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 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
21 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 122 81 69
Rank change year-on-year -41 -12 -16
Contract jobs citing Cisco 1,223 990 1,217
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.25% 3.03% 3.17%
As % of the Vendors category 5.40% 6.39% 7.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 793 625 725
10th Percentile £271 £300 £250
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.96% -2.10% +8.11%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £658 £644 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -5.41% -2.10% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 40 37
10th Percentile £27.49 £25.14 £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 £57.81 £55.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £83.66 £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 22,669 15,501 17,034
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.71% 47.46% 44.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,851 9,502 10,192
10th Percentile £310 £275 £286
25th Percentile £413 £403 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £613 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £731
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,287 795 671
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.69 £14.25
25th Percentile £16.62 £17.44 £15.62
Median hourly rate £26.13 £25.15 £30.41
Median % change year-on-year +3.90% -17.30% -30.63%
75th Percentile £60.78 £43.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £21.00 £30.00
% change year-on-year +22.62% -30.00% -29.12%

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 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 21 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 21 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 -41 1,009 £496 -0.82% 1,200
UK excluding London -36 718 £463 -5.41% 855
London -35 377 £500 - 468
Work from Home -22 292 £475 +4.11% 284
North of England +2 242 £484 +1.63% 172
North West +14 164 £483 +1.68% 80
South East -68 133 £450 -10.00% 222
Midlands -39 127 £450 - 109
West Midlands -26 121 £450 -5.26% 62
Scotland +6 99 £413 -2.94% 51
Yorkshire -17 71 £500 +1.63% 64
South West -35 65 £525 -4.55% 132
East of England -17 42 £465 -3.63% 131
Wales +11 29 £390 +95.00% 30
Northern Ireland +3 9 £145 -69.47% 24
North East -35 9 £375 -31.82% 29
East Midlands -26 4 £525 +83.73% 47
Channel Islands -4 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 40 (3.27%) SharePoint
2 36 (2.94%) Microsoft Exchange
3 13 (1.06%) Confluence
4 10 (0.82%) OpenStack
5 8 (0.65%) SAS
6 7 (0.57%) Apache
6 7 (0.57%) IIS
7 6 (0.49%) JBoss
8 4 (0.33%) CMS
8 4 (0.33%) nginx
9 3 (0.25%) CloudStack
9 3 (0.25%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.16%) Skype for Business
11 1 (0.082%) Apache Spark
11 1 (0.082%) FactoryTalk
11 1 (0.082%) Mendix
11 1 (0.082%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 49 (4.01%) Microsoft Office
2 26 (2.13%) Microsoft Excel
3 22 (1.80%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.25%) Acrobat
6 1 (0.082%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.082%) Monis
1 1 (0.082%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.082%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 247 (20.20%) Azure
2 154 (12.59%) AWS
3 99 (8.09%) Microsoft 365
4 64 (5.23%) Entra ID
5 38 (3.11%) GitHub
6 30 (2.45%) OneDrive
7 28 (2.29%) GCP
8 19 (1.55%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 18 (1.47%) OpenShift
10 16 (1.31%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 14 (1.14%) Power Platform
12 13 (1.06%) Nutanix
13 12 (0.98%) SaaS
14 8 (0.65%) AWS Direct Connect
14 8 (0.65%) Azure DevOps
14 8 (0.65%) Azure Sentinel
14 8 (0.65%) GitHub Actions
15 6 (0.49%) Amazon EC2
15 6 (0.49%) Cloudflare
15 6 (0.49%) Rubrik
Communications & Networking
1 509 (41.62%) Firewall
2 357 (29.19%) WAN
3 302 (24.69%) BGP
4 272 (22.24%) LAN
5 263 (21.50%) VPN
6 259 (21.18%) Network Security
7 213 (17.42%) Wireless
8 189 (15.45%) OSPF
9 184 (15.04%) VLAN
10 183 (14.96%) DNS
11 149 (12.18%) SD-WAN
12 135 (11.04%) Wi-Fi
13 130 (10.63%) MPLS
14 116 (9.48%) Cisco Nexus
15 108 (8.83%) DHCP
16 102 (8.34%) TCP/IP
17 93 (7.60%) Cisco ISE
18 88 (7.20%) Cisco IOS
18 88 (7.20%) VXLAN
19 86 (7.03%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (2.21%) SQL Server
2 7 (0.57%) Power BI
3 6 (0.49%) Hadoop
4 5 (0.41%) Big Data
5 4 (0.33%) Amazon RDS
6 3 (0.25%) Metadata
6 3 (0.25%) MySQL
7 2 (0.16%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.16%) PostgreSQL
8 1 (0.082%) Apache Hive
8 1 (0.082%) ClickHouse
Development Applications
1 36 (2.94%) Git
2 19 (1.55%) JIRA
3 14 (1.14%) GitLab
4 13 (1.06%) Sonatype Nexus
5 8 (0.65%) Jenkins
6 2 (0.16%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.082%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.082%) Tricentis qTest
7 1 (0.082%) Zephyr
General
1 280 (22.89%) Social Skills
2 127 (10.38%) Telecoms
3 125 (10.22%) Finance
4 105 (8.59%) Analytical Skills
5 66 (5.40%) Banking
6 62 (5.07%) Public Sector
7 61 (4.99%) Documentation Skills
8 44 (3.60%) Legal
9 22 (1.80%) Organisational Skills
10 21 (1.72%) Investment Banking
11 20 (1.64%) Retail
12 17 (1.39%) Financial Institution
13 15 (1.23%) Law
14 14 (1.14%) Military
15 11 (0.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 9 (0.74%) Influencing Skills
16 9 (0.74%) Manufacturing
16 9 (0.74%) Police
17 6 (0.49%) Marketing
18 5 (0.41%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 612 (50.04%) Network Engineer
2 179 (14.64%) Senior
3 148 (12.10%) Architect
4 143 (11.69%) Cisco Engineer
5 129 (10.55%) Senior Network Engineer
6 126 (10.30%) Cisco Network Engineer
7 86 (7.03%) Security Engineer
8 79 (6.46%) Network Architect
9 67 (5.48%) Network Security Engineer
10 63 (5.15%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 52 (4.25%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 43 (3.52%) Field Engineer
13 39 (3.19%) Analyst
13 39 (3.19%) Support Engineer
14 38 (3.11%) Lead
15 35 (2.86%) Telecoms Engineer
16 34 (2.78%) Solutions Architect
17 33 (2.70%) Data Network Engineer
18 30 (2.45%) Consultant
19 28 (2.29%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 87 (7.11%) Terraform
2 56 (4.58%) 802.1X
3 33 (2.70%) REST
4 20 (1.64%) YAML
5 18 (1.47%) JSON
6 12 (0.98%) NETCONF
6 12 (0.98%) SAML
7 9 (0.74%) XMPP
8 8 (0.65%) YANG
9 7 (0.57%) Microsoft Graph
9 7 (0.57%) RESTCONF
10 6 (0.49%) Flash
11 5 (0.41%) OpenConfig
12 3 (0.25%) .NET
12 3 (0.25%) Django
12 3 (0.25%) Java RMI
12 3 (0.25%) LAMP
12 3 (0.25%) LDAP
12 3 (0.25%) Middleware
12 3 (0.25%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 295 (24.12%) Data Centre
2 53 (4.33%) Hybrid Cloud
3 50 (4.09%) Onboarding
4 46 (3.76%) Driving Licence
5 43 (3.52%) PKI
6 34 (2.78%) Data Protection Act
6 34 (2.78%) Operational Technology
7 32 (2.62%) Video Conferencing
8 25 (2.04%) Management Information System
8 25 (2.04%) Replication
9 23 (1.88%) Clustering
10 22 (1.80%) Self-Motivation
11 21 (1.72%) Cloud Native
12 20 (1.64%) Analytical Mindset
12 20 (1.64%) Public Cloud
13 17 (1.39%) Private Cloud
14 16 (1.31%) Enterprise Storage
14 16 (1.31%) Linux Command Line
15 14 (1.14%) IoT
16 13 (1.06%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 239 (19.54%) Windows
2 125 (10.22%) Linux
3 97 (7.93%) Windows Server
4 22 (1.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 21 (1.72%) Mac OS
6 18 (1.47%) Ubuntu
6 18 (1.47%) Windows 10
7 11 (0.90%) Android
8 9 (0.74%) Unix
8 9 (0.74%) 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 (0.25%) VMS
14 1 (0.082%) CatOS
14 1 (0.082%) Debian
14 1 (0.082%) Windows 7
14 1 (0.082%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 195 (15.94%) Migration
2 156 (12.76%) Project Delivery
3 142 (11.61%) Problem-Solving
4 132 (10.79%) ITIL
5 110 (8.99%) High Availability
6 105 (8.59%) Load Balancing
7 102 (8.34%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 100 (8.18%) Stakeholder Management
9 95 (7.77%) Change Management
10 91 (7.44%) Network Design
11 88 (7.20%) Infrastructure as Code
11 88 (7.20%) Validation
12 84 (6.87%) Continuous Improvement
13 73 (5.97%) Technical Leadership
14 71 (5.81%) Zero Trust
15 68 (5.56%) Data Protection
16 67 (5.48%) ITSM
17 62 (5.07%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 61 (4.99%) CI/CD
19 59 (4.82%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 145 (11.86%) Python
2 59 (4.82%) PowerShell
3 33 (2.70%) Bash
4 27 (2.21%) SQL
5 5 (0.41%) Java
6 4 (0.33%) C
6 4 (0.33%) C++
7 3 (0.25%) Lisp
7 3 (0.25%) Shell Script
8 2 (0.16%) Go
8 2 (0.16%) Perl
9 1 (0.082%) Bicep
9 1 (0.082%) Kusto Query Language
9 1 (0.082%) Ladder Logic
9 1 (0.082%) R
Qualifications
1 329 (26.90%) Cisco Certification
2 300 (24.53%) Security Cleared
3 232 (18.97%) CCNP
4 220 (17.99%) SC Cleared
5 131 (10.71%) CCNA
6 77 (6.30%) DV Cleared
7 74 (6.05%) Degree
8 62 (5.07%) CCIE
9 27 (2.21%) Microsoft Certification
10 23 (1.88%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 19 (1.55%) MCSE
12 17 (1.39%) CISSP
13 15 (1.23%) AWS Certification
14 14 (1.14%) Azure Certification
14 14 (1.14%) Computer Science Degree
14 14 (1.14%) Network+ Certification
15 13 (1.06%) CCSE
16 12 (0.98%) BPSS Clearance
17 11 (0.90%) ISTQB
17 11 (0.90%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 39 (3.19%) SLA
2 27 (2.21%) NIST
3 22 (1.80%) QA
4 21 (1.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 14 (1.14%) Cyber Essentials
6 12 (0.98%) PCI DSS
7 8 (0.65%) GDPR
8 7 (0.57%) NCSC
9 5 (0.41%) Data Quality
9 5 (0.41%) Disclosure Scotland
9 5 (0.41%) GRC
9 5 (0.41%) JSP 440
9 5 (0.41%) PMO
10 4 (0.33%) ISO 31000
10 4 (0.33%) ISO 9001
10 4 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 27005
11 3 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 3 (0.25%) NIST 800
12 2 (0.16%) Accessibility
12 2 (0.16%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 140 (11.45%) VMware Infrastructure
2 128 (10.47%) Active Directory
3 48 (3.92%) vSphere
4 42 (3.43%) VMware NSX
5 38 (3.11%) VMware ESXi
6 36 (2.94%) Hyper-V
7 30 (2.45%) Firmware
8 29 (2.37%) Virtual Machines
9 18 (1.47%) Docker
10 10 (0.82%) 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%) ISA Server
13 4 (0.33%) SRDF
13 4 (0.33%) Virtual Servers
14 3 (0.25%) Dovecot
14 3 (0.25%) Postfix
15 2 (0.16%) UAG
Systems Management
1 151 (12.35%) Ansible
2 77 (6.30%) FortiGate
3 32 (2.62%) Kubernetes
4 30 (2.45%) Microsoft Intune
5 24 (1.96%) Cisco CUCM
6 21 (1.72%) Cisco Prime
6 21 (1.72%) SCCM
6 21 (1.72%) vCenter Server
7 10 (0.82%) Grafana
7 10 (0.82%) Nagios
8 9 (0.74%) Prometheus
8 9 (0.74%) WMI
8 9 (0.74%) WSUS
9 8 (0.65%) Failover Clustering
9 8 (0.65%) Puppet
10 7 (0.57%) EMC VPLEX
10 7 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
11 6 (0.49%) Red Hat Satellite
11 6 (0.49%) vRealize
12 5 (0.41%) SolarWinds Orion
Vendors
1 259 (21.18%) Palo Alto
2 237 (19.38%) Microsoft
3 206 (16.84%) Fortinet
4 199 (16.27%) VMware
5 185 (15.13%) F5
6 130 (10.63%) Juniper
7 126 (10.30%) Meraki
8 107 (8.75%) CheckPoint
9 87 (7.11%) Aruba
10 84 (6.87%) SolarWinds
11 83 (6.79%) ServiceNow
12 74 (6.05%) Arista
13 58 (4.74%) Zscaler
14 41 (3.35%) Splunk
15 40 (3.27%) Red Hat
16 35 (2.86%) Dell
17 31 (2.53%) NetApp
18 30 (2.45%) Nokia
19 23 (1.88%) Infoblox
20 22 (1.80%) EMC