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 12 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 42 24 49
Rank change year-on-year -18 +25 -7
Contract jobs citing Firewall 141 149 104
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 4.82% 7.40% 3.63%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 36.06% 40.60% 24.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 108 80 76
10th Percentile £398 £261 £406
25th Percentile £468 £413 £474
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £539 £488 £515
Median % change year-on-year +10.51% -5.36% +14.47%
75th Percentile £606 £568 £619
90th Percentile £636 £620 £700
England median daily rate £515 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -1.90% +5.00% -6.98%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - -
Median hourly rate £41.94 - -
75th Percentile £74.26 - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £41.94 £35.00 £65.49
% change year-on-year +19.83% -46.56% +25.63%

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 391 367 418
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 13.35% 18.23% 14.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 220 216 310
10th Percentile £273 £183 £200
25th Percentile £390 £312 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £450 £486
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -7.41% -2.80%
75th Percentile £588 £538 £597
90th Percentile £638 £600 £675
England median daily rate £500 £500 £475
% change year-on-year - +5.26% -9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 3 13
10th Percentile £15.50 £20.00 -
25th Percentile £18.75 £21.12 £17.72
Median hourly rate £41.94 £24.59 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year +70.59% -5.44% +7.87%
75th Percentile £74.26 £25.47 £45.88
90th Percentile - £25.90 £49.18
England median hourly rate £37.50 £35.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +7.14% -12.50% +110.53%

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 12 March 2026.

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 12 March 2026.

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 12 March 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Manchester -20 50 £568 +19.47% 43
Cumbria -2 38 £500 +5.26% 9
Cheshire -3 27 £613 +6.99% 13
Lancashire -1 16 £550 +10.00% 17
Merseyside -24 6 £330 +53.49% 3
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 (5.67%) CICS
2 4 (2.84%) Apache
2 4 (2.84%) OpenStack
3 2 (1.42%) Confluence
4 1 (0.71%) SharePoint
Applications
1 2 (1.42%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.71%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (0.71%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 37 (26.24%) Azure
2 27 (19.15%) AWS
3 15 (10.64%) GCP
4 10 (7.09%) Entra ID
4 10 (7.09%) Microsoft 365
5 9 (6.38%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 5 (3.55%) Azure AI
6 5 (3.55%) Azure Sentinel
6 5 (3.55%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 4 (2.84%) IBM Watson
7 4 (2.84%) Microsoft Purview
7 4 (2.84%) Nutanix
7 4 (2.84%) Vertex AI
8 3 (2.13%) Azure Monitor
8 3 (2.13%) OpenShift
9 2 (1.42%) Amazon EKS
9 2 (1.42%) AWS CloudFormation
9 2 (1.42%) AWS Lambda
9 2 (1.42%) Power Platform
9 2 (1.42%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 37 (26.24%) Network Security
2 35 (24.82%) VLAN
3 27 (19.15%) WAN
4 24 (17.02%) TCP/IP
5 19 (13.48%) BGP
5 19 (13.48%) DNS
6 18 (12.77%) Wi-Fi
7 16 (11.35%) VPN
7 16 (11.35%) Wireless
8 14 (9.93%) NetScaler
9 12 (8.51%) Cisco ISE
10 10 (7.09%) MPLS
11 9 (6.38%) DHCP
11 9 (6.38%) LAN
11 9 (6.38%) OSPF
12 8 (5.67%) Software-Defined Networking
13 7 (4.96%) Ethernet VPN
13 7 (4.96%) Kerberos
13 7 (4.96%) SD-WAN
14 6 (4.26%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (5.67%) DataStage
2 2 (1.42%) Amazon RDS
3 1 (0.71%) Redis
Development Applications
1 5 (3.55%) GitLab
1 5 (3.55%) JIRA
2 3 (2.13%) Sonatype Nexus
3 2 (1.42%) Bitbucket
3 2 (1.42%) Git
3 2 (1.42%) Jenkins
General
1 31 (21.99%) Finance
1 31 (21.99%) Social Skills
2 20 (14.18%) Analytical Skills
3 18 (12.77%) Public Sector
4 8 (5.67%) Influencing Skills
5 6 (4.26%) Banking
5 6 (4.26%) Documentation Skills
6 3 (2.13%) Legal
7 2 (1.42%) Military
8 1 (0.71%) Advertising
8 1 (0.71%) Aerospace
8 1 (0.71%) Financial Institution
8 1 (0.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 52 (36.88%) Network Engineer
2 24 (17.02%) Security Engineer
3 20 (14.18%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
4 15 (10.64%) Platform Engineer
5 14 (9.93%) Senior
6 13 (9.22%) Architect
7 9 (6.38%) Network Architect
8 8 (5.67%) Designer
8 8 (5.67%) Infrastructure Designer
9 7 (4.96%) Cloud Engineer
9 7 (4.96%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 6 (4.26%) Cisco Engineer
10 6 (4.26%) Virtualisation Engineer
11 5 (3.55%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
11 5 (3.55%) Cybersecurity Engineer
11 5 (3.55%) Senior Network Engineer
12 4 (2.84%) Infrastructure Architect
12 4 (2.84%) Senior Analyst
12 4 (2.84%) Senior Technical Analyst
12 4 (2.84%) Technical Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (16.31%) 802.1X
2 12 (8.51%) LDAP
3 8 (5.67%) Middleware
4 6 (4.26%) LangChain
4 6 (4.26%) PyTorch
4 6 (4.26%) scikit-learn
5 2 (1.42%) JSON
5 2 (1.42%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 50 (35.46%) Data Centre
2 18 (12.77%) Security Posture
3 13 (9.22%) Cloud Native
3 13 (9.22%) Product Ownership
4 8 (5.67%) BYOD
4 8 (5.67%) Mainframe
4 8 (5.67%) Onboarding
4 8 (5.67%) VSAM
5 5 (3.55%) Cloud Security Posture
5 5 (3.55%) Public Cloud
6 4 (2.84%) Cyber Threat
6 4 (2.84%) Private Cloud
7 3 (2.13%) Analytical Mindset
8 1 (0.71%) Cyber Defence
8 1 (0.71%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 1 (0.71%) Hybrid Cloud
8 1 (0.71%) Management Information System
8 1 (0.71%) PKI
8 1 (0.71%) Security Operations Centre
8 1 (0.71%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 47 (33.33%) Linux
2 38 (26.95%) Windows
3 17 (12.06%) Unix
4 15 (10.64%) Windows Server
5 11 (7.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (5.67%) AIX
6 8 (5.67%) Solaris
7 4 (2.84%) Windows Server 2012
7 4 (2.84%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (0.71%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 33 (23.40%) Cybersecurity
2 26 (18.44%) CI/CD
2 26 (18.44%) Problem-Solving
3 24 (17.02%) Containerisation
4 23 (16.31%) DevOps
4 23 (16.31%) SIEM
5 22 (15.60%) Load Balancing
6 19 (13.48%) Vulnerability Management
7 18 (12.77%) Project Delivery
7 18 (12.77%) Roadmaps
8 17 (12.06%) Change Management
8 17 (12.06%) ITIL
9 16 (11.35%) Cloud Security
10 15 (10.64%) Network Architecture
11 14 (9.93%) ITSM
11 14 (9.93%) Observability
11 14 (9.93%) Root Cause Analysis
12 13 (9.22%) Infrastructure as Code
12 13 (9.22%) Network Design
12 13 (9.22%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 34 (24.11%) Python
2 32 (22.70%) PowerShell
3 24 (17.02%) Bash
4 11 (7.80%) Perl
5 8 (5.67%) COBOL
6 5 (3.55%) Java
7 2 (1.42%) Kusto Query Language
7 2 (1.42%) Ruby
8 1 (0.71%) Bicep
8 1 (0.71%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 69 (48.94%) Security Cleared
2 56 (39.72%) SC Cleared
3 36 (25.53%) Cisco Certification
4 35 (24.82%) CCNP
5 26 (18.44%) CCNA
6 17 (12.06%) CISSP
7 12 (8.51%) Degree
8 9 (6.38%) CompTIA Security+
9 8 (5.67%) CISM
10 7 (4.96%) AWS Certification
11 6 (4.26%) Azure Certification
11 6 (4.26%) DV Cleared
11 6 (4.26%) Microsoft Certification
12 5 (3.55%) MCSA
12 5 (3.55%) MCSE
13 4 (2.84%) CCDP
13 4 (2.84%) Computer Science Degree
13 4 (2.84%) Network+ Certification
13 4 (2.84%) Server+ Certification
14 3 (2.13%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (5.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 8 (5.67%) NIST
2 5 (3.55%) Cyber Essentials
3 4 (2.84%) SLA
4 3 (2.13%) PCI DSS
5 2 (1.42%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
5 2 (1.42%) SOC 2
6 1 (0.71%) GDPR
System Software
1 28 (19.86%) Active Directory
2 25 (17.73%) Docker
3 21 (14.89%) VMware Infrastructure
4 11 (7.80%) vSphere
5 4 (2.84%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (1.42%) Virtual Servers
7 1 (0.71%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 24 (17.02%) Kubernetes
2 13 (9.22%) Terraform
3 7 (4.96%) CASB
4 6 (4.26%) Active Directory Federation Services
4 6 (4.26%) Nessus
5 5 (3.55%) FortiGate
5 5 (3.55%) Microsoft Intune
6 4 (2.84%) Progress Chef
6 4 (2.84%) SCCM
7 3 (2.13%) Fluentd
8 1 (0.71%) Ansible
8 1 (0.71%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 55 (39.01%) Cisco
2 38 (26.95%) Palo Alto
3 28 (19.86%) VMware
4 20 (14.18%) Microsoft
5 15 (10.64%) Meraki
6 12 (8.51%) IBM
7 11 (7.80%) Google
7 11 (7.80%) Red Hat
8 10 (7.09%) F5
9 9 (6.38%) Splunk
10 8 (5.67%) ServiceNow
11 7 (4.96%) Aruba
11 7 (4.96%) Ekahau
12 6 (4.26%) CheckPoint
12 6 (4.26%) Remedy
13 5 (3.55%) Citrix
13 5 (3.55%) CyberArk
13 5 (3.55%) Juniper
13 5 (3.55%) Tenable
14 4 (2.84%) Fortinet