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 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
8 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 99 59 59
Rank change year-on-year -40 0 +15
Contract jobs citing Cisco 1,099 1,118 1,547
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.59% 3.72% 3.47%
As % of the Vendors category 5.88% 7.93% 8.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 744 707 911
10th Percentile £263 £313 £250
25th Percentile £375 £413 £363
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 £623 £655 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £493 £475
% change year-on-year -3.55% +3.68% +1.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 40 21 64
10th Percentile £21.40 £18.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £25.15 £20.00 £18.28
Median hourly rate £68.17 £30.40 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +124.23% +21.60% -24.81%
75th Percentile £74.26 £60.00 £41.25
90th Percentile £93.88 £75.00 £67.04
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.26 £26.45 £24.25
% change year-on-year +180.76% +9.07% -44.57%

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 18,695 14,097 19,300
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 44.11% 46.89% 43.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,976 8,687 12,036
10th Percentile £306 £285 £256
25th Percentile £413 £406 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £513
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +1.46% -2.75%
75th Percentile £600 £623 £625
90th Percentile £700 £713 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.60% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 941 454 1,029
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.62 £12.13
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.02 £14.48
Median hourly rate £25.00 £29.00 £24.65
Median % change year-on-year -13.79% +17.65% -29.57%
75th Percentile £58.75 £63.75 £53.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.68 £27.50 £23.00
% change year-on-year -17.53% +19.57% -28.58%

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 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 8 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 8 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 -43 900 £475 -5.09% 473
UK excluding London -28 703 £475 -3.55% 452
Work from Home -37 289 £445 -11.00% 112
London -51 271 £490 -2.10% 112
South East +4 216 £500 -0.25% 141
North of England -54 171 £481 -3.75% 89
Midlands -24 149 £375 -15.49% 68
North West -16 138 £481 -3.75% 42
West Midlands -5 134 £375 -14.29% 32
Scotland +35 79 £425 +6.25% 24
South West -63 45 £540 +0.47% 52
East of England -14 40 £475 - 63
Yorkshire -88 27 £450 -14.29% 35
Wales -11 23 £380 -5.00% 22
East Midlands -43 13 £158 -65.00% 36
Northern Ireland - 9 £438 - 5
North East -13 8 £175 -58.82% 12

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 48 (4.37%) SharePoint
2 38 (3.46%) Microsoft Exchange
3 17 (1.55%) Confluence
4 7 (0.64%) Apache
5 6 (0.55%) Skype for Business
6 5 (0.45%) IIS
7 4 (0.36%) Appian
7 4 (0.36%) SharePoint Server
8 2 (0.18%) Mattermost
8 2 (0.18%) OpenStack
9 1 (0.091%) JBoss
9 1 (0.091%) WebLogic
9 1 (0.091%) WebSphere
Applications
1 71 (6.46%) Microsoft Office
2 46 (4.19%) MS Visio
3 21 (1.91%) Microsoft Excel
4 15 (1.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.45%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.45%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.091%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 19 (1.73%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.091%) Actimize
3 1 (0.091%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 166 (15.10%) Azure
2 140 (12.74%) AWS
3 95 (8.64%) Microsoft 365
4 40 (3.64%) GCP
5 37 (3.37%) Entra ID
6 17 (1.55%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 14 (1.27%) Datadog
8 13 (1.18%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 12 (1.09%) Nutanix
10 10 (0.91%) Azure Sentinel
11 9 (0.82%) AWS CloudFormation
11 9 (0.82%) SaaS
12 8 (0.73%) AWS Lambda
12 8 (0.73%) Azure DevOps
12 8 (0.73%) OpenShift
12 8 (0.73%) Serverless
13 7 (0.64%) Microsoft Purview
13 7 (0.64%) OneDrive
14 6 (0.55%) Amazon Kinesis
14 6 (0.55%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 446 (40.58%) Firewall
2 325 (29.57%) WAN
3 239 (21.75%) LAN
4 235 (21.38%) BGP
5 231 (21.02%) VPN
6 195 (17.74%) Network Security
7 169 (15.38%) OSPF
8 163 (14.83%) Wireless
9 139 (12.65%) SD-WAN
10 132 (12.01%) DNS
11 111 (10.10%) MPLS
12 106 (9.65%) VLAN
13 99 (9.01%) Cisco ISE
14 80 (7.28%) Wi-Fi
15 77 (7.01%) Cisco IOS
15 77 (7.01%) Cisco Nexus
16 76 (6.92%) DHCP
17 73 (6.64%) Cisco ASA
17 73 (6.64%) IPsec
18 67 (6.10%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (0.73%) 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 (0.091%) Metadata
5 1 (0.091%) MySQL
5 1 (0.091%) NoSQL
5 1 (0.091%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 22 (2.00%) JIRA
2 14 (1.27%) Sonatype Nexus
3 12 (1.09%) GitLab
4 11 (1.00%) Jenkins
5 9 (0.82%) Git
6 4 (0.36%) Cucumber
6 4 (0.36%) Robot Framework
6 4 (0.36%) Selenium
6 4 (0.36%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.18%) Rational DOORS
8 1 (0.091%) Bitbucket
General
1 232 (21.11%) Social Skills
2 164 (14.92%) Finance
3 161 (14.65%) Public Sector
4 111 (10.10%) Telecoms
5 76 (6.92%) Analytical Skills
6 64 (5.82%) Manufacturing
7 58 (5.28%) Banking
8 56 (5.10%) Documentation Skills
9 53 (4.82%) Legal
10 46 (4.19%) Marketing
11 45 (4.09%) Electronics
12 17 (1.55%) Investment Banking
12 17 (1.55%) Presentation Skills
13 15 (1.36%) Financial Institution
14 14 (1.27%) Organisational Skills
15 11 (1.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 10 (0.91%) Aerospace
16 10 (0.91%) Law
16 10 (0.91%) Military
17 8 (0.73%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 411 (37.40%) Network Engineer
2 129 (11.74%) Architect
3 88 (8.01%) Cisco Engineer
4 77 (7.01%) Network Architect
5 76 (6.92%) Cisco Network Engineer
6 73 (6.64%) Senior
7 65 (5.91%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
8 61 (5.55%) Security Engineer
9 60 (5.46%) Analyst
10 52 (4.73%) Consultant
11 51 (4.64%) IT Support
12 47 (4.28%) Network Consultant
13 41 (3.73%) Network Security Engineer
14 35 (3.18%) Desktop Support
15 34 (3.09%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 34 (3.09%) Senior Network Engineer
16 33 (3.00%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
16 33 (3.00%) Solutions Architect
17 29 (2.64%) Data Network Engineer
18 28 (2.55%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 61 (5.55%) 802.1X
2 16 (1.46%) Flash
2 16 (1.46%) LDAP
3 15 (1.36%) XMPP
4 10 (0.91%) NETCONF
5 9 (0.82%) SAML
5 9 (0.82%) YANG
6 8 (0.73%) Jinja
7 7 (0.64%) JSON
8 6 (0.55%) 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%) CSS
11 2 (0.18%) Django
11 2 (0.18%) Microsoft Graph
Miscellaneous
1 291 (26.48%) Data Centre
2 52 (4.73%) PKI
3 34 (3.09%) Replication
4 32 (2.91%) Linux Command Line
5 31 (2.82%) Data Protection Act
6 28 (2.55%) Onboarding
7 27 (2.46%) Clustering
7 27 (2.46%) Hybrid Cloud
8 26 (2.37%) Operational Technology
9 24 (2.18%) Cloud Native
10 23 (2.09%) Driving Licence
11 18 (1.64%) Product Ownership
11 18 (1.64%) Self-Motivation
12 16 (1.46%) Security Posture
12 16 (1.46%) Video Conferencing
13 14 (1.27%) NHS
14 12 (1.09%) Enterprise Storage
15 11 (1.00%) CMDB
15 11 (1.00%) SCADA
16 10 (0.91%) EMC VMAX
Operating Systems
1 183 (16.65%) Windows
2 106 (9.65%) Linux
3 67 (6.10%) Windows Server
4 51 (4.64%) Android
4 51 (4.64%) Mac OS
5 32 (2.91%) Windows 10
6 23 (2.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 16 (1.46%) Unix
8 6 (0.55%) Ubuntu
8 6 (0.55%) Windows Server 2012
8 6 (0.55%) Windows Server 2019
9 5 (0.45%) Windows Server 2016
10 4 (0.36%) CatOS
10 4 (0.36%) Solaris
10 4 (0.36%) VMS
11 2 (0.18%) AIX
12 1 (0.091%) CentOS
12 1 (0.091%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 160 (14.56%) Migration
2 135 (12.28%) Problem-Solving
3 94 (8.55%) Load Balancing
4 93 (8.46%) Agile
5 89 (8.10%) ITIL
5 89 (8.10%) Network Design
6 86 (7.83%) High Availability
7 83 (7.55%) Roadmaps
8 78 (7.10%) Cybersecurity
9 77 (7.01%) ITSM
10 73 (6.64%) Project Delivery
11 70 (6.37%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 69 (6.28%) Change Management
13 59 (5.37%) Service Management
14 58 (5.28%) Collaborative Working
15 56 (5.10%) Stakeholder Management
16 55 (5.00%) Disaster Recovery
17 54 (4.91%) Network Architecture
18 53 (4.82%) Network Monitoring
19 52 (4.73%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 123 (11.19%) Python
2 57 (5.19%) PowerShell
3 30 (2.73%) Bash
4 17 (1.55%) Perl
5 12 (1.09%) SQL
6 10 (0.91%) JavaScript
7 8 (0.73%) Lisp
8 4 (0.36%) C
8 4 (0.36%) PHP
9 3 (0.27%) Kusto Query Language
10 2 (0.18%) ActionScript
10 2 (0.18%) C++
10 2 (0.18%) Korn
10 2 (0.18%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.091%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 433 (39.40%) Security Cleared
2 337 (30.66%) SC Cleared
3 292 (26.57%) Cisco Certification
4 239 (21.75%) CCNP
5 107 (9.74%) CCNA
5 107 (9.74%) DV Cleared
6 83 (7.55%) Degree
7 73 (6.64%) CCIE
8 24 (2.18%) BPSS Clearance
9 22 (2.00%) Microsoft Certification
10 21 (1.91%) JNCIS
11 18 (1.64%) Azure Certification
11 18 (1.64%) Network+ Certification
12 17 (1.55%) ITIL Certification
13 16 (1.46%) CISSP
13 16 (1.46%) JNCIP
14 15 (1.36%) JNCIA
15 13 (1.18%) AWS Certification
15 13 (1.18%) MCSE
16 12 (1.09%) CCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 40 (3.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 34 (3.09%) NIST
3 32 (2.91%) SLA
4 23 (2.09%) Cyber Essentials
5 18 (1.64%) GDPR
5 18 (1.64%) PMO
6 14 (1.27%) NCSC
6 14 (1.27%) PCI DSS
7 6 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 6 (0.55%) QA
8 4 (0.36%) Disclosure Scotland
9 3 (0.27%) HIPAA
9 3 (0.27%) JSP 440
9 3 (0.27%) RMADS
10 2 (0.18%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 1 (0.091%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.091%) Def Stans
11 1 (0.091%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 1 (0.091%) JTAG
11 1 (0.091%) MiFID
System Software
1 144 (13.10%) VMware Infrastructure
2 105 (9.55%) Active Directory
3 64 (5.82%) VMware NSX
4 59 (5.37%) vSphere
5 41 (3.73%) VMware ESXi
6 17 (1.55%) Firmware
6 17 (1.55%) Virtual Machines
7 16 (1.46%) GPFS
7 16 (1.46%) NFS
8 14 (1.27%) Docker
9 12 (1.09%) Hyper-V
10 8 (0.73%) SRDF
11 5 (0.45%) Virtual Servers
12 4 (0.36%) vCloud
13 3 (0.27%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 3 (0.27%) Snort
13 3 (0.27%) Squid
13 3 (0.27%) Virtual Desktop
14 2 (0.18%) KVM
15 1 (0.091%) IAG
Systems Management
1 101 (9.19%) Ansible
2 92 (8.37%) FortiGate
3 45 (4.09%) vCenter Server
4 41 (3.73%) Terraform
5 36 (3.28%) vRealize
6 25 (2.27%) SCCM
7 19 (1.73%) Grafana
7 19 (1.73%) VxRail
8 16 (1.46%) Microsoft Intune
9 13 (1.18%) Cisco CUCM
9 13 (1.18%) Prometheus
10 12 (1.09%) Kubernetes
11 11 (1.00%) Single Sign-On
12 10 (0.91%) Cisco Prime
12 10 (0.91%) WSUS
13 9 (0.82%) Nagios
14 8 (0.73%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 8 (0.73%) Nessus
15 7 (0.64%) SCOM
16 6 (0.55%) EMC NetWorker
Vendors
1 268 (24.39%) Palo Alto
2 185 (16.83%) Microsoft
3 182 (16.56%) VMware
4 179 (16.29%) Juniper
5 152 (13.83%) F5
6 138 (12.56%) Aruba
7 107 (9.74%) CheckPoint
7 107 (9.74%) Fortinet
8 106 (9.65%) SolarWinds
9 99 (9.01%) Meraki
10 90 (8.19%) ServiceNow
11 79 (7.19%) Dell
12 68 (6.19%) HP
13 57 (5.19%) Splunk
14 48 (4.37%) Arista
15 46 (4.19%) Zscaler
16 45 (4.09%) IBM
17 44 (4.00%) SAP
18 41 (3.73%) Apple
19 32 (2.91%) Citrix