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

6 months to
4 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 60 41 35
Rank change year-on-year -19 -6 +18
Contract jobs citing Firewall 678 660 982
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.73% 4.65% 5.04%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.79% 28.92% 28.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 451 370 650
10th Percentile £313 £275 £313
25th Percentile £400 £378 £385
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% - +5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £613
90th Percentile £650 £635 £679
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 18 43
10th Percentile £27.88 £20.00 £47.91
25th Percentile £38.42 £20.05 £62.50
Median hourly rate £60.50 £35.00 £65.98
Median % change year-on-year +72.85% -46.95% +60.81%
75th Percentile £84.50 £41.25 £76.25
90th Percentile £89.63 £64.13 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £41.94 £35.00 £65.98
% change year-on-year +19.83% -46.95% +104.59%

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 2,202 2,282 3,429
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 12.12% 16.07% 17.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,463 1,281 2,052
10th Percentile £200 £190 £205
25th Percentile £300 £313 £335
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £470
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +1.06% +4.44%
75th Percentile £563 £580 £595
90th Percentile £650 £650 £683
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 129 110 269
10th Percentile £15.31 £15.20 £17.72
25th Percentile £16.25 £20.30 £26.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £31.79 £59.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.69% -46.12% +66.20%
75th Percentile £67.84 £61.13 £65.98
90th Percentile £83.15 £71.25 £75.05
UK median hourly rate £36.75 £32.50 £56.49
% change year-on-year +13.08% -42.47% +76.53%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 -22 195 £515 +8.42% 96
South East +7 193 £500 - 164
Midlands -19 122 £475 -5.00% 45
West Midlands -5 113 £475 +7.04% 38
North West -22 106 £525 +10.53% 46
Yorkshire -23 85 £449 +5.53% 40
Scotland -20 59 £425 -15.00% 18
South West -30 52 £550 +15.79% 39
East of England -18 39 £475 -9.52% 43
Wales -23 10 £293 -19.86% 12
East Midlands -50 8 £500 -23.14% 6
Northern Ireland - 8 £500 - 7
North East -12 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 32 (4.72%) Confluence
2 11 (1.62%) nginx
3 10 (1.47%) Apache
3 10 (1.47%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (1.47%) SharePoint
4 7 (1.03%) IIS
5 5 (0.74%) OpenStack
6 3 (0.44%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.29%) CICS
7 2 (0.29%) WebSphere
8 1 (0.15%) CMS
8 1 (0.15%) JBoss
8 1 (0.15%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 31 (4.57%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (2.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (2.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (1.77%) MS Visio
4 10 (1.47%) Mozilla Thunderbird
5 1 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.15%) Finacle
1 1 (0.15%) Pegasus Opera
1 1 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 192 (28.32%) AWS
2 182 (26.84%) Azure
3 74 (10.91%) GCP
4 49 (7.23%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 43 (6.34%) Amazon EC2
6 42 (6.19%) Microsoft 365
7 34 (5.01%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 32 (4.72%) Amazon S3
9 30 (4.42%) Entra ID
10 27 (3.98%) Amazon ELB
11 24 (3.54%) Amazon ECS
12 20 (2.95%) AWS CloudFormation
12 20 (2.95%) AWS KMS
12 20 (2.95%) Azure Sentinel
12 20 (2.95%) Serverless
13 17 (2.51%) IaaS
14 16 (2.36%) AWS Lambda
14 16 (2.36%) Azure Monitor
14 16 (2.36%) PaaS
15 14 (2.06%) Akamai
Communications & Networking
1 161 (23.75%) Network Security
2 150 (22.12%) VPN
3 139 (20.50%) DNS
4 126 (18.58%) WAN
5 88 (12.98%) BGP
5 88 (12.98%) TCP/IP
6 87 (12.83%) LAN
7 82 (12.09%) VLAN
8 81 (11.95%) Wireless
9 74 (10.91%) OSPF
10 54 (7.96%) DHCP
11 50 (7.37%) SD-WAN
12 39 (5.75%) Cisco ASA
12 39 (5.75%) IPsec
12 39 (5.75%) SSL
13 37 (5.46%) MPLS
13 37 (5.46%) Wi-Fi
14 35 (5.16%) Cisco ISE
15 29 (4.28%) HTTP
16 28 (4.13%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (4.72%) Amazon RDS
2 23 (3.39%) SQL Server
3 21 (3.10%) PostgreSQL
4 10 (1.47%) Amazon Aurora
5 4 (0.59%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.59%) Relational Database
6 3 (0.44%) DynamoDB
7 2 (0.29%) Elasticsearch
7 2 (0.29%) MariaDB
7 2 (0.29%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.29%) Oracle Database
8 1 (0.15%) Amazon QuickSight
8 1 (0.15%) BusinessObjects
8 1 (0.15%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
8 1 (0.15%) Metadata
8 1 (0.15%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (0.15%) Redis
8 1 (0.15%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 57 (8.41%) Jenkins
2 53 (7.82%) JIRA
3 51 (7.52%) Git
4 36 (5.31%) GitLab
5 16 (2.36%) Sonatype Nexus
5 16 (2.36%) Vagrant
6 14 (2.06%) Burp Suite
6 14 (2.06%) Metasploit
7 10 (1.47%) Bitbucket
8 5 (0.74%) Jaeger
9 4 (0.59%) CircleCI
10 2 (0.29%) Postman
11 1 (0.15%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.15%) Eclipse
11 1 (0.15%) MSI
11 1 (0.15%) SonarQube
11 1 (0.15%) Subversion
11 1 (0.15%) Travis CI
General
1 203 (29.94%) Social Skills
2 86 (12.68%) Analytical Skills
3 83 (12.24%) Public Sector
4 62 (9.14%) Finance
5 49 (7.23%) Documentation Skills
6 31 (4.57%) Banking
7 28 (4.13%) Telecoms
8 21 (3.10%) Legal
8 21 (3.10%) Manufacturing
9 16 (2.36%) Presentation Skills
10 8 (1.18%) Organisational Skills
11 7 (1.03%) Aerospace
11 7 (1.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 7 (1.03%) Law
11 7 (1.03%) Military
11 7 (1.03%) Retail
12 6 (0.88%) Financial Institution
13 5 (0.74%) Influencing Skills
14 4 (0.59%) Retail Banking
15 3 (0.44%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 189 (27.88%) Network Engineer
2 89 (13.13%) Architect
3 65 (9.59%) Senior
4 55 (8.11%) Security Engineer
5 47 (6.93%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 46 (6.78%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
7 37 (5.46%) Network Architect
8 36 (5.31%) Platform Engineer
9 35 (5.16%) DevOps Engineer
10 31 (4.57%) Analyst
11 23 (3.39%) AWS Engineer
11 23 (3.39%) IT Engineer
11 23 (3.39%) Security Architect
12 22 (3.24%) Support Engineer
13 21 (3.10%) Cloud Platform Engineer
14 20 (2.95%) Firewall Engineer
14 20 (2.95%) IT Support
15 19 (2.80%) Consultant
16 18 (2.65%) AWS DevOps
16 18 (2.65%) Cisco Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (4.42%) 802.1X
2 22 (3.24%) LDAP
3 16 (2.36%) SAML
4 14 (2.06%) Middleware
5 13 (1.92%) OAuth
5 13 (1.92%) OAuth2
5 13 (1.92%) OpenID
6 11 (1.62%) Node.js
7 10 (1.47%) JSON
8 9 (1.33%) Kafka
9 8 (1.18%) REST
9 8 (1.18%) RFC 2544
10 5 (0.74%) OpenTelemetry
10 5 (0.74%) Spring Boot
11 4 (0.59%) XML
12 3 (0.44%) ARM Templates
12 3 (0.44%) Elastic Stack
12 3 (0.44%) Lambda Expressions
12 3 (0.44%) Microsoft Graph
13 2 (0.29%) ModSecurity
Miscellaneous
1 124 (18.29%) Data Centre
2 56 (8.26%) Security Posture
3 35 (5.16%) PKI
4 29 (4.28%) Replication
5 28 (4.13%) Onboarding
5 28 (4.13%) Operational Technology
6 27 (3.98%) Hybrid Cloud
7 15 (2.21%) Cloud Native
7 15 (2.21%) Cyber Threat
7 15 (2.21%) Data Protection Act
8 14 (2.06%) Management Information System
9 13 (1.92%) Security Operations Centre
10 10 (1.47%) Enterprise Software
10 10 (1.47%) Fat Client
10 10 (1.47%) Private Cloud
10 10 (1.47%) Thin Client
11 9 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
11 9 (1.33%) Product Ownership
11 9 (1.33%) SCADA
12 8 (1.18%) Cloud Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 196 (28.91%) Windows
2 151 (22.27%) Linux
3 73 (10.77%) Windows Server
4 24 (3.54%) VMS
5 23 (3.39%) Unix
6 19 (2.80%) Amazon Linux
7 17 (2.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 14 (2.06%) Ubuntu
9 10 (1.47%) Windows 7
10 9 (1.33%) Windows 10
10 9 (1.33%) Windows Server 2019
11 7 (1.03%) Mac OS
12 5 (0.74%) Windows Server 2012
12 5 (0.74%) Windows Server 2016
13 3 (0.44%) Android
13 3 (0.44%) Apple iOS
13 3 (0.44%) CentOS
13 3 (0.44%) Solaris
14 2 (0.29%) Windows Server 2008
14 2 (0.29%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 134 (19.76%) Cybersecurity
2 112 (16.52%) Problem-Solving
3 101 (14.90%) DevOps
4 90 (13.27%) CI/CD
5 85 (12.54%) Incident Response
6 81 (11.95%) SIEM
7 73 (10.77%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 70 (10.32%) Cloud Security
8 70 (10.32%) Infrastructure as Code
9 64 (9.44%) ITIL
10 61 (9.00%) High Availability
11 60 (8.85%) Agile
12 59 (8.70%) Migration
13 58 (8.55%) Containerisation
14 57 (8.41%) Load Balancing
15 51 (7.52%) Change Management
15 51 (7.52%) Network Design
16 50 (7.37%) Zero Trust
17 47 (6.93%) Mentoring
17 47 (6.93%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 139 (20.50%) Python
2 113 (16.67%) PowerShell
3 66 (9.73%) Bash
4 37 (5.46%) SQL
5 34 (5.01%) Java
6 33 (4.87%) Perl
7 16 (2.36%) Groovy
8 10 (1.47%) Ruby
9 9 (1.33%) Shell Script
10 8 (1.18%) Bicep
11 5 (0.74%) Kusto Query Language
11 5 (0.74%) Rust
12 4 (0.59%) C#
13 3 (0.44%) Go
14 1 (0.15%) C++
14 1 (0.15%) JavaScript
14 1 (0.15%) Korn
14 1 (0.15%) Lisp
14 1 (0.15%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 291 (42.92%) Security Cleared
2 203 (29.94%) SC Cleared
3 134 (19.76%) Cisco Certification
4 111 (16.37%) CCNP
5 73 (10.77%) Degree
6 67 (9.88%) DV Cleared
7 52 (7.67%) CCNA
8 51 (7.52%) CISSP
9 36 (5.31%) AWS Certification
10 33 (4.87%) Azure Certification
10 33 (4.87%) Microsoft Certification
11 26 (3.83%) CCIE
12 24 (3.54%) CISM
13 15 (2.21%) CompTIA Security+
14 14 (2.06%) CHECK Team Member
15 12 (1.77%) Computer Science Degree
15 12 (1.77%) CREST Certified
15 12 (1.77%) Cyber Scheme
16 11 (1.62%) Postgraduate
17 10 (1.47%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 61 (9.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 51 (7.52%) NIST
3 43 (6.34%) GDPR
4 32 (4.72%) PCI DSS
5 17 (2.51%) SLA
6 14 (2.06%) QA
7 13 (1.92%) Cyber Essentials
8 12 (1.77%) NCSC
9 10 (1.47%) PMO
10 7 (1.03%) COBIT
11 5 (0.74%) PSD2
12 4 (0.59%) Actionable Recommendations
13 3 (0.44%) NIST 800
14 2 (0.29%) Disclosure Scotland
14 2 (0.29%) GRC
14 2 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
14 2 (0.29%) JSP 440
15 1 (0.15%) GAMP
15 1 (0.15%) GxP
15 1 (0.15%) HIPAA
System Software
1 116 (17.11%) Active Directory
2 104 (15.34%) VMware Infrastructure
3 90 (13.27%) Docker
4 31 (4.57%) Hyper-V
5 26 (3.83%) vSphere
6 23 (3.39%) VMware NSX
7 19 (2.80%) DFS Replication
8 15 (2.21%) VMware ESXi
9 11 (1.62%) Virtual Machines
10 10 (1.47%) Dovecot
10 10 (1.47%) Postfix
10 10 (1.47%) Squid
11 6 (0.88%) Firmware
11 6 (0.88%) Virtual Servers
12 5 (0.74%) KVM
13 4 (0.59%) Terminal Services
14 2 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
14 2 (0.29%) Xen
14 2 (0.29%) XenApp
15 1 (0.15%) RHEV
Systems Management
1 96 (14.16%) Terraform
2 77 (11.36%) Ansible
3 66 (9.73%) Kubernetes
4 30 (4.42%) FortiGate
5 27 (3.98%) Grafana
6 24 (3.54%) vCenter Server
7 23 (3.39%) Prometheus
8 20 (2.95%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 19 (2.80%) Single Sign-On
10 18 (2.65%) Microsoft Intune
11 17 (2.51%) Nmap
12 16 (2.36%) Nessus
13 14 (2.06%) SCCM
14 11 (1.62%) Proxmox
15 10 (1.47%) CSIRT
15 10 (1.47%) WMI
16 8 (1.18%) Fluentd
16 8 (1.18%) Nagios
17 6 (0.88%) NetBackup
17 6 (0.88%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 257 (37.91%) Cisco
2 166 (24.48%) Palo Alto
3 150 (22.12%) Microsoft
4 128 (18.88%) VMware
5 96 (14.16%) F5
6 84 (12.39%) CheckPoint
7 63 (9.29%) Fortinet
8 51 (7.52%) Splunk
9 48 (7.08%) Juniper
10 42 (6.19%) Meraki
11 39 (5.75%) SolarWinds
12 37 (5.46%) Aruba
13 36 (5.31%) Oracle
14 32 (4.72%) ServiceNow
15 31 (4.57%) Google
16 25 (3.69%) Citrix
17 20 (2.95%) Dell
18 17 (2.51%) Red Hat
18 17 (2.51%) Zscaler
19 12 (1.77%) Veeam