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

6 months to
27 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 2,883 1,812 2,205
As % of all contract jobs in London 18.15% 13.49% 12.10%
As % of the Qualifications category 61.60% 53.77% 49.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,158 1,218 1,533
10th Percentile £400 £363 £363
25th Percentile £461 £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 £709 £750
England median daily rate £525 £541 £550
% change year-on-year -3.00% -1.59% -3.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 17 42
10th Percentile £20.44 £19.23 £14.47
25th Percentile £25.04 £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 £76.59 £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 4,680 3,370 4,412
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 29.47% 25.09% 24.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,342 2,147 2,949
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 £660 £650
90th Percentile £750 £775 £771
England median daily rate £520 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.78% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 77 62 127
10th Percentile £20.14 £21.55 £14.26
25th Percentile £25.15 £24.93 £19.99
Median hourly rate £35.00 £37.25 £34.23
Median % change year-on-year -6.04% +8.82% -14.43%
75th Percentile £72.50 £56.19 £62.02
90th Percentile £76.62 £78.40 £83.75
England median hourly rate £25.15 £49.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year -48.67% +15.29% -10.53%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 £550 +4.76% 81
South London +2 147 £519 +5.82% 12
East London +7 10 £638 +145.19% 5
West London -22 10 - - 16
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
1 120 (4.16%) Confluence
2 70 (2.43%) SharePoint
3 44 (1.53%) Apache Spark
4 34 (1.18%) nginx
5 31 (1.08%) Apache
6 25 (0.87%) Microsoft Exchange
7 23 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
8 16 (0.55%) 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 (0.069%) WebSphere
Applications
1 40 (1.39%) Microsoft Excel
1 40 (1.39%) Microsoft Office
2 20 (0.69%) 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 (0.069%) AutoCAD
5 2 (0.069%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.069%) 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 20 (0.69%) 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%) Teamcenter
7 4 (0.14%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
7 4 (0.14%) SAP EWM
7 4 (0.14%) SAP HCM
7 4 (0.14%) SAP MM
7 4 (0.14%) SAP WM
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
1 674 (23.38%) AWS
2 663 (23.00%) Azure
3 184 (6.38%) GitHub
4 169 (5.86%) Power Platform
5 149 (5.17%) Serverless
6 146 (5.06%) GCP
7 138 (4.79%) Azure DevOps
8 111 (3.85%) Amazon S3
9 106 (3.68%) AWS Lambda
10 103 (3.57%) Microsoft 365
11 91 (3.16%) Entra ID
12 88 (3.05%) GitHub Actions
13 69 (2.39%) AWS CloudFormation
14 67 (2.32%) OCI
15 63 (2.19%) Amazon EKS
16 59 (2.05%) PaaS
17 57 (1.98%) Amazon EC2
18 55 (1.91%) Azure Data Factory
18 55 (1.91%) IaaS
18 55 (1.91%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 90 (3.12%) Firewall
2 65 (2.25%) DNS
3 61 (2.12%) Network Security
4 34 (1.18%) VPN
5 32 (1.11%) LAN
5 32 (1.11%) WAN
6 28 (0.97%) TCP/IP
7 25 (0.87%) Wireless
8 22 (0.76%) DHCP
9 18 (0.62%) BGP
9 18 (0.62%) NAS
9 18 (0.62%) SAN
10 17 (0.59%) Wi-Fi
11 16 (0.55%) Kerberos
12 14 (0.49%) SSL
13 12 (0.42%) HTTP
13 12 (0.42%) MPLS
13 12 (0.42%) OSPF
13 12 (0.42%) VLAN
14 9 (0.31%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 111 (3.85%) Power BI
2 107 (3.71%) PostgreSQL
3 79 (2.74%) Data Warehouse
4 54 (1.87%) NoSQL
5 50 (1.73%) SQL Server
6 47 (1.63%) Azure SQL Database
7 41 (1.42%) Metadata
8 39 (1.35%) Amazon RDS
9 37 (1.28%) Data Lake
9 37 (1.28%) Elasticsearch
9 37 (1.28%) Oracle Database
10 34 (1.18%) Relational Database
11 30 (1.04%) Amazon Athena
11 30 (1.04%) Amazon Redshift
11 30 (1.04%) Big Data
12 23 (0.80%) Tableau
13 22 (0.76%) Delta Lake
14 20 (0.69%) MongoDB
15 17 (0.59%) DynamoDB
16 16 (0.55%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 193 (6.69%) JIRA
2 180 (6.24%) Git
3 122 (4.23%) Jenkins
4 94 (3.26%) GitLab
5 33 (1.14%) Postman
6 32 (1.11%) Selenium
7 27 (0.94%) Cypress.io
7 27 (0.94%) JUnit
8 23 (0.80%) Bitbucket
9 17 (0.59%) Artifactory
10 15 (0.52%) SonarQube
11 13 (0.45%) Cucumber
11 13 (0.45%) Mockito
12 12 (0.42%) Maven
13 10 (0.35%) 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
17 6 (0.21%) SoapUI
General
1 895 (31.04%) Public Sector
2 673 (23.34%) Social Skills
3 278 (9.64%) Finance
4 233 (8.08%) Analytical Skills
5 76 (2.64%) Documentation Skills
6 68 (2.36%) Military
7 60 (2.08%) Banking
8 51 (1.77%) Telecoms
9 46 (1.60%) Presentation Skills
10 44 (1.53%) Influencing Skills
11 34 (1.18%) Police
12 33 (1.14%) Law
13 32 (1.11%) Legal
14 25 (0.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 25 (0.87%) Manufacturing
14 25 (0.87%) Marketing
15 20 (0.69%) Organisational Skills
16 17 (0.59%) Electronics
17 12 (0.42%) Retail
18 11 (0.38%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 465 (16.13%) Architect
2 361 (12.52%) Developer
3 279 (9.68%) Senior
4 233 (8.08%) Analyst
5 204 (7.08%) DevOps Engineer
6 169 (5.86%) Lead
7 167 (5.79%) Data Engineer
8 153 (5.31%) Consultant
9 120 (4.16%) Business Analyst
10 95 (3.30%) Azure Engineer
11 83 (2.88%) AWS Engineer
12 78 (2.71%) Solutions Architect
13 75 (2.60%) Technical Architect
14 68 (2.36%) Security Architect
15 62 (2.15%) AWS DevOps
15 62 (2.15%) Designer
16 57 (1.98%) AWS DevOps Engineer
17 53 (1.84%) Delivery Manager
18 50 (1.73%) Full-Stack Developer
18 50 (1.73%) SC Cleared Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 165 (5.72%) REST
2 90 (3.12%) Spring
3 87 (3.02%) Kafka
4 86 (2.98%) Node.js
5 85 (2.95%) React
6 84 (2.91%) SOAP
7 79 (2.74%) JSON
8 75 (2.60%) LDAP
9 69 (2.39%) PySpark
10 64 (2.22%) .NET
10 64 (2.22%) Oracle Fusion
11 63 (2.19%) HTML
12 59 (2.05%) Spring Boot
13 56 (1.94%) AngularJS
14 53 (1.84%) RESTful
15 52 (1.80%) CSS
16 43 (1.49%) OAuth
16 43 (1.49%) Web Services
17 40 (1.39%) XML
18 36 (1.25%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 137 (4.75%) Cloud Native
2 86 (2.98%) Onboarding
3 79 (2.74%) Product Ownership
4 62 (2.15%) Security Posture
5 60 (2.08%) Legacy Systems
6 59 (2.05%) PKI
7 57 (1.98%) Enterprise Software
8 53 (1.84%) Data Centre
9 43 (1.49%) Self-Motivation
10 42 (1.46%) Management Information System
11 38 (1.32%) Replication
12 30 (1.04%) Public Cloud
13 25 (0.87%) Distributed Systems
14 24 (0.83%) Security Operations Centre
15 23 (0.80%) AI Agents
16 22 (0.76%) Data Protection Act
17 19 (0.66%) Hybrid Cloud
18 18 (0.62%) Cyber Threat
18 18 (0.62%) Data Structures
18 18 (0.62%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 153 (5.31%) Linux
2 137 (4.75%) Windows
3 38 (1.32%) Android
3 38 (1.32%) Mac OS
4 33 (1.14%) Windows Server
5 25 (0.87%) VMS
5 25 (0.87%) Windows 10
6 20 (0.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 19 (0.66%) Unix
8 12 (0.42%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
10 8 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
11 5 (0.17%) Solaris
11 5 (0.17%) Ubuntu
12 4 (0.14%) Windows Server 2003
12 4 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
13 3 (0.10%) Amazon Linux
14 2 (0.069%) AIX
14 2 (0.069%) CentOS
15 1 (0.035%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 619 (21.47%) Agile
2 584 (20.26%) DevOps
3 488 (16.93%) CI/CD
4 350 (12.14%) Problem-Solving
5 295 (10.23%) Stakeholder Management
6 282 (9.78%) Infrastructure as Code
7 257 (8.91%) Migration
8 227 (7.87%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 206 (7.15%) Cybersecurity
10 186 (6.45%) Containerisation
10 186 (6.45%) Continuous Improvement
11 183 (6.35%) Data Modelling
12 170 (5.90%) AI
13 164 (5.69%) Analytics
14 159 (5.52%) Roadmaps
15 153 (5.31%) Test Automation
16 148 (5.13%) Business Intelligence
17 143 (4.96%) Microservices
18 141 (4.89%) Decision-Making
19 138 (4.79%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 443 (15.37%) Python
2 312 (10.82%) SQL
3 187 (6.49%) Java
4 178 (6.17%) PowerShell
5 162 (5.62%) JavaScript
6 87 (3.02%) C#
7 78 (2.71%) TypeScript
8 73 (2.53%) Bash
9 44 (1.53%) Scala
10 34 (1.18%) Ruby
11 27 (0.94%) Go
12 21 (0.73%) Apex Code
13 17 (0.59%) R
14 16 (0.55%) Shell Script
15 15 (0.52%) Bicep
15 15 (0.52%) PL/SQL
16 14 (0.49%) C++
17 9 (0.31%) Kotlin
18 8 (0.28%) C
18 8 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 2,383 (82.66%) SC Cleared
2 333 (11.55%) DV Cleared
3 92 (3.19%) Degree
4 75 (2.60%) BPSS Clearance
5 59 (2.05%) AWS Certification
6 49 (1.70%) CISSP
7 48 (1.66%) Azure Certification
8 31 (1.08%) CISM
9 28 (0.97%) Cisco Certification
10 24 (0.83%) CHECK Team Leader
11 21 (0.73%) CHECK Team Member
12 20 (0.69%) Microsoft Certification
13 19 (0.66%) GIAC
14 18 (0.62%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 15 (0.52%) ISTQB
15 15 (0.52%) TOGAF Certification
16 14 (0.49%) CCNP
16 14 (0.49%) CompTIA Security+
16 14 (0.49%) CTC Cleared
16 14 (0.49%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 117 (4.06%) Data Quality
2 96 (3.33%) QA
3 90 (3.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 72 (2.50%) Accessibility
5 71 (2.46%) NCSC
6 70 (2.43%) NIST
7 62 (2.15%) GDPR
8 23 (0.80%) PMO
9 22 (0.76%) WCAG
10 18 (0.62%) GRC
11 16 (0.55%) SLA
12 15 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 9 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
14 7 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials
14 7 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
14 7 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27005
15 6 (0.21%) HIPAA
15 6 (0.21%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 6 (0.21%) NIST 800
15 6 (0.21%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 264 (9.16%) Docker
2 110 (3.82%) Active Directory
3 45 (1.56%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
5 20 (0.69%) Hyper-V
6 16 (0.55%) VMware ESXi
7 11 (0.38%) Squid
7 11 (0.38%) VMware NSX
8 9 (0.31%) NFS
9 8 (0.28%) vSphere
10 7 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
11 5 (0.17%) BitLocker
11 5 (0.17%) Postfix
11 5 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
12 4 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
12 4 (0.14%) XenApp
12 4 (0.14%) XenDesktop
13 2 (0.069%) DFS Replication
13 2 (0.069%) Dovecot
13 2 (0.069%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 354 (12.28%) Terraform
2 312 (10.82%) Kubernetes
3 84 (2.91%) Ansible
4 53 (1.84%) Grafana
5 49 (1.70%) Prometheus
6 45 (1.56%) Single Sign-On
7 25 (0.87%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 21 (0.73%) Argo
9 19 (0.66%) SCCM
10 18 (0.62%) 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 (11.17%) Microsoft
2 173 (6.00%) Oracle
3 104 (3.61%) ServiceNow
4 90 (3.12%) Databricks
5 80 (2.77%) SAP
6 76 (2.64%) VMware
7 63 (2.19%) Splunk
8 59 (2.05%) Salesforce
9 57 (1.98%) CyberArk
10 52 (1.80%) Cisco
11 41 (1.42%) 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%) Dynatrace
16 29 (1.01%) Palo Alto
17 26 (0.90%) Atlassian
17 26 (0.90%) IBM
17 26 (0.90%) Okta