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

6 months to
14 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 174 158 170
Rank change year-on-year -16 +12 -3
Contract jobs citing Network Security 862 578 563
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.59% 1.77% 1.47%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 17.09% 15.29% 12.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 561 343 382
10th Percentile £400 £380 £363
25th Percentile £463 £450 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year +3.77% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £650 £630 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £540 £492 £550
% change year-on-year +9.76% -10.55% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 14 7
10th Percentile £26.60 £45.00 £32.90
25th Percentile £56.47 £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 5,044 3,781 4,544
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.32% 11.57% 11.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,936 2,333 2,657
10th Percentile £231 £230 £231
25th Percentile £385 £363 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £505
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.95% +1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £610
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £455 £500
% change year-on-year +4.40% -9.00% +9.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 402 198 261
10th Percentile £14.35 £15.45 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £21.37
Median hourly rate £26.72 £42.50 £51.50
Median % change year-on-year -37.13% -17.48% -8.83%
75th Percentile £65.88 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.88 £73.60 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.14 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -38.49% -25.89% -0.11%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 -16 752 £550 +4.76% 704
UK excluding London -23 430 £540 +9.76% 349
London -6 329 £550 - 395
Work from Home -2 260 £545 -0.91% 527
North of England +3 195 £537 +9.65% 76
North West -14 107 £536 +12.84% 49
South East -27 95 £559 +24.30% 112
Yorkshire +15 84 £539 +9.50% 22
Midlands -60 49 £450 -14.29% 55
East of England -9 41 £525 +10.53% 35
West Midlands -72 34 £450 -14.29% 35
Scotland -13 28 £600 +33.33% 28
South West -59 21 £600 -3.23% 37
East Midlands -6 14 £500 - 20
Channel Islands -1 6 £600 -17.24%
North East - 3 £678 - 5
Northern Ireland +4 1 - - 8
Wales -15 1 £650 +30.00% 5

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 19 (2.20%) Microsoft Exchange
2 16 (1.86%) SharePoint
3 11 (1.28%) Confluence
4 3 (0.35%) Apache
4 3 (0.35%) 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 20 (2.32%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (0.81%) MS Visio
3 5 (0.58%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.35%) Microsoft Excel
5 1 (0.12%) InfoPath
5 1 (0.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 6 (0.70%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 292 (33.87%) Azure
2 198 (22.97%) AWS
3 101 (11.72%) GCP
4 86 (9.98%) Entra ID
5 44 (5.10%) Microsoft 365
6 38 (4.41%) Azure DevOps
6 38 (4.41%) GitHub
7 31 (3.60%) Azure Monitor
8 27 (3.13%) Serverless
9 24 (2.78%) SaaS
10 23 (2.67%) Azure Sentinel
11 21 (2.44%) GitHub Actions
12 20 (2.32%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 17 (1.97%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 16 (1.86%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 16 (1.86%) Amazon EKS
14 16 (1.86%) Azure AKS
15 15 (1.74%) OCI
15 15 (1.74%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 14 (1.62%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 387 (44.90%) Firewall
2 203 (23.55%) VPN
3 185 (21.46%) WAN
4 131 (15.20%) DNS
5 124 (14.39%) LAN
6 105 (12.18%) Wireless
7 91 (10.56%) BGP
8 84 (9.74%) TCP/IP
9 81 (9.40%) SD-WAN
10 72 (8.35%) DHCP
11 70 (8.12%) VLAN
12 64 (7.42%) OSPF
13 57 (6.61%) SSL
14 49 (5.68%) MPLS
14 49 (5.68%) Wi-Fi
15 48 (5.57%) IPsec
16 43 (4.99%) Cisco ISE
17 41 (4.76%) Internet
18 37 (4.29%) Cisco ASA
19 35 (4.06%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (1.51%) SQL Server
2 6 (0.70%) BigQuery
3 5 (0.58%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (0.46%) Elasticsearch
4 4 (0.46%) Neo4j
5 3 (0.35%) Azure SQL Database
5 3 (0.35%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (0.23%) Data Lake
6 2 (0.23%) Delta Lake
6 2 (0.23%) InfluxDB
6 2 (0.23%) Power BI
7 1 (0.12%) Data Mining
7 1 (0.12%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.12%) Looker
7 1 (0.12%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.12%) Qlik Sense
7 1 (0.12%) Relational Database
7 1 (0.12%) Snowflake Schema
7 1 (0.12%) Star Schema
7 1 (0.12%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 38 (4.41%) Git
2 32 (3.71%) JIRA
3 30 (3.48%) GitLab
4 27 (3.13%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.81%) Sonatype Nexus
6 4 (0.46%) MSBuild
6 4 (0.46%) SonarQube
6 4 (0.46%) Visual Studio
7 3 (0.35%) Artifactory
7 3 (0.35%) Browser DevTools
8 2 (0.23%) IBM UrbanCode
9 1 (0.12%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.12%) Claude Code
9 1 (0.12%) Postman
9 1 (0.12%) SoapUI
9 1 (0.12%) Subversion
General
1 231 (26.80%) Social Skills
2 145 (16.82%) Finance
3 84 (9.74%) Analytical Skills
4 62 (7.19%) Banking
5 45 (5.22%) Public Sector
6 43 (4.99%) Documentation Skills
7 29 (3.36%) Telecoms
8 26 (3.02%) Legal
9 17 (1.97%) Financial Institution
10 14 (1.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 14 (1.62%) Influencing Skills
10 14 (1.62%) Manufacturing
10 14 (1.62%) Retail
11 12 (1.39%) Organisational Skills
12 9 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
13 8 (0.93%) Police
14 6 (0.70%) Automotive
14 6 (0.70%) Local Government
14 6 (0.70%) Military
15 5 (0.58%) Law
Job Titles
1 245 (28.42%) Network Engineer
2 149 (17.29%) Architect
3 113 (13.11%) Security Engineer
4 107 (12.41%) Senior
5 82 (9.51%) Security Architect
6 67 (7.77%) Network Security Engineer
7 64 (7.42%) Consultant
8 54 (6.26%) Network Architect
9 50 (5.80%) Senior Network Engineer
10 47 (5.45%) Project Manager
11 42 (4.87%) Cloud Engineer
11 42 (4.87%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 34 (3.94%) Security Consultant
13 29 (3.36%) Lead
14 28 (3.25%) Analyst
15 27 (3.13%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
16 24 (2.78%) Azure Engineer
16 24 (2.78%) Network Manager
17 23 (2.67%) Network Security Architect
18 22 (2.55%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 126 (14.62%) Terraform
2 34 (3.94%) 802.1X
3 19 (2.20%) REST
4 15 (1.74%) ARM Templates
5 14 (1.62%) SAML
6 12 (1.39%) Kafka
7 8 (0.93%) NETCONF
8 7 (0.81%) JSON
9 6 (0.70%) gRPC
9 6 (0.70%) Keycloak
10 5 (0.58%) Azure Blueprints
10 5 (0.58%) OpenID
10 5 (0.58%) SLSA
10 5 (0.58%) XML
11 4 (0.46%) .NET
11 4 (0.46%) LDAP
11 4 (0.46%) OAuth
11 4 (0.46%) Protocol Buffers
11 4 (0.46%) RESTful
11 4 (0.46%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 114 (13.23%) Data Centre
2 78 (9.05%) Security Posture
3 48 (5.57%) Onboarding
4 44 (5.10%) Cloud Native
5 43 (4.99%) Hybrid Cloud
6 42 (4.87%) Management Information System
7 32 (3.71%) Operational Technology
8 30 (3.48%) Cyber Threat
9 29 (3.36%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 28 (3.25%) PKI
11 22 (2.55%) Security Operations Centre
12 21 (2.44%) Self-Motivation
13 19 (2.20%) Cloud Security Posture
14 17 (1.97%) Data Protection Act
14 17 (1.97%) Public Cloud
15 15 (1.74%) Enterprise Software
16 13 (1.51%) Linux Command Line
17 12 (1.39%) Replication
18 9 (1.04%) SCADA
18 9 (1.04%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 95 (11.02%) Windows
2 82 (9.51%) Linux
3 36 (4.18%) Windows Server
4 16 (1.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 8 (0.93%) Windows 10
6 7 (0.81%) Unix
7 6 (0.70%) Ubuntu
8 5 (0.58%) Mac OS
9 3 (0.35%) Check Point GAiA
9 3 (0.35%) SUSE
9 3 (0.35%) VMS
10 2 (0.23%) Android
10 2 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
10 2 (0.23%) zOS
11 1 (0.12%) Oracle Linux
11 1 (0.12%) Rocky
11 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2003
11 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 172 (19.95%) Cloud Security
2 169 (19.61%) Cybersecurity
3 144 (16.71%) Stakeholder Management
4 127 (14.73%) CI/CD
5 125 (14.50%) Zero Trust
6 123 (14.27%) Incident Response
7 119 (13.81%) Continuous Improvement
8 117 (13.57%) Infrastructure as Code
9 112 (12.99%) SIEM
10 111 (12.88%) DevOps
11 110 (12.76%) Change Management
12 109 (12.65%) Migration
13 107 (12.41%) Problem-Solving
14 99 (11.48%) Security Architecture
15 92 (10.67%) Identity Access Management
16 89 (10.32%) High Availability
17 86 (9.98%) Data Protection
17 86 (9.98%) Infrastructure Engineering
18 85 (9.86%) Load Balancing
18 85 (9.86%) Security Operations
Programming Languages
1 147 (17.05%) Python
2 85 (9.86%) PowerShell
3 73 (8.47%) Bash
4 33 (3.83%) Bicep
5 23 (2.67%) SQL
6 13 (1.51%) Go
7 11 (1.28%) Java
8 7 (0.81%) Search Processing Language
9 6 (0.70%) Kusto Query Language
9 6 (0.70%) Shell Script
10 4 (0.46%) Rust
11 3 (0.35%) ActionScript
11 3 (0.35%) JavaScript
11 3 (0.35%) Perl
11 3 (0.35%) VBScript
12 1 (0.12%) C
12 1 (0.12%) C++
12 1 (0.12%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 238 (27.61%) Security Cleared
2 174 (20.19%) SC Cleared
3 170 (19.72%) Cisco Certification
4 109 (12.65%) CISSP
5 96 (11.14%) CCNP
6 69 (8.00%) DV Cleared
7 66 (7.66%) Degree
8 49 (5.68%) CCSP
9 48 (5.57%) CCNA
9 48 (5.57%) CISM
10 47 (5.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 36 (4.18%) Azure Certification
12 31 (3.60%) CCIE
13 28 (3.25%) AWS Certification
14 16 (1.86%) Computer Science Degree
15 13 (1.51%) GIAC
16 12 (1.39%) PMP
17 11 (1.28%) CEH
17 11 (1.28%) PMI Certification
18 10 (1.16%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 74 (8.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 68 (7.89%) NIST
3 33 (3.83%) GDPR
4 29 (3.36%) NCSC
5 22 (2.55%) PCI DSS
6 13 (1.51%) QA
7 12 (1.39%) Cyber Essentials
7 12 (1.39%) GRC
8 11 (1.28%) SLA
9 9 (1.04%) NIST 800
9 9 (1.04%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 7 (0.81%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 7 (0.81%) Disclosure Scotland
11 5 (0.58%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 4 (0.46%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 4 (0.46%) PMO
13 3 (0.35%) ISA99
13 3 (0.35%) SOC 2
14 2 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
14 2 (0.23%) JSP 440
System Software
1 77 (8.93%) Active Directory
2 55 (6.38%) VMware Infrastructure
3 32 (3.71%) Docker
4 22 (2.55%) Virtual Machines
5 16 (1.86%) VMware NSX
6 13 (1.51%) Hyper-V
7 10 (1.16%) VMware ESXi
7 10 (1.16%) vSphere
8 8 (0.93%) Virtual Desktop
9 5 (0.58%) Firmware
9 5 (0.58%) Squid
10 4 (0.46%) Virtual Servers
11 3 (0.35%) FreeRADIUS
12 2 (0.23%) NFS
12 2 (0.23%) OpenSSH
12 2 (0.23%) VMware Workstation
13 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 1 (0.12%) Postfix
13 1 (0.12%) ProxySG
13 1 (0.12%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 96 (11.14%) Ansible
2 79 (9.16%) Kubernetes
3 46 (5.34%) FortiGate
4 24 (2.78%) Microsoft Intune
5 23 (2.67%) Grafana
6 16 (1.86%) Prometheus
7 15 (1.74%) SCCM
8 14 (1.62%) Progress Chef
9 13 (1.51%) Single Sign-On
10 10 (1.16%) CASB
11 9 (1.04%) QRadar
12 7 (0.81%) Cisco Prime
12 7 (0.81%) Puppet
12 7 (0.81%) vCenter Server
13 6 (0.70%) Cisco CUCM
14 5 (0.58%) Suricata
14 5 (0.58%) VxRail
14 5 (0.58%) WSUS
15 4 (0.46%) Kustomize
15 4 (0.46%) Podman
Vendors
1 252 (29.23%) Cisco
2 159 (18.45%) Microsoft
2 159 (18.45%) Palo Alto
3 94 (10.90%) Fortinet
4 80 (9.28%) F5
5 73 (8.47%) VMware
6 62 (7.19%) Zscaler
7 56 (6.50%) CheckPoint
8 47 (5.45%) Juniper
9 39 (4.52%) Splunk
10 36 (4.18%) SolarWinds
11 32 (3.71%) Aruba
12 28 (3.25%) Google
13 25 (2.90%) ServiceNow
14 21 (2.44%) Citrix
15 16 (1.86%) Meraki
16 15 (1.74%) CyberArk
17 14 (1.62%) Tenable
18 13 (1.51%) Blue Coat
19 11 (1.28%) ForeScout