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

6 months to
24 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 87 52 54
Rank change year-on-year -35 +2 -7
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,380 1,286 1,514
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.71% 4.28% 3.48%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 28.63% 34.58% 28.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 890 760 943
10th Percentile £350 £319 £290
25th Percentile £413 £412 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £613
90th Percentile £650 £688 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% +3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 23 47
10th Percentile £28.00 £14.20 £16.98
25th Percentile £37.25 £14.66 £23.86
Median hourly rate £56.00 £30.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +86.67% -50.00% -4.08%
75th Percentile £70.11 £41.25 £85.65
90th Percentile £78.50 £44.65 £87.49
UK excluding London median hourly rate £56.00 £30.00 £82.38
% change year-on-year +86.67% -63.58% +31.71%

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 4,820 3,719 5,374
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.47% 12.38% 12.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,962 2,279 3,175
10th Percentile £250 £225 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £470 £490
% change year-on-year +2.13% -3.98% +3.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 298 176 426
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £20.56 £21.00 £17.69
Median hourly rate £27.94 £45.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -37.91% +12.50% +110.53%
75th Percentile £65.00 £61.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.08 £77.50 £72.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.72 £36.50 £47.50
% change year-on-year -26.79% -23.16% +150.00%

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 24 June 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 24 June 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 24 June 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 -41 1,171 £500 - 461
UK excluding London -32 789 £500 +5.26% 436
London -56 434 £500 -4.76% 105
Work from Home -35 395 £520 +4.00% 196
North of England -20 278 £500 +5.26% 101
South East -25 219 £514 +2.75% 156
North West -8 178 £537 +13.65% 56
Yorkshire -37 84 £425 -13.18% 33
Midlands -57 77 £433 -10.39% 63
East of England -10 70 £505 -2.88% 51
Scotland +9 64 £456 +4.29% 22
West Midlands -56 64 £425 -19.05% 40
South West -46 62 £525 +8.25% 39
Wales -17 25 £425 +30.77% 6
North East -15 22 £625 +25.00% 14
East Midlands -32 10 £500 +11.11% 23
Northern Ireland -7 2 £385 - 12

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 37 (2.68%) Microsoft Exchange
2 31 (2.25%) Confluence
3 23 (1.67%) SharePoint
4 14 (1.01%) nginx
5 10 (0.72%) Apache
5 10 (0.72%) CICS
6 5 (0.36%) IIS
6 5 (0.36%) SAS
7 4 (0.29%) Tomcat
8 3 (0.22%) Skype for Business
9 2 (0.14%) Apache Pulsar
9 2 (0.14%) CloudStack
9 2 (0.14%) CMS
9 2 (0.14%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.14%) Oracle HTTP Server
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 (0.072%) MTS
Applications
1 24 (1.74%) MS Visio
2 21 (1.52%) Microsoft Office
3 19 (1.38%) Microsoft Excel
4 11 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 8 (0.58%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.072%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 1 (0.072%) Dynamics GP
1 1 (0.072%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.072%) Primavera
1 1 (0.072%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.072%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 464 (33.62%) Azure
2 303 (21.96%) AWS
3 125 (9.06%) Entra ID
4 116 (8.41%) GCP
5 103 (7.46%) Microsoft 365
6 72 (5.22%) GitHub
7 65 (4.71%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 57 (4.13%) IaaS
9 53 (3.84%) Azure DevOps
10 49 (3.55%) SaaS
11 40 (2.90%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 40 (2.90%) PaaS
12 38 (2.75%) Azure Monitor
13 37 (2.68%) OCI
14 35 (2.54%) Serverless
15 34 (2.46%) Azure Sentinel
15 34 (2.46%) GitHub Actions
16 29 (2.10%) Amazon EC2
17 28 (2.03%) Google Kubernetes Engine
18 27 (1.96%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 393 (28.48%) Network Security
2 386 (27.97%) WAN
3 358 (25.94%) VPN
4 301 (21.81%) DNS
5 282 (20.43%) LAN
6 245 (17.75%) BGP
7 204 (14.78%) OSPF
8 178 (12.90%) VLAN
9 162 (11.74%) TCP/IP
10 160 (11.59%) SD-WAN
11 152 (11.01%) DHCP
12 145 (10.51%) Wireless
13 112 (8.12%) Wi-Fi
14 101 (7.32%) BIG-IP
15 92 (6.67%) VXLAN
16 91 (6.59%) MPLS
17 86 (6.23%) IPsec
18 81 (5.87%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
19 79 (5.72%) SSL
20 75 (5.43%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (1.38%) SQL Server
2 17 (1.23%) Elasticsearch
3 16 (1.16%) Power BI
4 14 (1.01%) PostgreSQL
5 11 (0.80%) Amazon RDS
6 10 (0.72%) DataStage
7 9 (0.65%) Azure SQL Database
7 9 (0.65%) Data Lake
7 9 (0.65%) Oracle Database
8 8 (0.58%) MySQL
9 6 (0.43%) Data Warehouse
10 5 (0.36%) Relational Database
11 4 (0.29%) Amazon Athena
11 4 (0.29%) Amazon QuickSight
11 4 (0.29%) Amazon Redshift
11 4 (0.29%) Delta Lake
11 4 (0.29%) NoSQL
12 3 (0.22%) Amazon Aurora
12 3 (0.22%) Big Data
12 3 (0.22%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 97 (7.03%) JIRA
2 57 (4.13%) Jenkins
3 41 (2.97%) GitLab
4 40 (2.90%) Git
5 15 (1.09%) Sonatype Nexus
6 10 (0.72%) Artifactory
6 10 (0.72%) Burp Suite
7 9 (0.65%) Bitbucket
7 9 (0.65%) Chocolatey
7 9 (0.65%) SonarQube
8 8 (0.58%) Metasploit
9 6 (0.43%) Jaeger
10 5 (0.36%) Browser DevTools
11 2 (0.14%) Cucumber
11 2 (0.14%) Gatling
11 2 (0.14%) Gradle
11 2 (0.14%) LoadRunner
11 2 (0.14%) MSI
11 2 (0.14%) REST Assured
11 2 (0.14%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 302 (21.88%) Social Skills
2 174 (12.61%) Finance
3 119 (8.62%) Analytical Skills
4 104 (7.54%) Public Sector
5 82 (5.94%) Documentation Skills
6 58 (4.20%) Banking
7 39 (2.83%) Telecoms
8 36 (2.61%) Legal
9 22 (1.59%) Financial Institution
9 22 (1.59%) Manufacturing
10 18 (1.30%) Military
11 17 (1.23%) Influencing Skills
12 13 (0.94%) Law
12 13 (0.94%) Retail
13 11 (0.80%) Investment Banking
13 11 (0.80%) Local Government
13 11 (0.80%) Organisational Skills
14 9 (0.65%) Front Office
14 9 (0.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 9 (0.65%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 441 (31.96%) Network Engineer
2 221 (16.01%) Architect
3 166 (12.03%) Senior
4 126 (9.13%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 115 (8.33%) Security Engineer
6 73 (5.29%) Network Architect
7 71 (5.14%) Cloud Engineer
8 70 (5.07%) Senior Network Engineer
9 57 (4.13%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
10 56 (4.06%) Azure Engineer
11 53 (3.84%) Network Security Engineer
12 50 (3.62%) Technical Architect
13 46 (3.33%) Consultant
14 44 (3.19%) Lead
15 43 (3.12%) DevOps Engineer
16 40 (2.90%) Security Architect
17 39 (2.83%) Cisco Engineer
18 36 (2.61%) Cisco Network Engineer
19 35 (2.54%) Analyst
19 35 (2.54%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 70 (5.07%) 802.1X
2 40 (2.90%) Middleware
3 35 (2.54%) LDAP
4 27 (1.96%) SAML
5 23 (1.67%) OpenID
6 13 (0.94%) Kafka
7 12 (0.87%) OAuth
8 11 (0.80%) OAuth2
8 11 (0.80%) REST
9 10 (0.72%) ARM Templates
10 9 (0.65%) LangChain
10 9 (0.65%) OpenTelemetry
10 9 (0.65%) PyTorch
10 9 (0.65%) scikit-learn
11 8 (0.58%) .NET
11 8 (0.58%) Spring Boot
12 7 (0.51%) YAML
13 6 (0.43%) React
13 6 (0.43%) SailPoint
14 5 (0.36%) Jinja
Miscellaneous
1 332 (24.06%) Data Centre
2 90 (6.52%) Cloud Native
3 84 (6.09%) Security Posture
4 74 (5.36%) Hybrid Cloud
5 59 (4.28%) PKI
6 53 (3.84%) Onboarding
7 47 (3.41%) Management Information System
8 41 (2.97%) Clustering
9 38 (2.75%) Operational Technology
10 30 (2.17%) Data Protection Act
10 30 (2.17%) Public Cloud
11 29 (2.10%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 26 (1.88%) IoT
13 24 (1.74%) Enterprise Storage
14 23 (1.67%) Cyber Threat
15 19 (1.38%) SCADA
16 16 (1.16%) Enterprise Software
16 16 (1.16%) Linux Command Line
16 16 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
17 15 (1.09%) BYOD
Operating Systems
1 304 (22.03%) Windows
2 179 (12.97%) Linux
3 108 (7.83%) Windows Server
4 42 (3.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 29 (2.10%) Unix
6 23 (1.67%) VMS
7 13 (0.94%) Windows Server 2019
8 11 (0.80%) Solaris
9 10 (0.72%) AIX
9 10 (0.72%) Ubuntu
10 9 (0.65%) Windows Server 2016
11 7 (0.51%) Windows Server 2003
12 6 (0.43%) CentOS
13 5 (0.36%) Mac OS
13 5 (0.36%) Windows 10
13 5 (0.36%) Windows Server 2012
14 4 (0.29%) Android
14 4 (0.29%) SUSE
15 3 (0.22%) Amazon Linux
15 3 (0.22%) CatOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 234 (16.96%) DevOps
2 210 (15.22%) CI/CD
3 205 (14.86%) Infrastructure as Code
4 196 (14.20%) Load Balancing
5 192 (13.91%) Migration
6 180 (13.04%) High Availability
7 171 (12.39%) Cybersecurity
8 167 (12.10%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 166 (12.03%) Problem-Solving
10 160 (11.59%) ITIL
11 155 (11.23%) Agile
12 148 (10.72%) Zero Trust
13 120 (8.70%) SIEM
14 111 (8.04%) Change Management
15 108 (7.83%) Validation
16 107 (7.75%) Observability
17 106 (7.68%) Project Delivery
18 103 (7.46%) Cloud Security
19 101 (7.32%) Roadmaps
20 97 (7.03%) Network Segmentation
Programming Languages
1 236 (17.10%) Python
2 146 (10.58%) PowerShell
3 88 (6.38%) Bash
4 44 (3.19%) SQL
5 40 (2.90%) Bicep
6 31 (2.25%) Java
7 11 (0.80%) ActionScript
8 10 (0.72%) COBOL
8 10 (0.72%) Perl
9 6 (0.43%) Groovy
9 6 (0.43%) JavaScript
9 6 (0.43%) Kusto Query Language
10 5 (0.36%) C++
10 5 (0.36%) PL/SQL
10 5 (0.36%) Rust
11 4 (0.29%) Go
12 3 (0.22%) Shell Script
13 2 (0.14%) C
13 2 (0.14%) Jython
13 2 (0.14%) PHP
Qualifications
1 459 (33.26%) Security Cleared
2 337 (24.42%) SC Cleared
3 283 (20.51%) Cisco Certification
4 212 (15.36%) CCNP
5 119 (8.62%) CCNA
6 116 (8.41%) Degree
7 101 (7.32%) DV Cleared
8 68 (4.93%) CISSP
9 56 (4.06%) Azure Certification
10 42 (3.04%) CCIE
11 39 (2.83%) AWS Certification
12 33 (2.39%) Microsoft Certification
13 31 (2.25%) CISM
14 21 (1.52%) Network+ Certification
15 18 (1.30%) Computer Science Degree
15 18 (1.30%) JNCIS
15 18 (1.30%) PMP
16 17 (1.23%) JNCIA
16 17 (1.23%) Server+ Certification
17 16 (1.16%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 72 (5.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 56 (4.06%) NIST
3 47 (3.41%) GDPR
4 33 (2.39%) NCSC
5 31 (2.25%) PCI DSS
6 26 (1.88%) QA
7 23 (1.67%) SLA
8 22 (1.59%) Cyber Essentials
9 9 (0.65%) PMO
10 8 (0.58%) Data Quality
10 8 (0.58%) Disclosure Scotland
11 7 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
12 6 (0.43%) GRC
12 6 (0.43%) NIST 800
13 5 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 5 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 5 (0.36%) RMADS
14 4 (0.29%) GxP
14 4 (0.29%) JSP 440
14 4 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 201 (14.57%) Active Directory
2 147 (10.65%) VMware Infrastructure
3 56 (4.06%) VMware NSX
4 51 (3.70%) Docker
5 37 (2.68%) VMware ESXi
5 37 (2.68%) vSphere
6 36 (2.61%) Virtual Machines
7 33 (2.39%) Hyper-V
8 25 (1.81%) Firmware
9 21 (1.52%) Virtual Desktop
10 16 (1.16%) Squid
11 13 (0.94%) BitLocker
12 9 (0.65%) Microsoft App-V
13 4 (0.29%) Terminal Services
14 3 (0.22%) Dovecot
14 3 (0.22%) EMC RecoverPoint
14 3 (0.22%) NFS
14 3 (0.22%) Postfix
15 2 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
15 2 (0.14%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 244 (17.68%) Terraform
2 173 (12.54%) Ansible
3 114 (8.26%) FortiGate
4 104 (7.54%) Kubernetes
5 62 (4.49%) Grafana
6 58 (4.20%) Prometheus
7 51 (3.70%) Microsoft Intune
8 37 (2.68%) Single Sign-On
9 30 (2.17%) SCCM
10 25 (1.81%) vCenter Server
11 19 (1.38%) Puppet
12 17 (1.23%) Progress Chef
13 16 (1.16%) CASB
14 14 (1.01%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 12 (0.87%) Cisco Prime
16 11 (0.80%) Consul
16 11 (0.80%) QRadar
17 10 (0.72%) Nmap
17 10 (0.72%) VxRail
18 9 (0.65%) vMotion
Vendors
1 494 (35.80%) Cisco
2 304 (22.03%) Palo Alto
3 278 (20.14%) Microsoft
4 198 (14.35%) Fortinet
5 192 (13.91%) F5
6 190 (13.77%) VMware
7 153 (11.09%) Juniper
8 124 (8.99%) CheckPoint
9 86 (6.23%) Aruba
10 80 (5.80%) Splunk
11 73 (5.29%) Arista
12 71 (5.14%) ServiceNow
13 68 (4.93%) SolarWinds
14 67 (4.86%) Google
15 55 (3.99%) Zscaler
16 43 (3.12%) Red Hat
17 38 (2.75%) Citrix
18 34 (2.46%) Meraki
19 31 (2.25%) Infoblox
20 28 (2.03%) Dynatrace