Network Security Contract Job Trends in the North West

Network Security
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North West requiring Network Security skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 19 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 87 70 72
Rank change year-on-year -17 +2 +10
Contract jobs citing Network Security 107 62 50
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 2.73% 2.84% 2.08%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 22.34% 21.75% 17.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 68 33 41
10th Percentile £409 £363 £450
25th Percentile £463 £416 £491
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £536 £475 £650
Median % change year-on-year +12.84% -26.92% +22.93%
75th Percentile £600 £612 £675
90th Percentile £650 £748 £738
England median daily rate £550 £533 £540
% change year-on-year +3.29% -1.39% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 2 0
10th Percentile - £66.19 -
25th Percentile £16.50 £66.85 -
Median hourly rate £17.00 £68.33 -
Median % change year-on-year -75.12% - -
75th Percentile £17.50 £69.43 -
90th Percentile - £69.87 -
England median hourly rate £73.00 £70.16 £53.75
% change year-on-year +4.05% +30.53% -24.30%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
North West

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 the North West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 479 285 293
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 12.22% 13.05% 12.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 301 171 167
10th Percentile £200 £147 £269
25th Percentile £340 £333 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £450 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.33% -14.29% +8.02%
75th Percentile £573 £541 £675
90th Percentile £613 £680 £825
England median daily rate £500 £488 £508
% change year-on-year +2.56% -3.94% +1.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 12 10
10th Percentile £14.04 £15.50 £25.43
25th Percentile £16.69 £17.75 £37.55
Median hourly rate £17.50 £20.00 £48.56
Median % change year-on-year -12.50% -58.81% +191.13%
75th Percentile £23.25 £48.27 £51.91
90th Percentile £35.31 £67.25 £57.65
England median hourly rate £43.50 £41.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year +4.82% -27.64% +1.52%

Network Security
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

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

Network Security job vacancy trend in the North West

Network Security
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Network Security.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Network Security

Network Security
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Network Security in the North West over the 6 months to 19 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Network Security in the North West

Network Security
Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Network Security.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Network Security

Network Security
Contract Job Locations in the North West

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 North West region over the 6 months to 19 September 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
Cheshire +9 38 £538 +13.16% 8
Manchester -24 28 £550 -7.33% 31
Cumbria - 25 £520 -
Merseyside -17 10 £600 +71.43% 2
Lancashire -16 6 £438 +16.67% 8
Network Security
England

Network Security
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West 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 1 (0.93%) Confluence
1 1 (0.93%) NetWeaver
1 1 (0.93%) nginx
Applications
1 5 (4.67%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (1.87%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 24 (22.43%) Azure
2 20 (18.69%) AWS
3 10 (9.35%) Entra ID
4 7 (6.54%) GCP
5 6 (5.61%) SaaS
5 6 (5.61%) Serverless
6 5 (4.67%) Azure DevOps
6 5 (4.67%) Azure Sentinel
7 4 (3.74%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 4 (3.74%) Amazon ECS
7 4 (3.74%) Amazon EKS
7 4 (3.74%) AWS CloudFormation
7 4 (3.74%) AWS CloudTrail
7 4 (3.74%) AWS KMS
7 4 (3.74%) AWS Lambda
7 4 (3.74%) Azure Monitor
7 4 (3.74%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 4 (3.74%) IaaS
8 3 (2.80%) Azure AI
8 3 (2.80%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 68 (63.55%) Firewall
2 36 (33.64%) VPN
3 34 (31.78%) Wireless
4 27 (25.23%) WAN
5 22 (20.56%) LAN
6 16 (14.95%) DNS
7 13 (12.15%) Broadband
7 13 (12.15%) Converged Networks
8 10 (9.35%) BGP
8 10 (9.35%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 9 (8.41%) DMZ
9 9 (8.41%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
9 9 (8.41%) OSPF
10 6 (5.61%) Cisco ASA
10 6 (5.61%) Internet
10 6 (5.61%) TCP/IP
10 6 (5.61%) Wi-Fi
11 4 (3.74%) Cisco ISE
11 4 (3.74%) MPLS
11 4 (3.74%) VLAN
Development Applications
1 8 (7.48%) Jenkins
2 7 (6.54%) GitLab
3 5 (4.67%) JIRA
4 3 (2.80%) Git
5 1 (0.93%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 20 (18.69%) Finance
1 20 (18.69%) Social Skills
2 12 (11.21%) Analytical Skills
3 11 (10.28%) Banking
4 3 (2.80%) Documentation Skills
4 3 (2.80%) Financial Institution
4 3 (2.80%) Legal
4 3 (2.80%) Manufacturing
5 1 (0.93%) Automotive
5 1 (0.93%) Games
5 1 (0.93%) Organisational Skills
5 1 (0.93%) Retail
Job Titles
1 52 (48.60%) Network Engineer
2 17 (15.89%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
3 15 (14.02%) Security Engineer
4 10 (9.35%) Project Manager
5 9 (8.41%) Network Security Engineer
6 8 (7.48%) Senior
6 8 (7.48%) Senior Network Engineer
6 8 (7.48%) VMware Engineer
7 7 (6.54%) Network Manager
7 7 (6.54%) Network Project Manager
7 7 (6.54%) Network Security Manager
7 7 (6.54%) Security Manager
7 7 (6.54%) Security Project Manager
8 6 (5.61%) Architect
8 6 (5.61%) Security Architect
9 5 (4.67%) Cloud Engineer
9 5 (4.67%) SIEM Engineer
9 5 (4.67%) Splunk Engineer
10 4 (3.74%) Cloud Security Engineer
11 3 (2.80%) Cloud Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (12.15%) Terraform
2 5 (4.67%) 802.1X
2 5 (4.67%) ARM Templates
2 5 (4.67%) Azure Blueprints
3 4 (3.74%) REST
4 3 (2.80%) JSON
5 2 (1.87%) Django
5 2 (1.87%) XML
6 1 (0.93%) JWT
6 1 (0.93%) ModSecurity
6 1 (0.93%) OpenID
6 1 (0.93%) SAP Basis
6 1 (0.93%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 15 (14.02%) Security Posture
2 13 (12.15%) Data Centre
2 13 (12.15%) Management Information System
3 7 (6.54%) Cloud Native
4 4 (3.74%) PKI
5 3 (2.80%) Cyber Defence
5 3 (2.80%) Cyber Threat
5 3 (2.80%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
5 3 (2.80%) Self-Motivation
6 2 (1.87%) Cloud Security Posture
6 2 (1.87%) Data Protection Act
6 2 (1.87%) Driving Licence
6 2 (1.87%) Hybrid Cloud
6 2 (1.87%) Operational Technology
6 2 (1.87%) Public Cloud
6 2 (1.87%) Social Media
7 1 (0.93%) Animation
7 1 (0.93%) Distributed Systems
7 1 (0.93%) Enterprise Cloud
7 1 (0.93%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 8 (7.48%) Linux
2 7 (6.54%) Windows
3 4 (3.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (1.87%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.93%) Unix
5 1 (0.93%) Windows Server 2003
5 1 (0.93%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 32 (29.91%) Load Balancing
2 22 (20.56%) Infrastructure as Code
2 22 (20.56%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 21 (19.63%) Change Management
3 21 (19.63%) Zero Trust
4 20 (18.69%) Cloud Security
4 20 (18.69%) Project Delivery
5 17 (15.89%) CI/CD
5 17 (15.89%) Migration
5 17 (15.89%) Network Segmentation
6 15 (14.02%) Configuration Management
6 15 (14.02%) Security Operations
7 14 (13.08%) SIEM
8 13 (12.15%) Incident Response
8 13 (12.15%) ITIL
8 13 (12.15%) Stakeholder Management
9 12 (11.21%) Agile
9 12 (11.21%) Impact Assessments
10 11 (10.28%) Service Management
10 11 (10.28%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 28 (26.17%) Python
2 19 (17.76%) PowerShell
3 10 (9.35%) Bash
4 5 (4.67%) Bicep
4 5 (4.67%) Kusto Query Language
4 5 (4.67%) Search Processing Language
4 5 (4.67%) SQL
5 4 (3.74%) Java
6 2 (1.87%) ActionScript
6 2 (1.87%) Perl
Qualifications
1 42 (39.25%) Cisco Certification
2 30 (28.04%) Security Cleared
3 28 (26.17%) SC Cleared
4 24 (22.43%) CCNA
4 24 (22.43%) CCNP
5 18 (16.82%) CISSP
6 12 (11.21%) Degree
7 9 (8.41%) AWS Certification
8 8 (7.48%) CCIE
9 7 (6.54%) GCIH
10 6 (5.61%) CCSP
11 5 (4.67%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 5 (4.67%) Azure Certification
11 5 (4.67%) GCFA
12 4 (3.74%) Microsoft Certification
13 3 (2.80%) CCIE Security
13 3 (2.80%) CompTIA Security+
13 3 (2.80%) Network+ Certification
14 2 (1.87%) CCSA
14 2 (1.87%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (8.41%) PCI DSS
2 6 (5.61%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 5 (4.67%) GDPR
3 5 (4.67%) NIST
4 4 (3.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 1 (0.93%) GxP
5 1 (0.93%) SLA
System Software
1 8 (7.48%) VMware Infrastructure
2 5 (4.67%) Active Directory
2 5 (4.67%) Docker
3 1 (0.93%) VMware ESXi
3 1 (0.93%) VMware NSX
3 1 (0.93%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 22 (20.56%) Ansible
2 15 (14.02%) Progress Chef
3 7 (6.54%) CASB
3 7 (6.54%) Kubernetes
4 3 (2.80%) Cisco Prime
5 2 (1.87%) Single Sign-On
5 2 (1.87%) vCenter Server
6 1 (0.93%) Backup Exec
6 1 (0.93%) Istio
6 1 (0.93%) Nagios
6 1 (0.93%) Network Intrusion Detection System
6 1 (0.93%) Puppet
6 1 (0.93%) vMotion
Vendors
1 48 (44.86%) Cisco
2 20 (18.69%) Microsoft
3 15 (14.02%) F5
3 15 (14.02%) Palo Alto
4 11 (10.28%) Splunk
5 10 (9.35%) VMware
6 9 (8.41%) Fortinet
7 8 (7.48%) AlgoSec
8 7 (6.54%) ServiceNow
9 6 (5.61%) ForeScout
10 5 (4.67%) CheckPoint
10 5 (4.67%) Cribl.io
10 5 (4.67%) Google
10 5 (4.67%) Zscaler
11 4 (3.74%) Juniper
11 4 (3.74%) McAfee
11 4 (3.74%) Meraki
11 4 (3.74%) Red Hat
11 4 (3.74%) SolarWinds
12 3 (2.80%) Aruba