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 2 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 150 139 182
Rank change year-on-year -11 +43 -1
Contract jobs citing Network Security 723 466 473
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.73% 1.94% 1.28%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 18.13% 14.85% 9.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 500 284 328
10th Percentile £400 £384 £363
25th Percentile £447 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £564
Median % change year-on-year - -6.87% -1.96%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £675
90th Percentile £700 £713 £775
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £564
% change year-on-year +0.96% -7.76% +0.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 7 15
10th Percentile £27.20 £80.34 -
25th Percentile £42.13 £80.84 £7.43
Median hourly rate £65.00 £81.35 £13.50
Median % change year-on-year -20.10% +502.59% -74.10%
75th Percentile £74.00 £83.05 £41.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £90.40 -
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £81.35 £19.00
% change year-on-year -20.10% +328.16% -65.45%

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 3,988 3,138 4,829
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.57% 13.03% 13.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,468 1,964 2,897
10th Percentile £263 £220 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -3.85%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £601
90th Percentile £675 £675 £697
UK median daily rate £500 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 262 120 389
10th Percentile £16.50 £14.20 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.33 £16.09 £16.30
Median hourly rate £32.50 £38.41 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.39% -3.98% +135.29%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.06 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £81.43 £70.66
UK median hourly rate £28.88 £40.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year -28.69% +1.25% +119.30%

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 2 June 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 2 June 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 2 June 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 +4 313 £550 -4.35% 124
North of England 0 161 £498 -0.50% 81
South East -23 103 £520 +6.12% 85
North West +5 92 £498 -1.49% 52
Yorkshire -22 66 £500 +2.04% 22
Midlands -45 48 £450 -14.29% 27
East of England -24 36 £525 -6.67% 22
South West -22 33 £550 - 28
West Midlands -62 30 £435 -17.14% 18
East Midlands -15 17 £638 - 9
North East -24 3 £538 -14.00% 11
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 16 (2.21%) Confluence
2 12 (1.66%) Microsoft Exchange
3 6 (0.83%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.28%) Apache
Applications
1 14 (1.94%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (1.66%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.28%) Microsoft Excel
5 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 5 (0.69%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 215 (29.74%) Azure
2 155 (21.44%) AWS
3 90 (12.45%) GCP
4 59 (8.16%) Entra ID
5 26 (3.60%) GitHub
6 25 (3.46%) Azure Sentinel
7 23 (3.18%) Azure DevOps
8 22 (3.04%) GitHub Actions
9 20 (2.77%) Microsoft 365
9 20 (2.77%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 17 (2.35%) Azure ExpressRoute
10 17 (2.35%) Azure Key Vault
10 17 (2.35%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 15 (2.07%) Serverless
12 14 (1.94%) Akamai
12 14 (1.94%) SaaS
13 13 (1.80%) Azure Monitor
14 12 (1.66%) AWS CloudFormation
14 12 (1.66%) AWS Direct Connect
14 12 (1.66%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 331 (45.78%) Firewall
2 147 (20.33%) VPN
3 135 (18.67%) WAN
4 102 (14.11%) LAN
5 94 (13.00%) DNS
6 90 (12.45%) BGP
7 77 (10.65%) OSPF
8 72 (9.96%) VLAN
9 63 (8.71%) SD-WAN
9 63 (8.71%) TCP/IP
9 63 (8.71%) Wireless
10 47 (6.50%) MPLS
11 46 (6.36%) DHCP
12 40 (5.53%) SSL
13 34 (4.70%) Cisco ISE
14 31 (4.29%) Cisco ASA
14 31 (4.29%) IPsec
15 28 (3.87%) HTTP
16 27 (3.73%) NGFW
17 26 (3.60%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
2 5 (0.69%) SQL Server
3 4 (0.55%) Neo4j
4 3 (0.41%) Amazon Athena
4 3 (0.41%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (0.41%) Power BI
5 2 (0.28%) Data Lake
5 2 (0.28%) Elasticsearch
5 2 (0.28%) InfluxDB
5 2 (0.28%) Oracle Database
5 2 (0.28%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (0.28%) Relational Database
5 2 (0.28%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 1 (0.14%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 33 (4.56%) JIRA
2 18 (2.49%) Git
3 17 (2.35%) GitLab
4 16 (2.21%) Jenkins
5 5 (0.69%) Browser DevTools
6 4 (0.55%) Snyk
6 4 (0.55%) Sonatype Nexus
7 3 (0.41%) Artifactory
8 2 (0.28%) SonarQube
9 1 (0.14%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.14%) Postman
9 1 (0.14%) SoapUI
General
1 163 (22.54%) Social Skills
2 113 (15.63%) Finance
3 63 (8.71%) Analytical Skills
4 51 (7.05%) Public Sector
5 46 (6.36%) Banking
6 31 (4.29%) Documentation Skills
7 22 (3.04%) Telecoms
8 20 (2.77%) Financial Institution
9 10 (1.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 9 (1.24%) Retail
11 8 (1.11%) Legal
12 7 (0.97%) Manufacturing
13 6 (0.83%) Law
13 6 (0.83%) Local Government
13 6 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
13 6 (0.83%) Police
14 5 (0.69%) Influencing Skills
14 5 (0.69%) Military
15 3 (0.41%) Presentation Skills
16 2 (0.28%) Billing
Job Titles
1 179 (24.76%) Network Engineer
2 157 (21.72%) Architect
3 95 (13.14%) Security Engineer
4 72 (9.96%) Security Architect
5 69 (9.54%) Senior
6 55 (7.61%) Network Architect
7 48 (6.64%) Network Security Engineer
8 33 (4.56%) Project Manager
9 30 (4.15%) Consultant
10 28 (3.87%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 28 (3.87%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
11 24 (3.32%) Cloud Engineer
11 24 (3.32%) Lead
12 23 (3.18%) Network Security Architect
13 21 (2.90%) Senior Network Engineer
13 21 (2.90%) Solutions Architect
14 20 (2.77%) Cloud Architect
14 20 (2.77%) Senior Architect
15 19 (2.63%) Analyst
15 19 (2.63%) Azure Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (4.29%) 802.1X
2 13 (1.80%) LDAP
2 13 (1.80%) SAML
3 7 (0.97%) Kafka
3 7 (0.97%) OAuth
4 6 (0.83%) OpenID
4 6 (0.83%) REST
5 5 (0.69%) CSS
5 5 (0.69%) OAuth2
6 4 (0.55%) ARM Templates
6 4 (0.55%) HTML
7 3 (0.41%) JSON
7 3 (0.41%) Lambda Expressions
7 3 (0.41%) Node.js
7 3 (0.41%) Plotly
7 3 (0.41%) SailPoint
7 3 (0.41%) SLSA
8 2 (0.28%) gRPC
8 2 (0.28%) Keycloak
8 2 (0.28%) Protocol Buffers
Miscellaneous
1 99 (13.69%) Data Centre
2 45 (6.22%) Security Posture
3 43 (5.95%) Cloud Native
4 40 (5.53%) Hybrid Cloud
5 29 (4.01%) PKI
6 24 (3.32%) Onboarding
7 23 (3.18%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 22 (3.04%) Cyber Threat
9 21 (2.90%) Public Cloud
10 19 (2.63%) IoT
10 19 (2.63%) Operational Technology
11 17 (2.35%) Data Protection Act
11 17 (2.35%) Management Information System
12 16 (2.21%) Product Ownership
13 14 (1.94%) Security Operations Centre
14 12 (1.66%) Self-Motivation
15 11 (1.52%) Cyber Security Posture
16 10 (1.38%) Analytical Mindset
16 10 (1.38%) Replication
17 9 (1.24%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 63 (8.71%) Windows
2 54 (7.47%) Linux
3 26 (3.60%) Windows Server
4 7 (0.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 7 (0.97%) VMS
5 6 (0.83%) Ubuntu
6 5 (0.69%) Unix
6 5 (0.69%) Windows 10
7 4 (0.55%) Mac OS
8 3 (0.41%) SUSE
9 2 (0.28%) Android
10 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2003
10 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 153 (21.16%) Cybersecurity
2 121 (16.74%) Zero Trust
3 114 (15.77%) Cloud Security
4 98 (13.55%) Security Architecture
5 97 (13.42%) CI/CD
6 95 (13.14%) Migration
6 95 (13.14%) SIEM
7 94 (13.00%) DevOps
8 87 (12.03%) Infrastructure as Code
9 79 (10.93%) Continuous Improvement
10 74 (10.24%) Network Segmentation
10 74 (10.24%) Problem-Solving
11 67 (9.27%) Application Security
11 67 (9.27%) High Availability
12 66 (9.13%) Threat Modelling
13 64 (8.85%) Stakeholder Management
14 63 (8.71%) Agile
15 62 (8.58%) Incident Response
16 61 (8.44%) Identity Access Management
17 60 (8.30%) Data Protection
Programming Languages
1 92 (12.72%) Python
2 59 (8.16%) PowerShell
3 29 (4.01%) Bash
4 21 (2.90%) Bicep
5 20 (2.77%) JavaScript
6 17 (2.35%) SQL
7 9 (1.24%) Kusto Query Language
8 7 (0.97%) Shell Script
9 5 (0.69%) Java
10 4 (0.55%) C
10 4 (0.55%) PHP
11 3 (0.41%) C++
12 2 (0.28%) Go
12 2 (0.28%) Perl
12 2 (0.28%) Ruby
12 2 (0.28%) Rust
13 1 (0.14%) ActionScript
13 1 (0.14%) C#
13 1 (0.14%) VBA
Qualifications
1 222 (30.71%) Security Cleared
2 162 (22.41%) SC Cleared
3 137 (18.95%) Cisco Certification
4 90 (12.45%) CCNP
5 84 (11.62%) CISSP
6 71 (9.82%) DV Cleared
7 55 (7.61%) CCNA
8 53 (7.33%) Degree
9 45 (6.22%) CISM
10 31 (4.29%) CCSP
11 30 (4.15%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 28 (3.87%) Azure Certification
13 16 (2.21%) GIAC
14 15 (2.07%) CCIE
15 14 (1.94%) AWS Certification
16 12 (1.66%) CEH
17 11 (1.52%) BPSS Clearance
17 11 (1.52%) CompTIA Security+
17 11 (1.52%) Computer Science Degree
17 11 (1.52%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (10.10%) NIST
2 54 (7.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 30 (4.15%) GDPR
4 22 (3.04%) PCI DSS
5 17 (2.35%) GRC
6 16 (2.21%) NCSC
7 14 (1.94%) Cyber Essentials
8 11 (1.52%) QA
9 10 (1.38%) SLA
10 9 (1.24%) Actionable Recommendations
11 8 (1.11%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 8 (1.11%) SOC 2
12 6 (0.83%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 4 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 4 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 42001
13 4 (0.55%) NIST 800
13 4 (0.55%) PMO
13 4 (0.55%) RMADS
14 3 (0.41%) ISA99
15 2 (0.28%) JSP 440
System Software
1 54 (7.47%) Active Directory
1 54 (7.47%) VMware Infrastructure
2 22 (3.04%) VMware NSX
3 20 (2.77%) Virtual Machines
4 17 (2.35%) Docker
5 14 (1.94%) Hyper-V
6 11 (1.52%) VMware ESXi
7 9 (1.24%) vSphere
8 5 (0.69%) Firmware
8 5 (0.69%) Squid
9 4 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.28%) NFS
10 2 (0.28%) Postfix
10 2 (0.28%) Sendmail
10 2 (0.28%) Varnish
10 2 (0.28%) VMware Workstation
11 1 (0.14%) KVM
11 1 (0.14%) ProxySG
11 1 (0.14%) RHEV
11 1 (0.14%) Xen
Systems Management
1 101 (13.97%) Terraform
2 65 (8.99%) Ansible
3 57 (7.88%) Kubernetes
4 36 (4.98%) FortiGate
5 16 (2.21%) Single Sign-On
6 14 (1.94%) Nagios
7 13 (1.80%) Grafana
8 11 (1.52%) vCenter Server
9 10 (1.38%) Microsoft Intune
10 9 (1.24%) Microsoft Clustering
11 8 (1.11%) Kibana
12 6 (0.83%) QRadar
13 5 (0.69%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 5 (0.69%) CASB
13 5 (0.69%) Prometheus
13 5 (0.69%) Suricata
13 5 (0.69%) WSUS
14 4 (0.55%) Istio
14 4 (0.55%) Kustomize
14 4 (0.55%) Puppet
Vendors
1 209 (28.91%) Cisco
2 118 (16.32%) Palo Alto
3 106 (14.66%) Microsoft
4 67 (9.27%) VMware
5 62 (8.58%) F5
6 54 (7.47%) Fortinet
7 49 (6.78%) Juniper
8 45 (6.22%) CheckPoint
8 45 (6.22%) Zscaler
9 33 (4.56%) ServiceNow
10 26 (3.60%) Splunk
11 25 (3.46%) SolarWinds
12 20 (2.77%) Google
13 19 (2.63%) Citrix
13 19 (2.63%) ForeScout
14 17 (2.35%) Aruba
15 13 (1.80%) Tenable
16 11 (1.52%) CyberArk
16 11 (1.52%) Okta
16 11 (1.52%) SAP