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 16 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 87 52 54
Rank change year-on-year -35 +2 +1
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,333 1,200 1,518
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.78% 4.12% 3.57%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 29.06% 32.45% 28.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 867 709 961
10th Percentile £335 £324 £298
25th Percentile £413 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £508 £513
Median % change year-on-year -1.48% -0.98% -2.38%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £650 £688 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £490 £500
% change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% +2.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 18 42
10th Percentile £19.90 - £16.00
25th Percentile £37.25 £14.20 £23.92
Median hourly rate £52.36 £26.25 £66.75
Median % change year-on-year +99.47% -60.67% +7.66%
75th Percentile £71.64 £41.44 £86.66
90th Percentile £85.10 £53.63 £87.52
UK excluding London median hourly rate £56.00 £25.00 £83.77
% change year-on-year +124.00% -70.15% +35.10%

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 4,587 3,698 5,394
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.55% 12.69% 12.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,836 2,280 3,215
10th Percentile £263 £213 £205
25th Percentile £400 £360 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £488 £490
Median % change year-on-year +1.54% -0.51% -5.68%
75th Percentile £588 £591 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £694
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £458 £475
% change year-on-year +3.83% -3.68% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 247 164 417
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.04 £17.30 £16.30
Median hourly rate £37.50 £31.79 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +17.96% -20.53% +116.22%
75th Percentile £65.88 £57.80 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.25 £24.66 £46.14
% change year-on-year +71.33% -46.55% +156.31%

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 16 May 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 16 May 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 16 May 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 1,114 £500 -2.91% 503
UK excluding London -22 747 £500 +2.04% 435
London -66 411 £510 -2.86% 140
Work from Home -28 391 £520 +4.00% 283
South East -5 241 £500 - 136
North of England -20 223 £508 +6.84% 129
North West -8 148 £539 +13.42% 76
Midlands -54 78 £425 -23.42% 58
East of England -8 67 £500 -4.76% 33
West Midlands -41 66 £416 -20.71% 36
Yorkshire -33 63 £425 -12.37% 38
South West -54 58 £525 +2.44% 45
Scotland +14 54 £450 +7.14% 30
Wales -15 28 £425 +16.44% 15
North East -10 14 £625 +13.64% 17
East Midlands -43 8 £488 -14.10% 22
Northern Ireland -1 2 £385 -

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 (2.70%) Microsoft Exchange
2 32 (2.40%) Confluence
3 16 (1.20%) SharePoint
4 13 (0.98%) nginx
5 12 (0.90%) Apache
6 10 (0.75%) CICS
7 6 (0.45%) SAS
8 5 (0.38%) IIS
9 3 (0.23%) Skype for Business
9 3 (0.23%) WebSphere
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%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.15%) Umbraco
10 2 (0.15%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.15%) WebSphere Portal
11 1 (0.075%) JBoss
Applications
1 30 (2.25%) Microsoft Office
2 23 (1.73%) MS Visio
3 22 (1.65%) Microsoft Excel
4 17 (1.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.53%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.075%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 1 (0.075%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.075%) Primavera
1 1 (0.075%) SAP S/4HANA
1 1 (0.075%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 445 (33.38%) Azure
2 277 (20.78%) AWS
3 111 (8.33%) GCP
4 109 (8.18%) Entra ID
5 103 (7.73%) Microsoft 365
6 65 (4.88%) GitHub
7 54 (4.05%) IaaS
7 54 (4.05%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 51 (3.83%) Azure DevOps
9 43 (3.23%) PaaS
10 39 (2.93%) GitHub Actions
11 38 (2.85%) Azure Sentinel
11 38 (2.85%) SaaS
12 36 (2.70%) Azure Monitor
13 33 (2.48%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 27 (2.03%) Serverless
15 26 (1.95%) Amazon EKS
16 25 (1.88%) Amazon EC2
16 25 (1.88%) OCI
17 23 (1.73%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 365 (27.38%) Network Security
2 362 (27.16%) WAN
3 339 (25.43%) VPN
4 282 (21.16%) DNS
5 274 (20.56%) LAN
6 230 (17.25%) BGP
7 208 (15.60%) OSPF
8 162 (12.15%) VLAN
9 149 (11.18%) DHCP
10 147 (11.03%) TCP/IP
11 142 (10.65%) SD-WAN
12 131 (9.83%) Wireless
13 106 (7.95%) Wi-Fi
14 90 (6.75%) MPLS
15 89 (6.68%) IPsec
16 83 (6.23%) VXLAN
17 81 (6.08%) BIG-IP
18 72 (5.40%) Ethernet VPN
19 69 (5.18%) Cisco ISE
20 66 (4.95%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (1.95%) SQL Server
2 19 (1.43%) PostgreSQL
3 18 (1.35%) Elasticsearch
4 13 (0.98%) Power BI
5 10 (0.75%) DataStage
5 10 (0.75%) Oracle Database
6 7 (0.53%) Azure SQL Database
6 7 (0.53%) Data Lake
6 7 (0.53%) Data Warehouse
6 7 (0.53%) MongoDB
7 6 (0.45%) MySQL
8 5 (0.38%) Amazon RDS
8 5 (0.38%) Relational Database
9 4 (0.30%) Amazon Athena
9 4 (0.30%) Amazon QuickSight
9 4 (0.30%) Amazon Redshift
9 4 (0.30%) Metadata
9 4 (0.30%) NoSQL
9 4 (0.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 3 (0.23%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 78 (5.85%) JIRA
2 49 (3.68%) Jenkins
3 42 (3.15%) Git
3 42 (3.15%) GitLab
4 17 (1.28%) Burp Suite
5 16 (1.20%) Metasploit
6 15 (1.13%) Sonatype Nexus
7 9 (0.68%) Artifactory
7 9 (0.68%) Bitbucket
7 9 (0.68%) Chocolatey
7 9 (0.68%) Jaeger
8 8 (0.60%) SonarQube
9 5 (0.38%) Browser DevTools
10 4 (0.30%) CircleCI
11 2 (0.15%) Introscope
11 2 (0.15%) Postman
11 2 (0.15%) Team Foundation Server
12 1 (0.075%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.075%) Cucumber
12 1 (0.075%) Gradle
General
1 311 (23.33%) Social Skills
2 153 (11.48%) Finance
3 119 (8.93%) Analytical Skills
4 109 (8.18%) Public Sector
5 90 (6.75%) Documentation Skills
6 51 (3.83%) Banking
7 41 (3.08%) Telecoms
8 28 (2.10%) Legal
9 24 (1.80%) Financial Institution
10 23 (1.73%) Manufacturing
11 21 (1.58%) Military
12 17 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
13 15 (1.13%) Law
13 15 (1.13%) Retail
14 10 (0.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 9 (0.68%) Organisational Skills
16 8 (0.60%) Front Office
16 8 (0.60%) Investment Banking
16 8 (0.60%) Local Government
16 8 (0.60%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 411 (30.83%) Network Engineer
2 212 (15.90%) Architect
3 165 (12.38%) Senior
4 109 (8.18%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 103 (7.73%) Security Engineer
6 73 (5.48%) Network Architect
7 66 (4.95%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
8 65 (4.88%) Senior Network Engineer
9 56 (4.20%) Azure Engineer
10 52 (3.90%) Cloud Engineer
11 45 (3.38%) Technical Architect
12 43 (3.23%) Cisco Engineer
12 43 (3.23%) Network Security Engineer
13 42 (3.15%) Lead
14 39 (2.93%) Cisco Network Engineer
15 38 (2.85%) DevOps Engineer
15 38 (2.85%) Security Architect
16 34 (2.55%) Analyst
17 32 (2.40%) Consultant
18 30 (2.25%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (5.18%) 802.1X
2 42 (3.15%) LDAP
3 39 (2.93%) Middleware
4 28 (2.10%) SAML
5 24 (1.80%) OpenID
6 19 (1.43%) Kafka
7 13 (0.98%) OAuth
8 12 (0.90%) OAuth2
9 11 (0.83%) Elastic Stack
9 11 (0.83%) OpenTelemetry
9 11 (0.83%) REST
10 10 (0.75%) Spring Boot
11 7 (0.53%) JSON
12 6 (0.45%) .NET
12 6 (0.45%) ARM Templates
12 6 (0.45%) HTML
12 6 (0.45%) LangChain
12 6 (0.45%) PyTorch
12 6 (0.45%) scikit-learn
12 6 (0.45%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 312 (23.41%) Data Centre
2 73 (5.48%) Cloud Native
3 70 (5.25%) Security Posture
4 61 (4.58%) PKI
5 53 (3.98%) Hybrid Cloud
6 47 (3.53%) Onboarding
7 39 (2.93%) Clustering
7 39 (2.93%) Operational Technology
8 38 (2.85%) Management Information System
9 33 (2.48%) Public Cloud
10 26 (1.95%) IoT
11 25 (1.88%) Data Protection Act
12 21 (1.58%) Cyber Threat
13 20 (1.50%) Enterprise Storage
13 20 (1.50%) SCADA
14 18 (1.35%) Enterprise Software
14 18 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
15 16 (1.20%) Driving Licence
15 16 (1.20%) Replication
16 14 (1.05%) BYOD
Operating Systems
1 307 (23.03%) Windows
2 177 (13.28%) Linux
3 120 (9.00%) Windows Server
4 32 (2.40%) Unix
5 29 (2.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 25 (1.88%) VMS
7 11 (0.83%) Solaris
8 10 (0.75%) AIX
8 10 (0.75%) Windows Server 2016
8 10 (0.75%) Windows Server 2019
9 8 (0.60%) Windows Server 2003
10 6 (0.45%) Windows 10
11 5 (0.38%) CatOS
11 5 (0.38%) Mac OS
11 5 (0.38%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.38%) Windows Server 2012
12 4 (0.30%) SUSE
13 3 (0.23%) Amazon Linux
13 3 (0.23%) Data ONTAP
13 3 (0.23%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 215 (16.13%) DevOps
2 192 (14.40%) Cybersecurity
3 186 (13.95%) CI/CD
4 181 (13.58%) Infrastructure as Code
5 179 (13.43%) Load Balancing
6 174 (13.05%) Problem-Solving
7 173 (12.98%) Migration
8 160 (12.00%) High Availability
9 157 (11.78%) ITIL
10 151 (11.33%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 132 (9.90%) Zero Trust
12 126 (9.45%) Agile
13 109 (8.18%) SIEM
14 103 (7.73%) Change Management
14 103 (7.73%) Cloud Security
15 95 (7.13%) Project Delivery
16 94 (7.05%) Technical Leadership
17 91 (6.83%) Network Segmentation
18 90 (6.75%) Observability
19 87 (6.53%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 184 (13.80%) Python
2 144 (10.80%) PowerShell
3 78 (5.85%) Bash
4 57 (4.28%) SQL
5 41 (3.08%) Bicep
6 30 (2.25%) Java
7 11 (0.83%) Perl
8 10 (0.75%) COBOL
8 10 (0.75%) JavaScript
9 8 (0.60%) Kusto Query Language
9 8 (0.60%) Rust
10 6 (0.45%) PL/SQL
11 5 (0.38%) Shell Script
12 4 (0.30%) Go
12 4 (0.30%) Groovy
13 3 (0.23%) C++
14 2 (0.15%) C#
14 2 (0.15%) Jython
14 2 (0.15%) PHP
14 2 (0.15%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 485 (36.38%) Security Cleared
2 362 (27.16%) SC Cleared
3 275 (20.63%) Cisco Certification
4 211 (15.83%) CCNP
5 109 (8.18%) CCNA
6 108 (8.10%) Degree
7 105 (7.88%) DV Cleared
8 59 (4.43%) CISSP
9 57 (4.28%) Azure Certification
10 43 (3.23%) CCIE
11 38 (2.85%) AWS Certification
12 34 (2.55%) CISM
13 28 (2.10%) Microsoft Certification
14 21 (1.58%) CompTIA Security+
14 21 (1.58%) JNCIS
15 20 (1.50%) Computer Science Degree
15 20 (1.50%) Network+ Certification
16 17 (1.28%) JNCIA
16 17 (1.28%) JNCIP
16 17 (1.28%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 78 (5.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 54 (4.05%) GDPR
3 52 (3.90%) NIST
4 36 (2.70%) PCI DSS
5 31 (2.33%) SLA
6 29 (2.18%) NCSC
7 27 (2.03%) QA
8 22 (1.65%) Cyber Essentials
9 17 (1.28%) PMO
10 7 (0.53%) Data Quality
10 7 (0.53%) Disclosure Scotland
11 6 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
11 6 (0.45%) GRC
11 6 (0.45%) JSP 440
11 6 (0.45%) RMADS
12 5 (0.38%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 5 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 5 (0.38%) SOC 2
13 4 (0.30%) GxP
13 4 (0.30%) NIST 800
System Software
1 214 (16.05%) Active Directory
2 163 (12.23%) VMware Infrastructure
3 63 (4.73%) VMware NSX
4 58 (4.35%) Docker
5 42 (3.15%) Hyper-V
6 37 (2.78%) Virtual Machines
7 36 (2.70%) vSphere
8 30 (2.25%) VMware ESXi
9 21 (1.58%) Firmware
9 21 (1.58%) Virtual Desktop
10 15 (1.13%) Squid
11 10 (0.75%) BitLocker
12 8 (0.60%) Microsoft App-V
13 3 (0.23%) DFS Replication
13 3 (0.23%) KVM
13 3 (0.23%) NFS
13 3 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
14 2 (0.15%) EMC RecoverPoint
14 2 (0.15%) iptables
14 2 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 218 (16.35%) Terraform
2 165 (12.38%) Ansible
3 103 (7.73%) Kubernetes
4 99 (7.43%) FortiGate
5 60 (4.50%) Grafana
6 52 (3.90%) Microsoft Intune
7 49 (3.68%) Prometheus
8 33 (2.48%) Single Sign-On
9 26 (1.95%) SCCM
10 25 (1.88%) vCenter Server
11 18 (1.35%) Nmap
12 15 (1.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 13 (0.98%) CASB
13 13 (0.98%) Nagios
13 13 (0.98%) QRadar
14 12 (0.90%) Puppet
15 11 (0.83%) Cisco Prime
15 11 (0.83%) VxRail
16 10 (0.75%) Progress Chef
17 9 (0.68%) WSUS
Vendors
1 485 (36.38%) Cisco
2 308 (23.11%) Palo Alto
3 266 (19.95%) Microsoft
4 209 (15.68%) VMware
5 179 (13.43%) Fortinet
6 173 (12.98%) F5
7 142 (10.65%) Juniper
8 138 (10.35%) CheckPoint
9 90 (6.75%) Aruba
10 83 (6.23%) Splunk
11 68 (5.10%) ServiceNow
11 68 (5.10%) SolarWinds
12 59 (4.43%) Arista
13 54 (4.05%) Google
14 46 (3.45%) Meraki
15 45 (3.38%) Zscaler
16 38 (2.85%) Citrix
17 32 (2.40%) Red Hat
18 29 (2.18%) Oracle
19 27 (2.03%) Extreme Networks