Security Cleared Contract Job Trends in London

Security Clearance
England > London

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in 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 21 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 10 10
Rank change year-on-year +5 0 +6
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 2,817 1,825 2,257
As % of all contract jobs in London 17.99% 13.51% 12.22%
As % of the Qualifications category 61.37% 53.72% 50.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,103 1,216 1,574
10th Percentile £400 £363 £363
25th Percentile £457 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £718 £750
England median daily rate £525 £548 £550
% change year-on-year -4.20% -0.36% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 17 45
10th Percentile £20.24 £19.23 £15.31
25th Percentile £24.12 £24.66 £19.99
Median hourly rate £25.77 £35.00 £24.50
Median % change year-on-year -26.37% +42.86% -51.00%
75th Percentile £76.58 £39.04 £65.00
90th Percentile - £102.69 £83.55
England median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £58.00
% change year-on-year -58.08% +3.46% -3.34%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
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 London.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 4,590 3,397 4,488
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 29.31% 25.15% 24.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,266 2,144 3,001
10th Percentile £363 £350 £325
25th Percentile £430 £450 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £533 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.45% -3.14% -4.35%
75th Percentile £638 £660 £650
90th Percentile £750 £774 £769
England median daily rate £520 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.78% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 75 58 129
10th Percentile £19.94 £21.50 £14.27
25th Percentile £25.15 £24.66 £19.99
Median hourly rate £35.00 £39.00 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year -10.26% +9.86% -11.25%
75th Percentile £65.88 £58.13 £65.00
90th Percentile £76.58 £79.84 £83.75
England median hourly rate £25.15 £48.40 £45.00
% change year-on-year -48.04% +7.56% -2.17%

Security Cleared
Job Vacancy Trend in London

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

Security Cleared job vacancy trend in London

Security Cleared
Daily Rate Trend in London

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

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

Security Cleared
Daily Rate Histogram in London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Security Cleared in London over the 6 months to 21 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Security Cleared in London

Security Cleared
Hourly Rate Trend in London

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

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

Security Cleared
Hourly Rate Histogram in London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Security Cleared in London over the 6 months to 21 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Security Cleared in London

Security Cleared
Contract Job Locations in 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 London region over the 6 months to 21 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Central London +5 349 £525 - 97
South London +2 141 £519 +3.71% 18
East London +11 10 £638 +145.19% 10
West London -25 10 - - 17
North London -4 2 £510 +31.70% 1
Security Cleared
England

Security Cleared
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in 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
1 117 (4.15%) Confluence
2 63 (2.24%) SharePoint
3 44 (1.56%) Apache Spark
4 34 (1.21%) nginx
5 30 (1.06%) Apache
6 25 (0.89%) Microsoft Exchange
7 23 (0.82%) Apache Airflow
8 16 (0.57%) Palantir Foundry
9 11 (0.39%) SAS
10 6 (0.21%) Tomcat
11 4 (0.14%) Camunda
11 4 (0.14%) CMS
12 3 (0.11%) JBoss
12 3 (0.11%) Jupyter
12 3 (0.11%) MQSeries
12 3 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 3 (0.11%) Traefik
12 3 (0.11%) WebLogic
13 2 (0.071%) IIS
13 2 (0.071%) WordPress
Applications
1 40 (1.42%) Microsoft Office
2 39 (1.38%) Microsoft Excel
3 19 (0.67%) Microsoft Project
4 15 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 15 (0.53%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.14%) Adobe XD
5 4 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
5 4 (0.14%) Sketch
6 3 (0.11%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 2 (0.071%) AutoCAD
7 2 (0.071%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.035%) Adobe Illustrator
8 1 (0.035%) EPLAN
8 1 (0.035%) InfoPath
8 1 (0.035%) InVision
8 1 (0.035%) Maya
8 1 (0.035%) OmniGraffle
8 1 (0.035%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.035%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.035%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 25 (0.89%) SAP S/4HANA
2 21 (0.75%) Oracle ERP
3 15 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
4 7 (0.25%) Oracle General Ledger
4 7 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
4 7 (0.25%) Workday HCM
5 6 (0.21%) Oracle FAH
5 6 (0.21%) SAP EWM
5 6 (0.21%) SAP WM
5 6 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 5 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
6 5 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
7 4 (0.14%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
7 4 (0.14%) SAP HCM
7 4 (0.14%) SAP MM
7 4 (0.14%) Teamcenter
8 3 (0.11%) Exchequer
8 3 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
8 3 (0.11%) SAP PS
8 3 (0.11%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 655 (23.25%) AWS
2 644 (22.86%) Azure
3 180 (6.39%) GitHub
4 167 (5.93%) Power Platform
5 152 (5.40%) Serverless
6 142 (5.04%) GCP
7 132 (4.69%) Azure DevOps
8 111 (3.94%) Amazon S3
9 108 (3.83%) AWS Lambda
10 94 (3.34%) Microsoft 365
11 89 (3.16%) GitHub Actions
12 88 (3.12%) Entra ID
13 68 (2.41%) OCI
14 65 (2.31%) AWS CloudFormation
15 62 (2.20%) Amazon EKS
16 60 (2.13%) PaaS
17 56 (1.99%) IaaS
18 55 (1.95%) Azure Data Factory
19 54 (1.92%) Amazon ECS
19 54 (1.92%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 90 (3.19%) Firewall
2 62 (2.20%) Network Security
3 61 (2.17%) DNS
4 34 (1.21%) VPN
5 33 (1.17%) LAN
5 33 (1.17%) WAN
6 28 (0.99%) TCP/IP
7 25 (0.89%) Wireless
8 22 (0.78%) DHCP
9 19 (0.67%) BGP
10 18 (0.64%) NAS
10 18 (0.64%) SAN
10 18 (0.64%) SSL
11 17 (0.60%) Wi-Fi
12 16 (0.57%) Kerberos
13 13 (0.46%) HTTP
13 13 (0.46%) OSPF
14 12 (0.43%) MPLS
14 12 (0.43%) VLAN
15 10 (0.35%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 113 (4.01%) Power BI
2 101 (3.59%) PostgreSQL
3 76 (2.70%) Data Warehouse
4 53 (1.88%) NoSQL
5 44 (1.56%) Azure SQL Database
5 44 (1.56%) SQL Server
6 41 (1.46%) Amazon RDS
7 39 (1.38%) Metadata
8 37 (1.31%) Data Lake
8 37 (1.31%) Oracle Database
9 36 (1.28%) Elasticsearch
10 33 (1.17%) Relational Database
11 32 (1.14%) Amazon Athena
12 30 (1.06%) Big Data
13 28 (0.99%) Amazon Redshift
14 23 (0.82%) Tableau
15 22 (0.78%) Delta Lake
16 18 (0.64%) MongoDB
17 16 (0.57%) DynamoDB
17 16 (0.57%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 186 (6.60%) JIRA
2 175 (6.21%) Git
3 113 (4.01%) Jenkins
4 93 (3.30%) GitLab
5 35 (1.24%) Postman
6 34 (1.21%) Selenium
7 28 (0.99%) Cypress.io
8 26 (0.92%) JUnit
9 22 (0.78%) Bitbucket
10 16 (0.57%) Artifactory
11 12 (0.43%) Cucumber
11 12 (0.43%) SonarQube
12 11 (0.39%) JMeter
12 11 (0.39%) Mockito
13 9 (0.32%) Maven
14 8 (0.28%) REST Assured
14 8 (0.28%) Visual Studio
14 8 (0.28%) Visual Studio Code
15 7 (0.25%) Gradle
15 7 (0.25%) MLflow
General
1 859 (30.49%) Public Sector
2 671 (23.82%) Social Skills
3 267 (9.48%) Finance
4 230 (8.16%) Analytical Skills
5 73 (2.59%) Documentation Skills
6 68 (2.41%) Military
7 55 (1.95%) Banking
8 51 (1.81%) Telecoms
9 47 (1.67%) Presentation Skills
10 44 (1.56%) Influencing Skills
11 31 (1.10%) Law
12 30 (1.06%) Legal
12 30 (1.06%) Police
13 27 (0.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 24 (0.85%) Manufacturing
14 24 (0.85%) Marketing
15 18 (0.64%) Organisational Skills
16 17 (0.60%) Electronics
17 11 (0.39%) Aerospace
17 11 (0.39%) Retail
Job Titles
1 448 (15.90%) Architect
2 343 (12.18%) Developer
3 275 (9.76%) Senior
4 233 (8.27%) Analyst
5 206 (7.31%) DevOps Engineer
6 166 (5.89%) Data Engineer
7 165 (5.86%) Lead
8 151 (5.36%) Consultant
9 118 (4.19%) Business Analyst
10 95 (3.37%) Azure Engineer
11 82 (2.91%) AWS Engineer
12 76 (2.70%) Solutions Architect
13 70 (2.48%) Technical Architect
14 65 (2.31%) Security Architect
15 60 (2.13%) AWS DevOps
16 59 (2.09%) Designer
17 56 (1.99%) AWS DevOps Engineer
18 52 (1.85%) Full-Stack Developer
19 51 (1.81%) Delivery Manager
20 49 (1.74%) SC Cleared Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 168 (5.96%) REST
2 90 (3.19%) SOAP
3 89 (3.16%) Kafka
4 87 (3.09%) JSON
5 85 (3.02%) Spring
6 84 (2.98%) Node.js
6 84 (2.98%) React
7 75 (2.66%) LDAP
8 69 (2.45%) PySpark
9 65 (2.31%) Oracle Fusion
10 54 (1.92%) Spring Boot
11 53 (1.88%) CSS
11 53 (1.88%) HTML
12 52 (1.85%) .NET
13 48 (1.70%) RESTful
14 46 (1.63%) OAuth
14 46 (1.63%) XML
15 44 (1.56%) AngularJS
16 43 (1.53%) Web Services
17 36 (1.28%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 131 (4.65%) Cloud Native
2 83 (2.95%) Onboarding
3 76 (2.70%) Product Ownership
4 62 (2.20%) Security Posture
5 59 (2.09%) PKI
6 58 (2.06%) Enterprise Software
7 57 (2.02%) Legacy Systems
8 53 (1.88%) Data Centre
9 43 (1.53%) Management Information System
10 42 (1.49%) Self-Motivation
11 34 (1.21%) Replication
12 29 (1.03%) Public Cloud
13 25 (0.89%) Security Operations Centre
14 23 (0.82%) AI Agents
15 22 (0.78%) Data Protection Act
15 22 (0.78%) Distributed Systems
16 19 (0.67%) Greenfield Project
16 19 (0.67%) Hybrid Cloud
17 18 (0.64%) Cyber Threat
18 16 (0.57%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 155 (5.50%) Linux
2 136 (4.83%) Windows
3 38 (1.35%) Mac OS
4 36 (1.28%) Android
5 33 (1.17%) Windows Server
6 26 (0.92%) VMS
7 25 (0.89%) Windows 10
8 20 (0.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 19 (0.67%) Unix
10 12 (0.43%) Apple iOS
11 9 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
12 8 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
13 6 (0.21%) Ubuntu
14 5 (0.18%) Solaris
15 4 (0.14%) Amazon Linux
15 4 (0.14%) Windows Server 2003
15 4 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
16 2 (0.071%) AIX
16 2 (0.071%) CentOS
17 1 (0.035%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 588 (20.87%) Agile
2 560 (19.88%) DevOps
3 469 (16.65%) CI/CD
4 354 (12.57%) Problem-Solving
5 285 (10.12%) Stakeholder Management
6 276 (9.80%) Infrastructure as Code
7 250 (8.87%) Migration
8 221 (7.85%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 210 (7.45%) Cybersecurity
10 177 (6.28%) Containerisation
11 174 (6.18%) Data Modelling
12 173 (6.14%) Continuous Improvement
13 166 (5.89%) AI
14 163 (5.79%) Analytics
15 156 (5.54%) Test Automation
16 150 (5.32%) Business Intelligence
17 149 (5.29%) Roadmaps
18 140 (4.97%) Microservices
19 134 (4.76%) Decision-Making
20 128 (4.54%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 437 (15.51%) Python
2 288 (10.22%) SQL
3 179 (6.35%) Java
4 176 (6.25%) PowerShell
5 154 (5.47%) JavaScript
6 77 (2.73%) TypeScript
7 75 (2.66%) C#
8 69 (2.45%) Bash
9 43 (1.53%) Scala
10 31 (1.10%) Ruby
11 28 (0.99%) Go
12 21 (0.75%) Apex Code
13 16 (0.57%) R
14 15 (0.53%) Bicep
14 15 (0.53%) C++
14 15 (0.53%) Shell Script
15 13 (0.46%) PL/SQL
16 8 (0.28%) C
16 8 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
17 6 (0.21%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 2,329 (82.68%) SC Cleared
2 331 (11.75%) DV Cleared
3 98 (3.48%) Degree
4 74 (2.63%) BPSS Clearance
5 56 (1.99%) AWS Certification
6 50 (1.77%) Azure Certification
7 49 (1.74%) CISSP
8 32 (1.14%) CISM
9 28 (0.99%) Cisco Certification
10 25 (0.89%) CHECK Team Leader
11 22 (0.78%) CHECK Team Member
12 20 (0.71%) GIAC
13 19 (0.67%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 17 (0.60%) Microsoft Certification
15 15 (0.53%) CompTIA Security+
15 15 (0.53%) ISTQB
15 15 (0.53%) TOGAF Certification
16 14 (0.50%) CCNP
16 14 (0.50%) CTC Cleared
16 14 (0.50%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 111 (3.94%) Data Quality
2 90 (3.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 86 (3.05%) QA
4 70 (2.48%) Accessibility
4 70 (2.48%) NCSC
4 70 (2.48%) NIST
5 60 (2.13%) GDPR
6 21 (0.75%) WCAG
7 20 (0.71%) PMO
8 17 (0.60%) GRC
9 15 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 15 (0.53%) SLA
10 9 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
11 7 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
11 7 (0.25%) Government Security Classifications
11 7 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 27005
12 6 (0.21%) HIPAA
12 6 (0.21%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 6 (0.21%) NIST 800
12 6 (0.21%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 260 (9.23%) Docker
2 112 (3.98%) Active Directory
3 45 (1.60%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
5 20 (0.71%) Hyper-V
6 16 (0.57%) VMware ESXi
7 11 (0.39%) Squid
8 10 (0.35%) VMware NSX
9 8 (0.28%) NFS
10 7 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
10 7 (0.25%) vSphere
11 5 (0.18%) BitLocker
11 5 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
12 4 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
12 4 (0.14%) Postfix
12 4 (0.14%) XenApp
12 4 (0.14%) XenDesktop
13 3 (0.11%) DFS Replication
13 3 (0.11%) Dovecot
14 2 (0.071%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 348 (12.35%) Terraform
2 308 (10.93%) Kubernetes
3 78 (2.77%) Ansible
4 50 (1.77%) Grafana
5 47 (1.67%) Prometheus
6 45 (1.60%) Single Sign-On
7 25 (0.89%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 21 (0.75%) Argo
9 19 (0.67%) SCCM
10 17 (0.60%) Consul
11 15 (0.53%) Packer
12 13 (0.46%) FortiGate
12 13 (0.46%) vRealize
13 11 (0.39%) Jamf Pro
13 11 (0.39%) Microsoft Intune
13 11 (0.39%) vCenter Server
13 11 (0.39%) vMotion
14 8 (0.28%) Puppet
15 7 (0.25%) EMC VPLEX
16 6 (0.21%) Kibana
Vendors
1 308 (10.93%) Microsoft
2 173 (6.14%) Oracle
3 103 (3.66%) ServiceNow
4 91 (3.23%) Databricks
5 86 (3.05%) SAP
6 75 (2.66%) VMware
7 66 (2.34%) Splunk
8 61 (2.17%) Salesforce
9 57 (2.02%) CyberArk
10 54 (1.92%) Cisco
11 42 (1.49%) Google
12 35 (1.24%) Red Hat
13 34 (1.21%) BeyondTrust
13 34 (1.21%) Centrify
14 32 (1.14%) Apple
15 30 (1.06%) Palo Alto
16 28 (0.99%) Dynatrace
16 28 (0.99%) IBM
17 25 (0.89%) Foundry
17 25 (0.89%) HP