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 26 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 234 190 191
Rank change year-on-year -44 +1 +51
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 437 471 560
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.18% 1.40% 1.28%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 10.90% 10.94% 9.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 247 283 349
10th Percentile £200 £207 £180
25th Percentile £314 £350 £275
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £488 £450
Median % change year-on-year -2.56% +8.33% -14.27%
75th Percentile £600 £619 £580
90th Percentile £657 £738 £681
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £400
% change year-on-year - +12.50% -15.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 44 11 50
10th Percentile £15.50 £21.25 £24.93
25th Percentile £32.00 £30.63 £40.85
Median hourly rate £64.07 £65.00 £51.70
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% +25.74% -20.47%
75th Percentile £65.00 - £56.49
90th Percentile £82.10 - £69.62
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £51.70
% change year-on-year - +25.74% -20.47%

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 4,011 4,306 6,012
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.79% 12.76% 13.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,629 2,532 3,708
10th Percentile £206 £220 £210
25th Percentile £358 £364 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £473 £475
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.53% +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 181 141 333
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.99 £17.72
25th Percentile £20.00 £21.46 £22.75
Median hourly rate £34.00 £35.00 £56.40
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -37.94% +38.23%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.00 £65.98
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.00 £75.59
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £35.00 £56.49
% change year-on-year +21.43% -38.04% +25.53%

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 26 December 2025.

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 26 December 2025.

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 26 December 2025. 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 -34 391 £478 -4.40% 674
UK excluding London -33 276 £450 - 666
London -32 130 £538 +8.86% 75
Work from Home -33 127 £450 -10.00% 221
North of England -40 82 £450 -4.76% 141
South East -6 64 £460 -1.08% 189
East of England -2 52 £381 -27.38% 105
North West -9 49 £475 +1.60% 72
West Midlands -8 37 £213 -5.56% 61
Midlands -38 37 £213 -43.33% 111
South West -17 29 £700 +21.74% 81
Yorkshire -41 29 £445 -36.46% 57
Scotland +18 25 £454 +13.50% 32
Wales -5 4 £250 -23.08% 18
North East -14 4 £400 +166.67% 13

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 33 (7.55%) SharePoint
2 23 (5.26%) Microsoft Exchange
3 14 (3.20%) Skype for Business
4 9 (2.06%) Confluence
5 8 (1.83%) OpenStack
6 4 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
7 3 (0.69%) Apache
7 3 (0.69%) Apache Spark
7 3 (0.69%) IIS
8 2 (0.46%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.46%) WordPress
9 1 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2010
9 1 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2013
9 1 (0.23%) Jupyter
Applications
1 38 (8.70%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (1.37%) Weka
3 5 (1.14%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.92%) Microsoft Excel
5 3 (0.69%) Acrobat
6 2 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 1 (0.23%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 1 (0.23%) Eikon
1 1 (0.23%) Eze OMS
1 1 (0.23%) Fidessa
1 1 (0.23%) Finacle
1 1 (0.23%) Pegasus Opera
1 1 (0.23%) RMDS
1 1 (0.23%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 109 (24.94%) AWS
2 101 (23.11%) Azure
3 82 (18.76%) Microsoft 365
4 27 (6.18%) Amazon EC2
4 27 (6.18%) GCP
4 27 (6.18%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 26 (5.95%) Amazon S3
6 22 (5.03%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 22 (5.03%) Amazon ELB
6 22 (5.03%) Entra ID
7 17 (3.89%) GitHub
8 12 (2.75%) AWS CloudFormation
9 9 (2.06%) Cloud Computing
9 9 (2.06%) SaaS
10 7 (1.60%) GitHub Actions
10 7 (1.60%) OneDrive
11 5 (1.14%) Apigee
11 5 (1.14%) Google Workspace
12 4 (0.92%) Azure DevOps
12 4 (0.92%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 254 (58.12%) DNS
2 161 (36.84%) Firewall
3 127 (29.06%) DHCP
4 122 (27.92%) VPN
5 88 (20.14%) SSL
6 70 (16.02%) WAN
7 69 (15.79%) LAN
8 63 (14.42%) Network Security
9 61 (13.96%) VLAN
10 59 (13.50%) HTTP
11 33 (7.55%) Wireshark
12 29 (6.64%) BGP
13 26 (5.95%) Wi-Fi
14 23 (5.26%) Wireless
15 22 (5.03%) BIG-IP
15 22 (5.03%) OSPF
16 21 (4.81%) Ethernet
17 20 (4.58%) Internet
17 20 (4.58%) SAN
18 15 (3.43%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (5.26%) SQL Server
2 14 (3.20%) PostgreSQL
3 5 (1.14%) Elasticsearch
3 5 (1.14%) Oracle Database
4 4 (0.92%) Amazon Aurora
4 4 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (0.92%) Big Data
4 4 (0.92%) MongoDB
4 4 (0.92%) NoSQL
5 3 (0.69%) Apache Cassandra
5 3 (0.69%) Delta Lake
5 3 (0.69%) Hadoop
5 3 (0.69%) Parquet
6 1 (0.23%) Apache Hive
6 1 (0.23%) Electronic Patient Records
6 1 (0.23%) Impala
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 44 (10.07%) Git
1 44 (10.07%) Jenkins
2 33 (7.55%) GitLab
3 24 (5.49%) JIRA
4 20 (4.58%) Fiddler
5 17 (3.89%) Eclipse
5 17 (3.89%) Visual Studio
6 5 (1.14%) Subversion
7 4 (0.92%) CircleCI
7 4 (0.92%) Robot Framework
7 4 (0.92%) TeamCity
8 3 (0.69%) MLflow
8 3 (0.69%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.69%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.46%) Maven
9 2 (0.46%) Poetry
9 2 (0.46%) Postman
9 2 (0.46%) PyCharm
9 2 (0.46%) Visual Studio Code
10 1 (0.23%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 153 (35.01%) Social Skills
2 78 (17.85%) Analytical Skills
3 43 (9.84%) Finance
4 37 (8.47%) Public Sector
5 31 (7.09%) Banking
6 26 (5.95%) Military
7 21 (4.81%) Investment Banking
8 20 (4.58%) Presentation Skills
9 11 (2.52%) Legal
10 10 (2.29%) Organisational Skills
11 9 (2.06%) Law
11 9 (2.06%) Telecoms
12 8 (1.83%) Front Office
13 6 (1.37%) Documentation Skills
13 6 (1.37%) Financial Institution
13 6 (1.37%) Local Government
14 3 (0.69%) Aerospace
14 3 (0.69%) Manufacturing
15 2 (0.46%) Advertising
15 2 (0.46%) Retail
Job Titles
1 86 (19.68%) Network Engineer
2 65 (14.87%) Support Engineer
3 57 (13.04%) Analyst
4 55 (12.59%) Senior
5 52 (11.90%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 31 (7.09%) IT Support
7 28 (6.41%) IT Engineer
8 23 (5.26%) Developer
9 21 (4.81%) 2nd Line Support
9 21 (4.81%) Support Analyst
10 20 (4.58%) DevOps Engineer
10 20 (4.58%) Technical Support
11 19 (4.35%) Web Engineer
12 18 (4.12%) SOC Analyst
13 17 (3.89%) Senior DevOps
14 16 (3.66%) Security Engineer
14 16 (3.66%) Senior DevOps Engineer
14 16 (3.66%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
14 16 (3.66%) Technical Analyst
15 15 (3.43%) C# Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (4.81%) Web Services
2 18 (4.12%) Node.js
3 15 (3.43%) Middleware
4 14 (3.20%) REST
5 11 (2.52%) SOAP
6 10 (2.29%) Elastic Stack
7 9 (2.06%) LDAP
8 7 (1.60%) AngularJS
9 6 (1.37%) FIX Protocol
10 5 (1.14%) Kafka
10 5 (1.14%) Ultra Messaging
11 4 (0.92%) .NET
11 4 (0.92%) JSON
11 4 (0.92%) React
11 4 (0.92%) RESTful
11 4 (0.92%) SAML
12 3 (0.69%) 802.1X
12 3 (0.69%) ASP.NET Web API
12 3 (0.69%) Flask
12 3 (0.69%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 28 (6.41%) Data Centre
1 28 (6.41%) Management Information System
2 24 (5.49%) Onboarding
3 18 (4.12%) Analytical Mindset
4 16 (3.66%) Security Operations Centre
5 14 (3.20%) Private Cloud
6 13 (2.97%) Cyberattack
6 13 (2.97%) Driving Licence
6 13 (2.97%) NHS
7 11 (2.52%) CMDB
7 11 (2.52%) Public Cloud
7 11 (2.52%) Replication
8 10 (2.29%) PKI
8 10 (2.29%) Security Posture
9 9 (2.06%) Self-Motivation
10 8 (1.83%) Clustering
10 8 (1.83%) SCADA
11 7 (1.60%) Cyber Threat
11 7 (1.60%) Hybrid Cloud
12 6 (1.37%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 205 (46.91%) Windows
2 151 (34.55%) Linux
3 55 (12.59%) Windows Server
4 39 (8.92%) Windows 10
5 32 (7.32%) Unix
6 13 (2.97%) Android
7 12 (2.75%) Windows Server 2016
7 12 (2.75%) Windows Server 2019
8 11 (2.52%) Mac OS
9 8 (1.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 8 (1.83%) Windows Server 2012
10 7 (1.60%) VMS
11 6 (1.37%) Apple iOS
11 6 (1.37%) Ubuntu
12 4 (0.92%) CentOS
12 4 (0.92%) Solaris
12 4 (0.92%) Windows Server 2003
13 3 (0.69%) Debian
13 3 (0.69%) Windows 7
14 2 (0.46%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 120 (27.46%) Problem-Solving
2 75 (17.16%) CI/CD
3 65 (14.87%) ITIL
4 63 (14.42%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 61 (13.96%) Agile
5 61 (13.96%) DevOps
6 54 (12.36%) Infrastructure as Code
7 53 (12.13%) Incident Response
8 52 (11.90%) Cybersecurity
9 50 (11.44%) SIEM
10 43 (9.84%) High Availability
10 43 (9.84%) Load Balancing
11 40 (9.15%) Infrastructure Automation
12 34 (7.78%) Root Cause Analysis
13 33 (7.55%) Knowledge Transfer
13 33 (7.55%) Migration
14 32 (7.32%) Security Operations
15 31 (7.09%) Validation
16 30 (6.86%) Disaster Recovery
17 29 (6.64%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 134 (30.66%) Python
2 79 (18.08%) Bash
3 78 (17.85%) PowerShell
4 27 (6.18%) Perl
4 27 (6.18%) SQL
5 24 (5.49%) JavaScript
6 23 (5.26%) C++
7 22 (5.03%) C#
8 18 (4.12%) Java
9 13 (2.97%) Shell Script
10 9 (2.06%) Go
11 5 (1.14%) C
12 4 (0.92%) Kusto Query Language
13 3 (0.69%) Groovy
13 3 (0.69%) Search Processing Language
13 3 (0.69%) T-SQL
14 2 (0.46%) Ruby
15 1 (0.23%) Bicep
15 1 (0.23%) TypeScript
15 1 (0.23%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 134 (30.66%) Security Cleared
2 99 (22.65%) SC Cleared
3 41 (9.38%) Degree
4 40 (9.15%) Cisco Certification
5 37 (8.47%) DV Cleared
6 33 (7.55%) Microsoft Certification
7 27 (6.18%) CCNP
8 22 (5.03%) CompTIA Security+
9 20 (4.58%) Network+ Certification
10 19 (4.35%) CCNA
11 16 (3.66%) Azure Certification
12 14 (3.20%) CISSP
13 13 (2.97%) Computer Science Degree
13 13 (2.97%) MCP
14 12 (2.75%) CompTIA CySA+
14 12 (2.75%) MCSE
15 11 (2.52%) Server+ Certification
16 7 (1.60%) JNCIS
16 7 (1.60%) MCSA
17 6 (1.37%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (5.72%) GDPR
2 9 (2.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 8 (1.83%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 8 (1.83%) SLA
4 6 (1.37%) NIST
5 4 (0.92%) HIPAA
6 3 (0.69%) Cyber Essentials
6 3 (0.69%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.46%) Disclosure Scotland
7 2 (0.46%) NCSC
8 1 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.23%) QA
8 1 (0.23%) SOC 2
System Software
1 97 (22.20%) Active Directory
2 66 (15.10%) VMware Infrastructure
3 56 (12.81%) Docker
4 32 (7.32%) Hyper-V
5 12 (2.75%) Firmware
6 9 (2.06%) Virtual Machines
6 9 (2.06%) VMware ESXi
7 8 (1.83%) vSphere
8 7 (1.60%) Lustre
8 7 (1.60%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 6 (1.37%) GPFS
9 6 (1.37%) Terminal Services
9 6 (1.37%) VMware NSX
10 5 (1.14%) KVM
10 5 (1.14%) NDS
10 5 (1.14%) NetIQ eDirectory
10 5 (1.14%) NFS
11 4 (0.92%) Veritas File System
11 4 (0.92%) Veritas Volume Manager
11 4 (0.92%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 89 (20.37%) Ansible
2 62 (14.19%) Terraform
3 37 (8.47%) SCCM
4 34 (7.78%) Kubernetes
5 28 (6.41%) Microsoft Intune
6 21 (4.81%) Grafana
7 16 (3.66%) Prometheus
8 12 (2.75%) Puppet
9 10 (2.29%) FortiGate
10 9 (2.06%) Single Sign-On
11 8 (1.83%) QRadar
11 8 (1.83%) WSUS
12 7 (1.60%) Nessus
12 7 (1.60%) Progress Chef
13 6 (1.37%) Nagios
13 6 (1.37%) vCenter Server
14 5 (1.14%) CASB
14 5 (1.14%) ITRS Geneos
14 5 (1.14%) Red Hat Satellite
15 4 (0.92%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 140 (32.04%) Microsoft
2 88 (20.14%) VMware
3 70 (16.02%) F5
4 63 (14.42%) Cisco
5 55 (12.59%) Palo Alto
6 42 (9.61%) Splunk
7 41 (9.38%) CheckPoint
8 27 (6.18%) Blue Coat
9 23 (5.26%) ServiceNow
10 22 (5.03%) Fortinet
10 22 (5.03%) McAfee
11 21 (4.81%) Oracle
11 21 (4.81%) SolarWinds
12 20 (4.58%) NetApp
13 19 (4.35%) Citrix
14 18 (4.12%) Juniper
14 18 (4.12%) Red Hat
15 13 (2.97%) Meraki
16 12 (2.75%) Veeam
17 11 (2.52%) CyberArk