Government Security Classifications Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Government Security Classifications (GSC)
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the UK excluding London requiring Government Security Classifications skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 4 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 395 342 381
Rank change year-on-year -53 +39 +118
Contract jobs citing Government Security Classifications 3 6 25
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.017% 0.042% 0.13%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 0.10% 0.27% 0.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 2 3 23
10th Percentile - £433 £463
25th Percentile - £444 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £475 £550
Median % change year-on-year +15.79% -13.64% -
75th Percentile - £488 £588
90th Percentile - - £594
UK median daily rate £550 £523 £550
% change year-on-year +5.20% -4.94% -22.54%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
UK excluding London

Government Security Classifications falls under the Quality Assurance and Compliance category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring quality assurance or compliance skills in the UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 2,997 2,186 3,008
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 16.49% 15.40% 15.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,904 1,238 1,876
10th Percentile £295 £208 £260
25th Percentile £400 £354 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.58% -5.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £596
90th Percentile £675 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 256 138 181
10th Percentile £13.60 £14.70 £13.25
25th Percentile £17.65 £19.92 £16.54
Median hourly rate £22.13 £29.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -23.71% -10.77% +54.76%
75th Percentile £63.75 £63.75 £64.50
90th Percentile £73.75 £73.83 £83.40
UK median hourly rate £26.11 £29.00 £33.00
% change year-on-year -9.97% -12.12% +40.22%

Government Security Classifications
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

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

Government Security Classifications job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Government Security Classifications
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Government Security Classifications.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Government Security Classifications

Government Security Classifications
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Government Security Classifications within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 4 January 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
South West -7 3 £550 -
Government Security Classifications
UK

Government Security Classifications
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding 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:

Cloud Services
1 3 (100.00%) Azure
2 2 (66.67%) AWS
3 1 (33.33%) AWS CloudFormation
3 1 (33.33%) Azure API Management
3 1 (33.33%) Azure DevOps
3 1 (33.33%) Azure Event Grid
3 1 (33.33%) Azure Key Vault
Communications & Networking
1 1 (33.33%) DHCP
1 1 (33.33%) DNS
1 1 (33.33%) NAS
1 1 (33.33%) SAN
1 1 (33.33%) SD-WAN
1 1 (33.33%) TCP/IP
1 1 (33.33%) VPN
1 1 (33.33%) WAN
Job Titles
1 3 (100.00%) Architect
2 2 (66.67%) Azure Architect
2 2 (66.67%) Infrastructure Architect
3 1 (33.33%) AWS Architect
3 1 (33.33%) AWS Infrastructure Architect
3 1 (33.33%) DevOps Architect
3 1 (33.33%) MODAF Architect
3 1 (33.33%) Network Infrastructure Architect
3 1 (33.33%) Network Security Architect
3 1 (33.33%) Security Architect
3 1 (33.33%) Solutions Architect
3 1 (33.33%) Storage Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (33.33%) ADO
Miscellaneous
1 1 (33.33%) CMDB
1 1 (33.33%) Product Ownership
1 1 (33.33%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 1 (33.33%) Linux
1 1 (33.33%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 3 (100.00%) Agile
1 3 (100.00%) MODAF
1 3 (100.00%) Scrum
1 3 (100.00%) User Experience
1 3 (100.00%) UX Research
2 2 (66.67%) CI/CD
2 2 (66.67%) DevOps
2 2 (66.67%) Infrastructure as Code
2 2 (66.67%) Observability
2 2 (66.67%) Performance Tuning
2 2 (66.67%) TOGAF
2 2 (66.67%) Zero Trust
3 1 (33.33%) B2C
3 1 (33.33%) BCP
3 1 (33.33%) Configuration Management
3 1 (33.33%) Enterprise Architecture
3 1 (33.33%) Identity Management
3 1 (33.33%) ITIL
3 1 (33.33%) Load Balancing
3 1 (33.33%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 1 (33.33%) Bicep
1 1 (33.33%) PowerShell
1 1 (33.33%) Python
Qualifications
1 3 (100.00%) SC Cleared
1 3 (100.00%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (100.00%) NCSC
2 1 (33.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (33.33%) NIST
System Software
1 1 (33.33%) Active Directory
1 1 (33.33%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 1 (33.33%) Ansible
1 1 (33.33%) Single Sign-On
1 1 (33.33%) Terraform
Vendors
1 1 (33.33%) VMware