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

6 months to
25 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 104 62 56
Rank change year-on-year -42 -6 -10
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,366 1,282 1,391
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.49% 3.88% 3.62%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 26.74% 33.79% 30.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 840 789 854
10th Percentile £350 £313 £321
25th Percentile £425 £413 £414
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £675 £688 £684
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% +2.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 29 29
10th Percentile £30.80 £15.29 £20.00
25th Percentile £54.68 £29.00 £21.25
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 £62.50
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.63 £79.08
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 5,109 3,794 4,596
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.31% 11.50% 11.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,954 2,369 2,655
10th Percentile £231 £225 £225
25th Percentile £390 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £454 £495
% change year-on-year +4.74% -8.38% +7.03%
Number of hourly rates quoted 422 202 227
10th Percentile £14.24 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £25.15 £23.45
Median hourly rate £32.75 £42.50 £50.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.94% -15.84% -10.60%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £72.72 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.00 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -31.76% -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 25 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 25 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 25 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 1,199 £505 +1.00% 1,133
UK excluding London -39 759 £500 +3.09% 712
London -61 469 £500 -2.91% 487
Work from Home -36 391 £523 +4.50% 442
North of England +3 282 £500 +3.09% 146
North West +6 164 £503 +5.79% 91
South East -55 163 £525 +5.00% 232
Yorkshire -21 96 £483 -1.43% 42
South West -10 89 £560 +15.46% 85
Midlands -70 85 £463 -2.63% 112
East of England -10 75 £572 +14.06% 60
West Midlands -74 63 £440 -7.37% 76
Scotland -22 62 £400 -11.11% 45
North East -17 29 £500 -13.04% 15
East Midlands -5 21 £500 +6.16% 36
Wales -18 7 £425 +112.50% 10
Channel Islands -7 2 £600 -17.24% 1
Northern Ireland -11 1 - - 26

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 (3.59%) Microsoft Exchange
2 37 (2.71%) SharePoint
3 34 (2.49%) 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 (0.073%) Appian
9 1 (0.073%) MTS
Applications
1 21 (1.54%) Microsoft Office
1 21 (1.54%) MS Visio
2 20 (1.46%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (0.59%) Microsoft Project
4 6 (0.44%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.073%) 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 (0.073%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.073%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.073%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 522 (38.21%) Azure
2 316 (23.13%) AWS
3 175 (12.81%) Entra ID
4 123 (9.00%) Microsoft 365
5 106 (7.76%) GCP
6 79 (5.78%) GitHub
7 71 (5.20%) IaaS
8 67 (4.90%) Azure DevOps
8 67 (4.90%) SaaS
9 56 (4.10%) Azure Monitor
10 48 (3.51%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 42 (3.07%) PaaS
12 41 (3.00%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 39 (2.86%) OCI
14 33 (2.42%) Serverless
15 32 (2.34%) Azure Sentinel
15 32 (2.34%) GitHub Actions
16 27 (1.98%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 27 (1.98%) AWS CloudFormation
17 26 (1.90%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 407 (29.80%) VPN
2 399 (29.21%) Network Security
3 362 (26.50%) DNS
4 344 (25.18%) WAN
5 252 (18.45%) LAN
6 238 (17.42%) BGP
7 210 (15.37%) DHCP
7 210 (15.37%) TCP/IP
8 199 (14.57%) VLAN
9 176 (12.88%) Wireless
10 172 (12.59%) OSPF
11 129 (9.44%) SD-WAN
12 124 (9.08%) Wi-Fi
13 78 (5.71%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 77 (5.64%) Cisco ASA
14 77 (5.64%) IPsec
15 76 (5.56%) MPLS
15 76 (5.56%) SSL
16 74 (5.42%) BIG-IP
17 65 (4.76%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (2.42%) SQL Server
2 20 (1.46%) Amazon RDS
3 18 (1.32%) PostgreSQL
4 15 (1.10%) 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 90 (6.59%) JIRA
2 64 (4.69%) Jenkins
3 52 (3.81%) Git
4 47 (3.44%) GitLab
5 16 (1.17%) Sonatype Nexus
6 9 (0.66%) Bitbucket
7 8 (0.59%) Artifactory
8 7 (0.51%) SonarQube
9 6 (0.44%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 4 (0.29%) Chocolatey
10 4 (0.29%) Maven
10 4 (0.29%) MSI
11 3 (0.22%) Browser DevTools
12 2 (0.15%) Burp Suite
12 2 (0.15%) Gatling
12 2 (0.15%) LoadRunner
12 2 (0.15%) Postman
12 2 (0.15%) REST Assured
12 2 (0.15%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 2 (0.15%) Vagrant
General
1 312 (22.84%) Social Skills
2 173 (12.66%) Finance
3 141 (10.32%) Analytical Skills
4 108 (7.91%) Public Sector
5 91 (6.66%) Banking
6 59 (4.32%) Documentation Skills
7 56 (4.10%) Telecoms
8 37 (2.71%) Manufacturing
9 28 (2.05%) Legal
10 22 (1.61%) Retail
11 18 (1.32%) Military
12 16 (1.17%) Local Government
13 15 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 14 (1.02%) Financial Institution
15 12 (0.88%) Aerospace
15 12 (0.88%) Influencing Skills
15 12 (0.88%) Police
16 10 (0.73%) Automotive
16 10 (0.73%) Investment Banking
16 10 (0.73%) Law
Job Titles
1 440 (32.21%) Network Engineer
2 212 (15.52%) Senior
3 164 (12.01%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 163 (11.93%) Architect
5 112 (8.20%) Security Engineer
6 93 (6.81%) Senior Network Engineer
7 84 (6.15%) Cloud Engineer
8 68 (4.98%) Consultant
9 64 (4.69%) Azure Engineer
10 62 (4.54%) Network Security Engineer
11 55 (4.03%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 54 (3.95%) Network Architect
13 53 (3.88%) DevOps Engineer
14 49 (3.59%) Lead
14 49 (3.59%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
14 49 (3.59%) Security Architect
15 40 (2.93%) Platform Engineer
16 39 (2.86%) Cisco Engineer
17 38 (2.78%) Technical Architect
18 37 (2.71%) Cisco Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 291 (21.30%) Terraform
2 41 (3.00%) 802.1X
3 29 (2.12%) SAML
4 28 (2.05%) Middleware
5 26 (1.90%) ARM Templates
6 23 (1.68%) REST
7 20 (1.46%) OpenID
8 17 (1.24%) OAuth
9 15 (1.10%) YAML
10 12 (0.88%) LDAP
10 12 (0.88%) OAuth2
11 11 (0.81%) JSON
12 10 (0.73%) React
13 8 (0.59%) SailPoint
14 7 (0.51%) Elastic Stack
14 7 (0.51%) Kafka
14 7 (0.51%) OpenTelemetry
15 6 (0.44%) .NET
15 6 (0.44%) ModSecurity
16 5 (0.37%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 291 (21.30%) Data Centre
2 105 (7.69%) Hybrid Cloud
3 77 (5.64%) PKI
4 73 (5.34%) Cloud Native
5 62 (4.54%) Security Posture
6 60 (4.39%) Onboarding
7 54 (3.95%) Management Information System
8 50 (3.66%) Operational Technology
9 38 (2.78%) Public Cloud
10 29 (2.12%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 27 (1.98%) Self-Motivation
12 25 (1.83%) Data Protection Act
13 24 (1.76%) Driving Licence
13 24 (1.76%) IoT
13 24 (1.76%) Replication
14 23 (1.68%) Enterprise Software
15 22 (1.61%) Linux Command Line
16 21 (1.54%) SCADA
17 19 (1.39%) Enterprise Storage
18 18 (1.32%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 337 (24.67%) Windows
2 220 (16.11%) Linux
3 148 (10.83%) Windows Server
4 45 (3.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 29 (2.12%) Unix
6 24 (1.76%) Ubuntu
7 19 (1.39%) VMS
8 17 (1.24%) Mac OS
9 14 (1.02%) CentOS
10 12 (0.88%) Windows 10
11 10 (0.73%) Windows Server 2019
12 9 (0.66%) Windows Server 2012
13 8 (0.59%) Amazon Linux
14 7 (0.51%) Android
14 7 (0.51%) Rocky
15 6 (0.44%) Apple iOS
16 5 (0.37%) Windows Server 2003
17 4 (0.29%) SUSE
17 4 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
18 3 (0.22%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 262 (19.18%) Infrastructure as Code
2 245 (17.94%) DevOps
3 244 (17.86%) CI/CD
4 240 (17.57%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 217 (15.89%) Cybersecurity
6 209 (15.30%) Migration
7 199 (14.57%) Problem-Solving
8 185 (13.54%) Load Balancing
9 171 (12.52%) ITIL
10 163 (11.93%) Zero Trust
11 155 (11.35%) Stakeholder Management
12 153 (11.20%) Agile
13 140 (10.25%) High Availability
14 139 (10.18%) Project Delivery
15 131 (9.59%) SIEM
16 128 (9.37%) Change Management
17 117 (8.57%) Technical Leadership
18 116 (8.49%) Cloud Security
19 114 (8.35%) Incident Response
20 112 (8.20%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 286 (20.94%) Python
2 225 (16.47%) PowerShell
3 134 (9.81%) Bash
4 47 (3.44%) Bicep
5 42 (3.07%) SQL
6 41 (3.00%) Java
7 17 (1.24%) ActionScript
8 14 (1.02%) Groovy
9 8 (0.59%) Kusto Query Language
9 8 (0.59%) Perl
9 8 (0.59%) Shell Script
10 6 (0.44%) Search Processing Language
11 5 (0.37%) C++
11 5 (0.37%) Go
11 5 (0.37%) JavaScript
12 4 (0.29%) TypeScript
13 3 (0.22%) C
14 2 (0.15%) COBOL
14 2 (0.15%) T-SQL
14 2 (0.15%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 459 (33.60%) Security Cleared
2 321 (23.50%) SC Cleared
3 238 (17.42%) Cisco Certification
4 178 (13.03%) CCNP
5 124 (9.08%) DV Cleared
6 105 (7.69%) Degree
7 92 (6.73%) CCNA
8 78 (5.71%) CISSP
9 69 (5.05%) Azure Certification
10 50 (3.66%) AWS Certification
11 36 (2.64%) CCIE
12 34 (2.49%) CISM
12 34 (2.49%) Microsoft Certification
13 26 (1.90%) Computer Science Degree
14 17 (1.24%) CEH
14 17 (1.24%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 15 (1.10%) Network+ Certification
15 15 (1.10%) PMI Certification
16 14 (1.02%) PMP
17 13 (0.95%) CCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 74 (5.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 67 (4.90%) NIST
3 34 (2.49%) GDPR
4 27 (1.98%) NCSC
5 26 (1.90%) QA
6 22 (1.61%) SLA
7 21 (1.54%) Cyber Essentials
7 21 (1.54%) PCI DSS
8 16 (1.17%) NIST 800
9 10 (0.73%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 9 (0.66%) JSP 440
10 9 (0.66%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 6 (0.44%) Data Quality
11 6 (0.44%) Disclosure Scotland
11 6 (0.44%) GxP
11 6 (0.44%) HIPAA
12 5 (0.37%) COBIT
12 5 (0.37%) GRC
13 4 (0.29%) 21 CFR Part 11
14 3 (0.22%) SOC 2
System Software
1 238 (17.42%) Active Directory
2 181 (13.25%) VMware Infrastructure
3 76 (5.56%) Docker
4 69 (5.05%) Hyper-V
5 59 (4.32%) VMware NSX
6 55 (4.03%) vSphere
7 49 (3.59%) VMware ESXi
8 44 (3.22%) Virtual Machines
9 24 (1.76%) Firmware
10 15 (1.10%) Virtual Desktop
11 9 (0.66%) Squid
12 8 (0.59%) Virtual Servers
13 7 (0.51%) BitLocker
14 5 (0.37%) Dovecot
14 5 (0.37%) FreeRADIUS
14 5 (0.37%) NFS
14 5 (0.37%) Postfix
15 4 (0.29%) Microsoft App-V
16 3 (0.22%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 3 (0.22%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 215 (15.74%) Ansible
2 131 (9.59%) Kubernetes
3 87 (6.37%) FortiGate
4 73 (5.34%) Microsoft Intune
5 55 (4.03%) Grafana
6 51 (3.73%) Prometheus
7 38 (2.78%) SCCM
8 31 (2.27%) Single Sign-On
9 29 (2.12%) Progress Chef
10 24 (1.76%) vCenter Server
11 21 (1.54%) VxRail
12 15 (1.10%) Cisco Prime
12 15 (1.10%) Puppet
13 12 (0.88%) CASB
14 10 (0.73%) Argo
14 10 (0.73%) Nagios
14 10 (0.73%) Nessus
14 10 (0.73%) Packer
15 8 (0.59%) Istio
15 8 (0.59%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 508 (37.19%) Cisco
2 341 (24.96%) Microsoft
3 322 (23.57%) Palo Alto
4 228 (16.69%) VMware
5 202 (14.79%) Fortinet
6 169 (12.37%) F5
7 120 (8.78%) CheckPoint
8 118 (8.64%) Juniper
9 73 (5.34%) Zscaler
10 64 (4.69%) Splunk
11 61 (4.47%) Aruba
12 60 (4.39%) Google
12 60 (4.39%) ServiceNow
13 56 (4.10%) Arista
14 55 (4.03%) Meraki
15 51 (3.73%) SolarWinds
16 34 (2.49%) Citrix
17 32 (2.34%) Red Hat
18 29 (2.12%) Dynatrace
19 27 (1.98%) CyberArk