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

6 months to
14 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 75 53 47
Rank change year-on-year -22 -6 +18
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,222 1,217 1,735
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.31% 3.85% 4.08%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 31.31% 30.00% 29.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 789 731 1,139
10th Percentile £315 £313 £313
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -
75th Percentile £600 £613 £627
90th Percentile £675 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -1.52% -1.00% +2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 22 49
10th Percentile £29.00 £20.00 £40.63
25th Percentile £34.00 £20.45 £62.50
Median hourly rate £41.94 £35.00 £65.98
Median % change year-on-year +19.83% -46.95% +106.19%
75th Percentile £77.13 £41.44 £76.25
90th Percentile £89.63 £58.75 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £56.00 £35.00 £65.98
% change year-on-year +60.00% -46.95% +77.06%

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 3,903 4,056 5,800
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.56% 12.83% 13.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,557 2,375 3,580
10th Percentile £205 £213 £210
25th Percentile £356 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -2.44%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £686 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £470 £475
% change year-on-year -4.26% -1.05% +3.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 165 135 328
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.22 £17.74
25th Percentile £19.00 £21.36 £23.07
Median hourly rate £34.00 £32.50 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year +4.62% -42.47% +125.96%
75th Percentile £65.00 £53.13 £65.98
90th Percentile £75.00 £70.00 £75.08
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.22 £31.08 £60.00
% change year-on-year +35.84% -48.20% +172.73%

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 January 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 January 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 14 January 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 -21 1,034 £513 -2.38% 518
UK excluding London -18 674 £488 -1.52% 500
London -31 399 £530 -3.64% 119
Work from Home -3 387 £500 -4.76% 220
South East +13 193 £500 - 170
North of England -25 187 £500 +5.26% 110
Midlands -19 122 £475 -6.91% 57
West Midlands -2 113 £475 +7.04% 39
North West -22 101 £519 +9.16% 57
Yorkshire -17 82 £463 +8.82% 39
Scotland -13 62 £425 -15.00% 33
South West -38 54 £550 +15.79% 59
East of England -20 39 £475 -9.52% 58
Wales -23 10 £293 -19.86% 20
East Midlands -50 8 £500 -23.14% 17
North East -12 7 £550 - 16
Northern Ireland - 7 £500 - 8

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 46 (3.76%) Microsoft Exchange
2 42 (3.44%) Confluence
3 30 (2.45%) SharePoint
4 13 (1.06%) Apache
5 12 (0.98%) nginx
6 9 (0.74%) OpenStack
7 7 (0.57%) IIS
8 6 (0.49%) SAS
8 6 (0.49%) Tomcat
9 3 (0.25%) WebSphere
10 2 (0.16%) CICS
10 2 (0.16%) JBoss
10 2 (0.16%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.16%) WebLogic
11 1 (0.082%) Anypoint
11 1 (0.082%) CMS
11 1 (0.082%) Exchange Server 2010
11 1 (0.082%) Exchange Server 2013
11 1 (0.082%) Mattermost
11 1 (0.082%) Traefik
Applications
1 35 (2.86%) Microsoft Office
2 19 (1.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 19 (1.55%) MS Visio
3 17 (1.39%) Microsoft Excel
4 9 (0.74%) Mozilla Thunderbird
5 2 (0.16%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 3 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.082%) Finacle
3 1 (0.082%) ION MarketView
3 1 (0.082%) Pegasus Opera
3 1 (0.082%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 423 (34.62%) Azure
2 348 (28.48%) AWS
3 148 (12.11%) GCP
4 118 (9.66%) Microsoft 365
5 83 (6.79%) Entra ID
6 75 (6.14%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 61 (4.99%) Amazon EC2
8 52 (4.26%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 51 (4.17%) GitHub
10 49 (4.01%) Amazon S3
11 46 (3.76%) Azure Sentinel
12 41 (3.36%) IaaS
13 39 (3.19%) Amazon ELB
13 39 (3.19%) Azure DevOps
14 37 (3.03%) Azure Monitor
15 33 (2.70%) PaaS
16 32 (2.62%) GitHub Actions
17 30 (2.45%) AWS CloudFormation
18 27 (2.21%) Serverless
19 26 (2.13%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 294 (24.06%) Network Security
2 291 (23.81%) VPN
3 246 (20.13%) WAN
4 232 (18.99%) DNS
5 168 (13.75%) LAN
6 151 (12.36%) TCP/IP
7 147 (12.03%) BGP
8 122 (9.98%) OSPF
9 115 (9.41%) VLAN
10 112 (9.17%) Wireless
11 111 (9.08%) SD-WAN
12 91 (7.45%) DHCP
13 87 (7.12%) Wi-Fi
14 78 (6.38%) SSL
15 75 (6.14%) MPLS
16 59 (4.83%) IPsec
17 51 (4.17%) Cisco Nexus
18 49 (4.01%) HTTP
19 48 (3.93%) Cisco ASA
20 46 (3.76%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (2.95%) SQL Server
2 34 (2.78%) Amazon RDS
3 29 (2.37%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (0.74%) Amazon Aurora
5 8 (0.65%) MongoDB
5 8 (0.65%) Oracle Database
6 7 (0.57%) Data Warehouse
7 6 (0.49%) Elasticsearch
8 5 (0.41%) Relational Database
9 4 (0.33%) Data Lake
9 4 (0.33%) Redis
9 4 (0.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 3 (0.25%) DynamoDB
10 3 (0.25%) NoSQL
10 3 (0.25%) Oracle Exadata
11 2 (0.16%) Azure SQL Database
11 2 (0.16%) Data Vault
11 2 (0.16%) DB2
11 2 (0.16%) MariaDB
11 2 (0.16%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 95 (7.77%) Jenkins
2 82 (6.71%) Git
3 78 (6.38%) JIRA
4 62 (5.07%) GitLab
5 25 (2.05%) Sonatype Nexus
6 15 (1.23%) Vagrant
7 14 (1.15%) Burp Suite
7 14 (1.15%) Metasploit
8 13 (1.06%) Bitbucket
9 7 (0.57%) SonarQube
10 6 (0.49%) Jaeger
11 4 (0.33%) CircleCI
12 3 (0.25%) Postman
13 2 (0.16%) Artifactory
13 2 (0.16%) MSI
14 1 (0.082%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 1 (0.082%) Chocolatey
14 1 (0.082%) Eclipse
14 1 (0.082%) Maven
14 1 (0.082%) Subversion
General
1 337 (27.58%) Social Skills
2 142 (11.62%) Analytical Skills
3 117 (9.57%) Public Sector
4 116 (9.49%) Finance
5 74 (6.06%) Documentation Skills
6 59 (4.83%) Banking
7 51 (4.17%) Telecoms
8 33 (2.70%) Legal
9 31 (2.54%) Manufacturing
10 28 (2.29%) Presentation Skills
11 13 (1.06%) Local Government
11 13 (1.06%) Military
12 12 (0.98%) Retail
13 11 (0.90%) Financial Institution
13 11 (0.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 10 (0.82%) Law
15 9 (0.74%) Organisational Skills
16 8 (0.65%) Aerospace
17 7 (0.57%) Influencing Skills
17 7 (0.57%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 303 (24.80%) Network Engineer
2 192 (15.71%) Architect
3 119 (9.74%) Senior
4 110 (9.00%) Security Engineer
5 87 (7.12%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 67 (5.48%) Network Architect
7 59 (4.83%) Security Architect
8 58 (4.75%) DevOps Engineer
9 53 (4.34%) Analyst
9 53 (4.34%) Platform Engineer
10 52 (4.26%) Consultant
11 50 (4.09%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 41 (3.36%) Azure Engineer
13 40 (3.27%) Solutions Architect
14 38 (3.11%) Network Security Engineer
15 34 (2.78%) Lead
16 33 (2.70%) Support Engineer
17 31 (2.54%) Cloud Engineer
18 28 (2.29%) Senior Network Engineer
19 27 (2.21%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (3.19%) 802.1X
2 31 (2.54%) LDAP
3 28 (2.29%) SAML
4 24 (1.96%) Middleware
5 20 (1.64%) OpenID
6 17 (1.39%) OAuth
7 16 (1.31%) Node.js
7 16 (1.31%) OAuth2
8 15 (1.23%) JSON
9 13 (1.06%) REST
10 12 (0.98%) Kafka
11 11 (0.90%) ARM Templates
11 11 (0.90%) Elastic Stack
12 10 (0.82%) XML
13 9 (0.74%) RFC 2544
14 8 (0.65%) YAML
15 7 (0.57%) Microsoft Graph
15 7 (0.57%) Spring Boot
16 6 (0.49%) OpenTelemetry
17 5 (0.41%) Regular Expression
Miscellaneous
1 218 (17.84%) Data Centre
2 84 (6.87%) Security Posture
3 58 (4.75%) PKI
4 49 (4.01%) Hybrid Cloud
5 46 (3.76%) Cloud Native
5 46 (3.76%) Operational Technology
6 45 (3.68%) Onboarding
7 39 (3.19%) Replication
8 29 (2.37%) Public Cloud
9 26 (2.13%) Management Information System
10 24 (1.96%) Cyber Threat
10 24 (1.96%) Security Operations Centre
11 22 (1.80%) Data Protection Act
12 19 (1.55%) Private Cloud
12 19 (1.55%) SCADA
13 14 (1.15%) Fat Client
13 14 (1.15%) Thin Client
14 13 (1.06%) Enterprise Software
14 13 (1.06%) Product Ownership
14 13 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 314 (25.70%) Windows
2 217 (17.76%) Linux
3 123 (10.07%) Windows Server
4 38 (3.11%) VMS
5 35 (2.86%) Unix
6 30 (2.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 18 (1.47%) Amazon Linux
8 16 (1.31%) Ubuntu
9 13 (1.06%) Windows 10
9 13 (1.06%) Windows Server 2019
10 11 (0.90%) Windows 7
11 8 (0.65%) Mac OS
11 8 (0.65%) Windows Server 2016
12 5 (0.41%) CentOS
12 5 (0.41%) Windows Server 2003
12 5 (0.41%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.33%) Android
14 3 (0.25%) Apple iOS
14 3 (0.25%) Solaris
15 2 (0.16%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 242 (19.80%) Cybersecurity
2 204 (16.69%) DevOps
3 196 (16.04%) Problem-Solving
4 185 (15.14%) CI/CD
5 173 (14.16%) Infrastructure as Code
6 156 (12.77%) SIEM
7 144 (11.78%) Cloud Security
7 144 (11.78%) Incident Response
8 137 (11.21%) Migration
9 136 (11.13%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 130 (10.64%) Agile
11 119 (9.74%) ITIL
12 113 (9.25%) High Availability
13 112 (9.17%) Load Balancing
14 104 (8.51%) Stakeholder Management
15 99 (8.10%) Change Management
16 94 (7.69%) Zero Trust
17 89 (7.28%) Mentoring
18 84 (6.87%) Network Design
19 80 (6.55%) DevSecOps
Programming Languages
1 241 (19.72%) Python
2 192 (15.71%) PowerShell
3 107 (8.76%) Bash
4 68 (5.56%) SQL
5 44 (3.60%) Java
6 38 (3.11%) Perl
7 20 (1.64%) Bicep
8 16 (1.31%) Kusto Query Language
9 15 (1.23%) Groovy
10 12 (0.98%) Ruby
11 9 (0.74%) Shell Script
12 7 (0.57%) Rust
13 6 (0.49%) JavaScript
14 4 (0.33%) C#
14 4 (0.33%) Go
14 4 (0.33%) PL/SQL
15 2 (0.16%) C++
16 1 (0.082%) C
16 1 (0.082%) Korn
16 1 (0.082%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 423 (34.62%) Security Cleared
2 296 (24.22%) SC Cleared
3 222 (18.17%) Cisco Certification
4 178 (14.57%) CCNP
5 115 (9.41%) Degree
6 98 (8.02%) DV Cleared
7 95 (7.77%) CISSP
8 85 (6.96%) CCNA
9 63 (5.16%) Azure Certification
10 53 (4.34%) CISM
11 51 (4.17%) AWS Certification
12 50 (4.09%) Microsoft Certification
13 48 (3.93%) CCIE
14 28 (2.29%) CompTIA Security+
15 21 (1.72%) Computer Science Degree
16 19 (1.55%) CEH
16 19 (1.55%) JNCIP
17 17 (1.39%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 16 (1.31%) CREST Certified
19 15 (1.23%) CHECK Team Member
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 112 (9.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 97 (7.94%) NIST
3 69 (5.65%) GDPR
4 42 (3.44%) PCI DSS
5 27 (2.21%) SLA
6 23 (1.88%) NCSC
7 22 (1.80%) Cyber Essentials
8 18 (1.47%) QA
9 14 (1.15%) PMO
10 12 (0.98%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 9 (0.74%) GRC
12 7 (0.57%) COBIT
12 7 (0.57%) HIPAA
13 6 (0.49%) JSP 440
14 5 (0.41%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 5 (0.41%) PSD2
14 5 (0.41%) SOC 2
15 4 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
15 4 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
15 4 (0.33%) NIST 800
System Software
1 214 (17.51%) Active Directory
2 154 (12.60%) VMware Infrastructure
3 137 (11.21%) Docker
4 47 (3.85%) Hyper-V
5 44 (3.60%) VMware NSX
6 32 (2.62%) Virtual Machines
7 27 (2.21%) vSphere
8 20 (1.64%) VMware ESXi
9 18 (1.47%) DFS Replication
10 14 (1.15%) Squid
11 13 (1.06%) Virtual Desktop
12 9 (0.74%) Dovecot
12 9 (0.74%) Firmware
12 9 (0.74%) Postfix
13 8 (0.65%) KVM
13 8 (0.65%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (0.49%) Snort
15 5 (0.41%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.41%) NDS
15 5 (0.41%) NetIQ eDirectory
Systems Management
1 204 (16.69%) Terraform
2 168 (13.75%) Ansible
3 108 (8.84%) Kubernetes
4 70 (5.73%) FortiGate
5 55 (4.50%) Microsoft Intune
6 37 (3.03%) Grafana
7 34 (2.78%) Prometheus
7 34 (2.78%) SCCM
7 34 (2.78%) Single Sign-On
8 26 (2.13%) vCenter Server
9 22 (1.80%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 19 (1.55%) Nessus
11 17 (1.39%) Nmap
12 16 (1.31%) CSIRT
13 14 (1.15%) Nagios
14 13 (1.06%) Fluentd
15 12 (0.98%) CASB
15 12 (0.98%) QRadar
15 12 (0.98%) WMI
16 10 (0.82%) SCOM
Vendors
1 400 (32.73%) Cisco
2 283 (23.16%) Microsoft
3 268 (21.93%) Palo Alto
4 190 (15.55%) VMware
5 152 (12.44%) F5
6 137 (11.21%) CheckPoint
7 119 (9.74%) Fortinet
8 94 (7.69%) Juniper
9 92 (7.53%) Splunk
10 69 (5.65%) Aruba
11 62 (5.07%) Meraki
12 59 (4.83%) Oracle
13 58 (4.75%) Google
14 57 (4.66%) SolarWinds
15 54 (4.42%) ServiceNow
16 51 (4.17%) Zscaler
17 43 (3.52%) Citrix
18 25 (2.05%) Dell
19 23 (1.88%) Red Hat
20 21 (1.72%) Tenable