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 11 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 172 161 171
Rank change year-on-year -11 +10 -5
Contract jobs citing Network Security 884 590 559
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.62% 1.79% 1.45%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 17.26% 15.34% 12.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 579 350 379
10th Percentile £400 £380 £363
25th Percentile £463 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year +3.77% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £650 £629 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £537 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +7.40% -9.09% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 14 7
10th Percentile £26.60 £45.00 £32.90
25th Percentile £56.47 £55.00 £42.50
Median hourly rate £73.00 £70.16 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.05% +40.32% -25.65%
75th Percentile £74.00 £84.09 £58.75
90th Percentile £85.00 £95.50 £82.79
UK excluding London median hourly rate £73.00 £70.16 £53.75
% change year-on-year +4.05% +30.53% +17.49%

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 5,121 3,847 4,573
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.38% 11.65% 11.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,996 2,371 2,670
10th Percentile £233 £235 £228
25th Percentile £390 £363 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £609
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £477 £465 £500
% change year-on-year +2.58% -7.00% +10.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 400 201 268
10th Percentile £14.28 £15.33 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £21.37
Median hourly rate £26.66 £42.50 £51.00
Median % change year-on-year -37.27% -16.67% -9.72%
75th Percentile £66.28 £63.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.11 £73.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -38.82% -25.89% +1.52%

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 11 September 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 11 September 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 11 September 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 -15 773 £550 +4.76% 348
UK excluding London -20 439 £537 +7.40% 215
London -7 341 £550 - 154
Work from Home +2 267 £531 -3.45% 160
North of England +5 201 £531 +8.42% 40
North West +1 115 £530 +11.47% 22
South East -27 100 £554 +20.41% 78
Yorkshire +9 83 £538 +9.25% 14
Midlands -62 48 £450 -18.18% 35
East of England -15 41 £525 -0.94% 29
West Midlands -72 33 £450 -18.18% 24
Scotland -7 28 £600 +33.33% 8
South West -61 20 £600 -3.23% 28
East Midlands -3 14 £500 - 11
Channel Islands +1 6 £600 -17.24%
North East - 2 £675 - 5
Northern Ireland +2 1 - - 2
Wales -17 1 £650 +30.00% 3

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 (2.15%) Microsoft Exchange
2 16 (1.81%) SharePoint
3 11 (1.24%) Confluence
4 3 (0.34%) Apache
4 3 (0.34%) 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 21 (2.38%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (0.79%) MS Visio
3 5 (0.57%) Microsoft Project
4 4 (0.45%) Microsoft Excel
5 1 (0.11%) InfoPath
5 1 (0.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 6 (0.68%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.11%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 311 (35.18%) Azure
2 212 (23.98%) AWS
3 108 (12.22%) GCP
4 91 (10.29%) Entra ID
5 45 (5.09%) Microsoft 365
6 40 (4.52%) GitHub
7 39 (4.41%) Azure DevOps
8 31 (3.51%) Azure Monitor
9 28 (3.17%) Serverless
10 27 (3.05%) Azure Sentinel
11 26 (2.94%) SaaS
12 22 (2.49%) GitHub Actions
13 20 (2.26%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 17 (1.92%) Amazon EKS
14 17 (1.92%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 16 (1.81%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 16 (1.81%) Azure AKS
15 16 (1.81%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 15 (1.70%) OCI
17 14 (1.58%) Azure Key Vault
Communications & Networking
1 402 (45.48%) Firewall
2 210 (23.76%) VPN
3 194 (21.95%) WAN
4 132 (14.93%) DNS
5 128 (14.48%) LAN
6 108 (12.22%) Wireless
7 96 (10.86%) BGP
8 88 (9.95%) TCP/IP
9 87 (9.84%) SD-WAN
10 73 (8.26%) DHCP
11 72 (8.14%) VLAN
12 69 (7.81%) OSPF
13 57 (6.45%) SSL
14 52 (5.88%) MPLS
15 51 (5.77%) IPsec
16 49 (5.54%) Wi-Fi
17 47 (5.32%) Cisco ISE
18 41 (4.64%) Cisco ASA
18 41 (4.64%) Internet
19 35 (3.96%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (1.47%) SQL Server
2 6 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
2 6 (0.68%) BigQuery
3 4 (0.45%) Elasticsearch
3 4 (0.45%) Neo4j
4 3 (0.34%) Azure SQL Database
4 3 (0.34%) Data Lake
4 3 (0.34%) PostgreSQL
4 3 (0.34%) Power BI
5 2 (0.23%) Delta Lake
5 2 (0.23%) InfluxDB
6 1 (0.11%) Data Mining
6 1 (0.11%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.11%) Looker
6 1 (0.11%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (0.11%) Qlik Sense
6 1 (0.11%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.11%) Snowflake Schema
6 1 (0.11%) Star Schema
6 1 (0.11%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 38 (4.30%) Git
2 32 (3.62%) JIRA
3 31 (3.51%) GitLab
4 28 (3.17%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.79%) Sonatype Nexus
6 4 (0.45%) MSBuild
6 4 (0.45%) SonarQube
6 4 (0.45%) Visual Studio
7 3 (0.34%) Artifactory
7 3 (0.34%) Browser DevTools
8 2 (0.23%) IBM UrbanCode
9 1 (0.11%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.11%) Claude Code
9 1 (0.11%) Postman
9 1 (0.11%) Snyk
9 1 (0.11%) SoapUI
9 1 (0.11%) Subversion
General
1 237 (26.81%) Social Skills
2 155 (17.53%) Finance
3 86 (9.73%) Analytical Skills
4 64 (7.24%) Banking
5 46 (5.20%) Public Sector
6 44 (4.98%) Documentation Skills
7 30 (3.39%) Telecoms
8 25 (2.83%) Legal
9 19 (2.15%) Financial Institution
10 15 (1.70%) Manufacturing
10 15 (1.70%) Retail
11 14 (1.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 14 (1.58%) Influencing Skills
12 12 (1.36%) Organisational Skills
13 9 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
14 8 (0.90%) Police
15 6 (0.68%) Automotive
15 6 (0.68%) Local Government
15 6 (0.68%) Military
16 5 (0.57%) Law
Job Titles
1 249 (28.17%) Network Engineer
2 163 (18.44%) Architect
3 113 (12.78%) Security Engineer
4 111 (12.56%) Senior
5 89 (10.07%) Security Architect
6 67 (7.58%) Network Security Engineer
7 65 (7.35%) Consultant
8 57 (6.45%) Network Architect
9 53 (6.00%) Senior Network Engineer
10 47 (5.32%) Project Manager
11 42 (4.75%) Cloud Engineer
11 42 (4.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 34 (3.85%) Security Consultant
13 30 (3.39%) Lead
14 28 (3.17%) Analyst
15 26 (2.94%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
16 25 (2.83%) Network Manager
17 24 (2.71%) Azure Engineer
18 23 (2.60%) Solutions Architect
19 22 (2.49%) Network Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 131 (14.82%) Terraform
2 35 (3.96%) 802.1X
3 19 (2.15%) REST
4 15 (1.70%) ARM Templates
5 14 (1.58%) SAML
6 12 (1.36%) Kafka
7 8 (0.90%) NETCONF
8 7 (0.79%) JSON
9 6 (0.68%) gRPC
9 6 (0.68%) Keycloak
10 5 (0.57%) Azure Blueprints
10 5 (0.57%) OpenID
10 5 (0.57%) SLSA
10 5 (0.57%) XML
11 4 (0.45%) .NET
11 4 (0.45%) CSS
11 4 (0.45%) LDAP
11 4 (0.45%) OAuth
11 4 (0.45%) RESTful
11 4 (0.45%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 114 (12.90%) Data Centre
2 84 (9.50%) Security Posture
3 53 (6.00%) Cloud Native
4 48 (5.43%) Onboarding
5 44 (4.98%) Hybrid Cloud
6 42 (4.75%) Management Information System
7 31 (3.51%) Operational Technology
8 30 (3.39%) Cyber Threat
9 29 (3.28%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 27 (3.05%) PKI
11 22 (2.49%) Security Operations Centre
12 21 (2.38%) Self-Motivation
13 19 (2.15%) Cloud Security Posture
14 17 (1.92%) Data Protection Act
14 17 (1.92%) Public Cloud
15 15 (1.70%) Enterprise Software
16 13 (1.47%) Linux Command Line
17 12 (1.36%) Replication
18 9 (1.02%) Virtual Team
19 8 (0.90%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 94 (10.63%) Windows
2 80 (9.05%) Linux
3 35 (3.96%) Windows Server
4 16 (1.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 8 (0.90%) Windows 10
6 7 (0.79%) Unix
7 6 (0.68%) Ubuntu
8 5 (0.57%) Mac OS
9 3 (0.34%) Check Point GAiA
9 3 (0.34%) SUSE
9 3 (0.34%) VMS
10 2 (0.23%) Android
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%) Windows Server 2003
11 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 182 (20.59%) Cloud Security
2 174 (19.68%) Cybersecurity
3 145 (16.40%) Stakeholder Management
4 133 (15.05%) Zero Trust
5 128 (14.48%) CI/CD
5 128 (14.48%) Continuous Improvement
6 123 (13.91%) Incident Response
7 119 (13.46%) Infrastructure as Code
8 114 (12.90%) Change Management
9 113 (12.78%) DevOps
9 113 (12.78%) SIEM
10 111 (12.56%) Migration
11 109 (12.33%) Problem-Solving
12 107 (12.10%) Security Architecture
13 96 (10.86%) High Availability
14 93 (10.52%) Data Protection
14 93 (10.52%) Identity Access Management
14 93 (10.52%) Threat Modelling
15 89 (10.07%) Load Balancing
16 88 (9.95%) Security Operations
Programming Languages
1 149 (16.86%) Python
2 86 (9.73%) PowerShell
3 73 (8.26%) Bash
4 36 (4.07%) Bicep
5 24 (2.71%) SQL
6 13 (1.47%) Go
7 11 (1.24%) Java
8 7 (0.79%) Search Processing Language
9 6 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
9 6 (0.68%) Shell Script
10 4 (0.45%) Rust
11 3 (0.34%) ActionScript
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%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 238 (26.92%) Security Cleared
2 174 (19.68%) Cisco Certification
2 174 (19.68%) SC Cleared
3 115 (13.01%) CISSP
4 100 (11.31%) CCNP
5 70 (7.92%) DV Cleared
6 66 (7.47%) Degree
7 55 (6.22%) CISM
8 51 (5.77%) CCNA
9 50 (5.66%) CCSP
10 48 (5.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 36 (4.07%) Azure Certification
12 32 (3.62%) CCIE
13 29 (3.28%) AWS Certification
14 16 (1.81%) Computer Science Degree
15 13 (1.47%) GIAC
16 12 (1.36%) PMP
17 11 (1.24%) BPSS Clearance
17 11 (1.24%) CEH
17 11 (1.24%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 74 (8.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 71 (8.03%) NIST
3 40 (4.52%) GDPR
4 29 (3.28%) NCSC
5 23 (2.60%) PCI DSS
6 13 (1.47%) QA
7 12 (1.36%) Cyber Essentials
7 12 (1.36%) GRC
8 11 (1.24%) SLA
9 9 (1.02%) NIST 800
9 9 (1.02%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 7 (0.79%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 7 (0.79%) Disclosure Scotland
11 5 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 5 (0.57%) PMO
12 4 (0.45%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 3 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
13 3 (0.34%) ISA99
13 3 (0.34%) SOC 2
14 2 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 78 (8.82%) Active Directory
2 56 (6.33%) VMware Infrastructure
3 33 (3.73%) Docker
4 22 (2.49%) Virtual Machines
5 18 (2.04%) VMware NSX
6 13 (1.47%) Hyper-V
7 11 (1.24%) vSphere
8 8 (0.90%) Virtual Desktop
8 8 (0.90%) VMware ESXi
9 5 (0.57%) Firmware
9 5 (0.57%) Squid
10 2 (0.23%) FreeRADIUS
10 2 (0.23%) NFS
10 2 (0.23%) OpenSSH
10 2 (0.23%) Virtual Servers
10 2 (0.23%) VMware Workstation
11 1 (0.11%) Postfix
11 1 (0.11%) ProxySG
11 1 (0.11%) Sendmail
11 1 (0.11%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 98 (11.09%) Ansible
2 81 (9.16%) Kubernetes
3 46 (5.20%) FortiGate
4 24 (2.71%) Microsoft Intune
5 23 (2.60%) Grafana
6 16 (1.81%) Prometheus
7 15 (1.70%) SCCM
8 14 (1.58%) Progress Chef
8 14 (1.58%) Single Sign-On
9 10 (1.13%) CASB
10 9 (1.02%) QRadar
11 7 (0.79%) Cisco Prime
11 7 (0.79%) Puppet
11 7 (0.79%) vCenter Server
12 6 (0.68%) Cisco CUCM
13 5 (0.57%) Suricata
13 5 (0.57%) WSUS
14 4 (0.45%) Nagios
14 4 (0.45%) Podman
14 4 (0.45%) systemd
Vendors
1 255 (28.85%) Cisco
2 163 (18.44%) Microsoft
2 163 (18.44%) Palo Alto
3 92 (10.41%) Fortinet
4 84 (9.50%) F5
5 76 (8.60%) VMware
6 60 (6.79%) Zscaler
7 57 (6.45%) CheckPoint
8 47 (5.32%) Juniper
9 40 (4.52%) Splunk
10 36 (4.07%) SolarWinds
11 31 (3.51%) Aruba
12 28 (3.17%) Google
13 27 (3.05%) ServiceNow
14 21 (2.38%) Citrix
15 16 (1.81%) Meraki
16 15 (1.70%) CyberArk
17 14 (1.58%) Tenable
18 13 (1.47%) Blue Coat
19 11 (1.24%) ForeScout