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

6 months to
1 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 249 183 204
Rank change year-on-year -66 +21 +35
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 418 453 512
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.08% 1.44% 1.14%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 10.34% 11.11% 8.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 238 284 330
10th Percentile £200 £214 £184
25th Percentile £313 £400 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £518 £488
Median % change year-on-year -13.04% +6.15% -7.14%
75th Percentile £588 £675 £579
90th Percentile £655 £775 £678
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £410
% change year-on-year -5.26% +15.85% -18.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 7 42
10th Percentile £15.50 £20.15 £23.35
25th Percentile £21.25 £26.25 £40.85
Median hourly rate £40.72 £62.50 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -34.85% +25.00% -23.08%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £56.49
90th Percentile £67.25 £68.50 £68.66
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £62.50 £50.39
% change year-on-year -32.90% +24.03% -22.48%

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 4,042 4,079 6,158
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.49% 12.99% 13.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,668 2,374 3,713
10th Percentile £204 £213 £207
25th Percentile £356 £363 £356
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £493
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +1.42% -4.50%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £684 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £468 £475
% change year-on-year -3.74% -1.58% +2.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 163 138 403
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.44 £15.58
25th Percentile £18.69 £21.46 £21.25
Median hourly rate £30.00 £33.75 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -11.11% -32.50% +141.49%
75th Percentile £65.00 £53.44 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £69.13 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.54 £31.08 £55.00
% change year-on-year +30.44% -43.49% +179.54%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 -41 366 £458 -9.31% 200
UK excluding London -20 271 £450 -5.26% 185
London -57 114 £500 - 53
Work from Home -54 112 £425 -29.98% 67
North of England -22 87 £425 -9.09% 38
South East -8 57 £500 -1.48% 57
North West -2 49 £425 -8.11% 17
East of England -11 44 £381 -18.01% 31
West Midlands -10 39 £200 -8.57% 6
Midlands -35 39 £200 -11.11% 17
Yorkshire -37 33 £443 -37.89% 16
South West -33 32 £700 +13.82% 26
Scotland +22 29 £454 +5.58% 16
North East -20 5 £200 +33.33% 7
Wales -10 3 £293 -10.00% 4

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 27 (6.46%) SharePoint
2 21 (5.02%) Microsoft Exchange
3 17 (4.07%) Confluence
4 14 (3.35%) Skype for Business
5 8 (1.91%) OpenStack
6 5 (1.20%) nginx
7 3 (0.72%) Apache
8 2 (0.48%) IIS
8 2 (0.48%) WordPress
9 1 (0.24%) Apache Airflow
9 1 (0.24%) Jupyter
9 1 (0.24%) Tomcat
Applications
1 32 (7.66%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (1.91%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.44%) Weka
4 5 (1.20%) Acrobat
5 2 (0.48%) Microsoft Excel
5 2 (0.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.24%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 1 (0.24%) Finacle
1 1 (0.24%) RMDS
1 1 (0.24%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 104 (24.88%) AWS
2 96 (22.97%) Azure
3 82 (19.62%) Microsoft 365
4 23 (5.50%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 22 (5.26%) Amazon S3
5 22 (5.26%) GCP
6 21 (5.02%) Amazon EC2
6 21 (5.02%) Entra ID
7 14 (3.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 14 (3.35%) Amazon ELB
8 11 (2.63%) GitHub
9 9 (2.15%) AWS CloudFormation
9 9 (2.15%) OneDrive
10 8 (1.91%) Route 53
11 7 (1.67%) Cloud Computing
11 7 (1.67%) Google Workspace
11 7 (1.67%) SaaS
12 6 (1.44%) Amazon EKS
13 5 (1.20%) AWS Lambda
13 5 (1.20%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 240 (57.42%) DNS
2 143 (34.21%) Firewall
3 119 (28.47%) DHCP
4 115 (27.51%) VPN
5 80 (19.14%) WAN
6 73 (17.46%) LAN
7 72 (17.22%) SSL
8 59 (14.11%) VLAN
9 56 (13.40%) HTTP
9 56 (13.40%) Network Security
10 39 (9.33%) Wireshark
11 35 (8.37%) Wi-Fi
12 33 (7.89%) BIG-IP
13 32 (7.66%) BGP
14 27 (6.46%) OSPF
15 24 (5.74%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
15 24 (5.74%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 18 (4.31%) SAN
16 18 (4.31%) Wireless
17 17 (4.07%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (4.07%) SQL Server
2 12 (2.87%) Elasticsearch
3 11 (2.63%) PostgreSQL
4 4 (0.96%) MongoDB
5 1 (0.24%) Amazon Aurora
5 1 (0.24%) Amazon RDS
5 1 (0.24%) Apache Cassandra
5 1 (0.24%) Apache Hive
5 1 (0.24%) Big Data
5 1 (0.24%) Electronic Patient Records
5 1 (0.24%) Impala
5 1 (0.24%) MySQL
5 1 (0.24%) NoSQL
5 1 (0.24%) Oracle Reports
5 1 (0.24%) Power BI
5 1 (0.24%) Redis
5 1 (0.24%) Relational Database
5 1 (0.24%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 30 (7.18%) GitLab
2 28 (6.70%) Git
2 28 (6.70%) JIRA
3 26 (6.22%) Fiddler
4 24 (5.74%) Jenkins
5 11 (2.63%) Eclipse
5 11 (2.63%) Visual Studio
6 5 (1.20%) Bitbucket
6 5 (1.20%) SonarQube
7 4 (0.96%) CircleCI
7 4 (0.96%) Subversion
8 3 (0.72%) Sonatype Nexus
8 3 (0.72%) TeamCity
9 2 (0.48%) Maven
10 1 (0.24%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 1 (0.24%) Cucumber
10 1 (0.24%) GCC
10 1 (0.24%) IntelliJ
10 1 (0.24%) MSI
10 1 (0.24%) Robot Framework
General
1 137 (32.78%) Social Skills
2 66 (15.79%) Analytical Skills
3 37 (8.85%) Public Sector
4 31 (7.42%) Finance
5 30 (7.18%) Banking
6 24 (5.74%) Military
7 22 (5.26%) Investment Banking
8 14 (3.35%) Presentation Skills
9 10 (2.39%) Documentation Skills
9 10 (2.39%) Telecoms
10 9 (2.15%) Front Office
11 7 (1.67%) Organisational Skills
12 6 (1.44%) Local Government
13 5 (1.20%) Legal
14 4 (0.96%) Law
15 3 (0.72%) Financial Institution
15 3 (0.72%) French Language
15 3 (0.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 3 (0.72%) Manufacturing
15 3 (0.72%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 96 (22.97%) Network Engineer
2 62 (14.83%) Analyst
3 58 (13.88%) Support Engineer
4 43 (10.29%) Senior
5 41 (9.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 30 (7.18%) IT Support
7 25 (5.98%) IT Engineer
8 24 (5.74%) Web Engineer
9 22 (5.26%) SOC Analyst
10 21 (5.02%) 2nd Line Support
10 21 (5.02%) Architect
11 19 (4.55%) Developer
12 18 (4.31%) Junior
13 17 (4.07%) Lead
14 16 (3.83%) DevOps Engineer
14 16 (3.83%) IT Support Engineer
14 16 (3.83%) Technical Analyst
14 16 (3.83%) Technical Support
15 15 (3.59%) Security Engineer
16 14 (3.35%) Infrastructure Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (3.59%) Web Services
2 13 (3.11%) Middleware
3 12 (2.87%) Node.js
4 9 (2.15%) LDAP
4 9 (2.15%) REST
5 7 (1.67%) OpenID
5 7 (1.67%) SOAP
6 5 (1.20%) FIX Protocol
6 5 (1.20%) SAML
7 4 (0.96%) .NET
7 4 (0.96%) Kafka
7 4 (0.96%) React
7 4 (0.96%) Ultra Messaging
8 3 (0.72%) 802.1X
8 3 (0.72%) AngularJS
8 3 (0.72%) ASP.NET Web API
8 3 (0.72%) Bootstrap
8 3 (0.72%) Express.js
8 3 (0.72%) WCF
8 3 (0.72%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 30 (7.18%) Management Information System
2 29 (6.94%) Data Centre
3 25 (5.98%) Onboarding
4 22 (5.26%) Security Operations Centre
5 20 (4.78%) Cyberattack
6 18 (4.31%) Analytical Mindset
7 16 (3.83%) Public Cloud
8 12 (2.87%) CMDB
8 12 (2.87%) Driving Licence
8 12 (2.87%) Private Cloud
9 11 (2.63%) Cyber Threat
9 11 (2.63%) NHS
9 11 (2.63%) PKI
10 8 (1.91%) Enterprise Software
10 8 (1.91%) Self-Motivation
11 7 (1.67%) Replication
12 6 (1.44%) Grid Computing
12 6 (1.44%) Security Posture
13 5 (1.20%) Clustering
13 5 (1.20%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 192 (45.93%) Windows
2 132 (31.58%) Linux
3 49 (11.72%) Windows Server
4 32 (7.66%) Windows 10
5 16 (3.83%) Unix
6 15 (3.59%) Android
7 13 (3.11%) Windows Server 2019
8 9 (2.15%) Mac OS
8 9 (2.15%) Windows Server 2016
9 8 (1.91%) Apple iOS
10 7 (1.67%) Windows Server 2012
11 6 (1.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 6 (1.44%) Ubuntu
12 5 (1.20%) VMS
13 4 (0.96%) Windows Server 2003
13 4 (0.96%) zOS
14 3 (0.72%) CentOS
14 3 (0.72%) Debian
14 3 (0.72%) Solaris
15 2 (0.48%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 115 (27.51%) Problem-Solving
2 64 (15.31%) ITIL
3 58 (13.88%) Incident Response
4 56 (13.40%) Cybersecurity
5 54 (12.92%) CI/CD
5 54 (12.92%) SIEM
6 51 (12.20%) Agile
7 50 (11.96%) DevOps
7 50 (11.96%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 45 (10.77%) Load Balancing
9 41 (9.81%) Infrastructure as Code
10 39 (9.33%) Root Cause Analysis
11 34 (8.13%) Security Operations
12 33 (7.89%) Migration
13 30 (7.18%) Knowledge Transfer
14 29 (6.94%) Continuous Improvement
14 29 (6.94%) High Availability
14 29 (6.94%) Infrastructure Automation
14 29 (6.94%) Mentoring
15 27 (6.46%) Disaster Recovery
Programming Languages
1 113 (27.03%) Python
2 77 (18.42%) PowerShell
3 60 (14.35%) Bash
4 21 (5.02%) SQL
5 17 (4.07%) C++
6 16 (3.83%) C#
6 16 (3.83%) Perl
7 15 (3.59%) JavaScript
8 13 (3.11%) Java
9 10 (2.39%) Shell Script
10 7 (1.67%) Go
11 5 (1.20%) C
12 3 (0.72%) Search Processing Language
12 3 (0.72%) T-SQL
13 2 (0.48%) Kusto Query Language
13 2 (0.48%) Ruby
14 1 (0.24%) Bicep
14 1 (0.24%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.24%) TypeScript
14 1 (0.24%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 139 (33.25%) Security Cleared
2 102 (24.40%) SC Cleared
3 45 (10.77%) Degree
4 43 (10.29%) DV Cleared
5 36 (8.61%) Cisco Certification
6 29 (6.94%) CCNP
7 23 (5.50%) CompTIA Security+
8 21 (5.02%) Microsoft Certification
9 20 (4.78%) Computer Science Degree
10 19 (4.55%) Network+ Certification
11 17 (4.07%) Azure Certification
11 17 (4.07%) CCNA
12 16 (3.83%) CompTIA CySA+
13 11 (2.63%) Server+ Certification
14 10 (2.39%) CISSP
14 10 (2.39%) JNCIS
15 9 (2.15%) Microsoft Certified Professional
16 7 (1.67%) CCIE
17 6 (1.44%) ECDL
18 5 (1.20%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (3.59%) GDPR
2 9 (2.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 8 (1.91%) SLA
4 7 (1.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 5 (1.20%) NIST
6 4 (0.96%) HIPAA
6 4 (0.96%) NCSC
7 2 (0.48%) Disclosure Scotland
7 2 (0.48%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.48%) QA
8 1 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.24%) GRC
8 1 (0.24%) RMADS
8 1 (0.24%) SOC 2
System Software
1 91 (21.77%) Active Directory
2 58 (13.88%) VMware Infrastructure
3 44 (10.53%) Docker
4 25 (5.98%) Hyper-V
5 15 (3.59%) Firmware
6 10 (2.39%) vSphere
7 9 (2.15%) VMware NSX
8 8 (1.91%) Virtual Machines
9 7 (1.67%) Lustre
9 7 (1.67%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 6 (1.44%) GPFS
10 6 (1.44%) Virtual Desktop
10 6 (1.44%) VMware ESXi
11 5 (1.20%) KVM
11 5 (1.20%) NDS
11 5 (1.20%) NetIQ eDirectory
11 5 (1.20%) NFS
11 5 (1.20%) Squid
12 3 (0.72%) Veritas File System
12 3 (0.72%) Veritas Volume Manager
Systems Management
1 81 (19.38%) Ansible
2 48 (11.48%) Terraform
3 37 (8.85%) Kubernetes
4 36 (8.61%) SCCM
5 31 (7.42%) Microsoft Intune
6 19 (4.55%) Grafana
7 16 (3.83%) Prometheus
8 15 (3.59%) FortiGate
9 14 (3.35%) Single Sign-On
10 8 (1.91%) Puppet
10 8 (1.91%) QRadar
10 8 (1.91%) WSUS
11 7 (1.67%) Nagios
12 6 (1.44%) Consul
12 6 (1.44%) Red Hat Satellite
13 5 (1.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 5 (1.20%) Tivoli NetView
14 4 (0.96%) ITRS Geneos
14 4 (0.96%) Nmap
14 4 (0.96%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 123 (29.43%) Microsoft
2 82 (19.62%) VMware
3 69 (16.51%) F5
4 61 (14.59%) Cisco
5 47 (11.24%) Palo Alto
6 43 (10.29%) Splunk
7 30 (7.18%) Blue Coat
7 30 (7.18%) CheckPoint
8 28 (6.70%) McAfee
9 25 (5.98%) ServiceNow
10 22 (5.26%) NetApp
11 21 (5.02%) Fortinet
12 20 (4.78%) Juniper
12 20 (4.78%) SolarWinds
13 18 (4.31%) Red Hat
14 16 (3.83%) Meraki
15 15 (3.59%) Oracle
16 13 (3.11%) Veeam
17 12 (2.87%) Citrix
18 10 (2.39%) Zscaler