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

6 months to
5 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 10,586 5,173 7,975
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.27% 17.66% 18.48%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.31% 57.41% 60.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,232 3,443 5,246
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 £694 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £548 £550
% change year-on-year -4.20% -0.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 859 292 526
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £21.46 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £50.20 £57.30
Median % change year-on-year +9.57% -12.40% -4.50%
75th Percentile £73.00 £67.31 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £78.27 £84.42
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £56.75 £58.00
% change year-on-year -3.08% -2.16% +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 15,273 9,011 13,184
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.13% 30.76% 30.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,150 5,681 8,135
10th Percentile £349 £285 £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 £704 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £501 £530
% change year-on-year -0.10% -5.57% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,097 516 1,076
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.13 £13.86
25th Percentile £21.25 £21.92 £17.86
Median hourly rate £47.50 £40.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.75% - -25.93%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.81 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.25 £80.05 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £40.72 £40.94
% change year-on-year +16.66% -0.55% -17.91%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 9,170 £525 -2.23% 2,066
UK excluding London +1 5,862 £525 -4.20% 1,739
London +6 3,251 £525 - 504
Work from Home +4 2,834 £525 - 887
South East +1 2,194 £538 -2.27% 526
South West 0 1,309 £538 -4.44% 388
Midlands +4 905 £475 -9.52% 203
North of England -2 842 £488 -2.50% 334
West Midlands +4 769 £475 -11.55% 134
North West -2 497 £493 -1.38% 163
East of England +2 386 £525 +16.67% 204
Scotland +36 218 £500 - 56
Yorkshire -5 206 £476 -9.33% 78
North East +1 172 £475 -6.40% 96
East Midlands -3 130 £450 -5.26% 69
Wales +6 79 £525 +5.00% 43
Northern Ireland +3 18 £425 -10.53% 26

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
1 405 (3.83%) Confluence
2 222 (2.10%) SharePoint
3 135 (1.28%) Microsoft Exchange
4 130 (1.23%) SAS
5 106 (1.00%) Apache Spark
6 85 (0.80%) Apache
7 70 (0.66%) Apache Airflow
8 38 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 37 (0.35%) nginx
10 26 (0.25%) Jupyter
11 20 (0.19%) Tomcat
12 15 (0.14%) CMS
12 15 (0.14%) IIS
12 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
13 14 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
14 13 (0.12%) Oracle Application Server
14 13 (0.12%) Skype for Business
15 11 (0.10%) NetWeaver
16 10 (0.094%) ArcGIS
16 10 (0.094%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 216 (2.04%) Microsoft Office
2 192 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
3 122 (1.15%) Microsoft Project
4 83 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (0.42%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.15%) 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
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
1 104 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
2 48 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
2 48 (0.45%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 30 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
4 29 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
5 26 (0.25%) Teamcenter
6 20 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
7 17 (0.16%) Maximo
8 16 (0.15%) SAP PP
9 13 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.12%) SAP PSCD
9 13 (0.12%) Temenos T24
10 11 (0.10%) Findur
10 11 (0.10%) Oracle Assets
11 10 (0.094%) iTrent
11 10 (0.094%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.085%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.085%) SAP GRC
12 9 (0.085%) SAP HR
13 8 (0.076%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 1,833 (17.32%) AWS
2 1,829 (17.28%) Azure
3 444 (4.19%) GitHub
4 432 (4.08%) GCP
5 404 (3.82%) Azure DevOps
6 391 (3.69%) Power Platform
7 284 (2.68%) Serverless
8 281 (2.65%) Microsoft 365
9 252 (2.38%) Entra ID
10 251 (2.37%) GitHub Actions
11 219 (2.07%) Amazon S3
12 188 (1.78%) AWS Lambda
13 158 (1.49%) PaaS
14 144 (1.36%) AWS CloudFormation
15 143 (1.35%) Amazon EC2
16 138 (1.30%) OpenShift
17 136 (1.28%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 136 (1.28%) Amazon EKS
18 126 (1.19%) IaaS
19 125 (1.18%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 477 (4.51%) Firewall
2 294 (2.78%) DNS
3 235 (2.22%) Network Security
4 226 (2.13%) WAN
5 205 (1.94%) LAN
6 173 (1.63%) VPN
7 146 (1.38%) BGP
8 142 (1.34%) DHCP
9 127 (1.20%) OSPF
10 122 (1.15%) TCP/IP
11 94 (0.89%) VLAN
12 93 (0.88%) Wi-Fi
13 84 (0.79%) Wireless
14 66 (0.62%) MPLS
15 55 (0.52%) SAN
16 54 (0.51%) SD-WAN
16 54 (0.51%) VXLAN
17 53 (0.50%) SSL
18 49 (0.46%) IPsec
19 45 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 301 (2.84%) Power BI
2 252 (2.38%) PostgreSQL
3 235 (2.22%) Data Warehouse
4 198 (1.87%) SQL Server
5 141 (1.33%) Metadata
6 121 (1.14%) Oracle Database
7 112 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
8 106 (1.00%) Data Lake
9 103 (0.97%) MongoDB
10 101 (0.95%) NoSQL
11 99 (0.94%) Relational Database
12 79 (0.75%) Pentaho
13 77 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
14 75 (0.71%) Big Data
15 73 (0.69%) MySQL
16 72 (0.68%) Azure SQL Database
17 69 (0.65%) Tableau
18 68 (0.64%) Oracle Reports
19 67 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
20 61 (0.58%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 639 (6.04%) JIRA
2 480 (4.53%) Git
3 390 (3.68%) Jenkins
4 383 (3.62%) GitLab
5 100 (0.94%) Selenium
6 89 (0.84%) Postman
7 77 (0.73%) JUnit
8 69 (0.65%) SonarQube
9 51 (0.48%) Rational DOORS
10 48 (0.45%) Artifactory
11 47 (0.44%) JMeter
12 44 (0.42%) Bitbucket
13 43 (0.41%) Cucumber
14 41 (0.39%) Maven
14 41 (0.39%) Mockito
15 38 (0.36%) Cypress.io
16 36 (0.34%) Visual Studio
17 30 (0.28%) Zephyr
18 27 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
19 24 (0.23%) Gatling
General
1 2,356 (22.26%) Public Sector
2 2,268 (21.42%) Social Skills
3 800 (7.56%) Analytical Skills
4 695 (6.57%) Finance
5 351 (3.32%) Military
6 283 (2.67%) Documentation Skills
7 246 (2.32%) Aerospace
8 167 (1.58%) Legal
9 139 (1.31%) Telecoms
10 130 (1.23%) Influencing Skills
10 130 (1.23%) Manufacturing
11 115 (1.09%) Banking
12 114 (1.08%) Organisational Skills
13 92 (0.87%) Presentation Skills
14 89 (0.84%) Law
15 86 (0.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 67 (0.63%) Police
17 63 (0.60%) Marketing
18 58 (0.55%) Electronics
19 37 (0.35%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,594 (15.06%) Architect
2 1,029 (9.72%) Developer
3 922 (8.71%) Senior
4 752 (7.10%) Analyst
5 728 (6.88%) Lead
6 535 (5.05%) Consultant
7 502 (4.74%) Data Engineer
8 492 (4.65%) DevOps Engineer
9 316 (2.99%) Technical Architect
10 311 (2.94%) Software Engineer
11 300 (2.83%) Network Engineer
12 282 (2.66%) Solutions Architect
13 279 (2.64%) Business Analyst
14 262 (2.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 226 (2.13%) Project Manager
16 220 (2.08%) Azure Engineer
17 213 (2.01%) Security Architect
18 212 (2.00%) Designer
19 187 (1.77%) AWS Engineer
20 185 (1.75%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 340 (3.21%) REST
2 247 (2.33%) Spring
3 215 (2.03%) Kafka
4 196 (1.85%) Node.js
4 196 (1.85%) Spring Boot
5 181 (1.71%) React
6 175 (1.65%) .NET
7 151 (1.43%) LDAP
8 150 (1.42%) SOAP
9 147 (1.39%) RESTful
10 142 (1.34%) JSON
11 122 (1.15%) AngularJS
11 122 (1.15%) PySpark
12 114 (1.08%) Web Services
13 99 (0.94%) HTML
14 96 (0.91%) Oracle Fusion
15 94 (0.89%) OAuth
16 88 (0.83%) XML
17 86 (0.81%) Elastic Stack
17 86 (0.81%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 354 (3.34%) Cloud Native
2 344 (3.25%) Product Ownership
3 311 (2.94%) Data Centre
4 299 (2.82%) Onboarding
5 191 (1.80%) Management Information System
6 178 (1.68%) PKI
7 134 (1.27%) Legacy Systems
8 131 (1.24%) Security Posture
9 127 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
10 123 (1.16%) Replication
11 119 (1.12%) Distributed Systems
12 110 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
13 88 (0.83%) Public Cloud
14 80 (0.76%) Hybrid Cloud
15 79 (0.75%) Clustering
15 79 (0.75%) Data Structures
16 77 (0.73%) Security Operations Centre
17 75 (0.71%) Virtual Team
18 65 (0.61%) Greenfield Project
19 61 (0.58%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 870 (8.22%) Windows
2 739 (6.98%) Linux
3 248 (2.34%) Windows Server
4 168 (1.59%) Unix
5 129 (1.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 115 (1.09%) Android
7 101 (0.95%) Windows 10
8 67 (0.63%) Apple iOS
9 50 (0.47%) Mac OS
10 42 (0.40%) Ubuntu
11 36 (0.34%) Solaris
12 32 (0.30%) VMS
13 29 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
14 28 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
15 27 (0.26%) AIX
16 22 (0.21%) 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 2,043 (19.30%) Agile
2 1,600 (15.11%) DevOps
3 1,429 (13.50%) CI/CD
4 1,147 (10.84%) Problem-Solving
5 993 (9.38%) Stakeholder Management
6 923 (8.72%) Continuous Improvement
7 859 (8.11%) Migration
8 782 (7.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 730 (6.90%) Infrastructure as Code
10 640 (6.05%) ITIL
11 619 (5.85%) Cybersecurity
12 613 (5.79%) Test Automation
13 608 (5.74%) Analytics
14 586 (5.54%) Containerisation
15 570 (5.38%) Software Engineering
16 567 (5.36%) Roadmaps
17 512 (4.84%) Data Modelling
18 499 (4.71%) Decision-Making
19 469 (4.43%) Scrum
20 451 (4.26%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,209 (11.42%) Python
2 963 (9.10%) SQL
3 665 (6.28%) Java
4 565 (5.34%) PowerShell
5 352 (3.33%) JavaScript
6 221 (2.09%) C#
7 193 (1.82%) Bash
8 182 (1.72%) TypeScript
9 116 (1.10%) PL/SQL
10 102 (0.96%) C++
11 100 (0.94%) Shell Script
12 76 (0.72%) Go
13 71 (0.67%) Scala
14 68 (0.64%) Ruby
15 60 (0.57%) Bicep
15 60 (0.57%) C
16 50 (0.47%) Apex Code
16 50 (0.47%) R
17 41 (0.39%) Ada
17 41 (0.39%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 8,084 (76.37%) SC Cleared
2 1,886 (17.82%) DV Cleared
3 467 (4.41%) Degree
4 318 (3.00%) BPSS Clearance
5 209 (1.97%) Cisco Certification
6 175 (1.65%) CISSP
7 139 (1.31%) Azure Certification
8 128 (1.21%) AWS Certification
9 121 (1.14%) CCNP
10 115 (1.09%) CISM
11 95 (0.90%) Microsoft Certification
12 87 (0.82%) CCNA
13 78 (0.74%) Computer Science Degree
14 74 (0.70%) PMP
15 72 (0.68%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 70 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
17 67 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
18 63 (0.60%) PMI Certification
19 56 (0.53%) ISTQB
20 49 (0.46%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 378 (3.57%) QA
2 322 (3.04%) Data Quality
3 300 (2.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 297 (2.81%) NIST
5 202 (1.91%) NCSC
6 197 (1.86%) Accessibility
7 165 (1.56%) GDPR
8 164 (1.55%) PMO
9 112 (1.06%) SLA
10 71 (0.67%) GRC
11 64 (0.60%) JSP 440
12 52 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
13 42 (0.40%) NIST 800
14 41 (0.39%) WCAG
15 34 (0.32%) RMADS
16 33 (0.31%) PCI DSS
17 32 (0.30%) COBIT
18 31 (0.29%) Def Stans
19 26 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
20 23 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 679 (6.41%) Docker
2 481 (4.54%) Active Directory
3 294 (2.78%) VMware Infrastructure
4 98 (0.93%) VMware ESXi
4 98 (0.93%) VMware NSX
5 85 (0.80%) Hyper-V
6 79 (0.75%) vSphere
7 74 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
8 42 (0.40%) Firmware
9 34 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
10 20 (0.19%) BitLocker
10 20 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
11 17 (0.16%) NFS
11 17 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 16 (0.15%) Postfix
13 13 (0.12%) vCloud
14 12 (0.11%) Squid
15 8 (0.076%) Microsoft App-V
16 7 (0.066%) KVM
17 6 (0.057%) Corosync
Systems Management
1 873 (8.25%) Kubernetes
2 854 (8.07%) Terraform
3 356 (3.36%) Ansible
4 268 (2.53%) Grafana
5 223 (2.11%) Prometheus
6 116 (1.10%) Single Sign-On
7 100 (0.94%) vCenter Server
8 85 (0.80%) SCCM
9 65 (0.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 58 (0.55%) FortiGate
11 56 (0.53%) Argo
11 56 (0.53%) Microsoft Intune
12 41 (0.39%) Puppet
13 37 (0.35%) Podman
14 35 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
14 35 (0.33%) Progress Chef
15 33 (0.31%) vRealize
16 31 (0.29%) Nagios
17 30 (0.28%) OPNET
17 30 (0.28%) Packer
Vendors
1 1,084 (10.24%) Microsoft
2 643 (6.07%) Oracle
3 515 (4.86%) VMware
4 422 (3.99%) ServiceNow
5 397 (3.75%) SAP
6 385 (3.64%) Cisco
7 248 (2.34%) Splunk
8 205 (1.94%) Databricks
9 171 (1.62%) Google
9 171 (1.62%) Red Hat
10 144 (1.36%) Salesforce
11 129 (1.22%) IBM
12 121 (1.14%) Palo Alto
13 120 (1.13%) Talend
14 110 (1.04%) Juniper
15 108 (1.02%) Atlassian
16 100 (0.94%) CyberArk
17 93 (0.88%) Informatica
18 88 (0.83%) Fortinet
18 88 (0.83%) Remedy