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

6 months to
19 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 64 51 36
Rank change year-on-year -13 -15 +8
Contract jobs citing Firewall 770 563 917
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.30% 4.41% 4.41%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.14% 28.15% 26.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 517 350 585
10th Percentile £318 £300 £293
25th Percentile £413 £386 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £575 £588 £609
90th Percentile £638 £650 £745
UK median daily rate £500 £510 £513
% change year-on-year -1.96% -0.49% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 32 17 30
10th Percentile £20.53 - £23.92
25th Percentile £37.25 £14.20 £58.88
Median hourly rate £56.00 £35.00 £83.77
Median % change year-on-year +60.00% -58.22% +35.10%
75th Percentile £74.26 £41.50 £87.46
90th Percentile £84.61 £56.50 £87.53
UK median hourly rate £56.00 £35.82 £68.25
% change year-on-year +56.33% -47.51% +10.08%

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 2,555 2,000 3,518
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.94% 15.67% 16.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,566 1,229 2,015
10th Percentile £205 £193 £202
25th Percentile £358 £305 £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 £638 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £488 £488
% change year-on-year +2.56% - -5.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 169 133 351
10th Percentile £15.62 £14.36 £13.50
25th Percentile £19.34 £18.13 £17.69
Median hourly rate £55.00 £28.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +96.43% -41.05% +156.76%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £79.81 £70.66
UK median hourly rate £47.50 £37.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +26.67% -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 19 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 19 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 19 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 +4 240 £506 +1.25% 136
North of England -23 220 £500 +5.26% 95
North West -8 143 £528 +11.16% 43
Midlands -38 95 £425 -23.42% 54
West Midlands -26 83 £420 -19.66% 31
Yorkshire -24 75 £434 -15.37% 26
East of England -8 66 £500 -4.76% 51
South West -45 61 £554 +1.28% 40
Scotland +14 54 £425 -1.45% 23
Wales -11 31 £425 +11.11% 20
East Midlands -48 8 £475 -18.10% 22
North East -13 5 £548 -0.45% 27
Northern Ireland +5 4 £500 - 3
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 (1.69%) Confluence
2 9 (1.17%) Apache
2 9 (1.17%) CICS
3 8 (1.04%) Microsoft Exchange
4 5 (0.65%) IIS
5 3 (0.39%) SharePoint
6 2 (0.26%) Apache Pulsar
6 2 (0.26%) IBM HTTP Server
6 2 (0.26%) Oracle HTTP Server
6 2 (0.26%) Skype for Business
6 2 (0.26%) WebSphere
6 2 (0.26%) WebSphere Application Server
6 2 (0.26%) WebSphere Portal
7 1 (0.13%) CMS
7 1 (0.13%) nginx
7 1 (0.13%) Umbraco
Applications
1 30 (3.90%) Microsoft Office
2 17 (2.21%) Microsoft Excel
3 14 (1.82%) MS Visio
4 13 (1.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.39%) 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
1 212 (27.53%) Azure
2 143 (18.57%) AWS
3 56 (7.27%) Entra ID
4 54 (7.01%) GCP
5 40 (5.19%) Microsoft 365
6 28 (3.64%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 26 (3.38%) GitHub
8 25 (3.25%) Azure DevOps
9 23 (2.99%) IaaS
10 22 (2.86%) Azure Sentinel
11 21 (2.73%) PaaS
12 18 (2.34%) Serverless
13 16 (2.08%) AWS CloudFormation
13 16 (2.08%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 16 (2.08%) Azure Monitor
14 14 (1.82%) AWS Lambda
14 14 (1.82%) GitHub Actions
14 14 (1.82%) Nutanix
15 13 (1.69%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 12 (1.56%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 213 (27.66%) WAN
2 210 (27.27%) Network Security
3 182 (23.64%) LAN
4 171 (22.21%) VPN
5 166 (21.56%) DNS
6 133 (17.27%) BGP
7 122 (15.84%) OSPF
8 106 (13.77%) VLAN
9 101 (13.12%) DHCP
10 97 (12.60%) Wireless
11 82 (10.65%) TCP/IP
12 71 (9.22%) SD-WAN
13 63 (8.18%) IPsec
14 60 (7.79%) Cisco ISE
15 57 (7.40%) Wi-Fi
16 49 (6.36%) VXLAN
17 48 (6.23%) MPLS
18 46 (5.97%) Ethernet VPN
19 42 (5.45%) Cisco Nexus
20 39 (5.06%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (1.69%) SQL Server
2 12 (1.56%) PostgreSQL
3 9 (1.17%) DataStage
4 8 (1.04%) Amazon RDS
5 6 (0.78%) Power BI
6 4 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
6 4 (0.52%) Data Lake
6 4 (0.52%) MongoDB
6 4 (0.52%) NoSQL
6 4 (0.52%) Relational Database
7 3 (0.39%) Delta Lake
7 3 (0.39%) DynamoDB
7 3 (0.39%) Oracle Database
8 2 (0.26%) MariaDB
8 2 (0.26%) Oracle Reports
9 1 (0.13%) Elasticsearch
9 1 (0.13%) MySQL
9 1 (0.13%) Redis
9 1 (0.13%) SAP HANA
9 1 (0.13%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 52 (6.75%) JIRA
2 28 (3.64%) GitLab
2 28 (3.64%) Jenkins
3 22 (2.86%) Git
4 16 (2.08%) Burp Suite
4 16 (2.08%) Metasploit
5 14 (1.82%) Sonatype Nexus
6 9 (1.17%) Jaeger
7 6 (0.78%) Bitbucket
8 4 (0.52%) Browser DevTools
8 4 (0.52%) CircleCI
9 3 (0.39%) Chocolatey
10 2 (0.26%) Introscope
11 1 (0.13%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.13%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.13%) MSI
11 1 (0.13%) Postman
11 1 (0.13%) Subversion
11 1 (0.13%) Team Foundation Server
11 1 (0.13%) Travis CI
General
1 210 (27.27%) Social Skills
2 80 (10.39%) Finance
3 74 (9.61%) Analytical Skills
4 62 (8.05%) Public Sector
5 56 (7.27%) Documentation Skills
6 22 (2.86%) Banking
7 19 (2.47%) Manufacturing
8 17 (2.21%) Telecoms
9 16 (2.08%) Influencing Skills
9 16 (2.08%) Legal
10 14 (1.82%) Military
11 10 (1.30%) Financial Institution
12 8 (1.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 8 (1.04%) Law
13 7 (0.91%) Retail
14 6 (0.78%) Aerospace
14 6 (0.78%) Organisational Skills
15 4 (0.52%) Presentation Skills
16 3 (0.39%) Back Office
16 3 (0.39%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 250 (32.47%) Network Engineer
2 118 (15.32%) Architect
3 76 (9.87%) Senior
4 64 (8.31%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 53 (6.88%) Network Architect
5 53 (6.88%) Security Engineer
6 41 (5.32%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
7 33 (4.29%) Senior Network Engineer
8 25 (3.25%) Cisco Engineer
8 25 (3.25%) Cloud Engineer
9 24 (3.12%) IT Support
10 23 (2.99%) Cisco Network Engineer
11 22 (2.86%) Lead
11 22 (2.86%) Network Specialist
11 22 (2.86%) Security Architect
12 21 (2.73%) Designer
13 20 (2.60%) Platform Engineer
13 20 (2.60%) Solutions Architect
14 19 (2.47%) Analyst
14 19 (2.47%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 57 (7.40%) 802.1X
2 26 (3.38%) SAML
3 24 (3.12%) LDAP
4 20 (2.60%) Middleware
5 18 (2.34%) Kafka
5 18 (2.34%) OAuth
5 18 (2.34%) OAuth2
6 16 (2.08%) OpenID
7 11 (1.43%) OpenTelemetry
8 9 (1.17%) Spring Boot
9 6 (0.78%) LangChain
9 6 (0.78%) PyTorch
9 6 (0.78%) REST
9 6 (0.78%) scikit-learn
10 5 (0.65%) JSON
10 5 (0.65%) Node.js
11 4 (0.52%) ARM Templates
11 4 (0.52%) YAML
12 3 (0.39%) Lambda Expressions
13 2 (0.26%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 186 (24.16%) Data Centre
2 48 (6.23%) Security Posture
3 45 (5.84%) PKI
4 39 (5.06%) Cloud Native
5 29 (3.77%) Operational Technology
6 27 (3.51%) Clustering
7 26 (3.38%) Hybrid Cloud
8 24 (3.12%) Onboarding
9 20 (2.60%) IoT
10 17 (2.21%) NHS
11 16 (2.08%) Private Cloud
11 16 (2.08%) Public Cloud
11 16 (2.08%) SCADA
12 15 (1.95%) Enterprise Software
12 15 (1.95%) Management Information System
13 13 (1.69%) BYOD
13 13 (1.69%) Product Ownership
14 12 (1.56%) Data Protection Act
14 12 (1.56%) Self-Motivation
15 11 (1.43%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 226 (29.35%) Windows
2 139 (18.05%) Linux
3 94 (12.21%) Windows Server
4 29 (3.77%) Unix
5 21 (2.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (1.43%) Solaris
7 9 (1.17%) AIX
8 7 (0.91%) Windows Server 2019
9 6 (0.78%) VMS
9 6 (0.78%) Windows Server 2016
10 5 (0.65%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.65%) Windows 7
11 4 (0.52%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.39%) Amazon Linux
12 3 (0.39%) CatOS
12 3 (0.39%) Data ONTAP
13 2 (0.26%) Oracle Linux
13 2 (0.26%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 2 (0.26%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 130 (16.88%) Cybersecurity
2 117 (15.19%) Problem-Solving
3 103 (13.38%) DevOps
4 102 (13.25%) Load Balancing
5 99 (12.86%) High Availability
6 97 (12.60%) ITIL
7 94 (12.21%) CI/CD
8 91 (11.82%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 81 (10.52%) Infrastructure as Code
10 70 (9.09%) Zero Trust
11 69 (8.96%) Change Management
12 67 (8.70%) Observability
13 64 (8.31%) Identity Access Management
14 62 (8.05%) Agile
15 61 (7.92%) Network Segmentation
15 61 (7.92%) Technical Leadership
16 59 (7.66%) Cloud Security
16 59 (7.66%) Migration
16 59 (7.66%) SIEM
17 57 (7.40%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 96 (12.47%) PowerShell
2 95 (12.34%) Python
3 45 (5.84%) Bash
4 33 (4.29%) SQL
5 24 (3.12%) Bicep
6 23 (2.99%) Java
7 14 (1.82%) Perl
8 9 (1.17%) COBOL
9 8 (1.04%) Rust
10 5 (0.65%) Ruby
11 4 (0.52%) C#
11 4 (0.52%) JavaScript
12 3 (0.39%) Go
12 3 (0.39%) Kusto Query Language
12 3 (0.39%) PL/SQL
12 3 (0.39%) Shell Script
13 2 (0.26%) C++
13 2 (0.26%) Jython
14 1 (0.13%) C
14 1 (0.13%) Korn
Qualifications
1 314 (40.78%) Security Cleared
2 206 (26.75%) SC Cleared
3 173 (22.47%) Cisco Certification
4 134 (17.40%) CCNP
5 91 (11.82%) DV Cleared
6 86 (11.17%) CCNA
7 76 (9.87%) Degree
8 42 (5.45%) CISSP
9 27 (3.51%) AWS Certification
10 25 (3.25%) Microsoft Certification
11 24 (3.12%) Azure Certification
12 20 (2.60%) CISM
13 19 (2.47%) CCIE
14 17 (2.21%) Network+ Certification
15 16 (2.08%) CHECK Team Member
15 16 (2.08%) JNCIS
16 14 (1.82%) CREST Certified
16 14 (1.82%) Cyber Scheme
17 13 (1.69%) Computer Science Degree
17 13 (1.69%) JNCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 62 (8.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 43 (5.58%) NIST
3 42 (5.45%) GDPR
4 33 (4.29%) PCI DSS
5 20 (2.60%) Cyber Essentials
5 20 (2.60%) NCSC
6 18 (2.34%) QA
7 14 (1.82%) SLA
8 12 (1.56%) PMO
9 5 (0.65%) Disclosure Scotland
9 5 (0.65%) JSP 440
10 4 (0.52%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 4 (0.52%) SOC 2
11 3 (0.39%) Data Quality
11 3 (0.39%) GRC
11 3 (0.39%) ISA99
11 3 (0.39%) RMADS
12 2 (0.26%) Government Security Classifications
12 2 (0.26%) GxP
12 2 (0.26%) PSD2
System Software
1 151 (19.61%) Active Directory
2 112 (14.55%) VMware Infrastructure
3 50 (6.49%) Docker
4 41 (5.32%) VMware NSX
5 27 (3.51%) vSphere
6 22 (2.86%) Hyper-V
7 15 (1.95%) Firmware
7 15 (1.95%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (1.30%) Virtual Machines
9 8 (1.04%) Virtual Desktop
10 3 (0.39%) DFS Replication
10 3 (0.39%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.13%) Citrix Hypervisor
11 1 (0.13%) KVM
11 1 (0.13%) ProxySG
11 1 (0.13%) Squid
11 1 (0.13%) UAG
11 1 (0.13%) Xen
11 1 (0.13%) XenApp
11 1 (0.13%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 94 (12.21%) Terraform
2 67 (8.70%) Ansible
3 59 (7.66%) Kubernetes
4 48 (6.23%) FortiGate
5 30 (3.90%) Single Sign-On
6 26 (3.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 23 (2.99%) Grafana
7 23 (2.99%) Microsoft Intune
8 21 (2.73%) vCenter Server
9 18 (2.34%) Nmap
10 17 (2.21%) Prometheus
11 11 (1.43%) Nagios
12 10 (1.30%) SCCM
13 9 (1.17%) CASB
13 9 (1.17%) Cisco Prime
13 9 (1.17%) Kiali
14 8 (1.04%) Nessus
15 7 (0.91%) VxRail
16 6 (0.78%) Progress Chef
17 5 (0.65%) Endace
Vendors
1 295 (38.31%) Cisco
2 157 (20.39%) Microsoft
3 146 (18.96%) Palo Alto
4 143 (18.57%) VMware
5 91 (11.82%) Juniper
6 88 (11.43%) F5
7 71 (9.22%) CheckPoint
7 71 (9.22%) Fortinet
8 67 (8.70%) Splunk
9 64 (8.31%) SolarWinds
10 56 (7.27%) Aruba
11 38 (4.94%) ServiceNow
12 35 (4.55%) Google
13 32 (4.16%) Meraki
14 25 (3.25%) Extreme Networks
15 24 (3.12%) Red Hat
16 21 (2.73%) Citrix
17 20 (2.60%) Oracle
18 17 (2.21%) Veeam
19 15 (1.95%) IBM