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

6 months to
24 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 70 52 36
Rank change year-on-year -18 -16 +7
Contract jobs citing Firewall 749 557 919
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.19% 4.34% 4.43%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 29.50% 28.17% 26.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 503 347 593
10th Percentile £318 £300 £298
25th Percentile £413 £384 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -
75th Percentile £574 £588 £609
90th Percentile £638 £650 £735
UK median daily rate £500 £510 £513
% change year-on-year -1.96% -0.49% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 16 31
10th Percentile £19.04 - £23.92
25th Percentile £37.25 £14.20 £52.45
Median hourly rate £56.00 £32.07 £83.77
Median % change year-on-year +74.60% -61.71% +35.10%
75th Percentile £72.00 £41.62 £87.46
90th Percentile £85.20 £59.38 £87.53
UK median hourly rate £52.36 £36.65 £60.00
% change year-on-year +42.88% -38.93% -3.23%

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 2,539 1,977 3,506
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.81% 15.41% 16.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,547 1,214 2,022
10th Percentile £206 £193 £203
25th Percentile £358 £300 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £465 £475
Median % change year-on-year +2.15% -2.11% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £655 £638 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £490 £488
% change year-on-year +2.04% +0.36% -6.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 175 134 357
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.20 £13.50
25th Percentile £20.54 £17.30 £17.00
Median hourly rate £52.50 £27.72 £46.39
Median % change year-on-year +89.39% -40.25% +150.76%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.69 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £79.21 £70.66
UK median hourly rate £42.25 £37.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +12.67% -6.25% +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 April 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 April 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 April 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
South East +3 245 £500 - 113
North of England -23 209 £499 +5.00% 97
North West -15 133 £525 +10.53% 47
Midlands -35 88 £420 -23.64% 45
West Midlands -21 76 £413 -21.09% 25
Yorkshire -21 74 £425 -17.07% 24
East of England -11 63 £500 -4.76% 47
South West -50 57 £550 +0.92% 38
Scotland +23 53 £425 - 14
Wales -11 32 £425 +11.11% 13
East Midlands -52 8 £475 -17.39% 20
Northern Ireland +3 3 £443 - 14
North East -16 2 £473 -14.09% 27
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 13 (1.74%) Confluence
2 9 (1.20%) Apache
2 9 (1.20%) CICS
3 8 (1.07%) Microsoft Exchange
4 5 (0.67%) IIS
5 3 (0.40%) SharePoint
5 3 (0.40%) Skype for Business
6 2 (0.27%) Apache Pulsar
6 2 (0.27%) CMS
6 2 (0.27%) IBM HTTP Server
6 2 (0.27%) Oracle HTTP Server
6 2 (0.27%) Umbraco
6 2 (0.27%) WebSphere
6 2 (0.27%) WebSphere Application Server
6 2 (0.27%) WebSphere Portal
7 1 (0.13%) nginx
Applications
1 30 (4.01%) Microsoft Office
2 17 (2.27%) Microsoft Excel
3 15 (2.00%) MS Visio
4 13 (1.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.40%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 210 (28.04%) Azure
2 136 (18.16%) AWS
3 54 (7.21%) Entra ID
4 48 (6.41%) GCP
5 42 (5.61%) Microsoft 365
6 28 (3.74%) Azure DevOps
7 26 (3.47%) GitHub
8 24 (3.20%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 22 (2.94%) Azure Sentinel
9 22 (2.94%) IaaS
10 20 (2.67%) PaaS
11 18 (2.40%) Serverless
12 16 (2.14%) AWS CloudFormation
12 16 (2.14%) Azure Monitor
13 15 (2.00%) Nutanix
14 14 (1.87%) AWS Lambda
14 14 (1.87%) GitHub Actions
15 13 (1.74%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 12 (1.60%) Azure ExpressRoute
16 12 (1.60%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 209 (27.90%) WAN
2 203 (27.10%) Network Security
3 181 (24.17%) LAN
4 168 (22.43%) VPN
5 154 (20.56%) DNS
6 122 (16.29%) BGP
7 119 (15.89%) OSPF
8 98 (13.08%) DHCP
9 95 (12.68%) VLAN
9 95 (12.68%) Wireless
10 80 (10.68%) TCP/IP
11 66 (8.81%) SD-WAN
12 63 (8.41%) IPsec
13 58 (7.74%) Cisco ISE
14 57 (7.61%) Wi-Fi
15 48 (6.41%) Ethernet VPN
16 47 (6.28%) VXLAN
17 43 (5.74%) MPLS
18 40 (5.34%) BIG-IP
18 40 (5.34%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (1.74%) SQL Server
2 12 (1.60%) PostgreSQL
3 9 (1.20%) DataStage
4 8 (1.07%) Amazon RDS
5 6 (0.80%) Power BI
6 4 (0.53%) Azure SQL Database
6 4 (0.53%) Data Lake
6 4 (0.53%) MongoDB
6 4 (0.53%) NoSQL
6 4 (0.53%) Relational Database
7 3 (0.40%) Delta Lake
7 3 (0.40%) DynamoDB
7 3 (0.40%) Oracle Database
8 2 (0.27%) MariaDB
8 2 (0.27%) Oracle Reports
9 1 (0.13%) Amazon Redshift
9 1 (0.13%) Elasticsearch
9 1 (0.13%) Redis
9 1 (0.13%) SAP HANA
9 1 (0.13%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 56 (7.48%) JIRA
2 28 (3.74%) Jenkins
3 27 (3.60%) GitLab
4 22 (2.94%) Git
5 16 (2.14%) Burp Suite
5 16 (2.14%) Metasploit
6 14 (1.87%) Sonatype Nexus
7 9 (1.20%) Jaeger
8 6 (0.80%) Bitbucket
9 4 (0.53%) Browser DevTools
9 4 (0.53%) CircleCI
10 3 (0.40%) Chocolatey
11 2 (0.27%) Introscope
11 2 (0.27%) Team Foundation Server
12 1 (0.13%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.13%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.13%) MSI
12 1 (0.13%) Postman
12 1 (0.13%) Subversion
12 1 (0.13%) Travis CI
General
1 200 (26.70%) Social Skills
2 79 (10.55%) Finance
3 67 (8.95%) Analytical Skills
4 60 (8.01%) Public Sector
5 51 (6.81%) Documentation Skills
6 22 (2.94%) Banking
7 19 (2.54%) Manufacturing
8 17 (2.27%) Telecoms
9 14 (1.87%) Military
10 13 (1.74%) Influencing Skills
10 13 (1.74%) Legal
11 10 (1.34%) Financial Institution
12 8 (1.07%) Law
13 7 (0.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 7 (0.93%) Retail
14 6 (0.80%) Aerospace
14 6 (0.80%) Organisational Skills
15 3 (0.40%) Back Office
15 3 (0.40%) Electronics
16 2 (0.27%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 250 (33.38%) Network Engineer
2 105 (14.02%) Architect
3 76 (10.15%) Senior
4 61 (8.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 53 (7.08%) Security Engineer
6 46 (6.14%) Network Architect
7 41 (5.47%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
8 34 (4.54%) Senior Network Engineer
9 26 (3.47%) Cisco Engineer
10 25 (3.34%) Cloud Engineer
11 24 (3.20%) Cisco Network Engineer
11 24 (3.20%) IT Support
12 23 (3.07%) Network Specialist
13 22 (2.94%) Lead
14 21 (2.80%) Designer
15 19 (2.54%) Analyst
15 19 (2.54%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
15 19 (2.54%) Security Architect
16 18 (2.40%) IT Engineer
16 18 (2.40%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 58 (7.74%) 802.1X
2 24 (3.20%) LDAP
3 20 (2.67%) Middleware
4 18 (2.40%) Kafka
5 17 (2.27%) SAML
6 11 (1.47%) OpenTelemetry
7 9 (1.20%) OAuth
7 9 (1.20%) OAuth2
7 9 (1.20%) Spring Boot
8 7 (0.93%) OpenID
9 6 (0.80%) LangChain
9 6 (0.80%) PyTorch
9 6 (0.80%) scikit-learn
10 5 (0.67%) JSON
10 5 (0.67%) Node.js
10 5 (0.67%) REST
11 4 (0.53%) ARM Templates
11 4 (0.53%) YAML
12 3 (0.40%) .NET
12 3 (0.40%) Lambda Expressions
Miscellaneous
1 178 (23.77%) Data Centre
2 47 (6.28%) Security Posture
3 44 (5.87%) PKI
4 38 (5.07%) Cloud Native
5 31 (4.14%) Operational Technology
6 28 (3.74%) Clustering
7 25 (3.34%) Hybrid Cloud
8 24 (3.20%) Onboarding
9 20 (2.67%) IoT
10 16 (2.14%) Management Information System
10 16 (2.14%) Public Cloud
10 16 (2.14%) SCADA
11 15 (2.00%) NHS
12 14 (1.87%) Enterprise Software
12 14 (1.87%) Self-Motivation
13 13 (1.74%) BYOD
14 12 (1.60%) Data Protection Act
15 11 (1.47%) Distributed Systems
16 10 (1.34%) Cyber Threat
16 10 (1.34%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 210 (28.04%) Windows
2 132 (17.62%) Linux
3 77 (10.28%) Windows Server
4 29 (3.87%) Unix
5 15 (2.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (1.47%) Solaris
7 9 (1.20%) AIX
8 7 (0.93%) Windows Server 2019
9 6 (0.80%) Windows Server 2016
10 5 (0.67%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.67%) VMS
10 5 (0.67%) Windows 7
11 4 (0.53%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.40%) Amazon Linux
12 3 (0.40%) CatOS
12 3 (0.40%) Data ONTAP
13 2 (0.27%) Oracle Linux
13 2 (0.27%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 2 (0.27%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 119 (15.89%) Cybersecurity
2 107 (14.29%) DevOps
3 105 (14.02%) Problem-Solving
4 94 (12.55%) High Availability
4 94 (12.55%) ITIL
5 92 (12.28%) Load Balancing
6 90 (12.02%) CI/CD
7 83 (11.08%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 80 (10.68%) Infrastructure as Code
9 68 (9.08%) Observability
10 65 (8.68%) Agile
11 64 (8.54%) Change Management
11 64 (8.54%) Zero Trust
12 62 (8.28%) Migration
13 60 (8.01%) Network Segmentation
13 60 (8.01%) Technical Leadership
14 59 (7.88%) SIEM
15 58 (7.74%) Cloud Security
15 58 (7.74%) Identity Access Management
16 52 (6.94%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 85 (11.35%) Python
2 77 (10.28%) PowerShell
3 36 (4.81%) Bash
4 33 (4.41%) SQL
5 24 (3.20%) Bicep
6 23 (3.07%) Java
7 9 (1.20%) COBOL
7 9 (1.20%) Perl
8 8 (1.07%) Rust
9 5 (0.67%) Ruby
10 4 (0.53%) C#
10 4 (0.53%) JavaScript
11 3 (0.40%) Go
11 3 (0.40%) Kusto Query Language
11 3 (0.40%) PL/SQL
11 3 (0.40%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.27%) C++
12 2 (0.27%) Jython
13 1 (0.13%) C
13 1 (0.13%) Korn
Qualifications
1 300 (40.05%) Security Cleared
2 201 (26.84%) SC Cleared
3 168 (22.43%) Cisco Certification
4 128 (17.09%) CCNP
5 84 (11.21%) CCNA
6 83 (11.08%) DV Cleared
7 68 (9.08%) Degree
8 37 (4.94%) CISSP
9 23 (3.07%) AWS Certification
10 21 (2.80%) Azure Certification
11 20 (2.67%) CISM
12 17 (2.27%) Network+ Certification
13 16 (2.14%) CHECK Team Member
13 16 (2.14%) JNCIS
13 16 (2.14%) Microsoft Certification
14 15 (2.00%) CCIE
15 14 (1.87%) CREST Certified
15 14 (1.87%) Cyber Scheme
16 13 (1.74%) CompTIA Security+
16 13 (1.74%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 57 (7.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 37 (4.94%) GDPR
2 37 (4.94%) NIST
3 28 (3.74%) PCI DSS
4 20 (2.67%) NCSC
5 19 (2.54%) Cyber Essentials
6 18 (2.40%) QA
7 15 (2.00%) SLA
8 12 (1.60%) PMO
9 6 (0.80%) Data Quality
10 5 (0.67%) Disclosure Scotland
10 5 (0.67%) JSP 440
11 4 (0.53%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 4 (0.53%) SOC 2
12 3 (0.40%) GRC
12 3 (0.40%) ISA99
12 3 (0.40%) RMADS
13 2 (0.27%) Government Security Classifications
13 2 (0.27%) GxP
13 2 (0.27%) NIST 800
System Software
1 138 (18.42%) Active Directory
2 101 (13.48%) VMware Infrastructure
3 46 (6.14%) Docker
4 37 (4.94%) VMware NSX
5 27 (3.60%) vSphere
6 21 (2.80%) Hyper-V
7 16 (2.14%) Firmware
7 16 (2.14%) VMware ESXi
8 11 (1.47%) Virtual Machines
9 8 (1.07%) Virtual Desktop
10 3 (0.40%) DFS Replication
10 3 (0.40%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.13%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.13%) Citrix Hypervisor
11 1 (0.13%) iptables
11 1 (0.13%) KVM
11 1 (0.13%) RHEV
11 1 (0.13%) UAG
11 1 (0.13%) XenApp
11 1 (0.13%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 92 (12.28%) Terraform
2 66 (8.81%) Ansible
3 55 (7.34%) Kubernetes
4 47 (6.28%) FortiGate
5 23 (3.07%) Grafana
6 21 (2.80%) Microsoft Intune
6 21 (2.80%) Single Sign-On
7 20 (2.67%) vCenter Server
8 18 (2.40%) Nmap
9 17 (2.27%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 17 (2.27%) Prometheus
10 11 (1.47%) Nagios
11 10 (1.34%) CASB
11 10 (1.34%) SCCM
12 9 (1.20%) Cisco Prime
12 9 (1.20%) Kiali
13 8 (1.07%) Nessus
14 7 (0.93%) VxRail
15 6 (0.80%) Progress Chef
16 5 (0.67%) Endace
Vendors
1 291 (38.85%) Cisco
2 147 (19.63%) Microsoft
3 141 (18.83%) Palo Alto
4 131 (17.49%) VMware
5 92 (12.28%) Juniper
6 84 (11.21%) F5
7 72 (9.61%) CheckPoint
8 70 (9.35%) Fortinet
9 67 (8.95%) Splunk
10 61 (8.14%) SolarWinds
11 55 (7.34%) Aruba
12 39 (5.21%) ServiceNow
13 33 (4.41%) Google
14 27 (3.60%) Meraki
15 26 (3.47%) Extreme Networks
16 20 (2.67%) Oracle
17 18 (2.40%) Red Hat
18 17 (2.27%) Citrix
18 17 (2.27%) Veeam
19 15 (2.00%) IBM