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 1 January 2026.

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

6 months to
1 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 171 101 102
Rank change year-on-year -70 +1 +68
Contract jobs requiring a Network Engineer 630 812 962
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.70% 2.45% 2.24%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.86% 2.64% 2.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 430 472 559
10th Percentile £308 £313 £300
25th Percentile £401 £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 £625
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £458 £440
% change year-on-year +3.83% +3.98% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 11 44
10th Percentile £20.75 - £24.65
25th Percentile £33.00 £20.00 £37.59
Median hourly rate £52.58 £20.38 £64.49
Median % change year-on-year +158.06% -68.41% +35.77%
75th Percentile £72.51 £47.50 £72.36
90th Percentile £80.38 £55.00 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £56.44 £20.00 £65.98
% change year-on-year +182.20% -69.69% +160.89%

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 33,835 30,753 40,099
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.20% 92.71% 93.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,431 18,857 26,859
10th Percentile £300 £298 £281
25th Percentile £405 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £485 £500
% change year-on-year -2.06% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,964 949 1,554
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.50 £14.43
25th Percentile £18.24 £21.05 £19.25
Median hourly rate £26.00 £32.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% -27.78% +41.93%
75th Percentile £58.75 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.50 £73.75 £77.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.52 £46.18
% change year-on-year -20.21% -31.75% +80.14%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 -67 532 £500 +2.04% 294
UK excluding London -51 392 £475 +3.83% 244
Work from Home -31 187 £445 -5.82% 95
London -46 180 £500 -4.31% 102
South East -5 137 £500 - 82
North of England -77 118 £500 +8.93% 52
North West -31 100 £500 +2.04% 22
Midlands -31 62 £390 -8.24% 39
West Midlands -8 57 £380 -15.08% 32
Scotland +23 47 £425 +6.25% 13
East of England -15 25 £475 +72.73% 23
South West -38 18 £475 +0.53% 16
Yorkshire -87 16 £435 +6.75% 22
Wales -12 8 £550 +57.14% 12
East Midlands -37 4 £650 +73.33% 7
Northern Ireland -4 3 £475 +6.74% 11
North East -6 3 £625 +28.21% 11

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

For the 6 months to 1 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.

1 360 (57.14%) Cisco
2 306 (48.57%) Firewall
3 230 (36.51%) Security Cleared
4 183 (29.05%) Cisco Certification
5 176 (27.94%) WAN
6 163 (25.87%) SC Cleared
7 155 (24.60%) CCNP
7 155 (24.60%) Palo Alto
8 138 (21.90%) BGP
9 128 (20.32%) LAN
10 123 (19.52%) Network Security
11 121 (19.21%) VPN
12 115 (18.25%) Juniper
13 101 (16.03%) Python
14 100 (15.87%) OSPF
15 96 (15.24%) F5
16 92 (14.60%) DNS
17 89 (14.13%) TCP/IP
18 88 (13.97%) Ansible
19 82 (13.02%) Load Balancing
20 80 (12.70%) CCNA
21 72 (11.43%) Wi-Fi
22 71 (11.27%) SD-WAN
23 70 (11.11%) Problem-Solving
23 70 (11.11%) VLAN
24 69 (10.95%) CheckPoint
25 68 (10.79%) AWS
25 68 (10.79%) Network Design
25 68 (10.79%) Wireless
26 67 (10.63%) Azure

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 (1.75%) SharePoint
2 6 (0.95%) Confluence
3 5 (0.79%) Microsoft Exchange
4 4 (0.63%) Apache
4 4 (0.63%) IIS
Applications
1 16 (2.54%) MS Visio
2 6 (0.95%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.32%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 68 (10.79%) AWS
2 67 (10.63%) Azure
3 19 (3.02%) GCP
4 14 (2.22%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 10 (1.59%) Entra ID
6 9 (1.43%) Microsoft 365
7 6 (0.95%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 6 (0.95%) Nutanix
8 5 (0.79%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 5 (0.79%) Amazon EC2
8 5 (0.79%) Amazon ELB
8 5 (0.79%) Amazon S3
8 5 (0.79%) AWS Direct Connect
8 5 (0.79%) GitHub
9 4 (0.63%) Akamai
9 4 (0.63%) Azure DevOps
9 4 (0.63%) Cohesity
9 4 (0.63%) Mimecast
9 4 (0.63%) OCI
10 3 (0.48%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 306 (48.57%) Firewall
2 176 (27.94%) WAN
3 138 (21.90%) BGP
4 128 (20.32%) LAN
5 123 (19.52%) Network Security
6 121 (19.21%) VPN
7 100 (15.87%) OSPF
8 92 (14.60%) DNS
9 89 (14.13%) TCP/IP
10 72 (11.43%) Wi-Fi
11 71 (11.27%) SD-WAN
12 70 (11.11%) VLAN
13 68 (10.79%) Wireless
14 64 (10.16%) MPLS
15 60 (9.52%) Cisco ISE
16 56 (8.89%) SSL
17 49 (7.78%) Cisco IOS
18 48 (7.62%) Cisco Nexus
18 48 (7.62%) IPsec
19 41 (6.51%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (0.48%) SQL Server
2 2 (0.32%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 1 (0.16%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 22 (3.49%) Fiddler
2 20 (3.17%) Git
3 11 (1.75%) GitLab
4 10 (1.59%) Jenkins
4 10 (1.59%) JIRA
5 7 (1.11%) Sonatype Nexus
6 3 (0.48%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.16%) ClearCase
7 1 (0.16%) Jaeger
General
1 139 (22.06%) Social Skills
2 66 (10.48%) Public Sector
3 45 (7.14%) Finance
4 39 (6.19%) Analytical Skills
5 35 (5.56%) Documentation Skills
6 31 (4.92%) Banking
7 29 (4.60%) Telecoms
8 27 (4.29%) Investment Banking
9 22 (3.49%) Manufacturing
10 13 (2.06%) Legal
11 7 (1.11%) Local Government
12 5 (0.79%) Financial Institution
12 5 (0.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 5 (0.79%) Military
12 5 (0.79%) Retail
13 4 (0.63%) Organisational Skills
13 4 (0.63%) Presentation Skills
14 3 (0.48%) Electronics
14 3 (0.48%) Marketing
14 3 (0.48%) Spanish Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (5.08%) 802.1X
2 6 (0.95%) RFC 2544
2 6 (0.95%) SAML
3 5 (0.79%) Jinja
4 4 (0.63%) JSON
4 4 (0.63%) Middleware
4 4 (0.63%) VML
5 3 (0.48%) LDAP
5 3 (0.48%) YANG
6 2 (0.32%) NETCONF
6 2 (0.32%) XML
7 1 (0.16%) ADO
7 1 (0.16%) CSS
7 1 (0.16%) FIX Protocol
7 1 (0.16%) HTML
7 1 (0.16%) Loki
7 1 (0.16%) Node.js
7 1 (0.16%) OpenConfig
7 1 (0.16%) REST
7 1 (0.16%) Ultra Messaging
Miscellaneous
1 122 (19.37%) Data Centre
2 21 (3.33%) Management Information System
2 21 (3.33%) Onboarding
3 18 (2.86%) Data Protection Act
3 18 (2.86%) Operational Technology
4 17 (2.70%) PKI
5 13 (2.06%) Hedge funds
6 10 (1.59%) Hybrid Cloud
6 10 (1.59%) Security Posture
7 9 (1.43%) Fibre Optics
7 9 (1.43%) Self-Motivation
8 8 (1.27%) SCADA
9 5 (0.79%) Driving Licence
9 5 (0.79%) NHS
9 5 (0.79%) Public Cloud
10 4 (0.63%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 4 (0.63%) IoT
10 4 (0.63%) Legacy Systems
10 4 (0.63%) Life Science
10 4 (0.63%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 49 (7.78%) Windows
2 31 (4.92%) Linux
3 27 (4.29%) Windows Server
4 5 (0.79%) Unix
5 3 (0.48%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.32%) CatOS
6 2 (0.32%) zOS
7 1 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
7 1 (0.16%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.16%) Windows 7
7 1 (0.16%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 82 (13.02%) Load Balancing
2 70 (11.11%) Problem-Solving
3 68 (10.79%) Network Design
4 51 (8.10%) Network Monitoring
5 49 (7.78%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 49 (7.78%) Migration
6 45 (7.14%) High Availability
7 40 (6.35%) Network Architecture
8 36 (5.71%) DevOps
9 35 (5.56%) Project Delivery
10 34 (5.40%) Network Management
11 33 (5.24%) Cybersecurity
12 31 (4.92%) ITSM
13 29 (4.60%) Service Management
14 28 (4.44%) Incident Response
15 26 (4.13%) Infrastructure as Code
16 25 (3.97%) Agile
16 25 (3.97%) Network Segmentation
17 24 (3.81%) Change Management
18 23 (3.65%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 101 (16.03%) Python
2 31 (4.92%) Bash
3 19 (3.02%) Perl
4 14 (2.22%) PowerShell
5 8 (1.27%) Lisp
6 6 (0.95%) C++
7 4 (0.63%) SQL
8 2 (0.32%) Go
8 2 (0.32%) Java
9 1 (0.16%) C
9 1 (0.16%) JavaScript
9 1 (0.16%) Ruby
9 1 (0.16%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 230 (36.51%) Security Cleared
2 183 (29.05%) Cisco Certification
3 163 (25.87%) SC Cleared
4 155 (24.60%) CCNP
5 80 (12.70%) CCNA
6 63 (10.00%) DV Cleared
7 27 (4.29%) CCIE
8 23 (3.65%) Degree
9 20 (3.17%) JNCIS
10 17 (2.70%) JNCIA
11 13 (2.06%) JNCIP
12 10 (1.59%) BPSS Clearance
12 10 (1.59%) Network+ Certification
13 8 (1.27%) CCDP
14 5 (0.79%) Computer Science Degree
15 4 (0.63%) CISSP
15 4 (0.63%) Microsoft Certification
16 3 (0.48%) CompTIA Security+
16 3 (0.48%) DBS Check
17 2 (0.32%) CCIE Data Center
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (1.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 8 (1.27%) SLA
2 5 (0.79%) GDPR
2 5 (0.79%) NIST
3 4 (0.63%) PCI DSS
4 3 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials
5 2 (0.32%) GRC
5 2 (0.32%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
5 2 (0.32%) QA
6 1 (0.16%) Disclosure Scotland
6 1 (0.16%) JSP 440
6 1 (0.16%) PMO
6 1 (0.16%) SOC 2
System Software
1 39 (6.19%) VMware NSX
2 36 (5.71%) Active Directory
3 30 (4.76%) VMware Infrastructure
4 27 (4.29%) Firmware
5 14 (2.22%) Docker
6 10 (1.59%) Hyper-V
7 5 (0.79%) ProxySG
7 5 (0.79%) Virtual Machines
8 3 (0.48%) KVM
9 2 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
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%) vSphere
10 1 (0.16%) Xen
Systems Management
1 88 (13.97%) Ansible
2 52 (8.25%) FortiGate
3 37 (5.87%) Terraform
4 25 (3.97%) vCenter Server
5 8 (1.27%) Kubernetes
6 7 (1.11%) Grafana
6 7 (1.11%) Prometheus
7 6 (0.95%) Nagios
7 6 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
8 4 (0.63%) Cisco Prime
8 4 (0.63%) SCCM
9 3 (0.48%) CASB
9 3 (0.48%) Cisco CUCM
9 3 (0.48%) Dell DRAC
9 3 (0.48%) Microsoft Intune
9 3 (0.48%) SCOrch
9 3 (0.48%) Tivoli NetView
9 3 (0.48%) WhatsUp Gold
10 1 (0.16%) Backup Exec
10 1 (0.16%) Norton AntiVirus
Vendors
1 360 (57.14%) Cisco
2 155 (24.60%) Palo Alto
3 115 (18.25%) Juniper
4 96 (15.24%) F5
5 69 (10.95%) CheckPoint
6 62 (9.84%) Fortinet
7 60 (9.52%) SolarWinds
8 58 (9.21%) Meraki
9 53 (8.41%) VMware
10 51 (8.10%) Aruba
11 42 (6.67%) Blue Coat
12 39 (6.19%) Microsoft
13 36 (5.71%) Arista
14 34 (5.40%) McAfee
15 19 (3.02%) NetApp
15 19 (3.02%) Nokia
15 19 (3.02%) Zscaler
16 16 (2.54%) ServiceNow
17 11 (1.75%) Remedy
18 10 (1.59%) Splunk