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

6 months to
5 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 283 230 274
Rank change year-on-year -53 +44 -38
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 446 368 353
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.86% 1.16% 0.81%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 9.04% 9.46% 6.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 241 228 232
10th Percentile £205 £213 £200
25th Percentile £313 £357 £275
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +5.26% -
75th Percentile £550 £623 £575
90th Percentile £639 £775 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £448 £450 £475
% change year-on-year -0.39% -5.26% +8.08%
Number of hourly rates quoted 36 18 34
10th Percentile £21.25 £18.96 £18.95
25th Percentile £24.44 £31.36 £56.49
Median hourly rate £32.50 £62.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -48.00% -3.85% +17.49%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 -
90th Percentile - - £66.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -50.00% - +11.84%

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 4,931 3,892 5,422
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.53% 12.26% 12.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,000 2,378 3,197
10th Percentile £250 £231 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -0.30%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £470 £490
% change year-on-year +3.51% -4.08% +3.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 307 182 429
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.87
25th Percentile £19.34 £23.17 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.44 £44.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -40.58% -1.11% +102.16%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £79.50 £73.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £36.57 £47.50
% change year-on-year -28.91% -23.01% +94.08%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 -41 397 £470 -3.59% 280
UK excluding London -43 255 £448 -0.39% 239
London -70 157 £470 -6.00% 66
Work from Home -61 108 £500 -11.11% 90
North of England -30 90 £447 -10.60% 41
South East -25 67 £527 +17.17% 85
North West +3 58 £475 +26.60% 18
Midlands -37 40 £402 -26.91% 36
East of England -21 36 £168 -60.59% 33
West Midlands -40 33 £400 -20.00% 21
Yorkshire -58 28 £447 -11.70% 22
South West -16 21 £425 -30.89% 41
Scotland -13 16 £301 -33.06% 6
Wales -14 7 £408 - 3
East Midlands -16 7 £451 -18.00% 15
North East -34 4 £306 +6.52% 5

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 28 (6.28%) SharePoint
2 16 (3.59%) Microsoft Exchange
3 13 (2.91%) Confluence
4 10 (2.24%) nginx
5 5 (1.12%) OpenStack
6 4 (0.90%) WebSphere
7 3 (0.67%) IIS
8 2 (0.45%) CICS
8 2 (0.45%) IBM HTTP Server
8 2 (0.45%) Oracle HTTP Server
8 2 (0.45%) WebSphere Application Server
8 2 (0.45%) WebSphere Portal
9 1 (0.22%) Traefik
Applications
1 33 (7.40%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (2.47%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (1.79%) MS Visio
4 7 (1.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 1 (0.22%) Houdini
5 1 (0.22%) NUKE
5 1 (0.22%) Weka
Business Applications
1 2 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.22%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 115 (25.78%) Azure
2 97 (21.75%) AWS
3 91 (20.40%) Microsoft 365
4 45 (10.09%) Entra ID
5 32 (7.17%) GCP
6 29 (6.50%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 25 (5.61%) OneDrive
8 21 (4.71%) Route 53
9 16 (3.59%) Amazon EC2
10 15 (3.36%) Amazon EKS
10 15 (3.36%) Amazon S3
11 13 (2.91%) AWS Lambda
11 13 (2.91%) GitHub
11 13 (2.91%) Serverless
12 11 (2.47%) AWS CloudFormation
12 11 (2.47%) Google Workspace
13 8 (1.79%) Azure DevOps
14 7 (1.57%) IaaS
15 6 (1.35%) Akamai
15 6 (1.35%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 255 (57.17%) DNS
2 169 (37.89%) Firewall
3 124 (27.80%) DHCP
4 116 (26.01%) VPN
5 83 (18.61%) WAN
6 81 (18.16%) Network Security
7 74 (16.59%) LAN
8 67 (15.02%) HTTP
9 66 (14.80%) BGP
10 64 (14.35%) VLAN
11 63 (14.13%) SSL
12 54 (12.11%) BIG-IP
13 44 (9.87%) OSPF
14 40 (8.97%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 39 (8.74%) Ethernet
16 35 (7.85%) Wi-Fi
17 29 (6.50%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 29 (6.50%) Wireshark
18 28 (6.28%) Wireless
19 24 (5.38%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (2.47%) Elasticsearch
1 11 (2.47%) SQL Server
2 4 (0.90%) PostgreSQL
3 3 (0.67%) Amazon RDS
4 2 (0.45%) MySQL
4 2 (0.45%) NoSQL
5 1 (0.22%) BigQuery
5 1 (0.22%) KDB
5 1 (0.22%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 48 (10.76%) JIRA
2 22 (4.93%) Fiddler
3 16 (3.59%) GitLab
4 14 (3.14%) Visual Studio
5 13 (2.91%) Eclipse
5 13 (2.91%) Git
5 13 (2.91%) Jenkins
6 10 (2.24%) Browser DevTools
7 7 (1.57%) Bitbucket
7 7 (1.57%) SonarQube
8 6 (1.35%) Sonatype Nexus
9 3 (0.67%) Artifactory
10 2 (0.45%) Introscope
10 2 (0.45%) Subversion
11 1 (0.22%) MSI
11 1 (0.22%) Postman
General
1 174 (39.01%) Social Skills
2 61 (13.68%) Finance
3 54 (12.11%) Analytical Skills
4 40 (8.97%) Banking
5 26 (5.83%) Public Sector
6 24 (5.38%) Investment Banking
7 22 (4.93%) Presentation Skills
8 21 (4.71%) Documentation Skills
8 21 (4.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 18 (4.04%) Military
10 13 (2.91%) Telecoms
11 8 (1.79%) Front Office
12 6 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
13 5 (1.12%) Legal
14 3 (0.67%) French Language
14 3 (0.67%) Marketing
14 3 (0.67%) Police
14 3 (0.67%) Retail
15 2 (0.45%) Japanese Language
15 2 (0.45%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 104 (23.32%) Network Engineer
2 48 (10.76%) Architect
3 47 (10.54%) Support Engineer
4 40 (8.97%) Analyst
5 36 (8.07%) IT Support
6 29 (6.50%) Web Engineer
7 27 (6.05%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 26 (5.83%) IT Engineer
9 25 (5.61%) Security Engineer
9 25 (5.61%) Senior
10 22 (4.93%) Technical Engineer
11 20 (4.48%) IT Support Engineer
11 20 (4.48%) Systems Engineer
12 19 (4.26%) IP Network Engineer
13 17 (3.81%) Blue Coat Engineer
14 14 (3.14%) Network Architect
14 14 (3.14%) Software Engineer
15 13 (2.91%) C# Software Engineer
15 13 (2.91%) Junior
15 13 (2.91%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (4.48%) LDAP
1 20 (4.48%) SAML
2 13 (2.91%) JSON
2 13 (2.91%) Node.js
2 13 (2.91%) Web Services
3 12 (2.69%) OpenID
3 12 (2.69%) REST
4 8 (1.79%) 802.1X
5 6 (1.35%) .NET
5 6 (1.35%) XML
6 5 (1.12%) OAuth
7 4 (0.90%) ARM Templates
7 4 (0.90%) NETCONF
7 4 (0.90%) OpenConfig
7 4 (0.90%) RESTCONF
7 4 (0.90%) YANG
8 3 (0.67%) HTML
8 3 (0.67%) Kafka
8 3 (0.67%) Middleware
8 3 (0.67%) WinForms
Miscellaneous
1 59 (13.23%) Data Centre
2 40 (8.97%) Onboarding
3 23 (5.16%) Management Information System
4 22 (4.93%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
5 19 (4.26%) Security Posture
6 15 (3.36%) Industry 4.0
6 15 (3.36%) Robotics
7 14 (3.14%) Driving Licence
7 14 (3.14%) Security Operations Centre
8 12 (2.69%) Cyber Threat
8 12 (2.69%) Hybrid Cloud
9 11 (2.47%) Cloud Native
10 10 (2.24%) Private Cloud
10 10 (2.24%) Self-Motivation
11 9 (2.02%) Cyberattack
11 9 (2.02%) PKI
11 9 (2.02%) Public Cloud
12 8 (1.79%) Analytical Mindset
12 8 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
12 8 (1.79%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 182 (40.81%) Windows
2 80 (17.94%) Linux
3 47 (10.54%) Windows Server
4 37 (8.30%) Mac OS
5 26 (5.83%) Windows 10
6 17 (3.81%) Apple iOS
6 17 (3.81%) Unix
7 11 (2.47%) Android
8 8 (1.79%) Ubuntu
9 7 (1.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 7 (1.57%) Windows Server 2012
10 6 (1.35%) zOS
11 3 (0.67%) CentOS
11 3 (0.67%) Check Point GAiA
11 3 (0.67%) Windows 7
11 3 (0.67%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.45%) Oracle Linux
12 2 (0.45%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
12 2 (0.45%) Windows Server 2003
12 2 (0.45%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 124 (27.80%) Problem-Solving
2 84 (18.83%) ITIL
3 56 (12.56%) Agile
4 54 (12.11%) Load Balancing
5 48 (10.76%) Incident Response
6 45 (10.09%) CI/CD
6 45 (10.09%) Customer Service
6 45 (10.09%) Migration
7 44 (9.87%) High Availability
8 43 (9.64%) DevOps
9 41 (9.19%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 40 (8.97%) ITSM
11 37 (8.30%) Infrastructure as Code
12 35 (7.85%) SIEM
13 34 (7.62%) Cybersecurity
13 34 (7.62%) Root Cause Analysis
14 31 (6.95%) Decision-Making
14 31 (6.95%) Validation
15 29 (6.50%) Stakeholder Management
16 27 (6.05%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 107 (23.99%) Python
2 48 (10.76%) PowerShell
3 46 (10.31%) Bash
4 27 (6.05%) JavaScript
5 22 (4.93%) C++
6 16 (3.59%) C#
7 12 (2.69%) SQL
8 9 (2.02%) VBA
9 6 (1.35%) C
10 5 (1.12%) ActionScript
11 4 (0.90%) Java
11 4 (0.90%) Perl
12 3 (0.67%) Go
13 2 (0.45%) Jython
13 2 (0.45%) Ruby
13 2 (0.45%) Shell Script
14 1 (0.22%) Groovy
14 1 (0.22%) Kusto Query Language
14 1 (0.22%) Objective-C
14 1 (0.22%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 111 (24.89%) Security Cleared
2 87 (19.51%) SC Cleared
3 79 (17.71%) Degree
4 51 (11.43%) Cisco Certification
5 39 (8.74%) CCNP
6 27 (6.05%) CCNA
7 21 (4.71%) Computer Science Degree
7 21 (4.71%) DV Cleared
7 21 (4.71%) Microsoft Certification
8 20 (4.48%) CISSP
9 17 (3.81%) CompTIA Security+
10 14 (3.14%) CCIE
11 11 (2.47%) Azure Certification
12 10 (2.24%) CompTIA CySA+
12 10 (2.24%) MCSA
12 10 (2.24%) MCSE
13 9 (2.02%) Network+ Certification
14 5 (1.12%) GCIA
14 5 (1.12%) GCIH
15 4 (0.90%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (2.69%) NIST
2 11 (2.47%) NCSC
3 10 (2.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 8 (1.79%) SLA
5 7 (1.57%) QA
6 5 (1.12%) GDPR
7 4 (0.90%) PCI DSS
8 3 (0.67%) NIST 800
9 2 (0.45%) Government Security Classifications
9 2 (0.45%) JSP 440
9 2 (0.45%) RMADS
10 1 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.22%) GRC
10 1 (0.22%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 104 (23.32%) Active Directory
2 52 (11.66%) VMware Infrastructure
3 18 (4.04%) Firmware
4 13 (2.91%) Squid
5 12 (2.69%) Virtual Desktop
6 10 (2.24%) Docker
6 10 (2.24%) Hyper-V
7 8 (1.79%) VMware NSX
7 8 (1.79%) vSphere
8 5 (1.12%) NFS
8 5 (1.12%) Virtual Machines
9 2 (0.45%) KVM
9 2 (0.45%) RACF
9 2 (0.45%) VirtualBox
10 1 (0.22%) Citrix Presentation Server
10 1 (0.22%) GPFS
10 1 (0.22%) iptables
10 1 (0.22%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 1 (0.22%) Snort
10 1 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 67 (15.02%) Ansible
2 42 (9.42%) Terraform
3 31 (6.95%) Microsoft Intune
4 28 (6.28%) Kubernetes
5 26 (5.83%) Single Sign-On
6 24 (5.38%) FortiGate
7 21 (4.71%) Grafana
8 20 (4.48%) SCCM
9 16 (3.59%) Prometheus
10 11 (2.47%) Jamf Pro
11 10 (2.24%) WSUS
12 9 (2.02%) Consul
13 6 (1.35%) CASB
13 6 (1.35%) QRadar
14 5 (1.12%) Nessus
14 5 (1.12%) Suricata
15 4 (0.90%) Nagios
15 4 (0.90%) Tivoli NetView
16 3 (0.67%) Puppet
16 3 (0.67%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 153 (34.30%) Microsoft
2 76 (17.04%) Cisco
3 70 (15.70%) F5
4 63 (14.13%) VMware
5 49 (10.99%) ServiceNow
6 28 (6.28%) Fortinet
7 27 (6.05%) Blue Coat
7 27 (6.05%) Palo Alto
8 26 (5.83%) Google
9 24 (5.38%) Splunk
10 23 (5.16%) Citrix
10 23 (5.16%) Zscaler
11 21 (4.71%) Infoblox
11 21 (4.71%) Juniper
11 21 (4.71%) McAfee
12 19 (4.26%) NetApp
13 18 (4.04%) CheckPoint
14 17 (3.81%) Siemens
15 16 (3.59%) Red Hat
16 13 (2.91%) SolarWinds