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

6 months to
6 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 521 408 395
Rank change year-on-year -113 -13 +325
Permanent jobs citing OSPF 128 357 373
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.26% 0.53% 0.71%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 2.07% 4.58% 4.60%
Number of salaries quoted 79 201 296
10th Percentile £44,500 £32,500 £39,438
25th Percentile £51,750 £42,500 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% - +1.85%
75th Percentile £76,250 £68,750 £65,625
90th Percentile £87,500 £82,500 £86,250
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 6,170 7,793 8,108
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 12.31% 11.51% 15.34%
Number of salaries quoted 4,150 4,007 6,516
10th Percentile £25,087 £30,000 £26,750
25th Percentile £28,250 £37,500 £34,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £37,500 £52,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -28.57% +5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £60,000 £70,000 £68,750
90th Percentile £78,790 £85,000 £85,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £34,000 £50,000 £45,000
% change year-on-year -32.00% +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 6 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 6 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 -103 120 £65,000 +18.18% 153
London +16 74 £67,500 -6.90% 82
UK excluding London -107 49 £60,000 +9.09% 110
Work from Home -20 34 £70,000 +12.00% 53
North of England -27 16 £60,000 +33.33% 13
South East -68 14 £57,500 +4.55% 56
Yorkshire +10 8 £75,000 +66.67% 9
North West -6 7 £60,000 +29.73% 2
Midlands +18 6 £60,000 +71.43% 18
South West +31 5 £53,000 -11.67% 8
West Midlands +25 5 £62,500 +78.57% 12
Scotland +5 5 - - 12
East of England +20 2 £58,750 -26.56% 4
East Midlands +19 1 £57,246 - 4
Channel Islands +6 1 £45,000 -
North East - 1 - - 2

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 2 (1.56%) Apache Airflow
1 2 (1.56%) nginx
Applications
1 14 (10.94%) MS Visio
2 5 (3.91%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.78%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.78%) OmniGraffle
Cloud Services
1 52 (40.63%) Azure
2 41 (32.03%) AWS
3 16 (12.50%) GCP
4 7 (5.47%) AWS Direct Connect
5 6 (4.69%) OCI
6 3 (2.34%) Azure DevOps
6 3 (2.34%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 2 (1.56%) Akamai
7 2 (1.56%) Dagster
7 2 (1.56%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 1 (0.78%) Azure Sentinel
8 1 (0.78%) Nutanix
Communications & Networking
1 124 (96.88%) BGP
2 105 (82.03%) Firewall
3 71 (55.47%) VPN
4 61 (47.66%) WAN
5 50 (39.06%) EIGRP
6 47 (36.72%) LAN
7 42 (32.81%) Network Security
8 40 (31.25%) SD-WAN
8 40 (31.25%) TCP/IP
9 39 (30.47%) VLAN
10 36 (28.13%) Wireless
11 32 (25.00%) IPsec
11 32 (25.00%) Wi-Fi
12 26 (20.31%) Cisco Nexus
13 25 (19.53%) MPLS
14 22 (17.19%) Cisco ASA
15 19 (14.84%) HSRP
16 18 (14.06%) VXLAN
16 18 (14.06%) WLAN
17 15 (11.72%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (1.56%) Data Lake
1 2 (1.56%) Metadata
1 2 (1.56%) MongoDB
1 2 (1.56%) MySQL
1 2 (1.56%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (0.78%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 4 (3.13%) Sonatype Nexus
2 3 (2.34%) GitLab
3 2 (1.56%) Git
3 2 (1.56%) Jaeger
3 2 (1.56%) Jenkins
3 2 (1.56%) MLflow
4 1 (0.78%) JIRA
General
1 44 (34.38%) Social Skills
2 19 (14.84%) Finance
3 16 (12.50%) Analytical Skills
4 14 (10.94%) Documentation Skills
5 12 (9.38%) Banking
6 8 (6.25%) Marketing
7 6 (4.69%) Public Sector
7 6 (4.69%) Retail
7 6 (4.69%) Telecoms
8 5 (3.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 3 (2.34%) Investment Banking
9 3 (2.34%) Mandarin Language
9 3 (2.34%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (1.56%) Agriculture
11 1 (0.78%) Aviation
11 1 (0.78%) Law
11 1 (0.78%) Legal
11 1 (0.78%) Manufacturing
11 1 (0.78%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.78%) Police
Job Titles
1 102 (79.69%) Network Engineer
2 25 (19.53%) Senior
3 22 (17.19%) Senior Network Engineer
4 9 (7.03%) Lead
5 8 (6.25%) Cisco Engineer
5 8 (6.25%) Cisco Network Engineer
5 8 (6.25%) Data Centre Engineer
5 8 (6.25%) Data Network Engineer
5 8 (6.25%) Lead Network Engineer
6 6 (4.69%) Deployment Engineer
7 5 (3.91%) Network Deployment Engineer
7 5 (3.91%) Network Manager
7 5 (3.91%) Network Team Leader
7 5 (3.91%) Team Leader
8 4 (3.13%) Architect
8 4 (3.13%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 4 (3.13%) IT Manager
8 4 (3.13%) Network Architect
8 4 (3.13%) Network Infrastructure Engineer
9 3 (2.34%) Operations Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (10.16%) 802.1X
2 6 (4.69%) Middleware
3 5 (3.91%) REST
4 2 (1.56%) FastAPI
4 2 (1.56%) Kafka
4 2 (1.56%) Keycloak
4 2 (1.56%) WebRTC
5 1 (0.78%) SAML
5 1 (0.78%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 48 (37.50%) Data Centre
2 7 (5.47%) Management Information System
3 4 (3.13%) Cloud Native
3 4 (3.13%) Public Cloud
4 3 (2.34%) Data Protection Act
4 3 (2.34%) IPTV
4 3 (2.34%) PKI
5 2 (1.56%) IoT
5 2 (1.56%) MPEG
5 2 (1.56%) Robotics
5 2 (1.56%) Virtual Team
6 1 (0.78%) Driving Licence
6 1 (0.78%) e-Health
6 1 (0.78%) Hedge funds
6 1 (0.78%) Hybrid Cloud
6 1 (0.78%) Onboarding
6 1 (0.78%) Security Posture
6 1 (0.78%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (0.78%) Smartcard
6 1 (0.78%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 5 (3.91%) Linux
1 5 (3.91%) Windows
2 2 (1.56%) Windows 10
2 2 (1.56%) Windows Server
3 1 (0.78%) Mac OS
3 1 (0.78%) Ubuntu
3 1 (0.78%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 33 (25.78%) Problem-Solving
2 29 (22.66%) Load Balancing
3 23 (17.97%) ITIL
4 19 (14.84%) High Availability
5 18 (14.06%) Migration
6 17 (13.28%) Network Monitoring
7 16 (12.50%) Change Management
8 12 (9.38%) Computer Science
8 12 (9.38%) Customer Service
8 12 (9.38%) Decision-Making
8 12 (9.38%) Incident Response
8 12 (9.38%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 12 (9.38%) Network Architecture
9 11 (8.59%) DevOps
9 11 (8.59%) Network Design
10 10 (7.81%) Disaster Recovery
10 10 (7.81%) Network Segmentation
10 10 (7.81%) Project Delivery
10 10 (7.81%) Stakeholder Management
10 10 (7.81%) Task Automation
Programming Languages
1 39 (30.47%) Python
2 6 (4.69%) Bash
3 3 (2.34%) PowerShell
4 1 (0.78%) JavaScript
Qualifications
1 70 (54.69%) Cisco Certification
2 61 (47.66%) CCNP
3 28 (21.88%) Degree
4 26 (20.31%) CCIE
5 24 (18.75%) CCNA
6 14 (10.94%) Security Cleared
7 11 (8.59%) Computer Science Degree
7 11 (8.59%) SC Cleared
8 6 (4.69%) Azure Certification
9 5 (3.91%) AWS Certification
9 5 (3.91%) CISSP
10 4 (3.13%) DV Cleared
10 4 (3.13%) TOGAF Certification
11 3 (2.34%) CCSA
12 2 (1.56%) CCSE
12 2 (1.56%) CWDP
12 2 (1.56%) CWNA
12 2 (1.56%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 2 (1.56%) JNCIP
13 1 (0.78%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (5.47%) PMO
2 5 (3.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 3 (2.34%) NIST
3 3 (2.34%) SLA
4 1 (0.78%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 10 (7.81%) VMware Infrastructure
2 7 (5.47%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (3.91%) Firmware
3 5 (3.91%) ProxySG
3 5 (3.91%) VMware NSX
4 4 (3.13%) Active Directory
5 2 (1.56%) Docker
5 2 (1.56%) Hyper-V
5 2 (1.56%) NFS
5 2 (1.56%) pfSense
5 2 (1.56%) vSphere
6 1 (0.78%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 34 (26.56%) Ansible
2 11 (8.59%) FortiGate
3 10 (7.81%) Terraform
4 5 (3.91%) Nagios
5 3 (2.34%) Dell DRAC
5 3 (2.34%) Kubernetes
6 2 (1.56%) Argo
6 2 (1.56%) CA Spectrum
6 2 (1.56%) Grafana
6 2 (1.56%) Prometheus
6 2 (1.56%) ZABBIX
7 1 (0.78%) Backup Exec
7 1 (0.78%) Cisco CUCM
7 1 (0.78%) Nessus
7 1 (0.78%) PowerCLI
7 1 (0.78%) vCenter Server
7 1 (0.78%) vRealize
7 1 (0.78%) VxRail
7 1 (0.78%) WMI
7 1 (0.78%) WSUS
Vendors
1 102 (79.69%) Cisco
2 42 (32.81%) Palo Alto
3 39 (30.47%) SolarWinds
4 33 (25.78%) CheckPoint
5 30 (23.44%) Fortinet
6 26 (20.31%) Meraki
7 25 (19.53%) F5
8 14 (10.94%) Juniper
9 13 (10.16%) VMware
10 11 (8.59%) Aruba
11 9 (7.03%) Arista
11 9 (7.03%) Infoblox
12 7 (5.47%) Microsoft
12 7 (5.47%) Motorola
13 5 (3.91%) Blue Coat
13 5 (3.91%) Citrix
13 5 (3.91%) ServiceNow
13 5 (3.91%) Zscaler
14 4 (3.13%) Dynatrace
14 4 (3.13%) Ekahau