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

6 months to
9 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 70 40 40
Rank change year-on-year -30 0 -4
Contract jobs citing Firewall 815 700 880
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.03% 4.78% 4.18%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 27.74% 32.59% 26.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 542 400 553
10th Percentile £332 £302 £275
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% +2.88%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £648 £638 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 23 34
10th Percentile £23.26 £14.20 £22.85
25th Percentile £36.36 £14.66 £26.25
Median hourly rate £57.37 £30.00 £82.38
Median % change year-on-year +91.23% -63.58% +31.71%
75th Percentile £70.94 £31.89 £87.46
90th Percentile £84.49 £44.65 £87.53
UK median hourly rate £59.37 £30.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +97.89% -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 2,938 2,148 3,304
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.94% 14.68% 15.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,710 1,312 1,865
10th Percentile £213 £200 £203
25th Percentile £368 £325 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £482 £470 £490
Median % change year-on-year +2.58% -4.08% +3.16%
75th Percentile £581 £575 £600
90th Percentile £650 £638 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £481 £500
% change year-on-year +4.06% -3.90% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 272 129 368
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.83 £13.50
25th Percentile £19.34 £17.30 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.22 £36.65 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.45% -22.85% +5.56%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £82.48 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £26.55 £45.00 £44.00
% change year-on-year -41.00% +2.27% +53.04%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 -16 288 £500 +5.26% 95
South East -27 217 £500 - 164
North West 0 186 £528 +11.16% 50
Yorkshire -40 86 £438 -10.21% 34
Midlands -65 81 £438 -7.89% 61
East of England -10 72 £525 -0.94% 38
South West -41 71 £538 +7.50% 55
Scotland +17 67 £456 +5.80% 26
West Midlands -62 66 £427 -18.67% 42
Wales -17 25 £425 +30.77% 8
North East -13 22 £625 +25.00% 13
East Midlands -27 12 £500 +11.11% 19
Northern Ireland -2 2 £385 - 20
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 (1.72%) Confluence
2 9 (1.10%) CICS
2 9 (1.10%) Microsoft Exchange
2 9 (1.10%) SharePoint
3 7 (0.86%) Apache
4 6 (0.74%) nginx
5 3 (0.37%) IIS
5 3 (0.37%) SAS
5 3 (0.37%) Skype for Business
5 3 (0.37%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.25%) Apache Pulsar
6 2 (0.25%) CloudStack
6 2 (0.25%) CMS
6 2 (0.25%) FactoryTalk
6 2 (0.25%) IBM HTTP Server
6 2 (0.25%) Oracle HTTP Server
6 2 (0.25%) Umbraco
6 2 (0.25%) WebSphere
6 2 (0.25%) WebSphere Application Server
6 2 (0.25%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 22 (2.70%) MS Visio
2 13 (1.60%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (0.74%) 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
1 265 (32.52%) Azure
2 158 (19.39%) AWS
3 66 (8.10%) Entra ID
4 65 (7.98%) GCP
5 50 (6.13%) Microsoft 365
6 33 (4.05%) Azure DevOps
7 31 (3.80%) GitHub
8 30 (3.68%) OCI
9 29 (3.56%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 27 (3.31%) IaaS
11 26 (3.19%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 24 (2.94%) SaaS
13 20 (2.45%) Azure Sentinel
14 18 (2.21%) Azure Monitor
15 16 (1.96%) Azure ExpressRoute
16 14 (1.72%) AWS CloudFormation
16 14 (1.72%) GitHub Actions
17 13 (1.60%) Microsoft Purview
18 12 (1.47%) Azure AKS
18 12 (1.47%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 250 (30.67%) WAN
2 222 (27.24%) Network Security
3 209 (25.64%) LAN
4 201 (24.66%) VPN
5 186 (22.82%) DNS
6 150 (18.40%) BGP
7 135 (16.56%) OSPF
8 122 (14.97%) Wireless
9 114 (13.99%) DHCP
10 110 (13.50%) VLAN
11 101 (12.39%) TCP/IP
12 98 (12.02%) SD-WAN
13 84 (10.31%) Wi-Fi
14 79 (9.69%) BIG-IP
15 67 (8.22%) VXLAN
16 61 (7.48%) Ethernet VPN
17 59 (7.24%) IPsec
18 55 (6.75%) Cisco ISE
19 54 (6.63%) MPLS
20 52 (6.38%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (1.23%) PostgreSQL
1 10 (1.23%) 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%) Amazon Athena
6 1 (0.12%) Amazon QuickSight
6 1 (0.12%) Amazon Redshift
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 (8.47%) JIRA
2 32 (3.93%) GitLab
3 29 (3.56%) Jenkins
4 17 (2.09%) 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 (0.25%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 2 (0.25%) Chocolatey
9 2 (0.25%) Cucumber
9 2 (0.25%) Gatling
9 2 (0.25%) Gradle
9 2 (0.25%) Introscope
9 2 (0.25%) LoadRunner
9 2 (0.25%) Metasploit
9 2 (0.25%) REST Assured
9 2 (0.25%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.25%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 172 (21.10%) Social Skills
2 84 (10.31%) Finance
3 67 (8.22%) Analytical Skills
3 67 (8.22%) Public Sector
4 40 (4.91%) Documentation Skills
5 25 (3.07%) Banking
6 24 (2.94%) Telecoms
7 19 (2.33%) Manufacturing
8 16 (1.96%) Legal
9 14 (1.72%) Military
10 13 (1.60%) Influencing Skills
11 8 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
12 7 (0.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 7 (0.86%) Retail
13 5 (0.61%) Police
14 4 (0.49%) Law
15 3 (0.37%) Aerospace
15 3 (0.37%) Financial Institution
16 2 (0.25%) Automotive
16 2 (0.25%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 274 (33.62%) Network Engineer
2 116 (14.23%) Architect
3 103 (12.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 101 (12.39%) Senior
5 65 (7.98%) Security Engineer
6 47 (5.77%) Network Architect
6 47 (5.77%) Senior Network Engineer
7 37 (4.54%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
8 35 (4.29%) Cloud Engineer
9 28 (3.44%) Lead
10 27 (3.31%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
11 24 (2.94%) Consultant
11 24 (2.94%) Technical Architect
12 21 (2.58%) Network Security Engineer
13 20 (2.45%) Designer
14 19 (2.33%) Network Specialist
14 19 (2.33%) Solutions Architect
15 18 (2.21%) Firewall Specialist
15 18 (2.21%) Security Architect
16 17 (2.09%) Cisco Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 59 (7.24%) 802.1X
2 21 (2.58%) LDAP
3 16 (1.96%) SAML
4 14 (1.72%) Middleware
5 11 (1.35%) Kafka
6 9 (1.10%) LangChain
6 9 (1.10%) PyTorch
6 9 (1.10%) scikit-learn
7 7 (0.86%) OAuth
8 6 (0.74%) ARM Templates
8 6 (0.74%) OAuth2
8 6 (0.74%) OpenTelemetry
8 6 (0.74%) SailPoint
8 6 (0.74%) YAML
9 5 (0.61%) React
9 5 (0.61%) Spring Boot
10 4 (0.49%) OpenID
10 4 (0.49%) Redfish
11 3 (0.37%) LAMP
11 3 (0.37%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 214 (26.26%) Data Centre
2 69 (8.47%) Cloud Native
3 51 (6.26%) Security Posture
4 50 (6.13%) Hybrid Cloud
5 48 (5.89%) PKI
6 32 (3.93%) Operational Technology
7 28 (3.44%) Clustering
8 21 (2.58%) IoT
8 21 (2.58%) Onboarding
8 21 (2.58%) SCADA
9 18 (2.21%) Enterprise Storage
9 18 (2.21%) Management Information System
9 18 (2.21%) Public Cloud
10 16 (1.96%) Data Protection Act
11 14 (1.72%) BYOD
11 14 (1.72%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 14 (1.72%) NHS
12 13 (1.60%) Private Cloud
13 12 (1.47%) Driving Licence
14 11 (1.35%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 198 (24.29%) Windows
2 122 (14.97%) Linux
3 68 (8.34%) Windows Server
4 27 (3.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 24 (2.94%) Unix
6 10 (1.23%) Solaris
7 9 (1.10%) AIX
7 9 (1.10%) Ubuntu
8 8 (0.98%) VMS
9 7 (0.86%) CentOS
9 7 (0.86%) Windows Server 2019
10 6 (0.74%) Mac OS
11 5 (0.61%) Windows Server 2016
12 4 (0.49%) Rocky
12 4 (0.49%) Windows 10
12 4 (0.49%) Windows Server 2012
13 3 (0.37%) Check Point GAiA
13 3 (0.37%) Data ONTAP
14 2 (0.25%) CatOS
14 2 (0.25%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 139 (17.06%) Load Balancing
2 134 (16.44%) CI/CD
3 130 (15.95%) DevOps
4 129 (15.83%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 120 (14.72%) High Availability
6 115 (14.11%) Infrastructure as Code
7 114 (13.99%) Problem-Solving
8 110 (13.50%) ITIL
9 109 (13.37%) Cybersecurity
10 94 (11.53%) Agile
11 86 (10.55%) Migration
11 86 (10.55%) Zero Trust
12 79 (9.69%) Change Management
13 73 (8.96%) Observability
14 72 (8.83%) Network Segmentation
14 72 (8.83%) SIEM
15 71 (8.71%) Roadmaps
16 63 (7.73%) Validation
17 61 (7.48%) Network Design
18 60 (7.36%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 136 (16.69%) Python
2 87 (10.67%) PowerShell
3 50 (6.13%) Bash
4 26 (3.19%) Bicep
5 25 (3.07%) SQL
6 24 (2.94%) Java
7 9 (1.10%) ActionScript
7 9 (1.10%) COBOL
8 5 (0.61%) Perl
9 4 (0.49%) Go
10 3 (0.37%) JavaScript
10 3 (0.37%) PL/SQL
11 2 (0.25%) C++
11 2 (0.25%) Groovy
11 2 (0.25%) Jython
11 2 (0.25%) Rust
12 1 (0.12%) Korn
12 1 (0.12%) Kusto Query Language
12 1 (0.12%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.12%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 297 (36.44%) Security Cleared
2 193 (23.68%) SC Cleared
3 184 (22.58%) Cisco Certification
4 126 (15.46%) CCNP
5 96 (11.78%) CCNA
6 81 (9.94%) DV Cleared
7 65 (7.98%) Degree
8 40 (4.91%) CISSP
9 30 (3.68%) AWS Certification
10 26 (3.19%) Azure Certification
11 19 (2.33%) CCIE
11 19 (2.33%) Microsoft Certification
12 18 (2.21%) Network+ Certification
13 17 (2.09%) JNCIS
14 15 (1.84%) CISM
14 15 (1.84%) Server+ Certification
15 14 (1.72%) JNCIA
16 13 (1.60%) PMP
17 11 (1.35%) BPSS Clearance
17 11 (1.35%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 47 (5.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 33 (4.05%) NIST
3 24 (2.94%) NCSC
4 22 (2.70%) GDPR
5 15 (1.84%) QA
6 13 (1.60%) Cyber Essentials
6 13 (1.60%) PCI DSS
7 8 (0.98%) Data Quality
7 8 (0.98%) Disclosure Scotland
8 6 (0.74%) JSP 440
8 6 (0.74%) SLA
9 4 (0.49%) GxP
9 4 (0.49%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
9 4 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 4 (0.49%) SOC 2
10 3 (0.37%) HIPAA
10 3 (0.37%) ISA99
10 3 (0.37%) NIST 800
10 3 (0.37%) RMADS
11 2 (0.25%) 21 CFR Part 11
System Software
1 135 (16.56%) Active Directory
2 108 (13.25%) VMware Infrastructure
3 42 (5.15%) VMware NSX
4 33 (4.05%) Docker
5 31 (3.80%) vSphere
6 22 (2.70%) Hyper-V
6 22 (2.70%) VMware ESXi
7 19 (2.33%) Firmware
8 15 (1.84%) Virtual Machines
9 10 (1.23%) Virtual Desktop
10 3 (0.37%) BitLocker
10 3 (0.37%) Dovecot
10 3 (0.37%) Postfix
11 2 (0.25%) Squid
11 2 (0.25%) Virtual Servers
11 2 (0.25%) VirtualBox
12 1 (0.12%) FreeRADIUS
12 1 (0.12%) iptables
12 1 (0.12%) KVM
12 1 (0.12%) NFS
Systems Management
1 137 (16.81%) Terraform
2 93 (11.41%) Ansible
3 55 (6.75%) FortiGate
4 53 (6.50%) Kubernetes
5 24 (2.94%) Microsoft Intune
6 21 (2.58%) Grafana
7 20 (2.45%) Single Sign-On
8 19 (2.33%) Prometheus
9 15 (1.84%) CASB
10 13 (1.60%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 12 (1.47%) Progress Chef
12 10 (1.23%) vCenter Server
13 8 (0.98%) Cisco Prime
13 8 (0.98%) SCCM
14 7 (0.86%) Nessus
15 6 (0.74%) Argo
15 6 (0.74%) Nagios
16 5 (0.61%) Packer
16 5 (0.61%) VxRail
17 4 (0.49%) QRadar
Vendors
1 300 (36.81%) Cisco
2 162 (19.88%) Microsoft
3 145 (17.79%) Palo Alto
3 145 (17.79%) VMware
4 124 (15.21%) F5
5 109 (13.37%) Juniper
6 78 (9.57%) Fortinet
7 68 (8.34%) CheckPoint
8 62 (7.61%) SolarWinds
9 58 (7.12%) Aruba
10 54 (6.63%) Splunk
11 49 (6.01%) ServiceNow
12 43 (5.28%) Google
13 34 (4.17%) Arista
14 27 (3.31%) Extreme Networks
15 25 (3.07%) Red Hat
16 22 (2.70%) Meraki
17 21 (2.58%) Zscaler
18 18 (2.21%) Citrix
18 18 (2.21%) Veeam