Network Engineer Contract Job Trends

Network Engineer
UK

The median Network Engineer daily rate in the UK is £472, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 10 July 2026.

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

6 months to
10 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 137 125 94
Rank change year-on-year -12 -31 +30
Contract jobs requiring a Network Engineer 1,048 725 1,027
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.99% 2.24% 2.38%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.15% 2.44% 2.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 676 455 639
10th Percentile £301 £325 £287
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £472 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -0.63% - +5.56%
75th Percentile £544 £575 £547
90th Percentile £600 £625 £635
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £475 £460
% change year-on-year -2.63% +3.26% +8.24%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 10 19
10th Percentile £28.70 £21.90 £18.33
25th Percentile £55.00 £25.00 £22.83
Median hourly rate £73.00 £45.75 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.56% +14.38% -35.48%
75th Percentile £78.75 £60.63 £69.38
90th Percentile - £69.50 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £73.00 £28.75 £50.53
% change year-on-year +153.91% -43.10% -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 48,674 29,733 40,149
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.49% 91.88% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,515 18,978 25,840
10th Percentile £325 £288 £288
25th Percentile £418 £400 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £522 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.40% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,263 1,368 2,770
10th Percentile £15.93 £13.75 £12.88
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £16.79
Median hourly rate £43.50 £26.39 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +64.87% -29.64% -14.05%
75th Percentile £67.50 £56.06 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.40 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% +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 10 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 10 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 10 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 -13 857 £475 -3.06% 319
UK excluding London -26 610 £463 -2.63% 305
London -28 296 £495 +3.13% 80
Work from Home -26 237 £450 -5.26% 67
North of England -22 213 £486 -1.31% 79
North West -1 156 £486 -0.66% 35
South East -23 150 £463 -7.50% 75
Midlands -6 118 £444 +2.31% 42
West Midlands -7 111 £438 +25.00% 16
Scotland +20 70 £413 -1.49% 26
Yorkshire -44 44 £450 -8.54% 31
East of England -19 43 £438 +11.82% 28
South West -46 42 £550 +4.76% 37
Wales -3 25 £425 - 13
North East -26 13 £600 +108.70% 13
East Midlands -24 4 £475 -5.00% 26
Northern Ireland +4 2 £468 -18.70% 7

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

For the 6 months to 10 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.

1 563 (53.72%) Cisco
2 463 (44.18%) Firewall
3 298 (28.44%) WAN
4 261 (24.90%) Security Cleared
5 254 (24.24%) BGP
6 250 (23.85%) Cisco Certification
7 247 (23.57%) LAN
8 246 (23.47%) Network Security
9 233 (22.23%) VPN
10 227 (21.66%) Palo Alto
11 191 (18.23%) CCNP
12 189 (18.03%) F5
13 184 (17.56%) SC Cleared
14 181 (17.27%) DNS
14 181 (17.27%) Wireless
15 171 (16.32%) OSPF
16 154 (14.69%) Fortinet
17 148 (14.12%) Load Balancing
18 142 (13.55%) VLAN
19 129 (12.31%) Azure
20 128 (12.21%) Juniper
21 123 (11.74%) Migration
22 122 (11.64%) Python
23 116 (11.07%) SD-WAN
24 107 (10.21%) TCP/IP
25 101 (9.64%) CCNA
26 99 (9.45%) Wi-Fi
27 98 (9.35%) High Availability
28 96 (9.16%) Problem-Solving
29 95 (9.06%) 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 4 (0.38%) Confluence
2 3 (0.29%) Microsoft Exchange
2 3 (0.29%) SAS
3 1 (0.095%) ArcGIS
3 1 (0.095%) CMS
3 1 (0.095%) OpenStack
3 1 (0.095%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.095%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 18 (1.72%) MS Visio
2 11 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (0.29%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 129 (12.31%) Azure
2 88 (8.40%) AWS
3 54 (5.15%) GCP
4 38 (3.63%) GitHub
5 17 (1.62%) Azure ExpressRoute
6 16 (1.53%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 12 (1.15%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 11 (1.05%) AWS CloudFormation
9 10 (0.95%) AWS Direct Connect
9 10 (0.95%) Entra ID
10 8 (0.76%) IaaS
11 7 (0.67%) Azure Sentinel
11 7 (0.67%) Microsoft 365
11 7 (0.67%) Nutanix
12 6 (0.57%) GitHub Actions
12 6 (0.57%) Google Compute Engine
13 5 (0.48%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 5 (0.48%) AWS Lambda
13 5 (0.48%) Cloudflare
13 5 (0.48%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 463 (44.18%) Firewall
2 298 (28.44%) WAN
3 254 (24.24%) BGP
4 247 (23.57%) LAN
5 246 (23.47%) Network Security
6 233 (22.23%) VPN
7 181 (17.27%) DNS
7 181 (17.27%) Wireless
8 171 (16.32%) OSPF
9 142 (13.55%) VLAN
10 116 (11.07%) SD-WAN
11 107 (10.21%) TCP/IP
12 99 (9.45%) Wi-Fi
13 79 (7.54%) Cisco Nexus
14 77 (7.35%) MPLS
15 76 (7.25%) Cisco ISE
16 75 (7.16%) Multicast
17 67 (6.39%) BIG-IP
18 62 (5.92%) DHCP
19 60 (5.73%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (0.095%) ClickHouse
1 1 (0.095%) GIS
1 1 (0.095%) Oracle Reports
1 1 (0.095%) QGIS
Development Applications
1 29 (2.77%) Jenkins
2 27 (2.58%) JIRA
3 21 (2.00%) Fiddler
4 17 (1.62%) Git
5 10 (0.95%) Sonatype Nexus
6 8 (0.76%) GitLab
7 2 (0.19%) Browser DevTools
General
1 140 (13.36%) Social Skills
2 65 (6.20%) Finance
3 62 (5.92%) Banking
4 51 (4.87%) Analytical Skills
5 44 (4.20%) Telecoms
6 43 (4.10%) Public Sector
7 38 (3.63%) Investment Banking
8 33 (3.15%) Documentation Skills
9 22 (2.10%) Legal
10 20 (1.91%) Retail
11 19 (1.81%) Manufacturing
12 9 (0.86%) Aerospace
13 8 (0.76%) Law
14 7 (0.67%) Financial Institution
14 7 (0.67%) Police
15 6 (0.57%) Pharmaceutical
16 5 (0.48%) Influencing Skills
16 5 (0.48%) Local Government
16 5 (0.48%) Organisational Skills
16 5 (0.48%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 47 (4.48%) 802.1X
2 13 (1.24%) SAML
3 11 (1.05%) REST
4 8 (0.76%) LDAP
5 4 (0.38%) NETCONF
6 2 (0.19%) AWS CDK
6 2 (0.19%) CSS
6 2 (0.19%) Django
6 2 (0.19%) HTML
6 2 (0.19%) Java RMI
6 2 (0.19%) Jinja
6 2 (0.19%) RFC 2544
7 1 (0.095%) JSON
7 1 (0.095%) ModSecurity
7 1 (0.095%) OpenTelemetry
7 1 (0.095%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 201 (19.18%) Data Centre
2 27 (2.58%) Hybrid Cloud
3 25 (2.39%) PKI
4 23 (2.19%) Data Protection Act
4 23 (2.19%) Management Information System
5 21 (2.00%) Security Posture
6 16 (1.53%) Onboarding
6 16 (1.53%) Operational Technology
7 15 (1.43%) Cloud Native
8 14 (1.34%) NHS
9 9 (0.86%) Clustering
9 9 (0.86%) Driving Licence
9 9 (0.86%) IoT
10 8 (0.76%) CCTV
11 7 (0.67%) Self-Motivation
12 6 (0.57%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 6 (0.57%) Enterprise Cloud
12 6 (0.57%) Linux Command Line
13 5 (0.48%) Public Cloud
14 4 (0.38%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 70 (6.68%) Windows
2 39 (3.72%) Linux
3 11 (1.05%) Windows Server
4 6 (0.57%) Unix
4 6 (0.57%) VMS
5 5 (0.48%) Windows Server 2019
6 4 (0.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
8 2 (0.19%) CatOS
8 2 (0.19%) Ubuntu
8 2 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
8 2 (0.19%) zOS
9 1 (0.095%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.095%) Solaris
9 1 (0.095%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.095%) Windows 7
9 1 (0.095%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 148 (14.12%) Load Balancing
2 123 (11.74%) Migration
3 98 (9.35%) High Availability
4 96 (9.16%) Problem-Solving
5 76 (7.25%) Project Delivery
6 73 (6.97%) ITIL
7 67 (6.39%) Network Design
8 65 (6.20%) Change Management
8 65 (6.20%) Network Monitoring
9 59 (5.63%) Infrastructure as Code
10 56 (5.34%) Validation
11 51 (4.87%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 45 (4.29%) Technical Leadership
13 43 (4.10%) Zero Trust
14 41 (3.91%) Continuous Improvement
15 40 (3.82%) CI/CD
15 40 (3.82%) Data Protection
15 40 (3.82%) ITSM
16 39 (3.72%) DevOps
17 37 (3.53%) Network Management
Programming Languages
1 122 (11.64%) Python
2 15 (1.43%) Bash
3 11 (1.05%) PowerShell
4 9 (0.86%) ActionScript
5 8 (0.76%) SQL
6 3 (0.29%) Bicep
6 3 (0.29%) C
6 3 (0.29%) Java
7 2 (0.19%) C++
7 2 (0.19%) Groovy
7 2 (0.19%) JavaScript
7 2 (0.19%) Perl
8 1 (0.095%) Go
8 1 (0.095%) Korn
8 1 (0.095%) Lisp
8 1 (0.095%) PHP
Qualifications
1 261 (24.90%) Security Cleared
2 250 (23.85%) Cisco Certification
3 191 (18.23%) CCNP
4 184 (17.56%) SC Cleared
5 101 (9.64%) CCNA
6 81 (7.73%) DV Cleared
7 43 (4.10%) CCIE
8 41 (3.91%) Degree
9 19 (1.81%) JNCIS
10 15 (1.43%) JNCIA
10 15 (1.43%) JNCIP
11 13 (1.24%) Network+ Certification
12 10 (0.95%) CISSP
12 10 (0.95%) Computer Science Degree
13 9 (0.86%) CCSE
14 6 (0.57%) Azure Certification
14 6 (0.57%) CompTIA Security+
15 5 (0.48%) AWS Certification
15 5 (0.48%) CCIE Wireless
15 5 (0.48%) CCSM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (1.62%) SLA
2 12 (1.15%) NIST
3 11 (1.05%) QA
4 10 (0.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 8 (0.76%) Disclosure Scotland
6 5 (0.48%) GDPR
6 5 (0.48%) PCI DSS
7 4 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
7 4 (0.38%) GRC
8 2 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials
8 2 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 20000
8 2 (0.19%) JSP 440
8 2 (0.19%) NCSC
9 1 (0.095%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 1 (0.095%) Data Quality
9 1 (0.095%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 1 (0.095%) PMO
System Software
1 70 (6.68%) VMware Infrastructure
2 36 (3.44%) VMware NSX
3 34 (3.24%) Firmware
4 29 (2.77%) Active Directory
5 16 (1.53%) VMware ESXi
5 16 (1.53%) vSphere
6 6 (0.57%) Hyper-V
7 5 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
8 4 (0.38%) Virtual Servers
9 2 (0.19%) Squid
10 1 (0.095%) Citrix Presentation Server
10 1 (0.095%) Docker
10 1 (0.095%) FreeRADIUS
10 1 (0.095%) IAG
10 1 (0.095%) iptables
10 1 (0.095%) KVM
10 1 (0.095%) Snort
10 1 (0.095%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 92 (8.78%) Ansible
2 85 (8.11%) Terraform
3 76 (7.25%) FortiGate
4 10 (0.95%) Cisco Prime
5 9 (0.86%) Grafana
6 8 (0.76%) Kubernetes
6 8 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
7 7 (0.67%) Prometheus
8 4 (0.38%) Packer
8 4 (0.38%) Puppet
9 3 (0.29%) Cisco CUCM
9 3 (0.29%) Nagios
10 2 (0.19%) CASB
10 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Intune
10 2 (0.19%) Nessus
10 2 (0.19%) SCCM
10 2 (0.19%) SCOM
10 2 (0.19%) Tivoli NetView
10 2 (0.19%) vCenter Server
10 2 (0.19%) WSUS
Vendors
1 563 (53.72%) Cisco
2 227 (21.66%) Palo Alto
3 189 (18.03%) F5
4 154 (14.69%) Fortinet
5 128 (12.21%) Juniper
6 95 (9.06%) VMware
7 78 (7.44%) CheckPoint
8 71 (6.77%) Arista
9 70 (6.68%) Aruba
10 54 (5.15%) Meraki
11 48 (4.58%) Microsoft
12 40 (3.82%) SolarWinds
12 40 (3.82%) Zscaler
13 33 (3.15%) Google
14 32 (3.05%) Infoblox
15 30 (2.86%) Blue Coat
16 27 (2.58%) ServiceNow
17 24 (2.29%) McAfee
18 21 (2.00%) Extreme Networks
19 20 (1.91%) Ekahau