F5 Contract Job Trends

F5
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring knowledge or experience of F5 products and/or services. It includes a benchmarking guide to contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited F5 over the 6 months leading up to 10 June 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 F5 Networks, Inc.

6 months to
10 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 314 351 287
Rank change year-on-year +37 -64 +85
Contract jobs citing F5 361 178 347
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.73% 0.61% 0.80%
As % of the Vendors category 1.80% 1.27% 1.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 158 98 230
10th Percentile £350 £396 £400
25th Percentile £405 £425 £433
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -6.19% +5.00% -1.96%
75th Percentile £580 £600 £575
90th Percentile £668 £633 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £536 £500
% change year-on-year -4.94% +7.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 3
10th Percentile £44.28 - -
25th Percentile £48.68 - -
Median hourly rate £57.02 - £23.80
75th Percentile £65.01 - -
90th Percentile £69.20 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.02 - -

All Vendors
UK

F5 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 20,080 13,989 18,443
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 40.58% 47.63% 42.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,626 8,611 11,465
10th Percentile £313 £280 £269
25th Percentile £413 £404 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £501 £515
Median % change year-on-year -0.20% -2.72% -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £481 £500
% change year-on-year +4.06% -3.90% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,022 624 1,139
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.84 £12.13
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.34 £14.49
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.50 £23.50
Median % change year-on-year +27.45% +8.51% -45.35%
75th Percentile £59.56 £55.00 £58.49
90th Percentile £78.54 £69.90 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £22.94 £22.00
% change year-on-year +30.79% +4.26% -45.00%

F5
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing F5 relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

F5 job vacancy trend in the UK

F5
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing F5.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing F5

F5
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing F5 over the 6 months to 10 June 2026.

Daily rate histogram for F5 in the UK

F5
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing F5.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing F5

F5
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing F5 over the 6 months to 10 June 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for F5 in the UK

F5
Top 14 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing F5 within the UK over the 6 months to 10 June 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 +19 315 £500 -8.17% 21
UK excluding London +41 259 £510 -4.94% 17
North of England +35 126 £563 +18.42% 5
North West +44 93 £575 +21.05% 3
Work from Home -12 85 £550 +15.79% 10
West Midlands +2 77 £500 -9.26% 4
Midlands -11 77 £500 -9.99% 4
South East -24 67 £525 - 6
London -70 60 £470 -1.57% 10
Yorkshire -33 26 £478 -
Scotland +1 22 £413 -7.04% 2
South West -29 18 £495 -8.29%
North East -11 13 £650 +18.18% 2
East of England -26 3 £530 +1.92%

F5
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 10 (2.77%) SharePoint
2 5 (1.39%) Confluence
3 4 (1.11%) nginx
4 3 (0.83%) Apache
4 3 (0.83%) IIS
4 3 (0.83%) Tomcat
5 1 (0.28%) CMS
5 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 14 (3.88%) MS Visio
2 6 (1.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (1.11%) Microsoft Excel
4 2 (0.55%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 55 (15.24%) Azure
2 51 (14.13%) AWS
3 22 (6.09%) OCI
4 13 (3.60%) SaaS
5 11 (3.05%) GitHub
6 8 (2.22%) IaaS
6 8 (2.22%) Microsoft 365
7 5 (1.39%) GCP
7 5 (1.39%) Nutanix
8 4 (1.11%) Entra ID
8 4 (1.11%) Mimecast
8 4 (1.11%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 3 (0.83%) Amazon S3
9 3 (0.83%) Cloudflare
10 2 (0.55%) Amazon OpenSearch
10 2 (0.55%) Azure ExpressRoute
10 2 (0.55%) OpenShift
11 1 (0.28%) AWS CloudFormation
11 1 (0.28%) CloudBees
11 1 (0.28%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 188 (52.08%) Firewall
2 157 (43.49%) DNS
3 147 (40.72%) BIG-IP
4 146 (40.44%) BGP
5 113 (31.30%) WAN
6 112 (31.02%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
7 104 (28.81%) OSPF
8 93 (25.76%) VPN
9 89 (24.65%) LAN
10 79 (21.88%) VXLAN
11 75 (20.78%) Network Security
12 68 (18.84%) TCP/IP
13 62 (17.17%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
14 60 (16.62%) Multicast
15 58 (16.07%) Ethernet VPN
16 55 (15.24%) SSL
17 51 (14.13%) DHCP
18 50 (13.85%) Cisco Nexus
19 49 (13.57%) SD-WAN
20 42 (11.63%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (1.11%) SQL Server
2 3 (0.83%) MySQL
3 2 (0.55%) Elasticsearch
4 1 (0.28%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 31 (8.59%) JIRA
2 25 (6.93%) Fiddler
3 22 (6.09%) GitLab
4 10 (2.77%) Jenkins
5 4 (1.11%) Git
5 4 (1.11%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 51 (14.13%) Banking
2 46 (12.74%) Social Skills
3 45 (12.47%) Finance
4 38 (10.53%) Investment Banking
5 29 (8.03%) Public Sector
6 17 (4.71%) Analytical Skills
7 12 (3.32%) Financial Institution
8 11 (3.05%) Telecoms
9 6 (1.66%) Military
10 4 (1.11%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (0.83%) Legal
11 3 (0.83%) Retail
12 1 (0.28%) Billing
12 1 (0.28%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.28%) Organisational Skills
12 1 (0.28%) Police
12 1 (0.28%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 181 (50.14%) Network Engineer
2 65 (18.01%) Senior
3 56 (15.51%) Security Engineer
4 52 (14.40%) Network Security Engineer
5 45 (12.47%) Cisco Engineer
6 43 (11.91%) Cisco Network Engineer
7 41 (11.36%) Web Engineer
8 39 (10.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 38 (10.53%) Data Network Engineer
10 35 (9.70%) Architect
10 35 (9.70%) Data Engineer
11 33 (9.14%) Cisco Security Engineer
12 28 (7.76%) Senior Network Engineer
13 23 (6.37%) IP Network Engineer
14 19 (5.26%) Network Specialist
14 19 (5.26%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 18 (4.99%) Blue Coat Engineer
16 16 (4.43%) Network Architect
17 14 (3.88%) Firewall Specialist
18 9 (2.49%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (9.42%) 802.1X
2 11 (3.05%) JSON
3 7 (1.94%) LDAP
3 7 (1.94%) SAML
4 6 (1.66%) YAML
5 4 (1.11%) REST
6 3 (0.83%) LAMP
6 3 (0.83%) LEMP Stack
7 2 (0.55%) NETCONF
7 2 (0.55%) OpenConfig
7 2 (0.55%) RESTCONF
7 2 (0.55%) YANG
8 1 (0.28%) Bun
8 1 (0.28%) Elastic Stack
8 1 (0.28%) React
8 1 (0.28%) VML
Miscellaneous
1 113 (31.30%) Data Centre
2 29 (8.03%) PKI
3 27 (7.48%) Hybrid Cloud
4 25 (6.93%) Clustering
5 18 (4.99%) Management Information System
5 18 (4.99%) Public Cloud
6 13 (3.60%) Cloud Native
7 12 (3.32%) Data Protection Act
8 7 (1.94%) Onboarding
9 6 (1.66%) Private Cloud
10 5 (1.39%) Algorithms
11 3 (0.83%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 3 (0.83%) iSeries
11 3 (0.83%) Legacy Systems
11 3 (0.83%) Self-Motivation
11 3 (0.83%) Virtual Team
12 2 (0.55%) CESG
12 2 (0.55%) Cyber Threat
12 2 (0.55%) Enterprise Storage
12 2 (0.55%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 60 (16.62%) Windows
2 38 (10.53%) Linux
3 9 (2.49%) Unix
3 9 (2.49%) Windows Server
3 9 (2.49%) Windows Server 2012
3 9 (2.49%) Windows Server 2019
4 3 (0.83%) CatOS
4 3 (0.83%) CentOS
4 3 (0.83%) Ubuntu
4 3 (0.83%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 180 (49.86%) Load Balancing
2 78 (21.61%) High Availability
3 47 (13.02%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 47 (13.02%) Migration
4 46 (12.74%) Problem-Solving
5 35 (9.70%) CI/CD
5 35 (9.70%) Project Delivery
6 33 (9.14%) Network Design
6 33 (9.14%) Observability
7 32 (8.86%) Agile
8 31 (8.59%) Zero Trust
9 30 (8.31%) Change Management
10 27 (7.48%) Infrastructure as Code
11 26 (7.20%) Identity Access Management
11 26 (7.20%) Roadmaps
12 25 (6.93%) Data Loss Prevention
12 25 (6.93%) Malware Detection/Protection
12 25 (6.93%) Network Management
12 25 (6.93%) Stakeholder Management
13 24 (6.65%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 82 (22.71%) Python
2 12 (3.32%) ActionScript
3 10 (2.77%) Bash
3 10 (2.77%) JavaScript
3 10 (2.77%) SQL
4 9 (2.49%) VBA
5 8 (2.22%) PowerShell
6 3 (0.83%) Lisp
7 2 (0.55%) C++
8 1 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
8 1 (0.28%) Perl
8 1 (0.28%) Shell Script
8 1 (0.28%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 87 (24.10%) Security Cleared
2 72 (19.94%) Cisco Certification
3 49 (13.57%) SC Cleared
4 40 (11.08%) CCNP
5 29 (8.03%) DV Cleared
6 16 (4.43%) CCIE
7 12 (3.32%) Degree
8 9 (2.49%) CCNA
8 9 (2.49%) JNCIP
8 9 (2.49%) JNCIS
9 7 (1.94%) JNCIA
10 5 (1.39%) CCIE Security
11 4 (1.11%) Computer Science Degree
11 4 (1.11%) JNCIE
12 3 (0.83%) CCDP
13 2 (0.55%) BPSS Clearance
13 2 (0.55%) CCSE
13 2 (0.55%) CESG Certified Professional
13 2 (0.55%) CHECK Team Leader
13 2 (0.55%) CREST Certified
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (2.49%) QA
2 6 (1.66%) Disclosure Scotland
3 4 (1.11%) JSP 440
4 3 (0.83%) NCSC
4 3 (0.83%) NIST
4 3 (0.83%) SLA
5 2 (0.55%) GDPR
5 2 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (0.55%) RMADS
6 1 (0.28%) GRC
6 1 (0.28%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 42 (11.63%) VMware Infrastructure
2 26 (7.20%) VMware NSX
3 21 (5.82%) Active Directory
4 20 (5.54%) Firmware
5 6 (1.66%) vSphere
6 5 (1.39%) Docker
6 5 (1.39%) Virtual Servers
7 4 (1.11%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.83%) Dovecot
8 3 (0.83%) Postfix
8 3 (0.83%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.28%) IAG
9 1 (0.28%) KVM
9 1 (0.28%) ProxySG
Systems Management
1 78 (21.61%) Ansible
2 51 (14.13%) FortiGate
3 35 (9.70%) Terraform
4 12 (3.32%) Prometheus
5 11 (3.05%) Grafana
6 10 (2.77%) Single Sign-On
7 8 (2.22%) Microsoft Intune
8 7 (1.94%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 7 (1.94%) SCCM
8 7 (1.94%) WMI
9 5 (1.39%) Kubernetes
9 5 (1.39%) Salt
10 3 (0.83%) HAProxy
11 2 (0.55%) Avamar
11 2 (0.55%) Nagios
11 2 (0.55%) Red Hat Satellite
12 1 (0.28%) Argo
12 1 (0.28%) NetBackup
12 1 (0.28%) vCenter Server
12 1 (0.28%) vRealize
Vendors
1 214 (59.28%) Cisco
2 122 (33.80%) Palo Alto
3 69 (19.11%) Juniper
4 57 (15.79%) VMware
5 56 (15.51%) Fortinet
6 52 (14.40%) CheckPoint
7 47 (13.02%) Arista
8 40 (11.08%) SolarWinds
9 39 (10.80%) Splunk
10 35 (9.70%) Aruba
11 31 (8.59%) Blue Coat
12 26 (7.20%) McAfee
13 25 (6.93%) Infoblox
13 25 (6.93%) ServiceNow
14 23 (6.37%) Extreme Networks
15 21 (5.82%) Microsoft
16 18 (4.99%) NetApp
17 11 (3.05%) Zscaler
18 7 (1.94%) Meraki
19 6 (1.66%) BigPanda