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 18 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,608 5,234 7,771
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.12% 17.81% 18.24%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.62% 57.50% 60.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,287 3,465 5,154
10th Percentile £375 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £625 £623 £650
90th Percentile £725 £688 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £540 £550
% change year-on-year -2.78% -1.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 829 298 514
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £13.91
25th Percentile £21.46 £21.26 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £40.30 £55.80
Median % change year-on-year +36.49% -27.79% -7.00%
75th Percentile £74.00 £66.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.27 £77.76 £84.43
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £52.00 £57.47
% change year-on-year +5.77% -9.52% -0.05%

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 15,237 9,103 12,859
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.77% 30.98% 30.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,137 5,746 7,978
10th Percentile £350 £281 £306
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year - -1.50% -3.09%
75th Percentile £622 £620 £646
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £533
% change year-on-year - -6.10% +1.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,076 514 1,058
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.13 £13.69
25th Percentile £21.28 £21.26 £17.73
Median hourly rate £50.00 £37.25 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +34.23% -6.88% -25.93%
75th Percentile £71.50 £65.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.36 £79.61 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £37.07 £40.30
% change year-on-year +28.24% -8.01% -19.40%

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 18 May 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 18 May 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 18 May 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 9,194 £525 -2.23% 1,913
UK excluding London +1 5,888 £525 -2.78% 1,532
London +6 3,274 £525 - 504
Work from Home +3 2,852 £525 - 1,138
South East +1 2,223 £546 -0.68% 515
South West 0 1,296 £538 -6.52% 355
North of England -1 889 £500 - 284
Midlands +3 864 £472 -10.10% 146
West Midlands +3 734 £474 -9.71% 104
North West -1 516 £500 - 159
East of England +2 376 £550 +10.00% 161
Scotland +35 223 £500 +11.11% 44
Yorkshire -11 214 £480 -4.00% 54
North East +1 195 £475 -1.04% 73
East Midlands -5 124 £450 -5.26% 42
Wales +3 82 £475 - 42
Northern Ireland +5 22 £638 +34.21% 20

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 (3.74%) Confluence
2 220 (2.07%) SharePoint
3 132 (1.24%) Microsoft Exchange
4 131 (1.23%) SAS
5 106 (1.00%) Apache Spark
6 82 (0.77%) Apache
7 72 (0.68%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.37%) WebLogic
9 34 (0.32%) nginx
10 29 (0.27%) Jupyter
11 21 (0.20%) Tomcat
12 16 (0.15%) IIS
12 16 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
13 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
14 14 (0.13%) CMS
14 14 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
15 13 (0.12%) NetWeaver
15 13 (0.12%) Skype for Business
16 11 (0.10%) ArcGIS
17 9 (0.085%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 193 (1.82%) Microsoft Office
2 192 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
3 108 (1.02%) Microsoft Project
4 88 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.13%) Simulink
8 7 (0.066%) AutoCAD
8 7 (0.066%) Notepad++
9 6 (0.057%) SOLIDWORKS
10 5 (0.047%) Revit
10 5 (0.047%) Windchill
11 4 (0.038%) Siemens NX
11 4 (0.038%) Sketch
12 3 (0.028%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.028%) Chatbot
13 2 (0.019%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.019%) InVision
13 2 (0.019%) Lectora
13 2 (0.019%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 113 (1.07%) SAP S/4HANA
2 48 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
3 39 (0.37%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 30 (0.28%) Teamcenter
5 28 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
5 28 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
6 23 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
7 15 (0.14%) Maximo
8 14 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
8 14 (0.13%) SAP PSCD
9 13 (0.12%) iTrent
9 13 (0.12%) SAP GRC
10 12 (0.11%) Findur
10 12 (0.11%) Temenos T24
11 11 (0.10%) Oracle Assets
12 10 (0.094%) SAP PP
13 9 (0.085%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 9 (0.085%) SAP ERP
13 9 (0.085%) SAP HCM
13 9 (0.085%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,856 (17.50%) AWS
2 1,826 (17.21%) Azure
3 442 (4.17%) GitHub
4 434 (4.09%) GCP
5 390 (3.68%) Azure DevOps
6 384 (3.62%) Power Platform
7 268 (2.53%) Serverless
8 262 (2.47%) Microsoft 365
9 255 (2.40%) Entra ID
10 250 (2.36%) GitHub Actions
11 210 (1.98%) Amazon S3
12 181 (1.71%) AWS Lambda
13 157 (1.48%) PaaS
14 148 (1.40%) Amazon EC2
15 144 (1.36%) Amazon EKS
16 137 (1.29%) AWS CloudFormation
17 135 (1.27%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 135 (1.27%) OpenShift
18 131 (1.23%) OCI
19 122 (1.15%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 483 (4.55%) Firewall
2 301 (2.84%) DNS
3 232 (2.19%) Network Security
4 230 (2.17%) WAN
5 208 (1.96%) LAN
6 174 (1.64%) VPN
7 151 (1.42%) DHCP
8 146 (1.38%) BGP
9 126 (1.19%) TCP/IP
10 125 (1.18%) OSPF
11 105 (0.99%) VLAN
12 96 (0.90%) Wi-Fi
13 84 (0.79%) Wireless
14 67 (0.63%) MPLS
15 61 (0.58%) SAN
16 56 (0.53%) Structured Cabling
17 55 (0.52%) VXLAN
18 52 (0.49%) SD-WAN
18 52 (0.49%) SSL
19 51 (0.48%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 301 (2.84%) Power BI
2 251 (2.37%) PostgreSQL
3 237 (2.23%) Data Warehouse
4 203 (1.91%) SQL Server
5 136 (1.28%) Metadata
6 130 (1.23%) Oracle Database
7 111 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
7 111 (1.05%) MongoDB
8 106 (1.00%) Data Lake
9 102 (0.96%) Relational Database
10 97 (0.91%) NoSQL
11 81 (0.76%) Pentaho
12 77 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
13 74 (0.70%) Big Data
14 72 (0.68%) Oracle Reports
15 71 (0.67%) MySQL
16 70 (0.66%) Tableau
17 65 (0.61%) Amazon Redshift
18 64 (0.60%) Azure SQL Database
19 61 (0.58%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 620 (5.84%) JIRA
2 465 (4.38%) Git
3 398 (3.75%) GitLab
4 396 (3.73%) Jenkins
5 109 (1.03%) Selenium
6 85 (0.80%) Postman
7 73 (0.69%) JUnit
8 65 (0.61%) SonarQube
9 55 (0.52%) Rational DOORS
10 53 (0.50%) Artifactory
10 53 (0.50%) JMeter
11 43 (0.41%) Bitbucket
11 43 (0.41%) Cucumber
12 39 (0.37%) Mockito
13 38 (0.36%) Maven
14 37 (0.35%) Visual Studio
15 35 (0.33%) Cypress.io
16 32 (0.30%) REST Assured
17 31 (0.29%) Zephyr
18 30 (0.28%) Gatling
General
1 2,329 (21.96%) Public Sector
2 2,211 (20.84%) Social Skills
3 757 (7.14%) Analytical Skills
4 694 (6.54%) Finance
5 350 (3.30%) Military
6 293 (2.76%) Documentation Skills
7 252 (2.38%) Aerospace
8 171 (1.61%) Legal
9 128 (1.21%) Telecoms
10 122 (1.15%) Influencing Skills
11 118 (1.11%) Banking
12 116 (1.09%) Manufacturing
13 112 (1.06%) Organisational Skills
14 87 (0.82%) Law
15 81 (0.76%) Presentation Skills
16 80 (0.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 62 (0.58%) Police
18 59 (0.56%) Marketing
19 48 (0.45%) Electronics
20 43 (0.41%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,613 (15.21%) Architect
2 998 (9.41%) Developer
3 908 (8.56%) Senior
4 746 (7.03%) Analyst
5 745 (7.02%) Lead
6 528 (4.98%) Consultant
7 515 (4.85%) Data Engineer
8 496 (4.68%) DevOps Engineer
9 323 (3.04%) Technical Architect
10 316 (2.98%) Software Engineer
11 300 (2.83%) Network Engineer
12 298 (2.81%) Solutions Architect
13 278 (2.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 275 (2.59%) Business Analyst
15 225 (2.12%) Project Manager
16 216 (2.04%) Azure Engineer
16 216 (2.04%) Designer
17 209 (1.97%) Security Architect
18 192 (1.81%) Administrator
19 190 (1.79%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 328 (3.09%) REST
2 252 (2.38%) Spring
3 217 (2.05%) Kafka
4 206 (1.94%) Spring Boot
5 193 (1.82%) Node.js
5 193 (1.82%) React
6 178 (1.68%) .NET
7 153 (1.44%) LDAP
8 151 (1.42%) SOAP
9 144 (1.36%) RESTful
10 126 (1.19%) JSON
11 122 (1.15%) AngularJS
12 120 (1.13%) PySpark
13 114 (1.07%) Web Services
14 98 (0.92%) Oracle Fusion
15 96 (0.90%) OAuth
16 90 (0.85%) Middleware
17 89 (0.84%) HTML
18 87 (0.82%) Playwright
19 85 (0.80%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 367 (3.46%) Cloud Native
2 334 (3.15%) Product Ownership
3 314 (2.96%) Data Centre
4 288 (2.71%) Onboarding
5 202 (1.90%) Management Information System
6 157 (1.48%) PKI
7 140 (1.32%) Legacy Systems
8 135 (1.27%) Security Posture
9 124 (1.17%) Enterprise Software
10 122 (1.15%) Replication
11 120 (1.13%) Distributed Systems
12 97 (0.91%) Self-Motivation
13 89 (0.84%) Public Cloud
14 88 (0.83%) Data Structures
15 86 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
16 83 (0.78%) Clustering
17 82 (0.77%) Hybrid Cloud
18 75 (0.71%) Virtual Team
19 70 (0.66%) Greenfield Project
20 65 (0.61%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 852 (8.03%) Windows
2 741 (6.99%) Linux
3 247 (2.33%) Windows Server
4 182 (1.72%) Unix
5 136 (1.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 104 (0.98%) Android
7 86 (0.81%) Windows 10
8 67 (0.63%) Apple iOS
9 44 (0.41%) Solaris
10 42 (0.40%) Mac OS
11 40 (0.38%) Ubuntu
12 31 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 29 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
14 28 (0.26%) VMS
15 26 (0.25%) AIX
16 22 (0.21%) CentOS
17 14 (0.13%) Windows 7
18 12 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
19 11 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
20 10 (0.094%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,013 (18.98%) Agile
2 1,606 (15.14%) DevOps
3 1,447 (13.64%) CI/CD
4 1,135 (10.70%) Problem-Solving
5 992 (9.35%) Stakeholder Management
6 926 (8.73%) Continuous Improvement
7 839 (7.91%) Migration
8 776 (7.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 743 (7.00%) Infrastructure as Code
10 642 (6.05%) ITIL
11 630 (5.94%) Cybersecurity
12 619 (5.84%) Test Automation
13 602 (5.67%) Analytics
14 584 (5.51%) Containerisation
15 580 (5.47%) Roadmaps
16 577 (5.44%) Software Engineering
17 541 (5.10%) Data Modelling
18 525 (4.95%) Decision-Making
19 455 (4.29%) AI
20 454 (4.28%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 1,203 (11.34%) Python
2 966 (9.11%) SQL
3 663 (6.25%) Java
4 550 (5.18%) PowerShell
5 336 (3.17%) JavaScript
6 220 (2.07%) C#
7 204 (1.92%) Bash
8 177 (1.67%) TypeScript
9 112 (1.06%) PL/SQL
10 98 (0.92%) Shell Script
11 97 (0.91%) C++
12 73 (0.69%) Go
13 70 (0.66%) Scala
14 69 (0.65%) Ruby
15 59 (0.56%) Bicep
16 57 (0.54%) C
17 52 (0.49%) Apex Code
18 50 (0.47%) R
19 41 (0.39%) Kusto Query Language
20 40 (0.38%) Ada
Qualifications
1 8,092 (76.28%) SC Cleared
2 1,912 (18.02%) DV Cleared
3 450 (4.24%) Degree
4 308 (2.90%) BPSS Clearance
5 213 (2.01%) Cisco Certification
6 177 (1.67%) CISSP
7 133 (1.25%) Azure Certification
8 124 (1.17%) CCNP
9 122 (1.15%) AWS Certification
10 119 (1.12%) CISM
11 95 (0.90%) Microsoft Certification
12 91 (0.86%) CCNA
13 80 (0.75%) PMP
14 73 (0.69%) Computer Science Degree
15 69 (0.65%) PMI Certification
15 69 (0.65%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 63 (0.59%) ITIL Certification
17 61 (0.58%) TOGAF Certification
18 58 (0.55%) ISTQB
19 50 (0.47%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 385 (3.63%) QA
2 321 (3.03%) Data Quality
3 301 (2.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 297 (2.80%) NIST
5 207 (1.95%) Accessibility
6 202 (1.90%) NCSC
7 174 (1.64%) GDPR
8 161 (1.52%) PMO
9 107 (1.01%) SLA
10 76 (0.72%) GRC
11 62 (0.58%) JSP 440
12 54 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
13 45 (0.42%) WCAG
14 40 (0.38%) NIST 800
15 33 (0.31%) RMADS
16 32 (0.30%) COBIT
17 31 (0.29%) PCI DSS
18 30 (0.28%) Def Stans
19 28 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
20 25 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 664 (6.26%) Docker
2 476 (4.49%) Active Directory
3 289 (2.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 102 (0.96%) VMware ESXi
5 98 (0.92%) VMware NSX
6 84 (0.79%) Hyper-V
7 77 (0.73%) vSphere
8 73 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
9 36 (0.34%) Firmware
10 35 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
11 24 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
12 23 (0.22%) NFS
13 19 (0.18%) BitLocker
14 18 (0.17%) vCloud
15 17 (0.16%) Squid
16 16 (0.15%) Postfix
16 16 (0.15%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 8 (0.075%) KVM
17 8 (0.075%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.057%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 834 (7.86%) Kubernetes
1 834 (7.86%) Terraform
2 366 (3.45%) Ansible
3 270 (2.55%) Grafana
4 223 (2.10%) Prometheus
5 114 (1.07%) Single Sign-On
6 102 (0.96%) vCenter Server
7 77 (0.73%) SCCM
8 66 (0.62%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 55 (0.52%) Microsoft Intune
10 54 (0.51%) FortiGate
11 53 (0.50%) Argo
12 41 (0.39%) Puppet
13 39 (0.37%) Podman
14 38 (0.36%) Oracle RMAN
15 34 (0.32%) Progress Chef
16 32 (0.30%) Nagios
17 31 (0.29%) vRealize
18 28 (0.26%) SCOM
19 25 (0.24%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,057 (9.96%) Microsoft
2 661 (6.23%) Oracle
3 510 (4.81%) VMware
4 417 (3.93%) ServiceNow
5 373 (3.52%) SAP
6 367 (3.46%) Cisco
7 251 (2.37%) Splunk
8 215 (2.03%) Databricks
9 176 (1.66%) Red Hat
10 171 (1.61%) Google
11 151 (1.42%) Salesforce
12 129 (1.22%) Talend
13 124 (1.17%) Palo Alto
14 123 (1.16%) IBM
15 103 (0.97%) Juniper
16 98 (0.92%) CyberArk
16 98 (0.92%) Informatica
17 92 (0.87%) Atlassian
18 88 (0.83%) Fortinet
19 85 (0.80%) F5