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

6 months to
19 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 38 24 43
Rank change year-on-year -14 +19 0
Contract jobs citing Firewall 156 145 109
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 5.18% 7.23% 3.87%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 37.41% 39.62% 27.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 123 77 80
10th Percentile £401 £258 £412
25th Percentile £469 £413 £477
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £528 £475 £533
Median % change year-on-year +11.16% -10.84% +18.39%
75th Percentile £600 £550 £700
90th Percentile £638 £626 £828
England median daily rate £515 £523 £500
% change year-on-year -1.44% +4.50% -6.98%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £41.94 - -
Median hourly rate £58.10 - -
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 417 366 401
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 13.84% 18.25% 14.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 246 213 299
10th Percentile £294 £182 £199
25th Percentile £395 £313 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £450 £493
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -8.72% -1.40%
75th Percentile £588 £538 £600
90th Percentile £649 £588 £700
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 £15.86 £20.00 -
25th Percentile £18.25 £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 £34.00 £35.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year -2.86% +7.69% +71.69%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 -14 54 £558 +21.86% 33
Cheshire +9 39 £575 +0.44% 14
Cumbria -2 38 £500 +5.26% 8
Lancashire -2 15 £550 +10.00% 17
Merseyside -20 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 (5.13%) CICS
2 4 (2.56%) Apache
2 4 (2.56%) OpenStack
3 2 (1.28%) Confluence
4 1 (0.64%) SharePoint
Applications
1 2 (1.28%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.64%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (0.64%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 48 (30.77%) Azure
2 33 (21.15%) AWS
3 16 (10.26%) GCP
4 13 (8.33%) Entra ID
5 10 (6.41%) Microsoft 365
6 9 (5.77%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 8 (5.13%) Azure Sentinel
8 5 (3.21%) Azure AI
8 5 (3.21%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 4 (2.56%) Azure Key Vault
9 4 (2.56%) IBM Watson
9 4 (2.56%) Microsoft Purview
9 4 (2.56%) Nutanix
9 4 (2.56%) Vertex AI
10 3 (1.92%) Azure Monitor
10 3 (1.92%) OpenShift
11 2 (1.28%) Amazon EC2
11 2 (1.28%) AWS CloudFormation
11 2 (1.28%) Azure Logic Apps
11 2 (1.28%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 48 (30.77%) Network Security
2 36 (23.08%) VLAN
3 32 (20.51%) WAN
4 27 (17.31%) VPN
5 23 (14.74%) TCP/IP
6 20 (12.82%) BGP
6 20 (12.82%) DNS
7 18 (11.54%) Wi-Fi
8 17 (10.90%) Wireless
9 14 (8.97%) NetScaler
10 12 (7.69%) Cisco ISE
10 12 (7.69%) SD-WAN
11 10 (6.41%) LAN
11 10 (6.41%) MPLS
11 10 (6.41%) OSPF
12 9 (5.77%) DHCP
13 8 (5.13%) Cisco ASA
13 8 (5.13%) Software-Defined Networking
14 7 (4.49%) Ethernet VPN
14 7 (4.49%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (5.13%) DataStage
2 2 (1.28%) Amazon RDS
2 2 (1.28%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (0.64%) Redis
Development Applications
1 5 (3.21%) GitLab
1 5 (3.21%) JIRA
2 3 (1.92%) Git
2 3 (1.92%) Sonatype Nexus
3 2 (1.28%) Bitbucket
3 2 (1.28%) Jenkins
General
1 32 (20.51%) Finance
2 31 (19.87%) Social Skills
3 19 (12.18%) Analytical Skills
4 18 (11.54%) Public Sector
5 10 (6.41%) Banking
6 8 (5.13%) Influencing Skills
7 6 (3.85%) Documentation Skills
8 3 (1.92%) Legal
9 2 (1.28%) Military
10 1 (0.64%) Advertising
10 1 (0.64%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.64%) Financial Institution
10 1 (0.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 56 (35.90%) Network Engineer
2 24 (15.38%) Security Engineer
3 23 (14.74%) Architect
4 20 (12.82%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
5 16 (10.26%) Platform Engineer
6 13 (8.33%) Network Architect
6 13 (8.33%) Senior
7 9 (5.77%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 8 (5.13%) Cloud Engineer
8 8 (5.13%) Designer
8 8 (5.13%) Infrastructure Designer
9 6 (3.85%) Cisco Engineer
9 6 (3.85%) Virtualisation Engineer
10 5 (3.21%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 5 (3.21%) Cybersecurity Engineer
10 5 (3.21%) Senior Network Engineer
11 4 (2.56%) Cisco Network Engineer
11 4 (2.56%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
11 4 (2.56%) Infrastructure Architect
11 4 (2.56%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (14.74%) 802.1X
2 12 (7.69%) LDAP
3 8 (5.13%) Middleware
4 6 (3.85%) LangChain
4 6 (3.85%) PyTorch
4 6 (3.85%) scikit-learn
5 2 (1.28%) JSON
5 2 (1.28%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 52 (33.33%) Data Centre
2 18 (11.54%) Cloud Native
2 18 (11.54%) Security Posture
3 13 (8.33%) Product Ownership
4 8 (5.13%) BYOD
4 8 (5.13%) Mainframe
4 8 (5.13%) Onboarding
4 8 (5.13%) VSAM
5 6 (3.85%) Public Cloud
6 5 (3.21%) Cloud Security Posture
7 4 (2.56%) Private Cloud
8 3 (1.92%) Analytical Mindset
8 3 (1.92%) Cyber Threat
9 2 (1.28%) Hybrid Cloud
10 1 (0.64%) Cyber Defence
10 1 (0.64%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 1 (0.64%) Management Information System
10 1 (0.64%) PKI
10 1 (0.64%) Security Operations Centre
10 1 (0.64%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 48 (30.77%) Linux
2 37 (23.72%) Windows
3 17 (10.90%) Unix
4 14 (8.97%) Windows Server
5 11 (7.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (5.13%) AIX
6 8 (5.13%) Solaris
7 4 (2.56%) Windows Server 2012
7 4 (2.56%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (0.64%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 32 (20.51%) Cybersecurity
2 27 (17.31%) CI/CD
2 27 (17.31%) Load Balancing
3 26 (16.67%) Containerisation
3 26 (16.67%) Problem-Solving
4 24 (15.38%) DevOps
5 22 (14.10%) SIEM
6 21 (13.46%) Change Management
7 19 (12.18%) Network Segmentation
8 18 (11.54%) Cloud Security
8 18 (11.54%) Project Delivery
8 18 (11.54%) Roadmaps
8 18 (11.54%) Vulnerability Management
9 17 (10.90%) ITIL
9 17 (10.90%) Network Monitoring
10 16 (10.26%) Network Architecture
10 16 (10.26%) Observability
11 15 (9.62%) High Availability
11 15 (9.62%) Infrastructure as Code
11 15 (9.62%) Threat Modelling
Programming Languages
1 36 (23.08%) Python
2 32 (20.51%) PowerShell
3 26 (16.67%) Bash
4 11 (7.05%) Perl
5 8 (5.13%) COBOL
6 6 (3.85%) Bicep
7 5 (3.21%) Java
8 2 (1.28%) Kusto Query Language
8 2 (1.28%) Ruby
9 1 (0.64%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 68 (43.59%) Security Cleared
2 55 (35.26%) SC Cleared
3 41 (26.28%) Cisco Certification
4 40 (25.64%) CCNP
5 31 (19.87%) CCNA
6 16 (10.26%) CISSP
7 12 (7.69%) Degree
8 8 (5.13%) CompTIA Security+
9 7 (4.49%) AWS Certification
9 7 (4.49%) CISM
10 6 (3.85%) Azure Certification
10 6 (3.85%) DV Cleared
10 6 (3.85%) Microsoft Certification
11 5 (3.21%) MCSA
11 5 (3.21%) MCSE
12 4 (2.56%) CCDP
12 4 (2.56%) Computer Science Degree
12 4 (2.56%) Network+ Certification
12 4 (2.56%) Server+ Certification
13 3 (1.92%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (7.05%) NIST
2 8 (5.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 5 (3.21%) Cyber Essentials
4 4 (2.56%) SLA
5 3 (1.92%) PCI DSS
6 2 (1.28%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
6 2 (1.28%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.64%) GDPR
System Software
1 28 (17.95%) Active Directory
2 27 (17.31%) Docker
3 21 (13.46%) VMware Infrastructure
4 11 (7.05%) vSphere
5 4 (2.56%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (1.28%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (1.28%) Virtual Servers
7 1 (0.64%) Firmware
7 1 (0.64%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 26 (16.67%) Kubernetes
2 19 (12.18%) Terraform
3 7 (4.49%) CASB
4 6 (3.85%) Active Directory Federation Services
4 6 (3.85%) Nessus
5 5 (3.21%) FortiGate
5 5 (3.21%) Microsoft Intune
6 4 (2.56%) Progress Chef
6 4 (2.56%) SCCM
7 3 (1.92%) Fluentd
8 2 (1.28%) Ansible
8 2 (1.28%) Grafana
8 2 (1.28%) Prometheus
9 1 (0.64%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 58 (37.18%) Cisco
2 40 (25.64%) Palo Alto
3 28 (17.95%) VMware
4 25 (16.03%) Microsoft
5 16 (10.26%) Meraki
6 13 (8.33%) Red Hat
7 12 (7.69%) IBM
8 11 (7.05%) Google
9 10 (6.41%) F5
10 9 (5.77%) Splunk
11 8 (5.13%) Aruba
11 8 (5.13%) CheckPoint
11 8 (5.13%) ServiceNow
12 7 (4.49%) Ekahau
13 6 (3.85%) Fortinet
13 6 (3.85%) Juniper
13 6 (3.85%) Remedy
14 5 (3.21%) Citrix
14 5 (3.21%) CyberArk
14 5 (3.21%) Tenable