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 January 2026.

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

6 months to
12 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 168 104 98
Rank change year-on-year -64 -6 +71
Contract jobs requiring a Network Engineer 607 775 976
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.67% 2.46% 2.27%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.83% 2.65% 2.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 410 451 566
10th Percentile £306 £313 £300
25th Percentile £400 £400 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year - +5.56% -
75th Percentile £538 £575 £550
90th Percentile £588 £638 £628
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £454 £440
% change year-on-year +4.68% +3.13% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 10 46
10th Percentile £21.98 £19.85 £24.75
25th Percentile £33.00 £20.00 £38.22
Median hourly rate £52.58 £20.19 £64.49
Median % change year-on-year +160.46% -68.70% +19.43%
75th Percentile £69.00 £45.13 £73.29
90th Percentile £74.26 £50.25 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £56.44 £20.00 £65.98
% change year-on-year +182.20% -69.69% +119.64%

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 33,096 29,209 40,038
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.31% 92.69% 93.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,909 17,885 26,705
10th Percentile £300 £291 £280
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £618 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £479 £500
% change year-on-year -0.73% -4.30% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,948 878 1,679
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.52 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.25 £21.05 £18.93
Median hourly rate £26.50 £32.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.46% -23.53% +28.79%
75th Percentile £60.00 £62.24 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £30.88 £45.00
% change year-on-year -18.54% -31.39% +66.65%

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 January 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 12 January 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 12 January 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 -70 509 £495 +1.02% 463
UK excluding London -52 380 £475 +4.68% 446
Work from Home -33 188 £440 -6.88% 259
London -53 168 £500 -4.76% 90
South East -2 137 £500 - 146
North of England -69 116 £500 +10.01% 69
North West -35 99 £500 +2.04% 31
Midlands -39 55 £380 -12.64% 58
West Midlands -15 51 £380 -15.08% 32
Scotland +16 47 £425 +6.25% 14
East of England -20 21 £400 +45.45% 79
South West -47 18 £475 +1.60% 59
Yorkshire -68 15 £435 +6.75% 27
Wales -10 8 £550 +57.14% 23
Northern Ireland -2 3 £475 +6.74% 12
North East -6 3 £625 +28.21% 14
East Midlands -36 3 £650 +73.33% 26

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

For the 6 months to 12 January 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.

1 351 (57.83%) Cisco
2 297 (48.93%) Firewall
3 229 (37.73%) Security Cleared
4 173 (28.50%) Cisco Certification
4 173 (28.50%) WAN
5 165 (27.18%) SC Cleared
6 152 (25.04%) Palo Alto
7 148 (24.38%) CCNP
8 135 (22.24%) BGP
9 129 (21.25%) LAN
10 122 (20.10%) Network Security
11 116 (19.11%) VPN
12 104 (17.13%) Juniper
13 97 (15.98%) Python
14 96 (15.82%) OSPF
15 94 (15.49%) F5
16 89 (14.66%) DNS
17 87 (14.33%) TCP/IP
18 82 (13.51%) Ansible
19 81 (13.34%) Load Balancing
20 75 (12.36%) CCNA
21 72 (11.86%) VLAN
22 69 (11.37%) Network Design
22 69 (11.37%) Wi-Fi
23 68 (11.20%) CheckPoint
23 68 (11.20%) Problem-Solving
24 66 (10.87%) Wireless
25 64 (10.54%) AWS
25 64 (10.54%) Azure
26 63 (10.38%) DV Cleared

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 11 (1.81%) SharePoint
2 7 (1.15%) Confluence
3 5 (0.82%) Apache
3 5 (0.82%) IIS
3 5 (0.82%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 16 (2.64%) MS Visio
2 6 (0.99%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.33%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (0.49%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 64 (10.54%) AWS
1 64 (10.54%) Azure
2 18 (2.97%) GCP
3 13 (2.14%) Virtual Private Cloud
4 12 (1.98%) Entra ID
5 10 (1.65%) Microsoft 365
6 5 (0.82%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 5 (0.82%) Amazon EC2
6 5 (0.82%) Amazon ELB
6 5 (0.82%) Amazon S3
6 5 (0.82%) Azure ExpressRoute
6 5 (0.82%) GitHub
6 5 (0.82%) IaaS
6 5 (0.82%) Nutanix
7 4 (0.66%) AWS Direct Connect
7 4 (0.66%) Cohesity
7 4 (0.66%) Mimecast
7 4 (0.66%) OCI
7 4 (0.66%) PaaS
7 4 (0.66%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 297 (48.93%) Firewall
2 173 (28.50%) WAN
3 135 (22.24%) BGP
4 129 (21.25%) LAN
5 122 (20.10%) Network Security
6 116 (19.11%) VPN
7 96 (15.82%) OSPF
8 89 (14.66%) DNS
9 87 (14.33%) TCP/IP
10 72 (11.86%) VLAN
11 69 (11.37%) Wi-Fi
12 66 (10.87%) Wireless
13 63 (10.38%) SD-WAN
14 58 (9.56%) Cisco ISE
15 57 (9.39%) MPLS
16 56 (9.23%) SSL
17 49 (8.07%) Cisco IOS
18 47 (7.74%) Cisco Nexus
18 47 (7.74%) IPsec
19 39 (6.43%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (0.49%) SQL Server
2 2 (0.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 1 (0.16%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 22 (3.62%) Fiddler
2 20 (3.29%) Git
3 11 (1.81%) GitLab
4 10 (1.65%) Jenkins
4 10 (1.65%) JIRA
5 7 (1.15%) Sonatype Nexus
6 3 (0.49%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.16%) ClearCase
7 1 (0.16%) Jaeger
General
1 131 (21.58%) Social Skills
2 60 (9.88%) Public Sector
3 42 (6.92%) Finance
4 39 (6.43%) Analytical Skills
5 36 (5.93%) Documentation Skills
6 30 (4.94%) Banking
7 28 (4.61%) Telecoms
8 26 (4.28%) Investment Banking
9 24 (3.95%) Manufacturing
10 13 (2.14%) Legal
11 7 (1.15%) Local Government
12 5 (0.82%) Financial Institution
12 5 (0.82%) Military
12 5 (0.82%) Retail
13 4 (0.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 4 (0.66%) Presentation Skills
14 3 (0.49%) Law
14 3 (0.49%) Marketing
14 3 (0.49%) Organisational Skills
14 3 (0.49%) Spanish Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (5.27%) 802.1X
2 6 (0.99%) RFC 2544
2 6 (0.99%) SAML
3 5 (0.82%) Jinja
4 4 (0.66%) JSON
4 4 (0.66%) Middleware
4 4 (0.66%) VML
5 3 (0.49%) LDAP
5 3 (0.49%) YANG
6 2 (0.33%) CSS
6 2 (0.33%) HTML
6 2 (0.33%) NETCONF
6 2 (0.33%) 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%) OpenTelemetry
7 1 (0.16%) REST
7 1 (0.16%) Ultra Messaging
Miscellaneous
1 127 (20.92%) Data Centre
2 21 (3.46%) Management Information System
3 19 (3.13%) Onboarding
4 18 (2.97%) Operational Technology
5 17 (2.80%) Data Protection Act
5 17 (2.80%) PKI
6 11 (1.81%) Hedge funds
7 10 (1.65%) Security Posture
7 10 (1.65%) Self-Motivation
8 9 (1.48%) Fibre Optics
8 9 (1.48%) Hybrid Cloud
9 5 (0.82%) Driving Licence
9 5 (0.82%) NHS
9 5 (0.82%) Public Cloud
9 5 (0.82%) SCADA
10 4 (0.66%) IoT
10 4 (0.66%) Legacy Systems
10 4 (0.66%) Life Science
10 4 (0.66%) Virtual Team
11 3 (0.49%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 49 (8.07%) Windows
2 32 (5.27%) Linux
3 29 (4.78%) Windows Server
4 5 (0.82%) Unix
5 2 (0.33%) CatOS
5 2 (0.33%) Mac OS
5 2 (0.33%) zOS
6 1 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
6 1 (0.16%) Windows 10
6 1 (0.16%) Windows 7
6 1 (0.16%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 81 (13.34%) Load Balancing
2 69 (11.37%) Network Design
3 68 (11.20%) Problem-Solving
4 51 (8.40%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 49 (8.07%) Network Monitoring
6 45 (7.41%) Migration
7 43 (7.08%) High Availability
8 41 (6.75%) Network Architecture
9 39 (6.43%) Project Delivery
10 36 (5.93%) DevOps
11 33 (5.44%) Cybersecurity
11 33 (5.44%) Network Management
12 31 (5.11%) ITSM
13 28 (4.61%) Service Management
14 27 (4.45%) Incident Response
15 25 (4.12%) Stakeholder Management
16 24 (3.95%) Change Management
17 23 (3.79%) Agile
18 22 (3.62%) Infrastructure as Code
18 22 (3.62%) Knowledge Transfer
Programming Languages
1 97 (15.98%) Python
2 31 (5.11%) Bash
3 19 (3.13%) Perl
4 14 (2.31%) PowerShell
5 8 (1.32%) Lisp
6 6 (0.99%) C++
7 4 (0.66%) SQL
8 2 (0.33%) Go
8 2 (0.33%) Java
8 2 (0.33%) JavaScript
9 1 (0.16%) C
9 1 (0.16%) Ruby
9 1 (0.16%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 229 (37.73%) Security Cleared
2 173 (28.50%) Cisco Certification
3 165 (27.18%) SC Cleared
4 148 (24.38%) CCNP
5 75 (12.36%) CCNA
6 63 (10.38%) DV Cleared
7 26 (4.28%) CCIE
8 21 (3.46%) Degree
9 20 (3.29%) JNCIS
10 15 (2.47%) JNCIA
11 13 (2.14%) JNCIP
12 10 (1.65%) Network+ Certification
13 9 (1.48%) BPSS Clearance
14 7 (1.15%) CCDP
15 5 (0.82%) Computer Science Degree
16 3 (0.49%) CISSP
16 3 (0.49%) CompTIA Security+
16 3 (0.49%) DBS Check
16 3 (0.49%) Microsoft Certification
17 2 (0.33%) MCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (1.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 7 (1.15%) SLA
2 4 (0.66%) GDPR
2 4 (0.66%) NIST
3 3 (0.49%) PCI DSS
3 3 (0.49%) QA
4 2 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials
4 2 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
5 1 (0.16%) Disclosure Scotland
5 1 (0.16%) GRC
5 1 (0.16%) ISO/IEC 20000
5 1 (0.16%) JSP 440
5 1 (0.16%) PMO
5 1 (0.16%) SOC 2
System Software
1 41 (6.75%) VMware NSX
2 37 (6.10%) Active Directory
3 32 (5.27%) VMware Infrastructure
4 26 (4.28%) Firmware
5 14 (2.31%) Docker
6 10 (1.65%) Hyper-V
7 5 (0.82%) ProxySG
7 5 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
8 3 (0.49%) KVM
9 2 (0.33%) vCloud
9 2 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.16%) BitLocker
10 1 (0.16%) RACF
10 1 (0.16%) RHEV
10 1 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.16%) vSphere
10 1 (0.16%) Xen
Systems Management
1 82 (13.51%) Ansible
2 47 (7.74%) FortiGate
3 33 (5.44%) Terraform
4 24 (3.95%) vCenter Server
5 8 (1.32%) Kubernetes
6 7 (1.15%) Grafana
6 7 (1.15%) Prometheus
7 6 (0.99%) Nagios
7 6 (0.99%) Single Sign-On
8 5 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
9 4 (0.66%) Cisco Prime
9 4 (0.66%) SCCM
10 3 (0.49%) CASB
10 3 (0.49%) Dell DRAC
10 3 (0.49%) SCOrch
10 3 (0.49%) Tivoli NetView
10 3 (0.49%) WhatsUp Gold
11 1 (0.16%) Amdocs OSS
11 1 (0.16%) Proxmox
11 1 (0.16%) Salt
Vendors
1 351 (57.83%) Cisco
2 152 (25.04%) Palo Alto
3 104 (17.13%) Juniper
4 94 (15.49%) F5
5 68 (11.20%) CheckPoint
6 61 (10.05%) SolarWinds
7 57 (9.39%) Meraki
8 55 (9.06%) Fortinet
9 54 (8.90%) Aruba
9 54 (8.90%) VMware
10 42 (6.92%) Blue Coat
11 39 (6.43%) Microsoft
12 34 (5.60%) McAfee
13 33 (5.44%) Arista
14 20 (3.29%) Nokia
15 19 (3.13%) NetApp
16 18 (2.97%) Zscaler
17 15 (2.47%) ServiceNow
18 11 (1.81%) Remedy
19 10 (1.65%) Splunk