Security Cleared Contract Job Trends in Central London

Security Clearance
London > Central London

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in Central London with a requirement for Security Cleared qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 8 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 11 16
Rank change year-on-year +8 +5 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 412 235 210
As % of all contract jobs in Central London 16.86% 11.89% 8.68%
As % of the Qualifications category 63.68% 48.55% 42.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 307 159 134
10th Percentile £425 £406 £402
25th Percentile £466 £456 £461
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £534 £520
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% +2.60% -4.67%
75th Percentile £638 £600 £634
90th Percentile £700 £700 £768
London median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 1 3
10th Percentile £33.62 - -
25th Percentile £45.39 - £20.22
Median hourly rate £65.00 £22.00 £20.82
Median % change year-on-year +195.45% +5.69% +0.53%
75th Percentile £70.88 - £43.20
90th Percentile £74.40 - £56.28
London median hourly rate £63.50 £37.00 £22.00
% change year-on-year +71.62% +68.18% -63.33%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
Central London

Security Cleared falls under the Academic Qualifications and Professional Certifications category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications in Central London.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 647 484 490
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Central London 26.47% 24.48% 20.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 465 322 314
10th Percentile £400 £364 £363
25th Percentile £458 £456 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +4.76% -6.67%
75th Percentile £638 £662 £643
90th Percentile £738 £763 £775
London median daily rate £525 £525 £539
% change year-on-year - -2.60% -6.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 5 6
10th Percentile £18.50 £24.16 £20.22
25th Percentile £22.56 £27.39 £21.41
Median hourly rate £32.07 £29.07 £25.99
Median % change year-on-year +10.30% +11.87% -49.54%
75th Percentile £58.58 £63.75 £39.56
90th Percentile £69.70 £85.50 £54.38
London median hourly rate £54.00 £29.07 £25.00
% change year-on-year +85.76% +16.28% -48.72%

Security Cleared
Job Vacancy Trend in Central London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Security Cleared relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in Central London.

Security Cleared job vacancy trend in Central London

Security Cleared
Daily Rate Trend in Central London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Central London citing Security Cleared.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Central London citing Security Cleared

Security Cleared
Daily Rate Histogram in Central London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Security Cleared in Central London over the 6 months to 8 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Security Cleared in Central London

Security Cleared
Hourly Rate Trend in Central London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Central London citing Security Cleared.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Central London citing Security Cleared

Security Cleared
Hourly Rate Histogram in Central London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Security Cleared in Central London over the 6 months to 8 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Security Cleared in Central London

Security Cleared
Contract Job Locations in Central London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Security Cleared within the Central London region over the 6 months to 8 May 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
City of London +12 385 £538 +1.56% 74
City of Westminster +3 15 £607 -6.54% 3
West End of London +7 13 £650 +12.07% 3
Lambeth - 1 £475 -
Security Cleared
London

Security Cleared
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Central London 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 11 (2.67%) Confluence
2 10 (2.43%) SharePoint
3 4 (0.97%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.49%) Apache
4 2 (0.49%) WebSphere
5 1 (0.24%) Anypoint
5 1 (0.24%) nginx
5 1 (0.24%) SharePoint 2010
5 1 (0.24%) Tomcat
5 1 (0.24%) WordPress
Applications
1 4 (0.97%) Microsoft Excel
1 4 (0.97%) Microsoft Office
1 4 (0.97%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.49%) AutoCAD
2 2 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 2 (0.49%) Revit
2 2 (0.49%) SOLIDWORKS
3 1 (0.24%) Maya
Business Applications
1 3 (0.73%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (0.49%) Exchequer
2 2 (0.49%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.49%) Temenos T24
3 1 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.24%) Findur
3 1 (0.24%) Integrated Workplace Management System
3 1 (0.24%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.24%) SAP HCM
3 1 (0.24%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 98 (23.79%) Azure
2 74 (17.96%) AWS
3 31 (7.52%) GitHub
4 30 (7.28%) GCP
5 22 (5.34%) Azure DevOps
5 22 (5.34%) GitHub Actions
6 21 (5.10%) Power Platform
7 15 (3.64%) Serverless
8 10 (2.43%) Amazon S3
8 10 (2.43%) AWS Lambda
8 10 (2.43%) Azure AKS
9 9 (2.18%) Power Automate
9 9 (2.18%) PowerApps
10 8 (1.94%) Azure Data Factory
10 8 (1.94%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 7 (1.70%) Microsoft 365
11 7 (1.70%) SaaS
12 6 (1.46%) Amazon ECS
12 6 (1.46%) AWS CodePipeline
12 6 (1.46%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 9 (2.18%) Firewall
1 9 (2.18%) LAN
1 9 (2.18%) Network Security
2 8 (1.94%) WAN
3 7 (1.70%) Wi-Fi
4 4 (0.97%) SAN
5 3 (0.73%) DNS
5 3 (0.73%) NAS
6 2 (0.49%) NGFW
6 2 (0.49%) VPN
6 2 (0.49%) VSAN
7 1 (0.24%) 3GPP
7 1 (0.24%) 5G
7 1 (0.24%) Ethernet VPN
7 1 (0.24%) FTP
7 1 (0.24%) HTTPS
7 1 (0.24%) Internet
7 1 (0.24%) NX-OS
7 1 (0.24%) SD-WAN
7 1 (0.24%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (2.91%) Power BI
2 8 (1.94%) PostgreSQL
3 7 (1.70%) Amazon Athena
3 7 (1.70%) SQL Server
4 5 (1.21%) Data Lake
4 5 (1.21%) Data Warehouse
5 4 (0.97%) BigQuery
5 4 (0.97%) Metadata
6 3 (0.73%) Amazon RDS
6 3 (0.73%) Geospatial Data
6 3 (0.73%) NoSQL
6 3 (0.73%) Tableau
7 2 (0.49%) Amazon QuickSight
7 2 (0.49%) Amazon Redshift
7 2 (0.49%) Azure SQL Database
7 2 (0.49%) DynamoDB
7 2 (0.49%) Elasticsearch
7 2 (0.49%) Metadata Repository
7 2 (0.49%) MySQL
7 2 (0.49%) Spatial Data
Development Applications
1 22 (5.34%) JIRA
2 17 (4.13%) Git
3 16 (3.88%) Jenkins
4 8 (1.94%) GitLab
5 5 (1.21%) Cypress.io
5 5 (1.21%) Postman
6 4 (0.97%) JMeter
6 4 (0.97%) Selenium
7 3 (0.73%) JUnit
7 3 (0.73%) Liquibase
7 3 (0.73%) Mockito
8 2 (0.49%) Ant
8 2 (0.49%) Artifactory
8 2 (0.49%) REST Assured
9 1 (0.24%) ERwin
9 1 (0.24%) Gradle
9 1 (0.24%) SonarQube
9 1 (0.24%) SpecFlow
9 1 (0.24%) Visual Studio
9 1 (0.24%) Vite
General
1 84 (20.39%) Public Sector
2 68 (16.50%) Social Skills
3 40 (9.71%) Finance
4 28 (6.80%) Analytical Skills
5 22 (5.34%) Military
6 10 (2.43%) Banking
7 8 (1.94%) Documentation Skills
8 7 (1.70%) Retail
9 6 (1.46%) Presentation Skills
10 5 (1.21%) Police
11 4 (0.97%) Influencing Skills
11 4 (0.97%) Law
11 4 (0.97%) Legal
12 3 (0.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 3 (0.73%) Marketing
12 3 (0.73%) Publishing
12 3 (0.73%) Telecoms
13 2 (0.49%) Financial Institution
13 2 (0.49%) Manufacturing
14 1 (0.24%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 88 (21.36%) Architect
2 51 (12.38%) Senior
3 47 (11.41%) Developer
4 36 (8.74%) DevOps Engineer
5 33 (8.01%) Analyst
6 24 (5.83%) Lead
7 22 (5.34%) Business Analyst
8 20 (4.85%) Data Engineer
9 19 (4.61%) Azure Engineer
9 19 (4.61%) Consultant
10 16 (3.88%) Cloud Engineer
11 14 (3.40%) Applications Architect
11 14 (3.40%) Platform Engineer
11 14 (3.40%) Senior Developer
11 14 (3.40%) Solutions Architect
12 11 (2.67%) AWS Engineer
12 11 (2.67%) Cloud Architect
12 11 (2.67%) Cloud Platform Engineer
12 11 (2.67%) Security Architect
13 10 (2.43%) GCP Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (2.67%) PySpark
2 9 (2.18%) React
2 9 (2.18%) Spring
3 8 (1.94%) Kafka
3 8 (1.94%) REST
4 7 (1.70%) Node.js
4 7 (1.70%) Spring Boot
5 6 (1.46%) HTML
5 6 (1.46%) JSON
5 6 (1.46%) Pandas
5 6 (1.46%) scikit-learn
5 6 (1.46%) Swagger
6 5 (1.21%) .NET
6 5 (1.21%) RESTful
7 4 (0.97%) Lightning Web Components
7 4 (0.97%) NumPy
8 3 (0.73%) AWS CDK
8 3 (0.73%) GeoJSON
8 3 (0.73%) Plotly
8 3 (0.73%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 31 (7.52%) Cloud Native
2 10 (2.43%) Data Centre
2 10 (2.43%) Legacy Systems
3 6 (1.46%) AI Agents
3 6 (1.46%) Distributed Systems
3 6 (1.46%) Hybrid Cloud
3 6 (1.46%) Onboarding
3 6 (1.46%) Product Ownership
4 5 (1.21%) Mobile App
5 4 (0.97%) LIMS
5 4 (0.97%) NHS
6 3 (0.73%) Data Structures
6 3 (0.73%) Enterprise Cloud
6 3 (0.73%) Management Information System
6 3 (0.73%) Marketing Technology
6 3 (0.73%) Public Cloud
6 3 (0.73%) Replication
7 2 (0.49%) Handset
7 2 (0.49%) Low-Code
7 2 (0.49%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 15 (3.64%) Linux
2 8 (1.94%) Windows
3 3 (0.73%) VMS
4 2 (0.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (0.49%) Windows 10
4 2 (0.49%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.24%) AIX
5 1 (0.24%) Android
5 1 (0.24%) CentOS
5 1 (0.24%) Mac OS
5 1 (0.24%) Solaris
5 1 (0.24%) SUSE
5 1 (0.24%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.24%) Unix
5 1 (0.24%) Windows Server 2012
5 1 (0.24%) Windows Server 2016
5 1 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 88 (21.36%) DevOps
2 66 (16.02%) Infrastructure as Code
3 64 (15.53%) CI/CD
4 56 (13.59%) Agile
5 41 (9.95%) Migration
6 40 (9.71%) Stakeholder Management
7 39 (9.47%) Containerisation
8 35 (8.50%) AI
9 24 (5.83%) Continuous Improvement
9 24 (5.83%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 23 (5.58%) Platform Engineering
11 22 (5.34%) Analytics
12 20 (4.85%) Observability
13 19 (4.61%) Cybersecurity
13 19 (4.61%) Data Modelling
13 19 (4.61%) Problem-Solving
13 19 (4.61%) Test Automation
14 18 (4.37%) Microservices
15 17 (4.13%) Data Pipeline
15 17 (4.13%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 46 (11.17%) Python
2 23 (5.58%) Java
3 20 (4.85%) SQL
4 18 (4.37%) JavaScript
5 12 (2.91%) PowerShell
6 10 (2.43%) C#
7 9 (2.18%) Bash
8 6 (1.46%) Scala
9 5 (1.21%) Ruby
9 5 (1.21%) TypeScript
10 3 (0.73%) Apex Code
10 3 (0.73%) Bicep
11 2 (0.49%) Kusto Query Language
11 2 (0.49%) R
12 1 (0.24%) ActionScript
12 1 (0.24%) ActionScript 2.0
12 1 (0.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.24%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.24%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.24%) X++
Qualifications
1 359 (87.14%) SC Cleared
2 28 (6.80%) DV Cleared
3 14 (3.40%) BPSS Clearance
4 9 (2.18%) Degree
5 8 (1.94%) CTC Cleared
6 7 (1.70%) GIAC
7 5 (1.21%) AWS Certification
7 5 (1.21%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 5 (1.21%) Azure Certification
7 5 (1.21%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 4 (0.97%) CISSP
9 3 (0.73%) APMP
9 3 (0.73%) ISACA
9 3 (0.73%) PMP
9 3 (0.73%) TOGAF Certification
10 2 (0.49%) CompTIA CySA+
10 2 (0.49%) CompTIA Security+
10 2 (0.49%) IIBA
10 2 (0.49%) OSCP
10 2 (0.49%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (4.37%) QA
2 17 (4.13%) Data Quality
3 10 (2.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 8 (1.94%) NIST
5 6 (1.46%) Accessibility
5 6 (1.46%) NCSC
6 3 (0.73%) Cyber Essentials
6 3 (0.73%) NIST 800
6 3 (0.73%) SLA
7 2 (0.49%) ISO 20022
7 2 (0.49%) WCAG
8 1 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.24%) COBIT
8 1 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 1 (0.24%) Def Stans
8 1 (0.24%) GDPR
8 1 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 1 (0.24%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.24%) PMO
System Software
1 26 (6.31%) Docker
2 12 (2.91%) VMware Infrastructure
3 7 (1.70%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (0.97%) Active Directory
5 3 (0.73%) VMware ESXi
5 3 (0.73%) vSphere
6 2 (0.49%) Firmware
6 2 (0.49%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.49%) VMware NSX
7 1 (0.24%) NFS
7 1 (0.24%) XenApp
7 1 (0.24%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 51 (12.38%) Kubernetes
2 48 (11.65%) Terraform
3 17 (4.13%) Ansible
4 11 (2.67%) Prometheus
5 9 (2.18%) Grafana
6 7 (1.70%) SCCM
7 3 (0.73%) vCenter Server
7 3 (0.73%) vRealize
8 2 (0.49%) FortiGate
8 2 (0.49%) Istio
8 2 (0.49%) PowerCLI
8 2 (0.49%) Puppet
9 1 (0.24%) Consul
9 1 (0.24%) EMC VPLEX
9 1 (0.24%) Failover Clustering
9 1 (0.24%) linkerd
9 1 (0.24%) Microsoft Clustering
9 1 (0.24%) Microsoft Intune
9 1 (0.24%) SCVMM
9 1 (0.24%) WSUS
Vendors
1 41 (9.95%) Microsoft
2 28 (6.80%) Databricks
3 15 (3.64%) Oracle
4 14 (3.40%) VMware
5 12 (2.91%) Google
6 11 (2.67%) Salesforce
7 8 (1.94%) ServiceNow
8 5 (1.21%) Cisco
8 5 (1.21%) Dynatrace
8 5 (1.21%) Fortinet
8 5 (1.21%) IBM
9 4 (0.97%) Pure Storage
9 4 (0.97%) SAP
10 3 (0.73%) Foundry
10 3 (0.73%) LogRhythm
10 3 (0.73%) MuleSoft
10 3 (0.73%) Splunk
10 3 (0.73%) webMethods
11 2 (0.49%) CyberArk
11 2 (0.49%) Palo Alto