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 19 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 368 456 343
Rank change year-on-year +88 -113 +242
Contract jobs citing NCSC 228 99 311
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.64% 0.27% 0.67%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 3.62% 2.04% 4.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 161 58 131
10th Percentile £463 £487 £500
25th Percentile £540 £506 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £640 £583 £618
Median % change year-on-year +9.87% -5.67% -5.00%
75th Percentile £700 £720 £725
90th Percentile £750 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £645 £625 £618
% change year-on-year +3.20% +1.21% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 3 29
10th Percentile £39.66 - £65.61
25th Percentile £77.50 £60.75 £75.00
Median hourly rate £86.50 £61.50 £83.40
Median % change year-on-year +40.66% -26.26% +31.90%
75th Percentile £91.50 £62.24 -
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £87.00 £61.50 £83.40
% change year-on-year +41.47% -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 6,302 4,855 6,656
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.65% 13.40% 14.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,045 2,834 4,449
10th Percentile £305 £269 £312
25th Percentile £402 £385 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £604 £625 £644
90th Percentile £700 £730 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £471 £500
% change year-on-year +3.61% -5.90% +4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 320 218 248
10th Percentile £13.59 £13.26 £14.46
25th Percentile £16.95 £15.79 £20.07
Median hourly rate £25.63 £27.50 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year -6.80% -25.17% +50.00%
75th Percentile £60.00 £53.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.87 £70.00 £80.93
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.14 £26.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -16.45% -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 19 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 19 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 19 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 +76 201 £640 +8.47% 97
UK excluding London +31 122 £645 +3.20% 76
Work from Home +44 79 £644 +17.05% 52
London +23 67 £638 +21.43% 27
South West +51 55 £675 +3.85% 21
South East -5 18 £570 -3.80% 36
East of England -2 17 £249 - 8
West Midlands -13 15 £700 +24.44%
Midlands -21 15 £700 +24.44% 1
North of England -37 13 £527 -24.73% 5
North West -20 8 £400 -20.32% 4
Wales +5 5 £238 -51.18% 3
Channel Islands - 5 £725 -
Scotland +2 4 £550 -31.25% 4
Yorkshire -42 4 £600 -18.64% 1
North East -7 1 £550 -26.67%

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 (2.19%) Confluence
2 3 (1.32%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.88%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (0.44%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.44%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 82 (35.96%) Azure
2 67 (29.39%) AWS
3 33 (14.47%) GitHub
4 21 (9.21%) Entra ID
5 19 (8.33%) GCP
6 15 (6.58%) AWS CloudFormation
7 13 (5.70%) Azure DevOps
8 10 (4.39%) AWS Fargate
8 10 (4.39%) Microsoft 365
8 10 (4.39%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 9 (3.95%) Amazon ECS
9 9 (3.95%) SaaS
10 8 (3.51%) Azure Sentinel
11 6 (2.63%) Amazon S3
11 6 (2.63%) Azure Monitor
12 5 (2.19%) Amazon EKS
12 5 (2.19%) Azure Key Vault
12 5 (2.19%) GitHub Actions
13 4 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
13 4 (1.75%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 20 (8.77%) Firewall
1 20 (8.77%) Network Security
2 12 (5.26%) DNS
3 9 (3.95%) BGP
4 7 (3.07%) VPN
5 4 (1.75%) VSAN
6 3 (1.32%) 4G
6 3 (1.32%) 5G
6 3 (1.32%) SD-WAN
6 3 (1.32%) Skype
6 3 (1.32%) WAN
7 2 (0.88%) DHCP
7 2 (0.88%) DMZ
7 2 (0.88%) EIGRP
7 2 (0.88%) Internet
7 2 (0.88%) OSPF
7 2 (0.88%) SNMP
7 2 (0.88%) TCP/IP
8 1 (0.44%) NAS
8 1 (0.44%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (3.07%) Amazon RDS
1 7 (3.07%) MongoDB
2 2 (0.88%) Amazon Athena
2 2 (0.88%) Amazon Redshift
2 2 (0.88%) BigQuery
2 2 (0.88%) Redis
2 2 (0.88%) Weaviate
3 1 (0.44%) Amazon QuickSight
3 1 (0.44%) Data Warehouse
3 1 (0.44%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (0.44%) Power BI
3 1 (0.44%) SQL Server
3 1 (0.44%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 21 (9.21%) SonarQube
2 15 (6.58%) GitLab
3 13 (5.70%) Jenkins
4 10 (4.39%) Burp Suite
4 10 (4.39%) Metasploit
5 7 (3.07%) JIRA
6 5 (2.19%) Git
7 4 (1.75%) Terragrunt
8 1 (0.44%) Mocha
8 1 (0.44%) MSI
General
1 72 (31.58%) Public Sector
2 62 (27.19%) Social Skills
3 26 (11.40%) Military
4 15 (6.58%) Finance
5 9 (3.95%) Manufacturing
5 9 (3.95%) Police
6 8 (3.51%) Documentation Skills
6 8 (3.51%) Electronics
6 8 (3.51%) Law
6 8 (3.51%) Marketing
6 8 (3.51%) Telecoms
7 7 (3.07%) Aerospace
7 7 (3.07%) Back Office
8 5 (2.19%) Analytical Skills
8 5 (2.19%) Local Government
9 3 (1.32%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (1.32%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (0.88%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (0.88%) Retail
11 1 (0.44%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 60 (26.32%) Architect
2 39 (17.11%) Lead
3 38 (16.67%) Security Engineer
4 28 (12.28%) Security Architect
5 20 (8.77%) Senior
6 16 (7.02%) Consultant
7 13 (5.70%) Analyst
8 12 (5.26%) DevSecOps Engineer
8 12 (5.26%) Security Consultant
9 11 (4.82%) Cybersecurity Engineer
9 11 (4.82%) Solutions Architect
10 10 (4.39%) Security Analyst
11 8 (3.51%) DevOps Engineer
11 8 (3.51%) Security Manager
12 7 (3.07%) SOC Architect
13 6 (2.63%) Azure Engineer
13 6 (2.63%) Lead DevOps
13 6 (2.63%) Lead DevOps Engineer
13 6 (2.63%) Product Owner
14 5 (2.19%) Penetration Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (4.82%) YAML
2 9 (3.95%) Kafka
3 8 (3.51%) Keycloak
4 7 (3.07%) cloud-init
4 7 (3.07%) ModSecurity
5 4 (1.75%) .NET
5 4 (1.75%) AWS CDK
6 3 (1.32%) RabbitMQ
6 3 (1.32%) SailPoint
7 2 (0.88%) Azure Blueprints
7 2 (0.88%) Faiss
7 2 (0.88%) LangChain
7 2 (0.88%) LangGraph
7 2 (0.88%) Middleware
7 2 (0.88%) REST
8 1 (0.44%) .NET Framework
8 1 (0.44%) ActiveMQ
8 1 (0.44%) ADO
8 1 (0.44%) Ajax
8 1 (0.44%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 22 (9.65%) Cyber Threat
2 19 (8.33%) Management Information System
3 18 (7.89%) PKI
4 16 (7.02%) Security Posture
5 13 (5.70%) Onboarding
6 11 (4.82%) Cloud Native
7 10 (4.39%) Product Ownership
8 9 (3.95%) Cyber Defence
9 8 (3.51%) CSOC
10 7 (3.07%) Legacy Applications
10 7 (3.07%) Operational Technology
11 6 (2.63%) NHS
11 6 (2.63%) Private Cloud
11 6 (2.63%) Public Cloud
11 6 (2.63%) Security Operations Centre
12 5 (2.19%) Legacy Systems
13 4 (1.75%) Data Centre
13 4 (1.75%) Enterprise Cloud
14 3 (1.32%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
14 3 (1.32%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 17 (7.46%) Linux
2 11 (4.82%) Windows
3 7 (3.07%) CentOS
3 7 (3.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 7 (3.07%) Unix
4 6 (2.63%) Windows Server
5 3 (1.32%) Mac OS
5 3 (1.32%) Windows 10
5 3 (1.32%) Windows Server 2008
6 2 (0.88%) Windows Server 2019
7 1 (0.44%) AIX
7 1 (0.44%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 86 (37.72%) Cybersecurity
2 58 (25.44%) Cloud Security
3 56 (24.56%) CI/CD
4 48 (21.05%) Infrastructure as Code
5 47 (20.61%) DevOps
6 43 (18.86%) DevSecOps
7 40 (17.54%) Incident Response
8 37 (16.23%) Risk Management
9 35 (15.35%) Threat Modelling
10 31 (13.60%) SIEM
11 30 (13.16%) Zero Trust
12 29 (12.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 28 (12.28%) Containerisation
13 28 (12.28%) OWASP
14 27 (11.84%) Information Assurance
15 24 (10.53%) Agile
16 23 (10.09%) Information Security
16 23 (10.09%) Penetration Testing
17 22 (9.65%) Data Protection
17 22 (9.65%) Security Architecture
Programming Languages
1 28 (12.28%) Python
2 22 (9.65%) Bash
3 9 (3.95%) PowerShell
4 8 (3.51%) Bicep
5 7 (3.07%) Go
6 5 (2.19%) Shell Script
6 5 (2.19%) SQL
7 2 (0.88%) C#
7 2 (0.88%) Java
8 1 (0.44%) JavaScript
8 1 (0.44%) Kusto Query Language
8 1 (0.44%) PL/SQL
8 1 (0.44%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 168 (73.68%) Security Cleared
2 130 (57.02%) SC Cleared
3 52 (22.81%) DV Cleared
4 48 (21.05%) CISSP
5 32 (14.04%) CISM
6 21 (9.21%) Degree
7 15 (6.58%) CREST Certified
8 14 (6.14%) OSCP
9 12 (5.26%) CHECK Team Member
9 12 (5.26%) Cisco Certification
10 11 (4.82%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
11 10 (4.39%) Tigerscheme
12 9 (3.95%) CompTIA Security+
13 8 (3.51%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 8 (3.51%) CESG Certified Professional
14 7 (3.07%) Azure Certification
14 7 (3.07%) BPSS Clearance
14 7 (3.07%) Microsoft Certification
15 6 (2.63%) CHECK Team Leader
16 5 (2.19%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 89 (39.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 77 (33.77%) NIST
3 40 (17.54%) JSP 440
4 29 (12.72%) Cyber Essentials
5 28 (12.28%) NIST 800
6 22 (9.65%) GDPR
7 18 (7.89%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 11 (4.82%) RMADS
9 10 (4.39%) ISO/IEC 27005
10 9 (3.95%) GRC
11 8 (3.51%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 7 (3.07%) Government Security Classifications
13 5 (2.19%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 4 (1.75%) Def Stans
15 3 (1.32%) Actionable Recommendations
15 3 (1.32%) IASME
15 3 (1.32%) PCI DSS
16 2 (0.88%) COBIT
17 1 (0.44%) ISO 22301
17 1 (0.44%) QA
System Software
1 18 (7.89%) Docker
2 15 (6.58%) Active Directory
3 14 (6.14%) Firmware
4 4 (1.75%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (1.32%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.88%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.44%) BitLocker
7 1 (0.44%) GPFS
7 1 (0.44%) Lustre
7 1 (0.44%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 1 (0.44%) UAG
7 1 (0.44%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 41 (17.98%) Terraform
2 34 (14.91%) Kubernetes
3 13 (5.70%) Ansible
4 12 (5.26%) Jamf Pro
5 10 (4.39%) Nmap
6 8 (3.51%) Grafana
6 8 (3.51%) Prometheus
7 7 (3.07%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 7 (3.07%) Packer
8 5 (2.19%) Single Sign-On
9 3 (1.32%) Check_MK
9 3 (1.32%) Microsoft Intune
9 3 (1.32%) OPNET
9 3 (1.32%) SELinux
9 3 (1.32%) vCenter Server
10 1 (0.44%) Argo
10 1 (0.44%) FortiGate
10 1 (0.44%) Istio
10 1 (0.44%) linkerd
10 1 (0.44%) VxRail
Vendors
1 30 (13.16%) Microsoft
2 16 (7.02%) VMware
3 14 (6.14%) Splunk
4 11 (4.82%) Okta
5 10 (4.39%) Veracode
6 8 (3.51%) SAP
7 7 (3.07%) Cisco
7 7 (3.07%) Google
8 4 (1.75%) CyberArk
8 4 (1.75%) NVIDIA
9 3 (1.32%) Fortinet
9 3 (1.32%) Juniper
9 3 (1.32%) LogRhythm
10 2 (0.88%) Brio
10 2 (0.88%) CrowdStrike
10 2 (0.88%) Dynatrace
10 2 (0.88%) Foundry
10 2 (0.88%) Saba
10 2 (0.88%) SolarWinds
11 1 (0.44%) Zscaler