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

6 months to
25 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 171 153 179
Rank change year-on-year -18 +26 -19
Contract jobs citing Network Security 871 599 532
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.62% 1.83% 1.37%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 17.21% 15.50% 11.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 581 355 361
10th Percentile £400 £375 £363
25th Percentile £463 £448 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £638 £618 £666
90th Percentile £730 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £528 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +5.60% -9.09% +4.12%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 17 7
10th Percentile £26.20 £45.00 £21.20
25th Percentile £42.13 £55.00 £32.75
Median hourly rate £73.00 £70.16 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.05% +40.32% -24.24%
75th Percentile £74.00 £84.00 £58.75
90th Percentile - £91.00 £82.79
UK excluding London median hourly rate £73.00 £70.16 £50.00
% change year-on-year +4.05% +40.32% +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 5,060 3,865 4,675
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.43% 11.81% 12.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,979 2,358 2,811
10th Percentile £250 £243 £220
25th Percentile £400 £370 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £484 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.31% -3.20% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £676 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £472 £500
% change year-on-year +0.58% -5.55% +10.80%
Number of hourly rates quoted 373 201 302
10th Percentile £15.18 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £20.50
Median hourly rate £26.00 £46.25 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -43.78% -7.50% -11.49%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.35 £74.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.84 £44.50 £54.94
% change year-on-year -41.93% -19.00% -4.32%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 -18 765 £550 +4.76% 218
UK excluding London -22 428 £528 +5.60% 173
London -7 337 £550 - 75
Work from Home +5 268 £540 +2.86% 98
North of England +17 201 £528 +8.36% 31
North West -3 116 £536 +12.84% 19
South East -33 104 £557 +13.67% 66
Yorkshire +15 82 £500 +1.63% 10
Midlands -68 48 £500 -4.76% 28
East of England -8 39 £525 -2.78% 18
West Midlands -67 29 £413 -21.43% 17
Scotland -6 27 £600 +33.33% 9
East Midlands -3 18 £638 - 11
South West -61 15 £563 -12.11% 24
Wales -18 2 £538 +7.50% 1
North East -38 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 (1.95%) Microsoft Exchange
2 12 (1.38%) Confluence
2 12 (1.38%) 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 (2.30%) 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 (0.69%) Oracle ERP
1 6 (0.69%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 308 (35.36%) Azure
2 204 (23.42%) AWS
3 108 (12.40%) GCP
4 92 (10.56%) Entra ID
5 42 (4.82%) Microsoft 365
6 38 (4.36%) Azure DevOps
7 32 (3.67%) Azure Monitor
7 32 (3.67%) GitHub
8 28 (3.21%) SaaS
9 27 (3.10%) Azure Sentinel
10 26 (2.99%) Serverless
11 20 (2.30%) Azure AKS
11 20 (2.30%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 20 (2.30%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 19 (2.18%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 19 (2.18%) GitHub Actions
13 16 (1.84%) OCI
14 15 (1.72%) Amazon EKS
15 14 (1.61%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 14 (1.61%) Azure Key Vault
Communications & Networking
1 398 (45.69%) Firewall
2 198 (22.73%) VPN
3 189 (21.70%) WAN
4 134 (15.38%) LAN
5 130 (14.93%) DNS
6 101 (11.60%) Wireless
7 97 (11.14%) BGP
8 93 (10.68%) TCP/IP
9 86 (9.87%) SD-WAN
10 74 (8.50%) OSPF
11 73 (8.38%) DHCP
12 71 (8.15%) VLAN
13 50 (5.74%) IPsec
13 50 (5.74%) MPLS
14 49 (5.63%) SSL
14 49 (5.63%) Wi-Fi
15 46 (5.28%) Cisco ISE
16 40 (4.59%) Cisco ASA
17 38 (4.36%) Internet
18 37 (4.25%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (1.49%) SQL Server
2 8 (0.92%) Azure SQL Database
3 6 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
3 6 (0.69%) BigQuery
4 4 (0.46%) Elasticsearch
4 4 (0.46%) Neo4j
4 4 (0.46%) 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%) 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%) Star Schema
7 1 (0.11%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 37 (4.25%) Git
2 33 (3.79%) JIRA
3 29 (3.33%) GitLab
4 24 (2.76%) Jenkins
5 8 (0.92%) Sonatype Nexus
6 6 (0.69%) Browser DevTools
7 4 (0.46%) MSBuild
7 4 (0.46%) SonarQube
7 4 (0.46%) Visual Studio
8 3 (0.34%) Artifactory
9 2 (0.23%) IBM UrbanCode
10 1 (0.11%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.11%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.11%) Postman
10 1 (0.11%) Snyk
10 1 (0.11%) SoapUI
10 1 (0.11%) Subversion
General
1 216 (24.80%) Social Skills
2 147 (16.88%) Finance
3 80 (9.18%) Analytical Skills
4 62 (7.12%) Banking
5 54 (6.20%) Public Sector
6 43 (4.94%) Documentation Skills
7 25 (2.87%) Telecoms
8 23 (2.64%) Legal
9 19 (2.18%) Financial Institution
10 14 (1.61%) Manufacturing
10 14 (1.61%) Retail
11 13 (1.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 11 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
12 11 (1.26%) Organisational Skills
13 8 (0.92%) Police
14 6 (0.69%) Automotive
14 6 (0.69%) Local Government
14 6 (0.69%) Military
14 6 (0.69%) Presentation Skills
15 5 (0.57%) Law
Job Titles
1 245 (28.13%) Network Engineer
2 161 (18.48%) Architect
3 107 (12.28%) Senior
4 103 (11.83%) Security Engineer
5 86 (9.87%) Security Architect
6 60 (6.89%) Consultant
6 60 (6.89%) Network Security Engineer
7 55 (6.31%) Network Architect
8 52 (5.97%) Senior Network Engineer
9 42 (4.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 41 (4.71%) Project Manager
11 39 (4.48%) Lead
12 37 (4.25%) Cloud Engineer
13 32 (3.67%) Security Consultant
14 27 (3.10%) Analyst
15 23 (2.64%) Network Manager
16 22 (2.53%) Azure Engineer
17 21 (2.41%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
18 20 (2.30%) DevOps Engineer
18 20 (2.30%) Network Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 126 (14.47%) Terraform
2 37 (4.25%) 802.1X
3 15 (1.72%) REST
3 15 (1.72%) SAML
4 14 (1.61%) ARM Templates
5 10 (1.15%) Kafka
6 6 (0.69%) JSON
6 6 (0.69%) NETCONF
7 5 (0.57%) .NET
7 5 (0.57%) OpenID
7 5 (0.57%) XML
8 4 (0.46%) Azure Blueprints
8 4 (0.46%) CSS
8 4 (0.46%) gRPC
8 4 (0.46%) Keycloak
8 4 (0.46%) OAuth
8 4 (0.46%) Protocol Buffers
8 4 (0.46%) RESTful
8 4 (0.46%) SLSA
9 3 (0.34%) ModSecurity
Miscellaneous
1 103 (11.83%) Data Centre
2 77 (8.84%) Security Posture
3 52 (5.97%) Cloud Native
4 46 (5.28%) Hybrid Cloud
5 41 (4.71%) Onboarding
6 39 (4.48%) Management Information System
7 35 (4.02%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 28 (3.21%) Operational Technology
9 25 (2.87%) Cyber Threat
9 25 (2.87%) PKI
10 21 (2.41%) Data Protection Act
10 21 (2.41%) Self-Motivation
11 20 (2.30%) Public Cloud
11 20 (2.30%) Security Operations Centre
12 17 (1.95%) Cloud Security Posture
13 13 (1.49%) Enterprise Software
13 13 (1.49%) Linux Command Line
13 13 (1.49%) Product Ownership
14 10 (1.15%) Replication
15 9 (1.03%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 88 (10.10%) Windows
2 77 (8.84%) Linux
3 29 (3.33%) Windows Server
4 15 (1.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 8 (0.92%) Windows 10
6 7 (0.80%) Unix
7 6 (0.69%) Mac OS
7 6 (0.69%) 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 (20.44%) Cloud Security
2 173 (19.86%) Cybersecurity
3 135 (15.50%) Zero Trust
4 128 (14.70%) Stakeholder Management
5 123 (14.12%) CI/CD
6 122 (14.01%) Continuous Improvement
7 120 (13.78%) Infrastructure as Code
8 110 (12.63%) DevOps
9 108 (12.40%) Change Management
9 108 (12.40%) SIEM
10 107 (12.28%) Incident Response
11 106 (12.17%) Migration
12 101 (11.60%) Problem-Solving
13 99 (11.37%) Security Architecture
14 96 (11.02%) High Availability
15 95 (10.91%) Identity Access Management
16 94 (10.79%) Data Protection
17 91 (10.45%) Load Balancing
18 89 (10.22%) ITIL
19 88 (10.10%) Threat Modelling
Programming Languages
1 131 (15.04%) Python
2 81 (9.30%) PowerShell
3 68 (7.81%) Bash
4 39 (4.48%) Bicep
5 29 (3.33%) SQL
6 10 (1.15%) Go
6 10 (1.15%) Java
7 9 (1.03%) JavaScript
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%) Perl
11 3 (0.34%) VBScript
12 2 (0.23%) C
12 2 (0.23%) Ruby
13 1 (0.11%) C++
Qualifications
1 221 (25.37%) Security Cleared
2 160 (18.37%) Cisco Certification
3 158 (18.14%) SC Cleared
4 102 (11.71%) CISSP
5 96 (11.02%) CCNP
6 67 (7.69%) Degree
7 66 (7.58%) DV Cleared
8 56 (6.43%) CCNA
9 50 (5.74%) CISM
10 42 (4.82%) CCSP
11 40 (4.59%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 38 (4.36%) Azure Certification
13 25 (2.87%) AWS Certification
13 25 (2.87%) CCIE
14 16 (1.84%) Computer Science Degree
15 11 (1.26%) GIAC
16 10 (1.15%) BPSS Clearance
16 10 (1.15%) CompTIA Security+
17 9 (1.03%) CEH
17 9 (1.03%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 75 (8.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 73 (8.38%) NIST
3 45 (5.17%) GDPR
4 32 (3.67%) NCSC
5 28 (3.21%) PCI DSS
6 19 (2.18%) QA
7 17 (1.95%) SLA
8 15 (1.72%) GRC
9 11 (1.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 10 (1.15%) Cyber Essentials
11 8 (0.92%) Disclosure Scotland
11 8 (0.92%) NIST 800
12 5 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 5 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 5 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 5 (0.57%) SOC 2
13 4 (0.46%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 3 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
14 3 (0.34%) ISA99
15 2 (0.23%) PMO
System Software
1 85 (9.76%) Active Directory
2 58 (6.66%) VMware Infrastructure
3 29 (3.33%) Docker
4 21 (2.41%) Virtual Machines
5 19 (2.18%) VMware NSX
6 14 (1.61%) Hyper-V
7 11 (1.26%) vSphere
8 8 (0.92%) Virtual Desktop
8 8 (0.92%) VMware ESXi
9 6 (0.69%) 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 90 (10.33%) Ansible
2 74 (8.50%) Kubernetes
3 46 (5.28%) FortiGate
4 23 (2.64%) Microsoft Intune
5 22 (2.53%) Grafana
6 17 (1.95%) Single Sign-On
7 14 (1.61%) SCCM
8 13 (1.49%) Progress Chef
8 13 (1.49%) Prometheus
9 12 (1.38%) CASB
10 7 (0.80%) Cisco Prime
10 7 (0.80%) Puppet
10 7 (0.80%) QRadar
10 7 (0.80%) vCenter Server
11 6 (0.69%) Cisco CUCM
12 5 (0.57%) Suricata
12 5 (0.57%) WSUS
13 4 (0.46%) Kustomize
13 4 (0.46%) Podman
13 4 (0.46%) systemd
Vendors
1 248 (28.47%) Cisco
2 163 (18.71%) Microsoft
3 149 (17.11%) Palo Alto
4 87 (9.99%) Fortinet
5 80 (9.18%) F5
6 77 (8.84%) VMware
7 58 (6.66%) Zscaler
8 55 (6.31%) CheckPoint
9 43 (4.94%) Juniper
10 41 (4.71%) Splunk
11 36 (4.13%) SolarWinds
12 33 (3.79%) ServiceNow
13 31 (3.56%) Aruba
14 27 (3.10%) Google
15 22 (2.53%) Citrix
16 16 (1.84%) Meraki
17 15 (1.72%) ForeScout
18 14 (1.61%) CyberArk
18 14 (1.61%) Tenable
19 13 (1.49%) Infoblox