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 29 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 200 153 110
Rank change year-on-year -47 -43 +55
Contract jobs citing WAN 516 602 1,039
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.43% 1.65% 2.26%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 12.99% 13.57% 16.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 342 367 617
10th Percentile £213 £243 £250
25th Percentile £318 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% - +8.25%
75th Percentile £550 £588 £638
90th Percentile £649 £673 £740
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £433 £461
% change year-on-year -7.51% -6.23% +2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 19 37
10th Percentile £14.24 £18.41 £19.35
25th Percentile £15.50 £26.83 £22.00
Median hourly rate £30.00 £42.50 £24.50
Median % change year-on-year -29.41% +73.47% +7.69%
75th Percentile £35.00 £75.00 £69.62
90th Percentile £68.71 - £75.10
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.00 £70.00 £23.75
% change year-on-year -61.43% +194.74% +7.95%

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 3,971 4,436 6,390
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.02% 12.17% 13.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,578 2,549 3,957
10th Percentile £205 £223 £211
25th Percentile £356 £370 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £613
90th Percentile £675 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 193 169 347
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.16 £17.72
25th Percentile £20.50 £23.10 £22.88
Median hourly rate £34.00 £41.00 £56.40
Median % change year-on-year -17.07% -27.30% +35.09%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £66.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £76.16
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £48.03 £56.49
% change year-on-year -11.51% -14.98% +25.53%

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 29 November 2025.

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 29 November 2025.

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 29 November 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 -53 424 £450 -10.00% 249
UK excluding London -56 293 £400 -7.51% 251
London +15 173 £525 -4.55% 72
Work from Home -35 118 £500 -6.76% 84
Midlands -25 79 £400 +6.67% 31
West Midlands +1 75 £400 -4.76% 20
North of England -65 73 £388 -11.93% 38
North West -31 53 £375 -16.67% 17
South East -43 50 £443 -11.50% 110
Scotland +37 44 £310 -22.50% 17
East of England -30 23 £340 -38.74% 30
Yorkshire -54 18 £393 +60.20% 20
South West -21 13 £500 +19.05% 24
Wales +4 7 £250 -35.48% 9
East Midlands -34 4 £315 -16.00% 10
Channel Islands - 4 £743 -
Northern Ireland -5 2 £600 - 2
North East -7 2 £550 +57.14% 1

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 23 (4.46%) Microsoft Exchange
1 23 (4.46%) SharePoint
2 12 (2.33%) OpenStack
3 8 (1.55%) Confluence
4 6 (1.16%) Skype for Business
5 2 (0.39%) Apache
5 2 (0.39%) nginx
6 1 (0.19%) CICS
6 1 (0.19%) IIS
6 1 (0.19%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.19%) WebSphere
6 1 (0.19%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 37 (7.17%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (2.52%) MS Visio
3 12 (2.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (1.94%) Microsoft Excel
5 4 (0.78%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.19%) Acrobat
Business Applications
1 1 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (0.19%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 117 (22.67%) Azure
2 76 (14.73%) AWS
3 39 (7.56%) Microsoft 365
4 28 (5.43%) Entra ID
5 26 (5.04%) GCP
6 13 (2.52%) Azure ExpressRoute
6 13 (2.52%) GitHub
7 12 (2.33%) Azure DevOps
7 12 (2.33%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 6 (1.16%) Azure Monitor
8 6 (1.16%) OneDrive
8 6 (1.16%) OpenShift
8 6 (1.16%) SaaS
9 5 (0.97%) AWS Direct Connect
9 5 (0.97%) Cloud Computing
9 5 (0.97%) IaaS
9 5 (0.97%) PaaS
10 4 (0.78%) Microsoft Purview
11 3 (0.58%) Microsoft Copilot
11 3 (0.58%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 312 (60.47%) LAN
2 244 (47.29%) Firewall
3 186 (36.05%) SD-WAN
4 170 (32.95%) VPN
5 118 (22.87%) BGP
6 100 (19.38%) MPLS
7 95 (18.41%) Wi-Fi
8 87 (16.86%) Network Security
9 86 (16.67%) DNS
10 82 (15.89%) Wireless
11 81 (15.70%) OSPF
12 67 (12.98%) TCP/IP
13 64 (12.40%) DHCP
13 64 (12.40%) VLAN
14 58 (11.24%) IPsec
15 43 (8.33%) Cisco Nexus
16 35 (6.78%) Cisco ISE
17 34 (6.59%) WLAN
18 31 (6.01%) EIGRP
19 28 (5.43%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (0.78%) MS Access
2 2 (0.39%) MySQL
2 2 (0.39%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (0.39%) RDBMS
2 2 (0.39%) Relational Database
2 2 (0.39%) SQL Server
3 1 (0.19%) Amazon RDS
3 1 (0.19%) MariaDB
3 1 (0.19%) NoSQL
3 1 (0.19%) Oracle Database
3 1 (0.19%) Power BI
3 1 (0.19%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 11 (2.13%) JIRA
2 7 (1.36%) GitLab
3 6 (1.16%) Jenkins
4 5 (0.97%) Git
4 5 (0.97%) Sonatype Nexus
5 2 (0.39%) Bitbucket
General
1 133 (25.78%) Social Skills
2 59 (11.43%) Public Sector
3 52 (10.08%) Telecoms
4 46 (8.91%) Finance
5 36 (6.98%) Analytical Skills
6 28 (5.43%) Documentation Skills
7 17 (3.29%) Manufacturing
8 12 (2.33%) Local Government
9 9 (1.74%) Presentation Skills
10 8 (1.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 7 (1.36%) Banking
11 7 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
12 6 (1.16%) Legal
12 6 (1.16%) Organisational Skills
12 6 (1.16%) Spanish Language
13 5 (0.97%) Retail
14 4 (0.78%) Financial Institution
14 4 (0.78%) Law
14 4 (0.78%) Military
15 3 (0.58%) French Language
Job Titles
1 169 (32.75%) Network Engineer
2 101 (19.57%) Architect
3 66 (12.79%) Network Architect
4 42 (8.14%) Senior
4 42 (8.14%) Support Engineer
5 28 (5.43%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 27 (5.23%) Security Engineer
7 26 (5.04%) Analyst
8 25 (4.84%) Senior Network Engineer
9 24 (4.65%) 2nd Line Support
10 23 (4.46%) WAN Engineer
11 22 (4.26%) Project Manager
11 22 (4.26%) Solutions Architect
12 21 (4.07%) Consultant
13 19 (3.68%) 3rd Line Engineer
13 19 (3.68%) Field Engineer
13 19 (3.68%) Network Security Engineer
14 18 (3.49%) 2nd Line Engineer
14 18 (3.49%) 3rd Line Support
14 18 (3.49%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (5.81%) 802.1X
2 10 (1.94%) Middleware
3 9 (1.74%) NETCONF
3 9 (1.74%) YANG
4 6 (1.16%) REST
5 3 (0.58%) EDI
5 3 (0.58%) Jinja
5 3 (0.58%) LDAP
5 3 (0.58%) RESTCONF
6 2 (0.39%) ARM Templates
6 2 (0.39%) LAMP
6 2 (0.39%) OpenConfig
6 2 (0.39%) VML
7 1 (0.19%) Java RMI
7 1 (0.19%) JSON
7 1 (0.19%) LAPP Stack
7 1 (0.19%) libvirt
7 1 (0.19%) Node.js
7 1 (0.19%) RFC 2544
7 1 (0.19%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 127 (24.61%) Data Centre
2 35 (6.78%) Hybrid Cloud
3 27 (5.23%) PKI
4 22 (4.26%) Driving Licence
5 19 (3.68%) Cloud Native
6 17 (3.29%) Public Cloud
7 13 (2.52%) CMDB
8 11 (2.13%) Virtual Team
9 10 (1.94%) Management Information System
9 10 (1.94%) Onboarding
9 10 (1.94%) Operational Technology
10 9 (1.74%) NHS
10 9 (1.74%) Self-Motivation
11 8 (1.55%) Replication
12 7 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
13 6 (1.16%) Legacy Systems
13 6 (1.16%) SCADA
13 6 (1.16%) Security Posture
14 4 (0.78%) CCTV
14 4 (0.78%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 86 (16.67%) Windows
2 31 (6.01%) Windows Server
3 25 (4.84%) Windows 10
4 23 (4.46%) Linux
5 9 (1.74%) Windows Server 2019
6 8 (1.55%) Windows Server 2016
7 7 (1.36%) Windows 7
8 4 (0.78%) Android
8 4 (0.78%) Mac OS
9 3 (0.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 3 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.19%) Mac OS X
10 1 (0.19%) MVS
10 1 (0.19%) Solaris
10 1 (0.19%) SUSE
10 1 (0.19%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.19%) Unix
10 1 (0.19%) VMS
10 1 (0.19%) Windows 8
10 1 (0.19%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 92 (17.83%) Network Design
2 77 (14.92%) Network Architecture
3 76 (14.73%) Migration
4 70 (13.57%) Problem-Solving
5 53 (10.27%) ITIL
6 52 (10.08%) Load Balancing
7 42 (8.14%) Change Management
7 42 (8.14%) Stakeholder Management
8 40 (7.75%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 38 (7.36%) Cybersecurity
9 38 (7.36%) Network Monitoring
10 35 (6.78%) Project Delivery
11 33 (6.40%) Zero Trust
12 32 (6.20%) Service Management
13 31 (6.01%) Network Management
13 31 (6.01%) Roadmaps
14 29 (5.62%) Customer Service
14 29 (5.62%) High Availability
14 29 (5.62%) Network Virtualisation
15 28 (5.43%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 54 (10.47%) Python
2 21 (4.07%) PowerShell
3 7 (1.36%) Bicep
4 6 (1.16%) Perl
4 6 (1.16%) VBScript
5 5 (0.97%) SQL
5 5 (0.97%) VB
6 4 (0.78%) Bash
7 1 (0.19%) Go
7 1 (0.19%) Java
7 1 (0.19%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 144 (27.91%) Security Cleared
2 125 (24.22%) Cisco Certification
3 110 (21.32%) SC Cleared
4 91 (17.64%) CCNP
5 50 (9.69%) CCIE
6 37 (7.17%) CCNA
7 35 (6.78%) Degree
8 31 (6.01%) DV Cleared
9 21 (4.07%) JNCIE
10 12 (2.33%) AWS Certification
11 10 (1.94%) Azure Certification
12 9 (1.74%) CISSP
12 9 (1.74%) JNCIP
13 8 (1.55%) BPSS Clearance
13 8 (1.55%) Computer Science Degree
14 7 (1.36%) CCSA
14 7 (1.36%) Network+ Certification
15 6 (1.16%) CCDP
15 6 (1.16%) ECDL
15 6 (1.16%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (3.88%) SLA
2 19 (3.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 11 (2.13%) NIST
4 9 (1.74%) GDPR
4 9 (1.74%) PCI DSS
5 5 (0.97%) PMO
6 4 (0.78%) QA
7 3 (0.58%) NCSC
8 2 (0.39%) GRC
9 1 (0.19%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 1 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials
9 1 (0.19%) Def Stans
9 1 (0.19%) Disclosure Scotland
9 1 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
9 1 (0.19%) MiFID
9 1 (0.19%) SOC 2
System Software
1 69 (13.37%) Active Directory
2 30 (5.81%) VMware Infrastructure
3 19 (3.68%) VMware NSX
4 14 (2.71%) Virtual Machines
5 13 (2.52%) Hyper-V
6 11 (2.13%) Firmware
7 6 (1.16%) Virtual Desktop
8 5 (0.97%) BitLocker
8 5 (0.97%) vSphere
9 2 (0.39%) KVM
9 2 (0.39%) Microsoft App-V
9 2 (0.39%) NFS
9 2 (0.39%) ProxySG
9 2 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
9 2 (0.39%) VMware Workstation
10 1 (0.19%) Ceph
10 1 (0.19%) iptables
10 1 (0.19%) Samba
10 1 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 1 (0.19%) Xen
Systems Management
1 53 (10.27%) Ansible
2 35 (6.78%) Terraform
3 23 (4.46%) SCCM
4 17 (3.29%) FortiGate
5 14 (2.71%) Microsoft Intune
6 11 (2.13%) CASB
7 7 (1.36%) SCOrch
8 4 (0.78%) CA Spectrum
8 4 (0.78%) Cisco Prime
8 4 (0.78%) vCenter Server
9 3 (0.58%) HAProxy
9 3 (0.58%) Kubernetes
9 3 (0.58%) OpenView
9 3 (0.58%) SCOM
9 3 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.39%) Cisco CUCM
10 2 (0.39%) Grafana
10 2 (0.39%) HP ALM
10 2 (0.39%) Jamf Pro
10 2 (0.39%) vMotion
Vendors
1 237 (45.93%) Cisco
2 93 (18.02%) Palo Alto
3 89 (17.25%) Microsoft
4 87 (16.86%) Juniper
5 72 (13.95%) Fortinet
6 58 (11.24%) F5
6 58 (11.24%) Meraki
7 52 (10.08%) VMware
8 42 (8.14%) CheckPoint
9 35 (6.78%) SolarWinds
10 27 (5.23%) Aruba
11 19 (3.68%) ServiceNow
12 17 (3.29%) Zscaler
13 14 (2.71%) Blue Coat
14 12 (2.33%) Citrix
15 9 (1.74%) HP
15 9 (1.74%) Remedy
16 8 (1.55%) Arista
16 8 (1.55%) Infoblox
17 7 (1.36%) Nokia