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

6 months to
17 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 38 23 45
Rank change year-on-year -15 +22 -6
Contract jobs citing Firewall 154 148 106
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 5.15% 7.36% 3.73%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 37.75% 40.44% 25.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 120 80 76
10th Percentile £399 £261 £409
25th Percentile £468 £413 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £527 £488 £520
Median % change year-on-year +8.00% -6.27% +15.58%
75th Percentile £589 £568 £675
90th Percentile £635 £620 £775
England median daily rate £513 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -2.38% +5.00% -6.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - -
Median hourly rate £41.94 - -
75th Percentile £74.26 - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £41.94 £35.00 £64.00
% change year-on-year +19.83% -45.31% +22.77%

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 408 366 410
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 13.65% 18.20% 14.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 237 218 305
10th Percentile £295 £184 £200
25th Percentile £400 £311 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £450 £480
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -6.25% -4.00%
75th Percentile £588 £538 £598
90th Percentile £644 £600 £683
England median daily rate £500 £500 £475
% change year-on-year - +5.26% -9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 3 13
10th Percentile £17.25 £20.00 -
25th Percentile £24.74 £21.12 £17.72
Median hourly rate £58.10 £24.59 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year +136.32% -5.44% +7.87%
75th Percentile £74.26 £25.47 £45.88
90th Percentile - £25.90 £49.18
England median hourly rate £40.02 £35.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year +14.34% +7.69% +71.05%

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 March 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 March 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 March 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 -23 54 £558 +17.37% 35
Cumbria -2 38 £500 +5.26% 8
Cheshire +7 36 £563 -1.75% 12
Lancashire -3 16 £550 +10.00% 17
Merseyside -19 6 £330 +53.49% 2
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 (5.19%) CICS
2 4 (2.60%) Apache
2 4 (2.60%) OpenStack
3 2 (1.30%) Confluence
4 1 (0.65%) SharePoint
Applications
1 2 (1.30%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.65%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (0.65%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 46 (29.87%) Azure
2 31 (20.13%) AWS
3 15 (9.74%) GCP
4 13 (8.44%) Entra ID
5 10 (6.49%) Microsoft 365
6 9 (5.84%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 8 (5.19%) Azure Sentinel
8 5 (3.25%) Azure AI
8 5 (3.25%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 4 (2.60%) Azure Key Vault
9 4 (2.60%) IBM Watson
9 4 (2.60%) Microsoft Purview
9 4 (2.60%) Nutanix
9 4 (2.60%) Vertex AI
10 3 (1.95%) Azure Monitor
10 3 (1.95%) OpenShift
11 2 (1.30%) Amazon EC2
11 2 (1.30%) AWS CloudFormation
11 2 (1.30%) Azure Logic Apps
11 2 (1.30%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 47 (30.52%) Network Security
2 36 (23.38%) VLAN
3 32 (20.78%) WAN
4 24 (15.58%) TCP/IP
4 24 (15.58%) VPN
5 20 (12.99%) BGP
5 20 (12.99%) DNS
6 18 (11.69%) Wi-Fi
7 17 (11.04%) Wireless
8 14 (9.09%) NetScaler
9 12 (7.79%) Cisco ISE
9 12 (7.79%) SD-WAN
10 10 (6.49%) LAN
10 10 (6.49%) MPLS
10 10 (6.49%) OSPF
11 9 (5.84%) DHCP
12 8 (5.19%) Software-Defined Networking
13 7 (4.55%) Ethernet VPN
13 7 (4.55%) Kerberos
14 6 (3.90%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (5.19%) DataStage
2 2 (1.30%) Amazon RDS
2 2 (1.30%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (0.65%) Redis
Development Applications
1 5 (3.25%) GitLab
1 5 (3.25%) JIRA
2 3 (1.95%) Git
2 3 (1.95%) Sonatype Nexus
3 2 (1.30%) Bitbucket
3 2 (1.30%) Jenkins
General
1 32 (20.78%) Finance
2 31 (20.13%) Social Skills
3 20 (12.99%) Analytical Skills
4 18 (11.69%) Public Sector
5 8 (5.19%) Banking
5 8 (5.19%) Influencing Skills
6 6 (3.90%) Documentation Skills
7 3 (1.95%) Legal
8 2 (1.30%) Military
9 1 (0.65%) Advertising
9 1 (0.65%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.65%) Financial Institution
9 1 (0.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 55 (35.71%) Network Engineer
2 24 (15.58%) Security Engineer
3 21 (13.64%) Architect
4 20 (12.99%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
5 16 (10.39%) Platform Engineer
6 14 (9.09%) Senior
7 13 (8.44%) Network Architect
8 9 (5.84%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 8 (5.19%) Cloud Engineer
9 8 (5.19%) Designer
9 8 (5.19%) Infrastructure Designer
10 6 (3.90%) Cisco Engineer
10 6 (3.90%) Virtualisation Engineer
11 5 (3.25%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
11 5 (3.25%) Cybersecurity Engineer
11 5 (3.25%) Senior Network Engineer
12 4 (2.60%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
12 4 (2.60%) Infrastructure Architect
12 4 (2.60%) Senior Analyst
12 4 (2.60%) Technical Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (14.94%) 802.1X
2 12 (7.79%) LDAP
3 8 (5.19%) Middleware
4 6 (3.90%) LangChain
4 6 (3.90%) PyTorch
4 6 (3.90%) scikit-learn
5 2 (1.30%) JSON
5 2 (1.30%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 52 (33.77%) Data Centre
2 18 (11.69%) Security Posture
3 16 (10.39%) Cloud Native
4 13 (8.44%) Product Ownership
5 8 (5.19%) BYOD
5 8 (5.19%) Mainframe
5 8 (5.19%) Onboarding
5 8 (5.19%) VSAM
6 6 (3.90%) Public Cloud
7 5 (3.25%) Cloud Security Posture
8 4 (2.60%) Cyber Threat
8 4 (2.60%) Private Cloud
9 3 (1.95%) Analytical Mindset
10 2 (1.30%) Hybrid Cloud
11 1 (0.65%) Cyber Defence
11 1 (0.65%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 1 (0.65%) Management Information System
11 1 (0.65%) PKI
11 1 (0.65%) Security Operations Centre
11 1 (0.65%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 49 (31.82%) Linux
2 38 (24.68%) Windows
3 17 (11.04%) Unix
4 15 (9.74%) Windows Server
5 11 (7.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (5.19%) AIX
6 8 (5.19%) Solaris
7 4 (2.60%) Windows Server 2012
7 4 (2.60%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (0.65%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 33 (21.43%) Cybersecurity
2 27 (17.53%) CI/CD
2 27 (17.53%) Load Balancing
3 26 (16.88%) Containerisation
3 26 (16.88%) Problem-Solving
4 24 (15.58%) DevOps
5 23 (14.94%) SIEM
6 20 (12.99%) Change Management
7 19 (12.34%) Vulnerability Management
8 18 (11.69%) Project Delivery
8 18 (11.69%) Roadmaps
9 17 (11.04%) Cloud Security
9 17 (11.04%) ITIL
9 17 (11.04%) Network Monitoring
9 17 (11.04%) Network Segmentation
10 16 (10.39%) Network Architecture
10 16 (10.39%) Observability
11 15 (9.74%) Infrastructure as Code
11 15 (9.74%) Threat Modelling
12 14 (9.09%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 37 (24.03%) Python
2 32 (20.78%) PowerShell
3 26 (16.88%) Bash
4 11 (7.14%) Perl
5 8 (5.19%) COBOL
6 6 (3.90%) Bicep
7 5 (3.25%) Java
8 2 (1.30%) Kusto Query Language
8 2 (1.30%) Ruby
9 1 (0.65%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 69 (44.81%) Security Cleared
2 56 (36.36%) SC Cleared
3 40 (25.97%) Cisco Certification
4 39 (25.32%) CCNP
5 30 (19.48%) CCNA
6 17 (11.04%) CISSP
7 12 (7.79%) Degree
8 9 (5.84%) CompTIA Security+
9 8 (5.19%) CISM
10 7 (4.55%) AWS Certification
11 6 (3.90%) Azure Certification
11 6 (3.90%) DV Cleared
11 6 (3.90%) Microsoft Certification
12 5 (3.25%) MCSA
12 5 (3.25%) MCSE
13 4 (2.60%) CCDP
13 4 (2.60%) Computer Science Degree
13 4 (2.60%) Network+ Certification
13 4 (2.60%) Server+ Certification
14 3 (1.95%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (7.14%) NIST
2 8 (5.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 5 (3.25%) Cyber Essentials
4 4 (2.60%) SLA
5 3 (1.95%) PCI DSS
6 2 (1.30%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
6 2 (1.30%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.65%) GDPR
System Software
1 29 (18.83%) Active Directory
2 27 (17.53%) Docker
3 21 (13.64%) VMware Infrastructure
4 11 (7.14%) vSphere
5 4 (2.60%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (1.30%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (1.30%) Virtual Servers
7 1 (0.65%) Firmware
7 1 (0.65%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 26 (16.88%) Kubernetes
2 19 (12.34%) Terraform
3 7 (4.55%) CASB
4 6 (3.90%) Active Directory Federation Services
4 6 (3.90%) Nessus
5 5 (3.25%) FortiGate
5 5 (3.25%) Microsoft Intune
6 4 (2.60%) Progress Chef
6 4 (2.60%) SCCM
7 3 (1.95%) Fluentd
8 2 (1.30%) Ansible
8 2 (1.30%) Grafana
8 2 (1.30%) Prometheus
9 1 (0.65%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 56 (36.36%) Cisco
2 38 (24.68%) Palo Alto
3 28 (18.18%) VMware
4 23 (14.94%) Microsoft
5 16 (10.39%) Meraki
6 13 (8.44%) Red Hat
7 12 (7.79%) IBM
8 11 (7.14%) Google
9 10 (6.49%) F5
10 9 (5.84%) Splunk
11 8 (5.19%) Aruba
11 8 (5.19%) ServiceNow
12 7 (4.55%) Ekahau
13 6 (3.90%) CheckPoint
13 6 (3.90%) Juniper
13 6 (3.90%) Remedy
14 5 (3.25%) Citrix
14 5 (3.25%) CyberArk
14 5 (3.25%) Tenable
15 4 (2.60%) Veeam