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 30 April 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 454 518 562
Rank change year-on-year +64 +44 +139
Contract jobs citing Cyber Essentials 65 82 151
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.22% 0.19% 0.25%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 1.43% 1.31% 1.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 39 51 115
10th Percentile £325 £225 £374
25th Percentile £441 £388 £469
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £515 £545
Median % change year-on-year +6.80% -5.42% +8.90%
75th Percentile £620 £619 £631
90th Percentile £632 £675 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +20.00% -4.76% +9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 0
10th Percentile £71.68 - -
25th Percentile £76.00 - -
Median hourly rate £83.20 - -
75th Percentile - - -
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £83.20 - -

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 4,558 6,250 7,982
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.59% 14.34% 13.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,921 3,951 5,482
10th Percentile £265 £295 £275
25th Percentile £400 £402 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% -2.86% +2.44%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £475
% change year-on-year -2.56% +2.63% +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 179 383 225
10th Percentile £18.04 £10.95 £13.21
25th Percentile £22.21 £13.18 £18.70
Median hourly rate £34.50 £21.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% -44.00% +33.93%
75th Percentile £65.00 £45.00 £62.00
90th Percentile £83.01 £67.38 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.78 £18.00 £36.25
% change year-on-year +126.53% -50.34% +72.21%

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 30 April 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 14 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 30 April 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 +59 58 £550 +6.80% 179
UK excluding London +51 46 £600 +20.00% 138
Work from Home +45 22 £566 -1.52% 75
South East +57 21 £620 +264.71% 43
London +25 18 £469 -6.25% 52
Midlands +28 9 £325 -51.85% 22
Scotland -1 7 £488 -2.50% 7
South West +41 5 £600 +4.35% 16
East Midlands +13 5 £325 -45.83% 3
West Midlands +17 4 £325 -56.67% 19
North of England +21 3 £600 +60.00% 44
Yorkshire +14 2 £575 +130.00% 25
North East - 1 £775 - 5
East of England - 1 £500 - 8

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 (4.62%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (1.54%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (3.08%) Infor CloudSuite
Cloud Services
1 15 (23.08%) Azure
2 13 (20.00%) SaaS
3 9 (13.85%) IaaS
3 9 (13.85%) Microsoft 365
3 9 (13.85%) PaaS
4 5 (7.69%) Entra ID
5 4 (6.15%) AWS
5 4 (6.15%) Azure Sentinel
5 4 (6.15%) Tricentis Tosca
6 3 (4.62%) Cloud Computing
6 3 (4.62%) OneDrive
7 2 (3.08%) Azure Stack
7 2 (3.08%) Microsoft Purview
7 2 (3.08%) Mimecast
7 2 (3.08%) Power Platform
8 1 (1.54%) Azure Data Factory
8 1 (1.54%) Azure Key Vault
8 1 (1.54%) Azure Monitor
8 1 (1.54%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 10 (15.38%) VSAN
2 9 (13.85%) Firewall
3 7 (10.77%) VPN
4 6 (9.23%) Network Security
5 5 (7.69%) SD-WAN
5 5 (7.69%) WAN
6 4 (6.15%) BGP
6 4 (6.15%) Cisco Nexus
6 4 (6.15%) MPLS
6 4 (6.15%) NGFW
6 4 (6.15%) OSPF
6 4 (6.15%) TCP/IP
7 3 (4.62%) DNS
7 3 (4.62%) VLAN
8 2 (3.08%) Cisco ASA
8 2 (3.08%) Intrusion Detection
9 1 (1.54%) Kerberos
9 1 (1.54%) NAS
9 1 (1.54%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (4.62%) Oracle Database
1 3 (4.62%) PostgreSQL
1 3 (4.62%) SQL Server
2 1 (1.54%) InfluxDB
2 1 (1.54%) MongoDB
2 1 (1.54%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 1 (1.54%) Jenkins
General
1 18 (27.69%) Social Skills
2 12 (18.46%) Public Sector
3 6 (9.23%) Manufacturing
4 5 (7.69%) Legal
5 4 (6.15%) Documentation Skills
6 3 (4.62%) Analytical Skills
6 3 (4.62%) Finance
6 3 (4.62%) Law
6 3 (4.62%) Presentation Skills
7 2 (3.08%) Local Government
7 2 (3.08%) Military
7 2 (3.08%) Organisational Skills
8 1 (1.54%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 18 (27.69%) Senior
2 15 (23.08%) Architect
3 11 (16.92%) Technical Architect
4 10 (15.38%) Senior Architect
4 10 (15.38%) Senior Technical Architect
5 7 (10.77%) Analyst
6 6 (9.23%) Security Analyst
7 5 (7.69%) Cybersecurity Analyst
7 5 (7.69%) Information Manager
8 4 (6.15%) Administrator
8 4 (6.15%) Applications Developer
8 4 (6.15%) Cybersecurity Manager
8 4 (6.15%) Developer
8 4 (6.15%) Information Assurance Manager
8 4 (6.15%) Infrastructure Technical Architect
8 4 (6.15%) Security Manager
8 4 (6.15%) Senior Applications Developer
8 4 (6.15%) Senior Developer
8 4 (6.15%) Support Engineer
8 4 (6.15%) Technical Infrastructure Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (6.15%) .NET
1 4 (6.15%) LDAP
2 3 (4.62%) X-Windows
3 2 (3.08%) ModSecurity
4 1 (1.54%) OAuth
4 1 (1.54%) OpenID
4 1 (1.54%) REST
4 1 (1.54%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 11 (16.92%) Hybrid Cloud
1 11 (16.92%) PKI
2 6 (9.23%) Management Information System
3 5 (7.69%) Security Posture
4 4 (6.15%) Enterprise Software
4 4 (6.15%) Public Cloud
5 3 (4.62%) Cyber Threat
5 3 (4.62%) Industry 4.0
5 3 (4.62%) Operational Technology
6 2 (3.08%) Onboarding
6 2 (3.08%) Security Operations Centre
7 1 (1.54%) Analytical Mindset
7 1 (1.54%) Distributed Systems
7 1 (1.54%) Linux Command Line
7 1 (1.54%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 15 (23.08%) Windows
2 11 (16.92%) Linux
3 5 (7.69%) Windows Server
4 4 (6.15%) Mac OS
4 4 (6.15%) Unix
5 2 (3.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (1.54%) Data ONTAP
6 1 (1.54%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 31 (47.69%) Cybersecurity
2 16 (24.62%) Information Security
2 16 (24.62%) Risk Management
3 15 (23.08%) DevSecOps
4 14 (21.54%) ITIL
5 13 (20.00%) TOGAF
6 12 (18.46%) CI/CD
7 11 (16.92%) Infrastructure as Code
7 11 (16.92%) IT Strategy
7 11 (16.92%) Technology Strategy
8 9 (13.85%) Containerisation
8 9 (13.85%) Continuous Delivery
8 9 (13.85%) Continuous Integration
8 9 (13.85%) Disaster Recovery
8 9 (13.85%) Incident Response
8 9 (13.85%) Microservices
8 9 (13.85%) Use Case
8 9 (13.85%) Zachman Framework
9 7 (10.77%) Requirements Management
9 7 (10.77%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 7 (10.77%) SQL
2 5 (7.69%) PowerShell
3 4 (6.15%) Shell Script
4 2 (3.08%) ActionScript
4 2 (3.08%) Bash
4 2 (3.08%) Python
5 1 (1.54%) Perl
Qualifications
1 25 (38.46%) Security Cleared
2 21 (32.31%) SC Cleared
3 15 (23.08%) CISSP
4 13 (20.00%) CISM
5 11 (16.92%) Microsoft Certification
6 10 (15.38%) MCSE
6 10 (15.38%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 6 (9.23%) CISA
8 5 (7.69%) Degree
8 5 (7.69%) DV Cleared
9 4 (6.15%) CRISC
9 4 (6.15%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
10 3 (4.62%) GIAC
11 1 (1.54%) CCNP
11 1 (1.54%) CEH
11 1 (1.54%) Cisco Certification
11 1 (1.54%) ITIL Certification
11 1 (1.54%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
11 1 (1.54%) RHCE
11 1 (1.54%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (44.62%) NIST
2 24 (36.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 16 (24.62%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 12 (18.46%) NCSC
5 9 (13.85%) GDPR
6 3 (4.62%) NIST 800
6 3 (4.62%) SOC 2
7 2 (3.08%) GRC
7 2 (3.08%) SLA
8 1 (1.54%) Accessibility
8 1 (1.54%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (1.54%) ISO 31000
8 1 (1.54%) ISO 9001
8 1 (1.54%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 1 (1.54%) JSP 440
8 1 (1.54%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 13 (20.00%) VMware Infrastructure
2 12 (18.46%) VMware NSX
3 6 (9.23%) Active Directory
3 6 (9.23%) Docker
4 4 (6.15%) Hyper-V
5 3 (4.62%) Virtual Servers
6 1 (1.54%) KVM
6 1 (1.54%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 5 (7.69%) Microsoft Intune
2 3 (4.62%) Kubernetes
3 2 (3.08%) Ansible
3 2 (3.08%) CASB
3 2 (3.08%) Single Sign-On
4 1 (1.54%) FortiGate
4 1 (1.54%) Grafana
4 1 (1.54%) HAProxy
4 1 (1.54%) Jamf Pro
4 1 (1.54%) Nagios
4 1 (1.54%) Red Hat Satellite
4 1 (1.54%) SCCM
4 1 (1.54%) Terraform
Vendors
1 24 (36.92%) Microsoft
2 14 (21.54%) Palo Alto
3 13 (20.00%) Cisco
3 13 (20.00%) VMware
4 4 (6.15%) Oracle
5 2 (3.08%) Infor
5 2 (3.08%) Qualys
5 2 (3.08%) Red Hat
5 2 (3.08%) ServiceNow
6 1 (1.54%) Commvault
6 1 (1.54%) Dell
6 1 (1.54%) EMC
6 1 (1.54%) Forcepoint
6 1 (1.54%) Fortinet
6 1 (1.54%) Meraki
6 1 (1.54%) NetApp
6 1 (1.54%) Progress
6 1 (1.54%) SonicWALL
6 1 (1.54%) Sophos