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 12 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 224 161 167
Rank change year-on-year -63 +6 +36
Contract jobs citing Cyber Essentials 13 2 10
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 0.22% 0.063% 0.21%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 1.43% 0.44% 1.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 12 2 8
10th Percentile £500 £533 £294
25th Percentile £503 £544 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £575 £375
Median % change year-on-year -6.09% +53.33% -9.09%
75th Percentile £591 £594 £650
90th Percentile £600 £598 £658
England median daily rate £540 £550 £525
% change year-on-year -1.82% +4.76% -4.55%

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 910 459 734
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 15.20% 14.38% 15.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 625 313 407
10th Percentile £347 £263 £306
25th Percentile £402 £363 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% +2.56%
75th Percentile £575 £580 £588
90th Percentile £675 £698 £688
England median daily rate £508 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -0.93% -2.38% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 63 25 84
10th Percentile £15.40 £14.53 -
25th Percentile £23.74 £22.14 £10.95
Median hourly rate £55.00 £24.59 £12.38
Median % change year-on-year +123.71% +98.67% -67.90%
75th Percentile £67.50 £34.50 £26.66
90th Percentile £73.50 £78.05 £47.25
England median hourly rate £29.04 £33.11 £20.55
% change year-on-year -12.29% +61.10% -51.64%

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 12 April 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 12 April 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 -52 7 £504 -12.40% 7
North West - 6 £540 - 7
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:

Applications
1 2 (15.38%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 6 (46.15%) Azure
2 5 (38.46%) Microsoft Purview
3 4 (30.77%) Microsoft 365
4 3 (23.08%) AWS
4 3 (23.08%) Azure Sentinel
5 2 (15.38%) Amazon GuardDuty
5 2 (15.38%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 6 (46.15%) Firewall
2 3 (23.08%) Network Security
3 1 (7.69%) VPN
Development Applications
1 2 (15.38%) Jenkins
General
1 6 (46.15%) Social Skills
2 5 (38.46%) Legal
3 1 (7.69%) Finance
3 1 (7.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 1 (7.69%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 7 (53.85%) Security Engineer
2 3 (23.08%) Cybersecurity Engineer
3 2 (15.38%) AWS Engineer
3 2 (15.38%) Azure Engineer
3 2 (15.38%) Azure Security Engineer
3 2 (15.38%) Information Security Engineer
3 2 (15.38%) Microsoft 365 Engineer
3 2 (15.38%) Microsoft Engineer
3 2 (15.38%) Senior
4 1 (7.69%) Analyst
4 1 (7.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 1 (7.69%) Infrastructure Security Engineer
4 1 (7.69%) Network Analyst
4 1 (7.69%) Project Manager
4 1 (7.69%) SC Cleared Project Manager
4 1 (7.69%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
4 1 (7.69%) Senior Security Engineer
4 1 (7.69%) SOC Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (15.38%) ARM Templates
1 2 (15.38%) AWS CDK
Miscellaneous
1 2 (15.38%) Cloud Native
1 2 (15.38%) Cloud Security Posture
1 2 (15.38%) Security Operations Centre
1 2 (15.38%) Security Posture
2 1 (7.69%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 2 (15.38%) Windows
2 1 (7.69%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 7 (53.85%) Cybersecurity
2 6 (46.15%) Vulnerability Remediation
3 5 (38.46%) Data Loss Prevention
3 5 (38.46%) Risk Management
4 4 (30.77%) Information Security
5 3 (23.08%) SIEM
5 3 (23.08%) Vulnerability Management
6 2 (15.38%) Change Management
6 2 (15.38%) CI/CD
6 2 (15.38%) Cloud Operations
6 2 (15.38%) Cloud Security
6 2 (15.38%) DevOps
6 2 (15.38%) Incident Response
6 2 (15.38%) Infrastructure as Code
6 2 (15.38%) Migration
6 2 (15.38%) Remediation Plan
6 2 (15.38%) Security Operations
6 2 (15.38%) Site Reliability Engineering
6 2 (15.38%) SOAR
6 2 (15.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 2 (15.38%) Bicep
1 2 (15.38%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 1 (7.69%) CISM
1 1 (7.69%) CISSP
1 1 (7.69%) SC Cleared
1 1 (7.69%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (84.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 6 (46.15%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
3 2 (15.38%) GDPR
3 2 (15.38%) NIST
4 1 (7.69%) GRC
4 1 (7.69%) NCSC
4 1 (7.69%) PMO
System Software
1 1 (7.69%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 1 (7.69%) Microsoft Intune
1 1 (7.69%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 7 (53.85%) Microsoft
2 4 (30.77%) Cisco
3 1 (7.69%) AlienVault
3 1 (7.69%) Apple
3 1 (7.69%) OneTrust
3 1 (7.69%) Qualys
3 1 (7.69%) ServiceNow
3 1 (7.69%) VMware