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

6 months to
28 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 290 257 254
Rank change year-on-year -33 -3 +41
Contract jobs citing BGP 448 333 372
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.85% 1.02% 0.93%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 9.01% 8.43% 7.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 263 215 237
10th Percentile £369 £325 £299
25th Percentile £413 £413 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year - +5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £573 £609 £538
90th Percentile £650 £675 £581
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £475
% change year-on-year - +5.26% -2.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 3 2
10th Percentile £50.15 £37.00 £23.15
25th Percentile £63.34 £38.13 £30.13
Median hourly rate £72.80 £40.00 £42.00
Median % change year-on-year +81.99% -4.76% -32.26%
75th Percentile £78.83 £49.38 £53.63
90th Percentile £87.05 £55.00 £60.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £72.80 - £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 4,975 3,951 4,930
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.41% 12.06% 12.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,982 2,418 2,984
10th Percentile £250 £235 £213
25th Percentile £400 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.41% -2.35% -
75th Percentile £588 £589 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £489 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +2.95% -5.00% +8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 335 194 348
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.15 £17.95
Median hourly rate £26.44 £48.75 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -45.76% +8.33% -10.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £83.70 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £44.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year -39.41% -12.00% -13.04%

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 July 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 July 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 July 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 -26 412 £500 - 65
UK excluding London -15 270 £500 - 39
London -76 121 £500 +2.56% 29
Work from Home -42 114 £500 - 25
South East +6 106 £525 +16.67% 11
North of England -12 102 £500 +5.26% 11
North West -5 78 £505 +6.32% 6
Midlands -32 50 £419 +4.69% 5
West Midlands -32 47 £413 +10.00% 5
South West -40 33 £525 -16.00% 6
Yorkshire -26 17 £495 +41.43% 6
North East -29 13 £650 +160.00%
Scotland -22 7 £375 -14.29% 1
East of England -22 6 £500 -28.57% 7
East Midlands -14 2 - -
Wales -19 2 £425 -6.08%

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 11 (2.46%) OpenStack
2 3 (0.67%) Microsoft Exchange
2 3 (0.67%) SAS
3 1 (0.22%) Confluence
3 1 (0.22%) SharePoint
Applications
1 11 (2.46%) MS Visio
2 9 (2.01%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (1.34%) Microsoft Excel
3 6 (1.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.67%) AutoCAD
Cloud Services
1 115 (25.67%) Azure
2 91 (20.31%) AWS
3 32 (7.14%) GCP
4 23 (5.13%) OCI
5 17 (3.79%) Azure ExpressRoute
6 14 (3.13%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 13 (2.90%) SaaS
8 11 (2.46%) GitHub
9 9 (2.01%) Azure Sentinel
10 8 (1.79%) AWS Direct Connect
11 7 (1.56%) Azure Monitor
11 7 (1.56%) OpenShift
12 6 (1.34%) Microsoft 365
12 6 (1.34%) Nutanix
13 3 (0.67%) Azure DevOps
13 3 (0.67%) Entra ID
14 2 (0.45%) Amazon EKS
14 2 (0.45%) Amazon GuardDuty
14 2 (0.45%) AWS CloudFormation
14 2 (0.45%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 287 (64.06%) OSPF
2 270 (60.27%) Firewall
3 243 (54.24%) WAN
4 152 (33.93%) LAN
5 138 (30.80%) VPN
6 118 (26.34%) VXLAN
7 116 (25.89%) VLAN
8 107 (23.88%) MPLS
9 103 (22.99%) DNS
9 103 (22.99%) Network Security
10 86 (19.20%) Ethernet VPN
11 83 (18.53%) SD-WAN
12 76 (16.96%) Multicast
13 73 (16.29%) TCP/IP
14 71 (15.85%) IPsec
15 64 (14.29%) Wireless
16 62 (13.84%) BIG-IP
17 54 (12.05%) Cisco ASA
17 54 (12.05%) Wi-Fi
18 53 (11.83%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Development Applications
1 22 (4.91%) GitLab
2 14 (3.13%) Git
3 8 (1.79%) Sonatype Nexus
4 7 (1.56%) JIRA
5 4 (0.89%) Jenkins
6 1 (0.22%) Bitbucket
General
1 73 (16.29%) Social Skills
2 47 (10.49%) Finance
3 44 (9.82%) Analytical Skills
4 33 (7.37%) Banking
4 33 (7.37%) Public Sector
5 28 (6.25%) Telecoms
6 20 (4.46%) Documentation Skills
7 19 (4.24%) Investment Banking
8 12 (2.68%) Military
9 11 (2.46%) Financial Institution
10 8 (1.79%) Retail
11 7 (1.56%) Legal
11 7 (1.56%) Police
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%) Organisational Skills
14 2 (0.45%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 259 (57.81%) Network Engineer
2 94 (20.98%) Senior
3 64 (14.29%) Cisco Engineer
4 61 (13.62%) Cisco Network Engineer
5 58 (12.95%) Senior Network Engineer
6 46 (10.27%) Security Engineer
7 45 (10.04%) Architect
8 44 (9.82%) Data Network Engineer
8 44 (9.82%) Network Security Engineer
9 33 (7.37%) Cisco Security Engineer
10 32 (7.14%) Data Engineer
10 32 (7.14%) Network Architect
11 25 (5.58%) Network Specialist
12 22 (4.91%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 20 (4.46%) Consultant
14 18 (4.02%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 17 (3.79%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
16 16 (3.57%) Developer
16 16 (3.57%) Web Engineer
17 14 (3.13%) Firewall Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (8.71%) 802.1X
2 13 (2.90%) REST
3 11 (2.46%) NETCONF
3 11 (2.46%) YANG
4 6 (1.34%) OpenConfig
4 6 (1.34%) RESTCONF
5 4 (0.89%) CSS
5 4 (0.89%) Jinja
5 4 (0.89%) LDAP
6 3 (0.67%) eBPF
7 2 (0.45%) RFC 2544
7 2 (0.45%) SAML
8 1 (0.22%) JSON
8 1 (0.22%) Model Context Protocol
8 1 (0.22%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 184 (41.07%) Data Centre
2 51 (11.38%) Hybrid Cloud
3 38 (8.48%) PKI
4 26 (5.80%) Clustering
5 23 (5.13%) Cloud Native
6 10 (2.23%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 9 (2.01%) Analytical Mindset
7 9 (2.01%) Private Cloud
7 9 (2.01%) Self-Motivation
8 6 (1.34%) Public Cloud
8 6 (1.34%) Security Posture
9 5 (1.12%) Digital Signage
9 5 (1.12%) Linux Command Line
9 5 (1.12%) Onboarding
9 5 (1.12%) Operational Technology
10 4 (0.89%) Data Protection Act
10 4 (0.89%) Distributed Systems
11 3 (0.67%) Driving Licence
11 3 (0.67%) Greenfield Project
11 3 (0.67%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 48 (10.71%) Windows
2 18 (4.02%) Linux
3 6 (1.34%) Windows Server
4 3 (0.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (0.67%) Ubuntu
4 3 (0.67%) Unix
4 3 (0.67%) Windows Server 2012
5 2 (0.45%) VMS
6 1 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
6 1 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 115 (25.67%) Load Balancing
2 84 (18.75%) High Availability
3 72 (16.07%) Network Design
4 68 (15.18%) Zero Trust
5 64 (14.29%) Infrastructure as Code
5 64 (14.29%) Migration
6 53 (11.83%) Problem-Solving
7 47 (10.49%) Network Architecture
8 45 (10.04%) ITIL
9 44 (9.82%) Project Delivery
10 41 (9.15%) CI/CD
11 37 (8.26%) Observability
12 34 (7.59%) Validation
13 33 (7.37%) DevOps
14 32 (7.14%) Change Management
14 32 (7.14%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 32 (7.14%) Network Segmentation
15 29 (6.47%) Mentoring
16 27 (6.03%) Continuous Improvement
17 26 (5.80%) Identity Access Management
Programming Languages
1 120 (26.79%) Python
2 9 (2.01%) Bash
3 8 (1.79%) PowerShell
4 6 (1.34%) SQL
5 3 (0.67%) Perl
5 3 (0.67%) PHP
6 2 (0.45%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 150 (33.48%) Security Cleared
2 147 (32.81%) Cisco Certification
3 103 (22.99%) CCNP
4 86 (19.20%) SC Cleared
5 60 (13.39%) DV Cleared
6 52 (11.61%) CCIE
7 23 (5.13%) Degree
8 22 (4.91%) CCNA
9 14 (3.13%) JNCIE
10 11 (2.46%) JNCIP
11 10 (2.23%) JNCIS
12 9 (2.01%) JNCIA
13 8 (1.79%) AWS Certification
13 8 (1.79%) Azure Certification
13 8 (1.79%) Computer Science Degree
14 6 (1.34%) CISSP
15 5 (1.12%) GIAC
16 4 (0.89%) CompTIA Security+
16 4 (0.89%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 3 (0.67%) CCIE Security
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (2.23%) NCSC
2 8 (1.79%) NIST
3 7 (1.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 4 (0.89%) Cyber Essentials
5 3 (0.67%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 3 (0.67%) GDPR
5 3 (0.67%) QA
5 3 (0.67%) SLA
6 2 (0.45%) NIST 800
6 2 (0.45%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.22%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 30 (6.70%) VMware Infrastructure
2 13 (2.90%) VMware NSX
3 9 (2.01%) Active Directory
4 7 (1.56%) Firmware
4 7 (1.56%) VMware ESXi
5 6 (1.34%) Hyper-V
6 4 (0.89%) Docker
6 4 (0.89%) vSphere
7 2 (0.45%) Virtual Machines
7 2 (0.45%) Virtual Servers
8 1 (0.22%) KVM
8 1 (0.22%) ProxySG
Systems Management
1 118 (26.34%) Ansible
2 76 (16.96%) Terraform
3 59 (13.17%) FortiGate
4 19 (4.24%) Grafana
5 16 (3.57%) Prometheus
6 13 (2.90%) Kubernetes
7 9 (2.01%) Cisco Prime
8 3 (0.67%) Nagios
8 3 (0.67%) vCenter Server
9 2 (0.45%) CASB
9 2 (0.45%) QRadar
9 2 (0.45%) SCOM
9 2 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.22%) Cisco CUCM
10 1 (0.22%) Microsoft Intune
10 1 (0.22%) Nmap
10 1 (0.22%) OPNET
10 1 (0.22%) Progress Chef
10 1 (0.22%) Puppet
10 1 (0.22%) VxRail
Vendors
1 312 (69.64%) Cisco
2 167 (37.28%) F5
3 129 (28.79%) Palo Alto
4 100 (22.32%) Fortinet
5 92 (20.54%) Juniper
6 82 (18.30%) Arista
7 44 (9.82%) Aruba
8 43 (9.60%) SolarWinds
9 42 (9.38%) CheckPoint
10 41 (9.15%) VMware
11 31 (6.92%) Splunk
12 27 (6.03%) Microsoft
13 26 (5.80%) Extreme Networks
14 22 (4.91%) Zscaler
15 18 (4.02%) Meraki
16 10 (2.23%) Citrix
16 10 (2.23%) Google
17 7 (1.56%) Ekahau
17 7 (1.56%) ServiceNow
18 5 (1.12%) HP