SANS Institute
UK

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for SANS qualifications. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months to 2 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
2 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 511 613 779
Rank change year-on-year +102 +166 -133
Contract jobs citing SANS 72 92 66
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.17% 0.15% 0.074%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.54% 0.57% 0.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 43 56 46
10th Percentile £463 £493 £450
25th Percentile £481 £609 £504
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £675 £700 £613
Median % change year-on-year -3.57% +14.29% -5.77%
75th Percentile £770 £750 £738
90th Percentile £825 £838 £766
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £700 £530
% change year-on-year -28.57% +32.08% +3.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 9 3
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - £62.75 £63.30
Median hourly rate - £75.00 £65.80
Median % change year-on-year - +13.98% -
75th Percentile - £77.50 £72.90
90th Percentile - £78.20 £75.66
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £75.00 £65.80
% change year-on-year - +13.98% -

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK

SANS is in the Academic Qualifications and Professional Certifications category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for academic qualifications or professional certifications.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 13,256 16,225 19,061
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 30.53% 27.32% 21.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,168 10,826 12,560
10th Percentile £300 £325 £325
25th Percentile £425 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.73% +4.76% +8.47%
75th Percentile £650 £650 £625
90th Percentile £743 £743 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £530 £530 £500
% change year-on-year - +6.00% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,080 849 777
10th Percentile £13.87 £15.25 £13.73
25th Percentile £17.88 £20.22 £19.35
Median hourly rate £40.00 £54.00 £42.00
Median % change year-on-year -25.93% +28.57% +8.50%
75th Percentile £61.60 £68.25 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.35 £80.00 £66.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.94 £50.00 £32.37
% change year-on-year -18.12% +54.46% -11.44%

SANS
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for SANS in the UK

SANS
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for SANS in the UK

SANS
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SANS over the 6 months to 2 May 2024.

Daily rate histogram for SANS in the UK

SANS
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for SANS in the UK

SANS
Top 7 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SANS within the UK over the 6 months to 2 May 2024. 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 +98 68 £675 -3.57% 19
UK excluding London +54 46 £500 -28.57% 8
South West +40 28 £500 - 2
Work from Home +129 27 £684 -8.83% 16
London +83 24 £750 - 8
South East +16 16 - - 4
Wales - 2 £666 -

SANS
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 3 (4.17%) Apache
1 3 (4.17%) IIS
1 3 (4.17%) WebLogic
1 3 (4.17%) WebSphere
2 1 (1.39%) Confluence
Applications
1 3 (4.17%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 18 (25.00%) IaaS
1 18 (25.00%) SaaS
2 16 (22.22%) PaaS
3 8 (11.11%) Azure
4 7 (9.72%) AWS
5 3 (4.17%) AWS CloudFormation
5 3 (4.17%) GCP
5 3 (4.17%) GitHub
6 1 (1.39%) Entra ID
6 1 (1.39%) GitHub Actions
6 1 (1.39%) Microsoft Purview
6 1 (1.39%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 16 (22.22%) 5G
1 16 (22.22%) Broadband
2 6 (8.33%) SAN
3 3 (4.17%) Network Security
3 3 (4.17%) TCP/IP
4 2 (2.78%) Cisco Firepower
4 2 (2.78%) DHCP
4 2 (2.78%) DNS
4 2 (2.78%) Firewall
5 1 (1.39%) FTP
5 1 (1.39%) HTTP
5 1 (1.39%) Intrusion Detection
5 1 (1.39%) tcpdump
5 1 (1.39%) VLAN
5 1 (1.39%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (5.56%) MySQL
1 4 (5.56%) Relational Database
2 3 (4.17%) DB2
2 3 (4.17%) RDBMS
2 3 (4.17%) SQL Server
3 1 (1.39%) Apache Cassandra
3 1 (1.39%) CouchDB
3 1 (1.39%) Elasticsearch
3 1 (1.39%) MongoDB
3 1 (1.39%) NoSQL
3 1 (1.39%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (1.39%) Redis
Development Applications
1 3 (4.17%) Burp Suite
1 3 (4.17%) Git
1 3 (4.17%) Jenkins
1 3 (4.17%) SonarQube
2 2 (2.78%) AppScan
2 2 (2.78%) GitLab
2 2 (2.78%) Subversion
3 1 (1.39%) CircleCI
3 1 (1.39%) Darcs
3 1 (1.39%) Jaeger
3 1 (1.39%) JIRA
3 1 (1.39%) Mercurial
3 1 (1.39%) Travis CI
General
1 19 (26.39%) Finance
2 16 (22.22%) Law
2 16 (22.22%) Organisational Skills
3 4 (5.56%) Social Skills
4 3 (4.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 3 (4.17%) Public Sector
5 1 (1.39%) Analytical Skills
5 1 (1.39%) Fire and Rescue
5 1 (1.39%) Police
5 1 (1.39%) Retail
Job Titles
1 20 (27.78%) Architect
2 18 (25.00%) Analyst
2 18 (25.00%) SOC Analyst
3 17 (23.61%) Security Architect
4 16 (22.22%) Penetration Tester
4 16 (22.22%) Security Penetration Tester
4 16 (22.22%) Security Specialist
4 16 (22.22%) Security Tester
4 16 (22.22%) Tester
4 16 (22.22%) Testing Specialist
5 10 (13.89%) SOC Engineer
6 6 (8.33%) CISSP Architect
6 6 (8.33%) Domain Architect
6 6 (8.33%) Enterprise Architect
6 6 (8.33%) Enterprise Infrastructure Architect
6 6 (8.33%) Enterprise Security Architect
7 4 (5.56%) Senior
8 3 (4.17%) Security Engineer
8 3 (4.17%) Senior Security Architect
8 3 (4.17%) Site Reliability Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (26.39%) Web Services
2 4 (5.56%) Elastic Stack
3 3 (4.17%) .NET
3 3 (4.17%) EJB
3 3 (4.17%) J2EE
3 3 (4.17%) JSP
3 3 (4.17%) LDAP
3 3 (4.17%) Servlets
3 3 (4.17%) XML
4 2 (2.78%) Regular Expression
5 1 (1.39%) AngularJS
5 1 (1.39%) CSS
5 1 (1.39%) HTML
5 1 (1.39%) React
5 1 (1.39%) REST
5 1 (1.39%) Svelte
Miscellaneous
1 24 (33.33%) CSOC
2 23 (31.94%) Security Operations Centre
3 18 (25.00%) Mobile App
4 9 (12.50%) Public Cloud
5 8 (11.11%) Management Information System
6 7 (9.72%) PKI
7 2 (2.78%) Cyberattack
8 1 (1.39%) CBDC
8 1 (1.39%) Digital Currency
8 1 (1.39%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 10 (13.89%) Windows
2 4 (5.56%) Linux
3 3 (4.17%) Windows Server
4 1 (1.39%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 54 (75.00%) Cybersecurity
2 31 (43.06%) SIEM
3 29 (40.28%) Use Case
4 26 (36.11%) Analytics
4 26 (36.11%) Incident Response
4 26 (36.11%) Time Management
5 25 (34.72%) Security Operations
6 22 (30.56%) Continuous Improvement
7 20 (27.78%) Application Security
7 20 (27.78%) OWASP
8 19 (26.39%) Security Testing
9 17 (23.61%) Penetration Testing
9 17 (23.61%) Security Architecture
9 17 (23.61%) Stakeholder Management
10 16 (22.22%) MITRE ATT&CK
10 16 (22.22%) Risk Management
11 14 (19.44%) Enterprise Architecture
12 10 (13.89%) Agile
13 8 (11.11%) Cloud Security
13 8 (11.11%) Information Security
Programming Languages
1 6 (8.33%) Python
2 5 (6.94%) SQL
3 4 (5.56%) Bash
3 4 (5.56%) Java
4 2 (2.78%) PowerShell
5 1 (1.39%) C
5 1 (1.39%) C#
5 1 (1.39%) C++
5 1 (1.39%) Go
5 1 (1.39%) JavaScript
5 1 (1.39%) Perl
5 1 (1.39%) PHP
5 1 (1.39%) Rust
5 1 (1.39%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 45 (62.50%) Security Cleared
2 29 (40.28%) Degree
3 24 (33.33%) DV Cleared
4 23 (31.94%) CISSP
5 21 (29.17%) GIAC
6 18 (25.00%) CREST Certified
7 17 (23.61%) GPEN
7 17 (23.61%) OSCP
8 15 (20.83%) CISM
9 11 (15.28%) CISA
10 10 (13.89%) CRISC
11 8 (11.11%) Cisco Certification
12 7 (9.72%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 5 (6.94%) CEH
13 5 (6.94%) SC Cleared
14 4 (5.56%) CCSK
15 2 (2.78%) CCSP
15 2 (2.78%) FFIEC
15 2 (2.78%) RHCE
16 1 (1.39%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (25.00%) GDPR
2 16 (22.22%) NCSC
2 16 (22.22%) PCI DSS
3 5 (6.94%) NIST
4 4 (5.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 4 (5.56%) NIST 800
5 3 (4.17%) GRC
6 2 (2.78%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
6 2 (2.78%) QA
7 1 (1.39%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 3 (4.17%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (5.56%) Ansible
1 4 (5.56%) Grafana
1 4 (5.56%) Prometheus
1 4 (5.56%) Terraform
2 3 (4.17%) Graylog
2 3 (4.17%) Kubernetes
2 3 (4.17%) Nagios
2 3 (4.17%) Progress Chef
2 3 (4.17%) Puppet
3 2 (2.78%) Host Intrusion Detection System
3 2 (2.78%) HP Fortify
3 2 (2.78%) Nessus
3 2 (2.78%) WebInspect
4 1 (1.39%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
4 1 (1.39%) CSIRT
4 1 (1.39%) Kibana
4 1 (1.39%) logstash
Vendors
1 16 (22.22%) Virgin Media
2 5 (6.94%) Splunk
3 4 (5.56%) Microsoft
3 4 (5.56%) Oracle
4 3 (4.17%) Checkmarx
4 3 (4.17%) Cisco
4 3 (4.17%) CyberArk
5 2 (2.78%) AlienVault
5 2 (2.78%) ArcSight
5 2 (2.78%) Carbon Black
5 2 (2.78%) LogRhythm
5 2 (2.78%) Symantec
5 2 (2.78%) Veracode
6 1 (1.39%) Google