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 8 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 250 180 210
Rank change year-on-year -70 +30 +21
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 419 451 504
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.07% 1.45% 1.12%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 10.31% 11.08% 8.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 240 284 328
10th Percentile £200 £213 £184
25th Percentile £309 £400 £263
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £525 £488
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% +7.69% -7.14%
75th Percentile £588 £675 £582
90th Percentile £655 £775 £676
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £419
% change year-on-year -5.26% +13.43% -16.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 37 8 42
10th Percentile £15.50 £20.43 £20.78
25th Percentile £21.25 £28.75 £40.68
Median hourly rate £39.50 £58.50 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.48% +17.00% -23.08%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £56.49
90th Percentile £67.25 £67.63 £68.66
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £62.50 £50.20
% change year-on-year -32.90% +24.51% -22.78%

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 4,065 4,072 6,131
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.39% 13.10% 13.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,677 2,390 3,688
10th Percentile £204 £210 £206
25th Percentile £350 £358 £356
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £490
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +2.04% -5.77%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £680 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £467 £475
% change year-on-year -3.54% -1.79% +1.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 168 136 414
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.85 £14.40
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.46 £21.00
Median hourly rate £29.44 £33.75 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.77% -32.50% +150.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £54.69 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £70.00 £74.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.24 £30.04 £53.00
% change year-on-year +37.28% -43.32% +166.60%

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 8 February 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 8 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for TCP/IP in the UK

TCP/IP
Top 15 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 8 February 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 -49 366 £450 -10.89% 261
UK excluding London -19 275 £450 -5.26% 234
London -65 112 £500 - 65
Work from Home -60 111 £425 -30.73% 97
North of England -25 90 £425 -5.29% 51
South East -15 57 £500 -8.26% 61
North West -2 50 £414 +18.25% 28
East of England -9 44 £381 -18.01% 45
West Midlands -13 40 £200 -8.57% 17
Midlands -27 40 £200 -11.11% 25
Yorkshire -37 36 £447 -37.33% 16
South West -25 32 £700 +13.82% 33
Scotland +21 30 £454 +5.58% 18
North East -19 4 £200 +6.67% 9
Wales -7 3 £293 -10.00% 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 27 (6.44%) SharePoint
2 21 (5.01%) Microsoft Exchange
3 18 (4.30%) Confluence
4 14 (3.34%) Skype for Business
5 8 (1.91%) OpenStack
6 6 (1.43%) nginx
7 3 (0.72%) Apache
8 2 (0.48%) IIS
8 2 (0.48%) WordPress
9 1 (0.24%) Apache Airflow
9 1 (0.24%) Jupyter
9 1 (0.24%) Tomcat
Applications
1 32 (7.64%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (1.91%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.43%) Weka
4 5 (1.19%) Acrobat
5 2 (0.48%) Microsoft Excel
5 2 (0.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.24%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 1 (0.24%) Finacle
1 1 (0.24%) RMDS
1 1 (0.24%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 105 (25.06%) AWS
2 96 (22.91%) Azure
3 83 (19.81%) Microsoft 365
4 24 (5.73%) Amazon S3
4 24 (5.73%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 23 (5.49%) Amazon EC2
6 22 (5.25%) GCP
7 21 (5.01%) Entra ID
8 14 (3.34%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 14 (3.34%) Amazon ELB
9 10 (2.39%) GitHub
9 10 (2.39%) OneDrive
9 10 (2.39%) Route 53
10 9 (2.15%) AWS CloudFormation
11 7 (1.67%) Amazon EKS
11 7 (1.67%) AWS Lambda
11 7 (1.67%) Cloud Computing
11 7 (1.67%) SaaS
11 7 (1.67%) Serverless
12 6 (1.43%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 248 (59.19%) DNS
2 142 (33.89%) Firewall
3 122 (29.12%) DHCP
4 117 (27.92%) VPN
5 79 (18.85%) WAN
6 73 (17.42%) LAN
7 72 (17.18%) SSL
8 59 (14.08%) VLAN
9 56 (13.37%) HTTP
9 56 (13.37%) Network Security
10 41 (9.79%) Wireshark
11 38 (9.07%) BIG-IP
12 35 (8.35%) Wi-Fi
13 32 (7.64%) BGP
14 27 (6.44%) OSPF
15 25 (5.97%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
15 25 (5.97%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 18 (4.30%) Wireless
17 17 (4.06%) Internet
17 17 (4.06%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (4.06%) SQL Server
2 13 (3.10%) Elasticsearch
3 11 (2.63%) PostgreSQL
4 4 (0.95%) MongoDB
5 1 (0.24%) Amazon Aurora
5 1 (0.24%) Amazon RDS
5 1 (0.24%) Apache Cassandra
5 1 (0.24%) Apache Hive
5 1 (0.24%) Big Data
5 1 (0.24%) Electronic Patient Records
5 1 (0.24%) Impala
5 1 (0.24%) MySQL
5 1 (0.24%) NoSQL
5 1 (0.24%) Oracle Reports
5 1 (0.24%) Power BI
5 1 (0.24%) Redis
5 1 (0.24%) Relational Database
5 1 (0.24%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 31 (7.40%) JIRA
2 30 (7.16%) GitLab
3 28 (6.68%) Fiddler
4 27 (6.44%) Git
5 24 (5.73%) Jenkins
6 10 (2.39%) Eclipse
6 10 (2.39%) Visual Studio
7 5 (1.19%) Bitbucket
7 5 (1.19%) SonarQube
8 4 (0.95%) CircleCI
9 3 (0.72%) Sonatype Nexus
9 3 (0.72%) Subversion
10 2 (0.48%) Maven
10 2 (0.48%) TeamCity
11 1 (0.24%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.24%) Cucumber
11 1 (0.24%) GCC
11 1 (0.24%) IntelliJ
11 1 (0.24%) MSI
11 1 (0.24%) Travis CI
General
1 140 (33.41%) Social Skills
2 67 (15.99%) Analytical Skills
3 38 (9.07%) Public Sector
4 31 (7.40%) Banking
5 29 (6.92%) Finance
6 23 (5.49%) Investment Banking
6 23 (5.49%) Military
7 13 (3.10%) Presentation Skills
8 11 (2.63%) Documentation Skills
8 11 (2.63%) Telecoms
9 9 (2.15%) Front Office
10 7 (1.67%) Organisational Skills
11 5 (1.19%) Legal
11 5 (1.19%) Local Government
12 4 (0.95%) Law
13 3 (0.72%) French Language
13 3 (0.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 3 (0.72%) Manufacturing
13 3 (0.72%) Marketing
14 2 (0.48%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 95 (22.67%) Network Engineer
2 62 (14.80%) Analyst
3 58 (13.84%) Support Engineer
4 44 (10.50%) Senior
5 38 (9.07%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 31 (7.40%) IT Support
7 26 (6.21%) Architect
7 26 (6.21%) IT Engineer
7 26 (6.21%) Web Engineer
8 22 (5.25%) SOC Analyst
9 21 (5.01%) 2nd Line Support
10 19 (4.53%) Junior
11 18 (4.30%) Developer
12 17 (4.06%) IT Support Engineer
12 17 (4.06%) Lead
12 17 (4.06%) Technical Analyst
12 17 (4.06%) Technical Support
13 16 (3.82%) DevOps Engineer
14 15 (3.58%) Security Engineer
15 14 (3.34%) IP Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (3.34%) Web Services
2 12 (2.86%) Middleware
3 11 (2.63%) Node.js
4 10 (2.39%) LDAP
5 9 (2.15%) REST
6 8 (1.91%) OpenID
7 7 (1.67%) SOAP
8 6 (1.43%) JSON
9 5 (1.19%) FIX Protocol
9 5 (1.19%) SAML
10 4 (0.95%) .NET
10 4 (0.95%) Kafka
10 4 (0.95%) React
10 4 (0.95%) Ultra Messaging
11 3 (0.72%) 802.1X
11 3 (0.72%) AngularJS
11 3 (0.72%) Bootstrap
11 3 (0.72%) Express.js
11 3 (0.72%) WCF
11 3 (0.72%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 32 (7.64%) Management Information System
2 28 (6.68%) Data Centre
3 24 (5.73%) Onboarding
4 22 (5.25%) Security Operations Centre
5 20 (4.77%) Cyberattack
6 18 (4.30%) Analytical Mindset
7 16 (3.82%) Public Cloud
8 12 (2.86%) CMDB
8 12 (2.86%) Driving Licence
8 12 (2.86%) NHS
8 12 (2.86%) PKI
9 11 (2.63%) Cyber Threat
9 11 (2.63%) Private Cloud
10 8 (1.91%) Enterprise Software
10 8 (1.91%) Self-Motivation
11 6 (1.43%) Grid Computing
11 6 (1.43%) Replication
11 6 (1.43%) Security Posture
12 5 (1.19%) Data Protection Act
12 5 (1.19%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 194 (46.30%) Windows
2 128 (30.55%) Linux
3 50 (11.93%) Windows Server
4 32 (7.64%) Windows 10
5 15 (3.58%) Android
6 14 (3.34%) Unix
7 13 (3.10%) Windows Server 2019
8 10 (2.39%) Mac OS
9 9 (2.15%) Windows Server 2016
10 8 (1.91%) Apple iOS
11 7 (1.67%) Windows Server 2012
12 6 (1.43%) Ubuntu
13 5 (1.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 5 (1.19%) VMS
14 4 (0.95%) Windows Server 2003
14 4 (0.95%) zOS
15 3 (0.72%) CentOS
15 3 (0.72%) Debian
16 2 (0.48%) Solaris
16 2 (0.48%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 117 (27.92%) Problem-Solving
2 65 (15.51%) ITIL
3 59 (14.08%) Incident Response
4 56 (13.37%) Cybersecurity
5 54 (12.89%) SIEM
6 53 (12.65%) Agile
7 52 (12.41%) CI/CD
8 50 (11.93%) DevOps
9 48 (11.46%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 47 (11.22%) Load Balancing
11 41 (9.79%) Infrastructure as Code
12 39 (9.31%) Root Cause Analysis
13 34 (8.11%) Security Operations
14 33 (7.88%) Migration
15 30 (7.16%) Continuous Improvement
15 30 (7.16%) Knowledge Transfer
16 29 (6.92%) Infrastructure Automation
16 29 (6.92%) Mentoring
17 27 (6.44%) Data Loss Prevention
17 27 (6.44%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 113 (26.97%) Python
2 76 (18.14%) PowerShell
3 59 (14.08%) Bash
4 21 (5.01%) SQL
5 16 (3.82%) JavaScript
6 15 (3.58%) C#
6 15 (3.58%) C++
7 13 (3.10%) Java
7 13 (3.10%) Perl
8 10 (2.39%) Shell Script
9 7 (1.67%) Go
10 4 (0.95%) C
11 3 (0.72%) Search Processing Language
11 3 (0.72%) T-SQL
12 2 (0.48%) Kusto Query Language
12 2 (0.48%) Ruby
12 2 (0.48%) VBA
13 1 (0.24%) PL/SQL
13 1 (0.24%) TypeScript
13 1 (0.24%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 141 (33.65%) Security Cleared
2 104 (24.82%) SC Cleared
3 46 (10.98%) Degree
4 43 (10.26%) DV Cleared
5 37 (8.83%) Cisco Certification
6 30 (7.16%) CCNP
7 23 (5.49%) CompTIA Security+
8 21 (5.01%) Microsoft Certification
9 20 (4.77%) Computer Science Degree
10 19 (4.53%) Network+ Certification
11 17 (4.06%) Azure Certification
11 17 (4.06%) CCNA
12 16 (3.82%) CompTIA CySA+
13 11 (2.63%) Server+ Certification
14 10 (2.39%) CISSP
14 10 (2.39%) JNCIS
15 9 (2.15%) Microsoft Certified Professional
16 8 (1.91%) CCIE
17 6 (1.43%) ECDL
18 5 (1.19%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (3.34%) GDPR
2 9 (2.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 8 (1.91%) SLA
4 6 (1.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 5 (1.19%) NCSC
5 5 (1.19%) NIST
6 4 (0.95%) HIPAA
7 2 (0.48%) Disclosure Scotland
7 2 (0.48%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.48%) QA
8 1 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.24%) GRC
8 1 (0.24%) RMADS
8 1 (0.24%) SOC 2
System Software
1 93 (22.20%) Active Directory
2 58 (13.84%) VMware Infrastructure
3 44 (10.50%) Docker
4 24 (5.73%) Hyper-V
5 16 (3.82%) Firmware
6 10 (2.39%) VMware NSX
6 10 (2.39%) vSphere
7 8 (1.91%) Virtual Machines
8 7 (1.67%) Lustre
8 7 (1.67%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 6 (1.43%) GPFS
9 6 (1.43%) Squid
9 6 (1.43%) Virtual Desktop
10 5 (1.19%) KVM
10 5 (1.19%) NDS
10 5 (1.19%) NetIQ eDirectory
10 5 (1.19%) VMware ESXi
11 4 (0.95%) NFS
12 2 (0.48%) Veritas File System
12 2 (0.48%) Veritas Volume Manager
Systems Management
1 83 (19.81%) Ansible
2 46 (10.98%) Terraform
3 40 (9.55%) Kubernetes
4 36 (8.59%) SCCM
5 31 (7.40%) Microsoft Intune
6 21 (5.01%) Grafana
7 18 (4.30%) Prometheus
8 15 (3.58%) FortiGate
8 15 (3.58%) Single Sign-On
9 8 (1.91%) Puppet
9 8 (1.91%) WSUS
10 7 (1.67%) Nagios
10 7 (1.67%) QRadar
11 6 (1.43%) Consul
12 5 (1.19%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 5 (1.19%) Red Hat Satellite
12 5 (1.19%) Tivoli NetView
13 4 (0.95%) ITRS Geneos
13 4 (0.95%) Nmap
13 4 (0.95%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 125 (29.83%) Microsoft
2 82 (19.57%) VMware
3 71 (16.95%) F5
4 60 (14.32%) Cisco
5 45 (10.74%) Palo Alto
6 42 (10.02%) Splunk
7 32 (7.64%) Blue Coat
8 30 (7.16%) CheckPoint
8 30 (7.16%) McAfee
9 26 (6.21%) ServiceNow
10 23 (5.49%) NetApp
11 21 (5.01%) Fortinet
12 20 (4.77%) Juniper
12 20 (4.77%) SolarWinds
13 18 (4.30%) Red Hat
14 15 (3.58%) Meraki
14 15 (3.58%) Oracle
15 13 (3.10%) Veeam
16 12 (2.86%) Citrix
17 10 (2.39%) Zscaler