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

6 months to
24 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 41 45 31
Rank change year-on-year +4 -14 +8
Contract jobs citing Firewall 182 98 123
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 4.65% 4.39% 5.03%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 35.69% 32.24% 41.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 142 62 78
10th Percentile £364 £363 £450
25th Percentile £447 £413 £495
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £517 £475 £601
Median % change year-on-year +8.86% -20.97% +26.00%
75th Percentile £588 £597 £844
90th Percentile £630 £667 £850
England median daily rate £510 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £29.00 £65.75 £46.25
Median hourly rate £30.00 £66.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -54.89% +40.00% +8.57%
75th Percentile £31.00 £67.25 £48.75
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £66.35 £30.00 £27.50
% change year-on-year +121.15% +9.09% -58.33%

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 510 304 300
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 13.04% 13.62% 12.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 330 177 198
10th Percentile £230 £147 £250
25th Percentile £352 £325 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £476 £447 £515
Median % change year-on-year +6.49% -13.20% +8.42%
75th Percentile £576 £538 £675
90th Percentile £625 £675 £833
England median daily rate £500 £492 £505
% change year-on-year +1.63% -2.57% +1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 5 9
10th Percentile £14.50 £22.40 £24.61
25th Percentile £16.50 £26.00 £35.00
Median hourly rate £17.50 £66.50 £48.56
Median % change year-on-year -73.68% +36.94% +191.13%
75th Percentile £22.26 £67.25 £51.91
90th Percentile £34.08 £69.00 £62.80
England median hourly rate £28.52 £43.00 £55.75
% change year-on-year -33.67% -22.86% -1.32%

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 24 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 24 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 0 58 £499 -8.06% 16
Cheshire +11 51 £528 +11.16% 4
Cumbria -3 50 £525 +1.25% 4
Lancashire +11 21 £519 - 4
Merseyside -18 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 8 (4.40%) SAS
2 3 (1.65%) CICS
2 3 (1.65%) Confluence
3 1 (0.55%) nginx
Applications
1 7 (3.85%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (2.20%) MS Visio
3 2 (1.10%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (0.55%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 61 (33.52%) Azure
2 48 (26.37%) AWS
3 23 (12.64%) GCP
4 15 (8.24%) SaaS
5 14 (7.69%) Google Kubernetes Engine
6 12 (6.59%) OCI
7 11 (6.04%) Entra ID
8 10 (5.49%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 8 (4.40%) Azure DevOps
9 8 (4.40%) Azure Sentinel
10 6 (3.30%) GitHub
11 5 (2.75%) Serverless
12 4 (2.20%) Azure Key Vault
12 4 (2.20%) Azure Monitor
12 4 (2.20%) IaaS
13 3 (1.65%) Amazon ECS
13 3 (1.65%) Amazon EKS
13 3 (1.65%) AWS KMS
13 3 (1.65%) GitHub Actions
13 3 (1.65%) IBM Watson
Communications & Networking
1 75 (41.21%) Network Security
2 61 (33.52%) VPN
3 52 (28.57%) Wireless
4 47 (25.82%) WAN
5 45 (24.73%) BGP
6 43 (23.63%) OSPF
7 29 (15.93%) LAN
8 28 (15.38%) VLAN
9 26 (14.29%) Wi-Fi
10 25 (13.74%) DNS
11 24 (13.19%) Cisco ASA
12 22 (12.09%) Cisco Firepower
13 19 (10.44%) SD-WAN
14 18 (9.89%) Cisco IOS
14 18 (9.89%) EIGRP
14 18 (9.89%) Structured Cabling
15 17 (9.34%) DHCP
16 16 (8.79%) NX-OS
17 15 (8.24%) NAS
17 15 (8.24%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (1.65%) DataStage
2 2 (1.10%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (1.10%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 15 (8.24%) GitLab
2 9 (4.95%) Jenkins
2 9 (4.95%) JIRA
3 4 (2.20%) Git
4 3 (1.65%) Sonatype Nexus
5 2 (1.10%) Burp Suite
5 2 (1.10%) Cucumber
5 2 (1.10%) Gatling
5 2 (1.10%) Gradle
5 2 (1.10%) LoadRunner
5 2 (1.10%) REST Assured
5 2 (1.10%) SonarQube
5 2 (1.10%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 42 (23.08%) Social Skills
2 35 (19.23%) Finance
3 18 (9.89%) Analytical Skills
4 17 (9.34%) Banking
5 13 (7.14%) Documentation Skills
6 12 (6.59%) Public Sector
7 5 (2.75%) Legal
8 4 (2.20%) Financial Institution
9 3 (1.65%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (1.65%) Organisational Skills
10 2 (1.10%) Military
10 2 (1.10%) Retail
11 1 (0.55%) Games
11 1 (0.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.55%) Manufacturing
11 1 (0.55%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 76 (41.76%) Network Engineer
2 26 (14.29%) Architect
3 25 (13.74%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 24 (13.19%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
5 21 (11.54%) Senior
6 18 (9.89%) Security Engineer
7 11 (6.04%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
8 10 (5.49%) Cloud Engineer
8 10 (5.49%) Network Architect
8 10 (5.49%) Senior Network Engineer
9 7 (3.85%) Technical Architect
10 6 (3.30%) Cloud Security Engineer
10 6 (3.30%) Consultant
10 6 (3.30%) Network Security Engineer
11 5 (2.75%) SIEM Engineer
11 5 (2.75%) Splunk Engineer
12 4 (2.20%) Azure Architect
12 4 (2.20%) Network Consultant
12 4 (2.20%) Product Owner
12 4 (2.20%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (21.98%) Terraform
2 9 (4.95%) 802.1X
3 4 (2.20%) ARM Templates
3 4 (2.20%) Azure Blueprints
3 4 (2.20%) Middleware
3 4 (2.20%) React
4 3 (1.65%) LangChain
4 3 (1.65%) PyTorch
4 3 (1.65%) scikit-learn
5 2 (1.10%) CSS
5 2 (1.10%) HTML
5 2 (1.10%) Node.js
5 2 (1.10%) ODBC
5 2 (1.10%) Playwright
5 2 (1.10%) Quarkus
5 2 (1.10%) REST
5 2 (1.10%) Spring
5 2 (1.10%) Spring Boot
6 1 (0.55%) JSON
6 1 (0.55%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 40 (21.98%) Data Centre
2 31 (17.03%) Cloud Native
3 21 (11.54%) Security Posture
4 14 (7.69%) Management Information System
5 13 (7.14%) Hybrid Cloud
6 5 (2.75%) PKI
7 4 (2.20%) Product Ownership
8 3 (1.65%) BYOD
8 3 (1.65%) Data Protection Act
8 3 (1.65%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 3 (1.65%) Driving Licence
8 3 (1.65%) Linux Command Line
8 3 (1.65%) Mainframe
8 3 (1.65%) Operational Technology
8 3 (1.65%) VSAM
9 2 (1.10%) Handset
9 2 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
10 1 (0.55%) Cloud Security Posture
10 1 (0.55%) Distributed Systems
10 1 (0.55%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 21 (11.54%) Linux
2 19 (10.44%) Windows
3 11 (6.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 5 (2.75%) Windows Server
5 4 (2.20%) Unix
6 3 (1.65%) AIX
6 3 (1.65%) Solaris
7 1 (0.55%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.55%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 49 (26.92%) Load Balancing
2 42 (23.08%) CI/CD
3 37 (20.33%) Change Management
3 37 (20.33%) Network Segmentation
4 33 (18.13%) Zero Trust
5 32 (17.58%) DevOps
6 31 (17.03%) Infrastructure as Code
6 31 (17.03%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 27 (14.84%) ITIL
7 27 (14.84%) Project Delivery
8 26 (14.29%) SIEM
9 25 (13.74%) Cloud Security
10 23 (12.64%) Agile
11 21 (11.54%) High Availability
12 20 (10.99%) Network Architecture
12 20 (10.99%) Roadmaps
13 18 (9.89%) Network Design
14 17 (9.34%) ITSM
14 17 (9.34%) Problem-Solving
14 17 (9.34%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 49 (26.92%) Python
2 23 (12.64%) PowerShell
3 19 (10.44%) Bash
4 13 (7.14%) Java
5 10 (5.49%) Bicep
6 7 (3.85%) SQL
7 5 (2.75%) Kusto Query Language
7 5 (2.75%) Search Processing Language
8 3 (1.65%) COBOL
9 2 (1.10%) JavaScript
9 2 (1.10%) Perl
9 2 (1.10%) T-SQL
10 1 (0.55%) ActionScript
10 1 (0.55%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 67 (36.81%) Security Cleared
2 65 (35.71%) Cisco Certification
3 61 (33.52%) SC Cleared
4 50 (27.47%) CCNP
5 45 (24.73%) CCNA
6 28 (15.38%) Degree
7 23 (12.64%) CISSP
8 16 (8.79%) Network+ Certification
9 15 (8.24%) AWS Certification
10 14 (7.69%) Server+ Certification
11 13 (7.14%) Azure Certification
12 8 (4.40%) CCIE
13 7 (3.85%) GCIH
14 5 (2.75%) GCFA
15 4 (2.20%) Computer Science Degree
16 3 (1.65%) CCIE Security
16 3 (1.65%) CCSP
16 3 (1.65%) Microsoft Certification
17 2 (1.10%) CCSA
17 2 (1.10%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (6.04%) NIST
2 10 (5.49%) PCI DSS
3 7 (3.85%) GDPR
3 7 (3.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 5 (2.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 2 (1.10%) Cyber Essentials
5 2 (1.10%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
5 2 (1.10%) SOC 2
6 1 (0.55%) Data Quality
System Software
1 15 (8.24%) Docker
2 7 (3.85%) Active Directory
3 3 (1.65%) Firmware
3 3 (1.65%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (1.65%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (1.10%) VMware NSX
5 1 (0.55%) BitLocker
5 1 (0.55%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 33 (18.13%) Ansible
2 21 (11.54%) Progress Chef
3 18 (9.89%) Kubernetes
4 10 (5.49%) CASB
5 3 (1.65%) Cisco Prime
5 3 (1.65%) Istio
5 3 (1.65%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (1.10%) Grafana
6 2 (1.10%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.55%) Nagios
7 1 (0.55%) Network Intrusion Detection System
7 1 (0.55%) Packer
7 1 (0.55%) Puppet
Vendors
1 83 (45.60%) Cisco
2 51 (28.02%) Palo Alto
3 29 (15.93%) CheckPoint
4 25 (13.74%) Microsoft
5 23 (12.64%) F5
6 20 (10.99%) Aruba
7 19 (10.44%) Fortinet
7 19 (10.44%) ServiceNow
8 17 (9.34%) Arista
8 17 (9.34%) Google
9 13 (7.14%) Red Hat
9 13 (7.14%) Splunk
10 9 (4.95%) Juniper
11 8 (4.40%) Meraki
12 7 (3.85%) AlgoSec
12 7 (3.85%) Zscaler
13 6 (3.30%) Ekahau
13 6 (3.30%) IBM
13 6 (3.30%) VMware
14 5 (2.75%) Citrix