NGFW Contracts

Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring NGFW skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited NGFW over the 6 months leading up to 30 April 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 464 580 621
Rank change year-on-year +116 +41 +164
Contract jobs citing NGFW 55 20 92
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.19% 0.046% 0.15%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 1.47% 0.35% 1.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 37 12 66
10th Percentile - £408 £416
25th Percentile £388 £425 £462
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - +7.32%
75th Percentile £613 £600 £638
90th Percentile £643 - £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £550 £525
% change year-on-year +9.09% +4.76% -2.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 0
Median hourly rate - £63.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £63.00 -

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
UK

NGFW 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 3,739 5,643 7,361
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.79% 12.94% 12.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,297 3,382 4,789
10th Percentile £213 £205 £235
25th Percentile £363 £350 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £495 £519
Median % change year-on-year -1.52% -4.53% +3.70%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £638
90th Percentile £675 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -2.63% - +8.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 181 423 478
10th Percentile £14.20 £13.57 £9.80
25th Percentile £17.30 £17.35 £10.63
Median hourly rate £32.50 £38.50 £19.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.58% +102.63% -31.84%
75th Percentile £58.75 £62.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £67.40 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.59 £45.88 £18.50
% change year-on-year -46.41% +148.00% -13.95%

NGFW
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for NGFW in the UK

NGFW
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for NGFW in the UK

NGFW
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing NGFW over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Daily rate histogram for NGFW in the UK

NGFW
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for NGFW in the UK

NGFW
Top 11 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing NGFW within the UK over the 6 months to 30 April 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 +101 53 £500 +7.53% 21
London +63 30 £450 +4.65% 6
Work from Home +71 24 £433 - 7
UK excluding London +62 15 £600 +9.09% 17
South East +50 11 £618 +47.02% 3
North of England - 2 £500 - 5
West Midlands - 2 £210 -
Midlands - 2 £210 -
South West +43 1 £500 -16.67% 3
North West - 1 £500 -
Yorkshire - 1 - - 5

NGFW
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:

Applications
1 1 (1.82%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 30 (54.55%) Azure
2 16 (29.09%) Azure ExpressRoute
3 13 (23.64%) AWS
4 8 (14.55%) GCP
5 4 (7.27%) AWS CloudFormation
5 4 (7.27%) Entra ID
5 4 (7.27%) SaaS
6 3 (5.45%) Microsoft 365
7 2 (3.64%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 47 (85.45%) Firewall
2 31 (56.36%) VPN
3 23 (41.82%) DNS
4 17 (30.91%) Network Security
5 13 (23.64%) WAN
6 12 (21.82%) BGP
7 10 (18.18%) MPLS
7 10 (18.18%) SSL
8 9 (16.36%) OSPF
9 8 (14.55%) Cisco ASA
9 8 (14.55%) Cisco Nexus
10 6 (10.91%) IPsec
10 6 (10.91%) SD-WAN
10 6 (10.91%) TCP/IP
11 5 (9.09%) LAN
11 5 (9.09%) Wi-Fi
11 5 (9.09%) Wireless
12 4 (7.27%) VLAN
13 3 (5.45%) DHCP
13 3 (5.45%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (3.64%) Data Lake
General
1 11 (20.00%) Social Skills
2 10 (18.18%) Finance
3 6 (10.91%) Analytical Skills
3 6 (10.91%) Public Sector
4 2 (3.64%) Back Office
4 2 (3.64%) Pharmaceutical
5 1 (1.82%) Documentation Skills
5 1 (1.82%) Law
5 1 (1.82%) Legal
5 1 (1.82%) Retail
Job Titles
1 29 (52.73%) Network Engineer
2 16 (29.09%) Azure Engineer
2 16 (29.09%) Network Support
2 16 (29.09%) Network Support Engineer
2 16 (29.09%) Support Engineer
3 15 (27.27%) Architect
4 10 (18.18%) Security Architect
5 8 (14.55%) Consultant
6 6 (10.91%) Senior
7 5 (9.09%) Security Consultant
8 4 (7.27%) Technical Architect
9 3 (5.45%) Cloud Architect
9 3 (5.45%) Cloud Security Architect
9 3 (5.45%) Firewall Architect
9 3 (5.45%) Infrastructure Architect
9 3 (5.45%) Network Consultant
9 3 (5.45%) Senior Architect
9 3 (5.45%) Senior Technical Architect
10 2 (3.64%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
10 2 (3.64%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (29.09%) ADO
2 6 (10.91%) SAML
3 1 (1.82%) LDAP
3 1 (1.82%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 17 (30.91%) Anti-Spyware
2 7 (12.73%) Hybrid Cloud
2 7 (12.73%) Public Cloud
3 5 (9.09%) Data Centre
3 5 (9.09%) PKI
4 4 (7.27%) Security Posture
5 3 (5.45%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 2 (3.64%) Cloud Native
6 2 (3.64%) Management Information System
6 2 (3.64%) Operational Technology
7 1 (1.82%) CMDB
7 1 (1.82%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 5 (9.09%) Windows
2 4 (7.27%) Windows Server
3 3 (5.45%) Linux
4 2 (3.64%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 24 (43.64%) Migration
2 21 (38.18%) Infrastructure as Code
3 20 (36.36%) Kalman Filter
4 19 (34.55%) Agile
5 11 (20.00%) TOGAF
6 10 (18.18%) Network Load Balancing
7 9 (16.36%) Cloud Security
7 9 (16.36%) Problem-Solving
7 9 (16.36%) SIEM
8 8 (14.55%) Application Security
8 8 (14.55%) Microservices
9 7 (12.73%) Security Architecture
10 6 (10.91%) Data Security
10 6 (10.91%) Information Security
10 6 (10.91%) Network Monitoring
11 5 (9.09%) Adaptive Security
11 5 (9.09%) DevOps
11 5 (9.09%) DevSecOps
12 4 (7.27%) RBAC
12 4 (7.27%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 5 (9.09%) Python
Qualifications
1 11 (20.00%) Cisco Certification
1 11 (20.00%) Security Cleared
2 10 (18.18%) SC Cleared
3 6 (10.91%) CCNP
3 6 (10.91%) CISM
3 6 (10.91%) CISSP
3 6 (10.91%) Degree
4 5 (9.09%) CCNA
5 4 (7.27%) Azure Certification
6 3 (5.45%) MCSE
6 3 (5.45%) Microsoft Certification
6 3 (5.45%) TOGAF Certification
6 3 (5.45%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 2 (3.64%) Computer Science Degree
7 2 (3.64%) JNCIP
8 1 (1.82%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (7.27%) Cyber Essentials
1 4 (7.27%) NCSC
1 4 (7.27%) NIST
2 1 (1.82%) QA
System Software
1 10 (18.18%) VMware Infrastructure
2 7 (12.73%) Active Directory
3 6 (10.91%) VMware NSX
4 3 (5.45%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (3.64%) Hyper-V
6 1 (1.82%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 22 (40.00%) Terraform
2 6 (10.91%) Active Directory Federation Services
3 5 (9.09%) Ansible
4 3 (5.45%) FortiGate
4 3 (5.45%) SolarWinds Orion
5 2 (3.64%) CASB
5 2 (3.64%) Cisco Prime
6 1 (1.82%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (1.82%) TrustSec
Vendors
1 44 (80.00%) Palo Alto
2 20 (36.36%) CheckPoint
3 16 (29.09%) Cisco
3 16 (29.09%) Infoblox
4 13 (23.64%) Microsoft
5 12 (21.82%) VMware
6 9 (16.36%) Zscaler
7 8 (14.55%) Aruba
7 8 (14.55%) F5
8 6 (10.91%) Fortinet
8 6 (10.91%) Juniper
8 6 (10.91%) SolarWinds
9 3 (5.45%) Arista
9 3 (5.45%) Meraki
9 3 (5.45%) ServiceNow
9 3 (5.45%) Splunk
10 2 (3.64%) BMC
10 2 (3.64%) Citrix
10 2 (3.64%) Extreme Networks
10 2 (3.64%) Forcepoint