MPLS Contract Job Trends

Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring MPLS skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 4 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 471 389 323
Rank change year-on-year -82 -66 +60
Contract jobs citing MPLS 202 162 269
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.38% 0.49% 0.69%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 4.09% 4.10% 5.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 131 110 146
10th Percentile £305 £323 £293
25th Percentile £400 £427 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £419
Median % change year-on-year - +19.40% -16.25%
75th Percentile £545 £600 £562
90th Percentile £627 £651 £681
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £450 £375
% change year-on-year +11.11% +20.00% -11.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 2 10
10th Percentile £22.53 £36.63 £13.93
25th Percentile £29.88 £37.19 £14.91
Median hourly rate £42.25 £38.75 £20.70
Median % change year-on-year +9.03% +87.20% -63.46%
75th Percentile £42.38 £39.69 £24.80
90th Percentile - £39.88 £29.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.25 - £15.88
% change year-on-year - - -71.30%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
UK

MPLS falls under the Communications and Computer Networking category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring communications or computer networking skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 4,937 3,953 4,763
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.34% 12.01% 12.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,934 2,417 2,892
10th Percentile £250 £235 £220
25th Percentile £400 £373 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.58% -5.00% +9.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 352 195 327
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.15 £18.27
Median hourly rate £26.66 £50.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -46.68% +5.26% -5.79%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £83.60 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.69 £45.00 £53.69
% change year-on-year -40.69% -16.18% -6.49%

MPLS
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing MPLS relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

MPLS job vacancy trend in the UK

MPLS
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing MPLS.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing MPLS

MPLS
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing MPLS over the 6 months to 4 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for MPLS in the UK

MPLS
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing MPLS.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing MPLS

MPLS
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing MPLS over the 6 months to 4 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for MPLS in the UK

MPLS
Top 13 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing MPLS within the UK over the 6 months to 4 August 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 -105 147 £500 - 50
UK excluding London -48 137 £500 +11.11% 34
South East -43 55 £525 +16.67% 11
London -75 46 £450 -14.29% 23
Work from Home -65 45 £450 -10.00% 25
Scotland +26 42 £310 -39.51% 7
South West -38 16 £525 -16.00% 5
Midlands -62 9 £440 +0.63% 4
North of England -70 9 £575 +21.05% 7
West Midlands -69 7 £440 +0.63% 4
East of England - 7 £500 -
North West -63 6 £575 +21.05% 4
Yorkshire -42 3 £483 +37.86% 3

MPLS
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 9 (4.46%) OpenStack
2 5 (2.48%) Microsoft Exchange
3 4 (1.98%) Confluence
Applications
1 24 (11.88%) MS Visio
2 12 (5.94%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (3.96%) Microsoft Excel
4 6 (2.97%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (1.49%) AutoCAD
6 1 (0.50%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.99%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 35 (17.33%) Azure
2 23 (11.39%) AWS
3 11 (5.45%) GCP
4 8 (3.96%) Entra ID
5 5 (2.48%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 4 (1.98%) AWS Direct Connect
6 4 (1.98%) IaaS
6 4 (1.98%) Microsoft 365
6 4 (1.98%) OpenShift
7 2 (0.99%) Azure DevOps
7 2 (0.99%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 2 (0.99%) GitHub
7 2 (0.99%) Mimecast
7 2 (0.99%) Power Platform
8 1 (0.50%) Azure Sentinel
8 1 (0.50%) Cloud Functions
8 1 (0.50%) Cloud Run
8 1 (0.50%) GitHub Actions
8 1 (0.50%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 1 (0.50%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 147 (72.77%) WAN
2 108 (53.47%) LAN
3 104 (51.49%) BGP
4 94 (46.53%) Firewall
5 61 (30.20%) OSPF
6 52 (25.74%) SD-WAN
7 50 (24.75%) Network Security
8 49 (24.26%) VPN
9 40 (19.80%) IPsec
10 29 (14.36%) Cisco Nexus
11 22 (10.89%) SDH
12 20 (9.90%) Wi-Fi
13 19 (9.41%) VLAN
13 19 (9.41%) Wireless
13 19 (9.41%) Wireshark
14 18 (8.91%) Ethernet VPN
15 17 (8.42%) Cisco ASA
15 17 (8.42%) DNS
15 17 (8.42%) Internet
15 17 (8.42%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (0.99%) Power BI
1 2 (0.99%) Tableau
2 1 (0.50%) BigQuery
2 1 (0.50%) Cloud Spanner
Development Applications
1 8 (3.96%) JIRA
2 6 (2.97%) Sonatype Nexus
3 5 (2.48%) Git
4 2 (0.99%) GitLab
4 2 (0.99%) Jenkins
5 1 (0.50%) Bitbucket
General
1 71 (35.15%) Telecoms
2 59 (29.21%) Social Skills
3 33 (16.34%) Analytical Skills
4 19 (9.41%) Finance
5 12 (5.94%) Documentation Skills
6 9 (4.46%) Legal
7 8 (3.96%) Financial Institution
7 8 (3.96%) Organisational Skills
8 5 (2.48%) Law
9 4 (1.98%) Military
10 3 (1.49%) Billing
10 3 (1.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (1.49%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (1.49%) Manufacturing
10 3 (1.49%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.49%) Public Sector
10 3 (1.49%) Retail
11 2 (0.99%) Banking
11 2 (0.99%) Investment Banking
12 1 (0.50%) Police
Job Titles
1 72 (35.64%) Network Engineer
2 37 (18.32%) Architect
3 26 (12.87%) Network Architect
4 24 (11.88%) Telecoms Engineer
5 18 (8.91%) Senior
6 17 (8.42%) Developer
7 16 (7.92%) Field Engineer
8 13 (6.44%) Field Telecoms Engineer
9 12 (5.94%) Project Engineer
10 11 (5.45%) Network Field Engineer
11 9 (4.46%) Lead
11 9 (4.46%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 7 (3.47%) IP Engineer
12 7 (3.47%) Test Engineer
13 6 (2.97%) Cisco Engineer
13 6 (2.97%) Consultant
13 6 (2.97%) Network Consultant
13 6 (2.97%) Network Manager
13 6 (2.97%) Senior Network Engineer
13 6 (2.97%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (5.45%) NETCONF
1 11 (5.45%) YANG
2 10 (4.95%) REST
3 8 (3.96%) 802.1X
4 6 (2.97%) OpenConfig
4 6 (2.97%) RESTCONF
5 4 (1.98%) Jinja
6 3 (1.49%) Java RMI
7 2 (0.99%) RFC 2544
8 1 (0.50%) JSON
8 1 (0.50%) LDAP
8 1 (0.50%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 41 (20.30%) Data Centre
2 22 (10.89%) Hybrid Cloud
3 12 (5.94%) Cloud Native
3 12 (5.94%) Driving Licence
4 9 (4.46%) Analytical Mindset
5 8 (3.96%) Private Cloud
6 7 (3.47%) Data Protection Act
7 6 (2.97%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 6 (2.97%) PKI
8 5 (2.48%) Operational Technology
8 5 (2.48%) Public Cloud
9 4 (1.98%) Management Information System
9 4 (1.98%) Self-Motivation
10 3 (1.49%) Fibre Optics
10 3 (1.49%) SCADA
11 2 (0.99%) Onboarding
11 2 (0.99%) Security Posture
11 2 (0.99%) Wiki
12 1 (0.50%) Enterprise Cloud
12 1 (0.50%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 11 (5.45%) Windows
2 10 (4.95%) Linux
3 6 (2.97%) Windows Server
4 5 (2.48%) Unix
5 3 (1.49%) Windows Server 2012
6 1 (0.50%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.50%) VMS
6 1 (0.50%) Windows Server 2016
6 1 (0.50%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 48 (23.76%) Project Delivery
2 32 (15.84%) Problem-Solving
3 25 (12.38%) Network Design
4 24 (11.88%) Network Architecture
5 22 (10.89%) Change Management
5 22 (10.89%) Migration
5 22 (10.89%) Zero Trust
6 21 (10.40%) ITIL
6 21 (10.40%) Stakeholder Management
6 21 (10.40%) Technical Leadership
7 20 (9.90%) Roadmaps
8 19 (9.41%) Agile
9 17 (8.42%) DevOps
10 16 (7.92%) AI
10 16 (7.92%) Network Segmentation
11 14 (6.93%) Disaster Recovery
12 13 (6.44%) Incident Management
12 13 (6.44%) Network Monitoring
12 13 (6.44%) TOGAF
12 13 (6.44%) Vulnerability Management
Programming Languages
1 33 (16.34%) Python
2 4 (1.98%) PowerShell
2 4 (1.98%) SQL
3 2 (0.99%) Bash
3 2 (0.99%) C
3 2 (0.99%) Perl
4 1 (0.50%) PHP
Qualifications
1 69 (34.16%) Security Cleared
2 62 (30.69%) Cisco Certification
3 37 (18.32%) CCNP
4 32 (15.84%) SC Cleared
5 31 (15.35%) DV Cleared
6 29 (14.36%) CCIE
7 21 (10.40%) CCNA
8 14 (6.93%) Degree
9 13 (6.44%) JNCIE
10 6 (2.97%) BPSS Clearance
11 4 (1.98%) AWS Certification
11 4 (1.98%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 3 (1.49%) CCDP
12 3 (1.49%) Computer Science Degree
12 3 (1.49%) ITIL Certification
12 3 (1.49%) PMP
13 2 (0.99%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 2 (0.99%) Azure Certification
13 2 (0.99%) CISSP
13 2 (0.99%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (4.95%) SLA
2 7 (3.47%) NCSC
3 4 (1.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 4 (1.98%) NIST
4 3 (1.49%) QA
5 2 (0.99%) GDPR
5 2 (0.99%) Government Security Classifications
5 2 (0.99%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials
6 1 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 1 (0.50%) HMG Security Policy Framework
6 1 (0.50%) NIST 800
6 1 (0.50%) PMO
System Software
1 10 (4.95%) Active Directory
2 8 (3.96%) VMware Infrastructure
3 7 (3.47%) VMware NSX
4 2 (0.99%) Docker
4 2 (0.99%) Firmware
4 2 (0.99%) Hyper-V
4 2 (0.99%) VMware ESXi
4 2 (0.99%) VMware Workstation
5 1 (0.50%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 35 (17.33%) Ansible
2 11 (5.45%) Terraform
3 6 (2.97%) Cisco Prime
3 6 (2.97%) FortiGate
4 4 (1.98%) Grafana
4 4 (1.98%) Prometheus
5 3 (1.49%) Microsoft Intune
5 3 (1.49%) Salt
6 2 (0.99%) Kubernetes
7 1 (0.50%) Avamar
7 1 (0.50%) CASB
7 1 (0.50%) Cisco CUCM
7 1 (0.50%) OPNET
7 1 (0.50%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.50%) Puppet
7 1 (0.50%) QRadar
7 1 (0.50%) SolarWinds Orion
7 1 (0.50%) Suricata
7 1 (0.50%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 129 (63.86%) Cisco
2 50 (24.75%) Palo Alto
3 44 (21.78%) F5
4 41 (20.30%) Microsoft
5 36 (17.82%) Fortinet
5 36 (17.82%) Juniper
6 23 (11.39%) Nokia
7 22 (10.89%) Aruba
8 21 (10.40%) CheckPoint
9 19 (9.41%) SolarWinds
9 19 (9.41%) VMware
10 14 (6.93%) Arista
11 11 (5.45%) Meraki
12 7 (3.47%) ServiceNow
12 7 (3.47%) Splunk
13 4 (1.98%) BigPanda
13 4 (1.98%) Google
13 4 (1.98%) HP
14 3 (1.49%) Citrix
14 3 (1.49%) LogicMonitor