NCSC Contract Job Trends

National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring NCSC skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 26 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 375 445 334
Rank change year-on-year +70 -111 +248
Contract jobs citing NCSC 219 103 306
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.61% 0.28% 0.67%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 3.45% 2.07% 4.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 155 61 128
10th Percentile £468 £481 £500
25th Percentile £540 £505 £544
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £575 £611
Median % change year-on-year +8.70% -5.93% -7.39%
75th Percentile £700 £725 £725
90th Percentile £775 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £648 £600 £610
% change year-on-year +7.92% -1.64% -6.15%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 3 28
10th Percentile £55.35 - £64.28
25th Percentile £81.25 £60.75 £80.15
Median hourly rate £87.00 £61.50 £83.40
Median % change year-on-year +41.47% -26.26% +31.90%
75th Percentile £91.50 £62.24 -
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £87.50 £61.50 £83.40
% change year-on-year +42.29% -26.26% +21.76%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 6,344 4,970 6,555
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.60% 13.63% 14.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,074 2,897 4,373
10th Percentile £309 £270 £313
25th Percentile £404 £387 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £625 £649
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.16% -5.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 313 228 239
10th Percentile £13.60 £13.52 £15.31
25th Percentile £17.48 £16.25 £20.88
Median hourly rate £26.11 £27.43 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.79% -31.44% +70.21%
75th Percentile £60.00 £55.00 £66.25
90th Percentile £79.97 £70.00 £83.28
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.57 £26.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -14.83% -40.45% +111.90%

NCSC
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing NCSC relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

NCSC job vacancy trend in the UK

NCSC
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing NCSC.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing NCSC

NCSC
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing NCSC over the 6 months to 26 November 2025.

Daily rate histogram for NCSC in the UK

NCSC
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing NCSC.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing NCSC

NCSC
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing NCSC over the 6 months to 26 November 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for NCSC in the UK

NCSC
Top 16 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing NCSC within the UK over the 6 months to 26 November 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
England +76 193 £625 +5.93% 161
UK excluding London +25 119 £648 +7.92% 197
Work from Home +50 77 £640 +16.36% 169
London +21 61 £600 +14.29% 21
South West +43 52 £675 +3.85% 28
South East -14 20 £573 -3.38% 53
East of England +1 16 £294 - 26
West Midlands -7 15 £700 +24.44% 10
Midlands -17 15 £700 +24.44% 18
North of England -45 13 £527 -24.73% 23
North West -17 8 £400 -20.32% 10
Wales -2 5 £238 -51.18% 10
Channel Islands - 5 £725 -
Yorkshire -35 4 £600 -18.64% 9
Scotland -2 3 £588 -26.56% 38
North East -8 1 £550 -26.67% 4

NCSC
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 5 (2.28%) Confluence
2 3 (1.37%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.91%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (0.46%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (0.91%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 74 (33.79%) Azure
2 59 (26.94%) AWS
3 26 (11.87%) GitHub
4 21 (9.59%) Entra ID
5 15 (6.85%) AWS CloudFormation
6 13 (5.94%) Azure DevOps
7 12 (5.48%) GCP
8 10 (4.57%) AWS Fargate
8 10 (4.57%) Microsoft 365
8 10 (4.57%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 9 (4.11%) Amazon ECS
9 9 (4.11%) SaaS
10 8 (3.65%) Azure Sentinel
11 6 (2.74%) Amazon S3
11 6 (2.74%) Azure Monitor
12 5 (2.28%) Amazon EKS
12 5 (2.28%) Azure Key Vault
12 5 (2.28%) GitHub Actions
13 4 (1.83%) AWS Lambda
13 4 (1.83%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 20 (9.13%) Firewall
2 19 (8.68%) Network Security
3 12 (5.48%) DNS
4 8 (3.65%) BGP
5 7 (3.20%) VPN
6 4 (1.83%) VSAN
7 3 (1.37%) 4G
7 3 (1.37%) 5G
7 3 (1.37%) SD-WAN
7 3 (1.37%) Skype
7 3 (1.37%) WAN
8 2 (0.91%) DHCP
8 2 (0.91%) DMZ
8 2 (0.91%) EIGRP
8 2 (0.91%) Internet
8 2 (0.91%) OSPF
8 2 (0.91%) SNMP
8 2 (0.91%) TCP/IP
9 1 (0.46%) NAS
9 1 (0.46%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (3.20%) Amazon RDS
1 7 (3.20%) MongoDB
2 2 (0.91%) Amazon Athena
2 2 (0.91%) Amazon Redshift
2 2 (0.91%) BigQuery
2 2 (0.91%) Redis
2 2 (0.91%) Weaviate
3 1 (0.46%) Amazon QuickSight
3 1 (0.46%) Data Warehouse
3 1 (0.46%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (0.46%) Power BI
3 1 (0.46%) SQL Server
3 1 (0.46%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 15 (6.85%) GitLab
1 15 (6.85%) SonarQube
2 13 (5.94%) Jenkins
3 7 (3.20%) JIRA
4 5 (2.28%) Git
5 4 (1.83%) Terragrunt
6 3 (1.37%) Burp Suite
6 3 (1.37%) Metasploit
7 1 (0.46%) Mocha
7 1 (0.46%) MSI
General
1 65 (29.68%) Public Sector
2 59 (26.94%) Social Skills
3 25 (11.42%) Military
4 15 (6.85%) Finance
5 9 (4.11%) Manufacturing
5 9 (4.11%) Police
6 8 (3.65%) Documentation Skills
6 8 (3.65%) Electronics
6 8 (3.65%) Law
6 8 (3.65%) Marketing
6 8 (3.65%) Telecoms
7 7 (3.20%) Aerospace
7 7 (3.20%) Back Office
8 5 (2.28%) Analytical Skills
8 5 (2.28%) Local Government
9 3 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (0.91%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (0.91%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (0.91%) Retail
11 1 (0.46%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 59 (26.94%) Architect
2 38 (17.35%) Lead
3 30 (13.70%) Security Engineer
4 27 (12.33%) Security Architect
5 19 (8.68%) Senior
6 16 (7.31%) Consultant
7 14 (6.39%) Analyst
8 12 (5.48%) DevSecOps Engineer
8 12 (5.48%) Security Consultant
9 11 (5.02%) Solutions Architect
10 10 (4.57%) Security Analyst
11 8 (3.65%) DevOps Engineer
11 8 (3.65%) Security Manager
12 7 (3.20%) SOC Architect
13 6 (2.74%) Azure Engineer
13 6 (2.74%) Lead DevOps
13 6 (2.74%) Lead DevOps Engineer
13 6 (2.74%) Product Owner
14 5 (2.28%) Cloud Engineer
14 5 (2.28%) Cybersecurity Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (5.02%) YAML
2 9 (4.11%) Kafka
3 8 (3.65%) Keycloak
4 7 (3.20%) cloud-init
4 7 (3.20%) ModSecurity
5 4 (1.83%) AWS CDK
6 3 (1.37%) .NET
6 3 (1.37%) SailPoint
7 2 (0.91%) Azure Blueprints
7 2 (0.91%) Faiss
7 2 (0.91%) LangChain
7 2 (0.91%) LangGraph
7 2 (0.91%) RabbitMQ
7 2 (0.91%) REST
8 1 (0.46%) Express.js
8 1 (0.46%) Node.js
8 1 (0.46%) OAuth
8 1 (0.46%) OAuth2
8 1 (0.46%) PyTorch
8 1 (0.46%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 22 (10.05%) Cyber Threat
2 19 (8.68%) Management Information System
3 18 (8.22%) PKI
4 16 (7.31%) Security Posture
5 12 (5.48%) Onboarding
6 11 (5.02%) Cloud Native
6 11 (5.02%) Product Ownership
7 9 (4.11%) Cyber Defence
8 8 (3.65%) CSOC
9 6 (2.74%) Legacy Applications
9 6 (2.74%) NHS
9 6 (2.74%) Operational Technology
9 6 (2.74%) Private Cloud
9 6 (2.74%) Public Cloud
10 5 (2.28%) Security Operations Centre
11 4 (1.83%) Data Centre
11 4 (1.83%) Enterprise Cloud
11 4 (1.83%) Legacy Systems
12 3 (1.37%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 3 (1.37%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 15 (6.85%) Linux
2 12 (5.48%) Windows
3 7 (3.20%) CentOS
3 7 (3.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 7 (3.20%) Unix
4 6 (2.74%) Windows Server
5 4 (1.83%) Mac OS
6 3 (1.37%) Windows 10
6 3 (1.37%) Windows Server 2008
7 2 (0.91%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (0.46%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 79 (36.07%) Cybersecurity
2 53 (24.20%) Cloud Security
3 48 (21.92%) CI/CD
4 47 (21.46%) DevOps
5 41 (18.72%) Infrastructure as Code
6 39 (17.81%) Incident Response
7 37 (16.89%) Risk Management
8 35 (15.98%) DevSecOps
9 31 (14.16%) SIEM
9 31 (14.16%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 31 (14.16%) Zero Trust
10 29 (13.24%) Threat Modelling
11 28 (12.79%) Containerisation
12 27 (12.33%) Information Assurance
13 25 (11.42%) Agile
14 22 (10.05%) Information Security
14 22 (10.05%) Security Architecture
15 21 (9.59%) GAP Analysis
15 21 (9.59%) OWASP
15 21 (9.59%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 21 (9.59%) Python
2 15 (6.85%) Bash
3 10 (4.57%) PowerShell
4 8 (3.65%) Bicep
5 7 (3.20%) Go
6 5 (2.28%) Shell Script
7 4 (1.83%) SQL
8 2 (0.91%) C#
8 2 (0.91%) Java
9 1 (0.46%) Kusto Query Language
9 1 (0.46%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 164 (74.89%) Security Cleared
2 127 (57.99%) SC Cleared
3 50 (22.83%) DV Cleared
4 45 (20.55%) CISSP
5 31 (14.16%) CISM
6 20 (9.13%) Degree
7 11 (5.02%) Cisco Certification
7 11 (5.02%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
8 9 (4.11%) CompTIA Security+
9 8 (3.65%) CESG Certified Professional
10 7 (3.20%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 7 (3.20%) Azure Certification
10 7 (3.20%) BPSS Clearance
10 7 (3.20%) CHECK Team Member
10 7 (3.20%) CREST Certified
10 7 (3.20%) Microsoft Certification
11 6 (2.74%) CHECK Team Leader
11 6 (2.74%) OSCP
12 5 (2.28%) AWS Certification
13 4 (1.83%) Tigerscheme
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 87 (39.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 75 (34.25%) NIST
3 40 (18.26%) JSP 440
4 28 (12.79%) NIST 800
5 23 (10.50%) Cyber Essentials
6 21 (9.59%) GDPR
7 12 (5.48%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 11 (5.02%) RMADS
9 10 (4.57%) ISO/IEC 27005
10 9 (4.11%) GRC
11 8 (3.65%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 7 (3.20%) Government Security Classifications
13 4 (1.83%) Def Stans
13 4 (1.83%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 3 (1.37%) Actionable Recommendations
14 3 (1.37%) IASME
15 2 (0.91%) PCI DSS
16 1 (0.46%) COBIT
16 1 (0.46%) ISO 22301
16 1 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 18 (8.22%) Docker
2 14 (6.39%) Active Directory
2 14 (6.39%) Firmware
3 4 (1.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (1.37%) VMware ESXi
5 2 (0.91%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.46%) BitLocker
6 1 (0.46%) GPFS
6 1 (0.46%) Lustre
6 1 (0.46%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 1 (0.46%) UAG
6 1 (0.46%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 41 (18.72%) Terraform
2 34 (15.53%) Kubernetes
3 13 (5.94%) Ansible
3 13 (5.94%) Jamf Pro
4 8 (3.65%) Grafana
4 8 (3.65%) Prometheus
5 7 (3.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 7 (3.20%) Packer
6 5 (2.28%) Single Sign-On
7 3 (1.37%) Check_MK
7 3 (1.37%) Microsoft Intune
7 3 (1.37%) Nmap
7 3 (1.37%) OPNET
7 3 (1.37%) vCenter Server
8 2 (0.91%) SELinux
9 1 (0.46%) Argo
9 1 (0.46%) FortiGate
9 1 (0.46%) Istio
9 1 (0.46%) linkerd
9 1 (0.46%) VxRail
Vendors
1 30 (13.70%) Microsoft
2 14 (6.39%) Splunk
2 14 (6.39%) VMware
3 11 (5.02%) Okta
4 8 (3.65%) SAP
5 7 (3.20%) Cisco
5 7 (3.20%) Google
6 4 (1.83%) CyberArk
6 4 (1.83%) NVIDIA
7 3 (1.37%) Fortinet
7 3 (1.37%) Juniper
7 3 (1.37%) LogRhythm
7 3 (1.37%) Veracode
8 2 (0.91%) Brio
8 2 (0.91%) CrowdStrike
8 2 (0.91%) Dynatrace
8 2 (0.91%) Foundry
8 2 (0.91%) Saba
8 2 (0.91%) SolarWinds
8 2 (0.91%) Sparx