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 1 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 231 208 193
Rank change year-on-year -23 -15 +45
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 429 449 578
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.20% 1.25% 1.27%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 10.98% 10.22% 9.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 228 256 355
10th Percentile £185 £203 £185
25th Percentile £270 £275 £273
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £454 £475 £438
Median % change year-on-year -4.42% +8.57% -15.05%
75th Percentile £591 £600 £584
90th Percentile £716 £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 3,907 4,392 6,317
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.93% 12.21% 13.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,537 2,525 3,915
10th Percentile £205 £220 £213
25th Percentile £350 £368 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £585 £600 £613
90th Percentile £675 £685 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 189 171 346
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.26 £17.72
25th Percentile £20.18 £23.05 £22.56
Median hourly rate £34.00 £41.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.07% -25.45% +30.95%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.98
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £76.18
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 1 December 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 1 December 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 1 December 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 -19 388 £475 - 547
UK excluding London -30 252 £425 +3.03% 507
London +2 147 £538 +10.26% 122
Work from Home -25 130 £452 -11.80% 386
North of England -35 69 £450 -2.70% 42
East of England +6 55 £413 -29.79% 78
South East -7 55 £384 -14.67% 258
North West -11 37 £535 +10.03% 23
Midlands -30 35 £213 -43.33% 38
West Midlands -2 34 £225 - 15
Yorkshire -44 29 £364 -39.38% 16
South West -4 28 £700 +47.37% 62
Scotland +11 18 £414 +3.44% 24
Wales -8 4 £250 -16.67% 16
North East -12 3 £400 +166.67% 3
Northern Ireland -11 2 - - 3
East Midlands -29 1 £165 -56.00% 22

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 (8.39%) SharePoint
2 27 (6.29%) Microsoft Exchange
3 14 (3.26%) Skype for Business
4 7 (1.63%) OpenStack
5 6 (1.40%) Confluence
6 4 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
7 3 (0.70%) Apache Spark
8 2 (0.47%) IIS
8 2 (0.47%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.47%) WordPress
9 1 (0.23%) Apache
9 1 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2010
9 1 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2013
9 1 (0.23%) Jupyter
Applications
1 42 (9.79%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (1.40%) Weka
3 4 (0.93%) Microsoft Excel
4 2 (0.47%) AutoCAD
4 2 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.47%) 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 89 (20.75%) Microsoft 365
2 87 (20.28%) AWS
2 87 (20.28%) Azure
3 27 (6.29%) Amazon EC2
4 26 (6.06%) Amazon S3
5 25 (5.83%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 24 (5.59%) Entra ID
7 22 (5.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 22 (5.13%) Amazon ELB
8 20 (4.66%) GCP
9 12 (2.80%) GitHub
10 9 (2.10%) AWS CloudFormation
10 9 (2.10%) OneDrive
11 8 (1.86%) Cloud Computing
11 8 (1.86%) SaaS
12 6 (1.40%) Google Workspace
13 4 (0.93%) Amazon EKS
13 4 (0.93%) Apigee
13 4 (0.93%) Azure DevOps
13 4 (0.93%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 228 (53.15%) DNS
2 150 (34.97%) Firewall
3 126 (29.37%) DHCP
4 118 (27.51%) VPN
5 78 (18.18%) SSL
6 65 (15.15%) WAN
7 64 (14.92%) LAN
8 58 (13.52%) HTTP
8 58 (13.52%) Network Security
9 57 (13.29%) VLAN
10 29 (6.76%) Internet
11 27 (6.29%) Wireshark
12 26 (6.06%) BGP
12 26 (6.06%) Ethernet
13 23 (5.36%) SAN
13 23 (5.36%) Wi-Fi
14 22 (5.13%) Wireless
15 18 (4.20%) OSPF
16 16 (3.73%) BIG-IP
17 14 (3.26%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (5.83%) SQL Server
2 9 (2.10%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (1.40%) NoSQL
4 5 (1.17%) Oracle Database
5 4 (0.93%) Amazon Aurora
5 4 (0.93%) Amazon RDS
5 4 (0.93%) Big Data
5 4 (0.93%) Elasticsearch
6 3 (0.70%) Apache Cassandra
6 3 (0.70%) Delta Lake
6 3 (0.70%) Hadoop
6 3 (0.70%) MySQL
6 3 (0.70%) Parquet
7 2 (0.47%) DB2
7 2 (0.47%) Relational Database
8 1 (0.23%) Apache Hive
8 1 (0.23%) Impala
8 1 (0.23%) Power BI
8 1 (0.23%) Redis
8 1 (0.23%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 44 (10.26%) Git
2 43 (10.02%) Jenkins
3 28 (6.53%) GitLab
4 22 (5.13%) Eclipse
4 22 (5.13%) Visual Studio
5 18 (4.20%) JIRA
6 14 (3.26%) Fiddler
7 8 (1.86%) Subversion
8 7 (1.63%) Postman
9 4 (0.93%) Robot Framework
9 4 (0.93%) TeamCity
10 3 (0.70%) MLflow
10 3 (0.70%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.70%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.47%) Maven
11 2 (0.47%) Mercurial
11 2 (0.47%) Poetry
11 2 (0.47%) PyCharm
11 2 (0.47%) Visual Studio Code
12 1 (0.23%) Cucumber
General
1 159 (37.06%) Social Skills
2 76 (17.72%) Analytical Skills
3 47 (10.96%) Finance
4 33 (7.69%) Public Sector
5 29 (6.76%) Military
6 27 (6.29%) Presentation Skills
7 25 (5.83%) Banking
8 18 (4.20%) Investment Banking
9 12 (2.80%) Legal
10 11 (2.56%) Telecoms
11 10 (2.33%) Front Office
11 10 (2.33%) Organisational Skills
12 8 (1.86%) Law
13 7 (1.63%) Local Government
14 6 (1.40%) Financial Institution
15 4 (0.93%) Documentation Skills
15 4 (0.93%) Manufacturing
16 3 (0.70%) Aerospace
16 3 (0.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 2 (0.47%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 74 (17.25%) Support Engineer
2 73 (17.02%) Network Engineer
3 54 (12.59%) Senior
4 52 (12.12%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 49 (11.42%) Analyst
6 36 (8.39%) IT Support
7 31 (7.23%) IT Engineer
8 26 (6.06%) Developer
8 26 (6.06%) Support Analyst
8 26 (6.06%) Technical Support
9 21 (4.90%) 2nd Line Support
10 20 (4.66%) C# Software Engineer
10 20 (4.66%) DevOps Engineer
10 20 (4.66%) Software Engineer
11 19 (4.43%) Technical Engineer
12 17 (3.96%) Senior DevOps
13 16 (3.73%) IT Support Engineer
13 16 (3.73%) Junior
13 16 (3.73%) Senior DevOps Engineer
13 16 (3.73%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (5.83%) Node.js
1 25 (5.83%) Web Services
2 17 (3.96%) Middleware
3 16 (3.73%) REST
4 12 (2.80%) LDAP
5 11 (2.56%) SOAP
6 9 (2.10%) Elastic Stack
7 8 (1.86%) FIX Protocol
8 7 (1.63%) AngularJS
9 5 (1.17%) Ultra Messaging
10 4 (0.93%) React
10 4 (0.93%) RESTful
10 4 (0.93%) SAML
11 3 (0.70%) .NET
11 3 (0.70%) Apache Avro
11 3 (0.70%) ASP.NET Web API
11 3 (0.70%) Bootstrap
11 3 (0.70%) Express.js
11 3 (0.70%) Flask
11 3 (0.70%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 31 (7.23%) Data Centre
2 29 (6.76%) Management Information System
3 21 (4.90%) Onboarding
4 18 (4.20%) Analytical Mindset
5 13 (3.03%) Driving Licence
5 13 (3.03%) NHS
5 13 (3.03%) Private Cloud
6 12 (2.80%) Security Posture
7 11 (2.56%) Replication
7 11 (2.56%) Video Conferencing
8 9 (2.10%) CMDB
8 9 (2.10%) iPhone
8 9 (2.10%) Public Cloud
8 9 (2.10%) Self-Motivation
9 8 (1.86%) PKI
9 8 (1.86%) SCADA
10 7 (1.63%) Clustering
10 7 (1.63%) Enterprise Software
10 7 (1.63%) Hybrid Cloud
11 6 (1.40%) Grid Computing
Operating Systems
1 200 (46.62%) Windows
2 145 (33.80%) Linux
3 55 (12.82%) Windows Server
4 48 (11.19%) Windows 10
5 31 (7.23%) Unix
6 17 (3.96%) Mac OS
7 16 (3.73%) Windows Server 2016
8 14 (3.26%) Android
9 11 (2.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 8 (1.86%) Ubuntu
10 8 (1.86%) Windows 7
10 8 (1.86%) Windows Server 2019
11 7 (1.63%) Apple iOS
12 6 (1.40%) CentOS
12 6 (1.40%) VMS
12 6 (1.40%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.93%) Debian
13 4 (0.93%) Solaris
14 3 (0.70%) Mac OS X
14 3 (0.70%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 107 (24.94%) Problem-Solving
2 78 (18.18%) CI/CD
3 70 (16.32%) Agile
4 68 (15.85%) ITIL
5 61 (14.22%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 59 (13.75%) DevOps
7 51 (11.89%) Infrastructure as Code
8 45 (10.49%) High Availability
9 37 (8.62%) Cybersecurity
10 36 (8.39%) Infrastructure Automation
10 36 (8.39%) Load Balancing
11 35 (8.16%) Validation
12 34 (7.93%) Continuous Integration
12 34 (7.93%) Migration
13 32 (7.46%) Knowledge Transfer
14 31 (7.23%) Incident Response
15 29 (6.76%) Configuration Management
15 29 (6.76%) SIEM
16 28 (6.53%) Service Management
17 27 (6.29%) Customer Service
Programming Languages
1 140 (32.63%) Python
2 78 (18.18%) Bash
3 69 (16.08%) PowerShell
4 31 (7.23%) C++
5 29 (6.76%) Perl
6 28 (6.53%) JavaScript
7 27 (6.29%) C#
8 23 (5.36%) SQL
9 17 (3.96%) Java
10 9 (2.10%) Go
11 8 (1.86%) Shell Script
12 4 (0.93%) C
12 4 (0.93%) Kusto Query Language
13 3 (0.70%) Groovy
13 3 (0.70%) PHP
13 3 (0.70%) Search Processing Language
13 3 (0.70%) T-SQL
14 2 (0.47%) Ruby
15 1 (0.23%) PL/SQL
15 1 (0.23%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 108 (25.17%) Security Cleared
2 80 (18.65%) SC Cleared
3 38 (8.86%) Cisco Certification
4 36 (8.39%) Microsoft Certification
5 35 (8.16%) Degree
6 26 (6.06%) DV Cleared
7 25 (5.83%) CCNP
8 22 (5.13%) CCNA
9 18 (4.20%) Network+ Certification
10 14 (3.26%) MCP
10 14 (3.26%) MCSE
11 13 (3.03%) Azure Certification
12 12 (2.80%) CISSP
13 11 (2.56%) CompTIA Security+
13 11 (2.56%) Server+ Certification
14 10 (2.33%) MCSA
15 7 (1.63%) A+ Certification
16 6 (1.40%) CCIE
16 6 (1.40%) ECDL
16 6 (1.40%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (5.36%) GDPR
2 8 (1.86%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 7 (1.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 6 (1.40%) Cyber Essentials
4 6 (1.40%) NIST
5 5 (1.17%) SLA
6 4 (0.93%) HIPAA
7 3 (0.70%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.47%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.47%) NCSC
8 2 (0.47%) QA
9 1 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
9 1 (0.23%) SOC 2
System Software
1 102 (23.78%) Active Directory
2 72 (16.78%) VMware Infrastructure
3 48 (11.19%) Docker
4 35 (8.16%) Hyper-V
5 13 (3.03%) VMware ESXi
6 9 (2.10%) Firmware
7 7 (1.63%) Lustre
7 7 (1.63%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 7 (1.63%) Terminal Services
8 6 (1.40%) GPFS
8 6 (1.40%) Virtual Machines
9 5 (1.17%) NDS
9 5 (1.17%) NetIQ eDirectory
9 5 (1.17%) NFS
9 5 (1.17%) vSphere
10 4 (0.93%) Veritas File System
10 4 (0.93%) Veritas Volume Manager
10 4 (0.93%) Virtual Desktop
11 3 (0.70%) KVM
11 3 (0.70%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 86 (20.05%) Ansible
2 61 (14.22%) Terraform
3 35 (8.16%) SCCM
4 26 (6.06%) Kubernetes
5 24 (5.59%) Microsoft Intune
6 19 (4.43%) Puppet
7 16 (3.73%) Grafana
7 16 (3.73%) Prometheus
8 9 (2.10%) FortiGate
8 9 (2.10%) vCenter Server
9 8 (1.86%) Single Sign-On
10 7 (1.63%) Nessus
11 6 (1.40%) Progress Chef
11 6 (1.40%) QRadar
11 6 (1.40%) WSUS
12 5 (1.17%) CASB
12 5 (1.17%) ITRS Geneos
12 5 (1.17%) Red Hat Satellite
13 4 (0.93%) Microsoft Clustering
14 3 (0.70%) Consul
Vendors
1 156 (36.36%) Microsoft
2 91 (21.21%) VMware
3 59 (13.75%) F5
4 54 (12.59%) Cisco
5 50 (11.66%) Palo Alto
6 42 (9.79%) CheckPoint
7 22 (5.13%) Citrix
7 22 (5.13%) ServiceNow
7 22 (5.13%) Splunk
8 21 (4.90%) Blue Coat
9 20 (4.66%) Red Hat
10 19 (4.43%) Fortinet
10 19 (4.43%) Oracle
11 17 (3.96%) NetApp
12 16 (3.73%) McAfee
13 14 (3.26%) SolarWinds
14 11 (2.56%) CyberArk
14 11 (2.56%) Juniper
14 11 (2.56%) MuleSoft
14 11 (2.56%) Zscaler