Network Security Contract Job Trends in England

Network Security
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring Network Security skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 5 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 173 161 164
Rank change year-on-year -12 +3 -2
Contract jobs citing Network Security 763 486 502
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.65% 1.74% 1.55%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 17.85% 14.79% 12.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 499 284 323
10th Percentile £400 £380 £361
25th Percentile £461 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £533 £535
Median % change year-on-year +3.29% -0.47% -2.73%
75th Percentile £650 £638 £638
90th Percentile £738 £738 £735
UK median daily rate £550 £539 £525
% change year-on-year +2.09% +2.62% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 16 7
10th Percentile £27.00 £45.00 £28.40
25th Percentile £67.81 £52.50 £38.75
Median hourly rate £72.75 £70.16 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.69% +40.32% -31.03%
75th Percentile £74.00 £85.00 £58.75
90th Percentile £85.00 £97.50 £82.79
UK median hourly rate £72.75 £70.16 £45.00
% change year-on-year +3.69% +55.91% -37.93%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
England

Network Security falls under the Communications and Computer Networking category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring communications or computer networking skills in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 4,275 3,287 3,928
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.27% 11.77% 12.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,519 2,082 2,256
10th Percentile £250 £220 £243
25th Percentile £400 £361 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £595 £600 £608
90th Percentile £688 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 386 175 170
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £16.19
25th Percentile £21.33 £20.79 £25.31
Median hourly rate £41.75 £35.00 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +19.29% -38.97% +1.52%
75th Percentile £68.75 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £93.77 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £41.72 £50.00
% change year-on-year -22.10% -16.56% -11.49%

Network Security
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Network Security relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Network Security job vacancy trend in England

Network Security
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Network Security.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Network Security

Network Security
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Network Security in England over the 6 months to 5 October 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Network Security in England

Network Security
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Network Security.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Network Security

Network Security
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Network Security in England over the 6 months to 5 October 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Network Security in England

Network Security
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Network Security within the England region over the 6 months to 5 October 2026. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
London -10 330 £550 - 358
North of England +13 203 £540 +10.83% 88
North West -6 109 £540 +13.68% 49
Yorkshire +20 90 £540 +9.76% 30
South East -27 90 £557 +23.78% 131
Midlands -58 50 £481 -8.33% 65
East of England -4 40 £525 +5.00% 40
West Midlands -72 38 £450 -14.29% 38
South West -41 28 £675 +5.47% 45
East Midlands -2 12 £500 - 27
North East - 3 £680 - 9
Network Security
UK

Network Security
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 19 (2.49%) Microsoft Exchange
2 16 (2.10%) SharePoint
3 11 (1.44%) Confluence
4 4 (0.52%) Apache
4 4 (0.52%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.26%) Apache Spark
5 2 (0.26%) nginx
6 1 (0.13%) CMS
6 1 (0.13%) IIS
6 1 (0.13%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 17 (2.23%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (0.79%) MS Visio
3 5 (0.66%) Microsoft Excel
4 3 (0.39%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.13%) InfoPath
Business Applications
1 6 (0.79%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 261 (34.21%) Azure
2 184 (24.12%) AWS
3 99 (12.98%) GCP
4 89 (11.66%) Entra ID
5 49 (6.42%) Microsoft 365
6 41 (5.37%) GitHub
7 36 (4.72%) Azure DevOps
8 33 (4.33%) Azure Monitor
9 31 (4.06%) Serverless
10 23 (3.01%) SaaS
11 21 (2.75%) Azure Sentinel
12 18 (2.36%) GitHub Actions
13 17 (2.23%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 17 (2.23%) Amazon EKS
13 17 (2.23%) Azure AKS
13 17 (2.23%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 17 (2.23%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 17 (2.23%) OCI
13 17 (2.23%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 15 (1.97%) AWS Direct Connect
Communications & Networking
1 356 (46.66%) Firewall
2 178 (23.33%) VPN
3 166 (21.76%) WAN
4 131 (17.17%) DNS
5 111 (14.55%) LAN
6 93 (12.19%) Wireless
7 87 (11.40%) TCP/IP
8 85 (11.14%) BGP
9 68 (8.91%) DHCP
10 62 (8.13%) VLAN
11 61 (7.99%) SD-WAN
12 57 (7.47%) OSPF
13 53 (6.95%) SSL
14 43 (5.64%) MPLS
15 37 (4.85%) Cisco ISE
16 35 (4.59%) Cisco ASA
17 33 (4.33%) IPsec
18 32 (4.19%) Wi-Fi
19 28 (3.67%) NGFW
20 27 (3.54%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (1.57%) SQL Server
2 7 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
3 6 (0.79%) BigQuery
4 5 (0.66%) Delta Lake
4 5 (0.66%) Elasticsearch
5 4 (0.52%) Neo4j
5 4 (0.52%) Power BI
6 3 (0.39%) Azure SQL Database
6 3 (0.39%) Data Lake
6 3 (0.39%) PostgreSQL
7 2 (0.26%) Relational Database
8 1 (0.13%) Amazon Athena
8 1 (0.13%) Amazon Aurora
8 1 (0.13%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.13%) Big Data
8 1 (0.13%) DynamoDB
8 1 (0.13%) Looker
8 1 (0.13%) SAP Data Services
8 1 (0.13%) SAP HANA
8 1 (0.13%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 39 (5.11%) Git
2 31 (4.06%) GitLab
3 29 (3.80%) Jenkins
4 23 (3.01%) JIRA
5 6 (0.79%) Sonatype Nexus
6 4 (0.52%) MSBuild
6 4 (0.52%) SonarQube
6 4 (0.52%) Visual Studio
7 3 (0.39%) Artifactory
7 3 (0.39%) Claude Code
8 2 (0.26%) IBM UrbanCode
9 1 (0.13%) Browser DevTools
9 1 (0.13%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.13%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.13%) Postman
9 1 (0.13%) REST Assured
9 1 (0.13%) SoapUI
9 1 (0.13%) Subversion
General
1 223 (29.23%) Social Skills
2 149 (19.53%) Finance
3 81 (10.62%) Analytical Skills
4 64 (8.39%) Banking
5 39 (5.11%) Public Sector
6 33 (4.33%) Documentation Skills
7 25 (3.28%) Legal
8 22 (2.88%) Telecoms
9 18 (2.36%) Financial Institution
10 15 (1.97%) Influencing Skills
11 14 (1.83%) Retail
12 13 (1.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 12 (1.57%) Manufacturing
14 11 (1.44%) Presentation Skills
15 10 (1.31%) Organisational Skills
16 8 (1.05%) Local Government
17 6 (0.79%) Automotive
17 6 (0.79%) Military
17 6 (0.79%) Pharmaceutical
17 6 (0.79%) Police
Job Titles
1 212 (27.79%) Network Engineer
2 128 (16.78%) Architect
3 110 (14.42%) Security Engineer
4 93 (12.19%) Senior
5 67 (8.78%) Security Architect
6 64 (8.39%) Network Security Engineer
7 56 (7.34%) Consultant
8 54 (7.08%) Network Architect
9 42 (5.50%) Cloud Engineer
10 41 (5.37%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 41 (5.37%) Project Manager
10 41 (5.37%) Senior Network Engineer
11 32 (4.19%) Lead
12 28 (3.67%) Network Security Architect
13 27 (3.54%) Security Consultant
14 24 (3.15%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
15 23 (3.01%) Analyst
16 22 (2.88%) Network Manager
17 20 (2.62%) DevSecOps Consultant
18 19 (2.49%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 135 (17.69%) Terraform
2 36 (4.72%) 802.1X
3 22 (2.88%) REST
4 14 (1.83%) ARM Templates
5 13 (1.70%) Kafka
6 12 (1.57%) SAML
7 8 (1.05%) NETCONF
8 7 (0.92%) JSON
9 6 (0.79%) gRPC
9 6 (0.79%) Keycloak
9 6 (0.79%) LDAP
9 6 (0.79%) YAML
10 5 (0.66%) Azure Blueprints
10 5 (0.66%) OpenID
10 5 (0.66%) SLSA
10 5 (0.66%) Software Packaging
11 4 (0.52%) .NET
11 4 (0.52%) CSS
11 4 (0.52%) OAuth
11 4 (0.52%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 101 (13.24%) Data Centre
2 74 (9.70%) Security Posture
3 50 (6.55%) Onboarding
4 46 (6.03%) Cloud Native
5 36 (4.72%) Hybrid Cloud
5 36 (4.72%) Management Information System
6 34 (4.46%) Cyber Threat
7 31 (4.06%) Operational Technology
8 26 (3.41%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 24 (3.15%) PKI
10 21 (2.75%) Self-Motivation
11 19 (2.49%) Cloud Security Posture
11 19 (2.49%) Security Operations Centre
12 18 (2.36%) Public Cloud
13 15 (1.97%) Data Protection Act
14 11 (1.44%) Enterprise Software
14 11 (1.44%) Linux Command Line
15 10 (1.31%) Replication
15 10 (1.31%) Video Conferencing
16 9 (1.18%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 93 (12.19%) Windows
2 78 (10.22%) Linux
3 44 (5.77%) Windows Server
4 19 (2.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 12 (1.57%) Unix
6 8 (1.05%) Windows 10
7 7 (0.92%) Ubuntu
8 3 (0.39%) Check Point GAiA
8 3 (0.39%) Mac OS
9 2 (0.26%) Android
9 2 (0.26%) Oracle Linux
9 2 (0.26%) Rocky
9 2 (0.26%) SUSE
9 2 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
9 2 (0.26%) zOS
10 1 (0.13%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
10 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2003
10 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 165 (21.63%) Cybersecurity
2 154 (20.18%) Cloud Security
3 137 (17.96%) CI/CD
4 135 (17.69%) Stakeholder Management
5 124 (16.25%) Zero Trust
6 123 (16.12%) Infrastructure as Code
7 116 (15.20%) Continuous Improvement
8 111 (14.55%) Incident Response
9 108 (14.15%) DevOps
9 108 (14.15%) Migration
10 107 (14.02%) SIEM
11 102 (13.37%) Problem-Solving
12 101 (13.24%) Change Management
13 89 (11.66%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 86 (11.27%) Security Architecture
15 83 (10.88%) Identity Access Management
16 82 (10.75%) Agile
17 80 (10.48%) Vulnerability Management
18 78 (10.22%) Security Operations
19 77 (10.09%) Load Balancing
Programming Languages
1 152 (19.92%) Python
2 86 (11.27%) PowerShell
3 72 (9.44%) Bash
4 32 (4.19%) Bicep
5 29 (3.80%) SQL
6 14 (1.83%) Go
7 12 (1.57%) Java
8 7 (0.92%) Search Processing Language
8 7 (0.92%) Shell Script
9 6 (0.79%) ActionScript
9 6 (0.79%) Kusto Query Language
10 4 (0.52%) Rust
11 3 (0.39%) JavaScript
11 3 (0.39%) Perl
11 3 (0.39%) VBScript
12 1 (0.13%) C#
12 1 (0.13%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 219 (28.70%) Security Cleared
2 155 (20.31%) Cisco Certification
3 151 (19.79%) SC Cleared
4 95 (12.45%) CISSP
5 89 (11.66%) CCNP
6 75 (9.83%) DV Cleared
7 61 (7.99%) Degree
8 47 (6.16%) CCSP
9 44 (5.77%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 44 (5.77%) CCNA
10 38 (4.98%) CISM
11 34 (4.46%) CCIE
12 25 (3.28%) Azure Certification
13 24 (3.15%) AWS Certification
14 17 (2.23%) Computer Science Degree
15 12 (1.57%) PMI Certification
15 12 (1.57%) PMP
16 11 (1.44%) JNCIP
17 10 (1.31%) GIAC
17 10 (1.31%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 63 (8.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 60 (7.86%) NIST
3 29 (3.80%) GDPR
4 27 (3.54%) PCI DSS
5 26 (3.41%) NCSC
6 14 (1.83%) Cyber Essentials
6 14 (1.83%) GRC
7 11 (1.44%) NIST 800
8 8 (1.05%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 7 (0.92%) SLA
10 6 (0.79%) QA
10 6 (0.79%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 4 (0.52%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 4 (0.52%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 4 (0.52%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 3 (0.39%) Data Quality
12 3 (0.39%) SOC 2
13 2 (0.26%) JSP 440
14 1 (0.13%) GLBA
14 1 (0.13%) GxP
System Software
1 83 (10.88%) Active Directory
2 55 (7.21%) VMware Infrastructure
3 33 (4.33%) Docker
4 15 (1.97%) Virtual Machines
4 15 (1.97%) VMware NSX
5 13 (1.70%) vSphere
6 10 (1.31%) Hyper-V
7 8 (1.05%) VMware ESXi
8 7 (0.92%) Virtual Desktop
9 5 (0.66%) Squid
9 5 (0.66%) Virtual Servers
10 4 (0.52%) FreeRADIUS
11 2 (0.26%) Firmware
11 2 (0.26%) Microsoft Virtual Server
11 2 (0.26%) VMware Workstation
12 1 (0.13%) NFS
12 1 (0.13%) OpenSSH
12 1 (0.13%) ProxySG
12 1 (0.13%) Samba
Systems Management
1 95 (12.45%) Ansible
2 77 (10.09%) Kubernetes
3 44 (5.77%) FortiGate
4 28 (3.67%) Grafana
5 27 (3.54%) Microsoft Intune
6 20 (2.62%) Prometheus
7 18 (2.36%) Progress Chef
8 13 (1.70%) SCCM
9 10 (1.31%) CASB
9 10 (1.31%) Single Sign-On
10 9 (1.18%) Nagios
11 8 (1.05%) QRadar
12 7 (0.92%) Cisco CUCM
12 7 (0.92%) Puppet
13 5 (0.66%) Suricata
14 4 (0.52%) Kustomize
14 4 (0.52%) Podman
14 4 (0.52%) systemd
14 4 (0.52%) VxRail
14 4 (0.52%) WSUS
Vendors
1 231 (30.28%) Cisco
2 157 (20.58%) Microsoft
3 145 (19.00%) Palo Alto
4 83 (10.88%) Fortinet
5 69 (9.04%) VMware
6 67 (8.78%) F5
7 59 (7.73%) Zscaler
8 49 (6.42%) CheckPoint
9 42 (5.50%) Juniper
10 34 (4.46%) SolarWinds
11 31 (4.06%) Google
12 30 (3.93%) Splunk
13 23 (3.01%) ServiceNow
14 21 (2.75%) Aruba
15 16 (2.10%) Meraki
16 15 (1.97%) Citrix
17 14 (1.83%) Blue Coat
18 12 (1.57%) AlgoSec
18 12 (1.57%) Tenable
19 11 (1.44%) Arista