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 12 November 2025.

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

6 months to
12 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 165 87 111
Rank change year-on-year -78 +24 +72
Contract jobs requiring a Network Engineer 613 928 1,024
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.74% 2.56% 2.20%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.92% 2.76% 2.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 412 542 637
10th Percentile £307 £332 £274
25th Percentile £400 £410 £369
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £490 £450
Median % change year-on-year -3.06% +8.89% -
75th Percentile £574 £580 £543
90th Percentile £637 £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 15 16 41
10th Percentile £21.26 - £25.00
25th Percentile £27.50 £20.00 £40.85
Median hourly rate £35.00 £41.50 £63.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.66% -34.13% +16.67%
75th Percentile £70.76 £54.06 £70.00
90th Percentile £79.50 £70.00 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.50 £21.39 £63.00
% change year-on-year +94.04% -66.05% +44.00%

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 31,989 33,651 43,674
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.92% 92.86% 93.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,308 20,292 29,666
10th Percentile £279 £300 £294
25th Percentile £402 £412 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £624 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,833 1,257 1,539
10th Percentile £14.06 £15.10 £14.99
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +60.48%
75th Percentile £51.80 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.92 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +87.37%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 -81 518 £500 +2.04% 248
UK excluding London -52 375 £490 +3.05% 198
London -52 185 £475 -6.86% 102
Work from Home -62 180 £450 -8.16% 83
South East -17 106 £500 - 84
North of England -69 106 £500 +2.56% 20
North West -45 78 £508 +3.57% 8
Midlands -19 73 £400 -10.61% 33
West Midlands -2 68 £395 -21.00% 25
Scotland +5 46 £425 +6.25% 19
East of England -12 28 £400 +33.33% 18
South West -34 27 £620 +30.87% 11
Yorkshire -58 26 £490 +19.03% 8
Northern Ireland -3 5 £475 +6.74% 8
East Midlands -31 5 £650 +73.33% 8
Wales -17 4 £335 -16.25% 10
North East -9 3 £625 +42.86% 4
Channel Islands - 1 £440 -

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

For the 6 months to 12 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.

1 373 (60.85%) Cisco
2 296 (48.29%) Firewall
3 197 (32.14%) Security Cleared
4 191 (31.16%) Cisco Certification
5 166 (27.08%) WAN
6 145 (23.65%) CCNP
7 144 (23.49%) BGP
8 135 (22.02%) SC Cleared
9 128 (20.88%) Python
10 123 (20.07%) Juniper
11 118 (19.25%) Network Security
12 114 (18.60%) Ansible
12 114 (18.60%) Palo Alto
13 113 (18.43%) LAN
14 103 (16.80%) OSPF
14 103 (16.80%) VPN
15 101 (16.48%) F5
16 97 (15.82%) DNS
17 81 (13.21%) AWS
18 77 (12.56%) CCNA
18 77 (12.56%) Cisco ISE
19 75 (12.23%) SolarWinds
20 74 (12.07%) SD-WAN
20 74 (12.07%) Wireless
21 72 (11.75%) Fortinet
21 72 (11.75%) Load Balancing
22 70 (11.42%) VLAN
23 69 (11.26%) TCP/IP
24 68 (11.09%) Network Design
25 66 (10.77%) Wi-Fi

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 (1.63%) Confluence
2 9 (1.47%) SharePoint
3 4 (0.65%) Microsoft Exchange
3 4 (0.65%) nginx
Applications
1 13 (2.12%) Microsoft Office
1 13 (2.12%) MS Visio
2 7 (1.14%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 4 (0.65%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 81 (13.21%) AWS
2 65 (10.60%) Azure
3 15 (2.45%) GCP
4 12 (1.96%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 10 (1.63%) Akamai
6 7 (1.14%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 7 (1.14%) Amazon S3
6 7 (1.14%) GitHub
7 6 (0.98%) Microsoft 365
8 5 (0.82%) Amazon EC2
8 5 (0.82%) Amazon ELB
8 5 (0.82%) AWS Direct Connect
8 5 (0.82%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 4 (0.65%) Azure DevOps
9 4 (0.65%) Cohesity
9 4 (0.65%) SaaS
10 3 (0.49%) IaaS
11 2 (0.33%) Nutanix
11 2 (0.33%) PaaS
11 2 (0.33%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 296 (48.29%) Firewall
2 166 (27.08%) WAN
3 144 (23.49%) BGP
4 118 (19.25%) Network Security
5 113 (18.43%) LAN
6 103 (16.80%) OSPF
6 103 (16.80%) VPN
7 97 (15.82%) DNS
8 77 (12.56%) Cisco ISE
9 74 (12.07%) SD-WAN
9 74 (12.07%) Wireless
10 70 (11.42%) VLAN
11 69 (11.26%) TCP/IP
12 66 (10.77%) Wi-Fi
13 62 (10.11%) MPLS
14 52 (8.48%) Cisco Nexus
15 50 (8.16%) Cisco IOS
16 45 (7.34%) IPsec
17 43 (7.01%) DHCP
18 40 (6.53%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (0.16%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 18 (2.94%) Git
1 18 (2.94%) JIRA
2 12 (1.96%) Fiddler
2 12 (1.96%) GitLab
2 12 (1.96%) Jenkins
3 10 (1.63%) Sonatype Nexus
4 7 (1.14%) Robot Framework
5 2 (0.33%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.16%) ClearCase
6 1 (0.16%) Mercurial
6 1 (0.16%) Subversion
General
1 139 (22.68%) Social Skills
2 60 (9.79%) Finance
3 57 (9.30%) Public Sector
4 38 (6.20%) Telecoms
5 37 (6.04%) Analytical Skills
6 27 (4.40%) Banking
7 23 (3.75%) Documentation Skills
8 21 (3.43%) Manufacturing
9 20 (3.26%) Investment Banking
10 11 (1.79%) Legal
11 6 (0.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 6 (0.98%) Local Government
12 5 (0.82%) Financial Institution
13 4 (0.65%) Law
13 4 (0.65%) Organisational Skills
14 3 (0.49%) Military
14 3 (0.49%) Pharmaceutical
14 3 (0.49%) Presentation Skills
14 3 (0.49%) Spanish Language
15 2 (0.33%) Electronics
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (4.24%) 802.1X
2 13 (2.12%) RFC 2544
3 8 (1.31%) NETCONF
4 7 (1.14%) RESTCONF
5 5 (0.82%) Jinja
6 4 (0.65%) Middleware
6 4 (0.65%) REST
7 3 (0.49%) SAML
8 2 (0.33%) JSON
8 2 (0.33%) Node.js
8 2 (0.33%) 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%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 115 (18.76%) Data Centre
2 25 (4.08%) Onboarding
3 22 (3.59%) PKI
4 20 (3.26%) Management Information System
5 18 (2.94%) Hedge funds
6 16 (2.61%) Data Protection Act
6 16 (2.61%) Fibre Optics
7 15 (2.45%) Operational Technology
8 10 (1.63%) Security Posture
9 9 (1.47%) Driving Licence
10 8 (1.31%) SCADA
11 7 (1.14%) Hybrid Cloud
11 7 (1.14%) Private Cloud
12 5 (0.82%) Cloud Native
12 5 (0.82%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 5 (0.82%) Life Science
12 5 (0.82%) Public Cloud
13 4 (0.65%) IoT
13 4 (0.65%) NHS
14 3 (0.49%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 45 (7.34%) Windows
2 28 (4.57%) Linux
3 25 (4.08%) Windows Server
4 5 (0.82%) Unix
5 3 (0.49%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.33%) Amazon Linux
6 2 (0.33%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.16%) VMS
7 1 (0.16%) Windows 7
7 1 (0.16%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 72 (11.75%) Load Balancing
2 68 (11.09%) Network Design
3 57 (9.30%) Problem-Solving
4 50 (8.16%) Migration
5 46 (7.50%) Network Monitoring
6 43 (7.01%) High Availability
6 43 (7.01%) Service Management
7 42 (6.85%) DevOps
8 39 (6.36%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 38 (6.20%) Network Architecture
10 32 (5.22%) Incident Response
11 31 (5.06%) Agile
11 31 (5.06%) ITSM
11 31 (5.06%) Network Management
12 28 (4.57%) ITIL
12 28 (4.57%) Network Segmentation
13 26 (4.24%) Cybersecurity
13 26 (4.24%) Infrastructure as Code
14 25 (4.08%) Project Delivery
15 24 (3.92%) Network Virtualisation
Programming Languages
1 128 (20.88%) Python
2 31 (5.06%) Bash
3 19 (3.10%) Perl
4 17 (2.77%) PowerShell
5 8 (1.31%) C++
5 8 (1.31%) Lisp
6 4 (0.65%) VB
7 3 (0.49%) Java
7 3 (0.49%) SQL
8 2 (0.33%) Go
9 1 (0.16%) C
9 1 (0.16%) JavaScript
9 1 (0.16%) Kotlin
9 1 (0.16%) PHP
9 1 (0.16%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 197 (32.14%) Security Cleared
2 191 (31.16%) Cisco Certification
3 145 (23.65%) CCNP
4 135 (22.02%) SC Cleared
5 77 (12.56%) CCNA
6 57 (9.30%) DV Cleared
7 32 (5.22%) Degree
8 25 (4.08%) CCIE
9 14 (2.28%) JNCIA
9 14 (2.28%) JNCIS
10 10 (1.63%) BPSS Clearance
10 10 (1.63%) Computer Science Degree
11 9 (1.47%) JNCIP
12 8 (1.31%) Network+ Certification
13 7 (1.14%) CCDP
14 6 (0.98%) CCSA
15 5 (0.82%) CISSP
16 4 (0.65%) Microsoft Certification
17 3 (0.49%) CEH
17 3 (0.49%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (1.79%) SLA
2 9 (1.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 7 (1.14%) QA
4 6 (0.98%) GDPR
5 5 (0.82%) NIST
6 4 (0.65%) Cyber Essentials
6 4 (0.65%) PCI DSS
7 3 (0.49%) GRC
8 2 (0.33%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 2 (0.33%) NCSC
8 2 (0.33%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.16%) Def Stans
System Software
1 30 (4.89%) VMware Infrastructure
2 29 (4.73%) VMware NSX
3 28 (4.57%) Active Directory
4 27 (4.40%) Firmware
5 14 (2.28%) Docker
6 12 (1.96%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (1.14%) Hyper-V
8 6 (0.98%) Virtual Machines
9 3 (0.49%) ProxySG
10 2 (0.33%) Ceph
10 2 (0.33%) KVM
10 2 (0.33%) vSphere
11 1 (0.16%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.16%) RACF
Systems Management
1 114 (18.60%) Ansible
2 62 (10.11%) FortiGate
3 39 (6.36%) Terraform
4 25 (4.08%) vCenter Server
5 8 (1.31%) Kubernetes
6 6 (0.98%) Cisco CUCM
6 6 (0.98%) Nagios
7 5 (0.82%) Grafana
7 5 (0.82%) SCCM
8 4 (0.65%) CASB
8 4 (0.65%) Cisco Prime
8 4 (0.65%) HP ALM
8 4 (0.65%) Prometheus
8 4 (0.65%) SCOrch
9 3 (0.49%) Dell DRAC
9 3 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.33%) CA Spectrum
10 2 (0.33%) HAProxy
10 2 (0.33%) Kibana
10 2 (0.33%) Packer
Vendors
1 373 (60.85%) Cisco
2 123 (20.07%) Juniper
3 114 (18.60%) Palo Alto
4 101 (16.48%) F5
5 75 (12.23%) SolarWinds
6 72 (11.75%) Fortinet
7 60 (9.79%) CheckPoint
8 54 (8.81%) VMware
9 53 (8.65%) Arista
10 48 (7.83%) Meraki
11 46 (7.50%) Microsoft
12 30 (4.89%) Aruba
12 30 (4.89%) Blue Coat
13 27 (4.40%) ServiceNow
14 26 (4.24%) Zscaler
15 22 (3.59%) McAfee
16 15 (2.45%) Nokia
17 12 (1.96%) NetApp
17 12 (1.96%) Remedy
18 11 (1.79%) HP