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

6 months to
16 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 62 49 35
Rank change year-on-year -13 -14 +9
Contract jobs citing Firewall 778 566 917
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.35% 4.46% 4.40%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.30% 28.26% 25.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 525 351 585
10th Percentile £318 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £386 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £575 £588 £608
90th Percentile £638 £650 £745
UK median daily rate £500 £513 £508
% change year-on-year -2.44% +0.99% -3.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 17 29
10th Percentile £20.50 - £23.92
25th Percentile £37.25 £14.20 £58.50
Median hourly rate £56.00 £35.00 £83.77
Median % change year-on-year +60.00% -58.22% +35.10%
75th Percentile £74.26 £41.50 £87.46
90th Percentile £85.00 £56.50 £87.53
UK median hourly rate £52.36 £35.82 £68.25
% change year-on-year +46.17% -47.51% +10.08%

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 2,568 2,003 3,552
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 11.07% 15.77% 17.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,583 1,227 2,039
10th Percentile £205 £193 £200
25th Percentile £356 £311 £348
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £467 £475
Median % change year-on-year +1.82% -1.79% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £656 £638 £683
UK median daily rate £495 £488 £486
% change year-on-year +1.54% +0.31% -5.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 168 132 352
10th Percentile £15.60 £14.28 £13.50
25th Percentile £19.34 £18.41 £17.69
Median hourly rate £53.25 £28.00 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year +90.18% -38.97% +148.00%
75th Percentile £70.15 £65.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £70.59
UK median hourly rate £42.60 £38.41 £40.00
% change year-on-year +10.92% -3.98% +110.53%

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 16 April 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 16 April 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 16 April 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 +5 239 £513 +2.50% 130
North of England -16 232 £500 +5.26% 91
North West -9 155 £528 +11.16% 41
Midlands -39 96 £425 -22.73% 54
West Midlands -18 84 £420 -19.31% 32
Yorkshire -25 75 £445 -13.22% 29
East of England -16 63 £475 -9.95% 52
South West -41 62 £560 +2.29% 31
Scotland +11 53 £425 -1.45% 21
Wales -16 31 £425 +9.68% 19
East Midlands -51 8 £475 -18.10% 22
North East -15 5 £548 -0.45% 22
Northern Ireland - 3 £500 - 7
South Coast - 2 £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 14 (1.80%) Confluence
2 9 (1.16%) Apache
2 9 (1.16%) CICS
3 8 (1.03%) Microsoft Exchange
4 5 (0.64%) IIS
5 4 (0.51%) OpenStack
6 3 (0.39%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.26%) Apache Pulsar
7 2 (0.26%) IBM HTTP Server
7 2 (0.26%) Oracle HTTP Server
7 2 (0.26%) Skype for Business
7 2 (0.26%) WebSphere
7 2 (0.26%) WebSphere Application Server
7 2 (0.26%) WebSphere Portal
8 1 (0.13%) nginx
Applications
1 31 (3.98%) Microsoft Office
2 17 (2.19%) Microsoft Excel
3 14 (1.80%) MS Visio
4 13 (1.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.39%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 213 (27.38%) Azure
2 150 (19.28%) AWS
3 57 (7.33%) GCP
4 56 (7.20%) Entra ID
5 40 (5.14%) Microsoft 365
6 31 (3.98%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 26 (3.34%) GitHub
8 23 (2.96%) Azure DevOps
8 23 (2.96%) IaaS
9 22 (2.83%) Serverless
10 21 (2.70%) PaaS
11 20 (2.57%) AWS CloudFormation
11 20 (2.57%) Azure Sentinel
12 18 (2.31%) AWS Lambda
12 18 (2.31%) Azure Monitor
13 15 (1.93%) Amazon EC2
14 14 (1.80%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 14 (1.80%) GitHub Actions
15 13 (1.67%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 12 (1.54%) Nutanix
Communications & Networking
1 215 (27.63%) WAN
2 209 (26.86%) Network Security
3 180 (23.14%) LAN
4 169 (21.72%) VPN
5 164 (21.08%) DNS
6 132 (16.97%) BGP
7 121 (15.55%) OSPF
8 105 (13.50%) VLAN
9 99 (12.72%) DHCP
10 96 (12.34%) Wireless
11 81 (10.41%) TCP/IP
12 70 (9.00%) SD-WAN
13 64 (8.23%) Cisco ISE
14 62 (7.97%) IPsec
15 61 (7.84%) Wi-Fi
16 49 (6.30%) VXLAN
17 48 (6.17%) MPLS
18 46 (5.91%) Ethernet VPN
19 41 (5.27%) Cisco Nexus
20 39 (5.01%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (1.54%) Amazon RDS
1 12 (1.54%) PostgreSQL
2 11 (1.41%) SQL Server
3 9 (1.16%) DataStage
4 6 (0.77%) Power BI
5 4 (0.51%) Azure SQL Database
5 4 (0.51%) Data Lake
5 4 (0.51%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.51%) NoSQL
5 4 (0.51%) Relational Database
6 3 (0.39%) Delta Lake
6 3 (0.39%) DynamoDB
6 3 (0.39%) Oracle Database
7 2 (0.26%) MariaDB
7 2 (0.26%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (0.13%) Elasticsearch
8 1 (0.13%) MySQL
8 1 (0.13%) Redis
8 1 (0.13%) SAP HANA
8 1 (0.13%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 53 (6.81%) JIRA
2 31 (3.98%) Jenkins
3 28 (3.60%) GitLab
4 25 (3.21%) Git
5 16 (2.06%) Burp Suite
5 16 (2.06%) Metasploit
5 16 (2.06%) Sonatype Nexus
6 9 (1.16%) Jaeger
7 8 (1.03%) Bitbucket
8 4 (0.51%) Browser DevTools
8 4 (0.51%) CircleCI
9 3 (0.39%) Chocolatey
10 2 (0.26%) Introscope
11 1 (0.13%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.13%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.13%) MSI
11 1 (0.13%) Subversion
11 1 (0.13%) Travis CI
General
1 211 (27.12%) Social Skills
2 80 (10.28%) Finance
3 72 (9.25%) Analytical Skills
4 64 (8.23%) Public Sector
5 56 (7.20%) Documentation Skills
6 24 (3.08%) Banking
7 19 (2.44%) Manufacturing
8 17 (2.19%) Telecoms
9 16 (2.06%) Influencing Skills
9 16 (2.06%) Legal
10 13 (1.67%) Military
11 10 (1.29%) Financial Institution
12 8 (1.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 8 (1.03%) Law
13 6 (0.77%) Aerospace
13 6 (0.77%) Organisational Skills
13 6 (0.77%) Retail
14 4 (0.51%) Presentation Skills
15 3 (0.39%) Back Office
15 3 (0.39%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 254 (32.65%) Network Engineer
2 120 (15.42%) Architect
3 78 (10.03%) Senior
4 60 (7.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 56 (7.20%) Security Engineer
6 54 (6.94%) Network Architect
7 44 (5.66%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
8 33 (4.24%) Senior Network Engineer
9 25 (3.21%) Cisco Engineer
9 25 (3.21%) Cloud Engineer
9 25 (3.21%) IT Support
10 24 (3.08%) Platform Engineer
11 23 (2.96%) Cisco Network Engineer
12 22 (2.83%) Lead
12 22 (2.83%) Network Specialist
12 22 (2.83%) Security Architect
13 21 (2.70%) Designer
14 20 (2.57%) Solutions Architect
15 19 (2.44%) Analyst
15 19 (2.44%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 61 (7.84%) 802.1X
2 25 (3.21%) SAML
3 23 (2.96%) LDAP
4 20 (2.57%) Middleware
5 18 (2.31%) Kafka
6 17 (2.19%) OAuth
6 17 (2.19%) OAuth2
7 15 (1.93%) OpenID
8 11 (1.41%) OpenTelemetry
9 9 (1.16%) Spring Boot
10 7 (0.90%) Node.js
11 6 (0.77%) LangChain
11 6 (0.77%) PyTorch
11 6 (0.77%) scikit-learn
12 5 (0.64%) JSON
12 5 (0.64%) REST
13 4 (0.51%) ARM Templates
13 4 (0.51%) YAML
14 3 (0.39%) Lambda Expressions
15 2 (0.26%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 190 (24.42%) Data Centre
2 50 (6.43%) Security Posture
3 45 (5.78%) PKI
4 39 (5.01%) Cloud Native
5 29 (3.73%) Hybrid Cloud
6 27 (3.47%) Clustering
6 27 (3.47%) Operational Technology
7 24 (3.08%) Onboarding
8 20 (2.57%) IoT
9 17 (2.19%) NHS
10 16 (2.06%) Private Cloud
10 16 (2.06%) Public Cloud
11 15 (1.93%) Enterprise Software
11 15 (1.93%) Management Information System
12 14 (1.80%) SCADA
13 13 (1.67%) BYOD
13 13 (1.67%) Product Ownership
14 12 (1.54%) Data Protection Act
14 12 (1.54%) Self-Motivation
15 11 (1.41%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 225 (28.92%) Windows
2 147 (18.89%) Linux
3 91 (11.70%) Windows Server
4 28 (3.60%) Unix
5 21 (2.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (1.41%) Solaris
7 9 (1.16%) AIX
8 7 (0.90%) Windows Server 2019
9 6 (0.77%) Windows 7
10 5 (0.64%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.64%) VMS
10 5 (0.64%) Windows Server 2016
11 4 (0.51%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.39%) Amazon Linux
12 3 (0.39%) CatOS
12 3 (0.39%) Data ONTAP
13 2 (0.26%) Oracle Linux
13 2 (0.26%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 2 (0.26%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 130 (16.71%) Cybersecurity
2 118 (15.17%) Problem-Solving
3 110 (14.14%) DevOps
4 107 (13.75%) Load Balancing
5 98 (12.60%) CI/CD
5 98 (12.60%) High Availability
6 97 (12.47%) ITIL
7 87 (11.18%) Infrastructure as Code
7 87 (11.18%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 70 (9.00%) Observability
9 69 (8.87%) Change Management
9 69 (8.87%) Zero Trust
10 66 (8.48%) Identity Access Management
11 63 (8.10%) Agile
12 61 (7.84%) Network Segmentation
12 61 (7.84%) SIEM
12 61 (7.84%) Technical Leadership
13 60 (7.71%) Cloud Security
14 59 (7.58%) Migration
15 58 (7.46%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 104 (13.37%) Python
2 99 (12.72%) PowerShell
3 52 (6.68%) Bash
4 33 (4.24%) SQL
5 25 (3.21%) Bicep
5 25 (3.21%) Java
6 17 (2.19%) Perl
7 9 (1.16%) COBOL
8 8 (1.03%) Rust
9 7 (0.90%) Ruby
10 4 (0.51%) C#
10 4 (0.51%) JavaScript
11 3 (0.39%) Go
11 3 (0.39%) Kusto Query Language
11 3 (0.39%) PL/SQL
11 3 (0.39%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.26%) C++
12 2 (0.26%) Jython
13 1 (0.13%) C
13 1 (0.13%) Korn
Qualifications
1 325 (41.77%) Security Cleared
2 214 (27.51%) SC Cleared
3 169 (21.72%) Cisco Certification
4 134 (17.22%) CCNP
5 92 (11.83%) DV Cleared
6 84 (10.80%) CCNA
7 75 (9.64%) Degree
8 41 (5.27%) CISSP
9 30 (3.86%) AWS Certification
10 26 (3.34%) Microsoft Certification
11 24 (3.08%) Azure Certification
12 19 (2.44%) CCIE
12 19 (2.44%) CISM
13 17 (2.19%) Network+ Certification
14 16 (2.06%) CHECK Team Member
14 16 (2.06%) JNCIS
15 14 (1.80%) CREST Certified
15 14 (1.80%) Cyber Scheme
16 13 (1.67%) Computer Science Degree
16 13 (1.67%) JNCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 62 (7.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 44 (5.66%) NIST
3 40 (5.14%) GDPR
4 33 (4.24%) PCI DSS
5 23 (2.96%) NCSC
6 20 (2.57%) Cyber Essentials
7 17 (2.19%) QA
8 14 (1.80%) SLA
9 12 (1.54%) PMO
10 5 (0.64%) JSP 440
11 4 (0.51%) Disclosure Scotland
11 4 (0.51%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 3 (0.39%) Data Quality
12 3 (0.39%) GRC
12 3 (0.39%) ISA99
12 3 (0.39%) RMADS
13 2 (0.26%) Government Security Classifications
13 2 (0.26%) GxP
13 2 (0.26%) PSD2
13 2 (0.26%) SOC 2
System Software
1 154 (19.79%) Active Directory
2 116 (14.91%) VMware Infrastructure
3 60 (7.71%) Docker
4 41 (5.27%) VMware NSX
5 32 (4.11%) vSphere
6 22 (2.83%) Hyper-V
7 15 (1.93%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (1.80%) Firmware
9 9 (1.16%) Virtual Machines
10 8 (1.03%) Virtual Desktop
11 4 (0.51%) Virtual Servers
12 3 (0.39%) DFS Replication
13 1 (0.13%) Citrix Hypervisor
13 1 (0.13%) KVM
13 1 (0.13%) ProxySG
13 1 (0.13%) Squid
13 1 (0.13%) UAG
13 1 (0.13%) Xen
13 1 (0.13%) XenApp
13 1 (0.13%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 101 (12.98%) Terraform
2 68 (8.74%) Ansible
2 68 (8.74%) Kubernetes
3 48 (6.17%) FortiGate
4 30 (3.86%) Single Sign-On
5 26 (3.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 23 (2.96%) Grafana
7 22 (2.83%) Microsoft Intune
8 20 (2.57%) vCenter Server
9 18 (2.31%) Nmap
10 17 (2.19%) Prometheus
11 11 (1.41%) Nagios
12 10 (1.29%) SCCM
13 9 (1.16%) CASB
13 9 (1.16%) Cisco Prime
13 9 (1.16%) Kiali
14 8 (1.03%) Nessus
15 7 (0.90%) VxRail
16 6 (0.77%) Progress Chef
16 6 (0.77%) WMI
Vendors
1 297 (38.17%) Cisco
2 160 (20.57%) Microsoft
3 151 (19.41%) Palo Alto
4 148 (19.02%) VMware
5 91 (11.70%) Juniper
6 90 (11.57%) F5
7 70 (9.00%) CheckPoint
8 69 (8.87%) Fortinet
9 67 (8.61%) Splunk
10 64 (8.23%) SolarWinds
11 56 (7.20%) Aruba
12 38 (4.88%) ServiceNow
13 37 (4.76%) Meraki
14 35 (4.50%) Google
15 25 (3.21%) Extreme Networks
16 24 (3.08%) Red Hat
17 22 (2.83%) Oracle
18 21 (2.70%) Citrix
19 15 (1.93%) IBM
19 15 (1.93%) Veeam