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 13 June 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
13 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 112 65 66
Rank change year-on-year -47 +1 -7
Contract jobs citing Cisco 1,130 1,088 1,314
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.26% 3.69% 3.01%
As % of the Vendors category 5.55% 7.75% 7.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 787 664 809
10th Percentile £300 £300 £250
25th Percentile £402 £400 £365
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +5.26% -
75th Percentile £573 £588 £588
90th Percentile £641 £650 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -5.00% +5.26% +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 33 25 35
10th Percentile £26.98 £17.93 £14.35
25th Percentile £44.00 £24.66 £19.50
Median hourly rate £55.00 £35.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +57.14% +40.00% -50.00%
75th Percentile £72.00 £45.00 £41.25
90th Percentile £77.70 £65.75 £57.56
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £30.00 £22.00
% change year-on-year +83.33% +36.36% -56.00%

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 20,354 14,032 18,415
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 40.68% 47.55% 42.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,795 8,637 11,446
10th Percentile £313 £280 £270
25th Percentile £413 £403 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £503 £515
Median % change year-on-year -0.60% -2.33% -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £626
90th Percentile £700 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £481 £500
% change year-on-year +3.92% -3.78% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,046 631 1,141
10th Percentile £15.28 £14.84 £12.13
25th Percentile £18.75 £17.33 £14.50
Median hourly rate £32.50 £26.32 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year +23.48% +10.59% -44.00%
75th Percentile £60.00 £55.37 £58.70
90th Percentile £78.75 £70.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.49 £23.67 £22.50
% change year-on-year +28.84% +5.18% -43.11%

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 13 June 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 13 June 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 13 June 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 -50 954 £475 -6.86% 514
UK excluding London -39 692 £475 -5.00% 522
London -53 311 £500 - 116
Work from Home -46 288 £450 -10.00% 111
North of England -38 208 £480 -4.00% 128
South East -28 189 £500 - 130
North West -7 163 £480 -4.00% 59
Midlands -30 132 £402 -15.37% 61
West Midlands -18 125 £402 -5.41% 36
Scotland +12 75 £450 +14.43% 39
South West -63 50 £518 -5.91% 74
Yorkshire -67 44 £484 -4.35% 45
East of England -11 42 £495 -0.50% 61
Wales -20 20 £468 +16.88% 17
Northern Ireland +9 10 £175 -50.00% 23
East Midlands -40 4 £458 -16.82% 25
North East -41 2 £425 +30.77% 25
Channel Islands -1 1 £550 +22.22%

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 28 (2.48%) SharePoint
2 18 (1.59%) Microsoft Exchange
3 12 (1.06%) Confluence
4 9 (0.80%) Apache
5 6 (0.53%) IIS
5 6 (0.53%) OpenStack
6 3 (0.27%) nginx
6 3 (0.27%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.18%) CloudStack
7 2 (0.18%) CMS
8 1 (0.088%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.088%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 43 (3.81%) Microsoft Office
2 27 (2.39%) MS Visio
3 22 (1.95%) Microsoft Excel
4 9 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.35%) Acrobat
Business Applications
1 8 (0.71%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 213 (18.85%) Azure
2 144 (12.74%) AWS
3 68 (6.02%) Microsoft 365
4 39 (3.45%) Entra ID
5 22 (1.95%) GCP
6 16 (1.42%) SaaS
7 15 (1.33%) GitHub
7 15 (1.33%) OpenShift
8 14 (1.24%) Nutanix
9 12 (1.06%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 12 (1.06%) Azure Sentinel
9 12 (1.06%) OneDrive
9 12 (1.06%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 8 (0.71%) IaaS
10 8 (0.71%) Microsoft Purview
11 7 (0.62%) Power Platform
12 5 (0.44%) Azure DevOps
12 5 (0.44%) GitHub Actions
12 5 (0.44%) Rubrik
13 4 (0.35%) Cloudflare
Communications & Networking
1 485 (42.92%) Firewall
2 372 (32.92%) WAN
3 285 (25.22%) LAN
4 280 (24.78%) BGP
5 238 (21.06%) Network Security
6 236 (20.88%) VPN
7 197 (17.43%) OSPF
8 171 (15.13%) Wireless
9 167 (14.78%) DNS
10 166 (14.69%) VLAN
11 165 (14.60%) SD-WAN
12 105 (9.29%) MPLS
13 103 (9.12%) Cisco Nexus
14 102 (9.03%) Wi-Fi
15 100 (8.85%) VXLAN
16 99 (8.76%) Cisco ISE
17 92 (8.14%) DHCP
18 74 (6.55%) IPsec
19 72 (6.37%) Cisco IOS
19 72 (6.37%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (1.33%) SQL Server
2 3 (0.27%) MySQL
2 3 (0.27%) NoSQL
3 2 (0.18%) PostgreSQL
4 1 (0.088%) Apache Hive
4 1 (0.088%) Big Data
4 1 (0.088%) ClickHouse
4 1 (0.088%) Hadoop
4 1 (0.088%) Metadata
4 1 (0.088%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 23 (2.04%) JIRA
2 14 (1.24%) Sonatype Nexus
3 11 (0.97%) Git
4 8 (0.71%) Jenkins
5 4 (0.35%) GitLab
6 2 (0.18%) Bitbucket
General
1 251 (22.21%) Social Skills
2 119 (10.53%) Finance
3 69 (6.11%) Analytical Skills
4 62 (5.49%) Telecoms
5 61 (5.40%) Public Sector
6 60 (5.31%) Legal
7 53 (4.69%) Banking
7 53 (4.69%) Documentation Skills
8 20 (1.77%) Investment Banking
9 18 (1.59%) Financial Institution
9 18 (1.59%) Manufacturing
10 17 (1.50%) Organisational Skills
11 16 (1.42%) Law
12 15 (1.33%) Retail
13 9 (0.80%) Military
14 8 (0.71%) Marketing
15 7 (0.62%) Police
15 7 (0.62%) Presentation Skills
16 5 (0.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 4 (0.35%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 520 (46.02%) Network Engineer
2 141 (12.48%) Architect
3 125 (11.06%) Cisco Engineer
4 116 (10.27%) Cisco Network Engineer
5 114 (10.09%) Senior
6 88 (7.79%) Security Engineer
7 80 (7.08%) Network Architect
8 68 (6.02%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
9 64 (5.66%) Network Security Engineer
10 63 (5.58%) Senior Network Engineer
11 52 (4.60%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 47 (4.16%) Data Network Engineer
13 34 (3.01%) Data Engineer
14 33 (2.92%) Analyst
14 33 (2.92%) Cisco Security Engineer
15 29 (2.57%) Solutions Architect
16 26 (2.30%) Network Specialist
17 25 (2.21%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
18 24 (2.12%) Lead
19 23 (2.04%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 76 (6.73%) 802.1X
2 14 (1.24%) Flash
2 14 (1.24%) LDAP
2 14 (1.24%) SAML
3 12 (1.06%) REST
4 8 (0.71%) XMPP
5 6 (0.53%) Jinja
6 3 (0.27%) LAMP
6 3 (0.27%) LEMP Stack
6 3 (0.27%) NETCONF
6 3 (0.27%) YAML
7 2 (0.18%) .NET Core
7 2 (0.18%) Blazor
7 2 (0.18%) Django
7 2 (0.18%) Elastic Stack
7 2 (0.18%) OpenConfig
7 2 (0.18%) OpenID
7 2 (0.18%) RESTCONF
7 2 (0.18%) RFC 2544
7 2 (0.18%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 309 (27.35%) Data Centre
2 56 (4.96%) PKI
3 49 (4.34%) Replication
4 43 (3.81%) Clustering
5 36 (3.19%) Onboarding
6 35 (3.10%) Data Protection Act
7 34 (3.01%) Hybrid Cloud
8 29 (2.57%) Operational Technology
9 22 (1.95%) Video Conferencing
10 21 (1.86%) Driving Licence
11 20 (1.77%) Security Posture
12 19 (1.68%) Enterprise Storage
13 18 (1.59%) Linux Command Line
14 17 (1.50%) EMC VMAX
15 15 (1.33%) Analytical Mindset
16 14 (1.24%) Cloud Native
16 14 (1.24%) SCADA
17 13 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
17 13 (1.15%) Virtual Team
18 10 (0.88%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 220 (19.47%) Windows
2 120 (10.62%) Linux
3 71 (6.28%) Windows Server
4 22 (1.95%) Unix
5 16 (1.42%) Windows 10
6 13 (1.15%) Ubuntu
7 11 (0.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 8 (0.71%) Windows Server 2019
9 7 (0.62%) Android
9 7 (0.62%) Mac OS
10 6 (0.53%) Windows Server 2012
11 5 (0.44%) AIX
11 5 (0.44%) Data ONTAP
11 5 (0.44%) VMS
12 4 (0.35%) CentOS
12 4 (0.35%) Solaris
13 3 (0.27%) CatOS
14 2 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
15 1 (0.088%) Check Point GAiA
15 1 (0.088%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 176 (15.58%) Migration
2 130 (11.50%) High Availability
3 123 (10.88%) Load Balancing
3 123 (10.88%) Problem-Solving
4 100 (8.85%) ITIL
5 91 (8.05%) ITSM
5 91 (8.05%) Project Delivery
6 90 (7.96%) Network Design
7 70 (6.19%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 68 (6.02%) Agile
9 67 (5.93%) Change Management
10 66 (5.84%) Continuous Improvement
11 65 (5.75%) Disaster Recovery
11 65 (5.75%) Technical Leadership
12 64 (5.66%) Network Monitoring
13 60 (5.31%) Infrastructure as Code
14 57 (5.04%) Cybersecurity
15 56 (4.96%) Stakeholder Management
15 56 (4.96%) Validation
16 53 (4.69%) Network Segmentation
Programming Languages
1 124 (10.97%) Python
2 58 (5.13%) PowerShell
3 23 (2.04%) SQL
4 22 (1.95%) Bash
5 6 (0.53%) C
6 4 (0.35%) PHP
7 3 (0.27%) C++
7 3 (0.27%) Java
7 3 (0.27%) Lisp
7 3 (0.27%) Perl
8 2 (0.18%) ActionScript
8 2 (0.18%) JavaScript
8 2 (0.18%) Korn
8 2 (0.18%) Shell Script
9 1 (0.088%) Bicep
9 1 (0.088%) Ladder Logic
Qualifications
1 342 (30.27%) Security Cleared
2 333 (29.47%) Cisco Certification
3 256 (22.65%) SC Cleared
4 251 (22.21%) CCNP
5 127 (11.24%) CCNA
6 100 (8.85%) DV Cleared
7 71 (6.28%) Degree
8 63 (5.58%) CCIE
9 32 (2.83%) Microsoft Certification
10 27 (2.39%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 23 (2.04%) MCSE
12 22 (1.95%) Network+ Certification
13 17 (1.50%) Azure Certification
13 17 (1.50%) Server+ Certification
13 17 (1.50%) VCAP
14 16 (1.42%) CCSE
14 16 (1.42%) MCSA
15 14 (1.24%) BPSS Clearance
16 13 (1.15%) JNCIP
16 13 (1.15%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 39 (3.45%) SLA
2 34 (3.01%) NIST
3 28 (2.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 25 (2.21%) Cyber Essentials
5 21 (1.86%) QA
6 17 (1.50%) NCSC
7 9 (0.80%) PMO
8 7 (0.62%) Disclosure Scotland
9 6 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 6 (0.53%) GDPR
9 6 (0.53%) JSP 440
9 6 (0.53%) PCI DSS
10 3 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 3 (0.27%) NIST 800
10 3 (0.27%) RMADS
11 2 (0.18%) Accessibility
11 2 (0.18%) Government Security Classifications
11 2 (0.18%) GRC
11 2 (0.18%) ISA99
11 2 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 148 (13.10%) VMware Infrastructure
2 90 (7.96%) Active Directory
3 58 (5.13%) VMware ESXi
4 57 (5.04%) vSphere
5 43 (3.81%) VMware NSX
6 37 (3.27%) Virtual Machines
7 27 (2.39%) Firmware
8 19 (1.68%) Hyper-V
9 18 (1.59%) NFS
10 14 (1.24%) GPFS
11 12 (1.06%) SRDF
12 6 (0.53%) Virtual Desktop
13 5 (0.44%) Docker
13 5 (0.44%) EMC RecoverPoint
14 4 (0.35%) vCloud
14 4 (0.35%) Virtual Servers
15 3 (0.27%) Dovecot
15 3 (0.27%) Postfix
15 3 (0.27%) UAG
16 2 (0.18%) Snort
Systems Management
1 140 (12.39%) Ansible
2 101 (8.94%) FortiGate
3 52 (4.60%) Terraform
4 32 (2.83%) vCenter Server
5 28 (2.48%) Grafana
6 22 (1.95%) Microsoft Intune
7 21 (1.86%) Prometheus
8 20 (1.77%) Kubernetes
9 18 (1.59%) vRealize
10 16 (1.42%) SCCM
11 14 (1.24%) Cisco Prime
12 13 (1.15%) Cisco CUCM
13 12 (1.06%) Single Sign-On
14 9 (0.80%) VxRail
15 7 (0.62%) WMI
16 6 (0.53%) EMC TimeFinder
16 6 (0.53%) EMC VPLEX
16 6 (0.53%) HAProxy
16 6 (0.53%) SCOM
17 5 (0.44%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 294 (26.02%) Palo Alto
2 213 (18.85%) F5
3 194 (17.17%) Microsoft
4 186 (16.46%) VMware
5 173 (15.31%) Fortinet
6 157 (13.89%) Juniper
7 120 (10.62%) Aruba
8 109 (9.65%) CheckPoint
9 103 (9.12%) ServiceNow
10 86 (7.61%) Meraki
10 86 (7.61%) SolarWinds
11 77 (6.81%) Arista
12 55 (4.87%) Splunk
13 49 (4.34%) Zscaler
14 42 (3.72%) Dell
15 31 (2.74%) EMC
16 29 (2.57%) Extreme Networks
16 29 (2.57%) IBM
17 27 (2.39%) Brocade
18 25 (2.21%) Infoblox