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

6 months to
14 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 98 61 58
Rank change year-on-year -37 -3 -12
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,355 1,279 1,351
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.50% 3.91% 3.52%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 26.86% 33.83% 29.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 834 770 845
10th Percentile £350 £313 £316
25th Percentile £425 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £675 £688 £696
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £488 £515
% change year-on-year +2.56% -5.34% +8.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 54 29 31
10th Percentile £29.68 £14.20 £20.00
25th Percentile £54.53 £25.00 £23.10
Median hourly rate £67.24 £30.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +124.12% -14.29% -46.97%
75th Percentile £79.69 £35.00 £76.12
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.63 £87.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.45 £30.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year +118.17% -36.84% -28.03%

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 5,044 3,781 4,544
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.32% 11.57% 11.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,936 2,333 2,657
10th Percentile £231 £230 £231
25th Percentile £385 £363 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £505
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.95% +1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £610
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £455 £500
% change year-on-year +4.40% -9.00% +9.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 402 198 261
10th Percentile £14.35 £15.45 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £21.37
Median hourly rate £26.72 £42.50 £51.50
Median % change year-on-year -37.13% -17.48% -8.83%
75th Percentile £65.88 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.88 £73.60 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.14 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -38.49% -25.89% -0.11%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 -38 1,191 £500 - 1,017
UK excluding London -36 746 £500 +2.56% 607
London -58 478 £500 -2.20% 501
Work from Home -37 382 £515 +3.00% 588
North of England -8 273 £500 +4.17% 126
South East -46 167 £523 +4.50% 208
North West +2 162 £503 +5.79% 79
Yorkshire -27 90 £475 -2.96% 31
South West -17 86 £556 +14.34% 73
Midlands -75 80 £463 -2.63% 93
East of England -4 74 £530 +9.84% 47
Scotland -14 60 £400 -11.11% 45
West Midlands -82 58 £440 -7.37% 62
North East -15 27 £500 -13.04% 17
East Midlands -12 20 £500 +1.63% 31
Wales -14 10 £425 +112.50% 11
Channel Islands -7 2 £600 -17.24% 1
Northern Ireland -8 1 - - 13

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 48 (3.54%) Microsoft Exchange
2 36 (2.66%) SharePoint
3 31 (2.29%) Confluence
4 13 (0.96%) Apache
5 12 (0.89%) nginx
6 10 (0.74%) SAS
7 4 (0.30%) FactoryTalk
7 4 (0.30%) IIS
8 3 (0.22%) CloudStack
8 3 (0.22%) Skype for Business
8 3 (0.22%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.15%) CICS
9 2 (0.15%) CMS
9 2 (0.15%) Umbraco
10 1 (0.074%) IBM HTTP Server
10 1 (0.074%) MTS
10 1 (0.074%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 1 (0.074%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.074%) WebSphere Application Server
10 1 (0.074%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 21 (1.55%) Microsoft Office
1 21 (1.55%) MS Visio
2 20 (1.48%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (0.59%) Microsoft Project
4 6 (0.44%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.074%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 5 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (0.22%) Remedy ITSM
3 2 (0.15%) Bloomberg TOMS
3 2 (0.15%) Dynamics GP
3 2 (0.15%) Eikon
3 2 (0.15%) Teamcenter
4 1 (0.074%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 513 (37.86%) Azure
2 312 (23.03%) AWS
3 167 (12.32%) Entra ID
4 127 (9.37%) Microsoft 365
5 103 (7.60%) GCP
6 72 (5.31%) GitHub
7 66 (4.87%) IaaS
8 65 (4.80%) Azure DevOps
9 63 (4.65%) SaaS
10 54 (3.99%) Azure Monitor
11 48 (3.54%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 43 (3.17%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 39 (2.88%) PaaS
14 36 (2.66%) OCI
14 36 (2.66%) Serverless
15 35 (2.58%) Azure Sentinel
16 32 (2.36%) GitHub Actions
17 27 (1.99%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 27 (1.99%) AWS CloudFormation
18 26 (1.92%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 410 (30.26%) VPN
2 387 (28.56%) Network Security
3 356 (26.27%) DNS
4 353 (26.05%) WAN
5 250 (18.45%) LAN
6 237 (17.49%) BGP
7 205 (15.13%) TCP/IP
8 204 (15.06%) DHCP
9 198 (14.61%) VLAN
10 173 (12.77%) OSPF
11 171 (12.62%) Wireless
12 129 (9.52%) SD-WAN
13 128 (9.45%) Wi-Fi
14 81 (5.98%) IPsec
15 79 (5.83%) Cisco ASA
16 78 (5.76%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 76 (5.61%) MPLS
18 73 (5.39%) BIG-IP
18 73 (5.39%) SSL
19 68 (5.02%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 35 (2.58%) SQL Server
2 19 (1.40%) PostgreSQL
3 17 (1.25%) Amazon RDS
4 13 (0.96%) Relational Database
5 12 (0.89%) Power BI
6 11 (0.81%) Data Lake
7 8 (0.59%) Amazon Aurora
7 8 (0.59%) NoSQL
8 6 (0.44%) Azure SQL Database
8 6 (0.44%) Elasticsearch
8 6 (0.44%) Oracle Database
9 5 (0.37%) MySQL
10 4 (0.30%) Db2
11 3 (0.22%) Big Data
11 3 (0.22%) Data Warehouse
11 3 (0.22%) Delta Lake
11 3 (0.22%) EDRMS
11 3 (0.22%) Metadata
12 2 (0.15%) Amazon QuickSight
12 2 (0.15%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 90 (6.64%) JIRA
2 59 (4.35%) Jenkins
3 47 (3.47%) Git
4 46 (3.39%) GitLab
5 15 (1.11%) Sonatype Nexus
6 9 (0.66%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.52%) Artifactory
8 6 (0.44%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 6 (0.44%) SonarQube
9 5 (0.37%) Chocolatey
10 4 (0.30%) Maven
10 4 (0.30%) MSI
11 3 (0.22%) Browser DevTools
12 2 (0.15%) Burp Suite
12 2 (0.15%) Gatling
12 2 (0.15%) Gradle
12 2 (0.15%) LoadRunner
12 2 (0.15%) REST Assured
12 2 (0.15%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 2 (0.15%) Vagrant
General
1 303 (22.36%) Social Skills
2 170 (12.55%) Finance
3 139 (10.26%) Analytical Skills
4 107 (7.90%) Public Sector
5 89 (6.57%) Banking
6 57 (4.21%) Documentation Skills
6 57 (4.21%) Telecoms
7 34 (2.51%) Manufacturing
8 27 (1.99%) Legal
9 20 (1.48%) Retail
10 17 (1.25%) Local Government
10 17 (1.25%) Military
11 13 (0.96%) Financial Institution
11 13 (0.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 13 (0.96%) Police
12 12 (0.89%) Influencing Skills
12 12 (0.89%) Organisational Skills
13 11 (0.81%) Aerospace
13 11 (0.81%) Investment Banking
14 10 (0.74%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 437 (32.25%) Network Engineer
2 215 (15.87%) Senior
3 160 (11.81%) Architect
4 156 (11.51%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 107 (7.90%) Security Engineer
6 96 (7.08%) Senior Network Engineer
7 83 (6.13%) Cloud Engineer
8 66 (4.87%) Consultant
9 63 (4.65%) Azure Engineer
10 59 (4.35%) Network Security Engineer
11 54 (3.99%) Network Architect
11 54 (3.99%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 52 (3.84%) DevOps Engineer
13 49 (3.62%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
14 48 (3.54%) Lead
15 44 (3.25%) Security Architect
16 41 (3.03%) Cisco Engineer
16 41 (3.03%) Platform Engineer
17 39 (2.88%) Cisco Network Engineer
18 36 (2.66%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 289 (21.33%) Terraform
2 41 (3.03%) 802.1X
3 30 (2.21%) Middleware
4 27 (1.99%) ARM Templates
4 27 (1.99%) SAML
5 19 (1.40%) OpenID
5 19 (1.40%) REST
6 15 (1.11%) OAuth
7 13 (0.96%) LDAP
8 12 (0.89%) OAuth2
9 11 (0.81%) YAML
10 10 (0.74%) React
11 8 (0.59%) JSON
11 8 (0.59%) Kafka
12 7 (0.52%) OpenTelemetry
12 7 (0.52%) SailPoint
13 6 (0.44%) .NET
13 6 (0.44%) Elastic Stack
14 5 (0.37%) Web Services
14 5 (0.37%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 287 (21.18%) Data Centre
2 103 (7.60%) Hybrid Cloud
3 75 (5.54%) PKI
4 71 (5.24%) Cloud Native
5 60 (4.43%) Onboarding
6 52 (3.84%) Management Information System
7 50 (3.69%) Security Posture
8 48 (3.54%) Operational Technology
9 33 (2.44%) Public Cloud
10 31 (2.29%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 26 (1.92%) Data Protection Act
11 26 (1.92%) IoT
12 24 (1.77%) Replication
12 24 (1.77%) SCADA
13 23 (1.70%) Linux Command Line
14 22 (1.62%) Driving Licence
14 22 (1.62%) Enterprise Software
15 21 (1.55%) Self-Motivation
16 19 (1.40%) Enterprise Storage
17 16 (1.18%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 332 (24.50%) Windows
2 218 (16.09%) Linux
3 143 (10.55%) Windows Server
4 44 (3.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 29 (2.14%) Unix
6 25 (1.85%) Ubuntu
7 21 (1.55%) VMS
8 16 (1.18%) Mac OS
9 14 (1.03%) CentOS
10 12 (0.89%) Windows Server 2019
11 9 (0.66%) Windows Server 2012
12 8 (0.59%) Amazon Linux
12 8 (0.59%) Windows 10
13 7 (0.52%) Android
13 7 (0.52%) Rocky
14 6 (0.44%) Apple iOS
14 6 (0.44%) Windows Server 2016
15 5 (0.37%) Windows Server 2003
16 4 (0.30%) SUSE
17 3 (0.22%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 251 (18.52%) Infrastructure as Code
2 239 (17.64%) DevOps
3 229 (16.90%) CI/CD
4 226 (16.68%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 202 (14.91%) Migration
6 198 (14.61%) Cybersecurity
7 192 (14.17%) Problem-Solving
8 186 (13.73%) Load Balancing
9 173 (12.77%) ITIL
10 154 (11.37%) Agile
11 153 (11.29%) Zero Trust
12 152 (11.22%) High Availability
13 139 (10.26%) Stakeholder Management
14 133 (9.82%) Project Delivery
15 130 (9.59%) Change Management
16 127 (9.37%) SIEM
17 113 (8.34%) Technical Leadership
18 110 (8.12%) Incident Response
18 110 (8.12%) Validation
19 109 (8.04%) Cloud Security
Programming Languages
1 280 (20.66%) Python
2 222 (16.38%) PowerShell
3 135 (9.96%) Bash
4 47 (3.47%) Bicep
5 43 (3.17%) SQL
6 39 (2.88%) Java
7 14 (1.03%) Groovy
8 13 (0.96%) ActionScript
9 10 (0.74%) Perl
10 8 (0.59%) Kusto Query Language
11 7 (0.52%) Shell Script
12 6 (0.44%) Go
12 6 (0.44%) Search Processing Language
13 4 (0.30%) C++
13 4 (0.30%) JavaScript
13 4 (0.30%) TypeScript
14 3 (0.22%) C
14 3 (0.22%) PL/SQL
15 2 (0.15%) COBOL
15 2 (0.15%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 452 (33.36%) Security Cleared
2 324 (23.91%) SC Cleared
3 235 (17.34%) Cisco Certification
4 177 (13.06%) CCNP
5 112 (8.27%) DV Cleared
6 109 (8.04%) Degree
7 90 (6.64%) CCNA
8 76 (5.61%) CISSP
9 70 (5.17%) Azure Certification
10 51 (3.76%) AWS Certification
11 36 (2.66%) Microsoft Certification
12 35 (2.58%) CCIE
13 34 (2.51%) CISM
14 28 (2.07%) Computer Science Degree
15 17 (1.25%) CEH
15 17 (1.25%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 15 (1.11%) Network+ Certification
16 15 (1.11%) PMI Certification
16 15 (1.11%) PMP
17 14 (1.03%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (5.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 58 (4.28%) NIST
3 35 (2.58%) GDPR
4 26 (1.92%) NCSC
5 25 (1.85%) QA
6 22 (1.62%) Cyber Essentials
7 21 (1.55%) PCI DSS
8 20 (1.48%) SLA
9 11 (0.81%) NIST 800
10 10 (0.74%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 9 (0.66%) JSP 440
12 8 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 7 (0.52%) Disclosure Scotland
14 6 (0.44%) Data Quality
14 6 (0.44%) GxP
14 6 (0.44%) HIPAA
15 5 (0.37%) COBIT
16 4 (0.30%) 21 CFR Part 11
17 3 (0.22%) GRC
17 3 (0.22%) SOC 2
System Software
1 228 (16.83%) Active Directory
2 173 (12.77%) VMware Infrastructure
3 75 (5.54%) Docker
4 67 (4.94%) Hyper-V
5 56 (4.13%) VMware NSX
6 48 (3.54%) vSphere
7 46 (3.39%) Virtual Machines
8 45 (3.32%) VMware ESXi
9 25 (1.85%) Firmware
10 14 (1.03%) Virtual Desktop
11 10 (0.74%) Squid
12 7 (0.52%) BitLocker
13 6 (0.44%) NFS
13 6 (0.44%) Virtual Servers
14 5 (0.37%) Dovecot
14 5 (0.37%) Postfix
15 4 (0.30%) FreeRADIUS
15 4 (0.30%) Microsoft App-V
16 3 (0.22%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 3 (0.22%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 212 (15.65%) Ansible
2 129 (9.52%) Kubernetes
3 88 (6.49%) FortiGate
4 68 (5.02%) Microsoft Intune
5 56 (4.13%) Grafana
6 52 (3.84%) Prometheus
7 42 (3.10%) SCCM
8 29 (2.14%) Single Sign-On
9 27 (1.99%) Progress Chef
10 24 (1.77%) vCenter Server
11 18 (1.33%) VxRail
12 15 (1.11%) Cisco Prime
13 14 (1.03%) Puppet
14 12 (0.89%) CASB
15 10 (0.74%) Argo
15 10 (0.74%) Packer
16 9 (0.66%) WSUS
17 8 (0.59%) Nessus
17 8 (0.59%) NetBackup
17 8 (0.59%) QRadar
Vendors
1 509 (37.56%) Cisco
2 332 (24.50%) Microsoft
3 315 (23.25%) Palo Alto
4 217 (16.01%) VMware
5 202 (14.91%) Fortinet
6 172 (12.69%) F5
7 122 (9.00%) CheckPoint
7 122 (9.00%) Juniper
8 66 (4.87%) Zscaler
9 63 (4.65%) Splunk
10 60 (4.43%) ServiceNow
11 59 (4.35%) Aruba
12 58 (4.28%) Arista
12 58 (4.28%) Google
13 54 (3.99%) Meraki
14 49 (3.62%) SolarWinds
15 35 (2.58%) Citrix
16 33 (2.44%) Red Hat
17 29 (2.14%) Dynatrace
17 29 (2.14%) Infoblox