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 22 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 550 375 497
Rank change year-on-year -175 +122 +170
Permanent jobs citing OSPF 120 348 333
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.17% 0.72% 0.44%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 1.21% 5.27% 3.22%
Number of salaries quoted 73 229 276
10th Percentile £48,200 £32,500 £37,500
25th Percentile £57,500 £43,799 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £67,500 £55,000 £51,193
Median % change year-on-year +22.73% +7.44% -6.07%
75th Percentile £77,500 £73,750 £67,500
90th Percentile £98,750 £83,750 £85,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £62,500 £53,000 £49,750
% change year-on-year +17.92% +6.53% +10.56%

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 9,941 6,599 10,343
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 14.41% 13.63% 13.72%
Number of salaries quoted 3,955 3,560 8,486
10th Percentile £26,000 £30,625 £26,250
25th Percentile £28,500 £38,750 £32,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £40,000 £55,000 £49,000
Median % change year-on-year -27.27% +12.24% -6.67%
75th Percentile £63,750 £72,500 £65,000
90th Percentile £82,004 £87,500 £80,000
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 22 February 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 22 February 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 -154 118 £67,500 +22.73% 51
UK excluding London -164 58 £62,500 +17.92% 36
London -9 53 £72,000 -0.69% 19
Work from Home -6 27 £70,875 +18.13% 18
South East -84 20 £70,000 +32.08% 21
Midlands -25 12 £62,500 +78.57% 4
North of England -52 12 £56,500 +18.95% 2
West Midlands -10 9 £62,500 +78.57% 4
South West -25 8 £54,560 -2.78% 5
North East -7 7 - -
East of England +9 6 £53,750 -25.86% 3
East Midlands -23 3 £50,000 -
Yorkshire -42 3 £62,500 +38.89% 1
North West -30 2 £50,750 -3.33% 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%) Apache Airflow
2 2 (1.67%) Confluence
2 2 (1.67%) nginx
Applications
1 19 (15.83%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.83%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 54 (45.00%) Azure
2 44 (36.67%) AWS
3 15 (12.50%) AWS Direct Connect
4 12 (10.00%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 11 (9.17%) SaaS
6 7 (5.83%) GCP
7 5 (4.17%) Microsoft 365
8 4 (3.33%) Datadog
9 3 (2.50%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 3 (2.50%) Nutanix
10 2 (1.67%) Azure DevOps
10 2 (1.67%) Dagster
10 2 (1.67%) OCI
11 1 (0.83%) Stackdriver
Communications & Networking
1 115 (95.83%) BGP
2 101 (84.17%) Firewall
3 88 (73.33%) WAN
4 79 (65.83%) VPN
5 66 (55.00%) LAN
6 60 (50.00%) Wireless
7 57 (47.50%) SD-WAN
8 50 (41.67%) EIGRP
9 45 (37.50%) Cisco ASA
9 45 (37.50%) Network Security
10 42 (35.00%) VLAN
11 39 (32.50%) MPLS
12 34 (28.33%) Wi-Fi
13 32 (26.67%) VXLAN
14 31 (25.83%) Cisco Nexus
15 28 (23.33%) Cisco ISE
16 26 (21.67%) IPsec
17 24 (20.00%) Cisco Firepower
18 20 (16.67%) TCP/IP
19 16 (13.33%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (1.67%) Data Lake
1 2 (1.67%) Metadata
1 2 (1.67%) MongoDB
1 2 (1.67%) MySQL
1 2 (1.67%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 4 (3.33%) Git
2 3 (2.50%) Sonatype Nexus
3 2 (1.67%) GitLab
3 2 (1.67%) Jaeger
3 2 (1.67%) Jenkins
3 2 (1.67%) MLflow
4 1 (0.83%) JIRA
General
1 33 (27.50%) Social Skills
2 31 (25.83%) Analytical Skills
3 14 (11.67%) Finance
4 7 (5.83%) Law
5 6 (5.00%) Retail Banking
6 5 (4.17%) Banking
7 4 (3.33%) Documentation Skills
7 4 (3.33%) Public Sector
8 3 (2.50%) Marketing
9 2 (1.67%) Agriculture
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%) Retail
Job Titles
1 92 (76.67%) Network Engineer
2 38 (31.67%) Senior
3 37 (30.83%) Senior Network Engineer
4 17 (14.17%) Cisco Engineer
4 17 (14.17%) Cisco Network Engineer
5 11 (9.17%) 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 13 (10.83%) REST
2 7 (5.83%) 802.1X
3 2 (1.67%) FastAPI
3 2 (1.67%) Kafka
3 2 (1.67%) Keycloak
3 2 (1.67%) WebRTC
Miscellaneous
1 51 (42.50%) Data Centre
2 9 (7.50%) Management Information System
3 7 (5.83%) Driving Licence
4 5 (4.17%) Cloud Native
4 5 (4.17%) Onboarding
4 5 (4.17%) PKI
4 5 (4.17%) Security Posture
5 3 (2.50%) Public Cloud
5 3 (2.50%) Virtual Team
6 2 (1.67%) Data Protection Act
6 2 (1.67%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 2 (1.67%) e-Learning
6 2 (1.67%) IoT
6 2 (1.67%) MPEG
6 2 (1.67%) Robotics
7 1 (0.83%) Digital Media
7 1 (0.83%) e-Health
7 1 (0.83%) Hedge funds
7 1 (0.83%) Hybrid Cloud
7 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 27 (22.50%) Problem-Solving
2 25 (20.83%) Kalman Filter
3 24 (20.00%) Load Balancing
4 22 (18.33%) Computer Science
4 22 (18.33%) Network Monitoring
4 22 (18.33%) Network Segmentation
5 19 (15.83%) Root Cause Analysis
6 17 (14.17%) Project Delivery
7 16 (13.33%) Zero Trust
8 15 (12.50%) Cloud Security
9 14 (11.67%) WAN Optimisation
10 13 (10.83%) Collaborative Working
10 13 (10.83%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 12 (10.00%) Analytical Thinking
11 12 (10.00%) Change Management
11 12 (10.00%) High Availability
11 12 (10.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 12 (10.00%) ITIL
12 11 (9.17%) Network Design
13 10 (8.33%) Network Management
Programming Languages
1 43 (35.83%) Python
2 3 (2.50%) Bash
3 1 (0.83%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 83 (69.17%) Cisco Certification
2 81 (67.50%) CCNP
3 26 (21.67%) Degree
4 23 (19.17%) CCIE
5 21 (17.50%) Computer Science Degree
6 13 (10.83%) CCNA
7 7 (5.83%) Security Cleared
8 6 (5.00%) Azure Certification
9 5 (4.17%) DBS Check
9 5 (4.17%) SC Cleared
10 4 (3.33%) AWS Certification
11 3 (2.50%) DV Cleared
11 3 (2.50%) Master's Degree
12 2 (1.67%) CCSA
12 2 (1.67%) CCSE
13 1 (0.83%) JNCIA
13 1 (0.83%) JNCIP
13 1 (0.83%) JNCIS
13 1 (0.83%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (11.67%) 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 12 (10.00%) ProxySG
2 8 (6.67%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (5.00%) Active Directory
4 2 (1.67%) Docker
4 2 (1.67%) Firmware
4 2 (1.67%) Hyper-V
4 2 (1.67%) NFS
4 2 (1.67%) VMware NSX
5 1 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 24 (20.00%) Ansible
2 18 (15.00%) FortiGate
3 10 (8.33%) Terraform
4 6 (5.00%) Check_MK
5 4 (3.33%) Nagios
6 2 (1.67%) Argo
6 2 (1.67%) Dell DRAC
6 2 (1.67%) Grafana
6 2 (1.67%) Kubernetes
6 2 (1.67%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.83%) CA Spectrum
7 1 (0.83%) VxRail
Vendors
1 113 (94.17%) Cisco
2 53 (44.17%) SolarWinds
3 46 (38.33%) Palo Alto
4 45 (37.50%) Meraki
5 43 (35.83%) Fortinet
6 35 (29.17%) CheckPoint
7 22 (18.33%) ServiceNow
8 20 (16.67%) F5
9 18 (15.00%) Infoblox
10 14 (11.67%) Motorola
11 13 (10.83%) Arista
12 12 (10.00%) Blue Coat
13 11 (9.17%) Dynatrace
13 11 (9.17%) Microsoft
14 10 (8.33%) VMware
15 9 (7.50%) Juniper
16 5 (4.17%) Aruba
17 4 (3.33%) ForeScout
17 4 (3.33%) Zscaler
18 3 (2.50%) Splunk