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 24 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 244 185 194
Rank change year-on-year -59 +9 +37
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 426 452 531
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.12% 1.43% 1.20%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 10.72% 11.14% 8.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 239 280 336
10th Percentile £205 £213 £184
25th Percentile £320 £382 £274
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £525 £450
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% +16.67% -14.29%
75th Percentile £588 £671 £575
90th Percentile £666 £775 £680
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £474 £400
% change year-on-year -5.01% +18.44% -17.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 8 47
10th Percentile £15.50 £20.43 £23.85
25th Percentile £22.00 £28.75 £40.74
Median hourly rate £41.94 £63.75 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -34.21% +27.50% -23.08%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £56.49
90th Percentile £67.25 £67.63 £69.62
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.22 £63.75 £50.39
% change year-on-year -18.09% +26.51% -22.48%

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 3,974 4,058 6,031
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.46% 12.84% 13.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,606 2,359 3,677
10th Percentile £204 £213 £208
25th Percentile £355 £363 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -2.91%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £686 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £466 £475
% change year-on-year -3.43% -1.89% +2.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 164 139 377
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.05 £16.97
25th Percentile £18.97 £21.46 £23.00
Median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £53.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% -33.96% +155.98%
75th Percentile £65.00 £58.69 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £70.00 £74.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.54 £32.50 £56.49
% change year-on-year +24.74% -42.47% +202.73%

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 24 January 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 24 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for TCP/IP in the UK

TCP/IP
Top 15 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 24 January 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 -38 379 £482 -5.12% 287
UK excluding London -23 269 £450 -5.01% 284
London -35 124 £525 - 53
Work from Home -65 116 £450 -25.86% 114
North of England -23 88 £443 -5.35% 49
South East -17 55 £500 +1.27% 95
North West -5 51 £450 -2.70% 16
East of England -5 47 £381 -18.01% 45
West Midlands -22 36 £200 -8.57% 9
Midlands -32 36 £200 -11.11% 31
South West -27 33 £700 +13.82% 36
Yorkshire -45 33 £443 -37.89% 23
Scotland +12 25 £454 +13.50% 22
Wales -12 4 £250 -23.08% 11
North East -18 4 £400 +166.67% 12

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 27 (6.34%) SharePoint
2 20 (4.69%) Microsoft Exchange
3 17 (3.99%) Confluence
4 14 (3.29%) Skype for Business
5 8 (1.88%) OpenStack
6 5 (1.17%) nginx
7 3 (0.70%) Apache
8 2 (0.47%) IIS
8 2 (0.47%) WordPress
9 1 (0.23%) Apache Airflow
9 1 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2010
9 1 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2013
9 1 (0.23%) Jupyter
9 1 (0.23%) Tomcat
Applications
1 32 (7.51%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (1.88%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.41%) Weka
4 5 (1.17%) Acrobat
5 2 (0.47%) Microsoft Excel
5 2 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.23%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 1 (0.23%) Finacle
1 1 (0.23%) RMDS
1 1 (0.23%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 112 (26.29%) AWS
2 99 (23.24%) Azure
3 78 (18.31%) Microsoft 365
4 32 (7.51%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 30 (7.04%) Amazon S3
6 29 (6.81%) Amazon EC2
7 22 (5.16%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 22 (5.16%) Amazon ELB
7 22 (5.16%) GCP
8 21 (4.93%) Entra ID
9 12 (2.82%) GitHub
10 9 (2.11%) AWS CloudFormation
10 9 (2.11%) SaaS
11 8 (1.88%) OneDrive
11 8 (1.88%) Route 53
12 7 (1.64%) Cloud Computing
12 7 (1.64%) Google Workspace
13 6 (1.41%) Amazon EKS
14 5 (1.17%) AWS Lambda
14 5 (1.17%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 244 (57.28%) DNS
2 150 (35.21%) Firewall
3 120 (28.17%) VPN
4 116 (27.23%) DHCP
5 81 (19.01%) SSL
6 79 (18.54%) WAN
7 73 (17.14%) LAN
8 62 (14.55%) Network Security
9 60 (14.08%) VLAN
10 57 (13.38%) HTTP
11 37 (8.69%) Wireshark
12 32 (7.51%) Wi-Fi
13 31 (7.28%) BIG-IP
14 30 (7.04%) BGP
15 24 (5.63%) OSPF
16 22 (5.16%) SAN
17 21 (4.93%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 21 (4.93%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
18 18 (4.23%) Wireless
19 17 (3.99%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (4.46%) SQL Server
2 12 (2.82%) Elasticsearch
3 11 (2.58%) PostgreSQL
4 4 (0.94%) MongoDB
5 2 (0.47%) Oracle Database
6 1 (0.23%) Amazon Aurora
6 1 (0.23%) Amazon RDS
6 1 (0.23%) Apache Cassandra
6 1 (0.23%) Apache Hive
6 1 (0.23%) Big Data
6 1 (0.23%) Electronic Patient Records
6 1 (0.23%) Impala
6 1 (0.23%) MySQL
6 1 (0.23%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.23%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (0.23%) Power BI
6 1 (0.23%) Redis
6 1 (0.23%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.23%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 40 (9.39%) Git
2 35 (8.22%) GitLab
3 34 (7.98%) Jenkins
4 30 (7.04%) JIRA
5 25 (5.87%) Fiddler
6 13 (3.05%) Eclipse
6 13 (3.05%) Visual Studio
7 6 (1.41%) Bitbucket
8 5 (1.17%) SonarQube
8 5 (1.17%) Subversion
9 4 (0.94%) CircleCI
9 4 (0.94%) TeamCity
10 3 (0.70%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.47%) Maven
11 2 (0.47%) Robot Framework
12 1 (0.23%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.23%) Cucumber
12 1 (0.23%) GCC
12 1 (0.23%) Postman
12 1 (0.23%) Travis CI
General
1 143 (33.57%) Social Skills
2 68 (15.96%) Analytical Skills
3 41 (9.62%) Public Sector
4 35 (8.22%) Finance
5 31 (7.28%) Banking
6 26 (6.10%) Military
7 22 (5.16%) Investment Banking
8 16 (3.76%) Presentation Skills
9 10 (2.35%) Documentation Skills
10 9 (2.11%) Front Office
11 8 (1.88%) Telecoms
12 7 (1.64%) Legal
12 7 (1.64%) Organisational Skills
13 6 (1.41%) Local Government
14 5 (1.17%) Law
15 4 (0.94%) Financial Institution
16 3 (0.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 3 (0.70%) Manufacturing
17 2 (0.47%) French Language
17 2 (0.47%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 94 (22.07%) Network Engineer
2 60 (14.08%) Analyst
3 59 (13.85%) Support Engineer
4 53 (12.44%) Senior
5 49 (11.50%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 29 (6.81%) IT Support
7 24 (5.63%) IT Engineer
7 24 (5.63%) Web Engineer
8 21 (4.93%) 2nd Line Support
9 20 (4.69%) Architect
9 20 (4.69%) Developer
9 20 (4.69%) SOC Analyst
10 17 (3.99%) Junior
10 17 (3.99%) Technical Analyst
10 17 (3.99%) Technical Support
11 16 (3.76%) DevOps Engineer
11 16 (3.76%) Support Analyst
12 15 (3.52%) IT Support Engineer
12 15 (3.52%) Lead
12 15 (3.52%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (3.99%) Web Services
2 14 (3.29%) Middleware
2 14 (3.29%) Node.js
3 11 (2.58%) REST
4 8 (1.88%) LDAP
4 8 (1.88%) SOAP
5 7 (1.64%) OpenID
6 5 (1.17%) FIX Protocol
6 5 (1.17%) Kafka
6 5 (1.17%) SAML
7 4 (0.94%) .NET
7 4 (0.94%) AngularJS
7 4 (0.94%) React
7 4 (0.94%) Ultra Messaging
8 3 (0.70%) 802.1X
8 3 (0.70%) Bootstrap
8 3 (0.70%) Express.js
8 3 (0.70%) JSON
8 3 (0.70%) WCF
8 3 (0.70%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 29 (6.81%) Management Information System
2 28 (6.57%) Data Centre
3 25 (5.87%) Onboarding
4 21 (4.93%) Security Operations Centre
5 18 (4.23%) Analytical Mindset
5 18 (4.23%) Cyberattack
6 15 (3.52%) Public Cloud
7 13 (3.05%) Private Cloud
8 12 (2.82%) CMDB
8 12 (2.82%) Driving Licence
8 12 (2.82%) NHS
9 11 (2.58%) Cyber Threat
10 10 (2.35%) PKI
10 10 (2.35%) Replication
11 9 (2.11%) Self-Motivation
12 8 (1.88%) Clustering
12 8 (1.88%) Enterprise Software
13 6 (1.41%) FPGA
13 6 (1.41%) Grid Computing
14 5 (1.17%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 194 (45.54%) Windows
2 137 (32.16%) Linux
3 50 (11.74%) Windows Server
4 33 (7.75%) Windows 10
5 21 (4.93%) Unix
6 12 (2.82%) Android
6 12 (2.82%) Windows Server 2019
7 9 (2.11%) Windows Server 2016
8 8 (1.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 6 (1.41%) Apple iOS
9 6 (1.41%) Mac OS
9 6 (1.41%) Ubuntu
9 6 (1.41%) VMS
9 6 (1.41%) Windows Server 2012
10 5 (1.17%) Windows Server 2003
11 4 (0.94%) CentOS
11 4 (0.94%) Solaris
11 4 (0.94%) zOS
12 3 (0.70%) Debian
13 2 (0.47%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 115 (27.00%) Problem-Solving
2 62 (14.55%) CI/CD
3 60 (14.08%) DevOps
3 60 (14.08%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 59 (13.85%) Incident Response
4 59 (13.85%) ITIL
5 54 (12.68%) Cybersecurity
6 53 (12.44%) Agile
6 53 (12.44%) SIEM
7 47 (11.03%) Infrastructure as Code
8 43 (10.09%) Load Balancing
9 40 (9.39%) Root Cause Analysis
10 38 (8.92%) High Availability
11 34 (7.98%) Infrastructure Automation
11 34 (7.98%) Security Operations
12 31 (7.28%) Mentoring
12 31 (7.28%) Migration
13 29 (6.81%) Disaster Recovery
13 29 (6.81%) Knowledge Transfer
14 28 (6.57%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 125 (29.34%) Python
2 81 (19.01%) PowerShell
3 69 (16.20%) Bash
4 22 (5.16%) Perl
5 21 (4.93%) SQL
6 19 (4.46%) C++
7 18 (4.23%) C#
7 18 (4.23%) JavaScript
8 14 (3.29%) Java
9 11 (2.58%) Shell Script
10 7 (1.64%) Go
11 5 (1.17%) C
12 3 (0.70%) Kusto Query Language
12 3 (0.70%) Search Processing Language
12 3 (0.70%) T-SQL
13 2 (0.47%) Ruby
14 1 (0.23%) Bicep
14 1 (0.23%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.23%) TypeScript
14 1 (0.23%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 141 (33.10%) Security Cleared
2 104 (24.41%) SC Cleared
3 42 (9.86%) Degree
4 41 (9.62%) DV Cleared
5 39 (9.15%) Cisco Certification
6 30 (7.04%) CCNP
7 24 (5.63%) Microsoft Certification
8 22 (5.16%) CompTIA Security+
9 20 (4.69%) CCNA
10 19 (4.46%) Network+ Certification
11 17 (3.99%) Azure Certification
11 17 (3.99%) Computer Science Degree
12 15 (3.52%) CompTIA CySA+
13 11 (2.58%) CISSP
13 11 (2.58%) MCP
13 11 (2.58%) Server+ Certification
14 10 (2.35%) JNCIS
15 6 (1.41%) CCIE
15 6 (1.41%) ECDL
16 5 (1.17%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (3.76%) GDPR
2 9 (2.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 8 (1.88%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 8 (1.88%) SLA
4 5 (1.17%) NIST
5 4 (0.94%) HIPAA
6 3 (0.70%) NCSC
7 2 (0.47%) Disclosure Scotland
7 2 (0.47%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.23%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.23%) QA
8 1 (0.23%) RMADS
8 1 (0.23%) SOC 2
System Software
1 86 (20.19%) Active Directory
2 62 (14.55%) VMware Infrastructure
3 51 (11.97%) Docker
4 26 (6.10%) Hyper-V
5 14 (3.29%) Firmware
6 10 (2.35%) vSphere
7 9 (2.11%) VMware NSX
8 8 (1.88%) Virtual Machines
9 7 (1.64%) Lustre
9 7 (1.64%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 7 (1.64%) VMware ESXi
10 6 (1.41%) GPFS
11 5 (1.17%) KVM
11 5 (1.17%) NDS
11 5 (1.17%) NetIQ eDirectory
11 5 (1.17%) NFS
11 5 (1.17%) Squid
11 5 (1.17%) Virtual Desktop
12 4 (0.94%) Veritas File System
12 4 (0.94%) Veritas Volume Manager
Systems Management
1 91 (21.36%) Ansible
2 60 (14.08%) Terraform
3 37 (8.69%) SCCM
4 35 (8.22%) Kubernetes
5 30 (7.04%) Microsoft Intune
6 18 (4.23%) Grafana
7 15 (3.52%) FortiGate
7 15 (3.52%) Prometheus
8 14 (3.29%) Single Sign-On
9 9 (2.11%) Puppet
9 9 (2.11%) QRadar
10 8 (1.88%) WSUS
11 7 (1.64%) Nagios
11 7 (1.64%) Red Hat Satellite
12 6 (1.41%) Consul
13 5 (1.17%) Tivoli NetView
14 4 (0.94%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 4 (0.94%) ITRS Geneos
14 4 (0.94%) Progress Chef
14 4 (0.94%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 125 (29.34%) Microsoft
2 86 (20.19%) VMware
3 78 (18.31%) F5
4 65 (15.26%) Cisco
5 53 (12.44%) Palo Alto
6 42 (9.86%) Splunk
7 36 (8.45%) CheckPoint
8 30 (7.04%) Blue Coat
9 27 (6.34%) McAfee
10 22 (5.16%) NetApp
10 22 (5.16%) SolarWinds
11 21 (4.93%) Fortinet
11 21 (4.93%) ServiceNow
12 20 (4.69%) Juniper
12 20 (4.69%) Red Hat
13 17 (3.99%) Oracle
14 16 (3.76%) Meraki
15 15 (3.52%) Veeam
16 14 (3.29%) Citrix
17 12 (2.82%) Zscaler