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

6 months to
21 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 278 227 224
Rank change year-on-year -51 -3 -9
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 504 402 418
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.93% 1.23% 1.09%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 9.97% 10.65% 9.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 263 219 235
10th Percentile £197 £184 £203
25th Percentile £295 £300 £260
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year -2.70% -2.63% +5.56%
75th Percentile £542 £594 £575
90th Percentile £674 £660 £666
UK excluding London median daily rate £449 £444 £425
% change year-on-year +1.13% +4.35% +6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 57 37 30
10th Percentile £26.50 £25.10 £29.13
25th Percentile £33.70 £33.00 -
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £69.50 - -
90th Percentile £95.05 £73.55 £65.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year - - +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 5,057 3,773 4,570
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.31% 11.55% 11.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,928 2,343 2,660
10th Percentile £231 £225 £227
25th Percentile £393 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £500
% change year-on-year +5.56% -10.00% +9.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 414 200 244
10th Percentile £14.14 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £24.75 £21.37
Median hourly rate £33.39 £42.50 £50.25
Median % change year-on-year -21.44% -15.42% -11.05%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £88.75 £73.20 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.25 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -26.47% -25.89% -0.26%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 -47 459 £465 -2.11% 808
UK excluding London -39 282 £449 +1.13% 504
London -48 198 £465 -19.13% 381
Work from Home -78 119 £500 -4.76% 280
North of England -58 73 £425 -17.87% 97
South East -49 71 £527 +40.60% 141
South West -1 48 £638 +41.67% 64
Midlands -35 43 £401 +3.90% 67
North West -36 41 £240 -55.76% 55
East of England -20 38 £425 -10.53% 69
West Midlands -41 36 £438 +9.38% 38
Yorkshire -44 28 £500 - 28
Scotland -26 16 £210 -49.94% 41
Wales -5 8 £390 +116.67% 12
East Midlands -8 7 £326 +97.58% 29
North East -39 4 £438 +75.00% 17

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 51 (10.12%) SharePoint
2 35 (6.94%) Microsoft Exchange
3 13 (2.58%) Confluence
4 12 (2.38%) OpenStack
5 5 (0.99%) nginx
6 4 (0.79%) FactoryTalk
7 3 (0.60%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.40%) CICS
8 2 (0.40%) IIS
8 2 (0.40%) Skype for Business
9 1 (0.20%) IBM HTTP Server
9 1 (0.20%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 1 (0.20%) Traefik
9 1 (0.20%) WebSphere Application Server
9 1 (0.20%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 18 (3.57%) Microsoft Office
2 16 (3.17%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (1.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (1.19%) 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 8 (1.59%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 169 (33.53%) Azure
2 125 (24.80%) Microsoft 365
3 107 (21.23%) AWS
4 78 (15.48%) Entra ID
5 36 (7.14%) OneDrive
6 30 (5.95%) GCP
7 23 (4.56%) GitHub
8 19 (3.77%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 16 (3.17%) OpenShift
10 14 (2.78%) Azure Monitor
11 12 (2.38%) AWS CloudFormation
12 11 (2.18%) GitHub Actions
13 10 (1.98%) Google Workspace
13 10 (1.98%) Route 53
14 9 (1.79%) Amazon EC2
14 9 (1.79%) Azure Sentinel
15 8 (1.59%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 7 (1.39%) Amazon EKS
16 7 (1.39%) IaaS
16 7 (1.39%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 299 (59.33%) DNS
2 212 (42.06%) Firewall
3 202 (40.08%) DHCP
4 149 (29.56%) VPN
5 92 (18.25%) Network Security
6 88 (17.46%) WAN
7 79 (15.67%) LAN
8 76 (15.08%) VLAN
9 71 (14.09%) HTTP
10 69 (13.69%) BGP
11 58 (11.51%) SSL
12 46 (9.13%) Wi-Fi
13 45 (8.93%) Wireless
14 44 (8.73%) OSPF
15 34 (6.75%) BIG-IP
16 32 (6.35%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 26 (5.16%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
18 25 (4.96%) SD-WAN
19 24 (4.76%) Ethernet
20 19 (3.77%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (3.77%) PostgreSQL
2 17 (3.37%) SQL Server
3 9 (1.79%) MySQL
4 8 (1.59%) MongoDB
4 8 (1.59%) NoSQL
4 8 (1.59%) SQLite
5 6 (1.19%) Amazon RDS
5 6 (1.19%) Redis
6 3 (0.60%) KDB
7 2 (0.40%) BigQuery
8 1 (0.20%) Cloud Spanner
8 1 (0.20%) Kdb+
8 1 (0.20%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 50 (9.92%) JIRA
2 44 (8.73%) Git
3 34 (6.75%) Jenkins
4 26 (5.16%) GitLab
5 13 (2.58%) Fiddler
5 13 (2.58%) Visual Studio
6 12 (2.38%) Eclipse
7 8 (1.59%) Sonatype Nexus
8 5 (0.99%) Artifactory
8 5 (0.99%) Selenium
9 4 (0.79%) Browser DevTools
10 2 (0.40%) Bitbucket
10 2 (0.40%) Subversion
11 1 (0.20%) Introscope
11 1 (0.20%) MSI
11 1 (0.20%) Postman
General
1 203 (40.28%) Social Skills
2 77 (15.28%) Analytical Skills
3 58 (11.51%) Finance
4 38 (7.54%) Banking
5 31 (6.15%) Public Sector
6 28 (5.56%) Telecoms
7 16 (3.17%) Investment Banking
7 16 (3.17%) Military
8 13 (2.58%) Documentation Skills
9 12 (2.38%) Front Office
10 9 (1.79%) Aerospace
11 7 (1.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 6 (1.19%) Legal
12 6 (1.19%) Manufacturing
12 6 (1.19%) Presentation Skills
13 5 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
13 5 (0.99%) Pharmaceutical
13 5 (0.99%) Police
14 4 (0.79%) Automotive
14 4 (0.79%) Multimedia
Job Titles
1 108 (21.43%) Network Engineer
2 68 (13.49%) Support Engineer
3 62 (12.30%) Senior
4 60 (11.90%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 55 (10.91%) IT Support
6 43 (8.53%) IT Engineer
7 37 (7.34%) IT Support Engineer
8 34 (6.75%) Analyst
8 34 (6.75%) Architect
9 26 (5.16%) Senior Network Engineer
10 23 (4.56%) Platform Engineer
11 22 (4.37%) Security Engineer
12 20 (3.97%) Linux Engineer
12 20 (3.97%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 17 (3.37%) Network Infrastructure Engineer
13 17 (3.37%) Support Analyst
14 16 (3.17%) Cloud Engineer
15 15 (2.98%) IP Network Engineer
15 15 (2.98%) Web Engineer
16 14 (2.78%) Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 88 (17.46%) Terraform
2 18 (3.57%) REST
3 14 (2.78%) SAML
4 13 (2.58%) JSON
5 12 (2.38%) ARM Templates
5 12 (2.38%) Node.js
5 12 (2.38%) Web Services
6 9 (1.79%) .NET
6 9 (1.79%) Kafka
7 8 (1.59%) 802.1X
7 8 (1.59%) HTML
7 8 (1.59%) LDAP
7 8 (1.59%) SPNEGO
8 7 (1.39%) Elastic Stack
8 7 (1.39%) Jinja
9 6 (1.19%) FastAPI
9 6 (1.19%) Flask
9 6 (1.19%) Pandas
9 6 (1.19%) RabbitMQ
9 6 (1.19%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 85 (16.87%) Data Centre
2 59 (11.71%) Onboarding
3 34 (6.75%) PKI
4 31 (6.15%) Hybrid Cloud
5 25 (4.96%) Management Information System
6 21 (4.17%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 21 (4.17%) Linux Command Line
7 18 (3.57%) Self-Motivation
8 17 (3.37%) Operational Technology
8 17 (3.37%) Public Cloud
9 16 (3.17%) Driving Licence
9 16 (3.17%) Video Conferencing
10 14 (2.78%) Cloud Native
11 13 (2.58%) SCADA
12 11 (2.18%) Cyber Threat
13 10 (1.98%) Enterprise Storage
13 10 (1.98%) Security Posture
14 9 (1.79%) Distributed Systems
14 9 (1.79%) Private Cloud
15 8 (1.59%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 246 (48.81%) Windows
2 163 (32.34%) Linux
3 79 (15.67%) Windows Server
4 52 (10.32%) Windows 10
5 43 (8.53%) Mac OS
6 31 (6.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 31 (6.15%) Unix
7 18 (3.57%) Apple iOS
8 16 (3.17%) Ubuntu
9 14 (2.78%) Android
10 6 (1.19%) CentOS
11 5 (0.99%) zOS
12 3 (0.60%) Check Point GAiA
12 3 (0.60%) Windows Server 2019
13 2 (0.40%) SUSE
13 2 (0.40%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 2 (0.40%) Windows Server 2012
14 1 (0.20%) AIX
14 1 (0.20%) Solaris
14 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 134 (26.59%) Problem-Solving
2 109 (21.63%) ITIL
3 89 (17.66%) CI/CD
4 83 (16.47%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 78 (15.48%) Infrastructure as Code
6 71 (14.09%) DevOps
7 67 (13.29%) Load Balancing
8 64 (12.70%) ITSM
9 62 (12.30%) Agile
10 61 (12.10%) Customer Service
11 58 (11.51%) Cybersecurity
12 54 (10.71%) Continuous Improvement
13 50 (9.92%) Migration
13 50 (9.92%) Platform Engineering
14 47 (9.33%) Incident Response
14 47 (9.33%) Validation
15 46 (9.13%) High Availability
16 45 (8.93%) Change Management
17 44 (8.73%) Service Management
17 44 (8.73%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 153 (30.36%) Python
2 107 (21.23%) PowerShell
3 89 (17.66%) Bash
4 27 (5.36%) C++
5 23 (4.56%) JavaScript
6 21 (4.17%) SQL
7 17 (3.37%) C#
8 15 (2.98%) Shell Script
9 14 (2.78%) Perl
10 12 (2.38%) Java
11 11 (2.18%) Bicep
12 8 (1.59%) Korn
13 7 (1.39%) VBA
14 5 (0.99%) ActionScript
14 5 (0.99%) Go
15 4 (0.79%) C
16 3 (0.60%) Kusto Query Language
16 3 (0.60%) VBScript
17 2 (0.40%) Objective-C
17 2 (0.40%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 138 (27.38%) Security Cleared
2 80 (15.87%) SC Cleared
3 64 (12.70%) Degree
4 58 (11.51%) Cisco Certification
5 54 (10.71%) DV Cleared
6 47 (9.33%) CCNP
7 28 (5.56%) CCNA
8 24 (4.76%) Microsoft Certification
9 20 (3.97%) A+ Certification
10 19 (3.77%) Computer Science Degree
11 16 (3.17%) Network+ Certification
12 15 (2.98%) CCIE
13 13 (2.58%) CISSP
13 13 (2.58%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 12 (2.38%) AWS Certification
14 12 (2.38%) VCAP
15 11 (2.18%) Azure Certification
16 8 (1.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 6 (1.19%) JNCIS
18 5 (0.99%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (4.76%) SLA
2 15 (2.98%) QA
3 10 (1.98%) NCSC
4 9 (1.79%) NIST
5 8 (1.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 4 (0.79%) 21 CFR Part 11
6 4 (0.79%) GxP
6 4 (0.79%) NIST 800
6 4 (0.79%) PCI DSS
7 3 (0.60%) GDPR
8 2 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
8 2 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 2 (0.40%) Government Security Classifications
8 2 (0.40%) JSP 440
9 1 (0.20%) Data Quality
9 1 (0.20%) ISO 8583
9 1 (0.20%) RMADS
System Software
1 168 (33.33%) Active Directory
2 95 (18.85%) VMware Infrastructure
3 42 (8.33%) Hyper-V
4 33 (6.55%) Docker
5 31 (6.15%) vSphere
6 23 (4.56%) VMware NSX
7 19 (3.77%) Firmware
8 14 (2.78%) Virtual Desktop
9 6 (1.19%) NFS
9 6 (1.19%) Virtual Machines
10 5 (0.99%) VMware ESXi
11 4 (0.79%) Squid
12 3 (0.60%) VirtualBox
13 2 (0.40%) KVM
13 2 (0.40%) RACF
13 2 (0.40%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 2 (0.40%) Virtual Servers
14 1 (0.20%) GPFS
14 1 (0.20%) iptables
14 1 (0.20%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 110 (21.83%) Ansible
2 65 (12.90%) Microsoft Intune
3 49 (9.72%) Kubernetes
4 31 (6.15%) SCCM
5 28 (5.56%) Grafana
6 18 (3.57%) Single Sign-On
7 17 (3.37%) FortiGate
8 16 (3.17%) Prometheus
8 16 (3.17%) VxRail
9 15 (2.98%) Jamf Pro
10 6 (1.19%) Istio
10 6 (1.19%) Nagios
10 6 (1.19%) systemd
11 5 (0.99%) Puppet
11 5 (0.99%) vCenter Server
11 5 (0.99%) WSUS
12 4 (0.79%) Consul
12 4 (0.79%) Suricata
12 4 (0.79%) ZABBIX
13 3 (0.60%) SELinux
Vendors
1 203 (40.28%) Microsoft
2 112 (22.22%) VMware
3 102 (20.24%) Cisco
4 62 (12.30%) ServiceNow
5 58 (11.51%) F5
6 28 (5.56%) Fortinet
7 24 (4.76%) Google
7 24 (4.76%) Zscaler
8 22 (4.37%) NetApp
9 20 (3.97%) Infoblox
9 20 (3.97%) Juniper
9 20 (3.97%) Palo Alto
10 18 (3.57%) Splunk
11 17 (3.37%) Red Hat
12 16 (3.17%) Blue Coat
13 15 (2.98%) Citrix
13 15 (2.98%) McAfee
13 15 (2.98%) SolarWinds
14 14 (2.78%) CheckPoint
15 11 (2.18%) Bloomberg