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 1 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 80 52 51
Rank change year-on-year -28 -1 +6
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,366 1,218 1,640
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.06% 4.19% 3.71%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.59% 32.34% 27.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 896 738 1,028
10th Percentile £339 £313 £313
25th Percentile £413 £406 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.91% +2.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £650 £688 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 18 38
10th Percentile £20.70 £14.20 £15.66
25th Percentile £37.25 £15.28 £23.92
Median hourly rate £48.72 £35.82 £62.75
Median % change year-on-year +36.00% -42.91% +6.97%
75th Percentile £74.26 £41.50 £85.65
90th Percentile £85.20 £53.63 £87.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.36 £35.00 £83.63
% change year-on-year +49.60% -58.15% +51.17%

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 4,466 3,766 5,915
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.00% 12.97% 13.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,866 2,332 3,562
10th Percentile £224 £213 £205
25th Percentile £380 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £475
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% +3.16% -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £473 £475
% change year-on-year +0.53% -0.53% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 191 148 408
10th Percentile £15.56 £14.99 £13.96
25th Percentile £19.34 £21.46 £17.72
Median hourly rate £41.94 £35.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +19.83% +7.69% +71.05%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.38 £62.50
90th Percentile £76.50 £75.00 £67.84
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.72 £31.79 £44.00
% change year-on-year +53.26% -27.75% +137.84%

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 1 April 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 1 April 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 1 April 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 -31 1,143 £515 -0.96% 482
UK excluding London -17 770 £500 - 419
London -63 420 £525 - 122
Work from Home -23 388 £515 +3.00% 174
South East +9 236 £515 +4.04% 134
North of England -22 235 £515 +8.42% 105
North West -7 157 £533 +12.70% 67
Midlands -44 96 £425 -23.42% 62
West Midlands -16 86 £425 -16.71% 37
Yorkshire -25 76 £433 -15.61% 27
South West -43 60 £550 +0.73% 42
East of England -10 59 £475 -7.32% 51
Scotland -6 53 £425 -2.86% 22
Wales -13 30 £425 +9.68% 13
East Midlands -53 7 £475 -19.83% 25
North East -12 5 £548 +9.50% 12
Northern Ireland - 3 £500 - 5

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 42 (3.07%) Microsoft Exchange
2 33 (2.42%) Confluence
3 19 (1.39%) SharePoint
4 13 (0.95%) Apache
4 13 (0.95%) nginx
5 9 (0.66%) SAS
6 8 (0.59%) CICS
7 6 (0.44%) IIS
8 4 (0.29%) OpenStack
9 3 (0.22%) WebSphere
10 2 (0.15%) Apache Pulsar
10 2 (0.15%) IBM HTTP Server
10 2 (0.15%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.15%) Skype for Business
10 2 (0.15%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.15%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.15%) WebSphere Portal
11 1 (0.073%) Anypoint
11 1 (0.073%) JBoss
Applications
1 38 (2.78%) Microsoft Office
2 22 (1.61%) Microsoft Excel
3 20 (1.46%) MS Visio
4 17 (1.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.073%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 2 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.073%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.073%) Primavera
2 1 (0.073%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.073%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 458 (33.53%) Azure
2 306 (22.40%) AWS
3 133 (9.74%) GCP
4 119 (8.71%) Microsoft 365
5 111 (8.13%) Entra ID
6 67 (4.90%) GitHub
7 63 (4.61%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 61 (4.47%) IaaS
9 55 (4.03%) PaaS
10 53 (3.88%) Azure DevOps
11 46 (3.37%) Azure Monitor
12 45 (3.29%) Serverless
13 44 (3.22%) Azure Sentinel
14 40 (2.93%) SaaS
15 39 (2.86%) Azure ExpressRoute
16 38 (2.78%) GitHub Actions
17 36 (2.64%) AWS Lambda
18 35 (2.56%) AWS CloudFormation
19 34 (2.49%) Amazon EC2
20 31 (2.27%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 371 (27.16%) Network Security
2 343 (25.11%) VPN
2 343 (25.11%) WAN
3 287 (21.01%) DNS
4 256 (18.74%) LAN
5 224 (16.40%) BGP
6 199 (14.57%) OSPF
7 155 (11.35%) VLAN
8 152 (11.13%) TCP/IP
9 146 (10.69%) DHCP
10 134 (9.81%) SD-WAN
11 123 (9.00%) Wireless
12 99 (7.25%) Wi-Fi
13 96 (7.03%) MPLS
14 79 (5.78%) IPsec
15 74 (5.42%) Cisco ISE
16 69 (5.05%) Cisco ASA
17 67 (4.90%) VXLAN
18 58 (4.25%) Cisco Nexus
19 57 (4.17%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (2.05%) SQL Server
2 20 (1.46%) PostgreSQL
3 18 (1.32%) Amazon RDS
3 18 (1.32%) Elasticsearch
4 13 (0.95%) Oracle Database
5 10 (0.73%) Data Lake
5 10 (0.73%) Data Warehouse
6 9 (0.66%) Power BI
7 8 (0.59%) DataStage
8 7 (0.51%) Azure SQL Database
8 7 (0.51%) MongoDB
9 6 (0.44%) MySQL
10 5 (0.37%) Relational Database
11 4 (0.29%) Amazon QuickSight
11 4 (0.29%) NoSQL
11 4 (0.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 3 (0.22%) Delta Lake
12 3 (0.22%) Oracle Exadata
12 3 (0.22%) Oracle Reports
12 3 (0.22%) Redis
Development Applications
1 79 (5.78%) JIRA
2 60 (4.39%) Jenkins
3 49 (3.59%) GitLab
4 45 (3.29%) Git
5 22 (1.61%) Sonatype Nexus
6 19 (1.39%) Bitbucket
7 16 (1.17%) Burp Suite
7 16 (1.17%) Metasploit
8 9 (0.66%) Chocolatey
9 8 (0.59%) Jaeger
10 7 (0.51%) SonarQube
11 4 (0.29%) Artifactory
11 4 (0.29%) CircleCI
12 3 (0.22%) Browser DevTools
13 2 (0.15%) Introscope
14 1 (0.073%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 1 (0.073%) Maven
14 1 (0.073%) MSI
14 1 (0.073%) PVCS
14 1 (0.073%) Subversion
General
1 352 (25.77%) Social Skills
2 163 (11.93%) Finance
3 141 (10.32%) Analytical Skills
4 108 (7.91%) Public Sector
5 96 (7.03%) Documentation Skills
6 54 (3.95%) Banking
7 42 (3.07%) Telecoms
8 33 (2.42%) Legal
9 26 (1.90%) Financial Institution
10 22 (1.61%) Manufacturing
11 18 (1.32%) Influencing Skills
12 16 (1.17%) Presentation Skills
13 14 (1.02%) Military
14 13 (0.95%) Law
15 12 (0.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 11 (0.81%) Local Government
16 11 (0.81%) Retail
17 10 (0.73%) Organisational Skills
18 8 (0.59%) Aerospace
18 8 (0.59%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 383 (28.04%) Network Engineer
2 237 (17.35%) Architect
3 143 (10.47%) Senior
4 111 (8.13%) Security Engineer
5 93 (6.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 83 (6.08%) Network Architect
7 58 (4.25%) Azure Engineer
8 54 (3.95%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
9 48 (3.51%) Senior Network Engineer
10 47 (3.44%) Security Architect
10 47 (3.44%) Solutions Architect
11 43 (3.15%) Analyst
11 43 (3.15%) Cloud Engineer
12 40 (2.93%) Consultant
12 40 (2.93%) DevOps Engineer
13 39 (2.86%) Lead
13 39 (2.86%) Platform Engineer
14 36 (2.64%) Cisco Engineer
14 36 (2.64%) Network Security Engineer
15 35 (2.56%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (5.20%) 802.1X
2 37 (2.71%) LDAP
3 34 (2.49%) Middleware
4 33 (2.42%) SAML
5 32 (2.34%) OpenID
6 20 (1.46%) Kafka
6 20 (1.46%) OAuth
7 19 (1.39%) OAuth2
8 14 (1.02%) REST
9 12 (0.88%) Node.js
10 11 (0.81%) ARM Templates
10 11 (0.81%) JSON
11 10 (0.73%) OpenTelemetry
12 9 (0.66%) Spring Boot
13 8 (0.59%) XML
14 7 (0.51%) Elastic Stack
14 7 (0.51%) YAML
15 6 (0.44%) LangChain
15 6 (0.44%) PyTorch
15 6 (0.44%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 290 (21.23%) Data Centre
2 80 (5.86%) Security Posture
3 76 (5.56%) PKI
4 74 (5.42%) Cloud Native
5 49 (3.59%) Hybrid Cloud
5 49 (3.59%) Onboarding
6 42 (3.07%) Operational Technology
7 39 (2.86%) Public Cloud
8 37 (2.71%) Clustering
9 35 (2.56%) Management Information System
10 26 (1.90%) IoT
11 22 (1.61%) Replication
12 21 (1.54%) Cyber Threat
12 21 (1.54%) Product Ownership
12 21 (1.54%) SCADA
13 20 (1.46%) NHS
14 19 (1.39%) Private Cloud
14 19 (1.39%) Security Operations Centre
15 18 (1.32%) Data Protection Act
16 17 (1.24%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 345 (25.26%) Windows
2 212 (15.52%) Linux
3 144 (10.54%) Windows Server
4 40 (2.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 32 (2.34%) Unix
6 29 (2.12%) VMS
7 13 (0.95%) Windows Server 2019
8 11 (0.81%) Windows Server 2016
9 10 (0.73%) Solaris
10 8 (0.59%) AIX
10 8 (0.59%) Windows 10
10 8 (0.59%) Windows 7
11 7 (0.51%) Windows Server 2003
12 4 (0.29%) CatOS
12 4 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
13 3 (0.22%) Amazon Linux
13 3 (0.22%) Data ONTAP
13 3 (0.22%) SUSE
14 2 (0.15%) Android
14 2 (0.15%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 225 (16.47%) Cybersecurity
2 218 (15.96%) DevOps
3 205 (15.01%) Problem-Solving
4 188 (13.76%) CI/CD
4 188 (13.76%) Infrastructure as Code
5 169 (12.37%) Load Balancing
6 165 (12.08%) Migration
7 161 (11.79%) ITIL
8 150 (10.98%) High Availability
9 142 (10.40%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 133 (9.74%) Agile
11 124 (9.08%) Cloud Security
11 124 (9.08%) SIEM
12 121 (8.86%) Zero Trust
13 117 (8.57%) Change Management
14 104 (7.61%) Incident Response
15 93 (6.81%) Project Delivery
16 92 (6.73%) Mentoring
17 91 (6.66%) Identity Access Management
17 91 (6.66%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 206 (15.08%) Python
2 197 (14.42%) PowerShell
3 95 (6.95%) Bash
4 59 (4.32%) SQL
5 41 (3.00%) Bicep
6 33 (2.42%) Java
7 25 (1.83%) Perl
8 12 (0.88%) Kusto Query Language
9 10 (0.73%) Ruby
10 8 (0.59%) COBOL
10 8 (0.59%) JavaScript
10 8 (0.59%) Rust
11 6 (0.44%) PL/SQL
12 5 (0.37%) Shell Script
13 4 (0.29%) C#
13 4 (0.29%) Go
14 2 (0.15%) C++
14 2 (0.15%) Jython
14 2 (0.15%) PHP
15 1 (0.073%) ActionScript
Qualifications
1 488 (35.72%) Security Cleared
2 334 (24.45%) SC Cleared
3 257 (18.81%) Cisco Certification
4 208 (15.23%) CCNP
5 131 (9.59%) DV Cleared
6 120 (8.78%) Degree
7 108 (7.91%) CCNA
8 83 (6.08%) CISSP
9 60 (4.39%) Azure Certification
10 50 (3.66%) CCIE
11 46 (3.37%) AWS Certification
12 45 (3.29%) CISM
13 40 (2.93%) Microsoft Certification
14 28 (2.05%) CompTIA Security+
15 27 (1.98%) JNCIS
16 26 (1.90%) JNCIP
17 22 (1.61%) Computer Science Degree
18 20 (1.46%) JNCIA
19 18 (1.32%) CREST Certified
19 18 (1.32%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 101 (7.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 76 (5.56%) NIST
3 69 (5.05%) GDPR
4 45 (3.29%) PCI DSS
5 39 (2.86%) NCSC
6 31 (2.27%) SLA
7 27 (1.98%) Cyber Essentials
8 22 (1.61%) QA
9 16 (1.17%) PMO
10 9 (0.66%) JSP 440
11 6 (0.44%) Actionable Recommendations
11 6 (0.44%) GRC
11 6 (0.44%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 5 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 5 (0.37%) RMADS
13 4 (0.29%) Data Quality
13 4 (0.29%) GxP
13 4 (0.29%) HIPAA
13 4 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 4 (0.29%) SOC 2
System Software
1 241 (17.64%) Active Directory
2 177 (12.96%) VMware Infrastructure
3 87 (6.37%) Docker
4 70 (5.12%) VMware NSX
5 44 (3.22%) Hyper-V
6 39 (2.86%) vSphere
7 31 (2.27%) Virtual Machines
8 30 (2.20%) VMware ESXi
9 19 (1.39%) Firmware
9 19 (1.39%) Virtual Desktop
10 12 (0.88%) Squid
11 9 (0.66%) BitLocker
12 8 (0.59%) Microsoft App-V
13 7 (0.51%) Virtual Servers
14 3 (0.22%) DFS Replication
14 3 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
15 2 (0.15%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 2 (0.15%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 2 (0.15%) NetIQ eDirectory
15 2 (0.15%) ProxySG
Systems Management
1 216 (15.81%) Terraform
2 157 (11.49%) Ansible
3 124 (9.08%) Kubernetes
4 98 (7.17%) FortiGate
5 62 (4.54%) Microsoft Intune
6 45 (3.29%) Grafana
7 42 (3.07%) Single Sign-On
8 38 (2.78%) Prometheus
9 35 (2.56%) SCCM
10 32 (2.34%) vCenter Server
11 25 (1.83%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 18 (1.32%) Nmap
13 16 (1.17%) QRadar
14 14 (1.02%) CASB
15 13 (0.95%) Nagios
16 12 (0.88%) Cisco Prime
17 11 (0.81%) VxRail
18 10 (0.73%) Nessus
18 10 (0.73%) Puppet
18 10 (0.73%) WSUS
Vendors
1 466 (34.11%) Cisco
2 304 (22.25%) Microsoft
3 271 (19.84%) Palo Alto
4 221 (16.18%) VMware
5 154 (11.27%) Fortinet
6 152 (11.13%) F5
7 148 (10.83%) Juniper
8 125 (9.15%) CheckPoint
9 94 (6.88%) Splunk
10 88 (6.44%) Aruba
11 71 (5.20%) SolarWinds
12 63 (4.61%) Google
13 56 (4.10%) ServiceNow
14 55 (4.03%) Meraki
15 46 (3.37%) Citrix
16 44 (3.22%) Zscaler
17 42 (3.07%) Red Hat
18 41 (3.00%) Oracle
19 40 (2.93%) Arista
20 26 (1.90%) Extreme Networks