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 26 June 2026.

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

6 months to
26 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 133 125 93
Rank change year-on-year -8 -32 +31
Contract jobs requiring a Network Engineer 1,019 682 1,024
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.00% 2.25% 2.36%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.17% 2.45% 2.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 669 417 633
10th Percentile £303 £320 £300
25th Percentile £403 £400 £378
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £478 £475
Median % change year-on-year -0.52% +0.53% +5.56%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £550
90th Percentile £600 £625 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £475 £460
% change year-on-year -2.63% +3.26% +6.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 9 20
10th Percentile £28.40 £22.41 £18.41
25th Percentile £55.00 £32.50 £23.04
Median hourly rate £72.54 £50.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +45.08% +25.00% -35.48%
75th Percentile £78.75 £61.25 £73.75
90th Percentile - £70.25 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £73.00 £35.00 £72.50
% change year-on-year +108.57% -51.72% +16.94%

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 47,008 27,876 40,382
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.38% 92.16% 92.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,552 17,889 25,942
10th Percentile £325 £288 £281
25th Percentile £415 £402 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -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 3,155 1,223 2,887
10th Percentile £15.38 £13.76 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.08 £17.31 £16.58
Median hourly rate £43.61 £26.45 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +64.86% -29.47% -12.79%
75th Percentile £67.50 £55.37 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.65 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -

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 26 June 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 26 June 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 26 June 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 -18 838 £475 -3.46% 284
UK excluding London -15 599 £463 -2.63% 271
London -22 285 £500 - 77
Work from Home -30 235 £450 -5.26% 72
North of England -13 204 £486 -1.31% 61
South East -11 156 £463 -7.50% 62
North West 0 152 £488 -0.20% 32
Midlands -2 116 £444 +3.20% 40
West Midlands +9 109 £438 +59.09% 18
Scotland +22 66 £415 +0.61% 22
East of England -12 42 £438 +14.38% 34
South West -46 41 £550 +4.76% 36
Yorkshire -45 39 £450 -8.54% 21
Wales -4 24 £425 - 9
North East -20 13 £600 +108.70% 8
East Midlands -17 4 £475 +5.56% 22
Northern Ireland +3 2 £468 -18.70% 10

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

For the 6 months to 26 June 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.

1 535 (52.50%) Cisco
2 441 (43.28%) Firewall
3 287 (28.16%) WAN
4 273 (26.79%) Security Cleared
5 250 (24.53%) Cisco Certification
6 240 (23.55%) LAN
7 236 (23.16%) BGP
8 232 (22.77%) Network Security
9 216 (21.20%) VPN
10 215 (21.10%) Palo Alto
11 196 (19.23%) SC Cleared
12 192 (18.84%) CCNP
13 179 (17.57%) DNS
14 176 (17.27%) F5
15 159 (15.60%) Wireless
16 154 (15.11%) OSPF
17 149 (14.62%) Fortinet
18 147 (14.43%) Load Balancing
19 135 (13.25%) VLAN
20 121 (11.87%) Azure
21 118 (11.58%) Python
22 115 (11.29%) Juniper
22 115 (11.29%) Migration
23 114 (11.19%) SD-WAN
24 104 (10.21%) CCNA
25 102 (10.01%) TCP/IP
26 99 (9.72%) High Availability
27 97 (9.52%) Wi-Fi
28 95 (9.32%) VMware
29 89 (8.73%) 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 6 (0.59%) Confluence
2 4 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.20%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.098%) Apache
4 1 (0.098%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.098%) CMS
4 1 (0.098%) IIS
4 1 (0.098%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.098%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 18 (1.77%) MS Visio
2 10 (0.98%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (0.29%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 121 (11.87%) Azure
2 86 (8.44%) AWS
3 53 (5.20%) GCP
4 37 (3.63%) GitHub
5 17 (1.67%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 15 (1.47%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 13 (1.28%) Entra ID
8 12 (1.18%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 11 (1.08%) AWS CloudFormation
10 10 (0.98%) AWS Direct Connect
11 9 (0.88%) IaaS
11 9 (0.88%) Microsoft 365
12 7 (0.69%) Azure Sentinel
12 7 (0.69%) Nutanix
13 6 (0.59%) GitHub Actions
13 6 (0.59%) Google Compute Engine
14 5 (0.49%) Amazon EC2
14 5 (0.49%) Route 53
14 5 (0.49%) SaaS
14 5 (0.49%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 441 (43.28%) Firewall
2 287 (28.16%) WAN
3 240 (23.55%) LAN
4 236 (23.16%) BGP
5 232 (22.77%) Network Security
6 216 (21.20%) VPN
7 179 (17.57%) DNS
8 159 (15.60%) Wireless
9 154 (15.11%) OSPF
10 135 (13.25%) VLAN
11 114 (11.19%) SD-WAN
12 102 (10.01%) TCP/IP
13 97 (9.52%) Wi-Fi
14 76 (7.46%) Cisco Nexus
15 75 (7.36%) MPLS
16 71 (6.97%) Multicast
17 67 (6.58%) BIG-IP
18 66 (6.48%) Cisco ISE
19 61 (5.99%) DHCP
20 58 (5.69%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (0.098%) ClickHouse
1 1 (0.098%) GIS
1 1 (0.098%) Oracle Reports
1 1 (0.098%) QGIS
1 1 (0.098%) SQL Server
1 1 (0.098%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 29 (2.85%) Jenkins
1 29 (2.85%) JIRA
2 22 (2.16%) Fiddler
3 17 (1.67%) Git
4 9 (0.88%) Sonatype Nexus
5 8 (0.79%) GitLab
6 2 (0.20%) Browser DevTools
General
1 137 (13.44%) Social Skills
2 63 (6.18%) Finance
3 58 (5.69%) Banking
4 46 (4.51%) Analytical Skills
5 44 (4.32%) Telecoms
6 38 (3.73%) Investment Banking
7 35 (3.43%) Documentation Skills
7 35 (3.43%) Public Sector
8 24 (2.36%) Legal
9 21 (2.06%) Manufacturing
10 20 (1.96%) Retail
11 10 (0.98%) Law
12 9 (0.88%) Aerospace
13 7 (0.69%) Financial Institution
14 6 (0.59%) Pharmaceutical
15 5 (0.49%) Influencing Skills
15 5 (0.49%) Military
15 5 (0.49%) Organisational Skills
15 5 (0.49%) Police
15 5 (0.49%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 47 (4.61%) 802.1X
2 11 (1.08%) REST
3 9 (0.88%) SAML
4 8 (0.79%) LDAP
5 2 (0.20%) AWS CDK
5 2 (0.20%) CSS
5 2 (0.20%) Django
5 2 (0.20%) HTML
5 2 (0.20%) Jinja
5 2 (0.20%) RFC 2544
6 1 (0.098%) Java RMI
6 1 (0.098%) JSON
6 1 (0.098%) ModSecurity
6 1 (0.098%) NETCONF
6 1 (0.098%) OpenTelemetry
6 1 (0.098%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 198 (19.43%) Data Centre
2 27 (2.65%) Hybrid Cloud
3 26 (2.55%) Data Protection Act
4 23 (2.26%) PKI
4 23 (2.26%) Security Posture
5 22 (2.16%) Management Information System
6 16 (1.57%) Onboarding
6 16 (1.57%) Operational Technology
7 14 (1.37%) Cloud Native
8 10 (0.98%) NHS
9 9 (0.88%) Clustering
10 8 (0.79%) CCTV
11 6 (0.59%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 6 (0.59%) Enterprise Cloud
11 6 (0.59%) Linux Command Line
11 6 (0.59%) Self-Motivation
12 5 (0.49%) Public Cloud
13 4 (0.39%) Distributed Systems
13 4 (0.39%) IoT
13 4 (0.39%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 73 (7.16%) Windows
2 41 (4.02%) Linux
3 13 (1.28%) Windows Server
4 6 (0.59%) Unix
4 6 (0.59%) VMS
5 5 (0.49%) Windows Server 2019
6 4 (0.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
8 2 (0.20%) CatOS
8 2 (0.20%) Ubuntu
8 2 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
8 2 (0.20%) zOS
9 1 (0.098%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.098%) Solaris
9 1 (0.098%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.098%) Windows 7
9 1 (0.098%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 147 (14.43%) Load Balancing
2 115 (11.29%) Migration
3 99 (9.72%) High Availability
4 89 (8.73%) Problem-Solving
5 77 (7.56%) Project Delivery
6 67 (6.58%) Network Monitoring
7 66 (6.48%) Network Design
8 60 (5.89%) ITIL
9 59 (5.79%) Infrastructure as Code
10 56 (5.50%) Change Management
11 55 (5.40%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 55 (5.40%) Validation
12 43 (4.22%) Data Protection
13 42 (4.12%) Technical Leadership
14 41 (4.02%) Zero Trust
15 40 (3.93%) DevOps
15 40 (3.93%) ITSM
16 39 (3.83%) CI/CD
16 39 (3.83%) Continuous Improvement
17 36 (3.53%) Network Management
Programming Languages
1 118 (11.58%) Python
2 15 (1.47%) Bash
3 12 (1.18%) PowerShell
4 9 (0.88%) ActionScript
5 8 (0.79%) SQL
6 3 (0.29%) Bicep
6 3 (0.29%) C
6 3 (0.29%) Java
7 2 (0.20%) C++
7 2 (0.20%) Groovy
7 2 (0.20%) JavaScript
7 2 (0.20%) Perl
8 1 (0.098%) Go
8 1 (0.098%) Korn
8 1 (0.098%) Lisp
8 1 (0.098%) PHP
Qualifications
1 273 (26.79%) Security Cleared
2 250 (24.53%) Cisco Certification
3 196 (19.23%) SC Cleared
4 192 (18.84%) CCNP
5 104 (10.21%) CCNA
6 83 (8.15%) DV Cleared
7 41 (4.02%) CCIE
8 40 (3.93%) Degree
9 15 (1.47%) JNCIA
9 15 (1.47%) JNCIS
10 13 (1.28%) Network+ Certification
11 11 (1.08%) JNCIP
12 9 (0.88%) CCSE
12 9 (0.88%) Computer Science Degree
13 8 (0.79%) CISSP
14 6 (0.59%) Azure Certification
14 6 (0.59%) CompTIA Security+
15 5 (0.49%) AWS Certification
15 5 (0.49%) CCIE Wireless
15 5 (0.49%) CCSM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (1.57%) SLA
2 12 (1.18%) NIST
3 11 (1.08%) QA
4 8 (0.79%) Disclosure Scotland
5 5 (0.49%) GDPR
5 5 (0.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 5 (0.49%) PCI DSS
6 4 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
6 4 (0.39%) GRC
7 2 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials
7 2 (0.20%) ISO/IEC 20000
7 2 (0.20%) JSP 440
7 2 (0.20%) NCSC
8 1 (0.098%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 1 (0.098%) Data Quality
8 1 (0.098%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 1 (0.098%) PMO
System Software
1 69 (6.77%) VMware Infrastructure
2 36 (3.53%) VMware NSX
3 33 (3.24%) Firmware
4 31 (3.04%) Active Directory
5 16 (1.57%) VMware ESXi
6 13 (1.28%) vSphere
7 6 (0.59%) Hyper-V
8 5 (0.49%) Virtual Machines
9 4 (0.39%) Virtual Servers
10 2 (0.20%) Squid
10 2 (0.20%) vCloud
10 2 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
11 1 (0.098%) Citrix Presentation Server
11 1 (0.098%) Docker
11 1 (0.098%) FreeRADIUS
11 1 (0.098%) IAG
11 1 (0.098%) iptables
11 1 (0.098%) KVM
11 1 (0.098%) Snort
Systems Management
1 87 (8.54%) Ansible
2 81 (7.95%) Terraform
3 75 (7.36%) FortiGate
4 9 (0.88%) Cisco Prime
4 9 (0.88%) Grafana
5 8 (0.79%) Kubernetes
5 8 (0.79%) Single Sign-On
6 7 (0.69%) Prometheus
7 5 (0.49%) Microsoft Intune
8 4 (0.39%) Packer
8 4 (0.39%) Puppet
9 3 (0.29%) Cisco CUCM
10 2 (0.20%) CASB
10 2 (0.20%) Nagios
10 2 (0.20%) Nessus
10 2 (0.20%) SCCM
10 2 (0.20%) SCOM
10 2 (0.20%) Tivoli NetView
10 2 (0.20%) vCenter Server
10 2 (0.20%) WSUS
Vendors
1 535 (52.50%) Cisco
2 215 (21.10%) Palo Alto
3 176 (17.27%) F5
4 149 (14.62%) Fortinet
5 115 (11.29%) Juniper
6 95 (9.32%) VMware
7 74 (7.26%) Aruba
8 68 (6.67%) Arista
8 68 (6.67%) CheckPoint
9 49 (4.81%) Microsoft
10 48 (4.71%) Meraki
11 40 (3.93%) SolarWinds
12 38 (3.73%) Zscaler
13 33 (3.24%) Google
14 31 (3.04%) Blue Coat
14 31 (3.04%) Infoblox
15 27 (2.65%) ServiceNow
16 25 (2.45%) McAfee
17 21 (2.06%) Extreme Networks
18 20 (1.96%) Splunk