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 13 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,888 5,246 7,992
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.76% 17.78% 18.30%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.38% 57.51% 61.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,492 3,409 5,257
10th Percentile £383 £340 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £623 £650
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 860 353 567
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £14.00
25th Percentile £25.15 £20.00 £21.46
Median hourly rate £58.50 £27.38 £55.80
Median % change year-on-year +113.70% -50.94% -7.00%
75th Percentile £74.55 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.50 £84.42
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £28.13 £57.33
% change year-on-year +104.41% -50.93% -0.30%

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 15,694 9,122 13,068
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.37% 30.91% 29.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,424 5,666 8,105
10th Percentile £350 £276 £310
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £624 £615 £638
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +1.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,162 576 1,113
10th Percentile £17.09 £17.71 £13.99
25th Percentile £22.63 £21.00 £18.35
Median hourly rate £50.00 £30.27 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.18% -24.33% -27.27%
75th Percentile £71.50 £64.50 £63.41
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.50 £76.05
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £29.27 £41.27
% change year-on-year +62.28% -29.07% -21.40%

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 13 June 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 13 June 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 13 June 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 9,409 £525 -2.23% 1,936
UK excluding London +1 6,061 £525 -0.94% 1,587
London +7 3,371 £525 - 522
Work from Home +5 2,972 £525 - 975
South East +1 2,256 £550 - 511
South West 0 1,275 £538 -4.44% 433
North of England +2 981 £500 - 314
Midlands +2 892 £469 -10.67% 143
West Midlands +2 773 £469 -10.67% 113
North West 0 543 £520 +3.91% 194
East of England +2 369 £550 +10.00% 120
Scotland +25 268 £500 +11.11% 62
Yorkshire -1 246 £494 -1.25% 76
North East +1 225 £480 - 48
East Midlands -5 112 £418 -17.53% 30
Wales +5 85 £490 +3.16% 29
Northern Ireland +6 27 £619 +30.26% 23

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
1 394 (3.62%) Confluence
2 235 (2.16%) SharePoint
3 158 (1.45%) SAS
4 134 (1.23%) Microsoft Exchange
5 104 (0.96%) Apache Spark
6 98 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
7 89 (0.82%) Apache
8 43 (0.39%) Jupyter
9 42 (0.39%) nginx
10 34 (0.31%) WebLogic
11 24 (0.22%) Tomcat
12 18 (0.17%) IIS
12 18 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
13 16 (0.15%) NetWeaver
14 15 (0.14%) CMS
14 15 (0.14%) Oracle Application Server
14 15 (0.14%) Skype for Business
15 13 (0.12%) Tuxedo
16 11 (0.10%) ArcGIS
17 8 (0.073%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 173 (1.59%) Microsoft Excel
2 147 (1.35%) Microsoft Office
3 78 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
4 77 (0.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 48 (0.44%) MS Visio
6 16 (0.15%) Simulink
6 16 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
7 10 (0.092%) SOLIDWORKS
8 9 (0.083%) AutoCAD
8 9 (0.083%) Revit
9 8 (0.073%) Chatbot
10 7 (0.064%) Notepad++
11 4 (0.037%) Sketch
11 4 (0.037%) Windchill
12 3 (0.028%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.018%) CATIA
13 2 (0.018%) Lectora
13 2 (0.018%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.018%) PlantUML
13 2 (0.018%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 122 (1.12%) SAP S/4HANA
2 60 (0.55%) Remedy ITSM
3 41 (0.38%) Oracle ERP
4 33 (0.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 31 (0.28%) Teamcenter
6 28 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
7 26 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
8 16 (0.15%) Primavera
8 16 (0.15%) SAP GRC
9 15 (0.14%) Findur
10 14 (0.13%) Maximo
10 14 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
11 13 (0.12%) SAP PSCD
12 12 (0.11%) iTrent
12 12 (0.11%) Temenos T24
13 10 (0.092%) Oracle Assets
13 10 (0.092%) SAP HR
14 9 (0.083%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 9 (0.083%) Salesforce CRM
14 9 (0.083%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,955 (17.96%) AWS
2 1,914 (17.58%) Azure
3 463 (4.25%) GitHub
4 431 (3.96%) GCP
5 420 (3.86%) Azure DevOps
6 412 (3.78%) Power Platform
7 279 (2.56%) Serverless
8 278 (2.55%) GitHub Actions
9 266 (2.44%) Microsoft 365
10 259 (2.38%) Entra ID
11 227 (2.08%) Amazon S3
12 196 (1.80%) AWS Lambda
13 161 (1.48%) Amazon EC2
14 158 (1.45%) PaaS
15 154 (1.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 141 (1.30%) SaaS
17 139 (1.28%) Amazon EKS
17 139 (1.28%) OCI
18 137 (1.26%) OpenShift
19 122 (1.12%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 460 (4.22%) Firewall
2 310 (2.85%) DNS
3 245 (2.25%) Network Security
4 226 (2.08%) WAN
5 198 (1.82%) LAN
6 177 (1.63%) VPN
7 159 (1.46%) DHCP
8 141 (1.30%) BGP
9 119 (1.09%) OSPF
10 112 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
11 111 (1.02%) TCP/IP
11 111 (1.02%) VLAN
12 85 (0.78%) Wireless
13 67 (0.62%) MPLS
14 59 (0.54%) SAN
14 59 (0.54%) SD-WAN
14 59 (0.54%) VXLAN
15 51 (0.47%) Structured Cabling
16 50 (0.46%) IPsec
17 48 (0.44%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 317 (2.91%) Power BI
2 285 (2.62%) PostgreSQL
3 253 (2.32%) Data Warehouse
4 222 (2.04%) SQL Server
5 154 (1.41%) Oracle Database
6 138 (1.27%) Metadata
7 125 (1.15%) Data Lake
8 116 (1.07%) Amazon RDS
9 111 (1.02%) Relational Database
10 105 (0.96%) MongoDB
11 85 (0.78%) Pentaho
12 83 (0.76%) MySQL
12 83 (0.76%) Oracle Reports
13 81 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
14 77 (0.71%) NoSQL
15 72 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
16 70 (0.64%) Amazon Athena
17 67 (0.62%) Tableau
18 66 (0.61%) Big Data
19 56 (0.51%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 620 (5.69%) JIRA
2 484 (4.45%) Git
3 451 (4.14%) GitLab
4 422 (3.88%) Jenkins
5 121 (1.11%) Selenium
6 86 (0.79%) JUnit
7 85 (0.78%) Postman
8 80 (0.73%) SonarQube
9 64 (0.59%) JMeter
10 58 (0.53%) Rational DOORS
11 54 (0.50%) Artifactory
11 54 (0.50%) Cucumber
12 45 (0.41%) Bitbucket
13 44 (0.40%) Cypress.io
14 42 (0.39%) Mockito
14 42 (0.39%) Visual Studio
15 41 (0.38%) Zephyr
16 39 (0.36%) Maven
16 39 (0.36%) REST Assured
17 37 (0.34%) Gatling
General
1 2,358 (21.66%) Public Sector
2 2,201 (20.21%) Social Skills
3 739 (6.79%) Analytical Skills
4 682 (6.26%) Finance
5 334 (3.07%) Military
6 294 (2.70%) Documentation Skills
7 285 (2.62%) Aerospace
8 177 (1.63%) Legal
9 129 (1.18%) Banking
10 127 (1.17%) Influencing Skills
11 108 (0.99%) Telecoms
12 101 (0.93%) Law
13 99 (0.91%) Organisational Skills
14 97 (0.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 97 (0.89%) Manufacturing
15 79 (0.73%) Presentation Skills
16 69 (0.63%) Police
17 49 (0.45%) Aviation
18 46 (0.42%) Marketing
19 41 (0.38%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,661 (15.26%) Architect
2 1,048 (9.63%) Developer
3 956 (8.78%) Senior
4 813 (7.47%) Lead
5 748 (6.87%) Analyst
6 538 (4.94%) Consultant
7 527 (4.84%) Data Engineer
8 512 (4.70%) DevOps Engineer
9 360 (3.31%) Technical Architect
10 323 (2.97%) Solutions Architect
11 322 (2.96%) Software Engineer
12 319 (2.93%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 281 (2.58%) Network Engineer
14 266 (2.44%) Business Analyst
15 242 (2.22%) Security Architect
16 225 (2.07%) Project Manager
17 218 (2.00%) Designer
18 206 (1.89%) Azure Engineer
19 204 (1.87%) Administrator
20 201 (1.85%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 332 (3.05%) REST
2 244 (2.24%) Spring
3 205 (1.88%) Spring Boot
4 201 (1.85%) Kafka
5 200 (1.84%) React
6 187 (1.72%) .NET
7 177 (1.63%) Node.js
8 155 (1.42%) RESTful
9 147 (1.35%) SOAP
10 142 (1.30%) LDAP
11 124 (1.14%) AngularJS
12 123 (1.13%) JSON
13 115 (1.06%) PySpark
14 113 (1.04%) Web Services
15 103 (0.95%) OAuth
16 100 (0.92%) Middleware
17 93 (0.85%) HTML
18 91 (0.84%) Playwright
19 83 (0.76%) OpenID
20 80 (0.73%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 407 (3.74%) Cloud Native
2 343 (3.15%) Product Ownership
3 318 (2.92%) Onboarding
4 314 (2.88%) Data Centre
5 219 (2.01%) Management Information System
6 165 (1.52%) Legacy Systems
7 145 (1.33%) PKI
8 139 (1.28%) Distributed Systems
9 131 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
10 127 (1.17%) Security Posture
11 119 (1.09%) Replication
12 105 (0.96%) Self-Motivation
13 92 (0.84%) Data Structures
14 88 (0.81%) Clustering
14 88 (0.81%) CMDB
14 88 (0.81%) Public Cloud
14 88 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
15 87 (0.80%) Hybrid Cloud
16 77 (0.71%) Virtual Team
17 74 (0.68%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 838 (7.70%) Windows
2 729 (6.70%) Linux
3 265 (2.43%) Windows Server
4 201 (1.85%) Unix
5 128 (1.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 91 (0.84%) Android
7 83 (0.76%) Windows 10
8 65 (0.60%) Apple iOS
9 54 (0.50%) Solaris
10 37 (0.34%) Ubuntu
11 35 (0.32%) Mac OS
12 32 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 30 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
14 29 (0.27%) AIX
15 22 (0.20%) CentOS
16 19 (0.17%) VMS
17 16 (0.15%) Windows 7
18 15 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
19 11 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
19 11 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,113 (19.41%) Agile
2 1,679 (15.42%) DevOps
3 1,533 (14.08%) CI/CD
4 1,106 (10.16%) Problem-Solving
5 1,080 (9.92%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,029 (9.45%) Continuous Improvement
7 890 (8.17%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 873 (8.02%) Migration
9 804 (7.38%) Infrastructure as Code
10 678 (6.23%) Cybersecurity
11 672 (6.17%) Test Automation
12 643 (5.91%) Analytics
13 623 (5.72%) Containerisation
14 619 (5.69%) ITIL
15 613 (5.63%) Software Engineering
16 599 (5.50%) Roadmaps
17 569 (5.23%) Decision-Making
18 561 (5.15%) Data Modelling
19 500 (4.59%) AI
20 494 (4.54%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,218 (11.19%) Python
2 1,023 (9.40%) SQL
3 696 (6.39%) Java
4 532 (4.89%) PowerShell
5 317 (2.91%) JavaScript
6 229 (2.10%) C#
7 217 (1.99%) Bash
8 188 (1.73%) TypeScript
9 137 (1.26%) PL/SQL
10 97 (0.89%) Shell Script
11 94 (0.86%) C++
12 75 (0.69%) Bicep
13 62 (0.57%) C
14 61 (0.56%) Ruby
15 59 (0.54%) Apex Code
16 57 (0.52%) Go
17 55 (0.51%) Scala
18 46 (0.42%) Kotlin
19 44 (0.40%) Ada
20 42 (0.39%) R
Qualifications
1 8,351 (76.70%) SC Cleared
2 1,939 (17.81%) DV Cleared
3 431 (3.96%) Degree
4 323 (2.97%) BPSS Clearance
5 212 (1.95%) Cisco Certification
6 175 (1.61%) CISSP
7 138 (1.27%) Azure Certification
8 120 (1.10%) AWS Certification
9 115 (1.06%) CCNP
9 115 (1.06%) CISM
10 108 (0.99%) Microsoft Certification
11 92 (0.84%) CCNA
12 85 (0.78%) PMP
13 79 (0.73%) PMI Certification
14 74 (0.68%) ISTQB
15 71 (0.65%) Computer Science Degree
16 69 (0.63%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 59 (0.54%) ITIL Certification
18 46 (0.42%) CompTIA Security+
19 41 (0.38%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 411 (3.77%) QA
2 322 (2.96%) Data Quality
3 316 (2.90%) NIST
4 311 (2.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 223 (2.05%) NCSC
6 217 (1.99%) Accessibility
7 179 (1.64%) GDPR
8 172 (1.58%) PMO
9 121 (1.11%) SLA
10 91 (0.84%) GRC
11 68 (0.62%) JSP 440
12 51 (0.47%) Cyber Essentials
12 51 (0.47%) WCAG
13 44 (0.40%) NIST 800
14 36 (0.33%) RMADS
15 33 (0.30%) Def Stans
16 28 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 24 (0.22%) COBIT
17 24 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
18 23 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 684 (6.28%) Docker
2 466 (4.28%) Active Directory
3 315 (2.89%) VMware Infrastructure
4 117 (1.07%) VMware ESXi
5 105 (0.96%) VMware NSX
6 94 (0.86%) Hyper-V
7 84 (0.77%) vSphere
8 77 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
9 39 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
10 32 (0.29%) Firmware
11 24 (0.22%) NFS
12 22 (0.20%) BitLocker
13 21 (0.19%) vCloud
14 19 (0.17%) Postfix
14 19 (0.17%) Squid
14 19 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
15 15 (0.14%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 9 (0.083%) Microsoft App-V
17 7 (0.064%) KVM
18 6 (0.055%) Corosync
Systems Management
1 891 (8.18%) Terraform
2 852 (7.83%) Kubernetes
3 381 (3.50%) Ansible
4 278 (2.55%) Grafana
5 231 (2.12%) Prometheus
6 115 (1.06%) vCenter Server
7 102 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
8 78 (0.72%) SCCM
9 60 (0.55%) Microsoft Intune
10 59 (0.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 57 (0.52%) Argo
12 49 (0.45%) FortiGate
13 45 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
14 40 (0.37%) Puppet
15 39 (0.36%) SCOM
16 38 (0.35%) Podman
17 27 (0.25%) Progress Chef
17 27 (0.25%) vRealize
18 26 (0.24%) Nagios
19 25 (0.23%) Istio
Vendors
1 1,094 (10.05%) Microsoft
2 751 (6.90%) Oracle
3 516 (4.74%) VMware
4 438 (4.02%) ServiceNow
5 343 (3.15%) SAP
6 342 (3.14%) Cisco
7 241 (2.21%) Splunk
8 203 (1.86%) Databricks
9 171 (1.57%) Salesforce
10 170 (1.56%) Google
11 169 (1.55%) Red Hat
12 144 (1.32%) Talend
13 126 (1.16%) IBM
14 123 (1.13%) Palo Alto
15 119 (1.09%) Informatica
16 102 (0.94%) Juniper
17 93 (0.85%) Fortinet
18 92 (0.84%) Dynatrace
19 91 (0.84%) CyberArk
20 89 (0.82%) F5