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

6 months to
4 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 53 30 40
Rank change year-on-year -23 +10 0
Contract jobs citing Firewall 116 129 118
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 4.36% 6.18% 4.11%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 31.61% 35.54% 26.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 83 65 87
10th Percentile £331 £238 £325
25th Percentile £446 £413 £480
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £495 £580
Median % change year-on-year +5.05% -14.66% +20.52%
75th Percentile £578 £550 £627
90th Percentile £642 £585 £678
England median daily rate £513 £525 £520
% change year-on-year -2.38% +0.96% -2.58%
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 £40.54 £35.00 £65.98
% change year-on-year +15.83% -46.95% +62.85%

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 367 363 447
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 13.79% 17.38% 15.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 207 205 326
10th Percentile £232 £193 £268
25th Percentile £358 £341 £395
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £450 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.56% -10.00% -
75th Percentile £571 £538 £613
90th Percentile £671 £600 £672
England median daily rate £488 £500 £486
% change year-on-year -2.50% +2.88% -7.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 5 13
10th Percentile £15.50 £20.74 -
25th Percentile £17.75 £22.98 £17.72
Median hourly rate £41.94 £24.76 £41.23
Median % change year-on-year +69.39% -39.95% +99.13%
75th Percentile £69.00 £51.00 £46.88
90th Percentile £74.26 £51.90 £49.38
England median hourly rate £32.00 £35.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year -8.57% -30.00% +141.49%

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 4 February 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 4 February 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 4 February 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 -2 32 £500 +5.26% 3
Cheshire +2 30 £550 +12.82% 12
Manchester -40 28 £555 +11.00% 40
Lancashire -5 16 £550 +10.00% 17
Merseyside -19 6 £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 (4.31%) Apache
1 5 (4.31%) OpenStack
2 3 (2.59%) CICS
3 1 (0.86%) JBoss
3 1 (0.86%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.86%) Tomcat
Applications
1 2 (1.72%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.86%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (0.86%) Finacle
1 1 (0.86%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 27 (23.28%) Azure
2 17 (14.66%) AWS
3 10 (8.62%) Entra ID
3 10 (8.62%) GCP
4 9 (7.76%) Microsoft 365
5 6 (5.17%) OpenShift
6 4 (3.45%) Amazon EC2
6 4 (3.45%) Azure Sentinel
6 4 (3.45%) Nutanix
7 3 (2.59%) Azure Logic Apps
7 3 (2.59%) Azure Monitor
7 3 (2.59%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 2 (1.72%) Amazon EKS
8 2 (1.72%) Amazon MSK
8 2 (1.72%) Amazon S3
8 2 (1.72%) AWS CloudFormation
8 2 (1.72%) AWS Lambda
8 2 (1.72%) Microsoft Purview
8 2 (1.72%) Power Platform
8 2 (1.72%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 34 (29.31%) Network Security
2 29 (25.00%) WAN
3 25 (21.55%) VLAN
4 18 (15.52%) BGP
5 17 (14.66%) NetScaler
5 17 (14.66%) TCP/IP
5 17 (14.66%) VPN
5 17 (14.66%) Wi-Fi
6 15 (12.93%) Cisco ISE
7 11 (9.48%) DNS
7 11 (9.48%) MPLS
8 10 (8.62%) LAN
9 9 (7.76%) Wireless
10 8 (6.90%) SD-WAN
10 8 (6.90%) Software-Defined Networking
11 7 (6.03%) Cisco ASA
11 7 (6.03%) Ethernet VPN
11 7 (6.03%) Kerberos
11 7 (6.03%) OSPF
12 6 (5.17%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (2.59%) DataStage
2 2 (1.72%) Amazon RDS
3 1 (0.86%) Redis
3 1 (0.86%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 8 (6.90%) GitLab
2 4 (3.45%) Jenkins
3 3 (2.59%) Git
3 3 (2.59%) Sonatype Nexus
4 2 (1.72%) Bitbucket
4 2 (1.72%) JIRA
General
1 24 (20.69%) Analytical Skills
2 20 (17.24%) Public Sector
2 20 (17.24%) Social Skills
3 19 (16.38%) Finance
4 7 (6.03%) Documentation Skills
5 5 (4.31%) Banking
6 3 (2.59%) Influencing Skills
6 3 (2.59%) Military
7 2 (1.72%) Legal
7 2 (1.72%) Telecoms
8 1 (0.86%) Advertising
8 1 (0.86%) Aerospace
8 1 (0.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (0.86%) Organisational Skills
8 1 (0.86%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 49 (42.24%) Network Engineer
2 21 (18.10%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
3 16 (13.79%) Platform Engineer
4 12 (10.34%) Security Engineer
4 12 (10.34%) Senior
5 10 (8.62%) Architect
6 7 (6.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 6 (5.17%) Cisco Engineer
7 6 (5.17%) Cybersecurity Engineer
7 6 (5.17%) Network Architect
7 6 (5.17%) Virtualisation Engineer
8 5 (4.31%) Senior Network Engineer
9 4 (3.45%) Analyst
9 4 (3.45%) Cisco Network Engineer
9 4 (3.45%) Operations Analyst
9 4 (3.45%) Senior Analyst
9 4 (3.45%) Senior Operations Analyst
9 4 (3.45%) Senior Technical Analyst
9 4 (3.45%) Technical Analyst
9 4 (3.45%) Technical Operations Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (16.38%) 802.1X
2 7 (6.03%) LDAP
3 4 (3.45%) Middleware
4 3 (2.59%) JSON
4 3 (2.59%) Node.js
5 1 (0.86%) Kafka
5 1 (0.86%) RabbitMQ
5 1 (0.86%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 41 (35.34%) Data Centre
2 9 (7.76%) Onboarding
3 8 (6.90%) Product Ownership
4 5 (4.31%) Public Cloud
5 4 (3.45%) Cyber Threat
5 4 (3.45%) Private Cloud
6 3 (2.59%) Analytical Mindset
6 3 (2.59%) BYOD
6 3 (2.59%) Mainframe
6 3 (2.59%) VSAM
7 2 (1.72%) Cloud Native
7 2 (1.72%) PKI
7 2 (1.72%) Security Posture
8 1 (0.86%) Cyber Defence
8 1 (0.86%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 1 (0.86%) Distributed Systems
8 1 (0.86%) Security Operations Centre
8 1 (0.86%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 34 (29.31%) Linux
2 30 (25.86%) Windows
3 14 (12.07%) Windows Server
4 8 (6.90%) Unix
5 6 (5.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 4 (3.45%) Windows Server 2012
6 4 (3.45%) Windows Server 2019
7 3 (2.59%) AIX
7 3 (2.59%) Solaris
8 1 (0.86%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 26 (22.41%) Containerisation
2 25 (21.55%) Cybersecurity
3 23 (19.83%) Problem-Solving
4 22 (18.97%) Load Balancing
5 19 (16.38%) DevOps
6 18 (15.52%) Project Delivery
7 17 (14.66%) CI/CD
7 17 (14.66%) Network Architecture
8 16 (13.79%) Network Design
9 14 (12.07%) Incident Response
9 14 (12.07%) Platform Engineering
10 13 (11.21%) Impact Assessments
10 13 (11.21%) Root Cause Analysis
11 12 (10.34%) Infrastructure as Code
11 12 (10.34%) Observability
12 11 (9.48%) High Availability
12 11 (9.48%) Network Management
12 11 (9.48%) Network Monitoring
13 10 (8.62%) Change Management
13 10 (8.62%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 29 (25.00%) PowerShell
2 28 (24.14%) Python
3 21 (18.10%) Bash
4 12 (10.34%) Perl
5 3 (2.59%) COBOL
5 3 (2.59%) Kusto Query Language
6 2 (1.72%) Java
6 2 (1.72%) Ruby
7 1 (0.86%) Lisp
7 1 (0.86%) PL/SQL
7 1 (0.86%) SQL
Qualifications
1 64 (55.17%) Security Cleared
2 52 (44.83%) SC Cleared
3 26 (22.41%) CCNP
3 26 (22.41%) Cisco Certification
4 17 (14.66%) CCNA
5 11 (9.48%) CISM
5 11 (9.48%) CISSP
6 7 (6.03%) Degree
7 6 (5.17%) DV Cleared
8 5 (4.31%) CCDP
9 4 (3.45%) CompTIA Security+
10 3 (2.59%) Azure Certification
11 2 (1.72%) AWS Certification
11 2 (1.72%) CCIE
11 2 (1.72%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 1 (0.86%) Computer Science Degree
12 1 (0.86%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (6.90%) NIST
2 6 (5.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 4 (3.45%) SLA
4 3 (2.59%) Cyber Essentials
5 1 (0.86%) GDPR
5 1 (0.86%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 23 (19.83%) Active Directory
2 21 (18.10%) Docker
3 19 (16.38%) VMware Infrastructure
4 11 (9.48%) vSphere
5 4 (3.45%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (1.72%) Virtual Servers
7 1 (0.86%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 22 (18.97%) Kubernetes
2 9 (7.76%) Terraform
3 7 (6.03%) Active Directory Federation Services
4 6 (5.17%) FortiGate
5 5 (4.31%) Fluentd
5 5 (4.31%) Microsoft Intune
6 4 (3.45%) SCCM
7 3 (2.59%) Ansible
8 1 (0.86%) Failover Clustering
8 1 (0.86%) Nessus
8 1 (0.86%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 53 (45.69%) Cisco
2 41 (35.34%) Palo Alto
3 22 (18.97%) VMware
4 21 (18.10%) Meraki
5 16 (13.79%) Microsoft
6 14 (12.07%) F5
7 6 (5.17%) Red Hat
7 6 (5.17%) Splunk
8 5 (4.31%) Cribl.io
8 5 (4.31%) Juniper
9 4 (3.45%) Citrix
9 4 (3.45%) IBM
9 4 (3.45%) Oracle
9 4 (3.45%) Veeam
10 3 (2.59%) CheckPoint
10 3 (2.59%) LogRhythm
10 3 (2.59%) SolarWinds
11 2 (1.72%) Aruba
11 2 (1.72%) Ekahau
11 2 (1.72%) Fortinet