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 17 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 63 41 38
Rank change year-on-year -22 -3 +8
Contract jobs citing Firewall 750 640 937
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.47% 5.04% 4.44%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.33% 29.67% 25.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 512 369 585
10th Percentile £313 £300 £281
25th Percentile £409 £400 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £570 £580 £608
90th Percentile £638 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £515 £507
% change year-on-year -2.91% +1.58% -3.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 16 32
10th Percentile £36.45 £14.20 £23.92
25th Percentile £39.30 £24.31 £55.47
Median hourly rate £48.72 £37.07 £72.50
Median % change year-on-year +31.42% -48.87% +31.06%
75th Percentile £74.26 £42.73 £85.65
90th Percentile £85.80 £73.75 £87.53
UK median hourly rate £42.32 £37.00 £64.00
% change year-on-year +14.39% -42.19% +15.69%

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 2,473 2,157 3,668
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 11.43% 16.98% 17.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,585 1,299 2,129
10th Percentile £203 £190 £203
25th Percentile £335 £313 £333
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
75th Percentile £575 £580 £588
90th Percentile £664 £650 £675
UK median daily rate £488 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -2.50% +5.26% -9.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 141 120 321
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £16.73 £21.00 £18.00
Median hourly rate £42.25 £32.50 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year +30.00% -29.16% +148.00%
75th Percentile £67.25 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £40.54 £35.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year +15.83% +7.69% +71.05%

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 17 March 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 17 March 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 17 March 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 -23 234 £500 - 105
South East +11 232 £500 - 166
North West -15 154 £527 +8.00% 62
Midlands -42 92 £431 -22.30% 52
West Midlands -30 83 £425 -11.23% 26
Yorkshire -25 78 £440 -20.00% 30
South West -45 57 £550 +0.92% 36
Scotland -3 55 £450 +2.86% 22
East of England -21 53 £475 -13.64% 62
Wales -18 25 £425 +7.94% 19
East Midlands -56 7 £475 -24.00% 26
North East -16 5 £548 -0.45% 13
Northern Ireland - 4 £488 - 3
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 16 (2.13%) Confluence
2 11 (1.47%) Microsoft Exchange
3 9 (1.20%) Apache
4 8 (1.07%) CICS
5 7 (0.93%) SharePoint
6 6 (0.80%) IIS
7 4 (0.53%) OpenStack
8 2 (0.27%) Apache Pulsar
8 2 (0.27%) Skype for Business
9 1 (0.13%) IBM HTTP Server
9 1 (0.13%) nginx
9 1 (0.13%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 1 (0.13%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.13%) WebSphere Application Server
9 1 (0.13%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 30 (4.00%) Microsoft Office
2 18 (2.40%) Microsoft Excel
3 16 (2.13%) MS Visio
4 14 (1.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.40%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 212 (28.27%) Azure
2 160 (21.33%) AWS
3 65 (8.67%) GCP
4 54 (7.20%) Entra ID
5 40 (5.33%) Microsoft 365
6 35 (4.67%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 26 (3.47%) GitHub
8 25 (3.33%) Serverless
9 23 (3.07%) AWS CloudFormation
10 22 (2.93%) Azure DevOps
10 22 (2.93%) IaaS
11 21 (2.80%) AWS Lambda
11 21 (2.80%) Azure Sentinel
11 21 (2.80%) PaaS
12 20 (2.67%) Amazon EC2
13 19 (2.53%) Azure Monitor
14 16 (2.13%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 15 (2.00%) Amazon EKS
16 14 (1.87%) Amazon ECS
16 14 (1.87%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 192 (25.60%) Network Security
2 186 (24.80%) WAN
3 163 (21.73%) VPN
4 150 (20.00%) LAN
5 148 (19.73%) DNS
6 123 (16.40%) BGP
7 111 (14.80%) OSPF
8 97 (12.93%) VLAN
9 90 (12.00%) Wireless
10 87 (11.60%) DHCP
11 80 (10.67%) TCP/IP
12 62 (8.27%) SD-WAN
13 59 (7.87%) Cisco ISE
14 55 (7.33%) IPsec
15 53 (7.07%) Wi-Fi
16 48 (6.40%) MPLS
17 44 (5.87%) VXLAN
18 41 (5.47%) Ethernet VPN
19 37 (4.93%) Cisco Nexus
20 36 (4.80%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (2.13%) Amazon RDS
2 12 (1.60%) PostgreSQL
2 12 (1.60%) SQL Server
3 8 (1.07%) DataStage
4 6 (0.80%) Power BI
5 4 (0.53%) Azure SQL Database
5 4 (0.53%) Data Lake
5 4 (0.53%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.53%) NoSQL
5 4 (0.53%) Relational Database
6 3 (0.40%) Delta Lake
6 3 (0.40%) DynamoDB
6 3 (0.40%) Oracle Database
7 2 (0.27%) Amazon QuickSight
7 2 (0.27%) MariaDB
8 1 (0.13%) Amazon Athena
8 1 (0.13%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.13%) Elasticsearch
8 1 (0.13%) Redis
8 1 (0.13%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 48 (6.40%) JIRA
2 36 (4.80%) Jenkins
3 31 (4.13%) GitLab
4 29 (3.87%) Git
5 21 (2.80%) Sonatype Nexus
6 16 (2.13%) Burp Suite
6 16 (2.13%) Metasploit
7 11 (1.47%) Bitbucket
8 8 (1.07%) Jaeger
9 4 (0.53%) CircleCI
10 3 (0.40%) Chocolatey
11 2 (0.27%) Browser DevTools
12 1 (0.13%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.13%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.13%) Introscope
12 1 (0.13%) MSI
12 1 (0.13%) Subversion
12 1 (0.13%) Travis CI
General
1 212 (28.27%) Social Skills
2 86 (11.47%) Finance
3 74 (9.87%) Analytical Skills
4 70 (9.33%) Public Sector
5 59 (7.87%) Documentation Skills
6 26 (3.47%) Banking
7 20 (2.67%) Legal
8 19 (2.53%) Manufacturing
8 19 (2.53%) Telecoms
9 15 (2.00%) Influencing Skills
10 10 (1.33%) Financial Institution
11 9 (1.20%) Military
12 8 (1.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 7 (0.93%) Aerospace
14 6 (0.80%) Law
14 6 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
14 6 (0.80%) Retail
15 4 (0.53%) Organisational Skills
16 3 (0.40%) Electronics
16 3 (0.40%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 240 (32.00%) Network Engineer
2 114 (15.20%) Architect
3 77 (10.27%) Senior
4 58 (7.73%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 56 (7.47%) Security Engineer
6 50 (6.67%) Network Architect
7 42 (5.60%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
8 31 (4.13%) Senior Network Engineer
9 26 (3.47%) Analyst
9 26 (3.47%) Cloud Engineer
10 25 (3.33%) IT Support
11 24 (3.20%) Cisco Engineer
11 24 (3.20%) Platform Engineer
12 23 (3.07%) Security Architect
13 21 (2.80%) Cisco Network Engineer
13 21 (2.80%) IT Engineer
14 20 (2.67%) DevOps Engineer
14 20 (2.67%) Network Specialist
14 20 (2.67%) Solutions Architect
15 19 (2.53%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 61 (8.13%) 802.1X
2 22 (2.93%) LDAP
2 22 (2.93%) SAML
3 19 (2.53%) Middleware
4 17 (2.27%) Kafka
4 17 (2.27%) OAuth
4 17 (2.27%) OAuth2
5 15 (2.00%) OpenID
6 10 (1.33%) Node.js
6 10 (1.33%) OpenTelemetry
7 8 (1.07%) Spring Boot
8 6 (0.80%) JSON
8 6 (0.80%) LangChain
8 6 (0.80%) PyTorch
8 6 (0.80%) scikit-learn
9 5 (0.67%) REST
9 5 (0.67%) YAML
10 4 (0.53%) ARM Templates
10 4 (0.53%) RFC 2544
11 3 (0.40%) Microsoft Graph
Miscellaneous
1 176 (23.47%) Data Centre
2 58 (7.73%) Security Posture
3 49 (6.53%) PKI
4 37 (4.93%) Cloud Native
5 27 (3.60%) Operational Technology
6 25 (3.33%) Onboarding
7 24 (3.20%) Hybrid Cloud
8 23 (3.07%) Clustering
9 18 (2.40%) NHS
10 17 (2.27%) IoT
11 15 (2.00%) Management Information System
11 15 (2.00%) Security Operations Centre
12 13 (1.73%) Product Ownership
13 12 (1.60%) BYOD
13 12 (1.60%) Cyber Threat
13 12 (1.60%) Private Cloud
13 12 (1.60%) Public Cloud
14 11 (1.47%) Enterprise Software
15 10 (1.33%) Replication
15 10 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 221 (29.47%) Windows
2 148 (19.73%) Linux
3 88 (11.73%) Windows Server
4 26 (3.47%) Unix
5 21 (2.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 9 (1.20%) Solaris
6 9 (1.20%) Windows 7
7 8 (1.07%) AIX
8 7 (0.93%) Windows Server 2019
9 5 (0.67%) VMS
9 5 (0.67%) Windows Server 2016
10 4 (0.53%) Windows Server 2012
11 3 (0.40%) Amazon Linux
11 3 (0.40%) CatOS
11 3 (0.40%) Mac OS
12 2 (0.27%) CentOS
12 2 (0.27%) Ubuntu
12 2 (0.27%) Windows 10
13 1 (0.13%) Data ONTAP
13 1 (0.13%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 142 (18.93%) Cybersecurity
2 120 (16.00%) Problem-Solving
3 107 (14.27%) DevOps
4 98 (13.07%) CI/CD
5 94 (12.53%) Load Balancing
6 90 (12.00%) High Availability
7 89 (11.87%) ITIL
8 87 (11.60%) Infrastructure as Code
9 82 (10.93%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 69 (9.20%) SIEM
11 64 (8.53%) Zero Trust
12 63 (8.40%) Agile
13 62 (8.27%) Cloud Security
13 62 (8.27%) Identity Access Management
13 62 (8.27%) Incident Response
14 61 (8.13%) Observability
15 60 (8.00%) Network Segmentation
16 59 (7.87%) Mentoring
16 59 (7.87%) Technical Leadership
17 58 (7.73%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 122 (16.27%) Python
2 108 (14.40%) PowerShell
3 60 (8.00%) Bash
4 30 (4.00%) SQL
5 28 (3.73%) Java
6 24 (3.20%) Bicep
6 24 (3.20%) Perl
7 10 (1.33%) Ruby
8 8 (1.07%) COBOL
8 8 (1.07%) Rust
9 4 (0.53%) C#
10 3 (0.40%) Go
10 3 (0.40%) Kusto Query Language
10 3 (0.40%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.27%) C++
11 2 (0.27%) JavaScript
12 1 (0.13%) Jython
12 1 (0.13%) Korn
12 1 (0.13%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 308 (41.07%) Security Cleared
2 196 (26.13%) SC Cleared
3 158 (21.07%) Cisco Certification
4 127 (16.93%) CCNP
5 91 (12.13%) DV Cleared
6 78 (10.40%) CCNA
7 70 (9.33%) Degree
8 43 (5.73%) CISSP
9 32 (4.27%) AWS Certification
10 29 (3.87%) Microsoft Certification
11 23 (3.07%) Azure Certification
12 22 (2.93%) CCIE
13 21 (2.80%) CISM
14 17 (2.27%) JNCIS
15 16 (2.13%) CHECK Team Member
16 14 (1.87%) CompTIA Security+
16 14 (1.87%) CREST Certified
16 14 (1.87%) Cyber Scheme
16 14 (1.87%) JNCIA
16 14 (1.87%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 67 (8.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 47 (6.27%) NIST
3 42 (5.60%) GDPR
4 34 (4.53%) PCI DSS
5 22 (2.93%) NCSC
6 21 (2.80%) Cyber Essentials
7 16 (2.13%) QA
8 15 (2.00%) SLA
9 12 (1.60%) PMO
10 5 (0.67%) Actionable Recommendations
11 4 (0.53%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 4 (0.53%) JSP 440
12 3 (0.40%) COBIT
12 3 (0.40%) Data Quality
12 3 (0.40%) GRC
13 2 (0.27%) Disclosure Scotland
13 2 (0.27%) Government Security Classifications
13 2 (0.27%) NIST 800
13 2 (0.27%) PSD2
13 2 (0.27%) SOC 2
System Software
1 149 (19.87%) Active Directory
2 112 (14.93%) VMware Infrastructure
3 70 (9.33%) Docker
4 33 (4.40%) VMware NSX
4 33 (4.40%) vSphere
5 25 (3.33%) Hyper-V
6 12 (1.60%) VMware ESXi
7 11 (1.47%) Firmware
8 8 (1.07%) Virtual Desktop
9 6 (0.80%) Virtual Servers
10 5 (0.67%) Virtual Machines
11 3 (0.40%) DFS Replication
11 3 (0.40%) KVM
12 1 (0.13%) Citrix Hypervisor
12 1 (0.13%) ProxySG
12 1 (0.13%) RHEV
12 1 (0.13%) UAG
12 1 (0.13%) Xen
12 1 (0.13%) XenApp
12 1 (0.13%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 105 (14.00%) Terraform
2 73 (9.73%) Kubernetes
3 70 (9.33%) Ansible
4 43 (5.73%) FortiGate
5 27 (3.60%) Single Sign-On
6 25 (3.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 24 (3.20%) Microsoft Intune
8 22 (2.93%) Grafana
9 20 (2.67%) vCenter Server
10 18 (2.40%) Nmap
11 16 (2.13%) Prometheus
12 12 (1.60%) SCCM
13 10 (1.33%) Nagios
14 9 (1.20%) CASB
14 9 (1.20%) WMI
15 8 (1.07%) Kiali
15 8 (1.07%) Nessus
16 7 (0.93%) Progress Chef
16 7 (0.93%) VxRail
17 6 (0.80%) Cisco Prime
Vendors
1 279 (37.20%) Cisco
2 158 (21.07%) Microsoft
3 151 (20.13%) Palo Alto
4 146 (19.47%) VMware
5 84 (11.20%) F5
5 84 (11.20%) Juniper
6 68 (9.07%) CheckPoint
7 63 (8.40%) Fortinet
7 63 (8.40%) Splunk
8 59 (7.87%) SolarWinds
9 56 (7.47%) Aruba
10 41 (5.47%) Google
11 40 (5.33%) Meraki
12 31 (4.13%) ServiceNow
13 26 (3.47%) Red Hat
14 22 (2.93%) Extreme Networks
15 21 (2.80%) Oracle
16 19 (2.53%) Citrix
17 15 (2.00%) Veeam
18 13 (1.73%) Dell