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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 16 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 481 543 594
Rank change year-on-year +62 +51 +224
Contract jobs citing SOC 2 66 26 68
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.20% 0.068% 0.14%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 1.18% 0.51% 0.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 40 11 44
10th Percentile £261 £500 £450
25th Percentile £450 £531 £607
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £585 £638 £625
Median % change year-on-year -8.24% +2.00% +2.04%
75th Percentile £791 £688 £700
90th Percentile £954 £700 £721
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £575 £450
% change year-on-year -8.70% +27.78% -18.18%

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 5,594 5,090 7,085
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.13% 13.38% 14.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,581 3,022 4,814
10th Percentile £300 £280 £313
25th Percentile £400 £400 £414
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £512 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.39% -2.43% -
75th Percentile £606 £625 £650
90th Percentile £713 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £480 £500
% change year-on-year -1.04% -4.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 269 262 254
10th Percentile £13.60 £12.25 £14.08
25th Percentile £17.45 £15.00 £18.71
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.09 £35.57
Median % change year-on-year +10.74% -23.83% +45.16%
75th Percentile £57.50 £58.44 £64.88
90th Percentile £80.55 £70.00 £78.36
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.18 £26.50 £35.50
% change year-on-year +6.34% -25.35% +68.17%

SOC 2
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing SOC 2 as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for SOC 2 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 16 September 2025.

Daily rate histogram for SOC 2 in the UK

SOC 2
Top 12 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 16 September 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 +47 54 £539 -14.65% 68
London +49 33 £638 -0.97% 41
Work from Home +53 25 £525 +5.00% 34
UK excluding London +18 18 £525 -8.70% 38
North of England -6 8 £500 -31.03% 7
Yorkshire - 7 £500 - 4
South East - 6 - - 23
East of England +6 3 £525 -8.70%
Midlands -9 2 £450 -10.00% 4
South West - 2 - - 3
West Midlands - 2 £450 - 1
North West -11 1 - - 1

SOC 2
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 4 (6.06%) Confluence
2 2 (3.03%) SharePoint
Applications
1 2 (3.03%) Chatbot
2 1 (1.52%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (1.52%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 30 (45.45%) AWS
2 29 (43.94%) Azure
2 29 (43.94%) GCP
3 14 (21.21%) SaaS
4 8 (12.12%) GitHub
4 8 (12.12%) GitHub Actions
4 8 (12.12%) Serverless
5 7 (10.61%) Amazon EC2
5 7 (10.61%) Amazon GuardDuty
5 7 (10.61%) Entra ID
5 7 (10.61%) IaaS
5 7 (10.61%) PaaS
5 7 (10.61%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 6 (9.09%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 5 (7.58%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 5 (7.58%) AWS KMS
7 5 (7.58%) AWS Lambda
7 5 (7.58%) Cloud Computing
7 5 (7.58%) Microsoft 365
8 4 (6.06%) AWS CloudTrail
Communications & Networking
1 12 (18.18%) Firewall
2 8 (12.12%) Network Security
2 8 (12.12%) SSL
2 8 (12.12%) VPN
3 6 (9.09%) DNS
4 3 (4.55%) Kerberos
4 3 (4.55%) SMTP
4 3 (4.55%) TCP/IP
5 2 (3.03%) SSH
5 2 (3.03%) X.509
6 1 (1.52%) BGP
6 1 (1.52%) DMZ
6 1 (1.52%) HTTPS
6 1 (1.52%) OSPF
6 1 (1.52%) SD-WAN
6 1 (1.52%) SNMP
6 1 (1.52%) Telnet
6 1 (1.52%) VLAN
6 1 (1.52%) WAN
6 1 (1.52%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (6.06%) Amazon RDS
2 2 (3.03%) BigQuery
2 2 (3.03%) DynamoDB
3 1 (1.52%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 8 (12.12%) Jenkins
2 7 (10.61%) GitLab
3 3 (4.55%) JIRA
4 2 (3.03%) Git
4 2 (3.03%) SonarQube
5 1 (1.52%) CircleCI
5 1 (1.52%) Snyk
General
1 22 (33.33%) Finance
2 21 (31.82%) Social Skills
3 7 (10.61%) Banking
4 6 (9.09%) Financial Institution
5 5 (7.58%) Analytical Skills
5 5 (7.58%) Documentation Skills
6 4 (6.06%) Investment Banking
7 2 (3.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 2 (3.03%) Legal
8 1 (1.52%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (1.52%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 13 (19.70%) Architect
2 9 (13.64%) Lead
3 6 (9.09%) Analyst
3 6 (9.09%) AWS Engineer
3 6 (9.09%) DevOps Engineer
3 6 (9.09%) Enterprise Architect
4 5 (7.58%) Administrator
4 5 (7.58%) Consultant
4 5 (7.58%) Lead DevOps
4 5 (7.58%) Lead DevOps Engineer
4 5 (7.58%) Security Engineer
4 5 (7.58%) Senior
4 5 (7.58%) Senior Architect
4 5 (7.58%) Senior Enterprise Architect
5 4 (6.06%) AWS DevOps
5 4 (6.06%) AWS DevOps Engineer
6 3 (4.55%) Security Analyst
6 3 (4.55%) Systems Administrator
6 3 (4.55%) Technical Administrator
6 3 (4.55%) Technical Advisor
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (13.64%) SAML
2 7 (10.61%) OAuth
2 7 (10.61%) OpenID
3 5 (7.58%) LDAP
4 4 (6.06%) Elastic Stack
4 4 (6.06%) OAuth2
5 2 (3.03%) SailPoint
6 1 (1.52%) AWS CDK
6 1 (1.52%) Faiss
6 1 (1.52%) FastAPI
6 1 (1.52%) LangChain
Miscellaneous
1 9 (13.64%) Cloud Native
2 7 (10.61%) Onboarding
2 7 (10.61%) Security Posture
3 5 (7.58%) PKI
4 4 (6.06%) Enterprise Cloud
4 4 (6.06%) Hybrid Cloud
4 4 (6.06%) Insider Threat
5 3 (4.55%) Cyber Kill Chain
5 3 (4.55%) Greenfield Project
5 3 (4.55%) Security Operations Centre
6 2 (3.03%) Algorithms
6 2 (3.03%) Cyber Defence
6 2 (3.03%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 2 (3.03%) Management Information System
6 2 (3.03%) YARA
7 1 (1.52%) AI Agents
7 1 (1.52%) Cloud Security Posture
7 1 (1.52%) Data Protection Act
7 1 (1.52%) Product Ownership
7 1 (1.52%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 7 (10.61%) Linux
2 4 (6.06%) Unix
2 4 (6.06%) Windows
3 2 (3.03%) AIX
3 2 (3.03%) Solaris
3 2 (3.03%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 27 (40.91%) Cloud Security
2 20 (30.30%) DevOps
3 19 (28.79%) Infrastructure as Code
4 18 (27.27%) CI/CD
5 17 (25.76%) Cybersecurity
6 15 (22.73%) Containerisation
6 15 (22.73%) Incident Response
7 14 (21.21%) Zero Trust
8 13 (19.70%) Identity Access Management
9 12 (18.18%) DevSecOps
10 11 (16.67%) RBAC
11 10 (15.15%) Data Loss Prevention
11 10 (15.15%) SIEM
12 9 (13.64%) Data Protection
13 8 (12.12%) Artificial Intelligence
13 8 (12.12%) Information Security
13 8 (12.12%) Problem-Solving
13 8 (12.12%) Security Monitoring
13 8 (12.12%) Threat Modelling
14 7 (10.61%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 23 (34.85%) Python
2 16 (24.24%) Bash
3 10 (15.15%) PowerShell
4 7 (10.61%) Bicep
5 4 (6.06%) Search Processing Language
5 4 (6.06%) SQL
6 3 (4.55%) Java
7 2 (3.03%) Go
7 2 (3.03%) Kusto Query Language
7 2 (3.03%) Shell Script
8 1 (1.52%) JavaScript
Qualifications
1 11 (16.67%) CISM
2 10 (15.15%) CISSP
3 7 (10.61%) AWS Certification
4 6 (9.09%) Azure Certification
5 4 (6.06%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 4 (6.06%) Microsoft Certification
5 4 (6.06%) SC Cleared
5 4 (6.06%) Security Cleared
6 3 (4.55%) GCIH
6 3 (4.55%) GIAC
6 3 (4.55%) MCP
7 2 (3.03%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 2 (3.03%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
7 2 (3.03%) CCSP
7 2 (3.03%) Cisco Certification
7 2 (3.03%) CSSLP
7 2 (3.03%) Degree
7 2 (3.03%) GCIA
8 1 (1.52%) PMI Certification
8 1 (1.52%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 47 (71.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 29 (43.94%) GDPR
2 29 (43.94%) NIST
3 12 (18.18%) PCI DSS
4 8 (12.12%) GRC
4 8 (12.12%) HIPAA
5 4 (6.06%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 4 (6.06%) Cyber Essentials
6 3 (4.55%) EU AI Act
6 3 (4.55%) NIST 800
7 2 (3.03%) Actionable Recommendations
7 2 (3.03%) FIPS 140-2
7 2 (3.03%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
7 2 (3.03%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (1.52%) ITGC
8 1 (1.52%) PMO
8 1 (1.52%) QA
8 1 (1.52%) SOC 1
System Software
1 13 (19.70%) Docker
2 10 (15.15%) Active Directory
3 1 (1.52%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 26 (39.39%) Terraform
2 18 (27.27%) Kubernetes
3 8 (12.12%) Ansible
3 8 (12.12%) Single Sign-On
4 7 (10.61%) Prometheus
5 6 (9.09%) Grafana
6 4 (6.06%) CASB
7 3 (4.55%) Microsoft Intune
8 2 (3.03%) Argo
8 2 (3.03%) Kustomize
8 2 (3.03%) PingFederate
8 2 (3.03%) Puppet
9 1 (1.52%) Istio
9 1 (1.52%) Jamf Pro
9 1 (1.52%) linkerd
9 1 (1.52%) QRadar
Vendors
1 19 (28.79%) Microsoft
2 11 (16.67%) Google
3 10 (15.15%) Splunk
4 4 (6.06%) CrowdStrike
4 4 (6.06%) Qualys
4 4 (6.06%) Tenable
5 3 (4.55%) CyberArk
5 3 (4.55%) Okta
5 3 (4.55%) Zscaler
6 2 (3.03%) Ping Identity
6 2 (3.03%) Salesforce
6 2 (3.03%) ServiceNow
7 1 (1.52%) BeyondTrust
7 1 (1.52%) LogRhythm
7 1 (1.52%) OpenAI
7 1 (1.52%) Tanium
7 1 (1.52%) VirusTotal