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 September 2026.

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

6 months to
16 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 131 159 97
Rank change year-on-year +28 -62 +14
Contract jobs requiring a Network Engineer 1,112 599 912
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.05% 1.82% 2.38%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.22% 2.00% 2.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 659 386 531
10th Percentile £306 £307 £300
25th Percentile £400 £400 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £470 £495
Median % change year-on-year +1.01% -5.00% +10.00%
75th Percentile £550 £573 £578
90th Percentile £625 £638 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £455 £490
% change year-on-year +1.65% -7.14% +15.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 51 13 20
10th Percentile £28.00 £22.12 £19.85
25th Percentile £59.69 £32.50 £20.00
Median hourly rate £74.00 £41.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +78.31% -7.78% -26.23%
75th Percentile £91.00 £67.25 £67.50
90th Percentile £92.53 £80.15 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.00 £38.25 £35.48
% change year-on-year +93.46% +7.81% -42.77%

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 50,111 30,002 35,564
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.33% 91.08% 92.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,702 18,956 21,934
10th Percentile £325 £278 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £625 £621 £638
90th Percentile £727 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,778 1,570 1,684
10th Percentile £14.59 £13.75 £14.73
25th Percentile £20.27 £17.30 £20.30
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -2.01%
75th Percentile £67.84 £52.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +5.88%

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 September 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 16 September 2026.

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 September 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 +15 907 £475 - 751
UK excluding London 0 632 £463 +1.65% 498
London +7 344 £488 +2.63% 311
North of England +22 249 £499 +2.84% 104
Work from Home -20 220 £469 +4.22% 236
North West +22 168 £500 +5.26% 53
Midlands -11 105 £475 +23.38% 86
South East -47 104 £463 -7.50% 100
West Midlands -23 90 £475 +25.83% 51
Scotland +15 79 £400 -5.88% 30
Yorkshire -11 68 £450 -8.07% 36
South West -20 57 £550 -7.95% 68
East of England -6 42 £435 +13.73% 86
Wales +20 35 £363 - 18
East Midlands -4 13 £500 -16.67% 35
North East -29 13 £600 - 15
Northern Ireland +2 2 £488 -7.14% 14
Channel Islands -4 2 £600 +36.36%

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

For the 6 months to 16 September 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.

1 604 (54.32%) Cisco
2 438 (39.39%) Firewall
3 308 (27.70%) WAN
4 255 (22.93%) BGP
5 246 (22.12%) Network Security
6 244 (21.94%) Security Cleared
7 236 (21.22%) VPN
8 232 (20.86%) LAN
9 229 (20.59%) Cisco Certification
10 224 (20.14%) Palo Alto
11 213 (19.15%) Wireless
12 179 (16.10%) CCNP
13 170 (15.29%) DNS
14 167 (15.02%) SC Cleared
15 161 (14.48%) OSPF
16 159 (14.30%) F5
16 159 (14.30%) Fortinet
17 154 (13.85%) VLAN
18 148 (13.31%) Python
19 136 (12.23%) Azure
20 134 (12.05%) Migration
21 125 (11.24%) Load Balancing
22 120 (10.79%) Wi-Fi
23 113 (10.16%) SD-WAN
24 107 (9.62%) Problem-Solving
25 99 (8.90%) Ansible
25 99 (8.90%) TCP/IP
26 95 (8.54%) Project Delivery
27 93 (8.36%) Terraform
28 86 (7.73%) AWS

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 8 (0.72%) Confluence
1 8 (0.72%) SAS
2 6 (0.54%) Microsoft Exchange
2 6 (0.54%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.090%) ArcGIS
3 1 (0.090%) CMS
3 1 (0.090%) FactoryTalk
3 1 (0.090%) OpenStack
3 1 (0.090%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 14 (1.26%) MS Visio
2 12 (1.08%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (0.36%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 136 (12.23%) Azure
2 86 (7.73%) AWS
3 41 (3.69%) GCP
4 40 (3.60%) GitHub
5 25 (2.25%) Azure ExpressRoute
6 17 (1.53%) Microsoft 365
7 13 (1.17%) AWS Direct Connect
8 12 (1.08%) Entra ID
8 12 (1.08%) IaaS
9 11 (0.99%) AWS CloudFormation
10 9 (0.81%) GitHub Actions
10 9 (0.81%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 6 (0.54%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 6 (0.54%) Nutanix
11 6 (0.54%) OCI
12 5 (0.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 5 (0.45%) AWS Lambda
12 5 (0.45%) Azure DevOps
12 5 (0.45%) Azure Sentinel
12 5 (0.45%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 438 (39.39%) Firewall
2 308 (27.70%) WAN
3 255 (22.93%) BGP
4 246 (22.12%) Network Security
5 236 (21.22%) VPN
6 232 (20.86%) LAN
7 213 (19.15%) Wireless
8 170 (15.29%) DNS
9 161 (14.48%) OSPF
10 154 (13.85%) VLAN
11 120 (10.79%) Wi-Fi
12 113 (10.16%) SD-WAN
13 99 (8.90%) TCP/IP
14 78 (7.01%) Multicast
15 77 (6.92%) MPLS
16 75 (6.74%) DHCP
17 73 (6.56%) Cisco Nexus
18 68 (6.12%) Cisco ASA
18 68 (6.12%) Cisco ISE
19 58 (5.22%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (0.54%) GIS
2 3 (0.27%) SQL Server
3 1 (0.090%) ClickHouse
3 1 (0.090%) Oracle Reports
3 1 (0.090%) QGIS
Development Applications
1 33 (2.97%) Git
2 27 (2.43%) JIRA
3 25 (2.25%) Jenkins
4 14 (1.26%) GitLab
5 13 (1.17%) Fiddler
6 7 (0.63%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.18%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.090%) Artifactory
8 1 (0.090%) Browser DevTools
General
1 134 (12.05%) Social Skills
2 89 (8.00%) Finance
3 68 (6.12%) Analytical Skills
4 67 (6.03%) Telecoms
5 61 (5.49%) Banking
6 53 (4.77%) Public Sector
7 31 (2.79%) Investment Banking
8 28 (2.52%) Documentation Skills
9 23 (2.07%) Legal
10 21 (1.89%) Retail
11 19 (1.71%) Manufacturing
12 9 (0.81%) Aerospace
13 8 (0.72%) Financial Institution
13 8 (0.72%) Police
14 7 (0.63%) Pharmaceutical
15 6 (0.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 5 (0.45%) Organisational Skills
17 4 (0.36%) Automotive
17 4 (0.36%) Law
17 4 (0.36%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 93 (8.36%) Terraform
2 43 (3.87%) 802.1X
3 18 (1.62%) REST
4 12 (1.08%) NETCONF
5 8 (0.72%) JSON
5 8 (0.72%) YAML
6 7 (0.63%) SAML
7 5 (0.45%) XML
8 3 (0.27%) Java RMI
8 3 (0.27%) YANG
9 2 (0.18%) eBPF
9 2 (0.18%) Jinja
9 2 (0.18%) LDAP
9 2 (0.18%) RESTCONF
9 2 (0.18%) RFC 2544
10 1 (0.090%) AWS CDK
10 1 (0.090%) Django
10 1 (0.090%) ModSecurity
10 1 (0.090%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 203 (18.26%) Data Centre
2 41 (3.69%) Hybrid Cloud
3 27 (2.43%) PKI
4 25 (2.25%) Driving Licence
5 24 (2.16%) Onboarding
6 23 (2.07%) Cloud Native
7 22 (1.98%) Operational Technology
8 17 (1.53%) Management Information System
9 13 (1.17%) IoT
10 12 (1.08%) Public Cloud
10 12 (1.08%) Security Posture
11 11 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
12 10 (0.90%) Linux Command Line
12 10 (0.90%) SCADA
13 9 (0.81%) Data Protection Act
13 9 (0.81%) Fibre Optics
14 8 (0.72%) Digital Signage
14 8 (0.72%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
15 7 (0.63%) CCTV
15 7 (0.63%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 67 (6.03%) Windows
2 52 (4.68%) Linux
3 13 (1.17%) Windows Server
4 6 (0.54%) VMS
5 5 (0.45%) Ubuntu
5 5 (0.45%) Unix
5 5 (0.45%) Windows Server 2019
5 5 (0.45%) zOS
6 4 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.27%) Windows Server 2012
8 2 (0.18%) Mac OS
8 2 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.090%) Solaris
9 1 (0.090%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.090%) Windows 7
9 1 (0.090%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 134 (12.05%) Migration
2 125 (11.24%) Load Balancing
3 107 (9.62%) Problem-Solving
4 95 (8.54%) Project Delivery
5 84 (7.55%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 78 (7.01%) High Availability
7 75 (6.74%) Validation
8 74 (6.65%) Infrastructure as Code
9 73 (6.56%) ITIL
10 71 (6.38%) Network Design
11 64 (5.76%) Change Management
12 56 (5.04%) Network Monitoring
13 53 (4.77%) Zero Trust
14 49 (4.41%) CI/CD
15 43 (3.87%) Technical Leadership
16 42 (3.78%) Continuous Improvement
16 42 (3.78%) Network Segmentation
17 40 (3.60%) Stakeholder Management
18 37 (3.33%) Incident Management
18 37 (3.33%) Network Management
Programming Languages
1 148 (13.31%) Python
2 29 (2.61%) Bash
3 20 (1.80%) PowerShell
4 9 (0.81%) ActionScript
5 7 (0.63%) SQL
6 6 (0.54%) C++
7 3 (0.27%) C
7 3 (0.27%) Java
7 3 (0.27%) Perl
8 2 (0.18%) Bicep
8 2 (0.18%) Go
8 2 (0.18%) Groovy
8 2 (0.18%) Search Processing Language
8 2 (0.18%) Shell Script
9 1 (0.090%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 244 (21.94%) Security Cleared
2 229 (20.59%) Cisco Certification
3 179 (16.10%) CCNP
4 167 (15.02%) SC Cleared
5 86 (7.73%) CCNA
6 69 (6.21%) DV Cleared
7 45 (4.05%) CCIE
8 34 (3.06%) Degree
9 14 (1.26%) CISSP
10 10 (0.90%) JNCIS
11 9 (0.81%) Network+ Certification
12 8 (0.72%) CCSE
12 8 (0.72%) JNCIP
13 7 (0.63%) Computer Science Degree
14 6 (0.54%) CCIE Security
14 6 (0.54%) DBS Check
15 5 (0.45%) Azure Certification
15 5 (0.45%) BPSS Clearance
15 5 (0.45%) CWNA
16 4 (0.36%) JNCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (2.07%) SLA
2 16 (1.44%) QA
3 12 (1.08%) NIST
4 8 (0.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 7 (0.63%) Disclosure Scotland
6 4 (0.36%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.18%) Data Quality
7 2 (0.18%) GDPR
7 2 (0.18%) JSP 440
7 2 (0.18%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.090%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.090%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.090%) GRC
8 1 (0.090%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 60 (5.40%) VMware Infrastructure
2 29 (2.61%) Active Directory
2 29 (2.61%) Firmware
3 28 (2.52%) VMware NSX
4 11 (0.99%) vSphere
5 10 (0.90%) VMware ESXi
6 8 (0.72%) Hyper-V
7 5 (0.45%) Virtual Machines
8 4 (0.36%) Docker
8 4 (0.36%) FreeRADIUS
9 3 (0.27%) Virtual Servers
10 2 (0.18%) Squid
11 1 (0.090%) iptables
11 1 (0.090%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 99 (8.90%) Ansible
2 69 (6.21%) FortiGate
3 29 (2.61%) Kubernetes
4 16 (1.44%) Cisco Prime
5 9 (0.81%) Istio
6 6 (0.54%) Cisco CUCM
6 6 (0.54%) Puppet
7 5 (0.45%) Cilium
7 5 (0.45%) Grafana
7 5 (0.45%) Progress Chef
8 4 (0.36%) Microsoft Intune
8 4 (0.36%) Nagios
8 4 (0.36%) Packer
8 4 (0.36%) Prometheus
8 4 (0.36%) systemd
8 4 (0.36%) vRealize
9 3 (0.27%) Single Sign-On
9 3 (0.27%) TrustSec
10 2 (0.18%) SCCM
10 2 (0.18%) SCOM
Vendors
1 604 (54.32%) Cisco
2 224 (20.14%) Palo Alto
3 159 (14.30%) F5
3 159 (14.30%) Fortinet
4 86 (7.73%) VMware
5 85 (7.64%) Juniper
6 80 (7.19%) CheckPoint
7 77 (6.92%) Arista
7 77 (6.92%) Meraki
8 60 (5.40%) Aruba
9 56 (5.04%) Microsoft
10 51 (4.59%) Zscaler
11 35 (3.15%) SolarWinds
12 26 (2.34%) Nokia
13 25 (2.25%) Infoblox
14 24 (2.16%) Blue Coat
15 23 (2.07%) ServiceNow
16 22 (1.98%) Google
17 18 (1.62%) NetApp
18 16 (1.44%) McAfee