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 1 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 91 53 53
Rank change year-on-year -38 0 -5
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,394 1,331 1,525
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.71% 4.33% 3.53%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 28.47% 35.14% 28.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 897 786 951
10th Percentile £350 £325 £290
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £613
90th Percentile £644 £689 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +4.44% -4.25% +2.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 23 47
10th Percentile £24.84 £14.20 £16.98
25th Percentile £37.25 £14.66 £23.86
Median hourly rate £56.00 £30.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +86.67% -50.00% -4.08%
75th Percentile £70.23 £37.01 £85.65
90th Percentile £78.55 £44.65 £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 4,897 3,788 5,390
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.53% 12.32% 12.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,987 2,310 3,177
10th Percentile £250 £230 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -1.19%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £472 £490
% change year-on-year +1.91% -3.62% +3.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 303 180 431
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.87
25th Percentile £19.34 £23.56 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.66 £45.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -40.76% - +114.29%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.31 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £80.10 £73.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.22 £36.57 £47.50
% change year-on-year -28.31% -23.01% +115.91%

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 1 July 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 1 July 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 1 July 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 -44 1,188 £500 - 541
UK excluding London -32 795 £500 +4.44% 481
London -60 443 £500 -3.68% 150
Work from Home -35 390 £520 +4.00% 207
North of England -16 288 £500 +5.26% 90
South East -28 212 £513 +2.50% 168
North West -1 187 £528 +12.34% 48
Yorkshire -38 85 £438 -10.62% 35
Midlands -61 80 £438 -9.51% 71
East of England -10 69 £525 +0.48% 50
Scotland +19 66 £450 +4.35% 23
West Midlands -51 65 £425 -19.05% 46
South West -44 61 £525 +6.33% 61
Wales -16 25 £425 +30.77% 16
North East -12 22 £625 +25.00% 9
East Midlands -26 12 £500 +11.11% 25
Northern Ireland -5 2 £385 - 18

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 36 (2.58%) Microsoft Exchange
2 32 (2.30%) Confluence
3 22 (1.58%) SharePoint
4 14 (1.00%) nginx
5 10 (0.72%) Apache
5 10 (0.72%) CICS
6 7 (0.50%) SAS
7 4 (0.29%) IIS
7 4 (0.29%) Tomcat
8 3 (0.22%) CloudStack
8 3 (0.22%) Skype for Business
9 2 (0.14%) Apache Pulsar
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 26 (1.87%) MS Visio
2 20 (1.43%) Microsoft Excel
3 19 (1.36%) Microsoft Office
4 9 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 8 (0.57%) 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
1 472 (33.86%) Azure
2 306 (21.95%) AWS
3 129 (9.25%) Entra ID
4 117 (8.39%) GCP
5 105 (7.53%) Microsoft 365
6 69 (4.95%) GitHub
7 64 (4.59%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 62 (4.45%) IaaS
9 52 (3.73%) SaaS
10 51 (3.66%) Azure DevOps
11 43 (3.08%) PaaS
12 40 (2.87%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 40 (2.87%) Azure Monitor
13 37 (2.65%) OCI
14 35 (2.51%) Azure Sentinel
14 35 (2.51%) Serverless
15 31 (2.22%) GitHub Actions
16 29 (2.08%) Amazon EC2
16 29 (2.08%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 27 (1.94%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 396 (28.41%) Network Security
2 394 (28.26%) WAN
3 375 (26.90%) VPN
4 313 (22.45%) DNS
5 288 (20.66%) LAN
6 257 (18.44%) BGP
7 215 (15.42%) OSPF
8 179 (12.84%) VLAN
9 166 (11.91%) TCP/IP
10 161 (11.55%) SD-WAN
11 159 (11.41%) DHCP
12 153 (10.98%) Wireless
13 113 (8.11%) Wi-Fi
14 102 (7.32%) BIG-IP
15 93 (6.67%) MPLS
16 91 (6.53%) VXLAN
17 86 (6.17%) IPsec
18 82 (5.88%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
19 78 (5.60%) SSL
20 74 (5.31%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (1.43%) SQL Server
2 17 (1.22%) 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%) DataStage
6 9 (0.65%) Azure SQL Database
7 8 (0.57%) MySQL
7 8 (0.57%) Oracle Database
8 5 (0.36%) Data Warehouse
8 5 (0.36%) Relational Database
9 4 (0.29%) Amazon Athena
9 4 (0.29%) Amazon QuickSight
9 4 (0.29%) Amazon Redshift
9 4 (0.29%) Delta Lake
9 4 (0.29%) NoSQL
10 3 (0.22%) Amazon Aurora
10 3 (0.22%) Big Data
10 3 (0.22%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 100 (7.17%) JIRA
2 54 (3.87%) Jenkins
3 41 (2.94%) GitLab
4 40 (2.87%) Git
5 16 (1.15%) Sonatype Nexus
6 10 (0.72%) Artifactory
7 9 (0.65%) Bitbucket
7 9 (0.65%) Chocolatey
7 9 (0.65%) SonarQube
8 7 (0.50%) Burp Suite
9 5 (0.36%) Browser DevTools
9 5 (0.36%) Jaeger
9 5 (0.36%) Metasploit
10 2 (0.14%) Cucumber
10 2 (0.14%) Gatling
10 2 (0.14%) Gradle
10 2 (0.14%) LoadRunner
10 2 (0.14%) MSI
10 2 (0.14%) REST Assured
10 2 (0.14%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 305 (21.88%) Social Skills
2 180 (12.91%) Finance
3 119 (8.54%) Analytical Skills
4 108 (7.75%) Public Sector
5 79 (5.67%) Documentation Skills
6 63 (4.52%) Banking
7 41 (2.94%) Telecoms
8 34 (2.44%) Legal
9 21 (1.51%) Financial Institution
9 21 (1.51%) Manufacturing
10 19 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
11 18 (1.29%) Military
12 13 (0.93%) Retail
13 12 (0.86%) Local Government
13 12 (0.86%) Organisational Skills
14 11 (0.79%) Law
15 10 (0.72%) Investment Banking
16 9 (0.65%) Front Office
16 9 (0.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 9 (0.65%) Police
Job Titles
1 449 (32.21%) Network Engineer
2 229 (16.43%) Architect
3 171 (12.27%) Senior
4 128 (9.18%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 117 (8.39%) Security Engineer
6 80 (5.74%) Network Architect
7 73 (5.24%) Senior Network Engineer
8 71 (5.09%) Cloud Engineer
9 56 (4.02%) Azure Engineer
10 54 (3.87%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
11 53 (3.80%) Network Security Engineer
11 53 (3.80%) Technical Architect
12 51 (3.66%) Consultant
13 45 (3.23%) Security Architect
14 44 (3.16%) Lead
15 41 (2.94%) DevOps Engineer
16 37 (2.65%) Cisco Engineer
16 37 (2.65%) Solutions Architect
17 35 (2.51%) Cisco Network Engineer
17 35 (2.51%) Cloud Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (4.95%) 802.1X
2 41 (2.94%) Middleware
3 36 (2.58%) LDAP
4 28 (2.01%) SAML
5 23 (1.65%) OpenID
6 12 (0.86%) Kafka
6 12 (0.86%) OAuth
7 11 (0.79%) ARM Templates
7 11 (0.79%) OAuth2
8 10 (0.72%) REST
9 9 (0.65%) LangChain
9 9 (0.65%) PyTorch
9 9 (0.65%) scikit-learn
10 8 (0.57%) .NET
10 8 (0.57%) OpenTelemetry
11 7 (0.50%) SailPoint
11 7 (0.50%) Spring Boot
11 7 (0.50%) YAML
12 6 (0.43%) Elastic Stack
12 6 (0.43%) React
Miscellaneous
1 337 (24.18%) Data Centre
2 93 (6.67%) Cloud Native
3 81 (5.81%) Security Posture
4 75 (5.38%) Hybrid Cloud
5 61 (4.38%) PKI
6 47 (3.37%) Management Information System
6 47 (3.37%) Onboarding
7 41 (2.94%) Clustering
8 38 (2.73%) Operational Technology
9 31 (2.22%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 29 (2.08%) Data Protection Act
11 28 (2.01%) Public Cloud
12 26 (1.87%) IoT
13 25 (1.79%) Enterprise Storage
14 21 (1.51%) Cyber Threat
15 19 (1.36%) SCADA
16 17 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
17 16 (1.15%) Linux Command Line
17 16 (1.15%) Private Cloud
17 16 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 308 (22.09%) Windows
2 179 (12.84%) Linux
3 110 (7.89%) Windows Server
4 44 (3.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 31 (2.22%) Unix
6 23 (1.65%) VMS
7 14 (1.00%) Windows Server 2019
8 13 (0.93%) Ubuntu
9 11 (0.79%) Solaris
10 10 (0.72%) AIX
10 10 (0.72%) Windows Server 2016
11 7 (0.50%) CentOS
11 7 (0.50%) Windows Server 2003
12 6 (0.43%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.36%) Mac OS
14 4 (0.29%) Android
14 4 (0.29%) SUSE
14 4 (0.29%) Windows 10
15 3 (0.22%) Amazon Linux
15 3 (0.22%) CatOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 232 (16.64%) DevOps
2 207 (14.85%) CI/CD
3 204 (14.63%) Infrastructure as Code
4 195 (13.99%) Load Balancing
5 190 (13.63%) Migration
6 181 (12.98%) High Availability
7 170 (12.20%) Cybersecurity
7 170 (12.20%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 169 (12.12%) ITIL
9 166 (11.91%) Problem-Solving
10 154 (11.05%) Agile
11 152 (10.90%) Zero Trust
12 121 (8.68%) SIEM
13 117 (8.39%) Change Management
14 110 (7.89%) Observability
15 108 (7.75%) Project Delivery
15 108 (7.75%) Validation
16 105 (7.53%) Cloud Security
17 104 (7.46%) Roadmaps
18 100 (7.17%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 240 (17.22%) Python
2 146 (10.47%) PowerShell
3 88 (6.31%) Bash
4 43 (3.08%) SQL
5 40 (2.87%) Bicep
6 30 (2.15%) 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%) Go
11 4 (0.29%) PL/SQL
11 4 (0.29%) Rust
12 3 (0.22%) Shell Script
13 2 (0.14%) C
13 2 (0.14%) Jython
13 2 (0.14%) PHP
Qualifications
1 464 (33.29%) Security Cleared
2 340 (24.39%) SC Cleared
3 290 (20.80%) Cisco Certification
4 218 (15.64%) CCNP
5 122 (8.75%) CCNA
6 115 (8.25%) Degree
7 104 (7.46%) DV Cleared
8 68 (4.88%) CISSP
9 55 (3.95%) Azure Certification
10 44 (3.16%) CCIE
11 39 (2.80%) AWS Certification
12 33 (2.37%) Microsoft Certification
13 32 (2.30%) CISM
14 21 (1.51%) Network+ Certification
15 20 (1.43%) Computer Science Degree
16 18 (1.29%) JNCIS
16 18 (1.29%) PMP
17 17 (1.22%) JNCIA
17 17 (1.22%) Server+ Certification
18 16 (1.15%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 71 (5.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 58 (4.16%) NIST
3 44 (3.16%) GDPR
4 35 (2.51%) NCSC
5 29 (2.08%) PCI DSS
6 24 (1.72%) QA
7 22 (1.58%) Cyber Essentials
7 22 (1.58%) SLA
8 9 (0.65%) NIST 800
9 8 (0.57%) Data Quality
9 8 (0.57%) Disclosure Scotland
10 7 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
10 7 (0.50%) PMO
11 6 (0.43%) GRC
11 6 (0.43%) JSP 440
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%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 203 (14.56%) Active Directory
2 146 (10.47%) VMware Infrastructure
3 54 (3.87%) VMware NSX
4 51 (3.66%) Docker
5 39 (2.80%) Virtual Machines
6 37 (2.65%) VMware ESXi
7 36 (2.58%) vSphere
8 33 (2.37%) Hyper-V
9 26 (1.87%) Firmware
10 19 (1.36%) Virtual Desktop
11 16 (1.15%) Squid
12 13 (0.93%) BitLocker
13 9 (0.65%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.29%) NFS
14 4 (0.29%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.22%) Dovecot
15 3 (0.22%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 3 (0.22%) Postfix
16 2 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
16 2 (0.14%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 242 (17.36%) Terraform
2 170 (12.20%) Ansible
3 115 (8.25%) FortiGate
4 103 (7.39%) Kubernetes
5 63 (4.52%) Grafana
6 59 (4.23%) Prometheus
7 53 (3.80%) Microsoft Intune
8 38 (2.73%) Single Sign-On
9 31 (2.22%) SCCM
10 24 (1.72%) vCenter Server
11 19 (1.36%) Puppet
12 17 (1.22%) Progress Chef
13 16 (1.15%) CASB
14 14 (1.00%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 11 (0.79%) Cisco Prime
15 11 (0.79%) Consul
15 11 (0.79%) QRadar
16 9 (0.65%) Nessus
16 9 (0.65%) vMotion
17 8 (0.57%) VxRail
Vendors
1 503 (36.08%) Cisco
2 306 (21.95%) Palo Alto
3 285 (20.44%) Microsoft
4 201 (14.42%) Fortinet
5 195 (13.99%) F5
6 191 (13.70%) VMware
7 158 (11.33%) Juniper
8 130 (9.33%) CheckPoint
9 81 (5.81%) Splunk
10 80 (5.74%) Aruba
11 74 (5.31%) Arista
12 73 (5.24%) ServiceNow
13 68 (4.88%) SolarWinds
14 66 (4.73%) Google
15 57 (4.09%) Zscaler
16 46 (3.30%) Citrix
17 43 (3.08%) Red Hat
18 38 (2.73%) Meraki
19 31 (2.22%) Infoblox
20 29 (2.08%) Dynatrace