BIG-IP Contract Job Trends

F5 Networks BIG-IP
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring BIG-IP skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 3 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 536 535 527
Rank change year-on-year -1 -8 +116
Contract jobs citing BIG-IP 132 25 35
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.25% 0.076% 0.090%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 2.66% 0.63% 0.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 48 13 27
10th Percentile £389 £310 £213
25th Percentile £450 £360 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £400 £400
Median % change year-on-year +30.63% - -38.46%
75th Percentile £600 £450 £581
90th Percentile £661 £566 £616
UK excluding London median daily rate £542 £520 £550
% change year-on-year +4.19% -5.45% +2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 0
10th Percentile £44.28 - -
25th Percentile £48.68 - -
Median hourly rate £57.02 - -
75th Percentile £65.01 - -
90th Percentile £69.20 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.02 - -

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
UK

BIG-IP 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 4,970 3,978 4,735
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.35% 12.01% 12.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,954 2,428 2,892
10th Percentile £250 £235 £220
25th Percentile £400 £373 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £591 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.16% -5.00% +8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 345 195 327
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.15 £18.27
Median hourly rate £26.44 £50.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -47.12% +5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £83.60 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £45.00 £53.69
% change year-on-year -40.76% -16.18% -6.63%

BIG-IP
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing BIG-IP relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

BIG-IP job vacancy trend in the UK

BIG-IP
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing BIG-IP.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing BIG-IP

BIG-IP
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing BIG-IP over the 6 months to 3 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for BIG-IP in the UK

BIG-IP
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing BIG-IP.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing BIG-IP

BIG-IP
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing BIG-IP over the 6 months to 3 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for BIG-IP in the UK

BIG-IP
Top 13 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing BIG-IP within the UK over the 6 months to 3 August 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 -20 119 £523 +30.63% 6
UK excluding London +10 115 £542 +4.19% 5
North of England - 60 £575 - 4
South East - 38 £538 -
Work from Home -24 37 £575 +59.72%
North West - 31 £575 - 4
Midlands -23 27 £475 +18.75% 1
West Midlands -36 27 £475 +18.75% 1
Yorkshire - 22 £478 -
North East - 13 £650 -
London -65 10 £470 +30.56% 1
Scotland - 7 £600 -
South West -39 1 £450 -25.00%

BIG-IP
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 3 (2.27%) SharePoint
2 2 (1.52%) Apache
2 2 (1.52%) IIS
2 2 (1.52%) nginx
2 2 (1.52%) Tomcat
3 1 (0.76%) Confluence
Applications
1 2 (1.52%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 35 (26.52%) AWS
1 35 (26.52%) Azure
2 22 (16.67%) OCI
3 12 (9.09%) SaaS
4 10 (7.58%) GitHub
4 10 (7.58%) IaaS
5 5 (3.79%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 3 (2.27%) GCP
7 2 (1.52%) Cloudflare
8 1 (0.76%) Amazon EC2
8 1 (0.76%) Amazon GuardDuty
8 1 (0.76%) Amazon S3
8 1 (0.76%) Entra ID
8 1 (0.76%) Microsoft 365
8 1 (0.76%) Nutanix
8 1 (0.76%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 94 (71.21%) Firewall
2 79 (59.85%) DNS
3 77 (58.33%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
4 62 (46.97%) BGP
4 62 (46.97%) OSPF
5 58 (43.94%) WAN
6 50 (37.88%) VXLAN
7 47 (35.61%) Ethernet VPN
8 45 (34.09%) TCP/IP
9 40 (30.30%) LAN
10 37 (28.03%) DHCP
10 37 (28.03%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
11 33 (25.00%) SSL
12 25 (18.94%) HTTP
12 25 (18.94%) SD-WAN
13 24 (18.18%) Junos
14 23 (17.42%) Cisco ISE
15 20 (15.15%) Network Security
16 19 (14.39%) Wireshark
17 16 (12.12%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (1.52%) MySQL
1 2 (1.52%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 24 (18.18%) JIRA
2 19 (14.39%) GitLab
3 16 (12.12%) Fiddler
4 10 (7.58%) Jenkins
5 3 (2.27%) Sonatype Nexus
6 1 (0.76%) Git
6 1 (0.76%) Robot Framework
General
1 21 (15.91%) Banking
2 18 (13.64%) Public Sector
3 16 (12.12%) Investment Banking
3 16 (12.12%) Social Skills
4 10 (7.58%) Finance
5 7 (5.30%) Telecoms
6 6 (4.55%) Military
7 4 (3.03%) Analytical Skills
8 2 (1.52%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (1.52%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (1.52%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 59 (44.70%) Network Engineer
2 38 (28.79%) Senior
3 29 (21.97%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 19 (14.39%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
5 18 (13.64%) Architect
5 18 (13.64%) Senior Network Engineer
6 17 (12.88%) IP Network Engineer
6 17 (12.88%) Network Specialist
7 16 (12.12%) Web Engineer
8 15 (11.36%) Blue Coat Engineer
9 14 (10.61%) Firewall Specialist
10 6 (4.55%) Lead
10 6 (4.55%) Network Infrastructure Engineer
11 5 (3.79%) Lead Architect
11 5 (3.79%) Network Architect
11 5 (3.79%) Security Engineer
12 4 (3.03%) Firewall Engineer
12 4 (3.03%) IP Engineer
12 4 (3.03%) Senior Firewall Engineer
12 4 (3.03%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (19.70%) 802.1X
2 9 (6.82%) JSON
3 4 (3.03%) LDAP
3 4 (3.03%) SAML
4 3 (2.27%) YAML
5 2 (1.52%) LAMP
5 2 (1.52%) LEMP Stack
Miscellaneous
1 60 (45.45%) Data Centre
2 24 (18.18%) Clustering
2 24 (18.18%) Hybrid Cloud
3 23 (17.42%) PKI
4 19 (14.39%) Cloud Native
5 15 (11.36%) Management Information System
6 6 (4.55%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 6 (4.55%) Onboarding
7 4 (3.03%) Data Protection Act
7 4 (3.03%) Private Cloud
8 3 (2.27%) Algorithms
9 2 (1.52%) Public Cloud
10 1 (0.76%) Enterprise Software
10 1 (0.76%) Legacy Systems
10 1 (0.76%) Linux Command Line
10 1 (0.76%) Operational Technology
10 1 (0.76%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 28 (21.21%) Windows
2 4 (3.03%) Linux
3 2 (1.52%) CentOS
3 2 (1.52%) Ubuntu
3 2 (1.52%) Windows Server
3 2 (1.52%) Windows Server 2012
3 2 (1.52%) Windows Server 2019
4 1 (0.76%) CatOS
4 1 (0.76%) Check Point GAiA
4 1 (0.76%) Unix
4 1 (0.76%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 77 (58.33%) Load Balancing
2 51 (38.64%) High Availability
3 33 (25.00%) CI/CD
3 33 (25.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 27 (20.45%) Zero Trust
5 26 (19.70%) Agile
6 24 (18.18%) Identity Access Management
6 24 (18.18%) Observability
7 21 (15.91%) Problem-Solving
8 20 (15.15%) Infrastructure as Code
9 19 (14.39%) ITIL
10 18 (13.64%) Network Design
11 17 (12.88%) DevOps
11 17 (12.88%) Network Architecture
12 16 (12.12%) Data Loss Prevention
12 16 (12.12%) Malware Detection/Protection
13 15 (11.36%) Site Reliability Engineering
14 14 (10.61%) Stakeholder Management
15 13 (9.85%) Project Delivery
16 11 (8.33%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 53 (40.15%) Python
2 11 (8.33%) ActionScript
3 9 (6.82%) JavaScript
4 8 (6.06%) VBA
5 3 (2.27%) Bash
6 2 (1.52%) PowerShell
7 1 (0.76%) Perl
7 1 (0.76%) SQL
Qualifications
1 49 (37.12%) Security Cleared
2 31 (23.48%) Cisco Certification
3 18 (13.64%) DV Cleared
3 18 (13.64%) SC Cleared
4 11 (8.33%) CCNP
5 7 (5.30%) JNCIA
5 7 (5.30%) JNCIP
5 7 (5.30%) JNCIS
6 6 (4.55%) Degree
7 3 (2.27%) CCIE
7 3 (2.27%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 1 (0.76%) AWS Certification
8 1 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 1 (0.76%) Azure Certification
8 1 (0.76%) CCDP
8 1 (0.76%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (3.03%) NCSC
2 1 (0.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 24 (18.18%) VMware Infrastructure
2 15 (11.36%) Firmware
3 11 (8.33%) VMware NSX
4 9 (6.82%) Active Directory
5 3 (2.27%) Virtual Servers
6 2 (1.52%) Dovecot
6 2 (1.52%) Postfix
7 1 (0.76%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 38 (28.79%) Ansible
2 29 (21.97%) FortiGate
3 23 (17.42%) Terraform
4 5 (3.79%) Single Sign-On
5 3 (2.27%) Cisco Prime
6 2 (1.52%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 2 (1.52%) HAProxy
7 1 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.76%) SCCM
Vendors
1 132 (100.00%) F5
2 55 (41.67%) Cisco
3 50 (37.88%) Palo Alto
4 35 (26.52%) SolarWinds
5 30 (22.73%) VMware
6 26 (19.70%) Arista
6 26 (19.70%) Juniper
6 26 (19.70%) Splunk
7 22 (16.67%) Extreme Networks
8 21 (15.91%) Aruba
9 18 (13.64%) Blue Coat
10 16 (12.12%) McAfee
11 15 (11.36%) Fortinet
11 15 (11.36%) NetApp
12 12 (9.09%) Infoblox
13 11 (8.33%) CheckPoint
13 11 (8.33%) Microsoft
14 7 (5.30%) ServiceNow
15 2 (1.52%) Ekahau
15 2 (1.52%) Google