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 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
12 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 114 78 68
Rank change year-on-year -36 -10 -15
Contract jobs citing Cisco 1,227 1,011 1,218
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.25% 3.06% 3.16%
As % of the Vendors category 5.37% 6.50% 7.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 805 632 731
10th Percentile £286 £300 £250
25th Percentile £400 £400 £378
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £496 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.23% -0.80% +8.11%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £581
90th Percentile £652 £638 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £465 £492 £500
% change year-on-year -5.49% -1.60% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 42 42 35
10th Percentile £26.85 - £19.10
25th Percentile £38.19 £25.15 £20.88
Median hourly rate £53.75 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +79.17% +9.09% -42.11%
75th Percentile £67.84 £58.44 £54.38
90th Percentile £78.75 £81.58 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £32.50 £37.50
% change year-on-year +69.23% -13.33% -21.05%

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 22,867 15,556 17,055
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.91% 47.12% 44.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,033 9,517 10,292
10th Percentile £313 £276 £288
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £613 £613 £626
90th Percentile £700 £700 £731
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £478 £500
% change year-on-year +4.60% -4.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,255 792 694
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.70 £14.25
25th Percentile £16.72 £17.42 £15.62
Median hourly rate £27.50 £25.15 £30.80
Median % change year-on-year +9.34% -18.33% -27.54%
75th Percentile £62.25 £43.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £81.25 £67.95 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.19 £21.24 £30.00
% change year-on-year +23.31% -29.20% -25.00%

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 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 12 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 12 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 -52 1,022 £500 - 922
UK excluding London -38 719 £465 -5.49% 711
London -36 389 £500 - 348
Work from Home -20 297 £476 +0.81% 371
North of England -2 247 £488 +2.63% 140
North West +16 171 £483 +1.68% 61
South East -66 140 £463 -11.06% 178
Midlands -40 130 £425 -10.53% 88
West Midlands -24 123 £425 -10.53% 46
Scotland +20 98 £413 -2.94% 42
Yorkshire -29 69 £500 +1.63% 54
South West -41 64 £525 -4.55% 117
East of England -17 35 £465 -3.63% 114
Wales +7 29 £390 +95.00% 29
Northern Ireland +2 8 £115 -71.25% 19
North East -41 8 £375 -31.82% 27
East Midlands -31 4 £525 +12.00% 42
Channel Islands -3 3 £600 -17.24%

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 (3.18%) SharePoint
2 35 (2.85%) Microsoft Exchange
3 12 (0.98%) Confluence
4 10 (0.81%) OpenStack
5 8 (0.65%) SAS
6 7 (0.57%) Apache
7 6 (0.49%) IIS
7 6 (0.49%) JBoss
8 4 (0.33%) nginx
9 3 (0.24%) CloudStack
9 3 (0.24%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.16%) CMS
10 2 (0.16%) Skype for Business
11 1 (0.081%) Apache Spark
11 1 (0.081%) FactoryTalk
11 1 (0.081%) Mendix
11 1 (0.081%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 49 (3.99%) Microsoft Office
2 26 (2.12%) Microsoft Excel
3 22 (1.79%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.57%) 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
1 250 (20.37%) Azure
2 157 (12.80%) AWS
3 103 (8.39%) Microsoft 365
4 65 (5.30%) Entra ID
5 33 (2.69%) GitHub
6 30 (2.44%) OneDrive
7 26 (2.12%) GCP
8 19 (1.55%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 18 (1.47%) OpenShift
10 17 (1.39%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 14 (1.14%) Power Platform
12 13 (1.06%) Nutanix
13 12 (0.98%) SaaS
14 9 (0.73%) Azure Sentinel
15 8 (0.65%) Azure DevOps
15 8 (0.65%) GitHub Actions
16 7 (0.57%) AWS Direct Connect
16 7 (0.57%) IaaS
17 6 (0.49%) Cloudflare
17 6 (0.49%) Rubrik
Communications & Networking
1 515 (41.97%) Firewall
2 361 (29.42%) WAN
3 306 (24.94%) BGP
4 276 (22.49%) LAN
5 271 (22.09%) VPN
6 254 (20.70%) Network Security
7 213 (17.36%) Wireless
8 193 (15.73%) VLAN
9 192 (15.65%) OSPF
10 188 (15.32%) DNS
11 149 (12.14%) SD-WAN
12 139 (11.33%) Wi-Fi
13 126 (10.27%) MPLS
14 119 (9.70%) Cisco Nexus
15 106 (8.64%) DHCP
16 95 (7.74%) TCP/IP
17 91 (7.42%) Cisco ISE
18 88 (7.17%) Cisco ASA
18 88 (7.17%) VXLAN
19 84 (6.85%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (2.20%) SQL Server
2 7 (0.57%) Power BI
3 6 (0.49%) Big Data
3 6 (0.49%) Hadoop
4 4 (0.33%) Amazon RDS
5 3 (0.24%) MySQL
6 2 (0.16%) Metadata
6 2 (0.16%) NoSQL
6 2 (0.16%) PostgreSQL
7 1 (0.081%) Apache Hive
7 1 (0.081%) ClickHouse
Development Applications
1 29 (2.36%) Git
2 19 (1.55%) JIRA
3 12 (0.98%) GitLab
3 12 (0.98%) Sonatype Nexus
4 8 (0.65%) Jenkins
5 2 (0.16%) Robot Framework
6 1 (0.081%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.081%) Tricentis qTest
6 1 (0.081%) Zephyr
General
1 288 (23.47%) Social Skills
2 124 (10.11%) Finance
3 122 (9.94%) Telecoms
4 98 (7.99%) Analytical Skills
5 63 (5.13%) Banking
6 61 (4.97%) Public Sector
7 59 (4.81%) Documentation Skills
8 40 (3.26%) Legal
9 22 (1.79%) Organisational Skills
10 20 (1.63%) Investment Banking
11 19 (1.55%) Retail
12 17 (1.39%) Financial Institution
13 14 (1.14%) Law
14 13 (1.06%) Military
15 11 (0.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 11 (0.90%) Police
16 10 (0.81%) Manufacturing
17 9 (0.73%) Influencing Skills
18 6 (0.49%) Marketing
19 5 (0.41%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 612 (49.88%) Network Engineer
2 180 (14.67%) Senior
3 151 (12.31%) Architect
4 146 (11.90%) Cisco Engineer
5 130 (10.59%) Cisco Network Engineer
6 127 (10.35%) Senior Network Engineer
7 91 (7.42%) Security Engineer
8 79 (6.44%) Network Architect
9 69 (5.62%) Network Security Engineer
10 60 (4.89%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 52 (4.24%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 42 (3.42%) Field Engineer
13 38 (3.10%) Analyst
13 38 (3.10%) Support Engineer
14 37 (3.02%) Data Network Engineer
15 36 (2.93%) Lead
16 35 (2.85%) Telecoms Engineer
17 34 (2.77%) Solutions Architect
18 29 (2.36%) Consultant
19 28 (2.28%) Cisco Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 84 (6.85%) Terraform
2 57 (4.65%) 802.1X
3 29 (2.36%) REST
4 16 (1.30%) YAML
5 14 (1.14%) JSON
6 12 (0.98%) SAML
7 11 (0.90%) NETCONF
8 7 (0.57%) Microsoft Graph
8 7 (0.57%) RESTCONF
8 7 (0.57%) XMPP
8 7 (0.57%) YANG
9 6 (0.49%) Flash
10 5 (0.41%) OpenConfig
11 3 (0.24%) .NET
11 3 (0.24%) Elastic Stack
11 3 (0.24%) Java RMI
11 3 (0.24%) LDAP
11 3 (0.24%) Middleware
11 3 (0.24%) OpenID
11 3 (0.24%) RFC 2544
Miscellaneous
1 298 (24.29%) Data Centre
2 52 (4.24%) Hybrid Cloud
3 51 (4.16%) Onboarding
4 47 (3.83%) PKI
5 43 (3.50%) Driving Licence
6 37 (3.02%) Data Protection Act
7 34 (2.77%) Operational Technology
8 28 (2.28%) Video Conferencing
9 25 (2.04%) Replication
10 24 (1.96%) Cloud Native
11 23 (1.87%) Clustering
12 22 (1.79%) Public Cloud
13 20 (1.63%) Analytical Mindset
13 20 (1.63%) Management Information System
14 18 (1.47%) Self-Motivation
15 17 (1.39%) Enterprise Storage
15 17 (1.39%) Private Cloud
16 16 (1.30%) Linux Command Line
17 14 (1.14%) IoT
17 14 (1.14%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 228 (18.58%) Windows
2 123 (10.02%) Linux
3 90 (7.33%) Windows Server
4 20 (1.63%) Mac OS
5 18 (1.47%) Ubuntu
6 17 (1.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 17 (1.39%) Windows 10
7 11 (0.90%) Android
8 9 (0.73%) Unix
8 9 (0.73%) Windows Server 2012
9 8 (0.65%) Windows Server 2019
10 7 (0.57%) AIX
10 7 (0.57%) Data ONTAP
11 6 (0.49%) CentOS
12 4 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
13 3 (0.24%) VMS
14 1 (0.081%) Check Point GAiA
14 1 (0.081%) Debian
14 1 (0.081%) Windows 7
14 1 (0.081%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 192 (15.65%) Migration
2 154 (12.55%) Project Delivery
3 136 (11.08%) ITIL
4 133 (10.84%) Problem-Solving
5 114 (9.29%) High Availability
6 111 (9.05%) Load Balancing
7 97 (7.91%) Change Management
7 97 (7.91%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 94 (7.66%) Stakeholder Management
9 93 (7.58%) Network Design
10 84 (6.85%) Infrastructure as Code
11 82 (6.68%) Continuous Improvement
11 82 (6.68%) Validation
12 72 (5.87%) Technical Leadership
13 67 (5.46%) Data Protection
14 66 (5.38%) Zero Trust
15 64 (5.22%) ITSM
16 61 (4.97%) CI/CD
16 61 (4.97%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 60 (4.89%) Disaster Recovery
Programming Languages
1 142 (11.57%) Python
2 62 (5.05%) PowerShell
3 32 (2.61%) Bash
4 27 (2.20%) SQL
5 5 (0.41%) Java
6 4 (0.33%) C
6 4 (0.33%) 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
1 331 (26.98%) Cisco Certification
2 299 (24.37%) Security Cleared
3 234 (19.07%) CCNP
4 222 (18.09%) SC Cleared
5 130 (10.59%) CCNA
6 78 (6.36%) DV Cleared
7 72 (5.87%) Degree
8 64 (5.22%) CCIE
9 27 (2.20%) Microsoft Certification
10 23 (1.87%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 19 (1.55%) MCSE
12 16 (1.30%) AWS Certification
12 16 (1.30%) Azure Certification
13 15 (1.22%) CISSP
14 14 (1.14%) Network+ Certification
15 13 (1.06%) CCSE
15 13 (1.06%) Computer Science Degree
16 12 (0.98%) BPSS Clearance
17 11 (0.90%) ISTQB
17 11 (0.90%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 39 (3.18%) SLA
2 27 (2.20%) NIST
3 22 (1.79%) QA
4 21 (1.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 16 (1.30%) Cyber Essentials
6 11 (0.90%) NCSC
7 10 (0.81%) PCI DSS
8 8 (0.65%) GDPR
9 5 (0.41%) Disclosure Scotland
9 5 (0.41%) JSP 440
9 5 (0.41%) PMO
10 4 (0.33%) Data Quality
10 4 (0.33%) GRC
11 3 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 3 (0.24%) ISO 31000
11 3 (0.24%) ISO 9001
11 3 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27005
11 3 (0.24%) NIST 800
12 2 (0.16%) Accessibility
12 2 (0.16%) ISA99
System Software
1 142 (11.57%) VMware Infrastructure
2 121 (9.86%) Active Directory
3 43 (3.50%) vSphere
4 42 (3.42%) VMware NSX
5 39 (3.18%) VMware ESXi
6 36 (2.93%) Hyper-V
7 31 (2.53%) Firmware
8 29 (2.36%) Virtual Machines
9 16 (1.30%) Docker
10 10 (0.81%) NFS
11 6 (0.49%) EMC RecoverPoint
11 6 (0.49%) GPFS
12 5 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
13 4 (0.33%) FreeRADIUS
13 4 (0.33%) SRDF
13 4 (0.33%) Virtual Servers
14 3 (0.24%) Dovecot
14 3 (0.24%) ISA Server
14 3 (0.24%) Postfix
15 2 (0.16%) UAG
Systems Management
1 145 (11.82%) Ansible
2 76 (6.19%) FortiGate
3 33 (2.69%) Kubernetes
4 32 (2.61%) Microsoft Intune
5 22 (1.79%) Cisco CUCM
6 21 (1.71%) Cisco Prime
6 21 (1.71%) SCCM
6 21 (1.71%) vCenter Server
7 11 (0.90%) Grafana
7 11 (0.90%) Prometheus
8 8 (0.65%) Failover Clustering
8 8 (0.65%) Puppet
8 8 (0.65%) WMI
8 8 (0.65%) WSUS
9 7 (0.57%) EMC VPLEX
9 7 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
10 6 (0.49%) Red Hat Satellite
10 6 (0.49%) vRealize
11 5 (0.41%) Avamar
11 5 (0.41%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 266 (21.68%) Palo Alto
2 239 (19.48%) Microsoft
3 208 (16.95%) Fortinet
4 198 (16.14%) VMware
5 195 (15.89%) F5
6 129 (10.51%) Juniper
7 124 (10.11%) Meraki
8 112 (9.13%) CheckPoint
9 91 (7.42%) Aruba
10 83 (6.76%) ServiceNow
11 76 (6.19%) SolarWinds
12 74 (6.03%) Arista
13 53 (4.32%) Zscaler
14 39 (3.18%) Splunk
15 37 (3.02%) Red Hat
16 36 (2.93%) Dell
17 30 (2.44%) Nokia
18 28 (2.28%) NetApp
19 22 (1.79%) Citrix
20 21 (1.71%) EMC