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

6 months to
12 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 156 153 186
Rank change year-on-year -3 +33 -9
Contract jobs citing Network Security 844 548 556
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.69% 1.86% 1.27%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 17.66% 14.89% 10.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 580 329 381
10th Percentile £400 £364 £375
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.48% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £625 £613 £666
90th Percentile £700 £690 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £520 £492 £575
% change year-on-year +5.69% -14.43% +9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 9 18
10th Percentile £26.60 £65.13 -
25th Percentile £37.34 £80.34 £7.43
Median hourly rate £67.75 £81.35 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -16.72% +287.38% -61.82%
75th Percentile £74.00 £82.10 £41.25
90th Percentile - £87.20 £45.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £73.00 £81.35 £7.43
% change year-on-year -10.26% +994.89% -66.62%

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 4,779 3,681 5,433
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.56% 12.51% 12.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,930 2,266 3,221
10th Percentile £263 £220 £208
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £482 £495
Median % change year-on-year +3.73% -2.63% -3.41%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £469 £481
% change year-on-year +2.27% -2.47% +1.32%
Number of hourly rates quoted 287 165 420
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.13 £16.30
Median hourly rate £27.50 £44.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -37.50% +10.00% +113.73%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.13 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £80.61 £71.31
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £31.79 £47.50
% change year-on-year +2.23% -33.07% +156.76%

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 12 June 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 12 June 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 12 June 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 +2 730 £525 - 225
UK excluding London -4 406 £520 +5.69% 204
London +12 324 £550 -4.35% 74
Work from Home +4 247 £540 +5.88% 109
North of England +6 166 £500 - 55
South East -40 98 £523 +6.63% 61
North West +9 91 £500 -1.96% 40
Yorkshire -8 73 £500 +2.04% 13
Midlands -52 48 £449 -22.00% 22
Scotland +1 34 £538 +26.47% 20
East of England -17 32 £525 -8.70% 16
South West -20 32 £550 -4.35% 25
West Midlands -62 29 £420 -26.96% 11
East Midlands -8 18 £638 - 11
Wales -24 3 £600 +103.39% 7
North East -33 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 22 (2.61%) Confluence
2 13 (1.54%) Microsoft Exchange
3 8 (0.95%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.24%) Apache
5 1 (0.12%) NetWeaver
5 1 (0.12%) nginx
Applications
1 15 (1.78%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.30%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Excel
5 1 (0.12%) InfoPath
5 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 6 (0.71%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 259 (30.69%) Azure
2 182 (21.56%) AWS
3 110 (13.03%) GCP
4 72 (8.53%) Entra ID
5 34 (4.03%) GitHub
6 28 (3.32%) Azure Sentinel
7 27 (3.20%) GitHub Actions
8 26 (3.08%) Azure DevOps
9 21 (2.49%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 20 (2.37%) Microsoft 365
11 19 (2.25%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 18 (2.13%) SaaS
13 17 (2.01%) Azure AKS
13 17 (2.01%) Azure Key Vault
13 17 (2.01%) Serverless
14 16 (1.90%) Akamai
15 15 (1.78%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 15 (1.78%) Azure Monitor
16 13 (1.54%) AWS CloudFormation
17 12 (1.42%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 378 (44.79%) Firewall
2 158 (18.72%) VPN
3 148 (17.54%) WAN
4 118 (13.98%) LAN
5 101 (11.97%) BGP
6 97 (11.49%) DNS
7 86 (10.19%) OSPF
8 84 (9.95%) SD-WAN
9 77 (9.12%) VLAN
10 75 (8.89%) Wireless
11 64 (7.58%) TCP/IP
12 53 (6.28%) MPLS
13 50 (5.92%) DHCP
14 45 (5.33%) IPsec
15 42 (4.98%) SSL
15 42 (4.98%) Wi-Fi
16 39 (4.62%) Cisco ISE
17 33 (3.91%) Cisco ASA
18 32 (3.79%) Internet
19 30 (3.55%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (0.95%) Azure SQL Database
2 5 (0.59%) SQL Server
3 4 (0.47%) Elasticsearch
3 4 (0.47%) Neo4j
4 3 (0.36%) Amazon Athena
4 3 (0.36%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (0.36%) Power BI
5 2 (0.24%) Data Lake
5 2 (0.24%) InfluxDB
5 2 (0.24%) Oracle Database
5 2 (0.24%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (0.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 1 (0.12%) BigQuery
6 1 (0.12%) Data Mining
6 1 (0.12%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (0.12%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 41 (4.86%) JIRA
2 24 (2.84%) GitLab
3 22 (2.61%) Jenkins
4 21 (2.49%) Git
5 8 (0.95%) Sonatype Nexus
6 7 (0.83%) Snyk
7 5 (0.59%) Browser DevTools
8 4 (0.47%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.36%) Artifactory
10 2 (0.24%) Postman
11 1 (0.12%) Burp Suite
11 1 (0.12%) Claude Code
11 1 (0.12%) JUnit
11 1 (0.12%) SoapUI
11 1 (0.12%) Zephyr
General
1 184 (21.80%) Social Skills
2 129 (15.28%) Finance
3 64 (7.58%) Public Sector
4 59 (6.99%) Analytical Skills
5 49 (5.81%) Banking
6 36 (4.27%) Documentation Skills
7 24 (2.84%) Telecoms
8 21 (2.49%) Financial Institution
9 13 (1.54%) Legal
10 11 (1.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 11 (1.30%) Retail
11 8 (0.95%) Police
12 7 (0.83%) Manufacturing
12 7 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
13 6 (0.71%) Law
13 6 (0.71%) Local Government
14 5 (0.59%) Influencing Skills
14 5 (0.59%) Military
15 3 (0.36%) Billing
15 3 (0.36%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 221 (26.18%) Network Engineer
2 184 (21.80%) Architect
3 110 (13.03%) Security Engineer
4 93 (11.02%) Security Architect
5 80 (9.48%) Senior
6 61 (7.23%) Network Architect
7 57 (6.75%) Network Security Engineer
8 38 (4.50%) Consultant
8 38 (4.50%) Project Manager
9 30 (3.55%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 30 (3.55%) Lead
10 27 (3.20%) Cloud Engineer
10 27 (3.20%) Senior Network Engineer
11 26 (3.08%) Network Security Architect
11 26 (3.08%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 23 (2.73%) Network Manager
13 22 (2.61%) Azure Architect
13 22 (2.61%) Cloud Architect
14 20 (2.37%) Firewall Engineer
14 20 (2.37%) Senior Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (4.38%) 802.1X
2 14 (1.66%) SAML
3 13 (1.54%) REST
4 9 (1.07%) Kafka
5 8 (0.95%) ARM Templates
5 8 (0.95%) LDAP
6 7 (0.83%) CSS
6 7 (0.83%) HTML
6 7 (0.83%) OAuth
7 6 (0.71%) OpenID
7 6 (0.71%) SLSA
8 5 (0.59%) OAuth2
9 4 (0.47%) AWS CDK
9 4 (0.47%) gRPC
9 4 (0.47%) Keycloak
9 4 (0.47%) Protocol Buffers
9 4 (0.47%) RESTful
10 3 (0.36%) Lambda Expressions
10 3 (0.36%) Plotly
10 3 (0.36%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 120 (14.22%) Data Centre
2 57 (6.75%) Security Posture
3 50 (5.92%) Cloud Native
4 40 (4.74%) Hybrid Cloud
5 32 (3.79%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 31 (3.67%) Onboarding
7 28 (3.32%) PKI
8 25 (2.96%) Data Protection Act
9 24 (2.84%) Public Cloud
10 23 (2.73%) Operational Technology
11 20 (2.37%) Product Ownership
12 19 (2.25%) IoT
12 19 (2.25%) Management Information System
13 17 (2.01%) Cyber Threat
14 14 (1.66%) Security Operations Centre
14 14 (1.66%) Self-Motivation
15 9 (1.07%) Replication
15 9 (1.07%) Virtual Team
16 8 (0.95%) Linux Command Line
17 7 (0.83%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 67 (7.94%) Linux
2 66 (7.82%) Windows
3 24 (2.84%) Windows Server
4 9 (1.07%) VMS
5 8 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (0.71%) Ubuntu
7 5 (0.59%) Mac OS
7 5 (0.59%) Unix
7 5 (0.59%) Windows 10
8 3 (0.36%) SUSE
9 2 (0.24%) Android
10 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2003
10 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 173 (20.50%) Cybersecurity
2 148 (17.54%) Cloud Security
3 138 (16.35%) Zero Trust
4 120 (14.22%) CI/CD
5 117 (13.86%) Security Architecture
6 114 (13.51%) Migration
7 112 (13.27%) DevOps
8 110 (13.03%) Infrastructure as Code
9 104 (12.32%) SIEM
10 93 (11.02%) Continuous Improvement
11 91 (10.78%) High Availability
12 86 (10.19%) Application Security
13 84 (9.95%) Threat Modelling
14 83 (9.83%) Network Segmentation
14 83 (9.83%) Problem-Solving
15 81 (9.60%) Identity Access Management
16 79 (9.36%) Data Protection
16 79 (9.36%) Stakeholder Management
17 78 (9.24%) Incident Response
18 77 (9.12%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 102 (12.09%) Python
2 42 (4.98%) PowerShell
3 34 (4.03%) Bash
4 29 (3.44%) Bicep
5 20 (2.37%) JavaScript
6 19 (2.25%) SQL
7 8 (0.95%) Shell Script
8 7 (0.83%) Java
9 5 (0.59%) Kusto Query Language
10 4 (0.47%) C
10 4 (0.47%) PHP
10 4 (0.47%) Rust
11 3 (0.36%) C++
12 2 (0.24%) Perl
12 2 (0.24%) Ruby
13 1 (0.12%) ActionScript
13 1 (0.12%) AppleScript
13 1 (0.12%) Go
13 1 (0.12%) Search Processing Language
13 1 (0.12%) VBA
Qualifications
1 242 (28.67%) Security Cleared
2 181 (21.45%) SC Cleared
3 158 (18.72%) Cisco Certification
4 100 (11.85%) CCNP
5 95 (11.26%) CISSP
6 71 (8.41%) DV Cleared
7 60 (7.11%) CCNA
7 60 (7.11%) Degree
8 57 (6.75%) CISM
9 36 (4.27%) CCSP
10 35 (4.15%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 29 (3.44%) Azure Certification
12 21 (2.49%) CCIE
13 20 (2.37%) AWS Certification
14 15 (1.78%) BPSS Clearance
15 14 (1.66%) CompTIA Security+
16 13 (1.54%) GIAC
17 12 (1.42%) Computer Science Degree
18 11 (1.30%) JNCIS
19 10 (1.18%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 93 (11.02%) NIST
2 74 (8.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 39 (4.62%) GDPR
4 28 (3.32%) PCI DSS
5 24 (2.84%) NCSC
6 19 (2.25%) QA
7 18 (2.13%) GRC
8 16 (1.90%) Cyber Essentials
9 13 (1.54%) SLA
10 8 (0.95%) Actionable Recommendations
10 8 (0.95%) Disclosure Scotland
10 8 (0.95%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 8 (0.95%) SOC 2
11 7 (0.83%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 5 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 4 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 42001
13 4 (0.47%) NIST 800
13 4 (0.47%) PMO
13 4 (0.47%) RMADS
14 3 (0.36%) ISA99
System Software
1 58 (6.87%) Active Directory
2 52 (6.16%) VMware Infrastructure
3 23 (2.73%) VMware NSX
4 21 (2.49%) Docker
4 21 (2.49%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (1.30%) VMware ESXi
6 10 (1.18%) vSphere
7 8 (0.95%) Hyper-V
8 5 (0.59%) Firmware
8 5 (0.59%) Squid
8 5 (0.59%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.24%) NFS
9 2 (0.24%) Postfix
9 2 (0.24%) Sendmail
9 2 (0.24%) Varnish
9 2 (0.24%) VMware Workstation
10 1 (0.12%) ProxySG
10 1 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 116 (13.74%) Terraform
2 75 (8.89%) Ansible
3 72 (8.53%) Kubernetes
4 40 (4.74%) FortiGate
5 18 (2.13%) Single Sign-On
6 17 (2.01%) Grafana
7 11 (1.30%) Microsoft Intune
7 11 (1.30%) vCenter Server
8 9 (1.07%) Prometheus
9 6 (0.71%) QRadar
10 5 (0.59%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 5 (0.59%) CASB
10 5 (0.59%) Istio
10 5 (0.59%) Puppet
10 5 (0.59%) Suricata
10 5 (0.59%) WSUS
11 4 (0.47%) Kustomize
11 4 (0.47%) Podman
12 3 (0.36%) Network Intrusion Detection System
12 3 (0.36%) VxRail
Vendors
1 237 (28.08%) Cisco
2 138 (16.35%) Palo Alto
3 116 (13.74%) Microsoft
4 75 (8.89%) F5
5 68 (8.06%) Fortinet
6 66 (7.82%) VMware
7 56 (6.64%) CheckPoint
8 54 (6.40%) Zscaler
9 53 (6.28%) Juniper
10 34 (4.03%) ServiceNow
11 30 (3.55%) Splunk
12 24 (2.84%) Aruba
13 21 (2.49%) ForeScout
13 21 (2.49%) Google
14 20 (2.37%) Citrix
15 19 (2.25%) SolarWinds
16 17 (2.01%) Tenable
17 13 (1.54%) Arista
17 13 (1.54%) Okta
18 12 (1.42%) Meraki