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 8 May 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
8 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 106 68 66
Rank change year-on-year -38 -2 -2
Contract jobs citing Cisco 1,083 1,034 1,326
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.28% 3.55% 3.07%
As % of the Vendors category 5.48% 7.49% 7.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 728 642 815
10th Percentile £300 £313 £250
25th Percentile £400 £413 £364
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £488
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +2.56% +2.63%
75th Percentile £567 £588 £600
90th Percentile £649 £650 £702
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -5.00% +5.26% +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 23 42
10th Percentile £24.04 £15.80 £13.36
25th Percentile £42.01 £21.58 £19.69
Median hourly rate £55.00 £37.50 £26.25
Median % change year-on-year +46.67% +42.86% -47.50%
75th Percentile £74.26 £63.13 £41.25
90th Percentile £88.25 £74.75 £72.36
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £27.70 £24.75
% change year-on-year +127.92% +11.92% -52.10%

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 19,748 13,810 18,286
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.61% 47.45% 42.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,551 8,637 11,343
10th Percentile £313 £285 £263
25th Percentile £413 £406 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £515
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% - -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £619 £630
90th Percentile £703 £714 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £498 £500
% change year-on-year -1.51% -0.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 988 563 1,092
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.84 £12.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.56 £14.41
Median hourly rate £32.11 £26.04 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +23.32% +15.73% -48.50%
75th Percentile £60.00 £56.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £78.61 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £24.09 £21.50
% change year-on-year +16.23% +12.05% -45.64%

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 8 May 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 8 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Cisco in the UK

Cisco
Top 17 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 8 May 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 -44 901 £475 -8.65% 545
UK excluding London -32 668 £475 -5.00% 524
Work from Home -20 295 £450 -13.21% 120
London -61 282 £500 -2.30% 148
South East -17 195 £500 - 143
North of England -45 181 £476 -4.75% 120
North West -15 147 £475 -4.04% 61
Midlands -24 133 £380 -15.56% 74
West Midlands -8 123 £373 -14.74% 57
Scotland +15 64 £450 +12.78% 32
South West -70 48 £513 -6.82% 72
East of England -4 44 £495 +13.14% 55
Yorkshire -68 34 £464 -13.67% 39
Wales -9 27 £475 +11.76% 24
Northern Ireland +11 8 £385 - 12
East Midlands -48 6 £415 -12.63% 17
North East -24 1 - - 20

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 23 (2.12%) Microsoft Exchange
1 23 (2.12%) SharePoint
2 15 (1.39%) Confluence
3 6 (0.55%) Apache
4 5 (0.46%) IIS
4 5 (0.46%) OpenStack
5 2 (0.18%) CMS
6 1 (0.092%) JBoss
6 1 (0.092%) Skype for Business
6 1 (0.092%) WebSphere
Applications
1 38 (3.51%) Microsoft Office
2 36 (3.32%) MS Visio
3 12 (1.11%) Microsoft Excel
4 10 (0.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.37%) Acrobat
6 1 (0.092%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 16 (1.48%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.092%) Actimize
Cloud Services
1 191 (17.64%) Azure
2 141 (13.02%) AWS
3 68 (6.28%) Microsoft 365
4 31 (2.86%) Entra ID
5 27 (2.49%) GCP
6 15 (1.39%) Nutanix
7 13 (1.20%) OpenShift
7 13 (1.20%) SaaS
8 11 (1.02%) GitHub
9 10 (0.92%) Azure Sentinel
9 10 (0.92%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 9 (0.83%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 8 (0.74%) Datadog
12 6 (0.55%) Azure DevOps
12 6 (0.55%) Microsoft Purview
12 6 (0.55%) Mimecast
13 5 (0.46%) IaaS
13 5 (0.46%) OneDrive
14 4 (0.37%) Power Platform
14 4 (0.37%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 485 (44.78%) Firewall
2 355 (32.78%) WAN
3 278 (25.67%) BGP
4 271 (25.02%) LAN
5 239 (22.07%) VPN
6 219 (20.22%) Network Security
7 200 (18.47%) OSPF
8 154 (14.22%) DNS
9 147 (13.57%) SD-WAN
9 147 (13.57%) Wireless
10 143 (13.20%) VLAN
11 106 (9.79%) Cisco Nexus
12 100 (9.23%) MPLS
13 99 (9.14%) Cisco ISE
14 89 (8.22%) VXLAN
14 89 (8.22%) Wi-Fi
15 80 (7.39%) IPsec
16 78 (7.20%) DHCP
17 70 (6.46%) Cisco ASA
18 68 (6.28%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (0.55%) SQL Server
2 2 (0.18%) DynamoDB
2 2 (0.18%) MariaDB
3 1 (0.092%) Big Data
3 1 (0.092%) ClickHouse
3 1 (0.092%) Metadata
3 1 (0.092%) MySQL
3 1 (0.092%) NoSQL
3 1 (0.092%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 23 (2.12%) JIRA
2 15 (1.39%) Sonatype Nexus
3 9 (0.83%) Git
4 8 (0.74%) Jenkins
5 6 (0.55%) GitLab
6 1 (0.092%) Bitbucket
General
1 227 (20.96%) Social Skills
2 114 (10.53%) Finance
3 71 (6.56%) Public Sector
4 66 (6.09%) Analytical Skills
4 66 (6.09%) Telecoms
5 59 (5.45%) Banking
6 55 (5.08%) Documentation Skills
7 53 (4.89%) Legal
8 26 (2.40%) Manufacturing
9 19 (1.75%) Investment Banking
10 16 (1.48%) Organisational Skills
10 16 (1.48%) Retail
11 14 (1.29%) Financial Institution
11 14 (1.29%) Law
12 13 (1.20%) Marketing
13 12 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
14 8 (0.74%) Aerospace
14 8 (0.74%) Military
15 7 (0.65%) Electronics
15 7 (0.65%) Police
Job Titles
1 500 (46.17%) Network Engineer
2 130 (12.00%) Architect
3 111 (10.25%) Cisco Engineer
4 106 (9.79%) Cisco Network Engineer
5 104 (9.60%) Senior
6 84 (7.76%) Security Engineer
7 76 (7.02%) Network Architect
7 76 (7.02%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
8 60 (5.54%) Network Security Engineer
9 54 (4.99%) Senior Network Engineer
10 46 (4.25%) Data Network Engineer
11 44 (4.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 37 (3.42%) Analyst
13 35 (3.23%) Data Engineer
14 34 (3.14%) Cisco Security Engineer
15 32 (2.95%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
16 26 (2.40%) Network Specialist
16 26 (2.40%) Solutions Architect
17 25 (2.31%) Lead
18 22 (2.03%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (6.28%) 802.1X
2 19 (1.75%) LDAP
3 14 (1.29%) Flash
4 13 (1.20%) SAML
5 8 (0.74%) REST
5 8 (0.74%) XMPP
6 6 (0.55%) Jinja
6 6 (0.55%) NETCONF
7 5 (0.46%) YANG
8 4 (0.37%) HTML
8 4 (0.37%) OpenConfig
8 4 (0.37%) RESTCONF
8 4 (0.37%) VML
9 3 (0.28%) JSON
10 2 (0.18%) ADO
10 2 (0.18%) CSS
10 2 (0.18%) Django
10 2 (0.18%) Middleware
10 2 (0.18%) Node.js
10 2 (0.18%) RFC 2544
Miscellaneous
1 292 (26.96%) Data Centre
2 55 (5.08%) PKI
3 44 (4.06%) Replication
4 40 (3.69%) Clustering
5 37 (3.42%) Data Protection Act
6 33 (3.05%) Operational Technology
7 30 (2.77%) Hybrid Cloud
8 28 (2.59%) Onboarding
9 27 (2.49%) Cloud Native
10 21 (1.94%) Linux Command Line
11 18 (1.66%) Driving Licence
11 18 (1.66%) Video Conferencing
12 17 (1.57%) Self-Motivation
13 16 (1.48%) Enterprise Storage
13 16 (1.48%) SCADA
14 15 (1.39%) Security Posture
15 14 (1.29%) EMC VMAX
16 13 (1.20%) Analytical Mindset
17 11 (1.02%) Virtual Team
18 9 (0.83%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 196 (18.10%) Windows
2 105 (9.70%) Linux
3 66 (6.09%) Windows Server
4 25 (2.31%) Windows 10
5 19 (1.75%) Unix
6 16 (1.48%) Mac OS
7 15 (1.39%) Android
7 15 (1.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 8 (0.74%) Ubuntu
9 5 (0.46%) CatOS
9 5 (0.46%) Windows Server 2012
9 5 (0.46%) Windows Server 2019
10 4 (0.37%) Solaris
11 3 (0.28%) AIX
11 3 (0.28%) Data ONTAP
11 3 (0.28%) VMS
12 2 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.092%) CentOS
13 1 (0.092%) Debian
13 1 (0.092%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 152 (14.04%) Migration
2 133 (12.28%) Problem-Solving
3 118 (10.90%) Load Balancing
4 115 (10.62%) High Availability
5 97 (8.96%) Network Design
6 92 (8.49%) ITIL
7 78 (7.20%) ITSM
8 76 (7.02%) Agile
9 70 (6.46%) Change Management
10 65 (6.00%) Cybersecurity
11 62 (5.72%) Network Monitoring
11 62 (5.72%) Project Delivery
12 61 (5.63%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 59 (5.45%) Disaster Recovery
14 57 (5.26%) Technical Leadership
15 56 (5.17%) Continuous Improvement
16 51 (4.71%) Validation
17 50 (4.62%) Infrastructure as Code
18 49 (4.52%) Data Protection
19 48 (4.43%) Zero Trust
Programming Languages
1 117 (10.80%) Python
2 50 (4.62%) PowerShell
3 21 (1.94%) Bash
4 14 (1.29%) SQL
5 8 (0.74%) C
6 4 (0.37%) PHP
7 3 (0.28%) C++
7 3 (0.28%) Java
7 3 (0.28%) JavaScript
7 3 (0.28%) Perl
8 2 (0.18%) ActionScript
8 2 (0.18%) Korn
8 2 (0.18%) Shell Script
9 1 (0.092%) Bicep
9 1 (0.092%) Kusto Query Language
9 1 (0.092%) Ladder Logic
9 1 (0.092%) Lisp
9 1 (0.092%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 381 (35.18%) Security Cleared
2 311 (28.72%) Cisco Certification
3 283 (26.13%) SC Cleared
4 237 (21.88%) CCNP
5 115 (10.62%) CCNA
6 111 (10.25%) DV Cleared
7 75 (6.93%) Degree
8 61 (5.63%) CCIE
9 27 (2.49%) Microsoft Certification
10 21 (1.94%) JNCIS
10 21 (1.94%) MCSE
10 21 (1.94%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 19 (1.75%) BPSS Clearance
12 18 (1.66%) Azure Certification
13 17 (1.57%) Network+ Certification
14 15 (1.39%) JNCIP
14 15 (1.39%) VCAP
15 14 (1.29%) CCSE
15 14 (1.29%) JNCIA
15 14 (1.29%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (2.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 29 (2.68%) NIST
2 29 (2.68%) SLA
3 25 (2.31%) Cyber Essentials
4 17 (1.57%) NCSC
5 14 (1.29%) QA
6 10 (0.92%) PMO
7 8 (0.74%) GDPR
8 7 (0.65%) Disclosure Scotland
8 7 (0.65%) JSP 440
9 4 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 4 (0.37%) PCI DSS
10 3 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 3 (0.28%) NIST 800
10 3 (0.28%) RMADS
11 2 (0.18%) Accessibility
11 2 (0.18%) GRC
11 2 (0.18%) ISA99
11 2 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 20000
12 1 (0.092%) JTAG
System Software
1 146 (13.48%) VMware Infrastructure
2 77 (7.11%) Active Directory
3 56 (5.17%) VMware NSX
4 54 (4.99%) vSphere
5 52 (4.80%) VMware ESXi
6 27 (2.49%) Virtual Machines
7 25 (2.31%) Firmware
8 18 (1.66%) Hyper-V
9 17 (1.57%) NFS
10 14 (1.29%) GPFS
11 9 (0.83%) SRDF
12 7 (0.65%) Docker
13 5 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
14 4 (0.37%) vCloud
14 4 (0.37%) Virtual Servers
15 3 (0.28%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 3 (0.28%) KVM
15 3 (0.28%) Snort
15 3 (0.28%) UAG
16 1 (0.092%) iptables
Systems Management
1 124 (11.45%) Ansible
2 102 (9.42%) FortiGate
3 46 (4.25%) Terraform
4 34 (3.14%) vCenter Server
5 26 (2.40%) vRealize
6 25 (2.31%) Grafana
7 18 (1.66%) Prometheus
8 16 (1.48%) Kubernetes
8 16 (1.48%) Microsoft Intune
9 14 (1.29%) Cisco Prime
9 14 (1.29%) SCCM
9 14 (1.29%) VxRail
10 12 (1.11%) Single Sign-On
11 10 (0.92%) Nagios
12 9 (0.83%) Cisco CUCM
13 7 (0.65%) SCOM
14 6 (0.55%) EMC TimeFinder
14 6 (0.55%) EMC VPLEX
14 6 (0.55%) WSUS
15 5 (0.46%) Salt
Vendors
1 295 (27.24%) Palo Alto
2 203 (18.74%) F5
3 184 (16.99%) VMware
4 170 (15.70%) Microsoft
5 164 (15.14%) Juniper
6 144 (13.30%) Fortinet
7 125 (11.54%) CheckPoint
8 119 (10.99%) Aruba
9 93 (8.59%) Meraki
10 85 (7.85%) ServiceNow
11 81 (7.48%) SolarWinds
12 66 (6.09%) Arista
13 52 (4.80%) Dell
14 50 (4.62%) Splunk
15 48 (4.43%) Zscaler
16 35 (3.23%) IBM
17 32 (2.95%) HP
18 29 (2.68%) EMC
18 29 (2.68%) Extreme Networks
19 25 (2.31%) Broadcom