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 7 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 185 166 129
Rank change year-on-year -19 -37 -11
Contract jobs citing WAN 722 469 761
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.46% 1.60% 1.75%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 15.06% 12.79% 14.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 480 301 424
10th Percentile £306 £250 £261
25th Percentile £400 £370 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% - -
75th Percentile £575 £576 £650
90th Percentile £675 £663 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £434 £475
% change year-on-year +9.51% -8.68% +8.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 15 33
10th Percentile £18.38 £18.70 £13.40
25th Percentile £19.88 £27.00 £16.00
Median hourly rate £22.50 £30.00 £24.87
Median % change year-on-year -25.00% +20.63% -56.62%
75th Percentile £62.29 £46.63 £40.00
90th Percentile £80.21 £66.60 £62.82
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £30.00 £24.87
% change year-on-year -25.00% +20.63% -54.64%

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 4,794 3,666 5,427
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.68% 12.54% 12.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,935 2,266 3,233
10th Percentile £263 £218 £206
25th Percentile £400 £360 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £481 £495
Median % change year-on-year +4.06% -2.93% -3.41%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £466 £475
% change year-on-year +1.99% -1.95% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 283 165 417
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.13 £16.30
Median hourly rate £29.04 £44.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -34.00% +10.00% +118.16%
75th Percentile £65.00 £61.25 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.85 £80.61 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.22 £32.50 £45.88
% change year-on-year +8.37% -29.16% +154.89%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 -18 615 £500 - 273
UK excluding London -1 440 £475 +9.51% 244
London -35 211 £520 +1.71% 75
Work from Home +1 181 £500 - 138
South East +20 175 £500 +11.11% 85
North of England -39 102 £483 +7.22% 46
North West -35 60 £525 +23.53% 20
Midlands -38 51 £339 -17.88% 32
Scotland +14 50 £500 +17.65% 23
East of England +1 42 £438 +1.74% 18
West Midlands -50 41 £319 -20.31% 23
Yorkshire -28 38 £450 -6.01% 20
South West -44 14 £500 - 26
North East -16 10 £650 +73.33% 6
Wales -19 8 £468 +78.10% 14
East Midlands -28 4 - - 9
Northern Ireland - 2 £468 - 6
Channel Islands - 1 £575 -

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 29 (4.02%) Microsoft Exchange
2 23 (3.19%) SharePoint
3 19 (2.63%) Confluence
4 7 (0.97%) OpenStack
4 7 (0.97%) Skype for Business
5 2 (0.28%) Apache Spark
5 2 (0.28%) IIS
6 1 (0.14%) CMS
6 1 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 24 (3.32%) MS Visio
2 16 (2.22%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (1.66%) Microsoft Excel
4 11 (1.52%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 4 (0.55%) Acrobat
7 2 (0.28%) AutoCAD
7 2 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.28%) DELMIA
Cloud Services
1 214 (29.64%) Azure
2 107 (14.82%) AWS
3 76 (10.53%) Microsoft 365
4 42 (5.82%) Entra ID
5 37 (5.12%) SaaS
6 25 (3.46%) GCP
7 22 (3.05%) OCI
8 16 (2.22%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 14 (1.94%) PaaS
10 13 (1.80%) Azure DevOps
10 13 (1.80%) OneDrive
11 12 (1.66%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 8 (1.11%) AWS CloudFormation
12 8 (1.11%) AWS Direct Connect
12 8 (1.11%) Power Platform
13 7 (0.97%) PowerApps
14 6 (0.83%) GitHub
14 6 (0.83%) IaaS
14 6 (0.83%) Serverless
15 5 (0.69%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 482 (66.76%) LAN
2 370 (51.25%) Firewall
3 275 (38.09%) SD-WAN
4 234 (32.41%) BGP
5 203 (28.12%) VPN
6 188 (26.04%) OSPF
7 150 (20.78%) Network Security
8 136 (18.84%) Wi-Fi
9 128 (17.73%) DNS
10 112 (15.51%) MPLS
11 96 (13.30%) Wireless
12 90 (12.47%) VLAN
13 87 (12.05%) DHCP
14 83 (11.50%) VXLAN
15 75 (10.39%) TCP/IP
16 70 (9.70%) IPsec
17 64 (8.86%) Ethernet VPN
18 61 (8.45%) WLAN
19 59 (8.17%) BIG-IP
20 48 (6.65%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (1.25%) SQL Server
2 3 (0.42%) MongoDB
2 3 (0.42%) NoSQL
2 3 (0.42%) PostgreSQL
3 2 (0.28%) Apache Cassandra
3 2 (0.28%) Elasticsearch
3 2 (0.28%) Flink
3 2 (0.28%) InfluxDB
3 2 (0.28%) MySQL
3 2 (0.28%) TimescaleDB
4 1 (0.14%) Amazon RDS
4 1 (0.14%) DynamoDB
4 1 (0.14%) MariaDB
4 1 (0.14%) Power BI
4 1 (0.14%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 33 (4.57%) JIRA
2 20 (2.77%) GitLab
3 11 (1.52%) Git
4 5 (0.69%) Sonatype Nexus
5 4 (0.55%) Browser DevTools
5 4 (0.55%) Jenkins
6 3 (0.42%) Chocolatey
7 2 (0.28%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.28%) Robot Framework
General
1 157 (21.75%) Social Skills
2 76 (10.53%) Finance
3 66 (9.14%) Analytical Skills
4 63 (8.73%) Public Sector
5 51 (7.06%) Legal
6 45 (6.23%) Telecoms
7 32 (4.43%) Documentation Skills
8 20 (2.77%) Manufacturing
9 17 (2.35%) Financial Institution
10 15 (2.08%) Military
11 12 (1.66%) Law
11 12 (1.66%) Retail
12 9 (1.25%) Banking
13 6 (0.83%) Billing
13 6 (0.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 6 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
14 5 (0.69%) Police
15 4 (0.55%) Influencing Skills
15 4 (0.55%) Local Government
16 3 (0.42%) German Language
Job Titles
1 270 (37.40%) Network Engineer
2 121 (16.76%) Architect
3 101 (13.99%) Senior
4 77 (10.66%) Network Architect
5 45 (6.23%) Senior Network Engineer
6 43 (5.96%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 36 (4.99%) Cisco Engineer
8 35 (4.85%) Lead
8 35 (4.85%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
9 31 (4.29%) Cisco Network Engineer
10 24 (3.32%) IT Support
10 24 (3.32%) Project Manager
11 23 (3.19%) Support Engineer
12 22 (3.05%) Analyst
13 21 (2.91%) Security Engineer
13 21 (2.91%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
14 18 (2.49%) Technical Architect
15 17 (2.35%) IT Engineer
15 17 (2.35%) Network Manager
15 17 (2.35%) Network Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 55 (7.62%) 802.1X
2 15 (2.08%) SAML
3 11 (1.52%) LDAP
3 11 (1.52%) REST
4 10 (1.39%) Microsoft Graph
5 7 (0.97%) NETCONF
5 7 (0.97%) YANG
6 5 (0.69%) Middleware
7 4 (0.55%) Jinja
8 3 (0.42%) ARM Templates
8 3 (0.42%) XMPP
9 2 (0.28%) Django
9 2 (0.28%) GraphQL
9 2 (0.28%) Kafka
9 2 (0.28%) OpenConfig
9 2 (0.28%) RabbitMQ
9 2 (0.28%) RESTCONF
9 2 (0.28%) RFC 2544
9 2 (0.28%) Software Packaging
9 2 (0.28%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 201 (27.84%) Data Centre
2 50 (6.93%) Hybrid Cloud
3 38 (5.26%) PKI
4 26 (3.60%) Clustering
5 24 (3.32%) Onboarding
6 20 (2.77%) Cloud Native
6 20 (2.77%) Security Posture
7 17 (2.35%) Operational Technology
8 14 (1.94%) Self-Motivation
9 13 (1.80%) Driving Licence
10 10 (1.39%) Analytical Mindset
10 10 (1.39%) IoT
10 10 (1.39%) Public Cloud
11 9 (1.25%) Data Protection Act
11 9 (1.25%) Enterprise Software
11 9 (1.25%) SCADA
12 7 (0.97%) Linux Command Line
13 6 (0.83%) NHS
14 5 (0.69%) CMDB
14 5 (0.69%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 175 (24.24%) Windows
2 59 (8.17%) Windows Server
3 49 (6.79%) Linux
4 21 (2.91%) Windows 10
5 15 (2.08%) Windows Server 2019
6 10 (1.39%) Android
7 8 (1.11%) VMS
8 7 (0.97%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 5 (0.69%) Windows Server 2016
10 4 (0.55%) Mac OS
10 4 (0.55%) Windows 7
10 4 (0.55%) Windows Server 2012
11 3 (0.42%) CatOS
11 3 (0.42%) Unix
12 1 (0.14%) CentOS
12 1 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
12 1 (0.14%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 108 (14.96%) Problem-Solving
2 106 (14.68%) ITIL
3 102 (14.13%) High Availability
4 93 (12.88%) Load Balancing
5 77 (10.66%) Zero Trust
6 75 (10.39%) Network Design
7 72 (9.97%) Migration
8 63 (8.73%) Network Architecture
9 62 (8.59%) Stakeholder Management
10 57 (7.89%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 56 (7.76%) Change Management
12 54 (7.48%) Technical Leadership
13 52 (7.20%) Agile
14 51 (7.06%) Infrastructure as Code
14 51 (7.06%) Roadmaps
15 50 (6.93%) Network Monitoring
15 50 (6.93%) Project Delivery
16 47 (6.51%) Identity Access Management
16 47 (6.51%) ITSM
16 47 (6.51%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 98 (13.57%) Python
2 51 (7.06%) PowerShell
3 21 (2.91%) SQL
4 12 (1.66%) Bash
5 5 (0.69%) VBScript
6 4 (0.55%) VB
7 3 (0.42%) C++
7 3 (0.42%) Java
7 3 (0.42%) JavaScript
8 2 (0.28%) C
8 2 (0.28%) Groovy
9 1 (0.14%) C#
9 1 (0.14%) Kusto Query Language
9 1 (0.14%) Perl
9 1 (0.14%) Shell Script
9 1 (0.14%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 235 (32.55%) Security Cleared
2 210 (29.09%) Cisco Certification
3 166 (22.99%) SC Cleared
4 146 (20.22%) CCNP
5 66 (9.14%) DV Cleared
6 61 (8.45%) CCNA
7 55 (7.62%) Degree
8 51 (7.06%) CCIE
9 21 (2.91%) PMP
10 14 (1.94%) JNCIP
10 14 (1.94%) PMI Certification
11 13 (1.80%) Azure Certification
11 13 (1.80%) Computer Science Degree
11 13 (1.80%) JNCIS
12 12 (1.66%) JNCIA
13 11 (1.52%) AWS Certification
13 11 (1.52%) JNCIE
14 9 (1.25%) CCSE
15 6 (0.83%) BPSS Clearance
15 6 (0.83%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (2.77%) QA
1 20 (2.77%) SLA
2 18 (2.49%) NIST
3 12 (1.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 9 (1.25%) NCSC
5 6 (0.83%) GDPR
6 4 (0.55%) Disclosure Scotland
6 4 (0.55%) PCI DSS
6 4 (0.55%) PMO
7 3 (0.42%) JSP 440
8 2 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials
8 2 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 20000
8 2 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 42001
8 2 (0.28%) RMADS
9 1 (0.14%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.14%) DICOM
9 1 (0.14%) NIST 800
9 1 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 103 (14.27%) Active Directory
2 67 (9.28%) VMware Infrastructure
3 30 (4.16%) VMware NSX
4 19 (2.63%) vSphere
5 14 (1.94%) Hyper-V
6 12 (1.66%) Firmware
6 12 (1.66%) Virtual Machines
7 4 (0.55%) BitLocker
8 3 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.42%) Virtual Servers
9 2 (0.28%) Squid
9 2 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.14%) Docker
10 1 (0.14%) KVM
10 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Virtual Server
10 1 (0.14%) ProxySG
10 1 (0.14%) RHEV
10 1 (0.14%) Xen
Systems Management
1 81 (11.22%) Ansible
2 76 (10.53%) FortiGate
3 70 (9.70%) Terraform
4 28 (3.88%) Microsoft Intune
5 23 (3.19%) Grafana
6 19 (2.63%) Prometheus
7 14 (1.94%) Single Sign-On
8 13 (1.80%) SCCM
9 8 (1.11%) Jamf Pro
10 7 (0.97%) Nagios
11 6 (0.83%) Cisco Prime
12 5 (0.69%) Cisco CUCM
12 5 (0.69%) Endace
12 5 (0.69%) Kubernetes
13 4 (0.55%) Progress Chef
13 4 (0.55%) vRealize Orchestrator
14 3 (0.42%) vCenter Server
15 2 (0.28%) Amdocs OSS
15 2 (0.28%) CASB
15 2 (0.28%) Packer
Vendors
1 373 (51.66%) Cisco
2 176 (24.38%) Palo Alto
3 137 (18.98%) Microsoft
4 111 (15.37%) F5
5 101 (13.99%) Aruba
6 97 (13.43%) Fortinet
7 96 (13.30%) Juniper
8 81 (11.22%) VMware
9 71 (9.83%) CheckPoint
10 66 (9.14%) SolarWinds
11 58 (8.03%) Arista
12 45 (6.23%) Zscaler
13 40 (5.54%) Meraki
14 36 (4.99%) ServiceNow
15 31 (4.29%) Splunk
16 27 (3.74%) Extreme Networks
17 16 (2.22%) Dell
18 15 (2.08%) Ekahau
19 13 (1.80%) Veeam
20 9 (1.25%) Infoblox