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 2 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 180 166 166
Rank change year-on-year -14 0 -15
Contract jobs citing Network Security 872 560 581
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.59% 1.69% 1.53%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 17.17% 14.74% 12.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 567 337 375
10th Percentile £400 £380 £361
25th Percentile £463 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £533 £538
Median % change year-on-year +3.29% -0.93% -2.27%
75th Percentile £650 £630 £634
90th Percentile £725 £738 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £540 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +8.00% -4.76% -1.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 16 9
10th Percentile £26.80 £45.00 £31.70
25th Percentile £67.50 £52.50 £36.00
Median hourly rate £73.00 £70.16 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.05% +55.91% -37.93%
75th Percentile £74.00 £85.00 £58.75
90th Percentile £85.00 £97.50 £70.77
UK excluding London median hourly rate £73.00 £70.16 £53.75
% change year-on-year +4.05% +30.53% -25.86%

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 5,078 3,800 4,549
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.25% 11.47% 11.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,925 2,382 2,627
10th Percentile £235 £220 £222
25th Percentile £389 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £606
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £485
% change year-on-year +5.56% -7.22% +5.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 427 207 205
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £21.04 £24.18
Median hourly rate £32.50 £41.94 £50.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.51% -16.95% -10.60%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £92.11 £73.80 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.72 £42.22 £57.35
% change year-on-year -36.71% -26.38% -0.26%

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 2 October 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 2 October 2026.

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 2 October 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 0 769 £550 +4.76% 767
UK excluding London -7 448 £540 +8.00% 420
London -4 328 £550 - 383
Work from Home -3 256 £540 -1.82% 346
North of England +12 207 £540 +10.32% 97
North West -10 110 £540 +13.68% 58
Yorkshire +20 92 £540 +8.87% 30
South East -37 90 £557 +23.78% 143
Midlands -66 54 £463 -11.90% 62
East of England -5 41 £525 +7.69% 40
West Midlands -62 41 £450 -14.29% 39
Scotland -21 27 £600 +33.33% 25
South West -40 27 £675 +5.47% 43
East Midlands -5 13 £500 - 23
Channel Islands 0 6 £600 -17.24%
North East - 4 £680 - 10
Northern Ireland +8 2 - - 10
Wales -15 1 £650 +30.00% 5

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 19 (2.18%) Microsoft Exchange
2 18 (2.06%) SharePoint
3 11 (1.26%) Confluence
4 4 (0.46%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (0.34%) Apache
6 2 (0.23%) IIS
7 1 (0.11%) Apache Spark
7 1 (0.11%) CMS
7 1 (0.11%) NetWeaver
7 1 (0.11%) nginx
Applications
1 17 (1.95%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (0.80%) MS Visio
3 5 (0.57%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (0.57%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.11%) InfoPath
Business Applications
1 6 (0.69%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.11%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 292 (33.49%) Azure
2 206 (23.62%) AWS
3 106 (12.16%) GCP
4 98 (11.24%) Entra ID
5 51 (5.85%) Microsoft 365
6 45 (5.16%) GitHub
7 40 (4.59%) Azure DevOps
8 32 (3.67%) Azure Monitor
9 30 (3.44%) Serverless
10 25 (2.87%) SaaS
11 24 (2.75%) Azure Sentinel
12 21 (2.41%) GitHub Actions
13 18 (2.06%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 18 (2.06%) Amazon EKS
13 18 (2.06%) Azure AKS
13 18 (2.06%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 17 (1.95%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 17 (1.95%) OCI
14 17 (1.95%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 15 (1.72%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 398 (45.64%) Firewall
2 202 (23.17%) VPN
3 193 (22.13%) WAN
4 136 (15.60%) DNS
5 135 (15.48%) LAN
6 103 (11.81%) Wireless
7 95 (10.89%) BGP
8 92 (10.55%) TCP/IP
9 79 (9.06%) SD-WAN
10 73 (8.37%) DHCP
11 66 (7.57%) OSPF
12 65 (7.45%) VLAN
13 60 (6.88%) SSL
14 52 (5.96%) MPLS
15 43 (4.93%) IPsec
15 43 (4.93%) Wi-Fi
16 42 (4.82%) Cisco ISE
17 39 (4.47%) Cisco ASA
18 37 (4.24%) Internet
19 32 (3.67%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (1.38%) SQL Server
2 9 (1.03%) Amazon RDS
3 7 (0.80%) BigQuery
4 5 (0.57%) Delta Lake
5 4 (0.46%) Elasticsearch
5 4 (0.46%) Neo4j
6 3 (0.34%) Azure SQL Database
6 3 (0.34%) PostgreSQL
6 3 (0.34%) Power BI
7 2 (0.23%) Data Lake
7 2 (0.23%) InfluxDB
7 2 (0.23%) Looker
7 2 (0.23%) Relational Database
8 1 (0.11%) Amazon Athena
8 1 (0.11%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.11%) DynamoDB
8 1 (0.11%) MongoDB
8 1 (0.11%) SAP Data Services
8 1 (0.11%) SAP HANA
8 1 (0.11%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 40 (4.59%) Git
2 32 (3.67%) GitLab
3 31 (3.56%) Jenkins
4 29 (3.33%) JIRA
5 7 (0.80%) Sonatype Nexus
6 4 (0.46%) MSBuild
6 4 (0.46%) SonarQube
6 4 (0.46%) Visual Studio
7 3 (0.34%) Artifactory
7 3 (0.34%) Browser DevTools
7 3 (0.34%) Claude Code
8 2 (0.23%) IBM UrbanCode
9 1 (0.11%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.11%) Postman
9 1 (0.11%) REST Assured
9 1 (0.11%) SoapUI
9 1 (0.11%) Subversion
General
1 245 (28.10%) Social Skills
2 162 (18.58%) Finance
3 92 (10.55%) Analytical Skills
4 67 (7.68%) Banking
5 44 (5.05%) Public Sector
6 43 (4.93%) Documentation Skills
7 31 (3.56%) Legal
7 31 (3.56%) Telecoms
8 18 (2.06%) Financial Institution
9 16 (1.83%) Influencing Skills
10 15 (1.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 14 (1.61%) Manufacturing
11 14 (1.61%) Retail
12 13 (1.49%) Organisational Skills
13 12 (1.38%) Presentation Skills
14 8 (0.92%) Local Government
15 6 (0.69%) Automotive
15 6 (0.69%) Law
15 6 (0.69%) Military
15 6 (0.69%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 247 (28.33%) Network Engineer
2 147 (16.86%) Architect
3 120 (13.76%) Security Engineer
4 105 (12.04%) Senior
5 80 (9.17%) Security Architect
6 73 (8.37%) Network Security Engineer
7 69 (7.91%) Consultant
8 57 (6.54%) Network Architect
9 50 (5.73%) Senior Network Engineer
10 46 (5.28%) Project Manager
11 44 (5.05%) Cloud Engineer
12 43 (4.93%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 37 (4.24%) Security Consultant
14 32 (3.67%) Lead
15 29 (3.33%) Network Security Architect
16 28 (3.21%) Analyst
17 27 (3.10%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
18 24 (2.75%) Network Manager
19 23 (2.64%) Azure Engineer
20 22 (2.52%) Network Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 145 (16.63%) Terraform
2 37 (4.24%) 802.1X
3 24 (2.75%) REST
4 15 (1.72%) ARM Templates
4 15 (1.72%) SAML
5 13 (1.49%) Kafka
6 8 (0.92%) JSON
6 8 (0.92%) NETCONF
7 6 (0.69%) gRPC
7 6 (0.69%) Keycloak
7 6 (0.69%) LDAP
8 5 (0.57%) Azure Blueprints
8 5 (0.57%) OpenID
8 5 (0.57%) SLSA
8 5 (0.57%) Software Packaging
8 5 (0.57%) XML
8 5 (0.57%) YAML
9 4 (0.46%) .NET
9 4 (0.46%) CSS
9 4 (0.46%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 118 (13.53%) Data Centre
2 86 (9.86%) Security Posture
3 56 (6.42%) Onboarding
4 48 (5.50%) Cloud Native
5 41 (4.70%) Hybrid Cloud
6 40 (4.59%) Management Information System
7 37 (4.24%) Operational Technology
8 33 (3.78%) Cyber Threat
9 27 (3.10%) PKI
10 26 (2.98%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 26 (2.98%) Self-Motivation
11 23 (2.64%) Security Operations Centre
12 19 (2.18%) Cloud Security Posture
12 19 (2.18%) Public Cloud
13 18 (2.06%) Data Protection Act
14 15 (1.72%) Enterprise Software
15 11 (1.26%) Replication
16 10 (1.15%) Linux Command Line
16 10 (1.15%) SCADA
17 9 (1.03%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 104 (11.93%) Windows
2 87 (9.98%) Linux
3 44 (5.05%) Windows Server
4 19 (2.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 12 (1.38%) Unix
6 8 (0.92%) Windows 10
7 6 (0.69%) Ubuntu
8 5 (0.57%) Mac OS
9 3 (0.34%) Check Point GAiA
10 2 (0.23%) Android
10 2 (0.23%) SUSE
10 2 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
10 2 (0.23%) zOS
11 1 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
11 1 (0.11%) Rocky
11 1 (0.11%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2003
11 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 183 (20.99%) Cybersecurity
2 175 (20.07%) Cloud Security
3 156 (17.89%) Stakeholder Management
4 144 (16.51%) CI/CD
5 136 (15.60%) Zero Trust
6 132 (15.14%) Infrastructure as Code
7 128 (14.68%) Continuous Improvement
8 123 (14.11%) Problem-Solving
9 122 (13.99%) Incident Response
10 118 (13.53%) SIEM
11 117 (13.42%) Migration
12 113 (12.96%) DevOps
13 109 (12.50%) Change Management
14 105 (12.04%) Security Architecture
15 96 (11.01%) Identity Access Management
16 94 (10.78%) Data Protection
17 93 (10.67%) Infrastructure Engineering
18 88 (10.09%) Vulnerability Management
19 87 (9.98%) Agile
20 86 (9.86%) Security Operations
Programming Languages
1 166 (19.04%) Python
2 90 (10.32%) PowerShell
3 74 (8.49%) Bash
4 34 (3.90%) Bicep
5 28 (3.21%) SQL
6 14 (1.61%) Go
7 13 (1.49%) Java
8 7 (0.80%) ActionScript
8 7 (0.80%) Search Processing Language
8 7 (0.80%) Shell Script
9 6 (0.69%) Kusto Query Language
10 4 (0.46%) Rust
11 3 (0.34%) JavaScript
11 3 (0.34%) Perl
11 3 (0.34%) VBScript
12 1 (0.11%) C
12 1 (0.11%) C++
12 1 (0.11%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 243 (27.87%) Security Cleared
2 175 (20.07%) Cisco Certification
3 172 (19.72%) SC Cleared
4 109 (12.50%) CISSP
5 97 (11.12%) CCNP
6 77 (8.83%) DV Cleared
7 65 (7.45%) Degree
8 53 (6.08%) CCSP
9 50 (5.73%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 48 (5.50%) CCNA
11 46 (5.28%) CISM
12 36 (4.13%) CCIE
13 30 (3.44%) Azure Certification
14 25 (2.87%) AWS Certification
15 17 (1.95%) Computer Science Degree
16 12 (1.38%) GIAC
16 12 (1.38%) PMI Certification
16 12 (1.38%) PMP
17 11 (1.26%) JNCIP
18 10 (1.15%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 77 (8.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 72 (8.26%) NIST
3 35 (4.01%) GDPR
4 31 (3.56%) NCSC
5 27 (3.10%) PCI DSS
6 15 (1.72%) Cyber Essentials
7 14 (1.61%) GRC
8 12 (1.38%) NIST 800
8 12 (1.38%) QA
9 10 (1.15%) SLA
10 9 (1.03%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 7 (0.80%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 6 (0.69%) Disclosure Scotland
13 5 (0.57%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 5 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 42001
14 4 (0.46%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 4 (0.46%) PMO
15 3 (0.34%) Data Quality
15 3 (0.34%) SOC 2
16 2 (0.23%) P3O
System Software
1 92 (10.55%) Active Directory
2 57 (6.54%) VMware Infrastructure
3 37 (4.24%) Docker
4 18 (2.06%) Virtual Machines
5 16 (1.83%) VMware NSX
6 12 (1.38%) Hyper-V
7 11 (1.26%) vSphere
8 8 (0.92%) Virtual Desktop
8 8 (0.92%) VMware ESXi
9 6 (0.69%) Virtual Servers
10 5 (0.57%) Squid
11 4 (0.46%) FreeRADIUS
12 2 (0.23%) Firmware
12 2 (0.23%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 2 (0.23%) OpenSSH
12 2 (0.23%) VMware Workstation
13 1 (0.11%) NFS
13 1 (0.11%) ProxySG
13 1 (0.11%) Samba
Systems Management
1 101 (11.58%) Ansible
2 82 (9.40%) Kubernetes
3 47 (5.39%) FortiGate
4 29 (3.33%) Grafana
5 27 (3.10%) Microsoft Intune
6 21 (2.41%) Prometheus
7 17 (1.95%) Progress Chef
8 15 (1.72%) SCCM
9 13 (1.49%) Single Sign-On
10 10 (1.15%) CASB
11 9 (1.03%) QRadar
12 8 (0.92%) Nagios
13 7 (0.80%) Cisco CUCM
13 7 (0.80%) Puppet
14 5 (0.57%) Suricata
15 4 (0.46%) Cisco Prime
15 4 (0.46%) Kustomize
15 4 (0.46%) Podman
15 4 (0.46%) systemd
15 4 (0.46%) WSUS
Vendors
1 265 (30.39%) Cisco
2 176 (20.18%) Palo Alto
3 171 (19.61%) Microsoft
4 99 (11.35%) Fortinet
5 83 (9.52%) F5
6 75 (8.60%) VMware
7 69 (7.91%) Zscaler
8 58 (6.65%) CheckPoint
9 47 (5.39%) Juniper
10 42 (4.82%) SolarWinds
11 40 (4.59%) Splunk
12 33 (3.78%) Aruba
13 31 (3.56%) Google
14 25 (2.87%) ServiceNow
15 19 (2.18%) Citrix
16 18 (2.06%) Meraki
17 14 (1.61%) Blue Coat
18 13 (1.49%) CyberArk
18 13 (1.49%) Tenable
19 12 (1.38%) AlgoSec