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

6 months to
10 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 155 149 183
Rank change year-on-year -6 +34 -6
Contract jobs citing Network Security 837 555 560
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.69% 1.89% 1.28%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 17.63% 15.12% 10.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 577 335 384
10th Percentile £400 £365 £375
25th Percentile £450 £450 £458
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -5.45% -
75th Percentile £623 £606 £666
90th Percentile £700 £688 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £520 £496 £575
% change year-on-year +4.84% -13.74% +9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 9 18
10th Percentile £26.20 £65.13 -
25th Percentile £33.81 £80.34 £7.43
Median hourly rate £58.13 £81.35 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.55% +287.38% -61.82%
75th Percentile £74.00 £82.10 £41.25
90th Percentile - £87.20 £45.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.00 £81.35 £7.43
% change year-on-year -9.04% +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 4,747 3,671 5,438
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.59% 12.50% 12.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,911 2,271 3,228
10th Percentile £263 £220 £206
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £485 £498
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -2.51% -2.93%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £469 £483
% change year-on-year +1.28% -2.95% +1.74%
Number of hourly rates quoted 281 165 420
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £20.82 £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 £70.72
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 10 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 10 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 10 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 -4 720 £525 - 214
UK excluding London -23 401 £520 +4.84% 195
London -6 318 £550 -4.35% 69
Work from Home +7 250 £540 +5.88% 106
North of England -1 162 £500 - 47
South East -33 99 £520 +6.12% 64
North West +1 88 £500 -1.96% 35
Yorkshire -10 72 £500 +2.04% 11
Midlands -53 48 £449 -18.45% 24
Scotland -3 34 £538 +26.47% 19
East of England -20 31 £525 -8.70% 12
South West -21 31 £550 -2.22% 20
West Midlands -57 29 £420 -23.64% 13
East Midlands -13 18 £638 - 11
Wales -22 3 £600 +103.39% 12
North East -22 2 £675 +8.00% 2

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 (2.63%) Confluence
2 13 (1.55%) Microsoft Exchange
3 8 (0.96%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.24%) Apache
5 1 (0.12%) NetWeaver
5 1 (0.12%) nginx
Applications
1 15 (1.79%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.31%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Excel
5 1 (0.12%) InfoPath
5 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 6 (0.72%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 260 (31.06%) Azure
2 183 (21.86%) AWS
3 115 (13.74%) GCP
4 70 (8.36%) Entra ID
5 34 (4.06%) GitHub
6 29 (3.46%) Azure Sentinel
7 27 (3.23%) Azure DevOps
7 27 (3.23%) GitHub Actions
8 22 (2.63%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 20 (2.39%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 20 (2.39%) Microsoft 365
10 19 (2.27%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 19 (2.27%) SaaS
11 18 (2.15%) AWS CloudFormation
12 17 (2.03%) Azure AKS
12 17 (2.03%) Azure Key Vault
13 16 (1.91%) Akamai
13 16 (1.91%) AWS Direct Connect
13 16 (1.91%) Serverless
14 15 (1.79%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 377 (45.04%) Firewall
2 164 (19.59%) VPN
3 146 (17.44%) WAN
4 116 (13.86%) LAN
5 99 (11.83%) BGP
6 96 (11.47%) DNS
7 85 (10.16%) OSPF
8 82 (9.80%) SD-WAN
9 76 (9.08%) VLAN
10 72 (8.60%) Wireless
11 64 (7.65%) TCP/IP
12 52 (6.21%) MPLS
13 50 (5.97%) DHCP
14 45 (5.38%) IPsec
15 41 (4.90%) SSL
16 39 (4.66%) Wi-Fi
17 37 (4.42%) Cisco ISE
18 33 (3.94%) Cisco ASA
19 32 (3.82%) Internet
20 30 (3.58%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (0.96%) Azure SQL Database
2 5 (0.60%) SQL Server
3 4 (0.48%) Neo4j
4 3 (0.36%) Amazon Athena
4 3 (0.36%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (0.36%) Elasticsearch
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 (4.90%) JIRA
2 23 (2.75%) GitLab
3 22 (2.63%) Jenkins
4 20 (2.39%) Git
5 8 (0.96%) Sonatype Nexus
6 7 (0.84%) Snyk
7 5 (0.60%) Browser DevTools
8 3 (0.36%) Artifactory
8 3 (0.36%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.24%) Postman
10 1 (0.12%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.12%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.12%) JUnit
10 1 (0.12%) SoapUI
10 1 (0.12%) Zephyr
General
1 180 (21.51%) Social Skills
2 129 (15.41%) Finance
3 63 (7.53%) Public Sector
4 57 (6.81%) Analytical Skills
5 48 (5.73%) Banking
6 36 (4.30%) Documentation Skills
7 24 (2.87%) Telecoms
8 21 (2.51%) Financial Institution
9 12 (1.43%) Legal
10 11 (1.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 10 (1.19%) Retail
12 8 (0.96%) Police
13 7 (0.84%) Manufacturing
13 7 (0.84%) Organisational Skills
14 6 (0.72%) Law
14 6 (0.72%) Local Government
15 5 (0.60%) Influencing Skills
15 5 (0.60%) Military
16 3 (0.36%) Billing
16 3 (0.36%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 219 (26.16%) Network Engineer
2 182 (21.74%) Architect
3 107 (12.78%) Security Engineer
4 91 (10.87%) Security Architect
5 80 (9.56%) Senior
6 61 (7.29%) Network Architect
7 56 (6.69%) Network Security Engineer
8 38 (4.54%) Consultant
8 38 (4.54%) Project Manager
9 31 (3.70%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 30 (3.58%) Lead
11 28 (3.35%) Cloud Engineer
12 27 (3.23%) Senior Network Engineer
13 26 (3.11%) Network Security Architect
13 26 (3.11%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
14 22 (2.63%) Azure Architect
14 22 (2.63%) Cloud Architect
15 20 (2.39%) Senior Architect
15 20 (2.39%) Solutions Architect
16 19 (2.27%) Firewall Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (4.30%) 802.1X
2 14 (1.67%) SAML
3 12 (1.43%) REST
4 8 (0.96%) ARM Templates
4 8 (0.96%) Kafka
4 8 (0.96%) LDAP
5 7 (0.84%) OAuth
6 6 (0.72%) CSS
6 6 (0.72%) HTML
6 6 (0.72%) OpenID
6 6 (0.72%) SLSA
7 5 (0.60%) OAuth2
8 4 (0.48%) AWS CDK
9 3 (0.36%) gRPC
9 3 (0.36%) Keycloak
9 3 (0.36%) Lambda Expressions
9 3 (0.36%) Plotly
9 3 (0.36%) Protocol Buffers
9 3 (0.36%) RESTful
9 3 (0.36%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 124 (14.81%) Data Centre
2 55 (6.57%) Security Posture
3 49 (5.85%) Cloud Native
4 41 (4.90%) Hybrid Cloud
5 31 (3.70%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 30 (3.58%) Onboarding
7 28 (3.35%) PKI
8 25 (2.99%) Data Protection Act
9 23 (2.75%) Public Cloud
10 22 (2.63%) Operational Technology
11 19 (2.27%) IoT
11 19 (2.27%) Management Information System
11 19 (2.27%) Product Ownership
12 17 (2.03%) Cyber Threat
13 15 (1.79%) Security Operations Centre
14 14 (1.67%) Self-Motivation
15 9 (1.08%) Replication
15 9 (1.08%) Virtual Team
16 8 (0.96%) Legacy Systems
16 8 (0.96%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 66 (7.89%) Windows
2 65 (7.77%) Linux
3 24 (2.87%) Windows Server
4 9 (1.08%) VMS
5 8 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (0.72%) Ubuntu
7 5 (0.60%) Mac OS
7 5 (0.60%) Unix
7 5 (0.60%) 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
1 172 (20.55%) Cybersecurity
2 144 (17.20%) Cloud Security
3 136 (16.25%) Zero Trust
4 118 (14.10%) CI/CD
5 115 (13.74%) Security Architecture
6 113 (13.50%) Infrastructure as Code
7 112 (13.38%) Migration
8 111 (13.26%) DevOps
9 103 (12.31%) SIEM
10 91 (10.87%) High Availability
11 90 (10.75%) Continuous Improvement
12 83 (9.92%) Problem-Solving
13 82 (9.80%) Application Security
13 82 (9.80%) Network Segmentation
14 81 (9.68%) Threat Modelling
15 78 (9.32%) Identity Access Management
16 77 (9.20%) Data Protection
16 77 (9.20%) Stakeholder Management
17 76 (9.08%) Incident Response
18 74 (8.84%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 102 (12.19%) Python
2 43 (5.14%) PowerShell
3 34 (4.06%) Bash
4 29 (3.46%) Bicep
5 19 (2.27%) JavaScript
6 18 (2.15%) SQL
7 7 (0.84%) Shell Script
8 6 (0.72%) Java
8 6 (0.72%) Kusto Query Language
9 4 (0.48%) C
9 4 (0.48%) PHP
10 3 (0.36%) C++
10 3 (0.36%) Rust
11 2 (0.24%) Perl
11 2 (0.24%) Ruby
12 1 (0.12%) ActionScript
12 1 (0.12%) AppleScript
12 1 (0.12%) Go
12 1 (0.12%) VBA
Qualifications
1 236 (28.20%) Security Cleared
2 176 (21.03%) SC Cleared
3 153 (18.28%) Cisco Certification
4 97 (11.59%) CCNP
5 96 (11.47%) CISSP
6 70 (8.36%) DV Cleared
7 59 (7.05%) Degree
8 58 (6.93%) CCNA
9 57 (6.81%) CISM
10 35 (4.18%) CCSP
11 34 (4.06%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 30 (3.58%) Azure Certification
13 19 (2.27%) AWS Certification
13 19 (2.27%) CCIE
14 14 (1.67%) BPSS Clearance
14 14 (1.67%) GIAC
15 13 (1.55%) CompTIA Security+
16 12 (1.43%) Computer Science Degree
17 11 (1.31%) JNCIS
17 11 (1.31%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 91 (10.87%) NIST
2 72 (8.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 38 (4.54%) GDPR
4 27 (3.23%) PCI DSS
5 24 (2.87%) NCSC
6 19 (2.27%) QA
7 18 (2.15%) GRC
8 16 (1.91%) Cyber Essentials
9 13 (1.55%) SLA
10 8 (0.96%) Actionable Recommendations
10 8 (0.96%) Disclosure Scotland
10 8 (0.96%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 8 (0.96%) SOC 2
11 7 (0.84%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 5 (0.60%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 4 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 42001
13 4 (0.48%) NIST 800
13 4 (0.48%) PMO
13 4 (0.48%) RMADS
14 3 (0.36%) ISA99
System Software
1 57 (6.81%) Active Directory
2 52 (6.21%) VMware Infrastructure
3 23 (2.75%) VMware NSX
4 21 (2.51%) Virtual Machines
5 20 (2.39%) Docker
6 11 (1.31%) VMware ESXi
7 10 (1.19%) vSphere
8 8 (0.96%) Hyper-V
9 5 (0.60%) Firmware
9 5 (0.60%) Squid
9 5 (0.60%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.24%) NFS
10 2 (0.24%) Postfix
10 2 (0.24%) Sendmail
10 2 (0.24%) Varnish
10 2 (0.24%) VMware Workstation
11 1 (0.12%) ProxySG
11 1 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 119 (14.22%) Terraform
2 79 (9.44%) Ansible
3 70 (8.36%) Kubernetes
4 40 (4.78%) FortiGate
5 18 (2.15%) Single Sign-On
6 16 (1.91%) Grafana
7 11 (1.31%) Microsoft Intune
7 11 (1.31%) vCenter Server
8 8 (0.96%) Prometheus
9 6 (0.72%) QRadar
10 5 (0.60%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 5 (0.60%) CASB
10 5 (0.60%) Istio
10 5 (0.60%) Suricata
10 5 (0.60%) WSUS
11 4 (0.48%) Kibana
11 4 (0.48%) Kustomize
11 4 (0.48%) Puppet
12 3 (0.36%) Failover Clustering
12 3 (0.36%) Network Intrusion Detection System
Vendors
1 233 (27.84%) Cisco
2 137 (16.37%) Palo Alto
3 116 (13.86%) Microsoft
4 75 (8.96%) F5
5 68 (8.12%) Fortinet
6 66 (7.89%) VMware
7 55 (6.57%) CheckPoint
8 54 (6.45%) Zscaler
9 50 (5.97%) Juniper
10 34 (4.06%) ServiceNow
11 29 (3.46%) Splunk
12 22 (2.63%) Aruba
13 21 (2.51%) ForeScout
13 21 (2.51%) Google
14 19 (2.27%) Citrix
15 17 (2.03%) Tenable
16 16 (1.91%) SolarWinds
17 13 (1.55%) Arista
17 13 (1.55%) Okta
18 12 (1.43%) Meraki