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

6 months to
21 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 168 152 184
Rank change year-on-year -16 +32 -13
Contract jobs citing Network Security 882 602 534
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.65% 1.84% 1.37%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 17.41% 15.56% 11.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 592 358 365
10th Percentile £400 £375 £363
25th Percentile £463 £446 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £640 £616 £666
90th Percentile £735 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £534 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +6.72% -9.09% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 19 7
10th Percentile £26.00 £45.00 £21.20
25th Percentile £42.13 £60.38 £32.75
Median hourly rate £73.00 £80.68 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.51% +61.35% -24.24%
75th Percentile £74.00 £83.05 £58.75
90th Percentile - £88.00 £82.79
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 5,067 3,869 4,742
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.46% 11.80% 12.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,997 2,360 2,862
10th Percentile £250 £240 £225
25th Percentile £400 £368 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £483 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.52% -3.40% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £473 £500
% change year-on-year +2.22% -5.50% +9.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 370 202 313
10th Percentile £15.18 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £20.50
Median hourly rate £26.14 £46.25 £49.00
Median % change year-on-year -43.48% -5.61% -12.35%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.35 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.14 £45.00 £54.88
% change year-on-year -41.91% -18.00% -4.28%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 -19 771 £550 +4.76% 220
UK excluding London -22 436 £534 +6.72% 171
London -2 336 £550 - 79
Work from Home +5 271 £550 +4.27% 100
North of England +8 200 £528 +8.36% 30
North West -3 113 £537 +13.05% 19
South East -24 112 £560 +14.29% 65
Yorkshire +11 84 £500 +0.81% 9
Midlands -55 49 £500 -4.76% 28
East of England -6 38 £525 -2.78% 18
West Midlands -71 30 £413 -21.43% 19
Scotland -11 27 £600 +33.33% 10
East Midlands -3 18 £638 - 9
South West -66 15 £563 -12.11% 22
Wales -20 2 £538 +7.50% 2
North East -35 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 17 (1.93%) Microsoft Exchange
2 12 (1.36%) Confluence
2 12 (1.36%) SharePoint
3 3 (0.34%) Apache
4 2 (0.23%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.11%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.11%) IIS
5 1 (0.11%) NetWeaver
5 1 (0.11%) nginx
Applications
1 20 (2.27%) 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
1 309 (35.03%) Azure
2 210 (23.81%) AWS
3 113 (12.81%) GCP
4 90 (10.20%) Entra ID
5 42 (4.76%) Microsoft 365
6 38 (4.31%) Azure DevOps
7 33 (3.74%) GitHub
8 32 (3.63%) Azure Monitor
9 28 (3.17%) Azure Sentinel
9 28 (3.17%) SaaS
10 26 (2.95%) Serverless
11 22 (2.49%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 21 (2.38%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 20 (2.27%) Azure AKS
13 20 (2.27%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 20 (2.27%) GitHub Actions
14 16 (1.81%) OCI
15 15 (1.70%) Akamai
15 15 (1.70%) Amazon EKS
16 14 (1.59%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 392 (44.44%) Firewall
2 196 (22.22%) VPN
3 185 (20.98%) WAN
4 133 (15.08%) LAN
5 129 (14.63%) DNS
6 99 (11.22%) Wireless
7 94 (10.66%) BGP
8 93 (10.54%) TCP/IP
9 87 (9.86%) SD-WAN
10 73 (8.28%) DHCP
10 73 (8.28%) OSPF
11 69 (7.82%) VLAN
12 50 (5.67%) MPLS
13 49 (5.56%) Wi-Fi
14 48 (5.44%) IPsec
15 47 (5.33%) SSL
16 44 (4.99%) Cisco ISE
17 39 (4.42%) Cisco ASA
17 39 (4.42%) Internet
18 37 (4.20%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (1.47%) SQL Server
2 8 (0.91%) Azure SQL Database
3 6 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
3 6 (0.68%) BigQuery
4 4 (0.45%) Elasticsearch
4 4 (0.45%) Neo4j
4 4 (0.45%) Power BI
5 3 (0.34%) Data Lake
5 3 (0.34%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (0.23%) Delta Lake
6 2 (0.23%) InfluxDB
7 1 (0.11%) Amazon Athena
7 1 (0.11%) Data Mining
7 1 (0.11%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.11%) Looker
7 1 (0.11%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.11%) Qlik Sense
7 1 (0.11%) Relational Database
7 1 (0.11%) Snowflake Schema
7 1 (0.11%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 37 (4.20%) Git
2 33 (3.74%) JIRA
3 29 (3.29%) GitLab
4 24 (2.72%) Jenkins
5 8 (0.91%) Sonatype Nexus
6 6 (0.68%) Browser DevTools
7 4 (0.45%) MSBuild
7 4 (0.45%) SonarQube
7 4 (0.45%) Visual Studio
8 3 (0.34%) Artifactory
9 2 (0.23%) IBM UrbanCode
9 2 (0.23%) Snyk
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
1 217 (24.60%) Social Skills
2 153 (17.35%) Finance
3 79 (8.96%) Analytical Skills
4 61 (6.92%) Banking
5 53 (6.01%) Public Sector
6 44 (4.99%) Documentation Skills
7 24 (2.72%) Telecoms
8 23 (2.61%) Legal
9 20 (2.27%) Financial Institution
10 14 (1.59%) Manufacturing
10 14 (1.59%) Retail
11 13 (1.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 12 (1.36%) Organisational Skills
13 10 (1.13%) Influencing Skills
14 8 (0.91%) Police
15 6 (0.68%) Automotive
15 6 (0.68%) Local Government
15 6 (0.68%) Presentation Skills
16 5 (0.57%) Front Office
16 5 (0.57%) Law
Job Titles
1 242 (27.44%) Network Engineer
2 164 (18.59%) Architect
3 106 (12.02%) Senior
4 103 (11.68%) Security Engineer
5 86 (9.75%) Security Architect
6 59 (6.69%) Network Security Engineer
7 58 (6.58%) Consultant
8 57 (6.46%) Network Architect
9 50 (5.67%) Senior Network Engineer
10 43 (4.88%) Project Manager
11 42 (4.76%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 39 (4.42%) Lead
13 38 (4.31%) Cloud Engineer
14 30 (3.40%) Security Consultant
15 29 (3.29%) Analyst
16 24 (2.72%) Network Manager
17 22 (2.49%) Azure Engineer
18 21 (2.38%) Network Security Architect
18 21 (2.38%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
19 20 (2.27%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 126 (14.29%) Terraform
2 35 (3.97%) 802.1X
3 15 (1.70%) REST
4 14 (1.59%) ARM Templates
4 14 (1.59%) SAML
5 10 (1.13%) Kafka
6 6 (0.68%) JSON
6 6 (0.68%) NETCONF
7 5 (0.57%) .NET
7 5 (0.57%) OpenID
7 5 (0.57%) XML
8 4 (0.45%) Azure Blueprints
8 4 (0.45%) CSS
8 4 (0.45%) gRPC
8 4 (0.45%) Keycloak
8 4 (0.45%) OAuth
8 4 (0.45%) Protocol Buffers
8 4 (0.45%) RESTful
8 4 (0.45%) SLSA
9 3 (0.34%) ModSecurity
Miscellaneous
1 104 (11.79%) Data Centre
2 77 (8.73%) Security Posture
3 51 (5.78%) Cloud Native
4 47 (5.33%) Hybrid Cloud
5 39 (4.42%) Management Information System
5 39 (4.42%) Onboarding
6 37 (4.20%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 28 (3.17%) Operational Technology
8 26 (2.95%) Cyber Threat
9 25 (2.83%) PKI
10 23 (2.61%) Data Protection Act
11 21 (2.38%) Public Cloud
11 21 (2.38%) Self-Motivation
12 20 (2.27%) Security Operations Centre
13 17 (1.93%) Cloud Security Posture
14 13 (1.47%) Enterprise Software
14 13 (1.47%) Linux Command Line
14 13 (1.47%) Product Ownership
15 10 (1.13%) Replication
16 9 (1.02%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 86 (9.75%) Windows
2 77 (8.73%) Linux
3 27 (3.06%) Windows Server
4 15 (1.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 8 (0.91%) Windows 10
6 7 (0.79%) Unix
7 6 (0.68%) Mac OS
7 6 (0.68%) Ubuntu
8 5 (0.57%) VMS
9 3 (0.34%) Check Point GAiA
9 3 (0.34%) SUSE
10 2 (0.23%) Android
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 2016
11 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 178 (20.18%) Cloud Security
2 177 (20.07%) Cybersecurity
3 134 (15.19%) Zero Trust
4 127 (14.40%) Stakeholder Management
5 124 (14.06%) CI/CD
6 122 (13.83%) Continuous Improvement
7 120 (13.61%) Infrastructure as Code
8 110 (12.47%) DevOps
9 109 (12.36%) Change Management
9 109 (12.36%) Migration
9 109 (12.36%) SIEM
10 108 (12.24%) Incident Response
11 103 (11.68%) Problem-Solving
12 97 (11.00%) Security Architecture
13 95 (10.77%) High Availability
13 95 (10.77%) Identity Access Management
14 94 (10.66%) Data Protection
15 90 (10.20%) Security Operations
16 88 (9.98%) Load Balancing
16 88 (9.98%) Threat Modelling
Programming Languages
1 130 (14.74%) Python
2 80 (9.07%) PowerShell
3 67 (7.60%) Bash
4 39 (4.42%) Bicep
5 29 (3.29%) SQL
6 12 (1.36%) JavaScript
7 10 (1.13%) Go
7 10 (1.13%) Java
8 7 (0.79%) Search Processing Language
8 7 (0.79%) Shell Script
9 6 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
10 4 (0.45%) Rust
11 3 (0.34%) Perl
11 3 (0.34%) VBScript
12 2 (0.23%) C
12 2 (0.23%) Ruby
13 1 (0.11%) C++
Qualifications
1 224 (25.40%) Security Cleared
2 161 (18.25%) SC Cleared
3 158 (17.91%) Cisco Certification
4 106 (12.02%) CISSP
5 95 (10.77%) CCNP
6 70 (7.94%) Degree
7 68 (7.71%) DV Cleared
8 56 (6.35%) CCNA
9 55 (6.24%) CISM
10 42 (4.76%) CCSP
11 40 (4.54%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 38 (4.31%) Azure Certification
13 24 (2.72%) AWS Certification
13 24 (2.72%) CCIE
14 16 (1.81%) Computer Science Degree
15 11 (1.25%) GIAC
15 11 (1.25%) PMP
16 10 (1.13%) BPSS Clearance
16 10 (1.13%) CompTIA Security+
17 9 (1.02%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 79 (8.96%) NIST
2 78 (8.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 48 (5.44%) GDPR
4 32 (3.63%) NCSC
5 31 (3.51%) PCI DSS
6 19 (2.15%) QA
7 17 (1.93%) SLA
8 15 (1.70%) GRC
9 14 (1.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 8 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
10 8 (0.91%) Disclosure Scotland
10 8 (0.91%) NIST 800
11 5 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 5 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 5 (0.57%) SOC 2
12 4 (0.45%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 3 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
13 3 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 3 (0.34%) ISA99
13 3 (0.34%) PMO
System Software
1 83 (9.41%) Active Directory
2 57 (6.46%) VMware Infrastructure
3 29 (3.29%) Docker
4 21 (2.38%) Virtual Machines
5 19 (2.15%) VMware NSX
6 14 (1.59%) Hyper-V
7 11 (1.25%) vSphere
8 8 (0.91%) Virtual Desktop
8 8 (0.91%) VMware ESXi
9 6 (0.68%) Firmware
10 5 (0.57%) 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 89 (10.09%) Ansible
2 74 (8.39%) Kubernetes
3 46 (5.22%) FortiGate
4 23 (2.61%) Microsoft Intune
5 22 (2.49%) Grafana
6 17 (1.93%) Single Sign-On
7 14 (1.59%) SCCM
8 13 (1.47%) Prometheus
9 12 (1.36%) CASB
9 12 (1.36%) Progress Chef
10 7 (0.79%) Cisco Prime
10 7 (0.79%) Puppet
10 7 (0.79%) QRadar
10 7 (0.79%) vCenter Server
11 6 (0.68%) Cisco CUCM
12 5 (0.57%) Suricata
12 5 (0.57%) WSUS
13 4 (0.45%) Kustomize
13 4 (0.45%) Podman
13 4 (0.45%) systemd
Vendors
1 245 (27.78%) Cisco
2 158 (17.91%) Microsoft
3 145 (16.44%) Palo Alto
4 85 (9.64%) Fortinet
5 76 (8.62%) F5
6 74 (8.39%) VMware
7 57 (6.46%) Zscaler
8 54 (6.12%) CheckPoint
9 42 (4.76%) Juniper
9 42 (4.76%) Splunk
10 36 (4.08%) SolarWinds
11 33 (3.74%) ServiceNow
12 31 (3.51%) Aruba
13 28 (3.17%) Google
14 21 (2.38%) Citrix
15 15 (1.70%) ForeScout
15 15 (1.70%) Meraki
15 15 (1.70%) Tenable
16 14 (1.59%) CyberArk
16 14 (1.59%) Infoblox