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 11 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 280 234 235
Rank change year-on-year -46 +1 -14
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 487 395 395
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.89% 1.20% 1.02%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 9.51% 10.27% 8.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 265 215 222
10th Percentile £197 £191 £203
25th Percentile £295 £309 £258
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +5.56% -
75th Percentile £550 £600 £575
90th Percentile £675 £660 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £425
% change year-on-year - +5.88% +6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 45 34 30
10th Percentile £26.41 £28.30 £29.13
25th Percentile £31.25 £42.53 £63.13
Median hourly rate £62.00 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.62% - +30.00%
75th Percentile £73.75 - -
90th Percentile £98.82 £78.28 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.48 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -2.34% - +30.00%

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 5,121 3,847 4,573
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.38% 11.65% 11.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,996 2,371 2,670
10th Percentile £233 £235 £228
25th Percentile £390 £363 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £609
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £477 £465 £500
% change year-on-year +2.58% -7.00% +10.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 400 201 268
10th Percentile £14.28 £15.33 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £21.37
Median hourly rate £26.66 £42.50 £51.00
Median % change year-on-year -37.27% -16.67% -9.72%
75th Percentile £66.28 £63.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.11 £73.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -38.82% -25.89% +1.52%

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 11 September 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 11 September 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 11 September 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 -51 444 £475 - 407
UK excluding London -38 267 £450 - 325
London -42 197 £465 -17.52% 140
Work from Home -96 111 £506 +1.25% 157
South East -34 77 £525 +40.00% 108
North of England -59 71 £420 -23.64% 62
South West -9 47 £638 +9.68% 35
Midlands -35 43 £400 -6.10% 39
North West -25 41 £240 -56.36% 30
West Midlands -39 35 £400 -0.50% 24
Yorkshire -44 26 £500 -9.09% 18
East of England -38 23 £425 -10.53% 56
Scotland -15 15 £210 -49.94% 20
Wales -7 8 £390 +116.67% 5
East Midlands -8 8 £402 -26.91% 15
North East -45 4 £438 +75.00% 16

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 52 (10.68%) SharePoint
2 35 (7.19%) Microsoft Exchange
3 12 (2.46%) Confluence
4 11 (2.26%) OpenStack
5 5 (1.03%) nginx
6 4 (0.82%) FactoryTalk
7 3 (0.62%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.41%) CICS
8 2 (0.41%) IIS
8 2 (0.41%) Skype for Business
9 1 (0.21%) IBM HTTP Server
9 1 (0.21%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 1 (0.21%) WebSphere Application Server
9 1 (0.21%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 17 (3.49%) Microsoft Office
2 16 (3.29%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (1.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (1.23%) 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 8 (1.64%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.21%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 164 (33.68%) Azure
2 127 (26.08%) Microsoft 365
3 105 (21.56%) AWS
4 75 (15.40%) Entra ID
5 36 (7.39%) OneDrive
6 29 (5.95%) GCP
7 22 (4.52%) GitHub
8 20 (4.11%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 15 (3.08%) OpenShift
10 13 (2.67%) Azure Monitor
11 12 (2.46%) Route 53
12 11 (2.26%) Amazon EC2
12 11 (2.26%) AWS CloudFormation
12 11 (2.26%) GitHub Actions
12 11 (2.26%) Google Workspace
13 9 (1.85%) Azure Sentinel
14 8 (1.64%) Amazon EKS
15 7 (1.44%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 7 (1.44%) IaaS
16 6 (1.23%) Azure ExpressRoute
Communications & Networking
1 291 (59.75%) DNS
2 208 (42.71%) Firewall
3 193 (39.63%) DHCP
4 149 (30.60%) VPN
5 88 (18.07%) Network Security
6 87 (17.86%) WAN
7 76 (15.61%) LAN
8 70 (14.37%) VLAN
9 66 (13.55%) HTTP
10 65 (13.35%) BGP
11 53 (10.88%) SSL
12 46 (9.45%) Wireless
13 45 (9.24%) Wi-Fi
14 40 (8.21%) BIG-IP
14 40 (8.21%) OSPF
15 36 (7.39%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 26 (5.34%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 24 (4.93%) SD-WAN
18 20 (4.11%) Wireshark
19 19 (3.90%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (3.70%) PostgreSQL
2 17 (3.49%) SQL Server
3 8 (1.64%) MySQL
3 8 (1.64%) SQLite
4 7 (1.44%) NoSQL
5 6 (1.23%) MongoDB
6 5 (1.03%) Redis
7 4 (0.82%) Amazon RDS
8 3 (0.62%) KDB
9 2 (0.41%) BigQuery
10 1 (0.21%) Cloud Spanner
10 1 (0.21%) Elasticsearch
10 1 (0.21%) Kdb+
Development Applications
1 47 (9.65%) JIRA
2 39 (8.01%) Git
3 31 (6.37%) Jenkins
4 23 (4.72%) GitLab
5 15 (3.08%) Fiddler
6 8 (1.64%) Sonatype Nexus
7 6 (1.23%) Visual Studio
8 5 (1.03%) Artifactory
8 5 (1.03%) Eclipse
9 4 (0.82%) Browser DevTools
9 4 (0.82%) Selenium
10 2 (0.41%) Bitbucket
10 2 (0.41%) Subversion
11 1 (0.21%) Introscope
11 1 (0.21%) MSI
11 1 (0.21%) Postman
General
1 198 (40.66%) Social Skills
2 71 (14.58%) Analytical Skills
3 62 (12.73%) Finance
4 41 (8.42%) Banking
5 28 (5.75%) Public Sector
6 27 (5.54%) Telecoms
7 20 (4.11%) Investment Banking
8 15 (3.08%) Front Office
9 13 (2.67%) Documentation Skills
10 8 (1.64%) Military
11 7 (1.44%) Aerospace
12 6 (1.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 6 (1.23%) Legal
12 6 (1.23%) Manufacturing
13 5 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
13 5 (1.03%) Pharmaceutical
13 5 (1.03%) Police
14 4 (0.82%) Automotive
14 4 (0.82%) Multimedia
15 3 (0.62%) Retail
Job Titles
1 101 (20.74%) Network Engineer
2 68 (13.96%) Support Engineer
3 60 (12.32%) Senior
4 58 (11.91%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 54 (11.09%) IT Support
6 43 (8.83%) IT Engineer
7 37 (7.60%) Analyst
7 37 (7.60%) Architect
7 37 (7.60%) IT Support Engineer
8 25 (5.13%) Senior Network Engineer
9 23 (4.72%) Platform Engineer
10 21 (4.31%) Security Engineer
11 20 (4.11%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 19 (3.90%) Linux Engineer
13 18 (3.70%) Web Engineer
14 16 (3.29%) IP Network Engineer
14 16 (3.29%) Network Infrastructure Engineer
14 16 (3.29%) Support Analyst
15 15 (3.08%) Cloud Engineer
16 14 (2.87%) 2nd Line Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 87 (17.86%) Terraform
2 16 (3.29%) REST
3 13 (2.67%) SAML
4 12 (2.46%) ARM Templates
4 12 (2.46%) JSON
5 9 (1.85%) .NET
6 8 (1.64%) 802.1X
6 8 (1.64%) LDAP
6 8 (1.64%) SPNEGO
7 7 (1.44%) HTML
7 7 (1.44%) Kafka
8 6 (1.23%) Elastic Stack
8 6 (1.23%) Jinja
8 6 (1.23%) XML
9 5 (1.03%) CSS
9 5 (1.03%) FastAPI
9 5 (1.03%) Flask
9 5 (1.03%) Node.js
9 5 (1.03%) Pandas
9 5 (1.03%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 85 (17.45%) Data Centre
2 59 (12.11%) Onboarding
3 33 (6.78%) PKI
4 30 (6.16%) Hybrid Cloud
5 27 (5.54%) Management Information System
6 21 (4.31%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 21 (4.31%) Linux Command Line
7 17 (3.49%) Public Cloud
8 16 (3.29%) Driving Licence
8 16 (3.29%) Operational Technology
9 14 (2.87%) Self-Motivation
10 13 (2.67%) Cloud Native
10 13 (2.67%) SCADA
10 13 (2.67%) Video Conferencing
11 11 (2.26%) Cyber Threat
12 10 (2.05%) Enterprise Storage
13 9 (1.85%) Distributed Systems
13 9 (1.85%) Private Cloud
13 9 (1.85%) Security Posture
14 8 (1.64%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 233 (47.84%) Windows
2 146 (29.98%) Linux
3 72 (14.78%) Windows Server
4 51 (10.47%) Windows 10
5 41 (8.42%) Mac OS
6 27 (5.54%) Unix
7 24 (4.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 19 (3.90%) Apple iOS
9 16 (3.29%) Ubuntu
10 15 (3.08%) Android
11 6 (1.23%) zOS
12 5 (1.03%) CentOS
13 3 (0.62%) Check Point GAiA
13 3 (0.62%) Windows Server 2019
14 2 (0.41%) Windows Server 2012
15 1 (0.21%) Data ONTAP
15 1 (0.21%) Oracle Linux
15 1 (0.21%) Rocky
15 1 (0.21%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
15 1 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 136 (27.93%) Problem-Solving
2 113 (23.20%) ITIL
3 81 (16.63%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 79 (16.22%) CI/CD
5 74 (15.20%) Infrastructure as Code
6 66 (13.55%) DevOps
7 63 (12.94%) ITSM
7 63 (12.94%) Load Balancing
8 62 (12.73%) Customer Service
9 57 (11.70%) Cybersecurity
10 56 (11.50%) Agile
11 53 (10.88%) Continuous Improvement
12 50 (10.27%) High Availability
13 49 (10.06%) Migration
13 49 (10.06%) Platform Engineering
14 47 (9.65%) Service Management
15 46 (9.45%) Incident Response
16 45 (9.24%) SIEM
17 42 (8.62%) Stakeholder Management
18 41 (8.42%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 147 (30.18%) Python
2 104 (21.36%) PowerShell
3 87 (17.86%) Bash
4 20 (4.11%) C++
4 20 (4.11%) SQL
5 16 (3.29%) JavaScript
6 14 (2.87%) Perl
7 13 (2.67%) Shell Script
8 11 (2.26%) Bicep
8 11 (2.26%) Java
9 10 (2.05%) C#
10 8 (1.64%) Korn
11 7 (1.44%) VBA
12 5 (1.03%) ActionScript
13 4 (0.82%) C
13 4 (0.82%) Go
14 3 (0.62%) Kusto Query Language
14 3 (0.62%) VBScript
15 2 (0.41%) Objective-C
15 2 (0.41%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 136 (27.93%) Security Cleared
2 82 (16.84%) SC Cleared
3 66 (13.55%) Degree
4 54 (11.09%) Cisco Certification
5 53 (10.88%) DV Cleared
6 42 (8.62%) CCNP
7 26 (5.34%) CCNA
7 26 (5.34%) Microsoft Certification
8 21 (4.31%) Computer Science Degree
9 20 (4.11%) A+ Certification
10 16 (3.29%) Network+ Certification
11 15 (3.08%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 14 (2.87%) CCIE
13 13 (2.67%) CISSP
14 12 (2.46%) Azure Certification
14 12 (2.46%) VCAP
15 11 (2.26%) AWS Certification
16 8 (1.64%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 5 (1.03%) ITIL Certification
17 5 (1.03%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (4.93%) SLA
2 14 (2.87%) QA
3 9 (1.85%) NCSC
3 9 (1.85%) NIST
4 6 (1.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 4 (0.82%) 21 CFR Part 11
5 4 (0.82%) GDPR
5 4 (0.82%) GxP
5 4 (0.82%) NIST 800
5 4 (0.82%) PCI DSS
6 2 (0.41%) Government Security Classifications
6 2 (0.41%) JSP 440
7 1 (0.21%) ISO 8583
7 1 (0.21%) RMADS
System Software
1 158 (32.44%) Active Directory
2 95 (19.51%) VMware Infrastructure
3 41 (8.42%) Hyper-V
4 32 (6.57%) Docker
5 24 (4.93%) vSphere
6 23 (4.72%) VMware NSX
7 20 (4.11%) Firmware
8 14 (2.87%) Virtual Desktop
9 6 (1.23%) NFS
9 6 (1.23%) Virtual Machines
10 5 (1.03%) Squid
11 4 (0.82%) VMware ESXi
12 3 (0.62%) VirtualBox
13 2 (0.41%) KVM
13 2 (0.41%) RACF
13 2 (0.41%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 2 (0.41%) Virtual Servers
14 1 (0.21%) GPFS
14 1 (0.21%) iptables
14 1 (0.21%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 107 (21.97%) Ansible
2 63 (12.94%) Microsoft Intune
3 49 (10.06%) Kubernetes
4 35 (7.19%) SCCM
5 26 (5.34%) Grafana
6 18 (3.70%) Single Sign-On
7 16 (3.29%) FortiGate
7 16 (3.29%) VxRail
8 15 (3.08%) Prometheus
9 11 (2.26%) Jamf Pro
10 8 (1.64%) WSUS
11 6 (1.23%) systemd
12 5 (1.03%) Istio
12 5 (1.03%) Puppet
12 5 (1.03%) Suricata
13 3 (0.62%) Consul
13 3 (0.62%) SELinux
13 3 (0.62%) vCenter Server
13 3 (0.62%) ZABBIX
14 2 (0.41%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 193 (39.63%) Microsoft
2 107 (21.97%) VMware
3 97 (19.92%) Cisco
4 64 (13.14%) ServiceNow
5 60 (12.32%) F5
6 26 (5.34%) Fortinet
7 24 (4.93%) NetApp
8 22 (4.52%) Google
9 21 (4.31%) Zscaler
10 19 (3.90%) Juniper
10 19 (3.90%) Palo Alto
11 18 (3.70%) Blue Coat
11 18 (3.70%) Infoblox
12 17 (3.49%) Citrix
12 17 (3.49%) McAfee
12 17 (3.49%) Red Hat
13 16 (3.29%) Splunk
14 14 (2.87%) Bloomberg
14 14 (2.87%) CheckPoint
15 11 (2.26%) Arista