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 15 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 539 527 538
Rank change year-on-year -12 +11 +87
Contract jobs citing BIG-IP 134 24 35
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.25% 0.073% 0.090%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 2.65% 0.62% 0.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 50 13 27
10th Percentile £396 £310 £213
25th Percentile £458 £360 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £400 £400
Median % change year-on-year +37.50% - -33.33%
75th Percentile £600 £450 £581
90th Percentile £654 £566 £616
UK excluding London median daily rate £560 £520 £550
% change year-on-year +7.69% -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 5,056 3,893 4,759
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.42% 11.81% 12.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,991 2,365 2,897
10th Percentile £250 £247 £220
25th Percentile £400 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.05% -5.00% +8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 366 201 321
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £20.00
Median hourly rate £26.14 £46.25 £48.56
Median % change year-on-year -43.48% -4.76% -10.07%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £82.10 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.40 £45.00 £54.88
% change year-on-year -41.33% -18.00% -3.58%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 -23 121 £550 +37.50% 6
UK excluding London +2 114 £560 +7.69% 7
North of England - 62 £575 - 3
Work from Home -29 37 £575 +59.72%
North West - 36 £588 - 3
South East - 36 £538 - 2
West Midlands -22 27 £475 +18.75% 1
Midlands -23 27 £475 +18.75% 1
Yorkshire - 19 £488 -
London -68 13 £470 +30.56% 1
North East - 13 £650 -
Scotland - 7 £600 - 1
South West -51 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 (2.24%) SharePoint
2 2 (1.49%) Apache
2 2 (1.49%) IIS
2 2 (1.49%) nginx
2 2 (1.49%) Tomcat
3 1 (0.75%) Confluence
Applications
1 2 (1.49%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 36 (26.87%) Azure
2 35 (26.12%) AWS
3 22 (16.42%) OCI
4 12 (8.96%) SaaS
5 10 (7.46%) GitHub
5 10 (7.46%) IaaS
6 5 (3.73%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 3 (2.24%) GCP
8 2 (1.49%) Cloudflare
8 2 (1.49%) Entra ID
9 1 (0.75%) Amazon EC2
9 1 (0.75%) Amazon GuardDuty
9 1 (0.75%) Amazon S3
9 1 (0.75%) Microsoft 365
9 1 (0.75%) Nutanix
9 1 (0.75%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 92 (68.66%) Firewall
2 83 (61.94%) DNS
2 83 (61.94%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
3 60 (44.78%) BGP
3 60 (44.78%) OSPF
4 56 (41.79%) WAN
5 48 (35.82%) VXLAN
6 45 (33.58%) Ethernet VPN
6 45 (33.58%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
7 43 (32.09%) TCP/IP
8 38 (28.36%) LAN
9 36 (26.87%) DHCP
10 33 (24.63%) SSL
11 25 (18.66%) HTTP
11 25 (18.66%) SD-WAN
12 22 (16.42%) Junos
13 21 (15.67%) Cisco ISE
14 19 (14.18%) Network Security
14 19 (14.18%) Wireshark
15 16 (11.94%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (1.49%) MySQL
1 2 (1.49%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 20 (14.93%) JIRA
2 19 (14.18%) GitLab
3 16 (11.94%) Fiddler
4 10 (7.46%) Jenkins
5 3 (2.24%) Sonatype Nexus
6 1 (0.75%) Git
6 1 (0.75%) Robot Framework
General
1 21 (15.67%) Banking
2 17 (12.69%) Investment Banking
3 16 (11.94%) Social Skills
4 15 (11.19%) Public Sector
5 13 (9.70%) Finance
6 7 (5.22%) Analytical Skills
6 7 (5.22%) Telecoms
7 4 (2.99%) Documentation Skills
7 4 (2.99%) Military
8 2 (1.49%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (1.49%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 60 (44.78%) Network Engineer
2 40 (29.85%) Senior
3 30 (22.39%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 20 (14.93%) Senior Network Engineer
5 19 (14.18%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
6 18 (13.43%) Architect
6 18 (13.43%) IP Network Engineer
7 16 (11.94%) Blue Coat Engineer
7 16 (11.94%) Network Specialist
7 16 (11.94%) Web Engineer
8 13 (9.70%) Firewall Specialist
9 8 (5.97%) Network Infrastructure Engineer
10 6 (4.48%) Lead
11 5 (3.73%) Lead Architect
11 5 (3.73%) Network Architect
11 5 (3.73%) Security Engineer
12 4 (2.99%) Firewall Engineer
12 4 (2.99%) IP Engineer
12 4 (2.99%) Network Security Engineer
12 4 (2.99%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (17.91%) 802.1X
2 7 (5.22%) JSON
3 5 (3.73%) YAML
4 4 (2.99%) LDAP
4 4 (2.99%) SAML
5 2 (1.49%) LAMP
5 2 (1.49%) LEMP Stack
6 1 (0.75%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 58 (43.28%) Data Centre
2 24 (17.91%) Hybrid Cloud
3 23 (17.16%) Clustering
4 22 (16.42%) PKI
5 19 (14.18%) Cloud Native
6 16 (11.94%) Management Information System
7 6 (4.48%) Data Protection Act
7 6 (4.48%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 6 (4.48%) Onboarding
8 4 (2.99%) Private Cloud
9 3 (2.24%) Algorithms
10 2 (1.49%) Public Cloud
11 1 (0.75%) Enterprise Software
11 1 (0.75%) Legacy Systems
11 1 (0.75%) Linux Command Line
11 1 (0.75%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 26 (19.40%) Windows
2 6 (4.48%) Linux
3 2 (1.49%) CentOS
3 2 (1.49%) Ubuntu
3 2 (1.49%) Windows Server
3 2 (1.49%) Windows Server 2012
3 2 (1.49%) Windows Server 2019
4 1 (0.75%) CatOS
4 1 (0.75%) Check Point GAiA
4 1 (0.75%) Unix
4 1 (0.75%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 78 (58.21%) Load Balancing
2 49 (36.57%) High Availability
3 34 (25.37%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 32 (23.88%) CI/CD
5 27 (20.15%) Zero Trust
6 22 (16.42%) Agile
6 22 (16.42%) Identity Access Management
6 22 (16.42%) Observability
7 21 (15.67%) Problem-Solving
8 20 (14.93%) Infrastructure as Code
9 19 (14.18%) ITIL
10 18 (13.43%) Network Design
11 17 (12.69%) DevOps
11 17 (12.69%) Network Architecture
12 16 (11.94%) Data Loss Prevention
12 16 (11.94%) Malware Detection/Protection
13 15 (11.19%) Site Reliability Engineering
14 14 (10.45%) Stakeholder Management
15 13 (9.70%) Project Delivery
16 12 (8.96%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 52 (38.81%) Python
2 10 (7.46%) ActionScript
2 10 (7.46%) JavaScript
3 7 (5.22%) VBA
4 3 (2.24%) Bash
4 3 (2.24%) Perl
4 3 (2.24%) PowerShell
4 3 (2.24%) SQL
Qualifications
1 46 (34.33%) Security Cleared
2 30 (22.39%) Cisco Certification
3 18 (13.43%) SC Cleared
4 16 (11.94%) DV Cleared
5 10 (7.46%) CCNP
6 7 (5.22%) JNCIA
6 7 (5.22%) JNCIP
6 7 (5.22%) JNCIS
7 6 (4.48%) Degree
8 3 (2.24%) CCIE
8 3 (2.24%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 2 (1.49%) Azure Certification
9 2 (1.49%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.75%) AWS Certification
10 1 (0.75%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 1 (0.75%) CCDP
10 1 (0.75%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (2.99%) NCSC
2 1 (0.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 30 (22.39%) VMware Infrastructure
2 16 (11.94%) Firmware
3 15 (11.19%) VMware NSX
4 12 (8.96%) Active Directory
5 3 (2.24%) Virtual Servers
6 2 (1.49%) Dovecot
6 2 (1.49%) Postfix
7 1 (0.75%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 36 (26.87%) Ansible
2 27 (20.15%) FortiGate
3 24 (17.91%) Terraform
4 6 (4.48%) Single Sign-On
5 3 (2.24%) Cisco Prime
6 2 (1.49%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 2 (1.49%) HAProxy
6 2 (1.49%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.75%) SCCM
Vendors
1 134 (100.00%) F5
2 53 (39.55%) Cisco
3 49 (36.57%) Palo Alto
4 35 (26.12%) VMware
5 33 (24.63%) SolarWinds
6 26 (19.40%) Arista
7 24 (17.91%) Juniper
7 24 (17.91%) Splunk
8 21 (15.67%) Aruba
9 20 (14.93%) Extreme Networks
10 18 (13.43%) Blue Coat
11 16 (11.94%) McAfee
11 16 (11.94%) NetApp
12 15 (11.19%) Fortinet
13 12 (8.96%) Infoblox
13 12 (8.96%) Microsoft
14 11 (8.21%) CheckPoint
15 6 (4.48%) ServiceNow
16 2 (1.49%) Ekahau
16 2 (1.49%) Google