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

6 months to
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 571 531 523
Rank change year-on-year -40 -8 +81
Contract jobs citing BIG-IP 115 26 39
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.21% 0.079% 0.10%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 2.26% 0.68% 0.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 51 13 31
10th Percentile £440 £310 £213
25th Percentile £470 £360 £305
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 £700 £536 £613
UK excluding London median daily rate £588 £520 £525
% change year-on-year +12.98% -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 5,079 3,805 4,583
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.34% 11.55% 11.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,940 2,363 2,666
10th Percentile £231 £225 £225
25th Percentile £392 £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 £500
% change year-on-year +5.56% -10.00% +10.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 411 199 252
10th Percentile £14.30 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £25.15 £21.37
Median hourly rate £32.50 £42.50 £51.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.53% -16.67% -9.72%
75th Percentile £68.75 £64.38 £65.00
90th Percentile £88.75 £75.00 £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 18 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 18 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 -24 102 £575 +43.75% 25
UK excluding London -28 94 £588 +12.98% 27
North of England -4 64 £575 - 13
North West -18 35 £600 - 10
Work from Home -39 34 £575 +27.78% 12
Yorkshire - 22 £500 - 3
West Midlands -31 21 £500 +25.00%
Midlands -33 21 £500 +25.00%
South East - 17 £625 - 5
London -69 14 £550 +58.27% 7
North East - 13 £650 -
Scotland - 7 £600 - 9
South West -36 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 (1.74%) Apache
1 2 (1.74%) IIS
1 2 (1.74%) nginx
1 2 (1.74%) SharePoint
1 2 (1.74%) Tomcat
2 1 (0.87%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (0.87%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 31 (26.96%) AWS
1 31 (26.96%) Azure
2 22 (19.13%) OCI
3 16 (13.91%) GitHub
3 16 (13.91%) IaaS
4 12 (10.43%) SaaS
5 5 (4.35%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 3 (2.61%) GCP
7 2 (1.74%) Cloudflare
8 1 (0.87%) Amazon EC2
8 1 (0.87%) Amazon GuardDuty
8 1 (0.87%) Amazon S3
8 1 (0.87%) Entra ID
8 1 (0.87%) Nutanix
8 1 (0.87%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 82 (71.30%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
2 76 (66.09%) Firewall
3 66 (57.39%) DNS
4 49 (42.61%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
5 41 (35.65%) BGP
5 41 (35.65%) OSPF
6 38 (33.04%) WAN
7 35 (30.43%) TCP/IP
8 32 (27.83%) VXLAN
9 31 (26.96%) SSL
10 27 (23.48%) Ethernet VPN
10 27 (23.48%) SD-WAN
11 22 (19.13%) Network Security
12 20 (17.39%) HTTP
13 18 (15.65%) DHCP
14 17 (14.78%) VPN
15 16 (13.91%) LAN
16 15 (13.04%) Wireshark
17 14 (12.17%) VLAN
17 14 (12.17%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (1.74%) MySQL
1 2 (1.74%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 23 (20.00%) JIRA
2 19 (16.52%) GitLab
3 16 (13.91%) Jenkins
4 13 (11.30%) Fiddler
5 3 (2.61%) Sonatype Nexus
6 1 (0.87%) Git
6 1 (0.87%) Robot Framework
General
1 22 (19.13%) Banking
2 18 (15.65%) Social Skills
3 16 (13.91%) Finance
4 15 (13.04%) Investment Banking
4 15 (13.04%) Public Sector
5 7 (6.09%) Analytical Skills
6 6 (5.22%) Telecoms
7 5 (4.35%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (1.74%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (1.74%) Military
8 2 (1.74%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 44 (38.26%) Network Engineer
2 32 (27.83%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 31 (26.96%) Senior
4 20 (17.39%) Architect
5 19 (16.52%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
6 15 (13.04%) IP Network Engineer
7 13 (11.30%) Blue Coat Engineer
7 13 (11.30%) Web Engineer
8 10 (8.70%) Senior Network Engineer
9 9 (7.83%) Network Infrastructure Engineer
10 7 (6.09%) Network Architect
11 6 (5.22%) Network Specialist
12 4 (3.48%) Automation Engineer
12 4 (3.48%) Firewall Engineer
12 4 (3.48%) Firewall Specialist
12 4 (3.48%) IP Engineer
12 4 (3.48%) Security Engineer
12 4 (3.48%) Senior Firewall Engineer
12 4 (3.48%) Technical Architect
13 3 (2.61%) Lead
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (20.87%) Terraform
2 7 (6.09%) JSON
3 6 (5.22%) 802.1X
4 5 (4.35%) YAML
5 3 (2.61%) LDAP
5 3 (2.61%) REST
5 3 (2.61%) SAML
6 2 (1.74%) gRPC
6 2 (1.74%) LAMP
6 2 (1.74%) LEMP Stack
6 2 (1.74%) NETCONF
6 2 (1.74%) RESTCONF
Miscellaneous
1 53 (46.09%) Data Centre
2 24 (20.87%) Hybrid Cloud
3 19 (16.52%) Cloud Native
4 13 (11.30%) Management Information System
5 8 (6.96%) Public Cloud
6 7 (6.09%) Onboarding
7 5 (4.35%) Clustering
7 5 (4.35%) Data Protection Act
7 5 (4.35%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 5 (4.35%) PKI
8 4 (3.48%) Enterprise Software
8 4 (3.48%) Private Cloud
9 2 (1.74%) Algorithms
10 1 (0.87%) Greenfield Project
10 1 (0.87%) Legacy Systems
10 1 (0.87%) Linux Command Line
10 1 (0.87%) Operational Technology
10 1 (0.87%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 8 (6.96%) Windows
2 7 (6.09%) Linux
3 2 (1.74%) CentOS
3 2 (1.74%) Ubuntu
3 2 (1.74%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.87%) CatOS
4 1 (0.87%) Check Point GAiA
4 1 (0.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.87%) Unix
4 1 (0.87%) Windows Server 2012
4 1 (0.87%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 58 (50.43%) Load Balancing
2 40 (34.78%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 38 (33.04%) CI/CD
4 29 (25.22%) Zero Trust
5 28 (24.35%) High Availability
6 26 (22.61%) Agile
7 21 (18.26%) Infrastructure as Code
8 19 (16.52%) Network Architecture
9 18 (15.65%) Network Design
10 17 (14.78%) DevOps
11 15 (13.04%) Site Reliability Engineering
12 13 (11.30%) Data Loss Prevention
12 13 (11.30%) Malware Detection/Protection
12 13 (11.30%) Problem-Solving
12 13 (11.30%) Project Delivery
13 11 (9.57%) Stakeholder Management
14 8 (6.96%) Project Management
14 8 (6.96%) Risk Management
15 7 (6.09%) Change Management
15 7 (6.09%) Risk Assessment
Programming Languages
1 62 (53.91%) Python
2 16 (13.91%) ActionScript
3 10 (8.70%) JavaScript
4 7 (6.09%) VBA
5 3 (2.61%) Bash
5 3 (2.61%) Perl
5 3 (2.61%) PowerShell
5 3 (2.61%) SQL
Qualifications
1 29 (25.22%) Security Cleared
2 18 (15.65%) SC Cleared
3 15 (13.04%) Cisco Certification
4 8 (6.96%) CCNP
5 6 (5.22%) Degree
6 5 (4.35%) CCIE
7 4 (3.48%) DV Cleared
8 3 (2.61%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 2 (1.74%) Azure Certification
9 2 (1.74%) JNCIE
9 2 (1.74%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.87%) AWS Certification
10 1 (0.87%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 1 (0.87%) CCDP
10 1 (0.87%) CCNA
10 1 (0.87%) CCSP
10 1 (0.87%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (3.48%) NCSC
2 1 (0.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 22 (19.13%) VMware Infrastructure
2 14 (12.17%) VMware NSX
3 13 (11.30%) Firmware
4 11 (9.57%) Active Directory
5 3 (2.61%) Virtual Servers
6 2 (1.74%) Dovecot
6 2 (1.74%) Postfix
7 1 (0.87%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 40 (34.78%) Ansible
2 13 (11.30%) FortiGate
3 4 (3.48%) Single Sign-On
4 3 (2.61%) Cisco Prime
5 2 (1.74%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 2 (1.74%) HAProxy
6 1 (0.87%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (0.87%) SCCM
6 1 (0.87%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 115 (100.00%) F5
2 44 (38.26%) Palo Alto
3 33 (28.70%) Cisco
4 27 (23.48%) VMware
5 26 (22.61%) Arista
6 21 (18.26%) Aruba
7 18 (15.65%) Fortinet
8 15 (13.04%) Blue Coat
9 14 (12.17%) SolarWinds
10 13 (11.30%) McAfee
10 13 (11.30%) NetApp
11 12 (10.43%) Infoblox
12 11 (9.57%) Microsoft
13 10 (8.70%) CheckPoint
14 9 (7.83%) Juniper
15 6 (5.22%) Splunk
16 4 (3.48%) Extreme Networks
17 3 (2.61%) Red Hat
18 2 (1.74%) Google
18 2 (1.74%) ServiceNow