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 15 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 73 41 40
Rank change year-on-year -32 -1 -4
Contract jobs citing Firewall 817 712 874
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.04% 4.82% 4.22%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 27.94% 32.99% 26.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 543 406 542
10th Percentile £342 £313 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £502
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.89% +5.68%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £650 £638 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 23 34
10th Percentile £26.42 £14.20 £22.85
25th Percentile £42.23 £14.66 £26.25
Median hourly rate £63.75 £30.00 £82.38
Median % change year-on-year +112.50% -63.58% +31.71%
75th Percentile £77.44 £31.89 £87.46
90th Percentile £98.94 £75.05 £87.53
UK median hourly rate £61.25 £30.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +104.17% -50.00% -4.08%

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 2,924 2,158 3,247
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.87% 14.62% 15.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,704 1,301 1,831
10th Percentile £213 £200 £205
25th Percentile £375 £325 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £490
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -3.06% +5.95%
75th Percentile £582 £575 £600
90th Percentile £650 £638 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £483 £500
% change year-on-year +3.63% -3.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 278 136 366
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £19.34 £17.30 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.22 £42.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -38.31% -10.53% +5.56%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £86.25 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £26.44 £47.50 £43.00
% change year-on-year -44.34% +10.47% +39.84%

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 15 July 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 15 July 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 15 July 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 -15 292 £500 +5.26% 115
South East -28 217 £513 +2.50% 196
North West -4 188 £537 +13.05% 55
Yorkshire -41 88 £450 -7.22% 46
Midlands -67 78 £444 -9.81% 83
South West -35 73 £525 +5.00% 65
East of England -13 70 £525 -2.78% 68
Scotland +16 68 £450 +4.35% 46
West Midlands -72 62 £433 -15.87% 48
Wales -11 25 £425 +17.24% 18
North East -20 22 £625 +25.00% 16
East Midlands -25 13 £500 +11.11% 34
Northern Ireland -6 2 £385 - 22
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 14 (1.71%) Confluence
2 10 (1.22%) Microsoft Exchange
3 9 (1.10%) CICS
4 8 (0.98%) SharePoint
5 7 (0.86%) Apache
6 6 (0.73%) nginx
7 3 (0.37%) IIS
7 3 (0.37%) SAS
7 3 (0.37%) Skype for Business
7 3 (0.37%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.24%) Apache Pulsar
8 2 (0.24%) CloudStack
8 2 (0.24%) CMS
8 2 (0.24%) FactoryTalk
8 2 (0.24%) IBM HTTP Server
8 2 (0.24%) Oracle HTTP Server
8 2 (0.24%) Umbraco
8 2 (0.24%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.24%) WebSphere Application Server
8 2 (0.24%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 21 (2.57%) MS Visio
2 13 (1.59%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (0.73%) Microsoft Excel
4 3 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 1 (0.12%) Dynamics GP
1 1 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.12%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 268 (32.80%) Azure
2 159 (19.46%) AWS
3 66 (8.08%) Entra ID
3 66 (8.08%) GCP
4 50 (6.12%) Microsoft 365
5 33 (4.04%) Azure DevOps
6 31 (3.79%) GitHub
7 29 (3.55%) OCI
8 28 (3.43%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 27 (3.30%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 26 (3.18%) IaaS
11 24 (2.94%) SaaS
12 19 (2.33%) Azure Monitor
12 19 (2.33%) Azure Sentinel
13 15 (1.84%) AWS CloudFormation
13 15 (1.84%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 14 (1.71%) GitHub Actions
15 13 (1.59%) Microsoft Purview
16 12 (1.47%) Azure AKS
16 12 (1.47%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 248 (30.35%) WAN
2 225 (27.54%) Network Security
3 209 (25.58%) LAN
4 202 (24.72%) VPN
5 189 (23.13%) DNS
6 153 (18.73%) BGP
7 136 (16.65%) OSPF
8 121 (14.81%) DHCP
9 120 (14.69%) Wireless
10 108 (13.22%) VLAN
11 107 (13.10%) TCP/IP
12 96 (11.75%) SD-WAN
13 85 (10.40%) Wi-Fi
14 77 (9.42%) BIG-IP
15 66 (8.08%) VXLAN
16 60 (7.34%) Ethernet VPN
17 59 (7.22%) IPsec
18 56 (6.85%) Cisco ISE
18 56 (6.85%) MPLS
19 52 (6.36%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (1.22%) PostgreSQL
1 10 (1.22%) SQL Server
2 9 (1.10%) DataStage
2 9 (1.10%) Relational Database
3 7 (0.86%) Azure SQL Database
3 7 (0.86%) Data Lake
3 7 (0.86%) Power BI
4 5 (0.61%) NoSQL
5 4 (0.49%) Amazon RDS
5 4 (0.49%) Delta Lake
5 4 (0.49%) MySQL
5 4 (0.49%) Oracle Database
6 1 (0.12%) EDRMS
6 1 (0.12%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (0.12%) Redis
6 1 (0.12%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 1 (0.12%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 69 (8.45%) JIRA
2 31 (3.79%) GitLab
3 29 (3.55%) Jenkins
4 16 (1.96%) Git
5 12 (1.47%) Sonatype Nexus
6 5 (0.61%) Browser DevTools
7 4 (0.49%) Bitbucket
7 4 (0.49%) Burp Suite
8 3 (0.37%) Jaeger
9 2 (0.24%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 2 (0.24%) Chocolatey
9 2 (0.24%) Cucumber
9 2 (0.24%) Gatling
9 2 (0.24%) Gradle
9 2 (0.24%) Introscope
9 2 (0.24%) LoadRunner
9 2 (0.24%) Metasploit
9 2 (0.24%) REST Assured
9 2 (0.24%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.24%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 173 (21.18%) Social Skills
2 88 (10.77%) Finance
3 70 (8.57%) Analytical Skills
4 68 (8.32%) Public Sector
5 38 (4.65%) Documentation Skills
6 26 (3.18%) Banking
6 26 (3.18%) Telecoms
7 20 (2.45%) Manufacturing
8 15 (1.84%) Legal
8 15 (1.84%) Military
9 13 (1.59%) Influencing Skills
10 8 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
11 7 (0.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 7 (0.86%) Retail
12 6 (0.73%) Police
13 5 (0.61%) Financial Institution
14 4 (0.49%) Aerospace
15 3 (0.37%) Law
16 2 (0.24%) Advertising
16 2 (0.24%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 274 (33.54%) Network Engineer
2 111 (13.59%) Architect
3 107 (13.10%) Senior
4 105 (12.85%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 68 (8.32%) Security Engineer
6 53 (6.49%) Senior Network Engineer
7 44 (5.39%) Network Architect
8 36 (4.41%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
9 35 (4.28%) Cloud Engineer
10 29 (3.55%) Lead
11 28 (3.43%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 24 (2.94%) Consultant
13 23 (2.82%) Technical Architect
14 22 (2.69%) Network Security Engineer
15 19 (2.33%) Designer
15 19 (2.33%) Network Specialist
16 18 (2.20%) Firewall Specialist
16 18 (2.20%) Security Architect
17 17 (2.08%) Cisco Engineer
17 17 (2.08%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 58 (7.10%) 802.1X
2 20 (2.45%) LDAP
3 14 (1.71%) Middleware
4 13 (1.59%) SAML
5 11 (1.35%) Kafka
6 9 (1.10%) LangChain
6 9 (1.10%) PyTorch
6 9 (1.10%) scikit-learn
7 6 (0.73%) ARM Templates
7 6 (0.73%) OpenTelemetry
7 6 (0.73%) SailPoint
7 6 (0.73%) YAML
8 5 (0.61%) OAuth
8 5 (0.61%) React
8 5 (0.61%) Spring Boot
9 4 (0.49%) OAuth2
9 4 (0.49%) Redfish
10 3 (0.37%) Elastic Stack
10 3 (0.37%) LEMP Stack
10 3 (0.37%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 213 (26.07%) Data Centre
2 70 (8.57%) Cloud Native
3 54 (6.61%) PKI
4 51 (6.24%) Hybrid Cloud
4 51 (6.24%) Security Posture
5 32 (3.92%) Operational Technology
6 29 (3.55%) Clustering
7 21 (2.57%) IoT
7 21 (2.57%) Onboarding
7 21 (2.57%) SCADA
8 18 (2.20%) Enterprise Storage
8 18 (2.20%) Management Information System
8 18 (2.20%) Public Cloud
9 16 (1.96%) Data Protection Act
10 14 (1.71%) BYOD
10 14 (1.71%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 13 (1.59%) NHS
12 12 (1.47%) Driving Licence
12 12 (1.47%) Self-Motivation
13 11 (1.35%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 204 (24.97%) Windows
2 129 (15.79%) Linux
3 68 (8.32%) Windows Server
4 30 (3.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 24 (2.94%) Unix
6 10 (1.22%) Solaris
7 9 (1.10%) AIX
7 9 (1.10%) Ubuntu
8 8 (0.98%) CentOS
8 8 (0.98%) VMS
9 7 (0.86%) Windows Server 2019
10 6 (0.73%) Mac OS
11 5 (0.61%) Rocky
11 5 (0.61%) Windows Server 2012
11 5 (0.61%) Windows Server 2016
12 4 (0.49%) Windows 10
13 3 (0.37%) Check Point GAiA
13 3 (0.37%) Data ONTAP
14 2 (0.24%) Oracle Linux
14 2 (0.24%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 137 (16.77%) CI/CD
2 136 (16.65%) Load Balancing
3 132 (16.16%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 130 (15.91%) DevOps
5 121 (14.81%) High Availability
6 119 (14.57%) Problem-Solving
7 117 (14.32%) Infrastructure as Code
8 112 (13.71%) Cybersecurity
9 110 (13.46%) ITIL
10 96 (11.75%) Agile
11 88 (10.77%) Migration
12 87 (10.65%) Zero Trust
13 81 (9.91%) Change Management
14 76 (9.30%) SIEM
15 73 (8.94%) Observability
16 71 (8.69%) Network Segmentation
16 71 (8.69%) Roadmaps
17 63 (7.71%) Technical Leadership
18 62 (7.59%) Project Delivery
18 62 (7.59%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 139 (17.01%) Python
2 92 (11.26%) PowerShell
3 54 (6.61%) Bash
4 27 (3.30%) Bicep
5 25 (3.06%) Java
5 25 (3.06%) SQL
6 9 (1.10%) ActionScript
6 9 (1.10%) COBOL
7 5 (0.61%) Perl
8 4 (0.49%) Go
9 3 (0.37%) JavaScript
9 3 (0.37%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.24%) C++
10 2 (0.24%) Groovy
10 2 (0.24%) Jython
10 2 (0.24%) Rust
11 1 (0.12%) Korn
11 1 (0.12%) Kusto Query Language
11 1 (0.12%) TypeScript
11 1 (0.12%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 301 (36.84%) Security Cleared
2 192 (23.50%) SC Cleared
3 183 (22.40%) Cisco Certification
4 124 (15.18%) CCNP
5 94 (11.51%) CCNA
6 87 (10.65%) DV Cleared
7 64 (7.83%) Degree
8 42 (5.14%) CISSP
9 31 (3.79%) AWS Certification
10 27 (3.30%) Azure Certification
11 19 (2.33%) CCIE
12 18 (2.20%) Network+ Certification
13 17 (2.08%) Microsoft Certification
14 16 (1.96%) CISM
14 16 (1.96%) JNCIS
15 15 (1.84%) Server+ Certification
16 14 (1.71%) JNCIA
17 13 (1.59%) PMP
18 11 (1.35%) BPSS Clearance
18 11 (1.35%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 48 (5.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 34 (4.16%) NIST
3 23 (2.82%) NCSC
4 22 (2.69%) GDPR
5 15 (1.84%) QA
6 13 (1.59%) Cyber Essentials
6 13 (1.59%) PCI DSS
7 8 (0.98%) Data Quality
7 8 (0.98%) Disclosure Scotland
8 6 (0.73%) JSP 440
9 5 (0.61%) SLA
10 4 (0.49%) GxP
10 4 (0.49%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 4 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 4 (0.49%) SOC 2
11 3 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 3 (0.37%) HIPAA
11 3 (0.37%) ISA99
11 3 (0.37%) NIST 800
11 3 (0.37%) RMADS
System Software
1 136 (16.65%) Active Directory
2 111 (13.59%) VMware Infrastructure
3 44 (5.39%) VMware NSX
4 36 (4.41%) Docker
5 32 (3.92%) vSphere
6 26 (3.18%) Hyper-V
7 22 (2.69%) VMware ESXi
8 19 (2.33%) Firmware
9 15 (1.84%) Virtual Machines
10 10 (1.22%) Virtual Desktop
11 3 (0.37%) BitLocker
11 3 (0.37%) Dovecot
11 3 (0.37%) Postfix
12 2 (0.24%) Squid
12 2 (0.24%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.24%) VirtualBox
13 1 (0.12%) Citrix Hypervisor
13 1 (0.12%) FreeRADIUS
13 1 (0.12%) iptables
13 1 (0.12%) KVM
Systems Management
1 140 (17.14%) Terraform
2 97 (11.87%) Ansible
3 57 (6.98%) Kubernetes
4 55 (6.73%) FortiGate
5 23 (2.82%) Microsoft Intune
6 20 (2.45%) Grafana
7 18 (2.20%) Prometheus
8 16 (1.96%) Single Sign-On
9 15 (1.84%) CASB
10 13 (1.59%) Progress Chef
11 11 (1.35%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 10 (1.22%) vCenter Server
13 9 (1.10%) SCCM
14 7 (0.86%) Cisco Prime
14 7 (0.86%) Nessus
15 6 (0.73%) Argo
15 6 (0.73%) VxRail
16 5 (0.61%) Nagios
16 5 (0.61%) Packer
17 4 (0.49%) QRadar
Vendors
1 301 (36.84%) Cisco
2 161 (19.71%) Microsoft
3 149 (18.24%) VMware
4 144 (17.63%) Palo Alto
5 122 (14.93%) F5
6 109 (13.34%) Juniper
7 76 (9.30%) Fortinet
8 66 (8.08%) CheckPoint
9 60 (7.34%) SolarWinds
10 57 (6.98%) Aruba
11 54 (6.61%) Splunk
12 49 (6.00%) ServiceNow
13 44 (5.39%) Google
14 34 (4.16%) Arista
15 26 (3.18%) Extreme Networks
15 26 (3.18%) Red Hat
16 22 (2.69%) Meraki
17 21 (2.57%) Zscaler
18 19 (2.33%) Veeam
19 18 (2.20%) Citrix