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

6 months to
17 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 151 152 180
Rank change year-on-year +1 +28 -11
Contract jobs citing Network Security 858 556 563
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.71% 1.87% 1.29%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 17.95% 14.99% 10.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 589 338 381
10th Percentile £400 £364 £375
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £613 £668
90th Percentile £700 £713 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £575
% change year-on-year +5.00% -13.04% +9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 9 18
10th Percentile £21.25 £65.13 -
25th Percentile £33.81 £80.34 £7.43
Median hourly rate £65.00 £81.35 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.10% +287.38% -61.82%
75th Percentile £74.00 £82.10 £41.25
90th Percentile - £87.20 £45.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £81.35 £7.43
% change year-on-year -17.03% +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 4,781 3,710 5,390
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.50% 12.50% 12.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,931 2,279 3,184
10th Percentile £258 £222 £210
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £481 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.95% -3.80% -1.96%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £470 £488
% change year-on-year +2.26% -3.59% +2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 291 174 422
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £19.81 £17.69
Median hourly rate £27.88 £42.75 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -34.78% +6.88% +110.53%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.97 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £78.50 £71.19
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.00 £31.08 £47.50
% change year-on-year -6.69% -34.57% +150.46%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 -7 741 £525 - 315
UK excluding London -17 414 £525 +5.00% 298
London +8 328 £550 -4.35% 95
Work from Home +2 251 £540 +2.86% 218
North of England +9 172 £500 - 69
South East -25 100 £523 +6.63% 77
North West +2 94 £508 +1.50% 46
Yorkshire -7 76 £500 +2.04% 21
Midlands -49 49 £450 -22.58% 35
Scotland 0 35 £600 +41.18% 36
East of England -21 32 £525 -8.70% 28
South West -27 30 £550 -6.38% 33
West Midlands -62 29 £420 -27.74% 19
East Midlands -5 19 £638 - 16
Wales -20 3 £600 +103.39% 12
North East -31 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 (2.68%) Confluence
2 13 (1.52%) Microsoft Exchange
3 8 (0.93%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.23%) Apache
5 1 (0.12%) IIS
5 1 (0.12%) NetWeaver
5 1 (0.12%) nginx
Applications
1 16 (1.86%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (1.40%) 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 4 (0.47%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 263 (30.65%) Azure
2 186 (21.68%) AWS
3 112 (13.05%) GCP
4 75 (8.74%) Entra ID
5 37 (4.31%) GitHub
6 30 (3.50%) GitHub Actions
7 28 (3.26%) Azure DevOps
7 28 (3.26%) Azure Sentinel
8 22 (2.56%) Microsoft 365
9 21 (2.45%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 19 (2.21%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 19 (2.21%) SaaS
10 19 (2.21%) Serverless
11 18 (2.10%) Azure AKS
11 18 (2.10%) Azure Key Vault
12 16 (1.86%) Akamai
12 16 (1.86%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 16 (1.86%) Azure Monitor
13 14 (1.63%) AWS CloudFormation
14 13 (1.52%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 388 (45.22%) Firewall
2 168 (19.58%) VPN
3 152 (17.72%) WAN
4 123 (14.34%) LAN
5 102 (11.89%) DNS
6 101 (11.77%) BGP
7 85 (9.91%) OSPF
8 83 (9.67%) SD-WAN
9 81 (9.44%) Wireless
10 76 (8.86%) VLAN
11 68 (7.93%) TCP/IP
12 54 (6.29%) MPLS
13 53 (6.18%) DHCP
14 47 (5.48%) IPsec
15 44 (5.13%) SSL
16 43 (5.01%) Wi-Fi
17 39 (4.55%) Cisco ISE
18 33 (3.85%) Internet
19 32 (3.73%) Cisco ASA
19 32 (3.73%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (0.93%) Azure SQL Database
2 5 (0.58%) 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 (4.90%) JIRA
2 25 (2.91%) GitLab
3 23 (2.68%) Git
3 23 (2.68%) Jenkins
4 7 (0.82%) Snyk
4 7 (0.82%) Sonatype Nexus
5 5 (0.58%) 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
1 194 (22.61%) Social Skills
2 134 (15.62%) Finance
3 63 (7.34%) Public Sector
4 62 (7.23%) Analytical Skills
5 50 (5.83%) Banking
6 38 (4.43%) Documentation Skills
7 24 (2.80%) Telecoms
8 21 (2.45%) Financial Institution
9 15 (1.75%) Legal
10 12 (1.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 11 (1.28%) Retail
12 9 (1.05%) Police
13 8 (0.93%) Organisational Skills
14 7 (0.82%) Local Government
14 7 (0.82%) Manufacturing
15 6 (0.70%) Law
16 5 (0.58%) Influencing Skills
16 5 (0.58%) Military
17 3 (0.35%) Billing
17 3 (0.35%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 226 (26.34%) Network Engineer
2 182 (21.21%) Architect
3 113 (13.17%) Security Engineer
4 90 (10.49%) Security Architect
5 81 (9.44%) Senior
6 59 (6.88%) Network Architect
6 59 (6.88%) Network Security Engineer
7 40 (4.66%) Consultant
8 38 (4.43%) Project Manager
9 32 (3.73%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 31 (3.61%) Lead
11 29 (3.38%) Cloud Engineer
12 28 (3.26%) Senior Network Engineer
13 27 (3.15%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
14 26 (3.03%) Network Security Architect
15 24 (2.80%) Network Manager
16 22 (2.56%) Azure Architect
17 21 (2.45%) Cloud Architect
17 21 (2.45%) Solutions Architect
18 20 (2.33%) Firewall Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (4.55%) 802.1X
2 14 (1.63%) SAML
3 13 (1.52%) REST
4 10 (1.17%) Kafka
5 9 (1.05%) ARM Templates
6 8 (0.93%) 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 (0.58%) 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
1 117 (13.64%) Data Centre
2 63 (7.34%) Security Posture
3 50 (5.83%) Cloud Native
4 41 (4.78%) Hybrid Cloud
5 34 (3.96%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 30 (3.50%) Onboarding
7 29 (3.38%) PKI
8 25 (2.91%) Data Protection Act
9 24 (2.80%) Operational Technology
9 24 (2.80%) Public Cloud
10 20 (2.33%) Management Information System
10 20 (2.33%) Product Ownership
11 19 (2.21%) IoT
12 17 (1.98%) Cyber Threat
13 15 (1.75%) Security Operations Centre
14 14 (1.63%) Self-Motivation
15 10 (1.17%) Replication
16 9 (1.05%) Virtual Team
17 8 (0.93%) Enterprise Cloud
17 8 (0.93%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 67 (7.81%) Linux
1 67 (7.81%) Windows
2 25 (2.91%) Windows Server
3 9 (1.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 9 (1.05%) VMS
4 6 (0.70%) Ubuntu
4 6 (0.70%) Unix
5 5 (0.58%) Mac OS
5 5 (0.58%) Windows 10
6 3 (0.35%) SUSE
7 2 (0.23%) Android
8 1 (0.12%) Check Point GAiA
8 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2003
8 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
8 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 173 (20.16%) Cybersecurity
2 152 (17.72%) Cloud Security
3 139 (16.20%) Zero Trust
4 125 (14.57%) CI/CD
5 118 (13.75%) Security Architecture
6 116 (13.52%) DevOps
7 114 (13.29%) Infrastructure as Code
8 113 (13.17%) Migration
9 110 (12.82%) SIEM
10 99 (11.54%) Continuous Improvement
11 95 (11.07%) High Availability
12 89 (10.37%) Problem-Solving
13 87 (10.14%) Stakeholder Management
14 86 (10.02%) Application Security
15 85 (9.91%) Network Segmentation
16 83 (9.67%) Incident Response
17 82 (9.56%) Data Protection
17 82 (9.56%) Threat Modelling
18 80 (9.32%) Agile
19 79 (9.21%) Load Balancing
Programming Languages
1 108 (12.59%) Python
2 46 (5.36%) PowerShell
3 37 (4.31%) Bash
4 31 (3.61%) Bicep
5 20 (2.33%) SQL
6 19 (2.21%) JavaScript
7 8 (0.93%) Shell Script
8 7 (0.82%) Java
9 5 (0.58%) Kusto Query Language
10 4 (0.47%) C
10 4 (0.47%) PHP
10 4 (0.47%) Rust
11 3 (0.35%) C++
11 3 (0.35%) 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 (28.55%) Security Cleared
2 183 (21.33%) SC Cleared
3 165 (19.23%) Cisco Certification
4 101 (11.77%) CCNP
5 99 (11.54%) CISSP
6 72 (8.39%) DV Cleared
7 65 (7.58%) CCNA
8 63 (7.34%) Degree
9 60 (6.99%) CISM
10 38 (4.43%) CCSP
11 37 (4.31%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 32 (3.73%) Azure Certification
13 23 (2.68%) CCIE
14 21 (2.45%) AWS Certification
15 15 (1.75%) BPSS Clearance
16 14 (1.63%) CompTIA Security+
16 14 (1.63%) Computer Science Degree
17 13 (1.52%) GIAC
18 11 (1.28%) JNCIS
19 10 (1.17%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 92 (10.72%) NIST
2 73 (8.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 40 (4.66%) GDPR
4 27 (3.15%) PCI DSS
5 24 (2.80%) NCSC
6 19 (2.21%) QA
7 18 (2.10%) GRC
8 15 (1.75%) Cyber Essentials
9 13 (1.52%) SLA
10 8 (0.93%) Actionable Recommendations
10 8 (0.93%) Disclosure Scotland
10 8 (0.93%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 8 (0.93%) SOC 2
11 7 (0.82%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 5 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 5 (0.58%) 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 63 (7.34%) Active Directory
2 52 (6.06%) VMware Infrastructure
3 24 (2.80%) Docker
4 23 (2.68%) VMware NSX
5 22 (2.56%) Virtual Machines
6 11 (1.28%) VMware ESXi
7 10 (1.17%) vSphere
8 8 (0.93%) Hyper-V
9 6 (0.70%) Firmware
10 5 (0.58%) Squid
10 5 (0.58%) Virtual Desktop
11 2 (0.23%) NFS
11 2 (0.23%) Postfix
11 2 (0.23%) Sendmail
11 2 (0.23%) Varnish
11 2 (0.23%) VMware Workstation
12 1 (0.12%) OpenSSH
12 1 (0.12%) ProxySG
12 1 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 120 (13.99%) Terraform
2 77 (8.97%) Ansible
3 75 (8.74%) Kubernetes
4 41 (4.78%) FortiGate
5 19 (2.21%) Grafana
6 18 (2.10%) Single Sign-On
7 11 (1.28%) Microsoft Intune
7 11 (1.28%) Prometheus
7 11 (1.28%) vCenter Server
8 6 (0.70%) QRadar
9 5 (0.58%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 5 (0.58%) CASB
9 5 (0.58%) Istio
9 5 (0.58%) Puppet
9 5 (0.58%) Suricata
9 5 (0.58%) WSUS
10 4 (0.47%) Kustomize
10 4 (0.47%) Podman
11 3 (0.35%) SCOM
11 3 (0.35%) VxRail
Vendors
1 240 (27.97%) Cisco
2 139 (16.20%) Palo Alto
3 120 (13.99%) Microsoft
4 76 (8.86%) F5
5 69 (8.04%) Fortinet
6 66 (7.69%) VMware
7 56 (6.53%) Zscaler
8 54 (6.29%) CheckPoint
9 53 (6.18%) Juniper
10 35 (4.08%) ServiceNow
11 31 (3.61%) Splunk
12 24 (2.80%) Aruba
13 22 (2.56%) Google
13 22 (2.56%) SolarWinds
14 21 (2.45%) ForeScout
15 20 (2.33%) Citrix
16 17 (1.98%) Tenable
17 15 (1.75%) Arista
18 13 (1.52%) Okta
19 12 (1.40%) Infoblox