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 22 November 2025.

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

6 months to
22 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 158 91 109
Rank change year-on-year -67 +18 +74
Contract jobs requiring a Network Engineer 636 919 1,021
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.77% 2.50% 2.19%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.95% 2.70% 2.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 433 539 632
10th Percentile £305 £318 £300
25th Percentile £400 £406 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £490 £450
Median % change year-on-year -3.06% +8.89% -
75th Percentile £563 £584 £550
90th Percentile £625 £638 £600
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £438
% change year-on-year +3.05% +8.57% -0.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 16 42
10th Percentile £23.10 - £24.55
25th Percentile £33.00 £20.00 £38.74
Median hourly rate £41.50 £41.50 £62.75
Median % change year-on-year - -33.86% +32.11%
75th Percentile £74.26 £54.06 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £70.00 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.50 £21.39 £62.75
% change year-on-year +210.93% -65.92% +161.46%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 32,680 34,083 43,648
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.96% 92.77% 93.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,712 20,554 29,563
10th Percentile £281 £300 £292
25th Percentile £402 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £647
90th Percentile £725 £738 £740
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £494 £500
% change year-on-year -3.85% -1.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,932 1,297 1,552
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.21 £15.16
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -22.22% +50.00%
75th Percentile £56.25 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.92 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £34.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year -26.03% -24.44% +83.97%

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 22 November 2025.

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 22 November 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Network Engineer in the UK

Network Engineer
Top 18 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 22 November 2025. 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 -65 531 £500 +2.04% 273
UK excluding London -61 385 £490 +3.05% 214
London -48 192 £475 -6.86% 111
Work from Home -52 188 £450 -8.16% 88
South East -20 113 £500 - 108
North of England -64 107 £500 +5.26% 21
North West -48 78 £500 +2.04% 13
Midlands -26 73 £400 -11.11% 29
West Midlands -1 68 £395 -21.00% 22
Scotland +5 48 £425 +6.25% 19
East of England -10 29 £375 +25.00% 17
Yorkshire -65 27 £487 +19.57% 6
South West -41 23 £623 +31.40% 14
Wales -14 7 £550 +37.50% 7
Northern Ireland -2 5 £475 +6.74% 3
East Midlands -32 5 £650 +73.33% 6
North East -2 3 £625 +28.21% 2
Channel Islands - 1 £440 -

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

For the 6 months to 22 November 2025, 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.

1 383 (60.22%) Cisco
2 305 (47.96%) Firewall
3 206 (32.39%) Security Cleared
4 195 (30.66%) Cisco Certification
5 167 (26.26%) WAN
6 150 (23.58%) CCNP
7 147 (23.11%) BGP
8 137 (21.54%) SC Cleared
9 130 (20.44%) Juniper
10 125 (19.65%) Python
11 123 (19.34%) Network Security
12 120 (18.87%) Palo Alto
13 111 (17.45%) LAN
14 109 (17.14%) Ansible
15 108 (16.98%) VPN
16 104 (16.35%) OSPF
17 101 (15.88%) F5
18 100 (15.72%) DNS
19 82 (12.89%) CCNA
20 81 (12.74%) SD-WAN
21 80 (12.58%) AWS
22 79 (12.42%) Wireless
23 77 (12.11%) Cisco ISE
23 77 (12.11%) SolarWinds
24 75 (11.79%) TCP/IP
25 72 (11.32%) Load Balancing
26 69 (10.85%) Fortinet
26 69 (10.85%) Network Design
26 69 (10.85%) VLAN
27 66 (10.38%) MPLS

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 9 (1.42%) Confluence
1 9 (1.42%) SharePoint
2 4 (0.63%) Microsoft Exchange
2 4 (0.63%) nginx
3 2 (0.31%) Apache
3 2 (0.31%) IIS
Applications
1 13 (2.04%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (1.89%) MS Visio
3 6 (0.94%) Microsoft Excel
4 4 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 4 (0.63%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 80 (12.58%) AWS
2 65 (10.22%) Azure
3 18 (2.83%) GCP
4 11 (1.73%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 10 (1.57%) Akamai
6 7 (1.10%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 7 (1.10%) Amazon S3
6 7 (1.10%) GitHub
7 6 (0.94%) Microsoft 365
8 5 (0.79%) Amazon EC2
8 5 (0.79%) Amazon ELB
8 5 (0.79%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 4 (0.63%) AWS Direct Connect
9 4 (0.63%) Azure DevOps
9 4 (0.63%) Cohesity
9 4 (0.63%) Entra ID
9 4 (0.63%) Nutanix
9 4 (0.63%) OCI
9 4 (0.63%) SaaS
10 3 (0.47%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 305 (47.96%) Firewall
2 167 (26.26%) WAN
3 147 (23.11%) BGP
4 123 (19.34%) Network Security
5 111 (17.45%) LAN
6 108 (16.98%) VPN
7 104 (16.35%) OSPF
8 100 (15.72%) DNS
9 81 (12.74%) SD-WAN
10 79 (12.42%) Wireless
11 77 (12.11%) Cisco ISE
12 75 (11.79%) TCP/IP
13 69 (10.85%) VLAN
14 66 (10.38%) MPLS
15 63 (9.91%) Wi-Fi
16 57 (8.96%) Cisco IOS
17 54 (8.49%) Cisco Nexus
18 45 (7.08%) DHCP
19 43 (6.76%) IPsec
20 41 (6.45%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (0.16%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 18 (2.83%) Git
1 18 (2.83%) JIRA
2 13 (2.04%) Fiddler
3 12 (1.89%) GitLab
3 12 (1.89%) Jenkins
4 9 (1.42%) Sonatype Nexus
5 7 (1.10%) Robot Framework
6 2 (0.31%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.16%) ClearCase
7 1 (0.16%) Mercurial
7 1 (0.16%) Subversion
General
1 144 (22.64%) Social Skills
2 61 (9.59%) Finance
3 60 (9.43%) Public Sector
4 41 (6.45%) Analytical Skills
5 40 (6.29%) Telecoms
6 27 (4.25%) Banking
7 24 (3.77%) Documentation Skills
8 22 (3.46%) Manufacturing
9 20 (3.14%) Investment Banking
10 13 (2.04%) Legal
11 8 (1.26%) Local Government
12 7 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 6 (0.94%) Financial Institution
14 5 (0.79%) Presentation Skills
15 4 (0.63%) Law
15 4 (0.63%) Organisational Skills
15 4 (0.63%) Pharmaceutical
16 3 (0.47%) Aerospace
16 3 (0.47%) Electronics
16 3 (0.47%) Marketing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (4.09%) 802.1X
2 11 (1.73%) RFC 2544
3 8 (1.26%) NETCONF
4 7 (1.10%) RESTCONF
5 5 (0.79%) Jinja
6 4 (0.63%) Middleware
6 4 (0.63%) REST
7 3 (0.47%) SAML
8 2 (0.31%) JSON
8 2 (0.31%) Node.js
8 2 (0.31%) YANG
9 1 (0.16%) ADO
9 1 (0.16%) CSS
9 1 (0.16%) FIX Protocol
9 1 (0.16%) gRPC
9 1 (0.16%) HTML
9 1 (0.16%) OpenConfig
9 1 (0.16%) Ultra Messaging
9 1 (0.16%) VML
9 1 (0.16%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 114 (17.92%) Data Centre
2 23 (3.62%) Onboarding
2 23 (3.62%) PKI
3 21 (3.30%) Management Information System
4 17 (2.67%) Data Protection Act
4 17 (2.67%) Hedge funds
5 16 (2.52%) Operational Technology
6 14 (2.20%) Fibre Optics
7 10 (1.57%) Security Posture
8 9 (1.42%) Driving Licence
8 9 (1.42%) Hybrid Cloud
9 8 (1.26%) SCADA
10 7 (1.10%) Private Cloud
10 7 (1.10%) Public Cloud
11 6 (0.94%) NHS
11 6 (0.94%) Self-Motivation
12 5 (0.79%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 5 (0.79%) IoT
12 5 (0.79%) Life Science
13 4 (0.63%) Cloud Native
Operating Systems
1 46 (7.23%) Windows
2 27 (4.25%) Linux
2 27 (4.25%) Windows Server
3 5 (0.79%) Unix
4 3 (0.47%) Mac OS
5 2 (0.31%) Amazon Linux
5 2 (0.31%) Windows 10
5 2 (0.31%) zOS
6 1 (0.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.16%) VMS
6 1 (0.16%) Windows 7
6 1 (0.16%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 72 (11.32%) Load Balancing
2 69 (10.85%) Network Design
3 64 (10.06%) Problem-Solving
4 50 (7.86%) Migration
5 45 (7.08%) Network Monitoring
6 43 (6.76%) High Availability
7 41 (6.45%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 41 (6.45%) Service Management
8 40 (6.29%) DevOps
9 36 (5.66%) Network Architecture
10 32 (5.03%) Agile
10 32 (5.03%) Incident Response
10 32 (5.03%) ITSM
11 31 (4.87%) Network Management
12 30 (4.72%) Network Segmentation
13 28 (4.40%) Cybersecurity
13 28 (4.40%) ITIL
14 25 (3.93%) Infrastructure as Code
15 24 (3.77%) Change Management
15 24 (3.77%) Network Virtualisation
Programming Languages
1 125 (19.65%) Python
2 32 (5.03%) Bash
3 20 (3.14%) Perl
4 18 (2.83%) PowerShell
5 8 (1.26%) C++
5 8 (1.26%) Lisp
6 3 (0.47%) Java
6 3 (0.47%) SQL
6 3 (0.47%) VB
7 2 (0.31%) Go
8 1 (0.16%) C
8 1 (0.16%) JavaScript
8 1 (0.16%) Kotlin
8 1 (0.16%) PHP
8 1 (0.16%) Ruby
8 1 (0.16%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 206 (32.39%) Security Cleared
2 195 (30.66%) Cisco Certification
3 150 (23.58%) CCNP
4 137 (21.54%) SC Cleared
5 82 (12.89%) CCNA
6 62 (9.75%) DV Cleared
7 32 (5.03%) Degree
8 25 (3.93%) CCIE
9 18 (2.83%) JNCIS
10 17 (2.67%) JNCIA
11 12 (1.89%) JNCIP
12 10 (1.57%) BPSS Clearance
12 10 (1.57%) Computer Science Degree
13 9 (1.42%) Network+ Certification
14 7 (1.10%) CCDP
15 6 (0.94%) CCSA
16 5 (0.79%) CISSP
17 4 (0.63%) Microsoft Certification
18 3 (0.47%) CEH
18 3 (0.47%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (1.57%) SLA
2 9 (1.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 6 (0.94%) GDPR
3 6 (0.94%) QA
4 5 (0.79%) NIST
5 4 (0.63%) Cyber Essentials
5 4 (0.63%) PCI DSS
6 3 (0.47%) GRC
7 2 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
7 2 (0.31%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.16%) Def Stans
8 1 (0.16%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.16%) NCSC
System Software
1 32 (5.03%) VMware Infrastructure
2 31 (4.87%) VMware NSX
3 30 (4.72%) Active Directory
4 29 (4.56%) Firmware
5 14 (2.20%) Docker
6 11 (1.73%) VMware ESXi
7 9 (1.42%) Hyper-V
8 6 (0.94%) Virtual Machines
9 3 (0.47%) ProxySG
10 2 (0.31%) Ceph
10 2 (0.31%) KVM
11 1 (0.16%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.16%) RACF
11 1 (0.16%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 109 (17.14%) Ansible
2 62 (9.75%) FortiGate
3 38 (5.97%) Terraform
4 26 (4.09%) vCenter Server
5 8 (1.26%) Kubernetes
6 6 (0.94%) Cisco CUCM
7 5 (0.79%) Cisco Prime
7 5 (0.79%) Grafana
7 5 (0.79%) Nagios
7 5 (0.79%) SCCM
8 4 (0.63%) CASB
8 4 (0.63%) Prometheus
8 4 (0.63%) SCOrch
9 3 (0.47%) Dell DRAC
9 3 (0.47%) HP ALM
9 3 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
9 3 (0.47%) Tivoli NetView
10 2 (0.31%) CA Spectrum
10 2 (0.31%) HAProxy
10 2 (0.31%) WhatsUp Gold
Vendors
1 383 (60.22%) Cisco
2 130 (20.44%) Juniper
3 120 (18.87%) Palo Alto
4 101 (15.88%) F5
5 77 (12.11%) SolarWinds
6 69 (10.85%) Fortinet
7 62 (9.75%) CheckPoint
8 55 (8.65%) VMware
9 49 (7.70%) Arista
9 49 (7.70%) Meraki
10 48 (7.55%) Microsoft
11 32 (5.03%) Aruba
11 32 (5.03%) Blue Coat
12 28 (4.40%) Zscaler
13 27 (4.25%) ServiceNow
14 23 (3.62%) McAfee
15 15 (2.36%) Nokia
16 14 (2.20%) NetApp
17 12 (1.89%) Remedy
18 11 (1.73%) Infoblox