NGFW Contract Job Trends in the North West

Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW)
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North West requiring NGFW skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 26 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 154 124 -
Rank change year-on-year -30 - -
Contract jobs citing NGFW 1 1 0
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 0.036% 0.049% -
As % of the Communications & Networking category 0.26% 0.27% -
Number of daily rates quoted 1 1 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £565 £475 -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £580 £500 -
Median % change year-on-year +16.00% - -
75th Percentile £595 £525 -
90th Percentile - - -
England median daily rate £550 £550 £430
% change year-on-year - +27.91% -21.82%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
North West

NGFW 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 378 376 416
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 13.54% 18.25% 15.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 212 216 295
10th Percentile £259 £183 £210
25th Percentile £377 £313 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £499 £450 £495
Median % change year-on-year +10.83% -9.09% -1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £538 £600
90th Percentile £645 £615 £672
England median daily rate £500 £500 £475
% change year-on-year - +5.26% -9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 4 13
10th Percentile £15.50 £20.37 -
25th Percentile £18.13 £22.05 £17.72
Median hourly rate £41.94 £24.67 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year +69.99% -5.11% +7.87%
75th Percentile £74.26 £32.39 £45.88
90th Percentile - £43.56 £49.18
England median hourly rate £34.00 £35.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year -2.86% -22.22% +133.16%

NGFW
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing NGFW relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West.

NGFW job vacancy trend in the North West

NGFW
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing NGFW.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing NGFW

NGFW
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 NGFW within the North West region over the 6 months to 26 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
Manchester - 1 £580 - 2
NGFW
England

NGFW
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 1 (100.00%) Confluence
Communications & Networking
1 1 (100.00%) Firewall
1 1 (100.00%) Intrusion Detection
1 1 (100.00%) Network Security
Development Applications
1 1 (100.00%) JIRA
General
1 1 (100.00%) Banking
Job Titles
1 1 (100.00%) Product Owner
1 1 (100.00%) Technical Product Owner
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (100.00%) 802.1X
Miscellaneous
1 1 (100.00%) Cloud Native
1 1 (100.00%) Product Ownership
1 1 (100.00%) Security Posture
Processes & Methodologies
1 1 (100.00%) Agile
1 1 (100.00%) Cyber Threat Intelligence
1 1 (100.00%) Cybersecurity
1 1 (100.00%) Identity Access Management
1 1 (100.00%) ITIL
1 1 (100.00%) Kanban
1 1 (100.00%) Network Segmentation
1 1 (100.00%) Open Source
1 1 (100.00%) Problem Management
1 1 (100.00%) Regulatory Compliance
1 1 (100.00%) Risk Assessment
1 1 (100.00%) Risk Management
1 1 (100.00%) Scrum
1 1 (100.00%) Security Architecture
1 1 (100.00%) Security Operations
1 1 (100.00%) SIEM
1 1 (100.00%) Site Reliability Engineering
1 1 (100.00%) Threat Intelligence
1 1 (100.00%) Workflow
1 1 (100.00%) Workflow Management
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (100.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 1 (100.00%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
1 1 (100.00%) NIST
1 1 (100.00%) PCI DSS
1 1 (100.00%) SOC 2
Systems Management
1 1 (100.00%) CASB
Vendors
1 1 (100.00%) Microsoft