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

6 months to
21 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 96 58 57
Rank change year-on-year -38 -1 -9
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,414 1,338 1,356
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.64% 4.08% 3.48%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 27.91% 34.58% 28.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 881 797 859
10th Percentile £350 £325 £313
25th Percentile £418 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £594 £614
90th Percentile £658 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £490 £513
% change year-on-year +2.15% -4.49% +7.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 29 28
10th Percentile £29.00 £14.20 £23.38
25th Percentile £44.86 £15.33 £23.92
Median hourly rate £65.57 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +118.57% +9.09% -58.33%
75th Percentile £79.06 £43.25 £79.06
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.63 £87.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.57 £30.00 £53.75
% change year-on-year +118.57% -44.19% -18.56%

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 5,067 3,869 4,742
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.46% 11.80% 12.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,997 2,360 2,862
10th Percentile £250 £240 £225
25th Percentile £400 £368 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £483 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.52% -3.40% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £473 £500
% change year-on-year +2.22% -5.50% +9.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 370 202 313
10th Percentile £15.18 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £20.50
Median hourly rate £26.14 £46.25 £49.00
Median % change year-on-year -43.48% -5.61% -12.35%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.35 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.14 £45.00 £54.88
% change year-on-year -41.91% -18.00% -4.28%

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 21 August 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 21 August 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 21 August 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 -37 1,232 £510 +2.00% 403
UK excluding London -28 800 £500 +2.15% 344
London -55 476 £500 +0.05% 111
Work from Home -37 394 £520 +4.00% 159
North of England -7 289 £500 +3.09% 62
South East -42 205 £525 +5.00% 137
North West +6 184 £525 +10.53% 32
South West -28 85 £550 +8.64% 37
Yorkshire -34 85 £450 -7.22% 18
East of England +2 76 £525 -4.55% 37
Midlands -80 72 £468 -1.47% 64
Scotland -1 63 £400 -13.51% 11
West Midlands -79 55 £450 -5.26% 44
North East -13 26 £500 -13.04% 14
Wales -16 17 £425 +61.90% 5
East Midlands -22 15 £500 +6.16% 20
Northern Ireland -8 1 - - 1

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 49 (3.47%) Microsoft Exchange
2 32 (2.26%) SharePoint
3 29 (2.05%) Confluence
4 15 (1.06%) Apache
5 11 (0.78%) nginx
5 11 (0.78%) SAS
6 4 (0.28%) CICS
6 4 (0.28%) FactoryTalk
6 4 (0.28%) IIS
6 4 (0.28%) Tomcat
7 3 (0.21%) CloudStack
7 3 (0.21%) Skype for Business
8 2 (0.14%) CMS
8 2 (0.14%) IBM HTTP Server
8 2 (0.14%) Oracle HTTP Server
8 2 (0.14%) Umbraco
8 2 (0.14%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.14%) WebSphere Application Server
8 2 (0.14%) WebSphere Portal
9 1 (0.071%) MTS
Applications
1 24 (1.70%) Microsoft Excel
2 23 (1.63%) MS Visio
3 22 (1.56%) Microsoft Office
4 10 (0.71%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 1 (0.071%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 5 (0.35%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.14%) Dynamics GP
2 2 (0.14%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.071%) Bloomberg TOMS
3 1 (0.071%) Eikon
3 1 (0.071%) Oracle Retail
3 1 (0.071%) Primavera
3 1 (0.071%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 530 (37.48%) Azure
2 326 (23.06%) AWS
3 162 (11.46%) Entra ID
4 127 (8.98%) Microsoft 365
5 112 (7.92%) GCP
6 75 (5.30%) GitHub
7 69 (4.88%) Azure DevOps
8 66 (4.67%) IaaS
9 62 (4.38%) SaaS
10 55 (3.89%) Azure Monitor
11 52 (3.68%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 50 (3.54%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 41 (2.90%) Azure Sentinel
14 40 (2.83%) PaaS
15 38 (2.69%) OCI
15 38 (2.69%) Serverless
16 36 (2.55%) GitHub Actions
17 28 (1.98%) Google Kubernetes Engine
18 26 (1.84%) Amazon EKS
18 26 (1.84%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 417 (29.49%) VPN
2 392 (27.72%) Network Security
3 387 (27.37%) WAN
4 368 (26.03%) DNS
5 281 (19.87%) LAN
6 255 (18.03%) BGP
7 217 (15.35%) DHCP
8 216 (15.28%) TCP/IP
9 200 (14.14%) VLAN
10 198 (14.00%) OSPF
11 168 (11.88%) Wireless
12 144 (10.18%) SD-WAN
13 133 (9.41%) Wi-Fi
14 85 (6.01%) Cisco ASA
14 85 (6.01%) MPLS
15 82 (5.80%) BIG-IP
15 82 (5.80%) IPsec
16 80 (5.66%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 72 (5.09%) SSL
18 71 (5.02%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (2.40%) SQL Server
2 19 (1.34%) PostgreSQL
3 15 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
3 15 (1.06%) Power BI
4 10 (0.71%) Azure SQL Database
4 10 (0.71%) Relational Database
5 9 (0.64%) Elasticsearch
5 9 (0.64%) Oracle Database
6 7 (0.50%) Data Lake
6 7 (0.50%) MySQL
7 6 (0.42%) Amazon Aurora
7 6 (0.42%) NoSQL
8 5 (0.35%) Delta Lake
9 4 (0.28%) Data Warehouse
9 4 (0.28%) DataStage
9 4 (0.28%) Db2
10 3 (0.21%) Amazon Athena
10 3 (0.21%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (0.21%) Big Data
10 3 (0.21%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 95 (6.72%) JIRA
2 58 (4.10%) Jenkins
3 50 (3.54%) GitLab
4 46 (3.25%) Git
5 12 (0.85%) Sonatype Nexus
6 10 (0.71%) Bitbucket
7 8 (0.57%) Artifactory
8 7 (0.50%) Chocolatey
9 6 (0.42%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 6 (0.42%) Browser DevTools
10 4 (0.28%) MSI
10 4 (0.28%) SonarQube
11 3 (0.21%) Burp Suite
12 2 (0.14%) Cucumber
12 2 (0.14%) Gatling
12 2 (0.14%) Gradle
12 2 (0.14%) Introscope
12 2 (0.14%) REST Assured
12 2 (0.14%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 2 (0.14%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 310 (21.92%) Social Skills
2 174 (12.31%) Finance
3 149 (10.54%) Analytical Skills
4 122 (8.63%) Public Sector
5 84 (5.94%) Banking
6 59 (4.17%) Documentation Skills
7 53 (3.75%) Telecoms
8 27 (1.91%) Manufacturing
9 26 (1.84%) Legal
10 20 (1.41%) Retail
11 18 (1.27%) Financial Institution
11 18 (1.27%) Local Government
12 17 (1.20%) Military
13 15 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
14 13 (0.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 13 (0.92%) Police
15 12 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
16 11 (0.78%) Investment Banking
17 10 (0.71%) Law
18 9 (0.64%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 451 (31.90%) Network Engineer
2 217 (15.35%) Senior
3 187 (13.22%) Architect
4 155 (10.96%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 105 (7.43%) Security Engineer
6 96 (6.79%) Senior Network Engineer
7 82 (5.80%) Cloud Engineer
8 65 (4.60%) Azure Engineer
9 60 (4.24%) Consultant
9 60 (4.24%) Network Architect
10 55 (3.89%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
11 52 (3.68%) Network Security Engineer
12 50 (3.54%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
13 48 (3.39%) DevOps Engineer
13 48 (3.39%) Lead
14 46 (3.25%) Security Architect
15 43 (3.04%) Technical Architect
16 42 (2.97%) Cisco Engineer
17 40 (2.83%) Cisco Network Engineer
18 38 (2.69%) Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 292 (20.65%) Terraform
2 54 (3.82%) 802.1X
3 37 (2.62%) Middleware
4 28 (1.98%) SAML
5 25 (1.77%) ARM Templates
6 19 (1.34%) OpenID
7 15 (1.06%) LDAP
7 15 (1.06%) REST
8 14 (0.99%) OAuth
9 11 (0.78%) Kafka
9 11 (0.78%) OAuth2
9 11 (0.78%) YAML
10 10 (0.71%) React
11 8 (0.57%) .NET
12 7 (0.50%) Elastic Stack
12 7 (0.50%) JSON
12 7 (0.50%) OpenTelemetry
12 7 (0.50%) SailPoint
13 5 (0.35%) LangChain
13 5 (0.35%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 310 (21.92%) Data Centre
2 97 (6.86%) Hybrid Cloud
3 85 (6.01%) PKI
4 83 (5.87%) Cloud Native
5 58 (4.10%) Onboarding
6 56 (3.96%) Management Information System
7 54 (3.82%) Security Posture
8 44 (3.11%) Operational Technology
9 31 (2.19%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 30 (2.12%) Data Protection Act
11 28 (1.98%) Public Cloud
12 27 (1.91%) Clustering
12 27 (1.91%) IoT
13 24 (1.70%) Driving Licence
13 24 (1.70%) Self-Motivation
14 23 (1.63%) Enterprise Software
14 23 (1.63%) Enterprise Storage
15 22 (1.56%) Replication
15 22 (1.56%) SCADA
16 20 (1.41%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 353 (24.96%) Windows
2 223 (15.77%) Linux
3 148 (10.47%) Windows Server
4 49 (3.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 27 (1.91%) Unix
6 22 (1.56%) Ubuntu
7 20 (1.41%) VMS
8 15 (1.06%) Mac OS
9 13 (0.92%) CentOS
9 13 (0.92%) Windows Server 2019
10 10 (0.71%) Windows Server 2016
11 8 (0.57%) Windows Server 2012
12 7 (0.50%) Rocky
12 7 (0.50%) Windows 10
13 6 (0.42%) Amazon Linux
14 5 (0.35%) Android
14 5 (0.35%) Solaris
14 5 (0.35%) Windows Server 2003
15 4 (0.28%) AIX
15 4 (0.28%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 248 (17.54%) DevOps
2 244 (17.26%) Infrastructure as Code
3 233 (16.48%) CI/CD
4 219 (15.49%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 199 (14.07%) Cybersecurity
6 196 (13.86%) Load Balancing
7 193 (13.65%) Problem-Solving
8 188 (13.30%) ITIL
9 186 (13.15%) Migration
10 166 (11.74%) High Availability
11 160 (11.32%) Zero Trust
12 159 (11.24%) Agile
13 136 (9.62%) Project Delivery
14 133 (9.41%) SIEM
15 131 (9.26%) Stakeholder Management
16 125 (8.84%) Change Management
17 114 (8.06%) Technical Leadership
17 114 (8.06%) Validation
18 110 (7.78%) Continuous Improvement
19 109 (7.71%) Cloud Security
Programming Languages
1 278 (19.66%) Python
2 217 (15.35%) PowerShell
3 134 (9.48%) Bash
4 52 (3.68%) Bicep
5 47 (3.32%) SQL
6 35 (2.48%) Java
7 12 (0.85%) Perl
8 10 (0.71%) ActionScript
8 10 (0.71%) Kusto Query Language
9 9 (0.64%) Groovy
10 6 (0.42%) Go
10 6 (0.42%) Search Processing Language
11 5 (0.35%) Shell Script
12 4 (0.28%) C++
12 4 (0.28%) COBOL
12 4 (0.28%) JavaScript
12 4 (0.28%) TypeScript
13 3 (0.21%) PL/SQL
14 2 (0.14%) Jython
14 2 (0.14%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 484 (34.23%) Security Cleared
2 343 (24.26%) SC Cleared
3 258 (18.25%) Cisco Certification
4 197 (13.93%) CCNP
5 125 (8.84%) DV Cleared
6 116 (8.20%) Degree
7 105 (7.43%) CCNA
8 76 (5.37%) CISSP
9 71 (5.02%) Azure Certification
10 53 (3.75%) AWS Certification
11 38 (2.69%) CCIE
12 32 (2.26%) Microsoft Certification
13 30 (2.12%) CISM
13 30 (2.12%) Computer Science Degree
14 20 (1.41%) Network+ Certification
15 16 (1.13%) JNCIS
15 16 (1.13%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 15 (1.06%) Server+ Certification
17 14 (0.99%) CEH
17 14 (0.99%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 71 (5.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 60 (4.24%) NIST
3 44 (3.11%) GDPR
4 28 (1.98%) NCSC
5 25 (1.77%) PCI DSS
6 24 (1.70%) QA
6 24 (1.70%) SLA
7 18 (1.27%) Cyber Essentials
8 10 (0.71%) JSP 440
9 9 (0.64%) Data Quality
9 9 (0.64%) NIST 800
10 8 (0.57%) Disclosure Scotland
10 8 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 7 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 7 (0.50%) GxP
12 6 (0.42%) HIPAA
13 5 (0.35%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
14 4 (0.28%) 21 CFR Part 11
14 4 (0.28%) SOC 2
15 3 (0.21%) GRC
System Software
1 238 (16.83%) Active Directory
2 186 (13.15%) VMware Infrastructure
3 71 (5.02%) Docker
3 71 (5.02%) Hyper-V
4 60 (4.24%) VMware NSX
5 49 (3.47%) vSphere
6 44 (3.11%) VMware ESXi
7 41 (2.90%) Virtual Machines
8 27 (1.91%) Firmware
9 15 (1.06%) Virtual Desktop
10 10 (0.71%) BitLocker
11 9 (0.64%) Squid
12 7 (0.50%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.42%) NFS
14 4 (0.28%) Terminal Services
14 4 (0.28%) Virtual Servers
15 3 (0.21%) Dovecot
15 3 (0.21%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 3 (0.21%) FreeRADIUS
15 3 (0.21%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 211 (14.92%) Ansible
2 128 (9.05%) Kubernetes
3 99 (7.00%) FortiGate
4 73 (5.16%) Microsoft Intune
5 56 (3.96%) Grafana
6 54 (3.82%) Prometheus
7 39 (2.76%) SCCM
8 35 (2.48%) Single Sign-On
9 29 (2.05%) Progress Chef
10 26 (1.84%) vCenter Server
11 18 (1.27%) VxRail
12 17 (1.20%) Puppet
13 15 (1.06%) CASB
14 13 (0.92%) Cisco Prime
15 10 (0.71%) Argo
15 10 (0.71%) Packer
16 9 (0.64%) vMotion
17 8 (0.57%) NetBackup
17 8 (0.57%) QRadar
17 8 (0.57%) WSUS
Vendors
1 511 (36.14%) Cisco
2 344 (24.33%) Microsoft
3 306 (21.64%) Palo Alto
4 235 (16.62%) VMware
5 202 (14.29%) Fortinet
6 177 (12.52%) F5
7 133 (9.41%) Juniper
8 127 (8.98%) CheckPoint
9 73 (5.16%) ServiceNow
9 73 (5.16%) Splunk
10 67 (4.74%) Aruba
10 67 (4.74%) Google
11 64 (4.53%) Arista
12 59 (4.17%) Zscaler
13 58 (4.10%) SolarWinds
14 50 (3.54%) Meraki
15 41 (2.90%) Citrix
16 39 (2.76%) Red Hat
17 32 (2.26%) Infoblox
18 31 (2.19%) Dynatrace