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 4 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 626 477 531
Rank change year-on-year -149 +54 +43
Contract jobs citing SOC 2 59 68 29
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.11% 0.20% 0.076%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 0.61% 1.18% 0.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 36 42 13
10th Percentile £425 £263 £500
25th Percentile £462 £453 £563
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £545 £538 £625
Median % change year-on-year +1.40% -14.00% -
75th Percentile £638 £775 £675
90th Percentile £725 £936 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £500 £588
% change year-on-year -6.25% -14.89% +30.56%

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 9,640 5,751 5,086
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.64% 17.33% 13.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,044 3,680 2,959
10th Percentile £325 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £509 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.80% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £606 £606 £625
90th Percentile £709 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +1.26% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 668 273 247
10th Percentile £13.93 £13.60 £13.16
25th Percentile £16.60 £16.92 £15.62
Median hourly rate £32.40 £30.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +7.98% +9.09% -22.82%
75th Percentile £65.00 £61.25 £62.53
90th Percentile £74.08 £79.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.40 £27.02 £27.50
% change year-on-year +19.91% -1.76% -30.56%

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 4 October 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SOC 2 in the UK

SOC 2
Top 10 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 4 October 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 -126 53 £565 +7.62% 401
London -72 44 £600 +5.49% 225
Work from Home -83 22 £565 +10.24% 344
UK excluding London -113 9 £469 -6.25% 273
Yorkshire -42 5 £453 -9.35% 18
North of England -70 5 £453 -6.16% 50
East of England -20 2 £503 -4.29% 18
Midlands -44 1 £463 +2.78% 29
West Midlands -46 1 £463 +2.78% 18
South East -64 1 £600 - 58

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 (3.39%) Apache Airflow
1 2 (3.39%) SharePoint
Applications
1 2 (3.39%) Chatbot
1 2 (3.39%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (3.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 3 (5.08%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 34 (57.63%) Azure
2 23 (38.98%) AWS
3 21 (35.59%) GCP
4 20 (33.90%) Entra ID
5 12 (20.34%) Azure Sentinel
6 8 (13.56%) OCI
7 6 (10.17%) Power Platform
7 6 (10.17%) SaaS
8 5 (8.47%) Snowflake
9 4 (6.78%) Azure Key Vault
9 4 (6.78%) Cloud Run
9 4 (6.78%) Datadog
9 4 (6.78%) GitHub
9 4 (6.78%) GitHub Actions
9 4 (6.78%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 4 (6.78%) Rubrik
10 3 (5.08%) Azure AKS
10 3 (5.08%) Dynamics 365
10 3 (5.08%) Power Automate
10 3 (5.08%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 4 (6.78%) Reverse Proxy
2 3 (5.08%) DNS
2 3 (5.08%) Firewall
2 3 (5.08%) Network Security
3 2 (3.39%) DHCP
3 2 (3.39%) Internet
3 2 (3.39%) VPN
3 2 (3.39%) X.509
4 1 (1.69%) Cisco IPT
4 1 (1.69%) Kerberos
4 1 (1.69%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (5.08%) Power BI
2 2 (3.39%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (3.39%) SQL Server
2 2 (3.39%) Tableau
3 1 (1.69%) Chroma
3 1 (1.69%) Data Lake
3 1 (1.69%) Delta Lake
3 1 (1.69%) Parquet
3 1 (1.69%) Pinecone
3 1 (1.69%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 4 (6.78%) Snyk
2 3 (5.08%) Git
3 2 (3.39%) JIRA
3 2 (3.39%) Postman
4 1 (1.69%) MLflow
General
1 17 (28.81%) Finance
1 17 (28.81%) Social Skills
2 7 (11.86%) Analytical Skills
3 6 (10.17%) Legal
4 5 (8.47%) Documentation Skills
5 4 (6.78%) Manufacturing
6 2 (3.39%) Banking
6 2 (3.39%) Local Government
6 2 (3.39%) Public Sector
7 1 (1.69%) Health Technology
7 1 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 8 (13.56%) Architect
1 8 (13.56%) Consultant
2 6 (10.17%) Lead
3 5 (8.47%) Security Manager
3 5 (8.47%) Senior
4 4 (6.78%) Developer
4 4 (6.78%) Project Manager
4 4 (6.78%) Security Project Manager
4 4 (6.78%) Vulnerability Management Engineer
5 3 (5.08%) Analyst
5 3 (5.08%) Applications Developer
5 3 (5.08%) DevSecOps Engineer
5 3 (5.08%) Dynamics 365 Consultant
5 3 (5.08%) Information Security Consultant
5 3 (5.08%) Security Consultant
5 3 (5.08%) Security Engineer
6 2 (3.39%) Information Security Officer
6 2 (3.39%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 2 (3.39%) Security Analyst
6 2 (3.39%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (27.12%) Terraform
2 7 (11.86%) OpenID
2 7 (11.86%) SAML
3 6 (10.17%) OAuth
3 6 (10.17%) OAuth2
3 6 (10.17%) SailPoint
4 4 (6.78%) JWT
4 4 (6.78%) Middleware
4 4 (6.78%) Node.js
4 4 (6.78%) React
4 4 (6.78%) REST
4 4 (6.78%) RESTful
5 2 (3.39%) Azure Blueprints
5 2 (3.39%) FastAPI
5 2 (3.39%) GraphQL
5 2 (3.39%) LangChain
5 2 (3.39%) LDAP
5 2 (3.39%) pgvector
6 1 (1.69%) LlamaIndex
6 1 (1.69%) Model Context Protocol
Miscellaneous
1 12 (20.34%) Cloud Native
2 9 (15.25%) Security Posture
3 7 (11.86%) Onboarding
4 5 (8.47%) Distributed Systems
4 5 (8.47%) Management Information System
4 5 (8.47%) PKI
5 4 (6.78%) Operational Technology
6 3 (5.08%) AI Agents
6 3 (5.08%) CMDB
7 2 (3.39%) Algorithms
7 2 (3.39%) Analytical Mindset
7 2 (3.39%) Life Science
7 2 (3.39%) Web Conferencing
8 1 (1.69%) Cyber Kill Chain
8 1 (1.69%) Hybrid Cloud
8 1 (1.69%) Linux Command Line
8 1 (1.69%) Product Ownership
8 1 (1.69%) Self-Motivation
8 1 (1.69%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 7 (11.86%) Linux
2 6 (10.17%) Windows
3 5 (8.47%) Windows Server
4 4 (6.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (5.08%) Ubuntu
6 2 (3.39%) Alpine Linux
7 1 (1.69%) CentOS
7 1 (1.69%) CoreOS
7 1 (1.69%) Unix
7 1 (1.69%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 21 (35.59%) Infrastructure as Code
2 19 (32.20%) CI/CD
3 17 (28.81%) Cybersecurity
4 16 (27.12%) Information Security
5 15 (25.42%) AI
6 14 (23.73%) DevOps
6 14 (23.73%) Secrets Management
7 13 (22.03%) Risk Management
7 13 (22.03%) Stakeholder Management
8 12 (20.34%) Cloud Security
8 12 (20.34%) Runbook
8 12 (20.34%) Zero Trust
9 11 (18.64%) Incident Response
9 11 (18.64%) RBAC
9 11 (18.64%) Vulnerability Management
10 10 (16.95%) Observability
11 9 (15.25%) Change Management
11 9 (15.25%) Remediation Plan
12 8 (13.56%) Microservices
12 8 (13.56%) Security Operations
Programming Languages
1 24 (40.68%) Python
2 13 (22.03%) PowerShell
3 7 (11.86%) JavaScript
4 6 (10.17%) SQL
5 5 (8.47%) Bash
5 5 (8.47%) Go
6 3 (5.08%) Bicep
6 3 (5.08%) C#
7 2 (3.39%) Java
8 1 (1.69%) BeanShell
8 1 (1.69%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 13 (22.03%) CISSP
2 11 (18.64%) CISM
3 7 (11.86%) Degree
4 5 (8.47%) AWS Certification
4 5 (8.47%) Computer Science Degree
4 5 (8.47%) PMI Certification
4 5 (8.47%) PMP
5 4 (6.78%) Azure Certification
6 3 (5.08%) CompTIA Security+
6 3 (5.08%) CRISC
6 3 (5.08%) Security Cleared
7 2 (3.39%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
7 2 (3.39%) CCSP
7 2 (3.39%) CISA
7 2 (3.39%) Cisco Certification
7 2 (3.39%) ISSAP
7 2 (3.39%) Microsoft Certification
7 2 (3.39%) SC Cleared
7 2 (3.39%) SSCP
8 1 (1.69%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 45 (76.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 30 (50.85%) NIST
3 18 (30.51%) GDPR
4 10 (16.95%) HIPAA
5 8 (13.56%) GRC
6 6 (10.17%) ISO 22301
7 5 (8.47%) NIST 800
7 5 (8.47%) PCI DSS
8 4 (6.78%) SOC 1
9 3 (5.08%) QA
10 2 (3.39%) Actionable Recommendations
10 2 (3.39%) Data Quality
10 2 (3.39%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 1 (1.69%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 1 (1.69%) NCSC
System Software
1 8 (13.56%) Active Directory
2 5 (8.47%) Docker
3 2 (3.39%) Virtual Servers
4 1 (1.69%) Ceph
4 1 (1.69%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (1.69%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 10 (16.95%) Kubernetes
2 4 (6.78%) Ansible
3 2 (3.39%) Nexpose
3 2 (3.39%) Puppet
3 2 (3.39%) Single Sign-On
4 1 (1.69%) Argo
4 1 (1.69%) FreeIPA
4 1 (1.69%) Grafana
4 1 (1.69%) Prometheus
4 1 (1.69%) QRadar
Vendors
1 20 (33.90%) Microsoft
2 8 (13.56%) Google
3 7 (11.86%) Okta
3 7 (11.86%) ServiceNow
4 6 (10.17%) CyberArk
5 5 (8.47%) Ping Identity
6 4 (6.78%) CrowdStrike
6 4 (6.78%) Splunk
7 3 (5.08%) OpenAI
8 2 (3.39%) Qualys
8 2 (3.39%) Rapid7
8 2 (3.39%) Tenable
8 2 (3.39%) TOWER Software
9 1 (1.69%) Commvault
9 1 (1.69%) Databricks
9 1 (1.69%) Oracle
9 1 (1.69%) Palo Alto
9 1 (1.69%) Red Hat
9 1 (1.69%) Veeam
9 1 (1.69%) VMware