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 28 March 2026.

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

6 months to
28 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 150 117 88
Rank change year-on-year -33 -29 +61
Contract jobs requiring a Network Engineer 815 680 1,074
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.83% 2.34% 2.43%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.99% 2.52% 2.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 547 420 647
10th Percentile £300 £313 £300
25th Percentile £401 £400 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year - +5.56% -4.31%
75th Percentile £538 £575 £536
90th Percentile £588 £625 £626
UK excluding London median daily rate £474 £450 £450
% change year-on-year +5.33% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 5 28
10th Percentile £23.85 £31.10 £22.50
25th Percentile £44.86 £50.00 £24.88
Median hourly rate £71.33 £57.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +24.05% +43.75% -36.12%
75th Percentile £74.26 £68.75 £70.94
90th Percentile £77.85 £73.25 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £71.94 £45.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +57.23% -26.80% +12.41%

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 40,899 26,977 41,058
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.01% 92.83% 92.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,498 17,746 26,889
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -3.67%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +2.11% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,538 929 2,519
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.19 £12.86
25th Percentile £19.51 £21.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £37.54 £32.50 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +15.51% -1.52% -23.26%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.52 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £77.25 £71.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.63 £32.50 £33.00
% change year-on-year +18.86% -1.52% -18.70%

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 28 March 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 28 March 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 28 March 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 -40 682 £490 - 279
UK excluding London -25 518 £474 +5.33% 264
Work from Home -11 215 £443 -6.84% 69
London -54 207 £500 - 60
South East -1 176 £480 -4.00% 72
North of England -47 158 £479 +0.92% 53
North West -17 136 £481 +1.32% 31
Midlands -17 92 £438 +2.94% 53
West Midlands +8 86 £429 +55.91% 31
Scotland +11 42 £413 - 19
East of England -9 36 £438 -12.50% 25
South West -35 35 £513 +8.47% 31
Wales -10 25 £425 +9.68% 10
Yorkshire -57 22 £440 -4.86% 16
East Midlands -46 3 £500 +11.11% 22
North East -11 1 - - 6
Northern Ireland - 1 £385 - 5

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

For the 6 months to 28 March 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.

1 436 (53.50%) Cisco
2 379 (46.50%) Firewall
3 282 (34.60%) Security Cleared
4 226 (27.73%) WAN
5 213 (26.13%) Cisco Certification
6 206 (25.28%) BGP
7 198 (24.29%) SC Cleared
8 197 (24.17%) Palo Alto
9 195 (23.93%) LAN
10 183 (22.45%) VPN
11 178 (21.84%) CCNP
12 172 (21.10%) Network Security
13 152 (18.65%) F5
14 148 (18.16%) OSPF
15 144 (17.67%) DNS
16 128 (15.71%) Juniper
16 128 (15.71%) Load Balancing
17 115 (14.11%) VLAN
18 112 (13.74%) TCP/IP
19 94 (11.53%) Wireless
20 93 (11.41%) Python
21 92 (11.29%) DV Cleared
22 90 (11.04%) CCNA
23 88 (10.80%) Azure
24 87 (10.67%) VMware
25 86 (10.55%) Problem-Solving
26 82 (10.06%) Aruba
27 81 (9.94%) Ansible
27 81 (9.94%) AWS
28 80 (9.82%) Fortinet

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 7 (0.86%) Confluence
1 7 (0.86%) SharePoint
2 5 (0.61%) Apache
2 5 (0.61%) IIS
3 3 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 17 (2.09%) MS Visio
2 8 (0.98%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.25%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 3 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 88 (10.80%) Azure
2 81 (9.94%) AWS
3 48 (5.89%) GCP
4 23 (2.82%) GitHub
5 15 (1.84%) Entra ID
5 15 (1.84%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 10 (1.23%) Google Kubernetes Engine
6 10 (1.23%) Microsoft 365
7 9 (1.10%) Azure ExpressRoute
8 8 (0.98%) Nutanix
9 7 (0.86%) AWS Direct Connect
10 6 (0.74%) Mimecast
10 6 (0.74%) Route 53
11 5 (0.61%) Google Compute Engine
12 4 (0.49%) Azure DevOps
12 4 (0.49%) Azure Sentinel
12 4 (0.49%) IaaS
12 4 (0.49%) SaaS
13 3 (0.37%) Catchpoint
13 3 (0.37%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 379 (46.50%) Firewall
2 226 (27.73%) WAN
3 206 (25.28%) BGP
4 195 (23.93%) LAN
5 183 (22.45%) VPN
6 172 (21.10%) Network Security
7 148 (18.16%) OSPF
8 144 (17.67%) DNS
9 115 (14.11%) VLAN
10 112 (13.74%) TCP/IP
11 94 (11.53%) Wireless
12 78 (9.57%) Wi-Fi
13 75 (9.20%) SD-WAN
14 72 (8.83%) MPLS
15 70 (8.59%) Cisco ISE
16 64 (7.85%) Cisco Nexus
17 58 (7.12%) BIG-IP
18 56 (6.87%) SSL
19 55 (6.75%) IPsec
20 53 (6.50%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (0.37%) SQL Server
2 2 (0.25%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 1 (0.12%) Oracle Database
3 1 (0.12%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 30 (3.68%) Fiddler
2 22 (2.70%) Git
3 18 (2.21%) JIRA
4 17 (2.09%) Jenkins
5 9 (1.10%) Sonatype Nexus
6 8 (0.98%) GitLab
7 1 (0.12%) Browser DevTools
7 1 (0.12%) ClearCase
7 1 (0.12%) Jaeger
General
1 138 (16.93%) Social Skills
2 52 (6.38%) Banking
3 51 (6.26%) Public Sector
4 45 (5.52%) Documentation Skills
4 45 (5.52%) Finance
5 41 (5.03%) Analytical Skills
6 38 (4.66%) Investment Banking
7 35 (4.29%) Telecoms
8 22 (2.70%) Legal
9 21 (2.58%) Manufacturing
10 8 (0.98%) Law
10 8 (0.98%) Retail
11 6 (0.74%) Financial Institution
12 5 (0.61%) Local Government
12 5 (0.61%) Military
12 5 (0.61%) Presentation Skills
13 4 (0.49%) Police
14 3 (0.37%) Electronics
14 3 (0.37%) Marketing
14 3 (0.37%) Pharmaceutical
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 42 (5.15%) 802.1X
2 9 (1.10%) LDAP
2 9 (1.10%) SAML
3 4 (0.49%) REST
3 4 (0.49%) VML
4 3 (0.37%) CSS
4 3 (0.37%) HTML
4 3 (0.37%) JSON
5 2 (0.25%) AWS CDK
5 2 (0.25%) Django
5 2 (0.25%) NETCONF
5 2 (0.25%) OpenTelemetry
5 2 (0.25%) RFC 2544
5 2 (0.25%) XML
5 2 (0.25%) YANG
6 1 (0.12%) ARM Templates
6 1 (0.12%) FIX Protocol
6 1 (0.12%) Loki
6 1 (0.12%) OpenConfig
6 1 (0.12%) Ultra Messaging
Miscellaneous
1 165 (20.25%) Data Centre
2 25 (3.07%) Data Protection Act
3 24 (2.94%) Management Information System
4 18 (2.21%) Operational Technology
5 17 (2.09%) Hybrid Cloud
5 17 (2.09%) PKI
6 15 (1.84%) Security Posture
7 13 (1.60%) NHS
8 12 (1.47%) Onboarding
9 10 (1.23%) Public Cloud
9 10 (1.23%) Self-Motivation
10 9 (1.10%) Clustering
11 7 (0.86%) Cloud Native
12 5 (0.61%) IoT
13 4 (0.49%) CMDB
13 4 (0.49%) Enterprise Cloud
13 4 (0.49%) Fibre Optics
13 4 (0.49%) Hedge funds
13 4 (0.49%) Mainframe
14 3 (0.37%) Distributed Architecture
Operating Systems
1 60 (7.36%) Windows
2 33 (4.05%) Linux
3 19 (2.33%) Windows Server
4 5 (0.61%) Unix
5 4 (0.49%) CatOS
5 4 (0.49%) zOS
6 1 (0.12%) Data ONTAP
6 1 (0.12%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.12%) Solaris
6 1 (0.12%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.12%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 128 (15.71%) Load Balancing
2 86 (10.55%) Problem-Solving
3 70 (8.59%) Migration
4 68 (8.34%) High Availability
5 67 (8.22%) Network Design
6 58 (7.12%) Network Monitoring
7 50 (6.13%) ITIL
8 49 (6.01%) Change Management
9 42 (5.15%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 42 (5.15%) Project Delivery
10 38 (4.66%) ITSM
11 37 (4.54%) DevOps
12 36 (4.42%) Network Management
13 35 (4.29%) Infrastructure as Code
13 35 (4.29%) Network Architecture
13 35 (4.29%) Stakeholder Management
14 34 (4.17%) Validation
15 33 (4.05%) Data Protection
16 32 (3.93%) Collaborative Working
17 30 (3.68%) Data Loss Prevention
Programming Languages
1 93 (11.41%) Python
2 21 (2.58%) Bash
3 11 (1.35%) PowerShell
4 10 (1.23%) SQL
5 7 (0.86%) Perl
6 5 (0.61%) Lisp
7 3 (0.37%) Java
7 3 (0.37%) JavaScript
8 2 (0.25%) ActionScript
8 2 (0.25%) Bicep
8 2 (0.25%) Go
9 1 (0.12%) C
9 1 (0.12%) C++
9 1 (0.12%) Korn
9 1 (0.12%) PHP
9 1 (0.12%) Ruby
9 1 (0.12%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 282 (34.60%) Security Cleared
2 213 (26.13%) Cisco Certification
3 198 (24.29%) SC Cleared
4 178 (21.84%) CCNP
5 92 (11.29%) DV Cleared
6 90 (11.04%) CCNA
7 34 (4.17%) Degree
8 33 (4.05%) CCIE
9 30 (3.68%) JNCIS
10 23 (2.82%) JNCIA
11 20 (2.45%) JNCIP
12 12 (1.47%) Network+ Certification
13 10 (1.23%) Computer Science Degree
14 5 (0.61%) AWS Certification
15 4 (0.49%) CCSE
15 4 (0.49%) CISSP
15 4 (0.49%) DBS Check
16 3 (0.37%) CWNA
16 3 (0.37%) GIAC
16 3 (0.37%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (1.35%) SLA
2 8 (0.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 8 (0.98%) NIST
3 5 (0.61%) GDPR
3 5 (0.61%) PCI DSS
4 4 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
5 3 (0.37%) Disclosure Scotland
5 3 (0.37%) GRC
5 3 (0.37%) QA
6 2 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
6 2 (0.25%) NCSC
6 2 (0.25%) PMO
7 1 (0.12%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 1 (0.12%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 1 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 20000
7 1 (0.12%) JSP 440
System Software
1 59 (7.24%) VMware Infrastructure
2 48 (5.89%) VMware NSX
3 30 (3.68%) Firmware
4 29 (3.56%) Active Directory
5 7 (0.86%) Docker
5 7 (0.86%) VMware ESXi
5 7 (0.86%) vSphere
6 5 (0.61%) ProxySG
7 4 (0.49%) Hyper-V
8 3 (0.37%) Virtual Servers
9 2 (0.25%) KVM
9 2 (0.25%) vCloud
9 2 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.12%) Citrix Presentation Server
10 1 (0.12%) IAG
10 1 (0.12%) RHEV
10 1 (0.12%) Snort
10 1 (0.12%) Xen
Systems Management
1 81 (9.94%) Ansible
2 55 (6.75%) FortiGate
3 54 (6.63%) Terraform
4 14 (1.72%) Grafana
4 14 (1.72%) vCenter Server
5 13 (1.60%) Prometheus
6 8 (0.98%) Cisco Prime
6 8 (0.98%) Nagios
6 8 (0.98%) Single Sign-On
7 6 (0.74%) Kubernetes
7 6 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
8 4 (0.49%) Tivoli NetView
9 2 (0.25%) Dell DRAC
9 2 (0.25%) Salt
9 2 (0.25%) WSUS
10 1 (0.12%) Amdocs OSS
10 1 (0.12%) CASB
10 1 (0.12%) ITRS Geneos
10 1 (0.12%) Proxmox
10 1 (0.12%) Suricata
Vendors
1 436 (53.50%) Cisco
2 197 (24.17%) Palo Alto
3 152 (18.65%) F5
4 128 (15.71%) Juniper
5 87 (10.67%) VMware
6 82 (10.06%) Aruba
7 80 (9.82%) Fortinet
8 73 (8.96%) CheckPoint
9 55 (6.75%) SolarWinds
10 50 (6.13%) Meraki
11 43 (5.28%) Arista
11 43 (5.28%) Blue Coat
12 40 (4.91%) McAfee
13 37 (4.54%) Microsoft
14 24 (2.94%) Google
14 24 (2.94%) ServiceNow
15 23 (2.82%) NetApp
16 20 (2.45%) Ekahau
17 19 (2.33%) Infoblox
17 19 (2.33%) Splunk