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

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 52 66 32
Rank change year-on-year +14 -34 -1
Contract jobs citing Firewall 165 71 117
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 4.08% 3.20% 4.83%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 34.30% 24.65% 37.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 122 52 45
10th Percentile £350 £350 £413
25th Percentile £447 £400 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £511 £463 £500
Median % change year-on-year +10.38% -7.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £598 £556 £566
90th Percentile £637 £645 £600
England median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 2 1
10th Percentile £30.81 £44.32 -
25th Percentile £33.53 £47.89 £46.25
Median hourly rate £38.56 £54.22 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.88% +14.15% +8.57%
75th Percentile £43.09 £60.92 £48.75
90th Percentile £45.51 £64.72 -
England median hourly rate £67.47 £31.39 £25.84
% change year-on-year +114.98% +21.46% -61.21%

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 481 288 312
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 11.90% 12.97% 12.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 307 167 155
10th Percentile £200 £146 £255
25th Percentile £324 £320 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £438 £500
Median % change year-on-year +7.43% -12.50% +1.42%
75th Percentile £575 £538 £584
90th Percentile £628 £683 £688
England median daily rate £500 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 15 9
10th Percentile £14.04 - £24.61
25th Percentile £17.25 £15.50 £35.00
Median hourly rate £17.50 £19.00 £48.56
Median % change year-on-year -7.89% -60.87% +191.13%
75th Percentile £29.19 £34.97 £51.91
90th Percentile £73.92 £67.25 £52.02
England median hourly rate £38.72 £34.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +13.88% -40.87% +1.79%

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 October 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 15 October 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 15 October 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 -9 51 £513 -6.82% 31
Cheshire +8 44 £538 +16.22% 3
Cumbria 0 44 £503 +4.09% 2
Lancashire -4 23 £510 +52.11% 11
Merseyside -17 3 £275 -33.33% 4
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 (4.85%) SAS
2 2 (1.21%) Microsoft Exchange
2 2 (1.21%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.61%) Apache
3 1 (0.61%) Confluence
3 1 (0.61%) IIS
3 1 (0.61%) nginx
Applications
1 4 (2.42%) Microsoft Office
1 4 (2.42%) MS Visio
2 2 (1.21%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (0.61%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 48 (29.09%) Azure
2 40 (24.24%) AWS
3 20 (12.12%) GCP
4 15 (9.09%) SaaS
5 14 (8.48%) Entra ID
6 13 (7.88%) Google Kubernetes Engine
6 13 (7.88%) OCI
7 10 (6.06%) GitHub
7 10 (6.06%) IaaS
8 8 (4.85%) Azure DevOps
9 6 (3.64%) Serverless
9 6 (3.64%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 5 (3.03%) Azure Monitor
10 5 (3.03%) Azure Sentinel
11 4 (2.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 4 (2.42%) Amazon ECS
11 4 (2.42%) Amazon EKS
11 4 (2.42%) AWS CloudTrail
11 4 (2.42%) AWS KMS
11 4 (2.42%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 70 (42.42%) Network Security
2 59 (35.76%) VPN
3 44 (26.67%) WAN
3 44 (26.67%) Wireless
4 43 (26.06%) BGP
5 41 (24.85%) OSPF
6 30 (18.18%) LAN
7 28 (16.97%) DNS
8 24 (14.55%) Cisco ASA
8 24 (14.55%) Wi-Fi
9 21 (12.73%) VLAN
10 19 (11.52%) Cisco Firepower
11 18 (10.91%) EIGRP
12 17 (10.30%) BIG-IP
13 16 (9.70%) DHCP
13 16 (9.70%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
13 16 (9.70%) SD-WAN
14 15 (9.09%) Structured Cabling
15 13 (7.88%) Cisco IOS
16 12 (7.27%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (1.21%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 15 (9.09%) GitLab
2 14 (8.48%) Jenkins
3 5 (3.03%) JIRA
4 4 (2.42%) Git
5 3 (1.82%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (1.21%) Burp Suite
6 2 (1.21%) Cucumber
6 2 (1.21%) Gatling
6 2 (1.21%) Gradle
6 2 (1.21%) LoadRunner
6 2 (1.21%) REST Assured
6 2 (1.21%) SonarQube
6 2 (1.21%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 39 (23.64%) Finance
2 35 (21.21%) Social Skills
3 22 (13.33%) Analytical Skills
4 17 (10.30%) Banking
5 12 (7.27%) Documentation Skills
5 12 (7.27%) Public Sector
6 6 (3.64%) Legal
7 4 (2.42%) Financial Institution
8 3 (1.82%) Military
8 3 (1.82%) Organisational Skills
9 1 (0.61%) Games
9 1 (0.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.61%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.61%) Retail
9 1 (0.61%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 71 (43.03%) Network Engineer
2 27 (16.36%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 23 (13.94%) Security Engineer
3 23 (13.94%) Senior
4 22 (13.33%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
5 13 (7.88%) Architect
6 11 (6.67%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
7 10 (6.06%) Network Security Engineer
7 10 (6.06%) Senior Network Engineer
8 9 (5.45%) Cloud Engineer
9 7 (4.24%) Consultant
10 6 (3.64%) Cloud Security Engineer
10 6 (3.64%) SIEM Engineer
11 5 (3.03%) Network Architect
11 5 (3.03%) Splunk Engineer
11 5 (3.03%) Technical Architect
12 4 (2.42%) IT Support
13 3 (1.82%) Automation Engineer
13 3 (1.82%) Network Project Manager
13 3 (1.82%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (23.03%) Terraform
2 5 (3.03%) ARM Templates
2 5 (3.03%) Azure Blueprints
3 4 (2.42%) React
4 3 (1.82%) LangChain
4 3 (1.82%) PyTorch
4 3 (1.82%) scikit-learn
5 2 (1.21%) 802.1X
5 2 (1.21%) CSS
5 2 (1.21%) HTML
5 2 (1.21%) JSON
5 2 (1.21%) Node.js
5 2 (1.21%) ODBC
5 2 (1.21%) Playwright
5 2 (1.21%) Quarkus
5 2 (1.21%) Regular Expression
5 2 (1.21%) REST
5 2 (1.21%) Spring
5 2 (1.21%) Spring Boot
6 1 (0.61%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 36 (21.82%) Data Centre
2 24 (14.55%) Cloud Native
3 21 (12.73%) Security Posture
4 17 (10.30%) Management Information System
5 12 (7.27%) Hybrid Cloud
6 6 (3.64%) Driving Licence
6 6 (3.64%) Self-Motivation
7 5 (3.03%) PKI
7 5 (3.03%) Public Cloud
8 4 (2.42%) Cyber Defence
8 4 (2.42%) Cyber Threat
8 4 (2.42%) Data Protection Act
8 4 (2.42%) Onboarding
8 4 (2.42%) Operational Technology
9 3 (1.82%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 3 (1.82%) Linux Command Line
10 2 (1.21%) Cloud Security Posture
10 2 (1.21%) Handset
11 1 (0.61%) Client/Server
11 1 (0.61%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 21 (12.73%) Windows
2 17 (10.30%) Linux
3 12 (7.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 5 (3.03%) Windows Server
5 2 (1.21%) Android
5 2 (1.21%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.61%) macOS
6 1 (0.61%) Unix
6 1 (0.61%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 45 (27.27%) Load Balancing
2 44 (26.67%) CI/CD
3 40 (24.24%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 33 (20.00%) Infrastructure as Code
5 32 (19.39%) Change Management
6 30 (18.18%) DevOps
7 28 (16.97%) SIEM
8 27 (16.36%) Project Delivery
8 27 (16.36%) Zero Trust
9 26 (15.76%) ITIL
10 25 (15.15%) Cloud Security
10 25 (15.15%) Network Segmentation
11 24 (14.55%) Agile
12 22 (13.33%) Network Architecture
13 20 (12.12%) Cybersecurity
13 20 (12.12%) Problem-Solving
14 18 (10.91%) Incident Response
14 18 (10.91%) Security Operations
15 17 (10.30%) High Availability
16 16 (9.70%) Network Design
Programming Languages
1 58 (35.15%) Python
2 28 (16.97%) PowerShell
3 21 (12.73%) Bash
4 13 (7.88%) Java
5 8 (4.85%) SQL
6 6 (3.64%) ActionScript
6 6 (3.64%) Bicep
7 5 (3.03%) Kusto Query Language
7 5 (3.03%) Search Processing Language
8 2 (1.21%) JavaScript
8 2 (1.21%) Perl
8 2 (1.21%) T-SQL
9 1 (0.61%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 62 (37.58%) Security Cleared
2 57 (34.55%) SC Cleared
3 46 (27.88%) Cisco Certification
4 32 (19.39%) CCNP
5 27 (16.36%) CCNA
6 24 (14.55%) CISSP
7 21 (12.73%) Degree
8 15 (9.09%) AWS Certification
9 13 (7.88%) Azure Certification
10 11 (6.67%) Network+ Certification
11 9 (5.45%) Server+ Certification
12 8 (4.85%) CCIE
13 7 (4.24%) GCIH
14 5 (3.03%) GCFA
15 4 (2.42%) Microsoft Certification
16 3 (1.82%) BPSS Clearance
16 3 (1.82%) CCIE Security
16 3 (1.82%) CCSP
17 2 (1.21%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 2 (1.21%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (6.67%) PCI DSS
2 10 (6.06%) NIST
3 9 (5.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 7 (4.24%) GDPR
5 5 (3.03%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 2 (1.21%) Cyber Essentials
7 1 (0.61%) COBIT
7 1 (0.61%) Data Quality
7 1 (0.61%) ITGC
7 1 (0.61%) NIST 800
System Software
1 12 (7.27%) Docker
2 11 (6.67%) Active Directory
3 3 (1.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (1.21%) Firmware
4 2 (1.21%) VMware NSX
5 1 (0.61%) BitLocker
5 1 (0.61%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.61%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 34 (20.61%) Ansible
2 23 (13.94%) Progress Chef
3 15 (9.09%) Kubernetes
4 9 (5.45%) CASB
5 4 (2.42%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (1.82%) Istio
7 1 (0.61%) Cisco Prime
7 1 (0.61%) FortiGate
7 1 (0.61%) Nagios
7 1 (0.61%) Network Intrusion Detection System
7 1 (0.61%) Packer
7 1 (0.61%) Puppet
Vendors
1 76 (46.06%) Cisco
2 47 (28.48%) Palo Alto
3 30 (18.18%) F5
4 26 (15.76%) Microsoft
5 22 (13.33%) CheckPoint
6 18 (10.91%) Fortinet
7 17 (10.30%) Arista
7 17 (10.30%) Aruba
8 14 (8.48%) Google
9 12 (7.27%) Red Hat
10 11 (6.67%) Juniper
10 11 (6.67%) Meraki
10 11 (6.67%) ServiceNow
10 11 (6.67%) Splunk
11 8 (4.85%) AlgoSec
12 6 (3.64%) Citrix
12 6 (3.64%) Zscaler
13 5 (3.03%) Cribl.io
13 5 (3.03%) VMware
14 4 (2.42%) SolarWinds