OSPF Contracts

Open Shortest Path First (OSPF)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring OSPF skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited OSPF over the 6 months leading up to 30 April 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 269 387 411
Rank change year-on-year +118 +24 +115
Contract jobs citing OSPF 281 217 324
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.96% 0.50% 0.54%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 7.52% 3.85% 4.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 176 153 207
10th Percentile £363 £313 £373
25th Percentile £425 £353 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% +11.11%
75th Percentile £615 £550 £600
90th Percentile £819 £742 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £450 £493
% change year-on-year +10.00% -8.63% +11.93%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 7 15
10th Percentile - £21.35 £32.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £23.75 £60.50
Median hourly rate £19.00 £24.50 £77.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.45% -68.39% +181.82%
75th Percentile £19.50 £46.88 £80.63
90th Percentile - £60.00 £83.43
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.00 £24.50 £62.00
% change year-on-year -22.45% -60.48% +138.46%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
UK

OSPF 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 3,739 5,643 7,361
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.79% 12.94% 12.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,297 3,382 4,789
10th Percentile £213 £205 £235
25th Percentile £363 £350 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £495 £519
Median % change year-on-year -1.52% -4.53% +3.70%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £638
90th Percentile £675 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -2.63% - +8.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 181 423 478
10th Percentile £14.20 £13.57 £9.80
25th Percentile £17.30 £17.35 £10.63
Median hourly rate £32.50 £38.50 £19.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.58% +102.63% -31.84%
75th Percentile £58.75 £62.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £67.40 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.59 £45.88 £18.50
% change year-on-year -46.41% +148.00% -13.95%

OSPF
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for OSPF in the UK

OSPF
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing OSPF.

Daily rate trend for OSPF in the UK

OSPF
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing OSPF over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Daily rate histogram for OSPF in the UK

OSPF
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing OSPF.

Hourly rate trend for OSPF in the UK

OSPF
Top 17 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing OSPF within the UK over the 6 months to 30 April 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 +71 217 £500 +5.26% 85
UK excluding London +82 124 £495 +10.00% 72
London +35 105 £500 +2.56% 36
Work from Home +77 93 £525 +7.69% 62
North of England +46 50 £500 +13.64% 14
North West +28 47 £525 +19.32% 7
South East +24 25 £500 +11.11% 11
South West +54 17 £563 +2.27% 7
Midlands +33 13 £543 - 12
Scotland +15 9 £413 -17.50% 14
Wales - 9 £450 - 4
West Midlands +19 7 £335 - 9
East Midlands - 6 £605 - 3
East of England +33 4 £400 +6.67% 3
North East -1 1 £250 -27.54% 1
Yorkshire - 1 £500 - 6
Channel Islands - 1 £450 -

OSPF
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 5 (1.78%) OpenStack
2 2 (0.71%) Confluence
Applications
1 7 (2.49%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (1.78%) MS Visio
3 3 (1.07%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 4 (1.42%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 61 (21.71%) AWS
2 51 (18.15%) Azure
3 24 (8.54%) GCP
4 19 (6.76%) IaaS
4 19 (6.76%) PaaS
4 19 (6.76%) SaaS
5 18 (6.41%) AWS CloudFormation
6 7 (2.49%) OpenShift
7 4 (1.42%) GitHub
8 3 (1.07%) Cloud Computing
8 3 (1.07%) Microsoft 365
9 2 (0.71%) Akamai
9 2 (0.71%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 2 (0.71%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 1 (0.36%) Datadog
10 1 (0.36%) npm
Communications & Networking
1 273 (97.15%) BGP
2 179 (63.70%) Firewall
3 116 (41.28%) VPN
4 101 (35.94%) Network Security
5 92 (32.74%) EIGRP
6 85 (30.25%) WAN
7 83 (29.54%) IPsec
8 77 (27.40%) TCP/IP
9 71 (25.27%) MPLS
10 69 (24.56%) HSRP
11 59 (21.00%) VLAN
12 58 (20.64%) DNS
13 53 (18.86%) Wireless
14 47 (16.73%) LAN
15 44 (15.66%) Cisco ASA
15 44 (15.66%) SD-WAN
16 40 (14.23%) Multicast
17 39 (13.88%) Cisco Firepower
18 38 (13.52%) Cisco Nexus
18 38 (13.52%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (0.71%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 9 (3.20%) Sonatype Nexus
2 4 (1.42%) GitLab
3 2 (0.71%) JIRA
4 1 (0.36%) Bitbucket
4 1 (0.36%) Jenkins
General
1 73 (25.98%) Social Skills
2 43 (15.30%) Analytical Skills
3 30 (10.68%) Finance
4 24 (8.54%) Telecoms
5 16 (5.69%) Public Sector
6 13 (4.63%) Banking
7 12 (4.27%) Documentation Skills
8 9 (3.20%) Military
9 7 (2.49%) Marketing
10 6 (2.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 5 (1.78%) Legal
12 3 (1.07%) Manufacturing
12 3 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (1.07%) Retail
13 2 (0.71%) Advertising
13 2 (0.71%) Electronics
13 2 (0.71%) Influencing Skills
13 2 (0.71%) Law
14 1 (0.36%) Aviation
14 1 (0.36%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 172 (61.21%) Network Engineer
2 48 (17.08%) Architect
3 26 (9.25%) Cisco Engineer
3 26 (9.25%) Cisco Network Engineer
3 26 (9.25%) Senior
4 22 (7.83%) Network Architect
4 22 (7.83%) Technical Architect
5 21 (7.47%) Cloud Architect
6 18 (6.41%) Cloud Native Architect
7 17 (6.05%) Senior Network Engineer
8 16 (5.69%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
9 14 (4.98%) Consultant
9 14 (4.98%) Security Architect
10 12 (4.27%) Implementation Engineer
11 11 (3.91%) Network Security Architect
11 11 (3.91%) Principal Engineer
11 11 (3.91%) Principal Network Engineer
12 10 (3.56%) AWS Architect
12 10 (3.56%) Network Consultant
13 9 (3.20%) Network Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (8.54%) 802.1X
2 5 (1.78%) Spine.js
3 2 (0.71%) JSON
3 2 (0.71%) XML
3 2 (0.71%) YAML
4 1 (0.36%) FIX Protocol
4 1 (0.36%) HTML
4 1 (0.36%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 48 (17.08%) Data Centre
2 20 (7.12%) Cloud Native
3 11 (3.91%) Hybrid Cloud
4 5 (1.78%) Hedge funds
4 5 (1.78%) Linux Command Line
4 5 (1.78%) Public Cloud
5 4 (1.42%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 4 (1.42%) NHS
5 4 (1.42%) PKI
6 2 (0.71%) Clustering
6 2 (0.71%) Derivative
6 2 (0.71%) Onboarding
6 2 (0.71%) Team-Oriented Environment
7 1 (0.36%) Driving Licence
7 1 (0.36%) FMCG
7 1 (0.36%) IoT
7 1 (0.36%) Legacy Systems
7 1 (0.36%) SCADA
7 1 (0.36%) Security Posture
7 1 (0.36%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 9 (3.20%) Linux
2 5 (1.78%) CatOS
3 4 (1.42%) Check Point GAiA
3 4 (1.42%) Unix
4 2 (0.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (0.71%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 50 (17.79%) Network Monitoring
2 45 (16.01%) Problem-Solving
3 42 (14.95%) Migration
4 36 (12.81%) Network Design
5 31 (11.03%) ITIL
6 24 (8.54%) Network Management
7 22 (7.83%) Infrastructure as Code
7 22 (7.83%) Project Delivery
8 21 (7.47%) High Availability
9 20 (7.12%) Test Automation
10 19 (6.76%) Computer Science
10 19 (6.76%) Network Architecture
10 19 (6.76%) Service Management
11 18 (6.41%) Root Cause Analysis
11 18 (6.41%) Sprint Planning
12 15 (5.34%) Change Management
12 15 (5.34%) Configuration Management
12 15 (5.34%) Validation
13 14 (4.98%) Low Latency
14 13 (4.63%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 41 (14.59%) Python
2 18 (6.41%) Bicep
3 7 (2.49%) Perl
4 4 (1.42%) Bash
4 4 (1.42%) PowerShell
5 1 (0.36%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 146 (51.96%) Cisco Certification
2 118 (41.99%) CCNP
3 74 (26.33%) Security Cleared
4 62 (22.06%) SC Cleared
5 46 (16.37%) CCIE
6 33 (11.74%) CCNA
7 32 (11.39%) Degree
8 14 (4.98%) CCSE
8 14 (4.98%) DV Cleared
9 12 (4.27%) CCSA
9 12 (4.27%) Computer Science Degree
10 8 (2.85%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 5 (1.78%) CCIE Data Center
11 5 (1.78%) CCIE Service Provider
11 5 (1.78%) JNCIA
11 5 (1.78%) JNCIE
12 4 (1.42%) AWS Certification
12 4 (1.42%) Check Point Certification
12 4 (1.42%) JNCIP
13 3 (1.07%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (1.42%) Cyber Essentials
1 4 (1.42%) NCSC
1 4 (1.42%) NIST
1 4 (1.42%) SLA
2 2 (0.71%) DICOM
2 2 (0.71%) HL7
2 2 (0.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 2 (0.71%) QA
3 1 (0.36%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 26 (9.25%) VMware Infrastructure
2 10 (3.56%) VMware NSX
3 6 (2.14%) Firmware
4 5 (1.78%) vSphere
5 2 (0.71%) Ceph
6 1 (0.36%) Docker
Systems Management
1 48 (17.08%) Ansible
2 24 (8.54%) Terraform
3 23 (8.19%) FortiGate
4 10 (3.56%) ZABBIX
5 7 (2.49%) Cisco Prime
6 6 (2.14%) Nagios
7 5 (1.78%) Cacti
7 5 (1.78%) Progress Chef
7 5 (1.78%) Puppet
7 5 (1.78%) vCenter Server
8 4 (1.42%) CA Spectrum
9 2 (0.71%) Argo
9 2 (0.71%) Kubernetes
10 1 (0.36%) Cisco LMS
10 1 (0.36%) Icinga
10 1 (0.36%) Netcool
10 1 (0.36%) Observium
10 1 (0.36%) OpenView
10 1 (0.36%) Tivoli
10 1 (0.36%) TrustSec
Vendors
1 239 (85.05%) Cisco
2 109 (38.79%) Palo Alto
3 73 (25.98%) CheckPoint
4 64 (22.78%) Fortinet
5 49 (17.44%) SolarWinds
6 47 (16.73%) Juniper
7 33 (11.74%) F5
8 28 (9.96%) VMware
9 27 (9.61%) Arista
10 20 (7.12%) Meraki
11 10 (3.56%) Aruba
11 10 (3.56%) Nokia
12 7 (2.49%) Red Hat
12 7 (2.49%) Splunk
12 7 (2.49%) Zscaler
13 6 (2.14%) McAfee
14 5 (1.78%) Microsoft
14 5 (1.78%) ServiceNow
15 4 (1.42%) BMC
15 4 (1.42%) Remedy