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 April 2026.

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

6 months to
21 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 145 121 87
Rank change year-on-year -24 -34 +54
Contract jobs requiring a Network Engineer 850 652 1,057
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.84% 2.21% 2.43%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.99% 2.39% 2.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 566 403 643
10th Percentile £300 £313 £300
25th Percentile £401 £389 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £460
Median % change year-on-year - +3.26% -3.16%
75th Percentile £538 £569 £538
90th Percentile £600 £617 £634
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £450 £450
% change year-on-year +4.33% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 5 28
10th Percentile £41.42 £31.10 £22.50
25th Percentile £56.44 £50.00 £30.13
Median hourly rate £74.26 £57.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +29.15% +35.29% -32.79%
75th Percentile £78.75 £68.75 £73.75
90th Percentile - £73.25 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.26 £45.75 £70.00
% change year-on-year +62.32% -34.64% +12.90%

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 42,695 27,272 40,291
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.26% 92.61% 92.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,420 17,879 26,298
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £748
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +2.63% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,730 998 2,613
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.50 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £19.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £42.00 £30.45 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +37.93% -13.00% -22.22%
75th Percentile £65.60 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.33 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.61 £29.80 £36.50
% change year-on-year +46.34% -18.36% -15.12%

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 April 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 April 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 April 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 -32 705 £480 -2.04% 274
UK excluding London -22 531 £470 +4.33% 269
London -60 213 £500 - 63
Work from Home -15 207 £443 -6.35% 58
South East -1 178 £475 -5.00% 68
North of England -43 148 £474 +0.58% 65
North West -21 122 £475 - 39
Midlands -2 101 £438 +2.94% 49
West Midlands +11 94 £429 +55.91% 29
Scotland +11 43 £413 +3.13% 23
South West -30 41 £529 +11.96% 20
East of England -5 40 £450 -5.26% 31
Yorkshire -62 26 £450 -2.70% 20
Wales -5 25 £425 +13.33% 12
East Midlands -45 3 £500 +11.11% 20
Northern Ireland - 2 £468 - 6
North East -16 1 - - 6

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

For the 6 months to 21 April 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.

1 467 (54.94%) Cisco
2 384 (45.18%) Firewall
3 282 (33.18%) Security Cleared
4 232 (27.29%) WAN
5 222 (26.12%) BGP
6 216 (25.41%) Cisco Certification
7 209 (24.59%) Palo Alto
8 206 (24.24%) LAN
9 202 (23.76%) SC Cleared
10 188 (22.12%) VPN
11 186 (21.88%) Network Security
12 177 (20.82%) CCNP
13 165 (19.41%) F5
14 158 (18.59%) OSPF
15 147 (17.29%) DNS
16 122 (14.35%) Load Balancing
17 119 (14.00%) Juniper
18 117 (13.76%) VLAN
19 104 (12.24%) Wireless
20 100 (11.76%) TCP/IP
21 96 (11.29%) Fortinet
22 93 (10.94%) DV Cleared
23 91 (10.71%) Python
24 90 (10.59%) CCNA
25 89 (10.47%) Azure
26 87 (10.24%) Problem-Solving
27 86 (10.12%) SD-WAN
28 81 (9.53%) Aruba
28 81 (9.53%) CheckPoint
29 79 (9.29%) 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 7 (0.82%) Confluence
2 5 (0.59%) Apache
2 5 (0.59%) IIS
2 5 (0.59%) SharePoint
3 4 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 16 (1.88%) MS Visio
2 7 (0.82%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (0.24%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 89 (10.47%) Azure
2 76 (8.94%) AWS
3 47 (5.53%) GCP
4 21 (2.47%) GitHub
5 16 (1.88%) Entra ID
6 14 (1.65%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 10 (1.18%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 9 (1.06%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 8 (0.94%) Microsoft 365
9 8 (0.94%) Nutanix
10 6 (0.71%) AWS Direct Connect
10 6 (0.71%) Route 53
11 5 (0.59%) Azure Sentinel
11 5 (0.59%) Google Compute Engine
11 5 (0.59%) Mimecast
12 3 (0.35%) AWS IoT
12 3 (0.35%) Catchpoint
12 3 (0.35%) GitHub Actions
12 3 (0.35%) IaaS
12 3 (0.35%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 384 (45.18%) Firewall
2 232 (27.29%) WAN
3 222 (26.12%) BGP
4 206 (24.24%) LAN
5 188 (22.12%) VPN
6 186 (21.88%) Network Security
7 158 (18.59%) OSPF
8 147 (17.29%) DNS
9 117 (13.76%) VLAN
10 104 (12.24%) Wireless
11 100 (11.76%) TCP/IP
12 86 (10.12%) SD-WAN
13 74 (8.71%) Wi-Fi
14 73 (8.59%) Cisco Nexus
15 70 (8.24%) MPLS
16 65 (7.65%) Cisco ISE
17 60 (7.06%) BIG-IP
17 60 (7.06%) IPsec
18 55 (6.47%) DHCP
18 55 (6.47%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (0.35%) SQL Server
2 2 (0.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 1 (0.12%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 27 (3.18%) Fiddler
2 20 (2.35%) Git
3 17 (2.00%) JIRA
4 13 (1.53%) Jenkins
5 10 (1.18%) Sonatype Nexus
6 6 (0.71%) GitLab
7 2 (0.24%) Browser DevTools
8 1 (0.12%) Jaeger
General
1 131 (15.41%) Social Skills
2 51 (6.00%) Banking
3 46 (5.41%) Public Sector
4 43 (5.06%) Documentation Skills
5 39 (4.59%) Analytical Skills
5 39 (4.59%) Finance
6 36 (4.24%) Investment Banking
7 33 (3.88%) Telecoms
8 25 (2.94%) Manufacturing
9 23 (2.71%) Legal
10 12 (1.41%) Retail
11 10 (1.18%) Law
12 7 (0.82%) Aerospace
13 5 (0.59%) Financial Institution
13 5 (0.59%) Local Government
13 5 (0.59%) Military
13 5 (0.59%) Police
14 4 (0.47%) Presentation Skills
15 3 (0.35%) Influencing Skills
15 3 (0.35%) Pharmaceutical
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (4.59%) 802.1X
2 11 (1.29%) SAML
3 10 (1.18%) LDAP
4 6 (0.71%) REST
5 4 (0.47%) JSON
5 4 (0.47%) VML
6 3 (0.35%) CSS
6 3 (0.35%) HTML
6 3 (0.35%) NETCONF
7 2 (0.24%) AWS CDK
7 2 (0.24%) Django
7 2 (0.24%) Jinja
7 2 (0.24%) OpenTelemetry
7 2 (0.24%) RFC 2544
7 2 (0.24%) XML
7 2 (0.24%) YANG
8 1 (0.12%) ARM Templates
8 1 (0.12%) Loki
8 1 (0.12%) OpenConfig
Miscellaneous
1 183 (21.53%) Data Centre
2 25 (2.94%) Data Protection Act
3 22 (2.59%) Management Information System
4 20 (2.35%) Hybrid Cloud
5 18 (2.12%) Operational Technology
5 18 (2.12%) PKI
6 15 (1.76%) Security Posture
7 13 (1.53%) Onboarding
8 12 (1.41%) NHS
8 12 (1.41%) Self-Motivation
9 9 (1.06%) Clustering
10 8 (0.94%) Public Cloud
11 7 (0.82%) Cloud Native
12 6 (0.71%) IoT
13 4 (0.47%) CMDB
13 4 (0.47%) Distributed Systems
13 4 (0.47%) Enterprise Cloud
13 4 (0.47%) Enterprise Software
13 4 (0.47%) Mainframe
13 4 (0.47%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 57 (6.71%) Windows
2 33 (3.88%) Linux
3 16 (1.88%) Windows Server
4 7 (0.82%) Unix
5 4 (0.47%) CatOS
5 4 (0.47%) zOS
6 1 (0.12%) Data ONTAP
6 1 (0.12%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.12%) Solaris
6 1 (0.12%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.12%) VMS
6 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
6 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 122 (14.35%) Load Balancing
2 87 (10.24%) Problem-Solving
3 78 (9.18%) High Availability
3 78 (9.18%) Migration
4 60 (7.06%) Network Design
5 57 (6.71%) Network Monitoring
6 49 (5.76%) Change Management
6 49 (5.76%) ITIL
7 45 (5.29%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 44 (5.18%) Project Delivery
9 38 (4.47%) Validation
10 37 (4.35%) ITSM
10 37 (4.35%) Network Management
11 36 (4.24%) Infrastructure as Code
12 35 (4.12%) Data Protection
13 33 (3.88%) DevOps
13 33 (3.88%) Stakeholder Management
14 31 (3.65%) Technical Leadership
15 30 (3.53%) Collaborative Working
16 28 (3.29%) Data Loss Prevention
Programming Languages
1 91 (10.71%) Python
2 15 (1.76%) Bash
3 8 (0.94%) SQL
4 7 (0.82%) PowerShell
5 4 (0.47%) Java
6 3 (0.35%) JavaScript
6 3 (0.35%) Lisp
6 3 (0.35%) Perl
7 2 (0.24%) ActionScript
7 2 (0.24%) Bicep
7 2 (0.24%) C
7 2 (0.24%) C++
7 2 (0.24%) Go
8 1 (0.12%) Korn
8 1 (0.12%) PHP
8 1 (0.12%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 282 (33.18%) Security Cleared
2 216 (25.41%) Cisco Certification
3 202 (23.76%) SC Cleared
4 177 (20.82%) CCNP
5 93 (10.94%) DV Cleared
6 90 (10.59%) CCNA
7 35 (4.12%) Degree
8 34 (4.00%) CCIE
9 26 (3.06%) JNCIS
10 22 (2.59%) JNCIA
11 16 (1.88%) JNCIP
12 12 (1.41%) Network+ Certification
13 11 (1.29%) Computer Science Degree
14 4 (0.47%) AWS Certification
14 4 (0.47%) Azure Certification
14 4 (0.47%) CCSE
14 4 (0.47%) CWNA
14 4 (0.47%) DBS Check
15 3 (0.35%) CISSP
15 3 (0.35%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (1.18%) SLA
2 7 (0.82%) NIST
3 6 (0.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 6 (0.71%) QA
4 5 (0.59%) Disclosure Scotland
4 5 (0.59%) PCI DSS
5 4 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
6 3 (0.35%) GDPR
6 3 (0.35%) GRC
7 2 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials
7 2 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 20000
7 2 (0.24%) NCSC
7 2 (0.24%) PMO
8 1 (0.12%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 1 (0.12%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 1 (0.12%) JSP 440
System Software
1 57 (6.71%) VMware Infrastructure
2 45 (5.29%) VMware NSX
3 28 (3.29%) Firmware
4 25 (2.94%) Active Directory
5 8 (0.94%) vSphere
6 7 (0.82%) VMware ESXi
7 5 (0.59%) Virtual Servers
8 4 (0.47%) Hyper-V
9 3 (0.35%) ProxySG
9 3 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.24%) KVM
10 2 (0.24%) vCloud
10 2 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
11 1 (0.12%) Citrix Presentation Server
11 1 (0.12%) Docker
11 1 (0.12%) IAG
11 1 (0.12%) iptables
11 1 (0.12%) RHEV
11 1 (0.12%) Snort
11 1 (0.12%) Xen
Systems Management
1 78 (9.18%) Ansible
2 60 (7.06%) FortiGate
3 56 (6.59%) Terraform
4 10 (1.18%) Grafana
4 10 (1.18%) Single Sign-On
5 9 (1.06%) Prometheus
6 8 (0.94%) Cisco Prime
6 8 (0.94%) vCenter Server
7 7 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
8 6 (0.71%) Kubernetes
8 6 (0.71%) Nagios
9 4 (0.47%) Tivoli NetView
10 2 (0.24%) Salt
10 2 (0.24%) SCOM
10 2 (0.24%) WSUS
11 1 (0.12%) Cacti
11 1 (0.12%) Iperf
11 1 (0.12%) SCCM
11 1 (0.12%) WhatsUp Gold
11 1 (0.12%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 467 (54.94%) Cisco
2 209 (24.59%) Palo Alto
3 165 (19.41%) F5
4 119 (14.00%) Juniper
5 96 (11.29%) Fortinet
6 81 (9.53%) Aruba
6 81 (9.53%) CheckPoint
7 79 (9.29%) VMware
8 50 (5.88%) Arista
8 50 (5.88%) SolarWinds
9 48 (5.65%) Meraki
10 40 (4.71%) Microsoft
11 35 (4.12%) Blue Coat
12 32 (3.76%) McAfee
13 24 (2.82%) Google
14 23 (2.71%) ServiceNow
15 22 (2.59%) Infoblox
15 22 (2.59%) NetApp
16 20 (2.35%) Ekahau
17 19 (2.24%) Zscaler