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

6 months to
9 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 89 52 56
Rank change year-on-year -37 +4 -6
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,363 1,246 1,509
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.74% 4.26% 3.49%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 28.39% 33.93% 27.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 883 737 944
10th Percentile £350 £313 £299
25th Percentile £413 £403 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £614
90th Percentile £647 £688 £723
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% +2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 22 46
10th Percentile £18.19 £14.20 £16.00
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 £70.94 £41.25 £85.65
90th Percentile £79.13 £44.83 £87.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.36 £30.00 £83.50
% change year-on-year +74.53% -64.07% +34.08%

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 4,801 3,672 5,408
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.66% 12.54% 12.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,942 2,266 3,205
10th Percentile £263 £216 £206
25th Percentile £400 £360 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £495
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -3.03% -3.41%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £466 £485
% change year-on-year +2.04% -3.92% +2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 283 165 420
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.13 £16.30
Median hourly rate £27.88 £41.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.82% +3.75% +116.22%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.13 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £80.61 £70.66
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £31.08 £47.50
% change year-on-year +4.57% -34.57% +156.76%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 -42 1,143 £500 -1.48% 475
UK excluding London -21 765 £500 +2.56% 426
London -55 428 £513 -1.68% 116
Work from Home -33 399 £520 +4.00% 196
North of England -15 260 £500 +3.09% 108
South East -14 222 £500 - 154
North West +1 166 £540 +13.68% 63
Yorkshire -37 79 £425 -13.00% 32
Midlands -62 77 £425 -19.05% 55
East of England -15 67 £504 -1.66% 33
Scotland +15 64 £450 +2.86% 17
West Midlands -51 64 £420 -16.00% 33
South West -49 55 £520 +4.00% 48
Wales -18 26 £425 +21.43% 12
North East -6 21 £625 +25.00% 13
East Midlands -48 9 £488 -11.36% 22
Northern Ireland -2 2 £385 - 5

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 38 (2.79%) Microsoft Exchange
2 30 (2.20%) Confluence
3 22 (1.61%) SharePoint
4 16 (1.17%) 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 (1.61%) Microsoft Office
3 18 (1.32%) Microsoft Excel
4 10 (0.73%) 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
1 454 (33.31%) Azure
2 301 (22.08%) AWS
3 121 (8.88%) GCP
4 115 (8.44%) Entra ID
5 109 (8.00%) Microsoft 365
6 73 (5.36%) GitHub
7 64 (4.70%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 59 (4.33%) IaaS
9 51 (3.74%) Azure DevOps
10 43 (3.15%) SaaS
11 42 (3.08%) PaaS
12 40 (2.93%) GitHub Actions
13 36 (2.64%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 35 (2.57%) OCI
15 31 (2.27%) Azure Sentinel
16 30 (2.20%) Azure Monitor
16 30 (2.20%) Serverless
17 28 (2.05%) Amazon EKS
18 27 (1.98%) Amazon EC2
19 26 (1.91%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 381 (27.95%) Network Security
2 371 (27.22%) WAN
3 356 (26.12%) VPN
4 289 (21.20%) DNS
5 279 (20.47%) LAN
6 238 (17.46%) BGP
7 211 (15.48%) OSPF
8 178 (13.06%) VLAN
9 152 (11.15%) TCP/IP
10 151 (11.08%) SD-WAN
11 150 (11.01%) DHCP
12 133 (9.76%) Wireless
13 112 (8.22%) Wi-Fi
14 96 (7.04%) VXLAN
15 95 (6.97%) BIG-IP
16 93 (6.82%) MPLS
17 87 (6.38%) IPsec
18 81 (5.94%) Ethernet VPN
19 77 (5.65%) SSL
20 74 (5.43%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (1.76%) SQL Server
2 19 (1.39%) Elasticsearch
3 17 (1.25%) PostgreSQL
4 15 (1.10%) Power BI
5 10 (0.73%) DataStage
6 9 (0.66%) Amazon RDS
6 9 (0.66%) Oracle Database
7 8 (0.59%) Azure SQL Database
7 8 (0.59%) MySQL
8 7 (0.51%) Data Lake
8 7 (0.51%) Relational Database
9 6 (0.44%) Data Warehouse
9 6 (0.44%) MongoDB
10 4 (0.29%) Amazon Athena
10 4 (0.29%) Amazon QuickSight
10 4 (0.29%) Amazon Redshift
10 4 (0.29%) Metadata
10 4 (0.29%) NoSQL
10 4 (0.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 3 (0.22%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 89 (6.53%) JIRA
2 62 (4.55%) Jenkins
3 48 (3.52%) GitLab
4 43 (3.15%) Git
5 15 (1.10%) Sonatype Nexus
6 10 (0.73%) Burp Suite
7 9 (0.66%) Artifactory
7 9 (0.66%) Bitbucket
7 9 (0.66%) Chocolatey
7 9 (0.66%) Jaeger
7 9 (0.66%) Metasploit
8 8 (0.59%) SonarQube
9 5 (0.37%) Browser DevTools
10 3 (0.22%) CircleCI
11 2 (0.15%) Introscope
11 2 (0.15%) Postman
11 2 (0.15%) Team Foundation Server
12 1 (0.073%) Cucumber
12 1 (0.073%) Gradle
12 1 (0.073%) PVCS
General
1 295 (21.64%) Social Skills
2 171 (12.55%) Finance
3 114 (8.36%) Analytical Skills
4 109 (8.00%) Public Sector
5 82 (6.02%) Documentation Skills
6 58 (4.26%) Banking
7 38 (2.79%) Telecoms
8 33 (2.42%) Legal
9 25 (1.83%) Financial Institution
10 23 (1.69%) Manufacturing
11 19 (1.39%) Military
12 16 (1.17%) Influencing Skills
13 15 (1.10%) Law
14 12 (0.88%) Retail
15 11 (0.81%) Investment Banking
16 10 (0.73%) Front Office
17 9 (0.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 9 (0.66%) Local Government
18 8 (0.59%) Organisational Skills
18 8 (0.59%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 425 (31.18%) Network Engineer
2 212 (15.55%) Architect
3 169 (12.40%) Senior
4 122 (8.95%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 112 (8.22%) Security Engineer
6 75 (5.50%) Network Architect
7 71 (5.21%) Senior Network Engineer
8 62 (4.55%) Cloud Engineer
9 61 (4.48%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
10 57 (4.18%) Azure Engineer
11 49 (3.60%) Network Security Engineer
12 46 (3.37%) Technical Architect
13 42 (3.08%) Lead
14 41 (3.01%) Cisco Engineer
14 41 (3.01%) DevOps Engineer
15 37 (2.71%) Cisco Network Engineer
15 37 (2.71%) Consultant
15 37 (2.71%) Security Architect
16 34 (2.49%) Cloud Architect
17 33 (2.42%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (5.06%) 802.1X
2 42 (3.08%) Middleware
3 36 (2.64%) LDAP
4 24 (1.76%) SAML
5 22 (1.61%) OpenID
6 18 (1.32%) Kafka
7 11 (0.81%) OAuth
7 11 (0.81%) OpenTelemetry
8 10 (0.73%) OAuth2
8 10 (0.73%) REST
8 10 (0.73%) Spring Boot
9 8 (0.59%) YAML
10 7 (0.51%) Elastic Stack
11 6 (0.44%) .NET
11 6 (0.44%) ARM Templates
11 6 (0.44%) HTML
11 6 (0.44%) LangChain
11 6 (0.44%) PyTorch
11 6 (0.44%) scikit-learn
12 5 (0.37%) ADO
Miscellaneous
1 339 (24.87%) Data Centre
2 86 (6.31%) Cloud Native
3 74 (5.43%) Security Posture
4 66 (4.84%) Hybrid Cloud
4 66 (4.84%) PKI
5 56 (4.11%) Onboarding
6 45 (3.30%) Management Information System
7 42 (3.08%) Clustering
8 37 (2.71%) Operational Technology
9 32 (2.35%) Public Cloud
10 28 (2.05%) Data Protection Act
11 25 (1.83%) IoT
12 24 (1.76%) Enterprise Storage
13 23 (1.69%) Cyber Threat
14 19 (1.39%) Self-Motivation
15 18 (1.32%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
15 18 (1.32%) SCADA
16 16 (1.17%) Driving Licence
16 16 (1.17%) Enterprise Software
17 15 (1.10%) BYOD
Operating Systems
1 306 (22.45%) Windows
2 188 (13.79%) Linux
3 118 (8.66%) Windows Server
4 37 (2.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 30 (2.20%) Unix
6 27 (1.98%) VMS
7 13 (0.95%) Windows Server 2019
8 11 (0.81%) Solaris
9 10 (0.73%) AIX
9 10 (0.73%) Windows Server 2016
10 9 (0.66%) Windows Server 2003
11 8 (0.59%) Ubuntu
12 7 (0.51%) Windows Server 2012
13 6 (0.44%) Windows 10
14 5 (0.37%) CentOS
14 5 (0.37%) Mac OS
15 4 (0.29%) Android
15 4 (0.29%) SUSE
16 3 (0.22%) Amazon Linux
16 3 (0.22%) CatOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 241 (17.68%) DevOps
2 212 (15.55%) CI/CD
3 192 (14.09%) Infrastructure as Code
4 187 (13.72%) Load Balancing
5 177 (12.99%) Cybersecurity
5 177 (12.99%) High Availability
6 173 (12.69%) Migration
7 164 (12.03%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 162 (11.89%) Problem-Solving
9 157 (11.52%) ITIL
10 147 (10.79%) Zero Trust
11 146 (10.71%) Agile
12 110 (8.07%) Project Delivery
12 110 (8.07%) SIEM
13 107 (7.85%) Observability
14 104 (7.63%) Change Management
15 101 (7.41%) Cloud Security
15 101 (7.41%) Network Segmentation
16 93 (6.82%) Technical Leadership
17 91 (6.68%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 209 (15.33%) Python
2 141 (10.34%) PowerShell
3 79 (5.80%) Bash
4 52 (3.82%) SQL
5 39 (2.86%) Java
6 38 (2.79%) Bicep
7 10 (0.73%) COBOL
7 10 (0.73%) Perl
8 9 (0.66%) ActionScript
9 8 (0.59%) Rust
10 7 (0.51%) Go
10 7 (0.51%) JavaScript
10 7 (0.51%) Kusto Query Language
11 6 (0.44%) Groovy
12 5 (0.37%) PL/SQL
12 5 (0.37%) Shell Script
13 3 (0.22%) C++
14 2 (0.15%) C
14 2 (0.15%) Jython
14 2 (0.15%) PHP
Qualifications
1 481 (35.29%) Security Cleared
2 359 (26.34%) SC Cleared
3 280 (20.54%) Cisco Certification
4 212 (15.55%) CCNP
5 113 (8.29%) CCNA
6 111 (8.14%) Degree
7 103 (7.56%) DV Cleared
8 65 (4.77%) CISSP
9 63 (4.62%) Azure Certification
10 42 (3.08%) AWS Certification
11 36 (2.64%) CCIE
12 33 (2.42%) CISM
13 30 (2.20%) Microsoft Certification
14 25 (1.83%) Network+ Certification
15 22 (1.61%) JNCIS
16 19 (1.39%) JNCIA
17 18 (1.32%) CompTIA Security+
17 18 (1.32%) Computer Science Degree
18 17 (1.25%) Server+ Certification
19 16 (1.17%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 70 (5.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 56 (4.11%) NIST
3 46 (3.37%) GDPR
4 32 (2.35%) PCI DSS
4 32 (2.35%) SLA
5 30 (2.20%) NCSC
6 24 (1.76%) QA
7 23 (1.69%) Cyber Essentials
8 11 (0.81%) 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%) RMADS
12 5 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 5 (0.37%) JSP 440
12 5 (0.37%) NIST 800
12 5 (0.37%) SOC 2
13 4 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 4 (0.29%) GxP
System Software
1 210 (15.41%) Active Directory
2 154 (11.30%) VMware Infrastructure
3 61 (4.48%) Docker
4 57 (4.18%) VMware NSX
5 38 (2.79%) Hyper-V
5 38 (2.79%) vSphere
6 36 (2.64%) Virtual Machines
7 31 (2.27%) VMware ESXi
8 24 (1.76%) Firmware
9 22 (1.61%) Virtual Desktop
10 16 (1.17%) Squid
11 13 (0.95%) BitLocker
12 10 (0.73%) Microsoft App-V
13 3 (0.22%) DFS Replication
13 3 (0.22%) Dovecot
13 3 (0.22%) Postfix
13 3 (0.22%) Terminal Services
14 2 (0.15%) Citrix Hypervisor
14 2 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
14 2 (0.15%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 229 (16.80%) Terraform
2 179 (13.13%) Ansible
3 113 (8.29%) Kubernetes
4 103 (7.56%) FortiGate
5 66 (4.84%) Grafana
6 57 (4.18%) Prometheus
7 55 (4.04%) Microsoft Intune
8 32 (2.35%) SCCM
9 31 (2.27%) Single Sign-On
10 24 (1.76%) vCenter Server
11 16 (1.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 16 (1.17%) Progress Chef
11 16 (1.17%) Puppet
12 13 (0.95%) CASB
12 13 (0.95%) QRadar
13 12 (0.88%) Cisco Prime
13 12 (0.88%) Nagios
14 11 (0.81%) Consul
14 11 (0.81%) Nmap
15 10 (0.73%) vMotion
Vendors
1 492 (36.10%) Cisco
2 305 (22.38%) Palo Alto
3 266 (19.52%) Microsoft
4 196 (14.38%) VMware
5 195 (14.31%) Fortinet
6 188 (13.79%) F5
7 155 (11.37%) Juniper
8 130 (9.54%) CheckPoint
9 92 (6.75%) Aruba
10 83 (6.09%) Splunk
11 75 (5.50%) ServiceNow
12 70 (5.14%) Arista
13 67 (4.92%) SolarWinds
14 61 (4.48%) Google
15 43 (3.15%) Zscaler
16 41 (3.01%) Red Hat
17 39 (2.86%) Citrix
18 36 (2.64%) Meraki
19 28 (2.05%) Extreme Networks
20 26 (1.91%) Oracle