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

6 months to
9 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 66 42 35
Rank change year-on-year -24 -7 +12
Contract jobs citing Firewall 685 636 1,019
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.51% 4.71% 4.83%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 29.83% 28.46% 27.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 465 360 660
10th Percentile £300 £274 £275
25th Percentile £400 £385 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% - -
75th Percentile £569 £575 £608
90th Percentile £648 £639 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £521 £520
% change year-on-year -4.08% +0.24% -0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 20 49
10th Percentile £35.25 £20.00 £52.47
25th Percentile £37.25 £20.14 £62.50
Median hourly rate £48.72 £35.00 £67.27
Median % change year-on-year +39.20% -47.97% +29.03%
75th Percentile £74.26 £41.62 £76.53
90th Percentile £85.80 £61.38 £85.92
UK median hourly rate £41.94 £35.82 £65.98
% change year-on-year +17.08% -45.71% +52.12%

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 2,296 2,235 3,673
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 11.78% 16.54% 17.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,524 1,275 2,114
10th Percentile £191 £185 £205
25th Percentile £301 £300 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £468 £475
Median % change year-on-year -3.74% -1.58% +1.06%
75th Percentile £563 £580 £588
90th Percentile £650 £650 £675
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £488
% change year-on-year -5.00% +2.56% -6.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 123 110 344
10th Percentile £15.05 £15.42 £14.27
25th Percentile £16.00 £21.00 £21.25
Median hourly rate £41.94 £30.04 £52.05
Median % change year-on-year +39.61% -42.28% +161.81%
75th Percentile £65.50 £62.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.85 £70.13 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £32.00 £33.75 £47.50
% change year-on-year -5.19% -28.95% +137.50%

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 February 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 February 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 February 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 -24 203 £500 +5.26% 118
South East +13 182 £500 - 195
North West -17 115 £525 +6.06% 77
Midlands -22 114 £463 -9.36% 56
West Midlands -13 105 £456 +4.29% 40
Yorkshire -20 85 £473 +11.18% 30
South West -34 61 £545 +1.68% 46
Scotland -16 56 £425 -6.85% 33
East of England -23 42 £460 -8.00% 69
Wales -16 20 £425 +16.44% 11
East Midlands -53 8 £500 -23.14% 16
Northern Ireland - 7 £500 -
North East -18 6 £550 - 13
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 22 (3.21%) Confluence
2 10 (1.46%) Apache
3 8 (1.17%) Microsoft Exchange
3 8 (1.17%) SharePoint
4 7 (1.02%) IIS
4 7 (1.02%) nginx
5 5 (0.73%) OpenStack
6 4 (0.58%) CICS
7 2 (0.29%) Apache Pulsar
8 1 (0.15%) CMS
8 1 (0.15%) JBoss
8 1 (0.15%) Tomcat
Applications
1 31 (4.53%) Microsoft Office
2 16 (2.34%) MS Visio
3 15 (2.19%) Microsoft Excel
4 14 (2.04%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.88%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 1 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.15%) Finacle
1 1 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 185 (27.01%) Azure
2 171 (24.96%) AWS
3 71 (10.36%) GCP
4 43 (6.28%) Microsoft 365
5 41 (5.99%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 38 (5.55%) Entra ID
7 35 (5.11%) Amazon EC2
8 26 (3.80%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 24 (3.50%) Amazon S3
10 22 (3.21%) AWS CloudFormation
11 21 (3.07%) Azure Sentinel
11 21 (3.07%) Serverless
12 20 (2.92%) Amazon ECS
13 19 (2.77%) IaaS
14 18 (2.63%) Amazon ELB
14 18 (2.63%) Azure Monitor
15 17 (2.48%) AWS Lambda
15 17 (2.48%) PaaS
16 15 (2.19%) Akamai
17 14 (2.04%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 164 (23.94%) Network Security
2 146 (21.31%) VPN
3 134 (19.56%) WAN
4 128 (18.69%) DNS
5 103 (15.04%) LAN
6 93 (13.58%) BGP
7 81 (11.82%) VLAN
8 80 (11.68%) Wireless
9 78 (11.39%) OSPF
10 77 (11.24%) TCP/IP
11 59 (8.61%) DHCP
12 50 (7.30%) SD-WAN
13 41 (5.99%) MPLS
14 40 (5.84%) IPsec
15 39 (5.69%) Cisco ASA
16 38 (5.55%) Wi-Fi
17 37 (5.40%) Cisco ISE
18 36 (5.26%) Cisco Nexus
19 31 (4.53%) SSL
20 23 (3.36%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (3.50%) Amazon RDS
2 21 (3.07%) SQL Server
3 15 (2.19%) PostgreSQL
4 6 (0.88%) Amazon Aurora
5 4 (0.58%) DataStage
5 4 (0.58%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.58%) Relational Database
6 3 (0.44%) DynamoDB
7 2 (0.29%) Amazon QuickSight
7 2 (0.29%) Data Lake
7 2 (0.29%) Elasticsearch
7 2 (0.29%) MariaDB
7 2 (0.29%) Oracle Database
8 1 (0.15%) Amazon Athena
8 1 (0.15%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.15%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
8 1 (0.15%) NoSQL
8 1 (0.15%) Power BI
8 1 (0.15%) Redis
8 1 (0.15%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 44 (6.42%) Jenkins
1 44 (6.42%) JIRA
2 38 (5.55%) Git
3 35 (5.11%) GitLab
4 20 (2.92%) Sonatype Nexus
5 14 (2.04%) Burp Suite
5 14 (2.04%) Metasploit
6 11 (1.61%) Bitbucket
7 8 (1.17%) Jaeger
7 8 (1.17%) Vagrant
8 4 (0.58%) CircleCI
9 3 (0.44%) Chocolatey
10 1 (0.15%) Artifactory
10 1 (0.15%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 1 (0.15%) MSI
10 1 (0.15%) SonarQube
10 1 (0.15%) Subversion
10 1 (0.15%) Travis CI
General
1 207 (30.22%) Social Skills
2 81 (11.82%) Analytical Skills
3 70 (10.22%) Public Sector
4 67 (9.78%) Finance
5 56 (8.18%) Documentation Skills
6 29 (4.23%) Banking
6 29 (4.23%) Telecoms
7 21 (3.07%) Legal
8 20 (2.92%) Manufacturing
9 12 (1.75%) Presentation Skills
10 11 (1.61%) Influencing Skills
11 9 (1.31%) Financial Institution
12 8 (1.17%) Military
13 7 (1.02%) Aerospace
13 7 (1.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 5 (0.73%) Law
14 5 (0.73%) Retail
15 4 (0.58%) Organisational Skills
15 4 (0.58%) Retail Banking
16 3 (0.44%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 194 (28.32%) Network Engineer
2 91 (13.28%) Architect
3 65 (9.49%) Senior
4 52 (7.59%) Security Engineer
5 51 (7.45%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 39 (5.69%) Network Architect
7 38 (5.55%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
8 33 (4.82%) Platform Engineer
9 28 (4.09%) Analyst
9 28 (4.09%) DevOps Engineer
10 23 (3.36%) IT Engineer
11 22 (3.21%) IT Support
12 21 (3.07%) Support Engineer
13 20 (2.92%) Cisco Engineer
14 19 (2.77%) Security Architect
15 18 (2.63%) Solutions Architect
16 17 (2.48%) Administrator
16 17 (2.48%) Cisco Network Engineer
17 16 (2.34%) Consultant
17 16 (2.34%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (4.53%) 802.1X
2 22 (3.21%) LDAP
3 20 (2.92%) SAML
4 17 (2.48%) OAuth
4 17 (2.48%) OAuth2
5 15 (2.19%) Middleware
5 15 (2.19%) OpenID
6 14 (2.04%) Kafka
7 11 (1.61%) Node.js
8 10 (1.46%) OpenTelemetry
9 9 (1.31%) JSON
10 8 (1.17%) Spring Boot
11 7 (1.02%) REST
12 6 (0.88%) RFC 2544
13 4 (0.58%) ARM Templates
13 4 (0.58%) Microsoft Graph
13 4 (0.58%) XML
14 3 (0.44%) Elastic Stack
14 3 (0.44%) Lambda Expressions
15 2 (0.29%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 139 (20.29%) Data Centre
2 56 (8.18%) Security Posture
3 34 (4.96%) PKI
4 27 (3.94%) Onboarding
5 22 (3.21%) Operational Technology
6 20 (2.92%) Hybrid Cloud
6 20 (2.92%) Replication
7 17 (2.48%) NHS
8 16 (2.34%) Security Operations Centre
9 15 (2.19%) Cloud Native
10 14 (2.04%) Cyber Threat
10 14 (2.04%) Data Protection Act
10 14 (2.04%) Management Information System
11 12 (1.75%) Private Cloud
12 11 (1.61%) Distributed Systems
12 11 (1.61%) Fat Client
12 11 (1.61%) Thin Client
13 10 (1.46%) Product Ownership
14 9 (1.31%) IoT
14 9 (1.31%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 187 (27.30%) Windows
2 142 (20.73%) Linux
3 77 (11.24%) Windows Server
4 18 (2.63%) Unix
5 15 (2.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 14 (2.04%) VMS
7 11 (1.61%) Amazon Linux
7 11 (1.61%) Windows 7
8 9 (1.31%) Ubuntu
9 8 (1.17%) Windows Server 2019
10 5 (0.73%) Solaris
10 5 (0.73%) Windows 10
11 4 (0.58%) AIX
11 4 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.44%) Android
12 3 (0.44%) Apple iOS
12 3 (0.44%) CatOS
12 3 (0.44%) CentOS
12 3 (0.44%) Mac OS
13 2 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 135 (19.71%) Cybersecurity
2 108 (15.77%) Problem-Solving
3 101 (14.74%) DevOps
4 91 (13.28%) CI/CD
5 79 (11.53%) Infrastructure as Code
6 75 (10.95%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 74 (10.80%) Incident Response
8 63 (9.20%) Containerisation
9 62 (9.05%) SIEM
10 61 (8.91%) Agile
11 60 (8.76%) ITIL
12 59 (8.61%) Load Balancing
13 55 (8.03%) Cloud Security
13 55 (8.03%) High Availability
13 55 (8.03%) Mentoring
14 54 (7.88%) Migration
15 53 (7.74%) Change Management
16 51 (7.45%) Continuous Improvement
17 50 (7.30%) Network Design
17 50 (7.30%) Zero Trust
Programming Languages
1 135 (19.71%) Python
2 113 (16.50%) PowerShell
3 67 (9.78%) Bash
4 34 (4.96%) SQL
5 30 (4.38%) Java
6 29 (4.23%) Perl
7 12 (1.75%) Bicep
8 10 (1.46%) Ruby
9 8 (1.17%) Groovy
9 8 (1.17%) Rust
10 6 (0.88%) Shell Script
11 4 (0.58%) C#
11 4 (0.58%) COBOL
11 4 (0.58%) Kusto Query Language
12 3 (0.44%) Go
13 1 (0.15%) JavaScript
13 1 (0.15%) Lisp
13 1 (0.15%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 284 (41.46%) Security Cleared
2 188 (27.45%) SC Cleared
3 136 (19.85%) Cisco Certification
4 116 (16.93%) CCNP
5 76 (11.09%) DV Cleared
6 67 (9.78%) Degree
7 62 (9.05%) CCNA
8 40 (5.84%) CISSP
9 29 (4.23%) AWS Certification
10 26 (3.80%) CCIE
11 25 (3.65%) Microsoft Certification
12 24 (3.50%) Azure Certification
13 23 (3.36%) CISM
14 14 (2.04%) CHECK Team Member
15 12 (1.75%) CREST Certified
15 12 (1.75%) Cyber Scheme
15 12 (1.75%) Postgraduate
16 10 (1.46%) CompTIA Security+
16 10 (1.46%) Computer Science Degree
17 9 (1.31%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 61 (8.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 47 (6.86%) NIST
3 33 (4.82%) GDPR
4 30 (4.38%) PCI DSS
5 20 (2.92%) Cyber Essentials
6 18 (2.63%) SLA
7 14 (2.04%) NCSC
7 14 (2.04%) QA
8 10 (1.46%) PMO
9 5 (0.73%) Actionable Recommendations
10 4 (0.58%) COBIT
10 4 (0.58%) GRC
11 3 (0.44%) NIST 800
12 2 (0.29%) JSP 440
12 2 (0.29%) PSD2
13 1 (0.15%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 1 (0.15%) ISO 20022
13 1 (0.15%) ISO 22301
13 1 (0.15%) ISO 8583
13 1 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 129 (18.83%) Active Directory
2 105 (15.33%) VMware Infrastructure
3 83 (12.12%) Docker
4 31 (4.53%) vSphere
5 29 (4.23%) VMware NSX
6 25 (3.65%) Hyper-V
7 14 (2.04%) VMware ESXi
8 11 (1.61%) DFS Replication
9 8 (1.17%) Virtual Desktop
10 7 (1.02%) Firmware
10 7 (1.02%) Virtual Machines
11 6 (0.88%) Dovecot
11 6 (0.88%) Postfix
11 6 (0.88%) Squid
11 6 (0.88%) Virtual Servers
12 3 (0.44%) KVM
13 1 (0.15%) BitLocker
13 1 (0.15%) ProxySG
13 1 (0.15%) RHEV
13 1 (0.15%) Xen
Systems Management
1 95 (13.87%) Terraform
2 75 (10.95%) Ansible
3 69 (10.07%) Kubernetes
4 27 (3.94%) Grafana
5 25 (3.65%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 23 (3.36%) FortiGate
6 23 (3.36%) Microsoft Intune
6 23 (3.36%) Single Sign-On
7 22 (3.21%) Prometheus
8 19 (2.77%) vCenter Server
9 18 (2.63%) Nmap
10 14 (2.04%) SCCM
11 11 (1.61%) WMI
12 10 (1.46%) CSIRT
12 10 (1.46%) Nessus
13 9 (1.31%) Fluentd
13 9 (1.31%) Nagios
14 8 (1.17%) Kiali
15 7 (1.02%) Proxmox
15 7 (1.02%) VxRail
Vendors
1 251 (36.64%) Cisco
2 155 (22.63%) Palo Alto
3 145 (21.17%) Microsoft
4 138 (20.15%) VMware
5 80 (11.68%) F5
6 79 (11.53%) CheckPoint
7 59 (8.61%) Fortinet
8 55 (8.03%) Juniper
9 49 (7.15%) Splunk
10 43 (6.28%) SolarWinds
11 41 (5.99%) Aruba
12 40 (5.84%) Meraki
13 31 (4.53%) Oracle
14 30 (4.38%) Google
15 24 (3.50%) ServiceNow
16 19 (2.77%) Dell
17 18 (2.63%) Citrix
18 17 (2.48%) Red Hat
19 16 (2.34%) Veeam
20 13 (1.90%) Zscaler