Network Security Job Trends in the South West

Network Security
England > South West

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in the South West requiring Network Security skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 16 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 171 88 143
Rank change year-on-year -83 +55 +10
Permanent jobs citing Network Security 72 84 104
As % of all permanent jobs in the South West 0.80% 2.42% 1.30%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 10.73% 14.76% 11.94%
Number of salaries quoted 51 78 82
10th Percentile £31,250 £38,889 £28,500
25th Percentile £45,000 £47,500 £50,313
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £50,000 £75,000
Median % change year-on-year +15.00% -33.33% +25.00%
75th Percentile £72,500 £65,000 £97,250
90th Percentile £88,750 £73,750 -
England median annual salary £65,288 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +8.81% - -

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
South West

Network Security falls under the Communications and Computer Networking category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring communications or computer networking skills in the South West.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 671 569 871
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the South West 7.42% 16.36% 10.89%
Number of salaries quoted 384 387 643
10th Percentile £29,500 £28,750 £28,050
25th Percentile £31,250 £30,500 £32,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £40,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -20.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £67,500 £54,782 £60,918
90th Percentile £75,000 £67,200 £80,000
England median annual salary £47,500 £42,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +11.76% -15.00% -2.53%

Network Security
Job Vacancy Trend in the South West

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Network Security relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the South West.

Network Security job vacancy trend in the South West

Network Security
Salary Trend in the South West

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Network Security.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Network Security

Network Security
Salary Histogram in the South West

Salary distribution for jobs citing Network Security in the South West over the 6 months to 16 August 2026.

Salary histogram for Network Security in the South West

Network Security
Job Locations in the South West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Network Security within the South West region over the 6 months to 16 August 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Gloucestershire -27 23 £57,500 +9.52% 4
Somerset -24 15 £50,000 -31.03% 2
Wiltshire -15 13 £57,500 +4.55% 4
Devon -10 11 £32,500 -37.17% 1
Bristol -67 8 £65,000 +30.00% 11
Network Security
England

Network Security
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South West 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 8 (11.11%) Microsoft Exchange
2 4 (5.56%) SharePoint
Business Applications
1 1 (1.39%) Oracle Payables
Cloud Services
1 36 (50.00%) Azure
2 26 (36.11%) Entra ID
3 20 (27.78%) Microsoft 365
4 18 (25.00%) AWS
5 9 (12.50%) Azure DevOps
6 8 (11.11%) Azure AKS
6 8 (11.11%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 5 (6.94%) OCI
8 4 (5.56%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 4 (5.56%) Amazon ECS
8 4 (5.56%) GCP
9 3 (4.17%) SaaS
10 2 (2.78%) IaaS
10 2 (2.78%) Mimecast
10 2 (2.78%) PaaS
11 1 (1.39%) Amazon EC2
11 1 (1.39%) Amazon S3
11 1 (1.39%) AWS Lambda
11 1 (1.39%) Serverless
11 1 (1.39%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 41 (56.94%) Firewall
2 20 (27.78%) VLAN
2 20 (27.78%) VPN
3 16 (22.22%) WAN
4 12 (16.67%) LAN
5 11 (15.28%) DHCP
5 11 (15.28%) DNS
6 9 (12.50%) SD-WAN
7 8 (11.11%) BGP
7 8 (11.11%) TCP/IP
7 8 (11.11%) Wi-Fi
8 6 (8.33%) Software-Defined Networking
9 5 (6.94%) DMZ
9 5 (6.94%) VoIP
9 5 (6.94%) Wireless
10 4 (5.56%) Ethernet VPN
10 4 (5.56%) OSPF
10 4 (5.56%) Wireshark
11 3 (4.17%) Cisco ASA
11 3 (4.17%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (1.39%) Amazon RDS
1 1 (1.39%) RDBMS
1 1 (1.39%) Relational Database
1 1 (1.39%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 9 (12.50%) JIRA
2 3 (4.17%) GitLab
3 2 (2.78%) Subversion
4 1 (1.39%) Bitbucket
4 1 (1.39%) Jenkins
4 1 (1.39%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 12 (16.67%) Finance
1 12 (16.67%) Social Skills
2 10 (13.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 9 (12.50%) Automotive
4 8 (11.11%) Aerospace
5 4 (5.56%) Public Sector
6 2 (2.78%) Analytical Skills
6 2 (2.78%) Retail
7 1 (1.39%) Fire and Rescue
7 1 (1.39%) Police
Job Titles
1 23 (31.94%) Support Engineer
2 21 (29.17%) IT Support
3 19 (26.39%) IT Engineer
3 19 (26.39%) IT Support Engineer
4 11 (15.28%) Architect
4 11 (15.28%) Network Engineer
5 9 (12.50%) Azure Engineer
5 9 (12.50%) Microsoft 365 Engineer
5 9 (12.50%) Server Engineer
5 9 (12.50%) Server Support
6 8 (11.11%) Azure Architect
6 8 (11.11%) Infrastructure Support
6 8 (11.11%) Senior
6 8 (11.11%) Technical Architect
7 7 (9.72%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 7 (9.72%) Systems Engineer
7 7 (9.72%) Systems Support
7 7 (9.72%) Systems Support Engineer
8 6 (8.33%) Infrastructure Support Engineer
8 6 (8.33%) Security Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (2.78%) HTML
2 1 (1.39%) 802.1X
Miscellaneous
1 10 (13.89%) Hybrid Cloud
2 4 (5.56%) Cyber Threat
2 4 (5.56%) Driving Licence
3 3 (4.17%) Data Centre
4 2 (2.78%) Cloud Native
5 1 (1.39%) Blog
5 1 (1.39%) Cloud Security Posture
5 1 (1.39%) Cyber Kill Chain
5 1 (1.39%) Distributed Architecture
5 1 (1.39%) Enterprise Software
5 1 (1.39%) PKI
5 1 (1.39%) Private Cloud
5 1 (1.39%) Product Ownership
5 1 (1.39%) Replication
5 1 (1.39%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 16 (22.22%) Windows
2 12 (16.67%) Linux
3 11 (15.28%) Windows Server
4 4 (5.56%) Windows Server 2012
4 4 (5.56%) Windows Server 2016
4 4 (5.56%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 20 (27.78%) Cybersecurity
2 16 (22.22%) Infrastructure as Code
3 13 (18.06%) Containerisation
3 13 (18.06%) DevOps
4 12 (16.67%) CI/CD
4 12 (16.67%) Network Virtualisation
5 11 (15.28%) Cloud Security
5 11 (15.28%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 10 (13.89%) Disaster Recovery
6 10 (13.89%) Problem-Solving
7 9 (12.50%) Continuous Improvement
7 9 (12.50%) Continuous Integration
7 9 (12.50%) Edge Computing
7 9 (12.50%) Hardware-in-the-Loop
7 9 (12.50%) Network Monitoring
7 9 (12.50%) Software Licensing
8 8 (11.11%) DevSecOps
8 8 (11.11%) GitOps
8 8 (11.11%) Project Delivery
8 8 (11.11%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 8 (11.11%) Bicep
1 8 (11.11%) Python
2 3 (4.17%) Bash
2 3 (4.17%) PowerShell
3 2 (2.78%) C
3 2 (2.78%) C++
3 2 (2.78%) JavaScript
3 2 (2.78%) TypeScript
4 1 (1.39%) PL/SQL
4 1 (1.39%) SQL
4 1 (1.39%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 20 (27.78%) Security Cleared
2 13 (18.06%) DV Cleared
3 12 (16.67%) SC Cleared
4 7 (9.72%) Cisco Certification
5 6 (8.33%) Azure Certification
6 5 (6.94%) AWS Certification
7 4 (5.56%) CCNA
7 4 (5.56%) MCSA
7 4 (5.56%) Microsoft Certification
7 4 (5.56%) Microsoft Certified Professional
8 3 (4.17%) CCNP
9 2 (2.78%) CCIE
9 2 (2.78%) CISSP
9 2 (2.78%) CompTIA Security+
9 2 (2.78%) Network+ Certification
9 2 (2.78%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 1 (1.39%) BPSS Clearance
10 1 (1.39%) Computer Science Degree
10 1 (1.39%) Degree
10 1 (1.39%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (23.61%) Cyber Essentials
2 13 (18.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 10 (13.89%) NIST
4 7 (9.72%) GRC
5 6 (8.33%) GDPR
6 2 (2.78%) PCI DSS
7 1 (1.39%) ISO/IEC 42001
7 1 (1.39%) JSP 440
7 1 (1.39%) NCSC
System Software
1 27 (37.50%) Active Directory
2 18 (25.00%) VMware Infrastructure
3 13 (18.06%) Docker
4 12 (16.67%) Hyper-V
5 2 (2.78%) VMware NSX
6 1 (1.39%) Firmware
6 1 (1.39%) iptables
6 1 (1.39%) KVM
6 1 (1.39%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 18 (25.00%) Terraform
2 11 (15.28%) Kubernetes
3 8 (11.11%) Ansible
4 4 (5.56%) Grafana
4 4 (5.56%) Iperf
4 4 (5.56%) Prometheus
5 2 (2.78%) FortiGate
6 1 (1.39%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 1 (1.39%) Oracle RMAN
6 1 (1.39%) Progress Chef
6 1 (1.39%) Proxmox
6 1 (1.39%) Puppet
6 1 (1.39%) SCCM
6 1 (1.39%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (1.39%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 36 (50.00%) Microsoft
2 18 (25.00%) VMware
3 12 (16.67%) Cisco
4 9 (12.50%) Fortinet
5 4 (5.56%) Oracle
5 4 (5.56%) Ruckus Wireless
5 4 (5.56%) SonicWALL
5 4 (5.56%) Veeam
6 3 (4.17%) Aruba
6 3 (4.17%) Palo Alto
7 2 (2.78%) Sophos
8 1 (1.39%) Arista
8 1 (1.39%) CheckPoint
8 1 (1.39%) Google
8 1 (1.39%) Juniper
8 1 (1.39%) SolarWinds
8 1 (1.39%) WatchGuard