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

6 months to
20 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 53 43 32
Rank change year-on-year -10 -11 +20
Contract jobs citing Firewall 736 727 1,140
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 4.19% 4.40% 5.56%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 32.38% 29.39% 30.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 470 406 738
10th Percentile £293 £275 £300
25th Percentile £400 £400 £385
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £489 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.30% - +5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £587 £600
90th Percentile £650 £641 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 18 58
10th Percentile £23.90 £20.00 £38.94
25th Percentile £29.00 £20.05 £62.50
Median hourly rate £41.50 £27.50 £66.62
Median % change year-on-year +50.91% -58.72% +62.38%
75th Percentile £80.00 £35.00 £75.67
90th Percentile £89.63 £52.13 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £34.00 £27.50 £65.98
% change year-on-year +23.64% -58.32% +86.60%

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 2,273 2,474 3,688
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 12.95% 14.97% 17.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,491 1,368 2,216
10th Percentile £191 £200 £205
25th Percentile £300 £345 £337
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% - +5.56%
75th Percentile £575 £583 £594
90th Percentile £648 £661 £675
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 147 134 280
10th Percentile £15.50 £20.00 £17.67
25th Percentile £18.50 £24.26 £24.32
Median hourly rate £42.50 £49.00 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -13.27% -13.26% +25.53%
75th Percentile £67.25 £68.44 £67.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £75.67
UK median hourly rate £36.00 £45.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year -20.00% -18.18% +27.91%

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 20 November 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 20 November 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 20 November 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 -14 210 £492 -1.60% 103
South East -1 182 £500 - 238
Midlands -2 151 £475 -5.00% 72
West Midlands +10 136 £475 -5.00% 53
Yorkshire -1 109 £488 +14.71% 34
North West -27 97 £523 +4.50% 60
Scotland -17 62 £450 -5.26% 34
East of England -16 55 £479 -8.81% 55
South West -28 55 £540 +13.68% 53
East Midlands -37 15 £492 -4.00% 19
Wales -3 13 £225 -40.98% 16
Northern Ireland - 12 £500 - 10
North East -10 7 £550 +57.14% 9
Channel Islands - 4 £725 -
South Coast - 2 - -
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 38 (5.16%) Confluence
2 35 (4.76%) Microsoft Exchange
3 17 (2.31%) SharePoint
4 11 (1.49%) Apache
4 11 (1.49%) nginx
5 9 (1.22%) OpenStack
6 4 (0.54%) IIS
6 4 (0.54%) JBoss
6 4 (0.54%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.27%) CICS
7 2 (0.27%) WebSphere
8 1 (0.14%) Anypoint
8 1 (0.14%) CMS
8 1 (0.14%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 28 (3.80%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (1.36%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 6 (0.82%) Microsoft Excel
3 6 (0.82%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.27%) Dynamics GP
2 1 (0.14%) Finacle
2 1 (0.14%) Pegasus Opera
2 1 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 191 (25.95%) AWS
2 186 (25.27%) Azure
3 87 (11.82%) Microsoft 365
4 76 (10.33%) GCP
5 55 (7.47%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 48 (6.52%) Amazon EC2
7 42 (5.71%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 38 (5.16%) Amazon S3
9 33 (4.48%) Amazon ELB
9 33 (4.48%) Entra ID
10 27 (3.67%) Azure Sentinel
11 25 (3.40%) Amazon ECS
12 24 (3.26%) AWS KMS
13 18 (2.45%) Serverless
14 17 (2.31%) AWS CloudFormation
15 16 (2.17%) AWS Lambda
15 16 (2.17%) IaaS
16 15 (2.04%) Akamai
17 14 (1.90%) PaaS
18 13 (1.77%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 155 (21.06%) Network Security
2 152 (20.65%) DNS
3 138 (18.75%) VPN
4 111 (15.08%) WAN
5 97 (13.18%) TCP/IP
6 87 (11.82%) Wireless
7 72 (9.78%) BGP
8 68 (9.24%) DHCP
9 66 (8.97%) LAN
10 65 (8.83%) VLAN
11 58 (7.88%) OSPF
12 53 (7.20%) SD-WAN
13 49 (6.66%) Cisco IOS
14 41 (5.57%) Cisco ISE
15 38 (5.16%) Cisco ASA
16 37 (5.03%) SSL
17 35 (4.76%) HTTP
17 35 (4.76%) Wi-Fi
18 31 (4.21%) MPLS
19 27 (3.67%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 38 (5.16%) Amazon RDS
2 24 (3.26%) SQL Server
3 16 (2.17%) PostgreSQL
4 10 (1.36%) Amazon Aurora
4 10 (1.36%) Relational Database
5 5 (0.68%) MySQL
6 4 (0.54%) DB2
6 4 (0.54%) DynamoDB
6 4 (0.54%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.27%) Azure SQL Database
7 2 (0.27%) Oracle Database
8 1 (0.14%) Amazon QuickSight
8 1 (0.14%) BusinessObjects
8 1 (0.14%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
8 1 (0.14%) Elasticsearch
8 1 (0.14%) Redis
Development Applications
1 73 (9.92%) Jenkins
2 61 (8.29%) Git
3 58 (7.88%) JIRA
4 31 (4.21%) GitLab
5 22 (2.99%) Vagrant
6 16 (2.17%) Postman
7 15 (2.04%) Sonatype Nexus
8 10 (1.36%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.14%) Eclipse
9 1 (0.14%) Maven
9 1 (0.14%) MSI
9 1 (0.14%) SonarQube
9 1 (0.14%) Subversion
General
1 186 (25.27%) Social Skills
2 86 (11.68%) Public Sector
3 85 (11.55%) Analytical Skills
4 68 (9.24%) Finance
5 31 (4.21%) Banking
5 31 (4.21%) Documentation Skills
5 31 (4.21%) Telecoms
6 25 (3.40%) Manufacturing
7 24 (3.26%) Games
7 24 (3.26%) Legal
8 16 (2.17%) Presentation Skills
9 8 (1.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 8 (1.09%) Organisational Skills
10 7 (0.95%) Military
11 6 (0.82%) Local Government
11 6 (0.82%) Retail
12 5 (0.68%) Aerospace
12 5 (0.68%) Influencing Skills
12 5 (0.68%) Law
13 4 (0.54%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 168 (22.83%) Network Engineer
2 91 (12.36%) Architect
3 68 (9.24%) Security Engineer
4 66 (8.97%) Senior
5 57 (7.74%) Platform Engineer
6 54 (7.34%) Analyst
7 46 (6.25%) DevOps Engineer
8 42 (5.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 39 (5.30%) Network Architect
10 30 (4.08%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
10 30 (4.08%) Support Engineer
11 26 (3.53%) IT Engineer
12 25 (3.40%) AWS Engineer
13 23 (3.13%) Network Security Engineer
13 23 (3.13%) Security Architect
14 21 (2.85%) IT Support
15 20 (2.72%) Cloud Platform Engineer
15 20 (2.72%) Consultant
15 20 (2.72%) Firewall Engineer
15 20 (2.72%) Security Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (3.26%) 802.1X
2 18 (2.45%) LDAP
3 16 (2.17%) RFC 2544
4 12 (1.63%) OAuth
4 12 (1.63%) OAuth2
4 12 (1.63%) OpenID
4 12 (1.63%) REST
4 12 (1.63%) SAML
5 10 (1.36%) JSON
6 9 (1.22%) Node.js
7 8 (1.09%) Middleware
8 6 (0.82%) Elastic Stack
9 5 (0.68%) XML
10 4 (0.54%) Kafka
11 3 (0.41%) CSS
11 3 (0.41%) HTML
11 3 (0.41%) JBoss Seam
11 3 (0.41%) Lambda Expressions
11 3 (0.41%) Microsoft Graph
12 2 (0.27%) ModSecurity
Miscellaneous
1 104 (14.13%) Data Centre
2 50 (6.79%) Security Posture
3 41 (5.57%) PKI
4 39 (5.30%) Operational Technology
5 36 (4.89%) Replication
6 35 (4.76%) Hybrid Cloud
7 24 (3.26%) Onboarding
8 19 (2.58%) Management Information System
9 18 (2.45%) Data Protection Act
10 16 (2.17%) Cloud Native
10 16 (2.17%) Cyber Threat
11 13 (1.77%) Enterprise Software
12 12 (1.63%) Cyber Defence
12 12 (1.63%) Fibre Optics
13 11 (1.49%) Virtual Team
14 10 (1.36%) Security Operations Centre
15 9 (1.22%) Private Cloud
15 9 (1.22%) Product Ownership
15 9 (1.22%) Public Cloud
15 9 (1.22%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 212 (28.80%) Windows
2 150 (20.38%) Linux
3 71 (9.65%) Windows Server
4 31 (4.21%) VMS
5 30 (4.08%) Mac OS
6 28 (3.80%) Android
7 27 (3.67%) Unix
8 25 (3.40%) Amazon Linux
9 20 (2.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 15 (2.04%) Ubuntu
11 11 (1.49%) Windows 10
12 8 (1.09%) Windows 7
13 6 (0.82%) Solaris
13 6 (0.82%) Windows Server 2016
14 5 (0.68%) CentOS
14 5 (0.68%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.68%) Windows Server 2019
15 3 (0.41%) AIX
15 3 (0.41%) Apple iOS
15 3 (0.41%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 136 (18.48%) Cybersecurity
2 113 (15.35%) DevOps
3 110 (14.95%) Problem-Solving
4 95 (12.91%) Cloud Security
5 91 (12.36%) Incident Response
6 85 (11.55%) SIEM
7 81 (11.01%) CI/CD
8 76 (10.33%) ITIL
9 73 (9.92%) Migration
10 71 (9.65%) Agile
11 63 (8.56%) Infrastructure as Code
12 62 (8.42%) High Availability
13 61 (8.29%) Change Management
13 61 (8.29%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 55 (7.47%) Configuration Management
14 55 (7.47%) Containerisation
15 54 (7.34%) Load Balancing
16 52 (7.07%) Security Operations
17 51 (6.93%) Platform Engineering
18 49 (6.66%) Network Design
Programming Languages
1 166 (22.55%) Python
2 143 (19.43%) PowerShell
3 67 (9.10%) Bash
4 41 (5.57%) Perl
5 34 (4.62%) Java
6 28 (3.80%) SQL
7 22 (2.99%) Groovy
8 8 (1.09%) Kusto Query Language
8 8 (1.09%) Ruby
8 8 (1.09%) Shell Script
9 3 (0.41%) Bicep
9 3 (0.41%) JavaScript
9 3 (0.41%) Kotlin
10 2 (0.27%) C#
11 1 (0.14%) C++
11 1 (0.14%) Go
11 1 (0.14%) Korn
11 1 (0.14%) Lisp
11 1 (0.14%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 245 (33.29%) Security Cleared
2 160 (21.74%) SC Cleared
3 131 (17.80%) Cisco Certification
4 97 (13.18%) CCNP
5 65 (8.83%) DV Cleared
6 61 (8.29%) Degree
7 54 (7.34%) CCNA
8 52 (7.07%) CISSP
9 40 (5.43%) AWS Certification
10 36 (4.89%) Azure Certification
11 35 (4.76%) Microsoft Certification
12 31 (4.21%) CCIE
13 25 (3.40%) CISM
14 19 (2.58%) Computer Science Degree
15 12 (1.63%) CEH
16 11 (1.49%) GIAC
17 10 (1.36%) CISMP
17 10 (1.36%) CompTIA Security+
17 10 (1.36%) GSEC
18 9 (1.22%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 57 (7.74%) NIST
2 51 (6.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 45 (6.11%) GDPR
4 21 (2.85%) PCI DSS
5 14 (1.90%) NCSC
5 14 (1.90%) QA
6 13 (1.77%) SLA
7 7 (0.95%) COBIT
7 7 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
8 5 (0.68%) Actionable Recommendations
8 5 (0.68%) Disclosure Scotland
8 5 (0.68%) PSD2
9 4 (0.54%) GRC
9 4 (0.54%) HIPAA
10 3 (0.41%) Accessibility
10 3 (0.41%) GxP
10 3 (0.41%) NIST 800
11 2 (0.27%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 2 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 1 (0.14%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 140 (19.02%) Active Directory
2 108 (14.67%) VMware Infrastructure
3 90 (12.23%) Docker
4 29 (3.94%) Hyper-V
5 25 (3.40%) DFS Replication
6 19 (2.58%) vSphere
7 17 (2.31%) VMware NSX
8 10 (1.36%) Dovecot
8 10 (1.36%) Postfix
8 10 (1.36%) Squid
9 9 (1.22%) VMware ESXi
10 8 (1.09%) Virtual Machines
11 7 (0.95%) Veritas Cluster Server
12 6 (0.82%) Firmware
12 6 (0.82%) Terminal Services
12 6 (0.82%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.54%) KVM
14 1 (0.14%) NDS
14 1 (0.14%) NFS
14 1 (0.14%) UAG
Systems Management
1 92 (12.50%) Terraform
2 89 (12.09%) Ansible
3 57 (7.74%) Kubernetes
4 47 (6.39%) Microsoft Intune
5 41 (5.57%) SCCM
6 28 (3.80%) FortiGate
7 27 (3.67%) Grafana
8 25 (3.40%) Prometheus
9 22 (2.99%) Puppet
10 18 (2.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 17 (2.31%) vCenter Server
12 15 (2.04%) Single Sign-On
13 14 (1.90%) Nessus
14 11 (1.49%) CSIRT
15 10 (1.36%) Microsoft Clustering
15 10 (1.36%) Proxmox
16 8 (1.09%) Fluentd
16 8 (1.09%) WMI
17 7 (0.95%) NetBackup
17 7 (0.95%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 277 (37.64%) Cisco
2 213 (28.94%) Microsoft
3 127 (17.26%) VMware
4 125 (16.98%) Palo Alto
5 103 (13.99%) F5
6 71 (9.65%) CheckPoint
7 66 (8.97%) Splunk
8 61 (8.29%) Meraki
9 60 (8.15%) Fortinet
10 46 (6.25%) Juniper
11 45 (6.11%) SolarWinds
12 42 (5.71%) Oracle
13 34 (4.62%) ServiceNow
14 32 (4.35%) Google
15 26 (3.53%) Citrix
16 24 (3.26%) Zscaler
17 20 (2.72%) Dell
18 19 (2.58%) Red Hat
19 17 (2.31%) MuleSoft
20 16 (2.17%) Aruba