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 12 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 359 429 451
Rank change year-on-year +70 +22 -17
Contract jobs citing NCSC 290 97 139
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.61% 0.33% 0.32%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 3.67% 2.11% 2.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 220 60 84
10th Percentile £450 £500 £488
25th Percentile £513 £563 £563
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £625 £640
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% -2.39% -5.14%
75th Percentile £700 £725 £700
90th Percentile £776 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £645 £600
% change year-on-year -6.98% +7.50% -14.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 8 2
10th Percentile £72.87 - £80.34
25th Percentile £80.93 £60.75 £80.85
Median hourly rate £85.40 £78.36 £81.71
Median % change year-on-year +8.98% -4.09% +10.43%
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 7,903 4,594 6,155
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.64% 15.73% 14.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,102 2,940 3,909
10th Percentile £340 £265 £288
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 £620 £625
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £482
% change year-on-year +5.26% -1.35% +0.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 461 172 383
10th Percentile £14.25 £18.10 £10.95
25th Percentile £18.50 £22.24 £13.18
Median hourly rate £35.00 £35.00 £21.12
Median % change year-on-year - +65.76% -39.67%
75th Percentile £67.25 £65.15 £45.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £82.94 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £51.25 £18.27
% change year-on-year -21.95% +180.51% -45.27%

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 12 May 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 12 May 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 12 May 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 +34 255 £600 -6.25% 62
UK excluding London -40 137 £600 -6.98% 52
Work from Home +34 110 £638 +6.25% 33
London +25 96 £625 - 14
South East -6 89 £600 -11.11% 22
South West -21 20 £575 -13.21% 17
North of England -63 13 £668 -3.78% 2
North West -33 9 £668 -5.49% 1
Midlands -58 7 £607 -6.62% 3
West Midlands -67 7 £607 -6.62%
Scotland -2 5 £451 -18.09% 2
Yorkshire -52 4 £638 -13.56%
East of England -26 3 £450 - 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 4 (1.38%) Confluence
2 3 (1.03%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.69%) Camunda
3 2 (0.69%) WebLogic
3 2 (0.69%) WebSphere
4 1 (0.34%) SharePoint 2010
4 1 (0.34%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 2 (0.69%) PlantUML
2 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 5 (1.72%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 2 (0.69%) Oracle ERP
2 2 (0.69%) SAP GRC
2 2 (0.69%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 104 (35.86%) Azure
2 80 (27.59%) AWS
3 38 (13.10%) Entra ID
4 26 (8.97%) OpenShift
5 22 (7.59%) GCP
6 18 (6.21%) Microsoft 365
7 15 (5.17%) Azure DevOps
7 15 (5.17%) SaaS
8 11 (3.79%) AWS CloudFormation
8 11 (3.79%) GitHub
9 10 (3.45%) Amazon GuardDuty
9 10 (3.45%) AWS KMS
9 10 (3.45%) GitHub Actions
9 10 (3.45%) IaaS
9 10 (3.45%) PaaS
10 9 (3.10%) Azure AKS
11 8 (2.76%) Amazon EKS
11 8 (2.76%) AWS CloudTrail
12 7 (2.41%) Azure Monitor
12 7 (2.41%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 30 (10.34%) Firewall
2 20 (6.90%) Network Security
3 11 (3.79%) VPN
4 10 (3.45%) BGP
4 10 (3.45%) IPsec
5 9 (3.10%) OSPF
5 9 (3.10%) SD-WAN
5 9 (3.10%) WAN
6 8 (2.76%) MPLS
7 7 (2.41%) DNS
8 6 (2.07%) Kerberos
8 6 (2.07%) LAN
8 6 (2.07%) VSAN
9 4 (1.38%) Ethernet VPN
9 4 (1.38%) MQTT
9 4 (1.38%) Multicast
9 4 (1.38%) TCP/IP
9 4 (1.38%) VLAN
9 4 (1.38%) VXLAN
10 3 (1.03%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (2.07%) PostgreSQL
2 4 (1.38%) Azure SQL Database
2 4 (1.38%) Redis
3 3 (1.03%) Power BI
3 3 (1.03%) Relational Database
4 2 (0.69%) MySQL
5 1 (0.34%) Amazon RDS
5 1 (0.34%) Amazon Redshift
5 1 (0.34%) BigQuery
5 1 (0.34%) DynamoDB
5 1 (0.34%) EDRMS
5 1 (0.34%) Metadata
5 1 (0.34%) NoSQL
5 1 (0.34%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 16 (5.52%) Jenkins
2 7 (2.41%) GitLab
2 7 (2.41%) JIRA
3 6 (2.07%) Git
4 2 (0.69%) Ant
4 2 (0.69%) Cucumber
4 2 (0.69%) Cypress.io
4 2 (0.69%) Gradle
4 2 (0.69%) JUnit
4 2 (0.69%) Maven
4 2 (0.69%) Mockito
5 1 (0.34%) Gatling
5 1 (0.34%) JMeter
5 1 (0.34%) Mocha
5 1 (0.34%) Postman
5 1 (0.34%) REST Assured
5 1 (0.34%) Selenium
5 1 (0.34%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 81 (27.93%) Public Sector
2 77 (26.55%) Social Skills
3 35 (12.07%) Finance
4 22 (7.59%) Influencing Skills
5 19 (6.55%) Documentation Skills
6 15 (5.17%) Analytical Skills
7 11 (3.79%) Telecoms
8 9 (3.10%) Law
9 7 (2.41%) Police
10 5 (1.72%) Legal
10 5 (1.72%) Local Government
10 5 (1.72%) Manufacturing
10 5 (1.72%) Military
11 4 (1.38%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (1.03%) Electronics
12 3 (1.03%) Marketing
13 2 (0.69%) Aerospace
13 2 (0.69%) Aviation
13 2 (0.69%) Banking
13 2 (0.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 108 (37.24%) Architect
2 39 (13.45%) Security Architect
3 27 (9.31%) Lead
4 26 (8.97%) Technical Architect
5 25 (8.62%) Consultant
6 23 (7.93%) Senior
7 16 (5.52%) Security Consultant
8 14 (4.83%) Analyst
9 13 (4.48%) CyberArk Architect
9 13 (4.48%) Lead Architect
9 13 (4.48%) Security Manager
10 12 (4.14%) Cloud Architect
10 12 (4.14%) Tester
11 11 (3.79%) Cloud Engineer
11 11 (3.79%) Solutions Architect
12 10 (3.45%) Cybersecurity Manager
12 10 (3.45%) Penetration Tester
13 9 (3.10%) Azure Engineer
13 9 (3.10%) Security Engineer
14 8 (2.76%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (7.24%) LDAP
2 17 (5.86%) SAML
3 16 (5.52%) OpenID
4 7 (2.41%) Kafka
5 6 (2.07%) REST
6 4 (1.38%) .NET
6 4 (1.38%) ADO
6 4 (1.38%) ARM Templates
6 4 (1.38%) Keycloak
6 4 (1.38%) Oracle Fusion
7 3 (1.03%) OAuth
7 3 (1.03%) RabbitMQ
7 3 (1.03%) Spring
8 2 (0.69%) AngularJS
8 2 (0.69%) Bootstrap
8 2 (0.69%) React
8 2 (0.69%) RFC 2544
8 2 (0.69%) SAP Fiori
8 2 (0.69%) Spring Boot
8 2 (0.69%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 24 (8.28%) Cloud Native
2 21 (7.24%) Onboarding
3 19 (6.55%) Operational Technology
4 17 (5.86%) Management Information System
5 14 (4.83%) PKI
6 13 (4.48%) Cyber Threat
6 13 (4.48%) Public Cloud
6 13 (4.48%) Security Posture
7 11 (3.79%) Data Centre
8 9 (3.10%) Security Operations Centre
9 8 (2.76%) Product Ownership
9 8 (2.76%) SCADA
10 7 (2.41%) NHS
11 6 (2.07%) CSOC
11 6 (2.07%) Legacy Systems
12 5 (1.72%) Hybrid Cloud
12 5 (1.72%) Private Cloud
13 4 (1.38%) Cyber Kill Chain
13 4 (1.38%) Cyberattack
13 4 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 24 (8.28%) Linux
2 17 (5.86%) Windows
3 6 (2.07%) Windows Server
4 4 (1.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (1.03%) Android
5 3 (1.03%) Apple iOS
5 3 (1.03%) VMS
6 2 (0.69%) Rocky
6 2 (0.69%) Ubuntu
6 2 (0.69%) Unix
7 1 (0.34%) CentOS
7 1 (0.34%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.34%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 121 (41.72%) Cybersecurity
2 70 (24.14%) CI/CD
3 65 (22.41%) Infrastructure as Code
4 64 (22.07%) DevOps
5 63 (21.72%) Cloud Security
6 52 (17.93%) Agile
7 49 (16.90%) Stakeholder Management
8 46 (15.86%) Security Architecture
8 46 (15.86%) Threat Modelling
9 45 (15.52%) Risk Management
10 40 (13.79%) Zero Trust
11 39 (13.45%) Roadmaps
12 37 (12.76%) Containerisation
12 37 (12.76%) Continuous Improvement
13 36 (12.41%) TOGAF
14 35 (12.07%) Incident Response
15 33 (11.38%) DevSecOps
16 32 (11.03%) Architectural Patterns
16 32 (11.03%) SIEM
17 31 (10.69%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 17 (5.86%) Python
2 14 (4.83%) Bicep
3 11 (3.79%) SQL
4 9 (3.10%) PowerShell
5 7 (2.41%) Bash
6 6 (2.07%) Java
7 2 (0.69%) Go
7 2 (0.69%) Kotlin
7 2 (0.69%) Swift
8 1 (0.34%) C#
8 1 (0.34%) JavaScript
8 1 (0.34%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 205 (70.69%) Security Cleared
2 171 (58.97%) SC Cleared
3 48 (16.55%) DV Cleared
4 37 (12.76%) CISSP
5 32 (11.03%) CISM
6 26 (8.97%) Cisco Certification
7 20 (6.90%) Degree
8 15 (5.17%) AWS Certification
9 13 (4.48%) CCNP
10 11 (3.79%) CHECK Team Leader
11 10 (3.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 10 (3.45%) Azure Certification
11 10 (3.45%) CESG Certified Professional
11 10 (3.45%) GIAC
12 9 (3.10%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 9 (3.10%) CEH
13 8 (2.76%) CCIE
13 8 (2.76%) CCSP
13 8 (2.76%) CHECK Team Member
13 8 (2.76%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 98 (33.79%) NIST
2 82 (28.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 38 (13.10%) GDPR
4 35 (12.07%) Cyber Essentials
5 21 (7.24%) NIST 800
6 20 (6.90%) JSP 440
7 17 (5.86%) RMADS
8 14 (4.83%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 13 (4.48%) Government Security Classifications
9 13 (4.48%) GRC
10 10 (3.45%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 10 (3.45%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 8 (2.76%) COBIT
12 7 (2.41%) ISO/IEC 20000
12 7 (2.41%) ISO/IEC 27005
13 6 (2.07%) IASME
13 6 (2.07%) PCI DSS
14 4 (1.38%) Accessibility
15 3 (1.03%) Def Stans
15 3 (1.03%) QA
System Software
1 25 (8.62%) Active Directory
2 13 (4.48%) VMware Infrastructure
3 12 (4.14%) Docker
4 9 (3.10%) VMware NSX
5 6 (2.07%) Virtual Desktop
6 4 (1.38%) Hyper-V
7 3 (1.03%) GPFS
7 3 (1.03%) Lustre
7 3 (1.03%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 3 (1.03%) VMware ESXi
8 2 (0.69%) vSphere
9 1 (0.34%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.34%) UAG
Systems Management
1 50 (17.24%) Kubernetes
2 37 (12.76%) Terraform
3 14 (4.83%) Ansible
4 6 (2.07%) Grafana
4 6 (2.07%) Istio
4 6 (2.07%) Prometheus
5 5 (1.72%) Argo
6 4 (1.38%) linkerd
7 3 (1.03%) SELinux
7 3 (1.03%) Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.69%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 2 (0.69%) Cisco Prime
8 2 (0.69%) Iperf
8 2 (0.69%) Nmap
9 1 (0.34%) CASB
9 1 (0.34%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
9 1 (0.34%) CSIRT
9 1 (0.34%) SCCM
9 1 (0.34%) vCenter Server
9 1 (0.34%) VxRail
Vendors
1 47 (16.21%) Microsoft
2 24 (8.28%) VMware
3 23 (7.93%) Splunk
4 17 (5.86%) Cisco
5 14 (4.83%) CyberArk
6 12 (4.14%) Palo Alto
7 9 (3.10%) Citrix
7 9 (3.10%) Fortinet
7 9 (3.10%) Red Hat
8 6 (2.07%) CloudEndure
8 6 (2.07%) Zscaler
9 5 (1.72%) CheckPoint
9 5 (1.72%) Juniper
9 5 (1.72%) Oracle
9 5 (1.72%) SAP
9 5 (1.72%) Sparx
10 4 (1.38%) BiZZdesign
10 4 (1.38%) Google
11 3 (1.03%) NVIDIA
11 3 (1.03%) Tenable