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

6 months to
11 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 204 165 107
Rank change year-on-year -39 -58 -15
Contract jobs citing Information Security 766 589 831
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.40% 1.78% 2.19%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.66% 1.97% 2.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 415 318 509
10th Percentile £313 £347 £400
25th Percentile £425 £413 £481
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £539 £575
Median % change year-on-year +2.09% -6.30% -3.08%
75th Percentile £638 £675 £688
90th Percentile £754 £775 £801
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £484 £600
% change year-on-year -2.90% -19.42% +8.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 83 54 20
10th Percentile £14.88 £18.82 £15.20
25th Percentile £21.35 £20.73 £15.73
Median hourly rate £62.25 £33.50 £20.60
Median % change year-on-year +85.82% +62.66% -71.61%
75th Percentile £80.00 £60.00 £37.25
90th Percentile £85.00 £82.00 £46.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.25 £33.50 £21.14
% change year-on-year +85.82% +58.47% -71.43%

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 46,170 29,963 32,599
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.61% 90.48% 86.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,721 18,625 19,646
10th Percentile £325 £295 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £737 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,354 1,887 1,283
10th Percentile £13.53 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.00 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +49.11% -37.13% -9.60%
75th Percentile £65.00 £42.90 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.65 £65.06 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £22.27 £40.33
% change year-on-year +68.43% -44.79% -7.99%

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 October 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 October 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 October 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 -44 690 £540 +0.70% 1,585
UK excluding London -21 411 £470 -2.90% 823
London -47 296 £600 +4.35% 843
Work from Home -46 193 £550 +14.58% 696
North of England -24 126 £475 +4.57% 239
South East -43 97 £496 -20.60% 220
North West -22 77 £525 +22.81% 112
Midlands -17 73 £450 +12.50% 98
West Midlands 0 64 £447 -3.35% 66
South West -20 53 £600 +29.73% 81
Scotland -7 36 £586 +31.57% 68
Yorkshire -17 33 £525 +5.00% 92
East of England -18 33 £515 +8.42% 49
North East -25 16 £425 -22.73% 36
East Midlands -30 9 £616 +54.06% 32
Wales -11 4 £815 +33.06% 24
Northern Ireland - 1 £550 - 50

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 40 (5.22%) SharePoint
2 22 (2.87%) Confluence
3 11 (1.44%) IIS
4 8 (1.04%) Microsoft Exchange
5 2 (0.26%) Apache
5 2 (0.26%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.26%) Apache Spark
5 2 (0.26%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 1 (0.13%) Documentum
6 1 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
6 1 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 19 (2.48%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (1.70%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (1.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 9 (1.17%) Spreadsheet
4 5 (0.65%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.39%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.13%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 21 (2.74%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.65%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.52%) Oracle Payroll
4 2 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
4 2 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.13%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.13%) SAP GRC
5 1 (0.13%) SAP MDG
5 1 (0.13%) Siebel CRM
5 1 (0.13%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 180 (23.50%) Azure
2 114 (14.88%) AWS
3 68 (8.88%) Entra ID
4 46 (6.01%) SaaS
5 44 (5.74%) Microsoft 365
6 43 (5.61%) GCP
7 32 (4.18%) Power Platform
8 28 (3.66%) GitHub
9 27 (3.52%) Azure DevOps
9 27 (3.52%) Serverless
10 25 (3.26%) Power Automate
11 24 (3.13%) Dynamics 365
12 23 (3.00%) Microsoft Purview
13 20 (2.61%) Azure Sentinel
14 18 (2.35%) Azure Functions
15 17 (2.22%) OCI
16 14 (1.83%) PaaS
17 13 (1.70%) GitHub Actions
18 11 (1.44%) IaaS
19 8 (1.04%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 48 (6.27%) Network Security
2 43 (5.61%) Firewall
3 20 (2.61%) WAN
4 17 (2.22%) LAN
5 16 (2.09%) DNS
6 10 (1.31%) DHCP
7 9 (1.17%) TCP/IP
8 8 (1.04%) Internet
8 8 (1.04%) NGFW
8 8 (1.04%) SSH
9 7 (0.91%) Wireless
10 6 (0.78%) Structured Cabling
10 6 (0.78%) VPN
11 5 (0.65%) FTP
11 5 (0.65%) HTTP
11 5 (0.65%) HTTPS
11 5 (0.65%) SD-WAN
11 5 (0.65%) SMTP
12 4 (0.52%) Cisco IPT
12 4 (0.52%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (4.18%) SQL Server
2 19 (2.48%) Metadata
3 16 (2.09%) Power BI
4 13 (1.70%) MongoDB
5 7 (0.91%) Data Lake
6 6 (0.78%) Relational Database
7 4 (0.52%) NoSQL
8 3 (0.39%) Data Warehouse
8 3 (0.39%) Oracle Reports
8 3 (0.39%) RDBMS
9 2 (0.26%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (0.26%) EDMS
9 2 (0.26%) Metadata Repository
9 2 (0.26%) Oracle Database
9 2 (0.26%) PostgreSQL
9 2 (0.26%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 2 (0.26%) Star Schema
10 1 (0.13%) Ataccama
10 1 (0.13%) Pinecone
10 1 (0.13%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 28 (3.66%) JIRA
2 12 (1.57%) Git
2 12 (1.57%) Postman
3 11 (1.44%) Cypress.io
3 11 (1.44%) Selenium
3 11 (1.44%) WebDriver
4 8 (1.04%) Cucumber
5 3 (0.39%) Claude Code
5 3 (0.39%) Protractor
5 3 (0.39%) ScalaTest
6 2 (0.26%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 2 (0.26%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.26%) git-flow
6 2 (0.26%) GitLab
6 2 (0.26%) JMeter
7 1 (0.13%) Jenkins
7 1 (0.13%) LSMW
7 1 (0.13%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 307 (40.08%) Social Skills
2 169 (22.06%) Finance
3 143 (18.67%) Public Sector
4 125 (16.32%) Analytical Skills
5 62 (8.09%) Legal
6 51 (6.66%) Banking
7 41 (5.35%) Documentation Skills
8 37 (4.83%) Influencing Skills
9 36 (4.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 29 (3.79%) Military
11 28 (3.66%) Organisational Skills
12 25 (3.26%) Presentation Skills
13 24 (3.13%) Local Government
14 21 (2.74%) Aerospace
15 18 (2.35%) Law
16 16 (2.09%) Manufacturing
17 11 (1.44%) Billing
17 11 (1.44%) Marketing
18 10 (1.31%) Retail
19 9 (1.17%) Police
Job Titles
1 115 (15.01%) Analyst
2 103 (13.45%) Senior
3 80 (10.44%) Lead
4 76 (9.92%) Architect
5 73 (9.53%) Consultant
6 49 (6.40%) Security Architect
7 48 (6.27%) Security Engineer
8 44 (5.74%) Security Consultant
9 41 (5.35%) Security Analyst
10 36 (4.70%) Developer
10 36 (4.70%) Security Manager
11 26 (3.39%) Information Manager
11 26 (3.39%) Project Manager
12 22 (2.87%) Information Officer
13 21 (2.74%) IT Manager
13 21 (2.74%) Security Officer
14 20 (2.61%) Coordinator
14 20 (2.61%) Cybersecurity Analyst
14 20 (2.61%) Information Security Officer
14 20 (2.61%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 46 (6.01%) Terraform
2 26 (3.39%) Oracle Fusion
2 26 (3.39%) SailPoint
3 21 (2.74%) OAuth
3 21 (2.74%) SAML
4 19 (2.48%) OpenID
5 18 (2.35%) XML
6 16 (2.09%) LDAP
6 16 (2.09%) OAuth2
7 15 (1.96%) Web Services
8 14 (1.83%) JSON
9 12 (1.57%) REST
10 11 (1.44%) Gherkin
10 11 (1.44%) XSLT
11 9 (1.17%) RESTful
12 8 (1.04%) Play Framework
13 6 (0.78%) .NET
13 6 (0.78%) Middleware
13 6 (0.78%) Node.js
14 5 (0.65%) React
Miscellaneous
1 158 (20.63%) Management Information System
2 66 (8.62%) Onboarding
3 49 (6.40%) Security Posture
4 34 (4.44%) Cyber Threat
5 32 (4.18%) Operational Technology
6 26 (3.39%) Cloud Native
6 26 (3.39%) Data Centre
7 25 (3.26%) Security Operations Centre
8 21 (2.74%) PKI
9 20 (2.61%) Taxonomies
10 17 (2.22%) Cyber Defence
11 15 (1.96%) Enterprise Software
11 15 (1.96%) Public Cloud
12 14 (1.83%) Data Protection Act
13 13 (1.70%) Distributed Systems
13 13 (1.70%) Product Ownership
14 12 (1.57%) NHS
15 10 (1.31%) Legacy Systems
15 10 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
15 10 (1.31%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 70 (9.14%) Windows
2 39 (5.09%) Linux
3 32 (4.18%) Windows Server
4 17 (2.22%) Unix
5 10 (1.31%) Android
6 8 (1.04%) macOS
7 6 (0.78%) Ubuntu
8 5 (0.65%) Windows 10
9 4 (0.52%) Apple iOS
10 3 (0.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 2 (0.26%) Alpine Linux
12 1 (0.13%) CentOS
12 1 (0.13%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 283 (36.95%) Cybersecurity
2 222 (28.98%) Risk Management
2 222 (28.98%) Stakeholder Management
3 161 (21.02%) Data Protection
4 153 (19.97%) Continuous Improvement
5 113 (14.75%) Problem-Solving
6 112 (14.62%) Agile
6 112 (14.62%) Incident Response
7 105 (13.71%) Vulnerability Management
8 102 (13.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 92 (12.01%) Security Operations
10 91 (11.88%) Roadmaps
11 88 (11.49%) Cloud Security
12 86 (11.23%) AI
13 80 (10.44%) DevOps
14 79 (10.31%) Security Architecture
15 77 (10.05%) Decision-Making
16 73 (9.53%) ITIL
17 72 (9.40%) CI/CD
18 69 (9.01%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 74 (9.66%) Python
2 57 (7.44%) PowerShell
3 26 (3.39%) SQL
4 22 (2.87%) Bash
5 20 (2.61%) C#
6 18 (2.35%) JavaScript
7 10 (1.31%) PL/SQL
8 9 (1.17%) Bicep
8 9 (1.17%) Scala
9 5 (0.65%) Go
9 5 (0.65%) Korn
10 4 (0.52%) Kusto Query Language
11 3 (0.39%) Java
11 3 (0.39%) TypeScript
12 2 (0.26%) Apex Code
12 2 (0.26%) Search Processing Language
13 1 (0.13%) R
13 1 (0.13%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 179 (23.37%) Security Cleared
2 141 (18.41%) CISSP
3 137 (17.89%) SC Cleared
4 128 (16.71%) Degree
5 99 (12.92%) CISM
6 46 (6.01%) CRISC
7 45 (5.87%) DV Cleared
8 38 (4.96%) Microsoft Certification
9 35 (4.57%) Cisco Certification
10 34 (4.44%) CISA
11 32 (4.18%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 23 (3.00%) CCSP
13 21 (2.74%) Computer Science Degree
14 18 (2.35%) Azure Certification
15 15 (1.96%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
15 15 (1.96%) PMP
16 14 (1.83%) AWS Certification
16 14 (1.83%) PMI Certification
17 13 (1.70%) BPSS Clearance
17 13 (1.70%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 202 (26.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 131 (17.10%) NIST
3 127 (16.58%) GDPR
4 116 (15.14%) GRC
5 43 (5.61%) NCSC
6 41 (5.35%) PCI DSS
7 39 (5.09%) Cyber Essentials
8 38 (4.96%) Data Quality
9 36 (4.70%) Accessibility
10 28 (3.66%) QA
11 26 (3.39%) SLA
12 23 (3.00%) WCAG
13 18 (2.35%) NIST 800
14 16 (2.09%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 15 (1.96%) HIPAA
15 15 (1.96%) SOC 2
16 13 (1.70%) ISO 22301
17 12 (1.57%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 11 (1.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
19 10 (1.31%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 66 (8.62%) Active Directory
2 9 (1.17%) Docker
3 6 (0.78%) Firmware
4 5 (0.65%) ISA Server
4 5 (0.65%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.39%) OpenAM
6 2 (0.26%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.26%) Squid
6 2 (0.26%) Virtual Servers
7 1 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.13%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 33 (4.31%) Kubernetes
2 19 (2.48%) Single Sign-On
3 16 (2.09%) Microsoft Intune
4 11 (1.44%) Ansible
5 10 (1.31%) Grafana
6 7 (0.91%) CASB
7 3 (0.39%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 3 (0.39%) QRadar
8 2 (0.26%) Computer Incident Response Team
8 2 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
8 2 (0.26%) Podman
8 2 (0.26%) RSA Archer
9 1 (0.13%) Control-M
9 1 (0.13%) Host Intrusion Detection System
9 1 (0.13%) Istio
9 1 (0.13%) SCCM
Vendors
1 203 (26.50%) Microsoft
2 47 (6.14%) Oracle
3 46 (6.01%) ServiceNow
4 36 (4.70%) Google
4 36 (4.70%) Splunk
5 23 (3.00%) Cisco
6 22 (2.87%) SAP
7 19 (2.48%) Palo Alto
8 17 (2.22%) CyberArk
9 16 (2.09%) CrowdStrike
10 15 (1.96%) Apple
11 13 (1.70%) Ariba
11 13 (1.70%) BeyondTrust
12 12 (1.57%) Databricks
12 12 (1.57%) Zscaler
13 11 (1.44%) Qualys
13 11 (1.44%) VMware
14 9 (1.17%) Okta
14 9 (1.17%) Rapid7
15 7 (0.91%) Ping Identity