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

6 months to
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 481 504 566
Rank change year-on-year +23 +62 +98
Contract jobs citing BIG-IP 148 17 20
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.30% 0.059% 0.047%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 3.12% 0.47% 0.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 56 8 12
10th Percentile £290 £381 £383
25th Percentile £389 £414 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £450 £488
Median % change year-on-year +5.56% -7.69% -22.00%
75th Percentile £588 £581 £594
90th Percentile £650 £638 £621
UK excluding London median daily rate £520 £600 £586
% change year-on-year -13.33% +2.39% +9.02%
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 4,738 3,621 5,426
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.70% 12.64% 12.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,909 2,244 3,253
10th Percentile £263 £213 £206
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £484 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.31% -3.20% -2.44%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £463 £483
% change year-on-year +2.70% -4.15% +1.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 280 156 414
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.14 £17.30 £16.30
Median hourly rate £28.44 £40.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -29.78% +1.25% +116.22%
75th Percentile £65.00 £59.09 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £30.32 £45.88
% change year-on-year +7.19% -33.91% +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 28 May 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 28 May 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 28 May 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 -5 134 £478 -4.50% 10
UK excluding London +25 119 £520 -13.33% 10
North of England - 65 £575 - 7
North West - 40 £575 - 3
South East -19 36 £538 - 1
Work from Home -20 35 £575 +9.52% 6
West Midlands -27 34 £340 -
Midlands -28 34 £340 -
Yorkshire - 18 £475 -
London -64 13 £470 +4.44% 2
North East - 11 £650 - 4
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 9 (6.08%) 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 13 (8.78%) MS Visio
2 4 (2.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.68%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 30 (20.27%) Azure
2 28 (18.92%) AWS
3 20 (13.51%) OCI
4 10 (6.76%) SaaS
5 7 (4.73%) GitHub
5 7 (4.73%) 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 96 (64.86%) DNS
2 95 (64.19%) Firewall
3 78 (52.70%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
4 62 (41.89%) WAN
5 60 (40.54%) BGP
5 60 (40.54%) OSPF
6 53 (35.81%) TCP/IP
7 52 (35.14%) SSL
8 50 (33.78%) VXLAN
9 47 (31.76%) Ethernet VPN
10 46 (31.08%) HTTP
10 46 (31.08%) LAN
11 42 (28.38%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
12 39 (26.35%) DHCP
13 35 (23.65%) Wireshark
14 25 (16.89%) SD-WAN
15 24 (16.22%) Cisco ISE
15 24 (16.22%) Junos
16 21 (14.19%) Network Security
17 17 (11.49%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (1.35%) MySQL
1 2 (1.35%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 26 (17.57%) Fiddler
2 22 (14.86%) JIRA
3 17 (11.49%) GitLab
4 7 (4.73%) Jenkins
5 1 (0.68%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 23 (15.54%) Banking
2 19 (12.84%) Investment Banking
3 18 (12.16%) Public Sector
3 18 (12.16%) Social Skills
4 10 (6.76%) Finance
5 6 (4.05%) Military
6 5 (3.38%) Telecoms
7 3 (2.03%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (1.35%) Analytical Skills
9 1 (0.68%) Billing
9 1 (0.68%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 71 (47.97%) Network Engineer
2 35 (23.65%) Senior
3 26 (17.57%) Web Engineer
4 25 (16.89%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 22 (14.86%) Architect
6 20 (13.51%) IP Network Engineer
7 18 (12.16%) Blue Coat Engineer
7 18 (12.16%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
8 17 (11.49%) Network Specialist
8 17 (11.49%) Senior Network Engineer
9 14 (9.46%) Firewall Specialist
10 9 (6.08%) Junior
11 8 (5.41%) Junior Network Engineer
12 6 (4.05%) Lead
13 5 (3.38%) Network Architect
13 5 (3.38%) Network Security Engineer
13 5 (3.38%) Security Engineer
14 4 (2.70%) Infrastructure Architect
14 4 (2.70%) Lead Architect
14 4 (2.70%) Migration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (17.57%) 802.1X
2 10 (6.76%) JSON
2 10 (6.76%) LDAP
2 10 (6.76%) SAML
3 3 (2.03%) YAML
4 2 (1.35%) LAMP
4 2 (1.35%) LEMP Stack
5 1 (0.68%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 53 (35.81%) Data Centre
2 25 (16.89%) PKI
3 24 (16.22%) Clustering
4 18 (12.16%) Hybrid Cloud
4 18 (12.16%) Management Information System
5 10 (6.76%) Cloud Native
6 5 (3.38%) Algorithms
7 3 (2.03%) Data Protection Act
7 3 (2.03%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 3 (2.03%) Onboarding
7 3 (2.03%) Public Cloud
8 2 (1.35%) CESG
8 2 (1.35%) Virtual Team
9 1 (0.68%) Enterprise Software
9 1 (0.68%) iSeries
9 1 (0.68%) Legacy Systems
9 1 (0.68%) Operational Technology
9 1 (0.68%) Product Ownership
9 1 (0.68%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 31 (20.95%) Windows
2 5 (3.38%) CatOS
3 4 (2.70%) Windows Server
3 4 (2.70%) Windows Server 2012
3 4 (2.70%) Windows Server 2019
4 3 (2.03%) Linux
4 3 (2.03%) Windows Server 2016
5 2 (1.35%) CentOS
5 2 (1.35%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 87 (58.78%) Load Balancing
2 52 (35.14%) High Availability
3 27 (18.24%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 26 (17.57%) Data Loss Prevention
4 26 (17.57%) Malware Detection/Protection
5 25 (16.89%) CI/CD
6 24 (16.22%) Identity Access Management
7 23 (15.54%) Agile
7 23 (15.54%) Observability
7 23 (15.54%) Zero Trust
8 21 (14.19%) Migration
9 20 (13.51%) Problem-Solving
10 19 (12.84%) Infrastructure as Code
10 19 (12.84%) ITIL
11 16 (10.81%) Network Design
12 13 (8.78%) Project Delivery
12 13 (8.78%) Site Reliability Engineering
13 12 (8.11%) DevOps
13 12 (8.11%) Service Management
13 12 (8.11%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 54 (36.49%) Python
2 10 (6.76%) JavaScript
3 9 (6.08%) VBA
4 8 (5.41%) ActionScript
5 2 (1.35%) Bash
5 2 (1.35%) PowerShell
6 1 (0.68%) Perl
6 1 (0.68%) Shell Script
6 1 (0.68%) SQL
Qualifications
1 47 (31.76%) Security Cleared
2 34 (22.97%) Cisco Certification
3 21 (14.19%) SC Cleared
4 16 (10.81%) DV Cleared
5 12 (8.11%) CCNP
6 10 (6.76%) JNCIP
7 7 (4.73%) JNCIA
7 7 (4.73%) JNCIS
8 6 (4.05%) CCIE
9 5 (3.38%) Degree
10 3 (2.03%) CCDP
10 3 (2.03%) CCSE
10 3 (2.03%) JNCIE
11 2 (1.35%) CCIE Security
11 2 (1.35%) CESG Certified Professional
11 2 (1.35%) CHECK Team Leader
11 2 (1.35%) CREST Certified
12 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 33 (22.30%) VMware Infrastructure
2 21 (14.19%) VMware NSX
3 18 (12.16%) Firmware
4 17 (11.49%) Active Directory
5 3 (2.03%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (1.35%) Dovecot
6 2 (1.35%) Postfix
6 2 (1.35%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 45 (30.41%) Ansible
2 34 (22.97%) FortiGate
3 23 (15.54%) Terraform
4 13 (8.78%) 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 61 (41.22%) Cisco
3 48 (32.43%) Palo Alto
4 43 (29.05%) VMware
5 32 (21.62%) Juniper
6 29 (19.59%) SolarWinds
7 27 (18.24%) Blue Coat
8 26 (17.57%) McAfee
9 25 (16.89%) Splunk
10 23 (15.54%) Arista
11 22 (14.86%) Extreme Networks
12 18 (12.16%) CheckPoint
12 18 (12.16%) NetApp
13 16 (10.81%) Aruba
13 16 (10.81%) Microsoft
14 12 (8.11%) Infoblox
15 11 (7.43%) Fortinet
15 11 (7.43%) ServiceNow
16 7 (4.73%) Zscaler
17 4 (2.70%) Remedy