Application Security Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Application Security (AppSec)
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the UK excluding London requiring Application Security skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 20 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 286 289 265
Rank change year-on-year +3 -24 +105
Contract jobs citing Application Security 103 65 141
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.57% 0.44% 0.72%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.66% 0.50% 0.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 64 48 36
10th Percentile £358 £386 £444
25th Percentile £450 £417 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £475 £509
Median % change year-on-year +6.32% -6.59% -15.25%
75th Percentile £611 £650 £613
90th Percentile £700 £788 £702
UK median daily rate £510 £575 £600
% change year-on-year -11.30% -4.17% -5.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 1
Median hourly rate - - £62.50
UK median hourly rate £90.00 - £62.50
% change year-on-year - - -18.03%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK excluding London

Application Security 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 UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 15,635 13,009 17,346
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 85.98% 87.13% 88.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,537 7,651 11,208
10th Percentile £220 £238 £250
25th Percentile £375 £381 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £476 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.80% - -
75th Percentile £575 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,774 755 1,215
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.50 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.00 £17.72
Median hourly rate £23.02 £31.52 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -26.98% -29.17% +42.58%
75th Percentile £48.75 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £71.25 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £43.50
% change year-on-year -22.62% -25.29% +24.29%

Application Security
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Application Security relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Application Security job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Application Security
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Application Security.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Application Security

Application Security
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Application Security in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 20 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Application Security in the UK excluding London

Application Security
Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Application Security.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Application Security

Application Security
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Application Security within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 20 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
North of England -11 51 £488 +11.43% 14
Yorkshire -30 33 £500 +14.29% 11
Midlands -18 20 £510 +37.37% 3
South West -1 18 £450 -21.74% 13
West Midlands -15 16 £488 +31.31% 2
South East -28 16 £563 -13.46% 19
North West -13 11 £450 - 3
North East - 7 £738 -
East Midlands - 4 £625 - 1
Scotland +2 2 £465 +9.41%
East of England -22 2 £650 -16.13% 6
Northern Ireland - 1 - -
Application Security
UK

Application Security
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 2 (1.94%) Documentum
2 1 (0.97%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (0.97%) Confluence
Applications
1 4 (3.88%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 5 (4.85%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (1.94%) Oracle Cash Management
2 2 (1.94%) Oracle General Ledger
2 2 (1.94%) Oracle Payables
2 2 (1.94%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 43 (41.75%) AWS
2 31 (30.10%) GCP
3 30 (29.13%) Azure
4 14 (13.59%) Akamai
5 9 (8.74%) GitHub
5 9 (8.74%) Microsoft 365
6 8 (7.77%) Entra ID
7 4 (3.88%) OpenShift
8 3 (2.91%) Azure DevOps
8 3 (2.91%) Cloudflare
9 2 (1.94%) Azure Sentinel
9 2 (1.94%) Azure Service Bus
9 2 (1.94%) IaaS
9 2 (1.94%) PaaS
9 2 (1.94%) SaaS
10 1 (0.97%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 1 (0.97%) AWS CloudFormation
10 1 (0.97%) Datadog
10 1 (0.97%) GitHub Actions
10 1 (0.97%) Stackdriver
Communications & Networking
1 25 (24.27%) Firewall
2 11 (10.68%) Network Security
3 10 (9.71%) Wireshark
4 7 (6.80%) HTTP
5 5 (4.85%) Internet
6 3 (2.91%) HTTPS
6 3 (2.91%) Kerberos
7 2 (1.94%) Intrusion Detection
7 2 (1.94%) Reverse Proxy
8 1 (0.97%) TCP/IP
8 1 (0.97%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (8.74%) PostgreSQL
2 7 (6.80%) NoSQL
3 6 (5.83%) MySQL
3 6 (5.83%) Relational Database
4 5 (4.85%) MongoDB
5 4 (3.88%) RDBMS
5 4 (3.88%) SQL Server
6 2 (1.94%) Redis
7 1 (0.97%) Apache Cassandra
7 1 (0.97%) DB2
Development Applications
1 10 (9.71%) Jenkins
2 9 (8.74%) Git
3 4 (3.88%) Android Studio
3 4 (3.88%) Gradle
3 4 (3.88%) Jaeger
3 4 (3.88%) PyCharm
4 3 (2.91%) Bitbucket
4 3 (2.91%) CocoaPods
4 3 (2.91%) GitLab
4 3 (2.91%) Snyk
4 3 (2.91%) SonarQube
4 3 (2.91%) Xcode
5 1 (0.97%) Burp Suite
5 1 (0.97%) Cucumber
5 1 (0.97%) Cypress.io
5 1 (0.97%) JIRA
5 1 (0.97%) JUnit
5 1 (0.97%) Mocha
5 1 (0.97%) Mockito
5 1 (0.97%) TestDirector
General
1 39 (37.86%) Social Skills
2 22 (21.36%) Finance
3 17 (16.50%) Analytical Skills
4 11 (10.68%) Public Sector
5 4 (3.88%) Banking
6 3 (2.91%) Financial Institution
6 3 (2.91%) Retail
7 2 (1.94%) Legal
8 1 (0.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (0.97%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 13 (12.62%) Architect
2 12 (11.65%) Developer
3 10 (9.71%) Security Architect
4 9 (8.74%) Security Engineer
5 8 (7.77%) Senior
6 7 (6.80%) Administrator
7 6 (5.83%) Lead
8 5 (4.85%) Application Support Team Leader
8 5 (4.85%) Applications Support
8 5 (4.85%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 5 (4.85%) Full-Stack Engineer
8 5 (4.85%) Oracle Team Leader
8 5 (4.85%) Scala Engineer
8 5 (4.85%) Support Team Leader
8 5 (4.85%) Team Leader
9 4 (3.88%) Analyst
9 4 (3.88%) Android Developer
9 4 (3.88%) Mobile Engineer
9 4 (3.88%) Security Analyst
10 3 (2.91%) DevSecOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (10.68%) RESTful
2 10 (9.71%) JSON
3 7 (6.80%) OAuth
4 6 (5.83%) REST
5 5 (4.85%) .NET
5 5 (4.85%) Kafka
5 5 (4.85%) Play Framework
5 5 (4.85%) Spring Boot
5 5 (4.85%) XML
6 4 (3.88%) Middleware
6 4 (3.88%) NumPy
6 4 (3.88%) OpenID
6 4 (3.88%) OpenTelemetry
6 4 (3.88%) Pandas
6 4 (3.88%) TensorFlow
7 3 (2.91%) LDAP
7 3 (2.91%) SAML
7 3 (2.91%) YAML
8 2 (1.94%) Flash
8 2 (1.94%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 27 (26.21%) Security Posture
2 17 (16.50%) Mobile App
3 12 (11.65%) Cloud Native
3 12 (11.65%) Onboarding
4 10 (9.71%) Management Information System
5 9 (8.74%) Enterprise Software
6 7 (6.80%) Cloud Security Posture
6 7 (6.80%) Hybrid Cloud
7 5 (4.85%) Public Cloud
8 4 (3.88%) Algorithms
8 4 (3.88%) Distributed Systems
8 4 (3.88%) Online Banking
9 3 (2.91%) BYOD
9 3 (2.91%) Clustering
9 3 (2.91%) Data Protection Act
9 3 (2.91%) Product Ownership
10 2 (1.94%) Blockchain
10 2 (1.94%) Legacy Systems
10 2 (1.94%) Mainframe
11 1 (0.97%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 11 (10.68%) Android
2 8 (7.77%) Apple iOS
3 7 (6.80%) Linux
3 7 (6.80%) Windows
4 6 (5.83%) Windows 10
5 1 (0.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.97%) Unix
5 1 (0.97%) Windows 8
5 1 (0.97%) Windows Server 2008
5 1 (0.97%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 33 (32.04%) CI/CD
1 33 (32.04%) DevOps
1 33 (32.04%) DevSecOps
2 30 (29.13%) Agile
3 27 (26.21%) Cloud Security
3 27 (26.21%) Problem-Solving
4 24 (23.30%) Test Automation
5 22 (21.36%) Microservices
6 21 (20.39%) Security Testing
7 20 (19.42%) Vulnerability Management
8 19 (18.45%) Threat Modelling
9 18 (17.48%) Architectural Patterns
10 17 (16.50%) Cybersecurity
11 16 (15.53%) SDLC
12 15 (14.56%) Migration
13 14 (13.59%) Zero Trust
14 13 (12.62%) Ethical Hacking
14 13 (12.62%) Information Security
14 13 (12.62%) Performance Optimisation
14 13 (12.62%) Security Operations
Programming Languages
1 15 (14.56%) Java
1 15 (14.56%) SQL
2 10 (9.71%) Python
3 6 (5.83%) Rust
4 5 (4.85%) C#
4 5 (4.85%) Kotlin
4 5 (4.85%) Scala
5 4 (3.88%) Objective-C
5 4 (3.88%) Swift
6 3 (2.91%) JavaScript
7 2 (1.94%) Bash
7 2 (1.94%) PowerShell
7 2 (1.94%) Solidity
8 1 (0.97%) Go
8 1 (0.97%) Perl
Qualifications
1 18 (17.48%) CISSP
2 17 (16.50%) Security Cleared
3 11 (10.68%) Degree
4 9 (8.74%) SC Cleared
5 8 (7.77%) CEH
5 8 (7.77%) CISM
6 6 (5.83%) AWS Certification
6 6 (5.83%) BPSS Clearance
7 5 (4.85%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 5 (4.85%) Azure Certification
7 5 (4.85%) CCSP
7 5 (4.85%) Cisco Certification
7 5 (4.85%) OSCP
8 4 (3.88%) GIAC
9 3 (2.91%) GWAPT
10 2 (1.94%) CCSK
10 2 (1.94%) CISA
10 2 (1.94%) DV Cleared
10 2 (1.94%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.97%) CSSLP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (16.50%) NIST
2 16 (15.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 13 (12.62%) QA
4 11 (10.68%) GDPR
5 10 (9.71%) PCI DSS
6 6 (5.83%) SLA
7 5 (4.85%) PSD2
8 3 (2.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 2 (1.94%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (1.94%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.97%) COBIT
10 1 (0.97%) COSO
10 1 (0.97%) Cyber Essentials
10 1 (0.97%) GRC
System Software
1 15 (14.56%) Docker
2 3 (2.91%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 16 (15.53%) Kubernetes
2 13 (12.62%) CSIRT
3 7 (6.80%) Grafana
3 7 (6.80%) Norton AntiVirus
3 7 (6.80%) SCCM
4 6 (5.83%) Prometheus
5 4 (3.88%) Kiali
6 3 (2.91%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 2 (1.94%) Ansible
7 2 (1.94%) Puppet
7 2 (1.94%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (1.94%) Symantec Endpoint Protection
7 2 (1.94%) Terraform
8 1 (0.97%) Nexpose
8 1 (0.97%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 20 (19.42%) Microsoft
2 16 (15.53%) F5
2 16 (15.53%) Splunk
3 9 (8.74%) McAfee
3 9 (8.74%) Oracle
4 7 (6.80%) Symantec
5 3 (2.91%) Checkmarx
5 3 (2.91%) Google
5 3 (2.91%) Imperva
5 3 (2.91%) Qualys
5 3 (2.91%) Veracode
6 2 (1.94%) Cisco
6 2 (1.94%) Citrix
6 2 (1.94%) OpenText
6 2 (1.94%) Xamarin
7 1 (0.97%) Tenable