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 4 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
4 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 89 63 57
Rank change year-on-year -26 -6 +35
Contract jobs citing Cisco 1,050 1,220 1,659
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.88% 3.39% 3.71%
As % of the Vendors category 6.08% 7.48% 8.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 699 722 1,005
10th Percentile £263 £285 £263
25th Percentile £363 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +5.26% +0.53%
75th Percentile £568 £575 £588
90th Percentile £600 £649 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £450
% change year-on-year +3.05% +5.56% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 30 83
10th Percentile £24.41 £18.13 £18.19
25th Percentile £25.15 £20.00 £24.00
Median hourly rate £35.00 £32.50 £43.75
Median % change year-on-year +7.69% -25.71% +70.17%
75th Percentile £74.26 £58.75 £65.98
90th Percentile £90.75 £75.00 £77.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.25 £37.50 £47.50
% change year-on-year +84.67% -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 17,280 16,314 20,249
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 47.35% 45.34% 45.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,974 9,654 12,908
10th Percentile £290 £296 £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 £720 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.60% - +1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 854 512 668
10th Percentile £15.27 £15.51 £15.30
25th Percentile £18.22 £19.28 £20.00
Median hourly rate £25.00 £29.39 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -14.92% -33.97% +73.08%
75th Percentile £43.75 £62.50 £64.55
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 4 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 4 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 4 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 -24 886 £500 - 331
UK excluding London -15 672 £490 +3.05% 324
London -44 295 £450 -11.76% 92
Work from Home -49 245 £450 -10.00% 123
South East +1 210 £500 - 146
Midlands +18 161 £385 -9.41% 37
West Midlands +24 140 £419 -16.25% 29
North of England -53 129 £483 +1.58% 63
North West -32 83 £500 +5.26% 39
Scotland +30 70 £425 +6.25% 27
South West -43 47 £550 +18.92% 24
East of England -10 37 £445 -15.24% 24
Yorkshire -55 37 £450 -10.00% 20
East Midlands -16 21 £158 -58.00% 8
Wales -3 16 £170 -56.13% 14
Northern Ireland +3 11 £475 -
North East -2 11 £175 -64.10% 5
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 66 (6.29%) Microsoft Exchange
2 47 (4.48%) SharePoint
3 18 (1.71%) Confluence
4 16 (1.52%) 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 32 (3.05%) 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 14 (1.33%) 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
2 142 (13.52%) AWS
3 115 (10.95%) 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
8 13 (1.24%) Datadog
9 12 (1.14%) Akamai
9 12 (1.14%) Azure ExpressRoute
10 11 (1.05%) AWS CloudFormation
11 10 (0.95%) AWS Lambda
11 10 (0.95%) OpenShift
11 10 (0.95%) Serverless
12 8 (0.76%) GitHub
12 8 (0.76%) Nutanix
12 8 (0.76%) Power Platform
12 8 (0.76%) SaaS
13 7 (0.67%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 431 (41.05%) Firewall
2 238 (22.67%) WAN
3 197 (18.76%) LAN
4 180 (17.14%) Wireless
5 169 (16.10%) VPN
6 168 (16.00%) BGP
7 136 (12.95%) Network Security
8 135 (12.86%) SD-WAN
9 124 (11.81%) OSPF
10 120 (11.43%) DNS
11 103 (9.81%) Cisco IOS
12 98 (9.33%) Cisco ISE
13 93 (8.86%) Cisco Nexus
14 88 (8.38%) MPLS
14 88 (8.38%) Wi-Fi
15 75 (7.14%) VLAN
16 74 (7.05%) DHCP
17 60 (5.71%) IPsec
18 54 (5.14%) Cisco ASA
18 54 (5.14%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (1.14%) 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
Development Applications
1 20 (1.90%) JIRA
2 17 (1.62%) GitLab
3 13 (1.24%) Sonatype Nexus
4 10 (0.95%) 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
2 176 (16.76%) Public Sector
3 132 (12.57%) Telecoms
4 128 (12.19%) Finance
5 74 (7.05%) Analytical Skills
6 66 (6.29%) Manufacturing
7 43 (4.10%) Electronics
7 43 (4.10%) Marketing
8 41 (3.90%) Documentation Skills
9 40 (3.81%) Banking
10 26 (2.48%) Legal
11 22 (2.10%) Games
12 21 (2.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 12 (1.14%) Presentation Skills
14 11 (1.05%) Organisational Skills
15 10 (0.95%) Aerospace
16 9 (0.86%) Military
17 8 (0.76%) Investment Banking
18 7 (0.67%) Influencing Skills
19 6 (0.57%) Retail
Job Titles
1 368 (35.05%) Network Engineer
2 121 (11.52%) Architect
3 80 (7.62%) Cisco Engineer
4 79 (7.52%) Network Architect
5 70 (6.67%) Analyst
6 65 (6.19%) Cisco Network Engineer
7 64 (6.10%) Consultant
8 63 (6.00%) Senior
9 55 (5.24%) Support Engineer
10 53 (5.05%) Security Engineer
11 52 (4.95%) IT Support
12 49 (4.67%) Network Consultant
12 49 (4.67%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
13 46 (4.38%) Platform Engineer
14 37 (3.52%) Desktop Support
14 37 (3.52%) Network Security Engineer
15 34 (3.24%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
16 32 (3.05%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 29 (2.76%) Juniper Engineer
17 29 (2.76%) Senior Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (3.24%) 802.1X
2 18 (1.71%) RFC 2544
2 18 (1.71%) XMPP
3 12 (1.14%) Jinja
3 12 (1.14%) JSON
3 12 (1.14%) NETCONF
3 12 (1.14%) YANG
4 11 (1.05%) Flash
5 10 (0.95%) XML
6 8 (0.76%) REST
7 7 (0.67%) Node.js
8 6 (0.57%) LDAP
9 4 (0.38%) RESTCONF
10 3 (0.29%) OpenConfig
11 2 (0.19%) ARM Templates
11 2 (0.19%) eBPF
11 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Graph
11 2 (0.19%) SAML
11 2 (0.19%) VML
11 2 (0.19%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 242 (23.05%) Data Centre
2 37 (3.52%) PKI
3 30 (2.86%) Driving Licence
4 28 (2.67%) Onboarding
5 27 (2.57%) Data Protection Act
6 26 (2.48%) Linux Command Line
7 24 (2.29%) Cloud Native
8 22 (2.10%) Hybrid Cloud
9 21 (2.00%) Replication
10 20 (1.90%) Operational Technology
11 19 (1.81%) Video Conferencing
12 16 (1.52%) Fibre Optics
13 13 (1.24%) Management Information System
13 13 (1.24%) NHS
14 12 (1.14%) Product Ownership
14 12 (1.14%) Security Posture
14 12 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
14 12 (1.14%) Virtual Team
15 11 (1.05%) Enterprise Storage
16 10 (0.95%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 185 (17.62%) Windows
2 111 (10.57%) Linux
3 87 (8.29%) Mac OS
4 83 (7.90%) Android
5 65 (6.19%) Windows Server
6 30 (2.86%) Windows 10
7 22 (2.10%) 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 Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 123 (11.71%) Problem-Solving
2 116 (11.05%) Migration
3 93 (8.86%) Service Management
4 84 (8.00%) Network Design
5 77 (7.33%) ITIL
6 75 (7.14%) Agile
6 75 (7.14%) Roadmaps
7 70 (6.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 63 (6.00%) Business Intelligence
8 63 (6.00%) ITSM
9 60 (5.71%) Change Management
9 60 (5.71%) Collaborative Working
10 59 (5.62%) Cybersecurity
10 59 (5.62%) Project Delivery
11 58 (5.52%) Incident Response
11 58 (5.52%) Network Architecture
12 53 (5.05%) Continuous Improvement
12 53 (5.05%) High Availability
13 51 (4.86%) Load Balancing
14 49 (4.67%) Performance Monitoring
Programming Languages
1 130 (12.38%) Python
2 84 (8.00%) PowerShell
3 40 (3.81%) Bash
4 33 (3.14%) SQL
5 25 (2.38%) Perl
6 13 (1.24%) JavaScript
7 9 (0.86%) C++
8 8 (0.76%) Lisp
9 6 (0.57%) Java
9 6 (0.57%) Kusto Query Language
10 3 (0.29%) C
10 3 (0.29%) Go
11 2 (0.19%) PHP
11 2 (0.19%) VB
12 1 (0.095%) Ruby
12 1 (0.095%) VBA
Qualifications
1 435 (41.43%) Security Cleared
2 334 (31.81%) SC Cleared
3 268 (25.52%) Cisco Certification
4 200 (19.05%) CCNP
5 112 (10.67%) DV Cleared
6 102 (9.71%) CCNA
7 76 (7.24%) Degree
8 70 (6.67%) CCIE
9 25 (2.38%) ITIL Certification
10 24 (2.29%) Computer Science Degree
11 23 (2.19%) BPSS Clearance
12 21 (2.00%) CISSP
12 21 (2.00%) Microsoft Certification
13 19 (1.81%) JNCIE
14 18 (1.71%) AWS Certification
15 17 (1.62%) Azure Certification
16 14 (1.33%) JNCIS
17 13 (1.24%) CCDP
17 13 (1.24%) JNCIA
18 12 (1.14%) 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%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 1 (0.095%) ISO 22301
12 1 (0.095%) JSP 440
12 1 (0.095%) JTAG
12 1 (0.095%) NIST 800
System Software
1 161 (15.33%) Active Directory
2 119 (11.33%) VMware Infrastructure
3 55 (5.24%) VMware NSX
4 34 (3.24%) vSphere
5 25 (2.38%) Firmware
6 23 (2.19%) VMware ESXi
7 21 (2.00%) Docker
8 16 (1.52%) Hyper-V
9 12 (1.14%) NFS
10 11 (1.05%) GPFS
10 11 (1.05%) Virtual Machines
11 7 (0.67%) Snort
11 7 (0.67%) Virtual Servers
12 5 (0.48%) KVM
12 5 (0.48%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 5 (0.48%) Squid
13 3 (0.29%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.19%) Terminal Services
14 2 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
15 1 (0.095%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 91 (8.67%) Ansible
2 59 (5.62%) FortiGate
3 53 (5.05%) SCCM
4 48 (4.57%) Terraform
5 45 (4.29%) vCenter Server
6 41 (3.90%) Microsoft Intune
7 26 (2.48%) vRealize
8 22 (2.10%) Kubernetes
9 17 (1.62%) Cisco CUCM
10 12 (1.14%) 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
15 7 (0.67%) EMC VPLEX
15 7 (0.67%) HP SiteScope
15 7 (0.67%) Single Sign-On
16 6 (0.57%) NetBackup
17 5 (0.48%) Nexpose
Vendors
1 218 (20.76%) Microsoft
2 193 (18.38%) Juniper
3 170 (16.19%) Palo Alto
4 153 (14.57%) VMware
5 135 (12.86%) Fortinet
6 120 (11.43%) SolarWinds
7 114 (10.86%) Meraki
8 111 (10.57%) F5
9 88 (8.38%) Dell
10 83 (7.90%) CheckPoint
11 79 (7.52%) Splunk
12 71 (6.76%) HP
13 65 (6.19%) Aruba
14 62 (5.90%) ServiceNow
15 54 (5.14%) Apple
16 45 (4.29%) SAP
17 38 (3.62%) Zscaler
18 35 (3.33%) AppDynamics
19 32 (3.05%) IBM
19 32 (3.05%) Oracle