BGP Contracts

Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring BGP skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited BGP over the 6 months leading up to 2 April 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 226 233 360
Rank change year-on-year +7 +127 +66
Contract jobs citing BGP 338 454 419
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 1.16% 1.03% 0.66%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 8.94% 7.70% 5.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 214 266 265
10th Percentile £336 £313 £363
25th Percentile £413 £377 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £600 £566 £575
90th Percentile £750 £669 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £450 £490
% change year-on-year +11.11% -8.16% +15.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 10 13
10th Percentile £19.78 £24.15 £27.95
25th Percentile £21.69 £24.44 £70.00
Median hourly rate £25.75 £46.25 £78.50
Median % change year-on-year -44.32% -41.08% +185.45%
75th Percentile £30.19 £69.38 £81.00
90th Percentile £32.33 £71.33 £84.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.00 £44.00 £78.50
% change year-on-year -56.82% -43.95% +55.45%

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 3,780 5,894 7,719
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 13.00% 13.33% 12.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,340 3,554 5,015
10th Percentile £213 £205 £231
25th Percentile £363 £350 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £523
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -9.09% +4.50%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £638
90th Percentile £675 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -1.05% - +11.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 153 406 521
10th Percentile £14.20 £13.93 £9.80
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.72 £10.63
Median hourly rate £32.50 £32.50 £19.00
Median % change year-on-year - +71.05% -25.61%
75th Percentile £62.50 £62.50 £59.28
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.63 £74.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.50 £44.00 £18.50
% change year-on-year -35.23% +137.84% -8.66%

BGP
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for BGP in the UK

BGP
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for BGP in the UK

BGP
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing BGP over the 6 months to 2 April 2025.

Daily rate histogram for BGP in the UK

BGP
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for BGP in the UK

BGP
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing BGP over the 6 months to 2 April 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for BGP in the UK

BGP
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 BGP within the UK over the 6 months to 2 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 -19 271 £500 +2.88% 248
UK excluding London -8 157 £500 +11.11% 167
London -2 123 £500 -4.76% 107
Work from Home +53 116 £511 +4.87% 79
North of England +66 60 £525 +4.17% 47
North West +47 57 £525 +3.30% 35
South East -1 38 £591 +31.39% 45
South West +13 29 £500 +1.01% 12
Midlands -43 16 £300 -14.29% 26
West Midlands -45 13 £300 -14.29% 16
Scotland +13 9 £438 -2.78% 11
Wales - 9 £450 - 6
East Midlands - 3 - - 9
East of England - 3 £425 - 16
Yorkshire +16 1 £500 -20.63% 9
North East -7 1 - - 3
Channel Islands - 1 £450 -

BGP
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 (1.48%) OpenStack
2 2 (0.59%) Confluence
3 1 (0.30%) CMS
Applications
1 5 (1.48%) Microsoft Office
1 5 (1.48%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 4 (1.18%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 82 (24.26%) AWS
2 75 (22.19%) Azure
3 34 (10.06%) GCP
4 19 (5.62%) AWS CloudFormation
4 19 (5.62%) IaaS
4 19 (5.62%) PaaS
4 19 (5.62%) SaaS
5 5 (1.48%) OpenShift
6 4 (1.18%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 3 (0.89%) Cloud Computing
7 3 (0.89%) Microsoft 365
8 2 (0.59%) Akamai
8 2 (0.59%) GitHub
8 2 (0.59%) IBM Watson
8 2 (0.59%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 1 (0.30%) Datadog
9 1 (0.30%) Entra ID
9 1 (0.30%) npm
9 1 (0.30%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 274 (81.07%) OSPF
2 188 (55.62%) Firewall
3 138 (40.83%) VPN
4 123 (36.39%) WAN
5 106 (31.36%) MPLS
6 97 (28.70%) EIGRP
7 94 (27.81%) Network Security
8 89 (26.33%) IPsec
9 78 (23.08%) TCP/IP
10 66 (19.53%) DNS
10 66 (19.53%) LAN
11 63 (18.64%) HSRP
12 61 (18.05%) VLAN
13 57 (16.86%) SD-WAN
14 55 (16.27%) Wireless
15 53 (15.68%) Cisco Nexus
16 51 (15.09%) Cisco ASA
17 50 (14.79%) DHCP
17 50 (14.79%) Multicast
18 46 (13.61%) Cisco Firepower
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (1.18%) Data Lake
2 2 (0.59%) MongoDB
2 2 (0.59%) MySQL
2 2 (0.59%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 12 (3.55%) Sonatype Nexus
2 9 (2.66%) Robot Framework
3 5 (1.48%) GitLab
4 4 (1.18%) JIRA
5 2 (0.59%) Jenkins
6 1 (0.30%) Bitbucket
General
1 77 (22.78%) Social Skills
2 53 (15.68%) Analytical Skills
3 38 (11.24%) Finance
4 32 (9.47%) Public Sector
4 32 (9.47%) Telecoms
5 15 (4.44%) Banking
6 11 (3.25%) Documentation Skills
7 7 (2.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 7 (2.07%) Legal
7 7 (2.07%) Marketing
7 7 (2.07%) Military
8 5 (1.48%) Investment Banking
8 5 (1.48%) Manufacturing
9 4 (1.18%) Electronics
10 3 (0.89%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (0.89%) Retail
11 2 (0.59%) Advertising
11 2 (0.59%) Influencing Skills
11 2 (0.59%) Prime Brokerage
12 1 (0.30%) Law
Job Titles
1 205 (60.65%) Network Engineer
2 51 (15.09%) Architect
3 32 (9.47%) Senior
4 30 (8.88%) Cisco Engineer
5 29 (8.58%) Cisco Network Engineer
6 23 (6.80%) Consultant
6 23 (6.80%) Network Architect
7 22 (6.51%) Cloud Architect
7 22 (6.51%) Technical Architect
8 20 (5.92%) Senior Network Engineer
9 18 (5.33%) Cloud Native Architect
10 17 (5.03%) Network Consultant
11 16 (4.73%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 15 (4.44%) Security Architect
12 15 (4.44%) WAN Engineer
13 12 (3.55%) Security Engineer
14 11 (3.25%) Implementation Engineer
14 11 (3.25%) Network Security Engineer
14 11 (3.25%) Principal Engineer
14 11 (3.25%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (6.51%) 802.1X
2 5 (1.48%) JSON
2 5 (1.48%) Spine.js
3 3 (0.89%) REST
3 3 (0.89%) XML
4 2 (0.59%) NETCONF
4 2 (0.59%) RESTCONF
4 2 (0.59%) SOAP
4 2 (0.59%) YAML
4 2 (0.59%) YANG
5 1 (0.30%) FIX Protocol
5 1 (0.30%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 53 (15.68%) Data Centre
2 30 (8.88%) Cloud Native
3 14 (4.14%) PKI
4 13 (3.85%) Hybrid Cloud
5 9 (2.66%) Self-Motivation
6 7 (2.07%) NHS
7 6 (1.78%) Public Cloud
8 5 (1.48%) Hedge funds
8 5 (1.48%) Linux Command Line
9 4 (1.18%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 2 (0.59%) Clustering
10 2 (0.59%) Data Protection Act
10 2 (0.59%) Derivative
10 2 (0.59%) Security Posture
10 2 (0.59%) Team-Oriented Environment
10 2 (0.59%) Virtual Team
11 1 (0.30%) FMCG
11 1 (0.30%) IoT
11 1 (0.30%) Legacy Systems
11 1 (0.30%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 9 (2.66%) Linux
2 6 (1.78%) Unix
3 5 (1.48%) CatOS
4 2 (0.59%) CentOS
4 2 (0.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (0.59%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 57 (16.86%) Problem-Solving
2 49 (14.50%) Migration
3 47 (13.91%) Network Monitoring
4 39 (11.54%) Network Management
5 36 (10.65%) ITIL
5 36 (10.65%) Network Design
6 31 (9.17%) Test Automation
7 29 (8.58%) Infrastructure as Code
7 29 (8.58%) Load Balancing
8 25 (7.40%) Project Delivery
9 22 (6.51%) Service Management
10 20 (5.92%) Network Architecture
11 18 (5.33%) Sprint Planning
12 17 (5.03%) Change Management
12 17 (5.03%) Root Cause Analysis
13 16 (4.73%) High Availability
14 15 (4.44%) Containerisation
14 15 (4.44%) Low Latency
14 15 (4.44%) Mentoring
15 14 (4.14%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 52 (15.38%) Python
2 19 (5.62%) Bicep
3 7 (2.07%) Perl
4 5 (1.48%) PowerShell
5 4 (1.18%) Bash
6 2 (0.59%) SQL
7 1 (0.30%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 154 (45.56%) Cisco Certification
2 117 (34.62%) CCNP
3 89 (26.33%) Security Cleared
4 68 (20.12%) SC Cleared
5 52 (15.38%) CCIE
6 40 (11.83%) CCNA
7 26 (7.69%) Degree
8 24 (7.10%) DV Cleared
9 8 (2.37%) CCSA
9 8 (2.37%) Computer Science Degree
9 8 (2.37%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 6 (1.78%) CCSE
11 5 (1.48%) AWS Certification
11 5 (1.48%) CCIE Data Center
11 5 (1.48%) CCIE Service Provider
11 5 (1.48%) ITIL Certification
11 5 (1.48%) JNCIP
12 4 (1.18%) CCIE Routing and Switching
12 4 (1.18%) JNCIA
12 4 (1.18%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (2.07%) SLA
2 4 (1.18%) Cyber Essentials
2 4 (1.18%) DICOM
2 4 (1.18%) HL7
2 4 (1.18%) NCSC
2 4 (1.18%) NIST
3 2 (0.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (0.59%) QA
4 1 (0.30%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 29 (8.58%) VMware Infrastructure
2 13 (3.85%) Docker
3 10 (2.96%) VMware NSX
4 7 (2.07%) Firmware
5 5 (1.48%) vSphere
6 1 (0.30%) Active Directory
6 1 (0.30%) ProxySG
Systems Management
1 55 (16.27%) Ansible
2 32 (9.47%) FortiGate
3 30 (8.88%) Terraform
4 14 (4.14%) Kubernetes
5 12 (3.55%) ZABBIX
6 6 (1.78%) Cisco Prime
6 6 (1.78%) Nagios
7 5 (1.48%) Cacti
7 5 (1.48%) Progress Chef
7 5 (1.48%) Puppet
7 5 (1.48%) vCenter Server
8 4 (1.18%) CA Spectrum
9 3 (0.89%) SolarWinds Orion
10 2 (0.59%) Cisco CUCM
10 2 (0.59%) Grafana
11 1 (0.30%) Cisco LMS
11 1 (0.30%) Cisco UCCX
11 1 (0.30%) Icinga
11 1 (0.30%) Observium
11 1 (0.30%) TrustSec
Vendors
1 267 (78.99%) Cisco
2 117 (34.62%) Palo Alto
3 80 (23.67%) Fortinet
4 68 (20.12%) CheckPoint
5 62 (18.34%) Juniper
6 57 (16.86%) SolarWinds
7 34 (10.06%) F5
7 34 (10.06%) VMware
8 26 (7.69%) Arista
9 18 (5.33%) Meraki
10 16 (4.73%) Aruba
11 11 (3.25%) Citrix
12 10 (2.96%) Infoblox
12 10 (2.96%) Nokia
12 10 (2.96%) Splunk
13 7 (2.07%) Microsoft
13 7 (2.07%) Zscaler
14 6 (1.78%) McAfee
15 5 (1.48%) IBM
15 5 (1.48%) Red Hat