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 14 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 89 51 54
Rank change year-on-year -38 +3 +1
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,329 1,203 1,538
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.79% 4.15% 3.60%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 29.23% 32.57% 28.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 862 713 968
10th Percentile £335 £320 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £514
Median % change year-on-year - -2.68% -2.14%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £650 £688 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% +2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 18 42
10th Percentile £19.90 - £16.00
25th Percentile £37.25 £14.20 £23.92
Median hourly rate £52.36 £26.25 £66.75
Median % change year-on-year +99.47% -60.67% +7.66%
75th Percentile £71.64 £41.44 £86.66
90th Percentile £85.10 £53.63 £87.52
UK excluding London median hourly rate £56.00 £25.00 £83.77
% change year-on-year +124.00% -70.15% +35.10%

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 4,546 3,694 5,429
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.56% 12.75% 12.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,806 2,274 3,239
10th Percentile £263 £213 £205
25th Percentile £400 £360 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £488 £490
Median % change year-on-year +1.54% -0.51% -4.99%
75th Percentile £588 £590 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £696
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £463 £475
% change year-on-year +2.70% -2.63% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 243 164 417
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.92 £16.30
Median hourly rate £40.54 £34.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +17.51% -13.75% +116.22%
75th Percentile £65.88 £58.70 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £24.71 £45.88
% change year-on-year +72.00% -46.14% +148.47%

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 14 May 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 14 May 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 14 May 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 1,109 £500 -2.44% 520
UK excluding London -22 743 £500 +2.56% 453
London -61 413 £510 -2.86% 133
Work from Home -29 392 £519 +3.70% 210
South East -1 238 £500 - 137
North of England -19 216 £500 +5.26% 122
North West -13 142 £539 +13.42% 69
Midlands -50 83 £425 -22.73% 70
West Midlands -32 70 £420 -20.00% 40
East of England -11 67 £500 -2.44% 44
Yorkshire -35 62 £425 -12.37% 35
South West -49 56 £538 +4.88% 49
Scotland +24 55 £450 +7.14% 25
Wales -16 29 £425 +16.44% 14
North East -6 14 £625 +13.64% 19
East Midlands -47 9 £488 -14.10% 30
Northern Ireland -1 2 £385 - 1

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 36 (2.71%) Microsoft Exchange
2 32 (2.41%) Confluence
3 16 (1.20%) SharePoint
4 13 (0.98%) nginx
5 11 (0.83%) Apache
6 10 (0.75%) CICS
7 6 (0.45%) SAS
8 5 (0.38%) IIS
9 3 (0.23%) Skype for Business
9 3 (0.23%) WebSphere
10 2 (0.15%) Apache Pulsar
10 2 (0.15%) CMS
10 2 (0.15%) IBM HTTP Server
10 2 (0.15%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.15%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.15%) Umbraco
10 2 (0.15%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.15%) WebSphere Portal
11 1 (0.075%) JBoss
11 1 (0.075%) MTS
Applications
1 30 (2.26%) Microsoft Office
2 23 (1.73%) MS Visio
3 22 (1.66%) Microsoft Excel
4 17 (1.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.53%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.075%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 1 (0.075%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.075%) Primavera
1 1 (0.075%) SAP S/4HANA
1 1 (0.075%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 445 (33.48%) Azure
2 274 (20.62%) AWS
3 110 (8.28%) GCP
4 109 (8.20%) Entra ID
5 105 (7.90%) Microsoft 365
6 64 (4.82%) GitHub
7 54 (4.06%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 53 (3.99%) IaaS
9 51 (3.84%) Azure DevOps
10 42 (3.16%) PaaS
11 40 (3.01%) Azure Monitor
11 40 (3.01%) Azure Sentinel
12 39 (2.93%) SaaS
13 38 (2.86%) GitHub Actions
14 32 (2.41%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 30 (2.26%) Serverless
16 27 (2.03%) OCI
17 26 (1.96%) Amazon EKS
18 25 (1.88%) Amazon EC2
19 21 (1.58%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 361 (27.16%) Network Security
2 359 (27.01%) WAN
3 333 (25.06%) VPN
4 279 (20.99%) DNS
5 270 (20.32%) LAN
6 227 (17.08%) BGP
7 207 (15.58%) OSPF
8 160 (12.04%) VLAN
9 147 (11.06%) DHCP
9 147 (11.06%) TCP/IP
10 142 (10.68%) SD-WAN
11 127 (9.56%) Wireless
12 103 (7.75%) Wi-Fi
13 90 (6.77%) MPLS
14 88 (6.62%) IPsec
15 82 (6.17%) VXLAN
16 81 (6.09%) BIG-IP
17 72 (5.42%) Ethernet VPN
18 70 (5.27%) Cisco ISE
19 68 (5.12%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (1.96%) SQL Server
2 19 (1.43%) PostgreSQL
3 18 (1.35%) Elasticsearch
4 13 (0.98%) Power BI
5 10 (0.75%) DataStage
5 10 (0.75%) Oracle Database
6 7 (0.53%) Azure SQL Database
6 7 (0.53%) Data Lake
6 7 (0.53%) Data Warehouse
6 7 (0.53%) MongoDB
7 6 (0.45%) MySQL
8 5 (0.38%) Amazon RDS
8 5 (0.38%) Relational Database
9 4 (0.30%) Amazon Athena
9 4 (0.30%) Amazon QuickSight
9 4 (0.30%) Amazon Redshift
9 4 (0.30%) Metadata
9 4 (0.30%) NoSQL
9 4 (0.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 3 (0.23%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 77 (5.79%) JIRA
2 47 (3.54%) Jenkins
3 41 (3.09%) Git
3 41 (3.09%) GitLab
4 16 (1.20%) Burp Suite
4 16 (1.20%) Metasploit
5 14 (1.05%) Sonatype Nexus
6 9 (0.68%) Artifactory
6 9 (0.68%) Bitbucket
6 9 (0.68%) Chocolatey
6 9 (0.68%) Jaeger
7 7 (0.53%) SonarQube
8 5 (0.38%) Browser DevTools
9 4 (0.30%) CircleCI
10 2 (0.15%) Introscope
10 2 (0.15%) Postman
10 2 (0.15%) Team Foundation Server
11 1 (0.075%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.075%) PVCS
11 1 (0.075%) Travis CI
General
1 312 (23.48%) Social Skills
2 155 (11.66%) Finance
3 119 (8.95%) Analytical Skills
4 109 (8.20%) Public Sector
5 89 (6.70%) Documentation Skills
6 50 (3.76%) Banking
7 41 (3.09%) Telecoms
8 27 (2.03%) Legal
9 24 (1.81%) Financial Institution
9 24 (1.81%) Manufacturing
10 20 (1.50%) Military
11 16 (1.20%) Influencing Skills
12 15 (1.13%) Law
12 15 (1.13%) Retail
13 10 (0.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 10 (0.75%) Presentation Skills
14 9 (0.68%) Organisational Skills
15 8 (0.60%) Front Office
15 8 (0.60%) Investment Banking
15 8 (0.60%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 408 (30.70%) Network Engineer
2 210 (15.80%) Architect
3 165 (12.42%) Senior
4 108 (8.13%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 104 (7.83%) Security Engineer
6 72 (5.42%) Network Architect
7 65 (4.89%) Senior Network Engineer
8 63 (4.74%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
9 57 (4.29%) Azure Engineer
10 52 (3.91%) Cloud Engineer
11 43 (3.24%) Technical Architect
12 42 (3.16%) Lead
12 42 (3.16%) Network Security Engineer
13 41 (3.09%) Cisco Engineer
14 38 (2.86%) DevOps Engineer
14 38 (2.86%) Security Architect
15 37 (2.78%) Cisco Network Engineer
16 32 (2.41%) Analyst
17 31 (2.33%) Consultant
18 30 (2.26%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (5.19%) 802.1X
2 42 (3.16%) LDAP
3 39 (2.93%) Middleware
4 28 (2.11%) SAML
5 24 (1.81%) OpenID
6 19 (1.43%) Kafka
7 13 (0.98%) OAuth
8 12 (0.90%) OAuth2
9 11 (0.83%) OpenTelemetry
9 11 (0.83%) REST
10 10 (0.75%) Elastic Stack
11 9 (0.68%) Spring Boot
12 7 (0.53%) ARM Templates
12 7 (0.53%) JSON
13 6 (0.45%) .NET
13 6 (0.45%) HTML
13 6 (0.45%) LangChain
13 6 (0.45%) PyTorch
13 6 (0.45%) scikit-learn
13 6 (0.45%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 313 (23.55%) Data Centre
2 76 (5.72%) Cloud Native
3 69 (5.19%) Security Posture
4 62 (4.67%) PKI
5 52 (3.91%) Hybrid Cloud
6 47 (3.54%) Onboarding
7 40 (3.01%) Operational Technology
8 39 (2.93%) Clustering
9 38 (2.86%) Management Information System
10 34 (2.56%) Public Cloud
11 27 (2.03%) IoT
12 25 (1.88%) Data Protection Act
13 22 (1.66%) SCADA
14 21 (1.58%) Cyber Threat
15 20 (1.50%) Enterprise Storage
16 18 (1.35%) Enterprise Software
16 18 (1.35%) Replication
16 18 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
17 16 (1.20%) Driving Licence
18 14 (1.05%) BYOD
Operating Systems
1 307 (23.10%) Windows
2 173 (13.02%) Linux
3 120 (9.03%) Windows Server
4 31 (2.33%) Unix
5 29 (2.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 25 (1.88%) VMS
7 11 (0.83%) Solaris
8 10 (0.75%) AIX
8 10 (0.75%) Windows Server 2016
8 10 (0.75%) Windows Server 2019
9 8 (0.60%) Windows Server 2003
10 6 (0.45%) Windows 10
11 5 (0.38%) CatOS
11 5 (0.38%) Mac OS
11 5 (0.38%) Windows Server 2012
12 4 (0.30%) SUSE
12 4 (0.30%) Ubuntu
12 4 (0.30%) Windows 7
13 3 (0.23%) Amazon Linux
13 3 (0.23%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 216 (16.25%) DevOps
2 193 (14.52%) Cybersecurity
3 188 (14.15%) CI/CD
4 180 (13.54%) Infrastructure as Code
5 175 (13.17%) Load Balancing
5 175 (13.17%) Problem-Solving
6 174 (13.09%) Migration
7 161 (12.11%) High Availability
8 158 (11.89%) ITIL
9 148 (11.14%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 131 (9.86%) Zero Trust
11 126 (9.48%) Agile
12 109 (8.20%) SIEM
13 104 (7.83%) Change Management
14 101 (7.60%) Cloud Security
15 93 (7.00%) Project Delivery
16 92 (6.92%) Technical Leadership
17 88 (6.62%) Network Segmentation
17 88 (6.62%) Observability
18 87 (6.55%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 185 (13.92%) Python
2 146 (10.99%) PowerShell
3 77 (5.79%) Bash
4 57 (4.29%) SQL
5 41 (3.09%) Bicep
6 29 (2.18%) Java
7 11 (0.83%) Perl
8 10 (0.75%) COBOL
8 10 (0.75%) JavaScript
8 10 (0.75%) Kusto Query Language
9 8 (0.60%) Rust
10 6 (0.45%) PL/SQL
11 5 (0.38%) Shell Script
12 4 (0.30%) C#
12 4 (0.30%) Go
12 4 (0.30%) Groovy
13 3 (0.23%) C++
14 2 (0.15%) Jython
14 2 (0.15%) PHP
14 2 (0.15%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 484 (36.42%) Security Cleared
2 361 (27.16%) SC Cleared
3 268 (20.17%) Cisco Certification
4 206 (15.50%) CCNP
5 109 (8.20%) Degree
6 106 (7.98%) CCNA
7 105 (7.90%) DV Cleared
8 59 (4.44%) CISSP
9 56 (4.21%) Azure Certification
10 41 (3.09%) CCIE
11 36 (2.71%) AWS Certification
12 34 (2.56%) CISM
13 28 (2.11%) Microsoft Certification
14 21 (1.58%) CompTIA Security+
15 20 (1.50%) Computer Science Degree
15 20 (1.50%) JNCIS
16 19 (1.43%) Network+ Certification
17 17 (1.28%) CREST Certified
17 17 (1.28%) JNCIP
17 17 (1.28%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 77 (5.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 54 (4.06%) GDPR
3 51 (3.84%) NIST
4 36 (2.71%) PCI DSS
5 31 (2.33%) SLA
6 29 (2.18%) NCSC
7 26 (1.96%) QA
8 22 (1.66%) Cyber Essentials
9 17 (1.28%) PMO
10 7 (0.53%) Data Quality
10 7 (0.53%) Disclosure Scotland
11 6 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
11 6 (0.45%) JSP 440
11 6 (0.45%) RMADS
12 5 (0.38%) GRC
12 5 (0.38%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 5 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 5 (0.38%) SOC 2
13 4 (0.30%) GxP
13 4 (0.30%) NIST 800
System Software
1 218 (16.40%) Active Directory
2 164 (12.34%) VMware Infrastructure
3 67 (5.04%) VMware NSX
4 58 (4.36%) Docker
5 42 (3.16%) Hyper-V
6 36 (2.71%) Virtual Machines
7 34 (2.56%) vSphere
8 30 (2.26%) VMware ESXi
9 21 (1.58%) Firmware
9 21 (1.58%) Virtual Desktop
10 15 (1.13%) Squid
11 10 (0.75%) BitLocker
12 8 (0.60%) Microsoft App-V
13 3 (0.23%) DFS Replication
13 3 (0.23%) KVM
13 3 (0.23%) NFS
13 3 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
14 2 (0.15%) Citrix Hypervisor
14 2 (0.15%) EMC RecoverPoint
14 2 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 215 (16.18%) Terraform
2 165 (12.42%) Ansible
3 101 (7.60%) FortiGate
3 101 (7.60%) Kubernetes
4 59 (4.44%) Grafana
5 52 (3.91%) Microsoft Intune
6 48 (3.61%) Prometheus
7 33 (2.48%) Single Sign-On
8 27 (2.03%) SCCM
9 26 (1.96%) vCenter Server
10 18 (1.35%) Nmap
11 15 (1.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 13 (0.98%) CASB
12 13 (0.98%) Nagios
12 13 (0.98%) QRadar
13 12 (0.90%) Cisco Prime
13 12 (0.90%) Puppet
14 11 (0.83%) VxRail
15 10 (0.75%) Progress Chef
16 9 (0.68%) WSUS
Vendors
1 485 (36.49%) Cisco
2 307 (23.10%) Palo Alto
3 270 (20.32%) Microsoft
4 211 (15.88%) VMware
5 176 (13.24%) Fortinet
6 171 (12.87%) F5
7 144 (10.84%) Juniper
8 135 (10.16%) CheckPoint
9 91 (6.85%) Aruba
10 83 (6.25%) Splunk
11 68 (5.12%) SolarWinds
12 65 (4.89%) ServiceNow
13 59 (4.44%) Arista
14 54 (4.06%) Google
15 45 (3.39%) Meraki
16 44 (3.31%) Zscaler
17 38 (2.86%) Citrix
18 32 (2.41%) Red Hat
19 29 (2.18%) Oracle
20 27 (2.03%) Extreme Networks