BGP Contract Job Trends

Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring BGP skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 20 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 280 253 258
Rank change year-on-year -27 +5 +37
Contract jobs citing BGP 458 337 385
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.87% 1.03% 0.92%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 9.16% 8.47% 7.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 270 214 245
10th Percentile £350 £325 £300
25th Percentile £413 £418 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £498 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -0.50% +5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £569 £613 £538
90th Percentile £650 £684 £575
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £475
% change year-on-year - +5.26% -2.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 3 2
10th Percentile £50.15 £37.00 £23.15
25th Percentile £63.34 £38.13 £30.13
Median hourly rate £72.80 £40.00 £42.00
Median % change year-on-year +81.99% -4.76% -40.00%
75th Percentile £78.83 £49.38 £53.63
90th Percentile £87.05 £55.00 £60.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £72.80 - £19.00
% change year-on-year - - -69.35%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
UK

BGP 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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 4,999 3,981 5,202
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.47% 12.14% 12.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,017 2,427 3,100
10th Percentile £238 £235 £213
25th Percentile £400 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £594 £600
90th Percentile £669 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £489 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +2.84% -5.00% +8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 327 193 395
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.00 £16.58
Median hourly rate £26.00 £47.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -45.26% +18.75% -11.11%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £83.80 £72.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.44 £42.50 £45.88
% change year-on-year -37.79% -7.37% -19.74%

BGP
Job Vacancy Trend

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

BGP job vacancy trend in the UK

BGP
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing BGP.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing BGP

BGP
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing BGP over the 6 months to 20 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for BGP in the UK

BGP
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing BGP.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing BGP

BGP
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing BGP over the 6 months to 20 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for BGP in the UK

BGP
Top 16 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing BGP within the UK over the 6 months to 20 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
England -21 413 £500 - 70
UK excluding London -38 271 £500 - 49
London -71 124 £488 -2.50% 25
Work from Home -29 119 £480 -7.34% 30
South East +10 109 £520 +15.56% 14
North of England -27 97 £500 +5.26% 12
North West -20 73 £521 +6.92% 7
Midlands -21 52 £419 +11.67% 6
West Midlands -38 49 £413 +17.86% 6
South West -47 30 £525 -16.00% 8
Yorkshire -37 17 £495 +41.43% 5
North East -24 13 £650 +160.00%
Scotland -18 11 £418 -4.57% 1
East of England -18 6 £500 -28.57% 7
East Midlands -15 2 - -
Wales -20 2 £425 -6.08%

BGP
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 13 (2.84%) OpenStack
2 3 (0.66%) SAS
3 2 (0.44%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.22%) Confluence
4 1 (0.22%) SharePoint
Applications
1 11 (2.40%) MS Visio
2 9 (1.97%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (1.31%) Microsoft Excel
3 6 (1.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.66%) AutoCAD
Cloud Services
1 116 (25.33%) Azure
2 92 (20.09%) AWS
3 32 (6.99%) GCP
4 22 (4.80%) OCI
5 17 (3.71%) Azure ExpressRoute
6 15 (3.28%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 13 (2.84%) SaaS
8 10 (2.18%) Azure Sentinel
8 10 (2.18%) GitHub
9 7 (1.53%) AWS Direct Connect
9 7 (1.53%) Azure Monitor
9 7 (1.53%) Microsoft 365
10 6 (1.31%) Nutanix
11 5 (1.09%) OpenShift
12 4 (0.87%) Entra ID
13 3 (0.66%) Amazon GuardDuty
13 3 (0.66%) Catchpoint
13 3 (0.66%) Route 53
14 2 (0.44%) Amazon EKS
14 2 (0.44%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 297 (64.85%) OSPF
2 275 (60.04%) Firewall
3 248 (54.15%) WAN
4 157 (34.28%) LAN
5 138 (30.13%) VPN
6 121 (26.42%) VLAN
7 116 (25.33%) VXLAN
8 113 (24.67%) MPLS
9 108 (23.58%) Network Security
10 100 (21.83%) DNS
11 86 (18.78%) Ethernet VPN
12 84 (18.34%) SD-WAN
13 77 (16.81%) Multicast
13 77 (16.81%) TCP/IP
14 69 (15.07%) IPsec
15 62 (13.54%) Wireless
16 61 (13.32%) BIG-IP
17 55 (12.01%) Wi-Fi
18 54 (11.79%) Cisco ASA
18 54 (11.79%) Cisco Nexus
Development Applications
1 21 (4.59%) GitLab
2 13 (2.84%) Git
3 10 (2.18%) Sonatype Nexus
4 7 (1.53%) JIRA
5 3 (0.66%) Jenkins
6 1 (0.22%) AppScan
6 1 (0.22%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.22%) Burp Suite
6 1 (0.22%) Metasploit
General
1 76 (16.59%) Social Skills
2 48 (10.48%) Finance
3 44 (9.61%) Analytical Skills
4 34 (7.42%) Public Sector
5 33 (7.21%) Banking
6 30 (6.55%) Telecoms
7 21 (4.59%) Documentation Skills
8 19 (4.15%) Investment Banking
9 13 (2.84%) Financial Institution
10 11 (2.40%) Military
11 8 (1.75%) Retail
12 7 (1.53%) Legal
12 7 (1.53%) Police
13 3 (0.66%) German Language
13 3 (0.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 3 (0.66%) Influencing Skills
13 3 (0.66%) Italian Language
13 3 (0.66%) Manufacturing
13 3 (0.66%) Spanish Language
14 2 (0.44%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 261 (56.99%) Network Engineer
2 93 (20.31%) Senior
3 62 (13.54%) Cisco Engineer
4 59 (12.88%) Cisco Network Engineer
5 55 (12.01%) Senior Network Engineer
6 46 (10.04%) Architect
6 46 (10.04%) Security Engineer
7 44 (9.61%) Data Network Engineer
7 44 (9.61%) Network Security Engineer
8 33 (7.21%) Cisco Security Engineer
9 32 (6.99%) Data Engineer
9 32 (6.99%) Network Architect
10 25 (5.46%) Network Specialist
11 22 (4.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 20 (4.37%) Consultant
13 18 (3.93%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
14 16 (3.49%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
14 16 (3.49%) Web Engineer
15 14 (3.06%) Developer
15 14 (3.06%) Firewall Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (8.52%) 802.1X
2 15 (3.28%) REST
3 13 (2.84%) NETCONF
3 13 (2.84%) YANG
4 6 (1.31%) OpenConfig
4 6 (1.31%) RESTCONF
5 4 (0.87%) CSS
5 4 (0.87%) Jinja
5 4 (0.87%) LDAP
6 2 (0.44%) RFC 2544
6 2 (0.44%) SAML
7 1 (0.22%) eBPF
7 1 (0.22%) Model Context Protocol
Miscellaneous
1 194 (42.36%) Data Centre
2 52 (11.35%) Hybrid Cloud
3 38 (8.30%) PKI
4 26 (5.68%) Clustering
5 23 (5.02%) Cloud Native
6 10 (2.18%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 10 (2.18%) Private Cloud
7 9 (1.97%) Analytical Mindset
8 8 (1.75%) Self-Motivation
9 7 (1.53%) Public Cloud
9 7 (1.53%) Security Posture
10 6 (1.31%) Operational Technology
11 5 (1.09%) Digital Signage
11 5 (1.09%) Linux Command Line
11 5 (1.09%) Onboarding
12 4 (0.87%) Data Protection Act
12 4 (0.87%) Distributed Systems
12 4 (0.87%) Management Information System
13 3 (0.66%) SCADA
13 3 (0.66%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 47 (10.26%) Windows
2 18 (3.93%) Linux
3 4 (0.87%) Windows Server
4 3 (0.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (0.66%) Ubuntu
5 2 (0.44%) Unix
5 2 (0.44%) VMS
5 2 (0.44%) Windows Server 2012
6 1 (0.22%) Kali Linux
6 1 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
6 1 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 113 (24.67%) Load Balancing
2 83 (18.12%) High Availability
3 73 (15.94%) Network Design
4 68 (14.85%) Zero Trust
5 66 (14.41%) Migration
6 65 (14.19%) Infrastructure as Code
7 57 (12.45%) Problem-Solving
8 48 (10.48%) Network Architecture
9 45 (9.83%) ITIL
10 43 (9.39%) CI/CD
10 43 (9.39%) Project Delivery
11 37 (8.08%) Change Management
11 37 (8.08%) Observability
12 34 (7.42%) DevOps
12 34 (7.42%) Validation
13 33 (7.21%) Network Segmentation
14 32 (6.99%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 29 (6.33%) Network Monitoring
16 28 (6.11%) Continuous Improvement
17 27 (5.90%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 126 (27.51%) Python
2 9 (1.97%) Bash
3 7 (1.53%) PowerShell
4 6 (1.31%) SQL
5 3 (0.66%) Perl
5 3 (0.66%) PHP
6 2 (0.44%) Shell Script
7 1 (0.22%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 155 (33.84%) Cisco Certification
2 148 (32.31%) Security Cleared
3 109 (23.80%) CCNP
4 88 (19.21%) SC Cleared
5 57 (12.45%) DV Cleared
6 56 (12.23%) CCIE
7 25 (5.46%) Degree
8 23 (5.02%) CCNA
9 16 (3.49%) JNCIE
10 12 (2.62%) JNCIP
11 11 (2.40%) JNCIS
12 10 (2.18%) JNCIA
13 8 (1.75%) AWS Certification
13 8 (1.75%) Azure Certification
13 8 (1.75%) Computer Science Degree
14 7 (1.53%) CISSP
15 6 (1.31%) GIAC
16 4 (0.87%) ISTQB
16 4 (0.87%) PMP
16 4 (0.87%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (2.62%) NCSC
2 9 (1.97%) NIST
3 8 (1.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 4 (0.87%) Cyber Essentials
4 4 (0.87%) GDPR
4 4 (0.87%) QA
5 3 (0.66%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 3 (0.66%) PCI DSS
5 3 (0.66%) SLA
6 2 (0.44%) NIST 800
7 1 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.22%) COBIT
7 1 (0.22%) GRC
7 1 (0.22%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 1 (0.22%) RMADS
System Software
1 30 (6.55%) VMware Infrastructure
2 15 (3.28%) VMware NSX
3 9 (1.97%) Active Directory
4 7 (1.53%) Firmware
4 7 (1.53%) VMware ESXi
4 7 (1.53%) vSphere
5 6 (1.31%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.66%) Docker
7 2 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
7 2 (0.44%) Virtual Servers
8 1 (0.22%) KVM
8 1 (0.22%) ProxySG
Systems Management
1 126 (27.51%) Ansible
2 73 (15.94%) Terraform
3 61 (13.32%) FortiGate
4 20 (4.37%) Grafana
5 17 (3.71%) Prometheus
6 10 (2.18%) Kubernetes
7 9 (1.97%) Cisco Prime
8 3 (0.66%) Nagios
8 3 (0.66%) vCenter Server
9 2 (0.44%) CASB
9 2 (0.44%) Iperf
9 2 (0.44%) Microsoft Intune
9 2 (0.44%) Nmap
9 2 (0.44%) QRadar
9 2 (0.44%) SCOM
9 2 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.22%) Cisco CUCM
10 1 (0.22%) OPNET
10 1 (0.22%) Progress Chef
10 1 (0.22%) Rancher
Vendors
1 315 (68.78%) Cisco
2 166 (36.24%) F5
3 132 (28.82%) Palo Alto
4 99 (21.62%) Fortinet
5 98 (21.40%) Juniper
6 84 (18.34%) Arista
7 44 (9.61%) CheckPoint
8 43 (9.39%) Aruba
8 43 (9.39%) SolarWinds
9 42 (9.17%) VMware
10 32 (6.99%) Splunk
11 26 (5.68%) Extreme Networks
11 26 (5.68%) Microsoft
12 22 (4.80%) Zscaler
13 18 (3.93%) Meraki
14 10 (2.18%) Citrix
15 9 (1.97%) Google
16 7 (1.53%) Ekahau
16 7 (1.53%) ServiceNow
17 5 (1.09%) HP