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

6 months to
15 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 38 36 29
Rank change year-on-year -2 -7 +10
Contract jobs citing Firewall 183 104 120
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 4.80% 4.74% 4.99%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 36.82% 34.90% 41.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 150 64 76
10th Percentile £378 £363 £456
25th Percentile £448 £413 £498
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £475 £614
Median % change year-on-year +10.53% -22.58% +36.33%
75th Percentile £600 £591 £850
90th Percentile £630 £663 -
England median daily rate £510 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £29.00 £65.75 £46.25
Median hourly rate £30.00 £66.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -54.89% +40.00% -24.60%
75th Percentile £31.00 £67.25 £48.75
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £65.69 £30.00 £27.50
% change year-on-year +118.97% +9.09% -58.33%

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 497 298 290
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 13.03% 13.59% 12.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 324 171 195
10th Percentile £243 £147 £255
25th Percentile £358 £325 £397
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £491 £438 £515
Median % change year-on-year +12.11% -15.05% +8.42%
75th Percentile £588 £538 £681
90th Percentile £626 £650 £840
England median daily rate £500 £492 £500
% change year-on-year +1.63% -1.60% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 5 9
10th Percentile £15.10 £22.40 £24.61
25th Percentile £16.69 £26.00 £35.00
Median hourly rate £17.50 £66.50 £48.56
Median % change year-on-year -73.68% +36.94% +194.30%
75th Percentile £23.25 £67.25 £51.91
90th Percentile £48.29 £69.00 £62.80
England median hourly rate £28.00 £43.75 £54.88
% change year-on-year -36.00% -20.27% -0.23%

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 15 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
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 15 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
Cheshire +11 58 £543 +8.69% 9
Manchester -10 56 £500 +5.26% 32
Cumbria -3 46 £525 +1.25% 5
Lancashire +12 21 £519 - 3
Merseyside -22 2 £275 -33.33% 6
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 (3.28%) SAS
2 3 (1.64%) CICS
2 3 (1.64%) Confluence
3 1 (0.55%) nginx
Applications
1 7 (3.83%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (2.19%) MS Visio
3 2 (1.09%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (0.55%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 67 (36.61%) Azure
2 54 (29.51%) AWS
3 25 (13.66%) GCP
4 16 (8.74%) Google Kubernetes Engine
5 15 (8.20%) SaaS
6 13 (7.10%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 12 (6.56%) OCI
8 10 (5.46%) Entra ID
9 8 (4.37%) Azure Sentinel
10 7 (3.83%) Azure DevOps
10 7 (3.83%) IBM Watson
11 6 (3.28%) Azure AI
11 6 (3.28%) GitHub
11 6 (3.28%) Vertex AI
12 4 (2.19%) Azure Key Vault
12 4 (2.19%) IaaS
12 4 (2.19%) Serverless
13 3 (1.64%) Azure Monitor
13 3 (1.64%) GitHub Actions
14 2 (1.09%) AWS KMS
Communications & Networking
1 67 (36.61%) Network Security
2 58 (31.69%) VPN
3 50 (27.32%) Wireless
4 45 (24.59%) WAN
5 43 (23.50%) BGP
6 41 (22.40%) OSPF
7 28 (15.30%) DNS
7 28 (15.30%) VLAN
8 27 (14.75%) LAN
9 25 (13.66%) Wi-Fi
10 19 (10.38%) Cisco ASA
10 19 (10.38%) Cisco Firepower
10 19 (10.38%) SD-WAN
11 18 (9.84%) Cisco IOS
11 18 (9.84%) Structured Cabling
12 17 (9.29%) DHCP
13 16 (8.74%) EIGRP
13 16 (8.74%) NX-OS
14 15 (8.20%) NAS
14 15 (8.20%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (1.64%) DataStage
2 2 (1.09%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (1.09%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 15 (8.20%) GitLab
2 10 (5.46%) JIRA
3 9 (4.92%) Jenkins
4 4 (2.19%) Git
5 3 (1.64%) 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 40 (21.86%) Social Skills
2 37 (20.22%) Finance
3 16 (8.74%) Analytical Skills
3 16 (8.74%) Banking
4 13 (7.10%) Documentation Skills
4 13 (7.10%) Public Sector
5 5 (2.73%) Financial Institution
6 4 (2.19%) Legal
7 3 (1.64%) Influencing Skills
7 3 (1.64%) Organisational Skills
8 2 (1.09%) Military
8 2 (1.09%) Retail
9 1 (0.55%) Games
9 1 (0.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.55%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.55%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 69 (37.70%) Network Engineer
2 26 (14.21%) Architect
3 25 (13.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 22 (12.02%) Security Engineer
4 22 (12.02%) Senior
5 21 (11.48%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
6 12 (6.56%) Cloud Engineer
7 11 (6.01%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
8 10 (5.46%) Network Architect
9 9 (4.92%) Senior Network Engineer
10 7 (3.83%) Technical Architect
11 6 (3.28%) Cloud Security Engineer
11 6 (3.28%) Consultant
12 5 (2.73%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 5 (2.73%) SIEM Engineer
12 5 (2.73%) Splunk Engineer
13 4 (2.19%) Azure Architect
13 4 (2.19%) GCP Engineer
13 4 (2.19%) Network Consultant
13 4 (2.19%) Product Owner
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (4.92%) 802.1X
1 9 (4.92%) LangChain
1 9 (4.92%) PyTorch
1 9 (4.92%) scikit-learn
2 4 (2.19%) Middleware
2 4 (2.19%) React
3 3 (1.64%) ARM Templates
3 3 (1.64%) Azure Blueprints
4 2 (1.09%) CSS
4 2 (1.09%) HTML
4 2 (1.09%) LDAP
4 2 (1.09%) Node.js
4 2 (1.09%) ODBC
4 2 (1.09%) Playwright
4 2 (1.09%) Quarkus
4 2 (1.09%) Spring
4 2 (1.09%) Spring Boot
5 1 (0.55%) JSON
5 1 (0.55%) OpenID
5 1 (0.55%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 40 (21.86%) Data Centre
2 39 (21.31%) Cloud Native
3 26 (14.21%) Security Posture
4 13 (7.10%) Hybrid Cloud
4 13 (7.10%) Management Information System
5 5 (2.73%) PKI
6 4 (2.19%) Product Ownership
7 3 (1.64%) BYOD
7 3 (1.64%) Data Protection Act
7 3 (1.64%) Linux Command Line
7 3 (1.64%) Mainframe
7 3 (1.64%) Operational Technology
7 3 (1.64%) VSAM
8 2 (1.09%) Cloud Security Posture
8 2 (1.09%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 2 (1.09%) Driving Licence
8 2 (1.09%) Handset
8 2 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
9 1 (0.55%) Distributed Systems
9 1 (0.55%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 25 (13.66%) Linux
2 23 (12.57%) Windows
3 13 (7.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 6 (3.28%) Unix
5 5 (2.73%) Windows Server
6 3 (1.64%) AIX
6 3 (1.64%) Solaris
7 1 (0.55%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.55%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 49 (26.78%) CI/CD
1 49 (26.78%) Load Balancing
2 36 (19.67%) DevOps
3 34 (18.58%) Change Management
3 34 (18.58%) Network Segmentation
3 34 (18.58%) SIEM
4 30 (16.39%) Infrastructure as Code
4 30 (16.39%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 28 (15.30%) Cloud Security
5 28 (15.30%) Zero Trust
6 26 (14.21%) Project Delivery
6 26 (14.21%) Roadmaps
7 25 (13.66%) Agile
7 25 (13.66%) ITIL
8 21 (11.48%) High Availability
9 19 (10.38%) Cybersecurity
9 19 (10.38%) Network Architecture
9 19 (10.38%) Scrum
10 18 (9.84%) Network Design
11 17 (9.29%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 56 (30.60%) Python
2 24 (13.11%) PowerShell
3 20 (10.93%) Bash
4 14 (7.65%) Java
5 9 (4.92%) Bicep
6 7 (3.83%) SQL
7 5 (2.73%) Kusto Query Language
7 5 (2.73%) Search Processing Language
8 3 (1.64%) COBOL
9 2 (1.09%) JavaScript
9 2 (1.09%) Perl
9 2 (1.09%) T-SQL
10 1 (0.55%) ActionScript
10 1 (0.55%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 64 (34.97%) Security Cleared
2 59 (32.24%) Cisco Certification
3 57 (31.15%) SC Cleared
4 45 (24.59%) CCNA
5 44 (24.04%) CCNP
6 28 (15.30%) Degree
7 22 (12.02%) CISSP
8 17 (9.29%) AWS Certification
9 16 (8.74%) Network+ Certification
10 15 (8.20%) Azure Certification
11 14 (7.65%) Server+ Certification
12 7 (3.83%) CCIE
13 6 (3.28%) GCIH
14 5 (2.73%) GCFA
15 4 (2.19%) CompTIA Security+
15 4 (2.19%) Computer Science Degree
15 4 (2.19%) Microsoft Certification
16 2 (1.09%) BPSS Clearance
16 2 (1.09%) MCSA
16 2 (1.09%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (4.92%) NIST
2 8 (4.37%) PCI DSS
3 7 (3.83%) GDPR
4 5 (2.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 5 (2.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 2 (1.09%) Cyber Essentials
5 2 (1.09%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
5 2 (1.09%) SOC 2
6 1 (0.55%) Data Quality
System Software
1 17 (9.29%) Docker
2 8 (4.37%) Active Directory
3 3 (1.64%) Firmware
3 3 (1.64%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (1.64%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (1.09%) VMware NSX
5 1 (0.55%) BitLocker
5 1 (0.55%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 41 (22.40%) Terraform
2 32 (17.49%) Ansible
3 21 (11.48%) Progress Chef
4 20 (10.93%) Kubernetes
5 12 (6.56%) CASB
6 3 (1.64%) Cisco Prime
6 3 (1.64%) Istio
6 3 (1.64%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (1.09%) Grafana
7 2 (1.09%) Nessus
7 2 (1.09%) Prometheus
8 1 (0.55%) Nagios
8 1 (0.55%) Network Intrusion Detection System
8 1 (0.55%) Packer
8 1 (0.55%) Puppet
Vendors
1 79 (43.17%) Cisco
2 45 (24.59%) Palo Alto
3 26 (14.21%) Microsoft
4 25 (13.66%) CheckPoint
5 23 (12.57%) Google
6 21 (11.48%) F5
7 20 (10.93%) Aruba
7 20 (10.93%) ServiceNow
8 18 (9.84%) Fortinet
9 17 (9.29%) Arista
10 15 (8.20%) Red Hat
11 14 (7.65%) Splunk
12 10 (5.46%) IBM
13 9 (4.92%) Juniper
14 7 (3.83%) Zscaler
15 6 (3.28%) Meraki
15 6 (3.28%) VMware
16 5 (2.73%) CyberArk
16 5 (2.73%) Ekahau
16 5 (2.73%) ForeScout