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 26 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 80 49 51
Rank change year-on-year -31 +2 +8
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,342 1,225 1,636
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.05% 4.21% 3.69%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.33% 32.26% 27.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 883 739 1,018
10th Percentile £336 £313 £313
25th Percentile £413 £406 £407
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% +2.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £652 £688 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
Number of hourly rates quoted 27 17 42
10th Percentile £20.65 £14.20 £16.00
25th Percentile £37.25 £18.50 £24.00
Median hourly rate £48.72 £36.65 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.95% -43.62% +10.80%
75th Percentile £74.26 £41.50 £85.65
90th Percentile £85.40 £56.50 £87.52
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.72 £35.82 £76.53
% change year-on-year +36.00% -53.19% +38.33%

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 4,425 3,797 5,893
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.06% 13.06% 13.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,841 2,357 3,552
10th Percentile £220 £213 £205
25th Percentile £375 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £490 £475
Median % change year-on-year +0.41% +3.16% -9.52%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
Number of hourly rates quoted 192 145 397
10th Percentile £15.51 £14.99 £13.94
25th Percentile £18.97 £21.46 £17.72
Median hourly rate £38.50 £35.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% +7.69% +69.71%
75th Percentile £67.31 £63.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £76.35 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.25 £32.50 £45.44
% change year-on-year +30.00% -28.48% +140.30%

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 26 March 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 26 March 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 26 March 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 -34 1,127 £513 -1.16% 482
UK excluding London -20 757 £500 - 419
London -54 415 £525 - 122
Work from Home -30 371 £514 +2.75% 174
North of England -19 235 £500 +5.26% 105
South East +8 232 £506 +2.27% 134
North West -11 156 £528 +11.16% 67
Midlands -40 96 £425 -24.11% 62
West Midlands -25 86 £425 -18.35% 37
Yorkshire -21 77 £433 -15.61% 27
East of England -17 56 £475 -10.38% 51
South West -45 56 £550 +0.73% 42
Scotland -5 52 £425 -2.86% 22
Wales -15 29 £425 +9.68% 13
East Midlands -56 7 £475 -19.83% 25
North East -16 5 £548 +9.50% 12
Northern Ireland - 3 £500 - 5

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 42 (3.13%) Microsoft Exchange
2 34 (2.53%) Confluence
3 20 (1.49%) SharePoint
4 13 (0.97%) Apache
4 13 (0.97%) nginx
5 9 (0.67%) SAS
6 8 (0.60%) CICS
7 6 (0.45%) IIS
8 4 (0.30%) OpenStack
9 3 (0.22%) WebSphere
10 2 (0.15%) Apache Pulsar
10 2 (0.15%) IBM HTTP Server
10 2 (0.15%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.15%) Skype for Business
10 2 (0.15%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.15%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.15%) WebSphere Portal
11 1 (0.075%) Anypoint
11 1 (0.075%) JBoss
Applications
1 39 (2.91%) Microsoft Office
2 22 (1.64%) Microsoft Excel
3 20 (1.49%) MS Visio
4 17 (1.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.45%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.075%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 2 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.075%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.075%) Primavera
2 1 (0.075%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.075%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 455 (33.90%) Azure
2 303 (22.58%) AWS
3 134 (9.99%) GCP
4 121 (9.02%) Microsoft 365
5 113 (8.42%) Entra ID
6 68 (5.07%) GitHub
7 64 (4.77%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 57 (4.25%) IaaS
9 52 (3.87%) Azure DevOps
10 51 (3.80%) PaaS
11 47 (3.50%) Azure Monitor
12 45 (3.35%) Azure Sentinel
13 44 (3.28%) Serverless
14 38 (2.83%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 38 (2.83%) GitHub Actions
15 35 (2.61%) Amazon EC2
15 35 (2.61%) AWS Lambda
16 34 (2.53%) AWS CloudFormation
16 34 (2.53%) SaaS
17 31 (2.31%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 367 (27.35%) Network Security
2 341 (25.41%) VPN
3 336 (25.04%) WAN
4 276 (20.57%) DNS
5 248 (18.48%) LAN
6 219 (16.32%) BGP
7 194 (14.46%) OSPF
8 151 (11.25%) TCP/IP
8 151 (11.25%) VLAN
9 138 (10.28%) DHCP
10 132 (9.84%) SD-WAN
11 124 (9.24%) Wireless
12 100 (7.45%) Wi-Fi
13 97 (7.23%) MPLS
14 75 (5.59%) IPsec
15 72 (5.37%) Cisco ISE
16 67 (4.99%) Cisco ASA
17 66 (4.92%) VXLAN
18 57 (4.25%) SSL
19 55 (4.10%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (2.16%) SQL Server
2 20 (1.49%) PostgreSQL
3 18 (1.34%) Amazon RDS
4 17 (1.27%) Elasticsearch
5 13 (0.97%) Oracle Database
6 10 (0.75%) Data Lake
6 10 (0.75%) Data Warehouse
7 9 (0.67%) Power BI
8 8 (0.60%) DataStage
8 8 (0.60%) MongoDB
9 7 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
10 6 (0.45%) MySQL
11 5 (0.37%) Relational Database
12 4 (0.30%) Amazon QuickSight
12 4 (0.30%) NoSQL
12 4 (0.30%) Redis
12 4 (0.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 3 (0.22%) Delta Lake
13 3 (0.22%) Metadata
13 3 (0.22%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 80 (5.96%) JIRA
2 62 (4.62%) Jenkins
3 51 (3.80%) GitLab
4 47 (3.50%) Git
5 22 (1.64%) Sonatype Nexus
6 19 (1.42%) Bitbucket
7 16 (1.19%) Burp Suite
7 16 (1.19%) Metasploit
8 9 (0.67%) Chocolatey
9 8 (0.60%) Jaeger
10 7 (0.52%) SonarQube
11 4 (0.30%) Artifactory
11 4 (0.30%) CircleCI
12 3 (0.22%) Browser DevTools
13 2 (0.15%) Introscope
14 1 (0.075%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 1 (0.075%) Maven
14 1 (0.075%) Postman
14 1 (0.075%) Subversion
14 1 (0.075%) Travis CI
General
1 351 (26.15%) Social Skills
2 162 (12.07%) Finance
3 137 (10.21%) Analytical Skills
4 108 (8.05%) Public Sector
5 95 (7.08%) Documentation Skills
6 55 (4.10%) Banking
7 40 (2.98%) Telecoms
8 33 (2.46%) Legal
9 26 (1.94%) Financial Institution
10 23 (1.71%) Manufacturing
11 18 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
12 16 (1.19%) Presentation Skills
13 13 (0.97%) Military
14 12 (0.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 11 (0.82%) Law
15 11 (0.82%) Local Government
15 11 (0.82%) Retail
16 10 (0.75%) Organisational Skills
17 8 (0.60%) Aerospace
17 8 (0.60%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 375 (27.94%) Network Engineer
2 235 (17.51%) Architect
3 136 (10.13%) Senior
4 112 (8.35%) Security Engineer
5 87 (6.48%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 83 (6.18%) Network Architect
7 54 (4.02%) Azure Engineer
8 51 (3.80%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
9 47 (3.50%) Security Architect
10 46 (3.43%) Analyst
10 46 (3.43%) Solutions Architect
11 43 (3.20%) Senior Network Engineer
12 41 (3.06%) Consultant
13 40 (2.98%) Cloud Engineer
14 39 (2.91%) Platform Engineer
15 38 (2.83%) Lead
16 37 (2.76%) DevOps Engineer
17 36 (2.68%) Network Security Engineer
18 34 (2.53%) Cisco Engineer
19 33 (2.46%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 70 (5.22%) 802.1X
2 38 (2.83%) LDAP
3 33 (2.46%) Middleware
4 30 (2.24%) SAML
5 29 (2.16%) OpenID
6 20 (1.49%) Kafka
6 20 (1.49%) OAuth
7 19 (1.42%) OAuth2
8 14 (1.04%) REST
9 12 (0.89%) ARM Templates
9 12 (0.89%) Node.js
10 11 (0.82%) JSON
11 10 (0.75%) OpenTelemetry
12 9 (0.67%) Spring Boot
13 8 (0.60%) Elastic Stack
13 8 (0.60%) XML
14 7 (0.52%) YAML
15 6 (0.45%) LangChain
15 6 (0.45%) PyTorch
15 6 (0.45%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 280 (20.86%) Data Centre
2 82 (6.11%) Security Posture
3 76 (5.66%) PKI
4 74 (5.51%) Cloud Native
5 47 (3.50%) Onboarding
6 45 (3.35%) Hybrid Cloud
7 41 (3.06%) Operational Technology
8 37 (2.76%) Public Cloud
9 35 (2.61%) Clustering
9 35 (2.61%) Management Information System
10 22 (1.64%) IoT
10 22 (1.64%) Replication
11 21 (1.56%) Cyber Threat
11 21 (1.56%) Product Ownership
11 21 (1.56%) SCADA
12 20 (1.49%) NHS
13 19 (1.42%) Security Operations Centre
14 18 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
14 18 (1.34%) Private Cloud
15 15 (1.12%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 344 (25.63%) Windows
2 207 (15.42%) Linux
3 143 (10.66%) Windows Server
4 39 (2.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 33 (2.46%) Unix
6 28 (2.09%) VMS
7 13 (0.97%) Windows Server 2019
8 11 (0.82%) Windows Server 2016
9 10 (0.75%) Solaris
10 9 (0.67%) Windows 7
11 8 (0.60%) AIX
11 8 (0.60%) Windows 10
12 6 (0.45%) Windows Server 2003
13 5 (0.37%) Mac OS
14 4 (0.30%) CatOS
14 4 (0.30%) Windows Server 2012
15 3 (0.22%) Amazon Linux
15 3 (0.22%) SUSE
15 3 (0.22%) Ubuntu
16 2 (0.15%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 226 (16.84%) Cybersecurity
2 210 (15.65%) DevOps
3 207 (15.42%) Problem-Solving
4 187 (13.93%) CI/CD
4 187 (13.93%) Infrastructure as Code
5 163 (12.15%) Load Balancing
6 162 (12.07%) ITIL
7 161 (12.00%) Migration
8 146 (10.88%) High Availability
9 132 (9.84%) Agile
9 132 (9.84%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 125 (9.31%) SIEM
11 122 (9.09%) Cloud Security
12 117 (8.72%) Zero Trust
13 116 (8.64%) Change Management
14 107 (7.97%) Incident Response
15 94 (7.00%) Stakeholder Management
16 93 (6.93%) Mentoring
17 91 (6.78%) Project Delivery
18 89 (6.63%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 207 (15.42%) Python
2 195 (14.53%) PowerShell
3 95 (7.08%) Bash
4 61 (4.55%) SQL
5 38 (2.83%) Bicep
6 33 (2.46%) Java
7 25 (1.86%) Perl
8 12 (0.89%) Kusto Query Language
9 10 (0.75%) Ruby
10 8 (0.60%) COBOL
10 8 (0.60%) JavaScript
10 8 (0.60%) Rust
11 6 (0.45%) PL/SQL
12 4 (0.30%) C#
12 4 (0.30%) Go
12 4 (0.30%) Shell Script
13 2 (0.15%) C++
13 2 (0.15%) Jython
13 2 (0.15%) PHP
14 1 (0.075%) ActionScript
Qualifications
1 472 (35.17%) Security Cleared
2 320 (23.85%) SC Cleared
3 254 (18.93%) Cisco Certification
4 204 (15.20%) CCNP
5 128 (9.54%) DV Cleared
6 121 (9.02%) Degree
7 108 (8.05%) CCNA
8 83 (6.18%) CISSP
9 59 (4.40%) Azure Certification
10 50 (3.73%) CCIE
11 46 (3.43%) AWS Certification
12 44 (3.28%) CISM
13 42 (3.13%) Microsoft Certification
14 27 (2.01%) CompTIA Security+
14 27 (2.01%) JNCIS
15 26 (1.94%) JNCIP
16 22 (1.64%) Computer Science Degree
17 20 (1.49%) JNCIA
18 18 (1.34%) CREST Certified
18 18 (1.34%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 102 (7.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 79 (5.89%) NIST
3 68 (5.07%) GDPR
4 45 (3.35%) PCI DSS
5 37 (2.76%) NCSC
6 31 (2.31%) SLA
7 28 (2.09%) Cyber Essentials
8 21 (1.56%) QA
9 16 (1.19%) PMO
10 9 (0.67%) JSP 440
11 7 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
12 6 (0.45%) GRC
12 6 (0.45%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 5 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 5 (0.37%) RMADS
14 4 (0.30%) Data Quality
14 4 (0.30%) GxP
14 4 (0.30%) HIPAA
14 4 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 4 (0.30%) SOC 2
System Software
1 242 (18.03%) Active Directory
2 175 (13.04%) VMware Infrastructure
3 89 (6.63%) Docker
4 69 (5.14%) VMware NSX
5 43 (3.20%) Hyper-V
6 39 (2.91%) vSphere
7 31 (2.31%) Virtual Machines
8 26 (1.94%) VMware ESXi
9 19 (1.42%) Firmware
9 19 (1.42%) Virtual Desktop
10 11 (0.82%) Squid
11 8 (0.60%) BitLocker
12 7 (0.52%) Microsoft App-V
12 7 (0.52%) Virtual Servers
13 3 (0.22%) DFS Replication
13 3 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
14 2 (0.15%) Citrix Hypervisor
14 2 (0.15%) EMC RecoverPoint
14 2 (0.15%) KVM
14 2 (0.15%) NetIQ eDirectory
Systems Management
1 218 (16.24%) Terraform
2 160 (11.92%) Ansible
3 122 (9.09%) Kubernetes
4 100 (7.45%) FortiGate
5 62 (4.62%) Microsoft Intune
6 45 (3.35%) Grafana
7 44 (3.28%) Single Sign-On
8 38 (2.83%) Prometheus
9 35 (2.61%) SCCM
10 32 (2.38%) vCenter Server
11 25 (1.86%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 18 (1.34%) Nmap
13 16 (1.19%) QRadar
14 14 (1.04%) CASB
15 13 (0.97%) Nagios
16 12 (0.89%) Cisco Prime
16 12 (0.89%) VxRail
17 10 (0.75%) Fluentd
17 10 (0.75%) Nessus
17 10 (0.75%) WSUS
Vendors
1 451 (33.61%) Cisco
2 305 (22.73%) Microsoft
3 272 (20.27%) Palo Alto
4 221 (16.47%) VMware
5 151 (11.25%) F5
6 148 (11.03%) Fortinet
7 144 (10.73%) Juniper
8 127 (9.46%) CheckPoint
9 94 (7.00%) Splunk
10 90 (6.71%) Aruba
11 70 (5.22%) SolarWinds
12 64 (4.77%) Google
13 56 (4.17%) ServiceNow
14 55 (4.10%) Meraki
15 45 (3.35%) Citrix
16 44 (3.28%) Zscaler
17 43 (3.20%) Oracle
18 41 (3.06%) Red Hat
19 37 (2.76%) Arista
20 25 (1.86%) Tenable