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 18 September 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
18 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 327 239 383
Rank change year-on-year -88 +144 +11
Contract jobs citing F5 251 380 277
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.76% 0.99% 0.56%
As % of the Vendors category 1.61% 2.23% 1.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 138 253 198
10th Percentile £380 £380 £395
25th Percentile £420 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.76% - -
75th Percentile £613 £588 £600
90th Percentile £704 £650 £655
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £550 £490
% change year-on-year -11.00% +12.24% -6.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 4 5
10th Percentile - £22.02 -
25th Percentile £65.75 £23.16 £68.75
Median hourly rate £66.50 £23.80 £72.50
Median % change year-on-year +179.41% -67.17% +34.26%
75th Percentile £67.25 - £77.50
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.50 £22.50 £72.50
% change year-on-year +195.56% -68.97% +34.26%

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 15,579 17,006 21,896
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 47.28% 44.16% 44.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,565 10,199 14,188
10th Percentile £275 £281 £263
25th Percentile £400 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -0.94%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £700 £731 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.40% - +3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 796 678 648
10th Percentile £14.72 £14.26 £15.21
25th Percentile £17.45 £15.62 £18.63
Median hourly rate £25.15 £30.00 £43.90
Median % change year-on-year -16.17% -31.66% +83.61%
75th Percentile £43.75 £63.75 £64.50
90th Percentile £68.00 £70.00 £75.08
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.28 £30.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year -29.07% -29.41% +112.50%

F5
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing F5 as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for F5 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 18 September 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
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 18 September 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 -70 227 £490 -6.76% 49
UK excluding London -43 160 £490 -11.00% 45
London -24 77 £475 - 7
North of England -3 69 £490 -0.10% 11
Work from Home -46 60 £500 -1.23% 20
West Midlands +33 47 £420 -20.00% 4
Midlands +13 47 £420 -30.00% 7
Yorkshire 0 39 £490 -0.10% 1
North West -21 36 £475 -3.06% 9
South East -58 23 £525 -4.55% 12
Scotland +9 17 £500 -13.12% 3
South West +16 16 £575 +24.32% 8
East of England -6 2 £520 -5.45% 5
North East - 1 £550 - 1

F5
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 10 (3.98%) Confluence
2 6 (2.39%) OpenStack
2 6 (2.39%) WebSphere
3 4 (1.59%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.80%) CICS
4 2 (0.80%) nginx
4 2 (0.80%) Tomcat
5 1 (0.40%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.40%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 3 (1.20%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Cloud Services
1 95 (37.85%) AWS
2 50 (19.92%) Azure
3 39 (15.54%) GCP
4 32 (12.75%) Akamai
5 22 (8.76%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 21 (8.37%) Amazon ELB
6 21 (8.37%) Amazon S3
7 20 (7.97%) Amazon EC2
7 20 (7.97%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 11 (4.38%) SaaS
9 9 (3.59%) PaaS
10 6 (2.39%) OpenShift
11 5 (1.99%) OCI
12 4 (1.59%) Apigee
12 4 (1.59%) GitHub
12 4 (1.59%) IaaS
13 2 (0.80%) AWS CloudTrail
13 2 (0.80%) Cloudflare
13 2 (0.80%) Entra ID
13 2 (0.80%) VULTR
Communications & Networking
1 153 (60.96%) Firewall
2 85 (33.86%) Network Security
3 81 (32.27%) DNS
4 58 (23.11%) VPN
5 53 (21.12%) SSL
5 53 (21.12%) WAN
6 51 (20.32%) Wireless
7 48 (19.12%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
8 44 (17.53%) BGP
8 44 (17.53%) TCP/IP
9 40 (15.94%) LAN
9 40 (15.94%) OSPF
10 36 (14.34%) Cisco ISE
11 31 (12.35%) Cisco Nexus
12 29 (11.55%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
12 29 (11.55%) Wireshark
13 28 (11.16%) SD-WAN
14 26 (10.36%) BIG-IP
15 24 (9.56%) DHCP
16 21 (8.37%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (0.80%) NoSQL
1 2 (0.80%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (0.40%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 35 (13.94%) Jenkins
2 31 (12.35%) Git
3 22 (8.76%) GitLab
4 16 (6.37%) JIRA
5 9 (3.59%) Sonatype Nexus
6 4 (1.59%) Fiddler
6 4 (1.59%) Robot Framework
7 2 (0.80%) Bitbucket
General
1 61 (24.30%) Social Skills
2 36 (14.34%) Finance
3 32 (12.75%) Banking
4 26 (10.36%) Analytical Skills
5 21 (8.37%) Public Sector
6 19 (7.57%) Documentation Skills
6 19 (7.57%) Telecoms
7 14 (5.58%) Investment Banking
8 9 (3.59%) Legal
9 6 (2.39%) Financial Institution
10 5 (1.99%) Military
10 5 (1.99%) Retail
11 3 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
11 3 (1.20%) Retail Banking
12 1 (0.40%) Advertising
12 1 (0.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 1 (0.40%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 88 (35.06%) Network Engineer
2 36 (14.34%) Senior
3 26 (10.36%) Architect
4 24 (9.56%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 21 (8.37%) Security Engineer
6 15 (5.98%) Designer
7 13 (5.18%) Consultant
7 13 (5.18%) Network Security Engineer
8 12 (4.78%) Automation Engineer
8 12 (4.78%) Network Architect
8 12 (4.78%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
9 11 (4.38%) Cisco Engineer
9 11 (4.38%) Cisco Network Engineer
10 10 (3.98%) Analyst
10 10 (3.98%) Network Infrastructure Engineer
10 10 (3.98%) Operations Engineer
11 9 (3.59%) DevOps Engineer
11 9 (3.59%) Juniper Engineer
11 9 (3.59%) Senior DevOps
11 9 (3.59%) Senior DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (3.98%) 802.1X
2 9 (3.59%) Middleware
3 8 (3.19%) REST
4 5 (1.99%) SOAP
5 4 (1.59%) AngularJS
5 4 (1.59%) JSON
5 4 (1.59%) SailPoint
6 3 (1.20%) RESTful
6 3 (1.20%) XML
7 2 (0.80%) LDAP
7 2 (0.80%) Regular Expression
Miscellaneous
1 56 (22.31%) Data Centre
2 19 (7.57%) Management Information System
3 14 (5.58%) Security Posture
4 13 (5.18%) Private Cloud
5 11 (4.38%) Hybrid Cloud
6 10 (3.98%) Cloud Native
6 10 (3.98%) Data Protection Act
6 10 (3.98%) Onboarding
7 5 (1.99%) Blackberry
7 5 (1.99%) Legacy Systems
7 5 (1.99%) Video Conferencing
8 4 (1.59%) Legacy Applications
8 4 (1.59%) Product Ownership
9 3 (1.20%) Public Cloud
10 2 (0.80%) Clustering
10 2 (0.80%) Linux Command Line
10 2 (0.80%) Mainframe
10 2 (0.80%) Replication
10 2 (0.80%) Video\Live Streaming
10 2 (0.80%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 27 (10.76%) Linux
2 26 (10.36%) Windows
3 16 (6.37%) Unix
4 9 (3.59%) Windows Server
5 3 (1.20%) VMS
6 2 (0.80%) Solaris
6 2 (0.80%) zOS
7 1 (0.40%) CentOS
7 1 (0.40%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.40%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 58 (23.11%) Load Balancing
2 45 (17.93%) High Availability
3 41 (16.33%) Migration
4 36 (14.34%) DevOps
5 34 (13.55%) Problem-Solving
6 32 (12.75%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 31 (12.35%) CI/CD
8 30 (11.95%) Agile
8 30 (11.95%) DevSecOps
9 27 (10.76%) Incident Response
9 27 (10.76%) Infrastructure Automation
10 26 (10.36%) Network Monitoring
11 24 (9.56%) ITIL
12 19 (7.57%) Change Management
12 19 (7.57%) Incident Management
12 19 (7.57%) Infrastructure as Code
13 18 (7.17%) OWASP
13 18 (7.17%) Root Cause Analysis
14 17 (6.77%) Cybersecurity
14 17 (6.77%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 72 (28.69%) Python
2 28 (11.16%) Bash
3 15 (5.98%) Perl
4 13 (5.18%) PowerShell
5 8 (3.19%) SQL
6 7 (2.79%) Java
7 5 (1.99%) VB
8 4 (1.59%) JavaScript
8 4 (1.59%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 63 (25.10%) Security Cleared
2 58 (23.11%) Cisco Certification
3 52 (20.72%) SC Cleared
4 42 (16.73%) CCNP
5 23 (9.16%) CCIE
6 15 (5.98%) Degree
7 13 (5.18%) DV Cleared
7 13 (5.18%) JNCIE
8 9 (3.59%) AWS Certification
9 8 (3.19%) CCSA
9 8 (3.19%) Computer Science Degree
10 7 (2.79%) CCNA
10 7 (2.79%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 5 (1.99%) Master's Degree
12 4 (1.59%) CCIE Routing and Switching
12 4 (1.59%) CCSE
13 3 (1.20%) CCDP
13 3 (1.20%) JNCIP
14 2 (0.80%) ITIL Certification
14 2 (0.80%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (2.79%) SLA
2 5 (1.99%) COBIT
3 4 (1.59%) GRC
4 3 (1.20%) Disclosure Scotland
5 2 (0.80%) Actionable Recommendations
5 2 (0.80%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.40%) QA
System Software
1 38 (15.14%) VMware Infrastructure
2 20 (7.97%) Docker
3 16 (6.37%) VMware NSX
4 10 (3.98%) Active Directory
5 8 (3.19%) Firmware
6 7 (2.79%) vSphere
7 3 (1.20%) Hyper-V
7 3 (1.20%) Virtual Machines
7 3 (1.20%) VMware ESXi
8 2 (0.80%) KVM
8 2 (0.80%) Snort
9 1 (0.40%) NFS
9 1 (0.40%) SRDF
9 1 (0.40%) Veritas Cluster Server
9 1 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.40%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.40%) Xen
9 1 (0.40%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 80 (31.87%) Ansible
2 58 (23.11%) Terraform
3 15 (5.98%) FortiGate
4 14 (5.58%) CSIRT
5 5 (1.99%) CA Spectrum
5 5 (1.99%) vCenter Server
6 4 (1.59%) OpenView
7 3 (1.20%) HAProxy
7 3 (1.20%) vRealize
8 2 (0.80%) Kubernetes
8 2 (0.80%) PowerCLI
9 1 (0.40%) Network Intrusion Detection System
9 1 (0.40%) Puppet
9 1 (0.40%) SCCM
Vendors
1 126 (50.20%) Cisco
2 66 (26.29%) CheckPoint
3 60 (23.90%) Palo Alto
4 56 (22.31%) Juniper
5 45 (17.93%) VMware
6 38 (15.14%) Fortinet
6 38 (15.14%) SolarWinds
7 19 (7.57%) Microsoft
8 17 (6.77%) Meraki
9 16 (6.37%) Splunk
9 16 (6.37%) Zscaler
10 15 (5.98%) Blue Coat
11 13 (5.18%) Citrix
12 11 (4.38%) Infoblox
12 11 (4.38%) Oracle
13 10 (3.98%) HP
13 10 (3.98%) ServiceNow
14 9 (3.59%) LogicMonitor
15 8 (3.19%) Dell
15 8 (3.19%) NetApp