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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 19 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 50 43 31
Rank change year-on-year -7 -12 +26
Contract jobs citing Firewall 682 752 1,198
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 4.41% 4.19% 5.58%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 32.68% 29.00% 33.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 411 455 800
10th Percentile £293 £294 £273
25th Percentile £400 £413 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £508 £475
Median % change year-on-year -3.94% +6.84% -1.96%
75th Percentile £588 £608 £592
90th Percentile £650 £659 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 27 53
10th Percentile £14.48 £20.00 £36.13
25th Percentile £23.20 £20.72 £61.00
Median hourly rate £30.00 £47.50 £65.98
Median % change year-on-year -36.84% -28.01% +48.44%
75th Percentile £49.25 £81.12 £75.00
90th Percentile £89.63 £87.46 £76.47
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £65.99
% change year-on-year -14.29% -46.96% +60.83%

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 2,087 2,593 3,527
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 13.49% 14.46% 16.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,312 1,439 2,158
10th Percentile £200 £205 £206
25th Percentile £315 £357 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £453
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +10.50% +0.56%
75th Percentile £575 £596 £588
90th Percentile £640 £675 £675
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 134 218 247
10th Percentile £15.03 £14.16 £16.05
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.37 £24.63
Median hourly rate £42.50 £57.35 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year -25.89% -0.26% +27.78%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £82.51 £75.00 £75.67
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £51.00 £56.49
% change year-on-year -16.67% -9.72% +36.12%

Firewall
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Job postings citing Firewall as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Job vacancy trend for Firewall 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 September 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 19 September 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 19 September 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
South East -4 184 £500 - 200
North of England -8 172 £480 -15.42% 139
Midlands +1 140 £475 -7.99% 79
West Midlands +18 124 £475 -9.52% 49
Yorkshire -3 87 £490 -14.50% 55
North West -19 82 £475 -17.39% 72
South West -11 59 £485 +2.11% 43
Scotland -3 57 £450 -10.00% 41
East of England -1 47 £501 +0.25% 75
East Midlands -30 16 £492 -1.35% 30
Northern Ireland - 15 £475 - 11
Wales -2 12 £200 -9.09% 6
Channel Islands - 4 £725 -
North East 0 3 £575 +35.29% 17
South Coast - 2 - -
Firewall
UK

Firewall
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 45 (6.60%) Microsoft Exchange
2 34 (4.99%) Confluence
3 16 (2.35%) SharePoint
4 11 (1.61%) nginx
5 6 (0.88%) Apache
6 5 (0.73%) OpenStack
6 5 (0.73%) Tomcat
7 4 (0.59%) JBoss
8 2 (0.29%) CICS
8 2 (0.29%) IIS
8 2 (0.29%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.15%) Anypoint
9 1 (0.15%) CMS
9 1 (0.15%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 25 (3.67%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (1.47%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 9 (1.32%) Microsoft Excel
4 7 (1.03%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.59%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.29%) Dynamics GP
1 2 (0.29%) SAP PM
2 1 (0.15%) Distributed Ledger
2 1 (0.15%) Finacle
2 1 (0.15%) Pegasus Opera
2 1 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 162 (23.75%) Azure
2 157 (23.02%) AWS
3 97 (14.22%) Microsoft 365
4 67 (9.82%) GCP
5 39 (5.72%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 38 (5.57%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 31 (4.55%) Amazon EC2
7 31 (4.55%) Amazon S3
8 30 (4.40%) Amazon ELB
9 28 (4.11%) Azure Sentinel
10 25 (3.67%) AWS KMS
11 24 (3.52%) Entra ID
12 20 (2.93%) IaaS
13 17 (2.49%) Akamai
13 17 (2.49%) OpenShift
14 16 (2.35%) PaaS
15 13 (1.91%) Amazon ECS
16 12 (1.76%) Amazon Glacier
17 10 (1.47%) Route 53
18 8 (1.17%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 145 (21.26%) VPN
2 143 (20.97%) Network Security
3 133 (19.50%) DNS
4 109 (15.98%) WAN
5 101 (14.81%) TCP/IP
6 85 (12.46%) Wireless
7 75 (11.00%) BGP
8 70 (10.26%) OSPF
9 68 (9.97%) LAN
10 65 (9.53%) VLAN
11 63 (9.24%) DHCP
12 45 (6.60%) SD-WAN
13 43 (6.30%) Cisco IOS
14 41 (6.01%) SSL
15 40 (5.87%) IPsec
16 38 (5.57%) Wi-Fi
17 36 (5.28%) Intrusion Detection
18 34 (4.99%) Cisco ASA
19 32 (4.69%) Cisco ISE
19 32 (4.69%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (4.69%) Amazon RDS
2 23 (3.37%) SQL Server
3 16 (2.35%) PostgreSQL
4 10 (1.47%) Amazon Aurora
5 9 (1.32%) Elasticsearch
6 8 (1.17%) Big Data
7 7 (1.03%) Relational Database
8 6 (0.88%) NoSQL
9 5 (0.73%) MySQL
10 4 (0.59%) Azure SQL Database
10 4 (0.59%) DB2
10 4 (0.59%) Oracle Database
11 2 (0.29%) Delta Lake
11 2 (0.29%) DynamoDB
11 2 (0.29%) GIS
11 2 (0.29%) Oracle Reports
11 2 (0.29%) Power BI
12 1 (0.15%) BusinessObjects
12 1 (0.15%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
12 1 (0.15%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 62 (9.09%) Jenkins
2 47 (6.89%) Git
3 44 (6.45%) JIRA
4 22 (3.23%) Vagrant
5 17 (2.49%) GitLab
6 16 (2.35%) Postman
7 5 (0.73%) Sonatype Nexus
8 3 (0.44%) Maven
9 2 (0.29%) Gradle
10 1 (0.15%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.15%) Eclipse
10 1 (0.15%) SonarQube
General
1 150 (21.99%) Social Skills
2 85 (12.46%) Public Sector
3 70 (10.26%) Analytical Skills
4 60 (8.80%) Finance
5 37 (5.43%) Telecoms
6 27 (3.96%) Banking
7 24 (3.52%) Games
8 23 (3.37%) Legal
8 23 (3.37%) Manufacturing
9 16 (2.35%) Documentation Skills
10 14 (2.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 10 (1.47%) Military
11 10 (1.47%) Presentation Skills
12 8 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
13 7 (1.03%) Law
14 5 (0.73%) Local Government
14 5 (0.73%) Retail
15 3 (0.44%) Japanese Language
15 3 (0.44%) Retail Banking
16 2 (0.29%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 163 (23.90%) Network Engineer
2 63 (9.24%) Architect
3 60 (8.80%) Security Engineer
4 58 (8.50%) Senior
5 52 (7.62%) Analyst
6 43 (6.30%) Platform Engineer
7 42 (6.16%) DevOps Engineer
8 38 (5.57%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 36 (5.28%) Support Engineer
10 35 (5.13%) Network Architect
11 34 (4.99%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 24 (3.52%) AWS Engineer
13 23 (3.37%) Administrator
14 21 (3.08%) 3rd Line Engineer
15 20 (2.93%) Lead
15 20 (2.93%) Network Security Engineer
16 19 (2.79%) AWS DevOps
16 19 (2.79%) AWS DevOps Engineer
16 19 (2.79%) Security Analyst
16 19 (2.79%) Technical Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (2.93%) 802.1X
1 20 (2.93%) RFC 2544
2 18 (2.64%) LDAP
3 13 (1.91%) Elastic Stack
4 9 (1.32%) REST
5 8 (1.17%) JSON
6 7 (1.03%) Kafka
6 7 (1.03%) Middleware
7 6 (0.88%) JBoss Seam
8 4 (0.59%) XML
9 3 (0.44%) CSS
9 3 (0.44%) HTML
9 3 (0.44%) ModSecurity
10 2 (0.29%) Microsoft Graph
11 1 (0.15%) .NET
11 1 (0.15%) ARM Templates
11 1 (0.15%) JWT
11 1 (0.15%) Lucene
11 1 (0.15%) MUnit
11 1 (0.15%) ODBC
Miscellaneous
1 96 (14.08%) Data Centre
2 38 (5.57%) Security Posture
3 35 (5.13%) Hybrid Cloud
4 34 (4.99%) PKI
5 33 (4.84%) Operational Technology
6 30 (4.40%) Replication
7 25 (3.67%) Management Information System
8 20 (2.93%) Data Protection Act
8 20 (2.93%) Onboarding
9 19 (2.79%) Cyber Threat
10 17 (2.49%) Fibre Optics
11 15 (2.20%) Cyber Defence
12 12 (1.76%) Enterprise Software
13 11 (1.61%) Cloud Native
13 11 (1.61%) Clustering
13 11 (1.61%) SCADA
13 11 (1.61%) Virtual Team
14 9 (1.32%) Public Cloud
15 8 (1.17%) Driving Licence
16 7 (1.03%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 185 (27.13%) Windows
2 106 (15.54%) Linux
3 59 (8.65%) Windows Server
4 35 (5.13%) Mac OS
5 30 (4.40%) Android
6 28 (4.11%) VMS
7 24 (3.52%) Unix
8 22 (3.23%) Amazon Linux
8 22 (3.23%) Windows 10
9 16 (2.35%) Ubuntu
10 15 (2.20%) Windows Server 2016
11 11 (1.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 9 (1.32%) Solaris
13 8 (1.17%) Windows Server 2012
14 6 (0.88%) Check Point GAiA
14 6 (0.88%) Windows Server 2019
15 5 (0.73%) CentOS
16 4 (0.59%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.44%) AIX
17 3 (0.44%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 119 (17.45%) Cybersecurity
2 106 (15.54%) DevOps
3 90 (13.20%) Cloud Security
3 90 (13.20%) Problem-Solving
4 86 (12.61%) ITIL
5 84 (12.32%) SIEM
6 76 (11.14%) Migration
7 71 (10.41%) Incident Response
8 66 (9.68%) High Availability
9 65 (9.53%) Agile
10 64 (9.38%) Change Management
11 61 (8.94%) CI/CD
12 54 (7.92%) Configuration Management
12 54 (7.92%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 50 (7.33%) Network Design
14 49 (7.18%) Security Operations
14 49 (7.18%) Service Management
15 46 (6.74%) Disaster Recovery
15 46 (6.74%) Network Architecture
16 43 (6.30%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 124 (18.18%) Python
2 108 (15.84%) PowerShell
3 39 (5.72%) Bash
4 34 (4.99%) SQL
5 28 (4.11%) Java
6 25 (3.67%) Perl
7 22 (3.23%) Groovy
8 10 (1.47%) Kusto Query Language
9 9 (1.32%) Shell Script
10 3 (0.44%) Bicep
10 3 (0.44%) Go
10 3 (0.44%) JavaScript
10 3 (0.44%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.15%) C#
11 1 (0.15%) C++
11 1 (0.15%) Korn
11 1 (0.15%) PL/SQL
11 1 (0.15%) VB
11 1 (0.15%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 223 (32.70%) Security Cleared
2 147 (21.55%) SC Cleared
3 126 (18.48%) Cisco Certification
4 90 (13.20%) CCNP
5 74 (10.85%) Degree
6 67 (9.82%) DV Cleared
7 52 (7.62%) CCNA
8 38 (5.57%) CISSP
9 33 (4.84%) Azure Certification
10 27 (3.96%) CCIE
11 25 (3.67%) Microsoft Certification
12 24 (3.52%) AWS Certification
12 24 (3.52%) Computer Science Degree
13 18 (2.64%) CISM
14 14 (2.05%) CCSE
15 10 (1.47%) CEH
15 10 (1.47%) CISMP
15 10 (1.47%) GSEC
16 9 (1.32%) CCSA
17 8 (1.17%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 39 (5.72%) GDPR
2 31 (4.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 31 (4.55%) NIST
3 17 (2.49%) SLA
4 14 (2.05%) PCI DSS
4 14 (2.05%) QA
5 10 (1.47%) NCSC
6 8 (1.17%) HIPAA
7 6 (0.88%) COBIT
7 6 (0.88%) Disclosure Scotland
8 5 (0.73%) Accessibility
9 3 (0.44%) Actionable Recommendations
9 3 (0.44%) GRC
9 3 (0.44%) GxP
9 3 (0.44%) PSD2
10 2 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.29%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 2 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 2 (0.29%) SOC 2
System Software
1 121 (17.74%) Active Directory
2 79 (11.58%) VMware Infrastructure
3 71 (10.41%) Docker
4 32 (4.69%) Hyper-V
5 27 (3.96%) DFS Replication
6 19 (2.79%) VMware ESXi
7 16 (2.35%) vSphere
8 14 (2.05%) Terminal Services
9 10 (1.47%) Dovecot
9 10 (1.47%) Postfix
9 10 (1.47%) Squid
10 9 (1.32%) Virtual Machines
11 8 (1.17%) BitLocker
11 8 (1.17%) Microsoft App-V
12 7 (1.03%) Veritas Cluster Server
12 7 (1.03%) VMware NSX
13 4 (0.59%) KVM
14 3 (0.44%) Firmware
15 2 (0.29%) XenApp
16 1 (0.15%) Snort
Systems Management
1 85 (12.46%) Ansible
2 64 (9.38%) Terraform
3 43 (6.30%) Kubernetes
4 41 (6.01%) Microsoft Intune
4 41 (6.01%) SCCM
5 33 (4.84%) Puppet
6 32 (4.69%) Grafana
7 29 (4.25%) Prometheus
8 28 (4.11%) FortiGate
9 19 (2.79%) vCenter Server
10 15 (2.20%) Nessus
11 12 (1.76%) CSIRT
11 12 (1.76%) Nagios
12 10 (1.47%) Microsoft Clustering
12 10 (1.47%) Proxmox
13 8 (1.17%) vMotion
14 7 (1.03%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 7 (1.03%) NetBackup
14 7 (1.03%) Oracle RMAN
15 6 (0.88%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 281 (41.20%) Cisco
2 197 (28.89%) Microsoft
3 115 (16.86%) Palo Alto
4 94 (13.78%) VMware
5 90 (13.20%) F5
6 81 (11.88%) CheckPoint
7 65 (9.53%) Fortinet
8 58 (8.50%) Splunk
9 49 (7.18%) Meraki
10 48 (7.04%) Juniper
10 48 (7.04%) SolarWinds
11 41 (6.01%) Oracle
12 39 (5.72%) ServiceNow
13 30 (4.40%) Citrix
14 27 (3.96%) Google
15 23 (3.37%) Zscaler
16 21 (3.08%) HP
17 17 (2.49%) Dell
17 17 (2.49%) MuleSoft
18 14 (2.05%) Aruba