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

6 months to
10 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 83 50 48
Rank change year-on-year -33 -2 +10
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,381 1,220 1,650
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.01% 4.18% 3.75%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.45% 32.42% 28.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 900 744 1,043
10th Percentile £337 £313 £313
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £504
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% +1.19% -4.00%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £650 £688 £760
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 18 40
10th Percentile £20.50 - £15.89
25th Percentile £37.25 £14.20 £23.92
Median hourly rate £48.72 £35.82 £68.25
Median % change year-on-year +36.00% -47.51% +10.08%
75th Percentile £74.26 £41.50 £85.99
90th Percentile £85.00 £53.63 £87.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.36 £35.00 £83.77
% change year-on-year +49.60% -58.22% +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 4,536 3,763 5,871
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.89% 12.88% 13.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,866 2,339 3,545
10th Percentile £231 £213 £205
25th Percentile £393 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £499 £490 £485
Median % change year-on-year +1.79% +1.03% -6.73%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £470 £475
% change year-on-year +1.17% -1.16% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 203 160 418
10th Percentile £15.62 £14.99 £13.86
25th Percentile £20.41 £21.35 £17.72
Median hourly rate £42.71 £37.50 £39.25
Median % change year-on-year +13.88% -4.46% +106.58%
75th Percentile £70.00 £62.50 £61.75
90th Percentile £76.20 £75.00 £67.84
UK excluding London median hourly rate £53.25 £28.00 £45.88
% change year-on-year +90.18% -38.97% +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 10 April 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 10 April 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 10 April 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 -33 1,158 £513 -1.49% 482
UK excluding London -16 783 £500 - 419
London -56 423 £519 -1.23% 122
Work from Home -19 396 £513 +2.50% 174
South East +4 238 £515 +3.00% 134
North of England -21 234 £508 +6.84% 105
North West -7 159 £528 +11.16% 67
Midlands -34 97 £425 -23.42% 62
West Midlands -18 85 £423 -17.20% 37
Yorkshire -23 73 £445 -13.22% 27
South West -38 65 £550 +0.55% 42
East of England -14 63 £488 -7.58% 51
Scotland +4 53 £425 +0.59% 22
Wales -13 31 £425 +9.68% 13
East Midlands -53 8 £475 -19.83% 25
North East -15 5 £548 -0.45% 12
Northern Ireland - 3 £500 - 5

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 (3.04%) Microsoft Exchange
2 29 (2.10%) Confluence
3 18 (1.30%) SharePoint
4 13 (0.94%) Apache
4 13 (0.94%) nginx
5 10 (0.72%) CICS
6 7 (0.51%) SAS
7 5 (0.36%) IIS
8 4 (0.29%) OpenStack
9 3 (0.22%) WebSphere
10 2 (0.14%) Apache Pulsar
10 2 (0.14%) IBM HTTP Server
10 2 (0.14%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.14%) Skype for Business
10 2 (0.14%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.14%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.14%) WebSphere Portal
11 1 (0.072%) Anypoint
11 1 (0.072%) JBoss
Applications
1 36 (2.61%) Microsoft Office
2 21 (1.52%) Microsoft Excel
3 19 (1.38%) MS Visio
4 17 (1.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.43%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.072%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 2 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.072%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.072%) Primavera
2 1 (0.072%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.072%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 453 (32.80%) Azure
2 300 (21.72%) AWS
3 124 (8.98%) GCP
4 118 (8.54%) Entra ID
4 118 (8.54%) Microsoft 365
5 63 (4.56%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 62 (4.49%) GitHub
7 61 (4.42%) IaaS
8 55 (3.98%) PaaS
9 50 (3.62%) Azure DevOps
10 47 (3.40%) Serverless
11 46 (3.33%) Azure Monitor
12 44 (3.19%) SaaS
13 43 (3.11%) Azure Sentinel
14 40 (2.90%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 38 (2.75%) GitHub Actions
16 37 (2.68%) AWS Lambda
17 34 (2.46%) Amazon EC2
17 34 (2.46%) AWS CloudFormation
18 31 (2.24%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 374 (27.08%) Network Security
2 348 (25.20%) WAN
3 342 (24.76%) VPN
4 287 (20.78%) DNS
5 262 (18.97%) LAN
6 227 (16.44%) BGP
7 200 (14.48%) OSPF
8 160 (11.59%) VLAN
9 152 (11.01%) TCP/IP
10 148 (10.72%) DHCP
11 132 (9.56%) SD-WAN
12 121 (8.76%) Wireless
13 103 (7.46%) Wi-Fi
14 98 (7.10%) MPLS
15 81 (5.87%) IPsec
16 76 (5.50%) Cisco ISE
17 68 (4.92%) VXLAN
18 66 (4.78%) Cisco ASA
19 60 (4.34%) SSL
20 59 (4.27%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (1.96%) SQL Server
2 20 (1.45%) PostgreSQL
3 18 (1.30%) Elasticsearch
4 17 (1.23%) Amazon RDS
5 11 (0.80%) Oracle Database
6 10 (0.72%) Data Lake
6 10 (0.72%) DataStage
7 9 (0.65%) Power BI
8 8 (0.58%) Data Warehouse
9 7 (0.51%) Azure SQL Database
9 7 (0.51%) MongoDB
10 6 (0.43%) MySQL
11 5 (0.36%) Amazon QuickSight
11 5 (0.36%) Relational Database
12 4 (0.29%) Amazon Athena
12 4 (0.29%) Amazon Redshift
12 4 (0.29%) NoSQL
12 4 (0.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 3 (0.22%) Delta Lake
13 3 (0.22%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 77 (5.58%) JIRA
2 54 (3.91%) Jenkins
3 47 (3.40%) Git
4 43 (3.11%) GitLab
5 22 (1.59%) Sonatype Nexus
6 19 (1.38%) Bitbucket
7 16 (1.16%) Burp Suite
7 16 (1.16%) Metasploit
8 9 (0.65%) Chocolatey
8 9 (0.65%) Jaeger
9 7 (0.51%) SonarQube
10 6 (0.43%) Artifactory
11 5 (0.36%) Browser DevTools
12 4 (0.29%) CircleCI
13 2 (0.14%) Introscope
14 1 (0.072%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 1 (0.072%) Maven
14 1 (0.072%) MSI
14 1 (0.072%) PVCS
14 1 (0.072%) Subversion
General
1 356 (25.78%) Social Skills
2 165 (11.95%) Finance
3 142 (10.28%) Analytical Skills
4 107 (7.75%) Public Sector
5 99 (7.17%) Documentation Skills
6 56 (4.06%) Banking
7 43 (3.11%) Telecoms
8 32 (2.32%) Legal
9 26 (1.88%) Financial Institution
10 23 (1.67%) Manufacturing
11 20 (1.45%) Influencing Skills
12 17 (1.23%) Military
13 15 (1.09%) Law
14 14 (1.01%) Presentation Skills
15 12 (0.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 12 (0.87%) Retail
16 11 (0.80%) Local Government
17 10 (0.72%) Organisational Skills
18 8 (0.58%) Front Office
19 7 (0.51%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 393 (28.46%) Network Engineer
2 241 (17.45%) Architect
3 148 (10.72%) Senior
4 115 (8.33%) Security Engineer
5 92 (6.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 85 (6.15%) Network Architect
7 58 (4.20%) Azure Engineer
8 56 (4.06%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
9 54 (3.91%) Senior Network Engineer
10 49 (3.55%) Security Architect
11 45 (3.26%) Cloud Engineer
12 44 (3.19%) Solutions Architect
13 43 (3.11%) Analyst
14 41 (2.97%) Consultant
15 40 (2.90%) Network Security Engineer
16 39 (2.82%) Lead
16 39 (2.82%) Platform Engineer
16 39 (2.82%) Technical Architect
17 37 (2.68%) Cisco Engineer
17 37 (2.68%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 72 (5.21%) 802.1X
2 38 (2.75%) SAML
3 37 (2.68%) LDAP
4 36 (2.61%) Middleware
5 35 (2.53%) OpenID
6 20 (1.45%) Kafka
6 20 (1.45%) OAuth
7 19 (1.38%) OAuth2
8 14 (1.01%) REST
9 12 (0.87%) Node.js
10 11 (0.80%) ARM Templates
10 11 (0.80%) OpenTelemetry
11 10 (0.72%) JSON
11 10 (0.72%) Spring Boot
12 8 (0.58%) Elastic Stack
13 7 (0.51%) XML
14 6 (0.43%) HTML
14 6 (0.43%) LangChain
14 6 (0.43%) scikit-learn
14 6 (0.43%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 298 (21.58%) Data Centre
2 78 (5.65%) Security Posture
3 74 (5.36%) Cloud Native
4 71 (5.14%) PKI
5 49 (3.55%) Hybrid Cloud
6 48 (3.48%) Onboarding
7 41 (2.97%) Operational Technology
8 37 (2.68%) Clustering
9 36 (2.61%) Management Information System
10 34 (2.46%) Public Cloud
11 30 (2.17%) IoT
12 22 (1.59%) Cyber Threat
12 22 (1.59%) Replication
12 22 (1.59%) SCADA
13 21 (1.52%) Data Protection Act
13 21 (1.52%) Private Cloud
13 21 (1.52%) Product Ownership
14 20 (1.45%) Enterprise Software
15 19 (1.38%) NHS
16 17 (1.23%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 346 (25.05%) Windows
2 214 (15.50%) Linux
3 143 (10.35%) Windows Server
4 37 (2.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 34 (2.46%) Unix
6 29 (2.10%) VMS
7 12 (0.87%) Solaris
8 11 (0.80%) Windows Server 2019
9 10 (0.72%) AIX
10 9 (0.65%) Windows Server 2016
11 7 (0.51%) Windows 7
11 7 (0.51%) Windows Server 2003
12 6 (0.43%) Windows 10
13 5 (0.36%) Mac OS
14 4 (0.29%) CatOS
14 4 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
15 3 (0.22%) Amazon Linux
15 3 (0.22%) Android
15 3 (0.22%) Data ONTAP
15 3 (0.22%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 226 (16.36%) Cybersecurity
2 218 (15.79%) DevOps
3 207 (14.99%) Problem-Solving
4 184 (13.32%) CI/CD
5 182 (13.18%) Infrastructure as Code
6 172 (12.45%) Load Balancing
7 168 (12.17%) Migration
8 163 (11.80%) ITIL
9 148 (10.72%) High Availability
10 139 (10.07%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 126 (9.12%) Agile
12 121 (8.76%) SIEM
13 119 (8.62%) Cloud Security
14 118 (8.54%) Change Management
15 117 (8.47%) Zero Trust
16 97 (7.02%) Incident Response
17 96 (6.95%) Roadmaps
18 93 (6.73%) Continuous Improvement
18 93 (6.73%) Mentoring
19 92 (6.66%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 203 (14.70%) Python
2 193 (13.98%) PowerShell
3 96 (6.95%) Bash
4 59 (4.27%) SQL
5 40 (2.90%) Bicep
6 33 (2.39%) Java
7 25 (1.81%) Perl
8 11 (0.80%) Kusto Query Language
9 10 (0.72%) COBOL
9 10 (0.72%) JavaScript
9 10 (0.72%) Ruby
10 8 (0.58%) Rust
11 6 (0.43%) PL/SQL
12 5 (0.36%) Shell Script
13 4 (0.29%) C#
13 4 (0.29%) Go
14 2 (0.14%) C++
14 2 (0.14%) Jython
14 2 (0.14%) PHP
15 1 (0.072%) ActionScript
Qualifications
1 494 (35.77%) Security Cleared
2 344 (24.91%) SC Cleared
3 263 (19.04%) Cisco Certification
4 212 (15.35%) CCNP
5 128 (9.27%) DV Cleared
6 123 (8.91%) Degree
7 109 (7.89%) CCNA
8 82 (5.94%) CISSP
9 61 (4.42%) Azure Certification
10 49 (3.55%) CCIE
11 46 (3.33%) AWS Certification
11 46 (3.33%) CISM
12 39 (2.82%) Microsoft Certification
13 26 (1.88%) CompTIA Security+
14 25 (1.81%) JNCIS
15 24 (1.74%) Computer Science Degree
15 24 (1.74%) JNCIP
16 19 (1.38%) JNCIA
16 19 (1.38%) Network+ Certification
17 18 (1.30%) CREST Certified
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 98 (7.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 78 (5.65%) NIST
3 69 (5.00%) GDPR
4 45 (3.26%) PCI DSS
5 37 (2.68%) NCSC
6 31 (2.24%) SLA
7 26 (1.88%) Cyber Essentials
8 21 (1.52%) QA
9 16 (1.16%) PMO
10 7 (0.51%) JSP 440
11 6 (0.43%) Actionable Recommendations
11 6 (0.43%) GRC
11 6 (0.43%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 6 (0.43%) RMADS
12 5 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 4 (0.29%) Data Quality
13 4 (0.29%) HIPAA
13 4 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 4 (0.29%) SOC 2
14 3 (0.22%) ISA99
System Software
1 244 (17.67%) Active Directory
2 181 (13.11%) VMware Infrastructure
3 87 (6.30%) Docker
4 72 (5.21%) VMware NSX
5 43 (3.11%) Hyper-V
6 39 (2.82%) vSphere
7 33 (2.39%) Virtual Machines
8 30 (2.17%) VMware ESXi
9 20 (1.45%) Firmware
9 20 (1.45%) Virtual Desktop
10 11 (0.80%) Squid
11 10 (0.72%) BitLocker
12 8 (0.58%) Microsoft App-V
12 8 (0.58%) Virtual Servers
13 3 (0.22%) DFS Replication
13 3 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
14 2 (0.14%) Citrix Hypervisor
14 2 (0.14%) iptables
14 2 (0.14%) KVM
14 2 (0.14%) NetIQ eDirectory
Systems Management
1 210 (15.21%) Terraform
2 152 (11.01%) Ansible
3 126 (9.12%) Kubernetes
4 100 (7.24%) FortiGate
5 61 (4.42%) Microsoft Intune
6 45 (3.26%) Grafana
7 44 (3.19%) Single Sign-On
8 39 (2.82%) Prometheus
9 34 (2.46%) SCCM
10 32 (2.32%) vCenter Server
11 27 (1.96%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 18 (1.30%) Nmap
13 14 (1.01%) CASB
13 14 (1.01%) Nagios
13 14 (1.01%) QRadar
14 12 (0.87%) Cisco Prime
14 12 (0.87%) Puppet
15 11 (0.80%) VxRail
16 10 (0.72%) Fluentd
16 10 (0.72%) WSUS
Vendors
1 471 (34.11%) Cisco
2 308 (22.30%) Microsoft
3 278 (20.13%) Palo Alto
4 224 (16.22%) VMware
5 163 (11.80%) Fortinet
6 155 (11.22%) F5
7 150 (10.86%) Juniper
8 129 (9.34%) CheckPoint
9 91 (6.59%) Splunk
10 84 (6.08%) Aruba
11 72 (5.21%) SolarWinds
12 57 (4.13%) Google
12 57 (4.13%) ServiceNow
13 56 (4.06%) Meraki
14 46 (3.33%) Citrix
15 42 (3.04%) Zscaler
16 41 (2.97%) Arista
16 41 (2.97%) Red Hat
17 39 (2.82%) Oracle
18 26 (1.88%) Tenable