Security Hardening Contract Job Trends

Security Hardening
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Security Hardening skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 15 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 515 514 541
Rank change year-on-year -1 +27 +133
Contract jobs citing Security Hardening 71 39 70
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.19% 0.11% 0.16%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.22% 0.13% 0.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 40 24 39
10th Percentile £323 £378 £454
25th Percentile £409 £494 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £588 £646 £694
90th Percentile £650 £730 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £550 £560
% change year-on-year -9.09% -1.70% -6.75%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 4
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £22.00
Median hourly rate - £112.00 £42.25
Median % change year-on-year - +165.09% -42.12%
75th Percentile - - £64.06
90th Percentile - - £64.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £63.75
% change year-on-year - - -12.67%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Security Hardening 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 32,245 30,148 39,308
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 88.48% 87.93% 88.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,297 18,397 26,233
10th Percentile £300 £306 £308
25th Percentile £406 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £531
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.13% -3.45%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £744 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,086 1,007 1,510
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £14.41
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.30 £19.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £43.79
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -25.79% +25.12%
75th Percentile £48.75 £62.53 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £73.85 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.00 £32.39 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.99% -27.21% +39.06%

Security Hardening
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Security Hardening relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Security Hardening job vacancy trend in the UK

Security Hardening
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Security Hardening.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Security Hardening

Security Hardening
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Security Hardening over the 6 months to 15 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Security Hardening in the UK

Security Hardening
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Security Hardening.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Security Hardening

Security Hardening
Top 14 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Security Hardening within the UK over the 6 months to 15 December 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 0 66 £500 -16.67% 67
UK excluding London -23 38 £500 -9.09% 60
London -18 24 £488 -9.30% 14
Work from Home +16 18 £540 -11.84% 8
North of England -30 14 £500 +122.22% 12
South West +1 11 £450 -28.00% 8
North West -17 7 £650 +188.89% 6
East of England - 7 £695 - 10
Yorkshire -36 6 £500 - 5
South East -2 5 £250 -58.33% 17
Midlands -40 3 £617 +7.30% 9
West Midlands -31 2 £628 -18.97% 6
East Midlands -17 1 £380 +1.33% 3
North East - 1 £400 - 1

Security Hardening
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 4 (5.63%) Confluence
2 2 (2.82%) Apache
3 1 (1.41%) Apache Spark
3 1 (1.41%) IIS
3 1 (1.41%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 2 (2.82%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 21 (29.58%) Azure
2 12 (16.90%) Entra ID
2 12 (16.90%) GitHub
3 11 (15.49%) AWS
4 7 (9.86%) GitHub Actions
4 7 (9.86%) Microsoft 365
5 6 (8.45%) IaaS
6 5 (7.04%) GCP
7 4 (5.63%) Azure Sentinel
8 3 (4.23%) Amazon EC2
8 3 (4.23%) Azure DevOps
9 2 (2.82%) Amazon S3
9 2 (2.82%) Datadog
9 2 (2.82%) OCI
9 2 (2.82%) SaaS
9 2 (2.82%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 1 (1.41%) Amazon ECR
10 1 (1.41%) Amazon OpenSearch
10 1 (1.41%) Microsoft Purview
10 1 (1.41%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 13 (18.31%) Firewall
2 11 (15.49%) DNS
3 8 (11.27%) TCP/IP
4 6 (8.45%) Kerberos
4 6 (8.45%) Network Security
5 5 (7.04%) DHCP
5 5 (7.04%) Internet
6 4 (5.63%) Wi-Fi
7 3 (4.23%) 4G
7 3 (4.23%) 5G
7 3 (4.23%) VLAN
8 2 (2.82%) Cisco IOS
8 2 (2.82%) Cisco Nexus
8 2 (2.82%) DMZ
8 2 (2.82%) HTTP
8 2 (2.82%) IOS XR
8 2 (2.82%) Junos
8 2 (2.82%) NX-OS
8 2 (2.82%) VPN
8 2 (2.82%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (2.82%) MariaDB
1 2 (2.82%) MySQL
1 2 (2.82%) Oracle Database
2 1 (1.41%) Amazon RDS
2 1 (1.41%) Apache Hive
2 1 (1.41%) Data Lake
2 1 (1.41%) Hadoop
2 1 (1.41%) Impala
2 1 (1.41%) MongoDB
2 1 (1.41%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (1.41%) Relational Database
2 1 (1.41%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 10 (14.08%) Git
2 8 (11.27%) JIRA
3 7 (9.86%) Jenkins
4 4 (5.63%) Artifactory
4 4 (5.63%) Subversion
4 4 (5.63%) TeamCity
5 3 (4.23%) Bitbucket
5 3 (4.23%) Rational DOORS
6 2 (2.82%) SonarQube
6 2 (2.82%) Vagrant
7 1 (1.41%) GCC
7 1 (1.41%) GitLab
7 1 (1.41%) MSI
7 1 (1.41%) SpecFlow
General
1 27 (38.03%) Social Skills
2 8 (11.27%) Finance
3 5 (7.04%) Analytical Skills
4 4 (5.63%) Presentation Skills
4 4 (5.63%) Public Sector
5 3 (4.23%) Documentation Skills
5 3 (4.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 3 (4.23%) Military
6 2 (2.82%) Banking
6 2 (2.82%) Financial Institution
7 1 (1.41%) Billing
7 1 (1.41%) Local Government
7 1 (1.41%) Retail
Job Titles
1 11 (15.49%) Consultant
2 9 (12.68%) Administrator
3 8 (11.27%) DevOps Engineer
3 8 (11.27%) Linux Administrator
4 7 (9.86%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 6 (8.45%) Security Engineer
5 6 (8.45%) VMware Consultant
6 5 (7.04%) DevSecOps Engineer
6 5 (7.04%) Senior
7 4 (5.63%) Linux Systems Administrator
7 4 (5.63%) Software Engineer
7 4 (5.63%) Systems Administrator
7 4 (5.63%) Test Specialist
7 4 (5.63%) VMware Engineer
7 4 (5.63%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
8 3 (4.23%) Network Engineer
8 3 (4.23%) Platform Engineer
8 3 (4.23%) Security Consultant
8 3 (4.23%) VMware Specialist
8 3 (4.23%) Windows Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (7.04%) REST
2 4 (5.63%) Elastic Stack
2 4 (5.63%) LDAP
2 4 (5.63%) OAuth
2 4 (5.63%) OpenID
2 4 (5.63%) SAML
3 3 (4.23%) Node.js
3 3 (4.23%) OAuth2
4 2 (2.82%) Kafka
4 2 (2.82%) LAMP
4 2 (2.82%) Middleware
4 2 (2.82%) RESTful
4 2 (2.82%) Zend Framework
5 1 (1.41%) AngularJS
5 1 (1.41%) Django
5 1 (1.41%) Flask
5 1 (1.41%) Gherkin
5 1 (1.41%) Microsoft Graph
5 1 (1.41%) Software Packaging
5 1 (1.41%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 9 (12.68%) Onboarding
2 8 (11.27%) Data Centre
2 8 (11.27%) Replication
3 7 (9.86%) PKI
4 5 (7.04%) Clustering
5 4 (5.63%) Enterprise Software
5 4 (5.63%) Security Posture
6 3 (4.23%) Cloud Native
7 2 (2.82%) CMDB
7 2 (2.82%) Distributed Systems
7 2 (2.82%) Driving Licence
7 2 (2.82%) Hedge funds
7 2 (2.82%) Hybrid Cloud
7 2 (2.82%) Public Cloud
8 1 (1.41%) CUDA
8 1 (1.41%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 1 (1.41%) Enterprise Storage
8 1 (1.41%) Fat Client
8 1 (1.41%) IBM XIV
8 1 (1.41%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 29 (40.85%) Windows
2 24 (33.80%) Linux
3 12 (16.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 9 (12.68%) Ubuntu
5 8 (11.27%) Windows Server
6 6 (8.45%) Solaris
7 5 (7.04%) Windows 10
8 4 (5.63%) CentOS
9 3 (4.23%) Unix
10 2 (2.82%) Debian
11 1 (1.41%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (1.41%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (1.41%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 25 (35.21%) DevOps
2 22 (30.99%) CI/CD
3 18 (25.35%) Infrastructure as Code
4 11 (15.49%) Agile
4 11 (15.49%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 10 (14.08%) High Availability
5 10 (14.08%) Zero Trust
6 9 (12.68%) Problem-Solving
7 8 (11.27%) Configuration Management
7 8 (11.27%) Cybersecurity
7 8 (11.27%) ITIL
7 8 (11.27%) Knowledge Transfer
8 7 (9.86%) RBAC
8 7 (9.86%) Service Management
9 6 (8.45%) Change Management
9 6 (8.45%) Cloud Security
9 6 (8.45%) Containerisation
9 6 (8.45%) Migration
9 6 (8.45%) Vulnerability Scanning
10 5 (7.04%) Server Building
Programming Languages
1 20 (28.17%) Python
2 17 (23.94%) Bash
3 14 (19.72%) PowerShell
4 6 (8.45%) JavaScript
4 6 (8.45%) Perl
5 4 (5.63%) Java
6 3 (4.23%) C++
6 3 (4.23%) Shell Script
7 2 (2.82%) PHP
8 1 (1.41%) C#
8 1 (1.41%) Kusto Query Language
8 1 (1.41%) Ruby
8 1 (1.41%) SQL
Qualifications
1 28 (39.44%) Security Cleared
2 20 (28.17%) SC Cleared
3 11 (15.49%) DV Cleared
4 3 (4.23%) Azure Certification
4 3 (4.23%) ITIL Certification
5 2 (2.82%) AWS Certification
6 1 (1.41%) BPSS Clearance
6 1 (1.41%) CCA
6 1 (1.41%) Degree
6 1 (1.41%) GSEC
6 1 (1.41%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (8.45%) GDPR
1 6 (8.45%) NCSC
2 5 (7.04%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 3 (4.23%) Cyber Essentials
3 3 (4.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 3 (4.23%) QA
4 2 (2.82%) NIST
4 2 (2.82%) PCI DSS
5 1 (1.41%) NIST 800
System Software
1 22 (30.99%) VMware Infrastructure
2 14 (19.72%) Active Directory
3 9 (12.68%) Docker
4 8 (11.27%) VMware ESXi
5 6 (8.45%) VMware NSX
6 5 (7.04%) vSphere
7 4 (5.63%) NFS
7 4 (5.63%) Veritas File System
7 4 (5.63%) Veritas Volume Manager
7 4 (5.63%) Virtual Desktop
8 2 (2.82%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (2.82%) VirtualBox
9 1 (1.41%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 1 (1.41%) HDFS
9 1 (1.41%) Microsoft App-V
9 1 (1.41%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 24 (33.80%) Ansible
2 19 (26.76%) Terraform
3 12 (16.90%) Kubernetes
4 8 (11.27%) Microsoft Intune
5 7 (9.86%) SCCM
6 5 (7.04%) Icinga
6 5 (7.04%) Nessus
6 5 (7.04%) Packer
6 5 (7.04%) Single Sign-On
7 4 (5.63%) Grafana
7 4 (5.63%) QRadar
7 4 (5.63%) Red Hat Satellite
7 4 (5.63%) vRealize
7 4 (5.63%) vRealize Orchestrator
8 3 (4.23%) Check_MK
8 3 (4.23%) Podman
8 3 (4.23%) Progress Chef
8 3 (4.23%) Prometheus
8 3 (4.23%) SELinux
8 3 (4.23%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 31 (43.66%) VMware
2 16 (22.54%) Microsoft
3 10 (14.08%) Red Hat
4 8 (11.27%) Splunk
5 6 (8.45%) Cisco
5 6 (8.45%) CyberArk
6 5 (7.04%) Juniper
6 5 (7.04%) Qualys
7 4 (5.63%) SaltStack
8 3 (4.23%) Citrix
8 3 (4.23%) Fortinet
9 2 (2.82%) New Relic
9 2 (2.82%) Oracle
9 2 (2.82%) Palo Alto
9 2 (2.82%) Rackspace
9 2 (2.82%) Zend
10 1 (1.41%) Atlassian
10 1 (1.41%) Cloudera
10 1 (1.41%) NVIDIA
10 1 (1.41%) Zscaler