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 8 July 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
8 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 114 68 67
Rank change year-on-year -46 -1 -10
Contract jobs citing Cisco 1,178 1,159 1,338
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.26% 3.63% 3.10%
As % of the Vendors category 5.48% 7.63% 7.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 794 716 821
10th Percentile £297 £311 £250
25th Percentile £400 £406 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +5.26% -
75th Percentile £569 £588 £575
90th Percentile £630 £649 £660
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -5.00% +5.26% +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 36 32 39
10th Percentile £26.72 £24.69 £17.30
25th Percentile £34.44 £25.15 £23.53
Median hourly rate £53.75 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +79.17% +9.09% -45.00%
75th Percentile £68.88 £43.69 £46.39
90th Percentile £76.50 £61.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £30.00 £41.95
% change year-on-year +83.33% -28.48% -11.69%

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 21,481 15,195 18,590
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.17% 47.56% 43.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,367 9,316 11,552
10th Percentile £313 £281 £270
25th Percentile £413 £402 £407
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year +0.10% -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £713 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,099 719 1,147
10th Percentile £15.75 £14.84 £12.40
25th Percentile £19.23 £17.33 £15.00
Median hourly rate £33.99 £25.15 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.15% +0.60% -38.27%
75th Percentile £63.75 £53.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £22.63 £24.18
% change year-on-year +43.61% -6.41% -22.00%

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 8 July 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 8 July 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 8 July 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 -47 995 £480 -4.00% 740
UK excluding London -47 714 £475 -5.00% 668
London -65 336 £500 - 235
Work from Home -35 294 £463 -7.50% 154
North of England -40 223 £481 -2.97% 151
South East -40 186 £500 -4.76% 174
North West -11 171 £479 +0.74% 71
Midlands -32 137 £418 -7.22% 83
West Midlands -23 130 £413 +3.13% 41
Scotland +22 88 £450 +12.50% 48
South West -68 56 £518 -5.91% 93
Yorkshire -58 49 £500 - 57
East of England -28 32 £500 -9.09% 76
Wales -20 19 £468 +61.21% 28
Northern Ireland +11 9 £145 -58.57% 23
East Midlands -32 4 £458 -3.68% 42
North East -41 4 £425 +30.77% 23
Channel Islands -1 1 £550 -24.14%

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 (2.38%) SharePoint
2 19 (1.61%) Microsoft Exchange
3 12 (1.02%) Confluence
4 7 (0.59%) Apache
4 7 (0.59%) OpenStack
5 3 (0.25%) CloudStack
5 3 (0.25%) IIS
5 3 (0.25%) nginx
5 3 (0.25%) SAS
5 3 (0.25%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.17%) CMS
7 1 (0.085%) Apache Spark
7 1 (0.085%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 47 (3.99%) Microsoft Office
2 32 (2.72%) MS Visio
3 26 (2.21%) Microsoft Excel
4 11 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.085%) Acrobat
Business Applications
1 5 (0.42%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 213 (18.08%) Azure
2 151 (12.82%) AWS
3 70 (5.94%) Microsoft 365
4 43 (3.65%) Entra ID
5 22 (1.87%) GCP
6 17 (1.44%) GitHub
6 17 (1.44%) OpenShift
7 16 (1.36%) OneDrive
7 16 (1.36%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 15 (1.27%) Azure ExpressRoute
8 15 (1.27%) Nutanix
9 13 (1.10%) Azure Sentinel
9 13 (1.10%) SaaS
10 10 (0.85%) Power Platform
11 9 (0.76%) IaaS
12 8 (0.68%) Microsoft Purview
13 6 (0.51%) Azure DevOps
13 6 (0.51%) Cloudflare
14 5 (0.42%) GitHub Actions
14 5 (0.42%) Rubrik
Communications & Networking
1 510 (43.29%) Firewall
2 374 (31.75%) WAN
3 306 (25.98%) BGP
4 300 (25.47%) LAN
5 261 (22.16%) VPN
6 250 (21.22%) Network Security
7 213 (18.08%) OSPF
8 201 (17.06%) Wireless
9 184 (15.62%) DNS
10 165 (14.01%) VLAN
11 154 (13.07%) SD-WAN
12 128 (10.87%) MPLS
13 118 (10.02%) Cisco Nexus
14 108 (9.17%) Wi-Fi
15 107 (9.08%) Cisco ISE
16 101 (8.57%) VXLAN
17 99 (8.40%) DHCP
18 83 (7.05%) Cisco ASA
19 81 (6.88%) Cisco IOS
20 78 (6.62%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (1.53%) SQL Server
2 3 (0.25%) MySQL
2 3 (0.25%) NoSQL
2 3 (0.25%) Power BI
3 2 (0.17%) Amazon RDS
3 2 (0.17%) PostgreSQL
4 1 (0.085%) Apache Hive
4 1 (0.085%) Big Data
4 1 (0.085%) ClickHouse
4 1 (0.085%) Hadoop
4 1 (0.085%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 19 (1.61%) JIRA
2 16 (1.36%) Sonatype Nexus
3 13 (1.10%) Git
4 9 (0.76%) Jenkins
5 3 (0.25%) GitLab
6 2 (0.17%) Bitbucket
General
1 275 (23.34%) Social Skills
2 109 (9.25%) Finance
3 81 (6.88%) Telecoms
4 75 (6.37%) Analytical Skills
5 67 (5.69%) Public Sector
6 60 (5.09%) Banking
7 59 (5.01%) Documentation Skills
8 45 (3.82%) Legal
9 23 (1.95%) Organisational Skills
10 20 (1.70%) Investment Banking
11 18 (1.53%) Financial Institution
12 16 (1.36%) Retail
13 14 (1.19%) Manufacturing
14 13 (1.10%) Law
15 12 (1.02%) Military
16 9 (0.76%) Influencing Skills
16 9 (0.76%) Police
17 8 (0.68%) Marketing
18 7 (0.59%) Presentation Skills
19 5 (0.42%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 562 (47.71%) Network Engineer
2 137 (11.63%) Architect
3 132 (11.21%) Senior
4 123 (10.44%) Cisco Engineer
5 112 (9.51%) Cisco Network Engineer
6 93 (7.89%) Security Engineer
7 76 (6.45%) Network Architect
7 76 (6.45%) Senior Network Engineer
8 69 (5.86%) Network Security Engineer
9 58 (4.92%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
10 57 (4.84%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 49 (4.16%) Data Network Engineer
12 36 (3.06%) Data Engineer
13 35 (2.97%) Analyst
13 35 (2.97%) Cisco Security Engineer
14 29 (2.46%) Field Engineer
15 27 (2.29%) Lead
15 27 (2.29%) Network Specialist
16 25 (2.12%) Solutions Architect
17 24 (2.04%) Data Centre Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 74 (6.28%) 802.1X
2 17 (1.44%) SAML
3 14 (1.19%) LDAP
3 14 (1.19%) REST
4 12 (1.02%) Flash
5 6 (0.51%) Jinja
5 6 (0.51%) XMPP
6 5 (0.42%) NETCONF
7 4 (0.34%) Django
7 4 (0.34%) OpenConfig
7 4 (0.34%) RESTCONF
7 4 (0.34%) YANG
8 3 (0.25%) Elastic Stack
8 3 (0.25%) JSON
8 3 (0.25%) LAMP
8 3 (0.25%) LEMP Stack
8 3 (0.25%) Microsoft Graph
8 3 (0.25%) YAML
9 2 (0.17%) .NET Core
9 2 (0.17%) Blazor
Miscellaneous
1 303 (25.72%) Data Centre
2 57 (4.84%) PKI
3 43 (3.65%) Replication
4 42 (3.57%) Clustering
5 41 (3.48%) Hybrid Cloud
6 39 (3.31%) Data Protection Act
7 35 (2.97%) Onboarding
8 32 (2.72%) Driving Licence
9 30 (2.55%) Operational Technology
10 27 (2.29%) Video Conferencing
11 19 (1.61%) Enterprise Storage
12 18 (1.53%) EMC VMAX
12 18 (1.53%) Security Posture
13 17 (1.44%) Analytical Mindset
13 17 (1.44%) Cloud Native
14 16 (1.36%) Linux Command Line
15 15 (1.27%) Virtual Team
16 14 (1.19%) SCADA
17 13 (1.10%) Public Cloud
17 13 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 215 (18.25%) Windows
2 124 (10.53%) Linux
3 66 (5.60%) Windows Server
4 18 (1.53%) Unix
5 16 (1.36%) Windows 10
6 15 (1.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 15 (1.27%) Ubuntu
7 10 (0.85%) Windows Server 2019
8 9 (0.76%) Android
9 8 (0.68%) Mac OS
10 7 (0.59%) AIX
10 7 (0.59%) Windows Server 2012
11 5 (0.42%) Data ONTAP
11 5 (0.42%) VMS
12 4 (0.34%) CentOS
13 3 (0.25%) CatOS
13 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
14 1 (0.085%) Debian
14 1 (0.085%) Windows 7
14 1 (0.085%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 185 (15.70%) Migration
2 135 (11.46%) Load Balancing
3 125 (10.61%) High Availability
4 119 (10.10%) Problem-Solving
5 113 (9.59%) ITIL
6 110 (9.34%) Project Delivery
7 89 (7.56%) Network Design
8 84 (7.13%) ITSM
9 82 (6.96%) Change Management
10 76 (6.45%) Continuous Improvement
11 72 (6.11%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 69 (5.86%) Stakeholder Management
13 65 (5.52%) Agile
13 65 (5.52%) Infrastructure as Code
14 63 (5.35%) Disaster Recovery
14 63 (5.35%) Technical Leadership
15 62 (5.26%) Cybersecurity
16 61 (5.18%) Network Monitoring
16 61 (5.18%) Validation
17 60 (5.09%) CI/CD
Programming Languages
1 141 (11.97%) Python
2 59 (5.01%) PowerShell
3 24 (2.04%) SQL
4 22 (1.87%) Bash
5 6 (0.51%) C
6 4 (0.34%) Java
6 4 (0.34%) Perl
6 4 (0.34%) PHP
7 3 (0.25%) C++
7 3 (0.25%) Lisp
7 3 (0.25%) Shell Script
8 2 (0.17%) ActionScript
8 2 (0.17%) Korn
9 1 (0.085%) Bicep
9 1 (0.085%) JavaScript
9 1 (0.085%) Ladder Logic
Qualifications
1 348 (29.54%) Cisco Certification
2 328 (27.84%) Security Cleared
3 252 (21.39%) CCNP
4 237 (20.12%) SC Cleared
5 139 (11.80%) CCNA
6 100 (8.49%) DV Cleared
7 72 (6.11%) Degree
8 66 (5.60%) CCIE
9 28 (2.38%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 27 (2.29%) Microsoft Certification
11 22 (1.87%) Network+ Certification
12 19 (1.61%) MCSE
13 18 (1.53%) BPSS Clearance
14 17 (1.44%) Azure Certification
14 17 (1.44%) Server+ Certification
15 14 (1.19%) CCSE
16 13 (1.10%) VCAP
17 12 (1.02%) AWS Certification
17 12 (1.02%) JNCIP
17 12 (1.02%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 43 (3.65%) SLA
2 32 (2.72%) NIST
3 29 (2.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 24 (2.04%) Cyber Essentials
5 21 (1.78%) QA
6 20 (1.70%) NCSC
7 9 (0.76%) PMO
8 7 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 7 (0.59%) Disclosure Scotland
9 5 (0.42%) GDPR
9 5 (0.42%) JSP 440
9 5 (0.42%) PCI DSS
10 3 (0.25%) Data Quality
10 3 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 3 (0.25%) NIST 800
11 2 (0.17%) Accessibility
11 2 (0.17%) Government Security Classifications
11 2 (0.17%) GRC
11 2 (0.17%) ISO/IEC 20000
11 2 (0.17%) RMADS
System Software
1 151 (12.82%) VMware Infrastructure
2 102 (8.66%) Active Directory
3 57 (4.84%) VMware ESXi
4 56 (4.75%) vSphere
5 50 (4.24%) VMware NSX
6 35 (2.97%) Virtual Machines
7 31 (2.63%) Firmware
8 24 (2.04%) Hyper-V
9 16 (1.36%) NFS
10 12 (1.02%) GPFS
10 12 (1.02%) SRDF
11 7 (0.59%) Docker
11 7 (0.59%) Virtual Desktop
12 6 (0.51%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 5 (0.42%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.34%) vCloud
15 3 (0.25%) Dovecot
15 3 (0.25%) Postfix
15 3 (0.25%) UAG
16 2 (0.17%) Snort
Systems Management
1 145 (12.31%) Ansible
2 96 (8.15%) FortiGate
3 58 (4.92%) Terraform
4 31 (2.63%) vCenter Server
5 28 (2.38%) Grafana
6 23 (1.95%) Microsoft Intune
6 23 (1.95%) SCCM
7 22 (1.87%) Kubernetes
8 21 (1.78%) Prometheus
9 16 (1.36%) vRealize
10 15 (1.27%) Cisco Prime
11 13 (1.10%) Cisco CUCM
11 13 (1.10%) Single Sign-On
12 9 (0.76%) VxRail
13 8 (0.68%) WMI
14 7 (0.59%) EMC VPLEX
14 7 (0.59%) WSUS
15 6 (0.51%) EMC TimeFinder
15 6 (0.51%) HAProxy
15 6 (0.51%) SCOM
Vendors
1 279 (23.68%) Palo Alto
2 229 (19.44%) F5
3 205 (17.40%) Microsoft
4 199 (16.89%) VMware
5 194 (16.47%) Fortinet
6 164 (13.92%) Juniper
7 110 (9.34%) CheckPoint
8 102 (8.66%) Aruba
9 98 (8.32%) ServiceNow
10 96 (8.15%) SolarWinds
11 93 (7.89%) Meraki
12 78 (6.62%) Arista
13 60 (5.09%) Splunk
14 49 (4.16%) Zscaler
15 43 (3.65%) Dell
16 31 (2.63%) EMC
17 30 (2.55%) Extreme Networks
18 29 (2.46%) IBM
19 28 (2.38%) Brocade
20 26 (2.21%) Infoblox