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

6 months to
9 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 37 33 30
Rank change year-on-year -4 -3 +15
Contract jobs citing Firewall 184 113 114
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 4.85% 5.12% 4.82%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 38.25% 36.69% 40.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 153 68 74
10th Percentile £383 £363 £454
25th Percentile £453 £413 £501
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £475 £638
Median % change year-on-year +10.53% -25.49% +41.67%
75th Percentile £600 £591 £850
90th Percentile £630 £650 -
England median daily rate £510 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £29.00 - £46.25
Median hourly rate £30.00 - £47.50
75th Percentile £31.00 - £48.75
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £65.57 £30.00 £27.50
% change year-on-year +118.57% +9.09% -58.32%

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 481 308 279
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 12.67% 13.96% 11.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 312 180 191
10th Percentile £241 £147 £250
25th Percentile £361 £325 £386
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £487 £446 £515
Median % change year-on-year +9.20% -13.40% +11.96%
75th Percentile £588 £538 £688
90th Percentile £630 £650 £850
England median daily rate £500 £500 £500
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 3 9
10th Percentile £15.40 £21.20 £20.21
25th Percentile £16.88 £23.00 £26.25
Median hourly rate £17.50 £27.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -35.19% -43.16% +184.77%
75th Percentile £27.38 £49.08 £51.91
90th Percentile £74.26 £61.73 £62.32
England median hourly rate £27.94 £44.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year -36.50% -20.00% +7.52%

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 9 August 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
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 9 August 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 -5 62 £500 +6.38% 23
Cheshire +9 55 £547 +15.10% 15
Cumbria -4 44 £530 +9.79% 4
Lancashire +10 21 £519 - 5
Merseyside -19 2 £275 -33.33% 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 5 (2.72%) CICS
2 3 (1.63%) SAS
3 2 (1.09%) Confluence
Applications
1 7 (3.80%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (2.17%) MS Visio
3 2 (1.09%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (0.54%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 65 (35.33%) Azure
2 51 (27.72%) AWS
3 24 (13.04%) GCP
4 16 (8.70%) Google Kubernetes Engine
5 15 (8.15%) SaaS
6 13 (7.07%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 12 (6.52%) OCI
8 11 (5.98%) Entra ID
9 8 (4.35%) Azure DevOps
10 7 (3.80%) Azure AI
10 7 (3.80%) Azure Sentinel
10 7 (3.80%) IBM Watson
11 6 (3.26%) GitHub
11 6 (3.26%) Vertex AI
12 5 (2.72%) Azure Key Vault
13 4 (2.17%) Azure Monitor
13 4 (2.17%) IaaS
14 3 (1.63%) GitHub Actions
14 3 (1.63%) Serverless
15 2 (1.09%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 66 (35.87%) Network Security
2 57 (30.98%) VPN
3 51 (27.72%) Wireless
4 45 (24.46%) WAN
5 39 (21.20%) BGP
6 37 (20.11%) OSPF
7 32 (17.39%) DNS
8 29 (15.76%) VLAN
9 27 (14.67%) LAN
10 24 (13.04%) Wi-Fi
11 19 (10.33%) Cisco IOS
11 19 (10.33%) SD-WAN
11 19 (10.33%) Structured Cabling
12 18 (9.78%) DHCP
13 17 (9.24%) NX-OS
13 17 (9.24%) TCP/IP
14 16 (8.70%) NAS
14 16 (8.70%) SAN
15 14 (7.61%) Cisco ASA
15 14 (7.61%) Cisco Firepower
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (2.72%) DataStage
2 2 (1.09%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (1.09%) SQL Server
3 1 (0.54%) Redis
Development Applications
1 14 (7.61%) GitLab
2 9 (4.89%) JIRA
3 8 (4.35%) Jenkins
4 4 (2.17%) Git
5 3 (1.63%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (1.09%) Burp Suite
6 2 (1.09%) Cucumber
6 2 (1.09%) Gatling
6 2 (1.09%) Gradle
6 2 (1.09%) LoadRunner
6 2 (1.09%) REST Assured
6 2 (1.09%) SonarQube
6 2 (1.09%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 41 (22.28%) Social Skills
2 40 (21.74%) Finance
3 15 (8.15%) Banking
4 14 (7.61%) Analytical Skills
5 13 (7.07%) Documentation Skills
5 13 (7.07%) Public Sector
6 5 (2.72%) Financial Institution
6 5 (2.72%) Influencing Skills
7 4 (2.17%) Legal
8 3 (1.63%) Organisational Skills
9 2 (1.09%) Military
9 2 (1.09%) Retail
10 1 (0.54%) Games
10 1 (0.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (0.54%) Manufacturing
10 1 (0.54%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 66 (35.87%) Network Engineer
2 27 (14.67%) Architect
3 25 (13.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 22 (11.96%) Security Engineer
4 22 (11.96%) Senior
5 19 (10.33%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
6 12 (6.52%) Cloud Engineer
7 11 (5.98%) Network Architect
7 11 (5.98%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
8 9 (4.89%) Senior Network Engineer
9 7 (3.80%) Technical Architect
10 6 (3.26%) Cloud Security Engineer
10 6 (3.26%) Consultant
10 6 (3.26%) Designer
11 5 (2.72%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
11 5 (2.72%) Infrastructure Designer
12 4 (2.17%) Network Consultant
12 4 (2.17%) Network Security Engineer
12 4 (2.17%) Product Owner
12 4 (2.17%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (4.89%) 802.1X
1 9 (4.89%) LangChain
1 9 (4.89%) PyTorch
1 9 (4.89%) scikit-learn
2 6 (3.26%) Middleware
3 5 (2.72%) LDAP
4 4 (2.17%) React
5 3 (1.63%) ARM Templates
5 3 (1.63%) Azure Blueprints
6 2 (1.09%) CSS
6 2 (1.09%) HTML
6 2 (1.09%) Node.js
6 2 (1.09%) ODBC
6 2 (1.09%) Playwright
6 2 (1.09%) Quarkus
6 2 (1.09%) Spring
6 2 (1.09%) Spring Boot
7 1 (0.54%) JSON
7 1 (0.54%) Software Packaging
7 1 (0.54%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 44 (23.91%) Data Centre
2 39 (21.20%) Cloud Native
3 29 (15.76%) Security Posture
4 14 (7.61%) Hybrid Cloud
5 12 (6.52%) Management Information System
6 5 (2.72%) BYOD
6 5 (2.72%) Cloud Security Posture
6 5 (2.72%) Mainframe
6 5 (2.72%) VSAM
7 4 (2.17%) PKI
7 4 (2.17%) Product Ownership
8 3 (1.63%) Linux Command Line
8 3 (1.63%) Operational Technology
9 2 (1.09%) Data Protection Act
9 2 (1.09%) Driving Licence
9 2 (1.09%) Handset
10 1 (0.54%) Animation
10 1 (0.54%) Enterprise Cloud
10 1 (0.54%) Public Cloud
10 1 (0.54%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 30 (16.30%) Linux
2 26 (14.13%) Windows
3 13 (7.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 11 (5.98%) Unix
5 5 (2.72%) AIX
5 5 (2.72%) Solaris
5 5 (2.72%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.54%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.54%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 49 (26.63%) CI/CD
1 49 (26.63%) Load Balancing
2 37 (20.11%) DevOps
3 34 (18.48%) Change Management
3 34 (18.48%) SIEM
4 33 (17.93%) Network Segmentation
5 30 (16.30%) Cloud Security
5 30 (16.30%) Infrastructure as Code
6 29 (15.76%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 27 (14.67%) Roadmaps
8 26 (14.13%) Project Delivery
8 26 (14.13%) Zero Trust
9 25 (13.59%) Agile
10 24 (13.04%) ITIL
11 21 (11.41%) High Availability
12 19 (10.33%) Network Architecture
12 19 (10.33%) Scrum
13 18 (9.78%) ITSM
13 18 (9.78%) Network Design
14 17 (9.24%) Vulnerability Assessment
Programming Languages
1 54 (29.35%) Python
2 22 (11.96%) PowerShell
3 19 (10.33%) Bash
4 14 (7.61%) Java
5 10 (5.43%) Bicep
6 6 (3.26%) SQL
7 5 (2.72%) COBOL
8 4 (2.17%) Kusto Query Language
8 4 (2.17%) Search Processing Language
9 2 (1.09%) JavaScript
9 2 (1.09%) Perl
9 2 (1.09%) T-SQL
10 1 (0.54%) ActionScript
10 1 (0.54%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 61 (33.15%) Security Cleared
2 59 (32.07%) Cisco Certification
3 55 (29.89%) SC Cleared
4 46 (25.00%) CCNA
5 44 (23.91%) CCNP
6 27 (14.67%) Degree
7 23 (12.50%) CISSP
8 17 (9.24%) Network+ Certification
9 16 (8.70%) AWS Certification
10 15 (8.15%) Azure Certification
10 15 (8.15%) Server+ Certification
11 7 (3.80%) CompTIA Security+
11 7 (3.80%) Microsoft Certification
12 6 (3.26%) CCIE
13 5 (2.72%) MCSA
13 5 (2.72%) MCSE
14 4 (2.17%) Computer Science Degree
14 4 (2.17%) GCFA
14 4 (2.17%) GCIH
15 3 (1.63%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (4.35%) NIST
2 7 (3.80%) PCI DSS
3 6 (3.26%) GDPR
4 4 (2.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 4 (2.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 2 (1.09%) Cyber Essentials
5 2 (1.09%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
5 2 (1.09%) SOC 2
6 1 (0.54%) Data Quality
System Software
1 17 (9.24%) Docker
2 11 (5.98%) Active Directory
3 4 (2.17%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (1.63%) Firmware
4 3 (1.63%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (1.09%) VMware NSX
6 1 (0.54%) BitLocker
6 1 (0.54%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 40 (21.74%) Terraform
2 30 (16.30%) Ansible
3 20 (10.87%) Kubernetes
4 19 (10.33%) Progress Chef
5 14 (7.61%) CASB
6 5 (2.72%) Nessus
7 3 (1.63%) Cisco Prime
7 3 (1.63%) Single Sign-On
8 2 (1.09%) Grafana
8 2 (1.09%) Istio
8 2 (1.09%) Prometheus
9 1 (0.54%) Nagios
9 1 (0.54%) Packer
9 1 (0.54%) Puppet
Vendors
1 74 (40.22%) Cisco
2 40 (21.74%) Palo Alto
3 26 (14.13%) Microsoft
4 23 (12.50%) Google
5 21 (11.41%) ServiceNow
6 20 (10.87%) Aruba
6 20 (10.87%) F5
7 19 (10.33%) CheckPoint
8 17 (9.24%) Arista
8 17 (9.24%) Fortinet
9 16 (8.70%) Splunk
10 15 (8.15%) Red Hat
11 12 (6.52%) IBM
12 9 (4.89%) Juniper
13 8 (4.35%) CyberArk
13 8 (4.35%) VMware
14 7 (3.80%) Zscaler
15 6 (3.26%) Meraki
16 5 (2.72%) Ekahau
16 5 (2.72%) ForeScout