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

6 months to
24 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 10 11
Rank change year-on-year +5 +1 +5
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 2,830 1,793 2,216
As % of all contract jobs in London 18.06% 13.51% 12.10%
As % of the Qualifications category 61.48% 53.86% 50.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,114 1,205 1,546
10th Percentile £400 £363 £363
25th Percentile £459 £450 £458
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% -3.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 17 43
10th Percentile £20.24 £19.23 £14.67
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% -56.00%
75th Percentile £76.58 £39.04 £62.02
90th Percentile - £102.69 £83.65
England median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £56.69
% change year-on-year -58.08% +5.84% -5.52%

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 4,603 3,329 4,432
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 29.37% 25.09% 24.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,276 2,119 2,964
10th Percentile £363 £350 £325
25th Percentile £430 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -4.35%
75th Percentile £638 £656 £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 61 127
10th Percentile £19.94 £21.50 £14.26
25th Percentile £25.15 £24.66 £19.99
Median hourly rate £35.00 £37.50 £34.23
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% +9.55% -14.43%
75th Percentile £65.88 £56.25 £63.13
90th Percentile £76.58 £78.40 £83.75
England median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -49.70% +12.36% -4.30%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 +5 353 £538 +2.38% 88
South London +2 141 £519 +3.71% 16
East London +10 10 £638 +145.19% 8
West London -25 10 - - 18
North London -3 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
1 116 (4.10%) Confluence
2 68 (2.40%) SharePoint
3 44 (1.55%) Apache Spark
4 33 (1.17%) nginx
5 30 (1.06%) Apache
6 25 (0.88%) Microsoft Exchange
7 23 (0.81%) 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%) SharePoint 2010
Applications
1 40 (1.41%) Microsoft Excel
1 40 (1.41%) Microsoft Office
2 19 (0.67%) 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 (0.071%) AutoCAD
5 2 (0.071%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.071%) 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
1 655 (23.14%) AWS
2 642 (22.69%) Azure
3 178 (6.29%) GitHub
4 167 (5.90%) Power Platform
5 148 (5.23%) Serverless
6 141 (4.98%) GCP
7 132 (4.66%) Azure DevOps
8 108 (3.82%) Amazon S3
9 105 (3.71%) AWS Lambda
10 98 (3.46%) Microsoft 365
11 88 (3.11%) Entra ID
12 86 (3.04%) GitHub Actions
13 69 (2.44%) OCI
14 67 (2.37%) AWS CloudFormation
15 62 (2.19%) Amazon EKS
16 60 (2.12%) PaaS
17 56 (1.98%) IaaS
18 55 (1.94%) Azure Data Factory
19 54 (1.91%) Amazon EC2
19 54 (1.91%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 89 (3.14%) Firewall
2 63 (2.23%) DNS
3 61 (2.16%) Network Security
4 33 (1.17%) LAN
4 33 (1.17%) VPN
4 33 (1.17%) WAN
5 28 (0.99%) TCP/IP
6 25 (0.88%) Wireless
7 22 (0.78%) DHCP
8 19 (0.67%) BGP
9 18 (0.64%) NAS
9 18 (0.64%) SAN
10 17 (0.60%) Wi-Fi
11 16 (0.57%) Kerberos
11 16 (0.57%) SSL
12 13 (0.46%) OSPF
13 12 (0.42%) HTTP
13 12 (0.42%) MPLS
13 12 (0.42%) VLAN
14 9 (0.32%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 111 (3.92%) Power BI
2 100 (3.53%) PostgreSQL
3 77 (2.72%) Data Warehouse
4 53 (1.87%) NoSQL
5 49 (1.73%) SQL Server
6 46 (1.63%) Azure SQL Database
7 39 (1.38%) Metadata
8 38 (1.34%) Amazon RDS
9 37 (1.31%) Data Lake
9 37 (1.31%) Oracle Database
10 36 (1.27%) Elasticsearch
11 33 (1.17%) Relational Database
12 30 (1.06%) Big Data
13 29 (1.02%) Amazon Athena
14 28 (0.99%) Amazon Redshift
15 23 (0.81%) Tableau
16 22 (0.78%) Delta Lake
17 18 (0.64%) MongoDB
18 16 (0.57%) DynamoDB
18 16 (0.57%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 185 (6.54%) JIRA
2 175 (6.18%) Git
3 111 (3.92%) Jenkins
4 92 (3.25%) GitLab
5 35 (1.24%) Postman
6 34 (1.20%) Selenium
7 27 (0.95%) Cypress.io
8 26 (0.92%) JUnit
9 22 (0.78%) Bitbucket
10 17 (0.60%) Artifactory
11 12 (0.42%) Cucumber
11 12 (0.42%) 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
1 871 (30.78%) Public Sector
2 668 (23.60%) Social Skills
3 269 (9.51%) Finance
4 233 (8.23%) Analytical Skills
5 74 (2.61%) Documentation Skills
6 68 (2.40%) Military
7 56 (1.98%) Banking
8 51 (1.80%) Telecoms
9 45 (1.59%) Presentation Skills
10 44 (1.55%) Influencing Skills
11 33 (1.17%) Police
12 32 (1.13%) Law
13 31 (1.10%) Legal
14 25 (0.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 24 (0.85%) Manufacturing
15 24 (0.85%) Marketing
16 18 (0.64%) Organisational Skills
17 17 (0.60%) Electronics
18 11 (0.39%) Aerospace
18 11 (0.39%) Retail
Job Titles
1 455 (16.08%) Architect
2 338 (11.94%) Developer
3 275 (9.72%) Senior
4 234 (8.27%) Analyst
5 203 (7.17%) DevOps Engineer
6 164 (5.80%) Data Engineer
6 164 (5.80%) Lead
7 151 (5.34%) Consultant
8 120 (4.24%) Business Analyst
9 95 (3.36%) Azure Engineer
10 82 (2.90%) AWS Engineer
11 75 (2.65%) Solutions Architect
12 71 (2.51%) Technical Architect
13 67 (2.37%) Security Architect
14 61 (2.16%) AWS DevOps
15 60 (2.12%) Designer
16 56 (1.98%) AWS DevOps Engineer
17 53 (1.87%) Delivery Manager
18 50 (1.77%) Full-Stack Developer
18 50 (1.77%) SC Cleared Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 166 (5.87%) REST
2 87 (3.07%) SOAP
3 85 (3.00%) JSON
3 85 (3.00%) Spring
4 84 (2.97%) Kafka
4 84 (2.97%) Node.js
4 84 (2.97%) React
5 74 (2.61%) LDAP
6 69 (2.44%) PySpark
7 66 (2.33%) Oracle Fusion
8 54 (1.91%) Spring Boot
9 53 (1.87%) CSS
9 53 (1.87%) HTML
10 52 (1.84%) .NET
11 48 (1.70%) RESTful
12 45 (1.59%) OAuth
13 44 (1.55%) AngularJS
13 44 (1.55%) XML
14 43 (1.52%) Web Services
15 36 (1.27%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 132 (4.66%) Cloud Native
2 83 (2.93%) Onboarding
3 76 (2.69%) Product Ownership
4 62 (2.19%) Security Posture
5 59 (2.08%) Enterprise Software
5 59 (2.08%) PKI
6 57 (2.01%) Legacy Systems
7 54 (1.91%) Data Centre
8 42 (1.48%) Management Information System
8 42 (1.48%) Self-Motivation
9 37 (1.31%) Replication
10 29 (1.02%) Public Cloud
11 24 (0.85%) Security Operations Centre
12 23 (0.81%) AI Agents
13 22 (0.78%) Data Protection Act
13 22 (0.78%) Distributed Systems
14 19 (0.67%) Greenfield Project
14 19 (0.67%) Hybrid Cloud
15 18 (0.64%) Cyber Threat
16 16 (0.57%) Cyber Defence
Operating Systems
1 154 (5.44%) Linux
2 139 (4.91%) Windows
3 38 (1.34%) Mac OS
4 36 (1.27%) Android
5 33 (1.17%) Windows Server
6 25 (0.88%) VMS
6 25 (0.88%) Windows 10
7 20 (0.71%) 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 (0.071%) AIX
15 2 (0.071%) CentOS
16 1 (0.035%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 592 (20.92%) Agile
2 559 (19.75%) DevOps
3 465 (16.43%) CI/CD
4 353 (12.47%) Problem-Solving
5 287 (10.14%) Stakeholder Management
6 277 (9.79%) Infrastructure as Code
7 251 (8.87%) Migration
8 222 (7.84%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 206 (7.28%) Cybersecurity
10 180 (6.36%) Containerisation
11 175 (6.18%) Data Modelling
12 174 (6.15%) Continuous Improvement
13 168 (5.94%) AI
14 164 (5.80%) Analytics
15 153 (5.41%) Test Automation
16 152 (5.37%) Roadmaps
17 149 (5.27%) Business Intelligence
18 139 (4.91%) Microservices
19 134 (4.73%) Decision-Making
20 130 (4.59%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 439 (15.51%) Python
2 291 (10.28%) SQL
3 179 (6.33%) Java
4 178 (6.29%) PowerShell
5 152 (5.37%) JavaScript
6 76 (2.69%) TypeScript
7 75 (2.65%) C#
8 71 (2.51%) Bash
9 44 (1.55%) Scala
10 31 (1.10%) Ruby
11 28 (0.99%) Go
12 21 (0.74%) Apex Code
13 16 (0.57%) 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 2,341 (82.72%) SC Cleared
2 330 (11.66%) DV Cleared
3 96 (3.39%) Degree
4 75 (2.65%) BPSS Clearance
5 56 (1.98%) AWS Certification
6 48 (1.70%) Azure Certification
6 48 (1.70%) CISSP
7 30 (1.06%) CISM
8 28 (0.99%) Cisco Certification
9 24 (0.85%) CHECK Team Leader
10 21 (0.74%) CHECK Team Member
11 19 (0.67%) GIAC
11 19 (0.67%) Microsoft Certification
12 18 (0.64%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 15 (0.53%) ISTQB
13 15 (0.53%) TOGAF Certification
14 14 (0.49%) CCNP
14 14 (0.49%) CompTIA Security+
14 14 (0.49%) CTC Cleared
14 14 (0.49%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 114 (4.03%) Data Quality
2 90 (3.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 89 (3.14%) QA
4 71 (2.51%) NCSC
5 70 (2.47%) Accessibility
5 70 (2.47%) NIST
6 60 (2.12%) GDPR
7 21 (0.74%) PMO
7 21 (0.74%) WCAG
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
1 259 (9.15%) Docker
2 112 (3.96%) Active Directory
3 45 (1.59%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
5 20 (0.71%) Hyper-V
6 16 (0.57%) VMware ESXi
7 10 (0.35%) Squid
7 10 (0.35%) VMware NSX
8 8 (0.28%) NFS
9 7 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
9 7 (0.25%) vSphere
10 5 (0.18%) BitLocker
10 5 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
11 4 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
11 4 (0.14%) XenApp
11 4 (0.14%) XenDesktop
12 3 (0.11%) Postfix
13 2 (0.071%) DFS Replication
13 2 (0.071%) Dovecot
13 2 (0.071%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 349 (12.33%) Terraform
2 305 (10.78%) Kubernetes
3 80 (2.83%) Ansible
4 49 (1.73%) Grafana
5 46 (1.63%) Prometheus
6 44 (1.55%) Single Sign-On
7 25 (0.88%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 21 (0.74%) 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 9 (0.32%) Puppet
15 7 (0.25%) EMC VPLEX
16 6 (0.21%) Kibana
Vendors
1 316 (11.17%) Microsoft
2 175 (6.18%) Oracle
3 101 (3.57%) ServiceNow
4 90 (3.18%) Databricks
5 84 (2.97%) SAP
6 75 (2.65%) VMware
7 64 (2.26%) Splunk
8 61 (2.16%) Salesforce
9 57 (2.01%) CyberArk
10 53 (1.87%) Cisco
11 40 (1.41%) Google
12 35 (1.24%) Red Hat
13 34 (1.20%) BeyondTrust
13 34 (1.20%) Centrify
14 32 (1.13%) Apple
15 30 (1.06%) Palo Alto
16 28 (0.99%) Dynatrace
16 28 (0.99%) IBM
17 25 (0.88%) Foundry
17 25 (0.88%) HP