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

6 months to
9 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 300 227 277
Rank change year-on-year -73 +50 +43
Contract jobs citing BGP 410 345 373
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.83% 1.18% 0.86%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 8.54% 9.40% 6.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 239 215 234
10th Percentile £331 £340 £319
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 £558 £609 £538
90th Percentile £629 £698 £613
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £500 £463
% change year-on-year -1.00% +7.99% -4.73%
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 4,801 3,672 5,408
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.66% 12.54% 12.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,942 2,266 3,205
10th Percentile £263 £216 £206
25th Percentile £400 £360 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £495
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -3.03% -3.41%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £466 £485
% change year-on-year +2.04% -3.92% +2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 283 165 420
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.13 £16.30
Median hourly rate £27.88 £41.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.82% +3.75% +116.22%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.13 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £80.61 £70.66
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £31.08 £47.50
% change year-on-year +4.57% -34.57% +156.76%

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 9 June 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 9 June 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 9 June 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 -57 367 £480 -4.00% 60
UK excluding London -34 237 £495 -1.00% 50
Work from Home -49 127 £450 -15.09% 32
London -87 114 £450 -10.00% 26
South East +17 103 £465 +3.33% 18
North of England -46 81 £575 +15.00% 11
North West -23 64 £575 +12.20% 6
Midlands -33 52 £413 +37.50% 4
West Midlands -30 49 £413 +43.48% 3
South West -46 22 £525 -14.29% 4
North East -13 13 £650 +160.00% 3
Yorkshire -51 10 £450 +28.57% 2
Scotland -10 8 £434 +5.15% 8
Wales -16 4 £425 -5.56%
East of England -31 4 £500 +25.00% 2
East Midlands -30 2 - - 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 7 (1.71%) OpenStack
2 4 (0.98%) Confluence
3 3 (0.73%) SharePoint
Applications
1 9 (2.20%) MS Visio
2 5 (1.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.98%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (0.73%) AutoCAD
4 3 (0.73%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 84 (20.49%) Azure
2 83 (20.24%) AWS
3 26 (6.34%) GCP
4 22 (5.37%) OCI
5 17 (4.15%) SaaS
6 15 (3.66%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 8 (1.95%) Route 53
8 7 (1.71%) AWS Direct Connect
9 6 (1.46%) Azure ExpressRoute
10 5 (1.22%) Amazon EKS
10 5 (1.22%) Amazon GuardDuty
10 5 (1.22%) Nutanix
11 4 (0.98%) Azure Sentinel
11 4 (0.98%) GitHub
12 3 (0.73%) Amazon S3
12 3 (0.73%) AWS CloudFormation
12 3 (0.73%) Catchpoint
12 3 (0.73%) IaaS
12 3 (0.73%) PaaS
13 2 (0.49%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 282 (68.78%) OSPF
2 238 (58.05%) Firewall
3 236 (57.56%) WAN
4 148 (36.10%) LAN
5 116 (28.29%) VXLAN
6 115 (28.05%) VPN
7 101 (24.63%) Network Security
8 99 (24.15%) VLAN
9 97 (23.66%) MPLS
10 89 (21.71%) Ethernet VPN
11 87 (21.22%) DNS
12 86 (20.98%) SD-WAN
13 70 (17.07%) Multicast
14 61 (14.88%) BIG-IP
15 57 (13.90%) IPsec
15 57 (13.90%) TCP/IP
16 43 (10.49%) Cisco Nexus
16 43 (10.49%) Wireless
17 42 (10.24%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 42 (10.24%) Wi-Fi
Development Applications
1 21 (5.12%) GitLab
2 9 (2.20%) Git
3 8 (1.95%) Sonatype Nexus
4 6 (1.46%) JIRA
5 3 (0.73%) Jenkins
6 1 (0.24%) AppScan
6 1 (0.24%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.24%) Burp Suite
6 1 (0.24%) Metasploit
General
1 54 (13.17%) Social Skills
2 41 (10.00%) Finance
3 36 (8.78%) Public Sector
4 35 (8.54%) Analytical Skills
5 29 (7.07%) Banking
5 29 (7.07%) Documentation Skills
6 24 (5.85%) Telecoms
7 21 (5.12%) Investment Banking
8 13 (3.17%) Financial Institution
9 12 (2.93%) Military
10 9 (2.20%) Manufacturing
11 7 (1.71%) Legal
12 4 (0.98%) Marketing
12 4 (0.98%) Police
12 4 (0.98%) Retail
13 3 (0.73%) French Language
13 3 (0.73%) German Language
13 3 (0.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 3 (0.73%) Italian Language
13 3 (0.73%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 233 (56.83%) Network Engineer
2 77 (18.78%) Senior
3 63 (15.37%) Cisco Engineer
4 58 (14.15%) Cisco Network Engineer
5 47 (11.46%) Security Engineer
6 44 (10.73%) Data Network Engineer
6 44 (10.73%) Senior Network Engineer
7 42 (10.24%) Network Security Engineer
8 39 (9.51%) Architect
9 34 (8.29%) Cisco Security Engineer
10 33 (8.05%) Data Engineer
11 26 (6.34%) Network Architect
11 26 (6.34%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 25 (6.10%) Network Specialist
13 24 (5.85%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 18 (4.39%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 15 (3.66%) Operations Engineer
15 15 (3.66%) Web Engineer
16 14 (3.41%) Firewall Specialist
17 13 (3.17%) Juniper Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 42 (10.24%) 802.1X
2 13 (3.17%) REST
3 7 (1.71%) LDAP
3 7 (1.71%) NETCONF
3 7 (1.71%) YANG
4 5 (1.22%) CSS
5 4 (0.98%) Jinja
6 2 (0.49%) AWS CDK
6 2 (0.49%) HTML
6 2 (0.49%) OpenConfig
6 2 (0.49%) RESTCONF
6 2 (0.49%) RFC 2544
7 1 (0.24%) eBPF
7 1 (0.24%) SAML
7 1 (0.24%) VML
Miscellaneous
1 186 (45.37%) Data Centre
2 41 (10.00%) PKI
3 35 (8.54%) Hybrid Cloud
4 26 (6.34%) Clustering
5 19 (4.63%) Cloud Native
6 8 (1.95%) Onboarding
7 5 (1.22%) Analytical Mindset
7 5 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
7 5 (1.22%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 5 (1.22%) Linux Command Line
7 5 (1.22%) Security Posture
8 4 (0.98%) Distributed Systems
8 4 (0.98%) Operational Technology
8 4 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
9 3 (0.73%) CESG
9 3 (0.73%) Greenfield Project
9 3 (0.73%) Management Information System
9 3 (0.73%) NHS
9 3 (0.73%) SCADA
9 3 (0.73%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 39 (9.51%) Windows
2 19 (4.63%) Linux
3 6 (1.46%) Ubuntu
4 3 (0.73%) Windows Server
5 2 (0.49%) Unix
6 1 (0.24%) Kali Linux
6 1 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.24%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 105 (25.61%) Load Balancing
2 77 (18.78%) High Availability
3 60 (14.63%) Network Design
4 55 (13.41%) Infrastructure as Code
5 54 (13.17%) Zero Trust
6 49 (11.95%) Migration
7 48 (11.71%) Problem-Solving
8 38 (9.27%) Network Architecture
9 37 (9.02%) CI/CD
10 33 (8.05%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 32 (7.80%) DevOps
11 32 (7.80%) ITIL
11 32 (7.80%) Observability
12 31 (7.56%) Change Management
13 28 (6.83%) Network Monitoring
13 28 (6.83%) Project Delivery
13 28 (6.83%) Technical Leadership
14 27 (6.59%) Network Segmentation
15 26 (6.34%) Identity Access Management
16 25 (6.10%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 95 (23.17%) Python
2 7 (1.71%) Bash
3 5 (1.22%) SQL
4 4 (0.98%) PHP
5 3 (0.73%) PowerShell
6 2 (0.49%) JavaScript
6 2 (0.49%) Perl
7 1 (0.24%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 156 (38.05%) Cisco Certification
2 147 (35.85%) Security Cleared
3 114 (27.80%) CCNP
4 108 (26.34%) SC Cleared
5 51 (12.44%) CCIE
6 42 (10.24%) DV Cleared
7 26 (6.34%) Degree
8 23 (5.61%) CCNA
9 15 (3.66%) JNCIP
10 13 (3.17%) JNCIS
11 12 (2.93%) JNCIA
11 12 (2.93%) JNCIE
12 9 (2.20%) Computer Science Degree
13 8 (1.95%) AWS Certification
14 7 (1.71%) Azure Certification
15 6 (1.46%) GIAC
16 5 (1.22%) CCDP
16 5 (1.22%) CompTIA Security+
16 5 (1.22%) Network+ Certification
17 4 (0.98%) APMG
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (2.93%) NIST
2 10 (2.44%) NCSC
3 9 (2.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 7 (1.71%) SLA
5 4 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
5 4 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 4 (0.98%) PCI DSS
6 3 (0.73%) GDPR
6 3 (0.73%) RMADS
7 2 (0.49%) JSP 440
7 2 (0.49%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.24%) COBIT
8 1 (0.24%) GRC
8 1 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 1 (0.24%) QA
System Software
1 29 (7.07%) VMware Infrastructure
2 11 (2.68%) VMware NSX
3 8 (1.95%) VMware ESXi
4 7 (1.71%) Firmware
5 6 (1.46%) Active Directory
6 5 (1.22%) Hyper-V
7 4 (0.98%) vSphere
8 2 (0.49%) Docker
8 2 (0.49%) vCloud
8 2 (0.49%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.24%) KVM
9 1 (0.24%) ProxySG
9 1 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 102 (24.88%) Ansible
2 58 (14.15%) Terraform
3 46 (11.22%) FortiGate
4 19 (4.63%) Grafana
5 16 (3.90%) Prometheus
6 7 (1.71%) Kubernetes
7 6 (1.46%) vCenter Server
8 5 (1.22%) Nagios
9 3 (0.73%) Cisco Prime
9 3 (0.73%) SCOM
10 2 (0.49%) CASB
10 2 (0.49%) Iperf
10 2 (0.49%) Nmap
10 2 (0.49%) QRadar
11 1 (0.24%) Cilium
11 1 (0.24%) Progress Chef
11 1 (0.24%) Single Sign-On
11 1 (0.24%) Suricata
11 1 (0.24%) vRealize
11 1 (0.24%) VxRail
Vendors
1 285 (69.51%) Cisco
2 145 (35.37%) F5
3 113 (27.56%) Palo Alto
4 85 (20.73%) Juniper
5 73 (17.80%) Fortinet
6 72 (17.56%) Arista
7 46 (11.22%) Aruba
8 41 (10.00%) CheckPoint
9 35 (8.54%) VMware
10 34 (8.29%) SolarWinds
11 30 (7.32%) Splunk
12 26 (6.34%) Extreme Networks
13 15 (3.66%) Zscaler
14 13 (3.17%) Meraki
15 9 (2.20%) ServiceNow
16 8 (1.95%) Microsoft
17 7 (1.71%) Ekahau
17 7 (1.71%) Nokia
18 6 (1.46%) Google
19 5 (1.22%) HP