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 23 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 66 54 44
Rank change year-on-year -12 -10 +21
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,313 1,358 2,070
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.67% 3.68% 4.45%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 32.82% 30.32% 31.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 835 819 1,364
10th Percentile £313 £312 £319
25th Percentile £413 £406 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £500 £505
% change year-on-year -2.50% -0.99% +6.32%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 22 65
10th Percentile - £20.00 £35.00
25th Percentile £29.00 £20.45 £62.50
Median hourly rate £34.00 £31.25 £65.98
Median % change year-on-year +8.80% -52.64% +86.60%
75th Percentile £74.26 £40.63 £75.67
90th Percentile £89.63 £48.63 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.72 £27.50 £66.62
% change year-on-year +51.71% -58.72% +62.38%

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 4,001 4,479 6,516
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.20% 12.12% 14.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,583 2,584 4,055
10th Percentile £205 £225 £213
25th Percentile £354 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £601
90th Percentile £675 £685 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 202 172 350
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.40 £17.72
25th Percentile £20.82 £23.59 £22.75
Median hourly rate £35.50 £42.50 £55.70
Median % change year-on-year -16.47% -23.70% +28.05%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £66.81
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £48.56 £56.49
% change year-on-year -12.48% -14.04% +25.53%

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 23 November 2025.

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 23 November 2025.

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 23 November 2025. 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 -12 1,125 £500 -4.76% 515
UK excluding London -13 722 £488 -2.50% 491
London -2 464 £525 -4.55% 135
Work from Home -2 376 £500 -4.76% 187
North of England -17 208 £492 -1.60% 87
South East -2 179 £500 - 216
Midlands -9 147 £475 -5.00% 58
West Midlands +15 134 £475 -5.00% 44
Yorkshire 0 107 £488 +9.86% 36
North West -26 97 £523 +4.50% 46
Scotland -23 61 £450 -5.26% 22
East of England -7 55 £479 -8.81% 45
South West -31 52 £540 +2.86% 50
Wales -9 13 £225 -39.19% 20
East Midlands -36 13 £450 -12.20% 13
Northern Ireland - 11 £500 - 8
North East -7 7 £550 +22.22% 5
Channel Islands - 4 £725 -

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 59 (4.49%) Microsoft Exchange
2 49 (3.73%) Confluence
3 34 (2.59%) SharePoint
4 16 (1.22%) OpenStack
5 13 (0.99%) Apache
5 13 (0.99%) nginx
6 6 (0.46%) Tomcat
7 5 (0.38%) JBoss
8 4 (0.30%) IIS
9 3 (0.23%) SAS
9 3 (0.23%) WebSphere
10 2 (0.15%) Anypoint
10 2 (0.15%) CICS
10 2 (0.15%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.15%) Traefik
10 2 (0.15%) WebLogic
11 1 (0.076%) Exchange Server 2010
11 1 (0.076%) Exchange Server 2013
11 1 (0.076%) Mattermost
11 1 (0.076%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 29 (2.21%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (0.76%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 9 (0.69%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.53%) Microsoft Excel
5 6 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.46%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 3 (0.23%) ION MarketView
2 2 (0.15%) Dynamics GP
2 2 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.076%) Finacle
3 1 (0.076%) Pegasus Opera
Cloud Services
1 409 (31.15%) Azure
2 345 (26.28%) AWS
3 153 (11.65%) Microsoft 365
4 146 (11.12%) GCP
5 91 (6.93%) Entra ID
6 79 (6.02%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 69 (5.26%) Amazon EC2
8 61 (4.65%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 58 (4.42%) Amazon S3
10 55 (4.19%) Azure Sentinel
11 46 (3.50%) Amazon ELB
12 38 (2.89%) GitHub
13 36 (2.74%) IaaS
14 35 (2.67%) Akamai
14 35 (2.67%) Azure DevOps
15 32 (2.44%) Serverless
16 31 (2.36%) Azure Monitor
17 30 (2.28%) PaaS
17 30 (2.28%) SaaS
18 27 (2.06%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 281 (21.40%) Network Security
2 276 (21.02%) VPN
3 274 (20.87%) DNS
4 240 (18.28%) WAN
5 166 (12.64%) LAN
6 160 (12.19%) TCP/IP
7 150 (11.42%) BGP
8 140 (10.66%) SD-WAN
9 126 (9.60%) OSPF
10 121 (9.22%) Wireless
11 116 (8.83%) DHCP
12 112 (8.53%) VLAN
13 102 (7.77%) Wi-Fi
14 82 (6.25%) SSL
15 76 (5.79%) Cisco Nexus
16 73 (5.56%) MPLS
17 65 (4.95%) Cisco ISE
18 60 (4.57%) Cisco IOS
19 55 (4.19%) HTTP
20 52 (3.96%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 40 (3.05%) Amazon RDS
2 37 (2.82%) SQL Server
3 25 (1.90%) PostgreSQL
4 11 (0.84%) Relational Database
5 10 (0.76%) Amazon Aurora
6 8 (0.61%) Data Lake
7 6 (0.46%) Azure SQL Database
7 6 (0.46%) MySQL
8 5 (0.38%) Oracle Database
8 5 (0.38%) Redis
9 4 (0.30%) DB2
9 4 (0.30%) MongoDB
10 3 (0.23%) Apache Cassandra
10 3 (0.23%) Data Warehouse
10 3 (0.23%) DynamoDB
10 3 (0.23%) NoSQL
11 2 (0.15%) Amazon QuickSight
11 2 (0.15%) Data Vault
11 2 (0.15%) RDBMS
12 1 (0.076%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Development Applications
1 108 (8.23%) Jenkins
2 95 (7.24%) Git
3 84 (6.40%) JIRA
4 66 (5.03%) GitLab
5 26 (1.98%) Sonatype Nexus
6 22 (1.68%) Vagrant
7 16 (1.22%) Postman
8 15 (1.14%) Bitbucket
9 8 (0.61%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.23%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.15%) Maven
11 2 (0.15%) MSI
12 1 (0.076%) Eclipse
12 1 (0.076%) Subversion
General
1 329 (25.06%) Social Skills
2 148 (11.27%) Finance
3 147 (11.20%) Analytical Skills
4 126 (9.60%) Public Sector
5 66 (5.03%) Banking
6 57 (4.34%) Documentation Skills
7 56 (4.27%) Telecoms
8 34 (2.59%) Manufacturing
9 30 (2.28%) Legal
9 30 (2.28%) Presentation Skills
10 25 (1.90%) Games
11 17 (1.29%) Local Government
12 13 (0.99%) Military
13 12 (0.91%) Organisational Skills
14 11 (0.84%) Law
14 11 (0.84%) Retail
15 10 (0.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 9 (0.69%) Financial Institution
16 9 (0.69%) Influencing Skills
17 6 (0.46%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 303 (23.08%) Network Engineer
2 210 (15.99%) Architect
3 134 (10.21%) Security Engineer
4 122 (9.29%) Senior
5 83 (6.32%) Analyst
6 82 (6.25%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 77 (5.86%) Network Architect
8 76 (5.79%) Platform Engineer
9 68 (5.18%) Consultant
10 66 (5.03%) DevOps Engineer
11 57 (4.34%) Security Architect
12 54 (4.11%) Network Security Engineer
13 44 (3.35%) Support Engineer
14 42 (3.20%) Solutions Architect
15 41 (3.12%) Azure Engineer
16 36 (2.74%) Lead
17 34 (2.59%) Cloud Engineer
17 34 (2.59%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
18 32 (2.44%) AWS Engineer
18 32 (2.44%) Security Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (2.21%) LDAP
2 28 (2.13%) 802.1X
3 22 (1.68%) RFC 2544
3 22 (1.68%) SAML
4 19 (1.45%) Middleware
5 18 (1.37%) JSON
5 18 (1.37%) OpenID
5 18 (1.37%) REST
6 16 (1.22%) OAuth
7 14 (1.07%) OAuth2
8 13 (0.99%) Node.js
9 11 (0.84%) Elastic Stack
9 11 (0.84%) XML
10 8 (0.61%) ARM Templates
10 8 (0.61%) YAML
11 6 (0.46%) Kafka
11 6 (0.46%) Microsoft Graph
12 4 (0.30%) Regular Expression
13 3 (0.23%) JBoss Seam
13 3 (0.23%) Rendezvous
Miscellaneous
1 201 (15.31%) Data Centre
2 81 (6.17%) Security Posture
3 63 (4.80%) Operational Technology
4 59 (4.49%) Hybrid Cloud
5 54 (4.11%) PKI
6 49 (3.73%) Replication
7 43 (3.27%) Onboarding
8 41 (3.12%) Cloud Native
9 30 (2.28%) Management Information System
10 29 (2.21%) Data Protection Act
11 26 (1.98%) Public Cloud
12 25 (1.90%) Cyber Threat
13 22 (1.68%) SCADA
14 21 (1.60%) Security Operations Centre
15 19 (1.45%) Private Cloud
16 17 (1.29%) Cyber Defence
16 17 (1.29%) Fibre Optics
17 15 (1.14%) Enterprise Software
17 15 (1.14%) Legacy Systems
17 15 (1.14%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 327 (24.90%) Windows
2 225 (17.14%) Linux
3 112 (8.53%) Windows Server
4 41 (3.12%) Unix
5 38 (2.89%) VMS
6 36 (2.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 32 (2.44%) Mac OS
8 28 (2.13%) Android
9 25 (1.90%) Amazon Linux
10 22 (1.68%) Ubuntu
11 13 (0.99%) Windows 10
12 11 (0.84%) Windows Server 2016
12 11 (0.84%) Windows Server 2019
13 9 (0.69%) CentOS
13 9 (0.69%) Windows 7
14 8 (0.61%) Windows Server 2012
15 6 (0.46%) Solaris
16 3 (0.23%) AIX
16 3 (0.23%) Apple iOS
16 3 (0.23%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 231 (17.59%) Cybersecurity
2 205 (15.61%) DevOps
3 197 (15.00%) Problem-Solving
4 173 (13.18%) Cloud Security
5 172 (13.10%) CI/CD
6 159 (12.11%) Infrastructure as Code
7 158 (12.03%) SIEM
8 156 (11.88%) Incident Response
9 145 (11.04%) Migration
10 137 (10.43%) Agile
11 131 (9.98%) ITIL
12 123 (9.37%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 116 (8.83%) High Availability
14 102 (7.77%) Change Management
15 95 (7.24%) Load Balancing
16 94 (7.16%) Stakeholder Management
17 93 (7.08%) Security Operations
18 90 (6.85%) Network Design
19 83 (6.32%) Zero Trust
20 81 (6.17%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 285 (21.71%) Python
2 219 (16.68%) PowerShell
3 119 (9.06%) Bash
4 58 (4.42%) SQL
5 46 (3.50%) Perl
6 44 (3.35%) Java
7 22 (1.68%) Groovy
8 19 (1.45%) Kusto Query Language
9 17 (1.29%) Bicep
10 11 (0.84%) Ruby
11 9 (0.69%) Shell Script
12 7 (0.53%) JavaScript
13 6 (0.46%) Go
14 4 (0.30%) C
14 4 (0.30%) C#
15 3 (0.23%) Kotlin
15 3 (0.23%) TypeScript
16 2 (0.15%) Apex Code
16 2 (0.15%) C++
16 2 (0.15%) PHP
Qualifications
1 372 (28.33%) Security Cleared
2 259 (19.73%) SC Cleared
3 223 (16.98%) Cisco Certification
4 167 (12.72%) CCNP
5 105 (8.00%) Degree
6 101 (7.69%) CISSP
7 85 (6.47%) CCNA
8 84 (6.40%) DV Cleared
9 60 (4.57%) Azure Certification
10 55 (4.19%) AWS Certification
11 51 (3.88%) CISM
11 51 (3.88%) Microsoft Certification
12 50 (3.81%) CCIE
13 33 (2.51%) Computer Science Degree
14 27 (2.06%) CEH
14 27 (2.06%) CompTIA Security+
15 19 (1.45%) GIAC
16 17 (1.29%) JNCIP
17 15 (1.14%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 15 (1.14%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 112 (8.53%) NIST
2 104 (7.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 71 (5.41%) GDPR
4 39 (2.97%) PCI DSS
5 22 (1.68%) SLA
6 20 (1.52%) NCSC
7 18 (1.37%) QA
8 14 (1.07%) Cyber Essentials
8 14 (1.07%) GRC
9 12 (0.91%) HIPAA
9 12 (0.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 9 (0.69%) COBIT
11 8 (0.61%) SOC 2
12 6 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 5 (0.38%) GxP
13 5 (0.38%) PSD2
14 4 (0.30%) Accessibility
14 4 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
14 4 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
14 4 (0.30%) NIST 800
System Software
1 240 (18.28%) Active Directory
2 148 (11.27%) VMware Infrastructure
3 145 (11.04%) Docker
4 44 (3.35%) Hyper-V
5 37 (2.82%) Virtual Machines
6 29 (2.21%) VMware NSX
7 25 (1.90%) DFS Replication
7 25 (1.90%) vSphere
8 17 (1.29%) Firmware
9 15 (1.14%) Squid
10 11 (0.84%) VMware ESXi
11 10 (0.76%) Dovecot
11 10 (0.76%) Postfix
12 8 (0.61%) Virtual Desktop
12 8 (0.61%) Virtual Servers
13 7 (0.53%) Terminal Services
13 7 (0.53%) Veritas Cluster Server
14 6 (0.46%) KVM
14 6 (0.46%) Snort
15 5 (0.38%) NetIQ eDirectory
Systems Management
1 193 (14.70%) Terraform
2 181 (13.79%) Ansible
3 103 (7.84%) Kubernetes
4 78 (5.94%) Microsoft Intune
5 70 (5.33%) FortiGate
6 62 (4.72%) SCCM
7 41 (3.12%) Grafana
8 39 (2.97%) Prometheus
9 31 (2.36%) Single Sign-On
10 22 (1.68%) Puppet
11 21 (1.60%) Nessus
12 20 (1.52%) vCenter Server
13 19 (1.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 17 (1.29%) CSIRT
15 16 (1.22%) CASB
16 15 (1.14%) QRadar
17 13 (0.99%) Fluentd
18 12 (0.91%) SCOM
19 10 (0.76%) Microsoft Clustering
19 10 (0.76%) WMI
Vendors
1 449 (34.20%) Cisco
2 346 (26.35%) Microsoft
3 228 (17.36%) Palo Alto
4 184 (14.01%) VMware
5 168 (12.80%) F5
6 142 (10.81%) Fortinet
7 125 (9.52%) CheckPoint
8 110 (8.38%) Splunk
9 102 (7.77%) Juniper
10 83 (6.32%) Meraki
11 73 (5.56%) SolarWinds
12 68 (5.18%) Oracle
13 58 (4.42%) Google
14 57 (4.34%) Zscaler
15 56 (4.27%) ServiceNow
16 49 (3.73%) Citrix
17 32 (2.44%) Aruba
18 31 (2.36%) Red Hat
19 26 (1.98%) Dell
20 21 (1.60%) Tenable