TCP/IP Contract Job Trends

Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring TCP/IP skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 31 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 293 219 278
Rank change year-on-year -74 +59 -40
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 419 359 339
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.85% 1.23% 0.79%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 8.76% 9.77% 6.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 239 250 232
10th Percentile £207 £225 £188
25th Percentile £375 £374 £334
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -7.50% - +2.46%
75th Percentile £550 £624 £575
90th Percentile £638 £775 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £456 £474 £488
% change year-on-year -3.75% -2.82% +8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 36 10 21
10th Percentile £21.25 £17.54 £16.00
25th Percentile £26.25 £32.44 £20.00
Median hourly rate £38.58 £58.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -34.05% -10.00% +13.38%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 -
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £63.75 £65.00
% change year-on-year -34.21% -1.92% +3.92%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
UK

TCP/IP 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 4,781 3,676 5,430
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.73% 12.63% 12.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,932 2,279 3,247
10th Percentile £263 £220 £206
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -2.44%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £465 £477
% change year-on-year +2.15% -2.52% +0.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 282 160 413
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.67 £16.30
Median hourly rate £28.96 £40.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.49% +1.25% +116.22%
75th Percentile £65.00 £59.09 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.93 £80.10 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £30.70 £45.88
% change year-on-year +5.86% -33.09% +151.88%

TCP/IP
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing TCP/IP relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

TCP/IP job vacancy trend in the UK

TCP/IP
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing TCP/IP.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing TCP/IP

TCP/IP
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing TCP/IP over the 6 months to 31 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for TCP/IP in the UK

TCP/IP
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing TCP/IP.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing TCP/IP

TCP/IP
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing TCP/IP over the 6 months to 31 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for TCP/IP in the UK

TCP/IP
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 TCP/IP within the UK over the 6 months to 31 May 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 -51 359 £475 -5.00% 182
UK excluding London -33 250 £456 -3.75% 174
London -67 133 £483 -3.50% 44
Work from Home -79 97 £468 -16.89% 56
North of England -30 93 £450 +12.50% 34
North West -4 56 £540 +116.00% 21
South East -40 56 £510 +13.33% 67
East of England -18 37 £263 -38.95% 23
Midlands -38 34 £400 -27.27% 23
Yorkshire -51 32 £449 -11.41% 10
West Midlands -38 31 £388 -29.55% 15
Scotland +8 24 £537 +21.24% 10
South West -32 20 £500 -18.70% 20
Wales -13 7 £408 -9.44% 6
North East -21 5 £306 +22.50% 4
East Midlands -28 3 £625 +13.64% 8

TCP/IP
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 17 (4.06%) Confluence
2 13 (3.10%) SharePoint
3 10 (2.39%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (2.39%) nginx
4 4 (0.95%) IIS
4 4 (0.95%) WebSphere
5 3 (0.72%) OpenStack
6 2 (0.48%) Apache
6 2 (0.48%) CICS
6 2 (0.48%) IBM HTTP Server
6 2 (0.48%) Oracle HTTP Server
6 2 (0.48%) WebSphere Application Server
6 2 (0.48%) WebSphere Portal
7 1 (0.24%) Traefik
Applications
1 28 (6.68%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (1.91%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.95%) Acrobat
3 4 (0.95%) Microsoft Excel
4 3 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.24%) Weka
Business Applications
1 2 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 96 (22.91%) AWS
1 96 (22.91%) Azure
2 72 (17.18%) Microsoft 365
3 29 (6.92%) Entra ID
4 28 (6.68%) GCP
5 26 (6.21%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 16 (3.82%) Amazon EC2
7 15 (3.58%) Amazon EKS
7 15 (3.58%) Amazon S3
7 15 (3.58%) OneDrive
8 14 (3.34%) Route 53
9 13 (3.10%) AWS Lambda
9 13 (3.10%) GitHub
9 13 (3.10%) Serverless
10 7 (1.67%) Azure DevOps
10 7 (1.67%) Google Workspace
10 7 (1.67%) Nutanix
10 7 (1.67%) SaaS
11 6 (1.43%) Akamai
11 6 (1.43%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 237 (56.56%) DNS
2 147 (35.08%) Firewall
3 101 (24.11%) VPN
4 100 (23.87%) DHCP
5 73 (17.42%) WAN
6 71 (16.95%) HTTP
7 70 (16.71%) Network Security
7 70 (16.71%) SSL
8 67 (15.99%) LAN
9 56 (13.37%) VLAN
10 53 (12.65%) BGP
10 53 (12.65%) BIG-IP
11 42 (10.02%) OSPF
12 36 (8.59%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
13 35 (8.35%) Wi-Fi
14 33 (7.88%) Ethernet
15 31 (7.40%) Wireshark
16 29 (6.92%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 21 (5.01%) Wireless
18 14 (3.34%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (2.86%) Elasticsearch
2 11 (2.63%) SQL Server
3 8 (1.91%) PostgreSQL
4 5 (1.19%) MongoDB
5 3 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
6 2 (0.48%) NoSQL
7 1 (0.24%) BigQuery
7 1 (0.24%) MySQL
7 1 (0.24%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.24%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 45 (10.74%) JIRA
2 26 (6.21%) Fiddler
3 21 (5.01%) GitLab
4 17 (4.06%) Git
5 15 (3.58%) Jenkins
6 13 (3.10%) Eclipse
6 13 (3.10%) Visual Studio
7 9 (2.15%) Browser DevTools
8 7 (1.67%) Bitbucket
8 7 (1.67%) SonarQube
9 4 (0.95%) CircleCI
9 4 (0.95%) Sonatype Nexus
10 3 (0.72%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.48%) Introscope
11 2 (0.48%) Subversion
12 1 (0.24%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.24%) Postman
12 1 (0.24%) Travis CI
General
1 147 (35.08%) Social Skills
2 56 (13.37%) Finance
3 48 (11.46%) Analytical Skills
4 38 (9.07%) Banking
5 30 (7.16%) Public Sector
6 23 (5.49%) Investment Banking
7 22 (5.25%) Presentation Skills
8 21 (5.01%) Military
9 19 (4.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 18 (4.30%) Documentation Skills
11 8 (1.91%) Telecoms
12 6 (1.43%) Front Office
13 5 (1.19%) Law
14 3 (0.72%) French Language
14 3 (0.72%) Manufacturing
14 3 (0.72%) Marketing
14 3 (0.72%) Organisational Skills
15 2 (0.48%) Aviation
15 2 (0.48%) Japanese Language
15 2 (0.48%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 102 (24.34%) Network Engineer
2 49 (11.69%) Analyst
3 34 (8.11%) Web Engineer
4 33 (7.88%) Support Engineer
5 30 (7.16%) Architect
5 30 (7.16%) Senior
6 27 (6.44%) Security Engineer
7 26 (6.21%) IT Support
8 22 (5.25%) Technical Engineer
9 21 (5.01%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 20 (4.77%) IP Network Engineer
10 20 (4.77%) SOC Analyst
11 18 (4.30%) Blue Coat Engineer
12 17 (4.06%) Systems Engineer
13 16 (3.82%) IT Engineer
13 16 (3.82%) Junior
14 15 (3.58%) Lead
15 13 (3.10%) Software Engineer
15 13 (3.10%) Technical Support
16 12 (2.86%) Network Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (4.77%) LDAP
2 16 (3.82%) SAML
3 14 (3.34%) Web Services
4 13 (3.10%) JSON
4 13 (3.10%) Node.js
5 12 (2.86%) OpenID
6 10 (2.39%) 802.1X
7 9 (2.15%) REST
8 5 (1.19%) .NET
8 5 (1.19%) Kafka
8 5 (1.19%) OAuth
8 5 (1.19%) XML
9 3 (0.72%) ARM Templates
9 3 (0.72%) HTML
9 3 (0.72%) Middleware
10 2 (0.48%) eBPF
10 2 (0.48%) NETCONF
10 2 (0.48%) OpenConfig
10 2 (0.48%) RESTCONF
10 2 (0.48%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 40 (9.55%) Data Centre
2 39 (9.31%) Onboarding
3 24 (5.73%) Security Operations Centre
4 23 (5.49%) Management Information System
5 21 (5.01%) Cyberattack
6 17 (4.06%) Cyber Threat
7 15 (3.58%) Industry 4.0
7 15 (3.58%) Robotics
8 13 (3.10%) Security Posture
9 10 (2.39%) Enterprise Software
10 9 (2.15%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 9 (2.15%) PKI
11 8 (1.91%) Data Protection Act
11 8 (1.91%) Driving Licence
11 8 (1.91%) Public Cloud
12 6 (1.43%) Mainframe
12 6 (1.43%) NHS
12 6 (1.43%) Private Cloud
13 5 (1.19%) CMDB
13 5 (1.19%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 177 (42.24%) Windows
2 94 (22.43%) Linux
3 49 (11.69%) Windows Server
4 26 (6.21%) Mac OS
5 16 (3.82%) Windows 10
6 14 (3.34%) Unix
7 12 (2.86%) Apple iOS
8 11 (2.63%) Android
9 10 (2.39%) Windows Server 2012
10 7 (1.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 7 (1.67%) Windows Server 2019
11 6 (1.43%) Ubuntu
11 6 (1.43%) zOS
12 4 (0.95%) Windows Server 2016
13 3 (0.72%) Debian
13 3 (0.72%) Windows 7
13 3 (0.72%) Windows Server 2003
14 2 (0.48%) CentOS
14 2 (0.48%) Oracle Linux
14 2 (0.48%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 118 (28.16%) Problem-Solving
2 67 (15.99%) ITIL
3 56 (13.37%) Incident Response
4 55 (13.13%) Agile
5 49 (11.69%) Load Balancing
6 48 (11.46%) Cybersecurity
6 48 (11.46%) SIEM
7 47 (11.22%) DevOps
8 41 (9.79%) CI/CD
9 38 (9.07%) Security Operations
10 37 (8.83%) Customer Service
10 37 (8.83%) Migration
11 35 (8.35%) ITSM
12 34 (8.11%) High Availability
12 34 (8.11%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 32 (7.64%) Root Cause Analysis
13 32 (7.64%) Validation
14 30 (7.16%) Computer Science
15 29 (6.92%) Decision-Making
16 28 (6.68%) Data Loss Prevention
Programming Languages
1 90 (21.48%) Python
2 41 (9.79%) Bash
3 40 (9.55%) PowerShell
4 29 (6.92%) JavaScript
5 20 (4.77%) C++
6 19 (4.53%) SQL
7 16 (3.82%) C#
8 9 (2.15%) Java
8 9 (2.15%) VBA
9 7 (1.67%) Shell Script
10 6 (1.43%) C
10 6 (1.43%) Go
11 4 (0.95%) Perl
12 2 (0.48%) ActionScript
12 2 (0.48%) Jython
12 2 (0.48%) Ruby
13 1 (0.24%) Groovy
13 1 (0.24%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 119 (28.40%) Security Cleared
2 95 (22.67%) SC Cleared
3 72 (17.18%) Degree
4 45 (10.74%) Cisco Certification
5 38 (9.07%) CCNP
6 30 (7.16%) Computer Science Degree
7 29 (6.92%) CompTIA Security+
7 29 (6.92%) DV Cleared
8 26 (6.21%) CCNA
9 19 (4.53%) CISSP
10 18 (4.30%) CompTIA CySA+
11 13 (3.10%) Microsoft Certification
12 9 (2.15%) Azure Certification
12 9 (2.15%) MCSA
12 9 (2.15%) Network+ Certification
13 8 (1.91%) MCSE
14 7 (1.67%) CCIE
14 7 (1.67%) JNCIS
15 5 (1.19%) CISM
15 5 (1.19%) JNCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (3.10%) SLA
2 10 (2.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 8 (1.91%) NIST
4 6 (1.43%) GDPR
4 6 (1.43%) QA
5 3 (0.72%) NCSC
6 2 (0.48%) Government Security Classifications
6 2 (0.48%) RMADS
7 1 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.24%) GRC
7 1 (0.24%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 85 (20.29%) Active Directory
2 47 (11.22%) VMware Infrastructure
3 18 (4.30%) Docker
3 18 (4.30%) Firmware
4 13 (3.10%) Squid
5 10 (2.39%) Virtual Desktop
6 9 (2.15%) vSphere
7 8 (1.91%) Hyper-V
7 8 (1.91%) VMware NSX
8 7 (1.67%) Virtual Machines
9 4 (0.95%) KVM
10 3 (0.72%) NFS
11 2 (0.48%) RACF
12 1 (0.24%) Citrix Presentation Server
12 1 (0.24%) Lustre
12 1 (0.24%) Snort
12 1 (0.24%) Virtual Servers
12 1 (0.24%) VirtualBox
12 1 (0.24%) VMware ESXi
12 1 (0.24%) Xen
Systems Management
1 65 (15.51%) Ansible
2 36 (8.59%) Terraform
3 34 (8.11%) Kubernetes
4 27 (6.44%) Microsoft Intune
5 26 (6.21%) Grafana
6 25 (5.97%) FortiGate
7 24 (5.73%) Single Sign-On
8 22 (5.25%) SCCM
9 16 (3.82%) Prometheus
10 10 (2.39%) Nagios
11 9 (2.15%) Consul
11 9 (2.15%) WSUS
12 8 (1.91%) QRadar
13 7 (1.67%) Jamf Pro
14 6 (1.43%) CASB
15 5 (1.19%) Nessus
15 5 (1.19%) Suricata
16 4 (0.95%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 4 (0.95%) Puppet
16 4 (0.95%) Tivoli NetView
Vendors
1 112 (26.73%) Microsoft
2 70 (16.71%) F5
3 66 (15.75%) Cisco
4 63 (15.04%) VMware
5 40 (9.55%) Splunk
6 38 (9.07%) ServiceNow
7 32 (7.64%) Blue Coat
8 26 (6.21%) McAfee
8 26 (6.21%) Palo Alto
9 22 (5.25%) Fortinet
10 20 (4.77%) Citrix
10 20 (4.77%) Juniper
10 20 (4.77%) Red Hat
11 19 (4.53%) NetApp
12 17 (4.06%) Siemens
13 16 (3.82%) Zscaler
14 13 (3.10%) SolarWinds
15 12 (2.86%) Bloomberg
15 12 (2.86%) CheckPoint
16 11 (2.63%) Google