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 16 July 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
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 113 70 66
Rank change year-on-year -43 -4 -9
Contract jobs citing Cisco 1,179 1,146 1,324
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.24% 3.53% 3.11%
As % of the Vendors category 5.43% 7.42% 7.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 791 706 806
10th Percentile £300 £304 £248
25th Percentile £400 £406 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +5.26% -
75th Percentile £573 £588 £575
90th Percentile £638 £638 £654
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -5.00% +5.26% +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 37 35 40
10th Percentile £26.72 £25.06 £17.46
25th Percentile £36.25 £25.15 £23.66
Median hourly rate £55.00 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +83.33% +9.09% -45.00%
75th Percentile £72.00 £58.13 £50.00
90th Percentile £78.60 £86.98 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £30.00 £46.39
% change year-on-year +83.33% -35.33% -2.67%

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 21,724 15,443 18,393
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.28% 47.53% 43.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,519 9,438 11,491
10th Percentile £313 £281 £272
25th Percentile £413 £403 £407
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year +0.10% -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £714 £729
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +4.38% -4.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,096 758 1,110
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.75 £12.50
25th Percentile £19.31 £17.30 £15.00
Median hourly rate £35.00 £25.15 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +39.17% +0.60% -38.27%
75th Percentile £65.00 £51.74 £60.75
90th Percentile £84.38 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.99 £22.50 £24.47
% change year-on-year +51.07% -8.03% -18.45%

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 16 July 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 16 July 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 16 July 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 £480 -4.00% 661
UK excluding London -46 705 £475 -5.00% 611
London -47 347 £500 - 182
Work from Home -43 288 £463 -7.50% 109
North of England -31 226 £485 -1.42% 138
South East -39 183 £510 -2.86% 155
North West -9 171 £482 +1.37% 68
Midlands -39 128 £425 -5.56% 74
West Midlands -24 122 £425 - 38
Scotland +21 88 £425 +6.38% 35
South West -58 58 £510 -7.27% 112
Yorkshire -63 52 £500 - 50
East of England -29 28 £515 -6.36% 68
Wales -11 19 £468 +35.51% 21
Northern Ireland +7 9 £145 -58.57% 18
North East -40 4 £425 +30.77% 21
East Midlands -31 3 £500 -9.09% 35
Channel Islands 0 1 £550 -24.14%

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 29 (2.46%) SharePoint
2 21 (1.78%) Microsoft Exchange
3 11 (0.93%) Confluence
4 9 (0.76%) OpenStack
5 7 (0.59%) Apache
6 3 (0.25%) CloudStack
6 3 (0.25%) IIS
6 3 (0.25%) nginx
6 3 (0.25%) SAS
6 3 (0.25%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.17%) CMS
8 1 (0.085%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.085%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 49 (4.16%) Microsoft Office
2 28 (2.37%) MS Visio
3 25 (2.12%) Microsoft Excel
4 12 (1.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.17%) Acrobat
Business Applications
1 5 (0.42%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 219 (18.58%) Azure
2 149 (12.64%) AWS
3 75 (6.36%) Microsoft 365
4 47 (3.99%) Entra ID
5 22 (1.87%) GCP
6 20 (1.70%) GitHub
7 19 (1.61%) OpenShift
8 18 (1.53%) OneDrive
9 17 (1.44%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 17 (1.44%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 15 (1.27%) Nutanix
11 12 (1.02%) Azure Sentinel
12 11 (0.93%) SaaS
13 10 (0.85%) Power Platform
14 8 (0.68%) Microsoft Purview
15 7 (0.59%) Cloudflare
15 7 (0.59%) IaaS
16 6 (0.51%) Azure DevOps
17 5 (0.42%) GitHub Actions
17 5 (0.42%) Rubrik
Communications & Networking
1 527 (44.70%) Firewall
2 369 (31.30%) WAN
3 315 (26.72%) BGP
4 298 (25.28%) LAN
5 270 (22.90%) VPN
6 261 (22.14%) Network Security
7 221 (18.74%) OSPF
8 204 (17.30%) Wireless
9 190 (16.12%) DNS
10 170 (14.42%) VLAN
11 144 (12.21%) SD-WAN
12 130 (11.03%) MPLS
13 115 (9.75%) Cisco Nexus
14 114 (9.67%) Wi-Fi
15 109 (9.25%) Cisco ISE
16 102 (8.65%) DHCP
17 96 (8.14%) VXLAN
18 90 (7.63%) TCP/IP
19 88 (7.46%) Cisco ASA
20 81 (6.87%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (1.70%) SQL Server
2 3 (0.25%) Amazon RDS
2 3 (0.25%) MySQL
2 3 (0.25%) NoSQL
2 3 (0.25%) Power BI
3 2 (0.17%) PostgreSQL
4 1 (0.085%) Apache Hive
4 1 (0.085%) Big Data
4 1 (0.085%) ClickHouse
4 1 (0.085%) Hadoop
4 1 (0.085%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 18 (1.53%) Git
1 18 (1.53%) JIRA
2 16 (1.36%) Sonatype Nexus
3 9 (0.76%) Jenkins
4 3 (0.25%) GitLab
5 2 (0.17%) Bitbucket
General
1 275 (23.32%) Social Skills
2 108 (9.16%) Finance
3 85 (7.21%) Analytical Skills
3 85 (7.21%) Telecoms
4 64 (5.43%) Banking
4 64 (5.43%) Public Sector
5 62 (5.26%) Documentation Skills
6 39 (3.31%) Legal
7 23 (1.95%) Organisational Skills
8 21 (1.78%) Financial Institution
9 19 (1.61%) Investment Banking
10 16 (1.36%) Retail
11 14 (1.19%) Military
12 13 (1.10%) Law
13 12 (1.02%) Manufacturing
14 10 (0.85%) Police
15 9 (0.76%) Influencing Skills
16 6 (0.51%) Marketing
16 6 (0.51%) Presentation Skills
17 5 (0.42%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 566 (48.01%) Network Engineer
2 140 (11.87%) Senior
3 134 (11.37%) Architect
4 116 (9.84%) Cisco Engineer
5 105 (8.91%) Cisco Network Engineer
6 97 (8.23%) Security Engineer
7 86 (7.29%) Senior Network Engineer
8 74 (6.28%) Network Architect
9 72 (6.11%) Network Security Engineer
10 57 (4.83%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 55 (4.66%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 43 (3.65%) Data Network Engineer
13 35 (2.97%) Analyst
14 34 (2.88%) Data Engineer
15 33 (2.80%) Cisco Security Engineer
16 29 (2.46%) Field Engineer
17 27 (2.29%) Lead
18 26 (2.21%) Network Specialist
19 24 (2.04%) Data Centre Engineer
19 24 (2.04%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 79 (6.70%) 802.1X
2 15 (1.27%) SAML
3 14 (1.19%) REST
4 10 (0.85%) Flash
4 10 (0.85%) LDAP
5 7 (0.59%) NETCONF
6 6 (0.51%) Jinja
6 6 (0.51%) OpenConfig
6 6 (0.51%) RESTCONF
6 6 (0.51%) XMPP
6 6 (0.51%) YANG
7 4 (0.34%) Django
7 4 (0.34%) JSON
8 3 (0.25%) Elastic Stack
8 3 (0.25%) LAMP
8 3 (0.25%) LEMP Stack
8 3 (0.25%) Microsoft Graph
8 3 (0.25%) YAML
9 2 (0.17%) .NET Core
9 2 (0.17%) Blazor
Miscellaneous
1 301 (25.53%) Data Centre
2 61 (5.17%) PKI
3 47 (3.99%) Hybrid Cloud
4 42 (3.56%) Clustering
5 41 (3.48%) Replication
6 39 (3.31%) Data Protection Act
6 39 (3.31%) Onboarding
7 32 (2.71%) Driving Licence
8 30 (2.54%) Operational Technology
8 30 (2.54%) Video Conferencing
9 19 (1.61%) Analytical Mindset
9 19 (1.61%) Enterprise Storage
10 18 (1.53%) EMC VMAX
10 18 (1.53%) Linux Command Line
11 17 (1.44%) Cloud Native
11 17 (1.44%) Public Cloud
11 17 (1.44%) Security Posture
12 14 (1.19%) SCADA
13 13 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
14 12 (1.02%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 217 (18.41%) Windows
2 128 (10.86%) Linux
3 67 (5.68%) Windows Server
4 18 (1.53%) Ubuntu
4 18 (1.53%) Windows 10
5 17 (1.44%) Unix
6 15 (1.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 10 (0.85%) Windows Server 2019
8 9 (0.76%) Android
9 8 (0.68%) AIX
9 8 (0.68%) Mac OS
10 7 (0.59%) Windows Server 2012
11 5 (0.42%) Data ONTAP
11 5 (0.42%) VMS
12 4 (0.34%) CentOS
13 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
14 1 (0.085%) CatOS
14 1 (0.085%) Debian
14 1 (0.085%) Windows 7
14 1 (0.085%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 185 (15.69%) Migration
2 132 (11.20%) Load Balancing
3 127 (10.77%) High Availability
4 124 (10.52%) Problem-Solving
5 113 (9.58%) ITIL
5 113 (9.58%) Project Delivery
6 89 (7.55%) Network Design
7 87 (7.38%) Change Management
8 83 (7.04%) ITSM
9 75 (6.36%) Continuous Improvement
10 73 (6.19%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 70 (5.94%) Infrastructure as Code
12 66 (5.60%) Stakeholder Management
12 66 (5.60%) Validation
13 65 (5.51%) CI/CD
14 62 (5.26%) Network Monitoring
15 60 (5.09%) Cybersecurity
15 60 (5.09%) Disaster Recovery
16 59 (5.00%) Technical Leadership
17 58 (4.92%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 146 (12.38%) Python
2 62 (5.26%) PowerShell
3 27 (2.29%) Bash
4 24 (2.04%) SQL
5 6 (0.51%) C
6 5 (0.42%) Shell Script
7 4 (0.34%) Java
7 4 (0.34%) Perl
8 3 (0.25%) C++
8 3 (0.25%) Lisp
8 3 (0.25%) PHP
9 2 (0.17%) ActionScript
9 2 (0.17%) Korn
10 1 (0.085%) Bicep
10 1 (0.085%) Ladder Logic
Qualifications
1 346 (29.35%) Cisco Certification
2 320 (27.14%) Security Cleared
3 251 (21.29%) CCNP
4 224 (19.00%) SC Cleared
5 136 (11.54%) CCNA
6 102 (8.65%) DV Cleared
7 71 (6.02%) Degree
8 67 (5.68%) CCIE
9 28 (2.37%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 27 (2.29%) Microsoft Certification
11 22 (1.87%) Network+ Certification
12 19 (1.61%) MCSE
13 18 (1.53%) BPSS Clearance
14 17 (1.44%) Azure Certification
14 17 (1.44%) Server+ Certification
15 13 (1.10%) JNCIP
15 13 (1.10%) JNCIS
15 13 (1.10%) VCAP
16 12 (1.02%) AWS Certification
16 12 (1.02%) CCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 40 (3.39%) SLA
2 33 (2.80%) NIST
3 29 (2.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 23 (1.95%) Cyber Essentials
5 20 (1.70%) QA
6 19 (1.61%) NCSC
7 7 (0.59%) Disclosure Scotland
8 6 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 6 (0.51%) PMO
9 5 (0.42%) GDPR
9 5 (0.42%) PCI DSS
10 4 (0.34%) JSP 440
11 3 (0.25%) Data Quality
11 3 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 3 (0.25%) NIST 800
12 2 (0.17%) Accessibility
12 2 (0.17%) Government Security Classifications
12 2 (0.17%) GRC
12 2 (0.17%) ISA99
13 1 (0.085%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 146 (12.38%) VMware Infrastructure
2 104 (8.82%) Active Directory
3 56 (4.75%) vSphere
4 54 (4.58%) VMware ESXi
5 50 (4.24%) VMware NSX
6 35 (2.97%) Virtual Machines
7 31 (2.63%) Firmware
8 22 (1.87%) Hyper-V
9 14 (1.19%) NFS
10 12 (1.02%) SRDF
11 10 (0.85%) GPFS
12 9 (0.76%) Docker
13 7 (0.59%) Virtual Desktop
14 6 (0.51%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 5 (0.42%) Virtual Servers
16 3 (0.25%) Dovecot
16 3 (0.25%) Postfix
16 3 (0.25%) UAG
17 2 (0.17%) Snort
17 2 (0.17%) vCloud
Systems Management
1 152 (12.89%) Ansible
2 94 (7.97%) FortiGate
3 67 (5.68%) Terraform
4 30 (2.54%) vCenter Server
5 27 (2.29%) Grafana
6 24 (2.04%) Kubernetes
6 24 (2.04%) Microsoft Intune
7 21 (1.78%) SCCM
8 20 (1.70%) Prometheus
9 15 (1.27%) Cisco CUCM
10 14 (1.19%) Cisco Prime
10 14 (1.19%) vRealize
11 10 (0.85%) Single Sign-On
12 8 (0.68%) VxRail
12 8 (0.68%) WMI
13 7 (0.59%) EMC VPLEX
13 7 (0.59%) WSUS
14 6 (0.51%) EMC TimeFinder
15 5 (0.42%) Jamf Pro
15 5 (0.42%) SCOM
Vendors
1 275 (23.32%) Palo Alto
2 231 (19.59%) F5
3 204 (17.30%) Microsoft
4 200 (16.96%) Fortinet
4 200 (16.96%) VMware
5 169 (14.33%) Juniper
6 112 (9.50%) CheckPoint
7 99 (8.40%) Aruba
8 97 (8.23%) Meraki
9 94 (7.97%) ServiceNow
9 94 (7.97%) SolarWinds
10 79 (6.70%) Arista
11 60 (5.09%) Splunk
12 50 (4.24%) Zscaler
13 41 (3.48%) Dell
14 29 (2.46%) EMC
14 29 (2.46%) Extreme Networks
15 28 (2.37%) Brocade
16 26 (2.21%) Citrix
17 25 (2.12%) IBM