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 6 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 348 204 235
Rank change year-on-year -144 +31 +160
Contract jobs citing BGP 271 399 443
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.69% 1.28% 0.99%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 6.65% 9.83% 7.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 159 240 233
10th Percentile £284 £374 £326
25th Percentile £400 £425 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £445 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -15.24% - +5.00%
75th Percentile £523 £652 £600
90th Percentile £588 £800 £708
UK excluding London median daily rate £445 £515 £490
% change year-on-year -13.59% +5.10% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 4 12
10th Percentile £67.45 £22.33 £24.25
25th Percentile £70.01 £28.06 £24.81
Median hourly rate £74.26 £33.75 £37.77
Median % change year-on-year +120.03% -10.64% -50.25%
75th Percentile - £35.75 £68.13
90th Percentile - £37.10 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.26 £19.00 £44.00
% change year-on-year +290.84% -56.82% +31.34%

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 4,078 4,060 6,113
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.41% 13.03% 13.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,684 2,382 3,680
10th Percentile £204 £213 £206
25th Percentile £356 £360 £356
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £493
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +1.52% -5.20%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £680 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £467 £475
% change year-on-year -3.64% -1.68% +2.15%
Number of hourly rates quoted 167 136 409
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.85 £15.33
25th Percentile £18.69 £21.46 £21.25
Median hourly rate £30.00 £33.75 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -11.11% -32.50% +150.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £54.69 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £69.38 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.24 £30.04 £55.00
% change year-on-year +37.28% -45.38% +176.66%

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 6 February 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
Top 15 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 6 February 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 -112 234 £450 -12.83% 63
UK excluding London -85 165 £445 -13.59% 46
Work from Home -84 92 £441 -30.24% 26
London -91 74 £449 -12.49% 21
South East -26 69 £445 -25.83% 18
West Midlands -3 47 £400 -9.35% 12
Midlands -19 47 £400 -12.57% 13
North of England -83 39 £550 +6.80% 7
North West -56 35 £550 +4.76% 4
Scotland +11 13 £425 +4.62% 2
South West -36 11 £525 +5.00% 4
Yorkshire -58 4 £600 +118.18% 3
North East -11 3 £550 -
Wales -3 2 - -
East of England -30 1 £300 +9.09% 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 16 (5.90%) OpenStack
2 12 (4.43%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.85%) Confluence
Applications
1 15 (5.54%) MS Visio
2 6 (2.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (1.48%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (1.11%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 52 (19.19%) AWS
2 39 (14.39%) Azure
3 16 (5.90%) GCP
4 13 (4.80%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 8 (2.95%) Azure ExpressRoute
6 7 (2.58%) AWS Direct Connect
7 6 (2.21%) Route 53
8 5 (1.85%) OpenShift
8 5 (1.85%) SaaS
9 4 (1.48%) Amazon GuardDuty
10 3 (1.11%) Amazon EKS
10 3 (1.11%) Amazon S3
10 3 (1.11%) Azure Sentinel
10 3 (1.11%) Catchpoint
10 3 (1.11%) IaaS
10 3 (1.11%) PaaS
11 2 (0.74%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 2 (0.74%) AWS CloudFormation
11 2 (0.74%) AWS Control Tower
11 2 (0.74%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 167 (61.62%) OSPF
2 159 (58.67%) Firewall
3 137 (50.55%) WAN
4 104 (38.38%) VPN
5 99 (36.53%) MPLS
6 95 (35.06%) LAN
7 71 (26.20%) Network Security
8 67 (24.72%) IPsec
9 60 (22.14%) VLAN
10 47 (17.34%) Wireless
11 44 (16.24%) DNS
11 44 (16.24%) SD-WAN
12 40 (14.76%) EIGRP
13 38 (14.02%) Cisco ASA
13 38 (14.02%) VXLAN
14 32 (11.81%) Cisco Nexus
14 32 (11.81%) TCP/IP
15 30 (11.07%) Ethernet VPN
16 28 (10.33%) Multicast
17 26 (9.59%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (0.37%) Redis
1 1 (0.37%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 9 (3.32%) Git
2 8 (2.95%) Sonatype Nexus
3 4 (1.48%) GitLab
4 3 (1.11%) JIRA
5 1 (0.37%) AppScan
5 1 (0.37%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.37%) Burp Suite
5 1 (0.37%) Metasploit
5 1 (0.37%) Robot Framework
General
1 73 (26.94%) Social Skills
2 38 (14.02%) Documentation Skills
3 33 (12.18%) Public Sector
4 30 (11.07%) Analytical Skills
5 20 (7.38%) Telecoms
6 17 (6.27%) Finance
7 16 (5.90%) Banking
8 15 (5.54%) Manufacturing
9 13 (4.80%) Investment Banking
10 9 (3.32%) Military
11 7 (2.58%) Financial Institution
12 6 (2.21%) Marketing
13 5 (1.85%) Legal
14 4 (1.48%) French Language
14 4 (1.48%) Influencing Skills
14 4 (1.48%) Retail
15 3 (1.11%) Electronics
16 2 (0.74%) Aviation
16 2 (0.74%) Pharmaceutical
16 2 (0.74%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 147 (54.24%) Network Engineer
2 39 (14.39%) Architect
3 37 (13.65%) Cisco Engineer
4 33 (12.18%) Cisco Network Engineer
5 26 (9.59%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
6 23 (8.49%) Network Architect
6 23 (8.49%) Security Engineer
7 19 (7.01%) Senior
8 18 (6.64%) Network Security Engineer
9 13 (4.80%) Juniper Engineer
10 12 (4.43%) Support Engineer
11 11 (4.06%) Data Network Engineer
12 10 (3.69%) Cisco Security Engineer
12 10 (3.69%) Data Engineer
12 10 (3.69%) Senior Network Engineer
12 10 (3.69%) WAN Engineer
13 9 (3.32%) 2nd Line Engineer
13 9 (3.32%) 3rd Line Engineer
13 9 (3.32%) 3rd Line Support
13 9 (3.32%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (4.43%) 802.1X
1 12 (4.43%) YANG
2 11 (4.06%) NETCONF
3 10 (3.69%) REST
4 5 (1.85%) LDAP
5 4 (1.48%) JSON
5 4 (1.48%) VML
6 3 (1.11%) OpenConfig
6 3 (1.11%) SAML
7 2 (0.74%) AWS CDK
7 2 (0.74%) CSS
7 2 (0.74%) HTML
7 2 (0.74%) RESTCONF
7 2 (0.74%) XML
8 1 (0.37%) Elastic Stack
8 1 (0.37%) gRPC
8 1 (0.37%) JFC
8 1 (0.37%) RabbitMQ
8 1 (0.37%) RFC 2544
8 1 (0.37%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 100 (36.90%) Data Centre
2 37 (13.65%) PKI
3 18 (6.64%) Hybrid Cloud
4 10 (3.69%) Cloud Native
5 8 (2.95%) Product Ownership
6 6 (2.21%) Self-Motivation
7 5 (1.85%) Analytical Mindset
7 5 (1.85%) Data Protection Act
7 5 (1.85%) NHS
7 5 (1.85%) Operational Technology
8 4 (1.48%) Onboarding
8 4 (1.48%) SCADA
9 3 (1.11%) CESG
9 3 (1.11%) Distributed Architecture
9 3 (1.11%) Linux Command Line
9 3 (1.11%) Public Cloud
10 2 (0.74%) Algorithms
10 2 (0.74%) Management Information System
10 2 (0.74%) Private Cloud
10 2 (0.74%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 21 (7.75%) Linux
2 12 (4.43%) Windows
3 8 (2.95%) Windows Server
4 6 (2.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 6 (2.21%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.37%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 46 (16.97%) Network Design
2 41 (15.13%) Load Balancing
3 39 (14.39%) Problem-Solving
4 26 (9.59%) Cybersecurity
4 26 (9.59%) Migration
5 24 (8.86%) Network Segmentation
6 23 (8.49%) Network Monitoring
7 22 (8.12%) Project Delivery
8 21 (7.75%) Roadmaps
8 21 (7.75%) Zero Trust
9 20 (7.38%) Network Architecture
10 18 (6.64%) Change Management
10 18 (6.64%) High Availability
10 18 (6.64%) Network Virtualisation
10 18 (6.64%) Stakeholder Management
10 18 (6.64%) Strategic Thinking
11 16 (5.90%) Security Architecture
11 16 (5.90%) TOGAF
12 15 (5.54%) DevOps
12 15 (5.54%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 68 (25.09%) Python
2 18 (6.64%) Bash
3 13 (4.80%) Perl
4 10 (3.69%) PowerShell
5 9 (3.32%) Lisp
6 4 (1.48%) C++
7 3 (1.11%) PHP
8 2 (0.74%) JavaScript
9 1 (0.37%) Shell Script
9 1 (0.37%) SQL
Qualifications
1 132 (48.71%) Cisco Certification
2 119 (43.91%) Security Cleared
3 113 (41.70%) CCNP
4 101 (37.27%) SC Cleared
5 49 (18.08%) CCIE
6 25 (9.23%) Degree
6 25 (9.23%) DV Cleared
7 23 (8.49%) CCNA
8 20 (7.38%) JNCIE
9 16 (5.90%) JNCIS
10 12 (4.43%) AWS Certification
11 11 (4.06%) JNCIP
12 10 (3.69%) JNCIA
13 9 (3.32%) CCDP
13 9 (3.32%) CISSP
14 5 (1.85%) CCIE Security
14 5 (1.85%) GIAC
15 4 (1.48%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 4 (1.48%) Azure Certification
15 4 (1.48%) GSEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (5.17%) NIST
2 13 (4.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 7 (2.58%) GDPR
3 7 (2.58%) NCSC
3 7 (2.58%) PCI DSS
3 7 (2.58%) SLA
4 3 (1.11%) Cyber Essentials
4 3 (1.11%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 3 (1.11%) RMADS
5 2 (0.74%) JSP 440
6 1 (0.37%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.37%) COBIT
6 1 (0.37%) GRC
6 1 (0.37%) NIST 800
6 1 (0.37%) QA
6 1 (0.37%) SOC 2
System Software
1 25 (9.23%) VMware Infrastructure
2 21 (7.75%) VMware NSX
3 8 (2.95%) Active Directory
3 8 (2.95%) Docker
4 5 (1.85%) Firmware
4 5 (1.85%) VMware ESXi
5 3 (1.11%) KVM
5 3 (1.11%) vSphere
6 2 (0.74%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.74%) vCloud
7 1 (0.37%) Squid
Systems Management
1 57 (21.03%) Ansible
2 30 (11.07%) Terraform
3 28 (10.33%) FortiGate
4 6 (2.21%) Grafana
4 6 (2.21%) Kubernetes
4 6 (2.21%) Prometheus
5 5 (1.85%) vCenter Server
6 4 (1.48%) Iperf
6 4 (1.48%) Nmap
7 3 (1.11%) Nagios
7 3 (1.11%) SCOM
7 3 (1.11%) Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.74%) Cisco Prime
9 1 (0.37%) CASB
9 1 (0.37%) Cisco CUCM
9 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Intune
9 1 (0.37%) Nessus
9 1 (0.37%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.37%) vRealize
9 1 (0.37%) VxRail
Vendors
1 188 (69.37%) Cisco
2 80 (29.52%) Palo Alto
3 76 (28.04%) Juniper
4 59 (21.77%) F5
5 46 (16.97%) Fortinet
6 43 (15.87%) CheckPoint
7 33 (12.18%) Aruba
8 30 (11.07%) VMware
9 28 (10.33%) Meraki
10 18 (6.64%) SolarWinds
11 16 (5.90%) Arista
12 15 (5.54%) Zscaler
13 12 (4.43%) Remedy
13 12 (4.43%) ServiceNow
14 11 (4.06%) Nokia
15 10 (3.69%) Ekahau
16 7 (2.58%) NVIDIA
17 6 (2.21%) Dell
17 6 (2.21%) Mellanox
17 6 (2.21%) Microsoft