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 4 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 68 48 36
Rank change year-on-year -20 -12 +6
Contract jobs citing Firewall 746 563 880
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.11% 4.41% 4.28%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 28.63% 28.55% 26.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 501 346 572
10th Percentile £318 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £386 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% +2.56%
75th Percentile £575 £587 £608
90th Percentile £638 £638 £771
UK median daily rate £500 £508 £515
% change year-on-year -1.48% -1.46% -1.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 18 31
10th Percentile £19.04 - £23.92
25th Percentile £37.25 £14.20 £52.45
Median hourly rate £56.00 £26.25 £83.77
Median % change year-on-year +113.33% -68.66% +35.10%
75th Percentile £72.00 £41.44 £87.46
90th Percentile £85.20 £53.63 £87.53
UK median hourly rate £52.36 £27.50 £61.50
% change year-on-year +90.40% -55.28% -0.81%

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 2,606 1,972 3,384
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.87% 15.44% 16.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,571 1,207 1,939
10th Percentile £212 £194 £203
25th Percentile £358 £304 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £465 £475
Median % change year-on-year +2.15% -2.11% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £653 £638 £675
UK median daily rate £495 £488 £495
% change year-on-year +1.54% -1.52% -4.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 194 136 358
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.20 £13.43
25th Percentile £21.25 £16.30 £16.30
Median hourly rate £49.36 £24.71 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year +99.76% -46.14% +148.00%
75th Percentile £68.44 £62.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £78.01 £70.66
UK median hourly rate £41.94 £36.65 £40.00
% change year-on-year +14.45% -8.39% +111.30%

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 4 May 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 4 May 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 4 May 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
South East -1 244 £500 - 133
North of England -23 208 £500 +5.26% 114
North West -14 137 £525 +10.53% 57
Midlands -48 89 £425 -23.42% 48
West Midlands -27 76 £420 -20.00% 32
Yorkshire -24 65 £425 -5.56% 32
East of England -14 64 £500 -2.44% 40
South West -52 56 £550 +0.55% 41
Scotland +8 54 £425 - 25
Wales -13 30 £425 +11.11% 16
East Midlands -47 9 £475 -16.30% 16
North East -15 8 £545 -0.91% 26
Northern Ireland +1 3 £443 - 4
South Coast - 2 £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 13 (1.74%) Confluence
2 9 (1.21%) Apache
2 9 (1.21%) CICS
3 8 (1.07%) Microsoft Exchange
4 5 (0.67%) IIS
5 3 (0.40%) SharePoint
5 3 (0.40%) Skype for Business
6 2 (0.27%) Apache Pulsar
6 2 (0.27%) CMS
6 2 (0.27%) IBM HTTP Server
6 2 (0.27%) Oracle HTTP Server
6 2 (0.27%) Umbraco
6 2 (0.27%) WebSphere
6 2 (0.27%) WebSphere Application Server
6 2 (0.27%) WebSphere Portal
7 1 (0.13%) nginx
Applications
1 26 (3.49%) Microsoft Office
2 17 (2.28%) Microsoft Excel
3 15 (2.01%) MS Visio
4 13 (1.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.40%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 211 (28.28%) Azure
2 135 (18.10%) AWS
3 50 (6.70%) Entra ID
4 42 (5.63%) GCP
5 40 (5.36%) Microsoft 365
6 29 (3.89%) Azure DevOps
7 24 (3.22%) GitHub
8 22 (2.95%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 21 (2.82%) Azure Sentinel
10 20 (2.68%) IaaS
11 17 (2.28%) PaaS
12 16 (2.14%) AWS CloudFormation
12 16 (2.14%) Serverless
13 15 (2.01%) Azure Monitor
13 15 (2.01%) Nutanix
13 15 (2.01%) SaaS
14 14 (1.88%) GitHub Actions
14 14 (1.88%) OCI
15 13 (1.74%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 13 (1.74%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 219 (29.36%) WAN
2 200 (26.81%) Network Security
3 186 (24.93%) LAN
4 162 (21.72%) VPN
5 148 (19.84%) DNS
6 130 (17.43%) BGP
7 126 (16.89%) OSPF
8 98 (13.14%) Wireless
9 96 (12.87%) VLAN
10 95 (12.73%) DHCP
11 78 (10.46%) TCP/IP
12 72 (9.65%) SD-WAN
13 67 (8.98%) Wi-Fi
14 66 (8.85%) IPsec
15 56 (7.51%) Cisco ISE
15 56 (7.51%) Ethernet VPN
15 56 (7.51%) VXLAN
16 52 (6.97%) BIG-IP
17 44 (5.90%) MPLS
18 43 (5.76%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (1.61%) SQL Server
2 10 (1.34%) PostgreSQL
3 9 (1.21%) DataStage
4 6 (0.80%) Amazon RDS
4 6 (0.80%) Power BI
5 4 (0.54%) Azure SQL Database
5 4 (0.54%) Data Lake
5 4 (0.54%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.54%) NoSQL
6 3 (0.40%) Delta Lake
6 3 (0.40%) Oracle Database
7 2 (0.27%) MariaDB
7 2 (0.27%) Oracle Reports
7 2 (0.27%) Relational Database
8 1 (0.13%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.13%) DynamoDB
8 1 (0.13%) MySQL
8 1 (0.13%) Redis
8 1 (0.13%) SAP HANA
8 1 (0.13%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 57 (7.64%) JIRA
2 29 (3.89%) GitLab
3 27 (3.62%) Jenkins
4 22 (2.95%) Git
5 16 (2.14%) Burp Suite
5 16 (2.14%) Metasploit
6 14 (1.88%) Sonatype Nexus
7 9 (1.21%) Jaeger
8 6 (0.80%) Bitbucket
9 4 (0.54%) Browser DevTools
9 4 (0.54%) CircleCI
10 3 (0.40%) Chocolatey
11 2 (0.27%) Introscope
11 2 (0.27%) Team Foundation Server
12 1 (0.13%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.13%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.13%) Postman
12 1 (0.13%) Travis CI
General
1 187 (25.07%) Social Skills
2 77 (10.32%) Finance
3 64 (8.58%) Public Sector
4 61 (8.18%) Analytical Skills
5 47 (6.30%) Documentation Skills
6 21 (2.82%) Banking
7 18 (2.41%) Manufacturing
7 18 (2.41%) Telecoms
8 15 (2.01%) Military
9 13 (1.74%) Legal
10 12 (1.61%) Influencing Skills
11 10 (1.34%) Financial Institution
12 8 (1.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 8 (1.07%) Law
13 7 (0.94%) Retail
14 6 (0.80%) Aerospace
14 6 (0.80%) Organisational Skills
15 3 (0.40%) Back Office
15 3 (0.40%) Electronics
15 3 (0.40%) Police
Job Titles
1 260 (34.85%) Network Engineer
2 101 (13.54%) Architect
3 83 (11.13%) Senior
4 70 (9.38%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 50 (6.70%) Security Engineer
6 46 (6.17%) Network Architect
7 43 (5.76%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
8 36 (4.83%) Senior Network Engineer
9 27 (3.62%) Cisco Engineer
9 27 (3.62%) Cloud Engineer
10 25 (3.35%) Cisco Network Engineer
11 22 (2.95%) Lead
12 21 (2.82%) Designer
12 21 (2.82%) Network Specialist
13 20 (2.68%) IT Support
14 19 (2.55%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
15 18 (2.41%) Analyst
15 18 (2.41%) Network Security Engineer
15 18 (2.41%) Security Architect
16 17 (2.28%) Penetration Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 59 (7.91%) 802.1X
2 26 (3.49%) LDAP
3 20 (2.68%) Middleware
4 18 (2.41%) Kafka
4 18 (2.41%) SAML
5 11 (1.47%) OpenTelemetry
6 9 (1.21%) Spring Boot
7 8 (1.07%) OAuth
7 8 (1.07%) OAuth2
8 6 (0.80%) LangChain
8 6 (0.80%) OpenID
8 6 (0.80%) PyTorch
8 6 (0.80%) scikit-learn
9 5 (0.67%) Node.js
10 4 (0.54%) ARM Templates
10 4 (0.54%) JSON
10 4 (0.54%) REST
10 4 (0.54%) YAML
11 3 (0.40%) .NET
12 2 (0.27%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 189 (25.34%) Data Centre
2 44 (5.90%) PKI
3 43 (5.76%) Security Posture
4 42 (5.63%) Cloud Native
5 29 (3.89%) Hybrid Cloud
5 29 (3.89%) Operational Technology
6 28 (3.75%) Clustering
7 23 (3.08%) Onboarding
8 18 (2.41%) IoT
9 16 (2.14%) SCADA
10 15 (2.01%) Management Information System
10 15 (2.01%) NHS
10 15 (2.01%) Public Cloud
11 14 (1.88%) Data Protection Act
11 14 (1.88%) Self-Motivation
12 13 (1.74%) BYOD
12 13 (1.74%) Enterprise Software
13 11 (1.47%) Distributed Systems
14 10 (1.34%) Enterprise Storage
14 10 (1.34%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 199 (26.68%) Windows
2 122 (16.35%) Linux
3 72 (9.65%) Windows Server
4 28 (3.75%) Unix
5 13 (1.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (1.34%) Solaris
7 9 (1.21%) AIX
8 7 (0.94%) Windows Server 2019
9 6 (0.80%) Windows Server 2016
10 5 (0.67%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.67%) Windows 7
11 4 (0.54%) CatOS
11 4 (0.54%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.40%) Data ONTAP
12 3 (0.40%) VMS
13 2 (0.27%) Oracle Linux
13 2 (0.27%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 2 (0.27%) Windows 10
14 1 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 117 (15.68%) Cybersecurity
2 109 (14.61%) DevOps
3 101 (13.54%) High Availability
4 100 (13.40%) Load Balancing
5 99 (13.27%) Problem-Solving
6 96 (12.87%) CI/CD
7 94 (12.60%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 93 (12.47%) ITIL
9 81 (10.86%) Infrastructure as Code
10 73 (9.79%) Zero Trust
11 65 (8.71%) Observability
12 64 (8.58%) Change Management
13 62 (8.31%) Agile
13 62 (8.31%) Network Segmentation
14 60 (8.04%) Technical Leadership
15 59 (7.91%) Migration
16 57 (7.64%) SIEM
17 55 (7.37%) Identity Access Management
18 53 (7.10%) Cloud Security
19 52 (6.97%) Network Monitoring
Programming Languages
1 89 (11.93%) Python
2 71 (9.52%) PowerShell
3 35 (4.69%) Bash
4 34 (4.56%) SQL
5 24 (3.22%) Bicep
6 23 (3.08%) Java
7 9 (1.21%) COBOL
8 8 (1.07%) Perl
8 8 (1.07%) Rust
9 5 (0.67%) Ruby
10 4 (0.54%) C#
10 4 (0.54%) JavaScript
11 3 (0.40%) Go
11 3 (0.40%) PL/SQL
11 3 (0.40%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.27%) C++
12 2 (0.27%) Jython
13 1 (0.13%) C
13 1 (0.13%) Groovy
13 1 (0.13%) Korn
Qualifications
1 306 (41.02%) Security Cleared
2 208 (27.88%) SC Cleared
3 165 (22.12%) Cisco Certification
4 125 (16.76%) CCNP
5 83 (11.13%) CCNA
6 81 (10.86%) DV Cleared
7 67 (8.98%) Degree
8 32 (4.29%) CISSP
9 22 (2.95%) AWS Certification
10 19 (2.55%) Azure Certification
11 16 (2.14%) CHECK Team Member
11 16 (2.14%) CISM
11 16 (2.14%) JNCIS
12 15 (2.01%) Microsoft Certification
12 15 (2.01%) Network+ Certification
13 14 (1.88%) CCIE
13 14 (1.88%) CREST Certified
13 14 (1.88%) Cyber Scheme
14 13 (1.74%) CompTIA Security+
14 13 (1.74%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 53 (7.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 35 (4.69%) GDPR
3 32 (4.29%) NIST
4 27 (3.62%) PCI DSS
5 20 (2.68%) Cyber Essentials
6 19 (2.55%) NCSC
7 18 (2.41%) QA
8 15 (2.01%) SLA
9 12 (1.61%) PMO
10 6 (0.80%) Data Quality
10 6 (0.80%) Disclosure Scotland
11 5 (0.67%) JSP 440
12 4 (0.54%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 4 (0.54%) SOC 2
13 3 (0.40%) GRC
13 3 (0.40%) ISA99
13 3 (0.40%) RMADS
14 2 (0.27%) Government Security Classifications
14 2 (0.27%) GxP
14 2 (0.27%) NIST 800
System Software
1 135 (18.10%) Active Directory
2 97 (13.00%) VMware Infrastructure
3 42 (5.63%) Docker
4 39 (5.23%) VMware NSX
5 24 (3.22%) vSphere
6 20 (2.68%) Hyper-V
7 16 (2.14%) Firmware
8 14 (1.88%) VMware ESXi
9 11 (1.47%) Virtual Machines
10 8 (1.07%) Virtual Desktop
11 3 (0.40%) DFS Replication
11 3 (0.40%) Virtual Servers
12 1 (0.13%) BitLocker
12 1 (0.13%) Citrix Hypervisor
12 1 (0.13%) KVM
12 1 (0.13%) RHEV
12 1 (0.13%) Squid
12 1 (0.13%) Xen
12 1 (0.13%) XenApp
12 1 (0.13%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 97 (13.00%) Terraform
2 73 (9.79%) Ansible
3 50 (6.70%) Kubernetes
4 48 (6.43%) FortiGate
5 23 (3.08%) Grafana
6 20 (2.68%) Single Sign-On
7 18 (2.41%) Microsoft Intune
7 18 (2.41%) Nmap
8 17 (2.28%) Prometheus
8 17 (2.28%) vCenter Server
9 15 (2.01%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 11 (1.47%) Nagios
11 10 (1.34%) CASB
11 10 (1.34%) SCCM
12 9 (1.21%) Cisco Prime
12 9 (1.21%) Kiali
13 8 (1.07%) Nessus
14 7 (0.94%) VxRail
15 6 (0.80%) Progress Chef
16 5 (0.67%) Endace
Vendors
1 298 (39.95%) Cisco
2 159 (21.31%) Palo Alto
3 140 (18.77%) Microsoft
4 130 (17.43%) VMware
5 98 (13.14%) F5
6 94 (12.60%) Juniper
7 73 (9.79%) CheckPoint
7 73 (9.79%) Fortinet
8 63 (8.45%) SolarWinds
9 62 (8.31%) Aruba
9 62 (8.31%) Splunk
10 39 (5.23%) ServiceNow
11 29 (3.89%) Google
12 27 (3.62%) Meraki
13 26 (3.49%) Extreme Networks
14 20 (2.68%) Oracle
15 19 (2.55%) Arista
16 17 (2.28%) Veeam
17 16 (2.14%) Citrix
17 16 (2.14%) Red Hat