NCSC Contract Job Trends in the North of England

National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC)
England > North of England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North of England requiring NCSC skills. It covers vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 9 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 178 156 182
Rank change year-on-year -22 +26 +42
Contract jobs citing NCSC 6 3 17
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North of England 0.15% 0.074% 0.33%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 0.94% 0.57% 2.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 4 2 12
10th Percentile £353 £481 £533
25th Percentile £431 £508 £606
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £559 £650
Median % change year-on-year -1.52% -14.08% +4.00%
75th Percentile £625 £603 £770
90th Percentile £670 £625 £797
England median daily rate £650 £588 £700
% change year-on-year +10.64% -16.07% +7.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 1
Median hourly rate - - £83.40
England median hourly rate £87.50 £70.75 £83.40
% change year-on-year +23.68% -15.17% +13.07%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
North of England

NCSC 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 North of England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 641 522 774
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 16.17% 12.81% 15.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 456 317 443
10th Percentile £269 £313 £300
25th Percentile £361 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £498 £500
Median % change year-on-year -9.55% -0.50% +2.56%
75th Percentile £550 £588 £581
90th Percentile £638 £669 £650
England median daily rate £500 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% +2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 22 41
10th Percentile £17.48 £11.88 £16.25
25th Percentile £22.14 £12.75 £18.00
Median hourly rate £23.57 £18.09 £32.00
Median % change year-on-year +30.31% -43.48% -16.19%
75th Percentile £60.68 £28.75 £49.52
90th Percentile £71.32 £43.10 £74.38
England median hourly rate £31.64 £28.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +11.02% -18.57% +52.17%

NCSC
Job Vacancy Trend in the North of England

Job postings citing NCSC as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the North of England.

Job vacancy trend for NCSC in the North of England

NCSC
Daily Rate Trend in the North of England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing NCSC.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing NCSC

NCSC
Daily Rate Histogram in the North of England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing NCSC in the North of England over the 6 months to 9 September 2025.

Daily rate histogram for NCSC in the North of England

NCSC
Hourly Rate Trend in the North of England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing NCSC.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing NCSC

NCSC
Contract Job Locations in the North of England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing NCSC within the North of England region over the 6 months to 9 September 2025. 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
North West -11 3 £400 -28.38% 3
Yorkshire - 3 £650 - 1
NCSC
England

NCSC
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the North of England by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Cloud Services
1 4 (66.67%) Azure
2 2 (33.33%) AWS
2 2 (33.33%) Azure DevOps
3 1 (16.67%) Amazon S3
3 1 (16.67%) AWS CloudFormation
3 1 (16.67%) AWS Lambda
3 1 (16.67%) Azure Stack
3 1 (16.67%) Entra ID
3 1 (16.67%) GCP
3 1 (16.67%) Microsoft 365
3 1 (16.67%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 1 (16.67%) DHCP
1 1 (16.67%) DNS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (16.67%) Amazon Athena
1 1 (16.67%) Amazon Redshift
1 1 (16.67%) Data Warehouse
General
1 6 (100.00%) Social Skills
2 5 (83.33%) Public Sector
3 2 (33.33%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 3 (50.00%) Architect
2 2 (33.33%) Security Manager
2 2 (33.33%) Solutions Architect
3 1 (16.67%) Cybersecurity Manager
3 1 (16.67%) Data Architect
3 1 (16.67%) Information Assurance Manager
3 1 (16.67%) Information Manager
3 1 (16.67%) Information Security Manager
3 1 (16.67%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 1 (16.67%) Infrastructure Security Engineer
3 1 (16.67%) Programme Manager
3 1 (16.67%) Security Assurance Manager
3 1 (16.67%) Security Engineer
3 1 (16.67%) Senior
3 1 (16.67%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
3 1 (16.67%) Senior Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (33.33%) .NET
Miscellaneous
1 3 (50.00%) Cloud Native
2 1 (16.67%) Management Information System
2 1 (16.67%) Operational Technology
2 1 (16.67%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 1 (16.67%) Linux
1 1 (16.67%) Windows
1 1 (16.67%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 3 (50.00%) Cybersecurity
1 3 (50.00%) Data Architecture
1 3 (50.00%) Integration Patterns
2 2 (33.33%) Architectural Patterns
2 2 (33.33%) CI/CD
2 2 (33.33%) DevOps
2 2 (33.33%) Event-Driven
2 2 (33.33%) Event-Driven Architecture
2 2 (33.33%) Incident Response
2 2 (33.33%) Information Security
2 2 (33.33%) Mentoring
2 2 (33.33%) Microservices
2 2 (33.33%) Software Engineering
2 2 (33.33%) Stakeholder Engagement
3 1 (16.67%) Agile
3 1 (16.67%) Data Analytics
3 1 (16.67%) Data Governance
3 1 (16.67%) Data Integration
3 1 (16.67%) Data Modelling
3 1 (16.67%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 2 (33.33%) C#
Qualifications
1 2 (33.33%) CISM
1 2 (33.33%) CISSP
2 1 (16.67%) AWS Certification
2 1 (16.67%) CESG Certified Professional
2 1 (16.67%) Degree
2 1 (16.67%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
2 1 (16.67%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (33.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (16.67%) Cyber Essentials
2 1 (16.67%) GDPR
2 1 (16.67%) NIST
System Software
1 1 (16.67%) Active Directory
1 1 (16.67%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 1 (16.67%) Terraform
Vendors
1 3 (50.00%) Microsoft
2 2 (33.33%) Brio