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

6 months to
16 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 101 62 58
Rank change year-on-year -39 -4 -12
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,365 1,288 1,347
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.52% 3.91% 3.52%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 26.93% 33.83% 29.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 838 779 840
10th Percentile £350 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £675 £688 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £488 £508
% change year-on-year +2.56% -3.94% +6.84%
Number of hourly rates quoted 55 28 32
10th Percentile £29.00 £14.85 £20.00
25th Percentile £49.61 £28.00 £22.11
Median hourly rate £67.00 £30.00 £31.25
Median % change year-on-year +123.33% -4.00% -52.64%
75th Percentile £79.38 £37.06 £75.68
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.63 £87.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.23 £30.00 £41.25
% change year-on-year +117.42% -27.27% -37.48%

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 3,807 4,537
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.34% 11.56% 11.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,937 2,354 2,642
10th Percentile £231 £225 £225
25th Percentile £389 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £476 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.04% -4.80% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £675 £677 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £452 £500
% change year-on-year +5.20% -9.70% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 414 198 255
10th Percentile £14.46 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £21.37
Median hourly rate £29.50 £43.00 £50.50
Median % change year-on-year -31.40% -14.85% -10.60%
75th Percentile £67.49 £64.69 £65.00
90th Percentile £88.67 £75.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.14 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -38.49% -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 16 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 16 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 16 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 -37 1,199 £500 - 1,268
UK excluding London -37 748 £500 +2.56% 750
London -57 481 £500 -2.91% 609
Work from Home -34 387 £518 +3.50% 513
North of England -5 275 £500 +4.17% 165
South East -47 167 £520 +4.00% 239
North West +5 162 £511 +7.47% 103
Yorkshire -34 92 £483 -1.43% 45
South West -18 86 £556 +14.34% 84
Midlands -70 82 £450 -5.26% 126
East of England -1 73 £530 +9.84% 53
Scotland -17 60 £400 -11.11% 62
West Midlands -81 60 £429 -9.68% 82
North East -15 27 £500 -13.04% 18
East Midlands -6 20 £500 +1.63% 44
Wales -14 9 £425 +112.50% 11
Channel Islands -7 2 £600 -17.24% 1
Northern Ireland -9 1 - - 18

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 (3.52%) Microsoft Exchange
2 36 (2.64%) SharePoint
3 31 (2.27%) Confluence
4 12 (0.88%) Apache
4 12 (0.88%) nginx
5 10 (0.73%) SAS
6 4 (0.29%) FactoryTalk
6 4 (0.29%) IIS
7 3 (0.22%) CloudStack
7 3 (0.22%) Skype for Business
7 3 (0.22%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.15%) CICS
8 2 (0.15%) CMS
8 2 (0.15%) Umbraco
9 1 (0.073%) IBM HTTP Server
9 1 (0.073%) MTS
9 1 (0.073%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 1 (0.073%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.073%) WebSphere Application Server
9 1 (0.073%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 21 (1.54%) Microsoft Office
1 21 (1.54%) MS Visio
2 20 (1.47%) 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 3 (0.22%) 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 Retail
Cloud Services
1 522 (38.24%) Azure
2 317 (23.22%) AWS
3 172 (12.60%) Entra ID
4 129 (9.45%) Microsoft 365
5 104 (7.62%) GCP
6 76 (5.57%) GitHub
7 69 (5.05%) IaaS
8 65 (4.76%) Azure DevOps
9 64 (4.69%) SaaS
10 55 (4.03%) Azure Monitor
11 46 (3.37%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 43 (3.15%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 39 (2.86%) PaaS
14 37 (2.71%) OCI
15 35 (2.56%) Azure Sentinel
15 35 (2.56%) Serverless
16 31 (2.27%) GitHub Actions
17 27 (1.98%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 27 (1.98%) AWS CloudFormation
18 26 (1.90%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 410 (30.04%) VPN
2 392 (28.72%) Network Security
3 364 (26.67%) DNS
4 352 (25.79%) WAN
5 251 (18.39%) LAN
6 238 (17.44%) BGP
7 210 (15.38%) TCP/IP
8 206 (15.09%) DHCP
9 198 (14.51%) VLAN
10 173 (12.67%) OSPF
10 173 (12.67%) Wireless
11 128 (9.38%) Wi-Fi
12 127 (9.30%) SD-WAN
13 81 (5.93%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 79 (5.79%) Cisco ASA
15 78 (5.71%) IPsec
16 77 (5.64%) BIG-IP
17 76 (5.57%) MPLS
18 74 (5.42%) SSL
19 67 (4.91%) 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 11 (0.81%) Data Lake
5 11 (0.81%) Power BI
6 8 (0.59%) Amazon Aurora
7 7 (0.51%) NoSQL
8 6 (0.44%) Elasticsearch
9 5 (0.37%) Azure SQL Database
9 5 (0.37%) Oracle Database
10 4 (0.29%) Db2
10 4 (0.29%) MySQL
11 3 (0.22%) Big Data
11 3 (0.22%) Data Warehouse
11 3 (0.22%) EDRMS
11 3 (0.22%) Metadata
12 2 (0.15%) Amazon Athena
12 2 (0.15%) Amazon QuickSight
12 2 (0.15%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 90 (6.59%) JIRA
2 62 (4.54%) Jenkins
3 48 (3.52%) 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%) Gatling
12 2 (0.15%) Gradle
12 2 (0.15%) LoadRunner
12 2 (0.15%) REST Assured
12 2 (0.15%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 2 (0.15%) Vagrant
General
1 306 (22.42%) Social Skills
2 171 (12.53%) Finance
3 143 (10.48%) Analytical Skills
4 111 (8.13%) Public Sector
5 89 (6.52%) Banking
6 57 (4.18%) Documentation Skills
6 57 (4.18%) Telecoms
7 34 (2.49%) Manufacturing
8 27 (1.98%) Legal
9 21 (1.54%) Retail
10 19 (1.39%) Local Government
11 18 (1.32%) Military
12 13 (0.95%) Financial Institution
12 13 (0.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 13 (0.95%) Police
13 12 (0.88%) Influencing Skills
13 12 (0.88%) Organisational Skills
14 11 (0.81%) Aerospace
14 11 (0.81%) Investment Banking
15 10 (0.73%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 438 (32.09%) Network Engineer
2 214 (15.68%) Senior
3 161 (11.79%) Architect
4 156 (11.43%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 108 (7.91%) Security Engineer
6 95 (6.96%) Senior Network Engineer
7 83 (6.08%) Cloud Engineer
8 68 (4.98%) Consultant
9 63 (4.62%) Azure Engineer
10 59 (4.32%) Network Security Engineer
11 55 (4.03%) Network Architect
12 54 (3.96%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 53 (3.88%) DevOps Engineer
14 50 (3.66%) Lead
15 48 (3.52%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
16 45 (3.30%) Security Architect
17 40 (2.93%) Cisco Engineer
17 40 (2.93%) Platform Engineer
18 38 (2.78%) Cisco Network Engineer
19 37 (2.71%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 288 (21.10%) Terraform
2 41 (3.00%) 802.1X
3 30 (2.20%) Middleware
4 28 (2.05%) SAML
5 27 (1.98%) ARM Templates
6 20 (1.47%) OpenID
7 19 (1.39%) REST
8 16 (1.17%) OAuth
9 14 (1.03%) LDAP
10 13 (0.95%) OAuth2
11 12 (0.88%) YAML
12 10 (0.73%) React
13 9 (0.66%) JSON
14 7 (0.51%) Kafka
14 7 (0.51%) OpenTelemetry
14 7 (0.51%) SailPoint
15 6 (0.44%) .NET
15 6 (0.44%) Elastic Stack
16 5 (0.37%) Web Services
16 5 (0.37%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 291 (21.32%) Data Centre
2 105 (7.69%) Hybrid Cloud
3 74 (5.42%) PKI
4 72 (5.27%) Cloud Native
5 60 (4.40%) Onboarding
6 54 (3.96%) Security Posture
7 53 (3.88%) Management Information System
8 47 (3.44%) Operational Technology
9 35 (2.56%) Public Cloud
10 32 (2.34%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 26 (1.90%) Data Protection Act
12 25 (1.83%) Replication
13 24 (1.76%) Enterprise Software
13 24 (1.76%) IoT
14 23 (1.68%) Driving Licence
14 23 (1.68%) Linux Command Line
15 22 (1.61%) Self-Motivation
16 21 (1.54%) SCADA
17 19 (1.39%) Enterprise Storage
18 18 (1.32%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 335 (24.54%) Windows
2 215 (15.75%) Linux
3 144 (10.55%) Windows Server
4 44 (3.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 28 (2.05%) Unix
6 25 (1.83%) Ubuntu
7 21 (1.54%) VMS
8 16 (1.17%) Mac OS
9 14 (1.03%) CentOS
10 12 (0.88%) Windows Server 2019
11 10 (0.73%) Windows 10
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
15 6 (0.44%) Windows Server 2016
16 5 (0.37%) Windows Server 2003
17 4 (0.29%) SUSE
18 3 (0.22%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 252 (18.46%) Infrastructure as Code
2 240 (17.58%) DevOps
3 235 (17.22%) CI/CD
4 230 (16.85%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 205 (15.02%) Migration
6 202 (14.80%) Cybersecurity
7 197 (14.43%) Problem-Solving
8 183 (13.41%) Load Balancing
9 175 (12.82%) ITIL
10 158 (11.58%) Agile
11 156 (11.43%) Zero Trust
12 149 (10.92%) High Availability
13 141 (10.33%) Stakeholder Management
14 136 (9.96%) Project Delivery
15 133 (9.74%) Change Management
16 131 (9.60%) SIEM
17 114 (8.35%) Cloud Security
18 113 (8.28%) Technical Leadership
19 110 (8.06%) Incident Response
19 110 (8.06%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 283 (20.73%) Python
2 225 (16.48%) PowerShell
3 135 (9.89%) Bash
4 47 (3.44%) Bicep
5 41 (3.00%) SQL
6 39 (2.86%) Java
7 16 (1.17%) ActionScript
8 14 (1.03%) Groovy
9 9 (0.66%) Perl
10 8 (0.59%) Kusto Query Language
11 7 (0.51%) Shell Script
12 6 (0.44%) Go
12 6 (0.44%) Search Processing Language
13 4 (0.29%) C++
13 4 (0.29%) JavaScript
13 4 (0.29%) TypeScript
14 3 (0.22%) C
14 3 (0.22%) PL/SQL
15 2 (0.15%) T-SQL
15 2 (0.15%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 453 (33.19%) Security Cleared
2 323 (23.66%) SC Cleared
3 237 (17.36%) Cisco Certification
4 177 (12.97%) CCNP
5 112 (8.21%) DV Cleared
6 110 (8.06%) Degree
7 91 (6.67%) CCNA
8 76 (5.57%) CISSP
9 71 (5.20%) Azure Certification
10 51 (3.74%) AWS Certification
11 37 (2.71%) Microsoft Certification
12 35 (2.56%) CCIE
13 34 (2.49%) CISM
14 29 (2.12%) Computer Science Degree
15 17 (1.25%) CEH
15 17 (1.25%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 15 (1.10%) Network+ Certification
16 15 (1.10%) PMI Certification
16 15 (1.10%) PMP
17 13 (0.95%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (5.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 59 (4.32%) NIST
3 34 (2.49%) GDPR
4 25 (1.83%) NCSC
4 25 (1.83%) QA
5 24 (1.76%) Cyber Essentials
6 21 (1.54%) PCI DSS
7 20 (1.47%) SLA
8 13 (0.95%) NIST 800
9 12 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 9 (0.66%) 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
1 233 (17.07%) Active Directory
2 172 (12.60%) VMware Infrastructure
3 75 (5.49%) Docker
4 69 (5.05%) Hyper-V
5 57 (4.18%) VMware NSX
6 49 (3.59%) vSphere
7 45 (3.30%) Virtual Machines
7 45 (3.30%) VMware ESXi
8 25 (1.83%) Firmware
9 15 (1.10%) Virtual Desktop
10 10 (0.73%) Squid
11 7 (0.51%) BitLocker
12 6 (0.44%) NFS
12 6 (0.44%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.37%) Dovecot
13 5 (0.37%) Postfix
14 4 (0.29%) FreeRADIUS
14 4 (0.29%) Microsoft App-V
15 3 (0.22%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 3 (0.22%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 213 (15.60%) Ansible
2 128 (9.38%) Kubernetes
3 89 (6.52%) FortiGate
4 71 (5.20%) Microsoft Intune
5 55 (4.03%) Grafana
6 51 (3.74%) Prometheus
7 42 (3.08%) SCCM
8 30 (2.20%) Single Sign-On
9 28 (2.05%) Progress Chef
10 24 (1.76%) vCenter Server
11 19 (1.39%) VxRail
12 15 (1.10%) Cisco Prime
13 14 (1.03%) Puppet
14 12 (0.88%) CASB
15 10 (0.73%) Argo
15 10 (0.73%) Packer
16 9 (0.66%) WSUS
17 8 (0.59%) Nessus
17 8 (0.59%) NetBackup
17 8 (0.59%) QRadar
Vendors
1 510 (37.36%) Cisco
2 340 (24.91%) Microsoft
3 322 (23.59%) Palo Alto
4 217 (15.90%) VMware
5 202 (14.80%) Fortinet
6 177 (12.97%) F5
7 122 (8.94%) CheckPoint
8 121 (8.86%) Juniper
9 70 (5.13%) Zscaler
10 63 (4.62%) Splunk
11 60 (4.40%) ServiceNow
12 59 (4.32%) Aruba
13 58 (4.25%) Arista
13 58 (4.25%) Google
14 55 (4.03%) Meraki
15 49 (3.59%) SolarWinds
16 35 (2.56%) Citrix
17 32 (2.34%) Red Hat
18 29 (2.12%) Dynatrace
18 29 (2.12%) Infoblox