Cisco Contract Job Trends

Cisco
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring knowledge or experience of Cisco products and/or services. It includes a benchmarking guide to contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Cisco over the 6 months leading up to 22 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

The figures below represent the IT contractor job market in general and are not representative of contractor rates within Cisco Systems, Inc.

6 months to
22 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 100 66 65
Rank change year-on-year -34 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Cisco 1,108 1,052 1,352
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.39% 3.57% 3.11%
As % of the Vendors category 5.63% 7.53% 7.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 749 669 824
10th Percentile £299 £302 £259
25th Percentile £400 £406 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £487
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +2.72% +1.41%
75th Percentile £560 £588 £591
90th Percentile £638 £650 £710
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £483 £475
% change year-on-year -0.52% +1.58% +2.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 19 44
10th Percentile £21.27 £17.55 £13.50
25th Percentile £30.06 £21.58 £23.53
Median hourly rate £54.86 £37.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +46.29% +25.00% -43.77%
75th Percentile £74.26 £66.88 £42.54
90th Percentile £88.25 £75.00 £73.67
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.26 £33.52 £30.00
% change year-on-year +121.52% +11.74% -45.77%

All Vendors
UK

Cisco falls under the Vendor Products and Services category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring knowledge or experience of all vendor products and services.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for knowledge or experience of vendor products and services 19,679 13,970 18,438
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 42.45% 47.41% 42.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,577 8,790 11,481
10th Percentile £313 £294 £260
25th Percentile £413 £406 £403
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £517
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -0.87% -1.52%
75th Percentile £600 £615 £630
90th Percentile £700 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -0.61% -1.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 993 543 1,075
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.99 £12.01
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.50 £14.36
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.76 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +8.07% +23.38% -48.86%
75th Percentile £60.00 £60.00 £57.33
90th Percentile £78.75 £77.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £24.66 £21.46
% change year-on-year +8.11% +14.91% -47.11%

Cisco
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Cisco relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Cisco job vacancy trend in the UK

Cisco
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Cisco.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Cisco

Cisco
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Cisco over the 6 months to 22 April 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Cisco in the UK

Cisco
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Cisco.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Cisco

Cisco
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Cisco over the 6 months to 22 April 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Cisco in the UK

Cisco
Top 17 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Cisco within the UK over the 6 months to 22 April 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 -44 923 £483 -4.86% 474
UK excluding London -28 705 £480 -0.52% 431
Work from Home -17 284 £450 -10.00% 92
London -65 274 £500 -0.55% 137
South East -6 212 £500 - 124
North of England -43 186 £481 -3.75% 97
North West -14 149 £481 -1.79% 41
Midlands -13 147 £380 -15.56% 77
West Midlands +2 134 £373 -14.74% 45
Scotland +23 66 £450 +12.78% 28
South West -70 48 £510 -7.27% 42
East of England -6 42 £495 +4.21% 50
Yorkshire -73 36 £450 -14.29% 43
Wales -8 25 £425 - 17
Northern Ireland +8 9 £385 - 7
East Midlands -53 9 £415 -12.63% 32
North East -24 4 £550 +69.23% 14

Cisco
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 37 (3.34%) Microsoft Exchange
2 32 (2.89%) SharePoint
3 16 (1.44%) Confluence
4 7 (0.63%) Apache
5 5 (0.45%) IIS
5 5 (0.45%) OpenStack
6 2 (0.18%) Skype for Business
7 1 (0.090%) CMS
7 1 (0.090%) JBoss
7 1 (0.090%) SharePoint Server
7 1 (0.090%) WebLogic
7 1 (0.090%) WebSphere
Applications
1 45 (4.06%) Microsoft Office
2 39 (3.52%) MS Visio
3 16 (1.44%) Microsoft Excel
4 12 (1.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.45%) Acrobat
6 2 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.090%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 17 (1.53%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.090%) Actimize
Cloud Services
1 196 (17.69%) Azure
2 159 (14.35%) AWS
3 84 (7.58%) Microsoft 365
4 40 (3.61%) Entra ID
5 34 (3.07%) GCP
6 17 (1.53%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 15 (1.35%) OpenShift
8 14 (1.26%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 13 (1.17%) Datadog
10 12 (1.08%) Nutanix
10 12 (1.08%) SaaS
11 9 (0.81%) Azure Sentinel
11 9 (0.81%) GitHub
12 7 (0.63%) Azure DevOps
13 6 (0.54%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 6 (0.54%) Amazon Kinesis
13 6 (0.54%) AWS CloudFormation
13 6 (0.54%) Mimecast
14 5 (0.45%) OneDrive
14 5 (0.45%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 477 (43.05%) Firewall
2 353 (31.86%) WAN
3 280 (25.27%) BGP
4 264 (23.83%) LAN
5 238 (21.48%) VPN
6 216 (19.49%) Network Security
7 204 (18.41%) OSPF
8 160 (14.44%) SD-WAN
9 150 (13.54%) DNS
10 148 (13.36%) Wireless
11 140 (12.64%) VLAN
12 106 (9.57%) MPLS
13 102 (9.21%) Cisco ISE
14 99 (8.94%) Cisco Nexus
15 94 (8.48%) VXLAN
16 81 (7.31%) Wi-Fi
17 78 (7.04%) Cisco ASA
17 78 (7.04%) DHCP
18 74 (6.68%) IPsec
19 71 (6.41%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (0.45%) DynamoDB
2 3 (0.27%) Amazon Athena
2 3 (0.27%) Power BI
2 3 (0.27%) SQL Server
3 2 (0.18%) MariaDB
4 1 (0.090%) Big Data
4 1 (0.090%) Metadata
4 1 (0.090%) MySQL
4 1 (0.090%) NoSQL
4 1 (0.090%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 23 (2.08%) JIRA
2 15 (1.35%) Sonatype Nexus
3 10 (0.90%) Git
4 8 (0.72%) Jenkins
5 6 (0.54%) GitLab
6 1 (0.090%) Bitbucket
General
1 240 (21.66%) Social Skills
2 128 (11.55%) Finance
3 111 (10.02%) Public Sector
4 77 (6.95%) Telecoms
5 70 (6.32%) Analytical Skills
6 60 (5.42%) Legal
7 59 (5.32%) Banking
8 54 (4.87%) Documentation Skills
9 38 (3.43%) Manufacturing
10 24 (2.17%) Marketing
11 19 (1.71%) Electronics
12 17 (1.53%) Investment Banking
13 15 (1.35%) Financial Institution
13 15 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
13 15 (1.35%) Presentation Skills
14 14 (1.26%) Law
15 13 (1.17%) Retail
16 9 (0.81%) Influencing Skills
17 7 (0.63%) Aerospace
17 7 (0.63%) Military
Job Titles
1 471 (42.51%) Network Engineer
2 138 (12.45%) Architect
3 103 (9.30%) Cisco Engineer
4 98 (8.84%) Senior
5 96 (8.66%) Cisco Network Engineer
6 84 (7.58%) Network Architect
7 79 (7.13%) Security Engineer
8 71 (6.41%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
9 57 (5.14%) Network Security Engineer
10 50 (4.51%) Senior Network Engineer
11 48 (4.33%) Analyst
12 44 (3.97%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 42 (3.79%) Data Network Engineer
14 33 (2.98%) Data Engineer
15 32 (2.89%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
16 30 (2.71%) Cisco Security Engineer
16 30 (2.71%) Consultant
17 28 (2.53%) Network Consultant
17 28 (2.53%) Solutions Architect
18 27 (2.44%) Infrastructure Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 62 (5.60%) 802.1X
2 17 (1.53%) LDAP
3 16 (1.44%) Flash
4 14 (1.26%) XMPP
5 11 (0.99%) SAML
6 9 (0.81%) REST
7 7 (0.63%) NETCONF
8 6 (0.54%) Jinja
8 6 (0.54%) YANG
9 5 (0.45%) Node.js
9 5 (0.45%) OpenConfig
10 4 (0.36%) HTML
10 4 (0.36%) JSON
10 4 (0.36%) RESTCONF
10 4 (0.36%) VML
11 2 (0.18%) ADO
11 2 (0.18%) CSS
11 2 (0.18%) Django
11 2 (0.18%) Middleware
11 2 (0.18%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 292 (26.35%) Data Centre
2 49 (4.42%) PKI
3 44 (3.97%) Replication
4 38 (3.43%) Clustering
5 32 (2.89%) Data Protection Act
5 32 (2.89%) Hybrid Cloud
6 30 (2.71%) Cloud Native
6 30 (2.71%) Onboarding
7 29 (2.62%) Linux Command Line
7 29 (2.62%) Operational Technology
8 20 (1.81%) Driving Licence
9 18 (1.62%) Product Ownership
10 17 (1.53%) Enterprise Storage
10 17 (1.53%) Self-Motivation
11 14 (1.26%) EMC VMAX
11 14 (1.26%) Security Posture
11 14 (1.26%) Video Conferencing
12 13 (1.17%) SCADA
13 12 (1.08%) NHS
14 11 (0.99%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 198 (17.87%) Windows
2 115 (10.38%) Linux
3 72 (6.50%) Windows Server
4 26 (2.35%) Mac OS
4 26 (2.35%) Windows 10
5 25 (2.26%) Android
6 22 (1.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 19 (1.71%) Unix
8 8 (0.72%) Ubuntu
9 7 (0.63%) Windows Server 2012
10 5 (0.45%) Windows Server 2019
11 4 (0.36%) CatOS
11 4 (0.36%) Solaris
12 3 (0.27%) Data ONTAP
12 3 (0.27%) VMS
13 2 (0.18%) AIX
13 2 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
14 1 (0.090%) CentOS
14 1 (0.090%) Debian
14 1 (0.090%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 167 (15.07%) Migration
2 137 (12.36%) Problem-Solving
3 112 (10.11%) Load Balancing
4 111 (10.02%) High Availability
5 99 (8.94%) ITIL
6 97 (8.75%) Network Design
7 84 (7.58%) ITSM
8 82 (7.40%) Agile
9 72 (6.50%) Change Management
9 72 (6.50%) Roadmaps
10 70 (6.32%) Cybersecurity
11 67 (6.05%) Continuous Improvement
12 64 (5.78%) Disaster Recovery
13 63 (5.69%) Project Delivery
14 61 (5.51%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 54 (4.87%) Network Monitoring
15 54 (4.87%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 53 (4.78%) Stakeholder Management
17 52 (4.69%) Service Management
17 52 (4.69%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 128 (11.55%) Python
2 59 (5.32%) PowerShell
3 27 (2.44%) Bash
4 11 (0.99%) Perl
5 8 (0.72%) C
5 8 (0.72%) SQL
6 4 (0.36%) PHP
7 3 (0.27%) C++
7 3 (0.27%) Java
7 3 (0.27%) JavaScript
7 3 (0.27%) Lisp
8 2 (0.18%) ActionScript
8 2 (0.18%) Korn
8 2 (0.18%) Shell Script
9 1 (0.090%) Bicep
9 1 (0.090%) Kusto Query Language
9 1 (0.090%) Ladder Logic
9 1 (0.090%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 405 (36.55%) Security Cleared
2 315 (28.43%) Cisco Certification
3 309 (27.89%) SC Cleared
4 249 (22.47%) CCNP
5 115 (10.38%) CCNA
6 108 (9.75%) DV Cleared
7 83 (7.49%) Degree
8 77 (6.95%) CCIE
9 26 (2.35%) Microsoft Certification
10 23 (2.08%) BPSS Clearance
11 21 (1.90%) Azure Certification
11 21 (1.90%) JNCIS
12 19 (1.71%) MCSE
12 19 (1.71%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 18 (1.62%) Network+ Certification
14 17 (1.53%) JNCIP
15 15 (1.35%) AWS Certification
15 15 (1.35%) JNCIA
16 14 (1.26%) CCSE
16 14 (1.26%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (3.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 31 (2.80%) NIST
3 30 (2.71%) SLA
4 23 (2.08%) Cyber Essentials
5 17 (1.53%) NCSC
6 16 (1.44%) GDPR
7 15 (1.35%) PMO
8 12 (1.08%) PCI DSS
9 10 (0.90%) QA
10 5 (0.45%) Disclosure Scotland
11 4 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 4 (0.36%) JSP 440
12 3 (0.27%) HIPAA
12 3 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 3 (0.27%) RMADS
13 2 (0.18%) ISA99
13 2 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 2 (0.18%) NIST 800
14 1 (0.090%) GRC
14 1 (0.090%) JTAG
System Software
1 155 (13.99%) VMware Infrastructure
2 92 (8.30%) Active Directory
3 63 (5.69%) vSphere
4 62 (5.60%) VMware NSX
5 52 (4.69%) VMware ESXi
6 22 (1.99%) Virtual Machines
7 20 (1.81%) Firmware
8 19 (1.71%) NFS
9 17 (1.53%) Hyper-V
10 16 (1.44%) GPFS
11 9 (0.81%) SRDF
12 7 (0.63%) Docker
13 6 (0.54%) Virtual Desktop
14 4 (0.36%) vCloud
14 4 (0.36%) Virtual Servers
15 3 (0.27%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 3 (0.27%) KVM
15 3 (0.27%) Snort
15 3 (0.27%) UAG
16 1 (0.090%) RHEV
Systems Management
1 119 (10.74%) Ansible
2 102 (9.21%) FortiGate
3 52 (4.69%) Terraform
4 39 (3.52%) vCenter Server
5 34 (3.07%) vRealize
6 24 (2.17%) Grafana
7 20 (1.81%) Microsoft Intune
7 20 (1.81%) SCCM
8 18 (1.62%) Prometheus
8 18 (1.62%) VxRail
9 16 (1.44%) Kubernetes
10 13 (1.17%) Cisco Prime
11 10 (0.90%) Nagios
11 10 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
12 7 (0.63%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 7 (0.63%) EMC NetWorker
12 7 (0.63%) EMC VPLEX
12 7 (0.63%) SCOM
13 6 (0.54%) Cisco CUCM
13 6 (0.54%) WSUS
Vendors
1 286 (25.81%) Palo Alto
2 195 (17.60%) F5
3 194 (17.51%) VMware
4 184 (16.61%) Microsoft
5 166 (14.98%) Juniper
6 140 (12.64%) Fortinet
7 129 (11.64%) Aruba
8 121 (10.92%) CheckPoint
9 96 (8.66%) Meraki
10 94 (8.48%) SolarWinds
11 92 (8.30%) ServiceNow
12 63 (5.69%) Dell
13 61 (5.51%) Arista
14 54 (4.87%) Splunk
15 45 (4.06%) IBM
16 43 (3.88%) Zscaler
17 42 (3.79%) HP
18 31 (2.80%) EMC
19 29 (2.62%) Citrix
20 27 (2.44%) Extreme Networks