Security Hardening Contract Job Trends in the Thames Valley

Security Hardening
South East > Thames Valley

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the Thames Valley requiring Security Hardening skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 2 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 146 101 -
Rank change year-on-year -45 - -
Contract jobs citing Security Hardening 5 3 0
As % of all contract jobs in the Thames Valley 0.18% 0.20% -
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.21% 0.21% -
Number of daily rates quoted 4 2 0
10th Percentile £442 £555 -
25th Percentile £491 £563 -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £546 £575 -
Median % change year-on-year -5.09% - -
75th Percentile £555 £588 -
90th Percentile - £595 -
South East median daily rate £518 £600 £500
% change year-on-year -13.63% +20.00% +17.65%

All Process & Methodology Skills
Thames Valley

Security Hardening falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in the Thames Valley.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 2,359 1,408 2,499
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 83.59% 93.12% 88.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,555 856 1,429
10th Percentile £294 £300 £213
25th Percentile £402 £409 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £501 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.10% +0.10% -
75th Percentile £600 £613 £600
90th Percentile £650 £675 £675
South East median daily rate £510 £504 £500
% change year-on-year +1.19% +0.80% -0.99%
Number of hourly rates quoted 193 51 182
10th Percentile £15.93 £14.20 £15.52
25th Percentile £19.54 £18.00 £20.04
Median hourly rate £75.00 £46.30 £43.75
Median % change year-on-year +61.99% +5.83% -9.61%
75th Percentile £85.50 £62.24 £63.22
90th Percentile £95.00 £75.50 £85.61
South East median hourly rate £40.00 £32.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year +23.08% -27.78% -

Security Hardening
Job Vacancy Trend in the Thames Valley

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Security Hardening relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley.

Security Hardening job vacancy trend in the Thames Valley

Security Hardening
Daily Rate Trend in the Thames Valley

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the Thames Valley citing Security Hardening.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the Thames Valley citing Security Hardening

Security Hardening
Daily Rate Histogram in the Thames Valley

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Security Hardening in the Thames Valley over the 6 months to 2 April 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Security Hardening in the Thames Valley

Security Hardening
Contract Job Locations in the Thames Valley

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Security Hardening within the Thames Valley region over the 6 months to 2 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
Berkshire - 3 £555 - 4
Buckinghamshire -24 1 £537 -6.70%
Oxfordshire - 1 - - 1
Security Hardening
South East

Security Hardening
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the Thames Valley 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:

Cloud Services
1 2 (40.00%) AWS
1 2 (40.00%) Azure
1 2 (40.00%) OpenShift
2 1 (20.00%) Amazon EC2
2 1 (20.00%) Amazon ECR
2 1 (20.00%) Amazon ECS
2 1 (20.00%) Amazon ELB
2 1 (20.00%) Amazon OpenSearch
2 1 (20.00%) Amazon S3
2 1 (20.00%) AWS CloudFormation
2 1 (20.00%) Entra ID
2 1 (20.00%) GitHub
2 1 (20.00%) GitHub Actions
2 1 (20.00%) OCI
2 1 (20.00%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 1 (20.00%) DNS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (20.00%) Amazon RDS
1 1 (20.00%) Oracle Database
1 1 (20.00%) Oracle Database 11g
1 1 (20.00%) Oracle Database 12c
1 1 (20.00%) Oracle Reports
1 1 (20.00%) PostgreSQL
1 1 (20.00%) Relational Database
1 1 (20.00%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 1 (20.00%) Git
General
1 1 (20.00%) Analytical Skills
1 1 (20.00%) Public Sector
1 1 (20.00%) Social Skills
Job Titles
1 2 (40.00%) Architect
1 2 (40.00%) Platform Architect
1 2 (40.00%) Senior
2 1 (20.00%) Backend Developer
2 1 (20.00%) DBA
2 1 (20.00%) Developer
2 1 (20.00%) Identity Management Engineer
2 1 (20.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 1 (20.00%) Lead
2 1 (20.00%) Lead Architect
2 1 (20.00%) Oracle DBA
2 1 (20.00%) Python Developer
2 1 (20.00%) Senior Backend Developer
2 1 (20.00%) Senior Developer
2 1 (20.00%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
2 1 (20.00%) Senior Python Developer
2 1 (20.00%) SQL DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (20.00%) Django
1 1 (20.00%) FastAPI
1 1 (20.00%) Flask
1 1 (20.00%) OAuth
1 1 (20.00%) OAuth2
1 1 (20.00%) OpenAPI
1 1 (20.00%) OpenID
1 1 (20.00%) REST
1 1 (20.00%) RESTful
1 1 (20.00%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 1 (20.00%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 1 (20.00%) Linux
1 1 (20.00%) Unix
1 1 (20.00%) Windows
1 1 (20.00%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 4 (80.00%) Disaster Recovery
2 3 (60.00%) CI/CD
2 3 (60.00%) Continuous Improvement
2 3 (60.00%) Performance Tuning
2 3 (60.00%) Technical Leadership
3 2 (40.00%) Deployment Automation
3 2 (40.00%) GitOps
3 2 (40.00%) High Availability
3 2 (40.00%) Workshop Facilitation
4 1 (20.00%) AI
4 1 (20.00%) Identity Access Management
4 1 (20.00%) Identity Management
4 1 (20.00%) Low Latency
4 1 (20.00%) Mentoring
4 1 (20.00%) OWASP
4 1 (20.00%) Project Delivery
4 1 (20.00%) Root Cause Analysis
4 1 (20.00%) Runbook
4 1 (20.00%) Test Strategy
4 1 (20.00%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 1 (20.00%) PowerShell
1 1 (20.00%) Python
1 1 (20.00%) SQL
Qualifications
1 2 (40.00%) SC Cleared
1 2 (40.00%) Security Cleared
2 1 (20.00%) Azure Certification
2 1 (20.00%) BPSS Clearance
2 1 (20.00%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (20.00%) GDPR
1 1 (20.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 1 (20.00%) NIST
System Software
1 1 (20.00%) Active Directory
1 1 (20.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 1 (20.00%) Argo
1 1 (20.00%) Data Guard
1 1 (20.00%) Grafana
1 1 (20.00%) Oracle RMAN
1 1 (20.00%) Prometheus
1 1 (20.00%) Terraform
Vendors
1 2 (40.00%) Red Hat
2 1 (20.00%) Microsoft
2 1 (20.00%) Oracle