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

6 months to
4 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 62 46 36
Rank change year-on-year -16 -10 +10
Contract jobs citing Firewall 775 587 931
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.41% 4.63% 4.44%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.37% 28.77% 25.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 525 353 594
10th Percentile £316 £300 £280
25th Percentile £413 £385 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £575 £588 £608
90th Percentile £638 £648 £713
UK median daily rate £500 £510 £500
% change year-on-year -1.96% +2.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 17 29
10th Percentile £20.68 - £23.92
25th Percentile £37.25 £14.20 £58.50
Median hourly rate £52.36 £35.00 £83.77
Median % change year-on-year +49.60% -58.22% +42.79%
75th Percentile £74.26 £41.50 £87.46
90th Percentile £85.30 £56.50 £87.53
UK median hourly rate £48.72 £35.82 £73.50
% change year-on-year +36.00% -51.26% +18.54%

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 2,552 2,040 3,611
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 11.23% 16.10% 17.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,607 1,243 2,101
10th Percentile £204 £193 £202
25th Percentile £354 £313 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £468 £475
Median % change year-on-year +1.60% -1.58% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £598
90th Percentile £654 £638 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £488 £480
% change year-on-year +2.56% +1.67% -7.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 159 127 338
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.67 £13.43
25th Percentile £18.25 £20.15 £17.69
Median hourly rate £50.00 £28.00 £45.44
Median % change year-on-year +78.57% -38.38% +145.62%
75th Percentile £70.29 £65.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.41 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £42.25 £35.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year +20.71% -6.67% +97.37%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 +7 235 £515 +3.00% 134
North of England -21 233 £515 +8.42% 105
North West -9 158 £528 +11.75% 67
Midlands -44 98 £425 -22.73% 62
West Midlands -15 86 £425 -18.35% 37
Yorkshire -25 73 £424 -17.20% 27
South West -39 62 £552 +1.10% 42
East of England -13 60 £475 -9.52% 51
Scotland -3 55 £425 -1.45% 22
Wales -17 30 £425 +9.68% 13
East Midlands -53 8 £475 -19.83% 25
North East -13 5 £548 +9.50% 12
Northern Ireland - 3 £500 - 5
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 16 (2.06%) Confluence
2 9 (1.16%) Apache
2 9 (1.16%) CICS
3 8 (1.03%) Microsoft Exchange
4 6 (0.77%) IIS
5 4 (0.52%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.52%) SharePoint
6 2 (0.26%) Apache Pulsar
6 2 (0.26%) IBM HTTP Server
6 2 (0.26%) Oracle HTTP Server
6 2 (0.26%) Skype for Business
6 2 (0.26%) WebSphere
6 2 (0.26%) WebSphere Application Server
6 2 (0.26%) WebSphere Portal
7 1 (0.13%) nginx
Applications
1 33 (4.26%) Microsoft Office
2 17 (2.19%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (1.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 13 (1.68%) MS Visio
4 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
1 215 (27.74%) Azure
2 153 (19.74%) AWS
3 58 (7.48%) GCP
4 57 (7.35%) Entra ID
5 40 (5.16%) Microsoft 365
6 33 (4.26%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 27 (3.48%) GitHub
8 25 (3.23%) Azure DevOps
9 24 (3.10%) Serverless
10 23 (2.97%) IaaS
11 22 (2.84%) AWS CloudFormation
12 21 (2.71%) Azure Sentinel
12 21 (2.71%) PaaS
13 20 (2.58%) AWS Lambda
14 19 (2.45%) Azure Monitor
15 17 (2.19%) Amazon EC2
16 15 (1.94%) Azure ExpressRoute
16 15 (1.94%) GitHub Actions
17 13 (1.68%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 13 (1.68%) Nutanix
Communications & Networking
1 204 (26.32%) Network Security
1 204 (26.32%) WAN
2 169 (21.81%) LAN
3 167 (21.55%) VPN
4 160 (20.65%) DNS
5 131 (16.90%) BGP
6 120 (15.48%) OSPF
7 101 (13.03%) VLAN
8 96 (12.39%) DHCP
9 91 (11.74%) Wireless
10 82 (10.58%) TCP/IP
11 65 (8.39%) SD-WAN
12 63 (8.13%) Cisco ISE
13 59 (7.61%) IPsec
14 56 (7.23%) Wi-Fi
15 49 (6.32%) MPLS
16 47 (6.06%) VXLAN
17 45 (5.81%) Ethernet VPN
18 38 (4.90%) Cisco ASA
19 36 (4.65%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (1.81%) Amazon RDS
2 12 (1.55%) PostgreSQL
3 11 (1.42%) SQL Server
4 9 (1.16%) DataStage
5 6 (0.77%) Power BI
6 4 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
6 4 (0.52%) Data Lake
6 4 (0.52%) MongoDB
6 4 (0.52%) NoSQL
6 4 (0.52%) Relational Database
7 3 (0.39%) Delta Lake
7 3 (0.39%) DynamoDB
7 3 (0.39%) Oracle Database
8 2 (0.26%) Amazon QuickSight
8 2 (0.26%) MariaDB
8 2 (0.26%) Oracle Reports
9 1 (0.13%) Amazon Athena
9 1 (0.13%) MySQL
9 1 (0.13%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 1 (0.13%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 56 (7.23%) JIRA
2 33 (4.26%) Jenkins
3 30 (3.87%) GitLab
4 27 (3.48%) Git
5 17 (2.19%) Sonatype Nexus
6 16 (2.06%) Burp Suite
6 16 (2.06%) Metasploit
7 9 (1.16%) Bitbucket
8 8 (1.03%) Jaeger
9 4 (0.52%) Browser DevTools
9 4 (0.52%) CircleCI
10 3 (0.39%) Chocolatey
11 2 (0.26%) Introscope
12 1 (0.13%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.13%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.13%) MSI
12 1 (0.13%) Subversion
12 1 (0.13%) Travis CI
General
1 210 (27.10%) Social Skills
2 82 (10.58%) Finance
3 71 (9.16%) Analytical Skills
4 69 (8.90%) Public Sector
5 58 (7.48%) Documentation Skills
6 24 (3.10%) Banking
7 19 (2.45%) Manufacturing
8 18 (2.32%) Telecoms
9 17 (2.19%) Legal
10 16 (2.06%) Influencing Skills
11 11 (1.42%) Military
12 10 (1.29%) Financial Institution
13 9 (1.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 8 (1.03%) Law
15 6 (0.77%) Aerospace
15 6 (0.77%) Organisational Skills
16 5 (0.65%) Retail
17 4 (0.52%) Electronics
17 4 (0.52%) Presentation Skills
18 3 (0.39%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 250 (32.26%) Network Engineer
2 122 (15.74%) Architect
3 78 (10.06%) Senior
4 61 (7.87%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 57 (7.35%) Security Engineer
6 53 (6.84%) Network Architect
7 44 (5.68%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
8 32 (4.13%) Senior Network Engineer
9 26 (3.35%) Cisco Engineer
9 26 (3.35%) Cloud Engineer
10 25 (3.23%) IT Support
11 24 (3.10%) Platform Engineer
12 23 (2.97%) Cisco Network Engineer
12 23 (2.97%) Security Architect
13 22 (2.84%) Analyst
13 22 (2.84%) Network Specialist
14 21 (2.71%) Lead
14 21 (2.71%) Solutions Architect
15 20 (2.58%) Designer
15 20 (2.58%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 60 (7.74%) 802.1X
2 24 (3.10%) SAML
3 22 (2.84%) LDAP
4 21 (2.71%) Middleware
5 18 (2.32%) Kafka
6 17 (2.19%) OAuth
6 17 (2.19%) OAuth2
7 15 (1.94%) OpenID
8 10 (1.29%) OpenTelemetry
9 8 (1.03%) Node.js
9 8 (1.03%) Spring Boot
10 6 (0.77%) LangChain
10 6 (0.77%) PyTorch
10 6 (0.77%) scikit-learn
11 5 (0.65%) JSON
11 5 (0.65%) REST
11 5 (0.65%) YAML
12 4 (0.52%) ARM Templates
13 3 (0.39%) Lambda Expressions
14 2 (0.26%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 184 (23.74%) Data Centre
2 51 (6.58%) Security Posture
3 46 (5.94%) PKI
4 39 (5.03%) Cloud Native
5 27 (3.48%) Hybrid Cloud
5 27 (3.48%) Operational Technology
6 26 (3.35%) Clustering
7 25 (3.23%) Onboarding
8 19 (2.45%) IoT
8 19 (2.45%) NHS
9 15 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
9 15 (1.94%) Management Information System
9 15 (1.94%) Private Cloud
9 15 (1.94%) Public Cloud
10 14 (1.81%) SCADA
11 13 (1.68%) BYOD
11 13 (1.68%) Product Ownership
12 12 (1.55%) Self-Motivation
13 11 (1.42%) Cyber Threat
13 11 (1.42%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 227 (29.29%) Windows
2 151 (19.48%) Linux
3 91 (11.74%) Windows Server
4 27 (3.48%) Unix
5 21 (2.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (1.42%) Solaris
7 9 (1.16%) AIX
8 7 (0.90%) Windows 7
8 7 (0.90%) Windows Server 2019
9 5 (0.65%) VMS
9 5 (0.65%) Windows Server 2016
10 4 (0.52%) Mac OS
10 4 (0.52%) Windows Server 2012
11 3 (0.39%) Amazon Linux
11 3 (0.39%) CatOS
11 3 (0.39%) Data ONTAP
12 2 (0.26%) Oracle Linux
12 2 (0.26%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
12 2 (0.26%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 134 (17.29%) Cybersecurity
2 122 (15.74%) Problem-Solving
3 112 (14.45%) DevOps
4 104 (13.42%) Load Balancing
5 100 (12.90%) CI/CD
6 97 (12.52%) High Availability
7 96 (12.39%) ITIL
8 91 (11.74%) Infrastructure as Code
9 88 (11.35%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 70 (9.03%) Zero Trust
11 69 (8.90%) Change Management
12 67 (8.65%) Observability
13 65 (8.39%) Identity Access Management
14 63 (8.13%) Agile
14 63 (8.13%) Network Segmentation
15 62 (8.00%) Cloud Security
15 62 (8.00%) SIEM
16 59 (7.61%) Technical Leadership
17 56 (7.23%) Containerisation
17 56 (7.23%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 112 (14.45%) Python
2 105 (13.55%) PowerShell
3 58 (7.48%) Bash
4 32 (4.13%) SQL
5 26 (3.35%) Bicep
6 25 (3.23%) Java
7 20 (2.58%) Perl
8 9 (1.16%) COBOL
9 8 (1.03%) Ruby
9 8 (1.03%) Rust
10 4 (0.52%) C#
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%) JavaScript
12 2 (0.26%) Jython
13 1 (0.13%) Groovy
13 1 (0.13%) Korn
Qualifications
1 326 (42.06%) Security Cleared
2 212 (27.35%) SC Cleared
3 163 (21.03%) Cisco Certification
4 131 (16.90%) CCNP
5 94 (12.13%) DV Cleared
6 81 (10.45%) CCNA
7 74 (9.55%) Degree
8 41 (5.29%) CISSP
9 31 (4.00%) AWS Certification
10 28 (3.61%) Microsoft Certification
11 26 (3.35%) Azure Certification
12 20 (2.58%) CCIE
13 19 (2.45%) CISM
14 17 (2.19%) JNCIS
15 16 (2.06%) CHECK Team Member
15 16 (2.06%) Network+ Certification
16 14 (1.81%) CREST Certified
16 14 (1.81%) Cyber Scheme
16 14 (1.81%) JNCIA
17 13 (1.68%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 65 (8.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 45 (5.81%) NIST
3 40 (5.16%) GDPR
4 33 (4.26%) PCI DSS
5 24 (3.10%) NCSC
6 21 (2.71%) Cyber Essentials
7 16 (2.06%) QA
8 14 (1.81%) SLA
9 12 (1.55%) PMO
10 5 (0.65%) JSP 440
11 4 (0.52%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 3 (0.39%) Data Quality
12 3 (0.39%) Disclosure Scotland
12 3 (0.39%) GRC
12 3 (0.39%) ISA99
13 2 (0.26%) Government Security Classifications
13 2 (0.26%) GxP
13 2 (0.26%) PSD2
13 2 (0.26%) RMADS
13 2 (0.26%) SOC 2
System Software
1 155 (20.00%) Active Directory
2 119 (15.35%) VMware Infrastructure
3 64 (8.26%) Docker
4 40 (5.16%) VMware NSX
5 33 (4.26%) vSphere
6 24 (3.10%) Hyper-V
7 15 (1.94%) VMware ESXi
8 13 (1.68%) Firmware
9 8 (1.03%) Virtual Desktop
9 8 (1.03%) Virtual Machines
10 4 (0.52%) Virtual Servers
11 3 (0.39%) DFS Replication
12 1 (0.13%) Citrix Hypervisor
12 1 (0.13%) ProxySG
12 1 (0.13%) RHEV
12 1 (0.13%) Squid
12 1 (0.13%) UAG
12 1 (0.13%) Xen
12 1 (0.13%) XenApp
12 1 (0.13%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 105 (13.55%) Terraform
2 70 (9.03%) Kubernetes
3 68 (8.77%) Ansible
4 45 (5.81%) FortiGate
5 29 (3.74%) Single Sign-On
6 26 (3.35%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 23 (2.97%) Grafana
7 23 (2.97%) Microsoft Intune
8 20 (2.58%) vCenter Server
9 18 (2.32%) Nmap
10 17 (2.19%) Prometheus
11 11 (1.42%) SCCM
12 10 (1.29%) Nagios
13 9 (1.16%) CASB
13 9 (1.16%) Cisco Prime
14 8 (1.03%) Kiali
14 8 (1.03%) Nessus
15 7 (0.90%) VxRail
15 7 (0.90%) WMI
16 5 (0.65%) Fluentd
Vendors
1 291 (37.55%) Cisco
2 159 (20.52%) Microsoft
3 151 (19.48%) VMware
4 149 (19.23%) Palo Alto
5 90 (11.61%) Juniper
6 84 (10.84%) F5
7 69 (8.90%) Fortinet
8 68 (8.77%) CheckPoint
9 65 (8.39%) Splunk
10 61 (7.87%) SolarWinds
11 55 (7.10%) Aruba
12 38 (4.90%) ServiceNow
13 37 (4.77%) Google
13 37 (4.77%) Meraki
14 24 (3.10%) Extreme Networks
14 24 (3.10%) Red Hat
15 22 (2.84%) Oracle
16 21 (2.71%) Citrix
17 15 (1.94%) IBM
18 14 (1.81%) Veeam