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

6 months to
25 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 95 59 58
Rank change year-on-year -36 -1 -11
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,406 1,338 1,337
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.62% 4.09% 3.44%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 27.79% 34.62% 28.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 878 795 849
10th Percentile £350 £325 £313
25th Percentile £416 £411 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £594 £622
90th Percentile £659 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £490 £513
% change year-on-year +2.15% -4.49% +7.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 49 29 28
10th Percentile £29.00 £14.20 £21.74
25th Percentile £44.86 £15.33 £23.89
Median hourly rate £65.69 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +118.97% +9.09% -58.33%
75th Percentile £78.75 £43.25 £79.06
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.63 £87.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.57 £30.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year +118.57% -36.84% -28.02%

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 5,060 3,865 4,675
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.43% 11.81% 12.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,979 2,358 2,811
10th Percentile £250 £243 £220
25th Percentile £400 £370 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £484 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.31% -3.20% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £676 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £472 £500
% change year-on-year +0.58% -5.55% +10.80%
Number of hourly rates quoted 373 201 302
10th Percentile £15.18 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £20.50
Median hourly rate £26.00 £46.25 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -43.78% -7.50% -11.49%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.35 £74.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.84 £44.50 £54.94
% change year-on-year -41.93% -19.00% -4.32%

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 25 August 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 25 August 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 25 August 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 -37 1,225 £508 +1.65% 643
UK excluding London -29 788 £500 +2.15% 422
London -56 480 £504 +0.70% 268
Work from Home -34 390 £520 +4.00% 290
North of England -3 282 £500 +3.09% 87
South East -37 199 £520 +4.00% 123
North West +2 177 £515 +8.42% 49
South West -20 85 £550 +11.39% 54
Yorkshire -28 85 £450 -7.64% 27
East of England -4 77 £525 -4.55% 43
Midlands -89 72 £468 -1.47% 81
Scotland +2 63 £400 -13.51% 26
West Midlands -77 55 £450 -5.26% 57
North East -16 26 £500 -13.04% 12
Wales -13 17 £425 +30.77% 6
East Midlands -22 15 £500 +6.16% 24
Northern Ireland -9 1 - - 11

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 47 (3.34%) Microsoft Exchange
2 32 (2.28%) SharePoint
3 30 (2.13%) Confluence
4 14 (1.00%) Apache
5 12 (0.85%) nginx
6 11 (0.78%) SAS
7 4 (0.28%) CICS
7 4 (0.28%) FactoryTalk
7 4 (0.28%) IIS
7 4 (0.28%) Tomcat
8 3 (0.21%) CloudStack
9 2 (0.14%) CMS
9 2 (0.14%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.14%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.14%) Skype for Business
9 2 (0.14%) Umbraco
9 2 (0.14%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.14%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.14%) WebSphere Portal
10 1 (0.071%) MTS
Applications
1 24 (1.71%) Microsoft Excel
2 23 (1.64%) MS Visio
3 22 (1.56%) Microsoft Office
4 10 (0.71%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (0.43%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 1 (0.071%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 1 (0.071%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 5 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.14%) Bloomberg TOMS
2 2 (0.14%) Dynamics GP
2 2 (0.14%) Eikon
2 2 (0.14%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.071%) Oracle Retail
3 1 (0.071%) Primavera
3 1 (0.071%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 524 (37.27%) Azure
2 320 (22.76%) AWS
3 163 (11.59%) Entra ID
4 128 (9.10%) Microsoft 365
5 107 (7.61%) GCP
6 73 (5.19%) GitHub
7 70 (4.98%) Azure DevOps
8 62 (4.41%) IaaS
9 61 (4.34%) SaaS
10 55 (3.91%) Azure Monitor
11 49 (3.49%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 48 (3.41%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 41 (2.92%) Azure Sentinel
14 38 (2.70%) OCI
14 38 (2.70%) PaaS
15 36 (2.56%) GitHub Actions
15 36 (2.56%) Serverless
16 26 (1.85%) AWS CloudFormation
16 26 (1.85%) Azure AKS
17 25 (1.78%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 416 (29.59%) VPN
2 398 (28.31%) Network Security
3 381 (27.10%) WAN
4 366 (26.03%) DNS
5 275 (19.56%) LAN
6 257 (18.28%) BGP
7 214 (15.22%) DHCP
8 211 (15.01%) TCP/IP
9 197 (14.01%) OSPF
9 197 (14.01%) VLAN
10 166 (11.81%) Wireless
11 142 (10.10%) SD-WAN
12 130 (9.25%) Wi-Fi
13 86 (6.12%) Cisco ASA
14 84 (5.97%) IPsec
14 84 (5.97%) MPLS
15 81 (5.76%) BIG-IP
16 80 (5.69%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 73 (5.19%) SSL
18 71 (5.05%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (2.35%) SQL Server
2 20 (1.42%) PostgreSQL
3 17 (1.21%) Amazon RDS
4 15 (1.07%) Power BI
5 11 (0.78%) Relational Database
6 10 (0.71%) Azure SQL Database
7 9 (0.64%) Oracle Database
8 8 (0.57%) Amazon Aurora
8 8 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
9 7 (0.50%) Data Lake
10 6 (0.43%) MySQL
10 6 (0.43%) NoSQL
11 5 (0.36%) Delta Lake
12 4 (0.28%) Data Warehouse
12 4 (0.28%) DataStage
12 4 (0.28%) Db2
13 3 (0.21%) Big Data
13 3 (0.21%) EDRMS
13 3 (0.21%) Metadata
14 2 (0.14%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 95 (6.76%) JIRA
2 59 (4.20%) Jenkins
3 49 (3.49%) GitLab
4 46 (3.27%) Git
5 12 (0.85%) Sonatype Nexus
6 9 (0.64%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.50%) Artifactory
8 6 (0.43%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 6 (0.43%) Browser DevTools
8 6 (0.43%) Chocolatey
9 4 (0.28%) MSI
10 3 (0.21%) Burp Suite
10 3 (0.21%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.14%) Cucumber
11 2 (0.14%) Gatling
11 2 (0.14%) Gradle
11 2 (0.14%) Introscope
11 2 (0.14%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.14%) Team Foundation Server
11 2 (0.14%) Vagrant
General
1 308 (21.91%) Social Skills
2 174 (12.38%) Finance
3 149 (10.60%) Analytical Skills
4 119 (8.46%) Public Sector
5 86 (6.12%) Banking
6 58 (4.13%) Documentation Skills
7 53 (3.77%) Telecoms
8 30 (2.13%) Manufacturing
9 27 (1.92%) Legal
10 20 (1.42%) Retail
11 18 (1.28%) Local Government
12 17 (1.21%) Financial Institution
12 17 (1.21%) Military
13 15 (1.07%) Influencing Skills
14 13 (0.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 13 (0.92%) Police
15 11 (0.78%) Investment Banking
15 11 (0.78%) Organisational Skills
16 10 (0.71%) Law
17 9 (0.64%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 450 (32.01%) Network Engineer
2 218 (15.50%) Senior
3 184 (13.09%) Architect
4 155 (11.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 101 (7.18%) Security Engineer
6 98 (6.97%) Senior Network Engineer
7 77 (5.48%) Cloud Engineer
8 64 (4.55%) Consultant
9 63 (4.48%) Azure Engineer
10 59 (4.20%) Network Architect
11 55 (3.91%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 53 (3.77%) Network Security Engineer
13 49 (3.49%) DevOps Engineer
13 49 (3.49%) Lead
13 49 (3.49%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
14 47 (3.34%) Security Architect
15 42 (2.99%) Cisco Engineer
16 40 (2.84%) Cisco Network Engineer
16 40 (2.84%) Platform Engineer
16 40 (2.84%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 288 (20.48%) Terraform
2 51 (3.63%) 802.1X
3 37 (2.63%) Middleware
4 29 (2.06%) SAML
5 25 (1.78%) ARM Templates
6 18 (1.28%) OpenID
7 15 (1.07%) LDAP
7 15 (1.07%) REST
8 14 (1.00%) OAuth
9 11 (0.78%) Kafka
9 11 (0.78%) OAuth2
10 10 (0.71%) React
10 10 (0.71%) YAML
11 8 (0.57%) .NET
12 7 (0.50%) Elastic Stack
12 7 (0.50%) JSON
12 7 (0.50%) OpenTelemetry
12 7 (0.50%) SailPoint
13 5 (0.36%) Jinja
13 5 (0.36%) ModSecurity
Miscellaneous
1 306 (21.76%) Data Centre
2 97 (6.90%) Hybrid Cloud
3 84 (5.97%) PKI
4 77 (5.48%) Cloud Native
5 59 (4.20%) Onboarding
6 54 (3.84%) Management Information System
7 50 (3.56%) Security Posture
8 46 (3.27%) Operational Technology
9 31 (2.20%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 29 (2.06%) Data Protection Act
10 29 (2.06%) IoT
11 27 (1.92%) Public Cloud
12 25 (1.78%) Clustering
13 24 (1.71%) Driving Licence
13 24 (1.71%) Replication
13 24 (1.71%) Self-Motivation
14 23 (1.64%) Enterprise Software
15 22 (1.56%) Enterprise Storage
15 22 (1.56%) SCADA
16 20 (1.42%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 351 (24.96%) Windows
2 221 (15.72%) Linux
3 148 (10.53%) Windows Server
4 46 (3.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 27 (1.92%) Unix
6 24 (1.71%) Ubuntu
7 20 (1.42%) VMS
8 15 (1.07%) Mac OS
9 12 (0.85%) CentOS
9 12 (0.85%) Windows Server 2019
10 9 (0.64%) Windows Server 2016
11 8 (0.57%) Amazon Linux
11 8 (0.57%) Windows Server 2012
12 7 (0.50%) Rocky
12 7 (0.50%) Windows 10
13 5 (0.36%) Android
13 5 (0.36%) Solaris
13 5 (0.36%) Windows Server 2003
14 4 (0.28%) AIX
14 4 (0.28%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 244 (17.35%) DevOps
2 243 (17.28%) Infrastructure as Code
3 231 (16.43%) CI/CD
4 221 (15.72%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 199 (14.15%) Cybersecurity
6 196 (13.94%) Load Balancing
7 190 (13.51%) Migration
8 189 (13.44%) Problem-Solving
9 188 (13.37%) ITIL
10 166 (11.81%) High Availability
11 163 (11.59%) Zero Trust
12 159 (11.31%) Agile
13 137 (9.74%) Project Delivery
13 137 (9.74%) Stakeholder Management
14 129 (9.17%) SIEM
15 128 (9.10%) Change Management
16 114 (8.11%) Technical Leadership
16 114 (8.11%) Validation
17 110 (7.82%) Cloud Security
18 109 (7.75%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 272 (19.35%) Python
2 214 (15.22%) PowerShell
3 129 (9.17%) Bash
4 52 (3.70%) Bicep
5 47 (3.34%) SQL
6 35 (2.49%) Java
7 12 (0.85%) Perl
8 11 (0.78%) Groovy
9 10 (0.71%) ActionScript
9 10 (0.71%) Kusto Query Language
10 6 (0.43%) Go
10 6 (0.43%) Search Processing Language
11 5 (0.36%) Shell Script
12 4 (0.28%) COBOL
12 4 (0.28%) JavaScript
12 4 (0.28%) TypeScript
13 3 (0.21%) C++
13 3 (0.21%) PL/SQL
14 2 (0.14%) Jython
14 2 (0.14%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 474 (33.71%) Security Cleared
2 334 (23.76%) SC Cleared
3 253 (17.99%) Cisco Certification
4 193 (13.73%) CCNP
5 121 (8.61%) DV Cleared
6 113 (8.04%) Degree
7 100 (7.11%) CCNA
8 74 (5.26%) CISSP
9 71 (5.05%) Azure Certification
10 52 (3.70%) AWS Certification
11 39 (2.77%) CCIE
12 32 (2.28%) Microsoft Certification
13 31 (2.20%) CISM
14 27 (1.92%) Computer Science Degree
15 18 (1.28%) Network+ Certification
16 16 (1.14%) JNCIS
16 16 (1.14%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 15 (1.07%) CEH
18 14 (1.00%) PMP
18 14 (1.00%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 74 (5.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 62 (4.41%) NIST
3 44 (3.13%) GDPR
4 28 (1.99%) NCSC
5 25 (1.78%) PCI DSS
6 24 (1.71%) QA
7 23 (1.64%) SLA
8 20 (1.42%) Cyber Essentials
9 9 (0.64%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 9 (0.64%) Data Quality
9 9 (0.64%) JSP 440
9 9 (0.64%) NIST 800
10 8 (0.57%) Disclosure Scotland
10 8 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 7 (0.50%) GxP
12 6 (0.43%) HIPAA
13 5 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
14 4 (0.28%) 21 CFR Part 11
14 4 (0.28%) SOC 2
15 3 (0.21%) PMO
System Software
1 235 (16.71%) Active Directory
2 184 (13.09%) VMware Infrastructure
3 70 (4.98%) Hyper-V
4 69 (4.91%) Docker
5 59 (4.20%) VMware NSX
6 48 (3.41%) vSphere
7 44 (3.13%) VMware ESXi
8 42 (2.99%) Virtual Machines
9 27 (1.92%) Firmware
10 15 (1.07%) Virtual Desktop
11 10 (0.71%) BitLocker
11 10 (0.71%) Squid
12 7 (0.50%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.43%) NFS
14 5 (0.36%) Dovecot
14 5 (0.36%) Postfix
15 4 (0.28%) Terminal Services
15 4 (0.28%) Virtual Servers
16 3 (0.21%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 3 (0.21%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 209 (14.86%) Ansible
2 123 (8.75%) Kubernetes
3 97 (6.90%) FortiGate
4 71 (5.05%) Microsoft Intune
5 56 (3.98%) Grafana
6 54 (3.84%) Prometheus
7 39 (2.77%) SCCM
8 34 (2.42%) Single Sign-On
9 28 (1.99%) Progress Chef
10 25 (1.78%) vCenter Server
11 18 (1.28%) VxRail
12 16 (1.14%) Puppet
13 15 (1.07%) CASB
14 13 (0.92%) Cisco Prime
15 10 (0.71%) Argo
15 10 (0.71%) Packer
16 9 (0.64%) vMotion
16 9 (0.64%) WSUS
17 8 (0.57%) NetBackup
17 8 (0.57%) QRadar
Vendors
1 514 (36.56%) Cisco
2 343 (24.40%) Microsoft
3 306 (21.76%) Palo Alto
4 231 (16.43%) VMware
5 202 (14.37%) Fortinet
6 178 (12.66%) F5
7 130 (9.25%) Juniper
8 125 (8.89%) CheckPoint
9 74 (5.26%) ServiceNow
10 72 (5.12%) Splunk
11 64 (4.55%) Arista
12 63 (4.48%) Aruba
13 61 (4.34%) Google
13 61 (4.34%) Zscaler
14 56 (3.98%) SolarWinds
15 51 (3.63%) Meraki
16 42 (2.99%) Citrix
17 35 (2.49%) Red Hat
18 32 (2.28%) Infoblox
19 29 (2.06%) Dynatrace