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 8 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 66 39 36
Rank change year-on-year -27 -3 +10
Contract jobs citing Firewall 730 660 980
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.45% 5.06% 4.63%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.22% 29.53% 26.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 497 373 612
10th Percentile £312 £300 £298
25th Percentile £406 £385 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £575 £580 £608
90th Percentile £638 £650 £678
UK median daily rate £500 £522 £513
% change year-on-year -4.12% +1.76% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 20 41
10th Percentile £36.45 £18.07 £23.92
25th Percentile £39.30 £20.94 £60.00
Median hourly rate £48.72 £35.82 £72.50
Median % change year-on-year +36.00% -50.59% +34.94%
75th Percentile £74.26 £42.73 £84.40
90th Percentile £85.80 £73.75 £87.53
UK median hourly rate £42.32 £36.65 £65.98
% change year-on-year +15.49% -44.46% +26.57%

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 2,416 2,235 3,715
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 11.42% 17.12% 17.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,563 1,325 2,152
10th Percentile £200 £185 £203
25th Percentile £317 £300 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £467 £473 £475
Median % change year-on-year -1.16% -0.53% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £665 £638 £675
UK median daily rate £480 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -4.00% +5.26% -8.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 134 122 320
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.22 £13.95
25th Percentile £16.78 £21.00 £19.76
Median hourly rate £42.10 £32.50 £46.95
Median % change year-on-year +29.52% -30.77% +149.44%
75th Percentile £65.75 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £74.10
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £35.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year +7.14% -6.67% +95.82%

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 8 March 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 8 March 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 8 March 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 -27 224 £519 +9.32% 114
South East +13 218 £500 - 182
North West -14 142 £540 +8.00% 80
Midlands -48 99 £425 -22.73% 55
West Midlands -19 89 £425 -15.00% 28
Yorkshire -30 80 £443 +7.21% 26
South West -38 60 £545 -0.18% 33
Scotland -10 54 £425 -2.86% 16
East of England -27 46 £470 -12.56% 62
Wales -16 26 £425 +14.86% 17
East Midlands -55 8 £475 -23.11% 27
North East -14 5 £548 -0.45% 8
Northern Ireland - 5 £500 - 1
South Coast - 2 £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 16 (2.19%) Confluence
2 11 (1.51%) Microsoft Exchange
3 9 (1.23%) Apache
4 8 (1.10%) CICS
5 7 (0.96%) SharePoint
6 6 (0.82%) IIS
7 4 (0.55%) OpenStack
8 2 (0.27%) Apache Pulsar
8 2 (0.27%) Skype for Business
9 1 (0.14%) CMS
9 1 (0.14%) nginx
Applications
1 30 (4.11%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (2.05%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (2.05%) MS Visio
3 14 (1.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.14%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 203 (27.81%) Azure
2 160 (21.92%) AWS
3 70 (9.59%) GCP
4 46 (6.30%) Entra ID
5 41 (5.62%) Microsoft 365
6 34 (4.66%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 23 (3.15%) IaaS
8 22 (3.01%) AWS CloudFormation
8 22 (3.01%) Serverless
9 21 (2.88%) GitHub
9 21 (2.88%) PaaS
10 20 (2.74%) Amazon EC2
10 20 (2.74%) Azure Sentinel
11 19 (2.60%) Azure Monitor
12 18 (2.47%) AWS Lambda
13 16 (2.19%) Azure DevOps
14 14 (1.92%) Amazon ECS
14 14 (1.92%) Amazon EKS
15 13 (1.78%) Google Workspace
15 13 (1.78%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 174 (23.84%) Network Security
2 171 (23.42%) WAN
3 152 (20.82%) VPN
4 142 (19.45%) DNS
5 137 (18.77%) LAN
6 118 (16.16%) BGP
7 105 (14.38%) OSPF
8 99 (13.56%) VLAN
9 87 (11.92%) Wireless
10 85 (11.64%) DHCP
11 76 (10.41%) TCP/IP
12 53 (7.26%) Cisco ISE
12 53 (7.26%) SD-WAN
13 49 (6.71%) MPLS
14 47 (6.44%) Wi-Fi
15 46 (6.30%) IPsec
16 42 (5.75%) VXLAN
17 39 (5.34%) Ethernet VPN
18 38 (5.21%) Cisco Nexus
19 34 (4.66%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (2.33%) SQL Server
2 16 (2.19%) Amazon RDS
3 11 (1.51%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (1.10%) DataStage
5 4 (0.55%) Data Lake
5 4 (0.55%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.55%) Relational Database
6 3 (0.41%) DynamoDB
7 2 (0.27%) Amazon QuickSight
7 2 (0.27%) MariaDB
7 2 (0.27%) Oracle Database
7 2 (0.27%) Power BI
8 1 (0.14%) Amazon Athena
8 1 (0.14%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.14%) BusinessObjects
8 1 (0.14%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
8 1 (0.14%) Elasticsearch
8 1 (0.14%) NoSQL
8 1 (0.14%) Redis
8 1 (0.14%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 43 (5.89%) JIRA
2 32 (4.38%) Jenkins
3 31 (4.25%) GitLab
4 27 (3.70%) Git
5 21 (2.88%) Sonatype Nexus
6 15 (2.05%) Burp Suite
6 15 (2.05%) Metasploit
7 11 (1.51%) Bitbucket
8 8 (1.10%) Jaeger
9 4 (0.55%) CircleCI
10 3 (0.41%) Chocolatey
11 1 (0.14%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.14%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.14%) Browser DevTools
11 1 (0.14%) MSI
11 1 (0.14%) Subversion
11 1 (0.14%) Travis CI
General
1 209 (28.63%) Social Skills
2 85 (11.64%) Finance
3 74 (10.14%) Analytical Skills
4 65 (8.90%) Public Sector
5 59 (8.08%) Documentation Skills
6 26 (3.56%) Banking
7 23 (3.15%) Telecoms
8 20 (2.74%) Legal
9 19 (2.60%) Manufacturing
10 15 (2.05%) Influencing Skills
11 10 (1.37%) Financial Institution
12 9 (1.23%) Military
13 8 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 7 (0.96%) Aerospace
15 6 (0.82%) Law
15 6 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
15 6 (0.82%) Retail
16 4 (0.55%) Organisational Skills
17 3 (0.41%) Local Government
17 3 (0.41%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 228 (31.23%) Network Engineer
2 99 (13.56%) Architect
3 69 (9.45%) Senior
4 59 (8.08%) Security Engineer
5 53 (7.26%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 47 (6.44%) Network Architect
7 40 (5.48%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
8 29 (3.97%) Analyst
9 26 (3.56%) IT Support
9 26 (3.56%) Senior Network Engineer
10 24 (3.29%) IT Engineer
11 23 (3.15%) Cisco Engineer
11 23 (3.15%) Platform Engineer
12 22 (3.01%) Cloud Engineer
12 22 (3.01%) Support Engineer
13 20 (2.74%) Cisco Network Engineer
13 20 (2.74%) DevOps Engineer
14 19 (2.60%) Security Architect
15 18 (2.47%) Network Specialist
15 18 (2.47%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 60 (8.22%) 802.1X
2 21 (2.88%) LDAP
3 20 (2.74%) SAML
4 18 (2.47%) Middleware
5 17 (2.33%) OAuth
5 17 (2.33%) OAuth2
6 15 (2.05%) OpenID
7 13 (1.78%) Kafka
8 10 (1.37%) Node.js
8 10 (1.37%) OpenTelemetry
9 8 (1.10%) Spring Boot
10 6 (0.82%) JSON
10 6 (0.82%) LangChain
10 6 (0.82%) PyTorch
10 6 (0.82%) scikit-learn
11 5 (0.68%) REST
11 5 (0.68%) RFC 2544
11 5 (0.68%) YAML
12 4 (0.55%) ARM Templates
13 3 (0.41%) Microsoft Graph
Miscellaneous
1 173 (23.70%) Data Centre
2 59 (8.08%) Security Posture
3 46 (6.30%) PKI
4 28 (3.84%) Cloud Native
5 27 (3.70%) Operational Technology
6 26 (3.56%) Onboarding
7 24 (3.29%) Hybrid Cloud
8 20 (2.74%) Clustering
9 18 (2.47%) NHS
10 15 (2.05%) Data Protection Act
10 15 (2.05%) Management Information System
10 15 (2.05%) Security Operations Centre
11 14 (1.92%) Product Ownership
12 13 (1.78%) Cyber Threat
13 12 (1.64%) BYOD
13 12 (1.64%) Private Cloud
14 11 (1.51%) Public Cloud
14 11 (1.51%) Replication
15 10 (1.37%) Distributed Systems
15 10 (1.37%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 215 (29.45%) Windows
2 146 (20.00%) Linux
3 88 (12.05%) Windows Server
4 25 (3.42%) Unix
5 20 (2.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 9 (1.23%) Solaris
6 9 (1.23%) Windows 7
7 8 (1.10%) AIX
8 7 (0.96%) Windows Server 2019
9 6 (0.82%) VMS
10 5 (0.68%) Windows Server 2016
11 4 (0.55%) Windows 10
11 4 (0.55%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.41%) Amazon Linux
12 3 (0.41%) CatOS
13 2 (0.27%) Android
13 2 (0.27%) Apple iOS
13 2 (0.27%) CentOS
13 2 (0.27%) Mac OS
13 2 (0.27%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 143 (19.59%) Cybersecurity
2 115 (15.75%) Problem-Solving
3 98 (13.42%) DevOps
4 94 (12.88%) CI/CD
5 84 (11.51%) Infrastructure as Code
6 80 (10.96%) Load Balancing
7 79 (10.82%) ITIL
8 78 (10.68%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 74 (10.14%) High Availability
10 73 (10.00%) SIEM
11 66 (9.04%) Incident Response
12 63 (8.63%) Cloud Security
13 60 (8.22%) Agile
13 60 (8.22%) Containerisation
14 59 (8.08%) Mentoring
15 57 (7.81%) Identity Access Management
16 56 (7.67%) Observability
17 54 (7.40%) Change Management
18 53 (7.26%) Zero Trust
19 52 (7.12%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 124 (16.99%) Python
2 110 (15.07%) PowerShell
3 60 (8.22%) Bash
4 30 (4.11%) Java
5 27 (3.70%) SQL
6 24 (3.29%) Perl
7 15 (2.05%) Bicep
8 10 (1.37%) Ruby
9 8 (1.10%) COBOL
9 8 (1.10%) Rust
10 4 (0.55%) C#
10 4 (0.55%) Shell Script
11 3 (0.41%) Go
11 3 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
12 2 (0.27%) C++
12 2 (0.27%) JavaScript
13 1 (0.14%) Korn
13 1 (0.14%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 296 (40.55%) Security Cleared
2 189 (25.89%) SC Cleared
3 157 (21.51%) Cisco Certification
4 127 (17.40%) CCNP
5 86 (11.78%) DV Cleared
6 75 (10.27%) CCNA
7 69 (9.45%) Degree
8 45 (6.16%) CISSP
9 31 (4.25%) AWS Certification
10 30 (4.11%) Microsoft Certification
11 23 (3.15%) CISM
12 22 (3.01%) Azure Certification
12 22 (3.01%) CCIE
13 15 (2.05%) CHECK Team Member
13 15 (2.05%) CompTIA Security+
13 15 (2.05%) JNCIS
14 14 (1.92%) Network+ Certification
15 13 (1.78%) CREST Certified
15 13 (1.78%) Cyber Scheme
15 13 (1.78%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 64 (8.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 49 (6.71%) NIST
3 37 (5.07%) GDPR
4 34 (4.66%) PCI DSS
5 22 (3.01%) Cyber Essentials
6 19 (2.60%) NCSC
7 18 (2.47%) SLA
8 16 (2.19%) QA
9 11 (1.51%) PMO
10 5 (0.68%) Actionable Recommendations
11 4 (0.55%) JSP 440
12 3 (0.41%) COBIT
12 3 (0.41%) GRC
12 3 (0.41%) NIST 800
13 2 (0.27%) Disclosure Scotland
13 2 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 2 (0.27%) PSD2
13 2 (0.27%) SOC 2
14 1 (0.14%) ISO 20022
14 1 (0.14%) ISO 22301
System Software
1 147 (20.14%) Active Directory
2 107 (14.66%) VMware Infrastructure
3 70 (9.59%) Docker
4 33 (4.52%) vSphere
5 31 (4.25%) VMware NSX
6 26 (3.56%) Hyper-V
7 13 (1.78%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (1.37%) Firmware
9 8 (1.10%) Virtual Desktop
10 6 (0.82%) Virtual Servers
11 5 (0.68%) Virtual Machines
12 3 (0.41%) DFS Replication
12 3 (0.41%) KVM
13 1 (0.14%) Citrix Hypervisor
13 1 (0.14%) NDS
13 1 (0.14%) NetIQ eDirectory
13 1 (0.14%) ProxySG
13 1 (0.14%) Xen
13 1 (0.14%) XenApp
13 1 (0.14%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 93 (12.74%) Terraform
2 73 (10.00%) Kubernetes
3 67 (9.18%) Ansible
4 41 (5.62%) FortiGate
5 26 (3.56%) Microsoft Intune
6 25 (3.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 23 (3.15%) Single Sign-On
8 20 (2.74%) Grafana
8 20 (2.74%) vCenter Server
9 17 (2.33%) Nmap
10 14 (1.92%) Prometheus
10 14 (1.92%) SCCM
11 10 (1.37%) Nagios
12 9 (1.23%) WMI
13 8 (1.10%) CASB
13 8 (1.10%) Fluentd
13 8 (1.10%) Kiali
13 8 (1.10%) Nessus
14 7 (0.96%) Progress Chef
14 7 (0.96%) VxRail
Vendors
1 280 (38.36%) Cisco
2 155 (21.23%) Microsoft
3 146 (20.00%) Palo Alto
4 141 (19.32%) VMware
5 83 (11.37%) Juniper
6 79 (10.82%) F5
7 72 (9.86%) CheckPoint
8 64 (8.77%) Splunk
9 61 (8.36%) Fortinet
10 57 (7.81%) SolarWinds
11 55 (7.53%) Aruba
12 41 (5.62%) Google
13 38 (5.21%) Meraki
14 25 (3.42%) ServiceNow
15 23 (3.15%) Oracle
15 23 (3.15%) Red Hat
16 21 (2.88%) Extreme Networks
17 18 (2.47%) Citrix
18 16 (2.19%) Dell
19 15 (2.05%) Veeam