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

6 months to
11 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 91 52 54
Rank change year-on-year -39 +2 -4
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,356 1,251 1,520
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.72% 4.26% 3.48%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 28.36% 34.08% 27.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 879 743 953
10th Percentile £350 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £619
90th Percentile £650 £688 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £499 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +2.84% -3.00% +2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 27 21 46
10th Percentile £17.33 - £16.00
25th Percentile £37.25 £14.20 £23.92
Median hourly rate £56.00 £30.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +86.67% -50.00% -4.08%
75th Percentile £70.41 £41.25 £85.65
90th Percentile £78.60 £45.00 £87.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.72 £30.00 £83.50
% change year-on-year +62.40% -64.07% +34.08%

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 4,781 3,671 5,438
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.58% 12.50% 12.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,930 2,271 3,228
10th Percentile £263 £220 £206
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £485 £498
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -2.51% -2.93%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £476 £469 £483
% change year-on-year +1.39% -2.95% +1.74%
Number of hourly rates quoted 284 165 420
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.14 £18.13 £16.30
Median hourly rate £27.50 £44.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -37.50% +10.00% +113.73%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.13 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.18 £80.61 £70.72
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £31.79 £47.50
% change year-on-year +2.23% -33.07% +156.76%

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 11 June 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 11 June 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 11 June 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 -44 1,141 £500 -0.79% 507
UK excluding London -27 762 £499 +2.84% 450
London -60 429 £510 -1.92% 123
Work from Home -35 396 £520 +4.00% 188
North of England -13 264 £500 +4.17% 118
South East -16 214 £500 - 160
North West -2 166 £537 +13.11% 75
Yorkshire -28 83 £434 -11.21% 30
Midlands -67 77 £425 -19.05% 62
East of England -10 69 £505 +1.00% 36
Scotland +11 64 £450 +5.88% 20
West Midlands -52 64 £420 -20.00% 38
South West -45 55 £520 +6.67% 49
Wales -18 25 £425 +21.43% 8
North East -9 21 £625 +25.00% 13
East Midlands -47 9 £488 -6.43% 24
Northern Ireland -2 2 £385 - 4

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 (2.65%) Microsoft Exchange
2 30 (2.21%) Confluence
3 22 (1.62%) SharePoint
4 15 (1.11%) nginx
5 11 (0.81%) Apache
6 10 (0.74%) CICS
7 6 (0.44%) IIS
8 5 (0.37%) SAS
8 5 (0.37%) Tomcat
9 3 (0.22%) Skype for Business
10 2 (0.15%) Apache Pulsar
10 2 (0.15%) CloudStack
10 2 (0.15%) CMS
10 2 (0.15%) IBM HTTP Server
10 2 (0.15%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.15%) Umbraco
10 2 (0.15%) WebSphere
10 2 (0.15%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.15%) WebSphere Portal
11 1 (0.074%) MTS
Applications
1 23 (1.70%) MS Visio
2 22 (1.62%) Microsoft Office
3 18 (1.33%) Microsoft Excel
4 10 (0.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 8 (0.59%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.074%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 1 (0.074%) Dynamics GP
1 1 (0.074%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.074%) Primavera
1 1 (0.074%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.074%) SAP S/4HANA
1 1 (0.074%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
1 1 (0.074%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 452 (33.33%) Azure
2 295 (21.76%) AWS
3 122 (9.00%) GCP
4 116 (8.55%) Entra ID
5 107 (7.89%) Microsoft 365
6 77 (5.68%) GitHub
7 63 (4.65%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 58 (4.28%) IaaS
9 51 (3.76%) Azure DevOps
10 45 (3.32%) SaaS
11 41 (3.02%) PaaS
12 40 (2.95%) GitHub Actions
13 36 (2.65%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 36 (2.65%) OCI
14 31 (2.29%) Serverless
15 30 (2.21%) Azure Monitor
15 30 (2.21%) Azure Sentinel
16 27 (1.99%) Amazon EC2
17 26 (1.92%) Google Kubernetes Engine
18 25 (1.84%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 381 (28.10%) Network Security
2 364 (26.84%) WAN
3 346 (25.52%) VPN
4 285 (21.02%) DNS
5 273 (20.13%) LAN
6 235 (17.33%) BGP
7 207 (15.27%) OSPF
8 175 (12.91%) VLAN
9 151 (11.14%) SD-WAN
10 147 (10.84%) TCP/IP
11 145 (10.69%) DHCP
12 135 (9.96%) Wireless
13 111 (8.19%) Wi-Fi
14 96 (7.08%) BIG-IP
15 94 (6.93%) VXLAN
16 93 (6.86%) MPLS
17 86 (6.34%) IPsec
18 80 (5.90%) Ethernet VPN
18 80 (5.90%) SSL
19 76 (5.60%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (1.77%) SQL Server
2 17 (1.25%) Elasticsearch
2 17 (1.25%) PostgreSQL
3 15 (1.11%) Power BI
4 10 (0.74%) Amazon RDS
4 10 (0.74%) DataStage
5 9 (0.66%) Oracle Database
6 8 (0.59%) Azure SQL Database
6 8 (0.59%) MySQL
7 7 (0.52%) Data Lake
7 7 (0.52%) Relational Database
8 6 (0.44%) Data Warehouse
8 6 (0.44%) MongoDB
9 4 (0.29%) Amazon Athena
9 4 (0.29%) Amazon QuickSight
9 4 (0.29%) Amazon Redshift
9 4 (0.29%) Metadata
9 4 (0.29%) NoSQL
9 4 (0.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 3 (0.22%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 90 (6.64%) JIRA
2 63 (4.65%) Jenkins
3 47 (3.47%) GitLab
4 44 (3.24%) Git
5 15 (1.11%) Sonatype Nexus
6 10 (0.74%) Burp Suite
7 9 (0.66%) Artifactory
7 9 (0.66%) Bitbucket
7 9 (0.66%) Chocolatey
7 9 (0.66%) Metasploit
8 8 (0.59%) Jaeger
8 8 (0.59%) SonarQube
9 5 (0.37%) Browser DevTools
10 3 (0.22%) CircleCI
11 2 (0.15%) Introscope
11 2 (0.15%) Postman
11 2 (0.15%) Team Foundation Server
12 1 (0.074%) Claude Code
12 1 (0.074%) Cucumber
12 1 (0.074%) REST Assured
General
1 292 (21.53%) Social Skills
2 169 (12.46%) Finance
3 112 (8.26%) Analytical Skills
4 105 (7.74%) Public Sector
5 78 (5.75%) Documentation Skills
6 59 (4.35%) Banking
7 36 (2.65%) Legal
7 36 (2.65%) Telecoms
8 24 (1.77%) Financial Institution
9 22 (1.62%) Manufacturing
10 19 (1.40%) Military
11 16 (1.18%) Influencing Skills
12 15 (1.11%) Law
13 12 (0.88%) Retail
14 11 (0.81%) Investment Banking
15 10 (0.74%) Front Office
16 9 (0.66%) Local Government
16 9 (0.66%) Presentation Skills
17 8 (0.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 8 (0.59%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 426 (31.42%) Network Engineer
2 210 (15.49%) Architect
3 166 (12.24%) Senior
4 124 (9.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 113 (8.33%) Security Engineer
6 74 (5.46%) Network Architect
7 71 (5.24%) Senior Network Engineer
8 64 (4.72%) Cloud Engineer
9 59 (4.35%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
10 56 (4.13%) Azure Engineer
11 50 (3.69%) Network Security Engineer
12 46 (3.39%) Technical Architect
13 44 (3.24%) DevOps Engineer
13 44 (3.24%) Lead
14 42 (3.10%) Cisco Engineer
15 38 (2.80%) Cisco Network Engineer
15 38 (2.80%) Security Architect
16 36 (2.65%) Consultant
17 33 (2.43%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
17 33 (2.43%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 70 (5.16%) 802.1X
2 41 (3.02%) Middleware
3 34 (2.51%) LDAP
4 26 (1.92%) SAML
5 22 (1.62%) OpenID
6 17 (1.25%) Kafka
7 11 (0.81%) OAuth
8 10 (0.74%) OAuth2
8 10 (0.74%) OpenTelemetry
8 10 (0.74%) REST
9 9 (0.66%) Spring Boot
10 7 (0.52%) ARM Templates
10 7 (0.52%) YAML
11 6 (0.44%) .NET
11 6 (0.44%) Elastic Stack
11 6 (0.44%) HTML
11 6 (0.44%) LangChain
11 6 (0.44%) PyTorch
11 6 (0.44%) scikit-learn
12 5 (0.37%) ADO
Miscellaneous
1 339 (25.00%) Data Centre
2 86 (6.34%) Cloud Native
3 75 (5.53%) Security Posture
4 67 (4.94%) Hybrid Cloud
5 60 (4.42%) PKI
6 57 (4.20%) Onboarding
7 43 (3.17%) Management Information System
8 41 (3.02%) Clustering
9 38 (2.80%) Operational Technology
10 32 (2.36%) Public Cloud
11 28 (2.06%) Data Protection Act
12 25 (1.84%) IoT
13 23 (1.70%) Cyber Threat
13 23 (1.70%) Enterprise Storage
14 19 (1.40%) Self-Motivation
15 18 (1.33%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
15 18 (1.33%) SCADA
16 16 (1.18%) Driving Licence
16 16 (1.18%) Enterprise Software
17 15 (1.11%) BYOD
Operating Systems
1 299 (22.05%) Windows
2 185 (13.64%) Linux
3 113 (8.33%) Windows Server
4 38 (2.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 30 (2.21%) Unix
6 27 (1.99%) VMS
7 13 (0.96%) Windows Server 2019
8 11 (0.81%) Solaris
9 10 (0.74%) AIX
9 10 (0.74%) Windows Server 2016
10 8 (0.59%) Ubuntu
10 8 (0.59%) Windows Server 2003
11 7 (0.52%) Windows Server 2012
12 6 (0.44%) Windows 10
13 5 (0.37%) CentOS
13 5 (0.37%) Mac OS
14 4 (0.29%) Android
14 4 (0.29%) SUSE
15 3 (0.22%) Amazon Linux
15 3 (0.22%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 244 (17.99%) DevOps
2 214 (15.78%) CI/CD
3 196 (14.45%) Infrastructure as Code
4 188 (13.86%) Load Balancing
5 175 (12.91%) Migration
6 173 (12.76%) Cybersecurity
7 171 (12.61%) High Availability
8 166 (12.24%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 161 (11.87%) Problem-Solving
10 158 (11.65%) ITIL
11 147 (10.84%) Agile
11 147 (10.84%) Zero Trust
12 110 (8.11%) Project Delivery
13 107 (7.89%) Observability
14 104 (7.67%) Change Management
14 104 (7.67%) SIEM
15 99 (7.30%) Cloud Security
16 98 (7.23%) Network Segmentation
17 93 (6.86%) Validation
18 90 (6.64%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 209 (15.41%) Python
2 135 (9.96%) PowerShell
3 80 (5.90%) Bash
4 49 (3.61%) SQL
5 39 (2.88%) Bicep
6 38 (2.80%) Java
7 10 (0.74%) ActionScript
7 10 (0.74%) COBOL
7 10 (0.74%) Perl
8 7 (0.52%) Go
8 7 (0.52%) JavaScript
8 7 (0.52%) Rust
9 6 (0.44%) Groovy
9 6 (0.44%) Kusto Query Language
9 6 (0.44%) Shell Script
10 5 (0.37%) PL/SQL
11 3 (0.22%) C++
12 2 (0.15%) C
12 2 (0.15%) Jython
12 2 (0.15%) PHP
Qualifications
1 467 (34.44%) Security Cleared
2 350 (25.81%) SC Cleared
3 275 (20.28%) Cisco Certification
4 207 (15.27%) CCNP
5 113 (8.33%) CCNA
6 112 (8.26%) Degree
7 98 (7.23%) DV Cleared
8 63 (4.65%) CISSP
9 60 (4.42%) Azure Certification
10 40 (2.95%) AWS Certification
11 37 (2.73%) CCIE
12 32 (2.36%) CISM
13 31 (2.29%) Microsoft Certification
14 22 (1.62%) Network+ Certification
15 20 (1.47%) JNCIS
16 19 (1.40%) Computer Science Degree
17 18 (1.33%) JNCIA
18 17 (1.25%) CompTIA Security+
18 17 (1.25%) PMP
18 17 (1.25%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 70 (5.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 57 (4.20%) NIST
3 47 (3.47%) GDPR
4 33 (2.43%) PCI DSS
5 32 (2.36%) SLA
6 30 (2.21%) NCSC
7 24 (1.77%) QA
8 22 (1.62%) Cyber Essentials
9 11 (0.81%) PMO
10 8 (0.59%) Disclosure Scotland
11 7 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
11 7 (0.52%) Data Quality
12 6 (0.44%) GRC
12 6 (0.44%) RMADS
13 5 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 5 (0.37%) JSP 440
13 5 (0.37%) NIST 800
13 5 (0.37%) SOC 2
14 4 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 4 (0.29%) GxP
System Software
1 205 (15.12%) Active Directory
2 153 (11.28%) VMware Infrastructure
3 59 (4.35%) Docker
4 57 (4.20%) VMware NSX
5 38 (2.80%) vSphere
6 36 (2.65%) Hyper-V
6 36 (2.65%) Virtual Machines
7 30 (2.21%) VMware ESXi
8 24 (1.77%) Firmware
9 22 (1.62%) Virtual Desktop
10 16 (1.18%) Squid
11 12 (0.88%) BitLocker
12 9 (0.66%) Microsoft App-V
13 3 (0.22%) DFS Replication
13 3 (0.22%) Dovecot
13 3 (0.22%) Postfix
13 3 (0.22%) Terminal Services
14 2 (0.15%) NFS
14 2 (0.15%) VirtualBox
14 2 (0.15%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 233 (17.18%) Terraform
2 182 (13.42%) Ansible
3 114 (8.41%) Kubernetes
4 104 (7.67%) FortiGate
5 67 (4.94%) Grafana
6 58 (4.28%) Prometheus
7 53 (3.91%) Microsoft Intune
8 32 (2.36%) SCCM
9 31 (2.29%) Single Sign-On
10 22 (1.62%) vCenter Server
11 17 (1.25%) Puppet
12 16 (1.18%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 16 (1.18%) Progress Chef
13 13 (0.96%) CASB
14 12 (0.88%) Cisco Prime
15 11 (0.81%) Consul
15 11 (0.81%) Nmap
15 11 (0.81%) QRadar
16 10 (0.74%) VxRail
17 9 (0.66%) vMotion
Vendors
1 487 (35.91%) Cisco
2 307 (22.64%) Palo Alto
3 261 (19.25%) Microsoft
4 193 (14.23%) VMware
5 192 (14.16%) Fortinet
6 189 (13.94%) F5
7 148 (10.91%) Juniper
8 129 (9.51%) CheckPoint
9 92 (6.78%) Aruba
10 80 (5.90%) Splunk
11 74 (5.46%) ServiceNow
12 70 (5.16%) Arista
13 66 (4.87%) SolarWinds
14 61 (4.50%) Google
15 43 (3.17%) Zscaler
16 40 (2.95%) Red Hat
17 38 (2.80%) Citrix
18 36 (2.65%) Meraki
19 28 (2.06%) Extreme Networks
20 26 (1.92%) Oracle