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

6 months to
25 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 65 40 35
Rank change year-on-year -25 -5 +10
Contract jobs citing Firewall 723 645 977
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.51% 4.86% 4.71%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.31% 28.70% 27.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 489 359 614
10th Percentile £310 £285 £282
25th Percentile £403 £385 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £608
90th Percentile £643 £650 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £520
% change year-on-year -4.76% +0.96% -0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 19 40
10th Percentile £35.38 £20.00 £53.23
25th Percentile £37.25 £20.63 £62.50
Median hourly rate £45.71 £35.00 £72.50
Median % change year-on-year +30.61% -51.72% +39.08%
75th Percentile £74.26 £41.74 £84.71
90th Percentile £85.70 £62.75 £87.53
UK median hourly rate £41.94 £36.65 £65.98
% change year-on-year +14.45% -44.46% +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 2,385 2,247 3,607
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 11.59% 16.92% 17.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,551 1,322 2,075
10th Percentile £191 £185 £205
25th Percentile £310 £300 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £470 £475
Median % change year-on-year -1.06% -1.05% +1.06%
75th Percentile £569 £575 £588
90th Percentile £655 £649 £675
UK median daily rate £478 £500 £483
% change year-on-year -4.45% +3.63% -6.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 134 108 309
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.41 £14.27
25th Percentile £16.59 £21.00 £21.00
Median hourly rate £41.24 £30.04 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +37.28% -39.92% +163.16%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £74.13 £76.25
UK median hourly rate £34.00 £32.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year +4.62% -27.78% +131.96%

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 25 February 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 25 February 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 25 February 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 -26 223 £515 +8.42% 111
South East +10 208 £500 - 189
North West -19 135 £525 +10.53% 74
Midlands -36 107 £425 -22.73% 44
West Midlands -20 95 £425 -7.10% 32
Yorkshire -20 86 £465 +16.25% 27
South West -43 60 £550 +10.00% 40
Scotland -11 55 £425 -2.86% 25
East of England -22 45 £470 -12.56% 50
Wales -18 20 £425 +16.44% 14
East Midlands -53 10 £488 -25.06% 12
Northern Ireland - 6 £500 - 1
North East -20 5 £548 -0.45% 11
South Coast - 3 £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 (2.77%) Confluence
2 11 (1.52%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (1.38%) Apache
4 7 (0.97%) SharePoint
5 6 (0.83%) CICS
5 6 (0.83%) IIS
6 4 (0.55%) nginx
6 4 (0.55%) OpenStack
7 2 (0.28%) Apache Pulsar
8 1 (0.14%) CMS
8 1 (0.14%) JBoss
8 1 (0.14%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 31 (4.29%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (2.07%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (2.07%) MS Visio
3 14 (1.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.41%) Mozilla Thunderbird
5 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.14%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 201 (27.80%) Azure
2 171 (23.65%) AWS
3 70 (9.68%) GCP
4 45 (6.22%) Entra ID
5 42 (5.81%) Microsoft 365
5 42 (5.81%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 29 (4.01%) Amazon EC2
7 22 (3.04%) AWS CloudFormation
7 22 (3.04%) IaaS
8 21 (2.90%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 21 (2.90%) Serverless
9 20 (2.77%) Azure Sentinel
9 20 (2.77%) PaaS
10 18 (2.49%) Amazon S3
10 18 (2.49%) Azure Monitor
11 17 (2.35%) Amazon ECS
11 17 (2.35%) AWS Lambda
11 17 (2.35%) GitHub
12 14 (1.94%) Azure DevOps
13 13 (1.80%) Amazon ELB
Communications & Networking
1 173 (23.93%) Network Security
2 163 (22.54%) WAN
3 156 (21.58%) VPN
4 144 (19.92%) DNS
5 126 (17.43%) LAN
6 110 (15.21%) BGP
7 98 (13.55%) OSPF
8 94 (13.00%) VLAN
9 89 (12.31%) Wireless
10 79 (10.93%) TCP/IP
11 74 (10.24%) DHCP
12 52 (7.19%) SD-WAN
13 51 (7.05%) Cisco ISE
14 49 (6.78%) MPLS
15 46 (6.36%) IPsec
16 42 (5.81%) Wi-Fi
17 39 (5.39%) Cisco ASA
18 38 (5.26%) Cisco Nexus
19 37 (5.12%) VXLAN
20 34 (4.70%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (2.77%) Amazon RDS
2 19 (2.63%) SQL Server
3 14 (1.94%) PostgreSQL
4 6 (0.83%) DataStage
5 4 (0.55%) Data Lake
5 4 (0.55%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.55%) Relational Database
6 3 (0.41%) Amazon Aurora
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 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 (6.09%) JIRA
2 41 (5.67%) Jenkins
3 35 (4.84%) Git
3 35 (4.84%) GitLab
4 20 (2.77%) Sonatype Nexus
5 15 (2.07%) Burp Suite
5 15 (2.07%) Metasploit
6 11 (1.52%) Bitbucket
7 8 (1.11%) Jaeger
8 4 (0.55%) CircleCI
8 4 (0.55%) Vagrant
9 3 (0.41%) Chocolatey
10 1 (0.14%) Artifactory
10 1 (0.14%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 1 (0.14%) MSI
10 1 (0.14%) Subversion
10 1 (0.14%) Travis CI
General
1 207 (28.63%) Social Skills
2 81 (11.20%) Finance
3 73 (10.10%) Analytical Skills
4 66 (9.13%) Public Sector
5 59 (8.16%) Documentation Skills
6 27 (3.73%) Banking
6 27 (3.73%) Telecoms
7 23 (3.18%) Legal
8 20 (2.77%) Manufacturing
9 13 (1.80%) Influencing Skills
10 10 (1.38%) Financial Institution
10 10 (1.38%) Military
11 9 (1.24%) Presentation Skills
12 7 (0.97%) Aerospace
12 7 (0.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
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
1 215 (29.74%) Network Engineer
2 103 (14.25%) Architect
3 74 (10.24%) Senior
4 62 (8.58%) Security Engineer
5 50 (6.92%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 48 (6.64%) Network Architect
7 38 (5.26%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
8 29 (4.01%) Analyst
9 28 (3.87%) Platform Engineer
10 27 (3.73%) DevOps Engineer
11 24 (3.32%) IT Engineer
12 23 (3.18%) IT Support
12 23 (3.18%) Senior Network Engineer
13 22 (3.04%) Cisco Engineer
13 22 (3.04%) Security Architect
14 21 (2.90%) Support Engineer
15 20 (2.77%) Cloud Engineer
16 19 (2.63%) Cisco Network Engineer
17 18 (2.49%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
17 18 (2.49%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 52 (7.19%) 802.1X
2 24 (3.32%) LDAP
3 20 (2.77%) SAML
4 17 (2.35%) Middleware
4 17 (2.35%) OAuth
4 17 (2.35%) OAuth2
5 15 (2.07%) OpenID
6 14 (1.94%) Kafka
7 10 (1.38%) Node.js
7 10 (1.38%) OpenTelemetry
8 8 (1.11%) JSON
8 8 (1.11%) Spring Boot
9 7 (0.97%) REST
10 6 (0.83%) LangChain
10 6 (0.83%) PyTorch
10 6 (0.83%) scikit-learn
11 5 (0.69%) RFC 2544
12 4 (0.55%) Microsoft Graph
12 4 (0.55%) XML
12 4 (0.55%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 157 (21.72%) Data Centre
2 59 (8.16%) Security Posture
3 44 (6.09%) PKI
4 29 (4.01%) Operational Technology
5 26 (3.60%) Cloud Native
5 26 (3.60%) Onboarding
6 25 (3.46%) Hybrid Cloud
7 17 (2.35%) NHS
8 16 (2.21%) Clustering
8 16 (2.21%) Replication
9 15 (2.07%) Data Protection Act
9 15 (2.07%) Management Information System
9 15 (2.07%) Security Operations Centre
10 14 (1.94%) Cyber Threat
11 12 (1.66%) Private Cloud
12 11 (1.52%) Public Cloud
13 10 (1.38%) Fat Client
13 10 (1.38%) IoT
13 10 (1.38%) SCADA
13 10 (1.38%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 209 (28.91%) Windows
2 149 (20.61%) Linux
3 80 (11.07%) Windows Server
4 23 (3.18%) Unix
5 20 (2.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (1.52%) VMS
7 10 (1.38%) Windows 7
8 7 (0.97%) Amazon Linux
8 7 (0.97%) Solaris
8 7 (0.97%) Windows Server 2019
9 6 (0.83%) AIX
10 5 (0.69%) Ubuntu
10 5 (0.69%) Windows 10
11 4 (0.55%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.41%) Android
12 3 (0.41%) Apple iOS
12 3 (0.41%) CatOS
12 3 (0.41%) Mac OS
12 3 (0.41%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.28%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 142 (19.64%) Cybersecurity
2 114 (15.77%) Problem-Solving
3 108 (14.94%) DevOps
4 96 (13.28%) CI/CD
5 82 (11.34%) Infrastructure as Code
6 76 (10.51%) Load Balancing
7 75 (10.37%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 74 (10.24%) Incident Response
9 72 (9.96%) High Availability
9 72 (9.96%) ITIL
10 71 (9.82%) SIEM
11 65 (8.99%) Cloud Security
12 62 (8.58%) Agile
12 62 (8.58%) Mentoring
13 59 (8.16%) Containerisation
14 55 (7.61%) Change Management
15 54 (7.47%) Zero Trust
16 52 (7.19%) Identity Access Management
17 50 (6.92%) Observability
17 50 (6.92%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 134 (18.53%) Python
2 112 (15.49%) PowerShell
3 67 (9.27%) Bash
4 32 (4.43%) Java
5 30 (4.15%) SQL
6 26 (3.60%) Perl
7 14 (1.94%) Bicep
8 10 (1.38%) Ruby
9 8 (1.11%) Rust
10 6 (0.83%) COBOL
11 4 (0.55%) C#
11 4 (0.55%) Groovy
11 4 (0.55%) Shell Script
12 3 (0.41%) Go
12 3 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
13 2 (0.28%) C++
13 2 (0.28%) JavaScript
14 1 (0.14%) Korn
14 1 (0.14%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 302 (41.77%) Security Cleared
2 192 (26.56%) SC Cleared
3 155 (21.44%) Cisco Certification
4 127 (17.57%) CCNP
5 86 (11.89%) DV Cleared
6 73 (10.10%) Degree
7 71 (9.82%) CCNA
8 48 (6.64%) CISSP
9 32 (4.43%) AWS Certification
10 30 (4.15%) Microsoft Certification
11 27 (3.73%) CCIE
12 24 (3.32%) Azure Certification
12 24 (3.32%) CISM
13 15 (2.07%) CHECK Team Member
13 15 (2.07%) CompTIA Security+
14 14 (1.94%) JNCIS
15 13 (1.80%) Computer Science Degree
15 13 (1.80%) CREST Certified
15 13 (1.80%) Cyber Scheme
15 13 (1.80%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 61 (8.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 49 (6.78%) NIST
3 34 (4.70%) GDPR
4 33 (4.56%) PCI DSS
5 22 (3.04%) Cyber Essentials
6 19 (2.63%) NCSC
7 18 (2.49%) SLA
8 15 (2.07%) 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%) PSD2
14 1 (0.14%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 1 (0.14%) Disclosure Scotland
14 1 (0.14%) ISO 20022
14 1 (0.14%) ISO 22301
14 1 (0.14%) ISO/IEC 27005
System Software
1 140 (19.36%) Active Directory
2 105 (14.52%) VMware Infrastructure
3 80 (11.07%) Docker
4 32 (4.43%) vSphere
5 30 (4.15%) VMware NSX
6 25 (3.46%) Hyper-V
7 14 (1.94%) VMware ESXi
8 8 (1.11%) Firmware
8 8 (1.11%) Virtual Desktop
9 7 (0.97%) DFS Replication
10 6 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
10 6 (0.83%) Virtual Servers
11 3 (0.41%) Dovecot
11 3 (0.41%) KVM
11 3 (0.41%) Postfix
11 3 (0.41%) Squid
12 1 (0.14%) Citrix Hypervisor
12 1 (0.14%) ProxySG
12 1 (0.14%) Xen
12 1 (0.14%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 100 (13.83%) Terraform
2 77 (10.65%) Ansible
3 72 (9.96%) Kubernetes
4 38 (5.26%) FortiGate
5 25 (3.46%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 23 (3.18%) Grafana
6 23 (3.18%) Microsoft Intune
6 23 (3.18%) Single Sign-On
7 20 (2.77%) vCenter Server
8 19 (2.63%) Nmap
9 18 (2.49%) Prometheus
10 14 (1.94%) SCCM
11 11 (1.52%) Nessus
12 10 (1.38%) Nagios
12 10 (1.38%) WMI
13 8 (1.11%) Fluentd
13 8 (1.11%) Kiali
13 8 (1.11%) Progress Chef
14 7 (0.97%) VxRail
15 6 (0.83%) CASB
Vendors
1 275 (38.04%) Cisco
2 160 (22.13%) Palo Alto
3 149 (20.61%) Microsoft
4 137 (18.95%) VMware
5 87 (12.03%) CheckPoint
6 85 (11.76%) F5
7 76 (10.51%) Juniper
8 59 (8.16%) Fortinet
9 58 (8.02%) Splunk
10 56 (7.75%) SolarWinds
11 52 (7.19%) Aruba
12 39 (5.39%) Google
13 38 (5.26%) Meraki
14 27 (3.73%) Oracle
15 24 (3.32%) ServiceNow
16 23 (3.18%) Red Hat
17 19 (2.63%) Dell
18 18 (2.49%) Citrix
19 17 (2.35%) Extreme Networks
20 15 (2.07%) Zscaler