Network Engineer Contract Job Trends in the South East

Network Engineer
England > South East

The median Network Engineer daily rate in the South East is £463, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 25 August 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 112 71 54
Rank change year-on-year -41 -17 +9
Contract jobs requiring a Network Engineer 124 97 175
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 1.86% 2.75% 3.67%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.02% 3.05% 3.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 91 83 103
10th Percentile £250 £305 £350
25th Percentile £380 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -7.50% - +17.65%
75th Percentile £568 £575 £600
90th Percentile £600 £614 £638
England median daily rate £480 £484 £490
% change year-on-year -0.78% -1.28% +8.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 2 6
10th Percentile £59.94 £72.86 £18.06
25th Percentile £76.25 £75.66 £19.48
Median hourly rate £77.50 £83.32 £47.95
Median % change year-on-year -6.98% +73.76% -22.67%
75th Percentile £78.75 £87.97 £75.24
90th Percentile - £88.97 £76.12
England median hourly rate £77.50 £57.50 £56.78
% change year-on-year +34.78% +1.27% -5.37%

All Contract IT Job Roles
South East

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the South East. 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 the South East with a recognized job title 6,147 3,185 4,402
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.02% 90.28% 92.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,596 2,050 2,665
10th Percentile £303 £205 £251
25th Percentile £425 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £515
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -2.91% +3.00%
75th Percentile £625 £600 £634
90th Percentile £718 £675 £688
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 756 289 363
10th Percentile £15.50 £13.75 £16.00
25th Percentile £25.00 £15.50 £27.25
Median hourly rate £52.46 £25.15 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +108.60% -56.15% +14.70%
75th Percentile £71.06 £57.50 £74.31
90th Percentile £86.61 £75.00 £80.00
England median hourly rate £42.50 £25.23 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.48% -43.94% +2.60%

Network Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Network Engineer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East.

Network Engineer job vacancy trend in the South East

Network Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Network Engineer job vacancies in the South East.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Network Engineer job vacancies in the South East

Network Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Network Engineer in the South East over the 6 months to 25 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Network Engineer in the South East

Network Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Network Engineer job vacancies in the South East.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Network Engineer job vacancies in the South East

Network Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South East

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Network Engineer in the South East over the 6 months to 25 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Network Engineer in the South East

Network Engineer
Contract Job Locations in the South East

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Network Engineer within the South East region over the 6 months to 25 August 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
Thames Valley +1 81 £463 +2.78% 10
Berkshire -12 52 £400 -11.11% 5
Hampshire -51 22 £550 +10.00% 11
Buckinghamshire -19 21 £525 +31.25% 1
Isle of Wight - 10 - -
Oxfordshire -19 8 £480 - 5
Surrey -19 5 £450 +5.88% 6
Sussex - 3 £246 -
East Sussex +3 2 £409 +43.42% 1
Network Engineer
England

Network Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East

For the 6 months to 25 August 2026, Network Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the South East region featuring Network Engineer in the job title.

1 68 (54.84%) Security Cleared
2 59 (47.58%) Cisco
3 53 (42.74%) Firewall
4 45 (36.29%) SC Cleared
5 43 (34.68%) WAN
6 40 (32.26%) LAN
7 38 (30.65%) VMware
8 35 (28.23%) Juniper
9 28 (22.58%) Network Security
9 28 (22.58%) Palo Alto
9 28 (22.58%) VMware Infrastructure
10 27 (21.77%) DNS
11 26 (20.97%) DV Cleared
12 25 (20.16%) BGP
13 23 (18.55%) DHCP
13 23 (18.55%) ITIL
14 21 (16.94%) Cisco Certification
14 21 (16.94%) Fortinet
14 21 (16.94%) OSPF
14 21 (16.94%) VPN
15 19 (15.32%) Cisco ASA
15 19 (15.32%) Network Monitoring
15 19 (15.32%) SD-WAN
15 19 (15.32%) Wireless
16 17 (13.71%) Cisco Firepower
16 17 (13.71%) High Availability
16 17 (13.71%) Windows
17 16 (12.90%) Technical Leadership
17 16 (12.90%) VLAN
18 15 (12.10%) IPsec

Network Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East 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 (0.81%) Microsoft Exchange
Cloud Services
1 12 (9.68%) AWS
1 12 (9.68%) Azure
2 5 (4.03%) Azure Sentinel
3 1 (0.81%) AWS Direct Connect
3 1 (0.81%) Azure DevOps
3 1 (0.81%) GCP
Communications & Networking
1 53 (42.74%) Firewall
2 43 (34.68%) WAN
3 40 (32.26%) LAN
4 28 (22.58%) Network Security
5 27 (21.77%) DNS
6 25 (20.16%) BGP
7 23 (18.55%) DHCP
8 21 (16.94%) OSPF
8 21 (16.94%) VPN
9 19 (15.32%) Cisco ASA
9 19 (15.32%) SD-WAN
9 19 (15.32%) Wireless
10 17 (13.71%) Cisco Firepower
11 16 (12.90%) VLAN
12 15 (12.10%) IPsec
13 14 (11.29%) Wi-Fi
14 12 (9.68%) SSL
15 11 (8.87%) NGFW
16 10 (8.06%) Cisco Nexus
17 9 (7.26%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (0.81%) GIS
Development Applications
1 1 (0.81%) Browser DevTools
1 1 (0.81%) Git
1 1 (0.81%) JIRA
General
1 16 (12.90%) Manufacturing
2 15 (12.10%) Social Skills
3 9 (7.26%) Aerospace
4 8 (6.45%) Analytical Skills
5 6 (4.84%) Finance
5 6 (4.84%) Telecoms
6 5 (4.03%) Retail
7 4 (3.23%) Public Sector
8 3 (2.42%) Legal
9 2 (1.61%) Documentation Skills
10 1 (0.81%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (9.68%) 802.1X
2 2 (1.61%) Terraform
3 1 (0.81%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 18 (14.52%) Data Centre
2 9 (7.26%) PKI
3 4 (3.23%) Fibre Optics
4 3 (2.42%) Hybrid Cloud
4 3 (2.42%) Security Posture
5 2 (1.61%) Clustering
5 2 (1.61%) CMDB
5 2 (1.61%) Driving Licence
5 2 (1.61%) IoT
5 2 (1.61%) Legacy Systems
5 2 (1.61%) NHS
5 2 (1.61%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (0.81%) Analytical Mindset
6 1 (0.81%) Cloud Native
6 1 (0.81%) Data Protection Act
6 1 (0.81%) Life Science
6 1 (0.81%) Renewable Energy
6 1 (0.81%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 17 (13.71%) Windows
2 11 (8.87%) Linux
3 1 (0.81%) Windows 10
3 1 (0.81%) Windows 7
3 1 (0.81%) Windows Server
3 1 (0.81%) Windows Server 2008
3 1 (0.81%) Windows Server 2012
3 1 (0.81%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 23 (18.55%) ITIL
2 19 (15.32%) Network Monitoring
3 17 (13.71%) High Availability
4 16 (12.90%) Technical Leadership
5 15 (12.10%) Network Virtualisation
6 13 (10.48%) Load Balancing
6 13 (10.48%) Problem-Solving
7 12 (9.68%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 12 (9.68%) Security Operations
8 11 (8.87%) Change Management
9 10 (8.06%) Migration
10 9 (7.26%) Virtual Environments
11 8 (6.45%) ITSM
12 7 (5.65%) Validation
13 6 (4.84%) Capacity Planning
13 6 (4.84%) Collaborative Working
13 6 (4.84%) Identity Access Management
13 6 (4.84%) Network Design
14 5 (4.03%) Root Cause Analysis
14 5 (4.03%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 3 (2.42%) Python
1 3 (2.42%) SQL
Qualifications
1 68 (54.84%) Security Cleared
2 45 (36.29%) SC Cleared
3 26 (20.97%) DV Cleared
4 21 (16.94%) Cisco Certification
5 14 (11.29%) CCNP
6 5 (4.03%) CCNA
6 5 (4.03%) CCSE
6 5 (4.03%) CCSM
6 5 (4.03%) JNCIS
7 4 (3.23%) Degree
7 4 (3.23%) JNCIP
8 2 (1.61%) CCIE
8 2 (1.61%) JNCIA
9 1 (0.81%) AWS Certification
9 1 (0.81%) Computer Science Degree
9 1 (0.81%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (5.65%) SLA
2 6 (4.84%) NIST
3 2 (1.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.81%) QA
System Software
1 28 (22.58%) VMware Infrastructure
2 15 (12.10%) VMware NSX
3 8 (6.45%) Active Directory
4 6 (4.84%) VMware ESXi
5 3 (2.42%) vSphere
6 2 (1.61%) Firmware
6 2 (1.61%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (0.81%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 8 (6.45%) FortiGate
2 4 (3.23%) Cisco CUCM
3 3 (2.42%) Ansible
3 3 (2.42%) Nagios
4 2 (1.61%) Avamar
5 1 (0.81%) CASB
5 1 (0.81%) Grafana
5 1 (0.81%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.81%) SCOM
Vendors
1 59 (47.58%) Cisco
2 38 (30.65%) VMware
3 35 (28.23%) Juniper
4 28 (22.58%) Palo Alto
5 21 (16.94%) Fortinet
6 14 (11.29%) CheckPoint
6 14 (11.29%) F5
6 14 (11.29%) SolarWinds
7 11 (8.87%) ServiceNow
8 6 (4.84%) Extreme Networks
8 6 (4.84%) Meraki
9 5 (4.03%) Aruba
10 4 (3.23%) Becrypt
10 4 (3.23%) Infoblox
10 4 (3.23%) Microsoft
11 3 (2.42%) Blue Coat
11 3 (2.42%) Nokia
11 3 (2.42%) SevOne
11 3 (2.42%) Zscaler
12 2 (1.61%) Xerox