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 31 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
31 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 120 73 67
Rank change year-on-year -47 -6 -10
Contract jobs citing Cisco 1,169 1,115 1,219
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.20% 3.40% 3.07%
As % of the Vendors category 5.33% 7.20% 7.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 769 689 751
10th Percentile £300 £300 £250
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - +5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £578
90th Percentile £638 £638 £660
UK excluding London median daily rate £477 £500 £491
% change year-on-year -4.60% +1.78% +9.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 37 34
10th Percentile £26.72 £25.09 £16.49
25th Percentile £41.35 £25.15 £22.75
Median hourly rate £55.00 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +83.33% +9.09% -45.00%
75th Percentile £72.00 £57.50 £54.69
90th Percentile £78.75 £85.65 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £30.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year +83.33% -40.00% -7.98%

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 21,941 15,481 17,273
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.32% 47.20% 43.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,626 9,492 10,831
10th Percentile £313 £280 £281
25th Percentile £413 £400 £412
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year +0.50% -3.85% -0.95%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £709 £732
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £476 £500
% change year-on-year +4.99% -4.75% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,111 777 890
10th Percentile £15.81 £14.60 £13.50
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £34.94 £25.15 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +38.93% -8.55% -33.97%
75th Percentile £65.00 £50.00 £61.40
90th Percentile £85.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.99 £22.32 £25.30
% change year-on-year +52.32% -11.80% -26.67%

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 31 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 31 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 31 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 -48 994 £500 - 493
UK excluding London -43 696 £477 -4.60% 391
London -47 356 £500 - 172
Work from Home -28 288 £476 -1.35% 126
North of England -26 224 £497 +1.49% 94
South East -47 175 £511 -7.05% 110
North West -7 167 £485 +2.11% 41
Midlands -33 129 £420 -15.15% 64
West Midlands -29 124 £416 -10.00% 25
Scotland +22 87 £425 - 21
South West -68 55 £500 -11.11% 53
Yorkshire -65 54 £500 - 43
East of England -16 34 £500 -9.09% 45
Wales -15 18 £468 +16.88% 11
Northern Ireland +4 7 £110 -68.71% 4
North East -45 4 £425 +30.77% 11
East Midlands -31 2 - - 39
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 (2.31%) Microsoft Exchange
3 9 (0.77%) Confluence
3 9 (0.77%) OpenStack
4 7 (0.60%) Apache
5 3 (0.26%) CloudStack
5 3 (0.26%) IIS
5 3 (0.26%) JBoss
5 3 (0.26%) nginx
5 3 (0.26%) SAS
5 3 (0.26%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.17%) CMS
7 1 (0.086%) Apache Spark
7 1 (0.086%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 50 (4.28%) Microsoft Office
2 25 (2.14%) MS Visio
3 24 (2.05%) Microsoft Excel
4 10 (0.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.26%) Acrobat
Business Applications
1 3 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 241 (20.62%) Azure
2 152 (13.00%) AWS
3 83 (7.10%) Microsoft 365
4 57 (4.88%) Entra ID
5 24 (2.05%) GCP
6 22 (1.88%) GitHub
6 22 (1.88%) OneDrive
7 21 (1.80%) OpenShift
8 18 (1.54%) Azure ExpressRoute
8 18 (1.54%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 14 (1.20%) Nutanix
10 12 (1.03%) Azure Sentinel
10 12 (1.03%) SaaS
11 10 (0.86%) Power Platform
12 9 (0.77%) Azure DevOps
13 8 (0.68%) IaaS
14 7 (0.60%) Cloudflare
14 7 (0.60%) Rubrik
15 6 (0.51%) Amazon EC2
15 6 (0.51%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 523 (44.74%) Firewall
2 364 (31.14%) WAN
3 312 (26.69%) BGP
4 292 (24.98%) LAN
5 264 (22.58%) VPN
6 246 (21.04%) Network Security
7 219 (18.73%) OSPF
8 210 (17.96%) Wireless
9 200 (17.11%) DNS
10 182 (15.57%) VLAN
11 145 (12.40%) SD-WAN
12 128 (10.95%) MPLS
13 120 (10.27%) Wi-Fi
14 116 (9.92%) DHCP
15 111 (9.50%) Cisco ISE
16 110 (9.41%) Cisco Nexus
17 101 (8.64%) VXLAN
18 93 (7.96%) TCP/IP
19 85 (7.27%) Cisco ASA
20 83 (7.10%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (2.14%) SQL Server
2 4 (0.34%) Amazon RDS
3 3 (0.26%) Big Data
3 3 (0.26%) Hadoop
3 3 (0.26%) MySQL
3 3 (0.26%) Power BI
4 2 (0.17%) Metadata
4 2 (0.17%) NoSQL
4 2 (0.17%) PostgreSQL
5 1 (0.086%) Apache Hive
5 1 (0.086%) ClickHouse
Development Applications
1 23 (1.97%) Git
2 20 (1.71%) JIRA
3 13 (1.11%) Sonatype Nexus
4 10 (0.86%) Jenkins
5 4 (0.34%) GitLab
6 1 (0.086%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.086%) Robot Framework
General
1 277 (23.70%) Social Skills
2 106 (9.07%) Finance
3 95 (8.13%) Telecoms
4 89 (7.61%) Analytical Skills
5 64 (5.47%) Banking
6 60 (5.13%) Public Sector
7 58 (4.96%) Documentation Skills
8 36 (3.08%) Legal
9 22 (1.88%) Organisational Skills
10 20 (1.71%) Financial Institution
11 19 (1.63%) Investment Banking
12 17 (1.45%) Law
12 17 (1.45%) Military
13 15 (1.28%) Retail
14 11 (0.94%) Police
15 10 (0.86%) Manufacturing
16 9 (0.77%) Influencing Skills
17 7 (0.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 6 (0.51%) Marketing
19 5 (0.43%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 580 (49.62%) Network Engineer
2 157 (13.43%) Senior
3 134 (11.46%) Architect
4 123 (10.52%) Cisco Engineer
5 113 (9.67%) Cisco Network Engineer
6 104 (8.90%) Senior Network Engineer
7 87 (7.44%) Security Engineer
8 74 (6.33%) Network Architect
9 68 (5.82%) Network Security Engineer
10 59 (5.05%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 52 (4.45%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 42 (3.59%) Data Network Engineer
13 35 (2.99%) Analyst
14 33 (2.82%) Data Engineer
15 32 (2.74%) Cisco Security Engineer
15 32 (2.74%) Field Engineer
16 28 (2.40%) Lead
16 28 (2.40%) Network Specialist
17 27 (2.31%) Automation Engineer
18 25 (2.14%) Telecoms Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 81 (6.93%) 802.1X
2 15 (1.28%) REST
3 14 (1.20%) SAML
4 9 (0.77%) Flash
5 7 (0.60%) NETCONF
5 7 (0.60%) XMPP
6 6 (0.51%) Jinja
6 6 (0.51%) OpenConfig
6 6 (0.51%) RESTCONF
6 6 (0.51%) YANG
7 5 (0.43%) JSON
7 5 (0.43%) LDAP
8 4 (0.34%) YAML
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%) Microsoft Graph
10 2 (0.17%) Blazor
10 2 (0.17%) eBPF
Miscellaneous
1 285 (24.38%) Data Centre
2 61 (5.22%) PKI
3 51 (4.36%) Hybrid Cloud
4 40 (3.42%) Clustering
5 39 (3.34%) Onboarding
6 34 (2.91%) Replication
7 33 (2.82%) Data Protection Act
7 33 (2.82%) Driving Licence
8 31 (2.65%) Operational Technology
9 30 (2.57%) Video Conferencing
10 21 (1.80%) Enterprise Storage
11 20 (1.71%) Analytical Mindset
12 19 (1.63%) Cloud Native
12 19 (1.63%) Linux Command Line
13 18 (1.54%) EMC VMAX
14 17 (1.45%) Public Cloud
15 16 (1.37%) Self-Motivation
16 14 (1.20%) SCADA
16 14 (1.20%) Security Posture
17 12 (1.03%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 217 (18.56%) Windows
2 130 (11.12%) Linux
3 74 (6.33%) Windows Server
4 18 (1.54%) Unix
5 17 (1.45%) Ubuntu
5 17 (1.45%) Windows 10
6 15 (1.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 10 (0.86%) Windows Server 2019
8 9 (0.77%) AIX
8 9 (0.77%) Android
9 8 (0.68%) Mac OS
10 7 (0.60%) Windows Server 2012
11 5 (0.43%) Data ONTAP
11 5 (0.43%) VMS
12 4 (0.34%) CentOS
12 4 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.086%) CatOS
13 1 (0.086%) Check Point GAiA
13 1 (0.086%) Debian
13 1 (0.086%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 179 (15.31%) Migration
2 135 (11.55%) Load Balancing
3 132 (11.29%) Problem-Solving
4 128 (10.95%) ITIL
4 128 (10.95%) Project Delivery
5 123 (10.52%) High Availability
6 96 (8.21%) Change Management
7 89 (7.61%) Network Design
8 83 (7.10%) Continuous Improvement
9 82 (7.01%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 79 (6.76%) ITSM
11 71 (6.07%) Stakeholder Management
12 67 (5.73%) Infrastructure as Code
13 65 (5.56%) CI/CD
14 64 (5.47%) Technical Leadership
14 64 (5.47%) Validation
15 62 (5.30%) Network Monitoring
16 55 (4.70%) Service Management
17 54 (4.62%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 53 (4.53%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 137 (11.72%) Python
2 57 (4.88%) PowerShell
3 30 (2.57%) 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 (0.086%) Bicep
9 1 (0.086%) Ladder Logic
9 1 (0.086%) PHP
Qualifications
1 341 (29.17%) Cisco Certification
2 312 (26.69%) Security Cleared
3 242 (20.70%) CCNP
4 214 (18.31%) SC Cleared
5 140 (11.98%) CCNA
6 100 (8.55%) DV Cleared
7 69 (5.90%) Degree
8 60 (5.13%) CCIE
9 26 (2.22%) Microsoft Certification
10 23 (1.97%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 22 (1.88%) Network+ Certification
12 18 (1.54%) MCSE
13 17 (1.45%) Azure Certification
13 17 (1.45%) Server+ Certification
14 15 (1.28%) BPSS Clearance
15 14 (1.20%) JNCIP
15 14 (1.20%) JNCIS
16 13 (1.11%) Computer Science Degree
17 12 (1.03%) AWS Certification
17 12 (1.03%) CCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 45 (3.85%) SLA
2 30 (2.57%) NIST
3 23 (1.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 19 (1.63%) Cyber Essentials
4 19 (1.63%) QA
5 17 (1.45%) NCSC
6 6 (0.51%) Disclosure Scotland
6 6 (0.51%) PMO
7 5 (0.43%) GDPR
7 5 (0.43%) PCI DSS
8 4 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 4 (0.34%) Data Quality
8 4 (0.34%) JSP 440
9 3 (0.26%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
9 3 (0.26%) NIST 800
10 2 (0.17%) Accessibility
10 2 (0.17%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.17%) ISA99
11 1 (0.086%) GRC
11 1 (0.086%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 138 (11.80%) VMware Infrastructure
2 110 (9.41%) Active Directory
3 44 (3.76%) VMware ESXi
4 43 (3.68%) vSphere
5 41 (3.51%) VMware NSX
6 31 (2.65%) Firmware
7 29 (2.48%) Virtual Machines
8 28 (2.40%) Hyper-V
9 13 (1.11%) Docker
9 13 (1.11%) NFS
10 12 (1.03%) SRDF
11 9 (0.77%) GPFS
12 6 (0.51%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 5 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
13 5 (0.43%) Virtual Servers
14 3 (0.26%) Dovecot
14 3 (0.26%) Postfix
14 3 (0.26%) UAG
15 2 (0.17%) FreeRADIUS
15 2 (0.17%) Snort
Systems Management
1 139 (11.89%) Ansible
2 92 (7.87%) FortiGate
3 70 (5.99%) Terraform
4 29 (2.48%) Kubernetes
5 28 (2.40%) Microsoft Intune
6 23 (1.97%) Grafana
7 21 (1.80%) Prometheus
7 21 (1.80%) SCCM
7 21 (1.80%) vCenter Server
8 17 (1.45%) Cisco CUCM
8 17 (1.45%) Cisco Prime
9 10 (0.86%) Single Sign-On
9 10 (0.86%) vRealize
10 8 (0.68%) VxRail
10 8 (0.68%) WMI
11 7 (0.60%) EMC VPLEX
11 7 (0.60%) Nagios
11 7 (0.60%) Puppet
11 7 (0.60%) WSUS
12 6 (0.51%) EMC TimeFinder
Vendors
1 267 (22.84%) Palo Alto
2 229 (19.59%) F5
3 210 (17.96%) Microsoft
4 205 (17.54%) Fortinet
5 198 (16.94%) VMware
6 162 (13.86%) Juniper
7 102 (8.73%) CheckPoint
8 99 (8.47%) Aruba
9 97 (8.30%) Meraki
10 96 (8.21%) SolarWinds
11 95 (8.13%) ServiceNow
12 73 (6.24%) Arista
13 58 (4.96%) Splunk
14 52 (4.45%) Zscaler
15 38 (3.25%) Dell
16 30 (2.57%) Red Hat
17 29 (2.48%) Extreme Networks
18 26 (2.22%) EMC
19 24 (2.05%) Brocade
19 24 (2.05%) Citrix