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 2 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 163 111 100
Rank change year-on-year -52 -11 +38
Contract jobs citing Information Security 605 781 1,137
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.77% 2.14% 2.42%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.96% 2.48% 2.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 320 478 807
10th Percentile £331 £400 £400
25th Percentile £418 £497 £493
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £588 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.38% +2.17% -
75th Percentile £675 £690 £688
90th Percentile £788 £800 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £582 £558
% change year-on-year -18.38% +4.39% +1.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 62 20 55
10th Percentile £18.82 £15.20 £16.03
25th Percentile £20.71 £15.73 £42.25
Median hourly rate £32.11 £21.55 £56.50
Median % change year-on-year +49.05% -61.87% -13.08%
75th Percentile £45.00 £37.25 £83.40
90th Percentile £80.40 £46.38 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.51 £22.09 £72.85
% change year-on-year +33.59% -69.68% +7.53%

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 30,862 31,468 41,662
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.18% 86.10% 88.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,265 18,925 28,165
10th Percentile £298 £310 £312
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £536
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.05% -2.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,997 1,117 1,592
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.00 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.33 £20.00 £18.93
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.50 £43.95
Median % change year-on-year -29.15% -19.23% +25.57%
75th Percentile £43.20 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.00 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.58 £35.00 £43.83
% change year-on-year -35.50% -20.14% +51.54%

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 2 November 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 2 November 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 2 November 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 -47 542 £550 -8.33% 465
UK excluding London -56 296 £475 -18.38% 373
London -35 245 £576 -3.19% 202
Work from Home -21 182 £500 -9.09% 186
North of England -33 79 £475 -17.39% 59
South East -28 78 £637 +13.66% 177
Midlands -35 50 £400 -31.62% 40
North West -29 48 £448 -23.31% 26
South West -14 44 £463 -31.48% 44
East Midlands +11 32 £400 -49.04% 18
Yorkshire -25 28 £494 -10.23% 25
East of England +3 26 £475 -20.83% 27
Scotland -13 18 £425 -10.53% 22
West Midlands -55 18 £450 -30.77% 22
Wales +4 5 £613 -8.41% 17
North East -9 3 £550 -32.52% 8

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 35 (5.79%) SharePoint
2 20 (3.31%) Confluence
3 15 (2.48%) Microsoft Exchange
4 7 (1.16%) Mattermost
4 7 (1.16%) Skype for Business
5 6 (0.99%) IIS
6 3 (0.50%) CMS
7 2 (0.33%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.17%) Apache
8 1 (0.17%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.17%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
8 1 (0.17%) WebSphere
8 1 (0.17%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 48 (7.93%) Microsoft Office
2 20 (3.31%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (1.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.83%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.50%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.50%) Navisworks
5 3 (0.50%) Revit
6 2 (0.33%) ProjectWise
7 1 (0.17%) 1Password
7 1 (0.17%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.17%) GNU Octave
Business Applications
1 15 (2.48%) Remedy ITSM
2 4 (0.66%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.33%) assyst
4 1 (0.17%) NEC Housing
4 1 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.17%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 113 (18.68%) Azure
2 70 (11.57%) AWS
3 33 (5.45%) Entra ID
3 33 (5.45%) Microsoft 365
4 29 (4.79%) GCP
5 22 (3.64%) Power Platform
6 19 (3.14%) Azure Sentinel
6 19 (3.14%) SaaS
7 10 (1.65%) Microsoft Purview
8 8 (1.32%) OneDrive
9 7 (1.16%) Azure DevOps
9 7 (1.16%) Cloud Computing
10 6 (0.99%) AWS CloudFormation
11 5 (0.83%) OpenShift
12 4 (0.66%) Amazon EC2
12 4 (0.66%) OCI
13 3 (0.50%) Amazon S3
13 3 (0.50%) Snowflake
14 2 (0.33%) IaaS
14 2 (0.33%) Viva Engage
Communications & Networking
1 74 (12.23%) Firewall
2 48 (7.93%) Network Security
3 23 (3.80%) DNS
4 19 (3.14%) HTTP
5 15 (2.48%) SSH
6 13 (2.15%) TCP/IP
6 13 (2.15%) VPN
7 12 (1.98%) Intrusion Detection
7 12 (1.98%) SMTP
7 12 (1.98%) SSL
8 10 (1.65%) FTP
9 9 (1.49%) DHCP
9 9 (1.49%) Internet
9 9 (1.49%) WAN
10 7 (1.16%) Skype
10 7 (1.16%) Wi-Fi
11 5 (0.83%) LAN
12 4 (0.66%) NGFW
12 4 (0.66%) Wireless
13 3 (0.50%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (2.81%) Power BI
2 9 (1.49%) Oracle BI Publisher
2 9 (1.49%) Oracle Reports
3 7 (1.16%) GIS
4 5 (0.83%) Data Warehouse
4 5 (0.83%) Tableau
5 4 (0.66%) Big Data
5 4 (0.66%) NoSQL
5 4 (0.66%) Redis
6 3 (0.50%) Data Lake
7 2 (0.33%) Amazon Aurora
7 2 (0.33%) Amazon RDS
7 2 (0.33%) BigQuery
7 2 (0.33%) EDRMS
8 1 (0.17%) Azure SQL Database
8 1 (0.17%) DB2
8 1 (0.17%) MongoDB
8 1 (0.17%) OLTP
8 1 (0.17%) PostgreSQL
8 1 (0.17%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 33 (5.45%) JIRA
2 11 (1.82%) Jenkins
3 8 (1.32%) Artifactory
4 6 (0.99%) Git
5 3 (0.50%) Burp Suite
6 2 (0.33%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 2 (0.33%) Snyk
6 2 (0.33%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.17%) Balsamiq
7 1 (0.17%) Eclipse
7 1 (0.17%) GCC
7 1 (0.17%) Log4j
7 1 (0.17%) Metasploit
7 1 (0.17%) MSI
General
1 250 (41.32%) Social Skills
2 153 (25.29%) Finance
3 70 (11.57%) Public Sector
4 68 (11.24%) Analytical Skills
5 44 (7.27%) Banking
6 39 (6.45%) Legal
7 28 (4.63%) Organisational Skills
8 18 (2.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 17 (2.81%) Military
10 15 (2.48%) Manufacturing
10 15 (2.48%) Presentation Skills
11 14 (2.31%) Police
12 13 (2.15%) Retail
13 12 (1.98%) Documentation Skills
14 9 (1.49%) Telecoms
15 8 (1.32%) Influencing Skills
16 7 (1.16%) Law
16 7 (1.16%) Local Government
17 5 (0.83%) Aerospace
17 5 (0.83%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 159 (26.28%) Analyst
2 54 (8.93%) Security Analyst
3 53 (8.76%) Consultant
4 44 (7.27%) Architect
4 44 (7.27%) Senior
5 43 (7.11%) Support Analyst
6 40 (6.61%) Security Manager
7 35 (5.79%) Lead
8 33 (5.45%) Security Engineer
9 32 (5.29%) Security Architect
10 26 (4.30%) Security Consultant
11 22 (3.64%) Security Specialist
11 22 (3.64%) SOC Analyst
12 21 (3.47%) Information Analyst
12 21 (3.47%) Information Security Analyst
13 18 (2.98%) Information Security Manager
14 16 (2.64%) Developer
15 15 (2.48%) Coordinator
15 15 (2.48%) Information Manager
15 15 (2.48%) Risk Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (2.48%) SailPoint
2 14 (2.31%) LDAP
3 11 (1.82%) Oracle Fusion
4 10 (1.65%) OAuth
5 8 (1.32%) Middleware
5 8 (1.32%) REST
6 7 (1.16%) Web Services
7 6 (0.99%) Qt
7 6 (0.99%) SAML
8 5 (0.83%) Kafka
8 5 (0.83%) OAuth2
8 5 (0.83%) OpenID
8 5 (0.83%) PyTorch
8 5 (0.83%) TensorFlow
9 4 (0.66%) FastAPI
9 4 (0.66%) Hugging Face
9 4 (0.66%) LangChain
9 4 (0.66%) LangGraph
9 4 (0.66%) Loki
9 4 (0.66%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 122 (20.17%) Management Information System
2 77 (12.73%) Security Posture
3 29 (4.79%) Cyber Threat
4 28 (4.63%) Security Operations Centre
5 22 (3.64%) PKI
6 21 (3.47%) Onboarding
7 14 (2.31%) Analytical Mindset
7 14 (2.31%) CSOC
8 13 (2.15%) Data Centre
8 13 (2.15%) Tandem
9 12 (1.98%) Cloud Native
10 11 (1.82%) Legacy Systems
11 10 (1.65%) Cyberattack
11 10 (1.65%) Enterprise Software
12 9 (1.49%) Cyber Defence
12 9 (1.49%) Data Protection Act
12 9 (1.49%) Greenfield Project
12 9 (1.49%) Operational Technology
13 7 (1.16%) Cloud Security Posture
13 7 (1.16%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 70 (11.57%) Windows
2 44 (7.27%) Linux
3 16 (2.64%) Unix
4 12 (1.98%) Windows Server
5 6 (0.99%) Windows 10
6 3 (0.50%) Kali Linux
6 3 (0.50%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.17%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 219 (36.20%) Cybersecurity
2 146 (24.13%) Risk Management
3 108 (17.85%) Problem-Solving
4 105 (17.36%) Incident Response
5 98 (16.20%) Stakeholder Management
6 95 (15.70%) Data Protection
7 83 (13.72%) ITIL
8 82 (13.55%) Security Operations
9 81 (13.39%) Agile
10 74 (12.23%) Cloud Security
11 67 (11.07%) Continuous Improvement
12 65 (10.74%) SIEM
13 61 (10.08%) Security Management
14 60 (9.92%) Computer Science
15 57 (9.42%) Vulnerability Management
16 52 (8.60%) Information Security Management
17 51 (8.43%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 51 (8.43%) Threat Modelling
18 50 (8.26%) Project Management
19 46 (7.60%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 51 (8.43%) Python
2 46 (7.60%) PowerShell
3 41 (6.78%) SQL
4 10 (1.65%) Java
5 7 (1.16%) Bash
6 6 (0.99%) C#
6 6 (0.99%) C++
7 5 (0.83%) Perl
8 2 (0.33%) JavaScript
8 2 (0.33%) Kusto Query Language
8 2 (0.33%) PHP
8 2 (0.33%) R
8 2 (0.33%) Rust
8 2 (0.33%) Solidity
8 2 (0.33%) TypeScript
9 1 (0.17%) ANSI SQL
9 1 (0.17%) Bicep
9 1 (0.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 1 (0.17%) T-SQL
9 1 (0.17%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 129 (21.32%) Security Cleared
2 116 (19.17%) CISSP
3 104 (17.19%) Degree
4 97 (16.03%) CISM
4 97 (16.03%) SC Cleared
5 46 (7.60%) Computer Science Degree
6 39 (6.45%) CISA
7 33 (5.45%) DV Cleared
8 26 (4.30%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
9 25 (4.13%) Master's Degree
10 23 (3.80%) Cisco Certification
10 23 (3.80%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
11 18 (2.98%) CRISC
12 17 (2.81%) BPSS Clearance
12 17 (2.81%) ITIL Certification
13 16 (2.64%) Azure Certification
14 15 (2.48%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 13 (2.15%) CEH
16 12 (1.98%) CCSP
17 10 (1.65%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 178 (29.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 159 (26.28%) NIST
3 105 (17.36%) GDPR
4 52 (8.60%) GRC
5 39 (6.45%) COBIT
6 37 (6.12%) Cyber Essentials
7 33 (5.45%) PCI DSS
8 22 (3.64%) NCSC
9 17 (2.81%) NIST 800
9 17 (2.81%) SLA
10 15 (2.48%) Accessibility
11 14 (2.31%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 13 (2.15%) Def Stans
13 12 (1.98%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 12 (1.98%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 10 (1.65%) PMO
15 8 (1.32%) HIPAA
15 8 (1.32%) JSP 440
16 7 (1.16%) ISO/IEC 27005
16 7 (1.16%) QA
System Software
1 47 (7.77%) Active Directory
2 11 (1.82%) Virtual Machines
3 10 (1.65%) Docker
4 3 (0.50%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.17%) BitLocker
5 1 (0.17%) Hyper-V
5 1 (0.17%) Microsoft App-V
5 1 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
5 1 (0.17%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 19 (3.14%) QRadar
2 18 (2.98%) Kubernetes
3 17 (2.81%) Microsoft Intune
4 15 (2.48%) HP SiteScope
4 15 (2.48%) SCOM
5 13 (2.15%) SCCM
6 12 (1.98%) Ansible
7 10 (1.65%) Terraform
8 7 (1.16%) Grafana
8 7 (1.16%) Prometheus
9 6 (0.99%) CASB
9 6 (0.99%) RSA Archer
10 5 (0.83%) SCOrch
11 4 (0.66%) CSIRT
11 4 (0.66%) Jamf Pro
11 4 (0.66%) Kustomize
12 3 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
12 3 (0.50%) WSUS
13 2 (0.33%) Nessus
13 2 (0.33%) Puppet
Vendors
1 135 (22.31%) Microsoft
2 40 (6.61%) Splunk
3 24 (3.97%) Cisco
4 23 (3.80%) ServiceNow
5 18 (2.98%) Oracle
6 16 (2.64%) Remedy
7 15 (2.48%) CyberArk
7 15 (2.48%) IBM
8 13 (2.15%) Salesforce
9 12 (1.98%) CrowdStrike
9 12 (1.98%) Rapid7
10 10 (1.65%) Darktrace
11 9 (1.49%) Qualys
12 8 (1.32%) Databricks
12 8 (1.32%) Fortinet
12 8 (1.32%) Google
12 8 (1.32%) Palo Alto
12 8 (1.32%) Tenable
12 8 (1.32%) Zscaler
13 7 (1.16%) Thales