In Scotland, demand for cyber-security specialists is falling as job creation in England drives up pay
“This is not a corner Scotland Ltd should consider cutting” says tech recruiter

High-flying cyber security specialists in Scotland have seen their salaries fall over the last year while pay across England and Ireland has risen, according to recruiter Randstad.

In 2020, the best cyber security specialists in Scotland were earning £72,700 a year. Now, average salaries for the top quartile of cyber security specialists have dropped to £70,200 - a fall of almost 3½ per cent.

Meanwhile, south of the border, pay for cyber security specialists in England have seen average salaries rise from £70,800 per year to £71,300, a ½ per cent increase.

Adrian Smith, senior director of operations at Randstad said, “Edinburgh and Glasgow certainly have an appetite for innovation and the opportunity to become world-leading centres for tech. But the salary figures don’t lie. They reflect changes in supply and demand. The high-flying jobs that power that top quartile of high cyber-security salaries are just not there. Given retail price inflation is currently running at close to four per cent, a fall of 3 ½ per cent looks even worse in real terms.”

Different story with England

Across England, A-players in the East Midlands have seen pay rise - particularly in Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Mansfield, Northampton and Nottingham - by over eight per cent, with average salaries up from £60,800 to £66,100 a year.

Adrian Smith said: “It would be easy to put this down to Glasgow and Edinburgh losing business to the EU post-Brexit. But cyber-security is a booming sector in England and if this was all the fault of Brexit, we wouldn’t be seeing salaries rising in the North West of England, in Yorkshire & the Humber, the East Midlands, or in London. The truth is, the best cyber-security jobs are being created south of the border and that’s unbalancing supply and demand, driving up pay. Last year, it was possible to recruit a less experienced cyber-security specialist for close to £47,000 in Nottingham. That was great value for a role that is in such high demand - dynamic, agile companies have taken full advantage of what was a 20 per discount on hiring the same person in London. But the same sort of candidate in the same city, would be demanding £52,600 now.”

Pay rises as medium sized business pivot to online

The recruiter says that the scale of medium sized businesses pivoting away from bricks and mortar towards online has spurred cyber-security hiring. In March, Lindy Cameron, the chief executive of the UK's cyber-security agency, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), said cyber-security was "still not taken as seriously as it should be” and was “simply not embedded into the UK's boardroom thinking”. But the amount of vacancies being filled suggests most of the UK is catching up.

Adrian Smith said: “There's a greater need for cybersecurity people as more businesses put more of their operational emphasis on the virtual world. Bosses might have been trying to put hiring freezes in place over the last year but cyber-security is not an area that CEOs can afford to ignore. Salary rises in England reflect that companies appreciate they can’t ignore cyber-security. Worryingly, that does not appear to be the case north of the border. The pay anomaly suggests Scottish employers might be being somewhat complacent. If that is indeed the case, I’d submit that this is not a corner organisations in Scotland should consider cutting. The threat is real, north of the border - Scotland's environmental watchdog learnt that the hard way earlier this year when it admitted it could take it years to recover from a cyber attack.”

Pay in London

The median salary of a cybersecurity specialist working in London has risen from £59,300 to £66,800 over the last 12 months, a marginal increase. But experienced candidates working in the right specialism have seen average packages rise from £79,600 to £80,900, up 1.6 per cent.

Adrian Smith said: "Employees working from home during the lockdowns made the job of keeping organisations’ IT infrastructure intact much harder. More than 50 per cent of decision makers in the IT community think remote workers will expose their organisation to the risk of a data breach. Remote working on a vast scale has been a major headache for IT security and that’s driven recruitment, especially in London."

High-flyers vs the rest

Average pay for cyber-security professionals rose from £54,300 to £60,300 in England, a rise of 0.7 per cent. In the Republic of Ireland, pay rose 0.3 per cent, from €41,700 to €41,800 a year. In Scotland, the median average cyber-security salary fell from £60,400 to £59,600, a 1.3 per cent fall.

About Randstad

Randstad is the global leader in the HR services industry. We support people and organisations in realising their true potential by combining the power of today’s technology with our passion for people. We call it Human Forward. In 2020, we helped nearly two million candidates find a meaningful job with more than 236,000 clients. Furthermore, we trained close to 350,000 people.

Randstad is active in 38 markets around the world and has a top-three position in almost half of these. In 2020, Randstad had on average 34,680 corporate employees and generated revenue of €20.7 billion. Randstad was founded in 1960 and is headquartered in Diemen, the Netherlands. Randstad N.V. is listed on the NYSE Euronext (symbol: RAND.AS).

For more information, see www.randstad.co.uk

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