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

6 months to
29 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 369 456 339
Rank change year-on-year +87 -117 +244
Contract jobs citing NCSC 221 105 305
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.61% 0.29% 0.66%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 3.49% 2.10% 4.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 155 65 127
10th Percentile £417 £485 £500
25th Percentile £531 £506 £538
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £575 £610
Median % change year-on-year +8.70% -5.74% -7.58%
75th Percentile £700 £738 £719
90th Percentile £775 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £644 £625 £610
% change year-on-year +3.00% +2.46% -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 6,330 4,993 6,581
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.56% 13.70% 14.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,066 2,907 4,382
10th Percentile £311 £266 £313
25th Percentile £404 £384 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £601 £625 £645
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.58% -5.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 314 226 242
10th Percentile £13.60 £13.52 £15.26
25th Percentile £17.58 £17.53 £20.70
Median hourly rate £26.31 £26.75 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year -1.66% -27.21% +53.13%
75th Percentile £61.09 £55.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.96 £70.00 £83.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.82 £26.50 £42.25
% change year-on-year -13.89% -37.28% +101.19%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 +76 195 £613 +2.94% 67
UK excluding London +35 121 £644 +3.00% 63
Work from Home +42 75 £640 +14.29% 41
London +36 59 £600 +14.29% 15
South West +54 52 £675 +3.85% 15
South East -4 21 £571 -3.59% 30
West Midlands -9 17 £700 +24.44% 1
Midlands -17 17 £700 +24.44% 2
East of England 0 16 £294 - 9
North of England -43 12 £527 -26.05% 3
North West -24 7 £400 -20.63% 2
Wales +2 5 £238 -51.18% 2
Channel Islands - 5 £725 -
Yorkshire -29 4 £600 -18.64% 1
Scotland +4 3 £588 -26.56% 4
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 6 (2.71%) Confluence
2 3 (1.36%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.90%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (0.45%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (0.90%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 75 (33.94%) Azure
2 60 (27.15%) AWS
3 26 (11.76%) GitHub
4 24 (10.86%) Entra ID
5 15 (6.79%) AWS CloudFormation
6 12 (5.43%) Azure DevOps
6 12 (5.43%) GCP
7 10 (4.52%) AWS Fargate
7 10 (4.52%) Microsoft 365
7 10 (4.52%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 9 (4.07%) Amazon ECS
8 9 (4.07%) SaaS
9 8 (3.62%) Azure Sentinel
10 6 (2.71%) Amazon S3
10 6 (2.71%) Azure Monitor
10 6 (2.71%) GitHub Actions
11 5 (2.26%) Amazon EKS
11 5 (2.26%) Azure Key Vault
11 5 (2.26%) OpenShift
12 4 (1.81%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 21 (9.50%) Firewall
2 19 (8.60%) Network Security
3 12 (5.43%) DNS
4 8 (3.62%) BGP
5 7 (3.17%) VPN
6 4 (1.81%) VSAN
7 3 (1.36%) 4G
7 3 (1.36%) 5G
7 3 (1.36%) Internet
7 3 (1.36%) SD-WAN
7 3 (1.36%) Skype
7 3 (1.36%) WAN
8 2 (0.90%) DHCP
8 2 (0.90%) DMZ
8 2 (0.90%) EIGRP
8 2 (0.90%) Kerberos
8 2 (0.90%) OSPF
8 2 (0.90%) SNMP
8 2 (0.90%) TCP/IP
9 1 (0.45%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (3.17%) Amazon RDS
1 7 (3.17%) MongoDB
2 3 (1.36%) Redis
3 2 (0.90%) Amazon Athena
3 2 (0.90%) Amazon Redshift
3 2 (0.90%) BigQuery
3 2 (0.90%) PostgreSQL
3 2 (0.90%) Weaviate
4 1 (0.45%) Amazon QuickSight
4 1 (0.45%) Data Warehouse
4 1 (0.45%) Power BI
4 1 (0.45%) SQL Server
4 1 (0.45%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 15 (6.79%) GitLab
1 15 (6.79%) SonarQube
2 12 (5.43%) Jenkins
3 8 (3.62%) JIRA
4 5 (2.26%) Git
5 4 (1.81%) Terragrunt
6 3 (1.36%) Burp Suite
6 3 (1.36%) Metasploit
7 1 (0.45%) Gatling
7 1 (0.45%) JMeter
7 1 (0.45%) Mocha
7 1 (0.45%) MSI
7 1 (0.45%) Postman
7 1 (0.45%) REST Assured
7 1 (0.45%) Selenium
General
1 64 (28.96%) Public Sector
2 59 (26.70%) Social Skills
3 24 (10.86%) Military
4 14 (6.33%) Finance
5 9 (4.07%) Manufacturing
6 8 (3.62%) Electronics
6 8 (3.62%) Law
6 8 (3.62%) Marketing
6 8 (3.62%) Police
6 8 (3.62%) Telecoms
7 7 (3.17%) Aerospace
7 7 (3.17%) Back Office
7 7 (3.17%) Documentation Skills
8 5 (2.26%) Analytical Skills
8 5 (2.26%) Local Government
9 3 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (0.90%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (0.90%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (0.90%) Retail
11 1 (0.45%) Welsh Language
Job Titles
1 58 (26.24%) Architect
2 36 (16.29%) Lead
3 31 (14.03%) Security Engineer
4 25 (11.31%) Security Architect
5 19 (8.60%) Senior
6 18 (8.14%) Consultant
7 14 (6.33%) Analyst
7 14 (6.33%) Security Consultant
8 12 (5.43%) DevSecOps Engineer
9 11 (4.98%) Solutions Architect
10 10 (4.52%) Security Analyst
11 9 (4.07%) DevOps Engineer
12 7 (3.17%) SOC Architect
12 7 (3.17%) Tester
13 6 (2.71%) Azure Engineer
13 6 (2.71%) Lead DevOps
13 6 (2.71%) Lead DevOps Engineer
13 6 (2.71%) Penetration Tester
13 6 (2.71%) Product Owner
13 6 (2.71%) Security Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (4.98%) YAML
2 10 (4.52%) Kafka
3 9 (4.07%) Keycloak
4 7 (3.17%) cloud-init
4 7 (3.17%) ModSecurity
5 4 (1.81%) AWS CDK
6 3 (1.36%) .NET
6 3 (1.36%) REST
6 3 (1.36%) SailPoint
7 2 (0.90%) Azure Blueprints
7 2 (0.90%) Faiss
7 2 (0.90%) LangChain
7 2 (0.90%) LangGraph
7 2 (0.90%) LDAP
7 2 (0.90%) RabbitMQ
8 1 (0.45%) ARM Templates
8 1 (0.45%) Express.js
8 1 (0.45%) JWT
8 1 (0.45%) NestJS
8 1 (0.45%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 22 (9.95%) Cyber Threat
2 18 (8.14%) Management Information System
2 18 (8.14%) PKI
3 17 (7.69%) Security Posture
4 13 (5.88%) Onboarding
5 11 (4.98%) Product Ownership
6 10 (4.52%) Cloud Native
7 9 (4.07%) Cyber Defence
8 8 (3.62%) CSOC
9 6 (2.71%) NHS
9 6 (2.71%) Operational Technology
9 6 (2.71%) Private Cloud
9 6 (2.71%) Public Cloud
10 5 (2.26%) Data Centre
10 5 (2.26%) Legacy Applications
10 5 (2.26%) Security Operations Centre
11 4 (1.81%) CUDA
11 4 (1.81%) Enterprise Cloud
12 3 (1.36%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 3 (1.36%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 16 (7.24%) Linux
2 12 (5.43%) Windows
3 8 (3.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 7 (3.17%) CentOS
4 7 (3.17%) Unix
5 6 (2.71%) Windows Server
6 3 (1.36%) Mac OS
6 3 (1.36%) Windows 10
6 3 (1.36%) Windows Server 2008
7 2 (0.90%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.90%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (0.45%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 77 (34.84%) Cybersecurity
2 54 (24.43%) Cloud Security
3 48 (21.72%) CI/CD
3 48 (21.72%) DevOps
4 43 (19.46%) Infrastructure as Code
5 39 (17.65%) Incident Response
6 35 (15.84%) DevSecOps
7 34 (15.38%) Risk Management
8 32 (14.48%) Zero Trust
9 31 (14.03%) Containerisation
9 31 (14.03%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 29 (13.12%) SIEM
11 28 (12.67%) Information Assurance
12 27 (12.22%) Threat Modelling
13 25 (11.31%) Agile
14 22 (9.95%) OWASP
15 21 (9.50%) GAP Analysis
15 21 (9.50%) Information Security
15 21 (9.50%) Security Architecture
15 21 (9.50%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 24 (10.86%) Python
2 16 (7.24%) Bash
3 10 (4.52%) PowerShell
4 8 (3.62%) Bicep
5 7 (3.17%) Go
6 5 (2.26%) Shell Script
7 4 (1.81%) SQL
8 3 (1.36%) Java
9 2 (0.90%) C#
10 1 (0.45%) JavaScript
10 1 (0.45%) Kusto Query Language
10 1 (0.45%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 167 (75.57%) Security Cleared
2 132 (59.73%) SC Cleared
3 52 (23.53%) DV Cleared
4 42 (19.00%) CISSP
5 29 (13.12%) CISM
6 20 (9.05%) Degree
7 10 (4.52%) CompTIA Security+
7 10 (4.52%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
8 9 (4.07%) Cisco Certification
9 8 (3.62%) CESG Certified Professional
10 7 (3.17%) Azure Certification
10 7 (3.17%) BPSS Clearance
10 7 (3.17%) CHECK Team Member
10 7 (3.17%) Microsoft Certification
11 6 (2.71%) CHECK Team Leader
11 6 (2.71%) CREST Certified
11 6 (2.71%) OSCP
12 5 (2.26%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 5 (2.26%) AWS Certification
13 4 (1.81%) Tigerscheme
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 83 (37.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 72 (32.58%) NIST
3 40 (18.10%) JSP 440
4 28 (12.67%) NIST 800
5 23 (10.41%) Cyber Essentials
6 21 (9.50%) GDPR
7 12 (5.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 10 (4.52%) RMADS
9 9 (4.07%) ISO/IEC 27005
10 8 (3.62%) GRC
10 8 (3.62%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 6 (2.71%) Government Security Classifications
12 4 (1.81%) Def Stans
13 3 (1.36%) Actionable Recommendations
13 3 (1.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 3 (1.36%) IASME
14 2 (0.90%) PCI DSS
14 2 (0.90%) QA
15 1 (0.45%) COBIT
15 1 (0.45%) ISO 22301
System Software
1 18 (8.14%) Docker
2 15 (6.79%) Active Directory
3 14 (6.33%) Firmware
4 4 (1.81%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (1.36%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.90%) GPFS
6 2 (0.90%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.90%) Lustre
6 2 (0.90%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 1 (0.45%) BitLocker
7 1 (0.45%) UAG
7 1 (0.45%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 43 (19.46%) Terraform
2 37 (16.74%) Kubernetes
3 14 (6.33%) Ansible
4 11 (4.98%) Jamf Pro
5 9 (4.07%) Grafana
5 9 (4.07%) Prometheus
6 7 (3.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 7 (3.17%) Packer
7 6 (2.71%) Single Sign-On
8 3 (1.36%) Check_MK
8 3 (1.36%) Nmap
8 3 (1.36%) OPNET
8 3 (1.36%) vCenter Server
9 2 (0.90%) Argo
9 2 (0.90%) Istio
9 2 (0.90%) linkerd
9 2 (0.90%) Microsoft Intune
9 2 (0.90%) SELinux
10 1 (0.45%) FortiGate
10 1 (0.45%) VxRail
Vendors
1 32 (14.48%) Microsoft
2 15 (6.79%) Splunk
2 15 (6.79%) VMware
3 11 (4.98%) Okta
4 8 (3.62%) Google
4 8 (3.62%) SAP
5 7 (3.17%) Cisco
6 5 (2.26%) NVIDIA
7 4 (1.81%) CyberArk
8 3 (1.36%) Fortinet
8 3 (1.36%) Juniper
8 3 (1.36%) LogRhythm
8 3 (1.36%) Veracode
9 2 (0.90%) Brio
9 2 (0.90%) Dynatrace
9 2 (0.90%) Foundry
9 2 (0.90%) Red Hat
9 2 (0.90%) SolarWinds
9 2 (0.90%) Sparx
10 1 (0.45%) CrowdStrike