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 15 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 245 185 221
Rank change year-on-year -60 +36 +8
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 436 442 490
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.09% 1.43% 1.09%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 10.54% 10.88% 8.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 253 281 321
10th Percentile £200 £213 £184
25th Percentile £315 £400 £275
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £525 £475
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% +10.53% -9.52%
75th Percentile £575 £675 £575
90th Percentile £653 £775 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £478 £413
% change year-on-year -5.76% +15.76% -17.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 35 7 38
10th Percentile £15.50 £20.15 £23.95
25th Percentile £21.25 £26.25 £40.85
Median hourly rate £34.00 £54.50 £50.20
Median % change year-on-year -37.61% +8.58% -22.78%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.38 £56.49
90th Percentile - £68.50 £69.62
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £47.50 £53.00
% change year-on-year -11.71% -10.38% -18.46%

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 4,135 4,062 6,014
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.35% 13.14% 13.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,717 2,404 3,588
10th Percentile £204 £210 £205
25th Percentile £355 £360 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £488
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +2.56% -5.89%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £680 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £470 £475
% change year-on-year -4.26% -1.05% +1.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 168 128 405
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.01 £14.41
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.46 £20.82
Median hourly rate £28.38 £32.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -12.68% -31.58% +143.59%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.47 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £70.38 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.54 £26.75 £51.89
% change year-on-year +51.55% -48.45% +160.23%

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 15 February 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 15 February 2026.

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 15 February 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 -38 377 £450 -14.29% 253
UK excluding London -25 280 £450 -5.76% 231
London -43 120 £496 -0.80% 53
Work from Home -57 117 £425 -31.45% 97
North of England -22 90 £425 -10.05% 56
South East -18 58 £500 -10.31% 63
North West -4 50 £488 +77.27% 28
East of England -3 48 £350 -24.73% 45
West Midlands -15 38 £200 -5.88% 17
Midlands -34 38 £200 -40.74% 22
Yorkshire -46 36 £443 -37.89% 19
South West -29 33 £700 +13.82% 33
Scotland +18 32 £421 -4.27% 15
North East -17 4 £200 +6.67% 13
Wales -8 3 £293 -10.00% 7

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 26 (5.96%) SharePoint
2 21 (4.82%) Microsoft Exchange
3 19 (4.36%) Confluence
4 14 (3.21%) Skype for Business
5 7 (1.61%) nginx
5 7 (1.61%) OpenStack
6 3 (0.69%) Apache
7 2 (0.46%) IIS
7 2 (0.46%) WordPress
8 1 (0.23%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.23%) Jupyter
Applications
1 37 (8.49%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (1.83%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.38%) Weka
4 5 (1.15%) Acrobat
5 2 (0.46%) Microsoft Excel
5 2 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.23%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 1 (0.23%) RMDS
1 1 (0.23%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 106 (24.31%) AWS
2 97 (22.25%) Azure
3 84 (19.27%) Microsoft 365
4 26 (5.96%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 24 (5.50%) Amazon S3
5 24 (5.50%) GCP
6 23 (5.28%) Amazon EC2
7 21 (4.82%) Entra ID
8 14 (3.21%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 14 (3.21%) Amazon ELB
9 11 (2.52%) GitHub
9 11 (2.52%) OneDrive
9 11 (2.52%) Route 53
10 9 (2.06%) AWS CloudFormation
11 8 (1.83%) Amazon EKS
11 8 (1.83%) AWS Lambda
11 8 (1.83%) Serverless
12 7 (1.61%) Cloud Computing
13 6 (1.38%) Azure DevOps
13 6 (1.38%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 264 (60.55%) DNS
2 146 (33.49%) Firewall
3 125 (28.67%) DHCP
4 124 (28.44%) VPN
5 80 (18.35%) WAN
6 77 (17.66%) SSL
7 75 (17.20%) LAN
8 62 (14.22%) Network Security
8 62 (14.22%) VLAN
9 61 (13.99%) HTTP
10 43 (9.86%) Wireshark
11 40 (9.17%) BIG-IP
12 36 (8.26%) Wi-Fi
13 32 (7.34%) BGP
14 29 (6.65%) OSPF
15 26 (5.96%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
15 26 (5.96%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 19 (4.36%) Ethernet
17 18 (4.13%) Wireless
18 16 (3.67%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (3.90%) SQL Server
2 14 (3.21%) Elasticsearch
3 11 (2.52%) PostgreSQL
4 4 (0.92%) MongoDB
5 1 (0.23%) Amazon Aurora
5 1 (0.23%) Amazon RDS
5 1 (0.23%) Apache Cassandra
5 1 (0.23%) Apache Hive
5 1 (0.23%) Big Data
5 1 (0.23%) Electronic Patient Records
5 1 (0.23%) Impala
5 1 (0.23%) MySQL
5 1 (0.23%) NoSQL
5 1 (0.23%) Oracle Reports
5 1 (0.23%) Power BI
5 1 (0.23%) Relational Database
5 1 (0.23%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 32 (7.34%) GitLab
1 32 (7.34%) JIRA
2 30 (6.88%) Fiddler
3 28 (6.42%) Git
4 23 (5.28%) Jenkins
5 10 (2.29%) Eclipse
5 10 (2.29%) Visual Studio
6 6 (1.38%) Bitbucket
6 6 (1.38%) SonarQube
7 4 (0.92%) CircleCI
8 3 (0.69%) Sonatype Nexus
8 3 (0.69%) Subversion
9 2 (0.46%) Maven
9 2 (0.46%) TeamCity
10 1 (0.23%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 1 (0.23%) Cucumber
10 1 (0.23%) GCC
10 1 (0.23%) IntelliJ
10 1 (0.23%) MSI
10 1 (0.23%) Travis CI
General
1 147 (33.72%) Social Skills
2 67 (15.37%) Analytical Skills
3 37 (8.49%) Public Sector
4 34 (7.80%) Finance
5 32 (7.34%) Banking
6 24 (5.50%) Investment Banking
7 23 (5.28%) Military
8 18 (4.13%) Presentation Skills
9 13 (2.98%) Documentation Skills
10 11 (2.52%) Telecoms
11 9 (2.06%) Front Office
12 8 (1.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 7 (1.61%) Organisational Skills
14 5 (1.15%) Legal
15 4 (0.92%) Law
15 4 (0.92%) Local Government
16 3 (0.69%) French Language
16 3 (0.69%) Manufacturing
16 3 (0.69%) Marketing
17 2 (0.46%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 100 (22.94%) Network Engineer
2 62 (14.22%) Analyst
3 59 (13.53%) Support Engineer
4 44 (10.09%) Senior
5 36 (8.26%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 33 (7.57%) IT Support
7 28 (6.42%) Web Engineer
8 26 (5.96%) Architect
8 26 (5.96%) IT Engineer
9 21 (4.82%) 2nd Line Support
9 21 (4.82%) SOC Analyst
10 20 (4.59%) Junior
11 18 (4.13%) Developer
11 18 (4.13%) DevOps Engineer
11 18 (4.13%) IT Support Engineer
11 18 (4.13%) Security Engineer
11 18 (4.13%) Technical Analyst
11 18 (4.13%) Technical Support
12 16 (3.67%) Lead
13 15 (3.44%) Blue Coat Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (3.21%) LDAP
1 14 (3.21%) Web Services
2 11 (2.52%) Middleware
3 10 (2.29%) Node.js
4 9 (2.06%) OpenID
4 9 (2.06%) REST
5 7 (1.61%) SOAP
6 6 (1.38%) JSON
7 5 (1.15%) FIX Protocol
7 5 (1.15%) SAML
8 4 (0.92%) .NET
8 4 (0.92%) Kafka
8 4 (0.92%) React
8 4 (0.92%) Ultra Messaging
9 3 (0.69%) 802.1X
9 3 (0.69%) AngularJS
9 3 (0.69%) Bootstrap
9 3 (0.69%) Express.js
9 3 (0.69%) WCF
9 3 (0.69%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 33 (7.57%) Management Information System
2 25 (5.73%) Data Centre
3 23 (5.28%) Onboarding
3 23 (5.28%) Security Operations Centre
4 19 (4.36%) Cyberattack
5 18 (4.13%) Analytical Mindset
6 16 (3.67%) Public Cloud
7 13 (2.98%) CMDB
7 13 (2.98%) NHS
8 12 (2.75%) Driving Licence
9 11 (2.52%) Cyber Threat
9 11 (2.52%) PKI
9 11 (2.52%) Private Cloud
9 11 (2.52%) Security Posture
10 8 (1.83%) Enterprise Software
10 8 (1.83%) Self-Motivation
11 6 (1.38%) Grid Computing
12 5 (1.15%) Data Protection Act
12 5 (1.15%) Robotics
12 5 (1.15%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 203 (46.56%) Windows
2 131 (30.05%) Linux
3 50 (11.47%) Windows Server
4 33 (7.57%) Windows 10
5 16 (3.67%) Unix
6 15 (3.44%) Android
7 12 (2.75%) Windows Server 2019
8 11 (2.52%) Mac OS
9 9 (2.06%) Windows Server 2016
10 8 (1.83%) Apple iOS
11 7 (1.61%) Windows Server 2012
12 5 (1.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 5 (1.15%) Ubuntu
12 5 (1.15%) VMS
13 4 (0.92%) zOS
14 3 (0.69%) Debian
14 3 (0.69%) Windows Server 2003
15 2 (0.46%) CentOS
15 2 (0.46%) Solaris
15 2 (0.46%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 124 (28.44%) Problem-Solving
2 70 (16.06%) ITIL
3 59 (13.53%) Incident Response
4 57 (13.07%) Cybersecurity
4 57 (13.07%) SIEM
5 54 (12.39%) DevOps
6 52 (11.93%) CI/CD
7 51 (11.70%) Agile
8 48 (11.01%) Load Balancing
9 46 (10.55%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 45 (10.32%) Infrastructure as Code
11 42 (9.63%) Root Cause Analysis
12 36 (8.26%) Security Operations
13 35 (8.03%) Migration
14 32 (7.34%) Customer Service
15 30 (6.88%) Knowledge Transfer
16 29 (6.65%) Continuous Improvement
16 29 (6.65%) Data Loss Prevention
16 29 (6.65%) Mentoring
17 28 (6.42%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 117 (26.83%) Python
2 77 (17.66%) PowerShell
3 63 (14.45%) Bash
4 21 (4.82%) SQL
5 17 (3.90%) JavaScript
6 15 (3.44%) C#
6 15 (3.44%) C++
7 13 (2.98%) Java
8 11 (2.52%) Perl
9 10 (2.29%) Shell Script
10 7 (1.61%) Go
11 6 (1.38%) C
12 3 (0.69%) Search Processing Language
12 3 (0.69%) T-SQL
13 2 (0.46%) Kusto Query Language
13 2 (0.46%) Ruby
13 2 (0.46%) VBA
13 2 (0.46%) VBScript
14 1 (0.23%) Bicep
14 1 (0.23%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 137 (31.42%) Security Cleared
2 102 (23.39%) SC Cleared
3 52 (11.93%) Degree
4 41 (9.40%) DV Cleared
5 36 (8.26%) Cisco Certification
6 29 (6.65%) CCNP
6 29 (6.65%) CompTIA Security+
7 24 (5.50%) Microsoft Certification
8 20 (4.59%) Computer Science Degree
9 19 (4.36%) Network+ Certification
10 17 (3.90%) Azure Certification
10 17 (3.90%) CCNA
10 17 (3.90%) CISSP
11 16 (3.67%) CompTIA CySA+
12 11 (2.52%) Server+ Certification
13 10 (2.29%) JNCIS
14 9 (2.06%) Microsoft Certified Professional
15 8 (1.83%) CCIE
16 6 (1.38%) AWS Certification
16 6 (1.38%) ECDL
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (3.21%) GDPR
2 11 (2.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 8 (1.83%) NIST
3 8 (1.83%) SLA
4 6 (1.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 5 (1.15%) NCSC
6 4 (0.92%) HIPAA
7 2 (0.46%) Disclosure Scotland
7 2 (0.46%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.46%) QA
8 1 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.23%) GRC
8 1 (0.23%) RMADS
8 1 (0.23%) SOC 2
System Software
1 97 (22.25%) Active Directory
2 58 (13.30%) VMware Infrastructure
3 46 (10.55%) Docker
4 23 (5.28%) Hyper-V
5 17 (3.90%) Firmware
6 11 (2.52%) Virtual Machines
6 11 (2.52%) VMware NSX
6 11 (2.52%) vSphere
7 7 (1.61%) Lustre
7 7 (1.61%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 7 (1.61%) Squid
8 6 (1.38%) GPFS
8 6 (1.38%) Virtual Desktop
9 5 (1.15%) KVM
9 5 (1.15%) NDS
9 5 (1.15%) NetIQ eDirectory
9 5 (1.15%) VMware ESXi
10 4 (0.92%) NFS
11 2 (0.46%) Veritas File System
11 2 (0.46%) Veritas Volume Manager
Systems Management
1 87 (19.95%) Ansible
2 50 (11.47%) Terraform
3 40 (9.17%) Kubernetes
4 37 (8.49%) SCCM
5 30 (6.88%) Microsoft Intune
6 22 (5.05%) Grafana
7 19 (4.36%) Prometheus
8 16 (3.67%) FortiGate
8 16 (3.67%) Single Sign-On
9 11 (2.52%) QRadar
10 8 (1.83%) Puppet
10 8 (1.83%) WSUS
11 7 (1.61%) Consul
11 7 (1.61%) Nagios
12 5 (1.15%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 5 (1.15%) Red Hat Satellite
12 5 (1.15%) Tivoli NetView
13 4 (0.92%) Iperf
13 4 (0.92%) ITRS Geneos
13 4 (0.92%) Nessus
Vendors
1 129 (29.59%) Microsoft
2 82 (18.81%) VMware
3 71 (16.28%) F5
4 56 (12.84%) Cisco
5 48 (11.01%) Splunk
6 43 (9.86%) Palo Alto
7 35 (8.03%) Blue Coat
8 32 (7.34%) McAfee
9 31 (7.11%) CheckPoint
10 28 (6.42%) ServiceNow
11 22 (5.05%) Fortinet
11 22 (5.05%) NetApp
12 21 (4.82%) Juniper
13 19 (4.36%) Red Hat
14 16 (3.67%) SolarWinds
15 14 (3.21%) Oracle
16 13 (2.98%) Citrix
16 13 (2.98%) Meraki
16 13 (2.98%) Zscaler
17 11 (2.52%) Veeam