Network Engineer Contract Job Trends

Network Engineer
UK

The median Network Engineer daily rate in the UK is £475, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 8 January 2026.

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

6 months to
8 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 164 100 101
Rank change year-on-year -64 +1 +76
Contract jobs requiring a Network Engineer 621 790 951
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.68% 2.45% 2.24%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.84% 2.64% 2.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 425 460 552
10th Percentile £306 £313 £300
25th Percentile £400 £400 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year - +5.56% -
75th Percentile £538 £575 £545
90th Percentile £588 £638 £614
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £458 £440
% change year-on-year +3.66% +4.15% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 11 45
10th Percentile £23.20 - £24.70
25th Percentile £33.00 £20.00 £38.04
Median hourly rate £56.44 £20.38 £65.98
Median % change year-on-year +177.01% -69.12% +30.01%
75th Percentile £74.26 £47.50 £73.75
90th Percentile £81.25 £55.00 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £61.47 £20.00 £65.98
% change year-on-year +207.35% -69.69% +148.23%

All Contract IT Job Roles
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 33,689 29,904 39,536
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.29% 92.67% 93.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,326 18,317 26,399
10th Percentile £300 £293 £281
25th Percentile £405 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £618 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £480 £500
% change year-on-year -1.04% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,972 925 1,611
10th Percentile £14.35 £15.57 £14.18
25th Percentile £18.25 £21.00 £19.06
Median hourly rate £26.54 £32.50 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.35% -26.97% +34.85%
75th Percentile £60.00 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.41 £73.75 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.10 £45.88
% change year-on-year -19.13% -32.21% +69.13%

Network Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Network Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

Network Engineer
Daily Rate Trend

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

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

Network Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Network Engineer over the 6 months to 8 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Network Engineer in the UK

Network Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend

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

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

Network Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Network Engineer over the 6 months to 8 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Network Engineer in the UK

Network Engineer
Top 17 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 Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 8 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
England -72 522 £481 -1.79% 330
UK excluding London -54 386 £475 +3.66% 317
Work from Home -28 192 £441 -5.51% 139
London -48 175 £500 -4.31% 47
South East -7 139 £500 - 99
North of England -70 116 £500 +8.93% 59
North West -33 99 £500 +2.04% 30
Midlands -34 59 £400 -5.88% 45
West Midlands -17 54 £390 -12.85% 30
Scotland +15 47 £425 +6.25% 11
East of England -20 22 £438 +59.09% 52
South West -39 18 £475 +0.53% 36
Yorkshire -79 15 £435 +6.75% 21
Wales -12 8 £550 +57.14% 14
East Midlands -44 4 £650 +73.33% 14
Northern Ireland -5 3 £475 +6.74% 9
North East -9 3 £625 +28.21% 11

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

For the 6 months to 8 January 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 featuring Network Engineer in the job title.

1 352 (56.68%) Cisco
2 300 (48.31%) Firewall
3 230 (37.04%) Security Cleared
4 178 (28.66%) WAN
5 177 (28.50%) Cisco Certification
6 164 (26.41%) SC Cleared
7 155 (24.96%) Palo Alto
8 151 (24.32%) CCNP
9 135 (21.74%) BGP
10 130 (20.93%) LAN
11 123 (19.81%) Network Security
12 118 (19.00%) VPN
13 111 (17.87%) Juniper
14 100 (16.10%) Python
15 96 (15.46%) OSPF
16 94 (15.14%) F5
17 90 (14.49%) DNS
18 87 (14.01%) Ansible
18 87 (14.01%) TCP/IP
19 82 (13.20%) Load Balancing
20 77 (12.40%) CCNA
21 71 (11.43%) Wi-Fi
22 69 (11.11%) CheckPoint
22 69 (11.11%) Network Design
22 69 (11.11%) Problem-Solving
22 69 (11.11%) VLAN
23 68 (10.95%) SD-WAN
23 68 (10.95%) Wireless
24 67 (10.79%) Azure
25 66 (10.63%) AWS

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:

Application Platforms
1 11 (1.77%) SharePoint
2 6 (0.97%) Confluence
3 5 (0.81%) Apache
3 5 (0.81%) IIS
3 5 (0.81%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 16 (2.58%) MS Visio
2 6 (0.97%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.32%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 67 (10.79%) Azure
2 66 (10.63%) AWS
3 19 (3.06%) GCP
4 13 (2.09%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 12 (1.93%) Entra ID
6 10 (1.61%) Microsoft 365
7 6 (0.97%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 6 (0.97%) Nutanix
8 5 (0.81%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 5 (0.81%) Amazon EC2
8 5 (0.81%) Amazon ELB
8 5 (0.81%) Amazon S3
8 5 (0.81%) GitHub
9 4 (0.64%) AWS Direct Connect
9 4 (0.64%) Azure DevOps
9 4 (0.64%) Cohesity
9 4 (0.64%) Mimecast
9 4 (0.64%) OCI
10 3 (0.48%) IaaS
10 3 (0.48%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 300 (48.31%) Firewall
2 178 (28.66%) WAN
3 135 (21.74%) BGP
4 130 (20.93%) LAN
5 123 (19.81%) Network Security
6 118 (19.00%) VPN
7 96 (15.46%) OSPF
8 90 (14.49%) DNS
9 87 (14.01%) TCP/IP
10 71 (11.43%) Wi-Fi
11 69 (11.11%) VLAN
12 68 (10.95%) SD-WAN
12 68 (10.95%) Wireless
13 63 (10.14%) MPLS
14 58 (9.34%) Cisco ISE
15 56 (9.02%) SSL
16 50 (8.05%) IPsec
17 49 (7.89%) Cisco IOS
18 45 (7.25%) Cisco Nexus
19 39 (6.28%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (0.48%) SQL Server
2 2 (0.32%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 1 (0.16%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 22 (3.54%) Fiddler
2 20 (3.22%) Git
3 11 (1.77%) GitLab
4 10 (1.61%) Jenkins
4 10 (1.61%) JIRA
5 7 (1.13%) Sonatype Nexus
6 3 (0.48%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.16%) ClearCase
7 1 (0.16%) Jaeger
General
1 135 (21.74%) Social Skills
2 64 (10.31%) Public Sector
3 43 (6.92%) Finance
4 39 (6.28%) Analytical Skills
5 36 (5.80%) Documentation Skills
6 30 (4.83%) Banking
7 28 (4.51%) Telecoms
8 26 (4.19%) Investment Banking
9 24 (3.86%) Manufacturing
10 13 (2.09%) Legal
11 7 (1.13%) Local Government
12 5 (0.81%) Financial Institution
12 5 (0.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 5 (0.81%) Military
12 5 (0.81%) Retail
13 4 (0.64%) Organisational Skills
13 4 (0.64%) Presentation Skills
14 3 (0.48%) Law
14 3 (0.48%) Marketing
14 3 (0.48%) Spanish Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (5.15%) 802.1X
2 6 (0.97%) RFC 2544
2 6 (0.97%) SAML
3 5 (0.81%) Jinja
4 4 (0.64%) JSON
4 4 (0.64%) Middleware
4 4 (0.64%) VML
5 3 (0.48%) LDAP
5 3 (0.48%) YANG
6 2 (0.32%) NETCONF
6 2 (0.32%) XML
7 1 (0.16%) ADO
7 1 (0.16%) CSS
7 1 (0.16%) FIX Protocol
7 1 (0.16%) gRPC
7 1 (0.16%) HTML
7 1 (0.16%) Loki
7 1 (0.16%) Node.js
7 1 (0.16%) REST
7 1 (0.16%) Ultra Messaging
Miscellaneous
1 124 (19.97%) Data Centre
2 21 (3.38%) Management Information System
2 21 (3.38%) Onboarding
3 18 (2.90%) Operational Technology
4 17 (2.74%) Data Protection Act
4 17 (2.74%) PKI
5 12 (1.93%) Hedge funds
6 10 (1.61%) Security Posture
6 10 (1.61%) Self-Motivation
7 9 (1.45%) Fibre Optics
7 9 (1.45%) Hybrid Cloud
8 7 (1.13%) SCADA
9 5 (0.81%) Driving Licence
9 5 (0.81%) NHS
9 5 (0.81%) Public Cloud
10 4 (0.64%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 4 (0.64%) IoT
10 4 (0.64%) Legacy Systems
10 4 (0.64%) Life Science
10 4 (0.64%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 49 (7.89%) Windows
2 31 (4.99%) Linux
3 28 (4.51%) Windows Server
4 5 (0.81%) Unix
5 3 (0.48%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.32%) CatOS
6 2 (0.32%) zOS
7 1 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
7 1 (0.16%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.16%) Windows 7
7 1 (0.16%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 82 (13.20%) Load Balancing
2 69 (11.11%) Network Design
2 69 (11.11%) Problem-Solving
3 52 (8.37%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 48 (7.73%) Network Monitoring
5 47 (7.57%) Migration
6 41 (6.60%) High Availability
7 40 (6.44%) Network Architecture
8 37 (5.96%) DevOps
8 37 (5.96%) Project Delivery
9 33 (5.31%) Cybersecurity
9 33 (5.31%) Network Management
10 31 (4.99%) ITSM
11 29 (4.67%) Service Management
12 28 (4.51%) Incident Response
13 25 (4.03%) Agile
13 25 (4.03%) Infrastructure as Code
13 25 (4.03%) Stakeholder Management
14 24 (3.86%) Change Management
15 21 (3.38%) Data Loss Prevention
Programming Languages
1 100 (16.10%) Python
2 31 (4.99%) Bash
3 19 (3.06%) Perl
4 14 (2.25%) PowerShell
5 8 (1.29%) Lisp
6 6 (0.97%) C++
7 4 (0.64%) SQL
8 2 (0.32%) Go
8 2 (0.32%) Java
9 1 (0.16%) C
9 1 (0.16%) JavaScript
9 1 (0.16%) Ruby
9 1 (0.16%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 230 (37.04%) Security Cleared
2 177 (28.50%) Cisco Certification
3 164 (26.41%) SC Cleared
4 151 (24.32%) CCNP
5 77 (12.40%) CCNA
6 63 (10.14%) DV Cleared
7 26 (4.19%) CCIE
8 23 (3.70%) Degree
9 20 (3.22%) JNCIS
10 17 (2.74%) JNCIA
11 13 (2.09%) JNCIP
12 10 (1.61%) Network+ Certification
13 9 (1.45%) BPSS Clearance
14 8 (1.29%) CCDP
15 5 (0.81%) Computer Science Degree
16 4 (0.64%) CISSP
16 4 (0.64%) Microsoft Certification
17 3 (0.48%) CompTIA Security+
17 3 (0.48%) DBS Check
18 2 (0.32%) CCIE Data Center
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (1.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 8 (1.29%) SLA
2 5 (0.81%) GDPR
2 5 (0.81%) NIST
3 4 (0.64%) PCI DSS
4 3 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials
5 2 (0.32%) GRC
5 2 (0.32%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
5 2 (0.32%) QA
6 1 (0.16%) Disclosure Scotland
6 1 (0.16%) JSP 440
6 1 (0.16%) PMO
6 1 (0.16%) SOC 2
System Software
1 39 (6.28%) VMware NSX
2 36 (5.80%) Active Directory
3 30 (4.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 27 (4.35%) Firmware
5 14 (2.25%) Docker
6 10 (1.61%) Hyper-V
7 5 (0.81%) ProxySG
7 5 (0.81%) Virtual Machines
8 3 (0.48%) KVM
9 2 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.16%) BitLocker
10 1 (0.16%) RACF
10 1 (0.16%) RHEV
10 1 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.16%) vSphere
10 1 (0.16%) Xen
Systems Management
1 87 (14.01%) Ansible
2 48 (7.73%) FortiGate
3 36 (5.80%) Terraform
4 25 (4.03%) vCenter Server
5 8 (1.29%) Kubernetes
6 7 (1.13%) Grafana
6 7 (1.13%) Prometheus
7 6 (0.97%) Nagios
7 6 (0.97%) Single Sign-On
8 4 (0.64%) Cisco Prime
8 4 (0.64%) Microsoft Intune
8 4 (0.64%) SCCM
9 3 (0.48%) CASB
9 3 (0.48%) Dell DRAC
9 3 (0.48%) SCOrch
9 3 (0.48%) Tivoli NetView
9 3 (0.48%) WhatsUp Gold
10 1 (0.16%) Cacti
10 1 (0.16%) SCOM
10 1 (0.16%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 352 (56.68%) Cisco
2 155 (24.96%) Palo Alto
3 111 (17.87%) Juniper
4 94 (15.14%) F5
5 69 (11.11%) CheckPoint
6 60 (9.66%) SolarWinds
7 58 (9.34%) Meraki
8 56 (9.02%) Fortinet
9 54 (8.70%) Aruba
10 53 (8.53%) VMware
11 42 (6.76%) Blue Coat
12 39 (6.28%) Microsoft
13 34 (5.48%) Arista
13 34 (5.48%) McAfee
14 20 (3.22%) Nokia
15 19 (3.06%) NetApp
15 19 (3.06%) Zscaler
16 16 (2.58%) ServiceNow
17 11 (1.77%) Remedy
18 10 (1.61%) Splunk