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 3 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
3 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 111 66 68
Rank change year-on-year -45 +2 -11
Contract jobs citing Cisco 1,165 1,134 1,326
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.26% 3.63% 3.05%
As % of the Vendors category 5.52% 7.64% 7.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 787 696 810
10th Percentile £300 £308 £250
25th Percentile £400 £408 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +5.26% -
75th Percentile £573 £588 £575
90th Percentile £638 £649 £660
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -5.00% +5.26% +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 36 30 40
10th Percentile £26.72 £24.27 £16.00
25th Percentile £34.44 £25.15 £23.04
Median hourly rate £53.75 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +79.17% +9.09% -45.00%
75th Percentile £68.88 £42.93 £46.39
90th Percentile £76.50 £61.68 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £30.00 £41.95
% change year-on-year +83.33% -28.48% -12.30%

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 21,123 14,842 18,645
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.00% 47.46% 42.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,162 9,096 11,591
10th Percentile £313 £281 £270
25th Percentile £413 £402 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £500 £515
Median % change year-on-year +0.10% -2.91% -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £713 £732
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £481 £500
% change year-on-year +3.95% -3.80% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,094 703 1,150
10th Percentile £15.75 £14.84 £12.40
25th Percentile £19.03 £17.33 £14.90
Median hourly rate £33.99 £25.15 £24.50
Median % change year-on-year +35.15% +2.65% -39.64%
75th Percentile £62.00 £53.50 £59.95
90th Percentile £80.08 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £22.63 £24.00
% change year-on-year +43.61% -5.71% -25.70%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 -49 985 £483 -3.40% 743
UK excluding London -43 706 £475 -5.00% 668
London -56 332 £500 - 236
Work from Home -37 293 £463 -7.50% 158
North of England -36 219 £483 -1.83% 153
South East -30 184 £505 -3.35% 172
North West -11 170 £480 +1.05% 72
Midlands -26 138 £415 -12.63% 88
West Midlands -16 131 £413 -15.38% 47
Scotland +27 86 £450 +12.50% 46
South West -63 54 £525 -4.55% 89
Yorkshire -72 46 £500 - 58
East of England -20 33 £500 +0.50% 76
Wales -22 19 £468 +61.21% 28
Northern Ireland +9 9 £145 -58.57% 25
East Midlands -33 4 £458 -3.68% 41
North East -41 4 £425 +30.77% 23
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 27 (2.32%) SharePoint
2 22 (1.89%) Microsoft Exchange
3 12 (1.03%) Confluence
4 7 (0.60%) Apache
4 7 (0.60%) OpenStack
5 3 (0.26%) CloudStack
5 3 (0.26%) IIS
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 47 (4.03%) Microsoft Office
2 31 (2.66%) MS Visio
3 26 (2.23%) Microsoft Excel
4 11 (0.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 5 (0.43%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 218 (18.71%) Azure
2 150 (12.88%) AWS
3 72 (6.18%) Microsoft 365
4 43 (3.69%) Entra ID
5 22 (1.89%) GCP
6 17 (1.46%) OpenShift
7 16 (1.37%) GitHub
7 16 (1.37%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 15 (1.29%) Nutanix
8 15 (1.29%) OneDrive
9 14 (1.20%) Azure ExpressRoute
10 13 (1.12%) Azure Sentinel
10 13 (1.12%) SaaS
11 10 (0.86%) Power Platform
12 9 (0.77%) IaaS
13 8 (0.69%) Microsoft Purview
14 6 (0.52%) Azure DevOps
15 5 (0.43%) GitHub Actions
15 5 (0.43%) Rubrik
16 4 (0.34%) Cloudflare
Communications & Networking
1 505 (43.35%) Firewall
2 376 (32.27%) WAN
3 301 (25.84%) BGP
4 293 (25.15%) LAN
5 254 (21.80%) VPN
6 246 (21.12%) Network Security
7 209 (17.94%) OSPF
8 196 (16.82%) Wireless
9 185 (15.88%) DNS
10 162 (13.91%) VLAN
11 161 (13.82%) SD-WAN
12 122 (10.47%) MPLS
13 116 (9.96%) Cisco Nexus
14 107 (9.18%) Wi-Fi
15 102 (8.76%) Cisco ISE
16 99 (8.50%) DHCP
16 99 (8.50%) VXLAN
17 81 (6.95%) Cisco IOS
18 80 (6.87%) Cisco ASA
19 77 (6.61%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (1.55%) SQL Server
2 3 (0.26%) MySQL
2 3 (0.26%) NoSQL
2 3 (0.26%) Power BI
3 2 (0.17%) Amazon RDS
3 2 (0.17%) PostgreSQL
4 1 (0.086%) Apache Hive
4 1 (0.086%) Big Data
4 1 (0.086%) ClickHouse
4 1 (0.086%) Hadoop
4 1 (0.086%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 23 (1.97%) JIRA
2 15 (1.29%) Sonatype Nexus
3 13 (1.12%) Git
4 9 (0.77%) Jenkins
5 3 (0.26%) GitLab
6 2 (0.17%) Bitbucket
General
1 272 (23.35%) Social Skills
2 116 (9.96%) Finance
3 76 (6.52%) Analytical Skills
4 75 (6.44%) Telecoms
5 66 (5.67%) Public Sector
6 60 (5.15%) Banking
7 58 (4.98%) Documentation Skills
8 52 (4.46%) Legal
9 23 (1.97%) Organisational Skills
10 20 (1.72%) Investment Banking
11 18 (1.55%) Financial Institution
12 16 (1.37%) Retail
13 14 (1.20%) Manufacturing
14 12 (1.03%) Law
14 12 (1.03%) Military
15 9 (0.77%) Influencing Skills
15 9 (0.77%) Police
16 8 (0.69%) Marketing
17 7 (0.60%) Presentation Skills
18 5 (0.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 548 (47.04%) Network Engineer
2 140 (12.02%) Architect
3 127 (10.90%) Senior
4 122 (10.47%) Cisco Engineer
5 111 (9.53%) Cisco Network Engineer
6 88 (7.55%) Security Engineer
7 77 (6.61%) Network Architect
8 72 (6.18%) Senior Network Engineer
9 65 (5.58%) Network Security Engineer
10 59 (5.06%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
11 57 (4.89%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 48 (4.12%) Data Network Engineer
13 36 (3.09%) Data Engineer
14 35 (3.00%) Cisco Security Engineer
15 34 (2.92%) Analyst
16 29 (2.49%) Lead
17 28 (2.40%) Network Specialist
18 27 (2.32%) Solutions Architect
19 26 (2.23%) Field Engineer
20 23 (1.97%) Data Centre Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 75 (6.44%) 802.1X
2 15 (1.29%) SAML
3 14 (1.20%) LDAP
3 14 (1.20%) REST
4 12 (1.03%) Flash
5 6 (0.52%) Jinja
5 6 (0.52%) XMPP
6 5 (0.43%) NETCONF
7 4 (0.34%) Django
7 4 (0.34%) OpenConfig
7 4 (0.34%) RESTCONF
7 4 (0.34%) YANG
8 3 (0.26%) Elastic Stack
8 3 (0.26%) JSON
8 3 (0.26%) LAMP
8 3 (0.26%) LEMP Stack
8 3 (0.26%) Microsoft Graph
8 3 (0.26%) YAML
9 2 (0.17%) .NET Core
9 2 (0.17%) Blazor
Miscellaneous
1 300 (25.75%) Data Centre
2 58 (4.98%) PKI
3 43 (3.69%) Replication
4 42 (3.61%) Clustering
5 40 (3.43%) Hybrid Cloud
6 37 (3.18%) Data Protection Act
7 34 (2.92%) Onboarding
8 29 (2.49%) Driving Licence
8 29 (2.49%) Operational Technology
9 27 (2.32%) Video Conferencing
10 19 (1.63%) Enterprise Storage
11 18 (1.55%) EMC VMAX
11 18 (1.55%) Security Posture
12 17 (1.46%) Analytical Mindset
12 17 (1.46%) Cloud Native
13 16 (1.37%) Linux Command Line
14 15 (1.29%) Virtual Team
15 14 (1.20%) SCADA
16 13 (1.12%) Public Cloud
16 13 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 220 (18.88%) Windows
2 125 (10.73%) Linux
3 71 (6.09%) Windows Server
4 18 (1.55%) Unix
5 15 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 15 (1.29%) Ubuntu
5 15 (1.29%) Windows 10
6 10 (0.86%) Windows Server 2019
7 9 (0.77%) Android
8 8 (0.69%) Mac OS
9 7 (0.60%) AIX
9 7 (0.60%) Windows Server 2012
10 5 (0.43%) Data ONTAP
10 5 (0.43%) VMS
11 4 (0.34%) CentOS
12 3 (0.26%) CatOS
12 3 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.086%) Check Point GAiA
13 1 (0.086%) Windows 7
13 1 (0.086%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 181 (15.54%) Migration
2 133 (11.42%) Load Balancing
3 125 (10.73%) High Availability
4 117 (10.04%) Problem-Solving
5 111 (9.53%) ITIL
6 105 (9.01%) Project Delivery
7 91 (7.81%) Network Design
8 87 (7.47%) ITSM
9 80 (6.87%) Change Management
10 75 (6.44%) Continuous Improvement
11 73 (6.27%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 70 (6.01%) Stakeholder Management
13 68 (5.84%) Agile
14 65 (5.58%) Infrastructure as Code
15 63 (5.41%) Disaster Recovery
16 62 (5.32%) Technical Leadership
17 60 (5.15%) CI/CD
17 60 (5.15%) Cybersecurity
17 60 (5.15%) Validation
18 58 (4.98%) Network Monitoring
Programming Languages
1 139 (11.93%) Python
2 59 (5.06%) PowerShell
3 24 (2.06%) SQL
4 22 (1.89%) Bash
5 6 (0.52%) C
6 4 (0.34%) Java
6 4 (0.34%) Perl
6 4 (0.34%) PHP
7 3 (0.26%) C++
7 3 (0.26%) Lisp
7 3 (0.26%) Shell Script
8 2 (0.17%) ActionScript
8 2 (0.17%) Korn
9 1 (0.086%) Bicep
9 1 (0.086%) JavaScript
9 1 (0.086%) Ladder Logic
Qualifications
1 346 (29.70%) Cisco Certification
2 328 (28.15%) Security Cleared
3 251 (21.55%) CCNP
4 237 (20.34%) SC Cleared
5 138 (11.85%) CCNA
6 100 (8.58%) DV Cleared
7 72 (6.18%) Degree
8 66 (5.67%) CCIE
9 28 (2.40%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 27 (2.32%) Microsoft Certification
11 22 (1.89%) Network+ Certification
12 19 (1.63%) MCSE
13 17 (1.46%) Azure Certification
13 17 (1.46%) BPSS Clearance
13 17 (1.46%) Server+ Certification
14 14 (1.20%) CCSE
15 13 (1.12%) VCAP
16 12 (1.03%) AWS Certification
16 12 (1.03%) JNCIP
16 12 (1.03%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 44 (3.78%) SLA
2 32 (2.75%) NIST
3 29 (2.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 25 (2.15%) Cyber Essentials
5 21 (1.80%) QA
6 20 (1.72%) NCSC
7 9 (0.77%) PMO
8 7 (0.60%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 7 (0.60%) Disclosure Scotland
9 5 (0.43%) GDPR
9 5 (0.43%) JSP 440
9 5 (0.43%) PCI DSS
10 3 (0.26%) Data Quality
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%) GRC
11 2 (0.17%) ISA99
11 2 (0.17%) RMADS
System Software
1 151 (12.96%) VMware Infrastructure
2 105 (9.01%) Active Directory
3 57 (4.89%) VMware ESXi
4 55 (4.72%) vSphere
5 49 (4.21%) VMware NSX
6 35 (3.00%) Virtual Machines
7 30 (2.58%) Firmware
8 24 (2.06%) Hyper-V
9 16 (1.37%) NFS
10 12 (1.03%) GPFS
10 12 (1.03%) SRDF
11 7 (0.60%) Docker
11 7 (0.60%) Virtual Desktop
12 6 (0.52%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 4 (0.34%) vCloud
13 4 (0.34%) Virtual Servers
14 3 (0.26%) Dovecot
14 3 (0.26%) Postfix
14 3 (0.26%) UAG
15 2 (0.17%) Snort
Systems Management
1 142 (12.19%) Ansible
2 100 (8.58%) FortiGate
3 56 (4.81%) Terraform
4 31 (2.66%) vCenter Server
5 28 (2.40%) Grafana
6 23 (1.97%) Microsoft Intune
6 23 (1.97%) SCCM
7 22 (1.89%) Kubernetes
8 21 (1.80%) Prometheus
9 16 (1.37%) vRealize
10 13 (1.12%) Cisco CUCM
10 13 (1.12%) Cisco Prime
10 13 (1.12%) Single Sign-On
11 9 (0.77%) VxRail
12 8 (0.69%) WMI
13 7 (0.60%) EMC VPLEX
13 7 (0.60%) WSUS
14 6 (0.52%) EMC TimeFinder
14 6 (0.52%) HAProxy
14 6 (0.52%) SCOM
Vendors
1 277 (23.78%) Palo Alto
2 222 (19.06%) F5
3 207 (17.77%) Microsoft
4 198 (17.00%) VMware
5 192 (16.48%) Fortinet
6 160 (13.73%) Juniper
7 106 (9.10%) CheckPoint
8 103 (8.84%) Aruba
9 102 (8.76%) ServiceNow
10 94 (8.07%) SolarWinds
11 89 (7.64%) Meraki
12 78 (6.70%) Arista
13 60 (5.15%) Splunk
14 47 (4.03%) Zscaler
15 43 (3.69%) Dell
16 31 (2.66%) EMC
17 30 (2.58%) Extreme Networks
18 29 (2.49%) IBM
19 28 (2.40%) Brocade
20 25 (2.15%) Infoblox