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

6 months to
4 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 83 52 51
Rank change year-on-year -31 -1 +6
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,368 1,226 1,647
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.03% 4.19% 3.73%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.50% 32.47% 28.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 894 746 1,040
10th Percentile £335 £313 £313
25th Percentile £413 £405 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% +2.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £623
90th Percentile £650 £688 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 18 39
10th Percentile £20.70 - £15.78
25th Percentile £37.25 £14.20 £23.92
Median hourly rate £48.72 £35.82 £73.50
Median % change year-on-year +36.00% -51.26% +18.54%
75th Percentile £74.26 £41.50 £86.32
90th Percentile £85.20 £53.63 £87.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.36 £35.00 £83.77
% change year-on-year +49.60% -58.22% +42.79%

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 4,485 3,776 5,869
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.93% 12.92% 13.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,861 2,338 3,544
10th Percentile £225 £213 £205
25th Percentile £380 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £480
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% +1.67% -7.79%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £468 £475
% change year-on-year +1.60% -1.58% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 195 153 407
10th Percentile £15.62 £14.99 £13.71
25th Percentile £20.41 £21.46 £17.72
Median hourly rate £42.25 £35.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +20.71% -6.67% +97.37%
75th Percentile £70.29 £63.25 £62.25
90th Percentile £77.10 £75.00 £67.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £28.00 £45.44
% change year-on-year +78.57% -38.38% +145.62%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 -31 1,145 £513 -1.44% 482
UK excluding London -16 775 £500 - 419
London -55 417 £520 -0.95% 122
Work from Home -27 393 £513 +2.50% 174
South East +7 235 £515 +3.00% 134
North of England -21 233 £515 +8.42% 105
North West -9 158 £528 +11.75% 67
Midlands -44 98 £425 -22.73% 62
West Midlands -15 86 £425 -18.35% 37
Yorkshire -25 73 £424 -17.20% 27
South West -39 62 £552 +1.10% 42
East of England -13 60 £475 -9.52% 51
Scotland -3 55 £425 -1.45% 22
Wales -17 30 £425 +9.68% 13
East Midlands -53 8 £475 -19.83% 25
North East -13 5 £548 +9.50% 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 (3.07%) Microsoft Exchange
2 30 (2.19%) Confluence
3 19 (1.39%) SharePoint
4 13 (0.95%) Apache
4 13 (0.95%) nginx
5 10 (0.73%) CICS
6 7 (0.51%) SAS
7 6 (0.44%) IIS
8 4 (0.29%) OpenStack
9 3 (0.22%) WebSphere
10 2 (0.15%) Apache Pulsar
10 2 (0.15%) IBM HTTP Server
10 2 (0.15%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.15%) Skype for Business
10 2 (0.15%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.15%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.15%) WebSphere Portal
11 1 (0.073%) Anypoint
11 1 (0.073%) JBoss
Applications
1 38 (2.78%) Microsoft Office
2 22 (1.61%) Microsoft Excel
3 19 (1.39%) MS Visio
4 17 (1.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.073%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 2 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.073%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.073%) Primavera
2 1 (0.073%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.073%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 458 (33.48%) Azure
2 298 (21.78%) AWS
3 127 (9.28%) GCP
4 120 (8.77%) Microsoft 365
5 115 (8.41%) Entra ID
6 63 (4.61%) GitHub
7 62 (4.53%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 61 (4.46%) IaaS
9 55 (4.02%) PaaS
10 51 (3.73%) Azure DevOps
11 46 (3.36%) Azure Monitor
11 46 (3.36%) Serverless
12 44 (3.22%) Azure Sentinel
12 44 (3.22%) SaaS
13 40 (2.92%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 39 (2.85%) GitHub Actions
15 36 (2.63%) AWS Lambda
16 35 (2.56%) AWS CloudFormation
17 33 (2.41%) Amazon EC2
18 31 (2.27%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 373 (27.27%) Network Security
2 341 (24.93%) WAN
3 339 (24.78%) VPN
4 286 (20.91%) DNS
5 255 (18.64%) LAN
6 225 (16.45%) BGP
7 199 (14.55%) OSPF
8 155 (11.33%) VLAN
9 150 (10.96%) TCP/IP
10 147 (10.75%) DHCP
11 130 (9.50%) SD-WAN
12 121 (8.85%) Wireless
13 98 (7.16%) MPLS
13 98 (7.16%) Wi-Fi
14 80 (5.85%) IPsec
15 75 (5.48%) Cisco ISE
16 68 (4.97%) Cisco ASA
17 67 (4.90%) VXLAN
18 59 (4.31%) SSL
19 58 (4.24%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (1.97%) SQL Server
2 20 (1.46%) PostgreSQL
3 18 (1.32%) Amazon RDS
3 18 (1.32%) Elasticsearch
4 11 (0.80%) Oracle Database
5 10 (0.73%) Data Lake
5 10 (0.73%) DataStage
6 9 (0.66%) Power BI
7 8 (0.58%) Data Warehouse
8 7 (0.51%) Azure SQL Database
8 7 (0.51%) MongoDB
9 6 (0.44%) MySQL
10 5 (0.37%) Relational Database
11 4 (0.29%) Amazon QuickSight
11 4 (0.29%) NoSQL
11 4 (0.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 3 (0.22%) Delta Lake
12 3 (0.22%) Oracle Exadata
12 3 (0.22%) Oracle Reports
12 3 (0.22%) Redis
Development Applications
1 77 (5.63%) JIRA
2 54 (3.95%) Jenkins
3 45 (3.29%) Git
4 42 (3.07%) GitLab
5 22 (1.61%) Sonatype Nexus
6 19 (1.39%) Bitbucket
7 16 (1.17%) Burp Suite
7 16 (1.17%) Metasploit
8 9 (0.66%) Chocolatey
9 8 (0.58%) Jaeger
10 7 (0.51%) SonarQube
11 5 (0.37%) Browser DevTools
12 4 (0.29%) Artifactory
12 4 (0.29%) CircleCI
13 2 (0.15%) Introscope
14 1 (0.073%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 1 (0.073%) Maven
14 1 (0.073%) MSI
14 1 (0.073%) PVCS
14 1 (0.073%) Subversion
General
1 352 (25.73%) Social Skills
2 166 (12.13%) Finance
3 143 (10.45%) Analytical Skills
4 107 (7.82%) Public Sector
5 99 (7.24%) Documentation Skills
6 55 (4.02%) Banking
7 43 (3.14%) Telecoms
8 32 (2.34%) Legal
9 26 (1.90%) Financial Institution
10 23 (1.68%) Manufacturing
11 20 (1.46%) Influencing Skills
12 14 (1.02%) Military
12 14 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
13 13 (0.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 13 (0.95%) Law
14 11 (0.80%) Local Government
14 11 (0.80%) Retail
15 10 (0.73%) Organisational Skills
16 8 (0.58%) Electronics
16 8 (0.58%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 386 (28.22%) Network Engineer
2 239 (17.47%) Architect
3 146 (10.67%) Senior
4 112 (8.19%) Security Engineer
5 92 (6.73%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 85 (6.21%) Network Architect
7 59 (4.31%) Azure Engineer
8 55 (4.02%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
9 52 (3.80%) Senior Network Engineer
10 47 (3.44%) Security Architect
11 46 (3.36%) Solutions Architect
12 44 (3.22%) Analyst
12 44 (3.22%) Cloud Engineer
13 40 (2.92%) Consultant
14 39 (2.85%) Lead
14 39 (2.85%) Platform Engineer
15 38 (2.78%) DevOps Engineer
16 37 (2.70%) Cisco Engineer
16 37 (2.70%) Technical Architect
17 36 (2.63%) Network Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (5.19%) 802.1X
2 38 (2.78%) SAML
3 37 (2.70%) LDAP
4 36 (2.63%) Middleware
5 35 (2.56%) OpenID
6 20 (1.46%) Kafka
6 20 (1.46%) OAuth
7 19 (1.39%) OAuth2
8 14 (1.02%) REST
9 12 (0.88%) Node.js
10 11 (0.80%) ARM Templates
11 10 (0.73%) JSON
11 10 (0.73%) OpenTelemetry
12 9 (0.66%) Spring Boot
13 8 (0.58%) Elastic Stack
14 7 (0.51%) XML
14 7 (0.51%) YAML
15 6 (0.44%) LangChain
15 6 (0.44%) PyTorch
15 6 (0.44%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 293 (21.42%) Data Centre
2 78 (5.70%) Security Posture
3 74 (5.41%) Cloud Native
4 72 (5.26%) PKI
5 49 (3.58%) Onboarding
6 47 (3.44%) Hybrid Cloud
7 41 (3.00%) Operational Technology
8 37 (2.70%) Clustering
9 35 (2.56%) Management Information System
10 33 (2.41%) Public Cloud
11 29 (2.12%) IoT
12 22 (1.61%) Cyber Threat
12 22 (1.61%) Replication
12 22 (1.61%) SCADA
13 21 (1.54%) Product Ownership
14 20 (1.46%) NHS
14 20 (1.46%) Private Cloud
15 19 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
16 18 (1.32%) Enterprise Software
17 17 (1.24%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 347 (25.37%) Windows
2 215 (15.72%) Linux
3 143 (10.45%) Windows Server
4 37 (2.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 34 (2.49%) Unix
6 30 (2.19%) VMS
7 12 (0.88%) Solaris
8 11 (0.80%) Windows Server 2019
9 10 (0.73%) AIX
10 9 (0.66%) Windows Server 2016
11 7 (0.51%) Windows 10
11 7 (0.51%) Windows 7
11 7 (0.51%) Windows Server 2003
12 4 (0.29%) CatOS
12 4 (0.29%) Mac OS
12 4 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
13 3 (0.22%) Amazon Linux
13 3 (0.22%) Data ONTAP
13 3 (0.22%) SUSE
14 2 (0.15%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 226 (16.52%) Cybersecurity
2 214 (15.64%) DevOps
3 209 (15.28%) Problem-Solving
4 184 (13.45%) Infrastructure as Code
5 182 (13.30%) CI/CD
6 169 (12.35%) Load Balancing
7 166 (12.13%) Migration
8 163 (11.92%) ITIL
9 149 (10.89%) High Availability
10 139 (10.16%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 124 (9.06%) Cloud Security
12 123 (8.99%) Agile
12 123 (8.99%) SIEM
13 121 (8.85%) Zero Trust
14 118 (8.63%) Change Management
15 99 (7.24%) Incident Response
16 95 (6.94%) Roadmaps
17 92 (6.73%) Mentoring
18 91 (6.65%) Identity Access Management
18 91 (6.65%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 200 (14.62%) Python
2 195 (14.25%) PowerShell
3 95 (6.94%) Bash
4 58 (4.24%) SQL
5 41 (3.00%) Bicep
6 32 (2.34%) Java
7 25 (1.83%) Perl
8 12 (0.88%) Kusto Query Language
9 10 (0.73%) COBOL
9 10 (0.73%) Ruby
10 8 (0.58%) JavaScript
10 8 (0.58%) Rust
11 6 (0.44%) PL/SQL
12 5 (0.37%) Shell Script
13 4 (0.29%) C#
13 4 (0.29%) Go
14 2 (0.15%) C++
14 2 (0.15%) Jython
14 2 (0.15%) PHP
15 1 (0.073%) ActionScript
Qualifications
1 487 (35.60%) Security Cleared
2 335 (24.49%) SC Cleared
3 258 (18.86%) Cisco Certification
4 208 (15.20%) CCNP
5 130 (9.50%) DV Cleared
6 123 (8.99%) Degree
7 107 (7.82%) CCNA
8 82 (5.99%) CISSP
9 62 (4.53%) Azure Certification
10 50 (3.65%) CCIE
11 46 (3.36%) AWS Certification
11 46 (3.36%) CISM
12 40 (2.92%) Microsoft Certification
13 26 (1.90%) CompTIA Security+
13 26 (1.90%) JNCIS
14 25 (1.83%) JNCIP
15 23 (1.68%) Computer Science Degree
16 20 (1.46%) JNCIA
17 18 (1.32%) CREST Certified
17 18 (1.32%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 102 (7.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 78 (5.70%) NIST
3 69 (5.04%) GDPR
4 45 (3.29%) PCI DSS
5 39 (2.85%) NCSC
6 31 (2.27%) SLA
7 27 (1.97%) Cyber Essentials
8 21 (1.54%) QA
9 16 (1.17%) PMO
10 9 (0.66%) JSP 440
11 6 (0.44%) Actionable Recommendations
11 6 (0.44%) GRC
11 6 (0.44%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 5 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 5 (0.37%) RMADS
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%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 243 (17.76%) Active Directory
2 181 (13.23%) VMware Infrastructure
3 86 (6.29%) Docker
4 72 (5.26%) VMware NSX
5 44 (3.22%) Hyper-V
6 39 (2.85%) vSphere
7 32 (2.34%) Virtual Machines
8 30 (2.19%) VMware ESXi
9 20 (1.46%) Virtual Desktop
10 19 (1.39%) Firmware
11 12 (0.88%) Squid
12 9 (0.66%) BitLocker
13 8 (0.58%) Microsoft App-V
14 7 (0.51%) Virtual Servers
15 3 (0.22%) DFS Replication
15 3 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
16 2 (0.15%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 2 (0.15%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 2 (0.15%) KVM
16 2 (0.15%) NetIQ eDirectory
Systems Management
1 210 (15.35%) Terraform
2 148 (10.82%) Ansible
3 124 (9.06%) Kubernetes
4 99 (7.24%) FortiGate
5 62 (4.53%) Microsoft Intune
6 44 (3.22%) Single Sign-On
7 43 (3.14%) Grafana
8 36 (2.63%) Prometheus
9 35 (2.56%) SCCM
10 32 (2.34%) vCenter Server
11 26 (1.90%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 18 (1.32%) Nmap
13 14 (1.02%) CASB
13 14 (1.02%) QRadar
14 13 (0.95%) Nagios
15 12 (0.88%) Cisco Prime
16 11 (0.80%) VxRail
17 10 (0.73%) Nessus
17 10 (0.73%) Puppet
17 10 (0.73%) WSUS
Vendors
1 467 (34.14%) Cisco
2 306 (22.37%) Microsoft
3 274 (20.03%) Palo Alto
4 224 (16.37%) VMware
5 156 (11.40%) Fortinet
6 153 (11.18%) F5
7 148 (10.82%) Juniper
8 127 (9.28%) CheckPoint
9 91 (6.65%) Splunk
10 84 (6.14%) Aruba
11 71 (5.19%) SolarWinds
12 60 (4.39%) Google
13 57 (4.17%) ServiceNow
14 55 (4.02%) Meraki
15 46 (3.36%) Citrix
16 44 (3.22%) Zscaler
17 41 (3.00%) Arista
17 41 (3.00%) Red Hat
18 39 (2.85%) Oracle
19 26 (1.90%) Extreme Networks