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 16 October 2025.

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

6 months to
16 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 169 92 112
Rank change year-on-year -77 +20 +79
Contract jobs requiring a Network Engineer 582 960 1,045
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.75% 2.55% 2.19%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.92% 2.75% 2.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 385 549 664
10th Percentile £314 £318 £273
25th Percentile £400 £410 £369
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £490 £450
Median % change year-on-year -3.06% +8.89% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £538
90th Percentile £638 £649 £600
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £425
% change year-on-year - +11.76% -0.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 18 36
10th Percentile £21.01 £19.55 £27.69
25th Percentile £22.50 £20.00 £33.08
Median hourly rate £34.00 £41.50 £61.25
Median % change year-on-year -18.07% -32.24% +13.43%
75th Percentile £58.75 £54.69 £67.46
90th Percentile £79.85 £75.00 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.00 £21.39 £65.98
% change year-on-year +63.65% -67.58% +148.23%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 30,238 34,964 44,820
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.89% 92.96% 93.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,083 21,110 30,627
10th Percentile £277 £300 £300
25th Percentile £400 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,669 1,427 1,528
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.05 £14.60
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £41.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -38.66% -8.89% +69.81%
75th Percentile £50.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.75 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.00 £41.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -39.76% -6.74% +97.78%

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 16 October 2025.

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 16 October 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Network Engineer in the UK

Network Engineer
Top 18 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 16 October 2025. 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 -69 502 £485 -2.02% 199
UK excluding London -57 351 £475 - 176
London -49 184 £475 -8.65% 63
Work from Home -60 172 £456 -6.89% 109
North of England -63 100 £490 +0.41% 43
South East -25 97 £500 - 64
Midlands -23 67 £400 -8.05% 26
North West -50 63 £489 -0.26% 25
West Midlands +1 61 £385 -23.00% 22
Scotland -4 40 £425 +6.25% 15
Yorkshire -43 35 £490 +20.12% 11
South West -18 30 £620 +30.53% 17
East of England +2 27 £383 +27.50% 14
East Midlands -32 6 £650 +73.33% 4
Northern Ireland -4 5 £475 +6.74%
North East -10 2 £625 +47.06% 7
Wales -12 1 - - 3
Channel Islands - 1 £440 -

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

For the 6 months to 16 October 2025, 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.

1 361 (62.03%) Cisco
2 280 (48.11%) Firewall
3 190 (32.65%) Security Cleared
4 186 (31.96%) Cisco Certification
5 156 (26.80%) WAN
6 140 (24.05%) BGP
7 137 (23.54%) SC Cleared
8 135 (23.20%) CCNP
9 129 (22.16%) Python
10 125 (21.48%) Social Skills
11 123 (21.13%) Ansible
12 119 (20.45%) Juniper
13 113 (19.42%) Network Security
14 106 (18.21%) Data Centre
15 105 (18.04%) Palo Alto
15 105 (18.04%) LAN
16 102 (17.53%) VPN
16 102 (17.53%) OSPF
17 99 (17.01%) F5
18 96 (16.49%) DNS
19 85 (14.60%) AWS
20 76 (13.06%) SD-WAN
21 72 (12.37%) SolarWinds
21 72 (12.37%) Wireless
22 71 (12.20%) Fortinet
23 68 (11.68%) CCNA
23 68 (11.68%) Cisco ISE
24 67 (11.51%) TCP/IP
25 63 (10.82%) MPLS
25 63 (10.82%) Load Balancing

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 10 (1.72%) Confluence
2 6 (1.03%) SharePoint
3 4 (0.69%) Microsoft Exchange
3 4 (0.69%) nginx
4 1 (0.17%) Apache
4 1 (0.17%) IIS
Applications
1 13 (2.23%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (1.72%) MS Visio
3 7 (1.20%) Microsoft Excel
4 4 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 85 (14.60%) AWS
2 63 (10.82%) Azure
3 13 (2.23%) GCP
4 12 (2.06%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 10 (1.72%) Akamai
6 7 (1.20%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 7 (1.20%) Amazon S3
6 7 (1.20%) GitHub
7 5 (0.86%) Amazon EC2
7 5 (0.86%) Amazon ELB
7 5 (0.86%) AWS Direct Connect
7 5 (0.86%) Microsoft 365
8 4 (0.69%) Azure ExpressRoute
8 4 (0.69%) SaaS
9 3 (0.52%) Azure DevOps
9 3 (0.52%) IaaS
9 3 (0.52%) Nutanix
10 2 (0.34%) Cloudflare
10 2 (0.34%) Cohesity
10 2 (0.34%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 280 (48.11%) Firewall
2 156 (26.80%) WAN
3 140 (24.05%) BGP
4 113 (19.42%) Network Security
5 105 (18.04%) LAN
6 102 (17.53%) OSPF
6 102 (17.53%) VPN
7 96 (16.49%) DNS
8 76 (13.06%) SD-WAN
9 72 (12.37%) Wireless
10 68 (11.68%) Cisco ISE
11 67 (11.51%) TCP/IP
12 63 (10.82%) MPLS
13 62 (10.65%) Cisco Nexus
14 60 (10.31%) VLAN
15 57 (9.79%) Wi-Fi
16 47 (8.08%) IPsec
17 43 (7.39%) Cisco IOS
17 43 (7.39%) DHCP
18 40 (6.87%) Cisco Firepower
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (0.17%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 18 (3.09%) JIRA
2 14 (2.41%) Git
3 12 (2.06%) GitLab
3 12 (2.06%) Jenkins
3 12 (2.06%) Sonatype Nexus
4 9 (1.55%) Fiddler
5 7 (1.20%) Robot Framework
6 2 (0.34%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.17%) ClearCase
7 1 (0.17%) Mercurial
7 1 (0.17%) Subversion
General
1 125 (21.48%) Social Skills
2 58 (9.97%) Finance
3 50 (8.59%) Public Sector
4 44 (7.56%) Telecoms
5 32 (5.50%) Analytical Skills
6 20 (3.44%) Banking
7 18 (3.09%) Manufacturing
8 16 (2.75%) Documentation Skills
9 14 (2.41%) Investment Banking
10 9 (1.55%) Legal
11 6 (1.03%) Local Government
12 5 (0.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 5 (0.86%) Law
13 4 (0.69%) Financial Institution
13 4 (0.69%) Organisational Skills
14 3 (0.52%) Military
14 3 (0.52%) Presentation Skills
14 3 (0.52%) Spanish Language
15 2 (0.34%) Aerospace
15 2 (0.34%) Electronics
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (3.78%) 802.1X
2 13 (2.23%) RFC 2544
3 7 (1.20%) NETCONF
3 7 (1.20%) RESTCONF
4 5 (0.86%) Jinja
5 4 (0.69%) Middleware
5 4 (0.69%) REST
6 3 (0.52%) SAML
7 2 (0.34%) gRPC
7 2 (0.34%) Node.js
8 1 (0.17%) ADO
8 1 (0.17%) CSS
8 1 (0.17%) FIX Protocol
8 1 (0.17%) HTML
8 1 (0.17%) JSON
8 1 (0.17%) Ultra Messaging
8 1 (0.17%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 106 (18.21%) Data Centre
2 24 (4.12%) Onboarding
3 21 (3.61%) PKI
4 18 (3.09%) Data Protection Act
4 18 (3.09%) Hedge funds
5 17 (2.92%) Management Information System
6 16 (2.75%) Fibre Optics
7 10 (1.72%) Security Posture
8 8 (1.37%) Operational Technology
9 7 (1.20%) Driving Licence
9 7 (1.20%) Hybrid Cloud
9 7 (1.20%) Private Cloud
10 6 (1.03%) Cloud Native
10 6 (1.03%) SCADA
10 6 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
11 5 (0.86%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 5 (0.86%) Life Science
11 5 (0.86%) Public Cloud
12 3 (0.52%) CMDB
12 3 (0.52%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 44 (7.56%) Windows
2 31 (5.33%) Linux
3 23 (3.95%) Windows Server
4 9 (1.55%) Unix
5 3 (0.52%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.34%) Amazon Linux
6 2 (0.34%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.17%) VMS
7 1 (0.17%) Windows 7
7 1 (0.17%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 63 (10.82%) Load Balancing
2 56 (9.62%) Network Design
3 55 (9.45%) Migration
3 55 (9.45%) Problem-Solving
4 54 (9.28%) Network Monitoring
5 42 (7.22%) DevOps
5 42 (7.22%) High Availability
6 39 (6.70%) Service Management
7 38 (6.53%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 36 (6.19%) Network Architecture
9 32 (5.50%) Agile
10 31 (5.33%) Incident Response
10 31 (5.33%) ITIL
11 28 (4.81%) Network Management
12 26 (4.47%) Infrastructure as Code
12 26 (4.47%) Network Segmentation
13 24 (4.12%) CI/CD
14 22 (3.78%) Cybersecurity
14 22 (3.78%) Network Virtualisation
14 22 (3.78%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 129 (22.16%) Python
2 29 (4.98%) Bash
3 16 (2.75%) Perl
4 13 (2.23%) PowerShell
5 8 (1.37%) C++
6 6 (1.03%) Java
6 6 (1.03%) Lisp
7 5 (0.86%) VB
8 3 (0.52%) SQL
9 2 (0.34%) Go
10 1 (0.17%) C
10 1 (0.17%) JavaScript
10 1 (0.17%) Kotlin
10 1 (0.17%) PHP
10 1 (0.17%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 190 (32.65%) Security Cleared
2 186 (31.96%) Cisco Certification
3 137 (23.54%) SC Cleared
4 135 (23.20%) CCNP
5 68 (11.68%) CCNA
6 47 (8.08%) DV Cleared
7 34 (5.84%) Degree
8 22 (3.78%) CCIE
9 15 (2.58%) JNCIA
10 13 (2.23%) Computer Science Degree
11 12 (2.06%) JNCIS
12 10 (1.72%) BPSS Clearance
13 8 (1.37%) JNCIP
14 6 (1.03%) CCDP
14 6 (1.03%) CCSA
14 6 (1.03%) Network+ Certification
15 4 (0.69%) CISSP
15 4 (0.69%) Microsoft Certification
16 3 (0.52%) ISEB
16 3 (0.52%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (1.72%) SLA
2 8 (1.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 7 (1.20%) QA
4 6 (1.03%) GDPR
5 5 (0.86%) NIST
6 4 (0.69%) PCI DSS
7 3 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials
7 3 (0.52%) GRC
8 2 (0.34%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 2 (0.34%) NCSC
8 2 (0.34%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.17%) Def Stans
System Software
1 26 (4.47%) Active Directory
2 25 (4.30%) VMware Infrastructure
3 24 (4.12%) VMware NSX
4 22 (3.78%) Firmware
5 12 (2.06%) Docker
5 12 (2.06%) VMware ESXi
6 8 (1.37%) Hyper-V
7 6 (1.03%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (0.34%) Ceph
8 2 (0.34%) KVM
9 1 (0.17%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.17%) RACF
9 1 (0.17%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 123 (21.13%) Ansible
2 51 (8.76%) FortiGate
3 42 (7.22%) Terraform
4 20 (3.44%) vCenter Server
5 8 (1.37%) Kubernetes
6 7 (1.20%) Cisco Prime
7 5 (0.86%) Cisco CUCM
7 5 (0.86%) HP ALM
7 5 (0.86%) SCCM
8 4 (0.69%) CASB
8 4 (0.69%) Grafana
8 4 (0.69%) Nagios
8 4 (0.69%) SCOrch
9 3 (0.52%) Dell DRAC
9 3 (0.52%) Prometheus
9 3 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.34%) CA Spectrum
10 2 (0.34%) HAProxy
10 2 (0.34%) Kibana
10 2 (0.34%) OpenView
Vendors
1 361 (62.03%) Cisco
2 119 (20.45%) Juniper
3 105 (18.04%) Palo Alto
4 99 (17.01%) F5
5 72 (12.37%) SolarWinds
6 71 (12.20%) Fortinet
7 62 (10.65%) CheckPoint
8 56 (9.62%) Arista
9 51 (8.76%) Microsoft
10 47 (8.08%) VMware
11 42 (7.22%) Meraki
12 32 (5.50%) Aruba
13 27 (4.64%) Zscaler
14 23 (3.95%) Blue Coat
15 22 (3.78%) ServiceNow
16 16 (2.75%) McAfee
17 14 (2.41%) HP
18 11 (1.89%) Infoblox
19 10 (1.72%) LogicMonitor
19 10 (1.72%) Nokia