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

6 months to
26 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 2,871 1,819 2,196
As % of all contract jobs in London 18.13% 13.51% 12.14%
As % of the Qualifications category 61.58% 53.74% 50.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,144 1,222 1,528
10th Percentile £400 £363 £363
25th Percentile £460 £450 £459
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 £545 £550
% change year-on-year -3.58% -1.00% -3.51%
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 4,662 3,385 4,382
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 29.43% 25.14% 24.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,324 2,153 2,930
10th Percentile £363 £350 £325
25th Percentile £430 £450 £427
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -4.35%
75th Percentile £638 £657 £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% -19.71%
75th Percentile £65.88 £56.13 £62.26
90th Percentile £76.58 £78.40 £83.75
England median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year -49.70% +17.65% -8.60%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 +5 354 £550 +4.76% 86
South London +2 145 £519 +4.76% 13
East London +5 10 £638 +145.19% 8
West London -21 10 - - 18
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 (4.11%) Confluence
2 71 (2.47%) SharePoint
3 44 (1.53%) Apache Spark
4 34 (1.18%) nginx
5 30 (1.04%) Apache
6 25 (0.87%) Microsoft Exchange
7 23 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
8 16 (0.56%) Palantir Foundry
9 11 (0.38%) SAS
10 6 (0.21%) Tomcat
11 5 (0.17%) CMS
12 4 (0.14%) Camunda
13 3 (0.10%) Drupal
13 3 (0.10%) JBoss
13 3 (0.10%) Jupyter
13 3 (0.10%) MQSeries
13 3 (0.10%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 3 (0.10%) Traefik
13 3 (0.10%) WebLogic
14 2 (0.070%) WebSphere
Applications
1 40 (1.39%) Microsoft Excel
1 40 (1.39%) Microsoft Office
2 20 (0.70%) Microsoft Project
3 15 (0.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 15 (0.52%) 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%) InfoPath
6 1 (0.035%) InVision
6 1 (0.035%) Maya
6 1 (0.035%) OmniGraffle
6 1 (0.035%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.035%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.035%) Trello
6 1 (0.035%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 25 (0.87%) SAP S/4HANA
2 21 (0.73%) Oracle ERP
3 15 (0.52%) Dynamics CRM
4 7 (0.24%) Oracle General Ledger
4 7 (0.24%) Remedy ITSM
4 7 (0.24%) Workday HCM
5 6 (0.21%) Oracle FAH
5 6 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 5 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
6 5 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
6 5 (0.17%) SAP EWM
6 5 (0.17%) SAP WM
6 5 (0.17%) Teamcenter
7 4 (0.14%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
7 4 (0.14%) SAP HCM
7 4 (0.14%) SAP MM
8 3 (0.10%) Oracle Assets
8 3 (0.10%) Oracle Payables
8 3 (0.10%) SAP PS
8 3 (0.10%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 667 (23.23%) AWS
2 653 (22.74%) Azure
3 180 (6.27%) GitHub
4 169 (5.89%) Power Platform
5 149 (5.19%) Serverless
6 142 (4.95%) GCP
7 135 (4.70%) Azure DevOps
8 110 (3.83%) Amazon S3
9 106 (3.69%) AWS Lambda
10 103 (3.59%) Microsoft 365
11 91 (3.17%) Entra ID
12 86 (3.00%) GitHub Actions
13 69 (2.40%) OCI
14 68 (2.37%) AWS CloudFormation
15 63 (2.19%) Amazon EKS
16 60 (2.09%) PaaS
17 57 (1.99%) Amazon EC2
18 55 (1.92%) Azure Data Factory
18 55 (1.92%) IaaS
18 55 (1.92%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 91 (3.17%) Firewall
2 65 (2.26%) DNS
3 61 (2.12%) Network Security
4 35 (1.22%) VPN
5 33 (1.15%) LAN
5 33 (1.15%) WAN
6 29 (1.01%) TCP/IP
7 25 (0.87%) Wireless
8 22 (0.77%) DHCP
9 19 (0.66%) BGP
10 18 (0.63%) NAS
10 18 (0.63%) SAN
11 17 (0.59%) Wi-Fi
12 16 (0.56%) Kerberos
12 16 (0.56%) SSL
13 13 (0.45%) OSPF
14 12 (0.42%) HTTP
14 12 (0.42%) MPLS
14 12 (0.42%) VLAN
15 9 (0.31%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 111 (3.87%) Power BI
2 105 (3.66%) PostgreSQL
3 78 (2.72%) Data Warehouse
4 53 (1.85%) NoSQL
5 50 (1.74%) SQL Server
6 47 (1.64%) Azure SQL Database
7 40 (1.39%) Metadata
8 39 (1.36%) Amazon RDS
9 37 (1.29%) Elasticsearch
9 37 (1.29%) Oracle Database
10 36 (1.25%) Data Lake
11 34 (1.18%) Relational Database
12 30 (1.04%) Big Data
13 29 (1.01%) Amazon Athena
13 29 (1.01%) Amazon Redshift
14 23 (0.80%) Tableau
15 22 (0.77%) Delta Lake
16 18 (0.63%) MongoDB
17 17 (0.59%) DynamoDB
18 16 (0.56%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 190 (6.62%) JIRA
2 178 (6.20%) Git
3 118 (4.11%) Jenkins
4 92 (3.20%) GitLab
5 35 (1.22%) Postman
6 33 (1.15%) Selenium
7 27 (0.94%) Cypress.io
7 27 (0.94%) JUnit
8 23 (0.80%) Bitbucket
9 17 (0.59%) Artifactory
10 14 (0.49%) SonarQube
11 13 (0.45%) Cucumber
12 12 (0.42%) Maven
12 12 (0.42%) Mockito
13 11 (0.38%) JMeter
14 9 (0.31%) REST Assured
15 8 (0.28%) Visual Studio
15 8 (0.28%) Visual Studio Code
16 7 (0.24%) Gradle
16 7 (0.24%) MLflow
General
1 889 (30.96%) Public Sector
2 674 (23.48%) Social Skills
3 274 (9.54%) Finance
4 232 (8.08%) Analytical Skills
5 75 (2.61%) Documentation Skills
6 68 (2.37%) Military
7 58 (2.02%) Banking
8 51 (1.78%) Telecoms
9 46 (1.60%) Presentation Skills
10 44 (1.53%) Influencing Skills
11 34 (1.18%) Police
12 33 (1.15%) Law
13 32 (1.11%) Legal
14 26 (0.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 25 (0.87%) Manufacturing
16 24 (0.84%) Marketing
17 19 (0.66%) Organisational Skills
18 17 (0.59%) Electronics
19 11 (0.38%) Aerospace
19 11 (0.38%) Retail
Job Titles
1 461 (16.06%) Architect
2 353 (12.30%) Developer
3 281 (9.79%) Senior
4 234 (8.15%) Analyst
5 204 (7.11%) DevOps Engineer
6 167 (5.82%) Data Engineer
6 167 (5.82%) Lead
7 153 (5.33%) Consultant
8 120 (4.18%) Business Analyst
9 94 (3.27%) Azure Engineer
10 82 (2.86%) AWS Engineer
11 75 (2.61%) Solutions Architect
12 74 (2.58%) Technical Architect
13 67 (2.33%) Security Architect
14 61 (2.12%) AWS DevOps
14 61 (2.12%) Designer
15 56 (1.95%) AWS DevOps Engineer
16 53 (1.85%) Delivery Manager
17 50 (1.74%) Full-Stack Developer
17 50 (1.74%) SC Cleared Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 168 (5.85%) REST
2 88 (3.07%) SOAP
2 88 (3.07%) Spring
3 86 (3.00%) Kafka
4 84 (2.93%) Node.js
4 84 (2.93%) React
5 83 (2.89%) JSON
6 75 (2.61%) LDAP
7 69 (2.40%) PySpark
8 66 (2.30%) Oracle Fusion
9 60 (2.09%) .NET
9 60 (2.09%) HTML
10 57 (1.99%) Spring Boot
11 54 (1.88%) CSS
12 52 (1.81%) RESTful
13 51 (1.78%) AngularJS
14 45 (1.57%) OAuth
15 44 (1.53%) Web Services
16 43 (1.50%) XML
17 36 (1.25%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 135 (4.70%) Cloud Native
2 85 (2.96%) Onboarding
3 79 (2.75%) Product Ownership
4 62 (2.16%) Security Posture
5 60 (2.09%) Legacy Systems
6 59 (2.06%) PKI
7 58 (2.02%) Enterprise Software
8 54 (1.88%) Data Centre
9 43 (1.50%) Self-Motivation
10 41 (1.43%) Management Information System
11 38 (1.32%) Replication
12 29 (1.01%) Public Cloud
13 25 (0.87%) Distributed Systems
14 24 (0.84%) Security Operations Centre
15 23 (0.80%) AI Agents
16 22 (0.77%) Data Protection Act
17 19 (0.66%) Greenfield Project
17 19 (0.66%) Hybrid Cloud
18 18 (0.63%) Cyber Threat
19 16 (0.56%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 155 (5.40%) Linux
2 138 (4.81%) Windows
3 38 (1.32%) Mac OS
4 36 (1.25%) Android
5 33 (1.15%) Windows Server
6 25 (0.87%) VMS
6 25 (0.87%) Windows 10
7 20 (0.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 19 (0.66%) Unix
9 12 (0.42%) Apple iOS
10 9 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
11 8 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
12 5 (0.17%) Solaris
12 5 (0.17%) Ubuntu
13 4 (0.14%) Windows Server 2003
13 4 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
14 3 (0.10%) Amazon Linux
15 2 (0.070%) AIX
15 2 (0.070%) CentOS
16 1 (0.035%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 609 (21.21%) Agile
2 579 (20.17%) DevOps
3 481 (16.75%) CI/CD
4 352 (12.26%) Problem-Solving
5 292 (10.17%) Stakeholder Management
6 280 (9.75%) Infrastructure as Code
7 254 (8.85%) Migration
8 224 (7.80%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 206 (7.18%) Cybersecurity
10 186 (6.48%) Containerisation
11 182 (6.34%) Continuous Improvement
12 181 (6.30%) Data Modelling
13 169 (5.89%) AI
14 164 (5.71%) Analytics
15 158 (5.50%) Roadmaps
16 154 (5.36%) Test Automation
17 149 (5.19%) Business Intelligence
18 142 (4.95%) Microservices
19 140 (4.88%) Decision-Making
20 137 (4.77%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 442 (15.40%) Python
2 306 (10.66%) SQL
3 187 (6.51%) Java
4 178 (6.20%) PowerShell
5 158 (5.50%) JavaScript
6 83 (2.89%) C#
7 76 (2.65%) TypeScript
8 73 (2.54%) Bash
9 44 (1.53%) Scala
10 32 (1.11%) Ruby
11 28 (0.98%) Go
12 21 (0.73%) Apex Code
13 17 (0.59%) R
14 15 (0.52%) Bicep
14 15 (0.52%) 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%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 2,373 (82.65%) SC Cleared
2 333 (11.60%) DV Cleared
3 95 (3.31%) Degree
4 75 (2.61%) BPSS Clearance
5 59 (2.06%) AWS Certification
6 48 (1.67%) Azure Certification
6 48 (1.67%) CISSP
7 30 (1.04%) CISM
8 28 (0.98%) Cisco Certification
9 24 (0.84%) CHECK Team Leader
10 21 (0.73%) CHECK Team Member
11 20 (0.70%) Microsoft Certification
12 19 (0.66%) GIAC
13 18 (0.63%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 15 (0.52%) ISTQB
14 15 (0.52%) 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
1 115 (4.01%) Data Quality
2 93 (3.24%) QA
3 90 (3.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 71 (2.47%) Accessibility
4 71 (2.47%) NCSC
5 70 (2.44%) NIST
6 60 (2.09%) GDPR
7 22 (0.77%) PMO
7 22 (0.77%) WCAG
8 17 (0.59%) GRC
9 15 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 15 (0.52%) SLA
10 9 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
11 7 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials
11 7 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
11 7 (0.24%) 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
1 262 (9.13%) Docker
2 111 (3.87%) Active Directory
3 45 (1.57%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
5 20 (0.70%) Hyper-V
6 16 (0.56%) VMware ESXi
7 11 (0.38%) Squid
7 11 (0.38%) VMware NSX
8 8 (0.28%) NFS
8 8 (0.28%) vSphere
9 7 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
10 5 (0.17%) BitLocker
10 5 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
11 4 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
11 4 (0.14%) Postfix
11 4 (0.14%) XenApp
11 4 (0.14%) XenDesktop
12 2 (0.070%) DFS Replication
12 2 (0.070%) Dovecot
12 2 (0.070%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 354 (12.33%) Terraform
2 314 (10.94%) Kubernetes
3 82 (2.86%) Ansible
4 52 (1.81%) Grafana
5 49 (1.71%) Prometheus
6 45 (1.57%) Single Sign-On
7 25 (0.87%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 21 (0.73%) Argo
9 19 (0.66%) SCCM
10 18 (0.63%) Consul
11 14 (0.49%) FortiGate
11 14 (0.49%) Packer
12 13 (0.45%) vRealize
13 11 (0.38%) Jamf Pro
13 11 (0.38%) Microsoft Intune
13 11 (0.38%) vCenter Server
13 11 (0.38%) vMotion
14 9 (0.31%) Puppet
15 7 (0.24%) EMC VPLEX
16 6 (0.21%) Kibana
Vendors
1 322 (11.22%) Microsoft
2 175 (6.10%) Oracle
3 101 (3.52%) ServiceNow
4 91 (3.17%) Databricks
5 83 (2.89%) SAP
6 76 (2.65%) VMware
7 64 (2.23%) Splunk
8 59 (2.06%) Salesforce
9 57 (1.99%) CyberArk
10 53 (1.85%) Cisco
11 41 (1.43%) Google
12 36 (1.25%) Red Hat
13 34 (1.18%) BeyondTrust
13 34 (1.18%) Centrify
14 32 (1.11%) Apple
15 30 (1.04%) Palo Alto
16 29 (1.01%) Dynatrace
17 27 (0.94%) IBM
18 26 (0.91%) Atlassian
19 25 (0.87%) Foundry