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

6 months to
7 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,621 5,161 8,010
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.27% 17.62% 18.46%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.40% 57.24% 60.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,260 3,429 5,280
10th Percentile £371 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £529 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.76% -3.82% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £696 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £548 £550
% change year-on-year -4.20% -0.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 858 292 528
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £21.41 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £50.00 £57.30
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -12.74% -4.50%
75th Percentile £73.34 £67.25 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.47 £84.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £56.40 £58.00
% change year-on-year -2.47% -2.77% +0.87%

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 15,304 9,016 13,257
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.09% 30.78% 30.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,172 5,686 8,192
10th Percentile £345 £286 £300
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £708 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £530
% change year-on-year - -5.66% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,101 515 1,079
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.13 £13.87
25th Percentile £21.25 £21.59 £17.88
Median hourly rate £47.50 £40.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.75% - -25.93%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.68 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.25 £79.48 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £40.00 £40.94
% change year-on-year +18.75% -2.30% -17.66%

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 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 7 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 7 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 +3 9,204 £525 -2.28% 2,119
UK excluding London +1 5,900 £525 -4.20% 1,796
London +6 3,263 £525 - 513
Work from Home +4 2,846 £525 - 1,033
South East +1 2,214 £538 -2.27% 569
South West 0 1,308 £538 -4.44% 352
Midlands +4 909 £475 -9.52% 196
North of England -1 851 £488 -2.50% 357
West Midlands +4 773 £475 -11.55% 131
North West -2 497 £489 -2.23% 188
East of England +2 386 £525 +16.67% 212
Scotland +42 220 £500 +11.11% 60
Yorkshire -2 210 £476 -9.43% 76
North East +1 177 £475 -5.00% 96
East Midlands -3 130 £450 -5.26% 65
Wales +4 83 £500 +5.26% 53
Northern Ireland +7 20 £450 -5.26% 31

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
1 409 (3.85%) Confluence
2 223 (2.10%) SharePoint
3 134 (1.26%) Microsoft Exchange
4 130 (1.22%) SAS
5 105 (0.99%) Apache Spark
6 85 (0.80%) Apache
7 71 (0.67%) Apache Airflow
8 38 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 37 (0.35%) nginx
10 26 (0.24%) Jupyter
11 20 (0.19%) Tomcat
12 15 (0.14%) IIS
12 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
13 14 (0.13%) CMS
13 14 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
13 14 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
14 13 (0.12%) Skype for Business
15 11 (0.10%) NetWeaver
16 10 (0.094%) ArcGIS
17 9 (0.085%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 213 (2.01%) Microsoft Office
2 193 (1.82%) Microsoft Excel
3 123 (1.16%) Microsoft Project
4 83 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.15%) Simulink
8 7 (0.066%) AutoCAD
8 7 (0.066%) Notepad++
9 6 (0.056%) 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
13 2 (0.019%) Chatbot
13 2 (0.019%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.019%) InVision
13 2 (0.019%) Lectora
13 2 (0.019%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 105 (0.99%) SAP S/4HANA
2 48 (0.45%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 47 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
4 30 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
5 29 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
6 26 (0.24%) Teamcenter
7 21 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
8 16 (0.15%) Maximo
9 15 (0.14%) SAP PP
10 14 (0.13%) SAP PSCD
11 13 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
11 13 (0.12%) Temenos T24
12 12 (0.11%) Findur
13 11 (0.10%) Oracle Assets
13 11 (0.10%) SAP GRC
14 10 (0.094%) iTrent
14 10 (0.094%) SAP HCM
15 9 (0.085%) Integrated Workplace Management System
15 9 (0.085%) SAP HR
16 8 (0.075%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 1,841 (17.33%) AWS
2 1,839 (17.31%) Azure
3 450 (4.24%) GitHub
4 434 (4.09%) GCP
5 406 (3.82%) Azure DevOps
6 387 (3.64%) Power Platform
7 279 (2.63%) Serverless
8 276 (2.60%) Microsoft 365
9 257 (2.42%) GitHub Actions
10 252 (2.37%) Entra ID
11 213 (2.01%) Amazon S3
12 184 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
13 158 (1.49%) PaaS
14 144 (1.36%) AWS CloudFormation
15 139 (1.31%) Amazon EC2
16 137 (1.29%) OpenShift
17 136 (1.28%) Amazon EKS
18 132 (1.24%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 126 (1.19%) IaaS
20 125 (1.18%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 478 (4.50%) Firewall
2 297 (2.80%) DNS
3 234 (2.20%) Network Security
4 225 (2.12%) WAN
5 205 (1.93%) LAN
6 173 (1.63%) VPN
7 146 (1.37%) BGP
8 143 (1.35%) DHCP
9 125 (1.18%) OSPF
10 122 (1.15%) TCP/IP
11 97 (0.91%) Wi-Fi
12 94 (0.89%) VLAN
13 82 (0.77%) Wireless
14 69 (0.65%) MPLS
15 57 (0.54%) SAN
16 54 (0.51%) VXLAN
17 53 (0.50%) SD-WAN
17 53 (0.50%) SSL
18 51 (0.48%) IPsec
19 45 (0.42%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 300 (2.82%) Power BI
2 255 (2.40%) PostgreSQL
3 235 (2.21%) Data Warehouse
4 197 (1.85%) SQL Server
5 139 (1.31%) Metadata
6 121 (1.14%) Oracle Database
7 110 (1.04%) Amazon RDS
8 108 (1.02%) Data Lake
9 102 (0.96%) MongoDB
10 100 (0.94%) Relational Database
11 99 (0.93%) NoSQL
12 79 (0.74%) Pentaho
13 78 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
14 74 (0.70%) Big Data
15 72 (0.68%) MySQL
16 71 (0.67%) Azure SQL Database
17 70 (0.66%) Oracle Reports
18 68 (0.64%) Tableau
19 66 (0.62%) Amazon Redshift
20 60 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 640 (6.03%) JIRA
2 478 (4.50%) Git
3 398 (3.75%) Jenkins
4 392 (3.69%) GitLab
5 100 (0.94%) Selenium
6 91 (0.86%) Postman
7 78 (0.73%) JUnit
8 69 (0.65%) SonarQube
9 52 (0.49%) Artifactory
9 52 (0.49%) Rational DOORS
10 49 (0.46%) JMeter
11 45 (0.42%) Bitbucket
12 41 (0.39%) Cucumber
12 41 (0.39%) Maven
12 41 (0.39%) Mockito
13 37 (0.35%) Cypress.io
13 37 (0.35%) Visual Studio
14 31 (0.29%) Zephyr
15 27 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
16 25 (0.24%) Gatling
General
1 2,342 (22.05%) Public Sector
2 2,275 (21.42%) Social Skills
3 799 (7.52%) Analytical Skills
4 706 (6.65%) Finance
5 352 (3.31%) Military
6 285 (2.68%) Documentation Skills
7 246 (2.32%) Aerospace
8 170 (1.60%) Legal
9 137 (1.29%) Telecoms
10 129 (1.21%) Influencing Skills
11 126 (1.19%) Manufacturing
12 117 (1.10%) Organisational Skills
13 116 (1.09%) Banking
14 91 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
15 88 (0.83%) Law
16 85 (0.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 68 (0.64%) Police
18 59 (0.56%) Marketing
19 55 (0.52%) Electronics
20 38 (0.36%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,610 (15.16%) Architect
2 1,012 (9.53%) Developer
3 920 (8.66%) Senior
4 751 (7.07%) Analyst
5 731 (6.88%) Lead
6 533 (5.02%) Consultant
7 506 (4.76%) Data Engineer
8 490 (4.61%) DevOps Engineer
9 316 (2.98%) Technical Architect
10 315 (2.97%) Software Engineer
11 298 (2.81%) Network Engineer
12 284 (2.67%) Solutions Architect
13 279 (2.63%) Business Analyst
14 263 (2.48%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 229 (2.16%) Project Manager
16 219 (2.06%) Azure Engineer
17 214 (2.01%) Security Architect
18 211 (1.99%) Designer
19 187 (1.76%) Administrator
20 185 (1.74%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 335 (3.15%) REST
2 253 (2.38%) Spring
3 220 (2.07%) Kafka
4 202 (1.90%) Spring Boot
5 195 (1.84%) Node.js
6 183 (1.72%) React
7 175 (1.65%) .NET
8 152 (1.43%) LDAP
9 148 (1.39%) SOAP
10 147 (1.38%) RESTful
11 139 (1.31%) JSON
12 122 (1.15%) AngularJS
12 122 (1.15%) PySpark
13 115 (1.08%) Web Services
14 98 (0.92%) Oracle Fusion
15 93 (0.88%) OAuth
16 92 (0.87%) HTML
17 88 (0.83%) Elastic Stack
18 86 (0.81%) Middleware
18 86 (0.81%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 362 (3.41%) Cloud Native
2 348 (3.28%) Product Ownership
3 311 (2.93%) Data Centre
4 299 (2.82%) Onboarding
5 193 (1.82%) Management Information System
6 176 (1.66%) PKI
7 137 (1.29%) Legacy Systems
8 131 (1.23%) Security Posture
9 126 (1.19%) Enterprise Software
10 124 (1.17%) Replication
11 119 (1.12%) Distributed Systems
12 105 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
13 89 (0.84%) Public Cloud
14 81 (0.76%) Data Structures
15 80 (0.75%) Clustering
15 80 (0.75%) Hybrid Cloud
16 76 (0.72%) Security Operations Centre
17 74 (0.70%) Virtual Team
18 67 (0.63%) Greenfield Project
19 62 (0.58%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 879 (8.28%) Windows
2 735 (6.92%) Linux
3 254 (2.39%) Windows Server
4 173 (1.63%) Unix
5 128 (1.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 113 (1.06%) Android
7 102 (0.96%) Windows 10
8 67 (0.63%) Apple iOS
9 48 (0.45%) Mac OS
10 43 (0.40%) Ubuntu
11 38 (0.36%) Solaris
12 33 (0.31%) VMS
13 29 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
14 28 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
15 27 (0.25%) AIX
16 23 (0.22%) CentOS
17 15 (0.14%) Windows 7
18 14 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
19 10 (0.094%) Embedded Linux
19 10 (0.094%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,052 (19.32%) Agile
2 1,604 (15.10%) DevOps
3 1,442 (13.58%) CI/CD
4 1,155 (10.87%) Problem-Solving
5 995 (9.37%) Stakeholder Management
6 924 (8.70%) Continuous Improvement
7 863 (8.13%) Migration
8 786 (7.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 737 (6.94%) Infrastructure as Code
10 638 (6.01%) ITIL
11 623 (5.87%) Test Automation
12 621 (5.85%) Cybersecurity
13 609 (5.73%) Analytics
14 597 (5.62%) Containerisation
15 574 (5.40%) Software Engineering
16 569 (5.36%) Roadmaps
17 518 (4.88%) Data Modelling
18 503 (4.74%) Decision-Making
19 466 (4.39%) Scrum
20 455 (4.28%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,212 (11.41%) Python
2 973 (9.16%) SQL
3 671 (6.32%) Java
4 568 (5.35%) PowerShell
5 342 (3.22%) JavaScript
6 220 (2.07%) C#
7 197 (1.85%) Bash
8 183 (1.72%) TypeScript
9 118 (1.11%) PL/SQL
10 100 (0.94%) C++
11 97 (0.91%) Shell Script
12 76 (0.72%) Go
13 71 (0.67%) Scala
14 68 (0.64%) Ruby
15 60 (0.56%) Bicep
15 60 (0.56%) C
16 50 (0.47%) R
17 45 (0.42%) Apex Code
18 41 (0.39%) Ada
19 40 (0.38%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 8,104 (76.30%) SC Cleared
2 1,900 (17.89%) DV Cleared
3 467 (4.40%) Degree
4 313 (2.95%) BPSS Clearance
5 208 (1.96%) Cisco Certification
6 177 (1.67%) CISSP
7 140 (1.32%) Azure Certification
8 127 (1.20%) AWS Certification
9 120 (1.13%) CCNP
10 116 (1.09%) CISM
11 97 (0.91%) Microsoft Certification
12 86 (0.81%) CCNA
13 77 (0.72%) Computer Science Degree
14 75 (0.71%) PMP
15 72 (0.68%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 70 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
17 67 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
18 64 (0.60%) PMI Certification
19 58 (0.55%) ISTQB
20 50 (0.47%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 383 (3.61%) QA
2 321 (3.02%) Data Quality
3 301 (2.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 297 (2.80%) NIST
5 202 (1.90%) NCSC
6 199 (1.87%) Accessibility
7 168 (1.58%) GDPR
8 165 (1.55%) PMO
9 111 (1.05%) SLA
10 73 (0.69%) GRC
11 65 (0.61%) JSP 440
12 52 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
13 41 (0.39%) NIST 800
13 41 (0.39%) WCAG
14 33 (0.31%) PCI DSS
14 33 (0.31%) RMADS
15 32 (0.30%) COBIT
16 31 (0.29%) Def Stans
17 28 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 23 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 681 (6.41%) Docker
2 488 (4.59%) Active Directory
3 301 (2.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 100 (0.94%) VMware ESXi
4 100 (0.94%) VMware NSX
5 87 (0.82%) Hyper-V
6 79 (0.74%) vSphere
7 74 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
8 42 (0.40%) Firmware
9 34 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
10 22 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
11 20 (0.19%) BitLocker
11 20 (0.19%) NFS
12 17 (0.16%) Postfix
12 17 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 15 (0.14%) vCloud
14 12 (0.11%) Squid
15 8 (0.075%) KVM
15 8 (0.075%) Microsoft App-V
16 7 (0.066%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 870 (8.19%) Kubernetes
2 854 (8.04%) Terraform
3 359 (3.38%) Ansible
4 272 (2.56%) Grafana
5 227 (2.14%) Prometheus
6 115 (1.08%) Single Sign-On
7 104 (0.98%) vCenter Server
8 86 (0.81%) SCCM
9 64 (0.60%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 57 (0.54%) FortiGate
11 56 (0.53%) Argo
11 56 (0.53%) Microsoft Intune
12 40 (0.38%) Puppet
13 37 (0.35%) Podman
14 35 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
14 35 (0.33%) Progress Chef
15 33 (0.31%) vRealize
16 32 (0.30%) Nagios
17 31 (0.29%) OPNET
18 29 (0.27%) Packer
Vendors
1 1,081 (10.18%) Microsoft
2 652 (6.14%) Oracle
3 524 (4.93%) VMware
4 420 (3.95%) ServiceNow
5 388 (3.65%) SAP
6 383 (3.61%) Cisco
7 248 (2.33%) Splunk
8 206 (1.94%) Databricks
9 171 (1.61%) Google
10 168 (1.58%) Red Hat
11 136 (1.28%) Salesforce
12 127 (1.20%) IBM
13 126 (1.19%) Talend
14 121 (1.14%) Palo Alto
15 109 (1.03%) Juniper
16 107 (1.01%) Atlassian
17 102 (0.96%) CyberArk
18 94 (0.89%) Informatica
19 89 (0.84%) Dynatrace
20 87 (0.82%) Remedy