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

6 months to
25 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 90 51 54
Rank change year-on-year -39 +3 -7
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,386 1,287 1,526
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.72% 4.27% 3.50%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 28.68% 34.58% 28.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 888 756 953
10th Percentile £350 £325 £290
25th Percentile £413 £413 £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 £650 £688 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% +3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 21 47
10th Percentile £28.00 - £16.98
25th Percentile £37.25 £14.20 £23.86
Median hourly rate £56.00 £30.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +86.67% -50.00% -4.08%
75th Percentile £70.11 £32.77 £85.65
90th Percentile £78.50 £43.25 £87.49
UK excluding London median hourly rate £56.00 £30.00 £82.38
% change year-on-year +86.67% -63.58% +31.71%

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 4,832 3,722 5,406
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.50% 12.36% 12.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,960 2,275 3,197
10th Percentile £250 £225 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £481 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.95% -3.80% -
75th Percentile £588 £590 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £473 £490
% change year-on-year +1.85% -3.57% +3.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 297 174 430
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £20.50 £21.00 £17.69
Median hourly rate £27.88 £45.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -38.04% - +136.84%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.97 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.10 £78.50 £72.93
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.69 £35.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year -23.74% -26.32% +150.00%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 -43 1,176 £500 -0.05% 427
UK excluding London -32 792 £500 +3.09% 404
London -58 438 £501 -4.67% 94
Work from Home -28 400 £520 +4.00% 184
North of England -17 278 £515 +8.42% 89
South East -30 218 £500 - 149
North West -1 178 £538 +13.16% 47
Yorkshire -40 84 £425 -13.18% 32
Midlands -63 79 £433 -11.94% 59
East of England -13 70 £505 -3.35% 49
Scotland +16 66 £456 +4.29% 20
West Midlands -56 64 £425 -19.05% 37
South West -57 62 £525 +7.69% 41
Wales -15 25 £425 +36.00% 5
North East -15 22 £625 +25.00% 12
East Midlands -30 12 £500 +11.11% 22
Northern Ireland -6 2 £385 - 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 37 (2.67%) Microsoft Exchange
2 32 (2.31%) Confluence
3 23 (1.66%) SharePoint
4 14 (1.01%) nginx
5 10 (0.72%) Apache
5 10 (0.72%) CICS
6 5 (0.36%) IIS
7 4 (0.29%) SAS
7 4 (0.29%) Tomcat
8 3 (0.22%) Skype for Business
9 2 (0.14%) Apache Pulsar
9 2 (0.14%) CloudStack
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 (0.072%) MTS
Applications
1 25 (1.80%) MS Visio
2 21 (1.52%) Microsoft Office
3 19 (1.37%) Microsoft Excel
4 11 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 8 (0.58%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.072%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 1 (0.072%) Bloomberg TOMS
1 1 (0.072%) Dynamics GP
1 1 (0.072%) Eikon
1 1 (0.072%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.072%) Primavera
1 1 (0.072%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.072%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 469 (33.84%) Azure
2 306 (22.08%) AWS
3 128 (9.24%) Entra ID
4 118 (8.51%) GCP
5 105 (7.58%) Microsoft 365
6 72 (5.19%) GitHub
7 66 (4.76%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 60 (4.33%) IaaS
9 53 (3.82%) Azure DevOps
10 51 (3.68%) SaaS
11 42 (3.03%) PaaS
12 40 (2.89%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 40 (2.89%) Azure Monitor
13 36 (2.60%) OCI
14 35 (2.53%) Serverless
15 34 (2.45%) Azure Sentinel
15 34 (2.45%) GitHub Actions
16 29 (2.09%) Amazon EC2
17 28 (2.02%) Google Kubernetes Engine
18 27 (1.95%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 393 (28.35%) Network Security
2 389 (28.07%) WAN
3 362 (26.12%) VPN
4 303 (21.86%) DNS
5 286 (20.63%) LAN
6 248 (17.89%) BGP
7 207 (14.94%) OSPF
8 176 (12.70%) VLAN
9 164 (11.83%) TCP/IP
10 161 (11.62%) SD-WAN
11 153 (11.04%) DHCP
12 147 (10.61%) Wireless
13 113 (8.15%) Wi-Fi
14 102 (7.36%) BIG-IP
15 93 (6.71%) MPLS
16 92 (6.64%) VXLAN
17 87 (6.28%) IPsec
18 82 (5.92%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
19 79 (5.70%) SSL
20 75 (5.41%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (1.44%) SQL Server
2 17 (1.23%) Elasticsearch
3 16 (1.15%) PostgreSQL
3 16 (1.15%) Power BI
4 11 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
4 11 (0.79%) Data Lake
5 10 (0.72%) Azure SQL Database
5 10 (0.72%) DataStage
6 8 (0.58%) MySQL
6 8 (0.58%) Oracle Database
7 5 (0.36%) Data Warehouse
7 5 (0.36%) Relational Database
8 4 (0.29%) Amazon Athena
8 4 (0.29%) Amazon QuickSight
8 4 (0.29%) Amazon Redshift
8 4 (0.29%) Delta Lake
8 4 (0.29%) NoSQL
9 3 (0.22%) Amazon Aurora
9 3 (0.22%) Big Data
9 3 (0.22%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 98 (7.07%) JIRA
2 57 (4.11%) Jenkins
3 41 (2.96%) GitLab
4 40 (2.89%) Git
5 16 (1.15%) Sonatype Nexus
6 10 (0.72%) Artifactory
6 10 (0.72%) Burp Suite
7 9 (0.65%) Bitbucket
7 9 (0.65%) Chocolatey
7 9 (0.65%) SonarQube
8 8 (0.58%) Metasploit
9 6 (0.43%) Jaeger
10 5 (0.36%) Browser DevTools
11 2 (0.14%) Cucumber
11 2 (0.14%) Gatling
11 2 (0.14%) Gradle
11 2 (0.14%) LoadRunner
11 2 (0.14%) MSI
11 2 (0.14%) REST Assured
11 2 (0.14%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 305 (22.01%) Social Skills
2 177 (12.77%) Finance
3 118 (8.51%) Analytical Skills
4 105 (7.58%) Public Sector
5 81 (5.84%) Documentation Skills
6 60 (4.33%) Banking
7 41 (2.96%) Telecoms
8 36 (2.60%) Legal
9 23 (1.66%) Manufacturing
10 22 (1.59%) Financial Institution
11 18 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
11 18 (1.30%) Military
12 13 (0.94%) Law
12 13 (0.94%) Retail
13 12 (0.87%) Organisational Skills
14 11 (0.79%) Investment Banking
14 11 (0.79%) Local Government
15 10 (0.72%) Front Office
16 9 (0.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 9 (0.65%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 443 (31.96%) Network Engineer
2 222 (16.02%) Architect
3 169 (12.19%) Senior
4 125 (9.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 116 (8.37%) Security Engineer
6 74 (5.34%) Cloud Engineer
6 74 (5.34%) Network Architect
7 72 (5.19%) Senior Network Engineer
8 57 (4.11%) Azure Engineer
9 55 (3.97%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
10 53 (3.82%) Network Security Engineer
11 52 (3.75%) Technical Architect
12 48 (3.46%) Consultant
13 44 (3.17%) Lead
14 43 (3.10%) DevOps Engineer
15 40 (2.89%) Security Architect
16 38 (2.74%) Cisco Engineer
17 37 (2.67%) Analyst
18 36 (2.60%) Cloud Architect
19 35 (2.53%) Cisco Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (5.12%) 802.1X
2 41 (2.96%) Middleware
3 35 (2.53%) LDAP
4 27 (1.95%) SAML
5 23 (1.66%) OpenID
6 13 (0.94%) Kafka
7 12 (0.87%) ARM Templates
7 12 (0.87%) OAuth
8 11 (0.79%) OAuth2
9 10 (0.72%) REST
10 9 (0.65%) LangChain
10 9 (0.65%) OpenTelemetry
10 9 (0.65%) PyTorch
10 9 (0.65%) scikit-learn
11 8 (0.58%) .NET
11 8 (0.58%) Spring Boot
12 7 (0.51%) SailPoint
12 7 (0.51%) YAML
13 6 (0.43%) React
14 5 (0.36%) Jinja
Miscellaneous
1 334 (24.10%) Data Centre
2 93 (6.71%) Cloud Native
3 83 (5.99%) Security Posture
4 75 (5.41%) Hybrid Cloud
5 59 (4.26%) PKI
6 53 (3.82%) Onboarding
7 48 (3.46%) Management Information System
8 41 (2.96%) Clustering
9 38 (2.74%) Operational Technology
10 30 (2.16%) Data Protection Act
10 30 (2.16%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 29 (2.09%) Public Cloud
12 26 (1.88%) IoT
13 24 (1.73%) Enterprise Storage
14 23 (1.66%) Cyber Threat
15 19 (1.37%) SCADA
16 16 (1.15%) Enterprise Software
16 16 (1.15%) Linux Command Line
16 16 (1.15%) Private Cloud
16 16 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 308 (22.22%) Windows
2 180 (12.99%) Linux
3 111 (8.01%) Windows Server
4 43 (3.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 30 (2.16%) Unix
6 24 (1.73%) VMS
7 13 (0.94%) Windows Server 2019
8 12 (0.87%) Ubuntu
9 11 (0.79%) Solaris
10 10 (0.72%) AIX
11 9 (0.65%) Windows Server 2016
12 7 (0.51%) Windows Server 2003
13 6 (0.43%) CentOS
14 5 (0.36%) Mac OS
14 5 (0.36%) Windows 10
14 5 (0.36%) Windows Server 2012
15 4 (0.29%) Android
15 4 (0.29%) SUSE
16 3 (0.22%) Amazon Linux
16 3 (0.22%) CatOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 236 (17.03%) DevOps
2 212 (15.30%) CI/CD
3 206 (14.86%) Infrastructure as Code
4 197 (14.21%) Load Balancing
5 193 (13.92%) Migration
6 182 (13.13%) High Availability
7 173 (12.48%) Cybersecurity
8 167 (12.05%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 166 (11.98%) Problem-Solving
10 161 (11.62%) ITIL
11 156 (11.26%) Agile
12 149 (10.75%) Zero Trust
13 120 (8.66%) SIEM
14 113 (8.15%) Change Management
15 108 (7.79%) Project Delivery
15 108 (7.79%) Validation
16 107 (7.72%) Observability
17 106 (7.65%) Cloud Security
18 102 (7.36%) Roadmaps
19 98 (7.07%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 237 (17.10%) Python
2 147 (10.61%) PowerShell
3 88 (6.35%) Bash
4 44 (3.17%) SQL
5 40 (2.89%) Bicep
6 31 (2.24%) Java
7 11 (0.79%) ActionScript
8 10 (0.72%) COBOL
8 10 (0.72%) Perl
9 6 (0.43%) Groovy
9 6 (0.43%) JavaScript
9 6 (0.43%) Kusto Query Language
10 5 (0.36%) C++
10 5 (0.36%) Rust
11 4 (0.29%) Go
11 4 (0.29%) PL/SQL
12 3 (0.22%) Shell Script
13 2 (0.14%) C
13 2 (0.14%) Jython
13 2 (0.14%) PHP
Qualifications
1 460 (33.19%) Security Cleared
2 338 (24.39%) SC Cleared
3 284 (20.49%) Cisco Certification
4 212 (15.30%) CCNP
5 119 (8.59%) CCNA
6 118 (8.51%) Degree
7 102 (7.36%) DV Cleared
8 67 (4.83%) CISSP
9 56 (4.04%) Azure Certification
10 43 (3.10%) CCIE
11 39 (2.81%) AWS Certification
12 33 (2.38%) Microsoft Certification
13 31 (2.24%) CISM
14 21 (1.52%) Network+ Certification
15 19 (1.37%) Computer Science Degree
16 18 (1.30%) JNCIS
16 18 (1.30%) PMP
17 17 (1.23%) JNCIA
17 17 (1.23%) Server+ Certification
18 16 (1.15%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 72 (5.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 56 (4.04%) NIST
3 47 (3.39%) GDPR
4 34 (2.45%) NCSC
5 31 (2.24%) PCI DSS
6 26 (1.88%) QA
7 23 (1.66%) Cyber Essentials
7 23 (1.66%) SLA
8 9 (0.65%) PMO
9 8 (0.58%) Data Quality
9 8 (0.58%) Disclosure Scotland
10 7 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
11 6 (0.43%) GRC
11 6 (0.43%) NIST 800
12 5 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 5 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 5 (0.36%) RMADS
13 4 (0.29%) GxP
13 4 (0.29%) JSP 440
13 4 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 204 (14.72%) Active Directory
2 146 (10.53%) VMware Infrastructure
3 55 (3.97%) VMware NSX
4 52 (3.75%) Docker
5 38 (2.74%) Virtual Machines
6 36 (2.60%) VMware ESXi
7 35 (2.53%) vSphere
8 33 (2.38%) Hyper-V
9 25 (1.80%) Firmware
10 21 (1.52%) Virtual Desktop
11 16 (1.15%) Squid
12 13 (0.94%) BitLocker
13 9 (0.65%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.29%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.22%) Dovecot
15 3 (0.22%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 3 (0.22%) NFS
15 3 (0.22%) Postfix
16 2 (0.14%) VirtualBox
16 2 (0.14%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 245 (17.68%) Terraform
2 174 (12.55%) Ansible
3 115 (8.30%) FortiGate
4 106 (7.65%) Kubernetes
5 62 (4.47%) Grafana
6 58 (4.18%) Prometheus
7 52 (3.75%) Microsoft Intune
8 38 (2.74%) Single Sign-On
9 32 (2.31%) SCCM
10 24 (1.73%) vCenter Server
11 19 (1.37%) Puppet
12 17 (1.23%) Progress Chef
13 16 (1.15%) CASB
14 14 (1.01%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 12 (0.87%) Cisco Prime
16 11 (0.79%) Consul
16 11 (0.79%) QRadar
17 10 (0.72%) Nmap
18 9 (0.65%) Nessus
18 9 (0.65%) vMotion
Vendors
1 496 (35.79%) Cisco
2 302 (21.79%) Palo Alto
3 280 (20.20%) Microsoft
4 200 (14.43%) Fortinet
5 192 (13.85%) F5
6 190 (13.71%) VMware
7 153 (11.04%) Juniper
8 124 (8.95%) CheckPoint
9 85 (6.13%) Aruba
10 81 (5.84%) Splunk
11 73 (5.27%) Arista
12 72 (5.19%) ServiceNow
13 69 (4.98%) Google
13 69 (4.98%) SolarWinds
14 57 (4.11%) Zscaler
15 43 (3.10%) Red Hat
16 41 (2.96%) Citrix
17 34 (2.45%) Meraki
18 31 (2.24%) Infoblox
19 28 (2.02%) Dynatrace