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

6 months to
27 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 236 182 199
Rank change year-on-year -54 +17 +38
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 427 452 512
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.12% 1.45% 1.15%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 10.74% 11.23% 8.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 240 280 328
10th Percentile £206 £213 £184
25th Percentile £323 £396 £275
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £525 £471
Median % change year-on-year -10.48% +11.46% -10.29%
75th Percentile £598 £675 £575
90th Percentile £688 £775 £678
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £474 £405
% change year-on-year -5.01% +16.98% -19.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 8 43
10th Percentile £15.50 £20.43 £23.45
25th Percentile £22.00 £28.75 £40.85
Median hourly rate £41.94 £63.75 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -34.21% +27.50% -23.08%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £56.49
90th Percentile £67.25 £67.63 £67.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.22 £63.75 £51.70
% change year-on-year -18.09% +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 3,975 4,025 6,064
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.44% 12.95% 13.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,607 2,333 3,682
10th Percentile £204 £213 £206
25th Percentile £356 £363 £356
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £495
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +1.01% -3.88%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £685 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £468 £475
% change year-on-year -3.74% -1.58% +2.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 164 139 390
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.76 £16.25
25th Percentile £18.97 £21.46 £22.00
Median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £51.89
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% -32.55% +150.60%
75th Percentile £65.00 £58.69 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.54 £31.79 £56.49
% change year-on-year +27.52% -43.72% +187.12%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 -35 380 £478 -5.81% 180
UK excluding London -29 272 £450 -5.01% 167
London -41 123 £525 +2.44% 50
Work from Home -64 115 £450 -25.86% 66
North of England -17 89 £425 -9.09% 31
South East -24 57 £500 -1.48% 61
North West -4 51 £425 -8.11% 12
East of England -5 46 £381 -18.01% 22
West Midlands -6 37 £200 -8.57% 6
Midlands -38 37 £200 -11.11% 15
South West -25 33 £700 +13.82% 21
Yorkshire -32 33 £443 -37.89% 14
Scotland +23 27 £454 +9.40% 18
North East -19 5 £200 +33.33% 7
Wales -11 3 £293 -10.00% 4

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 27 (6.32%) SharePoint
2 19 (4.45%) Microsoft Exchange
3 17 (3.98%) Confluence
4 14 (3.28%) Skype for Business
5 8 (1.87%) OpenStack
6 5 (1.17%) nginx
7 3 (0.70%) Apache
8 2 (0.47%) IIS
8 2 (0.47%) WordPress
9 1 (0.23%) Apache Airflow
9 1 (0.23%) Jupyter
9 1 (0.23%) Tomcat
Applications
1 32 (7.49%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (1.87%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.41%) Weka
4 5 (1.17%) Acrobat
5 2 (0.47%) Microsoft Excel
5 2 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.23%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 1 (0.23%) Finacle
1 1 (0.23%) RMDS
1 1 (0.23%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 112 (26.23%) AWS
2 97 (22.72%) Azure
3 77 (18.03%) Microsoft 365
4 32 (7.49%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 30 (7.03%) Amazon S3
6 29 (6.79%) Amazon EC2
7 22 (5.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 22 (5.15%) Amazon ELB
7 22 (5.15%) GCP
8 21 (4.92%) Entra ID
9 12 (2.81%) GitHub
10 9 (2.11%) AWS CloudFormation
11 8 (1.87%) OneDrive
11 8 (1.87%) Route 53
11 8 (1.87%) SaaS
12 7 (1.64%) Cloud Computing
12 7 (1.64%) Google Workspace
13 6 (1.41%) Amazon EKS
14 5 (1.17%) AWS Lambda
14 5 (1.17%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 243 (56.91%) DNS
2 151 (35.36%) Firewall
3 119 (27.87%) VPN
4 115 (26.93%) DHCP
5 82 (19.20%) SSL
6 79 (18.50%) WAN
7 73 (17.10%) LAN
8 62 (14.52%) Network Security
9 60 (14.05%) VLAN
10 58 (13.58%) HTTP
11 39 (9.13%) Wireshark
12 32 (7.49%) BGP
12 32 (7.49%) BIG-IP
12 32 (7.49%) Wi-Fi
13 26 (6.09%) OSPF
14 23 (5.39%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
14 23 (5.39%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 20 (4.68%) SAN
16 18 (4.22%) Wireless
17 17 (3.98%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (4.22%) SQL Server
2 12 (2.81%) Elasticsearch
3 11 (2.58%) PostgreSQL
4 4 (0.94%) MongoDB
5 1 (0.23%) Amazon Aurora
5 1 (0.23%) Amazon RDS
5 1 (0.23%) Apache Cassandra
5 1 (0.23%) Apache Hive
5 1 (0.23%) Big Data
5 1 (0.23%) Electronic Patient Records
5 1 (0.23%) Impala
5 1 (0.23%) MySQL
5 1 (0.23%) NoSQL
5 1 (0.23%) Oracle Database
5 1 (0.23%) Oracle Reports
5 1 (0.23%) Power BI
5 1 (0.23%) Redis
5 1 (0.23%) Relational Database
5 1 (0.23%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 40 (9.37%) Git
2 35 (8.20%) GitLab
3 34 (7.96%) Jenkins
4 29 (6.79%) JIRA
5 26 (6.09%) Fiddler
6 13 (3.04%) Eclipse
6 13 (3.04%) Visual Studio
7 6 (1.41%) Bitbucket
8 5 (1.17%) SonarQube
8 5 (1.17%) Subversion
9 4 (0.94%) CircleCI
9 4 (0.94%) TeamCity
10 3 (0.70%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.47%) Maven
11 2 (0.47%) Robot Framework
12 1 (0.23%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.23%) Cucumber
12 1 (0.23%) GCC
12 1 (0.23%) Postman
12 1 (0.23%) Travis CI
General
1 140 (32.79%) Social Skills
2 67 (15.69%) Analytical Skills
3 41 (9.60%) Public Sector
4 35 (8.20%) Finance
5 32 (7.49%) Banking
6 26 (6.09%) Military
7 23 (5.39%) Investment Banking
8 16 (3.75%) Presentation Skills
9 10 (2.34%) Documentation Skills
10 9 (2.11%) Front Office
10 9 (2.11%) Telecoms
11 7 (1.64%) Organisational Skills
12 6 (1.41%) Legal
12 6 (1.41%) Local Government
13 5 (1.17%) Law
14 4 (0.94%) Financial Institution
15 3 (0.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 3 (0.70%) Manufacturing
16 2 (0.47%) French Language
16 2 (0.47%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 96 (22.48%) Network Engineer
2 61 (14.29%) Analyst
3 58 (13.58%) Support Engineer
4 52 (12.18%) Senior
5 49 (11.48%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 29 (6.79%) IT Support
7 25 (5.85%) Web Engineer
8 24 (5.62%) IT Engineer
9 21 (4.92%) 2nd Line Support
9 21 (4.92%) Architect
9 21 (4.92%) SOC Analyst
10 20 (4.68%) Developer
11 17 (3.98%) Junior
12 16 (3.75%) DevOps Engineer
12 16 (3.75%) Lead
12 16 (3.75%) Technical Analyst
12 16 (3.75%) Technical Support
13 15 (3.51%) IT Support Engineer
13 15 (3.51%) Security Engineer
13 15 (3.51%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (3.98%) Web Services
2 14 (3.28%) Middleware
2 14 (3.28%) Node.js
3 11 (2.58%) REST
4 8 (1.87%) LDAP
4 8 (1.87%) SOAP
5 7 (1.64%) OpenID
6 5 (1.17%) FIX Protocol
6 5 (1.17%) Kafka
6 5 (1.17%) SAML
7 4 (0.94%) .NET
7 4 (0.94%) AngularJS
7 4 (0.94%) React
7 4 (0.94%) Ultra Messaging
8 3 (0.70%) 802.1X
8 3 (0.70%) ASP.NET Web API
8 3 (0.70%) Bootstrap
8 3 (0.70%) Express.js
8 3 (0.70%) JSON
8 3 (0.70%) WCF
Miscellaneous
1 31 (7.26%) Management Information System
2 29 (6.79%) Data Centre
3 25 (5.85%) Onboarding
4 21 (4.92%) Security Operations Centre
5 19 (4.45%) Cyberattack
6 18 (4.22%) Analytical Mindset
7 15 (3.51%) Public Cloud
8 13 (3.04%) Private Cloud
9 12 (2.81%) CMDB
9 12 (2.81%) Driving Licence
10 11 (2.58%) Cyber Threat
10 11 (2.58%) NHS
11 10 (2.34%) PKI
12 9 (2.11%) Replication
13 8 (1.87%) Enterprise Software
13 8 (1.87%) Self-Motivation
14 7 (1.64%) Clustering
15 6 (1.41%) Grid Computing
15 6 (1.41%) Security Posture
16 5 (1.17%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 190 (44.50%) Windows
2 138 (32.32%) Linux
3 47 (11.01%) Windows Server
4 33 (7.73%) Windows 10
5 21 (4.92%) Unix
6 13 (3.04%) Android
7 12 (2.81%) Windows Server 2019
8 9 (2.11%) Windows Server 2016
9 8 (1.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 6 (1.41%) Apple iOS
10 6 (1.41%) Mac OS
10 6 (1.41%) Ubuntu
10 6 (1.41%) Windows Server 2012
11 5 (1.17%) VMS
12 4 (0.94%) CentOS
12 4 (0.94%) Solaris
12 4 (0.94%) Windows Server 2003
12 4 (0.94%) zOS
13 3 (0.70%) Debian
14 2 (0.47%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 114 (26.70%) Problem-Solving
2 62 (14.52%) CI/CD
3 60 (14.05%) DevOps
3 60 (14.05%) Incident Response
4 59 (13.82%) ITIL
5 58 (13.58%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 55 (12.88%) Cybersecurity
7 54 (12.65%) Agile
7 54 (12.65%) SIEM
8 47 (11.01%) Infrastructure as Code
9 44 (10.30%) Load Balancing
10 40 (9.37%) Root Cause Analysis
11 38 (8.90%) High Availability
12 34 (7.96%) Infrastructure Automation
12 34 (7.96%) Security Operations
13 32 (7.49%) Migration
14 30 (7.03%) Mentoring
15 29 (6.79%) Continuous Improvement
15 29 (6.79%) Disaster Recovery
15 29 (6.79%) Knowledge Transfer
Programming Languages
1 127 (29.74%) Python
2 79 (18.50%) PowerShell
3 70 (16.39%) Bash
4 22 (5.15%) Perl
5 21 (4.92%) SQL
6 19 (4.45%) C++
7 18 (4.22%) C#
7 18 (4.22%) JavaScript
8 14 (3.28%) Java
9 11 (2.58%) Shell Script
10 7 (1.64%) Go
11 5 (1.17%) C
12 3 (0.70%) Kusto Query Language
12 3 (0.70%) Search Processing Language
12 3 (0.70%) T-SQL
13 2 (0.47%) Ruby
14 1 (0.23%) Bicep
14 1 (0.23%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.23%) TypeScript
14 1 (0.23%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 143 (33.49%) Security Cleared
2 106 (24.82%) SC Cleared
3 42 (9.84%) Degree
3 42 (9.84%) DV Cleared
4 38 (8.90%) Cisco Certification
5 30 (7.03%) CCNP
6 23 (5.39%) CompTIA Security+
7 22 (5.15%) Microsoft Certification
8 19 (4.45%) Network+ Certification
9 18 (4.22%) CCNA
9 18 (4.22%) Computer Science Degree
10 17 (3.98%) Azure Certification
11 16 (3.75%) CompTIA CySA+
12 11 (2.58%) CISSP
12 11 (2.58%) Server+ Certification
13 10 (2.34%) JNCIS
13 10 (2.34%) MCP
14 7 (1.64%) CCIE
15 6 (1.41%) ECDL
16 5 (1.17%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (3.75%) GDPR
2 9 (2.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 8 (1.87%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 8 (1.87%) SLA
4 5 (1.17%) NIST
5 4 (0.94%) HIPAA
5 4 (0.94%) NCSC
6 2 (0.47%) Disclosure Scotland
6 2 (0.47%) PCI DSS
6 2 (0.47%) QA
7 1 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.23%) Cyber Essentials
7 1 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
7 1 (0.23%) GRC
7 1 (0.23%) RMADS
7 1 (0.23%) SOC 2
System Software
1 85 (19.91%) Active Directory
2 61 (14.29%) VMware Infrastructure
3 51 (11.94%) Docker
4 25 (5.85%) Hyper-V
5 15 (3.51%) Firmware
6 9 (2.11%) VMware NSX
6 9 (2.11%) vSphere
7 8 (1.87%) Virtual Machines
8 7 (1.64%) Lustre
8 7 (1.64%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 7 (1.64%) VMware ESXi
9 6 (1.41%) GPFS
10 5 (1.17%) KVM
10 5 (1.17%) NDS
10 5 (1.17%) NetIQ eDirectory
10 5 (1.17%) NFS
10 5 (1.17%) Squid
10 5 (1.17%) Virtual Desktop
11 4 (0.94%) Veritas File System
11 4 (0.94%) Veritas Volume Manager
Systems Management
1 93 (21.78%) Ansible
2 60 (14.05%) Terraform
3 37 (8.67%) SCCM
4 35 (8.20%) Kubernetes
5 30 (7.03%) Microsoft Intune
6 18 (4.22%) Grafana
7 15 (3.51%) Prometheus
8 14 (3.28%) FortiGate
8 14 (3.28%) Single Sign-On
9 9 (2.11%) Puppet
9 9 (2.11%) QRadar
10 8 (1.87%) WSUS
11 7 (1.64%) Nagios
11 7 (1.64%) Red Hat Satellite
12 6 (1.41%) Consul
13 5 (1.17%) Tivoli NetView
14 4 (0.94%) Iperf
14 4 (0.94%) ITRS Geneos
14 4 (0.94%) Nmap
14 4 (0.94%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 123 (28.81%) Microsoft
2 85 (19.91%) VMware
3 80 (18.74%) F5
4 64 (14.99%) Cisco
5 55 (12.88%) Palo Alto
6 43 (10.07%) Splunk
7 38 (8.90%) CheckPoint
8 31 (7.26%) Blue Coat
9 28 (6.56%) McAfee
10 22 (5.15%) Fortinet
10 22 (5.15%) NetApp
10 22 (5.15%) SolarWinds
11 21 (4.92%) ServiceNow
12 20 (4.68%) Juniper
12 20 (4.68%) Red Hat
13 16 (3.75%) Meraki
13 16 (3.75%) Oracle
14 13 (3.04%) Citrix
14 13 (3.04%) Veeam
15 12 (2.81%) Zscaler