PCI DSS Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in the UK excluding London requiring PCI DSS skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 1 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 284 414 420
Rank change year-on-year +130 +6 -15
Permanent jobs citing PCI DSS 258 167 131
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.62% 0.45% 0.43%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 5.37% 2.84% 2.90%
Number of salaries quoted 98 92 110
10th Percentile £43,875 £40,500 £41,700
25th Percentile £47,500 £51,000 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £56,750 £55,000 £53,500
Median % change year-on-year +3.18% +2.80% +0.94%
75th Percentile £73,750 £75,250 £70,000
90th Percentile £81,250 £110,000 £92,625
UK median annual salary £65,000 £65,000 £62,500
% change year-on-year - +4.00% +4.17%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
UK excluding London

PCI DSS 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 4,808 5,878 4,517
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 11.46% 15.78% 14.69%
Number of salaries quoted 2,530 2,479 3,180
10th Percentile £29,000 £30,500 £27,965
25th Percentile £35,000 £38,750 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,500 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - +5.00%
75th Percentile £65,000 £70,000 £66,250
90th Percentile £81,250 £83,750 £80,000
UK median annual salary £58,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -3.33% - +4.35%

PCI DSS
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

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

PCI DSS job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

PCI DSS
Salary Trend in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing PCI DSS.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing PCI DSS

PCI DSS
Salary Histogram in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution for jobs citing PCI DSS in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 1 January 2026.

Salary histogram for PCI DSS in the UK excluding London

PCI DSS
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 PCI DSS within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 1 January 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 West +113 145 £50,000 -16.67% 3
Midlands +46 33 £52,500 +31.25% 9
South East -10 26 £63,750 +15.91% 36
North of England +8 25 £75,000 +42.86% 15
East Midlands +15 23 £80,000 +68.42% 2
North West +17 15 £75,000 +20.00% 9
Wales +13 13 £52,500 +5.00%
West Midlands +21 10 £51,250 +32.26% 7
Yorkshire -12 10 £65,000 +23.81% 6
East of England +25 8 £67,500 -9.40% 9
Scotland +1 8 £62,500 -37.50% 3
PCI DSS
UK

PCI DSS
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
1 100 (38.76%) Microsoft Exchange
2 4 (1.55%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.39%) Confluence
Applications
1 4 (1.55%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.39%) AutoCAD
Cloud Services
1 130 (50.39%) Azure
2 109 (42.25%) Microsoft 365
3 26 (10.08%) AWS
4 7 (2.71%) Azure Sentinel
5 6 (2.33%) Entra ID
6 5 (1.94%) GCP
7 4 (1.55%) SaaS
8 3 (1.16%) Cloud Computing
8 3 (1.16%) IaaS
8 3 (1.16%) Microsoft Purview
8 3 (1.16%) Mimecast
9 2 (0.78%) Amazon Bedrock
9 2 (0.78%) Amazon EKS
9 2 (0.78%) Amazon EventBridge
9 2 (0.78%) Amazon Kinesis
9 2 (0.78%) AWS CloudFormation
9 2 (0.78%) AWS Lambda
9 2 (0.78%) AWS Step Functions
9 2 (0.78%) Azure AKS
9 2 (0.78%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 103 (39.92%) DNS
2 102 (39.53%) DHCP
3 29 (11.24%) Network Security
4 20 (7.75%) Firewall
5 5 (1.94%) DMZ
6 4 (1.55%) LAN
6 4 (1.55%) VPN
6 4 (1.55%) WAN
7 3 (1.16%) SAN
8 2 (0.78%) NetScaler
8 2 (0.78%) VLAN
8 2 (0.78%) VSAN
8 2 (0.78%) WLAN
9 1 (0.39%) DMVPN
9 1 (0.39%) S/MIME
9 1 (0.39%) SD-WAN
9 1 (0.39%) SSL
9 1 (0.39%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 96 (37.21%) Amazon RDS
2 2 (0.78%) DynamoDB
3 1 (0.39%) DB2
3 1 (0.39%) Elasticsearch
3 1 (0.39%) Power BI
3 1 (0.39%) Relational Database
3 1 (0.39%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 2 (0.78%) Jenkins
2 1 (0.39%) Git
2 1 (0.39%) GitLab
General
1 134 (51.94%) Analytical Skills
2 127 (49.22%) Social Skills
3 89 (34.50%) Finance
4 46 (17.83%) Banking
5 30 (11.63%) Public Sector
6 26 (10.08%) Marketing
7 23 (8.91%) Telecoms
8 22 (8.53%) Electronics
8 22 (8.53%) Manufacturing
9 18 (6.98%) Organisational Skills
10 12 (4.65%) Retail
11 5 (1.94%) Documentation Skills
11 5 (1.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 5 (1.94%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.39%) Advertising
12 1 (0.39%) Investment Banking
12 1 (0.39%) Tech for Good
Job Titles
1 96 (37.21%) Systems Engineer
2 31 (12.02%) Consultant
3 29 (11.24%) Security Consultant
4 27 (10.47%) Cybersecurity Consultant
5 20 (7.75%) Security Manager
6 15 (5.81%) Analyst
7 10 (3.88%) Architect
7 10 (3.88%) Cybersecurity Manager
7 10 (3.88%) Information Manager
7 10 (3.88%) Information Security Manager
8 9 (3.49%) Security Assurance Manager
9 7 (2.71%) Security Analyst
9 7 (2.71%) Security Architect
10 6 (2.33%) Cloud Engineer
11 5 (1.94%) Compliance Manager
11 5 (1.94%) Lead
11 5 (1.94%) Senior
12 4 (1.55%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 4 (1.55%) IT Analyst
13 3 (1.16%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (1.16%) AngularJS
2 2 (0.78%) .NET
2 2 (0.78%) ARM Templates
2 2 (0.78%) Hugging Face
2 2 (0.78%) Kafka
2 2 (0.78%) LDAP
2 2 (0.78%) Node.js
2 2 (0.78%) Nuxt
2 2 (0.78%) RabbitMQ
2 2 (0.78%) React
2 2 (0.78%) Vue
3 1 (0.39%) ASP.NET
3 1 (0.39%) CSS
3 1 (0.39%) HTML
3 1 (0.39%) HTML5
3 1 (0.39%) Ionic Framework
3 1 (0.39%) JWT
3 1 (0.39%) OAuth2
3 1 (0.39%) RESTful
3 1 (0.39%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 97 (37.60%) Legacy Systems
2 24 (9.30%) Security Posture
3 22 (8.53%) Analytical Mindset
4 12 (4.65%) Management Information System
5 9 (3.49%) Cloud Native
6 7 (2.71%) PKI
7 6 (2.33%) Data Protection Act
8 5 (1.94%) Cloud Security Posture
8 5 (1.94%) Cyber Kill Chain
9 4 (1.55%) Blog
9 4 (1.55%) Cyber Threat
9 4 (1.55%) Security Operations Centre
9 4 (1.55%) Self-Motivation
10 2 (0.78%) CCTV
10 2 (0.78%) Clustering
10 2 (0.78%) Distributed Systems
10 2 (0.78%) EMV
10 2 (0.78%) SCADA
11 1 (0.39%) Hybrid Cloud
11 1 (0.39%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 108 (41.86%) Windows
2 106 (41.09%) Windows Server
3 102 (39.53%) Linux
4 96 (37.21%) Windows Server 2016
5 3 (1.16%) Android
6 2 (0.78%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 115 (44.57%) Problem-Solving
2 101 (39.15%) Vulnerability Remediation
3 100 (38.76%) Kalman Filter
3 100 (38.76%) Web Filtering
4 99 (38.37%) Vulnerability Scanning
5 98 (37.98%) Customer Experience
5 98 (37.98%) Migration
6 97 (37.60%) Customer Service
6 97 (37.60%) Email Filtering
7 81 (31.40%) Information Security
8 67 (25.97%) Cybersecurity
9 63 (24.42%) Risk Management
10 59 (22.87%) Roadmaps
11 54 (20.93%) Due Diligence
12 51 (19.77%) Business Continuity
12 51 (19.77%) Risk Assessment
13 46 (17.83%) Process Improvement
14 45 (17.44%) Business Continuity Management
14 45 (17.44%) Operations Management
14 45 (17.44%) Supply Chain Management
Programming Languages
1 7 (2.71%) PowerShell
1 7 (2.71%) Python
2 5 (1.94%) SQL
3 3 (1.16%) Bash
3 3 (1.16%) Java
4 2 (0.78%) Bicep
4 2 (0.78%) C#
5 1 (0.39%) JavaScript
Qualifications
1 125 (48.45%) Security Cleared
2 98 (37.98%) SC Cleared
3 86 (33.33%) CISSP
4 50 (19.38%) CISA
4 50 (19.38%) CRISC
5 31 (12.02%) CEH
6 27 (10.47%) CompTIA Security+
7 17 (6.59%) CISM
8 10 (3.88%) CREST Certified
9 6 (2.33%) Degree
10 5 (1.94%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 5 (1.94%) Cisco Certification
10 5 (1.94%) DV Cleared
10 5 (1.94%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
11 3 (1.16%) AWS Certification
11 3 (1.16%) CCSP
11 3 (1.16%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
12 2 (0.78%) CESG Certified Professional
12 2 (0.78%) CISMP
12 2 (0.78%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 126 (48.84%) Cyber Essentials
2 109 (42.25%) NIST
3 83 (32.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 46 (17.83%) GDPR
5 32 (12.40%) GRC
6 19 (7.36%) NCSC
7 16 (6.20%) SOC 2
8 15 (5.81%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 9 (3.49%) SOC 3
10 8 (3.10%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 7 (2.71%) QA
12 5 (1.94%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 5 (1.94%) JSP 440
13 3 (1.16%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
14 1 (0.39%) Accessibility
14 1 (0.39%) COBIT
14 1 (0.39%) Data Quality
14 1 (0.39%) HIPAA
14 1 (0.39%) ISO 22301
14 1 (0.39%) NIST 800
System Software
1 105 (40.70%) Active Directory
2 97 (37.60%) Hyper-V
3 96 (37.21%) Terminal Server
4 4 (1.55%) VMware ESXi
5 3 (1.16%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.78%) Docker
6 2 (0.78%) VMware NSX
6 2 (0.78%) vSphere
7 1 (0.39%) Squid
Systems Management
1 5 (1.94%) Kubernetes
1 5 (1.94%) Terraform
2 4 (1.55%) vCenter Server
3 3 (1.16%) Ansible
3 3 (1.16%) Microsoft Intune
4 2 (0.78%) Dell DRAC
4 2 (0.78%) VxRail
5 1 (0.39%) CASB
5 1 (0.39%) Kibana
5 1 (0.39%) Nessus
Vendors
1 112 (43.41%) Microsoft
2 101 (39.15%) VMware
3 98 (37.98%) SolarWinds
3 98 (37.98%) Veeam
4 96 (37.21%) Brocade
4 96 (37.21%) Nimble Storage
4 96 (37.21%) Splunk
4 96 (37.21%) Tanium
5 22 (8.53%) SAP
6 5 (1.94%) Google
7 4 (1.55%) Meraki
7 4 (1.55%) Tenable
8 3 (1.16%) Apple
8 3 (1.16%) Cisco
8 3 (1.16%) Palo Alto
9 2 (0.78%) Citrix
9 2 (0.78%) Dell
9 2 (0.78%) Fortinet
9 2 (0.78%) NetApp
9 2 (0.78%) OpenAI