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

6 months to
19 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 180 168 165
Rank change year-on-year -12 -3 -1
Contract jobs citing Network Security 877 565 579
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.60% 1.71% 1.50%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 17.12% 14.85% 12.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 569 335 385
10th Percentile £400 £380 £361
25th Percentile £463 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £534 £540
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -1.20% -1.82%
75th Percentile £650 £634 £650
90th Percentile £731 £738 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £540 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +8.00% -9.09% +3.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 14 7
10th Percentile £23.00 £45.00 £32.90
25th Percentile £62.81 £55.00 £42.50
Median hourly rate £73.00 £70.16 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.05% +40.32% -25.65%
75th Percentile £74.00 £84.09 £58.75
90th Percentile £85.00 £95.50 £82.79
UK excluding London median hourly rate £73.00 £70.16 £53.75
% change year-on-year +4.05% +30.53% +17.49%

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 5,124 3,805 4,583
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.34% 11.55% 11.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,966 2,363 2,666
10th Percentile £233 £225 £225
25th Percentile £393 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £500
% change year-on-year +5.56% -10.00% +10.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 418 199 252
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £25.15 £21.37
Median hourly rate £32.50 £42.50 £51.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.53% -16.67% -9.72%
75th Percentile £68.75 £64.38 £65.00
90th Percentile £88.74 £75.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.50 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -30.59% -25.89% -0.26%

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 September 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 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Network Security in the UK

Network Security
Top 18 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 September 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 -6 764 £550 +3.29% 698
UK excluding London -21 436 £540 +8.00% 359
London +3 335 £550 - 367
Work from Home -2 264 £540 -1.82% 271
North of England +8 199 £537 +9.70% 75
North West -17 107 £536 +12.84% 44
South East -32 92 £559 +24.22% 116
Yorkshire +17 87 £540 +8.87% 22
Midlands -62 51 £450 -14.29% 62
East of England -4 41 £525 +10.53% 40
West Midlands -72 37 £450 -14.29% 43
Scotland -10 28 £600 +33.33% 27
South West -44 24 £675 +8.87% 34
East Midlands -4 14 £500 - 19
Channel Islands -1 6 £600 -17.24%
North East - 4 £680 - 10
Northern Ireland +3 1 - - 7
Wales -14 1 £650 +30.00% 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 20 (2.28%) Microsoft Exchange
2 17 (1.94%) SharePoint
3 11 (1.25%) Confluence
4 3 (0.34%) Apache
4 3 (0.34%) 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 (2.28%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (0.80%) MS Visio
3 5 (0.57%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
5 1 (0.11%) InfoPath
5 1 (0.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 6 (0.68%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.11%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 297 (33.87%) Azure
2 200 (22.81%) AWS
3 104 (11.86%) GCP
4 91 (10.38%) Entra ID
5 48 (5.47%) Microsoft 365
6 42 (4.79%) GitHub
7 39 (4.45%) Azure DevOps
8 33 (3.76%) Azure Monitor
9 28 (3.19%) Serverless
10 25 (2.85%) SaaS
11 23 (2.62%) Azure Sentinel
12 21 (2.39%) GitHub Actions
13 20 (2.28%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 18 (2.05%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 17 (1.94%) Azure AKS
16 16 (1.82%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 16 (1.82%) Amazon EKS
17 15 (1.71%) OCI
17 15 (1.71%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 14 (1.60%) AWS Direct Connect
Communications & Networking
1 401 (45.72%) Firewall
2 206 (23.49%) VPN
3 186 (21.21%) WAN
4 138 (15.74%) DNS
5 129 (14.71%) LAN
6 106 (12.09%) Wireless
7 95 (10.83%) BGP
8 92 (10.49%) TCP/IP
9 79 (9.01%) SD-WAN
10 77 (8.78%) DHCP
11 70 (7.98%) VLAN
12 67 (7.64%) OSPF
13 59 (6.73%) SSL
14 50 (5.70%) MPLS
15 47 (5.36%) Wi-Fi
16 45 (5.13%) IPsec
17 42 (4.79%) Cisco ISE
17 42 (4.79%) Internet
18 38 (4.33%) Cisco ASA
19 34 (3.88%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (1.48%) SQL Server
2 7 (0.80%) Amazon RDS
2 7 (0.80%) BigQuery
3 4 (0.46%) Elasticsearch
3 4 (0.46%) Neo4j
4 3 (0.34%) Azure SQL Database
4 3 (0.34%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (0.23%) Data Lake
5 2 (0.23%) Delta Lake
5 2 (0.23%) InfluxDB
5 2 (0.23%) Power BI
6 1 (0.11%) Data Mining
6 1 (0.11%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.11%) Looker
6 1 (0.11%) Metadata
6 1 (0.11%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.11%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (0.11%) Qlik Sense
6 1 (0.11%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.11%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 40 (4.56%) Git
2 31 (3.53%) JIRA
3 30 (3.42%) GitLab
4 28 (3.19%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.80%) Sonatype Nexus
6 4 (0.46%) MSBuild
6 4 (0.46%) SonarQube
6 4 (0.46%) Visual Studio
7 3 (0.34%) Artifactory
7 3 (0.34%) Browser DevTools
8 2 (0.23%) Claude Code
8 2 (0.23%) IBM UrbanCode
9 1 (0.11%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.11%) Postman
9 1 (0.11%) SoapUI
9 1 (0.11%) Subversion
General
1 239 (27.25%) Social Skills
2 151 (17.22%) Finance
3 95 (10.83%) Analytical Skills
4 64 (7.30%) Banking
5 45 (5.13%) Documentation Skills
6 44 (5.02%) Public Sector
7 28 (3.19%) Telecoms
8 26 (2.96%) Legal
9 18 (2.05%) Financial Institution
10 15 (1.71%) Influencing Skills
11 14 (1.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 14 (1.60%) Manufacturing
11 14 (1.60%) Retail
12 12 (1.37%) Organisational Skills
13 10 (1.14%) Presentation Skills
14 8 (0.91%) Local Government
15 6 (0.68%) Automotive
15 6 (0.68%) Military
15 6 (0.68%) Police
16 5 (0.57%) Law
Job Titles
1 251 (28.62%) Network Engineer
2 150 (17.10%) Architect
3 117 (13.34%) Security Engineer
4 107 (12.20%) Senior
5 82 (9.35%) Security Architect
6 71 (8.10%) Network Security Engineer
7 69 (7.87%) Consultant
8 54 (6.16%) Network Architect
9 50 (5.70%) Senior Network Engineer
10 45 (5.13%) Project Manager
11 43 (4.90%) Cloud Engineer
11 43 (4.90%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 38 (4.33%) Security Consultant
13 32 (3.65%) Lead
14 28 (3.19%) Analyst
15 27 (3.08%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
16 25 (2.85%) Azure Engineer
17 24 (2.74%) Network Manager
17 24 (2.74%) Network Security Architect
18 23 (2.62%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 136 (15.51%) Terraform
2 35 (3.99%) 802.1X
3 22 (2.51%) REST
4 15 (1.71%) ARM Templates
4 15 (1.71%) SAML
5 12 (1.37%) Kafka
6 8 (0.91%) JSON
6 8 (0.91%) NETCONF
7 6 (0.68%) gRPC
7 6 (0.68%) Keycloak
7 6 (0.68%) OpenID
8 5 (0.57%) Azure Blueprints
8 5 (0.57%) LDAP
8 5 (0.57%) OAuth
8 5 (0.57%) SLSA
8 5 (0.57%) Software Packaging
8 5 (0.57%) XML
8 5 (0.57%) YAML
9 4 (0.46%) Protocol Buffers
9 4 (0.46%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 114 (13.00%) Data Centre
2 86 (9.81%) Security Posture
3 51 (5.82%) Onboarding
4 45 (5.13%) Cloud Native
5 43 (4.90%) Hybrid Cloud
6 42 (4.79%) Management Information System
7 35 (3.99%) Operational Technology
8 32 (3.65%) Cyber Threat
9 29 (3.31%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 27 (3.08%) PKI
11 24 (2.74%) Self-Motivation
12 22 (2.51%) Security Operations Centre
13 20 (2.28%) Cloud Security Posture
14 18 (2.05%) Data Protection Act
14 18 (2.05%) Public Cloud
15 15 (1.71%) Enterprise Software
16 13 (1.48%) Linux Command Line
17 12 (1.37%) Replication
18 9 (1.03%) SCADA
18 9 (1.03%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 104 (11.86%) Windows
2 87 (9.92%) Linux
3 42 (4.79%) Windows Server
4 19 (2.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 10 (1.14%) Unix
5 10 (1.14%) Windows 10
6 6 (0.68%) Ubuntu
7 5 (0.57%) Mac OS
8 4 (0.46%) SUSE
9 3 (0.34%) Check Point GAiA
9 3 (0.34%) VMS
10 2 (0.23%) Android
10 2 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
10 2 (0.23%) zOS
11 1 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
11 1 (0.11%) Rocky
11 1 (0.11%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2003
11 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 178 (20.30%) Cloud Security
2 176 (20.07%) Cybersecurity
3 150 (17.10%) Stakeholder Management
4 134 (15.28%) Zero Trust
5 132 (15.05%) CI/CD
6 126 (14.37%) Continuous Improvement
6 126 (14.37%) Incident Response
7 125 (14.25%) Infrastructure as Code
8 121 (13.80%) SIEM
9 117 (13.34%) Problem-Solving
10 115 (13.11%) DevOps
10 115 (13.11%) Migration
11 112 (12.77%) Change Management
12 110 (12.54%) Security Architecture
13 100 (11.40%) Identity Access Management
14 92 (10.49%) Data Protection
15 91 (10.38%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 89 (10.15%) Security Operations
17 87 (9.92%) Threat Modelling
18 86 (9.81%) Load Balancing
Programming Languages
1 158 (18.02%) Python
2 91 (10.38%) PowerShell
3 76 (8.67%) Bash
4 34 (3.88%) Bicep
5 23 (2.62%) SQL
6 14 (1.60%) Go
7 12 (1.37%) Java
8 7 (0.80%) Search Processing Language
8 7 (0.80%) Shell Script
9 6 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
10 4 (0.46%) ActionScript
10 4 (0.46%) Rust
11 3 (0.34%) JavaScript
11 3 (0.34%) Perl
11 3 (0.34%) VBScript
12 1 (0.11%) C
12 1 (0.11%) C++
12 1 (0.11%) Ruby
12 1 (0.11%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 243 (27.71%) Security Cleared
2 175 (19.95%) Cisco Certification
2 175 (19.95%) SC Cleared
3 110 (12.54%) CISSP
4 98 (11.17%) CCNP
5 72 (8.21%) DV Cleared
6 67 (7.64%) Degree
7 51 (5.82%) CCSP
8 49 (5.59%) CCNA
9 48 (5.47%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 47 (5.36%) CISM
11 35 (3.99%) Azure Certification
12 33 (3.76%) CCIE
13 27 (3.08%) AWS Certification
14 17 (1.94%) Computer Science Degree
15 13 (1.48%) GIAC
16 12 (1.37%) PMP
17 11 (1.25%) BPSS Clearance
17 11 (1.25%) CEH
17 11 (1.25%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 75 (8.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 70 (7.98%) NIST
3 34 (3.88%) GDPR
4 29 (3.31%) NCSC
5 24 (2.74%) PCI DSS
6 14 (1.60%) Cyber Essentials
7 13 (1.48%) GRC
7 13 (1.48%) QA
8 11 (1.25%) NIST 800
8 11 (1.25%) SLA
9 9 (1.03%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 8 (0.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 7 (0.80%) Disclosure Scotland
12 5 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 42001
13 4 (0.46%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 4 (0.46%) PMO
14 3 (0.34%) Data Quality
14 3 (0.34%) SOC 2
15 2 (0.23%) JSP 440
15 2 (0.23%) P3O
System Software
1 84 (9.58%) Active Directory
2 57 (6.50%) VMware Infrastructure
3 34 (3.88%) Docker
4 22 (2.51%) Virtual Machines
5 16 (1.82%) VMware NSX
6 14 (1.60%) Hyper-V
7 13 (1.48%) vSphere
8 12 (1.37%) VMware ESXi
9 8 (0.91%) Virtual Desktop
10 6 (0.68%) Virtual Servers
11 5 (0.57%) Firmware
11 5 (0.57%) Squid
12 3 (0.34%) FreeRADIUS
13 2 (0.23%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 2 (0.23%) NFS
13 2 (0.23%) OpenSSH
13 2 (0.23%) VMware Workstation
14 1 (0.11%) Postfix
14 1 (0.11%) ProxySG
14 1 (0.11%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 103 (11.74%) Ansible
2 81 (9.24%) Kubernetes
3 47 (5.36%) FortiGate
4 26 (2.96%) Microsoft Intune
5 25 (2.85%) Grafana
6 17 (1.94%) Prometheus
7 16 (1.82%) Progress Chef
8 15 (1.71%) SCCM
9 13 (1.48%) Single Sign-On
10 10 (1.14%) CASB
11 9 (1.03%) QRadar
12 7 (0.80%) Cisco Prime
12 7 (0.80%) Puppet
12 7 (0.80%) vCenter Server
12 7 (0.80%) VxRail
13 6 (0.68%) Cisco CUCM
13 6 (0.68%) Nagios
13 6 (0.68%) WSUS
14 5 (0.57%) Suricata
15 4 (0.46%) systemd
Vendors
1 260 (29.65%) Cisco
2 168 (19.16%) Palo Alto
3 167 (19.04%) Microsoft
4 95 (10.83%) Fortinet
5 82 (9.35%) F5
6 75 (8.55%) VMware
7 69 (7.87%) Zscaler
8 58 (6.61%) CheckPoint
9 47 (5.36%) Juniper
10 40 (4.56%) SolarWinds
10 40 (4.56%) Splunk
11 31 (3.53%) Aruba
12 30 (3.42%) Google
13 26 (2.96%) ServiceNow
14 21 (2.39%) Citrix
15 17 (1.94%) Meraki
16 15 (1.71%) CyberArk
17 14 (1.60%) Blue Coat
17 14 (1.60%) Tenable
18 12 (1.37%) Infoblox