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

6 months to
15 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 498 501 571
Rank change year-on-year +3 +70 +62
Contract jobs citing BIG-IP 148 22 18
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.29% 0.074% 0.041%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 3.10% 0.60% 0.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 53 11 11
10th Percentile £300 £381 £381
25th Percentile £440 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +6.67% -5.26% -26.92%
75th Percentile £588 £553 £606
90th Percentile £650 £600 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £523 £520 £622
% change year-on-year +0.48% -16.40% +15.72%
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 4,779 3,694 5,418
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.53% 12.47% 12.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,935 2,271 3,204
10th Percentile £263 £220 £210
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -1.96%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £470 £488
% change year-on-year +2.13% -3.59% +2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 290 171 424
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.80 £17.48
Median hourly rate £27.69 £41.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -33.28% +3.75% +111.30%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.69 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £80.00 £71.07
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.25 £31.08 £47.50
% change year-on-year -2.67% -34.57% +153.81%

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 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 15 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 15 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 +7 134 £500 +11.11% 7
UK excluding London -5 119 £523 +0.48% 8
North of England - 68 £575 - 2
North West - 39 £575 - 2
Work from Home -15 37 £575 +9.52% 3
South East - 36 £538 - 2
Midlands -28 31 £340 -15.00% 1
West Midlands -34 31 £340 -15.00% 1
Yorkshire - 22 £475 -
London -65 13 £470 +4.44% 2
North East - 13 £650 -
Scotland - 3 £600 - 3
South West -27 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 (5.41%) SharePoint
2 5 (3.38%) Confluence
3 2 (1.35%) Apache
3 2 (1.35%) IIS
3 2 (1.35%) nginx
3 2 (1.35%) Tomcat
Applications
1 9 (6.08%) MS Visio
2 3 (2.03%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.68%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 32 (21.62%) Azure
2 30 (20.27%) AWS
3 22 (14.86%) OCI
4 12 (8.11%) SaaS
5 9 (6.08%) GitHub
5 9 (6.08%) IaaS
6 3 (2.03%) Entra ID
6 3 (2.03%) Microsoft 365
7 2 (1.35%) Cloudflare
8 1 (0.68%) Amazon EC2
8 1 (0.68%) Amazon GuardDuty
8 1 (0.68%) Amazon S3
8 1 (0.68%) GCP
8 1 (0.68%) Nutanix
8 1 (0.68%) Route 53
8 1 (0.68%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 97 (65.54%) Firewall
2 94 (63.51%) DNS
3 81 (54.73%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
4 61 (41.22%) BGP
4 61 (41.22%) OSPF
5 60 (40.54%) WAN
6 54 (36.49%) TCP/IP
7 52 (35.14%) VXLAN
8 49 (33.11%) Ethernet VPN
9 47 (31.76%) SSL
10 43 (29.05%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
11 42 (28.38%) LAN
12 41 (27.70%) HTTP
13 40 (27.03%) DHCP
14 30 (20.27%) Wireshark
15 26 (17.57%) SD-WAN
16 24 (16.22%) Cisco ISE
16 24 (16.22%) Junos
17 21 (14.19%) Network Security
18 15 (10.14%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (1.35%) MySQL
1 2 (1.35%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 25 (16.89%) JIRA
2 24 (16.22%) Fiddler
3 19 (12.84%) GitLab
4 9 (6.08%) Jenkins
5 1 (0.68%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 23 (15.54%) Banking
2 19 (12.84%) Public Sector
3 18 (12.16%) Investment Banking
4 17 (11.49%) Social Skills
5 12 (8.11%) Finance
6 6 (4.05%) Military
7 5 (3.38%) Telecoms
8 2 (1.35%) Analytical Skills
8 2 (1.35%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.68%) Billing
9 1 (0.68%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 68 (45.95%) Network Engineer
2 36 (24.32%) Senior
3 29 (19.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 24 (16.22%) Web Engineer
5 21 (14.19%) Architect
6 19 (12.84%) IP Network Engineer
6 19 (12.84%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
7 17 (11.49%) Blue Coat Engineer
7 17 (11.49%) Network Specialist
7 17 (11.49%) Senior Network Engineer
8 14 (9.46%) Firewall Specialist
9 8 (5.41%) Junior
10 7 (4.73%) Junior Network Engineer
11 6 (4.05%) Lead
12 5 (3.38%) Network Infrastructure Engineer
12 5 (3.38%) Network Security Engineer
12 5 (3.38%) Security Engineer
13 4 (2.70%) Infrastructure Architect
13 4 (2.70%) Migration Engineer
13 4 (2.70%) Network Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (17.57%) 802.1X
2 10 (6.76%) JSON
3 7 (4.73%) LDAP
3 7 (4.73%) SAML
4 3 (2.03%) YAML
5 2 (1.35%) LAMP
5 2 (1.35%) LEMP Stack
6 1 (0.68%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 57 (38.51%) Data Centre
2 25 (16.89%) PKI
3 24 (16.22%) Clustering
4 20 (13.51%) Hybrid Cloud
5 17 (11.49%) Management Information System
6 14 (9.46%) Cloud Native
7 5 (3.38%) Algorithms
7 5 (3.38%) Onboarding
8 3 (2.03%) Data Protection Act
8 3 (2.03%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 3 (2.03%) Public Cloud
9 2 (1.35%) CESG
9 2 (1.35%) Virtual Team
10 1 (0.68%) Enterprise Software
10 1 (0.68%) iSeries
10 1 (0.68%) Legacy Systems
10 1 (0.68%) Linux Command Line
10 1 (0.68%) Operational Technology
10 1 (0.68%) Product Ownership
10 1 (0.68%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 30 (20.27%) Windows
2 4 (2.70%) Linux
2 4 (2.70%) Windows Server
2 4 (2.70%) Windows Server 2012
2 4 (2.70%) Windows Server 2019
3 3 (2.03%) CatOS
3 3 (2.03%) Windows Server 2016
4 2 (1.35%) CentOS
4 2 (1.35%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.68%) Check Point GAiA
5 1 (0.68%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 87 (58.78%) Load Balancing
2 55 (37.16%) High Availability
3 32 (21.62%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 29 (19.59%) CI/CD
5 25 (16.89%) Agile
5 25 (16.89%) Zero Trust
6 24 (16.22%) Data Loss Prevention
6 24 (16.22%) Identity Access Management
6 24 (16.22%) Malware Detection/Protection
6 24 (16.22%) Observability
7 21 (14.19%) Infrastructure as Code
8 20 (13.51%) Migration
8 20 (13.51%) Problem-Solving
9 18 (12.16%) ITIL
9 18 (12.16%) Network Design
10 16 (10.81%) DevOps
11 15 (10.14%) Site Reliability Engineering
12 13 (8.78%) Network Architecture
12 13 (8.78%) Project Delivery
13 12 (8.11%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 57 (38.51%) Python
2 10 (6.76%) ActionScript
2 10 (6.76%) JavaScript
3 9 (6.08%) VBA
4 3 (2.03%) Bash
5 2 (1.35%) PowerShell
6 1 (0.68%) Perl
6 1 (0.68%) Shell Script
6 1 (0.68%) SQL
Qualifications
1 48 (32.43%) Security Cleared
2 33 (22.30%) Cisco Certification
3 21 (14.19%) SC Cleared
4 16 (10.81%) DV Cleared
5 11 (7.43%) CCNP
6 9 (6.08%) JNCIP
7 7 (4.73%) JNCIA
7 7 (4.73%) JNCIS
8 5 (3.38%) CCIE
8 5 (3.38%) Degree
9 3 (2.03%) CCDP
10 2 (1.35%) CCIE Security
10 2 (1.35%) CCSE
10 2 (1.35%) CESG Certified Professional
10 2 (1.35%) CHECK Team Leader
10 2 (1.35%) CREST Certified
10 2 (1.35%) JNCIE
11 1 (0.68%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (1.35%) JSP 440
1 2 (1.35%) NCSC
1 2 (1.35%) RMADS
2 1 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 29 (19.59%) VMware Infrastructure
2 17 (11.49%) Firmware
2 17 (11.49%) VMware NSX
3 14 (9.46%) Active Directory
4 3 (2.03%) VMware ESXi
5 2 (1.35%) Dovecot
5 2 (1.35%) Postfix
5 2 (1.35%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 45 (30.41%) Ansible
2 34 (22.97%) FortiGate
3 24 (16.22%) Terraform
4 10 (6.76%) Single Sign-On
5 3 (2.03%) Microsoft Intune
5 3 (2.03%) SCCM
6 2 (1.35%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 2 (1.35%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 148 (100.00%) F5
2 58 (39.19%) Cisco
3 47 (31.76%) Palo Alto
4 38 (25.68%) VMware
5 31 (20.95%) Juniper
6 29 (19.59%) SolarWinds
7 26 (17.57%) Blue Coat
8 25 (16.89%) Arista
8 25 (16.89%) Splunk
9 24 (16.22%) McAfee
10 22 (14.86%) Extreme Networks
11 18 (12.16%) Aruba
12 17 (11.49%) NetApp
13 16 (10.81%) CheckPoint
14 13 (8.78%) Infoblox
14 13 (8.78%) Microsoft
15 12 (8.11%) Fortinet
16 11 (7.43%) ServiceNow
17 6 (4.05%) Zscaler
18 3 (2.03%) Remedy