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 15 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 270 254 264
Rank change year-on-year -16 +10 +32
Contract jobs citing BGP 461 341 382
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.88% 1.05% 0.89%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 9.22% 8.62% 7.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 274 217 238
10th Percentile £350 £325 £299
25th Percentile £407 £419 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -1.00% +5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £567 £613 £538
90th Percentile £650 £688 £581
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +5.26% - -1.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 3 4
10th Percentile £50.15 £37.00 £19.93
25th Percentile £63.34 £38.13 £22.06
Median hourly rate £72.80 £40.00 £39.25
Median % change year-on-year +81.99% +1.91% -43.93%
75th Percentile £78.83 £49.38 £57.50
90th Percentile £87.05 £55.00 £62.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £72.80 - £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 5,000 3,956 5,360
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.50% 12.19% 12.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,037 2,407 3,158
10th Percentile £239 £235 £213
25th Percentile £400 £364 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £483 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.63% -3.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.16% -3.06% +5.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 325 193 425
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.64
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.15 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.44 £47.50 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year -44.34% +10.47% +39.84%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £81.35 £73.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.22 £42.50 £47.50
% change year-on-year -38.31% -10.53% +5.56%

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 15 July 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 15 July 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 15 July 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 -26 414 £500 - 85
UK excluding London -32 272 £500 +5.26% 69
London -69 125 £475 -5.00% 26
Work from Home -49 118 £469 -9.37% 32
South East +15 108 £520 +15.56% 20
North of England -27 95 £500 +5.26% 12
North West -16 73 £521 +9.74% 6
Midlands -31 53 £419 +4.69% 9
West Midlands -39 50 £413 +10.00% 7
South West -41 32 £525 -16.00% 14
Yorkshire -41 15 £495 +41.43% 6
North East -27 13 £650 +160.00%
Scotland -11 10 £418 -4.57% 3
East of England -24 6 £500 -28.57% 8
Wales -15 4 £425 -5.56% 1
East Midlands -14 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 13 (2.82%) OpenStack
2 3 (0.65%) Confluence
2 3 (0.65%) SAS
2 3 (0.65%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 13 (2.82%) MS Visio
2 9 (1.95%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (1.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (1.30%) Microsoft Excel
5 3 (0.65%) AutoCAD
Cloud Services
1 114 (24.73%) Azure
2 94 (20.39%) AWS
3 32 (6.94%) GCP
4 22 (4.77%) OCI
5 17 (3.69%) Azure ExpressRoute
5 17 (3.69%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 15 (3.25%) SaaS
7 10 (2.17%) Azure Sentinel
7 10 (2.17%) GitHub
8 9 (1.95%) AWS Direct Connect
9 7 (1.52%) Azure Monitor
10 6 (1.30%) Nutanix
11 5 (1.08%) Amazon GuardDuty
11 5 (1.08%) Microsoft 365
11 5 (1.08%) OpenShift
11 5 (1.08%) Route 53
12 4 (0.87%) Amazon EKS
12 4 (0.87%) AWS CloudFormation
12 4 (0.87%) Entra ID
13 3 (0.65%) Catchpoint
Communications & Networking
1 298 (64.64%) OSPF
2 273 (59.22%) Firewall
3 250 (54.23%) WAN
4 155 (33.62%) LAN
5 140 (30.37%) VPN
6 118 (25.60%) VXLAN
7 116 (25.16%) VLAN
8 114 (24.73%) Network Security
9 113 (24.51%) MPLS
10 100 (21.69%) DNS
11 89 (19.31%) SD-WAN
12 88 (19.09%) Ethernet VPN
13 75 (16.27%) TCP/IP
14 74 (16.05%) Multicast
15 65 (14.10%) IPsec
16 62 (13.45%) BIG-IP
17 57 (12.36%) Wireless
18 55 (11.93%) Cisco ASA
19 53 (11.50%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
20 51 (11.06%) Wi-Fi
Development Applications
1 21 (4.56%) GitLab
2 13 (2.82%) Git
3 10 (2.17%) Sonatype Nexus
4 7 (1.52%) JIRA
5 3 (0.65%) Jenkins
6 1 (0.22%) AppScan
6 1 (0.22%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.22%) Burp Suite
6 1 (0.22%) Metasploit
General
1 77 (16.70%) Social Skills
2 45 (9.76%) Finance
3 44 (9.54%) Analytical Skills
4 35 (7.59%) Public Sector
5 32 (6.94%) Banking
6 31 (6.72%) Telecoms
7 21 (4.56%) Documentation Skills
8 19 (4.12%) Investment Banking
9 13 (2.82%) Financial Institution
10 11 (2.39%) Military
11 8 (1.74%) Legal
11 8 (1.74%) Retail
12 6 (1.30%) Police
13 3 (0.65%) German Language
13 3 (0.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 3 (0.65%) Influencing Skills
13 3 (0.65%) Italian Language
13 3 (0.65%) Manufacturing
13 3 (0.65%) Spanish Language
14 2 (0.43%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 256 (55.53%) Network Engineer
2 91 (19.74%) Senior
3 59 (12.80%) Cisco Engineer
4 56 (12.15%) Cisco Network Engineer
5 53 (11.50%) Senior Network Engineer
6 51 (11.06%) Architect
7 49 (10.63%) Security Engineer
8 44 (9.54%) Data Network Engineer
8 44 (9.54%) Network Security Engineer
9 36 (7.81%) Network Architect
10 33 (7.16%) Cisco Security Engineer
11 32 (6.94%) Data Engineer
12 24 (5.21%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 24 (5.21%) Network Specialist
13 20 (4.34%) Consultant
14 18 (3.90%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 16 (3.47%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
15 16 (3.47%) Web Engineer
16 14 (3.04%) Firewall Specialist
17 13 (2.82%) Data Centre Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (8.24%) 802.1X
2 15 (3.25%) REST
3 13 (2.82%) NETCONF
3 13 (2.82%) YANG
4 7 (1.52%) LDAP
5 6 (1.30%) OpenConfig
5 6 (1.30%) RESTCONF
6 4 (0.87%) CSS
6 4 (0.87%) Jinja
7 2 (0.43%) AWS CDK
7 2 (0.43%) RFC 2544
7 2 (0.43%) SAML
8 1 (0.22%) eBPF
8 1 (0.22%) Model Context Protocol
Miscellaneous
1 197 (42.73%) Data Centre
2 52 (11.28%) Hybrid Cloud
3 39 (8.46%) PKI
4 26 (5.64%) Clustering
5 25 (5.42%) Cloud Native
6 10 (2.17%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 10 (2.17%) Private Cloud
7 9 (1.95%) Analytical Mindset
8 7 (1.52%) Public Cloud
8 7 (1.52%) Security Posture
9 6 (1.30%) Operational Technology
9 6 (1.30%) Self-Motivation
10 5 (1.08%) Linux Command Line
10 5 (1.08%) Onboarding
10 5 (1.08%) SCADA
11 4 (0.87%) Data Protection Act
11 4 (0.87%) Distributed Systems
11 4 (0.87%) Management Information System
12 3 (0.65%) Greenfield Project
12 3 (0.65%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 48 (10.41%) Windows
2 21 (4.56%) Linux
3 6 (1.30%) Ubuntu
4 4 (0.87%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.43%) Unix
6 2 (0.43%) VMS
6 2 (0.43%) Windows Server 2012
7 1 (0.22%) Kali Linux
7 1 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
7 1 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 111 (24.08%) Load Balancing
2 84 (18.22%) High Availability
3 73 (15.84%) Network Design
4 69 (14.97%) Migration
5 68 (14.75%) Zero Trust
6 67 (14.53%) Infrastructure as Code
7 55 (11.93%) Problem-Solving
8 49 (10.63%) Network Architecture
9 46 (9.98%) ITIL
10 45 (9.76%) CI/CD
11 40 (8.68%) Project Delivery
12 37 (8.03%) Change Management
12 37 (8.03%) Observability
13 36 (7.81%) Network Segmentation
14 34 (7.38%) DevOps
14 34 (7.38%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 34 (7.38%) Validation
15 31 (6.72%) Network Monitoring
16 28 (6.07%) Continuous Improvement
17 27 (5.86%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 128 (27.77%) Python
2 9 (1.95%) Bash
3 7 (1.52%) PowerShell
4 6 (1.30%) SQL
5 4 (0.87%) PHP
6 3 (0.65%) Perl
7 2 (0.43%) Shell Script
8 1 (0.22%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 158 (34.27%) Cisco Certification
2 149 (32.32%) Security Cleared
3 112 (24.30%) CCNP
4 91 (19.74%) SC Cleared
5 59 (12.80%) CCIE
6 56 (12.15%) DV Cleared
7 25 (5.42%) Degree
8 23 (4.99%) CCNA
9 17 (3.69%) JNCIE
10 13 (2.82%) JNCIP
11 11 (2.39%) JNCIS
12 10 (2.17%) AWS Certification
12 10 (2.17%) JNCIA
13 8 (1.74%) Azure Certification
13 8 (1.74%) Computer Science Degree
14 7 (1.52%) CISSP
14 7 (1.52%) GIAC
15 5 (1.08%) CompTIA Security+
16 4 (0.87%) APMG
16 4 (0.87%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (2.60%) NCSC
1 12 (2.60%) NIST
2 11 (2.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 5 (1.08%) Cyber Essentials
4 4 (0.87%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 4 (0.87%) GDPR
4 4 (0.87%) QA
5 3 (0.65%) PCI DSS
5 3 (0.65%) SLA
6 2 (0.43%) NIST 800
7 1 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.22%) COBIT
7 1 (0.22%) GRC
7 1 (0.22%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 1 (0.22%) RMADS
System Software
1 33 (7.16%) VMware Infrastructure
2 15 (3.25%) VMware NSX
3 10 (2.17%) VMware ESXi
4 9 (1.95%) Active Directory
5 7 (1.52%) Firmware
5 7 (1.52%) vSphere
6 6 (1.30%) Hyper-V
7 3 (0.65%) Docker
8 2 (0.43%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (0.43%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.22%) KVM
9 1 (0.22%) ProxySG
Systems Management
1 128 (27.77%) Ansible
2 77 (16.70%) Terraform
3 60 (13.02%) FortiGate
4 22 (4.77%) Grafana
5 19 (4.12%) Prometheus
6 10 (2.17%) Kubernetes
7 6 (1.30%) vCenter Server
8 5 (1.08%) Cisco Prime
9 3 (0.65%) Nagios
9 3 (0.65%) SCOM
10 2 (0.43%) CASB
10 2 (0.43%) Iperf
10 2 (0.43%) Microsoft Intune
10 2 (0.43%) Nmap
10 2 (0.43%) QRadar
10 2 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
11 1 (0.22%) Cilium
11 1 (0.22%) Rancher
11 1 (0.22%) Suricata
11 1 (0.22%) VxRail
Vendors
1 314 (68.11%) Cisco
2 165 (35.79%) F5
3 130 (28.20%) Palo Alto
4 102 (22.13%) Juniper
5 96 (20.82%) Fortinet
6 84 (18.22%) Arista
7 45 (9.76%) VMware
8 44 (9.54%) CheckPoint
9 43 (9.33%) Aruba
10 42 (9.11%) SolarWinds
11 32 (6.94%) Splunk
12 26 (5.64%) Extreme Networks
13 25 (5.42%) Microsoft
14 24 (5.21%) Zscaler
15 18 (3.90%) Meraki
16 10 (2.17%) Citrix
17 9 (1.95%) Google
17 9 (1.95%) ServiceNow
18 8 (1.74%) Ekahau
19 5 (1.08%) HP