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

6 months to
29 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 282 225 210
Rank change year-on-year -57 -15 +1
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 498 403 447
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.91% 1.24% 1.18%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 9.80% 10.79% 9.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 259 222 251
10th Percentile £197 £182 £206
25th Percentile £295 £280 £262
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £454 £475
Median % change year-on-year -0.88% -4.42% +5.56%
75th Percentile £550 £588 £600
90th Percentile £678 £662 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £447 £425
% change year-on-year +0.67% +5.18% +6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 37 30
10th Percentile £26.41 £20.23 £29.13
25th Percentile £33.70 £33.00 -
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £68.75 - -
90th Percentile £94.42 £73.55 £65.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year - - +29.49%

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 5,084 3,735 4,513
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.31% 11.46% 11.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,934 2,338 2,593
10th Percentile £231 £219 £228
25th Percentile £390 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £488
% change year-on-year +5.56% -7.69% +5.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 427 200 213
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £25.11 £23.80
Median hourly rate £34.28 £42.50 £50.50
Median % change year-on-year -19.34% -15.84% -10.53%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £92.11 £73.20 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.50 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -32.94% -25.89% -0.26%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 -59 454 £475 - 584
UK excluding London -42 283 £450 +0.67% 394
London -50 192 £465 -19.13% 219
Work from Home -69 120 £500 +2.56% 215
North of England -65 73 £425 -17.87% 92
South East -55 69 £527 +40.60% 99
South West -6 48 £638 +10.87% 52
Midlands -31 45 £402 +8.10% 47
North West -37 41 £240 -55.76% 53
East of England -20 39 £425 -10.53% 52
West Midlands -38 39 £475 +23.08% 26
Yorkshire -45 28 £500 - 26
Scotland -24 17 £210 -49.94% 29
Wales -7 7 £376 +109.03% 11
East Midlands -12 6 £326 +97.58% 21
North East -39 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 49 (9.84%) SharePoint
2 35 (7.03%) Microsoft Exchange
3 13 (2.61%) Confluence
4 12 (2.41%) OpenStack
5 5 (1.00%) nginx
6 4 (0.80%) FactoryTalk
7 2 (0.40%) CICS
7 2 (0.40%) IIS
7 2 (0.40%) Skype for Business
7 2 (0.40%) WebSphere
8 1 (0.20%) Traefik
Applications
1 19 (3.82%) Microsoft Office
2 16 (3.21%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (1.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (1.20%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.40%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.40%) Houdini
5 2 (0.40%) NUKE
6 1 (0.20%) Weka
Business Applications
1 8 (1.61%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 165 (33.13%) Azure
2 126 (25.30%) Microsoft 365
3 105 (21.08%) AWS
4 76 (15.26%) Entra ID
5 36 (7.23%) OneDrive
6 30 (6.02%) GCP
7 23 (4.62%) GitHub
8 18 (3.61%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 15 (3.01%) OpenShift
10 14 (2.81%) Azure Monitor
11 11 (2.21%) AWS CloudFormation
11 11 (2.21%) GitHub Actions
12 10 (2.01%) Google Workspace
12 10 (2.01%) Route 53
13 9 (1.81%) Azure Sentinel
14 8 (1.61%) Amazon EC2
15 7 (1.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 7 (1.41%) IaaS
15 7 (1.41%) SaaS
16 6 (1.20%) Azure ExpressRoute
Communications & Networking
1 291 (58.43%) DNS
2 210 (42.17%) Firewall
3 201 (40.36%) DHCP
4 148 (29.72%) VPN
5 94 (18.88%) Network Security
6 86 (17.27%) WAN
7 80 (16.06%) LAN
8 74 (14.86%) VLAN
9 71 (14.26%) BGP
10 68 (13.65%) HTTP
11 57 (11.45%) SSL
12 48 (9.64%) Wi-Fi
13 47 (9.44%) Wireless
14 46 (9.24%) OSPF
15 32 (6.43%) BIG-IP
16 30 (6.02%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 26 (5.22%) SD-WAN
18 25 (5.02%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
19 24 (4.82%) Ethernet
20 20 (4.02%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (3.61%) PostgreSQL
2 16 (3.21%) SQL Server
3 8 (1.61%) MySQL
3 8 (1.61%) NoSQL
3 8 (1.61%) SQLite
4 7 (1.41%) MongoDB
5 6 (1.20%) Amazon RDS
5 6 (1.20%) Redis
6 3 (0.60%) BigQuery
6 3 (0.60%) KDB
7 1 (0.20%) Cloud Spanner
7 1 (0.20%) Kdb+
7 1 (0.20%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 48 (9.64%) JIRA
2 45 (9.04%) Git
3 34 (6.83%) Jenkins
4 27 (5.42%) GitLab
5 13 (2.61%) Fiddler
5 13 (2.61%) Visual Studio
6 12 (2.41%) Eclipse
7 9 (1.81%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (1.20%) Artifactory
9 5 (1.00%) Selenium
10 3 (0.60%) Browser DevTools
11 2 (0.40%) Bitbucket
12 1 (0.20%) MSI
12 1 (0.20%) Postman
General
1 199 (39.96%) Social Skills
2 76 (15.26%) Analytical Skills
3 56 (11.24%) Finance
4 39 (7.83%) Banking
5 32 (6.43%) Public Sector
6 28 (5.62%) Telecoms
7 17 (3.41%) Military
8 16 (3.21%) Investment Banking
9 13 (2.61%) Front Office
10 12 (2.41%) Documentation Skills
11 9 (1.81%) Aerospace
12 8 (1.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 6 (1.20%) Legal
13 6 (1.20%) Manufacturing
13 6 (1.20%) Presentation Skills
14 5 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
14 5 (1.00%) Pharmaceutical
14 5 (1.00%) Police
15 4 (0.80%) Automotive
15 4 (0.80%) Multimedia
Job Titles
1 110 (22.09%) Network Engineer
2 68 (13.65%) Support Engineer
3 60 (12.05%) Senior
4 59 (11.85%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 55 (11.04%) IT Support
6 45 (9.04%) IT Engineer
7 38 (7.63%) IT Support Engineer
8 34 (6.83%) Architect
9 33 (6.63%) Analyst
10 26 (5.22%) Senior Network Engineer
11 23 (4.62%) Platform Engineer
12 20 (4.02%) Linux Engineer
12 20 (4.02%) Security Engineer
12 20 (4.02%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 16 (3.21%) Cloud Engineer
13 16 (3.21%) IP Network Engineer
13 16 (3.21%) Network Infrastructure Engineer
13 16 (3.21%) Support Analyst
14 14 (2.81%) Consultant
14 14 (2.81%) Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 90 (18.07%) Terraform
2 19 (3.82%) REST
3 14 (2.81%) JSON
4 13 (2.61%) SAML
5 12 (2.41%) ARM Templates
5 12 (2.41%) Node.js
5 12 (2.41%) Web Services
6 9 (1.81%) .NET
6 9 (1.81%) Kafka
7 8 (1.61%) 802.1X
7 8 (1.61%) Elastic Stack
7 8 (1.61%) SPNEGO
8 7 (1.41%) Jinja
8 7 (1.41%) LDAP
9 6 (1.20%) CSS
9 6 (1.20%) Flask
9 6 (1.20%) HTML
9 6 (1.20%) RESTful
9 6 (1.20%) Software Packaging
9 6 (1.20%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 86 (17.27%) Data Centre
2 58 (11.65%) Onboarding
3 35 (7.03%) PKI
4 32 (6.43%) Hybrid Cloud
5 27 (5.42%) Management Information System
6 21 (4.22%) Linux Command Line
7 20 (4.02%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 20 (4.02%) Self-Motivation
8 17 (3.41%) Operational Technology
8 17 (3.41%) Public Cloud
8 17 (3.41%) Video Conferencing
9 15 (3.01%) Driving Licence
10 14 (2.81%) Cloud Native
11 13 (2.61%) SCADA
12 11 (2.21%) Cyber Threat
13 10 (2.01%) Enterprise Storage
13 10 (2.01%) Security Posture
14 9 (1.81%) Distributed Systems
14 9 (1.81%) Private Cloud
14 9 (1.81%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 246 (49.40%) Windows
2 163 (32.73%) Linux
3 79 (15.86%) Windows Server
4 52 (10.44%) Windows 10
5 44 (8.84%) Mac OS
6 30 (6.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 30 (6.02%) Unix
7 19 (3.82%) Apple iOS
8 14 (2.81%) Android
8 14 (2.81%) Ubuntu
9 5 (1.00%) CentOS
9 5 (1.00%) zOS
10 3 (0.60%) Check Point GAiA
10 3 (0.60%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.40%) SUSE
11 2 (0.40%) Windows Server 2012
12 1 (0.20%) Data ONTAP
12 1 (0.20%) Rocky
12 1 (0.20%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
12 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 129 (25.90%) Problem-Solving
2 108 (21.69%) ITIL
3 90 (18.07%) CI/CD
4 84 (16.87%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 81 (16.27%) Infrastructure as Code
6 75 (15.06%) DevOps
7 68 (13.65%) Load Balancing
8 67 (13.45%) ITSM
9 62 (12.45%) Agile
10 61 (12.25%) Customer Service
11 56 (11.24%) Cybersecurity
12 54 (10.84%) Continuous Improvement
13 50 (10.04%) Platform Engineering
14 48 (9.64%) Migration
15 47 (9.44%) Incident Response
16 46 (9.24%) Change Management
16 46 (9.24%) Validation
17 45 (9.04%) Service Management
18 44 (8.84%) SIEM
18 44 (8.84%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 151 (30.32%) Python
2 107 (21.49%) PowerShell
3 86 (17.27%) Bash
4 26 (5.22%) C++
5 23 (4.62%) SQL
6 21 (4.22%) JavaScript
7 18 (3.61%) C#
8 16 (3.21%) Shell Script
9 13 (2.61%) Java
9 13 (2.61%) Perl
10 12 (2.41%) Bicep
11 8 (1.61%) Korn
12 7 (1.41%) VBA
13 6 (1.20%) Go
14 5 (1.00%) ActionScript
15 3 (0.60%) Kusto Query Language
15 3 (0.60%) VBScript
16 2 (0.40%) Groovy
16 2 (0.40%) Objective-C
16 2 (0.40%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 138 (27.71%) Security Cleared
2 77 (15.46%) SC Cleared
3 62 (12.45%) Degree
4 58 (11.65%) DV Cleared
5 57 (11.45%) Cisco Certification
6 46 (9.24%) CCNP
7 27 (5.42%) CCNA
8 25 (5.02%) Microsoft Certification
9 20 (4.02%) A+ Certification
10 18 (3.61%) Computer Science Degree
11 15 (3.01%) CCIE
11 15 (3.01%) Network+ Certification
12 13 (2.61%) CISSP
12 13 (2.61%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 12 (2.41%) AWS Certification
13 12 (2.41%) VCAP
14 10 (2.01%) Azure Certification
15 8 (1.61%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 6 (1.20%) JNCIS
17 5 (1.00%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (5.02%) SLA
2 15 (3.01%) QA
3 10 (2.01%) NCSC
4 8 (1.61%) NIST
5 7 (1.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 4 (0.80%) 21 CFR Part 11
6 4 (0.80%) GxP
6 4 (0.80%) NIST 800
6 4 (0.80%) PCI DSS
7 3 (0.60%) GDPR
8 2 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
8 2 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 2 (0.40%) Government Security Classifications
8 2 (0.40%) JSP 440
9 1 (0.20%) Data Quality
9 1 (0.20%) ISO 8583
9 1 (0.20%) RMADS
System Software
1 170 (34.14%) Active Directory
2 97 (19.48%) VMware Infrastructure
3 41 (8.23%) Hyper-V
4 34 (6.83%) Docker
5 33 (6.63%) vSphere
6 23 (4.62%) VMware NSX
7 21 (4.22%) Firmware
8 15 (3.01%) Virtual Desktop
9 6 (1.20%) Virtual Machines
10 5 (1.00%) NFS
10 5 (1.00%) VMware ESXi
11 4 (0.80%) Squid
12 3 (0.60%) VirtualBox
13 2 (0.40%) KVM
13 2 (0.40%) RACF
13 2 (0.40%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 2 (0.40%) Virtual Servers
14 1 (0.20%) Lustre
14 1 (0.20%) NetIQ eDirectory
14 1 (0.20%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 111 (22.29%) Ansible
2 66 (13.25%) Microsoft Intune
3 50 (10.04%) Kubernetes
4 31 (6.22%) SCCM
5 30 (6.02%) Grafana
6 18 (3.61%) Prometheus
6 18 (3.61%) Single Sign-On
7 16 (3.21%) VxRail
8 14 (2.81%) FortiGate
8 14 (2.81%) Jamf Pro
9 8 (1.61%) Nagios
10 6 (1.20%) Istio
10 6 (1.20%) Puppet
10 6 (1.20%) systemd
11 5 (1.00%) vCenter Server
11 5 (1.00%) WSUS
12 4 (0.80%) Consul
12 4 (0.80%) Suricata
12 4 (0.80%) ZABBIX
13 3 (0.60%) SELinux
Vendors
1 204 (40.96%) Microsoft
2 114 (22.89%) VMware
3 102 (20.48%) Cisco
4 61 (12.25%) ServiceNow
5 57 (11.45%) F5
6 27 (5.42%) Fortinet
7 24 (4.82%) Google
7 24 (4.82%) Zscaler
8 22 (4.42%) NetApp
9 21 (4.22%) Palo Alto
10 20 (4.02%) Infoblox
11 19 (3.82%) Juniper
12 18 (3.61%) Splunk
13 17 (3.41%) SolarWinds
14 16 (3.21%) Blue Coat
14 16 (3.21%) Citrix
14 16 (3.21%) Red Hat
15 15 (3.01%) McAfee
16 14 (2.81%) CheckPoint
17 12 (2.41%) Bloomberg