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 6 December 2025, 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
6 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 89 61 56
Rank change year-on-year -28 -5 +36
Contract jobs citing Cisco 1,050 1,229 1,672
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.88% 3.42% 3.70%
As % of the Vendors category 6.08% 7.53% 8.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 701 729 1,012
10th Percentile £263 £286 £263
25th Percentile £369 £400 £377
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +5.26% -
75th Percentile £566 £580 £588
90th Percentile £600 £650 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £481 £450
% change year-on-year +1.77% +6.94% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 29 84
10th Percentile £24.04 £18.08 £18.29
25th Percentile £25.15 £20.00 £24.00
Median hourly rate £32.50 £37.50 £41.88
Median % change year-on-year -13.33% -10.45% +62.87%
75th Percentile £74.26 £60.00 £65.98
90th Percentile £91.13 £75.00 £77.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £72.00 £37.50 £47.50
% change year-on-year +92.00% -21.05% +42.86%

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 17,279 16,328 20,469
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 47.40% 45.37% 45.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,984 9,674 13,046
10th Percentile £290 £291 £255
25th Percentile £406 £413 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -1.87%
75th Percentile £610 £625 £638
90th Percentile £700 £718 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.60% - +1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 865 509 678
10th Percentile £15.23 £15.50 £15.25
25th Percentile £18.22 £19.38 £19.82
Median hourly rate £24.00 £30.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% -32.58% +73.08%
75th Percentile £43.21 £63.75 £64.85
90th Percentile £73.75 £75.00 £76.98
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £27.13 £44.50
% change year-on-year -18.89% -39.04% +97.78%

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 6 December 2025.

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 6 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Cisco in the UK

Cisco
Top 18 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 6 December 2025. 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 -28 886 £500 - 573
UK excluding London -14 671 £490 +1.77% 557
London -45 296 £450 -11.98% 122
Work from Home -39 252 £450 -10.00% 238
South East -1 208 £500 -0.99% 207
Midlands +11 162 £385 -10.72% 74
West Midlands +25 141 £419 -16.25% 45
North of England -52 130 £483 +1.58% 114
North West -33 84 £500 +5.26% 62
Scotland +30 70 £425 +6.25% 42
South West -39 46 £550 +18.92% 56
Yorkshire -57 37 £450 -10.00% 45
East of England -9 35 £445 -15.24% 52
East Midlands -18 21 £158 -58.00% 27
Wales 0 16 £170 -56.13% 23
North East +4 11 £175 -64.10% 8
Northern Ireland +3 11 £475 - 3
Channel Islands - 2 £725 -

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 63 (6.00%) Microsoft Exchange
2 48 (4.57%) SharePoint
3 19 (1.81%) Confluence
4 17 (1.62%) Apache
5 15 (1.43%) Skype for Business
6 14 (1.33%) WebLogic
7 8 (0.76%) OpenStack
8 7 (0.67%) Appian
8 7 (0.67%) Mattermost
9 5 (0.48%) SharePoint Server
10 3 (0.29%) WebSphere
11 2 (0.19%) CICS
11 2 (0.19%) IIS
11 2 (0.19%) Tomcat
12 1 (0.095%) Exchange Server 2010
12 1 (0.095%) Exchange Server 2013
12 1 (0.095%) JBoss
12 1 (0.095%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 88 (8.38%) Microsoft Office
2 34 (3.24%) MS Visio
3 20 (1.90%) Microsoft Excel
4 14 (1.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.48%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.095%) Acrobat
6 1 (0.095%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.095%) AutoCAD
6 1 (0.095%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 15 (1.43%) Remedy ITSM
2 4 (0.38%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.095%) Actimize
3 1 (0.095%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 164 (15.62%) Azure
2 143 (13.62%) AWS
3 113 (10.76%) Microsoft 365
4 41 (3.90%) GCP
5 36 (3.43%) Entra ID
6 15 (1.43%) Azure Monitor
6 15 (1.43%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 14 (1.33%) Azure Sentinel
7 14 (1.33%) Datadog
8 12 (1.14%) Akamai
8 12 (1.14%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 11 (1.05%) AWS CloudFormation
10 10 (0.95%) AWS Lambda
10 10 (0.95%) OpenShift
10 10 (0.95%) Serverless
11 9 (0.86%) Nutanix
12 8 (0.76%) GitHub
12 8 (0.76%) Power Platform
12 8 (0.76%) SaaS
13 7 (0.67%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 430 (40.95%) Firewall
2 243 (23.14%) WAN
3 201 (19.14%) LAN
4 180 (17.14%) Wireless
5 172 (16.38%) VPN
6 171 (16.29%) BGP
7 136 (12.95%) Network Security
7 136 (12.95%) SD-WAN
8 128 (12.19%) OSPF
9 117 (11.14%) DNS
10 99 (9.43%) Cisco ISE
11 98 (9.33%) Cisco IOS
12 93 (8.86%) Cisco Nexus
13 90 (8.57%) Wi-Fi
14 88 (8.38%) MPLS
15 75 (7.14%) VLAN
16 71 (6.76%) DHCP
17 63 (6.00%) IPsec
18 55 (5.24%) Cisco ASA
19 54 (5.14%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (1.24%) SQL Server
2 5 (0.48%) DynamoDB
2 5 (0.48%) Power BI
3 4 (0.38%) NoSQL
4 3 (0.29%) Amazon Athena
4 3 (0.29%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (0.19%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.095%) MariaDB
6 1 (0.095%) Metadata
6 1 (0.095%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 20 (1.90%) JIRA
2 17 (1.62%) GitLab
3 13 (1.24%) Sonatype Nexus
4 11 (1.05%) Git
5 9 (0.86%) Jenkins
6 8 (0.76%) Robot Framework
7 7 (0.67%) Cucumber
7 7 (0.67%) Selenium
7 7 (0.67%) SonarQube
8 2 (0.19%) Rational DOORS
8 2 (0.19%) Snyk
8 2 (0.19%) Subversion
9 1 (0.095%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.095%) Hudson
9 1 (0.095%) Mercurial
General
1 230 (21.90%) Social Skills
2 177 (16.86%) Public Sector
3 131 (12.48%) Finance
4 130 (12.38%) Telecoms
5 74 (7.05%) Analytical Skills
6 66 (6.29%) Manufacturing
7 43 (4.10%) Documentation Skills
7 43 (4.10%) Electronics
7 43 (4.10%) Marketing
8 41 (3.90%) Banking
9 24 (2.29%) Legal
10 21 (2.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 19 (1.81%) Games
12 13 (1.24%) Presentation Skills
13 12 (1.14%) Organisational Skills
14 10 (0.95%) Aerospace
15 9 (0.86%) Military
16 8 (0.76%) Investment Banking
17 7 (0.67%) Influencing Skills
17 7 (0.67%) Retail
Job Titles
1 367 (34.95%) Network Engineer
2 121 (11.52%) Architect
3 79 (7.52%) Cisco Engineer
3 79 (7.52%) Network Architect
4 71 (6.76%) Analyst
5 64 (6.10%) Cisco Network Engineer
6 63 (6.00%) Consultant
6 63 (6.00%) Senior
7 53 (5.05%) Support Engineer
8 52 (4.95%) IT Support
8 52 (4.95%) Security Engineer
9 51 (4.86%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
10 49 (4.67%) Network Consultant
11 43 (4.10%) Platform Engineer
12 37 (3.52%) Desktop Support
13 36 (3.43%) Network Security Engineer
14 34 (3.24%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
15 32 (3.05%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 29 (2.76%) Juniper Engineer
16 29 (2.76%) Senior Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (3.33%) 802.1X
2 18 (1.71%) XMPP
3 15 (1.43%) RFC 2544
4 13 (1.24%) JSON
4 13 (1.24%) NETCONF
4 13 (1.24%) YANG
5 12 (1.14%) Flash
5 12 (1.14%) Jinja
6 11 (1.05%) XML
7 8 (0.76%) REST
8 7 (0.67%) LDAP
8 7 (0.67%) Node.js
9 4 (0.38%) RESTCONF
10 3 (0.29%) HTML
10 3 (0.29%) OpenConfig
10 3 (0.29%) SAML
10 3 (0.29%) VML
11 2 (0.19%) Middleware
11 2 (0.19%) Regular Expression
11 2 (0.19%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 242 (23.05%) Data Centre
2 37 (3.52%) PKI
3 29 (2.76%) Driving Licence
4 28 (2.67%) Linux Command Line
4 28 (2.67%) Onboarding
5 27 (2.57%) Data Protection Act
6 24 (2.29%) Cloud Native
7 22 (2.10%) Hybrid Cloud
7 22 (2.10%) Replication
8 21 (2.00%) Operational Technology
9 19 (1.81%) Video Conferencing
10 13 (1.24%) Fibre Optics
10 13 (1.24%) Management Information System
10 13 (1.24%) NHS
11 12 (1.14%) Product Ownership
11 12 (1.14%) Security Posture
11 12 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
11 12 (1.14%) Virtual Team
12 11 (1.05%) Enterprise Storage
13 10 (0.95%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 182 (17.33%) Windows
2 113 (10.76%) Linux
3 84 (8.00%) Mac OS
4 80 (7.62%) Android
5 65 (6.19%) Windows Server
6 31 (2.95%) Windows 10
7 21 (2.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 20 (1.90%) Unix
9 7 (0.67%) Windows Server 2016
10 5 (0.48%) CentOS
10 5 (0.48%) Windows Server 2012
11 4 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.29%) VMS
12 3 (0.29%) Windows 7
12 3 (0.29%) Windows 8
13 2 (0.19%) CatOS
13 2 (0.19%) Solaris
13 2 (0.19%) zOS
14 1 (0.095%) MVS
14 1 (0.095%) Windows XP
Processes & Methodologies
1 124 (11.81%) Problem-Solving
2 116 (11.05%) Migration
3 90 (8.57%) Service Management
4 85 (8.10%) Network Design
5 77 (7.33%) Agile
6 76 (7.24%) ITIL
6 76 (7.24%) Roadmaps
7 70 (6.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 63 (6.00%) Business Intelligence
8 63 (6.00%) ITSM
9 61 (5.81%) Change Management
9 61 (5.81%) Project Delivery
10 60 (5.71%) Collaborative Working
10 60 (5.71%) Cybersecurity
11 59 (5.62%) Network Architecture
12 57 (5.43%) Incident Response
13 55 (5.24%) High Availability
14 54 (5.14%) Load Balancing
15 53 (5.05%) Continuous Improvement
16 49 (4.67%) Performance Monitoring
Programming Languages
1 130 (12.38%) Python
2 81 (7.71%) PowerShell
3 41 (3.90%) Bash
4 34 (3.24%) SQL
5 25 (2.38%) Perl
6 14 (1.33%) JavaScript
7 9 (0.86%) C++
8 8 (0.76%) Lisp
9 6 (0.57%) Java
9 6 (0.57%) Kusto Query Language
10 4 (0.38%) C
11 3 (0.29%) Go
12 2 (0.19%) PHP
12 2 (0.19%) VB
13 1 (0.095%) Ruby
13 1 (0.095%) VBA
Qualifications
1 436 (41.52%) Security Cleared
2 334 (31.81%) SC Cleared
3 270 (25.71%) Cisco Certification
4 205 (19.52%) CCNP
5 113 (10.76%) DV Cleared
6 102 (9.71%) CCNA
7 77 (7.33%) Degree
8 71 (6.76%) CCIE
9 25 (2.38%) BPSS Clearance
9 25 (2.38%) ITIL Certification
10 23 (2.19%) Computer Science Degree
11 21 (2.00%) CISSP
11 21 (2.00%) Microsoft Certification
12 18 (1.71%) AWS Certification
12 18 (1.71%) JNCIE
13 17 (1.62%) Azure Certification
14 13 (1.24%) CCDP
14 13 (1.24%) JNCIA
14 13 (1.24%) JNCIS
15 11 (1.05%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 42 (4.00%) SLA
2 32 (3.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 23 (2.19%) GDPR
4 19 (1.81%) NIST
5 16 (1.52%) PCI DSS
6 14 (1.33%) Cyber Essentials
7 12 (1.14%) PMO
8 7 (0.67%) NCSC
9 4 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 3 (0.29%) HIPAA
10 3 (0.29%) QA
11 2 (0.19%) Accessibility
11 2 (0.19%) Def Stans
11 2 (0.19%) Disclosure Scotland
12 1 (0.095%) Data Quality
12 1 (0.095%) GxP
12 1 (0.095%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 1 (0.095%) ISO 22301
12 1 (0.095%) JSP 440
12 1 (0.095%) NIST 800
System Software
1 158 (15.05%) Active Directory
2 122 (11.62%) VMware Infrastructure
3 57 (5.43%) VMware NSX
4 36 (3.43%) vSphere
5 25 (2.38%) Firmware
6 24 (2.29%) VMware ESXi
7 21 (2.00%) Docker
8 16 (1.52%) Hyper-V
9 13 (1.24%) NFS
10 12 (1.14%) GPFS
11 11 (1.05%) Virtual Machines
12 7 (0.67%) Snort
12 7 (0.67%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.48%) KVM
13 5 (0.48%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 5 (0.48%) Squid
14 3 (0.29%) BitLocker
15 2 (0.19%) Terminal Services
15 2 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
16 1 (0.095%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 90 (8.57%) Ansible
2 60 (5.71%) FortiGate
3 50 (4.76%) SCCM
4 48 (4.57%) Terraform
5 45 (4.29%) vCenter Server
6 38 (3.62%) Microsoft Intune
7 28 (2.67%) vRealize
8 22 (2.10%) Kubernetes
9 17 (1.62%) Cisco CUCM
10 14 (1.33%) VxRail
11 11 (1.05%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 10 (0.95%) WSUS
13 9 (0.86%) EMC NetWorker
13 9 (0.86%) Nessus
14 8 (0.76%) SCOM
14 8 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
15 7 (0.67%) EMC VPLEX
15 7 (0.67%) HP SiteScope
16 6 (0.57%) NetBackup
17 5 (0.48%) Nexpose
Vendors
1 215 (20.48%) Microsoft
2 192 (18.29%) Juniper
3 176 (16.76%) Palo Alto
4 156 (14.86%) VMware
5 134 (12.76%) Fortinet
6 122 (11.62%) SolarWinds
7 115 (10.95%) F5
8 113 (10.76%) Meraki
9 89 (8.48%) Dell
10 86 (8.19%) CheckPoint
11 75 (7.14%) Splunk
12 72 (6.86%) HP
13 69 (6.57%) Aruba
14 62 (5.90%) ServiceNow
15 54 (5.14%) Apple
16 45 (4.29%) SAP
17 37 (3.52%) Zscaler
18 36 (3.43%) AppDynamics
19 34 (3.24%) IBM
20 33 (3.14%) Oracle