WAN Contract Job Trends in the South West

Wide Area Network (WAN)
England > South West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the South West requiring WAN skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 21 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 127 87 85
Rank change year-on-year -40 -2 -15
Contract jobs citing WAN 33 25 54
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 0.90% 1.29% 1.95%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 10.41% 9.96% 11.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 21 11 42
10th Percentile £488 £203 £503
25th Percentile £513 £246 £625
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £400 £650
Median % change year-on-year +37.50% -38.46% +42.47%
75th Percentile £600 £556 £675
90th Percentile £620 £713 £733
England median daily rate £513 £450 £500
% change year-on-year +13.89% -10.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 0 6
10th Percentile - - £67.50
25th Percentile - - £72.19
Median hourly rate £12.71 - £75.00
75th Percentile - - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £19.00 £30.00 £24.87
% change year-on-year -36.67% +20.63% -37.83%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
South West

WAN 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 West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 317 251 466
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 8.66% 13.00% 16.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 176 159 301
10th Percentile £210 £213 £275
25th Percentile £400 £320 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £535
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -8.41% +1.90%
75th Percentile £633 £616 £638
90th Percentile £723 £670 £675
England median daily rate £500 £492 £504
% change year-on-year +1.63% -2.38% +0.80%
Number of hourly rates quoted 53 4 40
10th Percentile £12.71 £26.70 £12.32
25th Percentile £19.33 £40.07 £13.58
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -11.54% +15.06%
75th Percentile £90.00 £65.00 £71.56
90th Percentile £99.76 - £75.30
England median hourly rate £27.75 £43.50 £54.88
% change year-on-year -36.21% -20.73% -1.84%

WAN
Job Vacancy Trend in the South West

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing WAN relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West.

WAN job vacancy trend in the South West

WAN
Daily Rate Trend in the South West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing WAN.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing WAN

WAN
Daily Rate Histogram in the South West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing WAN in the South West over the 6 months to 21 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for WAN in the South West

WAN
Hourly Rate Trend in the South West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing WAN.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing WAN

WAN
Contract Job Locations in the South West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing WAN within the South West region over the 6 months to 21 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
Bristol -18 11 £600 +6.67% 6
Wiltshire -8 9 £525 +21.74% 1
Devon - 8 £490 - 1
Gloucestershire -8 3 £550 +86.44% 7
Dorset -8 2 - - 1
WAN
England

WAN
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South 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 2 (6.06%) Microsoft Exchange
1 2 (6.06%) SharePoint
1 2 (6.06%) Skype for Business
2 1 (3.03%) Confluence
Cloud Services
1 12 (36.36%) Azure
2 9 (27.27%) Azure ExpressRoute
3 7 (21.21%) Azure Sentinel
4 6 (18.18%) Entra ID
5 5 (15.15%) Azure Monitor
6 4 (12.12%) Azure Cosmos DB
6 4 (12.12%) Azure Functions
6 4 (12.12%) Azure Key Vault
6 4 (12.12%) Azure Storage
6 4 (12.12%) Serverless
7 2 (6.06%) Microsoft 365
8 1 (3.03%) AWS
8 1 (3.03%) GCP
Communications & Networking
1 19 (57.58%) LAN
2 14 (42.42%) BGP
2 14 (42.42%) Firewall
3 8 (24.24%) MPLS
4 7 (21.21%) IPsec
5 6 (18.18%) DNS
6 4 (12.12%) OSPF
6 4 (12.12%) VLAN
6 4 (12.12%) VPN
7 2 (6.06%) DHCP
7 2 (6.06%) NAS
7 2 (6.06%) Network Security
7 2 (6.06%) SAN
7 2 (6.06%) SD-WAN
7 2 (6.06%) Skype
7 2 (6.06%) SSL
7 2 (6.06%) Wireless
8 1 (3.03%) SNMP
8 1 (3.03%) Spanning Tree
8 1 (3.03%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (12.12%) Azure SQL Database
1 4 (12.12%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 1 (3.03%) Bitbucket
1 1 (3.03%) JIRA
General
1 16 (48.48%) Social Skills
2 8 (24.24%) Analytical Skills
3 6 (18.18%) Retail
4 2 (6.06%) Public Sector
5 1 (3.03%) Police
5 1 (3.03%) Presentation Skills
5 1 (3.03%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 6 (18.18%) Architect
1 6 (18.18%) IT Support
1 6 (18.18%) IT Support Technician
1 6 (18.18%) IT Technician
1 6 (18.18%) Junior
1 6 (18.18%) Junior IT Support
1 6 (18.18%) Junior IT Technician
1 6 (18.18%) Junior Support Technician
1 6 (18.18%) Support Technician
2 5 (15.15%) Azure Consultant
2 5 (15.15%) Consultant
2 5 (15.15%) Developer
3 3 (9.09%) Network Engineer
3 3 (9.09%) Support Engineer
3 3 (9.09%) Technical Architect
3 3 (9.09%) Technical Specialist
4 2 (6.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 2 (6.06%) Network Manager
4 2 (6.06%) Security Consultant
4 2 (6.06%) Senior Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (15.15%) Terraform
Miscellaneous
1 6 (18.18%) EPoS
2 2 (6.06%) Cyber Security Posture
2 2 (6.06%) Security Posture
3 1 (3.03%) CCTV
3 1 (3.03%) Data Centre
3 1 (3.03%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 11 (33.33%) Windows
2 4 (12.12%) Windows Server
3 2 (6.06%) Windows Server 2016
3 2 (6.06%) Windows Server 2019
4 1 (3.03%) Linux
4 1 (3.03%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 16 (48.48%) Problem-Solving
2 8 (24.24%) Service Delivery
3 7 (21.21%) Continuous Improvement
3 7 (21.21%) Incident Response
3 7 (21.21%) Knowledge Transfer
4 6 (18.18%) Customer Service
4 6 (18.18%) Incident Management
4 6 (18.18%) Infrastructure as Code
4 6 (18.18%) Roadmaps
5 5 (15.15%) Analytics
5 5 (15.15%) Change Control
5 5 (15.15%) Cybersecurity
5 5 (15.15%) Log Analytics
5 5 (15.15%) Migration
5 5 (15.15%) Operational Stability
5 5 (15.15%) Requirements Workshops
5 5 (15.15%) Runbook
5 5 (15.15%) Technical Discovery
5 5 (15.15%) Validation
6 4 (12.12%) RBAC
Programming Languages
1 4 (12.12%) PowerShell
1 4 (12.12%) SQL
2 1 (3.03%) C
Qualifications
1 13 (39.39%) Security Cleared
2 8 (24.24%) DV Cleared
2 8 (24.24%) SC Cleared
3 3 (9.09%) Cisco Certification
4 2 (6.06%) BPSS Clearance
4 2 (6.06%) CCNA
4 2 (6.06%) CCNP
5 1 (3.03%) CCDP
5 1 (3.03%) CCIE
5 1 (3.03%) DBS Check
5 1 (3.03%) VCDX
5 1 (3.03%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (6.06%) Cyber Essentials
1 2 (6.06%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
1 2 (6.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 2 (6.06%) QA
2 1 (3.03%) NIST
2 1 (3.03%) NIST 800
2 1 (3.03%) SLA
System Software
1 6 (18.18%) Active Directory
1 6 (18.18%) Virtual Desktop
2 5 (15.15%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (12.12%) Virtual Machines
4 3 (9.09%) VMware NSX
5 2 (6.06%) Hyper-V
5 2 (6.06%) vSphere
6 1 (3.03%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 6 (18.18%) FortiGate
2 2 (6.06%) McAfee ePO
2 2 (6.06%) Microsoft Intune
2 2 (6.06%) Single Sign-On
3 1 (3.03%) Nagios
3 1 (3.03%) OPNET
3 1 (3.03%) QRadar
3 1 (3.03%) SCCM
3 1 (3.03%) Suricata
Vendors
1 20 (60.61%) Microsoft
2 7 (21.21%) Cisco
3 5 (15.15%) VMware
3 5 (15.15%) Zscaler
4 2 (6.06%) McAfee
5 1 (3.03%) F5
5 1 (3.03%) Fortinet
5 1 (3.03%) Google
5 1 (3.03%) Infoblox
5 1 (3.03%) NetScout
5 1 (3.03%) Splunk