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

 6 months to
21 May 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 294 230 255
Rank change year-on-year -64 +25 +67
Contract jobs citing BGP 394 341 385
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.82% 1.17% 0.91%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 8.54% 9.28% 7.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 225 208 242
10th Percentile £313 £325 £314
25th Percentile £400 £425 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -7.50% +5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £550 £600 £550
90th Percentile £638 £743 £613
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £467
% change year-on-year - +1.82% -2.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 3 3
10th Percentile £47.22 £22.05 £19.45
25th Percentile £56.01 £27.38 £20.88
Median hourly rate £71.33 £37.50 £23.50
Median % change year-on-year +90.21% +59.57% -68.14%
75th Percentile £73.13 £39.38 £39.38
90th Percentile £73.81 £39.75 £48.75
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 4,615 3,675 5,406
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.56% 12.63% 12.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,846 2,275 3,227
10th Percentile £263 £213 £205
25th Percentile £400 £359 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £497 £485 £490
Median % change year-on-year +2.51% -1.02% -5.31%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £690
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £456 £475
% change year-on-year +4.11% -3.95% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 257 157 416
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £20.82 £17.30 £16.30
Median hourly rate £32.50 £37.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -13.33% -6.25% +116.22%
75th Percentile £65.88 £58.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.54 £27.97 £45.88
% change year-on-year +44.94% -39.04% +151.88%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 -43 349 £475 -5.00% 82
UK excluding London -34 230 £475 - 70
Work from Home -45 123 £445 -13.17% 40
South East +17 108 £450 - 25
London -78 107 £450 -10.00% 28
North of England -52 71 £575 +15.00% 18
North West -32 57 £568 +10.73% 12
Midlands -34 48 £413 +37.50% 11
West Midlands -33 45 £413 +43.48% 11
South West -38 22 £525 -2.33% 6
North East -14 10 £650 +160.00% 5
Scotland -4 7 £434 +5.15% 10
Yorkshire -48 6 £538 +53.57% 2
Wales -14 4 £425 -5.56%
East of England -24 4 £500 +25.00% 2
East Midlands -29 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 5 (1.27%) Confluence
2 4 (1.02%) OpenStack
2 4 (1.02%) SharePoint
Applications
1 9 (2.28%) MS Visio
2 7 (1.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 5 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
4 4 (1.02%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 75 (19.04%) AWS
1 75 (19.04%) Azure
2 22 (5.58%) GCP
3 18 (4.57%) OCI
4 15 (3.81%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 13 (3.30%) SaaS
6 8 (2.03%) Route 53
7 7 (1.78%) AWS Direct Connect
8 6 (1.52%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 5 (1.27%) Amazon EKS
9 5 (1.27%) Amazon GuardDuty
9 5 (1.27%) Nutanix
10 4 (1.02%) Azure Sentinel
10 4 (1.02%) GitHub
11 3 (0.76%) Amazon S3
11 3 (0.76%) AWS CloudFormation
11 3 (0.76%) Catchpoint
11 3 (0.76%) IaaS
11 3 (0.76%) PaaS
12 2 (0.51%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 278 (70.56%) OSPF
2 233 (59.14%) Firewall
3 222 (56.35%) WAN
4 152 (38.58%) LAN
5 111 (28.17%) VPN
6 109 (27.66%) VXLAN
7 99 (25.13%) Network Security
8 89 (22.59%) MPLS
9 86 (21.83%) VLAN
10 84 (21.32%) Ethernet VPN
11 81 (20.56%) DNS
12 74 (18.78%) SD-WAN
13 69 (17.51%) Multicast
14 59 (14.97%) BIG-IP
14 59 (14.97%) IPsec
15 54 (13.71%) TCP/IP
16 43 (10.91%) Cisco Nexus
16 43 (10.91%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 42 (10.66%) Cisco ISE
17 42 (10.66%) Wireless
Development Applications
1 19 (4.82%) GitLab
2 12 (3.05%) Git
3 9 (2.28%) Sonatype Nexus
4 5 (1.27%) JIRA
5 3 (0.76%) Jenkins
6 1 (0.25%) AppScan
6 1 (0.25%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.25%) Burp Suite
6 1 (0.25%) Metasploit
General
1 52 (13.20%) Social Skills
2 39 (9.90%) Finance
3 37 (9.39%) Public Sector
4 35 (8.88%) Documentation Skills
5 31 (7.87%) Analytical Skills
6 27 (6.85%) Banking
7 21 (5.33%) Telecoms
8 19 (4.82%) Investment Banking
9 13 (3.30%) Manufacturing
9 13 (3.30%) Military
10 12 (3.05%) Financial Institution
11 5 (1.27%) Retail
12 4 (1.02%) Legal
12 4 (1.02%) Marketing
12 4 (1.02%) Police
13 3 (0.76%) French Language
14 2 (0.51%) German Language
14 2 (0.51%) Italian Language
14 2 (0.51%) Presentation Skills
14 2 (0.51%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 230 (58.38%) Network Engineer
2 70 (17.77%) Senior
3 63 (15.99%) Cisco Engineer
4 59 (14.97%) Cisco Network Engineer
5 45 (11.42%) Security Engineer
6 42 (10.66%) Data Network Engineer
7 40 (10.15%) Architect
7 40 (10.15%) Network Security Engineer
7 40 (10.15%) Senior Network Engineer
8 33 (8.38%) Cisco Security Engineer
9 32 (8.12%) Data Engineer
10 30 (7.61%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
11 27 (6.85%) Network Architect
12 23 (5.84%) Network Specialist
13 22 (5.58%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 16 (4.06%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 15 (3.81%) Web Engineer
16 14 (3.55%) Firewall Specialist
17 13 (3.30%) Juniper Engineer
17 13 (3.30%) Operations Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 41 (10.41%) 802.1X
2 10 (2.54%) REST
3 8 (2.03%) NETCONF
3 8 (2.03%) YANG
4 7 (1.78%) LDAP
5 4 (1.02%) Jinja
6 3 (0.76%) CSS
6 3 (0.76%) OpenConfig
6 3 (0.76%) RESTCONF
6 3 (0.76%) VML
7 2 (0.51%) AWS CDK
7 2 (0.51%) HTML
7 2 (0.51%) RFC 2544
8 1 (0.25%) eBPF
8 1 (0.25%) JSON
8 1 (0.25%) SAML
8 1 (0.25%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 177 (44.92%) Data Centre
2 39 (9.90%) PKI
3 30 (7.61%) Hybrid Cloud
4 25 (6.35%) Clustering
5 14 (3.55%) Cloud Native
6 8 (2.03%) Onboarding
7 6 (1.52%) Data Protection Act
7 6 (1.52%) Security Posture
8 5 (1.27%) Self-Motivation
9 4 (1.02%) Analytical Mindset
9 4 (1.02%) Distributed Systems
9 4 (1.02%) Operational Technology
9 4 (1.02%) Public Cloud
10 3 (0.76%) CESG
10 3 (0.76%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 3 (0.76%) Greenfield Project
10 3 (0.76%) Linux Command Line
10 3 (0.76%) NHS
10 3 (0.76%) SCADA
10 3 (0.76%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 39 (9.90%) Windows
2 19 (4.82%) Linux
3 6 (1.52%) Ubuntu
4 3 (0.76%) Windows Server
5 2 (0.51%) Unix
6 1 (0.25%) Kali Linux
6 1 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.25%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 101 (25.63%) Load Balancing
2 65 (16.50%) High Availability
3 52 (13.20%) Network Design
4 48 (12.18%) Infrastructure as Code
5 47 (11.93%) Problem-Solving
5 47 (11.93%) Zero Trust
6 45 (11.42%) Migration
7 32 (8.12%) CI/CD
7 32 (8.12%) ITIL
7 32 (8.12%) Network Architecture
7 32 (8.12%) Observability
8 31 (7.87%) Change Management
9 28 (7.11%) DevOps
9 28 (7.11%) Project Delivery
9 28 (7.11%) Technical Leadership
10 27 (6.85%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 26 (6.60%) Identity Access Management
12 25 (6.35%) Network Monitoring
13 24 (6.09%) Network Segmentation
14 22 (5.58%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 88 (22.34%) Python
2 5 (1.27%) Bash
3 4 (1.02%) PHP
4 3 (0.76%) SQL
5 2 (0.51%) JavaScript
5 2 (0.51%) PowerShell
6 1 (0.25%) Lisp
6 1 (0.25%) Perl
Qualifications
1 161 (40.86%) Cisco Certification
2 149 (37.82%) Security Cleared
3 121 (30.71%) CCNP
4 112 (28.43%) SC Cleared
5 54 (13.71%) CCIE
6 41 (10.41%) DV Cleared
7 28 (7.11%) Degree
8 25 (6.35%) CCNA
9 16 (4.06%) JNCIP
10 15 (3.81%) JNCIS
11 13 (3.30%) JNCIE
12 12 (3.05%) JNCIA
13 9 (2.28%) Computer Science Degree
14 8 (2.03%) AWS Certification
15 7 (1.78%) Azure Certification
16 6 (1.52%) GIAC
17 5 (1.27%) CCDP
17 5 (1.27%) CISSP
17 5 (1.27%) CompTIA Security+
17 5 (1.27%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (2.54%) NCSC
2 9 (2.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 9 (2.28%) NIST
3 7 (1.78%) SLA
4 4 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
4 4 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 3 (0.76%) RMADS
6 2 (0.51%) JSP 440
6 2 (0.51%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.25%) COBIT
7 1 (0.25%) GDPR
7 1 (0.25%) GRC
7 1 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 1 (0.25%) NIST 800
7 1 (0.25%) QA
System Software
1 28 (7.11%) VMware Infrastructure
2 12 (3.05%) VMware NSX
3 8 (2.03%) VMware ESXi
4 6 (1.52%) Active Directory
5 5 (1.27%) Firmware
6 4 (1.02%) vSphere
7 3 (0.76%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.51%) Docker
8 2 (0.51%) vCloud
8 2 (0.51%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.25%) KVM
9 1 (0.25%) ProxySG
9 1 (0.25%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 95 (24.11%) Ansible
2 51 (12.94%) Terraform
3 47 (11.93%) FortiGate
4 17 (4.31%) Grafana
5 14 (3.55%) Prometheus
6 6 (1.52%) vCenter Server
7 5 (1.27%) Kubernetes
7 5 (1.27%) Nagios
8 3 (0.76%) Cisco Prime
8 3 (0.76%) SCOM
9 2 (0.51%) CASB
9 2 (0.51%) Iperf
9 2 (0.51%) Nmap
10 1 (0.25%) Cilium
10 1 (0.25%) Cisco CUCM
10 1 (0.25%) Failover Clustering
10 1 (0.25%) Microsoft Intune
10 1 (0.25%) QRadar
10 1 (0.25%) vRealize
10 1 (0.25%) VxRail
Vendors
1 283 (71.83%) Cisco
2 145 (36.80%) F5
3 116 (29.44%) Palo Alto
4 86 (21.83%) Juniper
5 63 (15.99%) Arista
6 61 (15.48%) Fortinet
7 52 (13.20%) Aruba
8 51 (12.94%) CheckPoint
9 35 (8.88%) VMware
10 33 (8.38%) SolarWinds
11 28 (7.11%) Splunk
12 26 (6.60%) Extreme Networks
13 18 (4.57%) Meraki
14 16 (4.06%) Zscaler
15 10 (2.54%) ServiceNow
16 9 (2.28%) Nokia
17 7 (1.78%) Ekahau
17 7 (1.78%) Microsoft
18 6 (1.52%) Google
19 5 (1.27%) NVIDIA
94 BGP jobs Nationwide