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 18 April 2026.

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

6 months to
18 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 138 126 89
Rank change year-on-year -12 -37 +53
Contract jobs requiring a Network Engineer 850 652 1,063
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.84% 2.22% 2.43%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.00% 2.39% 2.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 564 403 643
10th Percentile £300 £313 £300
25th Percentile £400 £389 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £460
Median % change year-on-year - +3.26% -3.16%
75th Percentile £538 £570 £538
90th Percentile £600 £624 £634
UK excluding London median daily rate £464 £450 £450
% change year-on-year +3.06% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 5 27
10th Percentile £41.42 £31.10 £22.25
25th Percentile £56.44 £50.00 £28.25
Median hourly rate £74.26 £57.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.15% +43.75% -36.74%
75th Percentile £78.75 £68.75 £73.75
90th Percentile - £73.25 £74.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.26 £45.75 £66.50
% change year-on-year +62.32% -31.20% +7.26%

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 42,529 27,248 40,570
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.22% 92.59% 92.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,364 17,869 26,526
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +2.63% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,696 990 2,603
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.50 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £19.05 £16.25
Median hourly rate £41.94 £30.43 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +37.85% -13.07% -20.55%
75th Percentile £65.60 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.75 £75.58 £72.43
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.85 £29.24 £35.65
% change year-on-year +46.55% -17.98% -15.28%

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 18 April 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 18 April 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 18 April 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 -24 707 £480 -2.04% 276
UK excluding London -17 531 £464 +3.06% 275
London -48 215 £500 - 56
Work from Home -17 213 £438 -7.41% 54
South East +10 176 £475 -5.00% 70
North of England -43 150 £474 +0.58% 64
North West -25 124 £475 - 38
Midlands +1 102 £438 +2.94% 54
West Midlands +7 95 £420 +52.73% 34
Scotland +12 43 £415 +3.75% 23
East of England -5 41 £413 -13.16% 34
South West -28 41 £529 +11.96% 20
Yorkshire -54 26 £450 -2.70% 20
Wales -4 25 £425 +13.33% 13
East Midlands -44 3 £500 +11.11% 20
Northern Ireland - 2 £468 - 4
North East -15 1 - - 6

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

For the 6 months to 18 April 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.

1 465 (54.71%) Cisco
2 386 (45.41%) Firewall
3 280 (32.94%) Security Cleared
4 236 (27.76%) WAN
5 221 (26.00%) BGP
6 217 (25.53%) Cisco Certification
7 210 (24.71%) LAN
8 207 (24.35%) Palo Alto
9 201 (23.65%) SC Cleared
10 187 (22.00%) VPN
11 184 (21.65%) Network Security
12 179 (21.06%) CCNP
13 164 (19.29%) F5
14 157 (18.47%) OSPF
15 148 (17.41%) DNS
16 121 (14.24%) Load Balancing
17 120 (14.12%) Juniper
18 118 (13.88%) VLAN
19 104 (12.24%) Wireless
20 102 (12.00%) TCP/IP
21 94 (11.06%) Fortinet
22 92 (10.82%) DV Cleared
23 91 (10.71%) Python
24 89 (10.47%) Azure
25 88 (10.35%) CCNA
25 88 (10.35%) Problem-Solving
26 84 (9.88%) SD-WAN
27 83 (9.76%) Aruba
28 81 (9.53%) CheckPoint
29 80 (9.41%) VMware

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 7 (0.82%) Confluence
2 6 (0.71%) SharePoint
3 5 (0.59%) Apache
3 5 (0.59%) IIS
4 4 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 17 (2.00%) MS Visio
2 7 (0.82%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (0.24%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 89 (10.47%) Azure
2 77 (9.06%) AWS
3 47 (5.53%) GCP
4 21 (2.47%) GitHub
5 17 (2.00%) Entra ID
6 14 (1.65%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 10 (1.18%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 9 (1.06%) Azure ExpressRoute
8 9 (1.06%) Microsoft 365
9 8 (0.94%) Nutanix
10 6 (0.71%) AWS Direct Connect
10 6 (0.71%) Route 53
11 5 (0.59%) Azure Sentinel
11 5 (0.59%) Google Compute Engine
11 5 (0.59%) Mimecast
12 3 (0.35%) AWS IoT
12 3 (0.35%) Catchpoint
12 3 (0.35%) GitHub Actions
12 3 (0.35%) Google Ads
12 3 (0.35%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 386 (45.41%) Firewall
2 236 (27.76%) WAN
3 221 (26.00%) BGP
4 210 (24.71%) LAN
5 187 (22.00%) VPN
6 184 (21.65%) Network Security
7 157 (18.47%) OSPF
8 148 (17.41%) DNS
9 118 (13.88%) VLAN
10 104 (12.24%) Wireless
11 102 (12.00%) TCP/IP
12 84 (9.88%) SD-WAN
13 75 (8.82%) Wi-Fi
14 73 (8.59%) Cisco Nexus
15 72 (8.47%) MPLS
16 65 (7.65%) Cisco ISE
17 60 (7.06%) BIG-IP
18 59 (6.94%) IPsec
19 57 (6.71%) SSL
20 56 (6.59%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (0.35%) SQL Server
2 2 (0.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 1 (0.12%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 28 (3.29%) Fiddler
2 20 (2.35%) Git
3 17 (2.00%) JIRA
4 13 (1.53%) Jenkins
5 10 (1.18%) Sonatype Nexus
6 6 (0.71%) GitLab
7 2 (0.24%) Browser DevTools
8 1 (0.12%) Jaeger
General
1 131 (15.41%) Social Skills
2 53 (6.24%) Banking
3 47 (5.53%) Public Sector
4 43 (5.06%) Documentation Skills
5 41 (4.82%) Analytical Skills
6 40 (4.71%) Finance
7 38 (4.47%) Investment Banking
8 33 (3.88%) Telecoms
9 25 (2.94%) Manufacturing
10 22 (2.59%) Legal
11 12 (1.41%) Retail
12 10 (1.18%) Law
13 7 (0.82%) Aerospace
14 5 (0.59%) Financial Institution
14 5 (0.59%) Local Government
14 5 (0.59%) Military
14 5 (0.59%) Police
15 4 (0.47%) Presentation Skills
16 3 (0.35%) Influencing Skills
16 3 (0.35%) Pharmaceutical
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (4.59%) 802.1X
2 11 (1.29%) SAML
3 10 (1.18%) LDAP
4 6 (0.71%) REST
5 4 (0.47%) JSON
5 4 (0.47%) VML
6 3 (0.35%) CSS
6 3 (0.35%) HTML
6 3 (0.35%) NETCONF
7 2 (0.24%) AWS CDK
7 2 (0.24%) Django
7 2 (0.24%) Jinja
7 2 (0.24%) OpenTelemetry
7 2 (0.24%) RFC 2544
7 2 (0.24%) XML
7 2 (0.24%) YANG
8 1 (0.12%) ARM Templates
8 1 (0.12%) Loki
8 1 (0.12%) OpenConfig
Miscellaneous
1 181 (21.29%) Data Centre
2 25 (2.94%) Data Protection Act
3 23 (2.71%) Management Information System
4 19 (2.24%) Hybrid Cloud
5 18 (2.12%) PKI
6 17 (2.00%) Operational Technology
7 15 (1.76%) Security Posture
8 13 (1.53%) Onboarding
9 12 (1.41%) NHS
9 12 (1.41%) Self-Motivation
10 9 (1.06%) Clustering
11 8 (0.94%) Public Cloud
12 7 (0.82%) Cloud Native
13 6 (0.71%) IoT
14 4 (0.47%) CMDB
14 4 (0.47%) Enterprise Cloud
14 4 (0.47%) Enterprise Software
14 4 (0.47%) Mainframe
14 4 (0.47%) Virtual Team
15 3 (0.35%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 57 (6.71%) Windows
2 32 (3.76%) Linux
3 16 (1.88%) Windows Server
4 7 (0.82%) Unix
5 4 (0.47%) CatOS
5 4 (0.47%) zOS
6 1 (0.12%) Data ONTAP
6 1 (0.12%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.12%) Solaris
6 1 (0.12%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.12%) VMS
6 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
6 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 121 (14.24%) Load Balancing
2 88 (10.35%) Problem-Solving
3 78 (9.18%) Migration
4 76 (8.94%) High Availability
5 60 (7.06%) Network Design
6 56 (6.59%) Network Monitoring
7 50 (5.88%) ITIL
8 49 (5.76%) Change Management
9 46 (5.41%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 42 (4.94%) Project Delivery
11 38 (4.47%) Validation
12 37 (4.35%) ITSM
13 36 (4.24%) Network Management
14 35 (4.12%) Infrastructure as Code
15 34 (4.00%) Data Protection
16 33 (3.88%) DevOps
16 33 (3.88%) Stakeholder Management
17 31 (3.65%) Collaborative Working
18 30 (3.53%) Technical Leadership
19 29 (3.41%) Data Loss Prevention
Programming Languages
1 91 (10.71%) Python
2 15 (1.76%) Bash
3 8 (0.94%) SQL
4 7 (0.82%) PowerShell
5 4 (0.47%) Java
5 4 (0.47%) Lisp
6 3 (0.35%) JavaScript
6 3 (0.35%) Perl
7 2 (0.24%) ActionScript
7 2 (0.24%) Bicep
7 2 (0.24%) C
7 2 (0.24%) C++
7 2 (0.24%) Go
8 1 (0.12%) Korn
8 1 (0.12%) PHP
8 1 (0.12%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 280 (32.94%) Security Cleared
2 217 (25.53%) Cisco Certification
3 201 (23.65%) SC Cleared
4 179 (21.06%) CCNP
5 92 (10.82%) DV Cleared
6 88 (10.35%) CCNA
7 36 (4.24%) CCIE
8 35 (4.12%) Degree
9 27 (3.18%) JNCIS
10 22 (2.59%) JNCIA
11 17 (2.00%) JNCIP
12 11 (1.29%) Computer Science Degree
12 11 (1.29%) Network+ Certification
13 4 (0.47%) AWS Certification
13 4 (0.47%) Azure Certification
13 4 (0.47%) CCSE
13 4 (0.47%) CWNA
13 4 (0.47%) DBS Check
14 3 (0.35%) CISSP
14 3 (0.35%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (1.18%) SLA
2 7 (0.82%) NIST
3 6 (0.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 5 (0.59%) PCI DSS
4 5 (0.59%) QA
5 4 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
5 4 (0.47%) Disclosure Scotland
6 3 (0.35%) GDPR
6 3 (0.35%) GRC
7 2 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials
7 2 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 20000
7 2 (0.24%) NCSC
7 2 (0.24%) PMO
8 1 (0.12%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 1 (0.12%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 1 (0.12%) JSP 440
System Software
1 58 (6.82%) VMware Infrastructure
2 45 (5.29%) VMware NSX
3 29 (3.41%) Firmware
4 26 (3.06%) Active Directory
5 8 (0.94%) vSphere
6 7 (0.82%) VMware ESXi
7 5 (0.59%) ProxySG
7 5 (0.59%) Virtual Servers
8 4 (0.47%) Hyper-V
9 3 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.24%) KVM
10 2 (0.24%) vCloud
10 2 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
11 1 (0.12%) Citrix Presentation Server
11 1 (0.12%) Docker
11 1 (0.12%) IAG
11 1 (0.12%) iptables
11 1 (0.12%) RHEV
11 1 (0.12%) Snort
11 1 (0.12%) Xen
Systems Management
1 78 (9.18%) Ansible
2 61 (7.18%) FortiGate
3 55 (6.47%) Terraform
4 10 (1.18%) Grafana
4 10 (1.18%) Single Sign-On
5 9 (1.06%) Prometheus
6 8 (0.94%) Cisco Prime
6 8 (0.94%) vCenter Server
7 7 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
8 6 (0.71%) Kubernetes
8 6 (0.71%) Nagios
9 4 (0.47%) Tivoli NetView
10 2 (0.24%) Salt
10 2 (0.24%) SCOM
10 2 (0.24%) WSUS
11 1 (0.12%) Cacti
11 1 (0.12%) Cisco CUCM
11 1 (0.12%) SCCM
11 1 (0.12%) WhatsUp Gold
11 1 (0.12%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 465 (54.71%) Cisco
2 207 (24.35%) Palo Alto
3 164 (19.29%) F5
4 120 (14.12%) Juniper
5 94 (11.06%) Fortinet
6 83 (9.76%) Aruba
7 81 (9.53%) CheckPoint
8 80 (9.41%) VMware
9 50 (5.88%) Arista
9 50 (5.88%) SolarWinds
10 47 (5.53%) Meraki
11 40 (4.71%) Microsoft
12 38 (4.47%) Blue Coat
13 33 (3.88%) McAfee
14 24 (2.82%) Google
14 24 (2.82%) ServiceNow
15 22 (2.59%) NetApp
16 21 (2.47%) Ekahau
16 21 (2.47%) Infoblox
17 19 (2.24%) Splunk