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 15 July 2026.

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

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 132 124 95
Rank change year-on-year -8 -29 +30
Contract jobs requiring a Network Engineer 1,051 721 1,005
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.00% 2.22% 2.35%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.16% 2.42% 2.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 679 451 621
10th Percentile £306 £325 £285
25th Percentile £408 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - +5.56%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £550
90th Percentile £600 £625 £634
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £475 £465
% change year-on-year -2.63% +2.15% +9.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 32 11 19
10th Percentile £29.00 £22.03 £18.33
25th Percentile £59.69 £27.50 £22.83
Median hourly rate £73.00 £50.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +46.00% +25.00% -35.48%
75th Percentile £78.75 £65.00 £69.38
90th Percentile £90.01 £76.25 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £73.50 £35.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year +110.00% -33.33% -15.32%

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 48,692 29,793 39,772
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.54% 91.81% 93.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,483 18,982 25,593
10th Percentile £325 £288 £288
25th Percentile £419 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,276 1,398 2,720
10th Percentile £15.93 £13.75 £13.00
25th Percentile £21.35 £17.44 £17.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £26.45 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +70.13% -33.88% -5.88%
75th Percentile £67.84 £56.19 £63.41
90th Percentile £80.07 £73.75 £73.78
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.56 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +81.13% -37.13% +6.67%

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 15 July 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 15 July 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 15 July 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 -18 857 £475 -3.06% 348
UK excluding London -25 609 £463 -2.63% 338
London -26 299 £490 +3.16% 87
Work from Home -40 228 £450 -5.26% 79
North of England -13 214 £486 -1.31% 87
North West -7 156 £480 -1.74% 47
South East -25 149 £470 -6.00% 74
Midlands -3 112 £475 +8.57% 50
West Midlands -7 105 £450 +28.57% 21
Scotland +24 71 £413 -1.49% 31
South West -41 46 £550 +4.76% 43
Yorkshire -49 45 £450 -8.54% 29
East of England -13 40 £455 +4.00% 37
Wales 0 25 £425 - 13
North East -28 13 £600 +108.70% 12
East Midlands -22 4 £475 -5.00% 28
Northern Ireland +2 2 £468 -18.70% 9

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

For the 6 months to 15 July 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.

1 560 (53.28%) Cisco
2 469 (44.62%) Firewall
3 292 (27.78%) WAN
4 260 (24.74%) Security Cleared
5 256 (24.36%) BGP
6 249 (23.69%) Network Security
7 248 (23.60%) Cisco Certification
8 243 (23.12%) LAN
9 235 (22.36%) VPN
10 225 (21.41%) Palo Alto
11 191 (18.17%) CCNP
12 186 (17.70%) F5
13 180 (17.13%) DNS
14 178 (16.94%) Wireless
15 177 (16.84%) SC Cleared
16 174 (16.56%) OSPF
17 155 (14.75%) Fortinet
18 144 (13.70%) Load Balancing
19 143 (13.61%) VLAN
20 132 (12.56%) Azure
21 130 (12.37%) Juniper
22 125 (11.89%) Migration
22 125 (11.89%) Python
23 112 (10.66%) SD-WAN
24 110 (10.47%) TCP/IP
25 101 (9.61%) Wi-Fi
26 99 (9.42%) CCNA
26 99 (9.42%) High Availability
27 95 (9.04%) Problem-Solving
28 94 (8.94%) Ansible

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 4 (0.38%) Confluence
2 3 (0.29%) Microsoft Exchange
2 3 (0.29%) SAS
3 1 (0.095%) ArcGIS
3 1 (0.095%) CMS
3 1 (0.095%) OpenStack
3 1 (0.095%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.095%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 16 (1.52%) MS Visio
2 11 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (0.29%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 132 (12.56%) Azure
2 87 (8.28%) AWS
3 53 (5.04%) GCP
4 39 (3.71%) GitHub
5 18 (1.71%) Azure ExpressRoute
6 16 (1.52%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 12 (1.14%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 11 (1.05%) AWS CloudFormation
9 10 (0.95%) AWS Direct Connect
9 10 (0.95%) Entra ID
10 8 (0.76%) IaaS
10 8 (0.76%) Microsoft 365
11 7 (0.67%) Nutanix
12 6 (0.57%) Azure Sentinel
12 6 (0.57%) GitHub Actions
12 6 (0.57%) Google Compute Engine
13 5 (0.48%) AWS Lambda
13 5 (0.48%) Cloudflare
13 5 (0.48%) Datadog
13 5 (0.48%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 469 (44.62%) Firewall
2 292 (27.78%) WAN
3 256 (24.36%) BGP
4 249 (23.69%) Network Security
5 243 (23.12%) LAN
6 235 (22.36%) VPN
7 180 (17.13%) DNS
8 178 (16.94%) Wireless
9 174 (16.56%) OSPF
10 143 (13.61%) VLAN
11 112 (10.66%) SD-WAN
12 110 (10.47%) TCP/IP
13 101 (9.61%) Wi-Fi
14 77 (7.33%) Cisco ISE
15 75 (7.14%) Multicast
16 74 (7.04%) Cisco Nexus
16 74 (7.04%) MPLS
17 66 (6.28%) DHCP
18 64 (6.09%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
19 62 (5.90%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (0.095%) ClickHouse
1 1 (0.095%) GIS
1 1 (0.095%) Oracle Reports
1 1 (0.095%) QGIS
Development Applications
1 28 (2.66%) Jenkins
2 26 (2.47%) JIRA
3 19 (1.81%) Fiddler
3 19 (1.81%) Git
4 10 (0.95%) Sonatype Nexus
5 8 (0.76%) GitLab
6 2 (0.19%) Browser DevTools
General
1 142 (13.51%) Social Skills
2 69 (6.57%) Finance
3 62 (5.90%) Banking
4 51 (4.85%) Analytical Skills
5 43 (4.09%) Public Sector
6 42 (4.00%) Telecoms
7 36 (3.43%) Investment Banking
8 34 (3.24%) Documentation Skills
9 22 (2.09%) Retail
10 20 (1.90%) Legal
11 19 (1.81%) Manufacturing
12 9 (0.86%) Aerospace
13 8 (0.76%) Police
14 7 (0.67%) Financial Institution
15 6 (0.57%) Law
15 6 (0.57%) Military
15 6 (0.57%) Pharmaceutical
16 5 (0.48%) Influencing Skills
16 5 (0.48%) Organisational Skills
16 5 (0.48%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 47 (4.47%) 802.1X
2 11 (1.05%) REST
3 10 (0.95%) SAML
4 5 (0.48%) LDAP
4 5 (0.48%) NETCONF
5 2 (0.19%) AWS CDK
5 2 (0.19%) Django
5 2 (0.19%) Java RMI
5 2 (0.19%) Jinja
5 2 (0.19%) RFC 2544
6 1 (0.095%) CSS
6 1 (0.095%) HTML
6 1 (0.095%) JSON
6 1 (0.095%) ModSecurity
6 1 (0.095%) OpenTelemetry
6 1 (0.095%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 200 (19.03%) Data Centre
2 29 (2.76%) Hybrid Cloud
3 28 (2.66%) PKI
4 22 (2.09%) Management Information System
5 20 (1.90%) Data Protection Act
6 19 (1.81%) Security Posture
7 16 (1.52%) Operational Technology
8 15 (1.43%) Cloud Native
8 15 (1.43%) Onboarding
9 12 (1.14%) NHS
10 10 (0.95%) Driving Licence
11 9 (0.86%) Clustering
11 9 (0.86%) IoT
12 8 (0.76%) CCTV
12 8 (0.76%) Linux Command Line
13 7 (0.67%) Self-Motivation
14 6 (0.57%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
14 6 (0.57%) Enterprise Cloud
14 6 (0.57%) Public Cloud
15 5 (0.48%) Fibre Optics
Operating Systems
1 72 (6.85%) Windows
2 41 (3.90%) Linux
3 11 (1.05%) Windows Server
4 6 (0.57%) VMS
5 5 (0.48%) Unix
5 5 (0.48%) Windows Server 2019
6 4 (0.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.29%) Ubuntu
7 3 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
8 2 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.095%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.095%) Solaris
9 1 (0.095%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.095%) Windows 7
9 1 (0.095%) Windows Server 2008
9 1 (0.095%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 144 (13.70%) Load Balancing
2 125 (11.89%) Migration
3 99 (9.42%) High Availability
4 95 (9.04%) Problem-Solving
5 79 (7.52%) Project Delivery
6 71 (6.76%) ITIL
7 68 (6.47%) Network Design
8 67 (6.37%) Change Management
9 65 (6.18%) Network Monitoring
10 62 (5.90%) Validation
11 59 (5.61%) Infrastructure as Code
12 54 (5.14%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 45 (4.28%) Technical Leadership
13 45 (4.28%) Zero Trust
14 40 (3.81%) CI/CD
15 39 (3.71%) Continuous Improvement
15 39 (3.71%) DevOps
15 39 (3.71%) ITSM
16 37 (3.52%) Data Protection
17 35 (3.33%) Network Architecture
Programming Languages
1 125 (11.89%) Python
2 16 (1.52%) Bash
3 11 (1.05%) PowerShell
4 9 (0.86%) ActionScript
5 8 (0.76%) SQL
6 3 (0.29%) Bicep
6 3 (0.29%) C
6 3 (0.29%) Java
7 2 (0.19%) C++
7 2 (0.19%) Groovy
7 2 (0.19%) Perl
8 1 (0.095%) Go
8 1 (0.095%) JavaScript
8 1 (0.095%) Korn
8 1 (0.095%) Lisp
8 1 (0.095%) PHP
8 1 (0.095%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 260 (24.74%) Security Cleared
2 248 (23.60%) Cisco Certification
3 191 (18.17%) CCNP
4 177 (16.84%) SC Cleared
5 99 (9.42%) CCNA
6 87 (8.28%) DV Cleared
7 44 (4.19%) CCIE
8 40 (3.81%) Degree
9 19 (1.81%) JNCIS
10 15 (1.43%) JNCIP
11 14 (1.33%) JNCIA
12 13 (1.24%) Network+ Certification
13 10 (0.95%) CISSP
13 10 (0.95%) Computer Science Degree
14 8 (0.76%) CCSE
15 6 (0.57%) Azure Certification
15 6 (0.57%) CompTIA Security+
16 5 (0.48%) AWS Certification
16 5 (0.48%) CCIE Wireless
16 5 (0.48%) CCSM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (1.52%) SLA
2 12 (1.14%) NIST
3 10 (0.95%) QA
4 9 (0.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 8 (0.76%) Disclosure Scotland
6 4 (0.38%) GDPR
6 4 (0.38%) PCI DSS
7 3 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
7 3 (0.29%) GRC
8 2 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials
8 2 (0.19%) JSP 440
8 2 (0.19%) NCSC
9 1 (0.095%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 1 (0.095%) Data Quality
9 1 (0.095%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 1 (0.095%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 69 (6.57%) VMware Infrastructure
2 35 (3.33%) VMware NSX
3 33 (3.14%) Firmware
4 28 (2.66%) Active Directory
5 16 (1.52%) VMware ESXi
5 16 (1.52%) vSphere
6 6 (0.57%) Hyper-V
7 5 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
8 4 (0.38%) Virtual Servers
9 2 (0.19%) Docker
9 2 (0.19%) Squid
10 1 (0.095%) Citrix Presentation Server
10 1 (0.095%) FreeRADIUS
10 1 (0.095%) IAG
10 1 (0.095%) iptables
10 1 (0.095%) KVM
10 1 (0.095%) Snort
10 1 (0.095%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 94 (8.94%) Ansible
2 87 (8.28%) Terraform
3 79 (7.52%) FortiGate
4 9 (0.86%) Kubernetes
5 8 (0.76%) Cisco Prime
5 8 (0.76%) Grafana
6 6 (0.57%) Prometheus
7 5 (0.48%) Cisco CUCM
7 5 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
8 4 (0.38%) Packer
8 4 (0.38%) Puppet
9 3 (0.29%) Nagios
10 2 (0.19%) CASB
10 2 (0.19%) Istio
10 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Intune
10 2 (0.19%) Nessus
10 2 (0.19%) SCCM
10 2 (0.19%) SCOM
10 2 (0.19%) vCenter Server
10 2 (0.19%) WSUS
Vendors
1 560 (53.28%) Cisco
2 225 (21.41%) Palo Alto
3 186 (17.70%) F5
4 155 (14.75%) Fortinet
5 130 (12.37%) Juniper
6 94 (8.94%) VMware
7 75 (7.14%) CheckPoint
8 73 (6.95%) Arista
9 66 (6.28%) Aruba
10 55 (5.23%) Meraki
11 46 (4.38%) Microsoft
12 41 (3.90%) Zscaler
13 37 (3.52%) SolarWinds
14 33 (3.14%) Google
15 32 (3.04%) Infoblox
16 28 (2.66%) Blue Coat
17 25 (2.38%) ServiceNow
18 23 (2.19%) McAfee
19 20 (1.90%) Ekahau
19 20 (1.90%) Extreme Networks