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 16 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 291 223 265
Rank change year-on-year -68 +42 +40
Contract jobs citing BGP 413 351 371
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.82% 1.18% 0.85%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 8.64% 9.49% 6.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 238 216 230
10th Percentile £339 £344 £313
25th Percentile £400 £425 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £559 £616 £538
90th Percentile £630 £700 £601
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £490 £463
% change year-on-year +1.02% +5.83% -4.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 3 4
10th Percentile £47.22 £37.00 £19.93
25th Percentile £56.01 £38.13 £22.06
Median hourly rate £71.33 £40.00 £39.25
Median % change year-on-year +78.33% +1.91% -43.93%
75th Percentile £73.13 £49.38 £57.50
90th Percentile £73.81 £55.00 £62.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £71.33 - £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 4,780 3,698 5,392
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.52% 12.48% 12.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,930 2,273 3,186
10th Percentile £263 £220 £210
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £483 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.52% -3.40% -1.96%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £470 £488
% change year-on-year +2.13% -3.59% +2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 290 172 422
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £19.13 £17.69
Median hourly rate £27.69 £41.25 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.87% +3.13% +111.30%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.41 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £79.50 £71.19
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.25 £31.08 £47.50
% change year-on-year -2.67% -34.57% +156.76%

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 16 June 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 16 June 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 16 June 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 -51 369 £490 -2.00% 68
UK excluding London -46 238 £495 +1.02% 57
Work from Home -35 123 £450 -14.29% 30
London -91 115 £450 -10.00% 27
South East +12 100 £475 +5.56% 20
North of England -45 82 £571 +16.58% 12
North West -31 63 £575 +16.16% 6
Midlands -35 51 £413 +17.86% 6
West Midlands -35 48 £413 +26.92% 4
South West -41 25 £538 -14.00% 3
North East -21 13 £650 +160.00% 1
Yorkshire -44 12 £475 +35.71% 5
Scotland -11 8 £434 +5.15% 9
Wales -17 4 £425 -5.56%
East of England -31 4 £500 - 2
East Midlands -25 2 - - 2

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 8 (1.94%) OpenStack
2 4 (0.97%) Confluence
3 3 (0.73%) SharePoint
Applications
1 9 (2.18%) MS Visio
2 5 (1.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.97%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (0.73%) AutoCAD
4 3 (0.73%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 88 (21.31%) Azure
2 82 (19.85%) AWS
3 27 (6.54%) GCP
4 22 (5.33%) OCI
5 17 (4.12%) SaaS
6 14 (3.39%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 12 (2.91%) Azure ExpressRoute
8 9 (2.18%) Azure Sentinel
9 8 (1.94%) AWS Direct Connect
9 8 (1.94%) Route 53
10 5 (1.21%) Amazon EKS
10 5 (1.21%) Amazon GuardDuty
10 5 (1.21%) Azure Monitor
10 5 (1.21%) GitHub
10 5 (1.21%) Nutanix
11 3 (0.73%) Amazon S3
11 3 (0.73%) AWS CloudFormation
11 3 (0.73%) Catchpoint
11 3 (0.73%) IaaS
11 3 (0.73%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 275 (66.59%) OSPF
2 239 (57.87%) Firewall
3 237 (57.38%) WAN
4 144 (34.87%) LAN
5 117 (28.33%) VXLAN
6 111 (26.88%) VPN
7 100 (24.21%) MPLS
7 100 (24.21%) Network Security
8 96 (23.24%) VLAN
9 88 (21.31%) Ethernet VPN
9 88 (21.31%) SD-WAN
10 84 (20.34%) DNS
11 69 (16.71%) Multicast
12 61 (14.77%) BIG-IP
13 56 (13.56%) IPsec
13 56 (13.56%) TCP/IP
14 46 (11.14%) Wireless
15 44 (10.65%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 42 (10.17%) Cisco Nexus
16 42 (10.17%) Wi-Fi
Development Applications
1 21 (5.08%) GitLab
2 11 (2.66%) Git
3 7 (1.69%) Sonatype Nexus
4 6 (1.45%) JIRA
5 3 (0.73%) Jenkins
6 1 (0.24%) AppScan
6 1 (0.24%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.24%) Burp Suite
6 1 (0.24%) Metasploit
General
1 56 (13.56%) Social Skills
2 41 (9.93%) Finance
3 34 (8.23%) Public Sector
4 33 (7.99%) Analytical Skills
5 29 (7.02%) Banking
6 25 (6.05%) Documentation Skills
7 24 (5.81%) Telecoms
8 20 (4.84%) Investment Banking
9 13 (3.15%) Financial Institution
10 12 (2.91%) Military
11 8 (1.94%) Legal
12 7 (1.69%) Manufacturing
13 4 (0.97%) Police
13 4 (0.97%) Retail
14 3 (0.73%) French Language
14 3 (0.73%) German Language
14 3 (0.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 3 (0.73%) Italian Language
14 3 (0.73%) Marketing
14 3 (0.73%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 230 (55.69%) Network Engineer
2 80 (19.37%) Senior
3 63 (15.25%) Cisco Engineer
4 58 (14.04%) Cisco Network Engineer
5 47 (11.38%) Security Engineer
6 44 (10.65%) Senior Network Engineer
7 43 (10.41%) Data Network Engineer
8 42 (10.17%) Network Security Engineer
9 40 (9.69%) Architect
10 33 (7.99%) Cisco Security Engineer
11 32 (7.75%) Data Engineer
12 27 (6.54%) Network Architect
13 24 (5.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 24 (5.81%) Network Specialist
14 23 (5.57%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
15 18 (4.36%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
16 15 (3.63%) Operations Engineer
16 15 (3.63%) Web Engineer
17 14 (3.39%) Firewall Specialist
18 12 (2.91%) Data Centre Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (10.65%) 802.1X
2 14 (3.39%) REST
3 8 (1.94%) NETCONF
3 8 (1.94%) YANG
4 7 (1.69%) LDAP
5 5 (1.21%) CSS
6 4 (0.97%) Jinja
7 2 (0.48%) AWS CDK
7 2 (0.48%) OpenConfig
7 2 (0.48%) RESTCONF
7 2 (0.48%) RFC 2544
8 1 (0.24%) eBPF
8 1 (0.24%) HTML
8 1 (0.24%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 184 (44.55%) Data Centre
2 38 (9.20%) Hybrid Cloud
2 38 (9.20%) PKI
3 26 (6.30%) Clustering
4 20 (4.84%) Cloud Native
5 8 (1.94%) Onboarding
6 6 (1.45%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 6 (1.45%) Security Posture
7 5 (1.21%) Analytical Mindset
7 5 (1.21%) Data Protection Act
8 4 (0.97%) Distributed Systems
8 4 (0.97%) Linux Command Line
8 4 (0.97%) Operational Technology
8 4 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
9 3 (0.73%) CESG
9 3 (0.73%) Greenfield Project
9 3 (0.73%) Management Information System
9 3 (0.73%) SCADA
9 3 (0.73%) Virtual Team
10 2 (0.48%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 43 (10.41%) Windows
2 18 (4.36%) Linux
3 6 (1.45%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.48%) Unix
4 2 (0.48%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.24%) Kali Linux
5 1 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.24%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 105 (25.42%) Load Balancing
2 75 (18.16%) High Availability
3 63 (15.25%) Network Design
4 61 (14.77%) Infrastructure as Code
5 58 (14.04%) Zero Trust
6 57 (13.80%) Migration
7 49 (11.86%) Problem-Solving
8 40 (9.69%) Network Architecture
9 38 (9.20%) CI/CD
10 34 (8.23%) Observability
11 33 (7.99%) DevOps
11 33 (7.99%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 31 (7.51%) Change Management
12 31 (7.51%) ITIL
13 29 (7.02%) Technical Leadership
14 28 (6.78%) Network Segmentation
14 28 (6.78%) Project Delivery
15 27 (6.54%) Validation
16 26 (6.30%) Continuous Improvement
16 26 (6.30%) Network Monitoring
Programming Languages
1 100 (24.21%) Python
2 7 (1.69%) Bash
3 6 (1.45%) SQL
4 4 (0.97%) PHP
4 4 (0.97%) PowerShell
5 2 (0.48%) Perl
6 1 (0.24%) JavaScript
6 1 (0.24%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 152 (36.80%) Cisco Certification
2 139 (33.66%) Security Cleared
3 109 (26.39%) CCNP
4 101 (24.46%) SC Cleared
5 53 (12.83%) CCIE
6 42 (10.17%) DV Cleared
7 24 (5.81%) Degree
8 22 (5.33%) CCNA
9 14 (3.39%) JNCIP
10 13 (3.15%) JNCIE
11 12 (2.91%) JNCIS
12 11 (2.66%) JNCIA
13 9 (2.18%) AWS Certification
14 8 (1.94%) Computer Science Degree
15 7 (1.69%) Azure Certification
16 6 (1.45%) GIAC
17 5 (1.21%) CCDP
17 5 (1.21%) CISSP
17 5 (1.21%) CompTIA Security+
18 4 (0.97%) APMG
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (2.66%) NIST
2 10 (2.42%) NCSC
3 9 (2.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 7 (1.69%) SLA
5 4 (0.97%) Cyber Essentials
5 4 (0.97%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 3 (0.73%) GDPR
6 3 (0.73%) PCI DSS
6 3 (0.73%) QA
6 3 (0.73%) RMADS
7 2 (0.48%) JSP 440
7 2 (0.48%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.24%) COBIT
8 1 (0.24%) GRC
8 1 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 28 (6.78%) VMware Infrastructure
2 10 (2.42%) VMware NSX
3 8 (1.94%) VMware ESXi
4 7 (1.69%) Firmware
5 5 (1.21%) Active Directory
5 5 (1.21%) Hyper-V
6 4 (0.97%) vSphere
7 2 (0.48%) Docker
7 2 (0.48%) vCloud
7 2 (0.48%) Virtual Servers
8 1 (0.24%) KVM
8 1 (0.24%) ProxySG
8 1 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 105 (25.42%) Ansible
2 64 (15.50%) Terraform
3 53 (12.83%) FortiGate
4 20 (4.84%) Grafana
5 17 (4.12%) Prometheus
6 7 (1.69%) Kubernetes
7 6 (1.45%) vCenter Server
8 3 (0.73%) Cisco Prime
8 3 (0.73%) SCOM
9 2 (0.48%) CASB
9 2 (0.48%) Iperf
9 2 (0.48%) Nagios
9 2 (0.48%) Nmap
9 2 (0.48%) QRadar
10 1 (0.24%) Cilium
10 1 (0.24%) Cisco CUCM
10 1 (0.24%) Microsoft Intune
10 1 (0.24%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.24%) Suricata
10 1 (0.24%) VxRail
Vendors
1 279 (67.55%) Cisco
2 144 (34.87%) F5
3 113 (27.36%) Palo Alto
4 84 (20.34%) Juniper
5 77 (18.64%) Fortinet
6 74 (17.92%) Arista
7 43 (10.41%) Aruba
8 36 (8.72%) CheckPoint
9 34 (8.23%) VMware
10 32 (7.75%) SolarWinds
11 30 (7.26%) Splunk
12 26 (6.30%) Extreme Networks
13 22 (5.33%) Zscaler
14 13 (3.15%) Microsoft
15 12 (2.91%) Meraki
16 9 (2.18%) ServiceNow
17 7 (1.69%) Ekahau
17 7 (1.69%) Google
17 7 (1.69%) Nokia
18 5 (1.21%) HP