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 27 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 75 53 48
Rank change year-on-year -22 -5 +16
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,221 1,211 1,796
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.21% 3.89% 4.05%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.72% 30.09% 29.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 793 715 1,167
10th Percentile £313 £313 £313
25th Percentile £413 £406 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -
75th Percentile £599 £613 £625
90th Percentile £675 £700 £721
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.50% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 23 55
10th Percentile £26.53 £20.00 £30.80
25th Percentile £33.00 £20.72 £61.25
Median hourly rate £41.94 £35.00 £65.98
Median % change year-on-year +19.83% -46.95% +83.28%
75th Percentile £71.06 £41.50 £76.53
90th Percentile £85.30 £57.50 £85.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.33 £35.00 £66.62
% change year-on-year +29.51% -47.47% +44.50%

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 3,975 4,025 6,064
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.44% 12.95% 13.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,607 2,333 3,682
10th Percentile £204 £213 £206
25th Percentile £356 £363 £356
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £495
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +1.01% -3.88%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £685 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £468 £475
% change year-on-year -3.74% -1.58% +2.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 164 139 390
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.76 £16.25
25th Percentile £18.97 £21.46 £22.00
Median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £51.89
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% -32.55% +150.60%
75th Percentile £65.00 £58.69 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.54 £31.79 £56.49
% change year-on-year +27.52% -43.72% +187.12%

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 27 January 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 27 January 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 27 January 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 -22 1,025 £508 -2.50% 524
UK excluding London -22 679 £488 -2.50% 482
London -34 389 £530 -1.40% 132
Work from Home -8 379 £510 -3.32% 229
North of England -26 195 £500 +5.26% 117
South East +9 176 £500 - 174
Midlands -24 121 £440 -12.00% 50
West Midlands -4 112 £440 +0.57% 35
North West -28 108 £519 +9.16% 65
Yorkshire -12 83 £460 +8.24% 38
Scotland -8 61 £450 -11.11% 31
South West -28 59 £550 +4.76% 59
East of England -17 41 £475 -5.00% 53
Wales -17 18 £335 -8.22% 10
East Midlands -54 8 £500 -23.14% 15
Northern Ireland - 8 £488 - 3
North East -17 7 £550 - 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 44 (3.60%) Confluence
1 44 (3.60%) Microsoft Exchange
2 26 (2.13%) SharePoint
3 16 (1.31%) nginx
4 13 (1.06%) Apache
5 9 (0.74%) OpenStack
6 7 (0.57%) IIS
7 6 (0.49%) SAS
7 6 (0.49%) Tomcat
8 3 (0.25%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.16%) CICS
9 2 (0.16%) JBoss
9 2 (0.16%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.16%) WebLogic
10 1 (0.082%) Anypoint
10 1 (0.082%) CMS
10 1 (0.082%) Mattermost
10 1 (0.082%) Traefik
10 1 (0.082%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 34 (2.78%) Microsoft Office
2 22 (1.80%) MS Visio
3 19 (1.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 18 (1.47%) Microsoft Excel
5 8 (0.66%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 1 (0.082%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.082%) Finacle
2 1 (0.082%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.082%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 418 (34.23%) Azure
2 342 (28.01%) AWS
3 145 (11.88%) GCP
4 116 (9.50%) Microsoft 365
5 86 (7.04%) Entra ID
6 80 (6.55%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 64 (5.24%) Amazon EC2
8 54 (4.42%) Amazon S3
9 52 (4.26%) GitHub
10 51 (4.18%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 43 (3.52%) Azure Sentinel
12 42 (3.44%) IaaS
13 41 (3.36%) Azure DevOps
14 38 (3.11%) Azure Monitor
15 36 (2.95%) Amazon ELB
15 36 (2.95%) PaaS
16 33 (2.70%) Serverless
17 32 (2.62%) AWS CloudFormation
17 32 (2.62%) GitHub Actions
18 27 (2.21%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 297 (24.32%) Network Security
2 290 (23.75%) VPN
3 249 (20.39%) WAN
4 237 (19.41%) DNS
5 168 (13.76%) LAN
6 151 (12.37%) TCP/IP
7 150 (12.29%) BGP
8 124 (10.16%) OSPF
9 112 (9.17%) VLAN
10 109 (8.93%) Wireless
11 104 (8.52%) SD-WAN
12 91 (7.45%) DHCP
13 83 (6.80%) Wi-Fi
14 77 (6.31%) MPLS
14 77 (6.31%) SSL
15 60 (4.91%) IPsec
16 55 (4.50%) Cisco ASA
17 51 (4.18%) Cisco Nexus
18 49 (4.01%) HTTP
19 46 (3.77%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 35 (2.87%) SQL Server
2 31 (2.54%) Amazon RDS
3 28 (2.29%) PostgreSQL
4 11 (0.90%) Elasticsearch
5 8 (0.66%) Amazon Aurora
5 8 (0.66%) MongoDB
5 8 (0.66%) Oracle Database
6 7 (0.57%) Data Warehouse
7 6 (0.49%) Data Lake
8 5 (0.41%) Redis
8 5 (0.41%) Relational Database
9 4 (0.33%) NoSQL
9 4 (0.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 3 (0.25%) Amazon QuickSight
10 3 (0.25%) DynamoDB
10 3 (0.25%) Oracle Exadata
11 2 (0.16%) Azure SQL Database
11 2 (0.16%) Data Vault
11 2 (0.16%) DB2
11 2 (0.16%) MariaDB
Development Applications
1 91 (7.45%) Jenkins
2 77 (6.31%) Git
2 77 (6.31%) JIRA
3 64 (5.24%) GitLab
4 26 (2.13%) Sonatype Nexus
5 19 (1.56%) Bitbucket
6 14 (1.15%) Burp Suite
6 14 (1.15%) Metasploit
7 12 (0.98%) Vagrant
8 11 (0.90%) SonarQube
9 8 (0.66%) Jaeger
10 4 (0.33%) CircleCI
11 3 (0.25%) Chocolatey
12 2 (0.16%) Artifactory
12 2 (0.16%) MSI
12 2 (0.16%) Postman
13 1 (0.082%) Atlassian Bamboo
13 1 (0.082%) Maven
13 1 (0.082%) Subversion
13 1 (0.082%) Travis CI
General
1 341 (27.93%) Social Skills
2 137 (11.22%) Analytical Skills
3 116 (9.50%) Public Sector
4 115 (9.42%) Finance
5 81 (6.63%) Documentation Skills
6 56 (4.59%) Banking
7 50 (4.10%) Telecoms
8 34 (2.78%) Legal
9 29 (2.38%) Manufacturing
9 29 (2.38%) Presentation Skills
10 14 (1.15%) Financial Institution
10 14 (1.15%) Military
11 13 (1.06%) Local Government
12 12 (0.98%) Retail
13 11 (0.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 8 (0.66%) Aerospace
14 8 (0.66%) Influencing Skills
14 8 (0.66%) Law
15 7 (0.57%) Electronics
15 7 (0.57%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 305 (24.98%) Network Engineer
2 196 (16.05%) Architect
3 122 (9.99%) Senior
4 106 (8.68%) Security Engineer
5 88 (7.21%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 65 (5.32%) Network Architect
7 57 (4.67%) Security Architect
8 56 (4.59%) DevOps Engineer
9 51 (4.18%) Platform Engineer
10 50 (4.10%) Analyst
10 50 (4.10%) Consultant
11 46 (3.77%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 45 (3.69%) Azure Engineer
13 40 (3.28%) Solutions Architect
14 37 (3.03%) Lead
14 37 (3.03%) Network Security Engineer
15 33 (2.70%) Cloud Engineer
15 33 (2.70%) Support Engineer
16 32 (2.62%) Senior Network Engineer
17 27 (2.21%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 42 (3.44%) 802.1X
2 37 (3.03%) LDAP
3 31 (2.54%) SAML
4 26 (2.13%) Middleware
4 26 (2.13%) OpenID
5 17 (1.39%) OAuth
6 16 (1.31%) Node.js
6 16 (1.31%) OAuth2
7 15 (1.23%) JSON
8 14 (1.15%) Kafka
8 14 (1.15%) REST
9 11 (0.90%) ARM Templates
10 10 (0.82%) Elastic Stack
10 10 (0.82%) XML
11 9 (0.74%) Spring Boot
12 8 (0.66%) OpenTelemetry
13 7 (0.57%) Microsoft Graph
13 7 (0.57%) RFC 2544
13 7 (0.57%) YAML
14 5 (0.41%) Regular Expression
Miscellaneous
1 229 (18.76%) Data Centre
2 83 (6.80%) Security Posture
3 57 (4.67%) PKI
4 47 (3.85%) Onboarding
5 46 (3.77%) Hybrid Cloud
6 45 (3.69%) Cloud Native
7 43 (3.52%) Operational Technology
8 36 (2.95%) Replication
9 30 (2.46%) Public Cloud
10 26 (2.13%) Management Information System
11 23 (1.88%) Security Operations Centre
12 22 (1.80%) Cyber Threat
12 22 (1.80%) Data Protection Act
13 21 (1.72%) SCADA
14 19 (1.56%) Private Cloud
15 17 (1.39%) NHS
16 14 (1.15%) Product Ownership
17 13 (1.06%) Fat Client
17 13 (1.06%) Thin Client
18 11 (0.90%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 301 (24.65%) Windows
2 210 (17.20%) Linux
3 121 (9.91%) Windows Server
4 33 (2.70%) VMS
5 28 (2.29%) Unix
6 26 (2.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 15 (1.23%) Amazon Linux
8 14 (1.15%) Ubuntu
8 14 (1.15%) Windows Server 2019
9 11 (0.90%) Windows 10
9 11 (0.90%) Windows 7
10 7 (0.57%) Windows Server 2016
11 5 (0.41%) CentOS
11 5 (0.41%) Mac OS
12 4 (0.33%) Android
12 4 (0.33%) CatOS
12 4 (0.33%) Windows Server 2003
12 4 (0.33%) Windows Server 2012
13 3 (0.25%) Apple iOS
13 3 (0.25%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 239 (19.57%) Cybersecurity
2 213 (17.44%) DevOps
3 191 (15.64%) Problem-Solving
4 189 (15.48%) CI/CD
5 179 (14.66%) Infrastructure as Code
6 144 (11.79%) Migration
7 142 (11.63%) Incident Response
8 138 (11.30%) Cloud Security
8 138 (11.30%) SIEM
9 134 (10.97%) Agile
9 134 (10.97%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 115 (9.42%) ITIL
11 111 (9.09%) High Availability
12 104 (8.52%) Load Balancing
13 102 (8.35%) Stakeholder Management
14 98 (8.03%) Change Management
15 97 (7.94%) Zero Trust
16 90 (7.37%) Mentoring
17 81 (6.63%) Security Architecture
18 80 (6.55%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 236 (19.33%) Python
2 192 (15.72%) PowerShell
3 109 (8.93%) Bash
4 67 (5.49%) SQL
5 44 (3.60%) Java
6 36 (2.95%) Perl
7 22 (1.80%) Bicep
8 13 (1.06%) Kusto Query Language
9 12 (0.98%) Groovy
9 12 (0.98%) Ruby
10 9 (0.74%) Rust
11 8 (0.66%) Shell Script
12 6 (0.49%) JavaScript
13 4 (0.33%) C#
13 4 (0.33%) Go
13 4 (0.33%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.082%) C
14 1 (0.082%) C++
14 1 (0.082%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 414 (33.91%) Security Cleared
2 285 (23.34%) SC Cleared
3 211 (17.28%) Cisco Certification
4 173 (14.17%) CCNP
5 114 (9.34%) Degree
6 103 (8.44%) DV Cleared
7 88 (7.21%) CCNA
7 88 (7.21%) CISSP
8 58 (4.75%) Azure Certification
9 55 (4.50%) CISM
10 48 (3.93%) AWS Certification
11 47 (3.85%) CCIE
12 41 (3.36%) Microsoft Certification
13 25 (2.05%) CompTIA Security+
14 20 (1.64%) Computer Science Degree
15 18 (1.47%) CEH
15 18 (1.47%) JNCIS
16 17 (1.39%) JNCIP
17 16 (1.31%) CREST Certified
18 15 (1.23%) CHECK Team Member
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 109 (8.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 93 (7.62%) NIST
3 62 (5.08%) GDPR
4 40 (3.28%) PCI DSS
5 26 (2.13%) NCSC
6 24 (1.97%) SLA
7 22 (1.80%) Cyber Essentials
8 18 (1.47%) QA
9 15 (1.23%) PMO
10 12 (0.98%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 11 (0.90%) GRC
12 7 (0.57%) HIPAA
13 6 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
13 6 (0.49%) COBIT
13 6 (0.49%) JSP 440
14 5 (0.41%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 5 (0.41%) SOC 2
15 4 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
15 4 (0.33%) NIST 800
16 3 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 216 (17.69%) Active Directory
2 159 (13.02%) VMware Infrastructure
3 134 (10.97%) Docker
4 56 (4.59%) VMware NSX
5 41 (3.36%) Hyper-V
6 34 (2.78%) Virtual Machines
7 31 (2.54%) vSphere
8 20 (1.64%) VMware ESXi
9 18 (1.47%) Squid
10 16 (1.31%) Virtual Desktop
11 15 (1.23%) DFS Replication
12 10 (0.82%) Firmware
13 8 (0.66%) Dovecot
13 8 (0.66%) KVM
13 8 (0.66%) Postfix
13 8 (0.66%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (0.49%) Snort
15 5 (0.41%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.41%) NDS
15 5 (0.41%) NetIQ eDirectory
Systems Management
1 210 (17.20%) Terraform
2 166 (13.60%) Ansible
3 115 (9.42%) Kubernetes
4 72 (5.90%) FortiGate
5 58 (4.75%) Microsoft Intune
6 43 (3.52%) Grafana
7 41 (3.36%) Single Sign-On
8 39 (3.19%) Prometheus
9 34 (2.78%) SCCM
10 26 (2.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 25 (2.05%) vCenter Server
12 18 (1.47%) Nmap
13 16 (1.31%) CSIRT
13 16 (1.31%) Nessus
14 14 (1.15%) Fluentd
14 14 (1.15%) Nagios
15 12 (0.98%) QRadar
15 12 (0.98%) WMI
16 9 (0.74%) CASB
16 9 (0.74%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 391 (32.02%) Cisco
2 279 (22.85%) Microsoft
3 270 (22.11%) Palo Alto
4 197 (16.13%) VMware
5 156 (12.78%) F5
6 143 (11.71%) CheckPoint
7 118 (9.66%) Fortinet
8 102 (8.35%) Juniper
9 89 (7.29%) Splunk
10 70 (5.73%) Aruba
11 63 (5.16%) Meraki
12 58 (4.75%) Oracle
13 57 (4.67%) SolarWinds
14 54 (4.42%) Google
15 49 (4.01%) Zscaler
16 46 (3.77%) ServiceNow
17 37 (3.03%) Citrix
18 25 (2.05%) Dell
18 25 (2.05%) Red Hat
19 18 (1.47%) Blue Coat