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 12 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,809 6,008 6,953
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.64% 18.20% 18.02%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.68% 58.01% 61.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,251 3,878 4,522
10th Percentile £390 £350 £350
25th Percentile £458 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £543 £534 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.59% -2.91% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £719 £700 £726
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £537 £550
% change year-on-year +0.09% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 810 581 415
10th Percentile £20.50 £18.51 £20.05
25th Percentile £35.00 £18.87 £27.00
Median hourly rate £64.09 £25.15 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +154.83% -58.08% -
75th Percentile £77.50 £37.50 £72.11
90th Percentile £90.00 £71.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +158.45% -58.08% +2.05%

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 17,195 10,356 11,331
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.52% 31.37% 29.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,490 6,444 7,004
10th Percentile £350 £300 £313
25th Percentile £438 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £628 £623 £638
90th Percentile £713 £700 £735
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,314 827 672
10th Percentile £17.18 £17.97 £17.00
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £24.18
Median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +88.87% -49.70% -9.09%
75th Percentile £72.06 £47.50 £68.00
90th Percentile £87.11 £71.33 £76.17
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £54.00
% change year-on-year +88.87% -53.43% +2.86%

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 12 September 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 12 September 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 12 September 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 +2 10,195 £550 +2.33% 3,504
UK excluding London +1 6,647 £538 +0.09% 2,585
London +6 3,600 £550 +3.29% 1,153
Work from Home +2 3,118 £525 -2.33% 2,773
South East +1 2,331 £565 +5.12% 757
South West 0 1,421 £550 - 564
North of England +3 1,267 £518 +3.60% 449
Midlands 0 931 £475 -7.77% 271
West Midlands +1 796 £475 -8.39% 164
North West +2 742 £530 - 261
East of England 0 372 £551 +0.18% 339
Yorkshire +3 304 £500 +2.15% 98
Scotland +12 302 £481 -0.62% 172
North East 0 242 £475 -2.56% 98
East Midlands -1 128 £450 -2.70% 106
Wales +5 108 £550 +10.00% 50
Northern Ireland +5 36 £650 +8.33% 39

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
1 401 (3.40%) Confluence
2 278 (2.35%) SharePoint
3 173 (1.46%) SAS
4 128 (1.08%) Microsoft Exchange
5 104 (0.88%) Apache
6 102 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
7 100 (0.85%) Apache Spark
8 38 (0.32%) Jupyter
8 38 (0.32%) nginx
9 33 (0.28%) WebLogic
10 23 (0.19%) IIS
10 23 (0.19%) Oracle Application Server
11 22 (0.19%) Skype for Business
11 22 (0.19%) Tomcat
12 19 (0.16%) CMS
13 17 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
14 16 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
15 15 (0.13%) NetWeaver
15 15 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 12 (0.10%) JBoss
Applications
1 212 (1.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 168 (1.42%) Microsoft Office
3 110 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
4 101 (0.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 23 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
7 18 (0.15%) AutoCAD
8 17 (0.14%) Revit
9 16 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
10 12 (0.10%) Simulink
11 8 (0.068%) Adobe XD
11 8 (0.068%) Chatbot
11 8 (0.068%) Windchill
12 7 (0.059%) Notepad++
12 7 (0.059%) Sketch
13 6 (0.051%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 4 (0.034%) Trello
15 3 (0.025%) OrCAD
16 2 (0.017%) Houdini
16 2 (0.017%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 151 (1.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 82 (0.69%) Remedy ITSM
3 53 (0.45%) Oracle ERP
4 42 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
5 34 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 30 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 28 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
8 26 (0.22%) SAP PSCD
9 25 (0.21%) Oracle Payroll
9 25 (0.21%) SAP GRC
10 19 (0.16%) Primavera
11 18 (0.15%) SAP FI
11 18 (0.15%) SAP HR
12 16 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
13 13 (0.11%) Findur
14 12 (0.10%) iTrent
14 12 (0.10%) SAP CO
14 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
15 11 (0.093%) NetSuite
15 11 (0.093%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 2,169 (18.37%) Azure
2 2,094 (17.73%) AWS
3 537 (4.55%) GitHub
4 530 (4.49%) Azure DevOps
5 484 (4.10%) Power Platform
6 457 (3.87%) GCP
7 355 (3.01%) GitHub Actions
8 334 (2.83%) Microsoft 365
9 312 (2.64%) Entra ID
10 289 (2.45%) Serverless
11 241 (2.04%) Amazon S3
12 212 (1.80%) AWS Lambda
13 176 (1.49%) SaaS
14 174 (1.47%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 173 (1.46%) OCI
16 168 (1.42%) Amazon EKS
17 151 (1.28%) Amazon EC2
18 141 (1.19%) OpenShift
19 134 (1.13%) AWS CloudFormation
20 116 (0.98%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 463 (3.92%) Firewall
2 381 (3.23%) DNS
3 238 (2.02%) Network Security
4 219 (1.85%) WAN
5 210 (1.78%) VPN
6 186 (1.58%) DHCP
7 166 (1.41%) LAN
8 137 (1.16%) TCP/IP
9 128 (1.08%) BGP
10 118 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
11 105 (0.89%) VLAN
12 89 (0.75%) OSPF
12 89 (0.75%) Wireless
13 77 (0.65%) SSL
14 67 (0.57%) MPLS
15 65 (0.55%) VSAN
16 63 (0.53%) IPsec
16 63 (0.53%) SAN
17 59 (0.50%) SD-WAN
18 48 (0.41%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 349 (2.96%) Power BI
2 312 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
3 288 (2.44%) SQL Server
4 272 (2.30%) Data Warehouse
5 197 (1.67%) Metadata
6 184 (1.56%) Oracle Database
7 155 (1.31%) Relational Database
8 147 (1.24%) Data Lake
9 135 (1.14%) MongoDB
10 116 (0.98%) Amazon RDS
11 108 (0.91%) MySQL
12 99 (0.84%) NoSQL
13 95 (0.80%) Oracle Reports
14 74 (0.63%) Pentaho
15 69 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
16 68 (0.58%) Amazon Athena
17 55 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
17 55 (0.47%) Big Data
18 54 (0.46%) Tableau
19 50 (0.42%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 663 (5.61%) JIRA
2 587 (4.97%) Git
3 521 (4.41%) GitLab
4 488 (4.13%) Jenkins
5 145 (1.23%) Selenium
6 85 (0.72%) Postman
7 83 (0.70%) SonarQube
8 75 (0.64%) JUnit
9 73 (0.62%) Maven
10 66 (0.56%) JMeter
11 59 (0.50%) Cucumber
12 53 (0.45%) Cypress.io
13 50 (0.42%) Gradle
14 46 (0.39%) Mockito
15 43 (0.36%) REST Assured
16 41 (0.35%) Gatling
17 40 (0.34%) Artifactory
17 40 (0.34%) Visual Studio
18 39 (0.33%) Zephyr
19 34 (0.29%) Bitbucket
General
1 2,641 (22.36%) Social Skills
2 2,432 (20.59%) Public Sector
3 950 (8.04%) Analytical Skills
4 778 (6.59%) Finance
5 420 (3.56%) Military
6 312 (2.64%) Aerospace
7 300 (2.54%) Documentation Skills
8 218 (1.85%) Influencing Skills
9 184 (1.56%) Organisational Skills
10 175 (1.48%) Legal
11 165 (1.40%) Telecoms
12 161 (1.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 147 (1.24%) Banking
14 130 (1.10%) Manufacturing
15 123 (1.04%) Law
16 119 (1.01%) Police
17 69 (0.58%) Presentation Skills
18 48 (0.41%) Local Government
19 46 (0.39%) Aviation
19 46 (0.39%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,913 (16.20%) Architect
2 1,228 (10.40%) Developer
3 1,122 (9.50%) Senior
4 1,054 (8.93%) Lead
5 703 (5.95%) Consultant
6 640 (5.42%) Analyst
7 517 (4.38%) DevOps Engineer
8 497 (4.21%) Data Engineer
9 424 (3.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 373 (3.16%) Technical Architect
11 368 (3.12%) Solutions Architect
12 292 (2.47%) Data Architect
13 291 (2.46%) Software Engineer
14 269 (2.28%) Security Architect
15 251 (2.13%) Network Engineer
16 223 (1.89%) Administrator
17 213 (1.80%) Azure Engineer
17 213 (1.80%) Java Developer
18 205 (1.74%) Cloud Engineer
18 205 (1.74%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,014 (8.59%) Terraform
2 456 (3.86%) REST
3 258 (2.18%) Spring
4 253 (2.14%) Kafka
5 237 (2.01%) Spring Boot
6 220 (1.86%) RESTful
7 216 (1.83%) .NET
8 204 (1.73%) React
9 183 (1.55%) Node.js
10 175 (1.48%) SOAP
11 167 (1.41%) JSON
12 135 (1.14%) HTML
13 132 (1.12%) OAuth
13 132 (1.12%) XML
14 122 (1.03%) AngularJS
15 121 (1.02%) Middleware
16 118 (1.00%) Web Services
17 105 (0.89%) Oracle Fusion
18 104 (0.88%) CSS
19 102 (0.86%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 528 (4.47%) Cloud Native
2 442 (3.74%) Onboarding
3 365 (3.09%) Product Ownership
4 308 (2.61%) Data Centre
5 266 (2.25%) Management Information System
6 189 (1.60%) Legacy Systems
7 179 (1.52%) PKI
8 177 (1.50%) Enterprise Software
9 160 (1.35%) CMDB
10 147 (1.24%) Distributed Systems
11 129 (1.09%) Replication
12 124 (1.05%) Hybrid Cloud
13 119 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
14 112 (0.95%) Cyber Threat
15 99 (0.84%) Data Structures
15 99 (0.84%) Operational Technology
16 92 (0.78%) Public Cloud
16 92 (0.78%) Security Operations Centre
17 91 (0.77%) Clustering
18 89 (0.75%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 1,005 (8.51%) Windows
2 814 (6.89%) Linux
3 373 (3.16%) Windows Server
4 234 (1.98%) Unix
5 158 (1.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 147 (1.24%) Windows 10
7 80 (0.68%) Android
8 70 (0.59%) Solaris
9 50 (0.42%) Mac OS
10 46 (0.39%) Apple iOS
11 43 (0.36%) CentOS
12 39 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
13 38 (0.32%) Ubuntu
14 33 (0.28%) AIX
15 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 25 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
17 22 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
18 21 (0.18%) VMS
19 16 (0.14%) Rocky
20 14 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,517 (21.31%) Agile
2 1,829 (15.49%) DevOps
3 1,799 (15.23%) CI/CD
4 1,583 (13.41%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,425 (12.07%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,272 (10.77%) Problem-Solving
7 1,175 (9.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,032 (8.74%) Infrastructure as Code
9 949 (8.04%) Migration
10 849 (7.19%) Cybersecurity
11 806 (6.83%) ITIL
12 787 (6.66%) Test Automation
13 757 (6.41%) Containerisation
14 736 (6.23%) Technical Leadership
15 728 (6.16%) Analytics
16 714 (6.05%) AI
17 712 (6.03%) Decision-Making
18 710 (6.01%) Roadmaps
19 695 (5.89%) Software Engineering
20 649 (5.50%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,384 (11.72%) Python
2 1,114 (9.43%) SQL
3 807 (6.83%) Java
4 607 (5.14%) PowerShell
5 411 (3.48%) JavaScript
6 361 (3.06%) Bash
7 238 (2.02%) C#
8 221 (1.87%) TypeScript
9 165 (1.40%) PL/SQL
10 128 (1.08%) Bicep
11 81 (0.69%) Shell Script
12 66 (0.56%) C++
13 58 (0.49%) Go
14 57 (0.48%) C
15 53 (0.45%) Scala
16 49 (0.41%) Apex Code
17 48 (0.41%) Groovy
18 47 (0.40%) Kotlin
19 42 (0.36%) Ruby
20 41 (0.35%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8,997 (76.19%) SC Cleared
2 2,239 (18.96%) DV Cleared
3 482 (4.08%) BPSS Clearance
4 464 (3.93%) Degree
5 223 (1.89%) CISSP
6 186 (1.58%) Cisco Certification
7 183 (1.55%) Azure Certification
8 171 (1.45%) Microsoft Certification
9 150 (1.27%) AWS Certification
10 144 (1.22%) CISM
11 109 (0.92%) PMI Certification
12 104 (0.88%) PMP
13 93 (0.79%) ISTQB
14 84 (0.71%) CCNP
15 75 (0.64%) Computer Science Degree
16 69 (0.58%) CCNA
17 62 (0.53%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 52 (0.44%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 46 (0.39%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
20 45 (0.38%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 537 (4.55%) QA
2 390 (3.30%) Data Quality
3 331 (2.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 323 (2.74%) NIST
5 286 (2.42%) NCSC
6 268 (2.27%) Accessibility
7 224 (1.90%) PMO
8 182 (1.54%) GDPR
9 174 (1.47%) SLA
10 157 (1.33%) GRC
11 87 (0.74%) WCAG
12 64 (0.54%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
14 45 (0.38%) NIST 800
15 37 (0.31%) Def Stans
16 26 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
16 26 (0.22%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 26 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 22 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 20 (0.17%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 825 (6.99%) Docker
2 629 (5.33%) Active Directory
3 437 (3.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 147 (1.24%) VMware ESXi
5 145 (1.23%) VMware NSX
6 142 (1.20%) Hyper-V
7 126 (1.07%) vSphere
8 92 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
9 46 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
10 42 (0.36%) Firmware
11 40 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
12 27 (0.23%) vCloud
13 25 (0.21%) BitLocker
14 20 (0.17%) NFS
15 15 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
16 14 (0.12%) Squid
17 11 (0.093%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 11 (0.093%) Postfix
18 9 (0.076%) Embedded Firmware
18 9 (0.076%) KVM
Systems Management
1 1,006 (8.52%) Kubernetes
2 457 (3.87%) Ansible
3 260 (2.20%) Grafana
4 208 (1.76%) Prometheus
5 139 (1.18%) SCCM
6 138 (1.17%) vCenter Server
7 95 (0.80%) SCOM
8 94 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
9 68 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
10 67 (0.57%) Argo
11 49 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
12 48 (0.41%) Puppet
13 41 (0.35%) Data Guard
14 32 (0.27%) Istio
14 32 (0.27%) Kibana
15 29 (0.25%) Control-M
15 29 (0.25%) NetBackup
15 29 (0.25%) Progress Chef
16 28 (0.24%) VxRail
17 27 (0.23%) Nagios
Vendors
1 1,549 (13.12%) Microsoft
2 954 (8.08%) Oracle
3 611 (5.17%) VMware
4 551 (4.67%) ServiceNow
5 457 (3.87%) SAP
6 299 (2.53%) Cisco
7 253 (2.14%) Google
8 222 (1.88%) Splunk
9 210 (1.78%) Databricks
10 178 (1.51%) Salesforce
11 149 (1.26%) Red Hat
12 127 (1.08%) Palo Alto
13 117 (0.99%) Informatica
14 108 (0.91%) Talend
15 106 (0.90%) IBM
16 101 (0.86%) Dynatrace
17 95 (0.80%) CyberArk
18 93 (0.79%) Remedy
19 82 (0.69%) SolarWinds
20 79 (0.67%) Fortinet