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

6 months to
11 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 70 43 42
Rank change year-on-year -27 -1 -6
Contract jobs citing Firewall 762 628 856
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.00% 4.75% 4.03%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 27.68% 31.04% 25.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 510 367 545
10th Percentile £331 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £499 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.84% -3.00% +2.56%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £608
90th Percentile £638 £638 £733
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 21 33
10th Percentile £13.92 - £23.92
25th Percentile £37.25 £14.20 £26.25
Median hourly rate £48.72 £30.00 £83.50
Median % change year-on-year +62.40% -64.07% +34.08%
75th Percentile £70.11 £41.25 £87.46
90th Percentile £73.81 £45.00 £87.53
UK median hourly rate £56.00 £30.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +86.67% -50.00% -4.08%

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 2,753 2,023 3,297
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.82% 15.29% 15.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,618 1,251 1,860
10th Percentile £231 £200 £203
25th Percentile £375 £313 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £476 £469 £483
Median % change year-on-year +1.39% -2.95% +1.74%
75th Percentile £579 £575 £600
90th Percentile £653 £638 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £485 £498
% change year-on-year +3.09% -2.51% -2.93%
Number of hourly rates quoted 243 124 357
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.44 £13.25
25th Percentile £21.25 £16.30 £16.30
Median hourly rate £32.50 £31.79 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.23% -33.07% +156.76%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £81.88 £73.45
UK median hourly rate £27.50 £44.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -37.50% +10.00% +113.73%

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 11 June 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 11 June 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 11 June 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 -13 264 £500 +4.17% 113
South East -16 214 £500 - 158
North West -2 166 £537 +13.11% 68
Yorkshire -28 83 £434 -11.21% 33
Midlands -67 77 £425 -19.05% 65
East of England -10 69 £505 +1.00% 38
Scotland +11 64 £450 +5.88% 17
West Midlands -52 64 £420 -20.00% 41
South West -45 55 £520 +6.67% 56
Wales -18 25 £425 +21.43% 5
North East -9 21 £625 +25.00% 12
East Midlands -47 9 £488 -6.43% 24
Northern Ireland -2 2 £385 - 4
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 10 (1.31%) Confluence
1 10 (1.31%) Microsoft Exchange
2 9 (1.18%) CICS
3 8 (1.05%) Apache
4 6 (0.79%) IIS
4 6 (0.79%) SharePoint
5 4 (0.52%) nginx
6 3 (0.39%) Skype for Business
6 3 (0.39%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.26%) Apache Pulsar
7 2 (0.26%) CloudStack
7 2 (0.26%) CMS
7 2 (0.26%) IBM HTTP Server
7 2 (0.26%) Oracle HTTP Server
7 2 (0.26%) Umbraco
7 2 (0.26%) WebSphere
7 2 (0.26%) WebSphere Application Server
7 2 (0.26%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 18 (2.36%) MS Visio
2 17 (2.23%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (1.44%) Microsoft Excel
4 6 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.39%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.13%) Dynamics GP
1 1 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
1 1 (0.13%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 236 (30.97%) Azure
2 140 (18.37%) AWS
3 56 (7.35%) Entra ID
4 54 (7.09%) GCP
5 46 (6.04%) Microsoft 365
6 32 (4.20%) Azure DevOps
6 32 (4.20%) GitHub
7 30 (3.94%) OCI
8 26 (3.41%) IaaS
8 26 (3.41%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 23 (3.02%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 20 (2.62%) SaaS
11 18 (2.36%) Azure Sentinel
12 15 (1.97%) GitHub Actions
13 13 (1.71%) Microsoft Purview
13 13 (1.71%) PaaS
14 12 (1.57%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 12 (1.57%) Azure Monitor
14 12 (1.57%) Nutanix
15 11 (1.44%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 231 (30.31%) WAN
2 203 (26.64%) Network Security
3 190 (24.93%) LAN
4 166 (21.78%) VPN
5 158 (20.73%) DNS
6 130 (17.06%) BGP
7 126 (16.54%) OSPF
8 107 (14.04%) VLAN
9 100 (13.12%) Wireless
10 98 (12.86%) DHCP
11 94 (12.34%) SD-WAN
12 78 (10.24%) Wi-Fi
13 71 (9.32%) TCP/IP
14 70 (9.19%) BIG-IP
15 68 (8.92%) VXLAN
16 66 (8.66%) Ethernet VPN
17 63 (8.27%) IPsec
18 51 (6.69%) MPLS
19 49 (6.43%) Cisco ISE
20 46 (6.04%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (1.44%) PostgreSQL
1 11 (1.44%) SQL Server
2 9 (1.18%) DataStage
3 6 (0.79%) Power BI
3 6 (0.79%) Relational Database
4 4 (0.52%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
4 4 (0.52%) Data Lake
4 4 (0.52%) MongoDB
4 4 (0.52%) MySQL
4 4 (0.52%) NoSQL
5 3 (0.39%) Delta Lake
5 3 (0.39%) Oracle Database
6 2 (0.26%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.13%) Amazon Redshift
7 1 (0.13%) EDRMS
7 1 (0.13%) Redis
7 1 (0.13%) SAP HANA
7 1 (0.13%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 1 (0.13%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 62 (8.14%) JIRA
2 38 (4.99%) GitLab
3 33 (4.33%) Jenkins
4 21 (2.76%) Git
5 11 (1.44%) Sonatype Nexus
6 10 (1.31%) Burp Suite
7 9 (1.18%) Metasploit
8 8 (1.05%) Jaeger
9 4 (0.52%) Browser DevTools
10 3 (0.39%) Chocolatey
10 3 (0.39%) CircleCI
11 2 (0.26%) Bitbucket
11 2 (0.26%) Introscope
11 2 (0.26%) Team Foundation Server
12 1 (0.13%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.13%) Cucumber
12 1 (0.13%) Gradle
12 1 (0.13%) LoadRunner
12 1 (0.13%) MSI
12 1 (0.13%) SonarQube
General
1 164 (21.52%) Social Skills
2 81 (10.63%) Finance
3 61 (8.01%) Public Sector
4 55 (7.22%) Analytical Skills
5 40 (5.25%) Documentation Skills
6 24 (3.15%) Banking
7 18 (2.36%) Legal
7 18 (2.36%) Telecoms
8 17 (2.23%) Manufacturing
9 14 (1.84%) Military
10 11 (1.44%) Influencing Skills
11 8 (1.05%) Financial Institution
11 8 (1.05%) Law
11 8 (1.05%) Retail
12 7 (0.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 5 (0.66%) Organisational Skills
14 3 (0.39%) Aerospace
14 3 (0.39%) Back Office
14 3 (0.39%) Police
15 2 (0.26%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 261 (34.25%) Network Engineer
2 95 (12.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 94 (12.34%) Architect
3 94 (12.34%) Senior
4 58 (7.61%) Security Engineer
5 45 (5.91%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
6 44 (5.77%) Network Architect
7 41 (5.38%) Senior Network Engineer
8 31 (4.07%) Cloud Engineer
9 29 (3.81%) Cisco Engineer
10 27 (3.54%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
11 26 (3.41%) Cisco Network Engineer
12 25 (3.28%) Lead
13 21 (2.76%) Designer
14 19 (2.49%) Network Specialist
14 19 (2.49%) Technical Architect
15 17 (2.23%) Network Security Engineer
16 16 (2.10%) Data Centre Engineer
16 16 (2.10%) Firewall Specialist
16 16 (2.10%) IT Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 58 (7.61%) 802.1X
2 21 (2.76%) LDAP
3 20 (2.62%) Middleware
4 17 (2.23%) Kafka
5 12 (1.57%) SAML
6 10 (1.31%) OpenTelemetry
7 9 (1.18%) Spring Boot
8 6 (0.79%) LangChain
8 6 (0.79%) PyTorch
8 6 (0.79%) scikit-learn
8 6 (0.79%) YAML
9 5 (0.66%) OAuth
9 5 (0.66%) OAuth2
10 4 (0.52%) ARM Templates
10 4 (0.52%) Redfish
11 3 (0.39%) Elastic Stack
11 3 (0.39%) LEMP Stack
11 3 (0.39%) React
11 3 (0.39%) REST
11 3 (0.39%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 219 (28.74%) Data Centre
2 57 (7.48%) Cloud Native
3 50 (6.56%) Security Posture
4 40 (5.25%) Hybrid Cloud
4 40 (5.25%) PKI
5 28 (3.67%) Clustering
5 28 (3.67%) Onboarding
6 27 (3.54%) Operational Technology
7 19 (2.49%) Management Information System
7 19 (2.49%) Public Cloud
8 17 (2.23%) IoT
9 16 (2.10%) Data Protection Act
10 15 (1.97%) Enterprise Storage
11 14 (1.84%) BYOD
11 14 (1.84%) SCADA
11 14 (1.84%) Self-Motivation
12 12 (1.57%) Cyber Threat
12 12 (1.57%) NHS
13 11 (1.44%) Driving Licence
14 10 (1.31%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 195 (25.59%) Windows
2 126 (16.54%) Linux
3 72 (9.45%) Windows Server
4 26 (3.41%) Unix
5 19 (2.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (1.31%) Solaris
7 9 (1.18%) AIX
7 9 (1.18%) Windows Server 2019
8 6 (0.79%) Ubuntu
8 6 (0.79%) Windows Server 2012
8 6 (0.79%) Windows Server 2016
9 5 (0.66%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.66%) VMS
10 4 (0.52%) CentOS
11 3 (0.39%) Data ONTAP
12 2 (0.26%) Android
12 2 (0.26%) CatOS
12 2 (0.26%) Oracle Linux
12 2 (0.26%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
12 2 (0.26%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 133 (17.45%) DevOps
2 124 (16.27%) CI/CD
3 123 (16.14%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 121 (15.88%) Load Balancing
5 111 (14.57%) High Availability
6 100 (13.12%) Cybersecurity
7 97 (12.73%) Infrastructure as Code
7 97 (12.73%) ITIL
8 87 (11.42%) Problem-Solving
9 85 (11.15%) Zero Trust
10 82 (10.76%) Agile
11 74 (9.71%) Observability
12 73 (9.58%) Network Segmentation
13 70 (9.19%) Migration
14 67 (8.79%) Change Management
15 61 (8.01%) Roadmaps
16 59 (7.74%) Project Delivery
17 57 (7.48%) Technical Leadership
18 56 (7.35%) Identity Access Management
18 56 (7.35%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 109 (14.30%) Python
2 66 (8.66%) PowerShell
3 38 (4.99%) Bash
4 32 (4.20%) SQL
5 30 (3.94%) Java
6 27 (3.54%) Bicep
7 9 (1.18%) COBOL
8 8 (1.05%) ActionScript
9 7 (0.92%) Rust
10 6 (0.79%) Go
11 5 (0.66%) Perl
12 3 (0.39%) JavaScript
12 3 (0.39%) PL/SQL
12 3 (0.39%) Shell Script
13 2 (0.26%) C++
13 2 (0.26%) Groovy
13 2 (0.26%) Jython
14 1 (0.13%) C
14 1 (0.13%) Korn
14 1 (0.13%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 294 (38.58%) Security Cleared
2 205 (26.90%) SC Cleared
3 179 (23.49%) Cisco Certification
4 128 (16.80%) CCNP
5 96 (12.60%) CCNA
6 66 (8.66%) Degree
6 66 (8.66%) DV Cleared
7 34 (4.46%) CISSP
8 25 (3.28%) AWS Certification
8 25 (3.28%) Azure Certification
9 19 (2.49%) Network+ Certification
10 16 (2.10%) JNCIS
10 16 (2.10%) Microsoft Certification
11 15 (1.97%) CISM
11 15 (1.97%) Server+ Certification
12 14 (1.84%) CCIE
12 14 (1.84%) JNCIA
13 12 (1.57%) PMP
14 10 (1.31%) CompTIA Security+
14 10 (1.31%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 47 (6.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 32 (4.20%) NIST
3 26 (3.41%) GDPR
4 21 (2.76%) PCI DSS
5 18 (2.36%) NCSC
5 18 (2.36%) QA
6 17 (2.23%) Cyber Essentials
6 17 (2.23%) SLA
7 8 (1.05%) Disclosure Scotland
7 8 (1.05%) PMO
8 6 (0.79%) Data Quality
9 4 (0.52%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
9 4 (0.52%) SOC 2
10 3 (0.39%) ISA99
10 3 (0.39%) JSP 440
10 3 (0.39%) RMADS
10 3 (0.39%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.26%) Government Security Classifications
11 2 (0.26%) GRC
11 2 (0.26%) GxP
System Software
1 130 (17.06%) Active Directory
2 94 (12.34%) VMware Infrastructure
3 38 (4.99%) Docker
4 30 (3.94%) vSphere
5 29 (3.81%) VMware NSX
6 18 (2.36%) Firmware
7 17 (2.23%) Hyper-V
8 15 (1.97%) VMware ESXi
9 14 (1.84%) Virtual Machines
10 10 (1.31%) Virtual Desktop
11 3 (0.39%) DFS Replication
11 3 (0.39%) Dovecot
11 3 (0.39%) Postfix
12 2 (0.26%) BitLocker
12 2 (0.26%) Squid
12 2 (0.26%) VirtualBox
13 1 (0.13%) FreeRADIUS
13 1 (0.13%) iptables
13 1 (0.13%) KVM
13 1 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 111 (14.57%) Terraform
2 83 (10.89%) Ansible
3 52 (6.82%) Kubernetes
4 50 (6.56%) FortiGate
5 27 (3.54%) Grafana
6 22 (2.89%) Microsoft Intune
7 20 (2.62%) Prometheus
8 15 (1.97%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 15 (1.97%) Single Sign-On
9 12 (1.57%) CASB
10 11 (1.44%) Nmap
10 11 (1.44%) Progress Chef
10 11 (1.44%) SCCM
11 10 (1.31%) vCenter Server
12 8 (1.05%) Cisco Prime
12 8 (1.05%) Kiali
13 6 (0.79%) Nagios
13 6 (0.79%) Nessus
13 6 (0.79%) VxRail
14 4 (0.52%) Dell DRAC
Vendors
1 293 (38.45%) Cisco
2 151 (19.82%) Palo Alto
3 135 (17.72%) Microsoft
4 124 (16.27%) VMware
5 119 (15.62%) F5
6 96 (12.60%) Juniper
7 72 (9.45%) Fortinet
8 66 (8.66%) Aruba
9 64 (8.40%) CheckPoint
10 59 (7.74%) SolarWinds
10 59 (7.74%) Splunk
11 53 (6.96%) ServiceNow
12 32 (4.20%) Google
13 29 (3.81%) Arista
14 27 (3.54%) Extreme Networks
15 22 (2.89%) Meraki
15 22 (2.89%) Red Hat
16 21 (2.76%) Veeam
17 17 (2.23%) Oracle
18 15 (1.97%) IBM