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 21 July 2026.

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

6 months to
21 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 133 126 96
Rank change year-on-year -7 -30 +23
Contract jobs requiring a Network Engineer 1,066 717 968
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.02% 2.20% 2.34%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.18% 2.40% 2.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 680 451 602
10th Percentile £313 £325 £285
25th Percentile £413 £400 £379
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - +5.56%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £550
90th Percentile £620 £625 £634
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -1.05% - +11.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 35 12 15
10th Percentile £29.00 £22.08 £17.98
25th Percentile £64.38 £30.00 £21.57
Median hourly rate £74.00 £53.75 £48.56
Median % change year-on-year +37.67% +10.69% -26.40%
75th Percentile £78.75 £70.63 £70.00
90th Percentile £92.53 £82.33 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £77.50 £38.25 £50.53
% change year-on-year +102.61% -24.30% -18.50%

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 48,798 29,864 38,453
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.56% 91.64% 93.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,431 18,992 24,873
10th Percentile £325 £285 £293
25th Percentile £420 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £735 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,294 1,429 2,439
10th Percentile £15.81 £13.75 £13.49
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £18.00
Median hourly rate £44.10 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +75.33% -37.13% -6.98%
75th Percentile £67.84 £55.00 £64.25
90th Percentile £80.17 £73.75 £74.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £41.81
% change year-on-year +78.93% -39.85% +5.65%

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 21 July 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 21 July 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 21 July 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 -12 871 £475 -2.96% 279
UK excluding London -18 618 £470 -1.05% 244
London -28 305 £490 +3.16% 88
Work from Home -44 230 £450 -5.26% 56
North of England -9 218 £490 -0.41% 66
North West -6 158 £490 -2.00% 36
South East -24 151 £473 -5.50% 55
Midlands +1 108 £475 +9.51% 34
West Midlands -2 101 £463 +32.14% 19
Scotland +22 76 £413 -5.71% 22
South West -38 51 £550 +3.77% 32
Yorkshire -48 47 £450 -8.54% 22
East of England -10 41 £470 +17.50% 24
Wales -6 22 £425 -2.86% 10
North East -32 13 £600 +84.62% 9
East Midlands -21 4 £475 -13.64% 15
Northern Ireland +1 1 £550 -4.35% 5

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

For the 6 months to 21 July 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.

1 575 (53.94%) Cisco
2 477 (44.75%) Firewall
3 294 (27.58%) WAN
4 265 (24.86%) Security Cleared
5 262 (24.58%) BGP
6 250 (23.45%) Network Security
7 249 (23.36%) Cisco Certification
8 245 (22.98%) LAN
9 243 (22.80%) VPN
10 228 (21.39%) Palo Alto
11 192 (18.01%) CCNP
11 192 (18.01%) F5
12 188 (17.64%) DNS
12 188 (17.64%) Wireless
13 179 (16.79%) OSPF
14 175 (16.42%) SC Cleared
15 160 (15.01%) Fortinet
16 149 (13.98%) Load Balancing
17 146 (13.70%) VLAN
18 140 (13.13%) Azure
19 129 (12.10%) Juniper
20 128 (12.01%) Python
21 126 (11.82%) Migration
22 114 (10.69%) TCP/IP
23 109 (10.23%) SD-WAN
24 106 (9.94%) Wi-Fi
25 98 (9.19%) CCNA
26 97 (9.10%) Ansible
26 97 (9.10%) High Availability
26 97 (9.10%) Problem-Solving

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 6 (0.56%) Confluence
2 4 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (0.28%) SAS
4 2 (0.19%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.094%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.094%) CMS
5 1 (0.094%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.094%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 15 (1.41%) MS Visio
2 11 (1.03%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 140 (13.13%) Azure
2 88 (8.26%) AWS
3 56 (5.25%) GCP
4 41 (3.85%) GitHub
5 18 (1.69%) Azure ExpressRoute
6 16 (1.50%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 13 (1.22%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 12 (1.13%) Microsoft 365
9 11 (1.03%) AWS CloudFormation
9 11 (1.03%) Entra ID
10 10 (0.94%) AWS Direct Connect
10 10 (0.94%) IaaS
11 7 (0.66%) GitHub Actions
11 7 (0.66%) Nutanix
12 6 (0.56%) Azure Sentinel
12 6 (0.56%) Google Compute Engine
13 5 (0.47%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 5 (0.47%) AWS Lambda
13 5 (0.47%) Cloudflare
13 5 (0.47%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 477 (44.75%) Firewall
2 294 (27.58%) WAN
3 262 (24.58%) BGP
4 250 (23.45%) Network Security
5 245 (22.98%) LAN
6 243 (22.80%) VPN
7 188 (17.64%) DNS
7 188 (17.64%) Wireless
8 179 (16.79%) OSPF
9 146 (13.70%) VLAN
10 114 (10.69%) TCP/IP
11 109 (10.23%) SD-WAN
12 106 (9.94%) Wi-Fi
13 80 (7.50%) Multicast
14 79 (7.41%) Cisco ISE
15 77 (7.22%) Cisco Nexus
16 72 (6.75%) MPLS
17 71 (6.66%) DHCP
18 65 (6.10%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
19 63 (5.91%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (0.094%) ClickHouse
1 1 (0.094%) GIS
1 1 (0.094%) Oracle Reports
1 1 (0.094%) QGIS
1 1 (0.094%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 29 (2.72%) Jenkins
2 28 (2.63%) JIRA
3 22 (2.06%) Git
4 19 (1.78%) Fiddler
5 11 (1.03%) GitLab
6 9 (0.84%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.19%) Browser DevTools
General
1 141 (13.23%) Social Skills
2 74 (6.94%) Finance
3 62 (5.82%) Banking
4 52 (4.88%) Analytical Skills
5 45 (4.22%) Public Sector
6 43 (4.03%) Telecoms
7 36 (3.38%) Investment Banking
8 34 (3.19%) Documentation Skills
9 22 (2.06%) Retail
10 19 (1.78%) Legal
10 19 (1.78%) Manufacturing
11 9 (0.84%) Aerospace
11 9 (0.84%) Police
12 7 (0.66%) Financial Institution
12 7 (0.66%) Law
13 6 (0.56%) Military
13 6 (0.56%) Pharmaceutical
14 5 (0.47%) Local Government
14 5 (0.47%) Organisational Skills
14 5 (0.47%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (4.69%) 802.1X
2 11 (1.03%) REST
3 10 (0.94%) SAML
4 5 (0.47%) LDAP
4 5 (0.47%) NETCONF
5 3 (0.28%) Java RMI
6 2 (0.19%) AWS CDK
6 2 (0.19%) Django
6 2 (0.19%) eBPF
6 2 (0.19%) Jinja
6 2 (0.19%) RFC 2544
7 1 (0.094%) CSS
7 1 (0.094%) HTML
7 1 (0.094%) JSON
7 1 (0.094%) ModSecurity
7 1 (0.094%) OpenTelemetry
7 1 (0.094%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 198 (18.57%) Data Centre
2 32 (3.00%) Hybrid Cloud
3 31 (2.91%) PKI
4 22 (2.06%) Management Information System
5 19 (1.78%) Cloud Native
5 19 (1.78%) Security Posture
6 17 (1.59%) Data Protection Act
7 16 (1.50%) Operational Technology
8 15 (1.41%) Onboarding
9 14 (1.31%) Driving Licence
10 9 (0.84%) Clustering
10 9 (0.84%) IoT
10 9 (0.84%) Linux Command Line
10 9 (0.84%) Self-Motivation
11 8 (0.75%) CCTV
11 8 (0.75%) NHS
12 6 (0.56%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 6 (0.56%) Enterprise Cloud
12 6 (0.56%) Fibre Optics
12 6 (0.56%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 71 (6.66%) Windows
2 45 (4.22%) Linux
3 10 (0.94%) Windows Server
4 6 (0.56%) Unix
4 6 (0.56%) VMS
5 5 (0.47%) Windows Server 2019
6 4 (0.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 4 (0.38%) Ubuntu
7 3 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
8 2 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.094%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.094%) Solaris
9 1 (0.094%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.094%) Windows 7
9 1 (0.094%) Windows Server 2008
9 1 (0.094%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 149 (13.98%) Load Balancing
2 126 (11.82%) Migration
3 97 (9.10%) High Availability
3 97 (9.10%) Problem-Solving
4 86 (8.07%) Project Delivery
5 73 (6.85%) ITIL
6 71 (6.66%) Change Management
7 69 (6.47%) Network Design
8 65 (6.10%) Network Monitoring
9 64 (6.00%) Infrastructure as Code
10 62 (5.82%) Validation
11 58 (5.44%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 46 (4.32%) Zero Trust
13 44 (4.13%) Technical Leadership
14 43 (4.03%) Continuous Improvement
15 41 (3.85%) CI/CD
16 40 (3.75%) DevOps
17 37 (3.47%) ITSM
17 37 (3.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 35 (3.28%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 128 (12.01%) Python
2 19 (1.78%) Bash
3 12 (1.13%) PowerShell
4 9 (0.84%) ActionScript
5 8 (0.75%) SQL
6 3 (0.28%) Bicep
6 3 (0.28%) C
6 3 (0.28%) C++
6 3 (0.28%) Java
7 2 (0.19%) Groovy
7 2 (0.19%) Perl
8 1 (0.094%) Go
8 1 (0.094%) JavaScript
8 1 (0.094%) Lisp
8 1 (0.094%) PHP
8 1 (0.094%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 265 (24.86%) Security Cleared
2 249 (23.36%) Cisco Certification
3 192 (18.01%) CCNP
4 175 (16.42%) SC Cleared
5 98 (9.19%) CCNA
6 91 (8.54%) DV Cleared
7 43 (4.03%) CCIE
8 39 (3.66%) Degree
9 19 (1.78%) JNCIS
10 16 (1.50%) JNCIP
11 13 (1.22%) JNCIA
11 13 (1.22%) Network+ Certification
12 10 (0.94%) CISSP
13 9 (0.84%) Computer Science Degree
14 8 (0.75%) CCSE
15 6 (0.56%) Azure Certification
15 6 (0.56%) CompTIA Security+
16 5 (0.47%) AWS Certification
16 5 (0.47%) CCIE Wireless
16 5 (0.47%) CCSM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (1.78%) SLA
2 12 (1.13%) NIST
3 10 (0.94%) QA
4 9 (0.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 8 (0.75%) Disclosure Scotland
6 4 (0.38%) GDPR
6 4 (0.38%) PCI DSS
7 3 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
7 3 (0.28%) GRC
8 2 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials
8 2 (0.19%) JSP 440
8 2 (0.19%) NCSC
9 1 (0.094%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 1 (0.094%) Data Quality
9 1 (0.094%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 1 (0.094%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 71 (6.66%) VMware Infrastructure
2 36 (3.38%) VMware NSX
3 33 (3.10%) Firmware
4 29 (2.72%) Active Directory
5 16 (1.50%) VMware ESXi
5 16 (1.50%) vSphere
6 6 (0.56%) Hyper-V
7 5 (0.47%) Virtual Machines
8 4 (0.38%) Virtual Servers
9 3 (0.28%) Docker
10 2 (0.19%) Squid
11 1 (0.094%) Citrix Presentation Server
11 1 (0.094%) FreeRADIUS
11 1 (0.094%) IAG
11 1 (0.094%) iptables
11 1 (0.094%) KVM
11 1 (0.094%) Snort
11 1 (0.094%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 97 (9.10%) Ansible
2 91 (8.54%) Terraform
3 79 (7.41%) FortiGate
4 14 (1.31%) Kubernetes
5 12 (1.13%) Cisco Prime
6 9 (0.84%) Grafana
7 7 (0.66%) Prometheus
8 6 (0.56%) Cisco CUCM
9 5 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
10 4 (0.38%) Istio
10 4 (0.38%) Packer
10 4 (0.38%) Puppet
11 3 (0.28%) Nagios
12 2 (0.19%) Avamar
12 2 (0.19%) CASB
12 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Intune
12 2 (0.19%) Nessus
12 2 (0.19%) SCCM
12 2 (0.19%) SCOM
12 2 (0.19%) WSUS
Vendors
1 575 (53.94%) Cisco
2 228 (21.39%) Palo Alto
3 192 (18.01%) F5
4 160 (15.01%) Fortinet
5 129 (12.10%) Juniper
6 97 (9.10%) VMware
7 78 (7.32%) CheckPoint
8 75 (7.04%) Arista
9 67 (6.29%) Aruba
10 51 (4.78%) Meraki
11 49 (4.60%) Microsoft
12 45 (4.22%) Zscaler
13 37 (3.47%) SolarWinds
14 36 (3.38%) Google
15 33 (3.10%) Infoblox
16 30 (2.81%) Blue Coat
17 26 (2.44%) ServiceNow
18 23 (2.16%) McAfee
19 20 (1.88%) Extreme Networks
20 19 (1.78%) Splunk