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 7 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 67 55 45
Rank change year-on-year -12 -10 +22
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,288 1,336 1,948
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.55% 3.74% 4.28%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 32.64% 30.18% 30.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 820 808 1,277
10th Percentile £319 £313 £313
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% +0.95%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £627
90th Percentile £688 £675 £711
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.50% - +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 20 57
10th Percentile £28.15 £19.85 £35.00
25th Percentile £29.00 £20.00 £60.00
Median hourly rate £38.47 £31.25 £65.98
Median % change year-on-year +23.10% -52.64% +72.00%
75th Percentile £82.25 £38.88 £76.25
90th Percentile £89.63 £48.75 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.50 £22.45 £65.98
% change year-on-year +196.21% -65.97% +60.81%

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 3,946 4,427 6,289
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.88% 12.40% 13.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,569 2,561 3,890
10th Percentile £206 £220 £211
25th Percentile £356 £370 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £584 £600 £613
90th Percentile £675 £685 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 186 165 349
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.95 £17.72
25th Percentile £20.04 £22.50 £22.75
Median hourly rate £33.39 £41.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.57% -25.45% +25.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.98
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £76.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £48.03 £56.49
% change year-on-year -11.51% -14.98% +25.53%

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 7 December 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 7 December 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 7 December 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 -9 1,096 £500 -4.76% 1,088
UK excluding London -15 700 £488 -2.50% 1,066
London -13 455 £525 -4.55% 177
Work from Home -6 375 £500 -4.76% 396
North of England -22 200 £500 +0.50% 248
South East -8 178 £488 -2.50% 351
Midlands -15 139 £475 -5.00% 166
West Midlands +4 131 £475 -5.00% 95
North West -16 102 £525 +5.00% 132
Yorkshire -10 94 £465 +0.54% 100
Scotland -14 61 £438 -12.50% 38
South West -30 50 £540 +13.68% 92
East of England -10 49 £483 -12.27% 141
Wales -7 12 £250 -32.43% 39
Northern Ireland - 10 £500 - 14
East Midlands -44 8 £475 +11.76% 65
North East -5 7 £550 +22.22% 19
Channel Islands - 4 £725 -

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 54 (4.19%) Microsoft Exchange
2 49 (3.80%) Confluence
3 33 (2.56%) SharePoint
4 16 (1.24%) OpenStack
5 14 (1.09%) Apache
6 11 (0.85%) nginx
7 6 (0.47%) Tomcat
8 5 (0.39%) JBoss
9 4 (0.31%) IIS
9 4 (0.31%) SAS
10 3 (0.23%) WebSphere
11 2 (0.16%) Anypoint
11 2 (0.16%) CICS
11 2 (0.16%) Oracle HTTP Server
11 2 (0.16%) Traefik
11 2 (0.16%) WebLogic
12 1 (0.078%) CMS
12 1 (0.078%) Exchange Server 2010
12 1 (0.078%) Exchange Server 2013
12 1 (0.078%) Mattermost
Applications
1 34 (2.64%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (1.01%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (1.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 13 (1.01%) MS Visio
3 10 (0.78%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 6 (0.47%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 3 (0.23%) ION MarketView
2 2 (0.16%) Dynamics GP
2 2 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.16%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.078%) Finacle
3 1 (0.078%) Pegasus Opera
Cloud Services
1 407 (31.60%) Azure
2 346 (26.86%) AWS
3 147 (11.41%) GCP
4 141 (10.95%) Microsoft 365
5 89 (6.91%) Entra ID
6 76 (5.90%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 65 (5.05%) Amazon EC2
8 58 (4.50%) Azure Sentinel
9 57 (4.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 54 (4.19%) Amazon S3
11 44 (3.42%) Amazon ELB
12 38 (2.95%) IaaS
13 37 (2.87%) GitHub
14 35 (2.72%) Akamai
14 35 (2.72%) Azure Monitor
15 34 (2.64%) Azure DevOps
16 31 (2.41%) PaaS
17 30 (2.33%) Serverless
18 29 (2.25%) SaaS
19 27 (2.10%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 282 (21.89%) VPN
2 279 (21.66%) Network Security
3 272 (21.12%) DNS
4 247 (19.18%) WAN
5 172 (13.35%) LAN
6 156 (12.11%) BGP
7 148 (11.49%) TCP/IP
8 138 (10.71%) SD-WAN
9 130 (10.09%) OSPF
10 125 (9.70%) Wireless
11 110 (8.54%) VLAN
12 108 (8.39%) DHCP
13 105 (8.15%) Wi-Fi
14 83 (6.44%) SSL
15 78 (6.06%) MPLS
16 77 (5.98%) Cisco Nexus
17 64 (4.97%) Cisco ISE
18 58 (4.50%) IPsec
19 57 (4.43%) HTTP
20 51 (3.96%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 40 (3.11%) SQL Server
2 38 (2.95%) Amazon RDS
3 25 (1.94%) PostgreSQL
4 10 (0.78%) Amazon Aurora
4 10 (0.78%) Relational Database
5 8 (0.62%) Data Lake
6 6 (0.47%) Azure SQL Database
6 6 (0.47%) MySQL
6 6 (0.47%) Oracle Database
7 4 (0.31%) Data Warehouse
7 4 (0.31%) DB2
7 4 (0.31%) MongoDB
7 4 (0.31%) Redis
8 3 (0.23%) Apache Cassandra
8 3 (0.23%) DynamoDB
8 3 (0.23%) NoSQL
9 2 (0.16%) Amazon QuickSight
9 2 (0.16%) Data Vault
9 2 (0.16%) Elasticsearch
9 2 (0.16%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 95 (7.38%) Jenkins
2 87 (6.75%) Git
3 76 (5.90%) JIRA
4 65 (5.05%) GitLab
5 24 (1.86%) Sonatype Nexus
6 20 (1.55%) Vagrant
7 13 (1.01%) Bitbucket
8 7 (0.54%) Burp Suite
8 7 (0.54%) Metasploit
8 7 (0.54%) SonarQube
9 6 (0.47%) Postman
10 3 (0.23%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.16%) Maven
11 2 (0.16%) MSI
12 1 (0.078%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.078%) CircleCI
12 1 (0.078%) Eclipse
12 1 (0.078%) Subversion
12 1 (0.078%) Travis CI
General
1 340 (26.40%) Social Skills
2 142 (11.02%) Analytical Skills
3 130 (10.09%) Public Sector
4 128 (9.94%) Finance
5 63 (4.89%) Documentation Skills
6 60 (4.66%) Banking
7 57 (4.43%) Telecoms
8 32 (2.48%) Manufacturing
9 29 (2.25%) Presentation Skills
10 26 (2.02%) Legal
11 19 (1.48%) Games
12 17 (1.32%) Local Government
13 15 (1.16%) Military
14 13 (1.01%) Retail
15 11 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
16 10 (0.78%) Influencing Skills
17 9 (0.70%) Financial Institution
17 9 (0.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 9 (0.70%) Law
18 7 (0.54%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 305 (23.68%) Network Engineer
2 204 (15.84%) Architect
3 131 (10.17%) Security Engineer
4 112 (8.70%) Senior
5 81 (6.29%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 77 (5.98%) Analyst
7 71 (5.51%) Network Architect
8 69 (5.36%) Platform Engineer
9 67 (5.20%) Consultant
10 62 (4.81%) DevOps Engineer
11 59 (4.58%) Security Architect
12 54 (4.19%) Network Security Engineer
13 42 (3.26%) Solutions Architect
14 41 (3.18%) Azure Engineer
14 41 (3.18%) Support Engineer
15 37 (2.87%) Lead
15 37 (2.87%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
16 33 (2.56%) Cloud Engineer
17 30 (2.33%) Project Manager
18 29 (2.25%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (2.48%) 802.1X
1 32 (2.48%) LDAP
2 25 (1.94%) SAML
3 20 (1.55%) JSON
4 19 (1.48%) Middleware
5 18 (1.40%) OpenID
6 16 (1.24%) OAuth
6 16 (1.24%) REST
7 14 (1.09%) OAuth2
7 14 (1.09%) RFC 2544
8 13 (1.01%) Node.js
8 13 (1.01%) XML
9 11 (0.85%) Elastic Stack
10 8 (0.62%) ARM Templates
10 8 (0.62%) YAML
11 6 (0.47%) Kafka
11 6 (0.47%) Microsoft Graph
12 4 (0.31%) Regular Expression
13 3 (0.23%) CSS
13 3 (0.23%) Rendezvous
Miscellaneous
1 203 (15.76%) Data Centre
2 83 (6.44%) Security Posture
3 64 (4.97%) Operational Technology
4 57 (4.43%) Hybrid Cloud
5 54 (4.19%) PKI
6 47 (3.65%) Replication
7 42 (3.26%) Onboarding
8 41 (3.18%) Cloud Native
9 28 (2.17%) Data Protection Act
9 28 (2.17%) Management Information System
10 24 (1.86%) Cyber Threat
11 23 (1.79%) Public Cloud
11 23 (1.79%) Security Operations Centre
12 21 (1.63%) SCADA
13 18 (1.40%) Cyber Defence
14 16 (1.24%) Private Cloud
15 15 (1.16%) Legacy Systems
15 15 (1.16%) Product Ownership
16 14 (1.09%) Enterprise Software
17 12 (0.93%) Fat Client
Operating Systems
1 328 (25.47%) Windows
2 222 (17.24%) Linux
3 116 (9.01%) Windows Server
4 38 (2.95%) Unix
5 37 (2.87%) VMS
6 35 (2.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 26 (2.02%) Mac OS
8 23 (1.79%) Amazon Linux
9 22 (1.71%) Android
10 21 (1.63%) Ubuntu
11 13 (1.01%) Windows 10
12 12 (0.93%) Windows Server 2019
13 11 (0.85%) Windows Server 2016
14 9 (0.70%) Windows 7
15 8 (0.62%) CentOS
16 7 (0.54%) Windows Server 2012
17 3 (0.23%) Apple iOS
17 3 (0.23%) Solaris
18 2 (0.16%) CatOS
18 2 (0.16%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 232 (18.01%) Cybersecurity
2 197 (15.30%) Problem-Solving
3 192 (14.91%) DevOps
4 170 (13.20%) CI/CD
5 167 (12.97%) Cloud Security
6 160 (12.42%) Infrastructure as Code
6 160 (12.42%) SIEM
7 152 (11.80%) Incident Response
8 141 (10.95%) Migration
9 130 (10.09%) Agile
10 127 (9.86%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 123 (9.55%) ITIL
12 116 (9.01%) High Availability
13 105 (8.15%) Change Management
14 101 (7.84%) Load Balancing
15 100 (7.76%) Stakeholder Management
16 92 (7.14%) Network Design
16 92 (7.14%) Security Operations
17 82 (6.37%) Zero Trust
18 81 (6.29%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 267 (20.73%) Python
2 210 (16.30%) PowerShell
3 117 (9.08%) Bash
4 62 (4.81%) SQL
5 43 (3.34%) Perl
6 41 (3.18%) Java
7 20 (1.55%) Bicep
7 20 (1.55%) Groovy
8 18 (1.40%) Kusto Query Language
9 11 (0.85%) Ruby
10 9 (0.70%) Shell Script
11 7 (0.54%) JavaScript
12 6 (0.47%) Go
13 4 (0.31%) C#
14 3 (0.23%) C
14 3 (0.23%) Kotlin
14 3 (0.23%) TypeScript
15 2 (0.16%) Apex Code
15 2 (0.16%) C++
15 2 (0.16%) PHP
Qualifications
1 379 (29.43%) Security Cleared
2 267 (20.73%) SC Cleared
3 223 (17.31%) Cisco Certification
4 169 (13.12%) CCNP
5 106 (8.23%) Degree
6 100 (7.76%) CISSP
7 82 (6.37%) CCNA
8 80 (6.21%) DV Cleared
9 56 (4.35%) Azure Certification
10 53 (4.11%) AWS Certification
10 53 (4.11%) CISM
11 52 (4.04%) Microsoft Certification
12 51 (3.96%) CCIE
13 29 (2.25%) CompTIA Security+
14 28 (2.17%) CEH
15 27 (2.10%) Computer Science Degree
16 20 (1.55%) GIAC
17 18 (1.40%) JNCIP
18 15 (1.16%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 15 (1.16%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 109 (8.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 108 (8.39%) NIST
3 74 (5.75%) GDPR
4 47 (3.65%) PCI DSS
5 22 (1.71%) QA
6 21 (1.63%) NCSC
7 18 (1.40%) SLA
8 14 (1.09%) Cyber Essentials
9 12 (0.93%) GRC
9 12 (0.93%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 10 (0.78%) HIPAA
11 9 (0.70%) COBIT
12 8 (0.62%) PMO
13 7 (0.54%) SOC 2
14 6 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
15 5 (0.39%) GxP
15 5 (0.39%) PSD2
16 4 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
16 4 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
16 4 (0.31%) NIST 800
System Software
1 237 (18.40%) Active Directory
2 143 (11.10%) Docker
2 143 (11.10%) VMware Infrastructure
3 49 (3.80%) Hyper-V
4 39 (3.03%) Virtual Machines
5 32 (2.48%) VMware NSX
6 23 (1.79%) vSphere
7 21 (1.63%) DFS Replication
8 16 (1.24%) Squid
9 15 (1.16%) Firmware
10 12 (0.93%) VMware ESXi
11 10 (0.78%) Dovecot
11 10 (0.78%) Postfix
12 8 (0.62%) Virtual Desktop
12 8 (0.62%) Virtual Servers
13 7 (0.54%) KVM
13 7 (0.54%) Snort
13 7 (0.54%) Terminal Services
14 5 (0.39%) NDS
14 5 (0.39%) NetIQ eDirectory
Systems Management
1 197 (15.30%) Terraform
2 160 (12.42%) Ansible
3 101 (7.84%) Kubernetes
4 70 (5.43%) FortiGate
4 70 (5.43%) Microsoft Intune
5 53 (4.11%) SCCM
6 39 (3.03%) Grafana
7 37 (2.87%) Prometheus
8 33 (2.56%) Single Sign-On
9 23 (1.79%) Nessus
10 21 (1.63%) vCenter Server
11 20 (1.55%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 17 (1.32%) CASB
12 17 (1.32%) CSIRT
13 14 (1.09%) QRadar
14 13 (1.01%) Fluentd
14 13 (1.01%) SCOM
15 12 (0.93%) Puppet
16 10 (0.78%) Nmap
16 10 (0.78%) WMI
Vendors
1 427 (33.15%) Cisco
2 327 (25.39%) Microsoft
3 239 (18.56%) Palo Alto
4 181 (14.05%) VMware
5 166 (12.89%) F5
6 142 (11.02%) Fortinet
7 129 (10.02%) CheckPoint
8 110 (8.54%) Splunk
9 103 (8.00%) Juniper
10 84 (6.52%) Meraki
11 69 (5.36%) SolarWinds
12 67 (5.20%) Oracle
13 60 (4.66%) Google
14 55 (4.27%) Zscaler
15 50 (3.88%) Citrix
16 48 (3.73%) ServiceNow
17 40 (3.11%) Aruba
18 29 (2.25%) Red Hat
19 26 (2.02%) Dell
20 24 (1.86%) Tenable