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 10 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 305 278 267
Rank change year-on-year -27 -11 +7
Contract jobs citing BGP 438 299 336
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.80% 0.91% 0.88%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 8.55% 7.77% 7.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 260 192 197
10th Percentile £375 £325 £350
25th Percentile £424 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £603 £563
90th Percentile £688 £663 £655
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +6.32% -5.00% +2.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 4 3
10th Percentile £48.63 £37.38 £22.40
25th Percentile £50.75 £39.06 £28.25
Median hourly rate £57.13 £48.75 £38.00
Median % change year-on-year +17.18% +28.29% -36.67%
75th Percentile £69.91 £60.88 £51.50
90th Percentile £83.14 £64.70 £59.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £58.25 £66.50 £19.00
% change year-on-year -12.41% +250.00% -68.85%

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 5,121 3,847 4,532
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.40% 11.66% 11.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,001 2,367 2,650
10th Percentile £235 £235 £228
25th Percentile £396 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £483 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.63% -3.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £609
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £465 £500
% change year-on-year +2.80% -7.00% +10.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 398 201 267
10th Percentile £14.68 £15.33 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £21.37
Median hourly rate £26.14 £42.50 £51.50
Median % change year-on-year -38.49% -17.48% -8.83%
75th Percentile £65.88 £63.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.13 £73.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -39.36% -25.89% +1.52%

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 10 September 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 10 September 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 10 September 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 -15 403 £505 +4.12% 208
UK excluding London -36 244 £505 +6.32% 90
London -58 136 £500 +3.09% 134
Work from Home -40 112 £500 +2.56% 69
North of England +7 106 £500 +5.26% 11
North West -1 77 £488 +2.63% 4
South East -33 72 £525 +5.00% 24
Midlands -45 46 £468 +17.00% 9
West Midlands -37 42 £571 +42.69% 6
South West -35 33 £525 -16.67% 10
Yorkshire -24 22 £495 +23.75% 6
North East -34 13 £650 +160.00% 1
Scotland -43 9 £375 -11.76% 9
East of England -29 7 £475 -32.14% 27
East Midlands -15 3 - - 3
Wales -12 1 £425 -2.86% 1

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 12 (2.74%) OpenStack
2 8 (1.83%) SAS
3 4 (0.91%) Microsoft Exchange
4 2 (0.46%) Confluence
5 1 (0.23%) SharePoint
Applications
1 9 (2.05%) MS Visio
2 6 (1.37%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (0.91%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.68%) AutoCAD
Cloud Services
1 109 (24.89%) Azure
2 83 (18.95%) AWS
3 23 (5.25%) GCP
3 23 (5.25%) OCI
4 22 (5.02%) Azure ExpressRoute
5 18 (4.11%) GitHub
6 13 (2.97%) SaaS
7 10 (2.28%) AWS Direct Connect
7 10 (2.28%) Microsoft 365
8 7 (1.60%) Azure Monitor
8 7 (1.60%) Azure Sentinel
8 7 (1.60%) OpenShift
8 7 (1.60%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 5 (1.14%) Nutanix
10 3 (0.68%) Entra ID
11 2 (0.46%) Amazon GuardDuty
11 2 (0.46%) AWS CloudFormation
12 1 (0.23%) Amazon EKS
12 1 (0.23%) GitHub Actions
12 1 (0.23%) IBM Watson
Communications & Networking
1 250 (57.08%) OSPF
2 244 (55.71%) Firewall
3 207 (47.26%) WAN
4 133 (30.37%) VPN
5 126 (28.77%) VLAN
6 118 (26.94%) LAN
7 107 (24.43%) VXLAN
8 101 (23.06%) MPLS
9 96 (21.92%) Network Security
10 87 (19.86%) DNS
11 85 (19.41%) SD-WAN
12 77 (17.58%) Ethernet VPN
13 71 (16.21%) Wireless
14 66 (15.07%) IPsec
15 65 (14.84%) TCP/IP
16 64 (14.61%) Wi-Fi
17 62 (14.16%) Multicast
18 55 (12.56%) Cisco Nexus
19 54 (12.33%) EIGRP
20 52 (11.87%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Development Applications
1 27 (6.16%) GitLab
2 18 (4.11%) Git
3 7 (1.60%) Sonatype Nexus
4 5 (1.14%) JIRA
5 1 (0.23%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.23%) Jenkins
General
1 76 (17.35%) Social Skills
2 47 (10.73%) Analytical Skills
3 44 (10.05%) Finance
4 31 (7.08%) Telecoms
5 28 (6.39%) Public Sector
6 27 (6.16%) Banking
7 18 (4.11%) Investment Banking
8 16 (3.65%) Documentation Skills
9 8 (1.83%) Legal
9 8 (1.83%) Police
9 8 (1.83%) Retail
10 6 (1.37%) Military
11 5 (1.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 4 (0.91%) Financial Institution
13 3 (0.68%) German Language
13 3 (0.68%) Influencing Skills
13 3 (0.68%) Italian Language
13 3 (0.68%) Spanish Language
14 2 (0.46%) Organisational Skills
14 2 (0.46%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 260 (59.36%) Network Engineer
2 97 (22.15%) Senior
3 63 (14.38%) Senior Network Engineer
4 59 (13.47%) Cisco Engineer
5 56 (12.79%) Cisco Network Engineer
6 46 (10.50%) Architect
7 40 (9.13%) Security Engineer
8 39 (8.90%) Network Security Engineer
9 38 (8.68%) Data Network Engineer
10 35 (7.99%) Network Architect
11 33 (7.53%) Consultant
12 28 (6.39%) Cisco Security Engineer
13 27 (6.16%) Data Engineer
14 23 (5.25%) Network Consultant
15 20 (4.57%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 19 (4.34%) Network Specialist
17 18 (4.11%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
18 17 (3.88%) Developer
19 13 (2.97%) Web Engineer
20 12 (2.74%) Operations Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (16.21%) Terraform
2 22 (5.02%) REST
3 21 (4.79%) 802.1X
4 12 (2.74%) NETCONF
5 11 (2.51%) YAML
6 10 (2.28%) YANG
7 9 (2.05%) JSON
8 6 (1.37%) RESTCONF
9 5 (1.14%) OpenConfig
10 4 (0.91%) CSS
11 3 (0.68%) eBPF
11 3 (0.68%) SAML
12 2 (0.46%) gRPC
12 2 (0.46%) Spine.js
13 1 (0.23%) Django
13 1 (0.23%) LDAP
13 1 (0.23%) Model Context Protocol
Miscellaneous
1 179 (40.87%) Data Centre
2 50 (11.42%) Hybrid Cloud
3 28 (6.39%) Cloud Native
4 16 (3.65%) PKI
5 11 (2.51%) Private Cloud
6 10 (2.28%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 8 (1.83%) Analytical Mindset
7 8 (1.83%) Digital Signage
7 8 (1.83%) Public Cloud
7 8 (1.83%) Self-Motivation
8 7 (1.60%) Onboarding
8 7 (1.60%) Operational Technology
9 6 (1.37%) Clustering
9 6 (1.37%) Security Posture
10 5 (1.14%) Linux Command Line
11 4 (0.91%) CMDB
11 4 (0.91%) Data Protection Act
11 4 (0.91%) Distributed Systems
12 3 (0.68%) Distributed Applications
12 3 (0.68%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 27 (6.16%) Windows
2 21 (4.79%) Linux
3 4 (0.91%) Windows Server
4 3 (0.68%) Unix
4 3 (0.68%) Windows Server 2012
5 2 (0.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.23%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.23%) VMS
6 1 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
6 1 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 93 (21.23%) Load Balancing
2 79 (18.04%) High Availability
3 77 (17.58%) Migration
4 74 (16.89%) Network Design
5 70 (15.98%) Infrastructure as Code
5 70 (15.98%) Zero Trust
6 48 (10.96%) Problem-Solving
7 46 (10.50%) ITIL
7 46 (10.50%) Project Delivery
8 45 (10.27%) Network Architecture
8 45 (10.27%) Validation
9 39 (8.90%) CI/CD
10 36 (8.22%) Network Segmentation
11 35 (7.99%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 30 (6.85%) DevOps
12 30 (6.85%) Technical Leadership
13 29 (6.62%) Stakeholder Management
14 28 (6.39%) Change Control
14 28 (6.39%) Mentoring
15 26 (5.94%) Cloud Security
Programming Languages
1 126 (28.77%) Python
2 11 (2.51%) Bash
3 6 (1.37%) PowerShell
4 5 (1.14%) SQL
5 3 (0.68%) Shell Script
6 2 (0.46%) Go
6 2 (0.46%) Perl
7 1 (0.23%) C++
7 1 (0.23%) Java
Qualifications
1 131 (29.91%) Security Cleared
2 122 (27.85%) Cisco Certification
3 92 (21.00%) CCNP
4 80 (18.26%) SC Cleared
5 49 (11.19%) CCIE
6 44 (10.05%) DV Cleared
7 22 (5.02%) CCNA
8 20 (4.57%) Degree
9 14 (3.20%) JNCIE
10 8 (1.83%) Computer Science Degree
11 7 (1.60%) Azure Certification
12 5 (1.14%) AWS Certification
13 4 (0.91%) CCIE Security
13 4 (0.91%) CISSP
13 4 (0.91%) PMP
13 4 (0.91%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 3 (0.68%) VCDX
15 2 (0.46%) CWNA
15 2 (0.46%) PMI Certification
15 2 (0.46%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (0.91%) NCSC
1 4 (0.91%) NIST
2 3 (0.68%) GDPR
2 3 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 3 (0.68%) QA
3 2 (0.46%) PCI DSS
4 1 (0.23%) Cyber Essentials
4 1 (0.23%) NIST 800
System Software
1 30 (6.85%) VMware Infrastructure
2 15 (3.42%) VMware NSX
3 8 (1.83%) Active Directory
3 8 (1.83%) Hyper-V
4 7 (1.60%) Firmware
5 5 (1.14%) Docker
6 4 (0.91%) vSphere
7 3 (0.68%) Virtual Servers
8 2 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.23%) ProxySG
9 1 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 121 (27.63%) Ansible
2 39 (8.90%) FortiGate
3 20 (4.57%) Kubernetes
4 12 (2.74%) Grafana
4 12 (2.74%) Prometheus
5 11 (2.51%) Cisco Prime
6 6 (1.37%) Cilium
7 4 (0.91%) Istio
7 4 (0.91%) Nagios
8 2 (0.46%) Puppet
8 2 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.23%) CASB
9 1 (0.23%) Microsoft Intune
9 1 (0.23%) OPNET
9 1 (0.23%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.23%) QRadar
9 1 (0.23%) Rancher
9 1 (0.23%) Suricata
Vendors
1 309 (70.55%) Cisco
2 138 (31.51%) F5
3 130 (29.68%) Palo Alto
4 98 (22.37%) Fortinet
5 79 (18.04%) Arista
6 58 (13.24%) Juniper
7 43 (9.82%) Aruba
7 43 (9.82%) VMware
8 40 (9.13%) CheckPoint
9 30 (6.85%) Microsoft
10 26 (5.94%) SolarWinds
11 17 (3.88%) Meraki
11 17 (3.88%) Zscaler
12 16 (3.65%) ServiceNow
13 12 (2.74%) Splunk
14 9 (2.05%) Red Hat
15 7 (1.60%) Citrix
15 7 (1.60%) Dell
15 7 (1.60%) Google
15 7 (1.60%) Nokia