Software-Defined Networking Contract Job Trends in England

Software-Defined Networking
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring Software-Defined Networking skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 4 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 609 499 485
Rank change year-on-year -110 -14 +67
Contract jobs citing Software-Defined Networking 37 23 47
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.080% 0.082% 0.15%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 0.86% 0.70% 1.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 26 13 24
10th Percentile £213 £433 £500
25th Percentile £491 £500 £506
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £516 £550 £588
Median % change year-on-year -6.14% -6.38% -9.62%
75th Percentile £655 £588 £697
90th Percentile £700 £598 £729
UK median daily rate £500 £561 £575
% change year-on-year -10.91% -2.39% -11.54%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £55.00 - -
Median hourly rate £67.00 - -
75th Percentile £70.50 - -
90th Percentile £83.72 - -
UK median hourly rate £67.00 - -

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
England

Software-Defined Networking 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 4,289 3,304 3,921
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.26% 11.77% 12.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,527 2,089 2,260
10th Percentile £250 £222 £242
25th Percentile £400 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £594 £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 388 174 169
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £16.08
25th Percentile £21.33 £20.94 £25.00
Median hourly rate £43.50 £36.25 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +20.00% -36.79% +1.52%
75th Percentile £68.75 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £93.27 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £41.94 £50.00
% change year-on-year -22.51% -16.12% -11.49%

Software-Defined Networking
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Software-Defined Networking relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Software-Defined Networking job vacancy trend in England

Software-Defined Networking
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Software-Defined Networking.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Software-Defined Networking

Software-Defined Networking
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software-Defined Networking in England over the 6 months to 4 October 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Software-Defined Networking in England

Software-Defined Networking
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Software-Defined Networking.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Software-Defined Networking

Software-Defined Networking
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Software-Defined Networking in England over the 6 months to 4 October 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Software-Defined Networking in England

Software-Defined Networking
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 Software-Defined Networking within the England region over the 6 months to 4 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
South East -50 13 £650 +13.00% 5
London -83 11 £500 -9.71% 32
North of England -61 8 £225 -55.45% 14
North West -38 7 £225 -55.45% 5
South West -30 4 £500 -7.83% 16
Yorkshire -40 1 - - 10
Software-Defined Networking
UK

Software-Defined Networking
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 2 (5.41%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (2.70%) Gliffy
Business Applications
1 1 (2.70%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 14 (37.84%) Azure
2 12 (32.43%) AWS
3 3 (8.11%) IaaS
3 3 (8.11%) OpenShift
4 2 (5.41%) GitHub
5 1 (2.70%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 1 (2.70%) Amazon EKS
5 1 (2.70%) Amazon S3
5 1 (2.70%) AWS CloudTrail
5 1 (2.70%) AWS Direct Connect
5 1 (2.70%) Azure DevOps
5 1 (2.70%) Azure ExpressRoute
5 1 (2.70%) GCP
5 1 (2.70%) GitHub Actions
5 1 (2.70%) OCI
5 1 (2.70%) PaaS
5 1 (2.70%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 21 (56.76%) Firewall
2 14 (37.84%) Network Security
3 13 (35.14%) BGP
4 11 (29.73%) VPN
5 10 (27.03%) TCP/IP
5 10 (27.03%) WAN
6 8 (21.62%) DNS
7 7 (18.92%) DHCP
7 7 (18.92%) Ethernet VPN
7 7 (18.92%) OSPF
7 7 (18.92%) VLAN
7 7 (18.92%) VXLAN
8 4 (10.81%) IP Telephony
8 4 (10.81%) NGFW
8 4 (10.81%) PSTN
9 3 (8.11%) Cisco ASA
9 3 (8.11%) Cisco Firepower
9 3 (8.11%) LAN
9 3 (8.11%) VSAN
10 2 (5.41%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (2.70%) Amazon Aurora
1 1 (2.70%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 1 (2.70%) Bitbucket
1 1 (2.70%) Git
1 1 (2.70%) GitLab
1 1 (2.70%) Jenkins
1 1 (2.70%) JIRA
1 1 (2.70%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 15 (40.54%) Social Skills
2 9 (24.32%) Analytical Skills
3 3 (8.11%) Aerospace
3 3 (8.11%) Finance
4 2 (5.41%) Banking
4 2 (5.41%) Public Sector
5 1 (2.70%) Advertising
5 1 (2.70%) Presentation Skills
5 1 (2.70%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 14 (37.84%) Network Engineer
2 12 (32.43%) Architect
3 8 (21.62%) Network Architect
4 6 (16.22%) Senior
5 5 (13.51%) Analyst
6 4 (10.81%) Network Analyst
7 3 (8.11%) Senior Network Engineer
7 3 (8.11%) Senior Systems Engineer
7 3 (8.11%) Systems Engineer
8 2 (5.41%) Consultant
8 2 (5.41%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
8 2 (5.41%) Infrastructure Architect
8 2 (5.41%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 2 (5.41%) Infrastructure Specialist
8 2 (5.41%) Security Architect
8 2 (5.41%) Security Engineer
8 2 (5.41%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
8 2 (5.41%) Solutions Architect
8 2 (5.41%) VMware Consultant
8 2 (5.41%) VMware Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (21.62%) Terraform
2 3 (8.11%) ARM Templates
3 2 (5.41%) REST
4 1 (2.70%) 802.1X
4 1 (2.70%) JSON
4 1 (2.70%) JWT
4 1 (2.70%) Kafka
4 1 (2.70%) Keycloak
4 1 (2.70%) Middleware
4 1 (2.70%) OpenID
4 1 (2.70%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 12 (32.43%) Data Centre
2 9 (24.32%) Cloud Native
3 8 (21.62%) Hybrid Cloud
4 7 (18.92%) Legacy Systems
5 4 (10.81%) Driving Licence
5 4 (10.81%) Management Information System
6 3 (8.11%) IoT
6 3 (8.11%) PKI
7 2 (5.41%) Distributed Architecture
7 2 (5.41%) Distributed Computing
7 2 (5.41%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 2 (5.41%) Public Cloud
8 1 (2.70%) Distributed Applications
8 1 (2.70%) Distributed Systems
8 1 (2.70%) Fibre Optics
8 1 (2.70%) Security Posture
8 1 (2.70%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 6 (16.22%) Linux
1 6 (16.22%) Windows
2 4 (10.81%) Windows Server
3 2 (5.41%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 14 (37.84%) Technical Leadership
2 12 (32.43%) ITIL
2 12 (32.43%) Stakeholder Management
3 10 (27.03%) Agile
3 10 (27.03%) Migration
4 9 (24.32%) Problem-Solving
4 9 (24.32%) Zero Trust
5 8 (21.62%) Continuous Improvement
5 8 (21.62%) Disaster Recovery
5 8 (21.62%) Infrastructure as Code
5 8 (21.62%) Network Virtualisation
5 8 (21.62%) Project Delivery
6 7 (18.92%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 7 (18.92%) Load Balancing
6 7 (18.92%) Network Architecture
6 7 (18.92%) Network Segmentation
7 6 (16.22%) DevOps
7 6 (16.22%) Network Design
7 6 (16.22%) Observability
7 6 (16.22%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 7 (18.92%) PowerShell
1 7 (18.92%) Python
2 5 (13.51%) Bash
3 3 (8.11%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 22 (59.46%) Security Cleared
2 13 (35.14%) Cisco Certification
2 13 (35.14%) DV Cleared
3 10 (27.03%) SC Cleared
4 8 (21.62%) CCNP
5 7 (18.92%) Degree
6 5 (13.51%) CCNA
6 5 (13.51%) Computer Science Degree
6 5 (13.51%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 4 (10.81%) CCIE
7 4 (10.81%) CISSP
7 4 (10.81%) ITIL Certification
8 3 (8.11%) AWS Certification
8 3 (8.11%) Azure Certification
8 3 (8.11%) CCIE Security
8 3 (8.11%) GIAC
9 2 (5.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 2 (5.41%) CCSP
9 2 (5.41%) Microsoft Certification
9 2 (5.41%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (8.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 3 (8.11%) NIST
2 2 (5.41%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 14 (37.84%) VMware Infrastructure
2 10 (27.03%) VMware NSX
3 5 (13.51%) vSphere
4 4 (10.81%) Firmware
5 3 (8.11%) Hyper-V
6 1 (2.70%) Active Directory
6 1 (2.70%) Docker
Systems Management
1 8 (21.62%) Ansible
2 7 (18.92%) Kubernetes
3 4 (10.81%) vRealize
4 3 (8.11%) Istio
5 2 (5.41%) Progress Chef
5 2 (5.41%) vRealize Orchestrator
6 1 (2.70%) Cisco CUCM
6 1 (2.70%) Puppet
Vendors
1 14 (37.84%) Cisco
1 14 (37.84%) VMware
2 10 (27.03%) Palo Alto
3 6 (16.22%) CheckPoint
4 5 (13.51%) Fortinet
4 5 (13.51%) Meraki
4 5 (13.51%) Microsoft
5 3 (8.11%) F5
5 3 (8.11%) Red Hat
6 2 (5.41%) AlgoSec
7 1 (2.70%) Becrypt
7 1 (2.70%) Dell
7 1 (2.70%) Google
7 1 (2.70%) Oracle
7 1 (2.70%) ServiceNow
7 1 (2.70%) SolarWinds
7 1 (2.70%) Sparx