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 29 April 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
29 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 100 66 66
Rank change year-on-year -34 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Cisco 1,091 1,041 1,334
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.32% 3.57% 3.08%
As % of the Vendors category 5.51% 7.52% 7.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 736 657 816
10th Percentile £300 £307 £254
25th Percentile £400 £408 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £487
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +2.72% +0.36%
75th Percentile £560 £588 £600
90th Percentile £636 £650 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £475
% change year-on-year -3.06% +3.16% +2.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 19 46
10th Percentile £21.46 £17.55 £13.65
25th Percentile £36.25 £21.58 £23.34
Median hourly rate £51.86 £37.50 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +38.29% +36.36% -45.00%
75th Percentile £74.26 £66.88 £41.25
90th Percentile £88.25 £75.00 £72.62
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.23 £33.52 £30.00
% change year-on-year +100.56% +11.74% -41.94%

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 19,803 13,848 18,355
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 42.06% 47.47% 42.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,660 8,700 11,393
10th Percentile £313 £290 £263
25th Percentile £413 £406 £403
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £518
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -0.48% -1.43%
75th Percentile £600 £619 £628
90th Percentile £700 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 995 560 1,077
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.99 £12.00
25th Percentile £18.54 £18.13 £14.36
Median hourly rate £30.50 £27.13 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +12.44% +20.56% -48.86%
75th Percentile £60.00 £57.52 £57.33
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.13 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.00 £24.19 £21.46
% change year-on-year +11.64% +12.70% -46.08%

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 29 April 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 29 April 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Cisco in the UK

Cisco
Top 16 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 29 April 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 -42 904 £475 -6.92% 429
UK excluding London -31 688 £475 -3.06% 429
Work from Home -26 281 £450 -11.11% 86
London -76 276 £500 -0.55% 116
South East -15 204 £500 - 111
North of England -49 182 £478 -4.45% 94
North West -14 147 £480 -3.03% 43
Midlands -18 136 £378 -16.11% 58
West Midlands -6 124 £345 -21.14% 45
Scotland +24 66 £450 +12.78% 27
South West -64 49 £510 -7.27% 59
East of England -10 43 £495 +4.21% 50
Yorkshire -77 36 £450 -14.29% 36
Wales -7 30 £425 - 21
Northern Ireland +11 9 £385 - 18
East Midlands -55 8 £415 -12.63% 13

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 31 (2.84%) Microsoft Exchange
2 24 (2.20%) SharePoint
3 13 (1.19%) Confluence
4 6 (0.55%) Apache
5 5 (0.46%) IIS
5 5 (0.46%) OpenStack
6 2 (0.18%) Skype for Business
7 1 (0.092%) CMS
7 1 (0.092%) JBoss
7 1 (0.092%) WebSphere
Applications
1 43 (3.94%) Microsoft Office
2 34 (3.12%) MS Visio
3 14 (1.28%) Microsoft Excel
4 11 (1.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.46%) Acrobat
6 1 (0.092%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 15 (1.37%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.092%) Actimize
Cloud Services
1 187 (17.14%) Azure
2 146 (13.38%) AWS
3 80 (7.33%) Microsoft 365
4 34 (3.12%) Entra ID
5 29 (2.66%) GCP
6 15 (1.37%) OpenShift
7 13 (1.19%) Nutanix
7 13 (1.19%) SaaS
7 13 (1.19%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 11 (1.01%) Azure ExpressRoute
8 11 (1.01%) GitHub
9 8 (0.73%) Azure Sentinel
9 8 (0.73%) Datadog
10 7 (0.64%) Azure DevOps
11 6 (0.55%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 6 (0.55%) Amazon Kinesis
11 6 (0.55%) AWS CloudFormation
11 6 (0.55%) Mimecast
12 5 (0.46%) IaaS
12 5 (0.46%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 483 (44.27%) Firewall
2 359 (32.91%) WAN
3 279 (25.57%) BGP
4 268 (24.56%) LAN
5 244 (22.36%) VPN
6 222 (20.35%) Network Security
7 203 (18.61%) OSPF
8 156 (14.30%) SD-WAN
9 153 (14.02%) DNS
10 149 (13.66%) Wireless
11 140 (12.83%) VLAN
12 102 (9.35%) Cisco Nexus
13 101 (9.26%) MPLS
14 99 (9.07%) Cisco ISE
15 91 (8.34%) VXLAN
16 87 (7.97%) Wi-Fi
17 79 (7.24%) IPsec
18 77 (7.06%) DHCP
19 74 (6.78%) Cisco ASA
20 71 (6.51%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (0.46%) DynamoDB
1 5 (0.46%) SQL Server
2 3 (0.27%) Amazon Athena
3 2 (0.18%) MariaDB
3 2 (0.18%) Power BI
4 1 (0.092%) Big Data
4 1 (0.092%) Metadata
4 1 (0.092%) MySQL
4 1 (0.092%) NoSQL
4 1 (0.092%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 22 (2.02%) JIRA
2 15 (1.37%) Sonatype Nexus
3 9 (0.82%) Git
4 8 (0.73%) Jenkins
5 6 (0.55%) GitLab
6 1 (0.092%) Bitbucket
General
1 229 (20.99%) Social Skills
2 120 (11.00%) Finance
3 95 (8.71%) Public Sector
4 72 (6.60%) Telecoms
5 65 (5.96%) Analytical Skills
6 61 (5.59%) Banking
7 53 (4.86%) Documentation Skills
8 52 (4.77%) Legal
9 33 (3.02%) Manufacturing
10 20 (1.83%) Marketing
11 18 (1.65%) Investment Banking
12 16 (1.47%) Organisational Skills
13 15 (1.37%) Financial Institution
14 14 (1.28%) Electronics
14 14 (1.28%) Law
14 14 (1.28%) Retail
15 13 (1.19%) Presentation Skills
16 7 (0.64%) Aerospace
16 7 (0.64%) Military
16 7 (0.64%) Police
Job Titles
1 488 (44.73%) Network Engineer
2 135 (12.37%) Architect
3 107 (9.81%) Cisco Engineer
4 103 (9.44%) Senior
5 101 (9.26%) Cisco Network Engineer
6 82 (7.52%) Security Engineer
7 79 (7.24%) Network Architect
8 74 (6.78%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
9 60 (5.50%) Network Security Engineer
10 54 (4.95%) Senior Network Engineer
11 46 (4.22%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 44 (4.03%) Data Network Engineer
13 42 (3.85%) Analyst
14 35 (3.21%) Data Engineer
15 32 (2.93%) Cisco Security Engineer
16 31 (2.84%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
17 25 (2.29%) Network Specialist
17 25 (2.29%) Solutions Architect
18 23 (2.11%) Lead
19 22 (2.02%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (6.23%) 802.1X
2 19 (1.74%) LDAP
3 15 (1.37%) Flash
4 13 (1.19%) SAML
5 9 (0.82%) REST
6 8 (0.73%) XMPP
7 6 (0.55%) Jinja
7 6 (0.55%) NETCONF
8 5 (0.46%) Node.js
8 5 (0.46%) YANG
9 4 (0.37%) HTML
9 4 (0.37%) OpenConfig
9 4 (0.37%) RESTCONF
9 4 (0.37%) VML
10 3 (0.27%) JSON
11 2 (0.18%) ADO
11 2 (0.18%) CSS
11 2 (0.18%) Django
11 2 (0.18%) Middleware
11 2 (0.18%) RFC 2544
Miscellaneous
1 286 (26.21%) Data Centre
2 54 (4.95%) PKI
3 44 (4.03%) Replication
4 40 (3.67%) Clustering
5 35 (3.21%) Data Protection Act
6 33 (3.02%) Hybrid Cloud
7 32 (2.93%) Operational Technology
8 30 (2.75%) Cloud Native
8 30 (2.75%) Onboarding
9 23 (2.11%) Linux Command Line
10 21 (1.92%) Driving Licence
11 17 (1.56%) Enterprise Storage
11 17 (1.56%) Self-Motivation
12 16 (1.47%) Video Conferencing
13 15 (1.37%) SCADA
13 15 (1.37%) Security Posture
14 14 (1.28%) EMC VMAX
15 13 (1.19%) Analytical Mindset
16 11 (1.01%) IoT
16 11 (1.01%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 200 (18.33%) Windows
2 106 (9.72%) Linux
3 69 (6.32%) Windows Server
4 27 (2.47%) Windows 10
5 23 (2.11%) Mac OS
6 22 (2.02%) Android
7 19 (1.74%) Unix
8 17 (1.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 8 (0.73%) Ubuntu
10 7 (0.64%) Windows Server 2012
11 5 (0.46%) CatOS
11 5 (0.46%) Windows Server 2019
12 4 (0.37%) Solaris
13 3 (0.27%) Data ONTAP
13 3 (0.27%) VMS
14 2 (0.18%) AIX
14 2 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
15 1 (0.092%) CentOS
15 1 (0.092%) Debian
15 1 (0.092%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 161 (14.76%) Migration
2 130 (11.92%) Problem-Solving
3 115 (10.54%) High Availability
4 113 (10.36%) Load Balancing
5 97 (8.89%) ITIL
5 97 (8.89%) Network Design
6 78 (7.15%) ITSM
7 75 (6.87%) Agile
8 73 (6.69%) Change Management
9 65 (5.96%) Continuous Improvement
9 65 (5.96%) Cybersecurity
10 64 (5.87%) Disaster Recovery
11 62 (5.68%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 61 (5.59%) Project Delivery
13 60 (5.50%) Network Monitoring
14 58 (5.32%) Roadmaps
15 54 (4.95%) Technical Leadership
16 52 (4.77%) Infrastructure as Code
17 49 (4.49%) Capacity Planning
17 49 (4.49%) Data Protection
Programming Languages
1 118 (10.82%) Python
2 53 (4.86%) PowerShell
3 20 (1.83%) Bash
4 9 (0.82%) SQL
5 8 (0.73%) C
6 4 (0.37%) PHP
7 3 (0.27%) C++
7 3 (0.27%) Java
7 3 (0.27%) JavaScript
7 3 (0.27%) Perl
8 2 (0.18%) ActionScript
8 2 (0.18%) Korn
8 2 (0.18%) Lisp
8 2 (0.18%) Shell Script
9 1 (0.092%) Bicep
9 1 (0.092%) Kusto Query Language
9 1 (0.092%) Ladder Logic
9 1 (0.092%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 389 (35.66%) Security Cleared
2 311 (28.51%) Cisco Certification
3 294 (26.95%) SC Cleared
4 239 (21.91%) CCNP
5 114 (10.45%) CCNA
6 110 (10.08%) DV Cleared
7 77 (7.06%) Degree
8 69 (6.32%) CCIE
9 27 (2.47%) Microsoft Certification
10 23 (2.11%) BPSS Clearance
11 21 (1.92%) JNCIS
11 21 (1.92%) MCSE
11 21 (1.92%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 18 (1.65%) Network+ Certification
13 17 (1.56%) Azure Certification
14 15 (1.37%) JNCIP
14 15 (1.37%) VCAP
15 14 (1.28%) JNCIA
15 14 (1.28%) MCSA
16 13 (1.19%) CCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (3.02%) SLA
2 32 (2.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 28 (2.57%) NIST
4 24 (2.20%) Cyber Essentials
5 17 (1.56%) NCSC
6 13 (1.19%) PMO
7 12 (1.10%) QA
8 11 (1.01%) GDPR
9 7 (0.64%) JSP 440
9 7 (0.64%) PCI DSS
10 6 (0.55%) Disclosure Scotland
11 4 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 3 (0.27%) HIPAA
12 3 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 3 (0.27%) RMADS
13 2 (0.18%) ISA99
13 2 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 2 (0.18%) NIST 800
14 1 (0.092%) GRC
14 1 (0.092%) JTAG
System Software
1 148 (13.57%) VMware Infrastructure
2 89 (8.16%) Active Directory
3 60 (5.50%) VMware NSX
4 58 (5.32%) vSphere
5 53 (4.86%) VMware ESXi
6 23 (2.11%) Virtual Machines
7 21 (1.92%) Firmware
8 20 (1.83%) Hyper-V
9 18 (1.65%) NFS
10 15 (1.37%) GPFS
11 9 (0.82%) SRDF
12 8 (0.73%) Docker
13 6 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
14 4 (0.37%) vCloud
14 4 (0.37%) Virtual Servers
15 3 (0.27%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 3 (0.27%) KVM
15 3 (0.27%) Snort
15 3 (0.27%) UAG
16 1 (0.092%) Squid
Systems Management
1 119 (10.91%) Ansible
2 101 (9.26%) FortiGate
3 50 (4.58%) Terraform
4 38 (3.48%) vCenter Server
5 28 (2.57%) vRealize
6 24 (2.20%) Grafana
7 20 (1.83%) Microsoft Intune
8 19 (1.74%) SCCM
9 18 (1.65%) Prometheus
10 17 (1.56%) Kubernetes
11 15 (1.37%) VxRail
12 13 (1.19%) Cisco Prime
13 12 (1.10%) Single Sign-On
14 10 (0.92%) Nagios
15 7 (0.64%) Cisco CUCM
15 7 (0.64%) EMC NetWorker
15 7 (0.64%) EMC VPLEX
15 7 (0.64%) SCOM
16 6 (0.55%) EMC TimeFinder
16 6 (0.55%) WSUS
Vendors
1 291 (26.67%) Palo Alto
2 199 (18.24%) F5
3 186 (17.05%) VMware
4 174 (15.95%) Microsoft
5 168 (15.40%) Juniper
6 143 (13.11%) Fortinet
7 127 (11.64%) Aruba
8 125 (11.46%) CheckPoint
9 95 (8.71%) Meraki
10 87 (7.97%) ServiceNow
11 86 (7.88%) SolarWinds
12 63 (5.77%) Arista
13 56 (5.13%) Dell
14 51 (4.67%) Splunk
15 44 (4.03%) Zscaler
16 38 (3.48%) IBM
17 35 (3.21%) HP
18 31 (2.84%) EMC
19 29 (2.66%) Extreme Networks
20 26 (2.38%) Broadcom