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 11 May 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
11 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 111 67 67
Rank change year-on-year -44 0 -3
Contract jobs citing Cisco 1,071 1,050 1,320
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.25% 3.57% 3.07%
As % of the Vendors category 5.43% 7.51% 7.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 720 655 813
10th Percentile £300 £311 £250
25th Percentile £400 £413 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +5.26% -
75th Percentile £569 £588 £590
90th Percentile £648 £650 £689
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £494 £475
% change year-on-year -3.75% +3.89% +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 36 23 41
10th Percentile £26.89 £15.80 £13.29
25th Percentile £44.00 £21.58 £18.50
Median hourly rate £55.00 £37.50 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +46.67% +36.36% -45.00%
75th Percentile £74.26 £63.13 £41.25
90th Percentile £88.75 £74.75 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £27.70 £24.75
% change year-on-year +127.92% +11.92% -50.50%

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 19,724 13,978 18,256
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.42% 47.54% 42.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,511 8,753 11,339
10th Percentile £313 £281 £263
25th Percentile £413 £406 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £514 £515
Median % change year-on-year -2.72% -0.19% -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £623 £630
90th Percentile £703 £716 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -1.01% -1.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 998 569 1,095
10th Percentile £15.29 £14.84 £12.01
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.50 £14.48
Median hourly rate £32.36 £25.50 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +26.91% +13.33% -48.43%
75th Percentile £60.00 £56.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.81 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.05 £23.00 £21.50
% change year-on-year +21.93% +6.98% -45.71%

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 11 May 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 11 May 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 11 May 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 -53 890 £475 -6.92% 546
UK excluding London -36 659 £475 -3.75% 524
Work from Home -18 294 £450 -10.00% 116
London -63 279 £500 -3.57% 153
South East -18 189 £500 - 143
North of England -46 180 £476 -4.75% 121
North West -14 146 £475 -4.04% 63
Midlands -28 132 £380 -15.56% 72
West Midlands -9 123 £378 -13.71% 53
Scotland +25 63 £450 +12.78% 36
South West -69 48 £519 -5.68% 68
East of England -6 44 £495 +13.14% 57
Yorkshire -79 34 £464 -7.75% 38
Wales -11 27 £475 +11.76% 24
Northern Ireland +8 8 £385 +10.00% 12
East Midlands -54 5 £458 -3.68% 19
North East -25 1 - - 20

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 24 (2.24%) SharePoint
2 22 (2.05%) Microsoft Exchange
3 15 (1.40%) Confluence
4 6 (0.56%) Apache
5 5 (0.47%) IIS
5 5 (0.47%) OpenStack
6 2 (0.19%) CMS
7 1 (0.093%) JBoss
7 1 (0.093%) Skype for Business
7 1 (0.093%) WebSphere
Applications
1 36 (3.36%) Microsoft Office
1 36 (3.36%) MS Visio
2 12 (1.12%) Microsoft Excel
3 10 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.37%) Acrobat
5 1 (0.093%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 15 (1.40%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.093%) Actimize
Cloud Services
1 192 (17.93%) Azure
2 141 (13.17%) AWS
3 65 (6.07%) Microsoft 365
4 31 (2.89%) Entra ID
5 27 (2.52%) GCP
6 15 (1.40%) Nutanix
7 13 (1.21%) OpenShift
7 13 (1.21%) SaaS
8 11 (1.03%) GitHub
9 10 (0.93%) Azure Sentinel
10 9 (0.84%) Azure ExpressRoute
10 9 (0.84%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 8 (0.75%) Datadog
12 6 (0.56%) Azure DevOps
12 6 (0.56%) Microsoft Purview
12 6 (0.56%) Mimecast
13 5 (0.47%) IaaS
13 5 (0.47%) OneDrive
14 4 (0.37%) Power Platform
14 4 (0.37%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 480 (44.82%) Firewall
2 352 (32.87%) WAN
3 275 (25.68%) BGP
4 267 (24.93%) LAN
5 235 (21.94%) VPN
6 219 (20.45%) Network Security
7 198 (18.49%) OSPF
8 153 (14.29%) DNS
9 146 (13.63%) SD-WAN
10 144 (13.45%) Wireless
11 142 (13.26%) VLAN
12 105 (9.80%) Cisco Nexus
13 97 (9.06%) Cisco ISE
14 96 (8.96%) MPLS
15 90 (8.40%) Wi-Fi
16 89 (8.31%) VXLAN
17 78 (7.28%) DHCP
17 78 (7.28%) IPsec
18 69 (6.44%) Cisco ASA
19 68 (6.35%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (0.65%) SQL Server
2 2 (0.19%) MariaDB
3 1 (0.093%) Big Data
3 1 (0.093%) ClickHouse
3 1 (0.093%) DynamoDB
3 1 (0.093%) Metadata
3 1 (0.093%) MySQL
3 1 (0.093%) NoSQL
3 1 (0.093%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 23 (2.15%) JIRA
2 15 (1.40%) Sonatype Nexus
3 9 (0.84%) Git
4 8 (0.75%) Jenkins
5 6 (0.56%) GitLab
6 1 (0.093%) Bitbucket
General
1 219 (20.45%) Social Skills
2 115 (10.74%) Finance
3 69 (6.44%) Public Sector
4 67 (6.26%) Analytical Skills
5 66 (6.16%) Telecoms
6 56 (5.23%) Banking
7 55 (5.14%) Documentation Skills
8 52 (4.86%) Legal
9 26 (2.43%) Manufacturing
10 19 (1.77%) Investment Banking
11 16 (1.49%) Organisational Skills
12 15 (1.40%) Retail
13 14 (1.31%) Financial Institution
13 14 (1.31%) Law
14 13 (1.21%) Marketing
15 12 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
16 9 (0.84%) Military
17 8 (0.75%) Aerospace
18 7 (0.65%) Electronics
19 6 (0.56%) Police
Job Titles
1 494 (46.13%) Network Engineer
2 128 (11.95%) Architect
3 109 (10.18%) Cisco Engineer
4 104 (9.71%) Cisco Network Engineer
5 103 (9.62%) Senior
6 84 (7.84%) Security Engineer
7 75 (7.00%) Network Architect
8 73 (6.82%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
9 60 (5.60%) Network Security Engineer
10 54 (5.04%) Senior Network Engineer
11 46 (4.30%) Data Network Engineer
12 44 (4.11%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 38 (3.55%) Analyst
14 35 (3.27%) Data Engineer
15 34 (3.17%) Cisco Security Engineer
16 29 (2.71%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
17 25 (2.33%) Lead
17 25 (2.33%) Network Specialist
17 25 (2.33%) Solutions Architect
18 21 (1.96%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (6.35%) 802.1X
2 19 (1.77%) LDAP
3 15 (1.40%) Flash
4 13 (1.21%) SAML
5 8 (0.75%) REST
6 7 (0.65%) XMPP
7 6 (0.56%) Jinja
7 6 (0.56%) NETCONF
8 5 (0.47%) YANG
9 4 (0.37%) HTML
9 4 (0.37%) OpenConfig
9 4 (0.37%) RESTCONF
9 4 (0.37%) VML
10 3 (0.28%) JSON
11 2 (0.19%) ADO
11 2 (0.19%) CSS
11 2 (0.19%) Django
11 2 (0.19%) Middleware
11 2 (0.19%) RFC 2544
12 1 (0.093%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 290 (27.08%) Data Centre
2 52 (4.86%) PKI
3 45 (4.20%) Replication
4 40 (3.73%) Clustering
5 37 (3.45%) Data Protection Act
6 33 (3.08%) Operational Technology
7 31 (2.89%) Hybrid Cloud
8 27 (2.52%) Cloud Native
8 27 (2.52%) Onboarding
9 22 (2.05%) Linux Command Line
10 18 (1.68%) Video Conferencing
11 17 (1.59%) Driving Licence
11 17 (1.59%) Self-Motivation
12 16 (1.49%) Enterprise Storage
12 16 (1.49%) SCADA
13 15 (1.40%) Security Posture
14 14 (1.31%) EMC VMAX
15 13 (1.21%) Analytical Mindset
16 11 (1.03%) Virtual Team
17 9 (0.84%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 193 (18.02%) Windows
2 106 (9.90%) Linux
3 65 (6.07%) Windows Server
4 22 (2.05%) Windows 10
5 19 (1.77%) Unix
6 15 (1.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 12 (1.12%) Mac OS
8 11 (1.03%) Android
9 8 (0.75%) Ubuntu
10 5 (0.47%) CatOS
10 5 (0.47%) Windows Server 2019
11 4 (0.37%) Solaris
11 4 (0.37%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.28%) AIX
12 3 (0.28%) Data ONTAP
12 3 (0.28%) VMS
13 2 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
14 1 (0.093%) CentOS
14 1 (0.093%) Debian
14 1 (0.093%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 151 (14.10%) Migration
2 132 (12.32%) Problem-Solving
3 118 (11.02%) Load Balancing
4 114 (10.64%) High Availability
5 95 (8.87%) Network Design
6 92 (8.59%) ITIL
7 77 (7.19%) Agile
8 75 (7.00%) ITSM
9 68 (6.35%) Change Management
10 65 (6.07%) Cybersecurity
11 61 (5.70%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 61 (5.70%) Network Monitoring
12 60 (5.60%) Project Delivery
13 59 (5.51%) Disaster Recovery
14 57 (5.32%) Continuous Improvement
15 56 (5.23%) Technical Leadership
16 50 (4.67%) Validation
17 49 (4.58%) Data Protection
17 49 (4.58%) Infrastructure as Code
18 48 (4.48%) Zero Trust
Programming Languages
1 115 (10.74%) Python
2 49 (4.58%) PowerShell
3 21 (1.96%) Bash
4 14 (1.31%) SQL
5 8 (0.75%) C
6 4 (0.37%) PHP
7 3 (0.28%) C++
7 3 (0.28%) Java
7 3 (0.28%) JavaScript
7 3 (0.28%) Perl
8 2 (0.19%) ActionScript
8 2 (0.19%) Korn
8 2 (0.19%) Shell Script
9 1 (0.093%) Bicep
9 1 (0.093%) Kusto Query Language
9 1 (0.093%) Ladder Logic
9 1 (0.093%) Lisp
9 1 (0.093%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 368 (34.36%) Security Cleared
2 311 (29.04%) Cisco Certification
3 274 (25.58%) SC Cleared
4 237 (22.13%) CCNP
5 114 (10.64%) CCNA
6 105 (9.80%) DV Cleared
7 76 (7.10%) Degree
8 61 (5.70%) CCIE
9 27 (2.52%) Microsoft Certification
10 21 (1.96%) MCSE
10 21 (1.96%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 20 (1.87%) JNCIS
12 18 (1.68%) Azure Certification
12 18 (1.68%) BPSS Clearance
13 17 (1.59%) Network+ Certification
14 15 (1.40%) JNCIP
14 15 (1.40%) VCAP
15 14 (1.31%) CCSE
15 14 (1.31%) JNCIA
15 14 (1.31%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (2.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 29 (2.71%) NIST
2 29 (2.71%) SLA
3 25 (2.33%) Cyber Essentials
4 17 (1.59%) NCSC
5 14 (1.31%) QA
6 10 (0.93%) PMO
7 7 (0.65%) Disclosure Scotland
7 7 (0.65%) GDPR
7 7 (0.65%) JSP 440
8 4 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 3 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
9 3 (0.28%) NIST 800
9 3 (0.28%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.28%) RMADS
10 2 (0.19%) Accessibility
10 2 (0.19%) GRC
10 2 (0.19%) ISA99
10 2 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 20000
11 1 (0.093%) MiFID
System Software
1 146 (13.63%) VMware Infrastructure
2 76 (7.10%) Active Directory
3 56 (5.23%) vSphere
4 54 (5.04%) VMware ESXi
4 54 (5.04%) VMware NSX
5 28 (2.61%) Virtual Machines
6 23 (2.15%) Firmware
7 18 (1.68%) NFS
8 17 (1.59%) Hyper-V
9 15 (1.40%) GPFS
10 9 (0.84%) SRDF
11 7 (0.65%) Docker
12 5 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
13 4 (0.37%) vCloud
13 4 (0.37%) Virtual Servers
14 3 (0.28%) EMC RecoverPoint
14 3 (0.28%) KVM
14 3 (0.28%) Snort
14 3 (0.28%) UAG
15 1 (0.093%) Squid
Systems Management
1 124 (11.58%) Ansible
2 102 (9.52%) FortiGate
3 45 (4.20%) Terraform
4 32 (2.99%) vCenter Server
5 27 (2.52%) vRealize
6 25 (2.33%) Grafana
7 18 (1.68%) Prometheus
8 16 (1.49%) Kubernetes
8 16 (1.49%) Microsoft Intune
9 14 (1.31%) Cisco Prime
9 14 (1.31%) VxRail
10 13 (1.21%) SCCM
11 12 (1.12%) Single Sign-On
12 10 (0.93%) Nagios
13 9 (0.84%) Cisco CUCM
14 7 (0.65%) SCOM
15 6 (0.56%) EMC TimeFinder
15 6 (0.56%) EMC VPLEX
15 6 (0.56%) WSUS
16 5 (0.47%) Endace
Vendors
1 294 (27.45%) Palo Alto
2 203 (18.95%) F5
3 185 (17.27%) VMware
4 169 (15.78%) Microsoft
5 158 (14.75%) Juniper
6 143 (13.35%) Fortinet
7 125 (11.67%) CheckPoint
8 120 (11.20%) Aruba
9 93 (8.68%) Meraki
10 85 (7.94%) ServiceNow
11 79 (7.38%) SolarWinds
12 67 (6.26%) Arista
13 50 (4.67%) Splunk
14 49 (4.58%) Zscaler
15 48 (4.48%) Dell
16 36 (3.36%) IBM
17 29 (2.71%) EMC
17 29 (2.71%) Extreme Networks
18 28 (2.61%) HP
19 25 (2.33%) Infoblox