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

6 months to
29 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 11,914 5,984 6,713
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.81% 18.36% 17.72%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.78% 58.23% 60.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,281 3,877 4,283
10th Percentile £396 £332 £350
25th Percentile £462 £443 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.42% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £720 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £537 £550
% change year-on-year +0.09% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 850 621 394
10th Percentile £19.99 £18.51 £20.12
25th Percentile £29.33 £18.87 £27.00
Median hourly rate £63.49 £25.15 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +152.45% -58.08% -
75th Percentile £77.44 £33.75 £71.74
90th Percentile £91.03 £70.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +158.45% -58.08% +3.91%

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 17,321 10,276 11,062
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.71% 31.52% 29.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,524 6,433 6,726
10th Percentile £350 £282 £313
25th Percentile £445 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £634
90th Percentile £713 £709 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,394 866 615
10th Percentile £17.00 £17.87 £17.73
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £24.18
Median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £48.56
Median % change year-on-year +86.88% -48.21% -9.54%
75th Percentile £72.25 £42.81 £68.75
90th Percentile £88.75 £70.00 £75.34
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -49.70% -4.21%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 10,258 £550 +2.33% 4,862
UK excluding London +1 6,644 £538 +0.09% 3,356
London +6 3,647 £550 +2.33% 1,448
Work from Home +2 3,142 £525 -2.33% 2,562
South East +1 2,260 £564 +7.48% 887
South West 0 1,396 £550 - 754
North of England +3 1,285 £518 -1.43% 663
Midlands 0 947 £481 -6.92% 357
West Midlands 0 807 £475 -8.39% 239
North West +1 767 £530 -4.72% 391
East of England 0 432 £574 +4.36% 377
Scotland +12 304 £486 -1.27% 240
Yorkshire +2 295 £496 +1.02% 105
North East 0 243 £470 -10.05% 170
East Midlands 0 133 £495 +7.03% 117
Wales +5 109 £550 +4.76% 64
Northern Ireland +1 36 £650 +21.50% 61

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
1 391 (3.28%) Confluence
2 266 (2.23%) SharePoint
3 165 (1.38%) SAS
4 129 (1.08%) Microsoft Exchange
5 111 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
6 103 (0.86%) Apache Spark
7 102 (0.86%) Apache
8 41 (0.34%) Jupyter
9 38 (0.32%) nginx
9 38 (0.32%) WebLogic
10 34 (0.29%) CMS
11 22 (0.18%) Skype for Business
12 21 (0.18%) IIS
13 19 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
14 18 (0.15%) Tomcat
15 16 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 16 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
16 15 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
17 11 (0.092%) JBoss
17 11 (0.092%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 216 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 166 (1.39%) Microsoft Office
3 104 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
4 101 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 19 (0.16%) Revit
9 18 (0.15%) SOLIDWORKS
9 18 (0.15%) Windchill
10 9 (0.076%) Adobe XD
10 9 (0.076%) Simulink
11 8 (0.067%) Chatbot
12 7 (0.059%) Notepad++
12 7 (0.059%) Sketch
13 6 (0.050%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 4 (0.034%) OrCAD
14 4 (0.034%) Trello
15 2 (0.017%) Gliffy
15 2 (0.017%) Houdini
Business Applications
1 148 (1.24%) SAP S/4HANA
2 81 (0.68%) Remedy ITSM
3 60 (0.50%) Oracle ERP
4 48 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
5 36 (0.30%) Teamcenter
6 32 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 30 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
8 26 (0.22%) Oracle Payroll
8 26 (0.22%) SAP PSCD
9 24 (0.20%) SAP GRC
10 21 (0.18%) SAP FI
11 18 (0.15%) Primavera
12 16 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
12 16 (0.13%) SAP HR
13 15 (0.13%) Maximo
14 14 (0.12%) SAP CO
15 13 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
15 13 (0.11%) Oracle Receivables
16 12 (0.10%) NetSuite
16 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,153 (18.07%) Azure
2 2,095 (17.58%) AWS
3 510 (4.28%) Azure DevOps
3 510 (4.28%) GitHub
4 494 (4.15%) Power Platform
5 459 (3.85%) GCP
6 350 (2.94%) Microsoft 365
7 349 (2.93%) GitHub Actions
8 332 (2.79%) Entra ID
9 274 (2.30%) Serverless
10 238 (2.00%) Amazon S3
11 202 (1.70%) AWS Lambda
12 178 (1.49%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 169 (1.42%) OCI
14 168 (1.41%) Amazon EKS
15 167 (1.40%) SaaS
16 143 (1.20%) Amazon EC2
17 137 (1.15%) OpenShift
18 128 (1.07%) AWS CloudFormation
19 110 (0.92%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 456 (3.83%) Firewall
2 387 (3.25%) DNS
3 242 (2.03%) Network Security
4 212 (1.78%) WAN
5 201 (1.69%) VPN
6 189 (1.59%) DHCP
7 163 (1.37%) LAN
8 138 (1.16%) TCP/IP
9 128 (1.07%) BGP
10 116 (0.97%) Wi-Fi
11 99 (0.83%) VLAN
12 91 (0.76%) Wireless
13 88 (0.74%) OSPF
14 71 (0.60%) SSL
15 65 (0.55%) MPLS
16 64 (0.54%) SAN
17 62 (0.52%) VSAN
18 61 (0.51%) IPsec
19 58 (0.49%) SD-WAN
20 50 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 350 (2.94%) Power BI
2 303 (2.54%) PostgreSQL
3 277 (2.32%) SQL Server
4 269 (2.26%) Data Warehouse
5 203 (1.70%) Metadata
6 188 (1.58%) Oracle Database
7 147 (1.23%) Data Lake
8 142 (1.19%) Relational Database
9 131 (1.10%) MongoDB
10 110 (0.92%) MySQL
11 106 (0.89%) Amazon RDS
12 95 (0.80%) NoSQL
13 88 (0.74%) Oracle Reports
14 72 (0.60%) Elasticsearch
15 70 (0.59%) Amazon Athena
16 69 (0.58%) Pentaho
17 58 (0.49%) Big Data
18 52 (0.44%) Tableau
19 51 (0.43%) Amazon Aurora
20 50 (0.42%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 655 (5.50%) JIRA
2 583 (4.89%) Git
3 530 (4.45%) GitLab
4 495 (4.15%) Jenkins
5 152 (1.28%) Selenium
6 87 (0.73%) Postman
7 78 (0.65%) Maven
8 77 (0.65%) JUnit
9 75 (0.63%) JMeter
9 75 (0.63%) SonarQube
10 72 (0.60%) Cucumber
11 54 (0.45%) Cypress.io
12 51 (0.43%) Gradle
13 47 (0.39%) REST Assured
14 46 (0.39%) Mockito
15 44 (0.37%) Gatling
16 40 (0.34%) Visual Studio
17 39 (0.33%) Artifactory
17 39 (0.33%) Zephyr
18 32 (0.27%) MSI
General
1 2,673 (22.44%) Social Skills
2 2,438 (20.46%) Public Sector
3 960 (8.06%) Analytical Skills
4 767 (6.44%) Finance
5 431 (3.62%) Military
6 340 (2.85%) Aerospace
7 311 (2.61%) Documentation Skills
8 231 (1.94%) Influencing Skills
9 192 (1.61%) Organisational Skills
10 175 (1.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 166 (1.39%) Legal
12 165 (1.38%) Telecoms
13 162 (1.36%) Manufacturing
14 141 (1.18%) Banking
15 122 (1.02%) Law
16 121 (1.02%) Police
17 75 (0.63%) Presentation Skills
18 54 (0.45%) Local Government
19 49 (0.41%) Aviation
20 42 (0.35%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,944 (16.32%) Architect
2 1,221 (10.25%) Developer
3 1,136 (9.54%) Senior
4 1,052 (8.83%) Lead
5 693 (5.82%) Consultant
6 645 (5.41%) Analyst
7 516 (4.33%) DevOps Engineer
8 487 (4.09%) Data Engineer
9 427 (3.58%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 375 (3.15%) Solutions Architect
11 368 (3.09%) Technical Architect
12 303 (2.54%) Data Architect
13 289 (2.43%) Security Architect
14 259 (2.17%) Software Engineer
15 250 (2.10%) Network Engineer
16 232 (1.95%) Administrator
17 217 (1.82%) Java Developer
18 215 (1.80%) Designer
19 211 (1.77%) Azure Engineer
20 208 (1.75%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,001 (8.40%) Terraform
2 467 (3.92%) REST
3 263 (2.21%) Kafka
4 257 (2.16%) Spring
5 237 (1.99%) Spring Boot
6 211 (1.77%) RESTful
7 202 (1.70%) .NET
8 190 (1.59%) React
9 183 (1.54%) SOAP
10 174 (1.46%) Node.js
11 156 (1.31%) JSON
12 143 (1.20%) OAuth
13 139 (1.17%) HTML
14 135 (1.13%) XML
15 126 (1.06%) Middleware
16 110 (0.92%) Web Services
17 109 (0.91%) Oracle Fusion
18 108 (0.91%) AngularJS
19 104 (0.87%) CSS
20 99 (0.83%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 538 (4.52%) Cloud Native
2 472 (3.96%) Onboarding
3 378 (3.17%) Product Ownership
4 310 (2.60%) Data Centre
5 271 (2.27%) Management Information System
6 187 (1.57%) Legacy Systems
7 182 (1.53%) PKI
8 179 (1.50%) Enterprise Software
9 163 (1.37%) CMDB
10 139 (1.17%) Distributed Systems
11 125 (1.05%) Hybrid Cloud
12 121 (1.02%) Cyber Threat
13 118 (0.99%) Replication
14 114 (0.96%) Operational Technology
15 112 (0.94%) Self-Motivation
16 101 (0.85%) Data Structures
17 99 (0.83%) Security Posture
18 93 (0.78%) Public Cloud
18 93 (0.78%) Security Operations Centre
19 90 (0.76%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 1,003 (8.42%) Windows
2 793 (6.66%) Linux
3 374 (3.14%) Windows Server
4 240 (2.01%) Unix
5 154 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 146 (1.23%) Windows 10
7 83 (0.70%) Solaris
8 78 (0.65%) Android
9 48 (0.40%) Mac OS
10 46 (0.39%) CentOS
11 45 (0.38%) Apple iOS
12 39 (0.33%) Ubuntu
13 37 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
14 31 (0.26%) AIX
15 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 25 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
17 20 (0.17%) VMS
18 19 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
19 16 (0.13%) Rocky
20 12 (0.10%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,533 (21.26%) Agile
2 1,804 (15.14%) DevOps
3 1,799 (15.10%) CI/CD
4 1,678 (14.08%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,467 (12.31%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,281 (10.75%) Problem-Solving
7 1,202 (10.09%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,027 (8.62%) Infrastructure as Code
9 970 (8.14%) Migration
10 865 (7.26%) Cybersecurity
11 790 (6.63%) ITIL
12 777 (6.52%) Test Automation
13 763 (6.40%) Decision-Making
14 761 (6.39%) Containerisation
15 759 (6.37%) Technical Leadership
16 746 (6.26%) AI
17 739 (6.20%) Roadmaps
18 717 (6.02%) Analytics
19 674 (5.66%) Software Engineering
20 632 (5.30%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,367 (11.47%) Python
2 1,111 (9.33%) SQL
3 793 (6.66%) Java
4 591 (4.96%) PowerShell
5 413 (3.47%) JavaScript
6 354 (2.97%) Bash
7 231 (1.94%) C#
8 223 (1.87%) TypeScript
9 156 (1.31%) PL/SQL
10 126 (1.06%) Bicep
11 85 (0.71%) Shell Script
12 60 (0.50%) C++
13 59 (0.50%) Go
13 59 (0.50%) Scala
14 51 (0.43%) C
15 49 (0.41%) Kotlin
16 48 (0.40%) Groovy
17 40 (0.34%) Apex Code
18 38 (0.32%) T-SQL
19 35 (0.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 9,083 (76.24%) SC Cleared
2 2,244 (18.83%) DV Cleared
3 534 (4.48%) BPSS Clearance
4 480 (4.03%) Degree
5 226 (1.90%) CISSP
6 192 (1.61%) Cisco Certification
7 187 (1.57%) Azure Certification
8 169 (1.42%) Microsoft Certification
9 153 (1.28%) AWS Certification
10 142 (1.19%) CISM
11 107 (0.90%) PMI Certification
12 97 (0.81%) PMP
13 96 (0.81%) ISTQB
14 90 (0.76%) CCNP
15 72 (0.60%) Computer Science Degree
16 71 (0.60%) CCNA
17 59 (0.50%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 55 (0.46%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 45 (0.38%) TOGAF Certification
20 43 (0.36%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 536 (4.50%) QA
2 388 (3.26%) Data Quality
3 340 (2.85%) NIST
4 325 (2.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 309 (2.59%) NCSC
6 291 (2.44%) Accessibility
7 221 (1.85%) PMO
8 183 (1.54%) SLA
9 177 (1.49%) GDPR
10 168 (1.41%) GRC
11 86 (0.72%) WCAG
12 58 (0.49%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
14 44 (0.37%) NIST 800
15 36 (0.30%) Def Stans
16 35 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
17 29 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 22 (0.18%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 21 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
20 20 (0.17%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 830 (6.97%) Docker
2 653 (5.48%) Active Directory
3 443 (3.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 142 (1.19%) VMware ESXi
5 140 (1.18%) VMware NSX
6 139 (1.17%) Hyper-V
7 132 (1.11%) vSphere
8 92 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
9 44 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
10 41 (0.34%) Firmware
11 38 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
12 26 (0.22%) BitLocker
13 25 (0.21%) vCloud
14 21 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
15 20 (0.17%) NFS
16 12 (0.10%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 11 (0.092%) Squid
18 10 (0.084%) KVM
18 10 (0.084%) Microsoft Virtual Server
18 10 (0.084%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 1,008 (8.46%) Kubernetes
2 442 (3.71%) Ansible
3 268 (2.25%) Grafana
4 204 (1.71%) Prometheus
5 138 (1.16%) SCCM
6 129 (1.08%) vCenter Server
7 99 (0.83%) SCOM
8 94 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
9 69 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
10 62 (0.52%) Argo
11 47 (0.39%) Kibana
12 44 (0.37%) Oracle RMAN
13 43 (0.36%) Puppet
14 39 (0.33%) Data Guard
15 36 (0.30%) Istio
16 33 (0.28%) NetBackup
17 31 (0.26%) VxRail
18 29 (0.24%) Control-M
19 26 (0.22%) WSUS
20 25 (0.21%) Nagios
Vendors
1 1,580 (13.26%) Microsoft
2 964 (8.09%) Oracle
3 600 (5.04%) VMware
4 542 (4.55%) ServiceNow
5 440 (3.69%) SAP
6 302 (2.53%) Cisco
7 271 (2.27%) Google
8 223 (1.87%) Splunk
9 184 (1.54%) Databricks
10 162 (1.36%) Salesforce
11 136 (1.14%) Red Hat
12 129 (1.08%) Palo Alto
13 110 (0.92%) Informatica
14 102 (0.86%) Dynatrace
14 102 (0.86%) IBM
15 100 (0.84%) Talend
16 99 (0.83%) CyberArk
17 93 (0.78%) Remedy
18 80 (0.67%) Fortinet
18 80 (0.67%) SolarWinds