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

6 months to
20 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 89 52 54
Rank change year-on-year -37 +2 -1
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,323 1,212 1,514
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.75% 4.16% 3.56%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 28.80% 32.78% 28.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 861 722 955
10th Percentile £335 £319 £299
25th Percentile £413 £405 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £650 £688 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £498 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +2.05% -2.50% +2.72%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 18 43
10th Percentile £18.19 - £16.00
25th Percentile £37.25 £14.20 £23.92
Median hourly rate £48.72 £26.25 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +85.60% -56.25% -3.23%
75th Percentile £70.15 £41.44 £86.32
90th Percentile £82.24 £53.63 £87.52
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.72 £25.00 £83.77
% change year-on-year +94.88% -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 4,594 3,697 5,396
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.54% 12.67% 12.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,838 2,286 3,217
10th Percentile £263 £213 £205
25th Percentile £400 £358 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £485 £490
Median % change year-on-year +2.06% -1.02% -5.31%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £694
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £455 £475
% change year-on-year +4.40% -4.21% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 254 162 417
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.52 £36.57 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.88% -8.57% +116.22%
75th Percentile £65.88 £58.73 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £26.25 £45.88
% change year-on-year +59.77% -42.79% +151.88%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -41 1,109 £500 -2.44% 492
UK excluding London -17 749 £498 +2.05% 440
London -63 404 £510 -2.86% 133
Work from Home -31 390 £519 +3.70% 218
South East -4 237 £500 - 146
North of England -18 228 £508 +6.84% 121
North West -7 150 £540 +13.68% 68
Midlands -54 80 £423 -23.87% 66
West Midlands -29 68 £413 -21.43% 41
East of England -6 66 £500 -2.44% 26
Yorkshire -33 65 £424 -12.63% 35
South West -51 58 £525 +5.00% 44
Scotland +6 54 £450 +4.35% 27
Wales -16 28 £425 +16.44% 14
North East -11 15 £625 +13.64% 19
East Midlands -47 8 £488 -14.10% 25
Northern Ireland -5 2 £385 - 2

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 34 (2.57%) Microsoft Exchange
2 32 (2.42%) Confluence
3 16 (1.21%) SharePoint
4 13 (0.98%) nginx
5 10 (0.76%) CICS
6 9 (0.68%) Apache
7 6 (0.45%) SAS
8 3 (0.23%) IIS
8 3 (0.23%) Skype for Business
9 2 (0.15%) Apache Pulsar
9 2 (0.15%) CloudStack
9 2 (0.15%) CMS
9 2 (0.15%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.15%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.15%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.15%) Umbraco
9 2 (0.15%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.15%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.15%) WebSphere Portal
10 1 (0.076%) MTS
Applications
1 29 (2.19%) Microsoft Office
2 23 (1.74%) MS Visio
3 22 (1.66%) Microsoft Excel
4 17 (1.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.53%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.076%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 1 (0.076%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.076%) Primavera
1 1 (0.076%) SAP S/4HANA
1 1 (0.076%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
1 1 (0.076%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 436 (32.96%) Azure
2 276 (20.86%) AWS
3 108 (8.16%) GCP
4 102 (7.71%) Entra ID
5 97 (7.33%) Microsoft 365
6 62 (4.69%) GitHub
7 55 (4.16%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 52 (3.93%) IaaS
9 51 (3.85%) Azure DevOps
10 43 (3.25%) PaaS
11 37 (2.80%) Azure Sentinel
11 37 (2.80%) SaaS
12 36 (2.72%) GitHub Actions
13 35 (2.65%) Azure Monitor
14 34 (2.57%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 28 (2.12%) OCI
15 28 (2.12%) Serverless
16 26 (1.97%) Amazon EC2
16 26 (1.97%) Amazon EKS
17 22 (1.66%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 366 (27.66%) WAN
2 364 (27.51%) Network Security
3 340 (25.70%) VPN
4 275 (20.79%) LAN
5 272 (20.56%) DNS
6 232 (17.54%) BGP
7 211 (15.95%) OSPF
8 166 (12.55%) VLAN
9 143 (10.81%) SD-WAN
9 143 (10.81%) TCP/IP
10 141 (10.66%) DHCP
11 134 (10.13%) Wireless
12 107 (8.09%) Wi-Fi
13 89 (6.73%) IPsec
14 88 (6.65%) MPLS
14 88 (6.65%) VXLAN
15 83 (6.27%) BIG-IP
16 76 (5.74%) Ethernet VPN
17 70 (5.29%) Cisco ISE
18 66 (4.99%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (1.89%) SQL Server
2 18 (1.36%) Elasticsearch
2 18 (1.36%) PostgreSQL
3 13 (0.98%) Power BI
4 10 (0.76%) DataStage
4 10 (0.76%) Oracle Database
5 7 (0.53%) Azure SQL Database
5 7 (0.53%) Data Lake
5 7 (0.53%) Data Warehouse
5 7 (0.53%) MongoDB
6 6 (0.45%) MySQL
7 5 (0.38%) Amazon RDS
7 5 (0.38%) Relational Database
8 4 (0.30%) Amazon Athena
8 4 (0.30%) Amazon QuickSight
8 4 (0.30%) Amazon Redshift
8 4 (0.30%) Metadata
8 4 (0.30%) NoSQL
8 4 (0.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 3 (0.23%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 80 (6.05%) JIRA
2 50 (3.78%) Jenkins
3 43 (3.25%) Git
3 43 (3.25%) GitLab
4 17 (1.28%) Burp Suite
5 16 (1.21%) Metasploit
6 15 (1.13%) Sonatype Nexus
7 9 (0.68%) Artifactory
7 9 (0.68%) Bitbucket
7 9 (0.68%) Chocolatey
7 9 (0.68%) Jaeger
8 8 (0.60%) SonarQube
9 5 (0.38%) Browser DevTools
10 4 (0.30%) CircleCI
11 2 (0.15%) Introscope
11 2 (0.15%) Postman
11 2 (0.15%) Team Foundation Server
12 1 (0.076%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.076%) Cucumber
12 1 (0.076%) Gradle
General
1 304 (22.98%) Social Skills
2 155 (11.72%) Finance
3 118 (8.92%) Analytical Skills
4 106 (8.01%) Public Sector
5 87 (6.58%) Documentation Skills
6 53 (4.01%) Banking
7 38 (2.87%) Telecoms
8 29 (2.19%) Legal
9 25 (1.89%) Financial Institution
10 24 (1.81%) Manufacturing
11 21 (1.59%) Military
12 17 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
13 15 (1.13%) Law
13 15 (1.13%) Retail
14 10 (0.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 10 (0.76%) Organisational Skills
15 8 (0.60%) Front Office
15 8 (0.60%) Investment Banking
15 8 (0.60%) Local Government
15 8 (0.60%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 415 (31.37%) Network Engineer
2 206 (15.57%) Architect
3 160 (12.09%) Senior
4 107 (8.09%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 105 (7.94%) Security Engineer
6 70 (5.29%) Network Architect
7 67 (5.06%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
8 64 (4.84%) Senior Network Engineer
9 56 (4.23%) Azure Engineer
10 53 (4.01%) Cloud Engineer
11 45 (3.40%) Network Security Engineer
12 44 (3.33%) Technical Architect
13 43 (3.25%) Cisco Engineer
14 42 (3.17%) Lead
15 39 (2.95%) Cisco Network Engineer
16 37 (2.80%) DevOps Engineer
16 37 (2.80%) Security Architect
17 34 (2.57%) Analyst
18 33 (2.49%) Consultant
19 30 (2.27%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 70 (5.29%) 802.1X
2 42 (3.17%) LDAP
3 40 (3.02%) Middleware
4 27 (2.04%) SAML
5 23 (1.74%) OpenID
6 18 (1.36%) Kafka
7 12 (0.91%) OAuth
8 11 (0.83%) Elastic Stack
8 11 (0.83%) OAuth2
8 11 (0.83%) OpenTelemetry
9 10 (0.76%) REST
9 10 (0.76%) Spring Boot
10 6 (0.45%) .NET
10 6 (0.45%) ARM Templates
10 6 (0.45%) HTML
10 6 (0.45%) JSON
10 6 (0.45%) LangChain
10 6 (0.45%) PyTorch
10 6 (0.45%) scikit-learn
10 6 (0.45%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 320 (24.19%) Data Centre
2 73 (5.52%) Security Posture
3 67 (5.06%) Cloud Native
4 57 (4.31%) PKI
5 56 (4.23%) Hybrid Cloud
6 47 (3.55%) Onboarding
7 39 (2.95%) Clustering
7 39 (2.95%) Operational Technology
8 38 (2.87%) Management Information System
9 32 (2.42%) Public Cloud
10 26 (1.97%) IoT
11 25 (1.89%) Data Protection Act
12 21 (1.59%) Cyber Threat
12 21 (1.59%) Enterprise Storage
13 19 (1.44%) SCADA
14 16 (1.21%) Driving Licence
14 16 (1.21%) Enterprise Software
14 16 (1.21%) Self-Motivation
15 14 (1.06%) BYOD
16 13 (0.98%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
Operating Systems
1 300 (22.68%) Windows
2 174 (13.15%) Linux
3 116 (8.77%) Windows Server
4 31 (2.34%) Unix
5 30 (2.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 25 (1.89%) VMS
7 11 (0.83%) Solaris
8 10 (0.76%) AIX
8 10 (0.76%) Windows Server 2016
8 10 (0.76%) 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%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.38%) Windows Server 2012
12 4 (0.30%) SUSE
13 3 (0.23%) Amazon Linux
13 3 (0.23%) Data ONTAP
13 3 (0.23%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 215 (16.25%) DevOps
2 184 (13.91%) Cybersecurity
3 183 (13.83%) CI/CD
4 178 (13.45%) Infrastructure as Code
4 178 (13.45%) Load Balancing
5 168 (12.70%) Migration
6 166 (12.55%) Problem-Solving
7 164 (12.40%) High Availability
8 150 (11.34%) ITIL
9 149 (11.26%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 136 (10.28%) Zero Trust
11 124 (9.37%) Agile
12 104 (7.86%) SIEM
13 102 (7.71%) Cloud Security
14 99 (7.48%) Change Management
15 98 (7.41%) Project Delivery
16 92 (6.95%) Network Segmentation
17 91 (6.88%) Observability
18 90 (6.80%) Technical Leadership
19 88 (6.65%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 183 (13.83%) Python
2 136 (10.28%) PowerShell
3 74 (5.59%) Bash
4 56 (4.23%) SQL
5 41 (3.10%) Bicep
6 30 (2.27%) Java
7 11 (0.83%) Perl
8 10 (0.76%) COBOL
8 10 (0.76%) JavaScript
9 8 (0.60%) Kusto Query Language
9 8 (0.60%) Rust
10 6 (0.45%) PL/SQL
11 5 (0.38%) Groovy
11 5 (0.38%) Shell Script
12 4 (0.30%) Go
13 3 (0.23%) C++
14 2 (0.15%) C#
14 2 (0.15%) Jython
14 2 (0.15%) PHP
14 2 (0.15%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 479 (36.21%) Security Cleared
2 359 (27.14%) SC Cleared
3 276 (20.86%) Cisco Certification
4 212 (16.02%) CCNP
5 111 (8.39%) CCNA
6 106 (8.01%) Degree
7 104 (7.86%) DV Cleared
8 59 (4.46%) Azure Certification
9 58 (4.38%) CISSP
10 40 (3.02%) CCIE
11 34 (2.57%) AWS Certification
12 33 (2.49%) CISM
13 28 (2.12%) Microsoft Certification
14 23 (1.74%) JNCIS
15 21 (1.59%) CompTIA Security+
15 21 (1.59%) Network+ Certification
16 20 (1.51%) Computer Science Degree
17 19 (1.44%) JNCIA
18 17 (1.28%) CREST Certified
18 17 (1.28%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (5.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 52 (3.93%) GDPR
2 52 (3.93%) NIST
3 36 (2.72%) PCI DSS
4 31 (2.34%) SLA
5 29 (2.19%) NCSC
6 27 (2.04%) QA
7 20 (1.51%) Cyber Essentials
8 16 (1.21%) PMO
9 7 (0.53%) Data Quality
9 7 (0.53%) Disclosure Scotland
10 6 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
10 6 (0.45%) GRC
10 6 (0.45%) JSP 440
10 6 (0.45%) RMADS
11 5 (0.38%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 5 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 5 (0.38%) SOC 2
12 4 (0.30%) GxP
12 4 (0.30%) NIST 800
System Software
1 204 (15.42%) Active Directory
2 156 (11.79%) VMware Infrastructure
3 61 (4.61%) VMware NSX
4 54 (4.08%) Docker
5 37 (2.80%) Hyper-V
5 37 (2.80%) vSphere
6 35 (2.65%) Virtual Machines
7 29 (2.19%) VMware ESXi
8 22 (1.66%) Firmware
9 20 (1.51%) Virtual Desktop
10 16 (1.21%) Squid
11 10 (0.76%) 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%) EMC RecoverPoint
14 2 (0.15%) iptables
14 2 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 215 (16.25%) Terraform
2 162 (12.24%) Ansible
3 101 (7.63%) FortiGate
4 99 (7.48%) Kubernetes
5 61 (4.61%) Grafana
6 50 (3.78%) Prometheus
7 47 (3.55%) Microsoft Intune
8 32 (2.42%) Single Sign-On
9 25 (1.89%) SCCM
9 25 (1.89%) vCenter Server
10 18 (1.36%) Nmap
11 14 (1.06%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 14 (1.06%) CASB
12 13 (0.98%) Nagios
12 13 (0.98%) Puppet
13 12 (0.91%) Cisco Prime
13 12 (0.91%) QRadar
14 11 (0.83%) VxRail
15 10 (0.76%) Progress Chef
16 9 (0.68%) Nessus
Vendors
1 487 (36.81%) Cisco
2 305 (23.05%) Palo Alto
3 253 (19.12%) Microsoft
4 202 (15.27%) VMware
5 179 (13.53%) Fortinet
6 177 (13.38%) F5
7 146 (11.04%) Juniper
8 135 (10.20%) CheckPoint
9 93 (7.03%) Aruba
10 83 (6.27%) Splunk
11 69 (5.22%) ServiceNow
12 67 (5.06%) SolarWinds
13 62 (4.69%) Arista
14 50 (3.78%) Google
15 45 (3.40%) Meraki
15 45 (3.40%) Zscaler
16 36 (2.72%) Citrix
17 33 (2.49%) Red Hat
18 28 (2.12%) Oracle
19 27 (2.04%) Extreme Networks