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 25 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 230 207 198
Rank change year-on-year -23 -9 +42
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 441 454 582
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.23% 1.25% 1.26%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 11.04% 10.28% 9.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 237 258 361
10th Percentile £185 £203 £185
25th Percentile £280 £267 £270
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £475 £425
Median % change year-on-year -2.11% +11.76% -17.48%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £581
90th Percentile £713 £738 £681
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £400 £400
% change year-on-year +6.25% - -11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 19 58
10th Percentile £15.50 £31.00 £23.13
25th Percentile £33.00 £62.50 £33.83
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year - +30.00% -23.08%
75th Percentile - - £56.49
90th Percentile £81.20 £67.50 £69.62
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year - +30.00% -23.08%

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 3,996 4,418 6,433
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.16% 12.17% 13.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,585 2,543 3,987
10th Percentile £206 £225 £213
25th Percentile £356 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £685 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 197 171 347
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.26 £17.72
25th Percentile £20.75 £23.59 £22.88
Median hourly rate £34.00 £42.50 £56.40
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% -24.65% +35.09%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £66.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £76.16
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £48.56 £56.49
% change year-on-year -12.48% -14.04% +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 25 November 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 25 November 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for TCP/IP in the UK

TCP/IP
Top 17 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 25 November 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 -22 399 £477 +0.32% 274
UK excluding London -20 259 £425 +6.25% 262
London +2 152 £550 +12.82% 69
Work from Home -10 134 £454 -11.41% 121
North of England -29 79 £475 +11.76% 26
East of England +3 54 £413 -29.79% 44
South East -11 53 £375 -14.29% 106
Yorkshire -27 39 £425 -15.00% 7
North West -10 37 £535 +15.68% 16
Midlands -31 35 £213 -43.33% 27
West Midlands -2 34 £225 - 16
South West -14 27 £700 +27.27% 38
Scotland +5 18 £414 +3.44% 24
Wales -4 4 £250 -16.67% 3
Northern Ireland -9 3 - - 4
North East -11 3 £400 +166.67% 3
East Midlands -31 1 £165 -56.00% 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 35 (7.94%) SharePoint
2 27 (6.12%) Microsoft Exchange
3 14 (3.17%) Skype for Business
4 7 (1.59%) OpenStack
5 6 (1.36%) Confluence
6 4 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
7 3 (0.68%) Apache Spark
8 2 (0.45%) IIS
8 2 (0.45%) nginx
8 2 (0.45%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.45%) WordPress
9 1 (0.23%) Apache
9 1 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2010
9 1 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2013
9 1 (0.23%) Jupyter
Applications
1 41 (9.30%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (1.36%) Weka
3 3 (0.68%) Microsoft Excel
4 2 (0.45%) AutoCAD
5 1 (0.23%) Acrobat
5 1 (0.23%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 1 (0.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.23%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 1 (0.23%) Dynamics CRM
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%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.23%) RMDS
1 1 (0.23%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 88 (19.95%) Microsoft 365
2 87 (19.73%) AWS
2 87 (19.73%) Azure
3 27 (6.12%) Amazon EC2
4 26 (5.90%) Amazon S3
5 25 (5.67%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 23 (5.22%) Entra ID
7 22 (4.99%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 22 (4.99%) Amazon ELB
7 22 (4.99%) GCP
8 14 (3.17%) GitHub
9 9 (2.04%) SaaS
10 8 (1.81%) AWS CloudFormation
10 8 (1.81%) Cloud Computing
10 8 (1.81%) OneDrive
11 6 (1.36%) Google Workspace
12 4 (0.91%) Apigee
12 4 (0.91%) Azure DevOps
12 4 (0.91%) GitHub Actions
12 4 (0.91%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 230 (52.15%) DNS
2 161 (36.51%) Firewall
3 129 (29.25%) DHCP
4 120 (27.21%) VPN
5 79 (17.91%) SSL
6 67 (15.19%) LAN
7 66 (14.97%) WAN
8 60 (13.61%) VLAN
9 58 (13.15%) HTTP
10 57 (12.93%) Network Security
11 30 (6.80%) Internet
12 27 (6.12%) Wireshark
13 26 (5.90%) Ethernet
14 25 (5.67%) BGP
15 24 (5.44%) SAN
15 24 (5.44%) Wi-Fi
16 23 (5.22%) Wireless
17 18 (4.08%) OSPF
18 16 (3.63%) BIG-IP
19 14 (3.17%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (5.67%) SQL Server
2 9 (2.04%) NoSQL
2 9 (2.04%) PostgreSQL
3 5 (1.13%) Oracle Database
4 4 (0.91%) Big Data
4 4 (0.91%) Elasticsearch
4 4 (0.91%) MySQL
5 3 (0.68%) Amazon Aurora
5 3 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
5 3 (0.68%) Apache Cassandra
5 3 (0.68%) DB2
5 3 (0.68%) Delta Lake
5 3 (0.68%) Hadoop
5 3 (0.68%) Parquet
5 3 (0.68%) Relational Database
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%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 52 (11.79%) Git
1 52 (11.79%) Jenkins
2 28 (6.35%) GitLab
3 22 (4.99%) Eclipse
3 22 (4.99%) Visual Studio
4 18 (4.08%) JIRA
5 16 (3.63%) Postman
6 14 (3.17%) Fiddler
7 8 (1.81%) Subversion
8 4 (0.91%) Robot Framework
8 4 (0.91%) TeamCity
9 3 (0.68%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.68%) MLflow
9 3 (0.68%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.68%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.45%) Maven
10 2 (0.45%) Mercurial
10 2 (0.45%) Poetry
10 2 (0.45%) PyCharm
10 2 (0.45%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 159 (36.05%) Social Skills
2 83 (18.82%) Analytical Skills
3 56 (12.70%) Finance
4 32 (7.26%) Public Sector
5 29 (6.58%) Military
6 27 (6.12%) Presentation Skills
7 26 (5.90%) Banking
8 18 (4.08%) Investment Banking
9 13 (2.95%) Front Office
10 12 (2.72%) Legal
11 11 (2.49%) Telecoms
12 10 (2.27%) Organisational Skills
13 8 (1.81%) Financial Institution
13 8 (1.81%) Law
13 8 (1.81%) Local Government
14 4 (0.91%) Documentation Skills
14 4 (0.91%) Manufacturing
15 3 (0.68%) Aerospace
15 3 (0.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 2 (0.45%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 75 (17.01%) Network Engineer
2 74 (16.78%) Support Engineer
3 59 (13.38%) Senior
4 53 (12.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 47 (10.66%) Analyst
6 36 (8.16%) IT Support
7 31 (7.03%) IT Engineer
8 29 (6.58%) Developer
9 26 (5.90%) Support Analyst
9 26 (5.90%) Technical Support
10 24 (5.44%) Technical Engineer
11 21 (4.76%) 2nd Line Support
12 20 (4.54%) C# Software Engineer
12 20 (4.54%) DevOps Engineer
12 20 (4.54%) Software Engineer
13 17 (3.85%) Automation Engineer
14 16 (3.63%) IT Support Engineer
14 16 (3.63%) Junior
14 16 (3.63%) Senior DevOps
14 16 (3.63%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (5.67%) Node.js
1 25 (5.67%) Web Services
2 20 (4.54%) Middleware
3 16 (3.63%) REST
4 12 (2.72%) LDAP
5 11 (2.49%) FIX Protocol
5 11 (2.49%) SOAP
6 8 (1.81%) Elastic Stack
7 7 (1.59%) AngularJS
8 5 (1.13%) FpML
8 5 (1.13%) Ultra Messaging
9 4 (0.91%) React
9 4 (0.91%) RESTful
9 4 (0.91%) SAML
10 3 (0.68%) Apache Avro
10 3 (0.68%) ASP.NET Web API
10 3 (0.68%) Express.js
10 3 (0.68%) Flask
10 3 (0.68%) NumPy
10 3 (0.68%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 31 (7.03%) Data Centre
2 29 (6.58%) Management Information System
3 22 (4.99%) Onboarding
4 17 (3.85%) Analytical Mindset
5 15 (3.40%) Private Cloud
6 13 (2.95%) Driving Licence
6 13 (2.95%) NHS
6 13 (2.95%) Security Posture
7 11 (2.49%) Replication
7 11 (2.49%) Video Conferencing
8 9 (2.04%) CMDB
8 9 (2.04%) Public Cloud
9 8 (1.81%) Enterprise Software
9 8 (1.81%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 8 (1.81%) iPhone
9 8 (1.81%) PKI
9 8 (1.81%) SCADA
9 8 (1.81%) Self-Motivation
10 7 (1.59%) Clustering
10 7 (1.59%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 205 (46.49%) Windows
2 148 (33.56%) Linux
3 55 (12.47%) Windows Server
4 47 (10.66%) Windows 10
5 36 (8.16%) Unix
6 17 (3.85%) Mac OS
7 16 (3.63%) Windows Server 2016
8 14 (3.17%) Android
9 13 (2.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 8 (1.81%) Apple iOS
10 8 (1.81%) Ubuntu
10 8 (1.81%) Windows 7
10 8 (1.81%) Windows Server 2019
11 7 (1.59%) Solaris
12 6 (1.36%) CentOS
12 6 (1.36%) VMS
12 6 (1.36%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.91%) Debian
13 4 (0.91%) Windows Server 2003
14 3 (0.68%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 109 (24.72%) Problem-Solving
2 80 (18.14%) Agile
3 79 (17.91%) CI/CD
4 68 (15.42%) DevOps
4 68 (15.42%) ITIL
5 61 (13.83%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 51 (11.56%) Infrastructure as Code
7 48 (10.88%) High Availability
8 39 (8.84%) Cybersecurity
9 38 (8.62%) Configuration Management
10 37 (8.39%) Infrastructure Automation
10 37 (8.39%) Load Balancing
11 36 (8.16%) Continuous Integration
12 34 (7.71%) Migration
13 33 (7.48%) Validation
14 30 (6.80%) Incident Response
14 30 (6.80%) Knowledge Transfer
15 28 (6.35%) Service Management
15 28 (6.35%) SIEM
16 26 (5.90%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 151 (34.24%) Python
2 78 (17.69%) Bash
3 68 (15.42%) PowerShell
4 34 (7.71%) C++
5 30 (6.80%) C#
5 30 (6.80%) Perl
6 28 (6.35%) JavaScript
7 26 (5.90%) SQL
8 20 (4.54%) Java
9 9 (2.04%) Go
10 8 (1.81%) Shell Script
11 4 (0.91%) C
11 4 (0.91%) Kusto Query Language
12 3 (0.68%) Groovy
12 3 (0.68%) PHP
12 3 (0.68%) Search Processing Language
12 3 (0.68%) T-SQL
13 2 (0.45%) Ruby
14 1 (0.23%) Bicep
14 1 (0.23%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 108 (24.49%) Security Cleared
2 81 (18.37%) SC Cleared
3 38 (8.62%) Cisco Certification
4 37 (8.39%) Degree
5 36 (8.16%) Microsoft Certification
6 28 (6.35%) DV Cleared
7 25 (5.67%) CCNP
8 23 (5.22%) CCNA
9 18 (4.08%) Network+ Certification
10 14 (3.17%) MCP
10 14 (3.17%) MCSE
11 13 (2.95%) Azure Certification
12 12 (2.72%) CISSP
13 11 (2.49%) Server+ Certification
14 10 (2.27%) CompTIA Security+
14 10 (2.27%) MCSA
15 7 (1.59%) A+ Certification
15 7 (1.59%) Computer Science Degree
16 6 (1.36%) ECDL
16 6 (1.36%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (5.22%) GDPR
2 8 (1.81%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 7 (1.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 6 (1.36%) Cyber Essentials
4 6 (1.36%) NIST
5 5 (1.13%) SLA
6 4 (0.91%) HIPAA
7 3 (0.68%) PCI DSS
7 3 (0.68%) QA
8 2 (0.45%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.45%) NCSC
9 1 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
9 1 (0.23%) SOC 2
System Software
1 101 (22.90%) Active Directory
2 84 (19.05%) VMware Infrastructure
3 47 (10.66%) Docker
4 37 (8.39%) Hyper-V
5 13 (2.95%) VMware ESXi
6 11 (2.49%) Firmware
7 7 (1.59%) Lustre
7 7 (1.59%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 7 (1.59%) Terminal Services
8 6 (1.36%) GPFS
8 6 (1.36%) Veritas Cluster Server
8 6 (1.36%) vSphere
9 5 (1.13%) NDS
9 5 (1.13%) NetIQ eDirectory
9 5 (1.13%) NFS
9 5 (1.13%) Virtual Machines
9 5 (1.13%) VMware NSX
10 4 (0.91%) Veritas File System
10 4 (0.91%) Veritas Volume Manager
10 4 (0.91%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 94 (21.32%) Ansible
2 61 (13.83%) Terraform
3 37 (8.39%) SCCM
4 27 (6.12%) Puppet
5 25 (5.67%) Kubernetes
6 23 (5.22%) Microsoft Intune
7 15 (3.40%) Grafana
7 15 (3.40%) Prometheus
8 10 (2.27%) Microsoft Clustering
9 9 (2.04%) FortiGate
9 9 (2.04%) vCenter Server
10 8 (1.81%) Single Sign-On
11 7 (1.59%) Nessus
12 6 (1.36%) QRadar
13 5 (1.13%) CASB
13 5 (1.13%) ITRS Geneos
13 5 (1.13%) Progress Chef
13 5 (1.13%) WSUS
14 4 (0.91%) Red Hat Satellite
15 3 (0.68%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 161 (36.51%) Microsoft
2 104 (23.58%) VMware
3 60 (13.61%) F5
4 56 (12.70%) Cisco
5 51 (11.56%) Palo Alto
6 43 (9.75%) CheckPoint
7 23 (5.22%) Citrix
8 21 (4.76%) Blue Coat
8 21 (4.76%) Red Hat
8 21 (4.76%) ServiceNow
8 21 (4.76%) Splunk
9 20 (4.54%) MuleSoft
9 20 (4.54%) Oracle
10 17 (3.85%) Fortinet
10 17 (3.85%) NetApp
11 16 (3.63%) McAfee
12 15 (3.40%) SolarWinds
13 12 (2.72%) Juniper
14 10 (2.27%) CyberArk
14 10 (2.27%) Google