Network Engineer Contract Job Trends

Network Engineer
UK

The median Network Engineer daily rate in the UK is £473, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 4 June 2026.

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

6 months to
4 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 131 120 93
Rank change year-on-year -11 -27 +35
Contract jobs requiring a Network Engineer 976 674 1,011
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.99% 2.34% 2.36%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.16% 2.53% 2.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 636 414 623
10th Percentile £300 £313 £298
25th Percentile £401 £391 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £473 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -0.42% - +2.70%
75th Percentile £544 £567 £538
90th Percentile £600 £625 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £466 £450
% change year-on-year -1.18% +3.44% +2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 9 20
10th Percentile £51.25 £22.41 £18.14
25th Percentile £63.55 £32.50 £24.19
Median hourly rate £77.50 £50.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +55.00% +25.00% -36.12%
75th Percentile £78.75 £61.25 £73.75
90th Percentile - £70.25 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £77.50 £35.00 £72.50
% change year-on-year +121.43% -51.72% +16.94%

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 45,181 26,628 39,798
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.32% 92.36% 92.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,497 17,201 25,733
10th Percentile £325 £287 £280
25th Percentile £413 £404 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £504 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.69% -4.00% -2.78%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,016 1,081 2,844
10th Percentile £15.03 £14.00 £12.83
25th Percentile £20.53 £17.80 £16.30
Median hourly rate £42.70 £28.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +52.48% -25.33% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.50 £58.75 £61.60
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -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 4 June 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 4 June 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 4 June 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 -18 808 £475 -3.46% 299
UK excluding London -13 585 £460 -1.18% 296
London -31 265 £500 - 87
Work from Home -20 234 £445 -6.32% 82
North of England -35 178 £474 -3.66% 58
South East +1 177 £463 -7.50% 78
North West -7 135 £474 -5.20% 25
Midlands +3 110 £425 - 43
West Midlands +10 103 £425 +54.55% 26
Scotland +12 54 £413 +3.13% 32
East of England -10 45 £438 +15.51% 30
South West -44 43 £533 +1.52% 30
Yorkshire -61 32 £450 -8.54% 25
Wales -10 26 £425 +21.43% 17
North East -19 11 £600 +108.70% 8
East Midlands -35 3 £488 +8.33% 17
Northern Ireland +6 2 £468 -18.70% 11

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

For the 6 months to 4 June 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.

1 513 (52.56%) Cisco
2 425 (43.55%) Firewall
3 288 (29.51%) Security Cleared
4 267 (27.36%) WAN
5 244 (25.00%) Cisco Certification
6 234 (23.98%) BGP
6 234 (23.98%) LAN
7 227 (23.26%) Palo Alto
8 220 (22.54%) Network Security
9 212 (21.72%) SC Cleared
10 205 (21.00%) VPN
11 195 (19.98%) CCNP
12 181 (18.55%) F5
13 170 (17.42%) DNS
14 160 (16.39%) OSPF
15 144 (14.75%) Load Balancing
16 139 (14.24%) VLAN
17 132 (13.52%) Fortinet
18 130 (13.32%) Wireless
19 120 (12.30%) Azure
20 110 (11.27%) Juniper
21 105 (10.76%) Python
22 104 (10.66%) Migration
22 104 (10.66%) TCP/IP
23 102 (10.45%) SD-WAN
24 95 (9.73%) CCNA
24 95 (9.73%) High Availability
25 94 (9.63%) Problem-Solving
26 92 (9.43%) VMware
26 92 (9.43%) Wi-Fi

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 (0.82%) Confluence
2 5 (0.51%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (0.31%) Apache
3 3 (0.31%) IIS
3 3 (0.31%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.10%) CMS
4 1 (0.10%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.10%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 16 (1.64%) MS Visio
2 9 (0.92%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.20%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 120 (12.30%) Azure
2 85 (8.71%) AWS
3 54 (5.53%) GCP
4 33 (3.38%) GitHub
5 16 (1.64%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 14 (1.43%) Azure ExpressRoute
6 14 (1.43%) Entra ID
7 13 (1.33%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 11 (1.13%) Microsoft 365
9 9 (0.92%) AWS CloudFormation
9 9 (0.92%) AWS Direct Connect
10 8 (0.82%) Azure Sentinel
10 8 (0.82%) Nutanix
11 7 (0.72%) IaaS
12 6 (0.61%) GitHub Actions
12 6 (0.61%) Google Compute Engine
12 6 (0.61%) Route 53
13 5 (0.51%) Mimecast
13 5 (0.51%) SaaS
14 3 (0.31%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 425 (43.55%) Firewall
2 267 (27.36%) WAN
3 234 (23.98%) BGP
3 234 (23.98%) LAN
4 220 (22.54%) Network Security
5 205 (21.00%) VPN
6 170 (17.42%) DNS
7 160 (16.39%) OSPF
8 139 (14.24%) VLAN
9 130 (13.32%) Wireless
10 104 (10.66%) TCP/IP
11 102 (10.45%) SD-WAN
12 92 (9.43%) Wi-Fi
13 76 (7.79%) Cisco Nexus
14 69 (7.07%) MPLS
15 67 (6.86%) BIG-IP
15 67 (6.86%) Multicast
16 61 (6.25%) SSL
17 60 (6.15%) Cisco ISE
18 59 (6.05%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (0.20%) SQL Server
1 2 (0.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
2 1 (0.10%) ClickHouse
2 1 (0.10%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 27 (2.77%) JIRA
2 25 (2.56%) Jenkins
3 24 (2.46%) Fiddler
4 19 (1.95%) Git
5 10 (1.02%) Sonatype Nexus
6 8 (0.82%) GitLab
7 2 (0.20%) Browser DevTools
General
1 127 (13.01%) Social Skills
2 56 (5.74%) Finance
3 55 (5.64%) Banking
4 45 (4.61%) Analytical Skills
5 38 (3.89%) Investment Banking
6 37 (3.79%) Documentation Skills
6 37 (3.79%) Telecoms
7 32 (3.28%) Public Sector
8 25 (2.56%) Manufacturing
9 22 (2.25%) Legal
10 17 (1.74%) Retail
11 10 (1.02%) Law
12 9 (0.92%) Aerospace
13 7 (0.72%) Financial Institution
14 6 (0.61%) Military
14 6 (0.61%) Pharmaceutical
15 5 (0.51%) Police
16 4 (0.41%) Presentation Skills
17 3 (0.31%) Influencing Skills
18 2 (0.20%) Billing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (4.61%) 802.1X
2 11 (1.13%) REST
3 9 (0.92%) SAML
4 8 (0.82%) LDAP
5 3 (0.31%) CSS
5 3 (0.31%) HTML
5 3 (0.31%) JSON
6 2 (0.20%) AWS CDK
6 2 (0.20%) Django
6 2 (0.20%) Jinja
6 2 (0.20%) NETCONF
6 2 (0.20%) RFC 2544
7 1 (0.10%) Java RMI
7 1 (0.10%) OpenTelemetry
7 1 (0.10%) VML
7 1 (0.10%) XML
7 1 (0.10%) XMPP
7 1 (0.10%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 206 (21.11%) Data Centre
2 27 (2.77%) Data Protection Act
3 25 (2.56%) Hybrid Cloud
4 24 (2.46%) PKI
5 22 (2.25%) Management Information System
6 19 (1.95%) Security Posture
7 15 (1.54%) Operational Technology
8 14 (1.43%) Onboarding
9 12 (1.23%) Cloud Native
10 9 (0.92%) Clustering
10 9 (0.92%) NHS
10 9 (0.92%) Self-Motivation
11 7 (0.72%) CCTV
12 6 (0.61%) Enterprise Cloud
12 6 (0.61%) Linux Command Line
13 5 (0.51%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
13 5 (0.51%) Public Cloud
14 4 (0.41%) Fibre Optics
14 4 (0.41%) IoT
14 4 (0.41%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 68 (6.97%) Windows
2 43 (4.41%) Linux
3 13 (1.33%) Windows Server
4 7 (0.72%) Unix
5 6 (0.61%) VMS
6 2 (0.20%) CatOS
6 2 (0.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
6 2 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
6 2 (0.20%) zOS
7 1 (0.10%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.10%) Solaris
7 1 (0.10%) Ubuntu
7 1 (0.10%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.10%) Windows 7
7 1 (0.10%) Windows Server 2008
7 1 (0.10%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 144 (14.75%) Load Balancing
2 104 (10.66%) Migration
3 95 (9.73%) High Availability
4 94 (9.63%) Problem-Solving
5 72 (7.38%) Network Monitoring
6 71 (7.27%) Project Delivery
7 63 (6.45%) Network Design
8 59 (6.05%) ITIL
9 57 (5.84%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 52 (5.33%) Infrastructure as Code
11 49 (5.02%) Change Management
12 45 (4.61%) Validation
13 42 (4.30%) Data Protection
14 41 (4.20%) Technical Leadership
15 40 (4.10%) DevOps
16 39 (4.00%) Network Management
17 38 (3.89%) ITSM
18 36 (3.69%) CI/CD
19 35 (3.59%) Zero Trust
20 33 (3.38%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 105 (10.76%) Python
2 14 (1.43%) Bash
3 9 (0.92%) PowerShell
4 8 (0.82%) SQL
5 7 (0.72%) ActionScript
6 3 (0.31%) Bicep
6 3 (0.31%) C
6 3 (0.31%) Java
6 3 (0.31%) JavaScript
7 2 (0.20%) C++
7 2 (0.20%) Groovy
8 1 (0.10%) Go
8 1 (0.10%) Korn
8 1 (0.10%) Lisp
8 1 (0.10%) Perl
8 1 (0.10%) PHP
Qualifications
1 288 (29.51%) Security Cleared
2 244 (25.00%) Cisco Certification
3 212 (21.72%) SC Cleared
4 195 (19.98%) CCNP
5 95 (9.73%) CCNA
6 86 (8.81%) DV Cleared
7 42 (4.30%) Degree
8 36 (3.69%) CCIE
9 19 (1.95%) JNCIA
10 18 (1.84%) JNCIS
11 17 (1.74%) Network+ Certification
12 12 (1.23%) JNCIP
13 11 (1.13%) Computer Science Degree
14 8 (0.82%) CCSE
15 7 (0.72%) Azure Certification
16 6 (0.61%) CompTIA Security+
17 5 (0.51%) CCSM
17 5 (0.51%) CISSP
17 5 (0.51%) CWNA
17 5 (0.51%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (1.54%) SLA
2 13 (1.33%) NIST
3 11 (1.13%) QA
4 8 (0.82%) Disclosure Scotland
5 6 (0.61%) PCI DSS
6 5 (0.51%) GDPR
6 5 (0.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 4 (0.41%) Actionable Recommendations
7 4 (0.41%) GRC
8 2 (0.20%) ISO/IEC 20000
8 2 (0.20%) JSP 440
8 2 (0.20%) NCSC
8 2 (0.20%) PMO
9 1 (0.10%) Cyber Essentials
9 1 (0.10%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 1 (0.10%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 66 (6.76%) VMware Infrastructure
2 37 (3.79%) VMware NSX
3 32 (3.28%) Firmware
4 27 (2.77%) Active Directory
5 12 (1.23%) VMware ESXi
6 9 (0.92%) vSphere
7 6 (0.61%) Hyper-V
8 5 (0.51%) Virtual Servers
9 4 (0.41%) Virtual Machines
10 3 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
11 2 (0.20%) KVM
11 2 (0.20%) Squid
11 2 (0.20%) vCloud
12 1 (0.10%) Citrix Presentation Server
12 1 (0.10%) Docker
12 1 (0.10%) IAG
12 1 (0.10%) iptables
12 1 (0.10%) RHEV
12 1 (0.10%) Snort
12 1 (0.10%) Xen
Systems Management
1 90 (9.22%) Ansible
2 76 (7.79%) Terraform
3 68 (6.97%) FortiGate
4 9 (0.92%) Cisco Prime
4 9 (0.92%) Grafana
5 8 (0.82%) Kubernetes
5 8 (0.82%) Single Sign-On
6 7 (0.72%) Prometheus
7 6 (0.61%) Microsoft Intune
7 6 (0.61%) Nagios
8 2 (0.20%) Avamar
8 2 (0.20%) CASB
8 2 (0.20%) Cisco CUCM
8 2 (0.20%) Istio
8 2 (0.20%) Packer
8 2 (0.20%) Puppet
8 2 (0.20%) Salt
8 2 (0.20%) SCOM
8 2 (0.20%) Tivoli NetView
8 2 (0.20%) WSUS
Vendors
1 513 (52.56%) Cisco
2 227 (23.26%) Palo Alto
3 181 (18.55%) F5
4 132 (13.52%) Fortinet
5 110 (11.27%) Juniper
6 92 (9.43%) VMware
7 82 (8.40%) Aruba
8 74 (7.58%) CheckPoint
9 63 (6.45%) Arista
10 45 (4.61%) Microsoft
11 43 (4.41%) SolarWinds
12 42 (4.30%) Meraki
13 32 (3.28%) Blue Coat
13 32 (3.28%) Google
14 30 (3.07%) Zscaler
15 28 (2.87%) ServiceNow
16 27 (2.77%) Infoblox
17 26 (2.66%) McAfee
18 21 (2.15%) Extreme Networks
19 20 (2.05%) NetApp