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 14 August 2026.

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

6 months to
14 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 134 128 94
Rank change year-on-year -6 -34 +23
Contract jobs requiring a Network Engineer 1,093 692 920
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.05% 2.10% 2.36%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.21% 2.30% 2.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 681 442 572
10th Percentile £313 £325 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - +5.56%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £550
90th Percentile £613 £638 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -0.07% - +11.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 44 13 15
10th Percentile £31.18 £22.12 £17.98
25th Percentile £65.94 £32.50 £21.57
Median hourly rate £77.50 £57.50 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +34.78% +9.52% -13.93%
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% -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 49,408 30,056 36,163
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.54% 91.31% 92.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,654 19,017 23,287
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 £623 £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 3,477 1,528 2,029
10th Percentile £15.00 £13.59 £14.23
25th Percentile £20.69 £17.29 £20.50
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% +2.00%
75th Percentile £67.98 £53.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.13 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +71.50% -44.11% +23.29%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 -10 896 £478 -2.45% 350
UK excluding London -9 644 £475 -0.07% 284
London -17 312 £495 +2.59% 124
North of England +6 242 £500 +2.15% 73
Work from Home -32 229 £463 - 79
North West +20 170 £500 +5.26% 37
South East -34 141 £466 -6.75% 55
Midlands -6 105 £475 +21.79% 52
West Midlands -10 98 £475 +33.80% 25
Scotland +35 81 £400 -11.11% 21
Yorkshire -21 59 £475 -3.46% 25
South West -31 56 £550 -2.22% 41
East of England -5 42 £470 +17.50% 27
Wales +1 25 £425 -3.41% 17
North East -34 13 £600 +29.73% 11
East Midlands -26 5 £475 -13.64% 27
Northern Ireland +4 1 £550 -4.35% 4

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

For the 6 months to 14 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.

1 593 (54.25%) Cisco
2 463 (42.36%) Firewall
3 309 (28.27%) WAN
4 266 (24.34%) BGP
5 262 (23.97%) Security Cleared
6 248 (22.69%) VPN
7 247 (22.60%) LAN
8 243 (22.23%) Cisco Certification
9 239 (21.87%) Network Security
10 226 (20.68%) Palo Alto
11 195 (17.84%) Wireless
12 186 (17.02%) DNS
12 186 (17.02%) F5
13 180 (16.47%) CCNP
14 175 (16.01%) OSPF
15 166 (15.19%) SC Cleared
16 161 (14.73%) Fortinet
17 149 (13.63%) VLAN
18 147 (13.45%) Azure
18 147 (13.45%) Load Balancing
19 132 (12.08%) Migration
20 125 (11.44%) Python
21 119 (10.89%) SD-WAN
22 118 (10.80%) Juniper
23 111 (10.16%) TCP/IP
24 109 (9.97%) Wi-Fi
25 102 (9.33%) Problem-Solving
26 98 (8.97%) Terraform
27 97 (8.87%) CCNA
27 97 (8.87%) High Availability

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%) Microsoft Exchange
1 6 (0.55%) SAS
2 5 (0.46%) Confluence
3 4 (0.37%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.091%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.091%) CMS
4 1 (0.091%) FactoryTalk
4 1 (0.091%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.091%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 16 (1.46%) MS Visio
2 12 (1.10%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.18%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 147 (13.45%) Azure
2 89 (8.14%) AWS
3 54 (4.94%) GCP
4 42 (3.84%) GitHub
5 24 (2.20%) Azure ExpressRoute
6 15 (1.37%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 14 (1.28%) Microsoft 365
8 13 (1.19%) AWS Direct Connect
8 13 (1.19%) Entra ID
8 13 (1.19%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 11 (1.01%) AWS CloudFormation
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%) Google Compute Engine
13 6 (0.55%) OCI
14 5 (0.46%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 463 (42.36%) Firewall
2 309 (28.27%) WAN
3 266 (24.34%) BGP
4 248 (22.69%) VPN
5 247 (22.60%) LAN
6 239 (21.87%) Network Security
7 195 (17.84%) Wireless
8 186 (17.02%) DNS
9 175 (16.01%) OSPF
10 149 (13.63%) VLAN
11 119 (10.89%) SD-WAN
12 111 (10.16%) TCP/IP
13 109 (9.97%) Wi-Fi
14 78 (7.14%) Cisco ISE
15 77 (7.04%) DHCP
16 76 (6.95%) Cisco Nexus
17 74 (6.77%) MPLS
17 74 (6.77%) Multicast
18 70 (6.40%) Cisco ASA
19 66 (6.04%) 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%) Jenkins
2 31 (2.84%) Git
3 24 (2.20%) JIRA
4 16 (1.46%) Fiddler
5 14 (1.28%) GitLab
6 7 (0.64%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.18%) Browser DevTools
8 1 (0.091%) Robot Framework
General
1 143 (13.08%) Social Skills
2 77 (7.04%) Finance
3 63 (5.76%) Analytical Skills
4 61 (5.58%) Banking
5 55 (5.03%) Public Sector
6 54 (4.94%) Telecoms
7 35 (3.20%) Investment Banking
8 32 (2.93%) Documentation Skills
9 24 (2.20%) Legal
10 22 (2.01%) Retail
11 18 (1.65%) Manufacturing
12 10 (0.91%) Police
13 9 (0.82%) Aerospace
13 9 (0.82%) Financial Institution
14 7 (0.64%) Law
14 7 (0.64%) Pharmaceutical
15 5 (0.46%) Military
15 5 (0.46%) Organisational Skills
16 4 (0.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 4 (0.37%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 54 (4.94%) 802.1X
2 13 (1.19%) REST
3 10 (0.91%) SAML
4 8 (0.73%) NETCONF
5 3 (0.27%) Java RMI
5 3 (0.27%) JSON
5 3 (0.27%) LDAP
5 3 (0.27%) YAML
6 2 (0.18%) eBPF
6 2 (0.18%) Jinja
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
1 186 (17.02%) Data Centre
2 41 (3.75%) Hybrid Cloud
3 31 (2.84%) PKI
4 26 (2.38%) Cloud Native
5 21 (1.92%) Management Information System
6 20 (1.83%) Driving Licence
7 18 (1.65%) Onboarding
8 16 (1.46%) Security Posture
9 15 (1.37%) Operational Technology
10 14 (1.28%) Data Protection Act
11 10 (0.91%) Linux Command Line
11 10 (0.91%) Public Cloud
11 10 (0.91%) Self-Motivation
12 9 (0.82%) IoT
13 8 (0.73%) CCTV
13 8 (0.73%) Clustering
14 7 (0.64%) Distributed Systems
14 7 (0.64%) Enterprise Cloud
14 7 (0.64%) NHS
15 6 (0.55%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
Operating Systems
1 71 (6.50%) Windows
2 49 (4.48%) Linux
3 13 (1.19%) 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
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
9 1 (0.091%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 147 (13.45%) Load Balancing
2 132 (12.08%) Migration
3 102 (9.33%) Problem-Solving
4 97 (8.87%) High Availability
5 90 (8.23%) Project Delivery
6 83 (7.59%) ITIL
7 73 (6.68%) Network Design
8 72 (6.59%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 70 (6.40%) Infrastructure as Code
10 69 (6.31%) Change Management
11 67 (6.13%) Validation
12 63 (5.76%) Network Monitoring
13 47 (4.30%) Technical Leadership
14 46 (4.21%) CI/CD
14 46 (4.21%) Zero Trust
15 45 (4.12%) Continuous Improvement
16 44 (4.03%) DevOps
17 37 (3.39%) ITSM
17 37 (3.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 36 (3.29%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 125 (11.44%) Python
2 24 (2.20%) Bash
3 14 (1.28%) PowerShell
4 9 (0.82%) ActionScript
4 9 (0.82%) 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
1 262 (23.97%) Security Cleared
2 243 (22.23%) Cisco Certification
3 180 (16.47%) CCNP
4 166 (15.19%) SC Cleared
5 97 (8.87%) CCNA
6 91 (8.33%) DV Cleared
7 46 (4.21%) CCIE
8 37 (3.39%) Degree
9 19 (1.74%) JNCIS
10 16 (1.46%) JNCIP
11 13 (1.19%) JNCIA
11 13 (1.19%) Network+ Certification
12 10 (0.91%) Computer Science Degree
13 9 (0.82%) CCSE
13 9 (0.82%) CISSP
14 6 (0.55%) AWS Certification
14 6 (0.55%) Azure Certification
14 6 (0.55%) DBS Check
15 5 (0.46%) CCIE Security
15 5 (0.46%) CCIE Wireless
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (2.29%) SLA
2 11 (1.01%) QA
3 9 (0.82%) NIST
4 8 (0.73%) Disclosure Scotland
5 6 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.18%) Data Quality
6 2 (0.18%) GDPR
6 2 (0.18%) JSP 440
6 2 (0.18%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.091%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.091%) Cyber Essentials
7 1 (0.091%) GRC
7 1 (0.091%) ISO/IEC 20000
7 1 (0.091%) NIST 800
System Software
1 75 (6.86%) VMware Infrastructure
2 32 (2.93%) Firmware
3 30 (2.74%) Active Directory
3 30 (2.74%) VMware NSX
4 14 (1.28%) VMware ESXi
5 13 (1.19%) vSphere
6 7 (0.64%) Hyper-V
7 5 (0.46%) Virtual Machines
8 4 (0.37%) Docker
8 4 (0.37%) Virtual Servers
9 3 (0.27%) FreeRADIUS
10 2 (0.18%) Squid
11 1 (0.091%) Citrix Presentation Server
11 1 (0.091%) IAG
11 1 (0.091%) iptables
11 1 (0.091%) Snort
11 1 (0.091%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 98 (8.97%) Terraform
2 91 (8.33%) Ansible
3 82 (7.50%) FortiGate
4 22 (2.01%) Kubernetes
5 15 (1.37%) Cisco Prime
6 7 (0.64%) Grafana
6 7 (0.64%) Istio
6 7 (0.64%) Prometheus
7 6 (0.55%) Cisco CUCM
7 6 (0.55%) Nagios
8 5 (0.46%) Puppet
8 5 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
9 4 (0.37%) Microsoft Intune
9 4 (0.37%) Packer
9 4 (0.37%) systemd
10 3 (0.27%) Cilium
10 3 (0.27%) TrustSec
11 2 (0.18%) Avamar
11 2 (0.18%) Progress Chef
11 2 (0.18%) WSUS
Vendors
1 593 (54.25%) Cisco
2 226 (20.68%) Palo Alto
3 186 (17.02%) F5
4 161 (14.73%) Fortinet
5 118 (10.80%) Juniper
6 97 (8.87%) VMware
7 82 (7.50%) CheckPoint
8 70 (6.40%) Arista
9 66 (6.04%) Aruba
10 57 (5.22%) Microsoft
11 52 (4.76%) Meraki
12 45 (4.12%) Zscaler
13 43 (3.93%) SolarWinds
14 38 (3.48%) Google
15 31 (2.84%) Infoblox
16 26 (2.38%) Blue Coat
16 26 (2.38%) ServiceNow
17 20 (1.83%) McAfee
17 20 (1.83%) NetApp
17 20 (1.83%) Nokia