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

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 566 533 528
Rank change year-on-year -33 -5 +88
Contract jobs citing BIG-IP 114 26 41
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.21% 0.079% 0.11%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 2.23% 0.68% 0.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 53 13 33
10th Percentile £441 £310 £219
25th Percentile £470 £360 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £400 £500
Median % change year-on-year +43.75% -20.00% -16.67%
75th Percentile £650 £450 £588
90th Percentile £698 £536 £620
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £520 £525
% change year-on-year +15.38% -0.95% -13.40%

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 5,121 3,802 4,542
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.33% 11.53% 11.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,964 2,363 2,621
10th Percentile £232 £225 £225
25th Percentile £393 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £478 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.71% -4.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £495
% change year-on-year +5.56% -9.09% +7.03%
Number of hourly rates quoted 423 204 228
10th Percentile £14.24 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £25.11 £23.63
Median hourly rate £33.00 £42.50 £51.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.35% -16.67% -9.72%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £72.15 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.50 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -30.59% -25.89% -0.26%

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 24 September 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
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 24 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 -44 102 £575 +43.75% 20
UK excluding London -17 94 £600 +15.38% 18
North of England -4 65 £600 - 12
North West -19 36 £600 - 9
Work from Home -43 33 £575 +27.78% 11
Yorkshire - 22 £500 - 3
West Midlands -32 20 £500 +25.00%
Midlands -34 20 £500 +25.00%
South East - 16 £625 - 2
London -79 14 £550 +58.27% 6
North East - 13 £650 -
Scotland - 7 £600 - 4
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 2 (1.75%) Apache
1 2 (1.75%) IIS
1 2 (1.75%) nginx
1 2 (1.75%) SharePoint
1 2 (1.75%) Tomcat
2 1 (0.88%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (0.88%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 31 (27.19%) AWS
1 31 (27.19%) Azure
2 22 (19.30%) OCI
3 17 (14.91%) GitHub
3 17 (14.91%) IaaS
4 12 (10.53%) SaaS
5 5 (4.39%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 3 (2.63%) GCP
7 2 (1.75%) Cloudflare
8 1 (0.88%) Amazon EC2
8 1 (0.88%) Amazon GuardDuty
8 1 (0.88%) Amazon S3
8 1 (0.88%) Entra ID
8 1 (0.88%) Nutanix
8 1 (0.88%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 81 (71.05%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
2 75 (65.79%) Firewall
3 64 (56.14%) DNS
4 48 (42.11%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
5 40 (35.09%) BGP
5 40 (35.09%) OSPF
6 37 (32.46%) WAN
7 33 (28.95%) TCP/IP
8 31 (27.19%) VXLAN
9 29 (25.44%) SSL
10 27 (23.68%) SD-WAN
11 26 (22.81%) Ethernet VPN
12 24 (21.05%) Network Security
13 18 (15.79%) HTTP
14 17 (14.91%) DHCP
14 17 (14.91%) VPN
15 15 (13.16%) LAN
16 14 (12.28%) VLAN
16 14 (12.28%) Wireshark
16 14 (12.28%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (1.75%) MySQL
1 2 (1.75%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 23 (20.18%) JIRA
2 19 (16.67%) GitLab
3 17 (14.91%) Jenkins
4 12 (10.53%) Fiddler
5 3 (2.63%) Sonatype Nexus
6 1 (0.88%) Git
6 1 (0.88%) Robot Framework
General
1 21 (18.42%) Banking
2 17 (14.91%) Social Skills
3 16 (14.04%) Finance
4 15 (13.16%) Public Sector
5 14 (12.28%) Investment Banking
6 7 (6.14%) Analytical Skills
7 6 (5.26%) Telecoms
8 5 (4.39%) Documentation Skills
9 2 (1.75%) Influencing Skills
9 2 (1.75%) Military
9 2 (1.75%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 42 (36.84%) Network Engineer
2 34 (29.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 31 (27.19%) Senior
4 20 (17.54%) Architect
5 19 (16.67%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
6 14 (12.28%) IP Network Engineer
7 12 (10.53%) Blue Coat Engineer
7 12 (10.53%) Web Engineer
8 10 (8.77%) Senior Network Engineer
9 9 (7.89%) Network Infrastructure Engineer
10 7 (6.14%) Network Architect
11 5 (4.39%) Network Specialist
12 4 (3.51%) Automation Engineer
12 4 (3.51%) Firewall Engineer
12 4 (3.51%) IP Engineer
12 4 (3.51%) Security Engineer
12 4 (3.51%) Senior Firewall Engineer
12 4 (3.51%) Technical Architect
13 3 (2.63%) Lead
13 3 (2.63%) Network Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (21.05%) Terraform
2 7 (6.14%) JSON
3 5 (4.39%) 802.1X
3 5 (4.39%) YAML
4 3 (2.63%) LDAP
4 3 (2.63%) REST
4 3 (2.63%) SAML
5 2 (1.75%) gRPC
5 2 (1.75%) LAMP
5 2 (1.75%) LEMP Stack
5 2 (1.75%) NETCONF
5 2 (1.75%) RESTCONF
Miscellaneous
1 53 (46.49%) Data Centre
2 24 (21.05%) Hybrid Cloud
3 19 (16.67%) Cloud Native
4 12 (10.53%) Management Information System
5 9 (7.89%) Public Cloud
6 8 (7.02%) Onboarding
7 5 (4.39%) Data Protection Act
7 5 (4.39%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 4 (3.51%) Clustering
8 4 (3.51%) Enterprise Software
8 4 (3.51%) PKI
8 4 (3.51%) Private Cloud
9 2 (1.75%) Algorithms
9 2 (1.75%) Self-Motivation
10 1 (0.88%) Greenfield Project
10 1 (0.88%) Legacy Systems
10 1 (0.88%) Linux Command Line
10 1 (0.88%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 7 (6.14%) Linux
1 7 (6.14%) Windows
2 2 (1.75%) CentOS
2 2 (1.75%) Ubuntu
2 2 (1.75%) Windows Server
3 1 (0.88%) CatOS
3 1 (0.88%) Check Point GAiA
3 1 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (0.88%) Unix
3 1 (0.88%) Windows Server 2012
3 1 (0.88%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 55 (48.25%) Load Balancing
2 42 (36.84%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 39 (34.21%) CI/CD
4 29 (25.44%) Zero Trust
5 27 (23.68%) Agile
6 26 (22.81%) High Availability
7 21 (18.42%) Infrastructure as Code
8 19 (16.67%) Network Architecture
9 18 (15.79%) Network Design
10 17 (14.91%) DevOps
11 15 (13.16%) Site Reliability Engineering
12 14 (12.28%) Problem-Solving
13 12 (10.53%) Data Loss Prevention
13 12 (10.53%) Malware Detection/Protection
13 12 (10.53%) Project Delivery
14 11 (9.65%) Stakeholder Management
15 8 (7.02%) Project Management
15 8 (7.02%) Risk Management
16 7 (6.14%) Risk Assessment
17 6 (5.26%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 63 (55.26%) Python
2 17 (14.91%) ActionScript
3 10 (8.77%) JavaScript
4 7 (6.14%) VBA
5 3 (2.63%) Bash
5 3 (2.63%) Perl
5 3 (2.63%) PowerShell
5 3 (2.63%) SQL
Qualifications
1 28 (24.56%) Security Cleared
2 18 (15.79%) SC Cleared
3 14 (12.28%) Cisco Certification
4 8 (7.02%) CCNP
5 5 (4.39%) CCIE
5 5 (4.39%) Degree
6 4 (3.51%) DV Cleared
7 3 (2.63%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 2 (1.75%) Azure Certification
8 2 (1.75%) JNCIE
8 2 (1.75%) Microsoft Certification
9 1 (0.88%) AWS Certification
9 1 (0.88%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 1 (0.88%) CCDP
9 1 (0.88%) CCNA
9 1 (0.88%) CCSP
9 1 (0.88%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (3.51%) NCSC
2 1 (0.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 21 (18.42%) VMware Infrastructure
2 14 (12.28%) VMware NSX
3 12 (10.53%) Firmware
4 11 (9.65%) Active Directory
5 3 (2.63%) Virtual Servers
6 2 (1.75%) Dovecot
6 2 (1.75%) Postfix
7 1 (0.88%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 40 (35.09%) Ansible
2 11 (9.65%) FortiGate
3 4 (3.51%) Single Sign-On
4 3 (2.63%) Cisco Prime
5 2 (1.75%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 2 (1.75%) HAProxy
6 1 (0.88%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (0.88%) SCCM
6 1 (0.88%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 114 (100.00%) F5
2 44 (38.60%) Palo Alto
3 32 (28.07%) Cisco
4 26 (22.81%) Arista
4 26 (22.81%) VMware
5 21 (18.42%) Aruba
6 18 (15.79%) Fortinet
7 14 (12.28%) Blue Coat
8 13 (11.40%) SolarWinds
9 12 (10.53%) Infoblox
9 12 (10.53%) McAfee
9 12 (10.53%) NetApp
10 11 (9.65%) Microsoft
11 10 (8.77%) CheckPoint
12 8 (7.02%) Juniper
13 5 (4.39%) Splunk
14 3 (2.63%) Extreme Networks
14 3 (2.63%) Red Hat
15 2 (1.75%) Ekahau
15 2 (1.75%) ServiceNow