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

6 months to
9 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 561 409 526
Rank change year-on-year -152 +117 +156
Permanent jobs citing OSPF 120 270 326
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.17% 0.61% 0.39%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 1.21% 4.51% 2.88%
Number of salaries quoted 69 216 269
10th Percentile £49,500 £32,500 £37,500
25th Percentile £58,750 £43,474 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £67,500 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +22.73% +10.00% -8.26%
75th Percentile £77,500 £73,750 £63,750
90th Percentile £103,750 £85,000 £82,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £65,000 £53,000 £48,500
% change year-on-year +22.64% +9.28% +7.78%

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 9,924 5,990 11,309
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 13.75% 13.59% 13.54%
Number of salaries quoted 3,880 3,655 9,229
10th Percentile £26,250 £29,750 £26,250
25th Percentile £29,000 £37,500 £32,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,000 £53,391 £48,000
Median % change year-on-year -21.33% +11.23% -8.57%
75th Percentile £65,000 £71,250 £63,750
90th Percentile £82,500 £87,500 £79,600
UK excluding London median annual salary £35,000 £50,000 £43,000
% change year-on-year -30.00% +16.28% -4.44%

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 9 March 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 9 March 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 -142 118 £67,500 +22.73% 47
UK excluding London -133 56 £65,000 +22.64% 44
London -8 54 £74,000 +2.07% 11
Work from Home +1 29 £76,750 +35.10% 10
South East -88 20 £70,000 +32.08% 21
North of England -48 12 £60,000 +9.09% 3
Midlands -31 10 £62,500 +78.57% 7
North East -10 8 - -
West Midlands -14 8 £62,500 +78.57% 5
South West -30 8 £57,110 +1.76% 4
East of England -2 6 £53,750 -8.12% 7
Yorkshire -52 3 £62,500 +38.89% 2
East Midlands -23 2 £50,000 - 2
North West -27 1 £53,000 -7.83% 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 5 (4.17%) Microsoft Exchange
2 2 (1.67%) Confluence
3 1 (0.83%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (0.83%) nginx
Applications
1 21 (17.50%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.83%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 52 (43.33%) Azure
2 43 (35.83%) AWS
3 15 (12.50%) AWS Direct Connect
4 12 (10.00%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 11 (9.17%) SaaS
6 5 (4.17%) GCP
6 5 (4.17%) Microsoft 365
7 4 (3.33%) Datadog
8 3 (2.50%) Azure ExpressRoute
8 3 (2.50%) Nutanix
9 2 (1.67%) OCI
10 1 (0.83%) Azure DevOps
10 1 (0.83%) Dagster
10 1 (0.83%) Stackdriver
Communications & Networking
1 115 (95.83%) BGP
2 101 (84.17%) Firewall
3 89 (74.17%) WAN
4 79 (65.83%) VPN
5 69 (57.50%) LAN
6 62 (51.67%) Wireless
7 59 (49.17%) SD-WAN
8 51 (42.50%) EIGRP
9 47 (39.17%) Network Security
10 46 (38.33%) Cisco ASA
11 42 (35.00%) VLAN
12 38 (31.67%) MPLS
13 34 (28.33%) Cisco Nexus
14 33 (27.50%) VXLAN
15 32 (26.67%) Cisco ISE
16 31 (25.83%) Wi-Fi
17 24 (20.00%) Cisco Firepower
18 23 (19.17%) IPsec
19 19 (15.83%) TCP/IP
20 18 (15.00%) Cisco Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (0.83%) Data Lake
1 1 (0.83%) Metadata
1 1 (0.83%) MongoDB
1 1 (0.83%) MySQL
1 1 (0.83%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 4 (3.33%) Git
2 2 (1.67%) Sonatype Nexus
3 1 (0.83%) GitLab
3 1 (0.83%) Jaeger
3 1 (0.83%) Jenkins
3 1 (0.83%) JIRA
3 1 (0.83%) MLflow
General
1 33 (27.50%) Social Skills
2 32 (26.67%) Analytical Skills
3 15 (12.50%) Finance
4 8 (6.67%) Retail Banking
5 7 (5.83%) Law
6 5 (4.17%) Banking
7 4 (3.33%) Public Sector
8 3 (2.50%) Documentation Skills
8 3 (2.50%) Marketing
9 2 (1.67%) Financial Institution
9 2 (1.67%) Organisational Skills
9 2 (1.67%) Police
9 2 (1.67%) Telecoms
10 1 (0.83%) Agriculture
10 1 (0.83%) Retail
Job Titles
1 93 (77.50%) Network Engineer
2 40 (33.33%) Senior
3 39 (32.50%) Senior Network Engineer
4 17 (14.17%) Cisco Engineer
4 17 (14.17%) Cisco Network Engineer
5 12 (10.00%) Firewall Engineer
6 10 (8.33%) Cisco Consultant
6 10 (8.33%) Cisco Network Consultant
6 10 (8.33%) Consultant
6 10 (8.33%) Network Consultant
7 9 (7.50%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 9 (7.50%) Infrastructure Operations Engineer
7 9 (7.50%) Network Infrastructure Engineer
7 9 (7.50%) Network Operations Engineer
7 9 (7.50%) Operations Engineer
7 9 (7.50%) WAN Consultant
8 8 (6.67%) Lead
8 8 (6.67%) Network Team Leader
8 8 (6.67%) Team Leader
9 7 (5.83%) Lead Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (10.00%) REST
2 9 (7.50%) 802.1X
3 1 (0.83%) FastAPI
3 1 (0.83%) Kafka
3 1 (0.83%) Keycloak
3 1 (0.83%) WebRTC
Miscellaneous
1 53 (44.17%) Data Centre
2 9 (7.50%) Management Information System
3 7 (5.83%) Driving Licence
4 5 (4.17%) Onboarding
4 5 (4.17%) PKI
4 5 (4.17%) Security Posture
5 4 (3.33%) Cloud Native
6 3 (2.50%) Public Cloud
6 3 (2.50%) Virtual Team
7 2 (1.67%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 2 (1.67%) e-Learning
8 1 (0.83%) Data Protection Act
8 1 (0.83%) Digital Media
8 1 (0.83%) e-Health
8 1 (0.83%) Hedge funds
8 1 (0.83%) Hybrid Cloud
8 1 (0.83%) IoT
8 1 (0.83%) MPEG
8 1 (0.83%) Robotics
8 1 (0.83%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 6 (5.00%) Windows
2 5 (4.17%) Windows Server
3 4 (3.33%) Linux
4 1 (0.83%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 28 (23.33%) Load Balancing
2 27 (22.50%) Kalman Filter
2 27 (22.50%) Problem-Solving
3 24 (20.00%) Computer Science
4 22 (18.33%) Network Monitoring
5 21 (17.50%) Network Segmentation
6 20 (16.67%) Project Delivery
6 20 (16.67%) Root Cause Analysis
7 16 (13.33%) WAN Optimisation
8 15 (12.50%) Cloud Security
8 15 (12.50%) Collaborative Working
8 15 (12.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 15 (12.50%) Zero Trust
9 14 (11.67%) Analytical Thinking
10 12 (10.00%) Change Management
10 12 (10.00%) High Availability
10 12 (10.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 12 (10.00%) ITIL
11 10 (8.33%) Network Design
11 10 (8.33%) Network Management
Programming Languages
1 43 (35.83%) Python
2 3 (2.50%) Bash
Qualifications
1 84 (70.00%) Cisco Certification
2 82 (68.33%) CCNP
3 27 (22.50%) Degree
4 25 (20.83%) CCIE
5 23 (19.17%) Computer Science Degree
6 11 (9.17%) CCNA
7 6 (5.00%) Azure Certification
7 6 (5.00%) Security Cleared
8 5 (4.17%) DBS Check
9 4 (3.33%) AWS Certification
9 4 (3.33%) SC Cleared
10 3 (2.50%) DV Cleared
10 3 (2.50%) Master's Degree
11 2 (1.67%) CCSA
11 2 (1.67%) CCSE
12 1 (0.83%) JNCIA
12 1 (0.83%) JNCIP
12 1 (0.83%) JNCIS
12 1 (0.83%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (13.33%) PMO
2 6 (5.00%) NIST
3 5 (4.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 3 (2.50%) PCI DSS
5 2 (1.67%) SLA
6 1 (0.83%) GDPR
6 1 (0.83%) ISO 9001
6 1 (0.83%) SOC 2
System Software
1 14 (11.67%) ProxySG
2 6 (5.00%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (4.17%) Active Directory
4 2 (1.67%) Hyper-V
4 2 (1.67%) VMware NSX
5 1 (0.83%) Docker
5 1 (0.83%) Firmware
5 1 (0.83%) NFS
Systems Management
1 22 (18.33%) Ansible
2 18 (15.00%) FortiGate
3 8 (6.67%) Check_MK
3 8 (6.67%) Terraform
4 4 (3.33%) Nagios
5 1 (0.83%) Argo
5 1 (0.83%) CA Spectrum
5 1 (0.83%) Dell DRAC
5 1 (0.83%) Grafana
5 1 (0.83%) Kubernetes
5 1 (0.83%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.83%) VxRail
Vendors
1 113 (94.17%) Cisco
2 56 (46.67%) SolarWinds
3 46 (38.33%) Palo Alto
4 44 (36.67%) Meraki
5 42 (35.00%) Fortinet
6 36 (30.00%) CheckPoint
7 23 (19.17%) F5
7 23 (19.17%) ServiceNow
8 20 (16.67%) Infoblox
9 16 (13.33%) Motorola
10 14 (11.67%) Blue Coat
11 13 (10.83%) Arista
12 11 (9.17%) Dynatrace
12 11 (9.17%) Microsoft
13 8 (6.67%) VMware
14 7 (5.83%) Juniper
15 5 (4.17%) Aruba
16 3 (2.50%) ForeScout
16 3 (2.50%) SevOne
16 3 (2.50%) Splunk