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 27 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 92 55 57
Rank change year-on-year -37 +2 -9
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,438 1,415 1,412
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.72% 4.29% 3.52%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 28.93% 35.42% 28.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 912 839 890
10th Percentile £350 £325 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £594 £600 £613
90th Percentile £650 £688 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £490 £515
% change year-on-year +2.15% -4.95% +8.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 27 37
10th Percentile £29.00 £14.20 £18.15
25th Percentile £36.25 £15.23 £23.92
Median hourly rate £62.50 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +108.33% +9.09% -58.32%
75th Percentile £78.50 £42.61 £85.65
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.63 £87.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £30.00 £73.50
% change year-on-year +116.67% -59.18% +13.96%

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 4,970 3,995 4,935
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.41% 12.12% 12.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,989 2,446 2,987
10th Percentile £250 £235 £213
25th Percentile £400 £374 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.41% -2.35% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £607
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.05% -5.00% +8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 333 194 348
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.15 £17.95
Median hourly rate £26.44 £48.75 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -45.76% +8.33% -10.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £83.70 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £44.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year -39.41% -12.00% -12.14%

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 27 July 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 27 July 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 27 July 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 -41 1,248 £500 - 463
UK excluding London -31 817 £500 +2.15% 392
London -57 475 £500 - 134
Work from Home -31 398 £520 +4.00% 162
North of England -15 288 £500 +5.26% 94
South East -30 229 £500 - 140
North West -8 188 £535 +12.63% 45
Yorkshire -43 84 £450 -7.64% 37
Midlands -64 78 £468 -4.88% 50
East of England -3 74 £525 -4.55% 34
South West -41 73 £538 +8.86% 48
Scotland +14 64 £425 -5.56% 19
West Midlands -59 62 £450 -10.00% 29
North East -19 22 £625 - 14
Wales -18 18 £425 +17.24% 12
East Midlands -23 13 £488 +3.50% 21
Northern Ireland -7 1 - - 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 43 (2.99%) Microsoft Exchange
2 27 (1.88%) Confluence
2 27 (1.88%) SharePoint
3 14 (0.97%) Apache
4 13 (0.90%) nginx
5 10 (0.70%) CICS
6 6 (0.42%) SAS
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%) Apache Pulsar
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
Applications
1 21 (1.46%) MS Visio
2 20 (1.39%) Microsoft Office
3 19 (1.32%) Microsoft Excel
4 8 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 3 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.070%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 3 (0.21%) 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%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.070%) Primavera
3 1 (0.070%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 512 (35.61%) Azure
2 320 (22.25%) AWS
3 150 (10.43%) Entra ID
4 122 (8.48%) GCP
5 120 (8.34%) Microsoft 365
6 73 (5.08%) GitHub
7 65 (4.52%) IaaS
8 57 (3.96%) Azure DevOps
8 57 (3.96%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 56 (3.89%) SaaS
10 47 (3.27%) Azure Monitor
11 44 (3.06%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 42 (2.92%) PaaS
13 39 (2.71%) Azure Sentinel
14 36 (2.50%) OCI
14 36 (2.50%) Serverless
15 32 (2.23%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 31 (2.16%) GitHub Actions
17 28 (1.95%) AWS CloudFormation
18 26 (1.81%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 416 (28.93%) VPN
2 402 (27.96%) Network Security
3 394 (27.40%) WAN
4 357 (24.83%) DNS
5 294 (20.45%) LAN
6 269 (18.71%) BGP
7 215 (14.95%) OSPF
8 204 (14.19%) VLAN
9 202 (14.05%) TCP/IP
10 201 (13.98%) DHCP
11 170 (11.82%) Wireless
12 146 (10.15%) SD-WAN
13 124 (8.62%) Wi-Fi
14 96 (6.68%) MPLS
15 95 (6.61%) BIG-IP
16 94 (6.54%) IPsec
17 84 (5.84%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
18 83 (5.77%) VXLAN
19 81 (5.63%) SSL
20 78 (5.42%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (2.16%) SQL Server
2 19 (1.32%) PostgreSQL
3 18 (1.25%) Power BI
4 13 (0.90%) Amazon RDS
5 12 (0.83%) Elasticsearch
6 10 (0.70%) DataStage
7 9 (0.63%) Azure SQL Database
7 9 (0.63%) Data Lake
7 9 (0.63%) Relational Database
8 8 (0.56%) MySQL
8 8 (0.56%) Oracle Database
9 5 (0.35%) Delta Lake
10 4 (0.28%) Amazon Aurora
10 4 (0.28%) Data Warehouse
10 4 (0.28%) Db2
10 4 (0.28%) NoSQL
11 3 (0.21%) Amazon Athena
11 3 (0.21%) Amazon QuickSight
11 3 (0.21%) Amazon Redshift
11 3 (0.21%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 92 (6.40%) JIRA
2 55 (3.82%) Jenkins
3 44 (3.06%) Git
4 41 (2.85%) GitLab
5 13 (0.90%) Sonatype Nexus
6 9 (0.63%) Artifactory
6 9 (0.63%) Bitbucket
7 8 (0.56%) Chocolatey
8 6 (0.42%) Browser DevTools
9 5 (0.35%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 4 (0.28%) Burp Suite
10 4 (0.28%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.14%) Cucumber
11 2 (0.14%) Gatling
11 2 (0.14%) Gradle
11 2 (0.14%) LoadRunner
11 2 (0.14%) Metasploit
11 2 (0.14%) MSI
11 2 (0.14%) REST Assured
11 2 (0.14%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 300 (20.86%) Social Skills
2 188 (13.07%) Finance
3 132 (9.18%) Analytical Skills
4 121 (8.41%) Public Sector
5 78 (5.42%) Banking
6 70 (4.87%) Documentation Skills
7 50 (3.48%) Telecoms
8 26 (1.81%) Manufacturing
9 25 (1.74%) Legal
10 23 (1.60%) Influencing Skills
11 22 (1.53%) Military
12 20 (1.39%) Financial Institution
13 19 (1.32%) Local Government
14 16 (1.11%) Retail
15 12 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
15 12 (0.83%) Police
16 11 (0.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 10 (0.70%) Law
18 9 (0.63%) Investment Banking
18 9 (0.63%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 469 (32.61%) Network Engineer
2 207 (14.39%) Architect
3 206 (14.33%) Senior
4 142 (9.87%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 127 (8.83%) Security Engineer
6 91 (6.33%) Senior Network Engineer
7 73 (5.08%) Cloud Engineer
8 71 (4.94%) Network Architect
9 60 (4.17%) Consultant
10 59 (4.10%) Network Security Engineer
11 57 (3.96%) Azure Engineer
12 50 (3.48%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
13 49 (3.41%) Security Architect
14 45 (3.13%) DevOps Engineer
14 45 (3.13%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
14 45 (3.13%) Technical Architect
15 40 (2.78%) Cisco Engineer
15 40 (2.78%) Lead
16 38 (2.64%) Cisco Network Engineer
17 34 (2.36%) Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 72 (5.01%) 802.1X
2 42 (2.92%) Middleware
3 28 (1.95%) SAML
4 27 (1.88%) LDAP
5 20 (1.39%) ARM Templates
6 17 (1.18%) OpenID
7 13 (0.90%) OAuth
8 11 (0.76%) Kafka
8 11 (0.76%) OAuth2
9 9 (0.63%) LangChain
9 9 (0.63%) PyTorch
9 9 (0.63%) React
9 9 (0.63%) REST
9 9 (0.63%) scikit-learn
10 8 (0.56%) .NET
10 8 (0.56%) YAML
11 7 (0.49%) Elastic Stack
11 7 (0.49%) SailPoint
12 6 (0.42%) OpenTelemetry
13 5 (0.35%) Jinja
Miscellaneous
1 329 (22.88%) Data Centre
2 96 (6.68%) Cloud Native
3 85 (5.91%) PKI
4 84 (5.84%) Hybrid Cloud
5 74 (5.15%) Security Posture
6 55 (3.82%) Management Information System
7 54 (3.76%) Onboarding
8 45 (3.13%) Operational Technology
9 42 (2.92%) Clustering
10 31 (2.16%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 29 (2.02%) Data Protection Act
11 29 (2.02%) IoT
12 27 (1.88%) Public Cloud
13 24 (1.67%) Enterprise Storage
13 24 (1.67%) SCADA
14 21 (1.46%) Driving Licence
14 21 (1.46%) Self-Motivation
15 19 (1.32%) Linux Command Line
16 18 (1.25%) Cyber Threat
16 18 (1.25%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 340 (23.64%) Windows
2 208 (14.46%) Linux
3 123 (8.55%) Windows Server
4 52 (3.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 35 (2.43%) Unix
6 23 (1.60%) VMS
7 19 (1.32%) Ubuntu
8 13 (0.90%) Windows Server 2019
9 11 (0.76%) CentOS
9 11 (0.76%) Solaris
10 10 (0.70%) AIX
10 10 (0.70%) Mac OS
11 9 (0.63%) Windows Server 2016
12 8 (0.56%) Windows 10
13 7 (0.49%) Rocky
13 7 (0.49%) Windows Server 2012
14 6 (0.42%) Windows Server 2003
15 4 (0.28%) Amazon Linux
15 4 (0.28%) Android
15 4 (0.28%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 236 (16.41%) DevOps
2 222 (15.44%) CI/CD
3 219 (15.23%) Infrastructure as Code
4 202 (14.05%) Load Balancing
5 197 (13.70%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 192 (13.35%) Problem-Solving
7 186 (12.93%) Cybersecurity
8 183 (12.73%) Migration
9 182 (12.66%) ITIL
10 180 (12.52%) High Availability
11 158 (10.99%) Zero Trust
12 151 (10.50%) Agile
13 136 (9.46%) SIEM
14 129 (8.97%) Change Management
15 126 (8.76%) Project Delivery
16 121 (8.41%) Observability
17 118 (8.21%) Validation
18 114 (7.93%) Stakeholder Management
19 106 (7.37%) Cloud Security
20 101 (7.02%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 259 (18.01%) Python
2 184 (12.80%) PowerShell
3 118 (8.21%) Bash
4 48 (3.34%) Bicep
5 41 (2.85%) SQL
6 34 (2.36%) Java
7 11 (0.76%) ActionScript
7 11 (0.76%) Perl
8 10 (0.70%) COBOL
9 7 (0.49%) Groovy
10 6 (0.42%) Go
10 6 (0.42%) JavaScript
10 6 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
11 5 (0.35%) C++
12 3 (0.21%) PL/SQL
12 3 (0.21%) Shell Script
12 3 (0.21%) TypeScript
13 2 (0.14%) C
13 2 (0.14%) Jython
13 2 (0.14%) PHP
Qualifications
1 483 (33.59%) Security Cleared
2 338 (23.50%) SC Cleared
3 278 (19.33%) Cisco Certification
4 209 (14.53%) CCNP
5 125 (8.69%) DV Cleared
6 114 (7.93%) CCNA
6 114 (7.93%) Degree
7 73 (5.08%) CISSP
8 59 (4.10%) Azure Certification
9 43 (2.99%) AWS Certification
10 40 (2.78%) CCIE
11 34 (2.36%) Microsoft Certification
12 33 (2.29%) CISM
13 25 (1.74%) Computer Science Degree
14 21 (1.46%) JNCIS
14 21 (1.46%) Network+ Certification
15 18 (1.25%) JNCIP
16 17 (1.18%) Server+ Certification
17 16 (1.11%) PMP
18 15 (1.04%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (5.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 59 (4.10%) NIST
3 43 (2.99%) GDPR
4 30 (2.09%) NCSC
5 25 (1.74%) PCI DSS
6 23 (1.60%) SLA
7 21 (1.46%) Cyber Essentials
7 21 (1.46%) QA
8 9 (0.63%) Data Quality
8 9 (0.63%) NIST 800
9 8 (0.56%) Disclosure Scotland
9 8 (0.56%) GxP
10 7 (0.49%) JSP 440
11 6 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 5 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
12 5 (0.35%) GRC
12 5 (0.35%) HIPAA
12 5 (0.35%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 4 (0.28%) 21 CFR Part 11
13 4 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 229 (15.92%) Active Directory
2 162 (11.27%) VMware Infrastructure
3 61 (4.24%) Docker
4 58 (4.03%) VMware NSX
5 48 (3.34%) Hyper-V
6 41 (2.85%) vSphere
7 39 (2.71%) Virtual Machines
7 39 (2.71%) VMware ESXi
8 25 (1.74%) Firmware
9 17 (1.18%) Virtual Desktop
10 12 (0.83%) BitLocker
11 11 (0.76%) Squid
12 8 (0.56%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.42%) NFS
14 4 (0.28%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.21%) Dovecot
15 3 (0.21%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 3 (0.21%) Postfix
15 3 (0.21%) Virtual Servers
16 2 (0.14%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 271 (18.85%) Terraform
2 189 (13.14%) Ansible
3 113 (7.86%) Kubernetes
4 109 (7.58%) FortiGate
5 68 (4.73%) Microsoft Intune
6 56 (3.89%) Grafana
7 53 (3.69%) Prometheus
8 39 (2.71%) SCCM
9 31 (2.16%) Single Sign-On
10 25 (1.74%) vCenter Server
11 20 (1.39%) Progress Chef
12 18 (1.25%) Puppet
13 16 (1.11%) CASB
14 14 (0.97%) Cisco Prime
14 14 (0.97%) VxRail
15 10 (0.70%) Packer
15 10 (0.70%) QRadar
16 9 (0.63%) Argo
17 8 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 8 (0.56%) vMotion
Vendors
1 518 (36.02%) Cisco
2 313 (21.77%) Microsoft
3 306 (21.28%) Palo Alto
4 216 (15.02%) VMware
5 208 (14.46%) Fortinet
6 200 (13.91%) F5
7 160 (11.13%) Juniper
8 124 (8.62%) CheckPoint
9 83 (5.77%) Splunk
10 76 (5.29%) Aruba
11 72 (5.01%) Google
11 72 (5.01%) ServiceNow
12 70 (4.87%) Arista
13 69 (4.80%) SolarWinds
14 65 (4.52%) Zscaler
15 45 (3.13%) Citrix
15 45 (3.13%) Meraki
16 44 (3.06%) Red Hat
17 32 (2.23%) Infoblox
18 29 (2.02%) Dynatrace