NCSC Contracts in the South East

National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC)
England > South East

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the South East requiring NCSC skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited NCSC over the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 115 150 191
Rank change year-on-year +35 +41 +57
Contract jobs citing NCSC 44 55 31
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the South East 1.46% 0.99% 0.53%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 8.59% 6.63% 3.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 23 11 25
10th Percentile £563 £525 £620
25th Percentile £590 £596 -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £630 £613 £700
Median % change year-on-year +2.86% -12.50% +33.33%
75th Percentile £743 £643 £799
90th Percentile £749 £650 £838
England median daily rate £650 £600 £675
% change year-on-year +8.33% -11.11% +8.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £60.75 - £71.20
Median hourly rate £67.40 - £72.40
75th Percentile £85.22 - £73.59
90th Percentile £90.00 - -
England median hourly rate £78.36 £81.71 £72.98
% change year-on-year -4.09% +11.96% +17.78%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
South East

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 South East.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 512 830 886
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 17.01% 14.93% 15.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 305 435 563
10th Percentile £200 £232 £200
25th Percentile £363 £361 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% - -
75th Percentile £600 £575 £575
90th Percentile £650 £638 £700
England median daily rate £513 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.38% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 32 65 43
10th Percentile £21.32 £10.82 £18.25
25th Percentile £24.66 £15.38 £19.00
Median hourly rate £46.30 £27.50 £31.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.36% -11.29% +47.44%
75th Percentile £62.24 £48.75 £51.94
90th Percentile £77.27 £65.00 £67.50
England median hourly rate £34.75 £22.34 £41.50
% change year-on-year +55.55% -46.17% +50.91%

NCSC
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Job postings citing NCSC as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the South East.

Job vacancy trend for NCSC in the South East

NCSC
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the South East

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing NCSC in the South East.

Daily rate trend for NCSC in the South East

NCSC
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing NCSC in the South East over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for NCSC in the South East

NCSC
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing NCSC in the South East.

Hourly rate trend for NCSC in the South East

NCSC
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South East

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing NCSC in the South East over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for NCSC in the South East

NCSC
Contract Job Locations in the South East

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing NCSC within the South East region over the 6 months to 1 May 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
Thames Valley +51 37 £653 +6.53% 5
Buckinghamshire +28 18 £630 +2.86% 1
Berkshire +26 18 £734 - 3
Hampshire +3 3 - - 7
East Sussex - 2 £563 -
Oxfordshire - 1 £675 - 2
Surrey - 1 - - 1
West Sussex - 1 £550 - 2
NCSC
England

NCSC
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the South East 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:

Application Platforms
1 2 (4.55%) Camunda
1 2 (4.55%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (2.27%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 12 (27.27%) Azure
1 12 (27.27%) PaaS
2 10 (22.73%) AWS
2 10 (22.73%) IaaS
2 10 (22.73%) SaaS
3 5 (11.36%) Microsoft 365
4 2 (4.55%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 2 (4.55%) Amazon ECS
4 2 (4.55%) AWS Fargate
4 2 (4.55%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 10 (22.73%) VSAN
2 4 (9.09%) BGP
2 4 (9.09%) Cisco Nexus
2 4 (9.09%) MPLS
2 4 (9.09%) NGFW
2 4 (9.09%) OSPF
2 4 (9.09%) SD-WAN
2 4 (9.09%) TCP/IP
2 4 (9.09%) VPN
2 4 (9.09%) WAN
3 3 (6.82%) DNS
3 3 (6.82%) Firewall
3 3 (6.82%) VLAN
4 2 (4.55%) Cisco ASA
5 1 (2.27%) Intrusion Detection
5 1 (2.27%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (4.55%) Amazon RDS
1 2 (4.55%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 2 (4.55%) Jenkins
1 2 (4.55%) JIRA
1 2 (4.55%) Terragrunt
General
1 12 (27.27%) Public Sector
2 5 (11.36%) Military
3 4 (9.09%) Social Skills
4 3 (6.82%) Analytical Skills
4 3 (6.82%) Telecoms
5 1 (2.27%) Automotive
5 1 (2.27%) Documentation Skills
5 1 (2.27%) Law
Job Titles
1 21 (47.73%) Architect
2 17 (38.64%) Senior
3 13 (29.55%) Technical Architect
4 10 (22.73%) Senior Architect
4 10 (22.73%) Senior Technical Architect
5 6 (13.64%) Auditor
5 6 (13.64%) Security Auditor
6 5 (11.36%) Information Security Specialist
6 5 (11.36%) Information Specialist
6 5 (11.36%) Principal Architect
6 5 (11.36%) Security Specialist
7 4 (9.09%) Infrastructure Technical Architect
7 4 (9.09%) Senior Data Warehouse Specialist
7 4 (9.09%) Senior Information Security Specialist
7 4 (9.09%) Senior Security Specialist
7 4 (9.09%) Technical Infrastructure Architect
8 3 (6.82%) Consultant
8 3 (6.82%) Security Advisor
8 3 (6.82%) Security Architect
8 3 (6.82%) Technical Writer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (4.55%) AngularJS
1 2 (4.55%) Kafka
1 2 (4.55%) Keycloak
1 2 (4.55%) OpenJDK
1 2 (4.55%) Spring Boot
1 2 (4.55%) YAML
2 1 (2.27%) Elastic Stack
2 1 (2.27%) JBoss Seam
Miscellaneous
1 11 (25.00%) Hybrid Cloud
1 11 (25.00%) Management Information System
2 10 (22.73%) PKI
3 8 (18.18%) Public Cloud
4 2 (4.55%) Operational Technology
5 1 (2.27%) SCADA
Processes & Methodologies
1 19 (43.18%) Containerisation
2 18 (40.91%) TOGAF
3 16 (36.36%) CI/CD
3 16 (36.36%) Cybersecurity
3 16 (36.36%) Infrastructure as Code
4 15 (34.09%) Microservices
5 14 (31.82%) DevSecOps
6 13 (29.55%) Continuous Delivery
6 13 (29.55%) Continuous Integration
6 13 (29.55%) ITIL
6 13 (29.55%) Zachman Framework
7 12 (27.27%) IT Strategy
7 12 (27.27%) Risk Management
7 12 (27.27%) Security Architecture
7 12 (27.27%) Technology Strategy
8 11 (25.00%) Decision-Making
9 10 (22.73%) Agile
9 10 (22.73%) Information Assurance
9 10 (22.73%) Matrix Organization
9 10 (22.73%) Vulnerability Assessment
Programming Languages
1 2 (4.55%) Java
1 2 (4.55%) PowerShell
1 2 (4.55%) Python
Qualifications
1 36 (81.82%) Security Cleared
2 24 (54.55%) SC Cleared
3 19 (43.18%) DV Cleared
4 14 (31.82%) MCSE
4 14 (31.82%) Microsoft Certification
5 10 (22.73%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 5 (11.36%) CCNP
6 5 (11.36%) Cisco Certification
6 5 (11.36%) Degree
7 4 (9.09%) CISM
8 2 (4.55%) AWS Certification
8 2 (4.55%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 2 (4.55%) Azure Certification
8 2 (4.55%) CISSP
9 1 (2.27%) CEH
9 1 (2.27%) CESG Certified Professional
9 1 (2.27%) CISA
9 1 (2.27%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (47.73%) NIST
2 12 (27.27%) Cyber Essentials
3 11 (25.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (2.27%) JSP 440
System Software
1 12 (27.27%) VMware Infrastructure
1 12 (27.27%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 4 (9.09%) Terraform
2 2 (4.55%) Microsoft Intune
2 2 (4.55%) SCCM
Vendors
1 16 (36.36%) VMware
2 12 (27.27%) Cisco
2 12 (27.27%) Palo Alto
3 4 (9.09%) Microsoft
4 1 (2.27%) Darktrace