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

6 months to
14 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 82 50 47
Rank change year-on-year -32 -3 +13
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,252 1,246 1,799
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.12% 4.02% 4.01%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.08% 30.66% 29.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 822 742 1,140
10th Percentile £313 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £411 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £518
Median % change year-on-year -3.89% +0.53% -1.43%
75th Percentile £588 £615 £625
90th Percentile £675 £704 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £494 £500
% change year-on-year -0.35% -1.25% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 24 59
10th Percentile £26.88 £20.00 £22.65
25th Percentile £35.31 £20.98 £60.00
Median hourly rate £41.94 £35.82 £65.98
Median % change year-on-year +17.08% -45.71% +46.86%
75th Percentile £74.26 £41.62 £76.53
90th Percentile £85.50 £56.25 £85.65
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.33 £35.00 £67.27
% change year-on-year +29.51% -47.97% +29.03%

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 4,162 4,064 6,038
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.37% 13.13% 13.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,729 2,399 3,608
10th Percentile £204 £210 £205
25th Percentile £356 £360 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £487
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +2.72% -6.39%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £681 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £468 £475
% change year-on-year -3.74% -1.58% +1.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 167 130 405
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.44 £14.41
25th Percentile £18.69 £21.46 £21.00
Median hourly rate £28.88 £32.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -11.14% -31.58% +143.59%
75th Percentile £65.00 £59.38 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £70.13 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.54 £26.75 £51.89
% change year-on-year +51.55% -48.45% +161.00%

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 14 February 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 February 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 February 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 -29 1,049 £500 -4.76% 580
UK excluding London -24 693 £492 -0.35% 528
London -42 392 £525 -2.33% 141
Work from Home -12 389 £500 -2.44% 225
North of England -23 209 £500 +5.26% 118
South East +15 187 £500 - 201
North West -21 119 £519 +9.32% 76
Midlands -33 112 £445 -16.86% 55
West Midlands -11 102 £440 -1.68% 38
Yorkshire -15 87 £465 +9.41% 27
South West -29 62 £550 +0.55% 54
Scotland -20 54 £425 -2.86% 29
East of England -24 42 £460 -12.38% 74
Wales -18 20 £425 +16.44% 13
East Midlands -53 8 £500 -23.14% 17
Northern Ireland - 7 £500 - 1
North East -17 6 £550 - 17

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 42 (3.35%) Confluence
2 40 (3.19%) Microsoft Exchange
3 24 (1.92%) SharePoint
4 18 (1.44%) nginx
5 13 (1.04%) Apache
6 8 (0.64%) OpenStack
7 7 (0.56%) IIS
8 6 (0.48%) CICS
8 6 (0.48%) SAS
9 3 (0.24%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.16%) Apache Pulsar
10 2 (0.16%) JBoss
10 2 (0.16%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.16%) WebLogic
11 1 (0.080%) Anypoint
11 1 (0.080%) CMS
11 1 (0.080%) Traefik
11 1 (0.080%) WebSphere
Applications
1 38 (3.04%) Microsoft Office
2 21 (1.68%) MS Visio
3 19 (1.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 18 (1.44%) Microsoft Excel
5 6 (0.48%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 1 (0.080%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.080%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.080%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.080%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 427 (34.11%) Azure
2 324 (25.88%) AWS
3 142 (11.34%) GCP
4 115 (9.19%) Microsoft 365
5 93 (7.43%) Entra ID
6 72 (5.75%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 55 (4.39%) GitHub
8 52 (4.15%) Amazon EC2
9 46 (3.67%) Azure Sentinel
10 45 (3.59%) IaaS
11 42 (3.35%) Amazon S3
12 41 (3.27%) Azure DevOps
12 41 (3.27%) PaaS
13 39 (3.12%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 38 (3.04%) Azure Monitor
15 36 (2.88%) Serverless
16 34 (2.72%) AWS CloudFormation
17 33 (2.64%) GitHub Actions
18 29 (2.32%) AWS Lambda
18 29 (2.32%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 322 (25.72%) Network Security
2 300 (23.96%) VPN
3 253 (20.21%) WAN
4 248 (19.81%) DNS
5 182 (14.54%) LAN
6 166 (13.26%) BGP
7 147 (11.74%) TCP/IP
8 142 (11.34%) OSPF
9 128 (10.22%) VLAN
10 114 (9.11%) Wireless
11 107 (8.55%) SD-WAN
12 104 (8.31%) DHCP
13 86 (6.87%) MPLS
14 82 (6.55%) Wi-Fi
15 71 (5.67%) SSL
16 65 (5.19%) IPsec
17 57 (4.55%) Cisco ASA
18 52 (4.15%) Cisco Nexus
19 48 (3.83%) Cisco ISE
19 48 (3.83%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (2.64%) SQL Server
2 27 (2.16%) Amazon RDS
3 25 (2.00%) PostgreSQL
4 14 (1.12%) Elasticsearch
5 8 (0.64%) Data Lake
5 8 (0.64%) Oracle Database
6 7 (0.56%) Data Warehouse
6 7 (0.56%) MongoDB
7 6 (0.48%) Amazon Aurora
7 6 (0.48%) DataStage
8 5 (0.40%) Relational Database
9 4 (0.32%) Redis
9 4 (0.32%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 3 (0.24%) Amazon QuickSight
10 3 (0.24%) DynamoDB
10 3 (0.24%) Oracle Exadata
11 2 (0.16%) Azure SQL Database
11 2 (0.16%) DB2
11 2 (0.16%) MariaDB
11 2 (0.16%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 76 (6.07%) JIRA
2 74 (5.91%) Jenkins
3 62 (4.95%) Git
3 62 (4.95%) GitLab
4 23 (1.84%) Sonatype Nexus
5 20 (1.60%) Bitbucket
6 15 (1.20%) Burp Suite
6 15 (1.20%) Metasploit
7 8 (0.64%) Jaeger
7 8 (0.64%) SonarQube
7 8 (0.64%) Vagrant
8 5 (0.40%) Chocolatey
9 4 (0.32%) CircleCI
10 3 (0.24%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.16%) MSI
12 1 (0.080%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.080%) Maven
12 1 (0.080%) Postman
12 1 (0.080%) Subversion
12 1 (0.080%) Travis CI
General
1 356 (28.43%) Social Skills
2 139 (11.10%) Analytical Skills
3 138 (11.02%) Finance
4 105 (8.39%) Public Sector
5 92 (7.35%) Documentation Skills
6 53 (4.23%) Banking
7 49 (3.91%) Telecoms
8 32 (2.56%) Legal
9 28 (2.24%) Manufacturing
10 27 (2.16%) Presentation Skills
11 17 (1.36%) Financial Institution
12 15 (1.20%) Influencing Skills
12 15 (1.20%) Military
13 13 (1.04%) Local Government
14 10 (0.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 10 (0.80%) Retail
15 8 (0.64%) Aerospace
15 8 (0.64%) Law
16 7 (0.56%) Electronics
16 7 (0.56%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 312 (24.92%) Network Engineer
2 211 (16.85%) Architect
3 116 (9.27%) Senior
4 115 (9.19%) Security Engineer
5 82 (6.55%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 72 (5.75%) Network Architect
7 55 (4.39%) Security Architect
8 52 (4.15%) Analyst
8 52 (4.15%) DevOps Engineer
9 51 (4.07%) Consultant
10 49 (3.91%) Azure Engineer
11 44 (3.51%) Platform Engineer
11 44 (3.51%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 41 (3.27%) Solutions Architect
13 40 (3.19%) Network Security Engineer
14 35 (2.80%) Lead
15 31 (2.48%) Cloud Engineer
15 31 (2.48%) Support Engineer
16 30 (2.40%) Senior Network Engineer
17 29 (2.32%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (3.43%) LDAP
2 42 (3.35%) 802.1X
3 31 (2.48%) SAML
4 29 (2.32%) Middleware
5 28 (2.24%) OpenID
6 20 (1.60%) OAuth
7 19 (1.52%) OAuth2
8 16 (1.28%) Kafka
9 15 (1.20%) JSON
10 14 (1.12%) Node.js
10 14 (1.12%) REST
11 10 (0.80%) OpenTelemetry
11 10 (0.80%) XML
12 9 (0.72%) ARM Templates
12 9 (0.72%) Spring Boot
13 8 (0.64%) Elastic Stack
13 8 (0.64%) Microsoft Graph
14 6 (0.48%) RFC 2544
15 5 (0.40%) YAML
16 4 (0.32%) VML
Miscellaneous
1 237 (18.93%) Data Centre
2 87 (6.95%) Security Posture
3 60 (4.79%) PKI
4 47 (3.75%) Onboarding
5 46 (3.67%) Hybrid Cloud
5 46 (3.67%) Operational Technology
6 44 (3.51%) Cloud Native
7 31 (2.48%) Public Cloud
8 30 (2.40%) Replication
9 29 (2.32%) Management Information System
10 24 (1.92%) Cyber Threat
10 24 (1.92%) Security Operations Centre
11 20 (1.60%) Data Protection Act
12 18 (1.44%) SCADA
13 17 (1.36%) NHS
13 17 (1.36%) Private Cloud
14 15 (1.20%) IoT
14 15 (1.20%) Product Ownership
15 13 (1.04%) Fat Client
15 13 (1.04%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 307 (24.52%) Windows
2 212 (16.93%) Linux
3 124 (9.90%) Windows Server
4 32 (2.56%) Unix
4 32 (2.56%) VMS
5 28 (2.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 12 (0.96%) Ubuntu
6 12 (0.96%) Windows Server 2019
7 11 (0.88%) Amazon Linux
7 11 (0.88%) Windows 10
7 11 (0.88%) Windows 7
8 7 (0.56%) Solaris
9 6 (0.48%) AIX
9 6 (0.48%) Windows Server 2016
10 5 (0.40%) Android
10 5 (0.40%) CentOS
10 5 (0.40%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.40%) Windows Server 2003
11 4 (0.32%) CatOS
11 4 (0.32%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 244 (19.49%) Cybersecurity
2 207 (16.53%) Problem-Solving
3 201 (16.05%) DevOps
4 178 (14.22%) CI/CD
5 177 (14.14%) Infrastructure as Code
6 151 (12.06%) Migration
7 139 (11.10%) Cloud Security
8 136 (10.86%) SIEM
9 135 (10.78%) Incident Response
10 128 (10.22%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 123 (9.82%) Agile
12 118 (9.42%) ITIL
13 115 (9.19%) High Availability
14 114 (9.11%) Load Balancing
15 109 (8.71%) Zero Trust
16 102 (8.15%) Stakeholder Management
17 99 (7.91%) Change Management
18 94 (7.51%) Mentoring
19 82 (6.55%) Continuous Improvement
19 82 (6.55%) Security Architecture
Programming Languages
1 223 (17.81%) Python
2 196 (15.65%) PowerShell
3 100 (7.99%) Bash
4 60 (4.79%) SQL
5 39 (3.12%) Java
6 31 (2.48%) Perl
7 26 (2.08%) Bicep
8 13 (1.04%) Kusto Query Language
9 12 (0.96%) Ruby
10 8 (0.64%) Groovy
10 8 (0.64%) JavaScript
10 8 (0.64%) Rust
10 8 (0.64%) Shell Script
11 6 (0.48%) COBOL
12 4 (0.32%) C#
12 4 (0.32%) Go
13 3 (0.24%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.080%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 426 (34.03%) Security Cleared
2 288 (23.00%) SC Cleared
3 228 (18.21%) Cisco Certification
4 191 (15.26%) CCNP
5 117 (9.35%) Degree
6 112 (8.95%) DV Cleared
7 95 (7.59%) CCNA
8 93 (7.43%) CISSP
9 57 (4.55%) CISM
10 54 (4.31%) Azure Certification
11 48 (3.83%) CCIE
12 47 (3.75%) AWS Certification
13 43 (3.43%) Microsoft Certification
14 30 (2.40%) CompTIA Security+
15 20 (1.60%) CEH
15 20 (1.60%) JNCIP
15 20 (1.60%) JNCIS
16 19 (1.52%) Computer Science Degree
17 17 (1.36%) CREST Certified
18 16 (1.28%) CHECK Team Member
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 114 (9.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 96 (7.67%) NIST
3 63 (5.03%) GDPR
4 44 (3.51%) PCI DSS
5 29 (2.32%) NCSC
6 26 (2.08%) Cyber Essentials
7 25 (2.00%) SLA
8 19 (1.52%) QA
9 15 (1.20%) PMO
10 12 (0.96%) GRC
11 11 (0.88%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 8 (0.64%) Actionable Recommendations
13 6 (0.48%) HIPAA
13 6 (0.48%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 6 (0.48%) JSP 440
14 5 (0.40%) SOC 2
15 4 (0.32%) COBIT
15 4 (0.32%) NIST 800
16 3 (0.24%) GxP
16 3 (0.24%) RMADS
System Software
1 228 (18.21%) Active Directory
2 166 (13.26%) VMware Infrastructure
3 116 (9.27%) Docker
4 62 (4.95%) VMware NSX
5 39 (3.12%) Hyper-V
6 34 (2.72%) vSphere
7 29 (2.32%) Virtual Machines
8 21 (1.68%) VMware ESXi
9 18 (1.44%) Squid
10 17 (1.36%) Virtual Desktop
11 11 (0.88%) DFS Replication
11 11 (0.88%) Firmware
12 8 (0.64%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.48%) Dovecot
13 6 (0.48%) Postfix
14 5 (0.40%) BitLocker
14 5 (0.40%) KVM
14 5 (0.40%) Microsoft App-V
14 5 (0.40%) NetIQ eDirectory
14 5 (0.40%) Snort
Systems Management
1 202 (16.13%) Terraform
2 160 (12.78%) Ansible
3 117 (9.35%) Kubernetes
4 77 (6.15%) FortiGate
5 59 (4.71%) Microsoft Intune
6 44 (3.51%) Grafana
7 43 (3.43%) Single Sign-On
8 39 (3.12%) Prometheus
9 35 (2.80%) SCCM
10 27 (2.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 26 (2.08%) vCenter Server
12 19 (1.52%) Nmap
13 17 (1.36%) Nessus
14 15 (1.20%) QRadar
15 14 (1.12%) Fluentd
15 14 (1.12%) Nagios
16 13 (1.04%) CASB
17 12 (0.96%) WMI
18 11 (0.88%) CSIRT
19 9 (0.72%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 404 (32.27%) Cisco
2 279 (22.28%) Microsoft
3 272 (21.73%) Palo Alto
4 210 (16.77%) VMware
5 142 (11.34%) CheckPoint
6 137 (10.94%) F5
7 132 (10.54%) Fortinet
8 109 (8.71%) Juniper
9 92 (7.35%) Splunk
10 77 (6.15%) Aruba
11 63 (5.03%) Meraki
12 58 (4.63%) SolarWinds
13 51 (4.07%) Google
14 50 (3.99%) Oracle
15 49 (3.91%) ServiceNow
16 48 (3.83%) Zscaler
17 38 (3.04%) Citrix
18 30 (2.40%) Red Hat
19 25 (2.00%) Dell
20 22 (1.76%) Arista