WAN Engineer Contract Job Trends in England

Wide Area Network Engineer (WAN Engineer)
UK > England

The median Wide Area Network Engineer (WAN Engineer) daily rate in England is £488, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 21 September 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 499 511 534
Rank change year-on-year +12 +23 +236
Contract jobs requiring a WAN Engineer 21 24 74
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 0.076% 0.073% 0.17%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.083% 0.079% 0.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 16 15 8
10th Percentile £281 £299 £212
25th Percentile £319 £363 £298
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £425
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% +11.76% -5.56%
75th Percentile £575 £638 £491
90th Percentile £678 - £515
UK median daily rate £488 £425 £475
% change year-on-year +14.71% -10.53% +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 0
10th Percentile £36.63 - -
25th Percentile £37.19 - -
Median hourly rate £38.75 - -
75th Percentile £39.69 - -
90th Percentile £39.88 - -
UK median hourly rate £38.75 - -

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
England

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in England. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in England with a recognized job title 25,187 30,511 40,033
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.33% 92.98% 94.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 16,216 19,002 27,957
10th Percentile £278 £300 £300
25th Percentile £401 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -3.67% -0.91%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,371 1,457 1,375
10th Percentile £13.75 £14.56 £15.25
25th Percentile £17.30 £21.25 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -45.54% +2.62% +73.08%
75th Percentile £53.99 £67.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.00 £75.00 £77.80
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -41.51% -3.37% +71.15%

WAN Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Job postings that featured WAN Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in England.

Job vacancy trend for WAN Engineer in England

WAN Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for WAN Engineer job vacancies in England.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for WAN Engineer job vacancies in England

WAN Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing WAN Engineer in England over the 6 months to 21 September 2025.

Daily rate histogram for WAN Engineer in England

WAN Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for WAN Engineer job vacancies in England.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for WAN Engineer job vacancies in England

WAN Engineer
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 WAN Engineer within the England region over the 6 months to 21 September 2025. 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 +28 15 £550 -12.00%
West Midlands -17 6 £300 -11.76% 4
Midlands -21 6 £300 -11.76% 4
WAN Engineer
UK

WAN Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England

For the 6 months to 21 September 2025, WAN Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the England region featuring WAN Engineer in the job title.

1 21 (100.00%) WAN
2 17 (80.95%) BGP
3 15 (71.43%) MPLS
4 13 (61.90%) SD-WAN
5 11 (52.38%) OSPF
6 10 (47.62%) VPN
6 10 (47.62%) Cisco
7 9 (42.86%) Juniper
8 8 (38.10%) IPsec
8 8 (38.10%) Social Skills
9 7 (33.33%) Public Sector
9 7 (33.33%) Fortinet
9 7 (33.33%) SC Cleared
9 7 (33.33%) Security Cleared
10 6 (28.57%) PKI
11 5 (23.81%) Network Security
11 5 (23.81%) Load Balancing
11 5 (23.81%) Azure
11 5 (23.81%) Change Control
11 5 (23.81%) Documentation Skills
11 5 (23.81%) Network Segmentation
12 4 (19.05%) ITIL
12 4 (19.05%) Validation
12 4 (19.05%) Migration
12 4 (19.05%) Firewall
12 4 (19.05%) Data Centre
12 4 (19.05%) Junos
13 3 (14.29%) Palo Alto
13 3 (14.29%) Finance
13 3 (14.29%) Banking

WAN Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Cloud Services
1 5 (23.81%) Azure
2 2 (9.52%) AWS
2 2 (9.52%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 21 (100.00%) WAN
2 17 (80.95%) BGP
3 15 (71.43%) MPLS
4 13 (61.90%) SD-WAN
5 11 (52.38%) OSPF
6 10 (47.62%) VPN
7 8 (38.10%) IPsec
8 5 (23.81%) Network Security
9 4 (19.05%) Firewall
9 4 (19.05%) Junos
10 3 (14.29%) LAN
11 2 (9.52%) Cisco IOS
11 2 (9.52%) Cisco Nexus
11 2 (9.52%) EIGRP
11 2 (9.52%) Ethernet VPN
11 2 (9.52%) IOS XR
11 2 (9.52%) Multicast
11 2 (9.52%) NX-OS
11 2 (9.52%) VXLAN
12 1 (4.76%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Development Applications
1 2 (9.52%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 8 (38.10%) Social Skills
2 7 (33.33%) Public Sector
3 5 (23.81%) Documentation Skills
4 3 (14.29%) Banking
4 3 (14.29%) Finance
5 2 (9.52%) Organisational Skills
Miscellaneous
1 6 (28.57%) PKI
2 4 (19.05%) Data Centre
3 2 (9.52%) Cloud Native
4 1 (4.76%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
4 1 (4.76%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 2 (9.52%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 5 (23.81%) Change Control
1 5 (23.81%) Load Balancing
1 5 (23.81%) Network Segmentation
2 4 (19.05%) ITIL
2 4 (19.05%) Migration
2 4 (19.05%) Validation
3 3 (14.29%) Network Design
4 2 (9.52%) Analytics
4 2 (9.52%) Change Management
4 2 (9.52%) End-to-End Testing
4 2 (9.52%) High Availability
4 2 (9.52%) Network Architecture
4 2 (9.52%) Network Monitoring
4 2 (9.52%) Network Virtualisation
4 2 (9.52%) Problem-Solving
4 2 (9.52%) Project Management
4 2 (9.52%) Security Patching
4 2 (9.52%) Test Planning
4 2 (9.52%) Time Management
4 2 (9.52%) WAN Optimisation
Programming Languages
1 2 (9.52%) Python
Qualifications
1 7 (33.33%) SC Cleared
1 7 (33.33%) Security Cleared
2 2 (9.52%) CCNP
2 2 (9.52%) Cisco Certification
2 2 (9.52%) JNCIS
System Software
1 2 (9.52%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 2 (9.52%) Ansible
Vendors
1 10 (47.62%) Cisco
2 9 (42.86%) Juniper
3 7 (33.33%) Fortinet
4 3 (14.29%) Palo Alto
5 2 (9.52%) Arista
5 2 (9.52%) Meraki
5 2 (9.52%) Microsoft
5 2 (9.52%) SolarWinds
6 1 (4.76%) F5