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

6 months to
21 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 72 39 41
Rank change year-on-year -33 +2 -4
Contract jobs citing Firewall 786 662 859
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.03% 4.93% 4.00%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 28.15% 32.48% 26.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 526 382 540
10th Percentile £350 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £479 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -4.25% +2.88%
75th Percentile £582 £582 £608
90th Percentile £638 £638 £719
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 22 34
10th Percentile £18.53 £14.20 £22.85
25th Percentile £37.25 £14.43 £26.25
Median hourly rate £56.00 £30.00 £82.38
Median % change year-on-year +86.67% -63.58% +31.71%
75th Percentile £70.00 £41.25 £87.46
90th Percentile £73.35 £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 2,792 2,038 3,295
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.77% 15.16% 15.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,644 1,246 1,846
10th Percentile £213 £200 £205
25th Percentile £375 £325 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £473 £488
Median % change year-on-year +1.59% -3.08% +2.63%
75th Percentile £582 £575 £600
90th Percentile £650 £638 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £483 £500
% change year-on-year +3.57% -3.45% -1.19%
Number of hourly rates quoted 255 124 369
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.44 £13.50
25th Percentile £20.75 £17.30 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.72 £35.75 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -25.26% -24.74% +150.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £81.88 £74.20
UK median hourly rate £27.94 £45.00 £41.50
% change year-on-year -37.91% +8.43% +118.42%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 -19 278 £500 +5.26% 94
South East -25 214 £500 - 151
North West -2 178 £537 +13.65% 54
Yorkshire -42 84 £443 -9.60% 29
Midlands -63 76 £427 -13.21% 66
East of England -7 72 £505 -2.88% 43
Scotland +19 64 £456 +4.29% 21
South West -41 63 £525 +8.25% 43
West Midlands -56 63 £425 -19.05% 38
Wales -18 25 £425 +30.77% 6
North East -16 22 £625 +25.00% 12
East Midlands -34 10 £488 +3.50% 28
Northern Ireland -8 2 £385 - 25
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 11 (1.40%) Confluence
2 9 (1.15%) CICS
2 9 (1.15%) Microsoft Exchange
3 8 (1.02%) Apache
4 6 (0.76%) IIS
4 6 (0.76%) SharePoint
5 4 (0.51%) nginx
6 3 (0.38%) Skype for Business
6 3 (0.38%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.25%) Apache Pulsar
7 2 (0.25%) CloudStack
7 2 (0.25%) CMS
7 2 (0.25%) IBM HTTP Server
7 2 (0.25%) Oracle HTTP Server
7 2 (0.25%) Umbraco
7 2 (0.25%) WebSphere
7 2 (0.25%) WebSphere Application Server
7 2 (0.25%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 19 (2.42%) MS Visio
2 17 (2.16%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (1.27%) Microsoft Excel
4 5 (0.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.38%) 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%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 247 (31.42%) Azure
2 146 (18.58%) AWS
3 62 (7.89%) Entra ID
4 55 (7.00%) GCP
5 45 (5.73%) Microsoft 365
6 34 (4.33%) Azure DevOps
7 31 (3.94%) GitHub
8 30 (3.82%) OCI
9 26 (3.31%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 25 (3.18%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 24 (3.05%) IaaS
12 22 (2.80%) Azure Sentinel
13 21 (2.67%) SaaS
14 17 (2.16%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 16 (2.04%) Azure Monitor
16 12 (1.53%) GitHub Actions
16 12 (1.53%) Microsoft Purview
17 11 (1.40%) Power Platform
18 10 (1.27%) PaaS
18 10 (1.27%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 248 (31.55%) WAN
2 214 (27.23%) Network Security
3 201 (25.57%) LAN
4 175 (22.26%) VPN
5 160 (20.36%) DNS
6 137 (17.43%) BGP
7 125 (15.90%) OSPF
8 111 (14.12%) Wireless
9 110 (13.99%) VLAN
10 98 (12.47%) SD-WAN
11 95 (12.09%) DHCP
12 82 (10.43%) Wi-Fi
13 78 (9.92%) TCP/IP
14 75 (9.54%) BIG-IP
15 70 (8.91%) VXLAN
16 64 (8.14%) Ethernet VPN
16 64 (8.14%) IPsec
17 52 (6.62%) Cisco ISE
18 51 (6.49%) MPLS
19 49 (6.23%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (1.15%) DataStage
1 9 (1.15%) PostgreSQL
2 8 (1.02%) SQL Server
3 6 (0.76%) Power BI
3 6 (0.76%) Relational Database
4 4 (0.51%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (0.51%) Azure SQL Database
4 4 (0.51%) Data Lake
4 4 (0.51%) MySQL
4 4 (0.51%) NoSQL
5 3 (0.38%) Delta Lake
5 3 (0.38%) Oracle Database
6 1 (0.13%) Amazon Athena
6 1 (0.13%) Amazon QuickSight
6 1 (0.13%) Amazon Redshift
6 1 (0.13%) EDRMS
6 1 (0.13%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.13%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (0.13%) Redis
6 1 (0.13%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 65 (8.27%) JIRA
2 34 (4.33%) GitLab
3 31 (3.94%) Jenkins
4 19 (2.42%) Git
5 10 (1.27%) Burp Suite
5 10 (1.27%) Sonatype Nexus
6 8 (1.02%) Metasploit
7 6 (0.76%) Jaeger
8 4 (0.51%) Browser DevTools
9 3 (0.38%) Chocolatey
10 2 (0.25%) Bitbucket
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%) Team Foundation Server
11 1 (0.13%) MSI
General
1 172 (21.88%) Social Skills
2 80 (10.18%) Finance
3 60 (7.63%) Public Sector
4 58 (7.38%) Analytical Skills
5 43 (5.47%) Documentation Skills
6 23 (2.93%) Banking
7 19 (2.42%) Legal
7 19 (2.42%) Telecoms
8 16 (2.04%) Manufacturing
9 14 (1.78%) Military
10 11 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
11 7 (0.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 7 (0.89%) Retail
12 6 (0.76%) Financial Institution
12 6 (0.76%) Organisational Skills
13 5 (0.64%) Law
14 3 (0.38%) Police
15 2 (0.25%) Aerospace
15 2 (0.25%) Back Office
15 2 (0.25%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 270 (34.35%) Network Engineer
2 101 (12.85%) Architect
3 97 (12.34%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 97 (12.34%) Senior
4 59 (7.51%) Security Engineer
5 43 (5.47%) Network Architect
5 43 (5.47%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
6 41 (5.22%) Senior Network Engineer
7 32 (4.07%) Cloud Engineer
8 28 (3.56%) Cisco Engineer
9 27 (3.44%) Lead
9 27 (3.44%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
10 25 (3.18%) Cisco Network Engineer
11 21 (2.67%) Designer
11 21 (2.67%) Technical Architect
12 20 (2.54%) Consultant
13 19 (2.42%) Network Specialist
14 18 (2.29%) Firewall Specialist
15 17 (2.16%) Analyst
15 17 (2.16%) Network Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 62 (7.89%) 802.1X
2 21 (2.67%) LDAP
3 17 (2.16%) Middleware
4 13 (1.65%) Kafka
4 13 (1.65%) SAML
5 9 (1.15%) LangChain
5 9 (1.15%) OpenTelemetry
5 9 (1.15%) PyTorch
5 9 (1.15%) scikit-learn
6 8 (1.02%) Spring Boot
7 6 (0.76%) OAuth
7 6 (0.76%) OAuth2
7 6 (0.76%) YAML
8 5 (0.64%) React
8 5 (0.64%) SailPoint
9 4 (0.51%) ARM Templates
9 4 (0.51%) OpenID
9 4 (0.51%) Redfish
10 3 (0.38%) .NET
10 3 (0.38%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 215 (27.35%) Data Centre
2 64 (8.14%) Cloud Native
3 55 (7.00%) Security Posture
4 45 (5.73%) Hybrid Cloud
5 41 (5.22%) PKI
6 30 (3.82%) Onboarding
7 28 (3.56%) Clustering
7 28 (3.56%) Operational Technology
8 21 (2.67%) Management Information System
9 17 (2.16%) IoT
9 17 (2.16%) Public Cloud
10 16 (2.04%) SCADA
11 15 (1.91%) Data Protection Act
11 15 (1.91%) Enterprise Storage
12 14 (1.78%) BYOD
13 13 (1.65%) Self-Motivation
14 12 (1.53%) Cyber Threat
14 12 (1.53%) NHS
15 11 (1.40%) Driving Licence
15 11 (1.40%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 194 (24.68%) Windows
2 118 (15.01%) Linux
3 71 (9.03%) Windows Server
4 26 (3.31%) Unix
5 20 (2.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (1.27%) Solaris
7 9 (1.15%) AIX
8 7 (0.89%) Windows Server 2019
9 6 (0.76%) Ubuntu
10 5 (0.64%) CentOS
10 5 (0.64%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.64%) VMS
10 5 (0.64%) Windows Server 2016
11 4 (0.51%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.38%) Check Point GAiA
12 3 (0.38%) Data ONTAP
13 2 (0.25%) CatOS
13 2 (0.25%) Oracle Linux
13 2 (0.25%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 2 (0.25%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 127 (16.16%) DevOps
2 126 (16.03%) CI/CD
2 126 (16.03%) Load Balancing
3 124 (15.78%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 115 (14.63%) High Availability
5 101 (12.85%) Infrastructure as Code
6 99 (12.60%) Cybersecurity
7 98 (12.47%) ITIL
8 91 (11.58%) Problem-Solving
9 87 (11.07%) Agile
10 82 (10.43%) Zero Trust
11 81 (10.31%) Migration
12 74 (9.41%) Network Segmentation
13 73 (9.29%) Observability
14 72 (9.16%) Change Management
15 68 (8.65%) Roadmaps
16 65 (8.27%) SIEM
17 60 (7.63%) Network Design
18 59 (7.51%) Project Delivery
19 58 (7.38%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 118 (15.01%) Python
2 66 (8.40%) PowerShell
3 40 (5.09%) Bash
4 27 (3.44%) SQL
5 26 (3.31%) Bicep
6 25 (3.18%) Java
7 9 (1.15%) ActionScript
7 9 (1.15%) COBOL
8 5 (0.64%) Perl
8 5 (0.64%) Rust
9 3 (0.38%) Go
9 3 (0.38%) JavaScript
9 3 (0.38%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.25%) C++
10 2 (0.25%) Groovy
10 2 (0.25%) Jython
11 1 (0.13%) C
11 1 (0.13%) Korn
11 1 (0.13%) TypeScript
11 1 (0.13%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 293 (37.28%) Security Cleared
2 199 (25.32%) SC Cleared
3 188 (23.92%) Cisco Certification
4 132 (16.79%) CCNP
5 101 (12.85%) CCNA
6 69 (8.78%) DV Cleared
7 68 (8.65%) Degree
8 38 (4.83%) CISSP
9 29 (3.69%) AWS Certification
10 26 (3.31%) Azure Certification
11 18 (2.29%) Network+ Certification
12 17 (2.16%) CCIE
12 17 (2.16%) Microsoft Certification
13 16 (2.04%) JNCIS
14 15 (1.91%) CISM
14 15 (1.91%) Server+ Certification
15 14 (1.78%) JNCIA
16 13 (1.65%) PMP
17 11 (1.40%) BPSS Clearance
18 9 (1.15%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 49 (6.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 31 (3.94%) NIST
3 26 (3.31%) GDPR
4 21 (2.67%) NCSC
5 19 (2.42%) PCI DSS
5 19 (2.42%) QA
6 16 (2.04%) Cyber Essentials
7 12 (1.53%) SLA
8 8 (1.02%) Disclosure Scotland
9 6 (0.76%) Data Quality
9 6 (0.76%) PMO
10 4 (0.51%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 4 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 4 (0.51%) SOC 2
11 3 (0.38%) ISA99
11 3 (0.38%) JSP 440
11 3 (0.38%) RMADS
12 2 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 2 (0.25%) GxP
12 2 (0.25%) HIPAA
System Software
1 128 (16.28%) Active Directory
2 93 (11.83%) VMware Infrastructure
3 33 (4.20%) VMware NSX
4 31 (3.94%) Docker
5 27 (3.44%) vSphere
6 19 (2.42%) Firmware
6 19 (2.42%) VMware ESXi
7 15 (1.91%) Hyper-V
8 12 (1.53%) Virtual Machines
9 9 (1.15%) Virtual Desktop
10 3 (0.38%) BitLocker
10 3 (0.38%) Dovecot
10 3 (0.38%) Postfix
11 2 (0.25%) Squid
11 2 (0.25%) VirtualBox
12 1 (0.13%) Citrix Hypervisor
12 1 (0.13%) FreeRADIUS
12 1 (0.13%) iptables
12 1 (0.13%) KVM
12 1 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 117 (14.89%) Terraform
2 81 (10.31%) Ansible
3 56 (7.12%) FortiGate
4 47 (5.98%) Kubernetes
5 23 (2.93%) Grafana
6 21 (2.67%) Microsoft Intune
7 19 (2.42%) Prometheus
8 17 (2.16%) Single Sign-On
9 13 (1.65%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 13 (1.65%) CASB
10 12 (1.53%) Progress Chef
10 12 (1.53%) vCenter Server
11 10 (1.27%) Nmap
12 8 (1.02%) Cisco Prime
12 8 (1.02%) SCCM
13 7 (0.89%) Nessus
14 6 (0.76%) Kiali
14 6 (0.76%) Nagios
14 6 (0.76%) VxRail
15 5 (0.64%) Argo
Vendors
1 301 (38.30%) Cisco
2 149 (18.96%) Palo Alto
3 146 (18.58%) Microsoft
4 124 (15.78%) VMware
5 118 (15.01%) F5
6 101 (12.85%) Juniper
7 74 (9.41%) Fortinet
8 65 (8.27%) Aruba
9 62 (7.89%) CheckPoint
9 62 (7.89%) SolarWinds
10 57 (7.25%) Splunk
11 51 (6.49%) ServiceNow
12 37 (4.71%) Google
13 32 (4.07%) Arista
14 27 (3.44%) Extreme Networks
15 23 (2.93%) Red Hat
16 20 (2.54%) Meraki
17 19 (2.42%) Veeam
18 18 (2.29%) Zscaler
19 17 (2.16%) IBM