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

6 months to
24 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 72 40 41
Rank change year-on-year -32 +1 -5
Contract jobs citing Firewall 789 663 857
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.03% 4.91% 4.04%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 28.23% 32.50% 26.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 529 383 538
10th Percentile £350 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% +3.09%
75th Percentile £586 £575 £608
90th Percentile £639 £638 £715
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 23 34
10th Percentile £18.53 £14.20 £22.85
25th Percentile £37.25 £14.66 £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 £44.65 £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 2,795 2,040 3,260
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.74% 15.11% 15.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,642 1,245 1,832
10th Percentile £213 £200 £205
25th Percentile £375 £325 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £470 £490
Median % change year-on-year +2.13% -3.98% +3.05%
75th Percentile £581 £575 £600
90th Percentile £650 £638 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 257 127 365
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.67 £13.50
25th Percentile £20.75 £17.30 £17.63
Median hourly rate £26.72 £36.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -26.79% -23.16% +150.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £81.65 £74.60
UK median hourly rate £27.94 £45.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -37.91% +12.50% +110.53%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 -20 278 £500 +5.26% 104
South East -25 219 £514 +2.75% 158
North West -8 178 £537 +13.65% 58
Yorkshire -37 84 £425 -13.18% 34
Midlands -57 77 £433 -10.39% 65
East of England -10 70 £505 -2.88% 52
Scotland +9 64 £456 +4.29% 21
West Midlands -56 64 £425 -19.05% 41
South West -46 62 £525 +8.25% 41
Wales -17 25 £425 +30.77% 5
North East -15 22 £625 +25.00% 14
East Midlands -32 10 £500 +11.11% 24
Northern Ireland -7 2 £385 - 11
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 (1.39%) Confluence
2 9 (1.14%) CICS
2 9 (1.14%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (0.89%) Apache
4 6 (0.76%) SharePoint
5 5 (0.63%) IIS
6 4 (0.51%) nginx
7 3 (0.38%) Skype for Business
7 3 (0.38%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.25%) Apache Pulsar
8 2 (0.25%) CloudStack
8 2 (0.25%) CMS
8 2 (0.25%) IBM HTTP Server
8 2 (0.25%) Oracle HTTP Server
8 2 (0.25%) Umbraco
8 2 (0.25%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.25%) WebSphere Application Server
8 2 (0.25%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 18 (2.28%) MS Visio
2 17 (2.15%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (1.27%) Microsoft Excel
4 5 (0.63%) 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
1 255 (32.32%) Azure
2 152 (19.26%) AWS
3 63 (7.98%) Entra ID
4 57 (7.22%) GCP
5 45 (5.70%) Microsoft 365
6 33 (4.18%) Azure DevOps
7 30 (3.80%) OCI
8 29 (3.68%) GitHub
9 28 (3.55%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 26 (3.30%) IaaS
11 25 (3.17%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 22 (2.79%) Azure Sentinel
12 22 (2.79%) SaaS
13 17 (2.15%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 17 (2.15%) Azure Monitor
14 14 (1.77%) AWS CloudFormation
15 12 (1.52%) GitHub Actions
15 12 (1.52%) Microsoft Purview
16 11 (1.39%) PaaS
16 11 (1.39%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 249 (31.56%) WAN
2 213 (27.00%) Network Security
3 203 (25.73%) LAN
4 175 (22.18%) VPN
5 164 (20.79%) DNS
6 138 (17.49%) BGP
7 125 (15.84%) OSPF
8 111 (14.07%) Wireless
9 106 (13.43%) VLAN
10 100 (12.67%) SD-WAN
11 98 (12.42%) DHCP
12 82 (10.39%) Wi-Fi
13 81 (10.27%) TCP/IP
14 76 (9.63%) BIG-IP
15 68 (8.62%) VXLAN
16 63 (7.98%) IPsec
17 62 (7.86%) Ethernet VPN
18 52 (6.59%) Cisco ISE
19 51 (6.46%) MPLS
20 50 (6.34%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (1.14%) DataStage
2 8 (1.01%) PostgreSQL
2 8 (1.01%) SQL Server
3 6 (0.76%) Power BI
4 5 (0.63%) Azure SQL Database
4 5 (0.63%) Data Lake
4 5 (0.63%) Relational Database
5 4 (0.51%) Amazon RDS
5 4 (0.51%) MySQL
5 4 (0.51%) NoSQL
6 3 (0.38%) Delta Lake
6 3 (0.38%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.13%) Amazon Athena
7 1 (0.13%) Amazon QuickSight
7 1 (0.13%) Amazon Redshift
7 1 (0.13%) EDRMS
7 1 (0.13%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.13%) Redis
7 1 (0.13%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 1 (0.13%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 67 (8.49%) JIRA
2 32 (4.06%) GitLab
3 29 (3.68%) Jenkins
4 17 (2.15%) Git
5 11 (1.39%) Sonatype Nexus
6 10 (1.27%) Burp Suite
7 8 (1.01%) Metasploit
8 6 (0.76%) Jaeger
9 4 (0.51%) Browser DevTools
10 3 (0.38%) Chocolatey
11 2 (0.25%) Bitbucket
11 2 (0.25%) Cucumber
11 2 (0.25%) Gatling
11 2 (0.25%) Gradle
11 2 (0.25%) Introscope
11 2 (0.25%) LoadRunner
11 2 (0.25%) REST Assured
11 2 (0.25%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.25%) Team Foundation Server
12 1 (0.13%) MSI
General
1 171 (21.67%) Social Skills
2 80 (10.14%) Finance
3 62 (7.86%) Analytical Skills
4 59 (7.48%) Public Sector
5 45 (5.70%) Documentation Skills
6 21 (2.66%) Banking
7 20 (2.53%) Telecoms
8 19 (2.41%) Legal
9 17 (2.15%) Manufacturing
10 14 (1.77%) Military
11 12 (1.52%) Influencing Skills
12 7 (0.89%) Organisational Skills
12 7 (0.89%) Retail
13 6 (0.76%) Financial Institution
13 6 (0.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 5 (0.63%) Law
15 3 (0.38%) Aerospace
15 3 (0.38%) Police
16 2 (0.25%) Aviation
16 2 (0.25%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 269 (34.09%) Network Engineer
2 107 (13.56%) Architect
3 98 (12.42%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 95 (12.04%) Senior
5 59 (7.48%) Security Engineer
6 44 (5.58%) Network Architect
7 43 (5.45%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
8 41 (5.20%) Senior Network Engineer
9 33 (4.18%) Cloud Engineer
10 27 (3.42%) Cisco Engineer
10 27 (3.42%) Lead
10 27 (3.42%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
11 25 (3.17%) Cisco Network Engineer
12 22 (2.79%) Technical Architect
13 20 (2.53%) Consultant
13 20 (2.53%) Designer
14 19 (2.41%) Network Specialist
15 18 (2.28%) Firewall Specialist
16 17 (2.15%) Analyst
16 17 (2.15%) Network Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 60 (7.60%) 802.1X
2 21 (2.66%) LDAP
3 17 (2.15%) Middleware
4 13 (1.65%) Kafka
4 13 (1.65%) SAML
5 9 (1.14%) LangChain
5 9 (1.14%) OpenTelemetry
5 9 (1.14%) PyTorch
5 9 (1.14%) scikit-learn
6 8 (1.01%) Spring Boot
7 6 (0.76%) ARM Templates
7 6 (0.76%) OAuth
7 6 (0.76%) OAuth2
7 6 (0.76%) YAML
8 5 (0.63%) React
8 5 (0.63%) SailPoint
9 4 (0.51%) OpenID
9 4 (0.51%) Redfish
10 3 (0.38%) .NET
10 3 (0.38%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 213 (27.00%) Data Centre
2 65 (8.24%) Cloud Native
3 55 (6.97%) Security Posture
4 48 (6.08%) Hybrid Cloud
5 41 (5.20%) PKI
6 28 (3.55%) Clustering
6 28 (3.55%) Operational Technology
7 26 (3.30%) Onboarding
8 21 (2.66%) Management Information System
9 17 (2.15%) Enterprise Storage
9 17 (2.15%) IoT
9 17 (2.15%) Public Cloud
10 16 (2.03%) SCADA
11 15 (1.90%) Data Protection Act
12 14 (1.77%) BYOD
13 13 (1.65%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
14 12 (1.52%) Cyber Threat
14 12 (1.52%) NHS
14 12 (1.52%) Private Cloud
15 10 (1.27%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 193 (24.46%) Windows
2 116 (14.70%) Linux
3 69 (8.75%) Windows Server
4 24 (3.04%) Unix
5 21 (2.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (1.27%) Solaris
7 9 (1.14%) AIX
8 7 (0.89%) Ubuntu
8 7 (0.89%) Windows Server 2019
9 5 (0.63%) CentOS
9 5 (0.63%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.63%) VMS
9 5 (0.63%) Windows Server 2016
10 4 (0.51%) Windows Server 2012
11 3 (0.38%) Check Point GAiA
11 3 (0.38%) Data ONTAP
12 2 (0.25%) CatOS
12 2 (0.25%) Oracle Linux
12 2 (0.25%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
12 2 (0.25%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 131 (16.60%) Load Balancing
2 125 (15.84%) DevOps
2 125 (15.84%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 124 (15.72%) CI/CD
4 119 (15.08%) High Availability
5 107 (13.56%) Infrastructure as Code
6 101 (12.80%) Cybersecurity
7 97 (12.29%) ITIL
8 95 (12.04%) Problem-Solving
9 88 (11.15%) Agile
10 85 (10.77%) Migration
11 83 (10.52%) Zero Trust
12 72 (9.13%) Change Management
12 72 (9.13%) Network Segmentation
13 71 (9.00%) Observability
14 69 (8.75%) Roadmaps
15 66 (8.37%) SIEM
16 59 (7.48%) Network Design
16 59 (7.48%) Project Delivery
17 58 (7.35%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 125 (15.84%) Python
2 72 (9.13%) PowerShell
3 44 (5.58%) Bash
4 26 (3.30%) Bicep
4 26 (3.30%) SQL
5 23 (2.92%) Java
6 9 (1.14%) ActionScript
6 9 (1.14%) COBOL
7 5 (0.63%) Perl
7 5 (0.63%) Rust
8 3 (0.38%) Go
8 3 (0.38%) JavaScript
8 3 (0.38%) PL/SQL
9 2 (0.25%) C++
9 2 (0.25%) Groovy
9 2 (0.25%) Jython
10 1 (0.13%) C
10 1 (0.13%) Korn
10 1 (0.13%) TypeScript
10 1 (0.13%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 294 (37.26%) Security Cleared
2 201 (25.48%) SC Cleared
3 187 (23.70%) Cisco Certification
4 131 (16.60%) CCNP
5 99 (12.55%) CCNA
6 69 (8.75%) Degree
6 69 (8.75%) DV Cleared
7 38 (4.82%) CISSP
8 29 (3.68%) AWS Certification
9 26 (3.30%) Azure Certification
10 18 (2.28%) CCIE
10 18 (2.28%) Network+ Certification
11 17 (2.15%) Microsoft Certification
12 15 (1.90%) CISM
12 15 (1.90%) JNCIS
12 15 (1.90%) Server+ Certification
13 14 (1.77%) JNCIA
14 13 (1.65%) PMP
15 11 (1.39%) BPSS Clearance
16 9 (1.14%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 49 (6.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 31 (3.93%) NIST
3 26 (3.30%) GDPR
4 22 (2.79%) NCSC
5 19 (2.41%) PCI DSS
5 19 (2.41%) QA
6 15 (1.90%) Cyber Essentials
7 8 (1.01%) Disclosure Scotland
7 8 (1.01%) SLA
8 7 (0.89%) 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
1 127 (16.10%) Active Directory
2 94 (11.91%) VMware Infrastructure
3 34 (4.31%) VMware NSX
4 30 (3.80%) Docker
5 28 (3.55%) vSphere
6 21 (2.66%) VMware ESXi
7 19 (2.41%) Firmware
8 14 (1.77%) Hyper-V
9 13 (1.65%) Virtual Machines
10 9 (1.14%) Virtual Desktop
11 3 (0.38%) BitLocker
11 3 (0.38%) Dovecot
11 3 (0.38%) Postfix
12 2 (0.25%) Squid
12 2 (0.25%) VirtualBox
13 1 (0.13%) Citrix Hypervisor
13 1 (0.13%) FreeRADIUS
13 1 (0.13%) iptables
13 1 (0.13%) KVM
13 1 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 123 (15.59%) Terraform
2 80 (10.14%) Ansible
3 57 (7.22%) FortiGate
4 46 (5.83%) Kubernetes
5 21 (2.66%) Grafana
5 21 (2.66%) Microsoft Intune
6 19 (2.41%) Prometheus
6 19 (2.41%) Single Sign-On
7 15 (1.90%) CASB
8 13 (1.65%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 12 (1.52%) Progress Chef
9 12 (1.52%) vCenter Server
10 10 (1.27%) Nmap
11 8 (1.01%) Cisco Prime
11 8 (1.01%) SCCM
12 7 (0.89%) Nessus
13 6 (0.76%) Kiali
13 6 (0.76%) VxRail
14 5 (0.63%) Argo
14 5 (0.63%) Nagios
Vendors
1 298 (37.77%) Cisco
2 152 (19.26%) Microsoft
3 148 (18.76%) Palo Alto
4 127 (16.10%) VMware
5 118 (14.96%) F5
6 102 (12.93%) Juniper
7 75 (9.51%) Fortinet
8 65 (8.24%) Aruba
9 62 (7.86%) CheckPoint
10 61 (7.73%) SolarWinds
11 56 (7.10%) Splunk
12 50 (6.34%) ServiceNow
13 41 (5.20%) Google
14 33 (4.18%) Arista
15 27 (3.42%) Extreme Networks
16 23 (2.92%) Red Hat
17 20 (2.53%) Meraki
17 20 (2.53%) Zscaler
18 19 (2.41%) Veeam
19 18 (2.28%) IBM