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 1 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 61 41 35
Rank change year-on-year -20 -6 +11
Contract jobs citing Firewall 726 644 986
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.51% 4.85% 4.69%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.49% 28.84% 26.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 495 359 620
10th Percentile £311 £297 £289
25th Percentile £409 £394 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £575 £580 £608
90th Percentile £638 £650 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £524 £513
% change year-on-year -4.53% +2.20% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 19 41
10th Percentile £35.38 £20.00 £46.39
25th Percentile £37.25 £23.75 £62.50
Median hourly rate £45.71 £36.65 £72.50
Median % change year-on-year +24.74% -49.46% +39.08%
75th Percentile £74.26 £43.49 £84.40
90th Percentile £85.70 £73.75 £87.53
UK median hourly rate £41.94 £37.00 £65.98
% change year-on-year +13.35% -43.92% +26.57%

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 2,381 2,233 3,679
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 11.50% 16.83% 17.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,546 1,314 2,122
10th Percentile £196 £185 £205
25th Percentile £313 £300 £341
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £470 £475
Median % change year-on-year -0.21% -1.05% +1.06%
75th Percentile £575 £580 £588
90th Percentile £664 £650 £675
UK median daily rate £481 £500 £480
% change year-on-year -3.75% +4.17% -7.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 134 110 315
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.32 £14.27
25th Percentile £16.59 £21.00 £20.91
Median hourly rate £41.94 £31.79 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +31.93% -36.42% +163.16%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.44 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £76.25
UK median hourly rate £35.50 £35.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +1.43% -12.50% +105.13%

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 1 March 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 1 March 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 1 March 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 -25 229 £520 +9.47% 116
South East +15 205 £500 - 217
North West -17 143 £540 +8.00% 76
Midlands -33 104 £425 -22.73% 59
West Midlands -13 93 £425 -15.00% 31
Yorkshire -24 84 £460 +8.24% 32
South West -45 59 £550 +7.32% 53
Scotland -6 56 £425 -2.86% 29
East of England -25 47 £470 -12.56% 62
Wales -19 22 £425 +16.44% 14
East Midlands -48 9 £488 -21.08% 28
Northern Ireland - 6 £500 - 1
North East -17 5 £548 -0.45% 8
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 20 (2.75%) Confluence
2 10 (1.38%) Microsoft Exchange
3 9 (1.24%) Apache
4 8 (1.10%) CICS
5 7 (0.96%) SharePoint
6 6 (0.83%) IIS
7 4 (0.55%) OpenStack
8 2 (0.28%) Apache Pulsar
8 2 (0.28%) nginx
9 1 (0.14%) CMS
9 1 (0.14%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 30 (4.13%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (2.07%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (2.07%) MS Visio
3 14 (1.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.14%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 1 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.14%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 197 (27.13%) Azure
2 167 (23.00%) AWS
3 71 (9.78%) GCP
4 45 (6.20%) Entra ID
5 40 (5.51%) Microsoft 365
5 40 (5.51%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 27 (3.72%) Amazon EC2
7 22 (3.03%) AWS CloudFormation
7 22 (3.03%) IaaS
8 21 (2.89%) Serverless
9 20 (2.75%) Azure Sentinel
9 20 (2.75%) PaaS
10 19 (2.62%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 19 (2.62%) GitHub
11 18 (2.48%) Azure Monitor
12 17 (2.34%) AWS Lambda
13 16 (2.20%) Amazon S3
14 15 (2.07%) Amazon ECS
15 14 (1.93%) Azure DevOps
16 13 (1.79%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 174 (23.97%) Network Security
2 164 (22.59%) WAN
3 156 (21.49%) VPN
4 145 (19.97%) DNS
5 129 (17.77%) LAN
6 111 (15.29%) BGP
7 98 (13.50%) OSPF
8 97 (13.36%) VLAN
9 90 (12.40%) Wireless
10 79 (10.88%) DHCP
11 77 (10.61%) TCP/IP
12 52 (7.16%) Cisco ISE
12 52 (7.16%) SD-WAN
13 48 (6.61%) MPLS
14 46 (6.34%) IPsec
15 45 (6.20%) Wi-Fi
16 39 (5.37%) VXLAN
17 38 (5.23%) Cisco Nexus
18 37 (5.10%) Cisco ASA
19 36 (4.96%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (2.48%) Amazon RDS
2 17 (2.34%) SQL Server
3 12 (1.65%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (1.10%) DataStage
5 4 (0.55%) Data Lake
5 4 (0.55%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.55%) Relational Database
6 3 (0.41%) DynamoDB
7 2 (0.28%) Amazon QuickSight
7 2 (0.28%) MariaDB
7 2 (0.28%) Oracle Database
7 2 (0.28%) Power BI
8 1 (0.14%) Amazon Athena
8 1 (0.14%) Amazon Aurora
8 1 (0.14%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.14%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
8 1 (0.14%) Elasticsearch
8 1 (0.14%) NoSQL
8 1 (0.14%) Redis
8 1 (0.14%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 44 (6.06%) JIRA
2 41 (5.65%) Jenkins
3 36 (4.96%) GitLab
4 33 (4.55%) Git
5 20 (2.75%) Sonatype Nexus
6 15 (2.07%) Burp Suite
6 15 (2.07%) Metasploit
7 11 (1.52%) Bitbucket
8 8 (1.10%) Jaeger
9 4 (0.55%) CircleCI
10 3 (0.41%) Chocolatey
11 2 (0.28%) Vagrant
12 1 (0.14%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.14%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.14%) MSI
12 1 (0.14%) Subversion
12 1 (0.14%) Travis CI
General
1 208 (28.65%) Social Skills
2 83 (11.43%) Finance
3 72 (9.92%) Analytical Skills
4 66 (9.09%) Public Sector
5 61 (8.40%) Documentation Skills
6 28 (3.86%) Banking
7 24 (3.31%) Telecoms
8 23 (3.17%) Legal
9 20 (2.75%) Manufacturing
10 15 (2.07%) Influencing Skills
11 10 (1.38%) Financial Institution
11 10 (1.38%) Military
12 7 (0.96%) Aerospace
12 7 (0.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 7 (0.96%) Presentation Skills
13 6 (0.83%) Law
14 5 (0.69%) Retail
15 4 (0.55%) Organisational Skills
15 4 (0.55%) Retail Banking
16 3 (0.41%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 224 (30.85%) Network Engineer
2 104 (14.33%) Architect
3 76 (10.47%) Senior
4 60 (8.26%) Security Engineer
5 50 (6.89%) Network Architect
6 49 (6.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 41 (5.65%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
8 29 (3.99%) Analyst
9 27 (3.72%) DevOps Engineer
10 26 (3.58%) Senior Network Engineer
11 25 (3.44%) Platform Engineer
12 24 (3.31%) IT Engineer
12 24 (3.31%) IT Support
13 22 (3.03%) Cisco Engineer
14 21 (2.89%) Cloud Engineer
14 21 (2.89%) Security Architect
14 21 (2.89%) Support Engineer
15 19 (2.62%) Cisco Network Engineer
16 18 (2.48%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
16 18 (2.48%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 56 (7.71%) 802.1X
2 22 (3.03%) LDAP
3 20 (2.75%) SAML
4 18 (2.48%) Middleware
5 17 (2.34%) OAuth
5 17 (2.34%) OAuth2
6 15 (2.07%) OpenID
7 13 (1.79%) Kafka
8 10 (1.38%) Node.js
8 10 (1.38%) OpenTelemetry
9 8 (1.10%) Spring Boot
10 7 (0.96%) JSON
11 6 (0.83%) LangChain
11 6 (0.83%) PyTorch
11 6 (0.83%) REST
11 6 (0.83%) scikit-learn
12 5 (0.69%) RFC 2544
13 4 (0.55%) ARM Templates
13 4 (0.55%) YAML
14 3 (0.41%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 163 (22.45%) Data Centre
2 59 (8.13%) Security Posture
3 45 (6.20%) PKI
4 29 (3.99%) Operational Technology
5 27 (3.72%) Cloud Native
6 26 (3.58%) Onboarding
7 25 (3.44%) Hybrid Cloud
8 18 (2.48%) Clustering
9 17 (2.34%) NHS
10 15 (2.07%) Data Protection Act
10 15 (2.07%) Management Information System
10 15 (2.07%) Security Operations Centre
11 14 (1.93%) Product Ownership
11 14 (1.93%) Replication
12 13 (1.79%) Cyber Threat
13 12 (1.65%) Private Cloud
14 11 (1.52%) BYOD
14 11 (1.52%) Public Cloud
15 10 (1.38%) IoT
15 10 (1.38%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 210 (28.93%) Windows
2 148 (20.39%) Linux
3 81 (11.16%) Windows Server
4 25 (3.44%) Unix
5 20 (2.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (1.38%) Windows 7
7 9 (1.24%) Solaris
7 9 (1.24%) VMS
8 8 (1.10%) AIX
9 7 (0.96%) Windows Server 2019
10 5 (0.69%) Amazon Linux
10 5 (0.69%) Windows 10
11 4 (0.55%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.41%) CatOS
12 3 (0.41%) Mac OS
12 3 (0.41%) Ubuntu
12 3 (0.41%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.28%) Android
13 2 (0.28%) Apple iOS
13 2 (0.28%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 140 (19.28%) Cybersecurity
2 114 (15.70%) Problem-Solving
3 106 (14.60%) DevOps
4 98 (13.50%) CI/CD
5 86 (11.85%) Infrastructure as Code
6 77 (10.61%) Load Balancing
7 76 (10.47%) ITIL
8 74 (10.19%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 73 (10.06%) High Availability
9 73 (10.06%) SIEM
10 72 (9.92%) Incident Response
11 65 (8.95%) Cloud Security
12 63 (8.68%) Agile
13 61 (8.40%) Mentoring
14 59 (8.13%) Containerisation
15 55 (7.58%) Identity Access Management
15 55 (7.58%) Zero Trust
16 53 (7.30%) Observability
17 52 (7.16%) Change Management
18 51 (7.02%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 130 (17.91%) Python
2 108 (14.88%) PowerShell
3 66 (9.09%) Bash
4 31 (4.27%) Java
5 27 (3.72%) SQL
6 25 (3.44%) Perl
7 14 (1.93%) Bicep
8 10 (1.38%) Ruby
9 8 (1.10%) COBOL
9 8 (1.10%) Rust
10 4 (0.55%) C#
10 4 (0.55%) Shell Script
11 3 (0.41%) Go
11 3 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
12 2 (0.28%) C++
12 2 (0.28%) Groovy
12 2 (0.28%) JavaScript
13 1 (0.14%) Korn
13 1 (0.14%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 302 (41.60%) Security Cleared
2 192 (26.45%) SC Cleared
3 161 (22.18%) Cisco Certification
4 130 (17.91%) CCNP
5 86 (11.85%) DV Cleared
6 77 (10.61%) CCNA
7 72 (9.92%) Degree
8 47 (6.47%) CISSP
9 31 (4.27%) AWS Certification
10 30 (4.13%) Microsoft Certification
11 26 (3.58%) CCIE
12 23 (3.17%) Azure Certification
12 23 (3.17%) CISM
13 15 (2.07%) CHECK Team Member
13 15 (2.07%) CompTIA Security+
13 15 (2.07%) JNCIS
13 15 (2.07%) Network+ Certification
14 13 (1.79%) Computer Science Degree
14 13 (1.79%) CREST Certified
14 13 (1.79%) Cyber Scheme
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 62 (8.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 50 (6.89%) NIST
3 35 (4.82%) PCI DSS
4 34 (4.68%) GDPR
5 22 (3.03%) Cyber Essentials
6 19 (2.62%) NCSC
7 18 (2.48%) SLA
8 16 (2.20%) QA
9 11 (1.52%) PMO
10 5 (0.69%) Actionable Recommendations
10 5 (0.69%) COBIT
11 4 (0.55%) JSP 440
12 3 (0.41%) GRC
12 3 (0.41%) NIST 800
13 2 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
13 2 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 2 (0.28%) PSD2
13 2 (0.28%) SOC 2
14 1 (0.14%) ISO 20022
14 1 (0.14%) ISO 22301
System Software
1 141 (19.42%) Active Directory
2 104 (14.33%) VMware Infrastructure
3 78 (10.74%) Docker
4 32 (4.41%) vSphere
5 30 (4.13%) VMware NSX
6 25 (3.44%) Hyper-V
7 14 (1.93%) VMware ESXi
8 8 (1.10%) Firmware
8 8 (1.10%) Virtual Desktop
9 6 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
9 6 (0.83%) Virtual Servers
10 5 (0.69%) DFS Replication
11 3 (0.41%) KVM
12 1 (0.14%) BitLocker
12 1 (0.14%) Citrix Hypervisor
12 1 (0.14%) Dovecot
12 1 (0.14%) Postfix
12 1 (0.14%) RHEV
12 1 (0.14%) UAG
12 1 (0.14%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 100 (13.77%) Terraform
2 75 (10.33%) Ansible
3 73 (10.06%) Kubernetes
4 41 (5.65%) FortiGate
5 25 (3.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 23 (3.17%) Single Sign-On
7 22 (3.03%) Microsoft Intune
8 21 (2.89%) Grafana
9 20 (2.75%) vCenter Server
10 18 (2.48%) Nmap
11 16 (2.20%) Prometheus
12 14 (1.93%) SCCM
13 10 (1.38%) Nagios
13 10 (1.38%) WMI
14 9 (1.24%) Nessus
15 8 (1.10%) CASB
15 8 (1.10%) Fluentd
15 8 (1.10%) Kiali
16 7 (0.96%) Progress Chef
16 7 (0.96%) VxRail
Vendors
1 281 (38.71%) Cisco
2 158 (21.76%) Palo Alto
3 151 (20.80%) Microsoft
4 138 (19.01%) VMware
5 86 (11.85%) F5
6 85 (11.71%) CheckPoint
7 76 (10.47%) Juniper
8 62 (8.54%) Splunk
9 59 (8.13%) Fortinet
10 57 (7.85%) SolarWinds
11 53 (7.30%) Aruba
12 40 (5.51%) Google
13 38 (5.23%) Meraki
14 27 (3.72%) ServiceNow
15 25 (3.44%) Oracle
16 23 (3.17%) Red Hat
17 19 (2.62%) Dell
17 19 (2.62%) Extreme Networks
18 18 (2.48%) Citrix
19 16 (2.20%) Zscaler