OSPF Contract Job Trends in England

Open Shortest Path First (OSPF)
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring OSPF skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 16 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 366 293 344
Rank change year-on-year -73 +51 +50
Contract jobs citing OSPF 264 229 205
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.59% 0.84% 0.56%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 6.20% 6.66% 4.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 160 133 148
10th Percentile £400 £365 £313
25th Percentile £419 £425 £394
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year +3.68% - -9.52%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £543
90th Percentile £668 £675 £575
UK median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 3 2
10th Percentile £53.01 £37.00 £18.98
25th Percentile £70.50 £38.13 £19.69
Median hourly rate £71.33 £40.00 £21.25
Median % change year-on-year +78.33% +88.24% -65.73%
75th Percentile £72.54 £49.38 £22.69
90th Percentile £84.53 £55.00 £23.33
UK median hourly rate £71.33 £40.00 £21.25
% change year-on-year +78.33% +88.24% -72.58%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
England

OSPF falls under the Communications and Computer Networking category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring communications or computer networking skills in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 4,255 3,436 4,738
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.51% 12.64% 12.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,624 2,121 2,827
10th Percentile £250 £235 £215
25th Percentile £400 £371 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £492 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.63% -1.60% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £484 £500
% change year-on-year +3.31% -3.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 307 160 381
10th Percentile £16.04 £14.99 £13.87
25th Percentile £20.41 £25.11 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.72 £45.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -40.62% +12.50% +18.52%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £87.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £26.44 £50.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -47.12% +25.00% +18.52%

OSPF
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing OSPF relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

OSPF job vacancy trend in England

OSPF
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing OSPF.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing OSPF

OSPF
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing OSPF in England over the 6 months to 16 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for OSPF in England

OSPF
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing OSPF.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing OSPF

OSPF
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing OSPF in England over the 6 months to 16 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for OSPF in England

OSPF
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing OSPF within the England region over the 6 months to 16 July 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
London -112 76 £500 +5.26% 19
South East -6 73 £473 +5.00% 6
North of England -70 53 £500 +5.26% 9
North West -54 35 £571 +20.26% 4
South West -24 20 £495 -15.74% 7
Midlands -61 18 £425 -12.82% 7
West Midlands -56 15 £440 -9.69% 7
North East -26 13 £650 +160.00%
Yorkshire -42 11 £490 -2.00% 5
East Midlands -13 2 - -
East of England -29 1 - - 8
OSPF
UK

OSPF
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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 (1.14%) Confluence
1 3 (1.14%) SAS
2 2 (0.76%) SharePoint
Applications
1 6 (2.27%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.14%) AutoCAD
3 2 (0.76%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Cloud Services
1 88 (33.33%) Azure
2 71 (26.89%) AWS
3 22 (8.33%) OCI
4 20 (7.58%) GCP
5 15 (5.68%) SaaS
6 14 (5.30%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 10 (3.79%) Azure ExpressRoute
8 8 (3.03%) GitHub
9 5 (1.89%) AWS Direct Connect
9 5 (1.89%) Microsoft 365
10 4 (1.52%) Amazon GuardDuty
10 4 (1.52%) Route 53
11 3 (1.14%) Amazon S3
11 3 (1.14%) AWS CloudFormation
11 3 (1.14%) Azure Sentinel
11 3 (1.14%) Entra ID
11 3 (1.14%) Nutanix
12 2 (0.76%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 2 (0.76%) AWS Control Tower
12 2 (0.76%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 261 (98.86%) BGP
2 199 (75.38%) Firewall
3 170 (64.39%) WAN
4 120 (45.45%) LAN
5 96 (36.36%) VLAN
6 85 (32.20%) VPN
7 84 (31.82%) VXLAN
8 81 (30.68%) SD-WAN
9 74 (28.03%) Network Security
10 68 (25.76%) Ethernet VPN
11 59 (22.35%) BIG-IP
11 59 (22.35%) MPLS
12 56 (21.21%) DNS
13 44 (16.67%) DHCP
13 44 (16.67%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
13 44 (16.67%) Wireless
14 43 (16.29%) IPsec
15 41 (15.53%) Cisco ISE
15 41 (15.53%) TCP/IP
16 40 (15.15%) Wi-Fi
Development Applications
1 20 (7.58%) GitLab
2 6 (2.27%) Git
2 6 (2.27%) Sonatype Nexus
3 4 (1.52%) JIRA
4 1 (0.38%) AppScan
4 1 (0.38%) Bitbucket
4 1 (0.38%) Burp Suite
4 1 (0.38%) Jenkins
4 1 (0.38%) Metasploit
General
1 34 (12.88%) Social Skills
2 28 (10.61%) Finance
2 28 (10.61%) Public Sector
3 24 (9.09%) Analytical Skills
4 19 (7.20%) Telecoms
5 17 (6.44%) Documentation Skills
6 12 (4.55%) Financial Institution
7 11 (4.17%) Banking
8 8 (3.03%) Retail
9 7 (2.65%) Military
10 6 (2.27%) Police
11 3 (1.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (1.14%) Legal
11 3 (1.14%) Manufacturing
12 2 (0.76%) Aviation
12 2 (0.76%) Investment Banking
12 2 (0.76%) Law
12 2 (0.76%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (0.76%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 143 (54.17%) Network Engineer
2 76 (28.79%) Senior
3 45 (17.05%) Senior Network Engineer
4 32 (12.12%) Architect
5 24 (9.09%) Network Specialist
6 20 (7.58%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 20 (7.58%) Network Architect
7 18 (6.82%) Cisco Engineer
7 18 (6.82%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
8 16 (6.06%) Cisco Network Engineer
9 14 (5.30%) Firewall Specialist
10 13 (4.92%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
11 8 (3.03%) Network Security Engineer
11 8 (3.03%) Security Engineer
11 8 (3.03%) Senior Data Warehouse Specialist
11 8 (3.03%) Senior Network Specialist
12 7 (2.65%) WAN Engineer
13 6 (2.27%) Senior Cisco Engineer
14 5 (1.89%) Data Centre Engineer
14 5 (1.89%) Senior Cisco Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (13.26%) 802.1X
2 4 (1.52%) Jinja
2 4 (1.52%) REST
3 2 (0.76%) AWS CDK
3 2 (0.76%) RFC 2544
3 2 (0.76%) SAML
4 1 (0.38%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 130 (49.24%) Data Centre
2 36 (13.64%) Hybrid Cloud
3 30 (11.36%) PKI
4 26 (9.85%) Clustering
5 17 (6.44%) Cloud Native
6 6 (2.27%) Security Posture
7 5 (1.89%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 5 (1.89%) Private Cloud
7 5 (1.89%) Self-Motivation
8 4 (1.52%) Onboarding
8 4 (1.52%) Operational Technology
9 3 (1.14%) Driving Licence
9 3 (1.14%) Greenfield Project
9 3 (1.14%) Management Information System
9 3 (1.14%) SCADA
10 2 (0.76%) Analytical Mindset
10 2 (0.76%) Data Protection Act
10 2 (0.76%) Fibre Optics
10 2 (0.76%) Public Cloud
11 1 (0.38%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 36 (13.64%) Windows
2 10 (3.79%) Linux
3 2 (0.76%) Unix
4 1 (0.38%) Kali Linux
4 1 (0.38%) VMS
4 1 (0.38%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.38%) Windows Server 2012
4 1 (0.38%) Windows Server 2016
4 1 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 72 (27.27%) High Availability
2 62 (23.48%) Load Balancing
3 57 (21.59%) Zero Trust
4 51 (19.32%) Network Design
5 43 (16.29%) ITIL
6 40 (15.15%) Infrastructure as Code
7 39 (14.77%) Problem-Solving
8 35 (13.26%) Migration
8 35 (13.26%) Network Architecture
9 31 (11.74%) CI/CD
9 31 (11.74%) Observability
10 28 (10.61%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 28 (10.61%) Project Delivery
11 26 (9.85%) Identity Access Management
11 26 (9.85%) Network Monitoring
12 24 (9.09%) DevOps
13 23 (8.71%) Continuous Improvement
14 21 (7.95%) Change Management
14 21 (7.95%) Cloud Security
14 21 (7.95%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 67 (25.38%) Python
2 5 (1.89%) PowerShell
3 3 (1.14%) Bash
4 2 (0.76%) Perl
5 1 (0.38%) Lisp
5 1 (0.38%) SQL
Qualifications
1 113 (42.80%) Security Cleared
2 99 (37.50%) Cisco Certification
3 76 (28.79%) SC Cleared
4 70 (26.52%) CCNP
5 36 (13.64%) CCIE
6 31 (11.74%) DV Cleared
7 18 (6.82%) Degree
8 16 (6.06%) CCNA
9 9 (3.41%) JNCIP
9 9 (3.41%) JNCIS
10 8 (3.03%) JNCIA
11 7 (2.65%) AWS Certification
12 6 (2.27%) Azure Certification
13 5 (1.89%) CISSP
13 5 (1.89%) Computer Science Degree
14 4 (1.52%) ISTQB
14 4 (1.52%) PMP
14 4 (1.52%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 3 (1.14%) VCDX
16 2 (0.76%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (3.79%) NCSC
2 3 (1.14%) GDPR
2 3 (1.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 3 (1.14%) SLA
3 2 (0.76%) NIST
4 1 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
4 1 (0.38%) COBIT
4 1 (0.38%) GRC
4 1 (0.38%) NIST 800
4 1 (0.38%) PCI DSS
4 1 (0.38%) QA
4 1 (0.38%) RMADS
System Software
1 18 (6.82%) VMware Infrastructure
2 11 (4.17%) VMware NSX
3 7 (2.65%) Firmware
4 5 (1.89%) Active Directory
5 4 (1.52%) vSphere
6 2 (0.76%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.76%) KVM
6 2 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.76%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.38%) ProxySG
7 1 (0.38%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 75 (28.41%) Ansible
2 51 (19.32%) Terraform
3 46 (17.42%) FortiGate
4 3 (1.14%) Nagios
5 2 (0.76%) CASB
5 2 (0.76%) Cisco Prime
5 2 (0.76%) Iperf
5 2 (0.76%) Kubernetes
5 2 (0.76%) Nmap
5 2 (0.76%) QRadar
6 1 (0.38%) Cisco CUCM
6 1 (0.38%) Grafana
6 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (0.38%) Nessus
6 1 (0.38%) OPNET
6 1 (0.38%) Progress Chef
6 1 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.38%) Suricata
Vendors
1 196 (74.24%) Cisco
2 106 (40.15%) F5
3 91 (34.47%) Palo Alto
4 63 (23.86%) Fortinet
5 62 (23.48%) Juniper
6 48 (18.18%) Arista
7 39 (14.77%) SolarWinds
8 38 (14.39%) CheckPoint
9 36 (13.64%) Aruba
10 29 (10.98%) Splunk
11 26 (9.85%) Extreme Networks
12 23 (8.71%) VMware
13 16 (6.06%) Zscaler
14 13 (4.92%) Meraki
15 9 (3.41%) Microsoft
15 9 (3.41%) ServiceNow
16 7 (2.65%) Google
17 6 (2.27%) Citrix
17 6 (2.27%) Ekahau
18 5 (1.89%) HP