Senior Network Engineer Job Trends

Senior Network Engineer
UK

The median Senior Network Engineer salary in the UK is £60,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 15 February 2026.

The table below compares current salary benchmarking and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 518 523 562
Rank change year-on-year +5 +39 +185
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Network Engineer 142 159 255
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.21% 0.32% 0.34%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.23% 0.35% 0.36%
Number of salaries quoted 104 101 215
10th Percentile £47,200 £43,500 £45,000
25th Percentile £54,438 £51,250 £46,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £62,500 £54,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% +15.74% -10.00%
75th Percentile £70,000 £77,500 £70,750
90th Percentile £75,000 £85,250 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £49,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% +12.24% -6.67%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of permanent jobs in our overall sample.

Permanent vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 61,307 45,494 70,946
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 91.18% 91.70% 94.90%
Number of salaries quoted 38,565 23,655 55,494
10th Percentile £29,000 £33,500 £28,500
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,000 £39,420
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -4.76%

Senior Network Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings featuring 'Senior Network Engineer' in the job title relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Senior Network Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

Senior Network Engineer
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for Senior Network Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Salary distribution trend for Senior Network Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Senior Network Engineer
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Senior Network Engineer over the 6 months to 15 February 2026.

Salary histogram for Senior Network Engineer in the UK

Senior Network Engineer
Top 17 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Senior Network Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 15 February 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
England +52 135 £60,000 -7.69% 40
UK excluding London +14 99 £60,000 +9.09% 37
Work from Home +29 36 £65,000 +5.44% 21
North of England +1 30 £60,000 -7.69% 5
Midlands +25 29 £55,500 +5.21% 6
London -4 29 £65,000 -13.33% 14
South East +13 25 £69,000 +27.78% 11
West Midlands +31 20 £60,000 +29.03% 5
North West +11 19 £60,000 +4.35% 5
East Midlands -5 9 £55,000 -20.00% 1
East of England +16 7 £75,000 +78.57% 3
North East 0 6 £50,000 -
Yorkshire -26 5 £67,500 -3.57%
South West -13 4 £57,110 +1.76% 5
Wales -5 2 £52,500 +22.09% 3
Scotland -13 1 - - 4
Northern Ireland - 1 £57,500 - 1

Senior Network Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 15 February 2026, Senior Network Engineer job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all permanent job ads featuring Senior Network Engineer in the job title.

1 99 (69.72%) Cisco
2 77 (54.23%) Firewall
3 70 (49.30%) WAN
4 66 (46.48%) Cisco Certification
5 63 (44.37%) LAN
6 61 (42.96%) CCNP
7 51 (35.92%) VPN
8 43 (30.28%) BGP
9 34 (23.94%) Network Security
10 33 (23.24%) Azure
10 33 (23.24%) SD-WAN
11 32 (22.54%) OSPF
12 30 (21.13%) Python
13 28 (19.72%) Wireless
14 27 (19.01%) Security Cleared
15 25 (17.61%) F5
16 24 (16.90%) CCIE
16 24 (16.90%) Fortinet
16 24 (16.90%) SolarWinds
17 23 (16.20%) Cisco ASA
18 22 (15.49%) Palo Alto
19 21 (14.79%) AWS
19 21 (14.79%) EIGRP
20 20 (14.08%) Cisco ISE
20 20 (14.08%) Juniper
20 20 (14.08%) MS Visio
20 20 (14.08%) VLAN
21 19 (13.38%) Kalman Filter
21 19 (13.38%) Network Design
21 19 (13.38%) SC Cleared

Senior Network Engineer Skill Set
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 2 (1.41%) Apache Airflow
1 2 (1.41%) Microsoft Exchange
1 2 (1.41%) nginx
Applications
1 20 (14.08%) MS Visio
2 2 (1.41%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.70%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 33 (23.24%) Azure
2 21 (14.79%) AWS
3 5 (3.52%) GCP
4 4 (2.82%) Microsoft 365
5 3 (2.11%) Datadog
6 2 (1.41%) Dagster
6 2 (1.41%) GitHub
7 1 (0.70%) Azure Monitor
7 1 (0.70%) Azure Sentinel
7 1 (0.70%) Cloud Computing
7 1 (0.70%) Nutanix
Communications & Networking
1 77 (54.23%) Firewall
2 70 (49.30%) WAN
3 63 (44.37%) LAN
4 51 (35.92%) VPN
5 43 (30.28%) BGP
6 34 (23.94%) Network Security
7 33 (23.24%) SD-WAN
8 32 (22.54%) OSPF
9 28 (19.72%) Wireless
10 23 (16.20%) Cisco ASA
11 21 (14.79%) EIGRP
12 20 (14.08%) Cisco ISE
12 20 (14.08%) VLAN
13 18 (12.68%) Cisco Nexus
14 15 (10.56%) Wi-Fi
15 14 (9.86%) Cisco Wireless
16 13 (9.15%) SNMP
17 12 (8.45%) WAAS
18 10 (7.04%) Wireless Security
19 9 (6.34%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (1.41%) Data Lake
1 2 (1.41%) Metadata
1 2 (1.41%) MongoDB
1 2 (1.41%) MySQL
1 2 (1.41%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 4 (2.82%) Jenkins
2 2 (1.41%) GitLab
2 2 (1.41%) Jaeger
2 2 (1.41%) MLflow
2 2 (1.41%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 20 (14.08%) Analytical Skills
2 19 (13.38%) Social Skills
3 13 (9.15%) Law
4 12 (8.45%) Finance
5 10 (7.04%) Public Sector
6 8 (5.63%) Retail
6 8 (5.63%) Telecoms
7 7 (4.93%) Banking
7 7 (4.93%) Police
8 4 (2.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 4 (2.82%) Marketing
9 2 (1.41%) Agriculture
9 2 (1.41%) Documentation Skills
10 1 (0.70%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.70%) Welsh Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (2.11%) Apache NiFi
2 2 (1.41%) FastAPI
2 2 (1.41%) Kafka
2 2 (1.41%) Keycloak
2 2 (1.41%) WebRTC
Miscellaneous
1 31 (21.83%) Data Centre
2 9 (6.34%) Driving Licence
3 5 (3.52%) Management Information System
3 5 (3.52%) Security Posture
4 4 (2.82%) Enterprise Software
5 3 (2.11%) Onboarding
5 3 (2.11%) PKI
6 2 (1.41%) IoT
6 2 (1.41%) MPEG
6 2 (1.41%) Public Cloud
6 2 (1.41%) Robotics
7 1 (0.70%) BYOD
Operating Systems
1 6 (4.23%) Windows
2 5 (3.52%) Windows Server
3 3 (2.11%) Linux
4 1 (0.70%) Android
4 1 (0.70%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 19 (13.38%) Kalman Filter
1 19 (13.38%) Network Design
2 18 (12.68%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 18 (12.68%) Load Balancing
3 16 (11.27%) High Availability
4 14 (9.86%) Continuous Improvement
4 14 (9.86%) Root Cause Analysis
5 13 (9.15%) Mentoring
5 13 (9.15%) Network Monitoring
5 13 (9.15%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 12 (8.45%) Computer Science
6 12 (8.45%) Project Delivery
7 10 (7.04%) Analytical Thinking
7 10 (7.04%) Collaborative Working
7 10 (7.04%) Requirements Gathering
7 10 (7.04%) WAN Optimisation
8 9 (6.34%) Change Control
8 9 (6.34%) Network Architecture
9 8 (5.63%) Problem Management
9 8 (5.63%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 30 (21.13%) Python
2 2 (1.41%) PowerShell
3 1 (0.70%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 66 (46.48%) Cisco Certification
2 61 (42.96%) CCNP
3 27 (19.01%) Security Cleared
4 24 (16.90%) CCIE
5 19 (13.38%) SC Cleared
6 17 (11.97%) CCNA
7 14 (9.86%) Degree
8 12 (8.45%) Computer Science Degree
8 12 (8.45%) DV Cleared
9 9 (6.34%) JNCIS
10 5 (3.52%) Azure Certification
10 5 (3.52%) JNCIP
11 4 (2.82%) BPSS Clearance
12 2 (1.41%) CCSA
12 2 (1.41%) CCSE
12 2 (1.41%) JNCIA
13 1 (0.70%) CCSP
13 1 (0.70%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (8.45%) PMO
2 3 (2.11%) NIST
2 3 (2.11%) PCI DSS
3 1 (0.70%) ISO 9001
3 1 (0.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 11 (7.75%) VMware Infrastructure
2 10 (7.04%) ProxySG
3 8 (5.63%) Firmware
4 6 (4.23%) VMware NSX
5 4 (2.82%) Active Directory
6 2 (1.41%) Docker
6 2 (1.41%) KVM
6 2 (1.41%) NFS
6 2 (1.41%) RHEV
6 2 (1.41%) Xen
7 1 (0.70%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.70%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 14 (9.86%) Ansible
2 9 (6.34%) FortiGate
3 8 (5.63%) Terraform
4 5 (3.52%) Nagios
5 2 (1.41%) Argo
5 2 (1.41%) Grafana
5 2 (1.41%) Kubernetes
5 2 (1.41%) Prometheus
5 2 (1.41%) Proxmox
6 1 (0.70%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (0.70%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 99 (69.72%) Cisco
2 25 (17.61%) F5
3 24 (16.90%) Fortinet
3 24 (16.90%) SolarWinds
4 22 (15.49%) Palo Alto
5 20 (14.08%) Juniper
6 18 (12.68%) CheckPoint
6 18 (12.68%) Infoblox
7 16 (11.27%) VMware
8 13 (9.15%) Microsoft
9 12 (8.45%) Motorola
10 10 (7.04%) Blue Coat
10 10 (7.04%) Meraki
10 10 (7.04%) ServiceNow
11 7 (4.93%) Arista
11 7 (4.93%) Dell
12 5 (3.52%) CrowdStrike
13 4 (2.82%) Aruba
14 3 (2.11%) SevOne
14 3 (2.11%) Splunk