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

6 months to
11 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 534 395 411
Rank change year-on-year -139 +16 +277
Permanent jobs citing OSPF 108 335 340
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.18% 0.62% 0.61%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 1.13% 4.70% 4.30%
Number of salaries quoted 70 212 269
10th Percentile £47,500 £32,500 £37,500
25th Percentile £53,500 £45,000 £46,125
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% +10.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £77,500 £68,750 £63,750
90th Percentile £88,125 £83,750 £85,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £53,000 £49,000
% change year-on-year +13.21% +8.16% +8.89%

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 9,538 7,134 7,901
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 16.08% 13.28% 14.13%
Number of salaries quoted 3,854 3,699 6,396
10th Percentile £25,250 £31,250 £26,500
25th Percentile £28,250 £39,000 £34,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £38,500 £54,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -28.70% +8.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £62,500 £71,250 £67,500
90th Percentile £81,250 £87,500 £82,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £33,750 £50,000 £45,000
% change year-on-year -32.50% +11.11% -

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 11 January 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 11 January 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 -116 105 £65,000 +18.18% 58
UK excluding London -105 57 £60,000 +13.21% 57
London -15 43 £74,000 +2.07% 17
Work from Home +23 26 £65,000 +4.00% 41
South East -54 22 £65,000 +18.18% 22
North of England -13 11 £56,500 +25.56% 8
Midlands -10 10 £62,500 +78.57% 10
South West -2 8 £54,560 -2.78% 1
West Midlands +4 7 £63,750 +82.14% 9
East of England +10 6 £53,750 -32.81% 8
North East +9 4 - - 4
North West -5 4 £50,750 +12.78% 2
East Midlands -8 3 £50,000 - 1
Yorkshire -21 3 £62,500 +25.00% 4

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 (4.63%) Microsoft Exchange
2 2 (1.85%) Apache Airflow
2 2 (1.85%) Confluence
2 2 (1.85%) nginx
Applications
1 17 (15.74%) MS Visio
2 3 (2.78%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.93%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 49 (45.37%) Azure
2 35 (32.41%) AWS
3 8 (7.41%) AWS Direct Connect
4 5 (4.63%) GCP
4 5 (4.63%) Microsoft 365
4 5 (4.63%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 4 (3.70%) SaaS
6 3 (2.78%) Azure DevOps
6 3 (2.78%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 2 (1.85%) Dagster
7 2 (1.85%) OCI
8 1 (0.93%) Azure Sentinel
8 1 (0.93%) Datadog
8 1 (0.93%) Nutanix
8 1 (0.93%) Stackdriver
Communications & Networking
1 103 (95.37%) BGP
2 93 (86.11%) Firewall
3 70 (64.81%) WAN
4 65 (60.19%) VPN
5 53 (49.07%) LAN
6 48 (44.44%) Wireless
7 46 (42.59%) EIGRP
8 42 (38.89%) Network Security
9 39 (36.11%) SD-WAN
10 34 (31.48%) VLAN
11 32 (29.63%) Cisco ASA
12 31 (28.70%) Wi-Fi
13 28 (25.93%) Cisco Nexus
14 26 (24.07%) IPsec
14 26 (24.07%) TCP/IP
15 25 (23.15%) MPLS
16 21 (19.44%) VXLAN
17 16 (14.81%) Wireshark
18 15 (13.89%) Cisco Firepower
19 14 (12.96%) HSRP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (1.85%) Data Lake
1 2 (1.85%) Metadata
1 2 (1.85%) MongoDB
1 2 (1.85%) MySQL
1 2 (1.85%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 4 (3.70%) Git
1 4 (3.70%) Sonatype Nexus
2 2 (1.85%) GitLab
2 2 (1.85%) Jaeger
2 2 (1.85%) Jenkins
2 2 (1.85%) MLflow
3 1 (0.93%) JIRA
General
1 35 (32.41%) Social Skills
2 27 (25.00%) Analytical Skills
3 10 (9.26%) Finance
4 8 (7.41%) Documentation Skills
5 7 (6.48%) Marketing
6 5 (4.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 4 (3.70%) Law
8 3 (2.78%) Banking
9 2 (1.85%) Agriculture
9 2 (1.85%) Organisational Skills
9 2 (1.85%) Police
9 2 (1.85%) Public Sector
10 1 (0.93%) Retail
10 1 (0.93%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 78 (72.22%) Network Engineer
2 33 (30.56%) Senior
3 30 (27.78%) Senior Network Engineer
4 12 (11.11%) Cisco Engineer
4 12 (11.11%) Cisco Network Engineer
5 8 (7.41%) Cisco Consultant
5 8 (7.41%) Cisco Network Consultant
5 8 (7.41%) Consultant
5 8 (7.41%) Network Consultant
6 7 (6.48%) Lead
6 7 (6.48%) Lead Network Engineer
6 7 (6.48%) Network Team Leader
6 7 (6.48%) Team Leader
6 7 (6.48%) WAN Consultant
7 6 (5.56%) Firewall Engineer
8 5 (4.63%) 3rd Line Support
8 5 (4.63%) Architect
8 5 (4.63%) Network Architect
9 4 (3.70%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 4 (3.70%) Network Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (11.11%) REST
2 6 (5.56%) 802.1X
3 2 (1.85%) FastAPI
3 2 (1.85%) Kafka
3 2 (1.85%) Keycloak
3 2 (1.85%) WebRTC
Miscellaneous
1 39 (36.11%) Data Centre
2 7 (6.48%) Driving Licence
3 4 (3.70%) Cloud Native
3 4 (3.70%) Management Information System
3 4 (3.70%) Onboarding
3 4 (3.70%) Public Cloud
4 3 (2.78%) Data Protection Act
4 3 (2.78%) Virtual Team
5 2 (1.85%) e-Learning
5 2 (1.85%) IoT
5 2 (1.85%) MPEG
5 2 (1.85%) PKI
5 2 (1.85%) Robotics
6 1 (0.93%) Digital Media
6 1 (0.93%) e-Health
6 1 (0.93%) Hedge funds
6 1 (0.93%) Hybrid Cloud
6 1 (0.93%) Security Posture
6 1 (0.93%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 6 (5.56%) Windows
2 5 (4.63%) Linux
2 5 (4.63%) Windows Server
3 1 (0.93%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 23 (21.30%) Load Balancing
1 23 (21.30%) Problem-Solving
2 19 (17.59%) Computer Science
2 19 (17.59%) Kalman Filter
3 16 (14.81%) Network Monitoring
4 14 (12.96%) Network Segmentation
5 13 (12.04%) ITIL
5 13 (12.04%) Root Cause Analysis
6 12 (11.11%) Customer Service
6 12 (11.11%) Project Delivery
7 11 (10.19%) Change Management
7 11 (10.19%) Cloud Security
7 11 (10.19%) High Availability
8 10 (9.26%) Time Management
8 10 (9.26%) Zero Trust
9 9 (8.33%) Network Management
10 8 (7.41%) Decision-Making
10 8 (7.41%) Mentoring
10 8 (7.41%) Strategic Thinking
11 7 (6.48%) Collaborative Working
Programming Languages
1 38 (35.19%) Python
2 5 (4.63%) Bash
3 1 (0.93%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 75 (69.44%) Cisco Certification
2 72 (66.67%) CCNP
3 26 (24.07%) Degree
4 25 (23.15%) CCIE
5 18 (16.67%) Computer Science Degree
6 14 (12.96%) CCNA
7 13 (12.04%) Security Cleared
8 10 (9.26%) SC Cleared
9 6 (5.56%) Azure Certification
10 5 (4.63%) DBS Check
11 4 (3.70%) AWS Certification
11 4 (3.70%) DV Cleared
12 3 (2.78%) Master's Degree
13 2 (1.85%) CISSP
13 2 (1.85%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 1 (0.93%) JNCIA
14 1 (0.93%) JNCIP
14 1 (0.93%) JNCIS
14 1 (0.93%) Network+ Certification
14 1 (0.93%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (12.04%) PMO
2 5 (4.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 3 (2.78%) NIST
3 3 (2.78%) SLA
4 1 (0.93%) GDPR
4 1 (0.93%) ISO 9001
4 1 (0.93%) SOC 2
System Software
1 11 (10.19%) ProxySG
2 9 (8.33%) VMware Infrastructure
3 7 (6.48%) Active Directory
3 7 (6.48%) Virtual Machines
4 3 (2.78%) Firmware
5 2 (1.85%) Docker
5 2 (1.85%) NFS
5 2 (1.85%) pfSense
5 2 (1.85%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 23 (21.30%) Ansible
2 18 (16.67%) FortiGate
3 13 (12.04%) Terraform
4 3 (2.78%) Dell DRAC
4 3 (2.78%) Nagios
5 2 (1.85%) Argo
5 2 (1.85%) Grafana
5 2 (1.85%) Kubernetes
5 2 (1.85%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.93%) CA Spectrum
6 1 (0.93%) VxRail
Vendors
1 97 (89.81%) Cisco
2 39 (36.11%) Palo Alto
3 36 (33.33%) SolarWinds
4 34 (31.48%) Fortinet
5 31 (28.70%) Meraki
6 30 (27.78%) CheckPoint
7 18 (16.67%) F5
8 14 (12.96%) Infoblox
9 13 (12.04%) Motorola
10 12 (11.11%) ServiceNow
11 11 (10.19%) Blue Coat
11 11 (10.19%) Microsoft
11 11 (10.19%) VMware
12 9 (8.33%) Juniper
13 8 (7.41%) Arista
14 5 (4.63%) Aruba
14 5 (4.63%) Zscaler
15 4 (3.70%) Dell
15 4 (3.70%) Dynatrace
16 3 (2.78%) Citrix