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

6 months to
7 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 165 156 182
Rank change year-on-year -9 +26 -18
Contract jobs citing Network Security 884 615 540
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.65% 1.87% 1.38%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 17.67% 15.57% 11.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 599 370 373
10th Percentile £400 £375 £363
25th Percentile £463 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £650 £613 £663
90th Percentile £738 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £531 £500 £575
% change year-on-year +6.20% -13.04% +9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 18 5
10th Percentile £26.00 £45.00 £20.30
25th Percentile £42.13 £58.79 £23.00
Median hourly rate £73.00 £80.68 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year -9.51% +40.30% -12.88%
75th Percentile £74.00 £83.53 £58.75
90th Percentile - £89.50 £94.82
UK excluding London median hourly rate £73.00 £80.68 £40.25
% change year-on-year -9.51% +100.43% +111.84%

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 5,004 3,950 4,727
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.37% 12.02% 12.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,970 2,419 2,866
10th Percentile £250 £240 £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 £490 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.16% -5.00% +9.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 355 195 324
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.15 £18.27
Median hourly rate £26.44 £47.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -44.34% - -5.79%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.70 £83.60 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.55 £45.00 £54.88
% change year-on-year -41.00% -18.00% -4.42%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 -17 769 £543 +3.51% 353
UK excluding London -29 429 £531 +6.20% 200
London -6 343 £550 - 173
Work from Home +7 271 £540 +1.89% 159
North of England -3 184 £530 +9.18% 48
South East -30 117 £557 +13.67% 75
North West -2 103 £536 +12.84% 29
Yorkshire +3 78 £507 +3.05% 17
Midlands -55 51 £438 -23.91% 28
East of England -16 36 £525 -4.55% 16
West Midlands -78 32 £406 -29.35% 15
Scotland -6 29 £600 +26.32% 11
East Midlands +3 18 £638 - 13
South West -52 16 £550 -8.33% 23
Wales -12 2 £538 +44.78% 3
North East -41 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 (1.81%) Microsoft Exchange
2 14 (1.58%) 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
Applications
1 21 (2.38%) 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
1 300 (33.94%) Azure
2 207 (23.42%) AWS
3 113 (12.78%) GCP
4 95 (10.75%) Entra ID
5 35 (3.96%) Microsoft 365
6 34 (3.85%) GitHub
7 33 (3.73%) Azure DevOps
7 33 (3.73%) Azure Sentinel
8 28 (3.17%) Azure Monitor
8 28 (3.17%) SaaS
9 24 (2.71%) Serverless
10 21 (2.38%) GitHub Actions
10 21 (2.38%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 20 (2.26%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 19 (2.15%) Azure AKS
13 18 (2.04%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 16 (1.81%) Akamai
15 15 (1.70%) Azure Key Vault
15 15 (1.70%) OCI
16 13 (1.47%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 391 (44.23%) Firewall
2 198 (22.40%) VPN
3 183 (20.70%) WAN
4 133 (15.05%) LAN
5 128 (14.48%) DNS
6 95 (10.75%) BGP
7 94 (10.63%) TCP/IP
7 94 (10.63%) Wireless
8 88 (9.95%) SD-WAN
9 75 (8.48%) OSPF
10 72 (8.14%) VLAN
11 65 (7.35%) DHCP
12 54 (6.11%) IPsec
13 51 (5.77%) MPLS
13 51 (5.77%) SSL
14 44 (4.98%) Wi-Fi
15 41 (4.64%) Cisco ISE
16 39 (4.41%) Internet
17 38 (4.30%) Cisco ASA
17 38 (4.30%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (1.47%) SQL Server
2 8 (0.90%) Azure SQL Database
3 6 (0.68%) 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 (0.23%) BigQuery
6 2 (0.23%) Delta Lake
6 2 (0.23%) InfluxDB
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 39 (4.41%) Git
2 36 (4.07%) JIRA
3 26 (2.94%) GitLab
4 21 (2.38%) 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
9 2 (0.23%) Postman
10 1 (0.11%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.11%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.11%) JUnit
10 1 (0.11%) SoapUI
10 1 (0.11%) Subversion
10 1 (0.11%) Zephyr
General
1 212 (23.98%) Social Skills
2 148 (16.74%) Finance
3 74 (8.37%) Analytical Skills
4 61 (6.90%) Banking
5 56 (6.33%) Public Sector
6 45 (5.09%) Documentation Skills
7 25 (2.83%) Financial Institution
7 25 (2.83%) Telecoms
8 20 (2.26%) Legal
9 14 (1.58%) Manufacturing
9 14 (1.58%) Retail
10 12 (1.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 12 (1.36%) Organisational Skills
11 11 (1.24%) Influencing Skills
12 8 (0.90%) Police
13 6 (0.68%) Automotive
13 6 (0.68%) Law
13 6 (0.68%) Local Government
13 6 (0.68%) Presentation Skills
14 4 (0.45%) Military
Job Titles
1 242 (27.38%) Network Engineer
2 184 (20.81%) Architect
3 102 (11.54%) Security Engineer
4 100 (11.31%) Security Architect
5 98 (11.09%) Senior
6 66 (7.47%) Network Architect
7 62 (7.01%) Network Security Engineer
8 54 (6.11%) Consultant
9 44 (4.98%) Senior Network Engineer
10 42 (4.75%) Project Manager
11 39 (4.41%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 39 (4.41%) Lead
12 31 (3.51%) Cloud Engineer
13 27 (3.05%) Network Security Architect
14 25 (2.83%) Analyst
14 25 (2.83%) Security Consultant
15 24 (2.71%) Network Manager
16 22 (2.49%) Solutions Architect
17 19 (2.15%) DevOps Engineer
17 19 (2.15%) Senior Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (4.07%) 802.1X
2 16 (1.81%) SAML
3 13 (1.47%) REST
4 12 (1.36%) ARM Templates
5 10 (1.13%) Kafka
6 6 (0.68%) NETCONF
7 5 (0.57%) .NET
7 5 (0.57%) CSS
7 5 (0.57%) HTML
7 5 (0.57%) JSON
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%) Azure Blueprints
9 3 (0.34%) Plotly
9 3 (0.34%) SLSA
Miscellaneous
1 102 (11.54%) Data Centre
2 70 (7.92%) Security Posture
3 50 (5.66%) Cloud Native
4 49 (5.54%) Hybrid Cloud
5 39 (4.41%) Onboarding
6 38 (4.30%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 33 (3.73%) Management Information System
8 28 (3.17%) Operational Technology
9 23 (2.60%) PKI
10 22 (2.49%) Cyber Threat
10 22 (2.49%) Data Protection Act
11 21 (2.38%) Public Cloud
12 20 (2.26%) Self-Motivation
13 18 (2.04%) Security Operations Centre
14 14 (1.58%) Linux Command Line
15 13 (1.47%) Enterprise Software
15 13 (1.47%) Product Ownership
16 11 (1.24%) Cloud Security Posture
17 10 (1.13%) IoT
17 10 (1.13%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 80 (9.05%) Windows
2 74 (8.37%) Linux
3 24 (2.71%) Windows Server
4 14 (1.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 9 (1.02%) Unix
6 7 (0.79%) Mac OS
6 7 (0.79%) Ubuntu
7 6 (0.68%) Windows 10
8 5 (0.57%) 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
1 174 (19.68%) Cloud Security
2 169 (19.12%) Cybersecurity
3 130 (14.71%) Zero Trust
4 123 (13.91%) CI/CD
5 119 (13.46%) SIEM
6 115 (13.01%) Continuous Improvement
7 113 (12.78%) DevOps
7 113 (12.78%) Infrastructure as Code
8 111 (12.56%) Migration
8 111 (12.56%) Stakeholder Management
9 108 (12.22%) Security Architecture
10 103 (11.65%) Change Management
11 99 (11.20%) Identity Access Management
12 98 (11.09%) Incident Response
13 97 (10.97%) Problem-Solving
14 93 (10.52%) High Availability
15 91 (10.29%) Data Protection
16 88 (9.95%) Threat Modelling
17 85 (9.62%) Load Balancing
18 83 (9.39%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 112 (12.67%) Python
2 72 (8.14%) PowerShell
3 57 (6.45%) Bash
4 36 (4.07%) Bicep
5 26 (2.94%) SQL
6 17 (1.92%) JavaScript
7 8 (0.90%) Java
8 7 (0.79%) Shell Script
9 6 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
10 5 (0.57%) Search Processing Language
11 4 (0.45%) Rust
12 3 (0.34%) Go
12 3 (0.34%) Perl
13 2 (0.23%) Ruby
14 1 (0.11%) AppleScript
14 1 (0.11%) C
14 1 (0.11%) PHP
14 1 (0.11%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 229 (25.90%) Security Cleared
2 160 (18.10%) SC Cleared
3 156 (17.65%) Cisco Certification
4 105 (11.88%) CISSP
5 90 (10.18%) CCNP
6 73 (8.26%) DV Cleared
7 69 (7.81%) Degree
8 56 (6.33%) CCNA
8 56 (6.33%) CISM
9 41 (4.64%) CCSP
10 40 (4.52%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 36 (4.07%) Azure Certification
12 23 (2.60%) CCIE
13 22 (2.49%) AWS Certification
14 14 (1.58%) Computer Science Degree
15 13 (1.47%) CompTIA Security+
16 11 (1.24%) GIAC
16 11 (1.24%) PMP
17 10 (1.13%) BPSS Clearance
17 10 (1.13%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 82 (9.28%) NIST
2 74 (8.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 46 (5.20%) GDPR
4 32 (3.62%) NCSC
5 29 (3.28%) PCI DSS
6 19 (2.15%) QA
6 19 (2.15%) SLA
7 15 (1.70%) GRC
8 13 (1.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 9 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
10 8 (0.90%) Disclosure Scotland
10 8 (0.90%) NIST 800
11 5 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 5 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 5 (0.57%) SOC 2
12 4 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
12 4 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 4 (0.45%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 3 (0.34%) ISA99
13 3 (0.34%) PMO
System Software
1 82 (9.28%) Active Directory
2 55 (6.22%) VMware Infrastructure
3 28 (3.17%) Docker
4 21 (2.38%) Virtual Machines
5 20 (2.26%) VMware NSX
6 12 (1.36%) Hyper-V
7 11 (1.24%) vSphere
8 8 (0.90%) VMware ESXi
9 6 (0.68%) Firmware
10 5 (0.57%) Squid
10 5 (0.57%) Virtual Desktop
11 3 (0.34%) NFS
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%) FreeRADIUS
13 1 (0.11%) ProxySG
Systems Management
1 118 (13.35%) Terraform
2 83 (9.39%) Ansible
3 70 (7.92%) Kubernetes
4 45 (5.09%) FortiGate
5 23 (2.60%) Microsoft Intune
6 22 (2.49%) Grafana
7 19 (2.15%) Single Sign-On
8 13 (1.47%) Prometheus
9 12 (1.36%) CASB
10 11 (1.24%) SCCM
11 8 (0.90%) Progress Chef
11 8 (0.90%) vCenter Server
12 7 (0.79%) Puppet
12 7 (0.79%) QRadar
13 6 (0.68%) Cisco CUCM
13 6 (0.68%) Cisco Prime
14 5 (0.57%) Suricata
14 5 (0.57%) WSUS
15 4 (0.45%) Kustomize
15 4 (0.45%) Podman
Vendors
1 246 (27.83%) Cisco
2 147 (16.63%) Microsoft
3 143 (16.18%) Palo Alto
4 81 (9.16%) Fortinet
5 79 (8.94%) F5
6 70 (7.92%) VMware
7 64 (7.24%) Zscaler
8 56 (6.33%) CheckPoint
9 52 (5.88%) Juniper
10 42 (4.75%) Splunk
11 35 (3.96%) ServiceNow
12 32 (3.62%) SolarWinds
13 29 (3.28%) Aruba
14 23 (2.60%) Citrix
15 22 (2.49%) Google
16 18 (2.04%) Tenable
17 15 (1.70%) CyberArk
17 15 (1.70%) ForeScout
18 14 (1.58%) Infoblox
18 14 (1.58%) Meraki