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 23 September 2026.

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

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 132 154 94
Rank change year-on-year +22 -60 +16
Contract jobs requiring a Network Engineer 1,134 587 911
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.07% 1.80% 2.42%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.24% 1.97% 2.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 665 385 527
10th Percentile £306 £306 £300
25th Percentile £400 £400 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £466 £495
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -5.96% +10.00%
75th Percentile £544 £563 £588
90th Percentile £626 £638 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £455 £490
% change year-on-year +1.65% -7.14% +15.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 63 13 20
10th Percentile £26.72 £22.12 £19.85
25th Percentile £59.69 £32.50 £20.00
Median hourly rate £73.00 £35.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +108.57% -22.22% -27.42%
75th Percentile £79.90 £67.25 £67.50
90th Percentile £92.53 £80.15 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £73.00 £38.25 £35.48
% change year-on-year +90.85% +7.81% -42.77%

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 50,606 29,766 35,027
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.26% 91.04% 92.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,920 18,783 21,484
10th Percentile £325 £276 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £733 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,907 1,587 1,616
10th Percentile £14.50 £13.75 £14.79
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.30 £20.69
Median hourly rate £42.30 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.19% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.70 £51.65 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £69.65 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.08 £43.97
% change year-on-year +69.49% -42.97% +0.50%

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 23 September 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 23 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Network Engineer in the UK

Network Engineer
Top 18 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 23 September 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 +28 924 £475 - 777
UK excluding London -1 651 £463 +1.65% 566
London +16 348 £475 - 253
North of England +12 249 £499 +2.84% 118
Work from Home -29 225 £469 +4.11% 254
North West +23 167 £500 +5.26% 65
Midlands -17 104 £475 +21.79% 98
South East -52 99 £463 -7.50% 118
West Midlands -16 86 £475 +25.00% 64
Scotland +14 81 £400 -5.88% 32
Yorkshire -11 69 £450 -8.07% 37
South West -8 60 £565 -5.44% 82
East of England 0 57 £420 +9.80% 87
Wales +20 36 £363 - 21
East Midlands -8 17 £500 -23.08% 34
North East -28 13 £600 - 16
Northern Ireland +2 3 £425 -10.53% 15
Channel Islands -4 2 £600 +36.36% 1

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

For the 6 months to 23 September 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.

1 615 (54.23%) Cisco
2 440 (38.80%) Firewall
3 309 (27.25%) WAN
4 259 (22.84%) BGP
5 253 (22.31%) Security Cleared
6 248 (21.87%) Network Security
7 240 (21.16%) VPN
8 237 (20.90%) LAN
9 232 (20.46%) Cisco Certification
10 222 (19.58%) Palo Alto
11 213 (18.78%) Wireless
12 181 (15.96%) CCNP
13 169 (14.90%) SC Cleared
14 167 (14.73%) DNS
15 165 (14.55%) OSPF
16 155 (13.67%) Fortinet
17 153 (13.49%) VLAN
18 152 (13.40%) Python
19 151 (13.32%) F5
20 138 (12.17%) Migration
21 132 (11.64%) Azure
22 123 (10.85%) Load Balancing
23 117 (10.32%) SD-WAN
24 115 (10.14%) Wi-Fi
25 112 (9.88%) Problem-Solving
26 108 (9.52%) TCP/IP
27 106 (9.35%) Ansible
28 97 (8.55%) Terraform
29 95 (8.38%) Project Delivery
30 90 (7.94%) VMware

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 9 (0.79%) Confluence
2 8 (0.71%) SAS
3 6 (0.53%) Microsoft Exchange
3 6 (0.53%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.18%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.088%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.088%) CMS
5 1 (0.088%) FactoryTalk
5 1 (0.088%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 14 (1.23%) MS Visio
2 12 (1.06%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (0.35%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (0.088%) SAP MDG
1 1 (0.088%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 132 (11.64%) Azure
2 83 (7.32%) AWS
3 43 (3.79%) GCP
4 40 (3.53%) GitHub
5 26 (2.29%) Azure ExpressRoute
6 17 (1.50%) Microsoft 365
7 15 (1.32%) Entra ID
8 14 (1.23%) AWS Direct Connect
9 12 (1.06%) IaaS
10 11 (0.97%) AWS CloudFormation
11 8 (0.71%) GitHub Actions
11 8 (0.71%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 6 (0.53%) Azure DevOps
12 6 (0.53%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 6 (0.53%) Nutanix
12 6 (0.53%) OCI
13 5 (0.44%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 5 (0.44%) AWS Lambda
13 5 (0.44%) Datadog
13 5 (0.44%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 440 (38.80%) Firewall
2 309 (27.25%) WAN
3 259 (22.84%) BGP
4 248 (21.87%) Network Security
5 240 (21.16%) VPN
6 237 (20.90%) LAN
7 213 (18.78%) Wireless
8 167 (14.73%) DNS
9 165 (14.55%) OSPF
10 153 (13.49%) VLAN
11 117 (10.32%) SD-WAN
12 115 (10.14%) Wi-Fi
13 108 (9.52%) TCP/IP
14 84 (7.41%) MPLS
15 76 (6.70%) DHCP
16 75 (6.61%) Multicast
17 73 (6.44%) Cisco Nexus
18 72 (6.35%) Cisco ISE
19 68 (6.00%) Cisco ASA
20 56 (4.94%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (0.53%) GIS
2 3 (0.26%) SQL Server
3 1 (0.088%) ClickHouse
3 1 (0.088%) Metadata
3 1 (0.088%) Oracle Reports
3 1 (0.088%) QGIS
Development Applications
1 37 (3.26%) Git
2 27 (2.38%) JIRA
3 24 (2.12%) Jenkins
4 13 (1.15%) GitLab
5 12 (1.06%) Fiddler
6 7 (0.62%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.18%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.088%) Artifactory
8 1 (0.088%) Browser DevTools
8 1 (0.088%) Postman
General
1 135 (11.90%) Social Skills
2 90 (7.94%) Finance
3 70 (6.17%) Analytical Skills
4 69 (6.08%) Telecoms
5 62 (5.47%) Banking
6 52 (4.59%) Public Sector
7 31 (2.73%) Investment Banking
8 28 (2.47%) Documentation Skills
9 23 (2.03%) Legal
10 20 (1.76%) Retail
11 18 (1.59%) Manufacturing
12 10 (0.88%) Aerospace
13 9 (0.79%) Financial Institution
14 8 (0.71%) Pharmaceutical
15 7 (0.62%) Police
16 6 (0.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 5 (0.44%) Organisational Skills
18 4 (0.35%) Automotive
18 4 (0.35%) Local Government
18 4 (0.35%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 97 (8.55%) Terraform
2 44 (3.88%) 802.1X
3 23 (2.03%) REST
4 13 (1.15%) NETCONF
5 11 (0.97%) JSON
6 10 (0.88%) YAML
7 7 (0.62%) SAML
8 5 (0.44%) XML
9 4 (0.35%) YANG
10 3 (0.26%) Java RMI
11 2 (0.18%) eBPF
11 2 (0.18%) Jinja
11 2 (0.18%) LDAP
11 2 (0.18%) ModSecurity
11 2 (0.18%) RESTCONF
11 2 (0.18%) RFC 2544
12 1 (0.088%) IDoc
12 1 (0.088%) OAuth2
12 1 (0.088%) OpenAPI
12 1 (0.088%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 202 (17.81%) Data Centre
2 40 (3.53%) Hybrid Cloud
3 27 (2.38%) PKI
4 25 (2.20%) Driving Licence
5 24 (2.12%) Onboarding
6 23 (2.03%) Cloud Native
7 22 (1.94%) Operational Technology
8 18 (1.59%) Management Information System
9 16 (1.41%) Self-Motivation
10 14 (1.23%) IoT
10 14 (1.23%) Security Posture
11 12 (1.06%) Public Cloud
12 10 (0.88%) Linux Command Line
12 10 (0.88%) SCADA
13 9 (0.79%) Data Protection Act
13 9 (0.79%) Fibre Optics
14 8 (0.71%) Digital Signage
15 7 (0.62%) CCTV
15 7 (0.62%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
15 7 (0.62%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 73 (6.44%) Windows
2 58 (5.11%) Linux
3 18 (1.59%) Windows Server
4 9 (0.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 6 (0.53%) VMS
6 5 (0.44%) Ubuntu
6 5 (0.44%) Unix
6 5 (0.44%) Windows Server 2019
6 5 (0.44%) zOS
7 3 (0.26%) Windows Server 2012
8 2 (0.18%) Mac OS
8 2 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.088%) Solaris
9 1 (0.088%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.088%) Windows 7
9 1 (0.088%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 138 (12.17%) Migration
2 123 (10.85%) Load Balancing
3 112 (9.88%) Problem-Solving
4 95 (8.38%) Project Delivery
5 87 (7.67%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 79 (6.97%) Infrastructure as Code
6 79 (6.97%) Validation
7 77 (6.79%) High Availability
8 74 (6.53%) Network Design
9 71 (6.26%) ITIL
10 60 (5.29%) Change Management
10 60 (5.29%) Zero Trust
11 57 (5.03%) Network Monitoring
12 53 (4.67%) CI/CD
13 45 (3.97%) Stakeholder Management
14 44 (3.88%) Continuous Improvement
14 44 (3.88%) Technical Leadership
15 43 (3.79%) Network Segmentation
16 42 (3.70%) DevOps
17 38 (3.35%) Network Management
Programming Languages
1 152 (13.40%) Python
2 31 (2.73%) Bash
3 26 (2.29%) PowerShell
4 9 (0.79%) ActionScript
5 7 (0.62%) SQL
6 6 (0.53%) C++
7 3 (0.26%) C
7 3 (0.26%) Java
7 3 (0.26%) Perl
8 2 (0.18%) Go
8 2 (0.18%) Groovy
8 2 (0.18%) Search Processing Language
8 2 (0.18%) Shell Script
9 1 (0.088%) Bicep
9 1 (0.088%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 253 (22.31%) Security Cleared
2 232 (20.46%) Cisco Certification
3 181 (15.96%) CCNP
4 169 (14.90%) SC Cleared
5 87 (7.67%) CCNA
6 76 (6.70%) DV Cleared
7 47 (4.14%) CCIE
8 33 (2.91%) Degree
9 15 (1.32%) CISSP
10 11 (0.97%) JNCIS
11 9 (0.79%) JNCIP
11 9 (0.79%) Network+ Certification
12 8 (0.71%) CCSE
13 7 (0.62%) Computer Science Degree
14 6 (0.53%) BPSS Clearance
14 6 (0.53%) CCIE Security
14 6 (0.53%) DBS Check
15 5 (0.44%) CCSA
15 5 (0.44%) CWNA
16 4 (0.35%) JNCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (2.03%) SLA
2 16 (1.41%) QA
3 14 (1.23%) NIST
4 10 (0.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 7 (0.62%) Disclosure Scotland
6 6 (0.53%) PCI DSS
7 3 (0.26%) Data Quality
8 2 (0.18%) GDPR
8 2 (0.18%) JSP 440
8 2 (0.18%) NIST 800
9 1 (0.088%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.088%) Cyber Essentials
9 1 (0.088%) GRC
9 1 (0.088%) ISO/IEC 20000
9 1 (0.088%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 59 (5.20%) VMware Infrastructure
2 35 (3.09%) Active Directory
3 30 (2.65%) Firmware
4 28 (2.47%) VMware NSX
5 16 (1.41%) vSphere
6 9 (0.79%) VMware ESXi
7 8 (0.71%) Hyper-V
8 5 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
9 4 (0.35%) Docker
9 4 (0.35%) FreeRADIUS
10 3 (0.26%) Virtual Servers
11 2 (0.18%) Squid
12 1 (0.088%) iptables
12 1 (0.088%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 106 (9.35%) Ansible
2 69 (6.08%) FortiGate
3 28 (2.47%) Kubernetes
4 16 (1.41%) Cisco Prime
5 9 (0.79%) Istio
5 9 (0.79%) Nagios
6 7 (0.62%) Grafana
7 6 (0.53%) Cisco CUCM
7 6 (0.53%) Progress Chef
7 6 (0.53%) Puppet
8 5 (0.44%) Cilium
8 5 (0.44%) Prometheus
9 4 (0.35%) Microsoft Intune
9 4 (0.35%) Packer
9 4 (0.35%) systemd
9 4 (0.35%) vRealize
10 3 (0.26%) Single Sign-On
10 3 (0.26%) TrustSec
11 2 (0.18%) Avamar
11 2 (0.18%) SCCM
Vendors
1 615 (54.23%) Cisco
2 222 (19.58%) Palo Alto
3 155 (13.67%) Fortinet
4 151 (13.32%) F5
5 90 (7.94%) VMware
6 86 (7.58%) Juniper
7 80 (7.05%) Arista
7 80 (7.05%) CheckPoint
8 77 (6.79%) Meraki
9 58 (5.11%) Aruba
9 58 (5.11%) Microsoft
10 53 (4.67%) Zscaler
11 41 (3.62%) SolarWinds
12 27 (2.38%) Nokia
13 25 (2.20%) ServiceNow
14 23 (2.03%) Blue Coat
15 22 (1.94%) Google
16 21 (1.85%) Infoblox
17 17 (1.50%) NetApp
18 15 (1.32%) McAfee