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

6 months to
20 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 103 61 58
Rank change year-on-year -42 -3 -13
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,383 1,290 1,374
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.53% 3.92% 3.57%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 27.14% 33.99% 29.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 851 785 848
10th Percentile £350 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £675 £688 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £485 £510
% change year-on-year +3.09% -4.90% +6.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 60 30 33
10th Percentile £29.00 £15.03 £20.00
25th Percentile £46.56 £29.00 £22.40
Median hourly rate £66.35 £30.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +121.15% -14.29% -46.96%
75th Percentile £78.75 £40.21 £75.24
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.63 £87.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.45 £30.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year +118.17% -36.84% -28.01%

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 5,096 3,795 4,582
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.34% 11.53% 11.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,949 2,356 2,663
10th Percentile £231 £225 £225
25th Percentile £393 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
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% +9.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 418 200 250
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £24.75 £21.37
Median hourly rate £32.50 £42.50 £50.50
Median % change year-on-year -23.53% -15.84% -10.60%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £88.74 £73.20 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.50 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -30.59% -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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -41 1,216 £501 +0.25% 1,067
UK excluding London -37 761 £500 +3.09% 639
London -55 485 £500 -3.21% 492
Work from Home -36 395 £520 +4.00% 406
North of England -6 279 £500 +3.09% 127
South East -47 169 £525 +5.00% 212
North West +7 163 £501 +5.53% 79
Yorkshire -29 94 £483 -1.43% 36
South West -9 89 £560 +15.46% 75
Midlands -79 84 £465 -2.05% 111
East of England -4 75 £530 +5.74% 53
West Midlands -80 62 £430 -9.47% 72
Scotland -21 60 £400 -11.11% 43
North East -17 29 £500 -13.04% 14
East Midlands -13 21 £500 +1.63% 39
Wales -14 9 £425 +112.50% 12
Channel Islands -7 2 £600 -17.24% 1
Northern Ireland -9 1 - - 12

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 (3.54%) Microsoft Exchange
2 37 (2.68%) SharePoint
3 33 (2.39%) Confluence
4 12 (0.87%) Apache
5 11 (0.80%) nginx
6 9 (0.65%) SAS
7 4 (0.29%) FactoryTalk
7 4 (0.29%) IIS
8 3 (0.22%) CloudStack
8 3 (0.22%) Skype for Business
8 3 (0.22%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.14%) CICS
9 2 (0.14%) CMS
9 2 (0.14%) Umbraco
10 1 (0.072%) IBM HTTP Server
10 1 (0.072%) MTS
10 1 (0.072%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 1 (0.072%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.072%) WebSphere Application Server
10 1 (0.072%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 21 (1.52%) Microsoft Office
1 21 (1.52%) MS Visio
2 20 (1.45%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (0.58%) Microsoft Project
4 6 (0.43%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.072%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 5 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
3 2 (0.14%) Bloomberg TOMS
3 2 (0.14%) Dynamics GP
3 2 (0.14%) Eikon
3 2 (0.14%) Teamcenter
4 1 (0.072%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.072%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.072%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 522 (37.74%) Azure
2 315 (22.78%) AWS
3 176 (12.73%) Entra ID
4 129 (9.33%) Microsoft 365
5 105 (7.59%) GCP
6 76 (5.50%) GitHub
7 70 (5.06%) IaaS
8 66 (4.77%) SaaS
9 65 (4.70%) Azure DevOps
10 55 (3.98%) Azure Monitor
11 48 (3.47%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 42 (3.04%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 41 (2.96%) PaaS
14 38 (2.75%) OCI
15 34 (2.46%) Azure Sentinel
16 33 (2.39%) Serverless
17 31 (2.24%) GitHub Actions
18 27 (1.95%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 27 (1.95%) AWS CloudFormation
19 26 (1.88%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 414 (29.93%) VPN
2 399 (28.85%) Network Security
3 367 (26.54%) DNS
4 352 (25.45%) WAN
5 254 (18.37%) LAN
6 240 (17.35%) BGP
7 216 (15.62%) TCP/IP
8 211 (15.26%) DHCP
9 203 (14.68%) VLAN
10 175 (12.65%) Wireless
11 173 (12.51%) OSPF
12 128 (9.26%) SD-WAN
13 127 (9.18%) Wi-Fi
14 81 (5.86%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 79 (5.71%) Cisco ASA
15 79 (5.71%) IPsec
16 76 (5.50%) BIG-IP
16 76 (5.50%) MPLS
16 76 (5.50%) SSL
17 67 (4.84%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 35 (2.53%) SQL Server
2 19 (1.37%) Amazon RDS
3 18 (1.30%) PostgreSQL
4 13 (0.94%) Relational Database
5 12 (0.87%) Data Lake
6 11 (0.80%) Power BI
7 8 (0.58%) Amazon Aurora
7 8 (0.58%) NoSQL
8 5 (0.36%) Azure SQL Database
8 5 (0.36%) Elasticsearch
9 4 (0.29%) Db2
9 4 (0.29%) MySQL
9 4 (0.29%) Oracle Database
10 3 (0.22%) Big Data
10 3 (0.22%) EDRMS
10 3 (0.22%) Metadata
11 2 (0.14%) Amazon Athena
11 2 (0.14%) Amazon QuickSight
11 2 (0.14%) Amazon Redshift
11 2 (0.14%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 90 (6.51%) JIRA
2 62 (4.48%) Jenkins
3 49 (3.54%) Git
4 46 (3.33%) GitLab
5 15 (1.08%) Sonatype Nexus
6 9 (0.65%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.51%) Artifactory
8 6 (0.43%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 6 (0.43%) SonarQube
9 5 (0.36%) Chocolatey
10 4 (0.29%) Maven
10 4 (0.29%) MSI
11 3 (0.22%) Browser DevTools
12 2 (0.14%) Burp Suite
12 2 (0.14%) Gatling
12 2 (0.14%) Gradle
12 2 (0.14%) LoadRunner
12 2 (0.14%) REST Assured
12 2 (0.14%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 2 (0.14%) Vagrant
General
1 312 (22.56%) Social Skills
2 173 (12.51%) Finance
3 148 (10.70%) Analytical Skills
4 110 (7.95%) Public Sector
5 91 (6.58%) Banking
6 59 (4.27%) Documentation Skills
7 56 (4.05%) Telecoms
8 35 (2.53%) Manufacturing
9 27 (1.95%) Legal
10 22 (1.59%) Retail
11 19 (1.37%) Local Government
12 18 (1.30%) Military
13 14 (1.01%) Financial Institution
13 14 (1.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 13 (0.94%) Influencing Skills
15 12 (0.87%) Aerospace
15 12 (0.87%) Police
16 11 (0.80%) Investment Banking
16 11 (0.80%) Organisational Skills
17 10 (0.72%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 447 (32.32%) Network Engineer
2 219 (15.84%) Senior
3 161 (11.64%) Architect
3 161 (11.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 114 (8.24%) Security Engineer
5 98 (7.09%) Senior Network Engineer
6 84 (6.07%) Cloud Engineer
7 68 (4.92%) Consultant
8 65 (4.70%) Azure Engineer
9 63 (4.56%) Network Security Engineer
10 56 (4.05%) Network Architect
11 55 (3.98%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 53 (3.83%) DevOps Engineer
13 49 (3.54%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
14 48 (3.47%) Lead
15 47 (3.40%) Security Architect
16 41 (2.96%) Cisco Engineer
16 41 (2.96%) Platform Engineer
17 39 (2.82%) Cisco Network Engineer
18 37 (2.68%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 291 (21.04%) Terraform
2 42 (3.04%) 802.1X
3 30 (2.17%) Middleware
4 28 (2.02%) SAML
5 27 (1.95%) ARM Templates
6 22 (1.59%) REST
7 19 (1.37%) OpenID
8 16 (1.16%) OAuth
9 13 (0.94%) LDAP
9 13 (0.94%) OAuth2
9 13 (0.94%) YAML
10 10 (0.72%) JSON
10 10 (0.72%) React
11 7 (0.51%) Kafka
11 7 (0.51%) OpenTelemetry
11 7 (0.51%) SailPoint
12 6 (0.43%) .NET
12 6 (0.43%) Elastic Stack
12 6 (0.43%) ModSecurity
13 5 (0.36%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 293 (21.19%) Data Centre
2 105 (7.59%) Hybrid Cloud
3 77 (5.57%) PKI
4 70 (5.06%) Cloud Native
5 63 (4.56%) Onboarding
6 60 (4.34%) Security Posture
7 54 (3.90%) Management Information System
8 49 (3.54%) Operational Technology
9 36 (2.60%) Public Cloud
10 31 (2.24%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 26 (1.88%) Data Protection Act
12 25 (1.81%) IoT
12 25 (1.81%) Replication
13 24 (1.74%) Enterprise Software
13 24 (1.74%) Self-Motivation
14 23 (1.66%) Driving Licence
14 23 (1.66%) Linux Command Line
15 21 (1.52%) SCADA
16 19 (1.37%) Enterprise Storage
17 18 (1.30%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 343 (24.80%) Windows
2 222 (16.05%) Linux
3 148 (10.70%) Windows Server
4 47 (3.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 31 (2.24%) Unix
6 25 (1.81%) Ubuntu
7 21 (1.52%) VMS
8 17 (1.23%) Mac OS
9 14 (1.01%) 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 (0.43%) 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
1 258 (18.66%) Infrastructure as Code
2 243 (17.57%) DevOps
3 239 (17.28%) CI/CD
3 239 (17.28%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 212 (15.33%) Cybersecurity
4 212 (15.33%) Migration
5 199 (14.39%) Problem-Solving
6 187 (13.52%) Load Balancing
7 178 (12.87%) ITIL
8 162 (11.71%) Zero Trust
9 154 (11.14%) Agile
10 147 (10.63%) High Availability
10 147 (10.63%) Stakeholder Management
11 137 (9.91%) Project Delivery
11 137 (9.91%) SIEM
12 131 (9.47%) Change Management
13 117 (8.46%) Cloud Security
13 117 (8.46%) Incident Response
14 116 (8.39%) Technical Leadership
15 113 (8.17%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 287 (20.75%) Python
2 232 (16.78%) PowerShell
3 136 (9.83%) Bash
4 47 (3.40%) Bicep
5 40 (2.89%) SQL
6 39 (2.82%) Java
7 16 (1.16%) ActionScript
8 14 (1.01%) Groovy
9 9 (0.65%) Perl
10 8 (0.58%) Kusto Query Language
10 8 (0.58%) Shell Script
11 6 (0.43%) Search Processing Language
12 5 (0.36%) Go
13 4 (0.29%) C++
13 4 (0.29%) JavaScript
13 4 (0.29%) TypeScript
14 3 (0.22%) C
15 2 (0.14%) COBOL
15 2 (0.14%) T-SQL
15 2 (0.14%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 460 (33.26%) Security Cleared
2 323 (23.36%) SC Cleared
3 238 (17.21%) Cisco Certification
4 177 (12.80%) CCNP
5 119 (8.60%) DV Cleared
6 110 (7.95%) Degree
7 90 (6.51%) CCNA
8 77 (5.57%) CISSP
9 71 (5.13%) Azure Certification
10 50 (3.62%) AWS Certification
11 37 (2.68%) Microsoft Certification
12 35 (2.53%) CCIE
13 34 (2.46%) CISM
14 29 (2.10%) Computer Science Degree
15 17 (1.23%) CEH
15 17 (1.23%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 15 (1.08%) Network+ Certification
16 15 (1.08%) PMI Certification
17 14 (1.01%) PMP
18 13 (0.94%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (5.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 65 (4.70%) NIST
3 35 (2.53%) GDPR
4 28 (2.02%) NCSC
5 25 (1.81%) QA
6 24 (1.74%) Cyber Essentials
6 24 (1.74%) PCI DSS
7 21 (1.52%) SLA
8 14 (1.01%) NIST 800
9 12 (0.87%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 10 (0.72%) JSP 440
11 8 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 7 (0.51%) Disclosure Scotland
13 6 (0.43%) GxP
13 6 (0.43%) HIPAA
14 5 (0.36%) COBIT
14 5 (0.36%) Data Quality
14 5 (0.36%) GRC
15 4 (0.29%) 21 CFR Part 11
16 3 (0.22%) SOC 2
System Software
1 235 (16.99%) Active Directory
2 176 (12.73%) VMware Infrastructure
3 76 (5.50%) Docker
4 69 (4.99%) Hyper-V
5 58 (4.19%) VMware NSX
6 53 (3.83%) vSphere
7 49 (3.54%) VMware ESXi
8 43 (3.11%) Virtual Machines
9 26 (1.88%) Firmware
10 15 (1.08%) Virtual Desktop
11 9 (0.65%) Squid
12 8 (0.58%) Virtual Servers
13 7 (0.51%) BitLocker
14 6 (0.43%) 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%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 218 (15.76%) Ansible
2 129 (9.33%) Kubernetes
3 90 (6.51%) FortiGate
4 72 (5.21%) Microsoft Intune
5 54 (3.90%) Grafana
6 50 (3.62%) Prometheus
7 42 (3.04%) SCCM
8 30 (2.17%) Single Sign-On
9 28 (2.02%) Progress Chef
10 25 (1.81%) vCenter Server
11 21 (1.52%) VxRail
12 15 (1.08%) Cisco Prime
13 14 (1.01%) Puppet
14 12 (0.87%) CASB
15 10 (0.72%) Nessus
15 10 (0.72%) Packer
16 9 (0.65%) Argo
16 9 (0.65%) QRadar
16 9 (0.65%) WSUS
17 8 (0.58%) Istio
Vendors
1 517 (37.38%) Cisco
2 345 (24.95%) Microsoft
3 325 (23.50%) Palo Alto
4 223 (16.12%) VMware
5 202 (14.61%) Fortinet
6 175 (12.65%) F5
7 122 (8.82%) CheckPoint
8 121 (8.75%) Juniper
9 73 (5.28%) Zscaler
10 66 (4.77%) Splunk
11 61 (4.41%) Aruba
12 60 (4.34%) Arista
12 60 (4.34%) Google
13 59 (4.27%) ServiceNow
14 55 (3.98%) Meraki
15 51 (3.69%) SolarWinds
16 36 (2.60%) Citrix
17 33 (2.39%) Red Hat
18 28 (2.02%) Dynatrace
19 27 (1.95%) CyberArk