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 5 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 373 417 466
Rank change year-on-year +44 +49 -54
Contract jobs citing NCSC 295 106 120
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.60% 0.37% 0.28%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 3.60% 2.28% 2.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 219 63 75
10th Percentile £461 £500 £481
25th Percentile £514 £563 £556
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £615 £645 £650
Median % change year-on-year -4.65% -0.77% -3.70%
75th Percentile £710 £699 £700
90th Percentile £803 £745 £741
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £640 £613
% change year-on-year -6.25% +4.49% -12.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 8 2
10th Percentile £73.75 £49.13 £80.34
25th Percentile £80.48 £60.75 £80.85
Median hourly rate £83.65 £84.21 £81.71
Median % change year-on-year -0.66% +3.06% +10.43%
75th Percentile £85.40 £88.75 £82.56
90th Percentile - £92.50 £83.07
UK excluding London median hourly rate £85.40 £84.21 £80.00
% change year-on-year +1.42% +5.26% +9.62%

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 8,198 4,644 5,964
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.69% 16.05% 13.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,257 2,965 3,756
10th Percentile £342 £263 £280
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +5.26% - -2.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 485 185 409
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.13 £10.99
25th Percentile £18.50 £22.00 £13.18
Median hourly rate £36.07 £32.50 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.98% +41.30% -39.07%
75th Percentile £67.50 £67.50 £48.75
90th Percentile £82.15 £81.65 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £32.81 £18.97
% change year-on-year +21.91% +72.96% -49.41%

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 5 June 2026.

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 5 June 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for NCSC in the UK

NCSC
Top 14 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 5 June 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
England +41 257 £625 -3.85% 96
UK excluding London -39 136 £600 -6.25% 81
Work from Home +41 114 £643 +0.86% 54
London +6 104 £625 -3.85% 26
South East -9 81 £600 -11.11% 24
South West -19 26 £600 -6.98% 28
North of England -72 14 £671 +19.33% 9
North West -32 10 £677 +16.52% 5
Midlands -56 6 £638 -1.92% 8
West Midlands -60 6 £638 -1.92% 5
Scotland -6 5 £451 -9.90% 6
Yorkshire - 4 £638 - 4
East of England -29 3 £450 +80.72% 3
Wales - 1 £550 - 2

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 6 (2.03%) Confluence
2 3 (1.02%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.68%) Camunda
3 2 (0.68%) WebLogic
3 2 (0.68%) WebSphere
4 1 (0.34%) SharePoint 2010
4 1 (0.34%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 2 (0.68%) PlantUML
2 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 6 (2.03%) Oracle ERP
2 3 (1.02%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 2 (0.68%) SAP GRC
3 2 (0.68%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 104 (35.25%) Azure
2 77 (26.10%) AWS
3 30 (10.17%) Entra ID
4 25 (8.47%) GCP
5 24 (8.14%) OpenShift
6 19 (6.44%) Microsoft 365
6 19 (6.44%) SaaS
7 15 (5.08%) Azure DevOps
8 11 (3.73%) IaaS
8 11 (3.73%) PaaS
9 10 (3.39%) GitHub
10 9 (3.05%) Amazon EKS
10 9 (3.05%) Azure AKS
10 9 (3.05%) GitHub Actions
11 8 (2.71%) OCI
12 7 (2.37%) Azure Monitor
12 7 (2.37%) Serverless
13 6 (2.03%) AWS CloudFormation
13 6 (2.03%) Azure Sentinel
14 5 (1.69%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 30 (10.17%) Firewall
2 22 (7.46%) Network Security
3 11 (3.73%) VPN
4 10 (3.39%) BGP
4 10 (3.39%) IPsec
5 9 (3.05%) OSPF
5 9 (3.05%) SD-WAN
5 9 (3.05%) WAN
6 8 (2.71%) MPLS
7 7 (2.37%) DNS
8 6 (2.03%) LAN
8 6 (2.03%) VSAN
9 4 (1.36%) Ethernet VPN
9 4 (1.36%) MQTT
9 4 (1.36%) Multicast
9 4 (1.36%) VLAN
9 4 (1.36%) VXLAN
10 3 (1.02%) DHCP
10 3 (1.02%) Kerberos
10 3 (1.02%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (1.69%) PostgreSQL
2 4 (1.36%) Azure SQL Database
3 3 (1.02%) Amazon RDS
3 3 (1.02%) Oracle Reports
3 3 (1.02%) Power BI
3 3 (1.02%) Redis
3 3 (1.02%) Relational Database
4 2 (0.68%) DynamoDB
4 2 (0.68%) MySQL
5 1 (0.34%) Amazon Redshift
5 1 (0.34%) BigQuery
5 1 (0.34%) EDRMS
5 1 (0.34%) Metadata
5 1 (0.34%) NoSQL
5 1 (0.34%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 15 (5.08%) Jenkins
2 10 (3.39%) JIRA
3 5 (1.69%) Git
3 5 (1.69%) GitLab
4 2 (0.68%) Ant
4 2 (0.68%) Cucumber
4 2 (0.68%) Cypress.io
4 2 (0.68%) Gradle
4 2 (0.68%) JUnit
4 2 (0.68%) Maven
4 2 (0.68%) Mockito
5 1 (0.34%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 87 (29.49%) Public Sector
2 81 (27.46%) Social Skills
3 35 (11.86%) Finance
4 21 (7.12%) Influencing Skills
5 19 (6.44%) Documentation Skills
6 17 (5.76%) Analytical Skills
7 14 (4.75%) Telecoms
8 10 (3.39%) Military
9 9 (3.05%) Law
10 7 (2.37%) Local Government
10 7 (2.37%) Manufacturing
10 7 (2.37%) Police
11 5 (1.69%) Legal
12 3 (1.02%) Electronics
12 3 (1.02%) Marketing
13 2 (0.68%) Aerospace
13 2 (0.68%) Banking
13 2 (0.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 2 (0.68%) Organisational Skills
13 2 (0.68%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 110 (37.29%) Architect
2 47 (15.93%) Security Architect
3 28 (9.49%) Consultant
3 28 (9.49%) Lead
3 28 (9.49%) Senior
4 27 (9.15%) Technical Architect
5 17 (5.76%) Security Consultant
6 14 (4.75%) Security Manager
7 13 (4.41%) CyberArk Architect
7 13 (4.41%) Solutions Architect
8 12 (4.07%) Cybersecurity Manager
9 10 (3.39%) Analyst
9 10 (3.39%) Cloud Engineer
9 10 (3.39%) Coordinator
9 10 (3.39%) Lead Architect
9 10 (3.39%) Security Assurance Coordinator
9 10 (3.39%) Security Engineer
10 9 (3.05%) Azure Engineer
10 9 (3.05%) Tester
11 8 (2.71%) Service Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (7.12%) LDAP
2 19 (6.44%) SAML
3 18 (6.10%) OpenID
4 5 (1.69%) .NET
4 5 (1.69%) Kafka
4 5 (1.69%) OAuth
4 5 (1.69%) Oracle Fusion
4 5 (1.69%) REST
5 4 (1.36%) ADO
5 4 (1.36%) ARM Templates
5 4 (1.36%) SOAP
6 3 (1.02%) JSON
6 3 (1.02%) Keycloak
6 3 (1.02%) Web Services
7 2 (0.68%) AngularJS
7 2 (0.68%) CSS
7 2 (0.68%) HTML
7 2 (0.68%) Nightwatchjs
7 2 (0.68%) OpenAPI
7 2 (0.68%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 26 (8.81%) Cloud Native
2 20 (6.78%) Management Information System
2 20 (6.78%) Onboarding
2 20 (6.78%) Operational Technology
3 14 (4.75%) Cyber Threat
4 13 (4.41%) PKI
4 13 (4.41%) Public Cloud
4 13 (4.41%) Security Operations Centre
4 13 (4.41%) Security Posture
5 10 (3.39%) CSOC
5 10 (3.39%) Data Centre
6 9 (3.05%) SCADA
7 8 (2.71%) Product Ownership
8 7 (2.37%) Hybrid Cloud
8 7 (2.37%) Private Cloud
9 6 (2.03%) NHS
10 5 (1.69%) Legacy Systems
11 4 (1.36%) CESG
11 4 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
12 3 (1.02%) CCTV
Operating Systems
1 22 (7.46%) Linux
2 15 (5.08%) Windows
3 6 (2.03%) Windows Server
4 3 (1.02%) Android
4 3 (1.02%) Apple iOS
4 3 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (1.02%) VMS
5 2 (0.68%) Unix
6 1 (0.34%) CentOS
6 1 (0.34%) Rocky
6 1 (0.34%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.34%) Windows 10
6 1 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 134 (45.42%) Cybersecurity
2 75 (25.42%) CI/CD
3 68 (23.05%) DevOps
4 65 (22.03%) Infrastructure as Code
5 64 (21.69%) Cloud Security
6 59 (20.00%) Agile
7 57 (19.32%) Stakeholder Management
8 55 (18.64%) Security Architecture
9 54 (18.31%) Risk Management
10 49 (16.61%) Threat Modelling
11 45 (15.25%) Continuous Improvement
12 44 (14.92%) Incident Response
13 38 (12.88%) SIEM
13 38 (12.88%) Zero Trust
14 37 (12.54%) TOGAF
15 35 (11.86%) Containerisation
16 34 (11.53%) Architectural Patterns
17 32 (10.85%) DevSecOps
17 32 (10.85%) Roadmaps
17 32 (10.85%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 14 (4.75%) Bicep
2 13 (4.41%) Python
3 11 (3.73%) SQL
4 8 (2.71%) PowerShell
5 6 (2.03%) Bash
5 6 (2.03%) Java
6 2 (0.68%) Go
6 2 (0.68%) Groovy
6 2 (0.68%) Kotlin
6 2 (0.68%) Swift
7 1 (0.34%) C#
Qualifications
1 210 (71.19%) Security Cleared
2 175 (59.32%) SC Cleared
3 52 (17.63%) DV Cleared
4 38 (12.88%) CISSP
5 34 (11.53%) CISM
6 26 (8.81%) Cisco Certification
7 19 (6.44%) Degree
8 13 (4.41%) CCNP
9 11 (3.73%) AWS Certification
9 11 (3.73%) Azure Certification
9 11 (3.73%) GIAC
10 10 (3.39%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 10 (3.39%) CHECK Team Leader
11 9 (3.05%) CEH
11 9 (3.05%) CESG Certified Professional
12 8 (2.71%) CCIE
12 8 (2.71%) CCSP
12 8 (2.71%) CompTIA Security+
13 7 (2.37%) CHECK Team Member
13 7 (2.37%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 103 (34.92%) NIST
2 87 (29.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 42 (14.24%) GDPR
4 33 (11.19%) Cyber Essentials
5 21 (7.12%) JSP 440
5 21 (7.12%) NIST 800
6 18 (6.10%) RMADS
7 17 (5.76%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 14 (4.75%) Government Security Classifications
9 11 (3.73%) GRC
10 10 (3.39%) COBIT
10 10 (3.39%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 10 (3.39%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 7 (2.37%) ISO/IEC 20000
11 7 (2.37%) ISO/IEC 27005
11 7 (2.37%) PCI DSS
12 6 (2.03%) IASME
13 5 (1.69%) QA
14 4 (1.36%) Accessibility
15 3 (1.02%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 25 (8.47%) Active Directory
2 14 (4.75%) VMware Infrastructure
3 12 (4.07%) Docker
4 9 (3.05%) VMware NSX
5 5 (1.69%) Hyper-V
6 4 (1.36%) VMware ESXi
7 3 (1.02%) vSphere
8 1 (0.34%) GPFS
8 1 (0.34%) KVM
8 1 (0.34%) Lustre
8 1 (0.34%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 1 (0.34%) UAG
8 1 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 49 (16.61%) Kubernetes
2 32 (10.85%) Terraform
3 12 (4.07%) Ansible
4 6 (2.03%) Istio
5 5 (1.69%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 5 (1.69%) Grafana
5 5 (1.69%) Prometheus
6 4 (1.36%) Argo
7 3 (1.02%) linkerd
8 2 (0.68%) Cisco Prime
8 2 (0.68%) Iperf
8 2 (0.68%) Microsoft Intune
8 2 (0.68%) Nmap
8 2 (0.68%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.34%) Cisco CUCM
9 1 (0.34%) CloudForms
9 1 (0.34%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
9 1 (0.34%) FortiGate
9 1 (0.34%) McAfee ePO
9 1 (0.34%) SELinux
Vendors
1 52 (17.63%) Microsoft
2 24 (8.14%) VMware
3 21 (7.12%) Splunk
4 17 (5.76%) Cisco
5 14 (4.75%) CyberArk
6 12 (4.07%) Palo Alto
7 9 (3.05%) Fortinet
7 9 (3.05%) Oracle
8 8 (2.71%) Red Hat
9 5 (1.69%) CheckPoint
9 5 (1.69%) Juniper
9 5 (1.69%) SAP
9 5 (1.69%) ServiceNow
9 5 (1.69%) Zscaler
10 4 (1.36%) BiZZdesign
10 4 (1.36%) Citrix
10 4 (1.36%) Google
11 3 (1.02%) SolarWinds
11 3 (1.02%) Sparx
11 3 (1.02%) Tenable