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

6 months to
12 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 83 50 51
Rank change year-on-year -33 +1 +8
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,310 1,266 1,709
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.07% 4.30% 3.83%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.39% 32.23% 28.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 866 756 1,059
10th Percentile £331 £319 £313
25th Percentile £413 £413 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £519 £510
Median % change year-on-year -3.57% +1.67% -2.86%
75th Percentile £589 £603 £625
90th Percentile £651 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 21 50
10th Percentile £25.65 £18.50 £16.00
25th Percentile £37.25 £31.32 £24.44
Median hourly rate £42.71 £37.00 £65.49
Median % change year-on-year +15.42% -43.50% +21.90%
75th Percentile £74.26 £41.97 £76.53
90th Percentile £85.60 £73.75 £87.05
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.72 £37.07 £69.88
% change year-on-year +31.42% -46.95% +26.32%

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 4,311 3,928 6,017
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.10% 13.35% 13.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,792 2,407 3,622
10th Percentile £206 £208 £205
25th Percentile £364 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £487 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -2.60% +5.26% -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £473 £470 £475
% change year-on-year +0.64% -1.05% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 178 141 398
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.33 £14.26
25th Percentile £20.04 £21.46 £18.93
Median hourly rate £38.50 £35.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -12.50% +110.53%
75th Percentile £67.44 £63.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.65 £75.00 £72.62
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £33.75 £47.50
% change year-on-year +24.27% -28.95% +151.19%

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 March 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 March 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 March 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 -35 1,091 £515 -1.90% 503
UK excluding London -25 734 £500 - 459
London -53 398 £525 - 120
Work from Home -21 379 £513 +2.50% 188
South East +11 229 £500 - 172
North of England -29 222 £516 +8.68% 111
North West -18 141 £539 +10.51% 73
Midlands -46 92 £425 -23.42% 60
West Midlands -33 83 £425 -15.00% 34
Yorkshire -29 79 £441 +6.90% 26
South West -44 57 £550 +0.92% 30
Scotland -12 56 £425 -2.86% 17
East of England -26 50 £475 -11.63% 64
Wales -14 25 £425 +9.68% 19
East Midlands -58 7 £475 -26.92% 25
North East -18 5 £548 -0.45% 12
Northern Ireland - 5 £500 - 2

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 45 (3.44%) Microsoft Exchange
2 34 (2.60%) Confluence
3 21 (1.60%) SharePoint
4 12 (0.92%) Apache
4 12 (0.92%) nginx
5 8 (0.61%) CICS
6 7 (0.53%) SAS
7 6 (0.46%) IIS
8 4 (0.31%) OpenStack
9 2 (0.15%) Apache Pulsar
9 2 (0.15%) Skype for Business
9 2 (0.15%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.076%) Anypoint
10 1 (0.076%) IBM HTTP Server
10 1 (0.076%) JBoss
10 1 (0.076%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 1 (0.076%) Tomcat
10 1 (0.076%) WebSphere Application Server
10 1 (0.076%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 35 (2.67%) Microsoft Office
2 23 (1.76%) Microsoft Excel
3 22 (1.68%) MS Visio
4 18 (1.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.076%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 2 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.076%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.076%) Primavera
2 1 (0.076%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.076%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 449 (34.27%) Azure
2 310 (23.66%) AWS
3 142 (10.84%) GCP
4 119 (9.08%) Microsoft 365
5 110 (8.40%) Entra ID
6 67 (5.11%) GitHub
7 65 (4.96%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 58 (4.43%) IaaS
9 51 (3.89%) PaaS
10 50 (3.82%) Azure DevOps
11 43 (3.28%) Azure Monitor
12 42 (3.21%) Azure Sentinel
13 41 (3.13%) Serverless
14 38 (2.90%) GitHub Actions
15 35 (2.67%) Amazon EC2
16 34 (2.60%) AWS CloudFormation
16 34 (2.60%) AWS Lambda
16 34 (2.60%) SaaS
17 31 (2.37%) Amazon EKS
17 31 (2.37%) Azure ExpressRoute
Communications & Networking
1 338 (25.80%) Network Security
2 315 (24.05%) WAN
3 311 (23.74%) VPN
4 256 (19.54%) DNS
5 233 (17.79%) LAN
6 206 (15.73%) BGP
7 179 (13.66%) OSPF
8 142 (10.84%) TCP/IP
9 139 (10.61%) VLAN
10 130 (9.92%) DHCP
11 124 (9.47%) SD-WAN
11 124 (9.47%) Wireless
12 101 (7.71%) Wi-Fi
13 98 (7.48%) MPLS
14 71 (5.42%) IPsec
15 68 (5.19%) Cisco ISE
16 64 (4.89%) Cisco ASA
16 64 (4.89%) VXLAN
17 55 (4.20%) Cisco Nexus
18 54 (4.12%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (2.44%) SQL Server
2 20 (1.53%) PostgreSQL
3 19 (1.45%) Amazon RDS
4 15 (1.15%) Elasticsearch
5 10 (0.76%) Data Lake
5 10 (0.76%) Oracle Database
6 8 (0.61%) Data Warehouse
6 8 (0.61%) DataStage
7 7 (0.53%) MongoDB
7 7 (0.53%) Power BI
8 5 (0.38%) Azure SQL Database
8 5 (0.38%) Relational Database
9 4 (0.31%) Amazon QuickSight
9 4 (0.31%) MySQL
9 4 (0.31%) Redis
9 4 (0.31%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 3 (0.23%) DynamoDB
10 3 (0.23%) NoSQL
10 3 (0.23%) Oracle Exadata
11 2 (0.15%) MariaDB
Development Applications
1 74 (5.65%) JIRA
2 63 (4.81%) Jenkins
3 53 (4.05%) GitLab
4 50 (3.82%) Git
5 24 (1.83%) Sonatype Nexus
6 21 (1.60%) Bitbucket
7 16 (1.22%) Burp Suite
7 16 (1.22%) Metasploit
8 8 (0.61%) Chocolatey
8 8 (0.61%) Jaeger
9 7 (0.53%) SonarQube
10 4 (0.31%) Artifactory
10 4 (0.31%) CircleCI
11 3 (0.23%) Browser DevTools
12 1 (0.076%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.076%) Introscope
12 1 (0.076%) MSI
12 1 (0.076%) Postman
12 1 (0.076%) Subversion
12 1 (0.076%) Travis CI
General
1 354 (27.02%) Social Skills
2 158 (12.06%) Finance
3 143 (10.92%) Analytical Skills
4 107 (8.17%) Public Sector
5 98 (7.48%) Documentation Skills
6 55 (4.20%) Banking
7 42 (3.21%) Telecoms
8 35 (2.67%) Legal
9 25 (1.91%) Financial Institution
9 25 (1.91%) Manufacturing
10 19 (1.45%) Presentation Skills
11 18 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
12 12 (0.92%) Local Government
12 12 (0.92%) Military
13 11 (0.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 11 (0.84%) Retail
14 10 (0.76%) Law
15 8 (0.61%) Aerospace
16 7 (0.53%) Electronics
16 7 (0.53%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 363 (27.71%) Network Engineer
2 220 (16.79%) Architect
3 134 (10.23%) Senior
4 115 (8.78%) Security Engineer
5 83 (6.34%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 77 (5.88%) Network Architect
7 54 (4.12%) Azure Engineer
8 53 (4.05%) Security Architect
9 51 (3.89%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
10 49 (3.74%) Consultant
11 46 (3.51%) Analyst
12 44 (3.36%) Senior Network Engineer
13 42 (3.21%) Cloud Engineer
13 42 (3.21%) Solutions Architect
14 39 (2.98%) DevOps Engineer
15 38 (2.90%) Lead
16 37 (2.82%) Network Security Engineer
16 37 (2.82%) Platform Engineer
17 31 (2.37%) Technical Architect
18 30 (2.29%) Cisco Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 72 (5.50%) 802.1X
2 39 (2.98%) LDAP
3 31 (2.37%) SAML
4 30 (2.29%) Middleware
5 29 (2.21%) OpenID
6 20 (1.53%) OAuth
7 19 (1.45%) OAuth2
8 18 (1.37%) Kafka
9 14 (1.07%) Node.js
10 12 (0.92%) REST
11 11 (0.84%) JSON
12 10 (0.76%) ARM Templates
12 10 (0.76%) OpenTelemetry
13 9 (0.69%) Spring Boot
14 8 (0.61%) Elastic Stack
14 8 (0.61%) XML
15 7 (0.53%) YAML
16 6 (0.46%) Microsoft Graph
16 6 (0.46%) PyTorch
16 6 (0.46%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 279 (21.30%) Data Centre
2 94 (7.18%) Security Posture
3 71 (5.42%) PKI
4 67 (5.11%) Cloud Native
5 46 (3.51%) Onboarding
6 44 (3.36%) Hybrid Cloud
7 41 (3.13%) Operational Technology
8 35 (2.67%) Public Cloud
9 34 (2.60%) Management Information System
10 29 (2.21%) Clustering
11 23 (1.76%) Cyber Threat
12 22 (1.68%) Data Protection Act
13 21 (1.60%) Product Ownership
13 21 (1.60%) Security Operations Centre
14 20 (1.53%) Replication
15 19 (1.45%) IoT
15 19 (1.45%) NHS
16 18 (1.37%) Private Cloud
17 15 (1.15%) SCADA
18 14 (1.07%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 337 (25.73%) Windows
2 205 (15.65%) Linux
3 140 (10.69%) Windows Server
4 34 (2.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 33 (2.52%) Unix
6 24 (1.83%) VMS
7 11 (0.84%) Windows Server 2019
8 9 (0.69%) Solaris
8 9 (0.69%) Windows 7
8 9 (0.69%) Windows Server 2016
9 8 (0.61%) AIX
9 8 (0.61%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.38%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.38%) Windows Server 2003
11 4 (0.31%) CatOS
11 4 (0.31%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.31%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.23%) Amazon Linux
12 3 (0.23%) Android
12 3 (0.23%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 237 (18.09%) Cybersecurity
2 209 (15.95%) Problem-Solving
3 206 (15.73%) DevOps
4 190 (14.50%) CI/CD
5 178 (13.59%) Infrastructure as Code
6 152 (11.60%) ITIL
7 149 (11.37%) Migration
8 144 (10.99%) Load Balancing
9 136 (10.38%) SIEM
10 132 (10.08%) Cloud Security
11 129 (9.85%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 128 (9.77%) High Availability
13 126 (9.62%) Agile
14 108 (8.24%) Incident Response
15 104 (7.94%) Zero Trust
16 102 (7.79%) Change Management
17 98 (7.48%) Stakeholder Management
18 92 (7.02%) Mentoring
19 88 (6.72%) Roadmaps
20 87 (6.64%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 212 (16.18%) Python
2 193 (14.73%) PowerShell
3 92 (7.02%) Bash
4 61 (4.66%) SQL
5 38 (2.90%) Java
6 30 (2.29%) Bicep
7 29 (2.21%) Perl
8 12 (0.92%) Kusto Query Language
8 12 (0.92%) Ruby
9 8 (0.61%) COBOL
9 8 (0.61%) JavaScript
9 8 (0.61%) Rust
10 4 (0.31%) C#
10 4 (0.31%) Shell Script
11 3 (0.23%) Go
11 3 (0.23%) PL/SQL
12 2 (0.15%) C++
13 1 (0.076%) Jython
13 1 (0.076%) Korn
13 1 (0.076%) PHP
Qualifications
1 448 (34.20%) Security Cleared
2 303 (23.13%) SC Cleared
3 254 (19.39%) Cisco Certification
4 202 (15.42%) CCNP
5 124 (9.47%) DV Cleared
6 118 (9.01%) Degree
7 103 (7.86%) CCNA
8 89 (6.79%) CISSP
9 54 (4.12%) Azure Certification
10 53 (4.05%) CCIE
11 49 (3.74%) CISM
12 46 (3.51%) AWS Certification
13 40 (3.05%) Microsoft Certification
14 30 (2.29%) CompTIA Security+
15 26 (1.98%) JNCIP
15 26 (1.98%) JNCIS
16 21 (1.60%) Computer Science Degree
17 19 (1.45%) JNCIA
17 19 (1.45%) Network+ Certification
18 18 (1.37%) CREST Certified
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 106 (8.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 80 (6.11%) NIST
3 70 (5.34%) GDPR
4 45 (3.44%) PCI DSS
5 34 (2.60%) NCSC
6 32 (2.44%) SLA
7 27 (2.06%) Cyber Essentials
8 21 (1.60%) QA
9 16 (1.22%) PMO
10 10 (0.76%) Actionable Recommendations
11 8 (0.61%) JSP 440
12 7 (0.53%) GRC
12 7 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 6 (0.46%) HIPAA
13 6 (0.46%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 5 (0.38%) NIST 800
14 5 (0.38%) RMADS
14 5 (0.38%) SOC 2
15 4 (0.31%) GxP
16 3 (0.23%) COBIT
System Software
1 246 (18.78%) Active Directory
2 164 (12.52%) VMware Infrastructure
3 92 (7.02%) Docker
4 67 (5.11%) VMware NSX
5 38 (2.90%) vSphere
6 37 (2.82%) Hyper-V
7 27 (2.06%) Virtual Machines
8 20 (1.53%) VMware ESXi
9 18 (1.37%) Virtual Desktop
10 14 (1.07%) Firmware
11 10 (0.76%) Squid
12 9 (0.69%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.46%) BitLocker
13 6 (0.46%) Microsoft App-V
14 5 (0.38%) NDS
14 5 (0.38%) NetIQ eDirectory
15 4 (0.31%) KVM
16 3 (0.23%) DFS Replication
16 3 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
17 2 (0.15%) Citrix Hypervisor
Systems Management
1 204 (15.57%) Terraform
2 150 (11.45%) Ansible
3 121 (9.24%) Kubernetes
4 98 (7.48%) FortiGate
5 68 (5.19%) Microsoft Intune
6 42 (3.21%) Single Sign-On
7 40 (3.05%) Grafana
8 36 (2.75%) SCCM
9 33 (2.52%) Prometheus
10 28 (2.14%) vCenter Server
11 26 (1.98%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 18 (1.37%) Nmap
13 16 (1.22%) CASB
14 15 (1.15%) QRadar
15 13 (0.99%) Nagios
16 10 (0.76%) Fluentd
16 10 (0.76%) Nessus
16 10 (0.76%) Puppet
17 9 (0.69%) Progress Chef
17 9 (0.69%) VxRail
Vendors
1 440 (33.59%) Cisco
2 300 (22.90%) Microsoft
3 270 (20.61%) Palo Alto
4 213 (16.26%) VMware
5 151 (11.53%) F5
6 141 (10.76%) Fortinet
7 140 (10.69%) Juniper
8 126 (9.62%) CheckPoint
9 98 (7.48%) Splunk
10 89 (6.79%) Aruba
11 70 (5.34%) SolarWinds
12 64 (4.89%) Google
13 61 (4.66%) Meraki
14 52 (3.97%) ServiceNow
15 48 (3.66%) Zscaler
16 43 (3.28%) Citrix
16 43 (3.28%) Oracle
17 39 (2.98%) Red Hat
18 32 (2.44%) Arista
19 25 (1.91%) Extreme Networks