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

6 months to
1 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 85 52 51
Rank change year-on-year -33 -1 +6
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,355 1,196 1,593
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.87% 4.09% 3.66%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 29.57% 32.19% 28.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 886 716 1,001
10th Percentile £331 £313 £313
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £509 £515
Median % change year-on-year -1.72% -1.21% -1.90%
75th Percentile £580 £600 £625
90th Percentile £644 £688 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% +1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 17 45
10th Percentile £19.90 - £16.00
25th Percentile £37.25 £14.20 £23.92
Median hourly rate £52.36 £36.65 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +42.88% -38.93% -3.23%
75th Percentile £71.64 £41.50 £85.65
90th Percentile £85.10 £56.50 £87.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £56.00 £32.07 £83.77
% change year-on-year +74.60% -61.71% +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 4,583 3,716 5,629
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.70% 12.70% 12.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,864 2,285 3,368
10th Percentile £250 £213 £205
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £488 £495
Median % change year-on-year +1.54% -1.52% -4.53%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £465 £481
% change year-on-year +2.15% -3.38% +1.32%
Number of hourly rates quoted 227 171 423
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.57
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.32 £17.35
Median hourly rate £41.94 £36.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.90% -8.75% +110.53%
75th Percentile £68.75 £58.72 £62.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £67.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £24.66 £45.88
% change year-on-year +102.76% -46.25% +148.00%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 -42 1,134 £500 -3.51% 466
UK excluding London -19 758 £500 +2.56% 388
London -50 425 £504 -4.10% 138
Work from Home -28 392 £513 +2.50% 187
South East +6 244 £500 - 126
North of England -23 214 £499 +5.00% 106
North West -13 138 £525 +10.53% 53
Midlands -46 94 £425 -24.11% 48
West Midlands -21 81 £420 -20.00% 32
Yorkshire -24 70 £425 -5.56% 30
East of England -7 64 £500 -2.44% 38
South West -49 56 £550 +0.73% 42
Scotland +13 53 £425 - 18
Wales -13 32 £425 +11.11% 17
East Midlands -47 9 £475 -17.39% 16
North East -14 8 £545 -0.91% 24
Northern Ireland +4 3 £443 - 4

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 39 (2.88%) Microsoft Exchange
2 31 (2.29%) Confluence
3 16 (1.18%) SharePoint
4 13 (0.96%) Apache
4 13 (0.96%) nginx
5 10 (0.74%) CICS
6 7 (0.52%) SAS
7 5 (0.37%) IIS
8 3 (0.22%) Skype for Business
8 3 (0.22%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.15%) Apache Pulsar
9 2 (0.15%) CMS
9 2 (0.15%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.15%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.15%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.15%) Umbraco
9 2 (0.15%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.15%) WebSphere Portal
10 1 (0.074%) JBoss
10 1 (0.074%) MTS
Applications
1 35 (2.58%) Microsoft Office
2 22 (1.62%) Microsoft Excel
3 21 (1.55%) MS Visio
4 17 (1.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.074%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 1 (0.074%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.074%) Primavera
1 1 (0.074%) SAP S/4HANA
1 1 (0.074%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 450 (33.21%) Azure
2 281 (20.74%) AWS
3 115 (8.49%) Microsoft 365
4 114 (8.41%) Entra ID
5 104 (7.68%) GCP
6 67 (4.94%) GitHub
7 57 (4.21%) IaaS
8 55 (4.06%) Azure DevOps
8 55 (4.06%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 50 (3.69%) PaaS
10 46 (3.39%) SaaS
11 42 (3.10%) Azure Monitor
11 42 (3.10%) Azure Sentinel
12 40 (2.95%) GitHub Actions
13 38 (2.80%) Serverless
14 34 (2.51%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 29 (2.14%) AWS Lambda
16 28 (2.07%) Amazon EC2
17 27 (1.99%) Amazon EKS
18 26 (1.92%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 373 (27.53%) Network Security
2 353 (26.05%) WAN
3 336 (24.80%) VPN
4 278 (20.52%) DNS
5 270 (19.93%) LAN
6 226 (16.68%) BGP
7 207 (15.28%) OSPF
8 157 (11.59%) VLAN
9 145 (10.70%) DHCP
10 144 (10.63%) TCP/IP
11 138 (10.18%) SD-WAN
12 125 (9.23%) Wireless
13 105 (7.75%) Wi-Fi
14 89 (6.57%) MPLS
15 86 (6.35%) IPsec
16 78 (5.76%) VXLAN
17 76 (5.61%) BIG-IP
18 71 (5.24%) Cisco ISE
19 68 (5.02%) Ethernet VPN
20 65 (4.80%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (1.92%) SQL Server
2 19 (1.40%) PostgreSQL
3 18 (1.33%) Elasticsearch
4 12 (0.89%) Amazon RDS
4 12 (0.89%) Power BI
5 11 (0.81%) Oracle Database
6 10 (0.74%) DataStage
7 8 (0.59%) Data Lake
7 8 (0.59%) Data Warehouse
8 7 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
8 7 (0.52%) MongoDB
9 6 (0.44%) MySQL
10 5 (0.37%) Relational Database
11 4 (0.30%) Amazon Athena
11 4 (0.30%) Amazon QuickSight
11 4 (0.30%) Amazon Redshift
11 4 (0.30%) Metadata
11 4 (0.30%) NoSQL
11 4 (0.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 3 (0.22%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 80 (5.90%) JIRA
2 52 (3.84%) Jenkins
3 38 (2.80%) Git
3 38 (2.80%) GitLab
4 19 (1.40%) Sonatype Nexus
5 16 (1.18%) Burp Suite
5 16 (1.18%) Metasploit
6 15 (1.11%) Bitbucket
7 9 (0.66%) Chocolatey
7 9 (0.66%) Jaeger
8 7 (0.52%) SonarQube
9 6 (0.44%) Artifactory
10 5 (0.37%) Browser DevTools
11 4 (0.30%) CircleCI
12 2 (0.15%) Introscope
12 2 (0.15%) Postman
12 2 (0.15%) Team Foundation Server
13 1 (0.074%) Maven
13 1 (0.074%) MSI
13 1 (0.074%) PVCS
General
1 327 (24.13%) Social Skills
2 162 (11.96%) Finance
3 126 (9.30%) Analytical Skills
4 108 (7.97%) Public Sector
5 90 (6.64%) Documentation Skills
6 53 (3.91%) Banking
7 43 (3.17%) Telecoms
8 29 (2.14%) Legal
9 26 (1.92%) Financial Institution
10 25 (1.85%) Manufacturing
11 19 (1.40%) Military
12 16 (1.18%) Influencing Skills
13 15 (1.11%) Law
14 14 (1.03%) Retail
15 11 (0.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 11 (0.81%) Local Government
16 10 (0.74%) Front Office
17 9 (0.66%) Investment Banking
17 9 (0.66%) Organisational Skills
17 9 (0.66%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 404 (29.82%) Network Engineer
2 217 (16.01%) Architect
3 159 (11.73%) Senior
4 106 (7.82%) Security Engineer
5 103 (7.60%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 75 (5.54%) Network Architect
7 62 (4.58%) Azure Engineer
7 62 (4.58%) Senior Network Engineer
8 57 (4.21%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
9 50 (3.69%) Cloud Engineer
10 43 (3.17%) Network Security Engineer
11 42 (3.10%) Lead
12 41 (3.03%) Security Architect
13 40 (2.95%) Technical Architect
14 39 (2.88%) DevOps Engineer
15 38 (2.80%) Cisco Engineer
16 36 (2.66%) Analyst
17 35 (2.58%) Cisco Network Engineer
18 34 (2.51%) Solutions Architect
19 32 (2.36%) Network Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (5.09%) 802.1X
2 41 (3.03%) LDAP
3 37 (2.73%) Middleware
4 31 (2.29%) SAML
5 28 (2.07%) OpenID
6 20 (1.48%) Kafka
7 14 (1.03%) OAuth
8 13 (0.96%) OAuth2
8 13 (0.96%) REST
9 11 (0.81%) OpenTelemetry
10 9 (0.66%) ARM Templates
10 9 (0.66%) JSON
10 9 (0.66%) Spring Boot
11 8 (0.59%) Elastic Stack
11 8 (0.59%) Node.js
12 6 (0.44%) LangChain
12 6 (0.44%) PyTorch
12 6 (0.44%) scikit-learn
12 6 (0.44%) XML
12 6 (0.44%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 295 (21.77%) Data Centre
2 73 (5.39%) Cloud Native
3 71 (5.24%) Security Posture
4 67 (4.94%) PKI
5 47 (3.47%) Hybrid Cloud
5 47 (3.47%) Onboarding
6 45 (3.32%) Operational Technology
7 39 (2.88%) Clustering
8 37 (2.73%) Management Information System
9 34 (2.51%) Public Cloud
10 29 (2.14%) IoT
11 27 (1.99%) Data Protection Act
12 22 (1.62%) SCADA
13 21 (1.55%) Cyber Threat
14 20 (1.48%) Enterprise Storage
15 19 (1.40%) Enterprise Software
16 18 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
17 16 (1.18%) NHS
17 16 (1.18%) Replication
18 15 (1.11%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 323 (23.84%) Windows
2 191 (14.10%) Linux
3 128 (9.45%) Windows Server
4 35 (2.58%) Unix
5 28 (2.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 26 (1.92%) VMS
7 11 (0.81%) Solaris
7 11 (0.81%) Windows Server 2016
7 11 (0.81%) Windows Server 2019
8 10 (0.74%) AIX
9 7 (0.52%) Windows Server 2003
10 6 (0.44%) Windows 10
11 5 (0.37%) Amazon Linux
11 5 (0.37%) CatOS
11 5 (0.37%) Mac OS
11 5 (0.37%) Windows 7
11 5 (0.37%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.22%) Data ONTAP
12 3 (0.22%) SUSE
13 2 (0.15%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 211 (15.57%) DevOps
2 204 (15.06%) Cybersecurity
3 185 (13.65%) Problem-Solving
4 181 (13.36%) CI/CD
5 179 (13.21%) Infrastructure as Code
6 172 (12.69%) Migration
7 170 (12.55%) Load Balancing
8 161 (11.88%) ITIL
9 157 (11.59%) High Availability
10 144 (10.63%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 127 (9.37%) Agile
12 123 (9.08%) Zero Trust
13 111 (8.19%) Change Management
13 111 (8.19%) SIEM
14 106 (7.82%) Cloud Security
15 91 (6.72%) Technical Leadership
16 90 (6.64%) Observability
17 89 (6.57%) Project Delivery
18 88 (6.49%) Network Segmentation
19 87 (6.42%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 182 (13.43%) Python
2 161 (11.88%) PowerShell
3 73 (5.39%) Bash
4 54 (3.99%) SQL
5 40 (2.95%) Bicep
6 30 (2.21%) Java
7 14 (1.03%) Perl
8 11 (0.81%) Kusto Query Language
9 10 (0.74%) COBOL
9 10 (0.74%) JavaScript
10 8 (0.59%) Rust
11 6 (0.44%) PL/SQL
11 6 (0.44%) Ruby
12 5 (0.37%) Shell Script
13 4 (0.30%) C#
13 4 (0.30%) Go
14 3 (0.22%) C++
14 3 (0.22%) Groovy
15 2 (0.15%) Jython
15 2 (0.15%) PHP
Qualifications
1 478 (35.28%) Security Cleared
2 349 (25.76%) SC Cleared
3 263 (19.41%) Cisco Certification
4 205 (15.13%) CCNP
5 112 (8.27%) DV Cleared
6 110 (8.12%) Degree
7 106 (7.82%) CCNA
8 63 (4.65%) CISSP
9 55 (4.06%) Azure Certification
10 43 (3.17%) CCIE
11 37 (2.73%) AWS Certification
12 36 (2.66%) CISM
13 28 (2.07%) Microsoft Certification
14 23 (1.70%) CompTIA Security+
14 23 (1.70%) JNCIS
15 20 (1.48%) Computer Science Degree
15 20 (1.48%) JNCIP
16 19 (1.40%) JNCIA
16 19 (1.40%) Network+ Certification
17 17 (1.25%) CREST Certified
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 81 (5.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 59 (4.35%) GDPR
3 57 (4.21%) NIST
4 38 (2.80%) PCI DSS
5 33 (2.44%) NCSC
5 33 (2.44%) SLA
6 25 (1.85%) Cyber Essentials
7 24 (1.77%) QA
8 17 (1.25%) PMO
9 7 (0.52%) Data Quality
9 7 (0.52%) JSP 440
10 6 (0.44%) Actionable Recommendations
10 6 (0.44%) Disclosure Scotland
10 6 (0.44%) RMADS
11 5 (0.37%) GRC
11 5 (0.37%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 5 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 5 (0.37%) SOC 2
12 4 (0.30%) GxP
13 3 (0.22%) ISA99
System Software
1 227 (16.75%) Active Directory
2 163 (12.03%) VMware Infrastructure
3 71 (5.24%) VMware NSX
4 64 (4.72%) Docker
5 41 (3.03%) Hyper-V
6 36 (2.66%) Virtual Machines
7 33 (2.44%) vSphere
8 30 (2.21%) VMware ESXi
9 22 (1.62%) Firmware
9 22 (1.62%) Virtual Desktop
10 11 (0.81%) Squid
11 10 (0.74%) BitLocker
12 8 (0.59%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.37%) Virtual Servers
14 3 (0.22%) DFS Replication
14 3 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
15 2 (0.15%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 2 (0.15%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 2 (0.15%) iptables
15 2 (0.15%) KVM
Systems Management
1 215 (15.87%) Terraform
2 162 (11.96%) Ansible
3 105 (7.75%) Kubernetes
4 103 (7.60%) FortiGate
5 58 (4.28%) Microsoft Intune
6 51 (3.76%) Grafana
7 45 (3.32%) Prometheus
8 36 (2.66%) Single Sign-On
9 33 (2.44%) SCCM
10 30 (2.21%) vCenter Server
11 18 (1.33%) Nmap
12 16 (1.18%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 14 (1.03%) QRadar
14 13 (0.96%) CASB
15 12 (0.89%) Cisco Prime
15 12 (0.89%) Nagios
15 12 (0.89%) Puppet
16 11 (0.81%) VxRail
16 11 (0.81%) WSUS
17 10 (0.74%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 485 (35.79%) Cisco
2 297 (21.92%) Microsoft
2 297 (21.92%) Palo Alto
3 207 (15.28%) VMware
4 175 (12.92%) Fortinet
5 169 (12.47%) F5
6 150 (11.07%) Juniper
7 140 (10.33%) CheckPoint
8 89 (6.57%) Aruba
9 87 (6.42%) Splunk
10 70 (5.17%) SolarWinds
11 60 (4.43%) ServiceNow
12 53 (3.91%) Arista
12 53 (3.91%) Google
13 46 (3.39%) Meraki
14 43 (3.17%) Zscaler
15 41 (3.03%) Citrix
16 34 (2.51%) Oracle
17 32 (2.36%) Red Hat
18 27 (1.99%) Extreme Networks