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

6 months to
13 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 273 230 237
Rank change year-on-year -43 +7 -13
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 489 393 395
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.90% 1.19% 1.02%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 9.61% 10.30% 8.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 262 214 222
10th Percentile £197 £190 £203
25th Percentile £295 £301 £260
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £458 £463
Median % change year-on-year -1.80% -0.92% +2.78%
75th Percentile £550 £597 £575
90th Percentile £675 £660 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £439 £450 £425
% change year-on-year -2.56% +5.88% +6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 49 34 30
10th Percentile £26.58 £28.30 £29.13
25th Percentile £31.25 £42.53 £63.13
Median hourly rate £63.48 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.34% - +30.00%
75th Percentile £71.43 - -
90th Percentile £98.82 £78.28 -
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 5,086 3,814 4,564
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.36% 11.59% 11.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,971 2,353 2,673
10th Percentile £235 £230 £230
25th Percentile £390 £363 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £503
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.48% +0.50%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £610
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £477 £455 £500
% change year-on-year +4.84% -9.00% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 400 199 265
10th Percentile £14.28 £15.29 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.08 £21.37
Median hourly rate £26.72 £42.50 £51.50
Median % change year-on-year -37.13% -17.48% -8.83%
75th Percentile £65.88 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.40 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.14 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -38.49% -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 13 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 13 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 13 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 -47 446 £465 -2.11% 528
UK excluding London -35 267 £439 -2.56% 369
London -51 199 £465 -15.84% 224
Work from Home -86 112 £500 - 436
South East -42 73 £527 +40.60% 112
North of England -57 71 £420 -22.58% 70
South West -2 48 £638 +15.91% 41
Midlands -31 41 £400 -0.50% 46
North West -40 41 £240 -56.36% 36
West Midlands -39 34 £400 -0.50% 27
East of England -24 27 £425 -10.53% 62
Yorkshire -44 26 £500 -4.76% 20
Scotland -24 15 £210 -49.94% 26
Wales -7 8 £390 +116.67% 10
East Midlands -11 7 £326 -8.81% 19
North East -40 4 £438 +75.00% 17

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 52 (10.63%) SharePoint
2 35 (7.16%) Microsoft Exchange
3 12 (2.45%) Confluence
4 11 (2.25%) OpenStack
5 6 (1.23%) nginx
6 4 (0.82%) FactoryTalk
7 3 (0.61%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.41%) CICS
8 2 (0.41%) IIS
8 2 (0.41%) 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 17 (3.48%) Microsoft Office
2 16 (3.27%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (1.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (1.23%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.41%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.41%) Houdini
5 2 (0.41%) NUKE
6 1 (0.20%) Weka
Business Applications
1 8 (1.64%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 162 (33.13%) Azure
2 128 (26.18%) Microsoft 365
3 104 (21.27%) AWS
4 77 (15.75%) Entra ID
5 36 (7.36%) OneDrive
6 29 (5.93%) GCP
7 22 (4.50%) GitHub
8 21 (4.29%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 15 (3.07%) OpenShift
10 13 (2.66%) Azure Monitor
11 12 (2.45%) AWS CloudFormation
11 12 (2.45%) Google Workspace
11 12 (2.45%) Route 53
12 11 (2.25%) Amazon EC2
12 11 (2.25%) GitHub Actions
13 9 (1.84%) Azure Sentinel
14 8 (1.64%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 8 (1.64%) Amazon EKS
15 7 (1.43%) IaaS
16 6 (1.23%) Azure ExpressRoute
Communications & Networking
1 291 (59.51%) DNS
2 205 (41.92%) Firewall
3 194 (39.67%) DHCP
4 149 (30.47%) VPN
5 84 (17.18%) Network Security
5 84 (17.18%) WAN
6 73 (14.93%) LAN
7 72 (14.72%) VLAN
8 65 (13.29%) HTTP
9 62 (12.68%) BGP
10 52 (10.63%) SSL
11 46 (9.41%) Wi-Fi
12 44 (9.00%) Wireless
13 37 (7.57%) OSPF
14 36 (7.36%) BIG-IP
15 32 (6.54%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 25 (5.11%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 24 (4.91%) SD-WAN
18 21 (4.29%) Ethernet
19 19 (3.89%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (3.68%) PostgreSQL
2 17 (3.48%) SQL Server
3 8 (1.64%) MySQL
3 8 (1.64%) SQLite
4 7 (1.43%) MongoDB
4 7 (1.43%) NoSQL
5 5 (1.02%) Redis
6 4 (0.82%) Amazon RDS
7 3 (0.61%) KDB
8 2 (0.41%) BigQuery
9 1 (0.20%) Cloud Spanner
9 1 (0.20%) Elasticsearch
9 1 (0.20%) Kdb+
Development Applications
1 47 (9.61%) JIRA
2 39 (7.98%) Git
3 32 (6.54%) Jenkins
4 24 (4.91%) GitLab
5 14 (2.86%) Fiddler
6 11 (2.25%) Visual Studio
7 10 (2.04%) Eclipse
8 8 (1.64%) Sonatype Nexus
9 5 (1.02%) Artifactory
10 4 (0.82%) Browser DevTools
10 4 (0.82%) Selenium
11 2 (0.41%) Bitbucket
11 2 (0.41%) Subversion
12 1 (0.20%) Introscope
12 1 (0.20%) MSI
12 1 (0.20%) Postman
General
1 201 (41.10%) Social Skills
2 72 (14.72%) Analytical Skills
3 62 (12.68%) Finance
4 40 (8.18%) Banking
5 29 (5.93%) Public Sector
6 27 (5.52%) Telecoms
7 19 (3.89%) Investment Banking
8 15 (3.07%) Front Office
9 14 (2.86%) Military
10 13 (2.66%) Documentation Skills
11 8 (1.64%) Aerospace
12 6 (1.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 6 (1.23%) Legal
12 6 (1.23%) Manufacturing
13 5 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
13 5 (1.02%) Pharmaceutical
13 5 (1.02%) Police
14 4 (0.82%) Automotive
14 4 (0.82%) Multimedia
14 4 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 99 (20.25%) Network Engineer
2 68 (13.91%) Support Engineer
3 59 (12.07%) Senior
4 58 (11.86%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 54 (11.04%) IT Support
6 43 (8.79%) IT Engineer
7 37 (7.57%) Analyst
7 37 (7.57%) IT Support Engineer
8 36 (7.36%) Architect
9 23 (4.70%) Platform Engineer
9 23 (4.70%) Senior Network Engineer
10 21 (4.29%) Security Engineer
11 20 (4.09%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 19 (3.89%) Linux Engineer
13 17 (3.48%) Support Analyst
13 17 (3.48%) Web Engineer
14 16 (3.27%) Cloud Engineer
14 16 (3.27%) Network Infrastructure Engineer
15 15 (3.07%) IP Network Engineer
16 14 (2.86%) 2nd Line Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 88 (18.00%) Terraform
2 16 (3.27%) REST
3 13 (2.66%) SAML
4 12 (2.45%) ARM Templates
4 12 (2.45%) JSON
5 10 (2.04%) Node.js
5 10 (2.04%) Web Services
6 9 (1.84%) .NET
7 8 (1.64%) 802.1X
7 8 (1.64%) Kafka
7 8 (1.64%) LDAP
7 8 (1.64%) SPNEGO
8 7 (1.43%) HTML
9 6 (1.23%) Elastic Stack
9 6 (1.23%) Jinja
9 6 (1.23%) XML
10 5 (1.02%) CSS
10 5 (1.02%) FastAPI
10 5 (1.02%) Flask
10 5 (1.02%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 84 (17.18%) Data Centre
2 59 (12.07%) Onboarding
3 34 (6.95%) PKI
4 30 (6.13%) Hybrid Cloud
5 26 (5.32%) Management Information System
6 21 (4.29%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 21 (4.29%) Linux Command Line
7 17 (3.48%) Public Cloud
8 16 (3.27%) Driving Licence
8 16 (3.27%) Operational Technology
9 14 (2.86%) Self-Motivation
10 13 (2.66%) Cloud Native
10 13 (2.66%) SCADA
10 13 (2.66%) Video Conferencing
11 11 (2.25%) Cyber Threat
12 10 (2.04%) Enterprise Storage
13 9 (1.84%) Distributed Systems
13 9 (1.84%) Private Cloud
13 9 (1.84%) Security Posture
14 8 (1.64%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 238 (48.67%) Windows
2 151 (30.88%) Linux
3 72 (14.72%) Windows Server
4 51 (10.43%) Windows 10
5 42 (8.59%) Mac OS
6 28 (5.73%) Unix
7 25 (5.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 19 (3.89%) Apple iOS
9 16 (3.27%) Ubuntu
10 15 (3.07%) Android
11 6 (1.23%) CentOS
11 6 (1.23%) zOS
12 3 (0.61%) Check Point GAiA
12 3 (0.61%) Windows Server 2019
13 2 (0.41%) Windows Server 2012
14 1 (0.20%) Data ONTAP
14 1 (0.20%) Oracle Linux
14 1 (0.20%) Rocky
14 1 (0.20%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
14 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 135 (27.61%) Problem-Solving
2 110 (22.49%) ITIL
3 85 (17.38%) CI/CD
4 81 (16.56%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 75 (15.34%) Infrastructure as Code
6 67 (13.70%) DevOps
7 62 (12.68%) Customer Service
7 62 (12.68%) Load Balancing
8 61 (12.47%) Agile
8 61 (12.47%) ITSM
9 56 (11.45%) Cybersecurity
10 53 (10.84%) Continuous Improvement
11 49 (10.02%) Platform Engineering
12 47 (9.61%) Migration
13 46 (9.41%) High Availability
14 45 (9.20%) Incident Response
14 45 (9.20%) Service Management
15 44 (9.00%) SIEM
16 43 (8.79%) Validation
17 40 (8.18%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 148 (30.27%) Python
2 104 (21.27%) PowerShell
3 88 (18.00%) Bash
4 25 (5.11%) C++
5 21 (4.29%) JavaScript
6 20 (4.09%) SQL
7 15 (3.07%) C#
8 14 (2.86%) Perl
9 13 (2.66%) Shell Script
10 11 (2.25%) Bicep
10 11 (2.25%) Java
11 8 (1.64%) Korn
12 7 (1.43%) VBA
13 5 (1.02%) ActionScript
13 5 (1.02%) Go
14 4 (0.82%) C
15 3 (0.61%) Kusto Query Language
15 3 (0.61%) VBScript
16 2 (0.41%) Groovy
16 2 (0.41%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 136 (27.81%) Security Cleared
2 81 (16.56%) SC Cleared
3 65 (13.29%) Degree
4 54 (11.04%) Cisco Certification
5 51 (10.43%) DV Cleared
6 42 (8.59%) CCNP
7 26 (5.32%) CCNA
7 26 (5.32%) Microsoft Certification
8 20 (4.09%) A+ Certification
8 20 (4.09%) Computer Science Degree
9 16 (3.27%) Network+ Certification
10 15 (3.07%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 14 (2.86%) CCIE
12 13 (2.66%) CISSP
13 12 (2.45%) AWS Certification
13 12 (2.45%) Azure Certification
13 12 (2.45%) VCAP
14 8 (1.64%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 5 (1.02%) CISM
15 5 (1.02%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (4.91%) SLA
2 14 (2.86%) QA
3 10 (2.04%) NCSC
4 9 (1.84%) NIST
5 6 (1.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 4 (0.82%) 21 CFR Part 11
6 4 (0.82%) GDPR
6 4 (0.82%) GxP
6 4 (0.82%) NIST 800
6 4 (0.82%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.41%) Government Security Classifications
7 2 (0.41%) JSP 440
8 1 (0.20%) ISO 8583
8 1 (0.20%) RMADS
System Software
1 159 (32.52%) Active Directory
2 91 (18.61%) VMware Infrastructure
3 41 (8.38%) Hyper-V
4 32 (6.54%) Docker
5 24 (4.91%) vSphere
6 23 (4.70%) VMware NSX
7 19 (3.89%) Firmware
8 14 (2.86%) Virtual Desktop
9 6 (1.23%) NFS
9 6 (1.23%) Virtual Machines
10 5 (1.02%) Squid
11 4 (0.82%) VMware ESXi
12 3 (0.61%) VirtualBox
13 2 (0.41%) KVM
13 2 (0.41%) RACF
13 2 (0.41%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 2 (0.41%) Virtual Servers
14 1 (0.20%) Embedded Firmware
14 1 (0.20%) Lustre
14 1 (0.20%) Snort
Systems Management
1 107 (21.88%) Ansible
2 63 (12.88%) Microsoft Intune
3 50 (10.22%) Kubernetes
4 35 (7.16%) SCCM
5 27 (5.52%) Grafana
6 19 (3.89%) Single Sign-On
7 17 (3.48%) FortiGate
8 16 (3.27%) Prometheus
8 16 (3.27%) VxRail
9 13 (2.66%) Jamf Pro
10 8 (1.64%) WSUS
11 6 (1.23%) Istio
11 6 (1.23%) systemd
12 5 (1.02%) Puppet
12 5 (1.02%) Suricata
13 4 (0.82%) Consul
13 4 (0.82%) ZABBIX
14 3 (0.61%) Packer
14 3 (0.61%) SELinux
14 3 (0.61%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 199 (40.70%) Microsoft
2 103 (21.06%) VMware
3 95 (19.43%) Cisco
4 62 (12.68%) ServiceNow
5 56 (11.45%) F5
6 26 (5.32%) Fortinet
7 23 (4.70%) Google
7 23 (4.70%) NetApp
8 21 (4.29%) Zscaler
9 19 (3.89%) Juniper
10 18 (3.68%) Infoblox
11 17 (3.48%) Blue Coat
11 17 (3.48%) Citrix
11 17 (3.48%) Palo Alto
11 17 (3.48%) Red Hat
12 16 (3.27%) McAfee
12 16 (3.27%) Splunk
13 14 (2.86%) Bloomberg
13 14 (2.86%) CheckPoint
14 11 (2.25%) Arista