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 25 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 81 69 77
Rank change year-on-year -12 +8 -4
Contract jobs citing Network Security 110 61 43
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 2.82% 2.81% 1.79%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 23.16% 21.55% 14.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 71 33 32
10th Percentile £413 £363 £413
25th Percentile £463 £416 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £537 £475 £569
Median % change year-on-year +13.05% -16.48% -1.09%
75th Percentile £600 £612 £678
90th Percentile £650 £748 £749
England median daily rate £550 £533 £538
% change year-on-year +3.29% -1.02% -2.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 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 475 283 295
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 12.16% 13.04% 12.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 302 170 153
10th Percentile £201 £147 £263
25th Percentile £336 £351 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £466 £453 £505
Median % change year-on-year +2.87% -10.30% +3.91%
75th Percentile £575 £547 £675
90th Percentile £624 £681 £818
England median daily rate £500 £490 £506
% change year-on-year +2.04% -3.21% +1.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 13 10
10th Percentile £13.33 - £25.43
25th Percentile £17.06 £15.50 £37.55
Median hourly rate £17.50 £20.00 £48.56
Median % change year-on-year -12.50% -58.81% +191.13%
75th Percentile £25.56 £41.94 £51.91
90th Percentile £36.54 £67.25 £57.65
England median hourly rate £43.50 £39.66 £57.35
% change year-on-year +9.68% -30.85% +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 25 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 25 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 +7 39 £525 +10.53% 8
Manchester -20 29 £550 -7.33% 39
Cumbria - 25 £520 -
Merseyside -19 10 £600 +71.43% 3
Lancashire -16 7 £438 +16.67% 10
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 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
1 1 (0.91%) Confluence
1 1 (0.91%) NetWeaver
1 1 (0.91%) nginx
Applications
1 5 (4.55%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (1.82%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (0.91%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 25 (22.73%) Azure
2 20 (18.18%) AWS
3 11 (10.00%) Entra ID
4 7 (6.36%) GCP
5 6 (5.45%) SaaS
5 6 (5.45%) Serverless
6 5 (4.55%) Azure DevOps
6 5 (4.55%) Azure Monitor
6 5 (4.55%) Azure Sentinel
6 5 (4.55%) IaaS
7 4 (3.64%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 4 (3.64%) Amazon ECS
7 4 (3.64%) Amazon EKS
7 4 (3.64%) AWS CloudFormation
7 4 (3.64%) AWS CloudTrail
7 4 (3.64%) AWS KMS
7 4 (3.64%) AWS Lambda
7 4 (3.64%) GitHub
7 4 (3.64%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 3 (2.73%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 69 (62.73%) Firewall
2 36 (32.73%) VPN
3 34 (30.91%) Wireless
4 27 (24.55%) WAN
5 22 (20.00%) LAN
6 17 (15.45%) DNS
7 13 (11.82%) Broadband
7 13 (11.82%) Converged Networks
8 11 (10.00%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 10 (9.09%) BGP
9 10 (9.09%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
10 9 (8.18%) DMZ
10 9 (8.18%) OSPF
11 6 (5.45%) Cisco ASA
11 6 (5.45%) Internet
11 6 (5.45%) TCP/IP
11 6 (5.45%) Wi-Fi
12 5 (4.55%) BIG-IP
13 4 (3.64%) Cisco ISE
13 4 (3.64%) VLAN
Development Applications
1 9 (8.18%) Jenkins
2 8 (7.27%) GitLab
3 5 (4.55%) JIRA
4 3 (2.73%) Git
5 1 (0.91%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 22 (20.00%) Finance
2 21 (19.09%) Social Skills
3 12 (10.91%) Analytical Skills
3 12 (10.91%) Banking
4 3 (2.73%) Documentation Skills
4 3 (2.73%) Financial Institution
4 3 (2.73%) Legal
4 3 (2.73%) Manufacturing
5 1 (0.91%) Automotive
5 1 (0.91%) Billing
5 1 (0.91%) Games
5 1 (0.91%) Organisational Skills
5 1 (0.91%) Presentation Skills
5 1 (0.91%) Public Sector
5 1 (0.91%) Publishing
5 1 (0.91%) Retail
Job Titles
1 53 (48.18%) Network Engineer
2 17 (15.45%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
3 16 (14.55%) Security Engineer
4 10 (9.09%) Network Security Engineer
4 10 (9.09%) Project Manager
5 8 (7.27%) Senior
5 8 (7.27%) Senior Network Engineer
6 7 (6.36%) Architect
6 7 (6.36%) Network Manager
6 7 (6.36%) Network Project Manager
6 7 (6.36%) Network Security Manager
6 7 (6.36%) Security Manager
6 7 (6.36%) Security Project Manager
6 7 (6.36%) VMware Engineer
7 6 (5.45%) Security Architect
8 5 (4.55%) Cloud Engineer
8 5 (4.55%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 5 (4.55%) SIEM Engineer
8 5 (4.55%) Splunk Engineer
9 4 (3.64%) Cloud Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (12.73%) Terraform
2 5 (4.55%) 802.1X
2 5 (4.55%) ARM Templates
2 5 (4.55%) Azure Blueprints
3 4 (3.64%) REST
4 3 (2.73%) JSON
5 2 (1.82%) Django
5 2 (1.82%) XML
6 1 (0.91%) JWT
6 1 (0.91%) ModSecurity
6 1 (0.91%) OpenID
6 1 (0.91%) SAP Basis
6 1 (0.91%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 15 (13.64%) Data Centre
1 15 (13.64%) Security Posture
2 13 (11.82%) Management Information System
3 7 (6.36%) Cloud Native
4 4 (3.64%) PKI
4 4 (3.64%) Self-Motivation
5 3 (2.73%) Cyber Defence
5 3 (2.73%) Cyber Threat
5 3 (2.73%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
5 3 (2.73%) Hybrid Cloud
5 3 (2.73%) Public Cloud
6 2 (1.82%) Cloud Security Posture
6 2 (1.82%) Data Protection Act
6 2 (1.82%) Driving Licence
6 2 (1.82%) Enterprise Cloud
6 2 (1.82%) Onboarding
6 2 (1.82%) Operational Technology
7 1 (0.91%) Distributed Systems
7 1 (0.91%) Product Ownership
7 1 (0.91%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 8 (7.27%) Linux
2 6 (5.45%) Windows
3 4 (3.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (1.82%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.91%) Unix
5 1 (0.91%) Windows Server 2003
5 1 (0.91%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 32 (29.09%) Load Balancing
2 25 (22.73%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 23 (20.91%) Infrastructure as Code
4 22 (20.00%) Zero Trust
5 21 (19.09%) Project Delivery
6 20 (18.18%) Change Management
6 20 (18.18%) Cloud Security
7 19 (17.27%) CI/CD
8 18 (16.36%) Migration
9 17 (15.45%) Network Segmentation
10 15 (13.64%) Configuration Management
10 15 (13.64%) Security Operations
11 14 (12.73%) ITIL
11 14 (12.73%) SIEM
12 13 (11.82%) Agile
12 13 (11.82%) Incident Response
13 12 (10.91%) Impact Assessments
13 12 (10.91%) Service Management
13 12 (10.91%) Stakeholder Management
14 11 (10.00%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 29 (26.36%) Python
2 19 (17.27%) PowerShell
3 10 (9.09%) Bash
4 6 (5.45%) Bicep
5 5 (4.55%) Kusto Query Language
5 5 (4.55%) Search Processing Language
5 5 (4.55%) SQL
6 4 (3.64%) Java
7 3 (2.73%) ActionScript
8 2 (1.82%) Perl
Qualifications
1 42 (38.18%) Cisco Certification
2 32 (29.09%) Security Cleared
3 30 (27.27%) SC Cleared
4 24 (21.82%) CCNA
4 24 (21.82%) CCNP
5 18 (16.36%) CISSP
6 12 (10.91%) Degree
7 9 (8.18%) AWS Certification
8 8 (7.27%) CCIE
9 7 (6.36%) GCIH
10 6 (5.45%) CCSP
11 5 (4.55%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 5 (4.55%) Azure Certification
11 5 (4.55%) GCFA
12 4 (3.64%) Microsoft Certification
13 3 (2.73%) CCIE Security
13 3 (2.73%) CompTIA Security+
13 3 (2.73%) Network+ Certification
14 2 (1.82%) BPSS Clearance
14 2 (1.82%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (9.09%) PCI DSS
2 6 (5.45%) NIST
2 6 (5.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 5 (4.55%) GDPR
3 5 (4.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.91%) GxP
System Software
1 8 (7.27%) VMware Infrastructure
2 6 (5.45%) Active Directory
2 6 (5.45%) Docker
3 1 (0.91%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 22 (20.00%) Ansible
2 15 (13.64%) Progress Chef
3 8 (7.27%) Kubernetes
4 7 (6.36%) CASB
5 3 (2.73%) Cisco Prime
6 2 (1.82%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.91%) Backup Exec
7 1 (0.91%) Grafana
7 1 (0.91%) Istio
7 1 (0.91%) Nagios
7 1 (0.91%) Network Intrusion Detection System
7 1 (0.91%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.91%) Puppet
7 1 (0.91%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 48 (43.64%) Cisco
2 20 (18.18%) Microsoft
3 17 (15.45%) F5
4 15 (13.64%) Palo Alto
5 11 (10.00%) Splunk
6 9 (8.18%) Fortinet
6 9 (8.18%) VMware
7 8 (7.27%) AlgoSec
8 7 (6.36%) ServiceNow
9 6 (5.45%) ForeScout
10 5 (4.55%) CheckPoint
10 5 (4.55%) Cribl.io
10 5 (4.55%) Google
10 5 (4.55%) Zscaler
11 4 (3.64%) Juniper
11 4 (3.64%) McAfee
11 4 (3.64%) Meraki
11 4 (3.64%) Red Hat
11 4 (3.64%) SolarWinds
12 3 (2.73%) Aruba