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 10 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 160 158 184
Rank change year-on-year -2 +26 -16
Contract jobs citing Network Security 910 581 567
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.73% 1.80% 1.31%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 18.17% 14.71% 10.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 611 358 378
10th Percentile £393 £364 £363
25th Percentile £442 £431 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £528 £517 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.23% -6.09% -
75th Percentile £625 £613 £660
90th Percentile £711 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £490 £575
% change year-on-year +7.14% -14.78% +9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 11 18
10th Percentile £24.10 £70.16 -
25th Percentile £38.94 £75.25 £7.43
Median hourly rate £73.00 £81.35 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -10.26% +287.38% -67.69%
75th Percentile £74.00 £83.05 £41.25
90th Percentile £74.05 £100.00 £45.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £73.00 £81.35 £7.43
% change year-on-year -10.26% +994.89% -63.98%

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 5,008 3,949 5,443
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.52% 12.20% 12.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,041 2,424 3,208
10th Percentile £238 £235 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £591 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £473 £490
% change year-on-year +1.59% -3.47% +3.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 316 185 426
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.86
25th Percentile £19.34 £23.75 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.55 £45.00 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year -41.00% +8.43% +38.33%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.25 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £80.61 £73.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.22 £39.32 £47.50
% change year-on-year -33.32% -17.22% +5.56%

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 10 July 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 10 July 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 10 July 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 +11 785 £531 +1.05% 230
UK excluding London -14 460 £525 +7.14% 188
London -2 334 £550 - 81
Work from Home +15 278 £539 +2.62% 103
North of England +4 189 £528 +8.36% 47
South East -21 117 £525 +7.14% 63
North West -3 97 £535 +12.63% 33
Yorkshire +11 90 £500 +2.04% 13
Midlands -44 57 £475 -18.28% 23
Scotland +4 39 £600 +39.13% 19
West Midlands -74 35 £420 -27.74% 9
East of England -20 33 £525 -0.94% 14
South West -30 32 £550 -8.33% 18
East Midlands +4 21 £569 - 14
Wales -21 3 £600 +106.90% 2
North East -36 2 £675 +8.00% 1

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 22 (2.42%) Confluence
2 12 (1.32%) Microsoft Exchange
3 8 (0.88%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.22%) Apache
5 1 (0.11%) IIS
5 1 (0.11%) NetWeaver
5 1 (0.11%) nginx
Applications
1 17 (1.87%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.99%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.33%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.11%) InfoPath
4 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 6 (0.66%) Oracle ERP
1 6 (0.66%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 281 (30.88%) Azure
2 201 (22.09%) AWS
3 121 (13.30%) GCP
4 82 (9.01%) Entra ID
5 38 (4.18%) GitHub
6 32 (3.52%) Azure DevOps
7 31 (3.41%) Azure Sentinel
8 27 (2.97%) GitHub Actions
9 26 (2.86%) Microsoft 365
10 25 (2.75%) SaaS
11 23 (2.53%) Serverless
12 22 (2.42%) Azure AKS
12 22 (2.42%) Azure Monitor
12 22 (2.42%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 20 (2.20%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 18 (1.98%) Azure Key Vault
15 17 (1.87%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 17 (1.87%) OCI
16 16 (1.76%) Akamai
17 15 (1.65%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 406 (44.62%) Firewall
2 192 (21.10%) VPN
3 175 (19.23%) WAN
4 130 (14.29%) LAN
5 118 (12.97%) DNS
6 110 (12.09%) BGP
7 95 (10.44%) Wireless
8 94 (10.33%) SD-WAN
9 89 (9.78%) OSPF
10 82 (9.01%) TCP/IP
11 74 (8.13%) VLAN
12 59 (6.48%) DHCP
13 57 (6.26%) MPLS
14 50 (5.49%) IPsec
15 47 (5.16%) SSL
16 44 (4.84%) Cisco ISE
16 44 (4.84%) Wi-Fi
17 41 (4.51%) Cisco ASA
18 39 (4.29%) NGFW
19 38 (4.18%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (0.99%) SQL Server
2 8 (0.88%) Azure SQL Database
3 5 (0.55%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (0.44%) Data Lake
4 4 (0.44%) Elasticsearch
4 4 (0.44%) Neo4j
4 4 (0.44%) Power BI
5 3 (0.33%) Amazon Athena
5 3 (0.33%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (0.22%) BigQuery
6 2 (0.22%) InfluxDB
6 2 (0.22%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.11%) Data Mining
7 1 (0.11%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.11%) DataStage
7 1 (0.11%) Looker
7 1 (0.11%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.11%) Relational Database
7 1 (0.11%) Snowflake Schema
7 1 (0.11%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 47 (5.16%) JIRA
2 32 (3.52%) Git
3 25 (2.75%) GitLab
4 23 (2.53%) Jenkins
5 11 (1.21%) Sonatype Nexus
6 7 (0.77%) Snyk
7 6 (0.66%) Browser DevTools
8 4 (0.44%) MSBuild
8 4 (0.44%) SonarQube
8 4 (0.44%) Visual Studio
9 3 (0.33%) Artifactory
10 2 (0.22%) Postman
11 1 (0.11%) Burp Suite
11 1 (0.11%) Claude Code
11 1 (0.11%) JUnit
11 1 (0.11%) SoapUI
11 1 (0.11%) Subversion
11 1 (0.11%) Zephyr
General
1 217 (23.85%) Social Skills
2 144 (15.82%) Finance
3 74 (8.13%) Analytical Skills
4 69 (7.58%) Public Sector
5 61 (6.70%) Banking
6 42 (4.62%) Documentation Skills
7 24 (2.64%) Financial Institution
8 22 (2.42%) Telecoms
9 16 (1.76%) Legal
10 13 (1.43%) Retail
11 12 (1.32%) Manufacturing
11 12 (1.32%) Organisational Skills
12 11 (1.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 10 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
14 8 (0.88%) Police
15 6 (0.66%) Law
15 6 (0.66%) Local Government
16 4 (0.44%) Military
17 3 (0.33%) Aerospace
17 3 (0.33%) Billing
Job Titles
1 246 (27.03%) Network Engineer
2 194 (21.32%) Architect
3 118 (12.97%) Security Engineer
4 95 (10.44%) Security Architect
5 89 (9.78%) Senior
6 67 (7.36%) Network Security Engineer
7 65 (7.14%) Network Architect
8 48 (5.27%) Consultant
9 41 (4.51%) Project Manager
10 36 (3.96%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 36 (3.96%) Lead
11 32 (3.52%) Senior Network Engineer
12 27 (2.97%) Cloud Engineer
13 26 (2.86%) Network Security Architect
14 25 (2.75%) Network Manager
15 24 (2.64%) Solutions Architect
16 22 (2.42%) Azure Architect
17 21 (2.31%) Analyst
17 21 (2.31%) Security Consultant
17 21 (2.31%) Senior Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (4.07%) 802.1X
2 19 (2.09%) SAML
3 15 (1.65%) REST
4 10 (1.10%) ARM Templates
4 10 (1.10%) Kafka
5 8 (0.88%) LDAP
6 7 (0.77%) OAuth
6 7 (0.77%) OpenID
7 6 (0.66%) CSS
7 6 (0.66%) HTML
7 6 (0.66%) SLSA
8 5 (0.55%) .NET
8 5 (0.55%) JSON
8 5 (0.55%) OAuth2
9 4 (0.44%) AWS CDK
9 4 (0.44%) gRPC
9 4 (0.44%) Keycloak
9 4 (0.44%) Protocol Buffers
9 4 (0.44%) RESTful
9 4 (0.44%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 116 (12.75%) Data Centre
2 68 (7.47%) Security Posture
3 52 (5.71%) Cloud Native
4 43 (4.73%) Hybrid Cloud
5 37 (4.07%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 30 (3.30%) Onboarding
7 29 (3.19%) Operational Technology
8 28 (3.08%) Data Protection Act
9 24 (2.64%) Management Information System
10 23 (2.53%) PKI
11 22 (2.42%) Cyber Threat
12 21 (2.31%) Public Cloud
13 20 (2.20%) Product Ownership
14 18 (1.98%) Security Operations Centre
15 17 (1.87%) IoT
15 17 (1.87%) Self-Motivation
16 11 (1.21%) Enterprise Software
16 11 (1.21%) Linux Command Line
17 10 (1.10%) Replication
17 10 (1.10%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 74 (8.13%) Linux
2 67 (7.36%) Windows
3 20 (2.20%) Windows Server
4 11 (1.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 8 (0.88%) Unix
6 7 (0.77%) Mac OS
6 7 (0.77%) Ubuntu
7 5 (0.55%) VMS
7 5 (0.55%) Windows 10
8 3 (0.33%) Android
8 3 (0.33%) Check Point GAiA
8 3 (0.33%) SUSE
9 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2003
9 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
9 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 186 (20.44%) Cybersecurity
2 162 (17.80%) Cloud Security
3 140 (15.38%) Zero Trust
4 129 (14.18%) CI/CD
5 125 (13.74%) SIEM
6 122 (13.41%) Infrastructure as Code
7 118 (12.97%) DevOps
8 116 (12.75%) Security Architecture
9 115 (12.64%) Migration
10 114 (12.53%) Continuous Improvement
11 102 (11.21%) Problem-Solving
11 102 (11.21%) Stakeholder Management
12 98 (10.77%) High Availability
13 92 (10.11%) Incident Response
14 91 (10.00%) Data Protection
15 90 (9.89%) Application Security
15 90 (9.89%) Identity Access Management
16 89 (9.78%) Change Management
17 88 (9.67%) Threat Modelling
18 87 (9.56%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 123 (13.52%) Python
2 60 (6.59%) PowerShell
3 48 (5.27%) Bash
4 35 (3.85%) Bicep
5 22 (2.42%) SQL
6 19 (2.09%) JavaScript
7 8 (0.88%) Shell Script
8 6 (0.66%) Java
9 5 (0.55%) Kusto Query Language
10 4 (0.44%) Perl
10 4 (0.44%) PHP
10 4 (0.44%) Rust
11 2 (0.22%) Ruby
12 1 (0.11%) ActionScript
12 1 (0.11%) AppleScript
12 1 (0.11%) C
12 1 (0.11%) Go
12 1 (0.11%) Search Processing Language
12 1 (0.11%) VBA
Qualifications
1 248 (27.25%) Security Cleared
2 180 (19.78%) SC Cleared
3 165 (18.13%) Cisco Certification
4 108 (11.87%) CISSP
5 96 (10.55%) CCNP
6 78 (8.57%) DV Cleared
7 70 (7.69%) Degree
8 65 (7.14%) CISM
9 61 (6.70%) CCNA
10 40 (4.40%) CCSP
11 39 (4.29%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 32 (3.52%) Azure Certification
13 25 (2.75%) CCIE
14 21 (2.31%) AWS Certification
15 17 (1.87%) GIAC
16 16 (1.76%) CompTIA Security+
16 16 (1.76%) Computer Science Degree
17 15 (1.65%) BPSS Clearance
18 13 (1.43%) CEH
19 11 (1.21%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 93 (10.22%) NIST
2 78 (8.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 42 (4.62%) GDPR
4 32 (3.52%) NCSC
5 29 (3.19%) PCI DSS
6 19 (2.09%) GRC
6 19 (2.09%) QA
7 14 (1.54%) Cyber Essentials
7 14 (1.54%) SLA
8 9 (0.99%) Disclosure Scotland
9 8 (0.88%) Actionable Recommendations
9 8 (0.88%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
9 8 (0.88%) NIST 800
9 8 (0.88%) SOC 2
10 7 (0.77%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 7 (0.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 4 (0.44%) PMO
12 3 (0.33%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 3 (0.33%) ISA99
12 3 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 68 (7.47%) Active Directory
2 57 (6.26%) VMware Infrastructure
3 26 (2.86%) Docker
4 25 (2.75%) VMware NSX
5 22 (2.42%) Virtual Machines
6 13 (1.43%) VMware ESXi
7 12 (1.32%) vSphere
8 10 (1.10%) Hyper-V
9 6 (0.66%) Firmware
10 5 (0.55%) Squid
11 4 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
12 3 (0.33%) NFS
13 2 (0.22%) OpenSSH
13 2 (0.22%) Postfix
13 2 (0.22%) Sendmail
13 2 (0.22%) Varnish
13 2 (0.22%) Virtual Servers
13 2 (0.22%) VMware Workstation
14 1 (0.11%) ProxySG
14 1 (0.11%) Samba
Systems Management
1 126 (13.85%) Terraform
2 83 (9.12%) Ansible
3 78 (8.57%) Kubernetes
4 43 (4.73%) FortiGate
5 21 (2.31%) Single Sign-On
6 19 (2.09%) Grafana
7 13 (1.43%) vCenter Server
8 12 (1.32%) Prometheus
9 11 (1.21%) Microsoft Intune
10 8 (0.88%) CASB
11 7 (0.77%) Puppet
11 7 (0.77%) QRadar
12 6 (0.66%) Istio
13 5 (0.55%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 5 (0.55%) SCCM
13 5 (0.55%) SCOM
13 5 (0.55%) Suricata
13 5 (0.55%) WSUS
14 4 (0.44%) Cisco Prime
14 4 (0.44%) Podman
Vendors
1 251 (27.58%) Cisco
2 144 (15.82%) Palo Alto
3 132 (14.51%) Microsoft
4 84 (9.23%) F5
5 81 (8.90%) Fortinet
6 71 (7.80%) VMware
7 64 (7.03%) CheckPoint
8 56 (6.15%) Juniper
8 56 (6.15%) Zscaler
9 38 (4.18%) Splunk
10 34 (3.74%) ServiceNow
11 28 (3.08%) SolarWinds
12 25 (2.75%) Citrix
13 24 (2.64%) Aruba
13 24 (2.64%) Google
14 22 (2.42%) ForeScout
15 21 (2.31%) Tenable
16 15 (1.65%) Infoblox
17 14 (1.54%) Arista
18 13 (1.43%) Meraki