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

6 months to
28 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 158 155 179
Rank change year-on-year -3 +24 -14
Contract jobs citing Network Security 895 608 553
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.69% 1.86% 1.38%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 17.99% 15.39% 11.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 602 370 377
10th Percentile £400 £375 £363
25th Percentile £458 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.86% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £650 £613 £650
90th Percentile £730 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £536 £500 £575
% change year-on-year +7.20% -13.04% +9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 18 9
10th Percentile £26.00 £45.00 £17.35
25th Percentile £42.13 £58.79 £23.00
Median hourly rate £73.00 £80.68 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.51% +101.69% -39.39%
75th Percentile £74.00 £83.53 £58.75
90th Percentile - £89.50 £70.77
UK excluding London median hourly rate £73.00 £80.68 £23.00
% change year-on-year -9.51% +250.76% +21.05%

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 4,975 3,951 4,930
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.41% 12.06% 12.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,982 2,418 2,984
10th Percentile £250 £235 £213
25th Percentile £400 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.41% -2.35% -
75th Percentile £588 £589 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £489 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +2.95% -5.00% +8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 335 194 348
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.15 £17.95
Median hourly rate £26.44 £48.75 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -45.76% +8.33% -10.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £83.70 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £44.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year -39.41% -12.00% -13.04%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 -10 777 £540 +2.86% 260
UK excluding London -19 446 £536 +7.20% 174
London -10 337 £550 - 121
Work from Home 0 269 £540 +1.89% 113
North of England +10 187 £533 +8.83% 36
South East -24 125 £557 +13.67% 69
North West -3 103 £537 +13.05% 22
Yorkshire +9 82 £500 +1.63% 12
Midlands -46 53 £500 -13.04% 28
East of England -16 35 £525 -4.55% 15
West Midlands -64 34 £413 -28.26% 13
Scotland -7 32 £600 +26.32% 12
South West -49 20 £550 -8.33% 14
East Midlands +4 18 £638 - 15
Wales -17 3 £600 +61.62% 3
North East -40 2 £675 +8.00% 2

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 (1.79%) Microsoft Exchange
2 14 (1.56%) Confluence
3 11 (1.23%) 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
Applications
1 20 (2.23%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (0.67%) 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 (0.67%) Oracle ERP
1 6 (0.67%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 297 (33.18%) Azure
2 205 (22.91%) AWS
3 116 (12.96%) GCP
4 92 (10.28%) Entra ID
5 34 (3.80%) GitHub
6 33 (3.69%) Azure DevOps
6 33 (3.69%) Microsoft 365
7 31 (3.46%) Azure Sentinel
8 28 (3.13%) Azure Monitor
9 25 (2.79%) Serverless
10 23 (2.57%) SaaS
11 22 (2.46%) GitHub Actions
12 21 (2.35%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 20 (2.23%) Azure AKS
13 20 (2.23%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 19 (2.12%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 17 (1.90%) Azure Key Vault
15 17 (1.90%) OCI
16 15 (1.68%) Akamai
17 13 (1.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 402 (44.92%) Firewall
2 202 (22.57%) VPN
3 182 (20.34%) WAN
4 133 (14.86%) LAN
5 125 (13.97%) DNS
6 103 (11.51%) BGP
7 95 (10.61%) Wireless
8 90 (10.06%) TCP/IP
9 85 (9.50%) SD-WAN
10 80 (8.94%) OSPF
11 74 (8.27%) VLAN
12 65 (7.26%) DHCP
13 54 (6.03%) IPsec
14 53 (5.92%) MPLS
15 50 (5.59%) SSL
16 46 (5.14%) Wi-Fi
17 43 (4.80%) Cisco ISE
18 41 (4.58%) NGFW
19 40 (4.47%) Cisco ASA
20 37 (4.13%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (1.45%) SQL Server
2 8 (0.89%) Azure SQL Database
3 5 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (0.45%) Data Lake
4 4 (0.45%) Elasticsearch
4 4 (0.45%) Neo4j
4 4 (0.45%) Power BI
5 3 (0.34%) Amazon Athena
5 3 (0.34%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (0.22%) BigQuery
6 2 (0.22%) Delta Lake
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%) 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 39 (4.36%) JIRA
2 36 (4.02%) Git
3 23 (2.57%) GitLab
4 17 (1.90%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.78%) Sonatype Nexus
6 6 (0.67%) 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 (0.22%) Postman
10 1 (0.11%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.11%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.11%) IBM UrbanCode
10 1 (0.11%) JUnit
10 1 (0.11%) SoapUI
10 1 (0.11%) Subversion
10 1 (0.11%) Zephyr
General
1 214 (23.91%) Social Skills
2 141 (15.75%) Finance
3 72 (8.04%) Analytical Skills
4 63 (7.04%) Public Sector
5 62 (6.93%) Banking
6 44 (4.92%) Documentation Skills
7 27 (3.02%) Telecoms
8 23 (2.57%) Financial Institution
9 19 (2.12%) Legal
10 14 (1.56%) Manufacturing
11 13 (1.45%) Retail
12 12 (1.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 12 (1.34%) Organisational Skills
13 11 (1.23%) Influencing Skills
14 8 (0.89%) Police
15 6 (0.67%) Law
15 6 (0.67%) Local Government
16 5 (0.56%) Military
17 4 (0.45%) Automotive
17 4 (0.45%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 245 (27.37%) Network Engineer
2 192 (21.45%) Architect
3 113 (12.63%) Security Engineer
4 101 (11.28%) Senior
5 99 (11.06%) Security Architect
6 71 (7.93%) Network Architect
7 67 (7.49%) Network Security Engineer
8 53 (5.92%) Consultant
9 43 (4.80%) Senior Network Engineer
10 42 (4.69%) Project Manager
11 40 (4.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 37 (4.13%) Lead
13 31 (3.46%) Cloud Engineer
14 30 (3.35%) Network Security Architect
15 25 (2.79%) Network Manager
16 23 (2.57%) Analyst
16 23 (2.57%) Security Consultant
17 22 (2.46%) Solutions Architect
18 21 (2.35%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
19 20 (2.23%) Azure Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (4.13%) 802.1X
2 16 (1.79%) SAML
3 15 (1.68%) REST
4 14 (1.56%) ARM Templates
5 10 (1.12%) Kafka
6 6 (0.67%) JSON
7 5 (0.56%) .NET
7 5 (0.56%) CSS
7 5 (0.56%) HTML
7 5 (0.56%) LDAP
7 5 (0.56%) NETCONF
8 4 (0.45%) gRPC
8 4 (0.45%) Keycloak
8 4 (0.45%) OAuth
8 4 (0.45%) OpenID
8 4 (0.45%) Protocol Buffers
8 4 (0.45%) RESTful
8 4 (0.45%) XML
9 3 (0.34%) Lambda Expressions
9 3 (0.34%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 110 (12.29%) Data Centre
2 70 (7.82%) Security Posture
3 48 (5.36%) Cloud Native
4 47 (5.25%) Hybrid Cloud
5 38 (4.25%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 37 (4.13%) Onboarding
7 30 (3.35%) Management Information System
8 29 (3.24%) Operational Technology
9 23 (2.57%) Data Protection Act
9 23 (2.57%) PKI
10 21 (2.35%) Cyber Threat
11 20 (2.23%) Public Cloud
12 19 (2.12%) Security Operations Centre
13 18 (2.01%) Self-Motivation
14 16 (1.79%) Product Ownership
15 14 (1.56%) Linux Command Line
16 13 (1.45%) Enterprise Software
17 12 (1.34%) IoT
18 10 (1.12%) Replication
18 10 (1.12%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 77 (8.60%) Linux
2 76 (8.49%) Windows
3 24 (2.68%) Windows Server
4 14 (1.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 9 (1.01%) Unix
6 7 (0.78%) Mac OS
6 7 (0.78%) Ubuntu
7 5 (0.56%) VMS
7 5 (0.56%) Windows 10
8 3 (0.34%) Android
8 3 (0.34%) Check Point GAiA
8 3 (0.34%) SUSE
9 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2003
9 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
9 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
9 1 (0.11%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 171 (19.11%) Cybersecurity
2 167 (18.66%) Cloud Security
3 137 (15.31%) Zero Trust
4 121 (13.52%) CI/CD
5 119 (13.30%) DevOps
6 118 (13.18%) SIEM
7 117 (13.07%) Infrastructure as Code
8 116 (12.96%) Continuous Improvement
9 114 (12.74%) Migration
10 111 (12.40%) Stakeholder Management
11 103 (11.51%) Security Architecture
12 102 (11.40%) Change Management
13 98 (10.95%) Problem-Solving
14 95 (10.61%) High Availability
14 95 (10.61%) Identity Access Management
15 94 (10.50%) Incident Response
16 88 (9.83%) Agile
17 87 (9.72%) Data Protection
17 87 (9.72%) Threat Modelling
18 86 (9.61%) Load Balancing
Programming Languages
1 111 (12.40%) Python
2 64 (7.15%) PowerShell
3 55 (6.15%) Bash
4 38 (4.25%) Bicep
5 21 (2.35%) SQL
6 18 (2.01%) JavaScript
7 8 (0.89%) Java
7 8 (0.89%) Shell Script
8 4 (0.45%) Perl
8 4 (0.45%) Rust
9 3 (0.34%) Go
9 3 (0.34%) PHP
10 2 (0.22%) Kusto Query Language
10 2 (0.22%) Ruby
11 1 (0.11%) ActionScript
11 1 (0.11%) AppleScript
11 1 (0.11%) C
11 1 (0.11%) Search Processing Language
11 1 (0.11%) VBA
Qualifications
1 238 (26.59%) Security Cleared
2 168 (18.77%) SC Cleared
3 156 (17.43%) Cisco Certification
4 99 (11.06%) CISSP
5 92 (10.28%) CCNP
6 77 (8.60%) DV Cleared
7 64 (7.15%) Degree
8 57 (6.37%) CCNA
8 57 (6.37%) CISM
9 40 (4.47%) CCSP
10 39 (4.36%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 35 (3.91%) Azure Certification
12 22 (2.46%) AWS Certification
12 22 (2.46%) CCIE
13 15 (1.68%) CompTIA Security+
14 12 (1.34%) Computer Science Degree
14 12 (1.34%) GIAC
15 11 (1.23%) PMP
16 10 (1.12%) CEH
17 9 (1.01%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 81 (9.05%) NIST
2 75 (8.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 42 (4.69%) GDPR
4 31 (3.46%) NCSC
5 25 (2.79%) PCI DSS
6 19 (2.12%) QA
6 19 (2.12%) SLA
7 18 (2.01%) GRC
8 13 (1.45%) Cyber Essentials
9 9 (1.01%) Disclosure Scotland
9 9 (1.01%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 8 (0.89%) NIST 800
11 6 (0.67%) Actionable Recommendations
11 6 (0.67%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 5 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 5 (0.56%) SOC 2
13 4 (0.45%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 3 (0.34%) ISA99
14 3 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 42001
14 3 (0.34%) PMO
System Software
1 79 (8.83%) Active Directory
2 55 (6.15%) VMware Infrastructure
3 29 (3.24%) Docker
4 23 (2.57%) VMware NSX
5 21 (2.35%) Virtual Machines
6 10 (1.12%) Hyper-V
6 10 (1.12%) VMware ESXi
6 10 (1.12%) vSphere
7 5 (0.56%) Firmware
7 5 (0.56%) Squid
7 5 (0.56%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.34%) NFS
9 2 (0.22%) OpenSSH
9 2 (0.22%) Postfix
9 2 (0.22%) Sendmail
9 2 (0.22%) Varnish
9 2 (0.22%) Virtual Servers
9 2 (0.22%) VMware Workstation
10 1 (0.11%) FreeRADIUS
10 1 (0.11%) ProxySG
Systems Management
1 123 (13.74%) Terraform
2 81 (9.05%) Ansible
3 72 (8.04%) Kubernetes
4 44 (4.92%) FortiGate
5 21 (2.35%) Microsoft Intune
6 20 (2.23%) Grafana
7 18 (2.01%) Single Sign-On
8 12 (1.34%) Prometheus
9 10 (1.12%) vCenter Server
10 9 (1.01%) SCCM
11 8 (0.89%) CASB
12 7 (0.78%) Puppet
12 7 (0.78%) QRadar
13 6 (0.67%) Cisco CUCM
13 6 (0.67%) Cisco Prime
14 5 (0.56%) Suricata
14 5 (0.56%) WSUS
15 4 (0.45%) Kustomize
15 4 (0.45%) Podman
15 4 (0.45%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 251 (28.04%) Cisco
2 148 (16.54%) Palo Alto
3 142 (15.87%) Microsoft
4 82 (9.16%) Fortinet
5 81 (9.05%) F5
6 70 (7.82%) VMware
7 64 (7.15%) Zscaler
8 59 (6.59%) CheckPoint
9 54 (6.03%) Juniper
10 37 (4.13%) Splunk
11 35 (3.91%) ServiceNow
12 32 (3.58%) SolarWinds
13 28 (3.13%) Aruba
14 24 (2.68%) Citrix
15 23 (2.57%) Google
16 18 (2.01%) Tenable
17 17 (1.90%) ForeScout
18 15 (1.68%) Infoblox
19 14 (1.56%) CyberArk
19 14 (1.56%) Meraki