Firewall Contract Job Trends in the South West

Firewall
England > South West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the South West requiring Firewall skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 28 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 72 64 55
Rank change year-on-year -8 -9 -12
Contract jobs citing Firewall 90 57 92
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 2.42% 2.90% 3.58%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 29.41% 22.53% 24.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 62 30 70
10th Percentile £428 £275 £424
25th Percentile £478 £334 £458
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £556 £485 £475
Median % change year-on-year +14.54% +2.11% -2.56%
75th Percentile £697 £566 £572
90th Percentile £732 £641 £668
England median daily rate £505 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +1.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 1 0
10th Percentile £89.50 - -
25th Percentile £90.63 - -
Median hourly rate £98.82 £17.79 -
Median % change year-on-year +455.48% - -
75th Percentile £99.71 - -
90th Percentile £100.00 - -
England median hourly rate £67.47 £30.00 £27.50
% change year-on-year +124.90% +9.09% -58.32%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
South 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 South West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 306 253 378
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 8.22% 12.86% 14.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 169 177 224
10th Percentile £205 £220 £350
25th Percentile £425 £285 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £485 £523
Median % change year-on-year +10.31% -7.18% -0.48%
75th Percentile £670 £588 £600
90th Percentile £725 £649 £675
England median daily rate £500 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 5 25
10th Percentile £12.71 £29.67 £12.05
25th Percentile £17.67 £47.50 -
Median hourly rate £26.14 £63.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -58.51% -3.08% +15.06%
75th Percentile £87.50 £65.00 £75.00
90th Percentile £99.29 - £81.00
England median hourly rate £43.50 £39.66 £57.35
% change year-on-year +9.68% -30.85% +1.52%

Firewall
Job Vacancy Trend in the South West

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

Firewall job vacancy trend in the South West

Firewall
Daily Rate Trend in the South West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Firewall.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Firewall

Firewall
Daily Rate Histogram in the South West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Firewall in the South West over the 6 months to 28 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Firewall in the South West

Firewall
Hourly Rate Trend in the South West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Firewall.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Firewall

Firewall
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Firewall in the South West over the 6 months to 28 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Firewall in the South West

Firewall
Contract Job Locations in the South 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 South West region over the 6 months to 28 September 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
Somerset -4 31 £683 +95.21% 22
Bristol -12 21 £556 +34.79% 5
Wiltshire -15 20 £558 +14.36% 21
Gloucestershire +7 11 £475 -5.00% 25
Dorset -16 2 - - 2
Cornwall - 1 £505 -
Firewall
England

Firewall
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South 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 (5.56%) Microsoft Exchange
2 4 (4.44%) SharePoint
3 1 (1.11%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (1.11%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (1.11%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 33 (36.67%) Azure
2 32 (35.56%) AWS
3 12 (13.33%) GCP
4 7 (7.78%) Azure Sentinel
4 7 (7.78%) GitHub
4 7 (7.78%) Microsoft 365
5 6 (6.67%) Azure DevOps
5 6 (6.67%) Entra ID
5 6 (6.67%) GitHub Actions
6 5 (5.56%) Azure ExpressRoute
6 5 (5.56%) Azure Monitor
6 5 (5.56%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 2 (2.22%) Amazon EKS
7 2 (2.22%) OpenShift
8 1 (1.11%) Azure Stack
8 1 (1.11%) Cloud Computing
8 1 (1.11%) Google Compute Engine
8 1 (1.11%) n8n
Communications & Networking
1 42 (46.67%) DNS
2 37 (41.11%) TCP/IP
3 35 (38.89%) DHCP
4 18 (20.00%) VSAN
5 14 (15.56%) WAN
6 13 (14.44%) BGP
7 12 (13.33%) VLAN
7 12 (13.33%) VPN
8 8 (8.89%) LAN
9 6 (6.67%) Cisco IOS
9 6 (6.67%) Network Security
10 5 (5.56%) OSPF
11 4 (4.44%) Software-Defined Networking
12 3 (3.33%) Cisco ASA
12 3 (3.33%) Cisco Nexus
12 3 (3.33%) MPLS
12 3 (3.33%) NAS
12 3 (3.33%) NX-OS
12 3 (3.33%) SAN
12 3 (3.33%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (3.33%) EDRMS
2 2 (2.22%) SQL Server
2 2 (2.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 1 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
3 1 (1.11%) Relational Database
3 1 (1.11%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 7 (7.78%) GitLab
1 7 (7.78%) Jenkins
2 5 (5.56%) JIRA
3 4 (4.44%) Git
4 1 (1.11%) Burp Suite
4 1 (1.11%) Cucumber
4 1 (1.11%) Gatling
4 1 (1.11%) Gradle
4 1 (1.11%) LoadRunner
4 1 (1.11%) REST Assured
4 1 (1.11%) SonarQube
4 1 (1.11%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 21 (23.33%) Social Skills
2 11 (12.22%) Public Sector
3 9 (10.00%) Analytical Skills
4 3 (3.33%) Banking
4 3 (3.33%) Documentation Skills
4 3 (3.33%) Finance
4 3 (3.33%) Military
5 2 (2.22%) Aerospace
6 1 (1.11%) Advertising
6 1 (1.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (1.11%) Manufacturing
6 1 (1.11%) Police
Job Titles
1 17 (18.89%) Network Engineer
2 14 (15.56%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 13 (14.44%) Architect
3 13 (14.44%) Platform Engineer
4 11 (12.22%) Principal Engineer
5 10 (11.11%) Senior
6 7 (7.78%) Consultant
7 6 (6.67%) Azure Consultant
7 6 (6.67%) Solutions Architect
8 5 (5.56%) QA Engineer
8 5 (5.56%) QA Test Engineer
8 5 (5.56%) Test Engineer
9 4 (4.44%) Administrator
9 4 (4.44%) Cloud Engineer
9 4 (4.44%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
9 4 (4.44%) Security Architect
10 3 (3.33%) Data Engineer
10 3 (3.33%) Data Migration Engineer
10 3 (3.33%) Senior Cloud Engineer
10 3 (3.33%) Senior Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (50.00%) Terraform
2 3 (3.33%) .NET
3 2 (2.22%) LDAP
3 2 (2.22%) ModSecurity
4 1 (1.11%) Elastic Stack
4 1 (1.11%) Jinja
4 1 (1.11%) NETCONF
4 1 (1.11%) Node.js
4 1 (1.11%) OAuth
4 1 (1.11%) OAuth2
4 1 (1.11%) OpenID
4 1 (1.11%) OpenTofu
4 1 (1.11%) Playwright
4 1 (1.11%) Quarkus
4 1 (1.11%) React
4 1 (1.11%) REST
4 1 (1.11%) SAML
4 1 (1.11%) Spring
4 1 (1.11%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 21 (23.33%) Data Centre
2 20 (22.22%) PKI
3 6 (6.67%) Public Cloud
4 5 (5.56%) Onboarding
5 4 (4.44%) Hybrid Cloud
5 4 (4.44%) Linux Command Line
6 2 (2.22%) CMDB
6 2 (2.22%) Cyber Security Posture
6 2 (2.22%) Cyber Threat
6 2 (2.22%) Enterprise Software
6 2 (2.22%) Security Posture
6 2 (2.22%) Self-Motivation
7 1 (1.11%) CAN bus
7 1 (1.11%) Cloud Native
7 1 (1.11%) Clustering
7 1 (1.11%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 42 (46.67%) Windows
2 37 (41.11%) Linux
3 8 (8.89%) Windows Server
4 5 (5.56%) Unix
5 2 (2.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (2.22%) Windows Server 2012
5 2 (2.22%) Windows Server 2019
6 1 (1.11%) CentOS
6 1 (1.11%) Rocky
6 1 (1.11%) SUSE
6 1 (1.11%) Ubuntu
6 1 (1.11%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 36 (40.00%) Infrastructure as Code
2 33 (36.67%) Cybersecurity
3 28 (31.11%) Technical Leadership
4 25 (27.78%) CI/CD
5 22 (24.44%) Platform Engineering
5 22 (24.44%) SIEM
6 21 (23.33%) Mentoring
7 20 (22.22%) DevSecOps
7 20 (22.22%) Problem-Solving
8 19 (21.11%) Network Virtualisation
8 19 (21.11%) Systems Engineering
9 18 (20.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 15 (16.67%) Customer Requirements
11 14 (15.56%) Converged Infrastructure
12 13 (14.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 12 (13.33%) Incident Response
13 12 (13.33%) Stakeholder Management
14 11 (12.22%) Containerisation
14 11 (12.22%) Continuous Improvement
14 11 (12.22%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 26 (28.89%) PowerShell
1 26 (28.89%) Python
2 25 (27.78%) Bash
3 2 (2.22%) Java
3 2 (2.22%) Shell Script
3 2 (2.22%) SQL
4 1 (1.11%) C
Qualifications
1 62 (68.89%) Security Cleared
2 50 (55.56%) DV Cleared
3 20 (22.22%) SC Cleared
4 12 (13.33%) VCAP
5 9 (10.00%) AWS Certification
6 7 (7.78%) Cisco Certification
7 4 (4.44%) CCNP
8 2 (2.22%) CISSP
8 2 (2.22%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 1 (1.11%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 1 (1.11%) Azure Certification
9 1 (1.11%) BPSS Clearance
9 1 (1.11%) CCNA
9 1 (1.11%) CCSK
9 1 (1.11%) CISA
9 1 (1.11%) CISM
9 1 (1.11%) CompTIA CySA+
9 1 (1.11%) ITIL Certification
9 1 (1.11%) SANS
9 1 (1.11%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (7.78%) QA
2 5 (5.56%) NIST
3 4 (4.44%) NCSC
4 3 (3.33%) Data Quality
4 3 (3.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 3 (3.33%) SLA
5 2 (2.22%) Cyber Essentials
5 2 (2.22%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 1 (1.11%) GDPR
6 1 (1.11%) HIPAA
6 1 (1.11%) JSP 440
6 1 (1.11%) NIST 800
6 1 (1.11%) PCI DSS
6 1 (1.11%) RMADS
System Software
1 36 (40.00%) VMware Infrastructure
2 31 (34.44%) Active Directory
3 23 (25.56%) VMware NSX
4 22 (24.44%) vSphere
5 19 (21.11%) Hyper-V
6 14 (15.56%) Docker
7 3 (3.33%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (3.33%) VirtualBox
8 2 (2.22%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (1.11%) Firmware
9 1 (1.11%) iptables
9 1 (1.11%) KVM
9 1 (1.11%) NFS
Systems Management
1 38 (42.22%) Ansible
2 29 (32.22%) Kubernetes
3 14 (15.56%) VxRail
4 8 (8.89%) FortiGate
5 4 (4.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 3 (3.33%) Istio
6 3 (3.33%) Microsoft Intune
6 3 (3.33%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (2.22%) CASB
7 2 (2.22%) Grafana
7 2 (2.22%) Nagios
7 2 (2.22%) Prometheus
8 1 (1.11%) Argo
8 1 (1.11%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 41 (45.56%) VMware
2 21 (23.33%) Cisco
3 17 (18.89%) Microsoft
4 8 (8.89%) CyberArk
4 8 (8.89%) Juniper
5 5 (5.56%) Zscaler
6 3 (3.33%) Databricks
6 3 (3.33%) Dynatrace
6 3 (3.33%) Infoblox
6 3 (3.33%) InterSystems
6 3 (3.33%) MuleSoft
6 3 (3.33%) Palo Alto
6 3 (3.33%) Thales
7 2 (2.22%) F5
7 2 (2.22%) Fortinet
7 2 (2.22%) Google
7 2 (2.22%) NetScout
7 2 (2.22%) Splunk
8 1 (1.11%) ServiceNow
8 1 (1.11%) SolarWinds