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 11 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 164 158 184
Rank change year-on-year -6 +26 -19
Contract jobs citing Network Security 886 620 539
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.66% 1.88% 1.38%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 17.64% 15.74% 11.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 595 374 373
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 £663
90th Percentile £735 £721 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £528 £500 £563
% change year-on-year +5.60% -11.11% +7.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 18 6
10th Percentile £26.00 £45.00 £20.75
25th Percentile £42.13 £58.79 £29.75
Median hourly rate £73.00 £80.68 £53.75
Median % change year-on-year -9.51% +50.09% -18.56%
75th Percentile £74.00 £83.53 £58.75
90th Percentile - £89.50 £88.81
UK excluding London median hourly rate £73.00 £80.68 £50.00
% change year-on-year -9.51% +61.35% +163.16%

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 5,024 3,940 4,737
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.41% 11.97% 12.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,970 2,411 2,875
10th Percentile £250 £241 £220
25th Percentile £400 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.63% -5.00% +9.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 360 198 316
10th Percentile £15.24 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £19.79
Median hourly rate £26.07 £46.88 £49.50
Median % change year-on-year -44.38% -5.30% -3.24%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £83.30 £74.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.14 £45.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year -41.91% -18.18% -3.36%

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 11 August 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 11 August 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 11 August 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 -14 772 £540 +2.86% 368
UK excluding London -29 432 £528 +5.60% 216
London -13 344 £550 - 173
Work from Home 0 275 £540 +1.50% 155
North of England -1 186 £528 +8.87% 54
South East -35 117 £557 +13.67% 75
North West -2 103 £536 +12.84% 34
Yorkshire +2 80 £500 +1.63% 18
Midlands -54 52 £463 -19.57% 34
East of England -15 36 £525 -4.55% 18
West Midlands -72 33 £406 -29.35% 20
Scotland -7 29 £600 +29.73% 12
East Midlands +6 18 £638 - 14
South West -56 16 £575 -4.17% 26
Wales -14 2 £538 +44.78% 3
North East -41 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 16 (1.81%) Microsoft Exchange
2 12 (1.35%) Confluence
3 11 (1.24%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.34%) Apache
5 1 (0.11%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.11%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.11%) IIS
5 1 (0.11%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 20 (2.26%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (0.79%) 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 (0.68%) Oracle ERP
1 6 (0.68%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 305 (34.42%) Azure
2 208 (23.48%) AWS
3 115 (12.98%) GCP
4 95 (10.72%) Entra ID
5 36 (4.06%) Microsoft 365
6 35 (3.95%) Azure DevOps
7 32 (3.61%) Azure Sentinel
7 32 (3.61%) GitHub
8 28 (3.16%) Azure Monitor
8 28 (3.16%) SaaS
9 24 (2.71%) Serverless
10 22 (2.48%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 21 (2.37%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 20 (2.26%) Azure AKS
12 20 (2.26%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 19 (2.14%) GitHub Actions
14 16 (1.81%) Akamai
15 15 (1.69%) Azure Key Vault
15 15 (1.69%) OCI
16 14 (1.58%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 396 (44.70%) Firewall
2 201 (22.69%) VPN
3 187 (21.11%) WAN
4 136 (15.35%) LAN
5 130 (14.67%) DNS
6 96 (10.84%) BGP
6 96 (10.84%) TCP/IP
6 96 (10.84%) Wireless
7 89 (10.05%) SD-WAN
8 76 (8.58%) OSPF
9 72 (8.13%) VLAN
10 68 (7.67%) DHCP
11 54 (6.09%) IPsec
12 51 (5.76%) MPLS
12 51 (5.76%) SSL
13 45 (5.08%) Wi-Fi
14 41 (4.63%) Cisco ISE
15 39 (4.40%) Internet
16 38 (4.29%) NGFW
17 37 (4.18%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (1.47%) SQL Server
2 8 (0.90%) Azure SQL Database
3 6 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (0.45%) BigQuery
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%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (0.23%) Amazon Athena
6 2 (0.23%) Delta Lake
6 2 (0.23%) InfluxDB
7 1 (0.11%) Data Mining
7 1 (0.11%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.11%) DataStage
7 1 (0.11%) Looker
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 38 (4.29%) Git
2 33 (3.72%) JIRA
3 25 (2.82%) GitLab
4 21 (2.37%) Jenkins
5 8 (0.90%) Sonatype Nexus
6 6 (0.68%) 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 (0.23%) IBM UrbanCode
10 1 (0.11%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.11%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.11%) Postman
10 1 (0.11%) SoapUI
10 1 (0.11%) Subversion
General
1 214 (24.15%) Social Skills
2 150 (16.93%) Finance
3 73 (8.24%) Analytical Skills
4 59 (6.66%) Banking
5 55 (6.21%) Public Sector
6 44 (4.97%) Documentation Skills
7 26 (2.93%) Financial Institution
8 23 (2.60%) Telecoms
9 21 (2.37%) Legal
10 14 (1.58%) Manufacturing
11 13 (1.47%) Retail
12 12 (1.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 12 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
13 11 (1.24%) Influencing Skills
14 8 (0.90%) Police
15 6 (0.68%) Automotive
15 6 (0.68%) Law
15 6 (0.68%) Local Government
15 6 (0.68%) Presentation Skills
16 4 (0.45%) Military
Job Titles
1 243 (27.43%) Network Engineer
2 179 (20.20%) Architect
3 103 (11.63%) Security Engineer
4 102 (11.51%) Senior
5 96 (10.84%) Security Architect
6 63 (7.11%) Network Architect
7 61 (6.88%) Network Security Engineer
8 56 (6.32%) Consultant
9 46 (5.19%) Senior Network Engineer
10 42 (4.74%) Project Manager
11 40 (4.51%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 40 (4.51%) Lead
12 33 (3.72%) Cloud Engineer
13 27 (3.05%) Security Consultant
14 26 (2.93%) Analyst
15 24 (2.71%) Network Manager
15 24 (2.71%) Network Security Architect
16 21 (2.37%) Azure Engineer
16 21 (2.37%) Solutions Architect
17 19 (2.14%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (4.06%) 802.1X
2 16 (1.81%) SAML
3 12 (1.35%) ARM Templates
3 12 (1.35%) REST
4 10 (1.13%) Kafka
5 6 (0.68%) NETCONF
6 5 (0.56%) .NET
6 5 (0.56%) CSS
6 5 (0.56%) JSON
7 4 (0.45%) gRPC
7 4 (0.45%) HTML
7 4 (0.45%) Keycloak
7 4 (0.45%) OAuth
7 4 (0.45%) OpenID
7 4 (0.45%) Protocol Buffers
7 4 (0.45%) RESTful
7 4 (0.45%) SLSA
7 4 (0.45%) XML
8 3 (0.34%) Azure Blueprints
8 3 (0.34%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 101 (11.40%) Data Centre
2 74 (8.35%) Security Posture
3 51 (5.76%) Cloud Native
4 49 (5.53%) Hybrid Cloud
5 40 (4.51%) Onboarding
6 36 (4.06%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 35 (3.95%) Management Information System
8 30 (3.39%) Operational Technology
9 23 (2.60%) Cyber Threat
10 22 (2.48%) Data Protection Act
10 22 (2.48%) PKI
11 21 (2.37%) Public Cloud
12 20 (2.26%) Self-Motivation
13 19 (2.14%) Security Operations Centre
14 14 (1.58%) Cloud Security Posture
15 13 (1.47%) Enterprise Software
15 13 (1.47%) Linux Command Line
15 13 (1.47%) Product Ownership
16 10 (1.13%) IoT
16 10 (1.13%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 81 (9.14%) Windows
2 72 (8.13%) Linux
3 23 (2.60%) Windows Server
4 14 (1.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 9 (1.02%) Unix
6 7 (0.79%) Windows 10
7 6 (0.68%) Mac OS
7 6 (0.68%) Ubuntu
8 5 (0.56%) VMS
9 3 (0.34%) Android
9 3 (0.34%) Check Point GAiA
9 3 (0.34%) SUSE
10 2 (0.23%) zOS
11 1 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
11 1 (0.11%) Rocky
11 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2003
11 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 177 (19.98%) Cloud Security
2 170 (19.19%) Cybersecurity
3 130 (14.67%) Zero Trust
4 123 (13.88%) CI/CD
5 119 (13.43%) Continuous Improvement
6 118 (13.32%) SIEM
7 117 (13.21%) Stakeholder Management
8 116 (13.09%) Infrastructure as Code
9 115 (12.98%) DevOps
10 107 (12.08%) Migration
11 106 (11.96%) Change Management
12 105 (11.85%) Security Architecture
13 101 (11.40%) Incident Response
14 99 (11.17%) Problem-Solving
15 98 (11.06%) Identity Access Management
16 94 (10.61%) High Availability
17 92 (10.38%) Data Protection
18 89 (10.05%) Threat Modelling
19 86 (9.71%) Load Balancing
20 85 (9.59%) Security Operations
Programming Languages
1 116 (13.09%) Python
2 71 (8.01%) PowerShell
3 58 (6.55%) Bash
4 35 (3.95%) Bicep
5 27 (3.05%) SQL
6 16 (1.81%) JavaScript
7 8 (0.90%) Java
8 7 (0.79%) Shell Script
9 6 (0.68%) Go
10 5 (0.56%) Kusto Query Language
10 5 (0.56%) Search Processing Language
11 4 (0.45%) Rust
12 3 (0.34%) Perl
13 2 (0.23%) Ruby
13 2 (0.23%) VBScript
14 1 (0.11%) C
Qualifications
1 227 (25.62%) Security Cleared
2 159 (17.95%) SC Cleared
3 157 (17.72%) Cisco Certification
4 104 (11.74%) CISSP
5 92 (10.38%) CCNP
6 71 (8.01%) DV Cleared
7 67 (7.56%) Degree
8 58 (6.55%) CCNA
9 57 (6.43%) CISM
10 40 (4.51%) CCSP
11 39 (4.40%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 36 (4.06%) Azure Certification
13 24 (2.71%) CCIE
14 20 (2.26%) AWS Certification
15 15 (1.69%) Computer Science Degree
16 12 (1.35%) CompTIA Security+
17 11 (1.24%) PMP
18 10 (1.13%) BPSS Clearance
18 10 (1.13%) GIAC
19 9 (1.02%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 78 (8.80%) NIST
2 74 (8.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 47 (5.30%) GDPR
4 33 (3.72%) NCSC
5 29 (3.27%) PCI DSS
6 19 (2.14%) QA
6 19 (2.14%) SLA
7 15 (1.69%) GRC
8 13 (1.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 8 (0.90%) Cyber Essentials
9 8 (0.90%) Disclosure Scotland
9 8 (0.90%) NIST 800
10 5 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 5 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 5 (0.56%) SOC 2
11 4 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
11 4 (0.45%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 3 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 3 (0.34%) ISA99
12 3 (0.34%) PMO
System Software
1 82 (9.26%) Active Directory
2 54 (6.09%) VMware Infrastructure
3 27 (3.05%) Docker
4 22 (2.48%) Virtual Machines
5 20 (2.26%) VMware NSX
6 12 (1.35%) Hyper-V
7 11 (1.24%) vSphere
8 7 (0.79%) Virtual Desktop
8 7 (0.79%) VMware ESXi
9 6 (0.68%) Firmware
10 5 (0.56%) Squid
11 3 (0.34%) NFS
12 2 (0.23%) FreeRADIUS
12 2 (0.23%) OpenSSH
12 2 (0.23%) Postfix
12 2 (0.23%) Sendmail
12 2 (0.23%) Varnish
12 2 (0.23%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.23%) VMware Workstation
13 1 (0.11%) ProxySG
Systems Management
1 120 (13.54%) Terraform
2 83 (9.37%) Ansible
3 74 (8.35%) Kubernetes
4 48 (5.42%) FortiGate
5 23 (2.60%) Microsoft Intune
6 22 (2.48%) Grafana
7 18 (2.03%) Single Sign-On
8 13 (1.47%) Prometheus
9 12 (1.35%) CASB
9 12 (1.35%) SCCM
10 8 (0.90%) Progress Chef
10 8 (0.90%) QRadar
11 7 (0.79%) Puppet
11 7 (0.79%) vCenter Server
12 6 (0.68%) Cisco CUCM
12 6 (0.68%) Cisco Prime
13 5 (0.56%) Suricata
13 5 (0.56%) WSUS
14 4 (0.45%) Kustomize
14 4 (0.45%) Podman
Vendors
1 247 (27.88%) Cisco
2 153 (17.27%) Microsoft
3 145 (16.37%) Palo Alto
4 85 (9.59%) Fortinet
5 79 (8.92%) F5
6 69 (7.79%) VMware
7 62 (7.00%) Zscaler
8 56 (6.32%) CheckPoint
9 51 (5.76%) Juniper
10 43 (4.85%) Splunk
11 34 (3.84%) ServiceNow
11 34 (3.84%) SolarWinds
12 30 (3.39%) Aruba
13 24 (2.71%) Google
14 23 (2.60%) Citrix
15 18 (2.03%) Tenable
16 15 (1.69%) CyberArk
16 15 (1.69%) ForeScout
16 15 (1.69%) Meraki
17 14 (1.58%) Infoblox