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

6 months to
20 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 90 54 55
Rank change year-on-year -36 +1 -7
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,450 1,420 1,470
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.75% 4.33% 3.52%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 29.01% 35.67% 28.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 926 842 925
10th Percentile £350 £325 £275
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £515
Median % change year-on-year - -2.91% -1.90%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £643 £688 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £488 £508
% change year-on-year +2.56% -3.94% +6.84%
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 27 42
10th Percentile £28.70 £14.20 £17.71
25th Percentile £37.53 £15.23 £23.92
Median hourly rate £61.25 £30.00 £53.75
Median % change year-on-year +104.17% -44.19% -18.55%
75th Percentile £77.44 £42.61 £85.65
90th Percentile £94.42 £89.63 £87.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.75 £30.00 £76.99
% change year-on-year +112.50% -61.03% +20.30%

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 4,999 3,981 5,202
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.47% 12.14% 12.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,017 2,427 3,100
10th Percentile £238 £235 £213
25th Percentile £400 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £594 £600
90th Percentile £669 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £489 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +2.84% -5.00% +8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 327 193 395
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.00 £16.58
Median hourly rate £26.00 £47.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -45.26% +18.75% -11.11%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £83.80 £72.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.44 £42.50 £45.88
% change year-on-year -37.79% -7.37% -19.74%

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 20 July 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 20 July 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 20 July 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 -42 1,251 £500 - 384
UK excluding London -31 823 £500 +2.56% 346
London -59 475 £500 - 92
Work from Home -37 401 £520 +4.00% 135
North of England -16 292 £500 +5.26% 74
South East -31 230 £513 +2.50% 133
North West -4 188 £537 +13.05% 35
Yorkshire -36 88 £450 -8.07% 28
Midlands -62 77 £450 -8.54% 42
East of England -5 73 £525 -4.55% 33
South West -37 72 £525 +5.00% 40
Scotland +4 67 £438 - 18
West Midlands -68 61 £430 -16.50% 26
North East -15 22 £625 - 13
Wales -21 19 £425 +17.24% 10
East Midlands -26 13 £500 +11.11% 16
Northern Ireland -6 1 - - 5

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 37 (2.55%) Microsoft Exchange
2 32 (2.21%) Confluence
3 22 (1.52%) SharePoint
4 17 (1.17%) nginx
5 13 (0.90%) Apache
6 10 (0.69%) CICS
7 6 (0.41%) SAS
8 4 (0.28%) Tomcat
9 3 (0.21%) CloudStack
9 3 (0.21%) FactoryTalk
9 3 (0.21%) IIS
9 3 (0.21%) Skype for Business
10 2 (0.14%) Apache Pulsar
10 2 (0.14%) CMS
10 2 (0.14%) IBM HTTP Server
10 2 (0.14%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.14%) Umbraco
10 2 (0.14%) WebSphere
10 2 (0.14%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.14%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 21 (1.45%) MS Visio
2 18 (1.24%) Microsoft Excel
3 16 (1.10%) Microsoft Office
4 8 (0.55%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.069%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.069%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 2 (0.14%) Dynamics GP
2 1 (0.069%) Bloomberg TOMS
2 1 (0.069%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.069%) Eikon
2 1 (0.069%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.069%) Primavera
2 1 (0.069%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.069%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 507 (34.97%) Azure
2 321 (22.14%) AWS
3 141 (9.72%) Entra ID
4 120 (8.28%) GCP
5 112 (7.72%) Microsoft 365
6 71 (4.90%) GitHub
7 65 (4.48%) IaaS
8 62 (4.28%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 54 (3.72%) SaaS
10 53 (3.66%) Azure DevOps
11 45 (3.10%) Azure Monitor
12 44 (3.03%) PaaS
13 43 (2.97%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 38 (2.62%) Serverless
15 36 (2.48%) Azure Sentinel
16 35 (2.41%) OCI
17 30 (2.07%) GitHub Actions
17 30 (2.07%) Google Kubernetes Engine
18 29 (2.00%) Amazon EC2
19 27 (1.86%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 416 (28.69%) VPN
2 411 (28.34%) Network Security
3 391 (26.97%) WAN
4 352 (24.28%) DNS
5 292 (20.14%) LAN
6 275 (18.97%) BGP
7 223 (15.38%) OSPF
8 204 (14.07%) TCP/IP
9 202 (13.93%) VLAN
10 195 (13.45%) DHCP
11 171 (11.79%) Wireless
12 146 (10.07%) SD-WAN
13 122 (8.41%) Wi-Fi
14 97 (6.69%) MPLS
15 96 (6.62%) BIG-IP
16 94 (6.48%) IPsec
17 86 (5.93%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
18 84 (5.79%) VXLAN
19 80 (5.52%) SSL
20 79 (5.45%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (1.66%) SQL Server
2 18 (1.24%) Power BI
3 17 (1.17%) Elasticsearch
3 17 (1.17%) PostgreSQL
4 13 (0.90%) Amazon RDS
5 10 (0.69%) Data Lake
5 10 (0.69%) DataStage
6 9 (0.62%) Azure SQL Database
6 9 (0.62%) Relational Database
7 8 (0.55%) MySQL
7 8 (0.55%) Oracle Database
8 5 (0.34%) Delta Lake
8 5 (0.34%) NoSQL
9 4 (0.28%) Amazon Aurora
9 4 (0.28%) Data Warehouse
9 4 (0.28%) Db2
10 3 (0.21%) Amazon Athena
10 3 (0.21%) Amazon QuickSight
10 3 (0.21%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (0.21%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 98 (6.76%) JIRA
2 52 (3.59%) Jenkins
3 42 (2.90%) Git
4 40 (2.76%) GitLab
5 15 (1.03%) Sonatype Nexus
6 12 (0.83%) Bitbucket
7 9 (0.62%) Artifactory
7 9 (0.62%) SonarQube
8 8 (0.55%) Chocolatey
9 6 (0.41%) Browser DevTools
10 4 (0.28%) Burp Suite
11 3 (0.21%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 2 (0.14%) Cucumber
12 2 (0.14%) Gatling
12 2 (0.14%) Gradle
12 2 (0.14%) Jaeger
12 2 (0.14%) LoadRunner
12 2 (0.14%) Metasploit
12 2 (0.14%) REST Assured
12 2 (0.14%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 310 (21.38%) Social Skills
2 189 (13.03%) Finance
3 128 (8.83%) Analytical Skills
4 121 (8.34%) Public Sector
5 77 (5.31%) Documentation Skills
6 75 (5.17%) Banking
7 47 (3.24%) Telecoms
8 26 (1.79%) Manufacturing
9 25 (1.72%) Legal
10 22 (1.52%) Financial Institution
11 20 (1.38%) Influencing Skills
11 20 (1.38%) Military
12 16 (1.10%) Retail
13 15 (1.03%) Local Government
14 12 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
14 12 (0.83%) Police
15 10 (0.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 10 (0.69%) Law
16 9 (0.62%) Investment Banking
17 8 (0.55%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 475 (32.76%) Network Engineer
2 213 (14.69%) Architect
3 196 (13.52%) Senior
4 141 (9.72%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 128 (8.83%) Security Engineer
6 86 (5.93%) Senior Network Engineer
7 71 (4.90%) Cloud Engineer
8 70 (4.83%) Network Architect
9 62 (4.28%) Network Security Engineer
10 60 (4.14%) Consultant
11 56 (3.86%) Azure Engineer
12 49 (3.38%) Technical Architect
13 48 (3.31%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
14 46 (3.17%) Security Architect
15 44 (3.03%) DevOps Engineer
16 40 (2.76%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
17 39 (2.69%) Lead
18 38 (2.62%) Cisco Engineer
19 35 (2.41%) Cisco Network Engineer
19 35 (2.41%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 74 (5.10%) 802.1X
2 42 (2.90%) Middleware
3 36 (2.48%) LDAP
4 26 (1.79%) SAML
5 20 (1.38%) OpenID
6 17 (1.17%) ARM Templates
7 11 (0.76%) OAuth
8 10 (0.69%) Kafka
9 9 (0.62%) LangChain
9 9 (0.62%) OAuth2
9 9 (0.62%) PyTorch
9 9 (0.62%) REST
9 9 (0.62%) scikit-learn
10 8 (0.55%) .NET
11 7 (0.48%) SailPoint
11 7 (0.48%) YAML
12 6 (0.41%) Elastic Stack
12 6 (0.41%) React
13 5 (0.34%) Jinja
13 5 (0.34%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 339 (23.38%) Data Centre
2 93 (6.41%) Cloud Native
3 84 (5.79%) Hybrid Cloud
4 80 (5.52%) PKI
5 75 (5.17%) Security Posture
6 51 (3.52%) Management Information System
7 50 (3.45%) Onboarding
8 43 (2.97%) Operational Technology
9 41 (2.83%) Clustering
10 32 (2.21%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 32 (2.21%) IoT
11 29 (2.00%) Data Protection Act
12 28 (1.93%) Public Cloud
13 24 (1.66%) Enterprise Storage
14 23 (1.59%) SCADA
15 20 (1.38%) Driving Licence
15 20 (1.38%) Self-Motivation
16 18 (1.24%) Enterprise Software
16 18 (1.24%) Linux Command Line
17 17 (1.17%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 325 (22.41%) Windows
2 198 (13.66%) Linux
3 114 (7.86%) Windows Server
4 50 (3.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 34 (2.34%) Unix
6 23 (1.59%) VMS
7 17 (1.17%) Ubuntu
8 14 (0.97%) Windows Server 2019
9 11 (0.76%) Solaris
10 10 (0.69%) AIX
10 10 (0.69%) CentOS
10 10 (0.69%) Windows Server 2016
11 7 (0.48%) Mac OS
11 7 (0.48%) Windows 10
11 7 (0.48%) Windows Server 2012
12 6 (0.41%) Rocky
12 6 (0.41%) Windows Server 2003
13 4 (0.28%) Amazon Linux
13 4 (0.28%) Android
13 4 (0.28%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 238 (16.41%) DevOps
2 217 (14.97%) CI/CD
3 216 (14.90%) Infrastructure as Code
4 200 (13.79%) Load Balancing
5 194 (13.38%) Problem-Solving
6 192 (13.24%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 190 (13.10%) Migration
8 185 (12.76%) ITIL
9 181 (12.48%) Cybersecurity
10 179 (12.34%) High Availability
11 158 (10.90%) Agile
12 155 (10.69%) Zero Trust
13 133 (9.17%) Change Management
14 130 (8.97%) SIEM
15 122 (8.41%) Project Delivery
16 118 (8.14%) Observability
17 117 (8.07%) Validation
18 113 (7.79%) Stakeholder Management
19 104 (7.17%) Roadmaps
20 103 (7.10%) Cloud Security
Programming Languages
1 257 (17.72%) Python
2 177 (12.21%) PowerShell
3 109 (7.52%) Bash
4 47 (3.24%) Bicep
5 42 (2.90%) SQL
6 33 (2.28%) Java
7 11 (0.76%) ActionScript
7 11 (0.76%) Perl
8 10 (0.69%) COBOL
9 7 (0.48%) Groovy
10 6 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
11 5 (0.34%) C++
11 5 (0.34%) Go
11 5 (0.34%) JavaScript
12 3 (0.21%) PL/SQL
12 3 (0.21%) Shell Script
13 2 (0.14%) C
13 2 (0.14%) Jython
13 2 (0.14%) PHP
14 1 (0.069%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 482 (33.24%) Security Cleared
2 341 (23.52%) SC Cleared
3 286 (19.72%) Cisco Certification
4 215 (14.83%) CCNP
5 124 (8.55%) DV Cleared
6 118 (8.14%) CCNA
7 110 (7.59%) Degree
8 71 (4.90%) CISSP
9 58 (4.00%) Azure Certification
10 43 (2.97%) CCIE
11 42 (2.90%) AWS Certification
12 34 (2.34%) Microsoft Certification
13 33 (2.28%) CISM
14 22 (1.52%) JNCIS
15 21 (1.45%) Computer Science Degree
15 21 (1.45%) Network+ Certification
16 18 (1.24%) JNCIP
16 18 (1.24%) PMP
17 17 (1.17%) Server+ Certification
18 16 (1.10%) JNCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 72 (4.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 58 (4.00%) NIST
3 42 (2.90%) GDPR
4 31 (2.14%) NCSC
5 25 (1.72%) PCI DSS
6 22 (1.52%) QA
7 21 (1.45%) Cyber Essentials
8 19 (1.31%) SLA
9 9 (0.62%) Data Quality
9 9 (0.62%) NIST 800
10 8 (0.55%) Disclosure Scotland
11 7 (0.48%) GxP
12 6 (0.41%) Actionable Recommendations
12 6 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 6 (0.41%) JSP 440
13 5 (0.34%) GRC
13 5 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 5 (0.34%) PMO
14 4 (0.28%) HIPAA
14 4 (0.28%) RMADS
System Software
1 219 (15.10%) Active Directory
2 162 (11.17%) VMware Infrastructure
3 60 (4.14%) VMware NSX
4 58 (4.00%) Docker
5 46 (3.17%) Hyper-V
6 44 (3.03%) vSphere
7 39 (2.69%) Virtual Machines
7 39 (2.69%) VMware ESXi
8 26 (1.79%) Firmware
9 17 (1.17%) Virtual Desktop
10 16 (1.10%) Squid
11 12 (0.83%) BitLocker
12 8 (0.55%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.41%) NFS
14 4 (0.28%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.21%) Dovecot
15 3 (0.21%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 3 (0.21%) Postfix
15 3 (0.21%) Virtual Servers
16 2 (0.14%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 266 (18.34%) Terraform
2 187 (12.90%) Ansible
3 117 (8.07%) FortiGate
4 112 (7.72%) Kubernetes
5 63 (4.34%) Grafana
6 61 (4.21%) Microsoft Intune
7 59 (4.07%) Prometheus
8 35 (2.41%) SCCM
8 35 (2.41%) Single Sign-On
9 24 (1.66%) vCenter Server
10 18 (1.24%) Progress Chef
11 17 (1.17%) Puppet
12 16 (1.10%) CASB
13 14 (0.97%) Cisco Prime
14 12 (0.83%) VxRail
15 11 (0.76%) Consul
16 10 (0.69%) QRadar
17 9 (0.62%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 9 (0.62%) Nessus
17 9 (0.62%) Packer
Vendors
1 526 (36.28%) Cisco
2 317 (21.86%) Palo Alto
3 299 (20.62%) Microsoft
4 214 (14.76%) VMware
5 211 (14.55%) Fortinet
6 206 (14.21%) F5
7 165 (11.38%) Juniper
8 132 (9.10%) CheckPoint
9 81 (5.59%) Splunk
10 76 (5.24%) Arista
11 74 (5.10%) Aruba
12 69 (4.76%) Google
12 69 (4.76%) ServiceNow
12 69 (4.76%) SolarWinds
13 60 (4.14%) Zscaler
14 48 (3.31%) Citrix
14 48 (3.31%) Red Hat
15 42 (2.90%) Meraki
16 33 (2.28%) Infoblox
17 31 (2.14%) Dynatrace