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

6 months to
19 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 307 232 265
Rank change year-on-year -75 +33 +175
Contract jobs citing BGP 270 391 466
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.81% 1.05% 0.97%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 7.12% 8.66% 7.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 177 219 256
10th Percentile £320 £350 £381
25th Percentile £413 £410 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.94% -3.81% +5.00%
75th Percentile £625 £594 £600
90th Percentile £675 £732 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £455 £525 £486
% change year-on-year -13.33% +8.02% -2.80%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 5 5
10th Percentile £37.38 £23.60 £20.90
25th Percentile £39.06 £31.25 £24.50
Median hourly rate £48.75 £35.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +39.29% +40.00% +4.17%
75th Percentile £60.88 £38.00 £36.00
90th Percentile £64.70 £54.20 £37.22
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.50 £19.00 £25.00
% change year-on-year +250.00% -24.00% +8.70%

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 3,791 4,515 6,562
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.44% 12.09% 13.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,424 2,592 4,117
10th Percentile £213 £225 £220
25th Percentile £358 £375 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £677 £687 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £453 £475 £466
% change year-on-year -4.63% +2.04% +3.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 189 177 328
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.96 £17.24
25th Percentile £19.00 £24.18 £22.75
Median hourly rate £34.00 £48.56 £56.45
Median % change year-on-year -29.98% -13.97% +42.63%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.45 £51.50 £56.49
% change year-on-year -19.51% -8.83% +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 19 October 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 19 October 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 19 October 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 -59 235 £500 - 90
UK excluding London -75 138 £455 -13.33% 79
London +6 103 £500 - 31
Work from Home -43 84 £544 -1.14% 51
Midlands -6 43 £400 -20.00% 18
West Midlands +10 42 £400 -5.88% 16
South East -33 35 £500 -4.76% 29
South West +11 26 £630 +14.55% 3
North of England -69 19 £447 -10.60% 20
North West -46 17 £447 -13.20% 10
Scotland +2 11 £425 +6.25% 6
East of England -9 8 £700 +26.13% 4
Channel Islands - 3 £725 -
Yorkshire -35 2 £520 +89.09% 7
Wales 0 1 £400 - 1
East Midlands -22 1 £438 -22.22% 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 23 (8.52%) OpenStack
2 12 (4.44%) Confluence
3 8 (2.96%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.74%) nginx
Applications
1 9 (3.33%) Microsoft Office
1 9 (3.33%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 66 (24.44%) AWS
2 45 (16.67%) Azure
3 14 (5.19%) GCP
4 8 (2.96%) OpenShift
5 7 (2.59%) Akamai
6 6 (2.22%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 5 (1.85%) AWS Direct Connect
7 5 (1.85%) SaaS
8 3 (1.11%) Azure ExpressRoute
8 3 (1.11%) IaaS
8 3 (1.11%) PaaS
9 2 (0.74%) GitHub
9 2 (0.74%) Microsoft 365
10 1 (0.37%) Amazon S3
10 1 (0.37%) AWS KMS
10 1 (0.37%) Azure DevOps
10 1 (0.37%) Azure Sentinel
10 1 (0.37%) Cloud Run
10 1 (0.37%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 183 (67.78%) OSPF
2 138 (51.11%) Firewall
3 109 (40.37%) WAN
4 106 (39.26%) VPN
5 104 (38.52%) MPLS
6 76 (28.15%) IPsec
6 76 (28.15%) VLAN
7 66 (24.44%) Network Security
8 52 (19.26%) LAN
9 50 (18.52%) DNS
10 47 (17.41%) SD-WAN
11 43 (15.93%) EIGRP
12 40 (14.81%) Wireless
13 39 (14.44%) TCP/IP
13 39 (14.44%) VXLAN
14 38 (14.07%) Ethernet VPN
15 28 (10.37%) Cisco Nexus
15 28 (10.37%) Multicast
16 26 (9.63%) DHCP
16 26 (9.63%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (0.74%) MongoDB
1 2 (0.74%) NoSQL
2 1 (0.37%) Redis
2 1 (0.37%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 11 (4.07%) JIRA
2 10 (3.70%) Git
3 9 (3.33%) Sonatype Nexus
4 7 (2.59%) GitLab
5 4 (1.48%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.37%) Jenkins
6 1 (0.37%) Robot Framework
General
1 80 (29.63%) Social Skills
2 30 (11.11%) Public Sector
3 27 (10.00%) Finance
4 23 (8.52%) Telecoms
5 22 (8.15%) Analytical Skills
6 20 (7.41%) Documentation Skills
7 12 (4.44%) Banking
8 7 (2.59%) Investment Banking
9 6 (2.22%) Marketing
9 6 (2.22%) Military
10 3 (1.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (1.11%) Legal
11 2 (0.74%) Advertising
11 2 (0.74%) Local Government
11 2 (0.74%) Manufacturing
11 2 (0.74%) Organisational Skills
12 1 (0.37%) Financial Institution
12 1 (0.37%) French Language
12 1 (0.37%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.37%) Law
Job Titles
1 140 (51.85%) Network Engineer
2 35 (12.96%) Architect
3 32 (11.85%) Senior
4 27 (10.00%) Cisco Engineer
5 26 (9.63%) Cisco Network Engineer
6 21 (7.78%) WAN Engineer
7 18 (6.67%) Senior Network Engineer
7 18 (6.67%) Support Engineer
8 16 (5.93%) Network Architect
9 15 (5.56%) Designer
10 14 (5.19%) 3rd Line Engineer
11 13 (4.81%) 3rd Line Support
11 13 (4.81%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
11 13 (4.81%) Juniper Engineer
12 12 (4.44%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
13 11 (4.07%) Consultant
14 10 (3.70%) 2nd Line Engineer
15 9 (3.33%) Network Security Engineer
15 9 (3.33%) Security Engineer
15 9 (3.33%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (5.56%) NETCONF
2 10 (3.70%) REST
3 9 (3.33%) RESTCONF
3 9 (3.33%) YANG
4 7 (2.59%) 802.1X
5 5 (1.85%) Jinja
6 4 (1.48%) JSON
7 3 (1.11%) SAML
7 3 (1.11%) YAML
8 2 (0.74%) eBPF
8 2 (0.74%) gRPC
8 2 (0.74%) SOAP
8 2 (0.74%) XML
9 1 (0.37%) CrewAI
9 1 (0.37%) Elastic Stack
9 1 (0.37%) JFC
9 1 (0.37%) LangChain
9 1 (0.37%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 67 (24.81%) Data Centre
2 40 (14.81%) PKI
3 19 (7.04%) Hybrid Cloud
4 12 (4.44%) Cloud Native
5 11 (4.07%) Onboarding
6 10 (3.70%) Operational Technology
7 6 (2.22%) Private Cloud
8 5 (1.85%) Data Protection Act
8 5 (1.85%) Self-Motivation
9 4 (1.48%) Legacy Systems
10 3 (1.11%) Public Cloud
11 2 (0.74%) CMDB
11 2 (0.74%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 2 (0.74%) Distributed Systems
11 2 (0.74%) Life Science
11 2 (0.74%) Product Ownership
11 2 (0.74%) Video\Live Streaming
12 1 (0.37%) Educational Technology
12 1 (0.37%) EMC VMAX
12 1 (0.37%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 13 (4.81%) Linux
2 8 (2.96%) Windows
3 3 (1.11%) Check Point GAiA
3 3 (1.11%) Windows Server
4 2 (0.74%) CentOS
4 2 (0.74%) Unix
5 1 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.37%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.37%) Windows Server 2012
5 1 (0.37%) Windows Server 2016
5 1 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 45 (16.67%) Network Design
2 37 (13.70%) Network Monitoring
3 34 (12.59%) Problem-Solving
4 30 (11.11%) High Availability
4 30 (11.11%) Load Balancing
4 30 (11.11%) Network Segmentation
5 29 (10.74%) Network Virtualisation
6 26 (9.63%) Migration
7 24 (8.89%) Validation
8 22 (8.15%) DevOps
9 19 (7.04%) Network Architecture
10 17 (6.30%) ITIL
11 16 (5.93%) Agile
11 16 (5.93%) Change Control
12 14 (5.19%) Change Management
12 14 (5.19%) CI/CD
12 14 (5.19%) Knowledge Transfer
12 14 (5.19%) SIEM
12 14 (5.19%) Strategic Thinking
13 13 (4.81%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 93 (34.44%) Python
2 16 (5.93%) Bash
3 11 (4.07%) Perl
4 6 (2.22%) C++
5 5 (1.85%) Lisp
6 3 (1.11%) PowerShell
6 3 (1.11%) SQL
7 2 (0.74%) C
8 1 (0.37%) Go
8 1 (0.37%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 121 (44.81%) Cisco Certification
2 93 (34.44%) CCNP
3 89 (32.96%) Security Cleared
4 62 (22.96%) SC Cleared
5 44 (16.30%) CCIE
6 25 (9.26%) Degree
7 24 (8.89%) JNCIE
8 22 (8.15%) DV Cleared
9 13 (4.81%) JNCIS
10 12 (4.44%) AWS Certification
10 12 (4.44%) CCNA
10 12 (4.44%) JNCIA
11 10 (3.70%) CCSE
12 9 (3.33%) CCSA
13 8 (2.96%) Computer Science Degree
13 8 (2.96%) JNCIP
14 4 (1.48%) CCDP
14 4 (1.48%) CISSP
15 3 (1.11%) BPSS Clearance
15 3 (1.11%) Check Point Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (4.07%) NCSC
2 5 (1.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 4 (1.48%) SLA
4 2 (0.74%) GDPR
4 2 (0.74%) NIST
5 1 (0.37%) Def Stans
5 1 (0.37%) NIST 800
5 1 (0.37%) SOC 2
System Software
1 20 (7.41%) VMware Infrastructure
2 16 (5.93%) Firmware
3 13 (4.81%) Docker
4 12 (4.44%) VMware NSX
5 8 (2.96%) VMware ESXi
6 5 (1.85%) Active Directory
7 3 (1.11%) Hyper-V
7 3 (1.11%) KVM
8 2 (0.74%) Ceph
9 1 (0.37%) Squid
Systems Management
1 86 (31.85%) Ansible
2 27 (10.00%) FortiGate
2 27 (10.00%) Terraform
3 8 (2.96%) Kubernetes
4 6 (2.22%) Nagios
5 4 (1.48%) CA Spectrum
6 3 (1.11%) Cisco CUCM
6 3 (1.11%) HAProxy
6 3 (1.11%) Iperf
6 3 (1.11%) Nmap
6 3 (1.11%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.74%) Cisco Prime
7 2 (0.74%) Grafana
7 2 (0.74%) 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
1 165 (61.11%) Cisco
2 87 (32.22%) Juniper
3 62 (22.96%) Fortinet
4 56 (20.74%) Palo Alto
5 42 (15.56%) F5
6 40 (14.81%) SolarWinds
7 38 (14.07%) Arista
8 34 (12.59%) VMware
9 28 (10.37%) CheckPoint
10 26 (9.63%) Meraki
11 12 (4.44%) Dell
11 12 (4.44%) ServiceNow
12 11 (4.07%) Microsoft
13 9 (3.33%) Atlassian
14 8 (2.96%) Remedy
14 8 (2.96%) Zscaler
15 5 (1.85%) Aruba
15 5 (1.85%) Ekahau
16 4 (1.48%) NVIDIA
16 4 (1.48%) Splunk