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

6 months to
17 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 77 44 40
Rank change year-on-year -33 -4 -3
Contract jobs citing Firewall 800 716 752
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 2.91% 4.65% 4.14%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 27.35% 33.54% 27.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 525 412 478
10th Percentile £350 £319 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £513
Median % change year-on-year +2.09% -4.44% +7.89%
75th Percentile £595 £588 £608
90th Percentile £650 £650 £720
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 40 26 23
10th Percentile £28.90 £14.20 £19.28
25th Percentile £44.86 £15.18 £23.92
Median hourly rate £65.57 £30.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +118.57% -36.84% -28.03%
75th Percentile £82.04 £61.25 £85.45
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.63 £87.46
UK median hourly rate £65.45 £30.00 £27.50
% change year-on-year +118.17% +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 2,925 2,135 2,771
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.63% 13.86% 15.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,648 1,284 1,641
10th Percentile £219 £201 £213
25th Percentile £373 £325 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £489 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.89% -5.00% +9.89%
75th Percentile £576 £575 £601
90th Percentile £650 £640 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £486 £500
% change year-on-year +2.83% -2.75% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 311 140 270
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.63 £19.45 £21.28
Median hourly rate £26.14 £45.00 £54.88
Median % change year-on-year -41.91% -18.00% -2.86%
75th Percentile £65.55 £65.56 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £87.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £26.14 £46.25 £49.00
% change year-on-year -43.48% -5.61% -10.91%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 -14 280 £500 +3.09% 90
South East -41 212 £520 +4.00% 146
North West +5 181 £525 +10.53% 46
South West -27 83 £550 +13.11% 48
Yorkshire -38 81 £450 -8.07% 27
East of England -4 78 £525 -4.55% 35
Midlands -73 75 £450 -5.26% 73
Scotland +5 62 £400 -13.51% 17
West Midlands -76 57 £440 -7.37% 44
North East -21 24 £625 +8.70% 20
Wales -14 17 £425 +61.90% 6
East Midlands -21 16 £488 +3.50% 29
Northern Ireland -5 1 - - 5
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 (2.38%) Microsoft Exchange
2 16 (2.00%) Confluence
3 10 (1.25%) Apache
3 10 (1.25%) SharePoint
4 9 (1.13%) nginx
5 6 (0.75%) SAS
6 4 (0.50%) FactoryTalk
6 4 (0.50%) IIS
7 3 (0.38%) CICS
7 3 (0.38%) Skype for Business
7 3 (0.38%) 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 (2.50%) MS Visio
2 11 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.88%) Microsoft Excel
4 5 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
5 4 (0.50%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 5 (0.63%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.25%) Dynamics GP
2 2 (0.25%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 284 (35.50%) Azure
2 181 (22.63%) AWS
3 77 (9.63%) Entra ID
4 63 (7.88%) GCP
5 60 (7.50%) Microsoft 365
6 39 (4.88%) Azure DevOps
7 33 (4.13%) GitHub
8 31 (3.88%) OCI
9 30 (3.75%) SaaS
10 29 (3.63%) IaaS
11 27 (3.38%) Azure Monitor
11 27 (3.38%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 26 (3.25%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 25 (3.13%) Azure Sentinel
14 22 (2.75%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 18 (2.25%) GitHub Actions
16 17 (2.13%) Serverless
17 14 (1.75%) AWS CloudFormation
17 14 (1.75%) AWS Direct Connect
17 14 (1.75%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 229 (28.63%) WAN
2 218 (27.25%) VPN
3 214 (26.75%) DNS
4 211 (26.38%) Network Security
5 192 (24.00%) LAN
6 140 (17.50%) BGP
7 139 (17.38%) DHCP
8 131 (16.38%) TCP/IP
9 123 (15.38%) OSPF
10 115 (14.38%) VLAN
10 115 (14.38%) Wireless
11 92 (11.50%) SD-WAN
12 90 (11.25%) Wi-Fi
13 67 (8.38%) BIG-IP
14 62 (7.75%) IPsec
15 54 (6.75%) MPLS
16 52 (6.50%) VXLAN
17 51 (6.38%) Cisco ASA
17 51 (6.38%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
18 48 (6.00%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (1.63%) SQL Server
2 12 (1.50%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (1.25%) Relational Database
4 7 (0.88%) Azure SQL Database
5 6 (0.75%) Power BI
6 5 (0.63%) Data Lake
6 5 (0.63%) NoSQL
6 5 (0.63%) Oracle Database
7 4 (0.50%) Amazon RDS
7 4 (0.50%) Delta Lake
7 4 (0.50%) MySQL
8 3 (0.38%) DataStage
9 2 (0.25%) EDRMS
10 1 (0.13%) Oracle Reports
10 1 (0.13%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 1 (0.13%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 68 (8.50%) JIRA
2 38 (4.75%) GitLab
3 33 (4.13%) Jenkins
4 17 (2.13%) Git
5 9 (1.13%) Bitbucket
6 8 (1.00%) Sonatype Nexus
7 6 (0.75%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 5 (0.63%) Browser DevTools
9 3 (0.38%) Burp Suite
10 2 (0.25%) Cucumber
10 2 (0.25%) Gatling
10 2 (0.25%) Gradle
10 2 (0.25%) Introscope
10 2 (0.25%) LoadRunner
10 2 (0.25%) REST Assured
10 2 (0.25%) SonarQube
10 2 (0.25%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.25%) Team Foundation Server
11 1 (0.13%) Ant
11 1 (0.13%) MSI
General
1 176 (22.00%) Social Skills
2 82 (10.25%) Analytical Skills
3 78 (9.75%) Finance
4 69 (8.63%) Public Sector
5 31 (3.88%) Documentation Skills
6 30 (3.75%) Banking
7 24 (3.00%) Telecoms
8 19 (2.38%) Manufacturing
9 14 (1.75%) Military
10 13 (1.63%) Legal
11 10 (1.25%) Organisational Skills
12 9 (1.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 8 (1.00%) Police
14 7 (0.88%) Aerospace
14 7 (0.88%) Retail
15 5 (0.63%) Financial Institution
15 5 (0.63%) Influencing Skills
15 5 (0.63%) Law
16 4 (0.50%) Pharmaceutical
17 3 (0.38%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 251 (31.38%) Network Engineer
2 114 (14.25%) Senior
3 109 (13.63%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 96 (12.00%) Architect
5 55 (6.88%) Security Engineer
6 50 (6.25%) Senior Network Engineer
7 42 (5.25%) Cloud Engineer
8 36 (4.50%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
9 33 (4.13%) Network Architect
9 33 (4.13%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
10 30 (3.75%) Lead
11 24 (3.00%) Platform Engineer
12 22 (2.75%) Consultant
13 21 (2.63%) Technical Architect
14 18 (2.25%) Network Security Engineer
14 18 (2.25%) Solutions Architect
15 16 (2.00%) Azure Engineer
15 16 (2.00%) Cisco Engineer
15 16 (2.00%) Security Architect
16 15 (1.88%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (5.00%) 802.1X
2 17 (2.13%) SAML
3 16 (2.00%) ARM Templates
4 10 (1.25%) Kafka
4 10 (1.25%) React
5 9 (1.13%) LangChain
5 9 (1.13%) PyTorch
5 9 (1.13%) scikit-learn
5 9 (1.13%) YAML
6 8 (1.00%) LDAP
6 8 (1.00%) Middleware
7 7 (0.88%) OAuth
7 7 (0.88%) OpenID
8 6 (0.75%) OAuth2
8 6 (0.75%) SailPoint
9 5 (0.63%) ModSecurity
9 5 (0.63%) OpenTelemetry
10 4 (0.50%) gRPC
10 4 (0.50%) Redfish
10 4 (0.50%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 180 (22.50%) Data Centre
2 67 (8.38%) Cloud Native
3 60 (7.50%) PKI
4 59 (7.38%) Hybrid Cloud
5 40 (5.00%) Security Posture
6 33 (4.13%) Operational Technology
7 24 (3.00%) SCADA
8 21 (2.63%) Management Information System
8 21 (2.63%) Onboarding
9 19 (2.38%) Public Cloud
10 18 (2.25%) Driving Licence
10 18 (2.25%) Enterprise Storage
10 18 (2.25%) Self-Motivation
11 17 (2.13%) Data Protection Act
12 16 (2.00%) Clustering
13 15 (1.88%) IoT
14 13 (1.63%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
15 12 (1.50%) Enterprise Software
16 11 (1.38%) Private Cloud
16 11 (1.38%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 220 (27.50%) Windows
2 147 (18.38%) Linux
3 91 (11.38%) Windows Server
4 31 (3.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 17 (2.13%) Unix
6 11 (1.38%) Mac OS
7 10 (1.25%) CentOS
8 9 (1.13%) Ubuntu
9 8 (1.00%) VMS
10 7 (0.88%) Rocky
11 6 (0.75%) Windows 10
12 5 (0.63%) Windows Server 2019
13 4 (0.50%) Android
13 4 (0.50%) Solaris
13 4 (0.50%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.50%) Windows Server 2016
14 3 (0.38%) AIX
14 3 (0.38%) Apple iOS
14 3 (0.38%) Check Point GAiA
14 3 (0.38%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 155 (19.38%) CI/CD
2 147 (18.38%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 141 (17.63%) DevOps
4 140 (17.50%) Infrastructure as Code
5 135 (16.88%) Load Balancing
6 125 (15.63%) Cybersecurity
7 120 (15.00%) Problem-Solving
8 113 (14.13%) ITIL
9 107 (13.38%) High Availability
10 99 (12.38%) Agile
11 88 (11.00%) SIEM
12 83 (10.38%) Zero Trust
13 82 (10.25%) Migration
14 77 (9.63%) Technical Leadership
15 76 (9.50%) Change Management
16 71 (8.88%) Roadmaps
17 69 (8.63%) Observability
18 67 (8.38%) Project Delivery
19 66 (8.25%) Network Segmentation
19 66 (8.25%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 160 (20.00%) Python
2 125 (15.63%) PowerShell
3 82 (10.25%) Bash
4 33 (4.13%) Bicep
5 31 (3.88%) SQL
6 26 (3.25%) Java
7 9 (1.13%) ActionScript
8 5 (0.63%) Go
8 5 (0.63%) Kusto Query Language
8 5 (0.63%) Search Processing Language
9 4 (0.50%) JavaScript
9 4 (0.50%) Perl
9 4 (0.50%) TypeScript
10 3 (0.38%) COBOL
10 3 (0.38%) 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 (0.13%) Korn
Qualifications
1 312 (39.00%) Security Cleared
2 202 (25.25%) SC Cleared
3 156 (19.50%) Cisco Certification
4 106 (13.25%) CCNP
5 92 (11.50%) DV Cleared
6 83 (10.38%) CCNA
7 65 (8.13%) Degree
8 42 (5.25%) CISSP
9 40 (5.00%) AWS Certification
10 33 (4.13%) Azure Certification
11 19 (2.38%) Network+ Certification
12 17 (2.13%) Microsoft Certification
13 16 (2.00%) CCIE
14 15 (1.88%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 14 (1.75%) Server+ Certification
16 12 (1.50%) CISM
16 12 (1.50%) Computer Science Degree
16 12 (1.50%) VCAP
17 11 (1.38%) JNCIS
18 10 (1.25%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 45 (5.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 35 (4.38%) NIST
3 26 (3.25%) GDPR
4 25 (3.13%) NCSC
5 15 (1.88%) QA
6 14 (1.75%) PCI DSS
7 11 (1.38%) Cyber Essentials
7 11 (1.38%) JSP 440
8 9 (1.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 8 (1.00%) Data Quality
9 8 (1.00%) Disclosure Scotland
10 6 (0.75%) SLA
11 5 (0.63%) GxP
12 4 (0.50%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 4 (0.50%) HIPAA
12 4 (0.50%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 4 (0.50%) SOC 2
13 3 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 3 (0.38%) ISA99
13 3 (0.38%) NIST 800
System Software
1 149 (18.63%) Active Directory
2 134 (16.75%) VMware Infrastructure
3 53 (6.63%) VMware NSX
4 52 (6.50%) Hyper-V
5 44 (5.50%) Docker
6 37 (4.63%) vSphere
7 23 (2.88%) VMware ESXi
8 19 (2.38%) Firmware
9 18 (2.25%) Virtual Machines
10 7 (0.88%) Virtual Desktop
11 4 (0.50%) Virtual Servers
12 3 (0.38%) Dovecot
12 3 (0.38%) FreeRADIUS
12 3 (0.38%) Postfix
12 3 (0.38%) VirtualBox
13 2 (0.25%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.25%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 2 (0.25%) Squid
14 1 (0.13%) iptables
14 1 (0.13%) NFS
Systems Management
1 168 (21.00%) Terraform
2 125 (15.63%) Ansible
3 78 (9.75%) Kubernetes
4 43 (5.38%) FortiGate
5 30 (3.75%) Microsoft Intune
6 23 (2.88%) Progress Chef
7 19 (2.38%) Single Sign-On
8 18 (2.25%) Grafana
9 17 (2.13%) Prometheus
10 15 (1.88%) CASB
11 14 (1.75%) VxRail
12 12 (1.50%) vCenter Server
13 11 (1.38%) SCCM
14 9 (1.13%) Argo
15 7 (0.88%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 7 (0.88%) NetBackup
15 7 (0.88%) Packer
16 6 (0.75%) Cisco Prime
16 6 (0.75%) Istio
17 5 (0.63%) Nagios
Vendors
1 283 (35.38%) Cisco
2 187 (23.38%) Microsoft
3 167 (20.88%) VMware
4 149 (18.63%) Palo Alto
5 111 (13.88%) F5
6 84 (10.50%) Juniper
7 68 (8.50%) Fortinet
8 63 (7.88%) CheckPoint
9 49 (6.13%) Aruba
9 49 (6.13%) ServiceNow
9 49 (6.13%) SolarWinds
10 45 (5.63%) Splunk
11 44 (5.50%) Google
12 28 (3.50%) Arista
13 26 (3.25%) Red Hat
14 24 (3.00%) Meraki
15 22 (2.75%) Zscaler
16 18 (2.25%) Veeam
17 17 (2.13%) Infoblox
18 16 (2.00%) CyberArk