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 25 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
25 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 118 83 66
Rank change year-on-year -35 -17 -13
Contract jobs citing Cisco 1,241 1,000 1,241
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.26% 3.03% 3.23%
As % of the Vendors category 5.43% 6.37% 7.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 801 633 734
10th Percentile £263 £300 £250
25th Percentile £400 £400 £395
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £492 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.46% -1.60% +8.11%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £669 £647 £655
UK excluding London median daily rate £465 £492 £500
% change year-on-year -5.49% -1.60% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 43 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 £50.38 £55.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £80.15 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £32.50 £37.50
% change year-on-year +69.23% -13.33% -21.33%

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 22,864 15,696 17,038
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.67% 47.57% 44.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,944 9,651 10,126
10th Percentile £310 £275 £287
25th Percentile £413 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £615 £613 £625
90th Percentile £703 £700 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,300 810 649
10th Percentile £13.98 £14.75 £14.50
25th Percentile £16.50 £17.79 £15.63
Median hourly rate £25.75 £25.15 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.39% -22.62% -25.97%
75th Percentile £59.19 £42.50 £64.25
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.54 £21.30 £30.00
% change year-on-year +19.91% -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 25 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 25 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 25 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 -40 1,027 £497 -0.64% 1,266
UK excluding London -34 731 £465 -5.49% 921
London -38 382 £500 - 470
Work from Home -23 293 £475 +2.70% 304
North of England +9 243 £484 +1.36% 184
North West +12 164 £483 +1.68% 84
South East -76 130 £449 -10.25% 235
Midlands -38 128 £450 -5.26% 127
West Midlands -20 123 £450 -12.20% 72
Scotland +8 100 £413 -2.94% 60
Yorkshire -15 72 £500 +1.63% 67
South West -33 66 £525 -4.55% 137
East of England -11 55 £500 +3.63% 136
Wales +10 28 £376 +88.13% 26
Northern Ireland +1 9 £145 -69.47% 30
North East -38 9 £375 -31.82% 33
Channel Islands -4 3 £600 -17.24%
East Midlands -24 3 £525 +83.73% 55

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 40 (3.22%) SharePoint
2 37 (2.98%) Microsoft Exchange
3 13 (1.05%) CMS
4 12 (0.97%) Confluence
5 11 (0.89%) OpenStack
6 8 (0.64%) SAS
7 7 (0.56%) Apache
7 7 (0.56%) IIS
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 49 (3.95%) Microsoft Office
2 26 (2.10%) 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
1 247 (19.90%) Azure
2 152 (12.25%) AWS
3 101 (8.14%) Microsoft 365
4 67 (5.40%) Entra ID
5 39 (3.14%) GitHub
6 30 (2.42%) OneDrive
7 28 (2.26%) GCP
8 21 (1.69%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 16 (1.29%) OpenShift
9 16 (1.29%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 14 (1.13%) Power Platform
11 13 (1.05%) Nutanix
12 12 (0.97%) SaaS
13 10 (0.81%) AWS Direct Connect
14 8 (0.64%) Azure DevOps
14 8 (0.64%) Azure Sentinel
14 8 (0.64%) GitHub Actions
15 7 (0.56%) Rubrik
16 6 (0.48%) Amazon EC2
16 6 (0.48%) Cloudflare
Communications & Networking
1 508 (40.93%) Firewall
2 364 (29.33%) WAN
3 305 (24.58%) BGP
4 279 (22.48%) LAN
5 266 (21.43%) Network Security
6 265 (21.35%) VPN
7 215 (17.32%) Wireless
8 192 (15.47%) OSPF
9 183 (14.75%) VLAN
10 181 (14.59%) DNS
11 152 (12.25%) SD-WAN
12 136 (10.96%) Wi-Fi
13 134 (10.80%) MPLS
14 116 (9.35%) Cisco Nexus
15 106 (8.54%) DHCP
16 103 (8.30%) TCP/IP
17 95 (7.66%) Cisco ISE
18 90 (7.25%) Cisco IOS
19 87 (7.01%) VXLAN
20 84 (6.77%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (2.18%) SQL Server
2 7 (0.56%) 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 18 (1.45%) JIRA
3 15 (1.21%) GitLab
4 13 (1.05%) Sonatype Nexus
5 8 (0.64%) Jenkins
6 2 (0.16%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.081%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.081%) Tricentis qTest
7 1 (0.081%) Zephyr
General
1 282 (22.72%) Social Skills
2 128 (10.31%) Finance
2 128 (10.31%) Telecoms
3 105 (8.46%) Analytical Skills
4 67 (5.40%) Banking
5 62 (5.00%) Documentation Skills
5 62 (5.00%) Public Sector
6 46 (3.71%) Legal
7 21 (1.69%) Investment Banking
7 21 (1.69%) Organisational Skills
8 20 (1.61%) Retail
9 17 (1.37%) Financial Institution
10 15 (1.21%) Law
11 14 (1.13%) Military
12 11 (0.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 10 (0.81%) Manufacturing
14 9 (0.73%) Influencing Skills
14 9 (0.73%) Police
15 6 (0.48%) Marketing
15 6 (0.48%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 617 (49.72%) Network Engineer
2 183 (14.75%) Senior
3 149 (12.01%) Architect
4 147 (11.85%) Cisco Engineer
5 133 (10.72%) Senior Network Engineer
6 126 (10.15%) Cisco Network Engineer
7 87 (7.01%) Security Engineer
8 79 (6.37%) Network Architect
9 68 (5.48%) Network Security Engineer
10 64 (5.16%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 52 (4.19%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 45 (3.63%) Lead
13 43 (3.46%) Field Engineer
14 40 (3.22%) Support Engineer
15 39 (3.14%) Analyst
16 36 (2.90%) Solutions Architect
17 35 (2.82%) Telecoms Engineer
18 31 (2.50%) Data Network Engineer
19 29 (2.34%) Consultant
20 27 (2.18%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 89 (7.17%) Terraform
2 56 (4.51%) 802.1X
3 35 (2.82%) REST
4 21 (1.69%) YAML
5 19 (1.53%) JSON
6 18 (1.45%) XMPP
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%) Elastic Stack
13 3 (0.24%) LAMP
13 3 (0.24%) LDAP
13 3 (0.24%) LEMP Stack
13 3 (0.24%) Middleware
13 3 (0.24%) OpenID
13 3 (0.24%) RFC 2544
Miscellaneous
1 293 (23.61%) Data Centre
2 56 (4.51%) Hybrid Cloud
3 49 (3.95%) Onboarding
4 47 (3.79%) Driving Licence
5 46 (3.71%) Video Conferencing
6 42 (3.38%) PKI
7 37 (2.98%) Operational Technology
8 36 (2.90%) Data Protection Act
9 25 (2.01%) Management Information System
9 25 (2.01%) Replication
9 25 (2.01%) Self-Motivation
10 22 (1.77%) Clustering
11 21 (1.69%) Cloud Native
11 21 (1.69%) Public Cloud
12 20 (1.61%) Analytical Mindset
13 17 (1.37%) Private Cloud
14 16 (1.29%) Enterprise Storage
14 16 (1.29%) Linux Command Line
15 14 (1.13%) IoT
16 13 (1.05%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 243 (19.58%) Windows
2 128 (10.31%) Linux
3 99 (7.98%) Windows Server
4 25 (2.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 23 (1.85%) Mac OS
6 18 (1.45%) Ubuntu
6 18 (1.45%) Windows 10
7 11 (0.89%) Android
8 10 (0.81%) Unix
9 9 (0.73%) Windows Server 2012
10 8 (0.64%) Windows Server 2019
11 7 (0.56%) AIX
11 7 (0.56%) Data ONTAP
12 6 (0.48%) CentOS
13 4 (0.32%) VMS
13 4 (0.32%) Windows Server 2016
14 1 (0.081%) CatOS
14 1 (0.081%) Check Point GAiA
14 1 (0.081%) Debian
14 1 (0.081%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 199 (16.04%) Migration
2 161 (12.97%) Project Delivery
3 147 (11.85%) Problem-Solving
4 132 (10.64%) ITIL
5 107 (8.62%) High Availability
6 106 (8.54%) Stakeholder Management
7 104 (8.38%) Load Balancing
8 103 (8.30%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 95 (7.66%) Change Management
10 92 (7.41%) Network Design
11 91 (7.33%) Infrastructure as Code
11 91 (7.33%) Validation
12 90 (7.25%) Continuous Improvement
13 75 (6.04%) Technical Leadership
14 74 (5.96%) Zero Trust
15 71 (5.72%) Data Protection
16 67 (5.40%) ITSM
17 64 (5.16%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 63 (5.08%) CI/CD
18 63 (5.08%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 148 (11.93%) Python
2 59 (4.75%) PowerShell
3 33 (2.66%) Bash
4 27 (2.18%) 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
1 337 (27.16%) Cisco Certification
2 305 (24.58%) Security Cleared
3 240 (19.34%) CCNP
4 225 (18.13%) SC Cleared
5 133 (10.72%) CCNA
6 77 (6.20%) DV Cleared
7 74 (5.96%) Degree
8 65 (5.24%) CCIE
9 27 (2.18%) Microsoft Certification
10 23 (1.85%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 19 (1.53%) CISSP
11 19 (1.53%) MCSE
12 15 (1.21%) AWS Certification
13 14 (1.13%) Azure Certification
13 14 (1.13%) Network+ Certification
14 13 (1.05%) CCSE
14 13 (1.05%) Computer Science Degree
15 12 (0.97%) BPSS Clearance
16 11 (0.89%) ISTQB
16 11 (0.89%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 40 (3.22%) SLA
2 28 (2.26%) NIST
3 22 (1.77%) QA
4 21 (1.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 14 (1.13%) Cyber Essentials
6 12 (0.97%) PCI DSS
7 8 (0.64%) GDPR
8 7 (0.56%) NCSC
9 5 (0.40%) Data Quality
9 5 (0.40%) Disclosure Scotland
9 5 (0.40%) GRC
10 4 (0.32%) ISO 31000
10 4 (0.32%) ISO 9001
10 4 (0.32%) ISO/IEC 27005
10 4 (0.32%) JSP 440
10 4 (0.32%) NIST 800
10 4 (0.32%) PMO
11 3 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 2 (0.16%) Accessibility
12 2 (0.16%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 156 (12.57%) VMware Infrastructure
2 135 (10.88%) Active Directory
3 52 (4.19%) vSphere
4 43 (3.46%) VMware NSX
5 38 (3.06%) VMware ESXi
6 36 (2.90%) Hyper-V
7 30 (2.42%) Firmware
8 29 (2.34%) Virtual Machines
9 19 (1.53%) Docker
10 10 (0.81%) NFS
11 6 (0.48%) EMC RecoverPoint
11 6 (0.48%) GPFS
12 5 (0.40%) FreeRADIUS
12 5 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
13 4 (0.32%) ISA Server
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
1 153 (12.33%) Ansible
2 77 (6.20%) FortiGate
3 33 (2.66%) Cisco CUCM
3 33 (2.66%) Kubernetes
4 30 (2.42%) Microsoft Intune
5 21 (1.69%) Cisco Prime
5 21 (1.69%) SCCM
5 21 (1.69%) vCenter Server
6 12 (0.97%) Nagios
7 9 (0.73%) Grafana
7 9 (0.73%) WMI
8 8 (0.64%) Failover Clustering
8 8 (0.64%) Prometheus
8 8 (0.64%) Puppet
8 8 (0.64%) WSUS
9 7 (0.56%) EMC VPLEX
9 7 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
10 6 (0.48%) Red Hat Satellite
10 6 (0.48%) vRealize
11 5 (0.40%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 262 (21.11%) Palo Alto
2 244 (19.66%) Microsoft
3 216 (17.41%) VMware
4 212 (17.08%) Fortinet
5 182 (14.67%) F5
6 128 (10.31%) Meraki
7 126 (10.15%) Juniper
8 107 (8.62%) CheckPoint
9 90 (7.25%) Aruba
10 84 (6.77%) ServiceNow
10 84 (6.77%) SolarWinds
11 73 (5.88%) Arista
12 58 (4.67%) Zscaler
13 39 (3.14%) Red Hat
13 39 (3.14%) Splunk
14 33 (2.66%) Dell
15 31 (2.50%) NetApp
16 30 (2.42%) Nokia
17 24 (1.93%) Infoblox
18 23 (1.85%) EMC