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 28 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 356 417 409
Rank change year-on-year +61 -8 +57
Contract jobs citing NCSC 285 112 192
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.61% 0.38% 0.44%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 3.59% 2.46% 3.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 218 69 91
10th Percentile £439 £496 £500
25th Percentile £513 £563 £563
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £630 £613
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +2.86% -9.26%
75th Percentile £688 £738 £694
90th Percentile £775 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £597 £630 £600
% change year-on-year -5.32% +5.00% -14.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 8 2
10th Percentile £68.00 - £80.34
25th Percentile £68.76 £60.75 £80.85
Median hourly rate £85.40 £78.36 £81.71
Median % change year-on-year +8.98% -4.09% +11.96%
75th Percentile - £88.75 £82.56
90th Percentile - £92.50 £83.07
UK excluding London median hourly rate £85.40 £78.36 £80.00
% change year-on-year +8.98% -2.05% +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 7,938 4,552 6,225
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.90% 15.51% 14.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,136 2,918 3,926
10th Percentile £333 £265 £297
25th Percentile £413 £400 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £600 £623 £625
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% +2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 458 179 383
10th Percentile £14.00 £18.04 £10.95
25th Percentile £18.50 £22.21 £13.18
Median hourly rate £32.50 £34.50 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -5.80% +64.29% -44.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £45.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £83.01 £67.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.50 £40.78 £18.00
% change year-on-year -12.94% +126.53% -48.57%

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 28 April 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 28 April 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for NCSC in the UK

NCSC
Top 13 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 28 April 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 +43 251 £600 -7.69% 45
UK excluding London -49 131 £597 -5.32% 37
Work from Home +40 107 £625 +0.40% 17
London +15 97 £625 -2.91% 15
South East -21 87 £600 -4.76% 22
South West -28 15 £525 -25.00% 7
North of England -76 14 £668 -7.93% 2
North West -28 10 £668 -5.49% 1
West Midlands -63 7 £607 -6.62% 1
Midlands -69 7 £607 -6.62% 2
Scotland -3 5 £451 -18.09% 1
Yorkshire -63 4 £638 -12.07%
East of England -29 3 £450 - 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 4 (1.40%) SharePoint
2 2 (0.70%) Camunda
2 2 (0.70%) WebLogic
2 2 (0.70%) WebSphere
3 1 (0.35%) Confluence
3 1 (0.35%) SharePoint 2010
3 1 (0.35%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 2 (0.70%) PlantUML
2 1 (0.35%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.35%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 5 (1.75%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 2 (0.70%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.35%) SAP GRC
3 1 (0.35%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 100 (35.09%) Azure
2 77 (27.02%) AWS
3 37 (12.98%) Entra ID
4 27 (9.47%) OpenShift
5 23 (8.07%) GCP
6 18 (6.32%) Azure DevOps
7 17 (5.96%) Microsoft 365
8 15 (5.26%) SaaS
9 13 (4.56%) GitHub
10 12 (4.21%) GitHub Actions
11 11 (3.86%) AWS CloudFormation
12 10 (3.51%) Amazon GuardDuty
12 10 (3.51%) AWS KMS
13 9 (3.16%) Azure AKS
13 9 (3.16%) Azure Monitor
14 8 (2.81%) Amazon EKS
14 8 (2.81%) AWS CloudTrail
14 8 (2.81%) IaaS
14 8 (2.81%) PaaS
15 7 (2.46%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 33 (11.58%) Firewall
2 21 (7.37%) Network Security
3 12 (4.21%) VPN
4 10 (3.51%) BGP
4 10 (3.51%) IPsec
5 9 (3.16%) DNS
5 9 (3.16%) OSPF
5 9 (3.16%) SD-WAN
5 9 (3.16%) WAN
6 8 (2.81%) MPLS
7 6 (2.11%) Kerberos
7 6 (2.11%) LAN
7 6 (2.11%) VSAN
8 4 (1.40%) Ethernet VPN
8 4 (1.40%) MQTT
8 4 (1.40%) Multicast
8 4 (1.40%) TCP/IP
8 4 (1.40%) VLAN
8 4 (1.40%) VXLAN
9 3 (1.05%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (2.46%) PostgreSQL
2 5 (1.75%) Redis
3 4 (1.40%) Azure SQL Database
3 4 (1.40%) Power BI
4 3 (1.05%) Relational Database
5 2 (0.70%) MySQL
6 1 (0.35%) Amazon QuickSight
6 1 (0.35%) Amazon RDS
6 1 (0.35%) Amazon Redshift
6 1 (0.35%) BigQuery
6 1 (0.35%) DynamoDB
6 1 (0.35%) EDRMS
6 1 (0.35%) Metadata
6 1 (0.35%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.35%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 16 (5.61%) Jenkins
2 8 (2.81%) GitLab
3 6 (2.11%) Git
4 5 (1.75%) JIRA
5 2 (0.70%) Ant
5 2 (0.70%) Cucumber
5 2 (0.70%) Cypress.io
5 2 (0.70%) Gradle
5 2 (0.70%) JUnit
5 2 (0.70%) Maven
5 2 (0.70%) Mockito
6 1 (0.35%) Gatling
6 1 (0.35%) JMeter
6 1 (0.35%) Mocha
6 1 (0.35%) MSI
6 1 (0.35%) Postman
6 1 (0.35%) REST Assured
6 1 (0.35%) Selenium
6 1 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 80 (28.07%) Public Sector
2 74 (25.96%) Social Skills
3 34 (11.93%) Finance
4 23 (8.07%) Influencing Skills
5 18 (6.32%) Documentation Skills
6 15 (5.26%) Analytical Skills
7 11 (3.86%) Telecoms
8 9 (3.16%) Law
9 7 (2.46%) Police
10 6 (2.11%) Manufacturing
11 5 (1.75%) Legal
11 5 (1.75%) Local Government
12 4 (1.40%) Presentation Skills
13 3 (1.05%) Electronics
13 3 (1.05%) Marketing
13 3 (1.05%) Military
14 2 (0.70%) Aerospace
14 2 (0.70%) Aviation
14 2 (0.70%) Banking
15 1 (0.35%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 106 (37.19%) Architect
2 38 (13.33%) Security Architect
3 28 (9.82%) Lead
4 26 (9.12%) Senior
5 24 (8.42%) Consultant
5 24 (8.42%) Technical Architect
6 15 (5.26%) Security Consultant
7 14 (4.91%) Analyst
8 13 (4.56%) CyberArk Architect
8 13 (4.56%) Lead Architect
8 13 (4.56%) Tester
9 12 (4.21%) Cloud Architect
9 12 (4.21%) Security Manager
9 12 (4.21%) Solutions Architect
10 11 (3.86%) Azure Engineer
10 11 (3.86%) Cloud Engineer
10 11 (3.86%) Penetration Tester
10 11 (3.86%) Security Engineer
11 9 (3.16%) Cybersecurity Manager
12 8 (2.81%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (7.02%) LDAP
2 15 (5.26%) OpenID
2 15 (5.26%) SAML
3 8 (2.81%) Kafka
4 5 (1.75%) Keycloak
5 4 (1.40%) ADO
5 4 (1.40%) ARM Templates
5 4 (1.40%) Oracle Fusion
5 4 (1.40%) REST
6 3 (1.05%) RabbitMQ
6 3 (1.05%) Spring
7 2 (0.70%) .NET
7 2 (0.70%) AngularJS
7 2 (0.70%) Bootstrap
7 2 (0.70%) CSS
7 2 (0.70%) HTML
7 2 (0.70%) React
7 2 (0.70%) RFC 2544
7 2 (0.70%) Spring Boot
7 2 (0.70%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 24 (8.42%) Cloud Native
2 20 (7.02%) Onboarding
3 17 (5.96%) Operational Technology
4 16 (5.61%) Management Information System
5 14 (4.91%) PKI
5 14 (4.91%) Security Posture
6 13 (4.56%) Public Cloud
7 12 (4.21%) Cyber Threat
8 11 (3.86%) Data Centre
9 9 (3.16%) SCADA
10 8 (2.81%) Product Ownership
11 7 (2.46%) NHS
12 6 (2.11%) Legacy Systems
13 5 (1.75%) Hybrid Cloud
13 5 (1.75%) Private Cloud
14 4 (1.40%) Cyberattack
14 4 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
15 3 (1.05%) CCTV
15 3 (1.05%) Mobile App
15 3 (1.05%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 22 (7.72%) Linux
2 16 (5.61%) Windows
3 6 (2.11%) Windows Server
4 4 (1.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (1.05%) Android
5 3 (1.05%) Apple iOS
5 3 (1.05%) VMS
6 2 (0.70%) Rocky
6 2 (0.70%) Ubuntu
7 1 (0.35%) CentOS
7 1 (0.35%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.35%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 111 (38.95%) Cybersecurity
2 70 (24.56%) CI/CD
3 68 (23.86%) Infrastructure as Code
4 66 (23.16%) DevOps
5 60 (21.05%) Cloud Security
6 47 (16.49%) Agile
7 46 (16.14%) Stakeholder Management
8 45 (15.79%) Risk Management
9 43 (15.09%) Threat Modelling
10 42 (14.74%) Security Architecture
11 41 (14.39%) Roadmaps
12 39 (13.68%) Zero Trust
13 38 (13.33%) Containerisation
14 36 (12.63%) TOGAF
15 34 (11.93%) DevSecOps
16 32 (11.23%) Continuous Improvement
16 32 (11.23%) Migration
17 30 (10.53%) Architectural Patterns
18 29 (10.18%) Incident Response
19 28 (9.82%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 18 (6.32%) Python
2 16 (5.61%) Bicep
3 11 (3.86%) SQL
4 10 (3.51%) PowerShell
5 8 (2.81%) Bash
6 4 (1.40%) Java
7 2 (0.70%) Go
7 2 (0.70%) Kotlin
7 2 (0.70%) Swift
8 1 (0.35%) C#
8 1 (0.35%) JavaScript
8 1 (0.35%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 202 (70.88%) Security Cleared
2 169 (59.30%) SC Cleared
3 47 (16.49%) DV Cleared
4 34 (11.93%) CISSP
5 28 (9.82%) CISM
6 25 (8.77%) Cisco Certification
7 20 (7.02%) Degree
8 13 (4.56%) AWS Certification
8 13 (4.56%) CCNP
9 12 (4.21%) CHECK Team Leader
10 10 (3.51%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 9 (3.16%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 9 (3.16%) CEH
11 9 (3.16%) CESG Certified Professional
11 9 (3.16%) CompTIA Security+
11 9 (3.16%) GIAC
12 8 (2.81%) Azure Certification
12 8 (2.81%) CHECK Team Member
12 8 (2.81%) CREST Certified
12 8 (2.81%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 97 (34.04%) NIST
2 80 (28.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 31 (10.88%) Cyber Essentials
3 31 (10.88%) GDPR
4 22 (7.72%) NIST 800
5 18 (6.32%) RMADS
6 15 (5.26%) JSP 440
7 14 (4.91%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 12 (4.21%) GRC
9 11 (3.86%) Government Security Classifications
10 10 (3.51%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 9 (3.16%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 8 (2.81%) COBIT
13 7 (2.46%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 6 (2.11%) IASME
14 6 (2.11%) ISO/IEC 27005
14 6 (2.11%) PCI DSS
15 4 (1.40%) Accessibility
15 4 (1.40%) Actionable Recommendations
16 3 (1.05%) Def Stans
System Software
1 24 (8.42%) Active Directory
2 13 (4.56%) VMware Infrastructure
3 12 (4.21%) Docker
4 9 (3.16%) VMware NSX
5 6 (2.11%) Virtual Desktop
6 4 (1.40%) Hyper-V
7 3 (1.05%) GPFS
7 3 (1.05%) Lustre
7 3 (1.05%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 3 (1.05%) VMware ESXi
8 2 (0.70%) UAG
8 2 (0.70%) vSphere
9 1 (0.35%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 52 (18.25%) Kubernetes
2 41 (14.39%) Terraform
3 15 (5.26%) Ansible
4 7 (2.46%) Grafana
4 7 (2.46%) Istio
4 7 (2.46%) Prometheus
5 6 (2.11%) Argo
6 5 (1.75%) linkerd
7 3 (1.05%) SELinux
8 2 (0.70%) Cisco Prime
8 2 (0.70%) Iperf
8 2 (0.70%) Microsoft Intune
8 2 (0.70%) Nmap
8 2 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.35%) Cisco CUCM
9 1 (0.35%) CSIRT
9 1 (0.35%) FortiGate
9 1 (0.35%) McAfee ePO
9 1 (0.35%) SCCM
9 1 (0.35%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 46 (16.14%) Microsoft
2 25 (8.77%) VMware
3 24 (8.42%) Splunk
4 17 (5.96%) Cisco
5 14 (4.91%) CyberArk
6 12 (4.21%) Palo Alto
7 10 (3.51%) Red Hat
8 9 (3.16%) Citrix
8 9 (3.16%) Fortinet
9 6 (2.11%) CloudEndure
9 6 (2.11%) Zscaler
10 5 (1.75%) CheckPoint
10 5 (1.75%) Juniper
10 5 (1.75%) Oracle
10 5 (1.75%) Sparx
11 4 (1.40%) BiZZdesign
11 4 (1.40%) Google
11 4 (1.40%) SAP
12 3 (1.05%) NVIDIA
12 3 (1.05%) Tenable