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 29 August 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
29 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 119 77 68
Rank change year-on-year -42 -9 -15
Contract jobs citing Cisco 1,218 1,054 1,203
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.26% 3.20% 3.12%
As % of the Vendors category 5.41% 6.78% 7.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 806 652 734
10th Percentile £300 £300 £252
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £478 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.50% - +5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £584 £575
90th Percentile £652 £638 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £468 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -6.50% - +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 40 41 33
10th Percentile £26.63 - £17.74
25th Percentile £34.44 £25.15 £20.50
Median hourly rate £52.00 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +73.33% +9.09% -42.11%
75th Percentile £67.84 £58.75 £55.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £83.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £30.00 £43.75
% change year-on-year +83.33% -31.43% -8.53%

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 22,533 15,547 16,927
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.81% 47.19% 43.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,888 9,521 10,392
10th Percentile £313 £275 £288
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £613 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,169 793 745
10th Percentile £14.35 £14.69 £13.69
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £29.96 £25.15 £28.50
Median % change year-on-year +19.13% -11.75% -33.72%
75th Percentile £65.00 £43.75 £61.60
90th Percentile £82.39 £67.90 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £21.24 £27.50
% change year-on-year +31.83% -22.76% -31.25%

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 29 August 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 29 August 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 29 August 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 -47 1,021 £500 - 803
UK excluding London -36 719 £468 -6.50% 683
London -40 383 £500 - 266
Work from Home -16 297 £475 -0.78% 156
North of England -9 248 £485 - 151
North West +4 175 £483 +1.68% 63
South East -65 150 £468 -10.81% 171
Midlands -30 133 £425 -17.48% 88
West Midlands -17 127 £425 -17.48% 41
Scotland +20 98 £413 -2.94% 41
Yorkshire -41 67 £500 +1.63% 59
South West -47 59 £525 -4.55% 103
East of England -19 35 £488 -11.36% 95
Wales +2 25 £425 +112.50% 32
Northern Ireland +4 8 £115 -67.14% 17
North East -36 7 £375 -31.82% 33
East Midlands -29 3 £525 +6.33% 47
Channel Islands -2 1 £550 -24.14%

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 38 (3.12%) SharePoint
2 31 (2.55%) Microsoft Exchange
3 12 (0.99%) Confluence
4 10 (0.82%) OpenStack
5 8 (0.66%) SAS
6 7 (0.57%) Apache
7 6 (0.49%) JBoss
8 4 (0.33%) nginx
9 3 (0.25%) CloudStack
9 3 (0.25%) IIS
9 3 (0.25%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.16%) CMS
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 48 (3.94%) Microsoft Office
2 28 (2.30%) Microsoft Excel
3 25 (2.05%) MS Visio
4 9 (0.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.25%) Acrobat
6 1 (0.082%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.082%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.082%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 246 (20.20%) Azure
2 156 (12.81%) AWS
3 97 (7.96%) Microsoft 365
4 60 (4.93%) Entra ID
5 31 (2.55%) GitHub
6 30 (2.46%) OneDrive
7 23 (1.89%) GCP
8 19 (1.56%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 18 (1.48%) OpenShift
9 18 (1.48%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 15 (1.23%) Power Platform
11 14 (1.15%) Nutanix
12 12 (0.99%) SaaS
13 10 (0.82%) Azure DevOps
13 10 (0.82%) Azure Sentinel
14 8 (0.66%) AWS Direct Connect
14 8 (0.66%) GitHub Actions
14 8 (0.66%) IaaS
15 6 (0.49%) Amazon EC2
15 6 (0.49%) Rubrik
Communications & Networking
1 517 (42.45%) Firewall
2 368 (30.21%) WAN
3 319 (26.19%) BGP
4 282 (23.15%) LAN
5 265 (21.76%) VPN
6 253 (20.77%) Network Security
7 207 (17.00%) Wireless
8 203 (16.67%) OSPF
9 190 (15.60%) DNS
10 188 (15.44%) VLAN
11 151 (12.40%) SD-WAN
12 135 (11.08%) Wi-Fi
13 124 (10.18%) MPLS
14 118 (9.69%) Cisco Nexus
15 106 (8.70%) DHCP
16 99 (8.13%) TCP/IP
17 98 (8.05%) Cisco ASA
18 97 (7.96%) Cisco ISE
19 96 (7.88%) VXLAN
20 77 (6.32%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (2.22%) SQL Server
2 7 (0.57%) Power BI
3 6 (0.49%) Big Data
3 6 (0.49%) Hadoop
4 4 (0.33%) Amazon RDS
5 3 (0.25%) MySQL
6 2 (0.16%) Metadata
6 2 (0.16%) NoSQL
6 2 (0.16%) PostgreSQL
7 1 (0.082%) Apache Hive
7 1 (0.082%) ClickHouse
Development Applications
1 28 (2.30%) Git
2 20 (1.64%) JIRA
3 13 (1.07%) Sonatype Nexus
4 12 (0.99%) GitLab
5 9 (0.74%) Jenkins
6 2 (0.16%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.082%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.082%) Tricentis qTest
7 1 (0.082%) Zephyr
General
1 279 (22.91%) Social Skills
2 121 (9.93%) Finance
2 121 (9.93%) Telecoms
3 99 (8.13%) Analytical Skills
4 63 (5.17%) Public Sector
5 61 (5.01%) Banking
6 59 (4.84%) Documentation Skills
7 38 (3.12%) Legal
8 21 (1.72%) Investment Banking
8 21 (1.72%) Organisational Skills
9 17 (1.40%) Financial Institution
9 17 (1.40%) Retail
10 14 (1.15%) Law
11 12 (0.99%) Military
12 11 (0.90%) Manufacturing
12 11 (0.90%) Police
13 10 (0.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 9 (0.74%) Influencing Skills
15 6 (0.49%) Marketing
16 4 (0.33%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 608 (49.92%) Network Engineer
2 182 (14.94%) Senior
3 150 (12.32%) Architect
4 145 (11.90%) Cisco Engineer
5 130 (10.67%) Cisco Network Engineer
6 128 (10.51%) Senior Network Engineer
7 85 (6.98%) Security Engineer
8 76 (6.24%) Network Architect
9 67 (5.50%) Network Security Engineer
10 62 (5.09%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 54 (4.43%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 43 (3.53%) Field Engineer
13 41 (3.37%) Data Network Engineer
14 35 (2.87%) Lead
14 35 (2.87%) Telecoms Engineer
15 34 (2.79%) Analyst
16 33 (2.71%) Solutions Architect
17 31 (2.55%) Support Engineer
18 30 (2.46%) Cisco Security Engineer
18 30 (2.46%) Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 77 (6.32%) Terraform
2 64 (5.25%) 802.1X
3 25 (2.05%) REST
4 14 (1.15%) YAML
5 13 (1.07%) SAML
6 12 (0.99%) JSON
7 9 (0.74%) NETCONF
8 8 (0.66%) Flash
9 7 (0.57%) Microsoft Graph
9 7 (0.57%) RESTCONF
10 6 (0.49%) OpenConfig
10 6 (0.49%) XMPP
10 6 (0.49%) YANG
11 4 (0.33%) Jinja
11 4 (0.33%) LDAP
12 3 (0.25%) Elastic Stack
12 3 (0.25%) LEMP Stack
12 3 (0.25%) Middleware
12 3 (0.25%) OpenID
12 3 (0.25%) RFC 2544
Miscellaneous
1 294 (24.14%) Data Centre
2 50 (4.11%) Hybrid Cloud
2 50 (4.11%) PKI
3 46 (3.78%) Onboarding
4 38 (3.12%) Data Protection Act
5 37 (3.04%) Driving Licence
6 33 (2.71%) Operational Technology
7 30 (2.46%) Video Conferencing
8 28 (2.30%) Replication
9 27 (2.22%) Clustering
10 24 (1.97%) Cloud Native
11 22 (1.81%) Analytical Mindset
12 20 (1.64%) Enterprise Storage
13 19 (1.56%) Public Cloud
14 17 (1.40%) Linux Command Line
14 17 (1.40%) Private Cloud
15 16 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
16 15 (1.23%) Management Information System
17 13 (1.07%) IoT
17 13 (1.07%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 223 (18.31%) Windows
2 124 (10.18%) Linux
3 87 (7.14%) Windows Server
4 18 (1.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 18 (1.48%) Ubuntu
5 17 (1.40%) Windows 10
6 12 (0.99%) Mac OS
7 10 (0.82%) Unix
7 10 (0.82%) Windows Server 2019
8 9 (0.74%) Windows Server 2012
9 8 (0.66%) AIX
9 8 (0.66%) Android
10 7 (0.57%) Data ONTAP
11 6 (0.49%) CentOS
12 4 (0.33%) VMS
12 4 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.082%) Debian
13 1 (0.082%) Oracle Linux
13 1 (0.082%) Windows 7
13 1 (0.082%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 199 (16.34%) Migration
2 151 (12.40%) Project Delivery
3 136 (11.17%) ITIL
4 131 (10.76%) Problem-Solving
5 123 (10.10%) Load Balancing
6 121 (9.93%) High Availability
7 97 (7.96%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 96 (7.88%) Change Management
9 91 (7.47%) Network Design
10 90 (7.39%) Stakeholder Management
11 83 (6.81%) Continuous Improvement
12 82 (6.73%) Infrastructure as Code
13 80 (6.57%) Validation
14 72 (5.91%) Technical Leadership
15 71 (5.83%) ITSM
16 66 (5.42%) CI/CD
17 64 (5.25%) Zero Trust
18 62 (5.09%) Data Protection
18 62 (5.09%) Network Monitoring
19 60 (4.93%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 142 (11.66%) Python
2 59 (4.84%) PowerShell
3 31 (2.55%) Bash
4 26 (2.13%) 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%) ActionScript
9 1 (0.082%) Bicep
9 1 (0.082%) Kusto Query Language
9 1 (0.082%) Ladder Logic
Qualifications
1 332 (27.26%) Cisco Certification
2 311 (25.53%) Security Cleared
3 233 (19.13%) CCNP
4 227 (18.64%) SC Cleared
5 133 (10.92%) CCNA
6 84 (6.90%) DV Cleared
7 70 (5.75%) Degree
8 64 (5.25%) CCIE
9 27 (2.22%) Microsoft Certification
10 23 (1.89%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 19 (1.56%) MCSE
12 17 (1.40%) Azure Certification
13 16 (1.31%) AWS Certification
14 14 (1.15%) BPSS Clearance
14 14 (1.15%) Computer Science Degree
14 14 (1.15%) Network+ Certification
15 12 (0.99%) CCSE
16 11 (0.90%) CISSP
16 11 (0.90%) ISTQB
16 11 (0.90%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 44 (3.61%) SLA
2 26 (2.13%) NIST
3 22 (1.81%) QA
4 19 (1.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 16 (1.31%) Cyber Essentials
6 11 (0.90%) NCSC
7 7 (0.57%) PCI DSS
8 5 (0.41%) Disclosure Scotland
8 5 (0.41%) GDPR
8 5 (0.41%) JSP 440
8 5 (0.41%) PMO
9 4 (0.33%) Data Quality
10 3 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 3 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 3 (0.25%) NIST 800
11 2 (0.16%) Accessibility
11 2 (0.16%) Government Security Classifications
11 2 (0.16%) ISA99
12 1 (0.082%) GRC
12 1 (0.082%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 151 (12.40%) VMware Infrastructure
2 117 (9.61%) Active Directory
3 44 (3.61%) vSphere
4 43 (3.53%) VMware NSX
5 41 (3.37%) VMware ESXi
6 34 (2.79%) Hyper-V
7 33 (2.71%) Firmware
8 29 (2.38%) Virtual Machines
9 16 (1.31%) Docker
10 12 (0.99%) NFS
11 8 (0.66%) GPFS
12 6 (0.49%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 5 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
14 4 (0.33%) SRDF
14 4 (0.33%) Virtual Servers
15 3 (0.25%) Dovecot
15 3 (0.25%) FreeRADIUS
15 3 (0.25%) Postfix
16 2 (0.16%) Snort
16 2 (0.16%) UAG
Systems Management
1 147 (12.07%) Ansible
2 80 (6.57%) FortiGate
3 32 (2.63%) Kubernetes
4 31 (2.55%) Microsoft Intune
5 22 (1.81%) Cisco CUCM
6 21 (1.72%) SCCM
7 20 (1.64%) vCenter Server
8 18 (1.48%) Cisco Prime
9 15 (1.23%) Grafana
10 14 (1.15%) Prometheus
11 9 (0.74%) Puppet
12 8 (0.66%) Failover Clustering
12 8 (0.66%) Single Sign-On
12 8 (0.66%) vRealize
12 8 (0.66%) WMI
12 8 (0.66%) WSUS
13 7 (0.57%) EMC VPLEX
14 6 (0.49%) Red Hat Satellite
15 5 (0.41%) Jamf Pro
15 5 (0.41%) Nagios
Vendors
1 268 (22.00%) Palo Alto
2 229 (18.80%) Microsoft
3 208 (17.08%) F5
3 208 (17.08%) Fortinet
3 208 (17.08%) VMware
4 134 (11.00%) Juniper
5 114 (9.36%) Meraki
6 110 (9.03%) CheckPoint
7 89 (7.31%) Aruba
7 89 (7.31%) ServiceNow
8 82 (6.73%) SolarWinds
9 73 (5.99%) Arista
10 51 (4.19%) Zscaler
11 43 (3.53%) Splunk
12 37 (3.04%) Red Hat
13 34 (2.79%) Dell
14 28 (2.30%) Nokia
15 25 (2.05%) NetApp
16 22 (1.81%) Infoblox
17 19 (1.56%) Veeam