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

6 months to
3 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 106 63 57
Rank change year-on-year -43 -6 -11
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,345 1,257 1,386
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.45% 3.79% 3.64%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 26.51% 33.11% 30.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 829 777 844
10th Percentile £350 £312 £320
25th Percentile £425 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £623
90th Percentile £675 £688 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £483 £500
% change year-on-year +3.57% -3.45% +2.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 57 29 28
10th Percentile £31.25 £17.30 £20.00
25th Percentile £55.00 £29.00 £20.98
Median hourly rate £67.47 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +124.90% +9.09% -58.32%
75th Percentile £78.75 £41.94 £51.56
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.63 £74.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.35 £30.00 £27.50
% change year-on-year +121.15% +9.09% -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 5,073 3,796 4,532
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.25% 11.45% 11.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,929 2,382 2,616
10th Percentile £234 £220 £225
25th Percentile £390 £362 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £607
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £453 £485
% change year-on-year +4.86% -6.60% +6.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 429 206 202
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £20.94 £23.80
Median hourly rate £33.00 £41.72 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.90% -16.56% -11.49%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.63 £65.00
90th Percentile £92.19 £74.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.36 £42.22 £57.35
% change year-on-year -35.20% -26.38% -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 3 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 3 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 3 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 1,183 £508 +1.50% 1,268
UK excluding London -42 751 £500 +3.57% 865
London -50 456 £500 -2.91% 547
Work from Home -39 384 £520 +4.00% 591
North of England -3 279 £500 +5.26% 162
North West +8 161 £506 +6.58% 94
South East -52 157 £500 - 268
Yorkshire -28 96 £495 +1.12% 51
South West -3 92 £556 +15.83% 110
Midlands -69 90 £475 - 121
East of England -3 72 £600 +15.38% 59
West Midlands -69 66 £450 -5.26% 71
Scotland -20 61 £400 -17.95% 78
North East -19 29 £500 -13.04% 18
East Midlands -9 23 £500 +6.16% 50
Wales -20 4 £608 +203.75% 34
Channel Islands -6 2 £600 -17.24% 1
Northern Ireland -10 1 - - 39

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 51 (3.79%) Microsoft Exchange
2 38 (2.83%) SharePoint
3 36 (2.68%) Confluence
4 13 (0.97%) Apache
4 13 (0.97%) nginx
5 8 (0.59%) 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%) CICS
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
3 18 (1.34%) Microsoft Office
4 8 (0.59%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (0.45%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 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
Cloud Services
1 516 (38.36%) Azure
2 314 (23.35%) AWS
3 176 (13.09%) Entra ID
4 125 (9.29%) Microsoft 365
5 113 (8.40%) GCP
6 81 (6.02%) GitHub
7 70 (5.20%) IaaS
8 67 (4.98%) Azure DevOps
9 60 (4.46%) SaaS
10 54 (4.01%) Azure Monitor
11 44 (3.27%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 43 (3.20%) OCI
13 40 (2.97%) PaaS
13 40 (2.97%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 33 (2.45%) GitHub Actions
15 32 (2.38%) Azure Sentinel
16 31 (2.30%) Serverless
17 28 (2.08%) AWS CloudFormation
18 27 (2.01%) Google Kubernetes Engine
19 26 (1.93%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 402 (29.89%) VPN
2 399 (29.67%) Network Security
3 360 (26.77%) DNS
4 338 (25.13%) WAN
5 247 (18.36%) LAN
6 233 (17.32%) BGP
7 213 (15.84%) TCP/IP
8 207 (15.39%) DHCP
9 191 (14.20%) VLAN
10 175 (13.01%) Wireless
11 166 (12.34%) OSPF
12 129 (9.59%) SD-WAN
13 122 (9.07%) Wi-Fi
14 78 (5.80%) MPLS
15 77 (5.72%) Cisco ASA
16 75 (5.58%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 74 (5.50%) SSL
18 72 (5.35%) BIG-IP
19 71 (5.28%) IPsec
20 62 (4.61%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (2.45%) SQL Server
2 20 (1.49%) Amazon RDS
3 18 (1.34%) PostgreSQL
4 16 (1.19%) Relational Database
5 15 (1.12%) Data Lake
6 12 (0.89%) Power BI
7 10 (0.74%) NoSQL
8 9 (0.67%) Amazon Aurora
9 6 (0.45%) Azure SQL Database
10 5 (0.37%) Elasticsearch
10 5 (0.37%) MySQL
11 4 (0.30%) Big Data
11 4 (0.30%) Db2
11 4 (0.30%) Oracle Database
12 3 (0.22%) Amazon Athena
12 3 (0.22%) EDRMS
12 3 (0.22%) Metadata
12 3 (0.22%) Oracle Reports
13 2 (0.15%) Amazon QuickSight
13 2 (0.15%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 87 (6.47%) JIRA
2 72 (5.35%) Jenkins
3 55 (4.09%) Git
4 49 (3.64%) GitLab
5 16 (1.19%) Sonatype Nexus
6 9 (0.67%) Artifactory
6 9 (0.67%) Bitbucket
7 8 (0.59%) SonarQube
8 6 (0.45%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 5 (0.37%) Maven
10 4 (0.30%) Chocolatey
10 4 (0.30%) MSI
11 3 (0.22%) Browser DevTools
11 3 (0.22%) Cucumber
11 3 (0.22%) REST Assured
12 2 (0.15%) Burp Suite
12 2 (0.15%) Gradle
12 2 (0.15%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 2 (0.15%) Team Foundation Server
12 2 (0.15%) Vagrant
General
1 312 (23.20%) Social Skills
2 177 (13.16%) Finance
3 137 (10.19%) Analytical Skills
4 108 (8.03%) Public Sector
5 95 (7.06%) Banking
6 56 (4.16%) Documentation Skills
7 54 (4.01%) Telecoms
8 37 (2.75%) Manufacturing
9 28 (2.08%) Legal
10 20 (1.49%) Retail
11 18 (1.34%) 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
14 12 (0.89%) Influencing Skills
15 11 (0.82%) Police
16 10 (0.74%) Automotive
16 10 (0.74%) Investment Banking
17 9 (0.67%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 438 (32.57%) Network Engineer
2 203 (15.09%) Senior
3 162 (12.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 161 (11.97%) Architect
5 112 (8.33%) Security Engineer
6 87 (6.47%) Cloud Engineer
6 87 (6.47%) Senior Network Engineer
7 71 (5.28%) Consultant
8 62 (4.61%) Network Security Engineer
9 61 (4.54%) Azure Engineer
10 57 (4.24%) Network Architect
11 55 (4.09%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 53 (3.94%) Security Architect
13 48 (3.57%) DevOps Engineer
13 48 (3.57%) Lead
14 46 (3.42%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
15 40 (2.97%) Platform Engineer
16 38 (2.83%) Cisco Engineer
17 36 (2.68%) Cisco Network Engineer
18 35 (2.60%) Firewall Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 295 (21.93%) Terraform
2 41 (3.05%) 802.1X
3 25 (1.86%) ARM Templates
3 25 (1.86%) Middleware
4 24 (1.78%) SAML
5 21 (1.56%) REST
6 18 (1.34%) OAuth
7 17 (1.26%) YAML
8 16 (1.19%) OpenID
9 12 (0.89%) LDAP
9 12 (0.89%) OAuth2
10 11 (0.82%) JSON
11 10 (0.74%) React
12 9 (0.67%) Kafka
13 8 (0.59%) ModSecurity
13 8 (0.59%) SailPoint
14 7 (0.52%) Elastic Stack
14 7 (0.52%) OpenTelemetry
15 6 (0.45%) .NET
15 6 (0.45%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 285 (21.19%) Data Centre
2 103 (7.66%) Hybrid Cloud
3 78 (5.80%) Cloud Native
4 76 (5.65%) PKI
5 62 (4.61%) Security Posture
6 61 (4.54%) Onboarding
7 54 (4.01%) Management Information System
8 48 (3.57%) Operational Technology
9 41 (3.05%) Public Cloud
10 29 (2.16%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 28 (2.08%) Self-Motivation
12 26 (1.93%) Data Protection Act
13 23 (1.71%) Driving Licence
13 23 (1.71%) Enterprise Software
14 22 (1.64%) Linux Command Line
15 21 (1.56%) Replication
16 20 (1.49%) SCADA
17 19 (1.41%) Enterprise Storage
17 19 (1.41%) IoT
18 18 (1.34%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 332 (24.68%) Windows
2 216 (16.06%) Linux
3 147 (10.93%) Windows Server
4 43 (3.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 32 (2.38%) Unix
6 25 (1.86%) Ubuntu
7 17 (1.26%) Mac OS
7 17 (1.26%) VMS
8 14 (1.04%) CentOS
9 12 (0.89%) Windows 10
10 11 (0.82%) Windows Server 2019
11 9 (0.67%) Windows Server 2012
12 8 (0.59%) Amazon Linux
12 8 (0.59%) Android
13 7 (0.52%) Rocky
14 6 (0.45%) Apple iOS
15 4 (0.30%) Windows Server 2003
15 4 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
16 3 (0.22%) Check Point GAiA
17 2 (0.15%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 268 (19.93%) Infrastructure as Code
2 250 (18.59%) CI/CD
3 240 (17.84%) DevOps
4 236 (17.55%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 222 (16.51%) Cybersecurity
6 208 (15.46%) Migration
7 200 (14.87%) Problem-Solving
8 184 (13.68%) Load Balancing
9 169 (12.57%) ITIL
10 161 (11.97%) Zero Trust
11 160 (11.90%) Stakeholder Management
12 156 (11.60%) Agile
13 137 (10.19%) Project Delivery
14 133 (9.89%) SIEM
15 131 (9.74%) High Availability
16 124 (9.22%) Change Management
17 120 (8.92%) Cloud Security
18 119 (8.85%) Technical Leadership
19 116 (8.62%) Incident Response
20 111 (8.25%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 286 (21.26%) Python
2 226 (16.80%) PowerShell
3 137 (10.19%) Bash
4 47 (3.49%) SQL
5 45 (3.35%) Bicep
5 45 (3.35%) Java
6 19 (1.41%) ActionScript
7 15 (1.12%) Groovy
8 10 (0.74%) Shell Script
9 9 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
10 8 (0.59%) Perl
11 6 (0.45%) C++
11 6 (0.45%) Go
11 6 (0.45%) JavaScript
11 6 (0.45%) Search Processing Language
12 4 (0.30%) TypeScript
13 3 (0.22%) C
13 3 (0.22%) C#
14 2 (0.15%) COBOL
14 2 (0.15%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 450 (33.46%) Security Cleared
2 312 (23.20%) SC Cleared
3 230 (17.10%) Cisco Certification
4 172 (12.79%) CCNP
5 125 (9.29%) DV Cleared
6 103 (7.66%) Degree
7 85 (6.32%) CCNA
8 77 (5.72%) CISSP
9 64 (4.76%) Azure Certification
10 51 (3.79%) AWS Certification
11 38 (2.83%) CCIE
12 34 (2.53%) Microsoft Certification
13 32 (2.38%) CISM
14 26 (1.93%) Computer Science Degree
15 17 (1.26%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 16 (1.19%) CEH
17 15 (1.12%) PMI Certification
18 14 (1.04%) PMP
19 13 (0.97%) CCSE
19 13 (0.97%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 76 (5.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 72 (5.35%) NIST
3 32 (2.38%) GDPR
4 26 (1.93%) NCSC
4 26 (1.93%) QA
5 25 (1.86%) PCI DSS
6 23 (1.71%) SLA
7 21 (1.56%) 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
1 235 (17.47%) Active Directory
2 176 (13.09%) VMware Infrastructure
3 81 (6.02%) Docker
4 67 (4.98%) Hyper-V
5 57 (4.24%) VMware NSX
6 55 (4.09%) vSphere
7 46 (3.42%) VMware ESXi
8 39 (2.90%) Virtual Machines
9 22 (1.64%) Firmware
10 15 (1.12%) Virtual Desktop
11 8 (0.59%) Squid
11 8 (0.59%) Virtual Servers
12 6 (0.45%) 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
1 217 (16.13%) Ansible
2 134 (9.96%) Kubernetes
3 82 (6.10%) FortiGate
4 74 (5.50%) Microsoft Intune
5 58 (4.31%) Grafana
6 53 (3.94%) Prometheus
7 39 (2.90%) SCCM
8 31 (2.30%) Progress Chef
8 31 (2.30%) Single Sign-On
9 21 (1.56%) vCenter Server
10 19 (1.41%) VxRail
11 15 (1.12%) Puppet
12 12 (0.89%) CASB
12 12 (0.89%) Cisco Prime
13 10 (0.74%) Argo
13 10 (0.74%) Nagios
13 10 (0.74%) Nessus
13 10 (0.74%) Packer
14 8 (0.59%) NetBackup
14 8 (0.59%) QRadar
Vendors
1 491 (36.51%) Cisco
2 342 (25.43%) Microsoft
3 330 (24.54%) Palo Alto
4 224 (16.65%) VMware
5 194 (14.42%) Fortinet
6 165 (12.27%) F5
7 120 (8.92%) CheckPoint
8 111 (8.25%) Juniper
9 71 (5.28%) Zscaler
10 66 (4.91%) Google
11 63 (4.68%) Splunk
12 60 (4.46%) Aruba
13 59 (4.39%) Meraki
14 57 (4.24%) ServiceNow
15 53 (3.94%) Arista
16 51 (3.79%) SolarWinds
17 34 (2.53%) Citrix
18 32 (2.38%) Red Hat
19 29 (2.16%) Dynatrace
20 26 (1.93%) Infoblox