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

6 months to
8 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 51 45 32
Rank change year-on-year -6 -13 +23
Contract jobs citing Firewall 720 725 1,179
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 4.22% 4.33% 5.66%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 32.07% 29.27% 31.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 457 394 769
10th Percentile £293 £280 £299
25th Percentile £400 £400 £385
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% - +5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £650 £638 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 18 59
10th Percentile £22.20 £20.00 £35.00
25th Percentile £29.00 £20.05 £62.50
Median hourly rate £35.00 £27.50 £65.98
Median % change year-on-year +27.27% -58.32% +48.60%
75th Percentile £74.26 £35.00 £75.67
90th Percentile £89.63 £60.75 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £33.39 £27.50 £65.98
% change year-on-year +21.40% -58.32% +67.04%

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 2,245 2,477 3,722
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 13.16% 14.81% 17.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,481 1,371 2,229
10th Percentile £191 £200 £205
25th Percentile £300 £330 £340
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £454 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -4.42% - +5.56%
75th Percentile £575 £580 £593
90th Percentile £648 £650 £675
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 139 130 286
10th Percentile £15.50 £19.85 £17.07
25th Percentile £18.50 £26.25 £24.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £51.25 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -17.07% -9.28% +25.53%
75th Percentile £66.13 £70.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £75.67
UK median hourly rate £34.00 £47.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year -28.42% -13.64% +33.28%

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 8 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 8 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 8 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 -11 209 £492 -1.60% 164
South East -5 172 £488 -2.50% 610
Midlands -5 147 £475 -5.00% 146
West Midlands +15 133 £475 -5.00% 88
Yorkshire 0 111 £488 -11.36% 46
North West -23 95 £525 +5.00% 88
Scotland -19 59 £475 - 59
South West -16 57 £540 +13.68% 104
East of England -6 54 £483 -8.10% 111
Wales -3 14 £200 -46.67% 43
East Midlands -37 14 £492 +3.58% 47
Northern Ireland - 13 £500 - 17
North East -11 6 £550 +57.14% 30
Channel Islands - 4 £725 - 10
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 (5.28%) Confluence
2 35 (4.86%) Microsoft Exchange
3 17 (2.36%) SharePoint
4 11 (1.53%) nginx
5 9 (1.25%) OpenStack
6 5 (0.69%) Apache
6 5 (0.69%) Tomcat
7 4 (0.56%) JBoss
8 2 (0.28%) CICS
8 2 (0.28%) IIS
8 2 (0.28%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.14%) Anypoint
9 1 (0.14%) CMS
9 1 (0.14%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 27 (3.75%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (1.39%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 6 (0.83%) Microsoft Excel
3 6 (0.83%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.28%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.28%) Dynamics GP
1 2 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.14%) Finacle
2 1 (0.14%) Pegasus Opera
2 1 (0.14%) SAP PM
Cloud Services
1 188 (26.11%) Azure
2 186 (25.83%) AWS
3 94 (13.06%) Microsoft 365
4 77 (10.69%) GCP
5 55 (7.64%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 45 (6.25%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 44 (6.11%) Amazon EC2
8 38 (5.28%) Amazon S3
9 32 (4.44%) Amazon ELB
9 32 (4.44%) Entra ID
10 28 (3.89%) Azure Sentinel
11 25 (3.47%) AWS KMS
12 22 (3.06%) Amazon ECS
13 15 (2.08%) Akamai
13 15 (2.08%) IaaS
14 14 (1.94%) AWS Lambda
14 14 (1.94%) Serverless
15 13 (1.81%) AWS Direct Connect
15 13 (1.81%) PaaS
15 13 (1.81%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 155 (21.53%) Network Security
2 149 (20.69%) DNS
3 142 (19.72%) VPN
4 115 (15.97%) WAN
5 94 (13.06%) TCP/IP
6 84 (11.67%) Wireless
7 73 (10.14%) BGP
8 69 (9.58%) LAN
9 68 (9.44%) VLAN
10 62 (8.61%) DHCP
11 59 (8.19%) OSPF
12 52 (7.22%) SD-WAN
13 44 (6.11%) Cisco IOS
14 43 (5.97%) Cisco ISE
15 40 (5.56%) SSL
16 37 (5.14%) Wi-Fi
17 35 (4.86%) Cisco ASA
18 32 (4.44%) HTTP
19 30 (4.17%) MPLS
20 29 (4.03%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 35 (4.86%) Amazon RDS
2 24 (3.33%) SQL Server
3 17 (2.36%) PostgreSQL
4 10 (1.39%) Amazon Aurora
4 10 (1.39%) Relational Database
5 5 (0.69%) DynamoDB
5 5 (0.69%) MySQL
5 5 (0.69%) NoSQL
6 4 (0.56%) DB2
7 3 (0.42%) Azure SQL Database
7 3 (0.42%) Oracle Database
8 1 (0.14%) Amazon QuickSight
8 1 (0.14%) BusinessObjects
8 1 (0.14%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
8 1 (0.14%) Delta Lake
8 1 (0.14%) Elasticsearch
8 1 (0.14%) GIS
8 1 (0.14%) Power BI
8 1 (0.14%) Redis
Development Applications
1 70 (9.72%) Jenkins
2 58 (8.06%) Git
3 54 (7.50%) JIRA
4 29 (4.03%) GitLab
5 22 (3.06%) Vagrant
6 16 (2.22%) Postman
7 11 (1.53%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (0.83%) 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
1 177 (24.58%) Social Skills
2 84 (11.67%) Public Sector
3 81 (11.25%) Analytical Skills
4 64 (8.89%) Finance
5 31 (4.31%) Documentation Skills
6 30 (4.17%) Banking
6 30 (4.17%) Telecoms
7 25 (3.47%) Manufacturing
8 24 (3.33%) Games
8 24 (3.33%) Legal
9 16 (2.22%) Presentation Skills
10 10 (1.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 8 (1.11%) Military
11 8 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
12 6 (0.83%) Local Government
12 6 (0.83%) Retail
13 5 (0.69%) Influencing Skills
13 5 (0.69%) Law
14 4 (0.56%) Retail Banking
15 3 (0.42%) Japanese Language
Job Titles
1 166 (23.06%) Network Engineer
2 85 (11.81%) Architect
3 68 (9.44%) Security Engineer
4 61 (8.47%) Senior
5 57 (7.92%) Platform Engineer
6 54 (7.50%) Analyst
7 44 (6.11%) DevOps Engineer
8 38 (5.28%) Network Architect
9 36 (5.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 32 (4.44%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
10 32 (4.44%) Support Engineer
11 26 (3.61%) IT Engineer
12 24 (3.33%) AWS Engineer
13 22 (3.06%) IT Support
13 22 (3.06%) Network Security Engineer
13 22 (3.06%) Security Architect
14 20 (2.78%) Cloud Platform Engineer
14 20 (2.78%) Consultant
15 19 (2.64%) Security Analyst
15 19 (2.64%) Technical Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (3.33%) 802.1X
2 18 (2.50%) LDAP
2 18 (2.50%) RFC 2544
3 12 (1.67%) REST
4 11 (1.53%) OAuth
4 11 (1.53%) OAuth2
4 11 (1.53%) OpenID
4 11 (1.53%) SAML
5 10 (1.39%) JSON
6 8 (1.11%) Elastic Stack
6 8 (1.11%) Middleware
7 6 (0.83%) Node.js
8 5 (0.69%) Kafka
8 5 (0.69%) XML
9 3 (0.42%) CSS
9 3 (0.42%) HTML
9 3 (0.42%) JBoss Seam
9 3 (0.42%) Lambda Expressions
9 3 (0.42%) Microsoft Graph
10 2 (0.28%) ModSecurity
Miscellaneous
1 103 (14.31%) Data Centre
2 51 (7.08%) Security Posture
3 37 (5.14%) Hybrid Cloud
3 37 (5.14%) Operational Technology
4 34 (4.72%) Replication
5 33 (4.58%) PKI
6 24 (3.33%) Onboarding
7 20 (2.78%) Management Information System
8 18 (2.50%) Data Protection Act
9 17 (2.36%) Cyber Threat
10 15 (2.08%) Fibre Optics
11 13 (1.81%) Cyber Defence
11 13 (1.81%) Enterprise Software
12 12 (1.67%) Cloud Native
13 11 (1.53%) Product Ownership
13 11 (1.53%) Virtual Team
14 9 (1.25%) Legacy Systems
14 9 (1.25%) Private Cloud
14 9 (1.25%) Public Cloud
14 9 (1.25%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 206 (28.61%) Windows
2 135 (18.75%) Linux
3 69 (9.58%) Windows Server
4 33 (4.58%) Mac OS
5 31 (4.31%) Android
5 31 (4.31%) VMS
6 25 (3.47%) Amazon Linux
7 23 (3.19%) Unix
8 20 (2.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 15 (2.08%) Ubuntu
9 15 (2.08%) Windows 10
10 8 (1.11%) Windows Server 2016
11 7 (0.97%) Solaris
12 6 (0.83%) Windows 7
12 6 (0.83%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.69%) CentOS
13 5 (0.69%) Windows Server 2019
14 3 (0.42%) AIX
14 3 (0.42%) Apple iOS
14 3 (0.42%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 132 (18.33%) Cybersecurity
2 110 (15.28%) DevOps
3 102 (14.17%) Problem-Solving
4 96 (13.33%) Cloud Security
5 91 (12.64%) Incident Response
6 83 (11.53%) SIEM
7 80 (11.11%) ITIL
8 76 (10.56%) CI/CD
9 73 (10.14%) Migration
10 70 (9.72%) Agile
11 61 (8.47%) High Availability
12 60 (8.33%) Change Management
12 60 (8.33%) Infrastructure as Code
13 56 (7.78%) Configuration Management
14 55 (7.64%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 54 (7.50%) Security Operations
16 53 (7.36%) Load Balancing
17 49 (6.81%) Network Design
18 47 (6.53%) Containerisation
18 47 (6.53%) Network Architecture
Programming Languages
1 159 (22.08%) Python
2 134 (18.61%) PowerShell
3 63 (8.75%) Bash
4 38 (5.28%) Perl
5 31 (4.31%) Java
6 30 (4.17%) SQL
7 22 (3.06%) Groovy
8 10 (1.39%) Kusto Query Language
9 9 (1.25%) Shell Script
10 5 (0.69%) Ruby
11 4 (0.56%) Bicep
12 3 (0.42%) JavaScript
12 3 (0.42%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.14%) C++
13 1 (0.14%) Go
13 1 (0.14%) Korn
13 1 (0.14%) Lisp
13 1 (0.14%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 235 (32.64%) Security Cleared
2 159 (22.08%) SC Cleared
3 132 (18.33%) Cisco Certification
4 96 (13.33%) CCNP
5 64 (8.89%) Degree
6 58 (8.06%) DV Cleared
7 54 (7.50%) CCNA
8 53 (7.36%) CISSP
9 37 (5.14%) Azure Certification
10 35 (4.86%) AWS Certification
11 34 (4.72%) Microsoft Certification
12 31 (4.31%) CCIE
13 25 (3.47%) CISM
14 20 (2.78%) Computer Science Degree
15 12 (1.67%) CEH
16 10 (1.39%) CISMP
16 10 (1.39%) GIAC
16 10 (1.39%) GSEC
17 9 (1.25%) CCSP
17 9 (1.25%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 55 (7.64%) NIST
2 49 (6.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 47 (6.53%) GDPR
4 20 (2.78%) PCI DSS
5 16 (2.22%) SLA
6 15 (2.08%) QA
7 13 (1.81%) NCSC
8 7 (0.97%) COBIT
9 6 (0.83%) Actionable Recommendations
9 6 (0.83%) Cyber Essentials
9 6 (0.83%) Disclosure Scotland
10 5 (0.69%) HIPAA
10 5 (0.69%) PSD2
11 3 (0.42%) Accessibility
11 3 (0.42%) GRC
11 3 (0.42%) GxP
12 2 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 2 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 2 (0.28%) NIST 800
12 2 (0.28%) SOC 2
System Software
1 135 (18.75%) Active Directory
2 98 (13.61%) VMware Infrastructure
3 84 (11.67%) Docker
4 25 (3.47%) DFS Replication
5 24 (3.33%) Hyper-V
6 19 (2.64%) vSphere
7 10 (1.39%) Dovecot
7 10 (1.39%) Postfix
7 10 (1.39%) Squid
7 10 (1.39%) VMware NSX
8 9 (1.25%) VMware ESXi
9 8 (1.11%) Virtual Machines
10 7 (0.97%) Veritas Cluster Server
11 6 (0.83%) Terminal Services
12 4 (0.56%) KVM
12 4 (0.56%) Virtual Servers
13 2 (0.28%) Firmware
14 1 (0.14%) NDS
14 1 (0.14%) NFS
14 1 (0.14%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 88 (12.22%) Terraform
2 82 (11.39%) Ansible
3 49 (6.81%) Kubernetes
3 49 (6.81%) Microsoft Intune
4 41 (5.69%) SCCM
5 28 (3.89%) Grafana
6 25 (3.47%) FortiGate
6 25 (3.47%) Prometheus
7 23 (3.19%) Puppet
8 17 (2.36%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 14 (1.94%) Nessus
9 14 (1.94%) vCenter Server
10 13 (1.81%) Single Sign-On
11 11 (1.53%) CSIRT
12 10 (1.39%) Microsoft Clustering
12 10 (1.39%) Proxmox
13 8 (1.11%) Fluentd
14 7 (0.97%) NetBackup
14 7 (0.97%) Oracle RMAN
15 6 (0.83%) WMI
Vendors
1 276 (38.33%) Cisco
2 208 (28.89%) Microsoft
3 121 (16.81%) Palo Alto
4 115 (15.97%) VMware
5 105 (14.58%) F5
6 71 (9.86%) CheckPoint
7 67 (9.31%) Splunk
8 63 (8.75%) Fortinet
9 59 (8.19%) Meraki
10 45 (6.25%) Juniper
11 42 (5.83%) SolarWinds
12 41 (5.69%) Oracle
13 36 (5.00%) ServiceNow
14 30 (4.17%) Google
15 25 (3.47%) Citrix
15 25 (3.47%) Zscaler
16 20 (2.78%) Dell
16 20 (2.78%) Red Hat
17 17 (2.36%) MuleSoft
18 15 (2.08%) Aruba