MPLS Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS)
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the UK excluding London requiring MPLS skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 30 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 295 219 239
Rank change year-on-year -76 +20 +115
Contract jobs citing MPLS 100 143 178
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.60% 0.85% 0.86%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 4.48% 5.72% 4.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 77 61 75
10th Percentile £263 £363 £263
25th Percentile £363 £408 £384
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £500 £486
Median % change year-on-year -15.00% +2.88% +14.35%
75th Percentile £525 £563 £551
90th Percentile £638 £649 £600
UK median daily rate £450 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -10.00% -4.76% +10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 2 14
10th Percentile - £18.10 £19.03
25th Percentile £19.00 £18.82 £24.63
Median hourly rate £20.00 £20.08 £65.98
Median % change year-on-year -0.37% -69.57% +186.87%
75th Percentile £21.00 £21.27 -
90th Percentile - £21.95 -
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £32.50 £65.98
% change year-on-year +15.38% -50.74% +163.92%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
UK excluding London

MPLS 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 the UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 2,234 2,498 3,636
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 13.47% 14.88% 17.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,460 1,369 2,180
10th Percentile £190 £200 £205
25th Percentile £300 £330 £340
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £471
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +0.96% +4.56%
75th Percentile £575 £581 £588
90th Percentile £648 £650 £675
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 141 131 281
10th Percentile £15.50 £18.03 £16.50
25th Percentile £18.50 £26.25 £24.00
Median hourly rate £41.94 £50.00 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -16.12% -11.49% +25.53%
75th Percentile £65.00 £67.50 £67.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £75.67
UK median hourly rate £34.50 £47.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year -27.37% -13.64% +35.55%

MPLS
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing MPLS relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

MPLS job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

MPLS
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing MPLS.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing MPLS

MPLS
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing MPLS in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 30 October 2025.

Daily rate histogram for MPLS in the UK excluding London

MPLS
Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing MPLS.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing MPLS

MPLS
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 MPLS within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 30 October 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
West Midlands -4 38 £400 -13.51% 9
Midlands -10 38 £400 - 10
South East -24 27 £450 -10.89% 17
North of England -67 12 £442 -11.55% 7
Scotland +1 10 £213 -43.33% 5
North West -33 10 £436 -13.61% 2
South West +1 9 £625 -1.19%
Northern Ireland - 3 £475 - 1
East of England -11 2 £350 - 2
North East -7 1 £550 +29.41%
Yorkshire -50 1 £500 - 5
MPLS
UK

MPLS
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 16 (16.00%) OpenStack
2 7 (7.00%) Confluence
3 2 (2.00%) Camunda
4 1 (1.00%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (1.00%) SharePoint
Applications
1 12 (12.00%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (4.00%) MS Visio
3 3 (3.00%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (3.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Cloud Services
1 24 (24.00%) AWS
2 17 (17.00%) Azure
3 8 (8.00%) GCP
4 6 (6.00%) OpenShift
5 4 (4.00%) Azure ExpressRoute
5 4 (4.00%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 2 (2.00%) AWS Direct Connect
7 1 (1.00%) Microsoft 365
7 1 (1.00%) Mimecast
Communications & Networking
1 67 (67.00%) BGP
2 62 (62.00%) WAN
3 50 (50.00%) VPN
4 37 (37.00%) LAN
5 36 (36.00%) IPsec
6 30 (30.00%) Firewall
7 26 (26.00%) OSPF
8 18 (18.00%) Wireless
9 16 (16.00%) DNS
10 14 (14.00%) VLAN
11 13 (13.00%) SD-WAN
12 11 (11.00%) SDH
13 10 (10.00%) Unified Communications
14 9 (9.00%) Cisco ASA
15 8 (8.00%) 5G
15 8 (8.00%) DHCP
15 8 (8.00%) Radio Access Network
15 8 (8.00%) Wireshark
15 8 (8.00%) WLAN
16 7 (7.00%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (1.00%) MongoDB
1 1 (1.00%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 8 (8.00%) JIRA
2 2 (2.00%) GitLab
3 1 (1.00%) Robot Framework
General
1 42 (42.00%) Social Skills
2 16 (16.00%) Telecoms
3 11 (11.00%) Analytical Skills
3 11 (11.00%) Public Sector
4 8 (8.00%) Documentation Skills
5 4 (4.00%) Influencing Skills
6 2 (2.00%) Legal
6 2 (2.00%) Organisational Skills
6 2 (2.00%) Presentation Skills
7 1 (1.00%) Finance
Job Titles
1 34 (34.00%) Network Engineer
2 19 (19.00%) Architect
3 18 (18.00%) Support Engineer
4 14 (14.00%) 3rd Line Engineer
5 13 (13.00%) 3rd Line Support
5 13 (13.00%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
6 12 (12.00%) Designer
6 12 (12.00%) Senior
7 10 (10.00%) Network Architect
7 10 (10.00%) WAN Engineer
8 9 (9.00%) 2nd Line Engineer
8 9 (9.00%) Senior Network Engineer
9 7 (7.00%) Field Engineer
10 6 (6.00%) IP Architect
10 6 (6.00%) IP Designer
10 6 (6.00%) IP Specialist
10 6 (6.00%) Network Designer
10 6 (6.00%) Solutions Architect
11 5 (5.00%) Network Support
11 5 (5.00%) Network Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (14.00%) NETCONF
2 8 (8.00%) RESTCONF
2 8 (8.00%) YANG
3 7 (7.00%) REST
4 2 (2.00%) JSON
5 1 (1.00%) 802.1X
5 1 (1.00%) gRPC
5 1 (1.00%) Jinja
5 1 (1.00%) SOAP
5 1 (1.00%) XML
5 1 (1.00%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 30 (30.00%) PKI
2 18 (18.00%) Data Centre
3 14 (14.00%) Hybrid Cloud
4 10 (10.00%) Cloud Native
5 6 (6.00%) Driving Licence
6 5 (5.00%) Operational Technology
6 5 (5.00%) Self-Motivation
7 3 (3.00%) Data Protection Act
7 3 (3.00%) SCADA
7 3 (3.00%) TM Forum
7 3 (3.00%) Virtual Team
8 2 (2.00%) Legacy Systems
8 2 (2.00%) Management Information System
9 1 (1.00%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 2 (2.00%) Linux
1 2 (2.00%) Unix
2 1 (1.00%) CentOS
2 1 (1.00%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 30 (30.00%) Network Design
2 24 (24.00%) Load Balancing
3 23 (23.00%) Network Virtualisation
4 18 (18.00%) Validation
5 16 (16.00%) Roadmaps
6 15 (15.00%) TOGAF
7 13 (13.00%) Network Architecture
8 12 (12.00%) Problem-Solving
9 11 (11.00%) Enterprise Architecture
9 11 (11.00%) Project Delivery
9 11 (11.00%) Strategic Thinking
10 10 (10.00%) ITIL
11 9 (9.00%) DevOps
11 9 (9.00%) Incident Response
11 9 (9.00%) Microservices
11 9 (9.00%) Network Management
11 9 (9.00%) Stakeholder Management
12 8 (8.00%) Knowledge Transfer
12 8 (8.00%) NsoIT
12 8 (8.00%) System Testing
Programming Languages
1 30 (30.00%) Python
2 3 (3.00%) Bash
3 1 (1.00%) Java
3 1 (1.00%) Lisp
3 1 (1.00%) SQL
Qualifications
1 49 (49.00%) Security Cleared
2 41 (41.00%) Cisco Certification
3 40 (40.00%) SC Cleared
4 27 (27.00%) CCNP
5 23 (23.00%) CCIE
6 17 (17.00%) Degree
6 17 (17.00%) JNCIE
7 11 (11.00%) AWS Certification
8 8 (8.00%) CCNA
9 4 (4.00%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 4 (4.00%) Azure Certification
9 4 (4.00%) CCSP
9 4 (4.00%) CISSP
9 4 (4.00%) Master's Degree
10 3 (3.00%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (3.00%) CCIE Security
10 3 (3.00%) DV Cleared
10 3 (3.00%) JNCIP
11 2 (2.00%) Computer Science Degree
11 2 (2.00%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (6.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 6 (6.00%) PCI DSS
2 5 (5.00%) GDPR
2 5 (5.00%) NIST
3 4 (4.00%) SLA
4 2 (2.00%) OASIS TOSCA
System Software
1 18 (18.00%) VMware Infrastructure
2 10 (10.00%) VMware NSX
3 7 (7.00%) VMware ESXi
4 5 (5.00%) Docker
5 1 (1.00%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 31 (31.00%) Ansible
2 11 (11.00%) Terraform
3 4 (4.00%) Kubernetes
4 3 (3.00%) Amdocs OSS
4 3 (3.00%) Iperf
4 3 (3.00%) Nmap
5 2 (2.00%) Cisco CUCM
5 2 (2.00%) FortiGate
6 1 (1.00%) SCCM
Vendors
1 57 (57.00%) Cisco
2 36 (36.00%) Juniper
3 24 (24.00%) Fortinet
4 18 (18.00%) VMware
5 17 (17.00%) F5
6 15 (15.00%) Palo Alto
7 11 (11.00%) Microsoft
8 9 (9.00%) SolarWinds
9 8 (8.00%) Meraki
10 7 (7.00%) Atlassian
10 7 (7.00%) CheckPoint
11 6 (6.00%) Nokia
12 4 (4.00%) Aruba
12 4 (4.00%) Dell
13 2 (2.00%) Amdocs
13 2 (2.00%) BT
13 2 (2.00%) CenturyLink
13 2 (2.00%) Ericsson
13 2 (2.00%) Forcepoint
13 2 (2.00%) Huawei