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 20 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 531 425 405
Rank change year-on-year -106 -20 +321
Permanent jobs citing OSPF 127 360 358
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.24% 0.54% 0.69%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 1.68% 4.57% 4.46%
Number of salaries quoted 80 206 285
10th Percentile £44,750 £32,500 £39,000
25th Percentile £51,500 £42,500 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% - +4.76%
75th Percentile £77,500 £68,750 £63,750
90th Percentile £87,500 £83,125 £85,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +9.09% +4.76% +5.00%

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 7,552 7,869 8,025
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 14.23% 11.71% 15.50%
Number of salaries quoted 4,211 3,995 6,432
10th Percentile £25,087 £30,000 £26,500
25th Percentile £28,250 £37,500 £33,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £37,750 £53,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -29.44% +7.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £60,000 £70,000 £67,500
90th Percentile £78,790 £85,000 £85,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £33,750 £50,000 £45,000
% change year-on-year -32.50% +11.11% -5.26%

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 20 November 2025.

Salary histogram for OSPF in the UK

OSPF
Top 16 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 20 November 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 -84 119 £65,000 +18.18% 75
London +1 65 £70,000 -3.45% 41
UK excluding London -104 57 £60,000 +9.09% 43
Work from Home -7 30 £65,000 +4.00% 34
South East -49 18 £60,000 +9.09% 19
North of England -1 14 £60,000 +33.33% 5
Midlands +32 7 £58,623 +67.49% 8
South West +23 7 £53,000 -11.67% 4
North West +1 7 £60,000 +26.32% 3
Yorkshire -1 6 £75,000 +66.67% 2
West Midlands +16 5 £62,500 +78.57% 6
East of England +15 5 £50,000 -37.50% 2
Scotland +7 5 - - 5
East Midlands +22 2 £53,623 - 2
North East +8 1 - -
Channel Islands +3 1 £45,000 -

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 3 (2.36%) Microsoft Exchange
2 2 (1.57%) Apache Airflow
2 2 (1.57%) nginx
Applications
1 14 (11.02%) MS Visio
2 5 (3.94%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.79%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.79%) OmniGraffle
Cloud Services
1 50 (39.37%) Azure
2 37 (29.13%) AWS
3 13 (10.24%) GCP
4 5 (3.94%) OCI
5 4 (3.15%) AWS Direct Connect
6 3 (2.36%) Azure DevOps
6 3 (2.36%) Azure ExpressRoute
6 3 (2.36%) Microsoft 365
7 2 (1.57%) Akamai
7 2 (1.57%) Dagster
8 1 (0.79%) Azure Sentinel
8 1 (0.79%) Nutanix
8 1 (0.79%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 120 (94.49%) BGP
2 103 (81.10%) Firewall
3 70 (55.12%) VPN
4 63 (49.61%) WAN
5 52 (40.94%) LAN
6 49 (38.58%) EIGRP
7 45 (35.43%) Network Security
8 44 (34.65%) TCP/IP
9 43 (33.86%) VLAN
10 40 (31.50%) Wireless
11 39 (30.71%) SD-WAN
12 27 (21.26%) Wi-Fi
13 26 (20.47%) IPsec
14 25 (19.69%) Cisco Nexus
15 24 (18.90%) MPLS
16 20 (15.75%) Cisco ASA
17 18 (14.17%) DHCP
18 17 (13.39%) DNS
18 17 (13.39%) VXLAN
18 17 (13.39%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (1.57%) Data Lake
1 2 (1.57%) Metadata
1 2 (1.57%) MongoDB
1 2 (1.57%) MySQL
1 2 (1.57%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (0.79%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 4 (3.15%) Sonatype Nexus
2 3 (2.36%) GitLab
3 2 (1.57%) Git
3 2 (1.57%) Jaeger
3 2 (1.57%) Jenkins
3 2 (1.57%) MLflow
4 1 (0.79%) JIRA
General
1 46 (36.22%) Social Skills
2 18 (14.17%) Analytical Skills
2 18 (14.17%) Finance
3 13 (10.24%) Documentation Skills
4 8 (6.30%) Banking
4 8 (6.30%) Marketing
5 6 (4.72%) Retail
6 5 (3.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 5 (3.94%) Public Sector
7 4 (3.15%) Telecoms
8 3 (2.36%) Mandarin Language
8 3 (2.36%) Presentation Skills
9 2 (1.57%) Agriculture
10 1 (0.79%) Aviation
10 1 (0.79%) Financial Institution
10 1 (0.79%) Law
10 1 (0.79%) Legal
10 1 (0.79%) Manufacturing
10 1 (0.79%) Organisational Skills
10 1 (0.79%) Police
Job Titles
1 96 (75.59%) Network Engineer
2 26 (20.47%) Senior
3 23 (18.11%) Senior Network Engineer
4 8 (6.30%) Lead
4 8 (6.30%) Lead Network Engineer
5 7 (5.51%) Cisco Engineer
5 7 (5.51%) Cisco Network Engineer
5 7 (5.51%) Data Centre Engineer
5 7 (5.51%) Data Network Engineer
5 7 (5.51%) Network Manager
6 6 (4.72%) Deployment Engineer
6 6 (4.72%) Network Team Leader
6 6 (4.72%) Team Leader
7 5 (3.94%) Network Deployment Engineer
8 4 (3.15%) Architect
8 4 (3.15%) IT Manager
8 4 (3.15%) Network Architect
9 3 (2.36%) Analyst
9 3 (2.36%) Consultant
9 3 (2.36%) Network Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (9.45%) 802.1X
2 6 (4.72%) Middleware
2 6 (4.72%) REST
3 2 (1.57%) FastAPI
3 2 (1.57%) Kafka
3 2 (1.57%) Keycloak
3 2 (1.57%) WebRTC
4 1 (0.79%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 45 (35.43%) Data Centre
2 4 (3.15%) Driving Licence
2 4 (3.15%) Management Information System
2 4 (3.15%) Public Cloud
3 3 (2.36%) Cloud Native
3 3 (2.36%) Data Protection Act
3 3 (2.36%) PKI
4 2 (1.57%) Hybrid Cloud
4 2 (1.57%) IoT
4 2 (1.57%) MPEG
4 2 (1.57%) Robotics
4 2 (1.57%) Virtual Team
5 1 (0.79%) Digital Media
5 1 (0.79%) e-Health
5 1 (0.79%) e-Learning
5 1 (0.79%) Hedge funds
5 1 (0.79%) Onboarding
5 1 (0.79%) Self-Motivation
5 1 (0.79%) Smartcard
5 1 (0.79%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 7 (5.51%) Windows
2 5 (3.94%) Linux
2 5 (3.94%) Windows Server
3 2 (1.57%) Windows 10
4 1 (0.79%) Mac OS
4 1 (0.79%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.79%) Unix
4 1 (0.79%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 33 (25.98%) Problem-Solving
2 27 (21.26%) Load Balancing
3 22 (17.32%) ITIL
4 20 (15.75%) Network Monitoring
5 19 (14.96%) Migration
6 18 (14.17%) High Availability
7 14 (11.02%) Change Management
7 14 (11.02%) Computer Science
8 13 (10.24%) Customer Service
8 13 (10.24%) Network Architecture
8 13 (10.24%) Stakeholder Management
9 11 (8.66%) Decision-Making
9 11 (8.66%) DevOps
9 11 (8.66%) Incident Response
10 10 (7.87%) Disaster Recovery
10 10 (7.87%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 10 (7.87%) Mentoring
10 10 (7.87%) Project Delivery
10 10 (7.87%) Root Cause Analysis
11 9 (7.09%) Network Design
Programming Languages
1 39 (30.71%) Python
2 7 (5.51%) Bash
3 3 (2.36%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 74 (58.27%) Cisco Certification
2 67 (52.76%) CCNP
3 29 (22.83%) Degree
4 25 (19.69%) CCIE
5 22 (17.32%) CCNA
6 15 (11.81%) Security Cleared
7 13 (10.24%) Computer Science Degree
8 11 (8.66%) SC Cleared
9 6 (4.72%) Azure Certification
10 5 (3.94%) CISSP
10 5 (3.94%) DV Cleared
11 4 (3.15%) AWS Certification
11 4 (3.15%) DBS Check
11 4 (3.15%) TOGAF Certification
12 2 (1.57%) CWDP
12 2 (1.57%) CWNA
12 2 (1.57%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 2 (1.57%) JNCIP
12 2 (1.57%) Master's Degree
12 2 (1.57%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (5.51%) PMO
2 5 (3.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 3 (2.36%) NIST
3 3 (2.36%) SLA
4 1 (0.79%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 10 (7.87%) VMware Infrastructure
2 7 (5.51%) Active Directory
2 7 (5.51%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (3.94%) ProxySG
3 5 (3.94%) VMware NSX
4 4 (3.15%) Firmware
5 2 (1.57%) Docker
5 2 (1.57%) Hyper-V
5 2 (1.57%) NFS
5 2 (1.57%) pfSense
5 2 (1.57%) vSphere
6 1 (0.79%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 36 (28.35%) Ansible
2 14 (11.02%) FortiGate
3 13 (10.24%) Terraform
4 4 (3.15%) Nagios
5 3 (2.36%) Dell DRAC
5 3 (2.36%) Kubernetes
6 2 (1.57%) Argo
6 2 (1.57%) CA Spectrum
6 2 (1.57%) Grafana
6 2 (1.57%) Prometheus
6 2 (1.57%) ZABBIX
7 1 (0.79%) Backup Exec
7 1 (0.79%) Nessus
7 1 (0.79%) PowerCLI
7 1 (0.79%) vCenter Server
7 1 (0.79%) vRealize
7 1 (0.79%) VxRail
7 1 (0.79%) WMI
7 1 (0.79%) WSUS
Vendors
1 102 (80.31%) Cisco
2 45 (35.43%) Palo Alto
3 35 (27.56%) SolarWinds
4 32 (25.20%) Fortinet
5 26 (20.47%) CheckPoint
6 25 (19.69%) F5
7 24 (18.90%) Meraki
8 15 (11.81%) Juniper
9 13 (10.24%) VMware
10 11 (8.66%) Aruba
10 11 (8.66%) Microsoft
11 7 (5.51%) Arista
11 7 (5.51%) Infoblox
11 7 (5.51%) Motorola
12 5 (3.94%) Blue Coat
12 5 (3.94%) Citrix
12 5 (3.94%) Dell
12 5 (3.94%) HP
12 5 (3.94%) Zscaler
13 4 (3.15%) Ekahau