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

6 months to
31 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 75 54 49
Rank change year-on-year -21 -5 +15
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,259 1,287 1,747
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.40% 3.85% 4.07%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 31.77% 30.23% 29.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 809 777 1,136
10th Percentile £324 £312 £313
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -
75th Percentile £600 £607 £627
90th Percentile £675 £675 £722
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.60% - +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 21 49
10th Percentile £20.75 £20.00 £45.24
25th Percentile £33.00 £20.19 £62.50
Median hourly rate £41.94 £35.00 £65.98
Median % change year-on-year +19.83% -46.95% +106.19%
75th Percentile £81.50 £41.50 £76.25
90th Percentile £89.63 £60.00 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.75 £35.00 £65.98
% change year-on-year +87.85% -46.95% +77.06%

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 3,963 4,257 5,848
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.70% 12.75% 13.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,593 2,505 3,604
10th Percentile £206 £220 £209
25th Percentile £356 £365 £362
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £474 £472
% change year-on-year -5.01% +0.42% +4.83%
Number of hourly rates quoted 179 138 327
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.86 £17.72
25th Percentile £20.00 £20.88 £23.00
Median hourly rate £34.00 £35.00 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -38.04% +61.40%
75th Percentile £65.50 £57.81 £65.98
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.38 £75.42
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £32.50 £57.99
% change year-on-year +30.77% -43.96% +46.67%

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 31 December 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 31 December 2025.

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 31 December 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 -23 1,068 £513 -2.38% 1,697
UK excluding London -20 677 £492 -1.60% 1,596
London -18 435 £525 -3.67% 292
Work from Home -2 391 £513 -2.10% 766
North of England -23 195 £519 +9.16% 358
South East +5 186 £500 - 450
Midlands -20 124 £475 -5.00% 254
West Midlands +3 115 £475 +7.04% 144
North West -15 105 £525 +8.25% 186
Yorkshire -23 85 £455 +7.06% 142
Scotland -10 59 £425 -15.00% 74
South West -21 54 £540 +13.68% 183
East of England -25 41 £475 -9.52% 218
Wales -22 10 £293 -19.86% 51
North East -8 8 £550 - 31
East Midlands -44 8 £500 -19.06% 95
Northern Ireland - 8 £500 - 35

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 44 (3.49%) Microsoft Exchange
2 43 (3.42%) Confluence
3 33 (2.62%) SharePoint
4 13 (1.03%) nginx
5 12 (0.95%) Apache
6 11 (0.87%) OpenStack
7 6 (0.48%) IIS
7 6 (0.48%) Tomcat
8 5 (0.40%) SAS
9 3 (0.24%) WebSphere
10 2 (0.16%) CICS
10 2 (0.16%) JBoss
10 2 (0.16%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.16%) Traefik
10 2 (0.16%) WebLogic
11 1 (0.079%) Anypoint
11 1 (0.079%) CMS
11 1 (0.079%) Exchange Server 2013
11 1 (0.079%) Mattermost
11 1 (0.079%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 35 (2.78%) Microsoft Office
2 16 (1.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 16 (1.27%) MS Visio
3 15 (1.19%) Microsoft Excel
4 10 (0.79%) Mozilla Thunderbird
5 3 (0.24%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 3 (0.24%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.079%) Finacle
3 1 (0.079%) ION MarketView
3 1 (0.079%) Pegasus Opera
3 1 (0.079%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 424 (33.68%) Azure
2 352 (27.96%) AWS
3 153 (12.15%) GCP
4 124 (9.85%) Microsoft 365
5 87 (6.91%) Entra ID
6 78 (6.20%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 63 (5.00%) Amazon EC2
8 54 (4.29%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 51 (4.05%) Amazon S3
9 51 (4.05%) Azure Sentinel
9 51 (4.05%) GitHub
10 42 (3.34%) IaaS
11 41 (3.26%) Amazon ELB
12 38 (3.02%) Azure DevOps
13 37 (2.94%) Azure Monitor
14 34 (2.70%) PaaS
15 31 (2.46%) GitHub Actions
16 30 (2.38%) AWS CloudFormation
17 29 (2.30%) Serverless
18 28 (2.22%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 306 (24.31%) VPN
2 295 (23.43%) Network Security
3 255 (20.25%) DNS
4 245 (19.46%) WAN
5 175 (13.90%) LAN
6 163 (12.95%) TCP/IP
7 154 (12.23%) BGP
8 127 (10.09%) OSPF
9 123 (9.77%) SD-WAN
10 113 (8.98%) VLAN
11 112 (8.90%) Wireless
12 103 (8.18%) Wi-Fi
13 97 (7.70%) DHCP
14 82 (6.51%) SSL
15 76 (6.04%) MPLS
16 64 (5.08%) Cisco Nexus
17 57 (4.53%) IPsec
18 51 (4.05%) Cisco ASA
19 49 (3.89%) HTTP
20 48 (3.81%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (2.86%) Amazon RDS
1 36 (2.86%) SQL Server
2 30 (2.38%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (0.79%) Amazon Aurora
4 8 (0.64%) MongoDB
5 7 (0.56%) Oracle Database
6 6 (0.48%) Data Lake
6 6 (0.48%) Data Warehouse
7 5 (0.40%) Elasticsearch
7 5 (0.40%) Relational Database
8 4 (0.32%) Redis
9 3 (0.24%) Apache Cassandra
9 3 (0.24%) Azure SQL Database
9 3 (0.24%) DynamoDB
9 3 (0.24%) NoSQL
9 3 (0.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 2 (0.16%) DB2
10 2 (0.16%) MySQL
10 2 (0.16%) Oracle Exadata
10 2 (0.16%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 99 (7.86%) Jenkins
2 87 (6.91%) Git
3 77 (6.12%) JIRA
4 65 (5.16%) GitLab
5 26 (2.07%) Sonatype Nexus
6 17 (1.35%) Vagrant
7 13 (1.03%) Bitbucket
8 11 (0.87%) Burp Suite
8 11 (0.87%) Metasploit
9 7 (0.56%) SonarQube
10 4 (0.32%) CircleCI
10 4 (0.32%) Jaeger
11 3 (0.24%) Postman
12 2 (0.16%) Artifactory
12 2 (0.16%) MSI
13 1 (0.079%) Atlassian Bamboo
13 1 (0.079%) Eclipse
13 1 (0.079%) Maven
13 1 (0.079%) Subversion
13 1 (0.079%) Travis CI
General
1 350 (27.80%) Social Skills
2 147 (11.68%) Analytical Skills
3 128 (10.17%) Public Sector
4 125 (9.93%) Finance
5 73 (5.80%) Documentation Skills
6 63 (5.00%) Banking
7 57 (4.53%) Telecoms
8 30 (2.38%) Manufacturing
9 29 (2.30%) Legal
9 29 (2.30%) Presentation Skills
10 16 (1.27%) Military
11 15 (1.19%) Retail
12 14 (1.11%) Local Government
13 11 (0.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 10 (0.79%) Law
14 10 (0.79%) Organisational Skills
15 9 (0.71%) Financial Institution
16 8 (0.64%) Aerospace
16 8 (0.64%) Influencing Skills
17 7 (0.56%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 303 (24.07%) Network Engineer
2 204 (16.20%) Architect
3 123 (9.77%) Security Engineer
4 116 (9.21%) Senior
5 91 (7.23%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 77 (6.12%) Network Architect
7 61 (4.85%) Consultant
8 60 (4.77%) DevOps Engineer
8 60 (4.77%) Security Architect
9 58 (4.61%) Platform Engineer
10 54 (4.29%) Analyst
11 46 (3.65%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 44 (3.49%) Azure Engineer
13 41 (3.26%) Network Security Engineer
14 38 (3.02%) Solutions Architect
15 37 (2.94%) Support Engineer
16 36 (2.86%) Lead
17 30 (2.38%) AWS Engineer
17 30 (2.38%) Cloud Engineer
17 30 (2.38%) Cybersecurity Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (3.10%) 802.1X
2 34 (2.70%) LDAP
3 25 (1.99%) Middleware
3 25 (1.99%) SAML
4 18 (1.43%) OpenID
5 16 (1.27%) JSON
5 16 (1.27%) Node.js
5 16 (1.27%) OAuth
6 14 (1.11%) OAuth2
7 12 (0.95%) Elastic Stack
7 12 (0.95%) REST
8 11 (0.87%) RFC 2544
9 10 (0.79%) Kafka
9 10 (0.79%) XML
10 9 (0.71%) ARM Templates
11 8 (0.64%) YAML
12 7 (0.56%) Microsoft Graph
13 5 (0.40%) Spring Boot
14 4 (0.32%) OpenTelemetry
14 4 (0.32%) Regular Expression
Miscellaneous
1 219 (17.39%) Data Centre
2 82 (6.51%) Security Posture
3 56 (4.45%) PKI
4 54 (4.29%) Hybrid Cloud
5 49 (3.89%) Operational Technology
6 48 (3.81%) Onboarding
7 47 (3.73%) Cloud Native
8 43 (3.42%) Replication
9 27 (2.14%) Management Information System
9 27 (2.14%) Public Cloud
10 25 (1.99%) Data Protection Act
11 24 (1.91%) Security Operations Centre
12 23 (1.83%) Cyber Threat
13 22 (1.75%) SCADA
14 17 (1.35%) Private Cloud
15 14 (1.11%) Product Ownership
16 13 (1.03%) Enterprise Software
16 13 (1.03%) Fat Client
16 13 (1.03%) Legacy Systems
16 13 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 325 (25.81%) Windows
2 223 (17.71%) Linux
3 123 (9.77%) Windows Server
4 40 (3.18%) VMS
5 38 (3.02%) Unix
6 32 (2.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 20 (1.59%) Amazon Linux
7 20 (1.59%) Ubuntu
8 15 (1.19%) Windows 10
8 15 (1.19%) Windows Server 2019
9 12 (0.95%) Mac OS
10 11 (0.87%) Windows Server 2016
11 10 (0.79%) Windows 7
12 8 (0.64%) Windows Server 2012
13 7 (0.56%) Android
14 6 (0.48%) CentOS
15 4 (0.32%) Windows Server 2003
16 3 (0.24%) Apple iOS
16 3 (0.24%) Solaris
17 2 (0.16%) CatOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 241 (19.14%) Cybersecurity
2 208 (16.52%) Problem-Solving
3 204 (16.20%) DevOps
4 188 (14.93%) CI/CD
5 181 (14.38%) Infrastructure as Code
6 160 (12.71%) SIEM
7 158 (12.55%) Cloud Security
8 150 (11.91%) Incident Response
9 142 (11.28%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 142 (11.28%) Migration
10 125 (9.93%) ITIL
11 124 (9.85%) Agile
12 114 (9.05%) High Availability
13 109 (8.66%) Load Balancing
14 103 (8.18%) Stakeholder Management
15 98 (7.78%) Change Management
16 95 (7.55%) Zero Trust
17 90 (7.15%) Network Design
18 83 (6.59%) Mentoring
19 79 (6.27%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 253 (20.10%) Python
2 200 (15.89%) PowerShell
3 112 (8.90%) Bash
4 70 (5.56%) SQL
5 43 (3.42%) Java
6 39 (3.10%) Perl
7 21 (1.67%) Bicep
8 17 (1.35%) Groovy
8 17 (1.35%) Kusto Query Language
9 12 (0.95%) Ruby
10 11 (0.87%) Shell Script
11 6 (0.48%) Go
11 6 (0.48%) JavaScript
12 5 (0.40%) Rust
13 4 (0.32%) C#
14 3 (0.24%) C
14 3 (0.24%) PL/SQL
15 2 (0.16%) Apex Code
15 2 (0.16%) C++
16 1 (0.079%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 414 (32.88%) Security Cleared
2 293 (23.27%) SC Cleared
3 219 (17.39%) Cisco Certification
4 174 (13.82%) CCNP
5 118 (9.37%) Degree
6 101 (8.02%) CISSP
7 89 (7.07%) DV Cleared
8 79 (6.27%) CCNA
9 64 (5.08%) Azure Certification
10 55 (4.37%) CISM
11 53 (4.21%) AWS Certification
11 53 (4.21%) Microsoft Certification
12 50 (3.97%) CCIE
13 31 (2.46%) CompTIA Security+
14 25 (1.99%) Computer Science Degree
15 21 (1.67%) CEH
16 19 (1.51%) JNCIP
17 16 (1.27%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 16 (1.27%) BPSS Clearance
18 14 (1.11%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 111 (8.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 107 (8.50%) NIST
3 70 (5.56%) GDPR
4 44 (3.49%) PCI DSS
5 25 (1.99%) SLA
6 20 (1.59%) Cyber Essentials
6 20 (1.59%) NCSC
7 18 (1.43%) QA
8 12 (0.95%) PMO
8 12 (0.95%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 11 (0.87%) GRC
10 9 (0.71%) COBIT
11 8 (0.64%) HIPAA
12 5 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 5 (0.40%) JSP 440
12 5 (0.40%) PSD2
12 5 (0.40%) SOC 2
13 4 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
13 4 (0.32%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 4 (0.32%) NIST 800
System Software
1 228 (18.11%) Active Directory
2 158 (12.55%) VMware Infrastructure
3 141 (11.20%) Docker
4 50 (3.97%) Hyper-V
5 44 (3.49%) VMware NSX
6 36 (2.86%) Virtual Machines
7 29 (2.30%) vSphere
8 20 (1.59%) DFS Replication
9 18 (1.43%) VMware ESXi
10 15 (1.19%) Squid
11 12 (0.95%) Virtual Desktop
12 10 (0.79%) Dovecot
12 10 (0.79%) Firmware
12 10 (0.79%) Postfix
13 8 (0.64%) KVM
13 8 (0.64%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (0.48%) Snort
14 6 (0.48%) Terminal Services
15 5 (0.40%) NDS
15 5 (0.40%) NetIQ eDirectory
Systems Management
1 215 (17.08%) Terraform
2 173 (13.74%) Ansible
3 111 (8.82%) Kubernetes
4 73 (5.80%) FortiGate
5 58 (4.61%) Microsoft Intune
6 41 (3.26%) Grafana
7 37 (2.94%) Prometheus
7 37 (2.94%) SCCM
8 32 (2.54%) Single Sign-On
9 27 (2.14%) vCenter Server
10 23 (1.83%) Nessus
11 22 (1.75%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 16 (1.27%) CSIRT
13 15 (1.19%) CASB
14 14 (1.11%) Nmap
15 13 (1.03%) Fluentd
15 13 (1.03%) Nagios
15 13 (1.03%) QRadar
16 11 (0.87%) Proxmox
16 11 (0.87%) WMI
Vendors
1 412 (32.72%) Cisco
2 293 (23.27%) Microsoft
3 268 (21.29%) Palo Alto
4 195 (15.49%) VMware
5 152 (12.07%) F5
6 140 (11.12%) Fortinet
7 138 (10.96%) CheckPoint
8 101 (8.02%) Juniper
9 99 (7.86%) Splunk
10 64 (5.08%) Meraki
11 62 (4.92%) Aruba
11 62 (4.92%) Google
12 61 (4.85%) Oracle
13 54 (4.29%) SolarWinds
14 53 (4.21%) ServiceNow
15 51 (4.05%) Zscaler
16 48 (3.81%) Citrix
17 28 (2.22%) Red Hat
18 25 (1.99%) Tenable
19 23 (1.83%) Dell