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 18 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 229 199 198
Rank change year-on-year -30 -1 +31
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 436 450 589
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.23% 1.25% 1.26%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 10.89% 10.34% 8.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 236 258 366
10th Percentile £185 £193 £185
25th Percentile £278 £260 £277
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £475 £438
Median % change year-on-year -1.05% +8.57% -15.46%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £586
90th Percentile £719 £738 £681
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £400 £400
% change year-on-year +6.25% - -11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 19 60
10th Percentile £15.50 £31.00 £20.50
25th Percentile £31.00 £62.50 £32.96
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year - +30.00% -23.08%
75th Percentile - - £56.49
90th Percentile £67.49 £67.50 £69.66
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year - +30.00% -23.08%

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 4,003 4,351 6,571
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.31% 12.07% 14.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,592 2,513 4,092
10th Percentile £206 £225 £213
25th Percentile £358 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £686 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 203 161 343
10th Percentile £15.50 £18.03 £17.72
25th Percentile £20.63 £25.75 £22.88
Median hourly rate £35.00 £47.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -26.32% -13.64% +31.74%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £66.25
90th Percentile £74.85 £75.00 £75.67
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £50.00 £56.49
% change year-on-year -15.00% -11.49% +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 18 November 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 18 November 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for TCP/IP in the UK

TCP/IP
Top 17 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 18 November 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 -25 395 £475 - 672
UK excluding London -19 254 £425 +6.25% 535
London +12 151 £550 +4.76% 204
Work from Home -1 139 £458 -12.71% 439
North of England -24 79 £475 +15.15% 58
East of England +1 53 £413 -29.79% 86
South East -9 51 £316 -27.71% 249
Yorkshire -35 40 £450 +100.00% 18
North West -13 36 £535 +11.17% 35
Midlands -30 36 £213 -43.33% 46
West Midlands -7 35 £225 - 23
South West -11 26 £700 +30.23% 61
Scotland +7 15 £445 +11.25% 35
Wales -2 4 £250 -16.67% 15
Northern Ireland -13 4 - - 2
North East -11 3 £400 +166.67% 5
East Midlands -34 1 £165 -56.00% 23

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 36 (8.26%) SharePoint
2 28 (6.42%) Microsoft Exchange
3 14 (3.21%) Skype for Business
4 7 (1.61%) OpenStack
5 6 (1.38%) Confluence
6 4 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
7 3 (0.69%) Apache Spark
8 2 (0.46%) IIS
8 2 (0.46%) nginx
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 41 (9.40%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (1.38%) Weka
3 3 (0.69%) Microsoft Excel
4 2 (0.46%) AutoCAD
5 1 (0.23%) Acrobat
5 1 (0.23%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 1 (0.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.23%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 1 (0.23%) Dynamics CRM
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 91 (20.87%) Microsoft 365
2 85 (19.50%) Azure
3 83 (19.04%) AWS
4 27 (6.19%) Amazon EC2
5 26 (5.96%) Amazon S3
5 26 (5.96%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 23 (5.28%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 22 (5.05%) Amazon ELB
7 22 (5.05%) Entra ID
7 22 (5.05%) GCP
8 16 (3.67%) GitHub
9 9 (2.06%) OneDrive
9 9 (2.06%) SaaS
10 8 (1.83%) Cloud Computing
11 6 (1.38%) GitHub Actions
11 6 (1.38%) Google Workspace
12 5 (1.15%) AWS CloudFormation
13 4 (0.92%) Amazon EKS
13 4 (0.92%) AWS Direct Connect
13 4 (0.92%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 229 (52.52%) DNS
2 161 (36.93%) Firewall
3 127 (29.13%) DHCP
4 122 (27.98%) VPN
5 80 (18.35%) SSL
6 66 (15.14%) LAN
7 63 (14.45%) WAN
8 61 (13.99%) VLAN
9 58 (13.30%) HTTP
9 58 (13.30%) Network Security
10 31 (7.11%) Internet
11 28 (6.42%) Ethernet
12 26 (5.96%) BGP
12 26 (5.96%) Wireless
12 26 (5.96%) Wireshark
13 24 (5.50%) SAN
14 22 (5.05%) Wi-Fi
15 19 (4.36%) OSPF
16 15 (3.44%) BIG-IP
17 14 (3.21%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (5.50%) SQL Server
2 9 (2.06%) NoSQL
3 8 (1.83%) PostgreSQL
4 5 (1.15%) Oracle Database
5 4 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
5 4 (0.92%) Big Data
5 4 (0.92%) DB2
5 4 (0.92%) Elasticsearch
5 4 (0.92%) MySQL
5 4 (0.92%) Relational Database
6 3 (0.69%) Amazon Aurora
6 3 (0.69%) Apache Cassandra
6 3 (0.69%) Delta Lake
6 3 (0.69%) Hadoop
6 3 (0.69%) Parquet
7 1 (0.23%) Apache Hive
7 1 (0.23%) DynamoDB
7 1 (0.23%) Electronic Patient Records
7 1 (0.23%) Impala
7 1 (0.23%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 53 (12.16%) Git
1 53 (12.16%) Jenkins
2 29 (6.65%) GitLab
3 23 (5.28%) Eclipse
3 23 (5.28%) Visual Studio
4 18 (4.13%) JIRA
5 16 (3.67%) Postman
6 13 (2.98%) Fiddler
7 8 (1.83%) Subversion
8 4 (0.92%) Robot Framework
8 4 (0.92%) TeamCity
9 3 (0.69%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.69%) MLflow
9 3 (0.69%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.69%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.46%) Maven
10 2 (0.46%) Mercurial
10 2 (0.46%) Poetry
10 2 (0.46%) PyCharm
10 2 (0.46%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 164 (37.61%) Social Skills
2 83 (19.04%) Analytical Skills
3 56 (12.84%) Finance
4 31 (7.11%) Public Sector
5 29 (6.65%) Military
6 28 (6.42%) Presentation Skills
7 26 (5.96%) Banking
8 19 (4.36%) Investment Banking
9 13 (2.98%) Front Office
10 12 (2.75%) Legal
11 10 (2.29%) Organisational Skills
12 9 (2.06%) Local Government
12 9 (2.06%) Telecoms
13 8 (1.83%) Law
14 7 (1.61%) Financial Institution
15 5 (1.15%) Manufacturing
16 4 (0.92%) Documentation Skills
16 4 (0.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 3 (0.69%) Marketing
18 2 (0.46%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 75 (17.20%) Support Engineer
2 71 (16.28%) Network Engineer
3 56 (12.84%) Senior
4 51 (11.70%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 48 (11.01%) Analyst
6 36 (8.26%) IT Support
7 32 (7.34%) IT Engineer
8 29 (6.65%) Developer
9 27 (6.19%) Technical Support
10 26 (5.96%) Support Analyst
11 25 (5.73%) Technical Engineer
12 21 (4.82%) 2nd Line Support
12 21 (4.82%) C# Software Engineer
12 21 (4.82%) DevOps Engineer
12 21 (4.82%) Software Engineer
13 17 (3.90%) Automation Engineer
14 16 (3.67%) IT Support Engineer
14 16 (3.67%) Senior DevOps
14 16 (3.67%) Technical Analyst
15 15 (3.44%) C++ Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (5.96%) Node.js
2 25 (5.73%) Web Services
3 19 (4.36%) Middleware
4 16 (3.67%) REST
5 12 (2.75%) FIX Protocol
6 10 (2.29%) LDAP
6 10 (2.29%) SOAP
7 9 (2.06%) Elastic Stack
8 6 (1.38%) AngularJS
9 5 (1.15%) FpML
9 5 (1.15%) Ultra Messaging
10 4 (0.92%) RESTful
10 4 (0.92%) SAML
11 3 (0.69%) Apache Avro
11 3 (0.69%) Flask
11 3 (0.69%) NumPy
11 3 (0.69%) Pandas
11 3 (0.69%) React
12 2 (0.46%) 802.1X
12 2 (0.46%) Bootstrap
Miscellaneous
1 30 (6.88%) Data Centre
1 30 (6.88%) Management Information System
2 23 (5.28%) Onboarding
3 17 (3.90%) Analytical Mindset
4 15 (3.44%) Private Cloud
5 14 (3.21%) Driving Licence
5 14 (3.21%) Security Posture
6 13 (2.98%) NHS
7 11 (2.52%) Replication
8 10 (2.29%) Video Conferencing
9 9 (2.06%) CMDB
9 9 (2.06%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 9 (2.06%) Public Cloud
9 9 (2.06%) Self-Motivation
10 8 (1.83%) Clustering
10 8 (1.83%) Enterprise Software
10 8 (1.83%) iPhone
10 8 (1.83%) SCADA
11 7 (1.61%) Fixed Income
12 6 (1.38%) Grid Computing
Operating Systems
1 202 (46.33%) Windows
2 144 (33.03%) Linux
3 53 (12.16%) Windows Server
4 48 (11.01%) Windows 10
5 36 (8.26%) Unix
6 17 (3.90%) Mac OS
7 16 (3.67%) Windows Server 2016
8 13 (2.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 12 (2.75%) Android
10 8 (1.83%) Apple iOS
10 8 (1.83%) Ubuntu
10 8 (1.83%) Windows 7
10 8 (1.83%) Windows Server 2019
11 7 (1.61%) Solaris
12 6 (1.38%) CentOS
12 6 (1.38%) VMS
12 6 (1.38%) Windows Server 2003
12 6 (1.38%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.92%) Debian
14 3 (0.69%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 107 (24.54%) Problem-Solving
2 78 (17.89%) Agile
2 78 (17.89%) CI/CD
3 70 (16.06%) DevOps
3 70 (16.06%) ITIL
4 59 (13.53%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 48 (11.01%) Infrastructure as Code
6 47 (10.78%) High Availability
7 38 (8.72%) Configuration Management
7 38 (8.72%) Infrastructure Automation
8 36 (8.26%) Continuous Integration
9 35 (8.03%) Load Balancing
10 34 (7.80%) Cybersecurity
11 33 (7.57%) Validation
12 32 (7.34%) Migration
13 31 (7.11%) Incident Response
14 29 (6.65%) Knowledge Transfer
15 28 (6.42%) Service Management
16 27 (6.19%) Root Cause Analysis
17 26 (5.96%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 147 (33.72%) Python
2 73 (16.74%) Bash
3 62 (14.22%) PowerShell
4 35 (8.03%) C++
5 30 (6.88%) C#
6 29 (6.65%) Perl
7 28 (6.42%) JavaScript
8 25 (5.73%) SQL
9 21 (4.82%) Java
10 9 (2.06%) Go
10 9 (2.06%) Shell Script
11 4 (0.92%) C
11 4 (0.92%) Kusto Query Language
12 3 (0.69%) Groovy
12 3 (0.69%) PHP
12 3 (0.69%) Search Processing Language
13 2 (0.46%) T-SQL
14 1 (0.23%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.23%) Ruby
14 1 (0.23%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 102 (23.39%) Security Cleared
2 76 (17.43%) SC Cleared
3 41 (9.40%) Cisco Certification
4 38 (8.72%) Degree
5 37 (8.49%) Microsoft Certification
6 27 (6.19%) DV Cleared
7 26 (5.96%) CCNP
8 25 (5.73%) CCNA
9 18 (4.13%) Network+ Certification
10 15 (3.44%) MCP
11 14 (3.21%) MCSE
12 13 (2.98%) Azure Certification
13 12 (2.75%) CISSP
14 11 (2.52%) MCSA
14 11 (2.52%) Server+ Certification
15 10 (2.29%) CompTIA Security+
16 7 (1.61%) A+ Certification
16 7 (1.61%) Computer Science Degree
17 6 (1.38%) ECDL
17 6 (1.38%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (5.50%) GDPR
2 8 (1.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 8 (1.83%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 7 (1.61%) NIST
4 6 (1.38%) Cyber Essentials
5 5 (1.15%) SLA
6 4 (0.92%) HIPAA
6 4 (0.92%) QA
7 3 (0.69%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.46%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.46%) NCSC
8 2 (0.46%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
9 1 (0.23%) PMO
System Software
1 98 (22.48%) Active Directory
2 78 (17.89%) VMware Infrastructure
3 44 (10.09%) Docker
4 34 (7.80%) Hyper-V
5 12 (2.75%) VMware ESXi
6 11 (2.52%) Firmware
7 8 (1.83%) vSphere
8 7 (1.61%) Terminal Services
9 6 (1.38%) GPFS
9 6 (1.38%) Lustre
9 6 (1.38%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 6 (1.38%) Veritas Cluster Server
9 6 (1.38%) Virtual Desktop
10 5 (1.15%) NDS
10 5 (1.15%) NetIQ eDirectory
10 5 (1.15%) Virtual Machines
11 4 (0.92%) NFS
11 4 (0.92%) Veritas File System
11 4 (0.92%) Veritas Volume Manager
11 4 (0.92%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 89 (20.41%) Ansible
2 57 (13.07%) Terraform
3 36 (8.26%) SCCM
4 28 (6.42%) Puppet
5 22 (5.05%) Kubernetes
5 22 (5.05%) Microsoft Intune
6 17 (3.90%) Prometheus
7 16 (3.67%) Grafana
8 11 (2.52%) FortiGate
9 10 (2.29%) Microsoft Clustering
10 9 (2.06%) vCenter Server
11 7 (1.61%) Nessus
11 7 (1.61%) Single Sign-On
12 6 (1.38%) ITRS Geneos
12 6 (1.38%) QRadar
13 5 (1.15%) CASB
13 5 (1.15%) Progress Chef
13 5 (1.15%) WSUS
14 4 (0.92%) Red Hat Satellite
15 3 (0.69%) Iperf
Vendors
1 158 (36.24%) Microsoft
2 98 (22.48%) VMware
3 58 (13.30%) F5
4 57 (13.07%) Cisco
5 51 (11.70%) Palo Alto
6 44 (10.09%) CheckPoint
7 25 (5.73%) Citrix
8 22 (5.05%) Splunk
9 21 (4.82%) Oracle
9 21 (4.82%) Red Hat
9 21 (4.82%) ServiceNow
10 20 (4.59%) Blue Coat
10 20 (4.59%) MuleSoft
11 18 (4.13%) Fortinet
12 17 (3.90%) SolarWinds
13 16 (3.67%) NetApp
14 15 (3.44%) McAfee
15 12 (2.75%) Juniper
16 11 (2.52%) Veeam
17 10 (2.29%) CyberArk