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 6 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 129 70 49
Rank change year-on-year -59 -21 +39
Contract jobs citing WAN 13 47 119
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 0.45% 2.71% 3.75%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 5.22% 16.85% 23.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 8 33 78
10th Percentile £435 £238 £333
25th Percentile £490 £350 £502
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £425 £625
Median % change year-on-year +17.65% -32.00% +28.21%
75th Percentile £527 £625 £688
90th Percentile £618 £670 £738
England median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - +6.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 4 15
10th Percentile - £30.84 -
25th Percentile - £59.23 -
Median hourly rate - £75.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year - +87.50% -40.67%
75th Percentile - - £72.31
90th Percentile - - £84.00
England median hourly rate £22.50 £35.00 £24.00
% change year-on-year -35.71% +45.83% -37.86%

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 249 279 497
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 8.59% 16.10% 15.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 173 194 315
10th Percentile £263 £300 £270
25th Percentile £413 £407 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £547 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.65% -0.55% +10.00%
75th Percentile £600 £617 £675
90th Percentile £725 £688 £738
England median daily rate £500 £500 £475
% change year-on-year - +5.26% -9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 5 46
10th Percentile £12.43 £12.15 £40.00
25th Percentile £25.94 £12.50 £46.52
Median hourly rate £60.00 £75.00 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% +32.77% +476.43%
75th Percentile £64.13 - £73.17
90th Percentile £67.27 - £76.63
England median hourly rate £34.50 £35.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -1.43% -12.50% +108.88%

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 6 March 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 6 March 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
Devon -3 6 £495 +20.00% 1
Bristol -33 2 £413 -2.94% 2
Dorset -6 1 - -
Somerset -11 1 £550 -8.33%
Gloucestershire -12 1 - - 4
Wiltshire -27 1 £500 -20.00% 4
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 (15.38%) Microsoft Exchange
1 2 (15.38%) Skype for Business
Cloud Services
1 4 (30.77%) Azure
2 3 (23.08%) AWS
3 1 (7.69%) Amazon CloudWatch
3 1 (7.69%) AWS CloudFormation
3 1 (7.69%) AWS CloudTrail
3 1 (7.69%) AWS Fargate
3 1 (7.69%) AWS Lambda
3 1 (7.69%) Azure DevOps
3 1 (7.69%) Entra ID
3 1 (7.69%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 9 (69.23%) LAN
2 4 (30.77%) DHCP
2 4 (30.77%) DNS
2 4 (30.77%) Firewall
2 4 (30.77%) VPN
3 3 (23.08%) Cisco IOS
3 3 (23.08%) SD-WAN
3 3 (23.08%) VLAN
3 3 (23.08%) VoIP
4 2 (15.38%) BGP
4 2 (15.38%) H.323
4 2 (15.38%) NAS
4 2 (15.38%) OSPF
4 2 (15.38%) RTP
4 2 (15.38%) SAN
4 2 (15.38%) Skype
4 2 (15.38%) TCP/IP
4 2 (15.38%) WLAN
5 1 (7.69%) Cisco ISE
5 1 (7.69%) Spanning Tree
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (15.38%) SQL Server
2 1 (7.69%) Amazon RDS
2 1 (7.69%) DynamoDB
2 1 (7.69%) MongoDB
2 1 (7.69%) NoSQL
2 1 (7.69%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 1 (7.69%) Bitbucket
1 1 (7.69%) GitLab
1 1 (7.69%) Jenkins
General
1 1 (7.69%) Analytical Skills
1 1 (7.69%) Finance
1 1 (7.69%) Financial Institution
1 1 (7.69%) French Language
1 1 (7.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
1 1 (7.69%) Public Sector
1 1 (7.69%) Social Skills
Job Titles
1 3 (23.08%) Architect
1 3 (23.08%) Network Engineer
1 3 (23.08%) Support Engineer
2 2 (15.38%) Infrastructure Architect
2 2 (15.38%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 2 (15.38%) Telephony Engineer
2 2 (15.38%) Wintel Engineer
2 2 (15.38%) Wintel Support
2 2 (15.38%) Wintel Support Engineer
3 1 (7.69%) 3rd Line Engineer
3 1 (7.69%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
3 1 (7.69%) AWS Architect
3 1 (7.69%) AWS Engineer
3 1 (7.69%) Azure Architect
3 1 (7.69%) DevOps Engineer
3 1 (7.69%) Network Infrastructure Architect
3 1 (7.69%) Network Infrastructure Engineer
3 1 (7.69%) Network Security Architect
3 1 (7.69%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
3 1 (7.69%) Storage Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (15.38%) XMPP
2 1 (7.69%) .NET
2 1 (7.69%) 802.1X
2 1 (7.69%) Apache NiFi
2 1 (7.69%) LDAP
2 1 (7.69%) Node.js
2 1 (7.69%) React
2 1 (7.69%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 2 (15.38%) Data Centre
2 1 (7.69%) Cloud Native
2 1 (7.69%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 7 (53.85%) Windows
2 4 (30.77%) Windows Server
3 2 (15.38%) Linux
3 2 (15.38%) Windows Server 2016
4 1 (7.69%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 4 (30.77%) Problem-Solving
2 3 (23.08%) CI/CD
2 3 (23.08%) DevOps
2 3 (23.08%) Migration
3 2 (15.38%) Agile
3 2 (15.38%) Collaborative Working
3 2 (15.38%) Configuration Management
3 2 (15.38%) Customer Service
3 2 (15.38%) FinOps
3 2 (15.38%) Infrastructure as Code
3 2 (15.38%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 2 (15.38%) Knowledge Transfer
3 2 (15.38%) Network Design
3 2 (15.38%) Zero Trust
4 1 (7.69%) Cloud Security
4 1 (7.69%) Design Patterns
4 1 (7.69%) Generative AI
4 1 (7.69%) Observability
4 1 (7.69%) Roadmaps
4 1 (7.69%) UX Research
Programming Languages
1 4 (30.77%) PowerShell
2 2 (15.38%) Python
2 2 (15.38%) SQL
3 1 (7.69%) Bicep
3 1 (7.69%) C#
3 1 (7.69%) Perl
3 1 (7.69%) T-SQL
3 1 (7.69%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 5 (38.46%) SC Cleared
1 5 (38.46%) Security Cleared
2 3 (23.08%) DV Cleared
3 1 (7.69%) CCNA
3 1 (7.69%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (15.38%) NCSC
2 1 (7.69%) Cyber Essentials
2 1 (7.69%) Government Security Classifications
2 1 (7.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 5 (38.46%) VMware Infrastructure
2 4 (30.77%) Active Directory
2 4 (30.77%) Hyper-V
3 2 (15.38%) VMware NSX
4 1 (7.69%) Docker
4 1 (7.69%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 2 (15.38%) Cisco CUCM
1 2 (15.38%) Grafana
1 2 (15.38%) McAfee ePO
1 2 (15.38%) Terraform
2 1 (7.69%) Ansible
2 1 (7.69%) EMC VPLEX
2 1 (7.69%) Kibana
2 1 (7.69%) Kubernetes
2 1 (7.69%) logstash
2 1 (7.69%) SCCM
2 1 (7.69%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 7 (53.85%) Cisco
2 6 (46.15%) VMware
3 4 (30.77%) Microsoft
4 2 (15.38%) Genesys
4 2 (15.38%) McAfee
5 1 (7.69%) Aruba
5 1 (7.69%) Citrix
5 1 (7.69%) Dell
5 1 (7.69%) EMC
5 1 (7.69%) LogicMonitor
5 1 (7.69%) Netskope
5 1 (7.69%) Palo Alto
5 1 (7.69%) SolarWinds