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 25 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 129 106 107
Rank change year-on-year -23 +1 +12
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 65 60 99
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 1.47% 1.63% 1.99%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 10.35% 8.88% 8.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 46 41 86
10th Percentile £179 £203 £148
25th Percentile £219 £262 £180
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £458 £450 £275
Median % change year-on-year +1.78% +63.64% -47.37%
75th Percentile £560 £573 £543
90th Percentile £644 £630 £575
England median daily rate £477 £488 £438
% change year-on-year -2.26% +11.43% -16.67%
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 £65.00 £65.00 £51.70
% change year-on-year - +25.74% -20.47%

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 628 676 1,143
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 14.19% 18.33% 22.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 463 387 621
10th Percentile £204 £235 £200
25th Percentile £340 £400 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% +11.11% -6.48%
75th Percentile £575 £598 £568
90th Percentile £638 £650 £650
England median daily rate £488 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.50% - -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 21 69
10th Percentile £18.23 £31.25 £23.45
25th Percentile £24.94 £35.00 £30.00
Median hourly rate £71.08 £60.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +17.49% +0.83% +33.33%
75th Percentile £88.72 £63.75 £71.90
90th Percentile £90.87 £70.00 £76.82
England median hourly rate £34.00 £35.00 £56.49
% change year-on-year -2.86% -38.04% +27.23%

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 25 December 2025.

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 25 December 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
Thames Valley -3 42 £456 -19.29% 46
Berkshire -7 26 £259 -51.91% 21
Hampshire -8 11 £500 -1.48% 38
Buckinghamshire +3 9 £625 +12.11% 14
Oxfordshire -6 7 £425 -32.00% 11
Surrey -13 7 £523 +100.96% 20
Kent - 5 £155 - 15
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 8 (12.31%) SharePoint
2 2 (3.08%) Apache
2 2 (3.08%) WordPress
3 1 (1.54%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (1.54%) Apache Spark
3 1 (1.54%) IIS
3 1 (1.54%) Tomcat
Applications
1 8 (12.31%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (7.69%) MS Visio
3 2 (3.08%) Microsoft Excel
3 2 (3.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Cloud Services
1 28 (43.08%) Azure
2 26 (40.00%) AWS
3 9 (13.85%) Microsoft 365
4 5 (7.69%) AWS CloudFormation
5 4 (6.15%) Entra ID
6 3 (4.62%) GCP
7 2 (3.08%) SaaS
8 1 (1.54%) Akamai
8 1 (1.54%) Amazon EC2
8 1 (1.54%) Amazon EKS
8 1 (1.54%) Amazon S3
8 1 (1.54%) Cloud Computing
8 1 (1.54%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 47 (72.31%) DNS
2 32 (49.23%) Firewall
3 30 (46.15%) DHCP
4 25 (38.46%) VLAN
5 24 (36.92%) VPN
6 12 (18.46%) Network Security
7 10 (15.38%) BGP
7 10 (15.38%) WAN
8 8 (12.31%) LAN
8 8 (12.31%) OSPF
9 6 (9.23%) IPv6
10 5 (7.69%) MPLS
10 5 (7.69%) Remote Desktop
11 4 (6.15%) Intrusion Detection
11 4 (6.15%) SAN
11 4 (6.15%) SSL
11 4 (6.15%) Wireless
12 3 (4.62%) HTTP
12 3 (4.62%) IPv4
12 3 (4.62%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (6.15%) SQL Server
2 2 (3.08%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (1.54%) Amazon Aurora
3 1 (1.54%) Amazon RDS
3 1 (1.54%) Big Data
3 1 (1.54%) Delta Lake
3 1 (1.54%) Hadoop
3 1 (1.54%) NoSQL
3 1 (1.54%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 4 (6.15%) JIRA
2 2 (3.08%) Jenkins
3 1 (1.54%) Git
3 1 (1.54%) MLflow
3 1 (1.54%) Poetry
3 1 (1.54%) PyCharm
3 1 (1.54%) SonarQube
3 1 (1.54%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 25 (38.46%) Analytical Skills
2 23 (35.38%) Social Skills
3 5 (7.69%) Law
3 5 (7.69%) Legal
4 4 (6.15%) Documentation Skills
4 4 (6.15%) Organisational Skills
4 4 (6.15%) Public Sector
5 3 (4.62%) Aerospace
6 2 (3.08%) Advertising
6 2 (3.08%) Telecoms
7 1 (1.54%) Finance
7 1 (1.54%) French Language
7 1 (1.54%) German Language
Job Titles
1 19 (29.23%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 17 (26.15%) Support Engineer
3 12 (18.46%) Senior
4 11 (16.92%) Infrastructure Support
4 11 (16.92%) Infrastructure Support Engineer
5 7 (10.77%) IT Support
6 6 (9.23%) Network Engineer
7 5 (7.69%) Analyst
7 5 (7.69%) Help Desk Officer
7 5 (7.69%) Help Desk Support
7 5 (7.69%) Service Desk Officer
7 5 (7.69%) Service Desk Support
7 5 (7.69%) SOC Analyst
7 5 (7.69%) Support Officer
8 4 (6.15%) IT Engineer
8 4 (6.15%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
8 4 (6.15%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
9 3 (4.62%) Lead
9 3 (4.62%) Tester
10 2 (3.08%) Service Delivery Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (3.08%) Elastic Stack
1 2 (3.08%) NETCONF
1 2 (3.08%) OpenConfig
1 2 (3.08%) RESTCONF
1 2 (3.08%) YANG
2 1 (1.54%) Apache Avro
2 1 (1.54%) Flask
2 1 (1.54%) JSON
2 1 (1.54%) NumPy
2 1 (1.54%) Pandas
2 1 (1.54%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 14 (21.54%) Analytical Mindset
2 6 (9.23%) Data Centre
3 5 (7.69%) PKI
4 4 (6.15%) Cyberattack
4 4 (6.15%) Security Operations Centre
5 3 (4.62%) SCADA
6 2 (3.08%) Cyber Threat
6 2 (3.08%) Hybrid Cloud
6 2 (3.08%) Self-Motivation
7 1 (1.54%) Cyber Defence
7 1 (1.54%) Data Protection Act
7 1 (1.54%) Smartphone
7 1 (1.54%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 40 (61.54%) Windows
2 30 (46.15%) Linux
3 13 (20.00%) Windows Server
4 5 (7.69%) Mac OS
4 5 (7.69%) Ubuntu
4 5 (7.69%) Windows 10
4 5 (7.69%) Windows Server 2012
4 5 (7.69%) Windows Server 2016
5 3 (4.62%) Debian
6 2 (3.08%) CentOS
6 2 (3.08%) Unix
7 1 (1.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 36 (55.38%) Problem-Solving
2 28 (43.08%) ITIL
3 20 (30.77%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 16 (24.62%) Preventative Maintenance
5 15 (23.08%) Service Management
6 14 (21.54%) Disaster Recovery
7 13 (20.00%) Cybersecurity
8 11 (16.92%) Virtual Infrastructure
9 9 (13.85%) SIEM
10 8 (12.31%) Containerisation
10 8 (12.31%) Incident Response
11 7 (10.77%) Computer Science
11 7 (10.77%) Network Design
12 6 (9.23%) PRINCE2
13 5 (7.69%) CI/CD
13 5 (7.69%) Creative Problem-Solving
13 5 (7.69%) CRM
13 5 (7.69%) Infrastructure as Code
13 5 (7.69%) Test Automation
14 4 (6.15%) DevSecOps
Programming Languages
1 15 (23.08%) Python
2 11 (16.92%) Bash
3 8 (12.31%) PowerShell
4 5 (7.69%) SQL
5 2 (3.08%) Java
5 2 (3.08%) Perl
5 2 (3.08%) Shell Script
6 1 (1.54%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 36 (55.38%) Security Cleared
2 27 (41.54%) SC Cleared
3 15 (23.08%) Microsoft Certification
3 15 (23.08%) Network+ Certification
4 12 (18.46%) Cisco Certification
5 11 (16.92%) Azure Certification
5 11 (16.92%) Server+ Certification
6 8 (12.31%) CCNP
6 8 (12.31%) DV Cleared
7 7 (10.77%) Degree
8 5 (7.69%) A+ Certification
9 4 (6.15%) AWS Certification
9 4 (6.15%) CCIE
10 3 (4.62%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (4.62%) CCNA
10 3 (4.62%) JNCIS
10 3 (4.62%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 2 (3.08%) CompTIA CySA+
11 2 (3.08%) CompTIA Security+
11 2 (3.08%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (13.85%) GDPR
2 1 (1.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (1.54%) NIST
2 1 (1.54%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 26 (40.00%) VMware Infrastructure
2 21 (32.31%) Hyper-V
3 19 (29.23%) Active Directory
4 9 (13.85%) Docker
5 5 (7.69%) Terminal Services
6 3 (4.62%) KVM
7 2 (3.08%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (1.54%) NDS
8 1 (1.54%) NetIQ eDirectory
8 1 (1.54%) RHEV
8 1 (1.54%) Virtual Desktop
8 1 (1.54%) Xen
Systems Management
1 12 (18.46%) Ansible
2 9 (13.85%) Kubernetes
3 6 (9.23%) Nagios
4 5 (7.69%) Terraform
5 3 (4.62%) Iperf
5 3 (4.62%) Microsoft Intune
5 3 (4.62%) Nmap
5 3 (4.62%) Progress Chef
5 3 (4.62%) Puppet
5 3 (4.62%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (3.08%) FortiGate
6 2 (3.08%) SCCM
6 2 (3.08%) vCenter Server
7 1 (1.54%) Argo
7 1 (1.54%) Grafana
7 1 (1.54%) Istio
7 1 (1.54%) Prometheus
7 1 (1.54%) Proxmox
7 1 (1.54%) Red Hat Satellite
7 1 (1.54%) WhatsUp Gold
Vendors
1 32 (49.23%) Microsoft
2 29 (44.62%) VMware
3 15 (23.08%) Cisco
4 9 (13.85%) SolarWinds
5 8 (12.31%) Fortinet
5 8 (12.31%) Juniper
5 8 (12.31%) Red Hat
6 7 (10.77%) CheckPoint
6 7 (10.77%) Citrix
6 7 (10.77%) Palo Alto
7 6 (9.23%) Splunk
8 5 (7.69%) F5
9 4 (6.15%) ServiceNow
10 1 (1.54%) Cloudera
10 1 (1.54%) CyberArk
10 1 (1.54%) Imperva
10 1 (1.54%) NetApp
10 1 (1.54%) NetIQ
10 1 (1.54%) Oracle
10 1 (1.54%) Proofpoint