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 1 February 2026.

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

6 months to
1 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 170 107 90
Rank change year-on-year -63 -17 +77
Contract jobs requiring a Network Engineer 641 755 1,060
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.66% 2.40% 2.36%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.82% 2.59% 2.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 435 438 627
10th Percentile £296 £300 £300
25th Percentile £400 £400 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £479 £450
Median % change year-on-year -0.78% +6.39% -2.70%
75th Percentile £525 £575 £538
90th Percentile £575 £638 £626
UK excluding London median daily rate £474 £450 £438
% change year-on-year +5.33% +2.86% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 9 49
10th Percentile £20.75 £19.70 £24.45
25th Percentile £33.00 - £38.75
Median hourly rate £48.72 £20.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +143.60% -66.67% -3.01%
75th Percentile £61.85 £38.00 £71.90
90th Percentile £74.26 £47.50 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £56.44 £20.00 £65.98
% change year-on-year +182.20% -69.69% +48.10%

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 35,259 29,175 41,799
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.50% 92.88% 93.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,247 17,830 27,664
10th Percentile £300 £298 £275
25th Percentile £405 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £479 £495
% change year-on-year -0.73% -3.33% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,103 856 2,215
10th Percentile £14.39 £15.92 £13.25
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £17.00
Median hourly rate £29.60 £32.66 £36.05
Median % change year-on-year -9.36% -9.40% +2.99%
75th Percentile £61.18 £62.50 £62.00
90th Percentile £70.57 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £31.64 £37.34
% change year-on-year -13.08% -15.27% +22.95%

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 1 February 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 1 February 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 1 February 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 -56 535 £475 -4.04% 261
UK excluding London -42 405 £474 +5.33% 247
Work from Home -12 194 £438 -8.38% 87
London -62 173 £500 -4.31% 77
South East -5 135 £500 - 76
North of England -75 123 £500 +5.26% 47
North West -35 106 £495 +1.02% 25
Midlands -28 68 £400 -8.57% 28
West Midlands -1 63 £390 -8.24% 21
Scotland +18 46 £418 +4.38% 30
East of England -16 28 £363 +31.82% 22
South West -54 20 £475 +2.70% 36
Yorkshire -71 16 £470 +28.33% 15
Wales -8 13 £550 +69.23% 7
East Midlands -38 4 £575 +27.78% 6
Northern Ireland - 4 £475 - 1
North East -15 2 £600 +23.08% 7

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

For the 6 months to 1 February 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.

1 364 (56.79%) Cisco
2 303 (47.27%) Firewall
3 236 (36.82%) Security Cleared
4 179 (27.93%) WAN
5 175 (27.30%) Cisco Certification
5 175 (27.30%) SC Cleared
6 163 (25.43%) Palo Alto
7 151 (23.56%) CCNP
8 150 (23.40%) LAN
9 143 (22.31%) BGP
10 133 (20.75%) Network Security
11 129 (20.12%) VPN
12 101 (15.76%) Juniper
13 100 (15.60%) F5
14 99 (15.44%) DNS
15 97 (15.13%) OSPF
15 97 (15.13%) Python
16 96 (14.98%) TCP/IP
17 85 (13.26%) Load Balancing
18 83 (12.95%) Ansible
19 80 (12.48%) CCNA
19 80 (12.48%) VLAN
20 73 (11.39%) Wi-Fi
21 72 (11.23%) Problem-Solving
22 71 (11.08%) Wireless
23 70 (10.92%) CheckPoint
24 67 (10.45%) SolarWinds
25 66 (10.30%) MPLS
25 66 (10.30%) Network Design
26 63 (9.83%) Azure

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 10 (1.56%) SharePoint
2 7 (1.09%) Confluence
3 5 (0.78%) Apache
3 5 (0.78%) IIS
3 5 (0.78%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 21 (3.28%) MS Visio
2 7 (1.09%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.62%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (0.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 3 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 63 (9.83%) Azure
2 62 (9.67%) AWS
3 22 (3.43%) GCP
4 13 (2.03%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 12 (1.87%) Entra ID
6 9 (1.40%) Microsoft 365
7 6 (0.94%) GitHub
8 5 (0.78%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 5 (0.78%) Amazon EC2
8 5 (0.78%) Amazon ELB
8 5 (0.78%) Amazon S3
8 5 (0.78%) Azure ExpressRoute
8 5 (0.78%) IaaS
8 5 (0.78%) Mimecast
8 5 (0.78%) Nutanix
9 4 (0.62%) AWS Direct Connect
9 4 (0.62%) Cohesity
9 4 (0.62%) PaaS
9 4 (0.62%) SaaS
10 3 (0.47%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 303 (47.27%) Firewall
2 179 (27.93%) WAN
3 150 (23.40%) LAN
4 143 (22.31%) BGP
5 133 (20.75%) Network Security
6 129 (20.12%) VPN
7 99 (15.44%) DNS
8 97 (15.13%) OSPF
9 96 (14.98%) TCP/IP
10 80 (12.48%) VLAN
11 73 (11.39%) Wi-Fi
12 71 (11.08%) Wireless
13 66 (10.30%) MPLS
14 62 (9.67%) Cisco ISE
15 60 (9.36%) SD-WAN
16 57 (8.89%) SSL
17 55 (8.58%) Cisco Nexus
18 49 (7.64%) IPsec
19 46 (7.18%) Wireshark
20 43 (6.71%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (0.47%) SQL Server
2 2 (0.31%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 1 (0.16%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 26 (4.06%) Fiddler
2 16 (2.50%) Git
3 11 (1.72%) Sonatype Nexus
4 10 (1.56%) GitLab
4 10 (1.56%) JIRA
5 9 (1.40%) Jenkins
6 2 (0.31%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.16%) ClearCase
7 1 (0.16%) Jaeger
General
1 130 (20.28%) Social Skills
2 62 (9.67%) Public Sector
3 39 (6.08%) Documentation Skills
4 38 (5.93%) Finance
5 34 (5.30%) Analytical Skills
5 34 (5.30%) Banking
5 34 (5.30%) Telecoms
6 30 (4.68%) Investment Banking
7 25 (3.90%) Manufacturing
8 16 (2.50%) Legal
9 7 (1.09%) Local Government
10 5 (0.78%) Law
10 5 (0.78%) Presentation Skills
10 5 (0.78%) Retail
11 4 (0.62%) Financial Institution
11 4 (0.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 4 (0.62%) Military
12 3 (0.47%) Electronics
12 3 (0.47%) Marketing
12 3 (0.47%) Spanish Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (4.52%) 802.1X
2 9 (1.40%) SAML
3 6 (0.94%) LDAP
4 4 (0.62%) JSON
4 4 (0.62%) Middleware
4 4 (0.62%) VML
5 3 (0.47%) RFC 2544
5 3 (0.47%) YANG
6 2 (0.31%) CSS
6 2 (0.31%) Django
6 2 (0.31%) HTML
6 2 (0.31%) Jinja
6 2 (0.31%) NETCONF
6 2 (0.31%) REST
6 2 (0.31%) XML
7 1 (0.16%) ARM Templates
7 1 (0.16%) FIX Protocol
7 1 (0.16%) gRPC
7 1 (0.16%) Loki
7 1 (0.16%) Ultra Messaging
Miscellaneous
1 141 (22.00%) Data Centre
2 21 (3.28%) Data Protection Act
3 20 (3.12%) Management Information System
4 19 (2.96%) Onboarding
5 18 (2.81%) Operational Technology
6 16 (2.50%) PKI
7 15 (2.34%) Security Posture
8 12 (1.87%) NHS
9 11 (1.72%) Hybrid Cloud
9 11 (1.72%) Self-Motivation
10 9 (1.40%) Hedge funds
11 6 (0.94%) Public Cloud
11 6 (0.94%) Virtual Team
12 5 (0.78%) Driving Licence
12 5 (0.78%) Fibre Optics
12 5 (0.78%) IoT
12 5 (0.78%) SCADA
13 4 (0.62%) Life Science
13 4 (0.62%) Mainframe
14 3 (0.47%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 52 (8.11%) Windows
2 31 (4.84%) Windows Server
3 30 (4.68%) Linux
4 4 (0.62%) CatOS
4 4 (0.62%) Unix
5 3 (0.47%) zOS
6 1 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
6 1 (0.16%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.16%) Windows 10
6 1 (0.16%) Windows 7
6 1 (0.16%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 85 (13.26%) Load Balancing
2 72 (11.23%) Problem-Solving
3 66 (10.30%) Network Design
4 53 (8.27%) Network Monitoring
5 49 (7.64%) Migration
6 45 (7.02%) High Availability
6 45 (7.02%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 42 (6.55%) Project Delivery
8 40 (6.24%) Network Architecture
9 34 (5.30%) Cybersecurity
10 33 (5.15%) Network Management
11 32 (4.99%) ITSM
11 32 (4.99%) Stakeholder Management
12 29 (4.52%) Change Management
12 29 (4.52%) DevOps
13 25 (3.90%) Collaborative Working
14 24 (3.74%) Incident Response
15 23 (3.59%) Data Protection
15 23 (3.59%) Service Management
16 22 (3.43%) Malware Detection/Protection
Programming Languages
1 97 (15.13%) Python
2 26 (4.06%) Bash
3 15 (2.34%) Perl
4 14 (2.18%) PowerShell
5 8 (1.25%) Lisp
6 5 (0.78%) C++
7 4 (0.62%) SQL
8 2 (0.31%) Java
8 2 (0.31%) JavaScript
9 1 (0.16%) C
9 1 (0.16%) Go
9 1 (0.16%) Korn
9 1 (0.16%) Ruby
9 1 (0.16%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 236 (36.82%) Security Cleared
2 175 (27.30%) Cisco Certification
2 175 (27.30%) SC Cleared
3 151 (23.56%) CCNP
4 80 (12.48%) CCNA
5 61 (9.52%) DV Cleared
6 28 (4.37%) CCIE
7 24 (3.74%) Degree
7 24 (3.74%) JNCIS
8 18 (2.81%) JNCIA
9 15 (2.34%) JNCIP
10 10 (1.56%) Network+ Certification
11 6 (0.94%) BPSS Clearance
11 6 (0.94%) Computer Science Degree
12 5 (0.78%) CCDP
13 4 (0.62%) DBS Check
14 3 (0.47%) CISSP
14 3 (0.47%) CompTIA Security+
15 2 (0.31%) CCSA
15 2 (0.31%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (1.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 7 (1.09%) NIST
3 6 (0.94%) GDPR
3 6 (0.94%) PCI DSS
3 6 (0.94%) SLA
4 4 (0.62%) GRC
5 3 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
5 3 (0.47%) QA
6 2 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
6 2 (0.31%) PMO
7 1 (0.16%) Cyber Essentials
7 1 (0.16%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.16%) ISO/IEC 20000
7 1 (0.16%) JSP 440
7 1 (0.16%) SOC 2
System Software
1 50 (7.80%) VMware NSX
2 39 (6.08%) Active Directory
3 36 (5.62%) VMware Infrastructure
4 28 (4.37%) Firmware
5 12 (1.87%) Docker
6 10 (1.56%) Hyper-V
7 5 (0.78%) ProxySG
7 5 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
8 4 (0.62%) vSphere
9 3 (0.47%) KVM
10 2 (0.31%) vCloud
10 2 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
11 1 (0.16%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.16%) RACF
11 1 (0.16%) RHEV
11 1 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.16%) Xen
Systems Management
1 83 (12.95%) Ansible
2 44 (6.86%) FortiGate
3 30 (4.68%) Terraform
4 23 (3.59%) vCenter Server
5 9 (1.40%) Single Sign-On
6 8 (1.25%) Grafana
6 8 (1.25%) Prometheus
7 6 (0.94%) Cisco Prime
7 6 (0.94%) Kubernetes
7 6 (0.94%) Microsoft Intune
7 6 (0.94%) Nagios
8 4 (0.62%) SCCM
8 4 (0.62%) Tivoli NetView
9 3 (0.47%) CASB
9 3 (0.47%) Dell DRAC
9 3 (0.47%) SCOrch
9 3 (0.47%) WhatsUp Gold
10 2 (0.31%) Salt
11 1 (0.16%) Amdocs OSS
11 1 (0.16%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 364 (56.79%) Cisco
2 163 (25.43%) Palo Alto
3 101 (15.76%) Juniper
4 100 (15.60%) F5
5 70 (10.92%) CheckPoint
6 67 (10.45%) SolarWinds
7 63 (9.83%) VMware
8 61 (9.52%) Aruba
8 61 (9.52%) Meraki
9 55 (8.58%) Fortinet
10 42 (6.55%) Blue Coat
11 40 (6.24%) Microsoft
12 38 (5.93%) McAfee
13 31 (4.84%) Arista
14 21 (3.28%) NetApp
14 21 (3.28%) Nokia
15 17 (2.65%) ServiceNow
16 13 (2.03%) Splunk
16 13 (2.03%) Zscaler
17 11 (1.72%) Ekahau