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

6 months to
9 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 151 158 185
Rank change year-on-year +7 +27 -16
Contract jobs citing Network Security 913 578 574
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.74% 1.79% 1.32%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 18.24% 14.68% 10.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 615 355 382
10th Percentile £393 £364 £363
25th Percentile £442 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -6.36% -
75th Percentile £625 £613 £658
90th Percentile £707 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £490 £575
% change year-on-year +7.14% -14.78% +9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 11 18
10th Percentile £24.10 £70.16 -
25th Percentile £38.94 £75.25 £7.43
Median hourly rate £73.00 £81.35 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -10.26% +287.38% -67.69%
75th Percentile £74.00 £83.05 £41.25
90th Percentile £74.05 £100.00 £45.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £73.00 £81.35 £7.43
% change year-on-year -10.26% +994.89% -63.98%

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 5,006 3,938 5,457
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.54% 12.19% 12.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,044 2,412 3,219
10th Percentile £238 £231 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £481 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.06% -3.90% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £470 £490
% change year-on-year +2.58% -4.08% +3.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 316 185 428
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.75
25th Percentile £19.34 £23.75 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.55 £45.00 £44.00
Median % change year-on-year -41.00% +2.27% +53.04%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £78.00 £73.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.22 £36.65 £47.50
% change year-on-year -28.45% -22.85% +5.56%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 -4 790 £528 +0.57% 249
UK excluding London -7 462 £525 +7.14% 199
London -8 337 £550 - 92
Work from Home +17 278 £538 +2.38% 113
North of England +7 190 £525 +7.80% 54
South East -14 118 £523 +6.63% 61
North West +5 99 £531 +11.79% 41
Yorkshire +10 89 £500 +1.83% 12
Midlands -49 57 £500 -13.98% 22
Scotland +11 39 £600 +39.13% 22
West Midlands -71 36 £435 -25.16% 10
East of England -11 33 £525 -0.94% 17
South West -34 32 £550 -8.33% 19
East Midlands +4 20 £569 - 12
Wales -23 3 £600 +106.90% 2
North East -31 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 23 (2.52%) Confluence
2 12 (1.31%) 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 17 (1.86%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.20%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.33%) Microsoft Excel
5 1 (0.11%) InfoPath
5 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 6 (0.66%) Oracle ERP
1 6 (0.66%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 282 (30.89%) Azure
2 202 (22.12%) AWS
3 121 (13.25%) GCP
4 80 (8.76%) Entra ID
5 38 (4.16%) GitHub
6 32 (3.50%) Azure DevOps
7 31 (3.40%) Azure Sentinel
8 27 (2.96%) GitHub Actions
9 26 (2.85%) Microsoft 365
10 25 (2.74%) SaaS
11 23 (2.52%) Serverless
12 22 (2.41%) Azure AKS
12 22 (2.41%) Azure Monitor
12 22 (2.41%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 20 (2.19%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 18 (1.97%) Azure Key Vault
15 17 (1.86%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 17 (1.86%) OCI
16 16 (1.75%) Akamai
17 15 (1.64%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 408 (44.69%) Firewall
2 195 (21.36%) VPN
3 176 (19.28%) WAN
4 131 (14.35%) LAN
5 119 (13.03%) DNS
6 110 (12.05%) BGP
7 95 (10.41%) SD-WAN
7 95 (10.41%) Wireless
8 89 (9.75%) OSPF
9 83 (9.09%) TCP/IP
10 76 (8.32%) VLAN
11 60 (6.57%) DHCP
12 57 (6.24%) MPLS
13 50 (5.48%) IPsec
14 47 (5.15%) SSL
15 44 (4.82%) Wi-Fi
16 42 (4.60%) Cisco ISE
17 40 (4.38%) Cisco ASA
18 39 (4.27%) NGFW
19 38 (4.16%) 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 47 (5.15%) JIRA
2 32 (3.50%) Git
3 25 (2.74%) GitLab
4 23 (2.52%) Jenkins
5 11 (1.20%) Sonatype Nexus
6 7 (0.77%) Snyk
7 6 (0.66%) Browser DevTools
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
1 218 (23.88%) Social Skills
2 143 (15.66%) Finance
3 73 (8.00%) Analytical Skills
4 69 (7.56%) Public Sector
5 61 (6.68%) Banking
6 42 (4.60%) Documentation Skills
7 24 (2.63%) Financial Institution
8 23 (2.52%) Telecoms
9 16 (1.75%) Legal
10 12 (1.31%) Organisational Skills
10 12 (1.31%) Retail
11 11 (1.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 10 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
12 10 (1.10%) Manufacturing
13 8 (0.88%) Police
14 6 (0.66%) Law
14 6 (0.66%) Local Government
15 4 (0.44%) Military
16 3 (0.33%) Billing
16 3 (0.33%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 248 (27.16%) Network Engineer
2 195 (21.36%) Architect
3 118 (12.92%) Security Engineer
4 96 (10.51%) Security Architect
5 90 (9.86%) Senior
6 67 (7.34%) Network Architect
6 67 (7.34%) Network Security Engineer
7 47 (5.15%) Consultant
8 41 (4.49%) Project Manager
9 36 (3.94%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 34 (3.72%) Lead
11 32 (3.50%) Senior Network Engineer
12 28 (3.07%) Network Security Architect
13 27 (2.96%) Cloud Engineer
14 25 (2.74%) Network Manager
15 24 (2.63%) Solutions Architect
16 22 (2.41%) Azure Architect
17 21 (2.30%) Cloud Architect
17 21 (2.30%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
17 21 (2.30%) Senior Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (4.05%) 802.1X
2 18 (1.97%) SAML
3 15 (1.64%) REST
4 10 (1.10%) ARM Templates
4 10 (1.10%) Kafka
5 8 (0.88%) LDAP
6 7 (0.77%) OAuth
6 7 (0.77%) OpenID
7 6 (0.66%) CSS
7 6 (0.66%) HTML
7 6 (0.66%) SLSA
8 5 (0.55%) .NET
8 5 (0.55%) JSON
8 5 (0.55%) OAuth2
9 4 (0.44%) AWS CDK
9 4 (0.44%) gRPC
9 4 (0.44%) Keycloak
9 4 (0.44%) Protocol Buffers
9 4 (0.44%) RESTful
9 4 (0.44%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 117 (12.81%) Data Centre
2 68 (7.45%) Security Posture
3 52 (5.70%) Cloud Native
4 43 (4.71%) Hybrid Cloud
5 37 (4.05%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 30 (3.29%) Onboarding
7 28 (3.07%) Data Protection Act
7 28 (3.07%) Operational Technology
8 24 (2.63%) Management Information System
8 24 (2.63%) PKI
9 22 (2.41%) Cyber Threat
10 21 (2.30%) Public Cloud
11 20 (2.19%) Product Ownership
12 18 (1.97%) IoT
12 18 (1.97%) Security Operations Centre
13 17 (1.86%) Self-Motivation
14 11 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
14 11 (1.20%) Linux Command Line
15 10 (1.10%) Replication
15 10 (1.10%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 74 (8.11%) Linux
2 70 (7.67%) Windows
3 21 (2.30%) Windows Server
4 11 (1.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 8 (0.88%) Unix
6 7 (0.77%) Mac OS
6 7 (0.77%) Ubuntu
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
1 184 (20.15%) Cybersecurity
2 161 (17.63%) Cloud Security
3 138 (15.12%) Zero Trust
4 130 (14.24%) CI/CD
5 124 (13.58%) SIEM
6 121 (13.25%) Infrastructure as Code
7 118 (12.92%) DevOps
8 117 (12.81%) Security Architecture
9 116 (12.71%) Migration
10 115 (12.60%) Continuous Improvement
11 101 (11.06%) Problem-Solving
11 101 (11.06%) Stakeholder Management
12 98 (10.73%) High Availability
13 91 (9.97%) Change Management
13 91 (9.97%) Data Protection
14 90 (9.86%) Application Security
14 90 (9.86%) Incident Response
15 89 (9.75%) Identity Access Management
16 88 (9.64%) Threat Modelling
17 87 (9.53%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 125 (13.69%) Python
2 60 (6.57%) PowerShell
3 48 (5.26%) Bash
4 35 (3.83%) Bicep
5 22 (2.41%) SQL
6 19 (2.08%) 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%) PHP
10 4 (0.44%) Rust
11 2 (0.22%) C
11 2 (0.22%) Ruby
12 1 (0.11%) ActionScript
12 1 (0.11%) AppleScript
12 1 (0.11%) C++
12 1 (0.11%) Go
12 1 (0.11%) Search Processing Language
12 1 (0.11%) VBA
Qualifications
1 251 (27.49%) Security Cleared
2 182 (19.93%) SC Cleared
3 168 (18.40%) Cisco Certification
4 104 (11.39%) CISSP
5 99 (10.84%) CCNP
6 79 (8.65%) DV Cleared
7 69 (7.56%) Degree
8 64 (7.01%) CCNA
9 63 (6.90%) CISM
10 40 (4.38%) CCSP
11 39 (4.27%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 32 (3.50%) Azure Certification
13 25 (2.74%) CCIE
14 21 (2.30%) AWS Certification
15 16 (1.75%) CompTIA Security+
15 16 (1.75%) Computer Science Degree
16 15 (1.64%) BPSS Clearance
16 15 (1.64%) GIAC
17 11 (1.20%) CEH
18 10 (1.10%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 93 (10.19%) NIST
2 77 (8.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 42 (4.60%) GDPR
4 32 (3.50%) NCSC
5 29 (3.18%) PCI DSS
6 19 (2.08%) GRC
6 19 (2.08%) QA
7 14 (1.53%) SLA
8 13 (1.42%) Cyber Essentials
9 9 (0.99%) Disclosure Scotland
10 8 (0.88%) Actionable Recommendations
10 8 (0.88%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 8 (0.88%) NIST 800
10 8 (0.88%) SOC 2
11 7 (0.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 6 (0.66%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 4 (0.44%) PMO
14 3 (0.33%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 3 (0.33%) JSP 440
14 3 (0.33%) RMADS
System Software
1 69 (7.56%) Active Directory
2 57 (6.24%) VMware Infrastructure
3 26 (2.85%) Docker
4 25 (2.74%) VMware NSX
5 22 (2.41%) Virtual Machines
6 13 (1.42%) VMware ESXi
7 12 (1.31%) vSphere
8 10 (1.10%) Hyper-V
9 6 (0.66%) Firmware
10 5 (0.55%) Squid
11 4 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
12 3 (0.33%) NFS
13 2 (0.22%) OpenSSH
13 2 (0.22%) Postfix
13 2 (0.22%) Sendmail
13 2 (0.22%) Varnish
13 2 (0.22%) Virtual Servers
13 2 (0.22%) VMware Workstation
14 1 (0.11%) ProxySG
14 1 (0.11%) Samba
Systems Management
1 126 (13.80%) Terraform
2 83 (9.09%) Ansible
3 78 (8.54%) Kubernetes
4 43 (4.71%) FortiGate
5 21 (2.30%) Single Sign-On
6 19 (2.08%) Grafana
7 13 (1.42%) vCenter Server
8 12 (1.31%) Microsoft Intune
8 12 (1.31%) Prometheus
9 8 (0.88%) CASB
10 7 (0.77%) Puppet
10 7 (0.77%) QRadar
11 6 (0.66%) Istio
12 5 (0.55%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 5 (0.55%) SCCM
12 5 (0.55%) SCOM
12 5 (0.55%) Suricata
12 5 (0.55%) WSUS
13 4 (0.44%) Kustomize
13 4 (0.44%) Podman
Vendors
1 253 (27.71%) Cisco
2 144 (15.77%) Palo Alto
3 130 (14.24%) Microsoft
4 84 (9.20%) F5
5 80 (8.76%) Fortinet
6 71 (7.78%) VMware
7 64 (7.01%) CheckPoint
8 58 (6.35%) Juniper
9 56 (6.13%) Zscaler
10 37 (4.05%) Splunk
11 35 (3.83%) ServiceNow
12 29 (3.18%) SolarWinds
13 25 (2.74%) Citrix
14 24 (2.63%) Aruba
14 24 (2.63%) Google
15 21 (2.30%) ForeScout
15 21 (2.30%) Tenable
16 15 (1.64%) Infoblox
17 14 (1.53%) Arista
18 13 (1.42%) Meraki