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

6 months to
21 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 129 84 56
Rank change year-on-year -45 -28 +39
Contract jobs citing WAN 11 43 99
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 0.43% 2.23% 3.30%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 4.37% 15.03% 21.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 6 32 62
10th Percentile £403 £230 £300
25th Percentile £502 £392 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £531 £423 £600
Median % change year-on-year +25.74% -29.58% +26.32%
75th Percentile £672 £625 £700
90th Percentile £744 £673 £738
England median daily rate £475 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -4.04% -1.00% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 5 12
10th Percentile - £37.15 £40.00
25th Percentile - - £56.88
Median hourly rate - £75.00 £69.62
Median % change year-on-year - +7.73% +24.14%
75th Percentile - - £75.00
90th Percentile - - £88.50
England median hourly rate £21.25 £72.50 £23.50
% change year-on-year -70.69% +208.51% -11.59%

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 252 286 461
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 9.96% 14.82% 15.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 181 181 270
10th Percentile £230 £300 £250
25th Percentile £375 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.43% -4.55% +10.00%
75th Percentile £614 £623 £679
90th Percentile £725 £706 £738
England median daily rate £491 £500 £493
% change year-on-year -1.80% +1.52% -5.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 9 68
10th Percentile £23.87 £11.88 £40.60
25th Percentile £37.25 £12.50 £48.31
Median hourly rate £50.00 £67.02 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -25.40% +18.64% +476.43%
75th Percentile £60.00 £75.00 £69.62
90th Percentile £64.80 - £75.38
England median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year -14.29% -36.36% +150.00%

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 January 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 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
Devon -1 3 £750 +81.82% 8
Bristol -15 3 £513 +8.47% 2
Somerset -6 2 £550 -8.33% 3
Gloucestershire -3 1 - - 4
Wiltshire -30 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 1 (9.09%) Microsoft Exchange
Cloud Services
1 6 (54.55%) Azure
2 4 (36.36%) AWS
3 1 (9.09%) Amazon CloudWatch
3 1 (9.09%) AWS CloudFormation
3 1 (9.09%) AWS CloudTrail
3 1 (9.09%) AWS Direct Connect
3 1 (9.09%) AWS Fargate
3 1 (9.09%) AWS Lambda
3 1 (9.09%) Azure DevOps
3 1 (9.09%) Azure ExpressRoute
3 1 (9.09%) Entra ID
3 1 (9.09%) Microsoft 365
3 1 (9.09%) Serverless
3 1 (9.09%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 8 (72.73%) LAN
2 6 (54.55%) VPN
3 4 (36.36%) DHCP
3 4 (36.36%) DNS
3 4 (36.36%) SD-WAN
4 3 (27.27%) Cisco IOS
4 3 (27.27%) VLAN
4 3 (27.27%) VoIP
5 2 (18.18%) BGP
5 2 (18.18%) Firewall
5 2 (18.18%) H.323
5 2 (18.18%) NAS
5 2 (18.18%) OSPF
5 2 (18.18%) RTP
5 2 (18.18%) SAN
5 2 (18.18%) WLAN
6 1 (9.09%) Cisco ASA
6 1 (9.09%) Cisco Nexus
6 1 (9.09%) Network Security
6 1 (9.09%) Spanning Tree
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (9.09%) Amazon RDS
1 1 (9.09%) DynamoDB
1 1 (9.09%) MongoDB
1 1 (9.09%) NoSQL
1 1 (9.09%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 1 (9.09%) Bitbucket
1 1 (9.09%) GitLab
1 1 (9.09%) Jenkins
General
1 3 (27.27%) Finance
2 2 (18.18%) Public Sector
2 2 (18.18%) Social Skills
3 1 (9.09%) Analytical Skills
3 1 (9.09%) Electronics
3 1 (9.09%) Financial Institution
3 1 (9.09%) French Language
3 1 (9.09%) Manufacturing
3 1 (9.09%) Marketing
3 1 (9.09%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 3 (27.27%) Architect
1 3 (27.27%) Infrastructure Engineer
1 3 (27.27%) Network Engineer
2 2 (18.18%) Network Architect
2 2 (18.18%) Telephony Engineer
3 1 (9.09%) AWS Architect
3 1 (9.09%) AWS Engineer
3 1 (9.09%) Azure Architect
3 1 (9.09%) Cisco Engineer
3 1 (9.09%) Cisco Network Engineer
3 1 (9.09%) Cloud Architect
3 1 (9.09%) Data Centre Architect
3 1 (9.09%) DevOps Engineer
3 1 (9.09%) Infrastructure Architect
3 1 (9.09%) IT Engineer
3 1 (9.09%) Lead Architect
3 1 (9.09%) Network Infrastructure Engineer
3 1 (9.09%) Network Security Architect
3 1 (9.09%) Security Architect
3 1 (9.09%) Storage Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (18.18%) XMPP
2 1 (9.09%) .NET
2 1 (9.09%) 802.1X
2 1 (9.09%) Apache NiFi
2 1 (9.09%) LDAP
2 1 (9.09%) Node.js
2 1 (9.09%) React
2 1 (9.09%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 2 (18.18%) Cloud Native
1 2 (18.18%) Data Centre
2 1 (9.09%) CMDB
2 1 (9.09%) Hybrid Cloud
2 1 (9.09%) Management Information System
2 1 (9.09%) NHS
2 1 (9.09%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 6 (54.55%) Windows
2 4 (36.36%) Windows Server
3 2 (18.18%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 4 (36.36%) Migration
1 4 (36.36%) Problem-Solving
2 3 (27.27%) CI/CD
2 3 (27.27%) Collaborative Working
2 3 (27.27%) DevOps
2 3 (27.27%) Infrastructure as Code
2 3 (27.27%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 3 (27.27%) Zero Trust
3 2 (18.18%) Agile
3 2 (18.18%) BCP
3 2 (18.18%) Business Continuity
3 2 (18.18%) Configuration Management
3 2 (18.18%) Cost Optimisation
3 2 (18.18%) Customer Service
3 2 (18.18%) FinOps
3 2 (18.18%) High Availability
3 2 (18.18%) Network Virtualisation
3 2 (18.18%) Vulnerability Management
4 1 (9.09%) Infrastructure Automation
4 1 (9.09%) Network Optimisation
Programming Languages
1 2 (18.18%) Python
1 2 (18.18%) SQL
2 1 (9.09%) Bicep
2 1 (9.09%) C#
2 1 (9.09%) Perl
2 1 (9.09%) PowerShell
2 1 (9.09%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 3 (27.27%) SC Cleared
1 3 (27.27%) Security Cleared
2 1 (9.09%) CCNA
2 1 (9.09%) Cisco Certification
2 1 (9.09%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (18.18%) NCSC
2 1 (9.09%) Cyber Essentials
2 1 (9.09%) Government Security Classifications
2 1 (9.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 3 (27.27%) Active Directory
2 2 (18.18%) Hyper-V
2 2 (18.18%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (9.09%) Docker
3 1 (9.09%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 2 (18.18%) Cisco CUCM
1 2 (18.18%) Grafana
1 2 (18.18%) Terraform
2 1 (9.09%) Ansible
2 1 (9.09%) Kibana
2 1 (9.09%) Kubernetes
2 1 (9.09%) logstash
2 1 (9.09%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 8 (72.73%) Cisco
2 4 (36.36%) VMware
3 3 (27.27%) Microsoft
4 2 (18.18%) Genesys
5 1 (9.09%) Aruba
5 1 (9.09%) Brocade
5 1 (9.09%) EMC
5 1 (9.09%) Extreme Networks
5 1 (9.09%) LogicMonitor
5 1 (9.09%) Palo Alto
5 1 (9.09%) SAP
5 1 (9.09%) SolarWinds