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

6 months to
7 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 95 54 59
Rank change year-on-year -41 +5 -11
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,438 1,403 1,348
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.69% 4.27% 3.45%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 28.74% 35.52% 28.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 900 834 850
10th Percentile £350 £325 £320
25th Percentile £417 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £614
90th Percentile £650 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £502 £490 £525
% change year-on-year +2.45% -6.76% +10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 27 31
10th Percentile £29.00 £14.20 £22.40
25th Percentile £43.98 £15.23 £23.92
Median hourly rate £65.23 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +117.42% +9.09% -58.32%
75th Percentile £78.75 £38.01 £85.45
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.63 £87.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.45 £30.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +118.17% -50.00% -9.06%

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 5,004 3,950 4,727
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.37% 12.02% 12.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,970 2,419 2,866
10th Percentile £250 £240 £220
25th Percentile £400 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.16% -5.00% +9.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 355 195 324
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.15 £18.27
Median hourly rate £26.44 £47.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -44.34% - -5.79%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.70 £83.60 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.55 £45.00 £54.88
% change year-on-year -41.00% -18.00% -4.42%

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 7 August 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 7 August 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 7 August 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 -44 1,250 £510 +2.00% 536
UK excluding London -34 810 £502 +2.45% 394
London -61 483 £500 - 190
Work from Home -35 394 £520 +4.00% 195
North of England -15 285 £500 +5.26% 95
South East -34 226 £520 +4.00% 139
North West -3 184 £525 +10.53% 54
Yorkshire -42 83 £450 -7.22% 31
South West -38 77 £550 +10.00% 48
East of England -6 75 £525 -2.78% 30
Midlands -74 74 £459 -3.37% 58
Scotland +6 64 £425 -8.11% 14
West Midlands -79 57 £440 -7.37% 33
North East -20 24 £625 +4.17% 14
Wales -13 16 £425 +17.24% 10
East Midlands -21 14 £500 +1.63% 25
Northern Ireland -4 1 - - 7

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 (3.20%) Microsoft Exchange
2 30 (2.09%) Confluence
3 27 (1.88%) SharePoint
4 15 (1.04%) Apache
5 13 (0.90%) nginx
6 6 (0.42%) CICS
6 6 (0.42%) SAS
7 4 (0.28%) FactoryTalk
7 4 (0.28%) Tomcat
8 3 (0.21%) CloudStack
8 3 (0.21%) IIS
8 3 (0.21%) Skype for Business
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 (0.070%) MTS
Applications
1 22 (1.53%) MS Visio
2 20 (1.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 20 (1.39%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
4 5 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
5 4 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.070%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 4 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.14%) Dynamics GP
2 2 (0.14%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.070%) Bloomberg TOMS
3 1 (0.070%) Eikon
3 1 (0.070%) Primavera
3 1 (0.070%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 524 (36.44%) Azure
2 329 (22.88%) AWS
3 157 (10.92%) Entra ID
4 124 (8.62%) Microsoft 365
5 115 (8.00%) GCP
6 75 (5.22%) GitHub
7 65 (4.52%) IaaS
8 63 (4.38%) Azure DevOps
9 61 (4.24%) SaaS
10 54 (3.76%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 52 (3.62%) Azure Monitor
12 47 (3.27%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 42 (2.92%) Azure Sentinel
13 42 (2.92%) PaaS
14 37 (2.57%) OCI
15 35 (2.43%) Serverless
16 33 (2.29%) GitHub Actions
17 30 (2.09%) Google Kubernetes Engine
18 26 (1.81%) AWS CloudFormation
19 24 (1.67%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 427 (29.69%) VPN
2 397 (27.61%) WAN
3 391 (27.19%) Network Security
4 375 (26.08%) DNS
5 291 (20.24%) LAN
6 263 (18.29%) BGP
7 215 (14.95%) DHCP
7 215 (14.95%) TCP/IP
8 210 (14.60%) OSPF
9 202 (14.05%) VLAN
10 165 (11.47%) Wireless
11 148 (10.29%) SD-WAN
12 126 (8.76%) Wi-Fi
13 94 (6.54%) BIG-IP
14 93 (6.47%) MPLS
15 92 (6.40%) IPsec
16 85 (5.91%) VXLAN
17 80 (5.56%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
18 78 (5.42%) SSL
19 77 (5.35%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (2.23%) SQL Server
2 19 (1.32%) PostgreSQL
3 17 (1.18%) Power BI
4 13 (0.90%) Amazon RDS
5 11 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
6 10 (0.70%) Azure SQL Database
6 10 (0.70%) Relational Database
7 9 (0.63%) Data Lake
7 9 (0.63%) Oracle Database
8 8 (0.56%) MySQL
9 6 (0.42%) DataStage
10 5 (0.35%) Delta Lake
11 4 (0.28%) Amazon Aurora
11 4 (0.28%) Data Warehouse
11 4 (0.28%) Db2
11 4 (0.28%) NoSQL
12 3 (0.21%) Amazon Athena
12 3 (0.21%) Amazon QuickSight
12 3 (0.21%) Amazon Redshift
12 3 (0.21%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 94 (6.54%) JIRA
2 58 (4.03%) Jenkins
3 47 (3.27%) Git
3 47 (3.27%) GitLab
4 14 (0.97%) Sonatype Nexus
5 10 (0.70%) Bitbucket
6 8 (0.56%) Artifactory
7 7 (0.49%) Chocolatey
8 6 (0.42%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 6 (0.42%) Browser DevTools
9 5 (0.35%) SonarQube
10 4 (0.28%) Burp Suite
11 3 (0.21%) MSI
12 2 (0.14%) Cucumber
12 2 (0.14%) Gradle
12 2 (0.14%) Introscope
12 2 (0.14%) LoadRunner
12 2 (0.14%) Metasploit
12 2 (0.14%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 2 (0.14%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 304 (21.14%) Social Skills
2 181 (12.59%) Finance
3 137 (9.53%) Analytical Skills
4 123 (8.55%) Public Sector
5 77 (5.35%) Banking
6 63 (4.38%) Documentation Skills
7 46 (3.20%) Telecoms
8 25 (1.74%) Legal
8 25 (1.74%) Manufacturing
9 22 (1.53%) Financial Institution
10 21 (1.46%) Military
11 19 (1.32%) Local Government
11 19 (1.32%) Retail
12 18 (1.25%) Influencing Skills
13 13 (0.90%) Law
13 13 (0.90%) Organisational Skills
14 12 (0.83%) Police
15 11 (0.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 10 (0.70%) Investment Banking
17 9 (0.63%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 464 (32.27%) Network Engineer
2 215 (14.95%) Senior
3 203 (14.12%) Architect
4 146 (10.15%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 113 (7.86%) Security Engineer
6 97 (6.75%) Senior Network Engineer
7 78 (5.42%) Cloud Engineer
8 70 (4.87%) Network Architect
9 61 (4.24%) Consultant
10 58 (4.03%) Azure Engineer
11 54 (3.76%) Network Security Engineer
12 50 (3.48%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 48 (3.34%) Security Architect
13 48 (3.34%) Technical Architect
14 46 (3.20%) DevOps Engineer
15 45 (3.13%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
16 44 (3.06%) Lead
17 42 (2.92%) Cisco Engineer
18 40 (2.78%) Cisco Network Engineer
19 38 (2.64%) Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (4.80%) 802.1X
2 41 (2.85%) Middleware
3 29 (2.02%) SAML
4 23 (1.60%) ARM Templates
5 21 (1.46%) LDAP
6 18 (1.25%) OpenID
7 12 (0.83%) OAuth
8 10 (0.70%) OAuth2
9 9 (0.63%) Kafka
9 9 (0.63%) LangChain
9 9 (0.63%) PyTorch
9 9 (0.63%) React
9 9 (0.63%) REST
9 9 (0.63%) scikit-learn
9 9 (0.63%) YAML
10 8 (0.56%) .NET
11 7 (0.49%) Elastic Stack
11 7 (0.49%) SailPoint
12 6 (0.42%) OpenTelemetry
13 5 (0.35%) Jinja
Miscellaneous
1 323 (22.46%) Data Centre
2 98 (6.82%) Hybrid Cloud
3 94 (6.54%) Cloud Native
4 89 (6.19%) PKI
5 66 (4.59%) Security Posture
6 61 (4.24%) Management Information System
7 53 (3.69%) Onboarding
8 48 (3.34%) Operational Technology
9 42 (2.92%) Clustering
10 30 (2.09%) Data Protection Act
11 29 (2.02%) Public Cloud
12 28 (1.95%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
13 25 (1.74%) IoT
14 24 (1.67%) SCADA
15 22 (1.53%) Driving Licence
15 22 (1.53%) Enterprise Software
15 22 (1.53%) Enterprise Storage
16 21 (1.46%) Self-Motivation
17 19 (1.32%) Linux Command Line
17 19 (1.32%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 360 (25.03%) Windows
2 224 (15.58%) Linux
3 139 (9.67%) Windows Server
4 51 (3.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 32 (2.23%) Unix
6 22 (1.53%) VMS
7 20 (1.39%) Ubuntu
8 14 (0.97%) Mac OS
9 13 (0.90%) Windows Server 2019
10 11 (0.76%) CentOS
11 10 (0.70%) Windows Server 2016
12 7 (0.49%) Rocky
12 7 (0.49%) Solaris
12 7 (0.49%) Windows 10
13 6 (0.42%) AIX
13 6 (0.42%) Windows Server 2003
13 6 (0.42%) Windows Server 2012
14 4 (0.28%) Amazon Linux
14 4 (0.28%) Android
14 4 (0.28%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 247 (17.18%) DevOps
2 233 (16.20%) CI/CD
3 232 (16.13%) Infrastructure as Code
4 207 (14.39%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 206 (14.33%) Load Balancing
6 194 (13.49%) Cybersecurity
7 193 (13.42%) Problem-Solving
8 188 (13.07%) ITIL
9 179 (12.45%) Migration
10 175 (12.17%) High Availability
11 156 (10.85%) Agile
12 154 (10.71%) Zero Trust
13 145 (10.08%) SIEM
14 131 (9.11%) Project Delivery
15 129 (8.97%) Change Management
16 119 (8.28%) Observability
17 113 (7.86%) Stakeholder Management
17 113 (7.86%) Validation
18 111 (7.72%) Cloud Security
19 104 (7.23%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 276 (19.19%) Python
2 203 (14.12%) PowerShell
3 135 (9.39%) Bash
4 50 (3.48%) Bicep
5 47 (3.27%) SQL
6 34 (2.36%) Java
7 11 (0.76%) ActionScript
8 10 (0.70%) Perl
9 9 (0.63%) Kusto Query Language
10 7 (0.49%) Groovy
10 7 (0.49%) JavaScript
11 6 (0.42%) COBOL
11 6 (0.42%) Go
12 5 (0.35%) C++
13 4 (0.28%) Search Processing Language
14 3 (0.21%) PL/SQL
14 3 (0.21%) Shell Script
14 3 (0.21%) TypeScript
15 2 (0.14%) Jython
15 2 (0.14%) PHP
Qualifications
1 492 (34.21%) Security Cleared
2 342 (23.78%) SC Cleared
3 272 (18.92%) Cisco Certification
4 202 (14.05%) CCNP
5 131 (9.11%) DV Cleared
6 119 (8.28%) Degree
7 114 (7.93%) CCNA
8 79 (5.49%) CISSP
9 66 (4.59%) Azure Certification
10 48 (3.34%) AWS Certification
11 39 (2.71%) CCIE
12 37 (2.57%) Microsoft Certification
13 33 (2.29%) CISM
14 28 (1.95%) Computer Science Degree
15 23 (1.60%) Network+ Certification
16 21 (1.46%) JNCIS
17 18 (1.25%) CompTIA Security+
18 17 (1.18%) JNCIP
18 17 (1.18%) Server+ Certification
19 16 (1.11%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 72 (5.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 61 (4.24%) NIST
3 45 (3.13%) GDPR
4 30 (2.09%) NCSC
5 25 (1.74%) PCI DSS
6 23 (1.60%) SLA
7 21 (1.46%) QA
8 19 (1.32%) Cyber Essentials
9 9 (0.63%) Data Quality
9 9 (0.63%) NIST 800
10 8 (0.56%) Disclosure Scotland
10 8 (0.56%) GxP
10 8 (0.56%) JSP 440
10 8 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 6 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 6 (0.42%) HIPAA
12 5 (0.35%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 4 (0.28%) 21 CFR Part 11
13 4 (0.28%) PMO
13 4 (0.28%) SOC 2
System Software
1 236 (16.41%) Active Directory
2 176 (12.24%) VMware Infrastructure
3 71 (4.94%) Docker
4 65 (4.52%) Hyper-V
5 59 (4.10%) VMware NSX
6 44 (3.06%) vSphere
7 42 (2.92%) Virtual Machines
8 39 (2.71%) VMware ESXi
9 26 (1.81%) Firmware
10 14 (0.97%) Virtual Desktop
11 11 (0.76%) BitLocker
12 10 (0.70%) Squid
13 8 (0.56%) Microsoft App-V
14 6 (0.42%) NFS
15 4 (0.28%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.21%) Dovecot
16 3 (0.21%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 3 (0.21%) Postfix
16 3 (0.21%) Virtual Servers
17 2 (0.14%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 282 (19.61%) Terraform
2 205 (14.26%) Ansible
3 123 (8.55%) Kubernetes
4 109 (7.58%) FortiGate
5 68 (4.73%) Microsoft Intune
6 55 (3.82%) Grafana
7 52 (3.62%) Prometheus
8 36 (2.50%) SCCM
9 35 (2.43%) Single Sign-On
10 26 (1.81%) Progress Chef
11 24 (1.67%) vCenter Server
12 20 (1.39%) CASB
13 18 (1.25%) Puppet
14 17 (1.18%) VxRail
15 13 (0.90%) Cisco Prime
16 11 (0.76%) Packer
16 11 (0.76%) QRadar
17 9 (0.63%) Argo
18 8 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
18 8 (0.56%) vMotion
Vendors
1 522 (36.30%) Cisco
2 333 (23.16%) Microsoft
3 305 (21.21%) Palo Alto
4 225 (15.65%) VMware
5 203 (14.12%) Fortinet
6 196 (13.63%) F5
7 159 (11.06%) Juniper
8 123 (8.55%) CheckPoint
9 90 (6.26%) Splunk
10 74 (5.15%) Aruba
10 74 (5.15%) Google
10 74 (5.15%) ServiceNow
11 69 (4.80%) Arista
11 69 (4.80%) SolarWinds
12 67 (4.66%) Zscaler
13 47 (3.27%) Meraki
14 44 (3.06%) Citrix
14 44 (3.06%) Red Hat
15 34 (2.36%) Infoblox
16 29 (2.02%) Dynatrace