NCSC Contracts

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 1 June 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
1 Jun 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 455 419 629
Rank change year-on-year -36 +210 -14
Contract jobs citing NCSC 120 284 210
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.28% 0.51% 0.24%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 2.00% 3.74% 1.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 76 179 149
10th Percentile £481 £484 £444
25th Percentile £559 £588 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £650 £675 £625
Median % change year-on-year -3.70% +8.00% +19.05%
75th Percentile £700 £750 £688
90th Percentile £738 £838 £810
UK excluding London median daily rate £613 £700 £625
% change year-on-year -12.50% +12.00% +20.77%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 26 7
10th Percentile £80.34 £59.73 £60.15
25th Percentile £80.85 £63.23 £60.93
Median hourly rate £81.71 £73.99 £68.58
Median % change year-on-year +10.43% +7.88% +17.88%
75th Percentile £82.56 £83.38 £75.06
90th Percentile £83.07 £83.40 £79.91
UK excluding London median hourly rate £80.00 £72.98 £68.58
% change year-on-year +9.62% +6.42% +17.88%

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 5,992 7,585 11,578
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 13.92% 13.53% 13.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,782 5,156 7,966
10th Percentile £280 £289 £300
25th Percentile £400 £413 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £518
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% +1.35% +9.05%
75th Percentile £625 £645 £625
90th Percentile £750 £750 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £486 £454
% change year-on-year -2.26% +7.17% +6.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 406 244 308
10th Percentile £10.98 £13.29 £12.05
25th Percentile £13.20 £18.65 £16.25
Median hourly rate £22.42 £37.50 £28.12
Median % change year-on-year -40.21% +33.38% +33.88%
75th Percentile £47.81 £63.23 £49.44
90th Percentile £69.44 £77.50 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.97 £36.25 £22.00
% change year-on-year -47.67% +64.77% +6.41%

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 1 June 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 12 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 1 June 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 -64 96 £619 -8.33% 39
Work from Home +67 62 £650 - 21
UK excluding London -66 54 £613 -12.50% 27
London +31 43 £650 -7.14% 12
South West -28 34 £600 -16.11% 9
South East -17 12 £628 -10.32% 4
Scotland +32 3 - -
North of England -4 3 - - 5
North West -6 3 - - 3
Midlands +16 1 £775 +27.84% 5
West Midlands +7 1 £775 +27.84% 4
East of England +1 1 - - 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 9 (7.50%) Confluence
2 2 (1.67%) Jupyter
2 2 (1.67%) Microsoft Exchange
2 2 (1.67%) nginx
2 2 (1.67%) Traefik
3 1 (0.83%) Apache
3 1 (0.83%) JBoss
3 1 (0.83%) Tomcat
3 1 (0.83%) WildFly
Applications
1 6 (5.00%) MS Visio
2 2 (1.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (1.67%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (1.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 3 (2.50%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 51 (42.50%) AWS
2 39 (32.50%) Azure
3 13 (10.83%) GitHub
4 12 (10.00%) Azure DevOps
5 11 (9.17%) GitHub Actions
6 10 (8.33%) IaaS
6 10 (8.33%) PaaS
6 10 (8.33%) SaaS
7 6 (5.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 6 (5.00%) GCP
8 4 (3.33%) AWS CloudTrail
8 4 (3.33%) Azure Monitor
8 4 (3.33%) Power Platform
9 3 (2.50%) Amazon EC2
9 3 (2.50%) AWS CloudFormation
9 3 (2.50%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 2 (1.67%) Amazon GuardDuty
10 2 (1.67%) Azure Sentinel
10 2 (1.67%) Entra ID
11 1 (0.83%) AWS CodeBuild
Communications & Networking
1 22 (18.33%) Network Security
2 13 (10.83%) Firewall
3 10 (8.33%) WAN
4 5 (4.17%) DNS
4 5 (4.17%) Intrusion Detection
4 5 (4.17%) Wi-Fi
5 3 (2.50%) BGP
5 3 (2.50%) DHCP
5 3 (2.50%) DMVPN
5 3 (2.50%) HSRP
5 3 (2.50%) Internet
5 3 (2.50%) LAN
5 3 (2.50%) MPLS
5 3 (2.50%) OSPF
5 3 (2.50%) SNMP
5 3 (2.50%) Spanning Tree
5 3 (2.50%) SSL
5 3 (2.50%) TCP/IP
5 3 (2.50%) VLAN
5 3 (2.50%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (1.67%) Amazon Athena
1 2 (1.67%) Big Data
2 1 (0.83%) NoSQL
2 1 (0.83%) Oracle Database
2 1 (0.83%) Oracle Database 11g
2 1 (0.83%) Oracle Reports
2 1 (0.83%) RDBMS
2 1 (0.83%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 10 (8.33%) SonarQube
2 9 (7.50%) JIRA
3 5 (4.17%) Git
4 3 (2.50%) Jenkins
5 2 (1.67%) CircleCI
5 2 (1.67%) GitLab
5 2 (1.67%) RStudio
6 1 (0.83%) JUnit
6 1 (0.83%) Maven
6 1 (0.83%) Subversion
6 1 (0.83%) Terragrunt
General
1 25 (20.83%) Public Sector
2 16 (13.33%) Social Skills
3 8 (6.67%) Analytical Skills
4 5 (4.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 3 (2.50%) Finance
6 2 (1.67%) Aerospace
6 2 (1.67%) Legal
6 2 (1.67%) Military
7 1 (0.83%) Influencing Skills
7 1 (0.83%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 44 (36.67%) Architect
2 24 (20.00%) Security Architect
3 18 (15.00%) Analyst
4 14 (11.67%) SOC Analyst
5 10 (8.33%) Security Engineer
5 10 (8.33%) Senior
6 9 (7.50%) Solutions Architect
7 8 (6.67%) Consultant
7 8 (6.67%) Lead
7 8 (6.67%) Security Consultant
8 6 (5.00%) IT Architect
8 6 (5.00%) Senior Architect
8 6 (5.00%) Senior Solutions Architect
9 5 (4.17%) Cloud Engineer
9 5 (4.17%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 5 (4.17%) Security Manager
10 4 (3.33%) Lead Security Architect
10 4 (3.33%) Network Architect
10 4 (3.33%) Risk Analyst
10 4 (3.33%) Security Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (8.33%) ARM Templates
1 10 (8.33%) Azure Blueprints
2 6 (5.00%) XML
3 5 (4.17%) JSON
4 3 (2.50%) Jinja
4 3 (2.50%) NETCONF
4 3 (2.50%) PyTorch
4 3 (2.50%) RESTful
4 3 (2.50%) scikit-learn
4 3 (2.50%) TensorFlow
4 3 (2.50%) YANG
5 2 (1.67%) cloud-init
5 2 (1.67%) JSON Schema
5 2 (1.67%) KML
5 2 (1.67%) Regular Expression
5 2 (1.67%) XML Schema
6 1 (0.83%) JSP
6 1 (0.83%) Servlets
6 1 (0.83%) STL
6 1 (0.83%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 35 (29.17%) Management Information System
2 15 (12.50%) CSOC
2 15 (12.50%) Security Operations Centre
3 11 (9.17%) Public Cloud
3 11 (9.17%) Security Posture
4 10 (8.33%) Onboarding
5 7 (5.83%) PKI
6 4 (3.33%) Cloud Native
6 4 (3.33%) Operational Technology
7 3 (2.50%) Algorithms
7 3 (2.50%) NHS
7 3 (2.50%) SCADA
8 2 (1.67%) Clustering
8 2 (1.67%) Cyber Security Posture
8 2 (1.67%) Cyberattack
8 2 (1.67%) Data Centre
8 2 (1.67%) Greenfield Project
9 1 (0.83%) Cyber Kill Chain
9 1 (0.83%) Insider Threat
9 1 (0.83%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 10 (8.33%) Linux
2 4 (3.33%) Windows
3 3 (2.50%) Windows Server
4 2 (1.67%) CentOS
4 2 (1.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.83%) AIX
5 1 (0.83%) Apple iOS
5 1 (0.83%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 71 (59.17%) Cybersecurity
2 41 (34.17%) Information Security
3 27 (22.50%) DevOps
3 27 (22.50%) Incident Response
4 26 (21.67%) Information Assurance
5 24 (20.00%) Security Management
6 22 (18.33%) Risk Assessment
7 20 (16.67%) Security Architecture
7 20 (16.67%) Security Operations
8 19 (15.83%) Cloud Security
8 19 (15.83%) Threat Intelligence
9 18 (15.00%) Architectural Patterns
9 18 (15.00%) Information Security Management
10 17 (14.17%) Containerisation
10 17 (14.17%) ITIL
10 17 (14.17%) MITRE ATT&CK
11 15 (12.50%) Risk Management
12 14 (11.67%) Mentoring
13 13 (10.83%) Cyber Resilience
13 13 (10.83%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 5 (4.17%) Python
2 2 (1.67%) Bash
2 2 (1.67%) Go
2 2 (1.67%) Java
2 2 (1.67%) R
2 2 (1.67%) Ruby
3 1 (0.83%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 88 (73.33%) Security Cleared
2 63 (52.50%) SC Cleared
3 29 (24.17%) DV Cleared
4 18 (15.00%) CISSP
5 17 (14.17%) CISM
6 14 (11.67%) BPSS Clearance
7 11 (9.17%) CISA
8 8 (6.67%) CREST Certified
8 8 (6.67%) TOGAF Certification
9 5 (4.17%) Cisco Certification
9 5 (4.17%) Degree
10 3 (2.50%) Azure Certification
10 3 (2.50%) CCNP
10 3 (2.50%) CESG Certified Professional
10 3 (2.50%) MCSE
10 3 (2.50%) Microsoft Certification
11 2 (1.67%) CLAS
11 2 (1.67%) CRISC
12 1 (0.83%) CCNA
12 1 (0.83%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (31.67%) NIST
2 25 (20.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 19 (15.83%) GDPR
4 8 (6.67%) GRC
5 6 (5.00%) HMG Security Policy Framework
6 5 (4.17%) COBIT
7 4 (3.33%) Government Security Classifications
7 4 (3.33%) ISO 31000
7 4 (3.33%) RMADS
8 3 (2.50%) GPG13
8 3 (2.50%) JSP 440
8 3 (2.50%) PCI DSS
8 3 (2.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 2 (1.67%) Disclosure Scotland
9 2 (1.67%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.83%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.83%) ISA99
10 1 (0.83%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 1 (0.83%) QA
System Software
1 15 (12.50%) Docker
2 3 (2.50%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (1.67%) Active Directory
3 2 (1.67%) Firmware
3 2 (1.67%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 18 (15.00%) Terraform
2 17 (14.17%) Ansible
3 16 (13.33%) Kubernetes
4 4 (3.33%) Trend Micro Deep Security
5 3 (2.50%) Docker Swarm
6 2 (1.67%) CASB
6 2 (1.67%) Consul
6 2 (1.67%) Graphite
6 2 (1.67%) HAProxy
6 2 (1.67%) Istio
6 2 (1.67%) linkerd
6 2 (1.67%) Packer
6 2 (1.67%) Podman
6 2 (1.67%) Prometheus
6 2 (1.67%) Puppet
6 2 (1.67%) SCCM
6 2 (1.67%) SCOrch
6 2 (1.67%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (1.67%) ZABBIX
7 1 (0.83%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 16 (13.33%) Microsoft
2 10 (8.33%) VMware
3 7 (5.83%) Splunk
4 6 (5.00%) Palo Alto
5 5 (4.17%) Oracle
6 4 (3.33%) Cisco
6 4 (3.33%) Juniper
7 3 (2.50%) Aruba
7 3 (2.50%) CrowdStrike
7 3 (2.50%) Meraki
7 3 (2.50%) Sparx
8 2 (1.67%) Atlassian
8 2 (1.67%) Databricks
8 2 (1.67%) Imperva
8 2 (1.67%) Netskope
8 2 (1.67%) PagerDuty
9 1 (0.83%) Apple
9 1 (0.83%) CheckPoint
9 1 (0.83%) Fortinet
9 1 (0.83%) ServiceNow