Firewall Contracts

Firewall
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring Firewall skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Firewall over the 6 months leading up to 3 June 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Jun 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 49 53 49
Rank change year-on-year +4 -4 +31
Contract jobs citing Firewall 1,222 1,531 2,419
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 4.24% 3.55% 4.29%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 33.24% 28.22% 33.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 728 960 1,666
10th Percentile £313 £300 £308
25th Percentile £404 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% +2.44%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £650
90th Percentile £688 £738 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £486 £500 £487
% change year-on-year -2.75% +2.72% +3.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 46 59
10th Percentile - £16.00 £22.06
25th Percentile £14.20 £23.92 £42.63
Median hourly rate £28.75 £60.00 £62.55
Median % change year-on-year -52.08% -4.08% +39.78%
75th Percentile £41.25 £85.65 £75.83
90th Percentile £47.88 £87.50 £81.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.75 £83.50 £62.55
% change year-on-year -65.57% +33.49% +178.00%

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 3,676 5,426 7,169
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.75% 12.59% 12.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,250 3,234 4,630
10th Percentile £219 £206 £240
25th Percentile £363 £350 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -3.00% -2.44% +2.50%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £638
90th Percentile £675 £688 £720
UK excluding London median daily rate £465 £480 £475
% change year-on-year -2.97% +0.95% +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 167 417 444
10th Percentile £14.20 £13.50 £9.80
25th Percentile £17.30 £16.30 £10.63
Median hourly rate £37.50 £40.00 £18.34
Median % change year-on-year -6.25% +118.16% -29.48%
75th Percentile £58.75 £63.75 £59.85
90th Percentile £80.41 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £45.88 £18.00
% change year-on-year -34.61% +154.89% -16.28%

Firewall
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Firewall as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Firewall in the UK

Firewall
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Firewall.

Daily rate trend for Firewall in the UK

Firewall
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Firewall over the 6 months to 3 June 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Firewall in the UK

Firewall
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Firewall.

Hourly rate trend for Firewall in the UK

Firewall
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Firewall over the 6 months to 3 June 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Firewall in the UK

Firewall
Top 18 Contract 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 3 June 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 0 1,053 £508 -0.98% 1,237
UK excluding London -4 597 £486 -2.75% 853
London +12 493 £523 -0.48% 459
Work from Home +5 388 £500 -4.76% 634
North of England +8 162 £485 -7.62% 210
South East -7 146 £500 +3.90% 209
North West +6 104 £475 -29.73% 97
Midlands -12 84 £525 +10.53% 151
South West -6 81 £500 +0.50% 103
Yorkshire +14 56 £492 -1.60% 86
West Midlands -10 55 £500 +5.26% 100
East of England +23 48 £500 +5.26% 107
Scotland -3 39 £438 -7.89% 46
Wales +20 36 £350 +12.00% 18
East Midlands +9 29 £555 +10.17% 47
Northern Ireland -1 7 - - 17
North East -4 2 £500 +33.33% 32
Channel Islands - 1 £450 - 8

Firewall
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 69 (5.65%) Microsoft Exchange
2 40 (3.27%) SharePoint
3 28 (2.29%) Confluence
4 6 (0.49%) IIS
5 5 (0.41%) CMS
5 5 (0.41%) nginx
6 3 (0.25%) Apache
6 3 (0.25%) Apache Spark
6 3 (0.25%) IBM Domino
6 3 (0.25%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.082%) Anypoint
7 1 (0.082%) Camunda
7 1 (0.082%) WinCC
Applications
1 39 (3.19%) Microsoft Office
2 18 (1.47%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (1.06%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.082%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.16%) Alphatax
1 2 (0.16%) Dynamics GP
1 2 (0.16%) Fidessa
1 2 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
1 2 (0.16%) SAP PM
2 1 (0.082%) Distributed Ledger
2 1 (0.082%) Oracle Payables
2 1 (0.082%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 390 (31.91%) Azure
2 253 (20.70%) AWS
3 127 (10.39%) Microsoft 365
4 96 (7.86%) GCP
5 81 (6.63%) Entra ID
6 78 (6.38%) IaaS
7 56 (4.58%) AWS CloudFormation
8 54 (4.42%) PaaS
9 46 (3.76%) Azure DevOps
10 44 (3.60%) Serverless
11 41 (3.36%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 40 (3.27%) SaaS
13 33 (2.70%) Azure Sentinel
14 28 (2.29%) GitHub
15 27 (2.21%) Azure Monitor
16 23 (1.88%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 22 (1.80%) OpenShift
18 20 (1.64%) Amazon S3
19 18 (1.47%) Azure AKS
20 17 (1.39%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 326 (26.68%) VPN
2 316 (25.86%) Network Security
3 241 (19.72%) DNS
4 237 (19.39%) WAN
5 192 (15.71%) BGP
6 185 (15.14%) OSPF
7 153 (12.52%) LAN
8 145 (11.87%) TCP/IP
9 132 (10.80%) Wireless
10 126 (10.31%) DHCP
11 112 (9.17%) SD-WAN
12 97 (7.94%) Cisco ASA
13 96 (7.86%) Wi-Fi
14 83 (6.79%) IPsec
15 78 (6.38%) Cisco Nexus
16 75 (6.14%) VLAN
17 69 (5.65%) MPLS
18 63 (5.16%) Cisco Firepower
19 59 (4.83%) EIGRP
20 57 (4.66%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (2.95%) SQL Server
2 21 (1.72%) Amazon RDS
3 16 (1.31%) NoSQL
4 14 (1.15%) Elasticsearch
5 12 (0.98%) Data Lake
5 12 (0.98%) PostgreSQL
6 10 (0.82%) Power BI
7 9 (0.74%) Big Data
8 7 (0.57%) Hadoop
9 6 (0.49%) MySQL
10 5 (0.41%) Data Warehouse
11 4 (0.33%) Oracle Database
12 3 (0.25%) Apache Hive
12 3 (0.25%) Apache Iceberg
12 3 (0.25%) Azure SQL Database
12 3 (0.25%) Parquet
12 3 (0.25%) Presto
12 3 (0.25%) Relational Database
13 2 (0.16%) DB2
13 2 (0.16%) GIS
Development Applications
1 48 (3.93%) Jenkins
2 42 (3.44%) JIRA
3 38 (3.11%) Git
4 24 (1.96%) GitLab
5 19 (1.55%) Sonatype Nexus
6 9 (0.74%) Postman
7 5 (0.41%) Maven
8 4 (0.33%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.25%) Artifactory
9 3 (0.25%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 3 (0.25%) Eclipse
9 3 (0.25%) Poetry
9 3 (0.25%) SonarQube
10 2 (0.16%) Gradle
10 2 (0.16%) MSI
10 2 (0.16%) Subversion
11 1 (0.082%) TeamCity
11 1 (0.082%) Vagrant
General
1 286 (23.40%) Social Skills
2 169 (13.83%) Finance
3 114 (9.33%) Analytical Skills
4 95 (7.77%) Public Sector
5 64 (5.24%) Banking
6 50 (4.09%) Telecoms
7 30 (2.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 23 (1.88%) Manufacturing
9 22 (1.80%) Legal
10 19 (1.55%) Documentation Skills
11 18 (1.47%) Marketing
12 17 (1.39%) Presentation Skills
13 12 (0.98%) Military
14 10 (0.82%) Pharmaceutical
15 8 (0.65%) Electronics
15 8 (0.65%) Financial Institution
15 8 (0.65%) Law
15 8 (0.65%) Retail
16 7 (0.57%) Local Government
17 6 (0.49%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 380 (31.10%) Network Engineer
2 187 (15.30%) Architect
3 105 (8.59%) Senior
4 86 (7.04%) Security Engineer
5 80 (6.55%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 73 (5.97%) Network Architect
7 65 (5.32%) Support Engineer
8 59 (4.83%) Security Architect
9 56 (4.58%) Analyst
9 56 (4.58%) Cisco Engineer
10 54 (4.42%) Cisco Network Engineer
11 52 (4.26%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 51 (4.17%) Azure Engineer
13 42 (3.44%) Network Security Engineer
14 40 (3.27%) Lead
15 39 (3.19%) Consultant
16 37 (3.03%) Cloud Architect
16 37 (3.03%) Technical Architect
17 36 (2.95%) Firewall Engineer
18 34 (2.78%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (3.03%) 802.1X
2 17 (1.39%) ADO
2 17 (1.39%) ARM Templates
3 16 (1.31%) Elastic Stack
3 16 (1.31%) LDAP
4 14 (1.15%) .NET
5 13 (1.06%) RFC 2544
6 12 (0.98%) REST
7 9 (0.74%) Web Services
8 8 (0.65%) React
9 7 (0.57%) AWS CDK
9 7 (0.57%) JBoss Seam
10 5 (0.41%) OAuth
10 5 (0.41%) OpenID
10 5 (0.41%) RESTful
10 5 (0.41%) SAML
10 5 (0.41%) Spine.js
11 4 (0.33%) JSON
11 4 (0.33%) YAML
12 3 (0.25%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 155 (12.68%) Data Centre
2 50 (4.09%) Cloud Native
3 41 (3.36%) Security Posture
4 40 (3.27%) Hybrid Cloud
5 39 (3.19%) PKI
6 37 (3.03%) Management Information System
7 31 (2.54%) Cyber Threat
8 26 (2.13%) Operational Technology
9 22 (1.80%) Video Conferencing
10 20 (1.64%) Security Operations Centre
11 19 (1.55%) Anti-Spyware
12 17 (1.39%) Enterprise Software
13 16 (1.31%) Data Protection Act
13 16 (1.31%) Public Cloud
13 16 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
14 15 (1.23%) Onboarding
15 13 (1.06%) Clustering
15 13 (1.06%) CMDB
15 13 (1.06%) Linux Command Line
15 13 (1.06%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 230 (18.82%) Windows
2 139 (11.37%) Linux
3 87 (7.12%) Windows Server
4 44 (3.60%) Windows 10
5 24 (1.96%) Unix
6 19 (1.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 17 (1.39%) Mac OS
7 17 (1.39%) Windows Server 2016
8 11 (0.90%) Android
9 10 (0.82%) CentOS
9 10 (0.82%) Solaris
10 9 (0.74%) Ubuntu
11 8 (0.65%) Apple iOS
12 7 (0.57%) Windows Server 2012
13 6 (0.49%) Check Point GAiA
13 6 (0.49%) Windows 7
13 6 (0.49%) Windows Server 2019
14 5 (0.41%) CatOS
14 5 (0.41%) VMS
14 5 (0.41%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 194 (15.88%) Problem-Solving
2 169 (13.83%) Migration
3 158 (12.93%) Cybersecurity
4 156 (12.77%) DevOps
5 137 (11.21%) Agile
6 132 (10.80%) Infrastructure as Code
7 116 (9.49%) ITIL
8 105 (8.59%) SIEM
9 103 (8.43%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 102 (8.35%) Cloud Security
11 97 (7.94%) Network Monitoring
12 92 (7.53%) CI/CD
12 92 (7.53%) Network Architecture
13 87 (7.12%) High Availability
14 78 (6.38%) Security Operations
15 76 (6.22%) Change Management
15 76 (6.22%) Computer Science
16 75 (6.14%) Incident Response
17 72 (5.89%) Project Delivery
18 69 (5.65%) Network Design
Programming Languages
1 182 (14.89%) Python
2 149 (12.19%) PowerShell
3 61 (4.99%) Bash
4 56 (4.58%) Bicep
5 37 (3.03%) SQL
6 20 (1.64%) Java
7 18 (1.47%) Perl
8 12 (0.98%) Shell Script
9 7 (0.57%) C#
9 7 (0.57%) Kusto Query Language
9 7 (0.57%) TypeScript
10 6 (0.49%) JavaScript
11 5 (0.41%) Go
11 5 (0.41%) Groovy
12 4 (0.33%) PHP
13 3 (0.25%) C++
14 2 (0.16%) Rust
14 2 (0.16%) VBScript
15 1 (0.082%) ActionScript
15 1 (0.082%) VB
Qualifications
1 330 (27.00%) Security Cleared
2 243 (19.89%) SC Cleared
3 237 (19.39%) Cisco Certification
4 182 (14.89%) CCNP
5 132 (10.80%) Degree
6 99 (8.10%) CCNA
7 73 (5.97%) DV Cleared
8 60 (4.91%) CISSP
9 58 (4.75%) Computer Science Degree
10 46 (3.76%) CCIE
11 44 (3.60%) Azure Certification
12 35 (2.86%) CISM
12 35 (2.86%) Microsoft Certification
13 23 (1.88%) CEH
14 22 (1.80%) AWS Certification
15 21 (1.72%) CCSE
16 16 (1.31%) CCSA
16 16 (1.31%) CompTIA Security+
16 16 (1.31%) Master's Degree
17 15 (1.23%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 58 (4.75%) NIST
2 44 (3.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 38 (3.11%) GDPR
4 26 (2.13%) SLA
5 22 (1.80%) HIPAA
6 21 (1.72%) PCI DSS
7 13 (1.06%) NCSC
8 12 (0.98%) GRC
9 11 (0.90%) QA
10 8 (0.65%) Cyber Essentials
10 8 (0.65%) GxP
10 8 (0.65%) SOC 2
11 6 (0.49%) NIST 800
12 4 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
12 4 (0.33%) Disclosure Scotland
13 2 (0.16%) 21 CFR Part 11
13 2 (0.16%) Accessibility
13 2 (0.16%) Data Quality
13 2 (0.16%) ISO/IEC 27005
13 2 (0.16%) PMO
System Software
1 168 (13.75%) Active Directory
2 98 (8.02%) VMware Infrastructure
3 50 (4.09%) Docker
4 35 (2.86%) vSphere
5 31 (2.54%) Hyper-V
6 29 (2.37%) Virtual Machines
7 26 (2.13%) VMware NSX
8 21 (1.72%) VMware ESXi
9 16 (1.31%) Microsoft App-V
10 14 (1.15%) Firmware
11 11 (0.90%) Terminal Services
12 10 (0.82%) BitLocker
13 7 (0.57%) DFS Replication
14 5 (0.41%) Virtual Servers
15 4 (0.33%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 4 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
16 3 (0.25%) iptables
16 3 (0.25%) Veritas Cluster Server
16 3 (0.25%) XenApp
17 1 (0.082%) FreeRADIUS
Systems Management
1 162 (13.26%) Ansible
2 159 (13.01%) Terraform
3 93 (7.61%) Kubernetes
4 74 (6.06%) Microsoft Intune
5 67 (5.48%) FortiGate
6 49 (4.01%) Puppet
7 42 (3.44%) SCCM
8 23 (1.88%) vCenter Server
9 21 (1.72%) Progress Chef
10 18 (1.47%) Nagios
11 17 (1.39%) Grafana
12 15 (1.23%) Single Sign-On
13 14 (1.15%) SELinux
13 14 (1.15%) ZABBIX
14 13 (1.06%) Prometheus
15 11 (0.90%) CASB
15 11 (0.90%) Cisco Prime
16 10 (0.82%) vMotion
17 9 (0.74%) PowerCLI
18 6 (0.49%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 496 (40.59%) Cisco
2 285 (23.32%) Microsoft
3 256 (20.95%) Palo Alto
4 178 (14.57%) CheckPoint
5 159 (13.01%) Fortinet
6 143 (11.70%) VMware
7 109 (8.92%) F5
8 84 (6.87%) Juniper
9 77 (6.30%) SolarWinds
10 65 (5.32%) Meraki
11 54 (4.42%) ServiceNow
12 50 (4.09%) Google
13 43 (3.52%) Splunk
14 42 (3.44%) Infoblox
15 40 (3.27%) Aruba
16 36 (2.95%) Arista
17 31 (2.54%) Oracle
18 29 (2.37%) Red Hat
19 27 (2.21%) Zscaler
20 25 (2.05%) Citrix