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

6 months to
2 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 107 63 56
Rank change year-on-year -44 -7 -12
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,346 1,262 1,394
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.45% 3.81% 3.66%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 26.51% 33.21% 30.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 827 779 848
10th Percentile £350 £312 £320
25th Percentile £425 £413 £423
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £675 £688 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £483 £500
% change year-on-year +3.63% -3.50% +2.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 57 29 30
10th Percentile £31.25 £17.30 £20.00
25th Percentile £55.00 £29.00 £21.54
Median hourly rate £67.47 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +124.90% +9.09% -58.33%
75th Percentile £78.75 £41.94 £60.00
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.63 £75.42
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.35 £30.00 £27.50
% change year-on-year +121.15% +9.09% -58.32%

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 5,078 3,800 4,549
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.25% 11.47% 11.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,925 2,382 2,627
10th Percentile £235 £220 £222
25th Percentile £389 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £606
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £485
% change year-on-year +5.56% -7.22% +5.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 427 207 205
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £21.04 £24.18
Median hourly rate £32.50 £41.94 £50.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.51% -16.95% -10.60%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £92.11 £73.80 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.72 £42.22 £57.35
% change year-on-year -36.71% -26.38% -0.26%

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 2 October 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 2 October 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Firewall in the UK

Firewall
Top 18 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 2 October 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 -44 1,184 £504 +0.80% 1,272
UK excluding London -40 753 £500 +3.63% 795
London -56 455 £500 -2.91% 555
Work from Home -40 385 £520 +4.00% 483
North of England -2 279 £500 +5.26% 155
North West +8 161 £506 +6.58% 94
South East -56 157 £500 - 272
Yorkshire -27 96 £495 +1.12% 47
Midlands -70 92 £475 - 120
South West -3 90 £556 +15.83% 108
East of England -3 73 £600 +15.38% 59
West Midlands -70 67 £450 -5.26% 70
Scotland -22 62 £400 -15.79% 45
North East -16 29 £500 -13.04% 15
East Midlands -5 24 £500 +6.16% 50
Wales -20 4 £608 +203.75% 18
Channel Islands -6 2 £600 -17.24% 1
Northern Ireland -7 1 - - 23

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 51 (3.79%) Microsoft Exchange
2 38 (2.82%) SharePoint
3 36 (2.67%) Confluence
4 12 (0.89%) Apache
4 12 (0.89%) nginx
5 8 (0.59%) SAS
6 4 (0.30%) FactoryTalk
6 4 (0.30%) IIS
7 3 (0.22%) CloudStack
7 3 (0.22%) Skype for Business
7 3 (0.22%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.15%) CICS
8 2 (0.15%) CMS
8 2 (0.15%) Umbraco
9 1 (0.074%) Appian
9 1 (0.074%) MTS
Applications
1 21 (1.56%) MS Visio
2 20 (1.49%) Microsoft Excel
3 18 (1.34%) Microsoft Office
4 8 (0.59%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (0.45%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 1 (0.074%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 6 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
2 5 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.15%) Bloomberg TOMS
3 2 (0.15%) Dynamics GP
3 2 (0.15%) Eikon
3 2 (0.15%) Teamcenter
4 1 (0.074%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.074%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.074%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 516 (38.34%) Azure
2 311 (23.11%) AWS
3 177 (13.15%) Entra ID
4 125 (9.29%) Microsoft 365
5 111 (8.25%) GCP
6 82 (6.09%) GitHub
7 70 (5.20%) IaaS
8 67 (4.98%) Azure DevOps
9 63 (4.68%) SaaS
10 53 (3.94%) Azure Monitor
11 43 (3.19%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 43 (3.19%) OCI
12 40 (2.97%) PaaS
13 39 (2.90%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 34 (2.53%) GitHub Actions
15 32 (2.38%) Azure Sentinel
16 31 (2.30%) Serverless
17 27 (2.01%) Google Kubernetes Engine
18 26 (1.93%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 26 (1.93%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 401 (29.79%) VPN
2 398 (29.57%) Network Security
3 356 (26.45%) DNS
4 337 (25.04%) WAN
5 246 (18.28%) LAN
6 230 (17.09%) BGP
7 210 (15.60%) TCP/IP
8 205 (15.23%) DHCP
9 191 (14.19%) VLAN
10 175 (13.00%) Wireless
11 164 (12.18%) OSPF
12 127 (9.44%) SD-WAN
13 122 (9.06%) Wi-Fi
14 77 (5.72%) MPLS
15 76 (5.65%) Cisco ASA
15 76 (5.65%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 75 (5.57%) SSL
17 73 (5.42%) BIG-IP
18 72 (5.35%) IPsec
19 62 (4.61%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (2.45%) SQL Server
2 20 (1.49%) Amazon RDS
3 18 (1.34%) PostgreSQL
4 16 (1.19%) Relational Database
5 14 (1.04%) Data Lake
6 11 (0.82%) Power BI
7 10 (0.74%) NoSQL
8 9 (0.67%) Amazon Aurora
9 6 (0.45%) Azure SQL Database
10 5 (0.37%) MySQL
11 4 (0.30%) Db2
11 4 (0.30%) Elasticsearch
11 4 (0.30%) Oracle Database
12 3 (0.22%) Amazon Athena
12 3 (0.22%) Big Data
12 3 (0.22%) EDRMS
12 3 (0.22%) Metadata
12 3 (0.22%) Oracle Reports
13 2 (0.15%) Amazon QuickSight
13 2 (0.15%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 87 (6.46%) JIRA
2 71 (5.27%) Jenkins
3 56 (4.16%) Git
4 50 (3.71%) GitLab
5 16 (1.19%) Sonatype Nexus
6 9 (0.67%) Artifactory
6 9 (0.67%) Bitbucket
7 8 (0.59%) SonarQube
8 6 (0.45%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 5 (0.37%) Maven
10 4 (0.30%) Chocolatey
10 4 (0.30%) MSI
11 3 (0.22%) Browser DevTools
11 3 (0.22%) REST Assured
12 2 (0.15%) Cucumber
12 2 (0.15%) Gatling
12 2 (0.15%) Gradle
12 2 (0.15%) LoadRunner
12 2 (0.15%) Postman
12 2 (0.15%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 313 (23.25%) Social Skills
2 175 (13.00%) Finance
3 139 (10.33%) Analytical Skills
4 107 (7.95%) Public Sector
5 95 (7.06%) Banking
6 57 (4.23%) Documentation Skills
7 55 (4.09%) Telecoms
8 38 (2.82%) Manufacturing
9 28 (2.08%) Legal
10 20 (1.49%) Retail
11 17 (1.26%) Military
12 16 (1.19%) Local Government
13 15 (1.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 14 (1.04%) Financial Institution
15 12 (0.89%) Aerospace
15 12 (0.89%) Influencing Skills
16 11 (0.82%) Police
17 10 (0.74%) Automotive
17 10 (0.74%) Investment Banking
18 9 (0.67%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 437 (32.47%) Network Engineer
2 206 (15.30%) Senior
3 161 (11.96%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 160 (11.89%) Architect
5 114 (8.47%) Security Engineer
6 89 (6.61%) Senior Network Engineer
7 86 (6.39%) Cloud Engineer
8 72 (5.35%) Consultant
9 63 (4.68%) Network Security Engineer
10 60 (4.46%) Azure Engineer
11 55 (4.09%) Network Architect
11 55 (4.09%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 51 (3.79%) Security Architect
13 48 (3.57%) Lead
14 47 (3.49%) DevOps Engineer
15 46 (3.42%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
16 40 (2.97%) Platform Engineer
17 37 (2.75%) Cisco Engineer
18 35 (2.60%) Cisco Network Engineer
18 35 (2.60%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 295 (21.92%) Terraform
2 41 (3.05%) 802.1X
3 26 (1.93%) SAML
4 25 (1.86%) ARM Templates
4 25 (1.86%) Middleware
5 22 (1.63%) REST
6 18 (1.34%) OAuth
6 18 (1.34%) OpenID
7 17 (1.26%) YAML
8 12 (0.89%) LDAP
8 12 (0.89%) OAuth2
9 11 (0.82%) JSON
10 10 (0.74%) React
11 8 (0.59%) Elastic Stack
11 8 (0.59%) Kafka
11 8 (0.59%) SailPoint
12 7 (0.52%) ModSecurity
12 7 (0.52%) OpenTelemetry
13 6 (0.45%) .NET
13 6 (0.45%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 284 (21.10%) Data Centre
2 102 (7.58%) Hybrid Cloud
3 76 (5.65%) Cloud Native
3 76 (5.65%) PKI
4 63 (4.68%) Security Posture
5 61 (4.53%) Onboarding
6 54 (4.01%) Management Information System
7 49 (3.64%) Operational Technology
8 38 (2.82%) Public Cloud
9 28 (2.08%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 28 (2.08%) Self-Motivation
10 25 (1.86%) Data Protection Act
11 23 (1.71%) Driving Licence
11 23 (1.71%) Enterprise Software
12 21 (1.56%) IoT
12 21 (1.56%) Linux Command Line
12 21 (1.56%) Replication
12 21 (1.56%) SCADA
13 19 (1.41%) Enterprise Storage
14 18 (1.34%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 331 (24.59%) Windows
2 215 (15.97%) Linux
3 147 (10.92%) Windows Server
4 43 (3.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 32 (2.38%) Unix
6 25 (1.86%) Ubuntu
7 18 (1.34%) VMS
8 17 (1.26%) Mac OS
9 14 (1.04%) CentOS
10 12 (0.89%) Windows 10
11 11 (0.82%) Windows Server 2019
12 9 (0.67%) Windows Server 2012
13 8 (0.59%) Amazon Linux
14 7 (0.52%) Android
14 7 (0.52%) Rocky
15 6 (0.45%) Apple iOS
16 4 (0.30%) Windows Server 2003
16 4 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
17 3 (0.22%) Check Point GAiA
18 2 (0.15%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 267 (19.84%) Infrastructure as Code
2 250 (18.57%) CI/CD
3 238 (17.68%) DevOps
4 235 (17.46%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 221 (16.42%) Cybersecurity
6 209 (15.53%) Migration
7 202 (15.01%) Problem-Solving
8 182 (13.52%) Load Balancing
9 169 (12.56%) ITIL
10 159 (11.81%) Stakeholder Management
10 159 (11.81%) Zero Trust
11 153 (11.37%) Agile
12 138 (10.25%) Project Delivery
13 133 (9.88%) SIEM
14 130 (9.66%) High Availability
15 124 (9.21%) Change Management
16 119 (8.84%) Technical Leadership
17 118 (8.77%) Cloud Security
18 114 (8.47%) Incident Response
19 111 (8.25%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 285 (21.17%) Python
2 223 (16.57%) PowerShell
3 135 (10.03%) Bash
4 46 (3.42%) SQL
5 45 (3.34%) Bicep
6 43 (3.19%) Java
7 19 (1.41%) ActionScript
8 15 (1.11%) Groovy
9 10 (0.74%) Shell Script
10 8 (0.59%) Kusto Query Language
10 8 (0.59%) Perl
11 6 (0.45%) C++
11 6 (0.45%) JavaScript
11 6 (0.45%) Search Processing Language
12 5 (0.37%) Go
13 4 (0.30%) TypeScript
14 3 (0.22%) C
15 2 (0.15%) C#
15 2 (0.15%) COBOL
15 2 (0.15%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 448 (33.28%) Security Cleared
2 311 (23.11%) SC Cleared
3 230 (17.09%) Cisco Certification
4 171 (12.70%) CCNP
5 124 (9.21%) DV Cleared
6 104 (7.73%) Degree
7 85 (6.32%) CCNA
8 77 (5.72%) CISSP
9 64 (4.75%) Azure Certification
10 51 (3.79%) AWS Certification
11 37 (2.75%) CCIE
12 34 (2.53%) Microsoft Certification
13 33 (2.45%) CISM
14 26 (1.93%) Computer Science Degree
15 17 (1.26%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 16 (1.19%) CEH
17 15 (1.11%) PMI Certification
18 14 (1.04%) PMP
19 13 (0.97%) CCSE
19 13 (0.97%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 77 (5.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 71 (5.27%) NIST
3 32 (2.38%) GDPR
4 26 (1.93%) QA
5 25 (1.86%) NCSC
6 24 (1.78%) PCI DSS
7 22 (1.63%) SLA
8 21 (1.56%) Cyber Essentials
9 16 (1.19%) NIST 800
10 10 (0.74%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 9 (0.67%) JSP 440
11 9 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 6 (0.45%) Data Quality
12 6 (0.45%) GxP
12 6 (0.45%) HIPAA
13 5 (0.37%) COBIT
13 5 (0.37%) Disclosure Scotland
13 5 (0.37%) GRC
14 4 (0.30%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 3 (0.22%) SOC 2
System Software
1 236 (17.53%) Active Directory
2 176 (13.08%) VMware Infrastructure
3 79 (5.87%) Docker
4 67 (4.98%) Hyper-V
5 57 (4.23%) VMware NSX
6 55 (4.09%) vSphere
7 46 (3.42%) VMware ESXi
8 40 (2.97%) Virtual Machines
9 22 (1.63%) Firmware
10 15 (1.11%) Virtual Desktop
11 8 (0.59%) Squid
11 8 (0.59%) Virtual Servers
12 6 (0.45%) BitLocker
13 5 (0.37%) Dovecot
13 5 (0.37%) FreeRADIUS
13 5 (0.37%) NFS
13 5 (0.37%) Postfix
14 4 (0.30%) VirtualBox
15 3 (0.22%) DFS Replication
15 3 (0.22%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 215 (15.97%) Ansible
2 133 (9.88%) Kubernetes
3 81 (6.02%) FortiGate
4 74 (5.50%) Microsoft Intune
5 57 (4.23%) Grafana
6 52 (3.86%) Prometheus
7 38 (2.82%) SCCM
8 31 (2.30%) Single Sign-On
9 30 (2.23%) Progress Chef
10 21 (1.56%) vCenter Server
11 19 (1.41%) VxRail
12 15 (1.11%) Puppet
13 12 (0.89%) CASB
13 12 (0.89%) Cisco Prime
14 10 (0.74%) Argo
14 10 (0.74%) Nagios
14 10 (0.74%) Nessus
14 10 (0.74%) Packer
15 8 (0.59%) NetBackup
15 8 (0.59%) QRadar
Vendors
1 490 (36.40%) Cisco
2 345 (25.63%) Microsoft
3 329 (24.44%) Palo Alto
4 224 (16.64%) VMware
5 195 (14.49%) Fortinet
6 167 (12.41%) F5
7 120 (8.92%) CheckPoint
8 112 (8.32%) Juniper
9 71 (5.27%) Zscaler
10 63 (4.68%) Google
10 63 (4.68%) Splunk
11 60 (4.46%) Aruba
12 59 (4.38%) Meraki
13 57 (4.23%) ServiceNow
14 54 (4.01%) Arista
15 51 (3.79%) SolarWinds
16 34 (2.53%) Citrix
17 31 (2.30%) Red Hat
18 29 (2.15%) Dynatrace
19 26 (1.93%) Infoblox