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 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 345 227 248
Rank change year-on-year -118 +21 +168
Contract jobs citing BGP 267 393 456
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.75% 1.08% 0.99%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 6.62% 8.91% 7.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 182 225 239
10th Percentile £314 £350 £334
25th Percentile £413 £406 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% - +5.00%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £600
90th Percentile £662 £735 £732
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £525 £490
% change year-on-year -9.52% +7.14% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 4 12
10th Percentile £59.10 £32.38 £24.25
25th Percentile £63.38 £34.06 £24.44
Median hourly rate £70.38 £36.50 £35.75
Median % change year-on-year +92.82% +2.10% +36.19%
75th Percentile £74.26 £44.75 £68.13
90th Percentile - £56.90 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.26 - £25.00
% change year-on-year - - +6.38%

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 4,035 4,413 6,473
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.27% 12.09% 14.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,603 2,552 4,034
10th Percentile £206 £225 £213
25th Percentile £358 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £685 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 205 165 341
10th Percentile £15.50 £18.22 £17.72
25th Percentile £20.82 £24.18 £22.75
Median hourly rate £36.00 £45.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% -18.18% +27.91%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £66.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £75.67
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £49.00 £56.49
% change year-on-year -13.27% -13.26% +25.53%

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 November 2025.

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 November 2025.

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 November 2025. 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 -90 232 £500 -0.99% 94
UK excluding London -74 151 £475 -9.52% 56
London -47 91 £493 +1.03% 49
Work from Home -57 80 £531 -3.41% 42
West Midlands -4 44 £400 -12.57% 8
Midlands -6 44 £400 -16.45% 10
South East -37 42 £500 -9.09% 30
North of England -77 28 £550 +6.80% 5
North West -48 25 £550 - 3
South West -10 21 £625 +19.05% 4
Scotland +2 14 £425 +6.25% 5
East of England -23 7 £700 +26.13% 1
North East -7 3 £550 -
Yorkshire -50 3 £520 +89.09% 2
Channel Islands - 3 £725 -
Wales +3 1 £400 -

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 23 (8.61%) OpenStack
2 11 (4.12%) SharePoint
3 10 (3.75%) Confluence
4 2 (0.75%) nginx
Applications
1 12 (4.49%) MS Visio
2 9 (3.37%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (1.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 60 (22.47%) AWS
2 43 (16.10%) Azure
3 17 (6.37%) GCP
4 8 (3.00%) Azure ExpressRoute
4 8 (3.00%) OpenShift
5 7 (2.62%) Akamai
5 7 (2.62%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 5 (1.87%) AWS Direct Connect
6 5 (1.87%) SaaS
7 3 (1.12%) IaaS
7 3 (1.12%) PaaS
8 2 (0.75%) GitHub
9 1 (0.37%) Amazon S3
9 1 (0.37%) AWS KMS
9 1 (0.37%) Azure DevOps
9 1 (0.37%) Azure Sentinel
9 1 (0.37%) Cloud Run
9 1 (0.37%) Entra ID
9 1 (0.37%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 169 (63.30%) OSPF
2 150 (56.18%) Firewall
3 114 (42.70%) WAN
4 108 (40.45%) MPLS
5 102 (38.20%) VPN
6 74 (27.72%) VLAN
7 71 (26.59%) IPsec
8 64 (23.97%) Network Security
9 59 (22.10%) LAN
10 57 (21.35%) SD-WAN
11 55 (20.60%) DNS
12 48 (17.98%) Wireless
13 44 (16.48%) EIGRP
14 42 (15.73%) VXLAN
15 33 (12.36%) Cisco ISE
15 33 (12.36%) DHCP
16 29 (10.86%) Ethernet VPN
17 26 (9.74%) TCP/IP
17 26 (9.74%) Wireshark
18 25 (9.36%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (0.75%) MongoDB
1 2 (0.75%) NoSQL
2 1 (0.37%) Redis
2 1 (0.37%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 13 (4.87%) Git
2 10 (3.75%) JIRA
3 7 (2.62%) GitLab
4 6 (2.25%) Sonatype Nexus
5 3 (1.12%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.37%) Jenkins
6 1 (0.37%) Robot Framework
General
1 83 (31.09%) Social Skills
2 31 (11.61%) Analytical Skills
2 31 (11.61%) Public Sector
3 24 (8.99%) Finance
4 23 (8.61%) Documentation Skills
5 17 (6.37%) Telecoms
6 12 (4.49%) Banking
7 9 (3.37%) Investment Banking
8 5 (1.87%) Legal
9 4 (1.50%) Financial Institution
9 4 (1.50%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (1.12%) Manufacturing
10 3 (1.12%) Marketing
10 3 (1.12%) Military
11 2 (0.75%) Advertising
11 2 (0.75%) Electronics
11 2 (0.75%) Local Government
11 2 (0.75%) Pharmaceutical
11 2 (0.75%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.37%) Law
Job Titles
1 146 (54.68%) Network Engineer
2 35 (13.11%) Architect
3 29 (10.86%) Senior
4 27 (10.11%) Cisco Engineer
5 26 (9.74%) Cisco Network Engineer
6 18 (6.74%) Senior Network Engineer
6 18 (6.74%) WAN Engineer
7 17 (6.37%) Network Architect
7 17 (6.37%) Support Engineer
8 14 (5.24%) 3rd Line Engineer
8 14 (5.24%) Designer
8 14 (5.24%) Juniper Engineer
8 14 (5.24%) Network Security Engineer
8 14 (5.24%) Security Engineer
9 13 (4.87%) 3rd Line Support
9 13 (4.87%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
9 13 (4.87%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
10 12 (4.49%) Consultant
10 12 (4.49%) Solutions Architect
11 10 (3.75%) 2nd Line Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (6.37%) NETCONF
2 11 (4.12%) YANG
3 10 (3.75%) REST
3 10 (3.75%) RESTCONF
4 8 (3.00%) 802.1X
5 5 (1.87%) Jinja
5 5 (1.87%) JSON
6 3 (1.12%) SAML
6 3 (1.12%) XML
6 3 (1.12%) YAML
7 2 (0.75%) eBPF
7 2 (0.75%) OpenConfig
7 2 (0.75%) SOAP
8 1 (0.37%) CrewAI
8 1 (0.37%) Elastic Stack
8 1 (0.37%) gRPC
8 1 (0.37%) JFC
8 1 (0.37%) LangChain
8 1 (0.37%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 71 (26.59%) Data Centre
2 41 (15.36%) PKI
3 18 (6.74%) Hybrid Cloud
4 10 (3.75%) Cloud Native
4 10 (3.75%) Operational Technology
5 9 (3.37%) Onboarding
6 8 (3.00%) Product Ownership
7 6 (2.25%) Self-Motivation
8 5 (1.87%) Private Cloud
9 4 (1.50%) Analytical Mindset
9 4 (1.50%) Data Protection Act
10 3 (1.12%) Legacy Systems
10 3 (1.12%) Public Cloud
11 2 (0.75%) CMDB
11 2 (0.75%) Distributed Architecture
11 2 (0.75%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 2 (0.75%) Distributed Systems
11 2 (0.75%) Life Science
11 2 (0.75%) NHS
11 2 (0.75%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 18 (6.74%) Linux
2 14 (5.24%) Windows
3 9 (3.37%) Windows Server
4 7 (2.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (0.75%) CentOS
5 2 (0.75%) Unix
6 1 (0.37%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.37%) Windows Server 2012
6 1 (0.37%) Windows Server 2016
6 1 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 50 (18.73%) Network Design
2 38 (14.23%) Problem-Solving
3 33 (12.36%) Load Balancing
4 32 (11.99%) Network Segmentation
5 31 (11.61%) High Availability
5 31 (11.61%) Network Virtualisation
6 29 (10.86%) Network Monitoring
7 27 (10.11%) Migration
8 22 (8.24%) Validation
9 20 (7.49%) Change Control
9 20 (7.49%) DevOps
9 20 (7.49%) Network Architecture
9 20 (7.49%) Strategic Thinking
10 19 (7.12%) Roadmaps
11 17 (6.37%) ITIL
11 17 (6.37%) Zero Trust
12 16 (5.99%) Knowledge Transfer
13 15 (5.62%) Cybersecurity
13 15 (5.62%) Service Management
13 15 (5.62%) TOGAF
Programming Languages
1 92 (34.46%) Python
2 21 (7.87%) Bash
3 16 (5.99%) Perl
4 11 (4.12%) PowerShell
5 8 (3.00%) Lisp
6 6 (2.25%) C++
7 3 (1.12%) SQL
8 2 (0.75%) C
9 1 (0.37%) Go
9 1 (0.37%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 126 (47.19%) Cisco Certification
2 99 (37.08%) CCNP
3 97 (36.33%) Security Cleared
4 70 (26.22%) SC Cleared
5 44 (16.48%) CCIE
6 25 (9.36%) JNCIE
7 23 (8.61%) Degree
7 23 (8.61%) DV Cleared
8 19 (7.12%) CCNA
9 14 (5.24%) JNCIS
10 13 (4.87%) AWS Certification
11 11 (4.12%) JNCIA
12 10 (3.75%) JNCIP
13 9 (3.37%) CISSP
14 8 (3.00%) CCDP
15 6 (2.25%) CCSA
16 4 (1.50%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 4 (1.50%) Azure Certification
16 4 (1.50%) CCSE
16 4 (1.50%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (3.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 9 (3.37%) NCSC
3 7 (2.62%) GDPR
3 7 (2.62%) NIST
3 7 (2.62%) SLA
4 5 (1.87%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.37%) Def Stans
5 1 (0.37%) NIST 800
5 1 (0.37%) SOC 2
System Software
1 27 (10.11%) VMware Infrastructure
2 16 (5.99%) Docker
2 16 (5.99%) VMware NSX
3 14 (5.24%) Firmware
4 8 (3.00%) Active Directory
4 8 (3.00%) VMware ESXi
5 3 (1.12%) Hyper-V
5 3 (1.12%) KVM
6 2 (0.75%) Ceph
7 1 (0.37%) Squid
Systems Management
1 78 (29.21%) Ansible
2 37 (13.86%) FortiGate
3 29 (10.86%) Terraform
4 11 (4.12%) Kubernetes
5 4 (1.50%) CA Spectrum
6 3 (1.12%) Cisco CUCM
6 3 (1.12%) Iperf
6 3 (1.12%) Nagios
6 3 (1.12%) Nmap
6 3 (1.12%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.75%) Grafana
7 2 (0.75%) HAProxy
7 2 (0.75%) Prometheus
8 1 (0.37%) CASB
8 1 (0.37%) Icinga
8 1 (0.37%) Observium
8 1 (0.37%) vCenter Server
8 1 (0.37%) VxRail
Vendors
1 170 (63.67%) Cisco
2 89 (33.33%) Juniper
3 63 (23.60%) Fortinet
4 62 (23.22%) Palo Alto
5 49 (18.35%) F5
6 39 (14.61%) VMware
7 36 (13.48%) SolarWinds
8 31 (11.61%) Meraki
9 26 (9.74%) Arista
10 21 (7.87%) CheckPoint
11 15 (5.62%) ServiceNow
12 13 (4.87%) Microsoft
13 12 (4.49%) Dell
14 11 (4.12%) Remedy
15 10 (3.75%) Zscaler
16 8 (3.00%) Atlassian
16 8 (3.00%) Ekahau
16 8 (3.00%) Red Hat
17 6 (2.25%) Aruba
17 6 (2.25%) Nokia