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 27 August 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
27 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 118 77 68
Rank change year-on-year -41 -9 -15
Contract jobs citing Cisco 1,204 1,059 1,213
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.24% 3.23% 3.12%
As % of the Vendors category 5.37% 6.85% 7.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 795 647 747
10th Percentile £300 £300 £254
25th Percentile £400 £400 £378
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £495 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.11% -0.92% +6.10%
75th Percentile £575 £586 £575
90th Percentile £653 £638 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £468 £500 £495
% change year-on-year -6.50% +1.01% +10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 41 32
10th Percentile £26.72 - £17.68
25th Percentile £36.25 £25.15 £21.93
Median hourly rate £52.50 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +75.00% +9.09% -42.11%
75th Percentile £67.84 £58.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £78.75 £83.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £30.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year +83.33% -40.00% +2.22%

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 22,410 15,468 16,983
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.74% 47.22% 43.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,815 9,456 10,461
10th Percentile £313 £275 £285
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £523
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -4.31% -0.48%
75th Percentile £610 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £726
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,156 806 773
10th Percentile £14.36 £14.59 £13.22
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £29.29 £25.15 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.44% -10.18% -36.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £46.30 £61.60
90th Percentile £83.13 £67.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £21.28 £26.08
% change year-on-year +31.58% -18.40% -34.48%

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 27 August 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 27 August 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 27 August 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 1,010 £500 - 1,048
UK excluding London -41 715 £468 -6.50% 795
London -35 378 £500 - 414
Work from Home -29 293 £475 -0.78% 239
North of England -5 250 £489 +0.88% 181
North West +12 177 £485 +2.11% 82
South East -62 146 £468 -10.81% 198
Midlands -33 130 £425 -17.48% 101
West Midlands -19 124 £425 -17.48% 51
Scotland +26 98 £413 -2.94% 52
Yorkshire -44 67 £500 +1.63% 70
South West -51 57 £525 -5.62% 118
East of England -19 34 £488 -11.36% 102
Wales +1 27 £425 +112.50% 34
Northern Ireland +2 8 £115 -67.14% 20
North East -40 7 £375 -31.82% 33
East Midlands -32 3 £525 +6.33% 50
Channel Islands -2 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 37 (3.07%) SharePoint
2 31 (2.57%) Microsoft Exchange
3 12 (1.00%) Confluence
4 10 (0.83%) OpenStack
5 8 (0.66%) SAS
6 7 (0.58%) Apache
7 6 (0.50%) JBoss
8 4 (0.33%) nginx
9 3 (0.25%) CloudStack
9 3 (0.25%) IIS
9 3 (0.25%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.17%) CMS
10 2 (0.17%) Skype for Business
11 1 (0.083%) Apache Spark
11 1 (0.083%) FactoryTalk
11 1 (0.083%) Mendix
11 1 (0.083%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 48 (3.99%) Microsoft Office
2 28 (2.33%) Microsoft Excel
3 25 (2.08%) MS Visio
4 9 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.25%) Acrobat
6 1 (0.083%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.083%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.083%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 242 (20.10%) Azure
2 152 (12.62%) AWS
3 95 (7.89%) Microsoft 365
4 59 (4.90%) Entra ID
5 30 (2.49%) GitHub
5 30 (2.49%) OneDrive
6 23 (1.91%) GCP
7 18 (1.50%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 18 (1.50%) OpenShift
7 18 (1.50%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 15 (1.25%) Power Platform
9 12 (1.00%) Nutanix
9 12 (1.00%) SaaS
10 10 (0.83%) Azure DevOps
10 10 (0.83%) Azure Sentinel
11 7 (0.58%) AWS Direct Connect
11 7 (0.58%) GitHub Actions
11 7 (0.58%) IaaS
12 6 (0.50%) Amazon EC2
12 6 (0.50%) Cloudflare
Communications & Networking
1 513 (42.61%) Firewall
2 362 (30.07%) WAN
3 317 (26.33%) BGP
4 282 (23.42%) LAN
5 255 (21.18%) VPN
6 251 (20.85%) Network Security
7 201 (16.69%) OSPF
7 201 (16.69%) Wireless
8 185 (15.37%) DNS
9 184 (15.28%) VLAN
10 150 (12.46%) SD-WAN
11 134 (11.13%) Wi-Fi
12 123 (10.22%) MPLS
13 117 (9.72%) Cisco Nexus
14 104 (8.64%) DHCP
15 98 (8.14%) TCP/IP
16 97 (8.06%) Cisco ASA
17 96 (7.97%) Cisco ISE
18 95 (7.89%) VXLAN
19 76 (6.31%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (2.24%) SQL Server
2 7 (0.58%) Power BI
3 6 (0.50%) Big Data
3 6 (0.50%) Hadoop
4 4 (0.33%) Amazon RDS
5 3 (0.25%) MySQL
6 2 (0.17%) Metadata
6 2 (0.17%) NoSQL
6 2 (0.17%) PostgreSQL
7 1 (0.083%) Apache Hive
7 1 (0.083%) ClickHouse
Development Applications
1 29 (2.41%) Git
2 20 (1.66%) JIRA
3 13 (1.08%) Sonatype Nexus
4 12 (1.00%) GitLab
5 9 (0.75%) Jenkins
6 2 (0.17%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.083%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.083%) Tricentis qTest
7 1 (0.083%) Zephyr
General
1 276 (22.92%) Social Skills
2 120 (9.97%) Telecoms
3 117 (9.72%) Finance
4 99 (8.22%) Analytical Skills
5 63 (5.23%) Public Sector
6 61 (5.07%) Banking
7 56 (4.65%) Documentation Skills
8 36 (2.99%) Legal
9 21 (1.74%) Investment Banking
9 21 (1.74%) Organisational Skills
10 18 (1.50%) Financial Institution
11 17 (1.41%) Retail
12 14 (1.16%) Law
13 12 (1.00%) Military
14 11 (0.91%) Manufacturing
14 11 (0.91%) Police
15 9 (0.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 9 (0.75%) Influencing Skills
16 6 (0.50%) Marketing
17 4 (0.33%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 603 (50.08%) Network Engineer
2 177 (14.70%) Senior
3 145 (12.04%) Cisco Engineer
4 144 (11.96%) Architect
5 130 (10.80%) Cisco Network Engineer
6 126 (10.47%) Senior Network Engineer
7 82 (6.81%) Security Engineer
8 72 (5.98%) Network Architect
9 66 (5.48%) Network Security Engineer
10 58 (4.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 50 (4.15%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 42 (3.49%) Field Engineer
13 40 (3.32%) Data Network Engineer
14 35 (2.91%) Lead
15 34 (2.82%) Analyst
15 34 (2.82%) Telecoms Engineer
16 31 (2.57%) Solutions Architect
17 30 (2.49%) Cisco Security Engineer
17 30 (2.49%) Data Engineer
17 30 (2.49%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 75 (6.23%) Terraform
2 61 (5.07%) 802.1X
3 24 (1.99%) REST
4 14 (1.16%) YAML
5 13 (1.08%) SAML
6 12 (1.00%) JSON
7 8 (0.66%) Flash
7 8 (0.66%) NETCONF
8 7 (0.58%) Microsoft Graph
8 7 (0.58%) XMPP
9 6 (0.50%) OpenConfig
9 6 (0.50%) RESTCONF
9 6 (0.50%) YANG
10 5 (0.42%) Jinja
11 4 (0.33%) LDAP
12 3 (0.25%) .NET
12 3 (0.25%) Django
12 3 (0.25%) Java RMI
12 3 (0.25%) LAMP
12 3 (0.25%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 286 (23.75%) Data Centre
2 49 (4.07%) Hybrid Cloud
2 49 (4.07%) PKI
3 46 (3.82%) Onboarding
4 38 (3.16%) Data Protection Act
5 36 (2.99%) Driving Licence
6 30 (2.49%) Operational Technology
6 30 (2.49%) Video Conferencing
7 28 (2.33%) Replication
8 27 (2.24%) Clustering
9 24 (1.99%) Cloud Native
10 22 (1.83%) Analytical Mindset
11 19 (1.58%) Enterprise Storage
12 17 (1.41%) Linux Command Line
12 17 (1.41%) Public Cloud
13 16 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
14 15 (1.25%) Management Information System
14 15 (1.25%) Private Cloud
15 13 (1.08%) IoT
15 13 (1.08%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 221 (18.36%) Windows
2 124 (10.30%) Linux
3 85 (7.06%) Windows Server
4 18 (1.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 18 (1.50%) Ubuntu
5 17 (1.41%) Windows 10
6 11 (0.91%) Mac OS
7 10 (0.83%) Unix
7 10 (0.83%) Windows Server 2019
8 9 (0.75%) Windows Server 2012
9 8 (0.66%) AIX
9 8 (0.66%) Android
10 6 (0.50%) CentOS
10 6 (0.50%) Data ONTAP
11 4 (0.33%) VMS
11 4 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.083%) Debian
12 1 (0.083%) Oracle Linux
12 1 (0.083%) Windows 7
12 1 (0.083%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 197 (16.36%) Migration
2 150 (12.46%) Project Delivery
3 139 (11.54%) ITIL
4 130 (10.80%) Problem-Solving
5 121 (10.05%) High Availability
6 120 (9.97%) Load Balancing
7 94 (7.81%) Change Management
8 92 (7.64%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 91 (7.56%) Network Design
10 89 (7.39%) Stakeholder Management
11 85 (7.06%) Continuous Improvement
12 81 (6.73%) Infrastructure as Code
13 77 (6.40%) Validation
14 71 (5.90%) ITSM
14 71 (5.90%) Technical Leadership
15 66 (5.48%) CI/CD
16 63 (5.23%) Network Monitoring
16 63 (5.23%) Zero Trust
17 60 (4.98%) Data Protection
17 60 (4.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 140 (11.63%) Python
2 59 (4.90%) PowerShell
3 31 (2.57%) Bash
4 25 (2.08%) SQL
5 5 (0.42%) Java
6 4 (0.33%) C
6 4 (0.33%) C++
7 3 (0.25%) Lisp
7 3 (0.25%) Shell Script
8 2 (0.17%) Go
8 2 (0.17%) Perl
9 1 (0.083%) ActionScript
9 1 (0.083%) Bicep
9 1 (0.083%) Kusto Query Language
9 1 (0.083%) Ladder Logic
Qualifications
1 330 (27.41%) Cisco Certification
2 302 (25.08%) Security Cleared
3 232 (19.27%) CCNP
4 219 (18.19%) SC Cleared
5 132 (10.96%) CCNA
6 83 (6.89%) DV Cleared
7 70 (5.81%) Degree
8 64 (5.32%) CCIE
9 25 (2.08%) Microsoft Certification
10 23 (1.91%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 19 (1.58%) MCSE
12 17 (1.41%) Azure Certification
13 14 (1.16%) AWS Certification
13 14 (1.16%) BPSS Clearance
13 14 (1.16%) Computer Science Degree
13 14 (1.16%) Network+ Certification
14 12 (1.00%) CCSE
15 11 (0.91%) CISSP
15 11 (0.91%) ISTQB
15 11 (0.91%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 44 (3.65%) SLA
2 26 (2.16%) NIST
3 23 (1.91%) QA
4 18 (1.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 15 (1.25%) Cyber Essentials
6 11 (0.91%) NCSC
7 7 (0.58%) PCI DSS
8 6 (0.50%) Disclosure Scotland
9 5 (0.42%) GDPR
9 5 (0.42%) JSP 440
9 5 (0.42%) PMO
10 4 (0.33%) Data Quality
11 3 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
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%) ISA99
13 1 (0.083%) GRC
13 1 (0.083%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 148 (12.29%) VMware Infrastructure
2 115 (9.55%) Active Directory
3 44 (3.65%) vSphere
4 43 (3.57%) VMware NSX
5 41 (3.41%) VMware ESXi
6 33 (2.74%) Firmware
7 32 (2.66%) Hyper-V
8 29 (2.41%) Virtual Machines
9 16 (1.33%) Docker
10 12 (1.00%) NFS
11 8 (0.66%) GPFS
12 6 (0.50%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 5 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
14 4 (0.33%) SRDF
14 4 (0.33%) Virtual Servers
15 3 (0.25%) Dovecot
15 3 (0.25%) FreeRADIUS
15 3 (0.25%) Postfix
16 2 (0.17%) Snort
16 2 (0.17%) UAG
Systems Management
1 145 (12.04%) Ansible
2 80 (6.64%) FortiGate
3 32 (2.66%) Kubernetes
4 30 (2.49%) Microsoft Intune
5 22 (1.83%) Cisco CUCM
6 21 (1.74%) SCCM
7 20 (1.66%) vCenter Server
8 18 (1.50%) Cisco Prime
9 15 (1.25%) Grafana
10 14 (1.16%) Prometheus
11 9 (0.75%) Puppet
12 8 (0.66%) Failover Clustering
12 8 (0.66%) Single Sign-On
12 8 (0.66%) vRealize
12 8 (0.66%) WMI
12 8 (0.66%) WSUS
13 7 (0.58%) EMC VPLEX
14 6 (0.50%) Red Hat Satellite
15 5 (0.42%) Jamf Pro
15 5 (0.42%) Nagios
Vendors
1 259 (21.51%) Palo Alto
2 228 (18.94%) Microsoft
3 208 (17.28%) Fortinet
4 204 (16.94%) F5
5 203 (16.86%) VMware
6 129 (10.71%) Juniper
7 112 (9.30%) Meraki
8 108 (8.97%) CheckPoint
9 92 (7.64%) ServiceNow
10 90 (7.48%) Aruba
11 80 (6.64%) SolarWinds
12 73 (6.06%) Arista
13 51 (4.24%) Zscaler
14 45 (3.74%) Splunk
15 37 (3.07%) Red Hat
16 31 (2.57%) Dell
17 28 (2.33%) Nokia
18 24 (1.99%) NetApp
19 23 (1.91%) Infoblox
20 21 (1.74%) Citrix