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 1 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 281 228 290
Rank change year-on-year -53 +62 -53
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 444 353 343
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.86% 1.15% 0.79%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 9.07% 9.32% 6.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 240 221 227
10th Percentile £205 £213 £197
25th Percentile £322 £356 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +5.26% -0.84%
75th Percentile £550 £623 £575
90th Percentile £639 £775 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £488
% change year-on-year - -7.69% +10.92%
Number of hourly rates quoted 37 17 32
10th Percentile £21.25 £18.79 £18.65
25th Percentile £25.00 £41.45 £53.93
Median hourly rate £32.50 £62.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -48.00% -3.85% +16.26%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 -
90th Percentile - - £67.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.86 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -47.91% - +13.38%

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 4,897 3,788 5,390
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.53% 12.32% 12.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,987 2,310 3,177
10th Percentile £250 £230 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -1.19%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £472 £490
% change year-on-year +1.91% -3.62% +3.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 303 180 431
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.87
25th Percentile £19.34 £23.56 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.66 £45.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -40.76% - +114.29%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.31 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £80.10 £73.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.22 £36.57 £47.50
% change year-on-year -28.31% -23.01% +115.91%

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 1 July 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 1 July 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 1 July 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 -26 394 £470 +1.62% 289
UK excluding London -28 254 £450 - 247
London -58 155 £470 +1.62% 70
Work from Home -61 107 £500 -11.11% 89
North of England -30 91 £450 -0.11% 42
South East -34 65 £530 +17.67% 86
North West +7 58 £500 +76.99% 20
Midlands -39 38 £402 -26.91% 38
East of England -9 36 £168 -60.59% 36
West Midlands -32 31 £400 -20.00% 23
Yorkshire -52 29 £449 -10.30% 21
South West -22 22 £475 -22.76% 41
Scotland -5 16 £301 -33.06% 6
Wales -10 7 £408 - 6
East Midlands -13 7 £451 -18.00% 15
North East -30 4 £306 +6.52% 5

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 25 (5.63%) SharePoint
2 15 (3.38%) Confluence
2 15 (3.38%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (2.25%) nginx
4 5 (1.13%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.90%) WebSphere
6 3 (0.68%) IIS
7 2 (0.45%) CICS
7 2 (0.45%) IBM HTTP Server
7 2 (0.45%) Oracle HTTP Server
7 2 (0.45%) WebSphere Application Server
7 2 (0.45%) WebSphere Portal
8 1 (0.23%) Traefik
Applications
1 32 (7.21%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (2.48%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (1.80%) MS Visio
4 7 (1.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.45%) Acrobat
6 1 (0.23%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.23%) Houdini
6 1 (0.23%) NUKE
6 1 (0.23%) Weka
Business Applications
1 2 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 113 (25.45%) Azure
2 96 (21.62%) AWS
3 87 (19.59%) Microsoft 365
4 42 (9.46%) Entra ID
5 32 (7.21%) GCP
6 29 (6.53%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 24 (5.41%) OneDrive
8 21 (4.73%) Route 53
9 16 (3.60%) Amazon EC2
10 15 (3.38%) Amazon EKS
10 15 (3.38%) Amazon S3
11 13 (2.93%) AWS Lambda
11 13 (2.93%) GitHub
11 13 (2.93%) Serverless
12 11 (2.48%) AWS CloudFormation
13 10 (2.25%) Google Workspace
14 7 (1.58%) Azure DevOps
14 7 (1.58%) IaaS
14 7 (1.58%) SaaS
15 6 (1.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 249 (56.08%) DNS
2 166 (37.39%) Firewall
3 118 (26.58%) DHCP
4 111 (25.00%) VPN
5 84 (18.92%) WAN
6 80 (18.02%) Network Security
7 74 (16.67%) LAN
8 68 (15.32%) HTTP
9 64 (14.41%) BGP
9 64 (14.41%) SSL
10 62 (13.96%) VLAN
11 56 (12.61%) BIG-IP
12 43 (9.68%) OSPF
13 41 (9.23%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 38 (8.56%) Ethernet
15 36 (8.11%) Wi-Fi
16 30 (6.76%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
16 30 (6.76%) Wireshark
17 26 (5.86%) Wireless
18 23 (5.18%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (2.48%) Elasticsearch
1 11 (2.48%) SQL Server
2 4 (0.90%) PostgreSQL
3 3 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
4 2 (0.45%) MySQL
4 2 (0.45%) NoSQL
5 1 (0.23%) BigQuery
5 1 (0.23%) KDB
5 1 (0.23%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 48 (10.81%) JIRA
2 23 (5.18%) Fiddler
3 16 (3.60%) GitLab
4 14 (3.15%) Visual Studio
5 13 (2.93%) Eclipse
5 13 (2.93%) Git
5 13 (2.93%) Jenkins
6 9 (2.03%) Browser DevTools
7 7 (1.58%) Bitbucket
7 7 (1.58%) SonarQube
8 6 (1.35%) Sonatype Nexus
9 3 (0.68%) Artifactory
10 2 (0.45%) Introscope
10 2 (0.45%) Subversion
11 1 (0.23%) MSI
11 1 (0.23%) Postman
General
1 175 (39.41%) Social Skills
2 60 (13.51%) Finance
3 55 (12.39%) Analytical Skills
4 39 (8.78%) Banking
5 24 (5.41%) Investment Banking
5 24 (5.41%) Public Sector
6 22 (4.95%) Presentation Skills
7 21 (4.73%) Documentation Skills
8 20 (4.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 19 (4.28%) Military
10 13 (2.93%) Telecoms
11 8 (1.80%) Front Office
12 6 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
13 5 (1.13%) Legal
14 3 (0.68%) French Language
14 3 (0.68%) Marketing
14 3 (0.68%) Retail
15 2 (0.45%) Aviation
15 2 (0.45%) Japanese Language
15 2 (0.45%) Police
Job Titles
1 104 (23.42%) Network Engineer
2 47 (10.59%) Architect
3 45 (10.14%) Support Engineer
4 39 (8.78%) Analyst
5 34 (7.66%) IT Support
6 30 (6.76%) Web Engineer
7 27 (6.08%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 25 (5.63%) Security Engineer
8 25 (5.63%) Senior
9 24 (5.41%) IT Engineer
10 22 (4.95%) Technical Engineer
11 21 (4.73%) Systems Engineer
12 19 (4.28%) IP Network Engineer
13 18 (4.05%) IT Support Engineer
14 17 (3.83%) Blue Coat Engineer
15 14 (3.15%) Junior
15 14 (3.15%) Network Architect
15 14 (3.15%) Software Engineer
16 13 (2.93%) C# Software Engineer
16 13 (2.93%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (4.50%) LDAP
2 19 (4.28%) SAML
3 13 (2.93%) JSON
3 13 (2.93%) Node.js
3 13 (2.93%) Web Services
4 12 (2.70%) OpenID
4 12 (2.70%) REST
5 8 (1.80%) 802.1X
6 6 (1.35%) .NET
6 6 (1.35%) XML
7 5 (1.13%) OAuth
8 4 (0.90%) ARM Templates
8 4 (0.90%) NETCONF
8 4 (0.90%) OpenConfig
8 4 (0.90%) RESTCONF
8 4 (0.90%) YANG
9 3 (0.68%) HTML
9 3 (0.68%) Kafka
9 3 (0.68%) Middleware
9 3 (0.68%) WinForms
Miscellaneous
1 58 (13.06%) Data Centre
2 41 (9.23%) Onboarding
3 23 (5.18%) Management Information System
4 21 (4.73%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
5 19 (4.28%) Security Posture
6 15 (3.38%) Industry 4.0
6 15 (3.38%) Robotics
7 13 (2.93%) Driving Licence
7 13 (2.93%) Security Operations Centre
8 12 (2.70%) Cyber Threat
8 12 (2.70%) Hybrid Cloud
9 11 (2.48%) Cloud Native
10 10 (2.25%) Private Cloud
11 9 (2.03%) Cyberattack
11 9 (2.03%) Enterprise Software
11 9 (2.03%) Public Cloud
12 8 (1.80%) Analytical Mindset
12 8 (1.80%) Data Protection Act
12 8 (1.80%) PKI
12 8 (1.80%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 183 (41.22%) Windows
2 82 (18.47%) Linux
3 47 (10.59%) Windows Server
4 36 (8.11%) Mac OS
5 25 (5.63%) Windows 10
6 17 (3.83%) Apple iOS
6 17 (3.83%) Unix
7 11 (2.48%) Android
8 7 (1.58%) Ubuntu
8 7 (1.58%) Windows Server 2012
9 6 (1.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 6 (1.35%) zOS
10 3 (0.68%) Check Point GAiA
10 3 (0.68%) Windows 7
10 3 (0.68%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.45%) CentOS
11 2 (0.45%) Oracle Linux
11 2 (0.45%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 2 (0.45%) Windows Server 2003
11 2 (0.45%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 124 (27.93%) Problem-Solving
2 84 (18.92%) ITIL
3 57 (12.84%) Agile
4 55 (12.39%) Load Balancing
5 48 (10.81%) Incident Response
6 47 (10.59%) Customer Service
7 45 (10.14%) CI/CD
7 45 (10.14%) Migration
8 44 (9.91%) High Availability
9 42 (9.46%) DevOps
9 42 (9.46%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 42 (9.46%) ITSM
10 37 (8.33%) Infrastructure as Code
11 35 (7.88%) Cybersecurity
11 35 (7.88%) SIEM
12 34 (7.66%) Root Cause Analysis
13 33 (7.43%) Validation
14 31 (6.98%) Decision-Making
15 30 (6.76%) Change Management
16 29 (6.53%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 107 (24.10%) Python
2 48 (10.81%) PowerShell
3 46 (10.36%) Bash
4 28 (6.31%) JavaScript
5 22 (4.95%) C++
6 16 (3.60%) C#
7 12 (2.70%) SQL
8 9 (2.03%) VBA
9 5 (1.13%) ActionScript
9 5 (1.13%) C
10 4 (0.90%) Java
10 4 (0.90%) Perl
11 3 (0.68%) Go
12 2 (0.45%) Jython
12 2 (0.45%) Ruby
12 2 (0.45%) Shell Script
13 1 (0.23%) Groovy
13 1 (0.23%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 110 (24.77%) Security Cleared
2 86 (19.37%) SC Cleared
3 79 (17.79%) Degree
4 50 (11.26%) Cisco Certification
5 38 (8.56%) CCNP
6 27 (6.08%) CCNA
7 21 (4.73%) CISSP
7 21 (4.73%) Computer Science Degree
7 21 (4.73%) DV Cleared
8 20 (4.50%) Microsoft Certification
9 18 (4.05%) CompTIA Security+
10 14 (3.15%) CCIE
11 10 (2.25%) Azure Certification
11 10 (2.25%) MCSA
11 10 (2.25%) MCSE
12 9 (2.03%) CompTIA CySA+
12 9 (2.03%) Network+ Certification
13 4 (0.90%) CEH
13 4 (0.90%) CISM
13 4 (0.90%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (2.48%) NIST
2 9 (2.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 9 (2.03%) NCSC
3 8 (1.80%) SLA
4 7 (1.58%) QA
5 5 (1.13%) GDPR
6 4 (0.90%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.45%) Government Security Classifications
7 2 (0.45%) JSP 440
7 2 (0.45%) NIST 800
7 2 (0.45%) RMADS
8 1 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.23%) GRC
8 1 (0.23%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 99 (22.30%) Active Directory
2 51 (11.49%) VMware Infrastructure
3 18 (4.05%) Firmware
4 13 (2.93%) Squid
5 12 (2.70%) Virtual Desktop
6 10 (2.25%) Docker
7 9 (2.03%) Hyper-V
7 9 (2.03%) VMware NSX
8 8 (1.80%) vSphere
9 5 (1.13%) NFS
9 5 (1.13%) Virtual Machines
10 2 (0.45%) KVM
10 2 (0.45%) RACF
10 2 (0.45%) VirtualBox
11 1 (0.23%) Citrix Presentation Server
11 1 (0.23%) GPFS
11 1 (0.23%) Lustre
11 1 (0.23%) Snort
11 1 (0.23%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 68 (15.32%) Ansible
2 42 (9.46%) Terraform
3 32 (7.21%) Microsoft Intune
4 28 (6.31%) Kubernetes
5 25 (5.63%) FortiGate
5 25 (5.63%) Single Sign-On
6 21 (4.73%) Grafana
7 20 (4.50%) SCCM
8 16 (3.60%) Prometheus
9 11 (2.48%) Jamf Pro
10 10 (2.25%) WSUS
11 9 (2.03%) Consul
12 6 (1.35%) CASB
12 6 (1.35%) QRadar
13 5 (1.13%) Nessus
13 5 (1.13%) Suricata
14 4 (0.90%) Nagios
14 4 (0.90%) Tivoli NetView
15 3 (0.68%) Puppet
15 3 (0.68%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 150 (33.78%) Microsoft
2 77 (17.34%) Cisco
3 72 (16.22%) F5
4 62 (13.96%) VMware
5 47 (10.59%) ServiceNow
6 28 (6.31%) Blue Coat
7 27 (6.08%) Fortinet
7 27 (6.08%) Palo Alto
8 25 (5.63%) Google
9 24 (5.41%) Splunk
10 22 (4.95%) Citrix
10 22 (4.95%) McAfee
10 22 (4.95%) Zscaler
11 20 (4.50%) Infoblox
11 20 (4.50%) Juniper
12 19 (4.28%) NetApp
13 17 (3.83%) CheckPoint
13 17 (3.83%) Siemens
14 16 (3.60%) Red Hat
15 13 (2.93%) SolarWinds