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 17 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 238 186 193
Rank change year-on-year -52 +7 +47
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 415 451 544
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.11% 1.42% 1.26%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 10.61% 11.01% 9.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 237 276 342
10th Percentile £200 £213 £185
25th Percentile £315 £380 £275
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £525 £450
Median % change year-on-year -11.43% +16.67% -14.27%
75th Percentile £600 £660 £580
90th Percentile £671 £750 £681
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £468 £400
% change year-on-year -3.74% +16.88% -15.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 37 8 51
10th Percentile £15.50 £20.43 £24.25
25th Percentile £29.00 £28.75 £40.74
Median hourly rate £41.94 £63.75 £50.39
Median % change year-on-year -34.21% +26.51% -22.48%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £56.49
90th Percentile £67.25 £67.63 £69.62
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.07 £63.75 £51.70
% change year-on-year +0.50% +23.32% -20.47%

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 3,913 4,097 5,909
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.49% 12.88% 13.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,580 2,396 3,637
10th Percentile £204 £213 £210
25th Percentile £356 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -2.44%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £468 £475
% change year-on-year -3.74% -1.58% +2.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 159 141 349
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.22 £17.74
25th Percentile £18.69 £21.46 £23.09
Median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% -38.04% +134.16%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.50 £65.98
90th Percentile £74.41 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £32.50 £58.50
% change year-on-year +29.05% -44.44% +179.48%

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 17 January 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 17 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for TCP/IP in the UK

TCP/IP
Top 15 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 17 January 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 -43 371 £475 -9.52% 240
UK excluding London -24 264 £450 -3.74% 227
London -41 120 £538 +2.38% 51
Work from Home -51 116 £450 -22.75% 96
North of England -32 84 £447 -3.35% 39
South East -8 57 £500 +1.27% 82
North West -4 49 £450 -2.70% 20
East of England -10 46 £381 -23.75% 36
West Midlands -11 37 £200 -11.11% 10
Midlands -25 37 £200 -11.11% 24
South West -24 32 £700 +13.82% 30
Yorkshire -42 31 £447 -36.14% 13
Scotland +16 23 £454 +13.50% 15
Wales -4 4 £250 -23.08% 6
North East -16 4 £400 +166.67% 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 29 (6.99%) SharePoint
2 21 (5.06%) Microsoft Exchange
3 14 (3.37%) Skype for Business
4 12 (2.89%) Confluence
5 8 (1.93%) OpenStack
6 3 (0.72%) Apache
6 3 (0.72%) IIS
7 2 (0.48%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.48%) WordPress
8 1 (0.24%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.24%) Exchange Server 2010
8 1 (0.24%) Exchange Server 2013
8 1 (0.24%) Jupyter
Applications
1 34 (8.19%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (1.69%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.45%) Weka
4 5 (1.20%) Acrobat
5 3 (0.72%) Microsoft Excel
6 2 (0.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 1 (0.24%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 1 (0.24%) Finacle
1 1 (0.24%) Pegasus Opera
1 1 (0.24%) RMDS
1 1 (0.24%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 107 (25.78%) AWS
2 100 (24.10%) Azure
3 78 (18.80%) Microsoft 365
4 27 (6.51%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 25 (6.02%) Amazon EC2
6 24 (5.78%) Amazon S3
7 22 (5.30%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 22 (5.30%) Amazon ELB
7 22 (5.30%) GCP
8 20 (4.82%) Entra ID
9 12 (2.89%) GitHub
10 10 (2.41%) AWS CloudFormation
10 10 (2.41%) SaaS
11 8 (1.93%) Cloud Computing
12 7 (1.69%) Google Workspace
13 6 (1.45%) OneDrive
14 4 (0.96%) AWS KMS
14 4 (0.96%) Azure DevOps
15 3 (0.72%) Azure Sentinel
15 3 (0.72%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 232 (55.90%) DNS
2 145 (34.94%) Firewall
3 113 (27.23%) VPN
4 111 (26.75%) DHCP
5 84 (20.24%) SSL
6 75 (18.07%) WAN
7 69 (16.63%) LAN
8 59 (14.22%) HTTP
9 58 (13.98%) Network Security
10 57 (13.73%) VLAN
11 36 (8.67%) Wireshark
12 30 (7.23%) Wi-Fi
13 28 (6.75%) BIG-IP
14 27 (6.51%) BGP
15 21 (5.06%) OSPF
16 20 (4.82%) SAN
17 19 (4.58%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 19 (4.58%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 19 (4.58%) Wireless
18 18 (4.34%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (5.06%) SQL Server
2 11 (2.65%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (1.45%) Elasticsearch
4 4 (0.96%) MongoDB
5 3 (0.72%) Oracle Database
6 2 (0.48%) Amazon Aurora
6 2 (0.48%) Amazon RDS
7 1 (0.24%) Apache Cassandra
7 1 (0.24%) Apache Hive
7 1 (0.24%) Big Data
7 1 (0.24%) Electronic Patient Records
7 1 (0.24%) Impala
7 1 (0.24%) MySQL
7 1 (0.24%) NoSQL
7 1 (0.24%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.24%) Power BI
7 1 (0.24%) Redis
7 1 (0.24%) Relational Database
7 1 (0.24%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 41 (9.88%) Git
2 37 (8.92%) Jenkins
3 34 (8.19%) GitLab
4 24 (5.78%) Fiddler
4 24 (5.78%) JIRA
5 14 (3.37%) Eclipse
5 14 (3.37%) Visual Studio
6 5 (1.20%) Subversion
7 4 (0.96%) CircleCI
7 4 (0.96%) TeamCity
8 3 (0.72%) Robot Framework
9 2 (0.48%) Maven
9 2 (0.48%) Postman
9 2 (0.48%) Sonatype Nexus
10 1 (0.24%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.24%) Cucumber
10 1 (0.24%) GCC
10 1 (0.24%) IntelliJ
10 1 (0.24%) MSI
10 1 (0.24%) Travis CI
General
1 141 (33.98%) Social Skills
2 64 (15.42%) Analytical Skills
3 38 (9.16%) Public Sector
4 34 (8.19%) Finance
5 32 (7.71%) Banking
6 26 (6.27%) Military
7 22 (5.30%) Investment Banking
8 17 (4.10%) Presentation Skills
9 9 (2.17%) Front Office
9 9 (2.17%) Legal
10 8 (1.93%) Telecoms
11 7 (1.69%) Law
11 7 (1.69%) Organisational Skills
12 6 (1.45%) Documentation Skills
12 6 (1.45%) Local Government
13 5 (1.20%) Financial Institution
14 3 (0.72%) Manufacturing
15 2 (0.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 1 (0.24%) Games
16 1 (0.24%) Police
Job Titles
1 90 (21.69%) Network Engineer
2 58 (13.98%) Support Engineer
3 57 (13.73%) Analyst
4 55 (13.25%) Senior
5 48 (11.57%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 29 (6.99%) IT Support
7 24 (5.78%) IT Engineer
8 23 (5.54%) Web Engineer
9 21 (5.06%) 2nd Line Support
10 20 (4.82%) Developer
11 19 (4.58%) SOC Analyst
12 17 (4.10%) DevOps Engineer
12 17 (4.10%) Support Analyst
13 16 (3.86%) Junior
13 16 (3.86%) Technical Support
14 15 (3.61%) Lead
14 15 (3.61%) Senior DevOps
14 15 (3.61%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
14 15 (3.61%) Technical Analyst
15 14 (3.37%) Senior DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (4.34%) Web Services
2 15 (3.61%) Node.js
3 14 (3.37%) Middleware
4 12 (2.89%) REST
5 9 (2.17%) SOAP
6 5 (1.20%) AngularJS
6 5 (1.20%) FIX Protocol
6 5 (1.20%) Kafka
6 5 (1.20%) LDAP
6 5 (1.20%) SAML
7 4 (0.96%) .NET
7 4 (0.96%) JSON
7 4 (0.96%) React
7 4 (0.96%) Ultra Messaging
8 3 (0.72%) 802.1X
8 3 (0.72%) ASP.NET Web API
8 3 (0.72%) Bootstrap
8 3 (0.72%) Elastic Stack
8 3 (0.72%) Express.js
8 3 (0.72%) WCF
Miscellaneous
1 29 (6.99%) Management Information System
2 27 (6.51%) Data Centre
3 26 (6.27%) Onboarding
4 19 (4.58%) Security Operations Centre
5 18 (4.34%) Analytical Mindset
6 16 (3.86%) Cyberattack
7 13 (3.13%) Driving Licence
8 12 (2.89%) CMDB
8 12 (2.89%) Private Cloud
8 12 (2.89%) Public Cloud
9 11 (2.65%) NHS
10 10 (2.41%) Cyber Threat
10 10 (2.41%) PKI
10 10 (2.41%) Replication
11 9 (2.17%) Self-Motivation
12 8 (1.93%) Clustering
12 8 (1.93%) Enterprise Software
13 6 (1.45%) Grid Computing
13 6 (1.45%) Security Posture
14 5 (1.20%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 193 (46.51%) Windows
2 139 (33.49%) Linux
3 49 (11.81%) Windows Server
4 33 (7.95%) Windows 10
5 25 (6.02%) Unix
6 12 (2.89%) Android
7 11 (2.65%) Windows Server 2019
8 10 (2.41%) Windows Server 2016
9 8 (1.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 7 (1.69%) VMS
11 6 (1.45%) Apple iOS
11 6 (1.45%) Ubuntu
11 6 (1.45%) Windows Server 2012
12 5 (1.20%) Mac OS
13 4 (0.96%) CentOS
13 4 (0.96%) Solaris
13 4 (0.96%) Windows Server 2003
13 4 (0.96%) zOS
14 3 (0.72%) Debian
15 2 (0.48%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 108 (26.02%) Problem-Solving
2 64 (15.42%) CI/CD
3 60 (14.46%) ITIL
4 58 (13.98%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 57 (13.73%) Agile
5 57 (13.73%) Incident Response
6 54 (13.01%) DevOps
7 53 (12.77%) Cybersecurity
8 52 (12.53%) SIEM
9 47 (11.33%) Infrastructure as Code
10 42 (10.12%) Load Balancing
11 38 (9.16%) High Availability
12 37 (8.92%) Root Cause Analysis
13 36 (8.67%) Infrastructure Automation
14 34 (8.19%) Security Operations
15 31 (7.47%) Migration
16 29 (6.99%) Disaster Recovery
16 29 (6.99%) Knowledge Transfer
16 29 (6.99%) Mentoring
17 28 (6.75%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 124 (29.88%) Python
2 78 (18.80%) PowerShell
3 69 (16.63%) Bash
4 24 (5.78%) Perl
5 21 (5.06%) SQL
6 20 (4.82%) JavaScript
7 19 (4.58%) C#
7 19 (4.58%) C++
8 16 (3.86%) Java
9 13 (3.13%) Shell Script
10 7 (1.69%) Go
11 4 (0.96%) C
12 3 (0.72%) Kusto Query Language
12 3 (0.72%) Search Processing Language
12 3 (0.72%) T-SQL
13 2 (0.48%) Ruby
14 1 (0.24%) Bicep
14 1 (0.24%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.24%) TypeScript
14 1 (0.24%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 135 (32.53%) Security Cleared
2 100 (24.10%) SC Cleared
3 40 (9.64%) DV Cleared
4 37 (8.92%) Cisco Certification
4 37 (8.92%) Degree
5 28 (6.75%) CCNP
6 24 (5.78%) Microsoft Certification
7 21 (5.06%) CompTIA Security+
8 20 (4.82%) Network+ Certification
9 19 (4.58%) CCNA
10 16 (3.86%) Azure Certification
11 15 (3.61%) Computer Science Degree
12 13 (3.13%) CompTIA CySA+
13 11 (2.65%) CISSP
13 11 (2.65%) MCP
13 11 (2.65%) Server+ Certification
14 9 (2.17%) JNCIS
15 6 (1.45%) ECDL
15 6 (1.45%) MCSE
16 5 (1.20%) MCDST
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (4.34%) GDPR
2 9 (2.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 8 (1.93%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 8 (1.93%) SLA
4 5 (1.20%) NIST
5 4 (0.96%) HIPAA
6 2 (0.48%) Disclosure Scotland
6 2 (0.48%) NCSC
6 2 (0.48%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials
7 1 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
7 1 (0.24%) QA
7 1 (0.24%) SOC 2
System Software
1 81 (19.52%) Active Directory
2 65 (15.66%) VMware Infrastructure
3 51 (12.29%) Docker
4 29 (6.99%) Hyper-V
5 14 (3.37%) Firmware
6 9 (2.17%) Virtual Machines
7 8 (1.93%) VMware NSX
7 8 (1.93%) vSphere
8 7 (1.69%) Lustre
8 7 (1.69%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 7 (1.69%) VMware ESXi
9 6 (1.45%) GPFS
10 5 (1.20%) KVM
10 5 (1.20%) NDS
10 5 (1.20%) NetIQ eDirectory
10 5 (1.20%) NFS
11 4 (0.96%) Terminal Services
11 4 (0.96%) Veritas File System
11 4 (0.96%) Veritas Volume Manager
11 4 (0.96%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 88 (21.20%) Ansible
2 55 (13.25%) Terraform
3 37 (8.92%) SCCM
4 30 (7.23%) Microsoft Intune
5 29 (6.99%) Kubernetes
6 14 (3.37%) Grafana
7 10 (2.41%) Prometheus
7 10 (2.41%) Puppet
8 9 (2.17%) FortiGate
8 9 (2.17%) QRadar
8 9 (2.17%) Single Sign-On
8 9 (2.17%) WSUS
9 7 (1.69%) Nagios
10 6 (1.45%) Red Hat Satellite
11 5 (1.20%) Progress Chef
11 5 (1.20%) Tivoli NetView
12 4 (0.96%) ITRS Geneos
12 4 (0.96%) vCenter Server
13 3 (0.72%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 3 (0.72%) Iperf
Vendors
1 123 (29.64%) Microsoft
2 88 (21.20%) VMware
3 75 (18.07%) F5
4 62 (14.94%) Cisco
5 51 (12.29%) Palo Alto
6 42 (10.12%) Splunk
7 35 (8.43%) CheckPoint
8 31 (7.47%) Blue Coat
9 26 (6.27%) McAfee
10 22 (5.30%) NetApp
10 22 (5.30%) SolarWinds
11 20 (4.82%) Fortinet
12 19 (4.58%) Juniper
12 19 (4.58%) ServiceNow
13 17 (4.10%) Oracle
14 16 (3.86%) Citrix
14 16 (3.86%) Meraki
15 15 (3.61%) Red Hat
16 13 (3.13%) Veeam
17 12 (2.89%) Zscaler