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 6 November 2025.

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

6 months to
6 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 163 90 114
Rank change year-on-year -73 +24 +74
Contract jobs requiring a Network Engineer 609 933 1,015
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.76% 2.55% 2.19%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.93% 2.75% 2.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 409 542 636
10th Percentile £315 £319 £274
25th Percentile £400 £408 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £490 £450
Median % change year-on-year -3.06% +8.89% -
75th Percentile £574 £575 £543
90th Percentile £638 £638 £600
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £475 £439
% change year-on-year +2.11% +8.26% +0.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 16 38
10th Percentile £21.26 - £28.76
25th Percentile £27.50 £20.00 £38.74
Median hourly rate £35.00 £41.50 £61.25
Median % change year-on-year -15.66% -32.24% +13.43%
75th Percentile £70.76 £54.06 £70.42
90th Percentile £79.50 £70.00 £76.47
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.50 £21.39 £62.50
% change year-on-year +94.04% -65.78% +42.86%

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 31,481 33,928 43,540
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.93% 92.88% 93.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,970 20,456 29,619
10th Percentile £279 £300 £299
25th Percentile £402 £412 £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 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,790 1,271 1,517
10th Percentile £14.09 £15.10 £14.90
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.22 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £37.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.03% -17.78% +55.71%
75th Percentile £51.19 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.65 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £36.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -30.14% -19.10% +85.42%

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 6 November 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 6 November 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 6 November 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 -70 516 £492 +0.41% 409
UK excluding London -55 374 £485 +2.11% 348
Work from Home -57 182 £450 -8.16% 153
London -64 181 £475 -6.86% 180
North of England -55 115 £500 +3.90% 51
South East -23 101 £500 - 168
North West -42 77 £515 +5.10% 26
Midlands -27 70 £400 -10.11% 41
West Midlands -3 65 £395 -21.00% 28
Scotland -2 43 £425 +6.25% 29
Yorkshire -41 36 £490 +19.03% 18
East of England -12 28 £400 +33.33% 34
South West -25 26 £623 +31.05% 17
Northern Ireland -4 5 £475 +6.74% 5
East Midlands -41 5 £650 +73.33% 12
Wales -14 4 £335 -14.92% 8
North East -12 3 £625 +47.06% 7
Channel Islands - 1 £440 - 4

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

For the 6 months to 6 November 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.

1 371 (60.92%) Cisco
2 296 (48.60%) Firewall
3 199 (32.68%) Security Cleared
4 195 (32.02%) Cisco Certification
5 170 (27.91%) WAN
6 144 (23.65%) CCNP
7 143 (23.48%) SC Cleared
8 138 (22.66%) BGP
9 127 (20.85%) Python
10 120 (19.70%) Network Security
11 119 (19.54%) Juniper
12 114 (18.72%) Ansible
13 113 (18.56%) Palo Alto
14 111 (18.23%) LAN
15 101 (16.58%) VPN
16 100 (16.42%) F5
17 99 (16.26%) OSPF
18 97 (15.93%) DNS
19 83 (13.63%) AWS
20 78 (12.81%) SD-WAN
21 77 (12.64%) Cisco ISE
22 75 (12.32%) CCNA
22 75 (12.32%) Wireless
23 72 (11.82%) SolarWinds
24 70 (11.49%) Fortinet
24 70 (11.49%) Load Balancing
25 69 (11.33%) TCP/IP
26 67 (11.00%) VLAN
27 65 (10.67%) Network Design
28 64 (10.51%) Azure

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 (1.64%) Confluence
2 8 (1.31%) SharePoint
3 4 (0.66%) Microsoft Exchange
3 4 (0.66%) nginx
Applications
1 13 (2.13%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (1.97%) MS Visio
3 7 (1.15%) Microsoft Excel
4 4 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 4 (0.66%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 83 (13.63%) AWS
2 64 (10.51%) Azure
3 15 (2.46%) GCP
4 12 (1.97%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 10 (1.64%) Akamai
6 7 (1.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 7 (1.15%) Amazon S3
6 7 (1.15%) GitHub
7 6 (0.99%) Microsoft 365
8 5 (0.82%) Amazon EC2
8 5 (0.82%) Amazon ELB
8 5 (0.82%) AWS Direct Connect
9 4 (0.66%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 4 (0.66%) Cohesity
9 4 (0.66%) SaaS
10 3 (0.49%) Azure DevOps
11 2 (0.33%) AWS Lambda
11 2 (0.33%) Cloudflare
11 2 (0.33%) Entra ID
11 2 (0.33%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 296 (48.60%) Firewall
2 170 (27.91%) WAN
3 138 (22.66%) BGP
4 120 (19.70%) Network Security
5 111 (18.23%) LAN
6 101 (16.58%) VPN
7 99 (16.26%) OSPF
8 97 (15.93%) DNS
9 78 (12.81%) SD-WAN
10 77 (12.64%) Cisco ISE
11 75 (12.32%) Wireless
12 69 (11.33%) TCP/IP
13 67 (11.00%) VLAN
14 64 (10.51%) Wi-Fi
15 59 (9.69%) MPLS
16 57 (9.36%) Cisco Nexus
17 44 (7.22%) Cisco IOS
17 44 (7.22%) DHCP
17 44 (7.22%) IPsec
18 39 (6.40%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (0.16%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 18 (2.96%) Git
1 18 (2.96%) JIRA
2 12 (1.97%) GitLab
2 12 (1.97%) Jenkins
3 11 (1.81%) Fiddler
3 11 (1.81%) Sonatype Nexus
4 7 (1.15%) Robot Framework
5 2 (0.33%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.16%) ClearCase
6 1 (0.16%) Mercurial
6 1 (0.16%) Subversion
General
1 134 (22.00%) Social Skills
2 59 (9.69%) Finance
3 54 (8.87%) Public Sector
4 39 (6.40%) Telecoms
5 37 (6.08%) Analytical Skills
6 25 (4.11%) Banking
7 21 (3.45%) Documentation Skills
7 21 (3.45%) Manufacturing
8 18 (2.96%) Investment Banking
9 10 (1.64%) Legal
10 6 (0.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 6 (0.99%) Local Government
11 4 (0.66%) Financial Institution
11 4 (0.66%) Law
11 4 (0.66%) Organisational Skills
12 3 (0.49%) Military
12 3 (0.49%) Pharmaceutical
12 3 (0.49%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (0.49%) Spanish Language
13 2 (0.33%) Electronics
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (4.11%) 802.1X
2 13 (2.13%) RFC 2544
3 8 (1.31%) NETCONF
4 7 (1.15%) RESTCONF
5 5 (0.82%) Jinja
6 4 (0.66%) Middleware
6 4 (0.66%) REST
7 3 (0.49%) SAML
8 2 (0.33%) JSON
8 2 (0.33%) Node.js
8 2 (0.33%) YANG
9 1 (0.16%) ADO
9 1 (0.16%) CSS
9 1 (0.16%) FIX Protocol
9 1 (0.16%) gRPC
9 1 (0.16%) HTML
9 1 (0.16%) OpenConfig
9 1 (0.16%) Ultra Messaging
9 1 (0.16%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 118 (19.38%) Data Centre
2 25 (4.11%) Onboarding
3 20 (3.28%) PKI
4 19 (3.12%) Management Information System
5 18 (2.96%) Hedge funds
6 17 (2.79%) Data Protection Act
7 16 (2.63%) Fibre Optics
8 15 (2.46%) Operational Technology
9 10 (1.64%) Security Posture
10 9 (1.48%) Driving Licence
11 8 (1.31%) SCADA
12 7 (1.15%) Hybrid Cloud
13 6 (0.99%) Cloud Native
13 6 (0.99%) Private Cloud
14 5 (0.82%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
14 5 (0.82%) Life Science
14 5 (0.82%) Public Cloud
15 4 (0.66%) IoT
16 3 (0.49%) CMDB
16 3 (0.49%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 45 (7.39%) Windows
2 28 (4.60%) Linux
3 25 (4.11%) Windows Server
4 6 (0.99%) Unix
5 3 (0.49%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.33%) Amazon Linux
6 2 (0.33%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.16%) VMS
7 1 (0.16%) Windows 7
7 1 (0.16%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 70 (11.49%) Load Balancing
2 65 (10.67%) Network Design
3 59 (9.69%) Problem-Solving
4 48 (7.88%) Migration
5 46 (7.55%) Network Monitoring
6 43 (7.06%) Service Management
7 42 (6.90%) High Availability
8 41 (6.73%) DevOps
9 40 (6.57%) Network Architecture
10 36 (5.91%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 31 (5.09%) Agile
11 31 (5.09%) Incident Response
11 31 (5.09%) Network Management
12 29 (4.76%) ITIL
13 27 (4.43%) ITSM
13 27 (4.43%) Network Segmentation
14 26 (4.27%) Infrastructure as Code
15 25 (4.11%) Cybersecurity
16 24 (3.94%) Project Delivery
17 22 (3.61%) Network Virtualisation
Programming Languages
1 127 (20.85%) Python
2 31 (5.09%) Bash
3 19 (3.12%) Perl
4 17 (2.79%) PowerShell
5 8 (1.31%) C++
6 7 (1.15%) Lisp
7 4 (0.66%) VB
8 3 (0.49%) Java
8 3 (0.49%) SQL
9 2 (0.33%) Go
10 1 (0.16%) C
10 1 (0.16%) JavaScript
10 1 (0.16%) Kotlin
10 1 (0.16%) PHP
10 1 (0.16%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 199 (32.68%) Security Cleared
2 195 (32.02%) Cisco Certification
3 144 (23.65%) CCNP
4 143 (23.48%) SC Cleared
5 75 (12.32%) CCNA
6 49 (8.05%) DV Cleared
7 32 (5.25%) Degree
8 24 (3.94%) CCIE
9 14 (2.30%) JNCIA
10 13 (2.13%) JNCIS
11 10 (1.64%) BPSS Clearance
11 10 (1.64%) Computer Science Degree
12 9 (1.48%) JNCIP
13 8 (1.31%) Network+ Certification
14 7 (1.15%) CCDP
15 6 (0.99%) CCSA
16 4 (0.66%) CISSP
16 4 (0.66%) Microsoft Certification
17 3 (0.49%) CEH
17 3 (0.49%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (1.64%) SLA
2 8 (1.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 7 (1.15%) QA
4 6 (0.99%) GDPR
5 5 (0.82%) NIST
6 4 (0.66%) PCI DSS
7 3 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
7 3 (0.49%) GRC
8 2 (0.33%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 2 (0.33%) NCSC
8 2 (0.33%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.16%) Def Stans
System Software
1 29 (4.76%) VMware Infrastructure
2 28 (4.60%) Active Directory
3 25 (4.11%) VMware NSX
4 23 (3.78%) Firmware
5 14 (2.30%) Docker
6 12 (1.97%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (1.15%) Hyper-V
8 6 (0.99%) Virtual Machines
9 3 (0.49%) ProxySG
10 2 (0.33%) Ceph
10 2 (0.33%) KVM
11 1 (0.16%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.16%) RACF
11 1 (0.16%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 114 (18.72%) Ansible
2 58 (9.52%) FortiGate
3 39 (6.40%) Terraform
4 22 (3.61%) vCenter Server
5 8 (1.31%) Kubernetes
6 6 (0.99%) Cisco CUCM
6 6 (0.99%) Nagios
7 5 (0.82%) Grafana
7 5 (0.82%) HP ALM
7 5 (0.82%) SCCM
8 4 (0.66%) CASB
8 4 (0.66%) Cisco Prime
8 4 (0.66%) Prometheus
8 4 (0.66%) SCOrch
9 3 (0.49%) Dell DRAC
9 3 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.33%) CA Spectrum
10 2 (0.33%) HAProxy
10 2 (0.33%) Kibana
10 2 (0.33%) Packer
Vendors
1 371 (60.92%) Cisco
2 119 (19.54%) Juniper
3 113 (18.56%) Palo Alto
4 100 (16.42%) F5
5 72 (11.82%) SolarWinds
6 70 (11.49%) Fortinet
7 59 (9.69%) CheckPoint
8 53 (8.70%) Arista
9 52 (8.54%) Microsoft
9 52 (8.54%) VMware
10 47 (7.72%) Meraki
11 29 (4.76%) Blue Coat
12 28 (4.60%) Aruba
13 26 (4.27%) ServiceNow
14 25 (4.11%) Zscaler
15 21 (3.45%) McAfee
16 14 (2.30%) Nokia
17 12 (1.97%) HP
18 11 (1.81%) NetApp
18 11 (1.81%) Remedy