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

6 months to
27 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 151 147 186
Rank change year-on-year -4 +39 +2
Contract jobs citing Network Security 821 550 544
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.68% 1.92% 1.27%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 17.41% 15.20% 10.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 557 334 373
10th Percentile £400 £368 £365
25th Percentile £446 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £524 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.24% -4.77% -4.35%
75th Percentile £623 £606 £666
90th Percentile £700 £696 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £490 £575
% change year-on-year +4.59% -14.78% +9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 7 17
10th Percentile £27.20 £66.20 -
25th Percentile £42.13 £80.34 £7.43
Median hourly rate £65.00 £81.35 £19.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.10% +328.16% -63.55%
75th Percentile £74.00 £81.73 £41.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £82.86 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.50 £81.35 £7.43
% change year-on-year -19.48% +994.89% -83.88%

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 4,715 3,618 5,402
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.67% 12.66% 12.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,897 2,244 3,234
10th Percentile £263 £213 £206
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £486 £490
Median % change year-on-year +2.83% -0.77% -4.39%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £465 £475
% change year-on-year +2.15% -2.11% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 274 153 414
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £20.93 £17.30 £16.30
Median hourly rate £28.96 £40.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -27.60% - +116.22%
75th Percentile £65.66 £60.13 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £79.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.22 £30.70 £46.14
% change year-on-year +14.72% -33.46% +156.31%

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 27 May 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 27 May 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 27 May 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 -16 710 £525 -1.27% 267
UK excluding London -24 404 £513 +4.59% 205
London -15 303 £550 -4.35% 111
Work from Home +9 237 £528 +5.60% 129
North of England +4 158 £498 -0.50% 54
South East -22 100 £500 +2.04% 72
North West +5 91 £493 -3.28% 35
Yorkshire -17 64 £500 +1.83% 15
Midlands -52 51 £475 -9.52% 17
East of England -19 35 £525 -6.67% 15
South West -24 33 £550 - 18
Scotland +7 32 £538 +26.47% 23
West Midlands -59 32 £435 -17.14% 11
East Midlands -16 18 £638 - 6
North East -22 3 £538 -14.00% 5
Wales -23 3 £600 +106.90% 10

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 21 (2.56%) Confluence
2 11 (1.34%) Microsoft Exchange
3 5 (0.61%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.24%) Apache
5 1 (0.12%) nginx
Applications
1 13 (1.58%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (1.46%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 5 (0.61%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 254 (30.94%) Azure
2 173 (21.07%) AWS
3 108 (13.15%) GCP
4 64 (7.80%) Entra ID
5 32 (3.90%) GitHub
6 30 (3.65%) Azure Sentinel
7 26 (3.17%) Azure DevOps
8 25 (3.05%) GitHub Actions
9 20 (2.44%) Azure ExpressRoute
10 19 (2.31%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 19 (2.31%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 17 (2.07%) Azure AKS
11 17 (2.07%) Azure Key Vault
11 17 (2.07%) Microsoft 365
12 16 (1.95%) Akamai
12 16 (1.95%) AWS CloudFormation
12 16 (1.95%) Azure Monitor
13 14 (1.71%) AWS Direct Connect
13 14 (1.71%) SaaS
14 11 (1.34%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 371 (45.19%) Firewall
2 168 (20.46%) VPN
3 148 (18.03%) WAN
4 120 (14.62%) LAN
5 102 (12.42%) BGP
6 98 (11.94%) DNS
7 89 (10.84%) OSPF
8 80 (9.74%) SD-WAN
9 76 (9.26%) VLAN
10 68 (8.28%) TCP/IP
11 67 (8.16%) Wireless
12 52 (6.33%) MPLS
13 49 (5.97%) DHCP
14 41 (4.99%) IPsec
15 39 (4.75%) SSL
16 38 (4.63%) Wi-Fi
17 35 (4.26%) Cisco ISE
18 31 (3.78%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
19 30 (3.65%) Cisco ASA
20 29 (3.53%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (0.85%) Azure SQL Database
2 5 (0.61%) SQL Server
3 4 (0.49%) Neo4j
4 3 (0.37%) Amazon Athena
4 3 (0.37%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (0.37%) InfluxDB
4 3 (0.37%) Power BI
5 2 (0.24%) Data Lake
5 2 (0.24%) Elasticsearch
5 2 (0.24%) Oracle Database
5 2 (0.24%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (0.24%) Relational Database
5 2 (0.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 1 (0.12%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 39 (4.75%) JIRA
2 22 (2.68%) Jenkins
3 21 (2.56%) GitLab
4 18 (2.19%) Git
5 8 (0.97%) Sonatype Nexus
6 7 (0.85%) Snyk
7 5 (0.61%) Browser DevTools
8 3 (0.37%) Artifactory
9 2 (0.24%) Postman
9 2 (0.24%) SonarQube
10 1 (0.12%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.12%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.12%) JUnit
10 1 (0.12%) SoapUI
10 1 (0.12%) Zephyr
General
1 183 (22.29%) Social Skills
2 119 (14.49%) Finance
3 69 (8.40%) Analytical Skills
4 59 (7.19%) Public Sector
5 46 (5.60%) Banking
6 37 (4.51%) Documentation Skills
7 27 (3.29%) Telecoms
8 20 (2.44%) Financial Institution
9 12 (1.46%) Legal
10 11 (1.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 9 (1.10%) Manufacturing
12 8 (0.97%) Retail
13 6 (0.73%) Law
13 6 (0.73%) Military
13 6 (0.73%) Organisational Skills
14 5 (0.61%) Influencing Skills
14 5 (0.61%) Local Government
14 5 (0.61%) Police
15 3 (0.37%) Billing
15 3 (0.37%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 211 (25.70%) Network Engineer
2 176 (21.44%) Architect
3 104 (12.67%) Security Engineer
4 87 (10.60%) Security Architect
5 74 (9.01%) Senior
6 62 (7.55%) Network Architect
7 51 (6.21%) Network Security Engineer
8 34 (4.14%) Consultant
9 31 (3.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 29 (3.53%) Project Manager
10 29 (3.53%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
11 28 (3.41%) Lead
12 26 (3.17%) Cloud Engineer
12 26 (3.17%) Network Security Architect
13 24 (2.92%) Senior Network Engineer
14 23 (2.80%) Analyst
14 23 (2.80%) Azure Architect
15 22 (2.68%) Cloud Architect
16 19 (2.31%) Solutions Architect
17 18 (2.19%) Senior Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (3.90%) 802.1X
2 13 (1.58%) LDAP
3 12 (1.46%) SAML
4 10 (1.22%) REST
5 7 (0.85%) ARM Templates
5 7 (0.85%) Kafka
6 6 (0.73%) SLSA
7 5 (0.61%) HTML
7 5 (0.61%) OAuth
8 4 (0.49%) AWS CDK
8 4 (0.49%) CSS
8 4 (0.49%) OpenID
9 3 (0.37%) JSON
9 3 (0.37%) Lambda Expressions
9 3 (0.37%) Node.js
9 3 (0.37%) OAuth2
9 3 (0.37%) Plotly
9 3 (0.37%) RabbitMQ
10 2 (0.24%) RESTful
10 2 (0.24%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 125 (15.23%) Data Centre
2 50 (6.09%) Security Posture
3 45 (5.48%) Cloud Native
4 40 (4.87%) Hybrid Cloud
5 32 (3.90%) Onboarding
6 27 (3.29%) PKI
7 25 (3.05%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 23 (2.80%) Data Protection Act
8 23 (2.80%) IoT
9 22 (2.68%) Cyber Threat
9 22 (2.68%) Management Information System
9 22 (2.68%) Public Cloud
10 21 (2.56%) Operational Technology
11 17 (2.07%) Product Ownership
12 14 (1.71%) Security Operations Centre
12 14 (1.71%) Self-Motivation
13 11 (1.34%) Cyber Security Posture
14 10 (1.22%) Analytical Mindset
14 10 (1.22%) Replication
14 10 (1.22%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 76 (9.26%) Windows
2 62 (7.55%) Linux
3 27 (3.29%) Windows Server
4 9 (1.10%) VMS
5 8 (0.97%) Unix
6 7 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 6 (0.73%) Ubuntu
8 5 (0.61%) Mac OS
8 5 (0.61%) Windows 10
9 3 (0.37%) SUSE
10 1 (0.12%) Android
10 1 (0.12%) Data ONTAP
10 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2003
10 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 167 (20.34%) Cybersecurity
2 139 (16.93%) Cloud Security
3 132 (16.08%) Zero Trust
4 113 (13.76%) Security Architecture
5 111 (13.52%) CI/CD
6 108 (13.15%) Migration
7 107 (13.03%) Infrastructure as Code
8 105 (12.79%) SIEM
9 102 (12.42%) DevOps
10 87 (10.60%) Problem-Solving
11 86 (10.48%) High Availability
12 84 (10.23%) Continuous Improvement
13 79 (9.62%) Application Security
13 79 (9.62%) Threat Modelling
14 78 (9.50%) Network Segmentation
15 77 (9.38%) Incident Response
16 74 (9.01%) Identity Access Management
17 72 (8.77%) Load Balancing
18 70 (8.53%) Agile
18 70 (8.53%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 115 (14.01%) Python
2 62 (7.55%) PowerShell
3 35 (4.26%) Bash
4 29 (3.53%) Bicep
5 21 (2.56%) JavaScript
6 17 (2.07%) SQL
7 10 (1.22%) Kusto Query Language
8 7 (0.85%) Go
8 7 (0.85%) Shell Script
9 6 (0.73%) Java
10 4 (0.49%) C
10 4 (0.49%) PHP
11 3 (0.37%) C++
12 2 (0.24%) C-shell
12 2 (0.24%) Korn
12 2 (0.24%) Ruby
12 2 (0.24%) Rust
13 1 (0.12%) ActionScript
13 1 (0.12%) AppleScript
13 1 (0.12%) Perl
Qualifications
1 242 (29.48%) Security Cleared
2 183 (22.29%) SC Cleared
3 159 (19.37%) Cisco Certification
4 106 (12.91%) CCNP
5 95 (11.57%) CISSP
6 71 (8.65%) DV Cleared
7 61 (7.43%) CCNA
8 56 (6.82%) Degree
9 54 (6.58%) CISM
10 32 (3.90%) CCSP
11 31 (3.78%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 30 (3.65%) Azure Certification
13 20 (2.44%) CCIE
14 17 (2.07%) GIAC
15 16 (1.95%) AWS Certification
16 14 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
16 14 (1.71%) CEH
17 13 (1.58%) JNCIS
18 12 (1.46%) CompTIA Security+
19 11 (1.34%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 85 (10.35%) NIST
2 66 (8.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 38 (4.63%) GDPR
4 25 (3.05%) PCI DSS
5 19 (2.31%) NCSC
6 18 (2.19%) QA
7 17 (2.07%) GRC
8 13 (1.58%) Cyber Essentials
8 13 (1.58%) SLA
9 8 (0.97%) Actionable Recommendations
9 8 (0.97%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
9 8 (0.97%) SOC 2
10 7 (0.85%) Disclosure Scotland
10 7 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 4 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 4 (0.49%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 4 (0.49%) PMO
11 4 (0.49%) RMADS
12 3 (0.37%) ISA99
13 2 (0.24%) NIST 800
System Software
1 56 (6.82%) Active Directory
2 54 (6.58%) VMware Infrastructure
3 24 (2.92%) VMware NSX
4 20 (2.44%) Virtual Machines
5 19 (2.31%) Docker
6 15 (1.83%) Hyper-V
7 11 (1.34%) VMware ESXi
7 11 (1.34%) vSphere
8 6 (0.73%) Firmware
9 5 (0.61%) Squid
9 5 (0.61%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.24%) NFS
10 2 (0.24%) Postfix
10 2 (0.24%) ProxySG
10 2 (0.24%) Sendmail
10 2 (0.24%) Varnish
10 2 (0.24%) VMware Workstation
11 1 (0.12%) KVM
11 1 (0.12%) RHEV
11 1 (0.12%) Xen
Systems Management
1 122 (14.86%) Terraform
2 82 (9.99%) Ansible
3 66 (8.04%) Kubernetes
4 38 (4.63%) FortiGate
5 18 (2.19%) Single Sign-On
6 14 (1.71%) Grafana
6 14 (1.71%) Nagios
7 11 (1.34%) Microsoft Intune
7 11 (1.34%) vCenter Server
8 9 (1.10%) Microsoft Clustering
9 8 (0.97%) Kibana
10 6 (0.73%) Prometheus
10 6 (0.73%) QRadar
11 5 (0.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 5 (0.61%) CASB
11 5 (0.61%) Istio
11 5 (0.61%) Suricata
11 5 (0.61%) WSUS
12 4 (0.49%) Kustomize
12 4 (0.49%) Puppet
Vendors
1 233 (28.38%) Cisco
2 134 (16.32%) Palo Alto
3 110 (13.40%) Microsoft
4 79 (9.62%) F5
5 70 (8.53%) VMware
6 63 (7.67%) Fortinet
7 59 (7.19%) Juniper
8 52 (6.33%) Zscaler
9 51 (6.21%) CheckPoint
10 31 (3.78%) ServiceNow
11 26 (3.17%) Splunk
12 24 (2.92%) SolarWinds
13 22 (2.68%) Aruba
13 22 (2.68%) ForeScout
14 20 (2.44%) Google
15 17 (2.07%) Citrix
16 16 (1.95%) Tenable
17 13 (1.58%) Okta
18 12 (1.46%) Infoblox
18 12 (1.46%) Meraki