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

6 months to
17 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 70 48 40
Rank change year-on-year -22 -8 0
Contract jobs citing Firewall 747 567 845
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.05% 4.38% 4.16%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 28.19% 28.56% 25.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 496 339 548
10th Percentile £321 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £396 £412
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% +2.56%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £608
90th Percentile £638 £640 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 17 31
10th Percentile £19.04 - £23.92
25th Percentile £37.25 £14.20 £51.95
Median hourly rate £56.00 £25.00 £83.77
Median % change year-on-year +124.00% -70.15% +35.10%
75th Percentile £72.00 £41.25 £87.46
90th Percentile £85.20 £56.50 £87.53
UK median hourly rate £52.36 £26.25 £60.00
% change year-on-year +99.47% -56.25% -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 2,650 1,985 3,267
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.81% 15.35% 16.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,571 1,227 1,854
10th Percentile £225 £200 £203
25th Percentile £366 £300 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year +2.70% -2.63% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £653 £630 £675
UK median daily rate £495 £488 £490
% change year-on-year +1.54% -0.51% -5.68%
Number of hourly rates quoted 213 128 359
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.20 £13.25
25th Percentile £21.25 £16.30 £16.30
Median hourly rate £42.25 £24.71 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year +70.98% -46.14% +158.48%
75th Percentile £65.88 £62.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.01 £70.66
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £32.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +15.38% -18.75% +116.22%

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 17 May 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 17 May 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 17 May 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 -1 241 £500 - 133
North of England -21 223 £508 +6.84% 120
North West -7 148 £539 +13.42% 71
Midlands -56 78 £425 -24.11% 58
East of England -6 67 £500 -4.76% 31
West Midlands -40 66 £416 -20.71% 36
Yorkshire -35 63 £425 -12.37% 35
South West -46 58 £525 +2.44% 43
Scotland +15 54 £450 +4.35% 29
Wales -16 28 £425 +16.44% 14
North East -9 14 £625 +13.64% 16
East Midlands -42 8 £488 -14.10% 22
Northern Ireland -1 2 £385 -
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%) CICS
3 8 (1.07%) Apache
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%) CloudStack
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 24 (3.21%) Microsoft Office
2 17 (2.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (2.28%) MS Visio
3 13 (1.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.54%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 220 (29.45%) Azure
2 130 (17.40%) AWS
3 49 (6.56%) Entra ID
4 46 (6.16%) GCP
5 38 (5.09%) Microsoft 365
6 31 (4.15%) Azure DevOps
7 24 (3.21%) GitHub
8 20 (2.68%) Azure Sentinel
9 19 (2.54%) IaaS
9 19 (2.54%) OCI
9 19 (2.54%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 16 (2.14%) Azure Monitor
11 15 (2.01%) Nutanix
11 15 (2.01%) PaaS
12 14 (1.87%) GitHub Actions
12 14 (1.87%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 13 (1.74%) AWS CloudFormation
13 13 (1.74%) SaaS
14 12 (1.61%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 11 (1.47%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 233 (31.19%) WAN
2 196 (26.24%) LAN
2 196 (26.24%) Network Security
3 169 (22.62%) VPN
4 158 (21.15%) DNS
5 132 (17.67%) BGP
6 128 (17.14%) OSPF
7 103 (13.79%) DHCP
7 103 (13.79%) VLAN
8 102 (13.65%) Wireless
9 83 (11.11%) SD-WAN
10 80 (10.71%) TCP/IP
11 72 (9.64%) Wi-Fi
12 67 (8.97%) IPsec
13 61 (8.17%) VXLAN
14 60 (8.03%) Ethernet VPN
15 56 (7.50%) BIG-IP
16 54 (7.23%) Cisco ISE
17 47 (6.29%) MPLS
18 45 (6.02%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (1.61%) SQL Server
2 11 (1.47%) PostgreSQL
3 9 (1.20%) DataStage
4 6 (0.80%) Power BI
5 4 (0.54%) Azure SQL Database
5 4 (0.54%) Data Lake
5 4 (0.54%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.54%) NoSQL
5 4 (0.54%) Relational Database
6 3 (0.40%) Delta Lake
6 3 (0.40%) Oracle Database
7 2 (0.27%) MariaDB
7 2 (0.27%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (0.13%) Amazon RDS
8 1 (0.13%) EDRMS
8 1 (0.13%) Elasticsearch
8 1 (0.13%) MySQL
8 1 (0.13%) Redis
8 1 (0.13%) SAP HANA
8 1 (0.13%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 53 (7.10%) JIRA
2 32 (4.28%) GitLab
3 24 (3.21%) Jenkins
4 21 (2.81%) Git
5 17 (2.28%) Burp Suite
6 16 (2.14%) Metasploit
7 11 (1.47%) Sonatype Nexus
8 9 (1.20%) Jaeger
9 4 (0.54%) Browser DevTools
9 4 (0.54%) CircleCI
10 3 (0.40%) Chocolatey
11 2 (0.27%) Bitbucket
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%) Cucumber
12 1 (0.13%) Gradle
12 1 (0.13%) LoadRunner
12 1 (0.13%) SonarQube
General
1 181 (24.23%) Social Skills
2 74 (9.91%) Finance
3 67 (8.97%) Public Sector
4 59 (7.90%) Analytical Skills
5 51 (6.83%) Documentation Skills
6 21 (2.81%) Banking
7 18 (2.41%) Manufacturing
8 17 (2.28%) Telecoms
9 16 (2.14%) Military
10 12 (1.61%) Influencing Skills
10 12 (1.61%) Legal
11 10 (1.34%) Financial Institution
12 8 (1.07%) Law
12 8 (1.07%) Retail
13 7 (0.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 6 (0.80%) Organisational Skills
15 5 (0.67%) Aerospace
16 3 (0.40%) Back Office
16 3 (0.40%) Police
17 2 (0.27%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 262 (35.07%) Network Engineer
2 98 (13.12%) Architect
3 90 (12.05%) Senior
4 80 (10.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 51 (6.83%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
6 48 (6.43%) Network Architect
7 47 (6.29%) Security Engineer
8 36 (4.82%) Senior Network Engineer
9 30 (4.02%) Cisco Engineer
10 27 (3.61%) Cisco Network Engineer
11 23 (3.08%) Cloud Engineer
11 23 (3.08%) Lead
11 23 (3.08%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 22 (2.95%) Designer
13 18 (2.41%) Analyst
13 18 (2.41%) IT Support
13 18 (2.41%) Network Specialist
14 17 (2.28%) Penetration Tester
14 17 (2.28%) Technical Architect
15 16 (2.14%) Firewall Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 59 (7.90%) 802.1X
2 27 (3.61%) LDAP
3 20 (2.68%) Middleware
4 18 (2.41%) Kafka
5 17 (2.28%) SAML
6 11 (1.47%) OpenTelemetry
7 10 (1.34%) Spring Boot
8 7 (0.94%) OAuth
8 7 (0.94%) OAuth2
9 6 (0.80%) LangChain
9 6 (0.80%) PyTorch
9 6 (0.80%) scikit-learn
10 5 (0.67%) Elastic Stack
10 5 (0.67%) OpenID
11 4 (0.54%) JSON
11 4 (0.54%) REST
11 4 (0.54%) YAML
12 3 (0.40%) .NET
12 3 (0.40%) Node.js
12 3 (0.40%) React
Miscellaneous
1 203 (27.18%) Data Centre
2 45 (6.02%) Security Posture
3 40 (5.35%) Cloud Native
4 39 (5.22%) PKI
5 35 (4.69%) Hybrid Cloud
6 28 (3.75%) Clustering
7 27 (3.61%) Operational Technology
8 23 (3.08%) Onboarding
9 17 (2.28%) IoT
9 17 (2.28%) Public Cloud
10 15 (2.01%) Management Information System
10 15 (2.01%) Self-Motivation
11 14 (1.87%) SCADA
12 13 (1.74%) BYOD
12 13 (1.74%) Data Protection Act
13 12 (1.61%) Enterprise Software
13 12 (1.61%) NHS
14 11 (1.47%) Distributed Systems
14 11 (1.47%) Driving Licence
15 10 (1.34%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 197 (26.37%) Windows
2 118 (15.80%) Linux
3 71 (9.50%) Windows Server
4 26 (3.48%) Unix
5 15 (2.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (1.34%) Solaris
7 9 (1.20%) AIX
8 7 (0.94%) Windows Server 2019
9 6 (0.80%) Windows Server 2016
10 5 (0.67%) Mac OS
11 4 (0.54%) CatOS
11 4 (0.54%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.40%) Data ONTAP
12 3 (0.40%) Ubuntu
12 3 (0.40%) VMS
12 3 (0.40%) Windows 7
13 2 (0.27%) Oracle Linux
13 2 (0.27%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 2 (0.27%) Windows 10
14 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 112 (14.99%) DevOps
1 112 (14.99%) Load Balancing
2 111 (14.86%) Cybersecurity
3 107 (14.32%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 104 (13.92%) High Availability
5 102 (13.65%) CI/CD
6 97 (12.99%) Problem-Solving
7 95 (12.72%) ITIL
8 87 (11.65%) Infrastructure as Code
9 77 (10.31%) Zero Trust
10 66 (8.84%) Network Segmentation
11 65 (8.70%) Migration
11 65 (8.70%) Observability
12 64 (8.57%) Agile
13 62 (8.30%) Change Management
13 62 (8.30%) Technical Leadership
14 57 (7.63%) SIEM
15 55 (7.36%) Identity Access Management
16 54 (7.23%) Network Design
16 54 (7.23%) Network Monitoring
Programming Languages
1 88 (11.78%) Python
2 65 (8.70%) PowerShell
3 37 (4.95%) SQL
4 36 (4.82%) Bash
5 28 (3.75%) Bicep
6 23 (3.08%) Java
7 9 (1.20%) COBOL
8 8 (1.07%) Rust
9 5 (0.67%) Perl
10 4 (0.54%) JavaScript
11 3 (0.40%) Go
11 3 (0.40%) PL/SQL
11 3 (0.40%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.27%) C#
12 2 (0.27%) C++
12 2 (0.27%) Jython
12 2 (0.27%) Ruby
13 1 (0.13%) C
13 1 (0.13%) Groovy
13 1 (0.13%) Korn
Qualifications
1 314 (42.03%) Security Cleared
2 219 (29.32%) SC Cleared
3 180 (24.10%) Cisco Certification
4 135 (18.07%) CCNP
5 91 (12.18%) CCNA
6 75 (10.04%) DV Cleared
7 69 (9.24%) Degree
8 29 (3.88%) CISSP
9 22 (2.95%) AWS Certification
10 20 (2.68%) Azure Certification
11 18 (2.41%) Network+ Certification
12 17 (2.28%) CCIE
13 16 (2.14%) CHECK Team Member
13 16 (2.14%) JNCIS
14 15 (2.01%) CISM
15 14 (1.87%) CREST Certified
15 14 (1.87%) Cyber Scheme
16 13 (1.74%) JNCIA
16 13 (1.74%) Microsoft Certification
16 13 (1.74%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 50 (6.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 32 (4.28%) GDPR
3 27 (3.61%) NIST
4 25 (3.35%) PCI DSS
5 20 (2.68%) QA
6 18 (2.41%) NCSC
7 17 (2.28%) Cyber Essentials
8 16 (2.14%) SLA
9 12 (1.61%) PMO
10 7 (0.94%) Disclosure Scotland
11 6 (0.80%) Data Quality
12 4 (0.54%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 4 (0.54%) JSP 440
12 4 (0.54%) SOC 2
13 3 (0.40%) ISA99
13 3 (0.40%) RMADS
14 2 (0.27%) Government Security Classifications
14 2 (0.27%) GRC
14 2 (0.27%) GxP
15 1 (0.13%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 130 (17.40%) Active Directory
2 99 (13.25%) VMware Infrastructure
3 38 (5.09%) Docker
4 33 (4.42%) VMware NSX
5 29 (3.88%) vSphere
6 21 (2.81%) Hyper-V
7 15 (2.01%) Firmware
8 14 (1.87%) Virtual Machines
8 14 (1.87%) VMware ESXi
9 8 (1.07%) Virtual Desktop
10 3 (0.40%) DFS Replication
11 2 (0.27%) KVM
12 1 (0.13%) BitLocker
12 1 (0.13%) Citrix Hypervisor
12 1 (0.13%) iptables
12 1 (0.13%) RHEV
12 1 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
12 1 (0.13%) VirtualBox
12 1 (0.13%) XenApp
12 1 (0.13%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 100 (13.39%) Terraform
2 80 (10.71%) Ansible
3 50 (6.69%) Kubernetes
4 46 (6.16%) FortiGate
5 26 (3.48%) Grafana
6 19 (2.54%) Prometheus
7 18 (2.41%) Nmap
7 18 (2.41%) Single Sign-On
8 15 (2.01%) Microsoft Intune
9 14 (1.87%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 14 (1.87%) vCenter Server
10 12 (1.61%) Nagios
11 11 (1.47%) CASB
12 9 (1.20%) Kiali
13 8 (1.07%) Cisco Prime
13 8 (1.07%) Nessus
13 8 (1.07%) SCCM
14 7 (0.94%) VxRail
15 6 (0.80%) Progress Chef
16 5 (0.67%) Endace
Vendors
1 302 (40.43%) Cisco
2 161 (21.55%) Palo Alto
3 134 (17.94%) VMware
4 133 (17.80%) Microsoft
5 103 (13.79%) F5
6 91 (12.18%) Juniper
7 75 (10.04%) Fortinet
8 72 (9.64%) CheckPoint
9 65 (8.70%) Aruba
10 63 (8.43%) SolarWinds
10 63 (8.43%) Splunk
11 46 (6.16%) ServiceNow
12 28 (3.75%) Google
13 27 (3.61%) Meraki
14 26 (3.48%) Extreme Networks
15 23 (3.08%) Arista
16 22 (2.95%) Veeam
17 17 (2.28%) Oracle
18 16 (2.14%) Citrix
18 16 (2.14%) Red Hat