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

6 months to
1 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 99 60 58
Rank change year-on-year -39 -2 -11
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,402 1,309 1,333
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.61% 4.00% 3.45%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 27.66% 33.97% 28.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 874 776 848
10th Percentile £350 £325 £318
25th Percentile £425 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £622
90th Percentile £660 £681 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £488 £513
% change year-on-year +2.56% -4.88% +7.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 51 28 28
10th Percentile £29.00 £14.20 £20.13
25th Percentile £49.61 £15.28 £23.80
Median hourly rate £65.69 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +118.97% +9.09% -58.32%
75th Percentile £78.75 £35.39 £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% -28.01%

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 5,069 3,853 4,615
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.45% 11.77% 11.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,982 2,359 2,742
10th Percentile £250 £238 £230
25th Percentile £400 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £469 £500
% change year-on-year +2.35% -6.20% +10.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 376 201 288
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £20.50
Median hourly rate £26.00 £45.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -42.22% -10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £65.22 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.81 £42.50 £55.75
% change year-on-year -39.28% -23.76% -1.32%

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 1 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 1 September 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 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 -39 1,224 £505 +1.00% 846
UK excluding London -27 779 £500 +2.56% 540
London -57 481 £500 - 401
Work from Home -30 399 £520 +4.00% 359
North of England -6 277 £500 +5.26% 105
South East -39 197 £523 +4.50% 177
North West +7 172 £500 +5.26% 58
South West -16 85 £556 +11.20% 65
Yorkshire -27 85 £450 -8.07% 29
East of England -3 78 £525 -4.55% 50
Midlands -79 75 £480 +1.05% 92
Scotland -5 63 £400 -11.11% 35
West Midlands -80 56 £450 -5.26% 61
North East -22 26 £500 -13.04% 20
East Midlands -13 17 £500 +1.63% 31
Wales -16 12 £425 +61.90% 6
Northern Ireland -7 1 - - 19

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 48 (3.42%) Microsoft Exchange
2 36 (2.57%) SharePoint
3 29 (2.07%) Confluence
4 13 (0.93%) Apache
5 12 (0.86%) nginx
6 11 (0.78%) SAS
7 4 (0.29%) FactoryTalk
7 4 (0.29%) IIS
7 4 (0.29%) Tomcat
8 3 (0.21%) CloudStack
9 2 (0.14%) CICS
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 25 (1.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 22 (1.57%) Microsoft Office
2 22 (1.57%) MS Visio
3 12 (0.86%) Microsoft Project
4 6 (0.43%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.071%) Mozilla Thunderbird
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%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.14%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.071%) Oracle Retail
3 1 (0.071%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 536 (38.23%) Azure
2 324 (23.11%) AWS
3 170 (12.13%) Entra ID
4 130 (9.27%) Microsoft 365
5 107 (7.63%) GCP
6 75 (5.35%) GitHub
7 74 (5.28%) Azure DevOps
8 61 (4.35%) IaaS
8 61 (4.35%) SaaS
9 56 (3.99%) Azure Monitor
10 48 (3.42%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 46 (3.28%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 43 (3.07%) Azure Sentinel
13 38 (2.71%) GitHub Actions
13 38 (2.71%) PaaS
13 38 (2.71%) Serverless
14 36 (2.57%) OCI
15 27 (1.93%) AWS CloudFormation
16 26 (1.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 26 (1.85%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 424 (30.24%) VPN
2 394 (28.10%) Network Security
3 373 (26.60%) WAN
4 364 (25.96%) DNS
5 266 (18.97%) LAN
6 252 (17.97%) BGP
7 213 (15.19%) DHCP
8 211 (15.05%) TCP/IP
9 197 (14.05%) VLAN
10 190 (13.55%) OSPF
11 167 (11.91%) Wireless
12 139 (9.91%) SD-WAN
13 131 (9.34%) Wi-Fi
14 86 (6.13%) Cisco ASA
14 86 (6.13%) IPsec
15 84 (5.99%) MPLS
16 81 (5.78%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 79 (5.63%) BIG-IP
18 73 (5.21%) SSL
19 69 (4.92%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (2.35%) SQL Server
2 20 (1.43%) PostgreSQL
3 18 (1.28%) Amazon RDS
4 16 (1.14%) Power BI
5 12 (0.86%) Relational Database
6 10 (0.71%) Data Lake
7 9 (0.64%) Azure SQL Database
7 9 (0.64%) Oracle Database
8 8 (0.57%) Amazon Aurora
8 8 (0.57%) NoSQL
9 7 (0.50%) Elasticsearch
10 5 (0.36%) Delta Lake
10 5 (0.36%) MySQL
11 4 (0.29%) Data Warehouse
11 4 (0.29%) Db2
12 3 (0.21%) Big Data
12 3 (0.21%) EDRMS
12 3 (0.21%) Metadata
13 2 (0.14%) Amazon Athena
13 2 (0.14%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 91 (6.49%) JIRA
2 60 (4.28%) Jenkins
3 49 (3.50%) GitLab
4 47 (3.35%) Git
5 14 (1.00%) Sonatype Nexus
6 9 (0.64%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.50%) Artifactory
8 6 (0.43%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 5 (0.36%) Browser DevTools
9 5 (0.36%) Chocolatey
9 5 (0.36%) SonarQube
10 4 (0.29%) MSI
11 3 (0.21%) Burp Suite
11 3 (0.21%) Maven
12 2 (0.14%) Cucumber
12 2 (0.14%) Gradle
12 2 (0.14%) Introscope
12 2 (0.14%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 2 (0.14%) Team Foundation Server
12 2 (0.14%) Vagrant
General
1 309 (22.04%) Social Skills
2 176 (12.55%) Finance
3 146 (10.41%) Analytical Skills
4 116 (8.27%) Public Sector
5 84 (5.99%) Banking
6 58 (4.14%) Documentation Skills
7 56 (3.99%) Telecoms
8 33 (2.35%) Manufacturing
9 29 (2.07%) Legal
10 23 (1.64%) Retail
11 18 (1.28%) Local Government
12 17 (1.21%) Military
13 14 (1.00%) Financial Institution
14 13 (0.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 13 (0.93%) Influencing Skills
14 13 (0.93%) Police
15 11 (0.78%) Aerospace
15 11 (0.78%) Investment Banking
15 11 (0.78%) Organisational Skills
16 10 (0.71%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 441 (31.46%) Network Engineer
2 227 (16.19%) Senior
3 179 (12.77%) Architect
4 159 (11.34%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 102 (7.28%) Security Engineer
6 99 (7.06%) Senior Network Engineer
7 81 (5.78%) Cloud Engineer
8 68 (4.85%) Consultant
9 65 (4.64%) Azure Engineer
10 57 (4.07%) Network Architect
11 56 (3.99%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 54 (3.85%) Network Security Engineer
13 51 (3.64%) DevOps Engineer
14 50 (3.57%) Lead
14 50 (3.57%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
15 47 (3.35%) Security Architect
16 43 (3.07%) Platform Engineer
17 42 (3.00%) Cisco Engineer
18 40 (2.85%) Cisco Network Engineer
19 38 (2.71%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 296 (21.11%) Terraform
2 45 (3.21%) 802.1X
3 34 (2.43%) Middleware
4 29 (2.07%) SAML
5 26 (1.85%) ARM Templates
6 18 (1.28%) OpenID
7 16 (1.14%) REST
8 14 (1.00%) LDAP
8 14 (1.00%) OAuth
9 11 (0.78%) Kafka
9 11 (0.78%) OAuth2
9 11 (0.78%) YAML
10 10 (0.71%) React
11 7 (0.50%) .NET
11 7 (0.50%) Elastic Stack
11 7 (0.50%) JSON
11 7 (0.50%) OpenTelemetry
11 7 (0.50%) SailPoint
12 5 (0.36%) gRPC
12 5 (0.36%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 296 (21.11%) Data Centre
2 101 (7.20%) Hybrid Cloud
3 79 (5.63%) Cloud Native
3 79 (5.63%) PKI
4 61 (4.35%) Onboarding
5 53 (3.78%) Management Information System
6 50 (3.57%) Security Posture
7 49 (3.50%) Operational Technology
8 32 (2.28%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 30 (2.14%) IoT
10 29 (2.07%) Public Cloud
11 28 (2.00%) Data Protection Act
12 24 (1.71%) Driving Licence
12 24 (1.71%) Replication
12 24 (1.71%) Self-Motivation
13 23 (1.64%) Enterprise Software
13 23 (1.64%) SCADA
14 21 (1.50%) Clustering
14 21 (1.50%) Linux Command Line
15 19 (1.36%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 351 (25.04%) Windows
2 222 (15.83%) Linux
3 149 (10.63%) Windows Server
4 46 (3.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 27 (1.93%) Unix
6 25 (1.78%) Ubuntu
7 21 (1.50%) VMS
8 15 (1.07%) Mac OS
9 13 (0.93%) CentOS
9 13 (0.93%) Windows Server 2019
10 8 (0.57%) Amazon Linux
10 8 (0.57%) Windows Server 2012
10 8 (0.57%) Windows Server 2016
11 7 (0.50%) Rocky
11 7 (0.50%) Windows 10
12 6 (0.43%) Android
13 5 (0.36%) Apple iOS
13 5 (0.36%) Windows Server 2003
14 4 (0.29%) SUSE
15 3 (0.21%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 254 (18.12%) DevOps
2 250 (17.83%) Infrastructure as Code
3 232 (16.55%) CI/CD
4 226 (16.12%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 204 (14.55%) Cybersecurity
6 203 (14.48%) Migration
7 194 (13.84%) Load Balancing
8 193 (13.77%) Problem-Solving
9 187 (13.34%) ITIL
10 167 (11.91%) High Availability
11 164 (11.70%) Zero Trust
12 161 (11.48%) Agile
13 144 (10.27%) Stakeholder Management
14 139 (9.91%) Project Delivery
15 138 (9.84%) Change Management
16 127 (9.06%) SIEM
17 118 (8.42%) Technical Leadership
18 116 (8.27%) Validation
19 109 (7.77%) Cloud Security
19 109 (7.77%) Incident Response
Programming Languages
1 278 (19.83%) Python
2 221 (15.76%) PowerShell
3 135 (9.63%) Bash
4 55 (3.92%) Bicep
5 48 (3.42%) SQL
6 38 (2.71%) Java
7 13 (0.93%) Groovy
8 11 (0.78%) Kusto Query Language
8 11 (0.78%) Perl
9 10 (0.71%) ActionScript
10 7 (0.50%) Shell Script
11 6 (0.43%) Go
11 6 (0.43%) Search Processing Language
12 4 (0.29%) JavaScript
12 4 (0.29%) TypeScript
13 3 (0.21%) C++
13 3 (0.21%) PL/SQL
14 2 (0.14%) COBOL
14 2 (0.14%) Jython
14 2 (0.14%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 478 (34.09%) Security Cleared
2 340 (24.25%) SC Cleared
3 242 (17.26%) Cisco Certification
4 182 (12.98%) CCNP
5 120 (8.56%) DV Cleared
6 113 (8.06%) Degree
7 95 (6.78%) CCNA
8 75 (5.35%) CISSP
9 71 (5.06%) Azure Certification
10 52 (3.71%) AWS Certification
11 38 (2.71%) CCIE
12 34 (2.43%) Microsoft Certification
13 33 (2.35%) CISM
14 28 (2.00%) Computer Science Degree
15 20 (1.43%) PMP
16 18 (1.28%) PMI Certification
17 17 (1.21%) CEH
17 17 (1.21%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 15 (1.07%) JNCIS
18 15 (1.07%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 77 (5.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 62 (4.42%) NIST
3 44 (3.14%) GDPR
4 27 (1.93%) NCSC
5 25 (1.78%) QA
6 23 (1.64%) PCI DSS
7 22 (1.57%) Cyber Essentials
8 20 (1.43%) SLA
9 10 (0.71%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 9 (0.64%) Data Quality
10 9 (0.64%) JSP 440
10 9 (0.64%) NIST 800
11 8 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 7 (0.50%) Disclosure Scotland
12 7 (0.50%) GxP
13 6 (0.43%) HIPAA
14 5 (0.36%) COBIT
15 4 (0.29%) 21 CFR Part 11
16 3 (0.21%) PMO
16 3 (0.21%) RMADS
System Software
1 235 (16.76%) Active Directory
2 183 (13.05%) VMware Infrastructure
3 75 (5.35%) Docker
4 71 (5.06%) Hyper-V
5 57 (4.07%) VMware NSX
6 50 (3.57%) vSphere
7 45 (3.21%) VMware ESXi
8 43 (3.07%) Virtual Machines
9 27 (1.93%) Firmware
10 14 (1.00%) Virtual Desktop
11 10 (0.71%) Squid
12 9 (0.64%) BitLocker
13 6 (0.43%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.43%) NFS
14 5 (0.36%) Dovecot
14 5 (0.36%) Postfix
15 4 (0.29%) Terminal Services
15 4 (0.29%) Virtual Servers
16 3 (0.21%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 3 (0.21%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 215 (15.34%) Ansible
2 129 (9.20%) Kubernetes
3 91 (6.49%) FortiGate
4 71 (5.06%) Microsoft Intune
5 58 (4.14%) Grafana
6 55 (3.92%) Prometheus
7 39 (2.78%) SCCM
8 35 (2.50%) Single Sign-On
9 27 (1.93%) Progress Chef
10 25 (1.78%) vCenter Server
11 17 (1.21%) VxRail
12 15 (1.07%) Puppet
13 13 (0.93%) CASB
13 13 (0.93%) Cisco Prime
14 10 (0.71%) Argo
14 10 (0.71%) Packer
15 9 (0.64%) vMotion
15 9 (0.64%) WSUS
16 8 (0.57%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 8 (0.57%) QRadar
Vendors
1 512 (36.52%) Cisco
2 341 (24.32%) Microsoft
3 311 (22.18%) Palo Alto
4 228 (16.26%) VMware
5 200 (14.27%) Fortinet
6 177 (12.62%) F5
7 125 (8.92%) Juniper
8 124 (8.84%) CheckPoint
9 66 (4.71%) ServiceNow
10 65 (4.64%) Splunk
11 62 (4.42%) Arista
12 61 (4.35%) Aruba
12 61 (4.35%) Google
13 60 (4.28%) Zscaler
14 54 (3.85%) SolarWinds
15 53 (3.78%) Meraki
16 40 (2.85%) Citrix
17 36 (2.57%) Red Hat
18 29 (2.07%) Infoblox
19 27 (1.93%) Dynatrace