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 18 September 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
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 117 80 69
Rank change year-on-year -37 -11 -15
Contract jobs citing Cisco 1,229 995 1,213
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.26% 3.02% 3.15%
As % of the Vendors category 5.40% 6.37% 7.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 801 627 725
10th Percentile £275 £297 £250
25th Percentile £400 £400 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.96% -2.10% +8.11%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £581
90th Percentile £650 £642 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -5.61% -2.00% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 46 41 37
10th Percentile £27.36 - £19.40
25th Percentile £44.00 £25.15 £20.50
Median hourly rate £55.00 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +83.33% +9.09% -42.11%
75th Percentile £68.75 £58.75 £55.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £83.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £32.50 £37.50
% change year-on-year +69.23% -13.33% -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 22,759 15,624 17,063
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.83% 47.42% 44.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,928 9,586 10,230
10th Percentile £310 £275 £285
25th Percentile £413 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £613 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £731
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +4.30% -4.13% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,273 791 679
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.75 £14.38
25th Percentile £16.70 £17.45 £15.62
Median hourly rate £26.66 £25.15 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.00% -16.17% -32.58%
75th Percentile £62.75 £43.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.92 £21.35 £29.89
% change year-on-year +21.43% -28.58% -29.68%

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 18 September 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 18 September 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 18 September 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 -42 1,017 £500 - 1,191
UK excluding London -35 714 £463 -5.61% 846
London -32 388 £500 - 465
Work from Home -21 298 £489 +5.68% 288
North of England +3 243 £484 +1.89% 168
North West +14 166 £483 +1.68% 76
South East -68 133 £450 -10.00% 220
Midlands -35 129 £450 -2.70% 107
West Midlands -23 123 £450 -5.26% 59
Scotland +15 98 £406 -4.41% 53
Yorkshire -14 70 £500 +1.63% 63
South West -34 65 £525 -4.55% 132
East of England -23 38 £455 -5.70% 130
Wales +11 29 £390 +95.00% 29
Northern Ireland +1 9 £145 -69.47% 23
North East -41 9 £375 -31.82% 30
East Midlands -28 4 £525 +20.00% 48
Channel Islands -4 3 £600 -17.24%

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 40 (3.25%) SharePoint
2 36 (2.93%) Microsoft Exchange
3 13 (1.06%) Confluence
4 9 (0.73%) OpenStack
5 8 (0.65%) SAS
6 7 (0.57%) Apache
7 6 (0.49%) IIS
7 6 (0.49%) JBoss
8 4 (0.33%) nginx
9 3 (0.24%) CloudStack
9 3 (0.24%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.16%) CMS
10 2 (0.16%) Skype for Business
11 1 (0.081%) Apache Spark
11 1 (0.081%) FactoryTalk
11 1 (0.081%) Mendix
11 1 (0.081%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 49 (3.99%) Microsoft Office
2 26 (2.12%) Microsoft Excel
3 22 (1.79%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.24%) Acrobat
6 1 (0.081%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.081%) Monis
1 1 (0.081%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.081%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 252 (20.50%) Azure
2 158 (12.86%) AWS
3 103 (8.38%) Microsoft 365
4 65 (5.29%) Entra ID
5 38 (3.09%) GitHub
6 30 (2.44%) OneDrive
7 26 (2.12%) GCP
8 19 (1.55%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 18 (1.46%) OpenShift
10 17 (1.38%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 14 (1.14%) Power Platform
12 13 (1.06%) Nutanix
13 12 (0.98%) SaaS
14 8 (0.65%) AWS Direct Connect
14 8 (0.65%) Azure DevOps
14 8 (0.65%) Azure Sentinel
14 8 (0.65%) GitHub Actions
15 6 (0.49%) Cloudflare
15 6 (0.49%) IaaS
15 6 (0.49%) Rubrik
Communications & Networking
1 515 (41.90%) Firewall
2 362 (29.45%) WAN
3 308 (25.06%) BGP
4 275 (22.38%) LAN
5 267 (21.72%) VPN
6 259 (21.07%) Network Security
7 212 (17.25%) Wireless
8 194 (15.79%) OSPF
9 189 (15.38%) VLAN
10 186 (15.13%) DNS
11 148 (12.04%) SD-WAN
12 136 (11.07%) Wi-Fi
13 130 (10.58%) MPLS
14 117 (9.52%) Cisco Nexus
15 108 (8.79%) DHCP
16 102 (8.30%) TCP/IP
17 91 (7.40%) Cisco IOS
17 91 (7.40%) Cisco ISE
18 89 (7.24%) VXLAN
19 86 (7.00%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (2.20%) SQL Server
2 7 (0.57%) Power BI
3 6 (0.49%) Hadoop
4 5 (0.41%) Big Data
5 4 (0.33%) Amazon RDS
6 3 (0.24%) Metadata
6 3 (0.24%) MySQL
7 2 (0.16%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.16%) PostgreSQL
8 1 (0.081%) Apache Hive
8 1 (0.081%) ClickHouse
Development Applications
1 36 (2.93%) Git
2 19 (1.55%) JIRA
3 14 (1.14%) GitLab
4 13 (1.06%) Sonatype Nexus
5 8 (0.65%) Jenkins
6 2 (0.16%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.081%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.081%) Tricentis qTest
7 1 (0.081%) Zephyr
General
1 284 (23.11%) Social Skills
2 126 (10.25%) Finance
2 126 (10.25%) Telecoms
3 102 (8.30%) Analytical Skills
4 67 (5.45%) Banking
5 63 (5.13%) Public Sector
6 61 (4.96%) Documentation Skills
7 44 (3.58%) Legal
8 22 (1.79%) Investment Banking
8 22 (1.79%) Organisational Skills
9 20 (1.63%) Retail
10 17 (1.38%) Financial Institution
11 15 (1.22%) Law
12 14 (1.14%) Military
13 11 (0.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 9 (0.73%) Influencing Skills
14 9 (0.73%) Manufacturing
14 9 (0.73%) Police
15 6 (0.49%) Marketing
16 5 (0.41%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 617 (50.20%) Network Engineer
2 183 (14.89%) Senior
3 150 (12.21%) Architect
4 147 (11.96%) Cisco Engineer
5 132 (10.74%) Senior Network Engineer
6 131 (10.66%) Cisco Network Engineer
7 88 (7.16%) Security Engineer
8 81 (6.59%) Network Architect
9 68 (5.53%) Network Security Engineer
10 63 (5.13%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 52 (4.23%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 43 (3.50%) Field Engineer
13 39 (3.17%) Support Engineer
14 38 (3.09%) Analyst
14 38 (3.09%) Lead
15 35 (2.85%) Data Network Engineer
15 35 (2.85%) Solutions Architect
15 35 (2.85%) Telecoms Engineer
16 30 (2.44%) Consultant
17 29 (2.36%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 87 (7.08%) Terraform
2 56 (4.56%) 802.1X
3 33 (2.69%) REST
4 20 (1.63%) YAML
5 18 (1.46%) JSON
6 12 (0.98%) NETCONF
6 12 (0.98%) SAML
7 8 (0.65%) YANG
8 7 (0.57%) Microsoft Graph
8 7 (0.57%) RESTCONF
8 7 (0.57%) XMPP
9 6 (0.49%) Flash
10 5 (0.41%) OpenConfig
11 3 (0.24%) .NET
11 3 (0.24%) Elastic Stack
11 3 (0.24%) Java RMI
11 3 (0.24%) LAMP
11 3 (0.24%) LDAP
11 3 (0.24%) Middleware
11 3 (0.24%) RFC 2544
Miscellaneous
1 300 (24.41%) Data Centre
2 54 (4.39%) Hybrid Cloud
3 50 (4.07%) Onboarding
4 46 (3.74%) Driving Licence
5 44 (3.58%) PKI
6 35 (2.85%) Data Protection Act
7 34 (2.77%) Operational Technology
8 30 (2.44%) Video Conferencing
9 25 (2.03%) Replication
10 24 (1.95%) Management Information System
11 23 (1.87%) Clustering
12 21 (1.71%) Cloud Native
12 21 (1.71%) Self-Motivation
13 20 (1.63%) Analytical Mindset
13 20 (1.63%) Public Cloud
14 17 (1.38%) Private Cloud
15 16 (1.30%) Enterprise Storage
15 16 (1.30%) Linux Command Line
16 14 (1.14%) IoT
17 13 (1.06%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 238 (19.37%) Windows
2 124 (10.09%) Linux
3 96 (7.81%) Windows Server
4 21 (1.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 20 (1.63%) Mac OS
6 18 (1.46%) Ubuntu
7 17 (1.38%) Windows 10
8 11 (0.90%) Android
9 9 (0.73%) Unix
9 9 (0.73%) Windows Server 2012
10 8 (0.65%) Windows Server 2019
11 7 (0.57%) AIX
11 7 (0.57%) Data ONTAP
12 6 (0.49%) CentOS
13 4 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
14 3 (0.24%) VMS
15 1 (0.081%) CatOS
15 1 (0.081%) Check Point GAiA
15 1 (0.081%) Debian
15 1 (0.081%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 196 (15.95%) Migration
2 156 (12.69%) Project Delivery
3 138 (11.23%) Problem-Solving
4 133 (10.82%) ITIL
5 110 (8.95%) High Availability
6 109 (8.87%) Load Balancing
7 102 (8.30%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 99 (8.06%) Stakeholder Management
9 96 (7.81%) Change Management
10 91 (7.40%) Network Design
11 89 (7.24%) Infrastructure as Code
12 88 (7.16%) Validation
13 84 (6.83%) Continuous Improvement
14 73 (5.94%) Technical Leadership
15 70 (5.70%) Zero Trust
16 68 (5.53%) Data Protection
17 67 (5.45%) ITSM
18 63 (5.13%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 62 (5.04%) CI/CD
20 59 (4.80%) Disaster Recovery
Programming Languages
1 148 (12.04%) Python
2 62 (5.04%) PowerShell
3 33 (2.69%) Bash
4 27 (2.20%) SQL
5 5 (0.41%) Java
6 4 (0.33%) C
6 4 (0.33%) C++
7 3 (0.24%) Lisp
7 3 (0.24%) Shell Script
8 2 (0.16%) Go
8 2 (0.16%) Perl
9 1 (0.081%) Bicep
9 1 (0.081%) Kusto Query Language
9 1 (0.081%) Ladder Logic
9 1 (0.081%) R
Qualifications
1 328 (26.69%) Cisco Certification
2 299 (24.33%) Security Cleared
3 233 (18.96%) CCNP
4 220 (17.90%) SC Cleared
5 131 (10.66%) CCNA
6 77 (6.27%) DV Cleared
7 73 (5.94%) Degree
8 63 (5.13%) CCIE
9 27 (2.20%) Microsoft Certification
10 23 (1.87%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 19 (1.55%) MCSE
12 15 (1.22%) AWS Certification
12 15 (1.22%) Azure Certification
12 15 (1.22%) CISSP
13 14 (1.14%) Computer Science Degree
13 14 (1.14%) Network+ Certification
14 12 (0.98%) BPSS Clearance
14 12 (0.98%) CCSE
15 11 (0.90%) ISTQB
15 11 (0.90%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 39 (3.17%) SLA
2 27 (2.20%) NIST
3 22 (1.79%) QA
4 20 (1.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 15 (1.22%) Cyber Essentials
6 11 (0.90%) PCI DSS
7 8 (0.65%) GDPR
7 8 (0.65%) NCSC
8 5 (0.41%) Data Quality
8 5 (0.41%) Disclosure Scotland
8 5 (0.41%) JSP 440
8 5 (0.41%) PMO
9 4 (0.33%) GRC
10 3 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 3 (0.24%) ISO 31000
10 3 (0.24%) ISO 9001
10 3 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27005
10 3 (0.24%) NIST 800
11 2 (0.16%) Accessibility
11 2 (0.16%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 140 (11.39%) VMware Infrastructure
2 127 (10.33%) Active Directory
3 47 (3.82%) vSphere
4 44 (3.58%) VMware NSX
5 38 (3.09%) VMware ESXi
6 36 (2.93%) Hyper-V
7 30 (2.44%) Firmware
8 29 (2.36%) Virtual Machines
9 18 (1.46%) Docker
10 10 (0.81%) NFS
11 6 (0.49%) EMC RecoverPoint
11 6 (0.49%) GPFS
12 5 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
13 4 (0.33%) FreeRADIUS
13 4 (0.33%) SRDF
13 4 (0.33%) Virtual Servers
14 3 (0.24%) Dovecot
14 3 (0.24%) ISA Server
14 3 (0.24%) Postfix
15 2 (0.16%) UAG
Systems Management
1 152 (12.37%) Ansible
2 77 (6.27%) FortiGate
3 32 (2.60%) Kubernetes
3 32 (2.60%) Microsoft Intune
4 22 (1.79%) Cisco CUCM
5 21 (1.71%) Cisco Prime
5 21 (1.71%) SCCM
5 21 (1.71%) vCenter Server
6 11 (0.90%) Grafana
7 10 (0.81%) Prometheus
8 9 (0.73%) Nagios
8 9 (0.73%) WMI
8 9 (0.73%) WSUS
9 8 (0.65%) Failover Clustering
9 8 (0.65%) Puppet
10 7 (0.57%) EMC VPLEX
10 7 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
11 6 (0.49%) Red Hat Satellite
11 6 (0.49%) vRealize
12 5 (0.41%) SolarWinds Orion
Vendors
1 263 (21.40%) Palo Alto
2 239 (19.45%) Microsoft
3 209 (17.01%) Fortinet
4 198 (16.11%) VMware
5 189 (15.38%) F5
6 129 (10.50%) Juniper
7 125 (10.17%) Meraki
8 107 (8.71%) CheckPoint
9 88 (7.16%) Aruba
10 86 (7.00%) ServiceNow
11 83 (6.75%) SolarWinds
12 77 (6.27%) Arista
13 57 (4.64%) Zscaler
14 40 (3.25%) Red Hat
14 40 (3.25%) Splunk
15 35 (2.85%) Dell
16 31 (2.52%) NetApp
17 29 (2.36%) Nokia
18 23 (1.87%) Infoblox
19 22 (1.79%) EMC