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 20 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 279 227 285
Rank change year-on-year -52 +58 -40
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 410 352 334
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.85% 1.21% 0.78%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 8.92% 9.52% 6.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 234 249 226
10th Percentile £223 £225 £188
25th Percentile £365 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £453 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -9.40% - +2.56%
75th Percentile £550 £625 £575
90th Percentile £638 £775 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £456 £488 £494
% change year-on-year -6.46% -1.27% +9.72%
Number of hourly rates quoted 33 9 21
10th Percentile £21.25 £17.87 £16.00
25th Percentile £26.25 £28.00 £20.00
Median hourly rate £41.94 £54.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.05% -16.15% +10.35%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 -
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £62.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year -32.90% -3.85% +3.92%

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 4,594 3,697 5,396
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.54% 12.67% 12.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,838 2,286 3,217
10th Percentile £263 £213 £205
25th Percentile £400 £358 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £485 £490
Median % change year-on-year +2.06% -1.02% -5.31%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £694
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £455 £475
% change year-on-year +4.40% -4.21% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 254 162 417
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.52 £36.57 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.88% -8.57% +116.22%
75th Percentile £65.88 £58.73 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £26.25 £45.88
% change year-on-year +59.77% -42.79% +151.88%

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 20 May 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 20 May 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 20 May 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 -53 349 £470 -6.00% 217
UK excluding London -15 249 £456 -6.46% 190
London -61 127 £475 -2.56% 60
North of England -11 90 £450 +20.00% 43
Work from Home -82 89 £450 -18.23% 79
South East -45 58 £510 +13.33% 67
North West -1 57 £540 +116.00% 24
East of England -15 37 £175 -59.30% 26
Midlands -48 33 £400 -27.27% 21
West Midlands -31 30 £388 -29.55% 17
Yorkshire -43 28 £447 -12.78% 15
Scotland +4 26 £425 -3.95% 15
South West -41 18 £500 -18.70% 21
Wales -11 7 £408 -9.44% 6
North East -21 5 £306 +22.50% 5
East Midlands -33 3 £625 +13.64% 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 17 (4.15%) Confluence
2 11 (2.68%) SharePoint
3 10 (2.44%) nginx
4 8 (1.95%) Microsoft Exchange
5 4 (0.98%) IIS
5 4 (0.98%) WebSphere
6 3 (0.73%) Apache
7 2 (0.49%) CICS
7 2 (0.49%) IBM HTTP Server
7 2 (0.49%) OpenStack
7 2 (0.49%) Oracle HTTP Server
7 2 (0.49%) WebSphere Application Server
7 2 (0.49%) WebSphere Portal
8 1 (0.24%) Traefik
Applications
1 28 (6.83%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (2.20%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.98%) Acrobat
4 3 (0.73%) Microsoft Excel
4 3 (0.73%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.24%) Weka
Business Applications
1 1 (0.24%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 91 (22.20%) AWS
2 90 (21.95%) Azure
3 64 (15.61%) Microsoft 365
4 26 (6.34%) Entra ID
4 26 (6.34%) GCP
5 25 (6.10%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 17 (4.15%) Amazon EC2
7 16 (3.90%) Amazon EKS
8 15 (3.66%) Amazon S3
9 14 (3.41%) Route 53
10 13 (3.17%) AWS Lambda
10 13 (3.17%) OneDrive
10 13 (3.17%) Serverless
11 10 (2.44%) GitHub
12 7 (1.71%) Azure DevOps
12 7 (1.71%) Google Workspace
12 7 (1.71%) Nutanix
12 7 (1.71%) SaaS
13 6 (1.46%) Akamai
13 6 (1.46%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 230 (56.10%) DNS
2 143 (34.88%) Firewall
3 97 (23.66%) VPN
4 95 (23.17%) DHCP
5 73 (17.80%) WAN
6 71 (17.32%) HTTP
7 68 (16.59%) SSL
8 66 (16.10%) LAN
8 66 (16.10%) Network Security
9 57 (13.90%) VLAN
10 54 (13.17%) BGP
11 50 (12.20%) BIG-IP
12 44 (10.73%) OSPF
13 34 (8.29%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 32 (7.80%) Wi-Fi
15 31 (7.56%) Ethernet
15 31 (7.56%) Wireshark
16 27 (6.59%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 18 (4.39%) Wireless
18 15 (3.66%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (2.93%) Elasticsearch
1 12 (2.93%) SQL Server
2 7 (1.71%) PostgreSQL
3 5 (1.22%) MongoDB
4 3 (0.73%) Amazon RDS
5 2 (0.49%) MySQL
6 1 (0.24%) Amazon Aurora
6 1 (0.24%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (0.24%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 41 (10.00%) JIRA
2 27 (6.59%) Fiddler
3 22 (5.37%) GitLab
4 19 (4.63%) Git
5 13 (3.17%) Jenkins
6 12 (2.93%) Eclipse
6 12 (2.93%) Visual Studio
7 9 (2.20%) Browser DevTools
8 7 (1.71%) Bitbucket
8 7 (1.71%) SonarQube
9 4 (0.98%) CircleCI
9 4 (0.98%) Sonatype Nexus
10 3 (0.73%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.49%) Introscope
11 2 (0.49%) Subversion
12 1 (0.24%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.24%) Postman
12 1 (0.24%) Travis CI
General
1 135 (32.93%) Social Skills
2 55 (13.41%) Finance
3 48 (11.71%) Analytical Skills
4 39 (9.51%) Banking
5 29 (7.07%) Public Sector
6 23 (5.61%) Investment Banking
7 22 (5.37%) Presentation Skills
8 20 (4.88%) Military
9 18 (4.39%) Documentation Skills
9 18 (4.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 10 (2.44%) Telecoms
11 6 (1.46%) Front Office
12 5 (1.22%) Law
13 3 (0.73%) French Language
13 3 (0.73%) Manufacturing
13 3 (0.73%) Marketing
13 3 (0.73%) Organisational Skills
14 2 (0.49%) Aviation
14 2 (0.49%) Japanese Language
14 2 (0.49%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 104 (25.37%) Network Engineer
2 49 (11.95%) Analyst
3 35 (8.54%) Web Engineer
4 31 (7.56%) Support Engineer
5 30 (7.32%) Senior
6 26 (6.34%) Architect
6 26 (6.34%) Security Engineer
7 23 (5.61%) IT Support
8 21 (5.12%) Technical Engineer
9 20 (4.88%) IP Network Engineer
9 20 (4.88%) SOC Analyst
10 18 (4.39%) Blue Coat Engineer
10 18 (4.39%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 17 (4.15%) IT Engineer
11 17 (4.15%) Systems Engineer
12 16 (3.90%) Junior
13 15 (3.66%) Lead
14 13 (3.17%) Integration Engineer
15 12 (2.93%) Junior Network Engineer
15 12 (2.93%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (5.37%) LDAP
2 15 (3.66%) SAML
3 14 (3.41%) Web Services
4 12 (2.93%) Node.js
4 12 (2.93%) OpenID
5 11 (2.68%) JSON
6 10 (2.44%) 802.1X
7 8 (1.95%) REST
8 5 (1.22%) Kafka
8 5 (1.22%) OAuth
8 5 (1.22%) XML
9 4 (0.98%) Middleware
10 3 (0.73%) .NET
10 3 (0.73%) ARM Templates
10 3 (0.73%) Elastic Stack
10 3 (0.73%) HTML
10 3 (0.73%) NETCONF
10 3 (0.73%) OpenConfig
10 3 (0.73%) RESTCONF
10 3 (0.73%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 35 (8.54%) Data Centre
2 30 (7.32%) Onboarding
3 24 (5.85%) Management Information System
4 23 (5.61%) Security Operations Centre
5 21 (5.12%) Cyberattack
6 15 (3.66%) Cyber Threat
6 15 (3.66%) Industry 4.0
6 15 (3.66%) Robotics
7 13 (3.17%) Security Posture
8 11 (2.68%) Enterprise Software
9 10 (2.44%) Public Cloud
10 8 (1.95%) Data Protection Act
10 8 (1.95%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 8 (1.95%) Driving Licence
10 8 (1.95%) Mainframe
11 7 (1.71%) PKI
12 6 (1.46%) NHS
12 6 (1.46%) Private Cloud
12 6 (1.46%) Self-Motivation
13 5 (1.22%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 168 (40.98%) Windows
2 92 (22.44%) Linux
3 48 (11.71%) Windows Server
4 21 (5.12%) Mac OS
5 15 (3.66%) Unix
5 15 (3.66%) Windows 10
6 11 (2.68%) Android
7 10 (2.44%) Apple iOS
7 10 (2.44%) Windows Server 2012
8 8 (1.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 8 (1.95%) zOS
9 7 (1.71%) Windows Server 2019
10 6 (1.46%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.98%) Windows Server 2016
12 3 (0.73%) Debian
12 3 (0.73%) Windows 7
12 3 (0.73%) Windows Server 2003
13 2 (0.49%) AIX
13 2 (0.49%) CentOS
13 2 (0.49%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 116 (28.29%) Problem-Solving
2 65 (15.85%) ITIL
3 54 (13.17%) Incident Response
4 49 (11.95%) Cybersecurity
5 48 (11.71%) Load Balancing
5 48 (11.71%) SIEM
6 47 (11.46%) Agile
7 43 (10.49%) DevOps
8 39 (9.51%) Security Operations
9 38 (9.27%) Migration
10 35 (8.54%) CI/CD
11 33 (8.05%) Customer Service
11 33 (8.05%) Validation
12 31 (7.56%) High Availability
12 31 (7.56%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 29 (7.07%) Computer Science
13 29 (7.07%) Data Loss Prevention
13 29 (7.07%) Decision-Making
13 29 (7.07%) ITSM
13 29 (7.07%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 88 (21.46%) Python
2 40 (9.76%) Bash
2 40 (9.76%) PowerShell
3 26 (6.34%) JavaScript
4 19 (4.63%) SQL
5 18 (4.39%) C++
6 15 (3.66%) C#
7 9 (2.20%) Java
8 7 (1.71%) Shell Script
8 7 (1.71%) VBA
9 6 (1.46%) C
9 6 (1.46%) Go
10 5 (1.22%) Perl
11 2 (0.49%) Jython
11 2 (0.49%) Ruby
12 1 (0.24%) Groovy
12 1 (0.24%) T-SQL
12 1 (0.24%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 119 (29.02%) Security Cleared
2 97 (23.66%) SC Cleared
3 69 (16.83%) Degree
4 44 (10.73%) Cisco Certification
5 37 (9.02%) CCNP
6 30 (7.32%) CompTIA Security+
7 29 (7.07%) Computer Science Degree
8 27 (6.59%) DV Cleared
9 23 (5.61%) CCNA
10 18 (4.39%) CISSP
10 18 (4.39%) CompTIA CySA+
11 13 (3.17%) Microsoft Certification
12 9 (2.20%) Azure Certification
12 9 (2.20%) MCSA
13 8 (1.95%) CCIE
13 8 (1.95%) MCSE
13 8 (1.95%) Network+ Certification
14 7 (1.71%) JNCIS
15 5 (1.22%) CISM
16 4 (0.98%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (2.68%) SLA
2 10 (2.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 7 (1.71%) NIST
4 5 (1.22%) GDPR
5 4 (0.98%) QA
6 3 (0.73%) NCSC
7 2 (0.49%) RMADS
8 1 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.24%) GRC
System Software
1 79 (19.27%) Active Directory
2 46 (11.22%) VMware Infrastructure
3 18 (4.39%) Docker
3 18 (4.39%) Firmware
4 13 (3.17%) Squid
5 9 (2.20%) VMware NSX
5 9 (2.20%) vSphere
6 8 (1.95%) Virtual Desktop
6 8 (1.95%) Virtual Machines
7 7 (1.71%) Hyper-V
8 5 (1.22%) KVM
9 4 (0.98%) NFS
10 2 (0.49%) Ceph
10 2 (0.49%) iptables
10 2 (0.49%) Lustre
10 2 (0.49%) RACF
10 2 (0.49%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 2 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.24%) VirtualBox
11 1 (0.24%) Xen
Systems Management
1 66 (16.10%) Ansible
2 36 (8.78%) Terraform
3 32 (7.80%) Kubernetes
4 27 (6.59%) SCCM
5 26 (6.34%) Grafana
6 24 (5.85%) FortiGate
6 24 (5.85%) Microsoft Intune
7 22 (5.37%) Single Sign-On
8 17 (4.15%) Prometheus
9 10 (2.44%) Nagios
9 10 (2.44%) WSUS
10 9 (2.20%) Consul
11 8 (1.95%) QRadar
12 6 (1.46%) CASB
12 6 (1.46%) Tivoli NetView
13 5 (1.22%) Jamf Pro
13 5 (1.22%) Nessus
13 5 (1.22%) Suricata
14 4 (0.98%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 4 (0.98%) Puppet
Vendors
1 101 (24.63%) Microsoft
2 68 (16.59%) F5
3 64 (15.61%) Cisco
3 64 (15.61%) VMware
4 41 (10.00%) Splunk
5 34 (8.29%) ServiceNow
6 32 (7.80%) Blue Coat
7 28 (6.83%) Palo Alto
8 27 (6.59%) McAfee
9 23 (5.61%) Fortinet
10 22 (5.37%) Red Hat
11 21 (5.12%) Citrix
12 20 (4.88%) Juniper
12 20 (4.88%) NetApp
13 17 (4.15%) Siemens
14 16 (3.90%) Zscaler
15 13 (3.17%) Bloomberg
15 13 (3.17%) SolarWinds
16 12 (2.93%) Arista
16 12 (2.93%) CheckPoint