Network Engineer Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Network Engineer
UK > UK excluding London

The median Network Engineer daily rate in the UK excluding London is £475, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 10 August 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 104 92 62
Rank change year-on-year -12 -30 +5
Contract jobs requiring a Network Engineer 627 406 550
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 2.30% 2.64% 3.02%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.49% 2.93% 3.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 367 285 334
10th Percentile £306 £319 £273
25th Percentile £406 £381 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - +11.76%
75th Percentile £538 £575 £540
90th Percentile £600 £625 £631
UK median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 8 13
10th Percentile £48.25 £21.65 £17.80
25th Percentile £70.67 £22.38 £20.74
Median hourly rate £77.50 £38.25 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +102.61% -27.14% -15.32%
75th Percentile £91.00 £77.94 £75.00
90th Percentile £92.53 £84.99 £75.24
UK median hourly rate £77.50 £53.75 £53.75
% change year-on-year +44.19% - -13.31%

All Contract IT Job Roles
UK excluding London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the UK excluding London. 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 contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK excluding London with a recognized job title 25,136 13,864 16,765
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.01% 90.30% 92.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,187 8,513 10,270
10th Percentile £305 £216 £220
25th Percentile £410 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £600 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £650 £684
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,014 1,225 1,734
10th Percentile £14.56 £13.27 £14.05
25th Percentile £20.50 £16.41 £19.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.11 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +69.26% -44.20% +20.00%
75th Percentile £68.00 £54.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% +1.18%

Network Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Network Engineer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Network Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Network Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Network Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Network Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London

Network Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Network Engineer in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 10 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Network Engineer in the UK excluding London

Network Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Network Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Network Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London

Network Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Network Engineer in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 10 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Network Engineer in the UK excluding London

Network Engineer
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Network Engineer within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 10 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
North of England 0 229 £500 +2.15% 88
North West +10 165 £500 +5.26% 45
South East -37 143 £473 -5.50% 57
Midlands -8 106 £475 +15.15% 47
West Midlands -6 98 £475 +32.40% 21
Scotland +32 80 £400 -11.11% 21
South West -32 53 £550 - 46
Yorkshire -32 51 £463 -6.00% 33
East of England -3 42 £470 +17.50% 25
Wales -4 22 £425 -5.56% 14
North East -33 13 £600 +29.73% 10
East Midlands -15 5 £475 -15.56% 26
Northern Ireland +4 1 £550 -4.35% 5
Network Engineer
UK

Network Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London

For the 6 months to 10 August 2026, Network Engineer contract 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 contract job ads across the UK excluding London region featuring Network Engineer in the job title.

1 340 (54.23%) Cisco
2 257 (40.99%) Firewall
3 207 (33.01%) Security Cleared
4 185 (29.51%) WAN
5 182 (29.03%) LAN
6 159 (25.36%) Cisco Certification
7 148 (23.60%) VPN
8 135 (21.53%) BGP
8 135 (21.53%) Network Security
9 133 (21.21%) DNS
10 128 (20.41%) Wireless
11 127 (20.26%) SC Cleared
12 121 (19.30%) F5
13 111 (17.70%) CCNP
14 109 (17.38%) Palo Alto
15 106 (16.91%) Load Balancing
16 92 (14.67%) OSPF
17 80 (12.76%) CCNA
18 78 (12.44%) VMware
19 76 (12.12%) DV Cleared
19 76 (12.12%) Wi-Fi
20 75 (11.96%) VLAN
21 71 (11.32%) SD-WAN
22 68 (10.85%) TCP/IP
23 67 (10.69%) Problem-Solving
24 66 (10.53%) Juniper
25 64 (10.21%) High Availability
26 62 (9.89%) VMware Infrastructure
27 59 (9.41%) Migration
28 58 (9.25%) ITIL

Network Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 3 (0.48%) SAS
2 2 (0.32%) Confluence
2 2 (0.32%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.16%) CMS
3 1 (0.16%) FactoryTalk
3 1 (0.16%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 13 (2.07%) MS Visio
2 7 (1.12%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.16%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 57 (9.09%) Azure
2 44 (7.02%) AWS
3 24 (3.83%) GCP
4 20 (3.19%) GitHub
5 7 (1.12%) IaaS
5 7 (1.12%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 6 (0.96%) Azure Sentinel
6 6 (0.96%) GitHub Actions
6 6 (0.96%) Google Kubernetes Engine
6 6 (0.96%) Microsoft 365
6 6 (0.96%) Nutanix
6 6 (0.96%) OCI
7 5 (0.80%) AWS Direct Connect
7 5 (0.80%) Azure DevOps
8 4 (0.64%) Cloudflare
8 4 (0.64%) Entra ID
8 4 (0.64%) Google Compute Engine
9 3 (0.48%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 3 (0.48%) Route 53
10 2 (0.32%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 257 (40.99%) Firewall
2 185 (29.51%) WAN
3 182 (29.03%) LAN
4 148 (23.60%) VPN
5 135 (21.53%) BGP
5 135 (21.53%) Network Security
6 133 (21.21%) DNS
7 128 (20.41%) Wireless
8 92 (14.67%) OSPF
9 76 (12.12%) Wi-Fi
10 75 (11.96%) VLAN
11 71 (11.32%) SD-WAN
12 68 (10.85%) TCP/IP
13 50 (7.97%) DHCP
14 49 (7.81%) BIG-IP
15 47 (7.50%) MPLS
16 46 (7.34%) Cisco Nexus
17 45 (7.18%) Cisco ASA
18 44 (7.02%) Cisco ISE
19 42 (6.70%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (0.16%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 21 (3.35%) Jenkins
2 17 (2.71%) JIRA
3 16 (2.55%) Fiddler
4 14 (2.23%) Git
5 9 (1.44%) GitLab
6 2 (0.32%) Browser DevTools
6 2 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 82 (13.08%) Social Skills
2 38 (6.06%) Analytical Skills
2 38 (6.06%) Public Sector
3 37 (5.90%) Banking
4 36 (5.74%) Telecoms
5 32 (5.10%) Investment Banking
6 24 (3.83%) Finance
7 18 (2.87%) Manufacturing
8 16 (2.55%) Documentation Skills
9 13 (2.07%) Legal
10 9 (1.44%) Aerospace
10 9 (1.44%) Police
11 6 (0.96%) Military
11 6 (0.96%) Retail
12 3 (0.48%) Influencing Skills
12 3 (0.48%) Law
12 3 (0.48%) Organisational Skills
13 2 (0.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 2 (0.32%) Pharmaceutical
14 1 (0.16%) Advertising
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (5.74%) 802.1X
2 8 (1.28%) NETCONF
3 7 (1.12%) SAML
4 4 (0.64%) LDAP
4 4 (0.64%) REST
5 3 (0.48%) Java RMI
6 1 (0.16%) Jinja
6 1 (0.16%) JSON
6 1 (0.16%) ModSecurity
6 1 (0.16%) RESTCONF
6 1 (0.16%) RFC 2544
6 1 (0.16%) XMPP
6 1 (0.16%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 83 (13.24%) Data Centre
2 25 (3.99%) PKI
3 20 (3.19%) Management Information System
4 15 (2.39%) Hybrid Cloud
5 14 (2.23%) Driving Licence
6 12 (1.91%) Cloud Native
7 11 (1.75%) Onboarding
8 9 (1.44%) Clustering
8 9 (1.44%) Data Protection Act
8 9 (1.44%) Operational Technology
8 9 (1.44%) Security Posture
8 9 (1.44%) Self-Motivation
9 5 (0.80%) Fibre Optics
9 5 (0.80%) NHS
10 4 (0.64%) SCADA
11 3 (0.48%) CMDB
11 3 (0.48%) Distributed Systems
12 2 (0.32%) IoT
12 2 (0.32%) Video Conferencing
12 2 (0.32%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 53 (8.45%) Windows
2 35 (5.58%) Linux
3 7 (1.12%) Windows Server
4 6 (0.96%) Unix
5 1 (0.16%) Mac OS
5 1 (0.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.16%) Solaris
5 1 (0.16%) Windows 10
5 1 (0.16%) Windows 7
5 1 (0.16%) Windows Server 2008
5 1 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
5 1 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 106 (16.91%) Load Balancing
2 67 (10.69%) Problem-Solving
3 64 (10.21%) High Availability
4 59 (9.41%) Migration
5 58 (9.25%) ITIL
6 49 (7.81%) Network Monitoring
7 48 (7.66%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 42 (6.70%) Project Delivery
9 37 (5.90%) Change Management
10 33 (5.26%) Network Design
10 33 (5.26%) Technical Leadership
11 32 (5.10%) Continuous Improvement
11 32 (5.10%) Validation
12 28 (4.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 27 (4.31%) Network Management
13 27 (4.31%) Service Management
14 26 (4.15%) CI/CD
14 26 (4.15%) Network Virtualisation
15 25 (3.99%) ITSM
16 24 (3.83%) Network Architecture
Programming Languages
1 38 (6.06%) Python
2 8 (1.28%) Bash
3 7 (1.12%) ActionScript
3 7 (1.12%) PowerShell
4 6 (0.96%) SQL
5 3 (0.48%) C++
6 2 (0.32%) Perl
7 1 (0.16%) Groovy
7 1 (0.16%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 207 (33.01%) Security Cleared
2 159 (25.36%) Cisco Certification
3 127 (20.26%) SC Cleared
4 111 (17.70%) CCNP
5 80 (12.76%) CCNA
6 76 (12.12%) DV Cleared
7 21 (3.35%) CCIE
8 20 (3.19%) Degree
9 13 (2.07%) JNCIS
10 10 (1.59%) JNCIA
10 10 (1.59%) JNCIP
10 10 (1.59%) Network+ Certification
11 6 (0.96%) Computer Science Degree
12 5 (0.80%) CCIE Wireless
12 5 (0.80%) CCSE
12 5 (0.80%) CCSM
12 5 (0.80%) DBS Check
12 5 (0.80%) Server+ Certification
13 4 (0.64%) CWNA
13 4 (0.64%) CWSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (2.39%) SLA
2 9 (1.44%) QA
3 8 (1.28%) Disclosure Scotland
3 8 (1.28%) NIST
4 2 (0.32%) Data Quality
4 2 (0.32%) GDPR
4 2 (0.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (0.32%) JSP 440
5 1 (0.16%) ISO/IEC 20000
5 1 (0.16%) NCSC
5 1 (0.16%) NIST 800
5 1 (0.16%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 62 (9.89%) VMware Infrastructure
2 27 (4.31%) Firmware
3 26 (4.15%) VMware NSX
4 21 (3.35%) Active Directory
5 10 (1.59%) VMware ESXi
5 10 (1.59%) vSphere
6 5 (0.80%) Hyper-V
7 3 (0.48%) Docker
8 2 (0.32%) FreeRADIUS
8 2 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
9 1 (0.16%) Citrix Presentation Server
9 1 (0.16%) Snort
9 1 (0.16%) Squid
9 1 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 32 (5.10%) Terraform
2 31 (4.94%) Ansible
3 29 (4.63%) FortiGate
4 7 (1.12%) Cisco Prime
5 6 (0.96%) Kubernetes
5 6 (0.96%) Nagios
6 5 (0.80%) Cisco CUCM
7 4 (0.64%) Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.32%) Avamar
8 2 (0.32%) CASB
8 2 (0.32%) Grafana
8 2 (0.32%) Prometheus
8 2 (0.32%) Puppet
8 2 (0.32%) SolarWinds Orion
8 2 (0.32%) WSUS
9 1 (0.16%) Iperf
9 1 (0.16%) Nessus
9 1 (0.16%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.16%) SCOM
9 1 (0.16%) Suricata
Vendors
1 340 (54.23%) Cisco
2 121 (19.30%) F5
3 109 (17.38%) Palo Alto
4 78 (12.44%) VMware
5 66 (10.53%) Juniper
6 54 (8.61%) Fortinet
7 49 (7.81%) CheckPoint
8 40 (6.38%) Aruba
9 36 (5.74%) SolarWinds
10 33 (5.26%) Microsoft
11 23 (3.67%) ServiceNow
12 22 (3.51%) Meraki
13 20 (3.19%) Blue Coat
13 20 (3.19%) McAfee
14 19 (3.03%) Google
15 18 (2.87%) NetApp
16 17 (2.71%) Nokia
17 16 (2.55%) Splunk
18 15 (2.39%) Extreme Networks
19 14 (2.23%) Ekahau