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 12 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 274 229 238
Rank change year-on-year -45 +9 -17
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 492 396 395
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.90% 1.20% 1.02%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 9.62% 10.32% 8.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 263 217 221
10th Percentile £197 £194 £203
25th Percentile £295 £305 £260
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £463 £463
Median % change year-on-year -2.70% - +2.78%
75th Percentile £550 £600 £575
90th Percentile £675 £660 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £430 £450 £425
% change year-on-year -4.44% +5.88% +6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 34 30
10th Percentile £26.62 £28.30 £29.13
25th Percentile £31.86 £42.53 £63.13
Median hourly rate £64.24 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -1.17% - +30.00%
75th Percentile £71.20 - -
90th Percentile £98.82 £78.28 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year - - +30.00%

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 5,113 3,839 4,570
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.37% 11.63% 11.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,984 2,363 2,663
10th Percentile £235 £235 £230
25th Percentile £390 £363 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £481 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.95% -3.80% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £610
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £463 £500
% change year-on-year +2.70% -7.50% +10.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 402 201 266
10th Percentile £14.35 £15.33 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £21.37
Median hourly rate £27.11 £42.50 £52.00
Median % change year-on-year -36.21% -18.27% -7.95%
75th Percentile £65.88 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.14 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -38.49% -25.89% +1.52%

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 12 September 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 12 September 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 12 September 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 -57 449 £470 -1.05% 497
UK excluding London -41 270 £430 -4.44% 370
London -40 199 £470 -14.93% 193
Work from Home -83 113 £500 - 423
South East -38 74 £525 +40.00% 116
North of England -60 72 £420 -23.64% 68
South West -2 49 £638 +9.68% 41
North West -29 42 £240 -56.36% 35
Midlands -38 42 £400 -6.10% 45
West Midlands -41 35 £400 -0.50% 26
East of England -24 27 £425 -10.53% 63
Yorkshire -50 26 £500 -9.09% 19
Scotland -24 15 £210 -49.94% 26
Wales -9 8 £390 +116.67% 10
East Midlands -13 7 £326 -40.73% 19
North East -44 4 £438 +75.00% 16

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 52 (10.57%) SharePoint
2 35 (7.11%) Microsoft Exchange
3 12 (2.44%) Confluence
4 11 (2.24%) OpenStack
5 6 (1.22%) nginx
6 4 (0.81%) FactoryTalk
7 3 (0.61%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.41%) CICS
8 2 (0.41%) IIS
8 2 (0.41%) Skype for Business
9 1 (0.20%) IBM HTTP Server
9 1 (0.20%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 1 (0.20%) Traefik
9 1 (0.20%) WebSphere Application Server
9 1 (0.20%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 17 (3.46%) Microsoft Office
2 16 (3.25%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (1.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (1.22%) 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
1 162 (32.93%) Azure
2 127 (25.81%) Microsoft 365
3 104 (21.14%) AWS
4 76 (15.45%) Entra ID
5 36 (7.32%) OneDrive
6 29 (5.89%) GCP
7 22 (4.47%) GitHub
8 21 (4.27%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 15 (3.05%) OpenShift
10 13 (2.64%) Azure Monitor
11 12 (2.44%) AWS CloudFormation
11 12 (2.44%) Route 53
12 11 (2.24%) Amazon EC2
12 11 (2.24%) GitHub Actions
12 11 (2.24%) Google Workspace
13 9 (1.83%) Azure Sentinel
14 8 (1.63%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 8 (1.63%) Amazon EKS
15 7 (1.42%) IaaS
16 6 (1.22%) Azure ExpressRoute
Communications & Networking
1 292 (59.35%) DNS
2 207 (42.07%) Firewall
3 194 (39.43%) DHCP
4 150 (30.49%) VPN
5 86 (17.48%) WAN
6 85 (17.28%) Network Security
7 74 (15.04%) LAN
8 72 (14.63%) VLAN
9 66 (13.41%) HTTP
10 63 (12.80%) BGP
11 53 (10.77%) SSL
12 45 (9.15%) Wi-Fi
13 44 (8.94%) Wireless
14 38 (7.72%) OSPF
15 37 (7.52%) BIG-IP
16 33 (6.71%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 26 (5.28%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
18 25 (5.08%) SD-WAN
19 22 (4.47%) Ethernet
20 20 (4.07%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (3.66%) PostgreSQL
2 17 (3.46%) SQL Server
3 8 (1.63%) MySQL
3 8 (1.63%) SQLite
4 7 (1.42%) MongoDB
4 7 (1.42%) NoSQL
5 5 (1.02%) Redis
6 4 (0.81%) Amazon RDS
7 3 (0.61%) KDB
8 2 (0.41%) BigQuery
9 1 (0.20%) Cloud Spanner
9 1 (0.20%) Elasticsearch
9 1 (0.20%) Kdb+
Development Applications
1 47 (9.55%) JIRA
2 39 (7.93%) Git
3 32 (6.50%) Jenkins
4 24 (4.88%) GitLab
5 15 (3.05%) Fiddler
6 12 (2.44%) Visual Studio
7 11 (2.24%) Eclipse
8 8 (1.63%) Sonatype Nexus
9 5 (1.02%) Artifactory
10 4 (0.81%) Browser DevTools
10 4 (0.81%) Selenium
11 2 (0.41%) Bitbucket
11 2 (0.41%) Subversion
12 1 (0.20%) Introscope
12 1 (0.20%) MSI
12 1 (0.20%) Postman
General
1 202 (41.06%) Social Skills
2 72 (14.63%) Analytical Skills
3 62 (12.60%) Finance
4 41 (8.33%) Banking
5 29 (5.89%) Public Sector
6 27 (5.49%) Telecoms
7 20 (4.07%) Investment Banking
8 15 (3.05%) Front Office
8 15 (3.05%) Military
9 13 (2.64%) Documentation Skills
10 8 (1.63%) Aerospace
11 6 (1.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 6 (1.22%) Legal
11 6 (1.22%) Manufacturing
12 5 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
12 5 (1.02%) Pharmaceutical
12 5 (1.02%) Police
13 4 (0.81%) Automotive
13 4 (0.81%) Multimedia
13 4 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 100 (20.33%) Network Engineer
2 68 (13.82%) Support Engineer
3 59 (11.99%) Senior
4 58 (11.79%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 54 (10.98%) IT Support
6 43 (8.74%) IT Engineer
7 37 (7.52%) Architect
7 37 (7.52%) IT Support Engineer
8 36 (7.32%) Analyst
9 23 (4.67%) Platform Engineer
9 23 (4.67%) Senior Network Engineer
10 21 (4.27%) Security Engineer
11 20 (4.07%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 19 (3.86%) Linux Engineer
13 18 (3.66%) Web Engineer
14 16 (3.25%) Cloud Engineer
14 16 (3.25%) IP Network Engineer
14 16 (3.25%) Network Infrastructure Engineer
14 16 (3.25%) Support Analyst
15 14 (2.85%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 88 (17.89%) Terraform
2 16 (3.25%) REST
3 13 (2.64%) SAML
4 12 (2.44%) ARM Templates
4 12 (2.44%) JSON
5 11 (2.24%) Node.js
5 11 (2.24%) Web Services
6 9 (1.83%) .NET
7 8 (1.63%) 802.1X
7 8 (1.63%) Kafka
7 8 (1.63%) LDAP
7 8 (1.63%) SPNEGO
8 7 (1.42%) HTML
9 6 (1.22%) Elastic Stack
9 6 (1.22%) Jinja
9 6 (1.22%) XML
10 5 (1.02%) CSS
10 5 (1.02%) FastAPI
10 5 (1.02%) Flask
10 5 (1.02%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 85 (17.28%) Data Centre
2 59 (11.99%) Onboarding
3 34 (6.91%) PKI
4 30 (6.10%) Hybrid Cloud
5 27 (5.49%) Management Information System
6 21 (4.27%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 21 (4.27%) Linux Command Line
7 17 (3.46%) Public Cloud
8 16 (3.25%) Driving Licence
8 16 (3.25%) Operational Technology
9 14 (2.85%) Self-Motivation
10 13 (2.64%) Cloud Native
10 13 (2.64%) SCADA
10 13 (2.64%) Video Conferencing
11 11 (2.24%) Cyber Threat
12 10 (2.03%) Enterprise Storage
13 9 (1.83%) Distributed Systems
13 9 (1.83%) Private Cloud
13 9 (1.83%) Security Posture
14 8 (1.63%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 238 (48.37%) Windows
2 152 (30.89%) Linux
3 72 (14.63%) Windows Server
4 51 (10.37%) Windows 10
5 41 (8.33%) Mac OS
6 28 (5.69%) Unix
7 25 (5.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 19 (3.86%) Apple iOS
9 16 (3.25%) Ubuntu
10 15 (3.05%) Android
11 6 (1.22%) CentOS
11 6 (1.22%) zOS
12 3 (0.61%) Check Point GAiA
12 3 (0.61%) Windows Server 2019
13 2 (0.41%) Windows Server 2012
14 1 (0.20%) Data ONTAP
14 1 (0.20%) Oracle Linux
14 1 (0.20%) Rocky
14 1 (0.20%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
14 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 136 (27.64%) Problem-Solving
2 111 (22.56%) ITIL
3 86 (17.48%) CI/CD
4 81 (16.46%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 75 (15.24%) Infrastructure as Code
6 67 (13.62%) DevOps
7 63 (12.80%) Agile
7 63 (12.80%) Load Balancing
8 62 (12.60%) Customer Service
9 61 (12.40%) ITSM
10 56 (11.38%) Cybersecurity
11 53 (10.77%) Continuous Improvement
12 49 (9.96%) Platform Engineering
13 48 (9.76%) Migration
14 47 (9.55%) High Availability
15 45 (9.15%) Incident Response
15 45 (9.15%) Service Management
15 45 (9.15%) Validation
16 44 (8.94%) SIEM
17 41 (8.33%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 148 (30.08%) Python
2 104 (21.14%) PowerShell
3 88 (17.89%) Bash
4 26 (5.28%) C++
5 22 (4.47%) JavaScript
6 20 (4.07%) SQL
7 16 (3.25%) C#
8 14 (2.85%) Perl
9 13 (2.64%) Shell Script
10 11 (2.24%) Bicep
10 11 (2.24%) Java
11 8 (1.63%) Korn
12 7 (1.42%) VBA
13 5 (1.02%) ActionScript
13 5 (1.02%) Go
14 4 (0.81%) C
15 3 (0.61%) Kusto Query Language
15 3 (0.61%) VBScript
16 2 (0.41%) Groovy
16 2 (0.41%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 137 (27.85%) Security Cleared
2 82 (16.67%) SC Cleared
3 65 (13.21%) Degree
4 54 (10.98%) Cisco Certification
5 51 (10.37%) DV Cleared
6 42 (8.54%) CCNP
7 26 (5.28%) CCNA
7 26 (5.28%) Microsoft Certification
8 20 (4.07%) A+ Certification
8 20 (4.07%) Computer Science Degree
9 16 (3.25%) Network+ Certification
10 15 (3.05%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 14 (2.85%) CCIE
12 13 (2.64%) CISSP
13 12 (2.44%) AWS Certification
13 12 (2.44%) Azure Certification
13 12 (2.44%) VCAP
14 8 (1.63%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 5 (1.02%) CISM
15 5 (1.02%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (4.88%) SLA
2 14 (2.85%) QA
3 10 (2.03%) NCSC
4 9 (1.83%) NIST
5 6 (1.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 4 (0.81%) 21 CFR Part 11
6 4 (0.81%) GDPR
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
1 158 (32.11%) Active Directory
2 92 (18.70%) VMware Infrastructure
3 41 (8.33%) Hyper-V
4 32 (6.50%) Docker
5 24 (4.88%) vSphere
6 23 (4.67%) VMware NSX
7 20 (4.07%) Firmware
8 14 (2.85%) Virtual Desktop
9 6 (1.22%) NFS
9 6 (1.22%) Virtual Machines
10 5 (1.02%) Squid
11 4 (0.81%) VMware ESXi
12 3 (0.61%) VirtualBox
13 2 (0.41%) KVM
13 2 (0.41%) RACF
13 2 (0.41%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 2 (0.41%) Virtual Servers
14 1 (0.20%) Embedded Firmware
14 1 (0.20%) Lustre
14 1 (0.20%) Snort
Systems Management
1 107 (21.75%) Ansible
2 63 (12.80%) Microsoft Intune
3 50 (10.16%) Kubernetes
4 35 (7.11%) SCCM
5 27 (5.49%) Grafana
6 18 (3.66%) Single Sign-On
7 17 (3.46%) FortiGate
8 16 (3.25%) Prometheus
8 16 (3.25%) VxRail
9 12 (2.44%) Jamf Pro
10 8 (1.63%) WSUS
11 6 (1.22%) Istio
11 6 (1.22%) systemd
12 5 (1.02%) Puppet
12 5 (1.02%) Suricata
13 4 (0.81%) Consul
13 4 (0.81%) ZABBIX
14 3 (0.61%) Packer
14 3 (0.61%) SELinux
14 3 (0.61%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 199 (40.45%) Microsoft
2 104 (21.14%) VMware
3 95 (19.31%) Cisco
4 62 (12.60%) ServiceNow
5 57 (11.59%) F5
6 26 (5.28%) Fortinet
7 24 (4.88%) NetApp
8 22 (4.47%) Google
9 21 (4.27%) Zscaler
10 19 (3.86%) Juniper
11 18 (3.66%) Blue Coat
11 18 (3.66%) Infoblox
12 17 (3.46%) Citrix
12 17 (3.46%) McAfee
12 17 (3.46%) Palo Alto
12 17 (3.46%) Red Hat
13 16 (3.25%) Splunk
14 14 (2.85%) Bloomberg
14 14 (2.85%) CheckPoint
15 11 (2.24%) Arista