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

6 months to
4 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 183 167 160
Rank change year-on-year -16 -7 -3
Contract jobs citing Network Security 868 557 579
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.59% 1.68% 1.52%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 17.21% 14.63% 12.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 565 330 373
10th Percentile £400 £380 £358
25th Percentile £463 £450 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £538 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.33% +2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £650 £636 £626
90th Percentile £733 £738 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +10.00% -4.76% -1.32%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 16 9
10th Percentile £27.00 £45.00 £31.70
25th Percentile £67.81 £52.50 £36.00
Median hourly rate £72.75 £70.16 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.69% +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 5,043 3,808 4,534
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.23% 11.47% 11.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,910 2,393 2,614
10th Percentile £231 £220 £225
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 £453 £485
% change year-on-year +4.86% -6.60% +6.59%
Number of hourly rates quoted 432 205 202
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £21.25 £23.90
Median hourly rate £32.50 £41.94 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.51% -16.12% -11.49%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £92.11 £74.20 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -37.27% -25.89% -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 4 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 4 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 4 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 -3 765 £550 +3.29% 760
UK excluding London -3 441 £550 +10.00% 413
London -10 331 £550 - 369
Work from Home -2 256 £540 -1.82% 295
North of England +15 203 £540 +10.83% 90
North West -3 109 £540 +13.68% 49
South East -30 91 £558 +24.00% 136
Yorkshire +13 90 £540 +9.76% 33
Midlands -60 50 £481 -8.33% 67
East of England -1 40 £525 +5.00% 42
West Midlands -70 38 £450 -14.29% 40
South West -36 28 £675 +5.47% 51
Scotland -15 27 £600 +29.73% 16
East Midlands -1 12 £500 - 27
Channel Islands 0 6 £600 -17.24%
North East - 3 £680 - 9
Northern Ireland +5 2 - - 10
Wales -16 1 £650 +30.00% 7

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 (2.19%) Microsoft Exchange
2 18 (2.07%) SharePoint
3 11 (1.27%) Confluence
4 4 (0.46%) Apache
4 4 (0.46%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.23%) Apache Spark
5 2 (0.23%) IIS
5 2 (0.23%) nginx
6 1 (0.12%) CMS
6 1 (0.12%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 17 (1.96%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (0.81%) MS Visio
3 5 (0.58%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (0.58%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.12%) InfoPath
Business Applications
1 6 (0.69%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 292 (33.64%) Azure
2 206 (23.73%) AWS
3 106 (12.21%) GCP
4 96 (11.06%) Entra ID
5 49 (5.65%) Microsoft 365
6 46 (5.30%) GitHub
7 39 (4.49%) Azure DevOps
8 34 (3.92%) Azure Monitor
9 31 (3.57%) Serverless
10 25 (2.88%) SaaS
11 24 (2.76%) Azure Sentinel
12 21 (2.42%) GitHub Actions
13 20 (2.30%) Azure AKS
14 18 (2.07%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 18 (2.07%) Amazon EKS
14 18 (2.07%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 18 (2.07%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 18 (2.07%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 17 (1.96%) OCI
16 16 (1.84%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 396 (45.62%) Firewall
2 201 (23.16%) VPN
3 189 (21.77%) WAN
4 138 (15.90%) DNS
5 133 (15.32%) LAN
6 102 (11.75%) Wireless
7 96 (11.06%) BGP
8 92 (10.60%) TCP/IP
9 77 (8.87%) SD-WAN
10 71 (8.18%) DHCP
11 67 (7.72%) OSPF
12 64 (7.37%) VLAN
13 58 (6.68%) SSL
14 51 (5.88%) MPLS
15 43 (4.95%) Wi-Fi
16 42 (4.84%) IPsec
17 41 (4.72%) Cisco ISE
18 39 (4.49%) Cisco ASA
19 36 (4.15%) Internet
20 32 (3.69%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (1.38%) SQL Server
2 9 (1.04%) Amazon RDS
3 7 (0.81%) BigQuery
4 5 (0.58%) Delta Lake
4 5 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
5 4 (0.46%) Neo4j
5 4 (0.46%) Power BI
6 3 (0.35%) Azure SQL Database
6 3 (0.35%) Data Lake
6 3 (0.35%) PostgreSQL
7 2 (0.23%) InfluxDB
7 2 (0.23%) Looker
7 2 (0.23%) Relational Database
8 1 (0.12%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.12%) Big Data
8 1 (0.12%) MongoDB
8 1 (0.12%) Qlik Sense
8 1 (0.12%) SAP Data Services
8 1 (0.12%) SAP HANA
8 1 (0.12%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 41 (4.72%) Git
2 32 (3.69%) GitLab
2 32 (3.69%) Jenkins
3 27 (3.11%) JIRA
4 7 (0.81%) Sonatype Nexus
5 4 (0.46%) MSBuild
5 4 (0.46%) SonarQube
5 4 (0.46%) Visual Studio
6 3 (0.35%) Artifactory
6 3 (0.35%) Claude Code
7 2 (0.23%) IBM UrbanCode
8 1 (0.12%) Browser DevTools
8 1 (0.12%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.12%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.12%) Postman
8 1 (0.12%) REST Assured
8 1 (0.12%) SoapUI
8 1 (0.12%) Subversion
General
1 246 (28.34%) Social Skills
2 162 (18.66%) Finance
3 91 (10.48%) Analytical Skills
4 66 (7.60%) Banking
5 44 (5.07%) Documentation Skills
5 44 (5.07%) Public Sector
6 30 (3.46%) Legal
6 30 (3.46%) Telecoms
7 18 (2.07%) Financial Institution
8 16 (1.84%) Influencing Skills
9 14 (1.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 14 (1.61%) Retail
10 13 (1.50%) Manufacturing
10 13 (1.50%) Organisational Skills
11 12 (1.38%) Presentation Skills
12 8 (0.92%) Local Government
13 6 (0.69%) Automotive
13 6 (0.69%) Law
13 6 (0.69%) Military
13 6 (0.69%) Police
Job Titles
1 244 (28.11%) Network Engineer
2 148 (17.05%) Architect
3 118 (13.59%) Security Engineer
4 104 (11.98%) Senior
5 81 (9.33%) Security Architect
6 71 (8.18%) Network Security Engineer
7 66 (7.60%) Consultant
8 59 (6.80%) Network Architect
9 48 (5.53%) Senior Network Engineer
10 45 (5.18%) Project Manager
11 44 (5.07%) Cloud Engineer
12 43 (4.95%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 36 (4.15%) Security Consultant
14 33 (3.80%) Lead
15 30 (3.46%) Network Security Architect
16 29 (3.34%) Analyst
17 27 (3.11%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
18 24 (2.76%) Azure Engineer
18 24 (2.76%) Network Manager
19 22 (2.53%) Network Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 147 (16.94%) Terraform
2 37 (4.26%) 802.1X
3 24 (2.76%) REST
4 15 (1.73%) ARM Templates
5 14 (1.61%) Kafka
6 13 (1.50%) SAML
7 8 (0.92%) JSON
7 8 (0.92%) NETCONF
8 6 (0.69%) gRPC
8 6 (0.69%) Keycloak
8 6 (0.69%) LDAP
8 6 (0.69%) YAML
9 5 (0.58%) Azure Blueprints
9 5 (0.58%) OpenID
9 5 (0.58%) SLSA
9 5 (0.58%) Software Packaging
9 5 (0.58%) XML
10 4 (0.46%) CSS
10 4 (0.46%) OAuth
10 4 (0.46%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 120 (13.82%) Data Centre
2 84 (9.68%) Security Posture
3 56 (6.45%) Onboarding
4 50 (5.76%) Cloud Native
5 41 (4.72%) Hybrid Cloud
6 40 (4.61%) Management Information System
7 36 (4.15%) Operational Technology
8 35 (4.03%) Cyber Threat
9 27 (3.11%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 27 (3.11%) PKI
10 25 (2.88%) Self-Motivation
11 23 (2.65%) Security Operations Centre
12 22 (2.53%) Public Cloud
13 19 (2.19%) Cloud Security Posture
14 18 (2.07%) Data Protection Act
15 13 (1.50%) Enterprise Software
16 11 (1.27%) Linux Command Line
16 11 (1.27%) Replication
17 10 (1.15%) Video Conferencing
18 9 (1.04%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 103 (11.87%) Windows
2 88 (10.14%) Linux
3 45 (5.18%) Windows Server
4 20 (2.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 12 (1.38%) Unix
6 8 (0.92%) Windows 10
7 7 (0.81%) Ubuntu
8 3 (0.35%) Check Point GAiA
8 3 (0.35%) Mac OS
9 2 (0.23%) Android
9 2 (0.23%) Oracle Linux
9 2 (0.23%) Rocky
9 2 (0.23%) SUSE
9 2 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
9 2 (0.23%) zOS
10 1 (0.12%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
10 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2003
10 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 185 (21.31%) Cybersecurity
2 175 (20.16%) Cloud Security
3 154 (17.74%) Stakeholder Management
4 144 (16.59%) CI/CD
5 137 (15.78%) Zero Trust
6 134 (15.44%) Infrastructure as Code
7 126 (14.52%) Continuous Improvement
8 125 (14.40%) Incident Response
9 123 (14.17%) Problem-Solving
10 120 (13.82%) SIEM
11 118 (13.59%) Migration
12 114 (13.13%) DevOps
13 109 (12.56%) Change Management
14 107 (12.33%) Security Architecture
15 97 (11.18%) Identity Access Management
16 94 (10.83%) Data Protection
17 93 (10.71%) Infrastructure Engineering
18 89 (10.25%) Agile
18 89 (10.25%) Load Balancing
19 87 (10.02%) Security Operations
Programming Languages
1 169 (19.47%) Python
2 92 (10.60%) PowerShell
3 77 (8.87%) Bash
4 34 (3.92%) Bicep
5 29 (3.34%) SQL
6 15 (1.73%) Go
7 14 (1.61%) Java
8 7 (0.81%) ActionScript
8 7 (0.81%) Kusto Query Language
8 7 (0.81%) Search Processing Language
8 7 (0.81%) Shell Script
9 4 (0.46%) Rust
10 3 (0.35%) JavaScript
10 3 (0.35%) Perl
10 3 (0.35%) VBScript
11 1 (0.12%) C
11 1 (0.12%) C#
11 1 (0.12%) C++
11 1 (0.12%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 242 (27.88%) Security Cleared
2 175 (20.16%) Cisco Certification
3 171 (19.70%) SC Cleared
4 107 (12.33%) CISSP
5 99 (11.41%) CCNP
6 78 (8.99%) DV Cleared
7 65 (7.49%) Degree
8 51 (5.88%) CCSP
9 49 (5.65%) CCNA
10 48 (5.53%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 43 (4.95%) CISM
12 37 (4.26%) CCIE
13 28 (3.23%) Azure Certification
14 25 (2.88%) AWS Certification
15 18 (2.07%) Computer Science Degree
16 12 (1.38%) GIAC
16 12 (1.38%) PMI Certification
16 12 (1.38%) PMP
17 11 (1.27%) BPSS Clearance
17 11 (1.27%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 76 (8.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 72 (8.29%) NIST
3 35 (4.03%) GDPR
4 31 (3.57%) NCSC
5 28 (3.23%) PCI DSS
6 15 (1.73%) 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 (1.04%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 7 (0.81%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 6 (0.69%) Disclosure Scotland
13 5 (0.58%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 5 (0.58%) ISO/IEC 42001
14 4 (0.46%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 4 (0.46%) Data Quality
14 4 (0.46%) PMO
15 3 (0.35%) SOC 2
16 2 (0.23%) P3O
System Software
1 90 (10.37%) Active Directory
2 58 (6.68%) VMware Infrastructure
3 38 (4.38%) Docker
4 17 (1.96%) Virtual Machines
5 16 (1.84%) VMware NSX
6 13 (1.50%) vSphere
7 12 (1.38%) Hyper-V
8 8 (0.92%) VMware ESXi
9 7 (0.81%) Virtual Desktop
10 6 (0.69%) Virtual Servers
11 5 (0.58%) Squid
12 4 (0.46%) FreeRADIUS
13 2 (0.23%) Firmware
13 2 (0.23%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 2 (0.23%) OpenSSH
13 2 (0.23%) VMware Workstation
14 1 (0.12%) NFS
14 1 (0.12%) ProxySG
14 1 (0.12%) Samba
Systems Management
1 102 (11.75%) Ansible
2 83 (9.56%) Kubernetes
3 47 (5.41%) FortiGate
4 30 (3.46%) Grafana
5 27 (3.11%) Microsoft Intune
6 22 (2.53%) Prometheus
7 18 (2.07%) Progress Chef
8 15 (1.73%) SCCM
9 11 (1.27%) Single Sign-On
10 10 (1.15%) CASB
11 9 (1.04%) Nagios
11 9 (1.04%) QRadar
12 7 (0.81%) Cisco CUCM
12 7 (0.81%) Puppet
13 5 (0.58%) Suricata
14 4 (0.46%) Cisco Prime
14 4 (0.46%) Kustomize
14 4 (0.46%) Podman
14 4 (0.46%) systemd
14 4 (0.46%) VxRail
Vendors
1 264 (30.41%) Cisco
2 173 (19.93%) Palo Alto
3 171 (19.70%) Microsoft
4 99 (11.41%) Fortinet
5 82 (9.45%) F5
6 76 (8.76%) VMware
7 67 (7.72%) Zscaler
8 57 (6.57%) CheckPoint
9 46 (5.30%) Juniper
10 43 (4.95%) SolarWinds
11 40 (4.61%) Splunk
12 34 (3.92%) Google
13 33 (3.80%) Aruba
14 25 (2.88%) ServiceNow
15 18 (2.07%) Meraki
16 17 (1.96%) Citrix
17 14 (1.61%) Blue Coat
18 13 (1.50%) CyberArk
18 13 (1.50%) Tenable
19 12 (1.38%) AlgoSec