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

6 months to
24 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 76 52 48
Rank change year-on-year -24 -4 +16
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,227 1,228 1,792
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.23% 3.88% 4.06%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.88% 30.26% 29.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 793 728 1,164
10th Percentile £313 £313 £313
25th Percentile £413 £406 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £518 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.38% -1.43% -
75th Percentile £594 £613 £627
90th Percentile £675 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +2.63% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 23 53
10th Percentile £26.53 £20.00 £27.53
25th Percentile £33.00 £20.72 £60.00
Median hourly rate £41.94 £35.00 £65.98
Median % change year-on-year +19.83% -46.95% +103.02%
75th Percentile £71.06 £41.50 £76.53
90th Percentile £85.30 £57.50 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.33 £35.00 £65.98
% change year-on-year +29.51% -46.95% +51.44%

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 3,974 4,058 6,031
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.46% 12.84% 13.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,606 2,359 3,677
10th Percentile £204 £213 £208
25th Percentile £355 £363 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -2.91%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £686 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £466 £475
% change year-on-year -3.43% -1.89% +2.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 164 139 377
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.05 £16.97
25th Percentile £18.97 £21.46 £23.00
Median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £53.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% -33.96% +155.98%
75th Percentile £65.00 £58.69 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £70.00 £74.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.54 £32.50 £56.49
% change year-on-year +24.74% -42.47% +202.73%

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 January 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 January 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 January 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 -27 1,028 £508 -2.40% 576
UK excluding London -22 678 £488 +2.63% 544
London -31 391 £530 -2.30% 128
Work from Home -4 388 £508 -3.79% 250
North of England -31 192 £492 +3.58% 125
South East +10 178 £500 - 196
Midlands -22 121 £440 -8.09% 59
West Midlands -10 113 £440 +0.57% 38
North West -27 107 £519 +9.16% 68
Yorkshire -25 81 £454 +6.71% 41
Scotland -13 62 £450 -4.00% 31
South West -31 59 £550 +10.00% 65
East of England -18 41 £475 -5.00% 64
Wales -20 17 £293 -19.86% 14
Northern Ireland - 8 £488 - 5
North East -15 7 £550 - 20
East Midlands -56 7 £440 -32.36% 21

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 45 (3.67%) Confluence
1 45 (3.67%) Microsoft Exchange
2 27 (2.20%) SharePoint
3 16 (1.30%) nginx
4 13 (1.06%) Apache
5 9 (0.73%) OpenStack
6 7 (0.57%) IIS
7 6 (0.49%) SAS
7 6 (0.49%) Tomcat
8 3 (0.24%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.16%) CICS
9 2 (0.16%) JBoss
9 2 (0.16%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.16%) WebLogic
10 1 (0.081%) Anypoint
10 1 (0.081%) CMS
10 1 (0.081%) Exchange Server 2010
10 1 (0.081%) Exchange Server 2013
10 1 (0.081%) Mattermost
10 1 (0.081%) Traefik
Applications
1 34 (2.77%) Microsoft Office
2 23 (1.87%) MS Visio
3 20 (1.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 18 (1.47%) Microsoft Excel
5 8 (0.65%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 1 (0.081%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.081%) Finacle
2 1 (0.081%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.081%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 421 (34.31%) Azure
2 348 (28.36%) AWS
3 149 (12.14%) GCP
4 117 (9.54%) Microsoft 365
5 87 (7.09%) Entra ID
6 80 (6.52%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 64 (5.22%) Amazon EC2
8 54 (4.40%) Amazon S3
9 52 (4.24%) GitHub
10 51 (4.16%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 43 (3.50%) Azure Sentinel
12 42 (3.42%) IaaS
13 40 (3.26%) Azure DevOps
14 38 (3.10%) Azure Monitor
15 36 (2.93%) Amazon ELB
15 36 (2.93%) PaaS
16 33 (2.69%) Serverless
17 32 (2.61%) AWS CloudFormation
17 32 (2.61%) GitHub Actions
18 27 (2.20%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 304 (24.78%) Network Security
2 289 (23.55%) VPN
3 252 (20.54%) WAN
4 240 (19.56%) DNS
5 169 (13.77%) LAN
6 150 (12.22%) TCP/IP
7 149 (12.14%) BGP
8 123 (10.02%) OSPF
9 111 (9.05%) VLAN
9 111 (9.05%) Wireless
10 105 (8.56%) SD-WAN
11 94 (7.66%) DHCP
12 87 (7.09%) Wi-Fi
13 77 (6.28%) SSL
14 73 (5.95%) MPLS
15 60 (4.89%) IPsec
16 52 (4.24%) Cisco ASA
16 52 (4.24%) Cisco Nexus
17 49 (3.99%) HTTP
18 46 (3.75%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 35 (2.85%) SQL Server
2 31 (2.53%) Amazon RDS
3 28 (2.28%) PostgreSQL
4 11 (0.90%) Elasticsearch
5 8 (0.65%) Amazon Aurora
5 8 (0.65%) MongoDB
5 8 (0.65%) Oracle Database
6 7 (0.57%) Data Warehouse
7 6 (0.49%) Data Lake
8 5 (0.41%) Redis
8 5 (0.41%) Relational Database
9 4 (0.33%) NoSQL
9 4 (0.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 3 (0.24%) Amazon QuickSight
10 3 (0.24%) DynamoDB
10 3 (0.24%) Oracle Exadata
11 2 (0.16%) Azure SQL Database
11 2 (0.16%) Data Vault
11 2 (0.16%) DB2
11 2 (0.16%) MariaDB
Development Applications
1 91 (7.42%) Jenkins
2 77 (6.28%) Git
2 77 (6.28%) JIRA
3 64 (5.22%) GitLab
4 26 (2.12%) Sonatype Nexus
5 19 (1.55%) Bitbucket
6 14 (1.14%) Burp Suite
6 14 (1.14%) Metasploit
7 12 (0.98%) Vagrant
8 11 (0.90%) SonarQube
9 7 (0.57%) Jaeger
10 4 (0.33%) CircleCI
11 3 (0.24%) Chocolatey
12 2 (0.16%) Artifactory
12 2 (0.16%) MSI
12 2 (0.16%) Postman
13 1 (0.081%) Atlassian Bamboo
13 1 (0.081%) Maven
13 1 (0.081%) Subversion
13 1 (0.081%) Travis CI
General
1 343 (27.95%) Social Skills
2 142 (11.57%) Analytical Skills
3 119 (9.70%) Public Sector
4 116 (9.45%) Finance
5 80 (6.52%) Documentation Skills
6 56 (4.56%) Banking
7 50 (4.07%) Telecoms
8 34 (2.77%) Legal
9 29 (2.36%) Manufacturing
9 29 (2.36%) Presentation Skills
10 15 (1.22%) Military
11 13 (1.06%) Local Government
12 12 (0.98%) Financial Institution
12 12 (0.98%) Retail
13 11 (0.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 8 (0.65%) Influencing Skills
14 8 (0.65%) Law
15 7 (0.57%) Aerospace
15 7 (0.57%) Electronics
15 7 (0.57%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 307 (25.02%) Network Engineer
2 199 (16.22%) Architect
3 123 (10.02%) Senior
4 111 (9.05%) Security Engineer
5 89 (7.25%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 65 (5.30%) Network Architect
7 60 (4.89%) Security Architect
8 56 (4.56%) DevOps Engineer
9 50 (4.07%) Analyst
9 50 (4.07%) Consultant
9 50 (4.07%) Platform Engineer
10 46 (3.75%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
11 44 (3.59%) Azure Engineer
12 41 (3.34%) Solutions Architect
13 38 (3.10%) Lead
13 38 (3.10%) Network Security Engineer
14 33 (2.69%) Cloud Engineer
14 33 (2.69%) Support Engineer
15 32 (2.61%) Senior Network Engineer
16 27 (2.20%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (3.50%) 802.1X
2 35 (2.85%) LDAP
3 31 (2.53%) SAML
4 26 (2.12%) OpenID
5 25 (2.04%) Middleware
6 17 (1.39%) OAuth
7 16 (1.30%) Node.js
7 16 (1.30%) OAuth2
8 15 (1.22%) JSON
9 14 (1.14%) REST
10 13 (1.06%) Kafka
11 11 (0.90%) ARM Templates
12 10 (0.81%) Elastic Stack
12 10 (0.81%) XML
13 8 (0.65%) RFC 2544
13 8 (0.65%) Spring Boot
14 7 (0.57%) Microsoft Graph
14 7 (0.57%) OpenTelemetry
14 7 (0.57%) YAML
15 5 (0.41%) Regular Expression
Miscellaneous
1 231 (18.83%) Data Centre
2 85 (6.93%) Security Posture
3 58 (4.73%) PKI
4 48 (3.91%) Cloud Native
5 47 (3.83%) Hybrid Cloud
5 47 (3.83%) Onboarding
6 43 (3.50%) Operational Technology
7 36 (2.93%) Replication
8 33 (2.69%) Public Cloud
9 25 (2.04%) Cyber Threat
9 25 (2.04%) Management Information System
10 24 (1.96%) Security Operations Centre
11 22 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
12 21 (1.71%) SCADA
13 19 (1.55%) Private Cloud
14 16 (1.30%) NHS
15 14 (1.14%) Enterprise Software
15 14 (1.14%) Fat Client
15 14 (1.14%) Product Ownership
15 14 (1.14%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 305 (24.86%) Windows
2 210 (17.11%) Linux
3 123 (10.02%) Windows Server
4 34 (2.77%) VMS
5 28 (2.28%) Unix
6 26 (2.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 15 (1.22%) Amazon Linux
8 14 (1.14%) Ubuntu
8 14 (1.14%) Windows Server 2019
9 11 (0.90%) Windows 10
9 11 (0.90%) Windows 7
10 7 (0.57%) Windows Server 2016
11 5 (0.41%) CentOS
11 5 (0.41%) Mac OS
11 5 (0.41%) Windows Server 2003
12 4 (0.33%) Android
12 4 (0.33%) CatOS
12 4 (0.33%) Windows Server 2012
13 3 (0.24%) Apple iOS
13 3 (0.24%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 245 (19.97%) Cybersecurity
2 211 (17.20%) DevOps
3 192 (15.65%) Problem-Solving
4 191 (15.57%) CI/CD
5 181 (14.75%) Infrastructure as Code
6 146 (11.90%) SIEM
7 142 (11.57%) Incident Response
7 142 (11.57%) Migration
8 140 (11.41%) Cloud Security
9 138 (11.25%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 132 (10.76%) Agile
11 116 (9.45%) ITIL
12 112 (9.13%) High Availability
13 106 (8.64%) Load Balancing
14 102 (8.31%) Stakeholder Management
15 100 (8.15%) Zero Trust
16 97 (7.91%) Change Management
17 93 (7.58%) Mentoring
18 85 (6.93%) Security Architecture
19 81 (6.60%) DevSecOps
Programming Languages
1 236 (19.23%) Python
2 192 (15.65%) PowerShell
3 108 (8.80%) Bash
4 67 (5.46%) SQL
5 43 (3.50%) Java
6 36 (2.93%) Perl
7 21 (1.71%) Bicep
8 13 (1.06%) Kusto Query Language
9 12 (0.98%) Groovy
9 12 (0.98%) Ruby
10 8 (0.65%) Rust
10 8 (0.65%) Shell Script
11 6 (0.49%) JavaScript
12 4 (0.33%) C#
12 4 (0.33%) Go
12 4 (0.33%) PL/SQL
13 1 (0.081%) C
13 1 (0.081%) C++
13 1 (0.081%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 420 (34.23%) Security Cleared
2 289 (23.55%) SC Cleared
3 221 (18.01%) Cisco Certification
4 179 (14.59%) CCNP
5 113 (9.21%) Degree
6 105 (8.56%) DV Cleared
7 91 (7.42%) CISSP
8 90 (7.33%) CCNA
9 61 (4.97%) Azure Certification
10 55 (4.48%) CISM
11 51 (4.16%) AWS Certification
12 48 (3.91%) CCIE
13 42 (3.42%) Microsoft Certification
14 25 (2.04%) CompTIA Security+
15 20 (1.63%) Computer Science Degree
16 18 (1.47%) CEH
16 18 (1.47%) JNCIP
16 18 (1.47%) JNCIS
17 16 (1.30%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 16 (1.30%) CREST Certified
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 112 (9.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 96 (7.82%) NIST
3 65 (5.30%) GDPR
4 43 (3.50%) PCI DSS
5 26 (2.12%) SLA
6 25 (2.04%) NCSC
7 22 (1.79%) Cyber Essentials
8 17 (1.39%) QA
9 15 (1.22%) PMO
10 12 (0.98%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 10 (0.81%) GRC
12 7 (0.57%) HIPAA
13 6 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
13 6 (0.49%) COBIT
13 6 (0.49%) JSP 440
14 5 (0.41%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 5 (0.41%) PSD2
14 5 (0.41%) SOC 2
15 4 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
15 4 (0.33%) NIST 800
System Software
1 217 (17.69%) Active Directory
2 161 (13.12%) VMware Infrastructure
3 136 (11.08%) Docker
4 55 (4.48%) VMware NSX
5 43 (3.50%) Hyper-V
6 34 (2.77%) Virtual Machines
7 32 (2.61%) vSphere
8 20 (1.63%) VMware ESXi
9 18 (1.47%) Squid
10 16 (1.30%) Virtual Desktop
11 15 (1.22%) DFS Replication
12 9 (0.73%) Firmware
13 8 (0.65%) Dovecot
13 8 (0.65%) KVM
13 8 (0.65%) Postfix
13 8 (0.65%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (0.49%) Snort
15 5 (0.41%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.41%) NDS
15 5 (0.41%) NetIQ eDirectory
Systems Management
1 210 (17.11%) Terraform
2 165 (13.45%) Ansible
3 117 (9.54%) Kubernetes
4 74 (6.03%) FortiGate
5 58 (4.73%) Microsoft Intune
6 42 (3.42%) Grafana
7 41 (3.34%) Single Sign-On
8 38 (3.10%) Prometheus
9 34 (2.77%) SCCM
10 26 (2.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 25 (2.04%) vCenter Server
12 17 (1.39%) Nmap
13 16 (1.30%) CSIRT
13 16 (1.30%) Nessus
14 14 (1.14%) Fluentd
14 14 (1.14%) Nagios
15 12 (0.98%) QRadar
15 12 (0.98%) WMI
16 9 (0.73%) CASB
16 9 (0.73%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 395 (32.19%) Cisco
2 279 (22.74%) Microsoft
3 267 (21.76%) Palo Alto
4 198 (16.14%) VMware
5 156 (12.71%) F5
6 139 (11.33%) CheckPoint
7 119 (9.70%) Fortinet
8 104 (8.48%) Juniper
9 88 (7.17%) Splunk
10 71 (5.79%) Aruba
11 64 (5.22%) Meraki
12 58 (4.73%) Oracle
13 57 (4.65%) SolarWinds
14 54 (4.40%) Google
15 51 (4.16%) Zscaler
16 47 (3.83%) ServiceNow
17 38 (3.10%) Citrix
18 25 (2.04%) Red Hat
19 24 (1.96%) Dell
20 18 (1.47%) Blue Coat