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 4 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 281 229 247
Rank change year-on-year -52 +18 -23
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 482 380 372
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.90% 1.18% 0.98%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 9.54% 10.05% 8.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 263 203 219
10th Percentile £197 £200 £203
25th Percentile £300 £313 £259
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £455 £463 £450
Median % change year-on-year -1.62% +2.78% -
75th Percentile £550 £600 £575
90th Percentile £675 £662 £645
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £425
% change year-on-year - +5.88% +6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 43 33 31
10th Percentile £26.33 £28.20 £30.00
25th Percentile £31.25 £45.75 £63.13
Median hourly rate £63.48 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.34% - +30.00%
75th Percentile £77.40 - -
90th Percentile £98.82 £79.85 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.48 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -2.34% - +30.00%

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 5,054 3,781 4,531
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.42% 11.70% 11.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,983 2,320 2,685
10th Percentile £235 £237 £231
25th Percentile £398 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £467 £500
% change year-on-year +2.73% -6.55% +10.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 376 199 279
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.10 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £21.31
Median hourly rate £26.00 £43.50 £50.50
Median % change year-on-year -40.23% -13.86% -9.67%
75th Percentile £65.88 £63.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.75 £73.40 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.84 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -39.20% -25.89% +1.52%

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 4 September 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 4 September 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 4 September 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 -44 440 £475 - 609
UK excluding London -37 264 £450 - 381
London -54 195 £470 -18.26% 304
Work from Home -72 113 £506 -1.22% 208
South East -42 79 £525 +40.00% 102
North of England -63 71 £425 -21.66% 78
South West -6 47 £638 +4.08% 56
North West -31 41 £268 -51.36% 39
Midlands -34 41 £401 -10.89% 50
West Midlands -37 33 £400 -11.11% 29
Yorkshire -45 26 £500 -4.76% 22
East of England -25 21 £423 +19.86% 44
Scotland -22 14 £210 -49.94% 31
Wales -9 8 £390 +116.67% 7
East Midlands -16 8 £402 -26.91% 21
North East -36 4 £438 +75.00% 20

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 50 (10.37%) SharePoint
2 32 (6.64%) Microsoft Exchange
3 12 (2.49%) Confluence
4 11 (2.28%) OpenStack
5 5 (1.04%) nginx
6 4 (0.83%) FactoryTalk
6 4 (0.83%) WebSphere
7 3 (0.62%) 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 (0.21%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 17 (3.53%) Microsoft Office
2 16 (3.32%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (1.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (1.24%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.41%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.41%) Houdini
5 2 (0.41%) NUKE
6 1 (0.21%) Weka
Business Applications
1 8 (1.66%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.21%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 166 (34.44%) Azure
2 125 (25.93%) Microsoft 365
3 106 (21.99%) AWS
4 76 (15.77%) Entra ID
5 36 (7.47%) OneDrive
6 29 (6.02%) GCP
7 22 (4.56%) GitHub
8 20 (4.15%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 15 (3.11%) OpenShift
10 14 (2.90%) Azure Monitor
11 12 (2.49%) Route 53
12 11 (2.28%) Amazon EC2
12 11 (2.28%) AWS CloudFormation
12 11 (2.28%) GitHub Actions
12 11 (2.28%) Google Workspace
13 9 (1.87%) Azure Sentinel
14 8 (1.66%) Amazon EKS
15 7 (1.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 6 (1.24%) Azure ExpressRoute
16 6 (1.24%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 289 (59.96%) DNS
2 208 (43.15%) Firewall
3 189 (39.21%) DHCP
4 146 (30.29%) VPN
5 89 (18.46%) Network Security
5 89 (18.46%) WAN
6 78 (16.18%) LAN
7 70 (14.52%) VLAN
8 66 (13.69%) HTTP
9 65 (13.49%) BGP
10 53 (11.00%) SSL
11 47 (9.75%) Wireless
12 45 (9.34%) Wi-Fi
13 41 (8.51%) BIG-IP
14 40 (8.30%) OSPF
15 36 (7.47%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 25 (5.19%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
16 25 (5.19%) SD-WAN
17 20 (4.15%) Wireshark
18 18 (3.73%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (3.73%) PostgreSQL
2 16 (3.32%) SQL Server
3 8 (1.66%) MySQL
3 8 (1.66%) SQLite
4 7 (1.45%) NoSQL
5 6 (1.24%) MongoDB
6 5 (1.04%) Redis
7 4 (0.83%) Amazon RDS
8 3 (0.62%) KDB
9 2 (0.41%) BigQuery
10 1 (0.21%) Cloud Spanner
10 1 (0.21%) Elasticsearch
10 1 (0.21%) Kdb+
Development Applications
1 47 (9.75%) JIRA
2 38 (7.88%) Git
3 32 (6.64%) Jenkins
4 23 (4.77%) GitLab
5 15 (3.11%) Fiddler
6 8 (1.66%) Sonatype Nexus
7 6 (1.24%) Visual Studio
8 5 (1.04%) Artifactory
8 5 (1.04%) Browser DevTools
8 5 (1.04%) Eclipse
9 4 (0.83%) Selenium
10 2 (0.41%) Bitbucket
10 2 (0.41%) Introscope
10 2 (0.41%) Subversion
11 1 (0.21%) MSI
11 1 (0.21%) Postman
General
1 193 (40.04%) Social Skills
2 72 (14.94%) Analytical Skills
3 63 (13.07%) Finance
4 41 (8.51%) Banking
5 29 (6.02%) Public Sector
6 26 (5.39%) Telecoms
7 20 (4.15%) Investment Banking
8 14 (2.90%) Front Office
9 13 (2.70%) Documentation Skills
10 8 (1.66%) Military
11 7 (1.45%) Aerospace
12 6 (1.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 6 (1.24%) Manufacturing
13 5 (1.04%) Legal
13 5 (1.04%) Organisational Skills
13 5 (1.04%) Pharmaceutical
13 5 (1.04%) Police
14 4 (0.83%) Automotive
14 4 (0.83%) Multimedia
15 3 (0.62%) Retail
Job Titles
1 103 (21.37%) Network Engineer
2 68 (14.11%) Support Engineer
3 63 (13.07%) Senior
4 56 (11.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 51 (10.58%) IT Support
6 41 (8.51%) IT Engineer
7 37 (7.68%) Architect
8 36 (7.47%) Analyst
9 35 (7.26%) IT Support Engineer
10 26 (5.39%) Senior Network Engineer
11 23 (4.77%) Platform Engineer
12 21 (4.36%) Security Engineer
12 21 (4.36%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 19 (3.94%) Linux Engineer
13 19 (3.94%) Web Engineer
14 16 (3.32%) IP Network Engineer
14 16 (3.32%) Network Infrastructure Engineer
15 15 (3.11%) Cloud Engineer
15 15 (3.11%) Support Analyst
16 14 (2.90%) 2nd Line Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 88 (18.26%) Terraform
2 16 (3.32%) REST
3 15 (3.11%) SAML
4 13 (2.70%) ARM Templates
5 12 (2.49%) JSON
6 9 (1.87%) .NET
6 9 (1.87%) 802.1X
7 8 (1.66%) Kafka
7 8 (1.66%) SPNEGO
8 7 (1.45%) HTML
8 7 (1.45%) LDAP
9 6 (1.24%) Elastic Stack
9 6 (1.24%) Jinja
9 6 (1.24%) RabbitMQ
9 6 (1.24%) XML
10 5 (1.04%) FastAPI
10 5 (1.04%) Flask
10 5 (1.04%) Node.js
10 5 (1.04%) Pandas
10 5 (1.04%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 82 (17.01%) Data Centre
2 59 (12.24%) Onboarding
3 33 (6.85%) PKI
4 31 (6.43%) Hybrid Cloud
5 27 (5.60%) Management Information System
6 21 (4.36%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 20 (4.15%) Linux Command Line
8 17 (3.53%) Public Cloud
9 16 (3.32%) Driving Licence
9 16 (3.32%) Operational Technology
10 15 (3.11%) Self-Motivation
11 13 (2.70%) Cloud Native
11 13 (2.70%) SCADA
12 12 (2.49%) Video Conferencing
13 11 (2.28%) Cyber Threat
14 10 (2.07%) Enterprise Storage
15 9 (1.87%) Distributed Systems
15 9 (1.87%) Private Cloud
15 9 (1.87%) Security Posture
16 8 (1.66%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 229 (47.51%) Windows
2 143 (29.67%) Linux
3 71 (14.73%) Windows Server
4 48 (9.96%) Windows 10
5 40 (8.30%) Mac OS
6 27 (5.60%) Unix
7 24 (4.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 18 (3.73%) Apple iOS
9 15 (3.11%) Ubuntu
10 14 (2.90%) Android
11 7 (1.45%) zOS
12 4 (0.83%) CentOS
13 3 (0.62%) Check Point GAiA
13 3 (0.62%) Windows Server 2012
13 3 (0.62%) Windows Server 2019
14 2 (0.41%) Oracle Linux
14 2 (0.41%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
15 1 (0.21%) Data ONTAP
15 1 (0.21%) Rocky
15 1 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 133 (27.59%) Problem-Solving
2 114 (23.65%) ITIL
3 80 (16.60%) CI/CD
4 79 (16.39%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 75 (15.56%) Infrastructure as Code
6 67 (13.90%) DevOps
7 63 (13.07%) ITSM
8 62 (12.86%) Load Balancing
9 59 (12.24%) Customer Service
10 57 (11.83%) Agile
10 57 (11.83%) Cybersecurity
11 52 (10.79%) Continuous Improvement
12 51 (10.58%) High Availability
13 50 (10.37%) Platform Engineering
14 48 (9.96%) Migration
14 48 (9.96%) Service Management
15 44 (9.13%) Incident Response
16 43 (8.92%) SIEM
17 42 (8.71%) Technical Leadership
18 41 (8.51%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 148 (30.71%) Python
2 104 (21.58%) PowerShell
3 88 (18.26%) Bash
4 21 (4.36%) SQL
5 20 (4.15%) C++
6 16 (3.32%) JavaScript
7 15 (3.11%) Perl
8 13 (2.70%) Shell Script
9 11 (2.28%) Bicep
9 11 (2.28%) Java
10 10 (2.07%) C#
11 8 (1.66%) Korn
12 7 (1.45%) VBA
13 5 (1.04%) ActionScript
14 4 (0.83%) C
14 4 (0.83%) Go
15 3 (0.62%) Kusto Query Language
15 3 (0.62%) VBScript
16 2 (0.41%) Jython
16 2 (0.41%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 137 (28.42%) Security Cleared
2 83 (17.22%) SC Cleared
3 66 (13.69%) Degree
4 56 (11.62%) Cisco Certification
5 54 (11.20%) DV Cleared
6 44 (9.13%) CCNP
7 28 (5.81%) CCNA
8 26 (5.39%) Microsoft Certification
9 20 (4.15%) Computer Science Degree
10 19 (3.94%) A+ Certification
11 16 (3.32%) Network+ Certification
12 14 (2.90%) CCIE
12 14 (2.90%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 13 (2.70%) Azure Certification
13 13 (2.70%) CISSP
14 12 (2.49%) VCAP
15 11 (2.28%) AWS Certification
16 8 (1.66%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 6 (1.24%) ITIL Certification
18 5 (1.04%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (4.98%) SLA
2 14 (2.90%) QA
3 9 (1.87%) NCSC
3 9 (1.87%) NIST
4 7 (1.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 5 (1.04%) GDPR
6 4 (0.83%) 21 CFR Part 11
6 4 (0.83%) GxP
6 4 (0.83%) NIST 800
6 4 (0.83%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.41%) Government Security Classifications
7 2 (0.41%) JSP 440
8 1 (0.21%) ISO 8583
8 1 (0.21%) RMADS
System Software
1 155 (32.16%) Active Directory
2 93 (19.29%) VMware Infrastructure
3 40 (8.30%) Hyper-V
4 32 (6.64%) Docker
5 23 (4.77%) VMware NSX
5 23 (4.77%) vSphere
6 19 (3.94%) Firmware
7 13 (2.70%) Virtual Desktop
8 5 (1.04%) NFS
8 5 (1.04%) Squid
8 5 (1.04%) Virtual Machines
9 3 (0.62%) VirtualBox
9 3 (0.62%) VMware ESXi
10 2 (0.41%) KVM
10 2 (0.41%) RACF
10 2 (0.41%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.21%) NDS
11 1 (0.21%) NetIQ eDirectory
11 1 (0.21%) Veritas Cluster Server
11 1 (0.21%) Veritas Volume Manager
Systems Management
1 107 (22.20%) Ansible
2 61 (12.66%) Microsoft Intune
3 49 (10.17%) Kubernetes
4 34 (7.05%) SCCM
5 26 (5.39%) Grafana
6 20 (4.15%) Single Sign-On
7 17 (3.53%) FortiGate
8 16 (3.32%) VxRail
9 15 (3.11%) Prometheus
10 11 (2.28%) Jamf Pro
11 8 (1.66%) WSUS
12 6 (1.24%) systemd
13 5 (1.04%) Istio
13 5 (1.04%) Suricata
14 4 (0.83%) Puppet
15 3 (0.62%) Consul
15 3 (0.62%) SELinux
15 3 (0.62%) Tivoli
15 3 (0.62%) Tivoli NetView
15 3 (0.62%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 190 (39.42%) Microsoft
2 104 (21.58%) VMware
3 97 (20.12%) Cisco
4 62 (12.86%) ServiceNow
5 60 (12.45%) F5
6 26 (5.39%) Fortinet
7 23 (4.77%) NetApp
8 22 (4.56%) Google
8 22 (4.56%) Zscaler
9 20 (4.15%) Palo Alto
10 19 (3.94%) Blue Coat
10 19 (3.94%) Juniper
11 18 (3.73%) Infoblox
12 17 (3.53%) Citrix
12 17 (3.53%) McAfee
12 17 (3.53%) Red Hat
13 15 (3.11%) CheckPoint
13 15 (3.11%) Splunk
14 14 (2.90%) Bloomberg
15 11 (2.28%) IBM