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

6 months to
10 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 321 299 241
Rank change year-on-year -22 -58 +23
Contract jobs citing BGP 421 276 387
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.77% 0.83% 1.02%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 8.34% 7.32% 8.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 241 179 218
10th Percentile £380 £323 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £485 £505
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -3.96% -3.81%
75th Percentile £600 £618 £588
90th Percentile £710 £675 £732
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £455 £505
% change year-on-year +12.09% -9.90% +3.75%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 4 5
10th Percentile £50.40 £37.38 £23.60
25th Percentile £58.13 £39.06 £31.25
Median hourly rate £68.75 £48.75 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +41.03% +39.29% -2.83%
75th Percentile - £60.88 £38.00
90th Percentile £72.75 £64.70 £54.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.75 £66.50 £19.00
% change year-on-year +3.38% +250.00% -55.29%

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 5,047 3,770 4,549
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.25% 11.38% 11.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,920 2,391 2,612
10th Percentile £236 £214 £223
25th Percentile £391 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £602
90th Percentile £680 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £485
% change year-on-year +5.56% -7.21% +6.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 434 192 190
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £20.13 £24.18
Median hourly rate £32.50 £36.25 £48.78
Median % change year-on-year -10.34% -25.69% -13.65%
75th Percentile £68.69 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £92.11 £75.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.14 £41.72 £54.88
% change year-on-year -37.34% -23.97% -4.57%

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 October 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 October 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for BGP in the UK

BGP
Top 15 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 October 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 -22 387 £500 - 266
UK excluding London -8 236 £510 +12.09% 92
London -60 132 £500 -2.44% 179
North of England +4 100 £500 +11.86% 16
Work from Home -47 99 £500 -8.05% 93
North West +3 71 £488 +9.06% 11
South East -45 61 £525 +5.00% 26
Midlands -44 39 £475 +18.75% 15
West Midlands -48 37 £571 +42.69% 8
South West -23 30 £525 -16.83% 9
Yorkshire -10 22 £495 +12.50% 4
East of England -24 18 £488 -30.36% 12
North East -30 13 £650 +160.00% 1
Scotland -19 11 £375 -11.76% 10
East Midlands -12 2 £475 +8.57% 7

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 14 (3.33%) OpenStack
2 8 (1.90%) SAS
3 5 (1.19%) Confluence
3 5 (1.19%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.24%) SharePoint
Applications
1 9 (2.14%) MS Visio
2 6 (1.43%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (0.95%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.71%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 1 (0.24%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 109 (25.89%) Azure
2 90 (21.38%) AWS
3 35 (8.31%) GCP
4 28 (6.65%) OCI
5 27 (6.41%) Azure ExpressRoute
6 23 (5.46%) GitHub
7 20 (4.75%) AWS Direct Connect
8 18 (4.28%) SaaS
9 15 (3.56%) Microsoft 365
10 8 (1.90%) Azure Monitor
11 7 (1.66%) Azure Sentinel
11 7 (1.66%) OpenShift
11 7 (1.66%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 5 (1.19%) Nutanix
13 4 (0.95%) Entra ID
14 3 (0.71%) AWS CloudFormation
14 3 (0.71%) IBM Watson
15 1 (0.24%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 1 (0.24%) AWS Lambda
15 1 (0.24%) Google Ads
Communications & Networking
1 239 (56.77%) OSPF
2 231 (54.87%) Firewall
3 189 (44.89%) WAN
4 132 (31.35%) VPN
5 117 (27.79%) VLAN
6 108 (25.65%) LAN
7 107 (25.42%) MPLS
8 95 (22.57%) Network Security
8 95 (22.57%) VXLAN
9 89 (21.14%) SD-WAN
10 84 (19.95%) DNS
11 77 (18.29%) Ethernet VPN
12 74 (17.58%) TCP/IP
13 66 (15.68%) IPsec
14 64 (15.20%) Wireless
15 58 (13.78%) Wi-Fi
16 55 (13.06%) Multicast
17 53 (12.59%) EIGRP
18 51 (12.11%) Cisco Nexus
19 45 (10.69%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (0.24%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 31 (7.36%) Git
2 30 (7.13%) GitLab
3 9 (2.14%) JIRA
4 7 (1.66%) Sonatype Nexus
5 2 (0.48%) Jenkins
6 1 (0.24%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.24%) Cucumber
General
1 74 (17.58%) Social Skills
2 53 (12.59%) Finance
3 50 (11.88%) Analytical Skills
4 34 (8.08%) Banking
5 31 (7.36%) Telecoms
6 27 (6.41%) Public Sector
7 15 (3.56%) Investment Banking
8 12 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
9 8 (1.90%) Legal
9 8 (1.90%) Military
10 7 (1.66%) Retail
11 6 (1.43%) Police
12 5 (1.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 4 (0.95%) Financial Institution
14 3 (0.71%) German Language
14 3 (0.71%) Influencing Skills
14 3 (0.71%) Italian Language
14 3 (0.71%) Manufacturing
14 3 (0.71%) Spanish Language
15 2 (0.48%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 244 (57.96%) Network Engineer
2 90 (21.38%) Senior
3 56 (13.30%) Senior Network Engineer
4 48 (11.40%) Architect
5 47 (11.16%) Cisco Engineer
6 44 (10.45%) Cisco Network Engineer
7 38 (9.03%) Network Architect
8 34 (8.08%) Consultant
9 31 (7.36%) Security Engineer
10 29 (6.89%) Network Security Engineer
11 25 (5.94%) Data Network Engineer
12 23 (5.46%) Network Consultant
13 20 (4.75%) Cisco Security Engineer
13 20 (4.75%) Data Engineer
14 19 (4.51%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 17 (4.04%) Developer
15 17 (4.04%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
16 15 (3.56%) Network Specialist
17 14 (3.33%) Operations Engineer
18 13 (3.09%) Lead
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (16.86%) Terraform
2 30 (7.13%) REST
3 18 (4.28%) JSON
4 17 (4.04%) NETCONF
4 17 (4.04%) YAML
5 16 (3.80%) 802.1X
6 15 (3.56%) YANG
7 6 (1.43%) RESTCONF
8 5 (1.19%) OpenConfig
9 4 (0.95%) CSS
10 3 (0.71%) eBPF
10 3 (0.71%) SAML
11 2 (0.48%) gRPC
11 2 (0.48%) Spine.js
12 1 (0.24%) Django
12 1 (0.24%) LDAP
12 1 (0.24%) Model Context Protocol
12 1 (0.24%) ModSecurity
12 1 (0.24%) pytest
12 1 (0.24%) Regular Expression
Miscellaneous
1 167 (39.67%) Data Centre
2 49 (11.64%) Hybrid Cloud
3 28 (6.65%) Cloud Native
4 15 (3.56%) Self-Motivation
5 13 (3.09%) PKI
6 12 (2.85%) Private Cloud
7 11 (2.61%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 9 (2.14%) Public Cloud
9 8 (1.90%) Analytical Mindset
9 8 (1.90%) CMDB
9 8 (1.90%) Digital Signage
10 6 (1.43%) Operational Technology
10 6 (1.43%) Security Posture
11 5 (1.19%) Data Structures
11 5 (1.19%) Linux Command Line
11 5 (1.19%) Video Conferencing
12 4 (0.95%) Data Protection Act
12 4 (0.95%) Enterprise Cloud
12 4 (0.95%) Onboarding
13 3 (0.71%) Distributed Applications
Operating Systems
1 40 (9.50%) Windows
2 31 (7.36%) Linux
3 12 (2.85%) Windows Server
4 10 (2.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (0.71%) Unix
5 3 (0.71%) Windows Server 2012
6 1 (0.24%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.24%) VMS
6 1 (0.24%) Windows Server 2016
6 1 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 89 (21.14%) Load Balancing
2 86 (20.43%) Infrastructure as Code
3 78 (18.53%) Migration
4 76 (18.05%) Zero Trust
5 72 (17.10%) High Availability
6 69 (16.39%) Network Design
7 53 (12.59%) Validation
8 50 (11.88%) CI/CD
9 48 (11.40%) Network Architecture
9 48 (11.40%) Problem-Solving
10 44 (10.45%) Project Delivery
11 39 (9.26%) ITIL
12 38 (9.03%) DevOps
13 35 (8.31%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 35 (8.31%) Runbook
14 34 (8.08%) Network Segmentation
14 34 (8.08%) Stakeholder Management
15 32 (7.60%) Change Control
16 31 (7.36%) Technical Leadership
17 28 (6.65%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 131 (31.12%) Python
2 14 (3.33%) Bash
3 9 (2.14%) PowerShell
4 5 (1.19%) SQL
5 3 (0.71%) Go
5 3 (0.71%) Shell Script
6 2 (0.48%) Perl
7 1 (0.24%) C++
7 1 (0.24%) Java
Qualifications
1 123 (29.22%) Security Cleared
2 111 (26.37%) Cisco Certification
3 86 (20.43%) CCNP
4 66 (15.68%) SC Cleared
5 52 (12.35%) DV Cleared
6 46 (10.93%) CCIE
7 25 (5.94%) CCNA
8 16 (3.80%) Degree
9 13 (3.09%) JNCIE
10 4 (0.95%) AWS Certification
10 4 (0.95%) Azure Certification
10 4 (0.95%) CCIE Security
10 4 (0.95%) CISSP
10 4 (0.95%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 2 (0.48%) Computer Science Degree
11 2 (0.48%) CWNA
11 2 (0.48%) JNCIP
11 2 (0.48%) PMI Certification
11 2 (0.48%) PMP
12 1 (0.24%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (1.43%) NIST
2 4 (0.95%) NCSC
3 3 (0.71%) GDPR
3 3 (0.71%) NIST 800
3 3 (0.71%) QA
3 3 (0.71%) SLA
4 2 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (0.48%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials
5 1 (0.24%) Data Quality
System Software
1 32 (7.60%) VMware Infrastructure
2 18 (4.28%) VMware NSX
3 17 (4.04%) Active Directory
4 12 (2.85%) vSphere
5 10 (2.38%) Docker
6 8 (1.90%) Hyper-V
7 6 (1.43%) Firmware
8 2 (0.48%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.24%) ProxySG
9 1 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
9 1 (0.24%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 127 (30.17%) Ansible
2 37 (8.79%) FortiGate
3 20 (4.75%) Kubernetes
4 14 (3.33%) Cisco Prime
5 12 (2.85%) Nagios
6 11 (2.61%) Grafana
7 10 (2.38%) Prometheus
8 6 (1.43%) Cilium
9 4 (0.95%) Istio
10 2 (0.48%) Puppet
10 2 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.48%) VxRail
11 1 (0.24%) CASB
11 1 (0.24%) Microsoft Intune
11 1 (0.24%) OPNET
11 1 (0.24%) Progress Chef
11 1 (0.24%) QRadar
11 1 (0.24%) Rancher
11 1 (0.24%) Suricata
Vendors
1 289 (68.65%) Cisco
2 128 (30.40%) Palo Alto
3 118 (28.03%) F5
4 88 (20.90%) Fortinet
5 78 (18.53%) Arista
6 54 (12.83%) Juniper
7 48 (11.40%) VMware
8 41 (9.74%) Aruba
9 38 (9.03%) CheckPoint
10 37 (8.79%) Microsoft
11 32 (7.60%) SolarWinds
12 22 (5.23%) ServiceNow
13 17 (4.04%) Zscaler
14 16 (3.80%) Meraki
15 14 (3.33%) Splunk
16 12 (2.85%) Red Hat
17 10 (2.38%) Google
18 9 (2.14%) Infoblox
19 7 (1.66%) Citrix
19 7 (1.66%) Oracle