OSPF Job Trends

Open Shortest Path First (OSPF)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs requiring OSPF skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 26 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 541 393 400
Rank change year-on-year -148 +7 +306
Permanent jobs citing OSPF 113 347 338
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.19% 0.62% 0.66%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 1.17% 4.72% 4.43%
Number of salaries quoted 74 223 268
10th Percentile £47,575 £32,500 £37,500
25th Percentile £55,046 £45,000 £46,219
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £55,000 £51,193
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% +7.44% -2.49%
75th Percentile £77,500 £68,375 £63,750
90th Percentile £91,875 £83,500 £85,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £53,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +13.21% +6.00% +5.26%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
UK

OSPF falls under the Communications and Computer Networking category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring communications or computer networking skills.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 9,681 7,354 7,627
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 16.15% 13.16% 14.86%
Number of salaries quoted 4,000 3,881 6,187
10th Percentile £25,087 £30,750 £26,500
25th Percentile £28,250 £38,000 £34,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £38,500 £54,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -28.70% +8.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £61,250 £71,250 £67,500
90th Percentile £80,000 £87,500 £84,056
UK excluding London median annual salary £34,000 £50,000 £45,000
% change year-on-year -32.00% +11.11% -0.55%

OSPF
Job Vacancy Trend

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

OSPF job vacancy trend in the UK

OSPF
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing OSPF.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing OSPF

OSPF
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing OSPF over the 6 months to 26 December 2025.

Salary histogram for OSPF in the UK

OSPF
Top 14 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing OSPF within the UK over the 6 months to 26 December 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England -122 110 £65,000 +18.18% 180
UK excluding London -107 55 £60,000 +13.21% 177
London 0 51 £75,000 +3.45% 28
Work from Home +4 28 £65,000 +4.00% 29
South East -66 20 £65,000 +18.18% 57
North of England -8 11 £60,000 +33.33% 37
Midlands -7 10 £62,500 +78.57% 35
South West +6 8 £54,560 -2.78% 15
West Midlands +3 7 £63,750 +82.14% 23
East of England +15 6 £53,750 -32.81% 20
North West +2 6 £56,500 +22.16% 18
North East +16 3 - - 3
East Midlands -8 3 £50,000 - 11
Yorkshire -21 2 £62,500 +31.58% 17

OSPF
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 5 (4.42%) Microsoft Exchange
2 2 (1.77%) Apache Airflow
2 2 (1.77%) Confluence
2 2 (1.77%) nginx
Applications
1 15 (13.27%) MS Visio
2 3 (2.65%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.88%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 48 (42.48%) Azure
2 35 (30.97%) AWS
3 7 (6.19%) AWS Direct Connect
4 5 (4.42%) GCP
4 5 (4.42%) Microsoft 365
5 4 (3.54%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 3 (2.65%) Azure DevOps
6 3 (2.65%) Azure ExpressRoute
6 3 (2.65%) SaaS
7 2 (1.77%) Dagster
7 2 (1.77%) OCI
8 1 (0.88%) Azure Sentinel
8 1 (0.88%) Datadog
8 1 (0.88%) Nutanix
8 1 (0.88%) Stackdriver
Communications & Networking
1 108 (95.58%) BGP
2 98 (86.73%) Firewall
3 71 (62.83%) WAN
4 70 (61.95%) VPN
5 56 (49.56%) LAN
6 49 (43.36%) EIGRP
6 49 (43.36%) Wireless
7 42 (37.17%) Network Security
8 40 (35.40%) SD-WAN
9 36 (31.86%) VLAN
10 29 (25.66%) Cisco ASA
10 29 (25.66%) TCP/IP
10 29 (25.66%) Wi-Fi
11 26 (23.01%) Cisco Nexus
12 25 (22.12%) IPsec
13 22 (19.47%) MPLS
14 20 (17.70%) VXLAN
15 18 (15.93%) Wireshark
16 16 (14.16%) DHCP
16 16 (14.16%) DNS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (1.77%) Data Lake
1 2 (1.77%) Metadata
1 2 (1.77%) MongoDB
1 2 (1.77%) MySQL
1 2 (1.77%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 4 (3.54%) Sonatype Nexus
2 3 (2.65%) Git
3 2 (1.77%) GitLab
3 2 (1.77%) Jaeger
3 2 (1.77%) Jenkins
3 2 (1.77%) MLflow
4 1 (0.88%) JIRA
General
1 38 (33.63%) Social Skills
2 25 (22.12%) Analytical Skills
3 14 (12.39%) Finance
4 8 (7.08%) Documentation Skills
5 7 (6.19%) Marketing
6 5 (4.42%) Banking
6 5 (4.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 4 (3.54%) Law
7 4 (3.54%) Retail
8 2 (1.77%) Agriculture
8 2 (1.77%) Organisational Skills
8 2 (1.77%) Police
8 2 (1.77%) Public Sector
8 2 (1.77%) Telecoms
9 1 (0.88%) Aviation
9 1 (0.88%) Legal
9 1 (0.88%) Mandarin Language
9 1 (0.88%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 82 (72.57%) Network Engineer
2 32 (28.32%) Senior
3 29 (25.66%) Senior Network Engineer
4 9 (7.96%) Cisco Engineer
4 9 (7.96%) Cisco Network Engineer
5 7 (6.19%) Lead
5 7 (6.19%) Lead Network Engineer
5 7 (6.19%) Network Team Leader
5 7 (6.19%) Team Leader
6 6 (5.31%) Cisco Consultant
6 6 (5.31%) Cisco Network Consultant
6 6 (5.31%) Consultant
6 6 (5.31%) Network Consultant
6 6 (5.31%) Network Manager
7 5 (4.42%) 3rd Line Support
7 5 (4.42%) Architect
7 5 (4.42%) Firewall Engineer
7 5 (4.42%) Network Architect
7 5 (4.42%) WAN Consultant
8 4 (3.54%) WAN Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (8.85%) REST
2 7 (6.19%) 802.1X
3 2 (1.77%) FastAPI
3 2 (1.77%) Kafka
3 2 (1.77%) Keycloak
3 2 (1.77%) WebRTC
Miscellaneous
1 40 (35.40%) Data Centre
2 7 (6.19%) Driving Licence
3 4 (3.54%) Cloud Native
3 4 (3.54%) Management Information System
3 4 (3.54%) Onboarding
3 4 (3.54%) Public Cloud
4 3 (2.65%) Data Protection Act
4 3 (2.65%) Virtual Team
5 2 (1.77%) e-Learning
5 2 (1.77%) Hybrid Cloud
5 2 (1.77%) IoT
5 2 (1.77%) MPEG
5 2 (1.77%) PKI
5 2 (1.77%) Robotics
6 1 (0.88%) Digital Media
6 1 (0.88%) e-Health
6 1 (0.88%) Hedge funds
6 1 (0.88%) Security Posture
6 1 (0.88%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 6 (5.31%) Windows
2 5 (4.42%) Linux
2 5 (4.42%) Windows Server
3 1 (0.88%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 27 (23.89%) Problem-Solving
2 26 (23.01%) Load Balancing
3 19 (16.81%) Network Monitoring
4 18 (15.93%) Computer Science
5 16 (14.16%) Kalman Filter
6 13 (11.50%) ITIL
6 13 (11.50%) Network Segmentation
7 12 (10.62%) Change Management
7 12 (10.62%) Customer Service
7 12 (10.62%) Root Cause Analysis
8 11 (9.73%) High Availability
8 11 (9.73%) Project Delivery
9 10 (8.85%) Cloud Security
9 10 (8.85%) Mentoring
9 10 (8.85%) Network Management
9 10 (8.85%) Time Management
9 10 (8.85%) Zero Trust
10 8 (7.08%) Incident Response
10 8 (7.08%) Migration
10 8 (7.08%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 40 (35.40%) Python
2 5 (4.42%) Bash
3 2 (1.77%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 76 (67.26%) Cisco Certification
2 71 (62.83%) CCNP
3 26 (23.01%) Degree
4 25 (22.12%) CCIE
5 17 (15.04%) Computer Science Degree
6 15 (13.27%) CCNA
7 13 (11.50%) Security Cleared
8 10 (8.85%) SC Cleared
9 6 (5.31%) Azure Certification
10 5 (4.42%) DBS Check
11 4 (3.54%) AWS Certification
11 4 (3.54%) CISSP
11 4 (3.54%) DV Cleared
12 3 (2.65%) Master's Degree
12 3 (2.65%) TOGAF Certification
13 2 (1.77%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 1 (0.88%) CWDP
14 1 (0.88%) CWNA
14 1 (0.88%) Network+ Certification
14 1 (0.88%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (9.73%) PMO
2 5 (4.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 3 (2.65%) NIST
3 3 (2.65%) SLA
4 1 (0.88%) GDPR
4 1 (0.88%) ISO 9001
4 1 (0.88%) SOC 2
System Software
1 11 (9.73%) VMware Infrastructure
2 9 (7.96%) ProxySG
3 7 (6.19%) Active Directory
3 7 (6.19%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (3.54%) VMware NSX
5 3 (2.65%) Firmware
6 2 (1.77%) Docker
6 2 (1.77%) NFS
6 2 (1.77%) pfSense
7 1 (0.88%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.88%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 26 (23.01%) Ansible
2 14 (12.39%) FortiGate
3 13 (11.50%) Terraform
4 3 (2.65%) Dell DRAC
4 3 (2.65%) Kubernetes
4 3 (2.65%) Nagios
5 2 (1.77%) Argo
5 2 (1.77%) CA Spectrum
5 2 (1.77%) Grafana
5 2 (1.77%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.88%) PowerCLI
6 1 (0.88%) vCenter Server
6 1 (0.88%) vRealize
6 1 (0.88%) VxRail
6 1 (0.88%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 100 (88.50%) Cisco
2 43 (38.05%) Palo Alto
3 38 (33.63%) SolarWinds
4 34 (30.09%) Fortinet
5 30 (26.55%) CheckPoint
5 30 (26.55%) Meraki
6 22 (19.47%) F5
7 13 (11.50%) VMware
8 12 (10.62%) Infoblox
9 11 (9.73%) Microsoft
9 11 (9.73%) Motorola
10 10 (8.85%) Arista
10 10 (8.85%) Juniper
11 9 (7.96%) Aruba
11 9 (7.96%) Blue Coat
11 9 (7.96%) ServiceNow
12 5 (4.42%) Zscaler
13 4 (3.54%) Citrix
13 4 (3.54%) Dell
14 3 (2.65%) HP