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

6 months to
14 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 83 50 50
Rank change year-on-year -33 0 +8
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,339 1,278 1,676
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.10% 4.33% 3.76%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.56% 32.40% 27.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 887 765 1,037
10th Percentile £334 £319 £313
25th Percentile £413 £413 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £517 £507
Median % change year-on-year -3.29% +1.97% -3.43%
75th Percentile £588 £603 £620
90th Percentile £651 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 19 44
10th Percentile £26.88 £17.64 £16.00
25th Percentile £37.25 £28.78 £23.92
Median hourly rate £42.32 £37.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.39% -43.08% +17.50%
75th Percentile £74.26 £41.74 £78.50
90th Percentile £85.50 £73.75 £87.37
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.72 £37.07 £69.24
% change year-on-year +31.42% -46.46% +25.16%

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 4,382 3,944 5,988
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.15% 13.36% 13.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,833 2,414 3,595
10th Percentile £213 £210 £205
25th Percentile £367 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £487 £496 £475
Median % change year-on-year -1.86% +4.46% -8.65%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £470 £475
% change year-on-year +1.06% -1.05% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 181 140 393
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.22 £14.05
25th Percentile £20.18 £21.46 £18.93
Median hourly rate £39.50 £35.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +12.86% +7.69% +71.05%
75th Percentile £67.50 £63.38 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £70.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.25 £32.50 £45.88
% change year-on-year +30.00% -29.16% +145.87%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 1,117 £515 -1.90% 479
UK excluding London -22 754 £500 - 433
London -54 405 £525 - 120
Work from Home -24 386 £513 +2.50% 168
South East +13 235 £500 - 165
North of England -23 233 £515 +8.42% 104
North West -12 151 £528 +8.31% 66
Midlands -42 94 £425 -23.42% 52
West Midlands -29 85 £425 -11.23% 26
Yorkshire -24 80 £441 +3.82% 27
Scotland -4 57 £438 - 18
South West -49 57 £550 +0.92% 35
East of England -26 50 £475 -10.38% 56
Wales -17 25 £425 +9.68% 16
East Midlands -55 7 £475 -24.00% 26
North East -18 5 £548 -0.45% 11
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 48 (3.58%) Microsoft Exchange
2 34 (2.54%) Confluence
3 23 (1.72%) SharePoint
4 12 (0.90%) Apache
4 12 (0.90%) nginx
5 8 (0.60%) CICS
6 7 (0.52%) SAS
7 6 (0.45%) IIS
8 4 (0.30%) OpenStack
9 2 (0.15%) Apache Pulsar
9 2 (0.15%) Skype for Business
9 2 (0.15%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.15%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.075%) Anypoint
10 1 (0.075%) IBM HTTP Server
10 1 (0.075%) JBoss
10 1 (0.075%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 1 (0.075%) WebSphere Application Server
10 1 (0.075%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 36 (2.69%) Microsoft Office
2 23 (1.72%) Microsoft Excel
3 22 (1.64%) MS Visio
4 18 (1.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.45%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.075%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 2 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.075%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.075%) Primavera
2 1 (0.075%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.075%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 461 (34.43%) Azure
2 315 (23.53%) AWS
3 142 (10.60%) GCP
4 121 (9.04%) Microsoft 365
5 117 (8.74%) Entra ID
6 69 (5.15%) GitHub
7 65 (4.85%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 59 (4.41%) IaaS
9 53 (3.96%) Azure DevOps
10 52 (3.88%) PaaS
11 46 (3.44%) Azure Sentinel
12 43 (3.21%) Azure Monitor
13 41 (3.06%) Serverless
14 40 (2.99%) GitHub Actions
15 35 (2.61%) Amazon EC2
15 35 (2.61%) AWS CloudFormation
16 34 (2.54%) AWS Lambda
16 34 (2.54%) SaaS
17 31 (2.32%) Amazon EKS
17 31 (2.32%) Azure ExpressRoute
Communications & Networking
1 350 (26.14%) Network Security
2 324 (24.20%) VPN
3 323 (24.12%) WAN
4 264 (19.72%) DNS
5 238 (17.77%) LAN
6 207 (15.46%) BGP
7 181 (13.52%) OSPF
8 144 (10.75%) TCP/IP
9 141 (10.53%) VLAN
10 137 (10.23%) DHCP
11 129 (9.63%) SD-WAN
12 127 (9.48%) Wireless
13 101 (7.54%) Wi-Fi
14 99 (7.39%) MPLS
15 71 (5.30%) IPsec
16 69 (5.15%) Cisco ISE
17 65 (4.85%) Cisco ASA
18 64 (4.78%) VXLAN
19 55 (4.11%) Cisco Nexus
19 55 (4.11%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (2.39%) SQL Server
2 21 (1.57%) PostgreSQL
3 20 (1.49%) Amazon RDS
4 16 (1.19%) Elasticsearch
5 11 (0.82%) Oracle Database
6 10 (0.75%) Data Lake
7 8 (0.60%) Data Warehouse
7 8 (0.60%) DataStage
7 8 (0.60%) Power BI
8 7 (0.52%) MongoDB
9 6 (0.45%) Azure SQL Database
10 5 (0.37%) Relational Database
11 4 (0.30%) Amazon QuickSight
11 4 (0.30%) MySQL
11 4 (0.30%) Redis
11 4 (0.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 3 (0.22%) DynamoDB
12 3 (0.22%) NoSQL
12 3 (0.22%) Oracle Exadata
13 2 (0.15%) MariaDB
Development Applications
1 76 (5.68%) JIRA
2 63 (4.71%) Jenkins
3 53 (3.96%) GitLab
4 51 (3.81%) Git
5 24 (1.79%) Sonatype Nexus
6 21 (1.57%) Bitbucket
7 16 (1.19%) Burp Suite
7 16 (1.19%) Metasploit
8 8 (0.60%) Chocolatey
8 8 (0.60%) Jaeger
9 7 (0.52%) SonarQube
10 4 (0.30%) Artifactory
10 4 (0.30%) CircleCI
11 3 (0.22%) Browser DevTools
12 1 (0.075%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.075%) Introscope
12 1 (0.075%) MSI
12 1 (0.075%) Postman
12 1 (0.075%) Subversion
12 1 (0.075%) Travis CI
General
1 360 (26.89%) Social Skills
2 159 (11.87%) Finance
3 145 (10.83%) Analytical Skills
4 110 (8.22%) Public Sector
5 99 (7.39%) Documentation Skills
6 55 (4.11%) Banking
7 42 (3.14%) Telecoms
8 35 (2.61%) Legal
9 26 (1.94%) Financial Institution
10 25 (1.87%) Manufacturing
11 19 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
12 18 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
13 12 (0.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 12 (0.90%) Local Government
13 12 (0.90%) Military
14 11 (0.82%) Retail
15 10 (0.75%) Law
16 8 (0.60%) Aerospace
17 7 (0.52%) Electronics
17 7 (0.52%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 368 (27.48%) Network Engineer
2 232 (17.33%) Architect
3 136 (10.16%) Senior
4 115 (8.59%) Security Engineer
5 89 (6.65%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 82 (6.12%) Network Architect
7 54 (4.03%) Azure Engineer
7 54 (4.03%) Security Architect
8 51 (3.81%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
9 50 (3.73%) Consultant
10 46 (3.44%) Analyst
11 44 (3.29%) Senior Network Engineer
12 43 (3.21%) Cloud Engineer
13 42 (3.14%) Solutions Architect
14 39 (2.91%) DevOps Engineer
15 38 (2.84%) Lead
16 37 (2.76%) Network Security Engineer
16 37 (2.76%) Platform Engineer
17 32 (2.39%) Technical Architect
18 30 (2.24%) Cisco Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 72 (5.38%) 802.1X
2 39 (2.91%) LDAP
3 31 (2.32%) Middleware
3 31 (2.32%) SAML
4 29 (2.17%) OpenID
5 20 (1.49%) OAuth
6 19 (1.42%) OAuth2
7 18 (1.34%) Kafka
8 14 (1.05%) Node.js
9 12 (0.90%) REST
10 11 (0.82%) JSON
11 10 (0.75%) ARM Templates
11 10 (0.75%) OpenTelemetry
12 9 (0.67%) Spring Boot
13 8 (0.60%) Elastic Stack
13 8 (0.60%) XML
14 7 (0.52%) Microsoft Graph
14 7 (0.52%) YAML
15 6 (0.45%) PyTorch
15 6 (0.45%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 286 (21.36%) Data Centre
2 93 (6.95%) Security Posture
3 74 (5.53%) PKI
4 71 (5.30%) Cloud Native
5 47 (3.51%) Onboarding
6 44 (3.29%) Hybrid Cloud
7 41 (3.06%) Operational Technology
8 35 (2.61%) Management Information System
8 35 (2.61%) Public Cloud
9 31 (2.32%) Clustering
10 24 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
11 23 (1.72%) Cyber Threat
12 21 (1.57%) Product Ownership
12 21 (1.57%) Security Operations Centre
13 20 (1.49%) Replication
14 19 (1.42%) IoT
14 19 (1.42%) NHS
15 18 (1.34%) Private Cloud
16 16 (1.19%) Enterprise Software
17 15 (1.12%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 342 (25.54%) Windows
2 208 (15.53%) Linux
3 143 (10.68%) Windows Server
4 34 (2.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 33 (2.46%) Unix
6 24 (1.79%) VMS
7 11 (0.82%) Windows Server 2019
8 9 (0.67%) Solaris
8 9 (0.67%) Windows 7
8 9 (0.67%) Windows Server 2016
9 8 (0.60%) AIX
9 8 (0.60%) Windows 10
10 6 (0.45%) Windows Server 2003
11 5 (0.37%) Mac OS
12 4 (0.30%) CatOS
12 4 (0.30%) Ubuntu
12 4 (0.30%) Windows Server 2012
13 3 (0.22%) Amazon Linux
13 3 (0.22%) Android
13 3 (0.22%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 241 (18.00%) Cybersecurity
2 213 (15.91%) Problem-Solving
3 209 (15.61%) DevOps
4 191 (14.26%) CI/CD
5 180 (13.44%) Infrastructure as Code
6 156 (11.65%) ITIL
7 154 (11.50%) Migration
8 148 (11.05%) Load Balancing
9 137 (10.23%) SIEM
10 135 (10.08%) Cloud Security
10 135 (10.08%) High Availability
10 135 (10.08%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 130 (9.71%) Agile
12 113 (8.44%) Zero Trust
13 110 (8.22%) Incident Response
14 109 (8.14%) Change Management
15 101 (7.54%) Stakeholder Management
16 93 (6.95%) Security Architecture
17 92 (6.87%) Mentoring
18 90 (6.72%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 214 (15.98%) Python
2 196 (14.64%) PowerShell
3 93 (6.95%) Bash
4 63 (4.71%) SQL
5 39 (2.91%) Java
6 35 (2.61%) Bicep
7 29 (2.17%) Perl
8 13 (0.97%) Kusto Query Language
9 12 (0.90%) Ruby
10 8 (0.60%) COBOL
10 8 (0.60%) JavaScript
10 8 (0.60%) Rust
11 5 (0.37%) Shell Script
12 4 (0.30%) C#
13 3 (0.22%) Go
13 3 (0.22%) PL/SQL
14 2 (0.15%) C++
15 1 (0.075%) Jython
15 1 (0.075%) Korn
15 1 (0.075%) PHP
Qualifications
1 459 (34.28%) Security Cleared
2 308 (23.00%) SC Cleared
3 258 (19.27%) Cisco Certification
4 206 (15.38%) CCNP
5 127 (9.48%) DV Cleared
6 120 (8.96%) Degree
7 106 (7.92%) CCNA
8 89 (6.65%) CISSP
9 54 (4.03%) Azure Certification
10 53 (3.96%) CCIE
11 49 (3.66%) CISM
12 46 (3.44%) AWS Certification
13 40 (2.99%) Microsoft Certification
14 30 (2.24%) CompTIA Security+
15 26 (1.94%) JNCIP
15 26 (1.94%) JNCIS
16 21 (1.57%) Computer Science Degree
17 19 (1.42%) JNCIA
17 19 (1.42%) Network+ Certification
18 18 (1.34%) CREST Certified
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 109 (8.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 86 (6.42%) NIST
3 71 (5.30%) GDPR
4 45 (3.36%) PCI DSS
5 34 (2.54%) NCSC
6 32 (2.39%) SLA
7 27 (2.02%) Cyber Essentials
8 21 (1.57%) QA
9 16 (1.19%) PMO
10 10 (0.75%) Actionable Recommendations
11 8 (0.60%) JSP 440
12 7 (0.52%) GRC
12 7 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 6 (0.45%) HIPAA
13 6 (0.45%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 5 (0.37%) NIST 800
14 5 (0.37%) RMADS
14 5 (0.37%) SOC 2
15 4 (0.30%) GxP
16 3 (0.22%) COBIT
System Software
1 252 (18.82%) Active Directory
2 169 (12.62%) VMware Infrastructure
3 95 (7.09%) Docker
4 67 (5.00%) VMware NSX
5 42 (3.14%) Hyper-V
6 38 (2.84%) vSphere
7 28 (2.09%) Virtual Machines
8 23 (1.72%) VMware ESXi
9 18 (1.34%) Virtual Desktop
10 15 (1.12%) Firmware
11 10 (0.75%) Squid
12 9 (0.67%) Virtual Servers
13 8 (0.60%) BitLocker
13 8 (0.60%) Microsoft App-V
14 5 (0.37%) NDS
14 5 (0.37%) NetIQ eDirectory
15 4 (0.30%) KVM
16 3 (0.22%) DFS Replication
16 3 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
17 2 (0.15%) Citrix Hypervisor
Systems Management
1 210 (15.68%) Terraform
2 153 (11.43%) Ansible
3 124 (9.26%) Kubernetes
4 99 (7.39%) FortiGate
5 69 (5.15%) Microsoft Intune
6 45 (3.36%) Single Sign-On
7 41 (3.06%) Grafana
8 36 (2.69%) SCCM
9 34 (2.54%) Prometheus
10 30 (2.24%) vCenter Server
11 26 (1.94%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 18 (1.34%) Nmap
13 17 (1.27%) CASB
14 15 (1.12%) QRadar
15 13 (0.97%) Nagios
16 11 (0.82%) Puppet
17 10 (0.75%) Fluentd
17 10 (0.75%) Nessus
18 9 (0.67%) Cisco Prime
18 9 (0.67%) WMI
Vendors
1 445 (33.23%) Cisco
2 308 (23.00%) Microsoft
3 275 (20.54%) Palo Alto
4 218 (16.28%) VMware
5 150 (11.20%) F5
6 142 (10.60%) Fortinet
7 140 (10.46%) Juniper
8 129 (9.63%) CheckPoint
9 97 (7.24%) Splunk
10 91 (6.80%) Aruba
11 70 (5.23%) SolarWinds
12 66 (4.93%) Google
13 61 (4.56%) Meraki
14 53 (3.96%) ServiceNow
15 48 (3.58%) Zscaler
16 45 (3.36%) Citrix
17 44 (3.29%) Oracle
18 41 (3.06%) Red Hat
19 32 (2.39%) Arista
20 25 (1.87%) Extreme Networks