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 18 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 84 47 50
Rank change year-on-year -37 +3 +9
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,322 1,277 1,663
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.06% 4.36% 3.74%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.26% 32.53% 27.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 874 764 1,033
10th Percentile £332 £325 £313
25th Percentile £413 £413 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £519 £507
Median % change year-on-year -3.57% +2.27% -3.43%
75th Percentile £588 £601 £625
90th Percentile £650 £700 £742
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 19 42
10th Percentile £25.65 £14.20 £16.00
25th Percentile £37.25 £28.78 £23.92
Median hourly rate £42.71 £37.00 £64.00
Median % change year-on-year +15.42% -42.19% +15.69%
75th Percentile £74.26 £41.74 £82.43
90th Percentile £85.60 £73.75 £87.48
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.36 £37.07 £72.50
% change year-on-year +41.24% -48.87% +31.06%

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 4,369 3,926 5,953
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.10% 13.39% 13.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,821 2,412 3,581
10th Percentile £213 £213 £205
25th Percentile £369 £370 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% +5.26% -9.34%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
Number of hourly rates quoted 185 142 396
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.01 £14.08
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £18.70
Median hourly rate £37.50 £35.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% +7.69% +71.05%
75th Percentile £67.25 £63.06 £63.75
90th Percentile £78.70 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.10 £32.50 £45.88
% change year-on-year +29.52% -29.16% +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 18 March 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 18 March 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 18 March 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 -40 1,110 £513 -2.38% 500
UK excluding London -23 744 £500 - 447
London -57 403 £525 - 127
Work from Home -27 377 £504 -0.25% 199
North of England -22 235 £500 - 106
South East +8 229 £500 - 161
North West -12 155 £527 +8.00% 63
Midlands -41 94 £425 -22.73% 55
West Midlands -23 85 £425 -11.23% 25
Yorkshire -23 78 £440 -20.00% 31
South West -46 56 £550 +0.92% 37
Scotland -6 53 £438 - 21
East of England -20 51 £475 -13.64% 61
Wales -19 25 £425 +9.68% 19
East Midlands -61 7 £475 -20.83% 30
North East -16 5 £548 -0.45% 12
Northern Ireland - 3 £500 - 3

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 47 (3.56%) Microsoft Exchange
2 33 (2.50%) Confluence
3 21 (1.59%) SharePoint
4 13 (0.98%) Apache
5 12 (0.91%) nginx
6 8 (0.61%) CICS
7 7 (0.53%) SAS
8 6 (0.45%) IIS
9 4 (0.30%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.15%) Apache Pulsar
10 2 (0.15%) Skype for Business
10 2 (0.15%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.15%) WebSphere
11 1 (0.076%) Anypoint
11 1 (0.076%) IBM HTTP Server
11 1 (0.076%) JBoss
11 1 (0.076%) Oracle HTTP Server
11 1 (0.076%) WebSphere Application Server
11 1 (0.076%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 36 (2.72%) Microsoft Office
2 22 (1.66%) Microsoft Excel
3 21 (1.59%) MS Visio
4 17 (1.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.45%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.076%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 2 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.076%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.076%) Primavera
2 1 (0.076%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.076%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 451 (34.11%) Azure
2 303 (22.92%) AWS
3 136 (10.29%) GCP
4 120 (9.08%) Microsoft 365
5 114 (8.62%) Entra ID
6 67 (5.07%) GitHub
7 65 (4.92%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 58 (4.39%) IaaS
9 52 (3.93%) PaaS
10 51 (3.86%) Azure DevOps
11 45 (3.40%) Azure Sentinel
12 43 (3.25%) Azure Monitor
13 42 (3.18%) Serverless
14 38 (2.87%) GitHub Actions
15 35 (2.65%) Amazon EC2
15 35 (2.65%) AWS CloudFormation
15 35 (2.65%) AWS Lambda
16 34 (2.57%) SaaS
17 33 (2.50%) Azure ExpressRoute
18 31 (2.34%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 356 (26.93%) Network Security
2 328 (24.81%) VPN
3 326 (24.66%) WAN
4 262 (19.82%) DNS
5 239 (18.08%) LAN
6 207 (15.66%) BGP
7 181 (13.69%) OSPF
8 140 (10.59%) TCP/IP
9 138 (10.44%) VLAN
10 134 (10.14%) DHCP
11 130 (9.83%) SD-WAN
12 123 (9.30%) Wireless
13 99 (7.49%) Wi-Fi
14 97 (7.34%) MPLS
15 73 (5.52%) IPsec
16 70 (5.30%) Cisco ISE
17 64 (4.84%) Cisco ASA
17 64 (4.84%) VXLAN
18 55 (4.16%) SSL
19 53 (4.01%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (2.04%) SQL Server
2 20 (1.51%) Amazon RDS
3 19 (1.44%) PostgreSQL
4 16 (1.21%) Elasticsearch
5 11 (0.83%) Oracle Database
6 10 (0.76%) Data Lake
7 9 (0.68%) Power BI
8 8 (0.61%) Data Warehouse
8 8 (0.61%) DataStage
9 7 (0.53%) Azure SQL Database
9 7 (0.53%) MongoDB
10 5 (0.38%) MySQL
10 5 (0.38%) Relational Database
11 4 (0.30%) Amazon QuickSight
11 4 (0.30%) NoSQL
11 4 (0.30%) Redis
11 4 (0.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 3 (0.23%) Delta Lake
12 3 (0.23%) DynamoDB
12 3 (0.23%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 77 (5.82%) JIRA
2 63 (4.77%) Jenkins
3 53 (4.01%) GitLab
4 50 (3.78%) Git
5 23 (1.74%) Sonatype Nexus
6 21 (1.59%) Bitbucket
7 16 (1.21%) Burp Suite
7 16 (1.21%) Metasploit
8 8 (0.61%) Chocolatey
8 8 (0.61%) Jaeger
9 7 (0.53%) SonarQube
10 4 (0.30%) Artifactory
10 4 (0.30%) CircleCI
11 3 (0.23%) Browser DevTools
12 1 (0.076%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.076%) Introscope
12 1 (0.076%) MSI
12 1 (0.076%) Postman
12 1 (0.076%) Subversion
12 1 (0.076%) Travis CI
General
1 356 (26.93%) Social Skills
2 159 (12.03%) Finance
3 137 (10.36%) Analytical Skills
4 108 (8.17%) Public Sector
5 98 (7.41%) Documentation Skills
6 54 (4.08%) Banking
7 40 (3.03%) Telecoms
8 33 (2.50%) Legal
9 26 (1.97%) Financial Institution
10 24 (1.82%) Manufacturing
11 18 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
11 18 (1.36%) Presentation Skills
12 12 (0.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 12 (0.91%) Military
13 10 (0.76%) Law
13 10 (0.76%) Local Government
13 10 (0.76%) Retail
14 8 (0.61%) Aerospace
14 8 (0.61%) Organisational Skills
15 7 (0.53%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 366 (27.69%) Network Engineer
2 232 (17.55%) Architect
3 133 (10.06%) Senior
4 117 (8.85%) Security Engineer
5 90 (6.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 82 (6.20%) Network Architect
7 53 (4.01%) Azure Engineer
8 52 (3.93%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
8 52 (3.93%) Security Architect
9 45 (3.40%) Consultant
10 44 (3.33%) Analyst
10 44 (3.33%) Cloud Engineer
11 43 (3.25%) Senior Network Engineer
12 42 (3.18%) Solutions Architect
13 38 (2.87%) Lead
13 38 (2.87%) Network Security Engineer
13 38 (2.87%) Platform Engineer
14 36 (2.72%) DevOps Engineer
15 32 (2.42%) Technical Architect
16 31 (2.34%) Cisco Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (5.37%) 802.1X
2 38 (2.87%) LDAP
3 31 (2.34%) Middleware
3 31 (2.34%) SAML
4 29 (2.19%) OpenID
5 20 (1.51%) OAuth
6 19 (1.44%) Kafka
6 19 (1.44%) OAuth2
7 14 (1.06%) Node.js
8 12 (0.91%) REST
9 11 (0.83%) JSON
10 10 (0.76%) ARM Templates
10 10 (0.76%) OpenTelemetry
11 9 (0.68%) Spring Boot
12 8 (0.61%) Elastic Stack
12 8 (0.61%) XML
13 7 (0.53%) Microsoft Graph
13 7 (0.53%) YAML
14 6 (0.45%) LangChain
14 6 (0.45%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 282 (21.33%) Data Centre
2 92 (6.96%) Security Posture
3 76 (5.75%) PKI
4 73 (5.52%) Cloud Native
5 46 (3.48%) Onboarding
6 45 (3.40%) Hybrid Cloud
7 41 (3.10%) Operational Technology
8 36 (2.72%) Public Cloud
9 35 (2.65%) Management Information System
10 31 (2.34%) Clustering
11 21 (1.59%) Cyber Threat
11 21 (1.59%) IoT
11 21 (1.59%) Product Ownership
12 20 (1.51%) Replication
12 20 (1.51%) SCADA
12 20 (1.51%) Security Operations Centre
13 19 (1.44%) Data Protection Act
13 19 (1.44%) NHS
14 18 (1.36%) Private Cloud
15 15 (1.13%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 335 (25.34%) Windows
2 204 (15.43%) Linux
3 142 (10.74%) Windows Server
4 34 (2.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 32 (2.42%) Unix
6 24 (1.82%) VMS
7 11 (0.83%) Windows Server 2019
8 9 (0.68%) Solaris
8 9 (0.68%) Windows 7
8 9 (0.68%) Windows Server 2016
9 8 (0.61%) AIX
9 8 (0.61%) Windows 10
10 6 (0.45%) Windows Server 2003
11 5 (0.38%) Mac OS
12 4 (0.30%) CatOS
12 4 (0.30%) Windows Server 2012
13 3 (0.23%) Amazon Linux
13 3 (0.23%) Android
14 2 (0.15%) Ubuntu
15 1 (0.076%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 233 (17.62%) Cybersecurity
2 211 (15.96%) Problem-Solving
3 208 (15.73%) DevOps
4 189 (14.30%) CI/CD
5 180 (13.62%) Infrastructure as Code
6 151 (11.42%) ITIL
6 151 (11.42%) Load Balancing
6 151 (11.42%) Migration
7 138 (10.44%) High Availability
8 134 (10.14%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 130 (9.83%) Cloud Security
10 128 (9.68%) SIEM
11 127 (9.61%) Agile
12 115 (8.70%) Zero Trust
13 112 (8.47%) Change Management
14 104 (7.87%) Incident Response
15 96 (7.26%) Stakeholder Management
16 91 (6.88%) Security Architecture
17 90 (6.81%) Identity Access Management
17 90 (6.81%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 203 (15.36%) Python
2 191 (14.45%) PowerShell
3 89 (6.73%) Bash
4 61 (4.61%) SQL
5 37 (2.80%) Bicep
6 36 (2.72%) Java
7 28 (2.12%) Perl
8 13 (0.98%) Kusto Query Language
9 12 (0.91%) Ruby
10 8 (0.61%) COBOL
10 8 (0.61%) JavaScript
10 8 (0.61%) Rust
11 5 (0.38%) PL/SQL
12 4 (0.30%) C#
12 4 (0.30%) Shell Script
13 3 (0.23%) Go
14 2 (0.15%) C++
14 2 (0.15%) PHP
15 1 (0.076%) Jython
15 1 (0.076%) Korn
Qualifications
1 461 (34.87%) Security Cleared
2 312 (23.60%) SC Cleared
3 254 (19.21%) Cisco Certification
4 203 (15.36%) CCNP
5 127 (9.61%) DV Cleared
6 116 (8.77%) Degree
7 106 (8.02%) CCNA
8 88 (6.66%) CISSP
9 54 (4.08%) Azure Certification
10 51 (3.86%) CCIE
11 49 (3.71%) CISM
12 46 (3.48%) AWS Certification
13 40 (3.03%) Microsoft Certification
14 28 (2.12%) CompTIA Security+
15 27 (2.04%) JNCIS
16 26 (1.97%) JNCIP
17 21 (1.59%) Computer Science Degree
18 20 (1.51%) JNCIA
19 19 (1.44%) Network+ Certification
20 18 (1.36%) CREST Certified
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 108 (8.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 82 (6.20%) NIST
3 69 (5.22%) GDPR
4 43 (3.25%) PCI DSS
5 36 (2.72%) NCSC
6 31 (2.34%) SLA
7 27 (2.04%) Cyber Essentials
8 20 (1.51%) QA
9 16 (1.21%) PMO
10 9 (0.68%) Actionable Recommendations
11 8 (0.61%) JSP 440
12 6 (0.45%) GRC
12 6 (0.45%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 5 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 5 (0.38%) RMADS
13 5 (0.38%) SOC 2
14 4 (0.30%) Data Quality
14 4 (0.30%) GxP
14 4 (0.30%) HIPAA
14 4 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 247 (18.68%) Active Directory
2 171 (12.93%) VMware Infrastructure
3 89 (6.73%) Docker
4 68 (5.14%) VMware NSX
5 41 (3.10%) Hyper-V
6 38 (2.87%) vSphere
7 28 (2.12%) Virtual Machines
8 23 (1.74%) VMware ESXi
9 18 (1.36%) Virtual Desktop
10 15 (1.13%) Firmware
11 10 (0.76%) Squid
12 9 (0.68%) Virtual Servers
13 8 (0.61%) BitLocker
14 7 (0.53%) Microsoft App-V
15 3 (0.23%) DFS Replication
15 3 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
16 2 (0.15%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 2 (0.15%) KVM
16 2 (0.15%) NetIQ eDirectory
16 2 (0.15%) ProxySG
Systems Management
1 210 (15.89%) Terraform
2 150 (11.35%) Ansible
3 120 (9.08%) Kubernetes
4 97 (7.34%) FortiGate
5 68 (5.14%) Microsoft Intune
6 44 (3.33%) Single Sign-On
7 42 (3.18%) Grafana
8 35 (2.65%) Prometheus
8 35 (2.65%) SCCM
9 30 (2.27%) vCenter Server
10 26 (1.97%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 18 (1.36%) Nmap
12 17 (1.29%) CASB
13 15 (1.13%) QRadar
14 13 (0.98%) Nagios
15 10 (0.76%) Fluentd
15 10 (0.76%) Nessus
16 9 (0.68%) Cisco Prime
16 9 (0.68%) VxRail
16 9 (0.68%) WMI
Vendors
1 440 (33.28%) Cisco
2 308 (23.30%) Microsoft
3 273 (20.65%) Palo Alto
4 220 (16.64%) VMware
5 149 (11.27%) F5
6 143 (10.82%) Fortinet
7 141 (10.67%) Juniper
8 127 (9.61%) CheckPoint
9 95 (7.19%) Splunk
10 89 (6.73%) Aruba
11 68 (5.14%) SolarWinds
12 63 (4.77%) Google
13 60 (4.54%) Meraki
14 53 (4.01%) ServiceNow
15 46 (3.48%) Zscaler
16 45 (3.40%) Citrix
17 40 (3.03%) Oracle
17 40 (3.03%) Red Hat
18 32 (2.42%) Arista
19 24 (1.82%) Tenable