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

6 months to
20 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 285 228 270
Rank change year-on-year -57 +42 +44
Contract jobs citing BGP 419 346 369
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.83% 1.16% 0.84%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 8.68% 9.32% 6.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 243 216 229
10th Percentile £342 £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 £560 £638 £538
90th Percentile £635 £738 £603
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £490 £473
% change year-on-year +1.02% +3.70% -2.78%
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 4,827 3,712 5,433
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.53% 12.43% 12.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,970 2,280 3,213
10th Percentile £250 £225 £210
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £484 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.31% -3.20% -1.48%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £471 £488
% change year-on-year +1.91% -3.38% +2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 296 171 425
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £20.69 £20.93 £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 £60.69 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.13 £80.00 £72.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.72 £32.77 £47.50
% change year-on-year -18.46% -31.01% +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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -38 375 £495 -1.00% 59
UK excluding London -41 245 £495 +1.02% 57
Work from Home -44 125 £450 -16.67% 34
London -81 115 £450 -10.00% 21
South East +9 102 £475 +5.56% 19
North of England -43 85 £571 +16.58% 11
North West -27 66 £575 +16.16% 6
Midlands -34 51 £413 +37.50% 7
West Midlands -34 48 £413 +43.48% 5
South West -43 26 £538 -14.00% 4
North East -23 13 £650 +160.00% 1
Yorkshire -49 12 £475 +35.71% 4
Scotland -10 9 £418 -1.76% 8
Wales -17 4 £425 -5.56%
East of England -34 4 £500 - 2
East Midlands -19 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 9 (2.15%) OpenStack
2 4 (0.95%) Confluence
3 3 (0.72%) SharePoint
Applications
1 10 (2.39%) MS Visio
2 5 (1.19%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (1.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 3 (0.72%) AutoCAD
3 3 (0.72%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 92 (21.96%) Azure
2 85 (20.29%) AWS
3 28 (6.68%) GCP
4 22 (5.25%) OCI
5 17 (4.06%) SaaS
6 16 (3.82%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 14 (3.34%) Azure ExpressRoute
8 9 (2.15%) Azure Sentinel
9 8 (1.91%) AWS Direct Connect
10 7 (1.67%) Route 53
11 6 (1.43%) Azure Monitor
11 6 (1.43%) GitHub
11 6 (1.43%) Nutanix
12 5 (1.19%) Amazon GuardDuty
13 4 (0.95%) Amazon EKS
13 4 (0.95%) AWS CloudFormation
14 3 (0.72%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 3 (0.72%) Amazon S3
14 3 (0.72%) IaaS
14 3 (0.72%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 276 (65.87%) OSPF
2 243 (58.00%) Firewall
3 240 (57.28%) WAN
4 144 (34.37%) LAN
5 118 (28.16%) VXLAN
6 114 (27.21%) VPN
7 101 (24.11%) MPLS
7 101 (24.11%) Network Security
8 100 (23.87%) VLAN
9 88 (21.00%) Ethernet VPN
10 87 (20.76%) DNS
10 87 (20.76%) SD-WAN
11 70 (16.71%) Multicast
12 62 (14.80%) BIG-IP
13 60 (14.32%) IPsec
14 59 (14.08%) TCP/IP
15 47 (11.22%) Wireless
16 46 (10.98%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 43 (10.26%) Cisco Nexus
18 42 (10.02%) Cisco IOS
Development Applications
1 21 (5.01%) GitLab
2 12 (2.86%) Git
3 7 (1.67%) JIRA
3 7 (1.67%) Sonatype Nexus
4 3 (0.72%) Jenkins
5 1 (0.24%) AppScan
5 1 (0.24%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.24%) Burp Suite
5 1 (0.24%) Metasploit
General
1 60 (14.32%) Social Skills
2 42 (10.02%) Finance
3 34 (8.11%) Analytical Skills
4 33 (7.88%) Public Sector
5 30 (7.16%) Banking
6 26 (6.21%) Telecoms
7 25 (5.97%) Documentation Skills
8 20 (4.77%) Investment Banking
9 13 (3.10%) Financial Institution
10 11 (2.63%) Military
11 7 (1.67%) Legal
11 7 (1.67%) Manufacturing
12 5 (1.19%) Retail
13 4 (0.95%) Police
14 3 (0.72%) French Language
14 3 (0.72%) German Language
14 3 (0.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 3 (0.72%) Italian Language
14 3 (0.72%) Marketing
14 3 (0.72%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 234 (55.85%) Network Engineer
2 82 (19.57%) Senior
3 62 (14.80%) Cisco Engineer
4 57 (13.60%) Cisco Network Engineer
5 48 (11.46%) Security Engineer
6 45 (10.74%) Senior Network Engineer
7 43 (10.26%) Data Network Engineer
7 43 (10.26%) Network Security Engineer
8 40 (9.55%) Architect
9 33 (7.88%) Cisco Security Engineer
10 32 (7.64%) Data Engineer
11 27 (6.44%) Network Architect
12 24 (5.73%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 24 (5.73%) Network Specialist
13 23 (5.49%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
14 18 (4.30%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 15 (3.58%) Operations Engineer
15 15 (3.58%) Web Engineer
16 14 (3.34%) Consultant
16 14 (3.34%) Firewall Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (10.26%) 802.1X
2 15 (3.58%) REST
3 9 (2.15%) NETCONF
3 9 (2.15%) YANG
4 7 (1.67%) LDAP
5 5 (1.19%) CSS
6 4 (0.95%) 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
1 187 (44.63%) Data Centre
2 42 (10.02%) Hybrid Cloud
3 37 (8.83%) PKI
4 26 (6.21%) Clustering
5 23 (5.49%) Cloud Native
6 8 (1.91%) Onboarding
7 7 (1.67%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 6 (1.43%) Security Posture
9 5 (1.19%) Analytical Mindset
9 5 (1.19%) Data Protection Act
10 4 (0.95%) Distributed Systems
10 4 (0.95%) Operational Technology
10 4 (0.95%) Private Cloud
10 4 (0.95%) Self-Motivation
11 3 (0.72%) Greenfield Project
11 3 (0.72%) Linux Command Line
11 3 (0.72%) Management Information System
11 3 (0.72%) SCADA
11 3 (0.72%) Virtual Team
12 2 (0.48%) CESG
Operating Systems
1 45 (10.74%) Windows
2 17 (4.06%) Linux
3 6 (1.43%) Ubuntu
4 3 (0.72%) Windows Server
5 2 (0.48%) Unix
6 1 (0.24%) Kali Linux
6 1 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.24%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 105 (25.06%) Load Balancing
2 76 (18.14%) High Availability
3 66 (15.75%) Network Design
4 64 (15.27%) Infrastructure as Code
5 62 (14.80%) Migration
6 58 (13.84%) Zero Trust
7 50 (11.93%) Problem-Solving
8 43 (10.26%) Network Architecture
9 39 (9.31%) CI/CD
10 34 (8.11%) DevOps
10 34 (8.11%) Observability
11 33 (7.88%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 32 (7.64%) Change Management
12 32 (7.64%) ITIL
12 32 (7.64%) Validation
13 31 (7.40%) Project Delivery
14 29 (6.92%) Network Segmentation
15 27 (6.44%) Technical Leadership
16 26 (6.21%) Identity Access Management
16 26 (6.21%) Network Monitoring
Programming Languages
1 108 (25.78%) Python
2 8 (1.91%) Bash
3 6 (1.43%) SQL
4 5 (1.19%) PowerShell
5 4 (0.95%) PHP
6 3 (0.72%) Perl
7 1 (0.24%) JavaScript
7 1 (0.24%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 154 (36.75%) Cisco Certification
2 136 (32.46%) Security Cleared
3 111 (26.49%) CCNP
4 96 (22.91%) SC Cleared
5 54 (12.89%) CCIE
6 41 (9.79%) DV Cleared
7 26 (6.21%) Degree
8 23 (5.49%) CCNA
9 14 (3.34%) JNCIE
9 14 (3.34%) JNCIP
10 11 (2.63%) JNCIS
11 10 (2.39%) AWS Certification
11 10 (2.39%) JNCIA
12 8 (1.91%) Computer Science Degree
13 7 (1.67%) Azure Certification
14 6 (1.43%) GIAC
15 5 (1.19%) CISSP
15 5 (1.19%) CompTIA Security+
16 4 (0.95%) PMP
16 4 (0.95%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (2.63%) NCSC
1 11 (2.63%) NIST
2 9 (2.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 7 (1.67%) SLA
4 4 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
4 4 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 4 (0.95%) QA
5 3 (0.72%) GDPR
5 3 (0.72%) PCI DSS
6 2 (0.48%) NIST 800
6 2 (0.48%) RMADS
7 1 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.24%) COBIT
7 1 (0.24%) GRC
7 1 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 1 (0.24%) JSP 440
System Software
1 29 (6.92%) VMware Infrastructure
2 12 (2.86%) VMware NSX
3 8 (1.91%) VMware ESXi
4 7 (1.67%) Firmware
5 6 (1.43%) Active Directory
5 6 (1.43%) Hyper-V
6 4 (0.95%) 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
1 108 (25.78%) Ansible
2 66 (15.75%) Terraform
3 55 (13.13%) FortiGate
4 20 (4.77%) Grafana
5 17 (4.06%) Prometheus
6 7 (1.67%) Kubernetes
7 6 (1.43%) vCenter Server
8 3 (0.72%) Cisco Prime
8 3 (0.72%) 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%) Progress Chef
10 1 (0.24%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.24%) Suricata
10 1 (0.24%) VxRail
Vendors
1 282 (67.30%) Cisco
2 146 (34.84%) F5
3 116 (27.68%) Palo Alto
4 87 (20.76%) Juniper
5 81 (19.33%) Fortinet
6 77 (18.38%) Arista
7 44 (10.50%) Aruba
8 37 (8.83%) CheckPoint
8 37 (8.83%) VMware
9 34 (8.11%) SolarWinds
10 31 (7.40%) Splunk
11 26 (6.21%) Extreme Networks
12 21 (5.01%) Zscaler
13 16 (3.82%) Microsoft
14 12 (2.86%) Meraki
15 9 (2.15%) ServiceNow
16 7 (1.67%) Ekahau
16 7 (1.67%) Google
16 7 (1.67%) Nokia
17 5 (1.19%) HP