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

6 months to
25 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 285 220 292
Rank change year-on-year -65 +72 -52
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 430 358 337
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.84% 1.19% 0.77%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 8.90% 9.62% 6.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 230 230 225
10th Percentile £206 £219 £188
25th Percentile £341 £362 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +5.26% -0.94%
75th Percentile £550 £625 £575
90th Percentile £638 £803 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £481
% change year-on-year - -6.49% +6.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 16 30
10th Percentile £21.25 £18.63 £18.25
25th Percentile £25.31 £38.09 £48.81
Median hourly rate £33.86 £62.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -45.82% -3.85% +17.49%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 -
90th Percentile - - £67.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.22 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -45.82% - +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 4,832 3,722 5,406
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.50% 12.36% 12.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,960 2,275 3,197
10th Percentile £250 £225 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £481 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.95% -3.80% -
75th Percentile £588 £590 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £473 £490
% change year-on-year +1.85% -3.57% +3.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 297 174 430
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £20.50 £21.00 £17.69
Median hourly rate £27.88 £45.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -38.04% - +136.84%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.97 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.10 £78.50 £72.93
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.69 £35.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year -23.74% -26.32% +150.00%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 -45 379 £473 -5.50% 200
UK excluding London -50 243 £450 - 184
London -58 151 £475 +1.33% 37
Work from Home -61 108 £500 -13.04% 67
North of England -34 87 £450 +5.70% 40
South East -36 61 £525 +16.67% 64
North West +4 55 £508 +79.65% 25
East of England -14 37 £175 -59.30% 34
Midlands -43 35 £413 -25.00% 26
West Midlands -37 31 £400 -20.00% 18
Yorkshire -57 28 £447 -10.60% 12
South West -45 20 £500 -18.70% 24
Scotland -7 16 £301 -27.41% 3
Wales -8 7 £408 - 4
East Midlands -21 4 £563 +2.27% 8
North East -34 4 £306 +22.50% 7

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 22 (5.12%) SharePoint
2 15 (3.49%) Confluence
3 14 (3.26%) Microsoft Exchange
4 10 (2.33%) nginx
5 4 (0.93%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.93%) WebSphere
6 3 (0.70%) IIS
7 2 (0.47%) CICS
7 2 (0.47%) IBM HTTP Server
7 2 (0.47%) Oracle HTTP Server
7 2 (0.47%) WebSphere Application Server
7 2 (0.47%) WebSphere Portal
8 1 (0.23%) Traefik
Applications
1 30 (6.98%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (2.33%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (1.63%) MS Visio
4 6 (1.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.47%) Acrobat
6 1 (0.23%) Weka
Business Applications
1 2 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 107 (24.88%) Azure
2 96 (22.33%) AWS
3 82 (19.07%) Microsoft 365
4 38 (8.84%) Entra ID
5 32 (7.44%) GCP
6 30 (6.98%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 22 (5.12%) OneDrive
7 22 (5.12%) Route 53
8 16 (3.72%) Amazon EC2
9 15 (3.49%) Amazon EKS
9 15 (3.49%) Amazon S3
10 13 (3.02%) AWS Lambda
10 13 (3.02%) GitHub
10 13 (3.02%) Serverless
11 11 (2.56%) AWS CloudFormation
11 11 (2.56%) Google Workspace
12 7 (1.63%) Azure DevOps
12 7 (1.63%) IaaS
12 7 (1.63%) SaaS
13 6 (1.40%) Akamai
Communications & Networking
1 237 (55.12%) DNS
2 164 (38.14%) Firewall
3 108 (25.12%) DHCP
4 104 (24.19%) VPN
5 78 (18.14%) WAN
6 75 (17.44%) Network Security
7 70 (16.28%) LAN
8 67 (15.58%) HTTP
9 64 (14.88%) SSL
10 62 (14.42%) BGP
11 58 (13.49%) VLAN
12 57 (13.26%) BIG-IP
13 42 (9.77%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
13 42 (9.77%) OSPF
14 37 (8.60%) Ethernet
15 36 (8.37%) Wi-Fi
16 31 (7.21%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 29 (6.74%) Wireshark
18 22 (5.12%) Wireless
19 21 (4.88%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (2.56%) Elasticsearch
1 11 (2.56%) SQL Server
2 4 (0.93%) PostgreSQL
3 3 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
4 2 (0.47%) MySQL
4 2 (0.47%) NoSQL
5 1 (0.23%) BigQuery
5 1 (0.23%) KDB
5 1 (0.23%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 47 (10.93%) JIRA
2 23 (5.35%) Fiddler
3 16 (3.72%) GitLab
4 14 (3.26%) Visual Studio
5 13 (3.02%) Eclipse
5 13 (3.02%) Jenkins
6 11 (2.56%) Git
7 9 (2.09%) Browser DevTools
8 7 (1.63%) Bitbucket
8 7 (1.63%) SonarQube
9 6 (1.40%) Sonatype Nexus
10 3 (0.70%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.47%) Introscope
11 2 (0.47%) Subversion
12 1 (0.23%) MSI
12 1 (0.23%) Postman
General
1 169 (39.30%) Social Skills
2 61 (14.19%) Finance
3 53 (12.33%) Analytical Skills
4 39 (9.07%) Banking
5 25 (5.81%) Investment Banking
6 22 (5.12%) Presentation Skills
6 22 (5.12%) Public Sector
7 21 (4.88%) Documentation Skills
8 20 (4.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 19 (4.42%) Military
10 12 (2.79%) Telecoms
11 9 (2.09%) Front Office
12 5 (1.16%) Legal
12 5 (1.16%) Organisational Skills
13 3 (0.70%) French Language
13 3 (0.70%) Marketing
14 2 (0.47%) Aviation
14 2 (0.47%) Japanese Language
14 2 (0.47%) Retail
14 2 (0.47%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 102 (23.72%) Network Engineer
2 45 (10.47%) Architect
3 43 (10.00%) Support Engineer
4 39 (9.07%) Analyst
5 33 (7.67%) IT Support
6 30 (6.98%) Web Engineer
7 26 (6.05%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 25 (5.81%) Security Engineer
8 25 (5.81%) Senior
9 22 (5.12%) IT Engineer
9 22 (5.12%) Technical Engineer
10 20 (4.65%) Systems Engineer
11 19 (4.42%) IP Network Engineer
12 17 (3.95%) Blue Coat Engineer
12 17 (3.95%) IT Support Engineer
13 14 (3.26%) Junior
13 14 (3.26%) Software Engineer
14 13 (3.02%) C# Software Engineer
14 13 (3.02%) Technical Support
15 12 (2.79%) Network Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (4.65%) LDAP
2 18 (4.19%) SAML
3 13 (3.02%) Node.js
3 13 (3.02%) Web Services
4 12 (2.79%) OpenID
5 11 (2.56%) JSON
6 10 (2.33%) REST
7 9 (2.09%) 802.1X
8 6 (1.40%) .NET
9 5 (1.16%) OAuth
10 4 (0.93%) ARM Templates
10 4 (0.93%) XML
11 3 (0.70%) HTML
11 3 (0.70%) Kafka
11 3 (0.70%) Middleware
11 3 (0.70%) NETCONF
11 3 (0.70%) OpenConfig
11 3 (0.70%) RESTCONF
11 3 (0.70%) WinForms
11 3 (0.70%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 56 (13.02%) Data Centre
2 41 (9.53%) Onboarding
3 22 (5.12%) Management Information System
4 21 (4.88%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
5 18 (4.19%) Security Posture
6 15 (3.49%) Industry 4.0
6 15 (3.49%) Robotics
7 13 (3.02%) Cyber Threat
7 13 (3.02%) Security Operations Centre
8 11 (2.56%) Cloud Native
8 11 (2.56%) Driving Licence
9 10 (2.33%) Hybrid Cloud
10 9 (2.09%) Cyberattack
10 9 (2.09%) Private Cloud
11 8 (1.86%) Data Protection Act
11 8 (1.86%) Enterprise Software
12 7 (1.63%) Analytical Mindset
12 7 (1.63%) Linux Command Line
12 7 (1.63%) PKI
12 7 (1.63%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 179 (41.63%) Windows
2 78 (18.14%) Linux
3 46 (10.70%) Windows Server
4 35 (8.14%) Mac OS
5 24 (5.58%) Windows 10
6 17 (3.95%) Apple iOS
7 16 (3.72%) Unix
8 10 (2.33%) Android
9 7 (1.63%) Windows Server 2012
10 6 (1.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 6 (1.40%) Ubuntu
10 6 (1.40%) zOS
11 3 (0.70%) Check Point GAiA
11 3 (0.70%) Windows 7
11 3 (0.70%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.47%) CentOS
12 2 (0.47%) Oracle Linux
12 2 (0.47%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
12 2 (0.47%) Windows Server 2003
12 2 (0.47%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 119 (27.67%) Problem-Solving
2 79 (18.37%) ITIL
3 57 (13.26%) Agile
4 53 (12.33%) Load Balancing
5 48 (11.16%) Incident Response
6 46 (10.70%) Migration
7 45 (10.47%) Customer Service
8 44 (10.23%) High Availability
9 43 (10.00%) CI/CD
10 42 (9.77%) DevOps
11 41 (9.53%) ITSM
12 38 (8.84%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 36 (8.37%) SIEM
14 35 (8.14%) Cybersecurity
14 35 (8.14%) Infrastructure as Code
14 35 (8.14%) Root Cause Analysis
15 33 (7.67%) Validation
16 31 (7.21%) Decision-Making
17 30 (6.98%) Stakeholder Management
18 28 (6.51%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 104 (24.19%) Python
2 47 (10.93%) PowerShell
3 46 (10.70%) Bash
4 28 (6.51%) JavaScript
5 21 (4.88%) C++
6 16 (3.72%) C#
7 12 (2.79%) SQL
8 9 (2.09%) VBA
9 5 (1.16%) ActionScript
9 5 (1.16%) C
10 4 (0.93%) Java
10 4 (0.93%) Perl
11 3 (0.70%) Go
12 2 (0.47%) Jython
12 2 (0.47%) Ruby
12 2 (0.47%) Shell Script
13 1 (0.23%) Groovy
13 1 (0.23%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 107 (24.88%) Security Cleared
2 86 (20.00%) SC Cleared
3 77 (17.91%) Degree
4 47 (10.93%) Cisco Certification
5 36 (8.37%) CCNP
6 26 (6.05%) CCNA
7 22 (5.12%) CISSP
8 21 (4.88%) Computer Science Degree
9 19 (4.42%) CompTIA Security+
9 19 (4.42%) DV Cleared
10 18 (4.19%) Microsoft Certification
11 12 (2.79%) CCIE
12 10 (2.33%) Azure Certification
12 10 (2.33%) MCSA
13 9 (2.09%) CompTIA CySA+
13 9 (2.09%) MCSE
14 8 (1.86%) Network+ Certification
15 5 (1.16%) CISM
16 4 (0.93%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
16 4 (0.93%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (2.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 9 (2.09%) NIST
2 8 (1.86%) SLA
3 7 (1.63%) NCSC
4 6 (1.40%) QA
5 5 (1.16%) GDPR
6 3 (0.70%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.47%) Government Security Classifications
7 2 (0.47%) RMADS
8 1 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.23%) GRC
System Software
1 94 (21.86%) Active Directory
2 47 (10.93%) VMware Infrastructure
3 18 (4.19%) Firmware
4 13 (3.02%) Squid
5 12 (2.79%) Virtual Desktop
6 10 (2.33%) Docker
7 9 (2.09%) Hyper-V
7 9 (2.09%) VMware NSX
8 6 (1.40%) vSphere
9 4 (0.93%) NFS
9 4 (0.93%) Virtual Machines
10 2 (0.47%) KVM
10 2 (0.47%) RACF
10 2 (0.47%) VirtualBox
11 1 (0.23%) GPFS
11 1 (0.23%) iptables
11 1 (0.23%) Lustre
11 1 (0.23%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 1 (0.23%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 65 (15.12%) Ansible
2 42 (9.77%) Terraform
3 30 (6.98%) Microsoft Intune
4 28 (6.51%) Kubernetes
5 26 (6.05%) FortiGate
6 25 (5.81%) Single Sign-On
7 21 (4.88%) Grafana
7 21 (4.88%) SCCM
8 16 (3.72%) Prometheus
9 11 (2.56%) Jamf Pro
10 10 (2.33%) WSUS
11 9 (2.09%) Consul
12 6 (1.40%) CASB
12 6 (1.40%) QRadar
13 5 (1.16%) Nessus
13 5 (1.16%) Suricata
14 4 (0.93%) Nagios
14 4 (0.93%) Tivoli NetView
15 3 (0.70%) Puppet
15 3 (0.70%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 143 (33.26%) Microsoft
2 72 (16.74%) F5
3 71 (16.51%) Cisco
4 58 (13.49%) VMware
5 43 (10.00%) ServiceNow
6 28 (6.51%) Blue Coat
7 27 (6.28%) Fortinet
7 27 (6.28%) Palo Alto
8 25 (5.81%) Google
9 24 (5.58%) Splunk
10 23 (5.35%) Citrix
11 22 (5.12%) McAfee
11 22 (5.12%) Zscaler
12 20 (4.65%) Infoblox
13 19 (4.42%) NetApp
14 18 (4.19%) Juniper
15 17 (3.95%) Siemens
16 16 (3.72%) CheckPoint
16 16 (3.72%) Red Hat
17 13 (3.02%) Bloomberg