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 12 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 71 72 64
Rank change year-on-year +1 -8 -24
Contract jobs citing Firewall 93 52 78
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 2.51% 2.64% 3.09%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.79% 20.39% 21.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 65 28 54
10th Percentile £450 £275 £391
25th Percentile £500 £325 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £560 £480 £475
Median % change year-on-year +16.67% +1.05% -2.56%
75th Percentile £690 £543 £597
90th Percentile £730 £632 £672
England median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -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 £31.39 £27.50
% change year-on-year +114.98% +14.13% -58.72%

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 302 255 356
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 8.16% 12.92% 14.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 168 185 207
10th Percentile £210 £225 £335
25th Percentile £450 £275 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £485 £525
Median % change year-on-year +13.40% -7.62% -
75th Percentile £688 £588 £625
90th Percentile £725 £661 £675
England median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 4 23
10th Percentile £12.71 £26.70 £11.90
25th Percentile £18.50 £40.07 £64.38
Median hourly rate £35.57 £56.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -37.04% -13.08% +15.06%
75th Percentile £90.00 £64.63 £73.13
90th Percentile £100.00 £64.85 £75.00
England median hourly rate £38.53 £34.00 £57.38
% change year-on-year +13.31% -40.74% +1.57%

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 12 October 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 12 October 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 12 October 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 -1 33 £654 +86.79% 19
Wiltshire -10 22 £555 +14.14% 24
Bristol -15 21 £588 +42.42% 7
Gloucestershire +8 12 £550 +10.00% 19
Dorset -16 2 - - 5
Cornwall - 1 £505 - 1
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 (5.38%) Microsoft Exchange
2 4 (4.30%) SharePoint
3 1 (1.08%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (1.08%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (1.08%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 36 (38.71%) Azure
2 32 (34.41%) AWS
3 12 (12.90%) GCP
4 8 (8.60%) Azure Sentinel
4 8 (8.60%) Entra ID
4 8 (8.60%) Microsoft 365
5 7 (7.53%) GitHub
6 6 (6.45%) Azure DevOps
6 6 (6.45%) GitHub Actions
7 5 (5.38%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 5 (5.38%) Azure Monitor
8 4 (4.30%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 2 (2.15%) Amazon EKS
9 2 (2.15%) OpenShift
10 1 (1.08%) Azure Logic Apps
10 1 (1.08%) Azure Service Bus
10 1 (1.08%) Azure Stack
10 1 (1.08%) Cloud Computing
10 1 (1.08%) Google Compute Engine
10 1 (1.08%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 45 (48.39%) DNS
2 41 (44.09%) TCP/IP
3 38 (40.86%) DHCP
4 18 (19.35%) VSAN
5 14 (15.05%) WAN
6 12 (12.90%) BGP
6 12 (12.90%) VLAN
7 11 (11.83%) VPN
8 8 (8.60%) Network Security
9 7 (7.53%) LAN
10 5 (5.38%) Cisco IOS
11 4 (4.30%) OSPF
11 4 (4.30%) Software-Defined Networking
12 3 (3.23%) Cisco ASA
12 3 (3.23%) Cisco Nexus
12 3 (3.23%) Internet
12 3 (3.23%) MPLS
12 3 (3.23%) NAS
12 3 (3.23%) SAN
12 3 (3.23%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (3.23%) EDRMS
2 2 (2.15%) SQL Server
2 2 (2.15%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 1 (1.08%) Amazon RDS
3 1 (1.08%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 8 (8.60%) Jenkins
2 6 (6.45%) GitLab
3 4 (4.30%) JIRA
4 3 (3.23%) Git
5 1 (1.08%) Burp Suite
5 1 (1.08%) Cucumber
5 1 (1.08%) Gatling
5 1 (1.08%) Gradle
5 1 (1.08%) LoadRunner
5 1 (1.08%) REST Assured
5 1 (1.08%) SonarQube
5 1 (1.08%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 20 (21.51%) Social Skills
2 9 (9.68%) Analytical Skills
2 9 (9.68%) Public Sector
3 3 (3.23%) Banking
3 3 (3.23%) Documentation Skills
3 3 (3.23%) Finance
3 3 (3.23%) Military
4 2 (2.15%) Aerospace
5 1 (1.08%) Advertising
5 1 (1.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 1 (1.08%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 17 (18.28%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 16 (17.20%) Network Engineer
3 15 (16.13%) Architect
4 13 (13.98%) Platform Engineer
5 11 (11.83%) Principal Engineer
6 10 (10.75%) Senior
7 7 (7.53%) Consultant
8 6 (6.45%) Azure Consultant
8 6 (6.45%) QA Engineer
8 6 (6.45%) QA Test Engineer
8 6 (6.45%) Security Architect
8 6 (6.45%) Solutions Architect
8 6 (6.45%) Test Engineer
9 5 (5.38%) Cloud Engineer
9 5 (5.38%) DevOps Engineer
10 4 (4.30%) Administrator
11 3 (3.23%) Migration Engineer
11 3 (3.23%) Senior Cloud Engineer
11 3 (3.23%) Senior Consultant
11 3 (3.23%) Senior Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (47.31%) Terraform
2 4 (4.30%) ModSecurity
3 3 (3.23%) .NET
4 2 (2.15%) LDAP
4 2 (2.15%) OAuth
4 2 (2.15%) OpenID
5 1 (1.08%) Elastic Stack
5 1 (1.08%) Node.js
5 1 (1.08%) OAuth2
5 1 (1.08%) Playwright
5 1 (1.08%) Quarkus
5 1 (1.08%) React
5 1 (1.08%) SAML
5 1 (1.08%) Spring
5 1 (1.08%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 20 (21.51%) PKI
2 18 (19.35%) Data Centre
3 6 (6.45%) Public Cloud
4 5 (5.38%) Linux Command Line
5 4 (4.30%) Hybrid Cloud
6 3 (3.23%) Enterprise Software
6 3 (3.23%) Onboarding
7 2 (2.15%) CMDB
7 2 (2.15%) Cyber Security Posture
7 2 (2.15%) Cyber Threat
7 2 (2.15%) Security Posture
7 2 (2.15%) Self-Motivation
8 1 (1.08%) Cloud Native
8 1 (1.08%) Clustering
8 1 (1.08%) Enterprise Cloud
8 1 (1.08%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 42 (45.16%) Windows
2 38 (40.86%) Linux
3 7 (7.53%) Windows Server
4 6 (6.45%) Unix
5 2 (2.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (2.15%) Windows Server 2012
5 2 (2.15%) Windows Server 2019
6 1 (1.08%) Android
6 1 (1.08%) CentOS
6 1 (1.08%) Data ONTAP
6 1 (1.08%) Rocky
6 1 (1.08%) SUSE
6 1 (1.08%) Ubuntu
6 1 (1.08%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 37 (39.78%) Cybersecurity
1 37 (39.78%) Infrastructure as Code
2 28 (30.11%) Technical Leadership
3 25 (26.88%) CI/CD
4 23 (24.73%) Platform Engineering
5 21 (22.58%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 21 (22.58%) Mentoring
5 21 (22.58%) SIEM
6 20 (21.51%) DevSecOps
6 20 (21.51%) Network Virtualisation
6 20 (21.51%) Problem-Solving
7 19 (20.43%) Systems Engineering
8 15 (16.13%) Customer Requirements
9 14 (15.05%) Converged Infrastructure
9 14 (15.05%) DevOps
10 13 (13.98%) Containerisation
10 13 (13.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 13 (13.98%) Stakeholder Management
11 12 (12.90%) Incident Response
11 12 (12.90%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 29 (31.18%) PowerShell
2 27 (29.03%) Bash
3 25 (26.88%) Python
4 3 (3.23%) Java
5 2 (2.15%) Shell Script
5 2 (2.15%) SQL
6 1 (1.08%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 68 (73.12%) Security Cleared
2 53 (56.99%) DV Cleared
3 22 (23.66%) SC Cleared
4 12 (12.90%) VCAP
5 9 (9.68%) AWS Certification
6 6 (6.45%) Cisco Certification
7 5 (5.38%) CCNP
8 3 (3.23%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 2 (2.15%) Azure Certification
9 2 (2.15%) CISSP
10 1 (1.08%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 1 (1.08%) CCSK
10 1 (1.08%) CEH
10 1 (1.08%) CISA
10 1 (1.08%) CISM
10 1 (1.08%) ITIL Certification
10 1 (1.08%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (1.08%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (8.60%) QA
2 7 (7.53%) NIST
3 6 (6.45%) NCSC
4 3 (3.23%) Data Quality
4 3 (3.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 3 (3.23%) SLA
5 2 (2.15%) Cyber Essentials
5 2 (2.15%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 1 (1.08%) GDPR
6 1 (1.08%) HIPAA
6 1 (1.08%) JSP 440
6 1 (1.08%) NIST 800
6 1 (1.08%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 36 (38.71%) VMware Infrastructure
2 30 (32.26%) Active Directory
3 22 (23.66%) VMware NSX
3 22 (23.66%) vSphere
4 19 (20.43%) Hyper-V
5 17 (18.28%) Docker
6 4 (4.30%) VirtualBox
7 3 (3.23%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (3.23%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (1.08%) Firmware
8 1 (1.08%) KVM
8 1 (1.08%) NFS
Systems Management
1 40 (43.01%) Ansible
2 29 (31.18%) Kubernetes
3 14 (15.05%) VxRail
4 7 (7.53%) FortiGate
5 4 (4.30%) Microsoft Intune
6 3 (3.23%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 3 (3.23%) CASB
6 3 (3.23%) Istio
6 3 (3.23%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (1.08%) Grafana
7 1 (1.08%) Nagios
7 1 (1.08%) Prometheus
7 1 (1.08%) SCCM
7 1 (1.08%) vCenter Server
7 1 (1.08%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 41 (44.09%) VMware
2 20 (21.51%) Cisco
3 19 (20.43%) Microsoft
4 8 (8.60%) CyberArk
5 7 (7.53%) Juniper
6 6 (6.45%) Zscaler
7 5 (5.38%) Palo Alto
8 3 (3.23%) Databricks
8 3 (3.23%) Dynatrace
8 3 (3.23%) InterSystems
8 3 (3.23%) MuleSoft
8 3 (3.23%) Thales
9 2 (2.15%) F5
9 2 (2.15%) Google
9 2 (2.15%) Infoblox
9 2 (2.15%) Splunk
10 1 (1.08%) Fortinet
10 1 (1.08%) Meraki
10 1 (1.08%) NetScout
10 1 (1.08%) ServiceNow