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 26 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 61 40 35
Rank change year-on-year -21 -5 +20
Contract jobs citing Firewall 682 686 1,005
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.71% 4.64% 5.11%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.14% 28.99% 28.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 449 388 658
10th Percentile £310 £275 £309
25th Percentile £400 £385 £385
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% - +5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £613
90th Percentile £650 £635 £680
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £538
% change year-on-year -3.85% -3.26% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 17 45
10th Percentile £26.45 - £40.63
25th Percentile £41.94 £20.00 £62.50
Median hourly rate £66.50 £35.00 £65.98
Median % change year-on-year +90.00% -46.95% +60.81%
75th Percentile £86.00 £41.25 £76.25
90th Percentile £89.63 £65.50 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £45.33 £35.00 £65.98
% change year-on-year +29.51% -46.95% +106.19%

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 2,263 2,366 3,484
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 12.30% 16.01% 17.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,503 1,344 2,080
10th Percentile £200 £188 £205
25th Percentile £301 £313 £340
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £473 £475
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.53% +5.56%
75th Percentile £564 £575 £596
90th Percentile £650 £650 £683
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 133 114 272
10th Percentile £15.36 £15.22 £17.30
25th Percentile £17.60 £20.88 £24.32
Median hourly rate £42.50 £35.00 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year +21.43% -38.04% +25.53%
75th Percentile £67.84 £62.50 £65.98
90th Percentile £83.60 £70.88 £75.23
UK median hourly rate £34.00 £35.00 £56.40
% change year-on-year -2.86% -37.94% +38.23%

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 26 December 2025.

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 26 December 2025.

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 26 December 2025. 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 -33 198 £519 +9.16% 202
South East +4 184 £495 -1.00% 295
Midlands -22 127 £475 -5.00% 153
West Midlands -1 117 £475 +7.04% 96
North West -18 106 £525 +6.06% 103
Yorkshire -15 87 £450 +5.88% 81
Scotland -14 59 £425 -15.00% 38
South West -28 54 £540 +13.68% 103
East of England -28 41 £475 -9.52% 128
Wales -17 11 £293 -19.86% 38
East Midlands -46 9 £475 -23.11% 51
North East -9 8 £550 - 21
Northern Ireland - 8 £500 - 16
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 33 (4.84%) Confluence
2 13 (1.91%) Microsoft Exchange
3 11 (1.61%) nginx
3 11 (1.61%) SharePoint
4 9 (1.32%) Apache
5 6 (0.88%) IIS
6 5 (0.73%) OpenStack
7 3 (0.44%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.29%) CICS
8 2 (0.29%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.15%) CMS
9 1 (0.15%) JBoss
9 1 (0.15%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 28 (4.11%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (1.76%) MS Visio
3 11 (1.61%) Microsoft Excel
3 11 (1.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (1.47%) Mozilla Thunderbird
5 1 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.15%) Finacle
1 1 (0.15%) Pegasus Opera
1 1 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 192 (28.15%) AWS
2 184 (26.98%) Azure
3 77 (11.29%) GCP
4 51 (7.48%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 50 (7.33%) Microsoft 365
6 44 (6.45%) Amazon EC2
7 35 (5.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 33 (4.84%) Amazon S3
9 30 (4.40%) Entra ID
10 28 (4.11%) Amazon ELB
11 24 (3.52%) Amazon ECS
12 23 (3.37%) Azure Sentinel
13 21 (3.08%) AWS KMS
14 20 (2.93%) AWS CloudFormation
14 20 (2.93%) Serverless
15 18 (2.64%) IaaS
16 17 (2.49%) PaaS
17 16 (2.35%) AWS Lambda
18 15 (2.20%) Azure Monitor
19 14 (2.05%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 163 (23.90%) Network Security
2 151 (22.14%) VPN
3 146 (21.41%) DNS
4 124 (18.18%) WAN
5 91 (13.34%) TCP/IP
6 86 (12.61%) LAN
7 84 (12.32%) BGP
8 77 (11.29%) VLAN
8 77 (11.29%) Wireless
9 70 (10.26%) OSPF
10 58 (8.50%) DHCP
11 49 (7.18%) SD-WAN
12 40 (5.87%) Cisco ASA
13 39 (5.72%) SSL
14 38 (5.57%) Wi-Fi
15 35 (5.13%) Cisco ISE
15 35 (5.13%) IPsec
15 35 (5.13%) MPLS
16 30 (4.40%) HTTP
17 27 (3.96%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (4.84%) Amazon RDS
2 24 (3.52%) SQL Server
3 21 (3.08%) PostgreSQL
4 10 (1.47%) Amazon Aurora
5 4 (0.59%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.59%) Relational Database
6 3 (0.44%) DynamoDB
7 2 (0.29%) Elasticsearch
7 2 (0.29%) MariaDB
7 2 (0.29%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.29%) Oracle Database
8 1 (0.15%) Amazon QuickSight
8 1 (0.15%) Azure SQL Database
8 1 (0.15%) BusinessObjects
8 1 (0.15%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
8 1 (0.15%) Metadata
8 1 (0.15%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (0.15%) Redis
8 1 (0.15%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 58 (8.50%) Jenkins
2 54 (7.92%) JIRA
3 52 (7.62%) Git
4 36 (5.28%) GitLab
5 17 (2.49%) Vagrant
6 16 (2.35%) Sonatype Nexus
7 10 (1.47%) Bitbucket
8 8 (1.17%) Burp Suite
8 8 (1.17%) Metasploit
9 4 (0.59%) CircleCI
9 4 (0.59%) Jaeger
10 2 (0.29%) Postman
11 1 (0.15%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.15%) Eclipse
11 1 (0.15%) MSI
11 1 (0.15%) SonarQube
11 1 (0.15%) Subversion
11 1 (0.15%) Travis CI
General
1 207 (30.35%) Social Skills
2 88 (12.90%) Analytical Skills
3 85 (12.46%) Public Sector
4 62 (9.09%) Finance
5 47 (6.89%) Documentation Skills
6 32 (4.69%) Banking
7 28 (4.11%) Telecoms
8 21 (3.08%) Legal
9 20 (2.93%) Manufacturing
10 16 (2.35%) Presentation Skills
11 9 (1.32%) Military
12 8 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
13 7 (1.03%) Aerospace
13 7 (1.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 7 (1.03%) Law
13 7 (1.03%) Retail
14 6 (0.88%) Financial Institution
15 5 (0.73%) Influencing Skills
16 4 (0.59%) Retail Banking
17 3 (0.44%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 184 (26.98%) Network Engineer
2 90 (13.20%) Architect
3 64 (9.38%) Senior
4 58 (8.50%) Security Engineer
5 48 (7.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 42 (6.16%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
7 39 (5.72%) Platform Engineer
8 38 (5.57%) Network Architect
9 36 (5.28%) DevOps Engineer
10 33 (4.84%) Analyst
11 25 (3.67%) AWS Engineer
12 24 (3.52%) IT Engineer
12 24 (3.52%) Security Architect
13 22 (3.23%) Support Engineer
14 21 (3.08%) Cloud Platform Engineer
14 21 (3.08%) IT Support
15 20 (2.93%) Firewall Engineer
16 19 (2.79%) AWS DevOps
16 19 (2.79%) Consultant
16 19 (2.79%) Network Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (4.25%) 802.1X
2 22 (3.23%) LDAP
3 16 (2.35%) SAML
4 13 (1.91%) Middleware
4 13 (1.91%) OAuth
4 13 (1.91%) OAuth2
4 13 (1.91%) OpenID
5 11 (1.61%) Node.js
6 10 (1.47%) JSON
7 9 (1.32%) RFC 2544
8 8 (1.17%) Kafka
8 8 (1.17%) REST
9 4 (0.59%) OpenTelemetry
9 4 (0.59%) Spring Boot
9 4 (0.59%) XML
10 3 (0.44%) Elastic Stack
10 3 (0.44%) Lambda Expressions
10 3 (0.44%) Microsoft Graph
11 2 (0.29%) ModSecurity
11 2 (0.29%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 120 (17.60%) Data Centre
2 51 (7.48%) Security Posture
3 37 (5.43%) PKI
4 31 (4.55%) Operational Technology
4 31 (4.55%) Replication
5 28 (4.11%) Hybrid Cloud
6 24 (3.52%) Onboarding
7 15 (2.20%) Cloud Native
7 15 (2.20%) Cyber Threat
7 15 (2.20%) Data Protection Act
8 13 (1.91%) Management Information System
8 13 (1.91%) Security Operations Centre
9 10 (1.47%) Cyber Defence
9 10 (1.47%) Enterprise Software
9 10 (1.47%) Fat Client
9 10 (1.47%) Private Cloud
9 10 (1.47%) Thin Client
10 9 (1.32%) Legacy Systems
10 9 (1.32%) Product Ownership
10 9 (1.32%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 197 (28.89%) Windows
2 151 (22.14%) Linux
3 75 (11.00%) Windows Server
4 26 (3.81%) VMS
5 23 (3.37%) Unix
6 20 (2.93%) Amazon Linux
7 17 (2.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 14 (2.05%) Ubuntu
9 10 (1.47%) Mac OS
9 10 (1.47%) Windows 10
9 10 (1.47%) Windows 7
10 9 (1.32%) Windows Server 2019
11 6 (0.88%) Android
11 6 (0.88%) Windows Server 2012
11 6 (0.88%) Windows Server 2016
12 3 (0.44%) Apple iOS
12 3 (0.44%) CentOS
12 3 (0.44%) Solaris
13 2 (0.29%) CatOS
13 2 (0.29%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 134 (19.65%) Cybersecurity
2 117 (17.16%) Problem-Solving
3 100 (14.66%) DevOps
4 88 (12.90%) CI/CD
4 88 (12.90%) Incident Response
5 83 (12.17%) SIEM
6 72 (10.56%) Cloud Security
6 72 (10.56%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 71 (10.41%) Infrastructure as Code
8 66 (9.68%) ITIL
9 61 (8.94%) High Availability
10 60 (8.80%) Migration
11 59 (8.65%) Agile
11 59 (8.65%) Containerisation
12 57 (8.36%) Load Balancing
13 54 (7.92%) Change Management
14 52 (7.62%) Network Design
14 52 (7.62%) Zero Trust
15 48 (7.04%) Disaster Recovery
16 47 (6.89%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 142 (20.82%) Python
2 121 (17.74%) PowerShell
3 68 (9.97%) Bash
4 38 (5.57%) SQL
5 34 (4.99%) Java
5 34 (4.99%) Perl
6 17 (2.49%) Groovy
7 10 (1.47%) Ruby
8 9 (1.32%) Shell Script
9 7 (1.03%) Bicep
10 5 (0.73%) Kusto Query Language
11 4 (0.59%) C#
11 4 (0.59%) Rust
12 3 (0.44%) Go
13 1 (0.15%) C++
13 1 (0.15%) JavaScript
13 1 (0.15%) Korn
13 1 (0.15%) Lisp
13 1 (0.15%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 278 (40.76%) Security Cleared
2 192 (28.15%) SC Cleared
3 131 (19.21%) Cisco Certification
4 108 (15.84%) CCNP
5 68 (9.97%) Degree
6 65 (9.53%) DV Cleared
7 54 (7.92%) CISSP
8 49 (7.18%) CCNA
9 36 (5.28%) AWS Certification
10 33 (4.84%) Microsoft Certification
11 32 (4.69%) Azure Certification
12 27 (3.96%) CCIE
13 26 (3.81%) CISM
14 14 (2.05%) CompTIA Security+
15 13 (1.91%) CEH
16 12 (1.76%) Computer Science Degree
17 11 (1.61%) GIAC
18 10 (1.47%) Network+ Certification
19 9 (1.32%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 9 (1.32%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 56 (8.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 52 (7.62%) NIST
3 41 (6.01%) GDPR
4 29 (4.25%) PCI DSS
5 16 (2.35%) SLA
6 13 (1.91%) NCSC
6 13 (1.91%) QA
7 12 (1.76%) Cyber Essentials
8 7 (1.03%) COBIT
9 6 (0.88%) PMO
10 5 (0.73%) PSD2
11 4 (0.59%) Actionable Recommendations
12 3 (0.44%) NIST 800
13 2 (0.29%) Disclosure Scotland
13 2 (0.29%) GRC
13 2 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 2 (0.29%) JSP 440
14 1 (0.15%) GAMP
14 1 (0.15%) GxP
14 1 (0.15%) HIPAA
System Software
1 122 (17.89%) Active Directory
2 107 (15.69%) VMware Infrastructure
3 91 (13.34%) Docker
4 33 (4.84%) Hyper-V
5 24 (3.52%) vSphere
6 23 (3.37%) VMware NSX
7 20 (2.93%) DFS Replication
8 13 (1.91%) VMware ESXi
9 11 (1.61%) Virtual Machines
10 10 (1.47%) Dovecot
10 10 (1.47%) Postfix
10 10 (1.47%) Squid
11 6 (0.88%) Firmware
11 6 (0.88%) Virtual Servers
12 5 (0.73%) KVM
12 5 (0.73%) Terminal Services
13 2 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
13 2 (0.29%) Xen
13 2 (0.29%) XenApp
14 1 (0.15%) UAG
Systems Management
1 98 (14.37%) Terraform
2 76 (11.14%) Ansible
3 65 (9.53%) Kubernetes
4 29 (4.25%) FortiGate
5 27 (3.96%) Grafana
6 23 (3.37%) Prometheus
7 22 (3.23%) vCenter Server
8 21 (3.08%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 21 (3.08%) Microsoft Intune
9 19 (2.79%) Single Sign-On
10 17 (2.49%) SCCM
11 16 (2.35%) Nessus
12 11 (1.61%) Nmap
12 11 (1.61%) Proxmox
13 10 (1.47%) CSIRT
13 10 (1.47%) WMI
14 8 (1.17%) Fluentd
14 8 (1.17%) Nagios
15 7 (1.03%) NetBackup
15 7 (1.03%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 258 (37.83%) Cisco
2 160 (23.46%) Microsoft
2 160 (23.46%) Palo Alto
3 131 (19.21%) VMware
4 96 (14.08%) F5
5 83 (12.17%) CheckPoint
6 64 (9.38%) Fortinet
7 56 (8.21%) Splunk
8 50 (7.33%) Juniper
9 43 (6.30%) Meraki
10 37 (5.43%) Oracle
10 37 (5.43%) SolarWinds
11 33 (4.84%) Google
12 32 (4.69%) Aruba
12 32 (4.69%) ServiceNow
13 27 (3.96%) Citrix
14 20 (2.93%) Zscaler
15 18 (2.64%) Dell
16 17 (2.49%) Red Hat
17 11 (1.61%) Blue Coat