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 23 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 345 387 495
Rank change year-on-year +42 +108 -116
Contract jobs citing NCSC 378 166 70
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.69% 0.51% 0.19%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 3.92% 2.95% 1.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 261 119 40
10th Percentile £460 £500 £474
25th Percentile £519 £545 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £645 £549
Median % change year-on-year -6.98% +17.54% -18.57%
75th Percentile £688 £700 £688
90th Percentile £775 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £650 £511
% change year-on-year -7.69% +27.16% -24.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 14 3
10th Percentile £71.00 £50.13 -
25th Percentile £77.75 £82.69 £60.75
Median hourly rate £87.50 £88.75 £61.50
Median % change year-on-year -1.41% +44.32% -26.26%
75th Percentile £96.00 £91.50 £71.12
90th Percentile - - £76.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £90.00 £90.00 £61.50
% change year-on-year - +46.35% -26.26%

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 9,644 5,626 5,052
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.58% 17.21% 13.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,076 3,605 2,983
10th Percentile £325 £300 £281
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £507
Median % change year-on-year - -1.38% -3.43%
75th Percentile £600 £610 £625
90th Percentile £700 £710 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +2.63% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 632 265 248
10th Percentile £13.92 £13.60 £12.41
25th Percentile £16.60 £16.92 £15.24
Median hourly rate £32.50 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% +9.09% -22.54%
75th Percentile £67.50 £60.00 £61.50
90th Percentile £75.90 £81.65 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.00 £27.53 £27.50
% change year-on-year +19.87% +0.11% -26.67%

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 23 September 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 23 September 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 23 September 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 +29 313 £586 -9.15% 212
UK excluding London -27 192 £600 -7.69% 139
Work from Home +15 141 £585 -9.30% 143
London -6 126 £585 -9.13% 83
South East -12 67 £680 +0.74% 36
South West -26 56 £600 -11.11% 25
North of England -46 38 £567 +3.09% 33
North West -15 37 £566 +41.50% 24
West Midlands -34 20 £585 -16.43% 13
Midlands -43 20 £585 -16.43% 17
Scotland -9 17 £800 +52.38% 12
Wales -9 5 £800 +236.13% 5
East of England -42 4 £510 +104.82% 9
North East - 1 £675 - 7

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 21 (5.56%) Confluence
2 5 (1.32%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (0.79%) Apache
3 3 (0.79%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.26%) IIS
4 1 (0.26%) nginx
4 1 (0.26%) SharePoint 2010
4 1 (0.26%) SharePoint 2013
4 1 (0.26%) Traefik
Applications
1 2 (0.53%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (0.53%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 2 (0.53%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 10 (2.65%) Oracle ERP
2 4 (1.06%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 2 (0.53%) SAP GRC
3 2 (0.53%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 122 (32.28%) Azure
2 96 (25.40%) AWS
3 29 (7.67%) Entra ID
3 29 (7.67%) GCP
4 23 (6.08%) SaaS
5 20 (5.29%) Azure DevOps
6 15 (3.97%) Microsoft 365
7 12 (3.17%) GitHub
8 11 (2.91%) IaaS
9 10 (2.65%) OCI
9 10 (2.65%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 9 (2.38%) PaaS
11 8 (2.12%) Amazon EKS
11 8 (2.12%) AWS CloudFormation
11 8 (2.12%) Azure Sentinel
11 8 (2.12%) GitHub Actions
12 6 (1.59%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 6 (1.59%) Amazon ECS
13 5 (1.32%) Azure Key Vault
13 5 (1.32%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 30 (7.94%) Network Security
2 28 (7.41%) Firewall
3 17 (4.50%) DNS
4 16 (4.23%) VPN
5 10 (2.65%) TCP/IP
6 8 (2.12%) WAN
7 7 (1.85%) LAN
8 6 (1.59%) DHCP
8 6 (1.59%) SD-WAN
8 6 (1.59%) VLAN
9 5 (1.32%) Cisco Firepower
9 5 (1.32%) Cisco Nexus
9 5 (1.32%) X.509
10 4 (1.06%) 4G
10 4 (1.06%) BGP
10 4 (1.06%) BIG-IP
10 4 (1.06%) Cisco ASA
10 4 (1.06%) IPsec
10 4 (1.06%) MPLS
10 4 (1.06%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (3.44%) Geospatial Data
2 7 (1.85%) Metadata
3 5 (1.32%) Data Lake
4 3 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (0.79%) Oracle Reports
5 2 (0.53%) Amazon Redshift
5 2 (0.53%) Azure SQL Database
5 2 (0.53%) Data Warehouse
5 2 (0.53%) DynamoDB
5 2 (0.53%) NoSQL
5 2 (0.53%) Parquet
6 1 (0.26%) Big Data
6 1 (0.26%) BigQuery
6 1 (0.26%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.26%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.26%) SAP HANA
6 1 (0.26%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 24 (6.35%) JIRA
2 14 (3.70%) Git
3 11 (2.91%) GitLab
3 11 (2.91%) Jenkins
3 11 (2.91%) MSI
4 2 (0.53%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 117 (30.95%) Public Sector
2 101 (26.72%) Social Skills
3 27 (7.14%) Analytical Skills
4 24 (6.35%) Finance
4 24 (6.35%) Military
5 18 (4.76%) Telecoms
6 16 (4.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 15 (3.97%) Influencing Skills
7 15 (3.97%) Local Government
8 14 (3.70%) Aerospace
9 12 (3.17%) Documentation Skills
9 12 (3.17%) Law
10 9 (2.38%) Police
11 6 (1.59%) Manufacturing
11 6 (1.59%) Organisational Skills
12 4 (1.06%) Back Office
13 3 (0.79%) Legal
14 2 (0.53%) Presentation Skills
15 1 (0.26%) Public Speaking
15 1 (0.26%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 127 (33.60%) Architect
2 67 (17.72%) Security Architect
3 53 (14.02%) Lead
4 43 (11.38%) Consultant
5 30 (7.94%) Senior
6 27 (7.14%) Security Manager
6 27 (7.14%) Technical Architect
7 26 (6.88%) Security Consultant
8 20 (5.29%) Cybersecurity Manager
9 19 (5.03%) Cybersecurity Consultant
10 15 (3.97%) Lead Architect
11 14 (3.70%) Tester
12 13 (3.44%) Developer
12 13 (3.44%) Penetration Tester
12 13 (3.44%) Security Engineer
13 12 (3.17%) Senior Architect
13 12 (3.17%) Solutions Architect
14 11 (2.91%) Analyst
14 11 (2.91%) Information Manager
14 11 (2.91%) SOC Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 55 (14.55%) Terraform
2 18 (4.76%) REST
3 17 (4.50%) .NET
3 17 (4.50%) RESTful
4 13 (3.44%) GeoJSON
5 12 (3.17%) .NET Framework
5 12 (3.17%) SAML
6 11 (2.91%) .NET Core
6 11 (2.91%) ATL
6 11 (2.91%) COM
6 11 (2.91%) CSS
6 11 (2.91%) CSS3
6 11 (2.91%) HTML
6 11 (2.91%) HTML5
6 11 (2.91%) MFC
6 11 (2.91%) OAuth
6 11 (2.91%) WPF
7 10 (2.65%) OpenID
8 9 (2.38%) LDAP
9 6 (1.59%) ModSecurity
Miscellaneous
1 40 (10.58%) Onboarding
2 37 (9.79%) Cloud Native
3 34 (8.99%) Security Operations Centre
4 32 (8.47%) Management Information System
5 28 (7.41%) Security Posture
6 24 (6.35%) Cyber Threat
7 22 (5.82%) Legacy Systems
8 21 (5.56%) PKI
9 20 (5.29%) CSOC
10 19 (5.03%) Operational Technology
11 13 (3.44%) SCADA
12 12 (3.17%) Hybrid Cloud
13 11 (2.91%) Private Cloud
14 9 (2.38%) Data Centre
14 9 (2.38%) Public Cloud
15 6 (1.59%) Distributed Systems
15 6 (1.59%) Enterprise Software
16 5 (1.32%) Analytical Mindset
16 5 (1.32%) Cyber Defence
16 5 (1.32%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 29 (7.67%) Windows
2 16 (4.23%) Linux
3 9 (2.38%) Windows Server
4 7 (1.85%) Mac OS
5 6 (1.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 4 (1.06%) Unix
6 4 (1.06%) Windows 10
7 2 (0.53%) Android
7 2 (0.53%) CentOS
7 2 (0.53%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (0.26%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.26%) Ubuntu
8 1 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 194 (51.32%) Cybersecurity
2 90 (23.81%) Incident Response
3 86 (22.75%) Risk Management
4 82 (21.69%) Security Architecture
4 82 (21.69%) Vulnerability Management
5 81 (21.43%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 80 (21.16%) Stakeholder Management
7 79 (20.90%) Continuous Improvement
8 75 (19.84%) Cloud Security
9 74 (19.58%) CI/CD
10 73 (19.31%) Agile
11 62 (16.40%) Infrastructure as Code
12 57 (15.08%) DevOps
12 57 (15.08%) Security Operations
12 57 (15.08%) Zero Trust
13 55 (14.55%) SIEM
14 54 (14.29%) Decision-Making
15 53 (14.02%) Incident Management
16 52 (13.76%) Technical Leadership
16 52 (13.76%) Threat Modelling
Programming Languages
1 30 (7.94%) Python
2 29 (7.67%) Bicep
3 16 (4.23%) PowerShell
4 12 (3.17%) C#
5 11 (2.91%) JavaScript
5 11 (2.91%) TypeScript
6 8 (2.12%) Bash
7 5 (1.32%) Java
8 4 (1.06%) SQL
9 3 (0.79%) Go
9 3 (0.79%) Kusto Query Language
10 2 (0.53%) Groovy
10 2 (0.53%) Objective-C
10 2 (0.53%) Search Processing Language
11 1 (0.26%) C
Qualifications
1 306 (80.95%) Security Cleared
2 241 (63.76%) SC Cleared
3 92 (24.34%) DV Cleared
4 64 (16.93%) CISSP
5 55 (14.55%) CISM
6 32 (8.47%) Cisco Certification
7 25 (6.61%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 19 (5.03%) Degree
9 16 (4.23%) AWS Certification
10 15 (3.97%) Azure Certification
10 15 (3.97%) CRISC
11 13 (3.44%) CCSP
11 13 (3.44%) CHECK Team Leader
12 12 (3.17%) CHECK Team Member
13 11 (2.91%) CompTIA Security+
14 10 (2.65%) CEH
15 9 (2.38%) GIAC
15 9 (2.38%) TOGAF Certification
16 8 (2.12%) CISA
16 8 (2.12%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 130 (34.39%) NIST
2 123 (32.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 48 (12.70%) GDPR
4 41 (10.85%) GRC
5 32 (8.47%) Cyber Essentials
5 32 (8.47%) JSP 440
6 27 (7.14%) NIST 800
7 21 (5.56%) Data Quality
8 20 (5.29%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 12 (3.17%) Accessibility
10 11 (2.91%) WCAG
11 10 (2.65%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 7 (1.85%) PCI DSS
12 7 (1.85%) QA
13 6 (1.59%) COBIT
13 6 (1.59%) Def Stans
13 6 (1.59%) Government Security Classifications
13 6 (1.59%) SLA
14 5 (1.32%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
15 4 (1.06%) ISO 22301
System Software
1 30 (7.94%) Active Directory
2 21 (5.56%) Docker
3 12 (3.17%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (2.38%) VMware NSX
5 5 (1.32%) Hyper-V
6 4 (1.06%) Firmware
6 4 (1.06%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.53%) KVM
7 2 (0.53%) Microsoft Virtual Server
7 2 (0.53%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.53%) Virtual Servers
7 2 (0.53%) vSphere
8 1 (0.26%) UAG
Systems Management
1 52 (13.76%) Kubernetes
2 11 (2.91%) Ansible
3 8 (2.12%) Jamf Pro
4 7 (1.85%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 6 (1.59%) Prometheus
6 5 (1.32%) Grafana
7 4 (1.06%) Microsoft Intune
8 3 (0.79%) Istio
8 3 (0.79%) QRadar
8 3 (0.79%) Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.53%) CSIRT
9 2 (0.53%) SCCM
10 1 (0.26%) FortiGate
10 1 (0.26%) FreeIPA
10 1 (0.26%) HAProxy
10 1 (0.26%) McAfee ePO
10 1 (0.26%) Packer
10 1 (0.26%) Rancher
10 1 (0.26%) vCenter Server
10 1 (0.26%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 88 (23.28%) Microsoft
2 20 (5.29%) VMware
3 18 (4.76%) ServiceNow
4 13 (3.44%) Oracle
5 10 (2.65%) Google
5 10 (2.65%) Splunk
6 8 (2.12%) Palo Alto
7 7 (1.85%) Cisco
8 6 (1.59%) Apple
8 6 (1.59%) SAP
9 4 (1.06%) F5
9 4 (1.06%) OneLogin
9 4 (1.06%) SolarWinds
9 4 (1.06%) Sparx
10 3 (0.79%) Cribl.io
10 3 (0.79%) Northgate
11 2 (0.53%) CrowdStrike
11 2 (0.53%) Qualys
11 2 (0.53%) Red Hat
11 2 (0.53%) Zscaler