WAN Engineer Contracts

Wide Area Network Engineer (WAN Engineer)
UK

The median Wide Area Network Engineer (WAN Engineer) daily rate in the UK is £510, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 26 July 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 534 530 613
Rank change year-on-year -4 +83 +224
Contract jobs requiring a WAN Engineer 21 50 67
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.064% 0.12% 0.12%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.070% 0.13% 0.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 13 13 17
10th Percentile £285 £187 £266
25th Percentile £375 £325 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £375 £425
Median % change year-on-year +36.00% -11.76% -10.53%
75th Percentile £575 £538 £525
90th Percentile £691 £635 £553
UK excluding London median daily rate £300 £350 £403
% change year-on-year -14.29% -13.04% +0.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 0
10th Percentile £36.63 - -
25th Percentile £37.19 - -
Median hourly rate £38.75 - -
75th Percentile £39.69 - -
90th Percentile £39.88 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - -

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 30,196 37,595 51,597
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.56% 93.05% 94.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,193 24,367 35,690
10th Percentile £284 £300 £308
25th Percentile £400 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.87% -0.47%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - +2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,458 2,277 1,552
10th Percentile £13.73 £13.69 £14.57
25th Percentile £17.30 £18.27 £19.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £41.81 £43.32
Median % change year-on-year -39.85% -3.47% +68.67%
75th Percentile £55.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £73.75 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £39.03
% change year-on-year -41.51% +10.19% +83.65%

WAN Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured WAN Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for WAN Engineer in the UK

WAN Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing WAN Engineer.

Daily rate trend for WAN Engineer in the UK

WAN Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing WAN Engineer over the 6 months to 26 July 2025.

Daily rate histogram for WAN Engineer in the UK

WAN Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing WAN Engineer.

Hourly rate trend for WAN Engineer in the UK

WAN Engineer
Top 6 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing WAN Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 26 July 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 -14 20 £510 +36.00% 6
London +24 17 £550 -10.20% 1
Work from Home +13 3 £510 +36.00% 1
UK excluding London -20 3 £300 -14.29% 5
Midlands -34 3 £300 -6.25% 5
West Midlands -34 3 £300 -6.25% 5

WAN Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 26 July 2025, WAN Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring WAN Engineer in the job title.

1 21 (100.00%) WAN
2 18 (85.71%) BGP
3 16 (76.19%) MPLS
4 15 (71.43%) OSPF
5 10 (47.62%) VPN
5 10 (47.62%) SD-WAN
6 8 (38.10%) Social Skills
6 8 (38.10%) Migration
7 7 (33.33%) Cisco
7 7 (33.33%) Fortinet
8 6 (28.57%) Multicast
8 6 (28.57%) Ansible
8 6 (28.57%) Juniper
9 5 (23.81%) IPsec
9 5 (23.81%) Change Control
9 5 (23.81%) Security Cleared
9 5 (23.81%) Documentation Skills
9 5 (23.81%) Network Segmentation
10 4 (19.05%) Performance Monitoring
10 4 (19.05%) Runbook
10 4 (19.05%) Data Centre
10 4 (19.05%) Network Security
10 4 (19.05%) Junos
10 4 (19.05%) SC Cleared
10 4 (19.05%) Azure
10 4 (19.05%) Firewall
10 4 (19.05%) ITIL
11 3 (14.29%) LAN
11 3 (14.29%) Finance
11 3 (14.29%) Cisco Nexus

WAN Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Cloud Services
1 4 (19.05%) Azure
2 2 (9.52%) AWS
2 2 (9.52%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 21 (100.00%) WAN
2 18 (85.71%) BGP
3 16 (76.19%) MPLS
4 15 (71.43%) OSPF
5 10 (47.62%) SD-WAN
5 10 (47.62%) VPN
6 6 (28.57%) Multicast
7 5 (23.81%) IPsec
8 4 (19.05%) Firewall
8 4 (19.05%) Junos
8 4 (19.05%) Network Security
9 3 (14.29%) Cisco Nexus
9 3 (14.29%) LAN
10 2 (9.52%) Cisco IOS
10 2 (9.52%) EIGRP
10 2 (9.52%) Ethernet VPN
10 2 (9.52%) IOS XR
10 2 (9.52%) NX-OS
10 2 (9.52%) VXLAN
11 1 (4.76%) VPLS
Development Applications
1 3 (14.29%) Sonatype Nexus
2 1 (4.76%) GitLab
General
1 8 (38.10%) Social Skills
2 5 (23.81%) Documentation Skills
3 3 (14.29%) Banking
3 3 (14.29%) Finance
3 3 (14.29%) Public Sector
4 2 (9.52%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (4.76%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 4 (19.05%) Data Centre
2 3 (14.29%) PKI
3 2 (9.52%) Cloud Native
4 1 (4.76%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
Operating Systems
1 2 (9.52%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 8 (38.10%) Migration
2 5 (23.81%) Change Control
2 5 (23.81%) Network Segmentation
3 4 (19.05%) ITIL
3 4 (19.05%) Performance Monitoring
3 4 (19.05%) Runbook
4 3 (14.29%) Load Balancing
5 2 (9.52%) Analytics
5 2 (9.52%) Change Management
5 2 (9.52%) End-to-End Testing
5 2 (9.52%) Network Monitoring
5 2 (9.52%) Network Optimisation
5 2 (9.52%) Network Virtualisation
5 2 (9.52%) Problem-Solving
5 2 (9.52%) Project Management
5 2 (9.52%) Security Patching
5 2 (9.52%) Service-Level Objective
5 2 (9.52%) Time Management
5 2 (9.52%) Validation
5 2 (9.52%) WAN Optimisation
Programming Languages
1 2 (9.52%) Python
Qualifications
1 5 (23.81%) Security Cleared
2 4 (19.05%) SC Cleared
3 2 (9.52%) CCNP
3 2 (9.52%) Cisco Certification
3 2 (9.52%) JNCIS
4 1 (4.76%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (4.76%) QA
System Software
1 2 (9.52%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 6 (28.57%) Ansible
2 1 (4.76%) Nagios
2 1 (4.76%) OpenView
2 1 (4.76%) OPNET
2 1 (4.76%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 7 (33.33%) Cisco
1 7 (33.33%) Fortinet
2 6 (28.57%) Juniper
3 3 (14.29%) Palo Alto
4 2 (9.52%) Arista
4 2 (9.52%) Microsoft
4 2 (9.52%) SolarWinds
5 1 (4.76%) HP