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

6 months to
8 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 75 42 42
Rank change year-on-year -33 0 -5
Contract jobs citing Firewall 815 721 753
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 2.97% 4.74% 4.11%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 27.90% 33.55% 27.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 531 412 469
10th Percentile £350 £319 £305
25th Percentile £413 £409 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £489 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.97% -6.95% +10.53%
75th Percentile £598 £584 £622
90th Percentile £650 £638 £740
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 25 25
10th Percentile £29.00 £14.20 £20.06
25th Percentile £44.86 £15.13 £23.92
Median hourly rate £65.45 £30.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +118.17% -50.00% -9.08%
75th Percentile £78.50 £43.25 £85.65
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.63 £87.46
UK median hourly rate £65.23 £30.00 £27.50
% change year-on-year +117.42% +9.09% -58.33%

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 2,921 2,149 2,782
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.66% 14.13% 15.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,641 1,298 1,628
10th Percentile £225 £202 £205
25th Percentile £375 £325 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -5.00% +9.89%
75th Percentile £582 £575 £608
90th Percentile £650 £638 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 309 136 279
10th Percentile £15.14 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £19.45 £18.50
Median hourly rate £26.66 £45.00 £54.88
Median % change year-on-year -40.76% -18.00% -4.28%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.63 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £87.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £26.44 £48.75 £48.56
% change year-on-year -45.76% +0.39% -3.69%

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 August 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 8 August 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 8 August 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 -15 285 £500 +5.26% 92
South East -30 228 £523 +4.50% 136
North West -3 184 £525 +10.53% 51
Yorkshire -43 83 £450 -7.22% 32
South West -36 78 £550 +13.11% 48
East of England -1 76 £525 -4.55% 30
Midlands -69 74 £459 -3.37% 59
Scotland +10 65 £425 -5.56% 13
West Midlands -73 57 £440 -7.37% 31
North East -21 24 £625 +4.17% 13
Wales -17 16 £425 +17.24% 10
East Midlands -18 14 £500 +1.63% 28
Northern Ireland -4 1 - - 7
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 19 (2.33%) Microsoft Exchange
2 17 (2.09%) Confluence
3 10 (1.23%) Apache
4 9 (1.10%) nginx
4 9 (1.10%) SharePoint
5 5 (0.61%) CICS
6 4 (0.49%) FactoryTalk
7 3 (0.37%) IIS
7 3 (0.37%) SAS
7 3 (0.37%) Skype for Business
7 3 (0.37%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.25%) CloudStack
8 2 (0.25%) CMS
8 2 (0.25%) IBM HTTP Server
8 2 (0.25%) Oracle HTTP Server
8 2 (0.25%) Umbraco
8 2 (0.25%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.25%) WebSphere Application Server
8 2 (0.25%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 20 (2.45%) MS Visio
2 12 (1.47%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.86%) Microsoft Excel
4 5 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 5 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.25%) Dynamics GP
2 2 (0.25%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 279 (34.23%) Azure
2 174 (21.35%) AWS
3 77 (9.45%) Entra ID
4 62 (7.61%) GCP
5 60 (7.36%) Microsoft 365
6 38 (4.66%) Azure DevOps
7 33 (4.05%) GitHub
8 31 (3.80%) OCI
9 30 (3.68%) SaaS
10 29 (3.56%) IaaS
11 28 (3.44%) Azure Monitor
12 27 (3.31%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 26 (3.19%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 25 (3.07%) Azure Sentinel
15 21 (2.58%) Azure ExpressRoute
16 17 (2.09%) GitHub Actions
17 16 (1.96%) Serverless
18 14 (1.72%) AWS CloudFormation
18 14 (1.72%) Azure AKS
19 13 (1.60%) AWS Direct Connect
Communications & Networking
1 243 (29.82%) WAN
2 223 (27.36%) DNS
3 217 (26.63%) VPN
4 212 (26.01%) Network Security
5 204 (25.03%) LAN
6 149 (18.28%) BGP
7 144 (17.67%) DHCP
8 132 (16.20%) OSPF
9 128 (15.71%) TCP/IP
10 117 (14.36%) Wireless
11 114 (13.99%) VLAN
12 93 (11.41%) SD-WAN
13 89 (10.92%) Wi-Fi
14 79 (9.69%) BIG-IP
15 64 (7.85%) VXLAN
16 63 (7.73%) IPsec
17 56 (6.87%) MPLS
18 55 (6.75%) Ethernet VPN
19 53 (6.50%) SSL
20 52 (6.38%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (1.60%) PostgreSQL
1 13 (1.60%) SQL Server
2 10 (1.23%) Relational Database
3 7 (0.86%) Azure SQL Database
4 6 (0.74%) Power BI
5 5 (0.61%) Data Lake
5 5 (0.61%) DataStage
5 5 (0.61%) Oracle Database
6 4 (0.49%) Amazon RDS
6 4 (0.49%) Delta Lake
6 4 (0.49%) MySQL
6 4 (0.49%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.25%) EDRMS
8 1 (0.12%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (0.12%) Redis
8 1 (0.12%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 1 (0.12%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 69 (8.47%) JIRA
2 37 (4.54%) GitLab
3 33 (4.05%) Jenkins
4 18 (2.21%) Git
5 9 (1.10%) Bitbucket
5 9 (1.10%) Sonatype Nexus
6 6 (0.74%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 5 (0.61%) Browser DevTools
8 4 (0.49%) Burp Suite
9 2 (0.25%) Cucumber
9 2 (0.25%) Gatling
9 2 (0.25%) Gradle
9 2 (0.25%) Introscope
9 2 (0.25%) LoadRunner
9 2 (0.25%) Metasploit
9 2 (0.25%) REST Assured
9 2 (0.25%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.25%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 2 (0.25%) Team Foundation Server
10 1 (0.12%) Ant
General
1 173 (21.23%) Social Skills
2 82 (10.06%) Finance
3 79 (9.69%) Analytical Skills
4 70 (8.59%) Public Sector
5 31 (3.80%) Documentation Skills
6 28 (3.44%) Banking
7 23 (2.82%) Telecoms
8 19 (2.33%) Manufacturing
9 18 (2.21%) Military
10 14 (1.72%) Legal
11 10 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
12 8 (0.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 7 (0.86%) Influencing Skills
13 7 (0.86%) Police
13 7 (0.86%) Retail
14 6 (0.74%) Aerospace
14 6 (0.74%) Law
15 5 (0.61%) Financial Institution
16 4 (0.49%) Pharmaceutical
17 2 (0.25%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 258 (31.66%) Network Engineer
2 117 (14.36%) Senior
3 106 (13.01%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 100 (12.27%) Architect
5 57 (6.99%) Security Engineer
6 54 (6.63%) Senior Network Engineer
7 41 (5.03%) Cloud Engineer
8 38 (4.66%) Network Architect
9 36 (4.42%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
10 33 (4.05%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
11 32 (3.93%) Lead
12 23 (2.82%) Consultant
13 22 (2.70%) Platform Engineer
13 22 (2.70%) Technical Architect
14 21 (2.58%) Network Security Engineer
15 18 (2.21%) Firewall Specialist
15 18 (2.21%) Network Specialist
15 18 (2.21%) Solutions Architect
16 17 (2.09%) Cisco Engineer
17 16 (1.96%) Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 53 (6.50%) 802.1X
2 17 (2.09%) SAML
3 16 (1.96%) ARM Templates
4 12 (1.47%) LDAP
5 10 (1.23%) Kafka
5 10 (1.23%) Middleware
5 10 (1.23%) React
6 9 (1.10%) LangChain
6 9 (1.10%) PyTorch
6 9 (1.10%) scikit-learn
7 7 (0.86%) OAuth
7 7 (0.86%) YAML
8 6 (0.74%) OAuth2
8 6 (0.74%) OpenID
8 6 (0.74%) SailPoint
9 5 (0.61%) OpenTelemetry
10 4 (0.49%) gRPC
10 4 (0.49%) ModSecurity
10 4 (0.49%) Redfish
10 4 (0.49%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 194 (23.80%) Data Centre
2 68 (8.34%) Cloud Native
3 67 (8.22%) PKI
4 62 (7.61%) Hybrid Cloud
5 45 (5.52%) Security Posture
6 35 (4.29%) Operational Technology
7 29 (3.56%) Clustering
8 23 (2.82%) SCADA
9 22 (2.70%) Management Information System
10 21 (2.58%) Onboarding
11 18 (2.21%) Enterprise Storage
11 18 (2.21%) Public Cloud
12 17 (2.09%) Driving Licence
13 16 (1.96%) Data Protection Act
14 15 (1.84%) IoT
14 15 (1.84%) Self-Motivation
15 12 (1.47%) Enterprise Software
16 11 (1.35%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
16 11 (1.35%) Private Cloud
16 11 (1.35%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 235 (28.83%) Windows
2 152 (18.65%) Linux
3 89 (10.92%) Windows Server
4 32 (3.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 22 (2.70%) Unix
6 11 (1.35%) Mac OS
7 10 (1.23%) CentOS
8 9 (1.10%) Ubuntu
8 9 (1.10%) VMS
9 7 (0.86%) Rocky
10 6 (0.74%) Solaris
10 6 (0.74%) Windows 10
11 5 (0.61%) AIX
11 5 (0.61%) Windows Server 2019
12 4 (0.49%) Windows Server 2012
12 4 (0.49%) Windows Server 2016
13 3 (0.37%) Android
13 3 (0.37%) Check Point GAiA
13 3 (0.37%) Data ONTAP
14 2 (0.25%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 153 (18.77%) CI/CD
2 146 (17.91%) Load Balancing
3 143 (17.55%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 142 (17.42%) DevOps
5 134 (16.44%) Infrastructure as Code
6 125 (15.34%) Problem-Solving
7 123 (15.09%) Cybersecurity
8 119 (14.60%) High Availability
9 117 (14.36%) ITIL
10 99 (12.15%) Agile
11 89 (10.92%) SIEM
12 82 (10.06%) Migration
13 81 (9.94%) Observability
13 81 (9.94%) Zero Trust
14 76 (9.33%) Change Management
15 75 (9.20%) Technical Leadership
16 71 (8.71%) Roadmaps
17 67 (8.22%) Validation
18 66 (8.10%) Project Delivery
19 64 (7.85%) Network Segmentation
Programming Languages
1 154 (18.90%) Python
2 117 (14.36%) PowerShell
3 78 (9.57%) Bash
4 34 (4.17%) Bicep
5 29 (3.56%) SQL
6 26 (3.19%) Java
7 9 (1.10%) ActionScript
8 5 (0.61%) COBOL
8 5 (0.61%) Go
8 5 (0.61%) JavaScript
9 4 (0.49%) Kusto Query Language
9 4 (0.49%) Perl
9 4 (0.49%) Search Processing Language
9 4 (0.49%) TypeScript
10 3 (0.37%) PL/SQL
11 2 (0.25%) C++
11 2 (0.25%) Groovy
11 2 (0.25%) Jython
11 2 (0.25%) T-SQL
12 1 (0.12%) Korn
Qualifications
1 324 (39.75%) Security Cleared
2 204 (25.03%) SC Cleared
3 168 (20.61%) Cisco Certification
4 110 (13.50%) CCNP
5 100 (12.27%) DV Cleared
6 88 (10.80%) CCNA
7 69 (8.47%) Degree
8 46 (5.64%) CISSP
9 38 (4.66%) AWS Certification
10 32 (3.93%) Azure Certification
11 22 (2.70%) Microsoft Certification
12 20 (2.45%) Network+ Certification
13 16 (1.96%) CCIE
14 15 (1.84%) JNCIS
14 15 (1.84%) Server+ Certification
14 15 (1.84%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 14 (1.72%) CISM
16 13 (1.60%) JNCIA
17 12 (1.47%) Computer Science Degree
18 11 (1.35%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 45 (5.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 33 (4.05%) NIST
3 26 (3.19%) GDPR
4 25 (3.07%) NCSC
5 15 (1.84%) QA
6 14 (1.72%) PCI DSS
7 11 (1.35%) Cyber Essentials
8 10 (1.23%) JSP 440
9 8 (0.98%) Data Quality
9 8 (0.98%) Disclosure Scotland
9 8 (0.98%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 6 (0.74%) GxP
11 5 (0.61%) SLA
12 4 (0.49%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 4 (0.49%) HIPAA
12 4 (0.49%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 4 (0.49%) SOC 2
13 3 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 3 (0.37%) ISA99
13 3 (0.37%) NIST 800
System Software
1 153 (18.77%) Active Directory
2 133 (16.32%) VMware Infrastructure
3 52 (6.38%) VMware NSX
4 50 (6.13%) Hyper-V
5 44 (5.40%) Docker
6 34 (4.17%) vSphere
7 22 (2.70%) VMware ESXi
8 19 (2.33%) Firmware
9 18 (2.21%) Virtual Machines
10 7 (0.86%) Virtual Desktop
11 4 (0.49%) Virtual Servers
12 3 (0.37%) Dovecot
12 3 (0.37%) Postfix
12 3 (0.37%) VirtualBox
13 2 (0.25%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.25%) FreeRADIUS
13 2 (0.25%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 2 (0.25%) Squid
14 1 (0.12%) iptables
14 1 (0.12%) KVM
Systems Management
1 162 (19.88%) Terraform
2 120 (14.72%) Ansible
3 73 (8.96%) Kubernetes
4 54 (6.63%) FortiGate
5 27 (3.31%) Microsoft Intune
6 21 (2.58%) Progress Chef
7 19 (2.33%) CASB
7 19 (2.33%) Single Sign-On
8 18 (2.21%) Grafana
9 17 (2.09%) Prometheus
10 13 (1.60%) VxRail
11 11 (1.35%) SCCM
11 11 (1.35%) vCenter Server
12 9 (1.10%) Argo
13 8 (0.98%) Packer
14 7 (0.86%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 7 (0.86%) Cisco Prime
14 7 (0.86%) NetBackup
15 6 (0.74%) Nessus
16 5 (0.61%) Nagios
Vendors
1 295 (36.20%) Cisco
2 187 (22.94%) Microsoft
3 166 (20.37%) VMware
4 147 (18.04%) Palo Alto
5 122 (14.97%) F5
6 100 (12.27%) Juniper
7 69 (8.47%) Fortinet
8 62 (7.61%) SolarWinds
9 61 (7.48%) CheckPoint
10 60 (7.36%) Splunk
11 54 (6.63%) Aruba
12 52 (6.38%) ServiceNow
13 45 (5.52%) Google
14 29 (3.56%) Arista
15 27 (3.31%) Red Hat
16 26 (3.19%) Meraki
17 25 (3.07%) Extreme Networks
18 23 (2.82%) Zscaler
19 18 (2.21%) CyberArk
19 18 (2.21%) Veeam