Firewall Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Firewall
UK > UK excluding London

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

6 months to
26 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 66 41 36
Rank change year-on-year -25 -5 +13
Contract jobs citing Firewall 669 631 1,001
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.57% 4.62% 4.88%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.30% 28.03% 27.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 449 352 662
10th Percentile £300 £275 £300
25th Percentile £400 £373 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.75% - -
75th Percentile £569 £575 £608
90th Percentile £646 £637 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 19 45
10th Percentile £35.13 £20.00 £49.43
25th Percentile £37.25 £20.09 £62.50
Median hourly rate £45.33 £35.00 £65.98
Median % change year-on-year +29.51% -46.95% +43.11%
75th Percentile £74.26 £41.38 £76.53
90th Percentile £85.90 £62.75 £84.61
UK median hourly rate £41.94 £35.00 £65.98
% change year-on-year +19.83% -46.95% +99.94%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
UK excluding London

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 UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 2,208 2,251 3,596
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 11.77% 16.47% 17.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,465 1,266 2,103
10th Percentile £191 £190 £205
25th Percentile £301 £300 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £468 £475
Median % change year-on-year -3.74% -1.58% +2.70%
75th Percentile £563 £580 £593
90th Percentile £650 £650 £682
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -2.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 117 114 312
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.53 £16.26
25th Percentile £16.00 £21.00 £24.00
Median hourly rate £40.54 £31.79 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year +27.52% -43.72% +189.69%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.56 £70.00 £74.90
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £33.75 £52.21
% change year-on-year -11.11% -35.35% +152.14%

Firewall
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Firewall relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Firewall job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Firewall
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Firewall.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Firewall

Firewall
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Firewall in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 26 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Firewall in the UK excluding London

Firewall
Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Firewall.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Firewall

Firewall
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Firewall in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 26 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Firewall in the UK excluding London

Firewall
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Firewall within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 26 January 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
North of England -25 191 £492 +3.58% 116
South East +7 173 £500 - 176
Midlands -25 120 £440 -12.00% 50
West Midlands -4 112 £440 +0.57% 36
North West -24 106 £519 +9.16% 64
Yorkshire -12 81 £454 +6.71% 38
Scotland -10 60 £450 -10.00% 30
South West -30 59 £550 +4.76% 56
East of England -15 41 £475 -5.00% 51
Wales -18 17 £293 -19.86% 10
Northern Ireland - 8 £488 - 3
North East -17 7 £550 - 18
East Midlands -56 7 £440 -32.36% 14
South Coast - 4 £600 -
Firewall
UK

Firewall
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 29 (4.33%) Confluence
2 10 (1.49%) Apache
2 10 (1.49%) Microsoft Exchange
3 9 (1.35%) nginx
4 8 (1.20%) SharePoint
5 7 (1.05%) IIS
6 5 (0.75%) OpenStack
7 3 (0.45%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.30%) CICS
8 2 (0.30%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.15%) CMS
9 1 (0.15%) JBoss
9 1 (0.15%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 29 (4.33%) Microsoft Office
2 17 (2.54%) MS Visio
3 16 (2.39%) Microsoft Excel
4 15 (2.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 8 (1.20%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 1 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.15%) Finacle
1 1 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 180 (26.91%) AWS
2 176 (26.31%) Azure
3 69 (10.31%) GCP
4 46 (6.88%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 40 (5.98%) Amazon EC2
6 39 (5.83%) Microsoft 365
7 30 (4.48%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 30 (4.48%) Entra ID
8 29 (4.33%) Amazon S3
9 23 (3.44%) Amazon ELB
10 22 (3.29%) Amazon ECS
11 21 (3.14%) Serverless
12 20 (2.99%) AWS CloudFormation
13 18 (2.69%) Azure Sentinel
13 18 (2.69%) IaaS
14 17 (2.54%) AWS Lambda
14 17 (2.54%) PaaS
15 16 (2.39%) AWS KMS
15 16 (2.39%) Azure Monitor
16 15 (2.24%) Akamai
Communications & Networking
1 157 (23.47%) Network Security
2 142 (21.23%) VPN
3 138 (20.63%) WAN
4 132 (19.73%) DNS
5 96 (14.35%) LAN
6 85 (12.71%) BGP
7 80 (11.96%) Wireless
8 79 (11.81%) TCP/IP
9 75 (11.21%) VLAN
10 70 (10.46%) OSPF
11 56 (8.37%) DHCP
12 50 (7.47%) SD-WAN
13 41 (6.13%) IPsec
14 39 (5.83%) Cisco ASA
14 39 (5.83%) Wi-Fi
15 38 (5.68%) MPLS
16 36 (5.38%) Cisco Nexus
17 35 (5.23%) Cisco ISE
17 35 (5.23%) SSL
18 27 (4.04%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (4.19%) Amazon RDS
2 22 (3.29%) SQL Server
3 19 (2.84%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (1.20%) Amazon Aurora
5 4 (0.60%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.60%) Relational Database
6 3 (0.45%) DynamoDB
6 3 (0.45%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.30%) Amazon QuickSight
7 2 (0.30%) Data Lake
7 2 (0.30%) Elasticsearch
7 2 (0.30%) MariaDB
7 2 (0.30%) Oracle Database
8 1 (0.15%) Amazon Athena
8 1 (0.15%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.15%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
8 1 (0.15%) Metadata
8 1 (0.15%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (0.15%) Redis
8 1 (0.15%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 51 (7.62%) JIRA
2 50 (7.47%) Jenkins
3 44 (6.58%) Git
4 35 (5.23%) GitLab
5 20 (2.99%) Sonatype Nexus
6 14 (2.09%) Burp Suite
6 14 (2.09%) Metasploit
7 12 (1.79%) Vagrant
8 11 (1.64%) Bitbucket
9 7 (1.05%) Jaeger
10 4 (0.60%) CircleCI
11 3 (0.45%) Chocolatey
12 1 (0.15%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.15%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.15%) MSI
12 1 (0.15%) Postman
12 1 (0.15%) SonarQube
12 1 (0.15%) Subversion
12 1 (0.15%) Travis CI
General
1 194 (29.00%) Social Skills
2 80 (11.96%) Analytical Skills
3 78 (11.66%) Public Sector
4 60 (8.97%) Finance
5 51 (7.62%) Documentation Skills
6 30 (4.48%) Banking
7 29 (4.33%) Telecoms
8 22 (3.29%) Legal
9 19 (2.84%) Manufacturing
10 14 (2.09%) Presentation Skills
11 8 (1.20%) Financial Institution
12 7 (1.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 7 (1.05%) Military
12 7 (1.05%) Retail
13 6 (0.90%) Aerospace
13 6 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
14 5 (0.75%) Law
15 4 (0.60%) Retail Banking
16 3 (0.45%) Local Government
16 3 (0.45%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 195 (29.15%) Network Engineer
2 90 (13.45%) Architect
3 70 (10.46%) Senior
4 48 (7.17%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 48 (7.17%) Security Engineer
5 39 (5.83%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
6 37 (5.53%) Network Architect
7 34 (5.08%) Platform Engineer
8 31 (4.63%) DevOps Engineer
9 28 (4.19%) Analyst
10 23 (3.44%) IT Engineer
11 22 (3.29%) IT Support
12 21 (3.14%) Support Engineer
13 20 (2.99%) AWS Engineer
13 20 (2.99%) Security Architect
14 19 (2.84%) Solutions Architect
15 18 (2.69%) Cisco Engineer
15 18 (2.69%) Cloud Platform Engineer
15 18 (2.69%) Senior Network Engineer
16 16 (2.39%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (5.23%) 802.1X
2 20 (2.99%) LDAP
2 20 (2.99%) SAML
3 15 (2.24%) OAuth
3 15 (2.24%) OAuth2
3 15 (2.24%) OpenID
4 13 (1.94%) Middleware
5 11 (1.64%) Kafka
5 11 (1.64%) Node.js
6 9 (1.35%) JSON
7 8 (1.20%) REST
8 7 (1.05%) OpenTelemetry
8 7 (1.05%) RFC 2544
8 7 (1.05%) Spring Boot
9 4 (0.60%) ARM Templates
9 4 (0.60%) XML
10 3 (0.45%) Elastic Stack
10 3 (0.45%) Lambda Expressions
10 3 (0.45%) Microsoft Graph
11 2 (0.30%) ModSecurity
Miscellaneous
1 141 (21.08%) Data Centre
2 52 (7.77%) Security Posture
3 35 (5.23%) PKI
4 26 (3.89%) Replication
5 25 (3.74%) Onboarding
6 23 (3.44%) Operational Technology
7 21 (3.14%) Hybrid Cloud
8 16 (2.39%) Data Protection Act
8 16 (2.39%) NHS
9 13 (1.94%) Private Cloud
9 13 (1.94%) Security Operations Centre
10 12 (1.79%) Cloud Native
10 12 (1.79%) Cyber Threat
10 12 (1.79%) Management Information System
11 11 (1.64%) Fat Client
11 11 (1.64%) Thin Client
12 9 (1.35%) Product Ownership
12 9 (1.35%) SCADA
13 8 (1.20%) Distributed Systems
13 8 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 193 (28.85%) Windows
2 146 (21.82%) Linux
3 76 (11.36%) Windows Server
4 18 (2.69%) VMS
5 17 (2.54%) Unix
6 15 (2.24%) Amazon Linux
6 15 (2.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 11 (1.64%) Ubuntu
7 11 (1.64%) Windows 7
8 10 (1.49%) Windows Server 2019
9 6 (0.90%) Windows 10
10 3 (0.45%) Android
10 3 (0.45%) Apple iOS
10 3 (0.45%) CatOS
10 3 (0.45%) CentOS
10 3 (0.45%) Mac OS
10 3 (0.45%) Solaris
10 3 (0.45%) Windows Server 2012
10 3 (0.45%) Windows Server 2016
11 2 (0.30%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 131 (19.58%) Cybersecurity
2 102 (15.25%) DevOps
3 95 (14.20%) Problem-Solving
4 91 (13.60%) CI/CD
5 80 (11.96%) Incident Response
6 76 (11.36%) Infrastructure as Code
7 72 (10.76%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 64 (9.57%) Agile
8 64 (9.57%) SIEM
9 60 (8.97%) Containerisation
10 59 (8.82%) Load Balancing
11 58 (8.67%) Cloud Security
12 56 (8.37%) High Availability
13 55 (8.22%) ITIL
14 52 (7.77%) Mentoring
15 50 (7.47%) Change Management
15 50 (7.47%) Network Design
16 49 (7.32%) Migration
17 48 (7.17%) Zero Trust
18 47 (7.03%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 136 (20.33%) Python
2 108 (16.14%) PowerShell
3 66 (9.87%) Bash
4 38 (5.68%) SQL
5 34 (5.08%) Java
6 31 (4.63%) Perl
7 12 (1.79%) Groovy
8 10 (1.49%) Ruby
9 9 (1.35%) Bicep
10 7 (1.05%) Rust
11 6 (0.90%) Shell Script
12 4 (0.60%) C#
13 3 (0.45%) Go
13 3 (0.45%) Kusto Query Language
14 1 (0.15%) JavaScript
14 1 (0.15%) Lisp
14 1 (0.15%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 281 (42.00%) Security Cleared
2 189 (28.25%) SC Cleared
3 131 (19.58%) Cisco Certification
4 110 (16.44%) CCNP
5 73 (10.91%) DV Cleared
6 65 (9.72%) Degree
7 61 (9.12%) CCNA
8 41 (6.13%) CISSP
9 30 (4.48%) AWS Certification
10 27 (4.04%) CCIE
11 25 (3.74%) Azure Certification
11 25 (3.74%) Microsoft Certification
12 23 (3.44%) CISM
13 14 (2.09%) CHECK Team Member
14 12 (1.79%) CREST Certified
14 12 (1.79%) Cyber Scheme
15 11 (1.64%) CompTIA Security+
15 11 (1.64%) Postgraduate
16 10 (1.49%) Computer Science Degree
17 9 (1.35%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 57 (8.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 46 (6.88%) NIST
3 33 (4.93%) GDPR
4 29 (4.33%) PCI DSS
5 17 (2.54%) SLA
6 15 (2.24%) Cyber Essentials
7 13 (1.94%) NCSC
7 13 (1.94%) QA
8 10 (1.49%) PMO
9 6 (0.90%) COBIT
10 4 (0.60%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.45%) NIST 800
12 2 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
12 2 (0.30%) GRC
12 2 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 2 (0.30%) JSP 440
12 2 (0.30%) PSD2
13 1 (0.15%) GAMP
13 1 (0.15%) GxP
13 1 (0.15%) HIPAA
System Software
1 122 (18.24%) Active Directory
2 107 (15.99%) VMware Infrastructure
3 87 (13.00%) Docker
4 28 (4.19%) VMware NSX
4 28 (4.19%) vSphere
5 27 (4.04%) Hyper-V
6 15 (2.24%) DFS Replication
7 14 (2.09%) VMware ESXi
8 8 (1.20%) Dovecot
8 8 (1.20%) Postfix
8 8 (1.20%) Squid
8 8 (1.20%) Virtual Machines
9 6 (0.90%) Firmware
9 6 (0.90%) Virtual Servers
10 5 (0.75%) KVM
10 5 (0.75%) Virtual Desktop
11 2 (0.30%) Xen
12 1 (0.15%) NetIQ eDirectory
12 1 (0.15%) ProxySG
12 1 (0.15%) Snort
Systems Management
1 96 (14.35%) Terraform
2 78 (11.66%) Ansible
3 68 (10.16%) Kubernetes
4 28 (4.19%) Grafana
5 25 (3.74%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 23 (3.44%) Prometheus
6 23 (3.44%) Single Sign-On
7 22 (3.29%) FortiGate
8 21 (3.14%) Microsoft Intune
9 19 (2.84%) vCenter Server
10 17 (2.54%) Nmap
11 13 (1.94%) SCCM
12 12 (1.79%) Nessus
13 11 (1.64%) WMI
14 10 (1.49%) CSIRT
15 9 (1.35%) Fluentd
15 9 (1.35%) Nagios
15 9 (1.35%) Proxmox
16 7 (1.05%) Kiali
17 6 (0.90%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 255 (38.12%) Cisco
2 157 (23.47%) Palo Alto
3 141 (21.08%) Microsoft
4 134 (20.03%) VMware
5 92 (13.75%) F5
6 80 (11.96%) CheckPoint
7 58 (8.67%) Juniper
8 57 (8.52%) Fortinet
9 47 (7.03%) Splunk
10 43 (6.43%) Meraki
11 42 (6.28%) SolarWinds
12 40 (5.98%) Aruba
13 36 (5.38%) Oracle
14 28 (4.19%) Google
15 27 (4.04%) ServiceNow
16 19 (2.84%) Dell
17 18 (2.69%) Citrix
18 16 (2.39%) Red Hat
19 15 (2.24%) Zscaler
20 13 (1.94%) Veeam