Information Security Contract Job Trends

Information Security (InfoSec)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Information Security skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 22 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 207 160 104
Rank change year-on-year -47 -56 -11
Contract jobs citing Information Security 764 576 839
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.40% 1.77% 2.21%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.66% 1.96% 2.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 407 314 526
10th Percentile £320 £316 £375
25th Percentile £425 £413 £481
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £528 £575
Median % change year-on-year +4.27% -8.26% -3.08%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £688
90th Percentile £824 £788 £798
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £475 £600
% change year-on-year -3.16% -20.83% +9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 44 16
10th Percentile £14.45 £21.10 £12.75
25th Percentile £21.35 £22.14 £14.67
Median hourly rate £62.25 £33.50 £16.60
Median % change year-on-year +85.82% +101.87% -77.08%
75th Percentile £79.00 £65.00 £21.80
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £48.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.25 £33.50 £15.73
% change year-on-year +85.82% +112.97% -78.41%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

Information Security 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 46,027 29,389 32,594
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.35% 90.49% 85.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,906 18,237 19,938
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £626 £625 £638
90th Percentile £731 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,152 1,808 1,420
10th Percentile £13.81 £14.24 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.69
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.09% -1.10%
75th Percentile £67.25 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.25 £74.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.08 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +79.61% -48.10% +1.18%

Information Security
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Information Security relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Information Security job vacancy trend in the UK

Information Security
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Information Security.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Information Security

Information Security
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Information Security over the 6 months to 22 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Information Security in the UK

Information Security
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Information Security.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Information Security

Information Security
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Information Security over the 6 months to 22 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Information Security in the UK

Information Security
Top 17 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Information Security within the UK over the 6 months to 22 September 2026. 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 -45 691 £550 +4.76% 1,485
UK excluding London -23 406 £460 -3.16% 830
London -46 302 £600 +5.73% 753
Work from Home -51 184 £570 +26.67% 627
North of England -23 118 £455 -1.41% 248
South East -35 97 £493 -21.20% 235
Midlands -15 75 £450 +12.50% 115
North West -24 72 £482 +12.75% 137
West Midlands +3 63 £438 -7.89% 74
South West -30 53 £600 +20.00% 94
Scotland -10 34 £565 +32.94% 46
East of England -20 32 £515 +42.27% 43
Yorkshire -36 30 £475 -5.00% 70
North East -20 16 £425 -22.73% 42
East Midlands -31 12 £533 +33.13% 41
Wales -8 3 £815 +33.06% 20
Northern Ireland +5 1 £550 - 37

Information Security
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 36 (4.71%) SharePoint
2 23 (3.01%) Confluence
3 9 (1.18%) IIS
4 8 (1.05%) Microsoft Exchange
5 2 (0.26%) Apache
5 2 (0.26%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.26%) Apache Spark
5 2 (0.26%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 1 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
6 1 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 22 (2.88%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (1.70%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (1.18%) Spreadsheet
4 8 (1.05%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.92%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.26%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.13%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 20 (2.62%) Dynamics CRM
2 7 (0.92%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.52%) Oracle Payroll
4 2 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
4 2 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.13%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.13%) SAP GRC
5 1 (0.13%) SAP MDG
5 1 (0.13%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 180 (23.56%) Azure
2 117 (15.31%) AWS
3 68 (8.90%) Entra ID
4 46 (6.02%) SaaS
5 44 (5.76%) Microsoft 365
6 43 (5.63%) GCP
7 31 (4.06%) Power Platform
8 29 (3.80%) GitHub
9 24 (3.14%) Azure DevOps
9 24 (3.14%) Dynamics 365
9 24 (3.14%) Power Automate
9 24 (3.14%) Serverless
10 21 (2.75%) Microsoft Purview
11 20 (2.62%) Azure Sentinel
12 16 (2.09%) Azure Functions
13 15 (1.96%) OCI
14 12 (1.57%) GitHub Actions
15 11 (1.44%) PaaS
16 10 (1.31%) IaaS
17 8 (1.05%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 50 (6.54%) Network Security
2 42 (5.50%) Firewall
3 20 (2.62%) WAN
4 17 (2.23%) LAN
5 16 (2.09%) DNS
6 10 (1.31%) DHCP
7 9 (1.18%) Internet
7 9 (1.18%) SSH
7 9 (1.18%) TCP/IP
7 9 (1.18%) Wireless
8 8 (1.05%) NGFW
9 7 (0.92%) HTTP
9 7 (0.92%) VPN
10 6 (0.79%) HTTPS
11 5 (0.65%) SD-WAN
11 5 (0.65%) SMTP
11 5 (0.65%) Structured Cabling
12 4 (0.52%) Cisco IPT
12 4 (0.52%) Intrusion Detection
12 4 (0.52%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (4.45%) SQL Server
2 17 (2.23%) Power BI
3 12 (1.57%) MongoDB
4 11 (1.44%) Metadata
5 4 (0.52%) NoSQL
6 3 (0.39%) Data Lake
6 3 (0.39%) Oracle Reports
6 3 (0.39%) Relational Database
7 2 (0.26%) Amazon RDS
7 2 (0.26%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.26%) RDBMS
8 1 (0.13%) Ataccama
8 1 (0.13%) Chroma
8 1 (0.13%) Metadata Repository
8 1 (0.13%) Neo4j
8 1 (0.13%) Oracle Database
8 1 (0.13%) Pinecone
8 1 (0.13%) SAP HANA
8 1 (0.13%) Star Schema
8 1 (0.13%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 27 (3.53%) JIRA
2 13 (1.70%) Git
3 12 (1.57%) Postman
4 11 (1.44%) Cypress.io
4 11 (1.44%) Selenium
4 11 (1.44%) WebDriver
5 8 (1.05%) Cucumber
6 3 (0.39%) Protractor
6 3 (0.39%) ScalaTest
7 2 (0.26%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 2 (0.26%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.26%) Claude Code
7 2 (0.26%) git-flow
7 2 (0.26%) GitLab
7 2 (0.26%) JMeter
8 1 (0.13%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.13%) Jenkins
8 1 (0.13%) LSMW
8 1 (0.13%) SoapUI
8 1 (0.13%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 298 (39.01%) Social Skills
2 173 (22.64%) Finance
3 148 (19.37%) Public Sector
4 113 (14.79%) Analytical Skills
5 64 (8.38%) Legal
6 53 (6.94%) Banking
7 44 (5.76%) Documentation Skills
8 38 (4.97%) Influencing Skills
9 36 (4.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 31 (4.06%) Organisational Skills
11 29 (3.80%) Military
12 26 (3.40%) Presentation Skills
13 25 (3.27%) Local Government
14 18 (2.36%) Law
15 16 (2.09%) Aerospace
16 12 (1.57%) Billing
16 12 (1.57%) Manufacturing
17 11 (1.44%) Marketing
18 10 (1.31%) Retail
19 8 (1.05%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 109 (14.27%) Analyst
2 91 (11.91%) Senior
3 81 (10.60%) Architect
4 74 (9.69%) Lead
5 67 (8.77%) Consultant
6 58 (7.59%) Security Architect
7 47 (6.15%) Security Engineer
8 45 (5.89%) Security Consultant
9 39 (5.10%) Security Analyst
10 38 (4.97%) Developer
11 36 (4.71%) Security Manager
12 28 (3.66%) Project Manager
13 26 (3.40%) Security Officer
14 25 (3.27%) Information Security Officer
15 24 (3.14%) Information Manager
16 23 (3.01%) Information Officer
16 23 (3.01%) IT Manager
17 19 (2.49%) Senior Manager
18 18 (2.36%) Cybersecurity Manager
19 17 (2.23%) Cybersecurity Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (5.63%) Terraform
2 26 (3.40%) SailPoint
3 25 (3.27%) Oracle Fusion
4 22 (2.88%) OAuth
5 21 (2.75%) SAML
6 19 (2.49%) OpenID
7 18 (2.36%) LDAP
7 18 (2.36%) XML
8 16 (2.09%) OAuth2
9 15 (1.96%) Web Services
10 14 (1.83%) JSON
11 11 (1.44%) Gherkin
11 11 (1.44%) XSLT
12 9 (1.18%) REST
12 9 (1.18%) RESTful
13 8 (1.05%) Play Framework
14 5 (0.65%) .NET
14 5 (0.65%) Middleware
14 5 (0.65%) Node.js
15 4 (0.52%) Jakarta EE
Miscellaneous
1 150 (19.63%) Management Information System
2 73 (9.55%) Onboarding
3 57 (7.46%) Security Posture
4 35 (4.58%) Cyber Threat
5 27 (3.53%) Operational Technology
6 24 (3.14%) Security Operations Centre
7 23 (3.01%) Data Centre
8 22 (2.88%) Cloud Native
9 21 (2.75%) PKI
10 16 (2.09%) Enterprise Software
10 16 (2.09%) Taxonomies
11 14 (1.83%) Cyber Defence
12 13 (1.70%) Data Protection Act
12 13 (1.70%) NHS
12 13 (1.70%) Product Ownership
12 13 (1.70%) Public Cloud
13 12 (1.57%) Distributed Systems
14 11 (1.44%) Self-Motivation
15 10 (1.31%) Analytical Mindset
15 10 (1.31%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 81 (10.60%) Windows
2 48 (6.28%) Linux
3 38 (4.97%) Windows Server
4 22 (2.88%) Unix
5 10 (1.31%) Android
5 10 (1.31%) Mac OS
6 8 (1.05%) Apple iOS
7 6 (0.79%) Ubuntu
8 5 (0.65%) Windows 10
9 3 (0.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 2 (0.26%) Alpine Linux
11 1 (0.13%) CentOS
11 1 (0.13%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 272 (35.60%) Cybersecurity
2 219 (28.66%) Risk Management
3 204 (26.70%) Stakeholder Management
4 152 (19.90%) Data Protection
5 140 (18.32%) Continuous Improvement
6 115 (15.05%) Incident Response
6 115 (15.05%) Problem-Solving
7 107 (14.01%) Agile
8 99 (12.96%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 97 (12.70%) Vulnerability Management
10 94 (12.30%) Security Operations
11 91 (11.91%) Cloud Security
12 89 (11.65%) Roadmaps
13 83 (10.86%) Decision-Making
14 78 (10.21%) Security Architecture
15 77 (10.08%) AI
16 76 (9.95%) DevOps
17 75 (9.82%) Computer Science
18 72 (9.42%) ITIL
19 70 (9.16%) CI/CD
Programming Languages
1 81 (10.60%) Python
2 67 (8.77%) PowerShell
3 28 (3.66%) Bash
4 24 (3.14%) SQL
5 20 (2.62%) C#
6 18 (2.36%) JavaScript
7 10 (1.31%) PL/SQL
8 9 (1.18%) Scala
9 7 (0.92%) Bicep
9 7 (0.92%) Java
10 5 (0.65%) Go
11 4 (0.52%) Kusto Query Language
12 3 (0.39%) Apex Code
12 3 (0.39%) Korn
13 2 (0.26%) Search Processing Language
14 1 (0.13%) R
14 1 (0.13%) Shell Script
14 1 (0.13%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 171 (22.38%) Security Cleared
2 143 (18.72%) CISSP
3 138 (18.06%) Degree
4 127 (16.62%) SC Cleared
5 97 (12.70%) CISM
6 48 (6.28%) DV Cleared
7 40 (5.24%) CRISC
7 40 (5.24%) Microsoft Certification
8 34 (4.45%) Cisco Certification
9 32 (4.19%) CISA
10 29 (3.80%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 23 (3.01%) Computer Science Degree
12 20 (2.62%) CCSP
13 19 (2.49%) Azure Certification
14 16 (2.09%) AWS Certification
14 16 (2.09%) PMP
15 15 (1.96%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
15 15 (1.96%) PMI Certification
16 13 (1.70%) CEH
17 12 (1.57%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 200 (26.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 132 (17.28%) NIST
3 124 (16.23%) GDPR
4 120 (15.71%) GRC
5 41 (5.37%) Cyber Essentials
5 41 (5.37%) NCSC
6 37 (4.84%) PCI DSS
7 35 (4.58%) Accessibility
7 35 (4.58%) Data Quality
8 23 (3.01%) QA
8 23 (3.01%) WCAG
9 21 (2.75%) NIST 800
10 19 (2.49%) SLA
11 18 (2.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 17 (2.23%) HIPAA
13 16 (2.09%) SOC 2
14 14 (1.83%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 12 (1.57%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 10 (1.31%) Government Security Classifications
17 9 (1.18%) PMO
System Software
1 75 (9.82%) Active Directory
2 11 (1.44%) Docker
3 7 (0.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (0.79%) Firmware
5 4 (0.52%) Hyper-V
5 4 (0.52%) ISA Server
6 3 (0.39%) OpenAM
7 2 (0.26%) Squid
7 2 (0.26%) Virtual Servers
8 1 (0.13%) BitLocker
8 1 (0.13%) Virtual Machines
8 1 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.13%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 30 (3.93%) Kubernetes
2 19 (2.49%) Single Sign-On
3 17 (2.23%) Microsoft Intune
4 12 (1.57%) Ansible
5 8 (1.05%) Grafana
6 6 (0.79%) CASB
7 4 (0.52%) Podman
7 4 (0.52%) QRadar
7 4 (0.52%) SCCM
8 3 (0.39%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 2 (0.26%) Computer Incident Response Team
9 2 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
9 2 (0.26%) RSA Archer
10 1 (0.13%) Control-M
10 1 (0.13%) Host Intrusion Detection System
10 1 (0.13%) Istio
Vendors
1 193 (25.26%) Microsoft
2 47 (6.15%) Oracle
3 42 (5.50%) ServiceNow
4 36 (4.71%) Google
4 36 (4.71%) Splunk
5 22 (2.88%) Cisco
5 22 (2.88%) CyberArk
6 21 (2.75%) SAP
7 19 (2.49%) BeyondTrust
7 19 (2.49%) Palo Alto
8 17 (2.23%) CrowdStrike
9 15 (1.96%) Apple
10 13 (1.70%) VMware
11 12 (1.57%) Ariba
11 12 (1.57%) Zscaler
12 10 (1.31%) Qualys
13 9 (1.18%) Okta
13 9 (1.18%) Remedy
14 8 (1.05%) Atlassian
15 7 (0.92%) Thales