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

6 months to
21 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 486 526 572
Rank change year-on-year +40 +46 +241
Contract jobs citing SOC 2 71 31 58
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.21% 0.084% 0.12%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 1.20% 0.63% 0.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 44 13 38
10th Percentile £263 £500 £450
25th Percentile £444 £563 £596
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £625 £638
Median % change year-on-year -18.00% -1.96% +2.00%
75th Percentile £768 £675 £700
90th Percentile £903 £700 £736
UK excluding London median daily rate £466 £588 £700
% change year-on-year -20.68% -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 5,928 4,955 6,794
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.72% 13.37% 14.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,795 2,885 4,602
10th Percentile £300 £275 £313
25th Percentile £400 £391 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £612 £625 £650
90th Percentile £711 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% +4.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 288 231 257
10th Percentile £13.60 £13.26 £15.00
25th Percentile £16.50 £16.11 £20.07
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £36.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -23.61% +46.31%
75th Percentile £60.00 £62.53 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.00 £79.87
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.00 £27.50 £37.50
% change year-on-year -9.09% -26.67% +68.54%

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 21 October 2025.

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 21 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 +33 57 £500 -16.67% 104
London +24 32 £538 -16.50% 62
Work from Home +39 28 £500 - 62
UK excluding London +5 18 £466 -20.68% 68
North of England -19 10 £466 -9.95% 8
Yorkshire - 7 £500 - 2
Midlands -18 4 £450 -10.00% 2
South East - 4 - - 46
West Midlands - 4 £450 -
North West -18 2 £420 -18.84% 6
South West - 2 - - 4
East of England -4 1 £525 -12.50%
North East - 1 £466 -

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 4 (5.63%) Confluence
2 1 (1.41%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 2 (2.82%) Chatbot
2 1 (1.41%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (1.41%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 38 (53.52%) Azure
2 33 (46.48%) AWS
3 29 (40.85%) GCP
4 13 (18.31%) SaaS
5 9 (12.68%) Entra ID
6 8 (11.27%) Amazon GuardDuty
6 8 (11.27%) GitHub
6 8 (11.27%) GitHub Actions
6 8 (11.27%) Serverless
7 7 (9.86%) Azure Sentinel
7 7 (9.86%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 7 (9.86%) IaaS
7 7 (9.86%) PaaS
8 6 (8.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 5 (7.04%) Amazon EC2
9 5 (7.04%) AWS CloudFormation
9 5 (7.04%) AWS Lambda
9 5 (7.04%) Microsoft 365
10 4 (5.63%) Cloud Computing
10 4 (5.63%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 13 (18.31%) Firewall
2 9 (12.68%) Network Security
3 7 (9.86%) VPN
4 6 (8.45%) DNS
5 5 (7.04%) Kerberos
5 5 (7.04%) SSL
6 4 (5.63%) SSH
7 3 (4.23%) SMTP
7 3 (4.23%) TCP/IP
8 1 (1.41%) BGP
8 1 (1.41%) DMZ
8 1 (1.41%) HTTPS
8 1 (1.41%) OSPF
8 1 (1.41%) SD-WAN
8 1 (1.41%) SNMP
8 1 (1.41%) Telnet
8 1 (1.41%) VLAN
8 1 (1.41%) WAN
8 1 (1.41%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (5.63%) Amazon RDS
2 2 (2.82%) BigQuery
2 2 (2.82%) DynamoDB
3 1 (1.41%) Data Vault
3 1 (1.41%) Looker
3 1 (1.41%) Pinecone
3 1 (1.41%) Power BI
3 1 (1.41%) Snowflake Schema
3 1 (1.41%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 7 (9.86%) Jenkins
2 6 (8.45%) GitLab
3 3 (4.23%) JIRA
4 2 (2.82%) Git
4 2 (2.82%) SonarQube
5 1 (1.41%) CircleCI
5 1 (1.41%) Snyk
General
1 24 (33.80%) Finance
2 21 (29.58%) Social Skills
3 7 (9.86%) Banking
4 6 (8.45%) Analytical Skills
5 5 (7.04%) Documentation Skills
5 5 (7.04%) Financial Institution
6 3 (4.23%) Investment Banking
6 3 (4.23%) Presentation Skills
7 2 (2.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (1.41%) Public Sector
8 1 (1.41%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 14 (19.72%) Architect
2 7 (9.86%) Analyst
2 7 (9.86%) Consultant
2 7 (9.86%) Lead
3 6 (8.45%) Security Engineer
3 6 (8.45%) Senior
4 5 (7.04%) Administrator
4 5 (7.04%) DevOps Engineer
4 5 (7.04%) Enterprise Architect
4 5 (7.04%) Lead DevOps
4 5 (7.04%) Lead DevOps Engineer
5 4 (5.63%) AWS Engineer
5 4 (5.63%) Senior Architect
5 4 (5.63%) Senior Enterprise Architect
6 3 (4.23%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
6 3 (4.23%) Management Consultant
6 3 (4.23%) Security Analyst
6 3 (4.23%) Systems Administrator
6 3 (4.23%) Technical Administrator
6 3 (4.23%) Technical Advisor
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (18.31%) SAML
2 11 (15.49%) OAuth
3 9 (12.68%) OpenID
4 7 (9.86%) LDAP
5 5 (7.04%) OAuth2
6 4 (5.63%) Elastic Stack
7 2 (2.82%) AWS CDK
7 2 (2.82%) GraphQL
7 2 (2.82%) Microsoft Graph
7 2 (2.82%) RESTful
7 2 (2.82%) SailPoint
8 1 (1.41%) ARM Templates
8 1 (1.41%) Faiss
8 1 (1.41%) FastAPI
8 1 (1.41%) Kafka
8 1 (1.41%) LangChain
8 1 (1.41%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 9 (12.68%) Cloud Native
2 7 (9.86%) Onboarding
2 7 (9.86%) Security Posture
3 5 (7.04%) Hybrid Cloud
4 3 (4.23%) Cyber Kill Chain
4 3 (4.23%) Data Protection Act
4 3 (4.23%) Enterprise Cloud
4 3 (4.23%) Greenfield Project
4 3 (4.23%) PKI
4 3 (4.23%) Security Operations Centre
5 2 (2.82%) Cloud Security Posture
5 2 (2.82%) Data Centre
5 2 (2.82%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
5 2 (2.82%) YARA
6 1 (1.41%) AI Agents
6 1 (1.41%) BYOD
6 1 (1.41%) Management Information System
6 1 (1.41%) PMI
6 1 (1.41%) Product Ownership
6 1 (1.41%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 9 (12.68%) Linux
2 4 (5.63%) AIX
2 4 (5.63%) Solaris
2 4 (5.63%) Unix
2 4 (5.63%) Windows
3 2 (2.82%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 26 (36.62%) Cloud Security
2 23 (32.39%) DevOps
3 21 (29.58%) CI/CD
4 20 (28.17%) Infrastructure as Code
5 18 (25.35%) Cybersecurity
6 15 (21.13%) Incident Response
6 15 (21.13%) Zero Trust
7 14 (19.72%) DevSecOps
8 13 (18.31%) Containerisation
8 13 (18.31%) Identity Access Management
9 12 (16.90%) RBAC
10 11 (15.49%) SIEM
11 10 (14.08%) AI
12 9 (12.68%) Problem-Solving
12 9 (12.68%) Security Monitoring
13 8 (11.27%) Continuous Improvement
13 8 (11.27%) Data Loss Prevention
13 8 (11.27%) Key Management
13 8 (11.27%) Threat Modelling
14 7 (9.86%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 26 (36.62%) Python
2 17 (23.94%) Bash
3 15 (21.13%) PowerShell
4 7 (9.86%) Bicep
5 5 (7.04%) SQL
6 4 (5.63%) Search Processing Language
7 3 (4.23%) Java
8 2 (2.82%) Go
8 2 (2.82%) Kusto Query Language
8 2 (2.82%) Shell Script
9 1 (1.41%) JavaScript
9 1 (1.41%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 9 (12.68%) CISM
2 8 (11.27%) AWS Certification
2 8 (11.27%) CISSP
3 7 (9.86%) Azure Certification
4 6 (8.45%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 5 (7.04%) SC Cleared
5 5 (7.04%) Security Cleared
6 4 (5.63%) (ISC)2 CCSP
6 4 (5.63%) Cisco Certification
7 3 (4.23%) Degree
7 3 (4.23%) GCIH
7 3 (4.23%) GIAC
7 3 (4.23%) MCP
7 3 (4.23%) Microsoft Certification
8 2 (2.82%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
8 2 (2.82%) CCSP
8 2 (2.82%) CSSLP
8 2 (2.82%) GCIA
9 1 (1.41%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
9 1 (1.41%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 48 (67.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 31 (43.66%) NIST
3 29 (40.85%) GDPR
4 16 (22.54%) PCI DSS
5 9 (12.68%) HIPAA
6 8 (11.27%) GRC
7 4 (5.63%) Cyber Essentials
8 3 (4.23%) EU AI Act
9 2 (2.82%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (2.82%) ISO 22301
9 2 (2.82%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
9 2 (2.82%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (1.41%) Data Quality
10 1 (1.41%) FedRAMP
10 1 (1.41%) ITGC
10 1 (1.41%) NIST 800
10 1 (1.41%) PMO
10 1 (1.41%) SOC 1
System Software
1 12 (16.90%) Active Directory
2 11 (15.49%) Docker
3 1 (1.41%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 28 (39.44%) Terraform
2 17 (23.94%) Kubernetes
3 10 (14.08%) Single Sign-On
4 8 (11.27%) Ansible
5 6 (8.45%) Prometheus
6 5 (7.04%) Grafana
7 3 (4.23%) Argo
7 3 (4.23%) Kustomize
8 2 (2.82%) Microsoft Intune
8 2 (2.82%) PingFederate
8 2 (2.82%) Puppet
8 2 (2.82%) QRadar
9 1 (1.41%) Istio
9 1 (1.41%) Jamf Pro
9 1 (1.41%) linkerd
Vendors
1 15 (21.13%) Microsoft
2 11 (15.49%) Google
2 11 (15.49%) Splunk
3 5 (7.04%) CrowdStrike
3 5 (7.04%) CyberArk
4 4 (5.63%) Tenable
5 3 (4.23%) BeyondTrust
5 3 (4.23%) Okta
5 3 (4.23%) Qualys
5 3 (4.23%) Zscaler
6 2 (2.82%) Optimizely
6 2 (2.82%) Ping Identity
6 2 (2.82%) Salesforce
6 2 (2.82%) ServiceNow
7 1 (1.41%) Databricks
7 1 (1.41%) Informatica
7 1 (1.41%) LogRhythm
7 1 (1.41%) OpenAI
7 1 (1.41%) Talend
7 1 (1.41%) Tanium