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 6 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 186 157 172
Rank change year-on-year -29 +15 +55
Contract jobs citing Cyber Essentials 12 8 21
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 0.27% 0.20% 0.44%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 1.72% 1.62% 2.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 9 5 20
10th Percentile £283 £438 -
25th Percentile £325 £475 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £505
Median % change year-on-year - -0.99% +6.32%
75th Percentile £538 £525 £550
90th Percentile £610 £570 £750
England median daily rate £557 £508 £563
% change year-on-year +9.53% -9.67% +21.62%

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 699 493 729
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 15.52% 12.34% 15.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 484 285 419
10th Percentile £300 £263 £263
25th Percentile £360 £360 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £455 £450 £483
Median % change year-on-year +1.06% -6.74% -3.50%
75th Percentile £550 £550 £575
90th Percentile £638 £638 £650
England median daily rate £500 £510 £540
% change year-on-year -1.96% -5.56% +2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 23 38
10th Percentile £15.25 £11.88 £15.22
25th Percentile £20.97 £13.50 £17.04
Median hourly rate £28.50 £16.00 £20.29
Median % change year-on-year +78.13% -21.12% -63.68%
75th Percentile £57.10 £24.18 £35.25
90th Percentile £70.55 £29.90 £74.56
England median hourly rate £30.00 £32.06 £40.50
% change year-on-year -6.43% -20.84% +55.77%

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 6 November 2025.

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 6 November 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 West -11 7 £325 -36.59% 27
Yorkshire -29 4 £502 +0.37% 15
North East - 1 £650 - 4
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 2 (16.67%) AWS
1 2 (16.67%) Azure
2 1 (8.33%) Amazon ECS
2 1 (8.33%) Amazon EventBridge
2 1 (8.33%) Amazon GuardDuty
2 1 (8.33%) Amazon SQS
2 1 (8.33%) AWS CloudFormation
2 1 (8.33%) AWS Fargate
2 1 (8.33%) AWS Lambda
2 1 (8.33%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 2 (16.67%) Network Security
2 1 (8.33%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (8.33%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 1 (8.33%) Jenkins
1 1 (8.33%) JIRA
General
1 6 (50.00%) Social Skills
2 3 (25.00%) Finance
3 2 (16.67%) Legal
4 1 (8.33%) Banking
4 1 (8.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 1 (8.33%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 2 (16.67%) Analyst
1 2 (16.67%) AWS Engineer
1 2 (16.67%) Risk Analyst
1 2 (16.67%) Senior
2 1 (8.33%) AWS Platform Engineer
2 1 (8.33%) Azure Engineer
2 1 (8.33%) Azure Security Engineer
2 1 (8.33%) Cisco Engineer
2 1 (8.33%) Cisco Network Engineer
2 1 (8.33%) Cloud Platform Engineer
2 1 (8.33%) Cybersecurity Manager
2 1 (8.33%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 1 (8.33%) Junior
2 1 (8.33%) Junior Risk Analyst
2 1 (8.33%) Network Engineer
2 1 (8.33%) Onboarding Analyst
2 1 (8.33%) Platform Engineer
2 1 (8.33%) Security Assurance Manager
2 1 (8.33%) Security Engineer
2 1 (8.33%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (8.33%) ARM Templates
1 1 (8.33%) AWS CDK
1 1 (8.33%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 2 (16.67%) Cloud Native
1 2 (16.67%) Security Posture
2 1 (8.33%) Cloud Security Posture
2 1 (8.33%) Distributed Systems
2 1 (8.33%) Legacy Systems
2 1 (8.33%) Management Information System
2 1 (8.33%) Onboarding
2 1 (8.33%) Operational Technology
2 1 (8.33%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 3 (25.00%) Windows
2 1 (8.33%) Linux
2 1 (8.33%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 4 (33.33%) Cybersecurity
1 4 (33.33%) Information Security
2 3 (25.00%) Continuous Improvement
2 3 (25.00%) Incident Response
3 2 (16.67%) CI/CD
3 2 (16.67%) Collaborative Culture
3 2 (16.67%) Data Protection
3 2 (16.67%) DevOps
3 2 (16.67%) Infrastructure as Code
3 2 (16.67%) Migration
3 2 (16.67%) Risk Assessment
3 2 (16.67%) Risk Management
3 2 (16.67%) Risk Register
3 2 (16.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
3 2 (16.67%) Stakeholder Management
3 2 (16.67%) Vulnerability Remediation
3 2 (16.67%) Wealth Management
4 1 (8.33%) Business Continuity
4 1 (8.33%) Cloud Security
4 1 (8.33%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 3 (25.00%) PowerShell
2 2 (16.67%) Python
3 1 (8.33%) Bash
3 1 (8.33%) Bicep
3 1 (8.33%) Go
3 1 (8.33%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 1 (8.33%) CISM
1 1 (8.33%) CISSP
1 1 (8.33%) Degree
1 1 (8.33%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
1 1 (8.33%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (75.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 5 (41.67%) NIST
3 3 (25.00%) GRC
4 2 (16.67%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 2 (16.67%) GDPR
4 2 (16.67%) NCSC
5 1 (8.33%) PCI DSS
5 1 (8.33%) PMO
5 1 (8.33%) SOC 2
System Software
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 3 (25.00%) Microsoft
2 1 (8.33%) Apple
2 1 (8.33%) Cisco
2 1 (8.33%) OneTrust
2 1 (8.33%) VMware
2 1 (8.33%) Zscaler