Firewall Contract Job Trends in the North West

Firewall
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North West requiring Firewall skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 14 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 52 30 38
Rank change year-on-year -22 +8 +14
Contract jobs citing Firewall 102 127 124
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 4.15% 5.86% 4.68%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 29.06% 38.84% 28.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 71 56 94
10th Percentile £350 £240 £394
25th Percentile £411 £413 £483
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £498 £578
Median % change year-on-year +5.53% -13.85% +18.16%
75th Percentile £578 £563 £629
90th Percentile £638 £594 £680
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 0 2
10th Percentile £49.08 - -
25th Percentile £59.80 - £40.63
Median hourly rate £70.38 - £43.75
75th Percentile £74.26 - £46.88
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £37.50 £28.70 £65.98
% change year-on-year +30.66% -56.50% +77.27%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
North West

Firewall falls under the Communications and Computer Networking category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring communications or computer networking skills in the North West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 351 327 439
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 14.29% 15.08% 16.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 204 174 318
10th Percentile £170 £203 £300
25th Percentile £332 £366 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £458 £474 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.43% -5.25% +2.56%
75th Percentile £550 £565 £625
90th Percentile £673 £675 £672
England median daily rate £484 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.20% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 7 13
10th Percentile £15.50 £18.76 -
25th Percentile £17.00 £22.01 £15.75
Median hourly rate £20.00 £48.56 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year -58.81% +174.04% -10.87%
75th Percentile £70.76 £51.91 £46.88
90th Percentile £74.26 £52.14 £49.38
England median hourly rate £34.00 £42.50 £56.40
% change year-on-year -20.00% -24.65% +27.03%

Firewall
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Firewall relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Firewall job vacancy trend in the North West

Firewall
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Firewall.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Firewall

Firewall
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Firewall in the North West over the 6 months to 14 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Firewall in the North West

Firewall
Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Firewall.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Firewall

Firewall
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Firewall in the North West over the 6 months to 14 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Firewall in the North West

Firewall
Contract Job Locations in the North West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Firewall within the North West region over the 6 months to 14 December 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Cheshire -1 39 £475 -5.94% 16
Manchester -29 25 £575 +12.20% 43
Cumbria -1 21 £525 +13.33% 8
Lancashire -4 10 £550 +15.79% 27
Merseyside -14 4 £365 +65.91% 7
Firewall
England

Firewall
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West 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 8 (7.84%) Apache
2 5 (4.90%) OpenStack
3 4 (3.92%) JBoss
4 2 (1.96%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.98%) Tomcat
Applications
1 2 (1.96%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.98%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (0.98%) Finacle
1 1 (0.98%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 20 (19.61%) Azure
2 18 (17.65%) AWS
3 9 (8.82%) GCP
3 9 (8.82%) Microsoft 365
4 6 (5.88%) OpenShift
5 5 (4.90%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 4 (3.92%) Amazon EC2
6 4 (3.92%) Azure Sentinel
6 4 (3.92%) Entra ID
7 3 (2.94%) Azure Logic Apps
7 3 (2.94%) Azure Monitor
8 2 (1.96%) Amazon ECS
8 2 (1.96%) Amazon EKS
8 2 (1.96%) Amazon MSK
8 2 (1.96%) Amazon S3
8 2 (1.96%) AWS CloudFormation
8 2 (1.96%) AWS Direct Connect
8 2 (1.96%) AWS Lambda
8 2 (1.96%) Serverless
9 1 (0.98%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 27 (26.47%) Network Security
2 25 (24.51%) WAN
3 17 (16.67%) TCP/IP
3 17 (16.67%) Wi-Fi
4 15 (14.71%) BGP
4 15 (14.71%) Cisco ISE
5 14 (13.73%) NetScaler
5 14 (13.73%) VPN
6 11 (10.78%) DNS
6 11 (10.78%) LAN
7 10 (9.80%) SSL
8 9 (8.82%) VLAN
9 8 (7.84%) Internet
9 8 (7.84%) Intrusion Detection
9 8 (7.84%) Software-Defined Networking
10 6 (5.88%) Cisco ASA
10 6 (5.88%) MPLS
10 6 (5.88%) Wireless
11 5 (4.90%) Cisco IOS
11 5 (4.90%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (3.92%) SQL Server
2 3 (2.94%) Relational Database
3 2 (1.96%) Amazon RDS
4 1 (0.98%) Redis
Development Applications
1 8 (7.84%) GitLab
2 4 (3.92%) Jenkins
3 3 (2.94%) Git
3 3 (2.94%) Sonatype Nexus
4 2 (1.96%) Bitbucket
4 2 (1.96%) JIRA
5 1 (0.98%) Eclipse
General
1 19 (18.63%) Finance
1 19 (18.63%) Public Sector
1 19 (18.63%) Social Skills
2 18 (17.65%) Analytical Skills
3 5 (4.90%) Banking
3 5 (4.90%) Documentation Skills
4 3 (2.94%) Japanese Language
4 3 (2.94%) Military
5 2 (1.96%) Legal
5 2 (1.96%) Telecoms
6 1 (0.98%) Financial Institution
6 1 (0.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
6 1 (0.98%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 45 (44.12%) Network Engineer
2 19 (18.63%) Security Engineer
3 13 (12.75%) Platform Engineer
4 12 (11.76%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
5 9 (8.82%) Senior
6 8 (7.84%) Network Security Engineer
7 6 (5.88%) Virtualisation Engineer
8 5 (4.90%) Architect
8 5 (4.90%) Network Architect
8 5 (4.90%) Senior Network Engineer
9 4 (3.92%) Cybersecurity Engineer
9 4 (3.92%) Firewall Engineer
10 3 (2.94%) Azure Engineer
10 3 (2.94%) Cloud Engineer
10 3 (2.94%) Consultant
10 3 (2.94%) Software Engineer
11 2 (1.96%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 2 (1.96%) Network Consultant
11 2 (1.96%) Security Consultant
11 2 (1.96%) Service Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (12.75%) 802.1X
2 4 (3.92%) Kafka
2 4 (3.92%) LDAP
3 3 (2.94%) JSON
3 3 (2.94%) Node.js
4 1 (0.98%) Middleware
4 1 (0.98%) RabbitMQ
4 1 (0.98%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 24 (23.53%) Data Centre
2 8 (7.84%) Product Ownership
3 5 (4.90%) PKI
3 5 (4.90%) Security Posture
4 4 (3.92%) Onboarding
5 3 (2.94%) Analytical Mindset
5 3 (2.94%) Cloud Security Posture
6 2 (1.96%) CMDB
6 2 (1.96%) Hybrid Cloud
7 1 (0.98%) Cloud Native
7 1 (0.98%) Cyber Threat
7 1 (0.98%) Distributed Systems
7 1 (0.98%) Management Information System
7 1 (0.98%) Private Cloud
7 1 (0.98%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 34 (33.33%) Linux
2 32 (31.37%) Windows
3 11 (10.78%) Windows Server
4 8 (7.84%) Unix
5 7 (6.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.98%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.98%) Windows Server 2012
6 1 (0.98%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 25 (24.51%) Containerisation
2 21 (20.59%) Network Design
3 19 (18.63%) Load Balancing
4 18 (17.65%) Network Architecture
5 17 (16.67%) CI/CD
5 17 (16.67%) DevOps
5 17 (16.67%) Incident Response
6 15 (14.71%) Cybersecurity
7 14 (13.73%) High Availability
7 14 (13.73%) Infrastructure as Code
7 14 (13.73%) Network Management
7 14 (13.73%) Problem-Solving
8 13 (12.75%) Impact Assessments
9 12 (11.76%) Infrastructure Automation
9 12 (11.76%) Observability
9 12 (11.76%) Platform Engineering
10 11 (10.78%) Cloud Security
10 11 (10.78%) ITSM
10 11 (10.78%) Migration
11 10 (9.80%) Vulnerability Assessment
Programming Languages
1 26 (25.49%) Python
2 21 (20.59%) Bash
3 19 (18.63%) PowerShell
4 13 (12.75%) Perl
5 3 (2.94%) Kusto Query Language
6 2 (1.96%) Java
6 2 (1.96%) Ruby
7 1 (0.98%) C++
7 1 (0.98%) Lisp
7 1 (0.98%) PL/SQL
7 1 (0.98%) SQL
Qualifications
1 46 (45.10%) Security Cleared
2 39 (38.24%) SC Cleared
3 21 (20.59%) Cisco Certification
4 20 (19.61%) CCNP
5 12 (11.76%) CISSP
6 10 (9.80%) Degree
7 8 (7.84%) CISM
8 6 (5.88%) CCDP
8 6 (5.88%) CCNA
9 5 (4.90%) CompTIA Security+
9 5 (4.90%) Microsoft Certification
10 4 (3.92%) Azure Certification
11 3 (2.94%) MCSA
11 3 (2.94%) MCSE
12 2 (1.96%) AWS Certification
12 2 (1.96%) CCIE
12 2 (1.96%) Computer Science Degree
12 2 (1.96%) DV Cleared
12 2 (1.96%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 1 (0.98%) CCNA CyberOps
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (9.80%) NIST
2 5 (4.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (1.96%) PCI DSS
4 1 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 18 (17.65%) Docker
2 16 (15.69%) Active Directory
3 15 (14.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (7.84%) vSphere
5 2 (1.96%) Virtual Servers
6 1 (0.98%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 19 (18.63%) Kubernetes
2 10 (9.80%) Terraform
3 6 (5.88%) Ansible
3 6 (5.88%) FortiGate
4 5 (4.90%) Fluentd
5 4 (3.92%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 3 (2.94%) CASB
6 3 (2.94%) Nessus
7 2 (1.96%) Microsoft Intune
7 2 (1.96%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.98%) Failover Clustering
8 1 (0.98%) QRadar
8 1 (0.98%) SCCM
8 1 (0.98%) SELinux
Vendors
1 47 (46.08%) Cisco
2 38 (37.25%) Palo Alto
3 21 (20.59%) Microsoft
4 20 (19.61%) Meraki
5 15 (14.71%) VMware
6 13 (12.75%) F5
7 10 (9.80%) Splunk
8 9 (8.82%) Zscaler
9 7 (6.86%) CheckPoint
9 7 (6.86%) Oracle
9 7 (6.86%) Red Hat
10 6 (5.88%) Fortinet
10 6 (5.88%) Juniper
11 5 (4.90%) Cribl.io
12 4 (3.92%) Citrix
12 4 (3.92%) IBM
12 4 (3.92%) Remedy
12 4 (3.92%) SolarWinds
13 3 (2.94%) CyberArk
13 3 (2.94%) LogRhythm