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

6 months to
27 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,539 5,912 7,184
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.49% 18.05% 18.50%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.89% 57.49% 62.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,079 3,763 4,726
10th Percentile £385 £350 £350
25th Percentile £456 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £535 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.93% -2.73% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £726
UK excluding London median daily rate £535 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -0.47% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 806 571 469
10th Percentile £19.42 £18.51 £15.09
25th Percentile £28.13 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £63.50 £25.15 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +152.49% -56.26% -4.17%
75th Percentile £78.75 £45.00 £71.90
90th Percentile £88.00 £72.50 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 £25.15 £58.49
% change year-on-year +154.47% -57.00% +1.72%

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 16,749 10,283 11,572
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.19% 31.39% 29.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,197 6,349 7,284
10th Percentile £350 £291 £313
25th Percentile £437 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £620 £638
90th Percentile £716 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £519 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.80% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,261 829 769
10th Percentile £17.42 £17.98 £14.42
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.23 £21.37
Median hourly rate £48.00 £25.15 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +90.85% -44.11% -18.18%
75th Percentile £72.54 £53.50 £67.02
90th Percentile £87.96 £72.75 £76.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £48.56
% change year-on-year +88.87% -48.21% -6.42%

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 27 August 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 27 August 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 27 August 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 9,980 £545 +1.40% 2,948
UK excluding London +1 6,488 £535 -0.47% 2,375
London +7 3,554 £550 +3.77% 934
Work from Home +2 3,057 £525 -2.33% 1,637
South East +1 2,358 £563 +4.65% 553
South West 0 1,363 £549 -1.08% 615
North of England +3 1,231 £512 +2.39% 494
Midlands 0 892 £470 -8.74% 203
West Midlands +1 764 £470 -8.74% 136
North West +4 710 £530 - 299
East of England 0 332 £550 - 273
Yorkshire +2 306 £500 +2.04% 106
Scotland +13 278 £481 -0.62% 181
North East 0 239 £475 -5.00% 109
East Midlands -2 119 £438 -10.21% 67
Wales +5 107 £550 +15.79% 35
Northern Ireland +3 34 £650 +25.00% 69

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
1 403 (3.49%) Confluence
2 277 (2.40%) SharePoint
3 180 (1.56%) SAS
4 127 (1.10%) Microsoft Exchange
5 100 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
5 100 (0.87%) Apache Spark
6 96 (0.83%) Apache
7 37 (0.32%) Jupyter
8 34 (0.29%) nginx
9 28 (0.24%) WebLogic
10 24 (0.21%) IIS
11 23 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
11 23 (0.20%) Skype for Business
12 22 (0.19%) Tomcat
13 17 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
14 16 (0.14%) CMS
14 16 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
15 13 (0.11%) JBoss
15 13 (0.11%) NetWeaver
16 9 (0.078%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 207 (1.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 161 (1.40%) Microsoft Office
3 109 (0.94%) Microsoft Project
4 93 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 42 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.15%) AutoCAD
7 17 (0.15%) Revit
8 16 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
9 15 (0.13%) Simulink
10 8 (0.069%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.069%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.069%) Windchill
11 7 (0.061%) Notepad++
11 7 (0.061%) Sketch
12 5 (0.043%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 3 (0.026%) Trello
14 2 (0.017%) Houdini
14 2 (0.017%) NUKE
14 2 (0.017%) OrCAD
Business Applications
1 143 (1.24%) SAP S/4HANA
2 78 (0.68%) Remedy ITSM
3 51 (0.44%) Oracle ERP
4 38 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
5 34 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 33 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
7 29 (0.25%) Teamcenter
8 24 (0.21%) SAP GRC
9 23 (0.20%) Oracle Payroll
10 22 (0.19%) SAP PSCD
11 20 (0.17%) Primavera
12 16 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
13 15 (0.13%) SAP FI
13 15 (0.13%) SAP HR
14 13 (0.11%) Findur
15 12 (0.10%) iTrent
15 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
15 12 (0.10%) Temenos T24
16 11 (0.095%) NetSuite
17 10 (0.087%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,172 (18.82%) Azure
2 2,029 (17.58%) AWS
3 547 (4.74%) Azure DevOps
4 531 (4.60%) GitHub
5 489 (4.24%) Power Platform
6 453 (3.93%) GCP
7 338 (2.93%) GitHub Actions
8 323 (2.80%) Microsoft 365
9 310 (2.69%) Entra ID
10 279 (2.42%) Serverless
11 226 (1.96%) Amazon S3
12 195 (1.69%) AWS Lambda
13 169 (1.46%) OCI
14 168 (1.46%) SaaS
15 162 (1.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 160 (1.39%) Amazon EKS
17 138 (1.20%) Amazon EC2
18 134 (1.16%) OpenShift
18 134 (1.16%) PaaS
19 125 (1.08%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 467 (4.05%) Firewall
2 370 (3.21%) DNS
3 224 (1.94%) WAN
4 221 (1.92%) Network Security
5 207 (1.79%) VPN
6 184 (1.59%) DHCP
7 182 (1.58%) LAN
8 138 (1.20%) BGP
9 134 (1.16%) TCP/IP
10 120 (1.04%) Wi-Fi
11 101 (0.88%) VLAN
12 99 (0.86%) OSPF
13 81 (0.70%) Wireless
14 68 (0.59%) MPLS
15 66 (0.57%) VSAN
16 63 (0.55%) SSL
17 62 (0.54%) IPsec
18 61 (0.53%) SD-WAN
19 60 (0.52%) SAN
20 50 (0.43%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 355 (3.08%) Power BI
2 294 (2.55%) PostgreSQL
3 290 (2.51%) SQL Server
4 269 (2.33%) Data Warehouse
5 172 (1.49%) Oracle Database
6 170 (1.47%) Metadata
7 144 (1.25%) Data Lake
8 137 (1.19%) Relational Database
9 124 (1.07%) MongoDB
10 109 (0.94%) Amazon RDS
11 100 (0.87%) MySQL
12 97 (0.84%) NoSQL
13 89 (0.77%) Oracle Reports
14 75 (0.65%) Pentaho
15 69 (0.60%) Amazon Athena
16 65 (0.56%) Amazon Redshift
16 65 (0.56%) Elasticsearch
17 59 (0.51%) Big Data
18 56 (0.49%) Tableau
19 48 (0.42%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 645 (5.59%) JIRA
2 562 (4.87%) Git
3 494 (4.28%) GitLab
4 464 (4.02%) Jenkins
5 135 (1.17%) Selenium
6 77 (0.67%) SonarQube
7 76 (0.66%) Postman
8 71 (0.62%) JMeter
9 69 (0.60%) JUnit
10 67 (0.58%) Maven
11 55 (0.48%) Cucumber
12 50 (0.43%) Cypress.io
13 48 (0.42%) Rational DOORS
14 45 (0.39%) Gradle
15 43 (0.37%) Visual Studio
16 42 (0.36%) Mockito
17 41 (0.36%) Gatling
18 39 (0.34%) Bitbucket
19 38 (0.33%) Artifactory
19 38 (0.33%) REST Assured
General
1 2,473 (21.43%) Social Skills
2 2,369 (20.53%) Public Sector
3 894 (7.75%) Analytical Skills
4 774 (6.71%) Finance
5 365 (3.16%) Military
6 309 (2.68%) Aerospace
7 301 (2.61%) Documentation Skills
8 197 (1.71%) Influencing Skills
9 168 (1.46%) Organisational Skills
9 168 (1.46%) Telecoms
10 167 (1.45%) Legal
11 143 (1.24%) Banking
12 141 (1.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 116 (1.01%) Manufacturing
14 112 (0.97%) Law
14 112 (0.97%) Police
15 61 (0.53%) Presentation Skills
16 46 (0.40%) Aviation
17 45 (0.39%) Retail
18 43 (0.37%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,852 (16.05%) Architect
2 1,241 (10.75%) Developer
3 1,100 (9.53%) Senior
4 1,045 (9.06%) Lead
5 697 (6.04%) Consultant
6 635 (5.50%) Analyst
7 497 (4.31%) Data Engineer
8 494 (4.28%) DevOps Engineer
9 428 (3.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 374 (3.24%) Technical Architect
11 354 (3.07%) Solutions Architect
12 294 (2.55%) Software Engineer
13 269 (2.33%) Data Architect
14 266 (2.31%) Security Architect
15 256 (2.22%) Network Engineer
16 217 (1.88%) Administrator
17 213 (1.85%) Java Developer
18 212 (1.84%) Azure Engineer
19 206 (1.79%) Project Manager
20 203 (1.76%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 986 (8.54%) Terraform
2 442 (3.83%) REST
3 251 (2.18%) Spring
4 242 (2.10%) Kafka
5 232 (2.01%) .NET
6 225 (1.95%) Spring Boot
7 215 (1.86%) RESTful
8 206 (1.79%) React
9 177 (1.53%) SOAP
10 174 (1.51%) Node.js
11 159 (1.38%) JSON
12 135 (1.17%) OAuth
13 130 (1.13%) Web Services
14 129 (1.12%) HTML
15 120 (1.04%) AngularJS
15 120 (1.04%) XML
16 112 (0.97%) Middleware
17 98 (0.85%) CSS
18 97 (0.84%) Playwright
19 94 (0.81%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 503 (4.36%) Cloud Native
2 415 (3.60%) Onboarding
3 374 (3.24%) Product Ownership
4 299 (2.59%) Data Centre
5 238 (2.06%) Management Information System
6 194 (1.68%) Legacy Systems
7 171 (1.48%) PKI
8 155 (1.34%) CMDB
8 155 (1.34%) Enterprise Software
9 153 (1.33%) Distributed Systems
10 124 (1.07%) Replication
11 121 (1.05%) Hybrid Cloud
12 120 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
13 113 (0.98%) Data Structures
14 93 (0.81%) Cyber Threat
14 93 (0.81%) Public Cloud
15 92 (0.80%) Security Operations Centre
16 87 (0.75%) Clustering
17 83 (0.72%) Operational Technology
18 81 (0.70%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 953 (8.26%) Windows
2 794 (6.88%) Linux
3 345 (2.99%) Windows Server
4 214 (1.85%) Unix
5 151 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 135 (1.17%) Windows 10
7 79 (0.68%) Android
8 61 (0.53%) Solaris
9 50 (0.43%) Mac OS
10 48 (0.42%) Apple iOS
11 42 (0.36%) Ubuntu
12 39 (0.34%) CentOS
12 39 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
13 36 (0.31%) AIX
14 26 (0.23%) Windows 7
15 23 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
16 22 (0.19%) VMS
17 21 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
18 15 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
19 13 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,405 (20.84%) Agile
2 1,806 (15.65%) DevOps
3 1,725 (14.95%) CI/CD
4 1,446 (12.53%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,313 (11.38%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,192 (10.33%) Problem-Solving
7 1,144 (9.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 967 (8.38%) Infrastructure as Code
9 915 (7.93%) Migration
10 810 (7.02%) Cybersecurity
11 770 (6.67%) ITIL
12 746 (6.47%) Test Automation
13 726 (6.29%) Analytics
14 710 (6.15%) Containerisation
15 680 (5.89%) Technical Leadership
16 672 (5.82%) Software Engineering
17 666 (5.77%) Roadmaps
18 662 (5.74%) Decision-Making
19 648 (5.62%) AI
20 622 (5.39%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,303 (11.29%) Python
2 1,096 (9.50%) SQL
3 794 (6.88%) Java
4 575 (4.98%) PowerShell
5 397 (3.44%) JavaScript
6 324 (2.81%) Bash
7 257 (2.23%) C#
8 202 (1.75%) TypeScript
9 158 (1.37%) PL/SQL
10 125 (1.08%) Bicep
11 79 (0.68%) Shell Script
12 75 (0.65%) C++
13 64 (0.55%) C
14 55 (0.48%) Apex Code
15 51 (0.44%) Scala
16 49 (0.42%) Kotlin
16 49 (0.42%) Ruby
17 47 (0.41%) Groovy
18 46 (0.40%) Go
19 36 (0.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 8,777 (76.06%) SC Cleared
2 2,163 (18.75%) DV Cleared
3 463 (4.01%) BPSS Clearance
4 456 (3.95%) Degree
5 207 (1.79%) CISSP
6 178 (1.54%) Cisco Certification
7 177 (1.53%) Azure Certification
8 159 (1.38%) Microsoft Certification
9 140 (1.21%) CISM
10 136 (1.18%) AWS Certification
11 106 (0.92%) PMI Certification
12 103 (0.89%) PMP
13 91 (0.79%) ISTQB
14 78 (0.68%) CCNP
15 73 (0.63%) CCNA
16 69 (0.60%) Computer Science Degree
17 62 (0.54%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 48 (0.42%) ITIL Certification
19 45 (0.39%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 42 (0.36%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 490 (4.25%) QA
2 384 (3.33%) Data Quality
3 312 (2.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 304 (2.63%) NIST
5 273 (2.37%) NCSC
6 254 (2.20%) Accessibility
7 228 (1.98%) PMO
8 184 (1.59%) GDPR
9 164 (1.42%) SLA
10 155 (1.34%) GRC
11 81 (0.70%) WCAG
12 66 (0.57%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
14 40 (0.35%) NIST 800
15 33 (0.29%) Def Stans
16 31 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 28 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
17 28 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 23 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
19 22 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 795 (6.89%) Docker
2 568 (4.92%) Active Directory
3 414 (3.59%) VMware Infrastructure
4 146 (1.27%) VMware NSX
5 136 (1.18%) VMware ESXi
6 126 (1.09%) Hyper-V
7 122 (1.06%) vSphere
8 80 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
9 43 (0.37%) Oracle RAC
10 41 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
11 39 (0.34%) Firmware
12 26 (0.23%) BitLocker
12 26 (0.23%) vCloud
13 15 (0.13%) NFS
14 14 (0.12%) Squid
15 13 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
16 11 (0.095%) Postfix
17 9 (0.078%) KVM
18 8 (0.069%) Ceph
18 8 (0.069%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 971 (8.41%) Kubernetes
2 436 (3.78%) Ansible
3 259 (2.24%) Grafana
4 207 (1.79%) Prometheus
5 133 (1.15%) vCenter Server
6 131 (1.14%) SCCM
7 84 (0.73%) Microsoft Intune
8 79 (0.68%) SCOM
9 69 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
10 67 (0.58%) Argo
11 52 (0.45%) Oracle RMAN
12 48 (0.42%) Puppet
13 42 (0.36%) Data Guard
14 34 (0.29%) Istio
15 32 (0.28%) Kibana
16 31 (0.27%) Progress Chef
17 30 (0.26%) Nagios
18 29 (0.25%) Control-M
19 27 (0.23%) WSUS
20 25 (0.22%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,483 (12.85%) Microsoft
2 912 (7.90%) Oracle
3 588 (5.10%) VMware
4 537 (4.65%) ServiceNow
5 447 (3.87%) SAP
6 302 (2.62%) Cisco
7 245 (2.12%) Google
8 214 (1.85%) Splunk
9 212 (1.84%) Databricks
10 184 (1.59%) Salesforce
11 146 (1.27%) Red Hat
12 128 (1.11%) IBM
13 119 (1.03%) Palo Alto
14 117 (1.01%) Informatica
15 109 (0.94%) Talend
16 96 (0.83%) Dynatrace
17 88 (0.76%) Remedy
18 80 (0.69%) SolarWinds
19 79 (0.68%) CyberArk
20 78 (0.68%) F5