Offensive Security Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Offensive Security
UK > UK excluding London

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

6 months to
2 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 427 335 390
Rank change year-on-year -92 +55 +56
Contract jobs citing Offensive Security 13 3 9
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.054% 0.023% 0.043%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.066% 0.026% 0.051%
Number of daily rates quoted 5 3 8
10th Percentile £460 - £600
25th Percentile - - £600
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £625
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% -4.00% -
75th Percentile - £625 £650
90th Percentile £580 £640 -
UK median daily rate £610 £613 £650
% change year-on-year -0.41% -5.77% -3.70%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK excluding London

Offensive 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 19,557 11,562 17,594
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 81.40% 90.45% 84.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,844 7,260 10,508
10th Percentile £289 £235 £250
25th Percentile £400 £375 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.62% -3.10% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £678 £663 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,054 815 2,057
10th Percentile £14.50 £14.20 £12.32
25th Percentile £19.00 £17.44 £15.23
Median hourly rate £43.31 £27.94 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +54.99% -23.45% +4.29%
75th Percentile £67.25 £64.76 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.93 £75.14 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.50
% change year-on-year +43.29% -18.31% -2.53%

Offensive Security
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

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

Offensive Security job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Offensive Security
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

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

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

Offensive Security
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Offensive Security in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 2 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Offensive Security in the UK excluding London

Offensive 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 Offensive Security within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 2 May 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
Midlands - 11 £550 - 1
West Midlands - 11 £550 -
North of England -52 9 £600 -7.69%
Yorkshire - 9 £600 -
South East - 1 £400 - 6
Offensive Security
UK

Offensive 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 3 (23.08%) OpenStack
2 1 (7.69%) Apache Spark
Cloud Services
1 1 (7.69%) Azure
Communications & Networking
1 1 (7.69%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (23.08%) Elasticsearch
2 1 (7.69%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 8 (61.54%) Claude Code
2 1 (7.69%) Burp Suite
General
1 1 (7.69%) Analytical Skills
Job Titles
1 8 (61.54%) Lead
2 5 (38.46%) Penetration Tester
2 5 (38.46%) Tester
3 4 (30.77%) Lead Tester
3 4 (30.77%) Security Penetration Tester
3 4 (30.77%) Security Tester
4 3 (23.08%) Cybersecurity Specialist
4 3 (23.08%) Security Specialist
5 1 (7.69%) Analyst
5 1 (7.69%) Cybersecurity Analyst
5 1 (7.69%) Cybersecurity Engineer
5 1 (7.69%) Security Analyst
5 1 (7.69%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (23.08%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 1 (7.69%) Cyber Defence
1 1 (7.69%) Cyber Threat
1 1 (7.69%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 1 (7.69%) Kali Linux
1 1 (7.69%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 12 (92.31%) Security Testing
2 5 (38.46%) Red Team
3 4 (30.77%) Cybersecurity
3 4 (30.77%) Purple Team
3 4 (30.77%) Threat Detection
4 3 (23.08%) DevOps
4 3 (23.08%) Incident Response
4 3 (23.08%) MITRE ATT&CK
4 3 (23.08%) Performance Tuning
4 3 (23.08%) Security Operations
4 3 (23.08%) SIEM
4 3 (23.08%) Visualisation
5 1 (7.69%) Cloud Security
5 1 (7.69%) Data Pipeline
5 1 (7.69%) Data Science
5 1 (7.69%) Decision-Making
5 1 (7.69%) Problem-Solving
5 1 (7.69%) Prototyping
5 1 (7.69%) Rapid Prototyping
5 1 (7.69%) Vulnerability Management
Programming Languages
1 1 (7.69%) Python
Qualifications
1 1 (7.69%) SANS
Systems Management
1 3 (23.08%) Ansible
1 3 (23.08%) Kibana
1 3 (23.08%) Kubernetes
1 3 (23.08%) logstash
1 3 (23.08%) Terraform
2 1 (7.69%) Nessus
2 1 (7.69%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1 (7.69%) Databricks