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

6 months to
7 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 361 394 427
Rank change year-on-year +33 +33 +24
Contract jobs citing NCSC 285 108 151
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.60% 0.37% 0.35%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 3.57% 2.35% 2.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 218 66 89
10th Percentile £447 £500 £490
25th Percentile £513 £563 £563
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £645 £625
Median % change year-on-year -6.98% +3.20% -7.41%
75th Percentile £688 £738 £700
90th Percentile £775 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £656 £600
% change year-on-year -8.57% +9.38% -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% +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 7,990 4,603 6,219
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.75% 15.72% 14.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,152 2,934 3,947
10th Percentile £338 £263 £297
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 £484
% change year-on-year +5.26% -1.76% +0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 470 179 384
10th Percentile £14.23 £18.04 £10.95
25th Percentile £18.50 £22.21 £13.18
Median hourly rate £34.50 £34.50 £21.06
Median % change year-on-year - +63.84% -39.84%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £45.00
90th Percentile £79.97 £82.79 £67.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.75 £46.30 £18.06
% change year-on-year -20.63% +156.44% -45.19%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 +29 250 £600 -9.43% 66
UK excluding London -51 132 £600 -8.57% 50
Work from Home +42 108 £638 +4.51% 41
London +14 96 £625 -2.91% 17
South East +2 89 £600 -11.11% 22
South West -25 15 £525 -20.75% 14
North of England -58 13 £668 -7.93% 6
North West -33 9 £668 -5.49% 3
West Midlands -63 7 £607 -6.62% 2
Midlands -77 7 £607 -6.62% 3
Scotland -1 5 £451 -18.09% 2
Yorkshire -53 4 £638 -12.07% 2
East of England -31 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 (1.40%) Confluence
2 3 (1.05%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.70%) Camunda
3 2 (0.70%) WebLogic
3 2 (0.70%) WebSphere
4 1 (0.35%) SharePoint 2010
4 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
2 2 (0.70%) SAP GRC
2 2 (0.70%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 102 (35.79%) Azure
2 78 (27.37%) AWS
3 38 (13.33%) Entra ID
4 27 (9.47%) OpenShift
5 22 (7.72%) GCP
6 18 (6.32%) Microsoft 365
7 15 (5.26%) Azure DevOps
7 15 (5.26%) SaaS
8 12 (4.21%) GitHub
9 11 (3.86%) AWS CloudFormation
9 11 (3.86%) GitHub Actions
10 10 (3.51%) Amazon GuardDuty
10 10 (3.51%) AWS KMS
10 10 (3.51%) IaaS
10 10 (3.51%) PaaS
11 9 (3.16%) Azure AKS
12 8 (2.81%) Amazon EKS
12 8 (2.81%) AWS CloudTrail
13 7 (2.46%) Azure Sentinel
13 7 (2.46%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 30 (10.53%) Firewall
2 21 (7.37%) Network Security
3 11 (3.86%) VPN
4 10 (3.51%) BGP
4 10 (3.51%) IPsec
5 9 (3.16%) OSPF
5 9 (3.16%) SD-WAN
5 9 (3.16%) WAN
6 8 (2.81%) MPLS
7 7 (2.46%) DNS
8 6 (2.11%) Kerberos
8 6 (2.11%) LAN
8 6 (2.11%) VSAN
9 4 (1.40%) Ethernet VPN
9 4 (1.40%) MQTT
9 4 (1.40%) Multicast
9 4 (1.40%) TCP/IP
9 4 (1.40%) VLAN
9 4 (1.40%) VXLAN
10 3 (1.05%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (2.46%) PostgreSQL
2 5 (1.75%) Redis
3 4 (1.40%) Azure SQL Database
4 3 (1.05%) Power BI
4 3 (1.05%) Relational Database
5 2 (0.70%) MySQL
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%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 16 (5.61%) Jenkins
2 8 (2.81%) GitLab
3 7 (2.46%) JIRA
4 6 (2.11%) Git
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%) Postman
6 1 (0.35%) REST Assured
6 1 (0.35%) Selenium
6 1 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 78 (27.37%) Public Sector
1 78 (27.37%) Social Skills
2 34 (11.93%) Finance
3 22 (7.72%) Influencing Skills
4 20 (7.02%) Documentation Skills
5 14 (4.91%) Analytical Skills
6 11 (3.86%) Telecoms
7 9 (3.16%) Law
8 7 (2.46%) Police
9 5 (1.75%) Legal
9 5 (1.75%) Local Government
9 5 (1.75%) Manufacturing
10 4 (1.40%) Military
10 4 (1.40%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (1.05%) Electronics
11 3 (1.05%) Marketing
12 2 (0.70%) Aerospace
12 2 (0.70%) Aviation
12 2 (0.70%) Banking
12 2 (0.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 107 (37.54%) Architect
2 40 (14.04%) Security Architect
3 27 (9.47%) Lead
4 25 (8.77%) Consultant
5 24 (8.42%) Technical Architect
6 23 (8.07%) Senior
7 16 (5.61%) Security Consultant
8 14 (4.91%) Analyst
9 13 (4.56%) CyberArk Architect
9 13 (4.56%) Lead Architect
10 12 (4.21%) Cloud Architect
10 12 (4.21%) Tester
11 11 (3.86%) Cloud Engineer
11 11 (3.86%) Security Manager
11 11 (3.86%) Solutions Architect
12 10 (3.51%) Penetration Tester
12 10 (3.51%) Security Engineer
13 9 (3.16%) Azure Engineer
14 8 (2.81%) Cybersecurity Manager
14 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%) AngularJS
7 2 (0.70%) Bootstrap
7 2 (0.70%) CSS
7 2 (0.70%) Nightwatchjs
7 2 (0.70%) React
7 2 (0.70%) RFC 2544
7 2 (0.70%) SAP Fiori
7 2 (0.70%) Spring Boot
7 2 (0.70%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 24 (8.42%) Cloud Native
2 21 (7.37%) Onboarding
3 19 (6.67%) Operational Technology
4 14 (4.91%) Management Information System
4 14 (4.91%) PKI
5 13 (4.56%) Public Cloud
6 12 (4.21%) Security Posture
7 11 (3.86%) Cyber Threat
7 11 (3.86%) Data Centre
8 8 (2.81%) Product Ownership
8 8 (2.81%) SCADA
9 7 (2.46%) NHS
10 6 (2.11%) Legacy Systems
11 5 (1.75%) Hybrid Cloud
11 5 (1.75%) Private Cloud
12 4 (1.40%) Cyber Kill Chain
12 4 (1.40%) Cyberattack
12 4 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
13 3 (1.05%) Cyber Defence
13 3 (1.05%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 24 (8.42%) Linux
2 17 (5.96%) 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
6 2 (0.70%) Unix
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
1 115 (40.35%) Cybersecurity
2 70 (24.56%) CI/CD
3 66 (23.16%) Infrastructure as Code
4 64 (22.46%) DevOps
5 60 (21.05%) Cloud Security
6 51 (17.89%) Agile
7 48 (16.84%) Stakeholder Management
8 47 (16.49%) Risk Management
8 47 (16.49%) Security Architecture
8 47 (16.49%) Threat Modelling
9 41 (14.39%) Zero Trust
10 39 (13.68%) Roadmaps
11 38 (13.33%) Containerisation
12 36 (12.63%) TOGAF
13 35 (12.28%) DevSecOps
14 32 (11.23%) Architectural Patterns
15 31 (10.88%) Migration
16 30 (10.53%) Continuous Improvement
17 29 (10.18%) Network Segmentation
17 29 (10.18%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 18 (6.32%) Python
2 14 (4.91%) Bicep
3 11 (3.86%) SQL
4 9 (3.16%) 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
2 168 (58.95%) SC Cleared
3 49 (17.19%) DV Cleared
4 35 (12.28%) CISSP
5 30 (10.53%) CISM
6 26 (9.12%) Cisco Certification
7 20 (7.02%) Degree
8 13 (4.56%) AWS Certification
8 13 (4.56%) CCNP
9 11 (3.86%) CHECK Team Leader
10 10 (3.51%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 10 (3.51%) CESG Certified Professional
10 10 (3.51%) GIAC
11 9 (3.16%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 9 (3.16%) Azure Certification
11 9 (3.16%) CEH
12 8 (2.81%) CCIE
12 8 (2.81%) CCSP
12 8 (2.81%) CHECK Team Member
12 8 (2.81%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 99 (34.74%) NIST
2 83 (29.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 35 (12.28%) Cyber Essentials
4 30 (10.53%) GDPR
5 21 (7.37%) NIST 800
6 20 (7.02%) JSP 440
7 18 (6.32%) RMADS
8 14 (4.91%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 13 (4.56%) Government Security Classifications
9 13 (4.56%) GRC
10 11 (3.86%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 10 (3.51%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 8 (2.81%) COBIT
13 7 (2.46%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 7 (2.46%) ISO/IEC 27005
14 6 (2.11%) IASME
14 6 (2.11%) PCI DSS
15 4 (1.40%) Accessibility
16 3 (1.05%) Def Stans
16 3 (1.05%) QA
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%) vSphere
9 1 (0.35%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.35%) UAG
Systems Management
1 51 (17.89%) Kubernetes
2 38 (13.33%) 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
7 3 (1.05%) Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.70%) Cisco Prime
8 2 (0.70%) Iperf
8 2 (0.70%) Nmap
9 1 (0.35%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 1 (0.35%) CASB
9 1 (0.35%) Cisco CUCM
9 1 (0.35%) McAfee ePO
9 1 (0.35%) Microsoft Intune
9 1 (0.35%) SCCM
9 1 (0.35%) VxRail
Vendors
1 45 (15.79%) 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%) SAP
10 5 (1.75%) Sparx
11 4 (1.40%) BiZZdesign
11 4 (1.40%) Google
12 3 (1.05%) NVIDIA
12 3 (1.05%) Tenable