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 23 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 236 194 196
Rank change year-on-year -42 +2 +45
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 433 461 555
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.17% 1.37% 1.28%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 10.82% 10.71% 9.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 244 276 343
10th Percentile £197 £206 £180
25th Percentile £300 £350 £273
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £485 £450
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% +7.67% -14.27%
75th Percentile £600 £607 £580
90th Percentile £659 £738 £681
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £400
% change year-on-year - +12.50% -15.61%
Number of hourly rates quoted 43 11 50
10th Percentile £15.50 £21.25 £24.93
25th Percentile £31.00 £30.63 £40.85
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £51.70
Median % change year-on-year - +25.74% -20.47%
75th Percentile - - £56.49
90th Percentile £82.40 - £69.62
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £51.70
% change year-on-year - +25.74% -20.47%

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 4,002 4,304 5,997
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.81% 12.75% 13.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,615 2,519 3,704
10th Percentile £206 £220 £210
25th Percentile £357 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £610
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 182 147 328
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.13 £17.72
25th Percentile £20.04 £21.46 £22.75
Median hourly rate £34.00 £35.00 £55.70
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -37.16% +35.75%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.00 £65.98
90th Percentile £80.00 £71.75 £75.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £35.00 £56.49
% change year-on-year +21.43% -38.04% +25.53%

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 23 December 2025.

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 23 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for TCP/IP in the UK

TCP/IP
Top 15 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 23 December 2025. 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 -31 386 £482 -1.23% 620
UK excluding London -27 269 £450 - 596
London -35 132 £538 +7.50% 84
Work from Home -40 126 £450 -10.00% 251
North of England -29 76 £449 -10.30% 132
South East -9 65 £458 +1.78% 176
East of England -3 51 £413 -25.00% 88
North West -9 46 £475 +2.70% 68
West Midlands -4 37 £225 - 48
Midlands -32 37 £225 -40.00% 89
South West -7 27 £700 +47.37% 81
Yorkshire -46 26 £424 -39.46% 54
Scotland +18 25 £454 +8.16% 27
Wales -6 4 £250 - 11
North East -13 4 £400 +166.67% 11

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 35 (8.08%) SharePoint
2 23 (5.31%) Microsoft Exchange
3 14 (3.23%) Skype for Business
4 8 (1.85%) OpenStack
5 7 (1.62%) Confluence
6 4 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
7 3 (0.69%) Apache
7 3 (0.69%) Apache Spark
7 3 (0.69%) IIS
8 2 (0.46%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.46%) WordPress
9 1 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2010
9 1 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2013
9 1 (0.23%) Jupyter
Applications
1 39 (9.01%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (1.39%) Weka
3 5 (1.15%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.92%) Microsoft Excel
5 2 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.23%) Acrobat
6 1 (0.23%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 1 (0.23%) Eikon
1 1 (0.23%) Eze OMS
1 1 (0.23%) Fidessa
1 1 (0.23%) Finacle
1 1 (0.23%) Pegasus Opera
1 1 (0.23%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.23%) RMDS
1 1 (0.23%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 107 (24.71%) AWS
2 98 (22.63%) Azure
3 82 (18.94%) Microsoft 365
4 27 (6.24%) Amazon EC2
4 27 (6.24%) GCP
5 26 (6.00%) Amazon S3
5 26 (6.00%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 22 (5.08%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 22 (5.08%) Amazon ELB
6 22 (5.08%) Entra ID
7 16 (3.70%) GitHub
8 12 (2.77%) AWS CloudFormation
9 8 (1.85%) Cloud Computing
9 8 (1.85%) OneDrive
10 7 (1.62%) GitHub Actions
10 7 (1.62%) SaaS
11 5 (1.15%) Apigee
11 5 (1.15%) Google Workspace
12 4 (0.92%) Azure DevOps
12 4 (0.92%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 255 (58.89%) DNS
2 160 (36.95%) Firewall
3 129 (29.79%) DHCP
4 126 (29.10%) VPN
5 86 (19.86%) SSL
6 67 (15.47%) WAN
7 66 (15.24%) LAN
8 64 (14.78%) Network Security
9 61 (14.09%) VLAN
10 57 (13.16%) HTTP
11 31 (7.16%) Wireshark
12 29 (6.70%) BGP
13 22 (5.08%) OSPF
13 22 (5.08%) Wi-Fi
13 22 (5.08%) Wireless
14 21 (4.85%) Ethernet
14 21 (4.85%) Internet
15 20 (4.62%) BIG-IP
15 20 (4.62%) SAN
16 14 (3.23%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (5.31%) SQL Server
2 13 (3.00%) PostgreSQL
3 5 (1.15%) Elasticsearch
3 5 (1.15%) Oracle Database
4 4 (0.92%) Amazon Aurora
4 4 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (0.92%) Big Data
4 4 (0.92%) NoSQL
5 3 (0.69%) Apache Cassandra
5 3 (0.69%) Delta Lake
5 3 (0.69%) Hadoop
5 3 (0.69%) MongoDB
5 3 (0.69%) Parquet
6 1 (0.23%) Apache Hive
6 1 (0.23%) Electronic Patient Records
6 1 (0.23%) Impala
6 1 (0.23%) MySQL
6 1 (0.23%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (0.23%) Power BI
6 1 (0.23%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 43 (9.93%) Git
1 43 (9.93%) Jenkins
2 32 (7.39%) GitLab
3 23 (5.31%) JIRA
4 18 (4.16%) Fiddler
5 17 (3.93%) Eclipse
5 17 (3.93%) Visual Studio
6 5 (1.15%) Subversion
7 4 (0.92%) CircleCI
7 4 (0.92%) Robot Framework
7 4 (0.92%) TeamCity
8 3 (0.69%) MLflow
8 3 (0.69%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.69%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.46%) Maven
9 2 (0.46%) Poetry
9 2 (0.46%) Postman
9 2 (0.46%) PyCharm
9 2 (0.46%) Visual Studio Code
10 1 (0.23%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 152 (35.10%) Social Skills
2 79 (18.24%) Analytical Skills
3 43 (9.93%) Finance
4 34 (7.85%) Public Sector
5 29 (6.70%) Banking
6 25 (5.77%) Military
7 20 (4.62%) Investment Banking
7 20 (4.62%) Presentation Skills
8 12 (2.77%) Legal
9 10 (2.31%) Law
9 10 (2.31%) Organisational Skills
9 10 (2.31%) Telecoms
10 8 (1.85%) Front Office
11 7 (1.62%) Documentation Skills
12 6 (1.39%) Financial Institution
12 6 (1.39%) Local Government
13 3 (0.69%) Aerospace
13 3 (0.69%) Manufacturing
14 2 (0.46%) Advertising
14 2 (0.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 82 (18.94%) Network Engineer
2 66 (15.24%) Support Engineer
3 57 (13.16%) Analyst
4 54 (12.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 54 (12.47%) Senior
5 32 (7.39%) IT Support
6 29 (6.70%) IT Engineer
7 23 (5.31%) Developer
8 22 (5.08%) Support Analyst
8 22 (5.08%) Technical Support
9 21 (4.85%) 2nd Line Support
10 20 (4.62%) DevOps Engineer
11 18 (4.16%) SOC Analyst
12 17 (3.93%) Senior DevOps
12 17 (3.93%) Web Engineer
13 16 (3.70%) Security Engineer
13 16 (3.70%) Senior DevOps Engineer
13 16 (3.70%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 16 (3.70%) Technical Analyst
14 15 (3.46%) C# Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (4.85%) Web Services
2 18 (4.16%) Node.js
3 15 (3.46%) Middleware
4 14 (3.23%) REST
5 11 (2.54%) SOAP
6 10 (2.31%) Elastic Stack
7 9 (2.08%) LDAP
8 7 (1.62%) AngularJS
9 6 (1.39%) FIX Protocol
10 5 (1.15%) Kafka
10 5 (1.15%) Ultra Messaging
11 4 (0.92%) .NET
11 4 (0.92%) JSON
11 4 (0.92%) React
11 4 (0.92%) RESTful
11 4 (0.92%) SAML
12 3 (0.69%) ASP.NET Web API
12 3 (0.69%) Flask
12 3 (0.69%) WCF
12 3 (0.69%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 29 (6.70%) Data Centre
2 27 (6.24%) Management Information System
3 21 (4.85%) Onboarding
4 19 (4.39%) Analytical Mindset
5 16 (3.70%) Security Operations Centre
6 14 (3.23%) Private Cloud
7 13 (3.00%) Cyberattack
7 13 (3.00%) Driving Licence
7 13 (3.00%) NHS
8 11 (2.54%) Public Cloud
8 11 (2.54%) Replication
9 10 (2.31%) PKI
9 10 (2.31%) Security Posture
10 9 (2.08%) CMDB
10 9 (2.08%) Self-Motivation
11 8 (1.85%) Clustering
11 8 (1.85%) SCADA
12 7 (1.62%) Hybrid Cloud
13 6 (1.39%) Cyber Threat
13 6 (1.39%) FPGA
Operating Systems
1 203 (46.88%) Windows
2 148 (34.18%) Linux
3 56 (12.93%) Windows Server
4 40 (9.24%) Windows 10
5 31 (7.16%) Unix
6 13 (3.00%) Android
6 13 (3.00%) Windows Server 2016
7 12 (2.77%) Windows Server 2019
8 11 (2.54%) Mac OS
9 9 (2.08%) Windows Server 2012
10 8 (1.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 7 (1.62%) VMS
12 6 (1.39%) Apple iOS
12 6 (1.39%) Ubuntu
13 4 (0.92%) CentOS
13 4 (0.92%) Solaris
13 4 (0.92%) Windows Server 2003
14 3 (0.69%) Debian
14 3 (0.69%) Windows 7
15 2 (0.46%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 118 (27.25%) Problem-Solving
2 75 (17.32%) CI/CD
3 64 (14.78%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 64 (14.78%) ITIL
4 61 (14.09%) Agile
4 61 (14.09%) DevOps
5 55 (12.70%) Infrastructure as Code
6 51 (11.78%) Incident Response
7 49 (11.32%) SIEM
8 48 (11.09%) Cybersecurity
9 44 (10.16%) High Availability
10 42 (9.70%) Load Balancing
11 40 (9.24%) Infrastructure Automation
12 33 (7.62%) Knowledge Transfer
12 33 (7.62%) Root Cause Analysis
13 32 (7.39%) Migration
13 32 (7.39%) Security Operations
14 29 (6.70%) Disaster Recovery
14 29 (6.70%) Validation
15 28 (6.47%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 133 (30.72%) Python
2 80 (18.48%) Bash
3 77 (17.78%) PowerShell
4 27 (6.24%) Perl
4 27 (6.24%) SQL
5 23 (5.31%) C++
5 23 (5.31%) JavaScript
6 22 (5.08%) C#
7 17 (3.93%) Java
8 13 (3.00%) Shell Script
9 10 (2.31%) Go
10 5 (1.15%) C
11 4 (0.92%) Kusto Query Language
12 3 (0.69%) Groovy
12 3 (0.69%) Search Processing Language
12 3 (0.69%) T-SQL
13 2 (0.46%) Ruby
14 1 (0.23%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.23%) TypeScript
14 1 (0.23%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 129 (29.79%) Security Cleared
2 95 (21.94%) SC Cleared
3 42 (9.70%) Degree
4 41 (9.47%) Cisco Certification
5 37 (8.55%) DV Cleared
6 33 (7.62%) Microsoft Certification
7 28 (6.47%) CCNP
8 21 (4.85%) CompTIA Security+
9 20 (4.62%) CCNA
9 20 (4.62%) Network+ Certification
10 16 (3.70%) Azure Certification
11 13 (3.00%) CISSP
11 13 (3.00%) Computer Science Degree
11 13 (3.00%) MCP
12 12 (2.77%) CompTIA CySA+
12 12 (2.77%) MCSE
13 11 (2.54%) Server+ Certification
14 7 (1.62%) JNCIS
14 7 (1.62%) MCSA
15 6 (1.39%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (6.00%) GDPR
2 9 (2.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 8 (1.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 7 (1.62%) SLA
5 6 (1.39%) NIST
6 4 (0.92%) HIPAA
7 3 (0.69%) Cyber Essentials
7 3 (0.69%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.46%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.46%) NCSC
9 1 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
9 1 (0.23%) QA
9 1 (0.23%) SOC 2
System Software
1 99 (22.86%) Active Directory
2 67 (15.47%) VMware Infrastructure
3 55 (12.70%) Docker
4 34 (7.85%) Hyper-V
5 11 (2.54%) Firmware
6 9 (2.08%) Virtual Machines
6 9 (2.08%) VMware ESXi
7 8 (1.85%) vSphere
8 7 (1.62%) Lustre
8 7 (1.62%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 7 (1.62%) Terminal Services
9 6 (1.39%) GPFS
10 5 (1.15%) KVM
10 5 (1.15%) NDS
10 5 (1.15%) NetIQ eDirectory
10 5 (1.15%) NFS
10 5 (1.15%) VMware NSX
11 4 (0.92%) Veritas File System
11 4 (0.92%) Veritas Volume Manager
11 4 (0.92%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 87 (20.09%) Ansible
2 63 (14.55%) Terraform
3 38 (8.78%) SCCM
4 33 (7.62%) Kubernetes
5 26 (6.00%) Microsoft Intune
6 21 (4.85%) Grafana
7 17 (3.93%) Prometheus
8 12 (2.77%) Puppet
9 10 (2.31%) FortiGate
10 9 (2.08%) Single Sign-On
11 8 (1.85%) QRadar
11 8 (1.85%) WSUS
12 7 (1.62%) Nessus
12 7 (1.62%) Progress Chef
13 6 (1.39%) Nagios
13 6 (1.39%) vCenter Server
14 5 (1.15%) CASB
14 5 (1.15%) ITRS Geneos
14 5 (1.15%) Red Hat Satellite
15 4 (0.92%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 139 (32.10%) Microsoft
2 88 (20.32%) VMware
3 68 (15.70%) F5
4 61 (14.09%) Cisco
5 54 (12.47%) Palo Alto
6 41 (9.47%) CheckPoint
6 41 (9.47%) Splunk
7 25 (5.77%) Blue Coat
8 24 (5.54%) ServiceNow
9 21 (4.85%) Citrix
9 21 (4.85%) Fortinet
9 21 (4.85%) SolarWinds
10 20 (4.62%) McAfee
10 20 (4.62%) Oracle
11 19 (4.39%) NetApp
12 18 (4.16%) Juniper
12 18 (4.16%) Red Hat
13 11 (2.54%) CyberArk
13 11 (2.54%) Zscaler
14 10 (2.31%) Veeam