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 21 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 53 42 32
Rank change year-on-year -11 -10 +22
Contract jobs citing Firewall 734 732 1,141
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 4.17% 4.43% 5.53%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 32.31% 29.58% 30.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 469 411 739
10th Percentile £293 £275 £300
25th Percentile £400 £394 £385
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% - +5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £583 £600
90th Percentile £650 £638 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 18 58
10th Percentile £23.90 £20.00 £38.94
25th Percentile £29.00 £20.05 £62.50
Median hourly rate £41.50 £27.50 £66.62
Median % change year-on-year +50.91% -58.72% +62.38%
75th Percentile £80.00 £35.00 £75.67
90th Percentile £89.63 £52.13 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £34.00 £27.50 £65.98
% change year-on-year +23.64% -58.32% +86.60%

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 2,272 2,475 3,698
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 12.91% 14.97% 17.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,490 1,364 2,221
10th Percentile £191 £200 £205
25th Percentile £300 £350 £338
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% - +5.56%
75th Percentile £575 £583 £595
90th Percentile £648 £660 £675
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 146 136 282
10th Percentile £15.50 £18.27 £17.72
25th Percentile £18.50 £24.18 £24.38
Median hourly rate £42.50 £48.56 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -12.48% -14.04% +25.53%
75th Percentile £67.25 £67.50 £67.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £75.67
UK median hourly rate £35.50 £45.00 £56.40
% change year-on-year -21.11% -20.21% +28.18%

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 21 November 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 21 November 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 21 November 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 -14 209 £492 -1.11% 124
South East -4 182 £500 - 252
Midlands -8 151 £475 -5.00% 77
West Midlands +12 136 £475 -5.00% 58
Yorkshire -6 108 £488 +14.71% 44
North West -26 97 £523 +4.50% 71
Scotland -22 62 £450 -5.26% 36
East of England -5 55 £479 -8.81% 60
South West -24 55 £540 +2.86% 66
East Midlands -32 15 £492 -4.00% 18
Wales -4 13 £225 -40.98% 19
Northern Ireland - 11 £500 - 10
North East -9 7 £550 +57.14% 10
Channel Islands - 4 £725 -
South Coast - 2 - -
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 38 (5.18%) Confluence
2 35 (4.77%) Microsoft Exchange
3 17 (2.32%) SharePoint
4 11 (1.50%) Apache
4 11 (1.50%) nginx
5 9 (1.23%) OpenStack
6 4 (0.54%) IIS
6 4 (0.54%) JBoss
6 4 (0.54%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.27%) CICS
7 2 (0.27%) WebSphere
8 1 (0.14%) Anypoint
8 1 (0.14%) CMS
8 1 (0.14%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 28 (3.81%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (1.36%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 6 (0.82%) Microsoft Excel
3 6 (0.82%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.27%) Dynamics GP
2 1 (0.14%) Finacle
2 1 (0.14%) Pegasus Opera
2 1 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 190 (25.89%) AWS
2 186 (25.34%) Azure
3 87 (11.85%) Microsoft 365
4 76 (10.35%) GCP
5 54 (7.36%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 48 (6.54%) Amazon EC2
7 41 (5.59%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 38 (5.18%) Amazon S3
9 33 (4.50%) Amazon ELB
9 33 (4.50%) Entra ID
10 27 (3.68%) Azure Sentinel
11 24 (3.27%) Amazon ECS
12 23 (3.13%) AWS KMS
13 17 (2.32%) Serverless
14 16 (2.18%) AWS CloudFormation
14 16 (2.18%) IaaS
15 15 (2.04%) AWS Lambda
16 14 (1.91%) Akamai
16 14 (1.91%) PaaS
17 13 (1.77%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 154 (20.98%) Network Security
2 151 (20.57%) DNS
3 137 (18.66%) VPN
4 111 (15.12%) WAN
5 95 (12.94%) TCP/IP
6 87 (11.85%) Wireless
7 72 (9.81%) BGP
8 68 (9.26%) DHCP
9 66 (8.99%) LAN
10 65 (8.86%) VLAN
11 58 (7.90%) OSPF
12 53 (7.22%) SD-WAN
13 49 (6.68%) Cisco IOS
14 41 (5.59%) Cisco ISE
15 38 (5.18%) Cisco ASA
16 36 (4.90%) SSL
16 36 (4.90%) Wi-Fi
17 34 (4.63%) HTTP
18 31 (4.22%) MPLS
19 27 (3.68%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (5.04%) Amazon RDS
2 23 (3.13%) SQL Server
3 16 (2.18%) PostgreSQL
4 10 (1.36%) Amazon Aurora
5 9 (1.23%) Relational Database
6 4 (0.54%) MySQL
6 4 (0.54%) NoSQL
7 3 (0.41%) DB2
7 3 (0.41%) DynamoDB
8 2 (0.27%) Azure SQL Database
8 2 (0.27%) Oracle Database
9 1 (0.14%) Amazon QuickSight
9 1 (0.14%) BusinessObjects
9 1 (0.14%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
9 1 (0.14%) Elasticsearch
9 1 (0.14%) Redis
Development Applications
1 72 (9.81%) Jenkins
2 60 (8.17%) Git
3 58 (7.90%) JIRA
4 30 (4.09%) GitLab
5 22 (3.00%) Vagrant
6 16 (2.18%) Postman
7 15 (2.04%) Sonatype Nexus
8 10 (1.36%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.14%) Eclipse
9 1 (0.14%) Maven
9 1 (0.14%) MSI
9 1 (0.14%) SonarQube
9 1 (0.14%) Subversion
General
1 186 (25.34%) Social Skills
2 86 (11.72%) Public Sector
3 85 (11.58%) Analytical Skills
4 68 (9.26%) Finance
5 31 (4.22%) Banking
5 31 (4.22%) Documentation Skills
5 31 (4.22%) Telecoms
6 25 (3.41%) Manufacturing
7 24 (3.27%) Games
7 24 (3.27%) Legal
8 16 (2.18%) Presentation Skills
9 9 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
10 8 (1.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 7 (0.95%) Military
12 6 (0.82%) Local Government
12 6 (0.82%) Retail
13 5 (0.68%) Aerospace
13 5 (0.68%) Influencing Skills
13 5 (0.68%) Law
14 4 (0.54%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 168 (22.89%) Network Engineer
2 91 (12.40%) Architect
3 67 (9.13%) Security Engineer
4 66 (8.99%) Senior
5 57 (7.77%) Platform Engineer
6 53 (7.22%) Analyst
7 45 (6.13%) DevOps Engineer
8 42 (5.72%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 39 (5.31%) Network Architect
10 30 (4.09%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
11 29 (3.95%) Support Engineer
12 26 (3.54%) IT Engineer
13 24 (3.27%) AWS Engineer
14 23 (3.13%) Network Security Engineer
14 23 (3.13%) Security Architect
15 21 (2.86%) IT Support
16 20 (2.72%) Cloud Platform Engineer
16 20 (2.72%) Consultant
17 19 (2.59%) Firewall Engineer
17 19 (2.59%) Security Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (3.27%) 802.1X
2 18 (2.45%) LDAP
3 16 (2.18%) RFC 2544
4 12 (1.63%) OAuth
4 12 (1.63%) OAuth2
4 12 (1.63%) OpenID
4 12 (1.63%) REST
4 12 (1.63%) SAML
5 10 (1.36%) JSON
6 9 (1.23%) Node.js
7 8 (1.09%) Middleware
8 5 (0.68%) Elastic Stack
8 5 (0.68%) XML
9 4 (0.54%) Kafka
10 3 (0.41%) CSS
10 3 (0.41%) HTML
10 3 (0.41%) JBoss Seam
10 3 (0.41%) Lambda Expressions
10 3 (0.41%) Microsoft Graph
11 2 (0.27%) ModSecurity
Miscellaneous
1 104 (14.17%) Data Centre
2 49 (6.68%) Security Posture
3 41 (5.59%) PKI
4 39 (5.31%) Operational Technology
5 36 (4.90%) Replication
6 35 (4.77%) Hybrid Cloud
7 23 (3.13%) Onboarding
8 18 (2.45%) Data Protection Act
8 18 (2.45%) Management Information System
9 16 (2.18%) Cloud Native
9 16 (2.18%) Cyber Threat
10 12 (1.63%) Cyber Defence
10 12 (1.63%) Enterprise Software
10 12 (1.63%) Fibre Optics
11 11 (1.50%) Virtual Team
12 10 (1.36%) Security Operations Centre
13 9 (1.23%) Private Cloud
13 9 (1.23%) Product Ownership
13 9 (1.23%) Public Cloud
13 9 (1.23%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 213 (29.02%) Windows
2 149 (20.30%) Linux
3 71 (9.67%) Windows Server
4 31 (4.22%) VMS
5 30 (4.09%) Mac OS
6 28 (3.81%) Android
7 26 (3.54%) Unix
8 25 (3.41%) Amazon Linux
9 20 (2.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 15 (2.04%) Ubuntu
11 11 (1.50%) Windows 10
12 8 (1.09%) Windows 7
13 6 (0.82%) Solaris
13 6 (0.82%) Windows Server 2016
14 5 (0.68%) CentOS
14 5 (0.68%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.68%) Windows Server 2019
15 3 (0.41%) AIX
15 3 (0.41%) Apple iOS
15 3 (0.41%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 135 (18.39%) Cybersecurity
2 112 (15.26%) DevOps
3 109 (14.85%) Problem-Solving
4 93 (12.67%) Cloud Security
5 90 (12.26%) Incident Response
6 84 (11.44%) SIEM
7 80 (10.90%) CI/CD
8 76 (10.35%) ITIL
9 73 (9.95%) Migration
10 72 (9.81%) Agile
11 62 (8.45%) High Availability
11 62 (8.45%) Infrastructure as Code
12 61 (8.31%) Change Management
12 61 (8.31%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 54 (7.36%) Configuration Management
13 54 (7.36%) Containerisation
13 54 (7.36%) Load Balancing
14 52 (7.08%) Security Operations
15 51 (6.95%) Platform Engineering
16 49 (6.68%) Network Design
Programming Languages
1 164 (22.34%) Python
2 143 (19.48%) PowerShell
3 67 (9.13%) Bash
4 40 (5.45%) Perl
5 34 (4.63%) Java
6 28 (3.81%) SQL
7 22 (3.00%) Groovy
8 8 (1.09%) Kusto Query Language
8 8 (1.09%) Ruby
9 7 (0.95%) Shell Script
10 3 (0.41%) Bicep
10 3 (0.41%) JavaScript
10 3 (0.41%) Kotlin
11 2 (0.27%) C#
12 1 (0.14%) C++
12 1 (0.14%) Go
12 1 (0.14%) Korn
12 1 (0.14%) Lisp
12 1 (0.14%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 244 (33.24%) Security Cleared
2 159 (21.66%) SC Cleared
3 131 (17.85%) Cisco Certification
4 97 (13.22%) CCNP
5 65 (8.86%) DV Cleared
6 61 (8.31%) Degree
7 54 (7.36%) CCNA
8 52 (7.08%) CISSP
9 39 (5.31%) AWS Certification
10 36 (4.90%) Azure Certification
11 35 (4.77%) Microsoft Certification
12 31 (4.22%) CCIE
13 25 (3.41%) CISM
14 19 (2.59%) Computer Science Degree
15 12 (1.63%) CEH
16 11 (1.50%) GIAC
17 10 (1.36%) CISMP
17 10 (1.36%) CompTIA Security+
17 10 (1.36%) GSEC
18 9 (1.23%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 56 (7.63%) NIST
2 50 (6.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 45 (6.13%) GDPR
4 21 (2.86%) PCI DSS
5 14 (1.91%) NCSC
6 13 (1.77%) QA
6 13 (1.77%) SLA
7 7 (0.95%) COBIT
7 7 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
8 5 (0.68%) Disclosure Scotland
8 5 (0.68%) PSD2
9 4 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
9 4 (0.54%) GRC
9 4 (0.54%) HIPAA
10 3 (0.41%) Accessibility
10 3 (0.41%) GxP
10 3 (0.41%) NIST 800
11 2 (0.27%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 2 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 1 (0.14%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 140 (19.07%) Active Directory
2 108 (14.71%) VMware Infrastructure
3 89 (12.13%) Docker
4 29 (3.95%) Hyper-V
5 25 (3.41%) DFS Replication
6 19 (2.59%) vSphere
7 17 (2.32%) VMware NSX
8 10 (1.36%) Dovecot
8 10 (1.36%) Postfix
8 10 (1.36%) Squid
9 9 (1.23%) VMware ESXi
10 8 (1.09%) Virtual Machines
11 7 (0.95%) Veritas Cluster Server
12 6 (0.82%) Firmware
12 6 (0.82%) Terminal Services
12 6 (0.82%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.54%) KVM
14 1 (0.14%) NDS
14 1 (0.14%) NFS
14 1 (0.14%) UAG
Systems Management
1 91 (12.40%) Terraform
2 88 (11.99%) Ansible
3 56 (7.63%) Kubernetes
4 47 (6.40%) Microsoft Intune
5 41 (5.59%) SCCM
6 28 (3.81%) FortiGate
7 26 (3.54%) Grafana
8 24 (3.27%) Prometheus
9 21 (2.86%) Puppet
10 18 (2.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 17 (2.32%) vCenter Server
12 15 (2.04%) Single Sign-On
13 14 (1.91%) Nessus
14 11 (1.50%) CSIRT
15 10 (1.36%) Microsoft Clustering
15 10 (1.36%) Proxmox
16 8 (1.09%) Fluentd
16 8 (1.09%) WMI
17 7 (0.95%) NetBackup
17 7 (0.95%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 277 (37.74%) Cisco
2 213 (29.02%) Microsoft
3 127 (17.30%) VMware
4 124 (16.89%) Palo Alto
5 103 (14.03%) F5
6 71 (9.67%) CheckPoint
7 65 (8.86%) Splunk
8 61 (8.31%) Meraki
9 60 (8.17%) Fortinet
10 46 (6.27%) Juniper
11 45 (6.13%) SolarWinds
12 41 (5.59%) Oracle
13 34 (4.63%) ServiceNow
14 32 (4.36%) Google
15 26 (3.54%) Citrix
16 24 (3.27%) Zscaler
17 20 (2.72%) Dell
18 19 (2.59%) Red Hat
19 17 (2.32%) MuleSoft
20 16 (2.18%) Aruba