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 5 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 157 118 97
Rank change year-on-year -39 -21 +36
Contract jobs citing Information Security 647 758 1,091
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.77% 2.10% 2.43%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.99% 2.40% 2.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 327 457 773
10th Percentile £350 £400 £400
25th Percentile £425 £480 £495
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.96% - -1.71%
75th Percentile £656 £688 £688
90th Percentile £775 £795 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £575 £550
% change year-on-year -17.39% +4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 72 25 56
10th Percentile £17.63 £15.27 £15.95
25th Percentile £20.71 £16.06 £42.25
Median hourly rate £33.50 £22.09 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +51.65% -55.82% -23.08%
75th Percentile £45.00 £36.75 £83.40
90th Percentile £79.37 £53.25 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.37 £22.09 £50.00
% change year-on-year +37.47% -55.82% -26.20%

All Process and 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 32,500 31,582 39,830
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 89.05% 87.42% 88.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,460 19,152 26,649
10th Percentile £300 £310 £312
25th Percentile £405 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.50% -3.09%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £743 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,092 1,104 1,551
10th Percentile £14.54 £15.25 £14.36
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.23 £18.95
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.75 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -23.21% -22.94% +21.43%
75th Percentile £45.53 £63.51 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.50 £73.93 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.85 £32.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -29.71% -23.53% +30.77%

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 5 December 2025.

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 5 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Information Security in the UK

Information Security
Top 16 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 5 December 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 -42 579 £538 -10.42% 300
UK excluding London -55 303 £475 -17.39% 248
London -23 274 £578 -3.67% 115
Work from Home -16 191 £520 -5.45% 139
South East -39 81 £588 +5.86% 98
North of England -36 79 £475 -13.64% 58
Midlands -34 50 £401 -27.05% 30
North West -26 47 £448 -22.17% 37
South West -20 44 £425 -37.07% 26
East of England +1 30 £520 -13.33% 25
Yorkshire -22 29 £475 -13.64% 18
West Midlands -45 26 £414 -36.35% 22
East Midlands +3 24 £400 -23.81% 8
Scotland -11 18 £425 -10.53% 17
Wales -3 5 £388 -44.64% 1
North East -5 3 £550 -32.52% 3

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 (5.56%) SharePoint
2 19 (2.94%) Confluence
3 18 (2.78%) Microsoft Exchange
4 7 (1.08%) Mattermost
4 7 (1.08%) Skype for Business
5 6 (0.93%) IIS
6 3 (0.46%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
7 2 (0.31%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.15%) Apache
8 1 (0.15%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.15%) WebSphere
8 1 (0.15%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 55 (8.50%) Microsoft Office
2 27 (4.17%) Microsoft Excel
3 11 (1.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.77%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.62%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.46%) Navisworks
6 3 (0.46%) Revit
7 2 (0.31%) ProjectWise
8 1 (0.15%) GNU Octave
Business Applications
1 15 (2.32%) Remedy ITSM
2 6 (0.93%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.31%) assyst
3 2 (0.31%) SAP GRC
3 2 (0.31%) Temenos T24
4 1 (0.15%) NEC Housing
4 1 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.15%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 129 (19.94%) Azure
2 81 (12.52%) AWS
3 45 (6.96%) Microsoft 365
4 36 (5.56%) Entra ID
5 29 (4.48%) GCP
6 28 (4.33%) Power Platform
7 19 (2.94%) Azure Sentinel
8 15 (2.32%) SaaS
9 12 (1.85%) Microsoft Purview
10 8 (1.24%) OneDrive
11 7 (1.08%) OCI
12 6 (0.93%) AWS CloudFormation
12 6 (0.93%) Cloud Computing
12 6 (0.93%) PowerApps
13 5 (0.77%) Azure DevOps
13 5 (0.77%) OpenShift
13 5 (0.77%) Power Automate
14 3 (0.46%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 3 (0.46%) GitHub
14 3 (0.46%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 75 (11.59%) Firewall
2 41 (6.34%) Network Security
3 29 (4.48%) DNS
4 19 (2.94%) HTTP
5 17 (2.63%) SSH
5 17 (2.63%) TCP/IP
6 13 (2.01%) DHCP
6 13 (2.01%) WAN
7 12 (1.85%) SMTP
8 11 (1.70%) Intrusion Detection
8 11 (1.70%) SSL
8 11 (1.70%) VPN
9 10 (1.55%) FTP
10 9 (1.39%) Internet
10 9 (1.39%) Wi-Fi
10 9 (1.39%) Wireless
11 7 (1.08%) Skype
12 6 (0.93%) LAN
13 4 (0.62%) NGFW
13 4 (0.62%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (3.55%) Power BI
2 7 (1.08%) Data Warehouse
2 7 (1.08%) GIS
3 6 (0.93%) SQL Server
3 6 (0.93%) Tableau
4 4 (0.62%) Big Data
4 4 (0.62%) NoSQL
4 4 (0.62%) Redis
4 4 (0.62%) SQL Server Reporting Services
5 3 (0.46%) Data Lake
5 3 (0.46%) Metadata
6 2 (0.31%) Amazon Aurora
6 2 (0.31%) Amazon RDS
6 2 (0.31%) BigQuery
6 2 (0.31%) DB2
6 2 (0.31%) EDRMS
6 2 (0.31%) MongoDB
6 2 (0.31%) Oracle Reports
6 2 (0.31%) Power Query
6 2 (0.31%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 31 (4.79%) JIRA
2 11 (1.70%) Jenkins
3 8 (1.24%) Artifactory
4 7 (1.08%) Burp Suite
5 5 (0.77%) Git
5 5 (0.77%) Metasploit
6 2 (0.31%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 2 (0.31%) Snyk
6 2 (0.31%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.15%) Balsamiq
7 1 (0.15%) Eclipse
7 1 (0.15%) GCC
7 1 (0.15%) MSI
General
1 261 (40.34%) Social Skills
2 160 (24.73%) Finance
3 82 (12.67%) Analytical Skills
4 79 (12.21%) Public Sector
5 47 (7.26%) Legal
6 44 (6.80%) Banking
7 29 (4.48%) Organisational Skills
8 18 (2.78%) Manufacturing
9 17 (2.63%) Military
10 15 (2.32%) Presentation Skills
11 13 (2.01%) Police
11 13 (2.01%) Telecoms
12 12 (1.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 12 (1.85%) Influencing Skills
12 12 (1.85%) Retail
13 10 (1.55%) Documentation Skills
13 10 (1.55%) Law
14 8 (1.24%) Local Government
15 6 (0.93%) Investment Banking
15 6 (0.93%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 164 (25.35%) Analyst
2 63 (9.74%) Consultant
3 56 (8.66%) Security Analyst
4 50 (7.73%) Architect
5 48 (7.42%) Senior
6 42 (6.49%) Support Analyst
7 39 (6.03%) Security Manager
8 38 (5.87%) Lead
9 37 (5.72%) Security Engineer
10 36 (5.56%) Security Architect
11 30 (4.64%) Security Consultant
12 25 (3.86%) Information Analyst
12 25 (3.86%) Information Security Analyst
13 20 (3.09%) Developer
14 19 (2.94%) Security Specialist
14 19 (2.94%) SOC Analyst
15 18 (2.78%) Coordinator
16 16 (2.47%) Information Security Manager
16 16 (2.47%) IT Support
17 15 (2.32%) Cybersecurity Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (2.16%) SailPoint
2 13 (2.01%) LDAP
2 13 (2.01%) OAuth
3 9 (1.39%) Middleware
3 9 (1.39%) OAuth2
4 8 (1.24%) REST
5 7 (1.08%) OpenID
5 7 (1.08%) Oracle Fusion
5 7 (1.08%) SAML
6 6 (0.93%) Qt
7 5 (0.77%) PyTorch
7 5 (0.77%) TensorFlow
8 4 (0.62%) FastAPI
8 4 (0.62%) Flask
8 4 (0.62%) HATEOAS
8 4 (0.62%) Kafka
8 4 (0.62%) Loki
8 4 (0.62%) OpenTelemetry
8 4 (0.62%) RESTful
8 4 (0.62%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 131 (20.25%) Management Information System
2 79 (12.21%) Security Posture
3 29 (4.48%) Cyber Threat
4 27 (4.17%) PKI
5 21 (3.25%) Security Operations Centre
6 19 (2.94%) Onboarding
7 15 (2.32%) Data Centre
8 14 (2.16%) Analytical Mindset
9 13 (2.01%) Cloud Native
9 13 (2.01%) CSOC
9 13 (2.01%) Operational Technology
9 13 (2.01%) Tandem
10 12 (1.85%) Data Protection Act
10 12 (1.85%) Product Ownership
11 11 (1.70%) Enterprise Software
12 10 (1.55%) Cyberattack
12 10 (1.55%) Legacy Systems
13 9 (1.39%) Cyber Defence
13 9 (1.39%) Greenfield Project
14 8 (1.24%) Insider Threat
Operating Systems
1 75 (11.59%) Windows
2 45 (6.96%) Linux
3 17 (2.63%) Unix
4 12 (1.85%) Windows Server
5 6 (0.93%) Windows 10
6 3 (0.46%) Kali Linux
6 3 (0.46%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.15%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 231 (35.70%) Cybersecurity
2 152 (23.49%) Risk Management
3 127 (19.63%) Problem-Solving
4 108 (16.69%) Stakeholder Management
5 100 (15.46%) Incident Response
6 96 (14.84%) Data Protection
7 85 (13.14%) ITIL
8 84 (12.98%) Cloud Security
9 75 (11.59%) Continuous Improvement
10 73 (11.28%) Security Operations
11 71 (10.97%) Agile
12 62 (9.58%) Security Management
12 62 (9.58%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 59 (9.12%) SIEM
14 57 (8.81%) Computer Science
15 51 (7.88%) Threat Modelling
16 48 (7.42%) Decision-Making
17 47 (7.26%) Information Security Management
17 47 (7.26%) Security Architecture
18 46 (7.11%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 53 (8.19%) Python
2 47 (7.26%) PowerShell
3 38 (5.87%) SQL
4 14 (2.16%) Java
5 8 (1.24%) Bash
6 6 (0.93%) C#
6 6 (0.93%) C++
7 5 (0.77%) Perl
8 4 (0.62%) Kotlin
9 3 (0.46%) R
10 2 (0.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 2 (0.31%) JavaScript
10 2 (0.31%) Kusto Query Language
10 2 (0.31%) PHP
10 2 (0.31%) Rust
10 2 (0.31%) Solidity
10 2 (0.31%) TypeScript
11 1 (0.15%) Bicep
11 1 (0.15%) T-SQL
11 1 (0.15%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 151 (23.34%) Security Cleared
2 119 (18.39%) CISSP
3 117 (18.08%) Degree
4 111 (17.16%) SC Cleared
5 83 (12.83%) CISM
6 43 (6.65%) Computer Science Degree
7 38 (5.87%) CISA
7 38 (5.87%) DV Cleared
8 25 (3.86%) Cisco Certification
8 25 (3.86%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
8 25 (3.86%) Master's Degree
9 21 (3.25%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
10 20 (3.09%) ITIL Certification
11 19 (2.94%) BPSS Clearance
12 17 (2.63%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 16 (2.47%) Azure Certification
14 15 (2.32%) CEH
14 15 (2.32%) CRISC
15 13 (2.01%) CCSP
16 10 (1.55%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 182 (28.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 161 (24.88%) NIST
3 108 (16.69%) GDPR
4 58 (8.96%) GRC
5 34 (5.26%) PCI DSS
6 33 (5.10%) COBIT
7 31 (4.79%) Cyber Essentials
8 21 (3.25%) NCSC
9 20 (3.09%) NIST 800
10 17 (2.63%) SLA
11 16 (2.47%) Accessibility
12 15 (2.32%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 15 (2.32%) PMO
12 15 (2.32%) QA
13 14 (2.16%) Def Stans
14 12 (1.85%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
15 11 (1.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 9 (1.39%) JSP 440
17 8 (1.24%) ISO/IEC 27005
18 7 (1.08%) PSD2
System Software
1 52 (8.04%) Active Directory
2 15 (2.32%) Virtual Machines
3 10 (1.55%) Docker
4 4 (0.62%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.15%) BitLocker
5 1 (0.15%) Hyper-V
5 1 (0.15%) Microsoft App-V
5 1 (0.15%) Virtual Desktop
5 1 (0.15%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 23 (3.55%) Microsoft Intune
2 19 (2.94%) Kubernetes
3 18 (2.78%) QRadar
4 17 (2.63%) SCCM
5 15 (2.32%) HP SiteScope
5 15 (2.32%) SCOM
6 13 (2.01%) Ansible
7 12 (1.85%) Terraform
8 7 (1.08%) CASB
8 7 (1.08%) Grafana
8 7 (1.08%) SCOrch
9 6 (0.93%) Nmap
9 6 (0.93%) Prometheus
9 6 (0.93%) RSA Archer
10 5 (0.77%) WSUS
11 4 (0.62%) CSIRT
11 4 (0.62%) Kustomize
12 2 (0.31%) EnCase
12 2 (0.31%) FTK
12 2 (0.31%) Nessus
Vendors
1 148 (22.87%) Microsoft
2 34 (5.26%) Splunk
3 27 (4.17%) ServiceNow
4 25 (3.86%) Cisco
5 17 (2.63%) Remedy
6 15 (2.32%) CyberArk
6 15 (2.32%) IBM
7 12 (1.85%) CrowdStrike
7 12 (1.85%) Oracle
8 11 (1.70%) Fortinet
8 11 (1.70%) Palo Alto
8 11 (1.70%) Rapid7
9 10 (1.55%) Salesforce
10 9 (1.39%) Qualys
10 9 (1.39%) SAP
10 9 (1.39%) Thales
11 8 (1.24%) Darktrace
11 8 (1.24%) Databricks
11 8 (1.24%) Gemalto
11 8 (1.24%) Google