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

6 months to
19 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 63 42 36
Rank change year-on-year -21 -6 +17
Contract jobs citing Firewall 657 627 968
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.58% 4.56% 4.90%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.19% 28.05% 28.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 441 351 640
10th Percentile £309 £262 £310
25th Percentile £400 £372 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £495 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.52% -1.00% -
75th Percentile £569 £575 £608
90th Percentile £650 £630 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £522 £525
% change year-on-year -4.21% -0.57% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 19 41
10th Percentile £35.13 £20.00 £46.39
25th Percentile £37.25 £20.09 £62.50
Median hourly rate £45.33 £35.00 £65.98
Median % change year-on-year +29.51% -46.95% +60.81%
75th Percentile £74.26 £41.38 £76.25
90th Percentile £85.90 £62.75 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £41.94 £35.00 £65.98
% change year-on-year +19.83% -46.95% +103.02%

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 2,176 2,235 3,450
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 11.84% 16.24% 17.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,450 1,256 2,040
10th Percentile £200 £188 £205
25th Percentile £300 £300 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £469 £475
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% -1.32% +2.70%
75th Percentile £563 £580 £595
90th Percentile £650 £650 £680
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -2.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 117 113 282
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.43 £17.72
25th Percentile £16.00 £21.00 £27.50
Median hourly rate £41.94 £32.50 £57.99
Median % change year-on-year +29.05% -43.96% +205.21%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £65.98
90th Percentile £74.56 £70.00 £74.00
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £56.45
% change year-on-year -14.29% -37.99% +156.57%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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
North of England -23 186 £492 +3.58% 110
South East +15 180 £500 - 195
Midlands -17 120 £445 -11.00% 54
West Midlands 0 112 £445 +1.71% 37
North West -25 102 £519 +9.16% 52
Yorkshire -14 80 £455 +7.06% 42
Scotland -11 57 £438 -12.50% 31
South West -33 52 £550 +10.00% 73
East of England -20 39 £475 -5.00% 64
Wales -18 16 £293 -19.86% 17
North East -15 7 £550 - 18
East Midlands -52 7 £440 -32.36% 17
Northern Ireland - 7 £500 - 6
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 (4.72%) Confluence
2 10 (1.52%) Apache
2 10 (1.52%) Microsoft Exchange
2 10 (1.52%) nginx
3 9 (1.37%) SharePoint
4 7 (1.07%) IIS
5 5 (0.76%) OpenStack
6 3 (0.46%) 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 29 (4.41%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (2.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (2.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 15 (2.28%) MS Visio
3 9 (1.37%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 1 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.15%) Finacle
1 1 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 182 (27.70%) AWS
2 174 (26.48%) Azure
3 70 (10.65%) GCP
4 48 (7.31%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 42 (6.39%) Amazon EC2
6 39 (5.94%) Microsoft 365
7 32 (4.87%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 31 (4.72%) Amazon S3
8 31 (4.72%) Entra ID
9 25 (3.81%) Amazon ELB
10 23 (3.50%) Amazon ECS
11 21 (3.20%) Serverless
12 20 (3.04%) AWS CloudFormation
13 18 (2.74%) AWS KMS
13 18 (2.74%) IaaS
14 17 (2.59%) AWS Lambda
14 17 (2.59%) Azure Sentinel
14 17 (2.59%) PaaS
15 16 (2.44%) Azure Monitor
16 14 (2.13%) Akamai
Communications & Networking
1 152 (23.14%) Network Security
2 143 (21.77%) VPN
3 133 (20.24%) WAN
4 131 (19.94%) DNS
5 92 (14.00%) LAN
6 83 (12.63%) BGP
7 78 (11.87%) VLAN
7 78 (11.87%) Wireless
8 77 (11.72%) TCP/IP
9 68 (10.35%) OSPF
10 51 (7.76%) DHCP
11 50 (7.61%) SD-WAN
12 40 (6.09%) IPsec
13 39 (5.94%) Cisco ASA
14 37 (5.63%) MPLS
15 36 (5.48%) Wi-Fi
16 35 (5.33%) Cisco ISE
16 35 (5.33%) SSL
17 30 (4.57%) Cisco Nexus
18 29 (4.41%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (4.57%) Amazon RDS
2 22 (3.35%) SQL Server
3 20 (3.04%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (1.37%) Amazon Aurora
5 4 (0.61%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.61%) Relational Database
6 3 (0.46%) 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 Business Intelligence
8 1 (0.15%) Data Lake
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 52 (7.91%) JIRA
2 51 (7.76%) Jenkins
3 46 (7.00%) Git
4 34 (5.18%) GitLab
5 16 (2.44%) Sonatype Nexus
6 14 (2.13%) Burp Suite
6 14 (2.13%) Metasploit
6 14 (2.13%) Vagrant
7 10 (1.52%) Bitbucket
8 7 (1.07%) Jaeger
9 4 (0.61%) CircleCI
10 2 (0.30%) Chocolatey
11 1 (0.15%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.15%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.15%) Eclipse
11 1 (0.15%) MSI
11 1 (0.15%) Postman
11 1 (0.15%) SonarQube
11 1 (0.15%) Subversion
11 1 (0.15%) Travis CI
General
1 191 (29.07%) Social Skills
2 78 (11.87%) Analytical Skills
2 78 (11.87%) Public Sector
3 61 (9.28%) Finance
4 49 (7.46%) Documentation Skills
5 30 (4.57%) Banking
6 27 (4.11%) Telecoms
7 23 (3.50%) Legal
8 18 (2.74%) Manufacturing
9 15 (2.28%) Presentation Skills
10 8 (1.22%) Financial Institution
11 7 (1.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 7 (1.07%) Military
11 7 (1.07%) Retail
12 6 (0.91%) Law
13 5 (0.76%) Aerospace
13 5 (0.76%) Influencing Skills
14 4 (0.61%) Retail Banking
15 3 (0.46%) Local Government
15 3 (0.46%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 192 (29.22%) Network Engineer
2 88 (13.39%) Architect
3 68 (10.35%) Senior
4 50 (7.61%) Security Engineer
5 43 (6.54%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 42 (6.39%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
7 36 (5.48%) Network Architect
8 35 (5.33%) Platform Engineer
9 32 (4.87%) DevOps Engineer
10 28 (4.26%) Analyst
11 22 (3.35%) AWS Engineer
11 22 (3.35%) Security Architect
12 21 (3.20%) IT Engineer
12 21 (3.20%) IT Support
13 20 (3.04%) Cloud Platform Engineer
13 20 (3.04%) Support Engineer
14 19 (2.89%) Solutions Architect
15 18 (2.74%) Cisco Engineer
16 17 (2.59%) Consultant
16 17 (2.59%) Network Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (4.87%) 802.1X
2 20 (3.04%) LDAP
2 20 (3.04%) SAML
3 15 (2.28%) OAuth
3 15 (2.28%) OAuth2
3 15 (2.28%) OpenID
4 13 (1.98%) Middleware
5 11 (1.67%) Kafka
5 11 (1.67%) Node.js
6 9 (1.37%) JSON
7 8 (1.22%) REST
8 7 (1.07%) OpenTelemetry
8 7 (1.07%) RFC 2544
8 7 (1.07%) Spring Boot
9 4 (0.61%) ARM Templates
9 4 (0.61%) XML
10 3 (0.46%) Elastic Stack
10 3 (0.46%) Lambda Expressions
10 3 (0.46%) Microsoft Graph
11 2 (0.30%) ModSecurity
Miscellaneous
1 130 (19.79%) Data Centre
2 53 (8.07%) Security Posture
3 35 (5.33%) PKI
4 28 (4.26%) Replication
5 25 (3.81%) Onboarding
6 23 (3.50%) Operational Technology
7 22 (3.35%) Hybrid Cloud
8 15 (2.28%) Cyber Threat
8 15 (2.28%) Data Protection Act
8 15 (2.28%) NHS
9 13 (1.98%) Cloud Native
9 13 (1.98%) Management Information System
9 13 (1.98%) Security Operations Centre
10 12 (1.83%) Private Cloud
11 11 (1.67%) Enterprise Software
11 11 (1.67%) Fat Client
11 11 (1.67%) Thin Client
12 9 (1.37%) Legacy Systems
12 9 (1.37%) Product Ownership
12 9 (1.37%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 187 (28.46%) Windows
2 144 (21.92%) Linux
3 71 (10.81%) Windows Server
4 20 (3.04%) VMS
5 17 (2.59%) Amazon Linux
5 17 (2.59%) Unix
6 16 (2.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 12 (1.83%) Ubuntu
8 11 (1.67%) Windows 7
9 9 (1.37%) Windows Server 2019
10 7 (1.07%) Windows 10
11 3 (0.46%) Android
11 3 (0.46%) Apple iOS
11 3 (0.46%) CatOS
11 3 (0.46%) CentOS
11 3 (0.46%) Mac OS
11 3 (0.46%) Solaris
11 3 (0.46%) Windows Server 2012
11 3 (0.46%) Windows Server 2016
12 2 (0.30%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 131 (19.94%) Cybersecurity
2 101 (15.37%) DevOps
3 94 (14.31%) Problem-Solving
4 91 (13.85%) CI/CD
5 80 (12.18%) Incident Response
6 72 (10.96%) Infrastructure as Code
7 71 (10.81%) SIEM
8 67 (10.20%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 61 (9.28%) Cloud Security
10 59 (8.98%) Agile
10 59 (8.98%) Containerisation
10 59 (8.98%) Load Balancing
11 58 (8.83%) High Availability
12 55 (8.37%) ITIL
13 52 (7.91%) Mentoring
14 51 (7.76%) Change Management
15 48 (7.31%) Migration
15 48 (7.31%) Network Design
16 46 (7.00%) Platform Engineering
17 45 (6.85%) DevSecOps
Programming Languages
1 133 (20.24%) Python
2 106 (16.13%) PowerShell
3 66 (10.05%) Bash
4 38 (5.78%) SQL
5 35 (5.33%) Java
6 32 (4.87%) Perl
7 14 (2.13%) Groovy
8 10 (1.52%) Ruby
9 9 (1.37%) Bicep
10 7 (1.07%) Rust
11 6 (0.91%) Shell Script
12 4 (0.61%) C#
13 3 (0.46%) Go
13 3 (0.46%) Kusto Query Language
14 1 (0.15%) C++
14 1 (0.15%) JavaScript
14 1 (0.15%) Lisp
14 1 (0.15%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 287 (43.68%) Security Cleared
2 196 (29.83%) SC Cleared
3 132 (20.09%) Cisco Certification
4 109 (16.59%) CCNP
5 72 (10.96%) DV Cleared
6 64 (9.74%) Degree
7 58 (8.83%) CCNA
8 43 (6.54%) CISSP
9 33 (5.02%) AWS Certification
10 29 (4.41%) Azure Certification
11 26 (3.96%) CCIE
12 25 (3.81%) Microsoft Certification
13 22 (3.35%) CISM
14 14 (2.13%) CHECK Team Member
15 12 (1.83%) CREST Certified
15 12 (1.83%) Cyber Scheme
16 11 (1.67%) CompTIA Security+
16 11 (1.67%) Postgraduate
17 10 (1.52%) Computer Science Degree
18 9 (1.37%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 59 (8.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 49 (7.46%) NIST
3 37 (5.63%) GDPR
4 32 (4.87%) PCI DSS
5 19 (2.89%) SLA
6 15 (2.28%) Cyber Essentials
7 13 (1.98%) NCSC
7 13 (1.98%) QA
8 10 (1.52%) PMO
9 6 (0.91%) COBIT
10 5 (0.76%) PSD2
11 4 (0.61%) Actionable Recommendations
12 3 (0.46%) 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%) GPG13
14 1 (0.15%) HIPAA
14 1 (0.15%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 116 (17.66%) Active Directory
2 100 (15.22%) VMware Infrastructure
3 90 (13.70%) Docker
4 28 (4.26%) Hyper-V
5 23 (3.50%) vSphere
6 22 (3.35%) VMware NSX
7 17 (2.59%) DFS Replication
8 13 (1.98%) VMware ESXi
9 9 (1.37%) Dovecot
9 9 (1.37%) Postfix
9 9 (1.37%) Squid
10 8 (1.22%) Virtual Machines
11 6 (0.91%) Firmware
11 6 (0.91%) Virtual Servers
12 5 (0.76%) KVM
13 4 (0.61%) Virtual Desktop
14 2 (0.30%) Terminal Services
14 2 (0.30%) Xen
15 1 (0.15%) NetIQ eDirectory
15 1 (0.15%) ProxySG
Systems Management
1 96 (14.61%) Terraform
2 73 (11.11%) Ansible
3 68 (10.35%) Kubernetes
4 28 (4.26%) Grafana
5 24 (3.65%) Prometheus
6 23 (3.50%) FortiGate
6 23 (3.50%) Single Sign-On
7 21 (3.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 20 (3.04%) Microsoft Intune
9 19 (2.89%) vCenter Server
10 17 (2.59%) Nmap
11 12 (1.83%) Nessus
11 12 (1.83%) SCCM
12 11 (1.67%) WMI
13 10 (1.52%) CSIRT
13 10 (1.52%) Proxmox
14 9 (1.37%) Nagios
15 8 (1.22%) Fluentd
16 7 (1.07%) Kiali
17 6 (0.91%) Puppet
Vendors
1 253 (38.51%) Cisco
2 157 (23.90%) Palo Alto
3 140 (21.31%) Microsoft
4 123 (18.72%) VMware
5 92 (14.00%) F5
6 79 (12.02%) CheckPoint
7 56 (8.52%) Fortinet
8 54 (8.22%) Juniper
9 48 (7.31%) Splunk
10 43 (6.54%) Meraki
10 43 (6.54%) SolarWinds
11 39 (5.94%) Aruba
12 35 (5.33%) Oracle
13 29 (4.41%) ServiceNow
14 28 (4.26%) Google
15 19 (2.89%) Dell
16 18 (2.74%) Citrix
17 16 (2.44%) Red Hat
17 16 (2.44%) Zscaler
18 11 (1.67%) Veeam