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

6 months to
23 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 159 112 102
Rank change year-on-year -47 -10 +38
Contract jobs citing Information Security 631 783 1,118
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.77% 2.12% 2.41%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.97% 2.45% 2.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 321 476 787
10th Percentile £340 £400 £404
25th Percentile £421 £490 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £594 £575
Median % change year-on-year -10.77% +3.30% -
75th Percentile £675 £690 £688
90th Percentile £775 £795 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £465 £598 £560
% change year-on-year -22.20% +6.79% +1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 67 25 55
10th Percentile £18.82 £15.27 £16.03
25th Percentile £20.71 £16.06 £42.25
Median hourly rate £33.50 £22.09 £56.50
Median % change year-on-year +51.65% -60.90% -13.74%
75th Percentile £45.00 £35.00 £83.40
90th Percentile £80.31 £44.50 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.12 £21.14 £72.85
% change year-on-year +56.66% -70.98% +4.08%

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 31,979 31,998 41,164
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 89.50% 86.61% 88.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,013 19,257 27,677
10th Percentile £300 £310 £308
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £532
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.22% -3.36%
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 2,115 1,171 1,588
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.10 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.12 £19.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £34.00 £43.85
Median % change year-on-year -26.03% -22.46% +25.29%
75th Percentile £45.46 £64.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.50 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.85 £32.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -29.69% -26.97% +48.33%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 -46 564 £533 -11.25% 347
UK excluding London -55 304 £465 -22.20% 277
London -24 258 £581 +0.09% 128
Work from Home -16 182 £525 -4.55% 182
North of England -36 80 £475 -17.39% 40
South East -37 79 £600 +6.67% 115
Midlands -39 54 £400 -37.01% 35
North West -29 46 £448 -25.29% 26
South West -24 45 £425 -37.65% 42
East Midlands +11 31 £400 -49.04% 8
Yorkshire -22 31 £475 -13.64% 12
East of England 0 27 £500 -16.67% 23
West Midlands -45 23 £413 -36.54% 27
Scotland -24 18 £425 -10.53% 23
Wales 0 5 £388 -44.64% 6
North East -5 3 £550 -32.52% 2

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 (5.71%) SharePoint
2 21 (3.33%) Confluence
3 17 (2.69%) Microsoft Exchange
4 7 (1.11%) Mattermost
4 7 (1.11%) Skype for Business
5 6 (0.95%) IIS
6 2 (0.32%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
6 2 (0.32%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.16%) Apache
7 1 (0.16%) Apache Airflow
7 1 (0.16%) WebSphere
7 1 (0.16%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 48 (7.61%) Microsoft Office
2 20 (3.17%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (1.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.79%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.63%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.48%) Navisworks
6 3 (0.48%) Revit
7 2 (0.32%) ProjectWise
8 1 (0.16%) 1Password
8 1 (0.16%) GNU Octave
Business Applications
1 15 (2.38%) Remedy ITSM
2 4 (0.63%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.32%) assyst
4 1 (0.16%) NEC Housing
4 1 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.16%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 117 (18.54%) Azure
2 72 (11.41%) AWS
3 42 (6.66%) Microsoft 365
4 35 (5.55%) Entra ID
5 29 (4.60%) GCP
6 25 (3.96%) Power Platform
7 19 (3.01%) Azure Sentinel
8 17 (2.69%) SaaS
9 12 (1.90%) Microsoft Purview
10 8 (1.27%) OneDrive
11 6 (0.95%) AWS CloudFormation
11 6 (0.95%) Azure DevOps
11 6 (0.95%) Cloud Computing
11 6 (0.95%) OpenShift
12 5 (0.79%) OCI
13 4 (0.63%) Amazon EC2
13 4 (0.63%) Amazon S3
14 3 (0.48%) GitHub
14 3 (0.48%) PaaS
14 3 (0.48%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 71 (11.25%) Firewall
2 44 (6.97%) Network Security
3 26 (4.12%) DNS
4 19 (3.01%) HTTP
5 17 (2.69%) SSH
6 15 (2.38%) TCP/IP
7 12 (1.90%) Intrusion Detection
7 12 (1.90%) SMTP
7 12 (1.90%) SSL
7 12 (1.90%) WAN
8 11 (1.74%) DHCP
8 11 (1.74%) VPN
9 10 (1.58%) FTP
10 9 (1.43%) Internet
11 8 (1.27%) Wi-Fi
12 7 (1.11%) Skype
13 6 (0.95%) LAN
14 5 (0.79%) Wireless
15 4 (0.63%) NGFW
15 4 (0.63%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (3.17%) Power BI
2 7 (1.11%) GIS
3 5 (0.79%) Tableau
4 4 (0.63%) Big Data
4 4 (0.63%) Data Warehouse
4 4 (0.63%) NoSQL
4 4 (0.63%) Oracle BI Publisher
4 4 (0.63%) Oracle Reports
4 4 (0.63%) Redis
5 3 (0.48%) Data Lake
5 3 (0.48%) SQL Server
6 2 (0.32%) Amazon Aurora
6 2 (0.32%) Amazon RDS
6 2 (0.32%) BigQuery
6 2 (0.32%) EDRMS
6 2 (0.32%) Metadata
6 2 (0.32%) Power Query
6 2 (0.32%) Relational Database
7 1 (0.16%) Amazon Redshift
7 1 (0.16%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 33 (5.23%) JIRA
2 12 (1.90%) Jenkins
3 8 (1.27%) Artifactory
4 6 (0.95%) Git
5 3 (0.48%) Burp Suite
6 2 (0.32%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 2 (0.32%) Snyk
6 2 (0.32%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.16%) Balsamiq
7 1 (0.16%) Eclipse
7 1 (0.16%) GCC
7 1 (0.16%) Log4j
7 1 (0.16%) Metasploit
7 1 (0.16%) MSI
General
1 255 (40.41%) Social Skills
2 157 (24.88%) Finance
3 75 (11.89%) Analytical Skills
3 75 (11.89%) Public Sector
4 44 (6.97%) Banking
4 44 (6.97%) Legal
5 30 (4.75%) Organisational Skills
6 18 (2.85%) Manufacturing
6 18 (2.85%) Military
7 15 (2.38%) Presentation Skills
8 14 (2.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 14 (2.22%) Police
9 12 (1.90%) Documentation Skills
9 12 (1.90%) Retail
9 12 (1.90%) Telecoms
10 11 (1.74%) Influencing Skills
11 9 (1.43%) Law
12 7 (1.11%) Local Government
13 5 (0.79%) Investment Banking
13 5 (0.79%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 170 (26.94%) Analyst
2 60 (9.51%) Security Analyst
3 59 (9.35%) Consultant
4 48 (7.61%) Architect
5 47 (7.45%) Senior
6 43 (6.81%) Security Manager
6 43 (6.81%) Support Analyst
7 37 (5.86%) Lead
8 36 (5.71%) Security Architect
9 34 (5.39%) Security Engineer
10 28 (4.44%) Security Consultant
11 27 (4.28%) Information Analyst
11 27 (4.28%) Information Security Analyst
12 21 (3.33%) Security Specialist
13 20 (3.17%) SOC Analyst
14 18 (2.85%) Information Security Manager
15 16 (2.54%) Developer
15 16 (2.54%) IT Support
15 16 (2.54%) Project Manager
16 15 (2.38%) Cybersecurity Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (2.38%) SailPoint
2 14 (2.22%) LDAP
3 10 (1.58%) OAuth
4 8 (1.27%) Middleware
4 8 (1.27%) Oracle Fusion
4 8 (1.27%) REST
4 8 (1.27%) SAML
5 7 (1.11%) OpenID
6 6 (0.95%) Qt
7 5 (0.79%) Kafka
7 5 (0.79%) OAuth2
7 5 (0.79%) PyTorch
7 5 (0.79%) TensorFlow
7 5 (0.79%) Web Services
8 4 (0.63%) FastAPI
8 4 (0.63%) Hugging Face
8 4 (0.63%) LangChain
8 4 (0.63%) LangGraph
8 4 (0.63%) Loki
8 4 (0.63%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 130 (20.60%) Management Information System
2 79 (12.52%) Security Posture
3 29 (4.60%) Cyber Threat
4 27 (4.28%) PKI
5 22 (3.49%) Security Operations Centre
6 21 (3.33%) Onboarding
7 14 (2.22%) Analytical Mindset
7 14 (2.22%) Cloud Native
7 14 (2.22%) CSOC
7 14 (2.22%) Data Centre
8 13 (2.06%) Tandem
9 12 (1.90%) Operational Technology
10 11 (1.74%) Data Protection Act
10 11 (1.74%) Enterprise Software
11 10 (1.58%) Cyberattack
11 10 (1.58%) Legacy Systems
12 9 (1.43%) Cyber Defence
12 9 (1.43%) Greenfield Project
12 9 (1.43%) Product Ownership
13 7 (1.11%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 70 (11.09%) Windows
2 45 (7.13%) Linux
3 16 (2.54%) Unix
4 11 (1.74%) Windows Server
5 6 (0.95%) Windows 10
6 3 (0.48%) Kali Linux
6 3 (0.48%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.16%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 234 (37.08%) Cybersecurity
2 157 (24.88%) Risk Management
3 116 (18.38%) Problem-Solving
4 107 (16.96%) Stakeholder Management
5 102 (16.16%) Incident Response
6 94 (14.90%) Data Protection
7 86 (13.63%) ITIL
8 76 (12.04%) Agile
8 76 (12.04%) Cloud Security
8 76 (12.04%) Security Operations
9 67 (10.62%) Continuous Improvement
10 62 (9.83%) SIEM
11 60 (9.51%) Security Management
12 58 (9.19%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 57 (9.03%) Computer Science
14 51 (8.08%) Threat Modelling
14 51 (8.08%) Vulnerability Management
15 50 (7.92%) Information Security Management
16 49 (7.77%) Project Management
17 47 (7.45%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 52 (8.24%) Python
2 47 (7.45%) PowerShell
3 39 (6.18%) SQL
4 10 (1.58%) Java
5 8 (1.27%) Bash
6 6 (0.95%) C#
6 6 (0.95%) C++
7 5 (0.79%) Perl
8 2 (0.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 2 (0.32%) JavaScript
8 2 (0.32%) Kusto Query Language
8 2 (0.32%) PHP
8 2 (0.32%) R
8 2 (0.32%) Rust
8 2 (0.32%) Solidity
8 2 (0.32%) TypeScript
9 1 (0.16%) ANSI SQL
9 1 (0.16%) Bicep
9 1 (0.16%) Korn
9 1 (0.16%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 139 (22.03%) Security Cleared
2 121 (19.18%) CISSP
3 109 (17.27%) Degree
4 105 (16.64%) SC Cleared
5 90 (14.26%) CISM
6 43 (6.81%) Computer Science Degree
7 38 (6.02%) CISA
8 32 (5.07%) DV Cleared
9 26 (4.12%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
10 24 (3.80%) Cisco Certification
10 24 (3.80%) Master's Degree
11 22 (3.49%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
12 20 (3.17%) ITIL Certification
13 18 (2.85%) BPSS Clearance
13 18 (2.85%) CRISC
14 16 (2.54%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 16 (2.54%) Azure Certification
15 15 (2.38%) CEH
16 12 (1.90%) CCSP
17 10 (1.58%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 184 (29.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 163 (25.83%) NIST
3 108 (17.12%) GDPR
4 62 (9.83%) GRC
5 35 (5.55%) Cyber Essentials
6 34 (5.39%) COBIT
7 30 (4.75%) PCI DSS
8 22 (3.49%) NCSC
9 20 (3.17%) NIST 800
10 16 (2.54%) Accessibility
10 16 (2.54%) SLA
11 15 (2.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 14 (2.22%) Def Stans
13 12 (1.90%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 12 (1.90%) PMO
14 11 (1.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 9 (1.43%) JSP 440
15 9 (1.43%) QA
16 8 (1.27%) ISO/IEC 27005
17 7 (1.11%) PSD2
System Software
1 51 (8.08%) Active Directory
2 12 (1.90%) Virtual Machines
3 11 (1.74%) Docker
4 4 (0.63%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.16%) BitLocker
5 1 (0.16%) Hyper-V
5 1 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
5 1 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
5 1 (0.16%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 20 (3.17%) Kubernetes
1 20 (3.17%) Microsoft Intune
2 18 (2.85%) QRadar
3 15 (2.38%) HP SiteScope
3 15 (2.38%) SCOM
4 14 (2.22%) SCCM
5 13 (2.06%) Ansible
6 12 (1.90%) Terraform
7 7 (1.11%) CASB
7 7 (1.11%) Grafana
7 7 (1.11%) Prometheus
8 6 (0.95%) RSA Archer
8 6 (0.95%) SCOrch
9 4 (0.63%) CSIRT
9 4 (0.63%) Kustomize
10 3 (0.48%) WSUS
11 2 (0.32%) FortiGate
11 2 (0.32%) FTK
11 2 (0.32%) Progress Chef
11 2 (0.32%) Puppet
Vendors
1 145 (22.98%) Microsoft
2 38 (6.02%) Splunk
3 25 (3.96%) Cisco
3 25 (3.96%) ServiceNow
4 16 (2.54%) CyberArk
4 16 (2.54%) Remedy
5 15 (2.38%) IBM
6 14 (2.22%) Oracle
7 12 (1.90%) CrowdStrike
7 12 (1.90%) Rapid7
7 12 (1.90%) Salesforce
8 10 (1.58%) Fortinet
8 10 (1.58%) Palo Alto
9 9 (1.43%) Qualys
9 9 (1.43%) Thales
10 8 (1.27%) Darktrace
10 8 (1.27%) Databricks
10 8 (1.27%) Gemalto
10 8 (1.27%) Google
10 8 (1.27%) SAP