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 17 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 88 52 55
Rank change year-on-year -36 +3 -7
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,361 1,271 1,502
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.70% 4.28% 3.45%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 28.47% 34.26% 27.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 876 752 940
10th Percentile £350 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £650 £688 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% +2.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 22 45
10th Percentile £26.42 £14.20 £17.00
25th Percentile £37.25 £14.43 £23.92
Median hourly rate £56.00 £30.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +86.67% -50.00% -4.08%
75th Percentile £70.17 £41.25 £85.65
90th Percentile £78.53 £44.83 £87.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £56.00 £30.00 £83.63
% change year-on-year +86.67% -64.13% +33.71%

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 4,781 3,710 5,390
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.50% 12.50% 12.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,931 2,279 3,184
10th Percentile £258 £222 £210
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £481 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.95% -3.80% -1.96%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £470 £488
% change year-on-year +2.26% -3.59% +2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 291 174 422
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £19.81 £17.69
Median hourly rate £27.88 £42.75 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -34.78% +6.88% +110.53%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.97 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £78.50 £71.19
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.00 £31.08 £47.50
% change year-on-year -6.69% -34.57% +150.46%

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 17 June 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 17 June 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 17 June 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 -43 1,150 £500 -1.48% 623
UK excluding London -28 771 £500 +3.09% 603
London -56 430 £501 -4.67% 132
Work from Home -34 385 £520 +4.00% 339
North of England -14 271 £500 +5.26% 127
South East -20 214 £500 - 192
North West +1 173 £537 +13.05% 70
Yorkshire -36 83 £443 -8.76% 39
Midlands -66 75 £425 -16.42% 83
East of England -6 70 £505 -3.81% 62
Scotland +12 64 £450 +5.88% 41
West Midlands -47 64 £420 -20.00% 48
South West -43 58 £525 +7.97% 68
Wales -18 25 £425 +30.77% 16
North East -13 21 £625 +25.00% 19
East Midlands -41 8 £500 +1.63% 35
Northern Ireland -3 2 £385 - 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 35 (2.57%) Microsoft Exchange
2 30 (2.20%) Confluence
3 20 (1.47%) SharePoint
4 15 (1.10%) nginx
5 11 (0.81%) Apache
6 10 (0.73%) CICS
7 6 (0.44%) IIS
8 5 (0.37%) SAS
8 5 (0.37%) Tomcat
9 3 (0.22%) Skype for Business
10 2 (0.15%) Apache Pulsar
10 2 (0.15%) CloudStack
10 2 (0.15%) CMS
10 2 (0.15%) IBM HTTP Server
10 2 (0.15%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.15%) Umbraco
10 2 (0.15%) WebSphere
10 2 (0.15%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.15%) WebSphere Portal
11 1 (0.073%) MTS
Applications
1 24 (1.76%) MS Visio
2 22 (1.62%) Microsoft Office
3 17 (1.25%) Microsoft Excel
4 9 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 8 (0.59%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.073%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 1 (0.073%) Dynamics GP
1 1 (0.073%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.073%) Primavera
1 1 (0.073%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.073%) SAP S/4HANA
1 1 (0.073%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
1 1 (0.073%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 455 (33.43%) Azure
2 292 (21.45%) AWS
3 121 (8.89%) Entra ID
4 115 (8.45%) GCP
5 107 (7.86%) Microsoft 365
6 74 (5.44%) GitHub
7 61 (4.48%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 58 (4.26%) IaaS
9 52 (3.82%) Azure DevOps
10 46 (3.38%) SaaS
11 41 (3.01%) PaaS
12 38 (2.79%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 37 (2.72%) OCI
14 35 (2.57%) Azure Monitor
14 35 (2.57%) GitHub Actions
15 34 (2.50%) Azure Sentinel
16 33 (2.42%) Serverless
17 28 (2.06%) Amazon EC2
17 28 (2.06%) Google Kubernetes Engine
18 25 (1.84%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 388 (28.51%) Network Security
2 375 (27.55%) WAN
3 348 (25.57%) VPN
4 288 (21.16%) DNS
5 276 (20.28%) LAN
6 241 (17.71%) BGP
7 206 (15.14%) OSPF
8 175 (12.86%) VLAN
9 155 (11.39%) SD-WAN
10 149 (10.95%) TCP/IP
11 145 (10.65%) DHCP
12 144 (10.58%) Wireless
13 112 (8.23%) Wi-Fi
14 98 (7.20%) BIG-IP
15 93 (6.83%) MPLS
15 93 (6.83%) VXLAN
16 88 (6.47%) IPsec
17 79 (5.80%) SSL
18 78 (5.73%) Ethernet VPN
19 77 (5.66%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (1.62%) SQL Server
2 18 (1.32%) Elasticsearch
3 16 (1.18%) PostgreSQL
3 16 (1.18%) Power BI
4 11 (0.81%) Amazon RDS
5 10 (0.73%) DataStage
6 9 (0.66%) Oracle Database
7 8 (0.59%) Azure SQL Database
7 8 (0.59%) Data Lake
7 8 (0.59%) MySQL
8 7 (0.51%) Data Warehouse
8 7 (0.51%) Relational Database
9 4 (0.29%) Amazon Athena
9 4 (0.29%) Amazon QuickSight
9 4 (0.29%) Amazon Redshift
9 4 (0.29%) Delta Lake
9 4 (0.29%) Metadata
9 4 (0.29%) MongoDB
9 4 (0.29%) NoSQL
9 4 (0.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 87 (6.39%) JIRA
2 59 (4.34%) Jenkins
3 44 (3.23%) GitLab
4 43 (3.16%) Git
5 14 (1.03%) Sonatype Nexus
6 10 (0.73%) Artifactory
6 10 (0.73%) Burp Suite
7 9 (0.66%) Bitbucket
7 9 (0.66%) Chocolatey
7 9 (0.66%) SonarQube
8 8 (0.59%) Metasploit
9 7 (0.51%) Jaeger
10 5 (0.37%) Browser DevTools
11 2 (0.15%) Cucumber
11 2 (0.15%) Gradle
11 2 (0.15%) Introscope
11 2 (0.15%) LoadRunner
11 2 (0.15%) Postman
11 2 (0.15%) REST Assured
11 2 (0.15%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 300 (22.04%) Social Skills
2 170 (12.49%) Finance
3 116 (8.52%) Analytical Skills
4 107 (7.86%) Public Sector
5 80 (5.88%) Documentation Skills
6 60 (4.41%) Banking
7 37 (2.72%) Telecoms
8 36 (2.65%) Legal
9 23 (1.69%) Financial Institution
10 21 (1.54%) Manufacturing
11 19 (1.40%) Military
12 16 (1.18%) Influencing Skills
13 13 (0.96%) Law
14 12 (0.88%) Retail
15 11 (0.81%) Investment Banking
16 10 (0.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 10 (0.73%) Local Government
17 9 (0.66%) Front Office
17 9 (0.66%) Organisational Skills
17 9 (0.66%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 435 (31.96%) Network Engineer
2 207 (15.21%) Architect
3 166 (12.20%) Senior
4 123 (9.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 117 (8.60%) Security Engineer
6 71 (5.22%) Network Architect
6 71 (5.22%) Senior Network Engineer
7 67 (4.92%) Cloud Engineer
8 59 (4.34%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
9 54 (3.97%) Azure Engineer
10 52 (3.82%) Network Security Engineer
11 46 (3.38%) Technical Architect
12 45 (3.31%) Consultant
12 45 (3.31%) Lead
13 43 (3.16%) DevOps Engineer
14 42 (3.09%) Cisco Engineer
15 39 (2.87%) Security Architect
16 38 (2.79%) Cisco Network Engineer
17 34 (2.50%) Cloud Architect
18 33 (2.42%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 73 (5.36%) 802.1X
2 39 (2.87%) Middleware
3 34 (2.50%) LDAP
4 27 (1.98%) SAML
5 23 (1.69%) OpenID
6 15 (1.10%) Kafka
7 12 (0.88%) OAuth
8 11 (0.81%) OAuth2
9 10 (0.73%) OpenTelemetry
9 10 (0.73%) REST
10 9 (0.66%) Spring Boot
11 8 (0.59%) ARM Templates
12 7 (0.51%) .NET
12 7 (0.51%) YAML
13 6 (0.44%) Elastic Stack
13 6 (0.44%) LangChain
13 6 (0.44%) PyTorch
13 6 (0.44%) React
13 6 (0.44%) scikit-learn
14 5 (0.37%) AWS CDK
Miscellaneous
1 330 (24.25%) Data Centre
2 84 (6.17%) Cloud Native
3 80 (5.88%) Security Posture
4 67 (4.92%) Hybrid Cloud
5 59 (4.34%) Onboarding
5 59 (4.34%) PKI
6 44 (3.23%) Management Information System
7 42 (3.09%) Clustering
8 40 (2.94%) Operational Technology
9 31 (2.28%) Public Cloud
10 28 (2.06%) Data Protection Act
11 25 (1.84%) IoT
12 23 (1.69%) Enterprise Storage
13 22 (1.62%) Cyber Threat
14 20 (1.47%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
15 19 (1.40%) SCADA
15 19 (1.40%) Self-Motivation
16 16 (1.18%) Driving Licence
16 16 (1.18%) Enterprise Software
17 15 (1.10%) BYOD
Operating Systems
1 301 (22.12%) Windows
2 183 (13.45%) Linux
3 110 (8.08%) Windows Server
4 39 (2.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 29 (2.13%) Unix
6 23 (1.69%) VMS
7 12 (0.88%) Windows Server 2019
8 11 (0.81%) Solaris
9 10 (0.73%) AIX
10 9 (0.66%) Windows Server 2016
11 8 (0.59%) Ubuntu
11 8 (0.59%) Windows Server 2003
12 6 (0.44%) Windows 10
12 6 (0.44%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.37%) CentOS
13 5 (0.37%) Mac OS
14 4 (0.29%) Android
14 4 (0.29%) SUSE
15 3 (0.22%) Amazon Linux
15 3 (0.22%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 238 (17.49%) DevOps
2 210 (15.43%) CI/CD
3 193 (14.18%) Infrastructure as Code
4 186 (13.67%) Load Balancing
4 186 (13.67%) Migration
5 174 (12.78%) High Availability
6 167 (12.27%) Cybersecurity
7 165 (12.12%) Problem-Solving
8 164 (12.05%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 160 (11.76%) ITIL
10 151 (11.09%) Agile
11 147 (10.80%) Zero Trust
12 111 (8.16%) SIEM
13 109 (8.01%) Change Management
13 109 (8.01%) Observability
14 107 (7.86%) Project Delivery
15 103 (7.57%) Cloud Security
16 101 (7.42%) Validation
17 99 (7.27%) Network Segmentation
18 96 (7.05%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 216 (15.87%) Python
2 134 (9.85%) PowerShell
3 81 (5.95%) Bash
4 48 (3.53%) SQL
5 39 (2.87%) Bicep
6 36 (2.65%) Java
7 10 (0.73%) ActionScript
7 10 (0.73%) COBOL
7 10 (0.73%) Perl
8 6 (0.44%) Groovy
8 6 (0.44%) JavaScript
8 6 (0.44%) Kusto Query Language
8 6 (0.44%) Rust
9 5 (0.37%) Go
9 5 (0.37%) PL/SQL
10 4 (0.29%) C++
10 4 (0.29%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.15%) C
11 2 (0.15%) Jython
11 2 (0.15%) PHP
Qualifications
1 455 (33.43%) Security Cleared
2 339 (24.91%) SC Cleared
3 283 (20.79%) Cisco Certification
4 210 (15.43%) CCNP
5 120 (8.82%) CCNA
6 113 (8.30%) Degree
7 98 (7.20%) DV Cleared
8 66 (4.85%) CISSP
9 58 (4.26%) Azure Certification
10 40 (2.94%) AWS Certification
10 40 (2.94%) CCIE
11 33 (2.42%) CISM
11 33 (2.42%) Microsoft Certification
12 21 (1.54%) Network+ Certification
13 20 (1.47%) JNCIS
14 19 (1.40%) Computer Science Degree
15 18 (1.32%) JNCIA
15 18 (1.32%) PMP
16 17 (1.25%) Server+ Certification
17 16 (1.18%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 71 (5.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 58 (4.26%) NIST
3 47 (3.45%) GDPR
4 31 (2.28%) PCI DSS
5 30 (2.20%) NCSC
5 30 (2.20%) SLA
6 25 (1.84%) QA
7 21 (1.54%) Cyber Essentials
8 9 (0.66%) PMO
9 8 (0.59%) Disclosure Scotland
10 7 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
10 7 (0.51%) Data Quality
11 6 (0.44%) GRC
11 6 (0.44%) NIST 800
11 6 (0.44%) RMADS
12 5 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 5 (0.37%) JSP 440
12 5 (0.37%) SOC 2
13 4 (0.29%) GxP
13 4 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 205 (15.06%) Active Directory
2 146 (10.73%) VMware Infrastructure
3 56 (4.11%) Docker
4 55 (4.04%) VMware NSX
5 37 (2.72%) vSphere
6 35 (2.57%) Hyper-V
7 34 (2.50%) Virtual Machines
8 30 (2.20%) VMware ESXi
9 25 (1.84%) Firmware
10 21 (1.54%) Virtual Desktop
11 16 (1.18%) Squid
12 13 (0.96%) BitLocker
13 10 (0.73%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.29%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.22%) DFS Replication
15 3 (0.22%) Dovecot
15 3 (0.22%) Postfix
16 2 (0.15%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 2 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
16 2 (0.15%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 230 (16.90%) Terraform
2 175 (12.86%) Ansible
3 109 (8.01%) FortiGate
3 109 (8.01%) Kubernetes
4 65 (4.78%) Grafana
5 58 (4.26%) Prometheus
6 50 (3.67%) Microsoft Intune
7 31 (2.28%) Single Sign-On
8 29 (2.13%) SCCM
9 23 (1.69%) vCenter Server
10 19 (1.40%) Puppet
11 17 (1.25%) Progress Chef
12 15 (1.10%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 13 (0.96%) CASB
14 12 (0.88%) Cisco Prime
15 11 (0.81%) Consul
15 11 (0.81%) QRadar
16 10 (0.73%) Nmap
16 10 (0.73%) vMotion
16 10 (0.73%) VxRail
Vendors
1 490 (36.00%) Cisco
2 307 (22.56%) Palo Alto
3 267 (19.62%) Microsoft
4 194 (14.25%) Fortinet
5 189 (13.89%) F5
6 186 (13.67%) VMware
7 153 (11.24%) Juniper
8 121 (8.89%) CheckPoint
9 86 (6.32%) Aruba
10 81 (5.95%) Splunk
11 72 (5.29%) Arista
12 71 (5.22%) ServiceNow
13 67 (4.92%) SolarWinds
14 59 (4.34%) Google
15 48 (3.53%) Zscaler
16 42 (3.09%) Red Hat
17 37 (2.72%) Citrix
18 34 (2.50%) Meraki
19 28 (2.06%) Extreme Networks
20 27 (1.98%) Dynatrace