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 16 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 156 150 182
Rank change year-on-year -6 +32 -15
Contract jobs citing Network Security 906 593 560
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.72% 1.83% 1.31%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 18.11% 14.97% 10.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 610 361 377
10th Percentile £393 £375 £363
25th Percentile £447 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.90% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £638 £613 £650
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £528 £496 £575
% change year-on-year +6.45% -13.74% +9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 16 17
10th Percentile £25.05 £50.00 -
25th Percentile £40.53 £66.37 £7.43
Median hourly rate £73.00 £81.01 £19.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.89% +326.38% -71.21%
75th Percentile £74.00 £84.25 £41.25
90th Percentile £74.03 £92.50 £48.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £73.00 £81.01 £7.43
% change year-on-year -9.89% +990.34% -60.89%

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 5,003 3,960 5,336
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.51% 12.19% 12.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,036 2,406 3,154
10th Percentile £245 £235 £213
25th Percentile £400 £365 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £484 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.31% -3.20% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £670 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £489 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +2.89% -4.04% +7.03%
Number of hourly rates quoted 325 194 420
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.15 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.44 £50.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -47.12% +25.00% +18.52%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £83.70 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.22 £43.25 £47.50
% change year-on-year -39.38% -8.95% -0.48%

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 16 July 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 16 July 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 16 July 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 -5 782 £535 +1.90% 230
UK excluding London -10 460 £528 +6.45% 212
London -1 333 £550 - 67
Work from Home +7 270 £540 +2.86% 117
North of England +6 191 £528 +8.36% 57
South East -17 122 £534 +8.90% 59
North West -7 101 £535 +12.63% 38
Yorkshire +7 88 £500 +2.04% 19
Midlands -57 52 £500 -13.04% 32
Scotland +3 37 £569 +30.00% 26
East of England -18 32 £525 -2.78% 17
South West -27 31 £550 -8.33% 20
West Midlands -72 31 £420 -26.96% 13
East Midlands +7 20 £638 - 19
Wales -13 3 £600 +106.90% 5
North East -37 2 £675 +8.00% 1

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 (2.10%) Confluence
2 12 (1.32%) Microsoft Exchange
3 9 (0.99%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.22%) Apache
5 1 (0.11%) IIS
5 1 (0.11%) NetWeaver
5 1 (0.11%) nginx
Applications
1 18 (1.99%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.99%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.33%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.11%) InfoPath
4 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 6 (0.66%) Oracle ERP
1 6 (0.66%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 278 (30.68%) Azure
2 201 (22.19%) AWS
3 117 (12.91%) GCP
4 83 (9.16%) Entra ID
5 32 (3.53%) GitHub
6 30 (3.31%) Azure DevOps
7 28 (3.09%) Azure Sentinel
8 27 (2.98%) Microsoft 365
9 25 (2.76%) SaaS
10 24 (2.65%) Serverless
11 23 (2.54%) Azure Monitor
12 22 (2.43%) GitHub Actions
12 22 (2.43%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 20 (2.21%) Azure AKS
14 19 (2.10%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 18 (1.99%) Azure Key Vault
16 17 (1.88%) Azure ExpressRoute
16 17 (1.88%) OCI
17 16 (1.77%) Akamai
17 16 (1.77%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 418 (46.14%) Firewall
2 205 (22.63%) VPN
3 182 (20.09%) WAN
4 132 (14.57%) LAN
5 124 (13.69%) DNS
6 114 (12.58%) BGP
7 98 (10.82%) Wireless
8 93 (10.26%) SD-WAN
9 91 (10.04%) OSPF
10 87 (9.60%) TCP/IP
11 76 (8.39%) VLAN
12 62 (6.84%) DHCP
13 57 (6.29%) MPLS
14 54 (5.96%) IPsec
15 50 (5.52%) SSL
16 45 (4.97%) Cisco ASA
16 45 (4.97%) Cisco ISE
17 44 (4.86%) Wi-Fi
18 40 (4.42%) NGFW
19 37 (4.08%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (0.99%) SQL Server
2 8 (0.88%) Azure SQL Database
3 5 (0.55%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (0.44%) Data Lake
4 4 (0.44%) Elasticsearch
4 4 (0.44%) Neo4j
4 4 (0.44%) Power BI
5 3 (0.33%) Amazon Athena
5 3 (0.33%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (0.22%) BigQuery
6 2 (0.22%) InfluxDB
6 2 (0.22%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.11%) Data Mining
7 1 (0.11%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.11%) DataStage
7 1 (0.11%) Delta Lake
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 43 (4.75%) JIRA
2 34 (3.75%) Git
3 23 (2.54%) GitLab
4 18 (1.99%) Jenkins
5 11 (1.21%) Sonatype Nexus
6 6 (0.66%) Browser DevTools
7 5 (0.55%) Snyk
8 4 (0.44%) MSBuild
8 4 (0.44%) SonarQube
8 4 (0.44%) Visual Studio
9 3 (0.33%) Artifactory
10 2 (0.22%) Postman
11 1 (0.11%) Burp Suite
11 1 (0.11%) Claude Code
11 1 (0.11%) JUnit
11 1 (0.11%) SoapUI
11 1 (0.11%) Subversion
11 1 (0.11%) Zephyr
General
1 216 (23.84%) Social Skills
2 145 (16.00%) Finance
3 74 (8.17%) Analytical Skills
4 66 (7.28%) Public Sector
5 64 (7.06%) Banking
6 44 (4.86%) Documentation Skills
7 25 (2.76%) Financial Institution
8 23 (2.54%) Telecoms
9 17 (1.88%) Legal
10 13 (1.43%) Retail
11 12 (1.32%) Manufacturing
11 12 (1.32%) Organisational Skills
12 11 (1.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 10 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
14 8 (0.88%) Police
15 6 (0.66%) Law
16 5 (0.55%) Local Government
17 3 (0.33%) Billing
17 3 (0.33%) Military
17 3 (0.33%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 253 (27.92%) Network Engineer
2 193 (21.30%) Architect
3 119 (13.13%) Security Engineer
4 94 (10.38%) Security Architect
5 91 (10.04%) Senior
6 71 (7.84%) Network Security Engineer
7 67 (7.40%) Network Architect
8 49 (5.41%) Consultant
9 39 (4.30%) Project Manager
10 37 (4.08%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 37 (4.08%) Senior Network Engineer
11 36 (3.97%) Lead
12 28 (3.09%) Cloud Engineer
13 26 (2.87%) Network Security Architect
14 25 (2.76%) Network Manager
15 23 (2.54%) Solutions Architect
16 22 (2.43%) Security Consultant
17 21 (2.32%) Analyst
17 21 (2.32%) Azure Architect
17 21 (2.32%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 41 (4.53%) 802.1X
2 18 (1.99%) SAML
3 15 (1.66%) REST
4 10 (1.10%) ARM Templates
4 10 (1.10%) Kafka
5 7 (0.77%) LDAP
6 6 (0.66%) OAuth
6 6 (0.66%) OpenID
7 5 (0.55%) .NET
7 5 (0.55%) CSS
7 5 (0.55%) HTML
7 5 (0.55%) JSON
8 4 (0.44%) AWS CDK
8 4 (0.44%) gRPC
8 4 (0.44%) Keycloak
8 4 (0.44%) OAuth2
8 4 (0.44%) Protocol Buffers
8 4 (0.44%) RESTful
8 4 (0.44%) SLSA
8 4 (0.44%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 118 (13.02%) Data Centre
2 68 (7.51%) Security Posture
3 49 (5.41%) Cloud Native
4 43 (4.75%) Hybrid Cloud
5 37 (4.08%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 29 (3.20%) Onboarding
7 27 (2.98%) Operational Technology
8 26 (2.87%) Data Protection Act
9 24 (2.65%) Management Information System
10 23 (2.54%) PKI
11 22 (2.43%) Public Cloud
12 20 (2.21%) Cyber Threat
13 19 (2.10%) Product Ownership
14 18 (1.99%) Security Operations Centre
15 17 (1.88%) IoT
15 17 (1.88%) Self-Motivation
16 13 (1.43%) Linux Command Line
17 11 (1.21%) Enterprise Software
18 10 (1.10%) Replication
18 10 (1.10%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 78 (8.61%) Linux
2 71 (7.84%) Windows
3 20 (2.21%) Windows Server
4 13 (1.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 8 (0.88%) Ubuntu
5 8 (0.88%) Unix
6 7 (0.77%) Mac OS
7 5 (0.55%) VMS
7 5 (0.55%) Windows 10
8 3 (0.33%) Android
8 3 (0.33%) Check Point GAiA
8 3 (0.33%) SUSE
9 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2003
9 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
9 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 179 (19.76%) Cybersecurity
2 162 (17.88%) Cloud Security
3 138 (15.23%) Zero Trust
4 123 (13.58%) CI/CD
5 122 (13.47%) SIEM
6 121 (13.36%) Infrastructure as Code
7 116 (12.80%) DevOps
8 114 (12.58%) Security Architecture
9 113 (12.47%) Migration
10 111 (12.25%) Continuous Improvement
11 103 (11.37%) Stakeholder Management
12 101 (11.15%) Problem-Solving
13 100 (11.04%) High Availability
14 97 (10.71%) Change Management
15 91 (10.04%) Incident Response
16 90 (9.93%) Identity Access Management
17 89 (9.82%) Data Protection
18 87 (9.60%) Load Balancing
19 85 (9.38%) Agile
19 85 (9.38%) Application Security
Programming Languages
1 123 (13.58%) Python
2 61 (6.73%) PowerShell
3 51 (5.63%) Bash
4 34 (3.75%) Bicep
5 22 (2.43%) SQL
6 18 (1.99%) JavaScript
7 8 (0.88%) Shell Script
8 7 (0.77%) Java
9 5 (0.55%) Kusto Query Language
10 4 (0.44%) Perl
10 4 (0.44%) Rust
11 3 (0.33%) PHP
12 2 (0.22%) Ruby
13 1 (0.11%) ActionScript
13 1 (0.11%) AppleScript
13 1 (0.11%) C
13 1 (0.11%) Go
13 1 (0.11%) Search Processing Language
13 1 (0.11%) VBA
Qualifications
1 246 (27.15%) Security Cleared
2 174 (19.21%) SC Cleared
3 162 (17.88%) Cisco Certification
4 104 (11.48%) CISSP
5 98 (10.82%) CCNP
6 80 (8.83%) DV Cleared
7 65 (7.17%) Degree
8 60 (6.62%) CISM
9 59 (6.51%) CCNA
10 40 (4.42%) CCSP
11 39 (4.30%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 33 (3.64%) Azure Certification
13 24 (2.65%) CCIE
14 23 (2.54%) AWS Certification
15 16 (1.77%) Computer Science Degree
15 16 (1.77%) GIAC
16 15 (1.66%) CompTIA Security+
17 14 (1.55%) BPSS Clearance
18 13 (1.43%) CEH
19 11 (1.21%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 88 (9.71%) NIST
2 75 (8.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 41 (4.53%) GDPR
4 30 (3.31%) NCSC
5 27 (2.98%) PCI DSS
6 19 (2.10%) QA
7 17 (1.88%) GRC
8 15 (1.66%) SLA
9 13 (1.43%) Cyber Essentials
10 9 (0.99%) Disclosure Scotland
11 8 (0.88%) NIST 800
12 7 (0.77%) Actionable Recommendations
12 7 (0.77%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 7 (0.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 6 (0.66%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 6 (0.66%) SOC 2
14 4 (0.44%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 3 (0.33%) ISA99
15 3 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 42001
15 3 (0.33%) PMO
System Software
1 73 (8.06%) Active Directory
2 58 (6.40%) VMware Infrastructure
3 27 (2.98%) Docker
3 27 (2.98%) VMware NSX
4 23 (2.54%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (1.32%) VMware ESXi
5 12 (1.32%) vSphere
6 10 (1.10%) Hyper-V
7 6 (0.66%) Firmware
8 5 (0.55%) Squid
8 5 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
9 3 (0.33%) NFS
10 2 (0.22%) OpenSSH
10 2 (0.22%) Postfix
10 2 (0.22%) Sendmail
10 2 (0.22%) Varnish
10 2 (0.22%) Virtual Servers
10 2 (0.22%) VMware Workstation
11 1 (0.11%) ProxySG
11 1 (0.11%) Samba
Systems Management
1 125 (13.80%) Terraform
2 86 (9.49%) Ansible
3 74 (8.17%) Kubernetes
4 44 (4.86%) FortiGate
5 20 (2.21%) Single Sign-On
6 19 (2.10%) Grafana
7 13 (1.43%) Microsoft Intune
8 12 (1.32%) Prometheus
8 12 (1.32%) vCenter Server
9 8 (0.88%) CASB
10 7 (0.77%) Puppet
10 7 (0.77%) QRadar
11 5 (0.55%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 5 (0.55%) Cisco CUCM
11 5 (0.55%) Cisco Prime
11 5 (0.55%) SCCM
11 5 (0.55%) Suricata
11 5 (0.55%) WSUS
12 4 (0.44%) Kustomize
12 4 (0.44%) Podman
Vendors
1 261 (28.81%) Cisco
2 148 (16.34%) Palo Alto
3 133 (14.68%) Microsoft
4 87 (9.60%) F5
5 83 (9.16%) Fortinet
6 72 (7.95%) VMware
7 67 (7.40%) CheckPoint
8 60 (6.62%) Juniper
9 58 (6.40%) Zscaler
10 37 (4.08%) Splunk
11 35 (3.86%) ServiceNow
12 30 (3.31%) SolarWinds
13 25 (2.76%) Aruba
13 25 (2.76%) Citrix
14 24 (2.65%) Google
15 22 (2.43%) ForeScout
16 19 (2.10%) Tenable
17 15 (1.66%) Infoblox
18 14 (1.55%) Arista
19 13 (1.43%) Meraki