Penetration Testing Contracts in the UK excluding London

Penetration Testing
UK > UK excluding London

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the UK excluding London with a requirement for Penetration Testing skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited Penetration Testing over the 6 months to 10 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
10 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 306 365 418
Rank change year-on-year +59 +53 -73
Contract jobs citing Penetration Testing 88 86 89
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 0.43% 0.37% 0.29%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.51% 0.41% 0.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 70 50 57
10th Percentile £425 £449 £370
25th Percentile £472 £481 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £560 £583
Median % change year-on-year -4.91% -3.86% +20.10%
75th Percentile £668 £638 £675
90th Percentile £676 £738 £775
UK median daily rate £585 £600 £580
% change year-on-year -2.50% +3.45% +10.48%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £81.75 - -
Median hourly rate £83.50 - -
75th Percentile £85.25 - -
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £83.50 £80.00 -
% change year-on-year +4.38% - -

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK excluding London

Penetration Testing is in the Processes and Methodologies category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies advertised in the UK excluding London with a requirement for process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 17,292 20,943 27,025
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 84.44% 89.50% 88.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,311 14,478 18,837
10th Percentile £250 £256 £235
25th Percentile £379 £400 £386
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year - +5.26% +8.57%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £575
90th Percentile £688 £688 £651
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £530
% change year-on-year -4.55% +3.77% +8.72%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,056 1,286 1,344
10th Percentile £12.32 £11.00 £12.25
25th Percentile £15.25 £15.39 £14.21
Median hourly rate £38.06 £35.00 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year +8.74% +75.00% -6.98%
75th Percentile £61.26 £65.00 £46.88
90th Percentile £72.90 £73.65 £61.15
UK median hourly rate £36.50 £36.25 £25.68
% change year-on-year +0.69% +41.16% +4.82%

Penetration Testing
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Job postings citing Penetration Testing as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Job vacancy trend for Penetration Testing in the UK excluding London

Penetration Testing
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Penetration Testing in the UK excluding London.

Daily rate trend for Penetration Testing in the UK excluding London

Penetration Testing
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Penetration Testing in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 10 May 2024.

Daily rate histogram for Penetration Testing in the UK excluding London

Penetration Testing
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Penetration Testing in the UK excluding London.

Hourly rate trend for Penetration Testing in the UK excluding London

Penetration Testing
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Penetration Testing within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 10 May 2024. 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
North of England +35 25 £650 +23.81% 16
South West +29 22 £525 -12.50% 19
Scotland +54 19 £515 -6.36% 5
North West +29 19 £666 +26.86% 8
Midlands +22 11 £550 -24.14% 6
East of England +13 8 £700 +27.27%
South East +7 8 £530 -7.83% 14
West Midlands +13 7 £650 -10.34% 2
Yorkshire +12 4 £650 +23.81% 7
East Midlands - 4 £400 - 4
North East - 2 £625 - 1
Wales - 1 £363 - 3
Penetration Testing
UK

Penetration Testing
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 1 (1.14%) Confluence
Business Applications
1 3 (3.41%) Dynamics GP
Cloud Services
1 18 (20.45%) Azure
2 11 (12.50%) AWS
3 5 (5.68%) Azure Sentinel
3 5 (5.68%) CloudFront
3 5 (5.68%) Entra ID
3 5 (5.68%) Power Platform
3 5 (5.68%) Virtual Private Cloud
4 3 (3.41%) Microsoft 365
5 2 (2.27%) PaaS
5 2 (2.27%) SaaS
6 1 (1.14%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 1 (1.14%) Amazon GuardDuty
6 1 (1.14%) AWS CloudTrail
6 1 (1.14%) Cloud Computing
6 1 (1.14%) Cloudflare
6 1 (1.14%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 27 (30.68%) Firewall
2 17 (19.32%) Network Security
3 7 (7.95%) VPN
3 7 (7.95%) Wireless
4 6 (6.82%) DNS
5 3 (3.41%) Intrusion Detection
5 3 (3.41%) SSL
6 2 (2.27%) TCP/IP
7 1 (1.14%) DHCP
7 1 (1.14%) Fibre Channel
7 1 (1.14%) iSCSI
7 1 (1.14%) LAN
7 1 (1.14%) MPLS
7 1 (1.14%) SAN
7 1 (1.14%) tcpdump
7 1 (1.14%) WAN
7 1 (1.14%) Wi-Fi
7 1 (1.14%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (1.14%) Apache Hive
1 1 (1.14%) Hadoop
1 1 (1.14%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 4 (4.55%) Burp Suite
2 1 (1.14%) IDA Disassembler
2 1 (1.14%) JIRA
General
1 25 (28.41%) Public Sector
2 14 (15.91%) Social Skills
3 9 (10.23%) Analytical Skills
4 6 (6.82%) Finance
4 6 (6.82%) Retail
5 4 (4.55%) Legal
6 3 (3.41%) Banking
7 1 (1.14%) Automotive
7 1 (1.14%) Manufacturing
7 1 (1.14%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 20 (22.73%) Analyst
2 14 (15.91%) Network Engineer
2 14 (15.91%) Security Analyst
3 12 (13.64%) Architect
3 12 (13.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 12 (13.64%) Security Architect
4 11 (12.50%) Cybersecurity Analyst
4 11 (12.50%) Network Infrastructure Engineer
5 8 (9.09%) Penetration Tester
5 8 (9.09%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
5 8 (9.09%) Security Engineer
5 8 (9.09%) Tester
6 7 (7.95%) Senior
6 7 (7.95%) Senior Analyst
6 7 (7.95%) Senior Cybersecurity Analyst
6 7 (7.95%) Senior Security Analyst
7 5 (5.68%) Applications Engineer
7 5 (5.68%) Cloud Engineer
8 4 (4.55%) Consultant
8 4 (4.55%) Cybersecurity Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (5.68%) OAuth
1 5 (5.68%) OAuth2
1 5 (5.68%) SAML
2 1 (1.14%) .NET
2 1 (1.14%) OLE
Miscellaneous
1 16 (18.18%) Data Centre
2 15 (17.05%) Private Cloud
3 13 (14.77%) Management Information System
4 11 (12.50%) Cyber Threat
4 11 (12.50%) Security Posture
5 8 (9.09%) Mobile App
6 6 (6.82%) Cloud Native
6 6 (6.82%) Operational Technology
7 5 (5.68%) Security Operations Centre
8 4 (4.55%) PKI
9 3 (3.41%) Cyber Defence
9 3 (3.41%) Cyberattack
10 2 (2.27%) Cyber Kill Chain
10 2 (2.27%) Insider Threat
11 1 (1.14%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 1 (1.14%) FMCG
11 1 (1.14%) Product Ownership
11 1 (1.14%) Renewable Energy
11 1 (1.14%) YARA
Operating Systems
1 22 (25.00%) Windows
2 20 (22.73%) Linux
3 4 (4.55%) Windows Server
4 3 (3.41%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 58 (65.91%) Cybersecurity
2 26 (29.55%) Information Security
3 17 (19.32%) Vulnerability Management
3 17 (19.32%) Vulnerability Scanning
4 16 (18.18%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 15 (17.05%) Application Security
5 15 (17.05%) Incident Response
5 15 (17.05%) Problem-Solving
5 15 (17.05%) Resource Management
5 15 (17.05%) Virtual Infrastructure
6 14 (15.91%) Agile
6 14 (15.91%) Risk Management
6 14 (15.91%) Security Architecture
6 14 (15.91%) SIEM
7 13 (14.77%) Red Team
7 13 (14.77%) Security Operations
8 12 (13.64%) Threat Modelling
8 12 (13.64%) Use Case
9 11 (12.50%) Incident Management
9 11 (12.50%) Vulnerability Assessment
Programming Languages
1 10 (11.36%) Python
2 7 (7.95%) C++
3 6 (6.82%) JavaScript
3 6 (6.82%) Kusto Query Language
4 2 (2.27%) Search Processing Language
5 1 (1.14%) C
5 1 (1.14%) Java
5 1 (1.14%) Perl
5 1 (1.14%) Ruby
5 1 (1.14%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 33 (37.50%) Security Cleared
2 31 (35.23%) SC Cleared
3 11 (12.50%) OSCP
4 8 (9.09%) CREST Certified
5 6 (6.82%) CEH
5 6 (6.82%) Degree
5 6 (6.82%) GIAC
5 6 (6.82%) GPEN
5 6 (6.82%) ITIL Certification
5 6 (6.82%) MCSE
5 6 (6.82%) Microsoft Certification
6 5 (5.68%) AWS Certification
6 5 (5.68%) CISSP
6 5 (5.68%) CompTIA Security+
7 4 (4.55%) CISM
8 2 (2.27%) DV Cleared
9 1 (1.14%) BPSS Clearance
9 1 (1.14%) CTC Cleared
9 1 (1.14%) Master's Degree
9 1 (1.14%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (28.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 20 (22.73%) NIST
3 9 (10.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
4 5 (5.68%) GDPR
4 5 (5.68%) PCI DSS
5 4 (4.55%) Disclosure Scotland
6 2 (2.27%) SLA
7 1 (1.14%) COBIT
7 1 (1.14%) HIPAA
7 1 (1.14%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
7 1 (1.14%) JSP 440
7 1 (1.14%) NCSC
System Software
1 16 (18.18%) VMware Infrastructure
2 15 (17.05%) Active Directory
3 14 (15.91%) vSphere
4 5 (5.68%) Docker
5 3 (3.41%) Hyper-V
6 1 (1.14%) Snort
6 1 (1.14%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 13 (14.77%) vCenter Server
2 3 (3.41%) SCCM
2 3 (3.41%) Terraform
3 1 (1.14%) HP Fortify
3 1 (1.14%) Kibana
3 1 (1.14%) Microsoft Intune
3 1 (1.14%) Nmap
Vendors
1 16 (18.18%) VMware
2 10 (11.36%) Microsoft
3 4 (4.55%) Splunk
4 1 (1.14%) Barracuda Networks
4 1 (1.14%) Cisco
4 1 (1.14%) Citrix
4 1 (1.14%) CrowdStrike
4 1 (1.14%) Google