TCP/IP Contract Job Trends in the South East

Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)
England > South East

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the South East requiring TCP/IP skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 2 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 122 114 107
Rank change year-on-year -8 -7 +9
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 63 55 102
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 1.44% 1.56% 2.06%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 10.28% 8.65% 8.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 44 36 90
10th Percentile £219 £203 £148
25th Percentile £233 £291 £180
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £473 £465 £275
Median % change year-on-year +1.61% +69.09% -47.12%
75th Percentile £561 £588 £549
90th Percentile £646 £630 £575
England median daily rate £477 £500 £450
% change year-on-year -4.70% +11.11% -14.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 1 2
10th Percentile £70.50 - £29.68
25th Percentile £73.75 £18.50 £36.69
Median hourly rate £86.82 £19.00 £49.25
Median % change year-on-year +356.92% -61.42% +114.13%
75th Percentile £89.63 £19.50 £62.69
90th Percentile - - £70.23
England median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £50.39
% change year-on-year -2.87% +28.99% -22.48%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
South East

TCP/IP 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 South East.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 613 636 1,145
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 13.97% 18.01% 23.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 454 353 629
10th Percentile £204 £237 £200
25th Percentile £340 £400 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £486 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -2.75% +11.11% -7.60%
75th Percentile £574 £600 £563
90th Percentile £641 £650 £650
England median daily rate £490 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.00% - -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 20 70
10th Percentile £18.23 £31.25 £23.96
25th Percentile £24.94 £35.00 £30.00
Median hourly rate £71.08 £59.00 £62.25
Median % change year-on-year +20.47% -5.22% +38.33%
75th Percentile £88.72 £62.81 £71.90
90th Percentile £90.87 £67.44 £76.68
England median hourly rate £36.75 £35.00 £56.49
% change year-on-year +5.00% -38.04% +50.64%

TCP/IP
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing TCP/IP relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East.

TCP/IP job vacancy trend in the South East

TCP/IP
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing TCP/IP.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing TCP/IP

TCP/IP
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing TCP/IP in the South East over the 6 months to 2 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for TCP/IP in the South East

TCP/IP
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing TCP/IP.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing TCP/IP

TCP/IP
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 TCP/IP within the South East region over the 6 months to 2 January 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 42 £456 -20.70% 25
Berkshire -2 26 £259 -55.04% 15
Hampshire -4 11 £500 -1.48% 23
Buckinghamshire 0 9 £625 +10.62% 6
Oxfordshire -5 7 £425 -32.00% 4
Surrey -16 7 £523 +100.96% 7
Kent - 3 £155 - 8
TCP/IP
England

TCP/IP
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 6 (9.52%) SharePoint
2 2 (3.17%) Apache
2 2 (3.17%) WordPress
3 1 (1.59%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (1.59%) Apache Spark
3 1 (1.59%) IIS
3 1 (1.59%) Tomcat
Applications
1 6 (9.52%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (7.94%) MS Visio
3 2 (3.17%) Microsoft Excel
3 2 (3.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Cloud Services
1 28 (44.44%) Azure
2 26 (41.27%) AWS
3 7 (11.11%) Microsoft 365
4 5 (7.94%) AWS CloudFormation
5 4 (6.35%) Entra ID
6 3 (4.76%) GCP
7 2 (3.17%) SaaS
8 1 (1.59%) Akamai
8 1 (1.59%) Amazon EC2
8 1 (1.59%) Amazon EKS
8 1 (1.59%) Amazon S3
8 1 (1.59%) Cloud Computing
8 1 (1.59%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 45 (71.43%) DNS
2 30 (47.62%) DHCP
2 30 (47.62%) Firewall
3 25 (39.68%) VLAN
4 22 (34.92%) VPN
5 12 (19.05%) Network Security
6 10 (15.87%) BGP
6 10 (15.87%) WAN
7 8 (12.70%) LAN
7 8 (12.70%) OSPF
8 6 (9.52%) IPv6
9 5 (7.94%) MPLS
10 4 (6.35%) Intrusion Detection
10 4 (6.35%) SAN
10 4 (6.35%) SSL
10 4 (6.35%) Wireless
11 3 (4.76%) HTTP
11 3 (4.76%) Internet
11 3 (4.76%) Intranet
11 3 (4.76%) IPv4
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (6.35%) SQL Server
2 2 (3.17%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (1.59%) Amazon Aurora
3 1 (1.59%) Amazon RDS
3 1 (1.59%) Big Data
3 1 (1.59%) Delta Lake
3 1 (1.59%) Hadoop
3 1 (1.59%) NoSQL
3 1 (1.59%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 4 (6.35%) JIRA
2 2 (3.17%) Jenkins
3 1 (1.59%) Git
3 1 (1.59%) MLflow
3 1 (1.59%) Poetry
3 1 (1.59%) PyCharm
3 1 (1.59%) SonarQube
3 1 (1.59%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 25 (39.68%) Analytical Skills
2 23 (36.51%) Social Skills
3 4 (6.35%) Documentation Skills
3 4 (6.35%) Organisational Skills
3 4 (6.35%) Public Sector
4 3 (4.76%) Aerospace
4 3 (4.76%) Law
4 3 (4.76%) Legal
5 2 (3.17%) Advertising
5 2 (3.17%) Telecoms
6 1 (1.59%) Finance
6 1 (1.59%) French Language
6 1 (1.59%) German Language
Job Titles
1 19 (30.16%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 17 (26.98%) Support Engineer
3 12 (19.05%) Senior
4 11 (17.46%) Infrastructure Support
4 11 (17.46%) Infrastructure Support Engineer
5 6 (9.52%) Network Engineer
6 5 (7.94%) Analyst
6 5 (7.94%) IT Support
6 5 (7.94%) SOC Analyst
7 4 (6.35%) IT Engineer
7 4 (6.35%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
7 4 (6.35%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
8 3 (4.76%) Help Desk Officer
8 3 (4.76%) Help Desk Support
8 3 (4.76%) Lead
8 3 (4.76%) Service Desk Officer
8 3 (4.76%) Service Desk Support
8 3 (4.76%) Support Officer
8 3 (4.76%) Tester
9 2 (3.17%) IP Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (3.17%) Elastic Stack
1 2 (3.17%) NETCONF
1 2 (3.17%) OpenConfig
1 2 (3.17%) RESTCONF
1 2 (3.17%) YANG
2 1 (1.59%) Apache Avro
2 1 (1.59%) Flask
2 1 (1.59%) JSON
2 1 (1.59%) NumPy
2 1 (1.59%) Pandas
2 1 (1.59%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 14 (22.22%) Analytical Mindset
2 6 (9.52%) Data Centre
3 5 (7.94%) PKI
4 4 (6.35%) Cyberattack
4 4 (6.35%) Security Operations Centre
5 3 (4.76%) SCADA
6 2 (3.17%) Cyber Threat
6 2 (3.17%) Hybrid Cloud
6 2 (3.17%) Self-Motivation
7 1 (1.59%) Cyber Defence
7 1 (1.59%) Data Protection Act
7 1 (1.59%) Smartphone
7 1 (1.59%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 38 (60.32%) Windows
2 30 (47.62%) Linux
3 11 (17.46%) Windows Server
4 5 (7.94%) Mac OS
4 5 (7.94%) Ubuntu
5 3 (4.76%) Debian
5 3 (4.76%) Windows 10
5 3 (4.76%) Windows Server 2012
5 3 (4.76%) Windows Server 2016
6 2 (3.17%) CentOS
6 2 (3.17%) Unix
7 1 (1.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 34 (53.97%) Problem-Solving
2 26 (41.27%) ITIL
3 20 (31.75%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 15 (23.81%) Service Management
5 14 (22.22%) Disaster Recovery
5 14 (22.22%) Preventative Maintenance
6 13 (20.63%) Cybersecurity
7 11 (17.46%) Virtual Infrastructure
8 9 (14.29%) SIEM
9 8 (12.70%) Containerisation
9 8 (12.70%) Incident Response
10 7 (11.11%) Computer Science
10 7 (11.11%) Network Design
11 5 (7.94%) CI/CD
11 5 (7.94%) Infrastructure as Code
11 5 (7.94%) Test Automation
12 4 (6.35%) DevSecOps
12 4 (6.35%) Knowledge Transfer
12 4 (6.35%) Platform Engineering
12 4 (6.35%) Systems Engineering
Programming Languages
1 15 (23.81%) Python
2 11 (17.46%) Bash
3 8 (12.70%) PowerShell
4 5 (7.94%) SQL
5 2 (3.17%) Java
5 2 (3.17%) Perl
5 2 (3.17%) Shell Script
6 1 (1.59%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 36 (57.14%) Security Cleared
2 27 (42.86%) SC Cleared
3 15 (23.81%) Microsoft Certification
3 15 (23.81%) Network+ Certification
4 12 (19.05%) Cisco Certification
5 11 (17.46%) Azure Certification
5 11 (17.46%) Server+ Certification
6 8 (12.70%) CCNP
6 8 (12.70%) DV Cleared
7 7 (11.11%) Degree
8 5 (7.94%) A+ Certification
9 4 (6.35%) AWS Certification
9 4 (6.35%) CCIE
10 3 (4.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (4.76%) CCNA
10 3 (4.76%) JNCIS
10 3 (4.76%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 2 (3.17%) JNCIE
11 2 (3.17%) RHCE
11 2 (3.17%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (11.11%) GDPR
2 1 (1.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (1.59%) NIST
2 1 (1.59%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 24 (38.10%) VMware Infrastructure
2 19 (30.16%) Hyper-V
3 17 (26.98%) Active Directory
4 9 (14.29%) Docker
5 3 (4.76%) KVM
5 3 (4.76%) Terminal Services
6 2 (3.17%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (1.59%) NDS
7 1 (1.59%) NetIQ eDirectory
7 1 (1.59%) RHEV
7 1 (1.59%) Virtual Desktop
7 1 (1.59%) Xen
Systems Management
1 12 (19.05%) Ansible
2 9 (14.29%) Kubernetes
3 6 (9.52%) Nagios
4 5 (7.94%) Terraform
5 3 (4.76%) Iperf
5 3 (4.76%) Microsoft Intune
5 3 (4.76%) Nmap
5 3 (4.76%) Progress Chef
5 3 (4.76%) Puppet
5 3 (4.76%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (3.17%) FortiGate
6 2 (3.17%) SCCM
6 2 (3.17%) vCenter Server
7 1 (1.59%) Argo
7 1 (1.59%) Grafana
7 1 (1.59%) Istio
7 1 (1.59%) Prometheus
7 1 (1.59%) Proxmox
7 1 (1.59%) Red Hat Satellite
7 1 (1.59%) WhatsUp Gold
Vendors
1 30 (47.62%) Microsoft
2 27 (42.86%) VMware
3 15 (23.81%) Cisco
4 9 (14.29%) SolarWinds
5 8 (12.70%) Fortinet
5 8 (12.70%) Juniper
5 8 (12.70%) Red Hat
6 7 (11.11%) CheckPoint
6 7 (11.11%) Palo Alto
7 6 (9.52%) Splunk
8 5 (7.94%) Citrix
8 5 (7.94%) F5
9 4 (6.35%) ServiceNow
10 1 (1.59%) Cloudera
10 1 (1.59%) CyberArk
10 1 (1.59%) NetApp
10 1 (1.59%) NetIQ
10 1 (1.59%) OpenText
10 1 (1.59%) Oracle
10 1 (1.59%) Wyse