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

6 months to
24 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 285 237 265
Rank change year-on-year -48 +28 +46
Contract jobs citing BGP 422 342 367
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.83% 1.14% 0.84%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 8.76% 9.20% 6.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 246 212 230
10th Percentile £349 £329 £313
25th Percentile £403 £425 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £560 £638 £538
90th Percentile £638 £738 £601
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £483 £475
% change year-on-year +2.59% +1.58% -1.35%
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 4,820 3,719 5,374
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.47% 12.38% 12.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,962 2,279 3,175
10th Percentile £250 £225 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £470 £490
% change year-on-year +2.13% -3.98% +3.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 298 176 426
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £20.56 £21.00 £17.69
Median hourly rate £27.94 £45.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -37.91% +12.50% +110.53%
75th Percentile £65.00 £61.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.08 £77.50 £72.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.72 £36.50 £47.50
% change year-on-year -26.79% -23.16% +150.00%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 -39 378 £493 -1.50% 65
UK excluding London -32 247 £495 +2.59% 59
Work from Home -44 123 £450 -16.67% 37
London -81 115 £450 -10.00% 24
South East +13 104 £475 +5.56% 16
North of England -48 83 £575 +17.35% 18
North West -33 64 £575 +16.16% 12
Midlands -28 52 £419 +39.58% 6
West Midlands -30 49 £413 +43.48% 5
South West -45 26 £538 -14.00% 3
North East -23 13 £650 +160.00% 1
Yorkshire -42 12 £475 +35.71% 5
Scotland -16 9 £418 -1.76% 8
East of England -27 5 £500 - 3
Wales -16 4 £425 -5.56%
East Midlands -19 2 - - 1

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 10 (2.37%) OpenStack
2 4 (0.95%) Confluence
2 4 (0.95%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.24%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 12 (2.84%) MS Visio
2 6 (1.42%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (1.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.95%) Microsoft Excel
4 3 (0.71%) AutoCAD
Cloud Services
1 97 (22.99%) Azure
2 88 (20.85%) AWS
3 29 (6.87%) GCP
4 22 (5.21%) OCI
5 17 (4.03%) SaaS
5 17 (4.03%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 14 (3.32%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 10 (2.37%) Azure Sentinel
8 9 (2.13%) AWS Direct Connect
9 7 (1.66%) Azure Monitor
10 6 (1.42%) GitHub
10 6 (1.42%) Nutanix
10 6 (1.42%) Route 53
11 5 (1.18%) Amazon GuardDuty
12 4 (0.95%) Amazon EKS
12 4 (0.95%) AWS CloudFormation
13 3 (0.71%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 3 (0.71%) Catchpoint
13 3 (0.71%) Entra ID
13 3 (0.71%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 277 (65.64%) OSPF
2 245 (58.06%) Firewall
3 242 (57.35%) WAN
4 147 (34.83%) LAN
5 117 (27.73%) VPN
5 117 (27.73%) VXLAN
6 103 (24.41%) Network Security
7 102 (24.17%) MPLS
8 101 (23.93%) VLAN
9 90 (21.33%) DNS
10 89 (21.09%) SD-WAN
11 87 (20.62%) Ethernet VPN
12 69 (16.35%) Multicast
13 63 (14.93%) BIG-IP
14 61 (14.45%) TCP/IP
15 59 (13.98%) IPsec
16 47 (11.14%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 45 (10.66%) Wireless
18 44 (10.43%) Cisco Nexus
19 42 (9.95%) Cisco IOS
Development Applications
1 21 (4.98%) GitLab
2 12 (2.84%) Git
3 8 (1.90%) Sonatype Nexus
4 7 (1.66%) JIRA
5 3 (0.71%) Jenkins
6 1 (0.24%) AppScan
6 1 (0.24%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.24%) Burp Suite
6 1 (0.24%) Metasploit
General
1 62 (14.69%) Social Skills
2 43 (10.19%) Finance
3 35 (8.29%) Analytical Skills
4 32 (7.58%) Public Sector
5 30 (7.11%) Banking
6 29 (6.87%) Telecoms
7 26 (6.16%) Documentation Skills
8 20 (4.74%) Investment Banking
9 13 (3.08%) Financial Institution
10 11 (2.61%) Military
11 7 (1.66%) Legal
11 7 (1.66%) Manufacturing
12 5 (1.18%) Retail
13 4 (0.95%) Police
14 3 (0.71%) French Language
14 3 (0.71%) German Language
14 3 (0.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 3 (0.71%) Italian Language
14 3 (0.71%) Marketing
14 3 (0.71%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 234 (55.45%) Network Engineer
2 83 (19.67%) Senior
3 61 (14.45%) Cisco Engineer
4 57 (13.51%) Cisco Network Engineer
5 49 (11.61%) Security Engineer
6 45 (10.66%) Senior Network Engineer
7 44 (10.43%) Network Security Engineer
8 43 (10.19%) Data Network Engineer
9 42 (9.95%) Architect
10 33 (7.82%) Cisco Security Engineer
11 32 (7.58%) Data Engineer
12 29 (6.87%) Network Architect
13 24 (5.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 24 (5.69%) Network Specialist
14 22 (5.21%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
15 18 (4.27%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
16 15 (3.55%) Web Engineer
17 14 (3.32%) Consultant
17 14 (3.32%) Firewall Specialist
17 14 (3.32%) Operations Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (9.48%) 802.1X
2 15 (3.55%) REST
3 10 (2.37%) NETCONF
3 10 (2.37%) YANG
4 7 (1.66%) LDAP
5 5 (1.18%) CSS
6 4 (0.95%) Jinja
7 3 (0.71%) OpenConfig
7 3 (0.71%) RESTCONF
8 2 (0.47%) AWS CDK
8 2 (0.47%) RFC 2544
9 1 (0.24%) eBPF
9 1 (0.24%) HTML
9 1 (0.24%) Model Context Protocol
9 1 (0.24%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 190 (45.02%) Data Centre
2 45 (10.66%) Hybrid Cloud
3 37 (8.77%) PKI
4 26 (6.16%) Clustering
5 24 (5.69%) Cloud Native
6 8 (1.90%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 7 (1.66%) Security Posture
8 6 (1.42%) Analytical Mindset
8 6 (1.42%) Onboarding
8 6 (1.42%) Private Cloud
9 5 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
10 4 (0.95%) Distributed Systems
10 4 (0.95%) Management Information System
10 4 (0.95%) Operational Technology
10 4 (0.95%) Self-Motivation
11 3 (0.71%) Greenfield Project
11 3 (0.71%) Linux Command Line
11 3 (0.71%) Public Cloud
11 3 (0.71%) SCADA
11 3 (0.71%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 45 (10.66%) Windows
2 17 (4.03%) Linux
3 6 (1.42%) Ubuntu
4 3 (0.71%) Windows Server
5 2 (0.47%) Unix
5 2 (0.47%) VMS
6 1 (0.24%) Kali Linux
6 1 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 107 (25.36%) Load Balancing
2 77 (18.25%) High Availability
3 67 (15.88%) Network Design
4 65 (15.40%) Infrastructure as Code
5 63 (14.93%) Migration
6 61 (14.45%) Zero Trust
7 49 (11.61%) Problem-Solving
8 45 (10.66%) Network Architecture
9 40 (9.48%) CI/CD
10 35 (8.29%) Observability
11 34 (8.06%) DevOps
11 34 (8.06%) ITIL
12 33 (7.82%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 33 (7.82%) Project Delivery
13 32 (7.58%) Change Management
13 32 (7.58%) Validation
14 30 (7.11%) Network Segmentation
15 27 (6.40%) Identity Access Management
16 26 (6.16%) Continuous Improvement
16 26 (6.16%) Network Monitoring
Programming Languages
1 113 (26.78%) Python
2 9 (2.13%) Bash
3 7 (1.66%) PowerShell
4 6 (1.42%) SQL
5 4 (0.95%) PHP
6 3 (0.71%) Perl
7 1 (0.24%) JavaScript
7 1 (0.24%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 156 (36.97%) Cisco Certification
2 136 (32.23%) Security Cleared
3 112 (26.54%) CCNP
4 95 (22.51%) SC Cleared
5 56 (13.27%) CCIE
6 42 (9.95%) DV Cleared
7 28 (6.64%) Degree
8 23 (5.45%) CCNA
9 15 (3.55%) JNCIE
10 14 (3.32%) JNCIP
11 11 (2.61%) JNCIS
12 10 (2.37%) AWS Certification
12 10 (2.37%) JNCIA
13 8 (1.90%) Azure Certification
13 8 (1.90%) Computer Science Degree
14 6 (1.42%) CISSP
14 6 (1.42%) GIAC
15 5 (1.18%) CompTIA Security+
16 4 (0.95%) APMG
16 4 (0.95%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (2.84%) NCSC
2 11 (2.61%) NIST
3 10 (2.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 5 (1.18%) Cyber Essentials
4 5 (1.18%) SLA
5 4 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 4 (0.95%) GDPR
5 4 (0.95%) QA
6 3 (0.71%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.47%) NIST 800
7 2 (0.47%) RMADS
8 1 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.24%) COBIT
8 1 (0.24%) GRC
8 1 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 1 (0.24%) JSP 440
System Software
1 29 (6.87%) VMware Infrastructure
2 13 (3.08%) VMware NSX
3 8 (1.90%) VMware ESXi
4 7 (1.66%) Active Directory
4 7 (1.66%) Firmware
5 6 (1.42%) Hyper-V
6 4 (0.95%) vSphere
7 2 (0.47%) Docker
7 2 (0.47%) vCloud
7 2 (0.47%) Virtual Servers
8 1 (0.24%) KVM
8 1 (0.24%) ProxySG
8 1 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 112 (26.54%) Ansible
2 68 (16.11%) Terraform
3 57 (13.51%) FortiGate
4 20 (4.74%) Grafana
5 17 (4.03%) Prometheus
6 7 (1.66%) Kubernetes
7 6 (1.42%) vCenter Server
8 3 (0.71%) Cisco Prime
8 3 (0.71%) SCOM
9 2 (0.47%) CASB
9 2 (0.47%) Iperf
9 2 (0.47%) Microsoft Intune
9 2 (0.47%) Nagios
9 2 (0.47%) Nmap
9 2 (0.47%) QRadar
9 2 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.24%) Cilium
10 1 (0.24%) Cisco CUCM
10 1 (0.24%) Progress Chef
10 1 (0.24%) VxRail
Vendors
1 284 (67.30%) Cisco
2 148 (35.07%) F5
3 118 (27.96%) Palo Alto
4 88 (20.85%) Juniper
5 84 (19.91%) Fortinet
6 78 (18.48%) Arista
7 44 (10.43%) Aruba
8 38 (9.00%) VMware
9 37 (8.77%) CheckPoint
10 35 (8.29%) SolarWinds
11 31 (7.35%) Splunk
12 26 (6.16%) Extreme Networks
13 22 (5.21%) Zscaler
14 19 (4.50%) Microsoft
15 12 (2.84%) Meraki
16 9 (2.13%) ServiceNow
17 8 (1.90%) Google
18 7 (1.66%) Ekahau
18 7 (1.66%) Nokia
19 5 (1.18%) HP