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 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
20 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 112 69 65
Rank change year-on-year -43 -4 -7
Contract jobs citing Cisco 1,182 1,143 1,302
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.24% 3.48% 3.12%
As % of the Vendors category 5.44% 7.33% 7.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 786 707 794
10th Percentile £300 £305 £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 £573 £588 £575
90th Percentile £638 £638 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -5.00% +5.26% +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 37 35 38
10th Percentile £26.72 £25.06 £17.14
25th Percentile £36.25 £25.15 £23.80
Median hourly rate £55.00 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +83.33% +9.09% -45.00%
75th Percentile £72.00 £58.13 £50.00
90th Percentile £78.60 £86.98 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £30.00 £46.39
% change year-on-year +83.33% -35.33% -16.14%

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 21,745 15,591 18,093
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.20% 47.53% 43.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,504 9,536 11,354
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £403 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year +1.00% -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £715 £728
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £478 £500
% change year-on-year +4.60% -4.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,091 765 1,013
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.75 £12.82
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.30 £15.50
Median hourly rate £34.87 £25.15 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year +38.65% -3.27% -37.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £50.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.98 £22.41 £25.00
% change year-on-year +51.65% -10.37% -22.24%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -45 1,001 £485 -3.00% 563
UK excluding London -46 704 £475 -5.00% 506
London -47 351 £500 - 169
Work from Home -42 292 £466 -6.80% 97
North of England -37 226 £485 -1.42% 119
South East -41 184 £511 -4.88% 138
North West -10 171 £483 +1.68% 55
Midlands -27 127 £425 -5.56% 62
West Midlands -28 121 £423 -6.11% 35
Scotland +15 87 £425 +5.59% 28
South West -64 56 £500 -9.09% 78
Yorkshire -63 52 £500 - 46
East of England -18 31 £515 -6.36% 55
Wales -17 19 £468 +35.51% 18
Northern Ireland +8 8 £115 -67.14% 17
North East -38 4 £425 +30.77% 19
East Midlands -33 3 £500 -9.09% 27
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 (2.37%) SharePoint
2 22 (1.86%) Microsoft Exchange
3 9 (0.76%) Confluence
3 9 (0.76%) OpenStack
4 7 (0.59%) Apache
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%) JBoss
7 1 (0.085%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 48 (4.06%) Microsoft Office
2 24 (2.03%) Microsoft Excel
2 24 (2.03%) MS Visio
3 10 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.17%) Acrobat
Business Applications
1 5 (0.42%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 223 (18.87%) Azure
2 150 (12.69%) AWS
3 75 (6.35%) Microsoft 365
4 48 (4.06%) Entra ID
5 22 (1.86%) GCP
6 21 (1.78%) GitHub
7 19 (1.61%) OpenShift
8 18 (1.52%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 17 (1.44%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 17 (1.44%) OneDrive
10 15 (1.27%) Nutanix
11 12 (1.02%) Azure Sentinel
12 11 (0.93%) SaaS
13 10 (0.85%) Power Platform
14 8 (0.68%) IaaS
14 8 (0.68%) Microsoft Purview
15 7 (0.59%) Azure DevOps
15 7 (0.59%) Cloudflare
16 6 (0.51%) Amazon EC2
16 6 (0.51%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 526 (44.50%) Firewall
2 364 (30.80%) WAN
3 315 (26.65%) BGP
4 293 (24.79%) LAN
5 268 (22.67%) VPN
6 256 (21.66%) Network Security
7 221 (18.70%) OSPF
8 207 (17.51%) Wireless
9 190 (16.07%) DNS
10 173 (14.64%) VLAN
11 140 (11.84%) SD-WAN
12 128 (10.83%) MPLS
13 118 (9.98%) Wi-Fi
14 115 (9.73%) Cisco Nexus
15 110 (9.31%) Cisco ISE
16 104 (8.80%) DHCP
17 96 (8.12%) VXLAN
18 89 (7.53%) TCP/IP
19 88 (7.45%) Cisco ASA
20 80 (6.77%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (1.69%) SQL Server
2 4 (0.34%) Amazon RDS
3 3 (0.25%) MySQL
3 3 (0.25%) NoSQL
3 3 (0.25%) Power BI
4 2 (0.17%) PostgreSQL
5 1 (0.085%) Apache Hive
5 1 (0.085%) Big Data
5 1 (0.085%) ClickHouse
5 1 (0.085%) Hadoop
5 1 (0.085%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 19 (1.61%) Git
1 19 (1.61%) JIRA
2 15 (1.27%) Sonatype Nexus
3 10 (0.85%) Jenkins
4 4 (0.34%) GitLab
5 2 (0.17%) Bitbucket
General
1 271 (22.93%) Social Skills
2 109 (9.22%) Finance
3 86 (7.28%) Telecoms
4 85 (7.19%) Analytical Skills
5 65 (5.50%) Banking
6 63 (5.33%) Public Sector
7 62 (5.25%) Documentation Skills
8 35 (2.96%) Legal
9 24 (2.03%) Organisational Skills
10 21 (1.78%) Financial Institution
11 19 (1.61%) Investment Banking
12 16 (1.35%) Retail
13 14 (1.18%) Military
14 13 (1.10%) Law
15 12 (1.02%) Manufacturing
16 11 (0.93%) Police
17 8 (0.68%) Influencing Skills
18 6 (0.51%) Marketing
18 6 (0.51%) Presentation Skills
19 5 (0.42%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 572 (48.39%) Network Engineer
2 143 (12.10%) Senior
3 131 (11.08%) Architect
4 120 (10.15%) Cisco Engineer
5 109 (9.22%) Cisco Network Engineer
6 95 (8.04%) Security Engineer
7 89 (7.53%) Senior Network Engineer
8 73 (6.18%) Network Architect
9 72 (6.09%) Network Security Engineer
10 56 (4.74%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 55 (4.65%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 43 (3.64%) Data Network Engineer
13 34 (2.88%) Analyst
13 34 (2.88%) Data Engineer
14 33 (2.79%) Cisco Security Engineer
15 31 (2.62%) Field Engineer
16 27 (2.28%) Network Specialist
17 25 (2.12%) Automation Engineer
17 25 (2.12%) Lead
18 24 (2.03%) Data Centre Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 78 (6.60%) 802.1X
2 14 (1.18%) REST
2 14 (1.18%) SAML
3 9 (0.76%) Flash
4 8 (0.68%) LDAP
5 7 (0.59%) NETCONF
6 6 (0.51%) Jinja
6 6 (0.51%) OpenConfig
6 6 (0.51%) RESTCONF
6 6 (0.51%) XMPP
6 6 (0.51%) YANG
7 4 (0.34%) Django
7 4 (0.34%) JSON
8 3 (0.25%) Elastic Stack
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%) RFC 2544
Miscellaneous
1 302 (25.55%) Data Centre
2 61 (5.16%) PKI
3 48 (4.06%) Hybrid Cloud
4 43 (3.64%) Clustering
5 40 (3.38%) Replication
6 38 (3.21%) Data Protection Act
6 38 (3.21%) Onboarding
7 33 (2.79%) Driving Licence
8 30 (2.54%) Operational Technology
8 30 (2.54%) Video Conferencing
9 19 (1.61%) Analytical Mindset
9 19 (1.61%) Enterprise Storage
10 18 (1.52%) Cloud Native
10 18 (1.52%) EMC VMAX
11 17 (1.44%) Linux Command Line
12 16 (1.35%) Public Cloud
12 16 (1.35%) Security Posture
13 14 (1.18%) SCADA
13 14 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
14 12 (1.02%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 217 (18.36%) Windows
2 128 (10.83%) Linux
3 67 (5.67%) Windows Server
4 18 (1.52%) Windows 10
5 17 (1.44%) Unix
6 16 (1.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 16 (1.35%) Ubuntu
7 10 (0.85%) Windows Server 2019
8 9 (0.76%) AIX
8 9 (0.76%) Android
9 8 (0.68%) Mac OS
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%) Windows Server 2016
14 1 (0.085%) CatOS
14 1 (0.085%) Check Point GAiA
14 1 (0.085%) Windows 7
14 1 (0.085%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 181 (15.31%) Migration
2 134 (11.34%) Load Balancing
3 128 (10.83%) High Availability
4 123 (10.41%) Problem-Solving
5 117 (9.90%) Project Delivery
6 114 (9.64%) ITIL
7 89 (7.53%) Network Design
8 87 (7.36%) Change Management
9 82 (6.94%) ITSM
10 77 (6.51%) Continuous Improvement
11 74 (6.26%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 72 (6.09%) Infrastructure as Code
13 67 (5.67%) CI/CD
13 67 (5.67%) Stakeholder Management
14 63 (5.33%) Network Monitoring
14 63 (5.33%) Validation
15 61 (5.16%) Disaster Recovery
16 59 (4.99%) Agile
17 58 (4.91%) Technical Leadership
18 57 (4.82%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 145 (12.27%) Python
2 62 (5.25%) PowerShell
3 29 (2.45%) Bash
4 25 (2.12%) SQL
5 6 (0.51%) C
6 5 (0.42%) Shell Script
7 4 (0.34%) Java
7 4 (0.34%) Perl
8 3 (0.25%) C++
8 3 (0.25%) Lisp
8 3 (0.25%) PHP
9 2 (0.17%) ActionScript
9 2 (0.17%) Korn
10 1 (0.085%) Bicep
10 1 (0.085%) Ladder Logic
Qualifications
1 341 (28.85%) Cisco Certification
2 320 (27.07%) Security Cleared
3 245 (20.73%) CCNP
4 223 (18.87%) SC Cleared
5 136 (11.51%) CCNA
6 102 (8.63%) DV Cleared
7 71 (6.01%) Degree
8 63 (5.33%) CCIE
9 28 (2.37%) Microsoft Certification
9 28 (2.37%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 22 (1.86%) Network+ Certification
11 20 (1.69%) MCSE
12 17 (1.44%) Azure Certification
12 17 (1.44%) BPSS Clearance
12 17 (1.44%) Server+ Certification
13 13 (1.10%) VCAP
14 12 (1.02%) AWS Certification
14 12 (1.02%) JNCIP
14 12 (1.02%) JNCIS
14 12 (1.02%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 40 (3.38%) SLA
2 31 (2.62%) NIST
3 27 (2.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 23 (1.95%) Cyber Essentials
5 20 (1.69%) QA
6 19 (1.61%) NCSC
7 7 (0.59%) Disclosure Scotland
8 6 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 6 (0.51%) PMO
9 5 (0.42%) GDPR
9 5 (0.42%) PCI DSS
10 4 (0.34%) JSP 440
11 3 (0.25%) Data Quality
11 3 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 3 (0.25%) NIST 800
12 2 (0.17%) Accessibility
12 2 (0.17%) Government Security Classifications
12 2 (0.17%) GRC
12 2 (0.17%) ISA99
13 1 (0.085%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 146 (12.35%) VMware Infrastructure
2 104 (8.80%) Active Directory
3 55 (4.65%) vSphere
4 51 (4.31%) VMware ESXi
4 51 (4.31%) VMware NSX
5 35 (2.96%) Virtual Machines
6 31 (2.62%) Firmware
7 22 (1.86%) Hyper-V
8 13 (1.10%) NFS
9 12 (1.02%) SRDF
10 10 (0.85%) Docker
11 9 (0.76%) GPFS
12 6 (0.51%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 5 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
13 5 (0.42%) Virtual Servers
14 3 (0.25%) Dovecot
14 3 (0.25%) Postfix
14 3 (0.25%) UAG
15 2 (0.17%) Snort
15 2 (0.17%) vCloud
Systems Management
1 149 (12.61%) Ansible
2 93 (7.87%) FortiGate
3 66 (5.58%) Terraform
4 28 (2.37%) Grafana
4 28 (2.37%) vCenter Server
5 25 (2.12%) Kubernetes
6 24 (2.03%) Microsoft Intune
7 21 (1.78%) Prometheus
7 21 (1.78%) SCCM
8 17 (1.44%) Cisco Prime
9 16 (1.35%) Cisco CUCM
10 13 (1.10%) vRealize
11 10 (0.85%) Single Sign-On
12 8 (0.68%) VxRail
12 8 (0.68%) WMI
13 7 (0.59%) EMC VPLEX
13 7 (0.59%) WSUS
14 6 (0.51%) EMC TimeFinder
15 5 (0.42%) Jamf Pro
15 5 (0.42%) SCOM
Vendors
1 278 (23.52%) Palo Alto
2 231 (19.54%) F5
3 203 (17.17%) Microsoft
3 203 (17.17%) VMware
4 201 (17.01%) Fortinet
5 167 (14.13%) Juniper
6 110 (9.31%) CheckPoint
7 98 (8.29%) Meraki
8 97 (8.21%) Aruba
9 96 (8.12%) SolarWinds
10 92 (7.78%) ServiceNow
11 78 (6.60%) Arista
12 60 (5.08%) Splunk
13 47 (3.98%) Zscaler
14 41 (3.47%) Dell
15 29 (2.45%) EMC
15 29 (2.45%) Extreme Networks
16 28 (2.37%) Brocade
17 27 (2.28%) Citrix
18 25 (2.12%) Red Hat