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 7 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,859 5,396 8,085
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 23.08% 17.61% 18.01%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.06% 58.24% 59.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,631 3,494 5,147
10th Percentile £358 £325 £360
25th Percentile £448 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.22%
75th Percentile £623 £627 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £518 £541 £563
% change year-on-year -4.30% -3.78% +2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 825 286 542
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.12 £16.03
25th Percentile £20.50 £24.77 £22.75
Median hourly rate £25.77 £57.13 £55.29
Median % change year-on-year -54.89% +3.32% -7.85%
75th Percentile £67.84 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £83.45 £77.35 £82.08
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £60.00 £56.10
% change year-on-year -57.05% +6.95% -2.87%

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 14,485 9,265 13,644
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.92% 30.23% 30.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,550 5,744 8,412
10th Percentile £331 £285 £288
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £614 £626 £650
90th Percentile £719 £725 £736
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £512 £528
% change year-on-year -2.39% -2.89% -0.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,068 473 1,020
10th Percentile £16.17 £19.98 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.54 £24.66 £19.14
Median hourly rate £26.22 £43.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -39.02% +7.50% -20.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £67.50 £63.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £82.22 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -49.70% +25.00% -13.40%

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 7 March 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 7 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Top 18 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 7 March 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 +1 8,553 £525 -3.67% 1,803
UK excluding London 0 5,464 £518 -4.30% 1,487
London +5 2,977 £530 +0.95% 497
Work from Home +4 2,711 £525 -0.38% 804
South East +1 1,904 £525 -4.55% 550
South West 0 1,329 £550 -0.72% 375
Midlands +4 864 £492 -10.55% 145
North of England -2 833 £492 +0.41% 217
West Midlands +3 695 £495 -10.16% 105
North West 0 534 £500 +5.26% 126
East of England +1 350 £492 -1.60% 152
Scotland +11 177 £475 - 48
Yorkshire -9 176 £484 -7.86% 47
East Midlands +2 167 £425 -17.07% 39
North East +1 153 £450 -10.00% 45
Wales -2 80 £515 -1.87% 31
Northern Ireland +11 30 £500 +64.01% 4
Channel Islands - 1 - - 1

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
1 362 (3.67%) Confluence
2 226 (2.29%) SharePoint
3 146 (1.48%) Microsoft Exchange
4 144 (1.46%) SAS
5 84 (0.85%) Apache Spark
6 75 (0.76%) Apache
7 58 (0.59%) Apache Airflow
8 43 (0.44%) nginx
9 40 (0.41%) WebLogic
10 31 (0.31%) Skype for Business
11 21 (0.21%) Jupyter
12 20 (0.20%) CMS
13 16 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
14 15 (0.15%) Tuxedo
15 10 (0.10%) IIS
15 10 (0.10%) Tomcat
16 9 (0.091%) ArcGIS
16 9 (0.091%) Oracle Workflow
17 7 (0.071%) OpenStack
18 6 (0.061%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 255 (2.59%) Microsoft Office
2 195 (1.98%) Microsoft Excel
3 122 (1.24%) Microsoft Project
4 70 (0.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 46 (0.47%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.12%) Simulink
8 6 (0.061%) Sketch
9 5 (0.051%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.051%) Oracle Smart View
9 5 (0.051%) Siemens NX
9 5 (0.051%) Windchill
10 4 (0.041%) Chatbot
11 3 (0.030%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.020%) Adobe Illustrator
12 2 (0.020%) CATIA
12 2 (0.020%) InVision
12 2 (0.020%) Photoshop
12 2 (0.020%) PlantUML
12 2 (0.020%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 156 (1.58%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (0.43%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 30 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
4 28 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
4 28 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
5 25 (0.25%) SAP MM
5 25 (0.25%) Teamcenter
6 19 (0.19%) SAP PP
7 17 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
8 16 (0.16%) Maximo
9 14 (0.14%) SAP VC
10 13 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
10 13 (0.13%) SAP QM
11 12 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
11 12 (0.12%) SAP WM
12 11 (0.11%) SAP EWM
13 10 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
13 10 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
14 9 (0.091%) Primavera
14 9 (0.091%) SAP PM
Cloud Services
1 1,681 (17.05%) AWS
2 1,622 (16.45%) Azure
3 437 (4.43%) GitHub
4 416 (4.22%) GCP
5 371 (3.76%) Power Platform
6 366 (3.71%) Azure DevOps
7 323 (3.28%) Microsoft 365
8 271 (2.75%) Serverless
9 254 (2.58%) Entra ID
10 233 (2.36%) GitHub Actions
11 202 (2.05%) Amazon S3
12 183 (1.86%) OpenShift
13 174 (1.76%) AWS Lambda
14 146 (1.48%) AWS CloudFormation
15 133 (1.35%) Amazon EKS
16 131 (1.33%) Amazon EC2
17 122 (1.24%) PaaS
18 120 (1.22%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 118 (1.20%) IaaS
20 112 (1.14%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 447 (4.53%) Firewall
2 286 (2.90%) DNS
3 217 (2.20%) Network Security
4 203 (2.06%) WAN
5 179 (1.82%) VPN
6 168 (1.70%) LAN
7 138 (1.40%) TCP/IP
8 137 (1.39%) BGP
9 132 (1.34%) DHCP
10 98 (0.99%) OSPF
11 97 (0.98%) Wireless
12 90 (0.91%) VLAN
13 75 (0.76%) Wi-Fi
14 74 (0.75%) MPLS
15 53 (0.54%) SAN
16 52 (0.53%) IPsec
17 49 (0.50%) SSL
18 47 (0.48%) Cisco ISE
19 42 (0.43%) Kerberos
20 40 (0.41%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 269 (2.73%) PostgreSQL
2 263 (2.67%) Power BI
3 179 (1.82%) Data Warehouse
4 154 (1.56%) SQL Server
5 123 (1.25%) Metadata
6 112 (1.14%) Oracle Database
7 102 (1.03%) Amazon RDS
8 100 (1.01%) NoSQL
9 97 (0.98%) MongoDB
10 95 (0.96%) Relational Database
11 79 (0.80%) Azure SQL Database
11 79 (0.80%) Data Lake
12 75 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
13 67 (0.68%) MySQL
14 66 (0.67%) Big Data
15 63 (0.64%) Pentaho
16 55 (0.56%) Amazon Redshift
16 55 (0.56%) Tableau
17 45 (0.46%) Delta Lake
17 45 (0.46%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 581 (5.89%) JIRA
2 473 (4.80%) Git
3 408 (4.14%) Jenkins
4 359 (3.64%) GitLab
5 114 (1.16%) Selenium
6 89 (0.90%) Postman
7 84 (0.85%) JUnit
8 60 (0.61%) Cypress.io
9 58 (0.59%) SonarQube
10 51 (0.52%) Bitbucket
11 49 (0.50%) Artifactory
12 47 (0.48%) Cucumber
12 47 (0.48%) Maven
13 45 (0.46%) Rational DOORS
14 44 (0.45%) Oracle APEX
15 36 (0.37%) Mockito
16 35 (0.36%) JMeter
17 34 (0.34%) REST Assured
17 34 (0.34%) Visual Studio
18 24 (0.24%) Metasploit
General
1 2,501 (25.37%) Public Sector
2 2,337 (23.70%) Social Skills
3 810 (8.22%) Analytical Skills
4 675 (6.85%) Finance
5 331 (3.36%) Military
6 265 (2.69%) Documentation Skills
7 225 (2.28%) Aerospace
8 192 (1.95%) Manufacturing
9 183 (1.86%) Telecoms
10 149 (1.51%) Legal
11 132 (1.34%) Organisational Skills
12 127 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
13 118 (1.20%) Electronics
13 118 (1.20%) Marketing
14 112 (1.14%) Presentation Skills
15 107 (1.09%) Banking
16 73 (0.74%) Law
17 69 (0.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 53 (0.54%) Police
19 38 (0.39%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,392 (14.12%) Architect
2 971 (9.85%) Developer
3 857 (8.69%) Senior
4 749 (7.60%) Analyst
5 662 (6.71%) Consultant
6 607 (6.16%) Lead
7 426 (4.32%) DevOps Engineer
8 371 (3.76%) Data Engineer
9 263 (2.67%) Solutions Architect
10 262 (2.66%) Business Analyst
11 258 (2.62%) Software Engineer
12 257 (2.61%) Network Engineer
13 255 (2.59%) Technical Architect
14 239 (2.42%) Support Engineer
15 197 (2.00%) Tester
16 182 (1.85%) Designer
17 177 (1.80%) AWS Engineer
18 174 (1.76%) Azure Engineer
19 173 (1.75%) Security Architect
20 171 (1.73%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 359 (3.64%) REST
2 229 (2.32%) Node.js
3 218 (2.21%) Spring
4 205 (2.08%) Kafka
5 202 (2.05%) React
6 165 (1.67%) SOAP
7 163 (1.65%) Spring Boot
8 157 (1.59%) JSON
9 152 (1.54%) LDAP
10 148 (1.50%) .NET
11 122 (1.24%) AngularJS
11 122 (1.24%) HTML
12 120 (1.22%) RESTful
13 118 (1.20%) Web Services
14 115 (1.17%) PySpark
15 110 (1.12%) OAuth
16 100 (1.01%) Oracle Fusion
17 98 (0.99%) XML
18 95 (0.96%) CSS
19 85 (0.86%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 304 (3.08%) Data Centre
2 295 (2.99%) Product Ownership
3 284 (2.88%) Cloud Native
4 247 (2.51%) Onboarding
5 202 (2.05%) PKI
6 185 (1.88%) Management Information System
7 143 (1.45%) Security Posture
8 122 (1.24%) Self-Motivation
9 120 (1.22%) Legacy Systems
10 111 (1.13%) Enterprise Software
11 101 (1.02%) Replication
12 86 (0.87%) Public Cloud
13 80 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
14 78 (0.79%) Hybrid Cloud
15 76 (0.77%) Distributed Systems
16 75 (0.76%) Driving Licence
17 69 (0.70%) Cyber Threat
18 60 (0.61%) Data Structures
19 57 (0.58%) Clustering
20 49 (0.50%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 885 (8.98%) Windows
2 710 (7.20%) Linux
3 229 (2.32%) Windows Server
4 150 (1.52%) Windows 10
5 131 (1.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 129 (1.31%) Android
7 122 (1.24%) Unix
8 69 (0.70%) Mac OS
9 54 (0.55%) Apple iOS
10 47 (0.48%) Ubuntu
11 37 (0.38%) VMS
12 31 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
13 25 (0.25%) CentOS
13 25 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
14 22 (0.22%) Solaris
15 20 (0.20%) Windows 7
16 14 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
17 11 (0.11%) AIX
17 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
18 9 (0.091%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,882 (19.09%) Agile
2 1,496 (15.17%) DevOps
3 1,314 (13.33%) CI/CD
4 1,190 (12.07%) Problem-Solving
5 914 (9.27%) Stakeholder Management
6 849 (8.61%) Migration
7 791 (8.02%) Continuous Improvement
8 698 (7.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 631 (6.40%) Cybersecurity
10 623 (6.32%) Infrastructure as Code
11 581 (5.89%) ITIL
12 551 (5.59%) Analytics
13 549 (5.57%) Roadmaps
13 549 (5.57%) Test Automation
14 534 (5.42%) Containerisation
15 462 (4.69%) Business Intelligence
16 460 (4.67%) Software Engineering
17 459 (4.66%) Scrum
18 432 (4.38%) Data Modelling
19 427 (4.33%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,182 (11.99%) Python
2 847 (8.59%) SQL
3 628 (6.37%) PowerShell
4 551 (5.59%) Java
5 445 (4.51%) JavaScript
6 229 (2.32%) Bash
7 214 (2.17%) TypeScript
8 204 (2.07%) C#
9 115 (1.17%) C++
10 107 (1.09%) PL/SQL
10 107 (1.09%) Shell Script
11 85 (0.86%) Go
12 68 (0.69%) C
13 65 (0.66%) Ruby
14 52 (0.53%) Scala
15 50 (0.51%) Ada
16 45 (0.46%) Kusto Query Language
17 42 (0.43%) Bicep
18 40 (0.41%) ABAP
19 36 (0.37%) R
Qualifications
1 7,550 (76.58%) SC Cleared
2 1,642 (16.65%) DV Cleared
3 490 (4.97%) Degree
4 323 (3.28%) BPSS Clearance
5 185 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
6 179 (1.82%) CISSP
7 138 (1.40%) AWS Certification
8 133 (1.35%) Azure Certification
9 127 (1.29%) CCNP
10 115 (1.17%) Microsoft Certification
11 112 (1.14%) CISM
12 90 (0.91%) Computer Science Degree
13 81 (0.82%) CCNA
14 68 (0.69%) ITIL Certification
15 64 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
15 64 (0.65%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 55 (0.56%) ISTQB
17 53 (0.54%) PMP
18 51 (0.52%) Master's Degree
19 49 (0.50%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 323 (3.28%) QA
2 300 (3.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 289 (2.93%) NIST
4 275 (2.79%) Data Quality
5 219 (2.22%) NCSC
6 196 (1.99%) Accessibility
7 186 (1.89%) GDPR
8 129 (1.31%) SLA
9 106 (1.08%) PMO
10 70 (0.71%) GRC
11 63 (0.64%) JSP 440
12 48 (0.49%) WCAG
13 43 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
14 41 (0.42%) Def Stans
15 40 (0.41%) NIST 800
16 35 (0.36%) COBIT
16 35 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 33 (0.33%) PCI DSS
18 27 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
19 24 (0.24%) RMADS
System Software
1 661 (6.70%) Docker
2 502 (5.09%) Active Directory
3 248 (2.52%) VMware Infrastructure
4 93 (0.94%) VMware NSX
5 74 (0.75%) vSphere
6 65 (0.66%) VMware ESXi
7 62 (0.63%) Hyper-V
7 62 (0.63%) Virtual Machines
8 30 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
9 28 (0.28%) Firmware
10 21 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
11 19 (0.19%) BitLocker
12 17 (0.17%) NFS
13 16 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 11 (0.11%) Postfix
15 10 (0.10%) Squid
16 9 (0.091%) vCloud
17 6 (0.061%) KVM
17 6 (0.061%) Microsoft App-V
18 5 (0.051%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 860 (8.72%) Kubernetes
2 810 (8.22%) Terraform
3 317 (3.22%) Ansible
4 243 (2.46%) Grafana
5 195 (1.98%) Prometheus
6 133 (1.35%) Single Sign-On
7 104 (1.05%) SCCM
8 90 (0.91%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 90 (0.91%) vCenter Server
9 74 (0.75%) Argo
10 73 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
11 48 (0.49%) FortiGate
12 42 (0.43%) vRealize
13 40 (0.41%) Packer
13 40 (0.41%) Podman
14 33 (0.33%) Kibana
14 33 (0.33%) Puppet
15 30 (0.30%) OPNET
15 30 (0.30%) Progress Chef
16 25 (0.25%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,093 (11.09%) Microsoft
2 551 (5.59%) Oracle
3 475 (4.82%) VMware
4 454 (4.60%) SAP
5 435 (4.41%) Cisco
6 403 (4.09%) ServiceNow
7 237 (2.40%) Splunk
8 193 (1.96%) Red Hat
9 155 (1.57%) Databricks
10 153 (1.55%) Google
11 143 (1.45%) CyberArk
12 137 (1.39%) Salesforce
13 132 (1.34%) Juniper
14 131 (1.33%) Palo Alto
15 127 (1.29%) Atlassian
16 102 (1.03%) Dell
17 101 (1.02%) IBM
18 91 (0.92%) Talend
19 86 (0.87%) HP
20 78 (0.79%) Aruba