National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC)
UK

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for NCSC skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited NCSC over the 6 months to 15 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
15 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 440 439 644
Rank change year-on-year -1 +205 -60
Contract jobs citing NCSC 134 276 215
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.31% 0.48% 0.25%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 2.21% 3.62% 1.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 84 182 149
10th Percentile £488 £500 £450
25th Percentile £563 £600 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £640 £681 £625
Median % change year-on-year -6.01% +9.00% +15.74%
75th Percentile £700 £769 £688
90th Percentile £738 £838 £810
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £700 £625
% change year-on-year -14.29% +12.00% +33.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 24 9
10th Percentile £80.34 £59.73 £52.05
25th Percentile £80.85 £62.00 £59.00
Median hourly rate £81.71 £73.99 £63.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.43% +17.44% +8.28%
75th Percentile £82.56 £83.33 £71.08
90th Percentile £83.07 £83.40 £79.47
UK excluding London median hourly rate £80.00 £72.98 £63.00
% change year-on-year +9.62% +15.84% +8.28%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
UK

NCSC is in the Quality Assurance and Compliance category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 6,062 7,631 11,586
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 14.25% 13.36% 13.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,850 5,224 7,927
10th Percentile £282 £280 £300
25th Percentile £405 £413 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £513
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% +2.44% +7.89%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £625
90th Percentile £750 £742 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £484 £480 £450
% change year-on-year +0.83% +6.56% +5.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 380 234 311
10th Percentile £10.95 £13.41 £12.02
25th Percentile £13.18 £18.71 £17.00
Median hourly rate £21.06 £35.00 £31.00
Median % change year-on-year -39.84% +12.90% +47.62%
75th Percentile £45.00 £62.00 £49.75
90th Percentile £68.75 £77.50 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.27 £35.00 £22.50
% change year-on-year -47.80% +55.56% +7.14%

NCSC
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing NCSC as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for NCSC in the UK

NCSC
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing NCSC.

Daily rate trend for NCSC in the UK

NCSC
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing NCSC over the 6 months to 15 May 2024.

Daily rate histogram for NCSC in the UK

NCSC
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing NCSC.

Hourly rate trend for NCSC in the UK

NCSC
Top 13 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing NCSC within the UK over the 6 months to 15 May 2024. 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 -40 107 £613 -12.50% 42
Work from Home +95 69 £600 -12.73% 15
UK excluding London -33 63 £600 -14.29% 33
London +37 47 £644 -8.04% 11
South West -12 34 £600 -16.43% 10
South East +1 16 £613 -12.50% 8
Scotland +44 5 £575 +4.55% 1
North of England -1 5 £575 -8.73% 2
North West -4 4 £575 -8.73% 1
Midlands +28 2 £675 -14.29% 3
West Midlands +15 2 £675 -14.29% 2
East of England +5 1 - - 4
Yorkshire - 1 £575 - 1

NCSC
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 11 (8.21%) Confluence
2 2 (1.49%) Jupyter
2 2 (1.49%) nginx
2 2 (1.49%) Traefik
3 1 (0.75%) Apache
3 1 (0.75%) JBoss
3 1 (0.75%) Tomcat
3 1 (0.75%) WildFly
Applications
1 7 (5.22%) MS Visio
2 3 (2.24%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (2.24%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (2.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 3 (2.24%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 51 (38.06%) AWS
2 44 (32.84%) Azure
3 14 (10.45%) GitHub
4 12 (8.96%) Azure DevOps
5 11 (8.21%) GitHub Actions
6 10 (7.46%) IaaS
6 10 (7.46%) PaaS
6 10 (7.46%) SaaS
7 6 (4.48%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 6 (4.48%) GCP
8 5 (3.73%) Microsoft 365
9 4 (2.99%) AWS CloudTrail
9 4 (2.99%) Azure Monitor
9 4 (2.99%) Power Platform
10 3 (2.24%) AWS CloudFormation
10 3 (2.24%) Azure Sentinel
10 3 (2.24%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 2 (1.49%) Amazon EC2
11 2 (1.49%) Amazon GuardDuty
12 1 (0.75%) AWS CodeBuild
Communications & Networking
1 23 (17.16%) Network Security
2 12 (8.96%) Firewall
3 8 (5.97%) WAN
4 5 (3.73%) DNS
4 5 (3.73%) Intrusion Detection
5 4 (2.99%) SSL
6 3 (2.24%) BGP
6 3 (2.24%) DHCP
6 3 (2.24%) DMVPN
6 3 (2.24%) HSRP
6 3 (2.24%) LAN
6 3 (2.24%) MPLS
6 3 (2.24%) OSPF
6 3 (2.24%) SD-WAN
6 3 (2.24%) SNMP
6 3 (2.24%) Spanning Tree
6 3 (2.24%) TCP/IP
6 3 (2.24%) VLAN
6 3 (2.24%) VPN
6 3 (2.24%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (1.49%) Amazon Athena
1 2 (1.49%) Big Data
2 1 (0.75%) NoSQL
2 1 (0.75%) Oracle Database
2 1 (0.75%) Oracle Database 11g
2 1 (0.75%) Oracle Reports
2 1 (0.75%) RDBMS
2 1 (0.75%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 12 (8.96%) JIRA
2 10 (7.46%) SonarQube
3 6 (4.48%) Git
4 3 (2.24%) Jenkins
5 2 (1.49%) CircleCI
5 2 (1.49%) GitLab
5 2 (1.49%) RStudio
6 1 (0.75%) JUnit
6 1 (0.75%) Maven
6 1 (0.75%) Subversion
6 1 (0.75%) Terragrunt
General
1 32 (23.88%) Public Sector
2 25 (18.66%) Social Skills
3 8 (5.97%) Analytical Skills
4 6 (4.48%) Local Government
5 5 (3.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 3 (2.24%) Finance
6 3 (2.24%) Legal
6 3 (2.24%) Police
7 2 (1.49%) Aerospace
7 2 (1.49%) Military
8 1 (0.75%) Influencing Skills
8 1 (0.75%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (0.75%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 46 (34.33%) Architect
2 27 (20.15%) Security Architect
3 20 (14.93%) Analyst
4 14 (10.45%) SOC Analyst
5 13 (9.70%) Consultant
5 13 (9.70%) Security Consultant
6 11 (8.21%) Senior
7 8 (5.97%) Lead
7 8 (5.97%) Security Engineer
8 7 (5.22%) Solutions Architect
9 6 (4.48%) Cybersecurity Consultant
9 6 (4.48%) IT Architect
9 6 (4.48%) Security Analyst
9 6 (4.48%) Senior Architect
9 6 (4.48%) Senior Solutions Architect
10 5 (3.73%) Cloud Engineer
10 5 (3.73%) Security Manager
11 4 (2.99%) Lead Security Architect
11 4 (2.99%) Network Architect
11 4 (2.99%) Risk Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (7.46%) ARM Templates
1 10 (7.46%) Azure Blueprints
2 6 (4.48%) XML
3 5 (3.73%) JSON
4 3 (2.24%) Jinja
4 3 (2.24%) NETCONF
4 3 (2.24%) PyTorch
4 3 (2.24%) RESTful
4 3 (2.24%) scikit-learn
4 3 (2.24%) TensorFlow
4 3 (2.24%) YANG
5 2 (1.49%) cloud-init
5 2 (1.49%) JSON Schema
5 2 (1.49%) KML
5 2 (1.49%) Regular Expression
5 2 (1.49%) XML Schema
6 1 (0.75%) JSP
6 1 (0.75%) Servlets
6 1 (0.75%) STL
6 1 (0.75%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 35 (26.12%) Management Information System
2 15 (11.19%) CSOC
2 15 (11.19%) Security Operations Centre
3 14 (10.45%) Security Posture
4 11 (8.21%) Public Cloud
5 10 (7.46%) Onboarding
6 7 (5.22%) PKI
7 6 (4.48%) Operational Technology
8 5 (3.73%) Cyber Defence
8 5 (3.73%) SCADA
9 4 (2.99%) Cloud Native
10 3 (2.24%) Algorithms
10 3 (2.24%) Cyber Threat
10 3 (2.24%) NHS
10 3 (2.24%) Product Ownership
11 2 (1.49%) Clustering
11 2 (1.49%) Cyber Security Posture
11 2 (1.49%) Cyberattack
11 2 (1.49%) Greenfield Project
12 1 (0.75%) Cyber Kill Chain
Operating Systems
1 8 (5.97%) Linux
2 2 (1.49%) CentOS
2 2 (1.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 2 (1.49%) Windows
3 1 (0.75%) AIX
3 1 (0.75%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.75%) Mac OS
3 1 (0.75%) Unix
3 1 (0.75%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 84 (62.69%) Cybersecurity
2 47 (35.07%) Information Security
3 31 (23.13%) Security Architecture
4 28 (20.90%) DevOps
5 27 (20.15%) Incident Response
6 26 (19.40%) Information Assurance
7 25 (18.66%) Security Management
8 21 (15.67%) Risk Assessment
8 21 (15.67%) Threat Intelligence
9 19 (14.18%) Information Security Management
10 18 (13.43%) Architectural Patterns
10 18 (13.43%) Cloud Security
10 18 (13.43%) Containerisation
10 18 (13.43%) Security Operations
10 18 (13.43%) TOGAF
11 17 (12.69%) ITIL
11 17 (12.69%) MITRE ATT&CK
12 16 (11.94%) Risk Management
12 16 (11.94%) SABSA
13 15 (11.19%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 6 (4.48%) Python
2 2 (1.49%) Bash
2 2 (1.49%) Go
2 2 (1.49%) Java
2 2 (1.49%) R
2 2 (1.49%) Ruby
3 1 (0.75%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 94 (70.15%) Security Cleared
2 64 (47.76%) SC Cleared
3 35 (26.12%) DV Cleared
4 26 (19.40%) CISSP
5 20 (14.93%) CISM
6 15 (11.19%) BPSS Clearance
7 11 (8.21%) CISA
8 10 (7.46%) Cisco Certification
9 8 (5.97%) CREST Certified
9 8 (5.97%) TOGAF Certification
10 7 (5.22%) Degree
11 6 (4.48%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 5 (3.73%) CCSK
13 3 (2.24%) Azure Certification
13 3 (2.24%) CCNP
13 3 (2.24%) CESG Certified Professional
13 3 (2.24%) MCSE
13 3 (2.24%) Microsoft Certification
14 2 (1.49%) CLAS
14 2 (1.49%) CRISC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 48 (35.82%) NIST
2 32 (23.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 18 (13.43%) GDPR
4 9 (6.72%) RMADS
5 8 (5.97%) GRC
6 7 (5.22%) Government Security Classifications
7 6 (4.48%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 4 (2.99%) ISO 31000
8 4 (2.99%) JSP 440
9 3 (2.24%) COBIT
9 3 (2.24%) Cyber Essentials
9 3 (2.24%) GPG13
9 3 (2.24%) ISO 22301
9 3 (2.24%) ISO/IEC 20000
9 3 (2.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 2 (1.49%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (1.49%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 2 (1.49%) NIST 800
10 2 (1.49%) PCI DSS
11 1 (0.75%) HIPAA
System Software
1 16 (11.94%) Docker
2 3 (2.24%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (1.49%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 19 (14.18%) Terraform
2 17 (12.69%) Ansible
3 16 (11.94%) Kubernetes
4 5 (3.73%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
5 4 (2.99%) Trend Micro Deep Security
6 3 (2.24%) Docker Swarm
7 2 (1.49%) Consul
7 2 (1.49%) Graphite
7 2 (1.49%) HAProxy
7 2 (1.49%) Istio
7 2 (1.49%) linkerd
7 2 (1.49%) Packer
7 2 (1.49%) Podman
7 2 (1.49%) Prometheus
7 2 (1.49%) Puppet
7 2 (1.49%) ZABBIX
8 1 (0.75%) Check_MK
8 1 (0.75%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 22 (16.42%) Microsoft
2 10 (7.46%) VMware
3 7 (5.22%) Splunk
4 5 (3.73%) Oracle
5 4 (2.99%) Atlassian
5 4 (2.99%) Cisco
5 4 (2.99%) Juniper
5 4 (2.99%) Palo Alto
6 3 (2.24%) Aruba
6 3 (2.24%) Databricks
6 3 (2.24%) Meraki
6 3 (2.24%) Sparx
7 2 (1.49%) PagerDuty
8 1 (0.75%) Apple
8 1 (0.75%) Cadence
8 1 (0.75%) CheckPoint
8 1 (0.75%) CrowdStrike
8 1 (0.75%) ForeScout
8 1 (0.75%) Fortinet