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

6 months to
2 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 92 52 43
Rank change year-on-year -40 -9 -13
Contract jobs citing Firewall 753 668 757
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 2.66% 4.26% 4.31%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 25.49% 31.78% 29.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 481 407 440
10th Percentile £350 £293 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £483 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.63% -3.50% +2.88%
75th Percentile £600 £583 £602
90th Percentile £675 £650 £650
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 46 22 22
10th Percentile £31.25 £15.58 £20.00
25th Percentile £48.93 £29.00 £20.05
Median hourly rate £66.35 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +121.15% +9.09% -58.32%
75th Percentile £71.22 £61.25 £70.94
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.63 £76.82
UK median hourly rate £67.47 £30.00 £27.50
% change year-on-year +124.90% +9.09% -58.33%

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 2,954 2,102 2,546
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.43% 13.41% 14.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,619 1,335 1,397
10th Percentile £213 £200 £200
25th Percentile £355 £313 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £450 £485
Median % change year-on-year +5.56% -7.22% +5.43%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £650 £643 £663
UK median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 351 138 172
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.45 £14.27
25th Percentile £19.33 £17.97 £23.91
Median hourly rate £26.72 £42.22 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year -36.71% -26.38% -0.26%
75th Percentile £65.88 £65.00 £65.51
90th Percentile £85.00 £80.41 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £41.94 £50.50
% change year-on-year -22.51% -16.95% -10.60%

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 2 October 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 2 October 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 2 October 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 -2 279 £500 +5.26% 151
North West +8 161 £506 +6.58% 91
South East -56 157 £500 - 267
Yorkshire -27 96 £495 +1.12% 47
Midlands -70 92 £475 - 112
South West -3 90 £556 +15.83% 105
East of England -3 73 £600 +15.38% 56
West Midlands -70 67 £450 -5.26% 66
Scotland -22 62 £400 -15.79% 42
North East -16 29 £500 -13.04% 14
East Midlands -5 24 £500 +6.16% 46
Wales -20 4 £608 +203.75% 16
Channel Islands -6 2 £600 -17.24% 1
Northern Ireland -7 1 - - 20
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 27 (3.59%) Microsoft Exchange
2 22 (2.92%) Confluence
3 15 (1.99%) SharePoint
4 10 (1.33%) Apache
5 9 (1.20%) nginx
6 8 (1.06%) SAS
7 4 (0.53%) FactoryTalk
7 4 (0.53%) IIS
8 3 (0.40%) Skype for Business
8 3 (0.40%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.27%) CloudStack
9 2 (0.27%) CMS
9 2 (0.27%) Umbraco
10 1 (0.13%) CICS
Applications
1 20 (2.66%) MS Visio
2 8 (1.06%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (0.66%) Spreadsheet
4 4 (0.53%) Microsoft Excel
5 3 (0.40%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 6 (0.80%) Remedy ITSM
2 5 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.27%) Dynamics GP
3 2 (0.27%) Teamcenter
4 1 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.13%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 272 (36.12%) Azure
2 162 (21.51%) AWS
3 89 (11.82%) Entra ID
4 71 (9.43%) Microsoft 365
5 68 (9.03%) GCP
6 46 (6.11%) IaaS
7 40 (5.31%) Azure DevOps
8 39 (5.18%) SaaS
9 36 (4.78%) GitHub
10 34 (4.52%) Azure Monitor
10 34 (4.52%) OCI
11 22 (2.92%) Azure Sentinel
11 22 (2.92%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 21 (2.79%) PaaS
13 19 (2.52%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 16 (2.12%) Serverless
15 15 (1.99%) Azure AKS
16 14 (1.86%) Amazon EKS
16 14 (1.86%) AWS CloudFormation
16 14 (1.86%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 226 (30.01%) DNS
2 219 (29.08%) Network Security
3 217 (28.82%) VPN
4 196 (26.03%) WAN
5 164 (21.78%) LAN
6 145 (19.26%) DHCP
7 132 (17.53%) TCP/IP
8 126 (16.73%) BGP
9 117 (15.54%) Wireless
10 112 (14.87%) VLAN
11 106 (14.08%) OSPF
12 80 (10.62%) SD-WAN
12 80 (10.62%) Wi-Fi
13 59 (7.84%) BIG-IP
14 53 (7.04%) Cisco ASA
15 51 (6.77%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 48 (6.37%) IPsec
16 48 (6.37%) SSL
17 44 (5.84%) Cisco Nexus
17 44 (5.84%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (2.26%) SQL Server
2 13 (1.73%) Relational Database
3 12 (1.59%) Data Lake
4 10 (1.33%) NoSQL
5 9 (1.20%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (0.53%) Amazon RDS
7 3 (0.40%) Azure SQL Database
7 3 (0.40%) EDRMS
7 3 (0.40%) MySQL
8 2 (0.27%) Oracle Database
8 2 (0.27%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 1 (0.13%) DataStage
9 1 (0.13%) Delta Lake
9 1 (0.13%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 62 (8.23%) JIRA
2 37 (4.91%) Jenkins
3 35 (4.65%) GitLab
4 17 (2.26%) Git
5 9 (1.20%) Bitbucket
5 9 (1.20%) Sonatype Nexus
6 6 (0.80%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 4 (0.53%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.40%) Browser DevTools
8 3 (0.40%) Maven
9 2 (0.27%) Burp Suite
9 2 (0.27%) Cucumber
9 2 (0.27%) Gatling
9 2 (0.27%) Gradle
9 2 (0.27%) LoadRunner
9 2 (0.27%) REST Assured
9 2 (0.27%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 2 (0.27%) Team Foundation Server
10 1 (0.13%) Ant
10 1 (0.13%) MSI
General
1 180 (23.90%) Social Skills
2 85 (11.29%) Analytical Skills
3 82 (10.89%) Finance
4 53 (7.04%) Public Sector
5 37 (4.91%) Banking
6 29 (3.85%) Documentation Skills
7 28 (3.72%) Manufacturing
8 26 (3.45%) Telecoms
9 17 (2.26%) Legal
10 13 (1.73%) Military
11 11 (1.46%) Aerospace
11 11 (1.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 7 (0.93%) Organisational Skills
12 7 (0.93%) Retail
13 6 (0.80%) Police
14 4 (0.53%) Financial Institution
14 4 (0.53%) Influencing Skills
14 4 (0.53%) Pharmaceutical
15 3 (0.40%) Advertising
15 3 (0.40%) Law
Job Titles
1 235 (31.21%) Network Engineer
2 123 (16.33%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 113 (15.01%) Senior
4 75 (9.96%) Architect
5 59 (7.84%) Security Engineer
6 48 (6.37%) Senior Network Engineer
7 42 (5.58%) Cloud Engineer
8 35 (4.65%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
9 34 (4.52%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
10 28 (3.72%) Lead
11 27 (3.59%) Network Security Engineer
12 26 (3.45%) Platform Engineer
13 24 (3.19%) Network Architect
14 23 (3.05%) Azure Engineer
15 22 (2.92%) Consultant
16 20 (2.66%) Solutions Architect
17 17 (2.26%) Developer
17 17 (2.26%) Technical Architect
18 16 (2.12%) DevOps Engineer
18 16 (2.12%) Project Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 169 (22.44%) Terraform
2 23 (3.05%) 802.1X
3 21 (2.79%) ARM Templates
4 15 (1.99%) SAML
5 13 (1.73%) YAML
6 10 (1.33%) React
7 9 (1.20%) REST
8 7 (0.93%) ModSecurity
8 7 (0.93%) OAuth
8 7 (0.93%) OpenID
9 6 (0.80%) LDAP
9 6 (0.80%) OAuth2
9 6 (0.80%) SailPoint
10 5 (0.66%) Azure Blueprints
10 5 (0.66%) gRPC
10 5 (0.66%) Kafka
10 5 (0.66%) OpenTelemetry
11 4 (0.53%) Middleware
11 4 (0.53%) Redfish
11 4 (0.53%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 168 (22.31%) Data Centre
2 62 (8.23%) Hybrid Cloud
3 54 (7.17%) PKI
4 50 (6.64%) Cloud Native
5 39 (5.18%) Security Posture
6 33 (4.38%) Operational Technology
7 26 (3.45%) Management Information System
7 26 (3.45%) Public Cloud
8 24 (3.19%) Onboarding
9 23 (3.05%) Self-Motivation
10 20 (2.66%) Driving Licence
11 18 (2.39%) SCADA
12 17 (2.26%) Data Protection Act
13 15 (1.99%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
13 15 (1.99%) Enterprise Storage
14 14 (1.86%) Linux Command Line
15 12 (1.59%) Cyber Threat
15 12 (1.59%) Enterprise Software
16 11 (1.46%) Replication
17 10 (1.33%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 214 (28.42%) Windows
2 151 (20.05%) Linux
3 103 (13.68%) Windows Server
4 34 (4.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 16 (2.12%) Unix
6 13 (1.73%) CentOS
6 13 (1.73%) Ubuntu
7 12 (1.59%) Mac OS
8 11 (1.46%) VMS
9 9 (1.20%) Windows 10
10 7 (0.93%) Rocky
11 6 (0.80%) Windows Server 2019
12 5 (0.66%) Android
12 5 (0.66%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.53%) Apple iOS
14 3 (0.40%) Check Point GAiA
15 2 (0.27%) SUSE
15 2 (0.27%) Windows Server 2003
16 1 (0.13%) AIX
16 1 (0.13%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 173 (22.97%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 167 (22.18%) CI/CD
3 161 (21.38%) Infrastructure as Code
4 141 (18.73%) DevOps
5 137 (18.19%) Cybersecurity
6 132 (17.53%) Problem-Solving
7 125 (16.60%) Load Balancing
8 100 (13.28%) Agile
9 98 (13.01%) ITIL
10 91 (12.08%) Migration
11 81 (10.76%) SIEM
12 79 (10.49%) Zero Trust
13 77 (10.23%) High Availability
13 77 (10.23%) Technical Leadership
14 73 (9.69%) Stakeholder Management
15 72 (9.56%) Project Delivery
16 67 (8.90%) Continuous Improvement
17 66 (8.76%) Validation
18 63 (8.37%) Change Management
19 62 (8.23%) Network Segmentation
Programming Languages
1 162 (21.51%) Python
2 140 (18.59%) PowerShell
3 81 (10.76%) Bash
4 30 (3.98%) Java
5 29 (3.85%) Bicep
6 27 (3.59%) SQL
7 17 (2.26%) ActionScript
8 5 (0.66%) Go
8 5 (0.66%) Kusto Query Language
8 5 (0.66%) Search Processing Language
8 5 (0.66%) Shell Script
9 4 (0.53%) JavaScript
9 4 (0.53%) TypeScript
10 3 (0.40%) Groovy
11 2 (0.27%) C
11 2 (0.27%) Perl
11 2 (0.27%) T-SQL
12 1 (0.13%) C++
12 1 (0.13%) COBOL
12 1 (0.13%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 300 (39.84%) Security Cleared
2 190 (25.23%) SC Cleared
3 142 (18.86%) Cisco Certification
4 99 (13.15%) CCNP
4 99 (13.15%) DV Cleared
5 63 (8.37%) CCNA
6 58 (7.70%) Degree
7 44 (5.84%) CISSP
8 36 (4.78%) AWS Certification
9 34 (4.52%) Azure Certification
10 20 (2.66%) CCIE
11 19 (2.52%) Microsoft Certification
12 15 (1.99%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 12 (1.59%) Network+ Certification
13 12 (1.59%) VCAP
14 11 (1.46%) CISM
15 10 (1.33%) Computer Science Degree
16 9 (1.20%) CEH
16 9 (1.20%) Server+ Certification
17 7 (0.93%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 40 (5.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 38 (5.05%) NIST
3 20 (2.66%) NCSC
4 19 (2.52%) GDPR
5 16 (2.12%) PCI DSS
5 16 (2.12%) QA
6 9 (1.20%) Cyber Essentials
6 9 (1.20%) JSP 440
6 9 (1.20%) SLA
7 8 (1.06%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 6 (0.80%) NIST 800
9 5 (0.66%) Data Quality
9 5 (0.66%) Disclosure Scotland
10 4 (0.53%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 4 (0.53%) GxP
10 4 (0.53%) HIPAA
11 3 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 2 (0.27%) GRC
12 2 (0.27%) SOC 2
13 1 (0.13%) ISA99
System Software
1 147 (19.52%) Active Directory
2 138 (18.33%) VMware Infrastructure
3 60 (7.97%) Hyper-V
4 48 (6.37%) vSphere
5 47 (6.24%) VMware NSX
6 46 (6.11%) Docker
7 34 (4.52%) VMware ESXi
8 19 (2.52%) Virtual Machines
9 17 (2.26%) Firmware
10 8 (1.06%) Virtual Servers
11 7 (0.93%) Virtual Desktop
12 5 (0.66%) FreeRADIUS
13 4 (0.53%) VirtualBox
14 3 (0.40%) Dovecot
14 3 (0.40%) Postfix
15 2 (0.27%) BitLocker
15 2 (0.27%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 1 (0.13%) KVM
16 1 (0.13%) NFS
16 1 (0.13%) Squid
Systems Management
1 134 (17.80%) Ansible
2 87 (11.55%) Kubernetes
3 32 (4.25%) FortiGate
4 31 (4.12%) Microsoft Intune
5 27 (3.59%) Progress Chef
6 20 (2.66%) Grafana
6 20 (2.66%) Single Sign-On
7 18 (2.39%) Prometheus
7 18 (2.39%) VxRail
8 14 (1.86%) SCCM
8 14 (1.86%) vCenter Server
9 12 (1.59%) CASB
10 8 (1.06%) Argo
10 8 (1.06%) Istio
11 7 (0.93%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 7 (0.93%) Nagios
11 7 (0.93%) NetBackup
11 7 (0.93%) Packer
12 5 (0.66%) QRadar
13 4 (0.53%) Dell DRAC
Vendors
1 268 (35.59%) Cisco
2 200 (26.56%) Microsoft
3 170 (22.58%) VMware
4 162 (21.51%) Palo Alto
5 104 (13.81%) F5
6 71 (9.43%) Fortinet
7 67 (8.90%) Juniper
8 65 (8.63%) CheckPoint
9 42 (5.58%) SolarWinds
10 41 (5.44%) Aruba
11 36 (4.78%) Google
11 36 (4.78%) ServiceNow
12 33 (4.38%) Splunk
13 32 (4.25%) Meraki
14 29 (3.85%) Arista
15 24 (3.19%) Veeam
16 23 (3.05%) Red Hat
16 23 (3.05%) Zscaler
17 18 (2.39%) NetApp
18 17 (2.26%) Databricks