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

6 months to
21 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 104 61 58
Rank change year-on-year -43 -3 -12
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,366 1,280 1,377
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.51% 3.92% 3.59%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 27.01% 33.93% 30.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 842 777 854
10th Percentile £350 £313 £320
25th Percentile £425 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £624
90th Percentile £675 £688 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £485 £508
% change year-on-year +3.09% -4.43% +5.61%
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 30 30
10th Percentile £30.58 £15.03 £20.00
25th Percentile £48.93 £29.00 £21.54
Median hourly rate £67.24 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +124.12% +9.09% -58.33%
75th Percentile £78.75 £40.21 £70.94
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.63 £87.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.69 £30.00 £31.25
% change year-on-year +118.97% -4.00% -52.64%

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 5,057 3,773 4,570
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.31% 11.55% 11.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,928 2,343 2,660
10th Percentile £231 £225 £227
25th Percentile £393 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £500
% change year-on-year +5.56% -10.00% +9.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 414 200 244
10th Percentile £14.14 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £24.75 £21.37
Median hourly rate £33.39 £42.50 £50.25
Median % change year-on-year -21.44% -15.42% -11.05%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £88.75 £73.20 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.25 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -26.47% -25.89% -0.26%

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 21 September 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 21 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Firewall in the UK

Firewall
Top 18 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 21 September 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 -40 1,202 £500 - 1,222
UK excluding London -39 758 £500 +3.09% 709
London -50 473 £500 -2.91% 584
Work from Home -34 388 £519 +3.75% 537
North of England -4 279 £500 +3.09% 150
South East -52 169 £525 +5.00% 232
North West +5 163 £501 +5.53% 92
Yorkshire -25 94 £483 -1.43% 44
South West -9 89 £560 +15.46% 89
Midlands -77 83 £465 -2.05% 113
East of England -4 74 £530 +5.74% 57
West Midlands -80 61 £430 -9.47% 70
Scotland -26 60 £400 -11.11% 45
North East -15 29 £500 -13.04% 16
East Midlands -8 21 £500 +6.16% 43
Wales -16 8 £425 +112.50% 13
Channel Islands -7 2 £600 -17.24% 1
Northern Ireland -9 1 - - 14

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 49 (3.59%) Microsoft Exchange
2 37 (2.71%) SharePoint
3 33 (2.42%) Confluence
4 12 (0.88%) Apache
5 11 (0.81%) nginx
6 9 (0.66%) SAS
7 4 (0.29%) FactoryTalk
7 4 (0.29%) IIS
8 3 (0.22%) CloudStack
8 3 (0.22%) Skype for Business
8 3 (0.22%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.15%) CICS
9 2 (0.15%) CMS
9 2 (0.15%) Umbraco
10 1 (0.073%) IBM HTTP Server
10 1 (0.073%) MTS
10 1 (0.073%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 1 (0.073%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.073%) WebSphere Application Server
10 1 (0.073%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 21 (1.54%) Microsoft Office
1 21 (1.54%) MS Visio
2 20 (1.46%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (0.59%) Microsoft Project
4 6 (0.44%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.073%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 5 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
3 2 (0.15%) Bloomberg TOMS
3 2 (0.15%) Dynamics GP
3 2 (0.15%) Eikon
3 2 (0.15%) Teamcenter
4 1 (0.073%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.073%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.073%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 517 (37.85%) Azure
2 311 (22.77%) AWS
3 175 (12.81%) Entra ID
4 124 (9.08%) Microsoft 365
5 104 (7.61%) GCP
6 76 (5.56%) GitHub
7 70 (5.12%) IaaS
8 66 (4.83%) SaaS
9 65 (4.76%) Azure DevOps
10 55 (4.03%) Azure Monitor
11 48 (3.51%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 41 (3.00%) PaaS
12 41 (3.00%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 38 (2.78%) OCI
14 33 (2.42%) Azure Sentinel
14 33 (2.42%) Serverless
15 31 (2.27%) GitHub Actions
16 27 (1.98%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 27 (1.98%) AWS CloudFormation
17 26 (1.90%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 408 (29.87%) VPN
2 397 (29.06%) Network Security
3 367 (26.87%) DNS
4 346 (25.33%) WAN
5 251 (18.37%) LAN
6 235 (17.20%) BGP
7 212 (15.52%) TCP/IP
8 211 (15.45%) DHCP
9 199 (14.57%) VLAN
10 175 (12.81%) Wireless
11 169 (12.37%) OSPF
12 128 (9.37%) SD-WAN
13 127 (9.30%) Wi-Fi
14 79 (5.78%) Cisco ASA
14 79 (5.78%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 79 (5.78%) IPsec
15 76 (5.56%) BIG-IP
15 76 (5.56%) SSL
16 75 (5.49%) MPLS
17 66 (4.83%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 35 (2.56%) SQL Server
2 19 (1.39%) Amazon RDS
3 18 (1.32%) PostgreSQL
4 13 (0.95%) Relational Database
5 12 (0.88%) Data Lake
6 11 (0.81%) Power BI
7 8 (0.59%) Amazon Aurora
7 8 (0.59%) NoSQL
8 5 (0.37%) Azure SQL Database
8 5 (0.37%) Elasticsearch
9 4 (0.29%) Db2
9 4 (0.29%) MySQL
9 4 (0.29%) Oracle Database
10 3 (0.22%) Big Data
10 3 (0.22%) EDRMS
10 3 (0.22%) Metadata
11 2 (0.15%) Amazon Athena
11 2 (0.15%) Amazon QuickSight
11 2 (0.15%) Amazon Redshift
11 2 (0.15%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 90 (6.59%) JIRA
2 62 (4.54%) Jenkins
3 49 (3.59%) Git
4 46 (3.37%) GitLab
5 15 (1.10%) Sonatype Nexus
6 9 (0.66%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.51%) Artifactory
8 6 (0.44%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 6 (0.44%) SonarQube
9 5 (0.37%) Chocolatey
10 4 (0.29%) Maven
10 4 (0.29%) MSI
11 3 (0.22%) Browser DevTools
12 2 (0.15%) Burp Suite
12 2 (0.15%) Cucumber
12 2 (0.15%) Gatling
12 2 (0.15%) Gradle
12 2 (0.15%) LoadRunner
12 2 (0.15%) REST Assured
12 2 (0.15%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 305 (22.33%) Social Skills
2 169 (12.37%) Finance
3 148 (10.83%) Analytical Skills
4 109 (7.98%) Public Sector
5 89 (6.52%) Banking
6 59 (4.32%) Documentation Skills
7 56 (4.10%) Telecoms
8 35 (2.56%) Manufacturing
9 27 (1.98%) Legal
10 22 (1.61%) Retail
11 18 (1.32%) Local Government
11 18 (1.32%) Military
12 14 (1.02%) Financial Institution
12 14 (1.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 13 (0.95%) Influencing Skills
14 12 (0.88%) Aerospace
14 12 (0.88%) Police
15 11 (0.81%) Organisational Skills
16 10 (0.73%) Automotive
17 9 (0.66%) Law
Job Titles
1 440 (32.21%) Network Engineer
2 214 (15.67%) Senior
3 161 (11.79%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 159 (11.64%) Architect
5 113 (8.27%) Security Engineer
6 93 (6.81%) Senior Network Engineer
7 84 (6.15%) Cloud Engineer
8 68 (4.98%) Consultant
9 64 (4.69%) Azure Engineer
10 62 (4.54%) Network Security Engineer
11 55 (4.03%) Network Architect
11 55 (4.03%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 52 (3.81%) DevOps Engineer
13 49 (3.59%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
14 48 (3.51%) Lead
15 47 (3.44%) Security Architect
16 40 (2.93%) Platform Engineer
17 39 (2.86%) Cisco Engineer
18 37 (2.71%) Cisco Network Engineer
19 36 (2.64%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 288 (21.08%) Terraform
2 42 (3.07%) 802.1X
3 29 (2.12%) Middleware
4 28 (2.05%) SAML
5 27 (1.98%) ARM Templates
6 22 (1.61%) REST
7 19 (1.39%) OpenID
8 16 (1.17%) OAuth
9 13 (0.95%) LDAP
9 13 (0.95%) OAuth2
9 13 (0.95%) YAML
10 10 (0.73%) JSON
10 10 (0.73%) React
11 7 (0.51%) Kafka
11 7 (0.51%) OpenTelemetry
11 7 (0.51%) SailPoint
12 6 (0.44%) .NET
12 6 (0.44%) Elastic Stack
12 6 (0.44%) ModSecurity
13 5 (0.37%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 289 (21.16%) Data Centre
2 104 (7.61%) Hybrid Cloud
3 77 (5.64%) PKI
4 69 (5.05%) Cloud Native
5 60 (4.39%) Security Posture
6 59 (4.32%) Onboarding
7 53 (3.88%) Management Information System
8 49 (3.59%) Operational Technology
9 36 (2.64%) Public Cloud
10 30 (2.20%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 25 (1.83%) Data Protection Act
11 25 (1.83%) IoT
11 25 (1.83%) Replication
12 24 (1.76%) Enterprise Software
12 24 (1.76%) Self-Motivation
13 23 (1.68%) Driving Licence
13 23 (1.68%) Linux Command Line
14 21 (1.54%) SCADA
15 19 (1.39%) Enterprise Storage
16 18 (1.32%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 338 (24.74%) Windows
2 221 (16.18%) Linux
3 147 (10.76%) Windows Server
4 47 (3.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 31 (2.27%) Unix
6 25 (1.83%) Ubuntu
7 21 (1.54%) VMS
8 17 (1.24%) Mac OS
9 14 (1.02%) CentOS
10 12 (0.88%) Windows 10
11 11 (0.81%) Windows Server 2019
12 9 (0.66%) Windows Server 2012
13 8 (0.59%) Amazon Linux
14 7 (0.51%) Android
14 7 (0.51%) Rocky
15 6 (0.44%) Apple iOS
16 5 (0.37%) SUSE
16 5 (0.37%) Windows Server 2003
16 5 (0.37%) Windows Server 2016
17 3 (0.22%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 255 (18.67%) Infrastructure as Code
2 241 (17.64%) DevOps
3 238 (17.42%) CI/CD
4 237 (17.35%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 212 (15.52%) Migration
6 211 (15.45%) Cybersecurity
7 197 (14.42%) Problem-Solving
8 186 (13.62%) Load Balancing
9 173 (12.66%) ITIL
10 161 (11.79%) Zero Trust
11 152 (11.13%) Agile
12 147 (10.76%) Stakeholder Management
13 146 (10.69%) High Availability
14 137 (10.03%) Project Delivery
15 133 (9.74%) SIEM
16 130 (9.52%) Change Management
17 116 (8.49%) Technical Leadership
18 115 (8.42%) Cloud Security
18 115 (8.42%) Incident Response
19 113 (8.27%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 283 (20.72%) Python
2 227 (16.62%) PowerShell
3 134 (9.81%) Bash
4 46 (3.37%) Bicep
5 40 (2.93%) SQL
6 39 (2.86%) Java
7 16 (1.17%) ActionScript
8 14 (1.02%) Groovy
9 9 (0.66%) Perl
10 8 (0.59%) Kusto Query Language
10 8 (0.59%) Shell Script
11 6 (0.44%) Search Processing Language
12 5 (0.37%) Go
13 4 (0.29%) C++
13 4 (0.29%) JavaScript
13 4 (0.29%) TypeScript
14 3 (0.22%) C
15 2 (0.15%) COBOL
15 2 (0.15%) T-SQL
15 2 (0.15%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 457 (33.46%) Security Cleared
2 320 (23.43%) SC Cleared
3 237 (17.35%) Cisco Certification
4 176 (12.88%) CCNP
5 119 (8.71%) DV Cleared
6 108 (7.91%) Degree
7 90 (6.59%) CCNA
8 77 (5.64%) CISSP
9 70 (5.12%) Azure Certification
10 50 (3.66%) AWS Certification
11 35 (2.56%) CCIE
11 35 (2.56%) Microsoft Certification
12 34 (2.49%) CISM
13 27 (1.98%) Computer Science Degree
14 17 (1.24%) CEH
14 17 (1.24%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 15 (1.10%) Network+ Certification
15 15 (1.10%) PMI Certification
16 14 (1.02%) PMP
17 13 (0.95%) CCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 72 (5.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 64 (4.69%) NIST
3 33 (2.42%) GDPR
4 28 (2.05%) NCSC
5 25 (1.83%) QA
6 23 (1.68%) Cyber Essentials
6 23 (1.68%) PCI DSS
7 21 (1.54%) SLA
8 14 (1.02%) NIST 800
9 12 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 10 (0.73%) JSP 440
11 8 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 7 (0.51%) Disclosure Scotland
13 6 (0.44%) GxP
13 6 (0.44%) HIPAA
14 5 (0.37%) COBIT
14 5 (0.37%) Data Quality
14 5 (0.37%) GRC
15 4 (0.29%) 21 CFR Part 11
16 3 (0.22%) SOC 2
System Software
1 235 (17.20%) Active Directory
2 175 (12.81%) VMware Infrastructure
3 75 (5.49%) Docker
4 69 (5.05%) Hyper-V
5 57 (4.17%) VMware NSX
6 53 (3.88%) vSphere
7 49 (3.59%) VMware ESXi
8 43 (3.15%) Virtual Machines
9 25 (1.83%) Firmware
10 15 (1.10%) Virtual Desktop
11 9 (0.66%) Squid
12 8 (0.59%) Virtual Servers
13 7 (0.51%) BitLocker
14 6 (0.44%) NFS
15 5 (0.37%) Dovecot
15 5 (0.37%) Postfix
16 4 (0.29%) FreeRADIUS
16 4 (0.29%) Microsoft App-V
17 3 (0.22%) Terminal Services
17 3 (0.22%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 216 (15.81%) Ansible
2 128 (9.37%) Kubernetes
3 90 (6.59%) FortiGate
4 72 (5.27%) Microsoft Intune
5 54 (3.95%) Grafana
6 50 (3.66%) Prometheus
7 39 (2.86%) SCCM
8 30 (2.20%) Single Sign-On
9 28 (2.05%) Progress Chef
10 25 (1.83%) vCenter Server
11 21 (1.54%) VxRail
12 15 (1.10%) Cisco Prime
13 14 (1.02%) Puppet
14 12 (0.88%) CASB
15 10 (0.73%) Nessus
15 10 (0.73%) Packer
16 9 (0.66%) Argo
17 8 (0.59%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 8 (0.59%) Istio
17 8 (0.59%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 509 (37.26%) Cisco
2 339 (24.82%) Microsoft
3 322 (23.57%) Palo Alto
4 222 (16.25%) VMware
5 199 (14.57%) Fortinet
6 173 (12.66%) F5
7 121 (8.86%) CheckPoint
7 121 (8.86%) Juniper
8 73 (5.34%) Zscaler
9 65 (4.76%) Splunk
10 61 (4.47%) Aruba
11 59 (4.32%) Google
12 58 (4.25%) ServiceNow
13 57 (4.17%) Arista
14 55 (4.03%) Meraki
15 51 (3.73%) SolarWinds
16 33 (2.42%) Citrix
16 33 (2.42%) Red Hat
17 28 (2.05%) Dynatrace
18 27 (1.98%) CyberArk