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 8 January 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
8 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 334 298 353
Rank change year-on-year -36 +55 +24
Contract jobs citing F5 270 249 253
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.73% 0.77% 0.60%
As % of the Vendors category 1.58% 1.69% 1.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 133 145 166
10th Percentile £350 £400 £400
25th Percentile £413 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -4.65% +1.42%
75th Percentile £625 £588 £625
90th Percentile £700 £642 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £498 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -5.24% +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 17,105 14,765 18,767
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 46.35% 45.75% 44.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,975 8,766 11,900
10th Percentile £300 £285 £253
25th Percentile £410 £409 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -2.33%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £700 £715 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 808 432 657
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.62 £14.16
25th Percentile £17.96 £19.44 £18.93
Median hourly rate £23.83 £27.24 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -12.53% -38.79% +61.82%
75th Percentile £47.00 £60.19 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £79.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.48 £25.00 £45.88
% change year-on-year -14.08% -45.51% +91.17%

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 8 January 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 8 January 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 8 January 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 -37 242 £500 -2.44% 42
UK excluding London -37 187 £498 -5.24% 45
North of England -2 98 £563 +14.80% 5
Work from Home -2 80 £500 +2.04% 30
Midlands +4 72 £390 -37.10% 4
West Midlands +23 71 £390 -31.13% 3
North West +6 69 £500 +2.04% 3
London -11 62 £575 +21.05% 7
Yorkshire -17 42 £575 +15.00% 1
South East -59 27 £500 -4.76% 14
Scotland +17 19 £500 -4.76% 6
South West -23 8 £520 +8.05% 3
East of England -22 2 - - 10
North East -12 1 £550 - 1
East Midlands -47 1 - - 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 10 (3.70%) Confluence
1 10 (3.70%) OpenStack
2 5 (1.85%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.74%) CICS
3 2 (0.74%) Tomcat
3 2 (0.74%) WebSphere
4 1 (0.37%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 12 (4.44%) MS Visio
2 5 (1.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.74%) Microsoft Excel
3 2 (0.74%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 98 (36.30%) AWS
2 52 (19.26%) Azure
3 48 (17.78%) GCP
4 29 (10.74%) Akamai
4 29 (10.74%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 25 (9.26%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 24 (8.89%) Amazon ELB
7 23 (8.52%) Amazon EC2
7 23 (8.52%) Amazon S3
8 9 (3.33%) OpenShift
9 6 (2.22%) OCI
10 5 (1.85%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 4 (1.48%) Cloudflare
12 3 (1.11%) GitHub
12 3 (1.11%) Microsoft 365
12 3 (1.11%) Mimecast
13 2 (0.74%) Apigee
13 2 (0.74%) AWS CloudTrail
13 2 (0.74%) AWS Direct Connect
13 2 (0.74%) VULTR
Communications & Networking
1 151 (55.93%) Firewall
2 113 (41.85%) DNS
3 83 (30.74%) Network Security
4 77 (28.52%) SSL
5 71 (26.30%) TCP/IP
6 67 (24.81%) VPN
7 63 (23.33%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
8 57 (21.11%) WAN
9 54 (20.00%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
10 47 (17.41%) BGP
11 45 (16.67%) Wireshark
12 41 (15.19%) HTTP
13 40 (14.81%) BIG-IP
14 36 (13.33%) LAN
14 36 (13.33%) Wireless
15 35 (12.96%) DMZ
16 33 (12.22%) OSPF
17 27 (10.00%) MPLS
18 21 (7.78%) Cisco Nexus
18 21 (7.78%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (0.74%) NoSQL
1 2 (0.74%) PostgreSQL
1 2 (0.74%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 33 (12.22%) Git
1 33 (12.22%) Jenkins
2 22 (8.15%) Fiddler
3 21 (7.78%) GitLab
4 11 (4.07%) JIRA
5 5 (1.85%) Sonatype Nexus
6 3 (1.11%) Robot Framework
7 2 (0.74%) Rational DOORS
General
1 74 (27.41%) Social Skills
2 45 (16.67%) Banking
3 37 (13.70%) Analytical Skills
4 33 (12.22%) Investment Banking
5 29 (10.74%) Finance
5 29 (10.74%) Public Sector
6 21 (7.78%) Documentation Skills
7 20 (7.41%) Telecoms
8 10 (3.70%) Retail
9 7 (2.59%) Military
10 6 (2.22%) Financial Institution
10 6 (2.22%) Influencing Skills
10 6 (2.22%) Legal
10 6 (2.22%) Presentation Skills
11 4 (1.48%) Retail Banking
12 3 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
13 1 (0.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 94 (34.81%) Network Engineer
2 34 (12.59%) Senior
3 31 (11.48%) Architect
4 26 (9.63%) Security Engineer
5 22 (8.15%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 22 (8.15%) Web Engineer
6 18 (6.67%) Network Architect
7 16 (5.93%) Operations Engineer
8 14 (5.19%) Network Security Engineer
8 14 (5.19%) Solutions Architect
9 12 (4.44%) DevOps Engineer
9 12 (4.44%) Senior DevOps
9 12 (4.44%) Senior DevOps Engineer
10 11 (4.07%) Automation Engineer
10 11 (4.07%) Blue Coat Engineer
10 11 (4.07%) IP Network Engineer
11 10 (3.70%) Junior
11 10 (3.70%) Junior Network Engineer
11 10 (3.70%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 8 (2.96%) Senior Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (4.81%) 802.1X
2 6 (2.22%) JSON
2 6 (2.22%) LDAP
2 6 (2.22%) REST
3 5 (1.85%) XML
4 4 (1.48%) Middleware
4 4 (1.48%) NETCONF
4 4 (1.48%) VML
4 4 (1.48%) YANG
5 3 (1.11%) OpenConfig
5 3 (1.11%) SAML
5 3 (1.11%) SOAP
6 2 (0.74%) AngularJS
6 2 (0.74%) Regular Expression
6 2 (0.74%) RESTCONF
7 1 (0.37%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 54 (20.00%) Data Centre
2 34 (12.59%) Management Information System
3 20 (7.41%) Security Posture
4 11 (4.07%) Data Protection Act
5 10 (3.70%) Cloud Native
6 9 (3.33%) Hybrid Cloud
7 8 (2.96%) Onboarding
8 7 (2.59%) Private Cloud
9 6 (2.22%) Legacy Systems
10 3 (1.11%) Distributed Architecture
10 3 (1.11%) Public Cloud
10 3 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
11 2 (0.74%) Analytical Mindset
11 2 (0.74%) Clustering
11 2 (0.74%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 2 (0.74%) Linux Command Line
11 2 (0.74%) Mainframe
11 2 (0.74%) PKI
11 2 (0.74%) Replication
11 2 (0.74%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 23 (8.52%) Windows
2 22 (8.15%) Linux
3 10 (3.70%) Unix
4 7 (2.59%) Windows Server
5 3 (1.11%) Windows Server 2012
5 3 (1.11%) Windows Server 2019
6 2 (0.74%) CatOS
6 2 (0.74%) Solaris
6 2 (0.74%) VMS
6 2 (0.74%) zOS
7 1 (0.37%) MVS
7 1 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.37%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 99 (36.67%) Load Balancing
2 47 (17.41%) DevOps
3 45 (16.67%) Incident Response
4 40 (14.81%) CI/CD
5 39 (14.44%) DevSecOps
6 36 (13.33%) Migration
6 36 (13.33%) Problem-Solving
7 35 (12.96%) High Availability
8 32 (11.85%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 31 (11.48%) Change Management
10 30 (11.11%) Business Strategy
11 29 (10.74%) Infrastructure Automation
12 27 (10.00%) Infrastructure as Code
13 25 (9.26%) Application Security
14 24 (8.89%) OWASP
14 24 (8.89%) Stakeholder Management
15 23 (8.52%) Test Automation
16 22 (8.15%) Cybersecurity
16 22 (8.15%) Mentoring
16 22 (8.15%) Network Design
Programming Languages
1 84 (31.11%) Python
2 32 (11.85%) Bash
3 12 (4.44%) Perl
4 8 (2.96%) PowerShell
5 5 (1.85%) Java
5 5 (1.85%) SQL
6 4 (1.48%) Shell Script
7 2 (0.74%) JavaScript
Qualifications
1 65 (24.07%) Security Cleared
2 51 (18.89%) SC Cleared
3 40 (14.81%) Cisco Certification
4 29 (10.74%) CCNP
5 25 (9.26%) CCIE
6 14 (5.19%) JNCIE
7 10 (3.70%) AWS Certification
8 8 (2.96%) DV Cleared
9 7 (2.59%) CCNA
9 7 (2.59%) Degree
10 6 (2.22%) JNCIP
11 5 (1.85%) CISSP
12 4 (1.48%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 4 (1.48%) CCDP
12 4 (1.48%) CCIE Security
12 4 (1.48%) CCSE
12 4 (1.48%) CCSP
13 3 (1.11%) Azure Certification
13 3 (1.11%) Computer Science Degree
13 3 (1.11%) GWAPT
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (2.59%) NIST
1 7 (2.59%) PCI DSS
2 6 (2.22%) COBIT
2 6 (2.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 5 (1.85%) GDPR
4 3 (1.11%) SLA
5 2 (0.74%) Actionable Recommendations
5 2 (0.74%) Disclosure Scotland
5 2 (0.74%) JSP 440
6 1 (0.37%) Accessibility
6 1 (0.37%) NCSC
6 1 (0.37%) RMADS
System Software
1 65 (24.07%) VMware Infrastructure
2 31 (11.48%) Docker
3 30 (11.11%) VMware NSX
4 12 (4.44%) Active Directory
4 12 (4.44%) Firmware
5 11 (4.07%) vSphere
6 3 (1.11%) KVM
7 2 (0.74%) Hyper-V
7 2 (0.74%) ProxySG
7 2 (0.74%) Snort
7 2 (0.74%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
7 2 (0.74%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.74%) Xen
8 1 (0.37%) NFS
8 1 (0.37%) SRDF
8 1 (0.37%) Veritas Cluster Server
8 1 (0.37%) Virtual Servers
8 1 (0.37%) XenApp
8 1 (0.37%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 79 (29.26%) Ansible
2 66 (24.44%) Terraform
3 20 (7.41%) CSIRT
4 11 (4.07%) FortiGate
5 10 (3.70%) Kubernetes
6 4 (1.48%) Single Sign-On
7 3 (1.11%) Microsoft Intune
7 3 (1.11%) Nagios
7 3 (1.11%) SCCM
7 3 (1.11%) vCenter Server
8 2 (0.74%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 2 (0.74%) Prometheus
8 2 (0.74%) vRealize
9 1 (0.37%) Argo
9 1 (0.37%) Grafana
9 1 (0.37%) Podman
9 1 (0.37%) Proxmox
9 1 (0.37%) Salt
9 1 (0.37%) SCOM
9 1 (0.37%) WhatsUp Gold
Vendors
1 99 (36.67%) Cisco
2 83 (30.74%) VMware
3 74 (27.41%) Palo Alto
4 66 (24.44%) CheckPoint
5 44 (16.30%) Blue Coat
5 44 (16.30%) Juniper
6 33 (12.22%) McAfee
7 29 (10.74%) Fortinet
8 22 (8.15%) Splunk
9 19 (7.04%) Meraki
9 19 (7.04%) NetApp
10 18 (6.67%) Zscaler
11 15 (5.56%) SolarWinds
12 12 (4.44%) Microsoft
13 10 (3.70%) Aruba
14 9 (3.33%) Oracle
15 8 (2.96%) Infoblox
15 8 (2.96%) Nokia
16 6 (2.22%) HP
16 6 (2.22%) Imperva