Network Security Contract Job Trends

Network Security
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Network Security skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 24 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 161 156 190
Rank change year-on-year -5 +34 -29
Contract jobs citing Network Security 895 600 558
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.70% 1.84% 1.37%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 17.99% 15.07% 11.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 602 365 373
10th Percentile £400 £375 £363
25th Percentile £463 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.86% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £650 £613 £650
90th Percentile £725 £713 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £537 £500 £575
% change year-on-year +7.40% -13.04% +9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 18 11
10th Percentile £26.00 £45.00 £7.43
25th Percentile £42.13 £58.79 £15.63
Median hourly rate £73.00 £80.68 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.51% +250.76% -65.15%
75th Percentile £74.00 £83.53 £50.00
90th Percentile - £89.50 £58.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £73.00 £80.68 £19.00
% change year-on-year -9.51% +324.61% -

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
UK

Network Security falls under the Communications and Computer Networking category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring communications or computer networking skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 4,976 3,981 5,061
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.43% 12.18% 12.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,993 2,436 3,038
10th Percentile £250 £235 £213
25th Percentile £400 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £489 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.25% -2.20% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £602
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.63% -5.00% +8.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 330 195 368
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.15 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.22 £47.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -44.80% +5.56% -10.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £83.60 £74.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £43.25 £48.56
% change year-on-year -38.36% -10.93% -14.42%

Network Security
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Network Security relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Network Security job vacancy trend in the UK

Network Security
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Network Security.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Network Security

Network Security
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Network Security over the 6 months to 24 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Network Security in the UK

Network Security
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Network Security.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Network Security

Network Security
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Network Security over the 6 months to 24 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Network Security in the UK

Network Security
Top 16 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 Security within the UK over the 6 months to 24 July 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 -10 777 £540 +2.86% 265
UK excluding London -19 450 £537 +7.40% 189
London -10 334 £550 - 118
Work from Home +4 270 £540 +2.86% 119
North of England +17 187 £535 +9.30% 40
South East -13 128 £560 +14.29% 68
North West +4 102 £537 +13.05% 25
Yorkshire +5 83 £507 +3.05% 13
Midlands -49 52 £500 -13.04% 26
Scotland 0 33 £600 +35.21% 23
East of England -17 33 £525 -4.55% 17
West Midlands -75 32 £416 -27.61% 11
South West -53 22 £550 -8.33% 17
East Midlands +6 19 £638 - 15
Wales -18 3 £600 +61.62% 3
North East -34 2 £675 +8.00% 2

Network Security
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 15 (1.68%) Confluence
1 15 (1.68%) Microsoft Exchange
2 10 (1.12%) SharePoint
3 3 (0.34%) Apache
4 1 (0.11%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.11%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.11%) IIS
4 1 (0.11%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 19 (2.12%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (0.67%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.11%) InfoPath
4 1 (0.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 6 (0.67%) Oracle ERP
1 6 (0.67%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 289 (32.29%) Azure
2 204 (22.79%) AWS
3 117 (13.07%) GCP
4 91 (10.17%) Entra ID
5 33 (3.69%) Azure DevOps
5 33 (3.69%) GitHub
6 31 (3.46%) Azure Sentinel
7 30 (3.35%) Microsoft 365
8 27 (3.02%) Azure Monitor
9 25 (2.79%) Serverless
10 23 (2.57%) SaaS
11 22 (2.46%) GitHub Actions
12 21 (2.35%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 20 (2.23%) Azure AKS
13 20 (2.23%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 19 (2.12%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 17 (1.90%) Azure Key Vault
15 17 (1.90%) OCI
16 15 (1.68%) Akamai
17 14 (1.56%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 405 (45.25%) Firewall
2 202 (22.57%) VPN
3 182 (20.34%) WAN
4 135 (15.08%) LAN
5 123 (13.74%) DNS
6 104 (11.62%) BGP
7 98 (10.95%) Wireless
8 90 (10.06%) TCP/IP
9 86 (9.61%) SD-WAN
10 82 (9.16%) OSPF
11 74 (8.27%) VLAN
12 66 (7.37%) DHCP
13 55 (6.15%) MPLS
14 54 (6.03%) IPsec
15 50 (5.59%) SSL
16 45 (5.03%) Wi-Fi
17 44 (4.92%) Cisco ISE
18 42 (4.69%) Cisco ASA
19 40 (4.47%) NGFW
20 38 (4.25%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (1.34%) SQL Server
2 8 (0.89%) Azure SQL Database
3 5 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (0.45%) Data Lake
4 4 (0.45%) Elasticsearch
4 4 (0.45%) Neo4j
4 4 (0.45%) Power BI
5 3 (0.34%) Amazon Athena
5 3 (0.34%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (0.22%) BigQuery
6 2 (0.22%) Delta Lake
6 2 (0.22%) InfluxDB
6 2 (0.22%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.11%) Data Mining
7 1 (0.11%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.11%) DataStage
7 1 (0.11%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.11%) Relational Database
7 1 (0.11%) Snowflake Schema
7 1 (0.11%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 40 (4.47%) JIRA
2 36 (4.02%) Git
3 23 (2.57%) GitLab
4 17 (1.90%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.78%) Sonatype Nexus
6 6 (0.67%) Browser DevTools
7 4 (0.45%) MSBuild
7 4 (0.45%) Snyk
7 4 (0.45%) SonarQube
7 4 (0.45%) Visual Studio
8 3 (0.34%) Artifactory
9 2 (0.22%) Postman
10 1 (0.11%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.11%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.11%) IBM UrbanCode
10 1 (0.11%) JUnit
10 1 (0.11%) SoapUI
10 1 (0.11%) Subversion
10 1 (0.11%) Zephyr
General
1 212 (23.69%) Social Skills
2 140 (15.64%) Finance
3 69 (7.71%) Analytical Skills
4 63 (7.04%) Public Sector
5 62 (6.93%) Banking
6 44 (4.92%) Documentation Skills
7 26 (2.91%) Telecoms
8 24 (2.68%) Financial Institution
9 19 (2.12%) Legal
10 14 (1.56%) Manufacturing
11 13 (1.45%) Retail
12 12 (1.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 12 (1.34%) Organisational Skills
13 11 (1.23%) Influencing Skills
14 8 (0.89%) Police
15 6 (0.67%) Law
15 6 (0.67%) Local Government
16 5 (0.56%) Military
17 4 (0.45%) Automotive
17 4 (0.45%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 248 (27.71%) Network Engineer
2 194 (21.68%) Architect
3 113 (12.63%) Security Engineer
4 100 (11.17%) Security Architect
4 100 (11.17%) Senior
5 71 (7.93%) Network Architect
6 68 (7.60%) Network Security Engineer
7 50 (5.59%) Consultant
8 42 (4.69%) Project Manager
8 42 (4.69%) Senior Network Engineer
9 39 (4.36%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 37 (4.13%) Lead
11 30 (3.35%) Network Security Architect
12 29 (3.24%) Cloud Engineer
13 25 (2.79%) Network Manager
14 23 (2.57%) Solutions Architect
15 22 (2.46%) Analyst
15 22 (2.46%) Security Consultant
16 21 (2.35%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
17 20 (2.23%) Azure Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (4.36%) 802.1X
2 17 (1.90%) SAML
3 15 (1.68%) REST
4 14 (1.56%) ARM Templates
5 10 (1.12%) Kafka
6 6 (0.67%) JSON
7 5 (0.56%) .NET
7 5 (0.56%) CSS
7 5 (0.56%) HTML
7 5 (0.56%) LDAP
7 5 (0.56%) NETCONF
7 5 (0.56%) OAuth
7 5 (0.56%) OpenID
8 4 (0.45%) gRPC
8 4 (0.45%) Keycloak
8 4 (0.45%) Protocol Buffers
8 4 (0.45%) RESTful
8 4 (0.45%) XML
9 3 (0.34%) Azure Blueprints
9 3 (0.34%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 110 (12.29%) Data Centre
2 68 (7.60%) Security Posture
3 49 (5.47%) Cloud Native
4 47 (5.25%) Hybrid Cloud
5 38 (4.25%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 35 (3.91%) Onboarding
7 28 (3.13%) Management Information System
7 28 (3.13%) Operational Technology
8 23 (2.57%) Data Protection Act
8 23 (2.57%) PKI
9 21 (2.35%) Cyber Threat
10 20 (2.23%) Public Cloud
11 18 (2.01%) Security Operations Centre
11 18 (2.01%) Self-Motivation
12 17 (1.90%) Product Ownership
13 14 (1.56%) IoT
13 14 (1.56%) Linux Command Line
14 13 (1.45%) Enterprise Software
15 10 (1.12%) Replication
15 10 (1.12%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 77 (8.60%) Linux
2 75 (8.38%) Windows
3 23 (2.57%) Windows Server
4 14 (1.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 9 (1.01%) Unix
6 7 (0.78%) Mac OS
6 7 (0.78%) Ubuntu
7 5 (0.56%) VMS
7 5 (0.56%) Windows 10
8 3 (0.34%) Android
8 3 (0.34%) Check Point GAiA
8 3 (0.34%) SUSE
9 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2003
9 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
9 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
9 1 (0.11%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 171 (19.11%) Cybersecurity
2 166 (18.55%) Cloud Security
3 139 (15.53%) Zero Trust
4 121 (13.52%) CI/CD
5 120 (13.41%) DevOps
6 118 (13.18%) SIEM
7 117 (13.07%) Infrastructure as Code
8 116 (12.96%) Continuous Improvement
9 112 (12.51%) Migration
10 107 (11.96%) Stakeholder Management
11 105 (11.73%) Security Architecture
12 100 (11.17%) Change Management
13 97 (10.84%) Problem-Solving
14 96 (10.73%) High Availability
15 94 (10.50%) Incident Response
16 93 (10.39%) Identity Access Management
17 87 (9.72%) Data Protection
17 87 (9.72%) Threat Modelling
18 86 (9.61%) Agile
19 85 (9.50%) Load Balancing
Programming Languages
1 112 (12.51%) Python
2 63 (7.04%) PowerShell
3 55 (6.15%) Bash
4 38 (4.25%) Bicep
5 21 (2.35%) SQL
6 18 (2.01%) JavaScript
7 8 (0.89%) Java
7 8 (0.89%) Shell Script
8 4 (0.45%) Perl
8 4 (0.45%) Rust
9 3 (0.34%) Go
9 3 (0.34%) PHP
10 2 (0.22%) Kusto Query Language
10 2 (0.22%) Ruby
11 1 (0.11%) ActionScript
11 1 (0.11%) AppleScript
11 1 (0.11%) C
11 1 (0.11%) Search Processing Language
11 1 (0.11%) VBA
Qualifications
1 240 (26.82%) Security Cleared
2 168 (18.77%) SC Cleared
3 157 (17.54%) Cisco Certification
4 100 (11.17%) CISSP
5 93 (10.39%) CCNP
6 79 (8.83%) DV Cleared
7 65 (7.26%) Degree
8 58 (6.48%) CISM
9 57 (6.37%) CCNA
10 40 (4.47%) CCSP
11 39 (4.36%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 35 (3.91%) Azure Certification
13 22 (2.46%) AWS Certification
13 22 (2.46%) CCIE
14 15 (1.68%) CompTIA Security+
15 13 (1.45%) Computer Science Degree
16 12 (1.34%) GIAC
17 11 (1.23%) BPSS Clearance
17 11 (1.23%) PMP
18 10 (1.12%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 83 (9.27%) NIST
2 75 (8.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 42 (4.69%) GDPR
4 31 (3.46%) NCSC
5 26 (2.91%) PCI DSS
6 19 (2.12%) GRC
6 19 (2.12%) QA
7 18 (2.01%) SLA
8 13 (1.45%) Cyber Essentials
9 9 (1.01%) Disclosure Scotland
9 9 (1.01%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 8 (0.89%) NIST 800
11 6 (0.67%) Actionable Recommendations
11 6 (0.67%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 6 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 6 (0.67%) SOC 2
12 4 (0.45%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 3 (0.34%) ISA99
13 3 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 42001
13 3 (0.34%) PMO
System Software
1 77 (8.60%) Active Directory
2 54 (6.03%) VMware Infrastructure
3 29 (3.24%) Docker
4 23 (2.57%) VMware NSX
5 21 (2.35%) Virtual Machines
6 10 (1.12%) Hyper-V
6 10 (1.12%) VMware ESXi
6 10 (1.12%) vSphere
7 6 (0.67%) Firmware
8 5 (0.56%) Squid
8 5 (0.56%) Virtual Desktop
9 3 (0.34%) NFS
10 2 (0.22%) OpenSSH
10 2 (0.22%) Postfix
10 2 (0.22%) Sendmail
10 2 (0.22%) Varnish
10 2 (0.22%) Virtual Servers
10 2 (0.22%) VMware Workstation
11 1 (0.11%) ProxySG
11 1 (0.11%) Samba
Systems Management
1 122 (13.63%) Terraform
2 82 (9.16%) Ansible
3 72 (8.04%) Kubernetes
4 44 (4.92%) FortiGate
5 20 (2.23%) Grafana
6 19 (2.12%) Single Sign-On
7 18 (2.01%) Microsoft Intune
8 12 (1.34%) Prometheus
9 10 (1.12%) vCenter Server
10 9 (1.01%) SCCM
11 8 (0.89%) CASB
12 7 (0.78%) Puppet
12 7 (0.78%) QRadar
13 6 (0.67%) Cisco CUCM
13 6 (0.67%) Cisco Prime
14 5 (0.56%) Suricata
14 5 (0.56%) WSUS
15 4 (0.45%) Kustomize
15 4 (0.45%) Podman
15 4 (0.45%) SCOM
Vendors
1 253 (28.27%) Cisco
2 149 (16.65%) Palo Alto
3 139 (15.53%) Microsoft
4 82 (9.16%) F5
4 82 (9.16%) Fortinet
5 68 (7.60%) VMware
6 63 (7.04%) Zscaler
7 62 (6.93%) CheckPoint
8 55 (6.15%) Juniper
9 38 (4.25%) Splunk
10 33 (3.69%) ServiceNow
11 32 (3.58%) SolarWinds
12 28 (3.13%) Aruba
13 24 (2.68%) Citrix
14 23 (2.57%) Google
15 19 (2.12%) ForeScout
16 18 (2.01%) Tenable
17 15 (1.68%) Infoblox
18 14 (1.56%) CyberArk
19 13 (1.45%) Meraki