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 28 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 533 496 569
Rank change year-on-year -37 +73 +169
Contract jobs citing SOC 2 60 22 33
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.16% 0.070% 0.075%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 0.91% 0.49% 0.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 41 10 19
10th Percentile - £481 £443
25th Percentile £413 £563 £481
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £600 £575
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% +4.35% +15.00%
75th Percentile £575 £626 £675
90th Percentile £850 £678 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £458 £588 £700
% change year-on-year -22.04% -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 6,574 4,504 6,337
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.13% 14.39% 14.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,230 2,640 4,212
10th Percentile £318 £250 £300
25th Percentile £410 £375 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £625 £638
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 328 174 310
10th Percentile £15.29 £15.00 £12.25
25th Percentile £18.08 £21.01 £14.55
Median hourly rate £26.34 £29.00 £27.90
Median % change year-on-year -9.17% +3.94% +7.31%
75th Percentile £63.75 £65.00 £55.80
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.27 £28.00 £27.17
% change year-on-year -6.18% +3.07% +8.66%

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 28 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SOC 2 in the UK

SOC 2
Top 14 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 28 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 -39 53 £500 -14.89% 130
UK excluding London -35 24 £458 -22.04% 130
London -17 22 £525 -16.00% 18
Work from Home -10 17 £500 -11.19% 43
North of England -45 12 £466 +50.32% 27
Yorkshire -42 8 £539 - 12
Midlands - 6 £442 - 21
South East - 6 £563 - 32
East Midlands - 3 £438 - 11
West Midlands - 3 £450 - 9
North West -26 2 £420 +35.48% 10
North East - 2 £466 - 5
South West - 2 - - 18
East of England -14 1 £525 -12.50% 18

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 (3.33%) Microsoft Exchange
1 2 (3.33%) SharePoint
2 1 (1.67%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (1.67%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (1.67%) Microsoft Office
1 1 (1.67%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 38 (63.33%) Azure
2 26 (43.33%) AWS
3 22 (36.67%) GCP
4 15 (25.00%) Entra ID
5 8 (13.33%) Microsoft 365
6 7 (11.67%) Amazon GuardDuty
6 7 (11.67%) SaaS
7 6 (10.00%) AWS CloudFormation
7 6 (10.00%) GitHub
7 6 (10.00%) GitHub Actions
8 5 (8.33%) Azure Sentinel
8 5 (8.33%) Power Platform
9 4 (6.67%) Azure DevOps
9 4 (6.67%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 3 (5.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 3 (5.00%) Azure Key Vault
10 3 (5.00%) Cloud Run
10 3 (5.00%) IaaS
10 3 (5.00%) Microsoft Purview
10 3 (5.00%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 8 (13.33%) Network Security
2 5 (8.33%) Firewall
2 5 (8.33%) Reverse Proxy
3 3 (5.00%) VPN
4 2 (3.33%) Kerberos
4 2 (3.33%) SSH
5 1 (1.67%) BGP
5 1 (1.67%) DNS
5 1 (1.67%) OSPF
5 1 (1.67%) SSL
5 1 (1.67%) TCP/IP
5 1 (1.67%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (1.67%) Amazon RDS
1 1 (1.67%) Data Vault
1 1 (1.67%) Looker
1 1 (1.67%) Pinecone
1 1 (1.67%) Power BI
1 1 (1.67%) Snowflake Schema
1 1 (1.67%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 1 (1.67%) GitLab
1 1 (1.67%) Jenkins
1 1 (1.67%) SonarQube
General
1 20 (33.33%) Social Skills
2 12 (20.00%) Finance
3 8 (13.33%) Analytical Skills
4 6 (10.00%) Banking
5 4 (6.67%) Legal
5 4 (6.67%) Public Sector
6 3 (5.00%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (3.33%) Financial Institution
7 2 (3.33%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (1.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (1.67%) Investment Banking
8 1 (1.67%) Law
8 1 (1.67%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 9 (15.00%) Architect
2 6 (10.00%) Analyst
3 5 (8.33%) Consultant
3 5 (8.33%) Platform Engineer
3 5 (8.33%) Security Engineer
3 5 (8.33%) Senior
4 3 (5.00%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
4 3 (5.00%) Lead
4 3 (5.00%) Security Architect
4 3 (5.00%) Solutions Architect
5 2 (3.33%) Administrator
5 2 (3.33%) Business Analyst
5 2 (3.33%) Enterprise Architect
5 2 (3.33%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 2 (3.33%) Integration Manager
5 2 (3.33%) IT Manager
5 2 (3.33%) IT Project Manager
5 2 (3.33%) Management Consultant
5 2 (3.33%) Project Manager
5 2 (3.33%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (26.67%) SAML
2 14 (23.33%) OAuth
3 13 (21.67%) OpenID
4 8 (13.33%) OAuth2
5 5 (8.33%) LDAP
5 5 (8.33%) Microsoft Graph
6 4 (6.67%) ARM Templates
6 4 (6.67%) RESTful
7 2 (3.33%) Flash
7 2 (3.33%) GraphQL
7 2 (3.33%) JWT
7 2 (3.33%) Middleware
7 2 (3.33%) Node.js
7 2 (3.33%) Smart Contracts
8 1 (1.67%) AWS CDK
8 1 (1.67%) Elastic Stack
8 1 (1.67%) Faiss
8 1 (1.67%) FastAPI
8 1 (1.67%) Kafka
8 1 (1.67%) LangChain
Miscellaneous
1 10 (16.67%) Onboarding
2 8 (13.33%) Cloud Native
3 5 (8.33%) Management Information System
4 4 (6.67%) Hybrid Cloud
4 4 (6.67%) Security Posture
5 3 (5.00%) Distributed Systems
5 3 (5.00%) Product Ownership
6 2 (3.33%) Blockchain
6 2 (3.33%) Cloud Security Posture
6 2 (3.33%) Cyber Threat
6 2 (3.33%) Data Centre
6 2 (3.33%) Data Protection Act
6 2 (3.33%) Enterprise Cloud
6 2 (3.33%) Greenfield Project
6 2 (3.33%) Operational Technology
7 1 (1.67%) AI Agents
7 1 (1.67%) Cyberattack
7 1 (1.67%) PKI
7 1 (1.67%) PMI
7 1 (1.67%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 8 (13.33%) Linux
2 5 (8.33%) Windows
3 4 (6.67%) Unix
4 3 (5.00%) AIX
4 3 (5.00%) Solaris
5 2 (3.33%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 23 (38.33%) Cybersecurity
2 20 (33.33%) CI/CD
2 20 (33.33%) Infrastructure as Code
3 18 (30.00%) DevOps
4 16 (26.67%) Cloud Security
5 14 (23.33%) Incident Response
6 12 (20.00%) RBAC
6 12 (20.00%) Risk Management
7 11 (18.33%) AI
7 11 (18.33%) Problem-Solving
7 11 (18.33%) SIEM
7 11 (18.33%) Zero Trust
8 10 (16.67%) Data Loss Prevention
8 10 (16.67%) DevSecOps
9 8 (13.33%) Containerisation
9 8 (13.33%) Data Protection
9 8 (13.33%) Information Security
9 8 (13.33%) Key Management
9 8 (13.33%) Stakeholder Management
9 8 (13.33%) Threat Modelling
Programming Languages
1 19 (31.67%) Python
2 16 (26.67%) PowerShell
3 11 (18.33%) Bash
4 9 (15.00%) Bicep
5 4 (6.67%) Search Processing Language
6 3 (5.00%) Go
6 3 (5.00%) Java
6 3 (5.00%) SQL
7 2 (3.33%) Rust
7 2 (3.33%) Solidity
8 1 (1.67%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 8 (13.33%) CISM
1 8 (13.33%) CISSP
1 8 (13.33%) Degree
2 6 (10.00%) AWS Certification
3 5 (8.33%) Azure Certification
4 4 (6.67%) Microsoft Certification
4 4 (6.67%) Security Cleared
5 3 (5.00%) (ISC)2 CCSP
5 3 (5.00%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 3 (5.00%) Cisco Certification
5 3 (5.00%) Computer Science Degree
5 3 (5.00%) MCP
6 2 (3.33%) BPSS Clearance
6 2 (3.33%) CCSK
6 2 (3.33%) CEH
6 2 (3.33%) CISA
6 2 (3.33%) OSCP
6 2 (3.33%) SC Cleared
7 1 (1.67%) CBAP
7 1 (1.67%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 36 (60.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 24 (40.00%) GDPR
3 21 (35.00%) NIST
4 13 (21.67%) HIPAA
4 13 (21.67%) PCI DSS
5 7 (11.67%) GRC
6 4 (6.67%) EU AI Act
7 3 (5.00%) Cyber Essentials
7 3 (5.00%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 2 (3.33%) FedRAMP
8 2 (3.33%) ISO 22301
9 1 (1.67%) Data Quality
9 1 (1.67%) NCSC
9 1 (1.67%) QA
9 1 (1.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 12 (20.00%) Active Directory
2 4 (6.67%) Docker
Systems Management
1 22 (36.67%) Terraform
2 13 (21.67%) Single Sign-On
3 11 (18.33%) Kubernetes
4 5 (8.33%) Ansible
5 2 (3.33%) Argo
5 2 (3.33%) Grafana
5 2 (3.33%) Microsoft Intune
5 2 (3.33%) PingFederate
5 2 (3.33%) Prometheus
6 1 (1.67%) CSIRT
6 1 (1.67%) Kustomize
6 1 (1.67%) QRadar
Vendors
1 14 (23.33%) Microsoft
2 9 (15.00%) Google
2 9 (15.00%) Splunk
3 4 (6.67%) Databricks
3 4 (6.67%) Ping Identity
3 4 (6.67%) ServiceNow
4 3 (5.00%) CrowdStrike
5 2 (3.33%) BeyondTrust
5 2 (3.33%) CyberArk
5 2 (3.33%) Okta
5 2 (3.33%) Optimizely
5 2 (3.33%) Salesforce
6 1 (1.67%) Informatica
6 1 (1.67%) Intel
6 1 (1.67%) OpenAI
6 1 (1.67%) Rapid7
6 1 (1.67%) Talend
6 1 (1.67%) Tenable
6 1 (1.67%) Zscaler