Security Testing Contracts in the UK excluding London

Security Testing
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the UK excluding London requiring Security Testing skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Security Testing over the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 289 301 371
Rank change year-on-year +12 +70 +53
Contract jobs citing Security Testing 47 98 92
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 0.37% 0.47% 0.38%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.41% 0.56% 0.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 34 46 56
10th Percentile £263 £463 £450
25th Percentile £384 £502 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £516 £585 £600
Median % change year-on-year -11.75% -2.50% +9.59%
75th Percentile £650 £644 £725
90th Percentile £744 £708 £788
UK median daily rate £500 £625 £600
% change year-on-year -20.00% +4.17% +9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 1 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £51.25 - -
Median hourly rate £52.50 £62.50 -
Median % change year-on-year -16.00% - -
75th Percentile £53.75 - -
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £62.50 -
% change year-on-year -16.00% - -

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK excluding London

Security Testing 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 11,543 17,602 21,544
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 90.42% 84.74% 89.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,249 10,520 14,947
10th Percentile £235 £250 £255
25th Percentile £375 £380 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.50% - +5.26%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £662 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 825 2,048 1,307
10th Percentile £14.20 £12.33 £11.00
25th Percentile £17.30 £15.28 £16.00
Median hourly rate £27.50 £37.34 £36.00
Median % change year-on-year -26.35% +3.72% +80.00%
75th Percentile £64.50 £60.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £72.98
UK median hourly rate £29.00 £35.65 £37.30
% change year-on-year -18.65% -4.42% +49.20%

Security Testing
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Job postings citing Security Testing as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Job vacancy trend for Security Testing in the UK excluding London

Security Testing
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Security Testing in the UK excluding London.

Daily rate trend for Security Testing in the UK excluding London

Security Testing
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Security Testing in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Security Testing in the UK excluding London

Security Testing
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Security Testing in the UK excluding London.

Hourly rate trend for Security Testing in the UK excluding London

Security Testing
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 Testing within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 1 May 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
South East +7 20 £575 +4.55% 63
Midlands +27 10 £516 -3.96% 40
West Midlands +20 10 £516 -20.58% 22
North of England +13 7 £275 -47.62% 53
Scotland +9 5 £375 -37.50% 10
Yorkshire +11 4 £275 - 21
Wales +3 4 £625 -6.19% 5
South West +42 3 £555 -5.13% 30
North West +8 3 £650 +23.81% 26
Security Testing
UK

Security Testing
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 4 (8.51%) Confluence
2 2 (4.26%) SAS
2 2 (4.26%) TPMS
3 1 (2.13%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (2.13%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 3 (6.38%) Dynamics GP
2 1 (2.13%) SAP APO
Cloud Services
1 18 (38.30%) Azure
2 8 (17.02%) AWS
3 7 (14.89%) Microsoft 365
4 5 (10.64%) Azure DevOps
4 5 (10.64%) Entra ID
5 4 (8.51%) Power Platform
6 3 (6.38%) SaaS
7 2 (4.26%) GCP
7 2 (4.26%) GitHub
7 2 (4.26%) GitHub Actions
7 2 (4.26%) IaaS
8 1 (2.13%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 5 (10.64%) Firewall
2 1 (2.13%) 5G
2 1 (2.13%) BGP
2 1 (2.13%) Ethernet VPN
2 1 (2.13%) MPLS
2 1 (2.13%) Network Security
2 1 (2.13%) SSL
2 1 (2.13%) VPN
2 1 (2.13%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (6.38%) Elasticsearch
2 2 (4.26%) Oracle Reports
3 1 (2.13%) IDMS
3 1 (2.13%) MongoDB
3 1 (2.13%) NoSQL
3 1 (2.13%) Power BI
3 1 (2.13%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 10 (21.28%) JIRA
2 9 (19.15%) Selenium
3 8 (17.02%) Postman
4 7 (14.89%) Cypress.io
5 6 (12.77%) Jenkins
6 5 (10.64%) GitLab
7 4 (8.51%) Git
7 4 (8.51%) SoapUI
8 3 (6.38%) JMeter
8 3 (6.38%) REST Assured
8 3 (6.38%) TestNG
8 3 (6.38%) Travis CI
9 2 (4.26%) Burp Suite
9 2 (4.26%) Metasploit
10 1 (2.13%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 1 (2.13%) Bitbucket
10 1 (2.13%) CA Gen
10 1 (2.13%) Cucumber
10 1 (2.13%) SonarQube
10 1 (2.13%) Visual Studio
General
1 21 (44.68%) Social Skills
2 8 (17.02%) Analytical Skills
3 7 (14.89%) Public Sector
4 3 (6.38%) Documentation Skills
5 2 (4.26%) Aerospace
5 2 (4.26%) Finance
6 1 (2.13%) Automotive
6 1 (2.13%) Influencing Skills
6 1 (2.13%) Marketing
6 1 (2.13%) Presentation Skills
6 1 (2.13%) Retail
Job Titles
1 14 (29.79%) Tester
2 6 (12.77%) Auditor
2 6 (12.77%) QA Tester
2 6 (12.77%) Security Auditor
3 4 (8.51%) Penetration Tester
3 4 (8.51%) Senior
3 4 (8.51%) Test Automation Engineer
3 4 (8.51%) Test Engineer
4 3 (6.38%) Information Specialist
4 3 (6.38%) Lead
4 3 (6.38%) Security Specialist
5 2 (4.26%) Architect
5 2 (4.26%) Cybersecurity Specialist
5 2 (4.26%) Information Assurance Specialist
5 2 (4.26%) QA Engineer
5 2 (4.26%) Security Architect
5 2 (4.26%) Senior Architect
5 2 (4.26%) Senior Security Architect
5 2 (4.26%) Test Leader
5 2 (4.26%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (4.26%) Gherkin
1 2 (4.26%) Playwright
1 2 (4.26%) RESTful
2 1 (2.13%) .NET
2 1 (2.13%) .NET Framework
2 1 (2.13%) AngularJS
2 1 (2.13%) GraphQL
2 1 (2.13%) JSON
2 1 (2.13%) NETCONF
2 1 (2.13%) OAuth
2 1 (2.13%) REST
2 1 (2.13%) RESTCONF
2 1 (2.13%) SOAP
2 1 (2.13%) WPF
2 1 (2.13%) XML
2 1 (2.13%) YAML
2 1 (2.13%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 3 (6.38%) Embedded Systems
1 3 (6.38%) Management Information System
1 3 (6.38%) PKI
2 2 (4.26%) Cyber Threat
2 2 (4.26%) Cyberattack
2 2 (4.26%) Data Protection Act
3 1 (2.13%) Cyber Security Posture
3 1 (2.13%) Distributed Systems
3 1 (2.13%) Educational Technology
3 1 (2.13%) EPoS
3 1 (2.13%) Industrial Internet of Things
3 1 (2.13%) IoT
3 1 (2.13%) Operational Technology
3 1 (2.13%) Product Ownership
3 1 (2.13%) SCADA
3 1 (2.13%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 6 (12.77%) Windows
2 4 (8.51%) Unix
3 3 (6.38%) Windows Server
4 1 (2.13%) CentOS
4 1 (2.13%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 28 (59.57%) Agile
2 20 (42.55%) Test Automation
3 16 (34.04%) Penetration Testing
4 12 (25.53%) DevOps
5 11 (23.40%) Performance Testing
5 11 (23.40%) Test Strategy
6 10 (21.28%) CI/CD
6 10 (21.28%) Cybersecurity
6 10 (21.28%) Non-Functional Testing
7 9 (19.15%) API Testing
7 9 (19.15%) Containerisation
7 9 (19.15%) Test Scripting
8 8 (17.02%) Collaborative Working
8 8 (17.02%) Problem-Solving
9 7 (14.89%) OWASP
9 7 (14.89%) Risk Management
10 6 (12.77%) Cloud Security
10 6 (12.77%) SDLC
11 5 (10.64%) Dynamic Application Security Testing
11 5 (10.64%) Static Application Security Testing
Programming Languages
1 10 (21.28%) Python
2 5 (10.64%) Bash
3 4 (8.51%) SQL
3 4 (8.51%) TypeScript
4 3 (6.38%) Java
5 2 (4.26%) C
5 2 (4.26%) C++
5 2 (4.26%) JavaScript
5 2 (4.26%) Ruby
6 1 (2.13%) COBOL
6 1 (2.13%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 17 (36.17%) Security Cleared
2 14 (29.79%) SC Cleared
3 9 (19.15%) CISSP
4 8 (17.02%) Degree
5 6 (12.77%) CEH
6 5 (10.64%) Computer Science Degree
7 4 (8.51%) CISM
7 4 (8.51%) CREST Certified
7 4 (8.51%) DV Cleared
7 4 (8.51%) ISTQB
7 4 (8.51%) Master's Degree
7 4 (8.51%) OSCE
8 2 (4.26%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 2 (4.26%) BPSS Clearance
8 2 (4.26%) CCSP
8 2 (4.26%) Cisco Certification
8 2 (4.26%) Cyber Scheme
8 2 (4.26%) GPEN
8 2 (4.26%) GWAPT
8 2 (4.26%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (29.79%) QA
2 7 (14.89%) NCSC
3 6 (12.77%) Accessibility
4 3 (6.38%) Disclosure Scotland
4 3 (6.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 3 (6.38%) NIST
5 2 (4.26%) GDPR
5 2 (4.26%) HIPAA
5 2 (4.26%) PCI DSS
6 1 (2.13%) PMO
System Software
1 5 (10.64%) Docker
2 4 (8.51%) Active Directory
3 3 (6.38%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 5 (10.64%) Kubernetes
2 3 (6.38%) Kibana
2 3 (6.38%) SCCM
3 2 (4.26%) CASB
4 1 (2.13%) Terraform
Vendors
1 2 (4.26%) Microsoft
1 2 (4.26%) Oracle
1 2 (4.26%) TOWER Software
2 1 (2.13%) BT
2 1 (2.13%) Cisco
2 1 (2.13%) ESRI
2 1 (2.13%) Rapid7
2 1 (2.13%) SAP
2 1 (2.13%) ServiceNow