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

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 180 177 164
Rank change year-on-year -3 -13 -2
Contract jobs citing Network Security 877 560 580
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.60% 1.69% 1.53%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 17.16% 14.75% 12.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 572 338 374
10th Percentile £400 £380 £361
25th Percentile £463 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £533 £536
Median % change year-on-year +3.29% -0.70% -2.50%
75th Percentile £650 £636 £634
90th Percentile £725 £738 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £540 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +8.00% -4.76% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 15 9
10th Percentile £26.80 £45.00 £31.70
25th Percentile £67.50 £50.00 £36.00
Median hourly rate £73.00 £70.16 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.05% +55.91% -37.93%
75th Percentile £74.00 £83.18 £58.75
90th Percentile £85.00 £94.00 £70.77
UK excluding London median hourly rate £73.00 £70.16 £53.75
% change year-on-year +4.05% +30.53% -25.86%

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 5,111 3,796 4,510
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.31% 11.48% 11.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,952 2,381 2,593
10th Percentile £235 £219 £225
25th Percentile £390 £362 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £488
% change year-on-year +5.56% -7.69% +5.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 428 204 206
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £23.94 £24.18
Median hourly rate £32.75 £42.50 £51.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.94% -16.67% -9.72%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.38 £65.00
90th Percentile £92.11 £72.15 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.36 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -35.62% -25.89% -0.26%

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 October 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 October 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 1 October 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 -10 772 £550 +4.76% 627
UK excluding London -8 447 £540 +8.00% 346
London +3 333 £550 - 295
Work from Home +3 261 £540 -1.82% 263
North of England +19 207 £540 +10.32% 87
North West -8 110 £540 +13.68% 56
Yorkshire +18 92 £540 +8.87% 22
South East -34 90 £557 +23.78% 107
Midlands -62 53 £450 -14.29% 55
East of England -5 42 £525 +7.69% 31
West Midlands -58 41 £450 -14.29% 37
Scotland -14 27 £600 +33.33% 19
South West -41 26 £675 +5.47% 36
East Midlands -7 12 £500 - 18
Channel Islands 0 6 £600 -17.24%
North East - 4 £680 - 10
Northern Ireland +8 2 - - 9
Wales -17 1 £650 +30.00% 7

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 (2.17%) Microsoft Exchange
2 18 (2.05%) SharePoint
3 11 (1.25%) Confluence
4 4 (0.46%) Apache
4 4 (0.46%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.23%) IIS
6 1 (0.11%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.11%) CMS
6 1 (0.11%) NetWeaver
6 1 (0.11%) nginx
Applications
1 17 (1.94%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (0.80%) MS Visio
3 5 (0.57%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (0.57%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.11%) InfoPath
Business Applications
1 6 (0.68%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.11%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 293 (33.41%) Azure
2 205 (23.38%) AWS
3 105 (11.97%) GCP
4 98 (11.17%) Entra ID
5 51 (5.82%) Microsoft 365
6 44 (5.02%) GitHub
7 40 (4.56%) Azure DevOps
8 32 (3.65%) Azure Monitor
9 29 (3.31%) Serverless
10 26 (2.96%) SaaS
11 24 (2.74%) Azure Sentinel
12 21 (2.39%) GitHub Actions
13 18 (2.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 18 (2.05%) Amazon EKS
13 18 (2.05%) Azure AKS
13 18 (2.05%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 18 (2.05%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 17 (1.94%) OCI
14 17 (1.94%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 15 (1.71%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 402 (45.84%) Firewall
2 203 (23.15%) VPN
3 194 (22.12%) WAN
4 138 (15.74%) DNS
5 136 (15.51%) LAN
6 103 (11.74%) Wireless
7 95 (10.83%) BGP
8 93 (10.60%) TCP/IP
9 80 (9.12%) SD-WAN
10 75 (8.55%) DHCP
11 66 (7.53%) OSPF
12 65 (7.41%) VLAN
13 60 (6.84%) SSL
14 52 (5.93%) MPLS
15 45 (5.13%) Wi-Fi
16 44 (5.02%) IPsec
17 42 (4.79%) Cisco ISE
18 39 (4.45%) Cisco ASA
19 38 (4.33%) Internet
20 32 (3.65%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (1.37%) SQL Server
2 9 (1.03%) Amazon RDS
3 7 (0.80%) BigQuery
4 5 (0.57%) Delta Lake
5 4 (0.46%) Elasticsearch
5 4 (0.46%) Neo4j
6 3 (0.34%) Azure SQL Database
6 3 (0.34%) PostgreSQL
6 3 (0.34%) Power BI
7 2 (0.23%) Data Lake
7 2 (0.23%) InfluxDB
7 2 (0.23%) Looker
7 2 (0.23%) Relational Database
8 1 (0.11%) Amazon Athena
8 1 (0.11%) Amazon Aurora
8 1 (0.11%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.11%) Metadata
8 1 (0.11%) Qlik Sense
8 1 (0.11%) SAP Data Services
8 1 (0.11%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 40 (4.56%) Git
2 31 (3.53%) GitLab
2 31 (3.53%) Jenkins
3 28 (3.19%) JIRA
4 7 (0.80%) Sonatype Nexus
5 4 (0.46%) MSBuild
5 4 (0.46%) SonarQube
5 4 (0.46%) Visual Studio
6 3 (0.34%) Artifactory
6 3 (0.34%) Browser DevTools
6 3 (0.34%) Claude Code
7 2 (0.23%) IBM UrbanCode
8 1 (0.11%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.11%) Postman
8 1 (0.11%) SoapUI
8 1 (0.11%) Subversion
General
1 245 (27.94%) Social Skills
2 162 (18.47%) Finance
3 94 (10.72%) Analytical Skills
4 68 (7.75%) Banking
5 45 (5.13%) Public Sector
6 43 (4.90%) Documentation Skills
7 32 (3.65%) Telecoms
8 31 (3.53%) Legal
9 18 (2.05%) Financial Institution
10 16 (1.82%) Influencing Skills
11 15 (1.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 14 (1.60%) Manufacturing
12 14 (1.60%) Retail
13 13 (1.48%) Organisational Skills
14 12 (1.37%) Presentation Skills
15 8 (0.91%) Local Government
16 7 (0.80%) Law
17 6 (0.68%) Automotive
17 6 (0.68%) Military
17 6 (0.68%) Police
Job Titles
1 249 (28.39%) Network Engineer
2 147 (16.76%) Architect
3 120 (13.68%) Security Engineer
4 106 (12.09%) Senior
5 79 (9.01%) Security Architect
6 73 (8.32%) Network Security Engineer
7 69 (7.87%) Consultant
8 56 (6.39%) Network Architect
9 50 (5.70%) Senior Network Engineer
10 46 (5.25%) Project Manager
11 44 (5.02%) Cloud Engineer
11 44 (5.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 37 (4.22%) Security Consultant
13 32 (3.65%) Lead
14 28 (3.19%) Analyst
14 28 (3.19%) Network Security Architect
15 27 (3.08%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
16 24 (2.74%) Network Manager
17 23 (2.62%) Azure Engineer
18 22 (2.51%) DevSecOps Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 144 (16.42%) Terraform
2 37 (4.22%) 802.1X
3 24 (2.74%) REST
4 16 (1.82%) SAML
5 15 (1.71%) ARM Templates
6 13 (1.48%) Kafka
7 8 (0.91%) JSON
7 8 (0.91%) NETCONF
8 6 (0.68%) gRPC
8 6 (0.68%) Keycloak
8 6 (0.68%) LDAP
8 6 (0.68%) OpenID
9 5 (0.57%) Azure Blueprints
9 5 (0.57%) SLSA
9 5 (0.57%) Software Packaging
9 5 (0.57%) XML
9 5 (0.57%) YAML
10 4 (0.46%) OAuth
10 4 (0.46%) Protocol Buffers
10 4 (0.46%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 119 (13.57%) Data Centre
2 87 (9.92%) Security Posture
3 55 (6.27%) Onboarding
4 48 (5.47%) Cloud Native
5 43 (4.90%) Hybrid Cloud
6 40 (4.56%) Management Information System
7 38 (4.33%) Operational Technology
8 33 (3.76%) Cyber Threat
9 27 (3.08%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 27 (3.08%) PKI
10 26 (2.96%) Self-Motivation
11 23 (2.62%) Security Operations Centre
12 20 (2.28%) Cloud Security Posture
12 20 (2.28%) Public Cloud
13 18 (2.05%) Data Protection Act
14 15 (1.71%) Enterprise Software
15 11 (1.25%) Replication
16 10 (1.14%) Linux Command Line
16 10 (1.14%) SCADA
17 9 (1.03%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 105 (11.97%) Windows
2 89 (10.15%) Linux
3 44 (5.02%) Windows Server
4 19 (2.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 13 (1.48%) Unix
6 8 (0.91%) Windows 10
7 6 (0.68%) Ubuntu
8 5 (0.57%) Mac OS
9 3 (0.34%) Check Point GAiA
10 2 (0.23%) Android
10 2 (0.23%) SUSE
10 2 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
10 2 (0.23%) zOS
11 1 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
11 1 (0.11%) Rocky
11 1 (0.11%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2003
11 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 183 (20.87%) Cybersecurity
2 176 (20.07%) Cloud Security
3 156 (17.79%) Stakeholder Management
4 143 (16.31%) CI/CD
5 136 (15.51%) Zero Trust
6 130 (14.82%) Infrastructure as Code
7 129 (14.71%) Continuous Improvement
8 123 (14.03%) Incident Response
8 123 (14.03%) Problem-Solving
9 118 (13.45%) Migration
9 118 (13.45%) SIEM
10 115 (13.11%) DevOps
11 108 (12.31%) Change Management
12 105 (11.97%) Security Architecture
13 95 (10.83%) Identity Access Management
13 95 (10.83%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 94 (10.72%) Data Protection
15 88 (10.03%) Vulnerability Management
16 87 (9.92%) Load Balancing
16 87 (9.92%) Security Operations
Programming Languages
1 166 (18.93%) Python
2 90 (10.26%) PowerShell
3 74 (8.44%) Bash
4 34 (3.88%) Bicep
5 28 (3.19%) SQL
6 14 (1.60%) Go
7 13 (1.48%) Java
8 7 (0.80%) Search Processing Language
8 7 (0.80%) Shell Script
9 6 (0.68%) ActionScript
9 6 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
10 4 (0.46%) Rust
11 3 (0.34%) JavaScript
11 3 (0.34%) Perl
11 3 (0.34%) VBScript
12 1 (0.11%) C
12 1 (0.11%) C++
12 1 (0.11%) Ruby
12 1 (0.11%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 243 (27.71%) Security Cleared
2 176 (20.07%) Cisco Certification
3 173 (19.73%) SC Cleared
4 109 (12.43%) CISSP
5 98 (11.17%) CCNP
6 76 (8.67%) DV Cleared
7 65 (7.41%) Degree
8 53 (6.04%) CCSP
9 50 (5.70%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 48 (5.47%) CCNA
11 46 (5.25%) CISM
12 36 (4.10%) CCIE
13 30 (3.42%) Azure Certification
14 25 (2.85%) AWS Certification
15 17 (1.94%) Computer Science Degree
16 12 (1.37%) GIAC
16 12 (1.37%) PMI Certification
16 12 (1.37%) PMP
17 11 (1.25%) JNCIP
18 10 (1.14%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 77 (8.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 72 (8.21%) NIST
3 35 (3.99%) GDPR
4 31 (3.53%) NCSC
5 27 (3.08%) PCI DSS
6 15 (1.71%) Cyber Essentials
7 14 (1.60%) GRC
8 12 (1.37%) NIST 800
8 12 (1.37%) QA
9 10 (1.14%) SLA
10 9 (1.03%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 7 (0.80%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 6 (0.68%) Disclosure Scotland
13 5 (0.57%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 5 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 42001
14 4 (0.46%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 4 (0.46%) PMO
15 3 (0.34%) Data Quality
15 3 (0.34%) SOC 2
16 2 (0.23%) P3O
System Software
1 93 (10.60%) Active Directory
2 57 (6.50%) VMware Infrastructure
3 37 (4.22%) Docker
4 18 (2.05%) Virtual Machines
5 16 (1.82%) VMware NSX
6 12 (1.37%) Hyper-V
7 11 (1.25%) vSphere
8 8 (0.91%) Virtual Desktop
8 8 (0.91%) VMware ESXi
9 6 (0.68%) Virtual Servers
10 5 (0.57%) Squid
11 4 (0.46%) FreeRADIUS
12 2 (0.23%) Firmware
12 2 (0.23%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 2 (0.23%) NFS
12 2 (0.23%) OpenSSH
12 2 (0.23%) VMware Workstation
13 1 (0.11%) Postfix
13 1 (0.11%) ProxySG
13 1 (0.11%) Samba
Systems Management
1 101 (11.52%) Ansible
2 82 (9.35%) Kubernetes
3 48 (5.47%) FortiGate
4 29 (3.31%) Grafana
5 27 (3.08%) Microsoft Intune
6 21 (2.39%) Prometheus
7 17 (1.94%) Progress Chef
8 15 (1.71%) SCCM
9 13 (1.48%) Single Sign-On
10 10 (1.14%) CASB
11 9 (1.03%) QRadar
12 8 (0.91%) Nagios
13 7 (0.80%) Cisco CUCM
13 7 (0.80%) Puppet
14 5 (0.57%) Suricata
15 4 (0.46%) Cisco Prime
15 4 (0.46%) Kustomize
15 4 (0.46%) Podman
15 4 (0.46%) systemd
15 4 (0.46%) VxRail
Vendors
1 267 (30.44%) Cisco
2 177 (20.18%) Palo Alto
3 171 (19.50%) Microsoft
4 100 (11.40%) Fortinet
5 83 (9.46%) F5
6 75 (8.55%) VMware
7 70 (7.98%) Zscaler
8 58 (6.61%) CheckPoint
9 48 (5.47%) Juniper
10 42 (4.79%) SolarWinds
11 39 (4.45%) Splunk
12 34 (3.88%) Aruba
13 31 (3.53%) Google
14 25 (2.85%) ServiceNow
15 19 (2.17%) Citrix
16 18 (2.05%) Meraki
17 14 (1.60%) Blue Coat
18 13 (1.48%) CyberArk
18 13 (1.48%) Tenable
19 12 (1.37%) AlgoSec