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 31 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 277 241 276
Rank change year-on-year -36 +35 -53
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 486 367 341
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.92% 1.12% 0.86%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 9.78% 9.28% 7.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 263 212 226
10th Percentile £207 £200 £203
25th Percentile £325 £350 £262
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +11.11% -5.26%
75th Percentile £568 £600 £575
90th Percentile £668 £653 £641
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £450
% change year-on-year +5.56% - +12.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 44 26 32
10th Percentile £25.25 £20.11 £21.00
25th Percentile £31.25 £45.75 £62.50
Median hourly rate £49.75 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.46% - +28.92%
75th Percentile £65.00 - -
90th Percentile £98.82 £86.32 £67.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -19.23% - +50.39%

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 4,971 3,954 4,855
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.36% 12.06% 12.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,961 2,420 2,950
10th Percentile £250 £235 £217
25th Percentile £400 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.41% -2.35% -
75th Percentile £588 £590 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.16% -5.00% +8.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 342 196 341
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.15 £18.03
Median hourly rate £26.66 £50.00 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year -46.68% +8.98% -8.24%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £83.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.72 £45.00 £52.00
% change year-on-year -40.62% -13.46% -8.63%

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 31 July 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 31 July 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 31 July 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 -30 448 £494 -1.30% 293
UK excluding London -13 278 £475 +5.56% 219
London -45 181 £475 -9.52% 109
Work from Home -45 117 £500 -9.09% 110
North of England -37 89 £475 -5.00% 49
South East -26 80 £527 +26.44% 71
North West -17 57 £475 -0.05% 26
South West -7 40 £638 +3.03% 37
Midlands -34 39 £402 -19.60% 30
East of England -14 33 £250 -52.38% 20
West Midlands -44 31 £406 +1.06% 19
Yorkshire -56 29 £475 -6.17% 15
Scotland -13 11 £301 -32.30% 9
East Midlands -11 8 £402 -26.91% 11
Wales -12 7 £408 +126.39% 5
North East -41 3 £413 +65.00% 10

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 42 (8.64%) SharePoint
2 23 (4.73%) Microsoft Exchange
3 13 (2.67%) Confluence
4 9 (1.85%) nginx
5 7 (1.44%) OpenStack
6 4 (0.82%) FactoryTalk
6 4 (0.82%) WebSphere
7 3 (0.62%) IIS
8 2 (0.41%) CICS
8 2 (0.41%) IBM HTTP Server
8 2 (0.41%) Oracle HTTP Server
8 2 (0.41%) WebSphere Application Server
8 2 (0.41%) WebSphere Portal
9 1 (0.21%) Traefik
Applications
1 36 (7.41%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (3.09%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (1.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (1.65%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.41%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.41%) Houdini
5 2 (0.41%) NUKE
6 1 (0.21%) Weka
Business Applications
1 7 (1.44%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.21%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 158 (32.51%) Azure
2 114 (23.46%) AWS
3 104 (21.40%) Microsoft 365
4 65 (13.37%) Entra ID
5 36 (7.41%) GCP
6 32 (6.58%) OneDrive
7 28 (5.76%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 19 (3.91%) GitHub
9 16 (3.29%) Route 53
10 15 (3.09%) Amazon EC2
11 11 (2.26%) AWS CloudFormation
11 11 (2.26%) Azure Monitor
11 11 (2.26%) Google Workspace
12 10 (2.06%) Amazon EKS
13 9 (1.85%) Azure DevOps
13 9 (1.85%) Azure Sentinel
13 9 (1.85%) OpenShift
14 8 (1.65%) Akamai
14 8 (1.65%) Amazon S3
14 8 (1.65%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 284 (58.44%) DNS
2 210 (43.21%) Firewall
3 163 (33.54%) DHCP
4 138 (28.40%) VPN
5 94 (19.34%) Network Security
6 89 (18.31%) WAN
7 78 (16.05%) LAN
8 76 (15.64%) VLAN
9 72 (14.81%) BGP
10 71 (14.61%) HTTP
11 59 (12.14%) SSL
12 48 (9.88%) BIG-IP
13 44 (9.05%) OSPF
14 41 (8.44%) Wi-Fi
15 39 (8.02%) Ethernet
16 37 (7.61%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 34 (7.00%) Wireless
18 26 (5.35%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
19 25 (5.14%) Wireshark
20 24 (4.94%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (2.88%) SQL Server
2 6 (1.23%) PostgreSQL
3 4 (0.82%) Elasticsearch
4 3 (0.62%) Amazon RDS
5 2 (0.41%) BigQuery
5 2 (0.41%) MySQL
5 2 (0.41%) NoSQL
5 2 (0.41%) SQLite
6 1 (0.21%) Cloud Spanner
6 1 (0.21%) KDB
6 1 (0.21%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 47 (9.67%) JIRA
2 25 (5.14%) Git
3 19 (3.91%) Fiddler
4 18 (3.70%) Jenkins
5 16 (3.29%) GitLab
6 14 (2.88%) Visual Studio
7 13 (2.67%) Eclipse
8 10 (2.06%) Browser DevTools
9 6 (1.23%) Sonatype Nexus
10 4 (0.82%) Artifactory
11 3 (0.62%) Bitbucket
12 2 (0.41%) Introscope
12 2 (0.41%) SonarQube
12 2 (0.41%) Subversion
13 1 (0.21%) MSI
13 1 (0.21%) Postman
General
1 196 (40.33%) Social Skills
2 69 (14.20%) Analytical Skills
3 65 (13.37%) Finance
4 44 (9.05%) Banking
5 33 (6.79%) Public Sector
6 22 (4.53%) Investment Banking
6 22 (4.53%) Presentation Skills
7 21 (4.32%) Telecoms
8 19 (3.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 17 (3.50%) Documentation Skills
10 16 (3.29%) Military
11 9 (1.85%) Front Office
12 6 (1.23%) Manufacturing
12 6 (1.23%) Pharmaceutical
13 5 (1.03%) Legal
13 5 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
14 4 (0.82%) Automotive
14 4 (0.82%) Police
15 3 (0.62%) Retail
16 2 (0.41%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 115 (23.66%) Network Engineer
2 55 (11.32%) Support Engineer
3 52 (10.70%) Senior
4 45 (9.26%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 44 (9.05%) Architect
6 36 (7.41%) IT Support
7 33 (6.79%) Analyst
8 29 (5.97%) IT Engineer
9 27 (5.56%) Security Engineer
10 26 (5.35%) Web Engineer
11 23 (4.73%) IT Support Engineer
12 22 (4.53%) Technical Engineer
13 21 (4.32%) Systems Engineer
14 20 (4.12%) Senior Network Engineer
15 19 (3.91%) Platform Engineer
16 18 (3.70%) IP Network Engineer
17 16 (3.29%) Blue Coat Engineer
17 16 (3.29%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
18 15 (3.09%) Cloud Engineer
18 15 (3.09%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (3.91%) SAML
2 15 (3.09%) JSON
2 15 (3.09%) LDAP
3 13 (2.67%) Node.js
3 13 (2.67%) REST
3 13 (2.67%) Web Services
4 12 (2.47%) 802.1X
4 12 (2.47%) ARM Templates
5 8 (1.65%) .NET
6 6 (1.23%) NETCONF
6 6 (1.23%) OpenConfig
6 6 (1.23%) OpenID
6 6 (1.23%) RESTCONF
6 6 (1.23%) XML
6 6 (1.23%) YANG
7 5 (1.03%) OAuth
8 4 (0.82%) boto
8 4 (0.82%) WinForms
9 3 (0.62%) eBPF
9 3 (0.62%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 76 (15.64%) Data Centre
2 50 (10.29%) Onboarding
3 30 (6.17%) PKI
4 27 (5.56%) Hybrid Cloud
5 26 (5.35%) Management Information System
6 24 (4.94%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 19 (3.91%) Robotics
8 18 (3.70%) Security Posture
9 17 (3.50%) Driving Licence
9 17 (3.50%) Linux Command Line
10 15 (3.09%) Industry 4.0
10 15 (3.09%) Public Cloud
11 14 (2.88%) Operational Technology
11 14 (2.88%) Self-Motivation
12 13 (2.67%) Cloud Native
13 12 (2.47%) SCADA
14 11 (2.26%) Cyber Threat
15 10 (2.06%) Analytical Mindset
16 9 (1.85%) Private Cloud
17 8 (1.65%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 212 (43.62%) Windows
2 121 (24.90%) Linux
3 62 (12.76%) Windows Server
4 35 (7.20%) Mac OS
4 35 (7.20%) Windows 10
5 21 (4.32%) Unix
6 15 (3.09%) Apple iOS
6 15 (3.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 13 (2.67%) Ubuntu
8 11 (2.26%) Android
9 4 (0.82%) Windows Server 2012
9 4 (0.82%) zOS
10 3 (0.62%) CentOS
10 3 (0.62%) Check Point GAiA
11 2 (0.41%) Oracle Linux
11 2 (0.41%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 2 (0.41%) Windows Server 2016
11 2 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
12 1 (0.21%) Data ONTAP
12 1 (0.21%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 136 (27.98%) Problem-Solving
2 101 (20.78%) ITIL
3 73 (15.02%) CI/CD
4 67 (13.79%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 62 (12.76%) Agile
5 62 (12.76%) Infrastructure as Code
6 58 (11.93%) Load Balancing
7 56 (11.52%) Customer Service
7 56 (11.52%) DevOps
8 54 (11.11%) Cybersecurity
9 49 (10.08%) Migration
10 48 (9.88%) SIEM
11 47 (9.67%) Incident Response
11 47 (9.67%) ITSM
12 46 (9.47%) High Availability
13 42 (8.64%) Service Management
13 42 (8.64%) Validation
14 41 (8.44%) Continuous Improvement
15 40 (8.23%) Technical Leadership
16 37 (7.61%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 136 (27.98%) Python
2 87 (17.90%) PowerShell
3 75 (15.43%) Bash
4 27 (5.56%) C++
4 27 (5.56%) JavaScript
5 17 (3.50%) C#
5 17 (3.50%) SQL
6 11 (2.26%) Java
7 9 (1.85%) VBA
8 8 (1.65%) Bicep
9 7 (1.44%) Perl
10 5 (1.03%) ActionScript
10 5 (1.03%) C
11 4 (0.82%) Shell Script
12 3 (0.62%) Go
13 2 (0.41%) Jython
13 2 (0.41%) Korn
13 2 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
13 2 (0.41%) Objective-C
13 2 (0.41%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 132 (27.16%) Security Cleared
2 88 (18.11%) SC Cleared
3 74 (15.23%) Degree
4 61 (12.55%) Cisco Certification
5 45 (9.26%) CCNP
6 44 (9.05%) DV Cleared
7 29 (5.97%) CCNA
8 28 (5.76%) Microsoft Certification
9 22 (4.53%) CISSP
10 16 (3.29%) CCIE
10 16 (3.29%) Computer Science Degree
11 15 (3.09%) Network+ Certification
12 11 (2.26%) Azure Certification
12 11 (2.26%) CompTIA Security+
13 10 (2.06%) A+ Certification
13 10 (2.06%) MCSA
13 10 (2.06%) MCSE
13 10 (2.06%) VCAP
14 8 (1.65%) AWS Certification
15 6 (1.23%) JNCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (3.91%) SLA
2 14 (2.88%) NIST
3 11 (2.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 10 (2.06%) NCSC
5 6 (1.23%) QA
6 5 (1.03%) GDPR
7 4 (0.82%) 21 CFR Part 11
7 4 (0.82%) GxP
7 4 (0.82%) NIST 800
7 4 (0.82%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.41%) Government Security Classifications
8 2 (0.41%) JSP 440
9 1 (0.21%) ISO 8583
9 1 (0.21%) RMADS
System Software
1 133 (27.37%) Active Directory
2 83 (17.08%) VMware Infrastructure
3 28 (5.76%) Hyper-V
4 25 (5.14%) Docker
5 23 (4.73%) VMware NSX
5 23 (4.73%) vSphere
6 17 (3.50%) Firmware
7 11 (2.26%) Virtual Desktop
8 8 (1.65%) Squid
9 6 (1.23%) Virtual Machines
10 4 (0.82%) NFS
10 4 (0.82%) VMware ESXi
11 2 (0.41%) KVM
11 2 (0.41%) RACF
11 2 (0.41%) VirtualBox
12 1 (0.21%) Citrix Presentation Server
12 1 (0.21%) GPFS
12 1 (0.21%) NetIQ eDirectory
12 1 (0.21%) Snort
12 1 (0.21%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 97 (19.96%) Ansible
2 75 (15.43%) Terraform
3 50 (10.29%) Microsoft Intune
4 42 (8.64%) Kubernetes
5 27 (5.56%) SCCM
6 25 (5.14%) Single Sign-On
7 20 (4.12%) Grafana
8 18 (3.70%) FortiGate
9 14 (2.88%) VxRail
10 11 (2.26%) Jamf Pro
11 10 (2.06%) Prometheus
12 9 (1.85%) WSUS
13 6 (1.23%) CASB
13 6 (1.23%) QRadar
13 6 (1.23%) systemd
14 5 (1.03%) Nessus
14 5 (1.03%) Suricata
15 4 (0.82%) Consul
16 3 (0.62%) Puppet
16 3 (0.62%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 177 (36.42%) Microsoft
2 95 (19.55%) VMware
3 93 (19.14%) Cisco
4 64 (13.17%) F5
5 54 (11.11%) ServiceNow
6 30 (6.17%) Fortinet
7 28 (5.76%) Zscaler
8 26 (5.35%) Google
9 25 (5.14%) Juniper
10 24 (4.94%) Blue Coat
11 23 (4.73%) Palo Alto
12 21 (4.32%) Citrix
12 21 (4.32%) Infoblox
13 20 (4.12%) Splunk
14 19 (3.91%) McAfee
14 19 (3.91%) NetApp
15 18 (3.70%) CheckPoint
16 17 (3.50%) Siemens
17 16 (3.29%) Red Hat
18 13 (2.67%) Remedy