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

6 months to
26 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 155 157 185
Rank change year-on-year +2 +28 -20
Contract jobs citing Network Security 876 547 566
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.72% 1.81% 1.30%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 18.15% 14.68% 10.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 600 331 378
10th Percentile £400 £370 £371
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.02% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £613 £663
90th Percentile £701 £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 16 10 18
10th Percentile £21.25 £67.64 -
25th Percentile £33.81 £72.70 £7.43
Median hourly rate £65.00 £81.01 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -19.77% +285.77% -61.82%
75th Percentile £74.00 £81.91 £41.25
90th Percentile - £85.60 £45.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £81.01 £7.43
% change year-on-year -16.68% +990.34% -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 4,826 3,725 5,407
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.48% 12.32% 12.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,956 2,268 3,192
10th Percentile £250 £225 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £470 £493
% change year-on-year +2.77% -4.57% +3.68%
Number of hourly rates quoted 297 177 430
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.87
25th Percentile £20.50 £21.00 £17.69
Median hourly rate £27.88 £44.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -36.64% -2.22% +136.84%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.13 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.10 £77.00 £73.30
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £33.89 £47.50
% change year-on-year -21.32% -28.66% +150.00%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 +2 759 £530 +0.86% 192
UK excluding London -14 433 £525 +7.14% 174
London +14 332 £550 -4.35% 58
Work from Home +3 264 £540 +2.86% 96
North of England +17 183 £525 +7.14% 40
South East -22 104 £520 +6.12% 56
North West +1 97 £525 +10.29% 28
Yorkshire +8 84 £500 +1.83% 11
Midlands -51 54 £475 -17.39% 21
Scotland +4 36 £600 +41.18% 17
West Midlands -64 33 £420 -26.96% 9
East of England -18 32 £525 -2.78% 18
South West -32 30 £550 -8.33% 24
East Midlands +8 20 £569 - 12
Wales -21 3 £600 +106.90% 3
North East -30 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 (2.63%) Confluence
2 13 (1.48%) Microsoft Exchange
3 9 (1.03%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.23%) Apache
5 1 (0.11%) IIS
5 1 (0.11%) NetWeaver
5 1 (0.11%) nginx
Applications
1 17 (1.94%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.26%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
5 1 (0.11%) InfoPath
5 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 6 (0.68%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.57%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 271 (30.94%) Azure
2 193 (22.03%) AWS
3 120 (13.70%) GCP
4 78 (8.90%) Entra ID
5 40 (4.57%) GitHub
6 32 (3.65%) GitHub Actions
7 29 (3.31%) Azure DevOps
7 29 (3.31%) Azure Sentinel
8 23 (2.63%) Microsoft 365
9 22 (2.51%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 21 (2.40%) SaaS
10 21 (2.40%) Serverless
11 20 (2.28%) Azure AKS
11 20 (2.28%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 18 (2.05%) Azure Key Vault
12 18 (2.05%) Azure Monitor
13 17 (1.94%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 16 (1.83%) Akamai
15 15 (1.71%) AWS CloudFormation
16 14 (1.60%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 391 (44.63%) Firewall
2 177 (20.21%) VPN
3 157 (17.92%) WAN
4 124 (14.16%) LAN
5 109 (12.44%) DNS
6 104 (11.87%) BGP
7 87 (9.93%) SD-WAN
7 87 (9.93%) Wireless
8 85 (9.70%) OSPF
9 75 (8.56%) TCP/IP
10 71 (8.11%) VLAN
11 54 (6.16%) DHCP
11 54 (6.16%) MPLS
12 47 (5.37%) IPsec
13 45 (5.14%) SSL
14 43 (4.91%) Wi-Fi
15 39 (4.45%) Cisco ISE
16 37 (4.22%) Internet
17 35 (4.00%) NGFW
18 33 (3.77%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (1.03%) Azure SQL Database
2 7 (0.80%) SQL Server
3 4 (0.46%) Amazon RDS
3 4 (0.46%) Data Lake
3 4 (0.46%) Elasticsearch
3 4 (0.46%) Neo4j
3 4 (0.46%) Power BI
4 3 (0.34%) Amazon Athena
4 3 (0.34%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (0.23%) BigQuery
5 2 (0.23%) InfluxDB
5 2 (0.23%) Oracle Database
6 1 (0.11%) Data Mining
6 1 (0.11%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.11%) Looker
6 1 (0.11%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (0.11%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.11%) Snowflake Schema
6 1 (0.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 1 (0.11%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 45 (5.14%) JIRA
2 25 (2.85%) Git
2 25 (2.85%) GitLab
2 25 (2.85%) Jenkins
3 9 (1.03%) Sonatype Nexus
4 7 (0.80%) Snyk
5 5 (0.57%) Browser DevTools
6 4 (0.46%) SonarQube
7 3 (0.34%) Artifactory
8 2 (0.23%) MSBuild
8 2 (0.23%) Postman
8 2 (0.23%) Visual Studio
9 1 (0.11%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.11%) Claude Code
9 1 (0.11%) JUnit
9 1 (0.11%) SoapUI
9 1 (0.11%) Zephyr
General
1 203 (23.17%) Social Skills
2 144 (16.44%) Finance
3 68 (7.76%) Analytical Skills
4 67 (7.65%) Public Sector
5 57 (6.51%) Banking
6 37 (4.22%) Documentation Skills
7 24 (2.74%) Financial Institution
8 23 (2.63%) Telecoms
9 15 (1.71%) Legal
10 12 (1.37%) Retail
11 11 (1.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 10 (1.14%) Organisational Skills
13 9 (1.03%) Influencing Skills
13 9 (1.03%) Police
14 8 (0.91%) Manufacturing
15 7 (0.80%) Local Government
16 6 (0.68%) Law
17 5 (0.57%) Military
18 3 (0.34%) Billing
18 3 (0.34%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 232 (26.48%) Network Engineer
2 187 (21.35%) Architect
3 115 (13.13%) Security Engineer
4 88 (10.05%) Security Architect
5 86 (9.82%) Senior
6 62 (7.08%) Network Architect
6 62 (7.08%) Network Security Engineer
7 43 (4.91%) Consultant
8 39 (4.45%) Project Manager
9 33 (3.77%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 32 (3.65%) Lead
11 30 (3.42%) Cloud Engineer
12 29 (3.31%) Senior Network Engineer
13 25 (2.85%) Network Manager
14 23 (2.63%) Network Security Architect
14 23 (2.63%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
14 23 (2.63%) Solutions Architect
15 22 (2.51%) Azure Architect
16 21 (2.40%) DevOps Engineer
16 21 (2.40%) Senior Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (4.34%) 802.1X
2 14 (1.60%) SAML
3 12 (1.37%) REST
4 10 (1.14%) ARM Templates
4 10 (1.14%) Kafka
5 8 (0.91%) LDAP
6 7 (0.80%) OAuth
7 6 (0.68%) CSS
7 6 (0.68%) HTML
7 6 (0.68%) OpenID
7 6 (0.68%) SLSA
8 5 (0.57%) OAuth2
9 4 (0.46%) AWS CDK
9 4 (0.46%) gRPC
9 4 (0.46%) Keycloak
9 4 (0.46%) Protocol Buffers
9 4 (0.46%) RESTful
10 3 (0.34%) .NET
10 3 (0.34%) Lambda Expressions
10 3 (0.34%) Plotly
Miscellaneous
1 113 (12.90%) Data Centre
2 65 (7.42%) Security Posture
3 54 (6.16%) Cloud Native
4 42 (4.79%) Hybrid Cloud
5 36 (4.11%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 27 (3.08%) Onboarding
7 26 (2.97%) Data Protection Act
7 26 (2.97%) PKI
8 25 (2.85%) Operational Technology
8 25 (2.85%) Public Cloud
9 22 (2.51%) Management Information System
10 20 (2.28%) Product Ownership
11 18 (2.05%) IoT
12 17 (1.94%) Cyber Threat
13 16 (1.83%) Security Operations Centre
14 15 (1.71%) Self-Motivation
15 10 (1.14%) Replication
15 10 (1.14%) Virtual Team
16 9 (1.03%) Enterprise Cloud
16 9 (1.03%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 68 (7.76%) Linux
2 65 (7.42%) Windows
3 23 (2.63%) Windows Server
4 11 (1.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 9 (1.03%) VMS
6 8 (0.91%) Unix
7 7 (0.80%) Ubuntu
8 6 (0.68%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.57%) Windows 10
10 3 (0.34%) Android
10 3 (0.34%) Check Point GAiA
10 3 (0.34%) SUSE
11 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2003
11 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 179 (20.43%) Cybersecurity
2 151 (17.24%) Cloud Security
3 136 (15.53%) Zero Trust
4 130 (14.84%) CI/CD
5 118 (13.47%) DevOps
5 118 (13.47%) Infrastructure as Code
5 118 (13.47%) Migration
6 114 (13.01%) SIEM
7 112 (12.79%) Security Architecture
8 108 (12.33%) Continuous Improvement
9 98 (11.19%) High Availability
10 96 (10.96%) Stakeholder Management
11 95 (10.84%) Problem-Solving
12 89 (10.16%) Application Security
13 87 (9.93%) Load Balancing
14 86 (9.82%) Agile
14 86 (9.82%) Threat Modelling
15 85 (9.70%) Network Segmentation
16 84 (9.59%) Data Protection
17 83 (9.47%) Identity Access Management
Programming Languages
1 113 (12.90%) Python
2 48 (5.48%) PowerShell
3 39 (4.45%) Bash
4 32 (3.65%) Bicep
5 22 (2.51%) SQL
6 19 (2.17%) JavaScript
7 8 (0.91%) Shell Script
8 6 (0.68%) Java
9 5 (0.57%) Kusto Query Language
10 4 (0.46%) PHP
10 4 (0.46%) Rust
11 3 (0.34%) C
11 3 (0.34%) Perl
12 2 (0.23%) C++
12 2 (0.23%) Ruby
13 1 (0.11%) ActionScript
13 1 (0.11%) AppleScript
13 1 (0.11%) Go
13 1 (0.11%) Search Processing Language
13 1 (0.11%) VBA
Qualifications
1 239 (27.28%) Security Cleared
2 176 (20.09%) SC Cleared
3 165 (18.84%) Cisco Certification
4 99 (11.30%) CCNP
4 99 (11.30%) CISSP
5 71 (8.11%) DV Cleared
6 66 (7.53%) Degree
7 64 (7.31%) CCNA
8 60 (6.85%) CISM
9 38 (4.34%) CCSP
10 37 (4.22%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 30 (3.42%) Azure Certification
12 24 (2.74%) CCIE
13 20 (2.28%) AWS Certification
14 15 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
15 14 (1.60%) CompTIA Security+
15 14 (1.60%) Computer Science Degree
16 13 (1.48%) GIAC
17 10 (1.14%) JNCIS
17 10 (1.14%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 88 (10.05%) NIST
2 72 (8.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 41 (4.68%) GDPR
4 27 (3.08%) NCSC
4 27 (3.08%) PCI DSS
5 19 (2.17%) GRC
5 19 (2.17%) QA
6 14 (1.60%) Cyber Essentials
6 14 (1.60%) SLA
7 8 (0.91%) Actionable Recommendations
7 8 (0.91%) Disclosure Scotland
7 8 (0.91%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
7 8 (0.91%) SOC 2
8 7 (0.80%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 5 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 5 (0.57%) NIST 800
10 4 (0.46%) PMO
11 3 (0.34%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 3 (0.34%) ISA99
11 3 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 66 (7.53%) Active Directory
2 52 (5.94%) VMware Infrastructure
3 25 (2.85%) Docker
4 24 (2.74%) Virtual Machines
5 23 (2.63%) VMware NSX
6 11 (1.26%) VMware ESXi
7 10 (1.14%) vSphere
8 8 (0.91%) Hyper-V
9 6 (0.68%) Firmware
10 5 (0.57%) Squid
11 4 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
12 2 (0.23%) NFS
12 2 (0.23%) Postfix
12 2 (0.23%) Sendmail
12 2 (0.23%) Varnish
12 2 (0.23%) VMware Workstation
13 1 (0.11%) OpenSSH
13 1 (0.11%) ProxySG
13 1 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 121 (13.81%) Terraform
2 80 (9.13%) Ansible
3 78 (8.90%) Kubernetes
4 42 (4.79%) FortiGate
5 20 (2.28%) Single Sign-On
6 19 (2.17%) Grafana
7 11 (1.26%) Microsoft Intune
7 11 (1.26%) Prometheus
7 11 (1.26%) vCenter Server
8 6 (0.68%) CASB
8 6 (0.68%) Istio
8 6 (0.68%) QRadar
9 5 (0.57%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 5 (0.57%) Puppet
9 5 (0.57%) Suricata
9 5 (0.57%) WSUS
10 4 (0.46%) Kustomize
10 4 (0.46%) Podman
11 3 (0.34%) Failover Clustering
11 3 (0.34%) Network Intrusion Detection System
Vendors
1 240 (27.40%) Cisco
2 135 (15.41%) Palo Alto
3 129 (14.73%) Microsoft
4 77 (8.79%) F5
5 71 (8.11%) Fortinet
6 66 (7.53%) VMware
7 58 (6.62%) CheckPoint
8 55 (6.28%) Zscaler
9 52 (5.94%) Juniper
10 35 (4.00%) ServiceNow
11 32 (3.65%) Splunk
12 26 (2.97%) Google
13 23 (2.63%) Aruba
14 22 (2.51%) SolarWinds
15 21 (2.40%) Citrix
15 21 (2.40%) ForeScout
16 17 (1.94%) Tenable
17 14 (1.60%) Arista
17 14 (1.60%) Infoblox
18 13 (1.48%) Okta