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 £52,500 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 11 January 2026.

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

6 months to
11 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 239 162 172
Rank change year-on-year -77 +10 +84
Permanent jobs requiring a Network Engineer 318 617 630
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.76% 1.71% 1.82%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.84% 1.84% 1.91%
Number of salaries quoted 255 390 542
10th Percentile £30,000 £36,250 £32,050
25th Percentile £45,000 £43,375 £39,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,500 £53,000 £48,000
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% +10.42% +1.05%
75th Percentile £60,000 £60,000 £55,000
90th Percentile £68,750 £65,000 £63,750
UK median annual salary £55,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year - +10.00% -

All Permanent IT Job Roles
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 37,951 33,588 32,956
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 90.41% 92.94% 95.36%
Number of salaries quoted 23,133 16,400 24,992
10th Percentile £28,000 £31,250 £27,500
25th Percentile £35,000 £40,000 £36,743
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £65,000 £68,750 £65,000
90th Percentile £80,000 £82,500 £78,750
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year -8.33% +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 11 January 2026.

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 11 January 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
South East -62 111 £52,500 -4.55% 116
Midlands +20 73 £55,000 +8.64% 52
West Midlands +29 57 £50,000 - 32
North of England -56 52 £45,000 -5.26% 66
Scotland +4 28 £45,000 -10.00% 14
North West -27 28 £45,000 -5.26% 30
South West -29 26 £55,000 +29.41% 48
East of England +16 20 £60,000 -5.25% 69
East Midlands -4 16 £55,000 - 20
Yorkshire -30 14 £45,000 -10.00% 25
North East -10 10 £50,000 +18.34% 14
Northern Ireland - 6 £57,500 - 12
Wales -29 2 £43,750 -0.57% 23
Network Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 11 January 2026, 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.

1 170 (53.46%) Cisco
2 127 (39.94%) Firewall
3 96 (30.19%) WAN
4 87 (27.36%) LAN
5 84 (26.42%) Cisco Certification
6 67 (21.07%) Security Cleared
7 66 (20.75%) CCNP
8 64 (20.13%) Azure
9 55 (17.30%) BGP
10 51 (16.04%) SD-WAN
10 51 (16.04%) VPN
11 50 (15.72%) Juniper
11 50 (15.72%) Network Security
12 48 (15.09%) Palo Alto
12 48 (15.09%) SolarWinds
13 47 (14.78%) Fortinet
13 47 (14.78%) Wireless
14 45 (14.15%) Microsoft
15 44 (13.84%) SC Cleared
16 42 (13.21%) Problem-Solving
17 40 (12.58%) Network Monitoring
18 38 (11.95%) CheckPoint
19 37 (11.64%) Meraki
20 36 (11.32%) CCNA
21 35 (11.01%) OSPF
22 34 (10.69%) DV Cleared
23 32 (10.06%) VLAN
24 31 (9.75%) Infrastructure Engineering
25 27 (8.49%) Change Management
25 27 (8.49%) Cisco ASA

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 (6.60%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (2.83%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (0.94%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 64 (20.13%) Azure
2 17 (5.35%) AWS
3 9 (2.83%) Microsoft 365
4 7 (2.20%) Entra ID
5 6 (1.89%) Azure Sentinel
5 6 (1.89%) GCP
6 3 (0.94%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 3 (0.94%) Azure DevOps
7 1 (0.31%) GitHub
7 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Purview
7 1 (0.31%) Nutanix
Communications & Networking
1 127 (39.94%) Firewall
2 96 (30.19%) WAN
3 87 (27.36%) LAN
4 55 (17.30%) BGP
5 51 (16.04%) SD-WAN
5 51 (16.04%) VPN
6 50 (15.72%) Network Security
7 47 (14.78%) Wireless
8 35 (11.01%) OSPF
9 32 (10.06%) VLAN
10 27 (8.49%) Cisco ASA
11 26 (8.18%) MPLS
12 23 (7.23%) Wi-Fi
13 22 (6.92%) Cisco Firepower
13 22 (6.92%) EIGRP
14 21 (6.60%) Cisco ISE
14 21 (6.60%) IPsec
14 21 (6.60%) Wireshark
15 19 (5.97%) Cisco IOS
16 16 (5.03%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (4.40%) GIS
Development Applications
1 3 (0.94%) Git
2 2 (0.63%) JIRA
3 1 (0.31%) Jenkins
General
1 58 (18.24%) Social Skills
2 29 (9.12%) Finance
3 20 (6.29%) Telecoms
4 17 (5.35%) Public Sector
5 14 (4.40%) Fire and Rescue
5 14 (4.40%) Legal
6 11 (3.46%) Analytical Skills
7 9 (2.83%) Retail
8 8 (2.52%) Manufacturing
9 7 (2.20%) Law
10 6 (1.89%) Automotive
10 6 (1.89%) Documentation Skills
11 4 (1.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 4 (1.26%) Police
12 2 (0.63%) Advertising
12 2 (0.63%) Aerospace
12 2 (0.63%) Banking
12 2 (0.63%) Marketing
13 1 (0.31%) Influencing Skills
13 1 (0.31%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (0.94%) Jinja
1 3 (0.94%) NETCONF
1 3 (0.94%) REST
1 3 (0.94%) YANG
2 1 (0.31%) 802.1X
2 1 (0.31%) Apache NiFi
2 1 (0.31%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 41 (12.89%) Data Centre
2 14 (4.40%) SCADA
3 13 (4.09%) Management Information System
4 10 (3.14%) Driving Licence
4 10 (3.14%) PKI
5 6 (1.89%) Data Protection Act
5 6 (1.89%) Public Cloud
6 5 (1.57%) Security Posture
7 4 (1.26%) Enterprise Software
7 4 (1.26%) Hybrid Cloud
7 4 (1.26%) Product Ownership
8 3 (0.94%) CCTV
8 3 (0.94%) Cloud Native
8 3 (0.94%) CMDB
8 3 (0.94%) iPad
8 3 (0.94%) Private Cloud
8 3 (0.94%) Social Media
8 3 (0.94%) Virtual Team
9 2 (0.63%) EPoS
9 2 (0.63%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 21 (6.60%) Windows
2 14 (4.40%) Windows Server
3 6 (1.89%) Linux
4 5 (1.57%) Windows 10
5 3 (0.94%) Android
6 1 (0.31%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 42 (13.21%) Problem-Solving
2 40 (12.58%) Network Monitoring
3 31 (9.75%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 27 (8.49%) Change Management
4 27 (8.49%) Customer Service
4 27 (8.49%) ITSM
5 26 (8.18%) Network Design
6 25 (7.86%) Service Management
7 24 (7.55%) Load Balancing
8 23 (7.23%) Network Virtualisation
9 22 (6.92%) ITIL
10 18 (5.66%) High Availability
10 18 (5.66%) Network Management
10 18 (5.66%) Problem Management
11 16 (5.03%) Continuous Improvement
11 16 (5.03%) Incident Management
12 15 (4.72%) Asset Management
12 15 (4.72%) Cybersecurity
13 14 (4.40%) Capacity Planning
13 14 (4.40%) Regulatory Compliance
Programming Languages
1 16 (5.03%) Python
2 8 (2.52%) PowerShell
3 2 (0.63%) Bash
Qualifications
1 84 (26.42%) Cisco Certification
2 67 (21.07%) Security Cleared
3 66 (20.75%) CCNP
4 44 (13.84%) SC Cleared
5 36 (11.32%) CCNA
6 34 (10.69%) DV Cleared
7 12 (3.77%) CCIE
8 10 (3.14%) Degree
8 10 (3.14%) JNCIS
9 9 (2.83%) Azure Certification
10 3 (0.94%) Computer Science Degree
10 3 (0.94%) DBS Check
11 2 (0.63%) CCSP
11 2 (0.63%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 2 (0.63%) JNCIA
12 1 (0.31%) CCIE Security
12 1 (0.31%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (1.57%) ISO/IEC 20000
2 3 (0.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 3 (0.94%) PMO
2 3 (0.94%) QA
2 3 (0.94%) SLA
3 1 (0.31%) GDPR
3 1 (0.31%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 17 (5.35%) VMware Infrastructure
2 15 (4.72%) Active Directory
2 15 (4.72%) VMware NSX
3 13 (4.09%) Firmware
4 4 (1.26%) Hyper-V
5 3 (0.94%) ProxySG
6 2 (0.63%) KVM
6 2 (0.63%) RHEV
6 2 (0.63%) Xen
7 1 (0.31%) iptables
7 1 (0.31%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 17 (5.35%) FortiGate
2 10 (3.14%) vCenter Server
3 9 (2.83%) Terraform
4 8 (2.52%) Ansible
5 7 (2.20%) Nagios
6 4 (1.26%) Dell DRAC
7 3 (0.94%) Grafana
7 3 (0.94%) Microsoft Intune
7 3 (0.94%) Prometheus
7 3 (0.94%) Proxmox
7 3 (0.94%) SCCM
8 1 (0.31%) VxRail
Vendors
1 170 (53.46%) Cisco
2 50 (15.72%) Juniper
3 48 (15.09%) Palo Alto
3 48 (15.09%) SolarWinds
4 47 (14.78%) Fortinet
5 45 (14.15%) Microsoft
6 38 (11.95%) CheckPoint
7 37 (11.64%) Meraki
8 27 (8.49%) F5
8 27 (8.49%) VMware
9 10 (3.14%) Aruba
9 10 (3.14%) Zscaler
10 9 (2.83%) Broadcom
10 9 (2.83%) ServiceNow
11 7 (2.20%) Splunk
12 6 (1.89%) Blue Coat
12 6 (1.89%) Dell
13 5 (1.57%) Avaya
13 5 (1.57%) HP
13 5 (1.57%) Infoblox