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 3 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 290 215 208
Rank change year-on-year -75 -7 -1
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 501 417 458
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.91% 1.26% 1.20%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 9.88% 10.99% 10.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 262 228 258
10th Percentile £197 £184 £203
25th Percentile £295 £281 £262
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £458 £464 £475
Median % change year-on-year -1.35% -2.37% +5.56%
75th Percentile £550 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £695 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £425
% change year-on-year - +5.88% +6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 38 29
10th Percentile £25.67 £18.96 £43.00
25th Percentile £32.47 £33.00 -
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £68.75 - -
90th Percentile £93.79 £71.98 £65.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year - - +28.99%

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 5,073 3,796 4,532
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.25% 11.45% 11.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,929 2,382 2,616
10th Percentile £234 £220 £225
25th Percentile £390 £362 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £607
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £453 £485
% change year-on-year +4.86% -6.60% +6.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 429 206 202
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £20.94 £23.80
Median hourly rate £33.00 £41.72 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.90% -16.56% -11.49%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.63 £65.00
90th Percentile £92.19 £74.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.36 £42.22 £57.35
% change year-on-year -35.20% -26.38% -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 3 October 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 3 October 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 3 October 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 -66 459 £475 - 787
UK excluding London -54 285 £450 - 535
London -47 194 £475 -14.03% 328
Work from Home -80 122 £500 - 294
South East -48 71 £525 +40.00% 142
North of England -70 70 £413 -20.29% 115
South West -4 51 £600 -5.88% 64
Midlands -40 44 £402 +8.10% 64
North West -40 40 £240 -55.76% 64
East of England -19 39 £425 -10.53% 69
West Midlands -35 39 £475 +23.08% 32
Yorkshire -45 26 £500 - 37
Scotland -24 17 £210 -52.27% 49
Wales -6 7 £376 +109.03% 19
East Midlands -13 5 £326 +97.58% 32
North East -44 4 £438 +75.00% 17

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 48 (9.58%) SharePoint
2 36 (7.19%) Microsoft Exchange
3 13 (2.59%) Confluence
4 12 (2.40%) 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 21 (4.19%) Microsoft Office
2 16 (3.19%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (1.40%) 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
5 2 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.20%) Weka
Business Applications
1 8 (1.60%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 166 (33.13%) Azure
2 126 (25.15%) Microsoft 365
3 107 (21.36%) AWS
4 76 (15.17%) Entra ID
5 36 (7.19%) OneDrive
6 33 (6.59%) GCP
7 25 (4.99%) GitHub
8 19 (3.79%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 15 (2.99%) OpenShift
10 14 (2.79%) Azure Monitor
11 12 (2.40%) AWS CloudFormation
11 12 (2.40%) GitHub Actions
12 11 (2.20%) Route 53
13 10 (2.00%) Google Workspace
14 9 (1.80%) Azure Sentinel
15 8 (1.60%) Amazon EC2
16 7 (1.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 7 (1.40%) IaaS
16 7 (1.40%) SaaS
17 6 (1.20%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 293 (58.48%) DNS
2 213 (42.51%) Firewall
3 201 (40.12%) DHCP
4 148 (29.54%) VPN
5 93 (18.56%) Network Security
6 85 (16.97%) WAN
7 80 (15.97%) LAN
8 74 (14.77%) VLAN
9 70 (13.97%) BGP
10 66 (13.17%) HTTP
11 56 (11.18%) SSL
12 50 (9.98%) Wi-Fi
13 47 (9.38%) Wireless
14 44 (8.78%) OSPF
15 29 (5.79%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 28 (5.59%) BIG-IP
17 26 (5.19%) SD-WAN
18 25 (4.99%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
19 24 (4.79%) Ethernet
20 21 (4.19%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (3.59%) PostgreSQL
2 16 (3.19%) SQL Server
3 8 (1.60%) MySQL
3 8 (1.60%) NoSQL
3 8 (1.60%) SQLite
4 7 (1.40%) 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 46 (9.18%) Git
1 46 (9.18%) JIRA
2 37 (7.39%) Jenkins
3 29 (5.79%) GitLab
4 13 (2.59%) Visual Studio
5 12 (2.40%) Eclipse
5 12 (2.40%) Fiddler
6 9 (1.80%) Sonatype Nexus
7 6 (1.20%) Artifactory
8 5 (1.00%) Selenium
9 3 (0.60%) Browser DevTools
10 2 (0.40%) Bitbucket
11 1 (0.20%) Cucumber
11 1 (0.20%) MSI
11 1 (0.20%) Postman
11 1 (0.20%) REST Assured
General
1 201 (40.12%) Social Skills
2 76 (15.17%) Analytical Skills
3 60 (11.98%) Finance
4 35 (6.99%) Banking
5 32 (6.39%) Public Sector
6 27 (5.39%) Telecoms
7 17 (3.39%) Military
8 15 (2.99%) Investment Banking
9 13 (2.59%) Front Office
10 12 (2.40%) Documentation Skills
11 9 (1.80%) Aerospace
11 9 (1.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 6 (1.20%) Legal
12 6 (1.20%) Manufacturing
12 6 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
12 6 (1.20%) Presentation Skills
13 5 (1.00%) Pharmaceutical
13 5 (1.00%) Police
14 4 (0.80%) Automotive
14 4 (0.80%) Multimedia
Job Titles
1 111 (22.16%) Network Engineer
2 68 (13.57%) Support Engineer
3 61 (12.18%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 60 (11.98%) Senior
5 55 (10.98%) IT Support
6 46 (9.18%) IT Engineer
7 38 (7.58%) IT Support Engineer
8 33 (6.59%) Analyst
9 31 (6.19%) Architect
10 26 (5.19%) Senior Network Engineer
11 23 (4.59%) Platform Engineer
12 21 (4.19%) Linux Engineer
12 21 (4.19%) Security Engineer
13 20 (3.99%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
14 17 (3.39%) Cloud Engineer
15 16 (3.19%) Network Infrastructure Engineer
15 16 (3.19%) Support Analyst
16 15 (2.99%) IP Network Engineer
17 14 (2.79%) Consultant
17 14 (2.79%) Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 93 (18.56%) Terraform
2 19 (3.79%) REST
3 13 (2.59%) SAML
4 12 (2.40%) ARM Templates
4 12 (2.40%) Node.js
4 12 (2.40%) Web Services
5 11 (2.20%) JSON
6 9 (1.80%) .NET
6 9 (1.80%) Kafka
7 8 (1.60%) 802.1X
7 8 (1.60%) Elastic Stack
7 8 (1.60%) Jinja
7 8 (1.60%) SPNEGO
8 7 (1.40%) LDAP
9 6 (1.20%) CSS
9 6 (1.20%) HTML
9 6 (1.20%) pytest
9 6 (1.20%) RESTful
9 6 (1.20%) Software Packaging
9 6 (1.20%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 86 (17.17%) Data Centre
2 58 (11.58%) Onboarding
3 35 (6.99%) PKI
4 33 (6.59%) Hybrid Cloud
5 27 (5.39%) Management Information System
6 22 (4.39%) Linux Command Line
7 20 (3.99%) Self-Motivation
8 19 (3.79%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 18 (3.59%) Public Cloud
10 17 (3.39%) Operational Technology
10 17 (3.39%) Video Conferencing
11 15 (2.99%) Driving Licence
12 14 (2.79%) Cloud Native
13 13 (2.59%) SCADA
14 11 (2.20%) Cyber Threat
15 10 (2.00%) Enterprise Storage
15 10 (2.00%) Security Posture
16 9 (1.80%) Distributed Systems
16 9 (1.80%) Private Cloud
16 9 (1.80%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 252 (50.30%) Windows
2 166 (33.13%) Linux
3 81 (16.17%) Windows Server
4 52 (10.38%) Windows 10
5 44 (8.78%) Mac OS
6 31 (6.19%) Unix
7 30 (5.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 19 (3.79%) Apple iOS
9 16 (3.19%) Android
10 14 (2.79%) Ubuntu
11 5 (1.00%) CentOS
11 5 (1.00%) zOS
12 3 (0.60%) Check Point GAiA
12 3 (0.60%) Windows Server 2019
13 2 (0.40%) SUSE
13 2 (0.40%) Windows Server 2012
14 1 (0.20%) AIX
14 1 (0.20%) Solaris
14 1 (0.20%) VMS
14 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 130 (25.95%) Problem-Solving
2 109 (21.76%) ITIL
3 92 (18.36%) CI/CD
4 87 (17.37%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 85 (16.97%) Infrastructure as Code
6 78 (15.57%) DevOps
7 68 (13.57%) ITSM
8 67 (13.37%) Load Balancing
9 63 (12.57%) Agile
10 62 (12.38%) Customer Service
11 57 (11.38%) Cybersecurity
12 53 (10.58%) Continuous Improvement
13 50 (9.98%) Migration
13 50 (9.98%) Platform Engineering
14 49 (9.78%) Validation
15 48 (9.58%) Change Management
15 48 (9.58%) Incident Response
16 46 (9.18%) Service Management
17 44 (8.78%) SIEM
18 43 (8.58%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 150 (29.94%) Python
2 111 (22.16%) PowerShell
3 89 (17.76%) Bash
4 26 (5.19%) C++
5 23 (4.59%) SQL
6 18 (3.59%) C#
6 18 (3.59%) JavaScript
7 17 (3.39%) Shell Script
8 14 (2.79%) Java
9 13 (2.59%) Perl
10 12 (2.40%) Bicep
11 8 (1.60%) Korn
12 7 (1.40%) Go
13 6 (1.20%) ActionScript
14 4 (0.80%) VBA
15 3 (0.60%) Kusto Query Language
15 3 (0.60%) VBScript
16 2 (0.40%) C
16 2 (0.40%) Objective-C
16 2 (0.40%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 139 (27.74%) Security Cleared
2 77 (15.37%) SC Cleared
3 63 (12.57%) Degree
4 59 (11.78%) DV Cleared
5 56 (11.18%) Cisco Certification
6 45 (8.98%) CCNP
7 26 (5.19%) CCNA
7 26 (5.19%) Microsoft Certification
8 21 (4.19%) A+ Certification
9 18 (3.59%) Computer Science Degree
10 15 (2.99%) CCIE
10 15 (2.99%) Network+ Certification
11 13 (2.59%) CISSP
11 13 (2.59%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 12 (2.40%) AWS Certification
12 12 (2.40%) VCAP
13 10 (2.00%) Azure Certification
14 8 (1.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 6 (1.20%) JNCIS
16 5 (1.00%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (5.19%) SLA
2 16 (3.19%) QA
3 10 (2.00%) NCSC
4 8 (1.60%) NIST
5 7 (1.40%) 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
1 173 (34.53%) Active Directory
2 98 (19.56%) VMware Infrastructure
3 42 (8.38%) Hyper-V
4 36 (7.19%) Docker
5 33 (6.59%) vSphere
6 23 (4.59%) VMware NSX
7 21 (4.19%) Firmware
8 15 (2.99%) Virtual Desktop
9 6 (1.20%) Virtual Machines
10 5 (1.00%) NFS
10 5 (1.00%) VMware ESXi
11 4 (0.80%) Squid
11 4 (0.80%) VirtualBox
12 2 (0.40%) KVM
12 2 (0.40%) RACF
12 2 (0.40%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 2 (0.40%) Virtual Servers
13 1 (0.20%) GPFS
13 1 (0.20%) iptables
13 1 (0.20%) zsh
Systems Management
1 111 (22.16%) Ansible
2 65 (12.97%) Microsoft Intune
3 51 (10.18%) Kubernetes
4 33 (6.59%) SCCM
5 30 (5.99%) Grafana
6 18 (3.59%) Prometheus
6 18 (3.59%) Single Sign-On
7 16 (3.19%) VxRail
8 14 (2.79%) Jamf Pro
9 13 (2.59%) FortiGate
10 8 (1.60%) Nagios
11 6 (1.20%) Istio
11 6 (1.20%) Puppet
11 6 (1.20%) systemd
12 5 (1.00%) vCenter Server
12 5 (1.00%) WSUS
13 4 (0.80%) Consul
13 4 (0.80%) Suricata
13 4 (0.80%) ZABBIX
14 3 (0.60%) SELinux
Vendors
1 204 (40.72%) Microsoft
2 115 (22.95%) VMware
3 101 (20.16%) Cisco
4 63 (12.57%) ServiceNow
5 53 (10.58%) F5
6 25 (4.99%) Fortinet
6 25 (4.99%) Google
7 24 (4.79%) Zscaler
8 21 (4.19%) NetApp
8 21 (4.19%) Palo Alto
9 19 (3.79%) Juniper
9 19 (3.79%) Splunk
10 17 (3.39%) Infoblox
10 17 (3.39%) SolarWinds
11 16 (3.19%) Citrix
11 16 (3.19%) Red Hat
12 15 (2.99%) Blue Coat
13 14 (2.79%) CheckPoint
13 14 (2.79%) McAfee
14 12 (2.40%) Bloomberg