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

6 months to
27 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 72 41 41
Rank change year-on-year -31 0 -4
Contract jobs citing Firewall 817 717 797
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.02% 4.75% 4.16%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 28.12% 33.00% 27.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 539 409 498
10th Percentile £350 £305 £286
25th Percentile £413 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £515
Median % change year-on-year +2.15% -4.95% +8.42%
75th Percentile £589 £588 £608
90th Percentile £648 £639 £713
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 35 26 28
10th Percentile £28.40 £14.20 £21.23
25th Percentile £37.52 £15.18 £23.92
Median hourly rate £65.00 £30.00 £73.50
Median % change year-on-year +116.67% -59.18% +13.96%
75th Percentile £76.38 £42.93 £86.10
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.63 £87.46
UK median hourly rate £62.50 £30.00 £27.50
% change year-on-year +108.33% +9.09% -58.32%

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 2,905 2,173 2,918
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.75% 14.38% 15.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,668 1,317 1,701
10th Percentile £224 £200 £205
25th Percentile £372 £325 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.05% -5.00% +8.70%
75th Percentile £581 £575 £600
90th Percentile £650 £638 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +2.41% -2.35% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 288 137 297
10th Percentile £15.58 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £17.30 £18.00
Median hourly rate £26.66 £44.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -39.41% -12.00% -12.14%
75th Percentile £65.00 £67.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £87.70 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £26.44 £48.75 £45.00
% change year-on-year -45.76% +8.33% -10.00%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 -15 288 £500 +5.26% 93
South East -30 229 £500 - 141
North West -8 188 £535 +12.63% 46
Yorkshire -43 84 £450 -7.64% 35
Midlands -64 78 £468 -4.88% 49
East of England -3 74 £525 -4.55% 36
South West -41 73 £538 +8.86% 47
Scotland +14 64 £425 -5.56% 19
West Midlands -59 62 £450 -10.00% 28
North East -19 22 £625 - 14
Wales -18 18 £425 +17.24% 12
East Midlands -23 13 £488 +3.50% 21
Northern Ireland -7 1 - - 6
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 16 (1.96%) Microsoft Exchange
2 14 (1.71%) Confluence
3 9 (1.10%) Apache
3 9 (1.10%) CICS
3 9 (1.10%) SharePoint
4 8 (0.98%) nginx
5 4 (0.49%) FactoryTalk
6 3 (0.37%) IIS
6 3 (0.37%) SAS
6 3 (0.37%) Skype for Business
6 3 (0.37%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.24%) Apache Pulsar
7 2 (0.24%) CloudStack
7 2 (0.24%) CMS
7 2 (0.24%) IBM HTTP Server
7 2 (0.24%) Oracle HTTP Server
7 2 (0.24%) Umbraco
7 2 (0.24%) WebSphere
7 2 (0.24%) WebSphere Application Server
7 2 (0.24%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 19 (2.33%) MS Visio
2 12 (1.47%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (0.73%) Microsoft Excel
4 3 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 3 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.24%) Dynamics GP
2 2 (0.24%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 272 (33.29%) Azure
2 163 (19.95%) AWS
3 75 (9.18%) Entra ID
4 66 (8.08%) GCP
5 56 (6.85%) Microsoft 365
6 36 (4.41%) Azure DevOps
7 32 (3.92%) GitHub
8 30 (3.67%) OCI
9 28 (3.43%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 28 (3.43%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 26 (3.18%) Azure Monitor
10 26 (3.18%) IaaS
11 25 (3.06%) SaaS
12 23 (2.82%) Azure Sentinel
13 19 (2.33%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 16 (1.96%) AWS CloudFormation
15 15 (1.84%) GitHub Actions
15 15 (1.84%) Serverless
16 13 (1.59%) Azure AKS
16 13 (1.59%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 244 (29.87%) WAN
2 221 (27.05%) Network Security
3 212 (25.95%) VPN
4 208 (25.46%) LAN
5 206 (25.21%) DNS
6 153 (18.73%) BGP
7 135 (16.52%) OSPF
8 132 (16.16%) DHCP
9 123 (15.06%) Wireless
10 117 (14.32%) TCP/IP
11 115 (14.08%) VLAN
12 93 (11.38%) SD-WAN
13 88 (10.77%) Wi-Fi
14 79 (9.67%) BIG-IP
15 65 (7.96%) IPsec
16 62 (7.59%) VXLAN
17 59 (7.22%) MPLS
18 56 (6.85%) Ethernet VPN
19 55 (6.73%) Cisco ISE
19 55 (6.73%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (1.47%) PostgreSQL
1 12 (1.47%) SQL Server
2 9 (1.10%) DataStage
2 9 (1.10%) Relational Database
3 7 (0.86%) Azure SQL Database
3 7 (0.86%) Power BI
4 5 (0.61%) Data Lake
5 4 (0.49%) Amazon RDS
5 4 (0.49%) Delta Lake
5 4 (0.49%) MySQL
5 4 (0.49%) NoSQL
5 4 (0.49%) Oracle Database
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 67 (8.20%) JIRA
2 31 (3.79%) GitLab
3 30 (3.67%) Jenkins
4 17 (2.08%) Git
5 9 (1.10%) Sonatype Nexus
6 7 (0.86%) Bitbucket
7 5 (0.61%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 5 (0.61%) Browser DevTools
8 4 (0.49%) Burp Suite
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
10 1 (0.12%) MSI
10 1 (0.12%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 167 (20.44%) Social Skills
2 84 (10.28%) Finance
3 74 (9.06%) Analytical Skills
4 68 (8.32%) Public Sector
5 36 (4.41%) Documentation Skills
6 27 (3.30%) Banking
7 26 (3.18%) Telecoms
8 21 (2.57%) Manufacturing
9 19 (2.33%) Military
10 14 (1.71%) Legal
11 12 (1.47%) Influencing Skills
12 9 (1.10%) Organisational Skills
13 8 (0.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 7 (0.86%) Police
14 7 (0.86%) Retail
15 4 (0.49%) Pharmaceutical
16 3 (0.37%) Advertising
16 3 (0.37%) Financial Institution
16 3 (0.37%) Law
17 2 (0.24%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 267 (32.68%) Network Engineer
2 112 (13.71%) Senior
3 107 (13.10%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 101 (12.36%) Architect
5 69 (8.45%) Security Engineer
6 53 (6.49%) Senior Network Engineer
7 40 (4.90%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
8 39 (4.77%) Network Architect
9 38 (4.65%) Cloud Engineer
10 32 (3.92%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
11 27 (3.30%) Lead
12 24 (2.94%) Consultant
12 24 (2.94%) Network Security Engineer
13 20 (2.45%) Designer
13 20 (2.45%) Technical Architect
14 19 (2.33%) Network Specialist
15 18 (2.20%) Cisco Engineer
15 18 (2.20%) Firewall Specialist
15 18 (2.20%) Platform Engineer
15 18 (2.20%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 56 (6.85%) 802.1X
2 16 (1.96%) LDAP
3 15 (1.84%) SAML
4 13 (1.59%) ARM Templates
5 12 (1.47%) Middleware
6 11 (1.35%) Kafka
7 9 (1.10%) LangChain
7 9 (1.10%) PyTorch
7 9 (1.10%) scikit-learn
8 8 (0.98%) React
9 7 (0.86%) OAuth
9 7 (0.86%) YAML
10 6 (0.73%) OAuth2
10 6 (0.73%) OpenTelemetry
10 6 (0.73%) SailPoint
11 4 (0.49%) ModSecurity
11 4 (0.49%) OpenID
11 4 (0.49%) Redfish
12 3 (0.37%) REST
12 3 (0.37%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 199 (24.36%) Data Centre
2 69 (8.45%) Cloud Native
3 63 (7.71%) PKI
4 53 (6.49%) Hybrid Cloud
5 49 (6.00%) Security Posture
6 34 (4.16%) Operational Technology
7 29 (3.55%) Clustering
8 25 (3.06%) Onboarding
9 23 (2.82%) SCADA
10 21 (2.57%) Management Information System
11 18 (2.20%) Enterprise Storage
11 18 (2.20%) IoT
11 18 (2.20%) Public Cloud
12 15 (1.84%) Data Protection Act
12 15 (1.84%) Driving Licence
12 15 (1.84%) Self-Motivation
13 14 (1.71%) BYOD
14 13 (1.59%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
15 11 (1.35%) Enterprise Software
16 10 (1.22%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 218 (26.68%) Windows
2 138 (16.89%) Linux
3 76 (9.30%) Windows Server
4 33 (4.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 25 (3.06%) Unix
6 10 (1.22%) CentOS
6 10 (1.22%) Solaris
7 9 (1.10%) AIX
7 9 (1.10%) Mac OS
7 9 (1.10%) Ubuntu
7 9 (1.10%) VMS
8 7 (0.86%) Rocky
9 6 (0.73%) Windows 10
9 6 (0.73%) Windows Server 2019
10 5 (0.61%) Windows Server 2012
11 4 (0.49%) Windows Server 2016
12 3 (0.37%) Check Point GAiA
12 3 (0.37%) Data ONTAP
13 2 (0.24%) Oracle Linux
13 2 (0.24%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 143 (17.50%) CI/CD
2 140 (17.14%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 138 (16.89%) Load Balancing
4 134 (16.40%) DevOps
5 122 (14.93%) Problem-Solving
6 121 (14.81%) Infrastructure as Code
7 120 (14.69%) Cybersecurity
8 119 (14.57%) High Availability
9 111 (13.59%) ITIL
10 93 (11.38%) Agile
11 84 (10.28%) SIEM
12 83 (10.16%) Migration
13 82 (10.04%) Zero Trust
14 79 (9.67%) Change Management
14 79 (9.67%) Observability
15 71 (8.69%) Roadmaps
16 69 (8.45%) Validation
17 68 (8.32%) Network Segmentation
18 64 (7.83%) Project Delivery
19 59 (7.22%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 141 (17.26%) Python
2 104 (12.73%) PowerShell
3 66 (8.08%) Bash
4 33 (4.04%) Bicep
5 25 (3.06%) Java
6 24 (2.94%) SQL
7 9 (1.10%) ActionScript
7 9 (1.10%) COBOL
8 5 (0.61%) Go
8 5 (0.61%) Perl
9 4 (0.49%) JavaScript
10 3 (0.37%) PL/SQL
10 3 (0.37%) TypeScript
11 2 (0.24%) C++
11 2 (0.24%) Groovy
11 2 (0.24%) Jython
12 1 (0.12%) C
12 1 (0.12%) Korn
12 1 (0.12%) Kusto Query Language
12 1 (0.12%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 318 (38.92%) Security Cleared
2 202 (24.72%) SC Cleared
3 175 (21.42%) Cisco Certification
4 118 (14.44%) CCNP
5 93 (11.38%) DV Cleared
6 89 (10.89%) CCNA
7 66 (8.08%) Degree
8 43 (5.26%) CISSP
9 33 (4.04%) AWS Certification
10 28 (3.43%) Azure Certification
11 20 (2.45%) Microsoft Certification
12 18 (2.20%) Network+ Certification
13 17 (2.08%) CCIE
14 15 (1.84%) CISM
14 15 (1.84%) Server+ Certification
15 14 (1.71%) JNCIS
16 12 (1.47%) JNCIA
16 12 (1.47%) PMP
17 11 (1.35%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 10 (1.22%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 48 (5.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 33 (4.04%) NIST
3 23 (2.82%) GDPR
3 23 (2.82%) NCSC
4 14 (1.71%) QA
5 13 (1.59%) Cyber Essentials
5 13 (1.59%) PCI DSS
6 8 (0.98%) Data Quality
6 8 (0.98%) Disclosure Scotland
7 7 (0.86%) JSP 440
8 6 (0.73%) GxP
9 5 (0.61%) SLA
10 4 (0.49%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 4 (0.49%) HIPAA
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%) ISA99
11 3 (0.37%) NIST 800
11 3 (0.37%) RMADS
System Software
1 146 (17.87%) Active Directory
2 117 (14.32%) VMware Infrastructure
3 47 (5.75%) VMware NSX
4 37 (4.53%) Docker
5 31 (3.79%) Hyper-V
5 31 (3.79%) vSphere
6 23 (2.82%) VMware ESXi
7 19 (2.33%) Firmware
8 17 (2.08%) Virtual Machines
9 8 (0.98%) Virtual Desktop
10 3 (0.37%) BitLocker
10 3 (0.37%) Dovecot
10 3 (0.37%) Postfix
11 2 (0.24%) FreeRADIUS
11 2 (0.24%) Squid
11 2 (0.24%) Virtual Servers
11 2 (0.24%) VirtualBox
12 1 (0.12%) iptables
12 1 (0.12%) KVM
12 1 (0.12%) NFS
Systems Management
1 153 (18.73%) Terraform
2 103 (12.61%) Ansible
3 61 (7.47%) Kubernetes
4 55 (6.73%) FortiGate
5 29 (3.55%) Microsoft Intune
6 16 (1.96%) Grafana
6 16 (1.96%) Single Sign-On
7 15 (1.84%) CASB
7 15 (1.84%) Progress Chef
7 15 (1.84%) Prometheus
8 13 (1.59%) SCCM
9 12 (1.47%) vCenter Server
10 10 (1.22%) VxRail
11 8 (0.98%) Argo
11 8 (0.98%) Cisco Prime
12 7 (0.86%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 7 (0.86%) Packer
13 6 (0.73%) Nessus
13 6 (0.73%) NetBackup
14 5 (0.61%) Nagios
Vendors
1 298 (36.47%) Cisco
2 172 (21.05%) Microsoft
3 154 (18.85%) VMware
4 144 (17.63%) Palo Alto
5 125 (15.30%) F5
6 101 (12.36%) Juniper
7 73 (8.94%) Fortinet
8 65 (7.96%) CheckPoint
9 62 (7.59%) SolarWinds
10 58 (7.10%) Aruba
11 54 (6.61%) Splunk
12 51 (6.24%) ServiceNow
13 47 (5.75%) Google
14 28 (3.43%) Arista
15 26 (3.18%) Red Hat
16 25 (3.06%) Extreme Networks
17 24 (2.94%) Meraki
17 24 (2.94%) Zscaler
18 20 (2.45%) Veeam
19 18 (2.20%) IBM