Cyber Essentials PLUS Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Cyber Essentials PLUS
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in the UK excluding London requiring Cyber Essentials PLUS skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 3 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 501 468 515
Rank change year-on-year -33 +47 -44
Permanent jobs citing Cyber Essentials PLUS 175 70 119
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.20% 0.20% 0.23%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 2.13% 1.47% 1.71%
Number of salaries quoted 128 57 46
10th Percentile £31,250 £30,500 £42,250
25th Percentile £38,500 £32,500 £43,994
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £51,250 £41,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +23.49% -17.00% -7.41%
75th Percentile £65,514 £55,000 £69,315
90th Percentile £82,500 £72,500 £81,875
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £65,750
% change year-on-year +9.09% -16.35% +5.20%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
UK excluding London

Cyber Essentials PLUS falls under the Quality Assurance and Compliance category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring quality assurance or compliance skills in the UK excluding London.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 8,201 4,755 6,949
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 9.47% 13.74% 13.19%
Number of salaries quoted 5,157 2,459 3,048
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,750 £27,500
25th Percentile £37,500 £33,500 £35,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £50,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £67,500 £66,250 £66,650
90th Percentile £82,500 £80,000 £81,250
UK median annual salary £55,000 £57,500 £57,500
% change year-on-year -4.35% - -4.17%

Cyber Essentials PLUS
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Cyber Essentials PLUS relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Cyber Essentials PLUS job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Cyber Essentials PLUS
Salary Trend in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Cyber Essentials PLUS.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Cyber Essentials PLUS

Cyber Essentials PLUS
Salary Histogram in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution for jobs citing Cyber Essentials PLUS in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 3 October 2026.

Salary histogram for Cyber Essentials PLUS in the UK excluding London

Cyber Essentials PLUS
Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Cyber Essentials PLUS within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 3 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
South East -25 56 £42,500 +2.41% 34
North of England -32 43 £55,000 - 20
Yorkshire -13 30 £58,750 +6.82% 9
South West -56 28 £55,000 +10.00% 13
Midlands -33 25 £58,589 +67.40% 19
East Midlands -26 17 £58,589 +67.40% 3
East of England -26 15 £35,000 -53.95% 3
North West -31 8 £45,000 +63.64% 11
West Midlands -37 8 £52,000 +60.00% 16
Scotland +6 6 £67,500 +80.00% 8
North East -62 5 £40,000 -56.76% 1
Northern Ireland - 2 £47,500 - 1
Cyber Essentials PLUS
UK

Cyber Essentials PLUS
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 24 (13.71%) SharePoint
2 20 (11.43%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.57%) Confluence
3 1 (0.57%) Site Server
Applications
1 12 (6.86%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.57%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (1.14%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 90 (51.43%) Microsoft 365
2 86 (49.14%) Azure
3 70 (40.00%) Entra ID
4 15 (8.57%) Microsoft Copilot
5 14 (8.00%) AWS
6 12 (6.86%) Power Platform
7 11 (6.29%) Azure Sentinel
7 11 (6.29%) Google Workspace
8 9 (5.14%) SaaS
9 8 (4.57%) NetDocuments
9 8 (4.57%) Power Automate
10 7 (4.00%) Copilot Studio
11 5 (2.86%) Microsoft Purview
12 4 (2.29%) Dynamics 365
12 4 (2.29%) IaaS
12 4 (2.29%) PaaS
13 2 (1.14%) Azure Stack
13 2 (1.14%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 2 (1.14%) GCP
13 2 (1.14%) Mimecast
Communications & Networking
1 34 (19.43%) Firewall
2 20 (11.43%) VPN
3 19 (10.86%) DHCP
3 19 (10.86%) DNS
3 19 (10.86%) VLAN
4 16 (9.14%) WAN
5 14 (8.00%) LAN
6 13 (7.43%) SSL
6 13 (7.43%) Wi-Fi
7 11 (6.29%) VoIP
8 9 (5.14%) Network Security
9 6 (3.43%) TCP/IP
10 4 (2.29%) SAN
11 2 (1.14%) IPsec
11 2 (1.14%) SD-WAN
12 1 (0.57%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (5.14%) Power BI
2 4 (2.29%) SQL Server
3 2 (1.14%) Data Lake
3 2 (1.14%) KNIME
4 1 (0.57%) Data Vault
4 1 (0.57%) Power Query
4 1 (0.57%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 1 (0.57%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 1 (0.57%) Git
1 1 (0.57%) JIRA
General
1 65 (37.14%) Social Skills
2 26 (14.86%) Analytical Skills
3 25 (14.29%) Legal
4 20 (11.43%) Finance
5 12 (6.86%) Aerospace
6 11 (6.29%) Law
6 11 (6.29%) Manufacturing
7 10 (5.71%) Public Sector
8 6 (3.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 4 (2.29%) Influencing Skills
9 4 (2.29%) Organisational Skills
9 4 (2.29%) Retail
9 4 (2.29%) Telecoms
10 3 (1.71%) Aviation
10 3 (1.71%) Pharmaceutical
11 2 (1.14%) Banking
11 2 (1.14%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.57%) Aeronautics
12 1 (0.57%) Games
12 1 (0.57%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 32 (18.29%) IT Manager
2 31 (17.71%) IT Support
3 26 (14.86%) IT Engineer
4 19 (10.86%) Operations Manager
5 17 (9.71%) IT Operations Manager
6 16 (9.14%) Analyst
6 16 (9.14%) Support Engineer
7 15 (8.57%) IT Support Engineer
7 15 (8.57%) Senior
8 14 (8.00%) IT Technician
8 14 (8.00%) Security Analyst
8 14 (8.00%) Senior IT Support
9 13 (7.43%) Lead
9 13 (7.43%) Security Manager
9 13 (7.43%) Support Technician
10 11 (6.29%) Cybersecurity Analyst
10 11 (6.29%) Senior IT Engineer
10 11 (6.29%) Senior Support Engineer
11 10 (5.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 10 (5.71%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (0.57%) PySpark
1 1 (0.57%) Terraform
Miscellaneous
1 35 (20.00%) Management Information System
2 30 (17.14%) Security Posture
3 19 (10.86%) Driving Licence
4 11 (6.29%) Onboarding
5 10 (5.71%) Analytical Mindset
6 8 (4.57%) Cyber Threat
7 6 (3.43%) Self-Motivation
8 5 (2.86%) Cyber Security Posture
8 5 (2.86%) Data Centre
9 4 (2.29%) BYOD
9 4 (2.29%) Cloud Native
9 4 (2.29%) Culture of Ownership
10 3 (1.71%) Robotics
11 2 (1.14%) AI Agents
11 2 (1.14%) Data Protection Act
11 2 (1.14%) Enterprise Software
11 2 (1.14%) IoT
11 2 (1.14%) Private Cloud
12 1 (0.57%) CSOC
12 1 (0.57%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 59 (33.71%) Windows
2 34 (19.43%) Windows Server
3 16 (9.14%) Windows Server 2019
4 14 (8.00%) Linux
5 13 (7.43%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.57%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 106 (60.57%) Cybersecurity
2 55 (31.43%) Risk Management
3 53 (30.29%) Continuous Improvement
4 46 (26.29%) Information Security
5 45 (25.71%) Disaster Recovery
6 41 (23.43%) Incident Response
7 35 (20.00%) Problem-Solving
8 34 (19.43%) Project Delivery
9 33 (18.86%) Data Protection
10 32 (18.29%) ISMS
11 31 (17.71%) ITIL
11 31 (17.71%) Security Management
11 31 (17.71%) Vulnerability Management
12 29 (16.57%) Service Management
13 28 (16.00%) AI
14 27 (15.43%) Information Security Management
15 26 (14.86%) ITSM
16 24 (13.71%) Service Delivery
16 24 (13.71%) Stakeholder Management
17 23 (13.14%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 11 (6.29%) SQL
2 9 (5.14%) PowerShell
3 6 (3.43%) C
4 4 (2.29%) XAML
5 3 (1.71%) Bicep
5 3 (1.71%) Kusto Query Language
6 2 (1.14%) Python
7 1 (0.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 42 (24.00%) Degree
2 30 (17.14%) CISSP
3 21 (12.00%) CompTIA Security+
3 21 (12.00%) Security Cleared
4 20 (11.43%) CISM
5 19 (10.86%) Microsoft Certification
6 14 (8.00%) SC Cleared
7 12 (6.86%) DBS Check
7 12 (6.86%) Network+ Certification
8 7 (4.00%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
9 6 (3.43%) BPSS Clearance
10 5 (2.86%) CISA
10 5 (2.86%) Cisco Certification
11 4 (2.29%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 4 (2.29%) Azure Certification
11 4 (2.29%) CCSP
11 4 (2.29%) Computer Science Degree
12 3 (1.71%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
13 2 (1.14%) CREST Certified
13 2 (1.14%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 175 (100.00%) Cyber Essentials
2 101 (57.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 34 (19.43%) GDPR
4 25 (14.29%) NIST
5 18 (10.29%) ISO 9001
6 12 (6.86%) ISO 14001
7 11 (6.29%) GRC
8 10 (5.71%) ISO/IEC 20000
9 9 (5.14%) NCSC
10 8 (4.57%) PCI DSS
11 6 (3.43%) SLA
11 6 (3.43%) SOC 2
12 3 (1.71%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 3 (1.71%) NIST 800
12 3 (1.71%) QA
13 2 (1.14%) COBIT
13 2 (1.14%) Data Quality
13 2 (1.14%) GxP
13 2 (1.14%) ISO 22301
13 2 (1.14%) RMADS
System Software
1 43 (24.57%) Active Directory
2 21 (12.00%) VMware Infrastructure
3 17 (9.71%) Hyper-V
4 5 (2.86%) Firmware
5 4 (2.29%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (1.14%) Docker
6 2 (1.14%) vSphere
7 1 (0.57%) Microsoft Virtual Server
7 1 (0.57%) Virtual Desktop
7 1 (0.57%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 49 (28.00%) Microsoft Intune
2 13 (7.43%) Jamf Pro
3 4 (2.29%) Single Sign-On
4 3 (1.71%) Nessus
4 3 (1.71%) Proxmox
5 2 (1.14%) FortiGate
5 2 (1.14%) Kubernetes
6 1 (0.57%) SCCM
6 1 (0.57%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 108 (61.71%) Microsoft
2 23 (13.14%) VMware
3 14 (8.00%) Cisco
3 14 (8.00%) Veeam
4 11 (6.29%) Apple
4 11 (6.29%) Datto
4 11 (6.29%) Google
4 11 (6.29%) SonicWALL
5 4 (2.29%) Meraki
6 3 (1.71%) Dell
6 3 (1.71%) Fortinet
7 2 (1.14%) Palo Alto
7 2 (1.14%) Qualys
7 2 (1.14%) Splunk
7 2 (1.14%) Tenable
7 2 (1.14%) Thales
8 1 (0.57%) Databricks
8 1 (0.57%) LogicMonitor
8 1 (0.57%) Nimble Storage
8 1 (0.57%) SolarWinds