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 23 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 608 490 538
Rank change year-on-year -118 +48 +51
Contract jobs citing SOC 2 67 63 25
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.12% 0.19% 0.064%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 0.72% 1.12% 0.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 44 38 10
10th Percentile £429 £373 £490
25th Percentile £500 £472 £547
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £578 £663 £644
Median % change year-on-year -12.83% +2.91% +3.00%
75th Percentile £675 £850 £694
90th Percentile £725 £950 £704
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £525 £613
% change year-on-year +14.29% -14.29% +36.11%

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 9,322 5,628 5,213
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.30% 17.07% 13.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,954 3,621 3,208
10th Percentile £325 £286 £288
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £512
Median % change year-on-year - -2.39% -2.43%
75th Percentile £600 £610 £625
90th Percentile £700 £716 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £482
% change year-on-year +3.58% -1.35% -3.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 577 265 304
10th Percentile £13.87 £13.60 £11.07
25th Percentile £17.50 £17.35 £14.41
Median hourly rate £36.07 £29.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +24.38% +16.00% -29.08%
75th Percentile £70.00 £60.00 £55.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £85.55 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.07 £25.11 £24.18
% change year-on-year +43.63% +3.86% -30.91%

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 23 August 2026.

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 23 August 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 -114 60 £600 +2.56% 26
London -82 37 £545 -24.83% 13
Work from Home -43 36 £600 +14.29% 12
UK excluding London -94 24 £600 +14.29% 13
South East -56 17 £650 - 6
North of England -64 3 £577 +12.54% 3
East of England -18 2 £503 -4.29%
North West -41 2 £577 - 1
Yorkshire -45 1 - -
Midlands -46 1 £463 +2.78% 3
West Midlands -51 1 £463 +2.78% 1
Scotland - 1 £400 -

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 (2.99%) Apache Airflow
1 2 (2.99%) Confluence
2 1 (1.49%) SharePoint
Applications
1 2 (2.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (1.49%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 3 (4.48%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 25 (37.31%) Azure
2 20 (29.85%) AWS
3 13 (19.40%) GCP
4 9 (13.43%) Entra ID
5 8 (11.94%) Azure Sentinel
5 8 (11.94%) SaaS
6 6 (8.96%) OCI
7 4 (5.97%) Azure Key Vault
8 3 (4.48%) Azure AKS
8 3 (4.48%) Dynamics 365
8 3 (4.48%) GitHub
8 3 (4.48%) GitHub Actions
8 3 (4.48%) Power Automate
8 3 (4.48%) Power Platform
8 3 (4.48%) PowerApps
9 2 (2.99%) AWS Control Tower
9 2 (2.99%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 2 (2.99%) Azure Monitor
9 2 (2.99%) Microsoft 365
9 2 (2.99%) Rubrik
Communications & Networking
1 5 (7.46%) Network Security
2 4 (5.97%) Firewall
3 2 (2.99%) DHCP
3 2 (2.99%) DNS
3 2 (2.99%) Internet
3 2 (2.99%) NGFW
3 2 (2.99%) VPN
3 2 (2.99%) X.509
4 1 (1.49%) Cisco IPT
4 1 (1.49%) Intrusion Detection
4 1 (1.49%) Kerberos
4 1 (1.49%) SMS
4 1 (1.49%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (2.99%) PostgreSQL
1 2 (2.99%) SQL Server
2 1 (1.49%) Azure SQL Database
2 1 (1.49%) Delta Lake
2 1 (1.49%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 4 (5.97%) JIRA
2 2 (2.99%) Git
2 2 (2.99%) GitLab
2 2 (2.99%) Jenkins
3 1 (1.49%) Burp Suite
3 1 (1.49%) MLflow
3 1 (1.49%) Postman
General
1 26 (38.81%) Finance
2 18 (26.87%) Social Skills
3 7 (10.45%) Legal
4 5 (7.46%) Documentation Skills
5 3 (4.48%) Analytical Skills
5 3 (4.48%) Banking
5 3 (4.48%) Manufacturing
6 1 (1.49%) Health Technology
6 1 (1.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (1.49%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 17 (25.37%) Project Manager
2 16 (23.88%) Security Manager
3 15 (22.39%) Security Project Manager
4 9 (13.43%) Consultant
5 7 (10.45%) Analyst
5 7 (10.45%) Senior
6 6 (8.96%) Architect
6 6 (8.96%) Lead
7 5 (7.46%) Cybersecurity Manager
7 5 (7.46%) Project Assurance Manager
7 5 (7.46%) Project Manager - Cybersecurity
8 4 (5.97%) Security Assurance Manager
8 4 (5.97%) Security Engineer
9 3 (4.48%) Dynamics 365 Consultant
9 3 (4.48%) Information Security Consultant
9 3 (4.48%) Security Consultant
9 3 (4.48%) SOC Manager
9 3 (4.48%) Technical Manager
10 2 (2.99%) Enterprise Security Architect
10 2 (2.99%) Information Officer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (10.45%) Terraform
2 4 (5.97%) SailPoint
3 3 (4.48%) OpenID
3 3 (4.48%) REST
3 3 (4.48%) SAML
4 2 (2.99%) 802.1X
4 2 (2.99%) Azure Blueprints
4 2 (2.99%) FastAPI
4 2 (2.99%) LDAP
4 2 (2.99%) OAuth
4 2 (2.99%) OAuth2
5 1 (1.49%) AWS CDK
5 1 (1.49%) FIDO
5 1 (1.49%) Flask
5 1 (1.49%) Keycloak
5 1 (1.49%) LangChain
5 1 (1.49%) pgvector
5 1 (1.49%) Playwright
5 1 (1.49%) RESTful
5 1 (1.49%) WebAuthn
Miscellaneous
1 8 (11.94%) Cloud Native
1 8 (11.94%) Onboarding
1 8 (11.94%) Security Posture
2 7 (10.45%) Operational Technology
3 5 (7.46%) Management Information System
4 4 (5.97%) Product Ownership
4 4 (5.97%) Virtual Team
5 3 (4.48%) CMDB
5 3 (4.48%) PKI
6 2 (2.99%) Algorithms
7 1 (1.49%) Analytical Mindset
7 1 (1.49%) Cyber Kill Chain
7 1 (1.49%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 1 (1.49%) Hybrid Cloud
7 1 (1.49%) Linux Command Line
7 1 (1.49%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 7 (10.45%) Linux
1 7 (10.45%) Windows
2 5 (7.46%) Windows Server
3 4 (5.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (4.48%) Ubuntu
5 2 (2.99%) Alpine Linux
6 1 (1.49%) CentOS
6 1 (1.49%) CoreOS
6 1 (1.49%) Unix
6 1 (1.49%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 33 (49.25%) Cybersecurity
2 27 (40.30%) Stakeholder Management
3 23 (34.33%) Risk Management
4 22 (32.84%) Change Management
5 16 (23.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 15 (22.39%) Zero Trust
7 14 (20.90%) Security Operations
8 13 (19.40%) Budget Management
8 13 (19.40%) Information Security
8 13 (19.40%) Infrastructure as Code
8 13 (19.40%) Matrix Organization
9 12 (17.91%) CI/CD
9 12 (17.91%) Incident Response
10 11 (16.42%) BCP
11 10 (14.93%) Data Protection
11 10 (14.93%) Identity Access Management
11 10 (14.93%) Project Delivery
11 10 (14.93%) Regulatory Compliance
11 10 (14.93%) Runbook
12 9 (13.43%) DevSecOps
Programming Languages
1 12 (17.91%) Python
2 9 (13.43%) PowerShell
3 6 (8.96%) Bash
4 4 (5.97%) JavaScript
5 3 (4.48%) C#
6 2 (2.99%) Bicep
6 2 (2.99%) Java
7 1 (1.49%) BeanShell
7 1 (1.49%) Go
7 1 (1.49%) SQL
Qualifications
1 18 (26.87%) CISSP
2 16 (23.88%) CISM
3 10 (14.93%) PMI Certification
3 10 (14.93%) PMP
4 3 (4.48%) AWS Certification
4 3 (4.48%) CompTIA Security+
4 3 (4.48%) CRISC
4 3 (4.48%) Degree
5 2 (2.99%) Azure Certification
5 2 (2.99%) CCSP
5 2 (2.99%) CISA
5 2 (2.99%) Cisco Certification
5 2 (2.99%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
5 2 (2.99%) ISSAP
5 2 (2.99%) Microsoft Certification
5 2 (2.99%) SSCP
6 1 (1.49%) GCIH
6 1 (1.49%) GIAC
6 1 (1.49%) GSEC
6 1 (1.49%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 58 (86.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 45 (67.16%) NIST
3 30 (44.78%) GDPR
4 11 (16.42%) GRC
5 8 (11.94%) PCI DSS
6 6 (8.96%) ISO 22301
7 5 (7.46%) HIPAA
7 5 (7.46%) NIST 800
7 5 (7.46%) SOC 1
8 4 (5.97%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
9 3 (4.48%) QA
10 2 (2.99%) Actionable Recommendations
10 2 (2.99%) Data Quality
10 2 (2.99%) PMO
11 1 (1.49%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 1 (1.49%) ISO 9001
11 1 (1.49%) ISO/IEC 20000
11 1 (1.49%) NCSC
System Software
1 6 (8.96%) Active Directory
2 3 (4.48%) Docker
3 2 (2.99%) Virtual Servers
4 1 (1.49%) Ceph
4 1 (1.49%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (1.49%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 5 (7.46%) Kubernetes
2 4 (5.97%) Ansible
3 3 (4.48%) Single Sign-On
4 2 (2.99%) CASB
4 2 (2.99%) Nexpose
4 2 (2.99%) Puppet
5 1 (1.49%) Argo
5 1 (1.49%) FreeIPA
5 1 (1.49%) Grafana
5 1 (1.49%) HP Fortify
5 1 (1.49%) Microsoft Intune
5 1 (1.49%) Prometheus
5 1 (1.49%) QRadar
5 1 (1.49%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 13 (19.40%) Microsoft
2 4 (5.97%) CrowdStrike
2 4 (5.97%) CyberArk
2 4 (5.97%) Google
2 4 (5.97%) ServiceNow
2 4 (5.97%) Splunk
3 3 (4.48%) Okta
3 3 (4.48%) Qualys
3 3 (4.48%) Rapid7
3 3 (4.48%) Tenable
4 2 (2.99%) TOWER Software
5 1 (1.49%) Commvault
5 1 (1.49%) ForgeRock
5 1 (1.49%) Oracle
5 1 (1.49%) Palo Alto
5 1 (1.49%) Red Hat
5 1 (1.49%) Remedy
5 1 (1.49%) Veeam
5 1 (1.49%) Veracode
5 1 (1.49%) VMware