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

6 months to
9 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 74 54 48
Rank change year-on-year -20 -6 +15
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,228 1,228 1,717
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.35% 3.84% 4.05%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 31.55% 30.07% 29.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 791 737 1,120
10th Percentile £315 £313 £313
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -
75th Percentile £600 £608 £626
90th Percentile £675 £675 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.50% - +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 22 50
10th Percentile £29.00 £20.00 £40.63
25th Percentile £34.00 £20.45 £60.63
Median hourly rate £41.94 £35.00 £65.98
Median % change year-on-year +19.83% -46.95% +112.84%
75th Percentile £81.50 £41.44 £76.25
90th Percentile £89.63 £58.75 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £35.00 £65.98
% change year-on-year +85.70% -46.95% +96.96%

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 3,892 4,084 5,751
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.61% 12.78% 13.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,542 2,388 3,551
10th Percentile £205 £220 £210
25th Percentile £356 £369 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -1.96%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £680 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £473 £473
% change year-on-year -4.76% - +3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 174 137 324
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.99 £18.17
25th Percentile £20.00 £21.00 £23.49
Median hourly rate £38.50 £32.50 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year +18.46% -42.47% +125.96%
75th Percentile £66.94 £53.75 £65.98
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.50 £75.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £31.79 £59.50
% change year-on-year +33.69% -46.57% +184.28%

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 9 January 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 9 January 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 9 January 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 -20 1,038 £503 -4.29% 462
UK excluding London -20 671 £488 -2.50% 434
London -23 409 £525 -4.55% 112
Work from Home -4 388 £500 -4.76% 217
South East +12 192 £500 - 162
North of England -24 189 £516 +8.68% 100
Midlands -21 123 £475 -6.91% 44
West Midlands -1 114 £475 +7.04% 35
North West -30 102 £525 +10.53% 52
Yorkshire -20 83 £460 +8.24% 36
Scotland -13 61 £425 -15.00% 23
South West -33 52 £550 +15.79% 46
East of England -31 37 £475 -9.52% 48
Wales -20 10 £293 -19.86% 17
East Midlands -50 8 £500 -23.14% 9
North East -12 7 £550 - 15
Northern Ireland - 7 £500 - 6

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 46 (3.75%) Microsoft Exchange
2 42 (3.42%) Confluence
3 29 (2.36%) SharePoint
4 13 (1.06%) Apache
4 13 (1.06%) nginx
5 9 (0.73%) OpenStack
6 7 (0.57%) IIS
7 6 (0.49%) SAS
7 6 (0.49%) Tomcat
8 3 (0.24%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.16%) CICS
9 2 (0.16%) JBoss
9 2 (0.16%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.16%) Traefik
9 2 (0.16%) WebLogic
10 1 (0.081%) Anypoint
10 1 (0.081%) CMS
10 1 (0.081%) Exchange Server 2010
10 1 (0.081%) Exchange Server 2013
10 1 (0.081%) Mattermost
Applications
1 36 (2.93%) Microsoft Office
2 18 (1.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 17 (1.38%) Microsoft Excel
4 16 (1.30%) MS Visio
5 10 (0.81%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 3 (0.24%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 3 (0.24%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.081%) Finacle
3 1 (0.081%) ION MarketView
3 1 (0.081%) Pegasus Opera
3 1 (0.081%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 425 (34.61%) Azure
2 349 (28.42%) AWS
3 149 (12.13%) GCP
4 119 (9.69%) Microsoft 365
5 84 (6.84%) Entra ID
6 76 (6.19%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 62 (5.05%) Amazon EC2
8 53 (4.32%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 52 (4.23%) GitHub
10 50 (4.07%) Amazon S3
11 48 (3.91%) Azure Sentinel
12 40 (3.26%) Amazon ELB
12 40 (3.26%) Azure DevOps
13 39 (3.18%) IaaS
14 36 (2.93%) Azure Monitor
15 33 (2.69%) GitHub Actions
16 31 (2.52%) PaaS
17 30 (2.44%) AWS CloudFormation
18 29 (2.36%) Serverless
19 27 (2.20%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 298 (24.27%) Network Security
2 295 (24.02%) VPN
3 242 (19.71%) WAN
4 235 (19.14%) DNS
5 162 (13.19%) LAN
6 156 (12.70%) TCP/IP
7 146 (11.89%) BGP
8 121 (9.85%) OSPF
9 113 (9.20%) SD-WAN
9 113 (9.20%) Wireless
10 112 (9.12%) VLAN
11 91 (7.41%) DHCP
12 90 (7.33%) Wi-Fi
13 82 (6.68%) SSL
14 73 (5.94%) MPLS
15 59 (4.80%) IPsec
16 51 (4.15%) Cisco Nexus
17 48 (3.91%) HTTP
18 46 (3.75%) Cisco ASA
18 46 (3.75%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (2.93%) SQL Server
2 35 (2.85%) Amazon RDS
3 30 (2.44%) PostgreSQL
4 10 (0.81%) Amazon Aurora
5 8 (0.65%) MongoDB
5 8 (0.65%) Oracle Database
6 7 (0.57%) Data Warehouse
7 6 (0.49%) Data Lake
8 5 (0.41%) Elasticsearch
8 5 (0.41%) Relational Database
9 4 (0.33%) Azure SQL Database
9 4 (0.33%) Redis
9 4 (0.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 3 (0.24%) DynamoDB
10 3 (0.24%) NoSQL
10 3 (0.24%) Oracle Exadata
11 2 (0.16%) Amazon QuickSight
11 2 (0.16%) Data Vault
11 2 (0.16%) DB2
11 2 (0.16%) MariaDB
Development Applications
1 97 (7.90%) Jenkins
2 83 (6.76%) Git
3 81 (6.60%) JIRA
4 62 (5.05%) GitLab
5 25 (2.04%) Sonatype Nexus
6 16 (1.30%) Vagrant
7 14 (1.14%) Burp Suite
7 14 (1.14%) Metasploit
8 13 (1.06%) Bitbucket
9 7 (0.57%) SonarQube
10 6 (0.49%) Jaeger
11 4 (0.33%) CircleCI
12 3 (0.24%) Postman
13 2 (0.16%) Artifactory
13 2 (0.16%) MSI
14 1 (0.081%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 1 (0.081%) Chocolatey
14 1 (0.081%) Eclipse
14 1 (0.081%) Maven
14 1 (0.081%) Subversion
General
1 345 (28.09%) Social Skills
2 147 (11.97%) Analytical Skills
3 122 (9.93%) Finance
4 120 (9.77%) Public Sector
5 74 (6.03%) Documentation Skills
6 59 (4.80%) Banking
7 53 (4.32%) Telecoms
8 31 (2.52%) Legal
8 31 (2.52%) Manufacturing
9 28 (2.28%) Presentation Skills
10 13 (1.06%) Local Government
10 13 (1.06%) Military
11 12 (0.98%) Retail
12 11 (0.90%) Financial Institution
12 11 (0.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 10 (0.81%) Organisational Skills
14 9 (0.73%) Law
15 8 (0.65%) Aerospace
16 7 (0.57%) Influencing Skills
16 7 (0.57%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 299 (24.35%) Network Engineer
2 192 (15.64%) Architect
3 116 (9.45%) Security Engineer
3 116 (9.45%) Senior
4 88 (7.17%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 68 (5.54%) Network Architect
6 60 (4.89%) DevOps Engineer
7 58 (4.72%) Consultant
8 57 (4.64%) Security Architect
9 55 (4.48%) Analyst
10 54 (4.40%) Platform Engineer
11 49 (3.99%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 43 (3.50%) Azure Engineer
13 41 (3.34%) Network Security Engineer
14 38 (3.09%) Solutions Architect
15 36 (2.93%) Lead
16 35 (2.85%) Support Engineer
17 30 (2.44%) Cloud Engineer
18 28 (2.28%) AWS Engineer
18 28 (2.28%) Cybersecurity Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (3.18%) 802.1X
2 34 (2.77%) LDAP
3 25 (2.04%) SAML
4 24 (1.95%) Middleware
5 18 (1.47%) OpenID
6 16 (1.30%) Node.js
7 15 (1.22%) JSON
7 15 (1.22%) OAuth
8 14 (1.14%) OAuth2
9 13 (1.06%) REST
10 12 (0.98%) Kafka
11 11 (0.90%) Elastic Stack
12 10 (0.81%) ARM Templates
12 10 (0.81%) RFC 2544
12 10 (0.81%) XML
13 8 (0.65%) YAML
14 7 (0.57%) Microsoft Graph
14 7 (0.57%) Spring Boot
15 6 (0.49%) OpenTelemetry
16 4 (0.33%) Regular Expression
Miscellaneous
1 215 (17.51%) Data Centre
2 85 (6.92%) Security Posture
3 54 (4.40%) PKI
4 52 (4.23%) Hybrid Cloud
5 49 (3.99%) Operational Technology
6 46 (3.75%) Cloud Native
6 46 (3.75%) Onboarding
7 40 (3.26%) Replication
8 29 (2.36%) Public Cloud
9 26 (2.12%) Management Information System
10 24 (1.95%) Cyber Threat
10 24 (1.95%) Security Operations Centre
11 22 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
12 20 (1.63%) SCADA
13 17 (1.38%) Private Cloud
14 14 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
15 13 (1.06%) Enterprise Software
15 13 (1.06%) Fat Client
15 13 (1.06%) Product Ownership
15 13 (1.06%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 315 (25.65%) Windows
2 220 (17.92%) Linux
3 120 (9.77%) Windows Server
4 39 (3.18%) VMS
5 38 (3.09%) Unix
6 32 (2.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 19 (1.55%) Amazon Linux
7 19 (1.55%) Ubuntu
8 14 (1.14%) Windows 10
8 14 (1.14%) Windows Server 2019
9 10 (0.81%) Windows 7
10 9 (0.73%) Mac OS
10 9 (0.73%) Windows Server 2016
11 6 (0.49%) Windows Server 2012
12 5 (0.41%) CentOS
13 4 (0.33%) Android
13 4 (0.33%) Windows Server 2003
14 3 (0.24%) Apple iOS
14 3 (0.24%) Solaris
15 2 (0.16%) CatOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 245 (19.95%) Cybersecurity
2 206 (16.78%) DevOps
3 203 (16.53%) Problem-Solving
4 190 (15.47%) CI/CD
5 178 (14.50%) Infrastructure as Code
6 158 (12.87%) SIEM
7 155 (12.62%) Cloud Security
8 148 (12.05%) Incident Response
9 138 (11.24%) Migration
10 136 (11.07%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 127 (10.34%) Agile
12 120 (9.77%) ITIL
13 111 (9.04%) High Availability
14 109 (8.88%) Load Balancing
15 104 (8.47%) Stakeholder Management
16 96 (7.82%) Change Management
17 95 (7.74%) Zero Trust
18 88 (7.17%) Mentoring
19 85 (6.92%) Network Design
20 80 (6.51%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 242 (19.71%) Python
2 191 (15.55%) PowerShell
3 107 (8.71%) Bash
4 71 (5.78%) SQL
5 44 (3.58%) Java
6 38 (3.09%) Perl
7 22 (1.79%) Bicep
8 16 (1.30%) Groovy
8 16 (1.30%) Kusto Query Language
9 12 (0.98%) Ruby
10 9 (0.73%) Shell Script
11 7 (0.57%) Rust
12 5 (0.41%) JavaScript
13 4 (0.33%) C#
13 4 (0.33%) Go
13 4 (0.33%) PL/SQL
14 2 (0.16%) C++
15 1 (0.081%) C
15 1 (0.081%) Korn
15 1 (0.081%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 416 (33.88%) Security Cleared
2 294 (23.94%) SC Cleared
3 215 (17.51%) Cisco Certification
4 173 (14.09%) CCNP
5 117 (9.53%) Degree
6 100 (8.14%) CISSP
7 91 (7.41%) DV Cleared
8 81 (6.60%) CCNA
9 63 (5.13%) Azure Certification
10 55 (4.48%) CISM
11 52 (4.23%) AWS Certification
11 52 (4.23%) Microsoft Certification
12 46 (3.75%) CCIE
13 32 (2.61%) CompTIA Security+
14 21 (1.71%) CEH
14 21 (1.71%) Computer Science Degree
15 19 (1.55%) JNCIP
16 16 (1.30%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 15 (1.22%) CHECK Team Member
18 14 (1.14%) CREST Certified
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 114 (9.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 103 (8.39%) NIST
3 72 (5.86%) GDPR
4 45 (3.66%) PCI DSS
5 27 (2.20%) SLA
6 21 (1.71%) Cyber Essentials
7 20 (1.63%) NCSC
7 20 (1.63%) QA
8 14 (1.14%) PMO
9 12 (0.98%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 10 (0.81%) GRC
11 8 (0.65%) COBIT
11 8 (0.65%) HIPAA
12 5 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 5 (0.41%) JSP 440
12 5 (0.41%) PSD2
12 5 (0.41%) SOC 2
13 4 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
13 4 (0.33%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 4 (0.33%) NIST 800
System Software
1 215 (17.51%) Active Directory
2 151 (12.30%) VMware Infrastructure
3 140 (11.40%) Docker
4 47 (3.83%) Hyper-V
5 42 (3.42%) VMware NSX
6 34 (2.77%) Virtual Machines
7 27 (2.20%) vSphere
8 20 (1.63%) VMware ESXi
9 19 (1.55%) DFS Replication
10 15 (1.22%) Squid
11 13 (1.06%) Virtual Desktop
12 10 (0.81%) Dovecot
12 10 (0.81%) Firmware
12 10 (0.81%) Postfix
13 8 (0.65%) KVM
13 8 (0.65%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (0.49%) Snort
15 5 (0.41%) NDS
15 5 (0.41%) NetIQ eDirectory
15 5 (0.41%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 210 (17.10%) Terraform
2 171 (13.93%) Ansible
3 112 (9.12%) Kubernetes
4 70 (5.70%) FortiGate
5 54 (4.40%) Microsoft Intune
6 39 (3.18%) Grafana
7 35 (2.85%) Prometheus
8 34 (2.77%) SCCM
9 31 (2.52%) Single Sign-On
10 26 (2.12%) vCenter Server
11 23 (1.87%) Nessus
12 20 (1.63%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 17 (1.38%) Nmap
14 16 (1.30%) CSIRT
15 15 (1.22%) CASB
16 13 (1.06%) Fluentd
16 13 (1.06%) Nagios
17 11 (0.90%) QRadar
17 11 (0.90%) SCOM
17 11 (0.90%) WMI
Vendors
1 392 (31.92%) Cisco
2 282 (22.96%) Microsoft
3 269 (21.91%) Palo Alto
4 187 (15.23%) VMware
5 149 (12.13%) F5
6 135 (10.99%) CheckPoint
7 121 (9.85%) Fortinet
8 95 (7.74%) Splunk
9 93 (7.57%) Juniper
10 65 (5.29%) Aruba
11 61 (4.97%) Meraki
12 60 (4.89%) Oracle
13 59 (4.80%) Google
14 56 (4.56%) ServiceNow
15 52 (4.23%) SolarWinds
16 49 (3.99%) Zscaler
17 43 (3.50%) Citrix
18 25 (2.04%) Dell
18 25 (2.04%) Red Hat
18 25 (2.04%) Tenable