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

6 months to
17 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 89 49 41
Rank change year-on-year -40 -8 -10
Contract jobs citing Firewall 755 676 737
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 2.68% 4.37% 4.14%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 25.58% 32.36% 28.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 482 405 448
10th Percentile £350 £300 £286
25th Percentile £421 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £508
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -3.94% +6.84%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £608
90th Percentile £675 £650 £664
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 46 23 26
10th Percentile £28.50 £14.39 £20.00
25th Percentile £44.86 £21.40 £20.45
Median hourly rate £65.57 £30.00 £41.25
Median % change year-on-year +118.57% -27.27% -37.48%
75th Percentile £76.73 £55.25 £83.19
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.63 £87.46
UK median hourly rate £67.47 £30.00 £31.25
% change year-on-year +124.90% -4.00% -52.64%

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 2,951 2,089 2,561
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.47% 13.50% 14.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,625 1,302 1,423
10th Percentile £210 £200 £205
25th Percentile £350 £325 £357
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £452 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.20% -9.70% +11.11%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £599
90th Percentile £650 £640 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £476 £500
% change year-on-year +5.04% -4.80% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 348 133 221
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.02 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £18.50 £21.37
Median hourly rate £26.69 £42.50 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year -37.20% -25.89% -0.26%
75th Percentile £67.47 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.32 £84.60 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £43.00 £50.50
% change year-on-year -24.42% -14.85% -10.60%

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 September 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 September 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 September 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 -8 275 £500 +4.17% 170
South East -49 169 £518 +3.50% 241
North West +8 162 £511 +7.47% 101
Yorkshire -35 92 £483 -1.43% 51
South West -13 87 £556 +14.34% 89
Midlands -77 82 £450 -5.26% 126
East of England -6 76 £530 +9.84% 53
Scotland -18 61 £400 -11.11% 73
West Midlands -82 60 £429 -9.68% 82
North East -17 27 £500 -13.04% 20
East Midlands -3 20 £500 +1.63% 44
Wales -16 9 £425 +112.50% 14
Channel Islands -7 2 £600 -17.24% 1
Northern Ireland -10 1 - - 17
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 25 (3.31%) Microsoft Exchange
2 20 (2.65%) Confluence
3 14 (1.85%) SharePoint
4 10 (1.32%) Apache
5 9 (1.19%) nginx
6 8 (1.06%) SAS
7 4 (0.53%) FactoryTalk
7 4 (0.53%) IIS
8 3 (0.40%) Skype for Business
8 3 (0.40%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.26%) CloudStack
9 2 (0.26%) CMS
9 2 (0.26%) Umbraco
10 1 (0.13%) CICS
10 1 (0.13%) IBM HTTP Server
10 1 (0.13%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 1 (0.13%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.13%) WebSphere Application Server
10 1 (0.13%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 20 (2.65%) MS Visio
2 11 (1.46%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (0.66%) Spreadsheet
4 4 (0.53%) Microsoft Excel
5 3 (0.40%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 5 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.53%) Remedy ITSM
3 2 (0.26%) Dynamics GP
3 2 (0.26%) Teamcenter
4 1 (0.13%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 272 (36.03%) Azure
2 165 (21.85%) AWS
3 83 (10.99%) Entra ID
4 71 (9.40%) Microsoft 365
5 60 (7.95%) GCP
6 42 (5.56%) IaaS
7 37 (4.90%) SaaS
8 36 (4.77%) Azure DevOps
9 33 (4.37%) Azure Monitor
10 32 (4.24%) GitHub
10 32 (4.24%) OCI
11 23 (3.05%) Azure Sentinel
11 23 (3.05%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 18 (2.38%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 17 (2.25%) PaaS
13 17 (2.25%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 16 (2.12%) Serverless
15 15 (1.99%) AWS CloudFormation
16 14 (1.85%) Amazon EKS
16 14 (1.85%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 226 (29.93%) DNS
2 214 (28.34%) VPN
3 211 (27.95%) Network Security
4 204 (27.02%) WAN
5 171 (22.65%) LAN
6 145 (19.21%) DHCP
7 129 (17.09%) BGP
7 129 (17.09%) TCP/IP
8 116 (15.36%) Wireless
9 112 (14.83%) OSPF
10 109 (14.44%) VLAN
11 85 (11.26%) Wi-Fi
12 81 (10.73%) SD-WAN
13 60 (7.95%) BIG-IP
14 57 (7.55%) Cisco ASA
15 53 (7.02%) IPsec
16 52 (6.89%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 50 (6.62%) SSL
18 45 (5.96%) Cisco Nexus
18 45 (5.96%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (2.25%) SQL Server
2 12 (1.59%) Relational Database
3 9 (1.19%) Data Lake
3 9 (1.19%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (0.93%) NoSQL
5 4 (0.53%) Amazon RDS
6 3 (0.40%) Azure SQL Database
6 3 (0.40%) EDRMS
6 3 (0.40%) MySQL
7 2 (0.26%) Oracle Database
7 2 (0.26%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 1 (0.13%) DataStage
8 1 (0.13%) Delta Lake
8 1 (0.13%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (0.13%) Power BI
8 1 (0.13%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 69 (9.14%) JIRA
2 36 (4.77%) GitLab
3 35 (4.64%) Jenkins
4 16 (2.12%) Git
5 9 (1.19%) Bitbucket
5 9 (1.19%) Sonatype Nexus
6 6 (0.79%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 4 (0.53%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.40%) Browser DevTools
8 3 (0.40%) Maven
9 2 (0.26%) Burp Suite
9 2 (0.26%) Cucumber
9 2 (0.26%) Gatling
9 2 (0.26%) Gradle
9 2 (0.26%) LoadRunner
9 2 (0.26%) REST Assured
9 2 (0.26%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 2 (0.26%) Team Foundation Server
10 1 (0.13%) Introscope
10 1 (0.13%) MSI
General
1 173 (22.91%) Social Skills
2 83 (10.99%) Analytical Skills
3 77 (10.20%) Finance
4 56 (7.42%) Public Sector
5 36 (4.77%) Banking
6 29 (3.84%) Documentation Skills
7 26 (3.44%) Telecoms
8 25 (3.31%) Manufacturing
9 16 (2.12%) Legal
10 15 (1.99%) Military
11 10 (1.32%) Aerospace
12 9 (1.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 9 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
13 8 (1.06%) Police
14 7 (0.93%) Retail
15 5 (0.66%) Law
16 4 (0.53%) Financial Institution
16 4 (0.53%) Pharmaceutical
17 3 (0.40%) Advertising
17 3 (0.40%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 235 (31.13%) Network Engineer
2 118 (15.63%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 117 (15.50%) Senior
4 75 (9.93%) Architect
5 54 (7.15%) Security Engineer
6 50 (6.62%) Senior Network Engineer
7 40 (5.30%) Cloud Engineer
8 36 (4.77%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
8 36 (4.77%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
9 33 (4.37%) Lead
10 25 (3.31%) Network Architect
10 25 (3.31%) Network Security Engineer
10 25 (3.31%) Platform Engineer
11 22 (2.91%) Consultant
12 20 (2.65%) Solutions Architect
13 19 (2.52%) Azure Engineer
14 18 (2.38%) Technical Architect
15 16 (2.12%) Developer
15 16 (2.12%) Support Engineer
16 15 (1.99%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 161 (21.32%) Terraform
2 23 (3.05%) 802.1X
3 21 (2.78%) ARM Templates
4 15 (1.99%) SAML
5 10 (1.32%) React
6 9 (1.19%) YAML
7 7 (0.93%) OAuth
7 7 (0.93%) OpenID
7 7 (0.93%) REST
8 6 (0.79%) Kafka
8 6 (0.79%) LDAP
8 6 (0.79%) OAuth2
8 6 (0.79%) SailPoint
9 5 (0.66%) Azure Blueprints
9 5 (0.66%) gRPC
9 5 (0.66%) Middleware
9 5 (0.66%) ModSecurity
9 5 (0.66%) OpenTelemetry
10 4 (0.53%) CSS
10 4 (0.53%) Redfish
Miscellaneous
1 168 (22.25%) Data Centre
2 65 (8.61%) Hybrid Cloud
3 53 (7.02%) PKI
4 51 (6.75%) Cloud Native
5 35 (4.64%) Security Posture
6 31 (4.11%) Operational Technology
7 24 (3.18%) Management Information System
7 24 (3.18%) Public Cloud
8 22 (2.91%) Onboarding
9 20 (2.65%) Driving Licence
10 19 (2.52%) SCADA
10 19 (2.52%) Self-Motivation
11 17 (2.25%) Data Protection Act
12 16 (2.12%) Enterprise Storage
13 15 (1.99%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
14 13 (1.72%) Enterprise Software
14 13 (1.72%) Linux Command Line
15 12 (1.59%) Replication
16 11 (1.46%) Private Cloud
17 8 (1.06%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 213 (28.21%) Windows
2 146 (19.34%) Linux
3 103 (13.64%) Windows Server
4 30 (3.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 16 (2.12%) Unix
6 13 (1.72%) CentOS
7 12 (1.59%) Ubuntu
8 11 (1.46%) Mac OS
9 10 (1.32%) VMS
10 8 (1.06%) Windows 10
11 7 (0.93%) Rocky
12 5 (0.66%) Android
12 5 (0.66%) Windows Server 2012
12 5 (0.66%) Windows Server 2019
13 4 (0.53%) Apple iOS
14 3 (0.40%) Check Point GAiA
15 2 (0.26%) Data ONTAP
15 2 (0.26%) Solaris
15 2 (0.26%) Windows Server 2003
16 1 (0.13%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 166 (21.99%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 157 (20.79%) CI/CD
3 149 (19.74%) Infrastructure as Code
4 137 (18.15%) DevOps
5 126 (16.69%) Problem-Solving
6 125 (16.56%) Load Balancing
7 123 (16.29%) Cybersecurity
8 102 (13.51%) Agile
8 102 (13.51%) ITIL
9 90 (11.92%) Migration
10 83 (10.99%) High Availability
11 79 (10.46%) Zero Trust
12 77 (10.20%) SIEM
13 75 (9.93%) Technical Leadership
14 74 (9.80%) Change Management
15 73 (9.67%) Project Delivery
16 66 (8.74%) Validation
17 65 (8.61%) Stakeholder Management
18 63 (8.34%) Continuous Improvement
19 60 (7.95%) Network Segmentation
Programming Languages
1 156 (20.66%) Python
2 134 (17.75%) PowerShell
3 80 (10.60%) Bash
4 31 (4.11%) Bicep
5 29 (3.84%) Java
6 27 (3.58%) SQL
7 15 (1.99%) ActionScript
8 5 (0.66%) Go
8 5 (0.66%) Kusto Query Language
8 5 (0.66%) Search Processing Language
9 4 (0.53%) Groovy
9 4 (0.53%) JavaScript
9 4 (0.53%) Shell Script
9 4 (0.53%) TypeScript
10 3 (0.40%) Perl
10 3 (0.40%) PL/SQL
11 2 (0.26%) C
11 2 (0.26%) T-SQL
12 1 (0.13%) C++
12 1 (0.13%) COBOL
Qualifications
1 298 (39.47%) Security Cleared
2 194 (25.70%) SC Cleared
3 148 (19.60%) Cisco Certification
4 103 (13.64%) CCNP
5 91 (12.05%) DV Cleared
6 68 (9.01%) CCNA
7 60 (7.95%) Degree
8 44 (5.83%) CISSP
9 37 (4.90%) AWS Certification
10 33 (4.37%) Azure Certification
11 20 (2.65%) CCIE
12 19 (2.52%) Microsoft Certification
13 16 (2.12%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 14 (1.85%) Network+ Certification
15 12 (1.59%) VCAP
16 11 (1.46%) CISM
16 11 (1.46%) Server+ Certification
17 10 (1.32%) Computer Science Degree
18 9 (1.19%) CEH
19 7 (0.93%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (4.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 29 (3.84%) NIST
3 19 (2.52%) GDPR
4 18 (2.38%) NCSC
5 15 (1.99%) QA
6 12 (1.59%) PCI DSS
7 9 (1.19%) Cyber Essentials
7 9 (1.19%) JSP 440
7 9 (1.19%) SLA
8 8 (1.06%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 7 (0.93%) Disclosure Scotland
10 5 (0.66%) Data Quality
10 5 (0.66%) NIST 800
11 4 (0.53%) 21 CFR Part 11
11 4 (0.53%) GxP
11 4 (0.53%) HIPAA
12 3 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 2 (0.26%) GRC
13 2 (0.26%) SOC 2
14 1 (0.13%) ISA99
System Software
1 149 (19.74%) Active Directory
2 136 (18.01%) VMware Infrastructure
3 59 (7.81%) Hyper-V
4 49 (6.49%) VMware NSX
5 44 (5.83%) Docker
5 44 (5.83%) vSphere
6 32 (4.24%) VMware ESXi
7 21 (2.78%) Virtual Machines
8 18 (2.38%) Firmware
9 7 (0.93%) Virtual Desktop
10 6 (0.79%) Virtual Servers
11 4 (0.53%) FreeRADIUS
12 3 (0.40%) Dovecot
12 3 (0.40%) Postfix
12 3 (0.40%) VirtualBox
13 2 (0.26%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.26%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 2 (0.26%) Squid
14 1 (0.13%) iptables
14 1 (0.13%) NFS
Systems Management
1 131 (17.35%) Ansible
2 82 (10.86%) Kubernetes
3 35 (4.64%) FortiGate
4 30 (3.97%) Microsoft Intune
5 25 (3.31%) Progress Chef
6 19 (2.52%) Grafana
6 19 (2.52%) Single Sign-On
7 17 (2.25%) Prometheus
8 15 (1.99%) vCenter Server
8 15 (1.99%) VxRail
9 14 (1.85%) SCCM
10 12 (1.59%) CASB
11 9 (1.19%) Argo
12 8 (1.06%) Istio
13 7 (0.93%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 7 (0.93%) NetBackup
13 7 (0.93%) Packer
14 6 (0.79%) Cisco Prime
15 5 (0.66%) Nagios
16 4 (0.53%) QRadar
Vendors
1 277 (36.69%) Cisco
2 193 (25.56%) Microsoft
3 166 (21.99%) VMware
4 157 (20.79%) Palo Alto
5 108 (14.30%) F5
6 73 (9.67%) Juniper
7 72 (9.54%) Fortinet
8 67 (8.87%) CheckPoint
9 42 (5.56%) SolarWinds
10 40 (5.30%) Aruba
11 39 (5.17%) ServiceNow
12 36 (4.77%) Splunk
13 33 (4.37%) Google
14 29 (3.84%) Meraki
15 28 (3.71%) Arista
16 23 (3.05%) Zscaler
17 21 (2.78%) Red Hat
17 21 (2.78%) Veeam
18 16 (2.12%) CyberArk
18 16 (2.12%) NetApp