SMTP Contracts

SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring SMTP skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited SMTP over the 6 months leading up to 14 July 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 450 541 638
Rank change year-on-year +91 +97 +98
Contract jobs citing SMTP 92 47 49
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.28% 0.11% 0.087%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 2.30% 0.88% 0.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 61 39 37
10th Percentile £313 £264 £303
25th Percentile £363 £407 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +4.76% -16.67%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £586
90th Percentile £638 £603 £672
UK excluding London median daily rate £575 £550 £466
% change year-on-year +4.55% +17.96% -15.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 0 1
10th Percentile £45.23 - -
25th Percentile £48.06 - -
Median hourly rate £80.68 - £83.00
75th Percentile £81.91 - -
90th Percentile £84.70 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £81.01 - -

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
UK

SMTP 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 4,001 5,360 7,149
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.32% 12.53% 12.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,410 3,158 4,628
10th Percentile £235 £213 £230
25th Percentile £363 £350 £378
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.45% - -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £675 £688 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £463
% change year-on-year -3.06% +5.95% +2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 198 425 366
10th Percentile £14.69 £13.64 £10.63
25th Percentile £20.89 £17.69 £11.87
Median hourly rate £45.00 £43.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.65% +56.36% -5.17%
75th Percentile £63.63 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.11 £73.55 £75.67
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.00 £47.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -13.68% +5.56% +95.65%

SMTP
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing SMTP as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for SMTP in the UK

SMTP
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing SMTP.

Daily rate trend for SMTP in the UK

SMTP
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SMTP over the 6 months to 14 July 2025.

Daily rate histogram for SMTP in the UK

SMTP
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing SMTP.

Hourly rate trend for SMTP in the UK

SMTP
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SMTP over the 6 months to 14 July 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for SMTP in the UK

SMTP
Top 12 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SMTP within the UK over the 6 months to 14 July 2025. 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 +75 89 £525 -4.55% 54
UK excluding London +45 56 £575 +4.55% 44
London +53 30 £375 -13.79% 10
Work from Home +46 22 £400 +7.38% 16
South East +55 19 £575 +180.49% 9
East of England +8 17 £625 +13.64% 15
West Midlands +15 11 £475 - 12
Midlands +11 11 £475 -36.67% 14
North of England - 9 £600 - 3
Yorkshire - 5 £600 - 1
North West - 4 - - 2
South West +38 1 £650 -3.70% 4

SMTP
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 21 (22.83%) Microsoft Exchange
2 16 (17.39%) Confluence
3 10 (10.87%) IIS
4 5 (5.43%) Apache
5 4 (4.35%) Exchange Server 2010
5 4 (4.35%) Skype for Business
6 3 (3.26%) nginx
7 1 (1.09%) CMS
7 1 (1.09%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (3.26%) AutoCAD
1 3 (3.26%) Mozilla Thunderbird
2 2 (2.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 2 (2.17%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (1.09%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 25 (27.17%) AWS
1 25 (27.17%) Azure
2 14 (15.22%) GCP
2 14 (15.22%) GitHub
3 10 (10.87%) OpenShift
4 9 (9.78%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 9 (9.78%) Amazon EC2
4 9 (9.78%) Amazon ELB
4 9 (9.78%) Amazon S3
4 9 (9.78%) AWS KMS
4 9 (9.78%) Azure DevOps
4 9 (9.78%) IaaS
4 9 (9.78%) PaaS
4 9 (9.78%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 7 (7.61%) Azure Monitor
5 7 (7.61%) Azure Sentinel
6 6 (6.52%) Amazon Glacier
6 6 (6.52%) Entra ID
6 6 (6.52%) Microsoft 365
7 3 (3.26%) Azure Machine Learning
Communications & Networking
1 64 (69.57%) DNS
2 44 (47.83%) HTTP
3 34 (36.96%) FTP
4 25 (27.17%) SSL
5 24 (26.09%) Firewall
6 20 (21.74%) TCP/IP
7 17 (18.48%) Network Security
8 16 (17.39%) DHCP
9 12 (13.04%) SSH
9 12 (13.04%) VPN
10 5 (5.43%) Internet
10 5 (5.43%) NetScaler
10 5 (5.43%) POP3
10 5 (5.43%) Skype
11 4 (4.35%) PSTN
12 3 (3.26%) IMAP
12 3 (3.26%) OpenLDAP
12 3 (3.26%) Telnet
13 2 (2.17%) DMARC
13 2 (2.17%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (19.57%) Amazon RDS
2 9 (9.78%) Big Data
2 9 (9.78%) Elasticsearch
3 5 (5.43%) Relational Database
4 3 (3.26%) Amazon Aurora
4 3 (3.26%) PostgreSQL
4 3 (3.26%) Power BI
5 1 (1.09%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 16 (17.39%) JIRA
2 10 (10.87%) Git
2 10 (10.87%) Jenkins
3 9 (9.78%) Vagrant
4 1 (1.09%) Bitbucket
4 1 (1.09%) Subversion
General
1 31 (33.70%) Social Skills
2 16 (17.39%) Analytical Skills
3 15 (16.30%) Public Sector
4 9 (9.78%) Finance
5 6 (6.52%) Law
6 5 (5.43%) Banking
6 5 (5.43%) Legal
7 3 (3.26%) Aerospace
7 3 (3.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 2 (2.17%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (1.09%) Aviation
9 1 (1.09%) Financial Institution
9 1 (1.09%) Investment Banking
9 1 (1.09%) Military
9 1 (1.09%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 21 (22.83%) Analyst
2 17 (18.48%) SOC Analyst
3 14 (15.22%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 12 (13.04%) Support Engineer
5 10 (10.87%) DevOps Engineer
6 9 (9.78%) 3rd Line Engineer
6 9 (9.78%) 3rd Line Support
6 9 (9.78%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
7 7 (7.61%) 3rd Line Infrastructure Engineer
7 7 (7.61%) 3rd Line Infrastructure Support
7 7 (7.61%) Infrastructure Support
7 7 (7.61%) Infrastructure Support Engineer
8 5 (5.43%) Audio Visual Engineer
8 5 (5.43%) Developer
8 5 (5.43%) ServiceNow Developer
9 4 (4.35%) AWS DevOps
9 4 (4.35%) AWS DevOps Engineer
9 4 (4.35%) AWS Engineer
9 4 (4.35%) Cloud Platform Engineer
9 4 (4.35%) Collaboration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (32.61%) LDAP
2 11 (11.96%) REST
3 7 (7.61%) .NET
3 7 (7.61%) YAML
4 5 (5.43%) AngularJS
4 5 (5.43%) Bootstrap
4 5 (5.43%) CSS
4 5 (5.43%) CSS3
4 5 (5.43%) JSON
4 5 (5.43%) Web Services
5 4 (4.35%) HTML
6 3 (3.26%) OpenTelemetry
7 2 (2.17%) SOAP
8 1 (1.09%) HTML5
Miscellaneous
1 21 (22.83%) PKI
2 17 (18.48%) Cyberattack
3 15 (16.30%) Clustering
4 14 (15.22%) Management Information System
5 13 (14.13%) Security Operations Centre
6 12 (13.04%) Cyber Threat
7 11 (11.96%) Analytical Mindset
7 11 (11.96%) CSOC
8 9 (9.78%) Data Centre
9 7 (7.61%) Distributed Systems
9 7 (7.61%) Replication
10 5 (5.43%) Self-Motivation
11 4 (4.35%) Blackberry
11 4 (4.35%) Handset
11 4 (4.35%) Product Ownership
12 3 (3.26%) Digital Signage
13 2 (2.17%) Cyber Kill Chain
13 2 (2.17%) Hybrid Cloud
13 2 (2.17%) Security Posture
13 2 (2.17%) YARA
Operating Systems
1 39 (42.39%) Windows
2 22 (23.91%) Linux
3 21 (22.83%) Windows Server
4 10 (10.87%) Windows Server 2003
5 9 (9.78%) Amazon Linux
5 9 (9.78%) VMS
6 4 (4.35%) Android
6 4 (4.35%) Windows Server 2019
7 1 (1.09%) Mac OS X
7 1 (1.09%) Ubuntu
7 1 (1.09%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 33 (35.87%) DevOps
2 27 (29.35%) SIEM
3 23 (25.00%) Cybersecurity
4 20 (21.74%) Security Operations
5 19 (20.65%) Artificial Intelligence
6 18 (19.57%) Machine Learning
6 18 (19.57%) Threat Detection
7 17 (18.48%) Incident Response
8 16 (17.39%) Agile
9 15 (16.30%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 14 (15.22%) Network Packet Capture
11 13 (14.13%) Information Security
12 12 (13.04%) CI/CD
13 11 (11.96%) Continuous Improvement
13 11 (11.96%) Information Management
14 10 (10.87%) Change Management
14 10 (10.87%) ITSM
15 9 (9.78%) Analytics
15 9 (9.78%) Configuration Management
15 9 (9.78%) Software Deployment
Programming Languages
1 56 (60.87%) PowerShell
2 20 (21.74%) Python
3 9 (9.78%) Groovy
4 7 (7.61%) C#
4 7 (7.61%) Kusto Query Language
4 7 (7.61%) Perl
5 6 (6.52%) Java
5 6 (6.52%) Shell Script
6 5 (5.43%) JavaScript
6 5 (5.43%) SQL
7 3 (3.26%) Bash
7 3 (3.26%) Bicep
8 1 (1.09%) VB
Qualifications
1 48 (52.17%) Security Cleared
2 33 (35.87%) SC Cleared
3 23 (25.00%) DV Cleared
4 16 (17.39%) Degree
5 3 (3.26%) CCNA
5 3 (3.26%) CCSP
5 3 (3.26%) CEH
5 3 (3.26%) Cisco Certification
5 3 (3.26%) CompTIA CySA+
5 3 (3.26%) CompTIA Security+
5 3 (3.26%) GCIH
5 3 (3.26%) OSCP
6 2 (2.17%) (ISC)2 CCSP
6 2 (2.17%) CISSP
7 1 (1.09%) AWS Certification
7 1 (1.09%) Azure Certification
7 1 (1.09%) BPSS Clearance
7 1 (1.09%) GCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (5.43%) SLA
2 3 (3.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 3 (3.26%) SOC 2
3 2 (2.17%) GDPR
3 2 (2.17%) HIPAA
3 2 (2.17%) NIST
3 2 (2.17%) NIST 800
4 1 (1.09%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 44 (47.83%) Active Directory
2 19 (20.65%) Docker
3 15 (16.30%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (10.87%) BitLocker
4 10 (10.87%) Hyper-V
4 10 (10.87%) Microsoft App-V
4 10 (10.87%) Terminal Services
4 10 (10.87%) VMware ESXi
5 7 (7.61%) DFS Replication
6 5 (5.43%) vSphere
6 5 (5.43%) XenApp
6 5 (5.43%) XenDesktop
7 3 (3.26%) Dovecot
7 3 (3.26%) NFS
7 3 (3.26%) Postfix
7 3 (3.26%) Squid
8 1 (1.09%) Microsoft Virtual Server
8 1 (1.09%) Samba
8 1 (1.09%) Virtual Desktop
8 1 (1.09%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 23 (25.00%) Ansible
2 12 (13.04%) Grafana
2 12 (13.04%) Kubernetes
3 10 (10.87%) Terraform
3 10 (10.87%) vCenter Server
3 10 (10.87%) vMotion
4 9 (9.78%) Nagios
4 9 (9.78%) Prometheus
4 9 (9.78%) Puppet
5 7 (7.61%) Microsoft Intune
6 5 (5.43%) Microsoft Clustering
6 5 (5.43%) Single Sign-On
6 5 (5.43%) WSUS
7 3 (3.26%) CSIRT
7 3 (3.26%) Nessus
8 1 (1.09%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 1 (1.09%) Proxmox
8 1 (1.09%) SCCM
8 1 (1.09%) SCOM
8 1 (1.09%) yum
Vendors
1 27 (29.35%) Microsoft
2 20 (21.74%) VMware
3 15 (16.30%) Citrix
4 14 (15.22%) HP
4 14 (15.22%) ServiceNow
5 13 (14.13%) Google
6 10 (10.87%) Symantec
7 6 (6.52%) CrowdStrike
8 5 (5.43%) Dell
9 4 (4.35%) Clearswift
9 4 (4.35%) Ribbon
10 3 (3.26%) Darktrace
10 3 (3.26%) Jaspersoft
11 2 (2.17%) Palo Alto
11 2 (2.17%) Splunk
11 2 (2.17%) Sun
11 2 (2.17%) Veeam
12 1 (1.09%) CheckPoint
12 1 (1.09%) Oracle
12 1 (1.09%) Remedy