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

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 102 60 58
Rank change year-on-year -42 -2 -12
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,376 1,278 1,345
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.51% 3.91% 3.57%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 26.81% 33.90% 30.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 847 779 832
10th Percentile £350 £313 £320
25th Percentile £425 £413 £417
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £623
90th Percentile £675 £688 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £485 £508
% change year-on-year +3.09% -4.43% +4.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 29 29
10th Percentile £30.58 £15.29 £20.00
25th Percentile £48.93 £29.00 £21.25
Median hourly rate £67.24 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +124.12% +9.09% -58.33%
75th Percentile £78.75 £41.94 £62.50
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.63 £79.08
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.69 £30.00 £27.50
% change year-on-year +118.97% +9.09% -58.33%

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 5,132 3,770 4,463
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.36% 11.53% 11.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,973 2,341 2,598
10th Percentile £235 £225 £225
25th Percentile £393 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £478 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.69% -4.48% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £500
% change year-on-year +5.56% -10.00% +8.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 424 199 229
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £25.15 £23.80
Median hourly rate £34.75 £42.50 £51.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.24% -17.48% -8.83%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £73.40 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -23.53% -25.89% -0.26%

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 23 September 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 23 September 2026.

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 23 September 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 -37 1,208 £501 +0.25% 1,072
UK excluding London -39 760 £500 +3.09% 714
London -50 478 £500 -3.21% 422
Work from Home -40 391 £520 +4.00% 434
North of England -7 282 £500 +3.09% 150
South East -49 168 £525 +5.00% 226
North West +7 164 £503 +5.79% 96
Yorkshire -32 96 £483 -1.43% 41
South West -10 89 £560 +15.46% 85
Midlands -78 83 £465 -2.05% 114
East of England -7 73 £540 +7.73% 62
Scotland -18 61 £400 -11.11% 47
West Midlands -74 61 £430 -9.47% 77
North East -12 29 £500 -13.04% 15
East Midlands -13 21 £500 +6.16% 37
Wales -16 8 £425 +112.50% 11
Channel Islands -7 2 £600 -17.24% 1
Northern Ireland -10 1 - - 24

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 49 (3.56%) Microsoft Exchange
2 37 (2.69%) SharePoint
3 34 (2.47%) Confluence
4 12 (0.87%) Apache
4 12 (0.87%) nginx
5 9 (0.65%) SAS
6 4 (0.29%) FactoryTalk
6 4 (0.29%) IIS
7 3 (0.22%) CloudStack
7 3 (0.22%) Skype for Business
7 3 (0.22%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.15%) CICS
8 2 (0.15%) CMS
8 2 (0.15%) Umbraco
9 1 (0.073%) Appian
9 1 (0.073%) IBM HTTP Server
9 1 (0.073%) MTS
9 1 (0.073%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 1 (0.073%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.073%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 21 (1.53%) Microsoft Office
1 21 (1.53%) MS Visio
2 20 (1.45%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (0.58%) Microsoft Project
4 6 (0.44%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.073%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 5 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
3 2 (0.15%) Bloomberg TOMS
3 2 (0.15%) Dynamics GP
3 2 (0.15%) Eikon
3 2 (0.15%) Teamcenter
4 1 (0.073%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.073%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.073%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 526 (38.23%) Azure
2 318 (23.11%) AWS
3 177 (12.86%) Entra ID
4 125 (9.08%) Microsoft 365
5 107 (7.78%) GCP
6 79 (5.74%) GitHub
7 72 (5.23%) IaaS
8 68 (4.94%) Azure DevOps
8 68 (4.94%) SaaS
9 57 (4.14%) Azure Monitor
10 49 (3.56%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 43 (3.13%) PaaS
12 42 (3.05%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 38 (2.76%) OCI
14 34 (2.47%) Serverless
15 33 (2.40%) Azure Sentinel
16 32 (2.33%) GitHub Actions
17 28 (2.03%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 28 (2.03%) AWS CloudFormation
18 26 (1.89%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 411 (29.87%) VPN
2 398 (28.92%) Network Security
3 370 (26.89%) DNS
4 347 (25.22%) WAN
5 252 (18.31%) LAN
6 236 (17.15%) BGP
7 213 (15.48%) DHCP
7 213 (15.48%) TCP/IP
8 200 (14.53%) VLAN
9 176 (12.79%) Wireless
10 170 (12.35%) OSPF
11 129 (9.38%) SD-WAN
12 126 (9.16%) Wi-Fi
13 79 (5.74%) Cisco ASA
13 79 (5.74%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 78 (5.67%) IPsec
15 76 (5.52%) BIG-IP
15 76 (5.52%) SSL
16 75 (5.45%) MPLS
17 66 (4.80%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 35 (2.54%) SQL Server
2 20 (1.45%) Amazon RDS
3 19 (1.38%) PostgreSQL
4 14 (1.02%) Relational Database
5 12 (0.87%) Data Lake
6 11 (0.80%) Power BI
7 9 (0.65%) Amazon Aurora
8 8 (0.58%) NoSQL
9 6 (0.44%) Azure SQL Database
9 6 (0.44%) MySQL
10 5 (0.36%) Elasticsearch
11 4 (0.29%) Db2
11 4 (0.29%) Metadata
11 4 (0.29%) Oracle Database
12 3 (0.22%) Amazon Athena
12 3 (0.22%) Big Data
12 3 (0.22%) EDRMS
13 2 (0.15%) Amazon QuickSight
13 2 (0.15%) Amazon Redshift
13 2 (0.15%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 91 (6.61%) JIRA
2 65 (4.72%) Jenkins
3 52 (3.78%) Git
4 48 (3.49%) GitLab
5 16 (1.16%) Sonatype Nexus
6 9 (0.65%) Bitbucket
7 8 (0.58%) Artifactory
8 7 (0.51%) SonarQube
9 6 (0.44%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 5 (0.36%) Chocolatey
11 4 (0.29%) Maven
11 4 (0.29%) MSI
12 3 (0.22%) Browser DevTools
13 2 (0.15%) Burp Suite
13 2 (0.15%) Gatling
13 2 (0.15%) LoadRunner
13 2 (0.15%) Postman
13 2 (0.15%) REST Assured
13 2 (0.15%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 2 (0.15%) Vagrant
General
1 312 (22.67%) Social Skills
2 171 (12.43%) Finance
3 148 (10.76%) Analytical Skills
4 109 (7.92%) Public Sector
5 91 (6.61%) Banking
6 59 (4.29%) Documentation Skills
7 57 (4.14%) Telecoms
8 35 (2.54%) Manufacturing
9 27 (1.96%) Legal
10 22 (1.60%) Retail
11 18 (1.31%) Local Government
11 18 (1.31%) Military
12 14 (1.02%) Financial Institution
12 14 (1.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 13 (0.94%) Influencing Skills
14 12 (0.87%) Aerospace
14 12 (0.87%) Police
15 11 (0.80%) Organisational Skills
16 10 (0.73%) Automotive
16 10 (0.73%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 440 (31.98%) Network Engineer
2 215 (15.63%) Senior
3 164 (11.92%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 162 (11.77%) Architect
5 113 (8.21%) Security Engineer
6 93 (6.76%) Senior Network Engineer
7 84 (6.10%) Cloud Engineer
8 69 (5.01%) Consultant
9 66 (4.80%) Azure Engineer
10 62 (4.51%) Network Security Engineer
11 55 (4.00%) Network Architect
11 55 (4.00%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 53 (3.85%) DevOps Engineer
13 49 (3.56%) Lead
13 49 (3.56%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
14 48 (3.49%) Security Architect
15 41 (2.98%) Platform Engineer
16 39 (2.83%) Cisco Engineer
17 37 (2.69%) Cisco Network Engineer
17 37 (2.69%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 295 (21.44%) Terraform
2 42 (3.05%) 802.1X
3 29 (2.11%) Middleware
3 29 (2.11%) SAML
4 27 (1.96%) ARM Templates
5 23 (1.67%) REST
6 20 (1.45%) OpenID
7 18 (1.31%) OAuth
8 15 (1.09%) YAML
9 13 (0.94%) LDAP
9 13 (0.94%) OAuth2
10 11 (0.80%) JSON
11 10 (0.73%) React
12 8 (0.58%) Kafka
12 8 (0.58%) SailPoint
13 7 (0.51%) Elastic Stack
13 7 (0.51%) OpenTelemetry
14 6 (0.44%) .NET
14 6 (0.44%) ModSecurity
14 6 (0.44%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 292 (21.22%) Data Centre
2 105 (7.63%) Hybrid Cloud
3 78 (5.67%) PKI
4 72 (5.23%) Cloud Native
5 61 (4.43%) Onboarding
5 61 (4.43%) Security Posture
6 54 (3.92%) Management Information System
7 49 (3.56%) Operational Technology
8 38 (2.76%) Public Cloud
9 30 (2.18%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 25 (1.82%) Data Protection Act
10 25 (1.82%) Replication
10 25 (1.82%) Self-Motivation
11 24 (1.74%) Enterprise Software
11 24 (1.74%) IoT
12 23 (1.67%) Driving Licence
12 23 (1.67%) Linux Command Line
13 21 (1.53%) SCADA
14 19 (1.38%) Enterprise Storage
15 18 (1.31%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 340 (24.71%) Windows
2 223 (16.21%) Linux
3 148 (10.76%) Windows Server
4 47 (3.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 31 (2.25%) Unix
6 25 (1.82%) Ubuntu
7 21 (1.53%) VMS
8 17 (1.24%) Mac OS
9 14 (1.02%) CentOS
10 12 (0.87%) Windows 10
11 11 (0.80%) Windows Server 2019
12 9 (0.65%) Windows Server 2012
13 8 (0.58%) Amazon Linux
14 7 (0.51%) Android
14 7 (0.51%) Rocky
15 6 (0.44%) Apple iOS
16 5 (0.36%) SUSE
16 5 (0.36%) Windows Server 2003
16 5 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
17 3 (0.22%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 263 (19.11%) Infrastructure as Code
2 245 (17.81%) CI/CD
3 244 (17.73%) DevOps
4 240 (17.44%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 214 (15.55%) Cybersecurity
5 214 (15.55%) Migration
6 199 (14.46%) Problem-Solving
7 187 (13.59%) Load Balancing
8 175 (12.72%) ITIL
9 163 (11.85%) Zero Trust
10 153 (11.12%) Agile
11 151 (10.97%) Stakeholder Management
12 147 (10.68%) High Availability
13 136 (9.88%) Project Delivery
14 133 (9.67%) SIEM
15 129 (9.38%) Change Management
16 117 (8.50%) Incident Response
16 117 (8.50%) Technical Leadership
17 116 (8.43%) Cloud Security
18 114 (8.28%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 288 (20.93%) Python
2 230 (16.72%) PowerShell
3 136 (9.88%) Bash
4 47 (3.42%) Bicep
5 42 (3.05%) SQL
6 40 (2.91%) Java
7 17 (1.24%) ActionScript
8 14 (1.02%) Groovy
9 9 (0.65%) Perl
10 8 (0.58%) Kusto Query Language
10 8 (0.58%) Shell Script
11 6 (0.44%) Search Processing Language
12 5 (0.36%) C++
12 5 (0.36%) Go
12 5 (0.36%) JavaScript
13 4 (0.29%) TypeScript
14 3 (0.22%) C
15 2 (0.15%) COBOL
15 2 (0.15%) T-SQL
15 2 (0.15%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 459 (33.36%) Security Cleared
2 321 (23.33%) SC Cleared
3 237 (17.22%) Cisco Certification
4 176 (12.79%) CCNP
5 121 (8.79%) DV Cleared
6 107 (7.78%) Degree
7 90 (6.54%) CCNA
8 78 (5.67%) CISSP
9 71 (5.16%) Azure Certification
10 51 (3.71%) AWS Certification
11 35 (2.54%) CCIE
11 35 (2.54%) CISM
11 35 (2.54%) Microsoft Certification
12 27 (1.96%) Computer Science Degree
13 17 (1.24%) CEH
13 17 (1.24%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 15 (1.09%) Network+ Certification
14 15 (1.09%) PMI Certification
15 14 (1.02%) PMP
16 13 (0.94%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 75 (5.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 65 (4.72%) NIST
3 36 (2.62%) GDPR
4 28 (2.03%) NCSC
5 27 (1.96%) QA
6 23 (1.67%) Cyber Essentials
6 23 (1.67%) PCI DSS
7 22 (1.60%) SLA
8 14 (1.02%) NIST 800
9 12 (0.87%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 10 (0.73%) JSP 440
11 9 (0.65%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 7 (0.51%) Disclosure Scotland
13 6 (0.44%) Data Quality
13 6 (0.44%) GxP
13 6 (0.44%) HIPAA
14 5 (0.36%) COBIT
14 5 (0.36%) GRC
15 4 (0.29%) 21 CFR Part 11
16 3 (0.22%) SOC 2
System Software
1 237 (17.22%) Active Directory
2 178 (12.94%) VMware Infrastructure
3 75 (5.45%) Docker
4 69 (5.01%) Hyper-V
5 58 (4.22%) VMware NSX
6 53 (3.85%) vSphere
7 49 (3.56%) VMware ESXi
8 45 (3.27%) Virtual Machines
9 25 (1.82%) Firmware
10 16 (1.16%) Virtual Desktop
11 9 (0.65%) Squid
12 8 (0.58%) Virtual Servers
13 7 (0.51%) BitLocker
14 6 (0.44%) NFS
15 5 (0.36%) Dovecot
15 5 (0.36%) Postfix
16 4 (0.29%) FreeRADIUS
16 4 (0.29%) Microsoft App-V
17 3 (0.22%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 3 (0.22%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 219 (15.92%) Ansible
2 132 (9.59%) Kubernetes
3 89 (6.47%) FortiGate
4 73 (5.31%) Microsoft Intune
5 56 (4.07%) Grafana
6 52 (3.78%) Prometheus
7 39 (2.83%) SCCM
8 31 (2.25%) Single Sign-On
9 29 (2.11%) Progress Chef
10 25 (1.82%) vCenter Server
11 21 (1.53%) VxRail
12 15 (1.09%) Cisco Prime
12 15 (1.09%) Puppet
13 12 (0.87%) CASB
14 10 (0.73%) Argo
14 10 (0.73%) Nessus
14 10 (0.73%) Packer
15 8 (0.58%) Istio
15 8 (0.58%) Nagios
15 8 (0.58%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 509 (36.99%) Cisco
2 345 (25.07%) Microsoft
3 322 (23.40%) Palo Alto
4 225 (16.35%) VMware
5 199 (14.46%) Fortinet
6 173 (12.57%) F5
7 121 (8.79%) CheckPoint
7 121 (8.79%) Juniper
8 73 (5.31%) Zscaler
9 66 (4.80%) Splunk
10 61 (4.43%) Aruba
11 60 (4.36%) Google
11 60 (4.36%) ServiceNow
12 57 (4.14%) Arista
13 55 (4.00%) Meraki
14 51 (3.71%) SolarWinds
15 34 (2.47%) Citrix
15 34 (2.47%) Red Hat
16 30 (2.18%) Dynatrace
17 27 (1.96%) CyberArk