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 23 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 278 266 260
Rank change year-on-year -12 -6 +39
Contract jobs citing BGP 450 332 375
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.85% 1.02% 0.91%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 9.03% 8.36% 7.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 266 210 236
10th Percentile £363 £325 £299
25th Percentile £413 £418 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year - +5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £573 £600 £538
90th Percentile £650 £675 £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 4,983 3,969 5,105
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.45% 12.15% 12.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,000 2,423 3,051
10th Percentile £250 £235 £213
25th Percentile £400 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.15% -2.10% -
75th Percentile £588 £590 £601
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.16% -5.00% +9.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 328 194 377
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.99 £13.95
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.15 £17.63
Median hourly rate £26.22 £46.88 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -44.06% +17.19% -16.52%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £83.70 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £42.50 £47.50
% change year-on-year -37.27% -10.53% -16.67%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 -25 413 £500 - 75
UK excluding London -16 266 £500 - 47
London -69 124 £488 -2.50% 31
Work from Home -43 116 £500 -0.99% 23
South East +7 107 £523 +16.11% 13
North of England -15 100 £500 +5.26% 11
North West -10 76 £500 +2.56% 6
Midlands -36 50 £425 +6.25% 6
West Midlands -40 47 £440 +17.40% 6
South West -46 30 £525 -16.00% 9
Yorkshire -34 17 £495 +41.43% 5
North East -26 13 £650 +160.00%
Scotland -11 6 £375 -14.29% 1
East of England -27 6 £500 -28.57% 7
East Midlands -14 2 - -
Wales -20 2 £425 -6.59%

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 11 (2.44%) OpenStack
2 3 (0.67%) SAS
3 2 (0.44%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.22%) Confluence
4 1 (0.22%) SharePoint
Applications
1 11 (2.44%) MS Visio
2 9 (2.00%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (1.33%) Microsoft Excel
3 6 (1.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.67%) AutoCAD
Cloud Services
1 116 (25.78%) Azure
2 92 (20.44%) AWS
3 33 (7.33%) GCP
4 23 (5.11%) OCI
5 18 (4.00%) Azure ExpressRoute
6 15 (3.33%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 13 (2.89%) SaaS
8 11 (2.44%) GitHub
9 10 (2.22%) Azure Sentinel
10 8 (1.78%) AWS Direct Connect
11 7 (1.56%) Azure Monitor
11 7 (1.56%) Microsoft 365
11 7 (1.56%) OpenShift
12 6 (1.33%) Nutanix
13 4 (0.89%) Entra ID
14 3 (0.67%) Amazon GuardDuty
14 3 (0.67%) Azure DevOps
14 3 (0.67%) Route 53
15 2 (0.44%) AWS CloudFormation
15 2 (0.44%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 293 (65.11%) OSPF
2 271 (60.22%) Firewall
3 245 (54.44%) WAN
4 153 (34.00%) LAN
5 140 (31.11%) VPN
6 119 (26.44%) VLAN
7 118 (26.22%) VXLAN
8 110 (24.44%) MPLS
9 105 (23.33%) Network Security
10 102 (22.67%) DNS
11 86 (19.11%) Ethernet VPN
12 85 (18.89%) SD-WAN
13 78 (17.33%) Multicast
14 77 (17.11%) TCP/IP
15 69 (15.33%) IPsec
16 63 (14.00%) Wireless
17 61 (13.56%) BIG-IP
18 56 (12.44%) Cisco ASA
19 53 (11.78%) Wi-Fi
20 52 (11.56%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Development Applications
1 22 (4.89%) GitLab
2 14 (3.11%) Git
3 8 (1.78%) Sonatype Nexus
4 7 (1.56%) JIRA
5 4 (0.89%) Jenkins
6 1 (0.22%) AppScan
6 1 (0.22%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.22%) Burp Suite
6 1 (0.22%) Metasploit
General
1 73 (16.22%) Social Skills
2 50 (11.11%) Finance
3 43 (9.56%) Analytical Skills
4 33 (7.33%) Banking
5 32 (7.11%) Public Sector
6 29 (6.44%) Telecoms
7 20 (4.44%) Documentation Skills
8 19 (4.22%) Investment Banking
9 13 (2.89%) Financial Institution
10 10 (2.22%) Military
11 8 (1.78%) Retail
12 7 (1.56%) Legal
12 7 (1.56%) Police
13 4 (0.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 3 (0.67%) German Language
14 3 (0.67%) Influencing Skills
14 3 (0.67%) Italian Language
14 3 (0.67%) Spanish Language
15 2 (0.44%) Organisational Skills
15 2 (0.44%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 257 (57.11%) Network Engineer
2 96 (21.33%) Senior
3 62 (13.78%) Cisco Engineer
4 59 (13.11%) Cisco Network Engineer
5 58 (12.89%) Senior Network Engineer
6 46 (10.22%) Architect
7 45 (10.00%) Security Engineer
8 43 (9.56%) Data Network Engineer
8 43 (9.56%) Network Security Engineer
9 32 (7.11%) Cisco Security Engineer
9 32 (7.11%) Network Architect
10 31 (6.89%) Data Engineer
11 25 (5.56%) Network Specialist
12 22 (4.89%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 20 (4.44%) Consultant
14 18 (4.00%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 17 (3.78%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
16 15 (3.33%) Web Engineer
17 14 (3.11%) Developer
17 14 (3.11%) Firewall Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (8.67%) 802.1X
2 13 (2.89%) REST
3 11 (2.44%) NETCONF
3 11 (2.44%) YANG
4 6 (1.33%) OpenConfig
4 6 (1.33%) RESTCONF
5 4 (0.89%) CSS
5 4 (0.89%) Jinja
5 4 (0.89%) LDAP
6 3 (0.67%) eBPF
7 2 (0.44%) RFC 2544
7 2 (0.44%) SAML
8 1 (0.22%) JSON
8 1 (0.22%) Model Context Protocol
8 1 (0.22%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 188 (41.78%) Data Centre
2 51 (11.33%) Hybrid Cloud
3 37 (8.22%) PKI
4 26 (5.78%) Clustering
5 23 (5.11%) Cloud Native
6 10 (2.22%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 10 (2.22%) Private Cloud
7 9 (2.00%) Analytical Mindset
7 9 (2.00%) Self-Motivation
8 7 (1.56%) Public Cloud
8 7 (1.56%) Security Posture
9 6 (1.33%) Operational Technology
10 5 (1.11%) Digital Signage
10 5 (1.11%) Linux Command Line
10 5 (1.11%) Onboarding
11 4 (0.89%) Data Protection Act
11 4 (0.89%) Distributed Systems
11 4 (0.89%) Management Information System
12 3 (0.67%) Greenfield Project
12 3 (0.67%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 48 (10.67%) Windows
2 19 (4.22%) Linux
3 5 (1.11%) Windows Server
4 3 (0.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (0.67%) Ubuntu
4 3 (0.67%) 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
1 114 (25.33%) Load Balancing
2 84 (18.67%) High Availability
3 72 (16.00%) Network Design
4 70 (15.56%) Zero Trust
5 65 (14.44%) Infrastructure as Code
5 65 (14.44%) Migration
6 54 (12.00%) Problem-Solving
7 47 (10.44%) Network Architecture
8 46 (10.22%) ITIL
9 44 (9.78%) Project Delivery
10 41 (9.11%) CI/CD
11 37 (8.22%) Observability
12 35 (7.78%) Change Management
12 35 (7.78%) Validation
13 33 (7.33%) DevOps
13 33 (7.33%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 33 (7.33%) Network Segmentation
14 29 (6.44%) Mentoring
15 28 (6.22%) Continuous Improvement
16 27 (6.00%) Identity Access Management
Programming Languages
1 122 (27.11%) Python
2 10 (2.22%) Bash
3 8 (1.78%) PowerShell
4 6 (1.33%) SQL
5 3 (0.67%) Perl
5 3 (0.67%) PHP
6 2 (0.44%) Shell Script
7 1 (0.22%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 150 (33.33%) Cisco Certification
2 148 (32.89%) Security Cleared
3 106 (23.56%) CCNP
4 87 (19.33%) SC Cleared
5 57 (12.67%) DV Cleared
6 54 (12.00%) CCIE
7 23 (5.11%) Degree
8 22 (4.89%) CCNA
9 14 (3.11%) JNCIE
10 11 (2.44%) JNCIP
11 10 (2.22%) JNCIS
12 9 (2.00%) JNCIA
13 8 (1.78%) AWS Certification
13 8 (1.78%) Azure Certification
13 8 (1.78%) Computer Science Degree
14 7 (1.56%) CISSP
15 6 (1.33%) GIAC
16 4 (0.89%) ISTQB
16 4 (0.89%) PMP
16 4 (0.89%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (2.67%) NCSC
2 9 (2.00%) NIST
3 8 (1.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 4 (0.89%) Cyber Essentials
4 4 (0.89%) GDPR
4 4 (0.89%) QA
5 3 (0.67%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 3 (0.67%) PCI DSS
5 3 (0.67%) 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 (6.67%) VMware Infrastructure
2 13 (2.89%) VMware NSX
3 9 (2.00%) Active Directory
4 7 (1.56%) Firmware
4 7 (1.56%) VMware ESXi
5 6 (1.33%) Hyper-V
6 4 (0.89%) Docker
6 4 (0.89%) vSphere
7 2 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
7 2 (0.44%) Virtual Servers
8 1 (0.22%) KVM
8 1 (0.22%) ProxySG
Systems Management
1 122 (27.11%) Ansible
2 76 (16.89%) Terraform
3 59 (13.11%) FortiGate
4 20 (4.44%) Grafana
5 17 (3.78%) Prometheus
6 13 (2.89%) Kubernetes
7 9 (2.00%) Cisco Prime
8 3 (0.67%) Nagios
8 3 (0.67%) 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%) Progress Chef
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%) Puppet
Vendors
1 311 (69.11%) Cisco
2 167 (37.11%) F5
3 131 (29.11%) Palo Alto
4 101 (22.44%) Fortinet
5 92 (20.44%) Juniper
6 83 (18.44%) Arista
7 45 (10.00%) CheckPoint
8 43 (9.56%) Aruba
8 43 (9.56%) SolarWinds
9 40 (8.89%) VMware
10 32 (7.11%) Splunk
11 27 (6.00%) Microsoft
12 26 (5.78%) Extreme Networks
13 22 (4.89%) Zscaler
14 18 (4.00%) Meraki
15 10 (2.22%) Citrix
15 10 (2.22%) Google
16 7 (1.56%) Ekahau
16 7 (1.56%) ServiceNow
17 5 (1.11%) HP