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 25 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 304 233 237
Rank change year-on-year -71 +4 +114
Contract jobs citing BGP 358 331 435
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.77% 1.12% 1.00%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 7.95% 8.81% 7.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 203 211 261
10th Percentile £340 £325 £313
25th Percentile £400 £419 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £544 £600 £550
90th Percentile £625 £750 £615
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -3.16% +5.56% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 1 9
10th Percentile £47.22 - £22.30
25th Percentile £56.01 £18.50 £24.25
Median hourly rate £71.33 £19.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +275.42% -49.33% -46.43%
75th Percentile £73.13 £19.50 £67.50
90th Percentile £73.81 - £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £71.33 £19.00 £43.75
% change year-on-year +275.42% -56.57% -29.44%

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 4,501 3,759 5,705
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.65% 12.74% 13.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,813 2,321 3,431
10th Percentile £250 £213 £205
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £490
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% - -5.77%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £465 £475
% change year-on-year +2.15% -2.11% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 211 173 427
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.71
25th Percentile £20.79 £20.30 £17.69
Median hourly rate £42.25 £37.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.67% -6.25% +110.53%
75th Percentile £70.00 £61.25 £62.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £67.21
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £27.50 £46.95
% change year-on-year +90.91% -41.42% +153.76%

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 25 April 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 25 April 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for BGP in the UK

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 25 April 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 -72 312 £460 -8.00% 77
UK excluding London -41 206 £460 -3.16% 66
Work from Home -26 109 £445 -11.00% 45
South East +4 108 £450 -10.00% 24
London -91 98 £500 - 21
North of England -74 49 £498 -0.50% 19
Midlands -32 46 £413 +26.92% 9
North West -45 44 £498 -5.24% 9
West Midlands -30 43 £413 +37.50% 8
South West -44 21 £513 -2.38% 7
Scotland +5 7 £438 +6.06% 2
Yorkshire -56 5 £538 +53.57% 4
Wales -13 4 £425 -5.56%
East Midlands -35 2 - - 1
East of England -40 2 £500 +17.65% 4

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 (1.68%) SharePoint
2 4 (1.12%) Confluence
3 3 (0.84%) OpenStack
Applications
1 12 (3.35%) MS Visio
2 8 (2.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (1.68%) Microsoft Office
4 5 (1.40%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 56 (15.64%) AWS
2 50 (13.97%) Azure
3 20 (5.59%) GCP
4 15 (4.19%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 8 (2.23%) Route 53
6 7 (1.96%) AWS Direct Connect
6 7 (1.96%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 5 (1.40%) Amazon EKS
7 5 (1.40%) Amazon GuardDuty
7 5 (1.40%) SaaS
8 4 (1.12%) Azure Sentinel
8 4 (1.12%) GitHub
8 4 (1.12%) Nutanix
9 3 (0.84%) Amazon S3
9 3 (0.84%) Catchpoint
9 3 (0.84%) IaaS
9 3 (0.84%) PaaS
10 2 (0.56%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 2 (0.56%) AWS CloudFormation
10 2 (0.56%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 256 (71.51%) OSPF
2 213 (59.50%) Firewall
3 200 (55.87%) WAN
4 145 (40.50%) LAN
5 114 (31.84%) VPN
6 98 (27.37%) Network Security
7 89 (24.86%) VXLAN
8 88 (24.58%) MPLS
9 79 (22.07%) DNS
9 79 (22.07%) VLAN
10 66 (18.44%) Ethernet VPN
11 62 (17.32%) Multicast
12 60 (16.76%) SD-WAN
13 52 (14.53%) IPsec
14 50 (13.97%) TCP/IP
15 45 (12.57%) Cisco ASA
16 43 (12.01%) DHCP
17 42 (11.73%) Cisco ISE
17 42 (11.73%) Cisco Nexus
18 41 (11.45%) Wireless
Development Applications
1 11 (3.07%) Git
2 9 (2.51%) Sonatype Nexus
3 4 (1.12%) GitLab
3 4 (1.12%) JIRA
4 3 (0.84%) Jenkins
5 1 (0.28%) AppScan
5 1 (0.28%) Burp Suite
5 1 (0.28%) Metasploit
General
1 53 (14.80%) Social Skills
2 36 (10.06%) Documentation Skills
3 34 (9.50%) Finance
4 30 (8.38%) Analytical Skills
5 29 (8.10%) Public Sector
6 25 (6.98%) Banking
7 22 (6.15%) Telecoms
8 17 (4.75%) Investment Banking
9 15 (4.19%) Financial Institution
10 14 (3.91%) Manufacturing
11 12 (3.35%) Military
12 6 (1.68%) Retail
13 5 (1.40%) Marketing
14 4 (1.12%) Legal
15 3 (0.84%) French Language
15 3 (0.84%) Police
16 2 (0.56%) Aviation
16 2 (0.56%) Electronics
16 2 (0.56%) Pharmaceutical
17 1 (0.28%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 223 (62.29%) Network Engineer
2 55 (15.36%) Cisco Engineer
3 52 (14.53%) Cisco Network Engineer
4 50 (13.97%) Senior
5 43 (12.01%) Security Engineer
6 38 (10.61%) Architect
6 38 (10.61%) Data Network Engineer
6 38 (10.61%) Network Security Engineer
7 37 (10.34%) Senior Network Engineer
8 30 (8.38%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
9 29 (8.10%) Cisco Security Engineer
10 28 (7.82%) Data Engineer
11 25 (6.98%) Network Architect
12 23 (6.42%) Network Specialist
13 14 (3.91%) Firewall Specialist
13 14 (3.91%) Juniper Engineer
14 13 (3.63%) Web Engineer
15 11 (3.07%) Data Centre Engineer
15 11 (3.07%) Design Engineer
15 11 (3.07%) Operations Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (11.17%) 802.1X
2 9 (2.51%) REST
3 8 (2.23%) NETCONF
3 8 (2.23%) YANG
4 6 (1.68%) LDAP
5 4 (1.12%) Jinja
5 4 (1.12%) OpenConfig
5 4 (1.12%) RESTCONF
5 4 (1.12%) VML
6 2 (0.56%) AWS CDK
6 2 (0.56%) CSS
6 2 (0.56%) HTML
6 2 (0.56%) RFC 2544
7 1 (0.28%) eBPF
7 1 (0.28%) JSON
7 1 (0.28%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 157 (43.85%) Data Centre
2 40 (11.17%) PKI
3 25 (6.98%) Clustering
4 16 (4.47%) Hybrid Cloud
5 8 (2.23%) Onboarding
6 7 (1.96%) Cloud Native
7 6 (1.68%) Data Protection Act
8 5 (1.40%) Analytical Mindset
8 5 (1.40%) Self-Motivation
9 4 (1.12%) Distributed Systems
9 4 (1.12%) NHS
9 4 (1.12%) Operational Technology
9 4 (1.12%) Public Cloud
9 4 (1.12%) Virtual Team
10 3 (0.84%) CESG
10 3 (0.84%) Greenfield Project
10 3 (0.84%) Linux Command Line
10 3 (0.84%) Management Information System
10 3 (0.84%) SCADA
10 3 (0.84%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 39 (10.89%) Windows
2 17 (4.75%) Linux
3 6 (1.68%) Ubuntu
4 3 (0.84%) Windows Server
5 2 (0.56%) Unix
6 1 (0.28%) Kali Linux
6 1 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.28%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 80 (22.35%) Load Balancing
2 56 (15.64%) High Availability
3 50 (13.97%) Problem-Solving
4 42 (11.73%) Migration
5 40 (11.17%) Network Design
6 32 (8.94%) Change Management
6 32 (8.94%) Observability
7 30 (8.38%) Infrastructure as Code
7 30 (8.38%) ITIL
8 27 (7.54%) Network Monitoring
9 26 (7.26%) Identity Access Management
10 25 (6.98%) Network Segmentation
10 25 (6.98%) Project Delivery
11 23 (6.42%) Root Cause Analysis
11 23 (6.42%) Stakeholder Management
12 22 (6.15%) Technical Leadership
12 22 (6.15%) Zero Trust
13 20 (5.59%) Continuous Improvement
13 20 (5.59%) Performance Tuning
14 19 (5.31%) Network Architecture
Programming Languages
1 70 (19.55%) Python
2 4 (1.12%) Bash
2 4 (1.12%) PHP
3 3 (0.84%) Lisp
4 2 (0.56%) JavaScript
4 2 (0.56%) PowerShell
4 2 (0.56%) SQL
5 1 (0.28%) Perl
Qualifications
1 155 (43.30%) Cisco Certification
2 140 (39.11%) Security Cleared
3 115 (32.12%) CCNP
4 105 (29.33%) SC Cleared
5 51 (14.25%) CCIE
6 41 (11.45%) DV Cleared
7 28 (7.82%) CCNA
8 25 (6.98%) Degree
9 18 (5.03%) JNCIS
10 17 (4.75%) JNCIP
11 13 (3.63%) JNCIA
11 13 (3.63%) JNCIE
12 8 (2.23%) Computer Science Degree
13 7 (1.96%) AWS Certification
13 7 (1.96%) GIAC
14 6 (1.68%) Azure Certification
14 6 (1.68%) CISSP
15 5 (1.40%) CCDP
15 5 (1.40%) CompTIA Security+
15 5 (1.40%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (2.79%) NCSC
1 10 (2.79%) SLA
2 9 (2.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 9 (2.51%) NIST
3 4 (1.12%) Cyber Essentials
3 4 (1.12%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 3 (0.84%) RMADS
5 2 (0.56%) JSP 440
5 2 (0.56%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.28%) COBIT
6 1 (0.28%) GDPR
6 1 (0.28%) GRC
6 1 (0.28%) HMG Security Policy Framework
6 1 (0.28%) NIST 800
6 1 (0.28%) QA
System Software
1 25 (6.98%) VMware Infrastructure
2 11 (3.07%) VMware NSX
3 8 (2.23%) VMware ESXi
4 6 (1.68%) Active Directory
5 3 (0.84%) vSphere
6 2 (0.56%) Docker
6 2 (0.56%) Firmware
6 2 (0.56%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.56%) vCloud
6 2 (0.56%) Virtual Servers
7 1 (0.28%) KVM
7 1 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 73 (20.39%) Ansible
2 51 (14.25%) FortiGate
3 37 (10.34%) Terraform
4 15 (4.19%) Grafana
5 12 (3.35%) Prometheus
6 6 (1.68%) vCenter Server
7 5 (1.40%) Kubernetes
7 5 (1.40%) Nagios
8 3 (0.84%) SCOM
9 2 (0.56%) Cisco Prime
9 2 (0.56%) Iperf
9 2 (0.56%) Nmap
10 1 (0.28%) CASB
10 1 (0.28%) Cilium
10 1 (0.28%) Cisco CUCM
10 1 (0.28%) Failover Clustering
10 1 (0.28%) Nessus
10 1 (0.28%) QRadar
10 1 (0.28%) vRealize
10 1 (0.28%) VxRail
Vendors
1 275 (76.82%) Cisco
2 120 (33.52%) F5
3 96 (26.82%) Palo Alto
4 91 (25.42%) Juniper
5 63 (17.60%) Fortinet
6 52 (14.53%) CheckPoint
7 42 (11.73%) Arista
8 40 (11.17%) Aruba
9 33 (9.22%) SolarWinds
10 31 (8.66%) VMware
11 28 (7.82%) Splunk
12 25 (6.98%) Extreme Networks
13 21 (5.87%) Meraki
14 18 (5.03%) Zscaler
15 11 (3.07%) Nokia
16 9 (2.51%) Ekahau
16 9 (2.51%) Microsoft
16 9 (2.51%) ServiceNow
17 6 (1.68%) Infoblox
17 6 (1.68%) Remedy