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 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 65 53 45
Rank change year-on-year -12 -8 +19
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,302 1,330 2,102
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.73% 3.69% 4.47%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 32.98% 30.67% 31.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 828 795 1,395
10th Percentile £318 £313 £313
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -
75th Percentile £600 £614 £625
90th Percentile £688 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.10% - +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 23 66
10th Percentile £20.47 £20.00 £30.63
25th Percentile £29.00 £20.72 £60.63
Median hourly rate £33.39 £27.50 £65.98
Median % change year-on-year +21.40% -58.32% +63.86%
75th Percentile £69.31 £39.75 £75.67
90th Percentile £89.63 £57.75 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.00 £27.50 £65.98
% change year-on-year +27.27% -58.32% +38.66%

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 3,948 4,336 6,578
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.31% 12.04% 14.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,557 2,499 4,094
10th Percentile £206 £225 £213
25th Percentile £360 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £685 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £454 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -4.42% - +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 198 160 345
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.99 £17.72
25th Percentile £20.04 £26.13 £22.75
Median hourly rate £34.00 £47.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.42% -13.64% +30.95%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.51 £66.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £75.93
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £50.00 £56.49
% change year-on-year -15.00% -11.49% +25.53%

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 November 2025.

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 November 2025.

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 11 November 2025. 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 -10 1,118 £500 -4.76% 739
UK excluding London -9 722 £490 -2.10% 587
London -10 456 £525 -4.55% 249
Work from Home -9 366 £500 -4.76% 277
North of England -13 208 £492 -1.60% 94
South East -4 175 £500 - 228
Midlands -4 146 £475 -5.00% 89
West Midlands +13 132 £475 -5.00% 67
Yorkshire -7 108 £488 +14.71% 37
North West -26 97 £525 +5.00% 43
Scotland -24 60 £463 -2.63% 27
South West -21 58 £525 +10.53% 66
East of England -12 54 £483 -8.10% 65
East Midlands -34 14 £492 -4.00% 22
Wales -9 13 £200 -47.54% 23
Northern Ireland - 13 £500 - 10
North East -12 6 £550 +57.14% 14
Channel Islands - 4 £725 -

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 58 (4.45%) Microsoft Exchange
2 51 (3.92%) Confluence
3 35 (2.69%) SharePoint
4 16 (1.23%) OpenStack
5 13 (1.00%) nginx
6 10 (0.77%) Apache
7 7 (0.54%) Tomcat
8 4 (0.31%) JBoss
9 3 (0.23%) CMS
9 3 (0.23%) SAS
10 2 (0.15%) Anypoint
10 2 (0.15%) CICS
10 2 (0.15%) IIS
10 2 (0.15%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.15%) Traefik
10 2 (0.15%) WebLogic
10 2 (0.15%) WebSphere
11 1 (0.077%) Exchange Server 2013
11 1 (0.077%) Mattermost
11 1 (0.077%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 29 (2.23%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (0.77%) Mozilla Thunderbird
2 10 (0.77%) MS Visio
3 9 (0.69%) Microsoft Excel
4 6 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.46%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 3 (0.23%) ION MarketView
2 2 (0.15%) Dynamics GP
2 2 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.077%) Finacle
3 1 (0.077%) Pegasus Opera
Cloud Services
1 398 (30.57%) Azure
2 343 (26.34%) AWS
3 148 (11.37%) Microsoft 365
4 147 (11.29%) GCP
5 90 (6.91%) Entra ID
6 81 (6.22%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 66 (5.07%) Amazon EC2
8 65 (4.99%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 58 (4.45%) Amazon S3
10 52 (3.99%) Azure Sentinel
11 45 (3.46%) Amazon ELB
12 37 (2.84%) IaaS
13 36 (2.76%) Akamai
13 36 (2.76%) Azure DevOps
14 34 (2.61%) GitHub
15 31 (2.38%) PaaS
16 28 (2.15%) SaaS
16 28 (2.15%) Serverless
17 27 (2.07%) Azure ExpressRoute
18 26 (2.00%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 283 (21.74%) VPN
2 276 (21.20%) Network Security
3 273 (20.97%) DNS
4 240 (18.43%) WAN
5 170 (13.06%) LAN
6 160 (12.29%) TCP/IP
7 151 (11.60%) BGP
8 138 (10.60%) SD-WAN
9 129 (9.91%) OSPF
10 118 (9.06%) Wireless
11 113 (8.68%) DHCP
11 113 (8.68%) VLAN
12 101 (7.76%) Wi-Fi
13 86 (6.61%) SSL
14 76 (5.84%) Cisco Nexus
15 69 (5.30%) MPLS
16 63 (4.84%) Cisco ISE
17 56 (4.30%) HTTP
18 55 (4.22%) Cisco IOS
19 52 (3.99%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 39 (3.00%) Amazon RDS
2 37 (2.84%) SQL Server
3 25 (1.92%) PostgreSQL
4 12 (0.92%) Relational Database
5 10 (0.77%) Amazon Aurora
6 8 (0.61%) Data Lake
7 7 (0.54%) MySQL
8 6 (0.46%) Azure SQL Database
9 5 (0.38%) DB2
9 5 (0.38%) DynamoDB
9 5 (0.38%) NoSQL
9 5 (0.38%) Oracle Database
9 5 (0.38%) Redis
10 4 (0.31%) Apache Cassandra
10 4 (0.31%) MongoDB
11 3 (0.23%) Data Warehouse
12 2 (0.15%) Amazon QuickSight
12 2 (0.15%) Data Vault
12 2 (0.15%) RDBMS
13 1 (0.077%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 108 (8.29%) Jenkins
2 94 (7.22%) Git
3 84 (6.45%) JIRA
4 66 (5.07%) GitLab
5 24 (1.84%) Sonatype Nexus
6 22 (1.69%) Vagrant
7 16 (1.23%) Postman
8 12 (0.92%) Bitbucket
9 9 (0.69%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.23%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.15%) Maven
11 2 (0.15%) MSI
12 1 (0.077%) Eclipse
12 1 (0.077%) Subversion
General
1 320 (24.58%) Social Skills
2 145 (11.14%) Finance
3 142 (10.91%) Analytical Skills
4 124 (9.52%) Public Sector
5 65 (4.99%) Banking
6 53 (4.07%) Documentation Skills
7 52 (3.99%) Telecoms
8 35 (2.69%) Manufacturing
9 31 (2.38%) Legal
10 29 (2.23%) Presentation Skills
11 26 (2.00%) Games
12 15 (1.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 14 (1.08%) Local Government
13 14 (1.08%) Military
14 11 (0.84%) Law
14 11 (0.84%) Organisational Skills
15 10 (0.77%) Retail
16 9 (0.69%) Influencing Skills
17 7 (0.54%) Financial Institution
18 5 (0.38%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 294 (22.58%) Network Engineer
2 210 (16.13%) Architect
3 133 (10.22%) Security Engineer
4 112 (8.60%) Senior
5 87 (6.68%) Analyst
6 78 (5.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 77 (5.91%) Network Architect
8 74 (5.68%) Platform Engineer
9 69 (5.30%) Consultant
10 64 (4.92%) DevOps Engineer
11 57 (4.38%) Security Architect
12 54 (4.15%) Network Security Engineer
13 45 (3.46%) Support Engineer
14 41 (3.15%) Solutions Architect
15 40 (3.07%) Azure Engineer
15 40 (3.07%) Lead
16 34 (2.61%) AWS Engineer
16 34 (2.61%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
17 33 (2.53%) Cloud Engineer
17 33 (2.53%) Security Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (2.53%) LDAP
2 29 (2.23%) 802.1X
3 25 (1.92%) RFC 2544
4 20 (1.54%) SAML
5 19 (1.46%) Middleware
5 19 (1.46%) REST
6 16 (1.23%) JSON
6 16 (1.23%) OpenID
7 15 (1.15%) OAuth
8 14 (1.08%) Elastic Stack
9 13 (1.00%) OAuth2
10 11 (0.84%) Node.js
11 9 (0.69%) XML
12 8 (0.61%) ARM Templates
12 8 (0.61%) YAML
13 6 (0.46%) Microsoft Graph
14 4 (0.31%) Kafka
15 3 (0.23%) CSS
15 3 (0.23%) JBoss Seam
15 3 (0.23%) Rendezvous
Miscellaneous
1 197 (15.13%) Data Centre
2 84 (6.45%) Security Posture
3 61 (4.69%) Hybrid Cloud
4 60 (4.61%) Operational Technology
5 47 (3.61%) PKI
6 45 (3.46%) Onboarding
7 44 (3.38%) Replication
8 34 (2.61%) Management Information System
9 29 (2.23%) Cloud Native
10 28 (2.15%) Data Protection Act
11 27 (2.07%) Cyber Threat
12 23 (1.77%) Public Cloud
13 22 (1.69%) Security Operations Centre
14 20 (1.54%) SCADA
15 19 (1.46%) Fibre Optics
16 18 (1.38%) Cyber Defence
16 18 (1.38%) Private Cloud
17 15 (1.15%) Enterprise Software
17 15 (1.15%) Legacy Systems
17 15 (1.15%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 320 (24.58%) Windows
2 226 (17.36%) Linux
3 107 (8.22%) Windows Server
4 40 (3.07%) Unix
5 38 (2.92%) VMS
6 37 (2.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 35 (2.69%) Mac OS
8 31 (2.38%) Android
9 25 (1.92%) Amazon Linux
10 22 (1.69%) Ubuntu
11 17 (1.31%) Windows 10
12 13 (1.00%) Windows Server 2016
13 11 (0.84%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.69%) CentOS
14 9 (0.69%) Windows Server 2012
15 7 (0.54%) Solaris
15 7 (0.54%) Windows 7
16 3 (0.23%) AIX
16 3 (0.23%) Apple iOS
16 3 (0.23%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 227 (17.43%) Cybersecurity
2 203 (15.59%) DevOps
3 187 (14.36%) Problem-Solving
4 185 (14.21%) Cloud Security
5 160 (12.29%) CI/CD
5 160 (12.29%) Incident Response
6 155 (11.90%) SIEM
7 152 (11.67%) Infrastructure as Code
8 142 (10.91%) Migration
9 132 (10.14%) Agile
10 128 (9.83%) ITIL
11 122 (9.37%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 116 (8.91%) High Availability
13 101 (7.76%) Change Management
14 96 (7.37%) Security Operations
15 91 (6.99%) Network Design
15 91 (6.99%) Stakeholder Management
16 86 (6.61%) Load Balancing
17 85 (6.53%) Zero Trust
18 81 (6.22%) Configuration Management
Programming Languages
1 282 (21.66%) Python
2 211 (16.21%) PowerShell
3 113 (8.68%) Bash
4 59 (4.53%) SQL
5 44 (3.38%) Java
5 44 (3.38%) Perl
6 22 (1.69%) Groovy
7 18 (1.38%) Bicep
7 18 (1.38%) Kusto Query Language
8 11 (0.84%) Shell Script
9 8 (0.61%) Ruby
10 7 (0.54%) JavaScript
11 6 (0.46%) Go
12 4 (0.31%) C
13 3 (0.23%) Kotlin
13 3 (0.23%) TypeScript
14 2 (0.15%) Apex Code
14 2 (0.15%) C++
14 2 (0.15%) PHP
15 1 (0.077%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 362 (27.80%) Security Cleared
2 255 (19.59%) SC Cleared
3 223 (17.13%) Cisco Certification
4 161 (12.37%) CCNP
5 108 (8.29%) Degree
6 103 (7.91%) CISSP
7 83 (6.37%) CCNA
8 81 (6.22%) DV Cleared
9 61 (4.69%) Azure Certification
10 52 (3.99%) AWS Certification
10 52 (3.99%) CISM
11 51 (3.92%) CCIE
11 51 (3.92%) Microsoft Certification
12 37 (2.84%) Computer Science Degree
13 27 (2.07%) CEH
14 26 (2.00%) CompTIA Security+
15 19 (1.46%) GIAC
16 16 (1.23%) BPSS Clearance
17 15 (1.15%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 14 (1.08%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 116 (8.91%) NIST
2 101 (7.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 74 (5.68%) GDPR
4 39 (3.00%) PCI DSS
5 25 (1.92%) SLA
6 20 (1.54%) QA
7 19 (1.46%) NCSC
8 14 (1.08%) HIPAA
9 13 (1.00%) GRC
10 12 (0.92%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 11 (0.84%) Cyber Essentials
12 10 (0.77%) SOC 2
13 9 (0.69%) COBIT
14 6 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
14 6 (0.46%) Disclosure Scotland
14 6 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
15 5 (0.38%) GxP
15 5 (0.38%) PSD2
16 4 (0.31%) Accessibility
17 3 (0.23%) NIST 800
System Software
1 235 (18.05%) Active Directory
2 142 (10.91%) Docker
3 136 (10.45%) VMware Infrastructure
4 39 (3.00%) Hyper-V
5 33 (2.53%) Virtual Machines
6 26 (2.00%) vSphere
7 25 (1.92%) DFS Replication
8 22 (1.69%) VMware NSX
9 15 (1.15%) Firmware
9 15 (1.15%) Squid
10 11 (0.84%) VMware ESXi
11 10 (0.77%) Dovecot
11 10 (0.77%) Postfix
12 7 (0.54%) Terminal Services
12 7 (0.54%) Veritas Cluster Server
12 7 (0.54%) Virtual Desktop
12 7 (0.54%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.46%) KVM
13 6 (0.46%) Snort
14 5 (0.38%) NDS
Systems Management
1 186 (14.29%) Terraform
2 183 (14.06%) Ansible
3 100 (7.68%) Kubernetes
4 74 (5.68%) Microsoft Intune
5 67 (5.15%) FortiGate
6 59 (4.53%) SCCM
7 43 (3.30%) Grafana
8 40 (3.07%) Prometheus
9 32 (2.46%) Single Sign-On
10 24 (1.84%) Puppet
11 21 (1.61%) Nessus
12 19 (1.46%) vCenter Server
13 18 (1.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 18 (1.38%) CSIRT
14 16 (1.23%) CASB
15 14 (1.08%) QRadar
16 11 (0.84%) Fluentd
17 10 (0.77%) Microsoft Clustering
17 10 (0.77%) Proxmox
17 10 (0.77%) SCOM
Vendors
1 447 (34.33%) Cisco
2 329 (25.27%) Microsoft
3 221 (16.97%) Palo Alto
4 172 (13.21%) VMware
5 169 (12.98%) F5
6 145 (11.14%) Fortinet
7 120 (9.22%) CheckPoint
8 112 (8.60%) Splunk
9 100 (7.68%) Juniper
10 80 (6.14%) Meraki
11 72 (5.53%) SolarWinds
12 67 (5.15%) Oracle
13 58 (4.45%) ServiceNow
14 56 (4.30%) Zscaler
15 54 (4.15%) Google
16 44 (3.38%) Citrix
17 34 (2.61%) Red Hat
18 28 (2.15%) Aruba
19 26 (2.00%) Dell
20 21 (1.61%) Arista