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 26 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 299 225 254
Rank change year-on-year -74 +29 +69
Contract jobs citing BGP 404 341 386
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.83% 1.19% 0.91%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 8.64% 9.41% 7.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 232 211 241
10th Percentile £315 £325 £331
25th Percentile £400 £425 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £467 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -6.60% +5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £550 £600 £550
90th Percentile £638 £740 £613
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £475 £450
% change year-on-year +0.53% +5.56% -6.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 3 4
10th Percentile £47.22 £22.05 £19.93
25th Percentile £56.01 £27.38 £22.06
Median hourly rate £71.33 £37.50 £39.25
Median % change year-on-year +90.21% -4.46% -43.93%
75th Percentile £73.13 £39.38 £57.50
90th Percentile £73.81 £39.75 £62.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £71.33 £19.00 £19.00
% change year-on-year +275.42% - -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 4,676 3,625 5,399
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.63% 12.67% 12.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,874 2,244 3,232
10th Percentile £263 £213 £206
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £485 £490
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -1.02% -4.39%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £463 £475
% change year-on-year +2.70% -2.63% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 269 156 414
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £20.82 £17.30 £16.30
Median hourly rate £28.88 £38.41 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -24.81% -3.98% +116.22%
75th Percentile £65.00 £59.09 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.41 £77.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.52 £28.00 £46.14
% change year-on-year +26.86% -39.31% +156.31%

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 26 May 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 26 May 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 26 May 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 -52 358 £475 -5.00% 84
UK excluding London -38 236 £478 +0.53% 74
Work from Home -38 125 £450 -12.20% 42
London -84 110 £475 -5.00% 28
South East +11 108 £450 - 26
North of England -52 74 £575 +15.00% 17
North West -26 59 £571 +11.46% 11
Midlands -37 50 £413 +37.50% 11
West Midlands -35 47 £413 +43.48% 11
South West -35 23 £525 -4.55% 8
North East -12 11 £650 +160.00% 5
Scotland -3 8 £434 +5.15% 10
Yorkshire -50 8 £475 +35.71% 2
Wales -16 4 £425 -5.56%
East of England -36 4 £500 +25.00% 4
East Midlands -31 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 6 (1.49%) OpenStack
2 5 (1.24%) Confluence
3 4 (0.99%) SharePoint
Applications
1 8 (1.98%) MS Visio
2 6 (1.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.99%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (0.74%) Microsoft Excel
5 1 (0.25%) AutoCAD
Cloud Services
1 79 (19.55%) AWS
1 79 (19.55%) Azure
2 23 (5.69%) GCP
3 20 (4.95%) OCI
4 15 (3.71%) SaaS
4 15 (3.71%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 8 (1.98%) Route 53
6 7 (1.73%) AWS Direct Connect
7 6 (1.49%) Azure ExpressRoute
8 5 (1.24%) Amazon EKS
8 5 (1.24%) Amazon GuardDuty
8 5 (1.24%) Nutanix
9 4 (0.99%) Azure Sentinel
9 4 (0.99%) GitHub
10 3 (0.74%) Amazon S3
10 3 (0.74%) AWS CloudFormation
10 3 (0.74%) Catchpoint
10 3 (0.74%) IaaS
10 3 (0.74%) PaaS
11 2 (0.50%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 285 (70.54%) OSPF
2 238 (58.91%) Firewall
3 233 (57.67%) WAN
4 155 (38.37%) LAN
5 112 (27.72%) VPN
6 111 (27.48%) VXLAN
7 101 (25.00%) Network Security
8 92 (22.77%) MPLS
8 92 (22.77%) VLAN
9 85 (21.04%) Ethernet VPN
10 81 (20.05%) DNS
11 80 (19.80%) SD-WAN
12 68 (16.83%) Multicast
13 61 (15.10%) BIG-IP
13 61 (15.10%) IPsec
14 52 (12.87%) TCP/IP
15 45 (11.14%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 44 (10.89%) Cisco Nexus
17 42 (10.40%) Cisco ISE
17 42 (10.40%) Wireless
Development Applications
1 19 (4.70%) GitLab
2 10 (2.48%) Git
3 9 (2.23%) Sonatype Nexus
4 5 (1.24%) JIRA
5 3 (0.74%) Jenkins
6 1 (0.25%) AppScan
6 1 (0.25%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.25%) Burp Suite
6 1 (0.25%) Metasploit
General
1 54 (13.37%) Social Skills
2 40 (9.90%) Finance
3 37 (9.16%) Public Sector
4 35 (8.66%) Documentation Skills
5 33 (8.17%) Analytical Skills
6 27 (6.68%) Banking
7 24 (5.94%) Telecoms
8 19 (4.70%) Investment Banking
9 13 (3.22%) Manufacturing
9 13 (3.22%) Military
10 12 (2.97%) Financial Institution
11 6 (1.49%) Retail
12 5 (1.24%) Legal
13 4 (0.99%) Marketing
13 4 (0.99%) Police
14 3 (0.74%) French Language
15 2 (0.50%) Aviation
15 2 (0.50%) German Language
15 2 (0.50%) Italian Language
15 2 (0.50%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 232 (57.43%) Network Engineer
2 74 (18.32%) Senior
3 65 (16.09%) Cisco Engineer
4 59 (14.60%) Cisco Network Engineer
5 45 (11.14%) Security Engineer
6 42 (10.40%) Architect
6 42 (10.40%) Data Network Engineer
6 42 (10.40%) Senior Network Engineer
7 40 (9.90%) Network Security Engineer
8 33 (8.17%) Cisco Security Engineer
9 32 (7.92%) Data Engineer
10 30 (7.43%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
11 29 (7.18%) Network Architect
12 24 (5.94%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 24 (5.94%) Network Specialist
13 18 (4.46%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
14 15 (3.71%) Web Engineer
15 14 (3.47%) Firewall Specialist
15 14 (3.47%) Operations Engineer
16 13 (3.22%) Juniper Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 41 (10.15%) 802.1X
2 12 (2.97%) REST
3 8 (1.98%) NETCONF
3 8 (1.98%) YANG
4 7 (1.73%) LDAP
5 4 (0.99%) Jinja
6 3 (0.74%) CSS
6 3 (0.74%) VML
7 2 (0.50%) AWS CDK
7 2 (0.50%) HTML
7 2 (0.50%) OpenConfig
7 2 (0.50%) RESTCONF
7 2 (0.50%) RFC 2544
8 1 (0.25%) eBPF
8 1 (0.25%) JSON
8 1 (0.25%) SAML
8 1 (0.25%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 182 (45.05%) Data Centre
2 39 (9.65%) PKI
3 32 (7.92%) Hybrid Cloud
4 25 (6.19%) Clustering
5 17 (4.21%) Cloud Native
6 8 (1.98%) Onboarding
7 6 (1.49%) Data Protection Act
7 6 (1.49%) Security Posture
8 5 (1.24%) Analytical Mindset
9 4 (0.99%) Distributed Systems
9 4 (0.99%) Linux Command Line
9 4 (0.99%) Operational Technology
9 4 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
10 3 (0.74%) CESG
10 3 (0.74%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 3 (0.74%) Greenfield Project
10 3 (0.74%) Management Information System
10 3 (0.74%) NHS
10 3 (0.74%) SCADA
10 3 (0.74%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 40 (9.90%) Windows
2 19 (4.70%) Linux
3 6 (1.49%) Ubuntu
4 3 (0.74%) Windows Server
5 2 (0.50%) Unix
6 1 (0.25%) Kali Linux
6 1 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.25%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 103 (25.50%) Load Balancing
2 70 (17.33%) High Availability
3 56 (13.86%) Network Design
4 51 (12.62%) Zero Trust
5 50 (12.38%) Infrastructure as Code
6 47 (11.63%) Problem-Solving
7 45 (11.14%) Migration
8 35 (8.66%) Network Architecture
9 34 (8.42%) CI/CD
10 32 (7.92%) Change Management
10 32 (7.92%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 32 (7.92%) ITIL
10 32 (7.92%) Observability
11 31 (7.67%) DevOps
12 28 (6.93%) Network Monitoring
13 27 (6.68%) Project Delivery
13 27 (6.68%) Technical Leadership
14 26 (6.44%) Identity Access Management
14 26 (6.44%) Network Segmentation
15 24 (5.94%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 89 (22.03%) Python
2 6 (1.49%) Bash
3 4 (0.99%) PHP
4 3 (0.74%) SQL
5 2 (0.50%) JavaScript
5 2 (0.50%) PowerShell
6 1 (0.25%) Lisp
6 1 (0.25%) Perl
Qualifications
1 165 (40.84%) Cisco Certification
2 151 (37.38%) Security Cleared
3 124 (30.69%) CCNP
4 114 (28.22%) SC Cleared
5 54 (13.37%) CCIE
6 41 (10.15%) DV Cleared
7 28 (6.93%) Degree
8 27 (6.68%) CCNA
9 16 (3.96%) JNCIP
10 14 (3.47%) JNCIS
11 13 (3.22%) JNCIE
12 12 (2.97%) JNCIA
13 9 (2.23%) Computer Science Degree
14 8 (1.98%) AWS Certification
15 7 (1.73%) Azure Certification
16 6 (1.49%) GIAC
17 5 (1.24%) CCDP
17 5 (1.24%) CISSP
17 5 (1.24%) CompTIA Security+
17 5 (1.24%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (2.72%) NIST
2 10 (2.48%) NCSC
3 9 (2.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 7 (1.73%) SLA
5 4 (0.99%) Cyber Essentials
5 4 (0.99%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 3 (0.74%) PCI DSS
6 3 (0.74%) RMADS
7 2 (0.50%) JSP 440
7 2 (0.50%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.25%) COBIT
8 1 (0.25%) GDPR
8 1 (0.25%) GRC
8 1 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 1 (0.25%) QA
System Software
1 29 (7.18%) VMware Infrastructure
2 12 (2.97%) VMware NSX
3 8 (1.98%) VMware ESXi
4 6 (1.49%) Active Directory
5 5 (1.24%) Firmware
6 4 (0.99%) Hyper-V
6 4 (0.99%) vSphere
7 2 (0.50%) Docker
7 2 (0.50%) vCloud
7 2 (0.50%) Virtual Servers
8 1 (0.25%) KVM
8 1 (0.25%) ProxySG
8 1 (0.25%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 95 (23.51%) Ansible
2 54 (13.37%) Terraform
3 47 (11.63%) FortiGate
4 18 (4.46%) Grafana
5 15 (3.71%) Prometheus
6 6 (1.49%) Kubernetes
6 6 (1.49%) vCenter Server
7 5 (1.24%) Nagios
8 3 (0.74%) Cisco Prime
8 3 (0.74%) SCOM
9 2 (0.50%) CASB
9 2 (0.50%) Iperf
9 2 (0.50%) Nmap
9 2 (0.50%) QRadar
10 1 (0.25%) Cilium
10 1 (0.25%) Progress Chef
10 1 (0.25%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.25%) Suricata
10 1 (0.25%) vRealize
10 1 (0.25%) VxRail
Vendors
1 288 (71.29%) Cisco
2 146 (36.14%) F5
3 118 (29.21%) Palo Alto
4 84 (20.79%) Juniper
5 64 (15.84%) Arista
6 62 (15.35%) Fortinet
7 54 (13.37%) Aruba
8 51 (12.62%) CheckPoint
9 36 (8.91%) VMware
10 33 (8.17%) SolarWinds
11 29 (7.18%) Splunk
12 26 (6.44%) Extreme Networks
13 19 (4.70%) Meraki
14 16 (3.96%) Zscaler
15 10 (2.48%) ServiceNow
16 9 (2.23%) Nokia
17 7 (1.73%) Ekahau
18 6 (1.49%) Google
18 6 (1.49%) Microsoft
19 5 (1.24%) Netskope