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

6 months to
11 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 84 50 50
Rank change year-on-year -34 0 +9
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,304 1,262 1,722
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.06% 4.28% 3.85%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.39% 32.11% 28.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 864 756 1,063
10th Percentile £327 £319 £313
25th Percentile £413 £412 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £519 £510
Median % change year-on-year -3.57% +1.67% -2.86%
75th Percentile £588 £603 £625
90th Percentile £652 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 21 51
10th Percentile £25.65 £18.50 £16.00
25th Percentile £37.25 £31.32 £24.63
Median hourly rate £42.71 £37.00 £65.98
Median % change year-on-year +15.42% -43.92% +22.81%
75th Percentile £74.26 £41.97 £76.53
90th Percentile £85.60 £73.75 £87.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.72 £37.07 £72.50
% change year-on-year +31.42% -48.87% +31.06%

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 4,291 3,930 6,037
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.08% 13.33% 13.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,780 2,405 3,620
10th Percentile £206 £208 £205
25th Percentile £363 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -3.75% +5.26% -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £473 £475
% change year-on-year -0.74% -0.53% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 176 140 399
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.32 £14.27
25th Percentile £20.28 £21.46 £18.97
Median hourly rate £40.02 £35.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.34% -12.50% +110.53%
75th Percentile £67.31 £63.38 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.75 £75.00 £72.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.25 £33.75 £47.50
% change year-on-year +25.19% -28.95% +151.19%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 -32 1,086 £513 -2.38% 494
UK excluding London -25 728 £500 - 447
London -58 398 £525 - 100
Work from Home -23 377 £500 - 177
South East +10 224 £500 - 168
North of England -25 222 £516 +8.68% 109
North West -16 141 £539 +10.51% 73
Midlands -52 95 £425 -22.73% 56
West Midlands -24 86 £425 -15.00% 31
Yorkshire -29 79 £441 +6.90% 25
South West -36 56 £550 +0.92% 33
Scotland -5 54 £425 -2.86% 15
East of England -23 48 £473 -7.80% 63
Wales -15 26 £425 +9.68% 17
East Midlands -61 7 £475 -26.92% 24
North East -17 5 £548 -0.45% 11
Northern Ireland - 5 £500 - 2

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 45 (3.45%) Microsoft Exchange
2 34 (2.61%) Confluence
3 22 (1.69%) SharePoint
4 12 (0.92%) Apache
4 12 (0.92%) nginx
5 8 (0.61%) CICS
6 6 (0.46%) IIS
6 6 (0.46%) SAS
7 4 (0.31%) OpenStack
8 2 (0.15%) Apache Pulsar
8 2 (0.15%) Skype for Business
8 2 (0.15%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.077%) Anypoint
9 1 (0.077%) IBM HTTP Server
9 1 (0.077%) JBoss
9 1 (0.077%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 1 (0.077%) Tomcat
9 1 (0.077%) WebSphere Application Server
9 1 (0.077%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 36 (2.76%) Microsoft Office
2 22 (1.69%) Microsoft Excel
2 22 (1.69%) MS Visio
3 18 (1.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.077%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 2 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.077%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.077%) Primavera
2 1 (0.077%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.077%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 443 (33.97%) Azure
2 307 (23.54%) AWS
3 140 (10.74%) GCP
4 118 (9.05%) Microsoft 365
5 108 (8.28%) Entra ID
6 64 (4.91%) GitHub
6 64 (4.91%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 57 (4.37%) IaaS
8 50 (3.83%) PaaS
9 48 (3.68%) Azure DevOps
10 42 (3.22%) Azure Monitor
11 41 (3.14%) Azure Sentinel
11 41 (3.14%) Serverless
12 37 (2.84%) GitHub Actions
13 35 (2.68%) Amazon EC2
14 34 (2.61%) AWS CloudFormation
14 34 (2.61%) AWS Lambda
15 33 (2.53%) SaaS
16 31 (2.38%) Azure ExpressRoute
17 30 (2.30%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 335 (25.69%) Network Security
2 314 (24.08%) WAN
3 312 (23.93%) VPN
4 255 (19.56%) DNS
5 231 (17.71%) LAN
6 201 (15.41%) BGP
7 174 (13.34%) OSPF
8 142 (10.89%) TCP/IP
9 139 (10.66%) VLAN
10 129 (9.89%) DHCP
11 124 (9.51%) SD-WAN
12 122 (9.36%) Wireless
13 99 (7.59%) Wi-Fi
14 97 (7.44%) MPLS
15 68 (5.21%) IPsec
16 64 (4.91%) Cisco ISE
17 63 (4.83%) VXLAN
18 61 (4.68%) Cisco ASA
19 56 (4.29%) SSL
20 55 (4.22%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (2.45%) SQL Server
2 20 (1.53%) PostgreSQL
3 19 (1.46%) Amazon RDS
4 15 (1.15%) Elasticsearch
5 10 (0.77%) Oracle Database
6 9 (0.69%) Data Lake
7 8 (0.61%) DataStage
8 7 (0.54%) Data Warehouse
8 7 (0.54%) MongoDB
9 6 (0.46%) Power BI
10 5 (0.38%) Azure SQL Database
10 5 (0.38%) Relational Database
11 4 (0.31%) Amazon QuickSight
11 4 (0.31%) MySQL
11 4 (0.31%) Redis
11 4 (0.31%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 3 (0.23%) DynamoDB
12 3 (0.23%) NoSQL
12 3 (0.23%) Oracle Exadata
13 2 (0.15%) MariaDB
Development Applications
1 73 (5.60%) JIRA
2 61 (4.68%) Jenkins
3 52 (3.99%) GitLab
4 49 (3.76%) Git
5 24 (1.84%) Sonatype Nexus
6 21 (1.61%) Bitbucket
7 15 (1.15%) Burp Suite
7 15 (1.15%) Metasploit
8 8 (0.61%) Chocolatey
8 8 (0.61%) Jaeger
9 7 (0.54%) SonarQube
10 4 (0.31%) Artifactory
10 4 (0.31%) CircleCI
11 3 (0.23%) Browser DevTools
12 1 (0.077%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.077%) Introscope
12 1 (0.077%) MSI
12 1 (0.077%) Postman
12 1 (0.077%) Subversion
12 1 (0.077%) Travis CI
General
1 353 (27.07%) Social Skills
2 157 (12.04%) Finance
3 141 (10.81%) Analytical Skills
4 108 (8.28%) Public Sector
5 96 (7.36%) Documentation Skills
6 55 (4.22%) Banking
7 44 (3.37%) Telecoms
8 36 (2.76%) Legal
9 25 (1.92%) Financial Institution
9 25 (1.92%) Manufacturing
10 19 (1.46%) Presentation Skills
11 18 (1.38%) Influencing Skills
12 12 (0.92%) Local Government
12 12 (0.92%) Military
13 11 (0.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 11 (0.84%) Retail
14 10 (0.77%) Law
15 8 (0.61%) Aerospace
16 7 (0.54%) Electronics
16 7 (0.54%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 359 (27.53%) Network Engineer
2 219 (16.79%) Architect
3 129 (9.89%) Senior
4 116 (8.90%) Security Engineer
5 82 (6.29%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 78 (5.98%) Network Architect
7 53 (4.06%) Azure Engineer
8 51 (3.91%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
8 51 (3.91%) Security Architect
9 48 (3.68%) Consultant
10 46 (3.53%) Analyst
11 41 (3.14%) Solutions Architect
12 40 (3.07%) Senior Network Engineer
13 39 (2.99%) Cloud Engineer
13 39 (2.99%) Lead
14 38 (2.91%) DevOps Engineer
14 38 (2.91%) Network Security Engineer
15 36 (2.76%) Platform Engineer
16 32 (2.45%) Technical Architect
17 30 (2.30%) IT Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 72 (5.52%) 802.1X
2 39 (2.99%) LDAP
3 31 (2.38%) SAML
4 29 (2.22%) Middleware
4 29 (2.22%) OpenID
5 20 (1.53%) OAuth
6 19 (1.46%) OAuth2
7 18 (1.38%) Kafka
8 14 (1.07%) Node.js
9 12 (0.92%) REST
10 11 (0.84%) JSON
11 10 (0.77%) ARM Templates
11 10 (0.77%) OpenTelemetry
12 9 (0.69%) Spring Boot
13 8 (0.61%) Elastic Stack
13 8 (0.61%) XML
14 7 (0.54%) YAML
15 6 (0.46%) Microsoft Graph
15 6 (0.46%) PyTorch
15 6 (0.46%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 279 (21.40%) Data Centre
2 93 (7.13%) Security Posture
3 70 (5.37%) PKI
4 64 (4.91%) Cloud Native
5 47 (3.60%) Onboarding
6 45 (3.45%) Hybrid Cloud
7 41 (3.14%) Operational Technology
8 34 (2.61%) Management Information System
8 34 (2.61%) Public Cloud
9 28 (2.15%) Clustering
10 23 (1.76%) Cyber Threat
10 23 (1.76%) Data Protection Act
11 21 (1.61%) Product Ownership
11 21 (1.61%) Security Operations Centre
12 20 (1.53%) Replication
13 19 (1.46%) NHS
14 18 (1.38%) IoT
14 18 (1.38%) Private Cloud
15 16 (1.23%) SCADA
16 14 (1.07%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 334 (25.61%) Windows
2 204 (15.64%) Linux
3 137 (10.51%) Windows Server
4 33 (2.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 33 (2.53%) Unix
5 24 (1.84%) VMS
6 10 (0.77%) Windows Server 2019
7 9 (0.69%) Solaris
7 9 (0.69%) Windows 7
8 8 (0.61%) AIX
8 8 (0.61%) Windows 10
8 8 (0.61%) Windows Server 2016
9 5 (0.38%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.38%) Windows Server 2003
10 4 (0.31%) CatOS
10 4 (0.31%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.31%) Windows Server 2012
11 3 (0.23%) Amazon Linux
11 3 (0.23%) Android
11 3 (0.23%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 238 (18.25%) Cybersecurity
2 208 (15.95%) Problem-Solving
3 200 (15.34%) DevOps
4 187 (14.34%) CI/CD
5 175 (13.42%) Infrastructure as Code
6 148 (11.35%) ITIL
7 147 (11.27%) Migration
8 141 (10.81%) Load Balancing
9 136 (10.43%) SIEM
10 129 (9.89%) Cloud Security
11 128 (9.82%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 124 (9.51%) Agile
12 124 (9.51%) High Availability
13 108 (8.28%) Incident Response
14 104 (7.98%) Change Management
14 104 (7.98%) Zero Trust
15 96 (7.36%) Stakeholder Management
16 92 (7.06%) Mentoring
17 87 (6.67%) Continuous Improvement
18 86 (6.60%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 211 (16.18%) Python
2 192 (14.72%) PowerShell
3 92 (7.06%) Bash
4 60 (4.60%) SQL
5 38 (2.91%) Java
6 29 (2.22%) Perl
7 28 (2.15%) Bicep
8 12 (0.92%) Kusto Query Language
8 12 (0.92%) Ruby
9 8 (0.61%) COBOL
9 8 (0.61%) JavaScript
9 8 (0.61%) Rust
10 5 (0.38%) Shell Script
11 4 (0.31%) C#
12 3 (0.23%) Go
12 3 (0.23%) PL/SQL
13 2 (0.15%) C++
14 1 (0.077%) Jython
14 1 (0.077%) Korn
14 1 (0.077%) PHP
Qualifications
1 444 (34.05%) Security Cleared
2 300 (23.01%) SC Cleared
3 254 (19.48%) Cisco Certification
4 202 (15.49%) CCNP
5 120 (9.20%) DV Cleared
6 118 (9.05%) Degree
7 104 (7.98%) CCNA
8 89 (6.83%) CISSP
9 53 (4.06%) Azure Certification
10 51 (3.91%) CCIE
11 49 (3.76%) CISM
12 45 (3.45%) AWS Certification
13 40 (3.07%) Microsoft Certification
14 30 (2.30%) CompTIA Security+
15 25 (1.92%) JNCIP
15 25 (1.92%) JNCIS
16 21 (1.61%) Computer Science Degree
17 19 (1.46%) Network+ Certification
18 18 (1.38%) JNCIA
19 17 (1.30%) CREST Certified
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 106 (8.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 80 (6.13%) NIST
3 69 (5.29%) GDPR
4 43 (3.30%) PCI DSS
5 32 (2.45%) NCSC
5 32 (2.45%) SLA
6 27 (2.07%) Cyber Essentials
7 21 (1.61%) QA
8 16 (1.23%) PMO
9 9 (0.69%) Actionable Recommendations
10 8 (0.61%) JSP 440
11 7 (0.54%) GRC
11 7 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 6 (0.46%) HIPAA
12 6 (0.46%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 5 (0.38%) NIST 800
13 5 (0.38%) SOC 2
14 4 (0.31%) GxP
15 3 (0.23%) COBIT
15 3 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 247 (18.94%) Active Directory
2 160 (12.27%) VMware Infrastructure
3 92 (7.06%) Docker
4 66 (5.06%) VMware NSX
5 37 (2.84%) Hyper-V
6 35 (2.68%) vSphere
7 27 (2.07%) Virtual Machines
8 21 (1.61%) VMware ESXi
9 17 (1.30%) Virtual Desktop
10 14 (1.07%) Firmware
11 10 (0.77%) Squid
12 9 (0.69%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.46%) BitLocker
13 6 (0.46%) Microsoft App-V
14 5 (0.38%) NDS
14 5 (0.38%) NetIQ eDirectory
15 4 (0.31%) KVM
16 3 (0.23%) DFS Replication
16 3 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
17 2 (0.15%) ProxySG
Systems Management
1 199 (15.26%) Terraform
2 147 (11.27%) Ansible
3 119 (9.13%) Kubernetes
4 97 (7.44%) FortiGate
5 68 (5.21%) Microsoft Intune
6 41 (3.14%) Single Sign-On
7 40 (3.07%) Grafana
8 36 (2.76%) SCCM
9 33 (2.53%) Prometheus
10 28 (2.15%) vCenter Server
11 26 (1.99%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 17 (1.30%) Nmap
13 16 (1.23%) CASB
14 15 (1.15%) QRadar
15 13 (1.00%) Nagios
16 10 (0.77%) Fluentd
16 10 (0.77%) Nessus
16 10 (0.77%) Puppet
17 9 (0.69%) Progress Chef
17 9 (0.69%) WMI
Vendors
1 440 (33.74%) Cisco
2 296 (22.70%) Microsoft
3 268 (20.55%) Palo Alto
4 208 (15.95%) VMware
5 149 (11.43%) F5
6 141 (10.81%) Juniper
7 140 (10.74%) Fortinet
8 128 (9.82%) CheckPoint
9 97 (7.44%) Splunk
10 89 (6.83%) Aruba
11 69 (5.29%) SolarWinds
12 62 (4.75%) Google
13 61 (4.68%) Meraki
14 52 (3.99%) ServiceNow
15 49 (3.76%) Zscaler
16 44 (3.37%) Oracle
17 41 (3.14%) Citrix
18 38 (2.91%) Red Hat
19 32 (2.45%) Arista
20 24 (1.84%) Extreme Networks