Firewall Contracts

Firewall
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring Firewall skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Firewall over the 6 months leading up to 30 April 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 52 52 57
Rank change year-on-year 0 +5 +26
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,200 1,601 2,393
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 4.10% 3.67% 4.01%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 32.09% 28.37% 32.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 722 1,007 1,673
10th Percentile £313 £313 £313
25th Percentile £405 £413 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.46% -1.90% +5.00%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £650
90th Percentile £688 £775 £706
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £500 £495
% change year-on-year -2.50% +1.01% +10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 45 53
10th Percentile - £16.00 £21.45
25th Percentile £14.20 £23.92 £40.00
Median hourly rate £36.65 £60.00 £62.00
Median % change year-on-year -38.93% -3.23% +39.33%
75th Percentile £41.50 £85.65 £75.99
90th Percentile £56.50 £87.50 £83.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.07 £83.77 £62.00
% change year-on-year -61.71% +35.10% +178.65%

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 3,739 5,643 7,361
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.79% 12.94% 12.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,297 3,382 4,789
10th Percentile £213 £205 £235
25th Percentile £363 £350 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £495 £519
Median % change year-on-year -1.52% -4.53% +3.70%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £638
90th Percentile £675 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -2.63% - +8.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 181 423 478
10th Percentile £14.20 £13.57 £9.80
25th Percentile £17.30 £17.35 £10.63
Median hourly rate £32.50 £38.50 £19.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.58% +102.63% -31.84%
75th Percentile £58.75 £62.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £67.40 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.59 £45.88 £18.50
% change year-on-year -46.41% +148.00% -13.95%

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
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Firewall.

Daily rate trend for Firewall in the UK

Firewall
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Firewall over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Firewall in the UK

Firewall
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Firewall.

Hourly rate trend for Firewall in the UK

Firewall
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Firewall over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Firewall in the UK

Firewall
Top 18 Contract 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 30 April 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 -1 1,027 £517 +0.88% 929
UK excluding London -12 557 £488 -2.50% 691
London +11 497 £525 - 303
Work from Home +9 393 £500 -2.91% 445
North of England +8 158 £475 -8.67% 174
South East -17 135 £500 +0.50% 192
North West +9 114 £475 -26.92% 87
South West -6 87 £545 +9.00% 96
Midlands -17 64 £560 +13.13% 101
East of England +17 41 £513 +7.89% 67
Yorkshire +5 40 £450 -6.74% 70
Scotland -8 38 £425 -19.05% 45
West Midlands -30 38 £525 +5.00% 63
Wales +23 35 £383 -6.13% 16
East Midlands +14 26 £575 +17.47% 36
Northern Ireland -6 3 - - 15
North East -8 3 £550 +46.67% 23
Channel Islands - 1 £450 -

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 80 (6.67%) Microsoft Exchange
2 52 (4.33%) SharePoint
3 23 (1.92%) Confluence
4 7 (0.58%) IIS
5 6 (0.50%) nginx
6 5 (0.42%) Apache Spark
7 4 (0.33%) Apache
7 4 (0.33%) CMS
8 2 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2010
8 2 (0.17%) Skype for Business
8 2 (0.17%) Tomcat
9 1 (0.083%) Anypoint
9 1 (0.083%) Camunda
9 1 (0.083%) Exchange Server 2003
9 1 (0.083%) Exchange Server 2007
9 1 (0.083%) WinCC
Applications
1 45 (3.75%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (1.25%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (1.08%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.17%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 5 (0.42%) Dynamics GP
2 2 (0.17%) Alphatax
2 2 (0.17%) Fidessa
3 1 (0.083%) Distributed Ledger
3 1 (0.083%) Oracle Payables
3 1 (0.083%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.083%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 376 (31.33%) Azure
2 232 (19.33%) AWS
3 127 (10.58%) Microsoft 365
4 82 (6.83%) GCP
5 78 (6.50%) Entra ID
6 74 (6.17%) IaaS
7 54 (4.50%) AWS CloudFormation
8 50 (4.17%) PaaS
9 42 (3.50%) Azure DevOps
10 41 (3.42%) Serverless
11 39 (3.25%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 35 (2.92%) SaaS
13 34 (2.83%) Azure Sentinel
14 25 (2.08%) Azure Monitor
15 24 (2.00%) GitHub
16 22 (1.83%) OneDrive
17 20 (1.67%) Amazon S3
18 19 (1.58%) OpenShift
19 18 (1.50%) Virtual Private Cloud
20 17 (1.42%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 327 (27.25%) VPN
2 321 (26.75%) Network Security
3 239 (19.92%) DNS
4 236 (19.67%) WAN
5 187 (15.58%) BGP
6 179 (14.92%) OSPF
7 150 (12.50%) LAN
8 144 (12.00%) Wireless
9 130 (10.83%) TCP/IP
10 120 (10.00%) DHCP
11 107 (8.92%) SD-WAN
11 107 (8.92%) Wi-Fi
12 101 (8.42%) Cisco ASA
13 81 (6.75%) IPsec
14 75 (6.25%) MPLS
15 72 (6.00%) Cisco Nexus
16 70 (5.83%) VLAN
17 65 (5.42%) EIGRP
18 61 (5.08%) Cisco Firepower
19 60 (5.00%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 43 (3.58%) SQL Server
2 19 (1.58%) Amazon RDS
3 17 (1.42%) PostgreSQL
4 15 (1.25%) Data Lake
5 14 (1.17%) Elasticsearch
6 11 (0.92%) NoSQL
7 10 (0.83%) Hadoop
7 10 (0.83%) Power BI
8 9 (0.75%) Big Data
9 6 (0.50%) Data Warehouse
10 5 (0.42%) Apache Hive
10 5 (0.42%) Apache Iceberg
10 5 (0.42%) MySQL
10 5 (0.42%) Parquet
10 5 (0.42%) Presto
11 4 (0.33%) Oracle Database
11 4 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
12 2 (0.17%) IDOL
12 2 (0.17%) InfluxDB
12 2 (0.17%) Redis
Development Applications
1 37 (3.08%) Jenkins
2 31 (2.58%) JIRA
3 30 (2.50%) Git
4 24 (2.00%) GitLab
5 14 (1.17%) Sonatype Nexus
6 5 (0.42%) Poetry
7 4 (0.33%) Artifactory
7 4 (0.33%) Maven
8 3 (0.25%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.25%) Eclipse
9 2 (0.17%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 2 (0.17%) HP UFT
9 2 (0.17%) LoadRunner
9 2 (0.17%) MSI
9 2 (0.17%) Subversion
10 1 (0.083%) Gradle
10 1 (0.083%) Octopus Deploy
10 1 (0.083%) Oracle Forms
10 1 (0.083%) SonarQube
10 1 (0.083%) TeamCity
General
1 283 (23.58%) Social Skills
2 173 (14.42%) Finance
3 109 (9.08%) Analytical Skills
4 89 (7.42%) Public Sector
5 63 (5.25%) Banking
6 52 (4.33%) Telecoms
7 25 (2.08%) Legal
8 23 (1.92%) Manufacturing
9 22 (1.83%) Documentation Skills
10 21 (1.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 19 (1.58%) Marketing
12 15 (1.25%) Presentation Skills
13 13 (1.08%) Electronics
14 11 (0.92%) Aerospace
14 11 (0.92%) Financial Institution
14 11 (0.92%) Law
15 10 (0.83%) Military
15 10 (0.83%) Pharmaceutical
15 10 (0.83%) Retail
16 7 (0.58%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 388 (32.33%) Network Engineer
2 186 (15.50%) Architect
3 104 (8.67%) Senior
4 84 (7.00%) Security Engineer
5 82 (6.83%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 73 (6.08%) Network Architect
7 63 (5.25%) Support Engineer
8 61 (5.08%) Azure Engineer
9 59 (4.92%) Security Architect
10 48 (4.00%) Cisco Engineer
10 48 (4.00%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
11 47 (3.92%) Analyst
12 46 (3.83%) Cisco Network Engineer
12 46 (3.83%) Network Security Engineer
13 44 (3.67%) Consultant
14 39 (3.25%) Technical Architect
15 38 (3.17%) Lead
15 38 (3.17%) Senior Network Engineer
16 36 (3.00%) Firewall Engineer
17 34 (2.83%) Cloud Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (3.33%) 802.1X
2 24 (2.00%) .NET
3 17 (1.42%) ADO
4 16 (1.33%) ARM Templates
5 13 (1.08%) LDAP
6 12 (1.00%) Elastic Stack
7 11 (0.92%) React
8 8 (0.67%) Web Services
9 7 (0.58%) AWS CDK
9 7 (0.58%) YAML
10 6 (0.50%) JBoss Seam
10 6 (0.50%) RESTful
10 6 (0.50%) SAML
11 5 (0.42%) Dask
11 5 (0.42%) LAPP Stack
11 5 (0.42%) OAuth
11 5 (0.42%) OpenID
11 5 (0.42%) RFC 2544
11 5 (0.42%) Spine.js
12 4 (0.33%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 160 (13.33%) Data Centre
2 55 (4.58%) Cloud Native
3 50 (4.17%) PKI
4 38 (3.17%) Security Posture
5 34 (2.83%) Management Information System
6 32 (2.67%) Hybrid Cloud
7 31 (2.58%) Cyber Threat
8 29 (2.42%) Video Conferencing
9 26 (2.17%) Operational Technology
10 19 (1.58%) Anti-Spyware
11 18 (1.50%) Replication
12 17 (1.42%) Enterprise Software
12 17 (1.42%) Onboarding
12 17 (1.42%) Security Operations Centre
13 15 (1.25%) Public Cloud
14 14 (1.17%) Data Protection Act
15 13 (1.08%) Clustering
15 13 (1.08%) CMDB
15 13 (1.08%) NHS
16 12 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 240 (20.00%) Windows
2 132 (11.00%) Linux
3 109 (9.08%) Windows Server
4 49 (4.08%) Windows 10
5 22 (1.83%) Unix
6 21 (1.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 17 (1.42%) Windows Server 2016
8 11 (0.92%) Mac OS
8 11 (0.92%) Windows Server 2012
9 10 (0.83%) Apple iOS
9 10 (0.83%) CentOS
9 10 (0.83%) Windows Server 2019
10 9 (0.75%) Ubuntu
11 8 (0.67%) Windows 7
12 7 (0.58%) VMS
13 6 (0.50%) Windows Server 2003
14 5 (0.42%) Android
14 5 (0.42%) CatOS
14 5 (0.42%) Solaris
15 4 (0.33%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 194 (16.17%) Problem-Solving
2 165 (13.75%) Migration
3 147 (12.25%) Cybersecurity
4 130 (10.83%) DevOps
5 123 (10.25%) Infrastructure as Code
6 117 (9.75%) Agile
7 107 (8.92%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 97 (8.08%) SIEM
9 96 (8.00%) ITIL
10 94 (7.83%) Network Architecture
11 83 (6.92%) CI/CD
12 79 (6.58%) Cloud Security
13 77 (6.42%) Network Monitoring
14 72 (6.00%) High Availability
14 72 (6.00%) Network Design
15 70 (5.83%) Project Delivery
16 67 (5.58%) Incident Response
17 66 (5.50%) Security Operations
18 65 (5.42%) Change Management
19 62 (5.17%) Network Management
Programming Languages
1 159 (13.25%) Python
2 127 (10.58%) PowerShell
3 56 (4.67%) Bicep
4 53 (4.42%) Bash
5 39 (3.25%) SQL
6 15 (1.25%) Perl
7 13 (1.08%) Java
8 9 (0.75%) Shell Script
8 9 (0.75%) TypeScript
9 8 (0.67%) JavaScript
10 7 (0.58%) C#
11 5 (0.42%) Go
12 4 (0.33%) Groovy
12 4 (0.33%) Kusto Query Language
12 4 (0.33%) PHP
13 3 (0.25%) C++
14 2 (0.17%) Rust
14 2 (0.17%) VBScript
15 1 (0.083%) ActionScript 2.0
15 1 (0.083%) VB
Qualifications
1 325 (27.08%) Security Cleared
2 243 (20.25%) SC Cleared
3 237 (19.75%) Cisco Certification
4 178 (14.83%) CCNP
5 122 (10.17%) Degree
6 105 (8.75%) CCNA
7 64 (5.33%) DV Cleared
8 59 (4.92%) CISSP
9 50 (4.17%) CCIE
10 44 (3.67%) Computer Science Degree
11 38 (3.17%) Azure Certification
12 35 (2.92%) Microsoft Certification
13 30 (2.50%) CISM
14 23 (1.92%) CEH
15 17 (1.42%) CCSA
15 17 (1.42%) CCSE
15 17 (1.42%) CISA
16 15 (1.25%) AWS Certification
16 15 (1.25%) GIAC
16 15 (1.25%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 53 (4.42%) NIST
2 39 (3.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 26 (2.17%) GDPR
4 21 (1.75%) PCI DSS
4 21 (1.75%) SLA
5 18 (1.50%) HIPAA
6 13 (1.08%) NCSC
7 10 (0.83%) GRC
7 10 (0.83%) QA
8 9 (0.75%) Cyber Essentials
9 8 (0.67%) GxP
9 8 (0.67%) NIST 800
10 5 (0.42%) SOC 2
11 4 (0.33%) Disclosure Scotland
12 2 (0.17%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 2 (0.17%) Accessibility
12 2 (0.17%) DICOM
12 2 (0.17%) HL7
12 2 (0.17%) ISO/IEC 27005
12 2 (0.17%) PMO
System Software
1 177 (14.75%) Active Directory
2 110 (9.17%) VMware Infrastructure
3 47 (3.92%) Docker
4 35 (2.92%) Hyper-V
4 35 (2.92%) Virtual Machines
5 34 (2.83%) VMware NSX
6 32 (2.67%) vSphere
7 22 (1.83%) VMware ESXi
8 16 (1.33%) Microsoft App-V
9 13 (1.08%) Firmware
10 12 (1.00%) Terminal Services
11 10 (0.83%) BitLocker
12 6 (0.50%) DFS Replication
12 6 (0.50%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.33%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 4 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
14 3 (0.25%) iptables
15 2 (0.17%) XenApp
15 2 (0.17%) XenDesktop
16 1 (0.083%) FreeRADIUS
Systems Management
1 146 (12.17%) Terraform
2 128 (10.67%) Ansible
3 87 (7.25%) Kubernetes
4 77 (6.42%) Microsoft Intune
5 68 (5.67%) FortiGate
6 43 (3.58%) SCCM
7 39 (3.25%) Puppet
8 22 (1.83%) Progress Chef
8 22 (1.83%) vCenter Server
9 16 (1.33%) Cisco Prime
10 14 (1.17%) Grafana
10 14 (1.17%) Nagios
10 14 (1.17%) ZABBIX
11 13 (1.08%) CASB
12 12 (1.00%) Single Sign-On
13 11 (0.92%) SELinux
14 10 (0.83%) Prometheus
14 10 (0.83%) vMotion
15 9 (0.75%) PowerCLI
16 8 (0.67%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 491 (40.92%) Cisco
2 273 (22.75%) Palo Alto
3 270 (22.50%) Microsoft
4 176 (14.67%) CheckPoint
5 158 (13.17%) Fortinet
6 152 (12.67%) VMware
7 102 (8.50%) F5
8 82 (6.83%) SolarWinds
9 77 (6.42%) Juniper
9 77 (6.42%) Meraki
10 47 (3.92%) Google
11 46 (3.83%) Infoblox
12 44 (3.67%) Aruba
13 36 (3.00%) ServiceNow
13 36 (3.00%) Splunk
14 34 (2.83%) Citrix
15 32 (2.67%) Arista
16 30 (2.50%) Oracle
17 28 (2.33%) Zscaler
18 22 (1.83%) HP