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

6 months to
24 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 80 50 50
Rank change year-on-year -30 0 +8
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,327 1,229 1,641
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.03% 4.22% 3.71%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 30.10% 32.19% 27.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 878 744 1,019
10th Percentile £337 £314 £312
25th Percentile £413 £407 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £508 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.48% +1.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £651 £692 £746
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £490 £495
% change year-on-year +2.04% -1.01% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 27 19 43
10th Percentile £20.65 £14.20 £16.00
25th Percentile £37.25 £22.38 £23.92
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 £50.75 £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 4,409 3,818 5,889
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.06% 13.11% 13.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,840 2,370 3,543
10th Percentile £213 £213 £205
25th Percentile £375 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £490 £475
Median % change year-on-year - +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 188 145 397
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.99 £13.94
25th Percentile £18.78 £21.46 £17.72
Median hourly rate £37.50 £35.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% +7.69% +71.05%
75th Percentile £67.31 £63.25 £63.75
90th Percentile £78.10 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £32.50 £43.12
% change year-on-year +29.05% -24.62% +128.00%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 1,115 £515 +0.24% 486
UK excluding London -21 750 £500 +2.04% 424
London -51 406 £525 - 122
Work from Home -28 375 £513 +2.50% 174
North of England -19 233 £508 +6.84% 91
South East +5 232 £500 +2.30% 146
North West -7 154 £528 +11.16% 56
Midlands -45 95 £425 -22.73% 64
West Midlands -26 85 £425 -15.00% 35
Yorkshire -27 77 £433 -15.61% 24
South West -51 56 £550 +0.92% 44
East of England -15 55 £475 -12.04% 57
Scotland -6 52 £425 -2.86% 22
Wales -16 26 £425 +9.68% 12
East Midlands -54 7 £475 -19.83% 29
North East -21 5 £548 +9.50% 11
Northern Ireland - 3 £500 - 3

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 (3.32%) Microsoft Exchange
2 34 (2.56%) Confluence
3 20 (1.51%) SharePoint
4 13 (0.98%) Apache
4 13 (0.98%) nginx
5 9 (0.68%) SAS
6 8 (0.60%) CICS
7 6 (0.45%) IIS
8 4 (0.30%) OpenStack
9 2 (0.15%) Apache Pulsar
9 2 (0.15%) Skype for Business
9 2 (0.15%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.15%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.075%) Anypoint
10 1 (0.075%) IBM HTTP Server
10 1 (0.075%) JBoss
10 1 (0.075%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 1 (0.075%) WebSphere Application Server
10 1 (0.075%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 36 (2.71%) Microsoft Office
2 22 (1.66%) Microsoft Excel
3 20 (1.51%) MS Visio
4 17 (1.28%) 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
1 453 (34.14%) Azure
2 300 (22.61%) AWS
3 131 (9.87%) GCP
4 124 (9.34%) Microsoft 365
5 114 (8.59%) Entra ID
6 67 (5.05%) GitHub
7 65 (4.90%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 58 (4.37%) IaaS
9 52 (3.92%) PaaS
10 51 (3.84%) Azure DevOps
11 48 (3.62%) Azure Sentinel
12 44 (3.32%) Serverless
13 43 (3.24%) Azure Monitor
14 38 (2.86%) GitHub Actions
15 36 (2.71%) Amazon EC2
15 36 (2.71%) AWS Lambda
16 35 (2.64%) AWS CloudFormation
17 34 (2.56%) SaaS
18 33 (2.49%) Azure ExpressRoute
19 32 (2.41%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 362 (27.28%) Network Security
2 333 (25.09%) VPN
2 333 (25.09%) WAN
3 269 (20.27%) DNS
4 246 (18.54%) LAN
5 214 (16.13%) BGP
6 190 (14.32%) OSPF
7 145 (10.93%) TCP/IP
8 142 (10.70%) VLAN
9 137 (10.32%) DHCP
10 129 (9.72%) SD-WAN
11 122 (9.19%) Wireless
12 99 (7.46%) Wi-Fi
13 97 (7.31%) MPLS
14 74 (5.58%) IPsec
15 70 (5.28%) Cisco ISE
16 66 (4.97%) Cisco ASA
17 64 (4.82%) VXLAN
18 56 (4.22%) SSL
19 53 (3.99%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (2.03%) SQL Server
2 20 (1.51%) Amazon RDS
3 19 (1.43%) PostgreSQL
4 17 (1.28%) Elasticsearch
5 13 (0.98%) Oracle Database
6 10 (0.75%) Data Lake
6 10 (0.75%) Data Warehouse
7 9 (0.68%) Power BI
8 8 (0.60%) DataStage
9 7 (0.53%) Azure SQL Database
9 7 (0.53%) MongoDB
10 5 (0.38%) MySQL
10 5 (0.38%) Relational Database
11 4 (0.30%) Amazon QuickSight
11 4 (0.30%) NoSQL
11 4 (0.30%) Redis
11 4 (0.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 3 (0.23%) Delta Lake
12 3 (0.23%) DynamoDB
12 3 (0.23%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 78 (5.88%) JIRA
2 63 (4.75%) Jenkins
3 53 (3.99%) GitLab
4 49 (3.69%) Git
5 22 (1.66%) Sonatype Nexus
6 21 (1.58%) Bitbucket
7 16 (1.21%) Burp Suite
7 16 (1.21%) Metasploit
8 8 (0.60%) Chocolatey
8 8 (0.60%) Jaeger
9 7 (0.53%) SonarQube
10 4 (0.30%) Artifactory
10 4 (0.30%) CircleCI
11 3 (0.23%) Browser DevTools
12 1 (0.075%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.075%) Claude Code
12 1 (0.075%) Introscope
12 1 (0.075%) MSI
12 1 (0.075%) Postman
12 1 (0.075%) Travis CI
General
1 353 (26.60%) Social Skills
2 163 (12.28%) Finance
3 135 (10.17%) Analytical Skills
4 108 (8.14%) Public Sector
5 95 (7.16%) Documentation Skills
6 55 (4.14%) Banking
7 40 (3.01%) Telecoms
8 33 (2.49%) Legal
9 26 (1.96%) Financial Institution
10 24 (1.81%) Manufacturing
11 19 (1.43%) Influencing Skills
12 17 (1.28%) Presentation Skills
13 12 (0.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 12 (0.90%) Local Government
13 12 (0.90%) Military
14 11 (0.83%) Law
15 10 (0.75%) Organisational Skills
15 10 (0.75%) Retail
16 8 (0.60%) Aerospace
16 8 (0.60%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 372 (28.03%) Network Engineer
2 236 (17.78%) Architect
3 135 (10.17%) Senior
4 115 (8.67%) Security Engineer
5 87 (6.56%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 84 (6.33%) Network Architect
7 53 (3.99%) Azure Engineer
8 51 (3.84%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
9 49 (3.69%) Security Architect
10 46 (3.47%) Analyst
11 45 (3.39%) Solutions Architect
12 44 (3.32%) Cloud Engineer
12 44 (3.32%) Senior Network Engineer
13 39 (2.94%) Consultant
13 39 (2.94%) Platform Engineer
14 37 (2.79%) DevOps Engineer
14 37 (2.79%) Lead
14 37 (2.79%) Network Security Engineer
15 33 (2.49%) Cisco Engineer
15 33 (2.49%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (5.35%) 802.1X
2 37 (2.79%) LDAP
3 30 (2.26%) Middleware
3 30 (2.26%) SAML
4 29 (2.19%) OpenID
5 20 (1.51%) OAuth
6 19 (1.43%) Kafka
6 19 (1.43%) OAuth2
7 14 (1.06%) Node.js
8 12 (0.90%) REST
9 11 (0.83%) JSON
10 10 (0.75%) ARM Templates
10 10 (0.75%) OpenTelemetry
11 9 (0.68%) Spring Boot
12 8 (0.60%) Elastic Stack
12 8 (0.60%) XML
13 7 (0.53%) YAML
14 6 (0.45%) LangChain
14 6 (0.45%) PyTorch
14 6 (0.45%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 280 (21.10%) Data Centre
2 84 (6.33%) Security Posture
3 76 (5.73%) PKI
4 75 (5.65%) Cloud Native
5 46 (3.47%) Onboarding
6 44 (3.32%) Hybrid Cloud
7 41 (3.09%) Operational Technology
8 37 (2.79%) Public Cloud
9 36 (2.71%) Management Information System
10 31 (2.34%) Clustering
11 22 (1.66%) IoT
12 21 (1.58%) Product Ownership
13 20 (1.51%) Cyber Threat
13 20 (1.51%) Data Protection Act
13 20 (1.51%) SCADA
14 19 (1.43%) NHS
14 19 (1.43%) Replication
14 19 (1.43%) Security Operations Centre
15 18 (1.36%) Private Cloud
16 15 (1.13%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 335 (25.24%) Windows
2 203 (15.30%) Linux
3 141 (10.63%) Windows Server
4 34 (2.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 31 (2.34%) Unix
6 24 (1.81%) VMS
7 13 (0.98%) Windows Server 2019
8 11 (0.83%) Windows Server 2016
9 9 (0.68%) Solaris
9 9 (0.68%) Windows 7
10 8 (0.60%) AIX
10 8 (0.60%) Windows 10
11 6 (0.45%) Windows Server 2003
12 5 (0.38%) Mac OS
13 4 (0.30%) CatOS
13 4 (0.30%) Windows Server 2012
14 3 (0.23%) Amazon Linux
15 2 (0.15%) Android
15 2 (0.15%) Ubuntu
16 1 (0.075%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 229 (17.26%) Cybersecurity
2 211 (15.90%) DevOps
3 206 (15.52%) Problem-Solving
4 185 (13.94%) Infrastructure as Code
5 184 (13.87%) CI/CD
6 157 (11.83%) ITIL
7 156 (11.76%) Load Balancing
8 151 (11.38%) Migration
9 137 (10.32%) High Availability
10 132 (9.95%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 131 (9.87%) Agile
12 128 (9.65%) SIEM
13 126 (9.50%) Cloud Security
14 115 (8.67%) Zero Trust
15 113 (8.52%) Change Management
16 106 (7.99%) Incident Response
17 95 (7.16%) Stakeholder Management
18 92 (6.93%) Mentoring
19 89 (6.71%) Identity Access Management
19 89 (6.71%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 203 (15.30%) Python
2 192 (14.47%) PowerShell
3 92 (6.93%) Bash
4 60 (4.52%) SQL
5 38 (2.86%) Bicep
6 35 (2.64%) Java
7 26 (1.96%) Perl
8 12 (0.90%) Kusto Query Language
8 12 (0.90%) Ruby
9 8 (0.60%) COBOL
9 8 (0.60%) JavaScript
9 8 (0.60%) Rust
10 5 (0.38%) PL/SQL
11 4 (0.30%) C#
11 4 (0.30%) Go
11 4 (0.30%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.15%) C++
12 2 (0.15%) PHP
13 1 (0.075%) ActionScript
13 1 (0.075%) Jython
Qualifications
1 467 (35.19%) Security Cleared
2 318 (23.96%) SC Cleared
3 251 (18.91%) Cisco Certification
4 199 (15.00%) CCNP
5 128 (9.65%) DV Cleared
6 119 (8.97%) Degree
7 104 (7.84%) CCNA
8 86 (6.48%) CISSP
9 56 (4.22%) Azure Certification
10 50 (3.77%) CCIE
11 48 (3.62%) AWS Certification
12 47 (3.54%) CISM
13 43 (3.24%) Microsoft Certification
14 27 (2.03%) CompTIA Security+
14 27 (2.03%) JNCIS
15 26 (1.96%) JNCIP
16 22 (1.66%) Computer Science Degree
17 20 (1.51%) JNCIA
18 18 (1.36%) CREST Certified
18 18 (1.36%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 106 (7.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 79 (5.95%) NIST
3 69 (5.20%) GDPR
4 45 (3.39%) PCI DSS
5 38 (2.86%) NCSC
6 30 (2.26%) SLA
7 29 (2.19%) Cyber Essentials
8 20 (1.51%) QA
9 16 (1.21%) PMO
10 9 (0.68%) JSP 440
11 7 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
12 6 (0.45%) GRC
12 6 (0.45%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 5 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 5 (0.38%) RMADS
13 5 (0.38%) SOC 2
14 4 (0.30%) Data Quality
14 4 (0.30%) GxP
14 4 (0.30%) HIPAA
14 4 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 243 (18.31%) Active Directory
2 169 (12.74%) VMware Infrastructure
3 90 (6.78%) Docker
4 68 (5.12%) VMware NSX
5 40 (3.01%) Hyper-V
6 37 (2.79%) vSphere
7 25 (1.88%) Virtual Machines
8 23 (1.73%) VMware ESXi
9 18 (1.36%) Virtual Desktop
10 16 (1.21%) Firmware
11 11 (0.83%) Squid
12 9 (0.68%) Virtual Servers
13 8 (0.60%) BitLocker
14 7 (0.53%) Microsoft App-V
15 3 (0.23%) DFS Replication
15 3 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
16 2 (0.15%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 2 (0.15%) KVM
16 2 (0.15%) NDS
16 2 (0.15%) NetIQ eDirectory
Systems Management
1 214 (16.13%) Terraform
2 151 (11.38%) Ansible
3 122 (9.19%) Kubernetes
4 96 (7.23%) FortiGate
5 65 (4.90%) Microsoft Intune
6 44 (3.32%) Grafana
6 44 (3.32%) Single Sign-On
7 37 (2.79%) Prometheus
8 36 (2.71%) SCCM
9 29 (2.19%) vCenter Server
10 25 (1.88%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 18 (1.36%) Nmap
12 16 (1.21%) QRadar
13 15 (1.13%) CASB
14 13 (0.98%) Nagios
15 10 (0.75%) Fluentd
15 10 (0.75%) Nessus
15 10 (0.75%) WSUS
16 9 (0.68%) Puppet
16 9 (0.68%) WMI
Vendors
1 446 (33.61%) Cisco
2 311 (23.44%) Microsoft
3 273 (20.57%) Palo Alto
4 216 (16.28%) VMware
5 149 (11.23%) F5
6 148 (11.15%) Fortinet
7 142 (10.70%) Juniper
8 127 (9.57%) CheckPoint
9 91 (6.86%) Splunk
10 89 (6.71%) Aruba
11 70 (5.28%) SolarWinds
12 64 (4.82%) Google
13 57 (4.30%) Meraki
14 53 (3.99%) ServiceNow
15 45 (3.39%) Citrix
16 44 (3.32%) Zscaler
17 42 (3.17%) Oracle
18 40 (3.01%) Red Hat
19 35 (2.64%) Arista
20 24 (1.81%) Extreme Networks