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 25 August 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
25 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 115 77 66
Rank change year-on-year -38 -11 -12
Contract jobs citing Cisco 1,204 1,050 1,203
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.24% 3.21% 3.10%
As % of the Vendors category 5.38% 6.79% 7.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 796 646 743
10th Percentile £300 £300 £250
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £484 £492 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.63% -1.60% +5.54%
75th Percentile £575 £585 £575
90th Percentile £655 £638 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £468 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -6.40% - +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 41 32
10th Percentile £26.72 - £17.68
25th Percentile £36.25 £25.15 £21.93
Median hourly rate £52.50 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +75.00% +9.09% -42.11%
75th Percentile £67.84 £58.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £78.75 £83.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £30.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year +83.33% -40.00% +2.22%

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 22,372 15,460 16,980
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.71% 47.22% 43.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,803 9,448 10,476
10th Percentile £313 £275 £286
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £611 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £728
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,160 806 783
10th Percentile £14.36 £14.67 £13.30
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £29.73 £25.15 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.21% -10.18% -36.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £46.30 £61.60
90th Percentile £83.03 £67.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £21.24 £26.13
% change year-on-year +31.83% -18.70% -34.03%

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 25 August 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 25 August 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 25 August 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 -44 1,014 £500 - 610
UK excluding London -39 717 £468 -6.40% 401
London -34 378 £500 - 257
Work from Home -23 292 £475 - 172
North of England -7 254 £493 +1.73% 97
North West +8 182 £487 +2.47% 50
South East -60 148 £467 -11.14% 101
Midlands -34 132 £425 -14.14% 60
West Midlands -19 126 £425 -17.48% 31
Scotland +29 96 £413 -2.94% 23
Yorkshire -36 66 £500 +1.63% 38
South West -51 56 £518 -6.97% 59
East of England -18 34 £500 -9.09% 49
Wales -2 26 £425 +112.50% 14
Northern Ireland +3 8 £115 -67.14% 7
North East -38 7 £375 -31.82% 10
East Midlands -35 3 £525 +20.00% 29
Channel Islands -1 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 37 (3.07%) SharePoint
2 31 (2.57%) Microsoft Exchange
3 12 (1.00%) Confluence
4 10 (0.83%) OpenStack
5 8 (0.66%) SAS
6 7 (0.58%) Apache
7 6 (0.50%) JBoss
8 4 (0.33%) nginx
9 3 (0.25%) CloudStack
9 3 (0.25%) IIS
9 3 (0.25%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.17%) CMS
10 2 (0.17%) Skype for Business
11 1 (0.083%) Apache Spark
11 1 (0.083%) FactoryTalk
11 1 (0.083%) Mendix
11 1 (0.083%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 50 (4.15%) Microsoft Office
2 29 (2.41%) Microsoft Excel
3 27 (2.24%) MS Visio
4 10 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.25%) Acrobat
6 1 (0.083%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.083%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.083%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 242 (20.10%) Azure
2 152 (12.62%) AWS
3 94 (7.81%) Microsoft 365
4 59 (4.90%) Entra ID
5 30 (2.49%) GitHub
6 29 (2.41%) OneDrive
7 23 (1.91%) GCP
8 18 (1.50%) Azure ExpressRoute
8 18 (1.50%) OpenShift
8 18 (1.50%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 15 (1.25%) Power Platform
10 12 (1.00%) Nutanix
10 12 (1.00%) SaaS
11 10 (0.83%) Azure DevOps
11 10 (0.83%) Azure Sentinel
12 7 (0.58%) AWS Direct Connect
12 7 (0.58%) Cloudflare
12 7 (0.58%) GitHub Actions
12 7 (0.58%) IaaS
12 7 (0.58%) Rubrik
Communications & Networking
1 514 (42.69%) Firewall
2 361 (29.98%) WAN
3 316 (26.25%) BGP
4 281 (23.34%) LAN
5 256 (21.26%) VPN
6 248 (20.60%) Network Security
7 204 (16.94%) Wireless
8 203 (16.86%) OSPF
9 192 (15.95%) DNS
10 183 (15.20%) VLAN
11 149 (12.38%) SD-WAN
12 135 (11.21%) Wi-Fi
13 123 (10.22%) MPLS
14 116 (9.63%) Cisco Nexus
15 109 (9.05%) DHCP
16 98 (8.14%) Cisco ISE
17 97 (8.06%) TCP/IP
17 97 (8.06%) VXLAN
18 96 (7.97%) Cisco ASA
19 79 (6.56%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (2.24%) SQL Server
2 7 (0.58%) Power BI
3 6 (0.50%) Big Data
3 6 (0.50%) Hadoop
4 4 (0.33%) Amazon RDS
5 3 (0.25%) MySQL
6 2 (0.17%) Metadata
6 2 (0.17%) NoSQL
6 2 (0.17%) PostgreSQL
7 1 (0.083%) Apache Hive
7 1 (0.083%) ClickHouse
Development Applications
1 30 (2.49%) Git
2 20 (1.66%) JIRA
3 12 (1.00%) GitLab
3 12 (1.00%) Sonatype Nexus
4 9 (0.75%) Jenkins
5 2 (0.17%) Robot Framework
6 1 (0.083%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.083%) Tricentis qTest
6 1 (0.083%) Zephyr
General
1 276 (22.92%) Social Skills
2 115 (9.55%) Finance
3 114 (9.47%) Telecoms
4 100 (8.31%) Analytical Skills
5 64 (5.32%) Public Sector
6 62 (5.15%) Banking
7 55 (4.57%) Documentation Skills
8 36 (2.99%) Legal
9 21 (1.74%) Investment Banking
9 21 (1.74%) Organisational Skills
10 18 (1.50%) Financial Institution
11 16 (1.33%) Retail
12 14 (1.16%) Law
13 12 (1.00%) Military
14 11 (0.91%) Manufacturing
14 11 (0.91%) Police
15 9 (0.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 9 (0.75%) Influencing Skills
16 6 (0.50%) Marketing
17 4 (0.33%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 605 (50.25%) Network Engineer
2 176 (14.62%) Senior
3 145 (12.04%) Architect
3 145 (12.04%) Cisco Engineer
4 130 (10.80%) Cisco Network Engineer
5 126 (10.47%) Senior Network Engineer
6 85 (7.06%) Security Engineer
7 73 (6.06%) Network Architect
8 68 (5.65%) Network Security Engineer
9 58 (4.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 52 (4.32%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
11 42 (3.49%) Data Network Engineer
12 41 (3.41%) Field Engineer
13 35 (2.91%) Lead
14 34 (2.82%) Analyst
15 32 (2.66%) Cisco Security Engineer
15 32 (2.66%) Data Engineer
15 32 (2.66%) Telecoms Engineer
16 30 (2.49%) Solutions Architect
17 29 (2.41%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 74 (6.15%) Terraform
2 64 (5.32%) 802.1X
3 25 (2.08%) REST
4 12 (1.00%) JSON
4 12 (1.00%) SAML
4 12 (1.00%) YAML
5 9 (0.75%) Flash
5 9 (0.75%) NETCONF
6 7 (0.58%) Microsoft Graph
6 7 (0.58%) OpenConfig
6 7 (0.58%) RESTCONF
6 7 (0.58%) XMPP
6 7 (0.58%) YANG
7 6 (0.50%) Jinja
8 4 (0.33%) LDAP
9 3 (0.25%) Django
9 3 (0.25%) Java RMI
9 3 (0.25%) LAMP
9 3 (0.25%) Middleware
9 3 (0.25%) RFC 2544
Miscellaneous
1 288 (23.92%) Data Centre
2 51 (4.24%) PKI
3 50 (4.15%) Hybrid Cloud
4 45 (3.74%) Onboarding
5 37 (3.07%) Data Protection Act
6 36 (2.99%) Driving Licence
7 30 (2.49%) Operational Technology
8 29 (2.41%) Clustering
8 29 (2.41%) Replication
8 29 (2.41%) Video Conferencing
9 24 (1.99%) Cloud Native
10 22 (1.83%) Analytical Mindset
11 19 (1.58%) Enterprise Storage
12 18 (1.50%) Linux Command Line
13 17 (1.41%) Public Cloud
13 17 (1.41%) Self-Motivation
14 16 (1.33%) Management Information System
15 14 (1.16%) IoT
15 14 (1.16%) Private Cloud
16 13 (1.08%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 217 (18.02%) Windows
2 125 (10.38%) Linux
3 84 (6.98%) Windows Server
4 18 (1.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 18 (1.50%) Ubuntu
5 17 (1.41%) Windows 10
6 10 (0.83%) Mac OS
6 10 (0.83%) Unix
6 10 (0.83%) Windows Server 2019
7 9 (0.75%) Windows Server 2012
8 8 (0.66%) AIX
8 8 (0.66%) Android
9 6 (0.50%) CentOS
9 6 (0.50%) Data ONTAP
10 4 (0.33%) VMS
10 4 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.083%) Debian
11 1 (0.083%) Oracle Linux
11 1 (0.083%) Windows 7
11 1 (0.083%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 187 (15.53%) Migration
2 149 (12.38%) Project Delivery
3 140 (11.63%) ITIL
4 130 (10.80%) Problem-Solving
5 124 (10.30%) Load Balancing
6 119 (9.88%) High Availability
7 91 (7.56%) Change Management
7 91 (7.56%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 91 (7.56%) Network Design
8 86 (7.14%) Continuous Improvement
9 84 (6.98%) Stakeholder Management
10 83 (6.89%) Infrastructure as Code
11 75 (6.23%) Validation
12 74 (6.15%) ITSM
13 69 (5.73%) Technical Leadership
14 68 (5.65%) CI/CD
15 63 (5.23%) Network Monitoring
16 62 (5.15%) Zero Trust
17 60 (4.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 59 (4.90%) Data Protection
Programming Languages
1 142 (11.79%) Python
2 59 (4.90%) PowerShell
3 31 (2.57%) Bash
4 25 (2.08%) SQL
5 5 (0.42%) Java
6 4 (0.33%) C
6 4 (0.33%) C++
7 3 (0.25%) Lisp
7 3 (0.25%) Shell Script
8 2 (0.17%) Go
8 2 (0.17%) Perl
9 1 (0.083%) ActionScript
9 1 (0.083%) Bicep
9 1 (0.083%) Ladder Logic
Qualifications
1 335 (27.82%) Cisco Certification
2 306 (25.42%) Security Cleared
3 236 (19.60%) CCNP
4 221 (18.36%) SC Cleared
5 134 (11.13%) CCNA
6 83 (6.89%) DV Cleared
7 73 (6.06%) Degree
8 66 (5.48%) CCIE
9 25 (2.08%) Microsoft Certification
10 23 (1.91%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 19 (1.58%) MCSE
12 17 (1.41%) Azure Certification
12 17 (1.41%) Network+ Certification
13 14 (1.16%) AWS Certification
13 14 (1.16%) BPSS Clearance
13 14 (1.16%) Computer Science Degree
13 14 (1.16%) Server+ Certification
14 13 (1.08%) CCSE
15 12 (1.00%) CISSP
16 11 (0.91%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 45 (3.74%) SLA
2 26 (2.16%) NIST
3 23 (1.91%) QA
4 18 (1.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 15 (1.25%) Cyber Essentials
6 11 (0.91%) NCSC
7 6 (0.50%) Disclosure Scotland
7 6 (0.50%) PCI DSS
8 5 (0.42%) GDPR
8 5 (0.42%) JSP 440
8 5 (0.42%) PMO
9 4 (0.33%) Data Quality
10 3 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 3 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 3 (0.25%) NIST 800
11 2 (0.17%) Accessibility
11 2 (0.17%) Government Security Classifications
11 2 (0.17%) ISA99
12 1 (0.083%) GRC
12 1 (0.083%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 148 (12.29%) VMware Infrastructure
2 114 (9.47%) Active Directory
3 45 (3.74%) vSphere
4 42 (3.49%) VMware ESXi
4 42 (3.49%) VMware NSX
5 33 (2.74%) Firmware
6 32 (2.66%) Hyper-V
7 29 (2.41%) Virtual Machines
8 16 (1.33%) Docker
9 13 (1.08%) NFS
10 9 (0.75%) GPFS
11 6 (0.50%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 5 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
13 4 (0.33%) SRDF
13 4 (0.33%) Virtual Servers
14 3 (0.25%) Dovecot
14 3 (0.25%) FreeRADIUS
14 3 (0.25%) Postfix
15 2 (0.17%) Snort
15 2 (0.17%) UAG
Systems Management
1 147 (12.21%) Ansible
2 84 (6.98%) FortiGate
3 32 (2.66%) Kubernetes
4 30 (2.49%) Microsoft Intune
5 22 (1.83%) Cisco CUCM
6 21 (1.74%) SCCM
7 20 (1.66%) vCenter Server
8 18 (1.50%) Cisco Prime
9 15 (1.25%) Grafana
10 14 (1.16%) Prometheus
11 9 (0.75%) Puppet
11 9 (0.75%) vRealize
12 8 (0.66%) Failover Clustering
12 8 (0.66%) Single Sign-On
12 8 (0.66%) WMI
12 8 (0.66%) WSUS
13 7 (0.58%) EMC VPLEX
14 6 (0.50%) Red Hat Satellite
14 6 (0.50%) VxRail
15 5 (0.42%) Nagios
Vendors
1 259 (21.51%) Palo Alto
2 229 (19.02%) Microsoft
3 210 (17.44%) Fortinet
4 208 (17.28%) F5
5 202 (16.78%) VMware
6 134 (11.13%) Juniper
7 112 (9.30%) Meraki
8 109 (9.05%) CheckPoint
9 97 (8.06%) ServiceNow
10 89 (7.39%) Aruba
11 82 (6.81%) SolarWinds
12 74 (6.15%) Arista
13 52 (4.32%) Zscaler
14 48 (3.99%) Splunk
15 37 (3.07%) Red Hat
16 31 (2.57%) Dell
17 26 (2.16%) Nokia
18 25 (2.08%) Infoblox
19 24 (1.99%) NetApp
20 20 (1.66%) EMC