BGP Contract Job Trends

Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring BGP skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 2 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 297 286 278
Rank change year-on-year -11 -8 -9
Contract jobs citing BGP 448 301 347
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.84% 0.93% 0.90%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 8.80% 7.86% 7.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 270 195 210
10th Percentile £375 £316 £311
25th Percentile £419 £406 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% - -5.00%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £550
90th Percentile £688 £670 £649
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% +2.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 4 2
10th Percentile £48.55 £37.38 £23.15
25th Percentile £49.00 £39.06 £30.13
Median hourly rate £58.25 £48.75 £42.00
Median % change year-on-year +19.49% +16.07% -30.00%
75th Percentile £73.75 £60.88 £53.63
90th Percentile £85.02 £64.70 £60.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £58.25 £66.50 £19.00
% change year-on-year -12.41% +250.00% -68.85%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
UK

BGP 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 5,090 3,828 4,616
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.50% 11.77% 11.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,008 2,343 2,743
10th Percentile £235 £238 £230
25th Percentile £398 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £481 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.95% -3.80% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £677 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £476 £469 £500
% change year-on-year +1.41% -6.13% +10.19%
Number of hourly rates quoted 377 200 288
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £20.50
Median hourly rate £26.00 £45.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -42.22% -10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £65.22 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.10 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.84 £42.50 £55.75
% change year-on-year -39.20% -23.76% -1.32%

BGP
Job Vacancy Trend

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

BGP job vacancy trend in the UK

BGP
Daily Rate Trend

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

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

BGP
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing BGP over the 6 months to 2 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for BGP in the UK

BGP
Hourly Rate Trend

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

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

BGP
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing BGP over the 6 months to 2 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for BGP in the UK

BGP
Top 16 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing BGP within the UK over the 6 months to 2 September 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 -9 412 £500 +5.26% 235
UK excluding London -21 253 £500 +5.26% 93
London -56 137 £500 +5.26% 160
Work from Home -29 115 £500 - 64
North of England 0 108 £500 +5.26% 16
South East -25 81 £525 +5.00% 31
North West +2 79 £488 +2.63% 6
Midlands -43 47 £447 +11.63% 12
West Midlands -37 44 £468 +17.00% 10
South West -37 33 £525 -16.67% 8
Yorkshire -19 22 £495 +23.75% 9
North East -33 13 £650 +160.00% 1
Scotland -24 9 £375 -11.76% 8
East of England -24 7 £475 -32.14% 16
East Midlands -14 2 - - 2
Wales -16 1 £425 -2.86% 1

BGP
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 12 (2.68%) OpenStack
2 8 (1.79%) SAS
3 4 (0.89%) Microsoft Exchange
4 2 (0.45%) Confluence
5 1 (0.22%) SharePoint
Applications
1 9 (2.01%) MS Visio
2 6 (1.34%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (0.89%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.67%) AutoCAD
Cloud Services
1 111 (24.78%) Azure
2 85 (18.97%) AWS
3 23 (5.13%) GCP
3 23 (5.13%) OCI
4 21 (4.69%) Azure ExpressRoute
5 17 (3.79%) GitHub
6 13 (2.90%) SaaS
7 10 (2.23%) AWS Direct Connect
7 10 (2.23%) Microsoft 365
8 8 (1.79%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 7 (1.56%) Azure Monitor
9 7 (1.56%) Azure Sentinel
9 7 (1.56%) OpenShift
10 5 (1.12%) Nutanix
11 3 (0.67%) Azure DevOps
11 3 (0.67%) Entra ID
12 2 (0.45%) Amazon GuardDuty
12 2 (0.45%) AWS CloudFormation
13 1 (0.22%) Amazon EC2
13 1 (0.22%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 259 (57.81%) OSPF
2 251 (56.03%) Firewall
3 216 (48.21%) WAN
4 136 (30.36%) VPN
5 125 (27.90%) LAN
5 125 (27.90%) VLAN
6 112 (25.00%) VXLAN
7 106 (23.66%) MPLS
8 100 (22.32%) Network Security
9 91 (20.31%) DNS
10 89 (19.87%) SD-WAN
11 79 (17.63%) Ethernet VPN
12 70 (15.63%) Wireless
13 68 (15.18%) TCP/IP
14 67 (14.96%) IPsec
15 63 (14.06%) Multicast
15 63 (14.06%) Wi-Fi
16 54 (12.05%) Cisco Nexus
16 54 (12.05%) EIGRP
16 54 (12.05%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Development Applications
1 28 (6.25%) GitLab
2 18 (4.02%) Git
3 7 (1.56%) JIRA
3 7 (1.56%) Sonatype Nexus
4 2 (0.45%) Jenkins
5 1 (0.22%) Bitbucket
General
1 76 (16.96%) Social Skills
2 48 (10.71%) Analytical Skills
3 44 (9.82%) Finance
4 31 (6.92%) Telecoms
5 30 (6.70%) Public Sector
6 28 (6.25%) Banking
7 19 (4.24%) Investment Banking
8 16 (3.57%) Documentation Skills
9 8 (1.79%) Legal
9 8 (1.79%) Police
9 8 (1.79%) Retail
10 6 (1.34%) Military
11 5 (1.12%) Financial Institution
12 4 (0.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 3 (0.67%) German Language
13 3 (0.67%) Influencing Skills
13 3 (0.67%) Italian Language
13 3 (0.67%) Spanish Language
14 2 (0.45%) Law
14 2 (0.45%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 265 (59.15%) Network Engineer
2 99 (22.10%) Senior
3 64 (14.29%) Senior Network Engineer
4 61 (13.62%) Cisco Engineer
5 58 (12.95%) Cisco Network Engineer
6 48 (10.71%) Architect
7 40 (8.93%) Data Network Engineer
7 40 (8.93%) Network Security Engineer
7 40 (8.93%) Security Engineer
8 36 (8.04%) Network Architect
9 33 (7.37%) Consultant
10 30 (6.70%) Cisco Security Engineer
11 29 (6.47%) Data Engineer
12 23 (5.13%) Network Consultant
13 20 (4.46%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 20 (4.46%) Network Specialist
14 18 (4.02%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 17 (3.79%) Developer
16 14 (3.13%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
16 14 (3.13%) Web Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 70 (15.63%) Terraform
2 23 (5.13%) 802.1X
3 22 (4.91%) REST
4 12 (2.68%) NETCONF
5 10 (2.23%) YAML
5 10 (2.23%) YANG
6 8 (1.79%) JSON
7 6 (1.34%) RESTCONF
8 5 (1.12%) OpenConfig
9 4 (0.89%) CSS
10 3 (0.67%) eBPF
10 3 (0.67%) SAML
11 2 (0.45%) gRPC
11 2 (0.45%) Spine.js
12 1 (0.22%) Django
12 1 (0.22%) Jinja
12 1 (0.22%) LDAP
12 1 (0.22%) Model Context Protocol
Miscellaneous
1 181 (40.40%) Data Centre
2 49 (10.94%) Hybrid Cloud
3 28 (6.25%) Cloud Native
4 18 (4.02%) PKI
5 11 (2.46%) Private Cloud
6 10 (2.23%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 9 (2.01%) Analytical Mindset
8 8 (1.79%) Clustering
8 8 (1.79%) Operational Technology
8 8 (1.79%) Public Cloud
8 8 (1.79%) Self-Motivation
9 7 (1.56%) Onboarding
10 6 (1.34%) Digital Signage
10 6 (1.34%) Security Posture
11 5 (1.12%) Linux Command Line
12 4 (0.89%) CMDB
12 4 (0.89%) Data Protection Act
12 4 (0.89%) Distributed Systems
13 3 (0.67%) Distributed Applications
13 3 (0.67%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 31 (6.92%) Windows
2 21 (4.69%) Linux
3 4 (0.89%) Windows Server
4 3 (0.67%) Unix
4 3 (0.67%) Windows Server 2012
5 2 (0.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.22%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.22%) VMS
6 1 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
6 1 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 96 (21.43%) Load Balancing
2 83 (18.53%) High Availability
3 79 (17.63%) Migration
4 75 (16.74%) Network Design
5 70 (15.63%) Infrastructure as Code
5 70 (15.63%) Zero Trust
6 49 (10.94%) Problem-Solving
7 48 (10.71%) ITIL
8 46 (10.27%) Project Delivery
8 46 (10.27%) Validation
9 45 (10.04%) Network Architecture
10 41 (9.15%) CI/CD
11 35 (7.81%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 35 (7.81%) Network Segmentation
12 32 (7.14%) DevOps
13 31 (6.92%) Technical Leadership
14 30 (6.70%) Stakeholder Management
15 29 (6.47%) Mentoring
16 27 (6.03%) Change Control
17 26 (5.80%) Low Latency
Programming Languages
1 127 (28.35%) Python
2 11 (2.46%) Bash
3 6 (1.34%) PowerShell
3 6 (1.34%) SQL
4 3 (0.67%) Shell Script
5 2 (0.45%) Go
5 2 (0.45%) Perl
6 1 (0.22%) C++
6 1 (0.22%) Java
Qualifications
1 140 (31.25%) Security Cleared
2 126 (28.13%) Cisco Certification
3 93 (20.76%) CCNP
4 86 (19.20%) SC Cleared
5 50 (11.16%) CCIE
6 48 (10.71%) DV Cleared
7 23 (5.13%) CCNA
8 20 (4.46%) Degree
9 14 (3.13%) JNCIE
10 8 (1.79%) Computer Science Degree
11 7 (1.56%) Azure Certification
12 5 (1.12%) AWS Certification
12 5 (1.12%) PMP
13 4 (0.89%) CCIE Security
13 4 (0.89%) CISSP
13 4 (0.89%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 3 (0.67%) VCDX
15 2 (0.45%) JNCIA
15 2 (0.45%) JNCIS
15 2 (0.45%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (0.89%) NCSC
1 4 (0.89%) NIST
2 3 (0.67%) GDPR
2 3 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 3 (0.67%) QA
3 2 (0.45%) PCI DSS
4 1 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials
4 1 (0.22%) NIST 800
System Software
1 30 (6.70%) VMware Infrastructure
2 15 (3.35%) VMware NSX
3 8 (1.79%) Active Directory
4 7 (1.56%) Firmware
4 7 (1.56%) Hyper-V
5 5 (1.12%) Docker
6 4 (0.89%) vSphere
7 3 (0.67%) Virtual Servers
8 2 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.22%) ProxySG
9 1 (0.22%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 122 (27.23%) Ansible
2 42 (9.38%) FortiGate
3 20 (4.46%) Kubernetes
4 13 (2.90%) Grafana
4 13 (2.90%) Prometheus
5 9 (2.01%) Cisco Prime
6 6 (1.34%) Cilium
7 4 (0.89%) Istio
7 4 (0.89%) Nagios
8 2 (0.45%) Puppet
8 2 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.22%) CASB
9 1 (0.22%) Microsoft Intune
9 1 (0.22%) OPNET
9 1 (0.22%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.22%) QRadar
9 1 (0.22%) Rancher
9 1 (0.22%) Suricata
Vendors
1 315 (70.31%) Cisco
2 142 (31.70%) F5
3 131 (29.24%) Palo Alto
4 101 (22.54%) Fortinet
5 81 (18.08%) Arista
6 61 (13.62%) Juniper
7 43 (9.60%) Aruba
7 43 (9.60%) VMware
8 42 (9.38%) CheckPoint
9 30 (6.70%) Microsoft
10 28 (6.25%) SolarWinds
11 18 (4.02%) Meraki
12 17 (3.79%) ServiceNow
13 16 (3.57%) Zscaler
14 14 (3.13%) Splunk
15 9 (2.01%) Extreme Networks
15 9 (2.01%) Red Hat
16 8 (1.79%) Google
17 7 (1.56%) Citrix
17 7 (1.56%) Dell