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 9 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
9 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 122 86 64
Rank change year-on-year -36 -22 -11
Contract jobs citing Cisco 1,201 989 1,257
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.20% 2.98% 3.31%
As % of the Vendors category 5.29% 6.26% 7.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 772 631 748
10th Percentile £257 £270 £257
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% +8.11%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £674 £638 £660
UK excluding London median daily rate £459 £491 £500
% change year-on-year -6.47% -1.80% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 46 50 35
10th Percentile £27.36 £25.14 £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% -39.82%
75th Percentile £68.75 £65.00 £51.88
90th Percentile £78.75 £83.66 £74.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £35.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year +57.14% -6.67% -21.05%

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 22,721 15,802 16,899
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.69% 47.64% 44.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,733 9,722 9,953
10th Percentile £310 £275 £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 £620 £613 £625
90th Percentile £710 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £486 £500
% change year-on-year +2.83% -2.75% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,391 808 602
10th Percentile £13.84 £14.75 £14.86
25th Percentile £16.10 £17.74 £16.00
Median hourly rate £24.19 £25.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.24% -23.08% -24.86%
75th Percentile £57.25 £38.80 £64.88
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.18 £21.10 £30.00
% change year-on-year +9.86% -29.67% -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 9 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 9 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 9 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 -48 993 £492 -1.60% 1,140
UK excluding London -38 711 £459 -6.47% 648
London -43 370 £500 +5.26% 514
Work from Home -42 285 £475 +2.70% 297
North of England +6 234 £483 +1.68% 153
North West +20 159 £483 +7.33% 82
Midlands -40 126 £450 - 107
South East -79 124 £430 -14.00% 165
West Midlands -28 122 £450 -2.70% 57
Scotland +12 98 £400 -5.88% 32
Yorkshire -19 68 £500 +2.15% 52
East of England -3 60 £500 +12.36% 79
South West -33 59 £525 -4.55% 85
Wales +13 28 £376 +88.13% 21
North East -37 9 £375 +50.00% 19
Northern Ireland +3 8 £110 -76.95% 14
Channel Islands -4 3 £600 -17.24%
East Midlands -33 3 £500 +217.46% 50

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 38 (3.16%) SharePoint
2 34 (2.83%) Microsoft Exchange
3 14 (1.17%) CMS
4 12 (1.00%) Confluence
5 9 (0.75%) OpenStack
6 8 (0.67%) IIS
6 8 (0.67%) 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 45 (3.75%) Microsoft Office
2 28 (2.33%) Microsoft Excel
3 22 (1.83%) MS Visio
4 8 (0.67%) 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
1 235 (19.57%) Azure
2 147 (12.24%) AWS
3 95 (7.91%) Microsoft 365
4 69 (5.75%) Entra ID
5 34 (2.83%) GitHub
6 33 (2.75%) OneDrive
7 30 (2.50%) GCP
8 21 (1.75%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 15 (1.25%) Nutanix
9 15 (1.25%) Power Platform
10 14 (1.17%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 12 (1.00%) OpenShift
11 12 (1.00%) SaaS
12 11 (0.92%) 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
1 491 (40.88%) Firewall
2 356 (29.64%) WAN
3 291 (24.23%) BGP
4 273 (22.73%) LAN
5 266 (22.15%) Network Security
6 260 (21.65%) VPN
7 210 (17.49%) Wireless
8 187 (15.57%) OSPF
9 180 (14.99%) VLAN
10 169 (14.07%) DNS
11 148 (12.32%) SD-WAN
12 141 (11.74%) MPLS
13 133 (11.07%) Wi-Fi
14 111 (9.24%) Cisco Nexus
15 106 (8.83%) TCP/IP
16 102 (8.49%) DHCP
17 92 (7.66%) Cisco ISE
18 89 (7.41%) Cisco IOS
19 84 (6.99%) Cisco ASA
20 76 (6.33%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (2.25%) SQL Server
2 8 (0.67%) Power BI
3 6 (0.50%) Hadoop
4 5 (0.42%) 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 40 (3.33%) Git
2 16 (1.33%) JIRA
3 13 (1.08%) GitLab
4 12 (1.00%) Sonatype Nexus
5 6 (0.50%) Jenkins
6 2 (0.17%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.083%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.083%) Tricentis qTest
7 1 (0.083%) Zephyr
General
1 275 (22.90%) Social Skills
2 137 (11.41%) Finance
3 124 (10.32%) Telecoms
4 106 (8.83%) Analytical Skills
5 74 (6.16%) Banking
6 62 (5.16%) Public Sector
7 58 (4.83%) Documentation Skills
8 47 (3.91%) Legal
9 24 (2.00%) Organisational Skills
10 22 (1.83%) Investment Banking
11 19 (1.58%) Retail
12 17 (1.42%) Financial Institution
13 14 (1.17%) Military
14 12 (1.00%) Law
15 11 (0.92%) Manufacturing
16 9 (0.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 9 (0.75%) Influencing Skills
17 8 (0.67%) Police
18 6 (0.50%) Presentation Skills
19 5 (0.42%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 596 (49.63%) Network Engineer
2 180 (14.99%) Senior
3 149 (12.41%) Architect
4 141 (11.74%) Cisco Engineer
5 134 (11.16%) Senior Network Engineer
6 118 (9.83%) Cisco Network Engineer
7 84 (6.99%) Security Engineer
8 79 (6.58%) Network Architect
9 63 (5.25%) Network Security Engineer
10 61 (5.08%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 45 (3.75%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 43 (3.58%) Lead
13 42 (3.50%) Field Engineer
14 41 (3.41%) Analyst
15 40 (3.33%) Support Engineer
16 36 (3.00%) Solutions Architect
17 35 (2.91%) Telecoms Engineer
18 28 (2.33%) Consultant
19 27 (2.25%) Data Network Engineer
20 26 (2.16%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 82 (6.83%) Terraform
2 54 (4.50%) 802.1X
3 33 (2.75%) REST
4 21 (1.75%) JSON
4 21 (1.75%) YAML
5 20 (1.67%) XMPP
6 13 (1.08%) NETCONF
7 12 (1.00%) SAML
8 10 (0.83%) YANG
9 7 (0.58%) Microsoft Graph
9 7 (0.58%) RESTCONF
10 5 (0.42%) Flash
10 5 (0.42%) OpenConfig
11 3 (0.25%) .NET
11 3 (0.25%) Django
11 3 (0.25%) Elastic Stack
11 3 (0.25%) Java RMI
11 3 (0.25%) LAMP
11 3 (0.25%) LDAP
11 3 (0.25%) RFC 2544
Miscellaneous
1 284 (23.65%) Data Centre
2 53 (4.41%) Hybrid Cloud
3 51 (4.25%) Video Conferencing
4 48 (4.00%) Onboarding
5 47 (3.91%) Driving Licence
6 39 (3.25%) Data Protection Act
6 39 (3.25%) PKI
7 37 (3.08%) Operational Technology
8 33 (2.75%) Management Information System
9 26 (2.16%) Public Cloud
10 25 (2.08%) Self-Motivation
11 21 (1.75%) Clustering
12 20 (1.67%) Cloud Native
13 19 (1.58%) Private Cloud
13 19 (1.58%) Replication
14 16 (1.33%) Analytical Mindset
15 15 (1.25%) Linux Command Line
16 14 (1.17%) Virtual Team
17 13 (1.08%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
17 13 (1.08%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 241 (20.07%) Windows
2 119 (9.91%) Linux
3 96 (7.99%) Windows Server
4 24 (2.00%) Mac OS
4 24 (2.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 17 (1.42%) Ubuntu
5 17 (1.42%) Windows 10
6 10 (0.83%) Android
7 9 (0.75%) Unix
8 8 (0.67%) Windows Server 2012
8 8 (0.67%) Windows Server 2019
9 7 (0.58%) AIX
10 5 (0.42%) CentOS
11 4 (0.33%) Data ONTAP
11 4 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
12 3 (0.25%) VMS
13 1 (0.083%) CatOS
13 1 (0.083%) Check Point GAiA
13 1 (0.083%) Debian
13 1 (0.083%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 188 (15.65%) Migration
2 164 (13.66%) Project Delivery
3 145 (12.07%) Problem-Solving
4 130 (10.82%) ITIL
5 125 (10.41%) Stakeholder Management
6 102 (8.49%) Load Balancing
7 100 (8.33%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 96 (7.99%) Change Management
9 95 (7.91%) High Availability
10 92 (7.66%) Validation
11 90 (7.49%) Continuous Improvement
12 89 (7.41%) Network Design
13 87 (7.24%) Infrastructure as Code
14 76 (6.33%) Data Protection
14 76 (6.33%) Zero Trust
15 75 (6.24%) Cybersecurity
16 73 (6.08%) Technical Leadership
17 66 (5.50%) ITSM
18 63 (5.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 60 (5.00%) Disaster Recovery
Programming Languages
1 138 (11.49%) Python
2 53 (4.41%) PowerShell
3 29 (2.41%) Bash
4 28 (2.33%) SQL
5 3 (0.25%) Lisp
5 3 (0.25%) Shell Script
6 2 (0.17%) Bicep
6 2 (0.17%) Go
6 2 (0.17%) Java
6 2 (0.17%) Perl
7 1 (0.083%) C++
7 1 (0.083%) Kusto Query Language
7 1 (0.083%) Ladder Logic
7 1 (0.083%) R
Qualifications
1 322 (26.81%) Cisco Certification
2 276 (22.98%) Security Cleared
3 231 (19.23%) CCNP
4 202 (16.82%) SC Cleared
5 126 (10.49%) CCNA
6 69 (5.75%) DV Cleared
7 68 (5.66%) Degree
8 67 (5.58%) CCIE
9 24 (2.00%) Microsoft Certification
10 22 (1.83%) CISSP
11 20 (1.67%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 16 (1.33%) AWS Certification
12 16 (1.33%) MCSE
13 14 (1.17%) Azure Certification
14 13 (1.08%) CCSE
14 13 (1.08%) Network+ Certification
15 12 (1.00%) BPSS Clearance
15 12 (1.00%) Computer Science Degree
16 11 (0.92%) ISTQB
17 10 (0.83%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 40 (3.33%) SLA
2 30 (2.50%) NIST
3 23 (1.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 21 (1.75%) QA
5 15 (1.25%) PCI DSS
6 13 (1.08%) Cyber Essentials
7 10 (0.83%) GDPR
8 7 (0.58%) NCSC
9 6 (0.50%) GRC
10 5 (0.42%) Data Quality
10 5 (0.42%) ISO 31000
10 5 (0.42%) ISO 9001
10 5 (0.42%) 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
1 150 (12.49%) VMware Infrastructure
2 130 (10.82%) Active Directory
3 52 (4.33%) vSphere
4 39 (3.25%) VMware NSX
5 34 (2.83%) VMware ESXi
6 31 (2.58%) Hyper-V
7 28 (2.33%) Firmware
7 28 (2.33%) Virtual Machines
8 17 (1.42%) Docker
9 6 (0.50%) NFS
10 5 (0.42%) FreeRADIUS
10 5 (0.42%) GPFS
10 5 (0.42%) ISA Server
11 4 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
11 4 (0.33%) Virtual Servers
12 3 (0.25%) Dovecot
12 3 (0.25%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 3 (0.25%) Postfix
12 3 (0.25%) SRDF
13 2 (0.17%) IAG
Systems Management
1 139 (11.57%) Ansible
2 74 (6.16%) FortiGate
3 34 (2.83%) Cisco CUCM
4 28 (2.33%) Microsoft Intune
5 25 (2.08%) Kubernetes
6 21 (1.75%) Cisco Prime
6 21 (1.75%) SCCM
7 18 (1.50%) vCenter Server
8 12 (1.00%) Nagios
9 9 (0.75%) Grafana
9 9 (0.75%) WMI
10 8 (0.67%) Failover Clustering
10 8 (0.67%) Puppet
11 7 (0.58%) CASB
11 7 (0.58%) Prometheus
11 7 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
11 7 (0.58%) WSUS
12 6 (0.50%) Red Hat Satellite
13 5 (0.42%) SolarWinds Orion
13 5 (0.42%) vRealize
Vendors
1 271 (22.56%) Palo Alto
2 243 (20.23%) Microsoft
3 210 (17.49%) VMware
4 205 (17.07%) Fortinet
5 174 (14.49%) F5
6 128 (10.66%) Meraki
7 123 (10.24%) Juniper
8 104 (8.66%) CheckPoint
9 88 (7.33%) Aruba
10 85 (7.08%) ServiceNow
11 82 (6.83%) SolarWinds
12 76 (6.33%) Arista
13 59 (4.91%) Zscaler
14 42 (3.50%) Splunk
15 37 (3.08%) Red Hat
16 28 (2.33%) Dell
17 27 (2.25%) Nokia
18 26 (2.16%) NetApp
19 25 (2.08%) Infoblox
20 21 (1.75%) Citrix