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 4 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 289 224 297
Rank change year-on-year -65 +73 -59
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 420 354 329
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.86% 1.23% 0.77%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 8.84% 9.76% 6.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 238 243 224
10th Percentile £207 £225 £188
25th Percentile £371 £363 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -8.00% - +2.56%
75th Percentile £550 £625 £575
90th Percentile £638 £775 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £458 £488
% change year-on-year -1.64% -6.15% +8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 37 10 21
10th Percentile £21.25 £17.54 £16.00
25th Percentile £26.25 £32.44 £20.00
Median hourly rate £35.22 £58.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -39.79% -10.00% +13.38%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 -
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.58 £63.75 £65.00
% change year-on-year -39.48% -1.92% +3.92%

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 4,750 3,626 5,393
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.71% 12.58% 12.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,907 2,248 3,213
10th Percentile £263 £216 £206
25th Percentile £400 £360 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £495
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -3.03% -3.41%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £465 £475
% change year-on-year +2.15% -2.11% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 282 162 414
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.88 £16.30
Median hourly rate £28.96 £41.25 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -29.79% +3.13% +118.16%
75th Percentile £65.00 £59.78 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.93 £80.91 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £31.79 £45.88
% change year-on-year +2.23% -30.71% +154.89%

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 4 June 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 4 June 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 4 June 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 -56 360 £470 -6.00% 267
UK excluding London -40 248 £450 -1.64% 225
London -66 135 £475 -5.00% 74
Work from Home -70 100 £450 -18.18% 93
North of England -28 92 £450 +12.50% 42
South East -40 55 £500 +11.11% 78
North West +8 54 £540 +116.00% 26
East of England -19 37 £263 -38.95% 26
Midlands -45 33 £400 -27.27% 33
Yorkshire -53 33 £449 -11.41% 11
West Midlands -39 30 £388 -29.55% 18
Scotland +3 24 £537 +21.24% 12
South West -33 20 £500 -18.70% 34
Wales -15 7 £408 -9.44% 4
North East -26 5 £306 +22.50% 6
East Midlands -29 3 £625 +13.64% 15

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 17 (4.05%) Confluence
2 14 (3.33%) SharePoint
3 10 (2.38%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (2.38%) nginx
4 4 (0.95%) OpenStack
4 4 (0.95%) WebSphere
5 3 (0.71%) IIS
6 2 (0.48%) CICS
6 2 (0.48%) IBM HTTP Server
6 2 (0.48%) Oracle HTTP Server
6 2 (0.48%) WebSphere Application Server
6 2 (0.48%) WebSphere Portal
7 1 (0.24%) Apache
7 1 (0.24%) Traefik
Applications
1 28 (6.67%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (1.90%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.95%) Acrobat
3 4 (0.95%) Microsoft Excel
4 3 (0.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.24%) Weka
Business Applications
1 2 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 95 (22.62%) AWS
1 95 (22.62%) Azure
2 72 (17.14%) Microsoft 365
3 28 (6.67%) Entra ID
3 28 (6.67%) GCP
4 26 (6.19%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 16 (3.81%) Amazon EC2
5 16 (3.81%) OneDrive
6 15 (3.57%) Amazon EKS
6 15 (3.57%) Amazon S3
7 14 (3.33%) GitHub
7 14 (3.33%) Route 53
8 13 (3.10%) AWS Lambda
8 13 (3.10%) Serverless
9 7 (1.67%) Azure DevOps
9 7 (1.67%) Google Workspace
9 7 (1.67%) Nutanix
9 7 (1.67%) SaaS
10 6 (1.43%) Akamai
10 6 (1.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 235 (55.95%) DNS
2 149 (35.48%) Firewall
3 101 (24.05%) VPN
4 100 (23.81%) DHCP
5 74 (17.62%) WAN
6 70 (16.67%) Network Security
7 69 (16.43%) HTTP
8 67 (15.95%) LAN
8 67 (15.95%) SSL
9 58 (13.81%) VLAN
10 56 (13.33%) BGP
11 52 (12.38%) BIG-IP
12 42 (10.00%) OSPF
13 36 (8.57%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 35 (8.33%) Wi-Fi
15 33 (7.86%) Ethernet
16 30 (7.14%) Wireshark
17 29 (6.90%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
18 21 (5.00%) Wireless
19 15 (3.57%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (2.86%) Elasticsearch
2 11 (2.62%) SQL Server
3 8 (1.90%) PostgreSQL
4 5 (1.19%) MongoDB
5 3 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
6 2 (0.48%) NoSQL
7 1 (0.24%) BigQuery
7 1 (0.24%) MySQL
7 1 (0.24%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.24%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 45 (10.71%) JIRA
2 24 (5.71%) Fiddler
3 21 (5.00%) GitLab
4 17 (4.05%) Git
5 16 (3.81%) Jenkins
6 13 (3.10%) Eclipse
6 13 (3.10%) Visual Studio
7 9 (2.14%) Browser DevTools
8 7 (1.67%) Bitbucket
8 7 (1.67%) SonarQube
9 4 (0.95%) CircleCI
9 4 (0.95%) Sonatype Nexus
10 3 (0.71%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.48%) Introscope
11 2 (0.48%) Subversion
12 1 (0.24%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.24%) Postman
12 1 (0.24%) Travis CI
General
1 149 (35.48%) Social Skills
2 58 (13.81%) Finance
3 49 (11.67%) Analytical Skills
4 38 (9.05%) Banking
5 30 (7.14%) Public Sector
6 23 (5.48%) Investment Banking
7 22 (5.24%) Presentation Skills
8 21 (5.00%) Military
9 19 (4.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 18 (4.29%) Documentation Skills
11 8 (1.90%) Telecoms
12 6 (1.43%) Front Office
13 5 (1.19%) Law
14 3 (0.71%) French Language
14 3 (0.71%) Manufacturing
14 3 (0.71%) Marketing
14 3 (0.71%) Organisational Skills
15 2 (0.48%) Aviation
15 2 (0.48%) Japanese Language
15 2 (0.48%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 104 (24.76%) Network Engineer
2 49 (11.67%) Analyst
3 35 (8.33%) Support Engineer
4 32 (7.62%) Web Engineer
5 30 (7.14%) Architect
5 30 (7.14%) Senior
6 28 (6.67%) IT Support
7 26 (6.19%) Security Engineer
8 22 (5.24%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 22 (5.24%) Technical Engineer
9 20 (4.76%) SOC Analyst
10 19 (4.52%) IP Network Engineer
11 18 (4.29%) IT Engineer
12 17 (4.05%) Blue Coat Engineer
12 17 (4.05%) Systems Engineer
13 16 (3.81%) Junior
14 15 (3.57%) Lead
15 14 (3.33%) IT Support Engineer
15 14 (3.33%) Software Engineer
16 13 (3.10%) C# Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (4.76%) LDAP
2 16 (3.81%) SAML
3 14 (3.33%) Web Services
4 13 (3.10%) JSON
4 13 (3.10%) Node.js
5 12 (2.86%) OpenID
6 10 (2.38%) 802.1X
6 10 (2.38%) REST
7 6 (1.43%) .NET
8 5 (1.19%) Kafka
8 5 (1.19%) OAuth
8 5 (1.19%) XML
9 3 (0.71%) ARM Templates
9 3 (0.71%) HTML
9 3 (0.71%) Middleware
9 3 (0.71%) WinForms
10 2 (0.48%) ASP.NET
10 2 (0.48%) eBPF
10 2 (0.48%) NETCONF
10 2 (0.48%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 43 (10.24%) Data Centre
2 40 (9.52%) Onboarding
3 24 (5.71%) Security Operations Centre
4 22 (5.24%) Management Information System
5 21 (5.00%) Cyberattack
6 17 (4.05%) Cyber Threat
7 15 (3.57%) Industry 4.0
7 15 (3.57%) Robotics
8 13 (3.10%) Security Posture
9 10 (2.38%) Enterprise Software
10 9 (2.14%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 8 (1.90%) Data Protection Act
11 8 (1.90%) Driving Licence
11 8 (1.90%) PKI
11 8 (1.90%) Public Cloud
12 6 (1.43%) Cloud Native
12 6 (1.43%) Mainframe
12 6 (1.43%) NHS
12 6 (1.43%) Private Cloud
13 5 (1.19%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 179 (42.62%) Windows
2 93 (22.14%) Linux
3 48 (11.43%) Windows Server
4 28 (6.67%) Mac OS
5 17 (4.05%) Windows 10
6 14 (3.33%) Unix
7 13 (3.10%) Apple iOS
8 11 (2.62%) Android
9 10 (2.38%) Windows Server 2012
10 7 (1.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 6 (1.43%) Windows Server 2019
11 6 (1.43%) zOS
12 4 (0.95%) Ubuntu
13 3 (0.71%) Windows 7
13 3 (0.71%) Windows Server 2003
13 3 (0.71%) Windows Server 2016
14 2 (0.48%) CentOS
14 2 (0.48%) Oracle Linux
14 2 (0.48%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
14 2 (0.48%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 119 (28.33%) Problem-Solving
2 65 (15.48%) ITIL
3 56 (13.33%) Incident Response
4 53 (12.62%) Agile
5 48 (11.43%) Cybersecurity
5 48 (11.43%) DevOps
6 47 (11.19%) Load Balancing
6 47 (11.19%) SIEM
7 42 (10.00%) CI/CD
8 39 (9.29%) Migration
9 38 (9.05%) Customer Service
10 37 (8.81%) ITSM
10 37 (8.81%) Security Operations
11 34 (8.10%) High Availability
11 34 (8.10%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 32 (7.62%) Root Cause Analysis
12 32 (7.62%) Validation
13 30 (7.14%) Computer Science
14 29 (6.90%) Decision-Making
15 28 (6.67%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 90 (21.43%) Python
2 42 (10.00%) Bash
3 40 (9.52%) PowerShell
4 29 (6.90%) JavaScript
5 21 (5.00%) C++
6 18 (4.29%) SQL
7 17 (4.05%) C#
8 9 (2.14%) Java
8 9 (2.14%) VBA
9 6 (1.43%) C
9 6 (1.43%) Go
9 6 (1.43%) Shell Script
10 4 (0.95%) Perl
11 3 (0.71%) ActionScript
12 2 (0.48%) Jython
12 2 (0.48%) Ruby
13 1 (0.24%) Groovy
13 1 (0.24%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 117 (27.86%) Security Cleared
2 93 (22.14%) SC Cleared
3 74 (17.62%) Degree
4 46 (10.95%) Cisco Certification
5 38 (9.05%) CCNP
6 30 (7.14%) Computer Science Degree
7 29 (6.90%) CompTIA Security+
8 27 (6.43%) CCNA
8 27 (6.43%) DV Cleared
9 19 (4.52%) CISSP
10 18 (4.29%) CompTIA CySA+
11 13 (3.10%) Microsoft Certification
12 9 (2.14%) Azure Certification
12 9 (2.14%) MCSA
12 9 (2.14%) Network+ Certification
13 8 (1.90%) MCSE
14 7 (1.67%) CCIE
14 7 (1.67%) JNCIS
15 5 (1.19%) CISM
15 5 (1.19%) JNCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (3.10%) SLA
2 10 (2.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 9 (2.14%) NIST
4 6 (1.43%) GDPR
4 6 (1.43%) QA
5 3 (0.71%) NCSC
6 2 (0.48%) Government Security Classifications
6 2 (0.48%) PCI DSS
6 2 (0.48%) RMADS
7 1 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.24%) GRC
System Software
1 84 (20.00%) Active Directory
2 47 (11.19%) VMware Infrastructure
3 18 (4.29%) Docker
4 17 (4.05%) Firmware
5 13 (3.10%) Squid
6 10 (2.38%) Virtual Desktop
7 9 (2.14%) Hyper-V
8 8 (1.90%) vSphere
9 7 (1.67%) VMware NSX
10 6 (1.43%) Virtual Machines
11 4 (0.95%) KVM
12 3 (0.71%) NFS
13 2 (0.48%) RACF
14 1 (0.24%) Citrix Presentation Server
14 1 (0.24%) Lustre
14 1 (0.24%) Snort
14 1 (0.24%) Virtual Servers
14 1 (0.24%) VirtualBox
14 1 (0.24%) VMware ESXi
14 1 (0.24%) Xen
Systems Management
1 66 (15.71%) Ansible
2 36 (8.57%) Terraform
3 35 (8.33%) Kubernetes
4 26 (6.19%) Grafana
4 26 (6.19%) Microsoft Intune
5 25 (5.95%) FortiGate
6 23 (5.48%) Single Sign-On
7 20 (4.76%) SCCM
8 16 (3.81%) Prometheus
9 10 (2.38%) Nagios
10 9 (2.14%) Consul
11 8 (1.90%) Jamf Pro
11 8 (1.90%) QRadar
11 8 (1.90%) WSUS
12 6 (1.43%) CASB
13 5 (1.19%) Nessus
13 5 (1.19%) Suricata
14 4 (0.95%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 4 (0.95%) Puppet
14 4 (0.95%) Tivoli NetView
Vendors
1 113 (26.90%) Microsoft
2 69 (16.43%) Cisco
2 69 (16.43%) F5
3 59 (14.05%) VMware
4 40 (9.52%) Splunk
5 39 (9.29%) ServiceNow
6 30 (7.14%) Blue Coat
7 26 (6.19%) Palo Alto
8 24 (5.71%) McAfee
9 22 (5.24%) Fortinet
10 20 (4.76%) Juniper
11 19 (4.52%) Citrix
12 18 (4.29%) NetApp
12 18 (4.29%) Red Hat
13 17 (4.05%) Siemens
14 16 (3.81%) Zscaler
15 12 (2.86%) Bloomberg
15 12 (2.86%) CheckPoint
15 12 (2.86%) SolarWinds
16 11 (2.62%) Infoblox