Security Hardening Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Security Hardening
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the UK excluding London requiring Security Hardening skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 26 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 373 341 372
Rank change year-on-year -32 +31 +69
Contract jobs citing Security Hardening 36 15 32
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.20% 0.10% 0.16%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.23% 0.12% 0.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 27 14 22
10th Percentile £305 £419 £451
25th Percentile £390 - £483
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £544
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +1.15% -9.38%
75th Percentile £607 £647 £694
90th Percentile £650 £765 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -9.09% - -2.48%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 2
10th Percentile - - £61.63
25th Percentile - - £62.19
Median hourly rate - - £63.75
75th Percentile - - £64.69
90th Percentile - - £64.88
UK median hourly rate - £112.00 £42.25
% change year-on-year - +165.09% -42.12%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK excluding London

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 UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 15,744 12,894 17,276
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 85.58% 87.27% 87.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,632 7,584 11,117
10th Percentile £221 £239 £250
25th Percentile £375 £381 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £575 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,754 742 1,246
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.50 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.00 £17.72
Median hourly rate £23.58 £31.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -25.16% -30.00% +40.63%
75th Percentile £50.00 £64.40 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.55 £73.46 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £43.50
% change year-on-year -22.62% -25.29% +24.29%

Security Hardening
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

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

Security Hardening job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Security Hardening
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

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

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

Security Hardening
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Security Hardening in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 26 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Security Hardening in the UK excluding London

Security Hardening
Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

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

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

Security Hardening
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 Security Hardening within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 26 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 -45 14 £500 - 2
South West 0 10 £450 -28.00% 1
North West - 7 £650 -
Yorkshire -34 6 £500 - 2
East of England - 6 £695 -
South East -8 5 £250 -58.33% 3
Midlands -47 3 £617 +7.30% 1
West Midlands -33 2 £628 -18.97% 1
East Midlands -19 1 £380 +1.33%
North East - 1 £400 -
Security Hardening
UK

Security Hardening
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 1 (2.78%) Confluence
1 1 (2.78%) IIS
1 1 (2.78%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 1 (2.78%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 6 (16.67%) Azure
2 5 (13.89%) Microsoft 365
3 4 (11.11%) Entra ID
3 4 (11.11%) IaaS
4 3 (8.33%) AWS
4 3 (8.33%) GitHub
4 3 (8.33%) GitHub Actions
5 2 (5.56%) Azure Sentinel
6 1 (2.78%) Amazon EC2
6 1 (2.78%) Amazon ECR
6 1 (2.78%) Amazon ECS
6 1 (2.78%) Amazon ELB
6 1 (2.78%) Amazon OpenSearch
6 1 (2.78%) Amazon S3
6 1 (2.78%) AWS CloudFormation
6 1 (2.78%) Azure DevOps
6 1 (2.78%) Datadog
6 1 (2.78%) GCP
6 1 (2.78%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 5 (13.89%) Firewall
2 3 (8.33%) DNS
2 3 (8.33%) VLAN
2 3 (8.33%) Wi-Fi
3 2 (5.56%) 4G
3 2 (5.56%) 5G
3 2 (5.56%) DHCP
3 2 (5.56%) TCP/IP
3 2 (5.56%) VSAN
4 1 (2.78%) Kerberos
4 1 (2.78%) Multicast
4 1 (2.78%) Network Security
4 1 (2.78%) VoIP
4 1 (2.78%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (2.78%) PostgreSQL
1 1 (2.78%) Relational Database
1 1 (2.78%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 4 (11.11%) Git
1 4 (11.11%) JIRA
2 3 (8.33%) Jenkins
2 3 (8.33%) Rational DOORS
3 2 (5.56%) Artifactory
4 1 (2.78%) SpecFlow
General
1 9 (25.00%) Social Skills
2 2 (5.56%) Documentation Skills
2 2 (5.56%) Military
2 2 (5.56%) Public Sector
3 1 (2.78%) Banking
3 1 (2.78%) Finance
3 1 (2.78%) Retail
Job Titles
1 7 (19.44%) Consultant
2 6 (16.67%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 6 (16.67%) VMware Consultant
3 5 (13.89%) DevOps Engineer
4 4 (11.11%) Senior
4 4 (11.11%) Software Engineer
4 4 (11.11%) VMware Engineer
4 4 (11.11%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
5 3 (8.33%) DevSecOps Engineer
5 3 (8.33%) Windows Engineer
6 2 (5.56%) 1st/2nd Line Support
6 2 (5.56%) 1st/2nd Line Support Engineer
6 2 (5.56%) 2nd Line Engineer
6 2 (5.56%) 2nd Line Support
6 2 (5.56%) 2nd Line Support Engineer
6 2 (5.56%) Engineering Specialist
6 2 (5.56%) Linux Engineer
6 2 (5.56%) Security Engineer
6 2 (5.56%) Support Engineer
6 2 (5.56%) VMware Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (5.56%) Middleware
2 1 (2.78%) .NET
2 1 (2.78%) AngularJS
2 1 (2.78%) Django
2 1 (2.78%) Elastic Stack
2 1 (2.78%) FastAPI
2 1 (2.78%) Flask
2 1 (2.78%) Gherkin
2 1 (2.78%) LDAP
2 1 (2.78%) Node.js
2 1 (2.78%) OAuth
2 1 (2.78%) OAuth2
2 1 (2.78%) OpenAPI
2 1 (2.78%) OpenID
2 1 (2.78%) Playwright
2 1 (2.78%) REST
2 1 (2.78%) RESTful
2 1 (2.78%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 7 (19.44%) Onboarding
2 6 (16.67%) Data Centre
3 3 (8.33%) PKI
4 2 (5.56%) Cloud Native
4 2 (5.56%) Driving Licence
4 2 (5.56%) Hybrid Cloud
4 2 (5.56%) Security Posture
5 1 (2.78%) Clustering
5 1 (2.78%) CMDB
5 1 (2.78%) Enterprise Storage
5 1 (2.78%) IBM XIV
5 1 (2.78%) Legacy Applications
5 1 (2.78%) Legacy Systems
5 1 (2.78%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 19 (52.78%) Windows
2 11 (30.56%) Linux
3 6 (16.67%) Windows Server
4 5 (13.89%) Windows 10
5 4 (11.11%) Ubuntu
6 2 (5.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (2.78%) Unix
7 1 (2.78%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 11 (30.56%) CI/CD
2 9 (25.00%) DevOps
2 9 (25.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 8 (22.22%) Infrastructure as Code
4 7 (19.44%) Knowledge Transfer
5 6 (16.67%) Agile
5 6 (16.67%) Service Management
5 6 (16.67%) Vulnerability Scanning
6 5 (13.89%) Continuous Improvement
6 5 (13.89%) ITIL
6 5 (13.89%) Zero Trust
7 4 (11.11%) Configuration Management
7 4 (11.11%) Containerisation
7 4 (11.11%) Cybersecurity
7 4 (11.11%) Digital Strategy
7 4 (11.11%) GitOps
7 4 (11.11%) Infrastructure Automation
7 4 (11.11%) Problem-Solving
7 4 (11.11%) Software Engineering
7 4 (11.11%) Unit Testing
Programming Languages
1 7 (19.44%) Python
2 6 (16.67%) Bash
2 6 (16.67%) PowerShell
3 4 (11.11%) Java
4 3 (8.33%) C++
5 2 (5.56%) JavaScript
6 1 (2.78%) C#
Qualifications
1 20 (55.56%) Security Cleared
2 13 (36.11%) SC Cleared
3 11 (30.56%) DV Cleared
4 1 (2.78%) CCA
4 1 (2.78%) GSEC
4 1 (2.78%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (8.33%) Cyber Essentials
1 3 (8.33%) NCSC
2 2 (5.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (2.78%) GDPR
3 1 (2.78%) NIST
3 1 (2.78%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 12 (33.33%) VMware Infrastructure
2 8 (22.22%) Active Directory
3 6 (16.67%) VMware NSX
4 5 (13.89%) Docker
4 5 (13.89%) vSphere
5 3 (8.33%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (5.56%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (5.56%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (2.78%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 12 (33.33%) Ansible
2 10 (27.78%) Terraform
3 9 (25.00%) Kubernetes
4 6 (16.67%) SCCM
5 5 (13.89%) Nessus
5 5 (13.89%) Packer
6 4 (11.11%) Microsoft Intune
6 4 (11.11%) vRealize
6 4 (11.11%) vRealize Orchestrator
7 3 (8.33%) Podman
7 3 (8.33%) SELinux
8 2 (5.56%) Check_MK
8 2 (5.56%) PowerCLI
8 2 (5.56%) Single Sign-On
8 2 (5.56%) vCenter Server
8 2 (5.56%) WSUS
9 1 (2.78%) Argo
9 1 (2.78%) Icinga
9 1 (2.78%) Prometheus
9 1 (2.78%) SolarWinds Orion
Vendors
1 21 (58.33%) VMware
2 8 (22.22%) Microsoft
3 3 (8.33%) Cisco
4 2 (5.56%) Citrix
4 2 (5.56%) Fortinet
4 2 (5.56%) Juniper
4 2 (5.56%) Red Hat
4 2 (5.56%) Splunk
5 1 (2.78%) Atlassian
5 1 (2.78%) CyberArk
5 1 (2.78%) Dell
5 1 (2.78%) IBM
5 1 (2.78%) Qualys
5 1 (2.78%) SolarWinds
5 1 (2.78%) Sophos
5 1 (2.78%) Veeam