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 18 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 269 238 282
Rank change year-on-year -31 +44 -53
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 496 359 357
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.94% 1.10% 0.85%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 9.86% 9.09% 6.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 270 214 232
10th Percentile £204 £210 £193
25th Percentile £316 £357 £263
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £461 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -7.75% +11.11% -5.26%
75th Percentile £550 £605 £560
90th Percentile £650 £662 £644
UK excluding London median daily rate £448 £450 £450
% change year-on-year -0.39% - +5.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 44 23 33
10th Percentile £21.25 £19.72 £20.00
25th Percentile £26.66 £43.60 £56.49
Median hourly rate £38.72 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -40.43% - +28.92%
75th Percentile £65.00 - -
90th Percentile £90.27 £88.30 £67.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.72 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -40.43% - +15.06%

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 5,032 3,950 5,255
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.51% 12.14% 12.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,041 2,407 3,109
10th Percentile £250 £235 £213
25th Percentile £400 £375 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £670 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +2.53% -4.04% +7.61%
Number of hourly rates quoted 332 192 405
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.11 £17.63
Median hourly rate £26.22 £48.75 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -46.22% +21.88% +14.29%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £83.90 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.22 £42.50 £47.50
% change year-on-year -38.31% -10.53% -0.87%

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 18 July 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 18 July 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 18 July 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 -9 448 £475 - 244
UK excluding London -27 287 £448 -0.39% 206
London -36 177 £475 -5.00% 73
Work from Home -53 119 £500 -8.00% 91
North of England -38 93 £447 -10.60% 38
South East -20 79 £527 +26.44% 79
North West -12 59 £450 +19.87% 14
Midlands -35 40 £401 -19.80% 25
East of England -5 37 £250 -52.38% 26
South West -11 35 £525 -14.63% 32
West Midlands -40 32 £400 -6.10% 15
Yorkshire -44 30 £454 -10.42% 21
Scotland -10 17 £178 -60.56% 9
East Midlands -12 8 £402 -26.91% 10
Wales -10 7 £408 - 5
North East -30 4 £306 +22.50% 7

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 36 (7.26%) SharePoint
2 19 (3.83%) Microsoft Exchange
3 16 (3.23%) Confluence
4 14 (2.82%) nginx
5 7 (1.41%) OpenStack
6 4 (0.81%) WebSphere
7 3 (0.60%) FactoryTalk
7 3 (0.60%) IIS
8 2 (0.40%) CICS
8 2 (0.40%) IBM HTTP Server
8 2 (0.40%) Oracle HTTP Server
8 2 (0.40%) WebSphere Application Server
8 2 (0.40%) WebSphere Portal
9 1 (0.20%) Traefik
Applications
1 34 (6.85%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (2.82%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (1.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (1.61%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.40%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.40%) Houdini
5 2 (0.40%) NUKE
6 1 (0.20%) Weka
Business Applications
1 5 (1.01%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 145 (29.23%) Azure
2 115 (23.19%) AWS
3 102 (20.56%) Microsoft 365
4 57 (11.49%) Entra ID
5 34 (6.85%) GCP
6 33 (6.65%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 28 (5.65%) OneDrive
8 21 (4.23%) Route 53
9 20 (4.03%) Amazon EC2
10 17 (3.43%) GitHub
11 15 (3.02%) Amazon EKS
12 14 (2.82%) Amazon S3
13 13 (2.62%) AWS Lambda
13 13 (2.62%) Serverless
14 11 (2.22%) AWS CloudFormation
14 11 (2.22%) Google Workspace
15 9 (1.81%) Azure Monitor
15 9 (1.81%) OpenShift
16 8 (1.61%) Azure DevOps
17 7 (1.41%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 289 (58.27%) DNS
2 203 (40.93%) Firewall
3 155 (31.25%) DHCP
4 140 (28.23%) VPN
5 88 (17.74%) Network Security
6 87 (17.54%) WAN
7 79 (15.93%) LAN
8 76 (15.32%) BGP
9 75 (15.12%) VLAN
10 71 (14.31%) HTTP
11 63 (12.70%) SSL
12 52 (10.48%) BIG-IP
13 48 (9.68%) OSPF
14 41 (8.27%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 41 (8.27%) Wi-Fi
15 39 (7.86%) Ethernet
16 32 (6.45%) Wireless
17 30 (6.05%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
18 27 (5.44%) Wireshark
19 24 (4.84%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (2.22%) SQL Server
2 10 (2.02%) Elasticsearch
3 6 (1.21%) PostgreSQL
4 3 (0.60%) Amazon RDS
5 2 (0.40%) MySQL
5 2 (0.40%) NoSQL
5 2 (0.40%) SQLite
6 1 (0.20%) BigQuery
6 1 (0.20%) KDB
6 1 (0.20%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 51 (10.28%) JIRA
2 23 (4.64%) Git
3 20 (4.03%) Fiddler
4 16 (3.23%) Jenkins
5 15 (3.02%) GitLab
6 14 (2.82%) Visual Studio
7 13 (2.62%) Eclipse
8 10 (2.02%) Browser DevTools
9 8 (1.61%) Bitbucket
10 7 (1.41%) SonarQube
11 5 (1.01%) Sonatype Nexus
12 4 (0.81%) Artifactory
13 2 (0.40%) Introscope
13 2 (0.40%) Subversion
14 1 (0.20%) MSI
14 1 (0.20%) Postman
General
1 192 (38.71%) Social Skills
2 68 (13.71%) Analytical Skills
3 65 (13.10%) Finance
4 42 (8.47%) Banking
5 35 (7.06%) Public Sector
6 22 (4.44%) Documentation Skills
6 22 (4.44%) Investment Banking
6 22 (4.44%) Presentation Skills
7 20 (4.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 18 (3.63%) Military
9 16 (3.23%) Telecoms
10 7 (1.41%) Front Office
11 5 (1.01%) Legal
11 5 (1.01%) Manufacturing
11 5 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
11 5 (1.01%) Pharmaceutical
12 3 (0.60%) Police
12 3 (0.60%) Retail
13 2 (0.40%) Advertising
13 2 (0.40%) Games
Job Titles
1 112 (22.58%) Network Engineer
2 55 (11.09%) Support Engineer
3 50 (10.08%) Architect
4 41 (8.27%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 41 (8.27%) Senior
5 39 (7.86%) Analyst
5 39 (7.86%) IT Support
6 30 (6.05%) IT Engineer
7 27 (5.44%) Web Engineer
8 26 (5.24%) Security Engineer
9 24 (4.84%) IT Support Engineer
10 22 (4.44%) Technical Engineer
11 20 (4.03%) Systems Engineer
12 18 (3.63%) IP Network Engineer
13 16 (3.23%) Blue Coat Engineer
14 15 (3.02%) Platform Engineer
14 15 (3.02%) Software Engineer
15 14 (2.82%) C# Software Engineer
15 14 (2.82%) Network Architect
15 14 (2.82%) Senior Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (4.23%) LDAP
2 19 (3.83%) SAML
3 14 (2.82%) JSON
4 13 (2.62%) Node.js
4 13 (2.62%) Web Services
5 12 (2.42%) REST
6 11 (2.22%) OpenID
7 10 (2.02%) 802.1X
8 9 (1.81%) ARM Templates
9 8 (1.61%) .NET
10 6 (1.21%) NETCONF
10 6 (1.21%) OpenConfig
10 6 (1.21%) RESTCONF
10 6 (1.21%) XML
10 6 (1.21%) YANG
11 5 (1.01%) OAuth
12 4 (0.81%) boto
12 4 (0.81%) eBPF
12 4 (0.81%) WinForms
13 3 (0.60%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 70 (14.11%) Data Centre
2 46 (9.27%) Onboarding
3 26 (5.24%) Management Information System
4 22 (4.44%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
4 22 (4.44%) PKI
5 21 (4.23%) Hybrid Cloud
6 19 (3.83%) Security Posture
7 17 (3.43%) Robotics
8 16 (3.23%) Driving Licence
9 15 (3.02%) Industry 4.0
9 15 (3.02%) Linux Command Line
9 15 (3.02%) Public Cloud
10 12 (2.42%) Operational Technology
10 12 (2.42%) Private Cloud
10 12 (2.42%) Self-Motivation
11 11 (2.22%) Cloud Native
11 11 (2.22%) SCADA
11 11 (2.22%) Security Operations Centre
12 10 (2.02%) Analytical Mindset
12 10 (2.02%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 210 (42.34%) Windows
2 111 (22.38%) Linux
3 60 (12.10%) Windows Server
4 39 (7.86%) Mac OS
5 31 (6.25%) Windows 10
6 18 (3.63%) Unix
7 17 (3.43%) Apple iOS
8 15 (3.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 13 (2.62%) Android
10 11 (2.22%) Ubuntu
11 7 (1.41%) Windows Server 2012
12 4 (0.81%) Windows Server 2019
12 4 (0.81%) zOS
13 3 (0.60%) CentOS
13 3 (0.60%) Check Point GAiA
13 3 (0.60%) Windows 7
13 3 (0.60%) Windows Server 2016
14 2 (0.40%) Oracle Linux
14 2 (0.40%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
14 2 (0.40%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 138 (27.82%) Problem-Solving
2 97 (19.56%) ITIL
3 64 (12.90%) CI/CD
4 59 (11.90%) Agile
4 59 (11.90%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 56 (11.29%) DevOps
5 56 (11.29%) Load Balancing
6 53 (10.69%) Customer Service
7 52 (10.48%) Cybersecurity
7 52 (10.48%) Infrastructure as Code
8 48 (9.68%) ITSM
9 46 (9.27%) Migration
10 45 (9.07%) High Availability
10 45 (9.07%) Incident Response
11 43 (8.67%) SIEM
12 38 (7.66%) Validation
13 35 (7.06%) Service Management
13 35 (7.06%) Stakeholder Management
14 33 (6.65%) Root Cause Analysis
14 33 (6.65%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 128 (25.81%) Python
2 75 (15.12%) PowerShell
3 64 (12.90%) Bash
4 27 (5.44%) JavaScript
5 26 (5.24%) C++
6 17 (3.43%) C#
7 15 (3.02%) SQL
8 10 (2.02%) Java
9 9 (1.81%) VBA
10 6 (1.21%) C
10 6 (1.21%) Perl
11 5 (1.01%) ActionScript
11 5 (1.01%) Bicep
12 4 (0.81%) Shell Script
13 3 (0.60%) Go
14 2 (0.40%) Jython
14 2 (0.40%) Korn
14 2 (0.40%) Kusto Query Language
14 2 (0.40%) Objective-C
14 2 (0.40%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 134 (27.02%) Security Cleared
2 93 (18.75%) SC Cleared
3 80 (16.13%) Degree
4 58 (11.69%) Cisco Certification
5 43 (8.67%) CCNP
6 40 (8.06%) DV Cleared
7 28 (5.65%) CCNA
8 26 (5.24%) Microsoft Certification
9 21 (4.23%) CISSP
10 18 (3.63%) Computer Science Degree
11 17 (3.43%) CCIE
12 14 (2.82%) CompTIA Security+
13 12 (2.42%) Network+ Certification
14 11 (2.22%) Azure Certification
15 10 (2.02%) MCSA
15 10 (2.02%) MCSE
16 9 (1.81%) CompTIA CySA+
17 6 (1.21%) A+ Certification
17 6 (1.21%) JNCIE
18 5 (1.01%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (2.62%) NIST
1 13 (2.62%) SLA
2 12 (2.42%) NCSC
3 10 (2.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 7 (1.41%) QA
5 5 (1.01%) GDPR
6 4 (0.81%) NIST 800
6 4 (0.81%) PCI DSS
7 3 (0.60%) 21 CFR Part 11
7 3 (0.60%) GxP
8 2 (0.40%) Government Security Classifications
8 2 (0.40%) JSP 440
8 2 (0.40%) RMADS
9 1 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.20%) GRC
9 1 (0.20%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 130 (26.21%) Active Directory
2 75 (15.12%) VMware Infrastructure
3 22 (4.44%) Hyper-V
4 21 (4.23%) Docker
5 20 (4.03%) vSphere
6 17 (3.43%) Firmware
6 17 (3.43%) VMware NSX
7 13 (2.62%) Squid
8 12 (2.42%) Virtual Desktop
9 6 (1.21%) Virtual Machines
10 5 (1.01%) NFS
11 4 (0.81%) VMware ESXi
12 2 (0.40%) KVM
12 2 (0.40%) RACF
12 2 (0.40%) VirtualBox
13 1 (0.20%) GPFS
13 1 (0.20%) iptables
13 1 (0.20%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 1 (0.20%) Snort
13 1 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 93 (18.75%) Ansible
2 67 (13.51%) Terraform
3 42 (8.47%) Kubernetes
4 41 (8.27%) Microsoft Intune
5 30 (6.05%) Single Sign-On
6 25 (5.04%) FortiGate
7 24 (4.84%) Grafana
7 24 (4.84%) SCCM
8 17 (3.43%) Prometheus
9 11 (2.22%) Jamf Pro
10 9 (1.81%) Consul
10 9 (1.81%) WSUS
11 8 (1.61%) VxRail
12 6 (1.21%) CASB
13 5 (1.01%) Nessus
13 5 (1.01%) QRadar
13 5 (1.01%) Suricata
14 4 (0.81%) systemd
15 3 (0.60%) Puppet
15 3 (0.60%) SELinux
Vendors
1 175 (35.28%) Microsoft
2 88 (17.74%) Cisco
3 85 (17.14%) VMware
4 70 (14.11%) F5
5 58 (11.69%) ServiceNow
6 31 (6.25%) Fortinet
7 27 (5.44%) Google
7 27 (5.44%) Palo Alto
8 25 (5.04%) Blue Coat
9 24 (4.84%) Juniper
10 23 (4.64%) Zscaler
11 22 (4.44%) Citrix
11 22 (4.44%) Splunk
12 21 (4.23%) Infoblox
12 21 (4.23%) Red Hat
13 20 (4.03%) CheckPoint
13 20 (4.03%) NetApp
14 19 (3.83%) McAfee
15 17 (3.43%) Siemens
16 13 (2.62%) SolarWinds