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 9 February 2026.

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

6 months to
9 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 170 106 88
Rank change year-on-year -64 -18 +74
Contract jobs requiring a Network Engineer 639 742 1,067
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.64% 2.40% 2.37%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.79% 2.58% 2.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 431 432 629
10th Percentile £293 £301 £300
25th Percentile £394 £400 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £477 £450
Median % change year-on-year -0.47% +6.06% -2.70%
75th Percentile £525 £575 £538
90th Percentile £575 £638 £626
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £458 £440
% change year-on-year +3.83% +3.98% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 9 48
10th Percentile £21.98 £19.70 £24.43
25th Percentile £33.00 - £38.75
Median hourly rate £52.58 £20.00 £61.25
Median % change year-on-year +162.90% -67.35% -1.21%
75th Percentile £68.57 £38.00 £72.36
90th Percentile £74.09 £47.50 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £56.44 £20.00 £65.98
% change year-on-year +182.20% -69.69% +18.67%

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 35,687 28,709 41,983
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.52% 92.95% 93.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,471 17,591 27,699
10th Percentile £300 £290 £275
25th Percentile £406 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £716 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £477 £489
% change year-on-year -0.42% -2.45% -2.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,179 837 2,322
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.91 £13.15
25th Percentile £18.76 £21.25 £16.54
Median hourly rate £30.00 £34.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -11.76% -2.86% -
75th Percentile £61.54 £63.75 £61.25
90th Percentile £71.99 £75.00 £72.73
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.85 £32.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -11.23% -7.14% -

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 -64 533 £475 -4.04% 254
UK excluding London -51 405 £475 +3.83% 236
Work from Home -17 197 £425 -10.95% 85
London -76 168 £500 -3.85% 84
South East +3 139 £500 - 69
North of England -65 124 £490 +3.16% 46
North West -25 106 £486 -0.89% 28
Midlands -17 69 £438 -2.78% 34
West Midlands -5 65 £400 -9.35% 26
Scotland +13 43 £418 +4.38% 29
East of England -13 29 £363 +31.82% 18
South West -55 19 £475 +0.53% 27
Yorkshire -75 18 £500 +53.85% 12
Wales -7 14 £550 +69.23% 12
East Midlands -41 3 £575 +27.78% 8
Northern Ireland - 3 £475 - 2
North East -15 1 - - 6

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

For the 6 months to 9 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 (56.96%) Cisco
2 305 (47.73%) Firewall
3 236 (36.93%) Security Cleared
4 176 (27.54%) Cisco Certification
5 175 (27.39%) SC Cleared
6 174 (27.23%) WAN
7 162 (25.35%) Palo Alto
8 152 (23.79%) CCNP
8 152 (23.79%) LAN
9 147 (23.00%) BGP
10 133 (20.81%) Network Security
10 133 (20.81%) VPN
11 105 (16.43%) F5
12 103 (16.12%) DNS
13 102 (15.96%) OSPF
14 101 (15.81%) Juniper
15 95 (14.87%) Python
15 95 (14.87%) TCP/IP
16 86 (13.46%) Load Balancing
17 82 (12.83%) VLAN
18 81 (12.68%) Ansible
19 79 (12.36%) CCNA
20 72 (11.27%) Problem-Solving
21 71 (11.11%) CheckPoint
22 70 (10.95%) Wireless
23 68 (10.64%) Wi-Fi
24 67 (10.49%) SolarWinds
25 66 (10.33%) VMware
26 65 (10.17%) MPLS
26 65 (10.17%) Network Design

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 (1.10%) Confluence
3 5 (0.78%) Apache
3 5 (0.78%) IIS
3 5 (0.78%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 20 (3.13%) MS Visio
2 4 (0.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.63%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 3 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 63 (9.86%) Azure
2 61 (9.55%) AWS
3 24 (3.76%) GCP
4 12 (1.88%) Entra ID
4 12 (1.88%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 9 (1.41%) Microsoft 365
6 7 (1.10%) GitHub
7 5 (0.78%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 5 (0.78%) Amazon EC2
7 5 (0.78%) Amazon ELB
7 5 (0.78%) Amazon S3
7 5 (0.78%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 5 (0.78%) IaaS
7 5 (0.78%) Mimecast
7 5 (0.78%) Nutanix
8 4 (0.63%) Cohesity
8 4 (0.63%) PaaS
8 4 (0.63%) SaaS
9 3 (0.47%) AWS Direct Connect
9 3 (0.47%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 305 (47.73%) Firewall
2 174 (27.23%) WAN
3 152 (23.79%) LAN
4 147 (23.00%) BGP
5 133 (20.81%) Network Security
5 133 (20.81%) VPN
6 103 (16.12%) DNS
7 102 (15.96%) OSPF
8 95 (14.87%) TCP/IP
9 82 (12.83%) VLAN
10 70 (10.95%) Wireless
11 68 (10.64%) Wi-Fi
12 65 (10.17%) MPLS
13 61 (9.55%) Cisco ISE
14 59 (9.23%) SSL
15 57 (8.92%) Cisco Nexus
16 56 (8.76%) SD-WAN
17 48 (7.51%) IPsec
18 47 (7.36%) Wireshark
19 42 (6.57%) 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 28 (4.38%) Fiddler
2 15 (2.35%) Git
3 12 (1.88%) JIRA
3 12 (1.88%) Sonatype Nexus
4 10 (1.56%) GitLab
4 10 (1.56%) Jenkins
5 1 (0.16%) ClearCase
5 1 (0.16%) Jaeger
5 1 (0.16%) Robot Framework
General
1 127 (19.87%) Social Skills
2 56 (8.76%) Public Sector
3 38 (5.95%) Banking
3 38 (5.95%) Documentation Skills
4 36 (5.63%) Finance
5 35 (5.48%) Telecoms
6 33 (5.16%) Investment Banking
7 32 (5.01%) Analytical Skills
8 24 (3.76%) Manufacturing
9 16 (2.50%) Legal
10 7 (1.10%) Local Government
11 5 (0.78%) Law
11 5 (0.78%) Military
11 5 (0.78%) Presentation Skills
11 5 (0.78%) Retail
12 4 (0.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 3 (0.47%) Electronics
13 3 (0.47%) Influencing Skills
13 3 (0.47%) Marketing
13 3 (0.47%) Spanish Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (4.23%) 802.1X
2 9 (1.41%) SAML
3 6 (0.94%) LDAP
4 4 (0.63%) JSON
4 4 (0.63%) Middleware
4 4 (0.63%) RFC 2544
4 4 (0.63%) VML
5 3 (0.47%) YANG
6 2 (0.31%) CSS
6 2 (0.31%) Django
6 2 (0.31%) HTML
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%) AWS CDK
7 1 (0.16%) gRPC
7 1 (0.16%) Loki
7 1 (0.16%) OpenTelemetry
7 1 (0.16%) Ultra Messaging
Miscellaneous
1 145 (22.69%) Data Centre
2 22 (3.44%) Data Protection Act
2 22 (3.44%) Management Information System
3 19 (2.97%) Onboarding
3 19 (2.97%) Operational Technology
4 15 (2.35%) PKI
4 15 (2.35%) Security Posture
5 12 (1.88%) NHS
6 11 (1.72%) Self-Motivation
7 10 (1.56%) Hybrid Cloud
8 8 (1.25%) Hedge funds
9 7 (1.10%) Public Cloud
10 6 (0.94%) Fibre Optics
11 5 (0.78%) Driving Licence
11 5 (0.78%) IoT
11 5 (0.78%) SCADA
11 5 (0.78%) Virtual Team
12 4 (0.63%) Life Science
12 4 (0.63%) Mainframe
13 3 (0.47%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 48 (7.51%) Windows
2 31 (4.85%) Windows Server
3 29 (4.54%) Linux
4 4 (0.63%) CatOS
5 3 (0.47%) zOS
6 2 (0.31%) Unix
7 1 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
7 1 (0.16%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 86 (13.46%) Load Balancing
2 72 (11.27%) Problem-Solving
3 65 (10.17%) Network Design
4 50 (7.82%) Network Monitoring
5 48 (7.51%) Migration
6 43 (6.73%) High Availability
7 42 (6.57%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 42 (6.57%) Project Delivery
8 39 (6.10%) Network Architecture
9 33 (5.16%) Network Management
10 32 (5.01%) ITSM
10 32 (5.01%) Stakeholder Management
11 31 (4.85%) Cybersecurity
12 30 (4.69%) Change Management
13 28 (4.38%) DevOps
14 25 (3.91%) Collaborative Working
15 24 (3.76%) Data Loss Prevention
15 24 (3.76%) Data Protection
15 24 (3.76%) Incident Response
15 24 (3.76%) Malware Detection/Protection
Programming Languages
1 95 (14.87%) Python
2 26 (4.07%) Bash
3 14 (2.19%) Perl
4 13 (2.03%) PowerShell
5 8 (1.25%) Lisp
6 5 (0.78%) C++
7 4 (0.63%) SQL
8 2 (0.31%) Java
8 2 (0.31%) JavaScript
9 1 (0.16%) Bicep
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 (36.93%) Security Cleared
2 176 (27.54%) Cisco Certification
3 175 (27.39%) SC Cleared
4 152 (23.79%) CCNP
5 79 (12.36%) CCNA
6 63 (9.86%) DV Cleared
7 26 (4.07%) CCIE
8 25 (3.91%) Degree
9 24 (3.76%) JNCIS
10 18 (2.82%) JNCIA
11 13 (2.03%) JNCIP
12 10 (1.56%) Network+ Certification
13 6 (0.94%) BPSS Clearance
13 6 (0.94%) Computer Science Degree
14 5 (0.78%) CCDP
15 4 (0.63%) DBS Check
16 3 (0.47%) CISSP
17 2 (0.31%) CCIE Data Center
17 2 (0.31%) CCSA
17 2 (0.31%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (1.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 7 (1.10%) NIST
3 6 (0.94%) GDPR
3 6 (0.94%) PCI DSS
3 6 (0.94%) SLA
4 4 (0.63%) 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%) NCSC
7 1 (0.16%) SOC 2
System Software
1 52 (8.14%) VMware NSX
2 38 (5.95%) Active Directory
3 37 (5.79%) VMware Infrastructure
4 28 (4.38%) Firmware
5 11 (1.72%) Docker
5 11 (1.72%) Hyper-V
6 5 (0.78%) ProxySG
6 5 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
7 4 (0.63%) KVM
7 4 (0.63%) vSphere
8 2 (0.31%) vCloud
8 2 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.16%) RACF
9 1 (0.16%) RHEV
9 1 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.16%) Xen
Systems Management
1 81 (12.68%) Ansible
2 43 (6.73%) FortiGate
3 32 (5.01%) Terraform
4 23 (3.60%) vCenter Server
5 9 (1.41%) Single Sign-On
6 8 (1.25%) Grafana
6 8 (1.25%) Prometheus
7 6 (0.94%) Cisco Prime
7 6 (0.94%) Microsoft Intune
7 6 (0.94%) Nagios
8 5 (0.78%) Kubernetes
9 4 (0.63%) Tivoli NetView
10 3 (0.47%) CASB
10 3 (0.47%) Dell DRAC
10 3 (0.47%) SCCM
10 3 (0.47%) SCOrch
11 2 (0.31%) Salt
12 1 (0.16%) Amdocs OSS
12 1 (0.16%) Failover Clustering
12 1 (0.16%) SCOM
Vendors
1 364 (56.96%) Cisco
2 162 (25.35%) Palo Alto
3 105 (16.43%) F5
4 101 (15.81%) Juniper
5 71 (11.11%) CheckPoint
6 67 (10.49%) SolarWinds
7 66 (10.33%) VMware
8 58 (9.08%) Aruba
8 58 (9.08%) Fortinet
9 56 (8.76%) Meraki
10 43 (6.73%) Blue Coat
11 39 (6.10%) McAfee
12 35 (5.48%) Microsoft
13 31 (4.85%) Arista
14 22 (3.44%) NetApp
15 20 (3.13%) Nokia
16 17 (2.66%) ServiceNow
17 13 (2.03%) Splunk
18 12 (1.88%) Zscaler
19 11 (1.72%) Ekahau