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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 19 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 163 105 92
Rank change year-on-year -58 -13 +46
Contract jobs citing Information Security 582 853 1,251
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 1.77% 2.21% 2.52%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.95% 2.58% 2.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 314 535 901
10th Percentile £316 £375 £400
25th Percentile £413 £490 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £575 £593
Median % change year-on-year -7.39% -3.08% +3.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £700
90th Percentile £788 £792 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £600 £550
% change year-on-year -16.67% +9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 44 17 40
10th Percentile £21.10 £12.75 £18.87
25th Percentile £22.14 £13.00 £42.25
Median hourly rate £33.50 £16.19 £72.54
Median % change year-on-year +106.92% -77.68% +27.58%
75th Percentile £65.00 £21.00 £83.40
90th Percentile £75.00 £46.75 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.50 £15.73 £73.31
% change year-on-year +112.97% -78.54% +17.90%

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 29,825 33,013 44,130
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.52% 85.68% 89.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,531 20,242 29,974
10th Percentile £300 £308 £313
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,812 1,459 1,554
10th Percentile £14.23 £14.96 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.00 £18.79
Median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £43.79
Median % change year-on-year -41.51% -1.81% +51.53%
75th Percentile £44.76 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £43.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year -47.67% +1.18% +84.18%

Information Security
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for Information Security 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 19 September 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 19 September 2025.

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 19 September 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 -52 525 £530 -11.67% 504
UK excluding London -56 266 £500 -16.67% 399
London -33 262 £571 +3.86% 217
Work from Home -38 170 £463 -15.91% 315
South East -27 71 £625 +8.70% 163
North of England -48 67 £462 -23.08% 86
South West +1 49 £513 -24.07% 45
North West -22 44 £428 -31.60% 48
Midlands -44 39 £400 -38.46% 39
East Midlands +9 27 £400 -49.04% 14
Yorkshire -25 22 £500 -13.04% 28
East of England +13 20 £362 -38.38% 40
Scotland -28 20 £425 -24.11% 27
West Midlands -46 12 £488 -25.00% 22
Wales +2 2 £613 -8.41% 8
Northern Ireland - 2 - - 7
North East -5 1 £550 - 12

Information Security
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 30 (5.15%) SharePoint
2 18 (3.09%) Confluence
3 15 (2.58%) Microsoft Exchange
4 8 (1.37%) Skype for Business
5 7 (1.20%) Mattermost
6 6 (1.03%) IIS
7 5 (0.86%) CMS
8 2 (0.34%) Tomcat
9 1 (0.17%) Apache
9 1 (0.17%) Apache Airflow
9 1 (0.17%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.17%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 41 (7.04%) Microsoft Office
2 21 (3.61%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (1.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (1.03%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.52%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.34%) Navisworks
6 2 (0.34%) ProjectWise
6 2 (0.34%) Revit
7 1 (0.17%) 1Password
7 1 (0.17%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.17%) GNU Octave
Business Applications
1 15 (2.58%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.34%) assyst
2 2 (0.34%) Endur
2 2 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.17%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.17%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 114 (19.59%) Azure
2 66 (11.34%) AWS
3 34 (5.84%) Microsoft 365
4 30 (5.15%) Entra ID
5 27 (4.64%) GCP
6 21 (3.61%) Power Platform
6 21 (3.61%) SaaS
7 20 (3.44%) Azure Sentinel
8 8 (1.37%) Microsoft Purview
8 8 (1.37%) OneDrive
9 7 (1.20%) Azure DevOps
9 7 (1.20%) Cloud Computing
10 6 (1.03%) AWS CloudFormation
10 6 (1.03%) IaaS
11 5 (0.86%) Azure Data Factory
11 5 (0.86%) Azure Logic Apps
11 5 (0.86%) OpenShift
11 5 (0.86%) Serverless
12 4 (0.69%) Azure Functions
12 4 (0.69%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 74 (12.71%) Firewall
2 51 (8.76%) Network Security
3 21 (3.61%) DNS
4 16 (2.75%) HTTP
5 15 (2.58%) VPN
6 14 (2.41%) Intrusion Detection
6 14 (2.41%) SSL
7 11 (1.89%) TCP/IP
8 10 (1.72%) FTP
8 10 (1.72%) SMTP
9 8 (1.37%) DHCP
9 8 (1.37%) Skype
9 8 (1.37%) SSH
10 5 (0.86%) NGFW
10 5 (0.86%) WAN
11 4 (0.69%) Wi-Fi
12 3 (0.52%) Internet
12 3 (0.52%) LAN
12 3 (0.52%) VLAN
12 3 (0.52%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (3.09%) Power BI
2 10 (1.72%) Oracle Reports
3 9 (1.55%) Oracle BI Publisher
4 7 (1.20%) GIS
5 6 (1.03%) Tableau
6 5 (0.86%) NoSQL
7 4 (0.69%) Big Data
7 4 (0.69%) Data Warehouse
7 4 (0.69%) Redis
7 4 (0.69%) SQL Server
8 2 (0.34%) Amazon Aurora
8 2 (0.34%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (0.34%) EDRMS
9 1 (0.17%) BigQuery
9 1 (0.17%) Couchbase
9 1 (0.17%) Data Lake
9 1 (0.17%) DynamoDB
9 1 (0.17%) Metadata
9 1 (0.17%) OLTP
9 1 (0.17%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 32 (5.50%) JIRA
2 11 (1.89%) Jenkins
3 8 (1.37%) Artifactory
4 5 (0.86%) Git
5 2 (0.34%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 2 (0.34%) Snyk
5 2 (0.34%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.17%) Balsamiq
6 1 (0.17%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.17%) Burp Suite
6 1 (0.17%) Eclipse
6 1 (0.17%) Log4j
6 1 (0.17%) Metasploit
General
1 241 (41.41%) Social Skills
2 156 (26.80%) Finance
3 73 (12.54%) Analytical Skills
4 56 (9.62%) Public Sector
5 50 (8.59%) Banking
6 39 (6.70%) Legal
7 24 (4.12%) Organisational Skills
8 20 (3.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 19 (3.26%) Military
10 15 (2.58%) Retail
11 13 (2.23%) Police
12 12 (2.06%) Law
12 12 (2.06%) Manufacturing
13 10 (1.72%) Telecoms
14 9 (1.55%) Influencing Skills
15 8 (1.37%) Documentation Skills
15 8 (1.37%) Local Government
16 6 (1.03%) Financial Institution
16 6 (1.03%) Investment Banking
16 6 (1.03%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 146 (25.09%) Analyst
2 55 (9.45%) Consultant
3 54 (9.28%) Security Analyst
4 49 (8.42%) Architect
4 49 (8.42%) Senior
5 45 (7.73%) Security Manager
6 42 (7.22%) Security Engineer
7 36 (6.19%) Lead
7 36 (6.19%) Security Consultant
8 35 (6.01%) Security Architect
9 34 (5.84%) Support Analyst
10 23 (3.95%) Information Security Manager
11 22 (3.78%) Information Analyst
11 22 (3.78%) Information Security Analyst
11 22 (3.78%) Security Specialist
12 21 (3.61%) Information Manager
13 20 (3.44%) SOC Analyst
14 18 (3.09%) Cybersecurity Analyst
15 17 (2.92%) Project Manager
16 16 (2.75%) Risk Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (2.75%) LDAP
2 13 (2.23%) SailPoint
3 11 (1.89%) Middleware
4 10 (1.72%) OAuth
4 10 (1.72%) Oracle Fusion
5 8 (1.37%) Web Services
6 7 (1.20%) REST
7 6 (1.03%) Kafka
7 6 (1.03%) Qt
8 5 (0.86%) .NET
8 5 (0.86%) Elastic Stack
8 5 (0.86%) OAuth2
8 5 (0.86%) PyTorch
8 5 (0.86%) TensorFlow
9 4 (0.69%) FastAPI
9 4 (0.69%) Hugging Face
9 4 (0.69%) LangChain
9 4 (0.69%) LangGraph
9 4 (0.69%) OpenTelemetry
9 4 (0.69%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 118 (20.27%) Management Information System
2 71 (12.20%) Security Posture
3 28 (4.81%) Cyber Threat
4 24 (4.12%) Security Operations Centre
5 23 (3.95%) Onboarding
6 18 (3.09%) PKI
7 12 (2.06%) Analytical Mindset
8 11 (1.89%) CSOC
8 11 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
9 10 (1.72%) Cloud Native
9 10 (1.72%) Cyberattack
10 9 (1.55%) Cyber Defence
11 8 (1.37%) Data Centre
11 8 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
12 7 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
12 7 (1.20%) Legacy Applications
12 7 (1.20%) Linux Command Line
12 7 (1.20%) Operational Technology
12 7 (1.20%) Product Ownership
13 6 (1.03%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 70 (12.03%) Windows
2 48 (8.25%) Linux
3 16 (2.75%) Windows Server
4 11 (1.89%) Unix
5 9 (1.55%) Windows 10
6 8 (1.37%) Mac OS
7 2 (0.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.17%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.17%) Kali Linux
8 1 (0.17%) VMS
8 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 205 (35.22%) Cybersecurity
2 148 (25.43%) Risk Management
3 105 (18.04%) Problem-Solving
4 102 (17.53%) Incident Response
5 98 (16.84%) Stakeholder Management
6 82 (14.09%) Agile
7 80 (13.75%) Security Operations
8 78 (13.40%) Data Protection
9 74 (12.71%) ITIL
10 70 (12.03%) Vulnerability Management
11 67 (11.51%) Cloud Security
11 67 (11.51%) SIEM
12 64 (11.00%) Continuous Improvement
13 57 (9.79%) Computer Science
14 49 (8.42%) Security Management
15 48 (8.25%) DevOps
16 47 (8.08%) Roadmaps
16 47 (8.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 46 (7.90%) Security Architecture
18 45 (7.73%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 52 (8.93%) PowerShell
2 46 (7.90%) Python
3 42 (7.22%) SQL
4 12 (2.06%) Java
5 8 (1.37%) Bash
6 6 (1.03%) C#
6 6 (1.03%) C++
7 5 (0.86%) Perl
8 4 (0.69%) PHP
8 4 (0.69%) Shell Script
8 4 (0.69%) TypeScript
9 3 (0.52%) R
10 1 (0.17%) ANSI SQL
10 1 (0.17%) Bicep
10 1 (0.17%) JavaScript
10 1 (0.17%) Korn
10 1 (0.17%) Kusto Query Language
10 1 (0.17%) Scala
10 1 (0.17%) T-SQL
10 1 (0.17%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 118 (20.27%) CISSP
2 113 (19.42%) Security Cleared
3 101 (17.35%) Degree
4 93 (15.98%) CISM
5 81 (13.92%) SC Cleared
6 42 (7.22%) Computer Science Degree
7 38 (6.53%) CISA
8 30 (5.15%) DV Cleared
9 24 (4.12%) CRISC
10 23 (3.95%) Cisco Certification
10 23 (3.95%) Master's Degree
11 22 (3.78%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
11 22 (3.78%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
12 20 (3.44%) Azure Certification
13 18 (3.09%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 17 (2.92%) BPSS Clearance
15 16 (2.75%) ITIL Certification
16 13 (2.23%) Microsoft Certification
17 12 (2.06%) CCSP
17 12 (2.06%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 160 (27.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 132 (22.68%) NIST
3 99 (17.01%) GDPR
4 52 (8.93%) GRC
5 36 (6.19%) COBIT
6 35 (6.01%) Cyber Essentials
7 33 (5.67%) PCI DSS
8 20 (3.44%) SLA
9 17 (2.92%) HIPAA
9 17 (2.92%) NCSC
10 15 (2.58%) Accessibility
11 13 (2.23%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 13 (2.23%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 13 (2.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 10 (1.72%) Def Stans
12 10 (1.72%) NIST 800
12 10 (1.72%) PMO
13 9 (1.55%) QA
14 8 (1.37%) SOC 2
15 6 (1.03%) ISO/IEC 27005
System Software
1 48 (8.25%) Active Directory
2 11 (1.89%) Docker
3 9 (1.55%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (0.86%) Hyper-V
5 4 (0.69%) Virtual Servers
5 4 (0.69%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.34%) vSphere
7 1 (0.17%) BitLocker
7 1 (0.17%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 15 (2.58%) HP SiteScope
1 15 (2.58%) Kubernetes
1 15 (2.58%) QRadar
1 15 (2.58%) SCOM
2 13 (2.23%) Microsoft Intune
3 11 (1.89%) Terraform
4 10 (1.72%) Ansible
4 10 (1.72%) SCCM
5 8 (1.37%) CASB
6 7 (1.20%) Grafana
6 7 (1.20%) Prometheus
7 5 (0.86%) RSA Archer
8 4 (0.69%) CSIRT
8 4 (0.69%) Kustomize
8 4 (0.69%) WSUS
9 3 (0.52%) Jamf Pro
9 3 (0.52%) OPNET
9 3 (0.52%) SCOrch
9 3 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.34%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 139 (23.88%) Microsoft
2 38 (6.53%) Splunk
3 21 (3.61%) Cisco
4 18 (3.09%) Salesforce
5 16 (2.75%) ServiceNow
6 15 (2.58%) CyberArk
6 15 (2.58%) Oracle
6 15 (2.58%) Remedy
7 12 (2.06%) CrowdStrike
7 12 (2.06%) Darktrace
8 11 (1.89%) Qualys
9 10 (1.72%) Google
10 9 (1.55%) Rapid7
11 8 (1.37%) Zscaler
12 7 (1.20%) IBM
12 7 (1.20%) Tenable
13 6 (1.03%) Palo Alto
13 6 (1.03%) SAP
14 5 (0.86%) Databricks
14 5 (0.86%) Fortinet