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

6 months to
1 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 274 239 274
Rank change year-on-year -35 +35 -43
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 491 373 342
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.92% 1.13% 0.87%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 9.83% 9.41% 7.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 265 213 226
10th Percentile £207 £200 £203
25th Percentile £325 £350 £262
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +11.11% -5.26%
75th Percentile £569 £606 £575
90th Percentile £666 £653 £641
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £450
% change year-on-year +5.56% - +12.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 45 26 32
10th Percentile £25.34 £20.11 £21.00
25th Percentile £31.25 £45.75 £62.50
Median hourly rate £52.50 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -19.23% - +28.92%
75th Percentile £65.00 - -
90th Percentile £98.82 £86.32 £67.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -19.23% - +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 4,995 3,963 4,799
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.37% 12.05% 12.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,973 2,421 2,922
10th Percentile £250 £235 £213
25th Percentile £400 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £595 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.16% -5.00% +8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 344 195 335
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.15 £18.15
Median hourly rate £26.69 £50.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -46.62% +5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £83.60 £74.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.72 £45.00 £54.88
% change year-on-year -40.62% -18.00% -3.58%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 -33 452 £495 -1.00% 314
UK excluding London -15 278 £475 +5.56% 239
London -47 185 £483 -10.23% 116
Work from Home -54 120 £500 -9.09% 114
North of England -38 89 £475 -5.00% 49
South East -26 80 £527 +26.44% 76
North West -16 57 £475 -0.05% 26
South West -6 40 £638 +3.03% 39
Midlands -32 39 £402 -19.60% 32
East of England -13 33 £250 -52.38% 24
West Midlands -45 31 £406 +1.06% 21
Yorkshire -43 29 £475 -5.00% 15
Scotland -16 11 £301 -32.30% 9
East Midlands -12 8 £402 -26.91% 11
Wales -7 7 £408 +126.39% 7
North East -37 3 £413 +65.00% 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 42 (8.55%) SharePoint
2 23 (4.68%) Microsoft Exchange
3 14 (2.85%) Confluence
4 9 (1.83%) nginx
5 7 (1.43%) OpenStack
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
9 1 (0.20%) Traefik
Applications
1 36 (7.33%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (3.05%) 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 7 (1.43%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 159 (32.38%) Azure
2 114 (23.22%) AWS
3 105 (21.38%) Microsoft 365
4 66 (13.44%) Entra ID
5 36 (7.33%) GCP
6 32 (6.52%) OneDrive
7 28 (5.70%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 19 (3.87%) GitHub
9 16 (3.26%) Route 53
10 15 (3.05%) Amazon EC2
11 11 (2.24%) AWS CloudFormation
11 11 (2.24%) Azure Monitor
11 11 (2.24%) Google Workspace
12 10 (2.04%) Amazon EKS
13 9 (1.83%) Azure DevOps
13 9 (1.83%) Azure Sentinel
13 9 (1.83%) OpenShift
14 8 (1.63%) Amazon S3
14 8 (1.63%) AWS Lambda
14 8 (1.63%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 288 (58.66%) DNS
2 212 (43.18%) Firewall
3 167 (34.01%) DHCP
4 139 (28.31%) VPN
5 95 (19.35%) Network Security
6 90 (18.33%) WAN
7 80 (16.29%) LAN
8 76 (15.48%) VLAN
9 73 (14.87%) BGP
10 72 (14.66%) HTTP
11 60 (12.22%) SSL
12 48 (9.78%) BIG-IP
13 45 (9.16%) OSPF
14 41 (8.35%) Wi-Fi
15 39 (7.94%) Ethernet
16 38 (7.74%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 35 (7.13%) Wireless
18 27 (5.50%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
19 26 (5.30%) Wireshark
20 24 (4.89%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (3.05%) SQL Server
2 6 (1.22%) PostgreSQL
3 4 (0.81%) Elasticsearch
4 3 (0.61%) Amazon RDS
5 2 (0.41%) BigQuery
5 2 (0.41%) MySQL
5 2 (0.41%) NoSQL
5 2 (0.41%) SQLite
6 1 (0.20%) Cloud Spanner
6 1 (0.20%) KDB
6 1 (0.20%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 48 (9.78%) JIRA
2 25 (5.09%) Git
3 19 (3.87%) Fiddler
4 18 (3.67%) Jenkins
5 16 (3.26%) GitLab
6 14 (2.85%) Visual Studio
7 13 (2.65%) Eclipse
8 10 (2.04%) Browser DevTools
9 7 (1.43%) Sonatype Nexus
10 4 (0.81%) Artifactory
11 3 (0.61%) Bitbucket
12 2 (0.41%) Introscope
12 2 (0.41%) SonarQube
12 2 (0.41%) Subversion
13 1 (0.20%) MSI
13 1 (0.20%) Postman
General
1 198 (40.33%) Social Skills
2 69 (14.05%) Analytical Skills
3 65 (13.24%) Finance
4 44 (8.96%) Banking
5 33 (6.72%) Public Sector
6 22 (4.48%) Investment Banking
6 22 (4.48%) Presentation Skills
7 21 (4.28%) Telecoms
8 19 (3.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 17 (3.46%) Documentation Skills
10 16 (3.26%) Military
11 9 (1.83%) Front Office
12 6 (1.22%) Manufacturing
12 6 (1.22%) Pharmaceutical
13 5 (1.02%) Legal
13 5 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
14 4 (0.81%) Automotive
14 4 (0.81%) Police
15 3 (0.61%) Retail
16 2 (0.41%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 115 (23.42%) Network Engineer
2 55 (11.20%) Support Engineer
3 53 (10.79%) Senior
4 47 (9.57%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 44 (8.96%) Architect
6 36 (7.33%) IT Support
7 33 (6.72%) Analyst
8 30 (6.11%) IT Engineer
9 27 (5.50%) Security Engineer
10 26 (5.30%) Web Engineer
11 23 (4.68%) IT Support Engineer
12 22 (4.48%) Technical Engineer
13 21 (4.28%) Systems Engineer
14 20 (4.07%) Senior Network Engineer
15 19 (3.87%) Platform Engineer
16 18 (3.67%) IP Network Engineer
17 17 (3.46%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
18 16 (3.26%) Blue Coat Engineer
19 15 (3.05%) Cloud Engineer
19 15 (3.05%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (3.87%) SAML
2 15 (3.05%) JSON
2 15 (3.05%) LDAP
3 13 (2.65%) Node.js
3 13 (2.65%) REST
3 13 (2.65%) Web Services
4 12 (2.44%) 802.1X
4 12 (2.44%) ARM Templates
5 8 (1.63%) .NET
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 (1.02%) OAuth
8 4 (0.81%) boto
8 4 (0.81%) WinForms
9 3 (0.61%) Kafka
9 3 (0.61%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 78 (15.89%) Data Centre
2 51 (10.39%) Onboarding
3 30 (6.11%) PKI
4 27 (5.50%) Hybrid Cloud
5 26 (5.30%) Management Information System
6 24 (4.89%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 19 (3.87%) Robotics
8 18 (3.67%) Security Posture
9 17 (3.46%) Driving Licence
9 17 (3.46%) Linux Command Line
10 15 (3.05%) Industry 4.0
10 15 (3.05%) Public Cloud
11 14 (2.85%) Operational Technology
11 14 (2.85%) Self-Motivation
12 13 (2.65%) Cloud Native
13 12 (2.44%) SCADA
14 11 (2.24%) Cyber Threat
15 10 (2.04%) Analytical Mindset
16 9 (1.83%) Private Cloud
17 8 (1.63%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 214 (43.58%) Windows
2 122 (24.85%) Linux
3 63 (12.83%) Windows Server
4 35 (7.13%) Mac OS
4 35 (7.13%) Windows 10
5 21 (4.28%) Unix
6 16 (3.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 15 (3.05%) Apple iOS
8 13 (2.65%) Ubuntu
9 11 (2.24%) 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
1 137 (27.90%) Problem-Solving
2 101 (20.57%) ITIL
3 73 (14.87%) CI/CD
4 69 (14.05%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 63 (12.83%) Agile
6 62 (12.63%) Infrastructure as Code
7 60 (12.22%) Load Balancing
8 56 (11.41%) Customer Service
8 56 (11.41%) DevOps
9 54 (11.00%) Cybersecurity
10 50 (10.18%) Migration
11 48 (9.78%) SIEM
12 47 (9.57%) High Availability
12 47 (9.57%) Incident Response
12 47 (9.57%) ITSM
13 42 (8.55%) Continuous Improvement
13 42 (8.55%) Service Management
13 42 (8.55%) Validation
14 40 (8.15%) Technical Leadership
15 39 (7.94%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 136 (27.70%) Python
2 88 (17.92%) PowerShell
3 75 (15.27%) Bash
4 27 (5.50%) C++
4 27 (5.50%) JavaScript
5 17 (3.46%) C#
5 17 (3.46%) SQL
6 11 (2.24%) Java
7 9 (1.83%) VBA
8 8 (1.63%) Bicep
9 7 (1.43%) Perl
10 5 (1.02%) ActionScript
10 5 (1.02%) C
11 4 (0.81%) Shell Script
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
1 132 (26.88%) Security Cleared
2 88 (17.92%) SC Cleared
3 74 (15.07%) Degree
4 62 (12.63%) Cisco Certification
5 46 (9.37%) CCNP
6 44 (8.96%) DV Cleared
7 30 (6.11%) CCNA
8 28 (5.70%) Microsoft Certification
9 22 (4.48%) CISSP
10 16 (3.26%) CCIE
10 16 (3.26%) Computer Science Degree
11 15 (3.05%) Network+ Certification
12 11 (2.24%) Azure Certification
12 11 (2.24%) CompTIA Security+
13 10 (2.04%) A+ Certification
13 10 (2.04%) MCSA
13 10 (2.04%) MCSE
13 10 (2.04%) VCAP
14 8 (1.63%) AWS Certification
15 6 (1.22%) GCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (3.87%) SLA
2 14 (2.85%) NIST
3 11 (2.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 10 (2.04%) NCSC
5 6 (1.22%) QA
6 5 (1.02%) GDPR
7 4 (0.81%) 21 CFR Part 11
7 4 (0.81%) GxP
7 4 (0.81%) NIST 800
7 4 (0.81%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.41%) Government Security Classifications
8 2 (0.41%) JSP 440
9 1 (0.20%) ISO 8583
9 1 (0.20%) RMADS
System Software
1 134 (27.29%) Active Directory
2 83 (16.90%) VMware Infrastructure
3 29 (5.91%) Hyper-V
4 25 (5.09%) Docker
5 23 (4.68%) VMware NSX
5 23 (4.68%) vSphere
6 17 (3.46%) Firmware
7 11 (2.24%) Virtual Desktop
8 8 (1.63%) Squid
9 6 (1.22%) Virtual Machines
10 4 (0.81%) NFS
10 4 (0.81%) VMware ESXi
11 2 (0.41%) KVM
11 2 (0.41%) RACF
11 2 (0.41%) VirtualBox
12 1 (0.20%) Citrix Presentation Server
12 1 (0.20%) NDS
12 1 (0.20%) NetIQ eDirectory
12 1 (0.20%) Snort
12 1 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 97 (19.76%) Ansible
2 75 (15.27%) Terraform
3 50 (10.18%) Microsoft Intune
4 42 (8.55%) Kubernetes
5 27 (5.50%) SCCM
6 25 (5.09%) Single Sign-On
7 20 (4.07%) FortiGate
7 20 (4.07%) Grafana
8 14 (2.85%) VxRail
9 11 (2.24%) Jamf Pro
10 10 (2.04%) Prometheus
11 9 (1.83%) WSUS
12 6 (1.22%) CASB
12 6 (1.22%) QRadar
12 6 (1.22%) systemd
13 5 (1.02%) Nessus
13 5 (1.02%) Suricata
14 4 (0.81%) Consul
15 3 (0.61%) Nagios
15 3 (0.61%) SELinux
Vendors
1 179 (36.46%) Microsoft
2 97 (19.76%) VMware
3 94 (19.14%) Cisco
4 66 (13.44%) F5
5 54 (11.00%) ServiceNow
6 30 (6.11%) Fortinet
7 28 (5.70%) Zscaler
8 26 (5.30%) Google
9 25 (5.09%) Juniper
10 24 (4.89%) Blue Coat
11 23 (4.68%) Palo Alto
12 21 (4.28%) Citrix
12 21 (4.28%) Infoblox
12 21 (4.28%) Splunk
13 19 (3.87%) CheckPoint
13 19 (3.87%) McAfee
13 19 (3.87%) NetApp
14 17 (3.46%) Red Hat
14 17 (3.46%) Siemens
15 13 (2.65%) Remedy