WAN Contract Job Trends

Wide Area Network (WAN)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring WAN skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 16 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 182 174 131
Rank change year-on-year -8 -43 -10
Contract jobs citing WAN 729 476 761
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.45% 1.61% 1.75%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 15.25% 12.87% 14.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 486 305 421
10th Percentile £306 £243 £263
25th Percentile £400 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -2.56% +2.63%
75th Percentile £580 £576 £638
90th Percentile £675 £675 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £430 £475
% change year-on-year +11.63% -9.47% +11.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 17 32
10th Percentile £18.44 £20.38 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.56 £27.00 £17.88
Median hourly rate £24.61 £30.00 £24.87
Median % change year-on-year -17.97% +20.63% -58.55%
75th Percentile £46.19 £43.25 £40.00
90th Percentile £78.88 £64.81 £64.92
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £30.00 £24.87
% change year-on-year -25.00% +20.63% -56.62%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
UK

WAN 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 4,780 3,698 5,392
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.52% 12.48% 12.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,930 2,273 3,186
10th Percentile £263 £220 £210
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £483 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.52% -3.40% -1.96%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £470 £488
% change year-on-year +2.13% -3.59% +2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 290 172 422
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £19.13 £17.69
Median hourly rate £27.69 £41.25 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.87% +3.13% +111.30%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.41 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £79.50 £71.19
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.25 £31.08 £47.50
% change year-on-year -2.67% -34.57% +156.76%

WAN
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing WAN relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

WAN job vacancy trend in the UK

WAN
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing WAN.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing WAN

WAN
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing WAN over the 6 months to 16 June 2026.

Daily rate histogram for WAN in the UK

WAN
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing WAN.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing WAN

WAN
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing WAN over the 6 months to 16 June 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for WAN in the UK

WAN
Top 18 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing WAN within the UK over the 6 months to 16 June 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 -22 617 £500 +2.09% 312
UK excluding London -9 444 £480 +11.63% 307
London -38 208 £518 -3.45% 87
Work from Home +16 181 £500 - 170
South East +11 169 £500 +11.11% 91
North of England -33 104 £483 +7.22% 61
North West -32 58 £527 +23.88% 28
Scotland +11 53 £500 +19.40% 34
Midlands -53 52 £339 -20.29% 36
West Midlands -56 43 £319 -22.73% 24
East of England -8 41 £438 +1.74% 23
Yorkshire -24 41 £450 -6.01% 26
South West -37 22 £561 +29.97% 28
North East -24 11 £650 +73.33% 8
Wales -18 7 £468 +133.75% 16
East Midlands -25 4 - - 12
Northern Ireland - 2 £468 - 24
Channel Islands 0 1 £575 -24.34%

WAN
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 28 (3.84%) Microsoft Exchange
2 22 (3.02%) SharePoint
3 18 (2.47%) Confluence
4 8 (1.10%) OpenStack
5 7 (0.96%) Skype for Business
6 2 (0.27%) Apache Spark
6 2 (0.27%) IIS
7 1 (0.14%) CMS
7 1 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 23 (3.16%) MS Visio
2 16 (2.19%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (1.65%) Microsoft Excel
4 11 (1.51%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 4 (0.55%) Acrobat
7 3 (0.41%) AutoCAD
8 2 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.27%) DELMIA
Cloud Services
1 223 (30.59%) Azure
2 107 (14.68%) AWS
3 75 (10.29%) Microsoft 365
4 46 (6.31%) Entra ID
5 38 (5.21%) SaaS
6 26 (3.57%) GCP
7 25 (3.43%) Azure ExpressRoute
8 23 (3.16%) OCI
9 14 (1.92%) PaaS
10 13 (1.78%) OneDrive
11 12 (1.65%) Azure DevOps
12 11 (1.51%) Serverless
12 11 (1.51%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 10 (1.37%) Azure Sentinel
14 9 (1.23%) AWS CloudFormation
15 8 (1.10%) AWS Direct Connect
15 8 (1.10%) Azure Monitor
15 8 (1.10%) Power Platform
16 7 (0.96%) PowerApps
17 6 (0.82%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 473 (64.88%) LAN
2 367 (50.34%) Firewall
3 284 (38.96%) SD-WAN
4 237 (32.51%) BGP
5 192 (26.34%) VPN
6 184 (25.24%) OSPF
7 147 (20.16%) Network Security
8 135 (18.52%) Wi-Fi
9 131 (17.97%) DNS
10 117 (16.05%) MPLS
11 99 (13.58%) Wireless
12 88 (12.07%) VLAN
13 85 (11.66%) DHCP
14 83 (11.39%) VXLAN
15 72 (9.88%) TCP/IP
16 69 (9.47%) IPsec
17 65 (8.92%) Ethernet VPN
18 61 (8.37%) WLAN
19 60 (8.23%) BIG-IP
20 45 (6.17%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (1.10%) SQL Server
2 5 (0.69%) Azure SQL Database
2 5 (0.69%) Data Lake
3 3 (0.41%) NoSQL
3 3 (0.41%) PostgreSQL
4 2 (0.27%) Apache Cassandra
4 2 (0.27%) Elasticsearch
4 2 (0.27%) Flink
4 2 (0.27%) InfluxDB
4 2 (0.27%) MongoDB
4 2 (0.27%) MySQL
4 2 (0.27%) TimescaleDB
5 1 (0.14%) Power BI
5 1 (0.14%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 32 (4.39%) JIRA
2 21 (2.88%) GitLab
3 11 (1.51%) Git
4 5 (0.69%) Jenkins
4 5 (0.69%) Sonatype Nexus
5 4 (0.55%) Browser DevTools
6 3 (0.41%) Chocolatey
7 2 (0.27%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.27%) Robot Framework
General
1 162 (22.22%) Social Skills
2 78 (10.70%) Finance
3 63 (8.64%) Analytical Skills
4 62 (8.50%) Public Sector
5 52 (7.13%) Legal
6 49 (6.72%) Telecoms
7 28 (3.84%) Documentation Skills
8 19 (2.61%) Manufacturing
9 17 (2.33%) Financial Institution
10 13 (1.78%) Retail
11 12 (1.65%) Law
11 12 (1.65%) Military
12 9 (1.23%) Banking
12 9 (1.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 7 (0.96%) Organisational Skills
14 6 (0.82%) Billing
15 5 (0.69%) Police
16 4 (0.55%) Influencing Skills
17 3 (0.41%) German Language
17 3 (0.41%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 274 (37.59%) Network Engineer
2 120 (16.46%) Architect
3 101 (13.85%) Senior
4 70 (9.60%) Network Architect
5 44 (6.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 44 (6.04%) Senior Network Engineer
6 38 (5.21%) Cisco Engineer
7 34 (4.66%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
8 33 (4.53%) Cisco Network Engineer
9 31 (4.25%) Lead
10 25 (3.43%) Project Manager
10 25 (3.43%) Support Engineer
11 23 (3.16%) IT Support
12 22 (3.02%) Security Engineer
12 22 (3.02%) Technical Architect
13 21 (2.88%) Analyst
14 20 (2.74%) Network Manager
14 20 (2.74%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 18 (2.47%) IT Engineer
16 17 (2.33%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 56 (7.68%) 802.1X
2 15 (2.06%) SAML
3 12 (1.65%) REST
4 10 (1.37%) LDAP
4 10 (1.37%) Microsoft Graph
5 8 (1.10%) NETCONF
5 8 (1.10%) YANG
6 5 (0.69%) Middleware
7 4 (0.55%) Jinja
8 3 (0.41%) ARM Templates
8 3 (0.41%) XMPP
9 2 (0.27%) Django
9 2 (0.27%) GraphQL
9 2 (0.27%) gRPC
9 2 (0.27%) Kafka
9 2 (0.27%) OpenAPI
9 2 (0.27%) RabbitMQ
9 2 (0.27%) RFC 2544
9 2 (0.27%) Software Packaging
9 2 (0.27%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 196 (26.89%) Data Centre
2 48 (6.58%) Hybrid Cloud
3 36 (4.94%) PKI
4 27 (3.70%) Clustering
5 24 (3.29%) Onboarding
6 22 (3.02%) Cloud Native
7 21 (2.88%) Security Posture
8 17 (2.33%) Operational Technology
9 15 (2.06%) Driving Licence
10 14 (1.92%) Self-Motivation
11 10 (1.37%) Analytical Mindset
11 10 (1.37%) IoT
11 10 (1.37%) Public Cloud
12 9 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
12 9 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
12 9 (1.23%) SCADA
13 7 (0.96%) Linux Command Line
13 7 (0.96%) NHS
14 5 (0.69%) CMDB
14 5 (0.69%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 182 (24.97%) Windows
2 57 (7.82%) Windows Server
3 48 (6.58%) Linux
4 19 (2.61%) Windows 10
5 17 (2.33%) Windows Server 2019
6 10 (1.37%) Android
7 8 (1.10%) VMS
8 7 (0.96%) Apple iOS
9 6 (0.82%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 4 (0.55%) Windows 7
11 4 (0.55%) Windows Server 2012
11 4 (0.55%) Windows Server 2016
12 3 (0.41%) CatOS
12 3 (0.41%) Unix
13 1 (0.14%) CentOS
13 1 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
13 1 (0.14%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 109 (14.95%) Problem-Solving
2 106 (14.54%) ITIL
3 102 (13.99%) High Availability
4 96 (13.17%) Load Balancing
5 78 (10.70%) Migration
5 78 (10.70%) Zero Trust
6 75 (10.29%) Network Design
7 65 (8.92%) Stakeholder Management
8 63 (8.64%) Network Architecture
9 59 (8.09%) Change Management
9 59 (8.09%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 58 (7.96%) Infrastructure as Code
11 56 (7.68%) Roadmaps
12 55 (7.54%) Agile
13 51 (7.00%) Network Monitoring
13 51 (7.00%) Project Delivery
13 51 (7.00%) Technical Leadership
14 46 (6.31%) DevOps
14 46 (6.31%) Identity Access Management
14 46 (6.31%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 102 (13.99%) Python
2 53 (7.27%) PowerShell
3 24 (3.29%) SQL
4 11 (1.51%) Bash
5 5 (0.69%) VBScript
6 4 (0.55%) VB
7 3 (0.41%) C++
7 3 (0.41%) Java
8 2 (0.27%) C
8 2 (0.27%) Groovy
8 2 (0.27%) JavaScript
9 1 (0.14%) Kusto Query Language
9 1 (0.14%) Perl
9 1 (0.14%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 222 (30.45%) Security Cleared
2 203 (27.85%) Cisco Certification
3 158 (21.67%) SC Cleared
4 135 (18.52%) CCNP
5 64 (8.78%) DV Cleared
6 63 (8.64%) CCNA
7 51 (7.00%) CCIE
8 49 (6.72%) Degree
9 23 (3.16%) PMP
10 16 (2.19%) PMI Certification
11 15 (2.06%) Azure Certification
12 14 (1.92%) JNCIP
13 13 (1.78%) AWS Certification
14 12 (1.65%) JNCIE
14 12 (1.65%) JNCIS
15 11 (1.51%) Computer Science Degree
15 11 (1.51%) JNCIA
16 9 (1.23%) BPSS Clearance
17 6 (0.82%) CCSE
18 5 (0.69%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (2.74%) SLA
2 19 (2.61%) QA
3 18 (2.47%) NIST
4 11 (1.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 8 (1.10%) NCSC
6 6 (0.82%) GDPR
7 4 (0.55%) Disclosure Scotland
7 4 (0.55%) PCI DSS
7 4 (0.55%) PMO
8 3 (0.41%) JSP 440
9 2 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 20000
9 2 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 2 (0.27%) RMADS
10 1 (0.14%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.14%) Cyber Essentials
10 1 (0.14%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 1 (0.14%) DICOM
10 1 (0.14%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 102 (13.99%) Active Directory
2 66 (9.05%) VMware Infrastructure
3 28 (3.84%) VMware NSX
4 19 (2.61%) vSphere
5 17 (2.33%) Virtual Machines
6 14 (1.92%) Hyper-V
7 13 (1.78%) Firmware
8 10 (1.37%) Virtual Desktop
9 4 (0.55%) BitLocker
10 3 (0.41%) Virtual Servers
11 2 (0.27%) Squid
12 1 (0.14%) Docker
12 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 1 (0.14%) ProxySG
12 1 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 83 (11.39%) Ansible
2 82 (11.25%) FortiGate
3 75 (10.29%) Terraform
4 27 (3.70%) Microsoft Intune
5 22 (3.02%) Grafana
6 19 (2.61%) Prometheus
7 15 (2.06%) SCCM
7 15 (2.06%) Single Sign-On
8 8 (1.10%) Jamf Pro
9 6 (0.82%) Cisco Prime
10 5 (0.69%) Cisco CUCM
10 5 (0.69%) Kubernetes
11 4 (0.55%) Endace
11 4 (0.55%) Progress Chef
11 4 (0.55%) vRealize Orchestrator
12 3 (0.41%) Nagios
12 3 (0.41%) Packer
12 3 (0.41%) Puppet
13 2 (0.27%) Amdocs OSS
13 2 (0.27%) McAfee ePO
Vendors
1 369 (50.62%) Cisco
2 171 (23.46%) Palo Alto
3 148 (20.30%) Microsoft
4 112 (15.36%) F5
5 94 (12.89%) Aruba
6 93 (12.76%) Fortinet
7 89 (12.21%) Juniper
8 80 (10.97%) VMware
9 65 (8.92%) SolarWinds
10 63 (8.64%) CheckPoint
11 58 (7.96%) Arista
12 50 (6.86%) Zscaler
13 43 (5.90%) Meraki
14 34 (4.66%) ServiceNow
15 30 (4.12%) Splunk
16 28 (3.84%) Extreme Networks
17 16 (2.19%) Dell
18 13 (1.78%) Ekahau
18 13 (1.78%) Veeam
19 8 (1.10%) Infoblox