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 5 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 63 42 35
Rank change year-on-year -21 -7 +13
Contract jobs citing Firewall 696 630 1,007
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.56% 4.63% 4.84%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 29.99% 28.01% 27.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 473 356 652
10th Percentile £309 £275 £276
25th Percentile £400 £385 £389
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £498 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.11% -0.50% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £608
90th Percentile £650 £638 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £520
% change year-on-year -3.85% - -0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 20 49
10th Percentile £35.13 £20.00 £52.47
25th Percentile £37.25 £20.14 £62.50
Median hourly rate £45.33 £35.00 £67.27
Median % change year-on-year +29.51% -47.97% +29.03%
75th Percentile £74.26 £41.62 £76.53
90th Percentile £85.90 £61.38 £85.92
UK median hourly rate £41.94 £35.82 £65.98
% change year-on-year +17.08% -45.71% +57.04%

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 2,321 2,249 3,633
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 11.88% 16.54% 17.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,550 1,279 2,091
10th Percentile £193 £190 £205
25th Percentile £306 £300 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £452 £470 £475
Median % change year-on-year -3.83% -1.05% +2.15%
75th Percentile £563 £580 £588
90th Percentile £651 £650 £675
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £493
% change year-on-year -5.00% +1.52% -4.83%
Number of hourly rates quoted 121 112 333
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.44 £15.33
25th Percentile £16.00 £21.00 £22.50
Median hourly rate £41.94 £31.79 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +31.93% -42.20% +177.08%
75th Percentile £65.00 £61.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £32.00 £35.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year -8.57% -30.00% +150.00%

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 5 February 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 5 February 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 5 February 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 -22 206 £500 +5.26% 107
South East +13 183 £500 - 180
North West -18 117 £523 +5.56% 69
Midlands -35 114 £469 -6.25% 58
West Midlands -8 105 £463 +5.71% 41
Yorkshire -17 86 £473 +11.18% 28
South West -25 62 £550 +7.32% 51
Scotland -12 59 £425 -2.86% 30
East of England -20 44 £460 -12.38% 65
Wales -12 20 £425 +16.44% 9
East Midlands -50 8 £500 -23.14% 17
Northern Ireland - 8 £488 - 2
North East -16 6 £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 26 (3.74%) Confluence
2 10 (1.44%) Apache
2 10 (1.44%) Microsoft Exchange
3 8 (1.15%) nginx
3 8 (1.15%) SharePoint
4 7 (1.01%) IIS
5 5 (0.72%) OpenStack
6 3 (0.43%) CICS
7 2 (0.29%) Apache Pulsar
8 1 (0.14%) CMS
8 1 (0.14%) JBoss
8 1 (0.14%) Tomcat
Applications
1 30 (4.31%) Microsoft Office
2 17 (2.44%) MS Visio
3 16 (2.30%) Microsoft Excel
4 15 (2.16%) 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%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.14%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 185 (26.58%) Azure
2 174 (25.00%) AWS
3 73 (10.49%) GCP
4 43 (6.18%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 42 (6.03%) Microsoft 365
6 38 (5.46%) Entra ID
7 37 (5.32%) Amazon EC2
8 28 (4.02%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 26 (3.74%) Amazon S3
10 22 (3.16%) AWS CloudFormation
11 21 (3.02%) Amazon ECS
11 21 (3.02%) Serverless
12 20 (2.87%) Amazon ELB
12 20 (2.87%) Azure Sentinel
13 19 (2.73%) IaaS
14 18 (2.59%) Azure Monitor
15 17 (2.44%) AWS Lambda
15 17 (2.44%) PaaS
16 16 (2.30%) AWS KMS
17 15 (2.16%) Akamai
Communications & Networking
1 165 (23.71%) Network Security
2 144 (20.69%) VPN
3 135 (19.40%) WAN
4 131 (18.82%) DNS
5 103 (14.80%) LAN
6 89 (12.79%) BGP
7 80 (11.49%) Wireless
8 79 (11.35%) VLAN
9 78 (11.21%) TCP/IP
10 75 (10.78%) OSPF
11 59 (8.48%) DHCP
12 50 (7.18%) SD-WAN
13 40 (5.75%) MPLS
13 40 (5.75%) Wi-Fi
14 39 (5.60%) Cisco ASA
14 39 (5.60%) Cisco ISE
14 39 (5.60%) IPsec
15 35 (5.03%) Cisco Nexus
16 29 (4.17%) SSL
17 25 (3.59%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (3.74%) Amazon RDS
2 21 (3.02%) SQL Server
3 16 (2.30%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (1.01%) Amazon Aurora
5 4 (0.57%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.57%) Relational Database
6 3 (0.43%) DataStage
6 3 (0.43%) DynamoDB
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%) NoSQL
8 1 (0.14%) Power BI
8 1 (0.14%) Redis
8 1 (0.14%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 47 (6.75%) JIRA
2 46 (6.61%) Jenkins
3 40 (5.75%) Git
4 35 (5.03%) GitLab
5 19 (2.73%) Sonatype Nexus
6 14 (2.01%) Burp Suite
6 14 (2.01%) Metasploit
7 11 (1.58%) Bitbucket
8 10 (1.44%) Vagrant
9 8 (1.15%) Jaeger
10 4 (0.57%) 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%) SonarQube
12 1 (0.14%) Subversion
12 1 (0.14%) Travis CI
General
1 206 (29.60%) Social Skills
2 82 (11.78%) Analytical Skills
3 77 (11.06%) Public Sector
4 69 (9.91%) Finance
5 58 (8.33%) Documentation Skills
6 32 (4.60%) Banking
7 28 (4.02%) Telecoms
8 22 (3.16%) Legal
9 20 (2.87%) Manufacturing
10 13 (1.87%) Presentation Skills
11 9 (1.29%) Financial Institution
11 9 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
12 8 (1.15%) Military
13 7 (1.01%) Aerospace
13 7 (1.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 7 (1.01%) Retail
14 5 (0.72%) Law
15 4 (0.57%) Back Office
15 4 (0.57%) Retail Banking
16 3 (0.43%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 197 (28.30%) Network Engineer
2 96 (13.79%) Architect
3 67 (9.63%) Senior
4 52 (7.47%) Security Engineer
5 51 (7.33%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 40 (5.75%) Network Architect
7 39 (5.60%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
8 34 (4.89%) Platform Engineer
9 30 (4.31%) DevOps Engineer
10 27 (3.88%) Analyst
11 23 (3.30%) IT Engineer
12 22 (3.16%) IT Support
12 22 (3.16%) Security Architect
13 21 (3.02%) Support Engineer
14 20 (2.87%) Cisco Engineer
15 18 (2.59%) Solutions Architect
16 17 (2.44%) AWS Engineer
16 17 (2.44%) Cisco Network Engineer
16 17 (2.44%) Cloud Platform Engineer
16 17 (2.44%) Senior Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (4.60%) 802.1X
2 23 (3.30%) LDAP
3 20 (2.87%) SAML
4 17 (2.44%) OAuth
4 17 (2.44%) OAuth2
5 15 (2.16%) Middleware
5 15 (2.16%) OpenID
6 14 (2.01%) Kafka
7 11 (1.58%) Node.js
8 10 (1.44%) JSON
8 10 (1.44%) OpenTelemetry
9 8 (1.15%) REST
9 8 (1.15%) Spring Boot
10 6 (0.86%) RFC 2544
11 4 (0.57%) ARM Templates
11 4 (0.57%) Microsoft Graph
11 4 (0.57%) XML
12 3 (0.43%) Elastic Stack
12 3 (0.43%) Lambda Expressions
13 2 (0.29%) ModSecurity
Miscellaneous
1 142 (20.40%) Data Centre
2 55 (7.90%) Security Posture
3 36 (5.17%) PKI
4 28 (4.02%) Onboarding
5 22 (3.16%) Operational Technology
5 22 (3.16%) Replication
6 21 (3.02%) Hybrid Cloud
7 17 (2.44%) NHS
8 16 (2.30%) Security Operations Centre
9 15 (2.16%) Cloud Native
10 14 (2.01%) Data Protection Act
10 14 (2.01%) Management Information System
10 14 (2.01%) Private Cloud
11 13 (1.87%) Cyber Threat
12 11 (1.58%) Distributed Systems
12 11 (1.58%) Fat Client
12 11 (1.58%) Thin Client
13 9 (1.29%) Product Ownership
13 9 (1.29%) Public Cloud
13 9 (1.29%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 195 (28.02%) Windows
2 147 (21.12%) Linux
3 77 (11.06%) Windows Server
4 20 (2.87%) Unix
5 16 (2.30%) VMS
6 15 (2.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 13 (1.87%) Amazon Linux
8 11 (1.58%) Windows 7
8 11 (1.58%) Windows Server 2019
9 10 (1.44%) Ubuntu
10 7 (1.01%) Windows 10
11 4 (0.57%) Solaris
11 4 (0.57%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.43%) AIX
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
Processes & Methodologies
1 137 (19.68%) Cybersecurity
2 106 (15.23%) Problem-Solving
3 104 (14.94%) DevOps
4 92 (13.22%) CI/CD
5 79 (11.35%) Infrastructure as Code
6 78 (11.21%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 76 (10.92%) Incident Response
8 66 (9.48%) Agile
9 64 (9.20%) SIEM
10 63 (9.05%) Containerisation
10 63 (9.05%) ITIL
11 61 (8.76%) Load Balancing
12 57 (8.19%) Cloud Security
13 56 (8.05%) Migration
14 55 (7.90%) Mentoring
15 54 (7.76%) High Availability
16 52 (7.47%) Change Management
17 51 (7.33%) Continuous Improvement
17 51 (7.33%) Network Design
18 50 (7.18%) Zero Trust
Programming Languages
1 137 (19.68%) Python
2 116 (16.67%) PowerShell
3 66 (9.48%) Bash
4 37 (5.32%) SQL
5 32 (4.60%) Java
6 29 (4.17%) Perl
7 12 (1.72%) Bicep
8 10 (1.44%) Groovy
8 10 (1.44%) Ruby
9 8 (1.15%) Rust
10 6 (0.86%) Shell Script
11 4 (0.57%) C#
11 4 (0.57%) Kusto Query Language
12 3 (0.43%) COBOL
12 3 (0.43%) Go
13 1 (0.14%) JavaScript
13 1 (0.14%) Lisp
13 1 (0.14%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 286 (41.09%) Security Cleared
2 190 (27.30%) SC Cleared
3 135 (19.40%) Cisco Certification
4 115 (16.52%) CCNP
5 77 (11.06%) DV Cleared
6 67 (9.63%) Degree
7 63 (9.05%) CCNA
8 41 (5.89%) CISSP
9 30 (4.31%) AWS Certification
10 29 (4.17%) CCIE
11 25 (3.59%) Azure Certification
11 25 (3.59%) Microsoft Certification
12 24 (3.45%) CISM
13 14 (2.01%) CHECK Team Member
14 12 (1.72%) CREST Certified
14 12 (1.72%) Cyber Scheme
15 11 (1.58%) Postgraduate
16 10 (1.44%) CompTIA Security+
16 10 (1.44%) Computer Science Degree
17 9 (1.29%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 61 (8.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 48 (6.90%) NIST
3 34 (4.89%) GDPR
4 31 (4.45%) PCI DSS
5 19 (2.73%) Cyber Essentials
6 18 (2.59%) SLA
7 15 (2.16%) NCSC
8 14 (2.01%) QA
9 10 (1.44%) PMO
10 6 (0.86%) COBIT
11 5 (0.72%) Actionable Recommendations
12 4 (0.57%) GRC
13 3 (0.43%) NIST 800
14 2 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
14 2 (0.29%) JSP 440
14 2 (0.29%) PSD2
15 1 (0.14%) GAMP
15 1 (0.14%) GxP
15 1 (0.14%) HIPAA
15 1 (0.14%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 130 (18.68%) Active Directory
2 107 (15.37%) VMware Infrastructure
3 85 (12.21%) Docker
4 31 (4.45%) vSphere
5 28 (4.02%) VMware NSX
6 25 (3.59%) Hyper-V
7 16 (2.30%) VMware ESXi
8 13 (1.87%) DFS Replication
9 8 (1.15%) Virtual Desktop
9 8 (1.15%) Virtual Machines
10 7 (1.01%) Dovecot
10 7 (1.01%) Firmware
10 7 (1.01%) Postfix
10 7 (1.01%) Squid
11 6 (0.86%) Virtual Servers
12 3 (0.43%) KVM
13 1 (0.14%) BitLocker
13 1 (0.14%) NDS
13 1 (0.14%) RHEV
13 1 (0.14%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 98 (14.08%) Terraform
2 76 (10.92%) Ansible
3 69 (9.91%) Kubernetes
4 29 (4.17%) Grafana
5 27 (3.88%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 24 (3.45%) FortiGate
6 24 (3.45%) Prometheus
7 23 (3.30%) Microsoft Intune
7 23 (3.30%) Single Sign-On
8 21 (3.02%) vCenter Server
9 18 (2.59%) Nmap
10 15 (2.16%) SCCM
11 11 (1.58%) Nessus
11 11 (1.58%) WMI
12 10 (1.44%) CSIRT
13 9 (1.29%) Fluentd
13 9 (1.29%) Nagios
14 8 (1.15%) Kiali
14 8 (1.15%) Proxmox
15 7 (1.01%) VxRail
Vendors
1 255 (36.64%) Cisco
2 159 (22.84%) Palo Alto
3 148 (21.26%) Microsoft
4 138 (19.83%) VMware
5 83 (11.93%) F5
6 80 (11.49%) CheckPoint
7 61 (8.76%) Fortinet
8 54 (7.76%) Juniper
9 49 (7.04%) Splunk
10 43 (6.18%) Meraki
11 42 (6.03%) Aruba
11 42 (6.03%) SolarWinds
12 34 (4.89%) Oracle
13 30 (4.31%) Google
14 25 (3.59%) ServiceNow
15 21 (3.02%) Dell
16 18 (2.59%) Citrix
17 16 (2.30%) Red Hat
17 16 (2.30%) Veeam
18 14 (2.01%) Zscaler