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

6 months to
29 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 77 51 48
Rank change year-on-year -26 -3 +14
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,233 1,237 1,782
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.20% 3.93% 4.07%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.59% 30.25% 29.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 805 729 1,156
10th Percentile £313 £313 £313
25th Percentile £413 £410 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -
75th Percentile £600 £615 £625
90th Percentile £675 £700 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.50% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 23 55
10th Percentile £26.53 £20.00 £30.80
25th Percentile £33.00 £20.72 £61.25
Median hourly rate £41.94 £35.00 £65.98
Median % change year-on-year +19.83% -46.95% +70.89%
75th Percentile £71.06 £41.50 £76.53
90th Percentile £85.30 £57.50 £85.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.33 £35.00 £66.62
% change year-on-year +29.51% -47.47% +35.64%

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 4,031 4,089 6,004
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.47% 12.99% 13.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,652 2,376 3,641
10th Percentile £204 £213 £206
25th Percentile £356 £363 £356
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £495
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +1.01% -3.88%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £685 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £468 £475
% change year-on-year -3.74% -1.58% +2.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 164 139 388
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.76 £16.25
25th Percentile £18.97 £21.46 £22.00
Median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £51.65
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% -32.24% +149.47%
75th Percentile £65.00 £58.69 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.54 £31.79 £56.45
% change year-on-year +27.52% -43.68% +186.89%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 -25 1,037 £513 -2.38% 494
UK excluding London -23 690 £488 -2.50% 454
London -35 389 £530 -1.40% 134
Work from Home -4 386 £513 -2.38% 200
North of England -27 199 £508 +6.84% 99
South East +4 180 £500 - 170
Midlands -27 122 £440 -12.00% 44
West Midlands -1 113 £440 +0.57% 31
North West -22 112 £523 +7.73% 58
Yorkshire -19 83 £463 +8.82% 33
Scotland -12 61 £450 -4.00% 30
South West -24 61 £550 +4.76% 52
East of England -15 41 £475 -5.00% 59
Wales -17 18 £335 -8.22% 7
East Midlands -56 8 £500 -23.14% 13
Northern Ireland - 8 £488 - 3
North East -17 7 £550 - 11

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 44 (3.57%) Confluence
1 44 (3.57%) Microsoft Exchange
2 26 (2.11%) SharePoint
3 16 (1.30%) nginx
4 13 (1.05%) Apache
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%) WebLogic
10 1 (0.081%) Anypoint
10 1 (0.081%) CMS
10 1 (0.081%) Mattermost
10 1 (0.081%) Traefik
10 1 (0.081%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 34 (2.76%) Microsoft Office
2 22 (1.78%) MS Visio
3 19 (1.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 18 (1.46%) Microsoft Excel
5 8 (0.65%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 1 (0.081%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.081%) Finacle
2 1 (0.081%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.081%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 420 (34.06%) Azure
2 340 (27.58%) AWS
3 144 (11.68%) GCP
4 116 (9.41%) Microsoft 365
5 91 (7.38%) Entra ID
6 79 (6.41%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 64 (5.19%) Amazon EC2
8 54 (4.38%) Amazon S3
9 52 (4.22%) GitHub
10 50 (4.06%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 43 (3.49%) Azure Sentinel
12 42 (3.41%) IaaS
13 41 (3.33%) Azure DevOps
14 39 (3.16%) Azure Monitor
15 36 (2.92%) Amazon ELB
16 35 (2.84%) PaaS
17 33 (2.68%) Serverless
18 32 (2.60%) AWS CloudFormation
18 32 (2.60%) GitHub Actions
19 26 (2.11%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 302 (24.49%) Network Security
2 292 (23.68%) VPN
3 249 (20.19%) WAN
4 238 (19.30%) DNS
5 167 (13.54%) LAN
6 150 (12.17%) BGP
7 149 (12.08%) TCP/IP
8 125 (10.14%) OSPF
9 114 (9.25%) VLAN
10 111 (9.00%) Wireless
11 104 (8.43%) SD-WAN
12 93 (7.54%) DHCP
13 83 (6.73%) Wi-Fi
14 77 (6.24%) MPLS
14 77 (6.24%) SSL
15 61 (4.95%) IPsec
16 55 (4.46%) Cisco ASA
17 51 (4.14%) Cisco Nexus
18 49 (3.97%) HTTP
19 46 (3.73%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (2.76%) SQL Server
2 31 (2.51%) Amazon RDS
3 28 (2.27%) PostgreSQL
4 11 (0.89%) Elasticsearch
5 8 (0.65%) 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%) Redis
8 5 (0.41%) Relational Database
9 4 (0.32%) NoSQL
9 4 (0.32%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 3 (0.24%) Amazon QuickSight
10 3 (0.24%) DynamoDB
10 3 (0.24%) Oracle Exadata
11 2 (0.16%) Azure SQL Database
11 2 (0.16%) Data Vault
11 2 (0.16%) MariaDB
11 2 (0.16%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 90 (7.30%) Jenkins
2 77 (6.24%) Git
2 77 (6.24%) JIRA
3 64 (5.19%) GitLab
4 25 (2.03%) Sonatype Nexus
5 19 (1.54%) Bitbucket
6 14 (1.14%) Burp Suite
6 14 (1.14%) Metasploit
7 12 (0.97%) Vagrant
8 10 (0.81%) SonarQube
9 8 (0.65%) Jaeger
10 4 (0.32%) CircleCI
11 3 (0.24%) Chocolatey
12 2 (0.16%) Artifactory
12 2 (0.16%) MSI
12 2 (0.16%) Postman
13 1 (0.081%) Atlassian Bamboo
13 1 (0.081%) Maven
13 1 (0.081%) Subversion
13 1 (0.081%) Travis CI
General
1 345 (27.98%) Social Skills
2 138 (11.19%) Analytical Skills
3 117 (9.49%) Finance
3 117 (9.49%) Public Sector
4 82 (6.65%) Documentation Skills
5 57 (4.62%) Banking
6 49 (3.97%) Telecoms
7 34 (2.76%) Legal
8 30 (2.43%) Manufacturing
9 29 (2.35%) Presentation Skills
10 14 (1.14%) Financial Institution
10 14 (1.14%) Military
11 13 (1.05%) Local Government
12 12 (0.97%) Retail
13 11 (0.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 8 (0.65%) Aerospace
14 8 (0.65%) Influencing Skills
14 8 (0.65%) Law
15 7 (0.57%) Electronics
15 7 (0.57%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 305 (24.74%) Network Engineer
2 200 (16.22%) Architect
3 121 (9.81%) Senior
4 108 (8.76%) Security Engineer
5 89 (7.22%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 65 (5.27%) Network Architect
7 57 (4.62%) Security Architect
8 56 (4.54%) DevOps Engineer
9 51 (4.14%) Consultant
10 50 (4.06%) Analyst
10 50 (4.06%) Platform Engineer
11 46 (3.73%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 45 (3.65%) Azure Engineer
13 40 (3.24%) Solutions Architect
14 37 (3.00%) Lead
14 37 (3.00%) Network Security Engineer
15 33 (2.68%) Cloud Engineer
15 33 (2.68%) Support Engineer
16 32 (2.60%) Senior Network Engineer
17 27 (2.19%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (3.57%) 802.1X
2 41 (3.33%) LDAP
3 31 (2.51%) SAML
4 26 (2.11%) Middleware
4 26 (2.11%) OpenID
5 17 (1.38%) OAuth
6 16 (1.30%) Node.js
6 16 (1.30%) OAuth2
7 15 (1.22%) JSON
8 14 (1.14%) Kafka
8 14 (1.14%) REST
9 11 (0.89%) ARM Templates
10 10 (0.81%) Elastic Stack
10 10 (0.81%) XML
11 9 (0.73%) Spring Boot
12 8 (0.65%) Microsoft Graph
12 8 (0.65%) OpenTelemetry
13 7 (0.57%) RFC 2544
13 7 (0.57%) YAML
14 4 (0.32%) Regular Expression
Miscellaneous
1 230 (18.65%) Data Centre
2 86 (6.97%) Security Posture
3 57 (4.62%) PKI
4 48 (3.89%) Onboarding
5 45 (3.65%) Hybrid Cloud
6 44 (3.57%) Cloud Native
7 43 (3.49%) Operational Technology
8 36 (2.92%) Replication
9 31 (2.51%) Public Cloud
10 27 (2.19%) Management Information System
11 25 (2.03%) Security Operations Centre
12 23 (1.87%) Cyber Threat
13 22 (1.78%) Data Protection Act
14 21 (1.70%) SCADA
15 19 (1.54%) Private Cloud
16 17 (1.38%) NHS
17 14 (1.14%) Product Ownership
18 13 (1.05%) Fat Client
18 13 (1.05%) Thin Client
19 12 (0.97%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 302 (24.49%) Windows
2 210 (17.03%) Linux
3 120 (9.73%) Windows Server
4 33 (2.68%) VMS
5 28 (2.27%) Unix
6 26 (2.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 15 (1.22%) Amazon Linux
8 14 (1.14%) Ubuntu
8 14 (1.14%) Windows Server 2019
9 12 (0.97%) Windows 10
10 11 (0.89%) Windows 7
11 7 (0.57%) Windows Server 2016
12 5 (0.41%) CentOS
12 5 (0.41%) Mac OS
13 4 (0.32%) Android
13 4 (0.32%) CatOS
13 4 (0.32%) Windows Server 2003
13 4 (0.32%) Windows Server 2012
14 3 (0.24%) Apple iOS
14 3 (0.24%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 244 (19.79%) Cybersecurity
2 211 (17.11%) DevOps
3 197 (15.98%) Problem-Solving
4 188 (15.25%) CI/CD
5 178 (14.44%) Infrastructure as Code
6 146 (11.84%) Migration
7 142 (11.52%) Incident Response
8 140 (11.35%) SIEM
9 137 (11.11%) Cloud Security
10 136 (11.03%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 133 (10.79%) Agile
12 119 (9.65%) ITIL
13 110 (8.92%) High Availability
14 104 (8.43%) Load Balancing
15 102 (8.27%) Stakeholder Management
16 101 (8.19%) Change Management
17 99 (8.03%) Zero Trust
18 90 (7.30%) Mentoring
19 83 (6.73%) Security Architecture
20 80 (6.49%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 236 (19.14%) Python
2 198 (16.06%) PowerShell
3 109 (8.84%) Bash
4 67 (5.43%) SQL
5 44 (3.57%) Java
6 35 (2.84%) Perl
7 22 (1.78%) Bicep
8 13 (1.05%) Kusto Query Language
9 12 (0.97%) Groovy
9 12 (0.97%) Ruby
10 9 (0.73%) Rust
11 8 (0.65%) Shell Script
12 6 (0.49%) JavaScript
13 4 (0.32%) C#
13 4 (0.32%) Go
13 4 (0.32%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.081%) C
14 1 (0.081%) C++
14 1 (0.081%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 419 (33.98%) Security Cleared
2 289 (23.44%) SC Cleared
3 211 (17.11%) Cisco Certification
4 173 (14.03%) CCNP
5 114 (9.25%) Degree
6 104 (8.43%) DV Cleared
7 89 (7.22%) CISSP
8 88 (7.14%) CCNA
9 58 (4.70%) Azure Certification
10 56 (4.54%) CISM
11 48 (3.89%) AWS Certification
12 47 (3.81%) CCIE
13 40 (3.24%) Microsoft Certification
14 25 (2.03%) CompTIA Security+
15 20 (1.62%) Computer Science Degree
16 19 (1.54%) CEH
17 18 (1.46%) JNCIS
18 17 (1.38%) JNCIP
19 16 (1.30%) CREST Certified
20 15 (1.22%) CHECK Team Member
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 109 (8.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 93 (7.54%) NIST
3 62 (5.03%) GDPR
4 39 (3.16%) PCI DSS
5 26 (2.11%) NCSC
6 24 (1.95%) Cyber Essentials
6 24 (1.95%) SLA
7 18 (1.46%) QA
8 15 (1.22%) PMO
9 12 (0.97%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 11 (0.89%) GRC
11 7 (0.57%) HIPAA
12 6 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
12 6 (0.49%) COBIT
12 6 (0.49%) JSP 440
13 5 (0.41%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 5 (0.41%) SOC 2
14 4 (0.32%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
14 4 (0.32%) NIST 800
15 3 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 221 (17.92%) Active Directory
2 161 (13.06%) VMware Infrastructure
3 133 (10.79%) Docker
4 57 (4.62%) VMware NSX
5 41 (3.33%) Hyper-V
6 34 (2.76%) Virtual Machines
7 32 (2.60%) vSphere
8 21 (1.70%) VMware ESXi
9 18 (1.46%) Squid
10 17 (1.38%) Virtual Desktop
11 15 (1.22%) DFS Replication
12 11 (0.89%) Firmware
13 8 (0.65%) Dovecot
13 8 (0.65%) KVM
13 8 (0.65%) Postfix
13 8 (0.65%) Virtual Servers
14 5 (0.41%) Microsoft App-V
14 5 (0.41%) NDS
14 5 (0.41%) NetIQ eDirectory
14 5 (0.41%) Snort
Systems Management
1 208 (16.87%) Terraform
2 166 (13.46%) Ansible
3 115 (9.33%) Kubernetes
4 72 (5.84%) FortiGate
5 58 (4.70%) Microsoft Intune
6 43 (3.49%) Grafana
7 41 (3.33%) Single Sign-On
8 39 (3.16%) Prometheus
9 35 (2.84%) SCCM
10 26 (2.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 26 (2.11%) vCenter Server
11 18 (1.46%) Nmap
12 16 (1.30%) CSIRT
12 16 (1.30%) Nessus
13 14 (1.14%) Fluentd
13 14 (1.14%) Nagios
14 12 (0.97%) QRadar
14 12 (0.97%) WMI
15 9 (0.73%) CASB
15 9 (0.73%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 394 (31.95%) Cisco
2 283 (22.95%) Microsoft
3 273 (22.14%) Palo Alto
4 199 (16.14%) VMware
5 155 (12.57%) F5
6 145 (11.76%) CheckPoint
7 119 (9.65%) Fortinet
8 102 (8.27%) Juniper
9 88 (7.14%) Splunk
10 71 (5.76%) Aruba
11 63 (5.11%) Meraki
12 57 (4.62%) Oracle
13 56 (4.54%) SolarWinds
14 53 (4.30%) Google
15 49 (3.97%) Zscaler
16 46 (3.73%) ServiceNow
17 37 (3.00%) Citrix
18 26 (2.11%) Dell
19 25 (2.03%) Red Hat
20 18 (1.46%) Blue Coat