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 29 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 65 42 35
Rank change year-on-year -23 -7 +15
Contract jobs citing Firewall 690 637 991
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.60% 4.65% 4.87%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.29% 28.09% 27.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 469 354 650
10th Percentile £307 £275 £300
25th Percentile £400 £375 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% - -
75th Percentile £569 £575 £608
90th Percentile £650 £635 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 19 46
10th Percentile £35.13 £20.00 £50.19
25th Percentile £37.25 £20.09 £62.50
Median hourly rate £45.33 £35.00 £66.62
Median % change year-on-year +29.51% -47.47% +35.64%
75th Percentile £74.26 £41.38 £76.53
90th Percentile £85.90 £62.75 £85.63
UK median hourly rate £41.94 £35.00 £65.98
% change year-on-year +19.83% -46.95% +70.89%

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 2,278 2,268 3,574
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 11.90% 16.54% 17.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,520 1,275 2,076
10th Percentile £193 £188 £205
25th Percentile £305 £300 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £468 £475
Median % change year-on-year -3.74% -1.58% +2.70%
75th Percentile £563 £578 £594
90th Percentile £650 £650 £675
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £495
% change year-on-year -5.00% +1.01% -3.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 118 114 318
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.53 £15.76
25th Percentile £16.00 £21.00 £23.00
Median hourly rate £40.54 £31.79 £56.45
Median % change year-on-year +27.52% -43.68% +186.89%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.48 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £51.65
% change year-on-year -14.29% -32.24% +149.47%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 -27 199 £508 +6.84% 102
South East +4 180 £500 - 167
Midlands -27 122 £440 -12.00% 44
West Midlands -1 113 £440 +0.57% 29
North West -22 112 £523 +7.73% 60
Yorkshire -19 83 £463 +8.82% 33
Scotland -12 61 £450 -4.00% 30
South West -24 61 £550 +4.76% 53
East of England -15 41 £475 -5.00% 51
Wales -17 18 £335 -8.22% 7
East Midlands -56 8 £500 -23.14% 15
Northern Ireland - 8 £488 - 2
North East -17 7 £550 - 12
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 (4.20%) Confluence
2 10 (1.45%) Apache
2 10 (1.45%) Microsoft Exchange
3 9 (1.30%) nginx
4 8 (1.16%) SharePoint
5 7 (1.01%) IIS
6 5 (0.72%) OpenStack
7 3 (0.43%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.29%) CICS
8 2 (0.29%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.14%) CMS
9 1 (0.14%) JBoss
9 1 (0.14%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 29 (4.20%) Microsoft Office
2 17 (2.46%) MS Visio
3 16 (2.32%) Microsoft Excel
4 15 (2.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 8 (1.16%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.14%) Finacle
1 1 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.14%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 182 (26.38%) Azure
2 178 (25.80%) AWS
3 69 (10.00%) GCP
4 45 (6.52%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 40 (5.80%) Amazon EC2
5 40 (5.80%) Microsoft 365
6 37 (5.36%) Entra ID
7 29 (4.20%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 29 (4.20%) Amazon S3
8 23 (3.33%) Amazon ELB
9 22 (3.19%) Amazon ECS
10 21 (3.04%) Serverless
11 20 (2.90%) AWS CloudFormation
12 19 (2.75%) IaaS
13 18 (2.61%) Azure Sentinel
14 17 (2.46%) AWS Lambda
14 17 (2.46%) Azure Monitor
14 17 (2.46%) PaaS
15 16 (2.32%) AWS KMS
16 14 (2.03%) Nutanix
Communications & Networking
1 162 (23.48%) Network Security
2 145 (21.01%) VPN
3 139 (20.14%) WAN
4 133 (19.28%) DNS
5 98 (14.20%) LAN
6 87 (12.61%) BGP
7 83 (12.03%) Wireless
8 80 (11.59%) TCP/IP
9 77 (11.16%) VLAN
10 73 (10.58%) OSPF
11 58 (8.41%) DHCP
12 51 (7.39%) SD-WAN
13 42 (6.09%) IPsec
14 40 (5.80%) Cisco ASA
14 40 (5.80%) MPLS
14 40 (5.80%) Wi-Fi
15 36 (5.22%) Cisco ISE
15 36 (5.22%) Cisco Nexus
16 35 (5.07%) SSL
17 27 (3.91%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (4.06%) Amazon RDS
2 22 (3.19%) SQL Server
3 19 (2.75%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (1.16%) Amazon Aurora
5 4 (0.58%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.58%) Relational Database
6 3 (0.43%) DynamoDB
6 3 (0.43%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.29%) Amazon QuickSight
7 2 (0.29%) Data Lake
7 2 (0.29%) Elasticsearch
7 2 (0.29%) MariaDB
7 2 (0.29%) Oracle Database
8 1 (0.14%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.14%) BusinessObjects
8 1 (0.14%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (0.14%) Power BI
8 1 (0.14%) Redis
8 1 (0.14%) SAP HANA
8 1 (0.14%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 51 (7.39%) JIRA
2 50 (7.25%) Jenkins
3 44 (6.38%) Git
4 35 (5.07%) GitLab
5 20 (2.90%) Sonatype Nexus
6 14 (2.03%) Burp Suite
6 14 (2.03%) Metasploit
7 12 (1.74%) Vagrant
8 11 (1.59%) Bitbucket
9 8 (1.16%) Jaeger
10 4 (0.58%) CircleCI
11 3 (0.43%) Chocolatey
12 1 (0.14%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.14%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.14%) MSI
12 1 (0.14%) Postman
12 1 (0.14%) SonarQube
12 1 (0.14%) Subversion
12 1 (0.14%) Travis CI
General
1 200 (28.99%) Social Skills
2 81 (11.74%) Analytical Skills
3 79 (11.45%) Public Sector
4 63 (9.13%) Finance
5 52 (7.54%) Documentation Skills
6 31 (4.49%) Banking
7 30 (4.35%) Telecoms
8 22 (3.19%) Legal
9 20 (2.90%) Manufacturing
10 14 (2.03%) Presentation Skills
11 9 (1.30%) Financial Institution
12 7 (1.01%) Aerospace
12 7 (1.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 7 (1.01%) Military
12 7 (1.01%) Retail
13 6 (0.87%) Influencing Skills
14 5 (0.72%) Law
15 4 (0.58%) Retail Banking
16 3 (0.43%) Local Government
16 3 (0.43%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 199 (28.84%) Network Engineer
2 94 (13.62%) Architect
3 69 (10.00%) Senior
4 50 (7.25%) Security Engineer
5 49 (7.10%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 39 (5.65%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
7 38 (5.51%) Network Architect
8 35 (5.07%) Platform Engineer
9 31 (4.49%) DevOps Engineer
10 28 (4.06%) Analyst
11 23 (3.33%) IT Engineer
12 22 (3.19%) IT Support
13 21 (3.04%) Support Engineer
14 20 (2.90%) AWS Engineer
14 20 (2.90%) Security Architect
15 19 (2.75%) Cloud Platform Engineer
15 19 (2.75%) Solutions Architect
16 18 (2.61%) Cisco Engineer
16 18 (2.61%) Senior Network Engineer
17 16 (2.32%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (5.36%) 802.1X
2 26 (3.77%) LDAP
3 20 (2.90%) SAML
4 15 (2.17%) OAuth
4 15 (2.17%) OAuth2
4 15 (2.17%) OpenID
5 14 (2.03%) Middleware
6 12 (1.74%) Kafka
7 11 (1.59%) Node.js
8 9 (1.30%) JSON
9 8 (1.16%) OpenTelemetry
9 8 (1.16%) REST
9 8 (1.16%) Spring Boot
10 7 (1.01%) RFC 2544
11 4 (0.58%) ARM Templates
11 4 (0.58%) Microsoft Graph
11 4 (0.58%) XML
12 3 (0.43%) Elastic Stack
12 3 (0.43%) Lambda Expressions
13 2 (0.29%) ModSecurity
Miscellaneous
1 143 (20.72%) Data Centre
2 55 (7.97%) Security Posture
3 35 (5.07%) PKI
4 26 (3.77%) Onboarding
4 26 (3.77%) Replication
5 23 (3.33%) Operational Technology
6 22 (3.19%) Hybrid Cloud
7 17 (2.46%) NHS
8 16 (2.32%) Data Protection Act
9 15 (2.17%) Security Operations Centre
10 14 (2.03%) Management Information System
11 13 (1.88%) Cyber Threat
11 13 (1.88%) Private Cloud
12 12 (1.74%) Cloud Native
13 11 (1.59%) Fat Client
13 11 (1.59%) Thin Client
14 9 (1.30%) Distributed Systems
14 9 (1.30%) Product Ownership
14 9 (1.30%) SCADA
15 8 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 195 (28.26%) Windows
2 148 (21.45%) Linux
3 76 (11.01%) Windows Server
4 18 (2.61%) VMS
5 17 (2.46%) Unix
6 15 (2.17%) Amazon Linux
6 15 (2.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 11 (1.59%) Ubuntu
7 11 (1.59%) Windows 7
8 10 (1.45%) Windows Server 2019
9 7 (1.01%) Windows 10
10 3 (0.43%) Android
10 3 (0.43%) Apple iOS
10 3 (0.43%) CatOS
10 3 (0.43%) CentOS
10 3 (0.43%) Mac OS
10 3 (0.43%) Solaris
10 3 (0.43%) Windows Server 2012
10 3 (0.43%) Windows Server 2016
11 2 (0.29%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 134 (19.42%) Cybersecurity
2 104 (15.07%) Problem-Solving
3 103 (14.93%) DevOps
4 92 (13.33%) CI/CD
5 80 (11.59%) Incident Response
6 76 (11.01%) Infrastructure as Code
7 74 (10.72%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 66 (9.57%) Agile
8 66 (9.57%) SIEM
9 63 (9.13%) ITIL
10 60 (8.70%) Containerisation
11 59 (8.55%) Load Balancing
12 57 (8.26%) Change Management
12 57 (8.26%) Cloud Security
13 56 (8.12%) High Availability
14 54 (7.83%) Mentoring
15 52 (7.54%) Migration
16 50 (7.25%) Network Design
16 50 (7.25%) Zero Trust
17 49 (7.10%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 138 (20.00%) Python
2 116 (16.81%) PowerShell
3 67 (9.71%) Bash
4 39 (5.65%) SQL
5 35 (5.07%) Java
6 30 (4.35%) Perl
7 12 (1.74%) Groovy
8 10 (1.45%) Bicep
8 10 (1.45%) Ruby
9 8 (1.16%) Rust
10 6 (0.87%) Shell Script
11 4 (0.58%) C#
12 3 (0.43%) Go
12 3 (0.43%) Kusto Query Language
13 1 (0.14%) JavaScript
13 1 (0.14%) Lisp
13 1 (0.14%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 288 (41.74%) Security Cleared
2 194 (28.12%) SC Cleared
3 132 (19.13%) Cisco Certification
4 111 (16.09%) CCNP
5 75 (10.87%) DV Cleared
6 66 (9.57%) Degree
7 61 (8.84%) CCNA
8 42 (6.09%) CISSP
9 30 (4.35%) AWS Certification
10 28 (4.06%) CCIE
11 25 (3.62%) Azure Certification
11 25 (3.62%) Microsoft Certification
12 24 (3.48%) CISM
13 14 (2.03%) CHECK Team Member
14 12 (1.74%) CREST Certified
14 12 (1.74%) Cyber Scheme
15 11 (1.59%) CompTIA Security+
15 11 (1.59%) Postgraduate
16 10 (1.45%) Computer Science Degree
17 9 (1.30%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 58 (8.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 46 (6.67%) NIST
3 33 (4.78%) GDPR
4 28 (4.06%) PCI DSS
5 18 (2.61%) SLA
6 17 (2.46%) Cyber Essentials
7 14 (2.03%) NCSC
7 14 (2.03%) QA
8 10 (1.45%) PMO
9 6 (0.87%) COBIT
10 4 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.43%) GRC
11 3 (0.43%) NIST 800
12 2 (0.29%) Disclosure Scotland
12 2 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 2 (0.29%) JSP 440
12 2 (0.29%) PSD2
13 1 (0.14%) GPG13
13 1 (0.14%) HIPAA
13 1 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 130 (18.84%) Active Directory
2 108 (15.65%) VMware Infrastructure
3 88 (12.75%) Docker
4 29 (4.20%) vSphere
5 28 (4.06%) VMware NSX
6 27 (3.91%) Hyper-V
7 15 (2.17%) DFS Replication
7 15 (2.17%) VMware ESXi
8 8 (1.16%) Dovecot
8 8 (1.16%) Postfix
8 8 (1.16%) Squid
8 8 (1.16%) Virtual Machines
9 7 (1.01%) Firmware
10 6 (0.87%) Virtual Desktop
10 6 (0.87%) Virtual Servers
11 5 (0.72%) KVM
12 2 (0.29%) Xen
13 1 (0.14%) NetIQ eDirectory
13 1 (0.14%) UAG
13 1 (0.14%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 96 (13.91%) Terraform
2 80 (11.59%) Ansible
3 69 (10.00%) Kubernetes
4 29 (4.20%) Grafana
5 25 (3.62%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 24 (3.48%) Prometheus
7 23 (3.33%) Single Sign-On
8 22 (3.19%) FortiGate
8 22 (3.19%) Microsoft Intune
9 20 (2.90%) vCenter Server
10 18 (2.61%) Nmap
11 14 (2.03%) SCCM
12 12 (1.74%) Nessus
13 11 (1.59%) WMI
14 10 (1.45%) CSIRT
15 9 (1.30%) Fluentd
15 9 (1.30%) Nagios
15 9 (1.30%) Proxmox
16 8 (1.16%) Kiali
17 6 (0.87%) VxRail
Vendors
1 260 (37.68%) Cisco
2 160 (23.19%) Palo Alto
3 147 (21.30%) Microsoft
4 135 (19.57%) VMware
5 92 (13.33%) F5
6 85 (12.32%) CheckPoint
7 59 (8.55%) Juniper
8 58 (8.41%) Fortinet
9 47 (6.81%) Splunk
10 42 (6.09%) Meraki
10 42 (6.09%) SolarWinds
11 41 (5.94%) Aruba
12 36 (5.22%) Oracle
13 28 (4.06%) Google
14 27 (3.91%) ServiceNow
15 20 (2.90%) Dell
16 18 (2.61%) Citrix
17 16 (2.32%) Red Hat
18 15 (2.17%) Zscaler
19 14 (2.03%) Veeam