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 20 September 2025, 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
20 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 81 70 52
Rank change year-on-year -11 -18 +41
Contract jobs citing Cisco 992 1,210 2,007
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 3.02% 3.14% 4.02%
As % of the Vendors category 6.35% 7.08% 9.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 626 720 1,274
10th Percentile £300 £250 £263
25th Percentile £400 £380 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £463
Median % change year-on-year -2.10% +8.11% -1.60%
75th Percentile £575 £582 £575
90th Percentile £643 £650 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £491 £500 £450
% change year-on-year -1.80% +11.11% +1.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 40 37 70
10th Percentile £25.14 £19.40 £16.18
25th Percentile £25.15 £20.50 £25.97
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -42.11% +90.00%
75th Percentile £57.81 £55.00 £65.24
90th Percentile £83.66 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £37.50 £47.50
% change year-on-year -13.33% -21.05% +25.70%

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 15,612 17,085 22,242
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 47.45% 44.35% 44.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,583 10,226 14,399
10th Percentile £275 £286 £263
25th Percentile £403 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -0.94%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £700 £731 £731
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.00% - +3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 801 677 660
10th Percentile £14.75 £14.35 £15.21
25th Percentile £17.55 £15.62 £18.87
Median hourly rate £25.15 £30.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -16.17% -32.58% +86.11%
75th Percentile £43.75 £63.75 £64.43
90th Percentile £68.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.30 £29.77 £42.50
% change year-on-year -28.45% -29.95% +112.50%

Cisco
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Cisco as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Cisco 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 20 September 2025.

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 20 September 2025.

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 20 September 2025. 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 -13 859 £500 - 493
UK excluding London -12 603 £491 -1.80% 430
London -16 314 £500 - 161
Work from Home -35 233 £463 -7.50% 177
South East +2 184 £500 -3.62% 167
Midlands +5 128 £463 -7.50% 76
North of England -29 125 £476 -0.52% 81
West Midlands +26 111 £475 -14.41% 46
North West -21 72 £475 -4.52% 40
South West -4 65 £550 +4.76% 31
Scotland +9 56 £425 +53.15% 33
Yorkshire -23 49 £492 +2.77% 27
East of England -8 32 £483 +48.46% 34
East Midlands -13 17 £438 +16.67% 30
Northern Ireland 0 11 £475 +31.03% 7
Wales -9 5 £200 -17.10% 14
North East -8 4 £550 +25.71% 14
Channel Islands - 2 £725 -

Cisco
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 51 (5.14%) Microsoft Exchange
2 25 (2.52%) Skype for Business
3 21 (2.12%) SharePoint
4 18 (1.81%) Confluence
5 16 (1.61%) Mattermost
6 15 (1.51%) Apache
7 13 (1.31%) WebLogic
8 8 (0.81%) OpenStack
9 4 (0.40%) Appian
10 2 (0.20%) CICS
10 2 (0.20%) Gunicorn
10 2 (0.20%) IIS
10 2 (0.20%) nginx
10 2 (0.20%) SharePoint Server
10 2 (0.20%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.20%) WebSphere
11 1 (0.10%) CMS
11 1 (0.10%) Exchange Server 2010
11 1 (0.10%) Exchange Server 2013
11 1 (0.10%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 63 (6.35%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (1.21%) Microsoft Excel
3 11 (1.11%) MS Visio
4 10 (1.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.10%) Acrobat
5 1 (0.10%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 1 (0.10%) AutoCAD
5 1 (0.10%) OmniGraffle
5 1 (0.10%) Revit
Business Applications
1 7 (0.71%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.20%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.10%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 156 (15.73%) Azure
2 127 (12.80%) AWS
3 84 (8.47%) Microsoft 365
4 35 (3.53%) GCP
5 29 (2.92%) Entra ID
6 13 (1.31%) Azure Monitor
6 13 (1.31%) OpenShift
7 12 (1.21%) Akamai
7 12 (1.21%) SaaS
8 10 (1.01%) Azure Sentinel
9 9 (0.91%) GitHub
10 8 (0.81%) Nutanix
10 8 (0.81%) PaaS
11 7 (0.71%) Serverless
12 6 (0.60%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 6 (0.60%) IaaS
12 6 (0.60%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 5 (0.50%) AWS CloudFormation
13 5 (0.50%) AWS Lambda
13 5 (0.50%) Azure ExpressRoute
Communications & Networking
1 479 (48.29%) Firewall
2 233 (23.49%) WAN
3 207 (20.87%) LAN
4 192 (19.35%) BGP
5 166 (16.73%) Network Security
6 165 (16.63%) VPN
7 162 (16.33%) Wireless
8 156 (15.73%) OSPF
9 149 (15.02%) DNS
10 129 (13.00%) SD-WAN
11 114 (11.49%) Cisco Nexus
12 98 (9.88%) Wi-Fi
13 95 (9.58%) DHCP
14 90 (9.07%) VLAN
15 89 (8.97%) MPLS
16 87 (8.77%) Cisco ISE
17 83 (8.37%) Cisco IOS
18 74 (7.46%) TCP/IP
19 69 (6.96%) IPsec
20 66 (6.65%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (1.51%) SQL Server
2 8 (0.81%) NoSQL
3 5 (0.50%) MySQL
4 4 (0.40%) MongoDB
5 3 (0.30%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (0.20%) Data Lake
6 2 (0.20%) Hadoop
6 2 (0.20%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.10%) BigQuery
7 1 (0.10%) Looker
7 1 (0.10%) Power BI
7 1 (0.10%) Redis
7 1 (0.10%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 31 (3.13%) JIRA
2 21 (2.12%) Sonatype Nexus
3 18 (1.81%) GitLab
4 15 (1.51%) Git
5 7 (0.71%) SonarQube
6 5 (0.50%) Bitbucket
6 5 (0.50%) Robot Framework
7 4 (0.40%) Cucumber
7 4 (0.40%) Jenkins
7 4 (0.40%) Selenium
8 2 (0.20%) Cypress.io
8 2 (0.20%) eggPlant
8 2 (0.20%) Snyk
8 2 (0.20%) Subversion
8 2 (0.20%) webpack
9 1 (0.10%) Hudson
9 1 (0.10%) JIRA Agile
9 1 (0.10%) Mercurial
9 1 (0.10%) Postman
General
1 234 (23.59%) Social Skills
2 99 (9.98%) Finance
3 94 (9.48%) Public Sector
4 92 (9.27%) Telecoms
5 72 (7.26%) Analytical Skills
6 36 (3.63%) Banking
7 30 (3.02%) Documentation Skills
8 29 (2.92%) Manufacturing
9 25 (2.52%) Games
10 24 (2.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 23 (2.32%) Legal
12 10 (1.01%) Law
13 9 (0.91%) Organisational Skills
14 8 (0.81%) Aerospace
14 8 (0.81%) Electronics
15 7 (0.71%) Military
16 6 (0.60%) Financial Institution
16 6 (0.60%) Local Government
17 5 (0.50%) Retail
18 4 (0.40%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 387 (39.01%) Network Engineer
2 117 (11.79%) Architect
3 86 (8.67%) Cisco Engineer
4 82 (8.27%) Network Architect
5 74 (7.46%) Cisco Network Engineer
6 72 (7.26%) Senior
7 59 (5.95%) Analyst
7 59 (5.95%) Support Engineer
8 49 (4.94%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
8 49 (4.94%) Security Engineer
9 42 (4.23%) Consultant
10 37 (3.73%) Test Engineer
11 36 (3.63%) Network Security Engineer
11 36 (3.63%) Platform Engineer
11 36 (3.63%) Senior Network Engineer
12 33 (3.33%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 24 (2.42%) 3rd Line Engineer
13 24 (2.42%) Support Analyst
14 23 (2.32%) Juniper Engineer
15 22 (2.22%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (3.73%) 802.1X
2 29 (2.92%) RFC 2544
3 19 (1.92%) XMPP
4 14 (1.41%) NETCONF
5 12 (1.21%) Jinja
6 10 (1.01%) JSON
6 10 (1.01%) RESTCONF
7 9 (0.91%) REST
8 8 (0.81%) XML
8 8 (0.81%) YANG
9 4 (0.40%) .NET
9 4 (0.40%) ASP.NET
9 4 (0.40%) Flash
9 4 (0.40%) React
9 4 (0.40%) YAML
10 3 (0.30%) CSS
10 3 (0.30%) HTML
10 3 (0.30%) Kafka
10 3 (0.30%) SOAP
10 3 (0.30%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 189 (19.05%) Data Centre
2 35 (3.53%) PKI
3 34 (3.43%) Data Protection Act
3 34 (3.43%) Onboarding
4 26 (2.62%) Fibre Optics
5 25 (2.52%) Management Information System
6 23 (2.32%) Driving Licence
6 23 (2.32%) Video Conferencing
7 22 (2.22%) Hybrid Cloud
7 22 (2.22%) Security Posture
8 19 (1.92%) Self-Motivation
9 13 (1.31%) Cloud Native
9 13 (1.31%) Replication
9 13 (1.31%) Virtual Team
10 12 (1.21%) Operational Technology
10 12 (1.21%) Public Cloud
11 11 (1.11%) CMDB
12 9 (0.91%) Blackberry
13 8 (0.81%) Enterprise Storage
14 7 (0.71%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 165 (16.63%) Windows
2 109 (10.99%) Linux
3 47 (4.74%) Mac OS
3 47 (4.74%) Windows Server
4 38 (3.83%) Android
5 31 (3.13%) Unix
6 24 (2.42%) Windows 10
7 13 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 6 (0.60%) Windows 7
8 6 (0.60%) Windows 8
9 4 (0.40%) CentOS
9 4 (0.40%) VMS
9 4 (0.40%) Windows Server 2012
9 4 (0.40%) Windows Server 2016
9 4 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
10 3 (0.30%) Mac OS X
10 3 (0.30%) Windows Server 2003
10 3 (0.30%) Windows XP
11 2 (0.20%) Solaris
11 2 (0.20%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 129 (13.00%) Problem-Solving
2 114 (11.49%) ITIL
3 96 (9.68%) Service Management
4 88 (8.87%) Migration
5 86 (8.67%) Network Design
6 67 (6.75%) Network Monitoring
7 64 (6.45%) Change Management
8 60 (6.05%) Agile
9 57 (5.75%) Computer Science
9 57 (5.75%) High Availability
10 52 (5.24%) Network Architecture
11 51 (5.14%) Incident Response
12 50 (5.04%) Load Balancing
13 46 (4.64%) Problem Management
14 45 (4.54%) DevOps
14 45 (4.54%) Project Delivery
15 44 (4.44%) Disaster Recovery
15 44 (4.44%) Project Management
15 44 (4.44%) Validation
16 43 (4.33%) Data Protection
Programming Languages
1 123 (12.40%) Python
2 77 (7.76%) PowerShell
3 55 (5.54%) SQL
4 25 (2.52%) Bash
5 17 (1.71%) Java
6 15 (1.51%) Perl
7 12 (1.21%) JavaScript
8 8 (0.81%) C++
9 7 (0.71%) VB
10 4 (0.40%) Go
10 4 (0.40%) Kusto Query Language
11 2 (0.20%) C
11 2 (0.20%) C#
11 2 (0.20%) Lisp
11 2 (0.20%) PHP
11 2 (0.20%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.10%) VBA
Qualifications
1 358 (36.09%) Security Cleared
2 306 (30.85%) Cisco Certification
3 261 (26.31%) SC Cleared
4 219 (22.08%) CCNP
5 107 (10.79%) DV Cleared
6 103 (10.38%) CCNA
7 90 (9.07%) Degree
8 63 (6.35%) CCIE
9 45 (4.54%) Computer Science Degree
10 28 (2.82%) ITIL Certification
11 21 (2.12%) Microsoft Certification
12 19 (1.92%) CCSA
13 18 (1.81%) JNCIE
14 16 (1.61%) BPSS Clearance
14 16 (1.61%) JNCIA
15 14 (1.41%) AWS Certification
16 13 (1.31%) CCSE
17 12 (1.21%) CISSP
18 10 (1.01%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
18 10 (1.01%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 36 (3.63%) SLA
2 14 (1.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 13 (1.31%) NIST
4 9 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
4 9 (0.91%) GDPR
5 6 (0.60%) NCSC
5 6 (0.60%) PCI DSS
5 6 (0.60%) QA
6 3 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
7 2 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 2 (0.20%) Def Stans
7 2 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
7 2 (0.20%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 2 (0.20%) PMO
8 1 (0.10%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.10%) COBIT
8 1 (0.10%) GxP
8 1 (0.10%) ISO 22301
8 1 (0.10%) NIST 800
System Software
1 149 (15.02%) Active Directory
2 88 (8.87%) VMware Infrastructure
3 29 (2.92%) VMware ESXi
4 28 (2.82%) VMware NSX
5 27 (2.72%) Firmware
6 15 (1.51%) Docker
6 15 (1.51%) Hyper-V
7 13 (1.31%) vSphere
8 9 (0.91%) Virtual Machines
9 6 (0.60%) KVM
9 6 (0.60%) Virtual Desktop
9 6 (0.60%) Virtual Servers
10 5 (0.50%) NFS
10 5 (0.50%) Snort
11 4 (0.40%) Ceph
11 4 (0.40%) GPFS
11 4 (0.40%) Microsoft Virtual Server
11 4 (0.40%) XenApp
12 3 (0.30%) BitLocker
12 3 (0.30%) Squid
Systems Management
1 114 (11.49%) Ansible
2 47 (4.74%) FortiGate
3 44 (4.44%) Microsoft Intune
4 43 (4.33%) SCCM
5 37 (3.73%) Terraform
6 29 (2.92%) vCenter Server
7 20 (2.02%) Kubernetes
8 18 (1.81%) Cisco CUCM
9 17 (1.71%) SCOM
10 11 (1.11%) Cisco Prime
11 7 (0.71%) EMC NetWorker
11 7 (0.71%) EMC VPLEX
11 7 (0.71%) HP ALM
11 7 (0.71%) HP SiteScope
12 6 (0.60%) NetBackup
12 6 (0.60%) OpenView
12 6 (0.60%) WSUS
13 5 (0.50%) CA Spectrum
13 5 (0.50%) Nagios
13 5 (0.50%) QRadar
Vendors
1 229 (23.08%) Microsoft
2 187 (18.85%) Juniper
3 166 (16.73%) Palo Alto
4 145 (14.62%) Fortinet
5 126 (12.70%) F5
6 122 (12.30%) VMware
7 106 (10.69%) Meraki
8 105 (10.58%) SolarWinds
9 103 (10.38%) CheckPoint
10 83 (8.37%) Splunk
11 47 (4.74%) ServiceNow
12 46 (4.64%) Dell
13 34 (3.43%) Arista
13 34 (3.43%) HP
14 31 (3.13%) Zscaler
15 27 (2.72%) Aruba
16 25 (2.52%) Oracle
17 24 (2.42%) Google
18 23 (2.32%) Citrix
18 23 (2.32%) Red Hat