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 8 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 184 146 153
Rank change year-on-year -38 +7 +82
Contract jobs citing Network Security 563 635 790
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.55% 1.78% 1.74%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 14.27% 14.34% 12.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 350 396 528
10th Percentile £350 £361 £400
25th Percentile £413 £429 £474
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £588 £625 £638
90th Percentile £689 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £489 £500 £550
% change year-on-year -2.30% -9.09% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 13 5
10th Percentile £39.60 £21.80 £65.00
25th Percentile £45.00 £36.00 £68.75
Median hourly rate £66.50 £41.00 £72.50
Median % change year-on-year +62.20% -43.45% +61.11%
75th Percentile £85.00 £50.00 £76.25
90th Percentile £94.50 £58.75 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £45.50 £72.50
% change year-on-year +42.86% -37.24% +61.11%

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 3,946 4,427 6,289
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.88% 12.40% 13.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,569 2,561 3,890
10th Percentile £206 £220 £211
25th Percentile £356 £370 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £584 £600 £613
90th Percentile £675 £685 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 186 165 349
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.95 £17.72
25th Percentile £20.04 £22.50 £22.75
Median hourly rate £33.39 £41.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.57% -25.45% +25.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.98
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £76.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £48.03 £56.49
% change year-on-year -11.51% -14.98% +25.53%

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 8 December 2025.

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 8 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Network Security in the UK

Network Security
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 Security within the UK over the 6 months to 8 December 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 -27 500 £500 -4.76% 338
UK excluding London -42 278 £489 -2.30% 300
London -11 229 £515 -6.36% 81
Work from Home -45 143 £518 +3.60% 168
North of England -33 97 £466 -6.75% 60
Midlands -21 70 £500 -14.13% 39
North West +9 66 £492 +0.92% 39
West Midlands 0 66 £500 -20.32% 21
South East -41 57 £425 -20.19% 117
Yorkshire -39 45 £205 -59.00% 19
South West -18 22 £575 +9.52% 36
East of England -13 21 £488 +44.44% 32
Scotland +8 20 £475 +18.75% 12
East Midlands -29 4 £650 +73.33% 17
Wales -5 3 £471 +102.69% 8
Northern Ireland - 3 £500 - 2
Channel Islands - 2 £725 - 1
North East -5 1 £550 -32.52% 3

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 6 (1.07%) Confluence
2 5 (0.89%) SharePoint
3 4 (0.71%) Apache
4 3 (0.53%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.18%) IIS
5 1 (0.18%) nginx
5 1 (0.18%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 15 (2.66%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (0.89%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.36%) Microsoft Excel
4 2 (0.36%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.18%) Windchill
Cloud Services
1 145 (25.75%) Azure
2 128 (22.74%) AWS
3 45 (7.99%) GCP
4 27 (4.80%) Microsoft 365
5 26 (4.62%) Entra ID
6 23 (4.09%) Amazon S3
7 22 (3.91%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 19 (3.37%) Amazon EC2
9 17 (3.02%) Azure DevOps
9 17 (3.02%) GitHub
10 16 (2.84%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 16 (2.84%) Amazon ELB
11 15 (2.66%) GitHub Actions
12 13 (2.31%) Azure Key Vault
12 13 (2.31%) Azure Sentinel
13 12 (2.13%) Azure Monitor
13 12 (2.13%) IaaS
13 12 (2.13%) Serverless
14 11 (1.95%) Google Workspace
15 10 (1.78%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 279 (49.56%) Firewall
2 113 (20.07%) VPN
3 103 (18.29%) DNS
4 91 (16.16%) WAN
5 63 (11.19%) BGP
6 60 (10.66%) SSL
7 58 (10.30%) LAN
7 58 (10.30%) TCP/IP
8 55 (9.77%) SD-WAN
9 48 (8.53%) OSPF
10 43 (7.64%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
11 42 (7.46%) VLAN
11 42 (7.46%) Wireless
12 36 (6.39%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
13 33 (5.86%) DMZ
14 28 (4.97%) Internet
15 26 (4.62%) Intrusion Detection
16 23 (4.09%) HTTP
17 21 (3.73%) DHCP
18 20 (3.55%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (0.53%) Amazon Athena
1 3 (0.53%) Amazon RDS
1 3 (0.53%) Azure SQL Database
1 3 (0.53%) InfluxDB
1 3 (0.53%) Relational Database
2 2 (0.36%) Data Lake
2 2 (0.36%) Power BI
3 1 (0.18%) GIS
3 1 (0.18%) MySQL
3 1 (0.18%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (0.18%) Redis
3 1 (0.18%) SQL Server
3 1 (0.18%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 24 (4.26%) Jenkins
2 22 (3.91%) Git
2 22 (3.91%) GitLab
3 6 (1.07%) JIRA
4 1 (0.18%) Burp Suite
4 1 (0.18%) Metasploit
4 1 (0.18%) SonarQube
4 1 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
4 1 (0.18%) Subversion
General
1 184 (32.68%) Social Skills
2 91 (16.16%) Analytical Skills
3 58 (10.30%) Finance
4 47 (8.35%) Public Sector
5 36 (6.39%) Banking
6 21 (3.73%) Telecoms
7 19 (3.37%) Documentation Skills
8 16 (2.84%) Investment Banking
9 11 (1.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 10 (1.78%) Pharmaceutical
11 9 (1.60%) Manufacturing
12 8 (1.42%) Legal
13 7 (1.24%) Military
13 7 (1.24%) Presentation Skills
14 6 (1.07%) Financial Institution
15 5 (0.89%) Influencing Skills
15 5 (0.89%) Law
15 5 (0.89%) Organisational Skills
16 3 (0.53%) Aerospace
16 3 (0.53%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 121 (21.49%) Network Engineer
2 107 (19.01%) Security Engineer
3 97 (17.23%) Architect
4 58 (10.30%) Network Security Engineer
5 56 (9.95%) Security Architect
6 46 (8.17%) Senior
7 41 (7.28%) Analyst
8 37 (6.57%) Network Architect
9 29 (5.15%) Consultant
10 24 (4.26%) Lead
11 20 (3.55%) Administrator
11 20 (3.55%) Cybersecurity Engineer
12 19 (3.37%) SOC Analyst
13 18 (3.20%) Network Security Architect
13 18 (3.20%) Security Analyst
14 16 (2.84%) IT Engineer
14 16 (2.84%) Operations Engineer
15 14 (2.49%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 14 (2.49%) Project Manager
15 14 (2.49%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (2.66%) 802.1X
2 14 (2.49%) LDAP
3 8 (1.42%) .NET
4 6 (1.07%) ARM Templates
4 6 (1.07%) Node.js
4 6 (1.07%) SAML
5 5 (0.89%) .NET Core
5 5 (0.89%) AngularJS
5 5 (0.89%) PyTorch
5 5 (0.89%) React
5 5 (0.89%) TensorFlow
6 4 (0.71%) RabbitMQ
7 3 (0.53%) Elastic Stack
7 3 (0.53%) Lambda Expressions
7 3 (0.53%) Plotly
8 2 (0.36%) ADO
8 2 (0.36%) OAuth
8 2 (0.36%) OAuth2
8 2 (0.36%) SailPoint
8 2 (0.36%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 42 (7.46%) Data Centre
2 41 (7.28%) Management Information System
2 41 (7.28%) Security Posture
3 28 (4.97%) Hybrid Cloud
4 24 (4.26%) Cloud Native
5 20 (3.55%) Cyber Threat
6 19 (3.37%) Operational Technology
6 19 (3.37%) Security Operations Centre
7 17 (3.02%) Onboarding
7 17 (3.02%) PKI
8 16 (2.84%) Analytical Mindset
9 14 (2.49%) Public Cloud
10 12 (2.13%) Cloud Security Posture
10 12 (2.13%) Data Protection Act
11 11 (1.95%) Cyberattack
11 11 (1.95%) Virtual Team
12 10 (1.78%) CSOC
12 10 (1.78%) Cyber Security Posture
13 9 (1.60%) SCADA
14 8 (1.42%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 86 (15.28%) Windows
2 72 (12.79%) Linux
3 22 (3.91%) Windows Server
4 15 (2.66%) Unix
5 5 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 4 (0.71%) VMS
7 3 (0.53%) Mac OS
8 2 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
9 1 (0.18%) CentOS
9 1 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
9 1 (0.18%) Kali Linux
9 1 (0.18%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.18%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 135 (23.98%) Cybersecurity
2 116 (20.60%) Problem-Solving
3 107 (19.01%) Incident Response
4 106 (18.83%) SIEM
5 91 (16.16%) Cloud Security
6 70 (12.43%) CI/CD
7 69 (12.26%) DevOps
8 68 (12.08%) Infrastructure as Code
9 60 (10.66%) Change Management
10 55 (9.77%) Migration
11 54 (9.59%) Zero Trust
12 53 (9.41%) Identity Access Management
13 51 (9.06%) Network Architecture
14 50 (8.88%) Security Operations
15 49 (8.70%) Security Architecture
15 49 (8.70%) Threat Modelling
16 47 (8.35%) Load Balancing
17 45 (7.99%) Vulnerability Management
18 44 (7.82%) Network Design
19 43 (7.64%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 112 (19.89%) Python
2 63 (11.19%) PowerShell
3 38 (6.75%) Bash
4 17 (3.02%) SQL
5 16 (2.84%) Bicep
6 10 (1.78%) JavaScript
6 10 (1.78%) Kusto Query Language
7 6 (1.07%) Go
7 6 (1.07%) Java
8 5 (0.89%) C#
9 4 (0.71%) Perl
10 3 (0.53%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.36%) C
11 2 (0.36%) C++
11 2 (0.36%) C-shell
11 2 (0.36%) Korn
12 1 (0.18%) Rust
12 1 (0.18%) T-SQL
12 1 (0.18%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 146 (25.93%) Security Cleared
2 100 (17.76%) Cisco Certification
3 99 (17.58%) SC Cleared
4 78 (13.85%) CCNP
4 78 (13.85%) CISSP
5 46 (8.17%) DV Cleared
6 43 (7.64%) Degree
7 37 (6.57%) CISM
8 29 (5.15%) CCIE
9 26 (4.62%) GIAC
10 24 (4.26%) CEH
11 21 (3.73%) CCNA
12 18 (3.20%) CompTIA Security+
13 16 (2.84%) Azure Certification
13 16 (2.84%) Computer Science Degree
14 15 (2.66%) AWS Certification
15 14 (2.49%) CCSA
16 13 (2.31%) CCSP
17 12 (2.13%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 9 (1.60%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 70 (12.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 67 (11.90%) NIST
3 45 (7.99%) GDPR
4 34 (6.04%) PCI DSS
5 16 (2.84%) NCSC
6 12 (2.13%) Cyber Essentials
7 11 (1.95%) GRC
7 11 (1.95%) HIPAA
8 6 (1.07%) SLA
8 6 (1.07%) SOC 2
9 5 (0.89%) PSD2
9 5 (0.89%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 4 (0.71%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 3 (0.53%) JSP 440
11 3 (0.53%) QA
12 2 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 2 (0.36%) GxP
12 2 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27005
12 2 (0.36%) PMO
13 1 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 38 (6.75%) Docker
2 37 (6.57%) Active Directory
2 37 (6.57%) VMware Infrastructure
3 10 (1.78%) Firmware
4 7 (1.24%) Virtual Machines
4 7 (1.24%) VMware NSX
5 5 (0.89%) Hyper-V
6 4 (0.71%) ProxySG
6 4 (0.71%) vSphere
7 3 (0.53%) Virtual Servers
8 1 (0.18%) KVM
8 1 (0.18%) RACF
8 1 (0.18%) XenApp
8 1 (0.18%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 81 (14.39%) Terraform
2 50 (8.88%) Ansible
3 30 (5.33%) Kubernetes
4 22 (3.91%) FortiGate
5 11 (1.95%) QRadar
6 7 (1.24%) Microsoft Intune
7 6 (1.07%) CASB
7 6 (1.07%) Grafana
7 6 (1.07%) Prometheus
7 6 (1.07%) Single Sign-On
8 5 (0.89%) Kibana
8 5 (0.89%) SCCM
9 4 (0.71%) CA Spectrum
10 3 (0.53%) Progress Chef
11 2 (0.36%) Jamf Pro
11 2 (0.36%) Nessus
11 2 (0.36%) Puppet
12 1 (0.18%) Fluentd
12 1 (0.18%) HP Fortify
12 1 (0.18%) VxRail
Vendors
1 135 (23.98%) Cisco
2 107 (19.01%) Palo Alto
3 94 (16.70%) Microsoft
4 91 (16.16%) F5
5 60 (10.66%) CheckPoint
6 47 (8.35%) Juniper
6 47 (8.35%) Zscaler
7 46 (8.17%) VMware
8 45 (7.99%) Fortinet
9 31 (5.51%) Splunk
10 27 (4.80%) Meraki
11 23 (4.09%) Google
12 21 (3.73%) CrowdStrike
12 21 (3.73%) SolarWinds
13 14 (2.49%) Tenable
14 13 (2.31%) Blue Coat
15 12 (2.13%) ServiceNow
16 11 (1.95%) ArcSight
16 11 (1.95%) Forcepoint
17 10 (1.78%) Qualys