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

6 months to
13 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 285 224 288
Rank change year-on-year -61 +64 -47
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 427 359 331
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.85% 1.22% 0.76%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 8.95% 9.77% 6.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 233 241 224
10th Percentile £207 £225 £188
25th Percentile £350 £363 £309
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £488
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +2.56% +0.52%
75th Percentile £550 £623 £575
90th Percentile £638 £775 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £488 £475
% change year-on-year -7.69% +2.63% +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 40 12 22
10th Percentile £21.25 £18.81 £16.25
25th Percentile £25.94 £41.31 £20.81
Median hourly rate £33.86 £63.75 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -46.89% -1.92% +15.40%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 -
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.22 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -45.82% - +10.35%

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 4,772 3,676 5,422
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.54% 12.46% 12.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,925 2,260 3,210
10th Percentile £263 £220 £210
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £484 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.31% -3.20% -2.44%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £470 £488
% change year-on-year +2.20% -3.66% +2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 290 167 417
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.13 £16.30
Median hourly rate £27.69 £44.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -37.07% +10.00% +110.53%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.69 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £80.41 £70.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.25 £31.79 £47.50
% change year-on-year -4.84% -33.07% +150.00%

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 13 June 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 13 June 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 13 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 -53 367 £468 -6.50% 202
UK excluding London -39 247 £450 -7.69% 188
London -48 144 £475 +2.70% 40
Work from Home -88 103 £450 -18.23% 65
North of England -19 93 £450 +12.43% 40
North West +2 54 £520 +108.00% 24
South East -44 52 £500 +11.11% 63
East of England -16 36 £350 -18.60% 28
Yorkshire -48 34 £449 -11.41% 11
Midlands -42 33 £400 -27.27% 30
West Midlands -33 30 £388 -29.55% 19
Scotland -3 24 £537 +24.77% 9
South West -19 22 £500 -18.70% 22
Wales -12 7 £408 +30.40% 3
North East -32 5 £306 +22.50% 8
East Midlands -24 3 £625 +13.64% 11

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 18 (4.22%) SharePoint
2 17 (3.98%) Confluence
3 11 (2.58%) Microsoft Exchange
4 10 (2.34%) nginx
5 4 (0.94%) WebSphere
6 3 (0.70%) IIS
6 3 (0.70%) OpenStack
7 2 (0.47%) CICS
7 2 (0.47%) IBM HTTP Server
7 2 (0.47%) Oracle HTTP Server
7 2 (0.47%) WebSphere Application Server
7 2 (0.47%) WebSphere Portal
8 1 (0.23%) Traefik
Applications
1 30 (7.03%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (1.64%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (1.64%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.94%) Acrobat
4 3 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.23%) Weka
Business Applications
1 2 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 99 (23.19%) Azure
2 90 (21.08%) AWS
3 79 (18.50%) Microsoft 365
4 33 (7.73%) Entra ID
5 29 (6.79%) GCP
6 28 (6.56%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 20 (4.68%) OneDrive
8 17 (3.98%) GitHub
9 16 (3.75%) Amazon EC2
10 15 (3.51%) Amazon EKS
10 15 (3.51%) Amazon S3
11 14 (3.28%) Route 53
12 13 (3.04%) AWS Lambda
12 13 (3.04%) Serverless
13 11 (2.58%) Google Workspace
14 7 (1.64%) Azure DevOps
14 7 (1.64%) SaaS
15 6 (1.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 6 (1.41%) AWS CloudFormation
15 6 (1.41%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 237 (55.50%) DNS
2 148 (34.66%) Firewall
3 100 (23.42%) DHCP
4 99 (23.19%) VPN
5 71 (16.63%) WAN
6 69 (16.16%) HTTP
7 68 (15.93%) SSL
8 65 (15.22%) Network Security
9 64 (14.99%) LAN
10 55 (12.88%) VLAN
11 54 (12.65%) BGP
11 54 (12.65%) BIG-IP
12 39 (9.13%) Wi-Fi
13 38 (8.90%) OSPF
14 37 (8.67%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 34 (7.96%) Ethernet
16 30 (7.03%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
16 30 (7.03%) Wireshark
17 24 (5.62%) Wireless
18 16 (3.75%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (2.58%) Elasticsearch
1 11 (2.58%) SQL Server
2 8 (1.87%) PostgreSQL
3 5 (1.17%) MongoDB
4 3 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
5 2 (0.47%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.23%) BigQuery
6 1 (0.23%) MySQL
6 1 (0.23%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (0.23%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 47 (11.01%) JIRA
2 24 (5.62%) Fiddler
3 21 (4.92%) GitLab
4 17 (3.98%) Jenkins
5 16 (3.75%) Git
6 13 (3.04%) Eclipse
6 13 (3.04%) Visual Studio
7 9 (2.11%) Browser DevTools
8 7 (1.64%) Bitbucket
8 7 (1.64%) SonarQube
9 4 (0.94%) Sonatype Nexus
10 3 (0.70%) Artifactory
10 3 (0.70%) CircleCI
11 2 (0.47%) Introscope
11 2 (0.47%) Subversion
12 1 (0.23%) Postman
General
1 162 (37.94%) Social Skills
2 61 (14.29%) Finance
3 48 (11.24%) Analytical Skills
4 40 (9.37%) Banking
5 28 (6.56%) Public Sector
6 25 (5.85%) Investment Banking
7 22 (5.15%) Presentation Skills
8 21 (4.92%) Military
9 20 (4.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 17 (3.98%) Documentation Skills
11 9 (2.11%) Telecoms
12 8 (1.87%) Front Office
13 5 (1.17%) Law
14 4 (0.94%) Legal
15 3 (0.70%) French Language
15 3 (0.70%) Marketing
15 3 (0.70%) Organisational Skills
16 2 (0.47%) Aviation
16 2 (0.47%) Japanese Language
16 2 (0.47%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 104 (24.36%) Network Engineer
2 53 (12.41%) Analyst
3 39 (9.13%) Support Engineer
4 32 (7.49%) Architect
4 32 (7.49%) Web Engineer
5 31 (7.26%) IT Support
6 28 (6.56%) Senior
7 26 (6.09%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 24 (5.62%) Security Engineer
9 22 (5.15%) Technical Engineer
10 20 (4.68%) SOC Analyst
10 20 (4.68%) Systems Engineer
11 19 (4.45%) IP Network Engineer
11 19 (4.45%) IT Engineer
12 17 (3.98%) Blue Coat Engineer
13 16 (3.75%) Junior
14 15 (3.51%) IT Support Engineer
14 15 (3.51%) Lead
15 14 (3.28%) Software Engineer
16 13 (3.04%) C# Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (4.68%) LDAP
2 18 (4.22%) SAML
3 13 (3.04%) Node.js
3 13 (3.04%) Web Services
4 12 (2.81%) OpenID
5 11 (2.58%) 802.1X
5 11 (2.58%) JSON
6 9 (2.11%) REST
7 5 (1.17%) .NET
7 5 (1.17%) Kafka
7 5 (1.17%) OAuth
8 4 (0.94%) XML
9 3 (0.70%) ARM Templates
9 3 (0.70%) HTML
9 3 (0.70%) Middleware
9 3 (0.70%) WinForms
10 2 (0.47%) eBPF
10 2 (0.47%) NETCONF
10 2 (0.47%) RESTCONF
10 2 (0.47%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 49 (11.48%) Data Centre
2 44 (10.30%) Onboarding
3 24 (5.62%) Security Operations Centre
4 22 (5.15%) Management Information System
5 21 (4.92%) Cyberattack
6 18 (4.22%) Cyber Threat
7 15 (3.51%) Industry 4.0
7 15 (3.51%) Robotics
8 14 (3.28%) Security Posture
9 10 (2.34%) Driving Licence
9 10 (2.34%) Enterprise Software
10 9 (2.11%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 8 (1.87%) Data Protection Act
12 7 (1.64%) PKI
12 7 (1.64%) Public Cloud
13 6 (1.41%) Analytical Mindset
13 6 (1.41%) Cloud Native
13 6 (1.41%) Mainframe
13 6 (1.41%) NHS
13 6 (1.41%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 187 (43.79%) Windows
2 95 (22.25%) Linux
3 45 (10.54%) Windows Server
4 34 (7.96%) Mac OS
5 21 (4.92%) Windows 10
6 17 (3.98%) Apple iOS
7 16 (3.75%) Unix
8 12 (2.81%) Android
9 8 (1.87%) Windows Server 2012
10 6 (1.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 6 (1.41%) zOS
11 5 (1.17%) Ubuntu
12 4 (0.94%) Windows Server 2019
13 3 (0.70%) Windows 7
14 2 (0.47%) AIX
14 2 (0.47%) CentOS
14 2 (0.47%) Oracle Linux
14 2 (0.47%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
14 2 (0.47%) Windows Server 2003
14 2 (0.47%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 122 (28.57%) Problem-Solving
2 73 (17.10%) ITIL
3 55 (12.88%) Agile
3 55 (12.88%) Incident Response
4 48 (11.24%) Cybersecurity
5 47 (11.01%) DevOps
6 46 (10.77%) Load Balancing
7 45 (10.54%) CI/CD
8 44 (10.30%) Customer Service
8 44 (10.30%) Migration
8 44 (10.30%) SIEM
9 42 (9.84%) ITSM
10 38 (8.90%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 35 (8.20%) Validation
12 34 (7.96%) High Availability
12 34 (7.96%) Security Operations
13 32 (7.49%) Root Cause Analysis
14 30 (7.03%) Computer Science
15 29 (6.79%) Decision-Making
15 29 (6.79%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 91 (21.31%) Python
2 41 (9.60%) Bash
3 39 (9.13%) PowerShell
4 29 (6.79%) JavaScript
5 20 (4.68%) C++
6 17 (3.98%) SQL
7 16 (3.75%) C#
8 9 (2.11%) Java
8 9 (2.11%) VBA
9 5 (1.17%) C
9 5 (1.17%) Go
9 5 (1.17%) Shell Script
10 4 (0.94%) ActionScript
10 4 (0.94%) Perl
11 2 (0.47%) Jython
11 2 (0.47%) Ruby
12 1 (0.23%) Groovy
12 1 (0.23%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 111 (26.00%) Security Cleared
2 88 (20.61%) SC Cleared
3 78 (18.27%) Degree
4 43 (10.07%) Cisco Certification
5 33 (7.73%) CCNP
6 30 (7.03%) Computer Science Degree
7 29 (6.79%) CompTIA Security+
8 27 (6.32%) CCNA
9 25 (5.85%) DV Cleared
10 20 (4.68%) CISSP
11 18 (4.22%) CompTIA CySA+
12 15 (3.51%) Microsoft Certification
13 9 (2.11%) MCSA
14 8 (1.87%) Azure Certification
14 8 (1.87%) MCSE
14 8 (1.87%) Network+ Certification
15 7 (1.64%) CCIE
16 5 (1.17%) CISM
16 5 (1.17%) JNCIS
17 4 (0.94%) GCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (3.04%) SLA
2 9 (2.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 9 (2.11%) NIST
3 6 (1.41%) QA
4 5 (1.17%) GDPR
5 3 (0.70%) NCSC
5 3 (0.70%) PCI DSS
6 2 (0.47%) Government Security Classifications
6 2 (0.47%) RMADS
7 1 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.23%) GRC
System Software
1 91 (21.31%) Active Directory
2 46 (10.77%) VMware Infrastructure
3 17 (3.98%) Firmware
4 16 (3.75%) Docker
5 13 (3.04%) Squid
5 13 (3.04%) Virtual Desktop
6 9 (2.11%) Hyper-V
7 7 (1.64%) VMware NSX
7 7 (1.64%) vSphere
8 4 (0.94%) NFS
8 4 (0.94%) Virtual Machines
9 2 (0.47%) KVM
9 2 (0.47%) RACF
9 2 (0.47%) VirtualBox
10 1 (0.23%) Citrix Presentation Server
10 1 (0.23%) GPFS
10 1 (0.23%) Lustre
10 1 (0.23%) Snort
10 1 (0.23%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 67 (15.69%) Ansible
2 36 (8.43%) Terraform
3 34 (7.96%) Kubernetes
4 29 (6.79%) Microsoft Intune
5 25 (5.85%) Grafana
6 24 (5.62%) FortiGate
6 24 (5.62%) Single Sign-On
7 21 (4.92%) SCCM
8 15 (3.51%) Prometheus
9 11 (2.58%) Jamf Pro
10 10 (2.34%) WSUS
11 9 (2.11%) Consul
12 6 (1.41%) CASB
12 6 (1.41%) QRadar
13 5 (1.17%) Nagios
13 5 (1.17%) Nessus
13 5 (1.17%) Suricata
14 4 (0.94%) Tivoli NetView
15 3 (0.70%) Puppet
15 3 (0.70%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 126 (29.51%) Microsoft
2 69 (16.16%) Cisco
3 68 (15.93%) F5
4 56 (13.11%) VMware
5 44 (10.30%) ServiceNow
6 40 (9.37%) Splunk
7 30 (7.03%) Blue Coat
8 28 (6.56%) Palo Alto
9 24 (5.62%) McAfee
10 23 (5.39%) Citrix
10 23 (5.39%) Fortinet
11 19 (4.45%) NetApp
12 17 (3.98%) Juniper
12 17 (3.98%) Siemens
12 17 (3.98%) Zscaler
13 16 (3.75%) Red Hat
14 15 (3.51%) Google
15 13 (3.04%) Bloomberg
15 13 (3.04%) CheckPoint
16 11 (2.58%) Netskope