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

6 months to
31 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 65 42 35
Rank change year-on-year -23 -7 +15
Contract jobs citing Firewall 691 637 1,008
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.58% 4.64% 4.84%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 29.94% 28.14% 27.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 468 358 660
10th Percentile £300 £275 £281
25th Percentile £400 £385 £387
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% - -
75th Percentile £570 £575 £608
90th Percentile £650 £638 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £521 £520
% change year-on-year -4.08% +0.24% -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% +27.80%
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% +64.95%

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 2,308 2,264 3,649
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 11.94% 16.51% 17.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,543 1,277 2,111
10th Percentile £191 £188 £205
25th Percentile £303 £300 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £467 £475
Median % change year-on-year -3.54% -1.79% +2.70%
75th Percentile £563 £580 £588
90th Percentile £650 £650 £675
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £493
% change year-on-year -5.00% +1.47% -4.32%
Number of hourly rates quoted 118 112 324
10th Percentile £15.18 £15.24 £15.38
25th Percentile £16.00 £20.94 £22.94
Median hourly rate £40.54 £30.04 £55.70
Median % change year-on-year +34.95% -46.07% +185.64%
75th Percentile £65.00 £61.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £50.00
% change year-on-year -7.69% -35.00% +146.91%

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 31 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 31 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 31 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 -25 205 £500 +5.26% 99
South East +10 181 £500 - 167
North West -25 116 £523 +5.56% 60
Midlands -28 116 £463 -7.50% 52
West Midlands -11 107 £456 +4.29% 36
Yorkshire -8 85 £465 +9.41% 31
South West -31 62 £550 +7.32% 56
Scotland -13 59 £438 -6.67% 33
East of England -18 42 £460 -12.38% 58
Wales -19 18 £335 -8.22% 8
East Midlands -50 8 £500 -23.14% 16
Northern Ireland - 8 £488 -
North East -19 7 £550 - 11
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 27 (3.91%) Confluence
2 10 (1.45%) Apache
2 10 (1.45%) Microsoft Exchange
3 8 (1.16%) nginx
3 8 (1.16%) SharePoint
4 7 (1.01%) IIS
5 5 (0.72%) OpenStack
6 3 (0.43%) CICS
6 3 (0.43%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.29%) WebSphere
8 1 (0.14%) Apache Pulsar
8 1 (0.14%) CMS
8 1 (0.14%) JBoss
8 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 7 (1.01%) 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
1 184 (26.63%) Azure
2 177 (25.62%) AWS
3 70 (10.13%) GCP
4 44 (6.37%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 41 (5.93%) Microsoft 365
6 38 (5.50%) Amazon EC2
6 38 (5.50%) Entra ID
7 28 (4.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 27 (3.91%) Amazon S3
9 21 (3.04%) Amazon ECS
9 21 (3.04%) Amazon ELB
9 21 (3.04%) AWS CloudFormation
9 21 (3.04%) Serverless
10 19 (2.75%) Azure Sentinel
10 19 (2.75%) IaaS
11 18 (2.60%) Azure Monitor
12 17 (2.46%) AWS Lambda
12 17 (2.46%) PaaS
13 15 (2.17%) AWS KMS
13 15 (2.17%) Nutanix
Communications & Networking
1 164 (23.73%) Network Security
2 141 (20.41%) VPN
3 137 (19.83%) WAN
4 130 (18.81%) DNS
5 101 (14.62%) LAN
6 89 (12.88%) BGP
7 81 (11.72%) TCP/IP
8 80 (11.58%) Wireless
9 77 (11.14%) VLAN
10 75 (10.85%) OSPF
11 59 (8.54%) DHCP
12 51 (7.38%) SD-WAN
13 41 (5.93%) Wi-Fi
14 40 (5.79%) MPLS
15 39 (5.64%) Cisco ASA
15 39 (5.64%) IPsec
16 37 (5.35%) Cisco ISE
17 35 (5.07%) Cisco Nexus
18 30 (4.34%) SSL
19 25 (3.62%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (3.76%) Amazon RDS
2 22 (3.18%) SQL Server
3 18 (2.60%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (1.01%) 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 Athena
8 1 (0.14%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.14%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
8 1 (0.14%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (0.14%) Power BI
8 1 (0.14%) Redis
8 1 (0.14%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 49 (7.09%) JIRA
2 48 (6.95%) Jenkins
3 42 (6.08%) Git
4 35 (5.07%) GitLab
5 20 (2.89%) Sonatype Nexus
6 14 (2.03%) Burp Suite
6 14 (2.03%) Metasploit
7 11 (1.59%) Bitbucket
8 10 (1.45%) Vagrant
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
1 202 (29.23%) Social Skills
2 83 (12.01%) Analytical Skills
3 78 (11.29%) Public Sector
4 67 (9.70%) Finance
5 55 (7.96%) Documentation Skills
6 31 (4.49%) Banking
7 27 (3.91%) Telecoms
8 22 (3.18%) Legal
9 21 (3.04%) Manufacturing
10 13 (1.88%) Presentation Skills
11 9 (1.30%) Financial Institution
12 8 (1.16%) Military
13 7 (1.01%) Aerospace
13 7 (1.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 7 (1.01%) Influencing Skills
13 7 (1.01%) Retail
14 5 (0.72%) Law
15 4 (0.58%) Retail Banking
16 3 (0.43%) Local Government
16 3 (0.43%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 197 (28.51%) Network Engineer
2 96 (13.89%) Architect
3 68 (9.84%) Senior
4 51 (7.38%) Security Engineer
5 50 (7.24%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 39 (5.64%) Network Architect
7 38 (5.50%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
8 34 (4.92%) Platform Engineer
9 29 (4.20%) DevOps Engineer
10 27 (3.91%) Analyst
11 23 (3.33%) IT Engineer
12 22 (3.18%) IT Support
13 21 (3.04%) Security Architect
13 21 (3.04%) Support Engineer
14 20 (2.89%) Cisco Engineer
15 19 (2.75%) Solutions Architect
16 18 (2.60%) AWS Engineer
17 17 (2.46%) Cisco Network Engineer
17 17 (2.46%) Cloud Platform Engineer
17 17 (2.46%) Senior Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (4.63%) 802.1X
2 25 (3.62%) LDAP
3 20 (2.89%) SAML
4 16 (2.32%) OAuth
4 16 (2.32%) OAuth2
5 15 (2.17%) Middleware
5 15 (2.17%) OpenID
6 13 (1.88%) Kafka
7 11 (1.59%) Node.js
8 10 (1.45%) JSON
9 9 (1.30%) OpenTelemetry
10 8 (1.16%) REST
10 8 (1.16%) Spring Boot
11 7 (1.01%) RFC 2544
12 4 (0.58%) ARM Templates
12 4 (0.58%) Microsoft Graph
12 4 (0.58%) XML
13 3 (0.43%) Elastic Stack
13 3 (0.43%) Lambda Expressions
14 2 (0.29%) ModSecurity
Miscellaneous
1 142 (20.55%) Data Centre
2 56 (8.10%) Security Posture
3 35 (5.07%) PKI
4 28 (4.05%) Onboarding
5 24 (3.47%) Replication
6 23 (3.33%) Operational Technology
7 22 (3.18%) Hybrid Cloud
8 17 (2.46%) NHS
9 16 (2.32%) Security Operations Centre
10 14 (2.03%) Data Protection Act
10 14 (2.03%) Management Information System
10 14 (2.03%) Private Cloud
11 13 (1.88%) Cloud Native
11 13 (1.88%) Cyber Threat
12 11 (1.59%) Fat Client
12 11 (1.59%) Thin Client
13 10 (1.45%) Distributed Systems
14 9 (1.30%) Product Ownership
14 9 (1.30%) Public Cloud
14 9 (1.30%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 196 (28.36%) Windows
2 147 (21.27%) Linux
3 77 (11.14%) Windows Server
4 18 (2.60%) Unix
5 16 (2.32%) VMS
6 15 (2.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 13 (1.88%) Amazon Linux
8 11 (1.59%) Windows 7
8 11 (1.59%) Windows Server 2019
9 10 (1.45%) Ubuntu
10 7 (1.01%) Windows 10
11 4 (0.58%) Solaris
11 4 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.43%) Android
12 3 (0.43%) Apple iOS
12 3 (0.43%) CatOS
12 3 (0.43%) CentOS
12 3 (0.43%) Mac OS
12 3 (0.43%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.29%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 137 (19.83%) Cybersecurity
2 106 (15.34%) Problem-Solving
3 102 (14.76%) DevOps
4 92 (13.31%) CI/CD
5 80 (11.58%) Incident Response
6 77 (11.14%) Infrastructure as Code
7 76 (11.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 68 (9.84%) SIEM
9 67 (9.70%) Agile
10 63 (9.12%) ITIL
11 62 (8.97%) Containerisation
12 61 (8.83%) Load Balancing
13 56 (8.10%) High Availability
14 55 (7.96%) Cloud Security
14 55 (7.96%) Mentoring
14 55 (7.96%) Migration
15 51 (7.38%) Change Management
15 51 (7.38%) Network Design
16 50 (7.24%) Continuous Improvement
17 49 (7.09%) Zero Trust
Programming Languages
1 136 (19.68%) Python
2 116 (16.79%) PowerShell
3 67 (9.70%) Bash
4 38 (5.50%) SQL
5 34 (4.92%) Java
6 29 (4.20%) Perl
7 11 (1.59%) Bicep
8 10 (1.45%) Groovy
8 10 (1.45%) Ruby
9 8 (1.16%) Rust
10 6 (0.87%) Shell Script
11 4 (0.58%) C#
11 4 (0.58%) Kusto Query Language
12 3 (0.43%) Go
13 1 (0.14%) COBOL
13 1 (0.14%) JavaScript
13 1 (0.14%) Lisp
13 1 (0.14%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 284 (41.10%) Security Cleared
2 189 (27.35%) SC Cleared
3 135 (19.54%) Cisco Certification
4 114 (16.50%) CCNP
5 75 (10.85%) DV Cleared
6 67 (9.70%) Degree
7 62 (8.97%) CCNA
8 42 (6.08%) CISSP
9 29 (4.20%) AWS Certification
10 28 (4.05%) CCIE
11 25 (3.62%) Azure Certification
11 25 (3.62%) Microsoft Certification
12 24 (3.47%) 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%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 60 (8.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 48 (6.95%) NIST
3 34 (4.92%) GDPR
4 30 (4.34%) PCI DSS
5 18 (2.60%) Cyber Essentials
5 18 (2.60%) SLA
6 14 (2.03%) NCSC
6 14 (2.03%) QA
7 10 (1.45%) PMO
8 6 (0.87%) COBIT
9 5 (0.72%) Actionable Recommendations
10 4 (0.58%) GRC
11 3 (0.43%) NIST 800
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%) GAMP
13 1 (0.14%) GxP
13 1 (0.14%) HIPAA
13 1 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 131 (18.96%) Active Directory
2 109 (15.77%) VMware Infrastructure
3 87 (12.59%) Docker
4 30 (4.34%) vSphere
5 28 (4.05%) VMware NSX
6 27 (3.91%) Hyper-V
7 15 (2.17%) VMware ESXi
8 13 (1.88%) DFS Replication
9 8 (1.16%) Virtual Machines
10 7 (1.01%) Dovecot
10 7 (1.01%) Firmware
10 7 (1.01%) Postfix
10 7 (1.01%) Squid
10 7 (1.01%) Virtual Desktop
11 6 (0.87%) Virtual Servers
12 5 (0.72%) KVM
13 2 (0.29%) Xen
14 1 (0.14%) ProxySG
14 1 (0.14%) XenApp
14 1 (0.14%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 95 (13.75%) Terraform
2 80 (11.58%) Ansible
3 71 (10.27%) Kubernetes
4 28 (4.05%) Grafana
5 27 (3.91%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 23 (3.33%) FortiGate
6 23 (3.33%) Microsoft Intune
6 23 (3.33%) Prometheus
6 23 (3.33%) Single Sign-On
7 20 (2.89%) vCenter Server
8 18 (2.60%) Nmap
9 15 (2.17%) SCCM
10 11 (1.59%) Nessus
10 11 (1.59%) WMI
11 10 (1.45%) CSIRT
12 9 (1.30%) Fluentd
12 9 (1.30%) Nagios
13 8 (1.16%) Kiali
13 8 (1.16%) Proxmox
14 6 (0.87%) Puppet
Vendors
1 256 (37.05%) Cisco
2 160 (23.15%) Palo Alto
3 149 (21.56%) Microsoft
4 137 (19.83%) VMware
5 85 (12.30%) F5
6 81 (11.72%) CheckPoint
7 59 (8.54%) Fortinet
8 54 (7.81%) Juniper
9 48 (6.95%) Splunk
10 43 (6.22%) Aruba
10 43 (6.22%) Meraki
11 42 (6.08%) SolarWinds
12 36 (5.21%) Oracle
13 28 (4.05%) Google
14 25 (3.62%) ServiceNow
15 20 (2.89%) Dell
16 18 (2.60%) Citrix
17 16 (2.32%) Red Hat
18 15 (2.17%) Veeam
18 15 (2.17%) Zscaler