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

6 months to
4 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 90 54 55
Rank change year-on-year -36 +1 -7
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,400 1,361 1,546
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.71% 4.31% 3.56%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 28.43% 35.20% 28.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 897 802 965
10th Percentile £350 £325 £275
25th Percentile £413 £411 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £641 £688 £692
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £483 £500
% change year-on-year +3.63% -3.50% +3.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 23 47
10th Percentile £23.26 £14.20 £16.98
25th Percentile £37.00 £14.66 £23.86
Median hourly rate £57.37 £30.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +91.23% -50.00% -4.08%
75th Percentile £70.32 £31.89 £85.65
90th Percentile £78.58 £44.65 £87.49
UK excluding London median hourly rate £56.00 £30.00 £82.38
% change year-on-year +86.67% -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 4,925 3,867 5,433
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.54% 12.26% 12.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,996 2,363 3,200
10th Percentile £250 £230 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -0.50%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £470 £493
% change year-on-year +3.25% -4.57% +3.68%
Number of hourly rates quoted 307 182 427
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.86
25th Percentile £19.34 £21.50 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.44 £44.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -40.58% -1.11% +100.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £79.50 £73.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £35.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year -25.71% -26.32% +90.00%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 -42 1,194 £500 - 523
UK excluding London -33 792 £500 +3.63% 470
London -59 453 £500 -4.08% 136
Work from Home -35 391 £520 +4.00% 208
North of England -12 286 £500 +5.26% 88
South East -31 207 £500 - 165
North West -1 186 £528 +11.75% 43
Yorkshire -39 84 £450 -8.07% 36
Midlands -59 82 £438 -7.89% 67
East of England -13 70 £525 +0.48% 48
Scotland +15 67 £450 +4.35% 23
West Midlands -61 67 £425 -19.05% 42
South West -50 61 £525 +5.00% 63
Wales -18 25 £425 +30.77% 13
North East -16 22 £625 +25.00% 11
East Midlands -29 12 £500 +11.11% 25
Northern Ireland -6 2 £385 - 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 36 (2.57%) Microsoft Exchange
2 33 (2.36%) Confluence
3 24 (1.71%) SharePoint
4 15 (1.07%) nginx
5 10 (0.71%) Apache
5 10 (0.71%) CICS
6 6 (0.43%) SAS
7 4 (0.29%) Tomcat
8 3 (0.21%) CloudStack
8 3 (0.21%) IIS
8 3 (0.21%) Skype for Business
9 2 (0.14%) Apache Pulsar
9 2 (0.14%) CMS
9 2 (0.14%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.14%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.14%) Umbraco
9 2 (0.14%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.14%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.14%) WebSphere Portal
10 1 (0.071%) MTS
Applications
1 26 (1.86%) MS Visio
2 18 (1.29%) Microsoft Excel
3 17 (1.21%) Microsoft Office
4 8 (0.57%) Microsoft Project
5 7 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.071%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 1 (0.071%) Bloomberg TOMS
1 1 (0.071%) Dynamics GP
1 1 (0.071%) Eikon
1 1 (0.071%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.071%) Primavera
1 1 (0.071%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.071%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 473 (33.79%) Azure
2 307 (21.93%) AWS
3 130 (9.29%) Entra ID
4 117 (8.36%) GCP
5 112 (8.00%) Microsoft 365
6 67 (4.79%) GitHub
7 64 (4.57%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 62 (4.43%) IaaS
9 52 (3.71%) SaaS
10 51 (3.64%) Azure DevOps
11 42 (3.00%) PaaS
12 40 (2.86%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 39 (2.79%) Azure Monitor
14 36 (2.57%) OCI
14 36 (2.57%) Serverless
15 34 (2.43%) Azure Sentinel
16 29 (2.07%) Amazon EC2
16 29 (2.07%) GitHub Actions
16 29 (2.07%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 27 (1.93%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 395 (28.21%) Network Security
1 395 (28.21%) WAN
2 385 (27.50%) VPN
3 320 (22.86%) DNS
4 289 (20.64%) LAN
5 262 (18.71%) BGP
6 216 (15.43%) OSPF
7 180 (12.86%) VLAN
8 170 (12.14%) TCP/IP
9 164 (11.71%) DHCP
10 162 (11.57%) SD-WAN
11 157 (11.21%) Wireless
12 114 (8.14%) Wi-Fi
13 102 (7.29%) BIG-IP
14 94 (6.71%) MPLS
15 91 (6.50%) VXLAN
16 84 (6.00%) IPsec
17 83 (5.93%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
18 79 (5.64%) SSL
19 74 (5.29%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (1.43%) SQL Server
2 17 (1.21%) Elasticsearch
2 17 (1.21%) Power BI
3 16 (1.14%) PostgreSQL
4 11 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
4 11 (0.79%) Data Lake
5 10 (0.71%) DataStage
6 9 (0.64%) Azure SQL Database
7 8 (0.57%) MySQL
7 8 (0.57%) Oracle Database
8 6 (0.43%) Relational Database
9 5 (0.36%) Delta Lake
9 5 (0.36%) NoSQL
10 4 (0.29%) Amazon Athena
10 4 (0.29%) Amazon QuickSight
10 4 (0.29%) Amazon Redshift
10 4 (0.29%) Data Warehouse
11 3 (0.21%) Amazon Aurora
11 3 (0.21%) Big Data
11 3 (0.21%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 102 (7.29%) JIRA
2 52 (3.71%) Jenkins
3 41 (2.93%) GitLab
4 40 (2.86%) Git
5 16 (1.14%) Sonatype Nexus
6 10 (0.71%) Artifactory
6 10 (0.71%) Bitbucket
7 9 (0.64%) Chocolatey
7 9 (0.64%) SonarQube
8 6 (0.43%) Browser DevTools
9 4 (0.29%) Burp Suite
9 4 (0.29%) Jaeger
10 2 (0.14%) Cucumber
10 2 (0.14%) Gradle
10 2 (0.14%) Introscope
10 2 (0.14%) LoadRunner
10 2 (0.14%) Metasploit
10 2 (0.14%) MSI
10 2 (0.14%) REST Assured
10 2 (0.14%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 303 (21.64%) Social Skills
2 183 (13.07%) Finance
3 117 (8.36%) Analytical Skills
4 111 (7.93%) Public Sector
5 75 (5.36%) Documentation Skills
6 67 (4.79%) Banking
7 40 (2.86%) Telecoms
8 35 (2.50%) Legal
9 20 (1.43%) Financial Institution
9 20 (1.43%) Manufacturing
10 19 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
11 18 (1.29%) Military
12 13 (0.93%) Local Government
12 13 (0.93%) Retail
13 12 (0.86%) Organisational Skills
14 11 (0.79%) Law
15 10 (0.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 10 (0.71%) Investment Banking
15 10 (0.71%) Police
16 9 (0.64%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 452 (32.29%) Network Engineer
2 232 (16.57%) Architect
3 175 (12.50%) Senior
4 127 (9.07%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 118 (8.43%) Security Engineer
6 81 (5.79%) Network Architect
7 75 (5.36%) Senior Network Engineer
8 68 (4.86%) Cloud Engineer
9 55 (3.93%) Technical Architect
10 54 (3.86%) Azure Engineer
10 54 (3.86%) Network Security Engineer
11 53 (3.79%) Consultant
12 50 (3.57%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
13 47 (3.36%) Security Architect
14 43 (3.07%) Lead
15 39 (2.79%) DevOps Engineer
16 37 (2.64%) Solutions Architect
17 36 (2.57%) Cloud Architect
18 34 (2.43%) Cisco Engineer
19 33 (2.36%) Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 70 (5.00%) 802.1X
2 42 (3.00%) Middleware
3 36 (2.57%) LDAP
4 29 (2.07%) SAML
5 23 (1.64%) OpenID
6 12 (0.86%) Kafka
6 12 (0.86%) OAuth
7 11 (0.79%) OAuth2
8 10 (0.71%) ARM Templates
9 9 (0.64%) LangChain
9 9 (0.64%) PyTorch
9 9 (0.64%) REST
9 9 (0.64%) scikit-learn
10 8 (0.57%) .NET
11 7 (0.50%) OpenTelemetry
11 7 (0.50%) SailPoint
11 7 (0.50%) YAML
12 6 (0.43%) Elastic Stack
12 6 (0.43%) React
12 6 (0.43%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 335 (23.93%) Data Centre
2 93 (6.64%) Cloud Native
3 79 (5.64%) Security Posture
4 75 (5.36%) Hybrid Cloud
5 63 (4.50%) PKI
6 47 (3.36%) Management Information System
7 45 (3.21%) Onboarding
8 41 (2.93%) Clustering
9 38 (2.71%) Operational Technology
10 31 (2.21%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 29 (2.07%) Data Protection Act
12 27 (1.93%) IoT
13 25 (1.79%) Enterprise Storage
13 25 (1.79%) Public Cloud
14 20 (1.43%) SCADA
15 19 (1.36%) Cyber Threat
16 18 (1.29%) Enterprise Software
17 17 (1.21%) Self-Motivation
18 16 (1.14%) Linux Command Line
18 16 (1.14%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 309 (22.07%) Windows
2 178 (12.71%) Linux
3 111 (7.93%) Windows Server
4 44 (3.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 31 (2.21%) Unix
6 21 (1.50%) VMS
7 14 (1.00%) Windows Server 2019
8 13 (0.93%) Ubuntu
9 11 (0.79%) Solaris
10 10 (0.71%) AIX
10 10 (0.71%) Windows Server 2016
11 8 (0.57%) CentOS
12 7 (0.50%) Windows Server 2003
13 6 (0.43%) Mac OS
13 6 (0.43%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.36%) Windows 10
15 4 (0.29%) Android
15 4 (0.29%) Rocky
15 4 (0.29%) SUSE
16 3 (0.21%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 229 (16.36%) DevOps
2 203 (14.50%) CI/CD
3 201 (14.36%) Infrastructure as Code
4 195 (13.93%) Load Balancing
5 186 (13.29%) Migration
6 181 (12.93%) High Availability
7 172 (12.29%) ITIL
8 170 (12.14%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 169 (12.07%) Problem-Solving
10 167 (11.93%) Cybersecurity
11 153 (10.93%) Zero Trust
12 152 (10.86%) Agile
13 124 (8.86%) Change Management
14 120 (8.57%) SIEM
15 110 (7.86%) Observability
15 110 (7.86%) Validation
16 109 (7.79%) Project Delivery
17 105 (7.50%) Roadmaps
18 103 (7.36%) Stakeholder Management
19 102 (7.29%) Cloud Security
Programming Languages
1 241 (17.21%) Python
2 147 (10.50%) PowerShell
3 88 (6.29%) Bash
4 41 (2.93%) SQL
5 40 (2.86%) Bicep
6 30 (2.14%) Java
7 11 (0.79%) ActionScript
8 10 (0.71%) COBOL
8 10 (0.71%) Perl
9 6 (0.43%) Groovy
9 6 (0.43%) JavaScript
9 6 (0.43%) Kusto Query Language
10 5 (0.36%) C++
10 5 (0.36%) Go
11 3 (0.21%) PL/SQL
11 3 (0.21%) Rust
11 3 (0.21%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.14%) C
12 2 (0.14%) Jython
12 2 (0.14%) PHP
Qualifications
1 461 (32.93%) Security Cleared
2 337 (24.07%) SC Cleared
3 289 (20.64%) Cisco Certification
4 217 (15.50%) CCNP
5 120 (8.57%) CCNA
6 110 (7.86%) Degree
7 105 (7.50%) DV Cleared
8 68 (4.86%) CISSP
9 54 (3.86%) Azure Certification
10 44 (3.14%) CCIE
11 39 (2.79%) AWS Certification
12 33 (2.36%) Microsoft Certification
13 32 (2.29%) CISM
14 21 (1.50%) Network+ Certification
15 20 (1.43%) Computer Science Degree
16 18 (1.29%) JNCIS
16 18 (1.29%) PMP
17 17 (1.21%) JNCIA
17 17 (1.21%) Server+ Certification
18 16 (1.14%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (4.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 58 (4.14%) NIST
3 42 (3.00%) GDPR
4 35 (2.50%) NCSC
5 26 (1.86%) PCI DSS
6 22 (1.57%) Cyber Essentials
6 22 (1.57%) QA
6 22 (1.57%) SLA
7 9 (0.64%) Data Quality
7 9 (0.64%) NIST 800
8 8 (0.57%) Disclosure Scotland
9 7 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
9 7 (0.50%) JSP 440
10 6 (0.43%) GRC
11 5 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 5 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 5 (0.36%) PMO
11 5 (0.36%) RMADS
12 4 (0.29%) GxP
12 4 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 206 (14.71%) Active Directory
2 145 (10.36%) VMware Infrastructure
3 52 (3.71%) VMware NSX
4 50 (3.57%) Docker
5 38 (2.71%) Virtual Machines
6 36 (2.57%) VMware ESXi
7 34 (2.43%) Hyper-V
7 34 (2.43%) vSphere
8 26 (1.86%) Firmware
9 18 (1.29%) Virtual Desktop
10 16 (1.14%) Squid
11 13 (0.93%) BitLocker
12 9 (0.64%) Microsoft App-V
13 4 (0.29%) NFS
13 4 (0.29%) Terminal Services
14 3 (0.21%) Dovecot
14 3 (0.21%) EMC RecoverPoint
14 3 (0.21%) Postfix
15 2 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
15 2 (0.14%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 240 (17.14%) Terraform
2 167 (11.93%) Ansible
3 116 (8.29%) FortiGate
4 99 (7.07%) Kubernetes
5 62 (4.43%) Grafana
6 58 (4.14%) Prometheus
7 54 (3.86%) Microsoft Intune
8 39 (2.79%) Single Sign-On
9 31 (2.21%) SCCM
10 23 (1.64%) vCenter Server
11 19 (1.36%) Puppet
12 17 (1.21%) Progress Chef
13 16 (1.14%) CASB
14 14 (1.00%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 12 (0.86%) Cisco Prime
16 11 (0.79%) Consul
16 11 (0.79%) QRadar
17 9 (0.64%) Nagios
17 9 (0.64%) Nessus
17 9 (0.64%) vMotion
Vendors
1 508 (36.29%) Cisco
2 301 (21.50%) Palo Alto
3 286 (20.43%) Microsoft
4 208 (14.86%) Fortinet
5 197 (14.07%) F5
6 192 (13.71%) VMware
7 161 (11.50%) Juniper
8 130 (9.29%) CheckPoint
9 81 (5.79%) Splunk
10 78 (5.57%) Aruba
11 75 (5.36%) Arista
12 74 (5.29%) ServiceNow
13 69 (4.93%) SolarWinds
14 65 (4.64%) Google
15 58 (4.14%) Zscaler
16 48 (3.43%) Citrix
17 43 (3.07%) Red Hat
18 38 (2.71%) Meraki
19 31 (2.21%) Infoblox
20 29 (2.07%) Dynatrace