Security Patching Contracts

Security Patching
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring Security Patching skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Security Patching over the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 441 496 664
Rank change year-on-year +55 +168 +112
Contract jobs citing Security Patching 79 86 54
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.27% 0.20% 0.090%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.30% 0.23% 0.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 56 67 36
10th Percentile £325 £243 £242
25th Percentile £375 £359 £305
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £513 £425
Median % change year-on-year -5.85% +20.59% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £530
90th Percentile £603 - £588
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £570 £400
% change year-on-year -14.04% +42.50% +24.03%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £31.50 - £20.79
Median hourly rate £33.00 - £23.86
75th Percentile £35.25 - £26.93
90th Percentile £35.70 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.00 - £23.86

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Security Patching 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 26,594 37,597 53,655
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.84% 86.31% 89.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,149 24,227 37,238
10th Percentile £308 £300 £325
25th Percentile £413 £413 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £650
90th Percentile £743 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.50% - +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,071 2,443 1,746
10th Percentile £14.41 £12.75 £11.00
25th Percentile £18.21 £16.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £29.00 £35.65 £37.30
Median % change year-on-year -18.65% -4.42% +49.20%
75th Percentile £60.38 £59.98 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £37.34 £36.00
% change year-on-year -26.35% +3.72% +80.00%

Security Patching
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for Security Patching in the UK

Security Patching
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for Security Patching in the UK

Security Patching
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Security Patching over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Security Patching in the UK

Security Patching
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for Security Patching in the UK

Security Patching
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 Security Patching within the UK over the 6 months to 1 May 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 +50 67 £490 -2.00% 47
UK excluding London +48 35 £490 -14.04% 36
London +43 34 £475 - 9
Work from Home +36 22 £481 +1.32% 29
South East +48 12 £569 +62.43% 19
South West +26 6 £550 -3.51% 5
North of England +23 6 £400 +60.00%
Yorkshire +12 6 £400 +60.00%
Midlands +25 4 £325 -23.53% 5
West Midlands +17 4 £325 -23.53% 3
Scotland +8 4 £500 -14.89%
East of England +30 2 - - 10
Wales - 1 - -

Security Patching
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 (6.33%) SharePoint
2 3 (3.80%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (2.53%) Confluence
4 1 (1.27%) Apache
4 1 (1.27%) Gunicorn
4 1 (1.27%) IIS
4 1 (1.27%) nginx
4 1 (1.27%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 1 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (2.53%) Oracle Applications
2 1 (1.27%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (1.27%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 18 (22.78%) Azure
2 11 (13.92%) AWS
3 8 (10.13%) Entra ID
4 6 (7.59%) IaaS
4 6 (7.59%) Microsoft 365
5 5 (6.33%) GCP
6 4 (5.06%) OneDrive
7 3 (3.80%) Azure DevOps
7 3 (3.80%) Google Workspace
7 3 (3.80%) PaaS
7 3 (3.80%) Salesforce Service Cloud
8 2 (2.53%) GitHub
8 2 (2.53%) Power Automate
8 2 (2.53%) Power Platform
8 2 (2.53%) PowerApps
9 1 (1.27%) AWS CloudFormation
9 1 (1.27%) GitHub Actions
9 1 (1.27%) MinIO
9 1 (1.27%) Nutanix
9 1 (1.27%) WhatsApp
Communications & Networking
1 14 (17.72%) Firewall
2 11 (13.92%) Network Security
3 7 (8.86%) DHCP
3 7 (8.86%) DNS
4 6 (7.59%) SAN
5 3 (3.80%) Fibre Channel
5 3 (3.80%) Intrusion Detection
5 3 (3.80%) SD-WAN
5 3 (3.80%) SSL
5 3 (3.80%) WAN
6 2 (2.53%) FTP
6 2 (2.53%) Remote Desktop
6 2 (2.53%) TCP/IP
6 2 (2.53%) VPN
7 1 (1.27%) BGP
7 1 (1.27%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
7 1 (1.27%) HTTP
7 1 (1.27%) OSPF
7 1 (1.27%) SNMP
7 1 (1.27%) Telnet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (6.33%) Oracle Database
1 5 (6.33%) Oracle Reports
2 4 (5.06%) PostgreSQL
3 3 (3.80%) MySQL
3 3 (3.80%) SQL Server
4 2 (2.53%) Amazon RDS
4 2 (2.53%) Power BI
5 1 (1.27%) Elasticsearch
5 1 (1.27%) Oracle BI Publisher
5 1 (1.27%) Redis
5 1 (1.27%) Relational Database
5 1 (1.27%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 7 (8.86%) GitLab
2 3 (3.80%) JIRA
3 2 (2.53%) Artifactory
3 2 (2.53%) Jenkins
4 1 (1.27%) Git
4 1 (1.27%) Poetry
General
1 16 (20.25%) Social Skills
2 10 (12.66%) Finance
3 6 (7.59%) Public Sector
4 5 (6.33%) Analytical Skills
5 3 (3.80%) Banking
5 3 (3.80%) Organisational Skills
6 2 (2.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 2 (2.53%) Telecoms
7 1 (1.27%) Back Office
7 1 (1.27%) Electronics
7 1 (1.27%) Legal
7 1 (1.27%) Manufacturing
7 1 (1.27%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 10 (12.66%) Senior
2 8 (10.13%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 7 (8.86%) Administrator
3 7 (8.86%) Azure Engineer
4 6 (7.59%) Analyst
4 6 (7.59%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
4 6 (7.59%) Support Engineer
4 6 (7.59%) Systems Administrator
4 6 (7.59%) VMware Engineer
4 6 (7.59%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
5 5 (6.33%) 3rd Line Engineer
5 5 (6.33%) 3rd Line Infrastructure Engineer
5 5 (6.33%) Database Engineer
5 5 (6.33%) Infrastructure Support
5 5 (6.33%) Senior Windows Engineer
5 5 (6.33%) Support Manager
5 5 (6.33%) Windows Engineer
6 4 (5.06%) Security Architect
6 4 (5.06%) Solutions Architect
6 4 (5.06%) Technical Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (3.80%) Lightning Web Components
1 3 (3.80%) Oracle GoldenGate
1 3 (3.80%) Visualforce
2 2 (2.53%) Middleware
3 1 (1.27%) Celery
3 1 (1.27%) Elastic Stack
3 1 (1.27%) Flask
3 1 (1.27%) JSON
3 1 (1.27%) Keycloak
3 1 (1.27%) LDAP
3 1 (1.27%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 7 (8.86%) PKI
2 4 (5.06%) iPhone
3 3 (3.80%) Legacy Systems
3 3 (3.80%) Management Information System
3 3 (3.80%) Virtual Team
4 2 (2.53%) Cyber Threat
4 2 (2.53%) Data Centre
4 2 (2.53%) Onboarding
4 2 (2.53%) Public Cloud
4 2 (2.53%) Video Conferencing
5 1 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
5 1 (1.27%) Replication
5 1 (1.27%) SCADA
5 1 (1.27%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 27 (34.18%) Windows
2 9 (11.39%) Mac OS
3 7 (8.86%) Windows 10
4 6 (7.59%) Linux
5 4 (5.06%) Android
6 3 (3.80%) Apple iOS
6 3 (3.80%) Windows Server
7 1 (1.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 25 (31.65%) Cybersecurity
2 15 (18.99%) Patch Management
3 14 (17.72%) DevOps
3 14 (17.72%) Problem-Solving
4 12 (15.19%) ITIL
5 11 (13.92%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 10 (12.66%) Change Management
6 10 (12.66%) Vulnerability Management
7 9 (11.39%) Incident Response
7 9 (11.39%) Infrastructure as Code
8 8 (10.13%) Customer Service
9 7 (8.86%) Performance Optimisation
9 7 (8.86%) Service Delivery
10 6 (7.59%) Cloud Security
10 6 (7.59%) Performance Tuning
10 6 (7.59%) Security Monitoring
10 6 (7.59%) Technical Leadership
11 5 (6.33%) CI/CD
11 5 (6.33%) Service Desk Management
11 5 (6.33%) Vulnerability Remediation
Programming Languages
1 14 (17.72%) PowerShell
2 7 (8.86%) Bash
2 7 (8.86%) SQL
3 6 (7.59%) Python
4 3 (3.80%) Apex Code
5 2 (2.53%) Perl
5 2 (2.53%) PL/SQL
6 1 (1.27%) C
6 1 (1.27%) Java
6 1 (1.27%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 20 (25.32%) Security Cleared
2 14 (17.72%) SC Cleared
3 6 (7.59%) Degree
3 6 (7.59%) DV Cleared
4 5 (6.33%) ACSP
4 5 (6.33%) ACTC
4 5 (6.33%) Computer Science Degree
5 2 (2.53%) CISSP
5 2 (2.53%) CompTIA Security+
6 1 (1.27%) A+ Certification
6 1 (1.27%) Azure Certification
6 1 (1.27%) ISEB
6 1 (1.27%) ISTQB
6 1 (1.27%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
6 1 (1.27%) MCP
6 1 (1.27%) Microsoft Certification
6 1 (1.27%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (8.86%) SLA
2 4 (5.06%) QA
3 3 (3.80%) Cyber Essentials
3 3 (3.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (2.53%) Actionable Recommendations
4 2 (2.53%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 2 (2.53%) NCSC
4 2 (2.53%) NIST
5 1 (1.27%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 18 (22.78%) Active Directory
2 9 (11.39%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (7.59%) DFS Replication
3 6 (7.59%) vSphere
4 2 (2.53%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (1.27%) BitLocker
5 1 (1.27%) FreeRADIUS
5 1 (1.27%) Hyper-V
5 1 (1.27%) iptables
5 1 (1.27%) Microsoft App-V
5 1 (1.27%) Virtual Desktop
5 1 (1.27%) VMware ESXi
5 1 (1.27%) XenApp
5 1 (1.27%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 15 (18.99%) SCCM
2 10 (12.66%) Ansible
3 9 (11.39%) Terraform
4 8 (10.13%) Jamf Pro
5 5 (6.33%) Microsoft Intune
5 5 (6.33%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
6 3 (3.80%) Data Guard
6 3 (3.80%) WSUS
7 2 (2.53%) Puppet
7 2 (2.53%) ZABBIX
8 1 (1.27%) Cacti
8 1 (1.27%) Grafana
8 1 (1.27%) McAfee ePO
8 1 (1.27%) Nagios
8 1 (1.27%) Netcool
8 1 (1.27%) Progress Chef
8 1 (1.27%) Proxmox
8 1 (1.27%) Salt
8 1 (1.27%) Single Sign-On
8 1 (1.27%) Wonderware InTouch
Vendors
1 32 (40.51%) Microsoft
2 12 (15.19%) Apple
3 10 (12.66%) ServiceNow
3 10 (12.66%) VMware
4 8 (10.13%) Oracle
5 6 (7.59%) Google
6 4 (5.06%) Cisco
7 3 (3.80%) Red Hat
7 3 (3.80%) Salesforce
8 2 (2.53%) IBM
8 2 (2.53%) McAfee
8 2 (2.53%) Palo Alto
8 2 (2.53%) Splunk
9 1 (1.27%) Atlassian
9 1 (1.27%) AVEVA
9 1 (1.27%) Canon
9 1 (1.27%) CrowdStrike
9 1 (1.27%) F5
9 1 (1.27%) Rockwell
9 1 (1.27%) Wonderware