Network Engineer Contract Job Trends in the Thames Valley

Network Engineer
South East > Thames Valley

The median Network Engineer daily rate in the Thames Valley is £458, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 22 February 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 74 72 61
Rank change year-on-year -2 -11 +13
Contract jobs requiring a Network Engineer 63 39 92
As % of all contract jobs in the Thames Valley 2.63% 2.32% 3.33%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.91% 2.51% 3.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 52 22 59
10th Percentile £300 £366 £323
25th Percentile £333 £419 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £458 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -8.40% - -
75th Percentile £553 £554 £519
90th Percentile £575 £586 £588
South East median daily rate £485 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.00% - +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 1 4
10th Percentile £24.17 - £24.33
25th Percentile £31.92 £18.50 £24.44
Median hourly rate £45.67 £19.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +140.34% -24.00% -55.36%
75th Percentile £59.25 £19.50 £36.63
90th Percentile £66.90 - £56.65
South East median hourly rate £56.44 £19.00 £25.00
% change year-on-year +197.05% -24.00% -55.36%

All Contract IT Job Roles
Thames Valley

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the Thames Valley. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the Thames Valley with a recognized job title 2,168 1,556 2,602
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.48% 92.56% 94.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,432 931 1,558
10th Percentile £273 £250 £209
25th Percentile £400 £400 £365
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £588 £613 £600
90th Percentile £650 £656 £675
South East median daily rate £500 £500 £500
Number of hourly rates quoted 147 43 177
10th Percentile £16.11 £19.66 £15.95
25th Percentile £19.36 £41.25 £19.25
Median hourly rate £35.00 £57.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -39.13% +27.78% +27.05%
75th Percentile £83.00 £64.73 £62.54
90th Percentile £97.50 £74.40 £75.31
South East median hourly rate £29.81 £42.69 £45.00
% change year-on-year -30.18% -5.13% -

Network Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the Thames Valley

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Network Engineer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley.

Network Engineer job vacancy trend in the Thames Valley

Network Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in the Thames Valley

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Network Engineer job vacancies in the Thames Valley.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Network Engineer job vacancies in the Thames Valley

Network Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in the Thames Valley

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Network Engineer in the Thames Valley over the 6 months to 22 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Network Engineer in the Thames Valley

Network Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in the Thames Valley

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Network Engineer job vacancies in the Thames Valley.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Network Engineer job vacancies in the Thames Valley

Network Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram in the Thames Valley

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Network Engineer in the Thames Valley over the 6 months to 22 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Network Engineer in the Thames Valley

Network Engineer
Contract Job Locations in the Thames Valley

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Network Engineer within the Thames Valley region over the 6 months to 22 February 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
Berkshire +8 51 £458 -0.97% 23
Oxfordshire -9 7 £425 -22.73% 2
Buckinghamshire -14 5 £560 +14.87% 8
Network Engineer
South East

Network Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the Thames Valley

For the 6 months to 22 February 2026, Network Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the Thames Valley region featuring Network Engineer in the job title.

1 52 (82.54%) Security Cleared
2 46 (73.02%) Cisco
3 37 (58.73%) SC Cleared
4 29 (46.03%) Juniper
5 27 (42.86%) Firewall
6 17 (26.98%) LAN
7 16 (25.40%) BGP
7 16 (25.40%) DV Cleared
8 15 (23.81%) WAN
9 14 (22.22%) Collaborative Working
9 14 (22.22%) OSPF
9 14 (22.22%) SolarWinds
10 13 (20.63%) Cisco Certification
11 11 (17.46%) DHCP
11 11 (17.46%) DNS
11 11 (17.46%) Network Security
12 10 (15.87%) F5
12 10 (15.87%) High Availability
13 9 (14.29%) CCNP
13 9 (14.29%) Ethernet VPN
13 9 (14.29%) VXLAN
14 8 (12.70%) Cisco ISE
14 8 (12.70%) Cisco Nexus
14 8 (12.70%) Fortinet
14 8 (12.70%) Palo Alto
14 8 (12.70%) Problem-Solving
14 8 (12.70%) Windows
14 8 (12.70%) WLAN
15 7 (11.11%) Azure
15 7 (11.11%) FortiGate

Network Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the Thames Valley 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:

Cloud Services
1 7 (11.11%) Azure
2 6 (9.52%) AWS
3 2 (3.17%) IaaS
3 2 (3.17%) PaaS
3 2 (3.17%) SaaS
4 1 (1.59%) GCP
4 1 (1.59%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 27 (42.86%) Firewall
2 17 (26.98%) LAN
3 16 (25.40%) BGP
4 15 (23.81%) WAN
5 14 (22.22%) OSPF
6 11 (17.46%) DHCP
6 11 (17.46%) DNS
6 11 (17.46%) Network Security
7 9 (14.29%) Ethernet VPN
7 9 (14.29%) VXLAN
8 8 (12.70%) Cisco ISE
8 8 (12.70%) Cisco Nexus
8 8 (12.70%) WLAN
9 7 (11.11%) Junos
9 7 (11.11%) VPN
10 6 (9.52%) BIG-IP
11 5 (7.94%) VLAN
11 5 (7.94%) Wireless
12 4 (6.35%) TCP/IP
13 3 (4.76%) Broadband
Development Applications
1 1 (1.59%) GitLab
1 1 (1.59%) Jenkins
1 1 (1.59%) JIRA
1 1 (1.59%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 20 (31.75%) Social Skills
2 8 (12.70%) Telecoms
3 6 (9.52%) Public Sector
4 5 (7.94%) Documentation Skills
5 4 (6.35%) Analytical Skills
6 2 (3.17%) Military
7 1 (1.59%) Influencing Skills
7 1 (1.59%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (9.52%) 802.1X
2 2 (3.17%) RFC 2544
Miscellaneous
1 17 (26.98%) Data Centre
2 7 (11.11%) Clustering
3 5 (7.94%) PKI
4 4 (6.35%) Self-Motivation
5 2 (3.17%) Driving Licence
5 2 (3.17%) Fibre Optics
6 1 (1.59%) Data Protection Act
6 1 (1.59%) Life Science
6 1 (1.59%) Management Information System
6 1 (1.59%) Onboarding
6 1 (1.59%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 8 (12.70%) Windows
2 2 (3.17%) Linux
3 1 (1.59%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 14 (22.22%) Collaborative Working
2 10 (15.87%) High Availability
3 8 (12.70%) Problem-Solving
4 7 (11.11%) Service Management
5 6 (9.52%) Identity Access Management
5 6 (9.52%) ITIL
5 6 (9.52%) Load Balancing
6 5 (7.94%) Incident Management
6 5 (7.94%) Incident Response
6 5 (7.94%) ITSM
6 5 (7.94%) Network Design
6 5 (7.94%) Network Management
6 5 (7.94%) Observability
7 4 (6.35%) Network Monitoring
8 3 (4.76%) Availability Management
9 2 (3.17%) Case Management
9 2 (3.17%) Change Management
9 2 (3.17%) Knowledge Transfer
9 2 (3.17%) Migration
9 2 (3.17%) Performance Analysis
Programming Languages
1 1 (1.59%) Bash
1 1 (1.59%) PowerShell
1 1 (1.59%) Python
Qualifications
1 52 (82.54%) Security Cleared
2 37 (58.73%) SC Cleared
3 16 (25.40%) DV Cleared
4 13 (20.63%) Cisco Certification
5 9 (14.29%) CCNP
6 6 (9.52%) JNCIP
6 6 (9.52%) Network+ Certification
7 5 (7.94%) JNCIA
7 5 (7.94%) JNCIS
8 4 (6.35%) CCNA
9 1 (1.59%) BC Cleared
9 1 (1.59%) BPSS Clearance
9 1 (1.59%) CCIP
9 1 (1.59%) Computer Science Degree
9 1 (1.59%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (3.17%) QA
2 1 (1.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (1.59%) NIST
2 1 (1.59%) SLA
System Software
1 4 (6.35%) VMware Infrastructure
2 2 (3.17%) vCloud
2 2 (3.17%) VMware NSX
3 1 (1.59%) Active Directory
3 1 (1.59%) Docker
3 1 (1.59%) Firmware
3 1 (1.59%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 7 (11.11%) FortiGate
2 4 (6.35%) Nagios
3 1 (1.59%) Amdocs OSS
3 1 (1.59%) Ansible
3 1 (1.59%) Kubernetes
3 1 (1.59%) Terraform
Vendors
1 46 (73.02%) Cisco
2 29 (46.03%) Juniper
3 14 (22.22%) SolarWinds
4 10 (15.87%) F5
5 8 (12.70%) Fortinet
5 8 (12.70%) Palo Alto
6 6 (9.52%) CheckPoint
6 6 (9.52%) Splunk
7 5 (7.94%) Extreme Networks
8 4 (6.35%) Aruba
8 4 (6.35%) VMware
9 3 (4.76%) Meraki
10 2 (3.17%) Nokia
11 1 (1.59%) BT
11 1 (1.59%) Ciena
11 1 (1.59%) Cramer
11 1 (1.59%) Infoblox
11 1 (1.59%) Microsoft
11 1 (1.59%) NetScout
11 1 (1.59%) Zscaler