Security Cleared Contract Job Trends

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 3 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,182 5,524 7,916
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.70% 17.66% 18.21%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.36% 57.37% 61.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,749 3,576 5,199
10th Percentile £381 £340 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £715 £699 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 844 412 588
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.50 £14.43
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £61.67 £25.15 £55.80
Median % change year-on-year +145.21% -54.93% -7.00%
75th Percentile £75.00 £60.56 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.46 £75.76 £83.61
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.25 £25.15 £58.00
% change year-on-year +147.51% -56.64% +0.87%

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 16,122 9,629 12,970
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.29% 30.79% 29.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,754 5,982 8,029
10th Percentile £350 £278 £311
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.43% -0.43% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £713 £706 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £527
% change year-on-year +2.00% -5.03% +0.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,177 647 1,108
10th Percentile £17.36 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £24.19 £20.19 £20.00
Median hourly rate £51.00 £27.94 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +82.53% -31.75% -26.70%
75th Percentile £72.54 £59.95 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.25 £75.00 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +97.47% -41.12% -20.54%

Security Cleared
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Security Cleared relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Security Cleared job vacancy trend in the UK

Security Cleared
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Security Cleared.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Security Cleared

Security Cleared
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Security Cleared over the 6 months to 3 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Security Cleared.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Security Cleared

Security Cleared
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Security Cleared over the 6 months to 3 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Top 17 Contract Job 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 3 July 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
England +3 9,647 £525 -2.33% 2,470
UK excluding London +1 6,262 £525 -2.33% 1,963
London +7 3,425 £533 +1.43% 725
Work from Home +5 3,074 £525 - 1,289
South East +1 2,332 £550 - 640
South West 0 1,305 £538 -6.52% 494
North of England +2 1,027 £500 - 349
Midlands +3 935 £469 -8.49% 201
West Midlands +2 797 £469 -9.77% 154
North West 0 552 £525 +5.00% 211
East of England +2 348 £550 +10.00% 127
Scotland +23 279 £500 +12.68% 116
Yorkshire -2 270 £500 +1.63% 80
North East +1 233 £475 -3.06% 59
East Midlands -1 126 £418 -12.11% 46
Wales +3 100 £550 +15.79% 51
Northern Ireland +6 30 £650 +30.00% 21

Security Cleared
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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
1 395 (3.53%) Confluence
2 239 (2.14%) SharePoint
3 165 (1.48%) SAS
4 135 (1.21%) Microsoft Exchange
5 107 (0.96%) Apache Spark
6 106 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
7 95 (0.85%) Apache
8 44 (0.39%) Jupyter
8 44 (0.39%) nginx
9 37 (0.33%) WebLogic
10 25 (0.22%) Tomcat
11 20 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
12 19 (0.17%) IIS
13 16 (0.14%) CMS
13 16 (0.14%) NetWeaver
14 15 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
15 14 (0.13%) Skype for Business
16 12 (0.11%) Tuxedo
17 11 (0.098%) Palantir Foundry
18 9 (0.080%) Documentum
Applications
1 175 (1.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 145 (1.30%) Microsoft Office
3 82 (0.73%) Microsoft Project
4 69 (0.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 51 (0.46%) MS Visio
6 17 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.13%) Simulink
8 12 (0.11%) SOLIDWORKS
9 11 (0.098%) AutoCAD
9 11 (0.098%) Revit
10 10 (0.089%) Chatbot
11 7 (0.063%) Notepad++
12 5 (0.045%) Adobe XD
13 4 (0.036%) Sketch
14 3 (0.027%) Windchill
15 2 (0.018%) CATIA
15 2 (0.018%) Lectora
15 2 (0.018%) Oracle Smart View
15 2 (0.018%) PlantUML
15 2 (0.018%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 129 (1.15%) SAP S/4HANA
2 65 (0.58%) Remedy ITSM
3 44 (0.39%) Oracle ERP
4 34 (0.30%) Teamcenter
5 33 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
6 32 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 29 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
8 20 (0.18%) Primavera
8 20 (0.18%) SAP PSCD
9 16 (0.14%) SAP GRC
10 15 (0.13%) Findur
10 15 (0.13%) Temenos T24
11 13 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
12 12 (0.11%) iTrent
12 12 (0.11%) Siebel CRM
13 11 (0.098%) SAP ERP
14 10 (0.089%) Maximo
14 10 (0.089%) SAP HR
15 9 (0.080%) Integrated Workplace Management System
15 9 (0.080%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,011 (17.98%) AWS
2 1,954 (17.47%) Azure
3 480 (4.29%) GitHub
4 435 (3.89%) Azure DevOps
5 432 (3.86%) Power Platform
6 412 (3.68%) GCP
7 300 (2.68%) GitHub Actions
8 282 (2.52%) Microsoft 365
9 278 (2.49%) Serverless
10 274 (2.45%) Entra ID
11 240 (2.15%) Amazon S3
12 196 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
13 163 (1.46%) Amazon EC2
14 159 (1.42%) SaaS
15 157 (1.40%) OCI
16 154 (1.38%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 152 (1.36%) PaaS
18 147 (1.31%) Amazon EKS
19 143 (1.28%) OpenShift
20 130 (1.16%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 462 (4.13%) Firewall
2 344 (3.08%) DNS
3 247 (2.21%) Network Security
4 232 (2.07%) WAN
5 200 (1.79%) LAN
6 192 (1.72%) VPN
7 173 (1.55%) DHCP
8 142 (1.27%) BGP
9 120 (1.07%) OSPF
10 113 (1.01%) VLAN
11 111 (0.99%) Wi-Fi
12 108 (0.97%) TCP/IP
13 88 (0.79%) Wireless
14 69 (0.62%) MPLS
15 65 (0.58%) SD-WAN
16 64 (0.57%) SAN
17 59 (0.53%) VXLAN
18 51 (0.46%) BIG-IP
19 50 (0.45%) IPsec
20 46 (0.41%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 335 (3.00%) Power BI
2 297 (2.66%) PostgreSQL
3 259 (2.32%) Data Warehouse
4 248 (2.22%) SQL Server
5 168 (1.50%) Oracle Database
6 141 (1.26%) Metadata
7 126 (1.13%) Data Lake
8 120 (1.07%) Relational Database
9 114 (1.02%) MongoDB
10 113 (1.01%) Amazon RDS
11 94 (0.84%) MySQL
12 88 (0.79%) Elasticsearch
13 86 (0.77%) Oracle Reports
13 86 (0.77%) Pentaho
14 78 (0.70%) Amazon Redshift
15 75 (0.67%) NoSQL
16 74 (0.66%) Amazon Athena
17 68 (0.61%) Big Data
18 64 (0.57%) Tableau
19 56 (0.50%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 626 (5.60%) JIRA
2 507 (4.53%) Git
3 473 (4.23%) GitLab
4 444 (3.97%) Jenkins
5 124 (1.11%) Selenium
6 86 (0.77%) JUnit
7 84 (0.75%) Postman
8 82 (0.73%) SonarQube
9 66 (0.59%) JMeter
10 59 (0.53%) Rational DOORS
11 55 (0.49%) Cucumber
12 47 (0.42%) Artifactory
13 46 (0.41%) Mockito
14 45 (0.40%) REST Assured
15 44 (0.39%) Cypress.io
16 43 (0.38%) Bitbucket
16 43 (0.38%) Maven
17 41 (0.37%) Visual Studio
17 41 (0.37%) Zephyr
18 37 (0.33%) Gatling
General
1 2,443 (21.85%) Public Sector
2 2,267 (20.27%) Social Skills
3 787 (7.04%) Analytical Skills
4 719 (6.43%) Finance
5 348 (3.11%) Military
6 303 (2.71%) Documentation Skills
7 292 (2.61%) Aerospace
8 178 (1.59%) Legal
9 156 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
10 135 (1.21%) Banking
11 128 (1.14%) Telecoms
12 107 (0.96%) Organisational Skills
13 97 (0.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 96 (0.86%) Manufacturing
15 95 (0.85%) Law
16 86 (0.77%) Police
17 78 (0.70%) Presentation Skills
18 54 (0.48%) Aviation
19 40 (0.36%) Marketing
20 38 (0.34%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 1,716 (15.35%) Architect
2 1,175 (10.51%) Developer
3 983 (8.79%) Senior
4 876 (7.83%) Lead
5 719 (6.43%) Analyst
6 554 (4.95%) Consultant
7 520 (4.65%) Data Engineer
8 499 (4.46%) DevOps Engineer
9 377 (3.37%) Technical Architect
10 354 (3.17%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 348 (3.11%) Software Engineer
12 333 (2.98%) Solutions Architect
13 269 (2.41%) Network Engineer
14 258 (2.31%) Security Architect
15 230 (2.06%) Business Analyst
16 218 (1.95%) Java Developer
17 217 (1.94%) Project Manager
18 216 (1.93%) Designer
19 206 (1.84%) AWS Engineer
20 204 (1.82%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 356 (3.18%) REST
2 264 (2.36%) Spring
3 219 (1.96%) Spring Boot
4 208 (1.86%) Kafka
5 199 (1.78%) .NET
6 197 (1.76%) React
7 193 (1.73%) Node.js
8 176 (1.57%) RESTful
9 147 (1.31%) SOAP
10 134 (1.20%) JSON
11 126 (1.13%) AngularJS
12 114 (1.02%) PySpark
13 113 (1.01%) LDAP
14 112 (1.00%) OAuth
15 111 (0.99%) Web Services
16 102 (0.91%) Middleware
17 95 (0.85%) HTML
17 95 (0.85%) Playwright
18 88 (0.79%) XML
19 87 (0.78%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 435 (3.89%) Cloud Native
2 355 (3.17%) Product Ownership
3 349 (3.12%) Onboarding
4 319 (2.85%) Data Centre
5 221 (1.98%) Management Information System
6 172 (1.54%) Legacy Systems
7 153 (1.37%) PKI
8 148 (1.32%) Distributed Systems
9 116 (1.04%) Replication
10 113 (1.01%) CMDB
11 111 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
12 107 (0.96%) Enterprise Software
13 100 (0.89%) Security Posture
14 99 (0.89%) Data Structures
15 94 (0.84%) Hybrid Cloud
16 90 (0.80%) Clustering
17 88 (0.79%) Public Cloud
18 85 (0.76%) Virtual Team
19 82 (0.73%) Security Operations Centre
20 74 (0.66%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 886 (7.92%) Windows
2 757 (6.77%) Linux
3 279 (2.50%) Windows Server
4 206 (1.84%) Unix
5 147 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 95 (0.85%) Android
7 88 (0.79%) Windows 10
8 65 (0.58%) Apple iOS
9 55 (0.49%) Solaris
10 43 (0.38%) Mac OS
11 38 (0.34%) Ubuntu
12 32 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 31 (0.28%) AIX
14 26 (0.23%) CentOS
15 25 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
16 19 (0.17%) VMS
17 16 (0.14%) Windows 7
18 15 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
19 14 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
20 11 (0.098%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,247 (20.09%) Agile
2 1,737 (15.53%) DevOps
3 1,603 (14.34%) CI/CD
4 1,174 (10.50%) Problem-Solving
5 1,145 (10.24%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,124 (10.05%) Continuous Improvement
7 942 (8.42%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 859 (7.68%) Migration
9 828 (7.40%) Infrastructure as Code
10 701 (6.27%) Cybersecurity
11 695 (6.22%) Test Automation
12 694 (6.21%) ITIL
13 671 (6.00%) Containerisation
14 659 (5.89%) Software Engineering
15 647 (5.79%) Analytics
16 630 (5.63%) Roadmaps
17 614 (5.49%) Decision-Making
18 576 (5.15%) Data Modelling
19 547 (4.89%) AI
20 533 (4.77%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,244 (11.13%) Python
2 1,057 (9.45%) SQL
3 771 (6.90%) Java
4 501 (4.48%) PowerShell
5 340 (3.04%) JavaScript
6 251 (2.24%) Bash
7 233 (2.08%) C#
8 190 (1.70%) TypeScript
9 157 (1.40%) PL/SQL
10 98 (0.88%) C++
11 94 (0.84%) Shell Script
12 78 (0.70%) Bicep
13 66 (0.59%) C
14 61 (0.55%) Apex Code
15 58 (0.52%) Ruby
16 56 (0.50%) Go
17 51 (0.46%) Kotlin
18 46 (0.41%) Ada
18 46 (0.41%) Scala
19 44 (0.39%) R
Qualifications
1 8,546 (76.43%) SC Cleared
2 2,061 (18.43%) DV Cleared
3 431 (3.85%) Degree
4 354 (3.17%) BPSS Clearance
5 216 (1.93%) Cisco Certification
6 177 (1.58%) CISSP
7 141 (1.26%) Azure Certification
8 121 (1.08%) Microsoft Certification
9 120 (1.07%) AWS Certification
10 110 (0.98%) CISM
11 108 (0.97%) CCNP
12 95 (0.85%) CCNA
13 88 (0.79%) PMP
14 87 (0.78%) PMI Certification
15 77 (0.69%) ISTQB
16 69 (0.62%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 67 (0.60%) Computer Science Degree
18 56 (0.50%) ITIL Certification
19 41 (0.37%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 39 (0.35%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 432 (3.86%) QA
2 334 (2.99%) Data Quality
3 320 (2.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 312 (2.79%) NIST
5 242 (2.16%) NCSC
6 229 (2.05%) Accessibility
7 192 (1.72%) GDPR
8 174 (1.56%) PMO
9 121 (1.08%) SLA
10 101 (0.90%) GRC
11 70 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 57 (0.51%) WCAG
13 45 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
14 44 (0.39%) NIST 800
15 33 (0.30%) Def Stans
16 32 (0.29%) RMADS
17 28 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 25 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
19 23 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
19 23 (0.21%) COBIT
System Software
1 742 (6.64%) Docker
2 466 (4.17%) Active Directory
3 340 (3.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 123 (1.10%) VMware ESXi
5 118 (1.06%) VMware NSX
6 94 (0.84%) Hyper-V
7 87 (0.78%) vSphere
8 82 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
9 43 (0.38%) Oracle RAC
10 34 (0.30%) Firmware
11 30 (0.27%) Virtual Desktop
12 25 (0.22%) NFS
13 23 (0.21%) BitLocker
14 22 (0.20%) vCloud
15 21 (0.19%) Squid
16 19 (0.17%) Postfix
17 12 (0.11%) Slurm Workload Manager
18 9 (0.080%) Microsoft App-V
19 7 (0.063%) KVM
20 6 (0.054%) Corosync
Systems Management
1 925 (8.27%) Terraform
2 914 (8.17%) Kubernetes
3 388 (3.47%) Ansible
4 276 (2.47%) Grafana
5 223 (1.99%) Prometheus
6 116 (1.04%) vCenter Server
7 89 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
8 88 (0.79%) SCCM
9 68 (0.61%) Microsoft Intune
10 64 (0.57%) Argo
11 51 (0.46%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 49 (0.44%) FortiGate
12 49 (0.44%) SCOM
13 47 (0.42%) Oracle RMAN
14 45 (0.40%) Puppet
15 32 (0.29%) Podman
16 28 (0.25%) Data Guard
16 28 (0.25%) Nagios
16 28 (0.25%) Progress Chef
17 26 (0.23%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,179 (10.54%) Microsoft
2 810 (7.24%) Oracle
3 529 (4.73%) VMware
4 497 (4.44%) ServiceNow
5 360 (3.22%) SAP
6 328 (2.93%) Cisco
7 220 (1.97%) Splunk
8 196 (1.75%) Databricks
9 186 (1.66%) Salesforce
10 184 (1.65%) Google
11 163 (1.46%) Red Hat
12 144 (1.29%) Talend
13 127 (1.14%) Informatica
14 124 (1.11%) IBM
15 109 (0.97%) Palo Alto
16 101 (0.90%) Juniper
17 95 (0.85%) Fortinet
18 93 (0.83%) F5
18 93 (0.83%) SolarWinds
19 87 (0.78%) Citrix