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 6 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 489 498 568
Rank change year-on-year +9 +70 +69
Contract jobs citing BIG-IP 145 20 17
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.29% 0.069% 0.039%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 3.03% 0.55% 0.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 53 10 10
10th Percentile £300 £381 £378
25th Percentile £440 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £438 £438
Median % change year-on-year +9.71% - -32.69%
75th Percentile £588 £550 £568
90th Percentile £650 £613 £624
UK excluding London median daily rate £523 £500 £622
% change year-on-year +4.50% -19.61% +17.08%
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 4,789 3,646 5,398
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.70% 12.56% 12.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,932 2,255 3,219
10th Percentile £263 £217 £206
25th Percentile £400 £360 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £495
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -3.03% -3.41%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £465 £475
% change year-on-year +2.10% -2.05% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 282 164 416
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.05 £16.30
Median hourly rate £28.96 £42.75 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.26% +6.88% +120.75%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.41 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.93 £80.71 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.86 £32.50 £45.88
% change year-on-year +4.18% -29.16% +154.89%

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 6 June 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 6 June 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 6 June 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 +9 131 £500 +11.11% 9
UK excluding London +11 116 £523 +4.50% 9
North of England - 65 £575 - 4
North West - 39 £575 - 1
Work from Home -13 36 £575 +9.52% 3
South East - 36 £538 - 2
Midlands -28 31 £340 -15.00% 1
West Midlands -30 31 £340 -15.00% 1
Yorkshire - 20 £475 - 1
London -69 13 £470 +4.44% 3
North East - 12 £650 - 2
Scotland - 3 £600 - 2
South West -24 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 8 (5.52%) SharePoint
2 4 (2.76%) Confluence
3 2 (1.38%) Apache
3 2 (1.38%) IIS
3 2 (1.38%) nginx
3 2 (1.38%) Tomcat
Applications
1 9 (6.21%) MS Visio
2 3 (2.07%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.69%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 31 (21.38%) Azure
2 29 (20.00%) AWS
3 21 (14.48%) OCI
4 11 (7.59%) SaaS
5 8 (5.52%) GitHub
5 8 (5.52%) IaaS
6 3 (2.07%) Entra ID
6 3 (2.07%) Microsoft 365
7 2 (1.38%) Cloudflare
8 1 (0.69%) Amazon EC2
8 1 (0.69%) Amazon GuardDuty
8 1 (0.69%) Amazon S3
8 1 (0.69%) GCP
8 1 (0.69%) Nutanix
8 1 (0.69%) Route 53
8 1 (0.69%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 94 (64.83%) Firewall
2 93 (64.14%) DNS
3 79 (54.48%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
4 60 (41.38%) BGP
4 60 (41.38%) OSPF
5 59 (40.69%) WAN
6 52 (35.86%) TCP/IP
7 51 (35.17%) VXLAN
8 48 (33.10%) Ethernet VPN
9 47 (32.41%) SSL
10 42 (28.97%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
10 42 (28.97%) LAN
11 41 (28.28%) HTTP
12 40 (27.59%) DHCP
13 30 (20.69%) Wireshark
14 25 (17.24%) SD-WAN
15 24 (16.55%) Cisco ISE
15 24 (16.55%) Junos
16 20 (13.79%) Network Security
17 14 (9.66%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (1.38%) MySQL
1 2 (1.38%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 24 (16.55%) Fiddler
2 23 (15.86%) JIRA
3 18 (12.41%) GitLab
4 8 (5.52%) Jenkins
5 1 (0.69%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 23 (15.86%) Banking
2 18 (12.41%) Investment Banking
2 18 (12.41%) Public Sector
3 17 (11.72%) Social Skills
4 11 (7.59%) Finance
5 6 (4.14%) Military
6 5 (3.45%) Telecoms
7 2 (1.38%) Analytical Skills
7 2 (1.38%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (0.69%) Billing
8 1 (0.69%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 67 (46.21%) Network Engineer
2 36 (24.83%) Senior
3 27 (18.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 24 (16.55%) Web Engineer
5 21 (14.48%) Architect
6 19 (13.10%) IP Network Engineer
6 19 (13.10%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
7 17 (11.72%) Blue Coat Engineer
7 17 (11.72%) Network Specialist
7 17 (11.72%) Senior Network Engineer
8 14 (9.66%) Firewall Specialist
9 8 (5.52%) Junior
10 7 (4.83%) Junior Network Engineer
11 6 (4.14%) Lead
12 5 (3.45%) Network Security Engineer
12 5 (3.45%) Security Engineer
13 4 (2.76%) Infrastructure Architect
13 4 (2.76%) Lead Architect
13 4 (2.76%) Migration Engineer
13 4 (2.76%) Network Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (17.93%) 802.1X
2 10 (6.90%) JSON
3 7 (4.83%) LDAP
3 7 (4.83%) SAML
4 3 (2.07%) YAML
5 2 (1.38%) LAMP
5 2 (1.38%) LEMP Stack
6 1 (0.69%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 55 (37.93%) Data Centre
2 25 (17.24%) PKI
3 24 (16.55%) Clustering
4 19 (13.10%) Hybrid Cloud
5 17 (11.72%) Management Information System
6 12 (8.28%) Cloud Native
7 5 (3.45%) Algorithms
8 4 (2.76%) Onboarding
9 3 (2.07%) Data Protection Act
9 3 (2.07%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 3 (2.07%) Public Cloud
10 2 (1.38%) CESG
10 2 (1.38%) Virtual Team
11 1 (0.69%) Enterprise Software
11 1 (0.69%) iSeries
11 1 (0.69%) Legacy Systems
11 1 (0.69%) Operational Technology
11 1 (0.69%) Product Ownership
11 1 (0.69%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 30 (20.69%) Windows
2 4 (2.76%) Windows Server
2 4 (2.76%) Windows Server 2012
2 4 (2.76%) Windows Server 2019
3 3 (2.07%) CatOS
3 3 (2.07%) Linux
3 3 (2.07%) Windows Server 2016
4 2 (1.38%) CentOS
4 2 (1.38%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 86 (59.31%) Load Balancing
2 53 (36.55%) High Availability
3 29 (20.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 27 (18.62%) CI/CD
5 24 (16.55%) Agile
5 24 (16.55%) Data Loss Prevention
5 24 (16.55%) Identity Access Management
5 24 (16.55%) Malware Detection/Protection
5 24 (16.55%) Zero Trust
6 23 (15.86%) Observability
7 20 (13.79%) Infrastructure as Code
7 20 (13.79%) Migration
7 20 (13.79%) Problem-Solving
8 18 (12.41%) ITIL
9 17 (11.72%) Network Design
10 14 (9.66%) DevOps
10 14 (9.66%) Site Reliability Engineering
11 13 (8.97%) Project Delivery
12 12 (8.28%) Service Management
12 12 (8.28%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 54 (37.24%) Python
2 10 (6.90%) JavaScript
3 9 (6.21%) ActionScript
3 9 (6.21%) VBA
4 2 (1.38%) Bash
4 2 (1.38%) PowerShell
5 1 (0.69%) Perl
5 1 (0.69%) Shell Script
5 1 (0.69%) SQL
Qualifications
1 48 (33.10%) Security Cleared
2 33 (22.76%) Cisco Certification
3 21 (14.48%) SC Cleared
4 16 (11.03%) DV Cleared
5 11 (7.59%) CCNP
6 9 (6.21%) JNCIP
7 7 (4.83%) JNCIA
7 7 (4.83%) JNCIS
8 5 (3.45%) CCIE
8 5 (3.45%) Degree
9 3 (2.07%) CCDP
10 2 (1.38%) CCIE Security
10 2 (1.38%) CCSE
10 2 (1.38%) CESG Certified Professional
10 2 (1.38%) CHECK Team Leader
10 2 (1.38%) CREST Certified
10 2 (1.38%) JNCIE
11 1 (0.69%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (1.38%) JSP 440
1 2 (1.38%) NCSC
1 2 (1.38%) RMADS
2 1 (0.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 29 (20.00%) VMware Infrastructure
2 17 (11.72%) Firmware
2 17 (11.72%) VMware NSX
3 14 (9.66%) Active Directory
4 3 (2.07%) VMware ESXi
5 2 (1.38%) Dovecot
5 2 (1.38%) Postfix
5 2 (1.38%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 44 (30.34%) Ansible
2 34 (23.45%) FortiGate
3 23 (15.86%) Terraform
4 10 (6.90%) Single Sign-On
5 3 (2.07%) Microsoft Intune
5 3 (2.07%) SCCM
6 2 (1.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 2 (1.38%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 145 (100.00%) F5
2 57 (39.31%) Cisco
3 46 (31.72%) Palo Alto
4 38 (26.21%) VMware
5 31 (21.38%) Juniper
6 28 (19.31%) SolarWinds
7 26 (17.93%) Blue Coat
8 25 (17.24%) Splunk
9 24 (16.55%) Arista
9 24 (16.55%) McAfee
10 22 (15.17%) Extreme Networks
11 17 (11.72%) Aruba
11 17 (11.72%) NetApp
12 15 (10.34%) CheckPoint
13 13 (8.97%) Infoblox
13 13 (8.97%) Microsoft
14 12 (8.28%) Fortinet
15 10 (6.90%) ServiceNow
16 6 (4.14%) Zscaler
17 3 (2.07%) Remedy