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

6 months to
6 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 322 220 265
Rank change year-on-year -102 +45 +168
Contract jobs citing BGP 266 393 443
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.77% 1.08% 0.95%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 6.77% 8.93% 6.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 181 223 237
10th Percentile £325 £351 £356
25th Percentile £413 £411 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.94% -3.81% +5.00%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £600
90th Percentile £664 £729 £700
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 7
10th Percentile £59.10 £32.38 £22.10
25th Percentile £63.38 £34.06 £24.75
Median hourly rate £70.38 £36.50 £34.00
Median % change year-on-year +92.82% +7.35% +30.77%
75th Percentile £74.26 £44.75 £38.40
90th Percentile - £56.90 £56.55
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 3,929 4,399 6,489
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.35% 12.04% 13.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,548 2,532 4,040
10th Percentile £213 £221 £213
25th Percentile £360 £369 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £681 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £452 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -4.95% - +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 194 159 339
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.95 £17.72
25th Percentile £20.00 £26.25 £22.75
Median hourly rate £34.00 £47.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.42% -13.64% +34.05%
75th Percentile £65.00 £66.01 £66.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £76.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £50.00 £56.49
% change year-on-year -15.00% -11.49% +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 6 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 6 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 6 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 -60 232 £500 - 161
UK excluding London -79 148 £475 -9.52% 123
London -37 93 £500 +1.27% 79
Work from Home -51 78 £538 +6.17% 55
West Midlands +2 44 £400 -12.57% 12
Midlands -14 44 £400 -16.45% 20
South East -37 37 £500 -4.76% 64
North of England -62 29 £550 +9.45% 15
North West -36 26 £550 +4.76% 4
South West +5 21 £625 +19.05% 8
Scotland +2 14 £425 +6.25% 14
East of England -15 8 £700 +26.13% 3
North East -10 3 £550 +29.41% 2
Yorkshire -41 3 £520 +89.09% 9
Channel Islands - 3 £725 - 1
Wales +1 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 (8.65%) OpenStack
2 11 (4.14%) Confluence
3 10 (3.76%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.75%) nginx
Applications
1 11 (4.14%) MS Visio
2 8 (3.01%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 65 (24.44%) AWS
2 47 (17.67%) Azure
3 19 (7.14%) GCP
4 8 (3.01%) OpenShift
4 8 (3.01%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 7 (2.63%) Akamai
5 7 (2.63%) Azure ExpressRoute
6 6 (2.26%) AWS Direct Connect
7 5 (1.88%) SaaS
8 3 (1.13%) IaaS
8 3 (1.13%) PaaS
9 2 (0.75%) GitHub
10 1 (0.38%) Amazon S3
10 1 (0.38%) AWS KMS
10 1 (0.38%) Azure DevOps
10 1 (0.38%) Azure Sentinel
10 1 (0.38%) Cloud Run
10 1 (0.38%) Entra ID
10 1 (0.38%) Microsoft 365
10 1 (0.38%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 174 (65.41%) OSPF
2 149 (56.02%) Firewall
3 110 (41.35%) WAN
4 103 (38.72%) MPLS
5 100 (37.59%) VPN
6 79 (29.70%) VLAN
7 71 (26.69%) IPsec
8 64 (24.06%) Network Security
9 54 (20.30%) DNS
9 54 (20.30%) SD-WAN
10 53 (19.92%) LAN
11 46 (17.29%) Wireless
12 44 (16.54%) EIGRP
13 43 (16.17%) VXLAN
14 32 (12.03%) Cisco ISE
14 32 (12.03%) DHCP
14 32 (12.03%) Ethernet VPN
15 27 (10.15%) TCP/IP
16 26 (9.77%) Cisco Nexus
16 26 (9.77%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (0.75%) MongoDB
1 2 (0.75%) NoSQL
2 1 (0.38%) Redis
2 1 (0.38%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 13 (4.89%) Git
2 10 (3.76%) JIRA
3 7 (2.63%) GitLab
3 7 (2.63%) Sonatype Nexus
4 3 (1.13%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.38%) Jenkins
5 1 (0.38%) Robot Framework
General
1 83 (31.20%) Social Skills
2 30 (11.28%) Analytical Skills
2 30 (11.28%) Public Sector
3 25 (9.40%) Finance
4 22 (8.27%) Documentation Skills
5 18 (6.77%) Telecoms
6 14 (5.26%) Banking
7 9 (3.38%) Investment Banking
8 5 (1.88%) Legal
9 4 (1.50%) Influencing Skills
9 4 (1.50%) Military
10 3 (1.13%) Marketing
11 2 (0.75%) Advertising
11 2 (0.75%) Financial Institution
11 2 (0.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.75%) Local Government
11 2 (0.75%) Manufacturing
11 2 (0.75%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.75%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.38%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 138 (51.88%) Network Engineer
2 36 (13.53%) Architect
3 27 (10.15%) Senior
4 26 (9.77%) Cisco Engineer
5 25 (9.40%) Cisco Network Engineer
6 18 (6.77%) Network Architect
6 18 (6.77%) WAN Engineer
7 17 (6.39%) Support Engineer
8 16 (6.02%) Senior Network Engineer
9 15 (5.64%) Designer
10 14 (5.26%) 3rd Line Engineer
11 13 (4.89%) 3rd Line Support
11 13 (4.89%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
11 13 (4.89%) Juniper Engineer
12 12 (4.51%) Consultant
12 12 (4.51%) Network Security Engineer
12 12 (4.51%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 12 (4.51%) Security Engineer
12 12 (4.51%) Solutions Architect
13 9 (3.38%) 2nd Line Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (6.02%) NETCONF
2 10 (3.76%) REST
2 10 (3.76%) YANG
3 9 (3.38%) RESTCONF
4 7 (2.63%) 802.1X
5 5 (1.88%) Jinja
5 5 (1.88%) JSON
6 3 (1.13%) SAML
6 3 (1.13%) XML
6 3 (1.13%) YAML
7 2 (0.75%) eBPF
7 2 (0.75%) SOAP
8 1 (0.38%) CrewAI
8 1 (0.38%) Elastic Stack
8 1 (0.38%) gRPC
8 1 (0.38%) JFC
8 1 (0.38%) LangChain
8 1 (0.38%) OpenConfig
8 1 (0.38%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 74 (27.82%) Data Centre
2 40 (15.04%) PKI
3 19 (7.14%) Hybrid Cloud
4 10 (3.76%) Cloud Native
4 10 (3.76%) Onboarding
4 10 (3.76%) Operational Technology
5 9 (3.38%) Product Ownership
6 5 (1.88%) Private Cloud
6 5 (1.88%) Self-Motivation
7 4 (1.50%) Data Protection Act
8 3 (1.13%) Analytical Mindset
8 3 (1.13%) Public Cloud
9 2 (0.75%) CMDB
9 2 (0.75%) Distributed Architecture
9 2 (0.75%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 2 (0.75%) Distributed Systems
9 2 (0.75%) Legacy Systems
9 2 (0.75%) Life Science
9 2 (0.75%) Video\Live Streaming
10 1 (0.38%) Fat Client
Operating Systems
1 18 (6.77%) Linux
2 14 (5.26%) Windows
3 9 (3.38%) Windows Server
4 7 (2.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (0.75%) CentOS
5 2 (0.75%) Unix
6 1 (0.38%) Check Point GAiA
6 1 (0.38%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.38%) Windows Server 2012
6 1 (0.38%) Windows Server 2016
6 1 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 49 (18.42%) Network Design
2 38 (14.29%) Problem-Solving
3 33 (12.41%) Load Balancing
4 31 (11.65%) High Availability
4 31 (11.65%) Network Monitoring
4 31 (11.65%) Network Segmentation
4 31 (11.65%) Network Virtualisation
5 23 (8.65%) Migration
6 22 (8.27%) Change Control
6 22 (8.27%) DevOps
6 22 (8.27%) Network Architecture
6 22 (8.27%) Validation
7 21 (7.89%) Strategic Thinking
8 20 (7.52%) ITIL
9 19 (7.14%) Roadmaps
10 18 (6.77%) Zero Trust
11 16 (6.02%) TOGAF
12 15 (5.64%) Agile
12 15 (5.64%) Cybersecurity
12 15 (5.64%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 95 (35.71%) Python
2 22 (8.27%) Bash
3 16 (6.02%) Perl
4 11 (4.14%) PowerShell
5 7 (2.63%) Lisp
6 6 (2.26%) C++
7 3 (1.13%) SQL
8 2 (0.75%) C
9 1 (0.38%) Go
9 1 (0.38%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 128 (48.12%) Cisco Certification
2 101 (37.97%) CCNP
3 92 (34.59%) Security Cleared
4 68 (25.56%) SC Cleared
5 46 (17.29%) CCIE
6 25 (9.40%) Degree
6 25 (9.40%) JNCIE
7 19 (7.14%) DV Cleared
8 16 (6.02%) CCNA
9 14 (5.26%) AWS Certification
10 13 (4.89%) JNCIS
11 11 (4.14%) JNCIA
12 10 (3.76%) JNCIP
13 8 (3.01%) CCDP
13 8 (3.01%) CISSP
14 7 (2.63%) CCSA
15 6 (2.26%) CCSE
16 5 (1.88%) Computer Science Degree
17 4 (1.50%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 4 (1.50%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (3.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 9 (3.38%) NCSC
3 7 (2.63%) GDPR
3 7 (2.63%) NIST
4 5 (1.88%) PCI DSS
4 5 (1.88%) SLA
5 1 (0.38%) Def Stans
5 1 (0.38%) NIST 800
5 1 (0.38%) SOC 2
System Software
1 27 (10.15%) VMware Infrastructure
2 16 (6.02%) Docker
2 16 (6.02%) VMware NSX
3 14 (5.26%) Firmware
4 8 (3.01%) Active Directory
4 8 (3.01%) VMware ESXi
5 3 (1.13%) Hyper-V
5 3 (1.13%) KVM
6 2 (0.75%) Ceph
7 1 (0.38%) Squid
Systems Management
1 82 (30.83%) Ansible
2 35 (13.16%) FortiGate
3 30 (11.28%) Terraform
4 11 (4.14%) Kubernetes
5 5 (1.88%) Nagios
6 4 (1.50%) CA Spectrum
7 3 (1.13%) Cisco CUCM
7 3 (1.13%) HAProxy
7 3 (1.13%) Iperf
7 3 (1.13%) Nmap
7 3 (1.13%) Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.75%) Grafana
8 2 (0.75%) Prometheus
9 1 (0.38%) CASB
9 1 (0.38%) Icinga
9 1 (0.38%) Observium
9 1 (0.38%) vCenter Server
9 1 (0.38%) VxRail
Vendors
1 165 (62.03%) Cisco
2 86 (32.33%) Juniper
3 64 (24.06%) Fortinet
4 62 (23.31%) Palo Alto
5 48 (18.05%) F5
6 39 (14.66%) SolarWinds
6 39 (14.66%) VMware
7 30 (11.28%) Arista
8 29 (10.90%) Meraki
9 22 (8.27%) CheckPoint
10 14 (5.26%) ServiceNow
11 12 (4.51%) Dell
11 12 (4.51%) Microsoft
12 10 (3.76%) Remedy
13 8 (3.01%) Atlassian
13 8 (3.01%) Red Hat
13 8 (3.01%) Zscaler
14 7 (2.63%) Ekahau
15 5 (1.88%) Citrix
15 5 (1.88%) Nokia