Cyber Essentials Contract Job Trends in the Midlands

Cyber Essentials
England > Midlands

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the Midlands citing Cyber Essentials skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 15 November 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

	6 months to 15 Nov 2026	Same period 2025	Same period 2024
Rank	189	155	128
Rank change year-on-year	-34	-27	-3
Contract jobs citing Cyber Essentials	13	13	7
As % of all contract jobs in the Midlands	0.26%	0.43%	0.26%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category	1.45%	2.46%	1.73%
Number of daily rates quoted	9	10	6
10^th Percentile	£400	£375	£194
25^th Percentile	£450	£403	£288
Median daily rate (50^th Percentile)	£500	£463	£325
Median % change year-on-year	+8.11%	+42.31%	-39.53%
75^th Percentile	£550	£631	£456
90^th Percentile	£620	£650	£644
England median daily rate	£500	£553	£503
% change year-on-year	-9.58%	+10.05%	-12.61%
Number of hourly rates quoted	1	0	0
10^th Percentile	-	-	-
25^th Percentile	£58.43	-	-
Median hourly rate	£63.14	-	-
75^th Percentile	£67.84	-	-
90^th Percentile	-	-	-
England median hourly rate	£71.00	£32.74	£78.40
% change year-on-year	+116.89%	-58.25%	+76.18%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
Midlands

Cyber Essentials falls under the Quality Assurance and Compliance category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies citing quality assurance or compliance skills in the Midlands.

	6 months to 15 Nov 2026	Same period 2025	Same period 2024
Contract vacancies citing quality assurance or compliance skills	898	528	404
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the Midlands	18.19%	17.51%	15.22%
Number of daily rates quoted	560	357	250
10^th Percentile	£315	£313	£263
25^th Percentile	£400	£393	£353
Median daily rate (50^th Percentile)	£450	£463	£473
Median % change year-on-year	-2.70%	-2.12%	-5.50%
75^th Percentile	£550	£563	£588
90^th Percentile	£656	£688	£676
England median daily rate	£520	£500	£513
% change year-on-year	+4.00%	-2.44%	-5.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted	84	24	21
10^th Percentile	£12.90	£12.63	£12.00
25^th Percentile	£14.00	£15.78	£14.70
Median hourly rate	£18.79	£20.00	£22.00
Median % change year-on-year	-6.05%	-9.09%	-20.00%
75^th Percentile	£23.75	£26.33	£42.25
90^th Percentile	£49.50	£34.65	£52.50
England median hourly rate	£32.40	£25.15	£30.67
% change year-on-year	+28.81%	-17.98%	-18.23%

Cyber Essentials Job Vacancy Trend in the Midlands

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Cyber Essentials relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the Midlands.

Cyber Essentials Daily Rate Trend in the Midlands

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the Midlands citing Cyber Essentials.

Cyber Essentials Daily Rate Histogram in the Midlands

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Cyber Essentials in the Midlands over the 6 months to 15 November 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Cyber Essentials in the Midlands

Cyber Essentials Hourly Rate Trend in the Midlands

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the Midlands citing Cyber Essentials.

Cyber Essentials Contract Job Locations in the Midlands

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Cyber Essentials within the Midlands region over the 6 months to 15 November 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	Job Ads Past 6 Months	Median Daily Rate Past 6 Months	Median Daily Rate % Change on Same Period Last Year	Live Jobs
West Midlands	-35	11	£500	+7.53%	42
East Midlands	-21	2	£500	+8.11%	12
Cyber Essentials England

Cyber Essentials Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the Midlands

For the 6 months to 15 November 2026, contractor job vacancies citing Cyber Essentials also mentioned the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the Midlands region citing Cyber Essentials.

Rank	Skill	Share	Job Ads
1	ISO/IEC 27001	92.3%	12
2	Cyber Essentials PLUS	69.2%	9
3	Azure	46.2%	6
3	Cisco Certification	46.2%	6
3	Cybersecurity	46.2%	6
3	Network Security	46.2%	6
3	Roadmaps	46.2%	6
3	Security Architecture	46.2%	6
9	AWS	38.5%	5
9	Cisco	38.5%	5
9	Firewall	38.5%	5
9	GDPR	38.5%	5
9	PowerShell	38.5%	5
9	Stakeholder Management	38.5%	5
9	Terraform	38.5%	5
16	Azure Sentinel	30.8%	4
16	CheckPoint	30.8%	4
16	CISM	30.8%	4
16	CISSP	30.8%	4
16	Cloud Security	30.8%	4
16	CrowdStrike	30.8%	4
16	Enterprise Architecture	30.8%	4
16	Entra ID	30.8%	4
16	Fortinet	30.8%	4
16	Infrastructure as Code	30.8%	4
16	NIST	30.8%	4
16	Python	30.8%	4
16	Splunk	30.8%	4
16	VLAN	30.8%	4
16	Zero Trust	30.8%	4

Cyber Essentials Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the Midlands by Category

The table below expands on the one above by listing co-occurrences one category at a time. It covers the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences in each category.

Quality Assurance & Compliance

Rank	Skill	Share	Job Ads
1	ISO/IEC 27001	92.3%	12
2	Cyber Essentials PLUS	69.2%	9
3	GDPR	38.5%	5
4	NIST	30.8%	4
5	NCSC	23.1%	3
6	NIST 800	15.4%	2