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 30 September 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
30 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 117 81 63
Rank change year-on-year -36 -18 -9
Contract jobs citing Cisco 1,241 991 1,244
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.26% 3.02% 3.31%
As % of the Vendors category 5.42% 6.34% 7.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 800 630 740
10th Percentile £262 £290 £257
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £489 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -2.20% +8.11%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £669 £638 £660
UK excluding London median daily rate £468 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -4.49% -2.10% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 42 37
10th Percentile £27.62 - £19.40
25th Percentile £44.00 £25.15 £20.50
Median hourly rate £55.00 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +83.33% +9.09% -42.11%
75th Percentile £68.75 £42.44 £55.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £81.43 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £32.50 £37.50
% change year-on-year +69.23% -13.33% -21.60%

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 22,886 15,627 16,747
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.70% 47.59% 44.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,922 9,629 9,875
10th Percentile £310 £275 £288
25th Percentile £413 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £618 £613 £625
90th Percentile £708 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £483 £500
% change year-on-year +3.63% -3.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,332 809 623
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.74 £14.69
25th Percentile £16.38 £17.75 £15.62
Median hourly rate £25.65 £25.15 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +1.97% -22.62% -24.42%
75th Percentile £57.50 £42.50 £64.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.72 £21.30 £30.00
% change year-on-year +16.06% -29.00% -29.41%

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 30 September 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 30 September 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 30 September 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 -43 1,027 £500 - 926
UK excluding London -32 732 £468 -4.49% 593
London -38 382 £500 +1.63% 353
Work from Home -34 295 £476 +2.92% 253
North of England 0 240 £485 +2.11% 133
North West +11 160 £484 +1.89% 67
South East -70 131 £449 -10.25% 144
Midlands -36 128 £459 +2.00% 96
West Midlands -24 123 £450 -8.86% 51
Scotland +13 99 £400 -5.88% 32
Yorkshire -20 73 £500 +1.63% 45
South West -36 64 £538 -2.27% 86
East of England 0 60 £500 +3.63% 82
Wales +11 28 £376 +88.13% 19
Northern Ireland +2 10 £145 -69.47% 12
North East -35 9 £375 -6.25% 21
Channel Islands -3 3 £600 -17.24%
East Midlands -32 3 £525 +233.33% 45

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 39 (3.14%) SharePoint
2 37 (2.98%) Microsoft Exchange
3 14 (1.13%) CMS
4 12 (0.97%) Confluence
5 11 (0.89%) OpenStack
6 8 (0.64%) IIS
6 8 (0.64%) SAS
7 7 (0.56%) Apache
8 6 (0.48%) JBoss
9 4 (0.32%) nginx
10 3 (0.24%) CloudStack
10 3 (0.24%) Tomcat
11 2 (0.16%) Skype for Business
12 1 (0.081%) Apache Spark
12 1 (0.081%) FactoryTalk
12 1 (0.081%) Mendix
12 1 (0.081%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 46 (3.71%) Microsoft Office
2 27 (2.18%) Microsoft Excel
3 22 (1.77%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.24%) Acrobat
6 1 (0.081%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.081%) Monis
1 1 (0.081%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.081%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 243 (19.58%) Azure
2 151 (12.17%) AWS
3 99 (7.98%) Microsoft 365
4 68 (5.48%) Entra ID
5 37 (2.98%) GitHub
6 32 (2.58%) OneDrive
7 31 (2.50%) GCP
8 20 (1.61%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 16 (1.29%) OpenShift
10 15 (1.21%) Power Platform
10 15 (1.21%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 13 (1.05%) Nutanix
12 12 (0.97%) SaaS
13 10 (0.81%) AWS Direct Connect
14 8 (0.64%) Azure Sentinel
14 8 (0.64%) GitHub Actions
15 7 (0.56%) Azure DevOps
15 7 (0.56%) OCI
15 7 (0.56%) Rubrik
16 6 (0.48%) Cloudflare
Communications & Networking
1 505 (40.69%) Firewall
2 362 (29.17%) WAN
3 298 (24.01%) BGP
4 278 (22.40%) LAN
5 267 (21.51%) Network Security
6 263 (21.19%) VPN
7 212 (17.08%) Wireless
8 188 (15.15%) OSPF
9 181 (14.59%) DNS
10 180 (14.50%) VLAN
11 150 (12.09%) SD-WAN
12 136 (10.96%) Wi-Fi
13 134 (10.80%) MPLS
14 112 (9.02%) Cisco Nexus
15 106 (8.54%) DHCP
16 102 (8.22%) TCP/IP
17 94 (7.57%) Cisco ISE
18 91 (7.33%) Cisco IOS
19 86 (6.93%) VXLAN
20 85 (6.85%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (2.18%) SQL Server
2 8 (0.64%) Power BI
3 6 (0.48%) Hadoop
4 5 (0.40%) Big Data
5 4 (0.32%) Amazon RDS
6 3 (0.24%) Metadata
6 3 (0.24%) MySQL
7 2 (0.16%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.16%) PostgreSQL
8 1 (0.081%) Apache Hive
8 1 (0.081%) ClickHouse
Development Applications
1 37 (2.98%) Git
2 15 (1.21%) GitLab
2 15 (1.21%) JIRA
3 11 (0.89%) Sonatype Nexus
4 8 (0.64%) Jenkins
5 2 (0.16%) Robot Framework
6 1 (0.081%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.081%) Tricentis qTest
6 1 (0.081%) Zephyr
General
1 284 (22.88%) Social Skills
2 132 (10.64%) Finance
3 130 (10.48%) Telecoms
4 106 (8.54%) Analytical Skills
5 71 (5.72%) Banking
6 63 (5.08%) Public Sector
7 61 (4.92%) Documentation Skills
8 46 (3.71%) Legal
9 22 (1.77%) Organisational Skills
10 21 (1.69%) Investment Banking
11 20 (1.61%) Retail
12 17 (1.37%) Financial Institution
13 15 (1.21%) Law
14 14 (1.13%) Military
15 10 (0.81%) Manufacturing
16 9 (0.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 9 (0.73%) Influencing Skills
17 8 (0.64%) Police
18 6 (0.48%) Marketing
18 6 (0.48%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 612 (49.32%) Network Engineer
2 185 (14.91%) Senior
3 148 (11.93%) Architect
3 148 (11.93%) Cisco Engineer
4 135 (10.88%) Senior Network Engineer
5 125 (10.07%) Cisco Network Engineer
6 90 (7.25%) Security Engineer
7 78 (6.29%) Network Architect
8 68 (5.48%) Network Security Engineer
9 62 (5.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 53 (4.27%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
11 46 (3.71%) Lead
12 42 (3.38%) Analyst
12 42 (3.38%) Field Engineer
13 41 (3.30%) Support Engineer
14 35 (2.82%) Telecoms Engineer
15 34 (2.74%) Solutions Architect
16 31 (2.50%) Data Network Engineer
17 29 (2.34%) Consultant
18 26 (2.10%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 87 (7.01%) Terraform
2 55 (4.43%) 802.1X
3 33 (2.66%) REST
4 21 (1.69%) YAML
5 20 (1.61%) XMPP
6 19 (1.53%) JSON
7 13 (1.05%) NETCONF
8 12 (0.97%) SAML
9 9 (0.73%) YANG
10 7 (0.56%) Microsoft Graph
10 7 (0.56%) RESTCONF
11 6 (0.48%) Flash
12 5 (0.40%) OpenConfig
13 3 (0.24%) .NET
13 3 (0.24%) Elastic Stack
13 3 (0.24%) Java RMI
13 3 (0.24%) LDAP
13 3 (0.24%) LEMP Stack
13 3 (0.24%) OpenID
13 3 (0.24%) RFC 2544
Miscellaneous
1 294 (23.69%) Data Centre
2 55 (4.43%) Hybrid Cloud
3 50 (4.03%) Onboarding
4 47 (3.79%) Driving Licence
4 47 (3.79%) Video Conferencing
5 42 (3.38%) PKI
6 37 (2.98%) Data Protection Act
6 37 (2.98%) Operational Technology
7 28 (2.26%) Management Information System
8 25 (2.01%) Replication
9 24 (1.93%) Self-Motivation
10 22 (1.77%) Clustering
10 22 (1.77%) Public Cloud
11 21 (1.69%) Cloud Native
12 19 (1.53%) Analytical Mindset
13 17 (1.37%) Private Cloud
14 16 (1.29%) Enterprise Storage
14 16 (1.29%) Linux Command Line
15 15 (1.21%) IoT
16 13 (1.05%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 243 (19.58%) Windows
2 125 (10.07%) Linux
3 97 (7.82%) Windows Server
4 24 (1.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 23 (1.85%) Mac OS
6 18 (1.45%) Windows 10
7 17 (1.37%) Ubuntu
8 11 (0.89%) Android
9 10 (0.81%) Unix
10 9 (0.73%) Windows Server 2012
11 8 (0.64%) Windows Server 2019
12 7 (0.56%) AIX
12 7 (0.56%) Data ONTAP
13 5 (0.40%) CentOS
14 4 (0.32%) Windows Server 2016
15 3 (0.24%) VMS
16 1 (0.081%) Debian
16 1 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
16 1 (0.081%) Windows 7
16 1 (0.081%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 193 (15.55%) Migration
2 162 (13.05%) Project Delivery
3 149 (12.01%) Problem-Solving
4 129 (10.39%) ITIL
5 111 (8.94%) Stakeholder Management
6 106 (8.54%) High Availability
7 102 (8.22%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 102 (8.22%) Load Balancing
8 94 (7.57%) Network Design
9 93 (7.49%) Change Management
10 92 (7.41%) Continuous Improvement
11 90 (7.25%) Infrastructure as Code
12 89 (7.17%) Validation
13 75 (6.04%) Data Protection
14 74 (5.96%) Technical Leadership
15 73 (5.88%) Zero Trust
16 68 (5.48%) Cybersecurity
17 65 (5.24%) ITSM
18 63 (5.08%) CI/CD
18 63 (5.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 144 (11.60%) Python
2 58 (4.67%) PowerShell
3 32 (2.58%) Bash
4 28 (2.26%) SQL
5 5 (0.40%) Java
6 4 (0.32%) C
6 4 (0.32%) C++
7 3 (0.24%) Lisp
7 3 (0.24%) Shell Script
8 2 (0.16%) Go
8 2 (0.16%) Perl
9 1 (0.081%) Bicep
9 1 (0.081%) Kusto Query Language
9 1 (0.081%) Ladder Logic
9 1 (0.081%) R
Qualifications
1 329 (26.51%) Cisco Certification
2 302 (24.34%) Security Cleared
3 234 (18.86%) CCNP
4 222 (17.89%) SC Cleared
5 129 (10.39%) CCNA
6 76 (6.12%) DV Cleared
7 72 (5.80%) Degree
8 66 (5.32%) CCIE
9 25 (2.01%) Microsoft Certification
10 22 (1.77%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 20 (1.61%) CISSP
12 17 (1.37%) MCSE
13 15 (1.21%) AWS Certification
14 14 (1.13%) Azure Certification
14 14 (1.13%) Network+ Certification
15 13 (1.05%) CCSE
15 13 (1.05%) Computer Science Degree
16 12 (0.97%) BPSS Clearance
17 11 (0.89%) ISTQB
17 11 (0.89%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 40 (3.22%) SLA
2 31 (2.50%) NIST
3 22 (1.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 21 (1.69%) QA
5 15 (1.21%) PCI DSS
6 13 (1.05%) Cyber Essentials
7 9 (0.73%) GDPR
8 7 (0.56%) NCSC
9 6 (0.48%) GRC
10 5 (0.40%) Data Quality
10 5 (0.40%) ISO 31000
10 5 (0.40%) ISO 9001
10 5 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 27005
11 4 (0.32%) Disclosure Scotland
11 4 (0.32%) JSP 440
11 4 (0.32%) NIST 800
11 4 (0.32%) PMO
12 3 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 2 (0.16%) Accessibility
13 2 (0.16%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 157 (12.65%) VMware Infrastructure
2 135 (10.88%) Active Directory
3 53 (4.27%) vSphere
4 42 (3.38%) VMware NSX
5 38 (3.06%) VMware ESXi
6 34 (2.74%) Hyper-V
7 31 (2.50%) Firmware
8 28 (2.26%) Virtual Machines
9 18 (1.45%) Docker
10 10 (0.81%) NFS
11 6 (0.48%) GPFS
12 5 (0.40%) FreeRADIUS
12 5 (0.40%) ISA Server
12 5 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
13 4 (0.32%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 4 (0.32%) SRDF
13 4 (0.32%) Virtual Servers
14 3 (0.24%) Dovecot
14 3 (0.24%) Postfix
15 2 (0.16%) IAG
Systems Management
1 143 (11.52%) Ansible
2 75 (6.04%) FortiGate
3 34 (2.74%) Cisco CUCM
4 32 (2.58%) Kubernetes
5 28 (2.26%) Microsoft Intune
6 21 (1.69%) SCCM
6 21 (1.69%) vCenter Server
7 18 (1.45%) Cisco Prime
8 12 (0.97%) Nagios
9 9 (0.73%) Grafana
9 9 (0.73%) WMI
10 8 (0.64%) Failover Clustering
10 8 (0.64%) Prometheus
10 8 (0.64%) Puppet
10 8 (0.64%) WSUS
11 7 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
12 6 (0.48%) CASB
12 6 (0.48%) Red Hat Satellite
12 6 (0.48%) vRealize
13 5 (0.40%) SolarWinds Orion
Vendors
1 265 (21.35%) Palo Alto
2 249 (20.06%) Microsoft
3 216 (17.41%) VMware
4 210 (16.92%) Fortinet
5 179 (14.42%) F5
6 132 (10.64%) Meraki
7 126 (10.15%) Juniper
8 106 (8.54%) CheckPoint
9 89 (7.17%) Aruba
10 85 (6.85%) SolarWinds
11 83 (6.69%) ServiceNow
12 73 (5.88%) Arista
13 59 (4.75%) Zscaler
14 39 (3.14%) Red Hat
14 39 (3.14%) Splunk
15 32 (2.58%) Dell
16 30 (2.42%) NetApp
17 29 (2.34%) Nokia
18 25 (2.01%) Infoblox
19 21 (1.69%) EMC