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 17 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 26 45
Rank change year-on-year -20 +19 -4
Contract jobs citing Firewall 121 137 115
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 4.41% 6.63% 4.09%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 32.79% 37.23% 26.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 88 70 83
10th Percentile £334 £228 £325
25th Percentile £455 £403 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £475 £575
Median % change year-on-year +9.32% -17.39% +15.00%
75th Percentile £588 £550 £627
90th Percentile £643 £600 £675
England median daily rate £500 £525 £520
% change year-on-year -4.76% +0.96% -3.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 0 2
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £40.63
Median hourly rate £41.94 - £43.75
75th Percentile £74.26 - £46.88
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £41.94 £35.00 £65.98
% change year-on-year +19.83% -46.95% +50.81%

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 369 368 437
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 13.46% 17.80% 15.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 203 210 312
10th Percentile £258 £190 £213
25th Percentile £360 £313 £377
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £478 £453 £498
Median % change year-on-year +5.52% -9.05% -0.50%
75th Percentile £575 £538 £603
90th Percentile £656 £601 £672
England median daily rate £488 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -2.50% +5.26% -9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 4 15
10th Percentile £15.50 £20.37 £17.72
25th Percentile £17.75 £22.05 £19.24
Median hourly rate £41.94 £24.67 £41.23
Median % change year-on-year +69.99% -40.16% +99.13%
75th Percentile £74.26 £32.39 £46.38
90th Percentile - £43.56 £48.75
England median hourly rate £28.88 £32.50 £47.50
% change year-on-year -11.14% -31.58% +137.50%

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 17 February 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 17 February 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 17 February 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 -28 38 £540 +8.00% 48
Cumbria -4 30 £491 +3.29% 6
Cheshire -4 26 £563 +18.42% 17
Lancashire -1 17 £550 +10.00% 18
Merseyside -17 6 £330 +53.49% 5
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 (4.96%) CICS
2 5 (4.13%) Apache
3 4 (3.31%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.83%) JBoss
4 1 (0.83%) SharePoint
Applications
1 4 (3.31%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.83%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (0.83%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 28 (23.14%) Azure
2 17 (14.05%) AWS
3 11 (9.09%) Entra ID
3 11 (9.09%) Microsoft 365
4 10 (8.26%) GCP
5 6 (4.96%) Azure Sentinel
6 5 (4.13%) OpenShift
7 4 (3.31%) Azure Monitor
7 4 (3.31%) Microsoft Purview
7 4 (3.31%) Nutanix
8 3 (2.48%) Amazon EC2
8 3 (2.48%) Azure Logic Apps
8 3 (2.48%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 2 (1.65%) Amazon ECS
9 2 (1.65%) Amazon EKS
9 2 (1.65%) Amazon MSK
9 2 (1.65%) AWS CloudFormation
9 2 (1.65%) AWS Lambda
9 2 (1.65%) Power Platform
9 2 (1.65%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 33 (27.27%) Network Security
2 27 (22.31%) VLAN
3 23 (19.01%) WAN
4 17 (14.05%) BGP
4 17 (14.05%) DNS
4 17 (14.05%) TCP/IP
4 17 (14.05%) VPN
5 14 (11.57%) NetScaler
5 14 (11.57%) Wi-Fi
6 12 (9.92%) Cisco ISE
7 11 (9.09%) MPLS
8 10 (8.26%) Wireless
9 8 (6.61%) SD-WAN
9 8 (6.61%) Software-Defined Networking
9 8 (6.61%) SSL
10 7 (5.79%) Cisco ASA
10 7 (5.79%) Ethernet VPN
10 7 (5.79%) Kerberos
10 7 (5.79%) LAN
10 7 (5.79%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (4.96%) DataStage
2 2 (1.65%) Amazon RDS
3 1 (0.83%) Redis
3 1 (0.83%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 8 (6.61%) GitLab
2 3 (2.48%) Git
2 3 (2.48%) Jenkins
2 3 (2.48%) Sonatype Nexus
3 2 (1.65%) Bitbucket
3 2 (1.65%) JIRA
General
1 27 (22.31%) Social Skills
2 25 (20.66%) Finance
3 23 (19.01%) Analytical Skills
4 18 (14.88%) Public Sector
5 6 (4.96%) Documentation Skills
5 6 (4.96%) Influencing Skills
6 3 (2.48%) Banking
6 3 (2.48%) Legal
6 3 (2.48%) Military
7 2 (1.65%) Telecoms
8 1 (0.83%) Advertising
8 1 (0.83%) Aerospace
8 1 (0.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 45 (37.19%) Network Engineer
2 17 (14.05%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
3 16 (13.22%) Platform Engineer
3 16 (13.22%) Security Engineer
4 11 (9.09%) Architect
4 11 (9.09%) Senior
5 7 (5.79%) Cybersecurity Engineer
5 7 (5.79%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 7 (5.79%) Network Architect
6 6 (4.96%) Cisco Engineer
6 6 (4.96%) Designer
6 6 (4.96%) Infrastructure Designer
6 6 (4.96%) Virtualisation Engineer
7 4 (3.31%) Cisco Network Engineer
7 4 (3.31%) Infrastructure Architect
7 4 (3.31%) Operations Analyst
7 4 (3.31%) Senior Analyst
7 4 (3.31%) Senior Network Engineer
7 4 (3.31%) Senior Technical Analyst
7 4 (3.31%) Technical Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (13.22%) 802.1X
2 11 (9.09%) LDAP
3 7 (5.79%) Middleware
4 3 (2.48%) JSON
5 2 (1.65%) Node.js
6 1 (0.83%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 43 (35.54%) Data Centre
2 9 (7.44%) Product Ownership
3 8 (6.61%) Onboarding
4 7 (5.79%) Security Posture
5 6 (4.96%) BYOD
5 6 (4.96%) Mainframe
5 6 (4.96%) VSAM
6 5 (4.13%) Public Cloud
7 4 (3.31%) Cloud Security Posture
7 4 (3.31%) Cyber Threat
7 4 (3.31%) Private Cloud
8 3 (2.48%) Analytical Mindset
9 2 (1.65%) PKI
10 1 (0.83%) Cloud Native
10 1 (0.83%) Cyber Defence
10 1 (0.83%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 1 (0.83%) Hybrid Cloud
10 1 (0.83%) Security Operations Centre
10 1 (0.83%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 41 (33.88%) Linux
2 35 (28.93%) Windows
3 15 (12.40%) Windows Server
4 14 (11.57%) Unix
5 7 (5.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (4.96%) AIX
6 6 (4.96%) Solaris
7 4 (3.31%) Windows Server 2012
7 4 (3.31%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (0.83%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 27 (22.31%) Cybersecurity
2 25 (20.66%) Containerisation
3 23 (19.01%) Problem-Solving
4 20 (16.53%) DevOps
5 18 (14.88%) Load Balancing
6 17 (14.05%) CI/CD
6 17 (14.05%) Project Delivery
7 15 (12.40%) Incident Response
7 15 (12.40%) Network Architecture
8 14 (11.57%) ITIL
8 14 (11.57%) Platform Engineering
8 14 (11.57%) Vulnerability Management
9 13 (10.74%) Change Management
9 13 (10.74%) Infrastructure as Code
9 13 (10.74%) Network Design
9 13 (10.74%) Observability
9 13 (10.74%) Root Cause Analysis
10 12 (9.92%) High Availability
11 11 (9.09%) ITSM
11 11 (9.09%) Network Monitoring
Programming Languages
1 29 (23.97%) PowerShell
2 25 (20.66%) Python
3 21 (17.36%) Bash
4 11 (9.09%) Perl
5 6 (4.96%) COBOL
6 3 (2.48%) Kusto Query Language
7 2 (1.65%) Java
7 2 (1.65%) Ruby
8 1 (0.83%) Bicep
8 1 (0.83%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 63 (52.07%) Security Cleared
2 50 (41.32%) SC Cleared
3 27 (22.31%) CCNP
3 27 (22.31%) Cisco Certification
4 19 (15.70%) CCNA
5 14 (11.57%) CISSP
6 10 (8.26%) CISM
7 8 (6.61%) CompTIA Security+
8 7 (5.79%) Degree
9 6 (4.96%) DV Cleared
10 5 (4.13%) Microsoft Certification
11 4 (3.31%) CCDP
11 4 (3.31%) MCSA
11 4 (3.31%) MCSE
12 3 (2.48%) Azure Certification
12 3 (2.48%) CCIE
13 2 (1.65%) AWS Certification
13 2 (1.65%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 1 (0.83%) BPSS Clearance
14 1 (0.83%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (7.44%) NIST
2 8 (6.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 5 (4.13%) Cyber Essentials
4 4 (3.31%) SLA
5 2 (1.65%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.83%) GDPR
System Software
1 28 (23.14%) Active Directory
2 21 (17.36%) Docker
2 21 (17.36%) VMware Infrastructure
3 11 (9.09%) vSphere
4 4 (3.31%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (1.65%) Virtual Servers
6 1 (0.83%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 21 (17.36%) Kubernetes
2 9 (7.44%) Terraform
3 7 (5.79%) Active Directory Federation Services
4 6 (4.96%) FortiGate
5 5 (4.13%) Fluentd
5 5 (4.13%) Microsoft Intune
5 5 (4.13%) Nessus
6 4 (3.31%) CASB
6 4 (3.31%) SCCM
7 3 (2.48%) Ansible
8 1 (0.83%) Failover Clustering
8 1 (0.83%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 51 (42.15%) Cisco
2 35 (28.93%) Palo Alto
3 26 (21.49%) VMware
4 19 (15.70%) Microsoft
5 15 (12.40%) Meraki
6 11 (9.09%) F5
7 9 (7.44%) Splunk
8 7 (5.79%) IBM
8 7 (5.79%) Red Hat
9 5 (4.13%) Citrix
9 5 (4.13%) Cribl.io
9 5 (4.13%) Juniper
9 5 (4.13%) Remedy
10 4 (3.31%) CyberArk
10 4 (3.31%) Tenable
10 4 (3.31%) Veeam
11 3 (2.48%) CheckPoint
11 3 (2.48%) LogRhythm
11 3 (2.48%) Oracle
12 2 (1.65%) Fortinet