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

6 months to
7 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 26 39
Rank change year-on-year -25 +13 +12
Contract jobs citing Firewall 106 126 122
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 4.23% 6.01% 4.60%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 29.44% 37.72% 28.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 73 57 90
10th Percentile £340 £242 £397
25th Percentile £455 £413 £483
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £475 £583
Median % change year-on-year +10.53% -18.52% +22.74%
75th Percentile £575 £550 £627
90th Percentile £637 £577 £676
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 0 2
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £40.63
Median hourly rate £41.94 - £43.75
75th Percentile £70.76 - £46.88
90th Percentile £74.26 - -
England median hourly rate £41.94 £35.00 £65.98
% change year-on-year +19.83% -46.95% +106.19%

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 360 334 425
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 14.38% 15.94% 16.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 204 179 307
10th Percentile £170 £188 £302
25th Percentile £332 £353 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £468 £463 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.24% -7.50% +1.73%
75th Percentile £550 £539 £626
90th Percentile £668 £614 £672
England median daily rate £492 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.60% - -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 5 9
10th Percentile £15.50 £18.52 £17.33
25th Percentile £18.50 £19.25 £17.72
Median hourly rate £34.47 £24.76 £41.23
Median % change year-on-year +39.22% -39.95% +36.40%
75th Percentile £67.25 £51.00 £46.88
90th Percentile £74.26 £51.90 £60.00
England median hourly rate £37.50 £35.00 £56.49
% change year-on-year +7.14% -38.04% +120.62%

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 January 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 7 January 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 7 January 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
Cumbria -3 31 £515 +11.17% 8
Cheshire -4 30 £525 +3.96% 3
Manchester -38 24 £586 +17.25% 22
Lancashire -3 14 £550 +15.79% 17
Merseyside -21 4 £330 +53.49% 3
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 5 (4.72%) Apache
1 5 (4.72%) OpenStack
2 1 (0.94%) JBoss
2 1 (0.94%) SharePoint
2 1 (0.94%) Tomcat
Applications
1 2 (1.89%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.94%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (0.94%) Finacle
1 1 (0.94%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 18 (16.98%) Azure
2 16 (15.09%) AWS
3 9 (8.49%) GCP
4 7 (6.60%) Microsoft 365
5 6 (5.66%) OpenShift
6 4 (3.77%) Amazon EC2
6 4 (3.77%) Azure Sentinel
6 4 (3.77%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 3 (2.83%) Azure Logic Apps
7 3 (2.83%) Azure Monitor
7 3 (2.83%) Entra ID
8 2 (1.89%) Amazon ECS
8 2 (1.89%) Amazon EKS
8 2 (1.89%) Amazon MSK
8 2 (1.89%) Amazon S3
8 2 (1.89%) AWS CloudFormation
8 2 (1.89%) AWS Lambda
8 2 (1.89%) Nutanix
8 2 (1.89%) Serverless
9 1 (0.94%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 33 (31.13%) Network Security
2 28 (26.42%) WAN
3 22 (20.75%) VLAN
4 20 (18.87%) TCP/IP
5 18 (16.98%) BGP
6 17 (16.04%) Wi-Fi
7 16 (15.09%) VPN
8 15 (14.15%) Cisco ISE
8 15 (14.15%) NetScaler
9 11 (10.38%) DNS
9 11 (10.38%) LAN
10 9 (8.49%) Cisco ASA
10 9 (8.49%) MPLS
11 8 (7.55%) Software-Defined Networking
11 8 (7.55%) Wireless
12 7 (6.60%) SD-WAN
12 7 (6.60%) SSL
13 6 (5.66%) OSPF
14 5 (4.72%) Internet
14 5 (4.72%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (1.89%) Amazon RDS
2 1 (0.94%) Redis
2 1 (0.94%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 8 (7.55%) GitLab
2 4 (3.77%) Jenkins
3 3 (2.83%) Git
3 3 (2.83%) Sonatype Nexus
4 2 (1.89%) Bitbucket
4 2 (1.89%) JIRA
5 1 (0.94%) Eclipse
General
1 22 (20.75%) Analytical Skills
2 19 (17.92%) Public Sector
3 18 (16.98%) Finance
4 17 (16.04%) Social Skills
5 5 (4.72%) Documentation Skills
6 4 (3.77%) Banking
7 3 (2.83%) Military
8 2 (1.89%) Legal
8 2 (1.89%) Telecoms
9 1 (0.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.94%) Organisational Skills
9 1 (0.94%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 49 (46.23%) Network Engineer
2 20 (18.87%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
3 14 (13.21%) Platform Engineer
3 14 (13.21%) Security Engineer
4 13 (12.26%) Senior
5 6 (5.66%) Cisco Engineer
5 6 (5.66%) Virtualisation Engineer
6 5 (4.72%) Architect
6 5 (4.72%) Cybersecurity Engineer
6 5 (4.72%) Network Architect
6 5 (4.72%) Senior Network Engineer
7 4 (3.77%) Analyst
7 4 (3.77%) Firewall Engineer
7 4 (3.77%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 4 (3.77%) Operations Analyst
7 4 (3.77%) Senior Analyst
7 4 (3.77%) Senior Operations Analyst
7 4 (3.77%) Senior Technical Analyst
7 4 (3.77%) Technical Analyst
7 4 (3.77%) Technical Operations Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (16.04%) 802.1X
2 4 (3.77%) LDAP
3 3 (2.83%) JSON
3 3 (2.83%) Node.js
4 1 (0.94%) Kafka
4 1 (0.94%) Middleware
4 1 (0.94%) RabbitMQ
4 1 (0.94%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 34 (32.08%) Data Centre
2 8 (7.55%) Product Ownership
3 7 (6.60%) Onboarding
4 5 (4.72%) Security Posture
5 4 (3.77%) Cyber Threat
6 3 (2.83%) Analytical Mindset
6 3 (2.83%) Cloud Security Posture
7 2 (1.89%) PKI
7 2 (1.89%) Private Cloud
7 2 (1.89%) Public Cloud
8 1 (0.94%) Cloud Native
8 1 (0.94%) CMDB
8 1 (0.94%) Distributed Systems
8 1 (0.94%) Hybrid Cloud
8 1 (0.94%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 35 (33.02%) Linux
2 30 (28.30%) Windows
3 12 (11.32%) Windows Server
4 8 (7.55%) Unix
5 7 (6.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (1.89%) Windows Server 2012
6 2 (1.89%) Windows Server 2019
7 1 (0.94%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 25 (23.58%) Containerisation
2 20 (18.87%) Cybersecurity
2 20 (18.87%) Load Balancing
3 19 (17.92%) Network Architecture
4 18 (16.98%) DevOps
5 17 (16.04%) CI/CD
5 17 (16.04%) Network Design
6 16 (15.09%) Incident Response
7 15 (14.15%) Problem-Solving
8 14 (13.21%) Network Management
9 13 (12.26%) Impact Assessments
9 13 (12.26%) Infrastructure as Code
10 12 (11.32%) High Availability
10 12 (11.32%) Observability
10 12 (11.32%) Platform Engineering
10 12 (11.32%) Project Delivery
11 11 (10.38%) Infrastructure Automation
11 11 (10.38%) SIEM
12 10 (9.43%) Cloud Security
12 10 (9.43%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 29 (27.36%) Python
2 21 (19.81%) Bash
3 20 (18.87%) PowerShell
4 13 (12.26%) Perl
5 3 (2.83%) Kusto Query Language
6 2 (1.89%) Java
6 2 (1.89%) Ruby
7 1 (0.94%) C++
7 1 (0.94%) Lisp
7 1 (0.94%) PL/SQL
7 1 (0.94%) SQL
Qualifications
1 59 (55.66%) Security Cleared
2 51 (48.11%) SC Cleared
3 28 (26.42%) Cisco Certification
4 27 (25.47%) CCNP
5 16 (15.09%) CISSP
6 15 (14.15%) CCNA
7 12 (11.32%) CISM
8 8 (7.55%) CompTIA Security+
8 8 (7.55%) Degree
9 6 (5.66%) CCDP
10 4 (3.77%) Microsoft Certification
11 3 (2.83%) Azure Certification
11 3 (2.83%) DV Cleared
11 3 (2.83%) MCSA
11 3 (2.83%) MCSE
12 2 (1.89%) AWS Certification
12 2 (1.89%) CCIE
12 2 (1.89%) Computer Science Degree
12 2 (1.89%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 1 (0.94%) Check Point Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (8.49%) NIST
2 5 (4.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 3 (2.83%) SLA
4 2 (1.89%) Cyber Essentials
5 1 (0.94%) GDPR
5 1 (0.94%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 19 (17.92%) Docker
2 17 (16.04%) Active Directory
3 16 (15.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (8.49%) vSphere
5 2 (1.89%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (1.89%) Virtual Servers
6 1 (0.94%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 20 (18.87%) Kubernetes
2 9 (8.49%) Terraform
3 6 (5.66%) FortiGate
4 5 (4.72%) Active Directory Federation Services
4 5 (4.72%) Fluentd
5 3 (2.83%) Ansible
5 3 (2.83%) CASB
5 3 (2.83%) Microsoft Intune
5 3 (2.83%) Nessus
6 2 (1.89%) SCCM
7 1 (0.94%) Failover Clustering
7 1 (0.94%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.94%) SELinux
Vendors
1 54 (50.94%) Cisco
2 43 (40.57%) Palo Alto
3 21 (19.81%) Meraki
4 17 (16.04%) VMware
5 15 (14.15%) Microsoft
6 12 (11.32%) F5
7 10 (9.43%) Splunk
8 7 (6.60%) CheckPoint
8 7 (6.60%) Red Hat
9 5 (4.72%) Cribl.io
9 5 (4.72%) Fortinet
9 5 (4.72%) Juniper
10 4 (3.77%) Citrix
10 4 (3.77%) Oracle
10 4 (3.77%) Remedy
10 4 (3.77%) SolarWinds
11 3 (2.83%) CyberArk
11 3 (2.83%) LogRhythm
11 3 (2.83%) Tenable
11 3 (2.83%) Zscaler