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 19 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 159 142 175
Rank change year-on-year -17 +33 +5
Contract jobs citing Network Security 790 573 551
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.64% 1.96% 1.29%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 17.26% 15.46% 10.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 535 346 376
10th Percentile £395 £370 £363
25th Percentile £438 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £575
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -8.70% -0.03%
75th Percentile £613 £606 £669
90th Percentile £700 £681 £769
UK excluding London median daily rate £503 £492 £575
% change year-on-year +2.13% -14.43% +9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 10 17
10th Percentile £31.88 £18.28 -
25th Percentile £42.13 £41.63 £7.43
Median hourly rate £65.50 £80.68 £19.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.81% +324.61% -64.53%
75th Percentile £74.07 £81.35 £41.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £82.29 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.00 £80.68 £7.43
% change year-on-year -18.19% +985.80% -84.87%

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 4,577 3,706 5,394
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.53% 12.69% 12.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,833 2,291 3,215
10th Percentile £263 £213 £205
25th Percentile £400 £362 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £488 £490
Median % change year-on-year +1.54% -0.51% -4.85%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £694
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £463 £475
% change year-on-year +2.70% -2.63% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 245 162 417
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £20.82 £17.30 £16.30
Median hourly rate £37.50 £36.57 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.54% -8.57% +116.22%
75th Percentile £65.88 £58.73 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.25 £25.00 £45.88
% change year-on-year +69.00% -45.51% +154.89%

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 19 May 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 19 May 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 19 May 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 -9 686 £525 -1.59% 251
UK excluding London -30 384 £503 +2.13% 191
London -12 298 £550 -4.35% 102
Work from Home +7 227 £528 +5.60% 124
North of England -6 146 £489 -2.20% 50
South East -35 95 £500 +2.04% 66
North West +2 87 £489 -3.22% 29
Yorkshire -23 56 £489 -0.20% 17
Midlands -40 54 £500 -9.09% 17
East of England -18 36 £515 -10.43% 13
West Midlands -51 34 £475 -13.64% 12
South West -26 30 £545 -0.91% 18
Scotland -2 28 £576 +35.47% 26
East Midlands -14 19 £638 - 5
Wales -18 3 £600 +106.90% 5
North East -19 3 £538 -14.00% 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 20 (2.53%) Confluence
2 10 (1.27%) Microsoft Exchange
3 4 (0.51%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.25%) Apache
5 1 (0.13%) nginx
Applications
1 14 (1.77%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.39%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 5 (0.63%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 246 (31.14%) Azure
2 166 (21.01%) AWS
3 99 (12.53%) GCP
4 57 (7.22%) Entra ID
5 32 (4.05%) GitHub
6 29 (3.67%) Azure Sentinel
7 27 (3.42%) Azure DevOps
7 27 (3.42%) GitHub Actions
8 19 (2.41%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 18 (2.28%) Azure AKS
9 18 (2.28%) Azure Key Vault
9 18 (2.28%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 17 (2.15%) Azure Monitor
11 15 (1.90%) Akamai
11 15 (1.90%) AWS CloudFormation
11 15 (1.90%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 15 (1.90%) Microsoft 365
12 14 (1.77%) AWS Direct Connect
12 14 (1.77%) SaaS
13 11 (1.39%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 362 (45.82%) Firewall
2 160 (20.25%) VPN
3 138 (17.47%) WAN
4 111 (14.05%) LAN
5 97 (12.28%) BGP
6 93 (11.77%) DNS
7 85 (10.76%) OSPF
8 74 (9.37%) SD-WAN
8 74 (9.37%) VLAN
9 66 (8.35%) TCP/IP
10 61 (7.72%) Wireless
11 46 (5.82%) MPLS
12 45 (5.70%) DHCP
13 37 (4.68%) Wi-Fi
14 34 (4.30%) SSL
15 33 (4.18%) Cisco ISE
15 33 (4.18%) IPsec
16 31 (3.92%) Cisco ASA
16 31 (3.92%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 28 (3.54%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (0.89%) Azure SQL Database
2 5 (0.63%) Amazon RDS
2 5 (0.63%) SQL Server
3 4 (0.51%) InfluxDB
3 4 (0.51%) Relational Database
4 3 (0.38%) Amazon Athena
4 3 (0.38%) Power BI
5 2 (0.25%) Data Lake
5 2 (0.25%) Oracle Database
5 2 (0.25%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (0.25%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 1 (0.13%) Neo4j
Development Applications
1 35 (4.43%) JIRA
2 22 (2.78%) Jenkins
3 19 (2.41%) GitLab
4 15 (1.90%) Git
5 8 (1.01%) Sonatype Nexus
6 7 (0.89%) Snyk
7 5 (0.63%) Browser DevTools
8 3 (0.38%) Artifactory
9 2 (0.25%) Postman
10 1 (0.13%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.13%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.13%) JUnit
10 1 (0.13%) SoapUI
10 1 (0.13%) Zephyr
General
1 172 (21.77%) Social Skills
2 116 (14.68%) Finance
3 68 (8.61%) Analytical Skills
4 55 (6.96%) Public Sector
5 44 (5.57%) Banking
6 34 (4.30%) Documentation Skills
7 27 (3.42%) Telecoms
8 21 (2.66%) Financial Institution
9 11 (1.39%) Legal
10 9 (1.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 6 (0.76%) Manufacturing
12 5 (0.63%) Law
12 5 (0.63%) Local Government
12 5 (0.63%) Military
12 5 (0.63%) Organisational Skills
12 5 (0.63%) Retail
13 4 (0.51%) Police
14 3 (0.38%) Billing
14 3 (0.38%) Electronics
14 3 (0.38%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 203 (25.70%) Network Engineer
2 170 (21.52%) Architect
3 103 (13.04%) Security Engineer
4 86 (10.89%) Security Architect
5 70 (8.86%) Senior
6 59 (7.47%) Network Architect
7 50 (6.33%) Network Security Engineer
8 29 (3.67%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 29 (3.67%) Lead
9 28 (3.54%) Consultant
10 27 (3.42%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
11 26 (3.29%) Project Manager
12 25 (3.16%) Network Security Architect
13 24 (3.04%) Cloud Engineer
14 23 (2.91%) Analyst
14 23 (2.91%) Senior Network Engineer
15 20 (2.53%) Azure Architect
16 19 (2.41%) Cloud Architect
17 18 (2.28%) Solutions Architect
18 16 (2.03%) Senior Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (3.54%) 802.1X
2 14 (1.77%) LDAP
3 10 (1.27%) SAML
4 8 (1.01%) REST
5 6 (0.76%) SLSA
6 5 (0.63%) HTML
6 5 (0.63%) Node.js
6 5 (0.63%) OAuth
7 4 (0.51%) AWS CDK
7 4 (0.51%) OpenID
7 4 (0.51%) RabbitMQ
8 3 (0.38%) .NET
8 3 (0.38%) ARM Templates
8 3 (0.38%) CSS
8 3 (0.38%) Elastic Stack
8 3 (0.38%) JSON
8 3 (0.38%) Lambda Expressions
8 3 (0.38%) OAuth2
8 3 (0.38%) Plotly
9 2 (0.25%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 120 (15.19%) Data Centre
2 45 (5.70%) Security Posture
3 42 (5.32%) Cloud Native
4 39 (4.94%) Hybrid Cloud
5 30 (3.80%) Onboarding
6 26 (3.29%) PKI
7 24 (3.04%) Data Protection Act
8 23 (2.91%) Cyber Threat
8 23 (2.91%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 23 (2.91%) IoT
8 23 (2.91%) Public Cloud
9 22 (2.78%) Management Information System
10 19 (2.41%) Operational Technology
11 16 (2.03%) Product Ownership
12 13 (1.65%) Security Operations Centre
13 11 (1.39%) Cyber Security Posture
13 11 (1.39%) Virtual Team
14 10 (1.27%) Analytical Mindset
14 10 (1.27%) Replication
15 9 (1.14%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 72 (9.11%) Windows
2 58 (7.34%) Linux
3 26 (3.29%) Windows Server
4 9 (1.14%) VMS
5 8 (1.01%) Unix
6 6 (0.76%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (0.76%) Ubuntu
7 5 (0.63%) Mac OS
7 5 (0.63%) Windows 10
8 3 (0.38%) SUSE
9 1 (0.13%) Android
9 1 (0.13%) Data ONTAP
9 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2003
9 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 162 (20.51%) Cybersecurity
2 134 (16.96%) Cloud Security
3 121 (15.32%) Zero Trust
4 113 (14.30%) Security Architecture
5 105 (13.29%) CI/CD
6 103 (13.04%) SIEM
7 101 (12.78%) Migration
8 100 (12.66%) DevOps
8 100 (12.66%) Infrastructure as Code
9 85 (10.76%) Problem-Solving
10 81 (10.25%) High Availability
11 79 (10.00%) Continuous Improvement
12 78 (9.87%) Threat Modelling
13 75 (9.49%) Network Segmentation
14 74 (9.37%) Incident Response
15 71 (8.99%) Application Security
16 68 (8.61%) Load Balancing
16 68 (8.61%) Stakeholder Management
17 67 (8.48%) Identity Access Management
18 64 (8.10%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 111 (14.05%) Python
2 61 (7.72%) PowerShell
3 34 (4.30%) Bash
4 25 (3.16%) Bicep
5 23 (2.91%) JavaScript
6 21 (2.66%) SQL
7 10 (1.27%) Kusto Query Language
8 8 (1.01%) Go
9 7 (0.89%) Java
9 7 (0.89%) Shell Script
10 4 (0.51%) C
10 4 (0.51%) PHP
11 3 (0.38%) C++
12 2 (0.25%) C#
12 2 (0.25%) C-shell
12 2 (0.25%) Korn
12 2 (0.25%) Ruby
13 1 (0.13%) ActionScript
13 1 (0.13%) AppleScript
13 1 (0.13%) Perl
Qualifications
1 231 (29.24%) Security Cleared
2 173 (21.90%) SC Cleared
3 153 (19.37%) Cisco Certification
4 103 (13.04%) CCNP
5 92 (11.65%) CISSP
6 67 (8.48%) DV Cleared
7 58 (7.34%) CCNA
8 51 (6.46%) CISM
8 51 (6.46%) Degree
9 30 (3.80%) Azure Certification
9 30 (3.80%) CCSP
10 29 (3.67%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 20 (2.53%) CCIE
12 18 (2.28%) GIAC
13 16 (2.03%) AWS Certification
14 15 (1.90%) CEH
15 14 (1.77%) CompTIA Security+
16 12 (1.52%) BPSS Clearance
16 12 (1.52%) JNCIS
17 11 (1.39%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 81 (10.25%) NIST
2 65 (8.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 38 (4.81%) GDPR
4 25 (3.16%) PCI DSS
5 19 (2.41%) NCSC
6 16 (2.03%) GRC
6 16 (2.03%) QA
7 13 (1.65%) Cyber Essentials
8 11 (1.39%) SLA
9 8 (1.01%) Actionable Recommendations
9 8 (1.01%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
9 8 (1.01%) SOC 2
10 7 (0.89%) Disclosure Scotland
10 7 (0.89%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 6 (0.76%) PMO
12 4 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 4 (0.51%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 4 (0.51%) RMADS
13 3 (0.38%) ISA99
14 2 (0.25%) JSP 440
System Software
1 52 (6.58%) Active Directory
2 50 (6.33%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (2.66%) VMware NSX
4 20 (2.53%) Virtual Machines
5 15 (1.90%) Docker
6 14 (1.77%) Hyper-V
7 10 (1.27%) VMware ESXi
8 9 (1.14%) vSphere
9 6 (0.76%) Firmware
10 5 (0.63%) Squid
10 5 (0.63%) Virtual Desktop
11 2 (0.25%) NFS
11 2 (0.25%) Postfix
11 2 (0.25%) Sendmail
11 2 (0.25%) Varnish
12 1 (0.13%) ProxySG
12 1 (0.13%) VMware Workstation
12 1 (0.13%) Xen
12 1 (0.13%) XenApp
12 1 (0.13%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 116 (14.68%) Terraform
2 73 (9.24%) Ansible
3 59 (7.47%) Kubernetes
4 37 (4.68%) FortiGate
5 16 (2.03%) Single Sign-On
6 14 (1.77%) Nagios
7 12 (1.52%) Grafana
8 11 (1.39%) vCenter Server
9 10 (1.27%) Microsoft Intune
10 9 (1.14%) Microsoft Clustering
11 8 (1.01%) Kibana
12 5 (0.63%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 5 (0.63%) Istio
12 5 (0.63%) Prometheus
12 5 (0.63%) QRadar
12 5 (0.63%) WSUS
13 4 (0.51%) CASB
13 4 (0.51%) Progress Chef
13 4 (0.51%) Suricata
14 3 (0.38%) Icinga
Vendors
1 222 (28.10%) Cisco
2 128 (16.20%) Palo Alto
3 108 (13.67%) Microsoft
4 75 (9.49%) F5
5 66 (8.35%) VMware
6 61 (7.72%) Fortinet
7 58 (7.34%) Juniper
8 51 (6.46%) CheckPoint
8 51 (6.46%) Zscaler
9 32 (4.05%) ServiceNow
10 25 (3.16%) Splunk
11 22 (2.78%) ForeScout
12 20 (2.53%) SolarWinds
13 19 (2.41%) Google
14 18 (2.28%) Aruba
15 17 (2.15%) Citrix
16 15 (1.90%) Tenable
17 12 (1.52%) Infoblox
17 12 (1.52%) Meraki
17 12 (1.52%) Okta