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

6 months to
10 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 109 63 56
Rank change year-on-year -46 -7 -10
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,344 1,253 1,373
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.46% 3.78% 3.62%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 26.63% 33.24% 30.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 833 775 825
10th Percentile £350 £304 £320
25th Percentile £425 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £622
90th Percentile £675 £688 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% +2.51%
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 29 27
10th Percentile £29.00 £19.70 £20.00
25th Percentile £48.93 £29.00 £20.72
Median hourly rate £67.47 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +124.90% +9.09% -58.32%
75th Percentile £78.75 £43.25 £42.75
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.63 £67.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.00 £31.39 £27.50
% change year-on-year +113.48% +14.13% -58.32%

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 5,047 3,770 4,549
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.25% 11.38% 11.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,920 2,391 2,612
10th Percentile £236 £214 £223
25th Percentile £391 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £602
90th Percentile £680 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £485
% change year-on-year +5.56% -7.21% +6.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 434 192 190
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £20.13 £24.18
Median hourly rate £32.50 £36.25 £48.78
Median % change year-on-year -10.34% -25.69% -13.65%
75th Percentile £68.69 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £92.11 £75.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.14 £41.72 £54.88
% change year-on-year -37.34% -23.97% -4.57%

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 October 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 October 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 10 October 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 -43 1,186 £513 +2.50% 1,144
UK excluding London -38 755 £500 +5.26% 631
London -60 454 £513 -2.38% 539
Work from Home -37 379 £525 +5.00% 432
North of England -3 279 £500 +5.26% 135
North West +9 161 £511 +13.44% 80
South East -54 161 £509 +1.75% 193
Yorkshire -20 96 £500 +2.56% 40
Midlands -65 95 £472 -0.74% 92
South West +2 93 £560 +17.89% 89
West Midlands -77 71 £450 -5.26% 56
East of England -11 69 £600 +24.35% 46
Scotland -15 60 £400 -20.00% 44
North East -16 29 £500 -13.04% 16
East Midlands -4 24 £500 +6.16% 36
Wales -20 3 £608 +203.75% 17
Channel Islands -6 2 £600 -17.24% 1
Northern Ireland -8 1 - - 18

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 52 (3.87%) Microsoft Exchange
2 39 (2.90%) SharePoint
3 34 (2.53%) Confluence
4 13 (0.97%) Apache
4 13 (0.97%) nginx
5 8 (0.60%) SAS
6 4 (0.30%) FactoryTalk
6 4 (0.30%) IIS
7 3 (0.22%) CloudStack
7 3 (0.22%) Skype for Business
7 3 (0.22%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.15%) CMS
8 2 (0.15%) Umbraco
9 1 (0.074%) Apache Spark
9 1 (0.074%) Appian
9 1 (0.074%) MTS
Applications
1 21 (1.56%) MS Visio
2 20 (1.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 20 (1.49%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.60%) Microsoft Project
4 6 (0.45%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.074%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 6 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
2 5 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.15%) Bloomberg TOMS
3 2 (0.15%) Dynamics GP
3 2 (0.15%) Eikon
3 2 (0.15%) Teamcenter
4 1 (0.074%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.074%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.074%) Oracle Retail
4 1 (0.074%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 526 (39.14%) Azure
2 314 (23.36%) AWS
3 180 (13.39%) Entra ID
4 125 (9.30%) Microsoft 365
5 114 (8.48%) GCP
6 85 (6.32%) GitHub
7 72 (5.36%) IaaS
8 69 (5.13%) Azure DevOps
9 63 (4.69%) Azure Monitor
10 61 (4.54%) SaaS
11 48 (3.57%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 45 (3.35%) OCI
13 42 (3.13%) PaaS
14 38 (2.83%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 37 (2.75%) Azure Sentinel
16 35 (2.60%) GitHub Actions
17 30 (2.23%) Serverless
18 28 (2.08%) AWS CloudFormation
19 27 (2.01%) Google Kubernetes Engine
20 26 (1.93%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 408 (30.36%) VPN
2 404 (30.06%) Network Security
3 376 (27.98%) DNS
4 332 (24.70%) WAN
5 241 (17.93%) LAN
6 231 (17.19%) BGP
7 223 (16.59%) TCP/IP
8 216 (16.07%) DHCP
9 196 (14.58%) VLAN
10 178 (13.24%) Wireless
11 166 (12.35%) OSPF
12 128 (9.52%) SD-WAN
13 120 (8.93%) Wi-Fi
14 79 (5.88%) MPLS
15 77 (5.73%) Cisco ASA
16 74 (5.51%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 73 (5.43%) IPsec
17 73 (5.43%) SSL
18 71 (5.28%) BIG-IP
19 63 (4.69%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (2.53%) SQL Server
2 20 (1.49%) Amazon RDS
2 20 (1.49%) PostgreSQL
3 16 (1.19%) Data Lake
3 16 (1.19%) Relational Database
4 12 (0.89%) Power BI
5 10 (0.74%) NoSQL
6 9 (0.67%) Amazon Aurora
7 6 (0.45%) Azure SQL Database
8 5 (0.37%) Elasticsearch
8 5 (0.37%) MySQL
8 5 (0.37%) Oracle Database
9 4 (0.30%) Big Data
9 4 (0.30%) Db2
10 3 (0.22%) EDRMS
10 3 (0.22%) Metadata
10 3 (0.22%) Oracle Reports
11 2 (0.15%) Delta Lake
11 2 (0.15%) Oracle Database 12c
11 2 (0.15%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 83 (6.18%) JIRA
2 72 (5.36%) Jenkins
3 56 (4.17%) Git
4 47 (3.50%) GitLab
5 17 (1.26%) Sonatype Nexus
6 9 (0.67%) Bitbucket
7 8 (0.60%) SonarQube
8 7 (0.52%) Artifactory
9 6 (0.45%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 5 (0.37%) Maven
11 4 (0.30%) Chocolatey
11 4 (0.30%) MSI
12 3 (0.22%) Cucumber
12 3 (0.22%) REST Assured
13 2 (0.15%) Burp Suite
13 2 (0.15%) Gatling
13 2 (0.15%) Gradle
13 2 (0.15%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 2 (0.15%) Team Foundation Server
13 2 (0.15%) Vagrant
General
1 313 (23.29%) Social Skills
2 179 (13.32%) Finance
3 136 (10.12%) Analytical Skills
4 106 (7.89%) Public Sector
5 97 (7.22%) Banking
6 56 (4.17%) Documentation Skills
7 54 (4.02%) Telecoms
8 38 (2.83%) Manufacturing
9 29 (2.16%) Legal
10 19 (1.41%) Retail
11 17 (1.26%) Military
12 16 (1.19%) Local Government
13 14 (1.04%) Financial Institution
13 14 (1.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 12 (0.89%) Aerospace
15 10 (0.74%) Automotive
15 10 (0.74%) Influencing Skills
15 10 (0.74%) Investment Banking
16 9 (0.67%) Organisational Skills
16 9 (0.67%) Police
Job Titles
1 433 (32.22%) Network Engineer
2 205 (15.25%) Senior
3 170 (12.65%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 158 (11.76%) Architect
5 109 (8.11%) Security Engineer
6 88 (6.55%) Cloud Engineer
7 83 (6.18%) Senior Network Engineer
8 70 (5.21%) Consultant
9 63 (4.69%) Azure Engineer
10 60 (4.46%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
11 57 (4.24%) Network Security Engineer
12 54 (4.02%) Network Architect
13 51 (3.79%) DevOps Engineer
13 51 (3.79%) Security Architect
14 46 (3.42%) Lead
15 45 (3.35%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
16 41 (3.05%) Platform Engineer
17 37 (2.75%) Cisco Engineer
17 37 (2.75%) Firewall Engineer
18 35 (2.60%) Cisco Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 304 (22.62%) Terraform
2 40 (2.98%) 802.1X
3 30 (2.23%) ARM Templates
4 22 (1.64%) Middleware
5 21 (1.56%) REST
5 21 (1.56%) SAML
6 19 (1.41%) OAuth
7 18 (1.34%) YAML
8 17 (1.26%) OpenID
9 12 (0.89%) JSON
9 12 (0.89%) LDAP
9 12 (0.89%) OAuth2
10 9 (0.67%) Kafka
10 9 (0.67%) ModSecurity
10 9 (0.67%) SailPoint
11 8 (0.60%) React
12 7 (0.52%) Elastic Stack
12 7 (0.52%) OpenTelemetry
13 6 (0.45%) .NET
13 6 (0.45%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 281 (20.91%) Data Centre
2 104 (7.74%) Hybrid Cloud
3 80 (5.95%) Cloud Native
4 76 (5.65%) PKI
5 67 (4.99%) Onboarding
6 62 (4.61%) Security Posture
7 56 (4.17%) Management Information System
8 49 (3.65%) Operational Technology
9 40 (2.98%) Public Cloud
10 27 (2.01%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 27 (2.01%) Self-Motivation
11 24 (1.79%) Driving Licence
12 23 (1.71%) Data Protection Act
12 23 (1.71%) Linux Command Line
13 21 (1.56%) Replication
13 21 (1.56%) SCADA
14 20 (1.49%) Enterprise Software
15 19 (1.41%) CMDB
15 19 (1.41%) Enterprise Storage
15 19 (1.41%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 338 (25.15%) Windows
2 219 (16.29%) Linux
3 153 (11.38%) Windows Server
4 44 (3.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 30 (2.23%) Unix
6 25 (1.86%) Ubuntu
7 17 (1.26%) VMS
8 14 (1.04%) CentOS
8 14 (1.04%) Mac OS
8 14 (1.04%) Windows 10
9 13 (0.97%) Windows Server 2019
10 9 (0.67%) Windows Server 2012
11 8 (0.60%) Amazon Linux
11 8 (0.60%) Android
12 7 (0.52%) Rocky
13 6 (0.45%) Apple iOS
13 6 (0.45%) Windows Server 2016
14 4 (0.30%) Windows Server 2003
15 3 (0.22%) Check Point GAiA
16 2 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 276 (20.54%) Infrastructure as Code
2 258 (19.20%) CI/CD
3 244 (18.15%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 240 (17.86%) DevOps
5 232 (17.26%) Cybersecurity
6 208 (15.48%) Migration
7 199 (14.81%) Problem-Solving
8 186 (13.84%) Load Balancing
9 170 (12.65%) ITIL
10 166 (12.35%) Stakeholder Management
11 165 (12.28%) Zero Trust
12 155 (11.53%) Agile
13 139 (10.34%) Project Delivery
14 131 (9.75%) SIEM
15 130 (9.67%) Change Management
16 128 (9.52%) High Availability
17 125 (9.30%) Cloud Security
18 119 (8.85%) Technical Leadership
19 113 (8.41%) Incident Response
20 112 (8.33%) Network Segmentation
Programming Languages
1 285 (21.21%) Python
2 238 (17.71%) PowerShell
3 142 (10.57%) Bash
4 51 (3.79%) Bicep
5 46 (3.42%) SQL
6 44 (3.27%) Java
7 20 (1.49%) ActionScript
8 15 (1.12%) Groovy
9 10 (0.74%) Kusto Query Language
9 10 (0.74%) Shell Script
10 8 (0.60%) Perl
11 6 (0.45%) C++
11 6 (0.45%) Go
11 6 (0.45%) Search Processing Language
12 4 (0.30%) JavaScript
12 4 (0.30%) TypeScript
13 3 (0.22%) C#
14 2 (0.15%) C
14 2 (0.15%) T-SQL
14 2 (0.15%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 451 (33.56%) Security Cleared
2 306 (22.77%) SC Cleared
3 227 (16.89%) Cisco Certification
4 169 (12.57%) CCNP
5 130 (9.67%) DV Cleared
6 102 (7.59%) Degree
7 87 (6.47%) CCNA
8 76 (5.65%) CISSP
9 66 (4.91%) Azure Certification
10 52 (3.87%) AWS Certification
11 38 (2.83%) CCIE
12 35 (2.60%) Microsoft Certification
13 30 (2.23%) CISM
14 25 (1.86%) Computer Science Degree
15 16 (1.19%) CEH
16 15 (1.12%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 14 (1.04%) PMI Certification
18 13 (0.97%) JNCIS
18 13 (0.97%) Network+ Certification
18 13 (0.97%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 78 (5.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 70 (5.21%) NIST
3 33 (2.46%) GDPR
4 27 (2.01%) NCSC
4 27 (2.01%) QA
5 25 (1.86%) PCI DSS
6 23 (1.71%) SLA
7 22 (1.64%) Cyber Essentials
8 16 (1.19%) NIST 800
9 10 (0.74%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 9 (0.67%) JSP 440
10 9 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 7 (0.52%) Data Quality
12 6 (0.45%) GxP
12 6 (0.45%) HIPAA
13 5 (0.37%) COBIT
13 5 (0.37%) Disclosure Scotland
13 5 (0.37%) GRC
14 4 (0.30%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 3 (0.22%) SOC 2
System Software
1 239 (17.78%) Active Directory
2 175 (13.02%) VMware Infrastructure
3 82 (6.10%) Docker
4 67 (4.99%) Hyper-V
5 57 (4.24%) vSphere
6 55 (4.09%) VMware NSX
7 47 (3.50%) VMware ESXi
8 40 (2.98%) Virtual Machines
9 23 (1.71%) Firmware
10 15 (1.12%) Virtual Desktop
11 8 (0.60%) Squid
12 7 (0.52%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.37%) BitLocker
13 5 (0.37%) Dovecot
13 5 (0.37%) FreeRADIUS
13 5 (0.37%) NFS
13 5 (0.37%) Postfix
14 4 (0.30%) VirtualBox
15 3 (0.22%) DFS Replication
15 3 (0.22%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 219 (16.29%) Ansible
2 133 (9.90%) Kubernetes
3 83 (6.18%) FortiGate
4 79 (5.88%) Microsoft Intune
5 58 (4.32%) Grafana
6 50 (3.72%) Prometheus
7 43 (3.20%) SCCM
8 30 (2.23%) Progress Chef
9 29 (2.16%) Single Sign-On
10 22 (1.64%) vCenter Server
11 19 (1.41%) VxRail
12 13 (0.97%) CASB
12 13 (0.97%) Cisco Prime
12 13 (0.97%) Puppet
13 11 (0.82%) Argo
14 10 (0.74%) Nagios
14 10 (0.74%) Nessus
14 10 (0.74%) Packer
15 8 (0.60%) Istio
15 8 (0.60%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 488 (36.31%) Cisco
2 349 (25.97%) Microsoft
3 328 (24.40%) Palo Alto
4 223 (16.59%) VMware
5 190 (14.14%) Fortinet
6 164 (12.20%) F5
7 118 (8.78%) CheckPoint
8 110 (8.18%) Juniper
9 68 (5.06%) Zscaler
10 67 (4.99%) Google
11 62 (4.61%) Splunk
12 61 (4.54%) Aruba
13 59 (4.39%) Meraki
14 58 (4.32%) ServiceNow
15 55 (4.09%) Arista
16 51 (3.79%) SolarWinds
17 32 (2.38%) Citrix
17 32 (2.38%) Red Hat
18 31 (2.31%) Dynatrace
19 26 (1.93%) Infoblox