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 13 July 2026.

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

6 months to
13 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 134 123 97
Rank change year-on-year -11 -26 +27
Contract jobs requiring a Network Engineer 1,047 730 1,005
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.99% 2.23% 2.35%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.15% 2.43% 2.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 675 459 621
10th Percentile £303 £325 £285
25th Percentile £401 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £472 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -0.63% - +5.56%
75th Percentile £547 £575 £550
90th Percentile £600 £625 £634
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £475 £465
% change year-on-year -2.63% +2.15% +9.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 11 19
10th Percentile £28.90 £22.03 £18.33
25th Percentile £56.56 £27.50 £22.83
Median hourly rate £73.00 £50.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +46.00% +25.00% -35.48%
75th Percentile £78.75 £65.00 £69.38
90th Percentile £82.05 £76.25 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £73.50 £35.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year +110.00% -33.33% -15.32%

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 48,729 30,023 39,779
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.49% 91.87% 93.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,502 19,148 25,568
10th Percentile £325 £287 £288
25th Percentile £419 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,285 1,392 2,719
10th Percentile £15.90 £13.75 £13.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.41 £17.00
Median hourly rate £43.69 £26.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +64.87% -33.75% -5.88%
75th Percentile £67.84 £56.25 £63.20
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% +6.67%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 -18 856 £475 -3.06% 349
UK excluding London -26 610 £463 -2.63% 319
London -28 294 £475 - 97
Work from Home -35 230 £450 -5.26% 74
North of England -16 216 £486 -1.31% 87
North West -4 158 £480 -1.74% 40
South East -31 148 £463 -7.50% 79
Midlands -2 116 £444 +2.31% 42
West Midlands -6 109 £438 +25.00% 16
Scotland +22 69 £413 -1.49% 26
South West -42 45 £550 +4.76% 40
Yorkshire -48 45 £450 -8.54% 34
East of England -10 42 £450 +12.50% 28
Wales -3 25 £425 - 12
North East -23 13 £600 +108.70% 13
East Midlands -24 4 £475 -5.00% 26
Northern Ireland +2 2 £468 -18.70% 7

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

For the 6 months to 13 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.

1 561 (53.58%) Cisco
2 464 (44.32%) Firewall
3 294 (28.08%) WAN
4 260 (24.83%) Security Cleared
5 254 (24.26%) BGP
6 249 (23.78%) Cisco Certification
7 246 (23.50%) Network Security
8 245 (23.40%) LAN
9 234 (22.35%) VPN
10 225 (21.49%) Palo Alto
11 191 (18.24%) CCNP
12 189 (18.05%) F5
13 183 (17.48%) DNS
14 181 (17.29%) SC Cleared
15 180 (17.19%) Wireless
16 172 (16.43%) OSPF
17 152 (14.52%) Fortinet
18 147 (14.04%) Load Balancing
19 140 (13.37%) VLAN
20 129 (12.32%) Azure
21 126 (12.03%) Juniper
22 123 (11.75%) Python
23 121 (11.56%) Migration
24 112 (10.70%) SD-WAN
25 110 (10.51%) TCP/IP
26 101 (9.65%) CCNA
27 100 (9.55%) Wi-Fi
28 98 (9.36%) High Availability
29 96 (9.17%) VMware
30 93 (8.88%) 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 4 (0.38%) Confluence
2 3 (0.29%) Microsoft Exchange
2 3 (0.29%) SAS
3 1 (0.096%) ArcGIS
3 1 (0.096%) CMS
3 1 (0.096%) OpenStack
3 1 (0.096%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.096%) 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 (12.32%) Azure
2 87 (8.31%) AWS
3 54 (5.16%) 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 (0.96%) AWS Direct Connect
9 10 (0.96%) Entra ID
10 8 (0.76%) IaaS
10 8 (0.76%) Microsoft 365
11 7 (0.67%) Nutanix
12 6 (0.57%) Azure Sentinel
12 6 (0.57%) GitHub Actions
12 6 (0.57%) Google Compute Engine
13 5 (0.48%) Amazon EC2
13 5 (0.48%) AWS Lambda
13 5 (0.48%) Datadog
13 5 (0.48%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 464 (44.32%) Firewall
2 294 (28.08%) WAN
3 254 (24.26%) BGP
4 246 (23.50%) Network Security
5 245 (23.40%) LAN
6 234 (22.35%) VPN
7 183 (17.48%) DNS
8 180 (17.19%) Wireless
9 172 (16.43%) OSPF
10 140 (13.37%) VLAN
11 112 (10.70%) SD-WAN
12 110 (10.51%) TCP/IP
13 100 (9.55%) Wi-Fi
14 77 (7.35%) Cisco Nexus
15 76 (7.26%) Cisco ISE
15 76 (7.26%) Multicast
16 72 (6.88%) MPLS
17 66 (6.30%) BIG-IP
18 63 (6.02%) DHCP
19 60 (5.73%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (0.096%) ClickHouse
1 1 (0.096%) GIS
1 1 (0.096%) Oracle Reports
1 1 (0.096%) QGIS
Development Applications
1 29 (2.77%) Jenkins
2 26 (2.48%) JIRA
3 21 (2.01%) Fiddler
4 17 (1.62%) Git
5 10 (0.96%) Sonatype Nexus
6 8 (0.76%) GitLab
7 2 (0.19%) Browser DevTools
General
1 140 (13.37%) Social Skills
2 67 (6.40%) Finance
3 63 (6.02%) Banking
4 49 (4.68%) Analytical Skills
5 43 (4.11%) Public Sector
6 41 (3.92%) Telecoms
7 38 (3.63%) Investment Banking
8 33 (3.15%) Documentation Skills
9 20 (1.91%) Legal
9 20 (1.91%) Retail
10 19 (1.81%) Manufacturing
11 9 (0.86%) Aerospace
12 8 (0.76%) Police
13 7 (0.67%) Financial Institution
14 6 (0.57%) Law
14 6 (0.57%) Pharmaceutical
15 5 (0.48%) Local Government
15 5 (0.48%) Military
15 5 (0.48%) Organisational Skills
15 5 (0.48%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 46 (4.39%) 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%) Django
6 2 (0.19%) Java RMI
6 2 (0.19%) Jinja
6 2 (0.19%) RFC 2544
7 1 (0.096%) CSS
7 1 (0.096%) HTML
7 1 (0.096%) JSON
7 1 (0.096%) ModSecurity
7 1 (0.096%) OpenTelemetry
7 1 (0.096%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 201 (19.20%) Data Centre
2 27 (2.58%) Hybrid Cloud
3 25 (2.39%) PKI
4 23 (2.20%) Management Information System
5 20 (1.91%) Data Protection Act
5 20 (1.91%) Security Posture
6 16 (1.53%) Operational Technology
7 15 (1.43%) Cloud Native
7 15 (1.43%) Onboarding
8 13 (1.24%) 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 (6.69%) 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 (0.096%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.096%) Solaris
9 1 (0.096%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.096%) Windows 7
9 1 (0.096%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 147 (14.04%) Load Balancing
2 121 (11.56%) Migration
3 98 (9.36%) High Availability
4 93 (8.88%) Problem-Solving
5 74 (7.07%) Project Delivery
6 72 (6.88%) ITIL
7 67 (6.40%) Network Design
8 65 (6.21%) Change Management
9 63 (6.02%) Network Monitoring
10 59 (5.64%) Infrastructure as Code
11 58 (5.54%) Validation
12 51 (4.87%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 44 (4.20%) Technical Leadership
14 43 (4.11%) Zero Trust
15 40 (3.82%) CI/CD
15 40 (3.82%) Continuous Improvement
16 39 (3.72%) DevOps
16 39 (3.72%) ITSM
17 37 (3.53%) Data Protection
18 36 (3.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 123 (11.75%) 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%) Perl
8 1 (0.096%) Go
8 1 (0.096%) JavaScript
8 1 (0.096%) Korn
8 1 (0.096%) Lisp
8 1 (0.096%) PHP
Qualifications
1 260 (24.83%) Security Cleared
2 249 (23.78%) Cisco Certification
3 191 (18.24%) CCNP
4 181 (17.29%) SC Cleared
5 101 (9.65%) CCNA
6 84 (8.02%) DV Cleared
7 44 (4.20%) CCIE
8 40 (3.82%) Degree
9 18 (1.72%) JNCIS
10 14 (1.34%) JNCIA
10 14 (1.34%) JNCIP
11 13 (1.24%) Network+ Certification
12 10 (0.96%) CISSP
12 10 (0.96%) 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 16 (1.53%) SLA
2 12 (1.15%) NIST
3 10 (0.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 10 (0.96%) QA
4 8 (0.76%) Disclosure Scotland
5 5 (0.48%) GDPR
5 5 (0.48%) PCI DSS
6 4 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
6 4 (0.38%) GRC
7 2 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials
7 2 (0.19%) JSP 440
7 2 (0.19%) NCSC
8 1 (0.096%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 1 (0.096%) Data Quality
8 1 (0.096%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 1 (0.096%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 70 (6.69%) VMware Infrastructure
2 37 (3.53%) VMware NSX
3 34 (3.25%) 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 (0.096%) Citrix Presentation Server
10 1 (0.096%) Docker
10 1 (0.096%) FreeRADIUS
10 1 (0.096%) IAG
10 1 (0.096%) iptables
10 1 (0.096%) KVM
10 1 (0.096%) Snort
10 1 (0.096%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 92 (8.79%) Ansible
2 85 (8.12%) Terraform
3 76 (7.26%) FortiGate
4 9 (0.86%) Grafana
5 8 (0.76%) Cisco Prime
5 8 (0.76%) Kubernetes
5 8 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
6 7 (0.67%) Prometheus
7 4 (0.38%) Packer
7 4 (0.38%) Puppet
8 3 (0.29%) Cisco CUCM
8 3 (0.29%) Nagios
9 2 (0.19%) CASB
9 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Intune
9 2 (0.19%) Nessus
9 2 (0.19%) SCCM
9 2 (0.19%) SCOM
9 2 (0.19%) Tivoli NetView
9 2 (0.19%) vCenter Server
9 2 (0.19%) WSUS
Vendors
1 561 (53.58%) Cisco
2 225 (21.49%) Palo Alto
3 189 (18.05%) F5
4 152 (14.52%) Fortinet
5 126 (12.03%) Juniper
6 96 (9.17%) VMware
7 79 (7.55%) CheckPoint
8 71 (6.78%) Arista
9 67 (6.40%) Aruba
10 55 (5.25%) Meraki
11 47 (4.49%) Microsoft
12 39 (3.72%) Zscaler
13 37 (3.53%) SolarWinds
14 33 (3.15%) Google
15 32 (3.06%) Infoblox
16 30 (2.87%) Blue Coat
17 26 (2.48%) ServiceNow
18 24 (2.29%) McAfee
19 21 (2.01%) Extreme Networks
20 20 (1.91%) Ekahau