Firewall Contract Job Trends

Firewall
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Firewall skills. It covers vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 17 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 62 58 46
Rank change year-on-year -4 -12 +24
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,288 1,347 2,218
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 3.91% 3.52% 4.47%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 33.83% 29.69% 33.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 779 840 1,522
10th Percentile £313 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -
75th Percentile £600 £625 £625
90th Percentile £688 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £508 £475
% change year-on-year -3.94% +6.84% -1.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 32 62
10th Percentile £14.85 £20.00 £35.00
25th Percentile £28.00 £22.11 £60.25
Median hourly rate £30.00 £31.25 £65.99
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% -52.64% +53.47%
75th Percentile £37.06 £75.68 £75.19
90th Percentile £89.63 £87.46 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £41.25 £65.98
% change year-on-year -27.27% -37.48% +48.44%

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 3,807 4,537 6,564
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.56% 11.86% 13.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,354 2,642 4,185
10th Percentile £225 £225 £226
25th Percentile £363 £375 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £476 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.80% - -
75th Percentile £588 £608 £613
90th Percentile £677 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £452 £500 £450
% change year-on-year -9.70% +11.11% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 198 255 300
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.16 £16.77
25th Percentile £25.15 £21.37 £22.94
Median hourly rate £43.00 £50.50 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -14.85% -10.60% +36.12%
75th Percentile £64.69 £65.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £75.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £57.35 £57.50
% change year-on-year -25.89% -0.26% +27.78%

Firewall
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Firewall as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Firewall 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 17 September 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 17 September 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 17 September 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 -5 1,114 £500 -4.76% 784
UK excluding London -8 676 £488 -3.94% 713
London +10 490 £515 -2.84% 201
Work from Home -7 378 £500 -9.09% 270
South East -8 180 £500 - 233
North of England -4 176 £480 -20.00% 158
Midlands 0 139 £475 -6.40% 119
West Midlands +13 123 £475 -9.52% 66
Yorkshire +5 88 £490 -14.50% 54
North West -19 85 £475 -21.10% 89
South West -7 59 £486 +2.37% 62
Scotland -4 54 £450 -10.00% 49
East of England +4 46 £483 +7.22% 94
East Midlands -30 16 £492 +0.51% 49
Northern Ireland - 14 £531 - 10
Wales +2 12 £200 -9.09% 8
Channel Islands - 4 £725 -
North East -1 3 £575 +91.67% 19

Firewall
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 62 (4.81%) Microsoft Exchange
2 50 (3.88%) Confluence
3 33 (2.56%) SharePoint
4 13 (1.01%) nginx
5 12 (0.93%) OpenStack
6 8 (0.62%) Apache
7 7 (0.54%) Tomcat
8 6 (0.47%) CMS
9 4 (0.31%) JBoss
10 3 (0.23%) IIS
11 2 (0.16%) CICS
11 2 (0.16%) Oracle HTTP Server
11 2 (0.16%) Traefik
11 2 (0.16%) WebLogic
11 2 (0.16%) WebSphere
12 1 (0.078%) Anypoint
12 1 (0.078%) Exchange Server 2010
12 1 (0.078%) Exchange Server 2013
12 1 (0.078%) Mattermost
12 1 (0.078%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 33 (2.56%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (0.78%) Mozilla Thunderbird
2 10 (0.78%) MS Visio
3 9 (0.70%) Microsoft Excel
4 8 (0.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.54%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 3 (0.23%) ION MarketView
1 3 (0.23%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.16%) Alphatax
2 2 (0.16%) Dynamics GP
2 2 (0.16%) SAP PM
3 1 (0.078%) Distributed Ledger
3 1 (0.078%) Finacle
3 1 (0.078%) Pegasus Opera
3 1 (0.078%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 372 (28.88%) Azure
2 321 (24.92%) AWS
3 142 (11.02%) Microsoft 365
4 128 (9.94%) GCP
5 79 (6.13%) Entra ID
6 66 (5.12%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 56 (4.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 53 (4.11%) Amazon S3
8 53 (4.11%) Azure Sentinel
9 52 (4.04%) IaaS
10 51 (3.96%) Amazon EC2
11 42 (3.26%) Amazon ELB
12 38 (2.95%) PaaS
13 35 (2.72%) Azure DevOps
14 32 (2.48%) Akamai
15 29 (2.25%) GitHub
15 29 (2.25%) Serverless
16 27 (2.10%) Azure ExpressRoute
17 25 (1.94%) AWS KMS
17 25 (1.94%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 311 (24.15%) VPN
2 281 (21.82%) Network Security
3 272 (21.12%) DNS
4 227 (17.62%) WAN
5 170 (13.20%) TCP/IP
6 169 (13.12%) LAN
7 161 (12.50%) BGP
8 152 (11.80%) OSPF
9 130 (10.09%) SD-WAN
10 125 (9.70%) Wireless
11 115 (8.93%) DHCP
12 106 (8.23%) VLAN
13 94 (7.30%) SSL
14 89 (6.91%) Wi-Fi
15 80 (6.21%) Cisco Nexus
16 71 (5.51%) MPLS
17 68 (5.28%) IPsec
18 60 (4.66%) Cisco ASA
18 60 (4.66%) Intrusion Detection
19 59 (4.58%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (2.80%) Amazon RDS
1 36 (2.80%) SQL Server
2 23 (1.79%) PostgreSQL
3 11 (0.85%) Data Lake
4 10 (0.78%) Amazon Aurora
4 10 (0.78%) Elasticsearch
4 10 (0.78%) NoSQL
5 9 (0.70%) Big Data
5 9 (0.70%) Relational Database
6 8 (0.62%) Azure SQL Database
7 7 (0.54%) MySQL
8 4 (0.31%) Apache Cassandra
8 4 (0.31%) DB2
8 4 (0.31%) Oracle Database
9 3 (0.23%) MongoDB
9 3 (0.23%) Power BI
9 3 (0.23%) Redis
10 2 (0.16%) Delta Lake
10 2 (0.16%) DynamoDB
10 2 (0.16%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 96 (7.45%) Jenkins
2 74 (5.75%) Git
3 70 (5.43%) JIRA
4 38 (2.95%) GitLab
5 22 (1.71%) Vagrant
6 16 (1.24%) Postman
6 16 (1.24%) Sonatype Nexus
7 10 (0.78%) SonarQube
8 4 (0.31%) Eclipse
9 3 (0.23%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 3 (0.23%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.23%) Maven
10 2 (0.16%) Artifactory
10 2 (0.16%) Gradle
11 1 (0.078%) MSI
11 1 (0.078%) TeamCity
General
1 294 (22.83%) Social Skills
2 155 (12.03%) Finance
3 123 (9.55%) Public Sector
4 115 (8.93%) Analytical Skills
5 70 (5.43%) Banking
6 67 (5.20%) Telecoms
7 35 (2.72%) Manufacturing
8 32 (2.48%) Documentation Skills
9 31 (2.41%) Legal
10 26 (2.02%) Games
11 23 (1.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 19 (1.48%) Presentation Skills
13 15 (1.16%) Law
13 15 (1.16%) Military
14 12 (0.93%) Marketing
14 12 (0.93%) Organisational Skills
15 10 (0.78%) Local Government
16 9 (0.70%) Retail
17 8 (0.62%) Financial Institution
18 5 (0.39%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 302 (23.45%) Network Engineer
2 195 (15.14%) Architect
3 119 (9.24%) Security Engineer
4 114 (8.85%) Senior
5 85 (6.60%) Analyst
6 82 (6.37%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 78 (6.06%) Network Architect
8 59 (4.58%) Support Engineer
9 57 (4.43%) DevOps Engineer
10 56 (4.35%) Security Architect
11 54 (4.19%) Consultant
11 54 (4.19%) Platform Engineer
12 52 (4.04%) Network Security Engineer
13 43 (3.34%) Cisco Engineer
14 42 (3.26%) Lead
14 42 (3.26%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
15 40 (3.11%) Azure Engineer
15 40 (3.11%) Cisco Network Engineer
16 39 (3.03%) AWS Engineer
17 32 (2.48%) Security Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (2.64%) LDAP
2 27 (2.10%) RFC 2544
3 26 (2.02%) 802.1X
4 19 (1.48%) Elastic Stack
5 18 (1.40%) REST
6 15 (1.16%) Middleware
7 13 (1.01%) JSON
8 9 (0.70%) .NET
8 9 (0.70%) ARM Templates
9 7 (0.54%) ADO
9 7 (0.54%) JBoss Seam
9 7 (0.54%) Kafka
9 7 (0.54%) SAML
9 7 (0.54%) XML
9 7 (0.54%) YAML
10 5 (0.39%) React
11 4 (0.31%) OAuth
12 3 (0.23%) Node.js
12 3 (0.23%) OAuth2
12 3 (0.23%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 181 (14.05%) Data Centre
2 70 (5.43%) Security Posture
3 57 (4.43%) Hybrid Cloud
4 56 (4.35%) Operational Technology
5 47 (3.65%) PKI
6 41 (3.18%) Management Information System
7 35 (2.72%) Onboarding
7 35 (2.72%) Replication
8 34 (2.64%) Cloud Native
8 34 (2.64%) Cyber Threat
9 32 (2.48%) Data Protection Act
10 22 (1.71%) SCADA
11 19 (1.48%) Security Operations Centre
12 18 (1.40%) Cyber Defence
12 18 (1.40%) Fibre Optics
13 17 (1.32%) Enterprise Software
14 16 (1.24%) Public Cloud
14 16 (1.24%) Virtual Team
15 15 (1.16%) Linux Command Line
16 14 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 293 (22.75%) Windows
2 193 (14.98%) Linux
3 92 (7.14%) Windows Server
4 40 (3.11%) Mac OS
5 39 (3.03%) Unix
6 31 (2.41%) VMS
7 30 (2.33%) Android
7 30 (2.33%) Windows 10
8 25 (1.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 22 (1.71%) Amazon Linux
10 20 (1.55%) Ubuntu
11 17 (1.32%) Windows Server 2016
12 11 (0.85%) Windows Server 2012
12 11 (0.85%) Windows Server 2019
13 9 (0.70%) Solaris
14 8 (0.62%) CentOS
15 7 (0.54%) Windows Server 2003
16 6 (0.47%) Check Point GAiA
17 4 (0.31%) Windows Server 2008
18 3 (0.23%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 203 (15.76%) Cybersecurity
2 199 (15.45%) DevOps
3 165 (12.81%) Cloud Security
4 163 (12.66%) Migration
5 160 (12.42%) Problem-Solving
6 156 (12.11%) SIEM
7 136 (10.56%) Infrastructure as Code
8 134 (10.40%) Incident Response
9 133 (10.33%) Agile
10 131 (10.17%) ITIL
11 129 (10.02%) CI/CD
12 123 (9.55%) High Availability
13 116 (9.01%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 100 (7.76%) Change Management
15 98 (7.61%) Security Operations
16 82 (6.37%) Network Design
16 82 (6.37%) Zero Trust
17 81 (6.29%) Configuration Management
18 78 (6.06%) Network Architecture
19 76 (5.90%) Vulnerability Management
Programming Languages
1 241 (18.71%) Python
2 184 (14.29%) PowerShell
3 90 (6.99%) Bash
4 63 (4.89%) SQL
5 42 (3.26%) Java
6 26 (2.02%) Perl
7 23 (1.79%) Groovy
8 22 (1.71%) Bicep
9 17 (1.32%) Kusto Query Language
10 14 (1.09%) Shell Script
11 9 (0.70%) Go
11 9 (0.70%) JavaScript
12 7 (0.54%) TypeScript
13 5 (0.39%) C#
13 5 (0.39%) C++
14 4 (0.31%) C
14 4 (0.31%) PHP
15 3 (0.23%) Kotlin
16 2 (0.16%) Apex Code
17 1 (0.078%) Rust
Qualifications
1 366 (28.42%) Security Cleared
2 265 (20.57%) SC Cleared
3 227 (17.62%) Cisco Certification
4 162 (12.58%) CCNP
5 124 (9.63%) Degree
6 78 (6.06%) CCNA
7 77 (5.98%) DV Cleared
8 76 (5.90%) CISSP
9 60 (4.66%) Azure Certification
10 50 (3.88%) Computer Science Degree
11 47 (3.65%) AWS Certification
12 46 (3.57%) CCIE
13 42 (3.26%) Microsoft Certification
14 36 (2.80%) CISM
15 24 (1.86%) CEH
16 21 (1.63%) CompTIA Security+
17 19 (1.48%) BPSS Clearance
17 19 (1.48%) CCSE
18 18 (1.40%) CCSA
19 15 (1.16%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 89 (6.91%) NIST
2 74 (5.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 64 (4.97%) GDPR
4 36 (2.80%) PCI DSS
5 25 (1.94%) SLA
6 19 (1.48%) HIPAA
7 15 (1.16%) QA
8 12 (0.93%) GRC
8 12 (0.93%) SOC 2
9 11 (0.85%) NCSC
10 9 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 7 (0.54%) COBIT
11 7 (0.54%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 5 (0.39%) Accessibility
12 5 (0.39%) Disclosure Scotland
13 4 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials
13 4 (0.31%) GxP
14 3 (0.23%) PMO
14 3 (0.23%) PSD2
15 2 (0.16%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 208 (16.15%) Active Directory
2 126 (9.78%) Docker
3 115 (8.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 52 (4.04%) Hyper-V
5 31 (2.41%) Virtual Machines
6 27 (2.10%) DFS Replication
7 23 (1.79%) VMware ESXi
8 22 (1.71%) vSphere
9 17 (1.32%) Terminal Services
10 15 (1.16%) Firmware
11 14 (1.09%) Squid
11 14 (1.09%) VMware NSX
12 13 (1.01%) Microsoft App-V
13 10 (0.78%) BitLocker
13 10 (0.78%) Dovecot
13 10 (0.78%) Postfix
14 7 (0.54%) Veritas Cluster Server
14 7 (0.54%) Virtual Desktop
15 5 (0.39%) Snort
15 5 (0.39%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 183 (14.21%) Ansible
2 164 (12.73%) Terraform
3 99 (7.69%) Kubernetes
4 61 (4.74%) FortiGate
5 60 (4.66%) Microsoft Intune
6 56 (4.35%) SCCM
7 44 (3.42%) Grafana
8 40 (3.11%) Prometheus
9 38 (2.95%) Puppet
10 22 (1.71%) Nessus
11 21 (1.63%) Single Sign-On
11 21 (1.63%) vCenter Server
12 17 (1.32%) Nagios
13 16 (1.24%) CASB
14 13 (1.01%) CSIRT
15 11 (0.85%) SELinux
16 10 (0.78%) Microsoft Clustering
16 10 (0.78%) Progress Chef
16 10 (0.78%) Proxmox
16 10 (0.78%) vMotion
Vendors
1 477 (37.03%) Cisco
2 307 (23.84%) Microsoft
3 222 (17.24%) Palo Alto
4 157 (12.19%) Fortinet
5 151 (11.72%) F5
6 150 (11.65%) VMware
7 149 (11.57%) CheckPoint
8 106 (8.23%) Juniper
9 93 (7.22%) Splunk
10 82 (6.37%) SolarWinds
11 71 (5.51%) Meraki
12 65 (5.05%) ServiceNow
13 60 (4.66%) Oracle
14 58 (4.50%) Google
15 51 (3.96%) Zscaler
16 50 (3.88%) Citrix
17 30 (2.33%) HP
18 26 (2.02%) Red Hat
19 25 (1.94%) Arista
19 25 (1.94%) Dell