Network Design Contract Job Trends

Network Design
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Network Design skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 434 361 338
Rank change year-on-year -73 -23 +104
Contract jobs citing Network Design 200 169 255
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.42% 0.58% 0.59%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.50% 0.64% 0.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 137 97 131
10th Percentile £405 £351 £363
25th Percentile £463 £438 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £475
Median % change year-on-year - +10.53% -5.00%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £600
90th Percentile £675 £693 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £538 £450
% change year-on-year -6.98% +19.44% -7.93%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 1 4
10th Percentile £27.85 - £23.55
25th Percentile £33.25 £66.25 £24.00
Median hourly rate £54.25 £67.50 £47.25
Median % change year-on-year -19.63% +42.86% -32.50%
75th Percentile £71.76 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £72.23 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £71.00 - £70.00

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

Network Design falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 39,989 26,597 37,605
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.62% 90.89% 86.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,206 17,155 24,229
10th Percentile £319 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £743 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +0.62% -3.10% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,387 1,068 2,445
10th Percentile £14.99 £14.65 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.96 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.65
Median % change year-on-year +43.29% -18.65% -4.42%
75th Percentile £66.00 £60.84 £59.95
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.69 £27.76 £37.18
% change year-on-year +57.38% -25.34% +3.28%

Network Design
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Network Design relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Network Design job vacancy trend in the UK

Network Design
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Network Design.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Network Design

Network Design
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Network Design over the 6 months to 1 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Network Design in the UK

Network Design
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Network Design.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Network Design

Network Design
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Network Design over the 6 months to 1 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Network Design in the UK

Network Design
Top 16 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Network Design within the UK over the 6 months to 1 May 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
England -76 172 £519 -5.64% 52
UK excluding London -87 114 £500 -6.98% 45
London -41 61 £525 +7.14% 15
Work from Home -38 44 £475 -6.17% 15
South East -50 43 £500 -13.04% 13
North of England -77 25 £522 +4.40% 12
North West -53 18 £522 +4.35% 10
South West -30 15 £500 -5.88% 5
Scotland +3 11 £450 +2.97% 5
West Midlands -57 10 £463 +5.71% 9
Midlands -71 10 £463 +5.71% 9
East of England -20 8 £500 +25.00% 1
Yorkshire -50 7 £585 +16.90%
North East -18 2 - - 2
Northern Ireland - 2 £600 -
Wales -13 1 - -

Network Design
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:

Application Platforms
1 6 (3.00%) OpenStack
2 2 (1.00%) Confluence
2 2 (1.00%) Microsoft Exchange
2 2 (1.00%) Skype for Business
3 1 (0.50%) ArcGIS
3 1 (0.50%) Smallworld
Applications
1 8 (4.00%) MS Visio
2 6 (3.00%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (2.50%) Microsoft Excel
4 4 (2.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.50%) Autodesk Inventor
5 1 (0.50%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 2 (1.00%) DELMIA
1 2 (1.00%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 47 (23.50%) Azure
2 35 (17.50%) AWS
3 7 (3.50%) OCI
4 5 (2.50%) Azure ExpressRoute
4 5 (2.50%) GCP
4 5 (2.50%) GitHub
5 4 (2.00%) PaaS
5 4 (2.00%) SaaS
6 3 (1.50%) IaaS
7 2 (1.00%) Dynamics 365
7 2 (1.00%) IBM Watson
7 2 (1.00%) Microsoft 365
8 1 (0.50%) AWS CloudFormation
8 1 (0.50%) AWS IoT
8 1 (0.50%) Azure Sentinel
8 1 (0.50%) Azure Storage
8 1 (0.50%) Datadog
8 1 (0.50%) GitHub Actions
8 1 (0.50%) Nutanix
8 1 (0.50%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 76 (38.00%) Firewall
2 70 (35.00%) WAN
3 48 (24.00%) BGP
4 43 (21.50%) LAN
5 40 (20.00%) VPN
6 35 (17.50%) Network Security
6 35 (17.50%) OSPF
7 32 (16.00%) SD-WAN
8 29 (14.50%) VLAN
9 28 (14.00%) Wi-Fi
10 25 (12.50%) MPLS
11 23 (11.50%) 5G
12 20 (10.00%) TCP/IP
13 18 (9.00%) VXLAN
14 15 (7.50%) 4G
14 15 (7.50%) DNS
14 15 (7.50%) IPsec
14 15 (7.50%) Radio Access Network
14 15 (7.50%) Wireless
15 13 (6.50%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (0.50%) GIS
Development Applications
1 5 (2.50%) GitLab
2 3 (1.50%) JIRA
3 2 (1.00%) Git
4 1 (0.50%) Jenkins
4 1 (0.50%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 43 (21.50%) Social Skills
2 25 (12.50%) Telecoms
3 20 (10.00%) Public Sector
4 17 (8.50%) Legal
5 16 (8.00%) Analytical Skills
6 15 (7.50%) Finance
7 8 (4.00%) Documentation Skills
8 5 (2.50%) Police
9 4 (2.00%) Banking
9 4 (2.00%) Manufacturing
10 2 (1.00%) Electronics
10 2 (1.00%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (1.00%) Military
10 2 (1.00%) Retail
10 2 (1.00%) Retail Banking
11 1 (0.50%) Aerospace
11 1 (0.50%) Aviation
11 1 (0.50%) German Language
11 1 (0.50%) Marketing
11 1 (0.50%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 63 (31.50%) Network Engineer
2 48 (24.00%) Architect
3 35 (17.50%) Network Architect
4 34 (17.00%) Senior
5 28 (14.00%) Network Specialist
6 22 (11.00%) Designer
7 20 (10.00%) Network Design Specialist
8 17 (8.50%) Network Designer
9 15 (7.50%) Design Engineer
10 13 (6.50%) Network Design Engineer
10 13 (6.50%) Senior Network Engineer
11 11 (5.50%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 9 (4.50%) Senior Designer
12 9 (4.50%) Senior Network Designer
12 9 (4.50%) Technical Architect
13 8 (4.00%) Lead
14 7 (3.50%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
14 7 (3.50%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 6 (3.00%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 6 (3.00%) Senior Network Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (4.00%) 802.1X
1 8 (4.00%) NETCONF
1 8 (4.00%) YANG
2 4 (2.00%) Kafka
2 4 (2.00%) OpenConfig
2 4 (2.00%) REST
2 4 (2.00%) RESTCONF
3 2 (1.00%) Django
3 2 (1.00%) OpenID
3 2 (1.00%) SAML
4 1 (0.50%) JSON
4 1 (0.50%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 50 (25.00%) Data Centre
2 22 (11.00%) Hybrid Cloud
3 13 (6.50%) Cloud Native
4 11 (5.50%) Data Protection Act
4 11 (5.50%) Management Information System
5 5 (2.50%) IoT
6 4 (2.00%) Analytical Mindset
6 4 (2.00%) Operational Technology
6 4 (2.00%) Self-Motivation
7 3 (1.50%) CCTV
7 3 (1.50%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 2 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
8 2 (1.00%) Hedge funds
8 2 (1.00%) Onboarding
8 2 (1.00%) PKI
8 2 (1.00%) Private Cloud
8 2 (1.00%) Security Posture
9 1 (0.50%) EMC VNX
9 1 (0.50%) Public Cloud
9 1 (0.50%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 9 (4.50%) Windows
2 8 (4.00%) Linux
3 6 (3.00%) Windows Server
4 2 (1.00%) Windows Server 2016
5 1 (0.50%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 43 (21.50%) Network Architecture
2 29 (14.50%) High Availability
3 28 (14.00%) Migration
4 25 (12.50%) Load Balancing
5 24 (12.00%) Problem-Solving
6 18 (9.00%) Infrastructure as Code
7 17 (8.50%) Roadmaps
7 17 (8.50%) Zero Trust
8 15 (7.50%) CI/CD
8 15 (7.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 14 (7.00%) Data Protection
9 14 (7.00%) Stakeholder Management
9 14 (7.00%) Technical Leadership
10 13 (6.50%) DevOps
11 12 (6.00%) Network Segmentation
12 11 (5.50%) Capacity Planning
12 11 (5.50%) Continuous Improvement
12 11 (5.50%) Cybersecurity
12 11 (5.50%) Project Delivery
13 10 (5.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 26 (13.00%) Python
2 6 (3.00%) PowerShell
3 4 (2.00%) Bash
4 2 (1.00%) Bicep
4 2 (1.00%) SQL
5 1 (0.50%) Perl
5 1 (0.50%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 75 (37.50%) Security Cleared
2 55 (27.50%) Cisco Certification
3 48 (24.00%) SC Cleared
4 41 (20.50%) CCNP
5 29 (14.50%) DV Cleared
6 23 (11.50%) CCIE
7 15 (7.50%) CCNA
8 11 (5.50%) Degree
9 10 (5.00%) JNCIS
10 9 (4.50%) JNCIE
11 7 (3.50%) Azure Certification
12 5 (2.50%) AWS Certification
13 3 (1.50%) RIBA
13 3 (1.50%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 2 (1.00%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 2 (1.00%) CEH
14 2 (1.00%) ITIL Certification
14 2 (1.00%) PMI Certification
14 2 (1.00%) PMP
14 2 (1.00%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (3.50%) NIST
2 3 (1.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 3 (1.50%) JSP 440
2 3 (1.50%) NCSC
2 3 (1.50%) SLA
3 2 (1.00%) Def Stans
3 2 (1.00%) GDPR
4 1 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
4 1 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials
4 1 (0.50%) DO-160
4 1 (0.50%) NIST 800
4 1 (0.50%) QA
System Software
1 14 (7.00%) VMware Infrastructure
2 10 (5.00%) VMware NSX
3 8 (4.00%) Active Directory
4 7 (3.50%) Hyper-V
5 3 (1.50%) KVM
5 3 (1.50%) vSphere
6 1 (0.50%) Docker
6 1 (0.50%) EMC RecoverPoint
6 1 (0.50%) Firmware
6 1 (0.50%) NFS
6 1 (0.50%) RHEV
6 1 (0.50%) SRDF
6 1 (0.50%) VMware ESXi
6 1 (0.50%) Xen
Systems Management
1 25 (12.50%) Ansible
2 16 (8.00%) FortiGate
2 16 (8.00%) Terraform
3 7 (3.50%) Kubernetes
4 5 (2.50%) Nagios
5 2 (1.00%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 2 (1.00%) McAfee ePO
5 2 (1.00%) Network Intrusion Detection System
5 2 (1.00%) SCCM
5 2 (1.00%) vCenter Server
6 1 (0.50%) Argo
6 1 (0.50%) Cisco Prime
6 1 (0.50%) EMC VPLEX
6 1 (0.50%) Failover Clustering
6 1 (0.50%) Grafana
6 1 (0.50%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.50%) Proxmox
6 1 (0.50%) SnapMirror
6 1 (0.50%) SnapVault
6 1 (0.50%) vRealize
Vendors
1 98 (49.00%) Cisco
2 48 (24.00%) Palo Alto
3 33 (16.50%) Juniper
4 29 (14.50%) F5
5 27 (13.50%) Microsoft
6 26 (13.00%) Fortinet
7 20 (10.00%) VMware
8 18 (9.00%) Aruba
9 15 (7.50%) Meraki
10 14 (7.00%) Arista
10 14 (7.00%) Nokia
11 11 (5.50%) CheckPoint
11 11 (5.50%) Ericsson
12 9 (4.50%) Huawei
13 8 (4.00%) SolarWinds
14 6 (3.00%) Zscaler
15 5 (2.50%) Ekahau
16 3 (1.50%) IBM
16 3 (1.50%) McAfee
16 3 (1.50%) NetScout