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 20 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 266 196 248
Rank change year-on-year -70 +52 -24
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 427 392 416
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.98% 1.34% 0.94%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 9.74% 10.10% 7.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 248 278 293
10th Percentile £213 £213 £188
25th Percentile £366 £400 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £525 £475
Median % change year-on-year -11.43% +10.53% -9.52%
75th Percentile £575 £655 £563
90th Percentile £650 £800 £674
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £513 £450
% change year-on-year -9.76% +13.89% -6.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 8 17
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.55 £16.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £28.06 £23.25
Median hourly rate £41.94 £52.25 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -19.73% -7.51% -9.69%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.06 -
90th Percentile - £65.00 £73.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £47.50 £56.49
% change year-on-year -11.71% -15.91% -13.09%

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 4,383 3,880 5,922
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.08% 13.26% 13.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,832 2,384 3,570
10th Percentile £217 £213 £205
25th Percentile £375 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £490 £475
Median % change year-on-year -0.10% +3.16% -9.51%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £473 £475
% change year-on-year +0.53% -0.53% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 188 143 393
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.22 £13.88
25th Percentile £18.97 £21.46 £18.00
Median hourly rate £36.00 £35.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.86% +7.69% +71.05%
75th Percentile £66.31 £63.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £78.10 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £32.50 £45.88
% change year-on-year +29.05% -29.16% +148.00%

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 20 March 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 20 March 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 20 March 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 -43 371 £477 -9.24% 199
UK excluding London -13 282 £463 -9.76% 178
London -68 116 £478 -4.40% 40
Work from Home -84 96 £425 -29.17% 67
North of England -27 94 £448 +2.69% 47
North West +6 60 £540 +44.00% 25
South East -40 59 £525 -5.83% 50
East of England +7 54 £350 -24.73% 26
South West -19 33 £700 +13.82% 25
Midlands -45 31 £213 -57.50% 23
Yorkshire -49 31 £443 -23.04% 17
West Midlands -39 30 £200 -4.76% 16
Scotland +20 28 £388 -14.84% 5
Wales -14 5 £293 -26.88% 4
North East -18 3 £200 +6.67% 8
East Midlands -42 1 £625 +13.64% 7

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 20 (4.68%) Confluence
1 20 (4.68%) Microsoft Exchange
2 18 (4.22%) SharePoint
3 14 (3.28%) Skype for Business
4 10 (2.34%) nginx
5 7 (1.64%) OpenStack
6 3 (0.70%) Apache
7 2 (0.47%) IIS
7 2 (0.47%) WordPress
8 1 (0.23%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.23%) IBM HTTP Server
8 1 (0.23%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.23%) Oracle HTTP Server
8 1 (0.23%) Traefik
8 1 (0.23%) WebSphere
8 1 (0.23%) WebSphere Application Server
8 1 (0.23%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 38 (8.90%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (2.34%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.41%) Weka
4 5 (1.17%) Acrobat
5 4 (0.94%) Microsoft Excel
5 4 (0.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.23%) Adobe Creative Suite
Business Applications
1 1 (0.23%) RMDS
1 1 (0.23%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 94 (22.01%) Azure
2 93 (21.78%) AWS
3 76 (17.80%) Microsoft 365
4 29 (6.79%) GCP
5 21 (4.92%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 20 (4.68%) Entra ID
7 15 (3.51%) Amazon S3
8 14 (3.28%) Amazon EC2
9 13 (3.04%) Route 53
10 11 (2.58%) Amazon EKS
11 10 (2.34%) AWS Lambda
11 10 (2.34%) OneDrive
11 10 (2.34%) Serverless
12 9 (2.11%) AWS CloudFormation
12 9 (2.11%) GitHub
13 8 (1.87%) Azure DevOps
14 7 (1.64%) Cloud Computing
14 7 (1.64%) Nutanix
14 7 (1.64%) SaaS
15 6 (1.41%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 240 (56.21%) DNS
2 140 (32.79%) Firewall
3 107 (25.06%) DHCP
4 102 (23.89%) VPN
5 87 (20.37%) WAN
6 78 (18.27%) LAN
7 64 (14.99%) HTTP
7 64 (14.99%) SSL
8 61 (14.29%) VLAN
9 58 (13.58%) Network Security
10 45 (10.54%) BGP
10 45 (10.54%) BIG-IP
11 42 (9.84%) Wi-Fi
12 39 (9.13%) OSPF
12 39 (9.13%) Wireshark
13 33 (7.73%) Ethernet
14 31 (7.26%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 26 (6.09%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
16 23 (5.39%) Wireless
17 19 (4.45%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (3.28%) SQL Server
2 13 (3.04%) Elasticsearch
3 8 (1.87%) PostgreSQL
4 4 (0.94%) MongoDB
5 1 (0.23%) Amazon Aurora
5 1 (0.23%) Amazon RDS
5 1 (0.23%) Apache Hive
5 1 (0.23%) Big Data
5 1 (0.23%) Electronic Patient Records
5 1 (0.23%) Impala
5 1 (0.23%) MySQL
5 1 (0.23%) NoSQL
5 1 (0.23%) Oracle Reports
5 1 (0.23%) Power BI
5 1 (0.23%) Relational Database
5 1 (0.23%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 35 (8.20%) JIRA
2 30 (7.03%) Fiddler
3 22 (5.15%) GitLab
4 14 (3.28%) Eclipse
4 14 (3.28%) Git
4 14 (3.28%) Jenkins
4 14 (3.28%) Visual Studio
5 7 (1.64%) Bitbucket
5 7 (1.64%) SonarQube
6 6 (1.41%) Browser DevTools
7 4 (0.94%) CircleCI
8 2 (0.47%) Sonatype Nexus
9 1 (0.23%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 1 (0.23%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.23%) GCC
9 1 (0.23%) IntelliJ
9 1 (0.23%) Introscope
9 1 (0.23%) MSI
9 1 (0.23%) Subversion
9 1 (0.23%) Travis CI
General
1 152 (35.60%) Social Skills
2 57 (13.35%) Analytical Skills
3 41 (9.60%) Finance
4 36 (8.43%) Banking
5 32 (7.49%) Public Sector
6 30 (7.03%) Presentation Skills
7 24 (5.62%) Investment Banking
7 24 (5.62%) Military
8 18 (4.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 14 (3.28%) Documentation Skills
10 10 (2.34%) Telecoms
11 9 (2.11%) Front Office
12 7 (1.64%) Organisational Skills
13 5 (1.17%) Law
14 4 (0.94%) Legal
15 3 (0.70%) Financial Institution
15 3 (0.70%) French Language
15 3 (0.70%) Manufacturing
15 3 (0.70%) Marketing
16 2 (0.47%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 109 (25.53%) Network Engineer
2 54 (12.65%) Analyst
3 53 (12.41%) Support Engineer
4 37 (8.67%) Web Engineer
5 34 (7.96%) Senior
6 27 (6.32%) Architect
7 25 (5.85%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 22 (5.15%) IT Engineer
8 22 (5.15%) IT Support
9 21 (4.92%) SOC Analyst
9 21 (4.92%) Technical Engineer
10 19 (4.45%) Blue Coat Engineer
10 19 (4.45%) IP Network Engineer
11 18 (4.22%) Technical Support
12 17 (3.98%) IT Support Engineer
12 17 (3.98%) Junior
12 17 (3.98%) Systems Engineer
12 17 (3.98%) Technical Analyst
13 15 (3.51%) Lead
14 14 (3.28%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (4.45%) LDAP
2 17 (3.98%) Web Services
3 14 (3.28%) Node.js
4 11 (2.58%) OpenID
5 9 (2.11%) 802.1X
5 9 (2.11%) SAML
6 7 (1.64%) Middleware
7 6 (1.41%) JSON
7 6 (1.41%) REST
8 5 (1.17%) FIX Protocol
9 4 (0.94%) Kafka
9 4 (0.94%) NETCONF
9 4 (0.94%) OAuth
9 4 (0.94%) OpenConfig
9 4 (0.94%) RESTCONF
9 4 (0.94%) Ultra Messaging
9 4 (0.94%) YANG
10 3 (0.70%) .NET
10 3 (0.70%) ARM Templates
10 3 (0.70%) React
Miscellaneous
1 32 (7.49%) Management Information System
2 30 (7.03%) Data Centre
3 22 (5.15%) Security Operations Centre
4 21 (4.92%) Cyberattack
5 17 (3.98%) Onboarding
6 16 (3.75%) Public Cloud
7 15 (3.51%) Industry 4.0
7 15 (3.51%) Robotics
8 13 (3.04%) Security Posture
9 12 (2.81%) CMDB
9 12 (2.81%) NHS
9 12 (2.81%) PKI
10 11 (2.58%) Driving Licence
10 11 (2.58%) Private Cloud
11 10 (2.34%) Analytical Mindset
11 10 (2.34%) Cyber Threat
11 10 (2.34%) Enterprise Software
12 7 (1.64%) Self-Motivation
13 6 (1.41%) Grid Computing
13 6 (1.41%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 185 (43.33%) Windows
2 111 (26.00%) Linux
3 52 (12.18%) Windows Server
4 23 (5.39%) Windows 10
5 15 (3.51%) Android
6 12 (2.81%) Unix
7 10 (2.34%) Mac OS
8 9 (2.11%) Windows Server 2012
9 8 (1.87%) Apple iOS
10 6 (1.41%) Windows Server 2019
10 6 (1.41%) zOS
11 4 (0.94%) Windows Server 2003
11 4 (0.94%) Windows Server 2016
12 3 (0.70%) Debian
12 3 (0.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 3 (0.70%) Ubuntu
12 3 (0.70%) VMS
12 3 (0.70%) Windows 7
13 2 (0.47%) AIX
14 1 (0.23%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 127 (29.74%) Problem-Solving
2 65 (15.22%) ITIL
3 54 (12.65%) Agile
4 52 (12.18%) Cybersecurity
5 51 (11.94%) Incident Response
5 51 (11.94%) SIEM
6 49 (11.48%) Load Balancing
7 45 (10.54%) DevOps
8 44 (10.30%) CI/CD
9 38 (8.90%) Infrastructure as Code
10 37 (8.67%) Migration
10 37 (8.67%) Root Cause Analysis
10 37 (8.67%) Security Operations
11 36 (8.43%) Customer Service
12 35 (8.20%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 35 (8.20%) Validation
13 32 (7.49%) Decision-Making
14 31 (7.26%) Data Loss Prevention
15 30 (7.03%) Malware Detection/Protection
16 28 (6.56%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 101 (23.65%) Python
2 77 (18.03%) PowerShell
3 52 (12.18%) Bash
4 21 (4.92%) JavaScript
4 21 (4.92%) SQL
5 18 (4.22%) C#
5 18 (4.22%) C++
6 11 (2.58%) Java
7 8 (1.87%) Go
7 8 (1.87%) Perl
8 6 (1.41%) Shell Script
9 5 (1.17%) C
10 2 (0.47%) Kusto Query Language
10 2 (0.47%) Ruby
10 2 (0.47%) T-SQL
10 2 (0.47%) VBA
10 2 (0.47%) VBScript
11 1 (0.23%) Bicep
11 1 (0.23%) Jython
11 1 (0.23%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 137 (32.08%) Security Cleared
2 110 (25.76%) SC Cleared
3 59 (13.82%) Degree
4 46 (10.77%) Cisco Certification
5 43 (10.07%) DV Cleared
6 36 (8.43%) CCNP
7 32 (7.49%) CompTIA Security+
8 25 (5.85%) Computer Science Degree
9 23 (5.39%) CCNA
10 18 (4.22%) CISSP
10 18 (4.22%) CompTIA CySA+
11 15 (3.51%) Microsoft Certification
12 12 (2.81%) Network+ Certification
13 10 (2.34%) JNCIS
14 9 (2.11%) MCSE
15 7 (1.64%) Azure Certification
15 7 (1.64%) CCIE
15 7 (1.64%) MCSA
16 6 (1.41%) AWS Certification
16 6 (1.41%) GCIH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (2.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 8 (1.87%) GDPR
2 8 (1.87%) NIST
2 8 (1.87%) SLA
3 5 (1.17%) NCSC
4 2 (0.47%) HIPAA
4 2 (0.47%) QA
4 2 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
5 1 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
5 1 (0.23%) GRC
5 1 (0.23%) RMADS
System Software
1 89 (20.84%) Active Directory
2 52 (12.18%) VMware Infrastructure
3 31 (7.26%) Docker
4 21 (4.92%) Firmware
5 11 (2.58%) VMware NSX
5 11 (2.58%) vSphere
6 9 (2.11%) Hyper-V
6 9 (2.11%) Squid
7 8 (1.87%) Virtual Machines
8 7 (1.64%) Lustre
8 7 (1.64%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 6 (1.41%) GPFS
10 5 (1.17%) Virtual Desktop
11 4 (0.94%) KVM
12 3 (0.70%) VMware ESXi
13 2 (0.47%) Ceph
13 2 (0.47%) NDS
13 2 (0.47%) NetIQ eDirectory
13 2 (0.47%) NFS
14 1 (0.23%) Citrix Presentation Server
Systems Management
1 67 (15.69%) Ansible
2 42 (9.84%) Terraform
3 38 (8.90%) Kubernetes
4 29 (6.79%) SCCM
5 26 (6.09%) Microsoft Intune
6 24 (5.62%) Grafana
7 21 (4.92%) Prometheus
8 20 (4.68%) Single Sign-On
9 17 (3.98%) FortiGate
10 9 (2.11%) Nagios
11 8 (1.87%) Consul
11 8 (1.87%) QRadar
11 8 (1.87%) WSUS
12 6 (1.41%) Puppet
12 6 (1.41%) Tivoli NetView
13 5 (1.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 5 (1.17%) CASB
13 5 (1.17%) Nessus
14 4 (0.94%) ITRS Geneos
15 3 (0.70%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 117 (27.40%) Microsoft
2 73 (17.10%) VMware
3 67 (15.69%) F5
4 60 (14.05%) Cisco
5 41 (9.60%) Splunk
6 35 (8.20%) Blue Coat
6 35 (8.20%) Palo Alto
7 32 (7.49%) McAfee
8 26 (6.09%) Juniper
8 26 (6.09%) ServiceNow
9 23 (5.39%) Fortinet
10 22 (5.15%) NetApp
11 19 (4.45%) CheckPoint
12 18 (4.22%) Red Hat
13 15 (3.51%) Citrix
13 15 (3.51%) Siemens
14 13 (3.04%) Aruba
14 13 (3.04%) SolarWinds
15 12 (2.81%) Oracle
15 12 (2.81%) Zscaler