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 12 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
12 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 119 76 68
Rank change year-on-year -43 -8 -12
Contract jobs citing Cisco 1,172 1,078 1,189
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.20% 3.27% 3.05%
As % of the Vendors category 5.28% 6.92% 6.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 765 662 734
10th Percentile £300 £300 £255
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% - +7.53%
75th Percentile £575 £587 £581
90th Percentile £642 £638 £655
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 44 37 33
10th Percentile £26.72 £25.09 £15.43
25th Percentile £40.08 £25.15 £22.40
Median hourly rate £55.00 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +83.33% +9.09% -43.78%
75th Percentile £72.43 £57.50 £55.00
90th Percentile £78.68 £85.65 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £30.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year +83.33% -40.00% -9.62%

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 22,198 15,572 17,016
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.59% 47.24% 43.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,745 9,526 10,606
10th Percentile £313 £280 £288
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £507 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year +1.40% -3.85% -0.95%
75th Percentile £606 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,146 796 841
10th Percentile £14.85 £14.48 £13.69
25th Percentile £18.27 £17.24 £15.62
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £29.77
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -15.52% -27.06%
75th Percentile £65.00 £47.50 £61.60
90th Percentile £83.43 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.96 £21.30 £28.00
% change year-on-year +50.06% -23.93% -18.84%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 -45 994 £500 - 963
UK excluding London -44 701 £475 -5.00% 695
London -55 359 £500 - 416
Work from Home -22 288 £475 -1.55% 228
North of England -17 233 £497 +4.04% 177
North West -2 170 £485 +2.11% 85
South East -48 168 £500 -4.76% 168
Midlands -31 129 £425 -18.27% 87
West Midlands -24 123 £420 -18.45% 45
Scotland +29 92 £419 -1.47% 50
Yorkshire -51 59 £500 +1.63% 65
South West -55 54 £500 -9.09% 104
East of England -14 35 £500 -9.09% 73
Wales -8 16 £468 +49.60% 30
Northern Ireland +10 7 £110 -68.71% 16
North East -43 5 £388 +19.23% 28
East Midlands -27 3 £525 -4.55% 42
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 31 (2.65%) SharePoint
2 27 (2.30%) Microsoft Exchange
3 12 (1.02%) Confluence
4 10 (0.85%) OpenStack
5 7 (0.60%) Apache
6 5 (0.43%) JBoss
7 4 (0.34%) nginx
7 4 (0.34%) SAS
8 3 (0.26%) CloudStack
8 3 (0.26%) IIS
8 3 (0.26%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.17%) CMS
10 1 (0.085%) Apache Spark
10 1 (0.085%) FactoryTalk
10 1 (0.085%) Mendix
10 1 (0.085%) SharePoint Server
10 1 (0.085%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 47 (4.01%) Microsoft Office
2 26 (2.22%) MS Visio
3 25 (2.13%) Microsoft Excel
4 10 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.26%) Acrobat
6 1 (0.085%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.17%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.085%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 242 (20.65%) Azure
2 149 (12.71%) AWS
3 84 (7.17%) Microsoft 365
4 59 (5.03%) Entra ID
5 26 (2.22%) GitHub
6 24 (2.05%) OneDrive
7 22 (1.88%) GCP
8 20 (1.71%) OpenShift
9 19 (1.62%) Azure ExpressRoute
10 18 (1.54%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 12 (1.02%) Nutanix
12 11 (0.94%) Power Platform
12 11 (0.94%) SaaS
13 10 (0.85%) Azure DevOps
13 10 (0.85%) Azure Sentinel
14 7 (0.60%) Cloudflare
14 7 (0.60%) GitHub Actions
14 7 (0.60%) IaaS
14 7 (0.60%) Rubrik
15 6 (0.51%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 523 (44.62%) Firewall
2 365 (31.14%) WAN
3 309 (26.37%) BGP
4 290 (24.74%) LAN
5 260 (22.18%) VPN
6 248 (21.16%) Network Security
7 213 (18.17%) OSPF
8 201 (17.15%) Wireless
9 199 (16.98%) DNS
10 177 (15.10%) VLAN
11 148 (12.63%) SD-WAN
12 129 (11.01%) MPLS
13 119 (10.15%) Wi-Fi
14 115 (9.81%) DHCP
15 114 (9.73%) Cisco Nexus
16 110 (9.39%) Cisco ISE
17 104 (8.87%) VXLAN
18 93 (7.94%) TCP/IP
19 88 (7.51%) Cisco ASA
20 86 (7.34%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (2.13%) SQL Server
2 5 (0.43%) Big Data
2 5 (0.43%) Hadoop
3 4 (0.34%) Amazon RDS
3 4 (0.34%) Power BI
4 3 (0.26%) MySQL
5 2 (0.17%) Metadata
5 2 (0.17%) NoSQL
5 2 (0.17%) PostgreSQL
6 1 (0.085%) Apache Hive
6 1 (0.085%) ClickHouse
Development Applications
1 26 (2.22%) Git
2 22 (1.88%) JIRA
3 13 (1.11%) Sonatype Nexus
4 11 (0.94%) Jenkins
5 8 (0.68%) GitLab
6 1 (0.085%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.085%) Robot Framework
6 1 (0.085%) Tricentis qTest
6 1 (0.085%) Zephyr
General
1 279 (23.81%) Social Skills
2 111 (9.47%) Finance
3 99 (8.45%) Telecoms
4 92 (7.85%) Analytical Skills
5 62 (5.29%) Public Sector
6 60 (5.12%) Banking
7 55 (4.69%) Documentation Skills
8 38 (3.24%) Legal
9 22 (1.88%) Financial Institution
9 22 (1.88%) Organisational Skills
10 18 (1.54%) Investment Banking
11 17 (1.45%) Law
12 16 (1.37%) Military
12 16 (1.37%) Retail
13 11 (0.94%) Police
14 10 (0.85%) Manufacturing
15 9 (0.77%) Influencing Skills
16 8 (0.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 7 (0.60%) Marketing
18 5 (0.43%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 582 (49.66%) Network Engineer
2 163 (13.91%) Senior
3 138 (11.77%) Architect
4 129 (11.01%) Cisco Engineer
5 118 (10.07%) Cisco Network Engineer
6 113 (9.64%) Senior Network Engineer
7 85 (7.25%) Security Engineer
8 75 (6.40%) Network Architect
9 67 (5.72%) Network Security Engineer
10 56 (4.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 49 (4.18%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 39 (3.33%) Data Network Engineer
13 35 (2.99%) Analyst
13 35 (2.99%) Field Engineer
14 31 (2.65%) Cisco Security Engineer
14 31 (2.65%) Data Engineer
15 30 (2.56%) Network Specialist
16 28 (2.39%) Lead
16 28 (2.39%) Telecoms Engineer
17 27 (2.30%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 79 (6.74%) 802.1X
2 20 (1.71%) REST
3 14 (1.19%) SAML
4 9 (0.77%) Flash
4 9 (0.77%) NETCONF
5 8 (0.68%) JSON
5 8 (0.68%) XMPP
5 8 (0.68%) YAML
6 7 (0.60%) OpenConfig
6 7 (0.60%) RESTCONF
6 7 (0.60%) YANG
7 6 (0.51%) Jinja
8 4 (0.34%) LDAP
8 4 (0.34%) Microsoft Graph
9 3 (0.26%) Elastic Stack
9 3 (0.26%) Java RMI
9 3 (0.26%) LAMP
9 3 (0.26%) LEMP Stack
9 3 (0.26%) Middleware
10 2 (0.17%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 279 (23.81%) Data Centre
2 61 (5.20%) PKI
3 51 (4.35%) Hybrid Cloud
4 42 (3.58%) Clustering
5 40 (3.41%) Onboarding
6 38 (3.24%) Data Protection Act
7 35 (2.99%) Operational Technology
8 32 (2.73%) Driving Licence
8 32 (2.73%) Replication
9 31 (2.65%) Video Conferencing
10 20 (1.71%) Analytical Mindset
11 19 (1.62%) Cloud Native
12 18 (1.54%) Enterprise Storage
12 18 (1.54%) Linux Command Line
13 17 (1.45%) Public Cloud
14 16 (1.37%) SCADA
14 16 (1.37%) Self-Motivation
15 15 (1.28%) EMC VMAX
16 14 (1.19%) Security Posture
17 12 (1.02%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 221 (18.86%) Windows
2 124 (10.58%) Linux
3 76 (6.48%) Windows Server
4 17 (1.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 17 (1.45%) Windows 10
5 16 (1.37%) Ubuntu
6 13 (1.11%) Unix
7 10 (0.85%) Windows Server 2019
8 9 (0.77%) AIX
8 9 (0.77%) Android
8 9 (0.77%) Mac OS
9 7 (0.60%) Windows Server 2012
10 5 (0.43%) Data ONTAP
11 4 (0.34%) CentOS
11 4 (0.34%) VMS
11 4 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.085%) Debian
12 1 (0.085%) Oracle Linux
12 1 (0.085%) Windows 7
12 1 (0.085%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 178 (15.19%) Migration
2 139 (11.86%) Problem-Solving
3 137 (11.69%) ITIL
4 134 (11.43%) Load Balancing
5 133 (11.35%) Project Delivery
6 125 (10.67%) High Availability
7 98 (8.36%) Change Management
8 91 (7.76%) Network Design
9 84 (7.17%) Continuous Improvement
10 82 (7.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 81 (6.91%) ITSM
12 73 (6.23%) Stakeholder Management
13 69 (5.89%) Infrastructure as Code
14 67 (5.72%) CI/CD
15 66 (5.63%) Technical Leadership
16 63 (5.38%) Network Monitoring
17 62 (5.29%) Validation
18 57 (4.86%) Service Management
18 57 (4.86%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 56 (4.78%) Data Protection
Programming Languages
1 136 (11.60%) Python
2 58 (4.95%) PowerShell
3 30 (2.56%) Bash
4 24 (2.05%) SQL
5 5 (0.43%) Shell Script
6 4 (0.34%) C
6 4 (0.34%) Java
7 3 (0.26%) C++
7 3 (0.26%) Lisp
8 2 (0.17%) ActionScript
8 2 (0.17%) Perl
9 1 (0.085%) Bicep
9 1 (0.085%) Ladder Logic
Qualifications
1 335 (28.58%) Cisco Certification
2 305 (26.02%) Security Cleared
3 232 (19.80%) CCNP
4 209 (17.83%) SC Cleared
5 136 (11.60%) CCNA
6 91 (7.76%) DV Cleared
7 69 (5.89%) Degree
8 61 (5.20%) CCIE
9 26 (2.22%) Microsoft Certification
10 23 (1.96%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 22 (1.88%) Network+ Certification
12 19 (1.62%) MCSE
13 17 (1.45%) Azure Certification
13 17 (1.45%) Server+ Certification
14 16 (1.37%) BPSS Clearance
15 13 (1.11%) Computer Science Degree
15 13 (1.11%) JNCIP
15 13 (1.11%) JNCIS
16 11 (0.94%) CCSE
17 10 (0.85%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 47 (4.01%) SLA
2 30 (2.56%) NIST
3 21 (1.79%) QA
4 19 (1.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 17 (1.45%) Cyber Essentials
6 15 (1.28%) NCSC
7 6 (0.51%) Disclosure Scotland
7 6 (0.51%) PMO
8 5 (0.43%) GDPR
8 5 (0.43%) JSP 440
8 5 (0.43%) PCI DSS
9 4 (0.34%) Data Quality
10 3 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 3 (0.26%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 3 (0.26%) NIST 800
11 2 (0.17%) Accessibility
11 2 (0.17%) Government Security Classifications
11 2 (0.17%) ISA99
12 1 (0.085%) GRC
12 1 (0.085%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 144 (12.29%) VMware Infrastructure
2 111 (9.47%) Active Directory
3 43 (3.67%) VMware NSX
4 41 (3.50%) VMware ESXi
4 41 (3.50%) vSphere
5 31 (2.65%) Firmware
6 29 (2.47%) Virtual Machines
7 28 (2.39%) Hyper-V
8 15 (1.28%) Docker
9 13 (1.11%) NFS
10 9 (0.77%) GPFS
10 9 (0.77%) SRDF
11 6 (0.51%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 5 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
12 5 (0.43%) Virtual Servers
13 3 (0.26%) Dovecot
13 3 (0.26%) FreeRADIUS
13 3 (0.26%) Postfix
14 2 (0.17%) Snort
14 2 (0.17%) UAG
Systems Management
1 138 (11.77%) Ansible
2 98 (8.36%) FortiGate
3 71 (6.06%) Terraform
4 30 (2.56%) Kubernetes
5 29 (2.47%) Microsoft Intune
6 21 (1.79%) SCCM
7 20 (1.71%) Cisco CUCM
8 18 (1.54%) Grafana
8 18 (1.54%) vCenter Server
9 17 (1.45%) Cisco Prime
10 15 (1.28%) Prometheus
11 10 (0.85%) Single Sign-On
12 9 (0.77%) Puppet
12 9 (0.77%) vRealize
13 8 (0.68%) WMI
13 8 (0.68%) WSUS
14 7 (0.60%) EMC VPLEX
14 7 (0.60%) Failover Clustering
14 7 (0.60%) Nagios
15 6 (0.51%) VxRail
Vendors
1 257 (21.93%) Palo Alto
2 228 (19.45%) F5
3 215 (18.34%) Microsoft
4 206 (17.58%) Fortinet
5 202 (17.24%) VMware
6 155 (13.23%) Juniper
7 99 (8.45%) CheckPoint
8 98 (8.36%) ServiceNow
9 97 (8.28%) SolarWinds
10 96 (8.19%) Meraki
11 89 (7.59%) Aruba
12 69 (5.89%) Arista
13 59 (5.03%) Splunk
14 53 (4.52%) Zscaler
15 35 (2.99%) Dell
16 34 (2.90%) Red Hat
17 27 (2.30%) Extreme Networks
18 26 (2.22%) Infoblox
19 23 (1.96%) Citrix
19 23 (1.96%) Nokia