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 4 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 586 419 572
Rank change year-on-year -167 +153 +72
Permanent jobs citing OSPF 131 242 328
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.15% 0.56% 0.34%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 1.26% 3.87% 2.52%
Number of salaries quoted 77 207 265
10th Percentile £42,500 £32,500 £37,500
25th Percentile £58,750 £44,399 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £53,000 £50,500
Median % change year-on-year +32.08% +4.95% -8.18%
75th Percentile £77,500 £66,875 £63,750
90th Percentile £101,500 £83,750 £81,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £62,500 £53,000 £48,500
% change year-on-year +17.92% +9.28% +6.30%

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 10,356 6,257 12,991
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 11.47% 14.57% 13.55%
Number of salaries quoted 3,991 3,787 9,461
10th Percentile £27,250 £27,500 £26,250
25th Percentile £30,750 £33,250 £32,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £45,000 £50,000 £47,500
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £68,750 £68,750 £63,750
90th Percentile £85,000 £87,500 £77,715
UK excluding London median annual salary £40,000 £45,000 £43,500
% change year-on-year -11.11% +3.45% -3.33%

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 4 May 2026.

Salary histogram for OSPF in the UK

OSPF
Top 15 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 4 May 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 -147 125 £70,000 +32.08% 71
London -13 58 £72,000 +6.67% 18
UK excluding London -154 58 £62,500 +17.92% 62
Work from Home -22 34 £75,500 +34.53% 27
South East -106 19 £75,000 +41.51% 21
North of England -65 15 £65,000 +18.18% 16
Midlands -40 12 £62,500 +78.57% 9
West Midlands -22 8 £62,500 +78.57% 8
North East -29 8 - - 6
South West -58 6 £62,800 +11.90% 8
East of England -20 5 £40,000 -14.89% 4
North West -30 4 £62,750 +9.13% 6
East Midlands - 4 £51,250 - 1
Yorkshire -67 3 £65,000 +45.41% 4
Scotland -23 1 - - 5

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 (3.82%) Microsoft Exchange
2 3 (2.29%) Confluence
Applications
1 23 (17.56%) MS Visio
2 2 (1.53%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 55 (41.98%) Azure
2 49 (37.40%) AWS
3 14 (10.69%) Virtual Private Cloud
4 12 (9.16%) AWS Direct Connect
5 11 (8.40%) SaaS
6 6 (4.58%) Datadog
6 6 (4.58%) GCP
6 6 (4.58%) Microsoft 365
7 5 (3.82%) Azure ExpressRoute
8 3 (2.29%) Azure Monitor
9 2 (1.53%) Cloud Computing
9 2 (1.53%) Nutanix
9 2 (1.53%) OCI
9 2 (1.53%) Route 53
10 1 (0.76%) ChatGPT
10 1 (0.76%) Cloudflare
10 1 (0.76%) Microsoft Copilot
10 1 (0.76%) OpenShift
10 1 (0.76%) Stackdriver
Communications & Networking
1 126 (96.18%) BGP
2 113 (86.26%) Firewall
3 99 (75.57%) WAN
4 93 (70.99%) VPN
5 79 (60.31%) LAN
6 64 (48.85%) SD-WAN
7 62 (47.33%) Wireless
8 57 (43.51%) Network Security
9 47 (35.88%) Cisco ASA
10 45 (34.35%) EIGRP
11 44 (33.59%) VLAN
12 41 (31.30%) MPLS
13 38 (29.01%) Cisco ISE
14 34 (25.95%) Cisco Nexus
15 33 (25.19%) VXLAN
15 33 (25.19%) Wi-Fi
16 26 (19.85%) Cisco Firepower
17 23 (17.56%) Cisco Wireless
17 23 (17.56%) TCP/IP
18 21 (16.03%) IPsec
Development Applications
1 2 (1.53%) Git
1 2 (1.53%) Sonatype Nexus
2 1 (0.76%) JIRA
General
1 34 (25.95%) Social Skills
2 31 (23.66%) Analytical Skills
3 16 (12.21%) Finance
4 8 (6.11%) Law
4 8 (6.11%) Retail Banking
5 6 (4.58%) Documentation Skills
5 6 (4.58%) Telecoms
6 5 (3.82%) Banking
7 4 (3.05%) Public Sector
8 2 (1.53%) Financial Institution
8 2 (1.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.76%) Marketing
9 1 (0.76%) Organisational Skills
9 1 (0.76%) Police
9 1 (0.76%) Retail
Job Titles
1 99 (75.57%) Network Engineer
2 48 (36.64%) Senior
3 42 (32.06%) Senior Network Engineer
4 14 (10.69%) Cisco Engineer
4 14 (10.69%) Cisco Network Engineer
4 14 (10.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 12 (9.16%) Firewall Engineer
6 11 (8.40%) Consultant
6 11 (8.40%) Network Consultant
6 11 (8.40%) Network Infrastructure Engineer
7 9 (6.87%) Cisco Consultant
7 9 (6.87%) Cisco Network Consultant
7 9 (6.87%) Infrastructure Operations Engineer
7 9 (6.87%) Network Operations Engineer
7 9 (6.87%) Operations Engineer
7 9 (6.87%) WAN Consultant
8 5 (3.82%) AWS Engineer
8 5 (3.82%) AWS Infrastructure Engineer
8 5 (3.82%) Lead
8 5 (3.82%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (11.45%) 802.1X
2 9 (6.87%) REST
3 3 (2.29%) ARM Templates
4 1 (0.76%) gRPC
4 1 (0.76%) LDAP
4 1 (0.76%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 61 (46.56%) Data Centre
2 10 (7.63%) PKI
3 9 (6.87%) Management Information System
3 9 (6.87%) Onboarding
4 8 (6.11%) Driving Licence
4 8 (6.11%) Security Posture
5 6 (4.58%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 4 (3.05%) Hybrid Cloud
7 3 (2.29%) Cloud Native
8 2 (1.53%) e-Learning
9 1 (0.76%) Digital Media
9 1 (0.76%) Linux Command Line
9 1 (0.76%) Self-Motivation
9 1 (0.76%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 12 (9.16%) Linux
2 6 (4.58%) Windows
3 5 (3.82%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.76%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 31 (23.66%) Problem-Solving
2 28 (21.37%) Load Balancing
3 27 (20.61%) Kalman Filter
4 24 (18.32%) Network Monitoring
4 24 (18.32%) Root Cause Analysis
5 22 (16.79%) Computer Science
5 22 (16.79%) Network Segmentation
6 20 (15.27%) Project Delivery
6 20 (15.27%) WAN Optimisation
7 18 (13.74%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 18 (13.74%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 18 (13.74%) Zero Trust
8 17 (12.98%) Collaborative Working
8 17 (12.98%) ITIL
8 17 (12.98%) Network Design
9 16 (12.21%) Analytical Thinking
10 15 (11.45%) Cloud Security
11 13 (9.92%) High Availability
12 11 (8.40%) Network Management
13 10 (7.63%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 48 (36.64%) Python
2 4 (3.05%) Bash
2 4 (3.05%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 84 (64.12%) Cisco Certification
2 80 (61.07%) CCNP
3 26 (19.85%) Degree
4 24 (18.32%) CCIE
5 22 (16.79%) Computer Science Degree
6 14 (10.69%) Security Cleared
7 13 (9.92%) CCNA
8 9 (6.87%) DV Cleared
9 6 (4.58%) SC Cleared
10 5 (3.82%) DBS Check
11 4 (3.05%) Azure Certification
12 3 (2.29%) Master's Degree
13 2 (1.53%) AWS Certification
13 2 (1.53%) BPSS Clearance
13 2 (1.53%) CCSA
13 2 (1.53%) CCSE
13 2 (1.53%) JNCIA
13 2 (1.53%) JNCIP
13 2 (1.53%) JNCIS
14 1 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (12.21%) PMO
2 6 (4.58%) SLA
3 5 (3.82%) NIST
3 5 (3.82%) PCI DSS
4 1 (0.76%) GDPR
4 1 (0.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.76%) SOC 2
System Software
1 16 (12.21%) ProxySG
2 6 (4.58%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (3.82%) Active Directory
4 3 (2.29%) Docker
5 2 (1.53%) Firmware
5 2 (1.53%) Hyper-V
5 2 (1.53%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 28 (21.37%) FortiGate
2 23 (17.56%) Ansible
3 10 (7.63%) Terraform
4 9 (6.87%) Check_MK
5 6 (4.58%) Nagios
6 1 (0.76%) CASB
6 1 (0.76%) Cisco Prime
6 1 (0.76%) Grafana
6 1 (0.76%) Kubernetes
6 1 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 116 (88.55%) Cisco
2 61 (46.56%) SolarWinds
3 48 (36.64%) Fortinet
4 47 (35.88%) Palo Alto
5 39 (29.77%) Meraki
6 35 (26.72%) CheckPoint
7 26 (19.85%) F5
8 25 (19.08%) ServiceNow
9 22 (16.79%) Infoblox
10 16 (12.21%) Blue Coat
10 16 (12.21%) Motorola
11 15 (11.45%) Arista
12 12 (9.16%) Microsoft
13 11 (8.40%) Dynatrace
14 10 (7.63%) Juniper
15 7 (5.34%) Aruba
15 7 (5.34%) VMware
16 5 (3.82%) ForeScout
16 5 (3.82%) SevOne
16 5 (3.82%) Splunk