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

6 months to
29 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 100 59 59
Rank change year-on-year -41 0 -11
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,413 1,327 1,330
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.62% 4.03% 3.45%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 27.65% 34.12% 28.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 879 789 845
10th Percentile £350 £325 £313
25th Percentile £419 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £595 £622
90th Percentile £658 £675 £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 5,110 3,889 4,614
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.48% 11.80% 11.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,012 2,381 2,747
10th Percentile £250 £238 £227
25th Percentile £400 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £470 £500
% change year-on-year +2.13% -6.00% +9.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 376 202 294
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% -9.62%
75th Percentile £65.06 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £79.50 £74.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.81 £42.50 £54.94
% change year-on-year -39.28% -22.64% -2.75%

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 29 August 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 29 August 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 29 August 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 -38 1,233 £503 +0.60% 830
UK excluding London -28 780 £500 +2.56% 534
London -55 490 £500 - 380
Work from Home -31 403 £520 +4.00% 340
North of England -9 276 £500 +5.26% 111
South East -43 200 £520 +4.00% 182
North West +1 171 £500 +5.26% 64
South West -20 86 £553 +10.60% 60
Yorkshire -36 85 £450 -8.07% 32
East of England -3 77 £525 -4.55% 53
Midlands -76 73 £472 -0.74% 90
Scotland -6 63 £400 -11.11% 26
West Midlands -73 56 £450 -5.26% 57
North East -14 26 £500 -13.04% 17
East Midlands -15 15 £500 +1.63% 33
Wales -16 13 £425 +61.90% 8
Northern Ireland -8 1 - - 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 49 (3.47%) Microsoft Exchange
2 36 (2.55%) SharePoint
3 29 (2.05%) Confluence
4 13 (0.92%) Apache
5 12 (0.85%) nginx
6 11 (0.78%) SAS
7 4 (0.28%) FactoryTalk
7 4 (0.28%) IIS
7 4 (0.28%) Tomcat
8 3 (0.21%) CloudStack
8 3 (0.21%) Skype for Business
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%) 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 (1.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 22 (1.56%) Microsoft Office
2 22 (1.56%) MS Visio
3 12 (0.85%) Microsoft Project
4 6 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.071%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 5 (0.35%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.14%) Bloomberg TOMS
2 2 (0.14%) Dynamics GP
2 2 (0.14%) Eikon
2 2 (0.14%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.071%) Oracle Retail
3 1 (0.071%) Primavera
3 1 (0.071%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 535 (37.86%) Azure
2 324 (22.93%) AWS
3 167 (11.82%) Entra ID
4 130 (9.20%) Microsoft 365
5 107 (7.57%) GCP
6 75 (5.31%) GitHub
7 74 (5.24%) Azure DevOps
8 61 (4.32%) IaaS
9 60 (4.25%) SaaS
10 57 (4.03%) Azure Monitor
11 49 (3.47%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 47 (3.33%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 43 (3.04%) Azure Sentinel
14 38 (2.69%) GitHub Actions
14 38 (2.69%) PaaS
14 38 (2.69%) Serverless
15 37 (2.62%) OCI
16 27 (1.91%) AWS CloudFormation
17 26 (1.84%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 26 (1.84%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 425 (30.08%) VPN
2 401 (28.38%) Network Security
3 383 (27.11%) WAN
4 367 (25.97%) DNS
5 272 (19.25%) LAN
6 256 (18.12%) BGP
7 215 (15.22%) DHCP
8 214 (15.15%) TCP/IP
9 196 (13.87%) VLAN
10 193 (13.66%) OSPF
11 168 (11.89%) Wireless
12 143 (10.12%) SD-WAN
13 130 (9.20%) Wi-Fi
14 88 (6.23%) Cisco ASA
15 85 (6.02%) IPsec
16 83 (5.87%) MPLS
17 80 (5.66%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
18 79 (5.59%) BIG-IP
19 74 (5.24%) SSL
20 71 (5.02%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (2.34%) SQL Server
2 20 (1.42%) PostgreSQL
3 18 (1.27%) Amazon RDS
4 16 (1.13%) Power BI
5 12 (0.85%) Relational Database
6 10 (0.71%) Azure SQL Database
7 9 (0.64%) Oracle Database
8 8 (0.57%) Amazon Aurora
8 8 (0.57%) Data Lake
8 8 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
9 6 (0.42%) NoSQL
10 5 (0.35%) Delta Lake
10 5 (0.35%) MySQL
11 4 (0.28%) Data Warehouse
11 4 (0.28%) 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 93 (6.58%) JIRA
2 59 (4.18%) Jenkins
3 49 (3.47%) GitLab
4 47 (3.33%) Git
5 14 (0.99%) Sonatype Nexus
6 9 (0.64%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.50%) Artifactory
8 6 (0.42%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 5 (0.35%) Browser DevTools
9 5 (0.35%) Chocolatey
10 4 (0.28%) MSI
10 4 (0.28%) SonarQube
11 3 (0.21%) Burp Suite
12 2 (0.14%) Gradle
12 2 (0.14%) Introscope
12 2 (0.14%) LoadRunner
12 2 (0.14%) Maven
12 2 (0.14%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 2 (0.14%) Team Foundation Server
12 2 (0.14%) Vagrant
General
1 312 (22.08%) Social Skills
2 179 (12.67%) Finance
3 148 (10.47%) Analytical Skills
4 117 (8.28%) Public Sector
5 85 (6.02%) Banking
6 59 (4.18%) Documentation Skills
7 56 (3.96%) Telecoms
8 30 (2.12%) Manufacturing
9 29 (2.05%) Legal
10 23 (1.63%) Retail
11 18 (1.27%) Local Government
12 17 (1.20%) Military
13 16 (1.13%) Financial Institution
14 14 (0.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 13 (0.92%) Influencing Skills
15 13 (0.92%) Police
16 11 (0.78%) Aerospace
16 11 (0.78%) Investment Banking
16 11 (0.78%) Organisational Skills
17 10 (0.71%) Law
Job Titles
1 444 (31.42%) Network Engineer
2 224 (15.85%) Senior
3 180 (12.74%) Architect
4 160 (11.32%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 103 (7.29%) Security Engineer
6 99 (7.01%) Senior Network Engineer
7 79 (5.59%) Cloud Engineer
8 69 (4.88%) Consultant
9 63 (4.46%) Azure Engineer
10 58 (4.10%) Network Architect
11 56 (3.96%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 54 (3.82%) Network Security Engineer
13 50 (3.54%) DevOps Engineer
13 50 (3.54%) Lead
13 50 (3.54%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
14 46 (3.26%) Security Architect
15 43 (3.04%) Platform Engineer
16 42 (2.97%) Cisco Engineer
17 40 (2.83%) Cisco Network Engineer
18 38 (2.69%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 296 (20.95%) Terraform
2 48 (3.40%) 802.1X
3 34 (2.41%) Middleware
4 29 (2.05%) SAML
5 26 (1.84%) ARM Templates
6 18 (1.27%) OpenID
7 15 (1.06%) LDAP
7 15 (1.06%) REST
8 14 (0.99%) OAuth
9 11 (0.78%) Kafka
9 11 (0.78%) OAuth2
9 11 (0.78%) YAML
10 10 (0.71%) React
11 8 (0.57%) .NET
12 7 (0.50%) Elastic Stack
12 7 (0.50%) JSON
12 7 (0.50%) OpenTelemetry
12 7 (0.50%) SailPoint
13 5 (0.35%) ModSecurity
13 5 (0.35%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 301 (21.30%) Data Centre
2 102 (7.22%) Hybrid Cloud
3 81 (5.73%) PKI
4 79 (5.59%) Cloud Native
5 61 (4.32%) Onboarding
6 53 (3.75%) Management Information System
7 50 (3.54%) Security Posture
8 48 (3.40%) Operational Technology
9 32 (2.26%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 29 (2.05%) Data Protection Act
10 29 (2.05%) IoT
11 28 (1.98%) Public Cloud
12 24 (1.70%) Driving Licence
12 24 (1.70%) Replication
12 24 (1.70%) Self-Motivation
13 23 (1.63%) Clustering
13 23 (1.63%) Enterprise Software
13 23 (1.63%) SCADA
14 22 (1.56%) Enterprise Storage
15 21 (1.49%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 354 (25.05%) Windows
2 222 (15.71%) Linux
3 150 (10.62%) Windows Server
4 46 (3.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 26 (1.84%) Unix
6 25 (1.77%) Ubuntu
7 21 (1.49%) VMS
8 15 (1.06%) Mac OS
9 13 (0.92%) CentOS
9 13 (0.92%) Windows Server 2019
10 9 (0.64%) Windows Server 2016
11 8 (0.57%) Amazon Linux
11 8 (0.57%) Windows Server 2012
12 7 (0.50%) Rocky
12 7 (0.50%) Windows 10
13 6 (0.42%) Android
13 6 (0.42%) Windows Server 2003
14 5 (0.35%) Apple iOS
15 4 (0.28%) SUSE
16 3 (0.21%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 251 (17.76%) DevOps
2 247 (17.48%) Infrastructure as Code
3 232 (16.42%) CI/CD
4 226 (15.99%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 204 (14.44%) Cybersecurity
6 201 (14.23%) Migration
7 198 (14.01%) Load Balancing
8 194 (13.73%) Problem-Solving
9 189 (13.38%) ITIL
10 168 (11.89%) High Availability
11 166 (11.75%) Zero Trust
12 163 (11.54%) Agile
13 145 (10.26%) Stakeholder Management
14 139 (9.84%) Change Management
14 139 (9.84%) Project Delivery
15 128 (9.06%) SIEM
16 117 (8.28%) Technical Leadership
17 116 (8.21%) Validation
18 109 (7.71%) Incident Response
19 108 (7.64%) Cloud Security
Programming Languages
1 277 (19.60%) Python
2 222 (15.71%) PowerShell
3 134 (9.48%) Bash
4 55 (3.89%) Bicep
5 47 (3.33%) SQL
6 37 (2.62%) Java
7 12 (0.85%) Groovy
7 12 (0.85%) Kusto Query Language
8 11 (0.78%) Perl
9 10 (0.71%) ActionScript
10 6 (0.42%) Go
10 6 (0.42%) Search Processing Language
10 6 (0.42%) Shell Script
11 4 (0.28%) JavaScript
11 4 (0.28%) TypeScript
12 3 (0.21%) C++
12 3 (0.21%) PL/SQL
13 2 (0.14%) COBOL
13 2 (0.14%) Jython
13 2 (0.14%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 482 (34.11%) Security Cleared
2 342 (24.20%) SC Cleared
3 244 (17.27%) Cisco Certification
4 184 (13.02%) CCNP
5 124 (8.78%) DV Cleared
6 115 (8.14%) Degree
7 96 (6.79%) CCNA
8 75 (5.31%) CISSP
9 72 (5.10%) Azure Certification
10 52 (3.68%) AWS Certification
11 37 (2.62%) CCIE
12 34 (2.41%) Microsoft Certification
13 33 (2.34%) CISM
14 29 (2.05%) Computer Science Degree
15 20 (1.42%) PMP
16 18 (1.27%) PMI Certification
17 17 (1.20%) CEH
17 17 (1.20%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 15 (1.06%) JNCIS
18 15 (1.06%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 78 (5.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 63 (4.46%) NIST
3 44 (3.11%) GDPR
4 27 (1.91%) NCSC
5 25 (1.77%) QA
6 24 (1.70%) PCI DSS
7 22 (1.56%) SLA
8 21 (1.49%) Cyber Essentials
9 9 (0.64%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 9 (0.64%) Data Quality
9 9 (0.64%) JSP 440
9 9 (0.64%) NIST 800
10 8 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 7 (0.50%) Disclosure Scotland
11 7 (0.50%) GxP
12 6 (0.42%) HIPAA
13 5 (0.35%) COBIT
14 4 (0.28%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 3 (0.21%) PMO
15 3 (0.21%) RMADS
System Software
1 237 (16.77%) Active Directory
2 187 (13.23%) VMware Infrastructure
3 74 (5.24%) Hyper-V
4 73 (5.17%) Docker
5 58 (4.10%) VMware NSX
6 48 (3.40%) vSphere
7 44 (3.11%) VMware ESXi
8 42 (2.97%) Virtual Machines
9 27 (1.91%) Firmware
10 14 (0.99%) Virtual Desktop
11 10 (0.71%) BitLocker
11 10 (0.71%) Squid
12 7 (0.50%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.42%) NFS
14 5 (0.35%) Dovecot
14 5 (0.35%) Postfix
15 4 (0.28%) Terminal Services
15 4 (0.28%) Virtual Servers
16 3 (0.21%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 3 (0.21%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 215 (15.22%) Ansible
2 127 (8.99%) Kubernetes
3 93 (6.58%) FortiGate
4 72 (5.10%) Microsoft Intune
5 59 (4.18%) Grafana
6 56 (3.96%) Prometheus
7 39 (2.76%) SCCM
8 34 (2.41%) Single Sign-On
9 28 (1.98%) Progress Chef
10 25 (1.77%) vCenter Server
11 17 (1.20%) VxRail
12 16 (1.13%) Puppet
13 13 (0.92%) CASB
13 13 (0.92%) 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%) NetBackup
16 8 (0.57%) QRadar
Vendors
1 517 (36.59%) Cisco
2 346 (24.49%) Microsoft
3 313 (22.15%) Palo Alto
4 232 (16.42%) VMware
5 202 (14.30%) Fortinet
6 179 (12.67%) F5
7 129 (9.13%) Juniper
8 124 (8.78%) CheckPoint
9 68 (4.81%) ServiceNow
10 67 (4.74%) Splunk
11 62 (4.39%) Arista
11 62 (4.39%) Aruba
12 61 (4.32%) Zscaler
13 60 (4.25%) Google
14 56 (3.96%) SolarWinds
15 55 (3.89%) Meraki
16 42 (2.97%) Citrix
17 36 (2.55%) Red Hat
18 30 (2.12%) Infoblox
19 28 (1.98%) Dynatrace