Cyber Essentials Contracts

Cyber Essentials
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring Cyber Essentials skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Cyber Essentials over the 6 months leading up to 3 July 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 469 516 548
Rank change year-on-year +47 +32 +182
Contract jobs citing Cyber Essentials 70 74 137
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.22% 0.17% 0.25%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 1.37% 1.24% 1.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 44 47 105
10th Percentile £348 £201 £414
25th Percentile £461 £469 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £563 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% -3.67% +9.00%
75th Percentile £675 £600 £675
90th Percentile £705 £655 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +10.00% -4.76% +16.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 1
10th Percentile £27.93 - -
25th Percentile £28.52 - £30.75
Median hourly rate £31.49 - £31.50
75th Percentile £34.16 - £32.25
90th Percentile £34.58 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.49 - £31.50
% change year-on-year - - +28.57%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
UK

Cyber Essentials falls under the Quality Assurance and Compliance category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring quality assurance or compliance skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 5,106 5,948 7,594
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.30% 13.68% 13.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,273 3,691 5,184
10th Percentile £280 £282 £300
25th Percentile £400 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% -2.86% -
75th Percentile £613 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £495
% change year-on-year - -4.04% +7.03%
Number of hourly rates quoted 213 431 253
10th Percentile £14.82 £11.07 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £13.52 £19.50
Median hourly rate £30.00 £23.80 £38.00
Median % change year-on-year +26.05% -37.37% +40.74%
75th Percentile £63.75 £50.54 £63.23
90th Percentile £83.32 £70.00 £79.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.18 £21.64 £37.50
% change year-on-year +30.22% -42.29% +67.45%

Cyber Essentials
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for Cyber Essentials in the UK

Cyber Essentials
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for Cyber Essentials in the UK

Cyber Essentials
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Cyber Essentials over the 6 months to 3 July 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Cyber Essentials in the UK

Cyber Essentials
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for Cyber Essentials in the UK

Cyber Essentials
Top 16 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Cyber Essentials within the UK over the 6 months to 3 July 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 +57 61 £550 +4.76% 252
UK excluding London +26 36 £550 +10.00% 195
London +44 28 £575 +9.52% 78
Work from Home +30 21 £525 -6.67% 126
South East +41 9 £550 +223.53% 58
Midlands +15 6 £650 +4.00% 29
North of England +6 6 £575 +15.00% 44
East of England - 6 £249 - 21
East Midlands +6 4 £650 +30.00% 12
Scotland -7 4 £550 -4.35% 11
South West +27 3 £350 -39.13% 33
North West +5 3 £225 -65.38% 16
West Midlands +6 2 - - 17
Yorkshire +5 2 £575 +53.33% 26
Channel Islands - 2 £725 -
North East - 1 £775 - 3

Cyber Essentials
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:

Application Platforms
1 3 (4.29%) SharePoint
2 1 (1.43%) CMS
2 1 (1.43%) Headless CMS
Business Applications
1 2 (2.86%) Infor CloudSuite
2 1 (1.43%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 21 (30.00%) Azure
2 11 (15.71%) AWS
3 10 (14.29%) Microsoft 365
4 8 (11.43%) GitHub
5 7 (10.00%) GCP
6 4 (5.71%) SaaS
6 4 (5.71%) Tricentis Tosca
7 3 (4.29%) Azure Sentinel
7 3 (4.29%) Entra ID
7 3 (4.29%) OneDrive
8 2 (2.86%) Azure Stack
8 2 (2.86%) Cloud Computing
9 1 (1.43%) Azure Data Factory
9 1 (1.43%) Azure DevOps
9 1 (1.43%) Azure Key Vault
9 1 (1.43%) Azure Monitor
9 1 (1.43%) Dynamics 365
9 1 (1.43%) Google Analytics
9 1 (1.43%) Microsoft Purview
9 1 (1.43%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 6 (8.57%) VLAN
2 5 (7.14%) DHCP
2 5 (7.14%) DNS
2 5 (7.14%) Firewall
2 5 (7.14%) IP Telephony
2 5 (7.14%) TCP/IP
3 3 (4.29%) Network Security
3 3 (4.29%) VPN
4 1 (1.43%) Intrusion Detection
4 1 (1.43%) Kerberos
4 1 (1.43%) NAS
4 1 (1.43%) SAN
4 1 (1.43%) SD-WAN
4 1 (1.43%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (1.43%) InfluxDB
1 1 (1.43%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 8 (11.43%) Burp Suite
1 8 (11.43%) Metasploit
1 8 (11.43%) SonarQube
2 1 (1.43%) Jenkins
General
1 27 (38.57%) Social Skills
2 17 (24.29%) Public Sector
3 5 (7.14%) Manufacturing
4 4 (5.71%) Legal
5 3 (4.29%) Documentation Skills
5 3 (4.29%) Finance
5 3 (4.29%) Local Government
5 3 (4.29%) Military
6 2 (2.86%) Retail
7 1 (1.43%) Analytical Skills
7 1 (1.43%) Banking
7 1 (1.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (1.43%) Organisational Skills
7 1 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 11 (15.71%) Analyst
2 10 (14.29%) Cybersecurity Engineer
2 10 (14.29%) Security Engineer
3 8 (11.43%) Security Manager
4 7 (10.00%) Consultant
5 6 (8.57%) Senior
6 5 (7.14%) Architect
6 5 (7.14%) Cybersecurity Manager
6 5 (7.14%) Developer
6 5 (7.14%) Lead
6 5 (7.14%) Security Consultant
6 5 (7.14%) Support Analyst
7 4 (5.71%) Administrator
7 4 (5.71%) Applications Developer
7 4 (5.71%) Information Manager
7 4 (5.71%) Senior Applications Developer
7 4 (5.71%) Senior Developer
8 3 (4.29%) Information Security Consultant
8 3 (4.29%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 3 (4.29%) Risk Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (5.71%) .NET
1 4 (5.71%) LDAP
1 4 (5.71%) OAuth
1 4 (5.71%) OpenID
1 4 (5.71%) SAML
2 3 (4.29%) X-Windows
3 1 (1.43%) ADO
3 1 (1.43%) Next.js
3 1 (1.43%) Node.js
3 1 (1.43%) React
3 1 (1.43%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 12 (17.14%) Security Posture
2 7 (10.00%) Security Operations Centre
3 5 (7.14%) iPad
3 5 (7.14%) iPhone
3 5 (7.14%) Video Conferencing
4 4 (5.71%) Management Information System
5 2 (2.86%) Cyber Threat
5 2 (2.86%) Low-Code
6 1 (1.43%) Industry 4.0
6 1 (1.43%) Linux Command Line
6 1 (1.43%) NHS
6 1 (1.43%) Onboarding
6 1 (1.43%) PKI
6 1 (1.43%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 18 (25.71%) Windows
2 9 (12.86%) Mac OS
3 7 (10.00%) Windows Server
4 5 (7.14%) Android
4 5 (7.14%) Linux
4 5 (7.14%) Windows 10
4 5 (7.14%) Windows 7
5 4 (5.71%) Unix
6 1 (1.43%) Data ONTAP
6 1 (1.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (1.43%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 35 (50.00%) Cybersecurity
2 25 (35.71%) Information Security
3 16 (22.86%) Incident Response
4 15 (21.43%) Data Protection
5 13 (18.57%) Security Operations
6 12 (17.14%) Cloud Security
6 12 (17.14%) OWASP
7 10 (14.29%) Infrastructure as Code
7 10 (14.29%) Penetration Testing
7 10 (14.29%) Vulnerability Assessment
7 10 (14.29%) Vulnerability Management
8 9 (12.86%) CI/CD
8 9 (12.86%) Risk Management
9 8 (11.43%) DevSecOps
9 8 (11.43%) Dynamic Application Security Testing
9 8 (11.43%) ITIL
9 8 (11.43%) Roadmaps
9 8 (11.43%) Security Management
9 8 (11.43%) Security Testing
9 8 (11.43%) Static Application Security Testing
Programming Languages
1 9 (12.86%) Bash
1 9 (12.86%) Python
2 5 (7.14%) PowerShell
3 4 (5.71%) Shell Script
3 4 (5.71%) SQL
4 2 (2.86%) ActionScript
5 1 (1.43%) Perl
5 1 (1.43%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 20 (28.57%) Security Cleared
2 18 (25.71%) SC Cleared
3 13 (18.57%) CISSP
4 12 (17.14%) CISM
5 11 (15.71%) OSCP
6 9 (12.86%) CREST Certified
7 8 (11.43%) CHECK Team Member
7 8 (11.43%) Tigerscheme
8 4 (5.71%) CISA
8 4 (5.71%) CRISC
9 3 (4.29%) DV Cleared
9 3 (4.29%) GIAC
9 3 (4.29%) Microsoft Certification
10 2 (2.86%) Azure Certification
10 2 (2.86%) CCNP
10 2 (2.86%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (2.86%) CompTIA Security+
10 2 (2.86%) Degree
10 2 (2.86%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
10 2 (2.86%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (41.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 26 (37.14%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
3 22 (31.43%) NIST
4 13 (18.57%) GDPR
5 12 (17.14%) NCSC
6 9 (12.86%) GRC
7 5 (7.14%) PCI DSS
8 4 (5.71%) SOC 2
9 3 (4.29%) Accessibility
9 3 (4.29%) COBIT
10 2 (2.86%) ISO 9001
11 1 (1.43%) Disclosure Scotland
11 1 (1.43%) HIPAA
11 1 (1.43%) ISO/IEC 27005
11 1 (1.43%) JSP 440
11 1 (1.43%) NIST 800
11 1 (1.43%) PMO
11 1 (1.43%) SLA
System Software
1 12 (17.14%) Active Directory
2 4 (5.71%) Hyper-V
3 3 (4.29%) Docker
3 3 (4.29%) Virtual Servers
4 1 (1.43%) KVM
4 1 (1.43%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (1.43%) VMware ESXi
4 1 (1.43%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 8 (11.43%) Nmap
2 5 (7.14%) Microsoft Intune
3 4 (5.71%) Single Sign-On
4 2 (2.86%) FortiGate
5 1 (1.43%) Ansible
5 1 (1.43%) Grafana
5 1 (1.43%) HAProxy
5 1 (1.43%) Jamf Pro
5 1 (1.43%) Nagios
5 1 (1.43%) Red Hat Satellite
5 1 (1.43%) SCCM
5 1 (1.43%) Terraform
5 1 (1.43%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 20 (28.57%) Microsoft
2 8 (11.43%) Veracode
3 4 (5.71%) Cisco
3 4 (5.71%) VMware
4 3 (4.29%) Ping Identity
4 3 (4.29%) Qualys
5 2 (2.86%) Infor
5 2 (2.86%) Palo Alto
6 1 (1.43%) Citrix
6 1 (1.43%) Commvault
6 1 (1.43%) Dell
6 1 (1.43%) EMC
6 1 (1.43%) Fortinet
6 1 (1.43%) Google
6 1 (1.43%) Meraki
6 1 (1.43%) NetApp
6 1 (1.43%) Proofpoint
6 1 (1.43%) Red Hat
6 1 (1.43%) SonicWALL
6 1 (1.43%) Sophos