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

6 months to
3 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 64 42 35
Rank change year-on-year -22 -7 +14
Contract jobs citing Firewall 691 628 1,025
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.57% 4.65% 4.85%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.03% 27.97% 27.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 471 351 663
10th Percentile £309 £275 £275
25th Percentile £400 £394 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% - +2.56%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £650 £638 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £520
% change year-on-year -4.76% +0.96% -0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 20 49
10th Percentile £35.13 £20.00 £52.47
25th Percentile £37.25 £20.14 £62.50
Median hourly rate £45.33 £35.00 £67.27
Median % change year-on-year +29.51% -47.97% +36.95%
75th Percentile £74.26 £41.62 £76.53
90th Percentile £85.90 £61.38 £85.92
UK median hourly rate £41.94 £35.82 £65.98
% change year-on-year +17.08% -45.71% +60.81%

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 2,301 2,245 3,692
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 11.89% 16.62% 17.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,542 1,265 2,127
10th Percentile £193 £189 £205
25th Percentile £306 £300 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £470 £475
Median % change year-on-year -4.26% -1.05% +2.70%
75th Percentile £563 £580 £588
90th Percentile £650 £650 £675
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £490
% change year-on-year -5.00% +2.04% -4.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 120 112 333
10th Percentile £15.23 £15.44 £15.33
25th Percentile £16.00 £21.00 £22.50
Median hourly rate £41.24 £31.79 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.73% -42.20% +179.54%
75th Percentile £65.00 £61.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year -14.29% -30.00% +146.91%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 -23 204 £500 +5.26% 103
South East +11 182 £500 - 178
North West -26 116 £520 +5.05% 63
Midlands -33 114 £469 -6.25% 59
West Midlands -7 105 £463 +5.71% 43
Yorkshire -14 84 £465 +9.41% 32
South West -28 61 £550 +7.32% 49
Scotland -8 59 £425 -9.33% 32
East of England -20 43 £445 -15.24% 62
Wales -13 20 £425 +16.44% 8
East Midlands -55 8 £500 -23.14% 16
Northern Ireland - 8 £488 -
North East -16 7 £550 - 10
South Coast - 4 £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 26 (3.76%) Confluence
2 10 (1.45%) Apache
2 10 (1.45%) Microsoft Exchange
3 8 (1.16%) nginx
3 8 (1.16%) SharePoint
4 7 (1.01%) IIS
5 5 (0.72%) OpenStack
6 3 (0.43%) CICS
7 1 (0.14%) Apache Pulsar
7 1 (0.14%) CMS
7 1 (0.14%) JBoss
7 1 (0.14%) Tomcat
Applications
1 29 (4.20%) Microsoft Office
2 17 (2.46%) MS Visio
3 16 (2.32%) Microsoft Excel
4 15 (2.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (1.01%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.14%) Finacle
1 1 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.14%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 183 (26.48%) Azure
2 174 (25.18%) AWS
3 69 (9.99%) GCP
4 43 (6.22%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 41 (5.93%) Microsoft 365
6 38 (5.50%) Entra ID
7 37 (5.35%) Amazon EC2
8 27 (3.91%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 26 (3.76%) Amazon S3
10 21 (3.04%) Amazon ECS
10 21 (3.04%) AWS CloudFormation
10 21 (3.04%) Serverless
11 20 (2.89%) Amazon ELB
12 19 (2.75%) Azure Sentinel
12 19 (2.75%) IaaS
13 18 (2.60%) Azure Monitor
14 17 (2.46%) AWS Lambda
14 17 (2.46%) PaaS
15 15 (2.17%) Akamai
15 15 (2.17%) Nutanix
Communications & Networking
1 164 (23.73%) Network Security
2 142 (20.55%) VPN
3 135 (19.54%) WAN
4 132 (19.10%) DNS
5 103 (14.91%) LAN
6 90 (13.02%) BGP
7 80 (11.58%) TCP/IP
7 80 (11.58%) Wireless
8 79 (11.43%) VLAN
9 76 (11.00%) OSPF
10 60 (8.68%) DHCP
11 50 (7.24%) SD-WAN
12 41 (5.93%) MPLS
13 40 (5.79%) Cisco ASA
13 40 (5.79%) Wi-Fi
14 39 (5.64%) Cisco ISE
14 39 (5.64%) IPsec
15 34 (4.92%) Cisco Nexus
16 29 (4.20%) SSL
17 25 (3.62%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (3.76%) Amazon RDS
2 21 (3.04%) SQL Server
3 16 (2.32%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (1.01%) Amazon Aurora
5 4 (0.58%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.58%) Relational Database
6 3 (0.43%) DataStage
6 3 (0.43%) DynamoDB
7 2 (0.29%) Amazon QuickSight
7 2 (0.29%) Data Lake
7 2 (0.29%) Elasticsearch
7 2 (0.29%) MariaDB
7 2 (0.29%) Oracle Database
8 1 (0.14%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.14%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
8 1 (0.14%) NoSQL
8 1 (0.14%) Power BI
8 1 (0.14%) Redis
8 1 (0.14%) SAP HANA
8 1 (0.14%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 47 (6.80%) JIRA
2 44 (6.37%) Jenkins
3 40 (5.79%) Git
4 34 (4.92%) GitLab
5 19 (2.75%) Sonatype Nexus
6 14 (2.03%) Burp Suite
6 14 (2.03%) Metasploit
7 11 (1.59%) Bitbucket
8 10 (1.45%) Vagrant
9 8 (1.16%) Jaeger
10 4 (0.58%) CircleCI
11 3 (0.43%) Chocolatey
12 1 (0.14%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.14%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.14%) MSI
12 1 (0.14%) SonarQube
12 1 (0.14%) Subversion
12 1 (0.14%) Travis CI
General
1 204 (29.52%) Social Skills
2 82 (11.87%) Analytical Skills
3 79 (11.43%) Public Sector
4 68 (9.84%) Finance
5 57 (8.25%) Documentation Skills
6 31 (4.49%) Banking
7 28 (4.05%) Telecoms
8 22 (3.18%) Legal
9 20 (2.89%) Manufacturing
10 13 (1.88%) Presentation Skills
11 9 (1.30%) Financial Institution
11 9 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
12 8 (1.16%) Military
13 7 (1.01%) Aerospace
13 7 (1.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 7 (1.01%) Retail
14 5 (0.72%) Law
15 4 (0.58%) Retail Banking
16 3 (0.43%) Local Government
16 3 (0.43%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 197 (28.51%) Network Engineer
2 94 (13.60%) Architect
3 67 (9.70%) Senior
4 51 (7.38%) Security Engineer
5 49 (7.09%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 39 (5.64%) Network Architect
6 39 (5.64%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
7 34 (4.92%) Platform Engineer
8 30 (4.34%) DevOps Engineer
9 27 (3.91%) Analyst
10 23 (3.33%) IT Engineer
11 22 (3.18%) IT Support
12 21 (3.04%) Security Architect
12 21 (3.04%) Support Engineer
13 20 (2.89%) Cisco Engineer
14 18 (2.60%) AWS Engineer
14 18 (2.60%) Solutions Architect
15 17 (2.46%) Cloud Platform Engineer
15 17 (2.46%) Senior Network Engineer
15 17 (2.46%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (4.63%) 802.1X
2 23 (3.33%) LDAP
3 20 (2.89%) SAML
4 16 (2.32%) OAuth
4 16 (2.32%) OAuth2
5 15 (2.17%) Middleware
5 15 (2.17%) OpenID
6 13 (1.88%) Kafka
7 11 (1.59%) Node.js
8 10 (1.45%) JSON
9 9 (1.30%) OpenTelemetry
10 8 (1.16%) REST
10 8 (1.16%) Spring Boot
11 6 (0.87%) RFC 2544
12 4 (0.58%) ARM Templates
12 4 (0.58%) Microsoft Graph
12 4 (0.58%) XML
13 3 (0.43%) Elastic Stack
13 3 (0.43%) Lambda Expressions
14 2 (0.29%) ModSecurity
Miscellaneous
1 141 (20.41%) Data Centre
2 55 (7.96%) Security Posture
3 35 (5.07%) PKI
4 27 (3.91%) Onboarding
5 22 (3.18%) Hybrid Cloud
5 22 (3.18%) Operational Technology
5 22 (3.18%) Replication
6 17 (2.46%) NHS
7 16 (2.32%) Security Operations Centre
8 14 (2.03%) Cloud Native
8 14 (2.03%) Data Protection Act
8 14 (2.03%) Management Information System
8 14 (2.03%) Private Cloud
9 13 (1.88%) Cyber Threat
10 11 (1.59%) Fat Client
10 11 (1.59%) Thin Client
11 10 (1.45%) Distributed Systems
12 9 (1.30%) Cyber Defence
12 9 (1.30%) Product Ownership
12 9 (1.30%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 193 (27.93%) Windows
2 147 (21.27%) Linux
3 77 (11.14%) Windows Server
4 20 (2.89%) Unix
5 16 (2.32%) VMS
6 15 (2.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 13 (1.88%) Amazon Linux
8 11 (1.59%) Windows 7
8 11 (1.59%) Windows Server 2019
9 10 (1.45%) Ubuntu
10 7 (1.01%) Windows 10
11 4 (0.58%) Solaris
11 4 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.43%) AIX
12 3 (0.43%) Android
12 3 (0.43%) Apple iOS
12 3 (0.43%) CatOS
12 3 (0.43%) CentOS
12 3 (0.43%) Mac OS
12 3 (0.43%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 136 (19.68%) Cybersecurity
2 106 (15.34%) Problem-Solving
3 101 (14.62%) DevOps
4 88 (12.74%) CI/CD
5 76 (11.00%) Incident Response
5 76 (11.00%) Infrastructure as Code
6 75 (10.85%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 65 (9.41%) Agile
8 64 (9.26%) SIEM
9 63 (9.12%) ITIL
10 62 (8.97%) Containerisation
11 61 (8.83%) Load Balancing
12 55 (7.96%) Cloud Security
12 55 (7.96%) Mentoring
12 55 (7.96%) Migration
13 54 (7.81%) High Availability
14 51 (7.38%) Change Management
14 51 (7.38%) Continuous Improvement
14 51 (7.38%) Network Design
15 48 (6.95%) Zero Trust
Programming Languages
1 136 (19.68%) Python
2 116 (16.79%) PowerShell
3 67 (9.70%) Bash
4 37 (5.35%) SQL
5 32 (4.63%) Java
6 29 (4.20%) Perl
7 11 (1.59%) Bicep
8 10 (1.45%) Groovy
8 10 (1.45%) Ruby
9 8 (1.16%) Rust
10 6 (0.87%) Shell Script
11 4 (0.58%) C#
11 4 (0.58%) Kusto Query Language
12 3 (0.43%) COBOL
12 3 (0.43%) Go
13 1 (0.14%) JavaScript
13 1 (0.14%) Lisp
13 1 (0.14%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 286 (41.39%) Security Cleared
2 190 (27.50%) SC Cleared
3 135 (19.54%) Cisco Certification
4 115 (16.64%) CCNP
5 75 (10.85%) DV Cleared
6 66 (9.55%) Degree
7 63 (9.12%) CCNA
8 41 (5.93%) CISSP
9 29 (4.20%) AWS Certification
9 29 (4.20%) CCIE
10 25 (3.62%) Azure Certification
10 25 (3.62%) Microsoft Certification
11 24 (3.47%) CISM
12 14 (2.03%) CHECK Team Member
13 12 (1.74%) CREST Certified
13 12 (1.74%) Cyber Scheme
14 11 (1.59%) Postgraduate
15 10 (1.45%) CompTIA Security+
16 9 (1.30%) Computer Science Degree
16 9 (1.30%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 60 (8.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 48 (6.95%) NIST
3 34 (4.92%) GDPR
4 30 (4.34%) PCI DSS
5 18 (2.60%) Cyber Essentials
5 18 (2.60%) SLA
6 15 (2.17%) NCSC
7 14 (2.03%) QA
8 10 (1.45%) PMO
9 6 (0.87%) COBIT
10 5 (0.72%) Actionable Recommendations
11 4 (0.58%) GRC
12 3 (0.43%) NIST 800
13 2 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 2 (0.29%) JSP 440
13 2 (0.29%) PSD2
14 1 (0.14%) GPG13
14 1 (0.14%) HIPAA
14 1 (0.14%) ISO 22301
14 1 (0.14%) ISO/IEC 27005
System Software
1 129 (18.67%) Active Directory
2 107 (15.48%) VMware Infrastructure
3 85 (12.30%) Docker
4 30 (4.34%) vSphere
5 28 (4.05%) VMware NSX
6 25 (3.62%) Hyper-V
7 15 (2.17%) VMware ESXi
8 13 (1.88%) DFS Replication
9 8 (1.16%) Virtual Desktop
9 8 (1.16%) Virtual Machines
10 7 (1.01%) Dovecot
10 7 (1.01%) Firmware
10 7 (1.01%) Postfix
10 7 (1.01%) Squid
11 6 (0.87%) Virtual Servers
12 3 (0.43%) KVM
13 1 (0.14%) BitLocker
13 1 (0.14%) NetIQ eDirectory
13 1 (0.14%) RHEV
13 1 (0.14%) Xen
Systems Management
1 94 (13.60%) Terraform
2 77 (11.14%) Ansible
3 68 (9.84%) Kubernetes
4 28 (4.05%) Grafana
5 27 (3.91%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 24 (3.47%) FortiGate
7 23 (3.33%) Microsoft Intune
7 23 (3.33%) Prometheus
7 23 (3.33%) Single Sign-On
8 20 (2.89%) vCenter Server
9 19 (2.75%) Nmap
10 14 (2.03%) SCCM
11 11 (1.59%) Nessus
11 11 (1.59%) WMI
12 10 (1.45%) CSIRT
13 9 (1.30%) Fluentd
13 9 (1.30%) Nagios
14 8 (1.16%) Kiali
14 8 (1.16%) Proxmox
15 6 (0.87%) VxRail
Vendors
1 254 (36.76%) Cisco
2 159 (23.01%) Palo Alto
3 146 (21.13%) Microsoft
4 136 (19.68%) VMware
5 83 (12.01%) F5
6 80 (11.58%) CheckPoint
7 62 (8.97%) Fortinet
8 54 (7.81%) Juniper
9 48 (6.95%) Splunk
10 43 (6.22%) Meraki
10 43 (6.22%) SolarWinds
11 42 (6.08%) Aruba
12 34 (4.92%) Oracle
13 27 (3.91%) Google
14 25 (3.62%) ServiceNow
15 20 (2.89%) Dell
16 18 (2.60%) Citrix
17 16 (2.32%) Red Hat
18 15 (2.17%) Veeam
19 13 (1.88%) Zscaler