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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 19 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 522 452 426
Rank change year-on-year -70 -26 +311
Permanent jobs citing OSPF 153 365 406
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 0.31% 0.47% 0.67%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 2.12% 3.85% 4.20%
Number of salaries quoted 96 202 332
10th Percentile £42,500 £32,500 £39,000
25th Percentile £49,250 £41,263 £45,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £58,750 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +6.82% - -
75th Percentile £75,313 £68,438 £67,500
90th Percentile £87,500 £87,500 £85,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £53,000 £50,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +6.00% -4.76% +1.94%

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 7,218 9,476 9,661
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 14.60% 12.13% 15.97%
Number of salaries quoted 4,025 4,917 6,924
10th Percentile £25,087 £29,318 £27,500
25th Percentile £29,000 £36,250 £35,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £40,000 £50,000 £50,500
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% -0.99% -3.81%
75th Percentile £61,250 £67,500 £70,000
90th Percentile £80,000 £81,750 £85,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £35,000 £47,500 £45,000
% change year-on-year -26.32% +5.56% -5.26%

OSPF
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing OSPF as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for OSPF 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 19 September 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 19 September 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 -72 140 £60,000 +9.09% 52
London +57 89 £65,000 -7.14% 15
UK excluding London -76 59 £53,000 +6.00% 43
Work from Home +15 44 £65,000 +4.00% 28
South East -61 18 £51,500 -6.36% 9
North of England -20 15 £60,000 +41.18% 10
South West +74 8 £53,000 -7.02% 2
North West -39 8 £58,750 +46.88% 7
Scotland +51 7 - - 3
Yorkshire +9 7 £85,000 +88.89% 2
Midlands +24 5 £61,123 +74.64% 14
West Midlands +21 4 £65,000 +85.71% 8
East of England -20 3 £65,000 +10.33% 6
Wales - 2 £55,000 -
East Midlands +26 1 £57,246 - 5
Channel Islands +1 1 £45,000 -

OSPF
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 2 (1.31%) Apache Airflow
1 2 (1.31%) nginx
2 1 (0.65%) IIS
2 1 (0.65%) Office Communications Server
Applications
1 16 (10.46%) MS Visio
2 4 (2.61%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.65%) AutoCAD
3 1 (0.65%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.65%) OmniGraffle
Cloud Services
1 56 (36.60%) Azure
2 55 (35.95%) AWS
3 22 (14.38%) GCP
4 14 (9.15%) AWS Direct Connect
5 6 (3.92%) OCI
6 4 (2.61%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 2 (1.31%) Akamai
7 2 (1.31%) Azure DevOps
7 2 (1.31%) Dagster
8 1 (0.65%) AWS Lambda
8 1 (0.65%) Azure ExpressRoute
8 1 (0.65%) Azure Sentinel
8 1 (0.65%) Microsoft 365
8 1 (0.65%) Nutanix
8 1 (0.65%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 148 (96.73%) BGP
2 129 (84.31%) Firewall
3 92 (60.13%) VPN
4 71 (46.41%) WAN
5 54 (35.29%) LAN
6 48 (31.37%) Network Security
7 46 (30.07%) SD-WAN
8 45 (29.41%) IPsec
9 44 (28.76%) EIGRP
10 43 (28.10%) MPLS
11 42 (27.45%) TCP/IP
12 40 (26.14%) VLAN
13 36 (23.53%) Wi-Fi
14 34 (22.22%) Cisco ASA
15 29 (18.95%) Wireless
16 27 (17.65%) Cisco Firepower
16 27 (17.65%) WLAN
17 25 (16.34%) HSRP
18 24 (15.69%) Cisco Nexus
18 24 (15.69%) NX-OS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (1.31%) Data Lake
1 2 (1.31%) Metadata
1 2 (1.31%) MongoDB
1 2 (1.31%) MySQL
1 2 (1.31%) PostgreSQL
1 2 (1.31%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 4 (2.61%) Sonatype Nexus
2 3 (1.96%) GitLab
3 2 (1.31%) Jaeger
3 2 (1.31%) Jenkins
3 2 (1.31%) JMeter
3 2 (1.31%) MLflow
4 1 (0.65%) JIRA
General
1 43 (28.10%) Social Skills
2 23 (15.03%) Finance
3 21 (13.73%) Banking
4 18 (11.76%) Documentation Skills
5 15 (9.80%) Analytical Skills
6 10 (6.54%) Telecoms
7 6 (3.92%) Investment Banking
7 6 (3.92%) Mandarin Language
7 6 (3.92%) Marketing
7 6 (3.92%) Retail
8 5 (3.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 5 (3.27%) Public Sector
9 3 (1.96%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (1.31%) Advertising
10 2 (1.31%) Agriculture
10 2 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.65%) Financial Institution
11 1 (0.65%) Games
11 1 (0.65%) Legal
11 1 (0.65%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 115 (75.16%) Network Engineer
2 24 (15.69%) Senior
3 19 (12.42%) Senior Network Engineer
4 16 (10.46%) Cisco Engineer
4 16 (10.46%) Cisco Network Engineer
5 12 (7.84%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 12 (7.84%) Lead
5 12 (7.84%) Network Infrastructure Engineer
6 10 (6.54%) Data Centre Engineer
6 10 (6.54%) Data Network Engineer
7 9 (5.88%) Infrastructure Operations Engineer
7 9 (5.88%) Network Operations Engineer
7 9 (5.88%) Operations Engineer
8 7 (4.58%) 3rd Line Engineer
8 7 (4.58%) 3rd Line Network Engineer
9 6 (3.92%) Network Manager
10 5 (3.27%) Architect
10 5 (3.27%) AWS Engineer
10 5 (3.27%) Deployment Engineer
10 5 (3.27%) Network Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (11.76%) 802.1X
2 6 (3.92%) Middleware
3 4 (2.61%) REST
4 2 (1.31%) FastAPI
4 2 (1.31%) Kafka
4 2 (1.31%) Keycloak
4 2 (1.31%) WebRTC
5 1 (0.65%) .NET
5 1 (0.65%) SAML
5 1 (0.65%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 64 (41.83%) Data Centre
2 20 (13.07%) Management Information System
3 6 (3.92%) IPTV
4 4 (2.61%) Cloud Native
4 4 (2.61%) PKI
4 4 (2.61%) Public Cloud
5 3 (1.96%) Hybrid Cloud
5 3 (1.96%) IoT
6 2 (1.31%) Data Protection Act
6 2 (1.31%) MPEG
6 2 (1.31%) PMI
6 2 (1.31%) Robotics
6 2 (1.31%) Virtual Team
7 1 (0.65%) Cyber Threat
7 1 (0.65%) Onboarding
7 1 (0.65%) Operational Technology
7 1 (0.65%) SCADA
7 1 (0.65%) Security Posture
7 1 (0.65%) Self-Motivation
7 1 (0.65%) Smartcard
Operating Systems
1 7 (4.58%) Linux
2 5 (3.27%) Windows
3 2 (1.31%) Ubuntu
3 2 (1.31%) Windows 10
3 2 (1.31%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.65%) Mac OS
4 1 (0.65%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 40 (26.14%) Problem-Solving
2 28 (18.30%) Load Balancing
3 27 (17.65%) ITIL
4 25 (16.34%) High Availability
5 21 (13.73%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 19 (12.42%) Change Management
7 18 (11.76%) Migration
7 18 (11.76%) Network Architecture
8 17 (11.11%) Incident Response
8 17 (11.11%) Network Monitoring
8 17 (11.11%) Network Segmentation
9 16 (10.46%) Continuous Improvement
10 15 (9.80%) Network Management
10 15 (9.80%) Root Cause Analysis
11 14 (9.15%) Process Improvement
12 13 (8.50%) Project Delivery
13 12 (7.84%) Artificial Intelligence
13 12 (7.84%) Cloud Security
13 12 (7.84%) Decision-Making
13 12 (7.84%) Network Design
Programming Languages
1 44 (28.76%) Python
2 13 (8.50%) Bash
3 5 (3.27%) PowerShell
4 1 (0.65%) C#
4 1 (0.65%) JavaScript
4 1 (0.65%) R
4 1 (0.65%) Scala
Qualifications
1 71 (46.41%) Cisco Certification
2 55 (35.95%) CCNP
3 39 (25.49%) CCNA
4 31 (20.26%) Degree
5 23 (15.03%) Security Cleared
6 22 (14.38%) CCIE
7 20 (13.07%) SC Cleared
8 9 (5.88%) Computer Science Degree
9 7 (4.58%) DV Cleared
10 5 (3.27%) AWS Certification
10 5 (3.27%) CCSA
10 5 (3.27%) CISSP
11 4 (2.61%) CCSE
11 4 (2.61%) TOGAF Certification
12 2 (1.31%) Azure Certification
12 2 (1.31%) CWDP
12 2 (1.31%) CWNA
12 2 (1.31%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 2 (1.31%) JNCIP
12 2 (1.31%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (3.27%) PMO
2 3 (1.96%) SLA
3 2 (1.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (1.31%) PCI DSS
3 2 (1.31%) QA
4 1 (0.65%) GDPR
4 1 (0.65%) HIPAA
4 1 (0.65%) NIST
System Software
1 12 (7.84%) VMware Infrastructure
2 8 (5.23%) Firmware
3 7 (4.58%) Virtual Machines
4 6 (3.92%) VMware NSX
5 5 (3.27%) Active Directory
5 5 (3.27%) ProxySG
6 3 (1.96%) Docker
7 2 (1.31%) Hyper-V
7 2 (1.31%) NFS
7 2 (1.31%) pfSense
7 2 (1.31%) vSphere
8 1 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 36 (23.53%) Ansible
2 11 (7.19%) FortiGate
2 11 (7.19%) Terraform
3 10 (6.54%) Nagios
4 5 (3.27%) Kubernetes
5 2 (1.31%) Argo
5 2 (1.31%) CA Spectrum
5 2 (1.31%) Dell DRAC
5 2 (1.31%) Grafana
5 2 (1.31%) Iperf
5 2 (1.31%) Prometheus
5 2 (1.31%) ZABBIX
6 1 (0.65%) Backup Exec
6 1 (0.65%) Cisco CUCM
6 1 (0.65%) HAProxy
6 1 (0.65%) Nessus
6 1 (0.65%) PowerCLI
6 1 (0.65%) Puppet
6 1 (0.65%) vCenter Server
6 1 (0.65%) vRealize
Vendors
1 116 (75.82%) Cisco
2 56 (36.60%) SolarWinds
3 44 (28.76%) CheckPoint
4 40 (26.14%) Fortinet
5 37 (24.18%) Palo Alto
6 31 (20.26%) F5
7 28 (18.30%) Meraki
8 23 (15.03%) Juniper
9 17 (11.11%) VMware
10 15 (9.80%) Infoblox
11 14 (9.15%) Dynatrace
12 10 (6.54%) Arista
12 10 (6.54%) Aruba
13 7 (4.58%) Microsoft
13 7 (4.58%) ServiceNow
14 6 (3.92%) Bloomberg
14 6 (3.92%) Citrix
14 6 (3.92%) Refinitiv
14 6 (3.92%) Riverbed
15 5 (3.27%) Blue Coat