Cybersecurity Contracts

Cybersecurity
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring Cybersecurity skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Cybersecurity 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 55 46 55
Rank change year-on-year -9 +9 +24
Contract jobs citing Cybersecurity 1,129 1,748 2,446
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 3.86% 4.01% 4.10%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.25% 4.65% 4.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 718 1,194 1,671
10th Percentile £375 £406 £420
25th Percentile £463 £500 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £585 £600
Median % change year-on-year -7.69% -2.50% +4.35%
75th Percentile £638 £688 £700
90th Percentile £727 £788 £785
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £570 £563
% change year-on-year -3.51% +1.33% +2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 44 56
10th Percentile £33.63 £26.75 £22.50
25th Percentile £45.00 £38.37 £35.00
Median hourly rate £63.91 £83.77 £65.50
Median % change year-on-year -23.71% +27.89% +54.12%
75th Percentile £81.91 £87.46 £83.31
90th Percentile £86.25 £87.72 £87.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £83.77 £65.50
% change year-on-year -37.32% +27.89% +18.63%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Cybersecurity 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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 26,551 37,621 53,662
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.82% 86.30% 89.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,137 24,254 37,244
10th Percentile £308 £300 £325
25th Percentile £413 £413 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £521 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.86% -4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £650
90th Percentile £744 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.80% - +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,071 2,437 1,746
10th Percentile £14.70 £12.75 £11.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £29.00 £35.50 £37.30
Median % change year-on-year -18.31% -4.83% +49.20%
75th Percentile £62.00 £59.95 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.94 £36.50 £36.00
% change year-on-year -23.45% +1.39% +80.00%

Cybersecurity
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for Cybersecurity in the UK

Cybersecurity
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for Cybersecurity in the UK

Cybersecurity
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Cybersecurity over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Cybersecurity in the UK

Cybersecurity
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for Cybersecurity in the UK

Cybersecurity
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Cybersecurity over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Cybersecurity in the UK

Cybersecurity
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 Cybersecurity 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 -8 926 £550 -5.50% 1,785
UK excluding London -16 552 £550 -3.51% 1,205
London -4 425 £538 -10.42% 704
Work from Home -17 331 £525 -10.64% 1,312
South East +3 171 £545 -7.63% 304
North of England -10 97 £556 -3.26% 311
Midlands -5 85 £525 -13.58% 170
Scotland -2 84 £500 -13.04% 112
West Midlands -6 75 £550 -10.93% 113
North West -7 59 £573 +0.44% 197
South West -41 56 £625 +16.17% 164
East of England +30 37 £600 - 109
Wales +13 26 £450 -25.00% 29
Yorkshire -10 26 £550 -8.33% 90
North East +4 12 £534 -2.91% 26
East Midlands +5 10 £500 +25.00% 55

Cybersecurity
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 25 (2.21%) SharePoint
2 24 (2.13%) Microsoft Exchange
3 19 (1.68%) Confluence
4 6 (0.53%) CMS
5 3 (0.27%) IIS
6 2 (0.18%) Apache
6 2 (0.18%) JBoss
6 2 (0.18%) TPMS
6 2 (0.18%) WebLogic
6 2 (0.18%) WebSphere
6 2 (0.18%) WebSphere Application Server
7 1 (0.089%) Apache Airflow
7 1 (0.089%) Apache Spark
7 1 (0.089%) CICS
7 1 (0.089%) nginx
7 1 (0.089%) Oracle Workflow
7 1 (0.089%) SAS
7 1 (0.089%) Tomcat
Applications
1 29 (2.57%) Microsoft Office
2 25 (2.21%) Microsoft Excel
3 16 (1.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 15 (1.33%) Microsoft Project
5 14 (1.24%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.44%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.089%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.089%) Simulink
7 1 (0.089%) SPSS
7 1 (0.089%) Stata
7 1 (0.089%) Trello
Business Applications
1 4 (0.35%) Dynamics GP
1 4 (0.35%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
3 2 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.089%) Maximo
4 1 (0.089%) NetSuite
4 1 (0.089%) Primavera
4 1 (0.089%) SAP BPC
4 1 (0.089%) SAP CO
4 1 (0.089%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.089%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.089%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 266 (23.56%) Azure
2 132 (11.69%) AWS
3 100 (8.86%) Microsoft 365
4 60 (5.31%) Power Platform
5 59 (5.23%) GCP
6 57 (5.05%) Entra ID
7 43 (3.81%) IaaS
8 38 (3.37%) Azure Sentinel
9 32 (2.83%) Cloud Computing
10 30 (2.66%) PaaS
11 26 (2.30%) SaaS
12 23 (2.04%) Microsoft Purview
13 18 (1.59%) GitHub
14 11 (0.97%) Google Workspace
14 11 (0.97%) Serverless
15 7 (0.62%) Amazon S3
16 6 (0.53%) AWS Lambda
16 6 (0.53%) Power Automate
17 5 (0.44%) Azure Key Vault
17 5 (0.44%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 147 (13.02%) Firewall
2 109 (9.65%) Network Security
3 50 (4.43%) DNS
4 41 (3.63%) Intrusion Detection
5 35 (3.10%) VPN
6 26 (2.30%) DHCP
7 25 (2.21%) HTTP
8 23 (2.04%) SSL
9 22 (1.95%) SMTP
9 22 (1.95%) TCP/IP
10 17 (1.51%) WAN
11 16 (1.42%) Internet
12 15 (1.33%) FTP
12 15 (1.33%) LAN
13 11 (0.97%) SAN
13 11 (0.97%) Wireless
14 10 (0.89%) SD-WAN
15 9 (0.80%) Ethernet
15 9 (0.80%) Unified Communications
15 9 (0.80%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 47 (4.16%) Power BI
2 26 (2.30%) SQL Server
3 21 (1.86%) Tableau
4 11 (0.97%) Big Data
4 11 (0.97%) MongoDB
5 9 (0.80%) Data Lake
6 6 (0.53%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 4 (0.35%) Data Warehouse
7 4 (0.35%) NoSQL
7 4 (0.35%) PostgreSQL
8 3 (0.27%) DynamoDB
8 3 (0.27%) GIS
9 2 (0.18%) Metadata
9 2 (0.18%) Relational Database
9 2 (0.18%) SAP Data Services
10 1 (0.089%) Flink
10 1 (0.089%) Oracle Database
10 1 (0.089%) QGIS
10 1 (0.089%) RDBMS
10 1 (0.089%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 29 (2.57%) JIRA
2 22 (1.95%) Git
3 13 (1.15%) Jenkins
4 5 (0.44%) JUnit
5 4 (0.35%) Cucumber
5 4 (0.35%) Gradle
5 4 (0.35%) HP UFT
5 4 (0.35%) IntelliJ
5 4 (0.35%) Maven
5 4 (0.35%) Rational Rhapsody
5 4 (0.35%) Selenium
5 4 (0.35%) Visual Studio Code
6 3 (0.27%) Bitbucket
6 3 (0.27%) Cypress.io
6 3 (0.27%) GitLab
6 3 (0.27%) Mocha
6 3 (0.27%) MSI
6 3 (0.27%) Postman
6 3 (0.27%) Xcode
7 2 (0.18%) Burp Suite
General
1 355 (31.44%) Social Skills
2 217 (19.22%) Finance
3 179 (15.85%) Analytical Skills
4 109 (9.65%) Public Sector
5 88 (7.79%) Banking
6 67 (5.93%) Legal
7 41 (3.63%) Presentation Skills
8 33 (2.92%) Organisational Skills
8 33 (2.92%) Telecoms
9 31 (2.75%) Manufacturing
10 18 (1.59%) Documentation Skills
10 18 (1.59%) Law
11 17 (1.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 17 (1.51%) Investment Banking
12 15 (1.33%) Marketing
12 15 (1.33%) Military
13 13 (1.15%) Financial Institution
14 11 (0.97%) Automotive
14 11 (0.97%) Retail
15 10 (0.89%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 222 (19.66%) Analyst
2 180 (15.94%) Architect
3 99 (8.77%) Security Architect
4 97 (8.59%) Security Analyst
5 92 (8.15%) Senior
6 83 (7.35%) Lead
7 80 (7.09%) Consultant
8 72 (6.38%) Cybersecurity Analyst
9 69 (6.11%) Security Manager
10 68 (6.02%) Security Engineer
11 63 (5.58%) Project Manager
12 46 (4.07%) Cybersecurity Manager
13 42 (3.72%) Cybersecurity Engineer
14 41 (3.63%) Security Consultant
15 38 (3.37%) SOC Analyst
16 37 (3.28%) Cybersecurity Architect
17 36 (3.19%) Security Project Manager
18 35 (3.10%) Solutions Architect
19 33 (2.92%) Business Analyst
20 32 (2.83%) Project Manager - Cybersecurity
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (1.86%) LDAP
1 21 (1.86%) REST
2 17 (1.51%) Kafka
3 15 (1.33%) HTML
4 14 (1.24%) CSS
5 11 (0.97%) SailPoint
6 10 (0.89%) .NET
7 9 (0.80%) AngularJS
7 9 (0.80%) Elastic Stack
7 9 (0.80%) SAML
8 8 (0.71%) Middleware
8 8 (0.71%) Node.js
9 7 (0.62%) JSON
10 6 (0.53%) .NET Core
10 6 (0.53%) JBoss Seam
10 6 (0.53%) Microsoft Graph
11 5 (0.44%) OAuth
11 5 (0.44%) OpenID
11 5 (0.44%) UIKit
12 4 (0.35%) Express.js
Miscellaneous
1 93 (8.24%) Security Posture
2 90 (7.97%) Management Information System
3 89 (7.88%) Cyber Threat
4 74 (6.55%) Operational Technology
5 46 (4.07%) Security Operations Centre
6 40 (3.54%) Onboarding
7 26 (2.30%) Self-Motivation
8 25 (2.21%) Cyberattack
9 24 (2.13%) SCADA
10 23 (2.04%) Algorithms
10 23 (2.04%) Data Centre
11 21 (1.86%) Cyber Defence
12 20 (1.77%) PKI
13 18 (1.59%) Product Ownership
14 17 (1.51%) Hybrid Cloud
15 16 (1.42%) CSOC
16 15 (1.33%) Analytical Mindset
17 13 (1.15%) Enterprise Software
18 12 (1.06%) Cyber Security Posture
18 12 (1.06%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 138 (12.22%) Windows
2 81 (7.17%) Linux
3 37 (3.28%) Windows Server
4 22 (1.95%) Mac OS
5 19 (1.68%) Windows 10
6 16 (1.42%) Unix
7 15 (1.33%) Apple iOS
8 10 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 9 (0.80%) Android
10 4 (0.35%) AIX
11 3 (0.27%) Solaris
12 2 (0.18%) Kali Linux
12 2 (0.18%) Windows 7
12 2 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
12 2 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
12 2 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.18%) Windows XP
13 1 (0.089%) Mac OS X
13 1 (0.089%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 227 (20.11%) Problem-Solving
2 187 (16.56%) Risk Management
3 167 (14.79%) Incident Response
4 160 (14.17%) Security Operations
5 155 (13.73%) Information Security
5 155 (13.73%) SIEM
6 144 (12.75%) Agile
7 120 (10.63%) Vulnerability Management
8 118 (10.45%) Stakeholder Management
9 111 (9.83%) Project Management
10 107 (9.48%) Cloud Security
10 107 (9.48%) Continuous Improvement
11 100 (8.86%) Security Architecture
12 98 (8.68%) Roadmaps
13 86 (7.62%) Analytics
14 84 (7.44%) ITIL
15 78 (6.91%) DevOps
16 72 (6.38%) Identity Access Management
17 71 (6.29%) Risk Assessment
18 70 (6.20%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 110 (9.74%) Python
2 90 (7.97%) PowerShell
3 44 (3.90%) SQL
4 23 (2.04%) Bash
5 22 (1.95%) Kusto Query Language
6 20 (1.77%) JavaScript
7 14 (1.24%) Java
8 10 (0.89%) Rust
9 8 (0.71%) C++
10 6 (0.53%) Ruby
10 6 (0.53%) TypeScript
11 5 (0.44%) C#
11 5 (0.44%) Objective-C
11 5 (0.44%) PHP
11 5 (0.44%) Swift
12 4 (0.35%) C
12 4 (0.35%) Groovy
13 3 (0.27%) Go
13 3 (0.27%) R
13 3 (0.27%) VBA
Qualifications
1 231 (20.46%) Security Cleared
2 186 (16.47%) CISSP
3 178 (15.77%) SC Cleared
4 154 (13.64%) Degree
5 109 (9.65%) CISM
6 67 (5.93%) DV Cleared
7 52 (4.61%) CEH
7 52 (4.61%) Cisco Certification
8 48 (4.25%) Microsoft Certification
9 40 (3.54%) CompTIA Security+
10 32 (2.83%) Azure Certification
10 32 (2.83%) Computer Science Degree
11 30 (2.66%) GIAC
12 29 (2.57%) CISA
13 28 (2.48%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 27 (2.39%) OSCP
15 25 (2.21%) Master's Degree
15 25 (2.21%) PMI Certification
16 24 (2.13%) CRISC
17 22 (1.95%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 198 (17.54%) NIST
2 158 (13.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 80 (7.09%) GDPR
4 46 (4.07%) NCSC
5 45 (3.99%) GRC
6 39 (3.45%) PCI DSS
7 31 (2.75%) Cyber Essentials
7 31 (2.75%) QA
8 29 (2.57%) Data Quality
9 26 (2.30%) NIST 800
10 22 (1.95%) HIPAA
11 21 (1.86%) SLA
12 19 (1.68%) COBIT
13 13 (1.15%) SOC 2
14 12 (1.06%) Disclosure Scotland
15 10 (0.89%) Accessibility
15 10 (0.89%) Def Stans
15 10 (0.89%) PMO
15 10 (0.89%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 9 (0.80%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 100 (8.86%) Active Directory
2 44 (3.90%) VMware Infrastructure
3 18 (1.59%) vSphere
4 17 (1.51%) Hyper-V
5 12 (1.06%) Docker
6 10 (0.89%) Virtual Machines
7 6 (0.53%) DFS Replication
8 4 (0.35%) Virtual Servers
8 4 (0.35%) VMware NSX
9 3 (0.27%) Microsoft App-V
10 2 (0.18%) RACF
10 2 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
11 1 (0.089%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.089%) Firmware
11 1 (0.089%) Veritas Cluster Server
11 1 (0.089%) VMware Workstation
11 1 (0.089%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 50 (4.43%) Microsoft Intune
2 30 (2.66%) SCCM
3 25 (2.21%) Kubernetes
4 22 (1.95%) Ansible
5 20 (1.77%) Terraform
6 15 (1.33%) CASB
7 13 (1.15%) QRadar
8 11 (0.97%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (0.62%) CSIRT
10 6 (0.53%) Grafana
10 6 (0.53%) Jamf Pro
11 5 (0.44%) Prometheus
11 5 (0.44%) WSUS
12 4 (0.35%) FortiGate
12 4 (0.35%) Nessus
12 4 (0.35%) Puppet
13 3 (0.27%) Podman
13 3 (0.27%) Progress Chef
14 2 (0.18%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 2 (0.18%) Argo
Vendors
1 266 (23.56%) Microsoft
2 55 (4.87%) VMware
3 54 (4.78%) Splunk
4 39 (3.45%) Cisco
5 37 (3.28%) Google
6 36 (3.19%) ServiceNow
7 26 (2.30%) Palo Alto
8 25 (2.21%) CyberArk
9 24 (2.13%) Qualys
9 24 (2.13%) SAP
10 20 (1.77%) CrowdStrike
11 19 (1.68%) Oracle
12 16 (1.42%) Tenable
13 14 (1.24%) Darktrace
14 13 (1.15%) Okta
15 12 (1.06%) IBM
15 12 (1.06%) LogRhythm
15 12 (1.06%) Veritas
16 11 (0.97%) Fortinet
16 11 (0.97%) Zscaler