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

6 months to
16 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 152 152 182
Rank change year-on-year 0 +30 -9
Contract jobs citing Network Security 854 555 563
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.70% 1.87% 1.29%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 17.87% 15.01% 10.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 584 336 381
10th Percentile £400 £363 £375
25th Percentile £449 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £524 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.24% -4.77% -
75th Percentile £623 £613 £668
90th Percentile £700 £700 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £520 £492 £575
% change year-on-year +5.69% -14.43% +9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 9 18
10th Percentile £26.80 £65.13 -
25th Percentile £38.94 £80.34 £7.43
Median hourly rate £67.50 £81.35 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.03% +287.38% -61.82%
75th Percentile £74.00 £82.10 £41.25
90th Percentile - £87.20 £45.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.25 £81.35 £7.43
% change year-on-year -13.64% +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 4,780 3,698 5,392
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.52% 12.48% 12.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,930 2,273 3,186
10th Percentile £263 £220 £210
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £483 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.52% -3.40% -1.96%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £470 £488
% change year-on-year +2.13% -3.59% +2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 290 172 422
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £19.13 £17.69
Median hourly rate £27.69 £41.25 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.87% +3.13% +111.30%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.41 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £79.50 £71.19
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.25 £31.08 £47.50
% change year-on-year -2.67% -34.57% +156.76%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 -4 737 £525 -0.47% 275
UK excluding London -21 407 £520 +5.69% 222
London +7 329 £550 -4.35% 102
Work from Home +13 251 £540 +2.86% 139
North of England +5 168 £500 - 66
South East -27 98 £523 +6.63% 59
North West +2 91 £500 -0.99% 51
Yorkshire -7 75 £500 +2.04% 13
Midlands -50 48 £449 -22.84% 25
Scotland +1 34 £569 +33.82% 26
East of England -23 33 £525 -8.70% 15
South West -26 30 £550 -4.35% 28
West Midlands -66 29 £420 -27.74% 13
East Midlands -9 18 £638 - 12
Wales -22 3 £600 +103.39% 6
North East -32 2 £675 +8.00% 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 23 (2.69%) Confluence
2 13 (1.52%) Microsoft Exchange
3 8 (0.94%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.23%) Apache
5 1 (0.12%) IIS
5 1 (0.12%) NetWeaver
5 1 (0.12%) nginx
Applications
1 15 (1.76%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.29%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.35%) Microsoft Excel
5 1 (0.12%) InfoPath
5 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 6 (0.70%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 266 (31.15%) Azure
2 187 (21.90%) AWS
3 112 (13.11%) GCP
4 76 (8.90%) Entra ID
5 36 (4.22%) GitHub
6 29 (3.40%) GitHub Actions
7 28 (3.28%) Azure DevOps
7 28 (3.28%) Azure Sentinel
8 21 (2.46%) Microsoft 365
8 21 (2.46%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 19 (2.22%) Azure Key Vault
9 19 (2.22%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 19 (2.22%) Serverless
10 18 (2.11%) Azure AKS
10 18 (2.11%) SaaS
11 16 (1.87%) Akamai
11 16 (1.87%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 16 (1.87%) Azure Monitor
12 14 (1.64%) AWS CloudFormation
13 13 (1.52%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 384 (44.96%) Firewall
2 163 (19.09%) VPN
3 147 (17.21%) WAN
4 118 (13.82%) LAN
5 100 (11.71%) BGP
5 100 (11.71%) DNS
6 84 (9.84%) OSPF
6 84 (9.84%) SD-WAN
7 77 (9.02%) VLAN
8 76 (8.90%) Wireless
9 66 (7.73%) TCP/IP
10 53 (6.21%) MPLS
11 52 (6.09%) DHCP
12 46 (5.39%) IPsec
13 43 (5.04%) SSL
14 42 (4.92%) Wi-Fi
15 39 (4.57%) Cisco ISE
16 33 (3.86%) Internet
17 32 (3.75%) Cisco ASA
18 31 (3.63%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (0.94%) Azure SQL Database
2 5 (0.59%) SQL Server
3 4 (0.47%) Amazon RDS
3 4 (0.47%) Elasticsearch
3 4 (0.47%) Neo4j
3 4 (0.47%) Power BI
4 3 (0.35%) Amazon Athena
4 3 (0.35%) Data Lake
5 2 (0.23%) InfluxDB
5 2 (0.23%) Oracle Database
5 2 (0.23%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (0.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 1 (0.12%) BigQuery
6 1 (0.12%) Data Mining
6 1 (0.12%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.12%) Delta Lake
6 1 (0.12%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (0.12%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.12%) Snowflake Schema
6 1 (0.12%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 42 (4.92%) JIRA
2 25 (2.93%) GitLab
3 23 (2.69%) Git
3 23 (2.69%) Jenkins
4 7 (0.82%) Snyk
4 7 (0.82%) Sonatype Nexus
5 5 (0.59%) Browser DevTools
6 4 (0.47%) SonarQube
7 3 (0.35%) Artifactory
8 2 (0.23%) 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
1 192 (22.48%) Social Skills
2 134 (15.69%) Finance
3 62 (7.26%) Public Sector
4 61 (7.14%) Analytical Skills
5 50 (5.85%) Banking
6 38 (4.45%) Documentation Skills
7 24 (2.81%) Telecoms
8 21 (2.46%) Financial Institution
9 15 (1.76%) Legal
10 12 (1.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 11 (1.29%) Retail
12 9 (1.05%) Police
13 8 (0.94%) Organisational Skills
14 7 (0.82%) Local Government
14 7 (0.82%) Manufacturing
15 6 (0.70%) Law
16 5 (0.59%) Influencing Skills
16 5 (0.59%) Military
17 3 (0.35%) Billing
17 3 (0.35%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 223 (26.11%) Network Engineer
2 185 (21.66%) Architect
3 113 (13.23%) Security Engineer
4 93 (10.89%) Security Architect
5 81 (9.48%) Senior
6 60 (7.03%) Network Architect
7 59 (6.91%) Network Security Engineer
8 38 (4.45%) Consultant
8 38 (4.45%) Project Manager
9 32 (3.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 29 (3.40%) Cloud Engineer
10 29 (3.40%) Lead
11 27 (3.16%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
11 27 (3.16%) Senior Network Engineer
12 26 (3.04%) Network Security Architect
13 24 (2.81%) Network Manager
14 22 (2.58%) Azure Architect
14 22 (2.58%) Cloud Architect
15 21 (2.46%) Solutions Architect
16 20 (2.34%) Firewall Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (4.57%) 802.1X
2 14 (1.64%) SAML
3 13 (1.52%) REST
4 10 (1.17%) Kafka
5 9 (1.05%) ARM Templates
6 8 (0.94%) LDAP
7 7 (0.82%) OAuth
8 6 (0.70%) CSS
8 6 (0.70%) HTML
8 6 (0.70%) OpenID
8 6 (0.70%) SLSA
9 5 (0.59%) OAuth2
10 4 (0.47%) AWS CDK
10 4 (0.47%) gRPC
10 4 (0.47%) Keycloak
10 4 (0.47%) Protocol Buffers
10 4 (0.47%) RESTful
11 3 (0.35%) Lambda Expressions
11 3 (0.35%) Plotly
11 3 (0.35%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 118 (13.82%) Data Centre
2 60 (7.03%) Security Posture
3 51 (5.97%) Cloud Native
4 42 (4.92%) Hybrid Cloud
5 34 (3.98%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 33 (3.86%) Onboarding
7 29 (3.40%) PKI
8 25 (2.93%) Data Protection Act
9 24 (2.81%) Public Cloud
10 23 (2.69%) Operational Technology
11 20 (2.34%) Product Ownership
12 19 (2.22%) IoT
12 19 (2.22%) Management Information System
13 17 (1.99%) Cyber Threat
14 14 (1.64%) Security Operations Centre
14 14 (1.64%) Self-Motivation
15 10 (1.17%) Replication
16 9 (1.05%) Virtual Team
17 8 (0.94%) Enterprise Cloud
17 8 (0.94%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 68 (7.96%) Linux
2 67 (7.85%) Windows
3 25 (2.93%) Windows Server
4 9 (1.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 9 (1.05%) VMS
5 6 (0.70%) Ubuntu
5 6 (0.70%) Unix
6 5 (0.59%) Mac OS
6 5 (0.59%) Windows 10
7 3 (0.35%) SUSE
8 2 (0.23%) Android
9 1 (0.12%) Check Point GAiA
9 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2003
9 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
9 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 174 (20.37%) Cybersecurity
2 153 (17.92%) Cloud Security
3 142 (16.63%) Zero Trust
4 123 (14.40%) CI/CD
5 121 (14.17%) Security Architecture
6 115 (13.47%) DevOps
7 114 (13.35%) Infrastructure as Code
7 114 (13.35%) Migration
8 108 (12.65%) SIEM
9 97 (11.36%) Continuous Improvement
10 94 (11.01%) High Availability
11 87 (10.19%) Problem-Solving
12 86 (10.07%) Application Security
13 85 (9.95%) Network Segmentation
14 84 (9.84%) Stakeholder Management
14 84 (9.84%) Threat Modelling
15 82 (9.60%) Data Protection
15 82 (9.60%) Identity Access Management
16 81 (9.48%) Incident Response
17 80 (9.37%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 105 (12.30%) Python
2 44 (5.15%) PowerShell
3 37 (4.33%) Bash
4 31 (3.63%) Bicep
5 20 (2.34%) SQL
6 19 (2.22%) JavaScript
7 8 (0.94%) Shell Script
8 7 (0.82%) Java
9 5 (0.59%) Kusto Query Language
10 4 (0.47%) C
10 4 (0.47%) PHP
10 4 (0.47%) Rust
11 3 (0.35%) C++
12 2 (0.23%) Perl
12 2 (0.23%) Ruby
13 1 (0.12%) ActionScript
13 1 (0.12%) AppleScript
13 1 (0.12%) Go
13 1 (0.12%) Search Processing Language
13 1 (0.12%) VBA
Qualifications
1 245 (28.69%) Security Cleared
2 184 (21.55%) SC Cleared
3 162 (18.97%) Cisco Certification
4 102 (11.94%) CCNP
5 97 (11.36%) CISSP
6 72 (8.43%) DV Cleared
7 62 (7.26%) CCNA
8 61 (7.14%) Degree
9 58 (6.79%) CISM
10 37 (4.33%) CCSP
11 36 (4.22%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 31 (3.63%) Azure Certification
13 23 (2.69%) CCIE
14 21 (2.46%) AWS Certification
15 15 (1.76%) BPSS Clearance
16 14 (1.64%) CompTIA Security+
16 14 (1.64%) Computer Science Degree
17 13 (1.52%) GIAC
18 11 (1.29%) JNCIS
19 10 (1.17%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 95 (11.12%) NIST
2 75 (8.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 39 (4.57%) GDPR
4 27 (3.16%) PCI DSS
5 23 (2.69%) NCSC
6 19 (2.22%) QA
7 18 (2.11%) GRC
8 16 (1.87%) Cyber Essentials
9 13 (1.52%) SLA
10 8 (0.94%) Actionable Recommendations
10 8 (0.94%) Disclosure Scotland
10 8 (0.94%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 8 (0.94%) SOC 2
11 7 (0.82%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 5 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 5 (0.59%) NIST 800
13 4 (0.47%) PMO
13 4 (0.47%) RMADS
14 3 (0.35%) ISA99
14 3 (0.35%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 62 (7.26%) Active Directory
2 52 (6.09%) VMware Infrastructure
3 24 (2.81%) Docker
4 23 (2.69%) VMware NSX
5 22 (2.58%) Virtual Machines
6 11 (1.29%) VMware ESXi
7 10 (1.17%) vSphere
8 8 (0.94%) Hyper-V
9 5 (0.59%) Firmware
9 5 (0.59%) Squid
9 5 (0.59%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.23%) NFS
10 2 (0.23%) Postfix
10 2 (0.23%) Sendmail
10 2 (0.23%) Varnish
10 2 (0.23%) VMware Workstation
11 1 (0.12%) OpenSSH
11 1 (0.12%) ProxySG
11 1 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 119 (13.93%) Terraform
2 76 (8.90%) Ansible
3 74 (8.67%) Kubernetes
4 41 (4.80%) FortiGate
5 19 (2.22%) Grafana
6 18 (2.11%) Single Sign-On
7 11 (1.29%) Microsoft Intune
7 11 (1.29%) Prometheus
7 11 (1.29%) vCenter Server
8 6 (0.70%) QRadar
9 5 (0.59%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 5 (0.59%) CASB
9 5 (0.59%) Istio
9 5 (0.59%) Puppet
9 5 (0.59%) Suricata
9 5 (0.59%) WSUS
10 4 (0.47%) Kustomize
10 4 (0.47%) Podman
11 3 (0.35%) Network Intrusion Detection System
11 3 (0.35%) VxRail
Vendors
1 237 (27.75%) Cisco
2 140 (16.39%) Palo Alto
3 119 (13.93%) Microsoft
4 75 (8.78%) F5
5 68 (7.96%) Fortinet
6 66 (7.73%) VMware
7 55 (6.44%) Zscaler
8 54 (6.32%) CheckPoint
9 53 (6.21%) Juniper
10 36 (4.22%) ServiceNow
11 30 (3.51%) Splunk
12 24 (2.81%) Aruba
13 22 (2.58%) Google
14 21 (2.46%) ForeScout
14 21 (2.46%) SolarWinds
15 20 (2.34%) Citrix
16 17 (1.99%) Tenable
17 14 (1.64%) Arista
18 13 (1.52%) Okta
19 12 (1.41%) Infoblox