Cyber Defence Contracts

Cyber Defence
UK

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Cyber Defence in contract job vacancies. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Cyber Defence over the 6 months leading up to 19 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 485 439 612
Rank change year-on-year -46 +173 +181
Contract jobs citing Cyber Defence 24 132 75
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.082% 0.31% 0.13%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.24% 1.02% 0.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 12 78 45
10th Percentile £458 £524 £600
25th Percentile £525 £577 £613
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £648 £700
Median % change year-on-year -7.34% -7.50% -3.45%
75th Percentile £728 £850 £788
90th Percentile £738 - £808
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £700 £650
% change year-on-year -14.29% +7.69% -10.34%

All Generic Skills
UK

Cyber Defence falls under the General and Transferable Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring generic IT skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 9,944 12,894 18,956
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.99% 30.28% 33.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,303 8,305 13,039
10th Percentile £300 £267 £313
25th Percentile £411 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £540 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% -1.82% -
75th Percentile £650 £663 £680
90th Percentile £775 £800 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £479 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.15% - +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 400 899 624
10th Percentile £16.08 £12.25 £9.80
25th Percentile £20.34 £15.17 £10.63
Median hourly rate £31.76 £31.50 £22.26
Median % change year-on-year +0.83% +41.54% -19.07%
75th Percentile £63.75 £61.30 £63.00
90th Percentile £83.20 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.90 £30.00 £22.00
% change year-on-year -0.33% +36.36% +3.53%

Cyber Defence
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Cyber Defence as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Cyber Defence in the UK

Cyber Defence
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Cyber Defence.

Daily rate trend for Cyber Defence in the UK

Cyber Defence
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Cyber Defence over the 6 months to 19 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Cyber Defence in the UK

Cyber Defence
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Cyber Defence.

Hourly rate trend for Cyber Defence in the UK

Cyber Defence
Top 10 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Cyber Defence within the UK over the 6 months to 19 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
England -52 22 £600 -14.29% 105
London +45 12 £713 -1.72% 33
UK excluding London -46 10 £600 -14.29% 79
Work from Home +51 5 £524 -4.82% 44
South West -6 3 £550 -5.50% 11
South East +13 2 £575 -28.13% 19
Midlands -14 2 £600 -6.98% 6
West Midlands -27 2 £600 -6.98% 3
East of England - 2 £650 - 28
Scotland +2 1 - - 3

Cyber Defence
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities 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:

Cloud Services
1 7 (29.17%) AWS
2 6 (25.00%) Azure
2 6 (25.00%) Azure Sentinel
3 3 (12.50%) GCP
3 3 (12.50%) IaaS
3 3 (12.50%) Microsoft Purview
3 3 (12.50%) PaaS
3 3 (12.50%) SaaS
4 2 (8.33%) Microsoft 365
5 1 (4.17%) Amazon GuardDuty
5 1 (4.17%) Azure Logic Apps
5 1 (4.17%) Azure Monitor
5 1 (4.17%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 6 (25.00%) Firewall
2 3 (12.50%) Network Security
3 2 (8.33%) Intrusion Detection
4 1 (4.17%) VPN
4 1 (4.17%) VSAN
General
1 7 (29.17%) Analytical Skills
2 6 (25.00%) Legal
2 6 (25.00%) Social Skills
3 5 (20.83%) Public Sector
4 2 (8.33%) Military
5 1 (4.17%) Finance
5 1 (4.17%) Fire and Rescue
5 1 (4.17%) Police
Job Titles
1 5 (20.83%) Security Engineer
2 4 (16.67%) Analyst
2 4 (16.67%) Lead
3 3 (12.50%) Architect
3 3 (12.50%) Security Analyst
3 3 (12.50%) Security Architect
3 3 (12.50%) Senior
3 3 (12.50%) Senior Tester
3 3 (12.50%) Tester
4 2 (8.33%) Automation Engineer
4 2 (8.33%) Cybersecurity Analyst
5 1 (4.17%) Consultant
5 1 (4.17%) Cyber Defence Analyst
5 1 (4.17%) Cybersecurity Consultant
5 1 (4.17%) Microsoft Engineer
5 1 (4.17%) Security Consultant
5 1 (4.17%) SIEM Engineer
5 1 (4.17%) Threat and Vulnerability Manager
5 1 (4.17%) Vulnerability Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (12.50%) CSS
1 3 (12.50%) HTML
2 2 (8.33%) Elastic Stack
3 1 (4.17%) .NET
3 1 (4.17%) ModSecurity
Miscellaneous
1 7 (29.17%) Cyber Threat
2 5 (20.83%) Cyber Kill Chain
3 4 (16.67%) Security Posture
4 2 (8.33%) Cloud Native
4 2 (8.33%) Insider Threat
4 2 (8.33%) PKI
5 1 (4.17%) Cloud Security Posture
5 1 (4.17%) Cyberattack
5 1 (4.17%) Data Protection Act
5 1 (4.17%) Hybrid Cloud
5 1 (4.17%) Management Information System
5 1 (4.17%) Onboarding
5 1 (4.17%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 4 (16.67%) Windows
2 3 (12.50%) Linux
3 1 (4.17%) Unix
3 1 (4.17%) Windows 10
3 1 (4.17%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 17 (70.83%) Cybersecurity
2 11 (45.83%) SIEM
3 10 (41.67%) Incident Response
4 8 (33.33%) Cloud Security
4 8 (33.33%) Continuous Improvement
4 8 (33.33%) Cyber Threat Intelligence
4 8 (33.33%) Threat Intelligence
5 7 (29.17%) Information Security
5 7 (29.17%) Problem-Solving
6 6 (25.00%) Security Operations
7 5 (20.83%) Analytics
7 5 (20.83%) Mentoring
7 5 (20.83%) MITRE ATT&CK
7 5 (20.83%) SOAR
8 4 (16.67%) Application Security
8 4 (16.67%) Penetration Testing
8 4 (16.67%) Roadmaps
8 4 (16.67%) Security Monitoring
8 4 (16.67%) Vulnerability Management
8 4 (16.67%) Vulnerability Remediation
Programming Languages
1 6 (25.00%) Python
2 3 (12.50%) JavaScript
2 3 (12.50%) Kusto Query Language
2 3 (12.50%) PHP
2 3 (12.50%) PowerShell
2 3 (12.50%) Ruby
2 3 (12.50%) SQL
Qualifications
1 9 (37.50%) Security Cleared
2 8 (33.33%) SC Cleared
3 6 (25.00%) Degree
4 5 (20.83%) CISSP
5 4 (16.67%) CEH
5 4 (16.67%) GIAC
6 3 (12.50%) CCSAS
6 3 (12.50%) CISM
6 3 (12.50%) CREST Certified
6 3 (12.50%) GPEN
6 3 (12.50%) GWAPT
6 3 (12.50%) OSCP
7 2 (8.33%) CompTIA Security+
7 2 (8.33%) DV Cleared
8 1 (4.17%) Computer Science Degree
8 1 (4.17%) ISSEP
8 1 (4.17%) Master's Degree
8 1 (4.17%) Microsoft Certification
8 1 (4.17%) SANS
8 1 (4.17%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (16.67%) NIST
2 3 (12.50%) GDPR
2 3 (12.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (8.33%) California Consumer Privacy Act
3 2 (8.33%) HIPAA
3 2 (8.33%) NCSC
3 2 (8.33%) SOC 2
4 1 (4.17%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 1 (4.17%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 3 (12.50%) CASB
2 1 (4.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
2 1 (4.17%) Ansible
2 1 (4.17%) OPNET
2 1 (4.17%) Puppet
Vendors
1 12 (50.00%) Microsoft
2 5 (20.83%) Splunk
3 2 (8.33%) ArcSight
3 2 (8.33%) Google
3 2 (8.33%) Palo Alto
3 2 (8.33%) SolarWinds
4 1 (4.17%) Atlassian
4 1 (4.17%) CrowdStrike
4 1 (4.17%) CyberArk
4 1 (4.17%) Forcepoint
4 1 (4.17%) Fortinet
4 1 (4.17%) Qualys
4 1 (4.17%) ServiceNow
4 1 (4.17%) Tenable
4 1 (4.17%) VMware