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

6 months to
12 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 96 55 59
Rank change year-on-year -41 +4 -11
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,431 1,386 1,356
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.68% 4.20% 3.48%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 28.53% 35.31% 28.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 893 824 860
10th Percentile £350 £325 £313
25th Percentile £420 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.10% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £616
90th Percentile £650 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £490 £515
% change year-on-year +3.17% -4.95% +8.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 28 31
10th Percentile £29.00 £14.20 £22.40
25th Percentile £43.98 £15.28 £23.92
Median hourly rate £65.23 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +117.42% +9.09% -59.56%
75th Percentile £78.75 £35.39 £85.45
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.63 £87.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.45 £30.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +118.17% -50.00% -11.76%

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 5,015 3,925 4,737
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.40% 11.91% 12.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,970 2,397 2,875
10th Percentile £250 £248 £220
25th Percentile £400 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £494 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.95% -5.00% +9.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 361 200 316
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £19.79
Median hourly rate £26.00 £46.88 £49.50
Median % change year-on-year -44.53% -5.30% -5.71%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £83.10 £74.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.14 £45.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year -41.91% -18.18% -2.64%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 -38 1,246 £511 +2.10% 859
UK excluding London -36 809 £505 +3.17% 550
London -62 483 £500 -0.99% 387
Work from Home -38 387 £520 +4.00% 339
North of England -12 282 £500 +5.26% 122
South East -35 223 £520 +4.00% 178
North West -4 183 £528 +11.16% 69
Yorkshire -39 81 £450 -7.22% 39
South West -28 80 £550 +13.11% 72
East of England -4 76 £525 -4.55% 42
Midlands -73 74 £468 -1.47% 79
Scotland +11 65 £425 -8.11% 34
West Midlands -69 58 £450 -5.26% 48
North East -20 24 £625 +4.17% 17
Wales -13 16 £425 +30.77% 12
East Midlands -15 14 £500 +1.63% 31
Northern Ireland -3 1 - - 17

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 47 (3.28%) Microsoft Exchange
2 28 (1.96%) Confluence
3 27 (1.89%) SharePoint
4 15 (1.05%) Apache
5 11 (0.77%) nginx
6 7 (0.49%) SAS
7 4 (0.28%) CICS
7 4 (0.28%) FactoryTalk
7 4 (0.28%) Tomcat
8 3 (0.21%) CloudStack
8 3 (0.21%) IIS
8 3 (0.21%) Skype for Business
9 2 (0.14%) CMS
9 2 (0.14%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.14%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.14%) Umbraco
9 2 (0.14%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.14%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.14%) WebSphere Portal
10 1 (0.070%) MTS
Applications
1 22 (1.54%) MS Visio
2 19 (1.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 19 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
4 6 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.070%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 5 (0.35%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.14%) Dynamics GP
2 2 (0.14%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.070%) Bloomberg TOMS
3 1 (0.070%) Eikon
3 1 (0.070%) Primavera
3 1 (0.070%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 527 (36.83%) Azure
2 331 (23.13%) AWS
3 158 (11.04%) Entra ID
4 125 (8.74%) Microsoft 365
5 117 (8.18%) GCP
6 75 (5.24%) GitHub
7 63 (4.40%) Azure DevOps
7 63 (4.40%) IaaS
8 60 (4.19%) SaaS
9 54 (3.77%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 51 (3.56%) Azure Monitor
11 49 (3.42%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 40 (2.80%) Azure Sentinel
13 37 (2.59%) OCI
13 37 (2.59%) PaaS
14 36 (2.52%) Serverless
15 34 (2.38%) GitHub Actions
16 30 (2.10%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 26 (1.82%) AWS CloudFormation
18 24 (1.68%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 427 (29.84%) VPN
2 401 (28.02%) WAN
3 395 (27.60%) Network Security
4 373 (26.07%) DNS
5 295 (20.61%) LAN
6 265 (18.52%) BGP
7 216 (15.09%) DHCP
8 214 (14.95%) TCP/IP
9 210 (14.68%) OSPF
10 202 (14.12%) VLAN
11 164 (11.46%) Wireless
12 147 (10.27%) SD-WAN
13 126 (8.81%) Wi-Fi
14 94 (6.57%) BIG-IP
14 94 (6.57%) MPLS
15 89 (6.22%) IPsec
16 85 (5.94%) VXLAN
17 81 (5.66%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
18 79 (5.52%) Cisco ASA
19 77 (5.38%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (2.24%) SQL Server
2 19 (1.33%) PostgreSQL
3 17 (1.19%) Power BI
4 14 (0.98%) Amazon RDS
5 10 (0.70%) Azure SQL Database
5 10 (0.70%) Relational Database
6 9 (0.63%) Elasticsearch
6 9 (0.63%) Oracle Database
7 8 (0.56%) MySQL
8 7 (0.49%) Data Lake
9 5 (0.35%) Amazon Aurora
9 5 (0.35%) Delta Lake
10 4 (0.28%) Data Warehouse
10 4 (0.28%) DataStage
10 4 (0.28%) Db2
10 4 (0.28%) NoSQL
11 3 (0.21%) Amazon Athena
11 3 (0.21%) Amazon Redshift
11 3 (0.21%) Big Data
11 3 (0.21%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 93 (6.50%) JIRA
2 59 (4.12%) Jenkins
3 48 (3.35%) Git
3 48 (3.35%) GitLab
4 13 (0.91%) Sonatype Nexus
5 10 (0.70%) Bitbucket
6 8 (0.56%) Artifactory
7 7 (0.49%) Chocolatey
8 6 (0.42%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 6 (0.42%) Browser DevTools
9 4 (0.28%) MSI
9 4 (0.28%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.21%) Burp Suite
11 2 (0.14%) Gatling
11 2 (0.14%) Gradle
11 2 (0.14%) Introscope
11 2 (0.14%) LoadRunner
11 2 (0.14%) REST Assured
11 2 (0.14%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.14%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 305 (21.31%) Social Skills
2 177 (12.37%) Finance
3 140 (9.78%) Analytical Skills
4 124 (8.67%) Public Sector
5 77 (5.38%) Banking
6 61 (4.26%) Documentation Skills
7 45 (3.14%) Telecoms
8 27 (1.89%) Legal
9 26 (1.82%) Manufacturing
10 22 (1.54%) Financial Institution
11 21 (1.47%) Military
12 19 (1.33%) Retail
13 18 (1.26%) Local Government
14 16 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
15 13 (0.91%) Law
15 13 (0.91%) Organisational Skills
16 12 (0.84%) Police
17 11 (0.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 10 (0.70%) Investment Banking
19 9 (0.63%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 465 (32.49%) Network Engineer
2 215 (15.02%) Senior
3 199 (13.91%) Architect
4 146 (10.20%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 113 (7.90%) Security Engineer
6 98 (6.85%) Senior Network Engineer
7 79 (5.52%) Cloud Engineer
8 67 (4.68%) Network Architect
9 61 (4.26%) Consultant
10 58 (4.05%) Azure Engineer
11 54 (3.77%) Network Security Engineer
12 51 (3.56%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 48 (3.35%) Security Architect
14 47 (3.28%) Technical Architect
15 46 (3.21%) Lead
15 46 (3.21%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
16 45 (3.14%) DevOps Engineer
17 41 (2.87%) Cisco Engineer
18 39 (2.73%) Cisco Network Engineer
19 38 (2.66%) Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (4.75%) 802.1X
2 40 (2.80%) Middleware
3 30 (2.10%) SAML
4 23 (1.61%) ARM Templates
5 20 (1.40%) LDAP
6 19 (1.33%) OpenID
7 14 (0.98%) OAuth
8 11 (0.77%) Kafka
8 11 (0.77%) OAuth2
9 10 (0.70%) React
9 10 (0.70%) REST
10 9 (0.63%) LangChain
10 9 (0.63%) PyTorch
10 9 (0.63%) scikit-learn
10 9 (0.63%) YAML
11 8 (0.56%) .NET
12 7 (0.49%) Elastic Stack
12 7 (0.49%) OpenTelemetry
12 7 (0.49%) SailPoint
13 5 (0.35%) ModSecurity
Miscellaneous
1 315 (22.01%) Data Centre
2 97 (6.78%) Hybrid Cloud
3 93 (6.50%) Cloud Native
4 90 (6.29%) PKI
5 65 (4.54%) Security Posture
6 59 (4.12%) Management Information System
7 55 (3.84%) Onboarding
8 50 (3.49%) Operational Technology
9 41 (2.87%) Clustering
10 31 (2.17%) Data Protection Act
11 29 (2.03%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 29 (2.03%) Public Cloud
12 25 (1.75%) SCADA
13 24 (1.68%) IoT
14 23 (1.61%) Enterprise Software
15 22 (1.54%) Self-Motivation
16 21 (1.47%) Driving Licence
16 21 (1.47%) Enterprise Storage
16 21 (1.47%) Replication
17 20 (1.40%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 359 (25.09%) Windows
2 221 (15.44%) Linux
3 139 (9.71%) Windows Server
4 49 (3.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 32 (2.24%) Unix
6 20 (1.40%) Ubuntu
6 20 (1.40%) VMS
7 15 (1.05%) Mac OS
8 13 (0.91%) Windows Server 2019
9 11 (0.77%) CentOS
10 10 (0.70%) Windows Server 2016
11 7 (0.49%) Rocky
11 7 (0.49%) Windows 10
12 6 (0.42%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.35%) Amazon Linux
13 5 (0.35%) Solaris
13 5 (0.35%) Windows Server 2003
14 4 (0.28%) AIX
14 4 (0.28%) Android
14 4 (0.28%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 247 (17.26%) DevOps
2 236 (16.49%) CI/CD
3 234 (16.35%) Infrastructure as Code
4 208 (14.54%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 208 (14.54%) Load Balancing
5 198 (13.84%) Cybersecurity
6 197 (13.77%) Problem-Solving
7 191 (13.35%) ITIL
8 179 (12.51%) High Availability
9 177 (12.37%) Migration
10 158 (11.04%) Agile
11 154 (10.76%) Zero Trust
12 143 (9.99%) SIEM
13 130 (9.08%) Project Delivery
14 129 (9.01%) Change Management
15 121 (8.46%) Observability
16 118 (8.25%) Stakeholder Management
17 114 (7.97%) Validation
18 110 (7.69%) Cloud Security
19 107 (7.48%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 273 (19.08%) Python
2 200 (13.98%) PowerShell
3 133 (9.29%) Bash
4 48 (3.35%) Bicep
5 47 (3.28%) SQL
6 35 (2.45%) Java
7 11 (0.77%) ActionScript
7 11 (0.77%) Perl
8 9 (0.63%) Kusto Query Language
9 8 (0.56%) Groovy
10 6 (0.42%) Go
11 5 (0.35%) C++
11 5 (0.35%) JavaScript
12 4 (0.28%) COBOL
12 4 (0.28%) Search Processing Language
12 4 (0.28%) TypeScript
13 3 (0.21%) PL/SQL
13 3 (0.21%) Shell Script
14 2 (0.14%) PHP
14 2 (0.14%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 488 (34.10%) Security Cleared
2 337 (23.55%) SC Cleared
3 270 (18.87%) Cisco Certification
4 200 (13.98%) CCNP
5 130 (9.08%) DV Cleared
6 116 (8.11%) Degree
7 113 (7.90%) CCNA
8 75 (5.24%) CISSP
9 67 (4.68%) Azure Certification
10 48 (3.35%) AWS Certification
11 39 (2.73%) CCIE
12 36 (2.52%) Microsoft Certification
13 31 (2.17%) CISM
14 29 (2.03%) Computer Science Degree
15 23 (1.61%) Network+ Certification
16 21 (1.47%) JNCIS
17 17 (1.19%) JNCIP
17 17 (1.19%) Server+ Certification
18 16 (1.12%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 15 (1.05%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 68 (4.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 61 (4.26%) NIST
3 44 (3.07%) GDPR
4 32 (2.24%) NCSC
5 24 (1.68%) PCI DSS
6 23 (1.61%) QA
6 23 (1.61%) SLA
7 19 (1.33%) Cyber Essentials
8 11 (0.77%) JSP 440
9 9 (0.63%) Data Quality
9 9 (0.63%) NIST 800
10 8 (0.56%) Disclosure Scotland
10 8 (0.56%) GxP
10 8 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 6 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 6 (0.42%) HIPAA
12 5 (0.35%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 4 (0.28%) 21 CFR Part 11
13 4 (0.28%) SOC 2
14 3 (0.21%) RMADS
System Software
1 237 (16.56%) Active Directory
2 175 (12.23%) VMware Infrastructure
3 71 (4.96%) Docker
4 65 (4.54%) Hyper-V
5 59 (4.12%) VMware NSX
6 44 (3.07%) vSphere
7 41 (2.87%) Virtual Machines
8 38 (2.66%) VMware ESXi
9 25 (1.75%) Firmware
10 16 (1.12%) Virtual Desktop
11 10 (0.70%) BitLocker
12 9 (0.63%) Squid
13 7 (0.49%) Microsoft App-V
14 6 (0.42%) NFS
15 5 (0.35%) Virtual Servers
16 4 (0.28%) Terminal Services
17 3 (0.21%) Dovecot
17 3 (0.21%) FreeRADIUS
17 3 (0.21%) Postfix
17 3 (0.21%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 283 (19.78%) Terraform
2 204 (14.26%) Ansible
3 124 (8.67%) Kubernetes
4 112 (7.83%) FortiGate
5 69 (4.82%) Microsoft Intune
6 55 (3.84%) Grafana
7 52 (3.63%) Prometheus
8 37 (2.59%) SCCM
9 35 (2.45%) Single Sign-On
10 26 (1.82%) Progress Chef
11 23 (1.61%) vCenter Server
12 19 (1.33%) CASB
13 17 (1.19%) Puppet
13 17 (1.19%) VxRail
14 13 (0.91%) Cisco Prime
15 10 (0.70%) Argo
15 10 (0.70%) Packer
16 9 (0.63%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 8 (0.56%) Nagios
17 8 (0.56%) WSUS
Vendors
1 523 (36.55%) Cisco
2 337 (23.55%) Microsoft
3 305 (21.31%) Palo Alto
4 224 (15.65%) VMware
5 203 (14.19%) Fortinet
6 198 (13.84%) F5
7 156 (10.90%) Juniper
8 119 (8.32%) CheckPoint
9 88 (6.15%) Splunk
10 76 (5.31%) ServiceNow
11 74 (5.17%) Google
12 71 (4.96%) Aruba
12 71 (4.96%) SolarWinds
13 68 (4.75%) Arista
14 65 (4.54%) Zscaler
15 46 (3.21%) Meraki
16 43 (3.00%) Citrix
17 41 (2.87%) Red Hat
18 33 (2.31%) Infoblox
19 29 (2.03%) Dynatrace