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 11 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 286 222 296
Rank change year-on-year -64 +74 -51
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 425 355 331
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.85% 1.21% 0.76%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 8.89% 9.67% 6.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 233 240 225
10th Percentile £207 £225 £188
25th Percentile £355 £362 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £488
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +2.56% -
75th Percentile £550 £623 £575
90th Percentile £638 £775 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £481
% change year-on-year -5.26% -1.30% +7.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 40 11 22
10th Percentile £21.25 £17.79 £16.25
25th Percentile £25.94 £36.88 £20.81
Median hourly rate £33.86 £62.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -45.82% -3.85% +17.49%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 -
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.22 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -45.82% - +11.84%

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 4,781 3,671 5,438
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.58% 12.50% 12.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,930 2,271 3,228
10th Percentile £263 £220 £206
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £485 £498
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -2.51% -2.93%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £476 £469 £483
% change year-on-year +1.39% -2.95% +1.74%
Number of hourly rates quoted 284 165 420
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.14 £18.13 £16.30
Median hourly rate £27.50 £44.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -37.50% +10.00% +113.73%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.13 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.18 £80.61 £70.72
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £31.79 £47.50
% change year-on-year +2.23% -33.07% +156.76%

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 11 June 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 11 June 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 11 June 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 -56 364 £465 -7.00% 213
UK excluding London -33 246 £450 -5.26% 197
London -60 142 £475 +2.70% 46
Work from Home -73 102 £450 -18.27% 71
North of England -34 92 £450 +12.50% 42
North West -5 54 £525 +110.00% 26
South East -42 52 £500 +11.11% 65
East of England -12 36 £350 -18.60% 29
Midlands -49 34 £400 -27.27% 27
Yorkshire -47 33 £449 -10.30% 11
West Midlands -38 31 £388 -29.55% 18
Scotland -2 24 £537 +24.77% 11
South West -22 22 £500 -18.70% 26
Wales -11 7 £408 +30.40% 4
North East -26 5 £306 +22.50% 7
East Midlands -32 3 £625 +13.64% 9

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 18 (4.24%) SharePoint
2 16 (3.76%) Confluence
3 11 (2.59%) Microsoft Exchange
4 10 (2.35%) nginx
5 4 (0.94%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.94%) WebSphere
6 3 (0.71%) IIS
7 2 (0.47%) CICS
7 2 (0.47%) IBM HTTP Server
7 2 (0.47%) Oracle HTTP Server
7 2 (0.47%) WebSphere Application Server
7 2 (0.47%) WebSphere Portal
8 1 (0.24%) Traefik
Applications
1 30 (7.06%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (1.65%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (1.65%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.94%) Acrobat
4 3 (0.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.24%) Weka
Business Applications
1 2 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 97 (22.82%) Azure
2 91 (21.41%) AWS
3 79 (18.59%) Microsoft 365
4 32 (7.53%) Entra ID
5 28 (6.59%) GCP
5 28 (6.59%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 20 (4.71%) OneDrive
7 17 (4.00%) GitHub
8 16 (3.76%) Amazon EC2
9 15 (3.53%) Amazon EKS
9 15 (3.53%) Amazon S3
10 14 (3.29%) Route 53
11 13 (3.06%) AWS Lambda
11 13 (3.06%) Serverless
12 11 (2.59%) Google Workspace
13 7 (1.65%) Azure DevOps
13 7 (1.65%) Nutanix
13 7 (1.65%) SaaS
14 6 (1.41%) Akamai
14 6 (1.41%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 237 (55.76%) DNS
2 147 (34.59%) Firewall
3 100 (23.53%) DHCP
4 97 (22.82%) VPN
5 71 (16.71%) WAN
6 69 (16.24%) HTTP
6 69 (16.24%) SSL
7 64 (15.06%) LAN
7 64 (15.06%) Network Security
8 56 (13.18%) VLAN
9 54 (12.71%) BIG-IP
10 53 (12.47%) BGP
11 38 (8.94%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
11 38 (8.94%) OSPF
12 37 (8.71%) Wi-Fi
13 33 (7.76%) Ethernet
14 31 (7.29%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
14 31 (7.29%) Wireshark
15 24 (5.65%) Wireless
16 16 (3.76%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (2.59%) Elasticsearch
1 11 (2.59%) SQL Server
2 8 (1.88%) PostgreSQL
3 5 (1.18%) MongoDB
4 3 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
5 2 (0.47%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.24%) BigQuery
6 1 (0.24%) MySQL
6 1 (0.24%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (0.24%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 46 (10.82%) JIRA
2 25 (5.88%) Fiddler
3 21 (4.94%) GitLab
4 17 (4.00%) Jenkins
5 16 (3.76%) Git
6 13 (3.06%) Eclipse
6 13 (3.06%) Visual Studio
7 9 (2.12%) Browser DevTools
8 7 (1.65%) Bitbucket
8 7 (1.65%) SonarQube
9 4 (0.94%) Sonatype Nexus
10 3 (0.71%) Artifactory
10 3 (0.71%) CircleCI
11 2 (0.47%) Introscope
11 2 (0.47%) Subversion
12 1 (0.24%) Postman
General
1 158 (37.18%) Social Skills
2 60 (14.12%) Finance
3 49 (11.53%) Analytical Skills
4 41 (9.65%) Banking
5 28 (6.59%) Public Sector
6 26 (6.12%) Investment Banking
7 22 (5.18%) Presentation Skills
8 21 (4.94%) Military
9 20 (4.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 17 (4.00%) Documentation Skills
11 9 (2.12%) Telecoms
12 8 (1.88%) Front Office
13 5 (1.18%) Law
14 3 (0.71%) French Language
14 3 (0.71%) Manufacturing
14 3 (0.71%) Marketing
14 3 (0.71%) Organisational Skills
15 2 (0.47%) Games
15 2 (0.47%) Japanese Language
15 2 (0.47%) Legal
Job Titles
1 104 (24.47%) Network Engineer
2 53 (12.47%) Analyst
3 39 (9.18%) Support Engineer
4 33 (7.76%) Web Engineer
5 32 (7.53%) Architect
6 31 (7.29%) IT Support
7 29 (6.82%) Senior
8 26 (6.12%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 24 (5.65%) Security Engineer
10 22 (5.18%) Technical Engineer
11 20 (4.71%) IP Network Engineer
11 20 (4.71%) SOC Analyst
12 19 (4.47%) IT Engineer
12 19 (4.47%) Systems Engineer
13 18 (4.24%) Blue Coat Engineer
14 16 (3.76%) Junior
15 15 (3.53%) IT Support Engineer
15 15 (3.53%) Lead
16 14 (3.29%) Software Engineer
17 13 (3.06%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (4.71%) LDAP
2 18 (4.24%) SAML
3 14 (3.29%) Web Services
4 13 (3.06%) Node.js
5 12 (2.82%) JSON
5 12 (2.82%) OpenID
6 11 (2.59%) 802.1X
7 10 (2.35%) REST
8 6 (1.41%) .NET
9 5 (1.18%) Kafka
9 5 (1.18%) OAuth
10 4 (0.94%) XML
11 3 (0.71%) ARM Templates
11 3 (0.71%) HTML
11 3 (0.71%) Middleware
11 3 (0.71%) WinForms
12 2 (0.47%) .NET Core
12 2 (0.47%) Blazor
12 2 (0.47%) eBPF
12 2 (0.47%) NETCONF
Miscellaneous
1 48 (11.29%) Data Centre
2 44 (10.35%) Onboarding
3 24 (5.65%) Security Operations Centre
4 23 (5.41%) Management Information System
5 21 (4.94%) Cyberattack
6 17 (4.00%) Cyber Threat
7 15 (3.53%) Industry 4.0
7 15 (3.53%) Robotics
8 14 (3.29%) Security Posture
9 10 (2.35%) Driving Licence
9 10 (2.35%) Enterprise Software
10 9 (2.12%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 8 (1.88%) Data Protection Act
11 8 (1.88%) Public Cloud
12 7 (1.65%) PKI
13 6 (1.41%) Cloud Native
13 6 (1.41%) Mainframe
13 6 (1.41%) NHS
13 6 (1.41%) Private Cloud
13 6 (1.41%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 185 (43.53%) Windows
2 94 (22.12%) Linux
3 46 (10.82%) Windows Server
4 33 (7.76%) Mac OS
5 20 (4.71%) Windows 10
6 17 (4.00%) Apple iOS
7 15 (3.53%) Unix
8 12 (2.82%) Android
9 9 (2.12%) Windows Server 2012
10 7 (1.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 6 (1.41%) zOS
12 5 (1.18%) Ubuntu
12 5 (1.18%) Windows Server 2019
13 3 (0.71%) Windows 7
14 2 (0.47%) CentOS
14 2 (0.47%) Oracle Linux
14 2 (0.47%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
14 2 (0.47%) VMS
14 2 (0.47%) Windows Server 2003
14 2 (0.47%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 123 (28.94%) Problem-Solving
2 71 (16.71%) ITIL
3 55 (12.94%) Agile
4 54 (12.71%) Incident Response
5 48 (11.29%) Cybersecurity
5 48 (11.29%) DevOps
5 48 (11.29%) Load Balancing
6 45 (10.59%) CI/CD
7 43 (10.12%) Migration
7 43 (10.12%) SIEM
8 42 (9.88%) Customer Service
8 42 (9.88%) ITSM
9 38 (8.94%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 35 (8.24%) Validation
11 33 (7.76%) High Availability
11 33 (7.76%) Root Cause Analysis
11 33 (7.76%) Security Operations
12 30 (7.06%) Computer Science
13 29 (6.82%) Decision-Making
13 29 (6.82%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 90 (21.18%) Python
2 41 (9.65%) Bash
3 40 (9.41%) PowerShell
4 29 (6.82%) JavaScript
5 20 (4.71%) C++
6 18 (4.24%) SQL
7 17 (4.00%) C#
8 9 (2.12%) Java
8 9 (2.12%) VBA
9 6 (1.41%) Go
10 5 (1.18%) C
10 5 (1.18%) Shell Script
11 4 (0.94%) ActionScript
11 4 (0.94%) Perl
12 2 (0.47%) Jython
12 2 (0.47%) Ruby
13 1 (0.24%) Groovy
13 1 (0.24%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 110 (25.88%) Security Cleared
2 87 (20.47%) SC Cleared
3 78 (18.35%) Degree
4 43 (10.12%) Cisco Certification
5 33 (7.76%) CCNP
6 30 (7.06%) Computer Science Degree
7 29 (6.82%) CompTIA Security+
8 27 (6.35%) CCNA
9 25 (5.88%) DV Cleared
10 19 (4.47%) CISSP
11 18 (4.24%) CompTIA CySA+
12 15 (3.53%) Microsoft Certification
13 9 (2.12%) MCSA
14 8 (1.88%) Azure Certification
14 8 (1.88%) MCSE
14 8 (1.88%) Network+ Certification
15 7 (1.65%) CCIE
16 5 (1.18%) CISM
16 5 (1.18%) JNCIS
17 4 (0.94%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (3.06%) SLA
2 9 (2.12%) NIST
3 8 (1.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 6 (1.41%) QA
5 4 (0.94%) GDPR
6 3 (0.71%) NCSC
7 2 (0.47%) Government Security Classifications
7 2 (0.47%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.47%) RMADS
8 1 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.24%) GRC
System Software
1 90 (21.18%) Active Directory
2 48 (11.29%) VMware Infrastructure
3 18 (4.24%) Firmware
4 17 (4.00%) Docker
5 13 (3.06%) Squid
5 13 (3.06%) Virtual Desktop
6 9 (2.12%) Hyper-V
7 8 (1.88%) vSphere
8 7 (1.65%) VMware NSX
9 5 (1.18%) Virtual Machines
10 4 (0.94%) NFS
11 3 (0.71%) KVM
12 2 (0.47%) RACF
12 2 (0.47%) VirtualBox
13 1 (0.24%) Citrix Presentation Server
13 1 (0.24%) GPFS
13 1 (0.24%) Lustre
13 1 (0.24%) Snort
13 1 (0.24%) Virtual Servers
13 1 (0.24%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 68 (16.00%) Ansible
2 36 (8.47%) Terraform
3 35 (8.24%) Kubernetes
4 28 (6.59%) Microsoft Intune
5 25 (5.88%) Grafana
6 24 (5.65%) FortiGate
6 24 (5.65%) Single Sign-On
7 21 (4.94%) SCCM
8 15 (3.53%) Prometheus
9 11 (2.59%) Jamf Pro
10 10 (2.35%) WSUS
11 9 (2.12%) Consul
12 6 (1.41%) CASB
12 6 (1.41%) QRadar
13 5 (1.18%) Nagios
13 5 (1.18%) Nessus
13 5 (1.18%) Suricata
14 4 (0.94%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 4 (0.94%) Tivoli NetView
15 3 (0.71%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 125 (29.41%) Microsoft
2 69 (16.24%) F5
3 67 (15.76%) Cisco
4 58 (13.65%) VMware
5 43 (10.12%) ServiceNow
6 39 (9.18%) Splunk
7 31 (7.29%) Blue Coat
8 28 (6.59%) Palo Alto
9 25 (5.88%) McAfee
10 23 (5.41%) Citrix
11 22 (5.18%) Fortinet
12 20 (4.71%) NetApp
13 17 (4.00%) Red Hat
13 17 (4.00%) Siemens
13 17 (4.00%) Zscaler
14 16 (3.76%) Juniper
15 14 (3.29%) Google
16 13 (3.06%) Bloomberg
17 12 (2.82%) CheckPoint
18 11 (2.59%) Netskope