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

6 months to
1 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 172 157 184
Rank change year-on-year -15 +27 -18
Contract jobs citing Network Security 866 605 538
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.61% 1.85% 1.39%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 17.08% 15.70% 11.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 571 357 371
10th Percentile £400 £375 £363
25th Percentile £463 £445 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £638 £618 £666
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £532 £492 £550
% change year-on-year +8.19% -10.55% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 17 6
10th Percentile £26.20 £45.00 £30.50
25th Percentile £42.13 £55.00 £44.38
Median hourly rate £73.00 £70.16 £53.75
Median % change year-on-year +4.05% +30.53% -20.07%
75th Percentile £74.00 £84.00 £58.75
90th Percentile - £91.00 £88.81
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 5,069 3,853 4,615
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.45% 11.77% 11.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,982 2,359 2,742
10th Percentile £250 £238 £230
25th Percentile £400 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £469 £500
% change year-on-year +2.35% -6.20% +10.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 376 201 288
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £20.50
Median hourly rate £26.00 £45.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -42.22% -10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £65.22 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.81 £42.50 £55.75
% change year-on-year -39.28% -23.76% -1.32%

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 1 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 1 September 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 1 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 -22 762 £550 +4.76% 595
UK excluding London -26 424 £532 +8.19% 340
London -15 337 £550 - 313
Work from Home +14 270 £531 -3.55% 227
North of England +14 201 £531 +8.48% 69
North West -14 114 £531 +11.79% 37
South East -32 105 £550 +17.18% 106
Yorkshire +16 84 £526 +6.00% 27
Midlands -68 43 £425 -19.05% 49
East of England -10 39 £525 -2.78% 28
West Midlands -75 28 £400 -23.81% 30
Scotland -15 26 £600 +33.33% 22
South West -55 16 £575 -10.16% 49
East Midlands -4 14 £500 - 19
North East - 2 £675 - 5
Northern Ireland +4 1 - - 17
Wales -17 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 17 (1.96%) Microsoft Exchange
2 13 (1.50%) SharePoint
3 10 (1.15%) Confluence
4 2 (0.23%) Apache
4 2 (0.23%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.12%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.12%) IIS
5 1 (0.12%) NetWeaver
5 1 (0.12%) nginx
Applications
1 21 (2.42%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (0.81%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.46%) Microsoft Excel
4 3 (0.35%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.12%) InfoPath
5 1 (0.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 6 (0.69%) Oracle ERP
2 2 (0.23%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 308 (35.57%) Azure
2 209 (24.13%) AWS
3 111 (12.82%) GCP
4 89 (10.28%) Entra ID
5 41 (4.73%) Microsoft 365
6 40 (4.62%) Azure DevOps
7 34 (3.93%) GitHub
8 30 (3.46%) Azure Monitor
9 27 (3.12%) Azure Sentinel
9 27 (3.12%) Serverless
10 26 (3.00%) SaaS
11 21 (2.42%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 20 (2.31%) GitHub Actions
13 19 (2.19%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 18 (2.08%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 16 (1.85%) Amazon EKS
15 16 (1.85%) Azure AKS
16 15 (1.73%) OCI
17 14 (1.62%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 14 (1.62%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 394 (45.50%) Firewall
2 204 (23.56%) VPN
3 193 (22.29%) WAN
4 132 (15.24%) LAN
5 129 (14.90%) DNS
6 104 (12.01%) Wireless
7 102 (11.78%) BGP
8 92 (10.62%) TCP/IP
9 87 (10.05%) SD-WAN
10 75 (8.66%) OSPF
11 74 (8.55%) VLAN
12 73 (8.43%) DHCP
13 52 (6.00%) IPsec
13 52 (6.00%) MPLS
13 52 (6.00%) SSL
14 50 (5.77%) Wi-Fi
15 47 (5.43%) Cisco ISE
16 40 (4.62%) Cisco ASA
16 40 (4.62%) Internet
17 35 (4.04%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (1.50%) SQL Server
2 6 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
2 6 (0.69%) BigQuery
3 4 (0.46%) Elasticsearch
3 4 (0.46%) Neo4j
4 3 (0.35%) Azure SQL Database
4 3 (0.35%) Data Lake
4 3 (0.35%) PostgreSQL
4 3 (0.35%) Power BI
5 2 (0.23%) Delta Lake
5 2 (0.23%) InfluxDB
6 1 (0.12%) Data Mining
6 1 (0.12%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.12%) Looker
6 1 (0.12%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (0.12%) Qlik Sense
6 1 (0.12%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.12%) Snowflake Schema
6 1 (0.12%) Star Schema
6 1 (0.12%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 35 (4.04%) Git
2 31 (3.58%) GitLab
3 29 (3.35%) JIRA
4 25 (2.89%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.81%) Sonatype Nexus
6 5 (0.58%) Browser DevTools
7 4 (0.46%) MSBuild
7 4 (0.46%) SonarQube
7 4 (0.46%) Visual Studio
8 3 (0.35%) Artifactory
9 2 (0.23%) IBM UrbanCode
10 1 (0.12%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.12%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.12%) Postman
10 1 (0.12%) Snyk
10 1 (0.12%) SoapUI
10 1 (0.12%) Subversion
General
1 221 (25.52%) Social Skills
2 151 (17.44%) Finance
3 81 (9.35%) Analytical Skills
4 59 (6.81%) Banking
5 48 (5.54%) Public Sector
6 44 (5.08%) Documentation Skills
7 28 (3.23%) Telecoms
8 24 (2.77%) Legal
9 19 (2.19%) Financial Institution
10 15 (1.73%) Retail
11 14 (1.62%) Manufacturing
12 12 (1.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 11 (1.27%) Influencing Skills
13 11 (1.27%) Organisational Skills
14 8 (0.92%) Police
15 7 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
16 6 (0.69%) Automotive
16 6 (0.69%) Local Government
16 6 (0.69%) Military
17 5 (0.58%) Law
Job Titles
1 244 (28.18%) Network Engineer
2 159 (18.36%) Architect
3 109 (12.59%) Senior
4 104 (12.01%) Security Engineer
5 88 (10.16%) Security Architect
6 63 (7.27%) Consultant
7 61 (7.04%) Network Security Engineer
8 55 (6.35%) Network Architect
9 52 (6.00%) Senior Network Engineer
10 45 (5.20%) Project Manager
11 40 (4.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 39 (4.50%) Cloud Engineer
13 33 (3.81%) Security Consultant
14 32 (3.70%) Lead
15 25 (2.89%) Analyst
15 25 (2.89%) Network Manager
16 24 (2.77%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
17 22 (2.54%) Azure Engineer
17 22 (2.54%) Solutions Architect
18 21 (2.42%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 123 (14.20%) Terraform
2 35 (4.04%) 802.1X
3 17 (1.96%) REST
4 15 (1.73%) SAML
5 14 (1.62%) ARM Templates
6 11 (1.27%) Kafka
7 8 (0.92%) NETCONF
8 6 (0.69%) gRPC
8 6 (0.69%) JSON
9 5 (0.58%) Keycloak
9 5 (0.58%) OpenID
9 5 (0.58%) SLSA
9 5 (0.58%) XML
10 4 (0.46%) .NET
10 4 (0.46%) Azure Blueprints
10 4 (0.46%) CSS
10 4 (0.46%) OAuth
10 4 (0.46%) Protocol Buffers
10 4 (0.46%) RESTful
11 3 (0.35%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 108 (12.47%) Data Centre
2 79 (9.12%) Security Posture
3 51 (5.89%) Cloud Native
4 44 (5.08%) Onboarding
5 43 (4.97%) Hybrid Cloud
6 39 (4.50%) Management Information System
7 36 (4.16%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 28 (3.23%) Operational Technology
9 27 (3.12%) Cyber Threat
10 26 (3.00%) PKI
11 22 (2.54%) Security Operations Centre
12 21 (2.42%) Self-Motivation
13 18 (2.08%) Cloud Security Posture
14 17 (1.96%) Data Protection Act
15 15 (1.73%) Public Cloud
16 13 (1.50%) Enterprise Software
16 13 (1.50%) Linux Command Line
17 11 (1.27%) Replication
18 9 (1.04%) IoT
18 9 (1.04%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 91 (10.51%) Windows
2 77 (8.89%) Linux
3 31 (3.58%) Windows Server
4 15 (1.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 8 (0.92%) Windows 10
6 6 (0.69%) Mac OS
6 6 (0.69%) Ubuntu
6 6 (0.69%) Unix
7 3 (0.35%) Check Point GAiA
7 3 (0.35%) SUSE
7 3 (0.35%) VMS
8 2 (0.23%) Android
8 2 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
8 2 (0.23%) zOS
9 1 (0.12%) Oracle Linux
9 1 (0.12%) Rocky
9 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2003
9 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
9 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 178 (20.55%) Cloud Security
2 171 (19.75%) Cybersecurity
3 135 (15.59%) Stakeholder Management
4 132 (15.24%) Zero Trust
5 126 (14.55%) Continuous Improvement
6 121 (13.97%) CI/CD
7 114 (13.16%) Incident Response
7 114 (13.16%) Migration
8 113 (13.05%) Infrastructure as Code
9 112 (12.93%) DevOps
10 110 (12.70%) Change Management
11 107 (12.36%) SIEM
12 103 (11.89%) Problem-Solving
12 103 (11.89%) Security Architecture
13 97 (11.20%) High Availability
14 92 (10.62%) Threat Modelling
15 91 (10.51%) Data Protection
15 91 (10.51%) Load Balancing
16 90 (10.39%) Identity Access Management
17 85 (9.82%) Security Operations
Programming Languages
1 136 (15.70%) Python
2 80 (9.24%) PowerShell
3 68 (7.85%) Bash
4 35 (4.04%) Bicep
5 24 (2.77%) SQL
6 12 (1.39%) Go
7 10 (1.15%) Java
8 9 (1.04%) JavaScript
9 7 (0.81%) Search Processing Language
10 6 (0.69%) Kusto Query Language
10 6 (0.69%) Shell Script
11 4 (0.46%) Rust
12 3 (0.35%) Perl
12 3 (0.35%) VBScript
13 1 (0.12%) C
13 1 (0.12%) C++
13 1 (0.12%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 226 (26.10%) Security Cleared
2 166 (19.17%) Cisco Certification
3 165 (19.05%) SC Cleared
4 106 (12.24%) CISSP
5 95 (10.97%) CCNP
6 65 (7.51%) DV Cleared
7 62 (7.16%) Degree
8 54 (6.24%) CISM
9 53 (6.12%) CCNA
10 47 (5.43%) CCSP
11 45 (5.20%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 36 (4.16%) Azure Certification
13 28 (3.23%) AWS Certification
13 28 (3.23%) CCIE
14 16 (1.85%) Computer Science Degree
15 11 (1.27%) BPSS Clearance
15 11 (1.27%) GIAC
15 11 (1.27%) PMP
16 10 (1.15%) CompTIA Security+
16 10 (1.15%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (8.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 68 (7.85%) NIST
3 41 (4.73%) GDPR
4 28 (3.23%) NCSC
5 24 (2.77%) PCI DSS
6 14 (1.62%) QA
7 12 (1.39%) GRC
7 12 (1.39%) SLA
8 11 (1.27%) Cyber Essentials
9 10 (1.15%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 8 (0.92%) NIST 800
11 7 (0.81%) Disclosure Scotland
12 6 (0.69%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 5 (0.58%) ISO/IEC 42001
14 4 (0.46%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 3 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
15 3 (0.35%) ISA99
15 3 (0.35%) SOC 2
16 2 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
16 2 (0.23%) PMO
System Software
1 77 (8.89%) Active Directory
2 56 (6.47%) VMware Infrastructure
3 30 (3.46%) Docker
4 21 (2.42%) Virtual Machines
5 19 (2.19%) VMware NSX
6 13 (1.50%) Hyper-V
7 11 (1.27%) vSphere
8 8 (0.92%) Virtual Desktop
8 8 (0.92%) VMware ESXi
9 5 (0.58%) Firmware
9 5 (0.58%) Squid
10 2 (0.23%) FreeRADIUS
10 2 (0.23%) NFS
10 2 (0.23%) OpenSSH
10 2 (0.23%) Virtual Servers
10 2 (0.23%) VMware Workstation
11 1 (0.12%) Postfix
11 1 (0.12%) ProxySG
11 1 (0.12%) Samba
11 1 (0.12%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 94 (10.85%) Ansible
2 77 (8.89%) Kubernetes
3 45 (5.20%) FortiGate
4 22 (2.54%) Grafana
4 22 (2.54%) Microsoft Intune
5 16 (1.85%) Single Sign-On
6 15 (1.73%) Prometheus
7 14 (1.62%) SCCM
8 13 (1.50%) Progress Chef
9 10 (1.15%) CASB
10 7 (0.81%) Cisco Prime
10 7 (0.81%) Puppet
10 7 (0.81%) QRadar
10 7 (0.81%) vCenter Server
11 6 (0.69%) Cisco CUCM
12 5 (0.58%) Suricata
12 5 (0.58%) WSUS
13 4 (0.46%) Kustomize
13 4 (0.46%) Nagios
13 4 (0.46%) Podman
Vendors
1 248 (28.64%) Cisco
2 156 (18.01%) Microsoft
3 152 (17.55%) Palo Alto
4 87 (10.05%) Fortinet
5 82 (9.47%) F5
6 77 (8.89%) VMware
7 55 (6.35%) CheckPoint
8 54 (6.24%) Zscaler
9 45 (5.20%) Juniper
10 37 (4.27%) Splunk
11 36 (4.16%) SolarWinds
12 31 (3.58%) Aruba
13 27 (3.12%) Google
14 26 (3.00%) ServiceNow
15 22 (2.54%) Citrix
16 16 (1.85%) Meraki
17 14 (1.62%) CyberArk
17 14 (1.62%) Tenable
18 12 (1.39%) Blue Coat
18 12 (1.39%) ForeScout