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

6 months to
10 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 68 46 38
Rank change year-on-year -22 -8 +3
Contract jobs citing Firewall 747 571 867
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.07% 4.44% 4.23%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 28.41% 28.69% 26.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 496 347 565
10th Percentile £315 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £396 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £492 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.61% -1.60% +2.56%
75th Percentile £575 £584 £608
90th Percentile £638 £638 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £508 £515
% change year-on-year -1.48% -1.46% -1.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 17 30
10th Percentile £19.04 - £23.37
25th Percentile £37.25 £14.20 £49.79
Median hourly rate £56.00 £25.00 £83.77
Median % change year-on-year +124.00% -70.15% +35.10%
75th Percentile £72.00 £41.25 £87.46
90th Percentile £85.20 £56.50 £87.53
UK median hourly rate £52.36 £26.25 £60.00
% change year-on-year +99.47% -56.25% -3.23%

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 2,629 1,990 3,328
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.82% 15.46% 16.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,568 1,220 1,904
10th Percentile £213 £200 £201
25th Percentile £358 £302 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £465 £475
Median % change year-on-year +2.10% -2.05% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £653 £638 £675
UK median daily rate £495 £488 £495
% change year-on-year +1.54% -1.52% -4.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 203 132 358
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.20 £13.43
25th Percentile £21.25 £16.30 £16.30
Median hourly rate £48.72 £24.66 £46.14
Median % change year-on-year +97.57% -46.55% +149.38%
75th Percentile £65.94 £62.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.41 £70.66
UK median hourly rate £41.24 £32.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +26.89% -18.75% +116.22%

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 10 May 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 10 May 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 10 May 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
South East -7 238 £500 - 144
North of England -24 213 £500 +5.26% 129
North West -14 140 £527 +10.84% 74
Midlands -51 87 £420 -25.00% 67
West Midlands -29 73 £413 -21.43% 40
East of England -11 64 £500 -2.44% 46
Yorkshire -36 63 £425 -12.37% 34
Scotland +24 59 £425 +1.19% 20
South West -56 56 £538 -1.38% 46
Wales -12 30 £425 +16.44% 16
North East -9 12 £585 +6.36% 22
East Midlands -49 10 £488 -14.10% 27
Northern Ireland 0 2 £385 - 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 13 (1.74%) Confluence
2 9 (1.20%) Apache
2 9 (1.20%) CICS
3 8 (1.07%) Microsoft Exchange
4 5 (0.67%) IIS
5 3 (0.40%) SharePoint
5 3 (0.40%) Skype for Business
6 2 (0.27%) Apache Pulsar
6 2 (0.27%) CMS
6 2 (0.27%) IBM HTTP Server
6 2 (0.27%) Oracle HTTP Server
6 2 (0.27%) Umbraco
6 2 (0.27%) WebSphere
6 2 (0.27%) WebSphere Application Server
6 2 (0.27%) WebSphere Portal
7 1 (0.13%) nginx
Applications
1 25 (3.35%) Microsoft Office
2 17 (2.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (2.28%) MS Visio
3 13 (1.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.54%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 215 (28.78%) Azure
2 132 (17.67%) AWS
3 50 (6.69%) Entra ID
4 42 (5.62%) GCP
5 38 (5.09%) Microsoft 365
6 31 (4.15%) Azure DevOps
7 23 (3.08%) GitHub
8 21 (2.81%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 20 (2.68%) Azure Sentinel
10 18 (2.41%) IaaS
10 18 (2.41%) OCI
11 17 (2.28%) Azure Monitor
12 16 (2.14%) AWS CloudFormation
13 15 (2.01%) Nutanix
13 15 (2.01%) PaaS
13 15 (2.01%) Serverless
14 14 (1.87%) GitHub Actions
14 14 (1.87%) SaaS
15 13 (1.74%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 12 (1.61%) Azure ExpressRoute
Communications & Networking
1 222 (29.72%) WAN
2 196 (26.24%) Network Security
3 188 (25.17%) LAN
4 161 (21.55%) VPN
5 150 (20.08%) DNS
6 129 (17.27%) BGP
7 125 (16.73%) OSPF
8 99 (13.25%) VLAN
9 98 (13.12%) Wireless
10 97 (12.99%) DHCP
11 80 (10.71%) TCP/IP
12 76 (10.17%) SD-WAN
13 69 (9.24%) Wi-Fi
14 67 (8.97%) IPsec
15 58 (7.76%) Ethernet VPN
15 58 (7.76%) VXLAN
16 55 (7.36%) Cisco ISE
17 54 (7.23%) BIG-IP
18 46 (6.16%) MPLS
19 44 (5.89%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (1.61%) SQL Server
2 9 (1.20%) DataStage
2 9 (1.20%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (0.80%) Power BI
4 5 (0.67%) Amazon RDS
5 4 (0.54%) Azure SQL Database
5 4 (0.54%) Data Lake
5 4 (0.54%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.54%) NoSQL
6 3 (0.40%) Delta Lake
6 3 (0.40%) Oracle Database
7 2 (0.27%) MariaDB
7 2 (0.27%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (0.13%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.13%) EDRMS
8 1 (0.13%) Elasticsearch
8 1 (0.13%) MySQL
8 1 (0.13%) Relational Database
8 1 (0.13%) SAP HANA
8 1 (0.13%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 57 (7.63%) JIRA
2 31 (4.15%) GitLab
3 26 (3.48%) Jenkins
4 24 (3.21%) Git
5 16 (2.14%) Burp Suite
5 16 (2.14%) Metasploit
6 14 (1.87%) Sonatype Nexus
7 9 (1.20%) Jaeger
8 6 (0.80%) Bitbucket
9 4 (0.54%) Browser DevTools
9 4 (0.54%) CircleCI
10 3 (0.40%) Chocolatey
11 2 (0.27%) Introscope
11 2 (0.27%) Team Foundation Server
12 1 (0.13%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.13%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.13%) Postman
12 1 (0.13%) Travis CI
General
1 184 (24.63%) Social Skills
2 78 (10.44%) Finance
3 67 (8.97%) Public Sector
4 60 (8.03%) Analytical Skills
5 47 (6.29%) Documentation Skills
6 21 (2.81%) Banking
7 20 (2.68%) Telecoms
8 19 (2.54%) Manufacturing
9 15 (2.01%) Military
10 13 (1.74%) Legal
11 12 (1.61%) Influencing Skills
12 10 (1.34%) Financial Institution
13 8 (1.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 8 (1.07%) Law
13 8 (1.07%) Retail
14 6 (0.80%) Aerospace
14 6 (0.80%) Organisational Skills
15 3 (0.40%) Back Office
15 3 (0.40%) Electronics
15 3 (0.40%) Police
Job Titles
1 260 (34.81%) Network Engineer
2 96 (12.85%) Architect
3 87 (11.65%) Senior
4 75 (10.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 48 (6.43%) Security Engineer
6 46 (6.16%) Network Architect
6 46 (6.16%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
7 36 (4.82%) Senior Network Engineer
8 26 (3.48%) Cisco Engineer
9 24 (3.21%) Cisco Network Engineer
9 24 (3.21%) Cloud Engineer
10 23 (3.08%) Lead
11 22 (2.95%) Designer
12 21 (2.81%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 20 (2.68%) Network Specialist
14 19 (2.54%) IT Support
15 18 (2.41%) Analyst
16 17 (2.28%) DevOps Engineer
16 17 (2.28%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
16 17 (2.28%) Penetration Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 59 (7.90%) 802.1X
2 27 (3.61%) LDAP
3 20 (2.68%) Middleware
4 18 (2.41%) Kafka
5 17 (2.28%) SAML
6 11 (1.47%) OpenTelemetry
7 9 (1.20%) Spring Boot
8 7 (0.94%) OAuth
8 7 (0.94%) OAuth2
9 6 (0.80%) LangChain
9 6 (0.80%) PyTorch
9 6 (0.80%) scikit-learn
10 5 (0.67%) Node.js
10 5 (0.67%) OpenID
11 4 (0.54%) JSON
11 4 (0.54%) REST
11 4 (0.54%) YAML
12 3 (0.40%) .NET
12 3 (0.40%) ARM Templates
12 3 (0.40%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 195 (26.10%) Data Centre
2 43 (5.76%) Cloud Native
3 41 (5.49%) Security Posture
4 40 (5.35%) PKI
5 31 (4.15%) Hybrid Cloud
6 29 (3.88%) Operational Technology
7 28 (3.75%) Clustering
8 23 (3.08%) Onboarding
9 18 (2.41%) IoT
10 16 (2.14%) SCADA
11 15 (2.01%) Management Information System
11 15 (2.01%) Public Cloud
12 14 (1.87%) Data Protection Act
12 14 (1.87%) NHS
12 14 (1.87%) Self-Motivation
13 13 (1.74%) BYOD
13 13 (1.74%) Enterprise Software
14 11 (1.47%) Distributed Systems
14 11 (1.47%) Driving Licence
15 10 (1.34%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 196 (26.24%) Windows
2 121 (16.20%) Linux
3 69 (9.24%) Windows Server
4 28 (3.75%) Unix
5 14 (1.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (1.34%) Solaris
7 9 (1.20%) AIX
8 7 (0.94%) Windows Server 2019
9 6 (0.80%) Windows Server 2016
10 5 (0.67%) Mac OS
11 4 (0.54%) CatOS
11 4 (0.54%) Windows 7
11 4 (0.54%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.40%) Data ONTAP
12 3 (0.40%) VMS
13 2 (0.27%) Oracle Linux
13 2 (0.27%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 2 (0.27%) Windows 10
14 1 (0.13%) CentOS
14 1 (0.13%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 115 (15.39%) Cybersecurity
2 113 (15.13%) DevOps
3 105 (14.06%) High Availability
4 103 (13.79%) Load Balancing
5 99 (13.25%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 98 (13.12%) CI/CD
7 96 (12.85%) Problem-Solving
8 94 (12.58%) ITIL
9 85 (11.38%) Infrastructure as Code
10 76 (10.17%) Zero Trust
11 65 (8.70%) Observability
12 63 (8.43%) Agile
12 63 (8.43%) Change Management
13 62 (8.30%) Migration
13 62 (8.30%) Network Segmentation
14 59 (7.90%) Technical Leadership
15 57 (7.63%) SIEM
16 55 (7.36%) Network Monitoring
17 54 (7.23%) Identity Access Management
17 54 (7.23%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 92 (12.32%) Python
2 71 (9.50%) PowerShell
3 37 (4.95%) SQL
4 36 (4.82%) Bash
5 26 (3.48%) Bicep
6 23 (3.08%) Java
7 9 (1.20%) COBOL
8 8 (1.07%) Perl
8 8 (1.07%) Rust
9 5 (0.67%) Ruby
10 4 (0.54%) C#
10 4 (0.54%) JavaScript
11 3 (0.40%) Go
11 3 (0.40%) PL/SQL
11 3 (0.40%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.27%) C++
12 2 (0.27%) Jython
13 1 (0.13%) C
13 1 (0.13%) Groovy
13 1 (0.13%) Korn
Qualifications
1 308 (41.23%) Security Cleared
2 213 (28.51%) SC Cleared
3 169 (22.62%) Cisco Certification
4 127 (17.00%) CCNP
5 86 (11.51%) CCNA
6 76 (10.17%) DV Cleared
7 69 (9.24%) Degree
8 29 (3.88%) CISSP
9 22 (2.95%) AWS Certification
10 18 (2.41%) Azure Certification
11 16 (2.14%) CHECK Team Member
11 16 (2.14%) JNCIS
11 16 (2.14%) Network+ Certification
12 15 (2.01%) CISM
13 14 (1.87%) CREST Certified
13 14 (1.87%) Cyber Scheme
14 13 (1.74%) CCIE
14 13 (1.74%) CompTIA Security+
14 13 (1.74%) JNCIA
14 13 (1.74%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 53 (7.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 33 (4.42%) GDPR
3 29 (3.88%) NIST
4 27 (3.61%) PCI DSS
5 19 (2.54%) NCSC
5 19 (2.54%) QA
6 18 (2.41%) Cyber Essentials
7 15 (2.01%) SLA
8 12 (1.61%) PMO
9 7 (0.94%) Disclosure Scotland
10 6 (0.80%) Data Quality
11 5 (0.67%) JSP 440
12 4 (0.54%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 4 (0.54%) SOC 2
13 3 (0.40%) GRC
13 3 (0.40%) ISA99
13 3 (0.40%) RMADS
14 2 (0.27%) Government Security Classifications
14 2 (0.27%) GxP
14 2 (0.27%) NIST 800
System Software
1 133 (17.80%) Active Directory
2 98 (13.12%) VMware Infrastructure
3 42 (5.62%) Docker
4 37 (4.95%) VMware NSX
5 25 (3.35%) vSphere
6 21 (2.81%) Hyper-V
7 14 (1.87%) Firmware
7 14 (1.87%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (1.61%) Virtual Machines
9 8 (1.07%) Virtual Desktop
10 3 (0.40%) DFS Replication
10 3 (0.40%) Virtual Servers
11 2 (0.27%) KVM
12 1 (0.13%) BitLocker
12 1 (0.13%) Citrix Hypervisor
12 1 (0.13%) iptables
12 1 (0.13%) RHEV
12 1 (0.13%) Squid
12 1 (0.13%) XenApp
12 1 (0.13%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 98 (13.12%) Terraform
2 78 (10.44%) Ansible
3 51 (6.83%) Kubernetes
4 48 (6.43%) FortiGate
5 24 (3.21%) Grafana
6 19 (2.54%) Single Sign-On
7 18 (2.41%) Nmap
7 18 (2.41%) Prometheus
8 15 (2.01%) Microsoft Intune
8 15 (2.01%) vCenter Server
9 14 (1.87%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 12 (1.61%) Nagios
11 11 (1.47%) CASB
12 9 (1.20%) Cisco Prime
12 9 (1.20%) Kiali
13 8 (1.07%) Nessus
13 8 (1.07%) SCCM
14 7 (0.94%) VxRail
15 6 (0.80%) Progress Chef
16 5 (0.67%) Endace
Vendors
1 297 (39.76%) Cisco
2 161 (21.55%) Palo Alto
3 134 (17.94%) Microsoft
4 132 (17.67%) VMware
5 101 (13.52%) F5
6 92 (12.32%) Juniper
7 73 (9.77%) Fortinet
8 72 (9.64%) CheckPoint
9 64 (8.57%) Aruba
10 62 (8.30%) SolarWinds
10 62 (8.30%) Splunk
11 40 (5.35%) ServiceNow
12 29 (3.88%) Google
13 26 (3.48%) Extreme Networks
13 26 (3.48%) Meraki
14 21 (2.81%) Arista
15 20 (2.68%) Oracle
16 18 (2.41%) Veeam
17 16 (2.14%) Citrix
17 16 (2.14%) Red Hat