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 29 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 231 209 199
Rank change year-on-year -22 -10 +44
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 437 451 582
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.21% 1.24% 1.27%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 11.00% 10.17% 9.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 233 256 358
10th Percentile £185 £203 £187
25th Percentile £270 £275 £283
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £475 £438
Median % change year-on-year -2.11% +8.57% -15.05%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £588
90th Percentile £723 £738 £681
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £413 £400
% change year-on-year +3.03% +3.13% -11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 20 58
10th Percentile £15.50 £29.13 £23.13
25th Percentile £33.00 £58.44 £33.83
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year - +30.00% -23.08%
75th Percentile - - £56.49
90th Percentile £81.20 £67.50 £69.62
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year - +30.00% -23.08%

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 3,971 4,436 6,390
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.02% 12.17% 13.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,578 2,549 3,957
10th Percentile £205 £223 £211
25th Percentile £356 £370 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £613
90th Percentile £675 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 193 169 347
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.16 £17.72
25th Percentile £20.50 £23.10 £22.88
Median hourly rate £34.00 £41.00 £56.40
Median % change year-on-year -17.07% -27.30% +35.09%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £66.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £76.16
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £48.03 £56.49
% change year-on-year -11.51% -14.98% +25.53%

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 29 November 2025.

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 29 November 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for TCP/IP in the UK

TCP/IP
Top 17 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 29 November 2025. 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 -12 396 £477 +0.32% 278
UK excluding London -22 254 £425 +3.03% 272
London +14 153 £550 +12.82% 72
Work from Home -18 134 £454 -9.20% 109
North of England -37 70 £463 - 31
South East +2 56 £380 -15.67% 111
East of England +5 55 £413 -29.79% 43
North West -17 37 £535 +10.03% 18
Midlands -29 35 £213 -43.33% 25
West Midlands -3 34 £225 - 15
Yorkshire -33 30 £365 -39.17% 10
South West +1 28 £700 +47.37% 41
Scotland +10 18 £414 +3.44% 22
Wales -4 4 £250 -16.67% 4
North East -11 3 £400 +166.67% 3
Northern Ireland -9 2 - - 3
East Midlands -30 1 £165 -56.00% 9

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 36 (8.24%) SharePoint
2 27 (6.18%) Microsoft Exchange
3 14 (3.20%) Skype for Business
4 7 (1.60%) Confluence
4 7 (1.60%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.69%) Apache Spark
7 2 (0.46%) IIS
7 2 (0.46%) nginx
7 2 (0.46%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.46%) WordPress
8 1 (0.23%) Apache
8 1 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2010
8 1 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2013
8 1 (0.23%) Jupyter
Applications
1 42 (9.61%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (1.37%) Weka
3 4 (0.92%) Microsoft Excel
4 2 (0.46%) AutoCAD
4 2 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.46%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.23%) Acrobat
5 1 (0.23%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 1 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 1 (0.23%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (0.23%) Eikon
1 1 (0.23%) Eze OMS
1 1 (0.23%) Fidessa
1 1 (0.23%) Finacle
1 1 (0.23%) Pegasus Opera
1 1 (0.23%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.23%) RMDS
1 1 (0.23%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 90 (20.59%) Azure
2 89 (20.37%) AWS
2 89 (20.37%) Microsoft 365
3 27 (6.18%) Amazon EC2
4 26 (5.95%) Amazon S3
5 25 (5.72%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 24 (5.49%) Entra ID
7 22 (5.03%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 22 (5.03%) Amazon ELB
7 22 (5.03%) GCP
8 14 (3.20%) GitHub
9 10 (2.29%) SaaS
10 9 (2.06%) AWS CloudFormation
10 9 (2.06%) OneDrive
11 8 (1.83%) Cloud Computing
12 6 (1.37%) Google Workspace
13 4 (0.92%) Amazon EKS
13 4 (0.92%) Apigee
13 4 (0.92%) Azure DevOps
13 4 (0.92%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 231 (52.86%) DNS
2 153 (35.01%) Firewall
3 129 (29.52%) DHCP
4 121 (27.69%) VPN
5 79 (18.08%) SSL
6 67 (15.33%) LAN
6 67 (15.33%) WAN
7 61 (13.96%) VLAN
8 58 (13.27%) HTTP
8 58 (13.27%) Network Security
9 29 (6.64%) Internet
10 28 (6.41%) BGP
11 27 (6.18%) Wireshark
12 26 (5.95%) Ethernet
13 23 (5.26%) SAN
13 23 (5.26%) Wi-Fi
13 23 (5.26%) Wireless
14 20 (4.58%) OSPF
15 16 (3.66%) BIG-IP
16 14 (3.20%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (5.72%) SQL Server
2 9 (2.06%) NoSQL
2 9 (2.06%) PostgreSQL
3 5 (1.14%) Oracle Database
4 4 (0.92%) Amazon Aurora
4 4 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (0.92%) Big Data
4 4 (0.92%) Elasticsearch
5 3 (0.69%) Apache Cassandra
5 3 (0.69%) Delta Lake
5 3 (0.69%) Hadoop
5 3 (0.69%) MySQL
5 3 (0.69%) Parquet
6 2 (0.46%) DB2
6 2 (0.46%) Relational Database
7 1 (0.23%) Apache Hive
7 1 (0.23%) Impala
7 1 (0.23%) Power BI
7 1 (0.23%) Redis
7 1 (0.23%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 46 (10.53%) Git
2 43 (9.84%) Jenkins
3 30 (6.86%) GitLab
4 22 (5.03%) Eclipse
4 22 (5.03%) Visual Studio
5 19 (4.35%) JIRA
6 14 (3.20%) Fiddler
7 8 (1.83%) Subversion
8 7 (1.60%) Postman
9 4 (0.92%) Robot Framework
9 4 (0.92%) TeamCity
10 3 (0.69%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.69%) MLflow
10 3 (0.69%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.69%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.46%) Maven
11 2 (0.46%) Mercurial
11 2 (0.46%) Poetry
11 2 (0.46%) PyCharm
11 2 (0.46%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 161 (36.84%) Social Skills
2 79 (18.08%) Analytical Skills
3 50 (11.44%) Finance
4 33 (7.55%) Public Sector
5 29 (6.64%) Military
6 27 (6.18%) Presentation Skills
7 25 (5.72%) Banking
8 18 (4.12%) Investment Banking
9 13 (2.97%) Front Office
10 12 (2.75%) Legal
11 11 (2.52%) Telecoms
12 10 (2.29%) Organisational Skills
13 8 (1.83%) Financial Institution
13 8 (1.83%) Law
13 8 (1.83%) Local Government
14 4 (0.92%) Documentation Skills
14 4 (0.92%) Manufacturing
15 3 (0.69%) Aerospace
15 3 (0.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 2 (0.46%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 77 (17.62%) Network Engineer
2 74 (16.93%) Support Engineer
3 54 (12.36%) Senior
4 53 (12.13%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 49 (11.21%) Analyst
6 36 (8.24%) IT Support
7 32 (7.32%) IT Engineer
8 29 (6.64%) Developer
9 26 (5.95%) Support Analyst
9 26 (5.95%) Technical Support
10 21 (4.81%) 2nd Line Support
11 20 (4.58%) C# Software Engineer
11 20 (4.58%) DevOps Engineer
11 20 (4.58%) Software Engineer
12 19 (4.35%) Technical Engineer
13 17 (3.89%) Senior DevOps
14 16 (3.66%) IT Support Engineer
14 16 (3.66%) Junior
14 16 (3.66%) Senior DevOps Engineer
14 16 (3.66%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (5.72%) Node.js
1 25 (5.72%) Web Services
2 20 (4.58%) Middleware
3 16 (3.66%) REST
4 12 (2.75%) LDAP
5 11 (2.52%) FIX Protocol
5 11 (2.52%) SOAP
6 9 (2.06%) Elastic Stack
7 7 (1.60%) AngularJS
8 5 (1.14%) FpML
8 5 (1.14%) Ultra Messaging
9 4 (0.92%) React
9 4 (0.92%) RESTful
9 4 (0.92%) SAML
10 3 (0.69%) Apache Avro
10 3 (0.69%) ASP.NET Web API
10 3 (0.69%) Bootstrap
10 3 (0.69%) Express.js
10 3 (0.69%) Flask
10 3 (0.69%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 33 (7.55%) Data Centre
2 29 (6.64%) Management Information System
3 21 (4.81%) Onboarding
4 18 (4.12%) Analytical Mindset
5 15 (3.43%) Private Cloud
6 13 (2.97%) Driving Licence
6 13 (2.97%) NHS
7 12 (2.75%) Security Posture
8 11 (2.52%) Public Cloud
8 11 (2.52%) Replication
8 11 (2.52%) Video Conferencing
9 9 (2.06%) CMDB
9 9 (2.06%) iPhone
9 9 (2.06%) Self-Motivation
10 8 (1.83%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 8 (1.83%) PKI
10 8 (1.83%) SCADA
11 7 (1.60%) Clustering
11 7 (1.60%) Fixed Income
11 7 (1.60%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 201 (46.00%) Windows
2 145 (33.18%) Linux
3 55 (12.59%) Windows Server
4 48 (10.98%) Windows 10
5 31 (7.09%) Unix
6 17 (3.89%) Mac OS
7 16 (3.66%) Windows Server 2016
8 14 (3.20%) Android
9 11 (2.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 8 (1.83%) Ubuntu
10 8 (1.83%) Windows 7
10 8 (1.83%) Windows Server 2019
11 7 (1.60%) Apple iOS
12 6 (1.37%) CentOS
12 6 (1.37%) VMS
12 6 (1.37%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.92%) Debian
13 4 (0.92%) Solaris
13 4 (0.92%) Windows Server 2003
14 3 (0.69%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 110 (25.17%) Problem-Solving
2 78 (17.85%) CI/CD
3 73 (16.70%) Agile
4 68 (15.56%) ITIL
5 62 (14.19%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 59 (13.50%) DevOps
7 51 (11.67%) Infrastructure as Code
8 48 (10.98%) High Availability
9 37 (8.47%) Continuous Integration
9 37 (8.47%) Cybersecurity
10 36 (8.24%) Infrastructure Automation
10 36 (8.24%) Load Balancing
11 35 (8.01%) Validation
12 34 (7.78%) Migration
13 32 (7.32%) Knowledge Transfer
14 31 (7.09%) Incident Response
15 29 (6.64%) Configuration Management
15 29 (6.64%) SIEM
16 28 (6.41%) Service Management
17 27 (6.18%) Customer Service
Programming Languages
1 145 (33.18%) Python
2 78 (17.85%) Bash
3 69 (15.79%) PowerShell
4 34 (7.78%) C++
5 30 (6.86%) C#
6 29 (6.64%) Perl
7 28 (6.41%) JavaScript
8 26 (5.95%) SQL
9 20 (4.58%) Java
10 9 (2.06%) Go
11 8 (1.83%) Shell Script
12 4 (0.92%) C
12 4 (0.92%) Kusto Query Language
13 3 (0.69%) Groovy
13 3 (0.69%) PHP
13 3 (0.69%) Search Processing Language
13 3 (0.69%) T-SQL
14 2 (0.46%) Ruby
15 1 (0.23%) PL/SQL
15 1 (0.23%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 111 (25.40%) Security Cleared
2 83 (18.99%) SC Cleared
3 40 (9.15%) Cisco Certification
4 37 (8.47%) Degree
5 36 (8.24%) Microsoft Certification
6 28 (6.41%) DV Cleared
7 26 (5.95%) CCNP
8 23 (5.26%) CCNA
9 18 (4.12%) Network+ Certification
10 14 (3.20%) MCP
10 14 (3.20%) MCSE
11 13 (2.97%) Azure Certification
12 12 (2.75%) CISSP
13 11 (2.52%) CompTIA Security+
13 11 (2.52%) Server+ Certification
14 10 (2.29%) MCSA
15 7 (1.60%) A+ Certification
15 7 (1.60%) Computer Science Degree
16 6 (1.37%) CCIE
16 6 (1.37%) ECDL
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (5.26%) GDPR
2 8 (1.83%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 7 (1.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 6 (1.37%) Cyber Essentials
4 6 (1.37%) NIST
5 5 (1.14%) SLA
6 4 (0.92%) HIPAA
7 3 (0.69%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.46%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.46%) NCSC
8 2 (0.46%) QA
9 1 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
9 1 (0.23%) SOC 2
System Software
1 102 (23.34%) Active Directory
2 74 (16.93%) VMware Infrastructure
3 48 (10.98%) Docker
4 36 (8.24%) Hyper-V
5 13 (2.97%) VMware ESXi
6 11 (2.52%) Firmware
7 7 (1.60%) Lustre
7 7 (1.60%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 7 (1.60%) Terminal Services
8 6 (1.37%) GPFS
8 6 (1.37%) Virtual Machines
8 6 (1.37%) vSphere
9 5 (1.14%) NDS
9 5 (1.14%) NetIQ eDirectory
9 5 (1.14%) NFS
9 5 (1.14%) VMware NSX
10 4 (0.92%) Veritas File System
10 4 (0.92%) Veritas Volume Manager
10 4 (0.92%) Virtual Desktop
11 3 (0.69%) Veritas Cluster Server
Systems Management
1 88 (20.14%) Ansible
2 61 (13.96%) Terraform
3 35 (8.01%) SCCM
4 26 (5.95%) Kubernetes
5 24 (5.49%) Microsoft Intune
6 19 (4.35%) Puppet
7 16 (3.66%) Grafana
7 16 (3.66%) Prometheus
8 9 (2.06%) FortiGate
8 9 (2.06%) vCenter Server
9 8 (1.83%) Single Sign-On
10 7 (1.60%) Nessus
11 6 (1.37%) Progress Chef
11 6 (1.37%) QRadar
11 6 (1.37%) WSUS
12 5 (1.14%) CASB
12 5 (1.14%) ITRS Geneos
12 5 (1.14%) Red Hat Satellite
13 4 (0.92%) Microsoft Clustering
14 3 (0.69%) Consul
Vendors
1 156 (35.70%) Microsoft
2 94 (21.51%) VMware
3 61 (13.96%) F5
4 58 (13.27%) Cisco
5 52 (11.90%) Palo Alto
6 43 (9.84%) CheckPoint
7 23 (5.26%) Citrix
8 22 (5.03%) ServiceNow
8 22 (5.03%) Splunk
9 21 (4.81%) Blue Coat
10 20 (4.58%) Red Hat
11 19 (4.35%) Fortinet
11 19 (4.35%) Oracle
12 17 (3.89%) NetApp
13 16 (3.66%) McAfee
14 15 (3.43%) SolarWinds
15 13 (2.97%) Juniper
16 11 (2.52%) CyberArk
16 11 (2.52%) MuleSoft
16 11 (2.52%) Zscaler