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

6 months to
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 278 223 228
Rank change year-on-year -55 +5 -12
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 506 407 409
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.93% 1.24% 1.06%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 9.96% 10.70% 8.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 263 225 225
10th Percentile £197 £185 £203
25th Percentile £295 £300 £260
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £454 £465
Median % change year-on-year -0.88% -2.37% +3.33%
75th Percentile £550 £588 £575
90th Percentile £674 £657 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £449 £425
% change year-on-year +0.33% +5.53% +6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 57 35 30
10th Percentile £26.50 £28.40 £29.13
25th Percentile £33.70 £41.70 -
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £69.50 - -
90th Percentile £95.05 £76.70 £65.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year - - +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 5,079 3,805 4,583
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.34% 11.55% 11.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,940 2,363 2,666
10th Percentile £231 £225 £225
25th Percentile £392 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £500
% change year-on-year +5.56% -10.00% +10.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 411 199 252
10th Percentile £14.30 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £25.15 £21.37
Median hourly rate £32.50 £42.50 £51.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.53% -16.67% -9.72%
75th Percentile £68.75 £64.38 £65.00
90th Percentile £88.75 £75.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.50 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -30.59% -25.89% -0.26%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 -43 461 £470 +0.27% 679
UK excluding London -42 279 £450 +0.33% 451
London -39 203 £465 -15.45% 301
Work from Home -81 120 £500 - 244
North of England -57 72 £425 -17.87% 85
South East -48 71 £527 +40.60% 131
South West +3 48 £638 +41.67% 58
Midlands -35 43 £400 -0.25% 59
North West -37 41 £240 -55.76% 48
East of England -22 37 £425 -10.53% 65
West Midlands -38 36 £400 -0.25% 34
Yorkshire -43 27 £500 - 21
Scotland -21 16 £210 -49.94% 35
Wales -6 8 £390 +116.67% 12
East Midlands -10 7 £326 -8.81% 25
North East -45 4 £438 +75.00% 18

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 51 (10.08%) SharePoint
2 35 (6.92%) Microsoft Exchange
3 13 (2.57%) Confluence
4 12 (2.37%) OpenStack
5 6 (1.19%) nginx
6 4 (0.79%) FactoryTalk
7 3 (0.59%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.40%) CICS
8 2 (0.40%) IIS
8 2 (0.40%) Skype for Business
9 1 (0.20%) IBM HTTP Server
9 1 (0.20%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 1 (0.20%) Traefik
9 1 (0.20%) WebSphere Application Server
9 1 (0.20%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 18 (3.56%) Microsoft Office
2 16 (3.16%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (1.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (1.19%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.40%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.40%) Houdini
5 2 (0.40%) NUKE
6 1 (0.20%) Weka
Business Applications
1 8 (1.58%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 169 (33.40%) Azure
2 130 (25.69%) Microsoft 365
3 110 (21.74%) AWS
4 79 (15.61%) Entra ID
5 36 (7.11%) OneDrive
6 29 (5.73%) GCP
7 23 (4.55%) GitHub
8 21 (4.15%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 16 (3.16%) OpenShift
10 14 (2.77%) Azure Monitor
11 13 (2.57%) Google Workspace
12 12 (2.37%) AWS CloudFormation
12 12 (2.37%) Route 53
13 11 (2.17%) Amazon EC2
13 11 (2.17%) GitHub Actions
14 9 (1.78%) Azure Sentinel
15 8 (1.58%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 8 (1.58%) Amazon EKS
16 7 (1.38%) SaaS
17 6 (1.19%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 301 (59.49%) DNS
2 212 (41.90%) Firewall
3 201 (39.72%) DHCP
4 153 (30.24%) VPN
5 90 (17.79%) Network Security
6 86 (17.00%) WAN
7 77 (15.22%) LAN
8 73 (14.43%) VLAN
9 71 (14.03%) HTTP
10 67 (13.24%) BGP
11 58 (11.46%) SSL
12 46 (9.09%) Wi-Fi
13 45 (8.89%) Wireless
14 42 (8.30%) OSPF
15 35 (6.92%) BIG-IP
16 33 (6.52%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 27 (5.34%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
18 25 (4.94%) SD-WAN
19 24 (4.74%) Ethernet
20 19 (3.75%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (3.75%) PostgreSQL
2 17 (3.36%) SQL Server
3 9 (1.78%) MySQL
4 8 (1.58%) MongoDB
4 8 (1.58%) NoSQL
4 8 (1.58%) SQLite
5 6 (1.19%) Amazon RDS
5 6 (1.19%) Redis
6 3 (0.59%) KDB
7 2 (0.40%) BigQuery
8 1 (0.20%) Cloud Spanner
8 1 (0.20%) Elasticsearch
8 1 (0.20%) Kdb+
8 1 (0.20%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 50 (9.88%) JIRA
2 44 (8.70%) Git
3 34 (6.72%) Jenkins
4 26 (5.14%) GitLab
5 14 (2.77%) Fiddler
6 13 (2.57%) Visual Studio
7 12 (2.37%) Eclipse
8 8 (1.58%) Sonatype Nexus
9 5 (0.99%) Artifactory
9 5 (0.99%) Selenium
10 4 (0.79%) Browser DevTools
11 2 (0.40%) Bitbucket
11 2 (0.40%) Subversion
12 1 (0.20%) Introscope
12 1 (0.20%) MSI
12 1 (0.20%) Postman
General
1 205 (40.51%) Social Skills
2 75 (14.82%) Analytical Skills
3 61 (12.06%) Finance
4 40 (7.91%) Banking
5 31 (6.13%) Public Sector
6 28 (5.53%) Telecoms
7 19 (3.75%) Investment Banking
8 16 (3.16%) Military
9 15 (2.96%) Front Office
10 14 (2.77%) Documentation Skills
11 9 (1.78%) Aerospace
12 7 (1.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 6 (1.19%) Legal
13 6 (1.19%) Manufacturing
13 6 (1.19%) Presentation Skills
14 5 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
14 5 (0.99%) Pharmaceutical
14 5 (0.99%) Police
15 4 (0.79%) Automotive
15 4 (0.79%) Multimedia
Job Titles
1 106 (20.95%) Network Engineer
2 68 (13.44%) Support Engineer
3 61 (12.06%) Senior
4 59 (11.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 55 (10.87%) IT Support
6 43 (8.50%) IT Engineer
7 37 (7.31%) Analyst
7 37 (7.31%) IT Support Engineer
8 36 (7.11%) Architect
9 25 (4.94%) Senior Network Engineer
10 23 (4.55%) Platform Engineer
11 22 (4.35%) Security Engineer
12 20 (3.95%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 19 (3.75%) Linux Engineer
14 17 (3.36%) Network Infrastructure Engineer
14 17 (3.36%) Support Analyst
15 16 (3.16%) Cloud Engineer
15 16 (3.16%) IP Network Engineer
15 16 (3.16%) Web Engineer
16 14 (2.77%) Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 89 (17.59%) Terraform
2 18 (3.56%) REST
3 14 (2.77%) SAML
4 13 (2.57%) JSON
5 12 (2.37%) ARM Templates
5 12 (2.37%) Node.js
5 12 (2.37%) Web Services
6 9 (1.78%) .NET
6 9 (1.78%) Kafka
6 9 (1.78%) LDAP
7 8 (1.58%) 802.1X
7 8 (1.58%) HTML
7 8 (1.58%) SPNEGO
8 7 (1.38%) Elastic Stack
8 7 (1.38%) Jinja
9 6 (1.19%) Flask
9 6 (1.19%) Pandas
9 6 (1.19%) RabbitMQ
9 6 (1.19%) RESTful
9 6 (1.19%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 83 (16.40%) Data Centre
2 62 (12.25%) Onboarding
3 34 (6.72%) PKI
4 31 (6.13%) Hybrid Cloud
5 26 (5.14%) Management Information System
6 21 (4.15%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 21 (4.15%) Linux Command Line
7 17 (3.36%) Operational Technology
7 17 (3.36%) Public Cloud
7 17 (3.36%) Self-Motivation
8 16 (3.16%) Driving Licence
8 16 (3.16%) Video Conferencing
9 14 (2.77%) Cloud Native
10 13 (2.57%) SCADA
11 11 (2.17%) Cyber Threat
12 10 (1.98%) Enterprise Storage
12 10 (1.98%) Security Posture
13 9 (1.78%) Distributed Systems
13 9 (1.78%) Private Cloud
14 8 (1.58%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 248 (49.01%) Windows
2 161 (31.82%) Linux
3 78 (15.42%) Windows Server
4 52 (10.28%) Windows 10
5 43 (8.50%) Mac OS
6 29 (5.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 29 (5.73%) Unix
7 18 (3.56%) Apple iOS
8 16 (3.16%) Ubuntu
9 14 (2.77%) Android
10 6 (1.19%) CentOS
11 5 (0.99%) zOS
12 3 (0.59%) Check Point GAiA
12 3 (0.59%) Windows Server 2019
13 2 (0.40%) Windows Server 2012
14 1 (0.20%) Data ONTAP
14 1 (0.20%) Oracle Linux
14 1 (0.20%) SUSE
14 1 (0.20%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
14 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 136 (26.88%) Problem-Solving
2 110 (21.74%) ITIL
3 89 (17.59%) CI/CD
4 83 (16.40%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 78 (15.42%) Infrastructure as Code
6 72 (14.23%) DevOps
7 67 (13.24%) Load Balancing
8 64 (12.65%) Agile
8 64 (12.65%) ITSM
9 61 (12.06%) Customer Service
10 58 (11.46%) Cybersecurity
11 55 (10.87%) Continuous Improvement
12 50 (9.88%) Platform Engineering
13 48 (9.49%) Migration
14 47 (9.29%) Incident Response
14 47 (9.29%) Validation
15 46 (9.09%) Service Management
16 45 (8.89%) High Availability
16 45 (8.89%) SIEM
17 43 (8.50%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 153 (30.24%) Python
2 111 (21.94%) PowerShell
3 89 (17.59%) Bash
4 27 (5.34%) C++
5 23 (4.55%) JavaScript
6 21 (4.15%) SQL
7 17 (3.36%) C#
8 14 (2.77%) Perl
8 14 (2.77%) Shell Script
9 12 (2.37%) Java
10 11 (2.17%) Bicep
11 8 (1.58%) Korn
12 7 (1.38%) VBA
13 5 (0.99%) ActionScript
13 5 (0.99%) Go
14 4 (0.79%) C
15 3 (0.59%) Kusto Query Language
15 3 (0.59%) VBScript
16 2 (0.40%) Groovy
16 2 (0.40%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 139 (27.47%) Security Cleared
2 81 (16.01%) SC Cleared
3 66 (13.04%) Degree
4 57 (11.26%) Cisco Certification
5 54 (10.67%) DV Cleared
6 46 (9.09%) CCNP
7 28 (5.53%) CCNA
8 26 (5.14%) Microsoft Certification
9 21 (4.15%) Computer Science Degree
10 20 (3.95%) A+ Certification
11 16 (3.16%) Network+ Certification
12 15 (2.96%) CCIE
12 15 (2.96%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 13 (2.57%) CISSP
14 12 (2.37%) AWS Certification
14 12 (2.37%) Azure Certification
14 12 (2.37%) VCAP
15 8 (1.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 6 (1.19%) JNCIS
17 5 (0.99%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (4.74%) SLA
2 15 (2.96%) QA
3 10 (1.98%) NCSC
4 9 (1.78%) NIST
5 8 (1.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 4 (0.79%) 21 CFR Part 11
6 4 (0.79%) GDPR
6 4 (0.79%) GxP
6 4 (0.79%) NIST 800
6 4 (0.79%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
7 2 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 2 (0.40%) Government Security Classifications
7 2 (0.40%) JSP 440
8 1 (0.20%) Data Quality
8 1 (0.20%) ISO 8583
8 1 (0.20%) RMADS
System Software
1 167 (33.00%) Active Directory
2 96 (18.97%) VMware Infrastructure
3 42 (8.30%) Hyper-V
4 33 (6.52%) Docker
5 30 (5.93%) vSphere
6 23 (4.55%) VMware NSX
7 20 (3.95%) Firmware
8 14 (2.77%) Virtual Desktop
9 7 (1.38%) Virtual Machines
10 6 (1.19%) NFS
11 5 (0.99%) Squid
11 5 (0.99%) VMware ESXi
12 3 (0.59%) VirtualBox
13 2 (0.40%) KVM
13 2 (0.40%) RACF
13 2 (0.40%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 2 (0.40%) Virtual Servers
14 1 (0.20%) Embedded Firmware
14 1 (0.20%) Lustre
14 1 (0.20%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 110 (21.74%) Ansible
2 66 (13.04%) Microsoft Intune
3 51 (10.08%) Kubernetes
4 35 (6.92%) SCCM
5 29 (5.73%) Grafana
6 19 (3.75%) Single Sign-On
7 17 (3.36%) FortiGate
7 17 (3.36%) Prometheus
8 16 (3.16%) VxRail
9 15 (2.96%) Jamf Pro
10 8 (1.58%) WSUS
11 6 (1.19%) Istio
11 6 (1.19%) systemd
12 5 (0.99%) Nagios
12 5 (0.99%) Puppet
12 5 (0.99%) vCenter Server
13 4 (0.79%) Consul
13 4 (0.79%) Suricata
13 4 (0.79%) ZABBIX
14 3 (0.59%) Packer
Vendors
1 206 (40.71%) Microsoft
2 112 (22.13%) VMware
3 102 (20.16%) Cisco
4 63 (12.45%) ServiceNow
5 59 (11.66%) F5
6 27 (5.34%) Fortinet
7 24 (4.74%) Google
8 23 (4.55%) NetApp
8 23 (4.55%) Zscaler
9 20 (3.95%) Infoblox
9 20 (3.95%) Juniper
9 20 (3.95%) Palo Alto
10 18 (3.56%) Citrix
11 17 (3.36%) Blue Coat
11 17 (3.36%) Red Hat
11 17 (3.36%) Splunk
12 16 (3.16%) McAfee
13 14 (2.77%) Bloomberg
13 14 (2.77%) CheckPoint
13 14 (2.77%) SolarWinds