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 2 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 524 399 400
Rank change year-on-year -125 +1 +297
Permanent jobs citing OSPF 111 341 339
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.19% 0.62% 0.65%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 1.15% 4.70% 4.44%
Number of salaries quoted 74 217 268
10th Percentile £47,575 £32,500 £37,500
25th Percentile £55,046 £45,000 £46,219
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £55,000 £50,743
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% +8.39% -3.35%
75th Percentile £77,500 £68,750 £64,063
90th Percentile £87,500 £83,750 £85,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £53,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +13.21% +6.00% +7.53%

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 9,636 7,259 7,642
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 16.26% 13.21% 14.76%
Number of salaries quoted 3,941 3,786 6,191
10th Percentile £25,087 £31,250 £26,500
25th Percentile £28,250 £38,750 £34,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £38,500 £54,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -28.70% +8.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £62,000 £71,250 £67,500
90th Percentile £80,000 £87,500 £83,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £34,000 £50,000 £45,000
% change year-on-year -32.00% +11.11% -

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 2 January 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 2 January 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 -139 108 £65,000 +18.18% 61
UK excluding London -115 55 £60,000 +13.21% 52
London -10 49 £74,000 +2.07% 23
Work from Home +13 29 £65,000 +4.00% 24
South East -66 21 £65,000 +18.18% 19
Midlands -9 10 £62,500 +78.57% 11
North of England -13 10 £60,000 +33.33% 14
South West +8 8 £54,560 -2.78% 1
West Midlands -3 7 £63,750 +82.14% 10
East of England +19 6 £53,750 -32.81% 1
North West +6 5 £53,000 +17.78% 2
North East +9 3 - - 3
East Midlands -17 3 £50,000 - 1
Yorkshire -12 2 £62,500 +25.00% 11

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 (4.50%) Microsoft Exchange
2 2 (1.80%) Apache Airflow
2 2 (1.80%) Confluence
2 2 (1.80%) nginx
Applications
1 15 (13.51%) MS Visio
2 3 (2.70%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.90%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 48 (43.24%) Azure
2 34 (30.63%) AWS
3 8 (7.21%) AWS Direct Connect
4 5 (4.50%) GCP
4 5 (4.50%) Microsoft 365
4 5 (4.50%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 4 (3.60%) SaaS
6 3 (2.70%) Azure DevOps
6 3 (2.70%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 2 (1.80%) Dagster
7 2 (1.80%) OCI
8 1 (0.90%) Azure Sentinel
8 1 (0.90%) Datadog
8 1 (0.90%) Nutanix
8 1 (0.90%) Stackdriver
Communications & Networking
1 106 (95.50%) BGP
2 97 (87.39%) Firewall
3 70 (63.06%) WAN
4 68 (61.26%) VPN
5 54 (48.65%) LAN
6 49 (44.14%) Wireless
7 47 (42.34%) EIGRP
8 41 (36.94%) Network Security
9 40 (36.04%) SD-WAN
10 34 (30.63%) VLAN
11 30 (27.03%) Cisco ASA
11 30 (27.03%) Wi-Fi
12 26 (23.42%) Cisco Nexus
12 26 (23.42%) IPsec
12 26 (23.42%) TCP/IP
13 23 (20.72%) MPLS
14 22 (19.82%) VXLAN
15 18 (16.22%) Wireshark
16 15 (13.51%) Cisco Firepower
16 15 (13.51%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (1.80%) Data Lake
1 2 (1.80%) Metadata
1 2 (1.80%) MongoDB
1 2 (1.80%) MySQL
1 2 (1.80%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 4 (3.60%) Sonatype Nexus
2 3 (2.70%) Git
3 2 (1.80%) GitLab
3 2 (1.80%) Jaeger
3 2 (1.80%) Jenkins
3 2 (1.80%) MLflow
4 1 (0.90%) JIRA
General
1 36 (32.43%) Social Skills
2 25 (22.52%) Analytical Skills
3 13 (11.71%) Finance
4 8 (7.21%) Documentation Skills
5 7 (6.31%) Marketing
6 5 (4.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 4 (3.60%) Law
8 3 (2.70%) Banking
8 3 (2.70%) Retail
9 2 (1.80%) Agriculture
9 2 (1.80%) Organisational Skills
9 2 (1.80%) Police
9 2 (1.80%) Public Sector
10 1 (0.90%) Legal
10 1 (0.90%) Mandarin Language
10 1 (0.90%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 81 (72.97%) Network Engineer
2 32 (28.83%) Senior
3 29 (26.13%) Senior Network Engineer
4 11 (9.91%) Cisco Engineer
4 11 (9.91%) Cisco Network Engineer
5 7 (6.31%) Cisco Consultant
5 7 (6.31%) Cisco Network Consultant
5 7 (6.31%) Consultant
5 7 (6.31%) Lead
5 7 (6.31%) Lead Network Engineer
5 7 (6.31%) Network Consultant
5 7 (6.31%) Network Team Leader
5 7 (6.31%) Team Leader
6 6 (5.41%) Firewall Engineer
6 6 (5.41%) WAN Consultant
7 5 (4.50%) 3rd Line Support
7 5 (4.50%) Architect
7 5 (4.50%) Network Architect
7 5 (4.50%) Network Manager
8 4 (3.60%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (9.91%) REST
2 7 (6.31%) 802.1X
3 2 (1.80%) FastAPI
3 2 (1.80%) Kafka
3 2 (1.80%) Keycloak
3 2 (1.80%) WebRTC
Miscellaneous
1 39 (35.14%) Data Centre
2 7 (6.31%) Driving Licence
3 5 (4.50%) Management Information System
4 4 (3.60%) Cloud Native
4 4 (3.60%) Onboarding
4 4 (3.60%) Public Cloud
5 3 (2.70%) Data Protection Act
5 3 (2.70%) Virtual Team
6 2 (1.80%) e-Learning
6 2 (1.80%) Hybrid Cloud
6 2 (1.80%) IoT
6 2 (1.80%) MPEG
6 2 (1.80%) PKI
6 2 (1.80%) Robotics
7 1 (0.90%) Digital Media
7 1 (0.90%) e-Health
7 1 (0.90%) Hedge funds
7 1 (0.90%) Security Posture
7 1 (0.90%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 6 (5.41%) Windows
2 5 (4.50%) Linux
2 5 (4.50%) Windows Server
3 1 (0.90%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 26 (23.42%) Problem-Solving
2 25 (22.52%) Load Balancing
3 18 (16.22%) Computer Science
3 18 (16.22%) Network Monitoring
4 17 (15.32%) Kalman Filter
5 15 (13.51%) Network Segmentation
6 13 (11.71%) ITIL
7 12 (10.81%) Change Management
7 12 (10.81%) Customer Service
8 11 (9.91%) Cloud Security
8 11 (9.91%) High Availability
8 11 (9.91%) Project Delivery
8 11 (9.91%) Root Cause Analysis
9 10 (9.01%) Network Management
9 10 (9.01%) Time Management
9 10 (9.01%) Zero Trust
10 9 (8.11%) Mentoring
11 8 (7.21%) Decision-Making
11 8 (7.21%) Migration
11 8 (7.21%) Strategic Thinking
Programming Languages
1 40 (36.04%) Python
2 5 (4.50%) Bash
3 2 (1.80%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 74 (66.67%) Cisco Certification
2 70 (63.06%) CCNP
3 25 (22.52%) Degree
4 24 (21.62%) CCIE
5 17 (15.32%) Computer Science Degree
6 14 (12.61%) CCNA
7 13 (11.71%) Security Cleared
8 10 (9.01%) SC Cleared
9 6 (5.41%) Azure Certification
10 5 (4.50%) DBS Check
11 4 (3.60%) AWS Certification
11 4 (3.60%) DV Cleared
12 3 (2.70%) CISSP
12 3 (2.70%) Master's Degree
13 2 (1.80%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 2 (1.80%) TOGAF Certification
14 1 (0.90%) CWDP
14 1 (0.90%) CWNA
14 1 (0.90%) Network+ Certification
14 1 (0.90%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (9.91%) PMO
2 5 (4.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 3 (2.70%) NIST
3 3 (2.70%) SLA
4 1 (0.90%) GDPR
4 1 (0.90%) ISO 9001
4 1 (0.90%) SOC 2
System Software
1 10 (9.01%) VMware Infrastructure
2 9 (8.11%) ProxySG
3 7 (6.31%) Active Directory
3 7 (6.31%) Virtual Machines
4 3 (2.70%) Firmware
4 3 (2.70%) VMware NSX
5 2 (1.80%) Docker
5 2 (1.80%) NFS
5 2 (1.80%) pfSense
6 1 (0.90%) VMware ESXi
6 1 (0.90%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 26 (23.42%) Ansible
2 16 (14.41%) FortiGate
3 13 (11.71%) Terraform
4 3 (2.70%) Dell DRAC
4 3 (2.70%) Kubernetes
4 3 (2.70%) Nagios
5 2 (1.80%) Argo
5 2 (1.80%) Grafana
5 2 (1.80%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.90%) CA Spectrum
6 1 (0.90%) PowerCLI
6 1 (0.90%) vCenter Server
6 1 (0.90%) vRealize
6 1 (0.90%) VxRail
Vendors
1 99 (89.19%) Cisco
2 42 (37.84%) Palo Alto
3 37 (33.33%) SolarWinds
4 34 (30.63%) Fortinet
5 31 (27.93%) Meraki
6 28 (25.23%) CheckPoint
7 20 (18.02%) F5
8 12 (10.81%) Infoblox
8 12 (10.81%) VMware
9 11 (9.91%) Microsoft
9 11 (9.91%) Motorola
10 10 (9.01%) ServiceNow
11 9 (8.11%) Arista
11 9 (8.11%) Aruba
11 9 (8.11%) Blue Coat
12 8 (7.21%) Juniper
13 5 (4.50%) Zscaler
14 4 (3.60%) Dell
14 4 (3.60%) Dynatrace
15 3 (2.70%) Riverbed