NCSC Job Trends

National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs requiring NCSC skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 10 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 484 542 588
Rank change year-on-year +58 +46 +4
Permanent jobs citing NCSC 189 153 218
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.29% 0.31% 0.29%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 2.33% 1.87% 2.08%
Number of salaries quoted 84 70 174
10th Percentile £52,000 £51,251 £48,273
25th Percentile £62,188 £59,031 £54,154
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £75,000 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% +15.38% -7.14%
75th Percentile £81,750 £77,500 £77,500
90th Percentile £90,875 £90,500 £87,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £65,000 £75,000 £61,439
% change year-on-year -13.33% +22.07% -1.70%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
UK

NCSC falls under the Quality Assurance and Compliance category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring quality assurance or compliance skills.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 8,111 8,192 10,503
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 12.35% 16.38% 14.13%
Number of salaries quoted 4,508 3,660 7,767
10th Percentile £30,000 £32,500 £27,965
25th Percentile £41,250 £43,853 £38,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year - +9.09% -4.35%
75th Percentile £78,757 £78,750 £73,750
90th Percentile £95,000 £95,125 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £54,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -7.41% +8.00% -

NCSC
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing NCSC relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

NCSC job vacancy trend in the UK

NCSC
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing NCSC.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing NCSC

NCSC
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing NCSC over the 6 months to 10 February 2026.

Salary histogram for NCSC in the UK

NCSC
Top 15 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing NCSC within the UK over the 6 months to 10 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England +41 139 £70,000 -6.35% 57
UK excluding London +24 123 £65,000 -13.33% 55
Work from Home +62 102 £79,625 +6.17% 25
London +47 44 £79,500 +6.77% 11
South East +35 39 £65,000 -6.81% 20
Scotland +25 39 £90,000 +14.29% 1
South West +7 24 £72,500 -23.68% 15
North of England -18 9 £70,000 -6.67% 12
Yorkshire -38 6 £73,231 -2.36% 4
Midlands -45 6 £70,000 +3.70% 7
East Midlands - 5 £70,000 - 2
East of England +17 4 - - 2
North West +14 3 £69,384 +15.64% 5
Wales +4 2 £61,250 -27.94% 1
West Midlands -43 1 - - 5

NCSC
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 4 (2.12%) SharePoint
2 2 (1.06%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.53%) Camunda
Applications
1 1 (0.53%) Abaqus
1 1 (0.53%) Siemens NX
1 1 (0.53%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 1 (0.53%) DELMIA
1 1 (0.53%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 109 (57.67%) Azure
2 66 (34.92%) Entra ID
3 57 (30.16%) Google Workspace
4 40 (21.16%) AWS
5 16 (8.47%) PaaS
6 13 (6.88%) Azure DevOps
7 8 (4.23%) GCP
8 5 (2.65%) Microsoft 365
8 5 (2.65%) Microsoft Purview
9 4 (2.12%) Amazon GuardDuty
10 3 (1.59%) Azure Sentinel
10 3 (1.59%) IaaS
11 2 (1.06%) dbt
11 2 (1.06%) OpenShift
12 1 (0.53%) AWS KMS
12 1 (0.53%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 1 (0.53%) Mimecast
12 1 (0.53%) OCI
12 1 (0.53%) SaaS
12 1 (0.53%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 58 (30.69%) Broadband
2 20 (10.58%) Network Security
3 18 (9.52%) Firewall
4 7 (3.70%) DMZ
5 3 (1.59%) WAN
6 2 (1.06%) DHCP
6 2 (1.06%) DNS
6 2 (1.06%) InfiniBand
6 2 (1.06%) Internet
6 2 (1.06%) LAN
6 2 (1.06%) TCP/IP
6 2 (1.06%) VPN
7 1 (0.53%) Intrusion Detection
7 1 (0.53%) Modbus
7 1 (0.53%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (1.06%) Weaviate
2 1 (0.53%) Data Lake
2 1 (0.53%) Data Warehouse
2 1 (0.53%) MySQL
2 1 (0.53%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (0.53%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 1 (0.53%) Ant
1 1 (0.53%) Cucumber
1 1 (0.53%) Cypress.io
1 1 (0.53%) Git
1 1 (0.53%) Gradle
1 1 (0.53%) JUnit
1 1 (0.53%) Maven
1 1 (0.53%) Mockito
General
1 77 (40.74%) Organisational Skills
2 66 (34.92%) Social Skills
3 36 (19.05%) Games
4 23 (12.17%) Finance
5 19 (10.05%) Public Sector
6 18 (9.52%) Analytical Skills
7 7 (3.70%) Influencing Skills
7 7 (3.70%) Law
8 6 (3.17%) Legal
8 6 (3.17%) Presentation Skills
9 5 (2.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (1.59%) Banking
10 3 (1.59%) Manufacturing
11 1 (0.53%) Aerospace
11 1 (0.53%) Back Office
11 1 (0.53%) Financial Institution
11 1 (0.53%) Military
11 1 (0.53%) Pharmaceutical
11 1 (0.53%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 39 (20.63%) Senior
2 37 (19.58%) Architect
3 26 (13.76%) Security Manager
4 25 (13.23%) Consultant
5 24 (12.70%) Developer
6 23 (12.17%) IAM Developer
6 23 (12.17%) Security Architect
7 21 (11.11%) Cybersecurity Manager
7 21 (11.11%) Lead
7 21 (11.11%) Security Consultant
8 20 (10.58%) Security Engineer
9 19 (10.05%) Security Assurance Manager
10 16 (8.47%) Systems Engineer
11 15 (7.94%) Senior Developer
12 13 (6.88%) Cybersecurity Consultant
13 8 (4.23%) Senior Systems Engineer
13 8 (4.23%) Systems Developer
14 7 (3.70%) Applications Engineer
15 6 (3.17%) Lead Architect
15 6 (3.17%) Senior Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 58 (30.69%) GraphQL
1 58 (30.69%) REST
1 58 (30.69%) SOAP
2 56 (29.63%) LDAP
2 56 (29.63%) OAuth
2 56 (29.63%) OpenID
2 56 (29.63%) SAML
3 15 (7.94%) YAML
4 7 (3.70%) React
4 7 (3.70%) Spring Boot
5 5 (2.65%) JSON
6 2 (1.06%) Django
6 2 (1.06%) Faiss
6 2 (1.06%) LangChain
6 2 (1.06%) LangGraph
6 2 (1.06%) ModSecurity
6 2 (1.06%) Ollama
6 2 (1.06%) PyTorch
6 2 (1.06%) TensorFlow
6 2 (1.06%) vLLM
Miscellaneous
1 62 (32.80%) Cyber Threat
2 58 (30.69%) Cyberattack
3 41 (21.69%) Security Posture
4 18 (9.52%) Cloud Native
5 16 (8.47%) PKI
6 12 (6.35%) Cloud Security Posture
7 10 (5.29%) Security Operations Centre
8 9 (4.76%) Management Information System
8 9 (4.76%) Operational Technology
9 8 (4.23%) Cyber Kill Chain
10 7 (3.70%) Hybrid Cloud
11 6 (3.17%) Blog
12 4 (2.12%) CUDA
12 4 (2.12%) Greenfield Project
13 3 (1.59%) Onboarding
13 3 (1.59%) Product Ownership
14 2 (1.06%) Data Centre
14 2 (1.06%) Industry 4.0
14 2 (1.06%) Private Cloud
14 2 (1.06%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 2 (1.06%) Linux
1 2 (1.06%) Windows
1 2 (1.06%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 146 (77.25%) Cybersecurity
2 71 (37.57%) Mentoring
3 68 (35.98%) Roadmaps
4 63 (33.33%) Identity Access Management
5 58 (30.69%) Programme Delivery
6 56 (29.63%) Regulatory Compliance
7 55 (29.10%) Threat Modelling
8 41 (21.69%) Security Architecture
9 40 (21.16%) Cloud Security
10 36 (19.05%) Continuous Improvement
11 30 (15.87%) Stakeholder Management
12 28 (14.81%) DevOps
12 28 (14.81%) Information Security
13 27 (14.29%) Agile
13 27 (14.29%) Application Security
14 26 (13.76%) SDLC
15 25 (13.23%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 25 (13.23%) Vulnerability Management
16 24 (12.70%) Change Control
17 23 (12.17%) Incident Response
Programming Languages
1 73 (38.62%) PowerShell
2 61 (32.28%) Bash
3 56 (29.63%) T-SQL
4 27 (14.29%) SQL
5 6 (3.17%) Java
6 5 (2.65%) Python
7 3 (1.59%) Go
8 2 (1.06%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 50 (26.46%) Security Cleared
2 35 (18.52%) CISSP
3 28 (14.81%) SC Cleared
4 26 (13.76%) CISM
5 25 (13.23%) DV Cleared
6 20 (10.58%) CREST Certified
6 20 (10.58%) Degree
7 16 (8.47%) Computer Science Degree
8 11 (5.82%) CESG Certified Professional
9 10 (5.29%) AWS Certification
9 10 (5.29%) Master's Degree
10 9 (4.76%) Azure Certification
11 8 (4.23%) TOGAF Certification
12 7 (3.70%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 7 (3.70%) CCSP
12 7 (3.70%) Cisco Certification
13 5 (2.65%) CRISC
14 4 (2.12%) BPSS Clearance
14 4 (2.12%) CISA
15 3 (1.59%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 144 (76.19%) NIST
2 118 (62.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 47 (24.87%) GDPR
4 37 (19.58%) Cyber Essentials
5 36 (19.05%) GRC
6 30 (15.87%) PCI DSS
7 28 (14.81%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 18 (9.52%) SOC 2
9 17 (8.99%) SOC 3
10 12 (6.35%) JSP 440
11 8 (4.23%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 4 (2.12%) Actionable Recommendations
13 3 (1.59%) Def Stans
14 2 (1.06%) ISO/IEC 27005
14 2 (1.06%) NIST 800
14 2 (1.06%) SLA
15 1 (0.53%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 56 (29.63%) Active Directory
2 2 (1.06%) GPFS
2 2 (1.06%) Lustre
2 2 (1.06%) Slurm Workload Manager
3 1 (0.53%) Docker
3 1 (0.53%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 5 (2.65%) Kubernetes
2 4 (2.12%) Terraform
3 2 (1.06%) Ansible
3 2 (1.06%) Microsoft Intune
3 2 (1.06%) SELinux
4 1 (0.53%) MOM
4 1 (0.53%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 24 (12.70%) Microsoft
2 4 (2.12%) CrowdStrike
2 4 (2.12%) CyberArk
2 4 (2.12%) NVIDIA
2 4 (2.12%) Splunk
3 3 (1.59%) Trend Micro
4 2 (1.06%) Google
4 2 (1.06%) LogRhythm
5 1 (0.53%) ANSYS
5 1 (0.53%) Cisco
5 1 (0.53%) Dell
5 1 (0.53%) Fortinet
5 1 (0.53%) Imperva
5 1 (0.53%) Intel
5 1 (0.53%) Juniper
5 1 (0.53%) PTC
5 1 (0.53%) Red Hat
5 1 (0.53%) SAP
5 1 (0.53%) Siemens
5 1 (0.53%) Varonis