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 April 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
29 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 316 351 312
Rank change year-on-year +35 -39 +63
Contract jobs citing F5 333 180 300
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.71% 0.62% 0.69%
As % of the Vendors category 1.68% 1.30% 1.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 139 104 195
10th Percentile £335 £384 £400
25th Percentile £400 £424 £433
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £536 £500
Median % change year-on-year -11.38% +7.20% -4.76%
75th Percentile £550 £600 £594
90th Percentile £669 £651 £704
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £542 £500
% change year-on-year -7.79% +8.45% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 3
10th Percentile £42.05 - -
25th Percentile £43.11 - -
Median hourly rate £48.72 - £23.80
75th Percentile £62.29 - £45.65
90th Percentile £68.11 - £58.76
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.72 - £63.00

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 19,803 13,848 18,355
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 42.06% 47.47% 42.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,660 8,700 11,393
10th Percentile £313 £290 £263
25th Percentile £413 £406 £403
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £518
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -0.48% -1.43%
75th Percentile £600 £619 £628
90th Percentile £700 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 995 560 1,077
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.99 £12.00
25th Percentile £18.54 £18.13 £14.36
Median hourly rate £30.50 £27.13 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +12.44% +20.56% -48.86%
75th Percentile £60.00 £57.52 £57.33
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.13 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.00 £24.19 £21.46
% change year-on-year +11.64% +12.70% -46.08%

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 April 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 29 April 2026.

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 April 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 +38 295 £495 -9.55% 26
UK excluding London +32 230 £500 -7.79% 26
North of England +24 110 £550 +8.91% 11
North West +48 89 £600 +26.32% 6
Midlands -13 72 £340 -41.53% 1
West Midlands -1 71 £340 -38.29% 1
Work from Home -29 68 £500 +2.56% 12
London -69 65 £470 -2.08% 5
South East -17 64 £525 - 3
Yorkshire -43 20 £478 -
Scotland +11 18 £413 -5.71% 2
South West -43 16 £465 -11.43% 6
North East -12 5 - - 5
East of England -37 2 £530 +13.98% 1
East Midlands -47 1 - -

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 8 (2.40%) SharePoint
2 6 (1.80%) Confluence
3 1 (0.30%) CMS
3 1 (0.30%) nginx
Applications
1 22 (6.61%) MS Visio
2 8 (2.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 5 (1.50%) Microsoft Excel
4 4 (1.20%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 38 (11.41%) Azure
2 37 (11.11%) AWS
3 11 (3.30%) OCI
4 7 (2.10%) GCP
4 7 (2.10%) Microsoft 365
5 6 (1.80%) SaaS
6 5 (1.50%) Nutanix
6 5 (1.50%) OpenShift
7 4 (1.20%) GitHub
7 4 (1.20%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 3 (0.90%) Amazon S3
8 3 (0.90%) Entra ID
9 2 (0.60%) Amazon OpenSearch
9 2 (0.60%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 2 (0.60%) Mimecast
10 1 (0.30%) Amazon EC2
10 1 (0.30%) Amazon GuardDuty
10 1 (0.30%) CloudBees
10 1 (0.30%) GitHub Actions
10 1 (0.30%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 169 (50.75%) Firewall
2 149 (44.74%) DNS
3 133 (39.94%) BGP
4 127 (38.14%) BIG-IP
5 107 (32.13%) WAN
6 99 (29.73%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
7 92 (27.63%) OSPF
8 90 (27.03%) VPN
9 87 (26.13%) LAN
10 78 (23.42%) Network Security
11 67 (20.12%) TCP/IP
12 61 (18.32%) VXLAN
13 58 (17.42%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
14 57 (17.12%) SSL
15 56 (16.82%) Multicast
16 49 (14.71%) Cisco Nexus
17 48 (14.41%) HTTP
18 46 (13.81%) Ethernet VPN
19 44 (13.21%) DHCP
20 43 (12.91%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (0.60%) Elasticsearch
1 2 (0.60%) SQL Server
2 1 (0.30%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 28 (8.41%) Fiddler
2 18 (5.41%) JIRA
3 11 (3.30%) GitLab
4 5 (1.50%) Git
5 4 (1.20%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.60%) Jenkins
General
1 54 (16.22%) Banking
2 48 (14.41%) Social Skills
3 42 (12.61%) Finance
4 39 (11.71%) Investment Banking
5 27 (8.11%) Public Sector
6 16 (4.80%) Analytical Skills
7 15 (4.50%) Financial Institution
8 13 (3.90%) Telecoms
9 9 (2.70%) Military
10 6 (1.80%) Retail
11 5 (1.50%) Documentation Skills
12 3 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
13 2 (0.60%) Organisational Skills
13 2 (0.60%) Presentation Skills
14 1 (0.30%) Billing
14 1 (0.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 178 (53.45%) Network Engineer
2 54 (16.22%) Senior
3 52 (15.62%) Security Engineer
4 48 (14.41%) Network Security Engineer
5 43 (12.91%) Web Engineer
6 40 (12.01%) Architect
7 38 (11.41%) Cisco Engineer
7 38 (11.41%) Cisco Network Engineer
8 35 (10.51%) Data Network Engineer
9 32 (9.61%) Data Engineer
10 30 (9.01%) Cisco Security Engineer
11 28 (8.41%) Senior Network Engineer
12 27 (8.11%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 24 (7.21%) IP Network Engineer
14 19 (5.71%) Blue Coat Engineer
14 19 (5.71%) Network Specialist
15 18 (5.41%) Network Architect
16 14 (4.20%) Firewall Specialist
17 10 (3.00%) Junior
17 10 (3.00%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (9.01%) 802.1X
2 11 (3.30%) LDAP
3 10 (3.00%) SAML
4 9 (2.70%) JSON
5 5 (1.50%) NETCONF
5 5 (1.50%) YANG
6 4 (1.20%) OpenConfig
6 4 (1.20%) RESTCONF
6 4 (1.20%) VML
7 3 (0.90%) REST
8 2 (0.60%) YAML
9 1 (0.30%) Elastic Stack
9 1 (0.30%) React
9 1 (0.30%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 90 (27.03%) Data Centre
2 28 (8.41%) PKI
3 24 (7.21%) Clustering
4 21 (6.31%) Management Information System
5 18 (5.41%) Hybrid Cloud
6 16 (4.80%) Public Cloud
7 13 (3.90%) Data Protection Act
8 6 (1.80%) Private Cloud
9 5 (1.50%) Algorithms
9 5 (1.50%) Self-Motivation
10 4 (1.20%) Analytical Mindset
10 4 (1.20%) Cloud Native
10 4 (1.20%) Onboarding
11 3 (0.90%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 3 (0.90%) iSeries
11 3 (0.90%) Virtual Team
12 2 (0.60%) CESG
12 2 (0.60%) Cyber Threat
12 2 (0.60%) Enterprise Software
12 2 (0.60%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 48 (14.41%) Windows
2 24 (7.21%) Linux
3 9 (2.70%) Unix
4 8 (2.40%) Windows Server
5 7 (2.10%) Windows Server 2012
5 7 (2.10%) Windows Server 2019
6 5 (1.50%) CatOS
7 3 (0.90%) Windows Server 2016
8 1 (0.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 170 (51.05%) Load Balancing
2 67 (20.12%) High Availability
3 48 (14.41%) Problem-Solving
4 43 (12.91%) Migration
5 33 (9.91%) Observability
6 32 (9.61%) Change Management
7 31 (9.31%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 28 (8.41%) Data Loss Prevention
8 28 (8.41%) Malware Detection/Protection
8 28 (8.41%) Network Design
9 27 (8.11%) Project Delivery
10 26 (7.81%) Identity Access Management
11 24 (7.21%) Roadmaps
12 23 (6.91%) Stakeholder Management
13 22 (6.61%) ITIL
14 19 (5.71%) Technical Leadership
15 18 (5.41%) Agile
16 17 (5.11%) Infrastructure as Code
16 17 (5.11%) Zero Trust
17 16 (4.80%) Data Protection
Programming Languages
1 60 (18.02%) Python
2 8 (2.40%) Bash
3 6 (1.80%) JavaScript
3 6 (1.80%) VBA
4 5 (1.50%) PowerShell
5 4 (1.20%) ActionScript
6 3 (0.90%) SQL
7 2 (0.60%) C++
8 1 (0.30%) Kusto Query Language
8 1 (0.30%) Lisp
8 1 (0.30%) Shell Script
8 1 (0.30%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 83 (24.92%) Security Cleared
2 70 (21.02%) Cisco Certification
3 46 (13.81%) SC Cleared
4 36 (10.81%) CCNP
5 28 (8.41%) DV Cleared
6 20 (6.01%) CCIE
7 12 (3.60%) CCNA
8 11 (3.30%) JNCIS
9 10 (3.00%) JNCIP
10 8 (2.40%) Degree
10 8 (2.40%) JNCIA
11 7 (2.10%) JNCIE
12 4 (1.20%) Computer Science Degree
13 3 (0.90%) CCDP
13 3 (0.90%) CCIE Security
13 3 (0.90%) CCSE
14 2 (0.60%) BPSS Clearance
14 2 (0.60%) CESG Certified Professional
14 2 (0.60%) CHECK Team Leader
14 2 (0.60%) CREST Certified
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (1.80%) QA
2 5 (1.50%) Disclosure Scotland
2 5 (1.50%) JSP 440
2 5 (1.50%) SLA
3 4 (1.20%) NIST
4 3 (0.90%) NCSC
5 2 (0.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (0.60%) RMADS
6 1 (0.30%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 52 (15.62%) VMware Infrastructure
2 33 (9.91%) VMware NSX
3 19 (5.71%) Active Directory
3 19 (5.71%) Firmware
4 7 (2.10%) Docker
4 7 (2.10%) vSphere
5 5 (1.50%) Virtual Servers
6 4 (1.20%) Virtual Desktop
6 4 (1.20%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.60%) KVM
7 2 (0.60%) ProxySG
8 1 (0.30%) IAG
8 1 (0.30%) RHEV
8 1 (0.30%) Xen
8 1 (0.30%) XenApp
8 1 (0.30%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 64 (19.22%) Ansible
2 51 (15.32%) FortiGate
3 25 (7.51%) Terraform
4 13 (3.90%) Prometheus
4 13 (3.90%) Single Sign-On
5 11 (3.30%) Grafana
6 7 (2.10%) Kubernetes
6 7 (2.10%) Microsoft Intune
6 7 (2.10%) SCCM
7 5 (1.50%) Salt
8 4 (1.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 4 (1.20%) Nagios
9 2 (0.60%) Argo
9 2 (0.60%) Red Hat Satellite
10 1 (0.30%) Backup Exec
10 1 (0.30%) NetBackup
10 1 (0.30%) Norton AntiVirus
10 1 (0.30%) SCOM
10 1 (0.30%) vCenter Server
10 1 (0.30%) WSUS
Vendors
1 199 (59.76%) Cisco
2 101 (30.33%) Palo Alto
3 70 (21.02%) VMware
4 67 (20.12%) Juniper
5 58 (17.42%) CheckPoint
6 40 (12.01%) Fortinet
7 35 (10.51%) Arista
7 35 (10.51%) Blue Coat
8 34 (10.21%) SolarWinds
9 32 (9.61%) McAfee
10 31 (9.31%) Splunk
11 23 (6.91%) Aruba
11 23 (6.91%) Extreme Networks
12 22 (6.61%) Infoblox
12 22 (6.61%) Microsoft
13 20 (6.01%) NetApp
14 18 (5.41%) ServiceNow
15 14 (4.20%) Zscaler
16 10 (3.00%) Meraki
17 6 (1.80%) BigPanda