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 3 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 30 33
Rank change year-on-year -6 +3 +6
Contract jobs citing Firewall 184 112 116
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 4.91% 5.10% 4.87%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 38.82% 35.90% 41.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 152 66 75
10th Percentile £382 £360 £450
25th Percentile £452 £411 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £527 £475 £625
Median % change year-on-year +10.84% -24.00% +31.58%
75th Percentile £599 £597 £850
90th Percentile £630 £650 -
England median daily rate £505 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +1.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 1
10th Percentile £33.53 - -
25th Percentile £40.32 - £46.25
Median hourly rate £52.13 - £47.50
75th Percentile £63.45 - £48.75
90th Percentile £69.93 - -
England median hourly rate £65.45 £30.00 £27.50
% change year-on-year +118.17% +9.09% -56.35%

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 474 312 282
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 12.65% 14.21% 11.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 306 178 192
10th Percentile £250 £148 £213
25th Percentile £363 £325 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £484 £450 £515
Median % change year-on-year +7.62% -12.62% +10.75%
75th Percentile £588 £538 £678
90th Percentile £630 £647 £848
England median daily rate £500 £494 £500
% change year-on-year +1.21% -1.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 3 10
10th Percentile £15.71 £21.20 £20.48
25th Percentile £17.06 £23.00 £28.44
Median hourly rate £17.75 £27.00 £46.69
Median % change year-on-year -34.26% -42.17% +179.92%
75th Percentile £32.54 £49.08 £51.68
90th Percentile £74.26 £61.73 £57.11
England median hourly rate £27.50 £45.00 £51.50
% change year-on-year -38.89% -12.62% +2.14%

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 3 August 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 3 August 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 3 August 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 -16 63 £500 +5.26% 22
Cheshire +13 53 £540 +13.78% 11
Cumbria -4 44 £530 +18.57% 2
Lancashire +12 22 £519 - 9
Merseyside -20 2 £275 -33.33% 8
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 6 (3.26%) CICS
2 3 (1.63%) SAS
3 2 (1.09%) Confluence
Applications
1 9 (4.89%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (2.17%) MS Visio
3 2 (1.09%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (0.54%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 64 (34.78%) Azure
2 48 (26.09%) AWS
3 24 (13.04%) GCP
4 16 (8.70%) Google Kubernetes Engine
5 13 (7.07%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 12 (6.52%) OCI
6 12 (6.52%) SaaS
7 11 (5.98%) Entra ID
8 8 (4.35%) Azure DevOps
9 7 (3.80%) Azure AI
9 7 (3.80%) IBM Watson
10 6 (3.26%) Azure Sentinel
10 6 (3.26%) GitHub
10 6 (3.26%) Vertex AI
11 5 (2.72%) Azure Key Vault
12 4 (2.17%) Azure Monitor
12 4 (2.17%) IaaS
12 4 (2.17%) Microsoft 365
13 3 (1.63%) GitHub Actions
13 3 (1.63%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 63 (34.24%) Network Security
2 56 (30.43%) VPN
3 51 (27.72%) Wireless
4 45 (24.46%) WAN
5 40 (21.74%) BGP
6 37 (20.11%) OSPF
7 32 (17.39%) DNS
8 30 (16.30%) VLAN
9 27 (14.67%) LAN
10 24 (13.04%) Wi-Fi
11 19 (10.33%) Cisco IOS
11 19 (10.33%) SD-WAN
11 19 (10.33%) Structured Cabling
12 18 (9.78%) DHCP
13 17 (9.24%) NX-OS
13 17 (9.24%) TCP/IP
14 16 (8.70%) NAS
14 16 (8.70%) SAN
15 14 (7.61%) Cisco ASA
15 14 (7.61%) Cisco Firepower
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (3.26%) DataStage
2 2 (1.09%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (1.09%) SQL Server
3 1 (0.54%) Redis
Development Applications
1 11 (5.98%) GitLab
2 9 (4.89%) JIRA
3 5 (2.72%) Jenkins
4 4 (2.17%) Git
5 3 (1.63%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (1.09%) Burp Suite
6 2 (1.09%) Cucumber
6 2 (1.09%) Gatling
6 2 (1.09%) Gradle
6 2 (1.09%) LoadRunner
6 2 (1.09%) REST Assured
6 2 (1.09%) SonarQube
6 2 (1.09%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 41 (22.28%) Social Skills
2 38 (20.65%) Finance
3 14 (7.61%) Banking
3 14 (7.61%) Public Sector
4 13 (7.07%) Analytical Skills
5 11 (5.98%) Documentation Skills
6 6 (3.26%) Influencing Skills
7 5 (2.72%) Legal
8 4 (2.17%) Financial Institution
9 3 (1.63%) Organisational Skills
10 2 (1.09%) Military
10 2 (1.09%) Retail
11 1 (0.54%) Games
11 1 (0.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.54%) Manufacturing
11 1 (0.54%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 66 (35.87%) Network Engineer
2 27 (14.67%) Architect
3 25 (13.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 24 (13.04%) Security Engineer
5 22 (11.96%) Senior
6 19 (10.33%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
7 12 (6.52%) Cloud Engineer
8 11 (5.98%) Network Architect
8 11 (5.98%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
9 9 (4.89%) Senior Network Engineer
10 7 (3.80%) Designer
10 7 (3.80%) Technical Architect
11 6 (3.26%) Cloud Security Engineer
11 6 (3.26%) Consultant
11 6 (3.26%) Infrastructure Designer
12 5 (2.72%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
13 4 (2.17%) Azure Architect
13 4 (2.17%) GCP Engineer
13 4 (2.17%) Network Consultant
13 4 (2.17%) Network Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (4.89%) 802.1X
1 9 (4.89%) LangChain
1 9 (4.89%) PyTorch
1 9 (4.89%) scikit-learn
2 7 (3.80%) Middleware
3 5 (2.72%) LDAP
4 4 (2.17%) React
5 3 (1.63%) ARM Templates
5 3 (1.63%) Azure Blueprints
6 2 (1.09%) CSS
6 2 (1.09%) HTML
6 2 (1.09%) Node.js
6 2 (1.09%) ODBC
6 2 (1.09%) Playwright
6 2 (1.09%) Quarkus
6 2 (1.09%) Spring
6 2 (1.09%) Spring Boot
7 1 (0.54%) JSON
7 1 (0.54%) Software Packaging
7 1 (0.54%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 46 (25.00%) Data Centre
2 39 (21.20%) Cloud Native
3 30 (16.30%) Security Posture
4 14 (7.61%) Hybrid Cloud
5 12 (6.52%) Management Information System
6 6 (3.26%) BYOD
6 6 (3.26%) Mainframe
6 6 (3.26%) VSAM
7 5 (2.72%) Cloud Security Posture
7 5 (2.72%) Product Ownership
8 4 (2.17%) PKI
9 3 (1.63%) Linux Command Line
9 3 (1.63%) Operational Technology
10 2 (1.09%) Data Protection Act
10 2 (1.09%) Driving Licence
10 2 (1.09%) Handset
11 1 (0.54%) Animation
11 1 (0.54%) Enterprise Cloud
11 1 (0.54%) Onboarding
11 1 (0.54%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 32 (17.39%) Linux
2 27 (14.67%) Windows
3 14 (7.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 12 (6.52%) Unix
5 6 (3.26%) AIX
5 6 (3.26%) Solaris
5 6 (3.26%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.54%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.54%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 49 (26.63%) Load Balancing
2 46 (25.00%) CI/CD
3 37 (20.11%) DevOps
4 36 (19.57%) Change Management
5 33 (17.93%) Network Segmentation
6 31 (16.85%) SIEM
7 29 (15.76%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 28 (15.22%) Roadmaps
9 27 (14.67%) Cloud Security
9 27 (14.67%) Infrastructure as Code
10 26 (14.13%) Zero Trust
11 25 (13.59%) Agile
11 25 (13.59%) Project Delivery
12 24 (13.04%) ITIL
13 22 (11.96%) High Availability
14 20 (10.87%) Cybersecurity
15 19 (10.33%) ITSM
15 19 (10.33%) Scrum
16 18 (9.78%) Network Design
17 17 (9.24%) Network Architecture
Programming Languages
1 52 (28.26%) Python
2 20 (10.87%) Bash
2 20 (10.87%) PowerShell
3 14 (7.61%) Java
4 10 (5.43%) Bicep
5 6 (3.26%) COBOL
6 3 (1.63%) Perl
6 3 (1.63%) SQL
7 2 (1.09%) JavaScript
7 2 (1.09%) T-SQL
8 1 (0.54%) ActionScript
8 1 (0.54%) Kusto Query Language
8 1 (0.54%) Search Processing Language
8 1 (0.54%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 63 (34.24%) Security Cleared
2 60 (32.61%) Cisco Certification
3 56 (30.43%) SC Cleared
4 47 (25.54%) CCNA
5 45 (24.46%) CCNP
6 25 (13.59%) Degree
7 20 (10.87%) CISSP
8 17 (9.24%) Network+ Certification
9 16 (8.70%) AWS Certification
10 15 (8.15%) Azure Certification
10 15 (8.15%) Server+ Certification
11 7 (3.80%) CompTIA Security+
11 7 (3.80%) Microsoft Certification
12 6 (3.26%) CCIE
13 5 (2.72%) MCSA
13 5 (2.72%) MCSE
14 4 (2.17%) Computer Science Degree
15 3 (1.63%) BPSS Clearance
16 1 (0.54%) DBS Check
16 1 (0.54%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (4.35%) NIST
2 6 (3.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 4 (2.17%) Cyber Essentials
3 4 (2.17%) PCI DSS
4 3 (1.63%) GDPR
5 2 (1.09%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
5 2 (1.09%) SOC 2
6 1 (0.54%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 17 (9.24%) Docker
2 12 (6.52%) Active Directory
3 5 (2.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (1.63%) Firmware
4 3 (1.63%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (1.09%) VMware NSX
6 1 (0.54%) BitLocker
6 1 (0.54%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 40 (21.74%) Terraform
2 27 (14.67%) Ansible
3 20 (10.87%) Kubernetes
4 16 (8.70%) Progress Chef
5 11 (5.98%) CASB
6 5 (2.72%) Nessus
7 3 (1.63%) Cisco Prime
7 3 (1.63%) Single Sign-On
8 2 (1.09%) Grafana
8 2 (1.09%) Istio
8 2 (1.09%) Prometheus
9 1 (0.54%) Nagios
9 1 (0.54%) Packer
9 1 (0.54%) Puppet
Vendors
1 75 (40.76%) Cisco
2 40 (21.74%) Palo Alto
3 25 (13.59%) Microsoft
4 23 (12.50%) Google
5 21 (11.41%) ServiceNow
6 20 (10.87%) Aruba
6 20 (10.87%) F5
7 19 (10.33%) CheckPoint
8 17 (9.24%) Arista
8 17 (9.24%) Fortinet
9 16 (8.70%) Red Hat
10 13 (7.07%) IBM
10 13 (7.07%) Splunk
11 10 (5.43%) VMware
12 9 (4.89%) Juniper
13 8 (4.35%) CyberArk
14 7 (3.80%) Zscaler
15 6 (3.26%) Meraki
16 5 (2.72%) Ekahau
16 5 (2.72%) ForeScout