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

6 months to
10 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 91 54 54
Rank change year-on-year -37 0 -6
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,430 1,397 1,546
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.72% 4.32% 3.58%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 28.55% 35.38% 28.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 912 827 959
10th Percentile £336 £325 £275
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £645 £688 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% +2.99%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 24 46
10th Percentile £28.30 £14.20 £18.06
25th Percentile £37.53 £14.89 £23.92
Median hourly rate £60.00 £30.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +100.00% -50.00% -4.08%
75th Percentile £73.69 £31.44 £85.65
90th Percentile £89.09 £44.48 £87.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.62 £30.00 £82.38
% change year-on-year +102.06% -63.58% +31.71%

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 5,008 3,949 5,443
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.52% 12.20% 12.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,041 2,424 3,208
10th Percentile £238 £235 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £591 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £473 £490
% change year-on-year +1.59% -3.47% +3.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 316 185 426
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.86
25th Percentile £19.34 £23.75 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.55 £45.00 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year -41.00% +8.43% +38.33%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.25 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £80.61 £73.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.22 £39.32 £47.50
% change year-on-year -33.32% -17.22% +5.56%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 1,224 £500 - 496
UK excluding London -31 813 £500 +2.56% 461
London -59 464 £500 -2.91% 126
Work from Home -38 393 £520 +4.00% 201
North of England -17 287 £500 +5.26% 94
South East -26 214 £500 - 175
North West -2 184 £532 +11.89% 50
Yorkshire -36 87 £438 -9.79% 33
Midlands -64 81 £438 -7.89% 60
East of England -17 73 £525 -0.94% 39
South West -36 72 £525 +5.00% 54
Scotland +10 67 £456 +5.80% 24
West Midlands -65 65 £425 -19.05% 39
Wales -15 25 £425 +17.24% 8
North East -18 22 £625 +25.00% 13
East Midlands -27 13 £500 +11.11% 21
Northern Ireland -4 2 £385 - 20

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 34 (2.38%) Confluence
2 33 (2.31%) Microsoft Exchange
3 24 (1.68%) SharePoint
4 16 (1.12%) nginx
5 12 (0.84%) Apache
6 10 (0.70%) CICS
7 6 (0.42%) SAS
8 4 (0.28%) Tomcat
9 3 (0.21%) CloudStack
9 3 (0.21%) IIS
9 3 (0.21%) Skype for Business
10 2 (0.14%) Apache Pulsar
10 2 (0.14%) CMS
10 2 (0.14%) FactoryTalk
10 2 (0.14%) IBM HTTP Server
10 2 (0.14%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.14%) Umbraco
10 2 (0.14%) WebSphere
10 2 (0.14%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.14%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 26 (1.82%) MS Visio
2 18 (1.26%) Microsoft Excel
3 17 (1.19%) Microsoft Office
4 8 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.070%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 1 (0.070%) Bloomberg TOMS
1 1 (0.070%) Dynamics GP
1 1 (0.070%) Eikon
1 1 (0.070%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.070%) Primavera
1 1 (0.070%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.070%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 487 (34.06%) Azure
2 318 (22.24%) AWS
3 134 (9.37%) Entra ID
4 120 (8.39%) GCP
5 110 (7.69%) Microsoft 365
6 69 (4.83%) GitHub
7 65 (4.55%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 63 (4.41%) IaaS
9 54 (3.78%) SaaS
10 51 (3.57%) Azure DevOps
11 43 (3.01%) PaaS
12 41 (2.87%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 39 (2.73%) Azure Monitor
14 36 (2.52%) OCI
14 36 (2.52%) Serverless
15 34 (2.38%) Azure Sentinel
16 30 (2.10%) Amazon EC2
16 30 (2.10%) GitHub Actions
17 29 (2.03%) Google Kubernetes Engine
18 27 (1.89%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 406 (28.39%) Network Security
2 399 (27.90%) WAN
3 397 (27.76%) VPN
4 333 (23.29%) DNS
5 294 (20.56%) LAN
6 266 (18.60%) BGP
7 218 (15.24%) OSPF
8 187 (13.08%) VLAN
9 183 (12.80%) TCP/IP
10 175 (12.24%) DHCP
11 163 (11.40%) Wireless
12 159 (11.12%) SD-WAN
13 115 (8.04%) Wi-Fi
14 101 (7.06%) BIG-IP
15 96 (6.71%) MPLS
16 91 (6.36%) VXLAN
17 86 (6.01%) IPsec
18 83 (5.80%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
19 79 (5.52%) SSL
20 78 (5.45%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (1.61%) SQL Server
2 18 (1.26%) Power BI
3 17 (1.19%) Elasticsearch
3 17 (1.19%) PostgreSQL
4 13 (0.91%) Amazon RDS
5 11 (0.77%) Data Lake
6 10 (0.70%) DataStage
7 9 (0.63%) Azure SQL Database
7 9 (0.63%) Relational Database
8 8 (0.56%) MySQL
8 8 (0.56%) Oracle Database
9 5 (0.35%) Delta Lake
9 5 (0.35%) NoSQL
10 4 (0.28%) Amazon Athena
10 4 (0.28%) Amazon Aurora
10 4 (0.28%) Amazon QuickSight
10 4 (0.28%) Amazon Redshift
10 4 (0.28%) Data Warehouse
11 3 (0.21%) Big Data
11 3 (0.21%) Db2
Development Applications
1 99 (6.92%) JIRA
2 53 (3.71%) Jenkins
3 41 (2.87%) Git
3 41 (2.87%) GitLab
4 16 (1.12%) Sonatype Nexus
5 11 (0.77%) Bitbucket
6 10 (0.70%) Artifactory
7 9 (0.63%) Chocolatey
7 9 (0.63%) SonarQube
8 6 (0.42%) Browser DevTools
9 4 (0.28%) Burp Suite
10 3 (0.21%) Jaeger
11 2 (0.14%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 2 (0.14%) Cucumber
11 2 (0.14%) Gradle
11 2 (0.14%) Introscope
11 2 (0.14%) LoadRunner
11 2 (0.14%) Metasploit
11 2 (0.14%) MSI
11 2 (0.14%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 308 (21.54%) Social Skills
2 184 (12.87%) Finance
3 123 (8.60%) Analytical Skills
4 118 (8.25%) Public Sector
5 76 (5.31%) Documentation Skills
6 71 (4.97%) Banking
7 42 (2.94%) Telecoms
8 31 (2.17%) Legal
9 25 (1.75%) Manufacturing
10 20 (1.40%) Financial Institution
10 20 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
11 18 (1.26%) Military
12 14 (0.98%) Local Government
13 13 (0.91%) Retail
14 12 (0.84%) Organisational Skills
15 11 (0.77%) Law
16 10 (0.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 10 (0.70%) Investment Banking
16 10 (0.70%) Police
17 9 (0.63%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 463 (32.38%) Network Engineer
2 232 (16.22%) Architect
3 179 (12.52%) Senior
4 132 (9.23%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 123 (8.60%) Security Engineer
6 79 (5.52%) Network Architect
7 77 (5.38%) Senior Network Engineer
8 70 (4.90%) Cloud Engineer
9 58 (4.06%) Consultant
9 58 (4.06%) Network Security Engineer
10 55 (3.85%) Azure Engineer
10 55 (3.85%) Technical Architect
11 47 (3.29%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 46 (3.22%) Security Architect
13 42 (2.94%) DevOps Engineer
13 42 (2.94%) Lead
14 40 (2.80%) Solutions Architect
15 36 (2.52%) Cloud Architect
16 33 (2.31%) Analyst
16 33 (2.31%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 70 (4.90%) 802.1X
2 42 (2.94%) Middleware
3 37 (2.59%) LDAP
4 32 (2.24%) SAML
5 23 (1.61%) OpenID
6 13 (0.91%) OAuth
7 11 (0.77%) Kafka
7 11 (0.77%) OAuth2
8 10 (0.70%) ARM Templates
9 9 (0.63%) LangChain
9 9 (0.63%) PyTorch
9 9 (0.63%) REST
9 9 (0.63%) scikit-learn
10 8 (0.56%) .NET
11 7 (0.49%) SailPoint
11 7 (0.49%) YAML
12 6 (0.42%) Elastic Stack
12 6 (0.42%) OpenTelemetry
12 6 (0.42%) React
13 5 (0.35%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 342 (23.92%) Data Centre
2 93 (6.50%) Cloud Native
3 79 (5.52%) Security Posture
4 77 (5.38%) Hybrid Cloud
5 68 (4.76%) PKI
6 47 (3.29%) Management Information System
6 47 (3.29%) Onboarding
7 42 (2.94%) Operational Technology
8 40 (2.80%) Clustering
9 32 (2.24%) IoT
10 31 (2.17%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 30 (2.10%) Data Protection Act
12 26 (1.82%) Public Cloud
13 24 (1.68%) Enterprise Storage
13 24 (1.68%) SCADA
14 20 (1.40%) Cyber Threat
15 19 (1.33%) Driving Licence
16 18 (1.26%) Enterprise Software
17 17 (1.19%) NHS
17 17 (1.19%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 313 (21.89%) Windows
2 187 (13.08%) Linux
3 109 (7.62%) Windows Server
4 47 (3.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 32 (2.24%) Unix
6 21 (1.47%) VMS
7 14 (0.98%) Ubuntu
7 14 (0.98%) Windows Server 2019
8 11 (0.77%) Solaris
9 10 (0.70%) AIX
9 10 (0.70%) Windows Server 2016
10 9 (0.63%) CentOS
11 6 (0.42%) Mac OS
11 6 (0.42%) Windows 10
11 6 (0.42%) Windows Server 2003
11 6 (0.42%) Windows Server 2012
12 5 (0.35%) Rocky
13 4 (0.28%) Amazon Linux
13 4 (0.28%) Android
13 4 (0.28%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 234 (16.36%) DevOps
2 215 (15.03%) CI/CD
3 212 (14.83%) Infrastructure as Code
4 199 (13.92%) Load Balancing
5 188 (13.15%) Migration
5 188 (13.15%) Problem-Solving
6 182 (12.73%) ITIL
7 180 (12.59%) Cybersecurity
8 179 (12.52%) High Availability
9 176 (12.31%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 156 (10.91%) Zero Trust
11 155 (10.84%) Agile
12 127 (8.88%) SIEM
13 124 (8.67%) Change Management
14 113 (7.90%) Observability
14 113 (7.90%) Validation
15 109 (7.62%) Project Delivery
16 107 (7.48%) Stakeholder Management
17 106 (7.41%) Roadmaps
18 104 (7.27%) Cloud Security
Programming Languages
1 249 (17.41%) Python
2 159 (11.12%) PowerShell
3 97 (6.78%) Bash
4 40 (2.80%) Bicep
4 40 (2.80%) SQL
5 33 (2.31%) Java
6 11 (0.77%) ActionScript
6 11 (0.77%) Perl
7 10 (0.70%) COBOL
8 7 (0.49%) Groovy
9 6 (0.42%) JavaScript
9 6 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
10 5 (0.35%) C++
10 5 (0.35%) Go
11 3 (0.21%) PL/SQL
11 3 (0.21%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.14%) C
12 2 (0.14%) Jython
12 2 (0.14%) PHP
12 2 (0.14%) Rust
Qualifications
1 467 (32.66%) Security Cleared
2 336 (23.50%) SC Cleared
3 288 (20.14%) Cisco Certification
4 215 (15.03%) CCNP
5 118 (8.25%) CCNA
6 113 (7.90%) Degree
6 113 (7.90%) DV Cleared
7 71 (4.97%) CISSP
8 56 (3.92%) Azure Certification
9 44 (3.08%) CCIE
10 41 (2.87%) AWS Certification
11 33 (2.31%) CISM
11 33 (2.31%) Microsoft Certification
12 22 (1.54%) Computer Science Degree
13 21 (1.47%) JNCIS
13 21 (1.47%) Network+ Certification
14 18 (1.26%) PMP
15 17 (1.19%) JNCIA
15 17 (1.19%) JNCIP
15 17 (1.19%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 72 (5.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 57 (3.99%) NIST
3 41 (2.87%) GDPR
4 34 (2.38%) NCSC
5 26 (1.82%) PCI DSS
6 22 (1.54%) Cyber Essentials
6 22 (1.54%) QA
7 21 (1.47%) SLA
8 9 (0.63%) Data Quality
8 9 (0.63%) NIST 800
9 8 (0.56%) Disclosure Scotland
10 7 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
10 7 (0.49%) JSP 440
11 6 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 6 (0.42%) GRC
11 6 (0.42%) GxP
12 5 (0.35%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 5 (0.35%) PMO
12 5 (0.35%) RMADS
13 4 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 211 (14.76%) Active Directory
2 159 (11.12%) VMware Infrastructure
3 59 (4.13%) VMware NSX
4 55 (3.85%) Docker
5 42 (2.94%) Hyper-V
6 41 (2.87%) vSphere
7 38 (2.66%) Virtual Machines
7 38 (2.66%) VMware ESXi
8 26 (1.82%) Firmware
9 19 (1.33%) Virtual Desktop
10 16 (1.12%) Squid
11 12 (0.84%) BitLocker
12 8 (0.56%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.35%) 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%) Citrix Hypervisor
Systems Management
1 257 (17.97%) Terraform
2 180 (12.59%) Ansible
3 115 (8.04%) FortiGate
4 107 (7.48%) Kubernetes
5 65 (4.55%) Grafana
6 61 (4.27%) Prometheus
7 55 (3.85%) Microsoft Intune
8 39 (2.73%) Single Sign-On
9 32 (2.24%) SCCM
10 23 (1.61%) vCenter Server
11 18 (1.26%) Puppet
12 17 (1.19%) Progress Chef
13 16 (1.12%) CASB
14 14 (0.98%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 12 (0.84%) Cisco Prime
16 11 (0.77%) Consul
17 10 (0.70%) QRadar
18 9 (0.63%) Nessus
18 9 (0.63%) VxRail
19 8 (0.56%) WSUS
Vendors
1 511 (35.73%) Cisco
2 313 (21.89%) Palo Alto
3 292 (20.42%) Microsoft
4 210 (14.69%) Fortinet
5 208 (14.55%) VMware
6 201 (14.06%) F5
7 165 (11.54%) Juniper
8 133 (9.30%) CheckPoint
9 81 (5.66%) Splunk
10 78 (5.45%) Aruba
11 75 (5.24%) Arista
12 70 (4.90%) ServiceNow
13 69 (4.83%) SolarWinds
14 65 (4.55%) Google
15 58 (4.06%) Zscaler
16 47 (3.29%) Citrix
17 46 (3.22%) Red Hat
18 41 (2.87%) Meraki
19 32 (2.24%) Infoblox
20 31 (2.17%) Dynatrace