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

6 months to
12 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 267 235 260
Rank change year-on-year -32 +25 -30
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 493 368 351
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.92% 1.12% 0.90%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 9.83% 9.38% 7.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 262 208 220
10th Percentile £206 £200 £203
25th Percentile £325 £355 £262
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +11.11% -5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £608 £560
90th Percentile £669 £653 £625
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £450 £450
% change year-on-year +7.78% - +12.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 28 32
10th Percentile £26.13 £20.36 £31.63
25th Percentile £31.25 £38.34 £63.44
Median hourly rate £62.99 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.09% - +28.92%
75th Percentile £70.73 - -
90th Percentile £98.82 £84.99 £67.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.99 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -3.09% - +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 5,015 3,925 4,737
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.40% 11.91% 12.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,970 2,397 2,875
10th Percentile £250 £248 £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 £494 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.95% -5.00% +9.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 361 200 316
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £19.79
Median hourly rate £26.00 £46.88 £49.50
Median % change year-on-year -44.53% -5.30% -5.71%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £83.10 £74.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.14 £45.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year -41.91% -18.18% -2.64%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 -21 459 £500 - 497
UK excluding London -20 282 £485 +7.78% 290
London -43 188 £490 -14.78% 260
Work from Home -60 114 £513 -6.82% 145
South East -28 83 £523 +16.11% 89
North of England -46 83 £488 -2.50% 57
North West -14 54 £475 -0.05% 28
South West -4 44 £594 -4.04% 45
Midlands -29 41 £402 -19.60% 34
East of England -13 35 £375 -28.57% 29
West Midlands -27 33 £406 +1.06% 23
Yorkshire -51 25 £500 - 18
Scotland -10 9 £425 +1.31% 21
East Midlands -4 8 £402 -26.91% 11
Wales -8 7 £408 +126.39% 10
North East -40 4 £438 +2.94% 13

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 45 (9.13%) SharePoint
2 24 (4.87%) Microsoft Exchange
3 12 (2.43%) Confluence
4 9 (1.83%) OpenStack
5 7 (1.42%) nginx
6 4 (0.81%) FactoryTalk
6 4 (0.81%) 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 36 (7.30%) Microsoft Office
2 16 (3.25%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (1.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (1.62%) 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 (1.42%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 167 (33.87%) Azure
2 115 (23.33%) AWS
3 110 (22.31%) Microsoft 365
4 72 (14.60%) Entra ID
5 36 (7.30%) GCP
6 34 (6.90%) OneDrive
7 25 (5.07%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 21 (4.26%) GitHub
9 13 (2.64%) OpenShift
9 13 (2.64%) Route 53
10 12 (2.43%) Amazon EC2
11 11 (2.23%) AWS CloudFormation
11 11 (2.23%) Azure Monitor
11 11 (2.23%) Google Workspace
12 10 (2.03%) GitHub Actions
13 8 (1.62%) Akamai
13 8 (1.62%) Amazon EKS
13 8 (1.62%) Azure Sentinel
14 7 (1.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 7 (1.42%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 286 (58.01%) DNS
2 214 (43.41%) Firewall
3 175 (35.50%) DHCP
4 143 (29.01%) VPN
5 93 (18.86%) Network Security
6 90 (18.26%) WAN
7 80 (16.23%) LAN
8 75 (15.21%) VLAN
9 73 (14.81%) HTTP
10 71 (14.40%) BGP
11 60 (12.17%) SSL
12 43 (8.72%) OSPF
12 43 (8.72%) Wi-Fi
13 42 (8.52%) BIG-IP
14 39 (7.91%) Ethernet
15 38 (7.71%) Wireless
16 37 (7.51%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 26 (5.27%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 26 (5.27%) SD-WAN
18 22 (4.46%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (3.04%) SQL Server
2 9 (1.83%) PostgreSQL
3 5 (1.01%) MySQL
3 5 (1.01%) NoSQL
4 4 (0.81%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (0.81%) 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 44 (8.92%) JIRA
2 27 (5.48%) Git
3 24 (4.87%) Jenkins
4 20 (4.06%) GitLab
5 16 (3.25%) Fiddler
6 14 (2.84%) Visual Studio
7 13 (2.64%) Eclipse
8 10 (2.03%) Browser DevTools
9 8 (1.62%) Sonatype Nexus
10 4 (0.81%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.41%) Bitbucket
11 2 (0.41%) Introscope
11 2 (0.41%) Selenium
11 2 (0.41%) Subversion
12 1 (0.20%) MSI
12 1 (0.20%) Postman
12 1 (0.20%) SonarQube
General
1 202 (40.97%) Social Skills
2 73 (14.81%) Analytical Skills
3 67 (13.59%) Finance
4 42 (8.52%) Banking
5 30 (6.09%) Public Sector
6 23 (4.67%) Telecoms
7 22 (4.46%) Presentation Skills
8 21 (4.26%) Investment Banking
9 20 (4.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 16 (3.25%) Military
11 13 (2.64%) Documentation Skills
12 10 (2.03%) Front Office
13 6 (1.22%) Manufacturing
13 6 (1.22%) Pharmaceutical
14 5 (1.01%) Aerospace
14 5 (1.01%) Legal
14 5 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
15 4 (0.81%) Automotive
15 4 (0.81%) Police
16 3 (0.61%) Retail
Job Titles
1 110 (22.31%) Network Engineer
2 58 (11.76%) Support Engineer
3 54 (10.95%) Senior
4 50 (10.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 38 (7.71%) Architect
5 38 (7.71%) IT Support
6 34 (6.90%) Analyst
7 32 (6.49%) IT Engineer
8 26 (5.27%) Security Engineer
8 26 (5.27%) Systems Engineer
9 25 (5.07%) IT Support Engineer
10 23 (4.67%) Web Engineer
11 22 (4.46%) Technical Engineer
12 21 (4.26%) Platform Engineer
13 20 (4.06%) Senior Network Engineer
14 19 (3.85%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 17 (3.45%) IP Network Engineer
16 15 (3.04%) Blue Coat Engineer
16 15 (3.04%) Software Engineer
17 14 (2.84%) 2nd Line Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (4.06%) SAML
2 15 (3.04%) REST
3 13 (2.64%) LDAP
3 13 (2.64%) Node.js
3 13 (2.64%) Web Services
4 12 (2.43%) 802.1X
4 12 (2.43%) JSON
5 11 (2.23%) ARM Templates
6 8 (1.62%) .NET
7 6 (1.22%) HTML
7 6 (1.22%) NETCONF
7 6 (1.22%) OpenConfig
7 6 (1.22%) RESTCONF
7 6 (1.22%) XML
7 6 (1.22%) YANG
8 5 (1.01%) Kafka
8 5 (1.01%) OAuth
8 5 (1.01%) OpenID
8 5 (1.01%) RESTful
9 4 (0.81%) boto
Miscellaneous
1 78 (15.82%) Data Centre
2 55 (11.16%) Onboarding
3 30 (6.09%) Hybrid Cloud
3 30 (6.09%) PKI
4 26 (5.27%) Management Information System
5 24 (4.87%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 19 (3.85%) Linux Command Line
6 19 (3.85%) Robotics
7 17 (3.45%) Driving Licence
7 17 (3.45%) Security Posture
8 16 (3.25%) Operational Technology
8 16 (3.25%) Public Cloud
9 15 (3.04%) Industry 4.0
10 14 (2.84%) Self-Motivation
11 13 (2.64%) SCADA
12 12 (2.43%) Cloud Native
13 11 (2.23%) Cyber Threat
14 10 (2.03%) Analytical Mindset
15 9 (1.83%) Private Cloud
16 8 (1.62%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 220 (44.62%) Windows
2 134 (27.18%) Linux
3 66 (13.39%) Windows Server
4 37 (7.51%) Windows 10
5 35 (7.10%) Mac OS
6 26 (5.27%) Unix
7 16 (3.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 15 (3.04%) Apple iOS
9 13 (2.64%) Ubuntu
10 11 (2.23%) Android
11 5 (1.01%) zOS
12 4 (0.81%) 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%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 138 (27.99%) Problem-Solving
2 106 (21.50%) ITIL
3 80 (16.23%) CI/CD
4 75 (15.21%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 68 (13.79%) Infrastructure as Code
6 63 (12.78%) Agile
7 61 (12.37%) Customer Service
7 61 (12.37%) DevOps
8 59 (11.97%) Load Balancing
9 57 (11.56%) Cybersecurity
10 51 (10.34%) ITSM
11 49 (9.94%) High Availability
11 49 (9.94%) Migration
12 46 (9.33%) Incident Response
12 46 (9.33%) Validation
13 45 (9.13%) Continuous Improvement
14 44 (8.92%) Service Management
14 44 (8.92%) SIEM
14 44 (8.92%) Technical Leadership
15 40 (8.11%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 139 (28.19%) Python
2 92 (18.66%) PowerShell
3 79 (16.02%) Bash
4 28 (5.68%) C++
5 25 (5.07%) JavaScript
6 19 (3.85%) SQL
7 17 (3.45%) C#
8 11 (2.23%) Java
9 9 (1.83%) Bicep
9 9 (1.83%) Perl
10 8 (1.62%) Shell Script
11 7 (1.42%) VBA
12 5 (1.01%) ActionScript
13 4 (0.81%) C
13 4 (0.81%) Go
14 3 (0.61%) VBScript
15 2 (0.41%) Jython
15 2 (0.41%) Korn
15 2 (0.41%) Objective-C
15 2 (0.41%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 135 (27.38%) Security Cleared
2 88 (17.85%) SC Cleared
3 80 (16.23%) Degree
4 62 (12.58%) Cisco Certification
5 47 (9.53%) DV Cleared
6 46 (9.33%) CCNP
7 31 (6.29%) CCNA
8 30 (6.09%) Microsoft Certification
9 21 (4.26%) Computer Science Degree
10 18 (3.65%) CISSP
11 16 (3.25%) CCIE
11 16 (3.25%) Network+ Certification
12 12 (2.43%) Azure Certification
13 11 (2.23%) A+ Certification
13 11 (2.23%) VCAP
14 10 (2.03%) MCSA
14 10 (2.03%) MCSE
15 8 (1.62%) AWS Certification
15 8 (1.62%) CompTIA Security+
16 7 (1.42%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (3.85%) SLA
2 11 (2.23%) NIST
2 11 (2.23%) QA
3 9 (1.83%) NCSC
4 8 (1.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 5 (1.01%) GDPR
6 4 (0.81%) 21 CFR Part 11
6 4 (0.81%) GxP
6 4 (0.81%) NIST 800
6 4 (0.81%) 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
1 141 (28.60%) Active Directory
2 90 (18.26%) VMware Infrastructure
3 34 (6.90%) Hyper-V
4 29 (5.88%) Docker
5 24 (4.87%) vSphere
6 22 (4.46%) VMware NSX
7 17 (3.45%) Firmware
8 12 (2.43%) Virtual Desktop
9 6 (1.22%) Squid
10 4 (0.81%) NFS
10 4 (0.81%) 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%) NDS
13 1 (0.20%) NetIQ eDirectory
13 1 (0.20%) Snort
13 1 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 100 (20.28%) Ansible
2 83 (16.84%) Terraform
3 54 (10.95%) Microsoft Intune
4 46 (9.33%) Kubernetes
5 29 (5.88%) SCCM
6 24 (4.87%) Single Sign-On
7 22 (4.46%) Grafana
8 19 (3.85%) FortiGate
9 15 (3.04%) VxRail
10 12 (2.43%) Prometheus
11 11 (2.23%) Jamf Pro
12 9 (1.83%) WSUS
13 6 (1.22%) CASB
13 6 (1.22%) systemd
14 5 (1.01%) Nessus
14 5 (1.01%) Suricata
15 4 (0.81%) Consul
16 3 (0.61%) Istio
16 3 (0.61%) Nagios
16 3 (0.61%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 185 (37.53%) Microsoft
2 102 (20.69%) VMware
3 93 (18.86%) Cisco
4 62 (12.58%) F5
5 53 (10.75%) ServiceNow
6 31 (6.29%) Fortinet
7 26 (5.27%) Google
7 26 (5.27%) Zscaler
8 25 (5.07%) Juniper
9 23 (4.67%) Palo Alto
10 21 (4.26%) Blue Coat
10 21 (4.26%) Citrix
11 18 (3.65%) CheckPoint
11 18 (3.65%) Infoblox
11 18 (3.65%) NetApp
11 18 (3.65%) Splunk
12 17 (3.45%) McAfee
12 17 (3.45%) Siemens
13 16 (3.25%) Red Hat
14 13 (2.64%) Remedy