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 21 February 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
21 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 99 58 57
Rank change year-on-year -41 -1 +19
Contract jobs citing Cisco 1,078 1,124 1,550
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.63% 3.66% 3.47%
As % of the Vendors category 5.90% 7.86% 7.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 729 705 909
10th Percentile £244 £300 £250
25th Percentile £363 £413 £365
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -7.50% +5.26% -2.06%
75th Percentile £550 £594 £600
90th Percentile £608 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 24 80
10th Percentile £21.33 £18.13 £14.16
25th Percentile £25.15 £20.00 £23.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £24.66 £32.25
Median % change year-on-year +163.58% -23.53% +12.17%
75th Percentile £74.26 £48.75 £50.00
90th Percentile £94.00 £74.63 £70.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.26 £20.38 £30.00
% change year-on-year +264.47% -32.08% -9.09%

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 18,275 14,301 19,412
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 44.62% 46.53% 43.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,706 8,638 12,154
10th Percentile £303 £277 £257
25th Percentile £413 £406 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £523
Median % change year-on-year -4.40% +0.10% -1.42%
75th Percentile £606 £625 £630
90th Percentile £700 £713 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 900 419 944
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.62 £12.99
25th Percentile £18.00 £21.25 £15.50
Median hourly rate £24.00 £29.00 £27.33
Median % change year-on-year -17.24% +6.10% -21.44%
75th Percentile £58.75 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £74.30 £80.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £27.13 £26.00
% change year-on-year -17.05% +4.33% -14.75%

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 21 February 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 21 February 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 21 February 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 -41 890 £475 -5.00% 603
UK excluding London -23 698 £475 - 552
Work from Home -36 296 £448 -10.50% 131
London -60 263 £463 -8.01% 157
South East +5 217 £500 - 168
North of England -59 157 £475 -5.00% 115
Midlands -6 152 £375 -16.67% 88
West Midlands +3 133 £375 -15.49% 47
North West -22 125 £481 -3.75% 54
Scotland +37 78 £425 +6.25% 36
South West -58 50 £550 +6.02% 63
East of England -14 36 £475 +8.57% 74
Yorkshire -85 26 £450 -10.00% 40
Wales -6 20 £170 -56.83% 17
East Midlands -31 17 £158 -65.95% 41
Northern Ireland +7 11 £475 - 5
North East -22 8 £175 -58.82% 21

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 52 (4.82%) SharePoint
2 42 (3.90%) Microsoft Exchange
3 19 (1.76%) Confluence
4 11 (1.02%) Skype for Business
5 10 (0.93%) Apache
6 5 (0.46%) Appian
6 5 (0.46%) IIS
6 5 (0.46%) OpenStack
6 5 (0.46%) SharePoint Server
7 4 (0.37%) Mattermost
7 4 (0.37%) WebLogic
8 1 (0.093%) JBoss
8 1 (0.093%) WebSphere
Applications
1 72 (6.68%) Microsoft Office
2 44 (4.08%) MS Visio
3 20 (1.86%) Microsoft Excel
4 14 (1.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.46%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.46%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.093%) AutoCAD
6 1 (0.093%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 21 (1.95%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.093%) Actimize
3 1 (0.093%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 166 (15.40%) Azure
2 147 (13.64%) AWS
3 95 (8.81%) Microsoft 365
4 42 (3.90%) GCP
5 37 (3.43%) Entra ID
6 17 (1.58%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 14 (1.30%) Datadog
8 12 (1.11%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 11 (1.02%) AWS CloudFormation
9 11 (1.02%) Nutanix
10 10 (0.93%) AWS Lambda
10 10 (0.93%) Azure Sentinel
10 10 (0.93%) OpenShift
10 10 (0.93%) Serverless
11 9 (0.83%) SaaS
12 7 (0.65%) Microsoft Purview
12 7 (0.65%) OneDrive
13 6 (0.56%) Azure DevOps
13 6 (0.56%) Mimecast
13 6 (0.56%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 431 (39.98%) Firewall
2 314 (29.13%) WAN
3 231 (21.43%) VPN
4 230 (21.34%) LAN
5 216 (20.04%) BGP
6 184 (17.07%) Network Security
7 164 (15.21%) Wireless
8 158 (14.66%) OSPF
9 136 (12.62%) SD-WAN
10 127 (11.78%) DNS
11 110 (10.20%) MPLS
12 101 (9.37%) VLAN
13 96 (8.91%) Cisco ISE
14 76 (7.05%) Cisco Nexus
14 76 (7.05%) IPsec
14 76 (7.05%) Wi-Fi
15 73 (6.77%) Cisco ASA
16 71 (6.59%) Cisco IOS
17 68 (6.31%) DHCP
18 57 (5.29%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (0.93%) SQL Server
2 5 (0.46%) DynamoDB
2 5 (0.46%) Power BI
3 3 (0.28%) Amazon Athena
4 2 (0.19%) MariaDB
5 1 (0.093%) Metadata
5 1 (0.093%) MySQL
5 1 (0.093%) NoSQL
5 1 (0.093%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 21 (1.95%) JIRA
2 14 (1.30%) Sonatype Nexus
3 13 (1.21%) GitLab
4 8 (0.74%) Jenkins
5 5 (0.46%) Cucumber
5 5 (0.46%) Robot Framework
5 5 (0.46%) Selenium
5 5 (0.46%) SonarQube
6 4 (0.37%) Git
7 2 (0.19%) Rational DOORS
8 1 (0.093%) Bitbucket
General
1 242 (22.45%) Social Skills
2 167 (15.49%) Public Sector
3 155 (14.38%) Finance
4 115 (10.67%) Telecoms
5 75 (6.96%) Analytical Skills
6 65 (6.03%) Manufacturing
7 59 (5.47%) Documentation Skills
8 52 (4.82%) Legal
9 49 (4.55%) Banking
10 46 (4.27%) Marketing
11 45 (4.17%) Electronics
12 17 (1.58%) Presentation Skills
13 15 (1.39%) Investment Banking
14 13 (1.21%) Organisational Skills
15 12 (1.11%) Financial Institution
15 12 (1.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 11 (1.02%) Law
17 10 (0.93%) Aerospace
17 10 (0.93%) Military
18 8 (0.74%) Retail
Job Titles
1 398 (36.92%) Network Engineer
2 120 (11.13%) Architect
3 85 (7.88%) Cisco Engineer
4 75 (6.96%) Network Architect
5 72 (6.68%) Cisco Network Engineer
6 68 (6.31%) Senior
7 62 (5.75%) Security Engineer
8 61 (5.66%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
9 57 (5.29%) Analyst
10 51 (4.73%) Consultant
10 51 (4.73%) IT Support
11 46 (4.27%) Network Consultant
12 40 (3.71%) Network Security Engineer
13 36 (3.34%) Desktop Support
14 35 (3.25%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
14 35 (3.25%) Support Engineer
15 33 (3.06%) Solutions Architect
16 32 (2.97%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 31 (2.88%) Senior Network Engineer
18 26 (2.41%) Infrastructure Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (4.64%) 802.1X
2 17 (1.58%) XMPP
3 16 (1.48%) LDAP
4 15 (1.39%) Flash
5 9 (0.83%) NETCONF
5 9 (0.83%) SAML
6 8 (0.74%) JSON
6 8 (0.74%) YANG
7 7 (0.65%) XML
8 5 (0.46%) Jinja
8 5 (0.46%) Node.js
8 5 (0.46%) RFC 2544
9 4 (0.37%) HTML
9 4 (0.37%) VML
10 3 (0.28%) OpenConfig
10 3 (0.28%) REST
11 2 (0.19%) ARM Templates
11 2 (0.19%) Django
11 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Graph
11 2 (0.19%) RESTCONF
Miscellaneous
1 276 (25.60%) Data Centre
2 55 (5.10%) PKI
3 32 (2.97%) Linux Command Line
4 30 (2.78%) Replication
5 29 (2.69%) Data Protection Act
6 28 (2.60%) Hybrid Cloud
7 27 (2.50%) Operational Technology
8 26 (2.41%) Onboarding
9 25 (2.32%) Cloud Native
9 25 (2.32%) Driving Licence
10 22 (2.04%) Clustering
11 17 (1.58%) Security Posture
11 17 (1.58%) Self-Motivation
11 17 (1.58%) Video Conferencing
12 14 (1.30%) Product Ownership
13 13 (1.21%) NHS
14 12 (1.11%) SCADA
15 11 (1.02%) CMDB
16 9 (0.83%) Enterprise Software
16 9 (0.83%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 184 (17.07%) Windows
2 111 (10.30%) Linux
3 71 (6.59%) Windows Server
4 52 (4.82%) Mac OS
5 51 (4.73%) Android
6 37 (3.43%) Windows 10
7 20 (1.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 17 (1.58%) Unix
9 6 (0.56%) Ubuntu
9 6 (0.56%) Windows Server 2012
9 6 (0.56%) Windows Server 2016
10 4 (0.37%) CatOS
10 4 (0.37%) Solaris
10 4 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.28%) VMS
12 1 (0.093%) CentOS
12 1 (0.093%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 152 (14.10%) Migration
2 135 (12.52%) Problem-Solving
3 88 (8.16%) Agile
4 85 (7.88%) Network Design
5 82 (7.61%) ITIL
6 78 (7.24%) Cybersecurity
6 78 (7.24%) Roadmaps
7 77 (7.14%) High Availability
7 77 (7.14%) Load Balancing
8 75 (6.96%) ITSM
9 74 (6.86%) Project Delivery
10 68 (6.31%) Change Management
10 68 (6.31%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 63 (5.84%) Service Management
12 59 (5.47%) Collaborative Working
13 58 (5.38%) Network Architecture
14 54 (5.01%) Business Intelligence
14 54 (5.01%) Network Monitoring
14 54 (5.01%) Stakeholder Management
15 52 (4.82%) Disaster Recovery
Programming Languages
1 116 (10.76%) Python
2 58 (5.38%) PowerShell
3 32 (2.97%) Bash
4 19 (1.76%) Perl
5 18 (1.67%) SQL
6 13 (1.21%) JavaScript
7 8 (0.74%) Lisp
8 4 (0.37%) C
8 4 (0.37%) C++
8 4 (0.37%) PHP
9 3 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
10 2 (0.19%) Korn
11 1 (0.093%) ActionScript
11 1 (0.093%) Java
11 1 (0.093%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 443 (41.09%) Security Cleared
2 344 (31.91%) SC Cleared
3 281 (26.07%) Cisco Certification
4 232 (21.52%) CCNP
5 113 (10.48%) DV Cleared
6 105 (9.74%) CCNA
7 81 (7.51%) Degree
8 72 (6.68%) CCIE
9 24 (2.23%) Microsoft Certification
10 22 (2.04%) BPSS Clearance
10 22 (2.04%) JNCIS
11 21 (1.95%) ITIL Certification
12 17 (1.58%) Azure Certification
13 16 (1.48%) AWS Certification
13 16 (1.48%) JNCIA
14 15 (1.39%) CISSP
14 15 (1.39%) JNCIP
14 15 (1.39%) MCSE
15 13 (1.21%) Network+ Certification
16 12 (1.11%) JNCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 39 (3.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 30 (2.78%) NIST
3 27 (2.50%) SLA
4 23 (2.13%) Cyber Essentials
5 18 (1.67%) GDPR
6 16 (1.48%) PMO
7 15 (1.39%) PCI DSS
8 14 (1.30%) NCSC
9 6 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 5 (0.46%) QA
11 3 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
11 3 (0.28%) HIPAA
11 3 (0.28%) JSP 440
11 3 (0.28%) RMADS
12 2 (0.19%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 1 (0.093%) Actionable Recommendations
13 1 (0.093%) Data Quality
13 1 (0.093%) Def Stans
13 1 (0.093%) JTAG
13 1 (0.093%) MiFID
System Software
1 151 (14.01%) VMware Infrastructure
2 117 (10.85%) Active Directory
3 76 (7.05%) VMware NSX
4 58 (5.38%) vSphere
5 40 (3.71%) VMware ESXi
6 21 (1.95%) Virtual Machines
7 16 (1.48%) Firmware
8 15 (1.39%) Docker
8 15 (1.39%) GPFS
8 15 (1.39%) NFS
9 14 (1.30%) Hyper-V
10 6 (0.56%) Virtual Servers
11 5 (0.46%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 4 (0.37%) KVM
12 4 (0.37%) Snort
12 4 (0.37%) SRDF
12 4 (0.37%) vCloud
12 4 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
13 3 (0.28%) Squid
14 1 (0.093%) Xen
Systems Management
1 95 (8.81%) Ansible
2 84 (7.79%) FortiGate
3 53 (4.92%) vCenter Server
4 45 (4.17%) Terraform
5 35 (3.25%) vRealize
6 26 (2.41%) SCCM
7 17 (1.58%) Microsoft Intune
7 17 (1.58%) VxRail
8 16 (1.48%) Grafana
8 16 (1.48%) Kubernetes
9 12 (1.11%) Cisco CUCM
10 11 (1.02%) Cisco Prime
10 11 (1.02%) Prometheus
10 11 (1.02%) Single Sign-On
10 11 (1.02%) WSUS
11 10 (0.93%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 9 (0.83%) Nessus
12 9 (0.83%) SCOM
13 8 (0.74%) Nagios
14 6 (0.56%) EMC NetWorker
Vendors
1 267 (24.77%) Palo Alto
2 190 (17.63%) Microsoft
3 185 (17.16%) VMware
4 177 (16.42%) Juniper
5 134 (12.43%) Aruba
6 133 (12.34%) F5
7 120 (11.13%) SolarWinds
8 116 (10.76%) CheckPoint
9 112 (10.39%) Fortinet
10 99 (9.18%) Meraki
11 76 (7.05%) ServiceNow
12 73 (6.77%) Dell
13 61 (5.66%) HP
14 53 (4.92%) Splunk
15 44 (4.08%) SAP
16 43 (3.99%) IBM
17 41 (3.80%) Apple
17 41 (3.80%) Arista
18 39 (3.62%) Zscaler
19 33 (3.06%) Remedy