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 2 March 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
2 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 331 326 326
Rank change year-on-year -5 0 +43
Contract jobs citing F5 294 202 283
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.71% 0.67% 0.63%
As % of the Vendors category 1.60% 1.44% 1.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 126 121 182
10th Percentile £335 £400 £401
25th Percentile £400 £425 £432
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £498 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.24% +5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £576 £588 £592
90th Percentile £713 £651 £674
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £531 £500
% change year-on-year -5.84% +6.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 1 3
10th Percentile £42.05 - £60.55
25th Percentile £43.11 £21.25 £63.63
Median hourly rate £48.72 £22.50 £72.50
Median % change year-on-year +116.53% -68.97% +62.01%
75th Percentile £62.29 £23.75 £76.25
90th Percentile £68.11 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.72 £22.50 £72.50
% change year-on-year +116.53% -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 18,390 14,075 19,347
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 44.43% 46.63% 43.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,788 8,582 12,105
10th Percentile £305 £281 £255
25th Percentile £413 £406 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £514
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +1.17% -2.47%
75th Percentile £603 £625 £626
90th Percentile £700 £713 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
Number of hourly rates quoted 923 435 981
10th Percentile £15.22 £15.62 £12.74
25th Percentile £18.15 £21.25 £15.10
Median hourly rate £24.00 £30.00 £25.50
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% +17.65% -27.14%
75th Percentile £58.75 £63.75 £55.00
90th Percentile £74.68 £81.80 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.63 £27.43 £25.00
% change year-on-year -17.48% +9.70% -21.65%

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 2 March 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 2 March 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 2 March 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 -11 264 £500 -4.76% 38
UK excluding London -9 197 £500 -5.84% 34
North of England +15 109 £550 +10.28% 7
North West +28 86 £550 +12.24% 5
Midlands -12 73 £375 -36.71% 7
Work from Home -14 73 £500 +4.17% 7
West Midlands +9 72 £375 -31.94% 7
London -28 67 £500 +2.04% 9
South East -25 45 £525 +5.00% 17
Yorkshire -36 31 £550 +100.00% 2
Scotland +14 13 £450 +2.86% 1
South West -38 5 £550 +18.92%
East of England -32 2 - - 2
East Midlands -46 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 (3.40%) Confluence
2 7 (2.38%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.70%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.34%) nginx
Applications
1 18 (6.12%) MS Visio
2 7 (2.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (1.36%) Microsoft Excel
4 3 (1.02%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 61 (20.75%) AWS
2 42 (14.29%) Azure
3 29 (9.86%) GCP
4 20 (6.80%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 16 (5.44%) Amazon S3
6 14 (4.76%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 14 (4.76%) Amazon EC2
6 14 (4.76%) Amazon ELB
7 12 (4.08%) Akamai
8 7 (2.38%) Microsoft 365
9 6 (2.04%) OpenShift
10 5 (1.70%) Azure ExpressRoute
10 5 (1.70%) Nutanix
11 4 (1.36%) Mimecast
11 4 (1.36%) OCI
12 3 (1.02%) Cloudflare
12 3 (1.02%) Entra ID
13 2 (0.68%) Amazon OpenSearch
13 2 (0.68%) AWS Direct Connect
13 2 (0.68%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 155 (52.72%) Firewall
2 145 (49.32%) DNS
3 85 (28.91%) BGP
4 82 (27.89%) BIG-IP
5 81 (27.55%) Network Security
6 76 (25.85%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
6 76 (25.85%) WAN
7 73 (24.83%) VPN
8 72 (24.49%) TCP/IP
9 67 (22.79%) SSL
10 60 (20.41%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
10 60 (20.41%) LAN
11 58 (19.73%) OSPF
12 48 (16.33%) Wireshark
13 46 (15.65%) HTTP
14 38 (12.93%) DMZ
15 35 (11.90%) MPLS
16 34 (11.56%) DHCP
17 33 (11.22%) Multicast
18 32 (10.88%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (0.68%) Elasticsearch
1 2 (0.68%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 30 (10.20%) Fiddler
2 22 (7.48%) Git
3 19 (6.46%) JIRA
4 17 (5.78%) Jenkins
5 16 (5.44%) GitLab
6 2 (0.68%) Rational DOORS
6 2 (0.68%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 54 (18.37%) Social Skills
2 49 (16.67%) Banking
3 45 (15.31%) Finance
4 37 (12.59%) Investment Banking
5 26 (8.84%) Analytical Skills
6 25 (8.50%) Public Sector
7 13 (4.42%) Telecoms
8 12 (4.08%) Financial Institution
9 10 (3.40%) Documentation Skills
9 10 (3.40%) Military
10 8 (2.72%) Retail
11 6 (2.04%) Influencing Skills
11 6 (2.04%) Presentation Skills
12 4 (1.36%) Legal
12 4 (1.36%) Retail Banking
13 2 (0.68%) Organisational Skills
14 1 (0.34%) Billing
14 1 (0.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 130 (44.22%) Network Engineer
2 43 (14.63%) Senior
3 37 (12.59%) Architect
3 37 (12.59%) Web Engineer
4 35 (11.90%) Security Engineer
5 26 (8.84%) Network Security Engineer
6 20 (6.80%) Cisco Engineer
7 19 (6.46%) Cisco Network Engineer
7 19 (6.46%) IP Network Engineer
8 18 (6.12%) Network Architect
8 18 (6.12%) Senior Network Engineer
9 17 (5.78%) Blue Coat Engineer
9 17 (5.78%) Data Engineer
9 17 (5.78%) Data Network Engineer
10 16 (5.44%) Cisco Security Engineer
11 15 (5.10%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 13 (4.42%) DevOps Engineer
12 13 (4.42%) Junior
13 12 (4.08%) Senior DevOps
13 12 (4.08%) Senior DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (7.82%) 802.1X
2 8 (2.72%) JSON
3 7 (2.38%) LDAP
4 6 (2.04%) SAML
5 5 (1.70%) NETCONF
5 5 (1.70%) REST
5 5 (1.70%) YANG
6 4 (1.36%) OpenConfig
6 4 (1.36%) VML
6 4 (1.36%) XML
7 3 (1.02%) RESTCONF
8 2 (0.68%) YAML
9 1 (0.34%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 65 (22.11%) Data Centre
2 27 (9.18%) Management Information System
3 20 (6.80%) PKI
4 16 (5.44%) Clustering
5 14 (4.76%) Public Cloud
6 10 (3.40%) Security Posture
7 9 (3.06%) Data Protection Act
8 6 (2.04%) Private Cloud
9 5 (1.70%) Hybrid Cloud
9 5 (1.70%) Onboarding
9 5 (1.70%) Self-Motivation
10 4 (1.36%) Cloud Native
10 4 (1.36%) Legacy Systems
11 3 (1.02%) Analytical Mindset
11 3 (1.02%) Distributed Architecture
11 3 (1.02%) iSeries
11 3 (1.02%) Virtual Team
12 2 (0.68%) Algorithms
12 2 (0.68%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 2 (0.68%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 36 (12.24%) Windows
2 20 (6.80%) Linux
3 9 (3.06%) Windows Server
4 7 (2.38%) Unix
4 7 (2.38%) Windows Server 2012
4 7 (2.38%) Windows Server 2019
5 4 (1.36%) CatOS
6 3 (1.02%) Windows Server 2016
7 1 (0.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 137 (46.60%) Load Balancing
2 50 (17.01%) High Availability
2 50 (17.01%) Problem-Solving
3 41 (13.95%) Migration
4 37 (12.59%) DevOps
5 35 (11.90%) Incident Response
6 32 (10.88%) Change Management
7 29 (9.86%) CI/CD
7 29 (9.86%) Data Loss Prevention
8 28 (9.52%) Malware Detection/Protection
8 28 (9.52%) Stakeholder Management
9 27 (9.18%) ITIL
9 27 (9.18%) Observability
10 26 (8.84%) Mentoring
11 24 (8.16%) Network Design
11 24 (8.16%) Roadmaps
12 23 (7.82%) DevSecOps
13 22 (7.48%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 21 (7.14%) Infrastructure as Code
15 20 (6.80%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 72 (24.49%) Python
2 27 (9.18%) Bash
3 5 (1.70%) PowerShell
3 5 (1.70%) SQL
4 3 (1.02%) ActionScript
5 2 (0.68%) C++
5 2 (0.68%) JavaScript
5 2 (0.68%) VBA
6 1 (0.34%) Kusto Query Language
6 1 (0.34%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 76 (25.85%) Security Cleared
2 53 (18.03%) Cisco Certification
3 43 (14.63%) SC Cleared
4 32 (10.88%) CCNP
5 22 (7.48%) CCIE
6 21 (7.14%) DV Cleared
7 11 (3.74%) JNCIP
8 10 (3.40%) JNCIS
9 9 (3.06%) CCNA
9 9 (3.06%) JNCIE
10 8 (2.72%) Degree
11 7 (2.38%) JNCIA
12 5 (1.70%) AWS Certification
12 5 (1.70%) CCIE Security
12 5 (1.70%) CISSP
13 4 (1.36%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 4 (1.36%) CCSP
14 3 (1.02%) Azure Certification
14 3 (1.02%) CCSE
15 2 (0.68%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (2.72%) NIST
2 6 (2.04%) PCI DSS
3 5 (1.70%) GDPR
3 5 (1.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 5 (1.70%) JSP 440
4 4 (1.36%) COBIT
4 4 (1.36%) SLA
5 3 (1.02%) NCSC
6 2 (0.68%) Disclosure Scotland
6 2 (0.68%) RMADS
7 1 (0.34%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.34%) QA
System Software
1 59 (20.07%) VMware Infrastructure
2 33 (11.22%) VMware NSX
3 24 (8.16%) Docker
4 18 (6.12%) Firmware
5 15 (5.10%) Active Directory
6 11 (3.74%) vSphere
7 4 (1.36%) Virtual Desktop
7 4 (1.36%) VMware ESXi
8 2 (0.68%) KVM
8 2 (0.68%) ProxySG
8 2 (0.68%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.34%) IAG
9 1 (0.34%) RHEV
9 1 (0.34%) Xen
9 1 (0.34%) XenApp
9 1 (0.34%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 71 (24.15%) Ansible
2 41 (13.95%) Terraform
3 35 (11.90%) FortiGate
4 11 (3.74%) Kubernetes
5 10 (3.40%) CSIRT
5 10 (3.40%) Prometheus
6 9 (3.06%) Single Sign-On
7 8 (2.72%) Grafana
8 7 (2.38%) Microsoft Intune
8 7 (2.38%) SCCM
9 5 (1.70%) Salt
10 4 (1.36%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 4 (1.36%) Nagios
11 2 (0.68%) Argo
11 2 (0.68%) Red Hat Satellite
12 1 (0.34%) Proxmox
12 1 (0.34%) Puppet
12 1 (0.34%) SCOM
12 1 (0.34%) vCenter Server
12 1 (0.34%) WhatsUp Gold
Vendors
1 140 (47.62%) Cisco
2 85 (28.91%) Palo Alto
3 83 (28.23%) VMware
4 67 (22.79%) CheckPoint
5 57 (19.39%) Juniper
6 47 (15.99%) Blue Coat
7 42 (14.29%) McAfee
8 31 (10.54%) Fortinet
8 31 (10.54%) Splunk
9 28 (9.52%) SolarWinds
10 21 (7.14%) NetApp
11 17 (5.78%) Arista
11 17 (5.78%) Aruba
11 17 (5.78%) Meraki
11 17 (5.78%) Microsoft
12 16 (5.44%) Extreme Networks
12 16 (5.44%) Zscaler
13 14 (4.76%) ServiceNow
14 9 (3.06%) Infoblox
15 7 (2.38%) Nokia