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 23 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 80 45 43
Rank change year-on-year -35 -2 -8
Contract jobs citing Firewall 800 699 738
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 2.88% 4.53% 4.07%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 27.05% 33.03% 27.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 517 410 464
10th Percentile £350 £312 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £513
Median % change year-on-year +2.15% -4.49% +7.89%
75th Percentile £594 £588 £608
90th Percentile £651 £650 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 40 26 23
10th Percentile £28.90 £14.20 £20.63
25th Percentile £44.86 £15.18 £23.92
Median hourly rate £65.57 £30.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +118.57% -36.84% -28.03%
75th Percentile £82.04 £61.25 £85.45
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.63 £87.46
UK median hourly rate £65.57 £30.00 £27.50
% change year-on-year +118.57% +9.09% -58.33%

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 2,957 2,116 2,714
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.66% 13.72% 14.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,655 1,284 1,575
10th Percentile £213 £204 £209
25th Percentile £363 £325 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £470 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.77% -6.00% +9.89%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £649 £642 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £483 £500
% change year-on-year +3.57% -3.45% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 320 138 268
10th Percentile £14.99 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.69 £20.19 £20.98
Median hourly rate £26.14 £44.50 £54.88
Median % change year-on-year -41.26% -18.91% -4.42%
75th Percentile £65.06 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £87.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £26.14 £46.25 £50.00
% change year-on-year -43.48% -7.50% -11.49%

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 23 August 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 23 August 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 23 August 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 -1 290 £500 +2.62% 64
South East -41 204 £525 +5.00% 142
North West +5 185 £525 +10.53% 32
South West -20 85 £550 +10.00% 39
Yorkshire -33 85 £450 -7.64% 22
East of England -2 76 £525 -4.55% 37
Midlands -75 72 £468 -1.47% 68
Scotland +2 63 £400 -13.51% 12
West Midlands -80 55 £450 -5.26% 49
North East -20 26 £500 -13.04% 12
Wales -18 17 £425 +61.90% 5
East Midlands -19 15 £500 +6.16% 19
Northern Ireland -9 1 - - 2
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 22 (2.75%) Microsoft Exchange
2 16 (2.00%) Confluence
3 11 (1.38%) SharePoint
4 10 (1.25%) Apache
5 9 (1.13%) nginx
6 8 (1.00%) SAS
7 4 (0.50%) FactoryTalk
7 4 (0.50%) IIS
8 3 (0.38%) CICS
8 3 (0.38%) Skype for Business
8 3 (0.38%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.25%) CloudStack
9 2 (0.25%) CMS
9 2 (0.25%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.25%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.25%) Umbraco
9 2 (0.25%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.25%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.25%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 21 (2.63%) MS Visio
2 11 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.88%) Microsoft Excel
4 5 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
5 4 (0.50%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 5 (0.63%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.25%) Dynamics GP
2 2 (0.25%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.13%) Oracle Retail
3 1 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 281 (35.13%) Azure
2 177 (22.13%) AWS
3 78 (9.75%) Entra ID
4 64 (8.00%) Microsoft 365
5 62 (7.75%) GCP
6 40 (5.00%) Azure DevOps
7 32 (4.00%) GitHub
7 32 (4.00%) OCI
7 32 (4.00%) SaaS
8 31 (3.88%) Azure Monitor
9 29 (3.63%) IaaS
10 25 (3.13%) Azure Sentinel
10 25 (3.13%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 25 (3.13%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 23 (2.88%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 18 (2.25%) GitHub Actions
12 18 (2.25%) Serverless
13 16 (2.00%) Amazon EKS
14 15 (1.88%) AWS CloudFormation
14 15 (1.88%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 229 (28.63%) WAN
2 222 (27.75%) Network Security
3 221 (27.63%) DNS
4 219 (27.38%) VPN
5 193 (24.13%) LAN
6 147 (18.38%) DHCP
7 145 (18.13%) BGP
8 135 (16.88%) TCP/IP
9 128 (16.00%) OSPF
10 118 (14.75%) Wireless
11 114 (14.25%) VLAN
12 93 (11.63%) SD-WAN
13 92 (11.50%) Wi-Fi
14 66 (8.25%) BIG-IP
15 58 (7.25%) IPsec
16 57 (7.13%) Cisco ASA
17 50 (6.25%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 50 (6.25%) MPLS
17 50 (6.25%) VXLAN
18 48 (6.00%) Cisco Firepower
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (1.63%) SQL Server
2 11 (1.38%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (1.25%) Relational Database
4 7 (0.88%) Azure SQL Database
5 6 (0.75%) NoSQL
6 5 (0.63%) Data Lake
6 5 (0.63%) Oracle Database
6 5 (0.63%) Power BI
7 4 (0.50%) Amazon RDS
7 4 (0.50%) Delta Lake
8 3 (0.38%) DataStage
8 3 (0.38%) MySQL
9 2 (0.25%) EDRMS
10 1 (0.13%) Oracle Reports
10 1 (0.13%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 1 (0.13%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 68 (8.50%) JIRA
2 39 (4.88%) GitLab
3 32 (4.00%) Jenkins
4 16 (2.00%) Git
5 9 (1.13%) Bitbucket
6 8 (1.00%) Sonatype Nexus
7 6 (0.75%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 5 (0.63%) Browser DevTools
9 3 (0.38%) Burp Suite
10 2 (0.25%) Cucumber
10 2 (0.25%) Gatling
10 2 (0.25%) Gradle
10 2 (0.25%) Introscope
10 2 (0.25%) LoadRunner
10 2 (0.25%) REST Assured
10 2 (0.25%) SonarQube
10 2 (0.25%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.25%) Team Foundation Server
11 1 (0.13%) Ant
11 1 (0.13%) MSI
General
1 177 (22.13%) Social Skills
2 85 (10.63%) Analytical Skills
3 81 (10.13%) Finance
4 68 (8.50%) Public Sector
5 34 (4.25%) Banking
6 29 (3.63%) Documentation Skills
7 24 (3.00%) Telecoms
8 20 (2.50%) Manufacturing
9 14 (1.75%) Military
10 13 (1.63%) Legal
11 9 (1.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 9 (1.13%) Organisational Skills
12 8 (1.00%) Aerospace
12 8 (1.00%) Police
12 8 (1.00%) Retail
13 5 (0.63%) Financial Institution
13 5 (0.63%) Influencing Skills
13 5 (0.63%) Law
14 4 (0.50%) Pharmaceutical
15 3 (0.38%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 254 (31.75%) Network Engineer
2 119 (14.88%) Senior
3 111 (13.88%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 91 (11.38%) Architect
5 54 (6.75%) Security Engineer
5 54 (6.75%) Senior Network Engineer
6 42 (5.25%) Cloud Engineer
7 38 (4.75%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
8 35 (4.38%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
9 32 (4.00%) Lead
10 30 (3.75%) Network Architect
11 25 (3.13%) Platform Engineer
12 22 (2.75%) Consultant
13 21 (2.63%) Network Security Engineer
14 19 (2.38%) Solutions Architect
14 19 (2.38%) Technical Architect
15 17 (2.13%) Azure Engineer
16 15 (1.88%) Cisco Engineer
16 15 (1.88%) Security Architect
16 15 (1.88%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 170 (21.25%) Terraform
2 36 (4.50%) 802.1X
3 18 (2.25%) ARM Templates
4 17 (2.13%) SAML
5 10 (1.25%) Kafka
5 10 (1.25%) React
6 9 (1.13%) YAML
7 8 (1.00%) Middleware
8 7 (0.88%) LDAP
8 7 (0.88%) OAuth
8 7 (0.88%) OpenID
9 6 (0.75%) OAuth2
9 6 (0.75%) SailPoint
10 5 (0.63%) LangChain
10 5 (0.63%) ModSecurity
10 5 (0.63%) OpenTelemetry
10 5 (0.63%) PyTorch
10 5 (0.63%) REST
10 5 (0.63%) scikit-learn
11 4 (0.50%) Redfish
Miscellaneous
1 183 (22.88%) Data Centre
2 62 (7.75%) PKI
3 60 (7.50%) Cloud Native
3 60 (7.50%) Hybrid Cloud
4 36 (4.50%) Security Posture
5 30 (3.75%) Operational Technology
6 22 (2.75%) Onboarding
7 21 (2.63%) Management Information System
7 21 (2.63%) SCADA
8 20 (2.50%) Driving Licence
9 18 (2.25%) Enterprise Storage
9 18 (2.25%) Self-Motivation
10 17 (2.13%) Data Protection Act
10 17 (2.13%) Public Cloud
11 14 (1.75%) Clustering
11 14 (1.75%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 14 (1.75%) IoT
12 12 (1.50%) Enterprise Software
13 11 (1.38%) Private Cloud
13 11 (1.38%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 223 (27.88%) Windows
2 146 (18.25%) Linux
3 97 (12.13%) Windows Server
4 30 (3.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 16 (2.00%) Unix
6 11 (1.38%) CentOS
6 11 (1.38%) Mac OS
7 10 (1.25%) Ubuntu
8 8 (1.00%) VMS
9 7 (0.88%) Rocky
10 6 (0.75%) Windows 10
11 5 (0.63%) Windows Server 2012
12 4 (0.50%) Android
12 4 (0.50%) Solaris
12 4 (0.50%) Windows Server 2016
12 4 (0.50%) Windows Server 2019
13 3 (0.38%) AIX
13 3 (0.38%) Apple iOS
13 3 (0.38%) Check Point GAiA
14 2 (0.25%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 151 (18.88%) CI/CD
1 151 (18.88%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 145 (18.13%) Infrastructure as Code
3 141 (17.63%) DevOps
4 136 (17.00%) Load Balancing
5 123 (15.38%) Cybersecurity
5 123 (15.38%) Problem-Solving
6 116 (14.50%) ITIL
7 105 (13.13%) High Availability
8 98 (12.25%) Agile
9 89 (11.13%) Migration
10 88 (11.00%) Zero Trust
11 80 (10.00%) Technical Leadership
12 79 (9.88%) SIEM
13 78 (9.75%) Change Management
14 70 (8.75%) Network Segmentation
15 69 (8.63%) Project Delivery
16 68 (8.50%) Observability
16 68 (8.50%) Validation
17 67 (8.38%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 156 (19.50%) Python
2 128 (16.00%) PowerShell
3 81 (10.13%) Bash
4 36 (4.50%) Bicep
5 30 (3.75%) SQL
6 25 (3.13%) Java
7 9 (1.13%) ActionScript
8 5 (0.63%) Go
8 5 (0.63%) Kusto Query Language
8 5 (0.63%) Search Processing Language
9 4 (0.50%) JavaScript
9 4 (0.50%) Perl
9 4 (0.50%) TypeScript
10 3 (0.38%) COBOL
10 3 (0.38%) PL/SQL
11 2 (0.25%) Groovy
11 2 (0.25%) Jython
11 2 (0.25%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.25%) T-SQL
12 1 (0.13%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 315 (39.38%) Security Cleared
2 205 (25.63%) SC Cleared
3 164 (20.50%) Cisco Certification
4 113 (14.13%) CCNP
5 94 (11.75%) DV Cleared
6 79 (9.88%) CCNA
7 64 (8.00%) Degree
8 47 (5.88%) CISSP
9 42 (5.25%) AWS Certification
10 34 (4.25%) Azure Certification
11 18 (2.25%) CCIE
11 18 (2.25%) Network+ Certification
12 17 (2.13%) Microsoft Certification
13 15 (1.88%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 14 (1.75%) Server+ Certification
15 12 (1.50%) CISM
15 12 (1.50%) Computer Science Degree
15 12 (1.50%) VCAP
16 10 (1.25%) JNCIS
16 10 (1.25%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 46 (5.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 34 (4.25%) NIST
3 26 (3.25%) GDPR
4 22 (2.75%) NCSC
5 15 (1.88%) PCI DSS
5 15 (1.88%) QA
6 10 (1.25%) JSP 440
7 9 (1.13%) Cyber Essentials
8 8 (1.00%) Data Quality
8 8 (1.00%) Disclosure Scotland
8 8 (1.00%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 7 (0.88%) SLA
10 5 (0.63%) GxP
11 4 (0.50%) 21 CFR Part 11
11 4 (0.50%) HIPAA
11 4 (0.50%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 4 (0.50%) SOC 2
12 3 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 3 (0.38%) ISA99
12 3 (0.38%) NIST 800
System Software
1 149 (18.63%) Active Directory
2 138 (17.25%) VMware Infrastructure
3 55 (6.88%) Hyper-V
4 53 (6.63%) VMware NSX
5 44 (5.50%) Docker
6 38 (4.75%) vSphere
7 25 (3.13%) VMware ESXi
8 19 (2.38%) Firmware
9 18 (2.25%) Virtual Machines
10 7 (0.88%) Virtual Desktop
11 4 (0.50%) Virtual Servers
12 3 (0.38%) Dovecot
12 3 (0.38%) FreeRADIUS
12 3 (0.38%) Postfix
12 3 (0.38%) VirtualBox
13 2 (0.25%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.25%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 2 (0.25%) Squid
14 1 (0.13%) iptables
14 1 (0.13%) KVM
Systems Management
1 126 (15.75%) Ansible
2 79 (9.88%) Kubernetes
3 43 (5.38%) FortiGate
4 33 (4.13%) Microsoft Intune
5 24 (3.00%) Progress Chef
6 21 (2.63%) Single Sign-On
7 19 (2.38%) Grafana
8 18 (2.25%) Prometheus
9 14 (1.75%) CASB
9 14 (1.75%) VxRail
10 12 (1.50%) SCCM
10 12 (1.50%) vCenter Server
11 9 (1.13%) Argo
12 7 (0.88%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 7 (0.88%) Istio
12 7 (0.88%) NetBackup
12 7 (0.88%) Packer
13 6 (0.75%) Cisco Prime
14 4 (0.50%) Cisco CUCM
14 4 (0.50%) Nagios
Vendors
1 289 (36.13%) Cisco
2 188 (23.50%) Microsoft
3 171 (21.38%) VMware
4 158 (19.75%) Palo Alto
5 109 (13.63%) F5
6 80 (10.00%) Juniper
7 72 (9.00%) Fortinet
8 69 (8.63%) CheckPoint
9 48 (6.00%) ServiceNow
9 48 (6.00%) SolarWinds
10 47 (5.88%) Aruba
11 44 (5.50%) Splunk
12 39 (4.88%) Google
13 28 (3.50%) Arista
13 28 (3.50%) Meraki
14 24 (3.00%) Red Hat
15 22 (2.75%) Zscaler
16 18 (2.25%) Veeam
17 17 (2.13%) Infoblox
18 16 (2.00%) Citrix