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

6 months to
15 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 564 448 577
Rank change year-on-year -116 +129 -14
Permanent jobs citing OSPF 172 231 344
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.18% 0.52% 0.32%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 2.52% 3.44% 2.59%
Number of salaries quoted 126 176 248
10th Percentile £49,500 £32,500 £37,500
25th Percentile £61,946 £42,500 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £73,250 £53,000 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year +38.21% +0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £82,188 £68,438 £67,500
90th Percentile £95,000 £85,000 £87,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £53,000 £48,500
% change year-on-year +32.08% +9.28% -3.00%

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 6,831 6,715 13,294
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 7.33% 15.08% 12.32%
Number of salaries quoted 4,393 3,780 9,413
10th Percentile £27,694 £25,750 £26,250
25th Percentile £31,250 £31,250 £32,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £47,500 £47,500
Median % change year-on-year - - -7.50%
75th Percentile £69,390 £67,500 £63,750
90th Percentile £85,000 £85,000 £77,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £42,500 £40,000 £44,200
% change year-on-year +6.25% -9.50% -1.78%

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 15 June 2026.

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 15 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England -113 164 £74,500 +40.57% 35
London -27 83 £77,500 +21.57% 11
UK excluding London -112 76 £70,000 +32.08% 37
Work from Home -9 48 £78,000 +27.35% 24
North of England -32 26 £70,000 - 10
Midlands -13 21 £70,000 +100.00% 4
South East -66 21 £75,000 +41.51% 9
West Midlands -10 19 £70,000 +100.00% 3
North West +1 11 £70,000 +21.74% 7
Yorkshire -41 8 £72,788 -2.95% 2
North East - 7 £65,576 - 1
Scotland +9 4 £61,500 -8.89% 6
South West -69 4 £56,550 +0.76%
East Midlands - 2 £53,750 - 1

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 2 (1.16%) Confluence
Applications
1 18 (10.47%) MS Visio
2 2 (1.16%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 57 (33.14%) Azure
2 45 (26.16%) AWS
3 11 (6.40%) SaaS
3 11 (6.40%) Virtual Private Cloud
4 10 (5.81%) OpenShift
5 9 (5.23%) AWS Direct Connect
6 8 (4.65%) Datadog
7 7 (4.07%) GCP
8 5 (2.91%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 4 (2.33%) ChatGPT
9 4 (2.33%) Microsoft Copilot
10 3 (1.74%) Azure Monitor
11 2 (1.16%) Cloud Computing
11 2 (1.16%) Nutanix
11 2 (1.16%) Route 53
12 1 (0.58%) Cloudflare
12 1 (0.58%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 170 (98.84%) BGP
2 139 (80.81%) Firewall
3 115 (66.86%) VPN
4 106 (61.63%) WAN
5 84 (48.84%) LAN
6 78 (45.35%) Network Security
7 64 (37.21%) SD-WAN
8 56 (32.56%) Wireless
9 55 (31.98%) VLAN
10 46 (26.74%) Cisco ASA
10 46 (26.74%) EIGRP
11 44 (25.58%) MPLS
11 44 (25.58%) VXLAN
12 39 (22.67%) Cisco ISE
13 38 (22.09%) Wi-Fi
14 35 (20.35%) Cisco Nexus
15 32 (18.60%) TCP/IP
16 27 (15.70%) Cisco Firepower
17 25 (14.53%) DNS
17 25 (14.53%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (1.74%) InfluxDB
Development Applications
1 1 (0.58%) Git
1 1 (0.58%) GitLab
1 1 (0.58%) JIRA
1 1 (0.58%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 59 (34.30%) Social Skills
2 28 (16.28%) Finance
3 27 (15.70%) Analytical Skills
4 15 (8.72%) Law
4 15 (8.72%) Telecoms
5 8 (4.65%) Retail Banking
6 6 (3.49%) Banking
7 5 (2.91%) Documentation Skills
7 5 (2.91%) Public Sector
8 2 (1.16%) Financial Institution
8 2 (1.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 2 (1.16%) Manufacturing
8 2 (1.16%) Marketing
8 2 (1.16%) Organisational Skills
8 2 (1.16%) Retail
9 1 (0.58%) Police
Job Titles
1 131 (76.16%) Network Engineer
2 69 (40.12%) Senior
3 53 (30.81%) Senior Network Engineer
4 13 (7.56%) Cisco Engineer
4 13 (7.56%) Cisco Network Engineer
5 12 (6.98%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 12 (6.98%) Network Specialist
6 11 (6.40%) Consultant
6 11 (6.40%) Network Consultant
7 9 (5.23%) Network Infrastructure Engineer
7 9 (5.23%) Network Security Specialist
7 9 (5.23%) Security Specialist
7 9 (5.23%) Senior Data Warehouse Specialist
7 9 (5.23%) Senior Network Security Specialist
7 9 (5.23%) Senior Network Specialist
7 9 (5.23%) Senior Security Specialist
8 8 (4.65%) Firewall Engineer
9 7 (4.07%) Infrastructure Operations Engineer
9 7 (4.07%) Network Operations Engineer
9 7 (4.07%) Operations Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (10.47%) 802.1X
2 7 (4.07%) gRPC
3 6 (3.49%) REST
4 3 (1.74%) ARM Templates
4 3 (1.74%) OpenTelemetry
5 1 (0.58%) LDAP
5 1 (0.58%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 84 (48.84%) Data Centre
2 11 (6.40%) Security Posture
3 10 (5.81%) PKI
4 9 (5.23%) Onboarding
5 7 (4.07%) Management Information System
6 6 (3.49%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 6 (3.49%) Hybrid Cloud
7 5 (2.91%) Driving Licence
8 2 (1.16%) Cloud Native
8 2 (1.16%) Life Science
8 2 (1.16%) Linux Command Line
9 1 (0.58%) Data Protection Act
9 1 (0.58%) IPTV
9 1 (0.58%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 18 (10.47%) Linux
2 4 (2.33%) Windows
3 1 (0.58%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 47 (27.33%) Problem-Solving
2 36 (20.93%) Network Monitoring
3 34 (19.77%) Load Balancing
4 25 (14.53%) Network Segmentation
4 25 (14.53%) Zero Trust
5 24 (13.95%) Project Delivery
5 24 (13.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 23 (13.37%) Computer Science
6 23 (13.37%) Kalman Filter
7 22 (12.79%) High Availability
7 22 (12.79%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 22 (12.79%) Network Design
8 21 (12.21%) Infrastructure as Code
9 19 (11.05%) Roadmaps
10 18 (10.47%) ITIL
11 17 (9.88%) WAN Optimisation
12 16 (9.30%) Analytics
12 16 (9.30%) Observability
12 16 (9.30%) Root Cause Analysis
13 15 (8.72%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 48 (27.91%) Python
2 7 (4.07%) Bash
3 6 (3.49%) Bicep
4 3 (1.74%) PowerShell
5 1 (0.58%) C
Qualifications
1 96 (55.81%) Cisco Certification
2 88 (51.16%) CCNP
3 26 (15.12%) Degree
4 25 (14.53%) CCIE
5 20 (11.63%) Computer Science Degree
6 19 (11.05%) CCNA
6 19 (11.05%) Security Cleared
7 12 (6.98%) DV Cleared
8 9 (5.23%) SC Cleared
9 4 (2.33%) Azure Certification
9 4 (2.33%) CISSP
9 4 (2.33%) Network+ Certification
10 2 (1.16%) BPSS Clearance
10 2 (1.16%) CCSA
10 2 (1.16%) CCSE
11 1 (0.58%) AWS Certification
11 1 (0.58%) ITIL Certification
11 1 (0.58%) JNCIA
11 1 (0.58%) JNCIP
11 1 (0.58%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (6.98%) PMO
1 12 (6.98%) SLA
2 5 (2.91%) NIST
2 5 (2.91%) PCI DSS
3 4 (2.33%) QA
4 1 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials
4 1 (0.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 12 (6.98%) ProxySG
2 5 (2.91%) VMware Infrastructure
2 5 (2.91%) VMware NSX
3 3 (1.74%) Docker
4 2 (1.16%) Firmware
4 2 (1.16%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 30 (17.44%) FortiGate
2 25 (14.53%) Ansible
3 14 (8.14%) Terraform
4 12 (6.98%) Nagios
5 10 (5.81%) Kubernetes
6 9 (5.23%) Check_MK
7 7 (4.07%) Grafana
8 6 (3.49%) Prometheus
9 3 (1.74%) ZABBIX
10 2 (1.16%) Cisco Prime
11 1 (0.58%) CASB
11 1 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 125 (72.67%) Cisco
2 60 (34.88%) Palo Alto
3 54 (31.40%) SolarWinds
4 49 (28.49%) Fortinet
5 33 (19.19%) Meraki
6 30 (17.44%) CheckPoint
7 29 (16.86%) F5
8 24 (13.95%) Arista
9 19 (11.05%) ServiceNow
10 17 (9.88%) Infoblox
11 15 (8.72%) Juniper
12 12 (6.98%) Blue Coat
12 12 (6.98%) Motorola
13 11 (6.40%) Aruba
14 9 (5.23%) Dynatrace
14 9 (5.23%) VMware
14 9 (5.23%) Zscaler
15 8 (4.65%) Microsoft
16 6 (3.49%) Mellanox
16 6 (3.49%) NVIDIA