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

6 months to
8 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 68 43 42
Rank change year-on-year -25 -1 -6
Contract jobs citing Firewall 767 619 850
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.04% 4.71% 4.03%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 27.68% 30.70% 25.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 510 364 540
10th Percentile £335 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £399 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% +2.88%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £608
90th Percentile £638 £638 £740
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 22 33
10th Percentile £16.48 £14.20 £23.92
25th Percentile £37.25 £14.43 £26.25
Median hourly rate £52.36 £30.00 £83.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.53% -64.07% +34.08%
75th Percentile £70.17 £41.25 £87.46
90th Percentile £76.38 £44.83 £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 2,771 2,016 3,287
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.98% 15.33% 15.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,624 1,249 1,854
10th Percentile £230 £200 £203
25th Percentile £375 £313 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £466 £480
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.92% +0.95%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £650 £638 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £480 £495
% change year-on-year +4.17% -3.03% -3.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 245 124 358
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.44 £13.25
25th Percentile £21.25 £16.30 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.22 £31.79 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +10.79% -33.07% +157.24%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £81.88 £73.00
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £42.75 £40.00
% change year-on-year -23.98% +6.88% +116.22%

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 8 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 8 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 8 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 -15 260 £500 +3.09% 105
South East -10 224 £500 - 158
North West -2 166 £540 +13.68% 59
Yorkshire -34 79 £425 -13.00% 33
Midlands -55 77 £425 -19.05% 60
East of England -10 66 £503 -1.85% 37
Scotland +19 64 £450 +2.86% 21
West Midlands -53 64 £420 -16.00% 39
South West -45 57 £523 +4.50% 52
Wales -20 26 £425 +21.43% 13
North East -9 21 £625 +25.00% 14
East Midlands -45 9 £488 -11.36% 21
Northern Ireland 0 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 (1.30%) Confluence
1 10 (1.30%) Microsoft Exchange
2 9 (1.17%) CICS
3 8 (1.04%) Apache
4 6 (0.78%) IIS
5 5 (0.65%) SharePoint
6 4 (0.52%) nginx
7 3 (0.39%) Skype for Business
7 3 (0.39%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.26%) Apache Pulsar
8 2 (0.26%) CloudStack
8 2 (0.26%) CMS
8 2 (0.26%) IBM HTTP Server
8 2 (0.26%) Oracle HTTP Server
8 2 (0.26%) Umbraco
8 2 (0.26%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.26%) WebSphere Application Server
8 2 (0.26%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 20 (2.61%) MS Visio
2 18 (2.35%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (1.43%) Microsoft Excel
4 6 (0.78%) 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
1 235 (30.64%) Azure
2 139 (18.12%) AWS
3 54 (7.04%) Entra ID
4 52 (6.78%) GCP
5 44 (5.74%) Microsoft 365
6 33 (4.30%) Azure DevOps
7 31 (4.04%) GitHub
8 28 (3.65%) OCI
9 26 (3.39%) IaaS
9 26 (3.39%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 23 (3.00%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 19 (2.48%) Azure Sentinel
12 17 (2.22%) SaaS
13 15 (1.96%) GitHub Actions
14 14 (1.83%) PaaS
15 13 (1.69%) Azure Monitor
16 12 (1.56%) Azure ExpressRoute
16 12 (1.56%) Microsoft Purview
16 12 (1.56%) Nutanix
17 11 (1.43%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 236 (30.77%) WAN
2 206 (26.86%) Network Security
3 195 (25.42%) LAN
4 172 (22.43%) VPN
5 161 (20.99%) DNS
6 134 (17.47%) BGP
7 130 (16.95%) OSPF
8 112 (14.60%) VLAN
9 103 (13.43%) DHCP
10 101 (13.17%) Wireless
11 92 (11.99%) SD-WAN
12 77 (10.04%) Wi-Fi
13 76 (9.91%) TCP/IP
14 69 (9.00%) VXLAN
15 68 (8.87%) BIG-IP
16 66 (8.60%) Ethernet VPN
17 64 (8.34%) IPsec
18 51 (6.65%) MPLS
19 50 (6.52%) Cisco ISE
20 45 (5.87%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (1.56%) SQL Server
2 11 (1.43%) PostgreSQL
3 9 (1.17%) DataStage
4 6 (0.78%) Power BI
5 5 (0.65%) Relational Database
6 4 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
6 4 (0.52%) Data Lake
6 4 (0.52%) MongoDB
6 4 (0.52%) MySQL
6 4 (0.52%) NoSQL
7 3 (0.39%) Amazon RDS
7 3 (0.39%) Delta Lake
7 3 (0.39%) Oracle Database
8 2 (0.26%) Oracle Reports
9 1 (0.13%) Amazon Redshift
9 1 (0.13%) EDRMS
9 1 (0.13%) MariaDB
9 1 (0.13%) Redis
9 1 (0.13%) SAP HANA
9 1 (0.13%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 61 (7.95%) JIRA
2 37 (4.82%) GitLab
3 32 (4.17%) Jenkins
4 21 (2.74%) Git
5 11 (1.43%) Sonatype Nexus
6 10 (1.30%) Burp Suite
7 9 (1.17%) Jaeger
7 9 (1.17%) Metasploit
8 4 (0.52%) Browser DevTools
9 3 (0.39%) Chocolatey
9 3 (0.39%) CircleCI
10 2 (0.26%) Bitbucket
10 2 (0.26%) Introscope
10 2 (0.26%) Team Foundation Server
11 1 (0.13%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.13%) Cucumber
11 1 (0.13%) Gradle
11 1 (0.13%) LoadRunner
11 1 (0.13%) MSI
11 1 (0.13%) SonarQube
General
1 169 (22.03%) Social Skills
2 83 (10.82%) Finance
3 65 (8.47%) Public Sector
4 60 (7.82%) Analytical Skills
5 44 (5.74%) Documentation Skills
6 24 (3.13%) Banking
7 19 (2.48%) Telecoms
8 18 (2.35%) Legal
9 17 (2.22%) Manufacturing
10 15 (1.96%) Military
11 11 (1.43%) Influencing Skills
12 9 (1.17%) Financial Institution
13 8 (1.04%) Law
13 8 (1.04%) Retail
14 7 (0.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 5 (0.65%) Organisational Skills
16 3 (0.39%) Aerospace
16 3 (0.39%) Back Office
16 3 (0.39%) Police
17 2 (0.26%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 264 (34.42%) Network Engineer
2 97 (12.65%) Senior
3 95 (12.39%) Architect
4 94 (12.26%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 58 (7.56%) Security Engineer
6 48 (6.26%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
7 46 (6.00%) Network Architect
8 41 (5.35%) Senior Network Engineer
9 29 (3.78%) Cloud Engineer
10 28 (3.65%) Cisco Engineer
10 28 (3.65%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
11 25 (3.26%) Cisco Network Engineer
12 23 (3.00%) Lead
13 22 (2.87%) Designer
14 20 (2.61%) Network Specialist
15 18 (2.35%) Technical Architect
16 17 (2.22%) Network Security Engineer
17 16 (2.09%) Azure Engineer
17 16 (2.09%) Firewall Specialist
17 16 (2.09%) IT Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 58 (7.56%) 802.1X
2 22 (2.87%) LDAP
3 21 (2.74%) Middleware
4 18 (2.35%) Kafka
5 12 (1.56%) SAML
6 11 (1.43%) OpenTelemetry
7 10 (1.30%) Spring Boot
8 6 (0.78%) LangChain
8 6 (0.78%) PyTorch
8 6 (0.78%) scikit-learn
8 6 (0.78%) YAML
9 5 (0.65%) OAuth
9 5 (0.65%) OAuth2
10 4 (0.52%) Elastic Stack
10 4 (0.52%) Redfish
11 3 (0.39%) ARM Templates
11 3 (0.39%) LEMP Stack
11 3 (0.39%) Node.js
11 3 (0.39%) React
11 3 (0.39%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 219 (28.55%) Data Centre
2 55 (7.17%) Cloud Native
3 49 (6.39%) Security Posture
4 41 (5.35%) PKI
5 40 (5.22%) Hybrid Cloud
6 28 (3.65%) Clustering
7 27 (3.52%) Onboarding
8 25 (3.26%) Operational Technology
9 20 (2.61%) Management Information System
10 19 (2.48%) Public Cloud
11 17 (2.22%) IoT
12 16 (2.09%) Data Protection Act
13 14 (1.83%) BYOD
13 14 (1.83%) Enterprise Storage
13 14 (1.83%) SCADA
13 14 (1.83%) Self-Motivation
14 13 (1.69%) NHS
15 12 (1.56%) Cyber Threat
16 11 (1.43%) Distributed Systems
16 11 (1.43%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 196 (25.55%) Windows
2 128 (16.69%) Linux
3 72 (9.39%) Windows Server
4 26 (3.39%) Unix
5 20 (2.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (1.30%) Solaris
7 9 (1.17%) AIX
8 8 (1.04%) Windows Server 2019
9 6 (0.78%) Mac OS
9 6 (0.78%) Ubuntu
9 6 (0.78%) Windows Server 2012
9 6 (0.78%) Windows Server 2016
10 5 (0.65%) VMS
11 4 (0.52%) CentOS
12 3 (0.39%) Data ONTAP
12 3 (0.39%) Windows 10
13 2 (0.26%) CatOS
13 2 (0.26%) Oracle Linux
13 2 (0.26%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 2 (0.26%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 131 (17.08%) DevOps
2 122 (15.91%) CI/CD
3 121 (15.78%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 118 (15.38%) Load Balancing
5 113 (14.73%) High Availability
6 102 (13.30%) Cybersecurity
7 97 (12.65%) Infrastructure as Code
8 96 (12.52%) ITIL
9 89 (11.60%) Problem-Solving
10 85 (11.08%) Zero Trust
11 80 (10.43%) Agile
12 74 (9.65%) Network Segmentation
12 74 (9.65%) Observability
13 68 (8.87%) Migration
14 67 (8.74%) Change Management
15 61 (7.95%) Roadmaps
16 59 (7.69%) Project Delivery
17 58 (7.56%) Network Design
17 58 (7.56%) SIEM
17 58 (7.56%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 110 (14.34%) Python
2 68 (8.87%) PowerShell
3 40 (5.22%) Bash
4 34 (4.43%) SQL
5 30 (3.91%) Java
6 27 (3.52%) Bicep
7 9 (1.17%) COBOL
8 8 (1.04%) Rust
9 7 (0.91%) ActionScript
10 6 (0.78%) Go
11 5 (0.65%) Perl
12 4 (0.52%) JavaScript
13 3 (0.39%) PL/SQL
13 3 (0.39%) Shell Script
14 2 (0.26%) C++
14 2 (0.26%) Groovy
14 2 (0.26%) Jython
15 1 (0.13%) C
15 1 (0.13%) Korn
15 1 (0.13%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 305 (39.77%) Security Cleared
2 211 (27.51%) SC Cleared
3 184 (23.99%) Cisco Certification
4 134 (17.47%) CCNP
5 97 (12.65%) CCNA
6 70 (9.13%) DV Cleared
7 69 (9.00%) Degree
8 34 (4.43%) CISSP
9 26 (3.39%) Azure Certification
10 25 (3.26%) AWS Certification
11 22 (2.87%) Network+ Certification
12 19 (2.48%) JNCIS
13 16 (2.09%) JNCIA
14 15 (1.96%) CISM
14 15 (1.96%) Microsoft Certification
14 15 (1.96%) Server+ Certification
15 13 (1.69%) CCIE
16 11 (1.43%) PMP
17 10 (1.30%) CompTIA Security+
17 10 (1.30%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 44 (5.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 31 (4.04%) NIST
3 24 (3.13%) GDPR
4 20 (2.61%) PCI DSS
5 18 (2.35%) NCSC
5 18 (2.35%) QA
6 17 (2.22%) Cyber Essentials
6 17 (2.22%) SLA
7 8 (1.04%) Disclosure Scotland
7 8 (1.04%) PMO
8 6 (0.78%) 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
11 2 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
11 2 (0.26%) Government Security Classifications
11 2 (0.26%) GRC
11 2 (0.26%) GxP
System Software
1 128 (16.69%) Active Directory
2 95 (12.39%) VMware Infrastructure
3 39 (5.08%) Docker
4 30 (3.91%) vSphere
5 29 (3.78%) VMware NSX
6 18 (2.35%) Firmware
6 18 (2.35%) Hyper-V
7 16 (2.09%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (1.83%) Virtual Machines
9 9 (1.17%) Virtual Desktop
10 3 (0.39%) DFS Replication
10 3 (0.39%) Dovecot
10 3 (0.39%) Postfix
11 2 (0.26%) BitLocker
11 2 (0.26%) KVM
11 2 (0.26%) Squid
11 2 (0.26%) VirtualBox
12 1 (0.13%) FreeRADIUS
12 1 (0.13%) iptables
12 1 (0.13%) RHEV
Systems Management
1 111 (14.47%) Terraform
2 82 (10.69%) Ansible
3 52 (6.78%) Kubernetes
4 51 (6.65%) FortiGate
5 28 (3.65%) Grafana
6 21 (2.74%) Microsoft Intune
6 21 (2.74%) Prometheus
7 15 (1.96%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 14 (1.83%) Single Sign-On
9 12 (1.56%) CASB
9 12 (1.56%) vCenter Server
10 11 (1.43%) Nagios
10 11 (1.43%) Nmap
10 11 (1.43%) Progress Chef
10 11 (1.43%) SCCM
11 9 (1.17%) Kiali
12 8 (1.04%) Cisco Prime
13 7 (0.91%) Nessus
13 7 (0.91%) VxRail
14 5 (0.65%) Endace
Vendors
1 301 (39.24%) Cisco
2 152 (19.82%) Palo Alto
3 135 (17.60%) Microsoft
4 127 (16.56%) VMware
5 119 (15.51%) F5
6 101 (13.17%) Juniper
7 76 (9.91%) Fortinet
8 66 (8.60%) Aruba
9 65 (8.47%) CheckPoint
10 62 (8.08%) SolarWinds
10 62 (8.08%) Splunk
11 53 (6.91%) ServiceNow
12 32 (4.17%) Google
13 28 (3.65%) Arista
14 27 (3.52%) Extreme Networks
15 23 (3.00%) Red Hat
16 22 (2.87%) Meraki
16 22 (2.87%) Veeam
17 17 (2.22%) Oracle
18 15 (1.96%) IBM