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

6 months to
10 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 163 148 182
Rank change year-on-year -15 +34 -16
Contract jobs citing Network Security 880 621 537
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.65% 1.87% 1.38%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 17.58% 15.67% 11.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 592 374 373
10th Percentile £400 £375 £363
25th Percentile £463 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £542 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +3.19% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £650 £613 £663
90th Percentile £737 £721 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £530 £500 £563
% change year-on-year +5.90% -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 5,006 3,963 4,708
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.38% 11.95% 12.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,963 2,424 2,875
10th Percentile £250 £240 £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 +3.58% -5.00% +9.89%
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% -4.61%
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% -4.21%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 -14 767 £542 +3.19% 363
UK excluding London -32 426 £530 +5.90% 204
London -9 344 £550 - 177
Work from Home +11 271 £540 +1.50% 158
North of England +6 183 £528 +8.87% 49
South East -38 117 £557 +13.67% 71
North West -6 103 £536 +12.84% 28
Yorkshire +3 77 £500 +1.63% 19
Midlands -50 50 £425 -26.09% 34
East of England -12 36 £525 -4.55% 17
West Midlands -69 31 £400 -30.43% 20
Scotland -5 29 £600 +29.73% 12
East Midlands +8 18 £638 - 14
South West -63 15 £563 -6.25% 23
Wales -19 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 (1.82%) Microsoft Exchange
2 12 (1.36%) Confluence
3 11 (1.25%) 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 (2.27%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (0.80%) 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
1 299 (33.98%) Azure
2 204 (23.18%) AWS
3 112 (12.73%) GCP
4 95 (10.80%) Entra ID
5 36 (4.09%) Microsoft 365
6 33 (3.75%) Azure DevOps
6 33 (3.75%) Azure Sentinel
6 33 (3.75%) GitHub
7 28 (3.18%) Azure Monitor
7 28 (3.18%) SaaS
8 24 (2.73%) Serverless
9 21 (2.39%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 20 (2.27%) Azure ExpressRoute
10 20 (2.27%) GitHub Actions
11 19 (2.16%) Azure AKS
12 18 (2.05%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 16 (1.82%) Akamai
14 15 (1.70%) Azure Key Vault
14 15 (1.70%) OCI
15 13 (1.48%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 392 (44.55%) Firewall
2 198 (22.50%) VPN
3 182 (20.68%) WAN
4 132 (15.00%) LAN
5 129 (14.66%) DNS
6 95 (10.80%) TCP/IP
6 95 (10.80%) Wireless
7 94 (10.68%) BGP
8 87 (9.89%) SD-WAN
9 75 (8.52%) OSPF
10 72 (8.18%) VLAN
11 66 (7.50%) DHCP
12 54 (6.14%) IPsec
13 51 (5.80%) SSL
14 49 (5.57%) MPLS
15 44 (5.00%) Wi-Fi
16 41 (4.66%) Cisco ISE
17 39 (4.43%) Internet
18 38 (4.32%) NGFW
19 36 (4.09%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (1.48%) SQL Server
2 8 (0.91%) Azure SQL Database
3 6 (0.68%) 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%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (0.23%) Amazon Athena
6 2 (0.23%) BigQuery
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 39 (4.43%) Git
2 34 (3.86%) JIRA
3 26 (2.95%) GitLab
4 21 (2.39%) Jenkins
5 8 (0.91%) 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
9 2 (0.23%) Postman
10 1 (0.11%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.11%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.11%) JUnit
10 1 (0.11%) SoapUI
10 1 (0.11%) Subversion
10 1 (0.11%) Zephyr
General
1 210 (23.86%) Social Skills
2 148 (16.82%) Finance
3 73 (8.30%) Analytical Skills
4 59 (6.70%) Banking
5 55 (6.25%) Public Sector
6 44 (5.00%) Documentation Skills
7 25 (2.84%) Financial Institution
8 24 (2.73%) Telecoms
9 20 (2.27%) Legal
10 14 (1.59%) Manufacturing
10 14 (1.59%) Retail
11 12 (1.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 12 (1.36%) Organisational Skills
12 11 (1.25%) Influencing Skills
13 8 (0.91%) Police
14 6 (0.68%) Automotive
14 6 (0.68%) Law
14 6 (0.68%) Local Government
14 6 (0.68%) Presentation Skills
15 4 (0.45%) Military
Job Titles
1 241 (27.39%) Network Engineer
2 180 (20.45%) Architect
3 102 (11.59%) Security Engineer
4 98 (11.14%) Senior
5 97 (11.02%) Security Architect
6 63 (7.16%) Network Architect
7 61 (6.93%) Network Security Engineer
8 55 (6.25%) Consultant
9 44 (5.00%) Senior Network Engineer
10 42 (4.77%) Project Manager
11 39 (4.43%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 39 (4.43%) Lead
12 31 (3.52%) Cloud Engineer
13 26 (2.95%) Analyst
13 26 (2.95%) Security Consultant
14 24 (2.73%) Network Manager
14 24 (2.73%) Network Security Architect
15 21 (2.39%) Solutions Architect
16 19 (2.16%) DevOps Engineer
16 19 (2.16%) Senior Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (4.09%) 802.1X
2 16 (1.82%) SAML
3 13 (1.48%) REST
4 12 (1.36%) ARM Templates
5 10 (1.14%) Kafka
6 6 (0.68%) NETCONF
7 5 (0.57%) .NET
7 5 (0.57%) CSS
7 5 (0.57%) HTML
7 5 (0.57%) JSON
8 4 (0.45%) gRPC
8 4 (0.45%) Keycloak
8 4 (0.45%) OAuth
8 4 (0.45%) OpenID
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%) ModSecurity
9 3 (0.34%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 101 (11.48%) Data Centre
2 71 (8.07%) Security Posture
3 50 (5.68%) Cloud Native
4 49 (5.57%) Hybrid Cloud
5 39 (4.43%) Onboarding
6 36 (4.09%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 35 (3.98%) Management Information System
8 29 (3.30%) Operational Technology
9 22 (2.50%) Cyber Threat
9 22 (2.50%) Data Protection Act
9 22 (2.50%) PKI
10 21 (2.39%) Public Cloud
11 20 (2.27%) Self-Motivation
12 18 (2.05%) Security Operations Centre
13 14 (1.59%) Linux Command Line
14 13 (1.48%) Enterprise Software
14 13 (1.48%) Product Ownership
15 12 (1.36%) Cloud Security Posture
16 10 (1.14%) IoT
16 10 (1.14%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 81 (9.20%) Windows
2 73 (8.30%) Linux
3 24 (2.73%) Windows Server
4 14 (1.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 9 (1.02%) Unix
6 7 (0.80%) Mac OS
6 7 (0.80%) Windows 10
7 6 (0.68%) Ubuntu
8 5 (0.57%) 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
1 174 (19.77%) Cloud Security
2 166 (18.86%) Cybersecurity
3 129 (14.66%) Zero Trust
4 121 (13.75%) CI/CD
5 119 (13.52%) SIEM
6 117 (13.30%) Continuous Improvement
7 113 (12.84%) DevOps
8 112 (12.73%) Infrastructure as Code
8 112 (12.73%) Stakeholder Management
9 108 (12.27%) Migration
10 106 (12.05%) Security Architecture
11 104 (11.82%) Change Management
12 99 (11.25%) Identity Access Management
13 98 (11.14%) Incident Response
14 97 (11.02%) Problem-Solving
15 93 (10.57%) Data Protection
16 91 (10.34%) High Availability
17 88 (10.00%) Threat Modelling
18 85 (9.66%) Load Balancing
19 84 (9.55%) Security Operations
Programming Languages
1 112 (12.73%) Python
2 73 (8.30%) PowerShell
3 57 (6.48%) Bash
4 36 (4.09%) Bicep
5 27 (3.07%) SQL
6 16 (1.82%) JavaScript
7 8 (0.91%) Java
8 7 (0.80%) Shell Script
9 6 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
10 5 (0.57%) Search Processing Language
11 4 (0.45%) Rust
12 3 (0.34%) Go
12 3 (0.34%) Perl
13 2 (0.23%) Ruby
13 2 (0.23%) VBScript
14 1 (0.11%) AppleScript
14 1 (0.11%) C
Qualifications
1 226 (25.68%) Security Cleared
2 157 (17.84%) SC Cleared
3 154 (17.50%) Cisco Certification
4 104 (11.82%) CISSP
5 89 (10.11%) CCNP
6 72 (8.18%) DV Cleared
7 67 (7.61%) Degree
8 56 (6.36%) CCNA
8 56 (6.36%) CISM
9 40 (4.55%) CCSP
10 39 (4.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 35 (3.98%) Azure Certification
12 23 (2.61%) CCIE
13 19 (2.16%) AWS Certification
14 15 (1.70%) Computer Science Degree
15 12 (1.36%) CompTIA Security+
16 11 (1.25%) PMP
17 10 (1.14%) BPSS Clearance
17 10 (1.14%) GIAC
18 9 (1.02%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 78 (8.86%) NIST
2 74 (8.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 47 (5.34%) GDPR
4 32 (3.64%) NCSC
5 29 (3.30%) PCI DSS
6 19 (2.16%) QA
6 19 (2.16%) SLA
7 15 (1.70%) GRC
8 13 (1.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 8 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
9 8 (0.91%) Disclosure Scotland
9 8 (0.91%) NIST 800
10 5 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 5 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 5 (0.57%) SOC 2
11 4 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
12 3 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 3 (0.34%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 3 (0.34%) ISA99
12 3 (0.34%) PMO
System Software
1 83 (9.43%) Active Directory
2 54 (6.14%) VMware Infrastructure
3 27 (3.07%) Docker
4 21 (2.39%) Virtual Machines
5 20 (2.27%) VMware NSX
6 12 (1.36%) Hyper-V
7 11 (1.25%) vSphere
8 7 (0.80%) VMware ESXi
9 6 (0.68%) Firmware
9 6 (0.68%) Virtual Desktop
10 5 (0.57%) Squid
11 3 (0.34%) NFS
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%) FreeRADIUS
13 1 (0.11%) ProxySG
Systems Management
1 116 (13.18%) Terraform
2 83 (9.43%) Ansible
3 70 (7.95%) Kubernetes
4 45 (5.11%) FortiGate
5 24 (2.73%) Microsoft Intune
6 22 (2.50%) Grafana
7 19 (2.16%) Single Sign-On
8 13 (1.48%) Prometheus
9 12 (1.36%) CASB
9 12 (1.36%) SCCM
10 8 (0.91%) Progress Chef
11 7 (0.80%) Puppet
11 7 (0.80%) QRadar
11 7 (0.80%) vCenter Server
12 6 (0.68%) Cisco CUCM
12 6 (0.68%) Cisco Prime
13 5 (0.57%) Suricata
13 5 (0.57%) WSUS
14 4 (0.45%) Kustomize
14 4 (0.45%) Podman
Vendors
1 244 (27.73%) Cisco
2 149 (16.93%) Microsoft
3 143 (16.25%) Palo Alto
4 81 (9.20%) Fortinet
5 79 (8.98%) F5
6 69 (7.84%) VMware
7 64 (7.27%) Zscaler
8 56 (6.36%) CheckPoint
9 52 (5.91%) Juniper
10 42 (4.77%) Splunk
11 35 (3.98%) ServiceNow
12 32 (3.64%) SolarWinds
13 29 (3.30%) Aruba
14 23 (2.61%) Citrix
15 22 (2.50%) Google
16 18 (2.05%) Tenable
17 15 (1.70%) CyberArk
17 15 (1.70%) ForeScout
18 14 (1.59%) Infoblox
18 14 (1.59%) Meraki