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 19 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 276 215 273
Rank change year-on-year -61 +58 -31
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 412 354 334
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.86% 1.21% 0.78%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 9.00% 9.55% 6.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 235 250 226
10th Percentile £223 £225 £188
25th Percentile £363 £365 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% - +2.56%
75th Percentile £550 £625 £575
90th Percentile £638 £753 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £453 £500 £494
% change year-on-year -9.40% +1.27% +9.72%
Number of hourly rates quoted 32 9 21
10th Percentile £21.25 £17.87 £16.00
25th Percentile £25.38 £28.00 £20.00
Median hourly rate £38.58 £54.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -29.21% -16.15% +10.35%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 -
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £62.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year -32.90% -3.85% +3.92%

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 4,577 3,706 5,394
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.53% 12.69% 12.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,833 2,291 3,215
10th Percentile £263 £213 £205
25th Percentile £400 £362 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £488 £490
Median % change year-on-year +1.54% -0.51% -4.85%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £694
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £463 £475
% change year-on-year +2.70% -2.63% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 245 162 417
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £20.82 £17.30 £16.30
Median hourly rate £37.50 £36.57 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.54% -8.57% +116.22%
75th Percentile £65.88 £58.73 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.25 £25.00 £45.88
% change year-on-year +69.00% -45.51% +154.89%

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 19 May 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 19 May 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 19 May 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 -43 351 £470 -6.00% 224
UK excluding London -31 251 £453 -9.40% 187
London -69 127 £475 - 63
North of England -14 90 £450 +20.00% 37
Work from Home -81 89 £450 -18.23% 85
South East -42 58 £510 +4.62% 68
North West -1 57 £540 +116.00% 20
East of England -13 39 £228 -47.09% 27
Midlands -46 32 £400 -27.27% 24
West Midlands -36 29 £388 -29.55% 18
Yorkshire -38 28 £447 -12.78% 14
Scotland +9 26 £425 -3.95% 9
South West -28 19 £500 -18.70% 23
Wales -11 7 £408 -9.44% 7
North East -19 5 £306 +22.50% 4
East Midlands -34 3 £625 +13.64% 6

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 18 (4.37%) Confluence
2 11 (2.67%) SharePoint
3 10 (2.43%) nginx
4 8 (1.94%) Microsoft Exchange
5 4 (0.97%) IIS
5 4 (0.97%) WebSphere
6 3 (0.73%) Apache
7 2 (0.49%) CICS
7 2 (0.49%) IBM HTTP Server
7 2 (0.49%) OpenStack
7 2 (0.49%) Oracle HTTP Server
7 2 (0.49%) WebSphere Application Server
7 2 (0.49%) WebSphere Portal
8 1 (0.24%) Traefik
Applications
1 28 (6.80%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (2.18%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.97%) Acrobat
4 3 (0.73%) Microsoft Excel
4 3 (0.73%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.24%) Weka
Business Applications
1 1 (0.24%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 90 (21.84%) AWS
1 90 (21.84%) Azure
2 64 (15.53%) Microsoft 365
3 26 (6.31%) Entra ID
3 26 (6.31%) GCP
4 25 (6.07%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 17 (4.13%) Amazon EC2
6 16 (3.88%) Amazon EKS
7 15 (3.64%) Amazon S3
8 14 (3.40%) Route 53
9 13 (3.16%) AWS Lambda
9 13 (3.16%) OneDrive
9 13 (3.16%) Serverless
10 10 (2.43%) GitHub
11 7 (1.70%) Azure DevOps
11 7 (1.70%) Google Workspace
11 7 (1.70%) Nutanix
11 7 (1.70%) SaaS
12 6 (1.46%) Akamai
12 6 (1.46%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 230 (55.83%) DNS
2 143 (34.71%) Firewall
3 99 (24.03%) VPN
4 95 (23.06%) DHCP
5 75 (18.20%) WAN
6 71 (17.23%) HTTP
7 68 (16.50%) LAN
7 68 (16.50%) SSL
8 66 (16.02%) Network Security
9 56 (13.59%) VLAN
10 54 (13.11%) BGP
11 50 (12.14%) BIG-IP
12 44 (10.68%) OSPF
13 34 (8.25%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
13 34 (8.25%) Wi-Fi
14 31 (7.52%) Wireshark
15 30 (7.28%) Ethernet
16 27 (6.55%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 18 (4.37%) Wireless
18 15 (3.64%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (2.91%) Elasticsearch
1 12 (2.91%) SQL Server
2 7 (1.70%) PostgreSQL
3 5 (1.21%) MongoDB
4 3 (0.73%) Amazon RDS
5 2 (0.49%) MySQL
6 1 (0.24%) Amazon Aurora
6 1 (0.24%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (0.24%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 42 (10.19%) JIRA
2 27 (6.55%) Fiddler
3 22 (5.34%) GitLab
4 19 (4.61%) Git
5 13 (3.16%) Jenkins
6 12 (2.91%) Eclipse
6 12 (2.91%) Visual Studio
7 9 (2.18%) Browser DevTools
8 7 (1.70%) Bitbucket
8 7 (1.70%) SonarQube
9 4 (0.97%) CircleCI
9 4 (0.97%) Sonatype Nexus
10 3 (0.73%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.49%) Introscope
11 2 (0.49%) Subversion
12 1 (0.24%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.24%) Postman
12 1 (0.24%) Travis CI
General
1 136 (33.01%) Social Skills
2 55 (13.35%) Finance
3 48 (11.65%) Analytical Skills
4 39 (9.47%) Banking
5 29 (7.04%) Public Sector
6 23 (5.58%) Investment Banking
7 22 (5.34%) Presentation Skills
8 21 (5.10%) Military
9 18 (4.37%) Documentation Skills
9 18 (4.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 10 (2.43%) Telecoms
11 6 (1.46%) Front Office
12 5 (1.21%) Law
13 3 (0.73%) French Language
13 3 (0.73%) Marketing
13 3 (0.73%) Organisational Skills
14 2 (0.49%) Aviation
14 2 (0.49%) Japanese Language
14 2 (0.49%) Retail
14 2 (0.49%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 104 (25.24%) Network Engineer
2 49 (11.89%) Analyst
3 35 (8.50%) Web Engineer
4 31 (7.52%) Support Engineer
5 30 (7.28%) Senior
6 28 (6.80%) Architect
7 26 (6.31%) Security Engineer
8 22 (5.34%) IT Support
9 21 (5.10%) Technical Engineer
10 20 (4.85%) IP Network Engineer
10 20 (4.85%) SOC Analyst
11 18 (4.37%) Blue Coat Engineer
11 18 (4.37%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 17 (4.13%) IT Engineer
12 17 (4.13%) Systems Engineer
13 16 (3.88%) Junior
14 15 (3.64%) Lead
15 14 (3.40%) Integration Engineer
16 12 (2.91%) Junior Network Engineer
16 12 (2.91%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (5.34%) LDAP
2 15 (3.64%) SAML
3 14 (3.40%) Web Services
4 12 (2.91%) Node.js
4 12 (2.91%) OpenID
5 11 (2.67%) JSON
6 10 (2.43%) 802.1X
7 8 (1.94%) REST
8 5 (1.21%) Kafka
8 5 (1.21%) OAuth
8 5 (1.21%) XML
9 4 (0.97%) Middleware
10 3 (0.73%) .NET
10 3 (0.73%) ARM Templates
10 3 (0.73%) Elastic Stack
10 3 (0.73%) HTML
10 3 (0.73%) NETCONF
10 3 (0.73%) OpenConfig
10 3 (0.73%) RESTCONF
10 3 (0.73%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 35 (8.50%) Data Centre
2 30 (7.28%) Onboarding
3 24 (5.83%) Management Information System
4 23 (5.58%) Security Operations Centre
5 21 (5.10%) Cyberattack
6 15 (3.64%) Cyber Threat
6 15 (3.64%) Industry 4.0
6 15 (3.64%) Robotics
7 13 (3.16%) Security Posture
8 11 (2.67%) Enterprise Software
9 10 (2.43%) Public Cloud
10 8 (1.94%) Data Protection Act
10 8 (1.94%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 8 (1.94%) Driving Licence
10 8 (1.94%) Mainframe
11 7 (1.70%) PKI
12 6 (1.46%) NHS
12 6 (1.46%) Private Cloud
12 6 (1.46%) Self-Motivation
13 5 (1.21%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 169 (41.02%) Windows
2 93 (22.57%) Linux
3 48 (11.65%) Windows Server
4 21 (5.10%) Mac OS
5 15 (3.64%) Unix
5 15 (3.64%) Windows 10
6 12 (2.91%) Android
7 10 (2.43%) Apple iOS
7 10 (2.43%) Windows Server 2012
8 8 (1.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 8 (1.94%) zOS
9 7 (1.70%) Windows Server 2019
10 6 (1.46%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.97%) Windows Server 2016
12 3 (0.73%) Debian
12 3 (0.73%) Windows 7
12 3 (0.73%) Windows Server 2003
13 2 (0.49%) AIX
13 2 (0.49%) CentOS
13 2 (0.49%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 117 (28.40%) Problem-Solving
2 65 (15.78%) ITIL
3 53 (12.86%) Incident Response
4 48 (11.65%) Agile
4 48 (11.65%) Cybersecurity
4 48 (11.65%) Load Balancing
4 48 (11.65%) SIEM
5 43 (10.44%) DevOps
6 40 (9.71%) Migration
7 39 (9.47%) Security Operations
8 35 (8.50%) CI/CD
9 34 (8.25%) Validation
10 33 (8.01%) Customer Service
11 31 (7.52%) High Availability
11 31 (7.52%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 29 (7.04%) Computer Science
12 29 (7.04%) Data Loss Prevention
12 29 (7.04%) Decision-Making
12 29 (7.04%) ITSM
12 29 (7.04%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 88 (21.36%) Python
2 41 (9.95%) PowerShell
3 40 (9.71%) Bash
4 27 (6.55%) JavaScript
5 19 (4.61%) SQL
6 18 (4.37%) C++
7 15 (3.64%) C#
8 9 (2.18%) Java
9 7 (1.70%) Shell Script
9 7 (1.70%) VBA
10 6 (1.46%) C
10 6 (1.46%) Go
11 5 (1.21%) Perl
12 2 (0.49%) Jython
12 2 (0.49%) Ruby
13 1 (0.24%) Groovy
13 1 (0.24%) T-SQL
13 1 (0.24%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 122 (29.61%) Security Cleared
2 100 (24.27%) SC Cleared
3 69 (16.75%) Degree
4 44 (10.68%) Cisco Certification
5 37 (8.98%) CCNP
6 30 (7.28%) CompTIA Security+
7 29 (7.04%) Computer Science Degree
8 27 (6.55%) DV Cleared
9 23 (5.58%) CCNA
10 18 (4.37%) CISSP
10 18 (4.37%) CompTIA CySA+
11 13 (3.16%) Microsoft Certification
12 9 (2.18%) Azure Certification
12 9 (2.18%) MCSA
13 8 (1.94%) CCIE
13 8 (1.94%) MCSE
13 8 (1.94%) Network+ Certification
14 7 (1.70%) JNCIS
15 5 (1.21%) CISM
16 4 (0.97%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (2.67%) SLA
2 9 (2.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 7 (1.70%) NIST
4 5 (1.21%) GDPR
5 4 (0.97%) QA
6 3 (0.73%) NCSC
7 2 (0.49%) RMADS
8 1 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.24%) GRC
System Software
1 79 (19.17%) Active Directory
2 46 (11.17%) VMware Infrastructure
3 18 (4.37%) Docker
3 18 (4.37%) Firmware
4 13 (3.16%) Squid
5 9 (2.18%) VMware NSX
5 9 (2.18%) vSphere
6 8 (1.94%) Virtual Desktop
6 8 (1.94%) Virtual Machines
7 7 (1.70%) Hyper-V
8 5 (1.21%) KVM
9 4 (0.97%) NFS
10 2 (0.49%) Ceph
10 2 (0.49%) iptables
10 2 (0.49%) Lustre
10 2 (0.49%) RACF
10 2 (0.49%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 2 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.24%) VirtualBox
11 1 (0.24%) Xen
Systems Management
1 66 (16.02%) Ansible
2 36 (8.74%) Terraform
3 32 (7.77%) Kubernetes
4 27 (6.55%) SCCM
5 26 (6.31%) Grafana
6 24 (5.83%) FortiGate
6 24 (5.83%) Microsoft Intune
7 22 (5.34%) Single Sign-On
8 17 (4.13%) Prometheus
9 10 (2.43%) Nagios
9 10 (2.43%) WSUS
10 9 (2.18%) Consul
11 8 (1.94%) QRadar
12 6 (1.46%) CASB
12 6 (1.46%) Tivoli NetView
13 5 (1.21%) Jamf Pro
13 5 (1.21%) Nessus
13 5 (1.21%) Suricata
14 4 (0.97%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 4 (0.97%) Puppet
Vendors
1 101 (24.51%) Microsoft
2 68 (16.50%) F5
3 64 (15.53%) Cisco
3 64 (15.53%) VMware
4 41 (9.95%) Splunk
5 34 (8.25%) ServiceNow
6 32 (7.77%) Blue Coat
7 28 (6.80%) Palo Alto
8 27 (6.55%) McAfee
9 23 (5.58%) Fortinet
10 22 (5.34%) Red Hat
11 21 (5.10%) Citrix
12 20 (4.85%) Juniper
12 20 (4.85%) NetApp
13 16 (3.88%) Siemens
13 16 (3.88%) Zscaler
14 13 (3.16%) Bloomberg
14 13 (3.16%) SolarWinds
15 12 (2.91%) Arista
15 12 (2.91%) CheckPoint