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 29 December 2025, 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
29 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 336 284 359
Rank change year-on-year -52 +75 +50
Contract jobs citing F5 275 272 249
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.75% 0.82% 0.58%
As % of the Vendors category 1.59% 1.78% 1.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 136 164 161
10th Percentile £350 £350 £400
25th Percentile £413 £427 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £504 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.74% -6.28% +1.42%
75th Percentile £625 £588 £626
90th Percentile £706 £638 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £493 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -6.19% +5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 1 7
10th Percentile £46.95 - £64.65
25th Percentile £50.08 £21.25 £68.75
Median hourly rate £57.61 £22.50 £72.50
Median % change year-on-year +156.04% -68.97% +271.79%
75th Percentile £63.58 £23.75 £76.88
90th Percentile £65.78 - £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.61 £22.50 £72.50
% change year-on-year +156.04% -68.97% -7.88%

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 17,315 15,273 19,332
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 46.93% 45.84% 44.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,057 9,100 12,272
10th Percentile £294 £285 £252
25th Percentile £409 £409 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -2.42%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £700 £717 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.60% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 831 447 661
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.62 £14.27
25th Percentile £17.99 £18.51 £19.25
Median hourly rate £23.83 £27.50 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year -13.36% -40.06% +76.99%
75th Percentile £44.75 £61.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £76.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.50 £25.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year -14.00% -45.86% +102.88%

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 29 December 2025.

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 29 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for F5 in the UK

F5
Top 15 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 29 December 2025. 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 -37 248 £500 - 129
UK excluding London -26 189 £493 -6.19% 134
North of England -2 99 £550 +12.24% 31
Work from Home -4 78 £500 +2.04% 25
Midlands -1 70 £390 -40.05% 24
West Midlands +32 69 £390 -33.98% 16
North West +6 69 £500 +2.04% 13
London -24 66 £575 +21.05% 11
Yorkshire -16 43 £575 +15.00% 15
South East -46 28 £500 -4.76% 29
Scotland +16 19 £500 -6.98% 8
South West -20 8 £520 +8.05% 15
East of England -24 2 - - 25
North East -8 1 £550 - 3
East Midlands -42 1 - - 7

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 (3.64%) Confluence
1 10 (3.64%) OpenStack
2 5 (1.82%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.73%) CICS
3 2 (0.73%) Tomcat
3 2 (0.73%) WebSphere
4 1 (0.36%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 12 (4.36%) MS Visio
2 5 (1.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.73%) Microsoft Excel
3 2 (0.73%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 100 (36.36%) AWS
2 53 (19.27%) Azure
3 48 (17.45%) GCP
4 31 (11.27%) Akamai
5 29 (10.55%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 25 (9.09%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 24 (8.73%) Amazon ELB
8 23 (8.36%) Amazon EC2
8 23 (8.36%) Amazon S3
9 9 (3.27%) OpenShift
10 6 (2.18%) OCI
11 5 (1.82%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 4 (1.45%) Cloudflare
13 3 (1.09%) GitHub
13 3 (1.09%) Microsoft 365
13 3 (1.09%) Mimecast
14 2 (0.73%) Apigee
14 2 (0.73%) AWS CloudTrail
14 2 (0.73%) PaaS
14 2 (0.73%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 154 (56.00%) Firewall
2 113 (41.09%) DNS
3 86 (31.27%) Network Security
4 76 (27.64%) SSL
5 69 (25.09%) TCP/IP
6 68 (24.73%) VPN
7 66 (24.00%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
8 58 (21.09%) WAN
9 54 (19.64%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
10 49 (17.82%) BGP
11 45 (16.36%) Wireshark
12 39 (14.18%) HTTP
13 38 (13.82%) LAN
13 38 (13.82%) Wireless
14 37 (13.45%) BIG-IP
15 36 (13.09%) DMZ
15 36 (13.09%) OSPF
16 27 (9.82%) MPLS
17 24 (8.73%) Cisco Nexus
18 22 (8.00%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (0.73%) NoSQL
1 2 (0.73%) PostgreSQL
1 2 (0.73%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 34 (12.36%) Git
1 34 (12.36%) Jenkins
2 22 (8.00%) GitLab
3 20 (7.27%) Fiddler
4 11 (4.00%) JIRA
5 5 (1.82%) Sonatype Nexus
6 4 (1.45%) Robot Framework
7 2 (0.73%) Rational DOORS
General
1 80 (29.09%) Social Skills
2 43 (15.64%) Banking
3 39 (14.18%) Analytical Skills
4 31 (11.27%) Finance
4 31 (11.27%) Investment Banking
5 30 (10.91%) Public Sector
6 21 (7.64%) Documentation Skills
7 20 (7.27%) Telecoms
8 10 (3.64%) Retail
9 8 (2.91%) Financial Institution
10 7 (2.55%) Military
11 6 (2.18%) Influencing Skills
11 6 (2.18%) Legal
11 6 (2.18%) Presentation Skills
12 4 (1.45%) Retail Banking
13 3 (1.09%) Organisational Skills
14 1 (0.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 95 (34.55%) Network Engineer
2 35 (12.73%) Senior
3 31 (11.27%) Architect
4 26 (9.45%) Security Engineer
5 23 (8.36%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 20 (7.27%) Web Engineer
7 18 (6.55%) Network Architect
8 16 (5.82%) Operations Engineer
9 14 (5.09%) Network Security Engineer
9 14 (5.09%) Solutions Architect
10 13 (4.73%) Automation Engineer
11 12 (4.36%) DevOps Engineer
11 12 (4.36%) Senior DevOps
11 12 (4.36%) Senior DevOps Engineer
12 10 (3.64%) Blue Coat Engineer
12 10 (3.64%) Designer
12 10 (3.64%) IP Network Engineer
12 10 (3.64%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 9 (3.27%) Junior
13 9 (3.27%) Junior Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (4.73%) 802.1X
2 6 (2.18%) JSON
2 6 (2.18%) LDAP
2 6 (2.18%) REST
3 5 (1.82%) Middleware
3 5 (1.82%) XML
4 4 (1.45%) NETCONF
4 4 (1.45%) VML
4 4 (1.45%) YANG
5 3 (1.09%) OpenConfig
5 3 (1.09%) SAML
5 3 (1.09%) SOAP
6 2 (0.73%) AngularJS
6 2 (0.73%) Regular Expression
6 2 (0.73%) RESTCONF
7 1 (0.36%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 54 (19.64%) Data Centre
2 34 (12.36%) Management Information System
3 20 (7.27%) Security Posture
4 13 (4.73%) Data Protection Act
5 10 (3.64%) Cloud Native
6 9 (3.27%) Hybrid Cloud
7 8 (2.91%) Onboarding
7 8 (2.91%) Private Cloud
8 6 (2.18%) Legacy Systems
9 3 (1.09%) Distributed Architecture
9 3 (1.09%) Public Cloud
9 3 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
10 2 (0.73%) Analytical Mindset
10 2 (0.73%) Clustering
10 2 (0.73%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 2 (0.73%) Linux Command Line
10 2 (0.73%) Mainframe
10 2 (0.73%) PKI
10 2 (0.73%) Replication
10 2 (0.73%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 24 (8.73%) Linux
1 24 (8.73%) Windows
2 11 (4.00%) Unix
3 8 (2.91%) Windows Server
4 3 (1.09%) Windows Server 2012
4 3 (1.09%) Windows Server 2019
5 2 (0.73%) CatOS
5 2 (0.73%) Solaris
5 2 (0.73%) VMS
5 2 (0.73%) zOS
6 1 (0.36%) MVS
6 1 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 100 (36.36%) Load Balancing
2 47 (17.09%) DevOps
3 45 (16.36%) Incident Response
4 40 (14.55%) CI/CD
5 39 (14.18%) DevSecOps
5 39 (14.18%) Problem-Solving
6 38 (13.82%) High Availability
7 36 (13.09%) Migration
8 33 (12.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 32 (11.64%) Change Management
10 31 (11.27%) Business Strategy
10 31 (11.27%) Infrastructure Automation
11 27 (9.82%) Infrastructure as Code
12 25 (9.09%) Application Security
13 24 (8.73%) Cybersecurity
13 24 (8.73%) OWASP
13 24 (8.73%) Stakeholder Management
13 24 (8.73%) Test Automation
14 22 (8.00%) Mentoring
14 22 (8.00%) Network Design
Programming Languages
1 86 (31.27%) Python
2 32 (11.64%) Bash
3 13 (4.73%) Perl
4 9 (3.27%) PowerShell
5 5 (1.82%) Java
5 5 (1.82%) SQL
6 4 (1.45%) Shell Script
7 2 (0.73%) JavaScript
8 1 (0.36%) VB
Qualifications
1 65 (23.64%) Security Cleared
2 51 (18.55%) SC Cleared
3 41 (14.91%) Cisco Certification
4 30 (10.91%) CCNP
5 25 (9.09%) CCIE
6 14 (5.09%) JNCIE
7 10 (3.64%) AWS Certification
8 7 (2.55%) CCNA
8 7 (2.55%) Degree
8 7 (2.55%) DV Cleared
9 6 (2.18%) JNCIP
10 5 (1.82%) CISSP
11 4 (1.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 4 (1.45%) CCDP
11 4 (1.45%) CCIE Security
11 4 (1.45%) CCSE
11 4 (1.45%) CCSP
12 3 (1.09%) Azure Certification
12 3 (1.09%) Computer Science Degree
12 3 (1.09%) GWAPT
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (2.55%) NIST
1 7 (2.55%) PCI DSS
2 6 (2.18%) COBIT
2 6 (2.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 5 (1.82%) GDPR
4 3 (1.09%) SLA
5 2 (0.73%) Actionable Recommendations
5 2 (0.73%) Disclosure Scotland
5 2 (0.73%) JSP 440
6 1 (0.36%) Accessibility
6 1 (0.36%) NCSC
6 1 (0.36%) RMADS
System Software
1 66 (24.00%) VMware Infrastructure
2 31 (11.27%) Docker
2 31 (11.27%) VMware NSX
3 13 (4.73%) Active Directory
4 12 (4.36%) Firmware
4 12 (4.36%) vSphere
5 3 (1.09%) KVM
5 3 (1.09%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.73%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.73%) ProxySG
6 2 (0.73%) Snort
6 2 (0.73%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (0.73%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.73%) Xen
7 1 (0.36%) NFS
7 1 (0.36%) RHEV
7 1 (0.36%) SRDF
7 1 (0.36%) Veritas Cluster Server
7 1 (0.36%) XenApp
7 1 (0.36%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 81 (29.45%) Ansible
2 68 (24.73%) Terraform
3 20 (7.27%) CSIRT
4 13 (4.73%) FortiGate
5 10 (3.64%) Kubernetes
6 4 (1.45%) Single Sign-On
6 4 (1.45%) vCenter Server
7 3 (1.09%) Microsoft Intune
7 3 (1.09%) Nagios
7 3 (1.09%) SCCM
7 3 (1.09%) vRealize
8 2 (0.73%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 2 (0.73%) Prometheus
9 1 (0.36%) Argo
9 1 (0.36%) Grafana
9 1 (0.36%) Podman
9 1 (0.36%) Proxmox
9 1 (0.36%) Salt
9 1 (0.36%) SCOM
9 1 (0.36%) WhatsUp Gold
Vendors
1 101 (36.73%) Cisco
2 84 (30.55%) VMware
3 73 (26.55%) Palo Alto
4 67 (24.36%) CheckPoint
5 48 (17.45%) Juniper
6 42 (15.27%) Blue Coat
7 31 (11.27%) Fortinet
7 31 (11.27%) McAfee
8 22 (8.00%) Splunk
9 18 (6.55%) Meraki
9 18 (6.55%) NetApp
9 18 (6.55%) SolarWinds
9 18 (6.55%) Zscaler
10 13 (4.73%) Microsoft
11 9 (3.27%) Aruba
11 9 (3.27%) Oracle
12 8 (2.91%) Infoblox
12 8 (2.91%) Nokia
13 7 (2.55%) CrowdStrike
14 6 (2.18%) ServiceNow