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 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 61 41 35
Rank change year-on-year -20 -6 +16
Contract jobs citing Firewall 677 674 980
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.70% 4.61% 5.06%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.39% 28.79% 28.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 447 380 646
10th Percentile £310 £275 £311
25th Percentile £400 £375 £385
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% - +5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £614
90th Percentile £650 £635 £683
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 17 43
10th Percentile £25.03 - £47.91
25th Percentile £40.77 £20.00 £62.50
Median hourly rate £65.75 £35.00 £65.98
Median % change year-on-year +87.85% -46.95% +77.06%
75th Percentile £85.25 £41.25 £76.25
90th Percentile £89.63 £65.50 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £41.94 £35.00 £65.98
% change year-on-year +19.83% -46.95% +106.19%

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 2,228 2,341 3,413
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 12.18% 16.01% 17.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,485 1,326 2,040
10th Percentile £200 £191 £205
25th Percentile £300 £313 £337
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £474 £472
Median % change year-on-year -5.01% +0.42% +4.83%
75th Percentile £563 £575 £596
90th Percentile £650 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 130 110 266
10th Percentile £15.32 £15.20 £17.72
25th Percentile £16.59 £20.30 £25.25
Median hourly rate £42.50 £32.50 £57.99
Median % change year-on-year +30.77% -43.96% +46.67%
75th Percentile £67.75 £62.50 £65.98
90th Percentile £83.08 £71.25 £75.13
UK median hourly rate £34.00 £35.00 £56.49
% change year-on-year -2.86% -38.04% +61.40%

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 December 2025.

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 December 2025.

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 December 2025. 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 -23 195 £519 +9.16% 358
South East +5 186 £500 - 450
Midlands -20 124 £475 -5.00% 254
West Midlands +3 115 £475 +7.04% 144
North West -15 105 £525 +8.25% 186
Yorkshire -23 85 £455 +7.06% 142
Scotland -10 59 £425 -15.00% 74
South West -21 54 £540 +13.68% 183
East of England -25 41 £475 -9.52% 218
Wales -22 10 £293 -19.86% 51
North East -8 8 £550 - 31
East Midlands -44 8 £500 -19.06% 95
Northern Ireland - 8 £500 - 35
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 33 (4.87%) Confluence
2 13 (1.92%) Microsoft Exchange
3 11 (1.62%) nginx
3 11 (1.62%) SharePoint
4 9 (1.33%) Apache
5 6 (0.89%) IIS
6 5 (0.74%) OpenStack
7 3 (0.44%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.30%) CICS
8 2 (0.30%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.15%) CMS
9 1 (0.15%) JBoss
9 1 (0.15%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 30 (4.43%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (1.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (1.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (1.77%) MS Visio
4 10 (1.48%) 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
1 193 (28.51%) AWS
2 181 (26.74%) Azure
3 75 (11.08%) GCP
4 51 (7.53%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 47 (6.94%) Microsoft 365
6 44 (6.50%) Amazon EC2
7 35 (5.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 33 (4.87%) Amazon S3
9 29 (4.28%) Entra ID
10 28 (4.14%) Amazon ELB
11 24 (3.55%) Amazon ECS
12 21 (3.10%) AWS KMS
13 20 (2.95%) AWS CloudFormation
13 20 (2.95%) Azure Sentinel
13 20 (2.95%) Serverless
14 17 (2.51%) IaaS
15 16 (2.36%) AWS Lambda
15 16 (2.36%) PaaS
16 15 (2.22%) Azure Monitor
17 14 (2.07%) Akamai
Communications & Networking
1 159 (23.49%) Network Security
2 151 (22.30%) VPN
3 144 (21.27%) DNS
4 125 (18.46%) WAN
5 91 (13.44%) TCP/IP
6 86 (12.70%) LAN
7 85 (12.56%) BGP
8 80 (11.82%) Wireless
9 79 (11.67%) VLAN
10 71 (10.49%) OSPF
11 57 (8.42%) DHCP
12 50 (7.39%) SD-WAN
13 40 (5.91%) Cisco ASA
14 39 (5.76%) SSL
15 37 (5.47%) MPLS
15 37 (5.47%) Wi-Fi
16 36 (5.32%) IPsec
17 35 (5.17%) Cisco ISE
18 30 (4.43%) HTTP
19 28 (4.14%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (4.87%) Amazon RDS
2 23 (3.40%) SQL Server
3 21 (3.10%) PostgreSQL
4 10 (1.48%) Amazon Aurora
5 4 (0.59%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.59%) Relational Database
6 3 (0.44%) DynamoDB
7 2 (0.30%) Elasticsearch
7 2 (0.30%) MariaDB
7 2 (0.30%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.30%) 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 58 (8.57%) Jenkins
2 54 (7.98%) JIRA
3 52 (7.68%) Git
4 36 (5.32%) GitLab
5 17 (2.51%) Vagrant
6 16 (2.36%) Sonatype Nexus
7 11 (1.62%) Burp Suite
7 11 (1.62%) Metasploit
8 10 (1.48%) Bitbucket
9 4 (0.59%) CircleCI
9 4 (0.59%) Jaeger
10 2 (0.30%) 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
1 200 (29.54%) Social Skills
2 85 (12.56%) Analytical Skills
2 85 (12.56%) Public Sector
3 61 (9.01%) Finance
4 46 (6.79%) Documentation Skills
5 31 (4.58%) Banking
6 28 (4.14%) Telecoms
7 22 (3.25%) Legal
8 20 (2.95%) Manufacturing
9 16 (2.36%) Presentation Skills
10 9 (1.33%) Military
11 8 (1.18%) Law
11 8 (1.18%) Organisational Skills
12 7 (1.03%) Aerospace
12 7 (1.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 7 (1.03%) Retail
13 5 (0.74%) Financial Institution
13 5 (0.74%) Influencing Skills
14 4 (0.59%) Retail Banking
15 3 (0.44%) Games
Job Titles
1 184 (27.18%) Network Engineer
2 89 (13.15%) Architect
3 64 (9.45%) Senior
4 56 (8.27%) Security Engineer
5 48 (7.09%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 42 (6.20%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
7 39 (5.76%) Platform Engineer
8 37 (5.47%) Network Architect
9 36 (5.32%) DevOps Engineer
10 29 (4.28%) Analyst
11 25 (3.69%) AWS Engineer
12 24 (3.55%) IT Engineer
13 23 (3.40%) Security Architect
14 22 (3.25%) IT Support
14 22 (3.25%) Support Engineer
15 21 (3.10%) Cloud Platform Engineer
16 20 (2.95%) Firewall Engineer
17 19 (2.81%) AWS DevOps
17 19 (2.81%) Consultant
18 18 (2.66%) AWS DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (4.43%) 802.1X
2 22 (3.25%) LDAP
3 16 (2.36%) SAML
4 13 (1.92%) Middleware
4 13 (1.92%) OAuth
4 13 (1.92%) OAuth2
4 13 (1.92%) OpenID
5 11 (1.62%) Node.js
6 10 (1.48%) JSON
7 9 (1.33%) RFC 2544
8 8 (1.18%) Kafka
8 8 (1.18%) REST
9 4 (0.59%) OpenTelemetry
9 4 (0.59%) Spring Boot
9 4 (0.59%) XML
10 3 (0.44%) Elastic Stack
10 3 (0.44%) Lambda Expressions
10 3 (0.44%) Microsoft Graph
11 2 (0.30%) ModSecurity
11 2 (0.30%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 121 (17.87%) Data Centre
2 54 (7.98%) Security Posture
3 37 (5.47%) PKI
4 31 (4.58%) Replication
5 28 (4.14%) Hybrid Cloud
5 28 (4.14%) Operational Technology
6 26 (3.84%) Onboarding
7 15 (2.22%) Cloud Native
7 15 (2.22%) Cyber Threat
7 15 (2.22%) Data Protection Act
8 13 (1.92%) Management Information System
8 13 (1.92%) Security Operations Centre
9 10 (1.48%) Enterprise Software
9 10 (1.48%) Fat Client
9 10 (1.48%) Private Cloud
9 10 (1.48%) Thin Client
10 9 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
10 9 (1.33%) Product Ownership
10 9 (1.33%) SCADA
11 8 (1.18%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 201 (29.69%) Windows
2 151 (22.30%) Linux
3 76 (11.23%) Windows Server
4 25 (3.69%) VMS
5 23 (3.40%) Unix
6 20 (2.95%) Amazon Linux
7 17 (2.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 14 (2.07%) Ubuntu
9 10 (1.48%) Mac OS
9 10 (1.48%) Windows 10
9 10 (1.48%) Windows 7
10 9 (1.33%) Windows Server 2019
11 6 (0.89%) Android
11 6 (0.89%) Windows Server 2012
11 6 (0.89%) Windows Server 2016
12 3 (0.44%) Apple iOS
12 3 (0.44%) CentOS
12 3 (0.44%) Solaris
13 2 (0.30%) CatOS
13 2 (0.30%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 131 (19.35%) Cybersecurity
2 114 (16.84%) Problem-Solving
3 100 (14.77%) DevOps
4 88 (13.00%) CI/CD
5 85 (12.56%) Incident Response
6 81 (11.96%) SIEM
7 73 (10.78%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 70 (10.34%) Cloud Security
8 70 (10.34%) Infrastructure as Code
9 64 (9.45%) ITIL
10 61 (9.01%) High Availability
11 60 (8.86%) Migration
12 59 (8.71%) Agile
13 58 (8.57%) Containerisation
14 57 (8.42%) Load Balancing
15 54 (7.98%) Change Management
16 51 (7.53%) Network Design
17 50 (7.39%) Zero Trust
18 47 (6.94%) Disaster Recovery
18 47 (6.94%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 141 (20.83%) Python
2 119 (17.58%) PowerShell
3 67 (9.90%) Bash
4 37 (5.47%) SQL
5 34 (5.02%) Java
5 34 (5.02%) Perl
6 17 (2.51%) Groovy
7 10 (1.48%) Ruby
8 9 (1.33%) Shell Script
9 7 (1.03%) Bicep
10 5 (0.74%) Kusto Query Language
11 4 (0.59%) C#
11 4 (0.59%) Rust
12 3 (0.44%) Go
13 1 (0.15%) C++
13 1 (0.15%) JavaScript
13 1 (0.15%) Korn
13 1 (0.15%) Lisp
13 1 (0.15%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 284 (41.95%) Security Cleared
2 197 (29.10%) SC Cleared
3 130 (19.20%) Cisco Certification
4 107 (15.81%) CCNP
5 69 (10.19%) Degree
6 66 (9.75%) DV Cleared
7 50 (7.39%) CCNA
7 50 (7.39%) CISSP
8 36 (5.32%) AWS Certification
9 33 (4.87%) Microsoft Certification
10 32 (4.73%) Azure Certification
11 26 (3.84%) CCIE
12 23 (3.40%) CISM
13 14 (2.07%) CompTIA Security+
14 12 (1.77%) Computer Science Degree
15 11 (1.62%) CHECK Team Member
16 10 (1.48%) CEH
16 10 (1.48%) Network+ Certification
17 9 (1.33%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 9 (1.33%) CREST Certified
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 58 (8.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 51 (7.53%) NIST
3 41 (6.06%) GDPR
4 29 (4.28%) PCI DSS
5 17 (2.51%) SLA
6 13 (1.92%) Cyber Essentials
6 13 (1.92%) NCSC
7 12 (1.77%) QA
8 8 (1.18%) PMO
9 7 (1.03%) COBIT
10 5 (0.74%) PSD2
11 4 (0.59%) Actionable Recommendations
12 3 (0.44%) NIST 800
13 2 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
13 2 (0.30%) GRC
13 2 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 2 (0.30%) JSP 440
14 1 (0.15%) GPG13
14 1 (0.15%) HIPAA
14 1 (0.15%) ISO 22301
System Software
1 122 (18.02%) Active Directory
2 107 (15.81%) VMware Infrastructure
3 90 (13.29%) Docker
4 33 (4.87%) Hyper-V
5 24 (3.55%) vSphere
6 23 (3.40%) VMware NSX
7 20 (2.95%) DFS Replication
8 13 (1.92%) VMware ESXi
9 11 (1.62%) Virtual Machines
10 10 (1.48%) Dovecot
10 10 (1.48%) Postfix
10 10 (1.48%) Squid
11 6 (0.89%) Firmware
11 6 (0.89%) Virtual Servers
12 5 (0.74%) KVM
12 5 (0.74%) Terminal Services
13 2 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
13 2 (0.30%) Xen
13 2 (0.30%) XenApp
14 1 (0.15%) RHEV
Systems Management
1 97 (14.33%) Terraform
2 76 (11.23%) Ansible
3 65 (9.60%) Kubernetes
4 29 (4.28%) FortiGate
5 27 (3.99%) Grafana
6 23 (3.40%) Prometheus
7 22 (3.25%) vCenter Server
8 21 (3.10%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 21 (3.10%) Microsoft Intune
9 19 (2.81%) Single Sign-On
10 17 (2.51%) SCCM
11 16 (2.36%) Nessus
12 14 (2.07%) Nmap
13 11 (1.62%) Proxmox
14 10 (1.48%) CSIRT
14 10 (1.48%) WMI
15 8 (1.18%) Fluentd
15 8 (1.18%) Nagios
16 6 (0.89%) NetBackup
16 6 (0.89%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 259 (38.26%) Cisco
2 160 (23.63%) Palo Alto
3 156 (23.04%) Microsoft
4 131 (19.35%) VMware
5 95 (14.03%) F5
6 83 (12.26%) CheckPoint
7 64 (9.45%) Fortinet
8 56 (8.27%) Splunk
9 50 (7.39%) Juniper
10 44 (6.50%) Meraki
11 38 (5.61%) SolarWinds
12 36 (5.32%) Oracle
13 34 (5.02%) Aruba
14 33 (4.87%) ServiceNow
15 32 (4.73%) Google
16 27 (3.99%) Citrix
17 18 (2.66%) Dell
18 17 (2.51%) Red Hat
18 17 (2.51%) Zscaler
19 11 (1.62%) Blue Coat