Cyber Essentials Contract Job Trends in the North of England

Cyber Essentials
England > North of England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North of England requiring Cyber Essentials skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 7 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 196 153 163
Rank change year-on-year -43 +10 +61
Contract jobs citing Cyber Essentials 12 6 19
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 0.25% 0.18% 0.41%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 1.64% 1.26% 2.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 11 3 16
10th Percentile £325 £425 £356
25th Percentile £431 £444 -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £504 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.74% - +5.26%
75th Percentile £594 £563 £522
90th Percentile £600 £585 £675
England median daily rate £550 £525 £538
% change year-on-year +4.76% -2.33% +16.22%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
North of England

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 requiring quality assurance or compliance skills in the North of England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 732 476 683
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 15.36% 13.97% 14.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 512 290 404
10th Percentile £304 £249 £268
25th Percentile £364 £356 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £463 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.54% -7.50% -
75th Percentile £550 £550 £588
90th Percentile £633 £685 £675
England median daily rate £500 £500 £550
% change year-on-year - -9.09% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 35 21 38
10th Percentile £17.48 - £10.96
25th Percentile £43.22 £15.50 £14.71
Median hourly rate £55.00 £20.19 £18.90
Median % change year-on-year +172.41% +6.85% -40.31%
75th Percentile £61.25 £24.76 £37.76
90th Percentile £68.00 £29.50 £74.56
England median hourly rate £26.11 £30.21 £33.00
% change year-on-year -13.57% -8.45% +36.08%

Cyber Essentials
Job Vacancy Trend in the North of England

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

Cyber Essentials job vacancy trend in the North of England

Cyber Essentials
Daily Rate Trend in the North of England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing Cyber Essentials.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing Cyber Essentials

Cyber Essentials
Daily Rate Histogram in the North of England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Cyber Essentials in the North of England over the 6 months to 7 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Cyber Essentials in the North of England

Cyber Essentials
Contract Job Locations in the North of England

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 North of England region over the 6 months to 7 January 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
Matching
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Yorkshire -46 6 £502 +0.37% 7
North West -23 5 £438 -14.63% 14
North East - 1 £650 - 3
Cyber Essentials
England

Cyber Essentials
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North of 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 1 (8.33%) Confluence
Cloud Services
1 4 (33.33%) AWS
1 4 (33.33%) Azure
2 2 (16.67%) Amazon GuardDuty
2 2 (16.67%) AWS CloudFormation
3 1 (8.33%) Amazon ECS
3 1 (8.33%) Amazon EventBridge
3 1 (8.33%) Amazon SQS
3 1 (8.33%) AWS Fargate
3 1 (8.33%) AWS Lambda
3 1 (8.33%) Azure Sentinel
3 1 (8.33%) Microsoft 365
3 1 (8.33%) Microsoft Purview
3 1 (8.33%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 2 (16.67%) Firewall
1 2 (16.67%) Network Security
2 1 (8.33%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (8.33%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 2 (16.67%) Jenkins
2 1 (8.33%) JIRA
General
1 4 (33.33%) Legal
1 4 (33.33%) Social Skills
2 2 (16.67%) Public Sector
3 1 (8.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 3 (25.00%) AWS Engineer
1 3 (25.00%) Security Engineer
1 3 (25.00%) Senior
2 2 (16.67%) Azure Engineer
2 2 (16.67%) Azure Security Engineer
2 2 (16.67%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 2 (16.67%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
3 1 (8.33%) Cisco Engineer
3 1 (8.33%) Cisco Network Engineer
3 1 (8.33%) Cloud Platform Engineer
3 1 (8.33%) Head of IT
3 1 (8.33%) Information Assurance Manager
3 1 (8.33%) Information Manager
3 1 (8.33%) Information Security Manager
3 1 (8.33%) Infrastructure Security Engineer
3 1 (8.33%) Network Engineer
3 1 (8.33%) Platform Engineer
3 1 (8.33%) Security Assurance Manager
3 1 (8.33%) Security Manager
3 1 (8.33%) Senior Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (16.67%) ARM Templates
1 2 (16.67%) AWS CDK
2 1 (8.33%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 3 (25.00%) Cloud Native
2 2 (16.67%) Cloud Security Posture
2 2 (16.67%) Security Posture
3 1 (8.33%) Distributed Systems
3 1 (8.33%) Legacy Systems
3 1 (8.33%) Management Information System
3 1 (8.33%) Operational Technology
3 1 (8.33%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 4 (33.33%) Windows
2 2 (16.67%) Linux
3 1 (8.33%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 4 (33.33%) Cybersecurity
1 4 (33.33%) Vulnerability Remediation
2 3 (25.00%) CI/CD
2 3 (25.00%) DevOps
2 3 (25.00%) Incident Response
2 3 (25.00%) Infrastructure as Code
2 3 (25.00%) Migration
3 2 (16.67%) Cloud Operations
3 2 (16.67%) Cloud Security
3 2 (16.67%) Continuous Improvement
3 2 (16.67%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 2 (16.67%) Remediation Plan
3 2 (16.67%) Site Reliability Engineering
3 2 (16.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
3 2 (16.67%) Vulnerability Management
4 1 (8.33%) Digital Strategy
4 1 (8.33%) Event-Driven
4 1 (8.33%) Knowledge Transfer
4 1 (8.33%) Platform Engineering
4 1 (8.33%) Zero Trust
Programming Languages
1 4 (33.33%) PowerShell
2 2 (16.67%) Bicep
2 2 (16.67%) Python
3 1 (8.33%) Bash
3 1 (8.33%) Go
3 1 (8.33%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 2 (16.67%) CISM
1 2 (16.67%) CISSP
2 1 (8.33%) Degree
2 1 (8.33%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
2 1 (8.33%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (66.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 4 (33.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
3 3 (25.00%) GDPR
4 2 (16.67%) NCSC
4 2 (16.67%) NIST
5 1 (8.33%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 1 (8.33%) Hyper-V
1 1 (8.33%) VMware ESXi
1 1 (8.33%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 1 (8.33%) Ansible
1 1 (8.33%) FortiGate
1 1 (8.33%) Microsoft Intune
1 1 (8.33%) SCCM
1 1 (8.33%) Terraform
1 1 (8.33%) WSUS
Vendors
1 4 (33.33%) Microsoft
2 2 (16.67%) VMware
3 1 (8.33%) AlienVault
3 1 (8.33%) Apple
3 1 (8.33%) Cisco
3 1 (8.33%) Qualys
3 1 (8.33%) Zscaler