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 29 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 161 140 153
Rank change year-on-year -21 +13 +57
Contract jobs citing Network Security 760 574 691
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.71% 1.96% 1.56%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 17.04% 15.07% 11.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 508 361 478
10th Percentile £350 £350 £400
25th Percentile £425 £422 £468
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -5.45% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £650
90th Percentile £689 £675 £747
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £575
% change year-on-year - -13.04% +9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 11 17
10th Percentile £24.10 £18.50 -
25th Percentile £42.13 £40.50 £7.43
Median hourly rate £65.00 £45.00 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year +44.44% +95.65% -55.88%
75th Percentile £75.00 £81.18 £41.25
90th Percentile £90.75 £82.10 £46.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.25 £80.68 £7.43
% change year-on-year -25.32% +985.80% -83.88%

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 4,461 3,809 5,932
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.01% 13.01% 13.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,857 2,368 3,570
10th Percentile £224 £213 £205
25th Percentile £375 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £488 £475
Median % change year-on-year +1.54% +2.63% -9.52%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £470 £475
% change year-on-year +1.06% -1.05% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 196 146 402
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.99 £13.87
25th Percentile £18.78 £21.46 £17.72
Median hourly rate £38.50 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% - +81.35%
75th Percentile £67.58 £63.63 £62.50
90th Percentile £77.00 £75.00 £68.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.25 £32.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year +30.00% -27.78% +139.11%

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 29 March 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 29 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Network Security in the UK

Network Security
Top 17 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 29 March 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 -17 668 £500 -6.85% 194
UK excluding London -14 379 £500 - 144
London -16 283 £520 -5.45% 73
Work from Home +10 206 £524 +4.75% 78
North of England -14 132 £478 -4.50% 33
South East -12 105 £500 -4.76% 46
North West 0 85 £491 -1.90% 24
Midlands -29 67 £500 -14.02% 20
West Midlands -23 53 £500 -14.02% 14
Yorkshire -34 52 £335 -31.63% 8
East of England -24 31 £488 -15.22% 19
South West -28 30 £540 -1.82% 19
Scotland +8 27 £509 +19.71% 7
East Midlands -24 13 £638 +50.00% 6
Wales -17 3 £513 +76.72% 2
North East -11 2 £475 -24.00% 1
Northern Ireland - 2 £500 - 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 19 (2.50%) Confluence
2 5 (0.66%) Apache
3 4 (0.53%) Microsoft Exchange
3 4 (0.53%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.13%) nginx
4 1 (0.13%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 22 (2.89%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (1.32%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.13%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 5 (0.66%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 237 (31.18%) Azure
2 165 (21.71%) AWS
3 92 (12.11%) GCP
4 53 (6.97%) Entra ID
5 36 (4.74%) GitHub
6 31 (4.08%) GitHub Actions
7 27 (3.55%) Azure DevOps
8 26 (3.42%) Azure Sentinel
9 21 (2.76%) Azure Key Vault
10 20 (2.63%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 19 (2.50%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 18 (2.37%) Azure Monitor
13 17 (2.24%) AWS CloudFormation
14 16 (2.11%) Microsoft 365
15 15 (1.97%) Amazon S3
16 14 (1.84%) Azure AKS
16 14 (1.84%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 13 (1.71%) Akamai
17 13 (1.71%) Power Platform
17 13 (1.71%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 368 (48.42%) Firewall
2 151 (19.87%) VPN
3 128 (16.84%) WAN
4 102 (13.42%) LAN
5 98 (12.89%) BGP
6 85 (11.18%) DNS
7 82 (10.79%) OSPF
8 72 (9.47%) VLAN
9 68 (8.95%) SD-WAN
10 59 (7.76%) TCP/IP
11 49 (6.45%) Wireless
12 44 (5.79%) MPLS
13 40 (5.26%) Cisco ASA
14 37 (4.87%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 35 (4.61%) DHCP
15 35 (4.61%) Wi-Fi
16 32 (4.21%) Internet
17 28 (3.68%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 28 (3.68%) SSL
18 26 (3.42%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (1.18%) Azure SQL Database
2 6 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
3 5 (0.66%) InfluxDB
3 5 (0.66%) Relational Database
4 4 (0.53%) Power BI
5 3 (0.39%) Amazon Athena
5 3 (0.39%) Data Lake
6 2 (0.26%) Oracle Database
6 2 (0.26%) SQL Server
6 2 (0.26%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 1 (0.13%) Redis
Development Applications
1 31 (4.08%) JIRA
2 25 (3.29%) Jenkins
3 20 (2.63%) GitLab
4 13 (1.71%) Git
5 7 (0.92%) Snyk
5 7 (0.92%) Sonatype Nexus
6 3 (0.39%) Browser DevTools
7 1 (0.13%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.13%) JUnit
7 1 (0.13%) Postman
7 1 (0.13%) Zephyr
General
1 196 (25.79%) Social Skills
2 104 (13.68%) Finance
3 87 (11.45%) Analytical Skills
4 65 (8.55%) Public Sector
5 36 (4.74%) Banking
6 31 (4.08%) Documentation Skills
7 27 (3.55%) Telecoms
8 21 (2.76%) Financial Institution
9 10 (1.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 10 (1.32%) Legal
10 7 (0.92%) Investment Banking
10 7 (0.92%) Manufacturing
10 7 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
11 6 (0.79%) Organisational Skills
12 5 (0.66%) Influencing Skills
12 5 (0.66%) Pharmaceutical
13 4 (0.53%) Local Government
13 4 (0.53%) Military
14 3 (0.39%) Billing
14 3 (0.39%) Police
Job Titles
1 174 (22.89%) Architect
2 172 (22.63%) Network Engineer
3 91 (11.97%) Security Architect
4 88 (11.58%) Security Engineer
5 63 (8.29%) Network Architect
6 56 (7.37%) Senior
7 39 (5.13%) Network Security Engineer
8 30 (3.95%) Analyst
9 28 (3.68%) Network Security Architect
10 24 (3.16%) Lead
11 22 (2.89%) Consultant
12 20 (2.63%) Azure Architect
12 20 (2.63%) Cloud Architect
12 20 (2.63%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 19 (2.50%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
13 19 (2.50%) Solutions Architect
14 18 (2.37%) Cloud Engineer
15 17 (2.24%) Security Analyst
16 16 (2.11%) Administrator
16 16 (2.11%) Security Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (3.03%) 802.1X
2 13 (1.71%) LDAP
3 8 (1.05%) Node.js
4 6 (0.79%) .NET
4 6 (0.79%) ARM Templates
4 6 (0.79%) RabbitMQ
4 6 (0.79%) REST
4 6 (0.79%) SAML
5 5 (0.66%) .NET Core
5 5 (0.66%) AngularJS
5 5 (0.66%) PyTorch
5 5 (0.66%) React
5 5 (0.66%) TensorFlow
6 4 (0.53%) AWS CDK
6 4 (0.53%) Elastic Stack
6 4 (0.53%) HTML
6 4 (0.53%) OAuth
7 3 (0.39%) CSS
7 3 (0.39%) Plotly
7 3 (0.39%) SLSA
Miscellaneous
1 101 (13.29%) Data Centre
2 44 (5.79%) Hybrid Cloud
3 43 (5.66%) Cloud Native
3 43 (5.66%) Security Posture
4 27 (3.55%) Management Information System
5 26 (3.42%) PKI
6 25 (3.29%) Onboarding
6 25 (3.29%) Public Cloud
7 22 (2.89%) IoT
7 22 (2.89%) Operational Technology
8 20 (2.63%) Data Protection Act
9 19 (2.50%) Product Ownership
10 18 (2.37%) Cyber Threat
10 18 (2.37%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 16 (2.11%) Analytical Mindset
11 16 (2.11%) Security Operations Centre
12 11 (1.45%) Cyber Security Posture
13 9 (1.18%) Clustering
13 9 (1.18%) Linux Command Line
13 9 (1.18%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 82 (10.79%) Windows
2 67 (8.82%) Linux
3 27 (3.55%) Windows Server
4 11 (1.45%) Unix
4 11 (1.45%) VMS
5 7 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 7 (0.92%) Ubuntu
6 5 (0.66%) Mac OS
7 3 (0.39%) SUSE
8 2 (0.26%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.13%) Android
9 1 (0.13%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 172 (22.63%) Cybersecurity
2 120 (15.79%) Cloud Security
3 118 (15.53%) Problem-Solving
4 113 (14.87%) Security Architecture
5 109 (14.34%) Zero Trust
6 105 (13.82%) Migration
7 102 (13.42%) SIEM
8 100 (13.16%) DevOps
9 99 (13.03%) Infrastructure as Code
10 98 (12.89%) CI/CD
11 82 (10.79%) Incident Response
12 73 (9.61%) Network Segmentation
12 73 (9.61%) Threat Modelling
13 72 (9.47%) Change Management
13 72 (9.47%) Continuous Improvement
14 68 (8.95%) Identity Access Management
15 66 (8.68%) Security Operations
16 63 (8.29%) Agile
16 63 (8.29%) High Availability
17 61 (8.03%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 110 (14.47%) Python
2 64 (8.42%) PowerShell
3 29 (3.82%) Bash
4 28 (3.68%) Bicep
5 27 (3.55%) SQL
6 25 (3.29%) JavaScript
7 15 (1.97%) Kusto Query Language
8 9 (1.18%) Go
9 7 (0.92%) Java
9 7 (0.92%) Shell Script
10 5 (0.66%) C#
11 4 (0.53%) C
11 4 (0.53%) PHP
12 3 (0.39%) C++
13 2 (0.26%) C-shell
13 2 (0.26%) Korn
14 1 (0.13%) ActionScript
14 1 (0.13%) AppleScript
14 1 (0.13%) Ruby
14 1 (0.13%) VBA
Qualifications
1 232 (30.53%) Security Cleared
2 163 (21.45%) SC Cleared
3 131 (17.24%) Cisco Certification
4 104 (13.68%) CCNP
5 96 (12.63%) CISSP
6 77 (10.13%) DV Cleared
7 51 (6.71%) CISM
8 50 (6.58%) CCNA
8 50 (6.58%) Degree
9 30 (3.95%) CCIE
10 27 (3.55%) GIAC
11 26 (3.42%) Azure Certification
12 22 (2.89%) CEH
13 20 (2.63%) AWS Certification
14 19 (2.50%) CompTIA Security+
15 15 (1.97%) CCSP
16 14 (1.84%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 13 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
18 12 (1.58%) JNCIS
18 12 (1.58%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 89 (11.71%) NIST
2 75 (9.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 49 (6.45%) GDPR
4 34 (4.47%) PCI DSS
5 21 (2.76%) NCSC
6 19 (2.50%) Cyber Essentials
7 15 (1.97%) GRC
8 14 (1.84%) SLA
9 10 (1.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 9 (1.18%) SOC 2
11 8 (1.05%) Actionable Recommendations
11 8 (1.05%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 8 (1.05%) QA
12 7 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 5 (0.66%) PMO
14 4 (0.53%) JSP 440
14 4 (0.53%) RMADS
15 3 (0.39%) Disclosure Scotland
16 2 (0.26%) HIPAA
16 2 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 51 (6.71%) VMware Infrastructure
2 45 (5.92%) Active Directory
3 25 (3.29%) Docker
4 23 (3.03%) VMware NSX
5 12 (1.58%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (1.58%) vSphere
6 11 (1.45%) Hyper-V
7 10 (1.32%) VMware ESXi
8 9 (1.18%) Firmware
9 4 (0.53%) ProxySG
10 3 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
11 1 (0.13%) KVM
11 1 (0.13%) NFS
11 1 (0.13%) Postfix
11 1 (0.13%) RHEV
11 1 (0.13%) Sendmail
11 1 (0.13%) Varnish
11 1 (0.13%) Xen
11 1 (0.13%) XenApp
11 1 (0.13%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 118 (15.53%) Terraform
2 72 (9.47%) Ansible
3 57 (7.50%) Kubernetes
4 27 (3.55%) FortiGate
5 14 (1.84%) Nagios
6 13 (1.71%) Microsoft Intune
6 13 (1.71%) Single Sign-On
7 12 (1.58%) Kibana
8 11 (1.45%) vCenter Server
9 9 (1.18%) Grafana
9 9 (1.18%) Microsoft Clustering
10 8 (1.05%) Prometheus
11 5 (0.66%) CASB
11 5 (0.66%) Progress Chef
12 4 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 4 (0.53%) Istio
12 4 (0.53%) Puppet
12 4 (0.53%) VxRail
13 3 (0.39%) Docker Swarm
13 3 (0.39%) Network Intrusion Detection System
Vendors
1 203 (26.71%) Cisco
2 122 (16.05%) Microsoft
3 118 (15.53%) Palo Alto
4 80 (10.53%) F5
5 66 (8.68%) VMware
6 60 (7.89%) Juniper
7 55 (7.24%) Fortinet
8 51 (6.71%) CheckPoint
9 41 (5.39%) Zscaler
10 33 (4.34%) Splunk
11 30 (3.95%) ServiceNow
12 29 (3.82%) Google
13 19 (2.50%) Aruba
13 19 (2.50%) Tenable
14 18 (2.37%) ForeScout
14 18 (2.37%) SolarWinds
15 16 (2.11%) Meraki
16 15 (1.97%) Databricks
16 15 (1.97%) Okta
17 12 (1.58%) Arista