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 14 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 268 234 246
Rank change year-on-year -34 +12 -15
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 490 369 354
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.92% 1.12% 0.91%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 9.76% 9.46% 7.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 259 209 224
10th Percentile £206 £200 £203
25th Percentile £313 £356 £262
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +11.11% -5.26%
75th Percentile £572 £600 £564
90th Percentile £675 £653 £625
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £450
% change year-on-year +5.56% - +12.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 30 32
10th Percentile £26.54 £20.62 £31.63
25th Percentile £31.25 £42.53 £63.44
Median hourly rate £64.24 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -1.17% - +28.92%
75th Percentile £72.01 - -
90th Percentile £98.82 £83.66 £67.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.24 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -1.17% - +114.88%

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 5,018 3,900 4,752
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.40% 11.85% 12.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,969 2,381 2,887
10th Percentile £250 £250 £220
25th Percentile £400 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.16% -5.00% +9.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 365 202 321
10th Percentile £15.21 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £20.00
Median hourly rate £26.14 £46.88 £49.00
Median % change year-on-year -44.23% -4.34% -9.26%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £82.03 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.14 £45.00 £54.88
% change year-on-year -41.91% -18.00% -3.58%

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 14 August 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 14 August 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 14 August 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 -29 456 £498 -0.50% 449
UK excluding London -17 278 £475 +5.56% 254
London -39 189 £483 -14.22% 239
Work from Home -53 113 £515 -6.36% 125
South East -30 83 £523 +16.11% 80
North of England -43 82 £475 -6.17% 55
North West -15 52 £425 -15.84% 26
South West -8 46 £644 +4.04% 33
Midlands -25 42 £402 -5.63% 31
West Midlands -34 34 £406 +1.31% 22
East of England -19 30 £375 -28.57% 26
Yorkshire -47 26 £500 -1.23% 17
Scotland -10 9 £425 +1.31% 19
East Midlands -16 8 £402 -26.91% 9
Wales -12 7 £408 +126.39% 6
North East -41 4 £438 +2.94% 14

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 46 (9.39%) SharePoint
2 24 (4.90%) Microsoft Exchange
3 12 (2.45%) Confluence
4 9 (1.84%) OpenStack
5 7 (1.43%) nginx
6 4 (0.82%) FactoryTalk
6 4 (0.82%) WebSphere
7 3 (0.61%) IIS
8 2 (0.41%) CICS
8 2 (0.41%) IBM HTTP Server
8 2 (0.41%) Oracle HTTP Server
8 2 (0.41%) WebSphere Application Server
8 2 (0.41%) WebSphere Portal
9 1 (0.20%) Traefik
Applications
1 31 (6.33%) Microsoft Office
2 16 (3.27%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (1.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (1.63%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.41%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.41%) Houdini
5 2 (0.41%) NUKE
6 1 (0.20%) Weka
Business Applications
1 7 (1.43%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 168 (34.29%) Azure
2 117 (23.88%) AWS
3 111 (22.65%) Microsoft 365
4 73 (14.90%) Entra ID
5 37 (7.55%) GCP
6 35 (7.14%) OneDrive
7 25 (5.10%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 21 (4.29%) GitHub
9 13 (2.65%) OpenShift
9 13 (2.65%) Route 53
10 12 (2.45%) Amazon EC2
11 11 (2.24%) AWS CloudFormation
11 11 (2.24%) Azure Monitor
11 11 (2.24%) Google Workspace
12 10 (2.04%) GitHub Actions
13 9 (1.84%) Amazon EKS
14 8 (1.63%) Akamai
14 8 (1.63%) Azure Sentinel
15 7 (1.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 7 (1.43%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 287 (58.57%) DNS
2 214 (43.67%) Firewall
3 176 (35.92%) DHCP
4 146 (29.80%) VPN
5 91 (18.57%) Network Security
6 90 (18.37%) WAN
7 80 (16.33%) LAN
8 75 (15.31%) VLAN
9 74 (15.10%) HTTP
10 72 (14.69%) BGP
11 58 (11.84%) SSL
12 45 (9.18%) Wi-Fi
13 44 (8.98%) OSPF
14 43 (8.78%) BIG-IP
15 39 (7.96%) Wireless
16 38 (7.76%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 34 (6.94%) Ethernet
18 27 (5.51%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
19 26 (5.31%) SD-WAN
20 23 (4.69%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (3.27%) SQL Server
2 9 (1.84%) PostgreSQL
3 5 (1.02%) MySQL
3 5 (1.02%) NoSQL
4 4 (0.82%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (0.82%) MongoDB
5 3 (0.61%) Redis
6 2 (0.41%) BigQuery
6 2 (0.41%) Elasticsearch
6 2 (0.41%) SQLite
7 1 (0.20%) Cloud Spanner
7 1 (0.20%) KDB
Development Applications
1 45 (9.18%) JIRA
2 28 (5.71%) Git
3 25 (5.10%) Jenkins
4 20 (4.08%) GitLab
5 17 (3.47%) Fiddler
6 14 (2.86%) Visual Studio
7 13 (2.65%) Eclipse
8 10 (2.04%) Browser DevTools
9 8 (1.63%) Sonatype Nexus
10 5 (1.02%) Artifactory
11 3 (0.61%) Bitbucket
12 2 (0.41%) Introscope
12 2 (0.41%) Selenium
12 2 (0.41%) Subversion
13 1 (0.20%) MSI
13 1 (0.20%) Postman
13 1 (0.20%) SonarQube
General
1 200 (40.82%) Social Skills
2 72 (14.69%) Analytical Skills
3 65 (13.27%) Finance
4 44 (8.98%) Banking
5 30 (6.12%) Public Sector
6 23 (4.69%) Telecoms
7 22 (4.49%) Investment Banking
8 17 (3.47%) Presentation Skills
9 16 (3.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 16 (3.27%) Military
10 13 (2.65%) Documentation Skills
11 10 (2.04%) Front Office
12 6 (1.22%) Manufacturing
12 6 (1.22%) Pharmaceutical
13 5 (1.02%) Aerospace
13 5 (1.02%) Legal
13 5 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
13 5 (1.02%) Police
14 4 (0.82%) Automotive
15 3 (0.61%) Retail
Job Titles
1 111 (22.65%) Network Engineer
2 60 (12.24%) Support Engineer
3 57 (11.63%) Senior
4 52 (10.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 40 (8.16%) IT Support
6 38 (7.76%) Architect
7 34 (6.94%) Analyst
7 34 (6.94%) IT Engineer
8 27 (5.51%) IT Support Engineer
9 24 (4.90%) Security Engineer
9 24 (4.90%) Web Engineer
10 23 (4.69%) Platform Engineer
11 22 (4.49%) Senior Network Engineer
12 21 (4.29%) Systems Engineer
13 19 (3.88%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
14 18 (3.67%) IP Network Engineer
15 17 (3.47%) Technical Engineer
16 16 (3.27%) Blue Coat Engineer
17 15 (3.06%) Cloud Engineer
17 15 (3.06%) Network Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (4.08%) SAML
2 15 (3.06%) REST
3 13 (2.65%) Node.js
3 13 (2.65%) Web Services
4 12 (2.45%) 802.1X
4 12 (2.45%) JSON
5 11 (2.24%) ARM Templates
6 10 (2.04%) LDAP
7 9 (1.84%) .NET
8 6 (1.22%) NETCONF
8 6 (1.22%) OpenConfig
8 6 (1.22%) RESTCONF
8 6 (1.22%) XML
8 6 (1.22%) YANG
9 5 (1.02%) HTML
9 5 (1.02%) Kafka
9 5 (1.02%) OAuth
9 5 (1.02%) OpenID
9 5 (1.02%) RESTful
10 4 (0.82%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 80 (16.33%) Data Centre
2 57 (11.63%) Onboarding
3 32 (6.53%) PKI
4 30 (6.12%) Hybrid Cloud
5 27 (5.51%) Management Information System
6 24 (4.90%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 19 (3.88%) Linux Command Line
8 17 (3.47%) Driving Licence
8 17 (3.47%) Public Cloud
9 16 (3.27%) Operational Technology
10 15 (3.06%) Self-Motivation
11 14 (2.86%) Robotics
12 13 (2.65%) SCADA
12 13 (2.65%) Security Posture
13 12 (2.45%) Cloud Native
14 11 (2.24%) Cyber Threat
15 10 (2.04%) Analytical Mindset
15 10 (2.04%) Industry 4.0
16 9 (1.84%) Private Cloud
16 9 (1.84%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 220 (44.90%) Windows
2 135 (27.55%) Linux
3 67 (13.67%) Windows Server
4 36 (7.35%) Windows 10
5 35 (7.14%) Mac OS
6 23 (4.69%) Unix
7 16 (3.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 15 (3.06%) Apple iOS
9 13 (2.65%) Ubuntu
10 11 (2.24%) Android
11 5 (1.02%) zOS
12 4 (0.82%) Windows Server 2012
13 3 (0.61%) CentOS
13 3 (0.61%) Check Point GAiA
14 2 (0.41%) Oracle Linux
14 2 (0.41%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
14 2 (0.41%) Windows Server 2016
14 2 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
15 1 (0.20%) Data ONTAP
15 1 (0.20%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 135 (27.55%) Problem-Solving
2 103 (21.02%) ITIL
3 81 (16.53%) CI/CD
4 76 (15.51%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 69 (14.08%) Infrastructure as Code
6 63 (12.86%) Agile
7 62 (12.65%) DevOps
8 61 (12.45%) Load Balancing
9 59 (12.04%) Cybersecurity
10 57 (11.63%) Customer Service
11 53 (10.82%) ITSM
12 49 (10.00%) High Availability
12 49 (10.00%) Migration
13 48 (9.80%) Incident Response
14 46 (9.39%) Continuous Improvement
14 46 (9.39%) SIEM
14 46 (9.39%) Technical Leadership
15 44 (8.98%) Service Management
15 44 (8.98%) Validation
16 42 (8.57%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 143 (29.18%) Python
2 95 (19.39%) PowerShell
3 81 (16.53%) Bash
4 28 (5.71%) C++
5 24 (4.90%) JavaScript
6 19 (3.88%) SQL
7 17 (3.47%) C#
8 12 (2.45%) Java
9 9 (1.84%) Bicep
9 9 (1.84%) Perl
9 9 (1.84%) Shell Script
10 7 (1.43%) VBA
11 5 (1.02%) ActionScript
12 4 (0.82%) C
12 4 (0.82%) Go
13 2 (0.41%) Jython
13 2 (0.41%) Korn
13 2 (0.41%) Objective-C
13 2 (0.41%) Ruby
13 2 (0.41%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 137 (27.96%) Security Cleared
2 89 (18.16%) SC Cleared
3 74 (15.10%) Degree
4 62 (12.65%) Cisco Certification
5 49 (10.00%) DV Cleared
6 46 (9.39%) CCNP
7 30 (6.12%) CCNA
8 27 (5.51%) Microsoft Certification
9 21 (4.29%) Computer Science Degree
10 16 (3.27%) CCIE
10 16 (3.27%) Network+ Certification
11 15 (3.06%) CISSP
12 12 (2.45%) Azure Certification
12 12 (2.45%) VCAP
13 11 (2.24%) A+ Certification
14 10 (2.04%) AWS Certification
15 7 (1.43%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 7 (1.43%) MCSA
15 7 (1.43%) MCSE
15 7 (1.43%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (4.08%) SLA
2 11 (2.24%) NIST
2 11 (2.24%) QA
3 9 (1.84%) NCSC
4 8 (1.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 5 (1.02%) GDPR
6 4 (0.82%) 21 CFR Part 11
6 4 (0.82%) GxP
6 4 (0.82%) NIST 800
6 4 (0.82%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.41%) Government Security Classifications
7 2 (0.41%) JSP 440
8 1 (0.20%) ISO 8583
8 1 (0.20%) RMADS
System Software
1 139 (28.37%) Active Directory
2 92 (18.78%) VMware Infrastructure
3 34 (6.94%) Hyper-V
4 29 (5.92%) Docker
5 25 (5.10%) vSphere
6 23 (4.69%) VMware NSX
7 18 (3.67%) Firmware
8 12 (2.45%) Virtual Desktop
9 6 (1.22%) Squid
10 4 (0.82%) NFS
10 4 (0.82%) VMware ESXi
11 3 (0.61%) Virtual Machines
11 3 (0.61%) VirtualBox
12 2 (0.41%) KVM
12 2 (0.41%) RACF
13 1 (0.20%) Citrix Presentation Server
13 1 (0.20%) GPFS
13 1 (0.20%) iptables
13 1 (0.20%) NetIQ eDirectory
13 1 (0.20%) Snort
Systems Management
1 102 (20.82%) Ansible
2 86 (17.55%) Terraform
3 54 (11.02%) Microsoft Intune
4 48 (9.80%) Kubernetes
5 28 (5.71%) SCCM
6 24 (4.90%) Single Sign-On
7 23 (4.69%) Grafana
8 19 (3.88%) FortiGate
9 16 (3.27%) VxRail
10 12 (2.45%) Prometheus
11 11 (2.24%) Jamf Pro
12 9 (1.84%) WSUS
13 6 (1.22%) systemd
14 5 (1.02%) Suricata
15 4 (0.82%) Consul
15 4 (0.82%) Istio
16 3 (0.61%) CASB
16 3 (0.61%) Puppet
16 3 (0.61%) SELinux
16 3 (0.61%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 184 (37.55%) Microsoft
2 104 (21.22%) VMware
3 94 (19.18%) Cisco
4 63 (12.86%) F5
5 54 (11.02%) ServiceNow
6 31 (6.33%) Fortinet
7 26 (5.31%) Google
8 25 (5.10%) Juniper
8 25 (5.10%) Zscaler
9 23 (4.69%) Palo Alto
10 21 (4.29%) Blue Coat
10 21 (4.29%) Citrix
11 19 (3.88%) NetApp
12 18 (3.67%) CheckPoint
12 18 (3.67%) Infoblox
12 18 (3.67%) McAfee
13 16 (3.27%) Red Hat
13 16 (3.27%) Splunk
14 12 (2.45%) Bloomberg
14 12 (2.45%) Siemens