NIST Contract Job Trends in the East of England

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
England > East of England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the East of England requiring NIST skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 2 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 62 59 92
Rank change year-on-year -3 +33 +31
Contract jobs citing NIST 40 23 22
As % of all contract jobs in the East of England 2.33% 2.11% 1.19%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 14.34% 12.78% 10.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 23 10 7
10th Percentile £503 £475 £649
25th Percentile £550 £505 £650
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £575 £650
Median % change year-on-year - -11.54% -
75th Percentile £666 £609 £693
90th Percentile £675 £638 £786
England median daily rate £563 £625 £620
% change year-on-year -10.00% +0.81% -4.62%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 1 11
10th Percentile £87.10 - -
25th Percentile £88.38 £77.50 £42.25
Median hourly rate £91.00 £85.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year +7.06% +91.01% -24.26%
75th Percentile £91.50 £92.50 £47.88
90th Percentile - - £49.00
England median hourly rate £88.75 £83.20 £44.50
% change year-on-year +6.67% +86.97% -35.73%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
East of England

NIST falls under the Quality Assurance and Compliance category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring quality assurance or compliance skills in the East of England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 279 180 206
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the East of England 16.27% 16.48% 11.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 118 94 117
10th Percentile £282 £273 £291
25th Percentile £413 £364 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.00% - +8.40%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £675
England median daily rate £500 £501 £525
% change year-on-year -0.15% -4.62% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 94 18 37
10th Percentile £15.53 £17.46 £13.72
25th Percentile £17.69 £27.75 £14.16
Median hourly rate £18.50 £45.75 £15.79
Median % change year-on-year -59.56% +189.74% -10.89%
75th Percentile £20.09 £71.50 £46.75
90th Percentile £23.16 £75.00 £47.65
England median hourly rate £25.15 £31.76 £27.50
% change year-on-year -20.81% +15.49% -4.68%

NIST
Job Vacancy Trend in the East of England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing NIST relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the East of England.

NIST job vacancy trend in the East of England

NIST
Daily Rate Trend in the East of England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the East of England citing NIST.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the East of England citing NIST

NIST
Daily Rate Histogram in the East of England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing NIST in the East of England over the 6 months to 2 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for NIST in the East of England

NIST
Hourly Rate Trend in the East of England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the East of England citing NIST.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the East of England citing NIST

NIST
Contract Job Locations in the East of England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing NIST within the East of England region over the 6 months to 2 February 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Cambridgeshire +8 19 £570 -5.00% 3
Bedfordshire -2 12 £650 +30.00%
Hertfordshire -18 6 £602 +20.30% 9
Suffolk +10 3 £550 +5.97% 1
NIST
England

NIST
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the East of England 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:

Cloud Services
1 19 (47.50%) Azure
2 10 (25.00%) GitHub
3 9 (22.50%) Azure AKS
3 9 (22.50%) GitHub Copilot
4 8 (20.00%) PaaS
4 8 (20.00%) Serverless
5 6 (15.00%) Azure DevOps
5 6 (15.00%) Azure Functions
6 4 (10.00%) AWS
6 4 (10.00%) GCP
7 3 (7.50%) Azure Sentinel
8 1 (2.50%) AWS KMS
8 1 (2.50%) Azure API Management
8 1 (2.50%) Azure Logic Apps
8 1 (2.50%) Azure Monitor
8 1 (2.50%) Entra ID
8 1 (2.50%) GitHub Actions
8 1 (2.50%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 2 (5.00%) Firewall
1 2 (5.00%) Modbus
1 2 (5.00%) Network Security
2 1 (2.50%) Cisco ASA
2 1 (2.50%) DHCP
2 1 (2.50%) DNS
2 1 (2.50%) Ethernet
2 1 (2.50%) LAN
2 1 (2.50%) SD-WAN
2 1 (2.50%) VPN
2 1 (2.50%) WAN
2 1 (2.50%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (2.50%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 2 (5.00%) JMeter
1 2 (5.00%) Postman
1 2 (5.00%) Selenium
2 1 (2.50%) Burp Suite
General
1 10 (25.00%) Social Skills
2 6 (15.00%) Aerospace
3 4 (10.00%) Military
3 4 (10.00%) Presentation Skills
4 3 (7.50%) Organisational Skills
5 2 (5.00%) Manufacturing
6 1 (2.50%) Documentation Skills
6 1 (2.50%) Finance
6 1 (2.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (2.50%) Police
Job Titles
1 7 (17.50%) Architect
2 6 (15.00%) Lead
2 6 (15.00%) Security Engineer
2 6 (15.00%) Senior
3 5 (12.50%) Analyst
3 5 (12.50%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
4 4 (10.00%) Technical Architect
5 2 (5.00%) Azure Engineer
5 2 (5.00%) Cloud Engineer
5 2 (5.00%) Consultant
5 2 (5.00%) Cyber Threat Analyst
5 2 (5.00%) Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst
5 2 (5.00%) Cyber Threat Intelligence Specialist
5 2 (5.00%) Cyber Threat Specialist
5 2 (5.00%) Developer
5 2 (5.00%) QA Leader
5 2 (5.00%) Security Analyst
5 2 (5.00%) Senior Developer
5 2 (5.00%) SOC Analyst
5 2 (5.00%) Test Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (32.50%) .NET
2 9 (22.50%) A2A Protocol
2 9 (22.50%) Model Context Protocol
2 9 (22.50%) PyTorch
2 9 (22.50%) RESTful
2 9 (22.50%) Semantic Kernel
2 9 (22.50%) TensorFlow
3 1 (2.50%) eBPF
3 1 (2.50%) Pandas
3 1 (2.50%) REST
3 1 (2.50%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 16 (40.00%) Cloud Native
2 9 (22.50%) Algorithms
3 8 (20.00%) Operational Technology
3 8 (20.00%) Security Posture
4 7 (17.50%) SCADA
5 5 (12.50%) Cyber Kill Chain
5 5 (12.50%) Cyber Threat
6 3 (7.50%) Cloud Security Posture
7 2 (5.00%) Management Information System
8 1 (2.50%) Enterprise Software
8 1 (2.50%) Linux Command Line
8 1 (2.50%) Onboarding
8 1 (2.50%) Security Operations Centre
Processes & Methodologies
1 14 (35.00%) Agile
1 14 (35.00%) AI
1 14 (35.00%) LLM
1 14 (35.00%) Prompt Engineering
1 14 (35.00%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
1 14 (35.00%) Test Automation
2 13 (32.50%) Cybersecurity
3 12 (30.00%) Problem-Solving
4 11 (27.50%) Machine Learning
4 11 (27.50%) Threat Modelling
5 9 (22.50%) API Management
5 9 (22.50%) Data Privacy
5 9 (22.50%) Incident Response
5 9 (22.50%) Security Operations
6 8 (20.00%) API Design
6 8 (20.00%) CI/CD
6 8 (20.00%) Data Pipeline
6 8 (20.00%) Deep Learning
6 8 (20.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 8 (20.00%) Threat Detection
Programming Languages
1 11 (27.50%) Python
2 1 (2.50%) Bash
2 1 (2.50%) Bicep
2 1 (2.50%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 16 (40.00%) Security Cleared
2 15 (37.50%) SC Cleared
3 9 (22.50%) Microsoft Certified Professional
4 6 (15.00%) CISSP
5 3 (7.50%) CISM
5 3 (7.50%) Degree
6 2 (5.00%) Cisco Certification
7 1 (2.50%) AWS Certification
7 1 (2.50%) Azure Certification
7 1 (2.50%) CCIE
7 1 (2.50%) CCIE Security
7 1 (2.50%) CCNP
7 1 (2.50%) CCSP
7 1 (2.50%) CEH
7 1 (2.50%) CRISC
7 1 (2.50%) GIAC
7 1 (2.50%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (40.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 14 (35.00%) EU AI Act
3 11 (27.50%) Cyber Essentials
4 9 (22.50%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 6 (15.00%) Def Stans
5 6 (15.00%) GDPR
6 5 (12.50%) JSP 440
6 5 (12.50%) NIST 800
7 4 (10.00%) NCSC
7 4 (10.00%) QA
8 3 (7.50%) GRC
9 2 (5.00%) HIPAA
9 2 (5.00%) PCI DSS
10 1 (2.50%) GPG13
10 1 (2.50%) SOC 2
System Software
1 4 (10.00%) Firmware
2 2 (5.00%) Docker
3 1 (2.50%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 5 (12.50%) Kubernetes
2 1 (2.50%) FortiGate
2 1 (2.50%) Nexpose
2 1 (2.50%) Terraform
Vendors
1 16 (40.00%) Microsoft
2 9 (22.50%) Foundry
3 5 (12.50%) VMware
4 2 (5.00%) Computacenter
4 2 (5.00%) Fortinet
4 2 (5.00%) ServiceNow
4 2 (5.00%) Splunk
5 1 (2.50%) CheckPoint
5 1 (2.50%) Cisco
5 1 (2.50%) Cribl.io
5 1 (2.50%) Palo Alto
5 1 (2.50%) Qualys
5 1 (2.50%) Tenable
5 1 (2.50%) Zscaler