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 15 October 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
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 127 84 61
Rank change year-on-year -43 -23 -7
Contract jobs citing Cisco 1,201 987 1,276
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.17% 2.97% 3.39%
As % of the Vendors category 5.20% 6.23% 7.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 769 632 759
10th Percentile £261 £263 £263
25th Percentile £400 £381 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.06% -3.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £675 £638 £658
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £492 £500
% change year-on-year -6.00% -1.60% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 45 51 34
10th Percentile £27.23 - £18.95
25th Percentile £44.00 £25.15 £20.27
Median hourly rate £56.00 £30.00 £27.25
Median % change year-on-year +86.67% +10.09% -37.82%
75th Percentile £68.75 £65.29 £52.81
90th Percentile £78.75 £89.63 £74.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £35.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year +57.14% -6.67% -21.05%

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 23,078 15,851 16,790
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.74% 47.74% 44.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,920 9,777 9,878
10th Percentile £310 £275 £286
25th Percentile £413 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £620 £613 £625
90th Percentile £712 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,446 804 580
10th Percentile £13.68 £14.84 £15.00
25th Percentile £16.03 £17.87 £16.85
Median hourly rate £24.19 £24.81 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% -24.82% -24.83%
75th Percentile £56.00 £38.06 £65.00
90th Percentile £76.88 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.18 £21.30 £31.00
% change year-on-year +8.83% -31.29% -29.14%

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 15 October 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 15 October 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 15 October 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 -49 996 £495 -1.00% 1,049
UK excluding London -38 711 £463 -6.00% 613
London -34 369 £500 +5.26% 465
Work from Home -39 293 £476 +2.64% 410
North of England +1 235 £484 +1.89% 140
North West +18 161 £483 +4.43% 71
Midlands -44 128 £450 - 107
West Midlands -29 124 £450 - 58
South East -86 121 £430 -14.00% 150
Scotland +9 96 £400 -5.88% 41
Yorkshire -25 67 £500 +2.15% 46
East of England -3 62 £500 +12.36% 66
South West -36 59 £525 -4.55% 85
Wales +11 28 £376 +88.13% 21
North East -33 9 £375 +114.29% 23
Northern Ireland +1 8 £110 -76.95% 10
Channel Islands -3 3 £600 -17.24%
East Midlands -26 3 £500 +217.46% 49

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 38 (3.16%) SharePoint
2 34 (2.83%) Microsoft Exchange
3 14 (1.17%) CMS
4 12 (1.00%) Confluence
5 9 (0.75%) OpenStack
6 8 (0.67%) IIS
6 8 (0.67%) SAS
7 7 (0.58%) Apache
8 6 (0.50%) JBoss
9 4 (0.33%) nginx
10 3 (0.25%) CloudStack
10 3 (0.25%) Tomcat
11 2 (0.17%) Skype for Business
12 1 (0.083%) Apache Spark
12 1 (0.083%) FactoryTalk
12 1 (0.083%) Mendix
12 1 (0.083%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 46 (3.83%) Microsoft Office
2 29 (2.41%) Microsoft Excel
3 22 (1.83%) MS Visio
4 9 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.25%) Acrobat
6 1 (0.083%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.083%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (0.083%) Monis
1 1 (0.083%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.083%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
1 1 (0.083%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 235 (19.57%) Azure
2 148 (12.32%) AWS
3 95 (7.91%) Microsoft 365
4 69 (5.75%) Entra ID
5 34 (2.83%) GitHub
6 33 (2.75%) OneDrive
7 32 (2.66%) GCP
8 21 (1.75%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 15 (1.25%) Nutanix
9 15 (1.25%) Power Platform
10 14 (1.17%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 12 (1.00%) OpenShift
11 12 (1.00%) SaaS
12 11 (0.92%) AWS Direct Connect
13 9 (0.75%) OCI
14 8 (0.67%) Azure Sentinel
14 8 (0.67%) Microsoft Purview
15 7 (0.58%) Azure DevOps
15 7 (0.58%) Cloudflare
15 7 (0.58%) Rubrik
Communications & Networking
1 487 (40.55%) Firewall
2 353 (29.39%) WAN
3 291 (24.23%) BGP
4 272 (22.65%) LAN
5 262 (21.82%) Network Security
6 257 (21.40%) VPN
7 215 (17.90%) Wireless
8 187 (15.57%) OSPF
9 179 (14.90%) VLAN
10 167 (13.91%) DNS
11 145 (12.07%) SD-WAN
12 140 (11.66%) MPLS
13 131 (10.91%) Wi-Fi
14 105 (8.74%) Cisco Nexus
14 105 (8.74%) TCP/IP
15 100 (8.33%) DHCP
16 95 (7.91%) Cisco ISE
17 91 (7.58%) Cisco IOS
18 85 (7.08%) Cisco ASA
19 74 (6.16%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (2.25%) SQL Server
2 8 (0.67%) Power BI
3 6 (0.50%) Hadoop
4 5 (0.42%) Big Data
5 4 (0.33%) Amazon RDS
6 3 (0.25%) Metadata
6 3 (0.25%) MySQL
7 2 (0.17%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.17%) PostgreSQL
8 1 (0.083%) Apache Hive
8 1 (0.083%) ClickHouse
Development Applications
1 40 (3.33%) Git
2 16 (1.33%) JIRA
3 13 (1.08%) GitLab
4 11 (0.92%) Sonatype Nexus
5 6 (0.50%) Jenkins
6 2 (0.17%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.083%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.083%) Tricentis qTest
7 1 (0.083%) Zephyr
General
1 278 (23.15%) Social Skills
2 137 (11.41%) Finance
3 122 (10.16%) Telecoms
4 111 (9.24%) Analytical Skills
5 74 (6.16%) Banking
6 62 (5.16%) Public Sector
7 57 (4.75%) Documentation Skills
8 46 (3.83%) Legal
9 24 (2.00%) Organisational Skills
10 22 (1.83%) Investment Banking
11 18 (1.50%) Retail
12 17 (1.42%) Financial Institution
13 15 (1.25%) Military
14 12 (1.00%) Law
15 11 (0.92%) Manufacturing
16 9 (0.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 8 (0.67%) Influencing Skills
17 8 (0.67%) Police
18 6 (0.50%) Presentation Skills
19 5 (0.42%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 589 (49.04%) Network Engineer
2 181 (15.07%) Senior
3 151 (12.57%) Architect
4 144 (11.99%) Cisco Engineer
5 133 (11.07%) Senior Network Engineer
6 119 (9.91%) Cisco Network Engineer
7 82 (6.83%) Security Engineer
8 78 (6.49%) Network Architect
9 61 (5.08%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 59 (4.91%) Network Security Engineer
11 45 (3.75%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 44 (3.66%) Lead
13 42 (3.50%) Field Engineer
14 41 (3.41%) Analyst
15 40 (3.33%) Support Engineer
16 35 (2.91%) Solutions Architect
16 35 (2.91%) Telecoms Engineer
17 28 (2.33%) Consultant
18 27 (2.25%) Data Network Engineer
19 26 (2.16%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 82 (6.83%) Terraform
2 54 (4.50%) 802.1X
3 34 (2.83%) REST
4 21 (1.75%) JSON
4 21 (1.75%) YAML
5 20 (1.67%) XMPP
6 13 (1.08%) NETCONF
7 12 (1.00%) SAML
8 10 (0.83%) YANG
9 7 (0.58%) Microsoft Graph
9 7 (0.58%) RESTCONF
10 5 (0.42%) Flash
10 5 (0.42%) OpenConfig
11 3 (0.25%) .NET
11 3 (0.25%) Django
11 3 (0.25%) Elastic Stack
11 3 (0.25%) Java RMI
11 3 (0.25%) LAMP
11 3 (0.25%) LDAP
11 3 (0.25%) RFC 2544
Miscellaneous
1 277 (23.06%) Data Centre
2 53 (4.41%) Hybrid Cloud
3 51 (4.25%) Onboarding
3 51 (4.25%) Video Conferencing
4 48 (4.00%) Driving Licence
5 38 (3.16%) Data Protection Act
5 38 (3.16%) PKI
6 37 (3.08%) Operational Technology
7 32 (2.66%) Management Information System
8 26 (2.16%) Public Cloud
9 24 (2.00%) Self-Motivation
10 21 (1.75%) Clustering
11 20 (1.67%) Cloud Native
12 19 (1.58%) Private Cloud
12 19 (1.58%) Replication
13 16 (1.33%) Analytical Mindset
14 15 (1.25%) Linux Command Line
14 15 (1.25%) Virtual Team
15 13 (1.08%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
15 13 (1.08%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 238 (19.82%) Windows
2 116 (9.66%) Linux
3 95 (7.91%) Windows Server
4 24 (2.00%) macOS
4 24 (2.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 17 (1.42%) Ubuntu
5 17 (1.42%) Windows 10
6 10 (0.83%) Android
7 9 (0.75%) Unix
8 8 (0.67%) Windows Server 2012
8 8 (0.67%) Windows Server 2019
9 7 (0.58%) AIX
10 5 (0.42%) CentOS
11 4 (0.33%) Data ONTAP
11 4 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
12 3 (0.25%) VMS
13 1 (0.083%) CatOS
13 1 (0.083%) Debian
13 1 (0.083%) Oracle Linux
13 1 (0.083%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 186 (15.49%) Migration
2 167 (13.91%) Project Delivery
3 151 (12.57%) Problem-Solving
4 128 (10.66%) ITIL
5 127 (10.57%) Stakeholder Management
6 100 (8.33%) Load Balancing
7 99 (8.24%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 97 (8.08%) Change Management
9 93 (7.74%) High Availability
10 92 (7.66%) Network Design
11 90 (7.49%) Validation
12 88 (7.33%) Continuous Improvement
12 88 (7.33%) Infrastructure as Code
13 77 (6.41%) Zero Trust
14 76 (6.33%) Cybersecurity
14 76 (6.33%) Technical Leadership
15 75 (6.24%) Data Protection
16 63 (5.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 62 (5.16%) ITSM
18 61 (5.08%) Disaster Recovery
Programming Languages
1 136 (11.32%) Python
2 54 (4.50%) PowerShell
3 29 (2.41%) Bash
4 28 (2.33%) SQL
5 3 (0.25%) Lisp
5 3 (0.25%) Shell Script
6 2 (0.17%) Bicep
6 2 (0.17%) Go
6 2 (0.17%) Java
6 2 (0.17%) Perl
7 1 (0.083%) C++
7 1 (0.083%) Kusto Query Language
7 1 (0.083%) Ladder Logic
7 1 (0.083%) R
Qualifications
1 321 (26.73%) Cisco Certification
2 278 (23.15%) Security Cleared
3 227 (18.90%) CCNP
4 204 (16.99%) SC Cleared
5 125 (10.41%) CCNA
6 70 (5.83%) CCIE
6 70 (5.83%) DV Cleared
7 69 (5.75%) Degree
8 24 (2.00%) Microsoft Certification
9 22 (1.83%) CISSP
10 20 (1.67%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 16 (1.33%) AWS Certification
11 16 (1.33%) MCSE
12 14 (1.17%) Azure Certification
13 13 (1.08%) CCSE
13 13 (1.08%) Network+ Certification
14 12 (1.00%) BPSS Clearance
14 12 (1.00%) Computer Science Degree
15 11 (0.92%) ISTQB
16 10 (0.83%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 39 (3.25%) SLA
2 32 (2.66%) NIST
3 25 (2.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 20 (1.67%) QA
5 17 (1.42%) PCI DSS
6 13 (1.08%) Cyber Essentials
7 10 (0.83%) GDPR
8 7 (0.58%) NCSC
9 6 (0.50%) GRC
10 5 (0.42%) Data Quality
10 5 (0.42%) ISO 31000
10 5 (0.42%) ISO 9001
10 5 (0.42%) ISO/IEC 27005
11 4 (0.33%) JSP 440
11 4 (0.33%) NIST 800
12 3 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 3 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
12 3 (0.25%) PMO
13 2 (0.17%) Accessibility
13 2 (0.17%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 148 (12.32%) VMware Infrastructure
2 131 (10.91%) Active Directory
3 53 (4.41%) vSphere
4 39 (3.25%) VMware NSX
5 35 (2.91%) VMware ESXi
6 29 (2.41%) Hyper-V
7 28 (2.33%) Firmware
7 28 (2.33%) Virtual Machines
8 17 (1.42%) Docker
9 6 (0.50%) NFS
10 5 (0.42%) FreeRADIUS
10 5 (0.42%) GPFS
10 5 (0.42%) ISA Server
11 4 (0.33%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 3 (0.25%) Dovecot
12 3 (0.25%) Postfix
12 3 (0.25%) SRDF
12 3 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
13 2 (0.17%) IAG
13 2 (0.17%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 138 (11.49%) Ansible
2 71 (5.91%) FortiGate
3 34 (2.83%) Cisco CUCM
4 28 (2.33%) Microsoft Intune
5 25 (2.08%) Kubernetes
6 21 (1.75%) Cisco Prime
7 20 (1.67%) SCCM
8 18 (1.50%) vCenter Server
9 12 (1.00%) Nagios
10 9 (0.75%) Grafana
10 9 (0.75%) WMI
11 8 (0.67%) Failover Clustering
11 8 (0.67%) Puppet
12 7 (0.58%) CASB
12 7 (0.58%) Prometheus
12 7 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
12 7 (0.58%) WSUS
13 6 (0.50%) Red Hat Satellite
14 5 (0.42%) SolarWinds Orion
14 5 (0.42%) vRealize
Vendors
1 265 (22.06%) Palo Alto
2 246 (20.48%) Microsoft
3 209 (17.40%) VMware
4 206 (17.15%) Fortinet
5 168 (13.99%) F5
6 132 (10.99%) Meraki
7 126 (10.49%) Juniper
8 100 (8.33%) CheckPoint
9 97 (8.08%) Aruba
10 88 (7.33%) ServiceNow
11 79 (6.58%) SolarWinds
12 75 (6.24%) Arista
13 56 (4.66%) Zscaler
14 43 (3.58%) Splunk
15 37 (3.08%) Red Hat
16 29 (2.41%) Dell
17 27 (2.25%) Nokia
18 26 (2.16%) NetApp
19 24 (2.00%) Infoblox
20 20 (1.67%) Citrix