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 30 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 505 470 533
Rank change year-on-year -35 +63 +134
Contract jobs citing SOC 2 53 19 23
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.16% 0.072% 0.061%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 0.94% 0.50% 0.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 39 10 15
10th Percentile £413 £397 £429
25th Percentile £425 £516 £466
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £588 £575
Median % change year-on-year -14.89% +2.17% +15.00%
75th Percentile £574 £619 £638
90th Percentile £865 £790 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £600 £575
% change year-on-year -16.67% +4.35% +15.00%

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 5,666 3,827 5,336
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 17.16% 14.40% 14.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,665 2,220 3,557
10th Percentile £322 £263 £313
25th Percentile £413 £378 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £613 £638 £650
90th Percentile £706 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 307 152 287
10th Percentile £15.49 £14.73 £12.00
25th Percentile £18.04 £20.88 £14.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £30.92 £28.30
Median % change year-on-year -18.65% +9.24% +1.07%
75th Percentile £63.45 £65.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £69.48 £75.00 £76.92
UK median hourly rate £26.34 £29.00 £26.66
% change year-on-year -9.17% +8.78% +2.54%

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 30 January 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 30 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
London -16 22 £525 -23.69% 18
North of England -52 12 £466 +29.00% 14
Yorkshire -48 8 £539 +30.58% 6
Midlands - 6 £442 - 10
South East - 6 £563 - 16
West Midlands - 3 £450 - 5
East Midlands - 3 £438 - 5
North West -20 2 £420 +35.48% 5
North East - 2 £466 - 3
South West - 2 - - 12
East of England -21 1 £525 -12.50% 6
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 1 (1.89%) Apache Airflow
1 1 (1.89%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (1.89%) Microsoft Office
1 1 (1.89%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 34 (64.15%) Azure
2 22 (41.51%) AWS
3 19 (35.85%) GCP
4 13 (24.53%) Entra ID
5 7 (13.21%) Amazon GuardDuty
6 6 (11.32%) AWS CloudFormation
6 6 (11.32%) Microsoft 365
7 5 (9.43%) Azure Sentinel
7 5 (9.43%) GitHub
7 5 (9.43%) GitHub Actions
7 5 (9.43%) Power Platform
8 4 (7.55%) Azure DevOps
8 4 (7.55%) SaaS
9 3 (5.66%) Azure Key Vault
9 3 (5.66%) Cloud Run
9 3 (5.66%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 3 (5.66%) Microsoft Purview
10 2 (3.77%) AWS KMS
10 2 (3.77%) AWS Lambda
10 2 (3.77%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 8 (15.09%) Network Security
2 5 (9.43%) Firewall
2 5 (9.43%) Reverse Proxy
3 3 (5.66%) VPN
4 2 (3.77%) Kerberos
4 2 (3.77%) SSH
5 1 (1.89%) BGP
5 1 (1.89%) DNS
5 1 (1.89%) OSPF
5 1 (1.89%) SSL
5 1 (1.89%) TCP/IP
5 1 (1.89%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (1.89%) Data Vault
1 1 (1.89%) Looker
1 1 (1.89%) Pinecone
1 1 (1.89%) Power BI
1 1 (1.89%) Snowflake Schema
1 1 (1.89%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 1 (1.89%) SonarQube
General
1 17 (32.08%) Social Skills
2 11 (20.75%) Finance
3 7 (13.21%) Analytical Skills
4 6 (11.32%) Banking
5 4 (7.55%) Legal
5 4 (7.55%) Public Sector
6 3 (5.66%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (3.77%) Financial Institution
7 2 (3.77%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (1.89%) Investment Banking
8 1 (1.89%) Law
8 1 (1.89%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 8 (15.09%) Architect
2 6 (11.32%) Analyst
3 5 (9.43%) Consultant
3 5 (9.43%) Security Engineer
4 4 (7.55%) Platform Engineer
4 4 (7.55%) Senior
5 3 (5.66%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
5 3 (5.66%) Security Architect
5 3 (5.66%) Solutions Architect
6 2 (3.77%) Administrator
6 2 (3.77%) Azure Engineer
6 2 (3.77%) Cybersecurity Analyst
6 2 (3.77%) Cybersecurity Architect
6 2 (3.77%) DevSecOps Engineer
6 2 (3.77%) Enterprise Architect
6 2 (3.77%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 2 (3.77%) Lead
6 2 (3.77%) Senior Architect
6 2 (3.77%) Senior Enterprise Architect
6 2 (3.77%) Senior Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (26.42%) OAuth
1 14 (26.42%) SAML
2 11 (20.75%) OpenID
3 8 (15.09%) OAuth2
4 5 (9.43%) LDAP
5 4 (7.55%) ARM Templates
5 4 (7.55%) RESTful
6 3 (5.66%) Microsoft Graph
6 3 (5.66%) Model Context Protocol
7 2 (3.77%) Flash
7 2 (3.77%) GraphQL
7 2 (3.77%) JWT
7 2 (3.77%) Middleware
7 2 (3.77%) Node.js
7 2 (3.77%) Smart Contracts
8 1 (1.89%) Faiss
8 1 (1.89%) FastAPI
8 1 (1.89%) Kafka
8 1 (1.89%) LangChain
8 1 (1.89%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 8 (15.09%) Cloud Native
1 8 (15.09%) Onboarding
2 5 (9.43%) Management Information System
3 4 (7.55%) Hybrid Cloud
3 4 (7.55%) Security Posture
4 3 (5.66%) Distributed Systems
4 3 (5.66%) Product Ownership
5 2 (3.77%) Blockchain
5 2 (3.77%) Cloud Security Posture
5 2 (3.77%) Cyber Threat
5 2 (3.77%) Data Protection Act
5 2 (3.77%) Enterprise Cloud
5 2 (3.77%) Greenfield Project
6 1 (1.89%) AI Agents
6 1 (1.89%) Cyberattack
6 1 (1.89%) Data Centre
6 1 (1.89%) Operational Technology
6 1 (1.89%) PKI
6 1 (1.89%) PMI
6 1 (1.89%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 8 (15.09%) Linux
2 4 (7.55%) Unix
3 3 (5.66%) AIX
3 3 (5.66%) Solaris
3 3 (5.66%) Windows
4 2 (3.77%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 21 (39.62%) Cybersecurity
2 19 (35.85%) CI/CD
2 19 (35.85%) Infrastructure as Code
3 17 (32.08%) DevOps
4 15 (28.30%) Cloud Security
5 13 (24.53%) Incident Response
6 12 (22.64%) RBAC
6 12 (22.64%) Risk Management
7 11 (20.75%) SIEM
7 11 (20.75%) Zero Trust
8 10 (18.87%) AI
8 10 (18.87%) Data Loss Prevention
8 10 (18.87%) DevSecOps
9 9 (16.98%) Problem-Solving
10 8 (15.09%) Data Protection
10 8 (15.09%) Key Management
10 8 (15.09%) Threat Modelling
11 7 (13.21%) Application Security
11 7 (13.21%) Containerisation
11 7 (13.21%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 16 (30.19%) Python
2 14 (26.42%) PowerShell
3 11 (20.75%) Bash
4 9 (16.98%) Bicep
5 4 (7.55%) Search Processing Language
6 3 (5.66%) Go
6 3 (5.66%) SQL
7 2 (3.77%) Java
7 2 (3.77%) Rust
7 2 (3.77%) Solidity
Qualifications
1 8 (15.09%) CISM
1 8 (15.09%) CISSP
1 8 (15.09%) Degree
2 4 (7.55%) Azure Certification
2 4 (7.55%) Microsoft Certification
2 4 (7.55%) Security Cleared
3 3 (5.66%) (ISC)2 CCSP
3 3 (5.66%) AWS Certification
3 3 (5.66%) Cisco Certification
3 3 (5.66%) Computer Science Degree
4 2 (3.77%) BPSS Clearance
4 2 (3.77%) CCSK
4 2 (3.77%) CEH
4 2 (3.77%) CISA
4 2 (3.77%) OSCP
4 2 (3.77%) SC Cleared
5 1 (1.89%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 1 (1.89%) CAPM
5 1 (1.89%) PMI Certification
5 1 (1.89%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (58.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 23 (43.40%) GDPR
3 19 (35.85%) NIST
4 13 (24.53%) HIPAA
5 11 (20.75%) PCI DSS
6 6 (11.32%) GRC
7 4 (7.55%) EU AI Act
8 3 (5.66%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
9 2 (3.77%) Cyber Essentials
9 2 (3.77%) FedRAMP
10 1 (1.89%) Data Quality
10 1 (1.89%) ISO 22301
10 1 (1.89%) NCSC
10 1 (1.89%) QA
System Software
1 10 (18.87%) Active Directory
2 3 (5.66%) Docker
Systems Management
1 20 (37.74%) Terraform
2 11 (20.75%) Single Sign-On
3 9 (16.98%) Kubernetes
4 5 (9.43%) Ansible
5 2 (3.77%) Microsoft Intune
5 2 (3.77%) PingFederate
6 1 (1.89%) CSIRT
6 1 (1.89%) Grafana
6 1 (1.89%) Prometheus
6 1 (1.89%) QRadar
Vendors
1 12 (22.64%) Microsoft
2 9 (16.98%) Splunk
3 6 (11.32%) Google
4 4 (7.55%) Databricks
4 4 (7.55%) Ping Identity
4 4 (7.55%) ServiceNow
5 3 (5.66%) CrowdStrike
6 2 (3.77%) BeyondTrust
6 2 (3.77%) CyberArk
6 2 (3.77%) Okta
6 2 (3.77%) Optimizely
6 2 (3.77%) Salesforce
7 1 (1.89%) Informatica
7 1 (1.89%) Intel
7 1 (1.89%) OpenAI
7 1 (1.89%) Rapid7
7 1 (1.89%) Talend
7 1 (1.89%) Tenable
7 1 (1.89%) Zscaler