Firewall Contracts

Firewall
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring Firewall skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Firewall over the 6 months leading up to 4 July 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 53 55 48
Rank change year-on-year +2 -7 +30
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,361 1,546 2,468
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 4.31% 3.56% 4.39%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 34.75% 28.46% 34.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 802 965 1,690
10th Percentile £325 £275 £305
25th Percentile £411 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -
75th Percentile £600 £608 £649
90th Percentile £688 £692 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £500 £483
% change year-on-year -3.50% +3.57% +1.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 47 66
10th Percentile £14.20 £16.98 £22.38
25th Percentile £14.66 £23.86 £40.38
Median hourly rate £30.00 £60.00 £62.55
Median % change year-on-year -50.00% -4.08% +39.00%
75th Percentile £31.89 £85.65 £75.00
90th Percentile £44.65 £87.49 £80.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £82.38 £62.55
% change year-on-year -63.58% +31.71% +49.11%

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 3,916 5,433 7,188
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.39% 12.51% 12.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,363 3,200 4,636
10th Percentile £230 £213 £240
25th Percentile £363 £350 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £503
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% -0.50% +0.50%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £675 £688 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £493 £475
% change year-on-year -4.57% +3.68% +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 188 427 421
10th Percentile £14.54 £13.86 £9.80
25th Percentile £20.81 £17.69 £10.63
Median hourly rate £42.00 £45.00 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% +100.00% -22.57%
75th Percentile £60.41 £63.75 £63.00
90th Percentile £76.50 £73.45 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.32 £47.50 £25.00
% change year-on-year -36.17% +90.00% +11.11%

Firewall
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Firewall as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Firewall in the UK

Firewall
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Firewall.

Daily rate trend for Firewall in the UK

Firewall
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Firewall over the 6 months to 4 July 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Firewall in the UK

Firewall
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Firewall.

Hourly rate trend for Firewall in the UK

Firewall
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Firewall over the 6 months to 4 July 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Firewall in the UK

Firewall
Top 18 Contract 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 4 July 2025. 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 +2 1,185 £500 -2.44% 3,395
UK excluding London 0 686 £483 -3.50% 2,180
London +12 537 £521 +0.72% 1,408
Work from Home +1 409 £500 -4.76% 1,407
North of England +11 193 £475 -15.56% 562
South East -1 185 £500 +1.27% 539
North West +6 114 £473 -21.25% 289
Midlands -10 97 £475 -5.00% 334
South West +2 84 £500 +1.01% 253
Yorkshire +17 76 £490 -4.95% 235
West Midlands -7 71 £525 +5.00% 207
East of England +21 56 £523 +4.50% 276
Scotland -12 40 £431 -9.21% 126
Wales +19 28 £325 +23.81% 69
East Midlands +2 26 £450 -10.67% 127
Northern Ireland -1 9 - - 45
Channel Islands - 5 £725 -
North East +3 3 £500 +122.22% 41

Firewall
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 78 (5.73%) Microsoft Exchange
2 48 (3.53%) SharePoint
3 37 (2.72%) Confluence
4 24 (1.76%) IBM Domino
5 7 (0.51%) Apache
5 7 (0.51%) OpenStack
6 6 (0.44%) IIS
7 5 (0.37%) CMS
8 4 (0.29%) Tomcat
9 3 (0.22%) JBoss
10 2 (0.15%) Anypoint
10 2 (0.15%) nginx
11 1 (0.073%) Camunda
11 1 (0.073%) WinCC
Applications
1 40 (2.94%) Microsoft Office
2 17 (1.25%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (0.88%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 4 (0.29%) Dynamics GP
2 2 (0.15%) Alphatax
2 2 (0.15%) ION MarketView
2 2 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.15%) SAP PM
3 1 (0.073%) Distributed Ledger
3 1 (0.073%) Oracle Payables
3 1 (0.073%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 404 (29.68%) Azure
2 277 (20.35%) AWS
3 153 (11.24%) Microsoft 365
4 108 (7.94%) GCP
5 86 (6.32%) Entra ID
6 79 (5.80%) IaaS
7 58 (4.26%) PaaS
8 51 (3.75%) Azure Sentinel
9 48 (3.53%) AWS CloudFormation
10 43 (3.16%) Azure DevOps
10 43 (3.16%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 41 (3.01%) SaaS
12 40 (2.94%) Serverless
13 33 (2.42%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 31 (2.28%) GitHub
15 28 (2.06%) Azure Monitor
16 22 (1.62%) Amazon S3
17 19 (1.40%) Akamai
17 19 (1.40%) OpenShift
18 18 (1.32%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 336 (24.69%) VPN
2 315 (23.14%) Network Security
3 276 (20.28%) DNS
4 260 (19.10%) WAN
5 205 (15.06%) BGP
6 194 (14.25%) OSPF
7 178 (13.08%) LAN
8 152 (11.17%) DHCP
9 145 (10.65%) TCP/IP
9 145 (10.65%) Wireless
10 132 (9.70%) SD-WAN
11 104 (7.64%) Wi-Fi
12 97 (7.13%) Cisco ASA
13 96 (7.05%) Cisco Nexus
14 91 (6.69%) VLAN
15 84 (6.17%) IPsec
16 73 (5.36%) Cisco ISE
17 70 (5.14%) MPLS
18 68 (5.00%) EIGRP
19 66 (4.85%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 35 (2.57%) SQL Server
2 26 (1.91%) Amazon RDS
3 16 (1.18%) NoSQL
4 11 (0.81%) Power BI
5 10 (0.73%) Data Lake
5 10 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
5 10 (0.73%) Relational Database
6 9 (0.66%) Big Data
6 9 (0.66%) MySQL
7 7 (0.51%) PostgreSQL
8 6 (0.44%) Azure SQL Database
9 4 (0.29%) DB2
9 4 (0.29%) Oracle Database
10 3 (0.22%) Apache Cassandra
11 2 (0.15%) Delta Lake
11 2 (0.15%) DynamoDB
11 2 (0.15%) GIS
11 2 (0.15%) MongoDB
11 2 (0.15%) Oracle Reports
11 2 (0.15%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 54 (3.97%) Jenkins
2 50 (3.67%) JIRA
3 36 (2.65%) Git
4 26 (1.91%) GitLab
5 19 (1.40%) Sonatype Nexus
6 14 (1.03%) Postman
7 6 (0.44%) Maven
7 6 (0.44%) Vagrant
8 5 (0.37%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.22%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 3 (0.22%) Eclipse
9 3 (0.22%) SonarQube
10 2 (0.15%) Gradle
10 2 (0.15%) MSI
10 2 (0.15%) Subversion
11 1 (0.073%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.073%) TeamCity
General
1 312 (22.92%) Social Skills
2 179 (13.15%) Finance
3 124 (9.11%) Analytical Skills
4 101 (7.42%) Public Sector
5 66 (4.85%) Banking
6 52 (3.82%) Telecoms
7 31 (2.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 30 (2.20%) Manufacturing
9 25 (1.84%) Games
9 25 (1.84%) Legal
10 23 (1.69%) Documentation Skills
11 17 (1.25%) Marketing
12 14 (1.03%) Military
12 14 (1.03%) Presentation Skills
13 12 (0.88%) Law
13 12 (0.88%) Local Government
14 11 (0.81%) Financial Institution
15 10 (0.73%) Pharmaceutical
16 9 (0.66%) Retail
17 7 (0.51%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 404 (29.68%) Network Engineer
2 195 (14.33%) Architect
3 114 (8.38%) Senior
4 109 (8.01%) Security Engineer
5 86 (6.32%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 82 (6.02%) Analyst
7 74 (5.44%) Network Architect
8 66 (4.85%) Support Engineer
9 63 (4.63%) Cisco Engineer
10 61 (4.48%) Cisco Network Engineer
11 59 (4.34%) Security Architect
12 58 (4.26%) Network Security Engineer
13 55 (4.04%) Azure Engineer
14 54 (3.97%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
15 49 (3.60%) Lead
16 45 (3.31%) Consultant
17 36 (2.65%) Technical Architect
18 35 (2.57%) Administrator
18 35 (2.57%) Cloud Architect
18 35 (2.57%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (2.65%) 802.1X
2 21 (1.54%) RFC 2544
3 20 (1.47%) Elastic Stack
4 17 (1.25%) ADO
4 17 (1.25%) REST
5 16 (1.18%) LDAP
6 15 (1.10%) .NET
6 15 (1.10%) ARM Templates
7 9 (0.66%) JBoss Seam
7 9 (0.66%) JSON
8 8 (0.59%) Web Services
9 7 (0.51%) XML
10 6 (0.44%) Kafka
10 6 (0.44%) OAuth
10 6 (0.44%) SAML
10 6 (0.44%) YAML
11 5 (0.37%) OpenID
11 5 (0.37%) Spine.js
12 4 (0.29%) OAuth2
12 4 (0.29%) React
Miscellaneous
1 183 (13.45%) Data Centre
2 50 (3.67%) Security Posture
3 49 (3.60%) Cloud Native
4 47 (3.45%) PKI
5 45 (3.31%) Hybrid Cloud
6 41 (3.01%) Management Information System
6 41 (3.01%) Operational Technology
7 34 (2.50%) Cyber Threat
8 21 (1.54%) Onboarding
9 20 (1.47%) Replication
10 19 (1.40%) Anti-Spyware
10 19 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
11 18 (1.32%) Security Operations Centre
12 16 (1.18%) Cyber Defence
12 16 (1.18%) SCADA
13 15 (1.10%) Video Conferencing
14 14 (1.03%) CMDB
14 14 (1.03%) Public Cloud
14 14 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
15 13 (0.96%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 276 (20.28%) Windows
2 156 (11.46%) Linux
3 99 (7.27%) Windows Server
4 41 (3.01%) Windows 10
5 36 (2.65%) Mac OS
6 29 (2.13%) Android
7 25 (1.84%) Unix
8 22 (1.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 17 (1.25%) Windows Server 2016
10 12 (0.88%) CentOS
11 11 (0.81%) VMS
12 10 (0.73%) Solaris
13 9 (0.66%) Ubuntu
13 9 (0.66%) Windows Server 2012
14 6 (0.44%) Amazon Linux
14 6 (0.44%) Check Point GAiA
14 6 (0.44%) Windows Server 2019
15 5 (0.37%) Apple iOS
15 5 (0.37%) CatOS
15 5 (0.37%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 186 (13.67%) Migration
2 183 (13.45%) Cybersecurity
2 183 (13.45%) Problem-Solving
3 166 (12.20%) DevOps
4 144 (10.58%) Agile
5 135 (9.92%) Cloud Security
6 132 (9.70%) Infrastructure as Code
7 124 (9.11%) ITIL
8 120 (8.82%) SIEM
9 114 (8.38%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 100 (7.35%) High Availability
11 99 (7.27%) Network Architecture
12 98 (7.20%) Network Monitoring
13 96 (7.05%) Security Operations
14 94 (6.91%) Incident Response
15 88 (6.47%) CI/CD
16 86 (6.32%) Change Management
17 77 (5.66%) Computer Science
17 77 (5.66%) Network Design
18 73 (5.36%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 202 (14.84%) Python
2 185 (13.59%) PowerShell
3 70 (5.14%) Bash
4 52 (3.82%) Bicep
5 38 (2.79%) SQL
6 31 (2.28%) Java
7 24 (1.76%) Perl
8 13 (0.96%) Shell Script
9 9 (0.66%) Kusto Query Language
10 8 (0.59%) Go
11 7 (0.51%) Groovy
11 7 (0.51%) JavaScript
12 6 (0.44%) C#
12 6 (0.44%) PHP
12 6 (0.44%) TypeScript
13 3 (0.22%) C
13 3 (0.22%) C++
13 3 (0.22%) Kotlin
14 2 (0.15%) Rust
14 2 (0.15%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 366 (26.89%) Security Cleared
2 274 (20.13%) Cisco Certification
3 273 (20.06%) SC Cleared
4 202 (14.84%) CCNP
5 133 (9.77%) Degree
6 117 (8.60%) CCNA
7 77 (5.66%) DV Cleared
8 63 (4.63%) CISSP
9 62 (4.56%) Computer Science Degree
10 51 (3.75%) CCIE
11 46 (3.38%) Azure Certification
12 33 (2.42%) CISM
13 29 (2.13%) AWS Certification
13 29 (2.13%) Microsoft Certification
14 24 (1.76%) CEH
15 21 (1.54%) CCSA
15 21 (1.54%) CCSE
16 17 (1.25%) GIAC
17 16 (1.18%) CISA
17 16 (1.18%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 60 (4.41%) NIST
2 54 (3.97%) GDPR
3 49 (3.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 30 (2.20%) SLA
5 26 (1.91%) PCI DSS
6 22 (1.62%) HIPAA
7 18 (1.32%) QA
8 15 (1.10%) NCSC
9 11 (0.81%) GRC
9 11 (0.81%) SOC 2
10 8 (0.59%) GxP
11 5 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials
11 5 (0.37%) Disclosure Scotland
11 5 (0.37%) NIST 800
12 4 (0.29%) Accessibility
12 4 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
13 2 (0.15%) 21 CFR Part 11
13 2 (0.15%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 2 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 2 (0.15%) PMO
System Software
1 202 (14.84%) Active Directory
2 110 (8.08%) VMware Infrastructure
3 64 (4.70%) Docker
4 39 (2.87%) Hyper-V
5 33 (2.42%) vSphere
6 31 (2.28%) Virtual Machines
7 22 (1.62%) VMware ESXi
8 21 (1.54%) VMware NSX
9 19 (1.40%) Firmware
10 16 (1.18%) Microsoft App-V
11 15 (1.10%) DFS Replication
12 13 (0.96%) Terminal Services
13 10 (0.73%) BitLocker
14 6 (0.44%) Veritas Cluster Server
15 5 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
16 4 (0.29%) iptables
17 3 (0.22%) Virtual Servers
17 3 (0.22%) XenApp
18 2 (0.15%) Microsoft Virtual Server
19 1 (0.073%) FreeRADIUS
Systems Management
1 172 (12.64%) Ansible
2 161 (11.83%) Terraform
3 94 (6.91%) Kubernetes
4 86 (6.32%) Microsoft Intune
5 66 (4.85%) SCCM
6 63 (4.63%) FortiGate
7 56 (4.11%) Puppet
8 26 (1.91%) Grafana
9 25 (1.84%) Progress Chef
10 23 (1.69%) vCenter Server
11 22 (1.62%) Prometheus
12 18 (1.32%) Single Sign-On
13 17 (1.25%) Nagios
14 13 (0.96%) CASB
14 13 (0.96%) SELinux
15 12 (0.88%) ZABBIX
16 10 (0.73%) QRadar
16 10 (0.73%) vMotion
17 9 (0.66%) Cisco Prime
17 9 (0.66%) PowerCLI
Vendors
1 565 (41.51%) Cisco
2 337 (24.76%) Microsoft
3 252 (18.52%) Palo Alto
4 182 (13.37%) CheckPoint
5 176 (12.93%) Fortinet
6 154 (11.32%) VMware
7 123 (9.04%) F5
8 104 (7.64%) Juniper
9 95 (6.98%) SolarWinds
10 90 (6.61%) Meraki
11 74 (5.44%) Splunk
12 55 (4.04%) Google
13 51 (3.75%) ServiceNow
14 45 (3.31%) Oracle
15 41 (3.01%) Arista
16 39 (2.87%) Infoblox
16 39 (2.87%) Zscaler
17 35 (2.57%) Aruba
18 34 (2.50%) Citrix
19 31 (2.28%) Red Hat