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 1 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 107 63 55
Rank change year-on-year -44 -8 -9
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,361 1,266 1,390
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.48% 3.83% 3.67%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 26.63% 33.35% 30.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 836 780 843
10th Percentile £350 £312 £320
25th Percentile £425 £413 £422
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £675 £688 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £483 £500
% change year-on-year +3.52% -3.40% +2.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 57 28 30
10th Percentile £31.25 £17.05 £20.00
25th Percentile £55.00 £29.00 £21.54
Median hourly rate £67.47 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +124.90% +9.09% -58.33%
75th Percentile £78.75 £42.27 £60.00
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.63 £75.42
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.35 £30.00 £27.50
% change year-on-year +121.15% +9.09% -58.32%

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 5,111 3,796 4,510
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.31% 11.48% 11.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,952 2,381 2,593
10th Percentile £235 £219 £225
25th Percentile £390 £362 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £488
% change year-on-year +5.56% -7.69% +5.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 428 204 206
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £23.94 £24.18
Median hourly rate £32.75 £42.50 £51.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.94% -16.67% -9.72%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.38 £65.00
90th Percentile £92.11 £72.15 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.36 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -35.62% -25.89% -0.26%

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 1 October 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 1 October 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Firewall in the UK

Firewall
Top 18 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 1 October 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 1,196 £505 +1.00% 1,228
UK excluding London -36 757 £500 +3.52% 756
London -49 463 £500 -2.91% 549
Work from Home -37 393 £520 +4.00% 464
North of England +2 281 £500 +5.26% 148
North West +9 162 £510 +7.37% 90
South East -50 160 £500 - 266
Yorkshire -23 97 £490 +0.10% 43
South West -4 91 £556 +15.83% 103
Midlands -73 89 £472 -0.74% 107
East of England -4 74 £600 +15.38% 59
West Midlands -69 67 £450 -5.26% 66
Scotland -17 62 £400 -15.79% 37
North East -11 29 £500 -13.04% 17
East Midlands -9 21 £500 +6.16% 41
Wales -22 4 £608 +203.75% 23
Channel Islands -6 2 £600 -17.24% 1
Northern Ireland -7 1 - - 19

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 51 (3.75%) Microsoft Exchange
2 38 (2.79%) SharePoint
3 36 (2.65%) Confluence
4 12 (0.88%) Apache
4 12 (0.88%) nginx
5 8 (0.59%) SAS
6 4 (0.29%) FactoryTalk
6 4 (0.29%) IIS
7 3 (0.22%) CloudStack
7 3 (0.22%) Skype for Business
7 3 (0.22%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.15%) CICS
8 2 (0.15%) CMS
8 2 (0.15%) Umbraco
9 1 (0.073%) Appian
9 1 (0.073%) MTS
Applications
1 21 (1.54%) MS Visio
2 20 (1.47%) Microsoft Excel
3 18 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
4 8 (0.59%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (0.44%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 1 (0.073%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 6 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
2 5 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.15%) Bloomberg TOMS
3 2 (0.15%) Dynamics GP
3 2 (0.15%) Eikon
3 2 (0.15%) Teamcenter
4 1 (0.073%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.073%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.073%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 516 (37.91%) Azure
2 310 (22.78%) AWS
3 176 (12.93%) Entra ID
4 125 (9.18%) Microsoft 365
5 110 (8.08%) GCP
6 81 (5.95%) GitHub
7 70 (5.14%) IaaS
8 67 (4.92%) Azure DevOps
9 65 (4.78%) SaaS
10 53 (3.89%) Azure Monitor
11 44 (3.23%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 41 (3.01%) OCI
13 40 (2.94%) PaaS
14 39 (2.87%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 34 (2.50%) GitHub Actions
16 32 (2.35%) Azure Sentinel
17 31 (2.28%) Serverless
18 27 (1.98%) Google Kubernetes Engine
19 26 (1.91%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 26 (1.91%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 405 (29.76%) VPN
2 402 (29.54%) Network Security
3 363 (26.67%) DNS
4 342 (25.13%) WAN
5 250 (18.37%) LAN
6 233 (17.12%) BGP
7 212 (15.58%) DHCP
8 211 (15.50%) TCP/IP
9 193 (14.18%) VLAN
10 176 (12.93%) Wireless
11 167 (12.27%) OSPF
12 129 (9.48%) SD-WAN
13 124 (9.11%) Wi-Fi
14 77 (5.66%) Cisco ASA
14 77 (5.66%) MPLS
15 76 (5.58%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 75 (5.51%) SSL
17 74 (5.44%) BIG-IP
17 74 (5.44%) IPsec
18 63 (4.63%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (2.42%) SQL Server
2 20 (1.47%) Amazon RDS
3 18 (1.32%) PostgreSQL
4 15 (1.10%) Relational Database
5 12 (0.88%) Data Lake
6 11 (0.81%) Power BI
7 9 (0.66%) Amazon Aurora
8 8 (0.59%) NoSQL
9 6 (0.44%) Azure SQL Database
10 5 (0.37%) Elasticsearch
10 5 (0.37%) MySQL
11 4 (0.29%) Db2
12 3 (0.22%) Amazon Athena
12 3 (0.22%) Big Data
12 3 (0.22%) EDRMS
12 3 (0.22%) Metadata
12 3 (0.22%) Oracle Database
13 2 (0.15%) Amazon QuickSight
13 2 (0.15%) Amazon Redshift
13 2 (0.15%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 87 (6.39%) JIRA
2 70 (5.14%) Jenkins
3 54 (3.97%) Git
4 49 (3.60%) GitLab
5 16 (1.18%) Sonatype Nexus
6 9 (0.66%) Artifactory
6 9 (0.66%) Bitbucket
7 8 (0.59%) SonarQube
8 6 (0.44%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 5 (0.37%) Maven
10 4 (0.29%) Chocolatey
10 4 (0.29%) MSI
11 3 (0.22%) Browser DevTools
12 2 (0.15%) Burp Suite
12 2 (0.15%) Gatling
12 2 (0.15%) Gradle
12 2 (0.15%) Postman
12 2 (0.15%) REST Assured
12 2 (0.15%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 2 (0.15%) Vagrant
General
1 315 (23.14%) Social Skills
2 177 (13.01%) Finance
3 142 (10.43%) Analytical Skills
4 109 (8.01%) Public Sector
5 93 (6.83%) Banking
6 59 (4.34%) Documentation Skills
7 57 (4.19%) Telecoms
8 37 (2.72%) Manufacturing
9 28 (2.06%) Legal
10 21 (1.54%) Retail
11 17 (1.25%) Military
12 16 (1.18%) Local Government
13 15 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 14 (1.03%) Financial Institution
15 12 (0.88%) Aerospace
15 12 (0.88%) Influencing Skills
15 12 (0.88%) Police
16 10 (0.73%) Automotive
16 10 (0.73%) Investment Banking
17 9 (0.66%) Law
Job Titles
1 442 (32.48%) Network Engineer
2 210 (15.43%) Senior
3 166 (12.20%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 160 (11.76%) Architect
5 114 (8.38%) Security Engineer
6 91 (6.69%) Senior Network Engineer
7 85 (6.25%) Cloud Engineer
8 72 (5.29%) Consultant
9 63 (4.63%) Network Security Engineer
10 61 (4.48%) Azure Engineer
11 55 (4.04%) Network Architect
11 55 (4.04%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 51 (3.75%) DevOps Engineer
13 50 (3.67%) Security Architect
14 48 (3.53%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
15 47 (3.45%) Lead
16 40 (2.94%) Platform Engineer
17 39 (2.87%) Cisco Engineer
18 37 (2.72%) Cisco Network Engineer
19 36 (2.65%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 294 (21.60%) Terraform
2 42 (3.09%) 802.1X
3 29 (2.13%) SAML
4 25 (1.84%) ARM Templates
4 25 (1.84%) Middleware
5 22 (1.62%) REST
6 21 (1.54%) OpenID
7 18 (1.32%) OAuth
8 15 (1.10%) YAML
9 12 (0.88%) LDAP
9 12 (0.88%) OAuth2
10 11 (0.81%) JSON
11 10 (0.73%) React
12 8 (0.59%) Elastic Stack
12 8 (0.59%) Kafka
12 8 (0.59%) SailPoint
13 7 (0.51%) ModSecurity
13 7 (0.51%) OpenTelemetry
14 6 (0.44%) .NET
14 6 (0.44%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 290 (21.31%) Data Centre
2 104 (7.64%) Hybrid Cloud
3 78 (5.73%) PKI
4 75 (5.51%) Cloud Native
5 63 (4.63%) Security Posture
6 62 (4.56%) Onboarding
7 54 (3.97%) Management Information System
8 51 (3.75%) Operational Technology
9 37 (2.72%) Public Cloud
10 29 (2.13%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 28 (2.06%) Self-Motivation
12 25 (1.84%) Data Protection Act
12 25 (1.84%) IoT
13 23 (1.69%) Driving Licence
13 23 (1.69%) Enterprise Software
14 21 (1.54%) Linux Command Line
14 21 (1.54%) Replication
14 21 (1.54%) SCADA
15 20 (1.47%) Enterprise Storage
16 18 (1.32%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 337 (24.76%) Windows
2 218 (16.02%) Linux
3 149 (10.95%) Windows Server
4 42 (3.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 32 (2.35%) Unix
6 24 (1.76%) Ubuntu
7 17 (1.25%) Mac OS
7 17 (1.25%) VMS
8 14 (1.03%) CentOS
9 12 (0.88%) Windows 10
10 11 (0.81%) Windows Server 2019
11 9 (0.66%) Windows Server 2012
12 8 (0.59%) Amazon Linux
13 7 (0.51%) Android
13 7 (0.51%) Rocky
14 6 (0.44%) Apple iOS
15 5 (0.37%) Windows Server 2003
16 4 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
17 3 (0.22%) Check Point GAiA
18 2 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 265 (19.47%) Infrastructure as Code
2 247 (18.15%) CI/CD
3 242 (17.78%) DevOps
4 241 (17.71%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 219 (16.09%) Cybersecurity
6 207 (15.21%) Migration
7 202 (14.84%) Problem-Solving
8 184 (13.52%) Load Balancing
9 168 (12.34%) ITIL
10 160 (11.76%) Zero Trust
11 159 (11.68%) Stakeholder Management
12 152 (11.17%) Agile
13 139 (10.21%) Project Delivery
14 134 (9.85%) High Availability
15 133 (9.77%) SIEM
16 124 (9.11%) Change Management
17 117 (8.60%) Technical Leadership
18 116 (8.52%) Cloud Security
19 115 (8.45%) Incident Response
20 112 (8.23%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 284 (20.87%) Python
2 223 (16.39%) PowerShell
3 134 (9.85%) Bash
4 46 (3.38%) Bicep
5 44 (3.23%) SQL
6 43 (3.16%) Java
7 18 (1.32%) ActionScript
8 15 (1.10%) Groovy
9 9 (0.66%) Shell Script
10 8 (0.59%) Kusto Query Language
10 8 (0.59%) Perl
11 6 (0.44%) C++
11 6 (0.44%) JavaScript
11 6 (0.44%) Search Processing Language
12 5 (0.37%) Go
13 4 (0.29%) TypeScript
14 3 (0.22%) C
15 2 (0.15%) C#
15 2 (0.15%) COBOL
15 2 (0.15%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 456 (33.50%) Security Cleared
2 315 (23.14%) SC Cleared
3 233 (17.12%) Cisco Certification
4 173 (12.71%) CCNP
5 126 (9.26%) DV Cleared
6 103 (7.57%) Degree
7 86 (6.32%) CCNA
8 77 (5.66%) CISSP
9 65 (4.78%) Azure Certification
10 51 (3.75%) AWS Certification
11 37 (2.72%) CCIE
12 34 (2.50%) Microsoft Certification
13 33 (2.42%) CISM
14 26 (1.91%) Computer Science Degree
15 17 (1.25%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 16 (1.18%) CEH
17 15 (1.10%) PMI Certification
18 14 (1.03%) Network+ Certification
18 14 (1.03%) PMP
19 13 (0.96%) CCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 78 (5.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 71 (5.22%) NIST
3 33 (2.42%) GDPR
4 26 (1.91%) NCSC
4 26 (1.91%) QA
5 24 (1.76%) PCI DSS
6 22 (1.62%) SLA
7 21 (1.54%) Cyber Essentials
8 16 (1.18%) NIST 800
9 10 (0.73%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 9 (0.66%) JSP 440
10 9 (0.66%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 6 (0.44%) Data Quality
11 6 (0.44%) GxP
11 6 (0.44%) HIPAA
12 5 (0.37%) COBIT
12 5 (0.37%) Disclosure Scotland
12 5 (0.37%) GRC
13 4 (0.29%) 21 CFR Part 11
14 3 (0.22%) SOC 2
System Software
1 238 (17.49%) Active Directory
2 178 (13.08%) VMware Infrastructure
3 79 (5.80%) Docker
4 68 (5.00%) Hyper-V
5 57 (4.19%) VMware NSX
6 55 (4.04%) vSphere
7 47 (3.45%) VMware ESXi
8 40 (2.94%) Virtual Machines
9 22 (1.62%) Firmware
10 15 (1.10%) Virtual Desktop
11 8 (0.59%) Squid
11 8 (0.59%) Virtual Servers
12 7 (0.51%) BitLocker
13 5 (0.37%) Dovecot
13 5 (0.37%) FreeRADIUS
13 5 (0.37%) NFS
13 5 (0.37%) Postfix
14 4 (0.29%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.29%) VirtualBox
15 3 (0.22%) DFS Replication
Systems Management
1 214 (15.72%) Ansible
2 132 (9.70%) Kubernetes
3 84 (6.17%) FortiGate
4 75 (5.51%) Microsoft Intune
5 57 (4.19%) Grafana
6 52 (3.82%) Prometheus
7 38 (2.79%) SCCM
8 31 (2.28%) Single Sign-On
9 30 (2.20%) Progress Chef
10 22 (1.62%) vCenter Server
11 19 (1.40%) VxRail
12 16 (1.18%) Puppet
13 12 (0.88%) CASB
13 12 (0.88%) Cisco Prime
14 10 (0.73%) Argo
14 10 (0.73%) Nagios
14 10 (0.73%) Nessus
14 10 (0.73%) Packer
15 8 (0.59%) NetBackup
15 8 (0.59%) QRadar
Vendors
1 500 (36.74%) Cisco
2 345 (25.35%) Microsoft
3 330 (24.25%) Palo Alto
4 226 (16.61%) VMware
5 199 (14.62%) Fortinet
6 167 (12.27%) F5
7 120 (8.82%) CheckPoint
8 116 (8.52%) Juniper
9 72 (5.29%) Zscaler
10 63 (4.63%) Google
10 63 (4.63%) Splunk
11 61 (4.48%) Aruba
12 59 (4.34%) Meraki
13 58 (4.26%) ServiceNow
14 54 (3.97%) Arista
15 52 (3.82%) SolarWinds
16 35 (2.57%) Citrix
17 31 (2.28%) Red Hat
18 29 (2.13%) Dynatrace
19 27 (1.98%) Infoblox