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

6 months to
14 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 10,530 5,151 7,856
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.14% 17.77% 18.37%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.55% 57.38% 60.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,213 3,417 5,174
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 £625 £650
90th Percentile £724 £689 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £543 £550
% change year-on-year -3.38% -1.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 826 293 526
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £21.25 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £42.50 £57.09
Median % change year-on-year +29.41% -25.55% -4.86%
75th Percentile £73.46 £66.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.00 £84.42
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £52.50 £58.00
% change year-on-year +4.76% -9.48% +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 15,140 8,977 12,977
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.83% 30.98% 30.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,058 5,660 7,999
10th Percentile £350 £285 £305
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -1.50% -3.09%
75th Percentile £619 £623 £650
90th Percentile £720 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £530
% change year-on-year - -5.66% +0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,068 507 1,065
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.13 £13.75
25th Percentile £21.25 £21.27 £17.80
Median hourly rate £48.72 £37.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.92% -6.25% -25.93%
75th Percentile £70.33 £65.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.36 £79.22 £75.85
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £37.50 £40.94
% change year-on-year +26.67% -8.40% -18.12%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 9,119 £525 -2.33% 1,881
UK excluding London +1 5,845 £525 -3.38% 1,533
London +6 3,247 £525 - 481
Work from Home +4 2,833 £525 - 850
South East +1 2,211 £538 -2.27% 507
South West 0 1,291 £538 -6.52% 345
Midlands +4 868 £475 -9.52% 158
North of England -1 861 £488 -2.50% 292
West Midlands +4 737 £475 -11.55% 116
North West -2 500 £500 - 163
East of England +2 375 £550 +10.00% 157
Scotland +39 221 £500 +6.95% 47
Yorkshire -12 207 £476 -4.90% 55
North East +1 188 £475 -3.06% 76
East Midlands -3 125 £450 -5.26% 42
Wales +4 85 £500 +5.26% 42
Northern Ireland +7 21 £600 +23.08% 21

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 (3.81%) Confluence
2 221 (2.10%) SharePoint
3 133 (1.26%) Microsoft Exchange
3 133 (1.26%) SAS
4 106 (1.01%) Apache Spark
5 83 (0.79%) Apache
6 73 (0.69%) Apache Airflow
7 38 (0.36%) WebLogic
8 34 (0.32%) nginx
9 29 (0.28%) Jupyter
10 21 (0.20%) Tomcat
11 16 (0.15%) IIS
11 16 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
13 14 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
14 13 (0.12%) CMS
14 13 (0.12%) Skype for Business
15 12 (0.11%) NetWeaver
16 10 (0.095%) ArcGIS
17 9 (0.085%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 203 (1.93%) Microsoft Office
2 193 (1.83%) Microsoft Excel
3 114 (1.08%) Microsoft Project
4 86 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.12%) 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
1 112 (1.06%) SAP S/4HANA
2 46 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
3 39 (0.37%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 29 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
5 28 (0.27%) Teamcenter
6 27 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
7 22 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
8 15 (0.14%) Maximo
9 14 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
9 14 (0.13%) SAP PSCD
10 13 (0.12%) SAP GRC
10 13 (0.12%) Temenos T24
11 12 (0.11%) Findur
11 12 (0.11%) iTrent
12 11 (0.10%) Oracle Assets
13 10 (0.095%) SAP PP
14 9 (0.085%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 9 (0.085%) SAP HCM
14 9 (0.085%) SAP HR
15 8 (0.076%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,842 (17.49%) AWS
2 1,815 (17.24%) Azure
3 440 (4.18%) GitHub
4 436 (4.14%) GCP
5 390 (3.70%) Azure DevOps
6 383 (3.64%) Power Platform
7 267 (2.54%) Serverless
8 264 (2.51%) Microsoft 365
9 254 (2.41%) Entra ID
10 250 (2.37%) GitHub Actions
11 210 (1.99%) Amazon S3
12 181 (1.72%) AWS Lambda
13 158 (1.50%) PaaS
14 145 (1.38%) Amazon EC2
15 140 (1.33%) Amazon EKS
16 137 (1.30%) AWS CloudFormation
17 136 (1.29%) OpenShift
18 135 (1.28%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 131 (1.24%) OCI
20 121 (1.15%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 484 (4.60%) Firewall
2 298 (2.83%) DNS
3 230 (2.18%) Network Security
4 224 (2.13%) WAN
5 204 (1.94%) LAN
6 171 (1.62%) VPN
7 146 (1.39%) DHCP
8 145 (1.38%) BGP
9 126 (1.20%) TCP/IP
10 125 (1.19%) OSPF
11 98 (0.93%) VLAN
12 96 (0.91%) Wi-Fi
13 80 (0.76%) Wireless
14 67 (0.64%) MPLS
15 56 (0.53%) SAN
16 55 (0.52%) VXLAN
17 53 (0.50%) SD-WAN
17 53 (0.50%) SSL
18 50 (0.47%) IPsec
19 49 (0.47%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 301 (2.86%) Power BI
2 252 (2.39%) PostgreSQL
3 236 (2.24%) Data Warehouse
4 200 (1.90%) SQL Server
5 136 (1.29%) Metadata
6 126 (1.20%) Oracle Database
7 109 (1.04%) Amazon RDS
8 105 (1.00%) Data Lake
9 102 (0.97%) MongoDB
10 99 (0.94%) Relational Database
11 97 (0.92%) NoSQL
12 83 (0.79%) Pentaho
13 78 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
14 74 (0.70%) Big Data
15 71 (0.67%) MySQL
15 71 (0.67%) Oracle Reports
16 67 (0.64%) Tableau
17 66 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
17 66 (0.63%) Azure SQL Database
18 60 (0.57%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 629 (5.97%) JIRA
2 468 (4.44%) Git
3 393 (3.73%) GitLab
3 393 (3.73%) Jenkins
4 101 (0.96%) Selenium
5 87 (0.83%) Postman
6 74 (0.70%) JUnit
7 67 (0.64%) SonarQube
8 55 (0.52%) Rational DOORS
9 53 (0.50%) Artifactory
10 51 (0.48%) JMeter
11 42 (0.40%) Bitbucket
11 42 (0.40%) Cucumber
12 39 (0.37%) Mockito
12 39 (0.37%) Visual Studio
13 38 (0.36%) Maven
14 36 (0.34%) Cypress.io
15 31 (0.29%) Zephyr
16 27 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
17 26 (0.25%) REST Assured
General
1 2,317 (22.00%) Public Sector
2 2,196 (20.85%) Social Skills
3 764 (7.26%) Analytical Skills
4 694 (6.59%) Finance
5 355 (3.37%) Military
6 284 (2.70%) Documentation Skills
7 249 (2.36%) Aerospace
8 169 (1.60%) Legal
9 128 (1.22%) Telecoms
10 120 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
11 115 (1.09%) Manufacturing
11 115 (1.09%) Organisational Skills
12 112 (1.06%) Banking
13 86 (0.82%) Law
14 85 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
15 77 (0.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 69 (0.66%) Police
17 54 (0.51%) Marketing
18 49 (0.47%) Electronics
19 39 (0.37%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,599 (15.19%) Architect
2 979 (9.30%) Developer
3 900 (8.55%) Senior
4 744 (7.07%) Analyst
5 733 (6.96%) Lead
6 522 (4.96%) Consultant
7 517 (4.91%) Data Engineer
8 495 (4.70%) DevOps Engineer
9 318 (3.02%) Technical Architect
10 314 (2.98%) Software Engineer
11 298 (2.83%) Network Engineer
12 291 (2.76%) Solutions Architect
13 271 (2.57%) Business Analyst
14 267 (2.54%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 228 (2.17%) Project Manager
16 215 (2.04%) Designer
17 214 (2.03%) Azure Engineer
18 208 (1.98%) Security Architect
19 187 (1.78%) Administrator
20 186 (1.77%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 323 (3.07%) REST
2 247 (2.35%) Spring
3 212 (2.01%) Kafka
4 201 (1.91%) Spring Boot
5 196 (1.86%) Node.js
6 189 (1.79%) React
7 176 (1.67%) .NET
8 154 (1.46%) LDAP
9 147 (1.40%) RESTful
9 147 (1.40%) SOAP
10 129 (1.23%) JSON
11 121 (1.15%) PySpark
12 120 (1.14%) AngularJS
13 118 (1.12%) Web Services
14 100 (0.95%) Oracle Fusion
15 98 (0.93%) OAuth
16 88 (0.84%) HTML
16 88 (0.84%) Middleware
17 85 (0.81%) XML
18 84 (0.80%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 367 (3.49%) Cloud Native
2 337 (3.20%) Product Ownership
3 313 (2.97%) Data Centre
4 288 (2.74%) Onboarding
5 201 (1.91%) Management Information System
6 161 (1.53%) PKI
7 136 (1.29%) Legacy Systems
8 134 (1.27%) Security Posture
9 125 (1.19%) Enterprise Software
10 122 (1.16%) Distributed Systems
10 122 (1.16%) Replication
11 97 (0.92%) Self-Motivation
12 89 (0.85%) Public Cloud
13 85 (0.81%) Data Structures
14 83 (0.79%) Security Operations Centre
15 82 (0.78%) Clustering
16 81 (0.77%) Hybrid Cloud
17 75 (0.71%) Virtual Team
18 70 (0.66%) Greenfield Project
19 63 (0.60%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 855 (8.12%) Windows
2 730 (6.93%) Linux
3 249 (2.36%) Windows Server
4 177 (1.68%) Unix
5 132 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 108 (1.03%) Android
7 88 (0.84%) Windows 10
8 68 (0.65%) Apple iOS
9 46 (0.44%) Mac OS
10 42 (0.40%) Solaris
10 42 (0.40%) Ubuntu
11 29 (0.28%) VMS
11 29 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
11 29 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
12 26 (0.25%) AIX
13 23 (0.22%) CentOS
14 14 (0.13%) Windows 7
15 11 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
15 11 (0.10%) Windows Server 2008
15 11 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,020 (19.18%) Agile
2 1,598 (15.18%) DevOps
3 1,439 (13.67%) CI/CD
4 1,134 (10.77%) Problem-Solving
5 993 (9.43%) Stakeholder Management
6 914 (8.68%) Continuous Improvement
7 830 (7.88%) Migration
8 771 (7.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 736 (6.99%) Infrastructure as Code
10 647 (6.14%) ITIL
11 621 (5.90%) Cybersecurity
12 614 (5.83%) Test Automation
13 604 (5.74%) Analytics
14 583 (5.54%) Containerisation
15 574 (5.45%) Software Engineering
16 572 (5.43%) Roadmaps
17 530 (5.03%) Data Modelling
18 521 (4.95%) Decision-Making
19 458 (4.35%) Scrum
20 452 (4.29%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,196 (11.36%) Python
2 961 (9.13%) SQL
3 655 (6.22%) Java
4 548 (5.20%) PowerShell
5 333 (3.16%) JavaScript
6 220 (2.09%) C#
7 200 (1.90%) Bash
8 177 (1.68%) TypeScript
9 111 (1.05%) PL/SQL
10 99 (0.94%) C++
11 97 (0.92%) Shell Script
12 74 (0.70%) Go
13 69 (0.66%) Scala
14 68 (0.65%) Ruby
15 58 (0.55%) Bicep
16 57 (0.54%) C
17 50 (0.47%) R
18 49 (0.47%) Apex Code
19 41 (0.39%) Kusto Query Language
20 39 (0.37%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 8,024 (76.20%) SC Cleared
2 1,894 (17.99%) DV Cleared
3 458 (4.35%) Degree
4 304 (2.89%) BPSS Clearance
5 213 (2.02%) Cisco Certification
6 179 (1.70%) CISSP
7 134 (1.27%) Azure Certification
8 124 (1.18%) CCNP
9 121 (1.15%) AWS Certification
9 121 (1.15%) CISM
10 93 (0.88%) Microsoft Certification
11 90 (0.85%) CCNA
12 79 (0.75%) PMP
13 75 (0.71%) Computer Science Degree
14 69 (0.66%) PMI Certification
15 68 (0.65%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 67 (0.64%) TOGAF Certification
17 66 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
18 57 (0.54%) ISTQB
19 50 (0.47%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 379 (3.60%) QA
2 322 (3.06%) Data Quality
3 302 (2.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 296 (2.81%) NIST
5 203 (1.93%) Accessibility
6 201 (1.91%) NCSC
7 167 (1.59%) GDPR
8 165 (1.57%) PMO
9 108 (1.03%) SLA
10 74 (0.70%) GRC
11 63 (0.60%) JSP 440
12 53 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials
13 44 (0.42%) WCAG
14 39 (0.37%) NIST 800
15 32 (0.30%) COBIT
15 32 (0.30%) RMADS
16 31 (0.29%) PCI DSS
17 30 (0.28%) Def Stans
18 28 (0.27%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 24 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 661 (6.28%) Docker
2 483 (4.59%) Active Directory
3 292 (2.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 102 (0.97%) VMware ESXi
5 99 (0.94%) VMware NSX
6 83 (0.79%) Hyper-V
7 76 (0.72%) vSphere
8 73 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
9 37 (0.35%) Firmware
10 35 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
11 22 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
12 20 (0.19%) NFS
13 19 (0.18%) BitLocker
14 17 (0.16%) Postfix
14 17 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 17 (0.16%) Squid
14 17 (0.16%) vCloud
15 8 (0.076%) KVM
15 8 (0.076%) Microsoft App-V
16 7 (0.066%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 838 (7.96%) Kubernetes
2 832 (7.90%) Terraform
3 362 (3.44%) Ansible
4 265 (2.52%) Grafana
5 218 (2.07%) Prometheus
6 117 (1.11%) Single Sign-On
7 103 (0.98%) vCenter Server
8 77 (0.73%) SCCM
9 66 (0.63%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 57 (0.54%) FortiGate
11 54 (0.51%) Microsoft Intune
12 53 (0.50%) Argo
13 40 (0.38%) Puppet
14 39 (0.37%) Podman
15 37 (0.35%) Oracle RMAN
16 34 (0.32%) Progress Chef
17 32 (0.30%) Nagios
18 31 (0.29%) vRealize
19 29 (0.28%) OPNET
20 26 (0.25%) SCOM
Vendors
1 1,052 (9.99%) Microsoft
2 656 (6.23%) Oracle
3 513 (4.87%) VMware
4 413 (3.92%) ServiceNow
5 378 (3.59%) SAP
6 370 (3.51%) Cisco
7 248 (2.36%) Splunk
8 208 (1.98%) Databricks
9 173 (1.64%) Google
10 170 (1.61%) Red Hat
11 139 (1.32%) Salesforce
12 131 (1.24%) Talend
13 124 (1.18%) IBM
14 123 (1.17%) Palo Alto
15 103 (0.98%) Juniper
16 99 (0.94%) CyberArk
17 98 (0.93%) Atlassian
17 98 (0.93%) Informatica
18 86 (0.82%) Fortinet
19 84 (0.80%) Dynatrace