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

6 months to
12 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 162 153 182
Rank change year-on-year -9 +29 -15
Contract jobs citing Network Security 886 615 539
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.66% 1.87% 1.38%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 17.67% 15.67% 11.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 596 371 373
10th Percentile £400 £375 £363
25th Percentile £463 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £542 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +3.19% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £650 £613 £663
90th Percentile £730 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £528 £500 £563
% change year-on-year +5.60% -11.11% +7.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 18 6
10th Percentile £26.00 £45.00 £20.75
25th Percentile £42.13 £58.79 £29.75
Median hourly rate £73.00 £80.68 £53.75
Median % change year-on-year -9.51% +50.09% -18.56%
75th Percentile £74.00 £83.53 £58.75
90th Percentile - £89.50 £88.81
UK excluding London median hourly rate £73.00 £80.68 £50.00
% change year-on-year -9.51% +61.35% +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 5,015 3,925 4,737
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.40% 11.91% 12.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,970 2,397 2,875
10th Percentile £250 £248 £220
25th Percentile £400 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £494 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.95% -5.00% +9.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 361 200 316
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £19.79
Median hourly rate £26.00 £46.88 £49.50
Median % change year-on-year -44.53% -5.30% -5.71%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £83.10 £74.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.14 £45.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year -41.91% -18.18% -2.64%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 -10 773 £540 +2.86% 553
UK excluding London -29 434 £528 +5.60% 311
London -9 344 £550 - 289
Work from Home +2 273 £545 +0.55% 257
North of England +4 188 £527 +8.56% 65
South East -29 117 £557 +13.67% 96
North West -9 104 £536 +12.84% 39
Yorkshire +8 81 £500 +1.63% 22
Midlands -51 52 £463 -19.57% 55
East of England -13 36 £525 -4.55% 24
West Midlands -63 33 £406 -29.35% 34
Scotland -2 29 £600 +29.73% 27
East Midlands +9 18 £638 - 21
South West -61 16 £575 -4.17% 36
Wales -14 2 £538 +44.78% 6
North East -41 2 £675 +8.00% 4

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 16 (1.81%) Microsoft Exchange
2 13 (1.47%) Confluence
3 11 (1.24%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.34%) Apache
5 1 (0.11%) 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 (2.26%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (0.79%) 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 (0.68%) Oracle ERP
1 6 (0.68%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 303 (34.20%) Azure
2 206 (23.25%) AWS
3 115 (12.98%) GCP
4 95 (10.72%) Entra ID
5 36 (4.06%) Microsoft 365
6 35 (3.95%) Azure DevOps
7 32 (3.61%) GitHub
8 30 (3.39%) Azure Sentinel
9 28 (3.16%) Azure Monitor
9 28 (3.16%) SaaS
10 25 (2.82%) Serverless
11 22 (2.48%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 22 (2.48%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 20 (2.26%) Azure AKS
12 20 (2.26%) GitHub Actions
12 20 (2.26%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 17 (1.92%) Akamai
14 15 (1.69%) Azure Key Vault
14 15 (1.69%) OCI
15 14 (1.58%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 395 (44.58%) Firewall
2 199 (22.46%) VPN
3 187 (21.11%) WAN
4 135 (15.24%) LAN
5 128 (14.45%) DNS
6 96 (10.84%) Wireless
7 94 (10.61%) BGP
8 93 (10.50%) TCP/IP
9 89 (10.05%) SD-WAN
10 74 (8.35%) OSPF
11 71 (8.01%) VLAN
12 67 (7.56%) DHCP
13 52 (5.87%) IPsec
13 52 (5.87%) MPLS
14 50 (5.64%) SSL
15 45 (5.08%) Wi-Fi
16 41 (4.63%) Cisco ISE
17 39 (4.40%) Internet
18 38 (4.29%) NGFW
19 37 (4.18%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (1.47%) SQL Server
2 8 (0.90%) Azure SQL Database
3 6 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
4 5 (0.56%) BigQuery
5 4 (0.45%) Data Lake
5 4 (0.45%) Elasticsearch
5 4 (0.45%) Neo4j
5 4 (0.45%) Power BI
6 3 (0.34%) PostgreSQL
7 2 (0.23%) Amazon Athena
7 2 (0.23%) Delta Lake
7 2 (0.23%) InfluxDB
8 1 (0.11%) Data Mining
8 1 (0.11%) Data Warehouse
8 1 (0.11%) DataStage
8 1 (0.11%) Looker
8 1 (0.11%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (0.11%) Relational Database
8 1 (0.11%) Snowflake Schema
8 1 (0.11%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 37 (4.18%) Git
2 34 (3.84%) JIRA
3 26 (2.93%) GitLab
4 22 (2.48%) Jenkins
5 8 (0.90%) Sonatype Nexus
6 6 (0.68%) Browser DevTools
7 4 (0.45%) MSBuild
7 4 (0.45%) Snyk
7 4 (0.45%) SonarQube
7 4 (0.45%) 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%) SoapUI
10 1 (0.11%) Subversion
General
1 214 (24.15%) Social Skills
2 150 (16.93%) Finance
3 73 (8.24%) Analytical Skills
4 58 (6.55%) Banking
5 55 (6.21%) Public Sector
6 43 (4.85%) Documentation Skills
7 26 (2.93%) Financial Institution
8 23 (2.60%) Telecoms
9 22 (2.48%) Legal
10 14 (1.58%) Manufacturing
10 14 (1.58%) Retail
11 12 (1.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 12 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
12 11 (1.24%) Influencing Skills
13 8 (0.90%) Police
14 6 (0.68%) Automotive
14 6 (0.68%) Law
14 6 (0.68%) Local Government
14 6 (0.68%) Presentation Skills
15 4 (0.45%) Military
Job Titles
1 242 (27.31%) Network Engineer
2 178 (20.09%) Architect
3 103 (11.63%) Security Engineer
4 101 (11.40%) Senior
5 95 (10.72%) Security Architect
6 63 (7.11%) Network Architect
7 61 (6.88%) Network Security Engineer
8 56 (6.32%) Consultant
9 46 (5.19%) Senior Network Engineer
10 43 (4.85%) Project Manager
11 40 (4.51%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 39 (4.40%) Lead
13 34 (3.84%) Cloud Engineer
14 27 (3.05%) Analyst
14 27 (3.05%) Security Consultant
15 24 (2.71%) Network Manager
15 24 (2.71%) Network Security Architect
16 21 (2.37%) Azure Engineer
16 21 (2.37%) Solutions Architect
17 19 (2.14%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (4.06%) 802.1X
2 16 (1.81%) SAML
3 12 (1.35%) ARM Templates
3 12 (1.35%) REST
4 10 (1.13%) Kafka
5 6 (0.68%) NETCONF
6 5 (0.56%) .NET
6 5 (0.56%) CSS
6 5 (0.56%) JSON
6 5 (0.56%) OpenID
7 4 (0.45%) gRPC
7 4 (0.45%) HTML
7 4 (0.45%) Keycloak
7 4 (0.45%) OAuth
7 4 (0.45%) Protocol Buffers
7 4 (0.45%) RESTful
7 4 (0.45%) SLSA
7 4 (0.45%) XML
8 3 (0.34%) ModSecurity
8 3 (0.34%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 100 (11.29%) Data Centre
2 75 (8.47%) Security Posture
3 49 (5.53%) Cloud Native
3 49 (5.53%) Hybrid Cloud
4 40 (4.51%) Onboarding
5 37 (4.18%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 35 (3.95%) Management Information System
7 30 (3.39%) Operational Technology
8 24 (2.71%) Cyber Threat
9 23 (2.60%) Data Protection Act
9 23 (2.60%) PKI
10 21 (2.37%) Public Cloud
10 21 (2.37%) Self-Motivation
11 19 (2.14%) Security Operations Centre
12 15 (1.69%) Cloud Security Posture
13 13 (1.47%) Enterprise Software
13 13 (1.47%) Linux Command Line
13 13 (1.47%) Product Ownership
14 10 (1.13%) Replication
15 9 (1.02%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 81 (9.14%) Windows
2 74 (8.35%) Linux
3 23 (2.60%) Windows Server
4 14 (1.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 9 (1.02%) Unix
6 7 (0.79%) Windows 10
7 6 (0.68%) Mac OS
7 6 (0.68%) Ubuntu
8 5 (0.56%) VMS
9 3 (0.34%) Android
9 3 (0.34%) Check Point GAiA
9 3 (0.34%) SUSE
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
1 176 (19.86%) Cloud Security
2 173 (19.53%) Cybersecurity
3 127 (14.33%) Zero Trust
4 124 (14.00%) CI/CD
5 119 (13.43%) Continuous Improvement
5 119 (13.43%) Stakeholder Management
6 116 (13.09%) Infrastructure as Code
6 116 (13.09%) SIEM
7 114 (12.87%) DevOps
8 107 (12.08%) Migration
9 105 (11.85%) Change Management
10 104 (11.74%) Incident Response
11 103 (11.63%) Security Architecture
12 99 (11.17%) Problem-Solving
13 98 (11.06%) Identity Access Management
14 93 (10.50%) High Availability
15 92 (10.38%) Data Protection
16 88 (9.93%) Threat Modelling
17 87 (9.82%) Load Balancing
18 85 (9.59%) Security Operations
Programming Languages
1 118 (13.32%) Python
2 70 (7.90%) PowerShell
3 61 (6.88%) Bash
4 35 (3.95%) Bicep
5 27 (3.05%) SQL
6 16 (1.81%) JavaScript
7 9 (1.02%) Java
8 8 (0.90%) Go
9 7 (0.79%) Shell Script
10 5 (0.56%) Kusto Query Language
10 5 (0.56%) Search Processing Language
11 4 (0.45%) Rust
12 3 (0.34%) Perl
13 2 (0.23%) C
13 2 (0.23%) Ruby
13 2 (0.23%) VBScript
14 1 (0.11%) C++
Qualifications
1 227 (25.62%) Security Cleared
2 160 (18.06%) SC Cleared
3 155 (17.49%) Cisco Certification
4 101 (11.40%) CISSP
5 91 (10.27%) CCNP
6 70 (7.90%) DV Cleared
7 68 (7.67%) Degree
8 58 (6.55%) CCNA
9 57 (6.43%) CISM
10 39 (4.40%) CCSP
11 38 (4.29%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 36 (4.06%) Azure Certification
13 24 (2.71%) CCIE
14 19 (2.14%) AWS Certification
15 15 (1.69%) Computer Science Degree
16 11 (1.24%) CompTIA Security+
16 11 (1.24%) PMP
17 10 (1.13%) BPSS Clearance
18 9 (1.02%) CEH
18 9 (1.02%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 79 (8.92%) NIST
2 74 (8.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 47 (5.30%) GDPR
4 33 (3.72%) NCSC
5 29 (3.27%) PCI DSS
6 19 (2.14%) QA
6 19 (2.14%) SLA
7 15 (1.69%) GRC
8 13 (1.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 8 (0.90%) Cyber Essentials
9 8 (0.90%) Disclosure Scotland
9 8 (0.90%) NIST 800
10 5 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 5 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 5 (0.56%) SOC 2
11 4 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
11 4 (0.45%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 3 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 3 (0.34%) ISA99
12 3 (0.34%) PMO
System Software
1 82 (9.26%) Active Directory
2 54 (6.09%) VMware Infrastructure
3 28 (3.16%) Docker
4 21 (2.37%) Virtual Machines
5 20 (2.26%) VMware NSX
6 12 (1.35%) Hyper-V
7 11 (1.24%) vSphere
8 7 (0.79%) Virtual Desktop
8 7 (0.79%) VMware ESXi
9 6 (0.68%) Firmware
10 5 (0.56%) 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
1 121 (13.66%) Terraform
2 83 (9.37%) Ansible
3 75 (8.47%) Kubernetes
4 49 (5.53%) FortiGate
5 23 (2.60%) Microsoft Intune
6 22 (2.48%) Grafana
7 18 (2.03%) Single Sign-On
8 13 (1.47%) Prometheus
9 12 (1.35%) CASB
9 12 (1.35%) SCCM
10 8 (0.90%) Progress Chef
11 7 (0.79%) Puppet
11 7 (0.79%) QRadar
11 7 (0.79%) vCenter Server
12 6 (0.68%) Cisco CUCM
12 6 (0.68%) Cisco Prime
13 5 (0.56%) Suricata
13 5 (0.56%) WSUS
14 4 (0.45%) Kustomize
14 4 (0.45%) Podman
Vendors
1 248 (27.99%) Cisco
2 153 (17.27%) Microsoft
3 145 (16.37%) Palo Alto
4 85 (9.59%) Fortinet
5 81 (9.14%) F5
6 69 (7.79%) VMware
7 61 (6.88%) Zscaler
8 56 (6.32%) CheckPoint
9 51 (5.76%) Juniper
10 43 (4.85%) Splunk
11 35 (3.95%) SolarWinds
12 34 (3.84%) ServiceNow
13 31 (3.50%) Aruba
14 26 (2.93%) Google
15 23 (2.60%) Citrix
16 18 (2.03%) Tenable
17 15 (1.69%) CyberArk
17 15 (1.69%) Meraki
18 14 (1.58%) ForeScout
18 14 (1.58%) Infoblox