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 25 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 9 11
Rank change year-on-year +4 +2 +5
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 2,853 1,803 2,201
As % of all contract jobs in London 18.05% 13.49% 12.10%
As % of the Qualifications category 61.41% 53.66% 50.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,131 1,213 1,534
10th Percentile £400 £363 £363
25th Percentile £459 £450 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £631 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £713 £750
England median daily rate £525 £548 £550
% change year-on-year -4.20% -0.36% -3.08%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 17 42
10th Percentile £20.24 £19.23 £14.47
25th Percentile £24.12 £24.66 £19.99
Median hourly rate £25.77 £35.00 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year -26.37% +59.09% -57.69%
75th Percentile £76.58 £39.04 £61.15
90th Percentile - £102.69 £83.70
England median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £56.49
% change year-on-year -58.08% +6.21% -5.85%

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 4,646 3,360 4,402
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 29.40% 25.13% 24.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,308 2,138 2,944
10th Percentile £363 £350 £325
25th Percentile £430 £450 £426
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -4.35%
75th Percentile £638 £659 £650
90th Percentile £750 £774 £770
England median daily rate £520 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.78% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 75 63 126
10th Percentile £19.94 £21.50 £14.26
25th Percentile £25.15 £24.66 £19.99
Median hourly rate £35.00 £37.00 £32.12
Median % change year-on-year -5.41% +15.21% -20.21%
75th Percentile £65.88 £56.13 £62.26
90th Percentile £76.58 £78.40 £83.75
England median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £43.17
% change year-on-year -49.70% +15.82% -9.12%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 +7 353 £538 +2.38% 85
South London +2 144 £519 +4.76% 13
East London +6 10 £638 +145.19% 7
West London -26 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
1 118 (4.14%) Confluence
2 70 (2.45%) SharePoint
3 44 (1.54%) Apache Spark
4 34 (1.19%) nginx
5 30 (1.05%) Apache
6 25 (0.88%) Microsoft Exchange
7 23 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
8 16 (0.56%) 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 (0.070%) IIS
13 2 (0.070%) SharePoint 2010
Applications
1 40 (1.40%) Microsoft Excel
1 40 (1.40%) Microsoft Office
2 20 (0.70%) Microsoft Project
3 15 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 15 (0.53%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.14%) Adobe XD
4 4 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
4 4 (0.14%) Sketch
5 2 (0.070%) AutoCAD
5 2 (0.070%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.070%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 1 (0.035%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.035%) EPLAN
6 1 (0.035%) InfoPath
6 1 (0.035%) Maya
6 1 (0.035%) OmniGraffle
6 1 (0.035%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.035%) Siemens NX
6 1 (0.035%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.035%) Trello
Business Applications
1 25 (0.88%) SAP S/4HANA
2 21 (0.74%) 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%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 5 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
6 5 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
6 5 (0.18%) SAP EWM
6 5 (0.18%) SAP WM
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%) Oracle Assets
8 3 (0.11%) Oracle Payables
8 3 (0.11%) SAP PS
8 3 (0.11%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 665 (23.31%) AWS
2 646 (22.64%) Azure
3 180 (6.31%) GitHub
4 167 (5.85%) Power Platform
5 149 (5.22%) Serverless
6 142 (4.98%) GCP
7 132 (4.63%) Azure DevOps
8 110 (3.86%) Amazon S3
9 106 (3.72%) AWS Lambda
10 101 (3.54%) Microsoft 365
11 88 (3.08%) Entra ID
12 86 (3.01%) GitHub Actions
13 69 (2.42%) OCI
14 68 (2.38%) AWS CloudFormation
15 63 (2.21%) Amazon EKS
16 60 (2.10%) PaaS
17 57 (2.00%) Amazon EC2
18 56 (1.96%) IaaS
19 55 (1.93%) Azure Data Factory
20 54 (1.89%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 91 (3.19%) Firewall
2 66 (2.31%) DNS
3 61 (2.14%) Network Security
4 35 (1.23%) VPN
5 33 (1.16%) LAN
5 33 (1.16%) WAN
6 29 (1.02%) TCP/IP
7 25 (0.88%) Wireless
8 22 (0.77%) DHCP
9 19 (0.67%) BGP
10 18 (0.63%) NAS
10 18 (0.63%) SAN
11 17 (0.60%) Wi-Fi
12 16 (0.56%) Kerberos
12 16 (0.56%) SSL
13 13 (0.46%) OSPF
14 12 (0.42%) HTTP
14 12 (0.42%) MPLS
14 12 (0.42%) VLAN
15 9 (0.32%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 111 (3.89%) Power BI
2 105 (3.68%) PostgreSQL
3 77 (2.70%) Data Warehouse
4 53 (1.86%) NoSQL
5 50 (1.75%) SQL Server
6 47 (1.65%) Azure SQL Database
7 39 (1.37%) Amazon RDS
7 39 (1.37%) Metadata
8 37 (1.30%) Data Lake
8 37 (1.30%) Elasticsearch
8 37 (1.30%) Oracle Database
9 34 (1.19%) Relational Database
10 30 (1.05%) Big Data
11 29 (1.02%) Amazon Athena
12 28 (0.98%) Amazon Redshift
13 23 (0.81%) Tableau
14 22 (0.77%) Delta Lake
15 18 (0.63%) MongoDB
16 17 (0.60%) DynamoDB
17 16 (0.56%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 187 (6.55%) JIRA
2 177 (6.20%) Git
3 115 (4.03%) Jenkins
4 92 (3.22%) GitLab
5 35 (1.23%) Postman
5 35 (1.23%) Selenium
6 27 (0.95%) Cypress.io
6 27 (0.95%) JUnit
7 23 (0.81%) Bitbucket
8 17 (0.60%) Artifactory
9 14 (0.49%) SonarQube
10 13 (0.46%) Cucumber
11 12 (0.42%) Maven
11 12 (0.42%) Mockito
12 11 (0.39%) JMeter
13 9 (0.32%) 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
1 883 (30.95%) Public Sector
2 670 (23.48%) Social Skills
3 270 (9.46%) Finance
4 235 (8.24%) Analytical Skills
5 75 (2.63%) Documentation Skills
6 68 (2.38%) Military
7 56 (1.96%) Banking
8 51 (1.79%) Telecoms
9 46 (1.61%) Presentation Skills
10 44 (1.54%) Influencing Skills
11 33 (1.16%) Law
11 33 (1.16%) Police
12 32 (1.12%) Legal
13 25 (0.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 24 (0.84%) Manufacturing
14 24 (0.84%) Marketing
15 18 (0.63%) Organisational Skills
16 17 (0.60%) Electronics
17 11 (0.39%) Aerospace
17 11 (0.39%) Retail
Job Titles
1 458 (16.05%) Architect
2 344 (12.06%) Developer
3 279 (9.78%) Senior
4 234 (8.20%) Analyst
5 204 (7.15%) DevOps Engineer
6 166 (5.82%) Lead
7 165 (5.78%) Data Engineer
8 152 (5.33%) Consultant
9 120 (4.21%) Business Analyst
10 95 (3.33%) Azure Engineer
11 82 (2.87%) AWS Engineer
12 76 (2.66%) Solutions Architect
13 71 (2.49%) Technical Architect
14 67 (2.35%) Security Architect
15 61 (2.14%) AWS DevOps
16 60 (2.10%) Designer
17 56 (1.96%) AWS DevOps Engineer
18 53 (1.86%) Delivery Manager
19 50 (1.75%) Full-Stack Developer
19 50 (1.75%) SC Cleared Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 168 (5.89%) REST
2 88 (3.08%) SOAP
2 88 (3.08%) Spring
3 87 (3.05%) Kafka
4 85 (2.98%) JSON
5 84 (2.94%) Node.js
5 84 (2.94%) React
6 75 (2.63%) LDAP
7 69 (2.42%) PySpark
8 66 (2.31%) Oracle Fusion
9 57 (2.00%) Spring Boot
10 56 (1.96%) HTML
11 55 (1.93%) .NET
12 53 (1.86%) CSS
13 52 (1.82%) RESTful
14 48 (1.68%) AngularJS
15 45 (1.58%) OAuth
16 44 (1.54%) Web Services
16 44 (1.54%) XML
17 36 (1.26%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 133 (4.66%) Cloud Native
2 85 (2.98%) Onboarding
3 78 (2.73%) Product Ownership
4 62 (2.17%) Security Posture
5 59 (2.07%) Enterprise Software
5 59 (2.07%) PKI
6 57 (2.00%) Legacy Systems
7 54 (1.89%) Data Centre
8 42 (1.47%) Management Information System
8 42 (1.47%) Self-Motivation
9 38 (1.33%) Replication
10 29 (1.02%) Public Cloud
11 24 (0.84%) Security Operations Centre
12 23 (0.81%) AI Agents
12 23 (0.81%) Distributed Systems
13 22 (0.77%) Data Protection Act
14 19 (0.67%) Greenfield Project
14 19 (0.67%) Hybrid Cloud
15 18 (0.63%) Cyber Threat
16 16 (0.56%) Cyber Defence
Operating Systems
1 155 (5.43%) Linux
2 139 (4.87%) Windows
3 38 (1.33%) Mac OS
4 36 (1.26%) Android
5 33 (1.16%) Windows Server
6 25 (0.88%) VMS
6 25 (0.88%) Windows 10
7 20 (0.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 19 (0.67%) Unix
9 12 (0.42%) Apple iOS
10 9 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
11 8 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
12 5 (0.18%) Solaris
12 5 (0.18%) Ubuntu
13 4 (0.14%) Windows Server 2003
13 4 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
14 3 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
15 2 (0.070%) AIX
15 2 (0.070%) CentOS
16 1 (0.035%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 602 (21.10%) Agile
2 570 (19.98%) DevOps
3 472 (16.54%) CI/CD
4 355 (12.44%) Problem-Solving
5 291 (10.20%) Stakeholder Management
6 280 (9.81%) Infrastructure as Code
7 252 (8.83%) Migration
8 224 (7.85%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 206 (7.22%) Cybersecurity
10 183 (6.41%) Containerisation
11 176 (6.17%) Continuous Improvement
11 176 (6.17%) Data Modelling
12 169 (5.92%) AI
13 164 (5.75%) Analytics
14 156 (5.47%) Test Automation
15 155 (5.43%) Roadmaps
16 149 (5.22%) Business Intelligence
17 141 (4.94%) Microservices
18 137 (4.80%) Decision-Making
19 135 (4.73%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 441 (15.46%) Python
2 300 (10.52%) SQL
3 183 (6.41%) Java
4 179 (6.27%) PowerShell
5 155 (5.43%) JavaScript
6 78 (2.73%) C#
7 76 (2.66%) TypeScript
8 72 (2.52%) Bash
9 44 (1.54%) Scala
10 32 (1.12%) Ruby
11 28 (0.98%) Go
12 21 (0.74%) Apex Code
13 16 (0.56%) R
14 15 (0.53%) Bicep
14 15 (0.53%) C++
15 14 (0.49%) PL/SQL
15 14 (0.49%) Shell Script
16 8 (0.28%) C
16 8 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
17 6 (0.21%) Rust
Qualifications
1 2,360 (82.72%) SC Cleared
2 331 (11.60%) DV Cleared
3 96 (3.36%) Degree
4 76 (2.66%) BPSS Clearance
5 59 (2.07%) AWS Certification
6 48 (1.68%) Azure Certification
6 48 (1.68%) CISSP
7 30 (1.05%) CISM
8 28 (0.98%) Cisco Certification
9 24 (0.84%) CHECK Team Leader
10 21 (0.74%) CHECK Team Member
11 20 (0.70%) Microsoft Certification
12 19 (0.67%) GIAC
13 18 (0.63%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 15 (0.53%) ISTQB
14 15 (0.53%) TOGAF Certification
15 14 (0.49%) CCNP
15 14 (0.49%) CompTIA Security+
15 14 (0.49%) CTC Cleared
15 14 (0.49%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 114 (4.00%) Data Quality
2 93 (3.26%) QA
3 90 (3.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 71 (2.49%) NCSC
5 70 (2.45%) Accessibility
5 70 (2.45%) NIST
6 60 (2.10%) GDPR
7 22 (0.77%) PMO
8 21 (0.74%) WCAG
9 17 (0.60%) GRC
10 15 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 15 (0.53%) SLA
11 9 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
12 7 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
12 7 (0.25%) Government Security Classifications
12 7 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 27005
13 6 (0.21%) HIPAA
13 6 (0.21%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 6 (0.21%) NIST 800
13 6 (0.21%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 261 (9.15%) Docker
2 112 (3.93%) Active Directory
3 45 (1.58%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
5 20 (0.70%) Hyper-V
6 16 (0.56%) 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 2 (0.070%) DFS Replication
13 2 (0.070%) Dovecot
13 2 (0.070%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 354 (12.41%) Terraform
2 309 (10.83%) Kubernetes
3 80 (2.80%) Ansible
4 51 (1.79%) Grafana
5 48 (1.68%) Prometheus
6 45 (1.58%) Single Sign-On
7 25 (0.88%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 21 (0.74%) Argo
9 19 (0.67%) SCCM
10 18 (0.63%) Consul
11 15 (0.53%) Packer
12 14 (0.49%) FortiGate
13 13 (0.46%) vRealize
14 11 (0.39%) Jamf Pro
14 11 (0.39%) Microsoft Intune
14 11 (0.39%) vCenter Server
14 11 (0.39%) vMotion
15 9 (0.32%) Puppet
16 7 (0.25%) EMC VPLEX
17 6 (0.21%) Kibana
Vendors
1 319 (11.18%) Microsoft
2 175 (6.13%) Oracle
3 101 (3.54%) ServiceNow
4 91 (3.19%) Databricks
5 84 (2.94%) SAP
6 75 (2.63%) VMware
7 64 (2.24%) Splunk
8 61 (2.14%) Salesforce
9 57 (2.00%) CyberArk
10 53 (1.86%) Cisco
11 41 (1.44%) Google
12 36 (1.26%) Red Hat
13 34 (1.19%) BeyondTrust
13 34 (1.19%) Centrify
14 32 (1.12%) Apple
15 30 (1.05%) Palo Alto
16 29 (1.02%) Dynatrace
17 28 (0.98%) IBM
18 26 (0.91%) Atlassian
19 25 (0.88%) HP