PCI DSS Contracts

Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring PCI DSS skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited PCI DSS over the 6 months leading up to 18 June 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Jun 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 372 389 420
Rank change year-on-year +17 +31 +147
Contract jobs citing PCI DSS 162 202 274
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.54% 0.46% 0.49%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 3.35% 3.37% 3.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 95 137 200
10th Percentile £378 £413 £415
25th Percentile £480 £480 £511
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year - -8.33% +10.09%
75th Percentile £681 £675 £700
90th Percentile £910 £818 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £525 £625
% change year-on-year - -16.00% +47.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 0
10th Percentile £27.73 - -
25th Percentile £28.03 - -
Median hourly rate £29.51 - -
75th Percentile £31.99 - -
90th Percentile £32.88 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.51 - -

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
UK

PCI DSS falls under the Quality Assurance and Compliance category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring quality assurance or compliance skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 4,831 5,999 7,533
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.20% 13.68% 13.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,078 3,743 5,150
10th Percentile £278 £280 £300
25th Percentile £400 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £509 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.67% -3.14% +0.96%
75th Percentile £614 £625 £645
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £488
% change year-on-year - -2.56% +8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 202 435 254
10th Percentile £15.12 £11.00 £13.41
25th Percentile £21.21 £13.18 £19.07
Median hourly rate £31.76 £23.09 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +37.55% -38.43% +31.58%
75th Percentile £67.50 £48.75 £63.05
90th Percentile £85.07 £70.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.00 £18.97 £37.50
% change year-on-year +68.69% -49.41% +63.04%

PCI DSS
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing PCI DSS as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for PCI DSS in the UK

PCI DSS
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing PCI DSS.

Daily rate trend for PCI DSS in the UK

PCI DSS
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing PCI DSS over the 6 months to 18 June 2025.

Daily rate histogram for PCI DSS in the UK

PCI DSS
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing PCI DSS.

Hourly rate trend for PCI DSS in the UK

PCI DSS
Top 13 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing PCI DSS within the UK over the 6 months to 18 June 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 +14 122 £538 -2.27% 1,359
London +5 63 £563 +2.27% 463
Work from Home +19 59 £525 -3.67% 575
UK excluding London +32 58 £525 - 1,007
North of England +11 19 £497 -0.60% 223
East of England +40 15 £250 -63.04% 139
North West +7 12 £491 -12.32% 114
South East +39 9 £525 - 303
South West +23 7 £538 +7.50% 107
Yorkshire +18 7 £533 +34.81% 91
Scotland +7 5 £638 -1.92% 47
Midlands +12 3 £575 -2.13% 156
West Midlands - 3 £575 - 92

PCI DSS
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 5 (3.09%) OpenStack
2 4 (2.47%) Apache Spark
3 3 (1.85%) SAS
4 2 (1.23%) Confluence
4 2 (1.23%) IIS
4 2 (1.23%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.62%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (0.62%) Microsoft Project
1 1 (0.62%) Trello
Business Applications
1 4 (2.47%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (1.85%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (1.23%) BASE24
3 2 (1.23%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (1.23%) Magento
3 2 (1.23%) Oracle Retail
3 2 (1.23%) SAP CX
3 2 (1.23%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 70 (43.21%) Azure
2 67 (41.36%) AWS
3 41 (25.31%) GCP
4 18 (11.11%) AWS CloudFormation
5 14 (8.64%) GitHub
6 10 (6.17%) Amazon S3
7 9 (5.56%) Cloud Computing
8 7 (4.32%) Entra ID
8 7 (4.32%) GitHub Actions
9 6 (3.70%) SaaS
9 6 (3.70%) Serverless
10 5 (3.09%) Amazon EC2
10 5 (3.09%) AWS Lambda
10 5 (3.09%) OpenShift
10 5 (3.09%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 4 (2.47%) Amazon EMR
11 4 (2.47%) Amazon Kinesis
11 4 (2.47%) Datadog
11 4 (2.47%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 3 (1.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 28 (17.28%) Network Security
2 19 (11.73%) Firewall
3 13 (8.02%) DNS
4 6 (3.70%) SAN
5 5 (3.09%) iSCSI
6 4 (2.47%) SSL
7 3 (1.85%) DHCP
7 3 (1.85%) SD-WAN
7 3 (1.85%) VPN
7 3 (1.85%) WAN
8 2 (1.23%) ATM
8 2 (1.23%) HTTP
8 2 (1.23%) IPsec
8 2 (1.23%) LAN
8 2 (1.23%) TCP/IP
8 2 (1.23%) VLAN
9 1 (0.62%) Intrusion Detection
9 1 (0.62%) IP Telephony
9 1 (0.62%) NAS
9 1 (0.62%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (5.56%) NoSQL
2 5 (3.09%) GIS
2 5 (3.09%) PostgreSQL
2 5 (3.09%) Relational Database
2 5 (3.09%) SQL Server
3 4 (2.47%) Amazon RDS
3 4 (2.47%) MongoDB
3 4 (2.47%) MySQL
3 4 (2.47%) Oracle Database
4 3 (1.85%) Amazon Aurora
4 3 (1.85%) MariaDB
5 2 (1.23%) NonStop SQL
6 1 (0.62%) BigQuery
6 1 (0.62%) DB2
6 1 (0.62%) Oracle Database 12c
6 1 (0.62%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (0.62%) SAP BW
6 1 (0.62%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 15 (9.26%) GitLab
2 14 (8.64%) JIRA
3 12 (7.41%) Jenkins
4 8 (4.94%) TeamCity
5 6 (3.70%) SonarQube
6 5 (3.09%) Cucumber
7 4 (2.47%) Artifactory
7 4 (2.47%) git-flow
7 4 (2.47%) Gradle
8 1 (0.62%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.62%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.62%) CircleCI
8 1 (0.62%) Gatling
8 1 (0.62%) Git
8 1 (0.62%) Metasploit
8 1 (0.62%) REST Assured
8 1 (0.62%) Selenium
8 1 (0.62%) Snyk
8 1 (0.62%) SpecFlow
8 1 (0.62%) TestRail
General
1 61 (37.65%) Social Skills
2 53 (32.72%) Finance
3 26 (16.05%) Analytical Skills
4 22 (13.58%) Banking
5 12 (7.41%) Legal
6 9 (5.56%) Retail
7 6 (3.70%) Public Sector
8 4 (2.47%) Marketing
9 3 (1.85%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (1.85%) Public Speaking
10 2 (1.23%) Financial Institution
10 2 (1.23%) Law
10 2 (1.23%) Manufacturing
10 2 (1.23%) Telecoms
11 1 (0.62%) General Ledger
11 1 (0.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.62%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.62%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 43 (26.54%) Architect
2 25 (15.43%) Security Architect
3 21 (12.96%) Consultant
4 16 (9.88%) Security Consultant
5 12 (7.41%) Administrator
6 11 (6.79%) Analyst
7 10 (6.17%) Senior
8 8 (4.94%) Lead
9 7 (4.32%) Information Security Consultant
10 6 (3.70%) Azure Engineer
10 6 (3.70%) DevSecOps Engineer
10 6 (3.70%) Systems Administrator
11 5 (3.09%) Cloud Architect
11 5 (3.09%) Cybersecurity Analyst
11 5 (3.09%) DBA
11 5 (3.09%) Linux Administrator
11 5 (3.09%) Security Analyst
11 5 (3.09%) Senior Data Warehouse Specialist
12 4 (2.47%) IT Architect
12 4 (2.47%) IT Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (3.70%) Kafka
1 6 (3.70%) OAuth
2 5 (3.09%) SailPoint
2 5 (3.09%) Spring
2 5 (3.09%) Spring Boot
3 4 (2.47%) LDAP
3 4 (2.47%) Oracle GoldenGate
3 4 (2.47%) RabbitMQ
3 4 (2.47%) REST
3 4 (2.47%) SAML
4 3 (1.85%) .NET
4 3 (1.85%) SAP Fiori
5 2 (1.23%) EDI
5 2 (1.23%) Middleware
5 2 (1.23%) OAuth2
5 2 (1.23%) OpenID
5 2 (1.23%) React
5 2 (1.23%) SAP PI
5 2 (1.23%) SOAP
5 2 (1.23%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 24 (14.81%) Security Posture
2 14 (8.64%) Cloud Native
3 12 (7.41%) Data Centre
4 7 (4.32%) Management Information System
5 6 (3.70%) Security Operations Centre
6 5 (3.09%) Clustering
6 5 (3.09%) Enterprise Software
6 5 (3.09%) Enterprise Storage
6 5 (3.09%) Linux Command Line
7 4 (2.47%) Data Protection Act
7 4 (2.47%) EMV
7 4 (2.47%) Onboarding
7 4 (2.47%) Replication
8 3 (1.85%) Blog
8 3 (1.85%) PKI
8 3 (1.85%) SWIFT Messaging Network
9 2 (1.23%) Data Structures
9 2 (1.23%) Hedge funds
9 2 (1.23%) Hybrid Cloud
9 2 (1.23%) Tandem
Operating Systems
1 16 (9.88%) Linux
2 7 (4.32%) CentOS
2 7 (4.32%) Windows
3 6 (3.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 5 (3.09%) Ubuntu
4 5 (3.09%) Windows Server
5 2 (1.23%) AIX
5 2 (1.23%) Oracle Linux
5 2 (1.23%) Rocky
5 2 (1.23%) Unix
5 2 (1.23%) Windows Server 2016
6 1 (0.62%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 40 (24.69%) Cloud Security
1 40 (24.69%) Incident Response
1 40 (24.69%) Risk Management
2 34 (20.99%) Information Security
3 30 (18.52%) Problem-Solving
4 29 (17.90%) CI/CD
5 28 (17.28%) Cybersecurity
5 28 (17.28%) Vulnerability Management
6 25 (15.43%) Agile
6 25 (15.43%) Containerisation
6 25 (15.43%) Stakeholder Management
7 23 (14.20%) DevOps
7 23 (14.20%) MITRE ATT&CK
7 23 (14.20%) Roadmaps
8 22 (13.58%) Infrastructure as Code
8 22 (13.58%) Migration
9 21 (12.96%) Computer Science
9 21 (12.96%) Project Management
9 21 (12.96%) Security Operations
10 19 (11.73%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 53 (32.72%) Python
2 26 (16.05%) PowerShell
3 17 (10.49%) Bash
4 10 (6.17%) Java
4 10 (6.17%) Shell Script
5 8 (4.94%) SQL
6 3 (1.85%) C
6 3 (1.85%) C++
6 3 (1.85%) Go
6 3 (1.85%) PHP
7 2 (1.23%) C#
7 2 (1.23%) COBOL
7 2 (1.23%) JavaScript
7 2 (1.23%) Perl
7 2 (1.23%) PL/SQL
7 2 (1.23%) TypeScript
8 1 (0.62%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 49 (30.25%) CISSP
2 32 (19.75%) CISM
3 23 (14.20%) Degree
4 18 (11.11%) GIAC
5 13 (8.02%) SANS
5 13 (8.02%) Security Cleared
6 11 (6.79%) SC Cleared
7 9 (5.56%) CEH
7 9 (5.56%) CISA
8 8 (4.94%) CRISC
9 7 (4.32%) Computer Science Degree
9 7 (4.32%) PMP
10 5 (3.09%) AWS Certification
10 5 (3.09%) Cisco Certification
10 5 (3.09%) OSCP
11 4 (2.47%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 4 (2.47%) Azure Certification
11 4 (2.47%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
11 4 (2.47%) PMI Certification
12 3 (1.85%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 74 (45.68%) GDPR
2 67 (41.36%) NIST
3 62 (38.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 48 (29.63%) HIPAA
5 17 (10.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 12 (7.41%) SOC 2
7 11 (6.79%) GRC
8 6 (3.70%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 6 (3.70%) NIST 800
9 4 (2.47%) COBIT
9 4 (2.47%) Cyber Essentials
9 4 (2.47%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 4 (2.47%) ISO 8583
9 4 (2.47%) PSD2
9 4 (2.47%) SLA
10 3 (1.85%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 3 (1.85%) QA
11 2 (1.23%) ISO 20022
11 2 (1.23%) PMO
11 2 (1.23%) SEPA
System Software
1 16 (9.88%) Active Directory
2 15 (9.26%) Docker
3 7 (4.32%) Hyper-V
4 4 (2.47%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (1.85%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (1.85%) VMware NSX
6 2 (1.23%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.62%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.62%) vSphere
7 1 (0.62%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 28 (17.28%) Terraform
2 24 (14.81%) Ansible
3 22 (13.58%) Kubernetes
4 8 (4.94%) Puppet
5 6 (3.70%) Nessus
5 6 (3.70%) Progress Chef
6 5 (3.09%) HP Fortify
7 4 (2.47%) Salt
8 3 (1.85%) Single Sign-On
9 2 (1.23%) Nagios
9 2 (1.23%) Packer
9 2 (1.23%) Prometheus
9 2 (1.23%) ZABBIX
10 1 (0.62%) Data Guard
10 1 (0.62%) Jamf Pro
10 1 (0.62%) linkerd
10 1 (0.62%) Microsoft Intune
10 1 (0.62%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
10 1 (0.62%) Oracle RMAN
10 1 (0.62%) SCCM
Vendors
1 34 (20.99%) Microsoft
2 18 (11.11%) Palo Alto
3 10 (6.17%) Google
3 10 (6.17%) Oracle
3 10 (6.17%) ServiceNow
3 10 (6.17%) VMware
4 6 (3.70%) CyberArk
4 6 (3.70%) Dell
4 6 (3.70%) HP
4 6 (3.70%) Okta
5 5 (3.09%) Cisco
5 5 (3.09%) ESRI
5 5 (3.09%) Qualys
5 5 (3.09%) Splunk
6 4 (2.47%) IBM
6 4 (2.47%) Zscaler
7 3 (1.85%) ForgeRock
7 3 (1.85%) MuleSoft
7 3 (1.85%) SAP
8 2 (1.23%) Adobe