Network Engineer Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Network Engineer
UK > UK excluding London

The median Network Engineer salary in the UK excluding London is £54,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 3 December 2025.

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

6 months to
3 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 264 161 158
Rank change year-on-year -103 -3 +124
Permanent jobs requiring a Network Engineer 272 712 633
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.72% 1.62% 2.19%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.79% 1.72% 2.29%
Number of salaries quoted 212 429 554
10th Percentile £37,500 £35,000 £31,325
25th Percentile £45,000 £41,250 £39,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £54,000 £52,500 £47,500
Median % change year-on-year +2.86% +10.53% -
75th Percentile £62,031 £61,250 £57,188
90th Percentile £68,750 £65,272 £65,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year - +10.00% -4.76%

All Permanent IT Job Vacancies
UK excluding London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent 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 permanent jobs in our overall sample.

Permanent vacancies in the UK excluding London with a recognized job title 34,258 41,339 27,635
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 90.25% 93.99% 95.51%
Number of salaries quoted 21,646 21,822 20,966
10th Percentile £27,500 £30,000 £28,000
25th Percentile £33,000 £40,000 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £52,500 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% - -
75th Percentile £65,000 £67,500 £67,500
90th Percentile £80,000 £81,250 £80,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £57,500 £60,000
% change year-on-year -4.35% -4.17% -

Network Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

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

Network Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Network Engineer
Salary Trend in the UK excluding London

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

Salary distribution trend for Network Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London

Network Engineer
Salary Histogram in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution for jobs citing Network Engineer in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 3 December 2025.

Salary histogram for Network Engineer in the UK excluding London

Network Engineer
Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Network Engineer within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 3 December 2025. 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
South East -78 88 £55,000 - 114
Midlands +14 60 £51,000 +7.37% 22
West Midlands +8 45 £45,000 -7.98% 21
North of England -71 42 £50,000 +5.26% 37
South West -10 27 £54,000 +27.06% 18
Scotland -12 22 £74,750 +49.50% 15
North West -26 22 £55,250 +16.32% 24
East of England +28 19 £60,000 +0.72% 14
East Midlands +13 15 £55,000 +57.14%
North East -2 10 £50,000 +18.34% 4
Yorkshire -24 10 £46,250 +2.78% 10
Northern Ireland - 7 £57,500 -
Wales -12 6 £49,750 +13.07% 4
Isle of Man +12 1 £60,000 +53.85%
Network Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 3 December 2025, 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 across the UK excluding London region featuring Network Engineer in the job title.

1 174 (63.97%) Cisco
2 127 (46.69%) Firewall
3 97 (35.66%) WAN
4 92 (33.82%) LAN
5 87 (31.99%) Cisco Certification
6 72 (26.47%) Azure
7 64 (23.53%) CCNP
7 64 (23.53%) Security Cleared
8 55 (20.22%) Fortinet
9 52 (19.12%) Network Security
10 51 (18.75%) Microsoft
10 51 (18.75%) SD-WAN
11 49 (18.01%) Juniper
11 49 (18.01%) VPN
12 47 (17.28%) CCNA
13 45 (16.54%) Palo Alto
14 43 (15.81%) Meraki
14 43 (15.81%) Wireless
15 42 (15.44%) BGP
15 42 (15.44%) Problem-Solving
15 42 (15.44%) SolarWinds
16 38 (13.97%) DV Cleared
16 38 (13.97%) SC Cleared
17 36 (13.24%) Network Monitoring
18 34 (12.50%) Infrastructure Engineering
19 33 (12.13%) CheckPoint
20 30 (11.03%) OSPF
21 29 (10.66%) Wi-Fi
22 28 (10.29%) Change Management
23 27 (9.93%) FortiGate

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:

Applications
1 21 (7.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (2.94%) MS Visio
3 6 (2.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.74%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (1.10%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 72 (26.47%) Azure
2 17 (6.25%) AWS
3 12 (4.41%) Microsoft 365
4 7 (2.57%) Entra ID
5 6 (2.21%) GCP
6 3 (1.10%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 3 (1.10%) Azure DevOps
6 3 (1.10%) Azure Sentinel
7 2 (0.74%) Nutanix
8 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 127 (46.69%) Firewall
2 97 (35.66%) WAN
3 92 (33.82%) LAN
4 52 (19.12%) Network Security
5 51 (18.75%) SD-WAN
6 49 (18.01%) VPN
7 43 (15.81%) Wireless
8 42 (15.44%) BGP
9 30 (11.03%) OSPF
10 29 (10.66%) Wi-Fi
11 27 (9.93%) VLAN
12 25 (9.19%) Cisco Firepower
12 25 (9.19%) MPLS
13 23 (8.46%) Cisco ISE
13 23 (8.46%) DNS
13 23 (8.46%) WLAN
14 21 (7.72%) Cisco ASA
14 21 (7.72%) IPsec
15 20 (7.35%) Cisco IOS
16 19 (6.99%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (5.15%) GIS
Development Applications
1 3 (1.10%) JIRA
General
1 57 (20.96%) Social Skills
2 28 (10.29%) Finance
3 17 (6.25%) Telecoms
4 14 (5.15%) Fire and Rescue
4 14 (5.15%) Legal
5 12 (4.41%) Public Sector
6 9 (3.31%) Manufacturing
7 7 (2.57%) Documentation Skills
8 6 (2.21%) Automotive
8 6 (2.21%) Retail
9 4 (1.47%) Analytical Skills
9 4 (1.47%) Law
10 3 (1.10%) Police
11 2 (0.74%) Pharmaceutical
12 1 (0.37%) Advertising
12 1 (0.37%) Electronics
12 1 (0.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 1 (0.37%) Military
12 1 (0.37%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (1.47%) 802.1X
2 3 (1.10%) REST
3 1 (0.37%) LDAP
3 1 (0.37%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 37 (13.60%) Data Centre
2 14 (5.15%) SCADA
3 13 (4.78%) Driving Licence
3 13 (4.78%) Management Information System
4 10 (3.68%) PKI
5 6 (2.21%) Data Protection Act
5 6 (2.21%) Public Cloud
5 6 (2.21%) Virtual Team
6 5 (1.84%) Self-Motivation
7 4 (1.47%) Enterprise Software
7 4 (1.47%) Product Ownership
8 3 (1.10%) CCTV
8 3 (1.10%) Cloud Native
8 3 (1.10%) iPad
8 3 (1.10%) Security Posture
8 3 (1.10%) Video Conferencing
9 2 (0.74%) Algorithms
9 2 (0.74%) CMDB
9 2 (0.74%) EPoS
9 2 (0.74%) FMCG
Operating Systems
1 21 (7.72%) Windows
2 14 (5.15%) Windows Server
3 7 (2.57%) Linux
4 5 (1.84%) Windows 10
5 3 (1.10%) Android
5 3 (1.10%) Unix
6 1 (0.37%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 42 (15.44%) Problem-Solving
2 36 (13.24%) Network Monitoring
3 34 (12.50%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 28 (10.29%) Change Management
5 25 (9.19%) Customer Service
5 25 (9.19%) Network Design
6 22 (8.09%) ITSM
6 22 (8.09%) Load Balancing
7 21 (7.72%) Network Virtualisation
7 21 (7.72%) Service Management
8 19 (6.99%) ITIL
9 18 (6.62%) High Availability
9 18 (6.62%) Network Management
10 17 (6.25%) Incident Management
11 15 (5.51%) Asset Management
11 15 (5.51%) Continuous Improvement
11 15 (5.51%) Problem Management
12 14 (5.15%) Agile
12 14 (5.15%) Capacity Planning
12 14 (5.15%) Regulatory Compliance
Programming Languages
1 13 (4.78%) Python
2 9 (3.31%) PowerShell
3 3 (1.10%) Bash
3 3 (1.10%) VB
4 1 (0.37%) C
Qualifications
1 87 (31.99%) Cisco Certification
2 64 (23.53%) CCNP
2 64 (23.53%) Security Cleared
3 47 (17.28%) CCNA
4 38 (13.97%) DV Cleared
4 38 (13.97%) SC Cleared
5 10 (3.68%) Degree
5 10 (3.68%) JNCIS
6 9 (3.31%) Azure Certification
7 7 (2.57%) CCIE
8 3 (1.10%) DBS Check
8 3 (1.10%) Network+ Certification
9 2 (0.74%) CCSP
9 2 (0.74%) CWAP
9 2 (0.74%) CWDP
9 2 (0.74%) CWNA
9 2 (0.74%) CWSP
9 2 (0.74%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 2 (0.74%) JNCIA
10 1 (0.37%) CCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (2.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 4 (1.47%) SLA
3 2 (0.74%) GDPR
3 2 (0.74%) ISO/IEC 20000
3 2 (0.74%) QA
4 1 (0.37%) GRC
4 1 (0.37%) ISO 9001
4 1 (0.37%) NIST
System Software
1 17 (6.25%) Firmware
2 13 (4.78%) Active Directory
2 13 (4.78%) VMware Infrastructure
3 12 (4.41%) VMware NSX
4 3 (1.10%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.74%) KVM
5 2 (0.74%) RHEV
5 2 (0.74%) Xen
6 1 (0.37%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 27 (9.93%) FortiGate
2 15 (5.51%) Ansible
3 11 (4.04%) Terraform
4 10 (3.68%) vCenter Server
5 6 (2.21%) Microsoft Intune
5 6 (2.21%) Nagios
6 3 (1.10%) Dell DRAC
6 3 (1.10%) Grafana
6 3 (1.10%) Prometheus
6 3 (1.10%) SCCM
7 2 (0.74%) Proxmox
8 1 (0.37%) VxRail
Vendors
1 174 (63.97%) Cisco
2 55 (20.22%) Fortinet
3 51 (18.75%) Microsoft
4 49 (18.01%) Juniper
5 45 (16.54%) Palo Alto
6 43 (15.81%) Meraki
7 42 (15.44%) SolarWinds
8 33 (12.13%) CheckPoint
9 23 (8.46%) F5
9 23 (8.46%) VMware
10 13 (4.78%) Aruba
11 10 (3.68%) Zscaler
12 9 (3.31%) Broadcom
13 7 (2.57%) ServiceNow
14 6 (2.21%) Citrix
14 6 (2.21%) HP
14 6 (2.21%) Splunk
15 4 (1.47%) CrowdStrike
15 4 (1.47%) Dell
16 3 (1.10%) Zerto