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 20 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 272 235 258
Rank change year-on-year -37 +23 -30
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 492 368 362
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.92% 1.12% 0.93%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 9.71% 9.48% 7.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 267 204 224
10th Percentile £205 £200 £203
25th Percentile £313 £350 £260
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -6.00% +11.11% -
75th Percentile £565 £608 £564
90th Percentile £675 £653 £625
UK excluding London median daily rate £461 £450 £450
% change year-on-year +2.50% - +12.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 30 32
10th Percentile £26.54 £27.28 £31.63
25th Percentile £31.25 £46.81 £63.44
Median hourly rate £64.24 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -1.17% - +30.00%
75th Percentile £72.01 - -
90th Percentile £98.82 £83.66 £67.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.24 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -1.17% - +36.84%

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 5,069 3,880 4,745
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.47% 11.82% 12.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,998 2,361 2,873
10th Percentile £250 £243 £220
25th Percentile £400 £370 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +1.68% -5.00% +9.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 366 203 314
10th Percentile £15.18 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £20.13
Median hourly rate £26.00 £46.25 £49.50
Median % change year-on-year -43.78% -6.57% -10.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.35 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £45.00 £54.88
% change year-on-year -42.22% -18.00% -2.86%

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 20 August 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 20 August 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 20 August 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 -40 453 £490 -2.00% 233
UK excluding London -34 275 £461 +2.50% 197
London -39 194 £475 -17.39% 64
Work from Home -65 115 £515 -4.19% 73
South East -15 83 £525 +38.34% 77
North of England -34 81 £461 -7.75% 40
North West -12 50 £410 -18.81% 18
South West +1 47 £644 +4.04% 24
Midlands -34 42 £402 -5.63% 27
West Midlands -38 34 £406 +1.06% 19
Yorkshire -43 27 £500 -4.76% 15
East of England -27 22 £425 -22.73% 26
Scotland -15 12 £213 -49.34% 5
Wales -11 8 £425 +136.11% 3
East Midlands -12 8 £402 -26.91% 8
North East -37 4 £438 +75.00% 10

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 48 (9.76%) SharePoint
2 27 (5.49%) Microsoft Exchange
3 12 (2.44%) Confluence
4 9 (1.83%) OpenStack
5 6 (1.22%) nginx
6 4 (0.81%) FactoryTalk
6 4 (0.81%) WebSphere
7 3 (0.61%) IIS
8 2 (0.41%) CICS
8 2 (0.41%) IBM HTTP Server
8 2 (0.41%) Oracle HTTP Server
8 2 (0.41%) WebSphere Application Server
8 2 (0.41%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 20 (4.07%) Microsoft Office
2 17 (3.46%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (1.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (1.63%) 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 (1.63%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 171 (34.76%) Azure
2 118 (23.98%) Microsoft 365
3 116 (23.58%) AWS
4 75 (15.24%) Entra ID
5 38 (7.72%) GCP
6 35 (7.11%) OneDrive
7 25 (5.08%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 21 (4.27%) GitHub
9 13 (2.64%) Azure Monitor
9 13 (2.64%) OpenShift
9 13 (2.64%) Route 53
10 12 (2.44%) Amazon EC2
11 11 (2.24%) AWS CloudFormation
11 11 (2.24%) Google Workspace
12 10 (2.03%) GitHub Actions
13 9 (1.83%) Amazon EKS
14 8 (1.63%) Akamai
14 8 (1.63%) Azure Sentinel
15 7 (1.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 7 (1.42%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 293 (59.55%) DNS
2 216 (43.90%) Firewall
3 183 (37.20%) DHCP
4 149 (30.28%) VPN
5 95 (19.31%) WAN
6 93 (18.90%) Network Security
7 82 (16.67%) LAN
8 75 (15.24%) VLAN
9 73 (14.84%) BGP
9 73 (14.84%) HTTP
10 56 (11.38%) SSL
11 47 (9.55%) Wi-Fi
12 45 (9.15%) OSPF
13 43 (8.74%) Wireless
14 42 (8.54%) BIG-IP
15 37 (7.52%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 26 (5.28%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
16 26 (5.28%) SD-WAN
17 24 (4.88%) Ethernet
18 22 (4.47%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (3.05%) SQL Server
2 12 (2.44%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (1.22%) MySQL
4 5 (1.02%) NoSQL
5 4 (0.81%) Amazon RDS
5 4 (0.81%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.81%) SQLite
6 3 (0.61%) KDB
6 3 (0.61%) Redis
7 2 (0.41%) BigQuery
7 2 (0.41%) Elasticsearch
8 1 (0.20%) Cloud Spanner
8 1 (0.20%) Kdb+
Development Applications
1 45 (9.15%) JIRA
2 30 (6.10%) Git
3 27 (5.49%) Jenkins
4 20 (4.07%) GitLab
5 16 (3.25%) Fiddler
6 14 (2.85%) Visual Studio
7 13 (2.64%) Eclipse
8 10 (2.03%) Browser DevTools
9 8 (1.63%) Sonatype Nexus
10 5 (1.02%) Artifactory
11 3 (0.61%) Bitbucket
12 2 (0.41%) Introscope
12 2 (0.41%) Selenium
12 2 (0.41%) Subversion
13 1 (0.20%) MSI
13 1 (0.20%) Postman
13 1 (0.20%) SonarQube
General
1 198 (40.24%) Social Skills
2 75 (15.24%) Analytical Skills
3 66 (13.41%) Finance
4 44 (8.94%) Banking
5 31 (6.30%) Public Sector
6 23 (4.67%) Telecoms
7 21 (4.27%) Investment Banking
8 16 (3.25%) Military
9 13 (2.64%) Documentation Skills
9 13 (2.64%) Front Office
10 7 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
11 6 (1.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 6 (1.22%) Manufacturing
12 5 (1.02%) Aerospace
12 5 (1.02%) Legal
12 5 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
12 5 (1.02%) Pharmaceutical
12 5 (1.02%) Police
13 4 (0.81%) Automotive
14 3 (0.61%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 111 (22.56%) Network Engineer
2 68 (13.82%) Support Engineer
3 62 (12.60%) Senior
4 53 (10.77%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 46 (9.35%) IT Support
6 39 (7.93%) IT Engineer
7 38 (7.72%) Architect
8 36 (7.32%) Analyst
9 32 (6.50%) IT Support Engineer
10 24 (4.88%) Security Engineer
10 24 (4.88%) Senior Network Engineer
11 23 (4.67%) Platform Engineer
11 23 (4.67%) Web Engineer
12 20 (4.07%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 17 (3.46%) IP Network Engineer
14 15 (3.05%) Blue Coat Engineer
14 15 (3.05%) Linux Engineer
14 15 (3.05%) Network Infrastructure Engineer
15 14 (2.85%) 2nd Line Engineer
15 14 (2.85%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 87 (17.68%) Terraform
2 20 (4.07%) SAML
3 14 (2.85%) REST
4 13 (2.64%) 802.1X
4 13 (2.64%) Node.js
4 13 (2.64%) Web Services
5 12 (2.44%) ARM Templates
5 12 (2.44%) JSON
6 9 (1.83%) .NET
7 8 (1.63%) LDAP
8 6 (1.22%) Kafka
8 6 (1.22%) NETCONF
8 6 (1.22%) OpenConfig
8 6 (1.22%) RESTCONF
8 6 (1.22%) XML
8 6 (1.22%) YANG
9 5 (1.02%) HTML
9 5 (1.02%) OAuth
9 5 (1.02%) OpenID
9 5 (1.02%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 85 (17.28%) Data Centre
2 58 (11.79%) Onboarding
3 34 (6.91%) PKI
4 31 (6.30%) Hybrid Cloud
5 27 (5.49%) Management Information System
6 24 (4.88%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 19 (3.86%) Linux Command Line
8 17 (3.46%) Driving Licence
8 17 (3.46%) Public Cloud
8 17 (3.46%) Self-Motivation
9 16 (3.25%) Operational Technology
10 13 (2.64%) SCADA
11 12 (2.44%) Cloud Native
12 11 (2.24%) Analytical Mindset
12 11 (2.24%) Cyber Threat
12 11 (2.24%) Security Posture
13 9 (1.83%) Distributed Systems
13 9 (1.83%) Private Cloud
13 9 (1.83%) Security Operations Centre
13 9 (1.83%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 228 (46.34%) Windows
2 137 (27.85%) Linux
3 68 (13.82%) Windows Server
4 43 (8.74%) Windows 10
5 37 (7.52%) Mac OS
6 22 (4.47%) Unix
7 18 (3.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 17 (3.46%) Apple iOS
9 13 (2.64%) Android
9 13 (2.64%) Ubuntu
10 5 (1.02%) zOS
11 3 (0.61%) CentOS
11 3 (0.61%) Check Point GAiA
11 3 (0.61%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.41%) Oracle Linux
12 2 (0.41%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
12 2 (0.41%) Windows Server 2016
12 2 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
13 1 (0.20%) SUSE
13 1 (0.20%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 132 (26.83%) Problem-Solving
2 110 (22.36%) ITIL
3 84 (17.07%) CI/CD
4 77 (15.65%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 71 (14.43%) Infrastructure as Code
6 64 (13.01%) DevOps
7 63 (12.80%) Agile
8 61 (12.40%) Load Balancing
9 59 (11.99%) Cybersecurity
9 59 (11.99%) ITSM
10 55 (11.18%) Customer Service
11 50 (10.16%) Continuous Improvement
12 49 (9.96%) High Availability
12 49 (9.96%) Migration
13 48 (9.76%) Incident Response
14 46 (9.35%) Service Management
14 46 (9.35%) SIEM
14 46 (9.35%) Technical Leadership
14 46 (9.35%) Validation
15 45 (9.15%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 148 (30.08%) Python
2 99 (20.12%) PowerShell
3 84 (17.07%) Bash
4 28 (5.69%) C++
5 24 (4.88%) JavaScript
6 21 (4.27%) SQL
7 18 (3.66%) C#
8 11 (2.24%) Java
8 11 (2.24%) Perl
9 10 (2.03%) Bicep
9 10 (2.03%) Shell Script
10 7 (1.42%) VBA
11 5 (1.02%) ActionScript
12 4 (0.81%) C
12 4 (0.81%) Go
12 4 (0.81%) Korn
13 3 (0.61%) VBScript
14 2 (0.41%) Jython
14 2 (0.41%) Objective-C
14 2 (0.41%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 143 (29.07%) Security Cleared
2 93 (18.90%) SC Cleared
3 66 (13.41%) Degree
4 63 (12.80%) Cisco Certification
5 51 (10.37%) DV Cleared
6 47 (9.55%) CCNP
7 31 (6.30%) CCNA
8 24 (4.88%) Microsoft Certification
9 22 (4.47%) Computer Science Degree
10 16 (3.25%) A+ Certification
10 16 (3.25%) CCIE
10 16 (3.25%) Network+ Certification
11 13 (2.64%) CISSP
12 12 (2.44%) Azure Certification
12 12 (2.44%) VCAP
13 11 (2.24%) AWS Certification
13 11 (2.24%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 7 (1.42%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 6 (1.22%) JNCIE
16 5 (1.02%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (4.67%) SLA
2 11 (2.24%) NIST
2 11 (2.24%) QA
3 9 (1.83%) NCSC
4 8 (1.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 5 (1.02%) GDPR
6 4 (0.81%) 21 CFR Part 11
6 4 (0.81%) GxP
6 4 (0.81%) NIST 800
6 4 (0.81%) 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
1 148 (30.08%) Active Directory
2 89 (18.09%) VMware Infrastructure
3 35 (7.11%) Hyper-V
4 28 (5.69%) Docker
5 24 (4.88%) vSphere
6 23 (4.67%) VMware NSX
7 18 (3.66%) Firmware
8 13 (2.64%) Virtual Desktop
9 6 (1.22%) Squid
10 4 (0.81%) NFS
11 3 (0.61%) Virtual Machines
11 3 (0.61%) VirtualBox
11 3 (0.61%) VMware ESXi
12 2 (0.41%) KVM
12 2 (0.41%) RACF
13 1 (0.20%) GPFS
13 1 (0.20%) NDS
13 1 (0.20%) NetIQ eDirectory
13 1 (0.20%) Snort
13 1 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 103 (20.93%) Ansible
2 59 (11.99%) Microsoft Intune
3 47 (9.55%) Kubernetes
4 31 (6.30%) SCCM
5 24 (4.88%) Grafana
5 24 (4.88%) Single Sign-On
6 19 (3.86%) FortiGate
7 16 (3.25%) VxRail
8 13 (2.64%) Prometheus
9 11 (2.24%) Jamf Pro
10 8 (1.63%) WSUS
11 6 (1.22%) systemd
12 5 (1.02%) Suricata
13 4 (0.81%) Consul
13 4 (0.81%) Istio
14 3 (0.61%) Puppet
14 3 (0.61%) SELinux
14 3 (0.61%) Tivoli
14 3 (0.61%) Tivoli NetView
14 3 (0.61%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 192 (39.02%) Microsoft
2 101 (20.53%) VMware
3 97 (19.72%) Cisco
4 63 (12.80%) F5
5 57 (11.59%) ServiceNow
6 31 (6.30%) Fortinet
7 26 (5.28%) Google
8 25 (5.08%) Zscaler
9 23 (4.67%) Juniper
9 23 (4.67%) Palo Alto
10 20 (4.07%) Blue Coat
10 20 (4.07%) NetApp
11 19 (3.86%) CheckPoint
12 18 (3.66%) Citrix
12 18 (3.66%) Infoblox
12 18 (3.66%) McAfee
13 16 (3.25%) Red Hat
13 16 (3.25%) Splunk
14 13 (2.64%) Bloomberg
15 11 (2.24%) SolarWinds