Cyber Essentials Contract Job Trends in the North West

Cyber Essentials
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North West requiring Cyber Essentials skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 22 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 142 117 136
Rank change year-on-year -25 +19 +28
Contract jobs citing Cyber Essentials 5 3 4
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 0.20% 0.14% 0.15%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 1.40% 0.98% 1.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 4 2 3
10th Percentile £308 £431 £380
25th Percentile £319 £459 £481
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £438 £513 £700
Median % change year-on-year -14.63% -26.79% +47.37%
75th Percentile £550 £559 £750
90th Percentile £573 £584 -
England median daily rate £550 £503 £575
% change year-on-year +9.45% -12.61% +27.78%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
North West

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 West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 357 307 357
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 14.28% 14.37% 13.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 249 185 211
10th Percentile £311 £295 £288
25th Percentile £360 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £433 £455 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.84% -9.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £560 £550 £588
90th Percentile £638 £646 £694
England median daily rate £500 £500 £550
% change year-on-year - -9.09% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 14 27
10th Percentile £42.64 £16.12 £16.25
25th Percentile £48.86 £18.57 £17.20
Median hourly rate £57.50 £23.14 £28.30
Median % change year-on-year +148.54% -18.25% -45.50%
75th Percentile £63.45 £27.94 £63.13
90th Percentile £71.16 £29.85 £76.20
England median hourly rate £25.15 £30.00 £35.63
% change year-on-year -16.17% -15.80% +58.36%

Cyber Essentials
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

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

Cyber Essentials job vacancy trend in the North West

Cyber Essentials
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

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

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

Cyber Essentials
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Cyber Essentials in the North West over the 6 months to 22 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Cyber Essentials in the North West

Cyber Essentials
Contract Job Locations in the North West

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 West region over the 6 months to 22 December 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
Manchester -9 3 £550 +7.32% 13
Cheshire - 1 £300 - 7
Merseyside - 1 £350 - 1
Cyber Essentials
England

Cyber Essentials
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West 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 (20.00%) Confluence
Cloud Services
1 2 (40.00%) AWS
1 2 (40.00%) Azure
2 1 (20.00%) Amazon ECS
2 1 (20.00%) Amazon EventBridge
2 1 (20.00%) Amazon SQS
2 1 (20.00%) AWS Fargate
2 1 (20.00%) AWS Lambda
2 1 (20.00%) Azure Sentinel
2 1 (20.00%) Microsoft 365
2 1 (20.00%) Microsoft Purview
2 1 (20.00%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 2 (40.00%) Firewall
1 2 (40.00%) Network Security
2 1 (20.00%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (20.00%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 1 (20.00%) JIRA
General
1 2 (40.00%) Public Sector
1 2 (40.00%) Social Skills
2 1 (20.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 1 (20.00%) AWS Engineer
1 1 (20.00%) AWS Platform Engineer
1 1 (20.00%) Cloud Platform Engineer
1 1 (20.00%) Cybersecurity Engineer
1 1 (20.00%) Cybersecurity Manager
1 1 (20.00%) Head of IT
1 1 (20.00%) Information Assurance Manager
1 1 (20.00%) Information Manager
1 1 (20.00%) Information Security Manager
1 1 (20.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
1 1 (20.00%) Infrastructure Security Engineer
1 1 (20.00%) Platform Engineer
1 1 (20.00%) Security Assurance Manager
1 1 (20.00%) Security Engineer
1 1 (20.00%) Security Manager
1 1 (20.00%) Senior
1 1 (20.00%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
1 1 (20.00%) Senior Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (20.00%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 1 (20.00%) Cloud Native
1 1 (20.00%) Distributed Systems
1 1 (20.00%) Management Information System
1 1 (20.00%) Operational Technology
1 1 (20.00%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 3 (60.00%) Windows
2 1 (20.00%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 3 (60.00%) Cybersecurity
2 2 (40.00%) Incident Response
3 1 (20.00%) CI/CD
3 1 (20.00%) Cyber Resilience
3 1 (20.00%) Data Loss Prevention
3 1 (20.00%) Digital Strategy
3 1 (20.00%) Event-Driven
3 1 (20.00%) Information Assurance
3 1 (20.00%) Infrastructure as Code
3 1 (20.00%) Infrastructure Automation
3 1 (20.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 1 (20.00%) Knowledge Transfer
3 1 (20.00%) Multi-Factor Authentication
3 1 (20.00%) Platform Engineering
3 1 (20.00%) Security Operations
3 1 (20.00%) SIEM
3 1 (20.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
3 1 (20.00%) Two-Factor Authentication
3 1 (20.00%) Vulnerability Management
3 1 (20.00%) Zero Trust
Programming Languages
1 1 (20.00%) Go
1 1 (20.00%) PowerShell
1 1 (20.00%) Python
1 1 (20.00%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 2 (40.00%) CISM
1 2 (40.00%) CISSP
2 1 (20.00%) Degree
2 1 (20.00%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
2 1 (20.00%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (40.00%) GDPR
1 2 (40.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (20.00%) NCSC
2 1 (20.00%) NIST
2 1 (20.00%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 1 (20.00%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 1 (20.00%) Microsoft Intune
1 1 (20.00%) Terraform
Vendors
1 2 (40.00%) Microsoft
2 1 (20.00%) AlienVault
2 1 (20.00%) Apple
2 1 (20.00%) Qualys
2 1 (20.00%) VMware