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

6 months to
8 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 265 241 268
Rank change year-on-year -24 +27 -41
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 503 368 343
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.94% 1.12% 0.88%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 9.98% 9.34% 7.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 270 211 219
10th Percentile £207 £200 £203
25th Percentile £325 £357 £262
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +11.11% -4.26%
75th Percentile £566 £603 £560
90th Percentile £660 £653 £625
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £450
% change year-on-year +5.56% - +12.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 27 31
10th Percentile £26.13 £20.23 £30.00
25th Percentile £31.25 £43.60 £63.13
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 £85.65 £67.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.99 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -3.09% - +50.39%

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 5,042 3,940 4,725
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.41% 11.98% 12.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,994 2,409 2,866
10th Percentile £250 £240 £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 £490 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.16% -5.00% +9.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 361 196 322
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.15 £18.50
Median hourly rate £26.44 £48.75 £48.56
Median % change year-on-year -45.76% +0.39% -3.69%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £83.50 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £45.00 £54.88
% change year-on-year -40.76% -18.00% -4.28%

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 8 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 8 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 8 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 -16 464 £491 -1.80% 305
UK excluding London -17 283 £475 +5.56% 215
London -45 191 £475 -15.56% 128
Work from Home -65 120 £500 -9.09% 109
North of England -50 86 £475 -5.00% 43
South East -23 83 £523 +16.11% 74
North West -9 56 £475 -0.05% 24
South West -8 43 £638 +3.03% 30
Midlands -28 40 £402 -19.60% 25
East of England -11 35 £375 -28.57% 22
West Midlands -34 32 £406 +1.06% 16
Yorkshire -48 26 £500 - 12
Scotland -14 10 £425 -4.49% 12
East Midlands -7 8 £402 -26.91% 9
Wales -10 7 £408 +126.39% 4
North East -41 4 £438 +2.94% 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 45 (8.95%) SharePoint
2 24 (4.77%) Microsoft Exchange
3 13 (2.58%) Confluence
4 9 (1.79%) OpenStack
5 8 (1.59%) nginx
6 4 (0.80%) FactoryTalk
6 4 (0.80%) WebSphere
7 3 (0.60%) IIS
8 2 (0.40%) CICS
8 2 (0.40%) IBM HTTP Server
8 2 (0.40%) Oracle HTTP Server
8 2 (0.40%) WebSphere Application Server
8 2 (0.40%) WebSphere Portal
9 1 (0.20%) Traefik
Applications
1 36 (7.16%) Microsoft Office
2 16 (3.18%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (1.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (1.59%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.40%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.40%) Houdini
5 2 (0.40%) NUKE
6 1 (0.20%) Weka
Business Applications
1 7 (1.39%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 168 (33.40%) Azure
2 115 (22.86%) AWS
3 110 (21.87%) Microsoft 365
4 71 (14.12%) Entra ID
5 37 (7.36%) GCP
6 34 (6.76%) OneDrive
7 27 (5.37%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 21 (4.17%) GitHub
9 14 (2.78%) Route 53
10 13 (2.58%) Amazon EC2
10 13 (2.58%) Azure Monitor
10 13 (2.58%) OpenShift
11 11 (2.19%) AWS CloudFormation
11 11 (2.19%) Google Workspace
12 9 (1.79%) Amazon EKS
12 9 (1.79%) Azure DevOps
12 9 (1.79%) Azure Sentinel
12 9 (1.79%) GitHub Actions
13 8 (1.59%) Akamai
14 7 (1.39%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 295 (58.65%) DNS
2 216 (42.94%) Firewall
3 173 (34.39%) DHCP
4 145 (28.83%) VPN
5 95 (18.89%) Network Security
6 89 (17.69%) WAN
7 79 (15.71%) LAN
8 77 (15.31%) HTTP
9 76 (15.11%) VLAN
10 73 (14.51%) BGP
11 62 (12.33%) SSL
12 44 (8.75%) BIG-IP
12 44 (8.75%) OSPF
12 44 (8.75%) Wi-Fi
13 39 (7.75%) Ethernet
14 38 (7.55%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 37 (7.36%) Wireless
16 27 (5.37%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 24 (4.77%) SD-WAN
17 24 (4.77%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (2.98%) SQL Server
2 9 (1.79%) PostgreSQL
3 5 (0.99%) MySQL
3 5 (0.99%) NoSQL
4 4 (0.80%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (0.80%) MongoDB
5 3 (0.60%) Elasticsearch
5 3 (0.60%) Redis
6 2 (0.40%) BigQuery
6 2 (0.40%) SQLite
7 1 (0.20%) Cloud Spanner
7 1 (0.20%) KDB
Development Applications
1 45 (8.95%) JIRA
2 28 (5.57%) Git
3 23 (4.57%) Jenkins
4 21 (4.17%) GitLab
5 18 (3.58%) Fiddler
6 14 (2.78%) Visual Studio
7 13 (2.58%) Eclipse
8 10 (1.99%) Browser DevTools
9 8 (1.59%) Sonatype Nexus
10 4 (0.80%) Artifactory
11 3 (0.60%) Bitbucket
12 2 (0.40%) Introscope
12 2 (0.40%) Selenium
12 2 (0.40%) SonarQube
12 2 (0.40%) Subversion
13 1 (0.20%) MSI
13 1 (0.20%) Postman
General
1 202 (40.16%) Social Skills
2 72 (14.31%) Analytical Skills
3 67 (13.32%) Finance
4 44 (8.75%) Banking
5 31 (6.16%) Public Sector
6 23 (4.57%) Telecoms
7 22 (4.37%) Investment Banking
7 22 (4.37%) Presentation Skills
8 20 (3.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 16 (3.18%) Military
10 15 (2.98%) Documentation Skills
11 10 (1.99%) Front Office
12 6 (1.19%) Manufacturing
12 6 (1.19%) Pharmaceutical
13 5 (0.99%) Aerospace
13 5 (0.99%) Legal
13 5 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
14 4 (0.80%) Automotive
14 4 (0.80%) Police
15 3 (0.60%) Retail
Job Titles
1 114 (22.66%) Network Engineer
2 58 (11.53%) Support Engineer
3 54 (10.74%) Senior
4 49 (9.74%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 39 (7.75%) Architect
5 39 (7.75%) IT Support
6 34 (6.76%) Analyst
7 32 (6.36%) IT Engineer
8 27 (5.37%) Security Engineer
9 26 (5.17%) Systems Engineer
10 25 (4.97%) IT Support Engineer
10 25 (4.97%) Web Engineer
11 22 (4.37%) Technical Engineer
12 21 (4.17%) Platform Engineer
13 20 (3.98%) Senior Network Engineer
14 18 (3.58%) IP Network Engineer
14 18 (3.58%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 16 (3.18%) Blue Coat Engineer
16 15 (2.98%) Cloud Engineer
16 15 (2.98%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (3.98%) SAML
2 15 (2.98%) REST
3 14 (2.78%) LDAP
4 13 (2.58%) ARM Templates
4 13 (2.58%) Node.js
4 13 (2.58%) Web Services
5 12 (2.39%) 802.1X
5 12 (2.39%) JSON
6 8 (1.59%) .NET
7 6 (1.19%) HTML
7 6 (1.19%) NETCONF
7 6 (1.19%) OpenConfig
7 6 (1.19%) OpenID
7 6 (1.19%) RESTCONF
7 6 (1.19%) XML
7 6 (1.19%) YANG
8 5 (0.99%) Kafka
8 5 (0.99%) OAuth
8 5 (0.99%) RESTful
9 4 (0.80%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 79 (15.71%) Data Centre
2 54 (10.74%) Onboarding
3 30 (5.96%) Hybrid Cloud
3 30 (5.96%) PKI
4 27 (5.37%) Management Information System
5 24 (4.77%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 19 (3.78%) Linux Command Line
6 19 (3.78%) Robotics
7 18 (3.58%) Security Posture
8 17 (3.38%) Driving Licence
9 16 (3.18%) Public Cloud
10 15 (2.98%) Industry 4.0
11 14 (2.78%) Cloud Native
11 14 (2.78%) Operational Technology
11 14 (2.78%) Self-Motivation
12 12 (2.39%) SCADA
13 11 (2.19%) Cyber Threat
14 10 (1.99%) Analytical Mindset
15 9 (1.79%) Private Cloud
16 8 (1.59%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 224 (44.53%) Windows
2 135 (26.84%) Linux
3 66 (13.12%) Windows Server
4 37 (7.36%) Windows 10
5 35 (6.96%) Mac OS
6 24 (4.77%) Unix
7 16 (3.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 15 (2.98%) Apple iOS
9 13 (2.58%) Ubuntu
10 11 (2.19%) Android
11 5 (0.99%) zOS
12 4 (0.80%) Windows Server 2012
13 3 (0.60%) CentOS
13 3 (0.60%) Check Point GAiA
14 2 (0.40%) Oracle Linux
14 2 (0.40%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
14 2 (0.40%) Windows Server 2016
14 2 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
15 1 (0.20%) Data ONTAP
15 1 (0.20%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 139 (27.63%) Problem-Solving
2 107 (21.27%) ITIL
3 79 (15.71%) CI/CD
4 73 (14.51%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 70 (13.92%) Infrastructure as Code
6 64 (12.72%) DevOps
7 63 (12.52%) Agile
8 61 (12.13%) Customer Service
9 60 (11.93%) Load Balancing
10 55 (10.93%) Cybersecurity
11 52 (10.34%) ITSM
12 51 (10.14%) Migration
13 49 (9.74%) SIEM
14 47 (9.34%) High Availability
15 46 (9.15%) Incident Response
15 46 (9.15%) Validation
16 44 (8.75%) Continuous Improvement
17 43 (8.55%) Service Management
17 43 (8.55%) Technical Leadership
18 40 (7.95%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 143 (28.43%) Python
2 95 (18.89%) PowerShell
3 83 (16.50%) Bash
4 28 (5.57%) C++
5 25 (4.97%) JavaScript
6 21 (4.17%) SQL
7 17 (3.38%) C#
8 11 (2.19%) Java
9 9 (1.79%) Bicep
10 8 (1.59%) Perl
10 8 (1.59%) Shell Script
11 7 (1.39%) VBA
12 6 (1.19%) C
13 5 (0.99%) ActionScript
14 4 (0.80%) Go
15 3 (0.60%) VBScript
16 2 (0.40%) Jython
16 2 (0.40%) Korn
16 2 (0.40%) Objective-C
16 2 (0.40%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 138 (27.44%) Security Cleared
2 92 (18.29%) SC Cleared
3 80 (15.90%) Degree
4 61 (12.13%) Cisco Certification
5 47 (9.34%) DV Cleared
6 45 (8.95%) CCNP
7 30 (5.96%) CCNA
7 30 (5.96%) Microsoft Certification
8 22 (4.37%) CISSP
9 21 (4.17%) Computer Science Degree
10 16 (3.18%) Network+ Certification
11 15 (2.98%) CCIE
12 12 (2.39%) Azure Certification
13 11 (2.19%) A+ Certification
13 11 (2.19%) CompTIA Security+
13 11 (2.19%) VCAP
14 10 (1.99%) MCSA
14 10 (1.99%) MCSE
15 9 (1.79%) AWS Certification
16 7 (1.39%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (3.78%) SLA
2 14 (2.78%) NIST
3 11 (2.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 10 (1.99%) QA
5 9 (1.79%) NCSC
6 5 (0.99%) GDPR
7 4 (0.80%) 21 CFR Part 11
7 4 (0.80%) GxP
7 4 (0.80%) NIST 800
7 4 (0.80%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.40%) Government Security Classifications
8 2 (0.40%) JSP 440
9 1 (0.20%) ISO 8583
9 1 (0.20%) RMADS
System Software
1 140 (27.83%) Active Directory
2 90 (17.89%) VMware Infrastructure
3 34 (6.76%) Hyper-V
4 31 (6.16%) Docker
5 24 (4.77%) vSphere
6 23 (4.57%) VMware NSX
7 18 (3.58%) Firmware
8 12 (2.39%) Virtual Desktop
9 7 (1.39%) Squid
10 6 (1.19%) Virtual Machines
11 4 (0.80%) NFS
11 4 (0.80%) VMware ESXi
12 3 (0.60%) VirtualBox
13 2 (0.40%) KVM
13 2 (0.40%) RACF
14 1 (0.20%) Citrix Presentation Server
14 1 (0.20%) NDS
14 1 (0.20%) NetIQ eDirectory
14 1 (0.20%) Snort
14 1 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 101 (20.08%) Ansible
2 84 (16.70%) Terraform
3 54 (10.74%) Microsoft Intune
4 46 (9.15%) Kubernetes
5 29 (5.77%) SCCM
6 25 (4.97%) Single Sign-On
7 23 (4.57%) Grafana
8 19 (3.78%) FortiGate
9 15 (2.98%) VxRail
10 13 (2.58%) Prometheus
11 11 (2.19%) Jamf Pro
12 9 (1.79%) WSUS
13 6 (1.19%) CASB
13 6 (1.19%) QRadar
13 6 (1.19%) systemd
14 5 (0.99%) Consul
14 5 (0.99%) Nessus
14 5 (0.99%) Suricata
15 3 (0.60%) Nagios
15 3 (0.60%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 186 (36.98%) Microsoft
2 103 (20.48%) VMware
3 93 (18.49%) Cisco
4 63 (12.52%) F5
5 54 (10.74%) ServiceNow
6 29 (5.77%) Fortinet
7 28 (5.57%) Zscaler
8 26 (5.17%) Google
9 25 (4.97%) Juniper
10 23 (4.57%) Blue Coat
11 22 (4.37%) Palo Alto
11 22 (4.37%) Splunk
12 21 (4.17%) Citrix
13 19 (3.78%) McAfee
13 19 (3.78%) NetApp
14 18 (3.58%) CheckPoint
14 18 (3.58%) Infoblox
15 17 (3.38%) Red Hat
15 17 (3.38%) Siemens
16 13 (2.58%) Remedy