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

6 months to
5 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 263 228 271
Rank change year-on-year -35 +43 -52
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 493 374 345
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.93% 1.14% 0.88%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 9.92% 9.46% 7.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 265 212 223
10th Percentile £207 £200 £203
25th Percentile £325 £355 £262
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +11.11% -4.26%
75th Percentile £568 £608 £568
90th Percentile £659 £653 £635
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £450
% change year-on-year +5.56% - +12.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 26 31
10th Percentile £25.50 £20.11 £30.00
25th Percentile £31.25 £45.75 £63.13
Median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% - +28.92%
75th Percentile £65.11 - -
90th Percentile £98.82 £86.32 £67.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -3.85% - +50.39%

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 4,970 3,953 4,763
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.34% 12.01% 12.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,953 2,417 2,892
10th Percentile £250 £235 £220
25th Percentile £400 £373 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.16% -5.00% +9.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 353 195 327
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.15 £18.27
Median hourly rate £26.66 £50.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -46.68% +5.26% -5.79%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £83.60 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £45.00 £53.69
% change year-on-year -40.76% -16.18% -6.49%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 -38 454 £492 -1.60% 333
UK excluding London -27 278 £475 +5.56% 246
London -35 187 £475 -13.64% 127
Work from Home -58 121 £500 -9.09% 133
North of England -31 85 £488 -2.50% 49
South East -29 81 £525 +16.67% 80
North West -15 56 £475 -0.05% 27
South West -13 40 £638 +3.03% 41
Midlands -36 39 £402 -19.60% 28
East of England -8 36 £375 -28.57% 26
West Midlands -40 31 £406 +1.06% 19
Yorkshire -54 26 £500 - 15
Scotland -15 11 £301 -32.30% 8
East Midlands -6 8 £402 -26.91% 9
Wales -8 7 £408 +126.39% 4
North East -38 3 £413 -2.94% 9

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 43 (8.72%) SharePoint
2 23 (4.67%) Microsoft Exchange
3 13 (2.64%) Confluence
4 9 (1.83%) nginx
4 9 (1.83%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.81%) FactoryTalk
5 4 (0.81%) WebSphere
6 3 (0.61%) IIS
7 2 (0.41%) CICS
7 2 (0.41%) IBM HTTP Server
7 2 (0.41%) Oracle HTTP Server
7 2 (0.41%) WebSphere Application Server
7 2 (0.41%) WebSphere Portal
8 1 (0.20%) Traefik
Applications
1 36 (7.30%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (3.04%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (1.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (1.62%) 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 7 (1.42%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 162 (32.86%) Azure
2 114 (23.12%) AWS
3 106 (21.50%) Microsoft 365
4 67 (13.59%) Entra ID
5 36 (7.30%) GCP
6 33 (6.69%) OneDrive
7 28 (5.68%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 19 (3.85%) GitHub
9 16 (3.25%) Route 53
10 15 (3.04%) Amazon EC2
11 12 (2.43%) Azure Monitor
12 11 (2.23%) AWS CloudFormation
12 11 (2.23%) Google Workspace
12 11 (2.23%) OpenShift
13 10 (2.03%) Amazon EKS
14 9 (1.83%) Azure DevOps
14 9 (1.83%) Azure Sentinel
15 8 (1.62%) Akamai
15 8 (1.62%) AWS Lambda
15 8 (1.62%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 290 (58.82%) DNS
2 213 (43.20%) Firewall
3 166 (33.67%) DHCP
4 141 (28.60%) VPN
5 94 (19.07%) Network Security
6 90 (18.26%) WAN
7 80 (16.23%) LAN
8 75 (15.21%) HTTP
8 75 (15.21%) VLAN
9 73 (14.81%) BGP
10 60 (12.17%) SSL
11 44 (8.92%) BIG-IP
11 44 (8.92%) OSPF
12 42 (8.52%) Wi-Fi
13 39 (7.91%) Ethernet
14 38 (7.71%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 35 (7.10%) Wireless
16 27 (5.48%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 24 (4.87%) SD-WAN
17 24 (4.87%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (3.04%) SQL Server
2 9 (1.83%) PostgreSQL
3 5 (1.01%) MySQL
3 5 (1.01%) NoSQL
4 4 (0.81%) Elasticsearch
4 4 (0.81%) MongoDB
5 3 (0.61%) Amazon RDS
5 3 (0.61%) Redis
6 2 (0.41%) BigQuery
6 2 (0.41%) SQLite
7 1 (0.20%) Cloud Spanner
7 1 (0.20%) KDB
Development Applications
1 45 (9.13%) JIRA
2 28 (5.68%) Git
3 21 (4.26%) Jenkins
4 19 (3.85%) GitLab
5 18 (3.65%) Fiddler
6 14 (2.84%) Visual Studio
7 13 (2.64%) Eclipse
8 10 (2.03%) Browser DevTools
9 7 (1.42%) Sonatype Nexus
10 4 (0.81%) Artifactory
11 3 (0.61%) Bitbucket
12 2 (0.41%) Introscope
12 2 (0.41%) Selenium
12 2 (0.41%) SonarQube
12 2 (0.41%) Subversion
13 1 (0.20%) MSI
13 1 (0.20%) Postman
General
1 197 (39.96%) Social Skills
2 70 (14.20%) Analytical Skills
3 65 (13.18%) Finance
4 44 (8.92%) Banking
5 32 (6.49%) Public Sector
6 23 (4.67%) Telecoms
7 22 (4.46%) Investment Banking
7 22 (4.46%) Presentation Skills
8 19 (3.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 16 (3.25%) Documentation Skills
9 16 (3.25%) Military
10 9 (1.83%) Front Office
11 6 (1.22%) Manufacturing
11 6 (1.22%) Pharmaceutical
12 5 (1.01%) Legal
12 5 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
13 4 (0.81%) Aerospace
13 4 (0.81%) Automotive
13 4 (0.81%) Police
14 3 (0.61%) Retail
Job Titles
1 114 (23.12%) Network Engineer
2 56 (11.36%) Support Engineer
3 53 (10.75%) Senior
4 49 (9.94%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 41 (8.32%) Architect
6 37 (7.51%) IT Support
7 33 (6.69%) Analyst
8 31 (6.29%) IT Engineer
9 27 (5.48%) Security Engineer
10 25 (5.07%) Web Engineer
11 24 (4.87%) IT Support Engineer
12 23 (4.67%) Systems Engineer
13 22 (4.46%) Technical Engineer
14 20 (4.06%) Senior Network Engineer
15 19 (3.85%) Platform Engineer
16 18 (3.65%) IP Network Engineer
16 18 (3.65%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
17 16 (3.25%) Blue Coat Engineer
18 15 (3.04%) Cloud Engineer
18 15 (3.04%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (3.85%) SAML
2 15 (3.04%) LDAP
2 15 (3.04%) REST
3 13 (2.64%) ARM Templates
3 13 (2.64%) Node.js
3 13 (2.64%) Web Services
4 12 (2.43%) 802.1X
4 12 (2.43%) JSON
5 8 (1.62%) .NET
6 6 (1.22%) HTML
6 6 (1.22%) NETCONF
6 6 (1.22%) OpenConfig
6 6 (1.22%) OpenID
6 6 (1.22%) RESTCONF
6 6 (1.22%) XML
6 6 (1.22%) YANG
7 5 (1.01%) Kafka
7 5 (1.01%) OAuth
7 5 (1.01%) RESTful
8 4 (0.81%) boto
Miscellaneous
1 78 (15.82%) Data Centre
2 52 (10.55%) Onboarding
3 30 (6.09%) PKI
4 29 (5.88%) Hybrid Cloud
5 26 (5.27%) Management Information System
6 24 (4.87%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 19 (3.85%) Robotics
8 18 (3.65%) Linux Command Line
8 18 (3.65%) Security Posture
9 17 (3.45%) Driving Licence
10 15 (3.04%) Industry 4.0
10 15 (3.04%) Public Cloud
11 14 (2.84%) Cloud Native
11 14 (2.84%) Operational Technology
11 14 (2.84%) Self-Motivation
12 12 (2.43%) SCADA
13 11 (2.23%) Cyber Threat
14 10 (2.03%) Analytical Mindset
15 9 (1.83%) Private Cloud
16 8 (1.62%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 217 (44.02%) Windows
2 128 (25.96%) Linux
3 65 (13.18%) Windows Server
4 35 (7.10%) Mac OS
4 35 (7.10%) Windows 10
5 21 (4.26%) Unix
6 16 (3.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 15 (3.04%) Apple iOS
8 13 (2.64%) Ubuntu
9 11 (2.23%) Android
10 4 (0.81%) Windows Server 2012
10 4 (0.81%) zOS
11 3 (0.61%) CentOS
11 3 (0.61%) Check Point GAiA
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%) Data ONTAP
13 1 (0.20%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 139 (28.19%) Problem-Solving
2 103 (20.89%) ITIL
3 76 (15.42%) CI/CD
4 71 (14.40%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 65 (13.18%) Infrastructure as Code
6 63 (12.78%) Agile
7 61 (12.37%) DevOps
8 60 (12.17%) Load Balancing
9 57 (11.56%) Customer Service
10 54 (10.95%) Cybersecurity
11 51 (10.34%) Migration
12 48 (9.74%) ITSM
12 48 (9.74%) SIEM
13 47 (9.53%) Incident Response
14 46 (9.33%) High Availability
15 44 (8.92%) Validation
16 42 (8.52%) Continuous Improvement
16 42 (8.52%) Service Management
17 41 (8.32%) Technical Leadership
18 38 (7.71%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 137 (27.79%) Python
2 90 (18.26%) PowerShell
3 79 (16.02%) Bash
4 27 (5.48%) C++
5 25 (5.07%) JavaScript
6 20 (4.06%) SQL
7 17 (3.45%) C#
8 11 (2.23%) Java
9 9 (1.83%) Bicep
10 7 (1.42%) Perl
10 7 (1.42%) Shell Script
10 7 (1.42%) VBA
11 5 (1.01%) ActionScript
11 5 (1.01%) C
12 3 (0.61%) Go
13 2 (0.41%) Jython
13 2 (0.41%) Korn
13 2 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
13 2 (0.41%) Objective-C
13 2 (0.41%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 133 (26.98%) Security Cleared
2 89 (18.05%) SC Cleared
3 78 (15.82%) Degree
4 61 (12.37%) Cisco Certification
5 45 (9.13%) CCNP
6 44 (8.92%) DV Cleared
7 30 (6.09%) CCNA
8 29 (5.88%) Microsoft Certification
9 22 (4.46%) CISSP
10 20 (4.06%) Computer Science Degree
11 15 (3.04%) CCIE
11 15 (3.04%) Network+ Certification
12 12 (2.43%) Azure Certification
13 11 (2.23%) CompTIA Security+
14 10 (2.03%) A+ Certification
14 10 (2.03%) MCSA
14 10 (2.03%) MCSE
14 10 (2.03%) VCAP
15 8 (1.62%) AWS Certification
16 7 (1.42%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (3.85%) SLA
2 14 (2.84%) NIST
3 11 (2.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 9 (1.83%) NCSC
4 9 (1.83%) QA
5 5 (1.01%) 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
1 135 (27.38%) Active Directory
2 85 (17.24%) VMware Infrastructure
3 31 (6.29%) Hyper-V
4 29 (5.88%) Docker
5 23 (4.67%) vSphere
6 22 (4.46%) VMware NSX
7 17 (3.45%) Firmware
8 11 (2.23%) Virtual Desktop
9 8 (1.62%) Squid
10 6 (1.22%) Virtual Machines
11 4 (0.81%) NFS
11 4 (0.81%) VMware ESXi
12 2 (0.41%) KVM
12 2 (0.41%) RACF
12 2 (0.41%) VirtualBox
13 1 (0.20%) GPFS
13 1 (0.20%) iptables
13 1 (0.20%) NetIQ eDirectory
13 1 (0.20%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 1 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 95 (19.27%) Ansible
2 78 (15.82%) Terraform
3 50 (10.14%) Microsoft Intune
4 44 (8.92%) Kubernetes
5 27 (5.48%) SCCM
6 25 (5.07%) Single Sign-On
7 23 (4.67%) Grafana
8 20 (4.06%) FortiGate
9 14 (2.84%) VxRail
10 13 (2.64%) Prometheus
11 11 (2.23%) Jamf Pro
12 9 (1.83%) WSUS
13 6 (1.22%) CASB
13 6 (1.22%) QRadar
13 6 (1.22%) systemd
14 5 (1.01%) Nessus
14 5 (1.01%) Suricata
15 4 (0.81%) Consul
16 3 (0.61%) Istio
16 3 (0.61%) SELinux
Vendors
1 181 (36.71%) Microsoft
2 98 (19.88%) VMware
3 93 (18.86%) Cisco
4 62 (12.58%) F5
5 54 (10.95%) ServiceNow
6 29 (5.88%) Fortinet
7 28 (5.68%) Zscaler
8 26 (5.27%) Google
9 25 (5.07%) Juniper
10 23 (4.67%) Blue Coat
11 22 (4.46%) Palo Alto
12 21 (4.26%) Citrix
12 21 (4.26%) Splunk
13 19 (3.85%) NetApp
14 18 (3.65%) CheckPoint
14 18 (3.65%) Infoblox
14 18 (3.65%) McAfee
14 18 (3.65%) Red Hat
15 17 (3.45%) Siemens
16 13 (2.64%) Remedy