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

6 months to
29 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 319 296 247
Rank change year-on-year -23 -49 +16
Contract jobs citing BGP 425 287 369
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.78% 0.88% 0.97%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 8.36% 7.68% 8.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 245 186 211
10th Percentile £380 £325 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -3.85%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £588
90th Percentile £700 £664 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £465 £505
% change year-on-year +9.68% -7.92% +3.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 4 4
10th Percentile £49.70 £37.38 £23.45
25th Percentile £57.59 £39.06 £30.88
Median hourly rate £68.75 £48.75 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +41.03% +33.56% -39.17%
75th Percentile - £60.88 £44.75
90th Percentile £73.25 £64.70 £56.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.75 £66.50 £19.00
% change year-on-year +3.38% +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 5,084 3,735 4,513
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.31% 11.46% 11.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,934 2,338 2,593
10th Percentile £231 £219 £228
25th Percentile £390 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £488
% change year-on-year +5.56% -7.69% +5.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 427 200 213
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £25.11 £23.80
Median hourly rate £34.28 £42.50 £50.50
Median % change year-on-year -19.34% -15.84% -10.53%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £92.11 £73.20 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.50 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -32.94% -25.89% -0.26%

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 29 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 29 September 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 29 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 -23 387 £500 - 184
UK excluding London -24 240 £510 +9.68% 87
London -71 125 £500 - 100
Work from Home -40 105 £500 -4.76% 71
North of England 0 101 £500 +5.26% 17
North West +1 72 £488 +2.63% 11
South East -44 64 £525 +5.00% 20
Midlands -39 41 £571 +42.69% 13
West Midlands -42 39 £571 +42.69% 8
South West -33 31 £525 -16.83% 10
Yorkshire -20 22 £495 +23.75% 4
East of England -17 18 £500 -28.57% 17
North East -28 13 £650 +160.00% 2
Scotland -29 11 £375 -11.76% 8
East Midlands -16 2 - - 5

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 (3.29%) OpenStack
2 8 (1.88%) SAS
3 4 (0.94%) Confluence
3 4 (0.94%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.24%) SharePoint
Applications
1 9 (2.12%) MS Visio
2 6 (1.41%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (0.94%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.71%) AutoCAD
Cloud Services
1 105 (24.71%) Azure
2 84 (19.76%) AWS
3 29 (6.82%) GCP
4 23 (5.41%) Azure ExpressRoute
4 23 (5.41%) GitHub
4 23 (5.41%) OCI
5 15 (3.53%) AWS Direct Connect
6 13 (3.06%) SaaS
7 10 (2.35%) Microsoft 365
8 8 (1.88%) Azure Monitor
9 7 (1.65%) Azure Sentinel
9 7 (1.65%) OpenShift
10 6 (1.41%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 5 (1.18%) Nutanix
12 4 (0.94%) Entra ID
13 2 (0.47%) AWS CloudFormation
13 2 (0.47%) IBM Watson
14 1 (0.24%) Amazon EKS
14 1 (0.24%) Amazon GuardDuty
14 1 (0.24%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 238 (56.00%) OSPF
2 234 (55.06%) Firewall
3 193 (45.41%) WAN
4 133 (31.29%) VPN
5 118 (27.76%) VLAN
6 113 (26.59%) LAN
7 103 (24.24%) MPLS
8 102 (24.00%) VXLAN
9 97 (22.82%) Network Security
10 87 (20.47%) SD-WAN
11 82 (19.29%) DNS
12 81 (19.06%) Ethernet VPN
13 71 (16.71%) TCP/IP
14 65 (15.29%) IPsec
15 64 (15.06%) Wireless
16 59 (13.88%) Wi-Fi
17 55 (12.94%) Multicast
18 54 (12.71%) Cisco Nexus
19 53 (12.47%) EIGRP
20 47 (11.06%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (0.24%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 30 (7.06%) GitLab
2 27 (6.35%) Git
3 7 (1.65%) JIRA
3 7 (1.65%) Sonatype Nexus
4 1 (0.24%) Bitbucket
4 1 (0.24%) Jenkins
General
1 74 (17.41%) Social Skills
2 47 (11.06%) Analytical Skills
3 45 (10.59%) Finance
4 32 (7.53%) Telecoms
5 29 (6.82%) Banking
6 26 (6.12%) Public Sector
7 16 (3.76%) Investment Banking
8 13 (3.06%) Documentation Skills
9 8 (1.88%) Legal
10 7 (1.65%) Police
10 7 (1.65%) Retail
11 6 (1.41%) Military
12 5 (1.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 4 (0.94%) Financial Institution
14 3 (0.71%) German Language
14 3 (0.71%) Influencing Skills
14 3 (0.71%) Italian Language
14 3 (0.71%) Spanish Language
15 2 (0.47%) Organisational Skills
15 2 (0.47%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 253 (59.53%) Network Engineer
2 96 (22.59%) Senior
3 63 (14.82%) Senior Network Engineer
4 52 (12.24%) Cisco Engineer
5 49 (11.53%) Cisco Network Engineer
6 48 (11.29%) Architect
7 38 (8.94%) Network Architect
8 37 (8.71%) Security Engineer
9 35 (8.24%) Network Security Engineer
10 34 (8.00%) Consultant
11 31 (7.29%) Data Network Engineer
12 24 (5.65%) Cisco Security Engineer
13 23 (5.41%) Data Engineer
13 23 (5.41%) Network Consultant
14 19 (4.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 18 (4.24%) Network Specialist
16 17 (4.00%) Developer
16 17 (4.00%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
17 13 (3.06%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
18 12 (2.82%) Operations Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 72 (16.94%) Terraform
2 29 (6.82%) REST
3 20 (4.71%) 802.1X
4 17 (4.00%) YAML
5 16 (3.76%) NETCONF
6 15 (3.53%) JSON
7 14 (3.29%) YANG
8 6 (1.41%) RESTCONF
9 5 (1.18%) OpenConfig
10 4 (0.94%) CSS
11 3 (0.71%) eBPF
11 3 (0.71%) SAML
12 2 (0.47%) gRPC
12 2 (0.47%) Spine.js
13 1 (0.24%) Django
13 1 (0.24%) LDAP
13 1 (0.24%) Model Context Protocol
13 1 (0.24%) ModSecurity
Miscellaneous
1 171 (40.24%) Data Centre
2 49 (11.53%) Hybrid Cloud
3 28 (6.59%) Cloud Native
4 14 (3.29%) PKI
4 14 (3.29%) Self-Motivation
5 12 (2.82%) Private Cloud
6 10 (2.35%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 8 (1.88%) Analytical Mindset
7 8 (1.88%) Digital Signage
7 8 (1.88%) Public Cloud
8 6 (1.41%) Onboarding
8 6 (1.41%) Operational Technology
8 6 (1.41%) Security Posture
9 5 (1.18%) CMDB
9 5 (1.18%) Data Structures
9 5 (1.18%) Linux Command Line
10 4 (0.94%) Clustering
10 4 (0.94%) Data Protection Act
10 4 (0.94%) Distributed Systems
10 4 (0.94%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 40 (9.41%) Windows
2 29 (6.82%) Linux
3 11 (2.59%) Windows Server
4 9 (2.12%) 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 88 (20.71%) Load Balancing
2 81 (19.06%) Migration
3 80 (18.82%) Infrastructure as Code
4 73 (17.18%) Network Design
4 73 (17.18%) Zero Trust
5 71 (16.71%) High Availability
6 49 (11.53%) Problem-Solving
6 49 (11.53%) Validation
7 46 (10.82%) CI/CD
8 45 (10.59%) Network Architecture
9 40 (9.41%) Project Delivery
10 38 (8.94%) ITIL
11 36 (8.47%) DevOps
12 35 (8.24%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 35 (8.24%) Network Segmentation
13 31 (7.29%) Technical Leadership
14 30 (7.06%) Change Control
15 29 (6.82%) Runbook
16 27 (6.35%) Continuous Improvement
16 27 (6.35%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 125 (29.41%) Python
2 13 (3.06%) Bash
3 9 (2.12%) PowerShell
4 5 (1.18%) SQL
5 3 (0.71%) Shell Script
6 2 (0.47%) Go
6 2 (0.47%) Perl
7 1 (0.24%) C++
7 1 (0.24%) Java
Qualifications
1 128 (30.12%) Security Cleared
2 116 (27.29%) Cisco Certification
3 89 (20.94%) CCNP
4 71 (16.71%) SC Cleared
5 52 (12.24%) DV Cleared
6 48 (11.29%) CCIE
7 24 (5.65%) CCNA
8 16 (3.76%) Degree
9 14 (3.29%) JNCIE
10 4 (0.94%) AWS Certification
10 4 (0.94%) Azure Certification
10 4 (0.94%) CCIE Security
10 4 (0.94%) CISSP
10 4 (0.94%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 3 (0.71%) Computer Science Degree
12 2 (0.47%) CWNA
12 2 (0.47%) JNCIP
12 2 (0.47%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.47%) PMP
13 1 (0.24%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (1.41%) NIST
2 4 (0.94%) NCSC
3 3 (0.71%) GDPR
3 3 (0.71%) NIST 800
3 3 (0.71%) QA
4 2 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (0.47%) PCI DSS
4 2 (0.47%) SLA
5 1 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials
5 1 (0.24%) Data Quality
System Software
1 33 (7.76%) VMware Infrastructure
2 19 (4.47%) VMware NSX
3 15 (3.53%) Active Directory
4 11 (2.59%) vSphere
5 10 (2.35%) Docker
6 8 (1.88%) Hyper-V
7 6 (1.41%) Firmware
8 3 (0.71%) Virtual Servers
9 2 (0.47%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.24%) ProxySG
10 1 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 122 (28.71%) Ansible
2 39 (9.18%) FortiGate
3 19 (4.47%) Kubernetes
4 11 (2.59%) Cisco Prime
4 11 (2.59%) Grafana
4 11 (2.59%) Nagios
5 10 (2.35%) Prometheus
6 6 (1.41%) Cilium
7 4 (0.94%) Istio
8 2 (0.47%) Puppet
8 2 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.47%) VxRail
9 1 (0.24%) CASB
9 1 (0.24%) Microsoft Intune
9 1 (0.24%) OPNET
9 1 (0.24%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.24%) QRadar
9 1 (0.24%) Rancher
9 1 (0.24%) Suricata
Vendors
1 298 (70.12%) Cisco
2 124 (29.18%) Palo Alto
3 122 (28.71%) F5
4 91 (21.41%) Fortinet
5 76 (17.88%) Arista
6 53 (12.47%) Juniper
7 49 (11.53%) VMware
8 41 (9.65%) Aruba
9 38 (8.94%) CheckPoint
10 32 (7.53%) Microsoft
10 32 (7.53%) SolarWinds
11 18 (4.24%) ServiceNow
12 17 (4.00%) Meraki
12 17 (4.00%) Zscaler
13 12 (2.82%) Red Hat
14 11 (2.59%) Splunk
15 8 (1.88%) Google
16 7 (1.65%) Citrix
16 7 (1.65%) Dell
16 7 (1.65%) Infoblox