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

6 months to
10 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 98 60 58
Rank change year-on-year -38 -2 -12
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,404 1,304 1,329
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.58% 3.95% 3.47%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 27.42% 33.90% 29.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 872 780 833
10th Percentile £350 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £660 £688 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £488 £511
% change year-on-year +2.56% -4.65% +7.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 54 29 28
10th Percentile £30.41 £14.20 £20.00
25th Percentile £54.53 £25.00 £23.45
Median hourly rate £67.24 £30.00 £36.25
Median % change year-on-year +124.12% -17.24% -45.06%
75th Percentile £79.69 £35.00 £79.06
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.63 £87.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.57 £30.00 £53.75
% change year-on-year +118.57% -44.19% -18.54%

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 5,121 3,847 4,532
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.40% 11.66% 11.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,001 2,367 2,650
10th Percentile £235 £235 £228
25th Percentile £396 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £483 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.63% -3.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £609
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £465 £500
% change year-on-year +2.80% -7.00% +10.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 398 201 267
10th Percentile £14.68 £15.33 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £21.37
Median hourly rate £26.14 £42.50 £51.50
Median % change year-on-year -38.49% -17.48% -8.83%
75th Percentile £65.88 £63.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.13 £73.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -39.36% -25.89% +1.52%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 1,229 £505 +1.00% 574
UK excluding London -33 777 £500 +2.56% 439
London -59 487 £500 -2.91% 205
Work from Home -36 398 £520 +4.00% 240
North of England -8 282 £500 +5.26% 87
South East -45 181 £525 +5.00% 159
North West +6 173 £500 +5.26% 55
Yorkshire -32 88 £475 -2.96% 18
South West -15 87 £556 +14.64% 48
East of England -1 79 £528 -2.31% 41
Midlands -86 79 £468 -1.47% 77
Scotland -27 63 £413 -8.33% 23
West Midlands -80 57 £450 -5.26% 54
North East -22 27 £500 -13.04% 15
East Midlands -14 20 £500 +1.63% 23
Wales -15 10 £425 +112.50% 6
Channel Islands -5 2 £600 -17.24% 1
Northern Ireland -8 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 53 (3.77%) Microsoft Exchange
2 38 (2.71%) SharePoint
3 30 (2.14%) Confluence
4 13 (0.93%) Apache
5 12 (0.85%) nginx
6 11 (0.78%) SAS
7 4 (0.28%) FactoryTalk
7 4 (0.28%) IIS
7 4 (0.28%) Tomcat
8 3 (0.21%) CloudStack
8 3 (0.21%) Skype for Business
9 2 (0.14%) CICS
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
10 1 (0.071%) MTS
Applications
1 26 (1.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 22 (1.57%) Microsoft Office
3 21 (1.50%) MS Visio
4 13 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (0.43%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 1 (0.071%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 5 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
3 2 (0.14%) Bloomberg TOMS
3 2 (0.14%) Dynamics GP
3 2 (0.14%) Eikon
3 2 (0.14%) Teamcenter
4 1 (0.071%) Oracle Retail
4 1 (0.071%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 534 (38.03%) Azure
2 323 (23.01%) AWS
3 176 (12.54%) Entra ID
4 133 (9.47%) Microsoft 365
5 106 (7.55%) GCP
6 76 (5.41%) GitHub
7 68 (4.84%) Azure DevOps
8 67 (4.77%) IaaS
9 64 (4.56%) SaaS
10 54 (3.85%) Azure Monitor
11 48 (3.42%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 44 (3.13%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 40 (2.85%) Azure Sentinel
14 39 (2.78%) PaaS
15 36 (2.56%) OCI
15 36 (2.56%) Serverless
16 34 (2.42%) GitHub Actions
17 28 (1.99%) AWS CloudFormation
18 27 (1.92%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 27 (1.92%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 425 (30.27%) VPN
2 402 (28.63%) Network Security
3 369 (26.28%) DNS
4 365 (26.00%) WAN
5 258 (18.38%) LAN
6 244 (17.38%) BGP
7 212 (15.10%) DHCP
8 209 (14.89%) TCP/IP
9 200 (14.25%) VLAN
10 180 (12.82%) OSPF
11 174 (12.39%) Wireless
12 134 (9.54%) SD-WAN
13 132 (9.40%) Wi-Fi
14 86 (6.13%) IPsec
15 83 (5.91%) Cisco ASA
16 81 (5.77%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 78 (5.56%) MPLS
18 77 (5.48%) BIG-IP
19 75 (5.34%) SSL
20 68 (4.84%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (2.56%) SQL Server
2 20 (1.42%) PostgreSQL
3 18 (1.28%) Amazon RDS
4 14 (1.00%) Power BI
5 12 (0.85%) Data Lake
5 12 (0.85%) Relational Database
6 8 (0.57%) Amazon Aurora
6 8 (0.57%) NoSQL
7 7 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
7 7 (0.50%) Elasticsearch
7 7 (0.50%) Oracle Database
8 5 (0.36%) MySQL
9 4 (0.28%) Data Warehouse
9 4 (0.28%) Db2
10 3 (0.21%) Big Data
10 3 (0.21%) Delta Lake
10 3 (0.21%) EDRMS
10 3 (0.21%) Metadata
11 2 (0.14%) Amazon Athena
11 2 (0.14%) Amazon QuickSight
Development Applications
1 92 (6.55%) JIRA
2 62 (4.42%) Jenkins
3 48 (3.42%) Git
3 48 (3.42%) GitLab
4 15 (1.07%) Sonatype Nexus
5 9 (0.64%) Bitbucket
6 7 (0.50%) Artifactory
7 6 (0.43%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 6 (0.43%) SonarQube
8 5 (0.36%) Chocolatey
9 4 (0.28%) Maven
9 4 (0.28%) MSI
10 3 (0.21%) Browser DevTools
10 3 (0.21%) Burp Suite
11 2 (0.14%) Gatling
11 2 (0.14%) Gradle
11 2 (0.14%) REST Assured
11 2 (0.14%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.14%) Team Foundation Server
11 2 (0.14%) Vagrant
General
1 307 (21.87%) Social Skills
2 174 (12.39%) Finance
3 143 (10.19%) Analytical Skills
4 111 (7.91%) Public Sector
5 87 (6.20%) Banking
6 59 (4.20%) Documentation Skills
7 57 (4.06%) Telecoms
8 34 (2.42%) Manufacturing
9 29 (2.07%) Legal
10 20 (1.42%) Retail
11 17 (1.21%) Local Government
11 17 (1.21%) Military
12 14 (1.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 13 (0.93%) Financial Institution
13 13 (0.93%) Police
14 12 (0.85%) Influencing Skills
14 12 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
15 11 (0.78%) Aerospace
15 11 (0.78%) Investment Banking
16 10 (0.71%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 446 (31.77%) Network Engineer
2 225 (16.03%) Senior
3 176 (12.54%) Architect
4 164 (11.68%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 108 (7.69%) Security Engineer
6 99 (7.05%) Senior Network Engineer
7 84 (5.98%) Cloud Engineer
8 67 (4.77%) Consultant
9 66 (4.70%) Azure Engineer
10 59 (4.20%) Network Architect
10 59 (4.20%) Network Security Engineer
11 55 (3.92%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 52 (3.70%) DevOps Engineer
13 51 (3.63%) Lead
14 49 (3.49%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
15 48 (3.42%) Security Architect
16 42 (2.99%) Cisco Engineer
16 42 (2.99%) Platform Engineer
17 40 (2.85%) Cisco Network Engineer
18 37 (2.64%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 298 (21.23%) Terraform
2 44 (3.13%) 802.1X
3 33 (2.35%) Middleware
4 28 (1.99%) ARM Templates
5 27 (1.92%) SAML
6 19 (1.35%) REST
7 18 (1.28%) OpenID
8 14 (1.00%) OAuth
9 13 (0.93%) LDAP
10 11 (0.78%) OAuth2
11 10 (0.71%) React
11 10 (0.71%) YAML
12 9 (0.64%) Kafka
13 8 (0.57%) JSON
14 7 (0.50%) .NET
14 7 (0.50%) OpenTelemetry
14 7 (0.50%) SailPoint
15 6 (0.43%) Elastic Stack
16 5 (0.36%) Web Services
16 5 (0.36%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 296 (21.08%) Data Centre
2 104 (7.41%) Hybrid Cloud
3 78 (5.56%) PKI
4 77 (5.48%) Cloud Native
5 61 (4.34%) Onboarding
6 53 (3.77%) Management Information System
7 50 (3.56%) Security Posture
8 49 (3.49%) Operational Technology
9 33 (2.35%) Public Cloud
10 31 (2.21%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 28 (1.99%) Data Protection Act
11 28 (1.99%) IoT
12 25 (1.78%) Enterprise Software
13 24 (1.71%) Replication
14 23 (1.64%) Driving Licence
14 23 (1.64%) Linux Command Line
14 23 (1.64%) SCADA
14 23 (1.64%) Self-Motivation
15 19 (1.35%) Clustering
15 19 (1.35%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 343 (24.43%) Windows
2 223 (15.88%) Linux
3 149 (10.61%) Windows Server
4 46 (3.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 29 (2.07%) Unix
6 25 (1.78%) Ubuntu
7 21 (1.50%) VMS
8 15 (1.07%) Mac OS
9 14 (1.00%) CentOS
10 13 (0.93%) Windows Server 2019
11 9 (0.64%) Windows Server 2012
12 8 (0.57%) Amazon Linux
13 7 (0.50%) Android
13 7 (0.50%) Rocky
13 7 (0.50%) Windows 10
13 7 (0.50%) Windows Server 2016
14 6 (0.43%) Apple iOS
14 6 (0.43%) Windows Server 2003
15 4 (0.28%) SUSE
16 3 (0.21%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 254 (18.09%) Infrastructure as Code
2 250 (17.81%) DevOps
3 233 (16.60%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 232 (16.52%) CI/CD
5 207 (14.74%) Migration
6 202 (14.39%) Cybersecurity
7 196 (13.96%) Problem-Solving
8 195 (13.89%) Load Balancing
9 183 (13.03%) ITIL
10 163 (11.61%) Agile
10 163 (11.61%) High Availability
11 162 (11.54%) Zero Trust
12 144 (10.26%) Stakeholder Management
13 138 (9.83%) Project Delivery
14 136 (9.69%) Change Management
15 128 (9.12%) SIEM
16 118 (8.40%) Technical Leadership
17 116 (8.26%) Validation
18 115 (8.19%) Cloud Security
19 111 (7.91%) Incident Response
Programming Languages
1 282 (20.09%) Python
2 224 (15.95%) PowerShell
3 135 (9.62%) Bash
4 53 (3.77%) Bicep
5 47 (3.35%) SQL
6 40 (2.85%) Java
7 14 (1.00%) Groovy
8 13 (0.93%) ActionScript
9 11 (0.78%) Perl
10 9 (0.64%) Kusto Query Language
11 8 (0.57%) Shell Script
12 6 (0.43%) Go
12 6 (0.43%) Search Processing Language
13 4 (0.28%) JavaScript
13 4 (0.28%) TypeScript
14 3 (0.21%) C++
14 3 (0.21%) PL/SQL
15 2 (0.14%) C
15 2 (0.14%) COBOL
15 2 (0.14%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 471 (33.55%) Security Cleared
2 335 (23.86%) SC Cleared
3 243 (17.31%) Cisco Certification
4 185 (13.18%) CCNP
5 119 (8.48%) DV Cleared
6 115 (8.19%) Degree
7 95 (6.77%) CCNA
8 75 (5.34%) CISSP
9 70 (4.99%) Azure Certification
10 52 (3.70%) AWS Certification
11 37 (2.64%) CCIE
12 35 (2.49%) Microsoft Certification
13 34 (2.42%) CISM
14 29 (2.07%) Computer Science Degree
15 19 (1.35%) PMP
16 18 (1.28%) PMI Certification
17 17 (1.21%) CEH
17 17 (1.21%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 15 (1.07%) JNCIS
18 15 (1.07%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 72 (5.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 63 (4.49%) NIST
3 39 (2.78%) GDPR
4 28 (1.99%) NCSC
5 25 (1.78%) QA
6 22 (1.57%) Cyber Essentials
6 22 (1.57%) PCI DSS
7 20 (1.42%) SLA
8 11 (0.78%) NIST 800
9 10 (0.71%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 9 (0.64%) JSP 440
11 8 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 7 (0.50%) Data Quality
12 7 (0.50%) Disclosure Scotland
12 7 (0.50%) GxP
13 6 (0.43%) HIPAA
14 5 (0.36%) COBIT
15 4 (0.28%) 21 CFR Part 11
16 3 (0.21%) PMO
16 3 (0.21%) RMADS
System Software
1 237 (16.88%) Active Directory
2 183 (13.03%) VMware Infrastructure
3 78 (5.56%) Docker
4 74 (5.27%) Hyper-V
5 56 (3.99%) VMware NSX
6 50 (3.56%) vSphere
7 46 (3.28%) Virtual Machines
7 46 (3.28%) VMware ESXi
8 26 (1.85%) Firmware
9 14 (1.00%) Virtual Desktop
10 10 (0.71%) Squid
11 9 (0.64%) BitLocker
12 6 (0.43%) Microsoft App-V
12 6 (0.43%) NFS
13 5 (0.36%) Dovecot
13 5 (0.36%) Postfix
13 5 (0.36%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.28%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.21%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 3 (0.21%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 216 (15.38%) Ansible
2 133 (9.47%) Kubernetes
3 89 (6.34%) FortiGate
4 70 (4.99%) Microsoft Intune
5 58 (4.13%) Grafana
6 54 (3.85%) Prometheus
7 42 (2.99%) SCCM
8 33 (2.35%) Single Sign-On
9 27 (1.92%) Progress Chef
10 25 (1.78%) vCenter Server
11 17 (1.21%) VxRail
12 15 (1.07%) Cisco Prime
12 15 (1.07%) Puppet
13 13 (0.93%) CASB
14 10 (0.71%) Argo
14 10 (0.71%) Packer
15 9 (0.64%) vMotion
15 9 (0.64%) WSUS
16 8 (0.57%) Istio
16 8 (0.57%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 516 (36.75%) Cisco
2 344 (24.50%) Microsoft
3 323 (23.01%) Palo Alto
4 227 (16.17%) VMware
5 201 (14.32%) Fortinet
6 178 (12.68%) F5
7 125 (8.90%) Juniper
8 124 (8.83%) CheckPoint
9 66 (4.70%) ServiceNow
10 64 (4.56%) Zscaler
11 63 (4.49%) Splunk
12 61 (4.34%) Aruba
12 61 (4.34%) Google
13 59 (4.20%) Arista
14 53 (3.77%) Meraki
15 51 (3.63%) SolarWinds
16 39 (2.78%) Citrix
17 37 (2.64%) Red Hat
18 29 (2.07%) Infoblox
19 27 (1.92%) CyberArk