NCSC Contract Job Trends in the West Midlands

National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC)
England > West Midlands

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the West Midlands requiring NCSC skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 19 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 119 103 110
Rank change year-on-year -16 +7 +53
Contract jobs citing NCSC 18 2 7
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 0.80% 0.12% 0.38%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 4.99% 0.70% 2.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 15 2 5
10th Percentile £540 £530 -
25th Percentile £670 £538 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £700 £563 £575
Median % change year-on-year +24.44% -2.17% +2.22%
75th Percentile - £575 £588
90th Percentile £850 - £648
England median daily rate £600 £623 £621
% change year-on-year -3.61% +0.20% -7.96%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
West Midlands

NCSC 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 in the West Midlands.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 361 284 276
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 16.03% 17.08% 15.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 226 183 205
10th Percentile £295 £220 £363
25th Percentile £405 £363 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.07% -2.40% +5.26%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £600
90th Percentile £700 £638 £688
England median daily rate £500 £500 £545
% change year-on-year - -8.26% +3.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 17 12
10th Percentile £12.63 £13.62 £13.03
25th Percentile £14.31 £14.70 £14.22
Median hourly rate £16.13 £16.19 £21.25
Median % change year-on-year -0.37% -23.81% +6.25%
75th Percentile £27.50 £33.75 £39.63
90th Percentile £36.28 £51.00 £75.25
England median hourly rate £25.63 £29.50 £35.50
% change year-on-year -13.12% -16.90% +58.41%

NCSC
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing NCSC relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands.

NCSC job vacancy trend in the West Midlands

NCSC
Daily Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing NCSC.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing NCSC

NCSC
Daily Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing NCSC in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 19 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for NCSC in the West Midlands

NCSC
Contract Job Locations in the West Midlands

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing NCSC within the West Midlands region over the 6 months to 19 December 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
Herefordshire -6 10 £700 +21.74%
Worcestershire - 10 £700 - 1
Warwickshire -8 3 £575 +4.55% 2
Birmingham - 2 £525 - 1
Shropshire - 1 £639 -
Staffordshire - 1 - -
NCSC
England

NCSC
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the West Midlands 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 (11.11%) Confluence
Cloud Services
1 14 (77.78%) Azure
2 10 (55.56%) GitHub
3 2 (11.11%) Azure Sentinel
3 2 (11.11%) Entra ID
3 2 (11.11%) OpenShift
4 1 (5.56%) Azure DevOps
4 1 (5.56%) Azure ExpressRoute
4 1 (5.56%) Azure Monitor
4 1 (5.56%) IaaS
4 1 (5.56%) PaaS
4 1 (5.56%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 4 (22.22%) Firewall
2 1 (5.56%) Kerberos
2 1 (5.56%) Network Security
2 1 (5.56%) VPN
Development Applications
1 11 (61.11%) SonarQube
2 2 (11.11%) JIRA
3 1 (5.56%) Git
General
1 1 (5.56%) Documentation Skills
1 1 (5.56%) Finance
1 1 (5.56%) Public Sector
1 1 (5.56%) Social Skills
Job Titles
1 10 (55.56%) DevSecOps Engineer
2 2 (11.11%) Consultant
2 2 (11.11%) Security Engineer
3 1 (5.56%) Azure Consultant
3 1 (5.56%) Cybersecurity Specialist
3 1 (5.56%) DevOps Consultant
3 1 (5.56%) Instrumentation Engineer
3 1 (5.56%) Penetration Tester
3 1 (5.56%) Security Consultant
3 1 (5.56%) Security Specialist
3 1 (5.56%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (61.11%) YAML
2 1 (5.56%) Azure Blueprints
2 1 (5.56%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 2 (11.11%) Security Posture
2 1 (5.56%) Management Information System
2 1 (5.56%) Onboarding
2 1 (5.56%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 2 (11.11%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 13 (72.22%) Regulatory Compliance
2 12 (66.67%) DevOps
2 12 (66.67%) DevSecOps
2 12 (66.67%) Infrastructure as Code
3 11 (61.11%) CI/CD
3 11 (61.11%) Containerisation
3 11 (61.11%) Test Automation
4 10 (55.56%) Platform Engineering
5 5 (27.78%) Cybersecurity
6 3 (16.67%) Agile
7 2 (11.11%) API Testing
7 2 (11.11%) OWASP
7 2 (11.11%) Penetration Testing
7 2 (11.11%) Roadmaps
8 1 (5.56%) Cyber Assurance
8 1 (5.56%) Infrastructure Automation
8 1 (5.56%) Privileged Access Management
8 1 (5.56%) Privileged Identity Management
8 1 (5.56%) Problem-Solving
8 1 (5.56%) Remediation Plan
Programming Languages
1 1 (5.56%) Bash
1 1 (5.56%) PowerShell
1 1 (5.56%) Python
Qualifications
1 16 (88.89%) SC Cleared
1 16 (88.89%) Security Cleared
2 10 (55.56%) DV Cleared
3 2 (11.11%) Microsoft Certification
4 1 (5.56%) Azure Certification
4 1 (5.56%) GSEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (22.22%) NIST
2 3 (16.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (5.56%) Cyber Essentials
3 1 (5.56%) GRC
3 1 (5.56%) ISO 22301
System Software
1 11 (61.11%) Docker
2 2 (11.11%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 13 (72.22%) Kubernetes
2 12 (66.67%) Terraform
3 1 (5.56%) Ansible
Vendors
1 3 (16.67%) Microsoft
2 1 (5.56%) Cisco