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 3 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 153 142 182
Rank change year-on-year -11 +40 -8
Contract jobs citing Network Security 843 555 552
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.73% 1.93% 1.28%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 17.77% 15.30% 10.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 571 335 378
10th Percentile £400 £370 £375
25th Percentile £447 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £564
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -7.76% +0.45%
75th Percentile £624 £613 £669
90th Percentile £700 £700 £754
UK excluding London median daily rate £515 £490 £575
% change year-on-year +5.00% -14.78% +9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 8 17
10th Percentile £27.20 £69.74 -
25th Percentile £42.13 £80.34 £7.43
Median hourly rate £65.00 £81.35 £19.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.10% +328.16% -65.45%
75th Percentile £74.00 £82.58 £41.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £88.80 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.50 £81.35 £7.43
% change year-on-year -19.48% +994.89% -66.62%

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 4,745 3,627 5,426
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.71% 12.61% 12.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,903 2,250 3,234
10th Percentile £263 £219 £206
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -2.44%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £465 £480
% change year-on-year +2.10% -2.97% +0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 282 161 417
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.79 £16.30
Median hourly rate £28.96 £41.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -29.37% +2.50% +118.16%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.13 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.93 £81.01 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £31.08 £45.88
% change year-on-year +4.57% -32.26% +154.89%

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 3 June 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 3 June 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 3 June 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 -2 729 £525 - 346
UK excluding London -13 413 £515 +5.00% 268
London -5 317 £550 -4.35% 132
Work from Home +14 248 £534 +5.74% 180
North of England -2 163 £500 - 83
South East -23 104 £520 +6.12% 77
North West +10 92 £498 -1.49% 54
Yorkshire -19 68 £500 +2.04% 24
Midlands -43 48 £450 -14.29% 27
East of England -20 36 £525 -6.67% 22
Scotland +8 34 £538 +26.47% 25
South West -21 33 £550 - 29
West Midlands -59 30 £435 -17.14% 19
East Midlands -14 17 £638 - 8
Wales -20 3 £600 +106.90% 13
North East -28 3 £538 -14.00% 9

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 22 (2.61%) Confluence
2 13 (1.54%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (0.83%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.24%) Apache
5 1 (0.12%) nginx
Applications
1 14 (1.66%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (1.42%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.24%) Microsoft Excel
5 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 5 (0.59%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 261 (30.96%) Azure
2 182 (21.59%) AWS
3 111 (13.17%) GCP
4 68 (8.07%) Entra ID
5 34 (4.03%) GitHub
6 30 (3.56%) Azure Sentinel
7 27 (3.20%) Azure DevOps
7 27 (3.20%) GitHub Actions
8 22 (2.61%) Microsoft 365
8 22 (2.61%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 21 (2.49%) Azure ExpressRoute
10 19 (2.25%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 17 (2.02%) AWS CloudFormation
11 17 (2.02%) Azure Key Vault
12 16 (1.90%) Akamai
12 16 (1.90%) AWS Direct Connect
12 16 (1.90%) Azure AKS
12 16 (1.90%) Azure Monitor
12 16 (1.90%) SaaS
12 16 (1.90%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 383 (45.43%) Firewall
2 172 (20.40%) VPN
3 150 (17.79%) WAN
4 121 (14.35%) LAN
5 103 (12.22%) BGP
6 101 (11.98%) DNS
7 89 (10.56%) OSPF
8 80 (9.49%) SD-WAN
9 77 (9.13%) VLAN
10 70 (8.30%) TCP/IP
11 68 (8.07%) Wireless
12 52 (6.17%) DHCP
12 52 (6.17%) MPLS
13 43 (5.10%) IPsec
13 43 (5.10%) SSL
14 39 (4.63%) Wi-Fi
15 36 (4.27%) Cisco ISE
16 33 (3.91%) Cisco ASA
17 31 (3.68%) HTTP
17 31 (3.68%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (0.95%) Azure SQL Database
2 5 (0.59%) SQL Server
3 4 (0.47%) Amazon RDS
3 4 (0.47%) Neo4j
4 3 (0.36%) Amazon Athena
4 3 (0.36%) Elasticsearch
4 3 (0.36%) InfluxDB
4 3 (0.36%) Power BI
5 2 (0.24%) Data Lake
5 2 (0.24%) Oracle Database
5 2 (0.24%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (0.24%) Relational Database
5 2 (0.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 1 (0.12%) BigQuery
6 1 (0.12%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 41 (4.86%) JIRA
2 23 (2.73%) GitLab
2 23 (2.73%) Jenkins
3 22 (2.61%) Git
4 8 (0.95%) Sonatype Nexus
5 7 (0.83%) Snyk
6 5 (0.59%) Browser DevTools
7 3 (0.36%) Artifactory
7 3 (0.36%) SonarQube
8 2 (0.24%) Postman
9 1 (0.12%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.12%) Claude Code
9 1 (0.12%) JUnit
9 1 (0.12%) SoapUI
9 1 (0.12%) Zephyr
General
1 189 (22.42%) Social Skills
2 126 (14.95%) Finance
3 69 (8.19%) Analytical Skills
4 62 (7.35%) Public Sector
5 48 (5.69%) Banking
6 39 (4.63%) Documentation Skills
7 25 (2.97%) Telecoms
8 20 (2.37%) Financial Institution
9 11 (1.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 11 (1.30%) Legal
10 9 (1.07%) Retail
11 8 (0.95%) Manufacturing
12 7 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
13 6 (0.71%) Law
13 6 (0.71%) Local Government
13 6 (0.71%) Police
14 5 (0.59%) Influencing Skills
14 5 (0.59%) Military
15 3 (0.36%) Billing
15 3 (0.36%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 219 (25.98%) Network Engineer
2 182 (21.59%) Architect
3 109 (12.93%) Security Engineer
4 89 (10.56%) Security Architect
5 78 (9.25%) Senior
6 62 (7.35%) Network Architect
7 55 (6.52%) Network Security Engineer
8 35 (4.15%) Consultant
9 34 (4.03%) Project Manager
10 30 (3.56%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 29 (3.44%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 28 (3.32%) Lead
13 27 (3.20%) Senior Network Engineer
14 26 (3.08%) Cloud Engineer
14 26 (3.08%) Network Security Architect
15 23 (2.73%) Azure Architect
16 22 (2.61%) Analyst
16 22 (2.61%) Cloud Architect
17 21 (2.49%) Solutions Architect
18 20 (2.37%) Senior Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (4.03%) 802.1X
2 14 (1.66%) SAML
3 13 (1.54%) LDAP
4 11 (1.30%) REST
5 8 (0.95%) Kafka
6 7 (0.83%) ARM Templates
6 7 (0.83%) OAuth
7 6 (0.71%) OpenID
7 6 (0.71%) SLSA
8 5 (0.59%) CSS
8 5 (0.59%) HTML
8 5 (0.59%) OAuth2
9 4 (0.47%) AWS CDK
10 3 (0.36%) gRPC
10 3 (0.36%) Keycloak
10 3 (0.36%) Lambda Expressions
10 3 (0.36%) Plotly
10 3 (0.36%) Protocol Buffers
10 3 (0.36%) RabbitMQ
10 3 (0.36%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 127 (15.07%) Data Centre
2 51 (6.05%) Security Posture
3 50 (5.93%) Cloud Native
4 42 (4.98%) Hybrid Cloud
5 30 (3.56%) Onboarding
6 29 (3.44%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 29 (3.44%) PKI
7 25 (2.97%) Data Protection Act
8 24 (2.85%) Public Cloud
9 23 (2.73%) Management Information System
10 22 (2.61%) Cyber Threat
11 21 (2.49%) Operational Technology
12 20 (2.37%) IoT
13 18 (2.14%) Product Ownership
14 17 (2.02%) Security Operations Centre
15 14 (1.66%) Self-Motivation
16 11 (1.30%) Cyber Security Posture
17 10 (1.19%) Analytical Mindset
17 10 (1.19%) Replication
18 9 (1.07%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 74 (8.78%) Windows
2 64 (7.59%) Linux
3 26 (3.08%) Windows Server
4 9 (1.07%) VMS
5 7 (0.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 7 (0.83%) Unix
6 6 (0.71%) Ubuntu
7 5 (0.59%) Mac OS
7 5 (0.59%) Windows 10
8 3 (0.36%) SUSE
9 2 (0.24%) Android
10 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2003
10 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 174 (20.64%) Cybersecurity
2 142 (16.84%) Cloud Security
3 135 (16.01%) Zero Trust
4 116 (13.76%) CI/CD
5 115 (13.64%) Security Architecture
6 113 (13.40%) Infrastructure as Code
7 112 (13.29%) Migration
8 110 (13.05%) SIEM
9 109 (12.93%) DevOps
10 90 (10.68%) Continuous Improvement
10 90 (10.68%) High Availability
11 86 (10.20%) Problem-Solving
12 83 (9.85%) Network Segmentation
12 83 (9.85%) Threat Modelling
13 81 (9.61%) Application Security
13 81 (9.61%) Incident Response
14 79 (9.37%) Identity Access Management
15 74 (8.78%) Data Protection
16 73 (8.66%) Load Balancing
17 72 (8.54%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 117 (13.88%) Python
2 64 (7.59%) PowerShell
3 36 (4.27%) Bash
4 28 (3.32%) Bicep
5 20 (2.37%) JavaScript
6 18 (2.14%) SQL
7 10 (1.19%) Kusto Query Language
8 8 (0.95%) Shell Script
9 6 (0.71%) Java
10 5 (0.59%) Go
11 4 (0.47%) C
11 4 (0.47%) PHP
12 3 (0.36%) C++
12 3 (0.36%) Rust
13 2 (0.24%) Perl
13 2 (0.24%) Ruby
14 1 (0.12%) ActionScript
14 1 (0.12%) AppleScript
14 1 (0.12%) Korn
14 1 (0.12%) VBA
Qualifications
1 251 (29.77%) Security Cleared
2 190 (22.54%) SC Cleared
3 159 (18.86%) Cisco Certification
4 104 (12.34%) CCNP
5 100 (11.86%) CISSP
6 74 (8.78%) DV Cleared
7 61 (7.24%) CCNA
7 61 (7.24%) Degree
8 56 (6.64%) CISM
9 34 (4.03%) CCSP
10 33 (3.91%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 31 (3.68%) Azure Certification
12 20 (2.37%) CCIE
13 18 (2.14%) GIAC
14 16 (1.90%) AWS Certification
15 15 (1.78%) BPSS Clearance
16 14 (1.66%) CEH
17 13 (1.54%) JNCIS
18 12 (1.42%) CompTIA Security+
18 12 (1.42%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 90 (10.68%) NIST
2 70 (8.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 38 (4.51%) GDPR
4 25 (2.97%) PCI DSS
5 21 (2.49%) NCSC
6 19 (2.25%) QA
7 16 (1.90%) Cyber Essentials
7 16 (1.90%) GRC
8 13 (1.54%) SLA
9 9 (1.07%) Actionable Recommendations
10 8 (0.95%) Disclosure Scotland
10 8 (0.95%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 8 (0.95%) SOC 2
11 7 (0.83%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 5 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 4 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 42001
13 4 (0.47%) NIST 800
13 4 (0.47%) PMO
13 4 (0.47%) RMADS
14 3 (0.36%) ISA99
System Software
1 59 (7.00%) Active Directory
2 55 (6.52%) VMware Infrastructure
3 25 (2.97%) VMware NSX
4 20 (2.37%) Docker
4 20 (2.37%) Virtual Machines
5 14 (1.66%) Hyper-V
6 11 (1.30%) VMware ESXi
6 11 (1.30%) vSphere
7 5 (0.59%) Firmware
7 5 (0.59%) Squid
7 5 (0.59%) Virtual Desktop
8 2 (0.24%) NFS
8 2 (0.24%) Postfix
8 2 (0.24%) Sendmail
8 2 (0.24%) Varnish
8 2 (0.24%) VMware Workstation
9 1 (0.12%) KVM
9 1 (0.12%) ProxySG
9 1 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.12%) Xen
Systems Management
1 124 (14.71%) Terraform
2 84 (9.96%) Ansible
3 69 (8.19%) Kubernetes
4 39 (4.63%) FortiGate
5 18 (2.14%) Single Sign-On
6 16 (1.90%) Grafana
7 14 (1.66%) Nagios
8 12 (1.42%) Microsoft Intune
9 11 (1.30%) vCenter Server
10 9 (1.07%) Microsoft Clustering
11 8 (0.95%) Kibana
11 8 (0.95%) Prometheus
12 6 (0.71%) QRadar
13 5 (0.59%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 5 (0.59%) CASB
13 5 (0.59%) Istio
13 5 (0.59%) Puppet
13 5 (0.59%) Suricata
13 5 (0.59%) WSUS
14 4 (0.47%) Kustomize
Vendors
1 236 (28.00%) Cisco
2 135 (16.01%) Palo Alto
3 116 (13.76%) Microsoft
4 77 (9.13%) F5
5 70 (8.30%) VMware
6 65 (7.71%) Fortinet
7 55 (6.52%) Juniper
8 53 (6.29%) CheckPoint
9 52 (6.17%) Zscaler
10 34 (4.03%) ServiceNow
11 29 (3.44%) Splunk
12 26 (3.08%) SolarWinds
13 22 (2.61%) Aruba
13 22 (2.61%) ForeScout
14 21 (2.49%) Google
15 19 (2.25%) Citrix
16 18 (2.14%) Tenable
17 13 (1.54%) Arista
17 13 (1.54%) Okta
18 12 (1.42%) Infoblox