Firewall Contract Job Trends

Firewall
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Firewall skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 15 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 83 52 50
Rank change year-on-year -31 -2 +7
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,367 1,219 1,620
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.98% 4.16% 3.72%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.46% 32.22% 28.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 891 743 1,017
10th Percentile £335 £313 £313
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £508
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% +0.99% -3.33%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £650 £688 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
Number of hourly rates quoted 32 18 40
10th Percentile £20.53 - £15.89
25th Percentile £37.25 £14.20 £23.92
Median hourly rate £52.36 £35.82 £68.25
Median % change year-on-year +46.17% -47.51% +10.08%
75th Percentile £74.26 £41.50 £87.12
90th Percentile £84.61 £53.63 £87.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £56.00 £35.00 £83.77
% change year-on-year +60.00% -58.22% +35.10%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 4,488 3,783 5,741
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.79% 12.91% 13.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,819 2,340 3,443
10th Percentile £233 £213 £205
25th Percentile £394 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £488 £486
Median % change year-on-year +1.54% +0.31% -5.81%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £469 £475
% change year-on-year +1.28% -1.26% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 207 169 421
10th Percentile £15.85 £14.99 £13.85
25th Percentile £20.63 £21.46 £17.69
Median hourly rate £45.00 £39.32 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +14.45% +2.13% +102.63%
75th Percentile £70.00 £62.25 £61.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £67.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £28.00 £45.44
% change year-on-year +96.43% -38.38% +145.62%

Firewall
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Firewall relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Firewall job vacancy trend in the UK

Firewall
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Firewall.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Firewall

Firewall
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Firewall over the 6 months to 15 April 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Firewall in the UK

Firewall
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Firewall.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Firewall

Firewall
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Firewall over the 6 months to 15 April 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Firewall in the UK

Firewall
Top 17 Contract Job Locations

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 over the 6 months to 15 April 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
England -33 1,143 £511 -1.78% 440
UK excluding London -14 780 £500 - 388
London -57 413 £513 -2.38% 131
Work from Home -25 388 £513 +2.50% 186
South East +4 240 £514 +2.75% 125
North of England -17 233 £500 +5.26% 90
North West -9 157 £528 +11.16% 45
Midlands -34 95 £425 -24.11% 57
West Midlands -23 83 £423 -19.18% 36
Yorkshire -23 74 £447 -18.73% 25
East of England -8 63 £475 -9.95% 48
South West -43 62 £560 +2.29% 31
Scotland +8 54 £425 -1.45% 26
Wales -13 31 £425 +9.68% 17
East Midlands -49 8 £475 -18.80% 21
North East -17 5 £548 -0.45% 21
Northern Ireland - 3 £500 - 8

Firewall
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 40 (2.93%) Microsoft Exchange
2 28 (2.05%) Confluence
3 17 (1.24%) SharePoint
4 13 (0.95%) Apache
4 13 (0.95%) nginx
5 10 (0.73%) CICS
6 7 (0.51%) SAS
7 5 (0.37%) IIS
8 4 (0.29%) OpenStack
9 3 (0.22%) WebSphere
10 2 (0.15%) Apache Pulsar
10 2 (0.15%) IBM HTTP Server
10 2 (0.15%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.15%) Skype for Business
10 2 (0.15%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.15%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.15%) WebSphere Portal
11 1 (0.073%) Anypoint
11 1 (0.073%) JBoss
Applications
1 36 (2.63%) Microsoft Office
2 21 (1.54%) Microsoft Excel
3 19 (1.39%) MS Visio
4 17 (1.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.073%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 2 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.073%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.073%) Primavera
2 1 (0.073%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.073%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 442 (32.33%) Azure
2 293 (21.43%) AWS
3 123 (9.00%) GCP
4 116 (8.49%) Microsoft 365
5 114 (8.34%) Entra ID
6 62 (4.54%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 60 (4.39%) GitHub
8 59 (4.32%) IaaS
9 53 (3.88%) PaaS
10 46 (3.37%) Azure DevOps
11 45 (3.29%) Serverless
12 42 (3.07%) Azure Monitor
12 42 (3.07%) SaaS
13 40 (2.93%) Azure Sentinel
14 36 (2.63%) AWS Lambda
14 36 (2.63%) GitHub Actions
15 35 (2.56%) Azure ExpressRoute
16 33 (2.41%) AWS CloudFormation
17 32 (2.34%) Amazon EC2
18 31 (2.27%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 373 (27.29%) Network Security
2 347 (25.38%) WAN
3 336 (24.58%) VPN
4 285 (20.85%) DNS
5 264 (19.31%) LAN
6 225 (16.46%) BGP
7 198 (14.48%) OSPF
8 159 (11.63%) VLAN
9 149 (10.90%) TCP/IP
10 147 (10.75%) DHCP
11 135 (9.88%) SD-WAN
12 121 (8.85%) Wireless
13 100 (7.32%) Wi-Fi
14 97 (7.10%) MPLS
15 80 (5.85%) IPsec
16 77 (5.63%) Cisco ISE
17 70 (5.12%) VXLAN
18 65 (4.75%) Cisco ASA
19 60 (4.39%) Cisco Nexus
20 59 (4.32%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (1.98%) SQL Server
2 20 (1.46%) PostgreSQL
3 18 (1.32%) Elasticsearch
4 16 (1.17%) Amazon RDS
5 11 (0.80%) Oracle Database
6 10 (0.73%) DataStage
7 9 (0.66%) Data Lake
7 9 (0.66%) Power BI
8 8 (0.59%) Data Warehouse
9 7 (0.51%) Azure SQL Database
9 7 (0.51%) MongoDB
10 6 (0.44%) MySQL
11 5 (0.37%) Relational Database
12 4 (0.29%) Amazon Athena
12 4 (0.29%) Amazon QuickSight
12 4 (0.29%) Amazon Redshift
12 4 (0.29%) NoSQL
12 4 (0.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 3 (0.22%) DynamoDB
13 3 (0.22%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 74 (5.41%) JIRA
2 53 (3.88%) Jenkins
3 46 (3.37%) Git
4 42 (3.07%) GitLab
5 22 (1.61%) Sonatype Nexus
6 19 (1.39%) Bitbucket
7 16 (1.17%) Burp Suite
7 16 (1.17%) Metasploit
8 9 (0.66%) Chocolatey
8 9 (0.66%) Jaeger
9 7 (0.51%) SonarQube
10 6 (0.44%) Artifactory
11 5 (0.37%) Browser DevTools
12 4 (0.29%) CircleCI
13 2 (0.15%) Introscope
14 1 (0.073%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 1 (0.073%) Maven
14 1 (0.073%) MSI
14 1 (0.073%) PVCS
14 1 (0.073%) Subversion
General
1 354 (25.90%) Social Skills
2 163 (11.92%) Finance
3 141 (10.31%) Analytical Skills
4 103 (7.53%) Public Sector
5 99 (7.24%) Documentation Skills
6 55 (4.02%) Banking
7 42 (3.07%) Telecoms
8 32 (2.34%) Legal
9 26 (1.90%) Financial Institution
10 23 (1.68%) Manufacturing
11 20 (1.46%) Influencing Skills
12 18 (1.32%) Military
13 15 (1.10%) Law
14 14 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
15 13 (0.95%) Retail
16 12 (0.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 11 (0.80%) Local Government
18 10 (0.73%) Organisational Skills
19 8 (0.59%) Front Office
20 7 (0.51%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 391 (28.60%) Network Engineer
2 237 (17.34%) Architect
3 146 (10.68%) Senior
4 111 (8.12%) Security Engineer
5 89 (6.51%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 84 (6.14%) Network Architect
7 58 (4.24%) Azure Engineer
8 56 (4.10%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
9 54 (3.95%) Senior Network Engineer
10 48 (3.51%) Security Architect
11 45 (3.29%) Cloud Engineer
12 43 (3.15%) Solutions Architect
13 39 (2.85%) Analyst
13 39 (2.85%) Consultant
13 39 (2.85%) Lead
13 39 (2.85%) Network Security Engineer
13 39 (2.85%) Platform Engineer
13 39 (2.85%) Technical Architect
14 36 (2.63%) Cisco Engineer
14 36 (2.63%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 72 (5.27%) 802.1X
2 38 (2.78%) SAML
3 37 (2.71%) LDAP
4 35 (2.56%) Middleware
4 35 (2.56%) OpenID
5 20 (1.46%) Kafka
5 20 (1.46%) OAuth
6 19 (1.39%) OAuth2
7 14 (1.02%) REST
8 12 (0.88%) Node.js
9 11 (0.80%) OpenTelemetry
10 10 (0.73%) JSON
10 10 (0.73%) Spring Boot
11 9 (0.66%) ARM Templates
12 8 (0.59%) Elastic Stack
13 7 (0.51%) XML
14 6 (0.44%) LangChain
14 6 (0.44%) PyTorch
14 6 (0.44%) scikit-learn
14 6 (0.44%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 296 (21.65%) Data Centre
2 76 (5.56%) Security Posture
3 73 (5.34%) Cloud Native
4 70 (5.12%) PKI
5 48 (3.51%) Onboarding
6 47 (3.44%) Hybrid Cloud
7 41 (3.00%) Operational Technology
8 38 (2.78%) Clustering
9 35 (2.56%) Management Information System
10 34 (2.49%) Public Cloud
11 29 (2.12%) IoT
12 22 (1.61%) Cyber Threat
12 22 (1.61%) Replication
13 21 (1.54%) Data Protection Act
13 21 (1.54%) Private Cloud
13 21 (1.54%) Product Ownership
13 21 (1.54%) SCADA
14 19 (1.39%) Enterprise Software
15 18 (1.32%) NHS
16 17 (1.24%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 344 (25.16%) Windows
2 214 (15.65%) Linux
3 143 (10.46%) Windows Server
4 37 (2.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 34 (2.49%) Unix
6 27 (1.98%) VMS
7 12 (0.88%) Solaris
8 11 (0.80%) Windows Server 2019
9 10 (0.73%) AIX
10 9 (0.66%) Windows Server 2016
11 7 (0.51%) Windows Server 2003
12 6 (0.44%) Windows 10
12 6 (0.44%) Windows 7
13 5 (0.37%) Mac OS
14 4 (0.29%) CatOS
14 4 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
15 3 (0.22%) Amazon Linux
15 3 (0.22%) Data ONTAP
15 3 (0.22%) SUSE
16 2 (0.15%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 221 (16.17%) Cybersecurity
2 212 (15.51%) DevOps
3 202 (14.78%) Problem-Solving
4 178 (13.02%) CI/CD
5 176 (12.87%) Infrastructure as Code
6 171 (12.51%) Load Balancing
7 167 (12.22%) Migration
8 162 (11.85%) ITIL
9 149 (10.90%) High Availability
10 135 (9.88%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 121 (8.85%) Agile
12 118 (8.63%) SIEM
13 117 (8.56%) Change Management
13 117 (8.56%) Cloud Security
13 117 (8.56%) Zero Trust
14 96 (7.02%) Roadmaps
15 93 (6.80%) Incident Response
15 93 (6.80%) Observability
16 92 (6.73%) Continuous Improvement
17 90 (6.58%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 198 (14.48%) Python
2 187 (13.68%) PowerShell
3 92 (6.73%) Bash
4 57 (4.17%) SQL
5 39 (2.85%) Bicep
6 33 (2.41%) Java
7 25 (1.83%) Perl
8 11 (0.80%) Kusto Query Language
9 10 (0.73%) COBOL
9 10 (0.73%) JavaScript
9 10 (0.73%) Ruby
10 8 (0.59%) Rust
11 6 (0.44%) PL/SQL
12 5 (0.37%) Shell Script
13 4 (0.29%) C#
13 4 (0.29%) Go
14 2 (0.15%) C++
14 2 (0.15%) Jython
14 2 (0.15%) PHP
15 1 (0.073%) ActionScript
Qualifications
1 486 (35.55%) Security Cleared
2 340 (24.87%) SC Cleared
3 263 (19.24%) Cisco Certification
4 211 (15.44%) CCNP
5 126 (9.22%) DV Cleared
6 122 (8.92%) Degree
7 110 (8.05%) CCNA
8 79 (5.78%) CISSP
9 57 (4.17%) Azure Certification
10 48 (3.51%) CCIE
11 46 (3.37%) AWS Certification
12 45 (3.29%) CISM
13 35 (2.56%) Microsoft Certification
14 25 (1.83%) CompTIA Security+
15 24 (1.76%) JNCIS
16 23 (1.68%) Computer Science Degree
16 23 (1.68%) JNCIP
17 19 (1.39%) JNCIA
17 19 (1.39%) Network+ Certification
18 18 (1.32%) CREST Certified
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 95 (6.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 76 (5.56%) NIST
3 66 (4.83%) GDPR
4 45 (3.29%) PCI DSS
5 36 (2.63%) NCSC
6 32 (2.34%) SLA
7 26 (1.90%) Cyber Essentials
8 22 (1.61%) QA
9 17 (1.24%) PMO
10 7 (0.51%) JSP 440
11 6 (0.44%) Actionable Recommendations
11 6 (0.44%) GRC
11 6 (0.44%) RMADS
12 5 (0.37%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 5 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 4 (0.29%) Data Quality
13 4 (0.29%) Disclosure Scotland
13 4 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 3 (0.22%) HIPAA
14 3 (0.22%) ISA99
System Software
1 237 (17.34%) Active Directory
2 179 (13.09%) VMware Infrastructure
3 85 (6.22%) Docker
4 72 (5.27%) VMware NSX
5 43 (3.15%) Hyper-V
6 38 (2.78%) vSphere
7 31 (2.27%) Virtual Machines
8 30 (2.19%) VMware ESXi
9 20 (1.46%) Virtual Desktop
10 19 (1.39%) Firmware
11 11 (0.80%) Squid
12 10 (0.73%) BitLocker
13 8 (0.59%) Microsoft App-V
13 8 (0.59%) Virtual Servers
14 3 (0.22%) DFS Replication
14 3 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
15 2 (0.15%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 2 (0.15%) iptables
15 2 (0.15%) KVM
15 2 (0.15%) NetIQ eDirectory
Systems Management
1 204 (14.92%) Terraform
2 152 (11.12%) Ansible
3 124 (9.07%) Kubernetes
4 102 (7.46%) FortiGate
5 60 (4.39%) Microsoft Intune
6 45 (3.29%) Grafana
7 44 (3.22%) Single Sign-On
8 39 (2.85%) Prometheus
9 33 (2.41%) SCCM
10 32 (2.34%) vCenter Server
11 27 (1.98%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 18 (1.32%) Nmap
13 14 (1.02%) Nagios
14 13 (0.95%) CASB
14 13 (0.95%) QRadar
15 12 (0.88%) Cisco Prime
15 12 (0.88%) Puppet
16 11 (0.80%) VxRail
17 10 (0.73%) Progress Chef
17 10 (0.73%) WSUS
Vendors
1 472 (34.53%) Cisco
2 304 (22.24%) Microsoft
3 279 (20.41%) Palo Alto
4 221 (16.17%) VMware
5 161 (11.78%) Fortinet
6 155 (11.34%) F5
7 149 (10.90%) Juniper
8 129 (9.44%) CheckPoint
9 90 (6.58%) Splunk
10 83 (6.07%) Aruba
11 73 (5.34%) SolarWinds
12 57 (4.17%) Google
12 57 (4.17%) ServiceNow
13 54 (3.95%) Meraki
14 46 (3.37%) Citrix
15 42 (3.07%) Zscaler
16 41 (3.00%) Arista
16 41 (3.00%) Red Hat
17 39 (2.85%) Oracle
18 26 (1.90%) Extreme Networks