SOC 2 Contract Job Trends

System and Organization Controls (SOC) 2
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring SOC 2 skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 15 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 520 511 548
Rank change year-on-year -9 +37 +189
Contract jobs citing SOC 2 58 23 32
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.16% 0.072% 0.076%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 0.90% 0.50% 0.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 36 11 18
10th Percentile £411 £500 £439
25th Percentile £413 £563 £534
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £600 £613
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% -2.04% +22.50%
75th Percentile £609 £627 £700
90th Percentile £888 £656 £715
UK excluding London median daily rate £496 £588 £700
% change year-on-year -15.66% -16.07% +86.67%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
UK

SOC 2 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 6,423 4,563 6,088
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.31% 14.33% 14.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,154 2,682 4,042
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 £623 £644
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.58% -5.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 309 175 245
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.00 £13.07
25th Percentile £17.69 £21.02 £17.13
Median hourly rate £25.77 £29.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -11.14% -10.77% +35.42%
75th Percentile £61.25 £64.73 £60.00
90th Percentile £73.75 £75.00 £79.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.36 £29.00 £30.00
% change year-on-year -29.79% -3.33% +37.93%

SOC 2
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing SOC 2 relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

SOC 2 job vacancy trend in the UK

SOC 2
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SOC 2.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SOC 2

SOC 2
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SOC 2 over the 6 months to 15 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SOC 2 in the UK

SOC 2
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 SOC 2 within the UK over the 6 months to 15 January 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 -18 50 £500 -16.67% 147
London -11 22 £525 -16.83% 26
UK excluding London -49 21 £496 -15.66% 137
Work from Home +9 15 £513 -8.97% 69
North of England -32 11 £497 +60.20% 24
Yorkshire -40 7 £550 - 14
South East - 6 £563 - 41
West Midlands - 4 £450 - 5
Midlands - 4 £450 - 17
North West -22 2 £420 +35.48% 6
South West - 2 - - 18
North East - 2 £466 - 4
East of England -23 1 £525 -12.50% 24

SOC 2
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 2 (3.45%) Microsoft Exchange
1 2 (3.45%) SharePoint
2 1 (1.72%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (1.72%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (1.72%) Microsoft Office
1 1 (1.72%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 39 (67.24%) Azure
2 23 (39.66%) AWS
3 20 (34.48%) GCP
4 11 (18.97%) Entra ID
5 9 (15.52%) SaaS
6 8 (13.79%) Microsoft 365
7 6 (10.34%) GitHub
7 6 (10.34%) GitHub Actions
8 5 (8.62%) Azure Sentinel
8 5 (8.62%) Power Platform
9 4 (6.90%) Amazon GuardDuty
9 4 (6.90%) Azure DevOps
9 4 (6.90%) IaaS
9 4 (6.90%) PaaS
10 3 (5.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 3 (5.17%) AWS CloudFormation
10 3 (5.17%) Azure Key Vault
10 3 (5.17%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 3 (5.17%) Google Workspace
10 3 (5.17%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 5 (8.62%) Firewall
1 5 (8.62%) Network Security
2 3 (5.17%) Kerberos
2 3 (5.17%) SSH
2 3 (5.17%) VPN
3 1 (1.72%) BGP
3 1 (1.72%) DNS
3 1 (1.72%) OSPF
3 1 (1.72%) Reverse Proxy
3 1 (1.72%) SSL
3 1 (1.72%) TCP/IP
3 1 (1.72%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (1.72%) Amazon RDS
1 1 (1.72%) Data Vault
1 1 (1.72%) Looker
1 1 (1.72%) Pinecone
1 1 (1.72%) Power BI
1 1 (1.72%) Snowflake Schema
1 1 (1.72%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 1 (1.72%) GitLab
1 1 (1.72%) Jenkins
1 1 (1.72%) SonarQube
General
1 19 (32.76%) Social Skills
2 11 (18.97%) Finance
3 8 (13.79%) Analytical Skills
4 6 (10.34%) Banking
5 4 (6.90%) Documentation Skills
5 4 (6.90%) Public Sector
6 3 (5.17%) Financial Institution
6 3 (5.17%) Legal
6 3 (5.17%) Presentation Skills
7 2 (3.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 2 (3.45%) Investment Banking
8 1 (1.72%) Law
Job Titles
1 7 (12.07%) Architect
2 6 (10.34%) Consultant
2 6 (10.34%) Senior
3 5 (8.62%) Analyst
3 5 (8.62%) Platform Engineer
3 5 (8.62%) Security Engineer
4 3 (5.17%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
4 3 (5.17%) Enterprise Architect
4 3 (5.17%) Lead
4 3 (5.17%) Management Consultant
4 3 (5.17%) Senior Architect
4 3 (5.17%) Senior Enterprise Architect
5 2 (3.45%) Administrator
5 2 (3.45%) Azure Security Engineer
5 2 (3.45%) DevSecOps Engineer
5 2 (3.45%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 2 (3.45%) Integration Manager
5 2 (3.45%) Integration Project Manager
5 2 (3.45%) Senior Security Engineer
5 2 (3.45%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (22.41%) SAML
2 11 (18.97%) OAuth
3 9 (15.52%) OpenID
4 6 (10.34%) LDAP
5 5 (8.62%) Microsoft Graph
6 4 (6.90%) ARM Templates
6 4 (6.90%) OAuth2
7 3 (5.17%) RESTful
8 2 (3.45%) Flash
8 2 (3.45%) GraphQL
8 2 (3.45%) Smart Contracts
9 1 (1.72%) AWS CDK
9 1 (1.72%) Elastic Stack
9 1 (1.72%) Faiss
9 1 (1.72%) FastAPI
9 1 (1.72%) JWT
9 1 (1.72%) Kafka
9 1 (1.72%) LangChain
9 1 (1.72%) Node.js
9 1 (1.72%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 9 (15.52%) Onboarding
2 5 (8.62%) Hybrid Cloud
3 4 (6.90%) Cloud Native
3 4 (6.90%) Management Information System
4 3 (5.17%) Data Protection Act
4 3 (5.17%) Security Posture
5 2 (3.45%) Blockchain
5 2 (3.45%) Cloud Security Posture
5 2 (3.45%) Data Centre
5 2 (3.45%) Enterprise Cloud
5 2 (3.45%) Greenfield Project
5 2 (3.45%) Operational Technology
6 1 (1.72%) AI Agents
6 1 (1.72%) Cyber Threat
6 1 (1.72%) Cyberattack
6 1 (1.72%) Distributed Systems
6 1 (1.72%) PKI
6 1 (1.72%) PMI
6 1 (1.72%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 9 (15.52%) Linux
2 6 (10.34%) Windows
3 4 (6.90%) AIX
3 4 (6.90%) Solaris
3 4 (6.90%) Unix
4 2 (3.45%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 19 (32.76%) Cybersecurity
2 16 (27.59%) CI/CD
3 15 (25.86%) Cloud Security
3 15 (25.86%) DevOps
3 15 (25.86%) Infrastructure as Code
4 14 (24.14%) Incident Response
5 12 (20.69%) RBAC
6 11 (18.97%) AI
6 11 (18.97%) Problem-Solving
7 10 (17.24%) Risk Management
8 8 (13.79%) SIEM
8 8 (13.79%) Zero Trust
9 7 (12.07%) Containerisation
9 7 (12.07%) Data Loss Prevention
9 7 (12.07%) DevSecOps
9 7 (12.07%) Identity Access Management
9 7 (12.07%) Infrastructure Automation
9 7 (12.07%) Roadmaps
9 7 (12.07%) Security Monitoring
10 6 (10.34%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 18 (31.03%) Python
2 17 (29.31%) PowerShell
3 12 (20.69%) Bash
4 7 (12.07%) Bicep
5 4 (6.90%) Search Processing Language
6 3 (5.17%) SQL
7 2 (3.45%) Java
7 2 (3.45%) Rust
7 2 (3.45%) Solidity
8 1 (1.72%) Go
8 1 (1.72%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 7 (12.07%) CISM
1 7 (12.07%) CISSP
2 6 (10.34%) AWS Certification
2 6 (10.34%) Azure Certification
2 6 (10.34%) Degree
3 4 (6.90%) Microsoft Certification
3 4 (6.90%) Security Cleared
4 3 (5.17%) (ISC)2 CCSP
4 3 (5.17%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
4 3 (5.17%) Cisco Certification
4 3 (5.17%) MCP
5 2 (3.45%) CCSK
5 2 (3.45%) CEH
5 2 (3.45%) CISA
5 2 (3.45%) OSCP
5 2 (3.45%) SC Cleared
6 1 (1.72%) CAPM
6 1 (1.72%) DV Cleared
6 1 (1.72%) PMI Certification
6 1 (1.72%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (56.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 22 (37.93%) GDPR
3 18 (31.03%) NIST
4 12 (20.69%) HIPAA
5 10 (17.24%) PCI DSS
6 4 (6.90%) EU AI Act
7 3 (5.17%) Cyber Essentials
7 3 (5.17%) GRC
8 2 (3.45%) FedRAMP
8 2 (3.45%) ISO 22301
9 1 (1.72%) Data Quality
9 1 (1.72%) NCSC
9 1 (1.72%) QA
9 1 (1.72%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 13 (22.41%) Active Directory
2 5 (8.62%) Docker
Systems Management
1 19 (32.76%) Terraform
2 10 (17.24%) Single Sign-On
3 7 (12.07%) Kubernetes
4 5 (8.62%) Ansible
5 2 (3.45%) Argo
5 2 (3.45%) Grafana
5 2 (3.45%) Microsoft Intune
5 2 (3.45%) PingFederate
5 2 (3.45%) Prometheus
6 1 (1.72%) CSIRT
6 1 (1.72%) Kustomize
6 1 (1.72%) QRadar
Vendors
1 11 (18.97%) Microsoft
2 9 (15.52%) Google
3 6 (10.34%) Splunk
4 4 (6.90%) Databricks
5 3 (5.17%) BeyondTrust
5 3 (5.17%) CrowdStrike
5 3 (5.17%) CyberArk
5 3 (5.17%) Ping Identity
5 3 (5.17%) ServiceNow
6 2 (3.45%) Optimizely
6 2 (3.45%) Salesforce
7 1 (1.72%) Informatica
7 1 (1.72%) Intel
7 1 (1.72%) Okta
7 1 (1.72%) OpenAI
7 1 (1.72%) Rapid7
7 1 (1.72%) Talend
7 1 (1.72%) Tenable
7 1 (1.72%) Zscaler