Security Cleared Contracts

Security Clearance
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for Security Cleared qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 4 3 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 +2 +6
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 5,169 8,069 9,909
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 17.66% 18.52% 16.60%
As % of the Qualifications category 57.48% 60.60% 60.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,446 5,281 6,804
10th Percentile £349 £350 £380
25th Percentile £450 £456 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £529 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.82% - -
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £694 £738 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £548 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -0.36% - +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 288 529 554
10th Percentile £18.50 £13.99 £19.00
25th Percentile £21.46 £21.46 £28.93
Median hourly rate £50.20 £57.33 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.45% -4.45% +14.29%
75th Percentile £67.50 £72.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.46 £83.75 £80.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £56.75 £58.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year -2.16% +0.87% +9.52%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK

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.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 8,993 13,316 16,299
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 30.72% 30.57% 27.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,686 8,190 10,861
10th Percentile £288 £300 £325
25th Percentile £413 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £535 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.87% -2.73% +4.76%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £707 £743 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £501 £533 £530
% change year-on-year -6.10% +0.57% +6.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 509 1,076 849
10th Percentile £18.13 £13.87 £15.25
25th Percentile £22.00 £17.88 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £40.00 £54.00
Median % change year-on-year - -25.93% +29.16%
75th Percentile £66.00 £61.60 £68.25
90th Percentile £80.20 £75.24 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £40.94 £49.57
% change year-on-year +3.81% -17.41% +53.14%

Security Cleared
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Security Cleared as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Security Cleared.

Daily rate trend for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Security Cleared over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Security Cleared.

Hourly rate trend for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Security Cleared over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Top 17 Contract Locations

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 UK over the 6 months to 1 May 2025. 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
England -2 4,513 £538 -2.27% 2,680
UK excluding London -1 2,700 £548 -0.36% 2,261
London +1 1,667 £525 -4.55% 636
Work from Home -1 1,616 £525 -4.55% 2,915
South West 0 799 £563 +2.27% 554
South East -1 792 £550 -5.50% 697
North of England +3 580 £500 -4.76% 391
North West 0 410 £500 -4.76% 242
Midlands -3 289 £525 +5.00% 280
West Midlands -2 220 £525 +16.67% 171
East of England -1 168 £450 -10.00% 258
Yorkshire +2 97 £525 - 109
North East +3 80 £508 -5.58% 44
Scotland -43 70 £475 -17.39% 126
East Midlands -3 69 £475 -13.64% 87
Wales -2 34 £533 -11.25% 38
Northern Ireland -6 15 £475 -6.17% 19

Security Cleared
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 167 (3.23%) Confluence
2 156 (3.02%) SharePoint
3 92 (1.78%) Microsoft Exchange
4 73 (1.41%) Apache
5 37 (0.72%) Apache Spark
6 34 (0.66%) nginx
7 28 (0.54%) Skype for Business
8 25 (0.48%) Apache Airflow
9 24 (0.46%) SAS
10 23 (0.44%) CMS
10 23 (0.44%) IIS
11 21 (0.41%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 13 (0.25%) WebLogic
13 12 (0.23%) Camunda
13 12 (0.23%) Traefik
14 10 (0.19%) Tomcat
15 9 (0.17%) Jupyter
15 9 (0.17%) MTS
15 9 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
15 9 (0.17%) WebSphere
Applications
1 110 (2.13%) Microsoft Office
2 81 (1.57%) Microsoft Excel
3 40 (0.77%) Microsoft Project
4 33 (0.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 19 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
6 14 (0.27%) Oracle Smart View
7 12 (0.23%) MS Visio
7 12 (0.23%) Simulink
8 10 (0.19%) Sketch
9 7 (0.14%) Siemens NX
9 7 (0.14%) Trello
10 5 (0.097%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.097%) InfoPath
10 5 (0.097%) Windchill
11 2 (0.039%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.039%) InVision
11 2 (0.039%) ProjectWise
12 1 (0.019%) CATIA
12 1 (0.019%) Revit
12 1 (0.019%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 78 (1.51%) SAP S/4HANA
2 26 (0.50%) Primavera
3 24 (0.46%) Dynamics CRM
3 24 (0.46%) Teamcenter
4 15 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
4 15 (0.29%) SAP PP
5 11 (0.21%) SAP HR
6 10 (0.19%) SAP EWM
7 9 (0.17%) Oracle Payables
7 9 (0.17%) Remedy ITSM
7 9 (0.17%) SAP CO
7 9 (0.17%) SAP Payroll
8 8 (0.15%) Oracle Assets
8 8 (0.15%) Oracle Cash Management
8 8 (0.15%) Oracle ERP
8 8 (0.15%) Oracle Receivables
8 8 (0.15%) SAP CRM
8 8 (0.15%) SAP FI
8 8 (0.15%) SAP FI/CO
8 8 (0.15%) SAP PS
Cloud Services
1 1,066 (20.62%) AWS
2 756 (14.63%) Azure
3 225 (4.35%) Power Platform
4 207 (4.00%) Microsoft 365
5 172 (3.33%) Serverless
6 148 (2.86%) GCP
7 143 (2.77%) Amazon S3
8 129 (2.50%) Azure DevOps
9 125 (2.42%) GitHub
10 121 (2.34%) AWS Lambda
11 120 (2.32%) Entra ID
12 103 (1.99%) SaaS
13 101 (1.95%) AWS CloudFormation
14 79 (1.53%) Amazon EKS
15 75 (1.45%) Amazon EC2
16 72 (1.39%) PaaS
17 69 (1.33%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 68 (1.32%) Power Automate
18 68 (1.32%) PowerApps
19 67 (1.30%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 327 (6.33%) Firewall
2 242 (4.68%) DNS
3 171 (3.31%) VPN
4 150 (2.90%) Network Security
5 129 (2.50%) WAN
6 98 (1.90%) DHCP
7 86 (1.66%) BGP
7 86 (1.66%) TCP/IP
8 83 (1.61%) LAN
9 77 (1.49%) OSPF
10 59 (1.14%) Cisco ASA
10 59 (1.14%) Wi-Fi
11 58 (1.12%) IPsec
12 57 (1.10%) HTTP
13 51 (0.99%) Cisco Firepower
14 46 (0.89%) SMTP
15 45 (0.87%) SSL
16 43 (0.83%) Cisco ISE
16 43 (0.83%) EIGRP
17 39 (0.75%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 222 (4.29%) PostgreSQL
2 156 (3.02%) Power BI
3 127 (2.46%) Relational Database
4 113 (2.19%) SQL Server
5 108 (2.09%) MongoDB
6 97 (1.88%) Data Warehouse
6 97 (1.88%) Oracle Database
7 89 (1.72%) Amazon RDS
8 69 (1.33%) MySQL
9 61 (1.18%) Data Lake
10 56 (1.08%) Big Data
11 53 (1.03%) Tableau
12 50 (0.97%) NoSQL
13 48 (0.93%) Oracle Reports
14 46 (0.89%) Elasticsearch
15 41 (0.79%) Metadata
16 34 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
17 32 (0.62%) Amazon Athena
18 30 (0.58%) Redis
19 24 (0.46%) Neo4j
Development Applications
1 300 (5.80%) JIRA
2 254 (4.91%) Jenkins
3 250 (4.84%) Git
4 180 (3.48%) GitLab
5 78 (1.51%) JUnit
6 62 (1.20%) Selenium
7 52 (1.01%) Bitbucket
7 52 (1.01%) SonarQube
8 51 (0.99%) Cucumber
9 41 (0.79%) Cypress.io
9 41 (0.79%) Gradle
10 40 (0.77%) Mockito
11 36 (0.70%) Maven
12 34 (0.66%) Liquibase
13 31 (0.60%) REST Assured
14 27 (0.52%) MSI
15 24 (0.46%) Postman
16 23 (0.44%) JMeter
17 19 (0.37%) ScriptRunner
18 17 (0.33%) CircleCI
General
1 1,380 (26.70%) Public Sector
2 1,231 (23.82%) Social Skills
3 494 (9.56%) Analytical Skills
4 428 (8.28%) Finance
5 174 (3.37%) Telecoms
6 149 (2.88%) Manufacturing
7 148 (2.86%) Military
8 113 (2.19%) Electronics
9 110 (2.13%) Marketing
10 98 (1.90%) Legal
11 76 (1.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 74 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
13 64 (1.24%) Organisational Skills
14 61 (1.18%) Aerospace
15 60 (1.16%) Law
16 43 (0.83%) Police
17 39 (0.75%) Banking
18 37 (0.72%) Documentation Skills
18 37 (0.72%) Influencing Skills
19 18 (0.35%) Billing
Job Titles
1 780 (15.09%) Architect
2 594 (11.49%) Developer
3 456 (8.82%) Senior
4 373 (7.22%) Analyst
5 290 (5.61%) Consultant
5 290 (5.61%) Lead
6 223 (4.31%) DevOps Engineer
7 208 (4.02%) Data Engineer
8 185 (3.58%) Network Engineer
9 156 (3.02%) Support Engineer
10 145 (2.81%) Solutions Architect
11 136 (2.63%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 118 (2.28%) Software Engineer
13 115 (2.22%) Business Analyst
14 113 (2.19%) Java Developer
15 110 (2.13%) AWS Engineer
16 107 (2.07%) Technical Architect
17 106 (2.05%) Project Manager
18 100 (1.93%) Security Architect
19 92 (1.78%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 192 (3.71%) React
2 187 (3.62%) Kafka
3 145 (2.81%) Spring
4 142 (2.75%) REST
4 142 (2.75%) Spring Boot
5 136 (2.63%) HTML
6 109 (2.11%) CSS
7 107 (2.07%) .NET
8 102 (1.97%) Node.js
9 96 (1.86%) SOAP
10 83 (1.61%) RESTful
10 83 (1.61%) Web Services
11 68 (1.32%) AngularJS
12 65 (1.26%) Swagger
13 61 (1.18%) OpenAPI
14 54 (1.04%) XML
15 52 (1.01%) Oracle Fusion
16 51 (0.99%) PySpark
17 44 (0.85%) Elastic Stack
17 44 (0.85%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 166 (3.21%) Data Centre
2 165 (3.19%) Onboarding
3 143 (2.77%) PKI
4 140 (2.71%) Management Information System
5 71 (1.37%) Product Ownership
6 70 (1.35%) Driving Licence
7 61 (1.18%) Public Cloud
8 58 (1.12%) Hybrid Cloud
9 51 (0.99%) CMDB
9 51 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
10 43 (0.83%) Security Posture
11 42 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
12 41 (0.79%) Enterprise Software
13 40 (0.77%) Linux Command Line
14 38 (0.74%) Legacy Systems
15 36 (0.70%) Cloud Native
15 36 (0.70%) Cyber Threat
16 35 (0.68%) Clustering
17 34 (0.66%) Replication
18 33 (0.64%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 606 (11.72%) Windows
2 491 (9.50%) Linux
3 224 (4.33%) Windows Server
4 141 (2.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 123 (2.38%) Windows 10
6 65 (1.26%) Unix
7 45 (0.87%) Windows Server 2019
8 41 (0.79%) CentOS
9 40 (0.77%) Windows Server 2016
10 35 (0.68%) Windows Server 2012
11 33 (0.64%) Android
12 27 (0.52%) Windows 7
13 25 (0.48%) Mac OS
14 23 (0.44%) VMS
15 20 (0.39%) Apple iOS
15 20 (0.39%) Ubuntu
16 19 (0.37%) AIX
17 12 (0.23%) Solaris
17 12 (0.23%) Windows Server 2003
18 11 (0.21%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 999 (19.33%) Agile
2 809 (15.65%) Problem-Solving
3 706 (13.66%) DevOps
4 539 (10.43%) CI/CD
5 390 (7.54%) Migration
6 382 (7.39%) ITIL
7 343 (6.64%) Stakeholder Management
8 327 (6.33%) Containerisation
8 327 (6.33%) Microservices
9 308 (5.96%) Software Engineering
10 284 (5.49%) Test Automation
11 280 (5.42%) Service Management
12 267 (5.17%) Project Management
13 252 (4.88%) Business Intelligence
14 245 (4.74%) Analytics
15 243 (4.70%) Infrastructure as Code
16 232 (4.49%) Cybersecurity
17 198 (3.83%) Roadmaps
17 198 (3.83%) Technical Leadership
18 189 (3.66%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 651 (12.59%) Python
2 570 (11.03%) SQL
3 409 (7.91%) Java
4 353 (6.83%) PowerShell
5 320 (6.19%) JavaScript
6 194 (3.75%) Bash
7 138 (2.67%) C#
8 133 (2.57%) TypeScript
9 92 (1.78%) PL/SQL
10 54 (1.04%) C++
11 51 (0.99%) Go
12 49 (0.95%) ABAP
13 40 (0.77%) Perl
14 30 (0.58%) Shell Script
15 25 (0.48%) R
16 24 (0.46%) Ada
17 23 (0.44%) C
18 21 (0.41%) Groovy
18 21 (0.41%) Scala
18 21 (0.41%) VB
Qualifications
1 4,075 (78.84%) SC Cleared
2 857 (16.58%) DV Cleared
3 293 (5.67%) Degree
4 176 (3.40%) BPSS Clearance
5 158 (3.06%) Cisco Certification
6 101 (1.95%) CCNP
7 97 (1.88%) AWS Certification
8 83 (1.61%) CISSP
9 81 (1.57%) Microsoft Certification
10 72 (1.39%) Computer Science Degree
11 71 (1.37%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 66 (1.28%) ITIL Certification
13 61 (1.18%) CCNA
14 52 (1.01%) CISM
15 49 (0.95%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 35 (0.68%) Azure Certification
17 34 (0.66%) CTC Cleared
18 33 (0.64%) MCSE
19 31 (0.60%) Dell Certification
20 30 (0.58%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 177 (3.42%) QA
2 118 (2.28%) SLA
3 102 (1.97%) NIST
4 93 (1.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 85 (1.64%) Data Quality
6 73 (1.41%) NCSC
7 64 (1.24%) GDPR
8 52 (1.01%) Accessibility
9 48 (0.93%) PMO
10 30 (0.58%) Def Stans
11 26 (0.50%) GRC
12 25 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials
13 24 (0.46%) JSP 440
14 23 (0.44%) HIPAA
15 17 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 15 (0.29%) WCAG
17 12 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
17 12 (0.23%) NIST 800
18 11 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
18 11 (0.21%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 366 (7.08%) Docker
2 364 (7.04%) Active Directory
3 255 (4.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 84 (1.63%) Hyper-V
5 72 (1.39%) VMware NSX
6 70 (1.35%) VMware ESXi
7 49 (0.95%) vSphere
8 46 (0.89%) Virtual Machines
9 28 (0.54%) Firmware
10 27 (0.52%) Microsoft App-V
11 25 (0.48%) BitLocker
12 22 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
13 21 (0.41%) NFS
14 10 (0.19%) Terminal Services
15 9 (0.17%) Apache ZooKeeper
15 9 (0.17%) Samba
16 8 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.14%) Microsoft Virtual Server
17 7 (0.14%) vCloud
18 6 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 489 (9.46%) Kubernetes
2 423 (8.18%) Terraform
3 290 (5.61%) Ansible
4 103 (1.99%) Microsoft Intune
5 97 (1.88%) SCCM
6 91 (1.76%) Grafana
7 84 (1.63%) Prometheus
8 76 (1.47%) Puppet
8 76 (1.47%) vCenter Server
9 48 (0.93%) Progress Chef
10 45 (0.87%) Single Sign-On
11 38 (0.74%) WSUS
12 35 (0.68%) FortiGate
13 33 (0.64%) Packer
14 31 (0.60%) Jamf Pro
15 25 (0.48%) Kibana
16 24 (0.46%) Istio
17 22 (0.43%) vRealize
18 18 (0.35%) Consul
18 18 (0.35%) VxRail
Vendors
1 676 (13.08%) Microsoft
2 380 (7.35%) VMware
3 356 (6.89%) Cisco
4 315 (6.09%) Oracle
5 310 (6.00%) SAP
6 211 (4.08%) ServiceNow
7 123 (2.38%) Palo Alto
8 116 (2.24%) Google
9 112 (2.17%) HP
10 108 (2.09%) Databricks
11 105 (2.03%) Dell
12 100 (1.93%) Red Hat
13 99 (1.92%) Juniper
14 94 (1.82%) Splunk
15 76 (1.47%) Atlassian
16 68 (1.32%) F5
17 66 (1.28%) Citrix
18 59 (1.14%) SolarWinds
19 47 (0.91%) Fortinet
20 45 (0.87%) Apple