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

6 months to
20 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 342 404 486
Rank change year-on-year +62 +82 -74
Contract jobs citing NCSC 326 123 102
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.64% 0.41% 0.23%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 3.83% 2.53% 1.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 243 74 66
10th Percentile £458 £483 £478
25th Percentile £514 £561 £553
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £615 £648 £650
Median % change year-on-year -5.02% -0.38% -3.70%
75th Percentile £704 £700 £719
90th Percentile £800 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £645 £600
% change year-on-year -6.98% +7.50% -14.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 13 2
10th Percentile £73.75 £60.75 £80.34
25th Percentile £80.48 £77.50 £80.85
Median hourly rate £83.65 £85.00 £81.71
Median % change year-on-year -1.59% +4.03% +5.43%
75th Percentile £85.40 £91.50 £82.56
90th Percentile - £92.30 £83.07
UK excluding London median hourly rate £85.40 £85.00 £80.00
% change year-on-year +0.47% +6.25% +6.68%

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 8,514 4,862 6,002
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.81% 16.28% 13.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,469 3,106 3,738
10th Percentile £340 £275 £280
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £509
Median % change year-on-year - -1.77% -3.05%
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% - -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 506 199 436
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.12 £11.00
25th Percentile £19.22 £19.73 £13.18
Median hourly rate £36.07 £31.76 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.57% +38.09% -38.67%
75th Percentile £67.84 £67.50 £48.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £85.35 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £31.76 £18.97
% change year-on-year +25.94% +67.42% -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 20 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 20 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 20 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 +48 281 £620 -4.62% 59
UK excluding London -32 161 £600 -6.98% 54
Work from Home +42 129 £625 -2.34% 29
London +1 106 £625 -3.85% 14
South East -7 85 £620 -8.15% 23
South West -10 36 £600 -6.98% 9
North of England -68 17 £662 +5.88% 8
North West -35 14 £668 +14.84% 4
Midlands -56 13 £492 -24.31% 4
West Midlands -57 13 £492 -24.31% 1
Scotland -6 8 £663 +32.50% 2
Wales - 4 £800 - 2
East of England -40 3 £450 +414.29% 3
Yorkshire -58 3 £600 -14.29% 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 12 (3.68%) Confluence
2 3 (0.92%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.61%) Camunda
3 2 (0.61%) WebLogic
3 2 (0.61%) WebSphere
4 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.31%) SharePoint 2010
4 1 (0.31%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 2 (0.61%) PlantUML
2 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 7 (2.15%) Oracle ERP
2 5 (1.53%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 2 (0.61%) SAP GRC
3 2 (0.61%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 119 (36.50%) Azure
2 83 (25.46%) AWS
3 31 (9.51%) Entra ID
4 30 (9.20%) GCP
5 20 (6.13%) OpenShift
6 19 (5.83%) Azure DevOps
6 19 (5.83%) Microsoft 365
6 19 (5.83%) SaaS
7 11 (3.37%) IaaS
7 11 (3.37%) PaaS
8 9 (2.76%) Azure AKS
8 9 (2.76%) Azure Monitor
8 9 (2.76%) GitHub
9 8 (2.45%) Amazon EKS
9 8 (2.45%) OCI
10 7 (2.15%) Serverless
11 6 (1.84%) Azure Sentinel
11 6 (1.84%) GitHub Actions
12 5 (1.53%) AWS Lambda
12 5 (1.53%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 32 (9.82%) Firewall
2 26 (7.98%) Network Security
3 14 (4.29%) VPN
4 11 (3.37%) BGP
5 10 (3.07%) IPsec
5 10 (3.07%) OSPF
5 10 (3.07%) WAN
6 9 (2.76%) DNS
6 9 (2.76%) MPLS
6 9 (2.76%) SD-WAN
7 8 (2.45%) LAN
8 6 (1.84%) VLAN
8 6 (1.84%) VSAN
9 5 (1.53%) TCP/IP
10 4 (1.23%) Cisco ASA
10 4 (1.23%) Cisco Nexus
10 4 (1.23%) Multicast
10 4 (1.23%) NGFW
11 3 (0.92%) Ethernet VPN
11 3 (0.92%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (2.15%) Geospatial Data
2 6 (1.84%) Azure SQL Database
3 3 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
3 3 (0.92%) Oracle Reports
3 3 (0.92%) Power BI
3 3 (0.92%) Relational Database
4 2 (0.61%) DynamoDB
4 2 (0.61%) MySQL
4 2 (0.61%) PostgreSQL
5 1 (0.31%) Amazon Redshift
5 1 (0.31%) BigQuery
5 1 (0.31%) Metadata
5 1 (0.31%) NoSQL
5 1 (0.31%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 16 (4.91%) JIRA
2 14 (4.29%) Jenkins
3 11 (3.37%) Git
4 5 (1.53%) MSI
5 2 (0.61%) Ant
5 2 (0.61%) Cucumber
5 2 (0.61%) Cypress.io
5 2 (0.61%) GitLab
5 2 (0.61%) Gradle
5 2 (0.61%) JUnit
5 2 (0.61%) Maven
5 2 (0.61%) Mockito
6 1 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 97 (29.75%) Public Sector
2 86 (26.38%) Social Skills
3 36 (11.04%) Finance
4 20 (6.13%) Influencing Skills
5 19 (5.83%) Documentation Skills
6 18 (5.52%) Analytical Skills
7 17 (5.21%) Telecoms
8 12 (3.68%) Military
9 9 (2.76%) Law
10 7 (2.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 7 (2.15%) Local Government
10 7 (2.15%) Manufacturing
10 7 (2.15%) Police
11 6 (1.84%) Legal
12 4 (1.23%) Aerospace
13 3 (0.92%) Electronics
13 3 (0.92%) Marketing
14 2 (0.61%) Aviation
14 2 (0.61%) Banking
14 2 (0.61%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 123 (37.73%) Architect
2 53 (16.26%) Security Architect
3 33 (10.12%) Lead
4 32 (9.82%) Consultant
5 31 (9.51%) Technical Architect
6 30 (9.20%) Senior
7 21 (6.44%) Security Consultant
8 15 (4.60%) Solutions Architect
9 14 (4.29%) Security Manager
10 12 (3.68%) CyberArk Architect
11 11 (3.37%) Cloud Engineer
11 11 (3.37%) Coordinator
11 11 (3.37%) Cybersecurity Manager
11 11 (3.37%) Lead Architect
11 11 (3.37%) Security Assurance Coordinator
11 11 (3.37%) Technical Leader
12 10 (3.07%) Analyst
12 10 (3.07%) Azure Engineer
12 10 (3.07%) Senior Architect
12 10 (3.07%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (6.75%) LDAP
2 21 (6.44%) OpenID
2 21 (6.44%) SAML
3 11 (3.37%) .NET
4 10 (3.07%) REST
5 8 (2.45%) OAuth
6 7 (2.15%) CSS
6 7 (2.15%) GeoJSON
6 7 (2.15%) HTML
6 7 (2.15%) RESTful
7 6 (1.84%) .NET Framework
8 5 (1.53%) .NET Core
8 5 (1.53%) ATL
8 5 (1.53%) COM
8 5 (1.53%) CSS3
8 5 (1.53%) HTML5
8 5 (1.53%) MFC
8 5 (1.53%) WPF
9 4 (1.23%) ARM Templates
9 4 (1.23%) OpenAPI
Miscellaneous
1 36 (11.04%) Cloud Native
2 31 (9.51%) Onboarding
3 24 (7.36%) Management Information System
4 17 (5.21%) Cyber Threat
4 17 (5.21%) Operational Technology
5 15 (4.60%) Data Centre
5 15 (4.60%) Security Operations Centre
6 14 (4.29%) PKI
6 14 (4.29%) Public Cloud
6 14 (4.29%) Security Posture
7 12 (3.68%) SCADA
8 11 (3.37%) CSOC
8 11 (3.37%) Hybrid Cloud
8 11 (3.37%) Private Cloud
9 10 (3.07%) Product Ownership
10 8 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
11 5 (1.53%) NHS
12 4 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
12 4 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
13 3 (0.92%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 23 (7.06%) Linux
2 19 (5.83%) Windows
3 6 (1.84%) Windows Server
4 4 (1.23%) Android
5 3 (0.92%) Apple iOS
5 3 (0.92%) Mac OS
5 3 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (0.92%) VMS
6 2 (0.61%) Unix
7 1 (0.31%) CentOS
7 1 (0.31%) Rocky
7 1 (0.31%) Ubuntu
7 1 (0.31%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 147 (45.09%) Cybersecurity
2 80 (24.54%) CI/CD
3 74 (22.70%) Agile
3 74 (22.70%) Cloud Security
3 74 (22.70%) Infrastructure as Code
4 73 (22.39%) DevOps
5 60 (18.40%) Stakeholder Management
6 58 (17.79%) Risk Management
7 57 (17.48%) Security Architecture
8 52 (15.95%) Continuous Improvement
8 52 (15.95%) Threat Modelling
9 51 (15.64%) Incident Response
10 45 (13.80%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 44 (13.50%) Zero Trust
12 43 (13.19%) SIEM
13 42 (12.88%) TOGAF
14 38 (11.66%) Architectural Patterns
14 38 (11.66%) Containerisation
15 37 (11.35%) DevSecOps
15 37 (11.35%) Vulnerability Management
Programming Languages
1 22 (6.75%) Bicep
2 14 (4.29%) Python
3 13 (3.99%) SQL
4 8 (2.45%) PowerShell
5 7 (2.15%) Java
6 6 (1.84%) C#
7 5 (1.53%) JavaScript
7 5 (1.53%) TypeScript
8 3 (0.92%) Bash
9 2 (0.61%) Go
9 2 (0.61%) Groovy
9 2 (0.61%) Kotlin
9 2 (0.61%) Swift
Qualifications
1 240 (73.62%) Security Cleared
2 197 (60.43%) SC Cleared
3 60 (18.40%) DV Cleared
4 39 (11.96%) CISSP
5 36 (11.04%) CISM
6 29 (8.90%) Cisco Certification
7 19 (5.83%) Degree
8 15 (4.60%) CCNP
9 13 (3.99%) Azure Certification
10 12 (3.68%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 12 (3.68%) AWS Certification
11 11 (3.37%) GIAC
12 10 (3.07%) CHECK Team Leader
13 9 (2.76%) CEH
13 9 (2.76%) CompTIA Security+
14 8 (2.45%) CCSP
14 8 (2.45%) CESG Certified Professional
14 8 (2.45%) CHECK Team Member
14 8 (2.45%) Microsoft Certification
15 7 (2.15%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 108 (33.13%) NIST
2 90 (27.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 45 (13.80%) GDPR
4 30 (9.20%) Cyber Essentials
5 22 (6.75%) NIST 800
6 21 (6.44%) JSP 440
7 18 (5.52%) RMADS
8 15 (4.60%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 14 (4.29%) Government Security Classifications
9 14 (4.29%) GRC
10 12 (3.68%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 10 (3.07%) COBIT
11 10 (3.07%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 9 (2.76%) Accessibility
13 7 (2.15%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 7 (2.15%) ISO/IEC 27005
13 7 (2.15%) PCI DSS
13 7 (2.15%) QA
14 6 (1.84%) IASME
15 5 (1.53%) Data Quality
System Software
1 28 (8.59%) Active Directory
2 17 (5.21%) Docker
3 15 (4.60%) VMware Infrastructure
4 12 (3.68%) VMware NSX
5 5 (1.53%) Hyper-V
6 4 (1.23%) VMware ESXi
7 3 (0.92%) vSphere
8 1 (0.31%) GPFS
8 1 (0.31%) KVM
8 1 (0.31%) Lustre
8 1 (0.31%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 1 (0.31%) UAG
Systems Management
1 54 (16.56%) Kubernetes
2 39 (11.96%) Terraform
3 9 (2.76%) Ansible
4 6 (1.84%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 3 (0.92%) Istio
5 3 (0.92%) Jamf Pro
6 2 (0.61%) Cisco Prime
6 2 (0.61%) Grafana
6 2 (0.61%) Iperf
6 2 (0.61%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (0.61%) Nmap
6 2 (0.61%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.61%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.31%) Argo
7 1 (0.31%) Cisco CUCM
7 1 (0.31%) CloudForms
7 1 (0.31%) FortiGate
7 1 (0.31%) McAfee ePO
7 1 (0.31%) SELinux
7 1 (0.31%) VxRail
Vendors
1 61 (18.71%) Microsoft
2 25 (7.67%) VMware
3 18 (5.52%) Cisco
4 17 (5.21%) Splunk
5 14 (4.29%) CyberArk
5 14 (4.29%) Palo Alto
6 9 (2.76%) Oracle
6 9 (2.76%) SAP
7 8 (2.45%) Fortinet
7 8 (2.45%) ServiceNow
8 6 (1.84%) Google
9 5 (1.53%) CheckPoint
9 5 (1.53%) Red Hat
9 5 (1.53%) SolarWinds
9 5 (1.53%) Sparx
10 4 (1.23%) Apple
10 4 (1.23%) F5
10 4 (1.23%) Juniper
11 3 (0.92%) BiZZdesign
11 3 (0.92%) Citrix