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

6 months to
30 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 505 506 564
Rank change year-on-year +1 +58 +80
Contract jobs citing BIG-IP 149 26 21
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.29% 0.085% 0.049%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 3.06% 0.69% 0.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 56 13 15
10th Percentile £300 £381 £354
25th Percentile £445 £400 £391
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £450 £450
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% - -30.77%
75th Percentile £588 £530 £545
90th Percentile £663 £595 £631
UK excluding London median daily rate £534 £520 £475
% change year-on-year +2.62% +9.47% -11.63%
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 4,877 3,770 5,390
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.50% 12.32% 12.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,980 2,297 3,176
10th Percentile £250 £225 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -1.19%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £473 £490
% change year-on-year +1.72% -3.57% +3.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 298 179 432
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.87
25th Percentile £19.34 £21.99 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.69 £45.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -40.69% - +113.17%
75th Percentile £65.00 £61.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £80.20 £73.21
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.44 £36.57 £47.50
% change year-on-year -27.71% -23.01% +114.64%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 -3 135 £500 +11.11% 4
UK excluding London +18 122 £534 +2.62% 4
North of England - 67 £575 - 2
South East - 39 £555 - 1
Work from Home -17 38 £575 +27.78% 3
North West - 37 £575 - 2
West Midlands -28 31 £340 -15.00%
Midlands -33 31 £340 -15.00%
Yorkshire - 23 £475 -
London -85 13 £470 +4.44% 1
North East - 13 £650 -
Scotland - 4 £600 - 1
South West -30 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 7 (4.70%) SharePoint
2 5 (3.36%) Confluence
3 2 (1.34%) Apache
3 2 (1.34%) IIS
3 2 (1.34%) nginx
3 2 (1.34%) Tomcat
Applications
1 9 (6.04%) MS Visio
2 3 (2.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.67%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 36 (24.16%) Azure
2 35 (23.49%) AWS
3 22 (14.77%) OCI
4 12 (8.05%) SaaS
5 10 (6.71%) GitHub
5 10 (6.71%) IaaS
6 5 (3.36%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 3 (2.01%) GCP
8 2 (1.34%) Cloudflare
8 2 (1.34%) Entra ID
8 2 (1.34%) Microsoft 365
9 1 (0.67%) Amazon EC2
9 1 (0.67%) Amazon GuardDuty
9 1 (0.67%) Amazon S3
9 1 (0.67%) Nutanix
9 1 (0.67%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 101 (67.79%) Firewall
2 95 (63.76%) DNS
3 84 (56.38%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
4 64 (42.95%) BGP
4 64 (42.95%) OSPF
5 63 (42.28%) WAN
6 56 (37.58%) TCP/IP
7 51 (34.23%) VXLAN
8 48 (32.21%) Ethernet VPN
9 45 (30.20%) LAN
10 44 (29.53%) SSL
11 43 (28.86%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
12 39 (26.17%) DHCP
13 38 (25.50%) HTTP
14 29 (19.46%) SD-WAN
15 28 (18.79%) Wireshark
16 24 (16.11%) Cisco ISE
16 24 (16.11%) Junos
17 22 (14.77%) Network Security
18 17 (11.41%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (1.34%) MySQL
1 2 (1.34%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 26 (17.45%) JIRA
2 22 (14.77%) Fiddler
3 19 (12.75%) GitLab
4 10 (6.71%) Jenkins
5 3 (2.01%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 23 (15.44%) Banking
2 19 (12.75%) Public Sector
2 19 (12.75%) Social Skills
3 18 (12.08%) Investment Banking
4 13 (8.72%) Finance
5 8 (5.37%) Telecoms
6 6 (4.03%) Military
7 3 (2.01%) Analytical Skills
7 3 (2.01%) Organisational Skills
8 2 (1.34%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.67%) Billing
Job Titles
1 67 (44.97%) Network Engineer
2 36 (24.16%) Senior
3 30 (20.13%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 24 (16.11%) Architect
5 22 (14.77%) Web Engineer
6 19 (12.75%) IP Network Engineer
6 19 (12.75%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
7 17 (11.41%) Blue Coat Engineer
7 17 (11.41%) Network Specialist
7 17 (11.41%) Senior Network Engineer
8 14 (9.40%) Firewall Specialist
9 8 (5.37%) Lead
10 7 (4.70%) Network Architect
11 6 (4.03%) Junior
11 6 (4.03%) Lead Architect
11 6 (4.03%) Network Infrastructure Engineer
11 6 (4.03%) Technical Architect
12 5 (3.36%) Junior Network Engineer
12 5 (3.36%) Network Security Engineer
12 5 (3.36%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (17.45%) 802.1X
2 10 (6.71%) JSON
3 7 (4.70%) LDAP
3 7 (4.70%) SAML
4 3 (2.01%) YAML
5 2 (1.34%) LAMP
5 2 (1.34%) LEMP Stack
6 1 (0.67%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 61 (40.94%) Data Centre
2 24 (16.11%) Clustering
2 24 (16.11%) Hybrid Cloud
2 24 (16.11%) PKI
3 19 (12.75%) Cloud Native
4 17 (11.41%) Management Information System
5 6 (4.03%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
5 6 (4.03%) Onboarding
6 4 (2.68%) Algorithms
6 4 (2.68%) Private Cloud
7 3 (2.01%) Data Protection Act
7 3 (2.01%) Public Cloud
8 2 (1.34%) Virtual Team
9 1 (0.67%) Enterprise Software
9 1 (0.67%) iSeries
9 1 (0.67%) Legacy Systems
9 1 (0.67%) Linux Command Line
9 1 (0.67%) Operational Technology
9 1 (0.67%) Product Ownership
9 1 (0.67%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 29 (19.46%) Windows
2 4 (2.68%) Linux
3 3 (2.01%) CatOS
3 3 (2.01%) Windows Server
3 3 (2.01%) Windows Server 2012
3 3 (2.01%) Windows Server 2019
4 2 (1.34%) CentOS
4 2 (1.34%) Ubuntu
4 2 (1.34%) Windows Server 2016
5 1 (0.67%) Check Point GAiA
5 1 (0.67%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 84 (56.38%) Load Balancing
2 54 (36.24%) High Availability
3 33 (22.15%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 32 (21.48%) CI/CD
5 29 (19.46%) Agile
6 28 (18.79%) Zero Trust
7 24 (16.11%) Identity Access Management
7 24 (16.11%) Observability
8 22 (14.77%) Data Loss Prevention
8 22 (14.77%) ITIL
8 22 (14.77%) Malware Detection/Protection
9 21 (14.09%) Infrastructure as Code
9 21 (14.09%) Problem-Solving
10 19 (12.75%) Migration
11 18 (12.08%) Network Design
12 17 (11.41%) DevOps
13 16 (10.74%) Network Architecture
14 15 (10.07%) Project Delivery
14 15 (10.07%) Site Reliability Engineering
15 14 (9.40%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 59 (39.60%) Python
2 11 (7.38%) ActionScript
3 10 (6.71%) JavaScript
4 9 (6.04%) VBA
5 3 (2.01%) Bash
6 2 (1.34%) PowerShell
7 1 (0.67%) Perl
7 1 (0.67%) Shell Script
7 1 (0.67%) SQL
Qualifications
1 51 (34.23%) Security Cleared
2 35 (23.49%) Cisco Certification
3 20 (13.42%) SC Cleared
4 19 (12.75%) DV Cleared
5 14 (9.40%) CCNP
6 9 (6.04%) JNCIP
7 8 (5.37%) Degree
8 7 (4.70%) JNCIA
8 7 (4.70%) JNCIS
9 6 (4.03%) CCIE
10 3 (2.01%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 2 (1.34%) CCDP
11 2 (1.34%) CCSE
11 2 (1.34%) JNCIE
12 1 (0.67%) AWS Certification
12 1 (0.67%) CESG Certified Professional
12 1 (0.67%) CHECK Team Leader
12 1 (0.67%) CREST Certified
12 1 (0.67%) Microsoft Certification
12 1 (0.67%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (3.36%) NCSC
2 1 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (0.67%) JSP 440
2 1 (0.67%) RMADS
System Software
1 29 (19.46%) VMware Infrastructure
2 18 (12.08%) VMware NSX
3 17 (11.41%) Firmware
4 13 (8.72%) Active Directory
5 2 (1.34%) Dovecot
5 2 (1.34%) Postfix
5 2 (1.34%) Virtual Servers
5 2 (1.34%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 45 (30.20%) Ansible
2 33 (22.15%) FortiGate
3 26 (17.45%) Terraform
4 9 (6.04%) Single Sign-On
5 2 (1.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 2 (1.34%) HAProxy
5 2 (1.34%) Microsoft Intune
5 2 (1.34%) SCCM
Vendors
1 149 (100.00%) F5
2 61 (40.94%) Cisco
3 51 (34.23%) Palo Alto
4 39 (26.17%) VMware
5 33 (22.15%) SolarWinds
6 30 (20.13%) Juniper
7 26 (17.45%) Splunk
8 25 (16.78%) Arista
9 24 (16.11%) Blue Coat
10 22 (14.77%) Extreme Networks
10 22 (14.77%) McAfee
11 18 (12.08%) Aruba
12 17 (11.41%) NetApp
13 16 (10.74%) CheckPoint
13 16 (10.74%) Microsoft
14 13 (8.72%) Infoblox
15 11 (7.38%) Fortinet
15 11 (7.38%) ServiceNow
16 5 (3.36%) Zscaler
17 3 (2.01%) Remedy