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

6 months to
29 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 104 63 56
Rank change year-on-year -41 -7 -10
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,357 1,255 1,389
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.48% 3.85% 3.67%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 26.69% 33.60% 30.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 834 770 845
10th Percentile £350 £313 £321
25th Percentile £425 £413 £419
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 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% +2.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 57 29 30
10th Percentile £31.25 £15.29 £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% -58.32%
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 5,084 3,735 4,513
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.31% 11.46% 11.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,934 2,338 2,593
10th Percentile £231 £219 £228
25th Percentile £390 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £488
% change year-on-year +5.56% -7.69% +5.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 427 200 213
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £25.11 £23.80
Median hourly rate £34.28 £42.50 £50.50
Median % change year-on-year -19.34% -15.84% -10.53%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £92.11 £73.20 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.50 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -32.94% -25.89% -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 29 September 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 29 September 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 29 September 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 -40 1,191 £505 +1.00% 941
UK excluding London -36 758 £500 +3.09% 571
London -58 459 £500 -2.91% 383
Work from Home -36 395 £525 +5.00% 381
North of England -1 281 £500 +5.26% 121
North West +10 162 £511 +7.47% 75
South East -58 162 £519 +3.75% 168
Yorkshire -25 97 £490 +0.10% 34
South West -7 90 £556 +15.73% 91
Midlands -65 88 £475 - 90
East of England -4 74 £593 +14.13% 49
West Midlands -75 66 £450 -5.26% 59
Scotland -20 63 £400 -13.51% 30
North East -14 29 £500 -13.04% 14
East Midlands -11 21 £500 +6.16% 31
Wales -21 4 £608 +203.75% 9
Channel Islands -5 2 £600 -17.24% 1
Northern Ireland -11 1 - - 17

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 49 (3.61%) Microsoft Exchange
2 37 (2.73%) SharePoint
3 35 (2.58%) Confluence
4 12 (0.88%) Apache
4 12 (0.88%) nginx
5 8 (0.59%) SAS
6 4 (0.29%) FactoryTalk
6 4 (0.29%) 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 (1.55%) MS Visio
2 20 (1.47%) Microsoft Excel
3 18 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
4 8 (0.59%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (0.44%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 1 (0.074%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 5 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
1 5 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.15%) Bloomberg TOMS
2 2 (0.15%) Dynamics GP
2 2 (0.15%) Eikon
2 2 (0.15%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.074%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.074%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.074%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 511 (37.66%) Azure
2 312 (22.99%) AWS
3 175 (12.90%) Entra ID
4 123 (9.06%) Microsoft 365
5 107 (7.89%) GCP
6 79 (5.82%) GitHub
7 72 (5.31%) IaaS
8 67 (4.94%) Azure DevOps
8 67 (4.94%) SaaS
9 53 (3.91%) Azure Monitor
10 44 (3.24%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 42 (3.10%) PaaS
12 41 (3.02%) OCI
13 40 (2.95%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 32 (2.36%) Azure Sentinel
14 32 (2.36%) GitHub Actions
15 31 (2.28%) Serverless
16 26 (1.92%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 26 (1.92%) AWS CloudFormation
16 26 (1.92%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 404 (29.77%) VPN
2 399 (29.40%) Network Security
3 362 (26.68%) DNS
4 342 (25.20%) WAN
5 252 (18.57%) LAN
6 234 (17.24%) BGP
7 211 (15.55%) DHCP
8 210 (15.48%) TCP/IP
9 193 (14.22%) VLAN
10 176 (12.97%) Wireless
11 168 (12.38%) OSPF
12 128 (9.43%) SD-WAN
13 124 (9.14%) Wi-Fi
14 77 (5.67%) Cisco ASA
14 77 (5.67%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 77 (5.67%) MPLS
15 75 (5.53%) IPsec
15 75 (5.53%) SSL
16 74 (5.45%) BIG-IP
17 64 (4.72%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (2.43%) SQL Server
2 20 (1.47%) Amazon RDS
3 18 (1.33%) PostgreSQL
4 15 (1.11%) Relational Database
5 12 (0.88%) Data Lake
6 11 (0.81%) Power BI
7 9 (0.66%) Amazon Aurora
8 8 (0.59%) NoSQL
9 6 (0.44%) Azure SQL Database
10 5 (0.37%) Elasticsearch
10 5 (0.37%) MySQL
11 4 (0.29%) Db2
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 Database
13 2 (0.15%) Amazon QuickSight
13 2 (0.15%) Amazon Redshift
13 2 (0.15%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 86 (6.34%) JIRA
2 66 (4.86%) Jenkins
3 52 (3.83%) Git
4 48 (3.54%) GitLab
5 15 (1.11%) Sonatype Nexus
6 9 (0.66%) Artifactory
6 9 (0.66%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.52%) SonarQube
8 6 (0.44%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 4 (0.29%) Chocolatey
9 4 (0.29%) Maven
9 4 (0.29%) MSI
10 3 (0.22%) Browser DevTools
11 2 (0.15%) Cucumber
11 2 (0.15%) Gradle
11 2 (0.15%) Postman
11 2 (0.15%) REST Assured
11 2 (0.15%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.15%) Team Foundation Server
11 2 (0.15%) Vagrant
General
1 315 (23.21%) Social Skills
2 174 (12.82%) Finance
3 142 (10.46%) Analytical Skills
4 107 (7.89%) Public Sector
5 92 (6.78%) Banking
6 59 (4.35%) Documentation Skills
7 57 (4.20%) Telecoms
8 37 (2.73%) Manufacturing
9 27 (1.99%) Legal
10 21 (1.55%) Retail
11 18 (1.33%) Military
12 16 (1.18%) Local Government
13 15 (1.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 14 (1.03%) Financial Institution
15 12 (0.88%) Aerospace
15 12 (0.88%) Influencing Skills
15 12 (0.88%) Police
16 10 (0.74%) Automotive
16 10 (0.74%) Investment Banking
16 10 (0.74%) Law
Job Titles
1 441 (32.50%) Network Engineer
2 209 (15.40%) Senior
3 164 (12.09%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 162 (11.94%) Architect
5 114 (8.40%) Security Engineer
6 92 (6.78%) Senior Network Engineer
7 85 (6.26%) Cloud Engineer
8 69 (5.08%) Consultant
9 63 (4.64%) Network Security Engineer
10 62 (4.57%) Azure Engineer
11 55 (4.05%) Network Architect
12 54 (3.98%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 53 (3.91%) DevOps Engineer
14 50 (3.68%) Security Architect
15 48 (3.54%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
16 47 (3.46%) Lead
17 40 (2.95%) Platform Engineer
18 39 (2.87%) Cisco Engineer
19 38 (2.80%) Technical Architect
20 37 (2.73%) Cisco Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 291 (21.44%) Terraform
2 42 (3.10%) 802.1X
3 29 (2.14%) SAML
4 26 (1.92%) Middleware
5 25 (1.84%) ARM Templates
6 21 (1.55%) OpenID
6 21 (1.55%) REST
7 18 (1.33%) OAuth
8 15 (1.11%) YAML
9 12 (0.88%) LDAP
9 12 (0.88%) OAuth2
10 11 (0.81%) JSON
11 10 (0.74%) React
12 8 (0.59%) Elastic Stack
12 8 (0.59%) Kafka
12 8 (0.59%) SailPoint
13 7 (0.52%) ModSecurity
13 7 (0.52%) OpenTelemetry
14 6 (0.44%) .NET
15 5 (0.37%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 292 (21.52%) Data Centre
2 103 (7.59%) Hybrid Cloud
3 78 (5.75%) PKI
4 73 (5.38%) Cloud Native
5 63 (4.64%) Onboarding
5 63 (4.64%) Security Posture
6 55 (4.05%) Management Information System
7 51 (3.76%) Operational Technology
8 39 (2.87%) Public Cloud
9 29 (2.14%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 28 (2.06%) Self-Motivation
11 25 (1.84%) Data Protection Act
12 24 (1.77%) IoT
13 23 (1.69%) Driving Licence
13 23 (1.69%) Enterprise Software
14 21 (1.55%) Replication
14 21 (1.55%) SCADA
15 20 (1.47%) Linux Command Line
16 19 (1.40%) Enterprise Storage
17 18 (1.33%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 333 (24.54%) Windows
2 216 (15.92%) Linux
3 146 (10.76%) Windows Server
4 43 (3.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 29 (2.14%) Unix
6 24 (1.77%) Ubuntu
7 17 (1.25%) Mac OS
7 17 (1.25%) VMS
8 14 (1.03%) CentOS
9 12 (0.88%) Windows 10
10 10 (0.74%) Windows Server 2019
11 9 (0.66%) Windows Server 2012
12 8 (0.59%) Amazon Linux
13 7 (0.52%) Android
13 7 (0.52%) Rocky
14 6 (0.44%) Apple iOS
15 5 (0.37%) Windows Server 2003
16 4 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
17 3 (0.22%) Check Point GAiA
18 2 (0.15%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 262 (19.31%) Infrastructure as Code
2 245 (18.05%) CI/CD
3 244 (17.98%) DevOps
4 241 (17.76%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 218 (16.06%) Cybersecurity
6 205 (15.11%) Migration
7 200 (14.74%) Problem-Solving
8 184 (13.56%) Load Balancing
9 168 (12.38%) ITIL
10 162 (11.94%) Zero Trust
11 158 (11.64%) Stakeholder Management
12 152 (11.20%) Agile
13 137 (10.10%) Project Delivery
14 135 (9.95%) High Availability
15 132 (9.73%) SIEM
16 125 (9.21%) Change Management
17 118 (8.70%) Cloud Security
18 116 (8.55%) Technical Leadership
19 115 (8.47%) Incident Response
20 112 (8.25%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 282 (20.78%) Python
2 222 (16.36%) PowerShell
3 132 (9.73%) Bash
4 47 (3.46%) Bicep
5 42 (3.10%) Java
5 42 (3.10%) SQL
6 18 (1.33%) ActionScript
7 13 (0.96%) Groovy
8 8 (0.59%) Kusto Query Language
8 8 (0.59%) Perl
8 8 (0.59%) Shell Script
9 6 (0.44%) C++
9 6 (0.44%) JavaScript
9 6 (0.44%) Search Processing Language
10 5 (0.37%) Go
11 4 (0.29%) TypeScript
12 3 (0.22%) C
13 2 (0.15%) C#
13 2 (0.15%) COBOL
13 2 (0.15%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 456 (33.60%) Security Cleared
2 318 (23.43%) SC Cleared
3 232 (17.10%) Cisco Certification
4 172 (12.68%) CCNP
5 126 (9.29%) DV Cleared
6 103 (7.59%) Degree
7 87 (6.41%) CCNA
8 77 (5.67%) CISSP
9 65 (4.79%) Azure Certification
10 50 (3.68%) AWS Certification
11 36 (2.65%) CCIE
12 34 (2.51%) Microsoft Certification
13 33 (2.43%) CISM
14 26 (1.92%) Computer Science Degree
15 16 (1.18%) CEH
16 15 (1.11%) Network+ Certification
16 15 (1.11%) PMI Certification
16 15 (1.11%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 14 (1.03%) PMP
18 13 (0.96%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 77 (5.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 70 (5.16%) NIST
3 33 (2.43%) GDPR
4 28 (2.06%) NCSC
5 25 (1.84%) QA
6 24 (1.77%) PCI DSS
7 22 (1.62%) SLA
8 21 (1.55%) Cyber Essentials
9 16 (1.18%) NIST 800
10 10 (0.74%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 9 (0.66%) JSP 440
11 9 (0.66%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 6 (0.44%) Data Quality
12 6 (0.44%) GxP
12 6 (0.44%) HIPAA
13 5 (0.37%) COBIT
13 5 (0.37%) Disclosure Scotland
13 5 (0.37%) GRC
14 4 (0.29%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 3 (0.22%) SOC 2
System Software
1 236 (17.39%) Active Directory
2 174 (12.82%) VMware Infrastructure
3 77 (5.67%) Docker
4 67 (4.94%) Hyper-V
5 56 (4.13%) VMware NSX
6 53 (3.91%) vSphere
7 44 (3.24%) VMware ESXi
8 39 (2.87%) Virtual Machines
9 21 (1.55%) Firmware
10 15 (1.11%) Virtual Desktop
11 8 (0.59%) Squid
11 8 (0.59%) Virtual Servers
12 7 (0.52%) BitLocker
13 5 (0.37%) Dovecot
13 5 (0.37%) FreeRADIUS
13 5 (0.37%) NFS
13 5 (0.37%) Postfix
14 4 (0.29%) Microsoft App-V
15 3 (0.22%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.22%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 209 (15.40%) Ansible
2 131 (9.65%) Kubernetes
3 84 (6.19%) FortiGate
4 73 (5.38%) Microsoft Intune
5 57 (4.20%) Grafana
6 53 (3.91%) Prometheus
7 38 (2.80%) SCCM
8 31 (2.28%) Single Sign-On
9 30 (2.21%) Progress Chef
10 20 (1.47%) vCenter Server
11 19 (1.40%) VxRail
12 16 (1.18%) Puppet
13 12 (0.88%) CASB
13 12 (0.88%) Cisco Prime
14 11 (0.81%) Argo
15 10 (0.74%) Nagios
15 10 (0.74%) Nessus
15 10 (0.74%) Packer
16 8 (0.59%) Istio
16 8 (0.59%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 502 (36.99%) Cisco
2 343 (25.28%) Microsoft
3 324 (23.88%) Palo Alto
4 221 (16.29%) VMware
5 199 (14.66%) Fortinet
6 168 (12.38%) F5
7 121 (8.92%) CheckPoint
8 116 (8.55%) Juniper
9 72 (5.31%) Zscaler
10 62 (4.57%) Splunk
11 61 (4.50%) Aruba
11 61 (4.50%) Google
12 59 (4.35%) ServiceNow
13 58 (4.27%) Meraki
14 54 (3.98%) Arista
15 52 (3.83%) SolarWinds
16 34 (2.51%) Citrix
17 32 (2.36%) Red Hat
18 29 (2.14%) Dynatrace
19 26 (1.92%) Infoblox