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

6 months to
15 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 63 39 34
Rank change year-on-year -24 -5 +19
Contract jobs citing Firewall 670 635 949
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.64% 4.56% 4.94%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.61% 28.18% 28.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 448 359 630
10th Percentile £306 £261 £300
25th Percentile £400 £369 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £495 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.52% -1.00% +2.56%
75th Percentile £569 £575 £608
90th Percentile £645 £635 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £521 £525
% change year-on-year -4.08% -0.71% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 19 43
10th Percentile £35.50 £20.00 £47.91
25th Percentile £37.25 £20.09 £62.50
Median hourly rate £56.00 £35.00 £65.98
Median % change year-on-year +60.00% -46.95% +77.06%
75th Percentile £85.00 £41.38 £76.25
90th Percentile £89.63 £62.75 £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 2,189 2,253 3,365
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 11.91% 16.18% 17.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,453 1,270 1,999
10th Percentile £200 £185 £205
25th Percentile £300 £300 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £470 £475
Median % change year-on-year -4.26% -1.05% +3.26%
75th Percentile £560 £580 £595
90th Percentile £650 £650 £682
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 120 111 265
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.22 £17.72
25th Percentile £16.00 £20.52 £27.50
Median hourly rate £41.94 £31.08 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +34.94% -48.20% +172.73%
75th Percentile £65.25 £60.81 £66.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £34.00 £32.50 £56.49
% change year-on-year +4.62% -42.47% +125.96%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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
South East +10 191 £500 - 162
North of England -18 187 £500 +5.26% 96
Midlands -19 120 £463 -9.36% 45
West Midlands +1 112 £463 +4.23% 36
North West -21 101 £519 +9.16% 51
Yorkshire -13 82 £463 +8.82% 32
Scotland -8 62 £425 -15.00% 29
South West -41 54 £550 +15.79% 56
East of England -24 39 £475 -9.52% 47
Wales -23 10 £293 -19.86% 11
North East -11 7 £550 - 15
East Midlands -54 7 £440 -32.36% 9
Northern Ireland - 7 £500 - 5
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 31 (4.63%) Confluence
2 11 (1.64%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (1.49%) Apache
3 10 (1.49%) nginx
3 10 (1.49%) SharePoint
4 7 (1.04%) IIS
5 5 (0.75%) OpenStack
6 3 (0.45%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.30%) CICS
7 2 (0.30%) WebSphere
8 1 (0.15%) CMS
8 1 (0.15%) JBoss
8 1 (0.15%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 30 (4.48%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (2.24%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (2.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 15 (2.24%) MS Visio
3 9 (1.34%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 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
1 191 (28.51%) AWS
2 180 (26.87%) Azure
3 72 (10.75%) GCP
4 49 (7.31%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 43 (6.42%) Amazon EC2
6 40 (5.97%) Microsoft 365
7 33 (4.93%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 32 (4.78%) Amazon S3
9 31 (4.63%) Entra ID
10 26 (3.88%) Amazon ELB
11 23 (3.43%) Amazon ECS
12 21 (3.13%) Serverless
13 20 (2.99%) AWS CloudFormation
14 19 (2.84%) AWS KMS
14 19 (2.84%) Azure Sentinel
15 18 (2.69%) IaaS
16 17 (2.54%) AWS Lambda
16 17 (2.54%) PaaS
17 16 (2.39%) Azure Monitor
18 14 (2.09%) Akamai
Communications & Networking
1 161 (24.03%) Network Security
2 151 (22.54%) VPN
3 135 (20.15%) DNS
4 133 (19.85%) WAN
5 93 (13.88%) LAN
6 85 (12.69%) BGP
7 84 (12.54%) TCP/IP
8 83 (12.39%) Wireless
9 82 (12.24%) VLAN
10 71 (10.60%) OSPF
11 54 (8.06%) DHCP
12 51 (7.61%) SD-WAN
13 42 (6.27%) IPsec
14 39 (5.82%) Cisco ASA
15 38 (5.67%) MPLS
16 37 (5.52%) SSL
17 36 (5.37%) Wi-Fi
18 35 (5.22%) Cisco ISE
19 30 (4.48%) Cisco Nexus
19 30 (4.48%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (4.63%) Amazon RDS
2 23 (3.43%) SQL Server
3 20 (2.99%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (1.34%) Amazon Aurora
5 4 (0.60%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.60%) Relational Database
6 3 (0.45%) DynamoDB
7 2 (0.30%) Amazon QuickSight
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 Athena
8 1 (0.15%) Amazon Redshift
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 54 (8.06%) JIRA
2 53 (7.91%) Jenkins
3 48 (7.16%) Git
4 34 (5.07%) GitLab
5 15 (2.24%) Sonatype Nexus
5 15 (2.24%) Vagrant
6 14 (2.09%) Burp Suite
6 14 (2.09%) Metasploit
7 10 (1.49%) Bitbucket
8 6 (0.90%) Jaeger
9 4 (0.60%) CircleCI
10 2 (0.30%) Postman
11 1 (0.15%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.15%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.15%) Chocolatey
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 (30.30%) Social Skills
2 84 (12.54%) Analytical Skills
3 79 (11.79%) Public Sector
4 58 (8.66%) Finance
5 50 (7.46%) Documentation Skills
6 31 (4.63%) Banking
7 28 (4.18%) Telecoms
8 23 (3.43%) Legal
9 21 (3.13%) Manufacturing
10 15 (2.24%) Presentation Skills
11 7 (1.04%) Aerospace
11 7 (1.04%) Financial Institution
11 7 (1.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 7 (1.04%) Law
11 7 (1.04%) Military
11 7 (1.04%) Retail
12 6 (0.90%) Organisational Skills
13 5 (0.75%) Influencing Skills
14 4 (0.60%) Retail Banking
15 3 (0.45%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 191 (28.51%) Network Engineer
2 89 (13.28%) Architect
3 68 (10.15%) Senior
4 50 (7.46%) Security Engineer
5 44 (6.57%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 43 (6.42%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
7 36 (5.37%) Platform Engineer
8 35 (5.22%) Network Architect
9 33 (4.93%) DevOps Engineer
10 30 (4.48%) Analyst
11 23 (3.43%) AWS Engineer
11 23 (3.43%) Security Architect
12 22 (3.28%) IT Engineer
12 22 (3.28%) Support Engineer
13 21 (3.13%) Cloud Platform Engineer
13 21 (3.13%) IT Support
14 18 (2.69%) Cisco Engineer
15 17 (2.54%) Consultant
15 17 (2.54%) Network Security Engineer
15 17 (2.54%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (4.63%) 802.1X
2 20 (2.99%) LDAP
2 20 (2.99%) SAML
3 15 (2.24%) OAuth
3 15 (2.24%) OAuth2
3 15 (2.24%) OpenID
4 12 (1.79%) Middleware
5 11 (1.64%) Node.js
6 10 (1.49%) Kafka
7 9 (1.34%) JSON
8 8 (1.19%) REST
9 7 (1.04%) RFC 2544
10 6 (0.90%) OpenTelemetry
10 6 (0.90%) Spring Boot
11 4 (0.60%) ARM Templates
11 4 (0.60%) XML
12 3 (0.45%) Elastic Stack
12 3 (0.45%) Lambda Expressions
12 3 (0.45%) Microsoft Graph
13 2 (0.30%) ModSecurity
Miscellaneous
1 124 (18.51%) Data Centre
2 54 (8.06%) Security Posture
3 35 (5.22%) PKI
4 29 (4.33%) Replication
5 25 (3.73%) Onboarding
5 25 (3.73%) Operational Technology
6 24 (3.58%) Hybrid Cloud
7 15 (2.24%) Cloud Native
7 15 (2.24%) Cyber Threat
7 15 (2.24%) Data Protection Act
8 13 (1.94%) Security Operations Centre
9 12 (1.79%) Management Information System
9 12 (1.79%) Private Cloud
10 11 (1.64%) Enterprise Software
10 11 (1.64%) Fat Client
10 11 (1.64%) Thin Client
11 9 (1.34%) Legacy Systems
11 9 (1.34%) NHS
11 9 (1.34%) Product Ownership
11 9 (1.34%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 192 (28.66%) Windows
2 146 (21.79%) Linux
3 75 (11.19%) Windows Server
4 21 (3.13%) VMS
5 20 (2.99%) Unix
6 18 (2.69%) Amazon Linux
7 16 (2.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 12 (1.79%) Ubuntu
9 11 (1.64%) Windows 7
10 9 (1.34%) Windows Server 2019
11 8 (1.19%) Windows 10
12 6 (0.90%) Mac OS
13 4 (0.60%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.60%) Windows Server 2016
14 3 (0.45%) Android
14 3 (0.45%) Apple iOS
14 3 (0.45%) CatOS
14 3 (0.45%) CentOS
14 3 (0.45%) Solaris
15 2 (0.30%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 132 (19.70%) Cybersecurity
2 103 (15.37%) Problem-Solving
3 102 (15.22%) DevOps
4 90 (13.43%) CI/CD
5 82 (12.24%) Incident Response
6 76 (11.34%) SIEM
7 72 (10.75%) Infrastructure as Code
8 70 (10.45%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 64 (9.55%) Cloud Security
10 61 (9.10%) Agile
10 61 (9.10%) ITIL
11 60 (8.96%) High Availability
12 59 (8.81%) Containerisation
12 59 (8.81%) Load Balancing
13 52 (7.76%) Change Management
13 52 (7.76%) Migration
14 51 (7.61%) Network Design
15 50 (7.46%) Mentoring
16 47 (7.01%) Platform Engineering
16 47 (7.01%) Zero Trust
Programming Languages
1 134 (20.00%) Python
2 107 (15.97%) PowerShell
3 66 (9.85%) Bash
4 37 (5.52%) SQL
5 35 (5.22%) Java
6 33 (4.93%) Perl
7 15 (2.24%) Groovy
8 10 (1.49%) Ruby
9 9 (1.34%) Bicep
10 7 (1.04%) Shell Script
11 6 (0.90%) Rust
12 4 (0.60%) C#
12 4 (0.60%) Kusto Query Language
13 3 (0.45%) 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
1 290 (43.28%) Security Cleared
2 200 (29.85%) SC Cleared
3 131 (19.55%) Cisco Certification
4 108 (16.12%) CCNP
5 71 (10.60%) DV Cleared
6 67 (10.00%) Degree
7 56 (8.36%) CCNA
8 45 (6.72%) CISSP
9 36 (5.37%) AWS Certification
10 32 (4.78%) Azure Certification
11 30 (4.48%) Microsoft Certification
12 26 (3.88%) CCIE
13 21 (3.13%) CISM
14 14 (2.09%) CHECK Team Member
15 12 (1.79%) CREST Certified
15 12 (1.79%) Cyber Scheme
16 11 (1.64%) CompTIA Security+
16 11 (1.64%) Postgraduate
17 10 (1.49%) Computer Science Degree
18 9 (1.34%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 59 (8.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 49 (7.31%) NIST
3 41 (6.12%) GDPR
4 32 (4.78%) PCI DSS
5 19 (2.84%) SLA
6 15 (2.24%) Cyber Essentials
7 13 (1.94%) NCSC
7 13 (1.94%) QA
8 10 (1.49%) PMO
9 7 (1.04%) COBIT
10 5 (0.75%) PSD2
11 4 (0.60%) Actionable Recommendations
12 3 (0.45%) 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%) GAMP
14 1 (0.15%) GxP
14 1 (0.15%) HIPAA
System Software
1 116 (17.31%) Active Directory
2 103 (15.37%) VMware Infrastructure
3 90 (13.43%) Docker
4 30 (4.48%) Hyper-V
5 23 (3.43%) vSphere
6 22 (3.28%) VMware NSX
7 18 (2.69%) DFS Replication
8 14 (2.09%) VMware ESXi
9 9 (1.34%) Dovecot
9 9 (1.34%) Postfix
9 9 (1.34%) Squid
10 8 (1.19%) Virtual Machines
11 6 (0.90%) Firmware
11 6 (0.90%) Virtual Servers
12 5 (0.75%) KVM
13 3 (0.45%) Terminal Services
14 2 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
14 2 (0.30%) Xen
15 1 (0.15%) ProxySG
15 1 (0.15%) RHEV
Systems Management
1 96 (14.33%) Terraform
2 73 (10.90%) Ansible
3 67 (10.00%) Kubernetes
4 28 (4.18%) Grafana
5 26 (3.88%) FortiGate
6 24 (3.58%) Prometheus
7 23 (3.43%) Single Sign-On
8 21 (3.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 20 (2.99%) vCenter Server
10 19 (2.84%) Microsoft Intune
11 17 (2.54%) Nmap
12 13 (1.94%) SCCM
13 12 (1.79%) Nessus
14 11 (1.64%) WMI
15 10 (1.49%) CSIRT
15 10 (1.49%) Proxmox
16 9 (1.34%) Nagios
17 8 (1.19%) Fluentd
18 7 (1.04%) Puppet
19 6 (0.90%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 259 (38.66%) Cisco
2 163 (24.33%) Palo Alto
3 147 (21.94%) Microsoft
4 128 (19.10%) VMware
5 94 (14.03%) F5
6 82 (12.24%) CheckPoint
7 57 (8.51%) Fortinet
8 48 (7.16%) Juniper
9 47 (7.01%) Splunk
10 43 (6.42%) SolarWinds
11 42 (6.27%) Meraki
12 38 (5.67%) Aruba
13 36 (5.37%) Oracle
14 33 (4.93%) ServiceNow
15 30 (4.48%) Google
16 22 (3.28%) Citrix
17 20 (2.99%) Dell
18 17 (2.54%) Zscaler
19 16 (2.39%) Red Hat
20 12 (1.79%) Veeam