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 16 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 55 29 36
Rank change year-on-year -26 +7 +12
Contract jobs citing Firewall 96 125 146
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 3.97% 5.31% 5.26%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 28.92% 39.56% 30.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 70 52 112
10th Percentile £357 £328 £393
25th Percentile £413 £430 £462
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £500 £575
Median % change year-on-year +4.50% -13.04% +21.05%
75th Percentile £573 £570 £627
90th Percentile £643 £600 £675
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 1 3
10th Percentile £49.08 - -
25th Percentile £59.80 £46.25 £40.63
Median hourly rate £70.38 £47.50 £43.75
Median % change year-on-year +48.17% +8.57% -
75th Percentile £74.26 £48.75 £54.94
90th Percentile - - £59.78
England median hourly rate £34.00 £27.50 £65.98
% change year-on-year +23.64% -58.32% +86.60%

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 332 316 482
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 13.73% 13.41% 17.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 203 162 351
10th Percentile £170 £213 £300
25th Percentile £355 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £466 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% -5.00% +6.38%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £600
90th Percentile £683 £684 £669
England median daily rate £492 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.60% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 8 12
10th Percentile £15.50 £29.91 -
25th Percentile £17.75 £42.66 £15.75
Median hourly rate £23.50 £48.56 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year -51.61% +174.04% -10.87%
75th Percentile £71.19 £51.91 £47.11
90th Percentile £74.26 £52.08 £49.78
England median hourly rate £34.00 £49.00 £56.49
% change year-on-year -30.61% -13.26% +25.53%

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 16 November 2025.

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 16 November 2025.

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 16 November 2025. 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
Cheshire +3 41 £475 -5.94% 10
Manchester -33 20 £574 +9.29% 17
Cumbria -1 19 £519 +9.16%
Lancashire -5 10 £550 +15.79% 16
Merseyside -14 3 £425 +112.50% 7
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 9 (9.38%) OpenStack
2 7 (7.29%) Apache
3 4 (4.17%) JBoss
3 4 (4.17%) SharePoint
4 1 (1.04%) Tomcat
Applications
1 2 (2.08%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (1.04%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (1.04%) Finacle
1 1 (1.04%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 23 (23.96%) AWS
1 23 (23.96%) Azure
2 11 (11.46%) GCP
3 10 (10.42%) Microsoft 365
4 6 (6.25%) OpenShift
5 5 (5.21%) Azure Sentinel
5 5 (5.21%) Entra ID
5 5 (5.21%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 4 (4.17%) Amazon EC2
7 3 (3.13%) Azure Logic Apps
7 3 (3.13%) Azure Monitor
8 2 (2.08%) Amazon ECS
8 2 (2.08%) Amazon EKS
8 2 (2.08%) Amazon MSK
8 2 (2.08%) Amazon S3
8 2 (2.08%) AWS CloudFormation
8 2 (2.08%) AWS Direct Connect
8 2 (2.08%) AWS Lambda
8 2 (2.08%) Microsoft Purview
8 2 (2.08%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 26 (27.08%) Network Security
2 18 (18.75%) BGP
3 16 (16.67%) WAN
4 15 (15.63%) TCP/IP
5 14 (14.58%) VLAN
5 14 (14.58%) VPN
6 13 (13.54%) DNS
7 12 (12.50%) Wi-Fi
8 10 (10.42%) Cisco ISE
9 9 (9.38%) NetScaler
10 8 (8.33%) Intrusion Detection
10 8 (8.33%) MPLS
10 8 (8.33%) Software-Defined Networking
10 8 (8.33%) SSL
11 7 (7.29%) LAN
12 6 (6.25%) DHCP
12 6 (6.25%) Internet
12 6 (6.25%) OSPF
13 5 (5.21%) Wireless
14 4 (4.17%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (4.17%) SQL Server
2 3 (3.13%) Relational Database
3 2 (2.08%) Amazon RDS
4 1 (1.04%) Redis
Development Applications
1 8 (8.33%) GitLab
2 4 (4.17%) Jenkins
3 3 (3.13%) Git
3 3 (3.13%) Sonatype Nexus
4 2 (2.08%) Bitbucket
4 2 (2.08%) JIRA
5 1 (1.04%) Eclipse
General
1 19 (19.79%) Finance
1 19 (19.79%) Social Skills
2 16 (16.67%) Analytical Skills
3 14 (14.58%) Public Sector
4 7 (7.29%) Banking
5 5 (5.21%) Documentation Skills
6 3 (3.13%) Japanese Language
7 2 (2.08%) Legal
7 2 (2.08%) Military
7 2 (2.08%) Telecoms
8 1 (1.04%) Financial Institution
8 1 (1.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (1.04%) Organisational Skills
8 1 (1.04%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 37 (38.54%) Network Engineer
2 21 (21.88%) Security Engineer
3 12 (12.50%) Platform Engineer
4 8 (8.33%) Network Security Engineer
4 8 (8.33%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
5 6 (6.25%) Designer
5 6 (6.25%) Network Designer
5 6 (6.25%) Senior
5 6 (6.25%) Virtualisation Engineer
6 5 (5.21%) Cloud Engineer
7 4 (4.17%) Azure Engineer
7 4 (4.17%) Cybersecurity Engineer
7 4 (4.17%) Firewall Engineer
7 4 (4.17%) Senior Network Engineer
8 3 (3.13%) Architect
8 3 (3.13%) Cloud Security Engineer
8 3 (3.13%) Microsoft 365 Engineer
8 3 (3.13%) Software Engineer
9 2 (2.08%) Azure Security Engineer
9 2 (2.08%) Lead
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (9.38%) 802.1X
2 4 (4.17%) Kafka
2 4 (4.17%) LDAP
3 3 (3.13%) JSON
3 3 (3.13%) Node.js
4 1 (1.04%) Middleware
4 1 (1.04%) RabbitMQ
4 1 (1.04%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 19 (19.79%) Data Centre
2 8 (8.33%) Product Ownership
3 5 (5.21%) Onboarding
3 5 (5.21%) Security Posture
4 4 (4.17%) Hybrid Cloud
4 4 (4.17%) Operational Technology
4 4 (4.17%) PKI
5 3 (3.13%) Analytical Mindset
5 3 (3.13%) Cloud Security Posture
6 2 (2.08%) CMDB
7 1 (1.04%) Cloud Native
7 1 (1.04%) Cyber Threat
7 1 (1.04%) Distributed Systems
7 1 (1.04%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 33 (34.38%) Linux
1 33 (34.38%) Windows
2 10 (10.42%) Windows Server
3 7 (7.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 7 (7.29%) Unix
4 1 (1.04%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 24 (25.00%) Containerisation
2 17 (17.71%) CI/CD
2 17 (17.71%) Incident Response
2 17 (17.71%) Network Design
3 16 (16.67%) DevOps
3 16 (16.67%) Network Architecture
4 14 (14.58%) Cloud Security
4 14 (14.58%) Cybersecurity
4 14 (14.58%) High Availability
4 14 (14.58%) Infrastructure as Code
4 14 (14.58%) Load Balancing
5 13 (13.54%) ITSM
6 12 (12.50%) Infrastructure Automation
6 12 (12.50%) Platform Engineering
7 11 (11.46%) Observability
7 11 (11.46%) Problem-Solving
8 10 (10.42%) Network Management
8 10 (10.42%) SIEM
8 10 (10.42%) Vulnerability Assessment
9 9 (9.38%) Impact Assessments
Programming Languages
1 26 (27.08%) Python
2 21 (21.88%) Bash
3 18 (18.75%) PowerShell
4 13 (13.54%) Perl
5 3 (3.13%) Kusto Query Language
6 2 (2.08%) Java
6 2 (2.08%) Ruby
7 1 (1.04%) C++
7 1 (1.04%) Lisp
7 1 (1.04%) PL/SQL
7 1 (1.04%) SQL
Qualifications
1 35 (36.46%) Security Cleared
2 30 (31.25%) SC Cleared
3 19 (19.79%) Cisco Certification
4 18 (18.75%) CCNP
5 12 (12.50%) CISSP
6 11 (11.46%) Degree
7 8 (8.33%) CISM
8 7 (7.29%) Microsoft Certification
9 6 (6.25%) Azure Certification
9 6 (6.25%) CCDP
10 5 (5.21%) CCNA
10 5 (5.21%) CompTIA Security+
11 3 (3.13%) CCIE
11 3 (3.13%) Computer Science Degree
11 3 (3.13%) MCSA
11 3 (3.13%) MCSE
12 2 (2.08%) AWS Certification
12 2 (2.08%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 2 (2.08%) JNCIE
12 2 (2.08%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (10.42%) NIST
2 5 (5.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (2.08%) PCI DSS
4 1 (1.04%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 21 (21.88%) Docker
2 15 (15.63%) Active Directory
3 14 (14.58%) VMware Infrastructure
4 7 (7.29%) vSphere
5 2 (2.08%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 18 (18.75%) Kubernetes
2 10 (10.42%) Terraform
3 6 (6.25%) Ansible
4 5 (5.21%) Fluentd
4 5 (5.21%) FortiGate
5 3 (3.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 3 (3.13%) CASB
5 3 (3.13%) Nessus
6 2 (2.08%) Progress Chef
7 1 (1.04%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (1.04%) QRadar
7 1 (1.04%) SELinux
Vendors
1 38 (39.58%) Cisco
2 30 (31.25%) Palo Alto
3 20 (20.83%) Microsoft
4 14 (14.58%) Meraki
4 14 (14.58%) VMware
5 13 (13.54%) F5
6 11 (11.46%) Zscaler
7 10 (10.42%) Splunk
8 7 (7.29%) Oracle
8 7 (7.29%) Red Hat
9 6 (6.25%) CheckPoint
9 6 (6.25%) Fortinet
10 5 (5.21%) Cribl.io
10 5 (5.21%) Juniper
11 4 (4.17%) Citrix
11 4 (4.17%) Dell
11 4 (4.17%) IBM
11 4 (4.17%) Remedy
11 4 (4.17%) SolarWinds
12 3 (3.13%) CyberArk