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

6 months to
23 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 91 55 57
Rank change year-on-year -36 +2 -9
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,441 1,404 1,447
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.73% 4.30% 3.52%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 28.92% 35.37% 28.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 915 830 910
10th Percentile £350 £325 £289
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year - -3.85% -0.95%
75th Percentile £594 £600 £608
90th Percentile £650 £688 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £489 £513
% change year-on-year +2.35% -4.68% +7.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 27 41
10th Percentile £28.80 £14.20 £18.50
25th Percentile £38.80 £15.23 £23.92
Median hourly rate £62.50 £30.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +108.33% -50.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £78.63 £42.61 £85.65
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.63 £87.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £30.00 £76.99
% change year-on-year +116.67% -61.03% +18.45%

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 4,983 3,969 5,105
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.45% 12.15% 12.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,000 2,423 3,051
10th Percentile £250 £235 £213
25th Percentile £400 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.15% -2.10% -
75th Percentile £588 £590 £601
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.16% -5.00% +9.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 328 194 377
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.99 £13.95
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.15 £17.63
Median hourly rate £26.22 £46.88 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -44.06% +17.19% -16.52%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £83.70 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £42.50 £47.50
% change year-on-year -37.27% -10.53% -16.67%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 1,253 £500 - 465
UK excluding London -27 818 £500 +2.35% 392
London -59 477 £500 -1.96% 129
Work from Home -37 395 £520 +4.00% 164
North of England -12 295 £500 +5.26% 97
South East -29 231 £506 +1.25% 139
North West -4 192 £537 +13.05% 50
Yorkshire -39 87 £450 -8.07% 35
Midlands -70 78 £450 -9.27% 45
East of England -13 72 £525 -4.55% 31
South West -45 69 £538 +7.50% 52
Scotland +15 62 £425 -4.23% 20
West Midlands -69 62 £434 -15.78% 26
North East -17 22 £625 - 14
Wales -22 18 £425 +17.24% 11
East Midlands -24 13 £500 +6.16% 19
Northern Ireland -3 1 - - 6

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 42 (2.91%) Microsoft Exchange
2 26 (1.80%) Confluence
2 26 (1.80%) SharePoint
3 13 (0.90%) Apache
4 12 (0.83%) nginx
5 10 (0.69%) CICS
6 6 (0.42%) SAS
7 4 (0.28%) Tomcat
8 3 (0.21%) CloudStack
8 3 (0.21%) FactoryTalk
8 3 (0.21%) IIS
8 3 (0.21%) Skype for Business
9 2 (0.14%) Apache Pulsar
9 2 (0.14%) CMS
9 2 (0.14%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.14%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.14%) Umbraco
9 2 (0.14%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.14%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.14%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 22 (1.53%) MS Visio
2 20 (1.39%) Microsoft Office
3 19 (1.32%) Microsoft Excel
4 8 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 2 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.069%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 2 (0.14%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.14%) Dynamics GP
2 1 (0.069%) Bloomberg TOMS
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
1 512 (35.53%) Azure
2 317 (22.00%) AWS
3 151 (10.48%) Entra ID
4 122 (8.47%) GCP
5 120 (8.33%) Microsoft 365
6 72 (5.00%) GitHub
7 66 (4.58%) IaaS
8 57 (3.96%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 56 (3.89%) SaaS
10 54 (3.75%) Azure DevOps
11 46 (3.19%) Azure Monitor
12 44 (3.05%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 43 (2.98%) PaaS
14 38 (2.64%) Azure Sentinel
15 36 (2.50%) OCI
16 34 (2.36%) Serverless
17 32 (2.22%) Google Kubernetes Engine
18 30 (2.08%) GitHub Actions
19 28 (1.94%) AWS CloudFormation
20 27 (1.87%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 421 (29.22%) VPN
2 405 (28.11%) Network Security
3 395 (27.41%) WAN
4 353 (24.50%) DNS
5 296 (20.54%) LAN
6 271 (18.81%) BGP
7 219 (15.20%) OSPF
8 206 (14.30%) TCP/IP
9 203 (14.09%) VLAN
10 202 (14.02%) DHCP
11 170 (11.80%) Wireless
12 147 (10.20%) SD-WAN
13 124 (8.61%) Wi-Fi
14 99 (6.87%) MPLS
15 94 (6.52%) BIG-IP
15 94 (6.52%) IPsec
16 84 (5.83%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 83 (5.76%) VXLAN
18 80 (5.55%) SSL
19 79 (5.48%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (2.15%) SQL Server
2 18 (1.25%) Power BI
3 17 (1.18%) PostgreSQL
4 13 (0.90%) Amazon RDS
5 12 (0.83%) Elasticsearch
6 10 (0.69%) DataStage
7 9 (0.62%) Azure SQL Database
7 9 (0.62%) Data Lake
7 9 (0.62%) Relational Database
8 8 (0.56%) MySQL
8 8 (0.56%) Oracle Database
9 5 (0.35%) Delta Lake
10 4 (0.28%) Amazon Aurora
10 4 (0.28%) Data Warehouse
10 4 (0.28%) Db2
10 4 (0.28%) NoSQL
11 3 (0.21%) Amazon Athena
11 3 (0.21%) Amazon QuickSight
11 3 (0.21%) Amazon Redshift
11 3 (0.21%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 92 (6.38%) JIRA
2 53 (3.68%) Jenkins
3 44 (3.05%) Git
4 41 (2.85%) GitLab
5 13 (0.90%) Sonatype Nexus
6 9 (0.62%) Artifactory
6 9 (0.62%) Chocolatey
7 6 (0.42%) Bitbucket
7 6 (0.42%) Browser DevTools
8 4 (0.28%) Burp Suite
8 4 (0.28%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.21%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 2 (0.14%) Cucumber
10 2 (0.14%) Gradle
10 2 (0.14%) Introscope
10 2 (0.14%) Jaeger
10 2 (0.14%) LoadRunner
10 2 (0.14%) Metasploit
10 2 (0.14%) MSI
10 2 (0.14%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 303 (21.03%) Social Skills
2 193 (13.39%) Finance
3 131 (9.09%) Analytical Skills
4 121 (8.40%) Public Sector
5 78 (5.41%) Banking
6 72 (5.00%) Documentation Skills
7 52 (3.61%) Telecoms
8 25 (1.73%) Legal
8 25 (1.73%) Manufacturing
9 23 (1.60%) Financial Institution
9 23 (1.60%) Influencing Skills
10 20 (1.39%) Military
11 18 (1.25%) Local Government
12 16 (1.11%) Retail
13 12 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
13 12 (0.83%) Police
14 11 (0.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 10 (0.69%) Law
16 9 (0.62%) Investment Banking
16 9 (0.62%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 474 (32.89%) Network Engineer
2 208 (14.43%) Architect
3 206 (14.30%) Senior
4 144 (9.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 127 (8.81%) Security Engineer
6 90 (6.25%) Senior Network Engineer
7 72 (5.00%) Cloud Engineer
7 72 (5.00%) Network Architect
8 60 (4.16%) Consultant
8 60 (4.16%) Network Security Engineer
9 56 (3.89%) Azure Engineer
10 50 (3.47%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
11 49 (3.40%) Security Architect
12 45 (3.12%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 45 (3.12%) Technical Architect
13 43 (2.98%) DevOps Engineer
14 39 (2.71%) Cisco Engineer
14 39 (2.71%) Lead
15 37 (2.57%) Cisco Network Engineer
16 34 (2.36%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 72 (5.00%) 802.1X
2 42 (2.91%) Middleware
3 30 (2.08%) LDAP
4 26 (1.80%) SAML
5 20 (1.39%) ARM Templates
6 15 (1.04%) OpenID
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%) scikit-learn
10 8 (0.56%) .NET
10 8 (0.56%) REST
10 8 (0.56%) YAML
11 7 (0.49%) React
11 7 (0.49%) SailPoint
12 6 (0.42%) Elastic Stack
13 5 (0.35%) Jinja
13 5 (0.35%) LAMP
Miscellaneous
1 331 (22.97%) Data Centre
2 95 (6.59%) Cloud Native
3 86 (5.97%) Hybrid Cloud
4 83 (5.76%) PKI
5 75 (5.20%) Security Posture
6 56 (3.89%) Management Information System
7 53 (3.68%) Onboarding
8 43 (2.98%) Operational Technology
9 41 (2.85%) Clustering
10 31 (2.15%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 30 (2.08%) Data Protection Act
12 29 (2.01%) IoT
13 28 (1.94%) Public Cloud
14 24 (1.67%) Enterprise Storage
15 23 (1.60%) SCADA
16 21 (1.46%) Driving Licence
16 21 (1.46%) Self-Motivation
17 19 (1.32%) Linux Command Line
18 18 (1.25%) Cyber Threat
18 18 (1.25%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 336 (23.32%) Windows
2 204 (14.16%) Linux
3 122 (8.47%) Windows Server
4 51 (3.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 35 (2.43%) Unix
6 23 (1.60%) VMS
7 19 (1.32%) Ubuntu
8 14 (0.97%) Windows Server 2019
9 11 (0.76%) Solaris
10 10 (0.69%) AIX
10 10 (0.69%) CentOS
11 9 (0.62%) Windows Server 2016
12 8 (0.56%) Mac OS
13 7 (0.49%) Windows 10
13 7 (0.49%) Windows Server 2012
14 6 (0.42%) Rocky
14 6 (0.42%) Windows Server 2003
15 4 (0.28%) Amazon Linux
15 4 (0.28%) Android
15 4 (0.28%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 236 (16.38%) DevOps
2 218 (15.13%) CI/CD
3 217 (15.06%) Infrastructure as Code
4 203 (14.09%) Load Balancing
5 199 (13.81%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 195 (13.53%) Problem-Solving
7 189 (13.12%) Migration
8 188 (13.05%) ITIL
9 183 (12.70%) Cybersecurity
10 181 (12.56%) High Availability
11 158 (10.96%) Zero Trust
12 153 (10.62%) Agile
13 134 (9.30%) Change Management
13 134 (9.30%) SIEM
14 127 (8.81%) Project Delivery
15 119 (8.26%) Observability
16 118 (8.19%) Validation
17 113 (7.84%) Stakeholder Management
18 106 (7.36%) Cloud Security
19 102 (7.08%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 259 (17.97%) Python
2 183 (12.70%) PowerShell
3 117 (8.12%) Bash
4 49 (3.40%) Bicep
5 42 (2.91%) SQL
6 34 (2.36%) Java
7 11 (0.76%) ActionScript
7 11 (0.76%) Perl
8 10 (0.69%) COBOL
9 7 (0.49%) Groovy
10 6 (0.42%) JavaScript
10 6 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
11 5 (0.35%) C++
11 5 (0.35%) Go
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%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 481 (33.38%) Security Cleared
2 336 (23.32%) SC Cleared
3 283 (19.64%) Cisco Certification
4 212 (14.71%) CCNP
5 125 (8.67%) DV Cleared
6 117 (8.12%) CCNA
7 113 (7.84%) Degree
8 74 (5.14%) CISSP
9 59 (4.09%) Azure Certification
10 42 (2.91%) AWS Certification
10 42 (2.91%) CCIE
11 34 (2.36%) CISM
11 34 (2.36%) Microsoft Certification
12 23 (1.60%) Computer Science Degree
13 22 (1.53%) JNCIS
14 21 (1.46%) Network+ Certification
15 18 (1.25%) JNCIP
16 17 (1.18%) PMP
16 17 (1.18%) Server+ Certification
17 15 (1.04%) JNCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (5.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 58 (4.02%) NIST
3 43 (2.98%) GDPR
4 32 (2.22%) NCSC
5 25 (1.73%) PCI DSS
6 23 (1.60%) SLA
7 22 (1.53%) QA
8 21 (1.46%) Cyber Essentials
9 9 (0.62%) Data Quality
9 9 (0.62%) NIST 800
10 8 (0.56%) Disclosure Scotland
11 7 (0.49%) GxP
11 7 (0.49%) JSP 440
12 6 (0.42%) Actionable Recommendations
12 6 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 6 (0.42%) GRC
13 5 (0.35%) HIPAA
13 5 (0.35%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
14 4 (0.28%) RMADS
14 4 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 229 (15.89%) Active Directory
2 161 (11.17%) VMware Infrastructure
3 61 (4.23%) Docker
4 58 (4.02%) VMware NSX
5 48 (3.33%) Hyper-V
6 41 (2.85%) vSphere
7 39 (2.71%) Virtual Machines
8 38 (2.64%) VMware ESXi
9 26 (1.80%) Firmware
10 18 (1.25%) Virtual Desktop
11 12 (0.83%) BitLocker
12 11 (0.76%) Squid
13 8 (0.56%) Microsoft App-V
14 6 (0.42%) NFS
15 4 (0.28%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.21%) Dovecot
16 3 (0.21%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 3 (0.21%) Postfix
16 3 (0.21%) Virtual Servers
17 2 (0.14%) Citrix Hypervisor
Systems Management
1 267 (18.53%) Terraform
2 188 (13.05%) Ansible
3 110 (7.63%) Kubernetes
4 108 (7.49%) FortiGate
5 68 (4.72%) Microsoft Intune
6 57 (3.96%) Grafana
7 54 (3.75%) Prometheus
8 39 (2.71%) SCCM
9 30 (2.08%) Single Sign-On
10 24 (1.67%) vCenter Server
11 20 (1.39%) Progress Chef
12 18 (1.25%) Puppet
13 16 (1.11%) CASB
14 14 (0.97%) Cisco Prime
15 13 (0.90%) VxRail
16 10 (0.69%) QRadar
17 9 (0.62%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 9 (0.62%) Packer
18 8 (0.56%) Nessus
18 8 (0.56%) vMotion
Vendors
1 524 (36.36%) Cisco
2 313 (21.72%) Palo Alto
3 311 (21.58%) Microsoft
4 215 (14.92%) VMware
5 208 (14.43%) Fortinet
6 203 (14.09%) F5
7 161 (11.17%) Juniper
8 132 (9.16%) CheckPoint
9 81 (5.62%) Splunk
10 74 (5.14%) Aruba
11 73 (5.07%) Arista
12 72 (5.00%) Google
13 70 (4.86%) ServiceNow
14 69 (4.79%) SolarWinds
15 65 (4.51%) Zscaler
16 46 (3.19%) Citrix
17 45 (3.12%) Red Hat
18 44 (3.05%) Meraki
19 33 (2.29%) Infoblox
20 27 (1.87%) Extreme Networks