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

6 months to
11 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 551 538 521
Rank change year-on-year -13 -17 +91
Contract jobs citing BIG-IP 118 27 42
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.22% 0.082% 0.11%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 2.30% 0.70% 0.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 52 15 34
10th Percentile £441 £316 £222
25th Percentile £470 £371 £353
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £400 £488
Median % change year-on-year +43.75% -17.95% -18.75%
75th Percentile £650 £490 £588
90th Percentile £684 £560 £613
UK excluding London median daily rate £575 £520 £525
% change year-on-year +10.58% -0.95% -12.50%

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 3,847 4,573
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.38% 11.65% 11.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,996 2,371 2,670
10th Percentile £233 £235 £228
25th Percentile £390 £363 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £609
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £477 £465 £500
% change year-on-year +2.58% -7.00% +10.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 400 201 268
10th Percentile £14.28 £15.33 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £21.37
Median hourly rate £26.66 £42.50 £51.00
Median % change year-on-year -37.27% -16.67% -9.72%
75th Percentile £66.28 £63.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.11 £73.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -38.82% -25.89% +1.52%

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 11 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 11 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 -37 105 £575 +43.75% 19
UK excluding London -12 97 £575 +10.58% 18
North of England -9 62 £575 - 10
North West -7 35 £600 - 7
Work from Home -51 35 £575 +27.78% 9
West Midlands -30 23 £500 +25.00%
Midlands -31 23 £500 +25.00%
South East - 21 £550 - 3
Yorkshire - 20 £500 - 3
London -72 14 £510 +41.67% 6
North East - 13 £650 -
Scotland - 7 £600 - 5
South West -48 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 (1.69%) Apache
1 2 (1.69%) IIS
1 2 (1.69%) nginx
1 2 (1.69%) SharePoint
1 2 (1.69%) Tomcat
2 1 (0.85%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (0.85%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 34 (28.81%) AWS
1 34 (28.81%) Azure
2 22 (18.64%) OCI
3 13 (11.02%) GitHub
3 13 (11.02%) IaaS
4 12 (10.17%) SaaS
5 5 (4.24%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 3 (2.54%) GCP
7 2 (1.69%) Cloudflare
8 1 (0.85%) Amazon EC2
8 1 (0.85%) Amazon GuardDuty
8 1 (0.85%) Amazon S3
8 1 (0.85%) Entra ID
8 1 (0.85%) Nutanix
8 1 (0.85%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 84 (71.19%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
2 77 (65.25%) Firewall
3 66 (55.93%) DNS
4 47 (39.83%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
5 45 (38.14%) BGP
5 45 (38.14%) OSPF
6 40 (33.90%) TCP/IP
6 40 (33.90%) WAN
7 33 (27.97%) SSL
7 33 (27.97%) VXLAN
8 28 (23.73%) Ethernet VPN
9 27 (22.88%) SD-WAN
10 24 (20.34%) Network Security
11 22 (18.64%) HTTP
12 19 (16.10%) DHCP
12 19 (16.10%) LAN
13 17 (14.41%) VPN
14 16 (13.56%) Wireshark
15 14 (11.86%) VLAN
15 14 (11.86%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (1.69%) MySQL
1 2 (1.69%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 22 (18.64%) JIRA
2 19 (16.10%) GitLab
3 14 (11.86%) Fiddler
4 13 (11.02%) Jenkins
5 3 (2.54%) Sonatype Nexus
6 1 (0.85%) Git
6 1 (0.85%) Robot Framework
General
1 23 (19.49%) Banking
2 16 (13.56%) Investment Banking
2 16 (13.56%) Social Skills
3 15 (12.71%) Public Sector
4 14 (11.86%) Finance
5 7 (5.93%) Analytical Skills
5 7 (5.93%) Telecoms
6 5 (4.24%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (1.69%) Influencing Skills
7 2 (1.69%) Military
7 2 (1.69%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 48 (40.68%) Network Engineer
2 34 (28.81%) Senior
3 31 (26.27%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 19 (16.10%) Architect
4 19 (16.10%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
5 16 (13.56%) IP Network Engineer
6 14 (11.86%) Blue Coat Engineer
6 14 (11.86%) Web Engineer
7 13 (11.02%) Senior Network Engineer
8 9 (7.63%) Network Infrastructure Engineer
9 7 (5.93%) Network Specialist
10 6 (5.08%) Network Architect
11 4 (3.39%) Firewall Engineer
11 4 (3.39%) Firewall Specialist
11 4 (3.39%) IP Engineer
11 4 (3.39%) Network Security Specialist
11 4 (3.39%) Security Engineer
11 4 (3.39%) Security Specialist
11 4 (3.39%) Senior Firewall Engineer
11 4 (3.39%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (20.34%) Terraform
2 7 (5.93%) 802.1X
2 7 (5.93%) JSON
3 5 (4.24%) YAML
4 3 (2.54%) LDAP
4 3 (2.54%) REST
4 3 (2.54%) SAML
5 2 (1.69%) gRPC
5 2 (1.69%) LAMP
5 2 (1.69%) LEMP Stack
5 2 (1.69%) NETCONF
5 2 (1.69%) RESTCONF
Miscellaneous
1 50 (42.37%) Data Centre
2 24 (20.34%) Hybrid Cloud
3 19 (16.10%) Cloud Native
4 14 (11.86%) Management Information System
5 6 (5.08%) Clustering
5 6 (5.08%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
5 6 (5.08%) Onboarding
5 6 (5.08%) PKI
6 5 (4.24%) Data Protection Act
6 5 (4.24%) Public Cloud
7 4 (3.39%) Enterprise Software
7 4 (3.39%) Private Cloud
8 3 (2.54%) Algorithms
9 1 (0.85%) Greenfield Project
9 1 (0.85%) Legacy Systems
9 1 (0.85%) Linux Command Line
9 1 (0.85%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 9 (7.63%) Windows
2 7 (5.93%) Linux
3 2 (1.69%) CentOS
3 2 (1.69%) Ubuntu
3 2 (1.69%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.85%) CatOS
4 1 (0.85%) Check Point GAiA
4 1 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.85%) Unix
4 1 (0.85%) Windows Server 2012
4 1 (0.85%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 61 (51.69%) Load Balancing
2 37 (31.36%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 35 (29.66%) CI/CD
4 33 (27.97%) High Availability
5 28 (23.73%) Zero Trust
6 24 (20.34%) Agile
7 20 (16.95%) Infrastructure as Code
8 18 (15.25%) Network Architecture
8 18 (15.25%) Network Design
9 17 (14.41%) DevOps
10 15 (12.71%) Site Reliability Engineering
11 14 (11.86%) Data Loss Prevention
11 14 (11.86%) Malware Detection/Protection
12 13 (11.02%) Project Delivery
12 13 (11.02%) Stakeholder Management
13 12 (10.17%) Problem-Solving
14 10 (8.47%) ITIL
14 10 (8.47%) Migration
15 8 (6.78%) Project Management
15 8 (6.78%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 58 (49.15%) Python
2 13 (11.02%) ActionScript
3 10 (8.47%) JavaScript
4 7 (5.93%) VBA
5 3 (2.54%) Bash
5 3 (2.54%) Perl
5 3 (2.54%) PowerShell
5 3 (2.54%) SQL
Qualifications
1 32 (27.12%) Security Cleared
2 20 (16.95%) SC Cleared
3 16 (13.56%) Cisco Certification
4 9 (7.63%) CCNP
5 6 (5.08%) Degree
6 5 (4.24%) CCIE
6 5 (4.24%) DV Cleared
7 3 (2.54%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 2 (1.69%) Azure Certification
8 2 (1.69%) JNCIE
8 2 (1.69%) Microsoft Certification
9 1 (0.85%) AWS Certification
9 1 (0.85%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 1 (0.85%) CCDP
9 1 (0.85%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 1 (0.85%) JNCIA
9 1 (0.85%) JNCIP
9 1 (0.85%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (3.39%) NCSC
2 1 (0.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 26 (22.03%) VMware Infrastructure
2 14 (11.86%) Firmware
2 14 (11.86%) VMware NSX
3 11 (9.32%) Active Directory
4 3 (2.54%) Virtual Servers
5 2 (1.69%) Dovecot
5 2 (1.69%) Postfix
6 1 (0.85%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 39 (33.05%) Ansible
2 13 (11.02%) FortiGate
3 4 (3.39%) Single Sign-On
4 3 (2.54%) Cisco Prime
5 2 (1.69%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 2 (1.69%) HAProxy
6 1 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (0.85%) SCCM
6 1 (0.85%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 118 (100.00%) F5
2 47 (39.83%) Palo Alto
3 37 (31.36%) Cisco
4 31 (26.27%) VMware
5 26 (22.03%) Arista
6 21 (17.80%) Aruba
7 18 (15.25%) Fortinet
8 16 (13.56%) Blue Coat
9 15 (12.71%) SolarWinds
10 14 (11.86%) McAfee
10 14 (11.86%) NetApp
11 12 (10.17%) Infoblox
12 11 (9.32%) Microsoft
13 10 (8.47%) CheckPoint
13 10 (8.47%) Juniper
14 7 (5.93%) Splunk
15 5 (4.24%) Extreme Networks
15 5 (4.24%) ServiceNow
16 3 (2.54%) Red Hat
17 2 (1.69%) Google