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 7 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 48 32 38
Rank change year-on-year -16 +6 +12
Contract jobs citing Firewall 102 129 130
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 4.16% 5.74% 4.83%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.00% 39.94% 28.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 72 56 99
10th Percentile £358 £281 £373
25th Percentile £413 £422 £474
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £575
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -13.04% +17.35%
75th Percentile £563 £567 £627
90th Percentile £638 £600 £677
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 0 2
10th Percentile £49.08 - -
25th Percentile £59.80 - £40.63
Median hourly rate £70.38 - £43.75
75th Percentile £74.26 - £46.88
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £35.00 £27.50 £65.98
% change year-on-year +27.27% -58.32% +72.00%

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 340 323 451
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 13.87% 14.37% 16.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 202 168 330
10th Percentile £170 £203 £285
25th Percentile £350 £385 £398
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £457 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.84% -5.00% +3.36%
75th Percentile £550 £570 £623
90th Percentile £677 £678 £672
England median daily rate £483 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.45% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 7 11
10th Percentile £15.50 £18.76 -
25th Percentile £17.00 £22.01 £15.75
Median hourly rate £20.00 £48.56 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year -58.81% +174.04% -10.87%
75th Percentile £70.76 £51.91 £32.30
90th Percentile £74.26 £52.14 £46.88
England median hourly rate £30.00 £48.56 £56.49
% change year-on-year -38.22% -14.04% +25.53%

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 7 December 2025.

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 7 December 2025.

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 7 December 2025. 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 -1 39 £475 -5.94% 28
Cumbria +1 25 £519 +12.09% 6
Manchester -35 21 £574 +9.29% 51
Lancashire -5 10 £550 +15.79% 26
Merseyside -16 4 £413 +106.25% 11
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 9 (8.82%) OpenStack
2 8 (7.84%) Apache
3 4 (3.92%) JBoss
4 3 (2.94%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.98%) Tomcat
Applications
1 2 (1.96%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.98%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (0.98%) Finacle
1 1 (0.98%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 21 (20.59%) AWS
2 20 (19.61%) Azure
3 9 (8.82%) GCP
3 9 (8.82%) Microsoft 365
4 6 (5.88%) OpenShift
5 5 (4.90%) Azure Sentinel
5 5 (4.90%) Entra ID
5 5 (4.90%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 4 (3.92%) Amazon EC2
7 3 (2.94%) Azure Logic Apps
7 3 (2.94%) Azure Monitor
8 2 (1.96%) Amazon ECS
8 2 (1.96%) Amazon EKS
8 2 (1.96%) Amazon MSK
8 2 (1.96%) Amazon S3
8 2 (1.96%) AWS CloudFormation
8 2 (1.96%) AWS Direct Connect
8 2 (1.96%) AWS Lambda
8 2 (1.96%) Microsoft Purview
8 2 (1.96%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 26 (25.49%) Network Security
2 22 (21.57%) WAN
3 17 (16.67%) BGP
4 16 (15.69%) Wi-Fi
5 15 (14.71%) TCP/IP
6 14 (13.73%) Cisco ISE
7 13 (12.75%) DNS
7 13 (12.75%) NetScaler
7 13 (12.75%) VPN
8 12 (11.76%) VLAN
9 9 (8.82%) LAN
10 8 (7.84%) Internet
10 8 (7.84%) Intrusion Detection
10 8 (7.84%) MPLS
10 8 (7.84%) Software-Defined Networking
10 8 (7.84%) SSL
11 6 (5.88%) Cisco ASA
11 6 (5.88%) DHCP
12 5 (4.90%) OSPF
12 5 (4.90%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (3.92%) SQL Server
2 3 (2.94%) Relational Database
3 2 (1.96%) Amazon RDS
4 1 (0.98%) Redis
Development Applications
1 8 (7.84%) GitLab
2 4 (3.92%) Jenkins
3 3 (2.94%) Git
3 3 (2.94%) Sonatype Nexus
4 2 (1.96%) Bitbucket
4 2 (1.96%) JIRA
5 1 (0.98%) Eclipse
General
1 19 (18.63%) Social Skills
2 18 (17.65%) Finance
2 18 (17.65%) Public Sector
3 16 (15.69%) Analytical Skills
4 6 (5.88%) Banking
5 5 (4.90%) Documentation Skills
6 3 (2.94%) Japanese Language
6 3 (2.94%) Military
7 2 (1.96%) Legal
7 2 (1.96%) Telecoms
8 1 (0.98%) Financial Institution
8 1 (0.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
8 1 (0.98%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 44 (43.14%) Network Engineer
2 20 (19.61%) Security Engineer
3 12 (11.76%) Platform Engineer
4 11 (10.78%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
5 8 (7.84%) Network Security Engineer
5 8 (7.84%) Senior
6 6 (5.88%) Virtualisation Engineer
7 4 (3.92%) Architect
7 4 (3.92%) Azure Engineer
7 4 (3.92%) Cloud Engineer
7 4 (3.92%) Cybersecurity Engineer
7 4 (3.92%) Designer
7 4 (3.92%) Firewall Engineer
7 4 (3.92%) Network Architect
7 4 (3.92%) Network Designer
7 4 (3.92%) Senior Network Engineer
8 3 (2.94%) Software Engineer
9 2 (1.96%) Consultant
9 2 (1.96%) Network Consultant
9 2 (1.96%) Service Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (12.75%) 802.1X
2 4 (3.92%) Kafka
2 4 (3.92%) LDAP
3 3 (2.94%) JSON
3 3 (2.94%) Node.js
4 1 (0.98%) Middleware
4 1 (0.98%) RabbitMQ
4 1 (0.98%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 23 (22.55%) Data Centre
2 8 (7.84%) Product Ownership
3 5 (4.90%) Onboarding
3 5 (4.90%) Security Posture
4 4 (3.92%) Operational Technology
4 4 (3.92%) PKI
5 3 (2.94%) Analytical Mindset
5 3 (2.94%) Cloud Security Posture
6 2 (1.96%) CMDB
6 2 (1.96%) Hybrid Cloud
7 1 (0.98%) Cloud Native
7 1 (0.98%) Cyber Threat
7 1 (0.98%) Distributed Systems
7 1 (0.98%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 34 (33.33%) Linux
2 32 (31.37%) Windows
3 10 (9.80%) Windows Server
4 8 (7.84%) Unix
5 7 (6.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.98%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 24 (23.53%) Containerisation
2 20 (19.61%) Network Design
3 18 (17.65%) Load Balancing
3 18 (17.65%) Network Architecture
4 17 (16.67%) CI/CD
4 17 (16.67%) Incident Response
5 16 (15.69%) DevOps
6 14 (13.73%) Cybersecurity
6 14 (13.73%) Infrastructure as Code
6 14 (13.73%) Network Management
7 13 (12.75%) High Availability
7 13 (12.75%) Impact Assessments
8 12 (11.76%) Cloud Security
8 12 (11.76%) Infrastructure Automation
8 12 (11.76%) Observability
8 12 (11.76%) Platform Engineering
8 12 (11.76%) Problem-Solving
9 11 (10.78%) ITSM
10 10 (9.80%) Migration
10 10 (9.80%) Vulnerability Assessment
Programming Languages
1 26 (25.49%) Python
2 21 (20.59%) Bash
3 18 (17.65%) PowerShell
4 13 (12.75%) Perl
5 3 (2.94%) Kusto Query Language
6 2 (1.96%) Java
6 2 (1.96%) Ruby
7 1 (0.98%) C++
7 1 (0.98%) Lisp
7 1 (0.98%) PL/SQL
7 1 (0.98%) SQL
Qualifications
1 44 (43.14%) Security Cleared
2 39 (38.24%) SC Cleared
3 20 (19.61%) Cisco Certification
4 19 (18.63%) CCNP
5 12 (11.76%) CISSP
6 9 (8.82%) Degree
7 8 (7.84%) CISM
8 6 (5.88%) CCDP
8 6 (5.88%) Microsoft Certification
9 5 (4.90%) Azure Certification
9 5 (4.90%) CCNA
9 5 (4.90%) CompTIA Security+
10 3 (2.94%) MCSA
10 3 (2.94%) MCSE
11 2 (1.96%) AWS Certification
11 2 (1.96%) CCIE
11 2 (1.96%) DV Cleared
11 2 (1.96%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 1 (0.98%) CCSA
12 1 (0.98%) Check Point Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (9.80%) NIST
2 5 (4.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (1.96%) PCI DSS
4 1 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 21 (20.59%) Docker
2 15 (14.71%) Active Directory
3 14 (13.73%) VMware Infrastructure
4 7 (6.86%) vSphere
5 2 (1.96%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 18 (17.65%) Kubernetes
2 10 (9.80%) Terraform
3 6 (5.88%) Ansible
4 5 (4.90%) Fluentd
4 5 (4.90%) FortiGate
5 3 (2.94%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 3 (2.94%) CASB
5 3 (2.94%) Nessus
6 2 (1.96%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.98%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.98%) QRadar
7 1 (0.98%) SELinux
Vendors
1 44 (43.14%) Cisco
2 37 (36.27%) Palo Alto
3 21 (20.59%) Microsoft
4 20 (19.61%) Meraki
5 14 (13.73%) VMware
6 12 (11.76%) F5
7 10 (9.80%) Splunk
7 10 (9.80%) Zscaler
8 7 (6.86%) Oracle
8 7 (6.86%) Red Hat
9 6 (5.88%) CheckPoint
10 5 (4.90%) Cribl.io
10 5 (4.90%) Juniper
11 4 (3.92%) Citrix
11 4 (3.92%) Dell
11 4 (3.92%) Fortinet
11 4 (3.92%) IBM
11 4 (3.92%) Remedy
11 4 (3.92%) SolarWinds
12 3 (2.94%) CyberArk