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 October 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
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 123 84 63
Rank change year-on-year -39 -21 -9
Contract jobs citing Cisco 1,207 983 1,250
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.21% 3.00% 3.32%
As % of the Vendors category 5.31% 6.29% 7.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 775 628 742
10th Percentile £250 £281 £258
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £489 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -2.20% +11.11%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £675 £638 £660
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £491 £500
% change year-on-year -5.80% -1.80% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 45 35
10th Percentile £27.62 - £19.10
25th Percentile £44.00 £25.15 £20.34
Median hourly rate £55.50 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +85.00% +9.09% -42.11%
75th Percentile £68.75 £57.50 £51.88
90th Percentile £78.75 £86.98 £74.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £35.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year +57.14% -6.67% -21.33%

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 22,723 15,631 16,765
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.58% 47.63% 44.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,722 9,617 9,871
10th Percentile £310 £277 £288
25th Percentile £413 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £619 £613 £625
90th Percentile £710 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,380 806 615
10th Percentile £13.93 £14.75 £14.84
25th Percentile £16.35 £17.81 £16.00
Median hourly rate £25.04 £25.15 £31.50
Median % change year-on-year -0.45% -20.17% -26.74%
75th Percentile £57.50 £40.19 £64.30
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.19 £21.30 £30.00
% change year-on-year +13.57% -29.00% -29.41%

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 October 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 6 October 2026.

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 October 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 -46 996 £492 -1.60% 1,401
UK excluding London -41 712 £463 -5.80% 989
London -36 372 £500 +5.26% 526
Work from Home -37 288 £475 +1.20% 350
North of England -1 234 £485 +2.11% 218
North West +13 158 £483 +1.68% 101
Midlands -45 126 £459 +2.00% 141
South East -74 126 £441 -11.75% 250
West Midlands -24 123 £450 -5.26% 77
Scotland +16 98 £400 -5.88% 53
Yorkshire -22 69 £500 +2.15% 79
East of England 0 60 £500 -3.85% 138
South West -38 58 £525 -4.55% 139
Wales +9 28 £376 +88.13% 35
Northern Ireland +4 9 £115 -75.79% 25
North East -34 9 £375 +50.00% 38
Channel Islands -4 3 £600 -17.24%
East Midlands -25 2 £525 +233.33% 64

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 39 (3.23%) SharePoint
2 34 (2.82%) Microsoft Exchange
3 14 (1.16%) CMS
4 11 (0.91%) Confluence
5 10 (0.83%) OpenStack
6 8 (0.66%) IIS
6 8 (0.66%) SAS
7 7 (0.58%) Apache
8 6 (0.50%) JBoss
9 4 (0.33%) nginx
10 3 (0.25%) CloudStack
10 3 (0.25%) Tomcat
11 2 (0.17%) Skype for Business
12 1 (0.083%) Apache Spark
12 1 (0.083%) FactoryTalk
12 1 (0.083%) Mendix
12 1 (0.083%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 46 (3.81%) Microsoft Office
2 27 (2.24%) Microsoft Excel
3 22 (1.82%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.25%) Acrobat
6 1 (0.083%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.083%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (0.083%) Monis
1 1 (0.083%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.083%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
1 1 (0.083%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 238 (19.72%) Azure
2 152 (12.59%) AWS
3 96 (7.95%) Microsoft 365
4 68 (5.63%) Entra ID
5 37 (3.07%) GitHub
6 32 (2.65%) OneDrive
7 31 (2.57%) GCP
8 21 (1.74%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 15 (1.24%) Nutanix
9 15 (1.24%) Power Platform
10 14 (1.16%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 13 (1.08%) OpenShift
11 13 (1.08%) SaaS
12 11 (0.91%) AWS Direct Connect
13 9 (0.75%) Azure Sentinel
14 7 (0.58%) Azure DevOps
14 7 (0.58%) Cloudflare
14 7 (0.58%) OCI
14 7 (0.58%) Rubrik
15 6 (0.50%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 489 (40.51%) Firewall
2 355 (29.41%) WAN
3 291 (24.11%) BGP
4 278 (23.03%) LAN
5 266 (22.04%) Network Security
6 261 (21.62%) VPN
7 212 (17.56%) Wireless
8 184 (15.24%) OSPF
9 177 (14.66%) VLAN
10 175 (14.50%) DNS
11 150 (12.43%) SD-WAN
12 137 (11.35%) Wi-Fi
13 134 (11.10%) MPLS
14 110 (9.11%) Cisco Nexus
15 104 (8.62%) TCP/IP
16 103 (8.53%) DHCP
17 92 (7.62%) Cisco ISE
18 89 (7.37%) Cisco IOS
19 84 (6.96%) Cisco ASA
20 80 (6.63%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (2.24%) SQL Server
2 8 (0.66%) Power BI
3 6 (0.50%) Hadoop
4 5 (0.41%) Big Data
5 4 (0.33%) Amazon RDS
6 3 (0.25%) Metadata
6 3 (0.25%) MySQL
7 2 (0.17%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.17%) PostgreSQL
8 1 (0.083%) Apache Hive
8 1 (0.083%) ClickHouse
Development Applications
1 36 (2.98%) Git
2 14 (1.16%) GitLab
2 14 (1.16%) JIRA
3 11 (0.91%) Sonatype Nexus
4 7 (0.58%) Jenkins
5 2 (0.17%) Robot Framework
6 1 (0.083%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.083%) Tricentis qTest
6 1 (0.083%) Zephyr
General
1 280 (23.20%) Social Skills
2 133 (11.02%) Finance
3 125 (10.36%) Telecoms
4 106 (8.78%) Analytical Skills
5 70 (5.80%) Banking
6 64 (5.30%) Public Sector
7 59 (4.89%) Documentation Skills
8 46 (3.81%) Legal
9 22 (1.82%) Investment Banking
9 22 (1.82%) Organisational Skills
10 20 (1.66%) Retail
11 17 (1.41%) Financial Institution
12 15 (1.24%) Military
13 12 (0.99%) Law
14 10 (0.83%) Manufacturing
15 9 (0.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 9 (0.75%) Influencing Skills
16 8 (0.66%) Police
17 6 (0.50%) Presentation Skills
18 5 (0.41%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 597 (49.46%) Network Engineer
2 176 (14.58%) Senior
3 151 (12.51%) Architect
4 143 (11.85%) Cisco Engineer
5 131 (10.85%) Senior Network Engineer
6 120 (9.94%) Cisco Network Engineer
7 88 (7.29%) Security Engineer
8 79 (6.55%) Network Architect
9 66 (5.47%) Network Security Engineer
10 61 (5.05%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 46 (3.81%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 44 (3.65%) Lead
13 42 (3.48%) Analyst
13 42 (3.48%) Field Engineer
14 41 (3.40%) Support Engineer
15 36 (2.98%) Solutions Architect
16 35 (2.90%) Telecoms Engineer
17 29 (2.40%) Consultant
17 29 (2.40%) Data Network Engineer
18 26 (2.15%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 84 (6.96%) Terraform
2 56 (4.64%) 802.1X
3 33 (2.73%) REST
4 21 (1.74%) YAML
5 20 (1.66%) XMPP
6 19 (1.57%) JSON
7 12 (0.99%) NETCONF
7 12 (0.99%) SAML
8 9 (0.75%) YANG
9 7 (0.58%) Microsoft Graph
9 7 (0.58%) RESTCONF
10 6 (0.50%) Flash
11 5 (0.41%) OpenConfig
12 3 (0.25%) .NET
12 3 (0.25%) Django
12 3 (0.25%) Elastic Stack
12 3 (0.25%) LDAP
12 3 (0.25%) LEMP Stack
12 3 (0.25%) OpenID
12 3 (0.25%) RFC 2544
Miscellaneous
1 284 (23.53%) Data Centre
2 53 (4.39%) Hybrid Cloud
3 49 (4.06%) Video Conferencing
4 47 (3.89%) Onboarding
5 46 (3.81%) Driving Licence
6 40 (3.31%) PKI
7 36 (2.98%) Data Protection Act
7 36 (2.98%) Operational Technology
8 32 (2.65%) Management Information System
9 26 (2.15%) Public Cloud
10 25 (2.07%) Self-Motivation
11 22 (1.82%) Cloud Native
11 22 (1.82%) Replication
12 21 (1.74%) Clustering
13 19 (1.57%) Private Cloud
14 18 (1.49%) Analytical Mindset
15 16 (1.33%) IoT
15 16 (1.33%) Linux Command Line
16 13 (1.08%) Enterprise Storage
16 13 (1.08%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 241 (19.97%) Windows
2 123 (10.19%) Linux
3 96 (7.95%) Windows Server
4 25 (2.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 23 (1.91%) Mac OS
6 18 (1.49%) Windows 10
7 17 (1.41%) Ubuntu
8 11 (0.91%) Android
9 10 (0.83%) Unix
10 8 (0.66%) Windows Server 2012
10 8 (0.66%) Windows Server 2019
11 7 (0.58%) AIX
12 6 (0.50%) Data ONTAP
13 5 (0.41%) CentOS
14 4 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
15 3 (0.25%) VMS
16 1 (0.083%) Debian
16 1 (0.083%) Oracle Linux
16 1 (0.083%) Windows 7
16 1 (0.083%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 190 (15.74%) Migration
2 162 (13.42%) Project Delivery
3 148 (12.26%) Problem-Solving
4 127 (10.52%) ITIL
5 120 (9.94%) Stakeholder Management
6 103 (8.53%) Load Balancing
7 100 (8.29%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 98 (8.12%) High Availability
9 92 (7.62%) Change Management
9 92 (7.62%) Continuous Improvement
10 91 (7.54%) Network Design
11 90 (7.46%) Validation
12 87 (7.21%) Infrastructure as Code
13 76 (6.30%) Zero Trust
14 73 (6.05%) Technical Leadership
15 72 (5.97%) Cybersecurity
15 72 (5.97%) Data Protection
16 63 (5.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 61 (5.05%) Disaster Recovery
17 61 (5.05%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 141 (11.68%) Python
2 56 (4.64%) PowerShell
3 31 (2.57%) Bash
4 28 (2.32%) SQL
5 5 (0.41%) Java
6 4 (0.33%) C++
7 3 (0.25%) C
7 3 (0.25%) Lisp
7 3 (0.25%) Shell Script
8 2 (0.17%) Bicep
8 2 (0.17%) Go
8 2 (0.17%) Perl
9 1 (0.083%) Kusto Query Language
9 1 (0.083%) Ladder Logic
9 1 (0.083%) R
Qualifications
1 323 (26.76%) Cisco Certification
2 283 (23.45%) Security Cleared
3 232 (19.22%) CCNP
4 206 (17.07%) SC Cleared
5 125 (10.36%) CCNA
6 72 (5.97%) DV Cleared
7 71 (5.88%) Degree
8 68 (5.63%) CCIE
9 26 (2.15%) Microsoft Certification
10 22 (1.82%) CISSP
10 22 (1.82%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 17 (1.41%) MCSE
12 16 (1.33%) AWS Certification
13 15 (1.24%) Azure Certification
14 13 (1.08%) CCSE
14 13 (1.08%) Computer Science Degree
15 12 (0.99%) BPSS Clearance
15 12 (0.99%) Network+ Certification
16 11 (0.91%) ISTQB
17 10 (0.83%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 41 (3.40%) SLA
2 31 (2.57%) NIST
3 22 (1.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 21 (1.74%) QA
5 15 (1.24%) PCI DSS
6 13 (1.08%) Cyber Essentials
7 9 (0.75%) GDPR
8 7 (0.58%) NCSC
9 6 (0.50%) GRC
10 5 (0.41%) Data Quality
10 5 (0.41%) ISO 31000
10 5 (0.41%) ISO 9001
10 5 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 27005
11 4 (0.33%) Disclosure Scotland
11 4 (0.33%) JSP 440
11 4 (0.33%) NIST 800
11 4 (0.33%) PMO
12 3 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 2 (0.17%) Accessibility
13 2 (0.17%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 156 (12.92%) VMware Infrastructure
2 131 (10.85%) Active Directory
3 55 (4.56%) vSphere
4 40 (3.31%) VMware NSX
5 38 (3.15%) VMware ESXi
6 33 (2.73%) Hyper-V
7 29 (2.40%) Virtual Machines
8 28 (2.32%) Firmware
9 18 (1.49%) Docker
10 8 (0.66%) NFS
11 6 (0.50%) GPFS
12 5 (0.41%) FreeRADIUS
12 5 (0.41%) ISA Server
12 5 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
13 4 (0.33%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 4 (0.33%) SRDF
13 4 (0.33%) Virtual Servers
14 3 (0.25%) Dovecot
14 3 (0.25%) Postfix
15 2 (0.17%) IAG
Systems Management
1 140 (11.60%) Ansible
2 73 (6.05%) FortiGate
3 34 (2.82%) Cisco CUCM
4 29 (2.40%) Microsoft Intune
5 28 (2.32%) Kubernetes
6 21 (1.74%) SCCM
6 21 (1.74%) vCenter Server
7 18 (1.49%) Cisco Prime
8 12 (0.99%) Nagios
9 10 (0.83%) Grafana
10 9 (0.75%) WMI
11 8 (0.66%) Failover Clustering
11 8 (0.66%) Prometheus
11 8 (0.66%) Puppet
11 8 (0.66%) WSUS
12 7 (0.58%) CASB
12 7 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
13 6 (0.50%) Red Hat Satellite
13 6 (0.50%) vRealize
14 5 (0.41%) SolarWinds Orion
Vendors
1 265 (21.96%) Palo Alto
2 246 (20.38%) Microsoft
3 214 (17.73%) VMware
4 201 (16.65%) Fortinet
5 174 (14.42%) F5
6 132 (10.94%) Meraki
7 122 (10.11%) Juniper
8 104 (8.62%) CheckPoint
9 89 (7.37%) Aruba
10 85 (7.04%) SolarWinds
11 80 (6.63%) ServiceNow
12 69 (5.72%) Arista
13 58 (4.81%) Zscaler
14 39 (3.23%) Red Hat
15 38 (3.15%) Splunk
16 31 (2.57%) Dell
17 29 (2.40%) NetApp
18 28 (2.32%) Nokia
19 23 (1.91%) Infoblox
20 21 (1.74%) Citrix