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 March 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 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 103 56 59
Rank change year-on-year -47 +3 +15
Contract jobs citing Cisco 1,085 1,107 1,495
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.51% 3.78% 3.36%
As % of the Vendors category 5.73% 7.99% 7.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 735 709 881
10th Percentile £263 £313 £250
25th Percentile £376 £413 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £474 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.20% +5.26% -1.04%
75th Percentile £553 £595 £590
90th Percentile £625 £650 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £475
% change year-on-year -3.06% +3.16% +2.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 17 60
10th Percentile £21.46 £16.97 £13.93
25th Percentile £25.15 £18.50 £18.21
Median hourly rate £65.00 £36.65 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +77.38% +46.58% -46.67%
75th Percentile £74.26 £65.00 £41.25
90th Percentile £93.75 £75.00 £67.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.26 £33.52 £24.00
% change year-on-year +121.52% +39.68% -50.57%

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 18,925 13,857 19,147
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 43.74% 47.27% 43.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,095 8,657 11,944
10th Percentile £310 £291 £256
25th Percentile £413 £406 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £513
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +1.46% -2.75%
75th Percentile £600 £623 £625
90th Percentile £700 £713 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.60% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 966 462 1,030
10th Percentile £15.32 £15.62 £12.13
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.00 £14.48
Median hourly rate £25.15 £29.00 £24.65
Median % change year-on-year -13.28% +17.65% -31.05%
75th Percentile £58.75 £63.75 £55.00
90th Percentile £76.04 £82.91 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.50 £27.43 £23.11
% change year-on-year -14.31% +18.68% -29.98%

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 March 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 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Cisco in the UK

Cisco
Top 17 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 March 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 -51 904 £481 -4.70% 455
UK excluding London -29 697 £475 -3.06% 418
Work from Home -36 282 £448 -10.95% 95
London -69 268 £490 -2.05% 104
South East +2 224 £500 -0.50% 120
North of England -46 178 £481 -3.75% 100
Midlands -16 147 £340 -24.44% 74
North West -16 146 £481 -2.78% 46
West Midlands -4 133 £340 -22.29% 35
Scotland +32 70 £438 +9.38% 19
East of England -2 41 £475 -12.04% 48
South West -69 39 £525 -3.58% 50
Yorkshire -86 26 £450 -14.29% 34
Wales -11 23 £380 -9.25% 18
East Midlands -52 12 £158 -65.95% 39
North East -12 8 £175 -60.00% 20
Northern Ireland - 6 £385 - 6

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 44 (4.06%) SharePoint
2 37 (3.41%) Microsoft Exchange
3 17 (1.57%) Confluence
4 7 (0.65%) Apache
5 5 (0.46%) IIS
6 3 (0.28%) Appian
6 3 (0.28%) OpenStack
6 3 (0.28%) SharePoint Server
7 2 (0.18%) Skype for Business
8 1 (0.092%) JBoss
8 1 (0.092%) WebLogic
8 1 (0.092%) WebSphere
Applications
1 67 (6.18%) Microsoft Office
2 46 (4.24%) MS Visio
3 21 (1.94%) Microsoft Excel
4 15 (1.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.46%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.46%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.092%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 17 (1.57%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.092%) Actimize
Cloud Services
1 169 (15.58%) Azure
2 146 (13.46%) AWS
3 97 (8.94%) Microsoft 365
4 40 (3.69%) GCP
5 39 (3.59%) Entra ID
6 17 (1.57%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 14 (1.29%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 14 (1.29%) Datadog
8 12 (1.11%) Nutanix
9 10 (0.92%) Azure Sentinel
10 9 (0.83%) SaaS
11 8 (0.74%) AWS CloudFormation
11 8 (0.74%) Azure DevOps
11 8 (0.74%) OneDrive
11 8 (0.74%) OpenShift
12 7 (0.65%) AWS Lambda
12 7 (0.65%) Microsoft Purview
12 7 (0.65%) Power Platform
12 7 (0.65%) Serverless
13 6 (0.55%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 440 (40.55%) Firewall
2 330 (30.41%) WAN
3 244 (22.49%) BGP
3 244 (22.49%) LAN
4 233 (21.47%) VPN
5 201 (18.53%) Network Security
6 175 (16.13%) OSPF
7 165 (15.21%) Wireless
8 139 (12.81%) SD-WAN
9 129 (11.89%) DNS
10 110 (10.14%) MPLS
11 106 (9.77%) Cisco ISE
11 106 (9.77%) VLAN
12 80 (7.37%) Wi-Fi
13 78 (7.19%) Cisco ASA
14 75 (6.91%) Cisco Nexus
15 74 (6.82%) DHCP
16 73 (6.73%) Cisco IOS
16 73 (6.73%) IPsec
17 72 (6.64%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (0.65%) SQL Server
2 5 (0.46%) DynamoDB
2 5 (0.46%) Power BI
3 3 (0.28%) Amazon Athena
4 2 (0.18%) MariaDB
5 1 (0.092%) Big Data
5 1 (0.092%) Metadata
5 1 (0.092%) MySQL
5 1 (0.092%) NoSQL
5 1 (0.092%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 22 (2.03%) JIRA
2 13 (1.20%) Sonatype Nexus
3 11 (1.01%) GitLab
3 11 (1.01%) Jenkins
4 9 (0.83%) Git
5 3 (0.28%) Cucumber
5 3 (0.28%) Robot Framework
5 3 (0.28%) Selenium
5 3 (0.28%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.18%) Rational DOORS
7 1 (0.092%) Bitbucket
General
1 228 (21.01%) Social Skills
2 157 (14.47%) Finance
3 153 (14.10%) Public Sector
4 107 (9.86%) Telecoms
5 75 (6.91%) Analytical Skills
6 64 (5.90%) Manufacturing
7 61 (5.62%) Banking
8 55 (5.07%) Documentation Skills
9 53 (4.88%) Legal
10 46 (4.24%) Marketing
11 44 (4.06%) Electronics
12 18 (1.66%) Investment Banking
13 17 (1.57%) Presentation Skills
14 16 (1.47%) Financial Institution
15 14 (1.29%) Organisational Skills
16 11 (1.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 10 (0.92%) Law
17 10 (0.92%) Retail
18 8 (0.74%) Aerospace
18 8 (0.74%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 420 (38.71%) Network Engineer
2 132 (12.17%) Architect
3 94 (8.66%) Cisco Engineer
4 82 (7.56%) Cisco Network Engineer
5 79 (7.28%) Network Architect
6 78 (7.19%) Senior
7 68 (6.27%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
8 64 (5.90%) Security Engineer
9 54 (4.98%) Analyst
10 49 (4.52%) IT Support
11 47 (4.33%) Consultant
12 43 (3.96%) Network Consultant
13 41 (3.78%) Network Security Engineer
14 38 (3.50%) Senior Network Engineer
15 35 (3.23%) Desktop Support
15 35 (3.23%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
16 33 (3.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 32 (2.95%) Solutions Architect
18 31 (2.86%) Data Network Engineer
19 28 (2.58%) Infrastructure Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 63 (5.81%) 802.1X
2 17 (1.57%) LDAP
3 16 (1.47%) Flash
4 14 (1.29%) XMPP
5 10 (0.92%) SAML
6 9 (0.83%) NETCONF
7 8 (0.74%) YANG
8 7 (0.65%) Jinja
9 6 (0.55%) JSON
10 5 (0.46%) Node.js
10 5 (0.46%) OpenConfig
10 5 (0.46%) REST
10 5 (0.46%) XML
11 4 (0.37%) HTML
11 4 (0.37%) RESTCONF
11 4 (0.37%) VML
12 3 (0.28%) RFC 2544
13 2 (0.18%) ARM Templates
13 2 (0.18%) CSS
13 2 (0.18%) Microsoft Graph
Miscellaneous
1 289 (26.64%) Data Centre
2 51 (4.70%) PKI
3 33 (3.04%) Replication
4 32 (2.95%) Data Protection Act
5 31 (2.86%) Linux Command Line
6 29 (2.67%) Clustering
7 27 (2.49%) Hybrid Cloud
7 27 (2.49%) Onboarding
8 26 (2.40%) Cloud Native
9 25 (2.30%) Operational Technology
10 23 (2.12%) Driving Licence
11 18 (1.66%) Product Ownership
12 16 (1.47%) Self-Motivation
13 14 (1.29%) Security Posture
13 14 (1.29%) Video Conferencing
14 13 (1.20%) SCADA
15 12 (1.11%) NHS
16 11 (1.01%) CMDB
16 11 (1.01%) Enterprise Storage
17 10 (0.92%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 177 (16.31%) Windows
2 101 (9.31%) Linux
3 62 (5.71%) Windows Server
4 51 (4.70%) Android
4 51 (4.70%) Mac OS
5 28 (2.58%) Windows 10
6 21 (1.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 16 (1.47%) Unix
8 6 (0.55%) Ubuntu
9 5 (0.46%) Windows Server 2012
9 5 (0.46%) Windows Server 2019
10 4 (0.37%) CatOS
10 4 (0.37%) Solaris
10 4 (0.37%) VMS
11 3 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
12 2 (0.18%) AIX
13 1 (0.092%) CentOS
13 1 (0.092%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 154 (14.19%) Migration
2 134 (12.35%) Problem-Solving
3 100 (9.22%) Load Balancing
4 92 (8.48%) High Availability
5 91 (8.39%) Network Design
6 90 (8.29%) Agile
7 88 (8.11%) ITIL
8 80 (7.37%) Roadmaps
9 79 (7.28%) ITSM
10 76 (7.00%) Cybersecurity
11 71 (6.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 67 (6.18%) Change Management
13 66 (6.08%) Project Delivery
14 60 (5.53%) Collaborative Working
15 58 (5.35%) Service Management
16 57 (5.25%) Stakeholder Management
17 54 (4.98%) Network Architecture
17 54 (4.98%) Network Monitoring
18 53 (4.88%) Continuous Improvement
19 52 (4.79%) Disaster Recovery
Programming Languages
1 124 (11.43%) Python
2 53 (4.88%) PowerShell
3 28 (2.58%) Bash
4 16 (1.47%) Perl
5 8 (0.74%) JavaScript
5 8 (0.74%) Lisp
5 8 (0.74%) SQL
6 4 (0.37%) C
6 4 (0.37%) PHP
7 2 (0.18%) ActionScript
7 2 (0.18%) Korn
7 2 (0.18%) Kusto Query Language
7 2 (0.18%) Shell Script
8 1 (0.092%) C++
8 1 (0.092%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 431 (39.72%) Security Cleared
2 336 (30.97%) SC Cleared
3 291 (26.82%) Cisco Certification
4 234 (21.57%) CCNP
5 107 (9.86%) DV Cleared
6 105 (9.68%) CCNA
7 81 (7.47%) Degree
8 76 (7.00%) CCIE
9 24 (2.21%) BPSS Clearance
10 22 (2.03%) JNCIS
11 20 (1.84%) Microsoft Certification
12 18 (1.66%) Azure Certification
12 18 (1.66%) Network+ Certification
13 17 (1.57%) CISSP
13 17 (1.57%) JNCIP
14 16 (1.47%) JNCIA
15 14 (1.29%) CCSE
16 13 (1.20%) AWS Certification
16 13 (1.20%) ITIL Certification
17 12 (1.11%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 42 (3.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 33 (3.04%) NIST
3 32 (2.95%) SLA
4 22 (2.03%) Cyber Essentials
5 18 (1.66%) GDPR
5 18 (1.66%) PMO
6 15 (1.38%) NCSC
7 14 (1.29%) PCI DSS
8 6 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 4 (0.37%) QA
10 3 (0.28%) HIPAA
10 3 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 3 (0.28%) JSP 440
10 3 (0.28%) RMADS
11 2 (0.18%) Disclosure Scotland
11 2 (0.18%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 2 (0.18%) ISA99
12 1 (0.092%) Accessibility
12 1 (0.092%) Data Quality
12 1 (0.092%) GRC
System Software
1 143 (13.18%) VMware Infrastructure
2 95 (8.76%) Active Directory
3 63 (5.81%) VMware NSX
4 59 (5.44%) vSphere
5 42 (3.87%) VMware ESXi
6 19 (1.75%) Firmware
7 16 (1.47%) GPFS
7 16 (1.47%) NFS
8 14 (1.29%) Virtual Machines
9 12 (1.11%) Docker
10 10 (0.92%) Hyper-V
11 8 (0.74%) SRDF
12 4 (0.37%) Snort
12 4 (0.37%) vCloud
13 3 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
13 3 (0.28%) Virtual Servers
14 2 (0.18%) KVM
14 2 (0.18%) Squid
15 1 (0.092%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 1 (0.092%) Xen
Systems Management
1 101 (9.31%) Ansible
2 94 (8.66%) FortiGate
3 43 (3.96%) Terraform
4 41 (3.78%) vCenter Server
5 36 (3.32%) vRealize
6 24 (2.21%) SCCM
7 21 (1.94%) Grafana
8 19 (1.75%) VxRail
9 16 (1.47%) Microsoft Intune
10 15 (1.38%) Prometheus
11 12 (1.11%) Single Sign-On
12 11 (1.01%) Cisco CUCM
12 11 (1.01%) Kubernetes
13 10 (0.92%) Cisco Prime
14 9 (0.83%) Nagios
15 7 (0.65%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 7 (0.65%) Nessus
15 7 (0.65%) WSUS
16 6 (0.55%) EMC TimeFinder
17 5 (0.46%) SCOM
Vendors
1 278 (25.62%) Palo Alto
2 181 (16.68%) VMware
3 180 (16.59%) Juniper
4 178 (16.41%) Microsoft
5 157 (14.47%) F5
6 142 (13.09%) Aruba
7 110 (10.14%) Fortinet
8 109 (10.05%) CheckPoint
9 101 (9.31%) SolarWinds
10 99 (9.12%) Meraki
11 92 (8.48%) ServiceNow
12 76 (7.00%) Dell
13 65 (5.99%) HP
14 52 (4.79%) Splunk
15 51 (4.70%) Arista
16 45 (4.15%) IBM
17 44 (4.06%) SAP
18 43 (3.96%) Zscaler
19 41 (3.78%) Apple
20 30 (2.76%) Citrix