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

6 months to
6 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,801 5,189 7,843
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.87% 17.87% 18.21%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.40% 57.57% 60.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,415 3,404 5,163
10th Percentile £381 £340 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £713 £695 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 860 322 556
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.16 £24.19 £21.46
Median hourly rate £57.35 £32.00 £55.80
Median % change year-on-year +79.22% -42.65% -7.00%
75th Percentile £74.55 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.10 £84.73
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.35 £32.50 £57.44
% change year-on-year +76.46% -43.42% -0.10%

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 15,564 9,013 12,867
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.51% 31.04% 29.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,327 5,626 7,986
10th Percentile £350 £275 £310
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £530
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -1.89% -3.64%
75th Percentile £620 £619 £644
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £501 £500 £534
% change year-on-year +0.10% -6.30% +1.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,137 543 1,105
10th Percentile £17.00 £17.65 £13.87
25th Percentile £21.33 £22.25 £18.32
Median hourly rate £50.00 £32.05 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +56.01% -19.88% -27.27%
75th Percentile £72.54 £65.00 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.00 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £32.00 £41.00
% change year-on-year +48.56% -21.95% -21.90%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 9,349 £525 -2.23% 2,135
UK excluding London +1 5,993 £525 -0.94% 1,670
London +7 3,361 £525 - 558
Work from Home +4 2,937 £525 - 1,064
South East +1 2,249 £550 - 546
South West 0 1,251 £538 -4.44% 444
North of England 0 967 £500 - 284
Midlands +3 886 £469 -10.67% 146
West Midlands +3 762 £470 -10.49% 103
North West -1 534 £515 +3.00% 169
East of England +2 374 £550 +10.00% 143
Scotland +22 247 £510 +9.32% 77
Yorkshire -5 247 £488 -1.71% 52
North East +1 220 £475 -1.04% 64
East Midlands -2 117 £421 -17.93% 43
Wales +5 86 £490 +3.16% 31
Northern Ireland +3 21 £638 +34.21% 30

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
1 397 (3.68%) Confluence
2 231 (2.14%) SharePoint
3 160 (1.48%) SAS
4 131 (1.21%) Microsoft Exchange
5 104 (0.96%) Apache Spark
6 96 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
7 92 (0.85%) Apache
8 42 (0.39%) nginx
9 40 (0.37%) Jupyter
10 33 (0.31%) WebLogic
11 24 (0.22%) Tomcat
12 19 (0.18%) IIS
13 18 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
14 17 (0.16%) CMS
15 16 (0.15%) NetWeaver
16 15 (0.14%) Skype for Business
17 14 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
18 10 (0.093%) ArcGIS
19 8 (0.074%) Apache Superset
19 8 (0.074%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 172 (1.59%) Microsoft Excel
2 149 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
3 77 (0.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 72 (0.67%) Microsoft Project
5 48 (0.44%) MS Visio
6 16 (0.15%) Simulink
6 16 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
7 9 (0.083%) SOLIDWORKS
8 8 (0.074%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.074%) Revit
9 7 (0.065%) Notepad++
10 4 (0.037%) Chatbot
10 4 (0.037%) Siemens NX
10 4 (0.037%) Sketch
10 4 (0.037%) Windchill
11 3 (0.028%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.019%) CATIA
12 2 (0.019%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.019%) Lectora
12 2 (0.019%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 117 (1.08%) SAP S/4HANA
2 60 (0.56%) Remedy ITSM
3 35 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
4 33 (0.31%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 31 (0.29%) Teamcenter
6 29 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
7 23 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.13%) Findur
8 14 (0.13%) Maximo
8 14 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.12%) Primavera
9 13 (0.12%) SAP GRC
9 13 (0.12%) SAP PSCD
10 12 (0.11%) iTrent
10 12 (0.11%) Temenos T24
11 10 (0.093%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.083%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.083%) Salesforce CRM
12 9 (0.083%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.083%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,932 (17.89%) AWS
2 1,887 (17.47%) Azure
3 458 (4.24%) GitHub
4 433 (4.01%) GCP
5 405 (3.75%) Azure DevOps
6 400 (3.70%) Power Platform
7 275 (2.55%) Serverless
8 271 (2.51%) GitHub Actions
9 264 (2.44%) Microsoft 365
10 257 (2.38%) Entra ID
11 220 (2.04%) Amazon S3
12 193 (1.79%) AWS Lambda
13 165 (1.53%) PaaS
14 157 (1.45%) Amazon EC2
15 149 (1.38%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 143 (1.32%) Amazon EKS
17 142 (1.31%) SaaS
18 139 (1.29%) OpenShift
19 135 (1.25%) OCI
20 121 (1.12%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 483 (4.47%) Firewall
2 323 (2.99%) DNS
3 252 (2.33%) Network Security
4 235 (2.18%) WAN
5 209 (1.94%) LAN
6 185 (1.71%) VPN
7 166 (1.54%) DHCP
8 147 (1.36%) BGP
9 125 (1.16%) OSPF
10 117 (1.08%) VLAN
11 116 (1.07%) TCP/IP
12 108 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
13 84 (0.78%) Wireless
14 68 (0.63%) MPLS
15 62 (0.57%) SAN
16 61 (0.56%) VXLAN
17 57 (0.53%) SD-WAN
18 53 (0.49%) Structured Cabling
19 51 (0.47%) IPsec
19 51 (0.47%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 309 (2.86%) Power BI
2 271 (2.51%) PostgreSQL
3 247 (2.29%) Data Warehouse
4 215 (1.99%) SQL Server
5 146 (1.35%) Oracle Database
6 135 (1.25%) Metadata
7 119 (1.10%) Data Lake
8 116 (1.07%) Amazon RDS
9 104 (0.96%) MongoDB
10 100 (0.93%) Relational Database
11 83 (0.77%) NoSQL
11 83 (0.77%) Pentaho
12 81 (0.75%) Oracle Reports
13 80 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
13 80 (0.74%) MySQL
14 69 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
15 68 (0.63%) Big Data
16 67 (0.62%) Amazon Athena
17 66 (0.61%) Tableau
18 56 (0.52%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 616 (5.70%) JIRA
2 468 (4.33%) Git
3 443 (4.10%) GitLab
4 420 (3.89%) Jenkins
5 122 (1.13%) Selenium
6 90 (0.83%) Postman
7 84 (0.78%) JUnit
8 74 (0.69%) SonarQube
9 60 (0.56%) JMeter
10 59 (0.55%) Artifactory
10 59 (0.55%) Rational DOORS
11 51 (0.47%) Cucumber
12 46 (0.43%) Bitbucket
13 42 (0.39%) Mockito
14 41 (0.38%) Zephyr
15 40 (0.37%) Maven
15 40 (0.37%) Visual Studio
16 39 (0.36%) Cypress.io
17 36 (0.33%) REST Assured
18 31 (0.29%) WebDriver
General
1 2,356 (21.81%) Public Sector
2 2,207 (20.43%) Social Skills
3 743 (6.88%) Analytical Skills
4 671 (6.21%) Finance
5 335 (3.10%) Military
6 300 (2.78%) Documentation Skills
7 275 (2.55%) Aerospace
8 168 (1.56%) Legal
9 124 (1.15%) Banking
10 123 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
11 121 (1.12%) Telecoms
12 106 (0.98%) Manufacturing
13 101 (0.94%) Organisational Skills
14 96 (0.89%) Law
15 88 (0.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 78 (0.72%) Presentation Skills
17 64 (0.59%) Police
18 52 (0.48%) Marketing
19 50 (0.46%) Aviation
20 42 (0.39%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,643 (15.21%) Architect
2 1,016 (9.41%) Developer
3 929 (8.60%) Senior
4 787 (7.29%) Lead
5 743 (6.88%) Analyst
6 530 (4.91%) Consultant
6 530 (4.91%) Data Engineer
7 513 (4.75%) DevOps Engineer
8 352 (3.26%) Technical Architect
9 319 (2.95%) Software Engineer
10 316 (2.93%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 315 (2.92%) Solutions Architect
12 287 (2.66%) Network Engineer
13 266 (2.46%) Business Analyst
14 230 (2.13%) Security Architect
15 220 (2.04%) Project Manager
16 218 (2.02%) Designer
17 214 (1.98%) Azure Engineer
18 198 (1.83%) Administrator
19 197 (1.82%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 334 (3.09%) REST
2 242 (2.24%) Spring
3 204 (1.89%) React
4 202 (1.87%) Kafka
5 200 (1.85%) Spring Boot
6 184 (1.70%) Node.js
7 182 (1.69%) .NET
8 154 (1.43%) LDAP
8 154 (1.43%) SOAP
9 151 (1.40%) RESTful
10 127 (1.18%) JSON
11 121 (1.12%) AngularJS
12 117 (1.08%) PySpark
12 117 (1.08%) Web Services
13 106 (0.98%) OAuth
14 98 (0.91%) Middleware
15 91 (0.84%) HTML
16 85 (0.79%) XML
17 84 (0.78%) Playwright
18 82 (0.76%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 393 (3.64%) Cloud Native
2 341 (3.16%) Product Ownership
3 326 (3.02%) Data Centre
4 304 (2.81%) Onboarding
5 217 (2.01%) Management Information System
6 159 (1.47%) PKI
7 149 (1.38%) Legacy Systems
8 132 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
9 130 (1.20%) Security Posture
10 129 (1.19%) Distributed Systems
11 121 (1.12%) Replication
12 101 (0.94%) Self-Motivation
13 91 (0.84%) Security Operations Centre
14 90 (0.83%) Hybrid Cloud
15 89 (0.82%) Clustering
16 88 (0.81%) Data Structures
16 88 (0.81%) Public Cloud
17 77 (0.71%) CMDB
18 76 (0.70%) Virtual Team
19 73 (0.68%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 851 (7.88%) Windows
2 744 (6.89%) Linux
3 268 (2.48%) Windows Server
4 197 (1.82%) Unix
5 135 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 96 (0.89%) Android
7 86 (0.80%) Windows 10
8 69 (0.64%) Apple iOS
9 53 (0.49%) Solaris
10 38 (0.35%) Mac OS
11 37 (0.34%) Ubuntu
12 31 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 30 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
14 27 (0.25%) AIX
15 25 (0.23%) VMS
16 23 (0.21%) CentOS
17 17 (0.16%) Windows 7
18 15 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
19 12 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
20 11 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,069 (19.16%) Agile
2 1,664 (15.41%) DevOps
3 1,515 (14.03%) CI/CD
4 1,107 (10.25%) Problem-Solving
5 1,041 (9.64%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,004 (9.30%) Continuous Improvement
7 866 (8.02%) Migration
8 861 (7.97%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 788 (7.30%) Infrastructure as Code
10 676 (6.26%) Cybersecurity
11 658 (6.09%) Test Automation
12 641 (5.93%) Analytics
13 617 (5.71%) ITIL
14 612 (5.67%) Containerisation
15 599 (5.55%) Software Engineering
16 596 (5.52%) Roadmaps
17 553 (5.12%) Data Modelling
18 549 (5.08%) Decision-Making
19 484 (4.48%) AI
19 484 (4.48%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 1,212 (11.22%) Python
2 994 (9.20%) SQL
3 677 (6.27%) Java
4 557 (5.16%) PowerShell
5 330 (3.06%) JavaScript
6 222 (2.06%) C#
7 213 (1.97%) Bash
8 183 (1.69%) TypeScript
9 129 (1.19%) PL/SQL
10 98 (0.91%) C++
11 96 (0.89%) Shell Script
12 67 (0.62%) Bicep
13 62 (0.57%) Go
14 61 (0.56%) Ruby
14 61 (0.56%) Scala
15 57 (0.53%) C
16 54 (0.50%) Apex Code
17 45 (0.42%) Ada
18 42 (0.39%) R
19 41 (0.38%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 8,259 (76.47%) SC Cleared
2 1,935 (17.92%) DV Cleared
3 434 (4.02%) Degree
4 309 (2.86%) BPSS Clearance
5 219 (2.03%) Cisco Certification
6 181 (1.68%) CISSP
7 138 (1.28%) Azure Certification
8 123 (1.14%) CCNP
9 117 (1.08%) CISM
10 115 (1.06%) AWS Certification
11 104 (0.96%) Microsoft Certification
12 93 (0.86%) CCNA
13 80 (0.74%) PMP
14 77 (0.71%) Computer Science Degree
15 73 (0.68%) PMI Certification
16 71 (0.66%) ISTQB
16 71 (0.66%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 59 (0.55%) ITIL Certification
18 46 (0.43%) GIAC
19 42 (0.39%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 400 (3.70%) QA
2 322 (2.98%) Data Quality
3 308 (2.85%) NIST
4 302 (2.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 212 (1.96%) NCSC
6 208 (1.93%) Accessibility
7 176 (1.63%) GDPR
8 163 (1.51%) PMO
9 119 (1.10%) SLA
10 81 (0.75%) GRC
11 68 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 53 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
13 46 (0.43%) WCAG
14 41 (0.38%) NIST 800
15 37 (0.34%) RMADS
16 34 (0.31%) Def Stans
17 27 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 25 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
19 24 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
19 24 (0.22%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 676 (6.26%) Docker
2 473 (4.38%) Active Directory
3 316 (2.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 116 (1.07%) VMware ESXi
5 107 (0.99%) VMware NSX
6 93 (0.86%) Hyper-V
7 84 (0.78%) vSphere
8 74 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
9 36 (0.33%) Firmware
9 36 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
10 23 (0.21%) BitLocker
10 23 (0.21%) NFS
11 21 (0.19%) vCloud
12 19 (0.18%) Postfix
12 19 (0.18%) Squid
13 18 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
14 15 (0.14%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 10 (0.093%) Microsoft App-V
16 9 (0.083%) KVM
17 6 (0.056%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 874 (8.09%) Terraform
2 845 (7.82%) Kubernetes
3 392 (3.63%) Ansible
4 277 (2.56%) Grafana
5 231 (2.14%) Prometheus
6 117 (1.08%) vCenter Server
7 106 (0.98%) Single Sign-On
8 77 (0.71%) SCCM
9 61 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 60 (0.56%) Microsoft Intune
11 54 (0.50%) FortiGate
12 50 (0.46%) Argo
13 42 (0.39%) Oracle RMAN
13 42 (0.39%) Puppet
14 39 (0.36%) SCOM
15 38 (0.35%) Podman
16 32 (0.30%) Nagios
17 29 (0.27%) Progress Chef
18 27 (0.25%) vRealize
19 25 (0.23%) Istio
Vendors
1 1,089 (10.08%) Microsoft
2 719 (6.66%) Oracle
3 520 (4.81%) VMware
4 417 (3.86%) ServiceNow
5 358 (3.31%) Cisco
6 352 (3.26%) SAP
7 247 (2.29%) Splunk
8 211 (1.95%) Databricks
9 175 (1.62%) Google
10 170 (1.57%) Red Hat
11 165 (1.53%) Salesforce
12 141 (1.31%) Talend
13 128 (1.19%) Palo Alto
14 126 (1.17%) IBM
15 108 (1.00%) Informatica
16 106 (0.98%) Juniper
17 99 (0.92%) CyberArk
18 97 (0.90%) Fortinet
19 91 (0.84%) Dynatrace
20 88 (0.81%) F5