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

6 months to
4 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 184 171 130
Rank change year-on-year -13 -41 -7
Contract jobs citing WAN 719 465 768
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.47% 1.61% 1.79%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 15.14% 12.82% 14.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 477 299 426
10th Percentile £306 £250 £261
25th Percentile £400 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% +2.63%
75th Percentile £575 £585 £650
90th Percentile £675 £665 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £438 £475
% change year-on-year +8.57% -7.89% +11.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 14 33
10th Percentile £18.38 £17.86 £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 £42.44 £40.00
90th Percentile £80.21 £57.88 £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 4,750 3,626 5,393
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.71% 12.58% 12.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,907 2,248 3,213
10th Percentile £263 £216 £206
25th Percentile £400 £360 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £495
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -3.03% -3.41%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £465 £475
% change year-on-year +2.15% -2.11% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 282 162 414
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.88 £16.30
Median hourly rate £28.96 £41.25 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -29.79% +3.13% +118.16%
75th Percentile £65.00 £59.78 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.93 £80.91 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £31.79 £45.88
% change year-on-year +2.23% -30.71% +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 4 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 4 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 4 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 -19 614 £500 - 278
UK excluding London -7 440 £475 +8.57% 241
London -26 211 £520 +2.97% 83
Work from Home +11 178 £510 +2.00% 143
South East +17 175 £500 +11.11% 90
North of England -37 102 £483 +5.46% 44
North West -17 60 £525 +20.00% 18
Midlands -48 51 £339 -21.45% 32
Scotland +12 50 £500 +17.65% 22
East of England -10 42 £438 +1.74% 17
West Midlands -51 41 £319 -22.73% 24
Yorkshire -33 38 £450 -6.01% 19
South West -49 14 £500 +21.21% 25
North East -20 10 £650 +73.33% 7
Wales -18 8 £468 +78.10% 12
East Midlands -26 4 - - 8
Northern Ireland - 2 £468 - 5
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 (4.03%) Microsoft Exchange
2 24 (3.34%) SharePoint
3 19 (2.64%) 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 23 (3.20%) MS Visio
2 15 (2.09%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (1.53%) Microsoft Excel
3 11 (1.53%) Microsoft Project
4 6 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.56%) Acrobat
6 2 (0.28%) AutoCAD
6 2 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.28%) DELMIA
Cloud Services
1 215 (29.90%) Azure
2 107 (14.88%) AWS
3 77 (10.71%) Microsoft 365
4 42 (5.84%) Entra ID
5 37 (5.15%) SaaS
6 25 (3.48%) GCP
7 22 (3.06%) OCI
8 16 (2.23%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 14 (1.95%) PaaS
10 13 (1.81%) Azure DevOps
10 13 (1.81%) OneDrive
11 12 (1.67%) 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 (0.70%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 481 (66.90%) LAN
2 370 (51.46%) Firewall
3 272 (37.83%) SD-WAN
4 234 (32.55%) BGP
5 202 (28.09%) VPN
6 188 (26.15%) OSPF
7 149 (20.72%) Network Security
8 136 (18.92%) Wi-Fi
9 128 (17.80%) DNS
10 112 (15.58%) MPLS
11 95 (13.21%) Wireless
12 90 (12.52%) VLAN
13 87 (12.10%) DHCP
14 83 (11.54%) VXLAN
15 74 (10.29%) TCP/IP
16 69 (9.60%) IPsec
17 64 (8.90%) Ethernet VPN
18 62 (8.62%) WLAN
19 59 (8.21%) BIG-IP
20 48 (6.68%) 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 (4.59%) JIRA
2 20 (2.78%) GitLab
3 11 (1.53%) Git
4 5 (0.70%) Sonatype Nexus
5 4 (0.56%) Browser DevTools
5 4 (0.56%) Jenkins
6 3 (0.42%) Chocolatey
7 2 (0.28%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.28%) Robot Framework
General
1 155 (21.56%) Social Skills
2 76 (10.57%) Finance
3 65 (9.04%) Analytical Skills
4 63 (8.76%) Public Sector
5 51 (7.09%) Legal
6 44 (6.12%) Telecoms
7 32 (4.45%) Documentation Skills
8 20 (2.78%) Manufacturing
9 17 (2.36%) Financial Institution
10 15 (2.09%) Military
11 13 (1.81%) Retail
12 12 (1.67%) Law
13 9 (1.25%) Banking
14 6 (0.83%) Billing
14 6 (0.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 6 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
15 5 (0.70%) Police
16 4 (0.56%) Influencing Skills
16 4 (0.56%) Local Government
17 3 (0.42%) German Language
Job Titles
1 267 (37.13%) Network Engineer
2 121 (16.83%) Architect
3 101 (14.05%) Senior
4 77 (10.71%) Network Architect
5 45 (6.26%) Senior Network Engineer
6 44 (6.12%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 35 (4.87%) Lead
7 35 (4.87%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
8 33 (4.59%) Cisco Engineer
9 28 (3.89%) Cisco Network Engineer
10 24 (3.34%) IT Support
10 24 (3.34%) Project Manager
11 23 (3.20%) Support Engineer
12 22 (3.06%) Analyst
13 21 (2.92%) Security Engineer
13 21 (2.92%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
14 18 (2.50%) Technical Architect
15 17 (2.36%) IT Engineer
15 17 (2.36%) Network Manager
15 17 (2.36%) Network Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 54 (7.51%) 802.1X
2 15 (2.09%) SAML
3 11 (1.53%) LDAP
3 11 (1.53%) REST
4 10 (1.39%) Microsoft Graph
5 7 (0.97%) NETCONF
5 7 (0.97%) YANG
6 5 (0.70%) Middleware
7 4 (0.56%) 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
1 202 (28.09%) Data Centre
2 50 (6.95%) Hybrid Cloud
3 38 (5.29%) PKI
4 26 (3.62%) Clustering
5 24 (3.34%) Onboarding
6 20 (2.78%) Cloud Native
7 19 (2.64%) Security Posture
8 17 (2.36%) Operational Technology
9 14 (1.95%) Self-Motivation
10 13 (1.81%) Driving Licence
11 10 (1.39%) Analytical Mindset
11 10 (1.39%) IoT
11 10 (1.39%) Public Cloud
12 9 (1.25%) Data Protection Act
12 9 (1.25%) Enterprise Software
12 9 (1.25%) SCADA
13 7 (0.97%) Linux Command Line
14 6 (0.83%) NHS
15 5 (0.70%) CMDB
15 5 (0.70%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 175 (24.34%) Windows
2 59 (8.21%) Windows Server
3 49 (6.82%) Linux
4 21 (2.92%) Windows 10
5 15 (2.09%) Windows Server 2019
6 10 (1.39%) Android
7 8 (1.11%) VMS
8 7 (0.97%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 5 (0.70%) Windows Server 2016
10 4 (0.56%) Mac OS
10 4 (0.56%) Windows 7
10 4 (0.56%) 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
1 109 (15.16%) Problem-Solving
2 106 (14.74%) ITIL
3 102 (14.19%) High Availability
4 93 (12.93%) Load Balancing
5 77 (10.71%) Zero Trust
6 74 (10.29%) Network Design
7 73 (10.15%) Migration
8 63 (8.76%) Network Architecture
9 61 (8.48%) Stakeholder Management
10 58 (8.07%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 55 (7.65%) Change Management
12 54 (7.51%) Technical Leadership
13 52 (7.23%) Agile
14 51 (7.09%) Infrastructure as Code
14 51 (7.09%) Roadmaps
15 50 (6.95%) Network Monitoring
16 49 (6.82%) Project Delivery
17 47 (6.54%) Identity Access Management
17 47 (6.54%) ITSM
17 47 (6.54%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 98 (13.63%) Python
2 51 (7.09%) PowerShell
3 21 (2.92%) SQL
4 12 (1.67%) Bash
5 5 (0.70%) VBScript
6 4 (0.56%) 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 (32.68%) Security Cleared
2 209 (29.07%) Cisco Certification
3 166 (23.09%) SC Cleared
4 145 (20.17%) CCNP
5 66 (9.18%) DV Cleared
6 61 (8.48%) CCNA
7 55 (7.65%) Degree
8 51 (7.09%) CCIE
9 21 (2.92%) PMP
10 14 (1.95%) JNCIP
10 14 (1.95%) PMI Certification
11 13 (1.81%) Azure Certification
11 13 (1.81%) Computer Science Degree
11 13 (1.81%) JNCIS
12 12 (1.67%) JNCIA
13 11 (1.53%) AWS Certification
13 11 (1.53%) JNCIE
14 9 (1.25%) CCSE
15 6 (0.83%) BPSS Clearance
15 6 (0.83%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (2.78%) QA
1 20 (2.78%) SLA
2 18 (2.50%) NIST
3 12 (1.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 9 (1.25%) NCSC
5 6 (0.83%) GDPR
6 4 (0.56%) Disclosure Scotland
6 4 (0.56%) PCI DSS
6 4 (0.56%) 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 (14.33%) Active Directory
2 67 (9.32%) VMware Infrastructure
3 30 (4.17%) VMware NSX
4 19 (2.64%) vSphere
5 14 (1.95%) Hyper-V
6 12 (1.67%) Firmware
6 12 (1.67%) Virtual Machines
7 4 (0.56%) 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 (11.27%) Ansible
2 76 (10.57%) FortiGate
3 70 (9.74%) Terraform
4 28 (3.89%) Microsoft Intune
5 23 (3.20%) Grafana
6 19 (2.64%) Prometheus
7 14 (1.95%) Single Sign-On
8 13 (1.81%) SCCM
9 8 (1.11%) Jamf Pro
10 7 (0.97%) Nagios
11 6 (0.83%) Cisco Prime
12 5 (0.70%) Cisco CUCM
12 5 (0.70%) Endace
12 5 (0.70%) Kubernetes
13 4 (0.56%) Progress Chef
13 4 (0.56%) 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
1 369 (51.32%) Cisco
2 176 (24.48%) Palo Alto
3 136 (18.92%) Microsoft
4 110 (15.30%) F5
5 101 (14.05%) Aruba
6 96 (13.35%) Fortinet
7 95 (13.21%) Juniper
8 81 (11.27%) VMware
9 71 (9.87%) CheckPoint
10 66 (9.18%) SolarWinds
11 57 (7.93%) Arista
12 44 (6.12%) Zscaler
13 37 (5.15%) Meraki
14 36 (5.01%) ServiceNow
15 31 (4.31%) Splunk
16 27 (3.76%) Extreme Networks
17 16 (2.23%) Dell
18 15 (2.09%) Ekahau
19 13 (1.81%) Veeam
20 9 (1.25%) Infoblox