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

6 months to
17 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 168 148 180
Rank change year-on-year -20 +32 -15
Contract jobs citing Network Security 875 619 539
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.64% 1.87% 1.39%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 17.39% 15.82% 11.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 590 367 372
10th Percentile £400 £375 £363
25th Percentile £463 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £638 £618 £663
90th Percentile £731 £718 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £530 £500 £555
% change year-on-year +5.90% -9.91% +5.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 19 7
10th Percentile £26.00 £45.00 £21.20
25th Percentile £42.13 £60.38 £32.75
Median hourly rate £73.00 £80.68 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.51% +61.35% -24.24%
75th Percentile £74.00 £83.05 £58.75
90th Percentile - £88.00 £82.79
UK excluding London median hourly rate £73.00 £80.68 £50.00
% change year-on-year -9.51% +61.35% +163.16%

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 5,031 3,913 4,729
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.40% 11.82% 12.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,979 2,378 2,892
10th Percentile £250 £242 £222
25th Percentile £400 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £486 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.83% -2.75% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £489 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +2.89% -5.00% +9.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 363 203 315
10th Percentile £15.18 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £20.00
Median hourly rate £26.14 £46.25 £49.00
Median % change year-on-year -43.48% -5.61% -10.91%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.95 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.14 £45.00 £54.88
% change year-on-year -41.91% -18.00% -2.86%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 -17 766 £550 +4.76% 397
UK excluding London -38 430 £530 +5.90% 255
London -8 339 £550 - 200
Work from Home +4 272 £550 +3.00% 187
North of England -2 187 £530 +9.18% 44
South East -26 118 £559 +13.98% 85
North West -4 104 £537 +13.05% 31
Yorkshire +10 80 £500 +1.63% 10
Midlands -50 50 £463 -11.90% 47
East of England -14 37 £525 -4.55% 21
West Midlands -72 31 £406 -22.62% 27
Scotland -5 28 £600 +33.33% 25
East Midlands -1 18 £638 - 20
South West -60 15 £563 -12.11% 27
Wales -18 2 £538 +7.50% 6
North East -41 2 £675 +8.00% 3

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 (1.83%) Microsoft Exchange
2 12 (1.37%) Confluence
3 11 (1.26%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.34%) Apache
5 2 (0.23%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.11%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.11%) IIS
6 1 (0.11%) NetWeaver
6 1 (0.11%) nginx
Applications
1 20 (2.29%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (0.80%) 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 (0.69%) Oracle ERP
1 6 (0.69%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 305 (34.86%) Azure
2 208 (23.77%) AWS
3 111 (12.69%) GCP
4 95 (10.86%) Entra ID
5 37 (4.23%) Microsoft 365
6 36 (4.11%) Azure DevOps
7 33 (3.77%) GitHub
8 30 (3.43%) Azure Sentinel
9 29 (3.31%) Azure Monitor
10 28 (3.20%) SaaS
11 25 (2.86%) Serverless
12 21 (2.40%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 21 (2.40%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 21 (2.40%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 20 (2.29%) Azure AKS
13 20 (2.29%) GitHub Actions
14 15 (1.71%) Akamai
14 15 (1.71%) Azure Key Vault
14 15 (1.71%) OCI
15 14 (1.60%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 385 (44.00%) Firewall
2 194 (22.17%) VPN
3 184 (21.03%) WAN
4 133 (15.20%) LAN
5 126 (14.40%) DNS
6 98 (11.20%) Wireless
7 91 (10.40%) BGP
7 91 (10.40%) TCP/IP
8 88 (10.06%) SD-WAN
9 71 (8.11%) OSPF
10 68 (7.77%) DHCP
10 68 (7.77%) VLAN
11 50 (5.71%) MPLS
12 49 (5.60%) IPsec
12 49 (5.60%) SSL
13 46 (5.26%) Wi-Fi
14 42 (4.80%) Cisco ISE
15 39 (4.46%) Internet
16 37 (4.23%) Cisco ASA
17 35 (4.00%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (1.49%) SQL Server
2 8 (0.91%) Azure SQL Database
3 6 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
3 6 (0.69%) BigQuery
4 5 (0.57%) Power BI
5 4 (0.46%) Data Lake
5 4 (0.46%) Elasticsearch
5 4 (0.46%) Neo4j
6 3 (0.34%) PostgreSQL
7 2 (0.23%) Delta Lake
7 2 (0.23%) InfluxDB
8 1 (0.11%) Amazon Athena
8 1 (0.11%) Data Mining
8 1 (0.11%) Data Warehouse
8 1 (0.11%) Looker
8 1 (0.11%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (0.11%) Qlik Sense
8 1 (0.11%) Relational Database
8 1 (0.11%) Snowflake Schema
8 1 (0.11%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 37 (4.23%) Git
2 33 (3.77%) JIRA
3 28 (3.20%) GitLab
4 23 (2.63%) Jenkins
5 8 (0.91%) Sonatype Nexus
6 6 (0.69%) Browser DevTools
7 4 (0.46%) MSBuild
7 4 (0.46%) Snyk
7 4 (0.46%) SonarQube
7 4 (0.46%) Visual Studio
8 3 (0.34%) Artifactory
9 2 (0.23%) IBM UrbanCode
10 1 (0.11%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.11%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.11%) Postman
10 1 (0.11%) SoapUI
10 1 (0.11%) Subversion
General
1 217 (24.80%) Social Skills
2 152 (17.37%) Finance
3 76 (8.69%) Analytical Skills
4 57 (6.51%) Banking
5 55 (6.29%) Public Sector
6 43 (4.91%) Documentation Skills
7 25 (2.86%) Financial Institution
7 25 (2.86%) Telecoms
8 22 (2.51%) Legal
9 14 (1.60%) Retail
10 13 (1.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 13 (1.49%) Manufacturing
11 12 (1.37%) Organisational Skills
12 10 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
13 8 (0.91%) Police
14 6 (0.69%) Automotive
14 6 (0.69%) Law
14 6 (0.69%) Local Government
14 6 (0.69%) Presentation Skills
15 5 (0.57%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 236 (26.97%) Network Engineer
2 167 (19.09%) Architect
3 102 (11.66%) Senior
4 98 (11.20%) Security Engineer
5 88 (10.06%) Security Architect
6 58 (6.63%) Network Architect
7 56 (6.40%) Consultant
7 56 (6.40%) Network Security Engineer
8 46 (5.26%) Senior Network Engineer
9 43 (4.91%) Project Manager
10 41 (4.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 39 (4.46%) Lead
12 36 (4.11%) Cloud Engineer
13 29 (3.31%) Analyst
14 27 (3.09%) Security Consultant
15 24 (2.74%) Network Manager
16 22 (2.51%) Azure Engineer
17 21 (2.40%) Network Security Architect
18 19 (2.17%) DevOps Engineer
18 19 (2.17%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (4.34%) 802.1X
2 16 (1.83%) SAML
3 14 (1.60%) REST
4 12 (1.37%) ARM Templates
5 10 (1.14%) Kafka
6 6 (0.69%) JSON
6 6 (0.69%) NETCONF
7 5 (0.57%) .NET
7 5 (0.57%) OpenID
7 5 (0.57%) XML
8 4 (0.46%) CSS
8 4 (0.46%) gRPC
8 4 (0.46%) Keycloak
8 4 (0.46%) OAuth
8 4 (0.46%) Protocol Buffers
8 4 (0.46%) RESTful
8 4 (0.46%) SLSA
9 3 (0.34%) Middleware
9 3 (0.34%) ModSecurity
9 3 (0.34%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 97 (11.09%) Data Centre
2 75 (8.57%) Security Posture
3 51 (5.83%) Cloud Native
4 46 (5.26%) Hybrid Cloud
5 40 (4.57%) Onboarding
6 37 (4.23%) Management Information System
7 36 (4.11%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 27 (3.09%) Operational Technology
9 26 (2.97%) Cyber Threat
10 23 (2.63%) Data Protection Act
10 23 (2.63%) PKI
11 21 (2.40%) Public Cloud
11 21 (2.40%) Self-Motivation
12 20 (2.29%) Security Operations Centre
13 16 (1.83%) Cloud Security Posture
14 13 (1.49%) Enterprise Software
14 13 (1.49%) Linux Command Line
14 13 (1.49%) Product Ownership
15 10 (1.14%) Replication
16 9 (1.03%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 81 (9.26%) Windows
2 74 (8.46%) Linux
3 23 (2.63%) Windows Server
4 14 (1.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 8 (0.91%) Unix
5 8 (0.91%) Windows 10
6 6 (0.69%) Mac OS
6 6 (0.69%) Ubuntu
7 5 (0.57%) VMS
8 3 (0.34%) Android
8 3 (0.34%) Check Point GAiA
8 3 (0.34%) SUSE
9 2 (0.23%) zOS
10 1 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
10 1 (0.11%) Rocky
10 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2003
10 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 179 (20.46%) Cloud Security
2 175 (20.00%) Cybersecurity
3 125 (14.29%) CI/CD
3 125 (14.29%) Zero Trust
4 124 (14.17%) Stakeholder Management
5 120 (13.71%) Continuous Improvement
6 118 (13.49%) Infrastructure as Code
7 113 (12.91%) SIEM
8 111 (12.69%) DevOps
9 108 (12.34%) Change Management
10 107 (12.23%) Incident Response
11 106 (12.11%) Migration
12 101 (11.54%) Problem-Solving
13 99 (11.31%) Security Architecture
14 95 (10.86%) Data Protection
14 95 (10.86%) Identity Access Management
15 93 (10.63%) High Availability
16 88 (10.06%) Threat Modelling
17 86 (9.83%) DevSecOps
17 86 (9.83%) Load Balancing
Programming Languages
1 125 (14.29%) Python
2 76 (8.69%) PowerShell
3 63 (7.20%) Bash
4 36 (4.11%) Bicep
5 30 (3.43%) SQL
6 12 (1.37%) JavaScript
7 9 (1.03%) Go
7 9 (1.03%) Java
8 7 (0.80%) Search Processing Language
8 7 (0.80%) Shell Script
9 6 (0.69%) Kusto Query Language
10 4 (0.46%) Rust
11 3 (0.34%) Perl
11 3 (0.34%) VBScript
12 2 (0.23%) C
12 2 (0.23%) Ruby
13 1 (0.11%) C++
Qualifications
1 224 (25.60%) Security Cleared
2 159 (18.17%) SC Cleared
3 152 (17.37%) Cisco Certification
4 101 (11.54%) CISSP
5 87 (9.94%) CCNP
6 68 (7.77%) Degree
7 67 (7.66%) DV Cleared
8 57 (6.51%) CCNA
8 57 (6.51%) CISM
9 42 (4.80%) CCSP
10 41 (4.69%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 36 (4.11%) Azure Certification
12 22 (2.51%) CCIE
13 21 (2.40%) AWS Certification
14 16 (1.83%) Computer Science Degree
15 11 (1.26%) PMP
16 10 (1.14%) BPSS Clearance
16 10 (1.14%) CompTIA Security+
16 10 (1.14%) GIAC
17 9 (1.03%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 78 (8.91%) NIST
2 76 (8.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 49 (5.60%) GDPR
4 33 (3.77%) NCSC
5 30 (3.43%) PCI DSS
6 19 (2.17%) QA
6 19 (2.17%) SLA
7 15 (1.71%) GRC
8 14 (1.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 8 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
9 8 (0.91%) Disclosure Scotland
9 8 (0.91%) NIST 800
10 5 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 5 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 5 (0.57%) SOC 2
11 4 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
11 4 (0.46%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 3 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 3 (0.34%) ISA99
12 3 (0.34%) PMO
System Software
1 81 (9.26%) Active Directory
2 55 (6.29%) VMware Infrastructure
3 27 (3.09%) Docker
4 21 (2.40%) Virtual Machines
5 19 (2.17%) VMware NSX
6 13 (1.49%) Hyper-V
7 11 (1.26%) vSphere
8 8 (0.91%) Virtual Desktop
8 8 (0.91%) VMware ESXi
9 6 (0.69%) Firmware
10 5 (0.57%) Squid
11 3 (0.34%) NFS
12 2 (0.23%) FreeRADIUS
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%) ProxySG
Systems Management
1 123 (14.06%) Terraform
2 87 (9.94%) Ansible
3 75 (8.57%) Kubernetes
4 48 (5.49%) FortiGate
5 24 (2.74%) Microsoft Intune
6 23 (2.63%) Grafana
7 18 (2.06%) Single Sign-On
8 13 (1.49%) Prometheus
8 13 (1.49%) SCCM
9 12 (1.37%) CASB
10 10 (1.14%) Progress Chef
11 7 (0.80%) Cisco Prime
11 7 (0.80%) Puppet
11 7 (0.80%) QRadar
11 7 (0.80%) vCenter Server
12 6 (0.69%) Cisco CUCM
13 5 (0.57%) Suricata
13 5 (0.57%) WSUS
14 4 (0.46%) Kustomize
14 4 (0.46%) Podman
Vendors
1 246 (28.11%) Cisco
2 152 (17.37%) Microsoft
3 142 (16.23%) Palo Alto
4 82 (9.37%) Fortinet
5 80 (9.14%) F5
6 71 (8.11%) VMware
7 58 (6.63%) Zscaler
8 53 (6.06%) CheckPoint
9 48 (5.49%) Juniper
10 44 (5.03%) Splunk
11 35 (4.00%) SolarWinds
12 34 (3.89%) ServiceNow
13 32 (3.66%) Aruba
14 27 (3.09%) Google
15 21 (2.40%) Citrix
16 17 (1.94%) Tenable
17 15 (1.71%) ForeScout
17 15 (1.71%) Meraki
18 14 (1.60%) CyberArk
18 14 (1.60%) Infoblox