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

6 months to
15 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 527 500 570
Rank change year-on-year -27 +70 +157
Contract jobs citing SOC 2 66 34 28
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.17% 0.11% 0.062%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 0.95% 0.75% 0.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 46 19 18
10th Percentile £413 £397 £439
25th Percentile £438 £453 £481
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £600 £575
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% +4.35% +21.05%
75th Percentile £628 £751 £688
90th Percentile £800 £890 £700
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 6,913 4,511 6,488
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.30% 14.60% 14.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,454 2,681 4,264
10th Percentile £325 £260 £300
25th Percentile £413 £375 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £625 £634
90th Percentile £700 £725 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +3.58% -2.56% +2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 361 168 339
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.00 £12.25
25th Percentile £18.23 £20.82 £14.50
Median hourly rate £25.77 £27.68 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.88% +10.70% -14.24%
75th Percentile £63.40 £65.00 £51.17
90th Percentile £69.65 £76.01 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.78 £27.68 £24.43
% change year-on-year -21.30% +13.28% -15.32%

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 15 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 15 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 -49 59 £500 -14.89% 42
London -7 29 £525 -30.09% 20
UK excluding London -60 23 £466 -5.62% 29
Work from Home -7 20 £500 - 27
North of England -56 12 £466 +12.97% 9
Yorkshire -60 8 £539 +30.58% 4
Midlands - 6 £438 - 5
South East - 5 £563 - 9
East Midlands - 3 £438 - 2
West Midlands - 3 - - 3
North West -30 2 £420 +35.48% 1
South West - 2 - - 2
North East - 2 £466 - 4
East of England -25 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 (3.03%) Microsoft Exchange
1 2 (3.03%) SharePoint
2 1 (1.52%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (1.52%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (1.52%) Microsoft Office
1 1 (1.52%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 38 (57.58%) Azure
2 27 (40.91%) AWS
3 22 (33.33%) GCP
4 16 (24.24%) Entra ID
5 8 (12.12%) Microsoft 365
6 7 (10.61%) Amazon GuardDuty
6 7 (10.61%) SaaS
7 6 (9.09%) AWS CloudFormation
7 6 (9.09%) Azure Sentinel
7 6 (9.09%) GitHub
7 6 (9.09%) GitHub Actions
8 5 (7.58%) Power Platform
9 4 (6.06%) Azure DevOps
9 4 (6.06%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 3 (4.55%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 3 (4.55%) AWS CloudTrail
10 3 (4.55%) Azure Key Vault
10 3 (4.55%) Cloud Run
10 3 (4.55%) IaaS
10 3 (4.55%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 8 (12.12%) Network Security
2 5 (7.58%) Firewall
2 5 (7.58%) Reverse Proxy
3 3 (4.55%) VPN
4 2 (3.03%) Kerberos
4 2 (3.03%) SSH
5 1 (1.52%) BGP
5 1 (1.52%) DNS
5 1 (1.52%) OSPF
5 1 (1.52%) SSL
5 1 (1.52%) TCP/IP
5 1 (1.52%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (1.52%) Amazon RDS
1 1 (1.52%) Data Vault
1 1 (1.52%) Looker
1 1 (1.52%) Pinecone
1 1 (1.52%) Power BI
1 1 (1.52%) Snowflake Schema
1 1 (1.52%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 1 (1.52%) GitLab
1 1 (1.52%) Jenkins
1 1 (1.52%) SonarQube
General
1 22 (33.33%) Social Skills
2 14 (21.21%) Finance
3 9 (13.64%) Analytical Skills
4 6 (9.09%) Banking
5 4 (6.06%) Legal
5 4 (6.06%) Public Sector
6 3 (4.55%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (3.03%) Financial Institution
7 2 (3.03%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (1.52%) Investment Banking
8 1 (1.52%) Law
8 1 (1.52%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 8 (12.12%) Architect
1 8 (12.12%) Senior
2 6 (9.09%) Analyst
3 5 (7.58%) Platform Engineer
3 5 (7.58%) Security Engineer
4 4 (6.06%) Consultant
4 4 (6.06%) Security Specialist
5 3 (4.55%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
5 3 (4.55%) Lead
5 3 (4.55%) Security Architect
5 3 (4.55%) Senior Data Warehouse Specialist
5 3 (4.55%) Senior Security Specialist
5 3 (4.55%) Solutions Architect
6 2 (3.03%) Azure Engineer
6 2 (3.03%) Cloud Engineer
6 2 (3.03%) Cybersecurity Analyst
6 2 (3.03%) Cybersecurity Architect
6 2 (3.03%) Risk Officer
6 2 (3.03%) Senior Architect
6 2 (3.03%) Senior Enterprise Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (24.24%) SAML
2 14 (21.21%) OAuth
3 13 (19.70%) OpenID
4 8 (12.12%) OAuth2
5 5 (7.58%) ARM Templates
5 5 (7.58%) LDAP
5 5 (7.58%) Microsoft Graph
6 4 (6.06%) RESTful
7 3 (4.55%) Model Context Protocol
8 2 (3.03%) Flash
8 2 (3.03%) GraphQL
8 2 (3.03%) JWT
8 2 (3.03%) Middleware
8 2 (3.03%) Node.js
8 2 (3.03%) Smart Contracts
9 1 (1.52%) Elastic Stack
9 1 (1.52%) JSON
9 1 (1.52%) Kafka
9 1 (1.52%) REST
9 1 (1.52%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 9 (13.64%) Cloud Native
1 9 (13.64%) Onboarding
2 6 (9.09%) Security Posture
3 5 (7.58%) Management Information System
4 4 (6.06%) Hybrid Cloud
5 3 (4.55%) Distributed Systems
5 3 (4.55%) Product Ownership
6 2 (3.03%) Blockchain
6 2 (3.03%) Cloud Security Posture
6 2 (3.03%) Cyber Threat
6 2 (3.03%) Data Centre
6 2 (3.03%) Data Protection Act
6 2 (3.03%) Enterprise Cloud
6 2 (3.03%) Greenfield Project
6 2 (3.03%) Operational Technology
7 1 (1.52%) AI Agents
7 1 (1.52%) Cyberattack
7 1 (1.52%) PKI
7 1 (1.52%) Security Operations Centre
7 1 (1.52%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 8 (12.12%) Linux
2 6 (9.09%) Windows
3 3 (4.55%) AIX
3 3 (4.55%) Solaris
3 3 (4.55%) Unix
4 2 (3.03%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 24 (36.36%) Cybersecurity
2 22 (33.33%) Infrastructure as Code
3 20 (30.30%) CI/CD
4 18 (27.27%) DevOps
4 18 (27.27%) Risk Management
5 17 (25.76%) Cloud Security
6 15 (22.73%) AI
7 14 (21.21%) Incident Response
8 12 (18.18%) RBAC
9 11 (16.67%) Information Security
9 11 (16.67%) Problem-Solving
9 11 (16.67%) SIEM
9 11 (16.67%) Zero Trust
10 10 (15.15%) Data Loss Prevention
10 10 (15.15%) Data Protection
10 10 (15.15%) DevSecOps
10 10 (15.15%) Stakeholder Management
11 9 (13.64%) Containerisation
11 9 (13.64%) Continuous Improvement
11 9 (13.64%) Data Security
Programming Languages
1 19 (28.79%) Python
2 16 (24.24%) PowerShell
3 11 (16.67%) Bash
4 10 (15.15%) Bicep
5 3 (4.55%) Go
5 3 (4.55%) Java
5 3 (4.55%) Search Processing Language
5 3 (4.55%) SQL
6 2 (3.03%) Rust
6 2 (3.03%) Solidity
7 1 (1.52%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 13 (19.70%) CISSP
2 10 (15.15%) CISM
2 10 (15.15%) Degree
3 7 (10.61%) AWS Certification
4 6 (9.09%) Azure Certification
4 6 (9.09%) CISA
5 5 (7.58%) CRISC
5 5 (7.58%) Security Cleared
6 4 (6.06%) Microsoft Certification
7 3 (4.55%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 3 (4.55%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 3 (4.55%) Cisco Certification
7 3 (4.55%) Computer Science Degree
7 3 (4.55%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
7 3 (4.55%) Master's Degree
7 3 (4.55%) SC Cleared
8 2 (3.03%) BPSS Clearance
8 2 (3.03%) CCSK
8 2 (3.03%) CEH
8 2 (3.03%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 43 (65.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 26 (39.39%) GDPR
2 26 (39.39%) NIST
3 18 (27.27%) PCI DSS
4 12 (18.18%) HIPAA
5 11 (16.67%) GRC
6 4 (6.06%) EU AI Act
6 4 (6.06%) NIST 800
7 3 (4.55%) Cyber Essentials
7 3 (4.55%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 2 (3.03%) COBIT
8 2 (3.03%) FedRAMP
8 2 (3.03%) ISO 22301
8 2 (3.03%) ISO 31000
8 2 (3.03%) PMO
8 2 (3.03%) SLA
9 1 (1.52%) Accessibility
9 1 (1.52%) Data Quality
9 1 (1.52%) NCSC
9 1 (1.52%) QA
System Software
1 13 (19.70%) Active Directory
2 5 (7.58%) Docker
Systems Management
1 23 (34.85%) Terraform
2 13 (19.70%) Single Sign-On
3 12 (18.18%) Kubernetes
4 4 (6.06%) Ansible
5 2 (3.03%) Argo
5 2 (3.03%) Grafana
5 2 (3.03%) Microsoft Intune
5 2 (3.03%) PingFederate
5 2 (3.03%) Prometheus
5 2 (3.03%) QRadar
6 1 (1.52%) CSIRT
6 1 (1.52%) Fluentd
6 1 (1.52%) Kustomize
6 1 (1.52%) logstash
Vendors
1 15 (22.73%) Microsoft
2 9 (13.64%) Google
2 9 (13.64%) Splunk
3 4 (6.06%) Databricks
3 4 (6.06%) Ping Identity
3 4 (6.06%) ServiceNow
4 3 (4.55%) CrowdStrike
4 3 (4.55%) Okta
5 2 (3.03%) BeyondTrust
5 2 (3.03%) CyberArk
5 2 (3.03%) Optimizely
5 2 (3.03%) Salesforce
6 1 (1.52%) Cribl.io
6 1 (1.52%) Informatica
6 1 (1.52%) Intel
6 1 (1.52%) OpenAI
6 1 (1.52%) Rapid7
6 1 (1.52%) Talend
6 1 (1.52%) Tenable
6 1 (1.52%) Zscaler