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 5 March 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
5 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 98 61 59
Rank change year-on-year -37 -2 +17
Contract jobs citing Cisco 1,105 1,088 1,515
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.60% 3.59% 3.44%
As % of the Vendors category 5.85% 7.71% 7.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 745 679 887
10th Percentile £263 £302 £250
25th Percentile £375 £413 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £474 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.20% +5.26% -
75th Percentile £550 £594 £600
90th Percentile £625 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - +1.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 22 65
10th Percentile £21.46 £18.13 £14.06
25th Percentile £25.15 £20.00 £22.75
Median hourly rate £65.00 £27.53 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +136.11% +10.12% -25.37%
75th Percentile £74.26 £56.25 £46.39
90th Percentile £93.75 £74.88 £66.89
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.26 £22.50 £25.00
% change year-on-year +230.04% -10.00% -42.86%

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 18,876 14,120 19,034
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 44.35% 46.65% 43.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,096 8,651 11,887
10th Percentile £306 £284 £255
25th Percentile £413 £406 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £514
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +1.17% -2.56%
75th Percentile £600 £623 £626
90th Percentile £700 £713 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £497 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -0.70% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 939 448 979
10th Percentile £15.24 £15.62 £12.69
25th Percentile £18.36 £21.25 £15.00
Median hourly rate £25.00 £29.54 £25.18
Median % change year-on-year -15.35% +17.30% -28.06%
75th Percentile £58.75 £63.75 £55.00
90th Percentile £74.68 £81.28 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.63 £27.35 £24.65
% change year-on-year -17.26% +10.95% -24.15%

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 5 March 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 5 March 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 5 March 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 -36 908 £481 -3.75% 546
UK excluding London -25 713 £475 - 496
Work from Home -32 292 £445 -11.00% 124
London -56 269 £492 -2.57% 148
South East +5 220 £500 -0.50% 151
North of England -50 170 £481 -3.75% 102
Midlands -15 150 £375 -16.67% 83
North West -19 137 £481 -3.75% 45
West Midlands -4 134 £375 -14.29% 36
Scotland +40 79 £425 +6.25% 29
South West -65 48 £550 +4.76% 60
East of England -13 39 £475 +8.57% 61
Yorkshire -84 27 £450 -10.00% 40
Wales -8 23 £380 -5.00% 23
East Midlands -42 14 £284 -36.94% 47
Northern Ireland - 10 £475 - 6
North East -14 8 £175 -58.82% 17

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 50 (4.52%) SharePoint
2 40 (3.62%) Microsoft Exchange
3 17 (1.54%) Confluence
4 8 (0.72%) Skype for Business
5 7 (0.63%) Apache
6 5 (0.45%) Appian
6 5 (0.45%) IIS
6 5 (0.45%) SharePoint Server
7 3 (0.27%) Mattermost
7 3 (0.27%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.090%) JBoss
8 1 (0.090%) WebLogic
8 1 (0.090%) WebSphere
Applications
1 73 (6.61%) Microsoft Office
2 46 (4.16%) MS Visio
3 21 (1.90%) Microsoft Excel
4 15 (1.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.45%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.45%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.090%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 20 (1.81%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.090%) Actimize
3 1 (0.090%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 165 (14.93%) Azure
2 142 (12.85%) AWS
3 95 (8.60%) Microsoft 365
4 40 (3.62%) GCP
5 37 (3.35%) Entra ID
6 17 (1.54%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 14 (1.27%) Datadog
8 13 (1.18%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 12 (1.09%) Nutanix
10 10 (0.90%) Azure Sentinel
11 9 (0.81%) AWS CloudFormation
11 9 (0.81%) OpenShift
11 9 (0.81%) SaaS
12 8 (0.72%) AWS Lambda
12 8 (0.72%) Serverless
13 7 (0.63%) Microsoft Purview
13 7 (0.63%) OneDrive
14 6 (0.54%) Amazon Kinesis
14 6 (0.54%) Azure DevOps
14 6 (0.54%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 449 (40.63%) Firewall
2 329 (29.77%) WAN
3 241 (21.81%) LAN
4 232 (21.00%) VPN
5 230 (20.81%) BGP
6 194 (17.56%) Network Security
7 170 (15.38%) Wireless
8 166 (15.02%) OSPF
9 141 (12.76%) SD-WAN
10 132 (11.95%) DNS
11 113 (10.23%) MPLS
12 107 (9.68%) VLAN
13 101 (9.14%) Cisco ISE
14 81 (7.33%) Wi-Fi
15 78 (7.06%) Cisco Nexus
16 77 (6.97%) Cisco IOS
17 75 (6.79%) DHCP
17 75 (6.79%) IPsec
18 74 (6.70%) Cisco ASA
19 62 (5.61%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (0.81%) SQL Server
2 5 (0.45%) DynamoDB
2 5 (0.45%) Power BI
3 3 (0.27%) Amazon Athena
4 2 (0.18%) MariaDB
5 1 (0.090%) Metadata
5 1 (0.090%) MySQL
5 1 (0.090%) NoSQL
5 1 (0.090%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 21 (1.90%) JIRA
2 14 (1.27%) Sonatype Nexus
3 13 (1.18%) GitLab
4 10 (0.90%) Jenkins
5 8 (0.72%) Git
6 5 (0.45%) Cucumber
6 5 (0.45%) Robot Framework
6 5 (0.45%) Selenium
6 5 (0.45%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.18%) Rational DOORS
8 1 (0.090%) Bitbucket
General
1 240 (21.72%) Social Skills
2 164 (14.84%) Finance
2 164 (14.84%) Public Sector
3 114 (10.32%) Telecoms
4 76 (6.88%) Analytical Skills
5 65 (5.88%) Manufacturing
6 58 (5.25%) Banking
6 58 (5.25%) Documentation Skills
7 53 (4.80%) Legal
8 46 (4.16%) Marketing
9 45 (4.07%) Electronics
10 17 (1.54%) Presentation Skills
11 16 (1.45%) Investment Banking
12 14 (1.27%) Financial Institution
12 14 (1.27%) Organisational Skills
13 12 (1.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 10 (0.90%) Aerospace
14 10 (0.90%) Law
14 10 (0.90%) Military
15 8 (0.72%) Retail
Job Titles
1 411 (37.19%) Network Engineer
2 132 (11.95%) Architect
3 86 (7.78%) Cisco Engineer
4 80 (7.24%) Network Architect
5 74 (6.70%) Cisco Network Engineer
6 72 (6.52%) Senior
7 65 (5.88%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
8 60 (5.43%) Analyst
9 59 (5.34%) Security Engineer
10 52 (4.71%) Consultant
11 51 (4.62%) IT Support
12 47 (4.25%) Network Consultant
13 39 (3.53%) Network Security Engineer
14 36 (3.26%) Desktop Support
15 34 (3.08%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
15 34 (3.08%) Senior Network Engineer
15 34 (3.08%) Solutions Architect
16 32 (2.90%) Support Engineer
17 31 (2.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 28 (2.53%) Infrastructure Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 59 (5.34%) 802.1X
2 16 (1.45%) Flash
2 16 (1.45%) LDAP
3 15 (1.36%) XMPP
4 11 (1.00%) NETCONF
5 10 (0.90%) YANG
6 9 (0.81%) SAML
7 8 (0.72%) Jinja
7 8 (0.72%) JSON
8 7 (0.63%) XML
9 5 (0.45%) Node.js
9 5 (0.45%) OpenConfig
9 5 (0.45%) RFC 2544
10 4 (0.36%) HTML
10 4 (0.36%) REST
10 4 (0.36%) RESTCONF
10 4 (0.36%) VML
11 2 (0.18%) ARM Templates
11 2 (0.18%) CSS
11 2 (0.18%) Django
Miscellaneous
1 290 (26.24%) Data Centre
2 56 (5.07%) PKI
3 34 (3.08%) Replication
4 32 (2.90%) Linux Command Line
5 31 (2.81%) Data Protection Act
6 29 (2.62%) Hybrid Cloud
7 28 (2.53%) Onboarding
8 27 (2.44%) Operational Technology
9 26 (2.35%) Clustering
10 25 (2.26%) Cloud Native
11 23 (2.08%) Driving Licence
12 19 (1.72%) Product Ownership
12 19 (1.72%) Self-Motivation
13 16 (1.45%) Security Posture
13 16 (1.45%) Video Conferencing
14 14 (1.27%) NHS
15 12 (1.09%) SCADA
16 11 (1.00%) CMDB
17 10 (0.90%) Enterprise Storage
18 9 (0.81%) EMC VMAX
Operating Systems
1 182 (16.47%) Windows
2 107 (9.68%) Linux
3 67 (6.06%) Windows Server
4 52 (4.71%) Mac OS
5 51 (4.62%) Android
6 35 (3.17%) Windows 10
7 22 (1.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 16 (1.45%) Unix
9 6 (0.54%) Ubuntu
9 6 (0.54%) Windows Server 2012
9 6 (0.54%) Windows Server 2016
10 4 (0.36%) CatOS
10 4 (0.36%) Solaris
10 4 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.27%) VMS
12 2 (0.18%) AIX
13 1 (0.090%) CentOS
13 1 (0.090%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 158 (14.30%) Migration
2 137 (12.40%) Problem-Solving
3 94 (8.51%) Agile
4 92 (8.33%) Load Balancing
5 90 (8.14%) ITIL
5 90 (8.14%) Network Design
6 85 (7.69%) High Availability
7 84 (7.60%) Roadmaps
8 80 (7.24%) ITSM
9 78 (7.06%) Cybersecurity
10 74 (6.70%) Project Delivery
11 70 (6.33%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 67 (6.06%) Change Management
13 63 (5.70%) Service Management
14 60 (5.43%) Collaborative Working
15 57 (5.16%) Network Architecture
16 56 (5.07%) Stakeholder Management
17 55 (4.98%) Network Monitoring
18 54 (4.89%) Disaster Recovery
19 51 (4.62%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 124 (11.22%) Python
2 59 (5.34%) PowerShell
3 32 (2.90%) Bash
4 18 (1.63%) Perl
5 13 (1.18%) SQL
6 11 (1.00%) JavaScript
7 8 (0.72%) Lisp
8 4 (0.36%) C
8 4 (0.36%) PHP
9 3 (0.27%) C++
9 3 (0.27%) Kusto Query Language
10 2 (0.18%) ActionScript
10 2 (0.18%) Korn
10 2 (0.18%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.090%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 440 (39.82%) Security Cleared
2 341 (30.86%) SC Cleared
3 297 (26.88%) Cisco Certification
4 242 (21.90%) CCNP
5 112 (10.14%) DV Cleared
6 110 (9.95%) CCNA
7 85 (7.69%) Degree
8 75 (6.79%) CCIE
9 23 (2.08%) BPSS Clearance
9 23 (2.08%) Microsoft Certification
10 22 (1.99%) JNCIS
11 19 (1.72%) ITIL Certification
12 18 (1.63%) Azure Certification
12 18 (1.63%) Network+ Certification
13 16 (1.45%) CISSP
13 16 (1.45%) JNCIA
13 16 (1.45%) JNCIP
14 14 (1.27%) AWS Certification
14 14 (1.27%) MCSE
15 12 (1.09%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 40 (3.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 34 (3.08%) NIST
3 32 (2.90%) SLA
4 23 (2.08%) Cyber Essentials
5 18 (1.63%) GDPR
6 17 (1.54%) PMO
7 16 (1.45%) PCI DSS
8 14 (1.27%) NCSC
9 6 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 6 (0.54%) QA
10 4 (0.36%) Disclosure Scotland
11 3 (0.27%) HIPAA
11 3 (0.27%) JSP 440
11 3 (0.27%) RMADS
12 2 (0.18%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 1 (0.090%) Actionable Recommendations
13 1 (0.090%) Data Quality
13 1 (0.090%) Def Stans
13 1 (0.090%) ISO 22301
13 1 (0.090%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 146 (13.21%) VMware Infrastructure
2 110 (9.95%) Active Directory
3 68 (6.15%) VMware NSX
4 58 (5.25%) vSphere
5 42 (3.80%) VMware ESXi
6 18 (1.63%) Firmware
6 18 (1.63%) Virtual Machines
7 16 (1.45%) GPFS
7 16 (1.45%) NFS
8 15 (1.36%) Docker
9 12 (1.09%) Hyper-V
10 8 (0.72%) SRDF
11 6 (0.54%) Virtual Servers
12 4 (0.36%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 4 (0.36%) vCloud
13 3 (0.27%) Snort
13 3 (0.27%) Squid
13 3 (0.27%) Virtual Desktop
14 2 (0.18%) KVM
15 1 (0.090%) IAG
Systems Management
1 101 (9.14%) Ansible
2 93 (8.42%) FortiGate
3 49 (4.43%) vCenter Server
4 42 (3.80%) Terraform
5 36 (3.26%) vRealize
6 25 (2.26%) SCCM
7 19 (1.72%) VxRail
8 18 (1.63%) Grafana
9 16 (1.45%) Microsoft Intune
10 12 (1.09%) Cisco CUCM
10 12 (1.09%) Kubernetes
10 12 (1.09%) Prometheus
11 11 (1.00%) Single Sign-On
12 10 (0.90%) Cisco Prime
12 10 (0.90%) WSUS
13 9 (0.81%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 9 (0.81%) Nagios
14 8 (0.72%) Nessus
14 8 (0.72%) SCOM
15 6 (0.54%) EMC TimeFinder
Vendors
1 270 (24.43%) Palo Alto
2 190 (17.19%) Microsoft
3 185 (16.74%) Juniper
4 183 (16.56%) VMware
5 148 (13.39%) F5
6 137 (12.40%) Aruba
7 113 (10.23%) SolarWinds
8 109 (9.86%) Fortinet
9 108 (9.77%) CheckPoint
10 99 (8.96%) Meraki
11 90 (8.14%) ServiceNow
12 77 (6.97%) Dell
13 65 (5.88%) HP
14 58 (5.25%) Splunk
15 46 (4.16%) Zscaler
16 45 (4.07%) Arista
16 45 (4.07%) IBM
17 44 (3.98%) SAP
18 41 (3.71%) Apple
19 32 (2.90%) Remedy