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 August 2026.

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

6 months to
18 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 134 136 97
Rank change year-on-year +2 -39 +21
Contract jobs requiring a Network Engineer 1,094 685 913
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.04% 2.08% 2.36%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.21% 2.28% 2.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 678 435 569
10th Percentile £313 £319 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £394
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - +5.56%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £550
90th Percentile £622 £638 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - +11.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 43 13 15
10th Percentile £30.45 £22.12 £17.98
25th Percentile £64.38 £32.50 £21.57
Median hourly rate £77.50 £57.50 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +34.78% +9.52% -5.10%
75th Percentile £91.00 £68.75 £75.00
90th Percentile £92.53 £81.65 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £77.50 £41.50 £52.50
% change year-on-year +86.75% -20.95% -8.95%

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 49,538 30,006 36,016
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.49% 91.28% 92.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,704 18,935 23,189
10th Percentile £325 £281 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
75th Percentile £625 £621 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,506 1,542 1,988
10th Percentile £15.00 £13.56 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.69 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.94% -41.51% +3.61%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.83 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £44.02
% change year-on-year +68.99% -42.87% +22.28%

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 August 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 August 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 August 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 -12 898 £480 -1.94% 378
UK excluding London -1 640 £475 - 321
London -25 317 £475 -5.00% 128
North of England +2 243 £500 +2.15% 73
Work from Home -24 227 £463 - 73
North West +14 172 £500 +5.26% 35
South East -40 133 £466 -6.75% 62
Midlands -11 108 £475 +18.75% 55
West Midlands -4 100 £475 +32.40% 26
Scotland +28 79 £400 -5.88% 27
Yorkshire -27 58 £475 -3.46% 29
South West -23 57 £550 -4.35% 45
East of England -11 42 £470 +17.50% 38
Wales -1 25 £425 -3.41% 20
North East -30 13 £600 +29.73% 10
East Midlands -23 6 £475 -13.64% 29
Northern Ireland +4 2 £488 -15.22% 7

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

For the 6 months to 18 August 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.

1 589 (53.84%) Cisco
2 450 (41.13%) Firewall
3 308 (28.15%) WAN
4 265 (24.22%) BGP
5 259 (23.67%) Security Cleared
6 245 (22.39%) VPN
7 241 (22.03%) Cisco Certification
7 241 (22.03%) LAN
8 234 (21.39%) Network Security
9 221 (20.20%) Palo Alto
10 196 (17.92%) Wireless
11 181 (16.54%) CCNP
11 181 (16.54%) DNS
11 181 (16.54%) F5
12 170 (15.54%) OSPF
13 169 (15.45%) SC Cleared
14 157 (14.35%) Fortinet
15 150 (13.71%) VLAN
16 143 (13.07%) Load Balancing
17 142 (12.98%) Azure
18 135 (12.34%) Migration
19 129 (11.79%) Python
20 121 (11.06%) SD-WAN
21 111 (10.15%) Wi-Fi
22 109 (9.96%) TCP/IP
23 108 (9.87%) Juniper
24 100 (9.14%) CCNA
25 99 (9.05%) Problem-Solving
26 98 (8.96%) Terraform
26 98 (8.96%) 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 6 (0.55%) SAS
1 6 (0.55%) SharePoint
2 5 (0.46%) Confluence
2 5 (0.46%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.091%) ArcGIS
3 1 (0.091%) CMS
3 1 (0.091%) FactoryTalk
3 1 (0.091%) OpenStack
3 1 (0.091%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 16 (1.46%) MS Visio
2 13 (1.19%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (0.37%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 142 (12.98%) Azure
2 87 (7.95%) AWS
3 53 (4.84%) GCP
4 44 (4.02%) GitHub
5 24 (2.19%) Azure ExpressRoute
6 15 (1.37%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 13 (1.19%) AWS Direct Connect
7 13 (1.19%) Microsoft 365
8 12 (1.10%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 11 (1.01%) AWS CloudFormation
9 11 (1.01%) Entra ID
10 10 (0.91%) IaaS
11 9 (0.82%) GitHub Actions
12 7 (0.64%) Nutanix
13 6 (0.55%) Azure DevOps
13 6 (0.55%) Azure Sentinel
13 6 (0.55%) Cloudflare
13 6 (0.55%) OCI
14 5 (0.46%) AWS Lambda
14 5 (0.46%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 450 (41.13%) Firewall
2 308 (28.15%) WAN
3 265 (24.22%) BGP
4 245 (22.39%) VPN
5 241 (22.03%) LAN
6 234 (21.39%) Network Security
7 196 (17.92%) Wireless
8 181 (16.54%) DNS
9 170 (15.54%) OSPF
10 150 (13.71%) VLAN
11 121 (11.06%) SD-WAN
12 111 (10.15%) Wi-Fi
13 109 (9.96%) TCP/IP
14 75 (6.86%) Cisco ISE
14 75 (6.86%) Cisco Nexus
14 75 (6.86%) Multicast
15 74 (6.76%) MPLS
16 72 (6.58%) DHCP
17 70 (6.40%) Cisco ASA
18 67 (6.12%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (0.27%) SQL Server
2 2 (0.18%) GIS
3 1 (0.091%) ClickHouse
3 1 (0.091%) Oracle Reports
3 1 (0.091%) QGIS
Development Applications
1 33 (3.02%) Git
2 32 (2.93%) Jenkins
3 24 (2.19%) JIRA
4 16 (1.46%) Fiddler
4 16 (1.46%) GitLab
5 6 (0.55%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.18%) Browser DevTools
6 2 (0.18%) Robot Framework
General
1 140 (12.80%) Social Skills
2 82 (7.50%) Finance
3 63 (5.76%) Analytical Skills
4 61 (5.58%) Banking
5 58 (5.30%) Telecoms
6 55 (5.03%) Public Sector
7 35 (3.20%) Investment Banking
8 32 (2.93%) Documentation Skills
9 22 (2.01%) Legal
9 22 (2.01%) Retail
10 19 (1.74%) Manufacturing
11 10 (0.91%) Police
12 9 (0.82%) Aerospace
12 9 (0.82%) Financial Institution
13 6 (0.55%) Pharmaceutical
14 5 (0.46%) Law
14 5 (0.46%) Organisational Skills
15 4 (0.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 4 (0.37%) Local Government
15 4 (0.37%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (4.57%) 802.1X
2 15 (1.37%) REST
3 8 (0.73%) NETCONF
3 8 (0.73%) SAML
4 5 (0.46%) JSON
4 5 (0.46%) YAML
5 3 (0.27%) Java RMI
5 3 (0.27%) LDAP
6 2 (0.18%) eBPF
6 2 (0.18%) Jinja
6 2 (0.18%) RFC 2544
7 1 (0.091%) AWS CDK
7 1 (0.091%) ModSecurity
7 1 (0.091%) OpenTelemetry
7 1 (0.091%) RESTCONF
7 1 (0.091%) XML
7 1 (0.091%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 189 (17.28%) Data Centre
2 40 (3.66%) Hybrid Cloud
3 29 (2.65%) PKI
4 25 (2.29%) Cloud Native
5 21 (1.92%) Management Information System
6 20 (1.83%) Driving Licence
6 20 (1.83%) Onboarding
7 17 (1.55%) Operational Technology
8 14 (1.28%) Security Posture
9 13 (1.19%) Data Protection Act
10 11 (1.01%) IoT
11 10 (0.91%) Linux Command Line
11 10 (0.91%) Public Cloud
11 10 (0.91%) Self-Motivation
12 7 (0.64%) CCTV
12 7 (0.64%) Distributed Systems
12 7 (0.64%) Enterprise Cloud
12 7 (0.64%) NHS
13 6 (0.55%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
13 6 (0.55%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 72 (6.58%) Windows
2 52 (4.75%) Linux
3 12 (1.10%) Windows Server
4 6 (0.55%) VMS
5 5 (0.46%) Ubuntu
5 5 (0.46%) Unix
5 5 (0.46%) Windows Server 2019
6 4 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.27%) Windows Server 2012
8 2 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
8 2 (0.18%) zOS
9 1 (0.091%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.091%) Solaris
9 1 (0.091%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.091%) Windows 7
9 1 (0.091%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 143 (13.07%) Load Balancing
2 135 (12.34%) Migration
3 99 (9.05%) Problem-Solving
4 92 (8.41%) Project Delivery
5 91 (8.32%) High Availability
6 79 (7.22%) ITIL
7 75 (6.86%) Infrastructure as Code
8 74 (6.76%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 74 (6.76%) Network Design
9 72 (6.58%) Validation
10 68 (6.22%) Change Management
11 61 (5.58%) Network Monitoring
12 49 (4.48%) CI/CD
13 47 (4.30%) Technical Leadership
14 46 (4.20%) Zero Trust
15 45 (4.11%) DevOps
16 44 (4.02%) Continuous Improvement
17 38 (3.47%) Network Segmentation
18 37 (3.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 35 (3.20%) Cloud Security
Programming Languages
1 129 (11.79%) Python
2 25 (2.29%) Bash
3 15 (1.37%) PowerShell
4 8 (0.73%) ActionScript
4 8 (0.73%) SQL
5 5 (0.46%) C++
6 3 (0.27%) C
6 3 (0.27%) Java
7 2 (0.18%) Bicep
7 2 (0.18%) Go
7 2 (0.18%) Groovy
7 2 (0.18%) Perl
7 2 (0.18%) Shell Script
8 1 (0.091%) Lisp
8 1 (0.091%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 259 (23.67%) Security Cleared
2 241 (22.03%) Cisco Certification
3 181 (16.54%) CCNP
4 169 (15.45%) SC Cleared
5 100 (9.14%) CCNA
6 86 (7.86%) DV Cleared
7 47 (4.30%) CCIE
8 37 (3.38%) Degree
9 15 (1.37%) JNCIS
10 12 (1.10%) JNCIP
10 12 (1.10%) Network+ Certification
11 10 (0.91%) CISSP
11 10 (0.91%) Computer Science Degree
12 9 (0.82%) CCSE
12 9 (0.82%) JNCIA
13 6 (0.55%) AWS Certification
13 6 (0.55%) Azure Certification
13 6 (0.55%) CCIE Security
13 6 (0.55%) DBS Check
14 5 (0.46%) CCSM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (2.38%) SLA
2 12 (1.10%) QA
3 10 (0.91%) NIST
4 8 (0.73%) Disclosure Scotland
5 7 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 3 (0.27%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.18%) Data Quality
7 2 (0.18%) GDPR
7 2 (0.18%) JSP 440
8 1 (0.091%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.091%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.091%) GRC
8 1 (0.091%) ISO/IEC 20000
8 1 (0.091%) NIST 800
System Software
1 74 (6.76%) VMware Infrastructure
2 33 (3.02%) Firmware
3 31 (2.83%) VMware NSX
4 29 (2.65%) Active Directory
5 13 (1.19%) VMware ESXi
6 12 (1.10%) vSphere
7 7 (0.64%) Hyper-V
8 5 (0.46%) Virtual Machines
9 4 (0.37%) Docker
10 3 (0.27%) FreeRADIUS
10 3 (0.27%) Virtual Servers
11 2 (0.18%) Squid
12 1 (0.091%) IAG
12 1 (0.091%) iptables
12 1 (0.091%) Snort
12 1 (0.091%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 98 (8.96%) Terraform
2 94 (8.59%) Ansible
3 77 (7.04%) FortiGate
4 24 (2.19%) Kubernetes
5 14 (1.28%) Cisco Prime
6 7 (0.64%) Grafana
6 7 (0.64%) Istio
6 7 (0.64%) Prometheus
7 6 (0.55%) Cisco CUCM
8 5 (0.46%) Nagios
8 5 (0.46%) Puppet
9 4 (0.37%) Microsoft Intune
9 4 (0.37%) Packer
9 4 (0.37%) Single Sign-On
9 4 (0.37%) systemd
10 3 (0.27%) Cilium
10 3 (0.27%) TrustSec
11 2 (0.18%) Progress Chef
11 2 (0.18%) SCCM
11 2 (0.18%) vRealize
Vendors
1 589 (53.84%) Cisco
2 221 (20.20%) Palo Alto
3 181 (16.54%) F5
4 157 (14.35%) Fortinet
5 108 (9.87%) Juniper
6 98 (8.96%) VMware
7 81 (7.40%) CheckPoint
8 71 (6.49%) Arista
9 67 (6.12%) Aruba
10 57 (5.21%) Microsoft
11 52 (4.75%) Meraki
12 43 (3.93%) Zscaler
13 38 (3.47%) Google
14 37 (3.38%) SolarWinds
15 30 (2.74%) Infoblox
16 28 (2.56%) ServiceNow
17 25 (2.29%) Blue Coat
18 20 (1.83%) McAfee
18 20 (1.83%) NetApp
18 20 (1.83%) Nokia