Security Hardening Contract Job Trends in England

Security Hardening
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring Security Hardening skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 30 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 469 469 538
Rank change year-on-year 0 +69 +127
Contract jobs citing Security Hardening 50 48 47
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.17% 0.15% 0.12%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.19% 0.18% 0.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 31 32 30
10th Percentile £363 £406 £450
25th Percentile £469 £494 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £600 £538
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +11.63% -10.42%
75th Percentile £650 £625 £706
90th Percentile £651 £650 £750
UK median daily rate £545 £575 £560
% change year-on-year -5.22% +2.77% -5.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 3 3
10th Percentile - £41.44 £29.85
25th Percentile - £67.90 £41.63
Median hourly rate - £112.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year - +79.20% -14.38%
75th Percentile - - £64.38
90th Percentile - - £64.75
UK median hourly rate - £112.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year - +79.20% -14.38%

All Process and Methodology Skills
England

Security Hardening falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 26,361 27,078 35,512
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 90.72% 86.65% 88.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 16,710 16,527 24,439
10th Percentile £295 £313 £313
25th Percentile £405 £416 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,692 994 1,489
10th Percentile £14.55 £15.00 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.03 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -37.13% -10.11% +27.14%
75th Percentile £44.77 £66.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.25 £74.83 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £36.08 £43.86
% change year-on-year -30.30% -17.73% +25.31%

Security Hardening
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Security Hardening relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Security Hardening job vacancy trend in England

Security Hardening
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Security Hardening.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Security Hardening

Security Hardening
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Security Hardening in England over the 6 months to 30 October 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Security Hardening in England

Security Hardening
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Security Hardening.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Security Hardening

Security Hardening
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Security Hardening within the England region over the 6 months to 30 October 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
North of England -27 18 £600 +166.67% 1
London +7 16 £575 +6.98% 13
North West -20 10 £650 +188.89% 1
South West +9 8 £540 +8.00%
Yorkshire -25 8 £500 -
South East -5 4 £350 -41.67% 10
East of England - 2 £695 -
Midlands -20 1 £617 +69.04% 3
West Midlands -23 1 £617 +73.80%
Security Hardening
UK

Security Hardening
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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 5 (10.00%) Confluence
2 2 (4.00%) Apache
2 2 (4.00%) IIS
3 1 (2.00%) BizTalk Server
Applications
1 1 (2.00%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 11 (22.00%) GitHub
2 8 (16.00%) AWS
2 8 (16.00%) Azure
3 6 (12.00%) GitHub Actions
4 3 (6.00%) Datadog
4 3 (6.00%) Entra ID
4 3 (6.00%) GCP
4 3 (6.00%) Microsoft 365
5 2 (4.00%) Amazon EC2
5 2 (4.00%) Amazon S3
5 2 (4.00%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 1 (2.00%) Amazon ECR
6 1 (2.00%) Amazon ECS
6 1 (2.00%) Amazon OpenSearch
6 1 (2.00%) AWS CloudFormation
6 1 (2.00%) Azure Key Vault
6 1 (2.00%) Cloud Computing
6 1 (2.00%) Google Kubernetes Engine
6 1 (2.00%) PaaS
6 1 (2.00%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 10 (20.00%) TCP/IP
2 8 (16.00%) Firewall
3 7 (14.00%) DNS
4 3 (6.00%) 4G
4 3 (6.00%) 5G
4 3 (6.00%) Internet
5 2 (4.00%) HTTP
5 2 (4.00%) SMTP
5 2 (4.00%) VSAN
5 2 (4.00%) X.509
6 1 (2.00%) Kerberos
6 1 (2.00%) Multicast
6 1 (2.00%) Network Security
6 1 (2.00%) VLAN
6 1 (2.00%) VoIP
6 1 (2.00%) VPN
6 1 (2.00%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (4.00%) MariaDB
1 2 (4.00%) MySQL
1 2 (4.00%) Oracle Database
1 2 (4.00%) SQL Server
2 1 (2.00%) Amazon RDS
2 1 (2.00%) BigQuery
2 1 (2.00%) Data Lake
2 1 (2.00%) Looker
2 1 (2.00%) MongoDB
2 1 (2.00%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (2.00%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 12 (24.00%) Git
2 8 (16.00%) Jenkins
2 8 (16.00%) JIRA
3 4 (8.00%) Artifactory
3 4 (8.00%) Subversion
3 4 (8.00%) TeamCity
4 3 (6.00%) Rational DOORS
5 2 (4.00%) Bitbucket
5 2 (4.00%) Postman
5 2 (4.00%) SpecFlow
5 2 (4.00%) Vagrant
6 1 (2.00%) GCC
6 1 (2.00%) GitLab
6 1 (2.00%) MSI
6 1 (2.00%) SonarQube
General
1 20 (40.00%) Social Skills
2 5 (10.00%) Analytical Skills
2 5 (10.00%) Finance
3 3 (6.00%) Documentation Skills
3 3 (6.00%) Military
4 2 (4.00%) Financial Institution
4 2 (4.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 2 (4.00%) Presentation Skills
5 1 (2.00%) Banking
5 1 (2.00%) Billing
5 1 (2.00%) Marketing
5 1 (2.00%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 8 (16.00%) Administrator
1 8 (16.00%) Linux Administrator
2 7 (14.00%) Senior
3 6 (12.00%) Consultant
4 5 (10.00%) Software Engineer
5 4 (8.00%) Analyst
5 4 (8.00%) DevSecOps Engineer
5 4 (8.00%) Linux Systems Administrator
5 4 (8.00%) Systems Administrator
5 4 (8.00%) Test Specialist
5 4 (8.00%) VMware Consultant
5 4 (8.00%) Windows Engineer
6 3 (6.00%) DevOps Engineer
6 3 (6.00%) Engineering Specialist
6 3 (6.00%) Infrastructure Analyst
6 3 (6.00%) Linux Engineer
6 3 (6.00%) Security Analyst
7 2 (4.00%) Platform Engineer
7 2 (4.00%) Senior DevOps Engineer
7 2 (4.00%) Technical Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (10.00%) REST
2 3 (6.00%) .NET
3 2 (4.00%) AngularJS
3 2 (4.00%) Gherkin
3 2 (4.00%) LAMP
3 2 (4.00%) Middleware
3 2 (4.00%) OAuth
3 2 (4.00%) OAuth2
3 2 (4.00%) OpenID
3 2 (4.00%) Playwright
3 2 (4.00%) SAML
3 2 (4.00%) Zend Framework
4 1 (2.00%) Django
4 1 (2.00%) Elastic Stack
4 1 (2.00%) FastAPI
4 1 (2.00%) Flask
4 1 (2.00%) Kafka
4 1 (2.00%) Microsoft Graph
4 1 (2.00%) OpenAPI
4 1 (2.00%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 7 (14.00%) Replication
2 6 (12.00%) Onboarding
2 6 (12.00%) PKI
3 5 (10.00%) Clustering
4 4 (8.00%) Enterprise Software
4 4 (8.00%) Legacy Applications
5 3 (6.00%) Cloud Native
5 3 (6.00%) Data Centre
5 3 (6.00%) Hybrid Cloud
6 2 (4.00%) Hedge funds
7 1 (2.00%) CMDB
7 1 (2.00%) CUDA
7 1 (2.00%) Cyber Defence
7 1 (2.00%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 1 (2.00%) Distributed Systems
7 1 (2.00%) Enterprise Storage
7 1 (2.00%) Fat Client
7 1 (2.00%) IBM XIV
7 1 (2.00%) Private Cloud
7 1 (2.00%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 22 (44.00%) Windows
2 18 (36.00%) Linux
3 12 (24.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 11 (22.00%) Windows Server
5 7 (14.00%) Solaris
6 4 (8.00%) Unix
7 3 (6.00%) CentOS
7 3 (6.00%) Ubuntu
8 2 (4.00%) Debian
8 2 (4.00%) Windows 10
9 1 (2.00%) AIX
9 1 (2.00%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 1 (2.00%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (2.00%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 18 (36.00%) DevOps
2 17 (34.00%) CI/CD
3 14 (28.00%) Infrastructure as Code
4 11 (22.00%) Agile
5 9 (18.00%) High Availability
6 8 (16.00%) Configuration Management
6 8 (16.00%) Disaster Recovery
7 7 (14.00%) Migration
8 6 (12.00%) Containerisation
8 6 (12.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 6 (12.00%) Patch Management
8 6 (12.00%) Problem-Solving
9 5 (10.00%) Change Management
9 5 (10.00%) Incident Response
9 5 (10.00%) Project Delivery
9 5 (10.00%) Software Engineering
9 5 (10.00%) Unit Testing
9 5 (10.00%) Vulnerability Management
9 5 (10.00%) Zero Trust
10 4 (8.00%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 18 (36.00%) Python
2 14 (28.00%) Bash
3 7 (14.00%) PowerShell
4 6 (12.00%) Perl
5 4 (8.00%) Java
5 4 (8.00%) JavaScript
6 3 (6.00%) C++
7 2 (4.00%) C#
7 2 (4.00%) PHP
7 2 (4.00%) Shell Script
8 1 (2.00%) Go
8 1 (2.00%) Kusto Query Language
8 1 (2.00%) SQL
Qualifications
1 15 (30.00%) Security Cleared
2 13 (26.00%) SC Cleared
3 3 (6.00%) DV Cleared
3 3 (6.00%) ITIL Certification
4 2 (4.00%) Azure Certification
5 1 (2.00%) AWS Certification
5 1 (2.00%) BPSS Clearance
5 1 (2.00%) CCA
5 1 (2.00%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (14.00%) GDPR
2 5 (10.00%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 4 (8.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 3 (6.00%) NCSC
5 2 (4.00%) NIST
5 2 (4.00%) PCI DSS
5 2 (4.00%) QA
6 1 (2.00%) Cyber Essentials
6 1 (2.00%) NIST 800
System Software
1 20 (40.00%) VMware Infrastructure
2 10 (20.00%) Docker
3 7 (14.00%) VMware ESXi
4 5 (10.00%) Active Directory
4 5 (10.00%) vSphere
5 4 (8.00%) NFS
5 4 (8.00%) Veritas File System
5 4 (8.00%) Veritas Volume Manager
6 3 (6.00%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (4.00%) Virtual Machines
7 2 (4.00%) VirtualBox
7 2 (4.00%) VMware NSX
8 1 (2.00%) Microsoft App-V
8 1 (2.00%) Terminal Services
8 1 (2.00%) Veritas Cluster Server
Systems Management
1 19 (38.00%) Ansible
2 10 (20.00%) Terraform
3 9 (18.00%) Kubernetes
3 9 (18.00%) SCCM
4 4 (8.00%) Nessus
4 4 (8.00%) Puppet
4 4 (8.00%) QRadar
4 4 (8.00%) Red Hat Satellite
4 4 (8.00%) Single Sign-On
4 4 (8.00%) vRealize
4 4 (8.00%) vRealize Orchestrator
4 4 (8.00%) WSUS
5 3 (6.00%) Check_MK
5 3 (6.00%) Grafana
5 3 (6.00%) Podman
5 3 (6.00%) SELinux
6 2 (4.00%) Icinga
6 2 (4.00%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (4.00%) Progress Chef
6 2 (4.00%) Salt
Vendors
1 25 (50.00%) VMware
2 9 (18.00%) Red Hat
3 8 (16.00%) Microsoft
3 8 (16.00%) Qualys
3 8 (16.00%) Splunk
4 6 (12.00%) CyberArk
5 4 (8.00%) Cisco
5 4 (8.00%) SaltStack
6 3 (6.00%) Fortinet
6 3 (6.00%) Juniper
7 2 (4.00%) Atlassian
7 2 (4.00%) Citrix
7 2 (4.00%) IBM
7 2 (4.00%) MuleSoft
7 2 (4.00%) New Relic
7 2 (4.00%) Oracle
7 2 (4.00%) Rackspace
7 2 (4.00%) Zend
8 1 (2.00%) Dynatrace
8 1 (2.00%) NVIDIA