SOC 2 Contract Job Trends in England

System and Organization Controls (SOC) 2
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring SOC 2 skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 28 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 510 459 537
Rank change year-on-year -51 +78 +111
Contract jobs citing SOC 2 65 29 14
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.18% 0.11% 0.037%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 1.05% 0.75% 0.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 51 17 10
10th Percentile £413 £387 £415
25th Percentile £438 £406 £458
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £600 £563
Median % change year-on-year -12.50% +6.67% +15.38%
75th Percentile £598 £751 £588
90th Percentile £650 £801 £700
UK median daily rate £513 £626 £575
% change year-on-year -18.07% +8.78% +9.52%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
England

SOC 2 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 England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 6,204 3,856 5,431
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 17.46% 15.01% 14.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,009 2,340 3,538
10th Percentile £331 £263 £313
25th Percentile £413 £375 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £604 £638 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £520
% change year-on-year - -3.85% -0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 358 153 328
10th Percentile £15.60 £15.50 £12.37
25th Percentile £18.26 £21.25 £14.58
Median hourly rate £25.94 £31.76 £26.66
Median % change year-on-year -18.32% +19.13% -23.83%
75th Percentile £63.75 £65.00 £48.75
90th Percentile £73.75 £78.39 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £27.94 £30.11 £25.06
% change year-on-year -7.19% +20.14% -22.90%

SOC 2
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing SOC 2 relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

SOC 2 job vacancy trend in England

SOC 2
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing SOC 2.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing SOC 2

SOC 2
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SOC 2 in England over the 6 months to 28 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SOC 2 in England

SOC 2
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SOC 2 within the England region over the 6 months to 28 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
London -24 31 £525 -25.05% 23
North of England -55 13 £497 +20.39% 11
Midlands - 7 £438 - 2
Yorkshire -60 6 £539 +30.58% 3
South East - 6 £600 - 13
North West -32 5 £499 +61.05% 5
West Midlands - 4 - - 2
East Midlands - 3 £438 -
North East - 2 £466 - 3
South West - 2 - -
SOC 2
UK

SOC 2
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in 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:

Application Platforms
1 4 (6.15%) Confluence
2 1 (1.54%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 2 (3.08%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (3.08%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 30 (46.15%) Azure
2 20 (30.77%) AWS
3 14 (21.54%) Entra ID
3 14 (21.54%) GCP
4 7 (10.77%) Amazon GuardDuty
4 7 (10.77%) Azure Sentinel
4 7 (10.77%) Microsoft 365
5 6 (9.23%) AWS CloudFormation
6 5 (7.69%) Power Platform
7 4 (6.15%) Azure DevOps
7 4 (6.15%) GitHub
7 4 (6.15%) GitHub Actions
7 4 (6.15%) Microsoft Purview
8 3 (4.62%) Azure Key Vault
9 2 (3.08%) AWS KMS
9 2 (3.08%) Cloud Run
9 2 (3.08%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 2 (3.08%) Lucidchart
9 2 (3.08%) SaaS
9 2 (3.08%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 10 (15.38%) Network Security
2 6 (9.23%) Firewall
3 5 (7.69%) Reverse Proxy
4 3 (4.62%) VPN
5 2 (3.08%) Kerberos
5 2 (3.08%) NGFW
5 2 (3.08%) SSH
6 1 (1.54%) BGP
6 1 (1.54%) DNS
6 1 (1.54%) Intrusion Detection
6 1 (1.54%) OSPF
6 1 (1.54%) SSL
6 1 (1.54%) TCP/IP
6 1 (1.54%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (1.54%) Data Lake
1 1 (1.54%) Data Vault
1 1 (1.54%) Looker
1 1 (1.54%) Power BI
1 1 (1.54%) Snowflake Schema
1 1 (1.54%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 2 (3.08%) JIRA
General
1 22 (33.85%) Social Skills
2 14 (21.54%) Finance
3 9 (13.85%) Analytical Skills
4 6 (9.23%) Legal
5 4 (6.15%) Banking
5 4 (6.15%) Documentation Skills
5 4 (6.15%) Public Sector
6 2 (3.08%) Organisational Skills
6 2 (3.08%) Presentation Skills
7 1 (1.54%) Law
Job Titles
1 8 (12.31%) Analyst
2 7 (10.77%) Senior
3 6 (9.23%) Security Engineer
4 5 (7.69%) Architect
4 5 (7.69%) Consultant
4 5 (7.69%) Security Specialist
5 4 (6.15%) Platform Engineer
5 4 (6.15%) Project Manager
6 3 (4.62%) Azure Engineer
6 3 (4.62%) Azure Security Engineer
6 3 (4.62%) Business Analyst
6 3 (4.62%) Security Architect
6 3 (4.62%) Security Manager
6 3 (4.62%) Security Project Manager
6 3 (4.62%) Senior Data Warehouse Specialist
6 3 (4.62%) Senior Security Specialist
6 3 (4.62%) Solutions Architect
7 2 (3.08%) DevSecOps Engineer
7 2 (3.08%) Lead
7 2 (3.08%) Project Manager - Cybersecurity
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (21.54%) OAuth
1 14 (21.54%) SAML
2 11 (16.92%) OpenID
3 8 (12.31%) OAuth2
4 5 (7.69%) LDAP
5 4 (6.15%) ARM Templates
5 4 (6.15%) Microsoft Graph
5 4 (6.15%) RESTful
6 2 (3.08%) 802.1X
6 2 (3.08%) Flash
6 2 (3.08%) GraphQL
6 2 (3.08%) JWT
6 2 (3.08%) Middleware
6 2 (3.08%) Node.js
6 2 (3.08%) Smart Contracts
7 1 (1.54%) Kafka
7 1 (1.54%) Model Context Protocol
7 1 (1.54%) SailPoint
7 1 (1.54%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 9 (13.85%) Cloud Native
1 9 (13.85%) Security Posture
2 6 (9.23%) Onboarding
3 5 (7.69%) Management Information System
3 5 (7.69%) Product Ownership
4 4 (6.15%) Hybrid Cloud
5 3 (4.62%) Distributed Systems
6 2 (3.08%) Blockchain
6 2 (3.08%) Cloud Security Posture
6 2 (3.08%) Cyber Threat
6 2 (3.08%) Data Protection Act
6 2 (3.08%) Operational Technology
6 2 (3.08%) PMI
7 1 (1.54%) CMDB
7 1 (1.54%) Cyberattack
7 1 (1.54%) Data Centre
7 1 (1.54%) NHS
7 1 (1.54%) PKI
7 1 (1.54%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 6 (9.23%) Linux
2 4 (6.15%) AIX
2 4 (6.15%) Solaris
2 4 (6.15%) Windows
3 2 (3.08%) VMS
4 1 (1.54%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 25 (38.46%) Cybersecurity
2 21 (32.31%) Risk Management
3 18 (27.69%) CI/CD
3 18 (27.69%) Infrastructure as Code
4 17 (26.15%) Cloud Security
5 16 (24.62%) DevOps
6 15 (23.08%) Zero Trust
7 14 (21.54%) Data Protection
7 14 (21.54%) Stakeholder Management
8 13 (20.00%) AI
8 13 (20.00%) Incident Response
9 12 (18.46%) Agile
9 12 (18.46%) Information Security
9 12 (18.46%) SIEM
10 11 (16.92%) DevSecOps
10 11 (16.92%) RBAC
11 10 (15.38%) Data Loss Prevention
11 10 (15.38%) Regulatory Compliance
12 9 (13.85%) Continuous Improvement
12 9 (13.85%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 12 (18.46%) PowerShell
1 12 (18.46%) Python
2 8 (12.31%) Bash
2 8 (12.31%) Bicep
3 3 (4.62%) Go
3 3 (4.62%) SQL
4 2 (3.08%) Java
4 2 (3.08%) Rust
4 2 (3.08%) Solidity
5 1 (1.54%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 14 (21.54%) CISSP
2 12 (18.46%) CISM
2 12 (18.46%) Degree
3 6 (9.23%) CISA
3 6 (9.23%) CRISC
3 6 (9.23%) Security Cleared
4 5 (7.69%) Azure Certification
5 4 (6.15%) Cisco Certification
5 4 (6.15%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
5 4 (6.15%) Microsoft Certification
5 4 (6.15%) PMI Certification
5 4 (6.15%) PMP
5 4 (6.15%) SC Cleared
6 3 (4.62%) (ISC)2 CCSP
6 3 (4.62%) AWS Certification
6 3 (4.62%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (4.62%) Master's Degree
7 2 (3.08%) BPSS Clearance
7 2 (3.08%) CCSK
7 2 (3.08%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 44 (67.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 32 (49.23%) NIST
3 28 (43.08%) GDPR
4 20 (30.77%) PCI DSS
5 11 (16.92%) GRC
6 10 (15.38%) HIPAA
7 5 (7.69%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 4 (6.15%) NIST 800
9 3 (4.62%) EU AI Act
9 3 (4.62%) PMO
10 2 (3.08%) COBIT
10 2 (3.08%) Cyber Essentials
10 2 (3.08%) FedRAMP
10 2 (3.08%) ISO 31000
10 2 (3.08%) SLA
11 1 (1.54%) Data Quality
11 1 (1.54%) ISO 22301
11 1 (1.54%) NCSC
11 1 (1.54%) QA
System Software
1 10 (15.38%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 15 (23.08%) Terraform
2 12 (18.46%) Single Sign-On
3 6 (9.23%) Kubernetes
4 2 (3.08%) Ansible
4 2 (3.08%) CASB
4 2 (3.08%) Microsoft Intune
4 2 (3.08%) PingFederate
5 1 (1.54%) CSIRT
5 1 (1.54%) QRadar
Vendors
1 14 (21.54%) Microsoft
2 7 (10.77%) Splunk
3 4 (6.15%) CrowdStrike
3 4 (6.15%) Databricks
3 4 (6.15%) Ping Identity
4 3 (4.62%) CyberArk
4 3 (4.62%) Google
4 3 (4.62%) ServiceNow
4 3 (4.62%) Tenable
5 2 (3.08%) BeyondTrust
5 2 (3.08%) Okta
5 2 (3.08%) Optimizely
5 2 (3.08%) Qualys
5 2 (3.08%) Salesforce
6 1 (1.54%) Informatica
6 1 (1.54%) Intel
6 1 (1.54%) Rapid7
6 1 (1.54%) Talend
6 1 (1.54%) Zscaler