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

6 months to
17 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 88 54 55
Rank change year-on-year -34 +1 -7
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,453 1,409 1,479
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.76% 4.33% 3.50%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 29.00% 35.65% 28.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 927 832 916
10th Percentile £350 £325 £275
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £514
Median % change year-on-year - -2.68% -2.14%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £646 £688 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £489 £508
% change year-on-year +2.35% -3.74% +6.84%
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 27 46
10th Percentile £28.70 £14.20 £18.06
25th Percentile £37.53 £15.23 £23.92
Median hourly rate £61.25 £30.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +104.17% -50.00% -4.08%
75th Percentile £77.44 £42.61 £85.65
90th Percentile £94.42 £89.63 £87.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.75 £30.00 £82.38
% change year-on-year +112.50% -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 5,011 3,952 5,259
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.52% 12.15% 12.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,028 2,401 3,103
10th Percentile £250 £235 £213
25th Percentile £400 £370 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £670 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +2.58% -4.04% +7.03%
Number of hourly rates quoted 329 192 405
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.11 £17.63
Median hourly rate £26.44 £48.75 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -45.76% +21.88% +23.08%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £83.90 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.22 £42.50 £47.50
% change year-on-year -38.31% -10.53% -0.48%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 1,251 £500 - 386
UK excluding London -31 823 £500 +2.35% 352
London -59 477 £500 - 90
Work from Home -33 399 £520 +4.00% 135
North of England -14 291 £500 +5.26% 77
South East -29 225 £500 - 135
North West -6 188 £537 +13.05% 38
Yorkshire -33 87 £450 -7.22% 28
Midlands -69 78 £450 -8.54% 42
South West -40 75 £538 +7.50% 38
East of England -9 72 £525 -4.55% 35
Scotland +11 67 £438 - 19
West Midlands -65 62 £434 -15.78% 27
North East -17 22 £625 +38.89% 13
Wales -16 21 £425 +17.24% 10
East Midlands -27 13 £500 +11.11% 15
Northern Ireland -7 2 £385 - 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 37 (2.55%) Microsoft Exchange
2 34 (2.34%) Confluence
3 24 (1.65%) SharePoint
4 17 (1.17%) nginx
5 13 (0.89%) Apache
6 10 (0.69%) CICS
7 6 (0.41%) SAS
8 4 (0.28%) Tomcat
9 3 (0.21%) CloudStack
9 3 (0.21%) FactoryTalk
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%) 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 24 (1.65%) MS Visio
2 19 (1.31%) Microsoft Excel
3 16 (1.10%) Microsoft Office
4 8 (0.55%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.069%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.069%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 2 (0.14%) Dynamics GP
2 1 (0.069%) Bloomberg TOMS
2 1 (0.069%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.069%) Eikon
2 1 (0.069%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.069%) Primavera
2 1 (0.069%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.069%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 502 (34.55%) Azure
2 324 (22.30%) AWS
3 139 (9.57%) Entra ID
4 121 (8.33%) GCP
5 112 (7.71%) Microsoft 365
6 71 (4.89%) GitHub
7 65 (4.47%) IaaS
8 64 (4.40%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 56 (3.85%) SaaS
10 53 (3.65%) Azure DevOps
11 44 (3.03%) PaaS
12 41 (2.82%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 40 (2.75%) Azure Monitor
14 38 (2.62%) Serverless
15 35 (2.41%) OCI
16 33 (2.27%) Azure Sentinel
17 30 (2.06%) GitHub Actions
17 30 (2.06%) Google Kubernetes Engine
18 29 (2.00%) Amazon EC2
18 29 (2.00%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 414 (28.49%) Network Security
2 412 (28.36%) VPN
3 395 (27.19%) WAN
4 348 (23.95%) DNS
5 294 (20.23%) LAN
6 278 (19.13%) BGP
7 226 (15.55%) OSPF
8 201 (13.83%) VLAN
9 198 (13.63%) TCP/IP
10 189 (13.01%) DHCP
11 171 (11.77%) Wireless
12 151 (10.39%) SD-WAN
13 121 (8.33%) Wi-Fi
14 98 (6.74%) BIG-IP
14 98 (6.74%) MPLS
15 93 (6.40%) IPsec
16 88 (6.06%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 85 (5.85%) VXLAN
18 80 (5.51%) SSL
19 79 (5.44%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (1.65%) SQL Server
2 18 (1.24%) Power BI
3 17 (1.17%) Elasticsearch
3 17 (1.17%) PostgreSQL
4 13 (0.89%) Amazon RDS
5 10 (0.69%) Data Lake
5 10 (0.69%) DataStage
6 9 (0.62%) Azure SQL Database
6 9 (0.62%) Relational Database
7 8 (0.55%) MySQL
7 8 (0.55%) Oracle Database
8 5 (0.34%) Delta Lake
8 5 (0.34%) NoSQL
9 4 (0.28%) Amazon Aurora
9 4 (0.28%) Data Warehouse
9 4 (0.28%) Db2
10 3 (0.21%) Amazon Athena
10 3 (0.21%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (0.21%) Big Data
10 3 (0.21%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 98 (6.74%) JIRA
2 52 (3.58%) Jenkins
3 42 (2.89%) Git
4 40 (2.75%) GitLab
5 15 (1.03%) Sonatype Nexus
6 12 (0.83%) Bitbucket
7 9 (0.62%) Artifactory
7 9 (0.62%) SonarQube
8 8 (0.55%) Chocolatey
9 6 (0.41%) Browser DevTools
10 4 (0.28%) Burp Suite
11 3 (0.21%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 2 (0.14%) Cucumber
12 2 (0.14%) Gradle
12 2 (0.14%) Introscope
12 2 (0.14%) Jaeger
12 2 (0.14%) LoadRunner
12 2 (0.14%) Metasploit
12 2 (0.14%) MSI
12 2 (0.14%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 310 (21.34%) Social Skills
2 189 (13.01%) Finance
3 130 (8.95%) Analytical Skills
4 121 (8.33%) Public Sector
5 77 (5.30%) Documentation Skills
6 75 (5.16%) Banking
7 48 (3.30%) Telecoms
8 26 (1.79%) Manufacturing
9 25 (1.72%) Legal
10 22 (1.51%) Financial Institution
11 21 (1.45%) Influencing Skills
12 18 (1.24%) Military
13 16 (1.10%) Retail
14 15 (1.03%) Local Government
15 12 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
16 11 (0.76%) Police
17 10 (0.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 10 (0.69%) Law
18 9 (0.62%) Investment Banking
19 8 (0.55%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 475 (32.69%) Network Engineer
2 221 (15.21%) Architect
3 193 (13.28%) Senior
4 137 (9.43%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 129 (8.88%) Security Engineer
6 87 (5.99%) Senior Network Engineer
7 74 (5.09%) Network Architect
8 71 (4.89%) Cloud Engineer
9 62 (4.27%) Network Security Engineer
10 60 (4.13%) Consultant
11 56 (3.85%) Azure Engineer
12 54 (3.72%) Technical Architect
13 48 (3.30%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
14 46 (3.17%) Security Architect
15 44 (3.03%) DevOps Engineer
16 40 (2.75%) Lead
17 37 (2.55%) Cisco Engineer
18 36 (2.48%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
18 36 (2.48%) Solutions Architect
19 35 (2.41%) Cloud Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 74 (5.09%) 802.1X
2 42 (2.89%) Middleware
3 36 (2.48%) LDAP
4 26 (1.79%) SAML
5 20 (1.38%) OpenID
6 12 (0.83%) ARM Templates
7 11 (0.76%) OAuth
8 10 (0.69%) Kafka
9 9 (0.62%) LangChain
9 9 (0.62%) OAuth2
9 9 (0.62%) PyTorch
9 9 (0.62%) REST
9 9 (0.62%) scikit-learn
10 8 (0.55%) .NET
11 7 (0.48%) SailPoint
11 7 (0.48%) YAML
12 6 (0.41%) Elastic Stack
12 6 (0.41%) React
13 5 (0.34%) AWS CDK
13 5 (0.34%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 344 (23.68%) Data Centre
2 95 (6.54%) Cloud Native
3 80 (5.51%) Hybrid Cloud
4 79 (5.44%) PKI
5 76 (5.23%) Security Posture
6 49 (3.37%) Management Information System
7 47 (3.23%) Onboarding
8 43 (2.96%) Operational Technology
9 41 (2.82%) Clustering
10 32 (2.20%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 32 (2.20%) IoT
11 29 (2.00%) Data Protection Act
11 29 (2.00%) Public Cloud
12 25 (1.72%) SCADA
13 24 (1.65%) Enterprise Storage
14 20 (1.38%) Driving Licence
15 19 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
16 18 (1.24%) Enterprise Software
16 18 (1.24%) Linux Command Line
17 17 (1.17%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 323 (22.23%) Windows
2 196 (13.49%) Linux
3 112 (7.71%) Windows Server
4 50 (3.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 34 (2.34%) Unix
6 23 (1.58%) VMS
7 17 (1.17%) Ubuntu
8 14 (0.96%) Windows Server 2019
9 11 (0.76%) Solaris
10 10 (0.69%) AIX
10 10 (0.69%) CentOS
10 10 (0.69%) Windows Server 2016
11 7 (0.48%) Mac OS
11 7 (0.48%) Windows 10
11 7 (0.48%) Windows Server 2012
12 6 (0.41%) Rocky
12 6 (0.41%) Windows Server 2003
13 4 (0.28%) Amazon Linux
13 4 (0.28%) Android
13 4 (0.28%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 235 (16.17%) DevOps
2 218 (15.00%) Infrastructure as Code
3 216 (14.87%) CI/CD
4 200 (13.76%) Load Balancing
5 195 (13.42%) Problem-Solving
6 191 (13.15%) Migration
7 186 (12.80%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 183 (12.59%) ITIL
9 181 (12.46%) High Availability
10 178 (12.25%) Cybersecurity
11 159 (10.94%) Zero Trust
12 158 (10.87%) Agile
13 133 (9.15%) Change Management
14 131 (9.02%) SIEM
15 122 (8.40%) Project Delivery
16 115 (7.91%) Observability
17 113 (7.78%) Stakeholder Management
17 113 (7.78%) Validation
18 104 (7.16%) Cloud Security
18 104 (7.16%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 259 (17.83%) Python
2 173 (11.91%) PowerShell
3 104 (7.16%) Bash
4 42 (2.89%) Bicep
4 42 (2.89%) SQL
5 33 (2.27%) Java
6 11 (0.76%) ActionScript
6 11 (0.76%) Perl
7 10 (0.69%) COBOL
8 7 (0.48%) Groovy
9 6 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
10 5 (0.34%) C++
10 5 (0.34%) Go
10 5 (0.34%) JavaScript
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
13 1 (0.069%) Korn
Qualifications
1 481 (33.10%) Security Cleared
2 342 (23.54%) SC Cleared
3 287 (19.75%) Cisco Certification
4 216 (14.87%) CCNP
5 123 (8.47%) DV Cleared
6 118 (8.12%) CCNA
7 108 (7.43%) Degree
8 71 (4.89%) CISSP
9 58 (3.99%) Azure Certification
10 44 (3.03%) AWS Certification
10 44 (3.03%) CCIE
11 34 (2.34%) Microsoft Certification
12 33 (2.27%) CISM
13 22 (1.51%) JNCIS
14 21 (1.45%) Computer Science Degree
14 21 (1.45%) Network+ Certification
15 19 (1.31%) JNCIP
16 18 (1.24%) PMP
17 17 (1.17%) Server+ Certification
18 16 (1.10%) JNCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (5.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 59 (4.06%) NIST
3 42 (2.89%) GDPR
4 31 (2.13%) NCSC
5 25 (1.72%) PCI DSS
6 22 (1.51%) QA
7 21 (1.45%) Cyber Essentials
8 19 (1.31%) SLA
9 9 (0.62%) Data Quality
9 9 (0.62%) NIST 800
10 8 (0.55%) Disclosure Scotland
11 7 (0.48%) GxP
12 6 (0.41%) Actionable Recommendations
12 6 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 6 (0.41%) JSP 440
13 5 (0.34%) GRC
13 5 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 5 (0.34%) PMO
14 4 (0.28%) RMADS
14 4 (0.28%) SOC 2
System Software
1 217 (14.93%) Active Directory
2 164 (11.29%) VMware Infrastructure
3 64 (4.40%) VMware NSX
4 58 (3.99%) Docker
5 46 (3.17%) Hyper-V
6 44 (3.03%) vSphere
7 39 (2.68%) Virtual Machines
7 39 (2.68%) VMware ESXi
8 26 (1.79%) Firmware
9 17 (1.17%) Virtual Desktop
10 16 (1.10%) Squid
11 12 (0.83%) BitLocker
12 8 (0.55%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.41%) 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
1 265 (18.24%) Terraform
2 187 (12.87%) Ansible
3 117 (8.05%) FortiGate
4 112 (7.71%) Kubernetes
5 63 (4.34%) Grafana
6 59 (4.06%) Prometheus
7 58 (3.99%) Microsoft Intune
8 35 (2.41%) Single Sign-On
9 32 (2.20%) SCCM
10 24 (1.65%) vCenter Server
11 18 (1.24%) Progress Chef
12 17 (1.17%) Puppet
13 16 (1.10%) CASB
14 14 (0.96%) Cisco Prime
15 12 (0.83%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 12 (0.83%) VxRail
16 11 (0.76%) Consul
17 10 (0.69%) QRadar
18 9 (0.62%) Nessus
18 9 (0.62%) Packer
Vendors
1 527 (36.27%) Cisco
2 316 (21.75%) Palo Alto
3 295 (20.30%) Microsoft
4 217 (14.93%) VMware
5 213 (14.66%) Fortinet
6 208 (14.32%) F5
7 169 (11.63%) Juniper
8 133 (9.15%) CheckPoint
9 81 (5.57%) Splunk
10 76 (5.23%) Arista
11 74 (5.09%) Aruba
12 71 (4.89%) ServiceNow
13 69 (4.75%) Google
13 69 (4.75%) SolarWinds
14 62 (4.27%) Zscaler
15 48 (3.30%) Red Hat
16 47 (3.23%) Citrix
17 42 (2.89%) Meraki
18 33 (2.27%) Infoblox
19 31 (2.13%) Dynatrace