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 28 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 292 224 252
Rank change year-on-year -68 +28 +76
Contract jobs citing BGP 402 344 391
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.82% 1.20% 0.91%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 8.48% 9.50% 7.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 232 216 246
10th Percentile £336 £325 £333
25th Percentile £400 £425 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £552 £600 £550
90th Percentile £638 £720 £613
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £490 £463
% change year-on-year -2.04% +5.83% -2.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 3 4
10th Percentile £47.22 £37.00 £19.93
25th Percentile £56.01 £38.13 £22.06
Median hourly rate £71.33 £40.00 £39.25
Median % change year-on-year +78.33% +1.91% -43.93%
75th Percentile £73.13 £49.38 £57.50
90th Percentile £73.81 £55.00 £62.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £71.33 - £19.00
% change year-on-year - - -69.35%

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 4,738 3,621 5,426
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.70% 12.64% 12.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,909 2,244 3,253
10th Percentile £263 £213 £206
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £484 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.31% -3.20% -2.44%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £463 £483
% change year-on-year +2.70% -4.15% +1.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 280 156 414
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.14 £17.30 £16.30
Median hourly rate £28.44 £40.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -29.78% +1.25% +116.22%
75th Percentile £65.00 £59.09 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £30.32 £45.88
% change year-on-year +7.19% -33.91% +154.89%

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 28 May 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 28 May 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 28 May 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 -56 357 £480 -4.00% 83
UK excluding London -25 233 £480 -2.04% 74
Work from Home -47 123 £450 -12.20% 46
London -84 110 £475 -5.00% 29
South East +15 105 £458 -3.58% 24
North of England -52 74 £575 +15.00% 18
North West -29 58 £571 +11.46% 11
Midlands -36 50 £413 +37.50% 11
West Midlands -34 47 £413 +43.48% 11
South West -32 23 £525 -8.70% 7
North East -18 11 £650 +160.00% 6
Yorkshire -51 9 £475 +35.71% 2
Scotland -4 8 £434 +5.15% 10
Wales -20 4 £425 -5.56%
East of England -29 4 £500 +25.00% 5
East Midlands -28 2 - -

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 6 (1.49%) OpenStack
2 5 (1.24%) Confluence
3 4 (1.00%) SharePoint
Applications
1 9 (2.24%) MS Visio
2 6 (1.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (0.75%) Microsoft Excel
5 1 (0.25%) AutoCAD
Cloud Services
1 80 (19.90%) AWS
2 79 (19.65%) Azure
3 23 (5.72%) GCP
4 20 (4.98%) OCI
5 15 (3.73%) SaaS
5 15 (3.73%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 8 (1.99%) Route 53
7 7 (1.74%) AWS Direct Connect
8 6 (1.49%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 5 (1.24%) Amazon EKS
9 5 (1.24%) Amazon GuardDuty
9 5 (1.24%) Nutanix
10 4 (1.00%) Azure Sentinel
10 4 (1.00%) GitHub
11 3 (0.75%) Amazon S3
11 3 (0.75%) AWS CloudFormation
11 3 (0.75%) Catchpoint
11 3 (0.75%) IaaS
11 3 (0.75%) PaaS
12 2 (0.50%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 283 (70.40%) OSPF
2 236 (58.71%) Firewall
3 232 (57.71%) WAN
4 153 (38.06%) LAN
5 113 (28.11%) VPN
6 110 (27.36%) VXLAN
7 104 (25.87%) Network Security
8 95 (23.63%) VLAN
9 94 (23.38%) MPLS
10 84 (20.90%) DNS
10 84 (20.90%) Ethernet VPN
11 81 (20.15%) SD-WAN
12 68 (16.92%) Multicast
13 60 (14.93%) BIG-IP
14 59 (14.68%) IPsec
15 52 (12.94%) TCP/IP
16 44 (10.95%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 42 (10.45%) Cisco ISE
17 42 (10.45%) Cisco Nexus
17 42 (10.45%) Wireless
Development Applications
1 19 (4.73%) GitLab
2 10 (2.49%) Git
3 8 (1.99%) Sonatype Nexus
4 5 (1.24%) JIRA
5 3 (0.75%) Jenkins
6 1 (0.25%) AppScan
6 1 (0.25%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.25%) Burp Suite
6 1 (0.25%) Metasploit
General
1 52 (12.94%) Social Skills
2 40 (9.95%) Finance
3 35 (8.71%) Public Sector
4 31 (7.71%) Analytical Skills
4 31 (7.71%) Documentation Skills
5 27 (6.72%) Banking
6 22 (5.47%) Telecoms
7 19 (4.73%) Investment Banking
8 12 (2.99%) Financial Institution
8 12 (2.99%) Military
9 10 (2.49%) Manufacturing
10 5 (1.24%) Legal
10 5 (1.24%) Retail
11 4 (1.00%) Marketing
11 4 (1.00%) Police
12 3 (0.75%) French Language
13 2 (0.50%) Aviation
13 2 (0.50%) German Language
13 2 (0.50%) Italian Language
13 2 (0.50%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 231 (57.46%) Network Engineer
2 74 (18.41%) Senior
3 63 (15.67%) Cisco Engineer
4 58 (14.43%) Cisco Network Engineer
5 45 (11.19%) Security Engineer
6 43 (10.70%) Data Network Engineer
6 43 (10.70%) Senior Network Engineer
7 41 (10.20%) Architect
8 40 (9.95%) Network Security Engineer
9 33 (8.21%) Cisco Security Engineer
10 32 (7.96%) Data Engineer
11 29 (7.21%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 28 (6.97%) Network Architect
13 25 (6.22%) Network Specialist
14 23 (5.72%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 17 (4.23%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
16 15 (3.73%) Web Engineer
17 14 (3.48%) Firewall Specialist
17 14 (3.48%) Operations Engineer
18 13 (3.23%) Juniper Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 41 (10.20%) 802.1X
2 11 (2.74%) REST
3 8 (1.99%) NETCONF
3 8 (1.99%) YANG
4 7 (1.74%) LDAP
5 4 (1.00%) CSS
5 4 (1.00%) Jinja
6 2 (0.50%) AWS CDK
6 2 (0.50%) HTML
6 2 (0.50%) OpenConfig
6 2 (0.50%) RESTCONF
6 2 (0.50%) RFC 2544
6 2 (0.50%) VML
7 1 (0.25%) eBPF
7 1 (0.25%) JSON
7 1 (0.25%) SAML
7 1 (0.25%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 180 (44.78%) Data Centre
2 39 (9.70%) PKI
3 33 (8.21%) Hybrid Cloud
4 25 (6.22%) Clustering
5 17 (4.23%) Cloud Native
6 8 (1.99%) Onboarding
7 6 (1.49%) Security Posture
8 5 (1.24%) Analytical Mindset
8 5 (1.24%) Data Protection Act
9 4 (1.00%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 4 (1.00%) Distributed Systems
9 4 (1.00%) Linux Command Line
9 4 (1.00%) Operational Technology
9 4 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
10 3 (0.75%) CESG
10 3 (0.75%) Greenfield Project
10 3 (0.75%) Management Information System
10 3 (0.75%) NHS
10 3 (0.75%) SCADA
10 3 (0.75%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 40 (9.95%) Windows
2 19 (4.73%) Linux
3 6 (1.49%) Ubuntu
4 3 (0.75%) Windows Server
5 2 (0.50%) Unix
6 1 (0.25%) Kali Linux
6 1 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.25%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 103 (25.62%) Load Balancing
2 72 (17.91%) High Availability
3 58 (14.43%) Network Design
4 52 (12.94%) Infrastructure as Code
4 52 (12.94%) Zero Trust
5 45 (11.19%) Migration
5 45 (11.19%) Problem-Solving
6 36 (8.96%) Network Architecture
7 34 (8.46%) CI/CD
8 32 (7.96%) DevOps
8 32 (7.96%) Observability
9 31 (7.71%) Change Management
9 31 (7.71%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 31 (7.71%) ITIL
10 30 (7.46%) Network Monitoring
11 28 (6.97%) Technical Leadership
12 26 (6.47%) Identity Access Management
12 26 (6.47%) Network Segmentation
12 26 (6.47%) Project Delivery
13 24 (5.97%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 89 (22.14%) Python
2 6 (1.49%) Bash
3 4 (1.00%) PHP
3 4 (1.00%) SQL
4 2 (0.50%) JavaScript
4 2 (0.50%) PowerShell
5 1 (0.25%) Lisp
5 1 (0.25%) Perl
Qualifications
1 160 (39.80%) Cisco Certification
2 149 (37.06%) Security Cleared
3 119 (29.60%) CCNP
4 111 (27.61%) SC Cleared
5 53 (13.18%) CCIE
6 42 (10.45%) DV Cleared
7 25 (6.22%) CCNA
7 25 (6.22%) Degree
8 16 (3.98%) JNCIP
9 14 (3.48%) JNCIS
10 13 (3.23%) JNCIE
11 12 (2.99%) JNCIA
12 9 (2.24%) Computer Science Degree
13 8 (1.99%) AWS Certification
14 7 (1.74%) Azure Certification
15 6 (1.49%) GIAC
16 5 (1.24%) CCDP
16 5 (1.24%) CISSP
16 5 (1.24%) CompTIA Security+
16 5 (1.24%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (2.74%) NIST
2 10 (2.49%) NCSC
3 9 (2.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 7 (1.74%) SLA
5 4 (1.00%) Cyber Essentials
5 4 (1.00%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 3 (0.75%) PCI DSS
6 3 (0.75%) RMADS
7 2 (0.50%) JSP 440
7 2 (0.50%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.25%) COBIT
8 1 (0.25%) GDPR
8 1 (0.25%) GRC
8 1 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 1 (0.25%) QA
System Software
1 29 (7.21%) VMware Infrastructure
2 12 (2.99%) VMware NSX
3 8 (1.99%) VMware ESXi
4 6 (1.49%) Active Directory
5 5 (1.24%) Firmware
6 4 (1.00%) Hyper-V
6 4 (1.00%) vSphere
7 2 (0.50%) Docker
7 2 (0.50%) vCloud
7 2 (0.50%) Virtual Servers
8 1 (0.25%) KVM
8 1 (0.25%) ProxySG
8 1 (0.25%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 95 (23.63%) Ansible
2 54 (13.43%) Terraform
3 47 (11.69%) FortiGate
4 18 (4.48%) Grafana
5 15 (3.73%) Prometheus
6 6 (1.49%) Kubernetes
6 6 (1.49%) vCenter Server
7 5 (1.24%) Nagios
8 3 (0.75%) Cisco Prime
8 3 (0.75%) SCOM
9 2 (0.50%) CASB
9 2 (0.50%) Iperf
9 2 (0.50%) Nmap
9 2 (0.50%) QRadar
10 1 (0.25%) Cilium
10 1 (0.25%) Progress Chef
10 1 (0.25%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.25%) Suricata
10 1 (0.25%) vRealize
10 1 (0.25%) VxRail
Vendors
1 285 (70.90%) Cisco
2 144 (35.82%) F5
3 115 (28.61%) Palo Alto
4 84 (20.90%) Juniper
5 66 (16.42%) Fortinet
6 65 (16.17%) Arista
7 49 (12.19%) Aruba
8 46 (11.44%) CheckPoint
9 36 (8.96%) VMware
10 34 (8.46%) SolarWinds
11 29 (7.21%) Splunk
12 26 (6.47%) Extreme Networks
13 16 (3.98%) Meraki
13 16 (3.98%) Zscaler
14 10 (2.49%) ServiceNow
15 9 (2.24%) Nokia
16 7 (1.74%) Ekahau
16 7 (1.74%) Microsoft
17 6 (1.49%) Google
18 5 (1.24%) NVIDIA