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 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 50 44 32
Rank change year-on-year -6 -12 +23
Contract jobs citing Firewall 694 729 1,188
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 4.28% 4.28% 5.64%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 31.63% 29.00% 32.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 428 397 778
10th Percentile £293 £284 £281
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £500 £490
Median % change year-on-year -3.00% +2.04% +3.16%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £650 £638 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 19 58
10th Percentile £18.51 £19.70 £35.00
25th Percentile £29.00 £20.00 £62.50
Median hourly rate £31.39 £27.50 £66.62
Median % change year-on-year +14.13% -58.72% +50.05%
75th Percentile £69.31 £35.00 £75.67
90th Percentile £89.63 £60.50 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £67.27
% change year-on-year +9.09% -59.12% +70.29%

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 2,194 2,514 3,647
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 13.52% 14.75% 17.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,425 1,379 2,197
10th Percentile £194 £200 £206
25th Percentile £305 £330 £340
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £465
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +2.15% +3.33%
75th Percentile £575 £580 £588
90th Percentile £649 £650 £675
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 135 138 273
10th Percentile £15.40 £17.23 £16.50
25th Percentile £18.15 £26.25 £23.00
Median hourly rate £41.50 £51.25 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -19.02% -9.28% +25.53%
75th Percentile £65.00 £66.52 £67.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £75.67
UK median hourly rate £34.00 £48.56 £56.40
% change year-on-year -29.98% -13.90% +41.00%

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 October 2025.

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 October 2025.

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 October 2025. 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 -20 186 £488 -2.50% 144
South East -3 170 £500 - 271
Midlands -8 146 £475 -5.00% 104
West Midlands +19 132 £475 -5.00% 71
Yorkshire +1 98 £488 -5.80% 43
North West -27 85 £475 -5.94% 79
South West -3 59 £525 +10.53% 56
Scotland -21 59 £475 - 36
East of England -5 53 £479 -8.81% 59
East Midlands -33 14 £492 -10.55% 30
Northern Ireland - 14 £488 - 9
Wales -7 12 £200 -23.81% 15
Channel Islands - 4 £725 -
North East -11 3 £575 +64.29% 29
South Coast - 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 38 (5.48%) Confluence
2 35 (5.04%) Microsoft Exchange
3 18 (2.59%) SharePoint
4 11 (1.59%) nginx
5 9 (1.30%) OpenStack
6 6 (0.86%) Apache
7 5 (0.72%) Tomcat
8 4 (0.58%) JBoss
9 3 (0.43%) IIS
10 2 (0.29%) CICS
10 2 (0.29%) WebSphere
11 1 (0.14%) Anypoint
11 1 (0.14%) CMS
11 1 (0.14%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 22 (3.17%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (1.44%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 6 (0.86%) Microsoft Excel
3 6 (0.86%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.29%) Dynamics GP
1 2 (0.29%) SAP PM
2 1 (0.14%) Finacle
2 1 (0.14%) Pegasus Opera
2 1 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 176 (25.36%) Azure
2 169 (24.35%) AWS
3 94 (13.54%) Microsoft 365
4 70 (10.09%) GCP
5 51 (7.35%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 43 (6.20%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 41 (5.91%) Amazon EC2
8 35 (5.04%) Amazon S3
9 32 (4.61%) Amazon ELB
10 27 (3.89%) Azure Sentinel
10 27 (3.89%) Entra ID
11 25 (3.60%) AWS KMS
12 19 (2.74%) Amazon ECS
13 15 (2.16%) Akamai
14 12 (1.73%) Amazon Glacier
14 12 (1.73%) AWS CloudFormation
14 12 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
14 12 (1.73%) Serverless
15 11 (1.59%) IaaS
16 10 (1.44%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 140 (20.17%) Network Security
2 137 (19.74%) VPN
3 136 (19.60%) DNS
4 113 (16.28%) WAN
5 95 (13.69%) TCP/IP
6 84 (12.10%) Wireless
7 69 (9.94%) LAN
8 66 (9.51%) BGP
9 62 (8.93%) VLAN
10 60 (8.65%) OSPF
11 57 (8.21%) DHCP
12 48 (6.92%) SD-WAN
13 44 (6.34%) Cisco IOS
14 42 (6.05%) SSL
15 41 (5.91%) Cisco ISE
16 38 (5.48%) Wi-Fi
17 34 (4.90%) Cisco ASA
18 33 (4.76%) HTTP
19 31 (4.47%) IPsec
20 30 (4.32%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (4.61%) Amazon RDS
2 23 (3.31%) SQL Server
3 15 (2.16%) PostgreSQL
4 10 (1.44%) Amazon Aurora
5 7 (1.01%) Relational Database
6 6 (0.86%) NoSQL
7 5 (0.72%) MySQL
8 4 (0.58%) Azure SQL Database
8 4 (0.58%) DB2
8 4 (0.58%) Oracle Database
9 2 (0.29%) Delta Lake
9 2 (0.29%) DynamoDB
9 2 (0.29%) GIS
9 2 (0.29%) Power BI
10 1 (0.14%) Amazon QuickSight
10 1 (0.14%) BusinessObjects
10 1 (0.14%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
10 1 (0.14%) Elasticsearch
10 1 (0.14%) Redis
Development Applications
1 68 (9.80%) Jenkins
2 57 (8.21%) Git
3 54 (7.78%) JIRA
4 24 (3.46%) GitLab
5 22 (3.17%) Vagrant
6 16 (2.31%) Postman
7 11 (1.59%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (0.86%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.29%) Maven
10 1 (0.14%) Eclipse
10 1 (0.14%) Gradle
10 1 (0.14%) SonarQube
General
1 163 (23.49%) Social Skills
2 86 (12.39%) Public Sector
3 73 (10.52%) Analytical Skills
4 66 (9.51%) Finance
5 32 (4.61%) Telecoms
6 31 (4.47%) Banking
7 26 (3.75%) Documentation Skills
8 24 (3.46%) Games
8 24 (3.46%) Manufacturing
9 23 (3.31%) Legal
10 15 (2.16%) Presentation Skills
11 13 (1.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 9 (1.30%) Military
13 8 (1.15%) Organisational Skills
14 6 (0.86%) Local Government
14 6 (0.86%) Retail
15 5 (0.72%) Law
16 4 (0.58%) Influencing Skills
16 4 (0.58%) Retail Banking
17 3 (0.43%) Japanese Language
Job Titles
1 161 (23.20%) Network Engineer
2 77 (11.10%) Architect
3 63 (9.08%) Security Engineer
4 62 (8.93%) Senior
5 54 (7.78%) Analyst
6 48 (6.92%) Platform Engineer
7 45 (6.48%) DevOps Engineer
8 38 (5.48%) Network Architect
9 35 (5.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 32 (4.61%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
11 29 (4.18%) Support Engineer
12 23 (3.31%) AWS Engineer
13 19 (2.74%) AWS DevOps
13 19 (2.74%) Consultant
13 19 (2.74%) Firewall Engineer
13 19 (2.74%) IT Engineer
13 19 (2.74%) Network Security Engineer
13 19 (2.74%) Security Analyst
13 19 (2.74%) Technical Engineer
14 18 (2.59%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (3.46%) 802.1X
2 20 (2.88%) RFC 2544
3 18 (2.59%) LDAP
4 11 (1.59%) REST
5 9 (1.30%) JSON
6 8 (1.15%) Elastic Stack
6 8 (1.15%) Middleware
6 8 (1.15%) OAuth
6 8 (1.15%) OAuth2
6 8 (1.15%) OpenID
6 8 (1.15%) SAML
7 6 (0.86%) Kafka
7 6 (0.86%) Node.js
8 5 (0.72%) XML
9 3 (0.43%) CSS
9 3 (0.43%) HTML
9 3 (0.43%) JBoss Seam
9 3 (0.43%) Microsoft Graph
10 2 (0.29%) ModSecurity
11 1 (0.14%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 94 (13.54%) Data Centre
2 45 (6.48%) Security Posture
3 36 (5.19%) Hybrid Cloud
4 33 (4.76%) Operational Technology
4 33 (4.76%) Replication
5 32 (4.61%) PKI
6 23 (3.31%) Onboarding
7 19 (2.74%) Data Protection Act
7 19 (2.74%) Management Information System
8 17 (2.45%) Cyber Threat
8 17 (2.45%) Fibre Optics
9 13 (1.87%) Cyber Defence
9 13 (1.87%) Enterprise Software
10 12 (1.73%) Cloud Native
11 11 (1.59%) Virtual Team
12 9 (1.30%) SCADA
13 8 (1.15%) Legacy Systems
13 8 (1.15%) Private Cloud
13 8 (1.15%) Public Cloud
14 7 (1.01%) Cloud Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 191 (27.52%) Windows
2 114 (16.43%) Linux
3 56 (8.07%) Windows Server
4 35 (5.04%) Mac OS
5 31 (4.47%) Android
6 29 (4.18%) VMS
7 22 (3.17%) Amazon Linux
7 22 (3.17%) Unix
8 19 (2.74%) Windows 10
9 15 (2.16%) Ubuntu
10 12 (1.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 11 (1.59%) Windows Server 2016
12 7 (1.01%) Solaris
12 7 (1.01%) Windows Server 2012
13 6 (0.86%) Windows 7
14 5 (0.72%) CentOS
14 5 (0.72%) Windows Server 2019
15 3 (0.43%) AIX
15 3 (0.43%) Apple iOS
15 3 (0.43%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 119 (17.15%) Cybersecurity
2 108 (15.56%) DevOps
3 93 (13.40%) Cloud Security
3 93 (13.40%) Problem-Solving
4 87 (12.54%) Incident Response
5 85 (12.25%) SIEM
6 82 (11.82%) ITIL
7 73 (10.52%) Migration
8 71 (10.23%) Agile
9 70 (10.09%) CI/CD
10 62 (8.93%) Change Management
11 60 (8.65%) High Availability
12 55 (7.93%) Configuration Management
13 52 (7.49%) Infrastructure as Code
13 52 (7.49%) Security Operations
14 51 (7.35%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 48 (6.92%) Network Architecture
16 47 (6.77%) Load Balancing
16 47 (6.77%) Network Design
17 43 (6.20%) Disaster Recovery
Programming Languages
1 151 (21.76%) Python
2 119 (17.15%) PowerShell
3 54 (7.78%) Bash
4 32 (4.61%) Java
4 32 (4.61%) Perl
4 32 (4.61%) SQL
5 22 (3.17%) Groovy
6 9 (1.30%) Kusto Query Language
6 9 (1.30%) Shell Script
7 5 (0.72%) Bicep
7 5 (0.72%) Ruby
8 3 (0.43%) JavaScript
8 3 (0.43%) Kotlin
9 2 (0.29%) Go
10 1 (0.14%) C++
10 1 (0.14%) Korn
10 1 (0.14%) Lisp
10 1 (0.14%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 228 (32.85%) Security Cleared
2 150 (21.61%) SC Cleared
3 126 (18.16%) Cisco Certification
4 91 (13.11%) CCNP
5 61 (8.79%) Degree
6 59 (8.50%) DV Cleared
7 49 (7.06%) CCNA
8 46 (6.63%) CISSP
9 35 (5.04%) Azure Certification
10 34 (4.90%) AWS Certification
11 32 (4.61%) Microsoft Certification
12 30 (4.32%) CCIE
13 21 (3.03%) CISM
13 21 (3.03%) Computer Science Degree
14 12 (1.73%) CEH
15 10 (1.44%) CISMP
15 10 (1.44%) GIAC
15 10 (1.44%) GSEC
16 9 (1.30%) CompTIA Security+
17 8 (1.15%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 45 (6.48%) NIST
2 44 (6.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 43 (6.20%) GDPR
4 18 (2.59%) PCI DSS
5 16 (2.31%) SLA
6 14 (2.02%) QA
7 12 (1.73%) NCSC
8 7 (1.01%) COBIT
9 6 (0.86%) Actionable Recommendations
9 6 (0.86%) Disclosure Scotland
10 5 (0.72%) HIPAA
11 4 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials
11 4 (0.58%) PSD2
12 3 (0.43%) Accessibility
12 3 (0.43%) GRC
12 3 (0.43%) GxP
13 2 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 2 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 2 (0.29%) NIST 800
13 2 (0.29%) SOC 2
System Software
1 125 (18.01%) Active Directory
2 86 (12.39%) VMware Infrastructure
3 78 (11.24%) Docker
4 25 (3.60%) DFS Replication
4 25 (3.60%) Hyper-V
5 16 (2.31%) vSphere
6 10 (1.44%) Dovecot
6 10 (1.44%) Postfix
6 10 (1.44%) Squid
7 8 (1.15%) Virtual Machines
7 8 (1.15%) VMware NSX
8 7 (1.01%) Veritas Cluster Server
8 7 (1.01%) VMware ESXi
9 6 (0.86%) Terminal Services
10 4 (0.58%) KVM
10 4 (0.58%) Virtual Servers
11 3 (0.43%) Firmware
12 1 (0.14%) NDS
12 1 (0.14%) NFS
12 1 (0.14%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 80 (11.53%) Ansible
1 80 (11.53%) Terraform
2 43 (6.20%) Kubernetes
2 43 (6.20%) Microsoft Intune
3 40 (5.76%) SCCM
4 28 (4.03%) Grafana
5 25 (3.60%) Prometheus
6 24 (3.46%) FortiGate
7 23 (3.31%) Puppet
8 14 (2.02%) Nessus
9 13 (1.87%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 11 (1.59%) CSIRT
10 11 (1.59%) vCenter Server
11 10 (1.44%) Microsoft Clustering
11 10 (1.44%) Proxmox
12 8 (1.15%) Single Sign-On
13 7 (1.01%) NetBackup
13 7 (1.01%) Oracle RMAN
14 6 (0.86%) Progress Chef
14 6 (0.86%) WMI
Vendors
1 279 (40.20%) Cisco
2 197 (28.39%) Microsoft
3 114 (16.43%) Palo Alto
4 104 (14.99%) VMware
5 103 (14.84%) F5
6 70 (10.09%) CheckPoint
7 61 (8.79%) Fortinet
8 60 (8.65%) Splunk
9 57 (8.21%) Meraki
10 50 (7.20%) Juniper
11 45 (6.48%) SolarWinds
12 43 (6.20%) Oracle
13 35 (5.04%) ServiceNow
14 26 (3.75%) Zscaler
15 25 (3.60%) Google
16 21 (3.03%) Citrix
17 19 (2.74%) Dell
18 17 (2.45%) Aruba
18 17 (2.45%) MuleSoft
19 14 (2.02%) HP