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 11 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 202 174 109
Rank change year-on-year -28 -65 -10
Contract jobs citing Information Security 735 556 820
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.38% 1.69% 2.11%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.62% 1.87% 2.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 395 319 520
10th Percentile £350 £350 £375
25th Percentile £450 £420 £484
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £530 £599
Median % change year-on-year +3.77% -11.52% +0.25%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £688
90th Percentile £813 £828 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £493 £513 £600
% change year-on-year -3.90% -14.58% +9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 70 40 18
10th Percentile £16.16 £21.55 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.55 £22.14 £13.56
Median hourly rate £62.25 £24.66 £16.60
Median % change year-on-year +152.43% +48.60% -79.46%
75th Percentile £79.38 £75.00 £23.89
90th Percentile £80.00 £85.00 £44.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.25 £27.53 £15.73
% change year-on-year +126.12% +75.02% -81.12%

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 45,312 29,789 33,296
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.84% 90.47% 85.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,886 18,626 21,285
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £421 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £727 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,829 1,693 1,837
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £19.00 £17.30 £18.35
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -38.57% -1.35%
75th Percentile £68.00 £48.13 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.74 £42.50
% change year-on-year +93.36% -46.51% +17.24%

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 11 August 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 11 August 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 11 August 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 -27 673 £550 +4.76% 777
UK excluding London -17 369 £493 -3.90% 463
London -25 323 £600 +14.29% 402
Work from Home -48 185 £583 +16.60% 336
South East -29 114 £500 -20.00% 154
North of England -58 92 £465 -2.11% 115
North West -16 64 £458 -0.87% 67
Midlands -25 60 £450 +12.50% 48
West Midlands -19 47 £450 -7.69% 29
South West -19 44 £550 -5.98% 51
East of England -15 30 £538 +1.42% 42
Scotland -10 25 £475 +7.41% 34
Yorkshire -50 23 £540 +9.37% 33
East Midlands -17 13 £557 +39.19% 19
Wales -8 5 £645 +55.42% 11
North East -42 4 £450 -15.73% 15
Northern Ireland +5 1 £550 - 18

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 27 (3.67%) Confluence
2 25 (3.40%) SharePoint
3 7 (0.95%) Microsoft Exchange
4 5 (0.68%) IIS
5 1 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.14%) Apache
5 1 (0.14%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.14%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.14%) Jupyter
5 1 (0.14%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
5 1 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 20 (2.72%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (1.90%) Microsoft Excel
3 6 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (0.82%) Microsoft Project
4 5 (0.68%) Spreadsheet
5 2 (0.27%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 10 (1.36%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (0.82%) Remedy ITSM
3 2 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
3 2 (0.27%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.14%) NEC Housing
4 1 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
4 1 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.14%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
4 1 (0.14%) SAP MDG
4 1 (0.14%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 166 (22.59%) Azure
2 108 (14.69%) AWS
3 62 (8.44%) Entra ID
4 45 (6.12%) SaaS
5 39 (5.31%) Microsoft 365
6 31 (4.22%) GCP
7 23 (3.13%) GitHub
8 22 (2.99%) Microsoft Purview
9 21 (2.86%) Power Platform
10 19 (2.59%) Azure Sentinel
11 15 (2.04%) OCI
12 13 (1.77%) Power Automate
12 13 (1.77%) Serverless
13 12 (1.63%) Azure DevOps
14 11 (1.50%) Dynamics 365
15 9 (1.22%) IaaS
15 9 (1.22%) PaaS
16 8 (1.09%) Azure Key Vault
16 8 (1.09%) Cloud Computing
17 6 (0.82%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 46 (6.26%) Firewall
2 43 (5.85%) Network Security
3 18 (2.45%) WAN
4 15 (2.04%) LAN
5 13 (1.77%) VPN
6 12 (1.63%) Wireless
7 10 (1.36%) DNS
7 10 (1.36%) SSH
8 9 (1.22%) HTTP
8 9 (1.22%) TCP/IP
9 8 (1.09%) NGFW
10 7 (0.95%) DHCP
10 7 (0.95%) HTTPS
10 7 (0.95%) Internet
11 5 (0.68%) Structured Cabling
12 4 (0.54%) Cisco IPT
12 4 (0.54%) Intrusion Detection
12 4 (0.54%) SD-WAN
13 3 (0.41%) Wi-Fi
14 2 (0.27%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (3.27%) SQL Server
2 18 (2.45%) Power BI
3 8 (1.09%) Metadata
4 6 (0.82%) Data Lake
5 5 (0.68%) Oracle Reports
6 4 (0.54%) MongoDB
6 4 (0.54%) NoSQL
7 3 (0.41%) Data Warehouse
8 2 (0.27%) Relational Database
9 1 (0.14%) Amazon RDS
9 1 (0.14%) MariaDB
9 1 (0.14%) Neo4j
9 1 (0.14%) Oracle BI Publisher
9 1 (0.14%) Oracle Database
9 1 (0.14%) Oracle Database 10g
9 1 (0.14%) PostgreSQL
9 1 (0.14%) RDBMS
9 1 (0.14%) SAP HANA
9 1 (0.14%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 30 (4.08%) JIRA
2 9 (1.22%) Cypress.io
2 9 (1.22%) Postman
2 9 (1.22%) Selenium
2 9 (1.22%) WebDriver
3 6 (0.82%) Cucumber
4 3 (0.41%) Burp Suite
4 3 (0.41%) Git
4 3 (0.41%) git-flow
4 3 (0.41%) Protractor
5 2 (0.27%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 2 (0.27%) Bitbucket
5 2 (0.27%) JMeter
5 2 (0.27%) Metasploit
6 1 (0.14%) Claude Code
6 1 (0.14%) GitLab
6 1 (0.14%) Jenkins
6 1 (0.14%) LSMW
6 1 (0.14%) SoapUI
6 1 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 249 (33.88%) Social Skills
2 164 (22.31%) Finance
3 131 (17.82%) Public Sector
4 86 (11.70%) Analytical Skills
5 57 (7.76%) Banking
6 55 (7.48%) Legal
7 44 (5.99%) Documentation Skills
8 26 (3.54%) Organisational Skills
9 24 (3.27%) Local Government
10 23 (3.13%) Influencing Skills
11 17 (2.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 17 (2.31%) Retail
12 15 (2.04%) Military
13 14 (1.90%) Law
14 13 (1.77%) Aerospace
14 13 (1.77%) Billing
14 13 (1.77%) Presentation Skills
15 10 (1.36%) Marketing
16 9 (1.22%) Police
17 8 (1.09%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 97 (13.20%) Analyst
2 79 (10.75%) Senior
3 77 (10.48%) Consultant
4 72 (9.80%) Architect
5 59 (8.03%) Lead
5 59 (8.03%) Security Consultant
6 51 (6.94%) Security Architect
7 50 (6.80%) Security Engineer
8 38 (5.17%) Security Analyst
8 38 (5.17%) Security Manager
9 25 (3.40%) IT Manager
10 23 (3.13%) Project Manager
11 22 (2.99%) Cybersecurity Manager
12 19 (2.59%) Developer
12 19 (2.59%) Senior Manager
13 18 (2.45%) Business Analyst
13 18 (2.45%) Information Officer
13 18 (2.45%) Security Officer
14 17 (2.31%) Head of Security
14 17 (2.31%) Information Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (3.40%) SailPoint
2 23 (3.13%) OAuth
2 23 (3.13%) Oracle Fusion
3 17 (2.31%) SAML
4 16 (2.18%) LDAP
4 16 (2.18%) OAuth2
4 16 (2.18%) OpenID
5 14 (1.90%) Web Services
6 11 (1.50%) REST
7 10 (1.36%) XML
8 9 (1.22%) Gherkin
9 6 (0.82%) .NET
9 6 (0.82%) JSON
10 4 (0.54%) ASP.NET
10 4 (0.54%) Jakarta EE
10 4 (0.54%) JSP
10 4 (0.54%) Kafka
10 4 (0.54%) Lightning Web Components
11 3 (0.41%) OpenTelemetry
11 3 (0.41%) SLSA
Miscellaneous
1 131 (17.82%) Management Information System
2 80 (10.88%) Onboarding
3 58 (7.89%) Security Posture
4 31 (4.22%) Operational Technology
5 23 (3.13%) Cyber Threat
6 20 (2.72%) Security Operations Centre
7 18 (2.45%) Data Centre
8 17 (2.31%) Cloud Native
9 15 (2.04%) Enterprise Software
9 15 (2.04%) PKI
10 14 (1.90%) Self-Motivation
11 12 (1.63%) Data Protection Act
12 11 (1.50%) BYOD
12 11 (1.50%) Public Cloud
13 10 (1.36%) Analytical Mindset
13 10 (1.36%) Virtual Team
14 9 (1.22%) Driving Licence
14 9 (1.22%) Legacy Systems
14 9 (1.22%) Product Ownership
15 8 (1.09%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 80 (10.88%) Windows
2 40 (5.44%) Linux
3 34 (4.63%) Windows Server
4 20 (2.72%) Unix
5 10 (1.36%) Android
5 10 (1.36%) Mac OS
6 9 (1.22%) Apple iOS
7 5 (0.68%) Ubuntu
7 5 (0.68%) Windows 10
8 2 (0.27%) Alpine Linux
8 2 (0.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.14%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 264 (35.92%) Cybersecurity
2 209 (28.44%) Risk Management
3 163 (22.18%) Stakeholder Management
4 123 (16.73%) Continuous Improvement
4 123 (16.73%) Data Protection
5 108 (14.69%) Problem-Solving
6 99 (13.47%) Security Operations
7 93 (12.65%) Incident Response
8 91 (12.38%) Roadmaps
8 91 (12.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 84 (11.43%) Agile
10 82 (11.16%) Cloud Security
11 79 (10.75%) Vulnerability Management
12 76 (10.34%) Decision-Making
13 65 (8.84%) Change Management
14 63 (8.57%) DevOps
15 62 (8.44%) Computer Science
15 62 (8.44%) Security Management
16 60 (8.16%) SIEM
17 59 (8.03%) AI
Programming Languages
1 75 (10.20%) Python
2 66 (8.98%) PowerShell
3 29 (3.95%) Bash
4 20 (2.72%) SQL
5 12 (1.63%) Java
6 11 (1.50%) C#
7 9 (1.22%) JavaScript
8 8 (1.09%) Bicep
9 6 (0.82%) PL/SQL
10 5 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
11 4 (0.54%) Apex Code
12 3 (0.41%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.14%) BeanShell
13 1 (0.14%) Go
13 1 (0.14%) Scala
13 1 (0.14%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 155 (21.09%) Security Cleared
2 137 (18.64%) CISSP
3 130 (17.69%) Degree
4 122 (16.60%) SC Cleared
5 93 (12.65%) CISM
6 39 (5.31%) DV Cleared
7 32 (4.35%) Cisco Certification
8 31 (4.22%) CISA
9 28 (3.81%) CRISC
10 27 (3.67%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 26 (3.54%) Microsoft Certification
12 19 (2.59%) CEH
12 19 (2.59%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
13 18 (2.45%) Computer Science Degree
14 17 (2.31%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
15 14 (1.90%) PMP
16 13 (1.77%) AWS Certification
16 13 (1.77%) Master's Degree
16 13 (1.77%) PMI Certification
17 12 (1.63%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 210 (28.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 140 (19.05%) NIST
3 123 (16.73%) GDPR
4 106 (14.42%) GRC
5 46 (6.26%) PCI DSS
6 41 (5.58%) Cyber Essentials
7 33 (4.49%) NCSC
8 24 (3.27%) QA
9 23 (3.13%) Data Quality
10 22 (2.99%) Accessibility
11 19 (2.59%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 18 (2.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 17 (2.31%) NIST 800
14 16 (2.18%) SOC 2
15 15 (2.04%) SLA
16 14 (1.90%) COBIT
16 14 (1.90%) Government Security Classifications
16 14 (1.90%) HIPAA
17 12 (1.63%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 10 (1.36%) WCAG
System Software
1 77 (10.48%) Active Directory
2 10 (1.36%) Docker
3 9 (1.22%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (0.82%) Hyper-V
5 3 (0.41%) OpenAM
5 3 (0.41%) Squid
6 2 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.27%) Virtual Servers
7 1 (0.14%) BitLocker
7 1 (0.14%) Ceph
7 1 (0.14%) Firmware
7 1 (0.14%) RACF
7 1 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.14%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 25 (3.40%) Terraform
2 18 (2.45%) Microsoft Intune
3 17 (2.31%) Kubernetes
3 17 (2.31%) Single Sign-On
4 11 (1.50%) Ansible
5 7 (0.95%) SCCM
6 4 (0.54%) Podman
6 4 (0.54%) QRadar
7 3 (0.41%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 3 (0.41%) RSA Archer
8 2 (0.27%) Computer Incident Response Team
8 2 (0.27%) Jamf Pro
8 2 (0.27%) Nmap
9 1 (0.14%) CASB
9 1 (0.14%) Host Intrusion Detection System
9 1 (0.14%) Istio
9 1 (0.14%) WSUS
Vendors
1 156 (21.22%) Microsoft
2 43 (5.85%) Oracle
2 43 (5.85%) ServiceNow
3 22 (2.99%) CyberArk
3 22 (2.99%) Google
4 19 (2.59%) BeyondTrust
4 19 (2.59%) SAP
5 16 (2.18%) Apple
5 16 (2.18%) Splunk
6 14 (1.90%) Cisco
6 14 (1.90%) Palo Alto
6 14 (1.90%) VMware
7 12 (1.63%) Ariba
8 11 (1.50%) CrowdStrike
9 10 (1.36%) Zscaler
10 7 (0.95%) IBM
10 7 (0.95%) Remedy
11 6 (0.82%) Atlassian
11 6 (0.82%) Computacenter
11 6 (0.82%) Qualys