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

6 months to
11 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 374 498 360
Rank change year-on-year +124 -138 +262
Contract jobs citing NCSC 184 72 290
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.56% 0.19% 0.60%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 3.17% 1.42% 4.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 129 39 172
10th Percentile £500 £473 £485
25th Percentile £550 £500 £560
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £650 £525 £671
Median % change year-on-year +23.81% -21.76% +3.23%
75th Percentile £700 £645 £800
90th Percentile £746 £775 £850
UK excluding London median daily rate £650 £531 £673
% change year-on-year +22.50% -21.13% +6.15%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 3 29
10th Percentile £39.10 - £65.61
25th Percentile £82.50 £60.75 £74.37
Median hourly rate £87.00 £61.50 £83.40
Median % change year-on-year +41.47% -26.26% +21.76%
75th Percentile £91.50 £71.12 -
90th Percentile - £76.45 £83.84
UK excluding London median hourly rate £87.50 £61.50 £83.40
% change year-on-year +42.29% -26.26% +13.07%

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 5,800 5,070 6,842
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.51% 13.38% 14.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,708 2,949 4,615
10th Percentile £300 £275 £313
25th Percentile £400 £399 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £608 £625 £650
90th Percentile £705 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 283 240 255
10th Percentile £13.60 £13.26 £15.00
25th Percentile £16.71 £16.17 £20.00
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.67 £35.63
Median % change year-on-year +8.42% -22.34% +44.81%
75th Percentile £60.00 £62.88 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.00 £79.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.11 £27.75 £37.50
% change year-on-year -9.50% -26.00% +72.41%

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 11 October 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 11 October 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 11 October 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 +119 165 £648 +23.33% 78
UK excluding London +61 109 £650 +22.50% 73
Work from Home +72 64 £648 +23.33% 44
South West +56 51 £675 +3.85% 14
London +36 50 £650 +23.81% 32
East of England +15 17 £249 - 2
South East +13 17 £590 +16.83% 21
Midlands 0 14 £700 +21.74% 8
West Midlands -3 14 £700 +21.74% 2
North of England -13 7 £550 +9.56% 13
Channel Islands - 5 £725 -
Scotland -1 4 £550 -31.25%
North West -10 4 £400 -20.32% 11
Yorkshire - 3 £650 - 1
Wales - 3 £238 - 14

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 (2.17%) Confluence
2 3 (1.63%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 1 (0.54%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 63 (34.24%) Azure
2 47 (25.54%) AWS
3 29 (15.76%) GitHub
4 18 (9.78%) Entra ID
5 14 (7.61%) AWS CloudFormation
6 13 (7.07%) GCP
7 10 (5.43%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 9 (4.89%) AWS Fargate
9 8 (4.35%) Amazon ECS
9 8 (4.35%) Azure DevOps
10 7 (3.80%) Microsoft 365
11 6 (3.26%) Azure Sentinel
12 5 (2.72%) Amazon S3
12 5 (2.72%) SaaS
13 4 (2.17%) Amazon EKS
13 4 (2.17%) AWS Lambda
13 4 (2.17%) Azure Key Vault
13 4 (2.17%) Serverless
14 3 (1.63%) GitHub Actions
14 3 (1.63%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 18 (9.78%) Network Security
2 13 (7.07%) Firewall
3 11 (5.98%) BGP
4 9 (4.89%) DNS
5 5 (2.72%) VPN
5 5 (2.72%) VSAN
6 3 (1.63%) 4G
6 3 (1.63%) 5G
6 3 (1.63%) SD-WAN
6 3 (1.63%) Skype
6 3 (1.63%) WAN
7 2 (1.09%) DHCP
7 2 (1.09%) EIGRP
7 2 (1.09%) Internet
7 2 (1.09%) Modbus
7 2 (1.09%) OSPF
7 2 (1.09%) SNMP
8 1 (0.54%) MQTT
8 1 (0.54%) Software-Defined Networking
8 1 (0.54%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (3.80%) Amazon RDS
1 7 (3.80%) MongoDB
2 2 (1.09%) Weaviate
3 1 (0.54%) Amazon Athena
3 1 (0.54%) Amazon Redshift
3 1 (0.54%) Data Warehouse
3 1 (0.54%) Redis
3 1 (0.54%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 20 (10.87%) SonarQube
2 13 (7.07%) GitLab
3 12 (6.52%) Jenkins
4 10 (5.43%) Burp Suite
4 10 (5.43%) Metasploit
5 4 (2.17%) JIRA
5 4 (2.17%) Terragrunt
6 2 (1.09%) Git
General
1 62 (33.70%) Public Sector
2 45 (24.46%) Social Skills
3 26 (14.13%) Military
4 13 (7.07%) Finance
5 9 (4.89%) Analytical Skills
5 9 (4.89%) Telecoms
6 8 (4.35%) Documentation Skills
6 8 (4.35%) Electronics
6 8 (4.35%) Manufacturing
6 8 (4.35%) Marketing
7 7 (3.80%) Back Office
8 6 (3.26%) Police
9 5 (2.72%) Aerospace
9 5 (2.72%) Law
9 5 (2.72%) Local Government
10 3 (1.63%) Pharmaceutical
11 2 (1.09%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.54%) Banking
12 1 (0.54%) Retail
12 1 (0.54%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 53 (28.80%) Architect
2 37 (20.11%) Lead
3 33 (17.93%) Security Engineer
4 23 (12.50%) Security Architect
5 16 (8.70%) Consultant
6 15 (8.15%) Senior
7 13 (7.07%) Security Consultant
8 12 (6.52%) Cybersecurity Engineer
9 11 (5.98%) DevSecOps Engineer
10 9 (4.89%) Analyst
10 9 (4.89%) Solutions Architect
11 7 (3.80%) DevOps Engineer
11 7 (3.80%) Security Analyst
11 7 (3.80%) Security Manager
11 7 (3.80%) SOC Architect
12 6 (3.26%) Lead DevOps
12 6 (3.26%) Lead DevOps Engineer
12 6 (3.26%) Security Specialist
13 5 (2.72%) Senior Architect
13 5 (2.72%) Senior Network Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (5.43%) YAML
2 7 (3.80%) cloud-init
2 7 (3.80%) Kafka
2 7 (3.80%) Keycloak
3 4 (2.17%) .NET
3 4 (2.17%) AWS CDK
3 4 (2.17%) ModSecurity
4 2 (1.09%) Faiss
4 2 (1.09%) LangChain
4 2 (1.09%) LangGraph
4 2 (1.09%) Middleware
4 2 (1.09%) RabbitMQ
4 2 (1.09%) SailPoint
5 1 (0.54%) .NET Core
5 1 (0.54%) ActiveMQ
5 1 (0.54%) AngularJS
5 1 (0.54%) ARM Templates
5 1 (0.54%) Azure Blueprints
5 1 (0.54%) Elastic Stack
5 1 (0.54%) Entity Framework
Miscellaneous
1 19 (10.33%) Management Information System
2 17 (9.24%) PKI
3 14 (7.61%) Cyber Threat
4 12 (6.52%) Onboarding
5 10 (5.43%) Cloud Native
5 10 (5.43%) Cyber Defence
6 9 (4.89%) Security Posture
7 7 (3.80%) Legacy Applications
7 7 (3.80%) Operational Technology
8 6 (3.26%) CSOC
8 6 (3.26%) Private Cloud
9 5 (2.72%) NHS
10 4 (2.17%) Data Centre
10 4 (2.17%) Legacy Systems
10 4 (2.17%) Security Operations Centre
11 3 (1.63%) Product Ownership
11 3 (1.63%) SCADA
12 2 (1.09%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 2 (1.09%) Enterprise Cloud
12 2 (1.09%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 18 (9.78%) Linux
2 10 (5.43%) Windows
3 7 (3.80%) CentOS
3 7 (3.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 7 (3.80%) Unix
4 6 (3.26%) Windows Server
5 4 (2.17%) Windows 10
6 3 (1.63%) Mac OS
6 3 (1.63%) Windows Server 2008
7 2 (1.09%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (0.54%) AIX
8 1 (0.54%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 70 (38.04%) Cybersecurity
2 43 (23.37%) CI/CD
3 39 (21.20%) Cloud Security
4 37 (20.11%) Infrastructure as Code
5 35 (19.02%) DevSecOps
6 33 (17.93%) DevOps
7 30 (16.30%) Risk Management
8 28 (15.22%) Incident Response
8 28 (15.22%) Threat Modelling
9 27 (14.67%) Information Assurance
10 23 (12.50%) Vulnerability Assessment
10 23 (12.50%) Zero Trust
11 22 (11.96%) Security Architecture
11 22 (11.96%) SIEM
12 21 (11.41%) Containerisation
12 21 (11.41%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 20 (10.87%) Information Security
13 20 (10.87%) Security Management
14 18 (9.78%) Agile
14 18 (9.78%) Penetration Testing
Programming Languages
1 23 (12.50%) Python
2 19 (10.33%) Bash
3 7 (3.80%) Go
4 6 (3.26%) PowerShell
5 5 (2.72%) Shell Script
5 5 (2.72%) SQL
6 4 (2.17%) Bicep
7 2 (1.09%) C#
8 1 (0.54%) JavaScript
8 1 (0.54%) Kusto Query Language
8 1 (0.54%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 134 (72.83%) Security Cleared
2 90 (48.91%) SC Cleared
3 53 (28.80%) DV Cleared
4 36 (19.57%) CISSP
5 23 (12.50%) CISM
6 17 (9.24%) Degree
7 12 (6.52%) CREST Certified
8 11 (5.98%) OSCP
9 9 (4.89%) CHECK Team Member
9 9 (4.89%) Cisco Certification
9 9 (4.89%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
9 9 (4.89%) Tigerscheme
10 7 (3.80%) CESG Certified Professional
11 6 (3.26%) Azure Certification
12 5 (2.72%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 5 (2.72%) CompTIA Security+
13 4 (2.17%) Computer Science Degree
13 4 (2.17%) Microsoft Certification
14 3 (1.63%) AWS Certification
14 3 (1.63%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 64 (34.78%) NIST
2 63 (34.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 32 (17.39%) JSP 440
4 25 (13.59%) Cyber Essentials
5 23 (12.50%) NIST 800
6 16 (8.70%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 13 (7.07%) GDPR
8 9 (4.89%) RMADS
9 6 (3.26%) Government Security Classifications
9 6 (3.26%) GRC
10 5 (2.72%) ISO/IEC 27005
11 4 (2.17%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 3 (1.63%) IASME
13 2 (1.09%) COBIT
13 2 (1.09%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 1 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
14 1 (0.54%) Def Stans
14 1 (0.54%) ISO 22301
14 1 (0.54%) PCI DSS
14 1 (0.54%) SLA
System Software
1 15 (8.15%) Docker
2 14 (7.61%) Firmware
3 12 (6.52%) Active Directory
4 4 (2.17%) VMware ESXi
4 4 (2.17%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (1.09%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.54%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 26 (14.13%) Terraform
2 24 (13.04%) Kubernetes
3 12 (6.52%) Jamf Pro
4 10 (5.43%) Ansible
4 10 (5.43%) Nmap
5 7 (3.80%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 7 (3.80%) Grafana
5 7 (3.80%) Packer
5 7 (3.80%) Prometheus
6 4 (2.17%) OPNET
6 4 (2.17%) Single Sign-On
7 3 (1.63%) Check_MK
7 3 (1.63%) vCenter Server
8 2 (1.09%) Microsoft Intune
8 2 (1.09%) SELinux
9 1 (0.54%) FortiGate
9 1 (0.54%) Puppet
9 1 (0.54%) VxRail
Vendors
1 24 (13.04%) Microsoft
2 17 (9.24%) VMware
3 12 (6.52%) Splunk
4 10 (5.43%) Veracode
5 9 (4.89%) Okta
6 8 (4.35%) SAP
7 7 (3.80%) Cisco
8 3 (1.63%) Fortinet
8 3 (1.63%) Juniper
8 3 (1.63%) NVIDIA
9 2 (1.09%) Brio
9 2 (1.09%) CrowdStrike
9 2 (1.09%) CyberArk
9 2 (1.09%) Dynatrace
9 2 (1.09%) Foundry
9 2 (1.09%) Google
9 2 (1.09%) LogRhythm
9 2 (1.09%) Saba
9 2 (1.09%) SolarWinds
10 1 (0.54%) Oracle