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 5 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 536 498 566
Rank change year-on-year -38 +68 +160
Contract jobs citing SOC 2 61 28 32
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.16% 0.090% 0.072%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 0.90% 0.62% 0.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 41 16 20
10th Percentile - £406 £446
25th Percentile £413 £477 £481
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £600 £588
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% +2.13% +17.50%
75th Percentile £575 £658 £700
90th Percentile £850 £813 -
UK excluding London median daily rate £466 £494 £700
% change year-on-year -5.62% -29.46% +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 6,753 4,534 6,395
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.25% 14.56% 14.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,337 2,668 4,240
10th Percentile £322 £258 £300
25th Percentile £411 £377 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £625 £635
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.06% +3.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 346 173 331
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.00 £12.24
25th Percentile £18.16 £21.00 £14.50
Median hourly rate £27.04 £30.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.88% +20.00% -5.89%
75th Percentile £63.75 £65.00 £51.67
90th Percentile £69.83 £75.00 £72.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.85 £29.00 £25.00
% change year-on-year -14.33% +16.00% -

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 5 February 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 5 February 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 -37 53 £500 -14.89% 46
London -25 23 £525 -30.09% 25
UK excluding London -41 23 £466 -5.62% 33
Work from Home -4 19 £500 - 33
North of England -52 12 £466 +12.97% 10
Yorkshire -51 8 £539 +30.58% 5
South East - 6 £563 - 6
Midlands - 5 £438 - 4
East Midlands - 3 £438 -
North West -25 2 £420 +35.48% 3
North East - 2 £466 - 2
South West - 2 - - 7
West Midlands - 2 - - 4
East of England -24 1 £525 -12.50%

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 (3.28%) Microsoft Exchange
1 2 (3.28%) SharePoint
2 1 (1.64%) Apache Airflow
Cloud Services
1 39 (63.93%) Azure
2 28 (45.90%) AWS
3 23 (37.70%) GCP
4 16 (26.23%) Entra ID
5 8 (13.11%) Microsoft 365
6 7 (11.48%) Amazon GuardDuty
6 7 (11.48%) SaaS
7 6 (9.84%) AWS CloudFormation
7 6 (9.84%) Azure Sentinel
7 6 (9.84%) GitHub
7 6 (9.84%) GitHub Actions
8 5 (8.20%) Power Platform
9 4 (6.56%) Azure DevOps
9 4 (6.56%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 3 (4.92%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 3 (4.92%) AWS CloudTrail
10 3 (4.92%) Azure Key Vault
10 3 (4.92%) Cloud Run
10 3 (4.92%) IaaS
10 3 (4.92%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 8 (13.11%) Network Security
2 5 (8.20%) Firewall
2 5 (8.20%) Reverse Proxy
3 3 (4.92%) VPN
4 2 (3.28%) Kerberos
4 2 (3.28%) SSH
5 1 (1.64%) BGP
5 1 (1.64%) DNS
5 1 (1.64%) OSPF
5 1 (1.64%) SSL
5 1 (1.64%) TCP/IP
5 1 (1.64%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (1.64%) Amazon RDS
1 1 (1.64%) Data Vault
1 1 (1.64%) Looker
1 1 (1.64%) Pinecone
1 1 (1.64%) Power BI
1 1 (1.64%) Snowflake Schema
1 1 (1.64%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 1 (1.64%) GitLab
1 1 (1.64%) Jenkins
1 1 (1.64%) SonarQube
General
1 19 (31.15%) Social Skills
2 12 (19.67%) Finance
3 8 (13.11%) Analytical Skills
4 6 (9.84%) Banking
5 4 (6.56%) Legal
5 4 (6.56%) Public Sector
6 2 (3.28%) Documentation Skills
6 2 (3.28%) Financial Institution
6 2 (3.28%) Presentation Skills
7 1 (1.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (1.64%) Investment Banking
7 1 (1.64%) Law
7 1 (1.64%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 9 (14.75%) Architect
2 5 (8.20%) Analyst
2 5 (8.20%) Consultant
2 5 (8.20%) Platform Engineer
2 5 (8.20%) Security Engineer
2 5 (8.20%) Senior
3 3 (4.92%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
3 3 (4.92%) Lead
3 3 (4.92%) Security Architect
3 3 (4.92%) Solutions Architect
4 2 (3.28%) Administrator
4 2 (3.28%) Cloud Engineer
4 2 (3.28%) Cybersecurity Architect
4 2 (3.28%) Enterprise Architect
4 2 (3.28%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 2 (3.28%) Integration Manager
4 2 (3.28%) Integration Project Manager
4 2 (3.28%) IT Manager
4 2 (3.28%) IT Project Manager
4 2 (3.28%) Senior Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (26.23%) SAML
2 14 (22.95%) OAuth
3 13 (21.31%) OpenID
4 8 (13.11%) OAuth2
5 5 (8.20%) ARM Templates
5 5 (8.20%) LDAP
5 5 (8.20%) Microsoft Graph
6 4 (6.56%) RESTful
7 3 (4.92%) Model Context Protocol
8 2 (3.28%) Flash
8 2 (3.28%) GraphQL
8 2 (3.28%) JWT
8 2 (3.28%) Middleware
8 2 (3.28%) Node.js
8 2 (3.28%) Smart Contracts
9 1 (1.64%) Elastic Stack
9 1 (1.64%) JSON
9 1 (1.64%) Kafka
9 1 (1.64%) REST
9 1 (1.64%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 10 (16.39%) Onboarding
2 9 (14.75%) Cloud Native
3 5 (8.20%) Management Information System
3 5 (8.20%) Security Posture
4 4 (6.56%) Hybrid Cloud
5 3 (4.92%) Distributed Systems
5 3 (4.92%) Product Ownership
6 2 (3.28%) Blockchain
6 2 (3.28%) Cloud Security Posture
6 2 (3.28%) Cyber Threat
6 2 (3.28%) Data Centre
6 2 (3.28%) Data Protection Act
6 2 (3.28%) Enterprise Cloud
6 2 (3.28%) Greenfield Project
6 2 (3.28%) Operational Technology
7 1 (1.64%) Cyberattack
7 1 (1.64%) Enterprise Software
7 1 (1.64%) PKI
7 1 (1.64%) Security Operations Centre
7 1 (1.64%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 8 (13.11%) Linux
2 5 (8.20%) Windows
3 4 (6.56%) Unix
4 2 (3.28%) AIX
4 2 (3.28%) Solaris
4 2 (3.28%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 22 (36.07%) Cybersecurity
1 22 (36.07%) Infrastructure as Code
2 21 (34.43%) CI/CD
3 19 (31.15%) DevOps
4 17 (27.87%) Cloud Security
5 14 (22.95%) Incident Response
6 12 (19.67%) Risk Management
6 12 (19.67%) SIEM
7 11 (18.03%) AI
7 11 (18.03%) Problem-Solving
7 11 (18.03%) RBAC
7 11 (18.03%) Zero Trust
8 10 (16.39%) Data Loss Prevention
8 10 (16.39%) DevSecOps
9 9 (14.75%) Containerisation
10 8 (13.11%) Data Protection
10 8 (13.11%) Information Security
10 8 (13.11%) Key Management
10 8 (13.11%) Threat Modelling
11 7 (11.48%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 20 (32.79%) Python
2 17 (27.87%) PowerShell
3 12 (19.67%) Bash
4 10 (16.39%) Bicep
5 4 (6.56%) Search Processing Language
6 3 (4.92%) Go
6 3 (4.92%) Java
6 3 (4.92%) SQL
7 2 (3.28%) Rust
7 2 (3.28%) Solidity
8 1 (1.64%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 9 (14.75%) CISSP
2 8 (13.11%) CISM
3 7 (11.48%) AWS Certification
3 7 (11.48%) Degree
4 6 (9.84%) Azure Certification
5 4 (6.56%) Microsoft Certification
5 4 (6.56%) Security Cleared
6 3 (4.92%) (ISC)2 CCSP
6 3 (4.92%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 3 (4.92%) Cisco Certification
6 3 (4.92%) Computer Science Degree
7 2 (3.28%) BPSS Clearance
7 2 (3.28%) CCSK
7 2 (3.28%) CEH
7 2 (3.28%) CISA
7 2 (3.28%) CompTIA Security+
7 2 (3.28%) OSCP
7 2 (3.28%) SC Cleared
8 1 (1.64%) CRISC
8 1 (1.64%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (60.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 25 (40.98%) GDPR
3 20 (32.79%) NIST
4 13 (21.31%) HIPAA
4 13 (21.31%) PCI DSS
5 8 (13.11%) GRC
6 4 (6.56%) EU AI Act
7 3 (4.92%) Cyber Essentials
7 3 (4.92%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 2 (3.28%) FedRAMP
8 2 (3.28%) ISO 22301
9 1 (1.64%) Accessibility
9 1 (1.64%) Data Quality
9 1 (1.64%) NCSC
9 1 (1.64%) QA
9 1 (1.64%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 13 (21.31%) Active Directory
2 5 (8.20%) Docker
Systems Management
1 24 (39.34%) Terraform
2 13 (21.31%) Single Sign-On
3 12 (19.67%) Kubernetes
4 5 (8.20%) Ansible
5 2 (3.28%) Argo
5 2 (3.28%) Grafana
5 2 (3.28%) Microsoft Intune
5 2 (3.28%) PingFederate
5 2 (3.28%) Prometheus
5 2 (3.28%) QRadar
6 1 (1.64%) CSIRT
6 1 (1.64%) Fluentd
6 1 (1.64%) Kustomize
6 1 (1.64%) logstash
Vendors
1 15 (24.59%) Microsoft
2 10 (16.39%) Splunk
3 9 (14.75%) Google
4 4 (6.56%) Databricks
4 4 (6.56%) Ping Identity
4 4 (6.56%) ServiceNow
5 3 (4.92%) CrowdStrike
5 3 (4.92%) Okta
6 2 (3.28%) BeyondTrust
6 2 (3.28%) CyberArk
6 2 (3.28%) Optimizely
6 2 (3.28%) Salesforce
7 1 (1.64%) Cribl.io
7 1 (1.64%) Informatica
7 1 (1.64%) Intel
7 1 (1.64%) OpenAI
7 1 (1.64%) Rapid7
7 1 (1.64%) Talend
7 1 (1.64%) Tenable
7 1 (1.64%) Zscaler