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

6 months to
20 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 369 433 324
Rank change year-on-year +64 -109 +242
Contract jobs citing NCSC 227 108 298
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.62% 0.32% 0.68%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 3.56% 2.24% 4.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 161 70 120
10th Percentile £419 £499 £499
25th Percentile £525 £513 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £606 £613
Median % change year-on-year -1.03% -1.02% -9.26%
75th Percentile £700 £734 £700
90th Percentile £775 £750 £770
UK excluding London median daily rate £629 £625 £625
% change year-on-year +0.56% - -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 4 25
10th Percentile £41.37 - £60.30
25th Percentile £70.94 £60.75 £81.87
Median hourly rate £86.25 £61.50 £83.40
Median % change year-on-year +40.26% -26.26% +22.46%
75th Percentile £91.13 £66.27 -
90th Percentile £91.50 £73.52 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £87.50 £61.50 £83.40
% change year-on-year +42.29% -26.26% +14.28%

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 6,371 4,820 6,407
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.28% 14.14% 14.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,109 2,834 4,272
10th Percentile £313 £260 £313
25th Percentile £406 £375 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £625 £645
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +2.63% -5.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 323 185 233
10th Percentile £14.05 £15.00 £14.20
25th Percentile £17.69 £21.00 £20.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £28.00 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year -10.18% -21.13% +57.88%
75th Percentile £60.00 £62.24 £64.50
90th Percentile £73.75 £70.00 £82.49
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.50 £27.35 £35.50
% change year-on-year -25.05% -22.96% +75.40%

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 December 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 20 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for NCSC in the UK

NCSC
Top 15 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 December 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 +60 205 £600 -3.61% 77
UK excluding London +19 113 £629 +0.56% 85
Work from Home +36 83 £600 +5.73% 67
London +28 68 £576 -2.33% 27
South West +38 47 £675 +3.85% 17
South East -20 31 £570 -7.69% 24
West Midlands -13 18 £700 +24.44% 4
Midlands -20 18 £700 +24.44% 5
North of England -51 11 £575 -20.69% 6
East of England -15 8 £500 - 9
North West -23 7 £463 -8.23% 4
Wales +4 5 £238 -51.18% 3
Scotland +8 3 £588 -14.23% 25
Yorkshire -52 3 £600 -17.24%
North East -9 1 £550 -26.67% 2

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 5 (2.20%) Confluence
2 3 (1.32%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.88%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (0.44%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (1.32%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 1 (0.44%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 77 (33.92%) Azure
2 70 (30.84%) AWS
3 35 (15.42%) Entra ID
4 28 (12.33%) GitHub
5 21 (9.25%) AWS CloudFormation
6 17 (7.49%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 11 (4.85%) Amazon ECS
7 11 (4.85%) Azure DevOps
7 11 (4.85%) GCP
7 11 (4.85%) SaaS
8 10 (4.41%) Amazon GuardDuty
8 10 (4.41%) AWS Fargate
8 10 (4.41%) AWS KMS
9 9 (3.96%) GitHub Actions
9 9 (3.96%) Microsoft 365
9 9 (3.96%) OpenShift
10 8 (3.52%) AWS CloudTrail
10 8 (3.52%) Azure Sentinel
11 7 (3.08%) Amazon EKS
11 7 (3.08%) AWS Control Tower
Communications & Networking
1 20 (8.81%) Firewall
2 15 (6.61%) Network Security
3 11 (4.85%) DNS
4 5 (2.20%) VPN
5 4 (1.76%) Kerberos
5 4 (1.76%) SD-WAN
5 4 (1.76%) VSAN
6 3 (1.32%) 4G
6 3 (1.32%) 5G
6 3 (1.32%) BGP
6 3 (1.32%) Internet
6 3 (1.32%) Skype
6 3 (1.32%) WAN
7 2 (0.88%) DMZ
7 2 (0.88%) Ethernet VPN
7 2 (0.88%) IPsec
7 2 (0.88%) LAN
7 2 (0.88%) TCP/IP
7 2 (0.88%) VXLAN
8 1 (0.44%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (3.08%) Amazon RDS
1 7 (3.08%) MongoDB
2 6 (2.64%) Redis
3 5 (2.20%) PostgreSQL
4 2 (0.88%) BigQuery
4 2 (0.88%) Weaviate
5 1 (0.44%) Amazon Athena
5 1 (0.44%) Amazon QuickSight
5 1 (0.44%) Amazon Redshift
5 1 (0.44%) EDRMS
5 1 (0.44%) Power BI
5 1 (0.44%) SQL Server
5 1 (0.44%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 17 (7.49%) GitLab
2 15 (6.61%) SonarQube
3 12 (5.29%) Jenkins
4 7 (3.08%) JIRA
5 5 (2.20%) Git
6 4 (1.76%) Terragrunt
7 3 (1.32%) Burp Suite
7 3 (1.32%) Metasploit
8 1 (0.44%) Gatling
8 1 (0.44%) JMeter
8 1 (0.44%) Mocha
8 1 (0.44%) MSI
8 1 (0.44%) Postman
8 1 (0.44%) REST Assured
8 1 (0.44%) Selenium
General
1 69 (30.40%) Public Sector
2 57 (25.11%) Social Skills
3 25 (11.01%) Finance
4 16 (7.05%) Military
5 9 (3.96%) Manufacturing
6 8 (3.52%) Electronics
6 8 (3.52%) Law
6 8 (3.52%) Marketing
6 8 (3.52%) Police
6 8 (3.52%) Telecoms
7 7 (3.08%) Back Office
7 7 (3.08%) Documentation Skills
8 6 (2.64%) Aerospace
8 6 (2.64%) Influencing Skills
9 4 (1.76%) Analytical Skills
9 4 (1.76%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.32%) Retail
11 1 (0.44%) Local Government
11 1 (0.44%) Retail Banking
11 1 (0.44%) Welsh Language
Job Titles
1 64 (28.19%) Architect
2 29 (12.78%) Lead
3 26 (11.45%) Security Architect
4 23 (10.13%) Security Engineer
5 22 (9.69%) Consultant
6 17 (7.49%) Senior
7 16 (7.05%) Analyst
8 15 (6.61%) Security Consultant
9 12 (5.29%) DevOps Engineer
9 12 (5.29%) DevSecOps Engineer
10 11 (4.85%) Security Analyst
10 11 (4.85%) Solutions Architect
11 9 (3.96%) Cloud Architect
12 8 (3.52%) Lead Architect
12 8 (3.52%) Security Manager
12 8 (3.52%) Tester
13 7 (3.08%) Penetration Tester
13 7 (3.08%) SOC Architect
14 6 (2.64%) Lead DevOps
14 6 (2.64%) Product Owner
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (5.73%) Kafka
2 12 (5.29%) Keycloak
3 11 (4.85%) YAML
4 8 (3.52%) ModSecurity
5 7 (3.08%) cloud-init
6 5 (2.20%) LDAP
7 4 (1.76%) AWS CDK
8 3 (1.32%) REST
8 3 (1.32%) SailPoint
9 2 (0.88%) .NET
9 2 (0.88%) ADO
9 2 (0.88%) Azure Blueprints
9 2 (0.88%) Faiss
9 2 (0.88%) LangChain
9 2 (0.88%) LangGraph
9 2 (0.88%) OpenID
9 2 (0.88%) Oracle Fusion
9 2 (0.88%) RabbitMQ
9 2 (0.88%) SAML
10 1 (0.44%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 23 (10.13%) Cyber Threat
2 20 (8.81%) Security Posture
3 19 (8.37%) PKI
4 12 (5.29%) Management Information System
5 11 (4.85%) Onboarding
5 11 (4.85%) Product Ownership
6 9 (3.96%) Cyber Defence
7 8 (3.52%) CSOC
7 8 (3.52%) Operational Technology
8 7 (3.08%) Cloud Native
8 7 (3.08%) Security Operations Centre
9 6 (2.64%) Data Centre
9 6 (2.64%) NHS
9 6 (2.64%) Private Cloud
9 6 (2.64%) Public Cloud
10 5 (2.20%) Legacy Applications
11 4 (1.76%) CUDA
11 4 (1.76%) Enterprise Cloud
11 4 (1.76%) SCADA
12 3 (1.32%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 15 (6.61%) Linux
2 12 (5.29%) Windows
3 8 (3.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 7 (3.08%) CentOS
4 7 (3.08%) Unix
5 5 (2.20%) Windows Server
6 3 (1.32%) Windows 10
6 3 (1.32%) Windows Server 2008
7 2 (0.88%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.88%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (0.44%) Mac OS
8 1 (0.44%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 81 (35.68%) Cybersecurity
2 55 (24.23%) Cloud Security
3 52 (22.91%) CI/CD
4 50 (22.03%) DevOps
5 46 (20.26%) Infrastructure as Code
6 42 (18.50%) Incident Response
7 37 (16.30%) DevSecOps
8 36 (15.86%) Risk Management
9 34 (14.98%) Containerisation
10 33 (14.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 31 (13.66%) Zero Trust
12 30 (13.22%) SIEM
13 28 (12.33%) Roadmaps
13 28 (12.33%) Threat Modelling
14 24 (10.57%) OWASP
14 24 (10.57%) Security Architecture
15 21 (9.25%) Stakeholder Management
16 20 (8.81%) Agile
16 20 (8.81%) Information Assurance
16 20 (8.81%) Information Security
Programming Languages
1 28 (12.33%) Python
2 19 (8.37%) Bash
3 10 (4.41%) PowerShell
4 8 (3.52%) Bicep
5 7 (3.08%) Go
6 5 (2.20%) Shell Script
7 4 (1.76%) SQL
8 3 (1.32%) Java
9 1 (0.44%) C#
9 1 (0.44%) JavaScript
9 1 (0.44%) Kusto Query Language
9 1 (0.44%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 172 (75.77%) Security Cleared
2 144 (63.44%) SC Cleared
3 50 (22.03%) DV Cleared
4 41 (18.06%) CISSP
5 30 (13.22%) CISM
6 16 (7.05%) Degree
7 13 (5.73%) AWS Certification
8 9 (3.96%) CESG Certified Professional
8 9 (3.96%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
9 8 (3.52%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 8 (3.52%) CHECK Team Leader
9 8 (3.52%) CHECK Team Member
9 8 (3.52%) CompTIA Security+
10 7 (3.08%) BPSS Clearance
10 7 (3.08%) CREST Certified
11 6 (2.64%) Cisco Certification
11 6 (2.64%) OSCP
12 5 (2.20%) Azure Certification
12 5 (2.20%) Microsoft Certification
13 4 (1.76%) Tigerscheme
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 86 (37.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 68 (29.96%) NIST
3 35 (15.42%) JSP 440
4 29 (12.78%) Cyber Essentials
5 22 (9.69%) NIST 800
6 17 (7.49%) GDPR
7 14 (6.17%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 9 (3.96%) GRC
8 9 (3.96%) ISO/IEC 27005
8 9 (3.96%) RMADS
9 8 (3.52%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 4 (1.76%) Actionable Recommendations
10 4 (1.76%) Def Stans
10 4 (1.76%) Government Security Classifications
11 3 (1.32%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 3 (1.32%) IASME
11 3 (1.32%) QA
12 2 (0.88%) PCI DSS
13 1 (0.44%) COBIT
13 1 (0.44%) ISO 22301
System Software
1 18 (7.93%) Docker
2 17 (7.49%) Active Directory
3 8 (3.52%) Firmware
4 6 (2.64%) Virtual Desktop
5 4 (1.76%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (1.32%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.88%) GPFS
7 2 (0.88%) Lustre
7 2 (0.88%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 1 (0.44%) BitLocker
8 1 (0.44%) Hyper-V
8 1 (0.44%) UAG
8 1 (0.44%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 52 (22.91%) Terraform
2 42 (18.50%) Kubernetes
3 17 (7.49%) Ansible
4 12 (5.29%) Grafana
4 12 (5.29%) Prometheus
5 8 (3.52%) Jamf Pro
6 7 (3.08%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 7 (3.08%) Packer
7 6 (2.64%) Single Sign-On
8 5 (2.20%) Argo
8 5 (2.20%) Istio
8 5 (2.20%) linkerd
9 3 (1.32%) Check_MK
9 3 (1.32%) Nmap
9 3 (1.32%) OPNET
9 3 (1.32%) vCenter Server
10 2 (0.88%) SELinux
11 1 (0.44%) FortiGate
11 1 (0.44%) Microsoft Intune
11 1 (0.44%) SCCM
Vendors
1 32 (14.10%) Microsoft
2 19 (8.37%) Splunk
3 12 (5.29%) VMware
4 11 (4.85%) Okta
5 8 (3.52%) Google
5 8 (3.52%) SAP
6 7 (3.08%) Cisco
6 7 (3.08%) Citrix
7 6 (2.64%) CloudEndure
8 5 (2.20%) CyberArk
8 5 (2.20%) NVIDIA
8 5 (2.20%) Red Hat
9 4 (1.76%) Fortinet
9 4 (1.76%) Juniper
9 4 (1.76%) Zscaler
10 3 (1.32%) LogRhythm
10 3 (1.32%) Sparx
10 3 (1.32%) Veracode
11 2 (0.88%) Dynatrace
11 2 (0.88%) Palo Alto