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 12 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 73 42 39
Rank change year-on-year -31 -3 -3
Contract jobs citing Firewall 820 711 879
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.03% 4.79% 4.23%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 27.75% 32.78% 26.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 545 406 548
10th Percentile £331 £309 £275
25th Percentile £413 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% +4.05%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £650 £638 £679
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 24 34
10th Percentile £23.26 £14.20 £22.85
25th Percentile £39.44 £14.89 £26.25
Median hourly rate £60.62 £30.00 £82.38
Median % change year-on-year +102.06% -63.58% +31.71%
75th Percentile £72.56 £35.07 £87.46
90th Percentile £94.77 £71.60 £87.53
UK median hourly rate £60.00 £30.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +100.00% -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 2,955 2,169 3,259
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.91% 14.61% 15.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,722 1,315 1,838
10th Percentile £213 £200 £204
25th Percentile £368 £325 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £472 £488
Median % change year-on-year +2.81% -3.18% +4.84%
75th Percentile £581 £575 £600
90th Percentile £650 £638 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £482 £500
% change year-on-year +3.79% -3.65% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 272 135 365
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £19.34 £17.30 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.00 £41.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -37.35% -12.63% +5.56%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £85.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £26.00 £46.25 £40.00
% change year-on-year -43.78% +15.63% +45.45%

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 12 July 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 12 July 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 12 July 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 -14 291 £500 +5.26% 90
South East -34 216 £500 - 170
North West -5 187 £536 +12.84% 50
Yorkshire -36 88 £450 -7.22% 29
Midlands -60 81 £438 -11.08% 60
East of England -12 73 £525 -0.94% 39
South West -40 72 £525 +5.00% 50
Scotland +15 68 £450 +4.35% 25
West Midlands -64 65 £425 -15.84% 40
Wales -17 25 £425 +17.24% 7
North East -16 22 £625 +25.00% 13
East Midlands -28 13 £500 +11.11% 20
Northern Ireland -3 2 £385 - 19
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 (1.71%) Confluence
2 9 (1.10%) CICS
2 9 (1.10%) Microsoft Exchange
2 9 (1.10%) SharePoint
3 7 (0.85%) Apache
4 6 (0.73%) nginx
5 3 (0.37%) IIS
5 3 (0.37%) SAS
5 3 (0.37%) Skype for Business
5 3 (0.37%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.24%) Apache Pulsar
6 2 (0.24%) CloudStack
6 2 (0.24%) CMS
6 2 (0.24%) FactoryTalk
6 2 (0.24%) IBM HTTP Server
6 2 (0.24%) Oracle HTTP Server
6 2 (0.24%) Umbraco
6 2 (0.24%) WebSphere
6 2 (0.24%) WebSphere Application Server
6 2 (0.24%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 22 (2.68%) MS Visio
2 13 (1.59%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (0.73%) Microsoft Excel
4 3 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 1 (0.12%) Dynamics GP
1 1 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.12%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 267 (32.56%) Azure
2 159 (19.39%) AWS
3 67 (8.17%) Entra ID
4 65 (7.93%) GCP
5 51 (6.22%) Microsoft 365
6 33 (4.02%) Azure DevOps
7 31 (3.78%) GitHub
8 30 (3.66%) OCI
9 29 (3.54%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 27 (3.29%) IaaS
11 26 (3.17%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 24 (2.93%) SaaS
13 20 (2.44%) Azure Sentinel
14 18 (2.20%) Azure Monitor
15 16 (1.95%) Azure ExpressRoute
16 14 (1.71%) AWS CloudFormation
16 14 (1.71%) GitHub Actions
17 13 (1.59%) Microsoft Purview
18 12 (1.46%) Azure AKS
18 12 (1.46%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 252 (30.73%) WAN
2 222 (27.07%) Network Security
3 212 (25.85%) LAN
4 202 (24.63%) VPN
5 189 (23.05%) DNS
6 152 (18.54%) BGP
7 137 (16.71%) OSPF
8 123 (15.00%) Wireless
9 116 (14.15%) DHCP
10 109 (13.29%) VLAN
11 104 (12.68%) TCP/IP
12 98 (11.95%) SD-WAN
13 85 (10.37%) Wi-Fi
14 79 (9.63%) BIG-IP
15 67 (8.17%) VXLAN
16 61 (7.44%) Ethernet VPN
17 60 (7.32%) IPsec
18 56 (6.83%) Cisco ISE
19 55 (6.71%) MPLS
20 52 (6.34%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (1.22%) PostgreSQL
1 10 (1.22%) SQL Server
2 9 (1.10%) DataStage
2 9 (1.10%) Relational Database
3 7 (0.85%) Azure SQL Database
3 7 (0.85%) Data Lake
3 7 (0.85%) Power BI
4 5 (0.61%) NoSQL
5 4 (0.49%) Amazon RDS
5 4 (0.49%) Delta Lake
5 4 (0.49%) MySQL
5 4 (0.49%) Oracle Database
6 1 (0.12%) Amazon Athena
6 1 (0.12%) Amazon QuickSight
6 1 (0.12%) Amazon Redshift
6 1 (0.12%) EDRMS
6 1 (0.12%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (0.12%) Redis
6 1 (0.12%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 1 (0.12%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 69 (8.41%) JIRA
2 32 (3.90%) GitLab
3 29 (3.54%) Jenkins
4 17 (2.07%) Git
5 12 (1.46%) Sonatype Nexus
6 5 (0.61%) Browser DevTools
7 4 (0.49%) Bitbucket
7 4 (0.49%) Burp Suite
8 3 (0.37%) Jaeger
9 2 (0.24%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 2 (0.24%) Chocolatey
9 2 (0.24%) Cucumber
9 2 (0.24%) Gatling
9 2 (0.24%) Gradle
9 2 (0.24%) Introscope
9 2 (0.24%) LoadRunner
9 2 (0.24%) Metasploit
9 2 (0.24%) REST Assured
9 2 (0.24%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.24%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 174 (21.22%) Social Skills
2 87 (10.61%) Finance
3 69 (8.41%) Analytical Skills
4 68 (8.29%) Public Sector
5 40 (4.88%) Documentation Skills
6 26 (3.17%) Banking
7 25 (3.05%) Telecoms
8 20 (2.44%) Manufacturing
9 16 (1.95%) Legal
10 14 (1.71%) Military
11 13 (1.59%) Influencing Skills
12 8 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
13 7 (0.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 7 (0.85%) Retail
14 6 (0.73%) Police
15 5 (0.61%) Financial Institution
16 4 (0.49%) Aerospace
16 4 (0.49%) Law
17 2 (0.24%) Advertising
17 2 (0.24%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 275 (33.54%) Network Engineer
2 114 (13.90%) Architect
3 104 (12.68%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 103 (12.56%) Senior
5 65 (7.93%) Security Engineer
6 50 (6.10%) Senior Network Engineer
7 46 (5.61%) Network Architect
8 36 (4.39%) Cloud Engineer
8 36 (4.39%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
9 29 (3.54%) Lead
10 27 (3.29%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
11 24 (2.93%) Consultant
11 24 (2.93%) Technical Architect
12 21 (2.56%) Network Security Engineer
13 19 (2.32%) Designer
13 19 (2.32%) Network Specialist
13 19 (2.32%) Solutions Architect
14 18 (2.20%) Firewall Specialist
14 18 (2.20%) Security Architect
15 16 (1.95%) Data Centre Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 59 (7.20%) 802.1X
2 21 (2.56%) LDAP
3 17 (2.07%) SAML
4 14 (1.71%) Middleware
5 11 (1.34%) Kafka
6 9 (1.10%) LangChain
6 9 (1.10%) PyTorch
6 9 (1.10%) scikit-learn
7 7 (0.85%) OAuth
8 6 (0.73%) ARM Templates
8 6 (0.73%) OAuth2
8 6 (0.73%) OpenTelemetry
8 6 (0.73%) SailPoint
8 6 (0.73%) YAML
9 5 (0.61%) React
9 5 (0.61%) Spring Boot
10 4 (0.49%) OpenID
10 4 (0.49%) Redfish
11 3 (0.37%) .NET
11 3 (0.37%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 212 (25.85%) Data Centre
2 69 (8.41%) Cloud Native
3 51 (6.22%) Hybrid Cloud
3 51 (6.22%) Security Posture
4 49 (5.98%) PKI
5 32 (3.90%) Operational Technology
6 28 (3.41%) Clustering
7 22 (2.68%) Onboarding
8 21 (2.56%) IoT
8 21 (2.56%) SCADA
9 18 (2.20%) Enterprise Storage
9 18 (2.20%) Management Information System
9 18 (2.20%) Public Cloud
10 16 (1.95%) Data Protection Act
11 14 (1.71%) BYOD
11 14 (1.71%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 14 (1.71%) NHS
12 13 (1.59%) Private Cloud
13 12 (1.46%) Driving Licence
13 12 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 199 (24.27%) Windows
2 125 (15.24%) Linux
3 68 (8.29%) Windows Server
4 28 (3.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 24 (2.93%) Unix
6 10 (1.22%) Solaris
7 9 (1.10%) AIX
7 9 (1.10%) Ubuntu
8 8 (0.98%) CentOS
8 8 (0.98%) VMS
9 7 (0.85%) Windows Server 2019
10 6 (0.73%) Mac OS
11 5 (0.61%) Rocky
11 5 (0.61%) Windows Server 2016
12 4 (0.49%) Windows 10
12 4 (0.49%) Windows Server 2012
13 3 (0.37%) Check Point GAiA
13 3 (0.37%) Data ONTAP
14 2 (0.24%) CatOS
14 2 (0.24%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 138 (16.83%) Load Balancing
2 136 (16.59%) CI/CD
3 132 (16.10%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 131 (15.98%) DevOps
5 119 (14.51%) High Availability
6 117 (14.27%) Problem-Solving
7 116 (14.15%) Infrastructure as Code
8 112 (13.66%) Cybersecurity
9 110 (13.41%) ITIL
10 94 (11.46%) Agile
11 87 (10.61%) Migration
11 87 (10.61%) Zero Trust
12 81 (9.88%) Change Management
13 73 (8.90%) Observability
13 73 (8.90%) SIEM
14 72 (8.78%) Network Segmentation
14 72 (8.78%) Roadmaps
15 63 (7.68%) Validation
16 61 (7.44%) Technical Leadership
17 60 (7.32%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 138 (16.83%) Python
2 90 (10.98%) PowerShell
3 52 (6.34%) Bash
4 27 (3.29%) Bicep
5 25 (3.05%) SQL
6 24 (2.93%) Java
7 9 (1.10%) ActionScript
7 9 (1.10%) COBOL
8 5 (0.61%) Perl
9 4 (0.49%) Go
10 3 (0.37%) JavaScript
10 3 (0.37%) PL/SQL
11 2 (0.24%) C++
11 2 (0.24%) Groovy
11 2 (0.24%) Jython
11 2 (0.24%) Rust
12 1 (0.12%) C
12 1 (0.12%) Korn
12 1 (0.12%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.12%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 299 (36.46%) Security Cleared
2 194 (23.66%) SC Cleared
3 183 (22.32%) Cisco Certification
4 124 (15.12%) CCNP
5 94 (11.46%) CCNA
6 82 (10.00%) DV Cleared
7 65 (7.93%) Degree
8 42 (5.12%) CISSP
9 31 (3.78%) AWS Certification
10 27 (3.29%) Azure Certification
11 19 (2.32%) CCIE
11 19 (2.32%) Microsoft Certification
12 18 (2.20%) Network+ Certification
13 16 (1.95%) CISM
13 16 (1.95%) JNCIS
14 15 (1.83%) Server+ Certification
15 14 (1.71%) JNCIA
16 13 (1.59%) PMP
17 11 (1.34%) BPSS Clearance
17 11 (1.34%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 48 (5.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 33 (4.02%) NIST
3 24 (2.93%) NCSC
4 22 (2.68%) GDPR
5 15 (1.83%) QA
6 14 (1.71%) Cyber Essentials
7 13 (1.59%) PCI DSS
8 8 (0.98%) Data Quality
8 8 (0.98%) Disclosure Scotland
9 6 (0.73%) JSP 440
9 6 (0.73%) SLA
10 4 (0.49%) GxP
10 4 (0.49%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 4 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 4 (0.49%) SOC 2
11 3 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 3 (0.37%) HIPAA
11 3 (0.37%) ISA99
11 3 (0.37%) NIST 800
11 3 (0.37%) RMADS
System Software
1 135 (16.46%) Active Directory
2 110 (13.41%) VMware Infrastructure
3 43 (5.24%) VMware NSX
4 34 (4.15%) Docker
5 31 (3.78%) vSphere
6 24 (2.93%) Hyper-V
7 22 (2.68%) VMware ESXi
8 19 (2.32%) Firmware
9 15 (1.83%) Virtual Machines
10 10 (1.22%) Virtual Desktop
11 3 (0.37%) BitLocker
11 3 (0.37%) Dovecot
11 3 (0.37%) Postfix
12 2 (0.24%) Squid
12 2 (0.24%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.24%) VirtualBox
13 1 (0.12%) Citrix Hypervisor
13 1 (0.12%) FreeRADIUS
13 1 (0.12%) iptables
13 1 (0.12%) KVM
Systems Management
1 140 (17.07%) Terraform
2 96 (11.71%) Ansible
3 55 (6.71%) FortiGate
3 55 (6.71%) Kubernetes
4 23 (2.80%) Microsoft Intune
5 21 (2.56%) Grafana
6 20 (2.44%) Single Sign-On
7 19 (2.32%) Prometheus
8 15 (1.83%) CASB
9 13 (1.59%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 12 (1.46%) Progress Chef
11 10 (1.22%) vCenter Server
12 8 (0.98%) Cisco Prime
12 8 (0.98%) SCCM
13 7 (0.85%) Nessus
14 6 (0.73%) Argo
15 5 (0.61%) Nagios
15 5 (0.61%) Packer
15 5 (0.61%) VxRail
16 4 (0.49%) Dell DRAC
Vendors
1 301 (36.71%) Cisco
2 163 (19.88%) Microsoft
3 147 (17.93%) VMware
4 145 (17.68%) Palo Alto
5 124 (15.12%) F5
6 107 (13.05%) Juniper
7 78 (9.51%) Fortinet
8 69 (8.41%) CheckPoint
9 61 (7.44%) SolarWinds
10 58 (7.07%) Aruba
11 54 (6.59%) Splunk
12 49 (5.98%) ServiceNow
13 43 (5.24%) Google
14 34 (4.15%) Arista
15 27 (3.29%) Extreme Networks
16 25 (3.05%) Red Hat
17 22 (2.68%) Meraki
18 21 (2.56%) Zscaler
19 19 (2.32%) Veeam
20 18 (2.20%) IBM