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

6 months to
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 284 222 275
Rank change year-on-year -62 +53 -24
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 415 352 347
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.85% 1.23% 0.81%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 8.76% 9.72% 6.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 237 248 237
10th Percentile £209 £225 £188
25th Percentile £375 £371 £338
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -8.00% - +2.56%
75th Percentile £550 £623 £575
90th Percentile £638 £775 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £456 £475 £488
% change year-on-year -4.00% -2.56% +8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 35 10 21
10th Percentile £21.25 £17.54 £16.00
25th Percentile £26.25 £32.44 £20.00
Median hourly rate £41.94 £58.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.31% -10.00% +10.35%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 -
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £63.75 £65.00
% change year-on-year -34.21% -1.92% +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 4,738 3,621 5,426
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.70% 12.64% 12.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,909 2,244 3,253
10th Percentile £263 £213 £206
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £484 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.31% -3.20% -2.44%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £463 £483
% change year-on-year +2.70% -4.15% +1.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 280 156 414
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.14 £17.30 £16.30
Median hourly rate £28.44 £40.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -29.78% +1.25% +116.22%
75th Percentile £65.00 £59.09 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £30.32 £45.88
% change year-on-year +7.19% -33.91% +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 28 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 28 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 28 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 -58 355 £470 -6.00% 206
UK excluding London -27 249 £456 -4.00% 184
London -62 130 £475 - 59
Work from Home -83 95 £460 -16.36% 70
North of England -25 93 £450 +12.50% 33
North West 0 56 £540 +116.00% 19
South East -38 55 £510 +13.33% 69
East of England -16 37 £263 -38.95% 26
Midlands -44 34 £400 -27.27% 23
Yorkshire -48 32 £449 -10.30% 10
West Midlands -39 31 £388 -29.55% 15
Scotland +8 24 £537 +21.24% 12
South West -25 20 £500 -18.70% 23
Wales -15 7 £408 -9.44% 6
North East -26 5 £306 +22.50% 5
East Midlands -30 3 £625 +13.64% 8

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 17 (4.10%) Confluence
2 12 (2.89%) SharePoint
3 10 (2.41%) nginx
4 9 (2.17%) Microsoft Exchange
5 4 (0.96%) IIS
5 4 (0.96%) WebSphere
6 3 (0.72%) OpenStack
7 2 (0.48%) Apache
7 2 (0.48%) CICS
7 2 (0.48%) IBM HTTP Server
7 2 (0.48%) Oracle HTTP Server
7 2 (0.48%) WebSphere Application Server
7 2 (0.48%) WebSphere Portal
8 1 (0.24%) Traefik
Applications
1 28 (6.75%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (1.93%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.96%) Acrobat
4 3 (0.72%) Microsoft Excel
5 2 (0.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.24%) Weka
Business Applications
1 2 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 95 (22.89%) Azure
2 94 (22.65%) AWS
3 70 (16.87%) Microsoft 365
4 29 (6.99%) Entra ID
5 28 (6.75%) GCP
6 26 (6.27%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 16 (3.86%) Amazon EC2
8 15 (3.61%) Amazon EKS
8 15 (3.61%) Amazon S3
9 14 (3.37%) OneDrive
9 14 (3.37%) Route 53
10 13 (3.13%) AWS Lambda
10 13 (3.13%) GitHub
10 13 (3.13%) Serverless
11 7 (1.69%) Azure DevOps
11 7 (1.69%) Google Workspace
11 7 (1.69%) Nutanix
12 6 (1.45%) Akamai
12 6 (1.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 6 (1.45%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 234 (56.39%) DNS
2 145 (34.94%) Firewall
3 101 (24.34%) VPN
4 97 (23.37%) DHCP
5 72 (17.35%) WAN
6 71 (17.11%) HTTP
7 70 (16.87%) Network Security
7 70 (16.87%) SSL
8 66 (15.90%) LAN
9 56 (13.49%) VLAN
10 53 (12.77%) BIG-IP
11 52 (12.53%) BGP
12 42 (10.12%) OSPF
13 36 (8.67%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 34 (8.19%) Wi-Fi
15 32 (7.71%) Ethernet
16 31 (7.47%) Wireshark
17 29 (6.99%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
18 21 (5.06%) Wireless
19 14 (3.37%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (2.89%) Elasticsearch
2 10 (2.41%) SQL Server
3 7 (1.69%) PostgreSQL
4 5 (1.20%) MongoDB
5 3 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
6 1 (0.24%) BigQuery
6 1 (0.24%) MySQL
6 1 (0.24%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.24%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (0.24%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 45 (10.84%) JIRA
2 26 (6.27%) Fiddler
3 21 (5.06%) GitLab
4 17 (4.10%) Git
5 15 (3.61%) Jenkins
6 13 (3.13%) Eclipse
6 13 (3.13%) Visual Studio
7 9 (2.17%) Browser DevTools
8 7 (1.69%) Bitbucket
8 7 (1.69%) SonarQube
9 4 (0.96%) CircleCI
9 4 (0.96%) Sonatype Nexus
10 3 (0.72%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.48%) Introscope
11 2 (0.48%) Subversion
12 1 (0.24%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.24%) Postman
12 1 (0.24%) Travis CI
General
1 144 (34.70%) Social Skills
2 56 (13.49%) Finance
3 48 (11.57%) Analytical Skills
4 38 (9.16%) Banking
5 29 (6.99%) Public Sector
6 23 (5.54%) Investment Banking
7 22 (5.30%) Presentation Skills
8 21 (5.06%) Military
9 19 (4.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 18 (4.34%) Documentation Skills
11 8 (1.93%) Telecoms
12 6 (1.45%) Front Office
13 5 (1.20%) Law
14 3 (0.72%) French Language
14 3 (0.72%) Manufacturing
14 3 (0.72%) Marketing
14 3 (0.72%) Organisational Skills
15 2 (0.48%) Aviation
15 2 (0.48%) Japanese Language
15 2 (0.48%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 101 (24.34%) Network Engineer
2 50 (12.05%) Analyst
3 34 (8.19%) Web Engineer
4 33 (7.95%) Support Engineer
5 30 (7.23%) Senior
6 29 (6.99%) Architect
7 27 (6.51%) Security Engineer
8 25 (6.02%) IT Support
9 22 (5.30%) Technical Engineer
10 21 (5.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 20 (4.82%) IP Network Engineer
11 20 (4.82%) SOC Analyst
12 18 (4.34%) Blue Coat Engineer
13 17 (4.10%) Systems Engineer
14 16 (3.86%) IT Engineer
14 16 (3.86%) Junior
15 15 (3.61%) Lead
16 13 (3.13%) Software Engineer
16 13 (3.13%) Technical Support
17 12 (2.89%) Network Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (4.82%) LDAP
2 16 (3.86%) SAML
3 14 (3.37%) Web Services
4 13 (3.13%) JSON
4 13 (3.13%) Node.js
5 12 (2.89%) OpenID
6 10 (2.41%) 802.1X
7 9 (2.17%) REST
8 5 (1.20%) Kafka
8 5 (1.20%) OAuth
8 5 (1.20%) XML
9 4 (0.96%) .NET
10 3 (0.72%) ARM Templates
10 3 (0.72%) HTML
10 3 (0.72%) Middleware
11 2 (0.48%) eBPF
11 2 (0.48%) NETCONF
11 2 (0.48%) OpenConfig
11 2 (0.48%) RESTCONF
11 2 (0.48%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 38 (9.16%) Data Centre
1 38 (9.16%) Onboarding
2 24 (5.78%) Management Information System
2 24 (5.78%) Security Operations Centre
3 21 (5.06%) Cyberattack
4 17 (4.10%) Cyber Threat
5 15 (3.61%) Industry 4.0
5 15 (3.61%) Robotics
6 13 (3.13%) Security Posture
7 10 (2.41%) Enterprise Software
8 9 (2.17%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 8 (1.93%) Data Protection Act
9 8 (1.93%) Driving Licence
9 8 (1.93%) PKI
9 8 (1.93%) Public Cloud
10 6 (1.45%) Mainframe
10 6 (1.45%) NHS
10 6 (1.45%) Private Cloud
11 5 (1.20%) Cloud Native
11 5 (1.20%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 174 (41.93%) Windows
2 93 (22.41%) Linux
3 48 (11.57%) Windows Server
4 25 (6.02%) Mac OS
5 17 (4.10%) Windows 10
6 14 (3.37%) Unix
7 11 (2.65%) Android
7 11 (2.65%) Apple iOS
8 10 (2.41%) Windows Server 2012
9 7 (1.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 7 (1.69%) Windows Server 2019
10 6 (1.45%) Ubuntu
10 6 (1.45%) zOS
11 4 (0.96%) Windows Server 2016
12 3 (0.72%) Debian
12 3 (0.72%) Windows 7
12 3 (0.72%) Windows Server 2003
13 2 (0.48%) CentOS
13 2 (0.48%) Oracle Linux
13 2 (0.48%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 117 (28.19%) Problem-Solving
2 65 (15.66%) ITIL
3 56 (13.49%) Incident Response
4 54 (13.01%) Agile
5 49 (11.81%) Load Balancing
6 48 (11.57%) Cybersecurity
6 48 (11.57%) SIEM
7 47 (11.33%) DevOps
8 41 (9.88%) CI/CD
9 38 (9.16%) Security Operations
10 36 (8.67%) Customer Service
10 36 (8.67%) Migration
11 34 (8.19%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 34 (8.19%) ITSM
12 33 (7.95%) High Availability
13 32 (7.71%) Validation
14 31 (7.47%) Root Cause Analysis
15 30 (7.23%) Computer Science
16 29 (6.99%) Decision-Making
17 28 (6.75%) Data Loss Prevention
Programming Languages
1 89 (21.45%) Python
2 41 (9.88%) Bash
3 39 (9.40%) PowerShell
4 29 (6.99%) JavaScript
5 20 (4.82%) C++
6 19 (4.58%) SQL
7 16 (3.86%) C#
8 9 (2.17%) Java
8 9 (2.17%) VBA
9 7 (1.69%) Shell Script
10 6 (1.45%) C
10 6 (1.45%) Go
11 4 (0.96%) Perl
12 2 (0.48%) ActionScript
12 2 (0.48%) Jython
12 2 (0.48%) Ruby
13 1 (0.24%) Groovy
13 1 (0.24%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 118 (28.43%) Security Cleared
2 95 (22.89%) SC Cleared
3 71 (17.11%) Degree
4 45 (10.84%) Cisco Certification
5 38 (9.16%) CCNP
6 30 (7.23%) Computer Science Degree
7 29 (6.99%) CompTIA Security+
8 28 (6.75%) DV Cleared
9 26 (6.27%) CCNA
10 19 (4.58%) CISSP
11 18 (4.34%) CompTIA CySA+
12 13 (3.13%) Microsoft Certification
13 9 (2.17%) Azure Certification
13 9 (2.17%) MCSA
13 9 (2.17%) Network+ Certification
14 8 (1.93%) MCSE
15 7 (1.69%) CCIE
15 7 (1.69%) JNCIS
16 5 (1.20%) CISM
16 5 (1.20%) JNCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (3.13%) SLA
2 10 (2.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 8 (1.93%) NIST
4 6 (1.45%) GDPR
5 5 (1.20%) QA
6 3 (0.72%) NCSC
7 2 (0.48%) RMADS
8 1 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.24%) GRC
8 1 (0.24%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 84 (20.24%) Active Directory
2 46 (11.08%) VMware Infrastructure
3 18 (4.34%) Docker
3 18 (4.34%) Firmware
4 13 (3.13%) Squid
5 10 (2.41%) Virtual Desktop
6 9 (2.17%) vSphere
7 8 (1.93%) Hyper-V
7 8 (1.93%) VMware NSX
8 7 (1.69%) Virtual Machines
9 4 (0.96%) KVM
10 3 (0.72%) NFS
11 2 (0.48%) RACF
12 1 (0.24%) Citrix Presentation Server
12 1 (0.24%) Lustre
12 1 (0.24%) Snort
12 1 (0.24%) Virtual Servers
12 1 (0.24%) VirtualBox
12 1 (0.24%) VMware ESXi
12 1 (0.24%) Xen
Systems Management
1 65 (15.66%) Ansible
2 36 (8.67%) Terraform
3 34 (8.19%) Kubernetes
4 26 (6.27%) Grafana
5 25 (6.02%) FortiGate
5 25 (6.02%) Microsoft Intune
6 23 (5.54%) SCCM
6 23 (5.54%) Single Sign-On
7 16 (3.86%) Prometheus
8 10 (2.41%) Nagios
9 9 (2.17%) Consul
9 9 (2.17%) WSUS
10 8 (1.93%) QRadar
11 6 (1.45%) CASB
11 6 (1.45%) Jamf Pro
12 5 (1.20%) Nessus
12 5 (1.20%) Suricata
13 4 (0.96%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 4 (0.96%) Puppet
13 4 (0.96%) Tivoli NetView
Vendors
1 109 (26.27%) Microsoft
2 69 (16.63%) F5
3 64 (15.42%) Cisco
4 62 (14.94%) VMware
5 40 (9.64%) Splunk
6 36 (8.67%) ServiceNow
7 32 (7.71%) Blue Coat
8 26 (6.27%) McAfee
8 26 (6.27%) Palo Alto
9 21 (5.06%) Fortinet
10 20 (4.82%) Citrix
10 20 (4.82%) Red Hat
11 19 (4.58%) Juniper
11 19 (4.58%) NetApp
12 17 (4.10%) Siemens
13 16 (3.86%) Zscaler
14 13 (3.13%) SolarWinds
15 12 (2.89%) Bloomberg
15 12 (2.89%) CheckPoint
16 11 (2.65%) Google