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 21 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 87 51 51
Rank change year-on-year -36 0 +4
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,346 1,214 1,600
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.91% 4.12% 3.68%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.04% 32.10% 28.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 873 742 1,008
10th Percentile £332 £313 £313
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £513
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% -0.49% -2.38%
75th Percentile £586 £600 £627
90th Percentile £647 £688 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
Number of hourly rates quoted 33 18 42
10th Percentile £20.55 - £16.00
25th Percentile £37.25 £14.20 £23.98
Median hourly rate £56.00 £35.82 £68.25
Median % change year-on-year +56.33% -47.51% +10.08%
75th Percentile £74.26 £41.50 £86.66
90th Percentile £84.21 £53.63 £87.52
UK excluding London median hourly rate £56.00 £35.00 £83.77
% change year-on-year +60.00% -58.22% +35.10%

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 4,480 3,782 5,676
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.68% 12.84% 13.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,806 2,345 3,403
10th Percentile £246 £213 £205
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £489
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -0.31% -5.96%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £464 £475
% change year-on-year +2.43% -2.37% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 207 171 425
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.86
25th Percentile £20.79 £21.00 £17.69
Median hourly rate £48.72 £37.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.92% -6.25% +110.53%
75th Percentile £70.00 £61.38 £62.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.50 £28.00 £46.14
% change year-on-year +98.21% -39.31% +149.38%

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 21 April 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 21 April 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 21 April 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 -38 1,126 £500 -3.85% 459
UK excluding London -13 764 £500 - 418
London -59 412 £513 -2.38% 118
Work from Home -26 378 £514 +2.75% 203
South East +1 243 £500 - 133
North of England -20 219 £500 +5.26% 102
North West -10 143 £528 +11.16% 46
Midlands -39 94 £425 -22.73% 57
West Midlands -24 82 £423 -19.18% 32
Yorkshire -32 74 £443 -13.66% 27
East of England -9 64 £500 -4.76% 47
South West -49 57 £550 +0.55% 39
Scotland +14 54 £425 -1.45% 21
Wales -11 31 £425 +11.11% 20
East Midlands -52 8 £475 -17.39% 25
North East -12 5 £548 -0.45% 30
Northern Ireland +4 3 £443 - 13

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 40 (2.97%) Microsoft Exchange
2 30 (2.23%) Confluence
3 17 (1.26%) SharePoint
4 13 (0.97%) Apache
4 13 (0.97%) nginx
5 10 (0.74%) CICS
6 7 (0.52%) SAS
7 5 (0.37%) IIS
8 3 (0.22%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.15%) Apache Pulsar
9 2 (0.15%) CMS
9 2 (0.15%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.15%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.15%) Skype for Business
9 2 (0.15%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.15%) Umbraco
9 2 (0.15%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.15%) WebSphere Portal
10 1 (0.074%) Anypoint
10 1 (0.074%) JBoss
Applications
1 35 (2.60%) Microsoft Office
2 21 (1.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 21 (1.56%) MS Visio
3 17 (1.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.45%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.074%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 2 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.074%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.074%) Primavera
2 1 (0.074%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.074%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 442 (32.84%) Azure
2 287 (21.32%) AWS
3 119 (8.84%) GCP
4 115 (8.54%) Entra ID
4 115 (8.54%) Microsoft 365
5 60 (4.46%) GitHub
5 60 (4.46%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 58 (4.31%) IaaS
7 52 (3.86%) PaaS
8 50 (3.71%) Azure DevOps
9 42 (3.12%) Azure Sentinel
10 41 (3.05%) SaaS
11 40 (2.97%) Azure Monitor
11 40 (2.97%) Serverless
12 37 (2.75%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 36 (2.67%) GitHub Actions
14 31 (2.30%) AWS Lambda
15 29 (2.15%) Amazon EC2
16 28 (2.08%) Amazon EKS
16 28 (2.08%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 374 (27.79%) Network Security
2 344 (25.56%) WAN
3 335 (24.89%) VPN
4 282 (20.95%) DNS
5 263 (19.54%) LAN
6 227 (16.86%) BGP
7 199 (14.78%) OSPF
8 156 (11.59%) VLAN
9 148 (11.00%) DHCP
10 147 (10.92%) TCP/IP
11 137 (10.18%) SD-WAN
12 125 (9.29%) Wireless
13 94 (6.98%) MPLS
13 94 (6.98%) Wi-Fi
14 83 (6.17%) IPsec
15 72 (5.35%) Cisco ISE
16 71 (5.27%) VXLAN
17 66 (4.90%) Cisco ASA
18 64 (4.75%) Cisco Nexus
19 59 (4.38%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (2.15%) SQL Server
2 21 (1.56%) PostgreSQL
3 18 (1.34%) Elasticsearch
4 13 (0.97%) Amazon RDS
5 11 (0.82%) Oracle Database
6 10 (0.74%) DataStage
7 9 (0.67%) Power BI
8 8 (0.59%) Data Lake
8 8 (0.59%) Data Warehouse
9 7 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
9 7 (0.52%) MongoDB
10 6 (0.45%) MySQL
11 5 (0.37%) Relational Database
12 4 (0.30%) Amazon Athena
12 4 (0.30%) Amazon QuickSight
12 4 (0.30%) Amazon Redshift
12 4 (0.30%) NoSQL
12 4 (0.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 3 (0.22%) DynamoDB
13 3 (0.22%) Redis
Development Applications
1 76 (5.65%) JIRA
2 52 (3.86%) Jenkins
3 43 (3.19%) Git
4 41 (3.05%) GitLab
5 19 (1.41%) Sonatype Nexus
6 16 (1.19%) Bitbucket
6 16 (1.19%) Burp Suite
6 16 (1.19%) Metasploit
7 9 (0.67%) Chocolatey
7 9 (0.67%) Jaeger
8 7 (0.52%) SonarQube
9 6 (0.45%) Artifactory
10 5 (0.37%) Browser DevTools
11 4 (0.30%) CircleCI
12 2 (0.15%) Introscope
12 2 (0.15%) Postman
12 2 (0.15%) Team Foundation Server
13 1 (0.074%) Maven
13 1 (0.074%) PVCS
13 1 (0.074%) Subversion
General
1 344 (25.56%) Social Skills
2 163 (12.11%) Finance
3 141 (10.48%) Analytical Skills
4 103 (7.65%) Public Sector
5 93 (6.91%) Documentation Skills
6 53 (3.94%) Banking
7 41 (3.05%) Telecoms
8 31 (2.30%) Legal
9 26 (1.93%) Financial Institution
10 23 (1.71%) Manufacturing
11 20 (1.49%) Influencing Skills
12 19 (1.41%) Military
13 15 (1.11%) Law
14 14 (1.04%) Retail
15 13 (0.97%) Presentation Skills
16 11 (0.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 11 (0.82%) Local Government
17 10 (0.74%) Organisational Skills
18 9 (0.67%) Front Office
19 8 (0.59%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 384 (28.53%) Network Engineer
2 227 (16.86%) Architect
3 145 (10.77%) Senior
4 110 (8.17%) Security Engineer
5 92 (6.84%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 82 (6.09%) Network Architect
7 55 (4.09%) Azure Engineer
7 55 (4.09%) Senior Network Engineer
8 53 (3.94%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
9 45 (3.34%) Cloud Engineer
9 45 (3.34%) Security Architect
10 41 (3.05%) Network Security Engineer
11 40 (2.97%) Lead
12 39 (2.90%) Analyst
13 38 (2.82%) Solutions Architect
13 38 (2.82%) Technical Architect
14 37 (2.75%) Consultant
15 35 (2.60%) Cisco Engineer
15 35 (2.60%) DevOps Engineer
16 33 (2.45%) Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 67 (4.98%) 802.1X
2 39 (2.90%) LDAP
3 35 (2.60%) Middleware
4 34 (2.53%) SAML
5 30 (2.23%) OpenID
6 20 (1.49%) Kafka
7 15 (1.11%) OAuth
7 15 (1.11%) REST
8 14 (1.04%) OAuth2
9 11 (0.82%) OpenTelemetry
10 10 (0.74%) JSON
10 10 (0.74%) Spring Boot
11 9 (0.67%) ARM Templates
11 9 (0.67%) Node.js
12 8 (0.59%) Elastic Stack
13 7 (0.52%) XML
14 6 (0.45%) HTML
14 6 (0.45%) LangChain
14 6 (0.45%) scikit-learn
14 6 (0.45%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 289 (21.47%) Data Centre
2 74 (5.50%) Security Posture
3 73 (5.42%) Cloud Native
4 70 (5.20%) PKI
5 49 (3.64%) Onboarding
6 43 (3.19%) Hybrid Cloud
7 40 (2.97%) Operational Technology
8 38 (2.82%) Clustering
9 35 (2.60%) Management Information System
9 35 (2.60%) Public Cloud
10 29 (2.15%) IoT
11 22 (1.63%) Cyber Threat
12 21 (1.56%) Data Protection Act
12 21 (1.56%) Product Ownership
12 21 (1.56%) Replication
12 21 (1.56%) SCADA
13 19 (1.41%) Enterprise Software
13 19 (1.41%) Private Cloud
14 18 (1.34%) Enterprise Storage
14 18 (1.34%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 337 (25.04%) Windows
2 205 (15.23%) Linux
3 141 (10.48%) Windows Server
4 37 (2.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 36 (2.67%) Unix
6 29 (2.15%) VMS
7 12 (0.89%) Solaris
8 11 (0.82%) Windows Server 2016
8 11 (0.82%) Windows Server 2019
9 10 (0.74%) AIX
10 7 (0.52%) Windows Server 2003
11 5 (0.37%) Amazon Linux
11 5 (0.37%) Mac OS
11 5 (0.37%) Windows 10
11 5 (0.37%) Windows 7
11 5 (0.37%) Windows Server 2012
12 4 (0.30%) CatOS
13 3 (0.22%) Data ONTAP
13 3 (0.22%) SUSE
14 2 (0.15%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 219 (16.27%) Cybersecurity
2 209 (15.53%) DevOps
3 194 (14.41%) Problem-Solving
4 176 (13.08%) CI/CD
5 171 (12.70%) Infrastructure as Code
6 168 (12.48%) Migration
7 161 (11.96%) Load Balancing
8 159 (11.81%) ITIL
9 150 (11.14%) High Availability
10 137 (10.18%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 123 (9.14%) Agile
12 118 (8.77%) Zero Trust
13 115 (8.54%) Change Management
13 115 (8.54%) SIEM
14 114 (8.47%) Cloud Security
15 96 (7.13%) Roadmaps
16 93 (6.91%) Continuous Improvement
17 91 (6.76%) Project Delivery
18 90 (6.69%) Observability
18 90 (6.69%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 187 (13.89%) Python
2 174 (12.93%) PowerShell
3 82 (6.09%) Bash
4 55 (4.09%) SQL
5 38 (2.82%) Bicep
6 31 (2.30%) Java
7 21 (1.56%) Perl
8 11 (0.82%) Kusto Query Language
9 10 (0.74%) COBOL
9 10 (0.74%) JavaScript
10 8 (0.59%) Rust
11 7 (0.52%) Ruby
12 6 (0.45%) PL/SQL
13 5 (0.37%) Shell Script
14 4 (0.30%) C#
14 4 (0.30%) Go
15 3 (0.22%) Groovy
16 2 (0.15%) C++
16 2 (0.15%) Jython
16 2 (0.15%) PHP
Qualifications
1 473 (35.14%) Security Cleared
2 337 (25.04%) SC Cleared
3 266 (19.76%) Cisco Certification
4 208 (15.45%) CCNP
5 122 (9.06%) Degree
6 118 (8.77%) DV Cleared
7 109 (8.10%) CCNA
8 79 (5.87%) CISSP
9 60 (4.46%) Azure Certification
10 49 (3.64%) CCIE
11 44 (3.27%) AWS Certification
11 44 (3.27%) CISM
12 30 (2.23%) Microsoft Certification
13 25 (1.86%) CompTIA Security+
14 24 (1.78%) Computer Science Degree
15 23 (1.71%) JNCIS
16 22 (1.63%) JNCIP
17 19 (1.41%) JNCIA
17 19 (1.41%) Network+ Certification
18 18 (1.34%) CREST Certified
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 95 (7.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 72 (5.35%) NIST
3 68 (5.05%) GDPR
4 45 (3.34%) PCI DSS
5 33 (2.45%) NCSC
6 32 (2.38%) SLA
7 26 (1.93%) Cyber Essentials
8 23 (1.71%) QA
9 17 (1.26%) PMO
10 7 (0.52%) JSP 440
11 6 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
11 6 (0.45%) RMADS
12 5 (0.37%) Data Quality
12 5 (0.37%) Disclosure Scotland
12 5 (0.37%) GRC
12 5 (0.37%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 5 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 5 (0.37%) SOC 2
13 3 (0.22%) HIPAA
13 3 (0.22%) ISA99
System Software
1 229 (17.01%) Active Directory
2 175 (13.00%) VMware Infrastructure
3 73 (5.42%) Docker
3 73 (5.42%) VMware NSX
4 42 (3.12%) Hyper-V
5 35 (2.60%) vSphere
6 33 (2.45%) Virtual Machines
7 31 (2.30%) VMware ESXi
8 21 (1.56%) Firmware
9 20 (1.49%) Virtual Desktop
10 11 (0.82%) Squid
11 10 (0.74%) BitLocker
12 8 (0.59%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.45%) Virtual Servers
14 3 (0.22%) DFS Replication
14 3 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
15 2 (0.15%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 2 (0.15%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 2 (0.15%) Samba
15 2 (0.15%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 201 (14.93%) Terraform
2 154 (11.44%) Ansible
3 114 (8.47%) Kubernetes
4 103 (7.65%) FortiGate
5 60 (4.46%) Microsoft Intune
6 46 (3.42%) Grafana
7 41 (3.05%) Prometheus
8 39 (2.90%) Single Sign-On
9 34 (2.53%) SCCM
10 33 (2.45%) vCenter Server
11 21 (1.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 18 (1.34%) Nmap
13 13 (0.97%) CASB
13 13 (0.97%) QRadar
14 12 (0.89%) Cisco Prime
14 12 (0.89%) Nagios
14 12 (0.89%) Puppet
15 11 (0.82%) VxRail
15 11 (0.82%) WSUS
16 10 (0.74%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 474 (35.22%) Cisco
2 298 (22.14%) Microsoft
3 276 (20.51%) Palo Alto
4 215 (15.97%) VMware
5 169 (12.56%) Fortinet
6 157 (11.66%) F5
7 146 (10.85%) Juniper
8 132 (9.81%) CheckPoint
9 90 (6.69%) Splunk
10 80 (5.94%) Aruba
11 72 (5.35%) SolarWinds
12 59 (4.38%) ServiceNow
13 57 (4.23%) Google
14 50 (3.71%) Meraki
15 46 (3.42%) Citrix
16 42 (3.12%) Arista
16 42 (3.12%) Zscaler
17 41 (3.05%) Red Hat
18 36 (2.67%) Oracle
19 26 (1.93%) Extreme Networks