Data Network Engineer Contract Job Trends

Data Network Engineer
UK

The median Data Network Engineer daily rate in the UK is £490, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 16 December 2025.

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

6 months to
16 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 596 514 599
Rank change year-on-year -82 +85 +175
Contract jobs requiring a Data Network Engineer 7 30 3
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.019% 0.088% 0.007%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.021% 0.094% 0.007%
Number of daily rates quoted 2 18 0
10th Percentile £393 £428 -
25th Percentile £428 £435 -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £445 -
Median % change year-on-year +10.11% - -
75th Percentile £548 £455 -
90th Percentile £579 £550 -
UK excluding London median daily rate £380 £445 -
% change year-on-year -14.61% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £33.00 - -
Median hourly rate £34.00 - -
75th Percentile £35.00 - -
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - -

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. 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 UK with a recognized job title 33,396 31,755 41,279
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.97% 92.76% 93.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,158 19,530 27,755
10th Percentile £290 £300 £288
25th Percentile £404 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £644
90th Percentile £723 £738 £740
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,967 1,021 1,465
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.48 £15.19
25th Percentile £18.11 £21.00 £19.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £34.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -26.03% -24.44% +50.00%
75th Percentile £57.50 £62.69 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.47 £72.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -22.62% -27.78% +80.00%

Data Network Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Data Network Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

Data Network Engineer
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Data Network Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Data Network Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Data Network Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Data Network Engineer over the 6 months to 16 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Data Network Engineer in the UK

Data Network Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Data Network Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Data Network Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Data Network Engineer
Top 9 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Data Network Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 16 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
England -57 6 £600 +34.83% 2
Work from Home -12 4 - - 2
London -4 2 £600 -
UK excluding London -76 2 £380 -14.61% 2
Scotland +5 1 £380 -14.61%
West Midlands -30 1 - -
North West -33 1 - -
Midlands -37 1 - -
North of England -47 1 - -

Data Network Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 16 December 2025, Data 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 featuring Data Network Engineer in the job title.

1 5 (71.43%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 4 (57.14%) Hyper-V
2 4 (57.14%) LAN
2 4 (57.14%) VMware
2 4 (57.14%) WAN
2 4 (57.14%) Wi-Fi
3 3 (42.86%) Cisco
3 3 (42.86%) Firewall
3 3 (42.86%) FortiGate
3 3 (42.86%) HP
3 3 (42.86%) Middleware
3 3 (42.86%) Palo Alto
3 3 (42.86%) Performance Optimisation
3 3 (42.86%) SAN
3 3 (42.86%) TCP/IP
3 3 (42.86%) VLAN
4 2 (28.57%) BGP
4 2 (28.57%) Kubernetes
4 2 (28.57%) Low Latency
4 2 (28.57%) Python
4 2 (28.57%) Terraform
5 1 (14.29%) Actionable Insight
5 1 (14.29%) AI
5 1 (14.29%) Ansible
5 1 (14.29%) Arista
5 1 (14.29%) Benchmarking
5 1 (14.29%) Capacity Planning
5 1 (14.29%) CI/CD
5 1 (14.29%) Cisco Nexus
5 1 (14.29%) DevOps

Data Network Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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:

Communications & Networking
1 4 (57.14%) LAN
1 4 (57.14%) WAN
1 4 (57.14%) Wi-Fi
2 3 (42.86%) Firewall
2 3 (42.86%) SAN
2 3 (42.86%) TCP/IP
2 3 (42.86%) VLAN
3 2 (28.57%) BGP
4 1 (14.29%) Cisco Nexus
4 1 (14.29%) DMZ
4 1 (14.29%) DNS
4 1 (14.29%) Ethernet VPN
4 1 (14.29%) Internet
4 1 (14.29%) Multicast
4 1 (14.29%) OSPF
4 1 (14.29%) Software-Defined Networking
4 1 (14.29%) VPN
4 1 (14.29%) VXLAN
Development Applications
1 1 (14.29%) Jaeger
1 1 (14.29%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 3 (42.86%) Local Government
2 2 (28.57%) Banking
2 2 (28.57%) Investment Banking
3 1 (14.29%) Games
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (42.86%) Middleware
2 1 (14.29%) Loki
2 1 (14.29%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 4 (57.14%) Data Centre
2 1 (14.29%) Cloud Native
2 1 (14.29%) Distributed Systems
2 1 (14.29%) Media Streaming
2 1 (14.29%) Online Games
Processes & Methodologies
1 5 (71.43%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 3 (42.86%) Performance Optimisation
3 2 (28.57%) Low Latency
4 1 (14.29%) Actionable Insight
4 1 (14.29%) AI
4 1 (14.29%) Benchmarking
4 1 (14.29%) Capacity Planning
4 1 (14.29%) DevOps
4 1 (14.29%) ETL
4 1 (14.29%) High Availability
4 1 (14.29%) High-Frequency Trading
4 1 (14.29%) Load Balancing
4 1 (14.29%) Machine Learning
4 1 (14.29%) Microservices
4 1 (14.29%) Migration
4 1 (14.29%) Performance Tuning
4 1 (14.29%) Project Management
4 1 (14.29%) SDLC
4 1 (14.29%) Site Reliability Engineering
4 1 (14.29%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 2 (28.57%) Python
2 1 (14.29%) Go
2 1 (14.29%) Java
System Software
1 4 (57.14%) Hyper-V
2 1 (14.29%) KVM
2 1 (14.29%) VMware Infrastructure
2 1 (14.29%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 3 (42.86%) FortiGate
2 2 (28.57%) Kubernetes
2 2 (28.57%) Terraform
3 1 (14.29%) Ansible
3 1 (14.29%) Grafana
3 1 (14.29%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 4 (57.14%) VMware
2 3 (42.86%) Cisco
2 3 (42.86%) HP
2 3 (42.86%) Palo Alto
3 1 (14.29%) Arista
3 1 (14.29%) F5
3 1 (14.29%) Meraki
3 1 (14.29%) Splunk