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

6 months to
3 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,680 5,161 7,875
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.86% 17.94% 18.27%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.29% 57.67% 61.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,327 3,397 5,195
10th Percentile £381 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £713 £695 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £537 £550
% change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 862 314 555
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.42 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.04 £24.19 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.50 £32.50 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year +70.77% -42.47% -5.85%
75th Percentile £74.20 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £78.34 £84.78
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £35.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +57.14% -39.13% -

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 15,413 8,949 12,884
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.55% 31.10% 29.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,220 5,610 8,017
10th Percentile £350 £275 £310
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £530
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -1.89% -3.64%
75th Percentile £620 £619 £644
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £534
% change year-on-year - -6.30% +1.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,135 529 1,104
10th Percentile £16.88 £17.59 £13.87
25th Percentile £21.33 £21.50 £18.13
Median hourly rate £48.50 £32.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +49.23% -18.75% -27.27%
75th Percentile £71.50 £65.00 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.68 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £32.05 £41.27
% change year-on-year +48.21% -22.33% -21.40%

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 3 June 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 3 June 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 3 June 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 9,244 £525 -2.23% 2,161
UK excluding London +1 5,928 £525 -2.23% 1,727
London +7 3,308 £525 - 552
Work from Home +4 2,907 £525 - 1,103
South East +1 2,214 £550 - 552
South West 0 1,248 £538 -4.44% 450
North of England 0 949 £500 - 292
Midlands +3 884 £469 -10.67% 159
West Midlands +3 761 £470 -10.54% 112
North West -1 524 £514 +2.75% 177
East of England +2 377 £550 +10.00% 149
Yorkshire -6 243 £488 -1.71% 58
Scotland +27 240 £510 +14.93% 77
North East +1 216 £475 -1.04% 58
East Midlands -4 116 £434 -15.37% 47
Wales +6 85 £490 +3.16% 49
Northern Ireland +1 19 £650 +36.84% 33

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
1 386 (3.61%) Confluence
2 229 (2.14%) SharePoint
3 155 (1.45%) SAS
4 129 (1.21%) Microsoft Exchange
5 103 (0.96%) Apache Spark
6 91 (0.85%) Apache
7 89 (0.83%) Apache Airflow
8 41 (0.38%) nginx
9 37 (0.35%) Jupyter
10 35 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 23 (0.22%) Tomcat
12 19 (0.18%) IIS
13 18 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
14 15 (0.14%) CMS
14 15 (0.14%) Skype for Business
15 14 (0.13%) NetWeaver
15 14 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
16 11 (0.10%) Tuxedo
17 10 (0.094%) ArcGIS
18 8 (0.075%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 170 (1.59%) Microsoft Excel
2 152 (1.42%) Microsoft Office
3 78 (0.73%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 71 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
5 46 (0.43%) MS Visio
6 17 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.15%) Simulink
8 8 (0.075%) SOLIDWORKS
9 7 (0.066%) AutoCAD
9 7 (0.066%) Notepad++
9 7 (0.066%) Revit
10 4 (0.037%) Siemens NX
10 4 (0.037%) Sketch
10 4 (0.037%) Windchill
11 3 (0.028%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.028%) Chatbot
12 2 (0.019%) CATIA
12 2 (0.019%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.019%) Lectora
12 2 (0.019%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 114 (1.07%) SAP S/4HANA
2 56 (0.52%) Remedy ITSM
3 34 (0.32%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 31 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
4 31 (0.29%) Teamcenter
5 29 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
6 23 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
7 14 (0.13%) Findur
7 14 (0.13%) Maximo
7 14 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.12%) SAP GRC
8 13 (0.12%) SAP PSCD
9 12 (0.11%) iTrent
9 12 (0.11%) Temenos T24
10 11 (0.10%) Primavera
11 10 (0.094%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.084%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.084%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.084%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.084%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,895 (17.74%) AWS
2 1,865 (17.46%) Azure
3 446 (4.18%) GitHub
4 427 (4.00%) GCP
5 401 (3.75%) Azure DevOps
6 391 (3.66%) Power Platform
7 271 (2.54%) Serverless
8 259 (2.43%) GitHub Actions
8 259 (2.43%) Microsoft 365
9 254 (2.38%) Entra ID
10 217 (2.03%) Amazon S3
11 188 (1.76%) AWS Lambda
12 158 (1.48%) PaaS
13 156 (1.46%) Amazon EC2
14 148 (1.39%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 141 (1.32%) Amazon EKS
16 137 (1.28%) SaaS
17 136 (1.27%) OpenShift
18 133 (1.25%) OCI
19 119 (1.11%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 484 (4.53%) Firewall
2 317 (2.97%) DNS
3 251 (2.35%) Network Security
4 239 (2.24%) WAN
5 212 (1.99%) LAN
6 179 (1.68%) VPN
7 162 (1.52%) DHCP
8 150 (1.40%) BGP
9 128 (1.20%) OSPF
10 117 (1.10%) TCP/IP
11 115 (1.08%) VLAN
12 111 (1.04%) Wi-Fi
13 86 (0.81%) Wireless
14 68 (0.64%) MPLS
15 63 (0.59%) SAN
16 62 (0.58%) VXLAN
17 57 (0.53%) SD-WAN
17 57 (0.53%) Structured Cabling
18 54 (0.51%) IPsec
19 50 (0.47%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 303 (2.84%) Power BI
2 265 (2.48%) PostgreSQL
3 246 (2.30%) Data Warehouse
4 209 (1.96%) SQL Server
5 143 (1.34%) Oracle Database
6 133 (1.25%) Metadata
7 119 (1.11%) Data Lake
8 113 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
9 105 (0.98%) MongoDB
10 99 (0.93%) Relational Database
11 85 (0.80%) NoSQL
12 83 (0.78%) Pentaho
13 81 (0.76%) Oracle Reports
14 78 (0.73%) MySQL
15 76 (0.71%) Elasticsearch
16 68 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
17 66 (0.62%) Amazon Athena
17 66 (0.62%) Big Data
17 66 (0.62%) Tableau
18 53 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 601 (5.63%) JIRA
2 461 (4.32%) Git
3 438 (4.10%) GitLab
4 406 (3.80%) Jenkins
5 119 (1.11%) Selenium
6 89 (0.83%) Postman
7 81 (0.76%) JUnit
8 73 (0.68%) SonarQube
9 60 (0.56%) Rational DOORS
10 59 (0.55%) Artifactory
10 59 (0.55%) JMeter
11 49 (0.46%) Cucumber
12 42 (0.39%) Mockito
13 40 (0.37%) Bitbucket
13 40 (0.37%) Visual Studio
13 40 (0.37%) Zephyr
14 39 (0.37%) Maven
15 38 (0.36%) Cypress.io
16 35 (0.33%) REST Assured
17 30 (0.28%) WebDriver
General
1 2,322 (21.74%) Public Sector
2 2,182 (20.43%) Social Skills
3 724 (6.78%) Analytical Skills
4 670 (6.27%) Finance
5 328 (3.07%) Military
6 296 (2.77%) Documentation Skills
7 272 (2.55%) Aerospace
8 168 (1.57%) Legal
9 125 (1.17%) Telecoms
10 121 (1.13%) Influencing Skills
11 118 (1.10%) Banking
12 111 (1.04%) Manufacturing
13 105 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
14 92 (0.86%) Law
15 85 (0.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 76 (0.71%) Presentation Skills
17 63 (0.59%) Police
18 52 (0.49%) Marketing
19 49 (0.46%) Aviation
20 40 (0.37%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,627 (15.23%) Architect
2 1,001 (9.37%) Developer
3 919 (8.60%) Senior
4 758 (7.10%) Lead
5 731 (6.84%) Analyst
6 528 (4.94%) Data Engineer
7 527 (4.93%) Consultant
8 505 (4.73%) DevOps Engineer
9 350 (3.28%) Technical Architect
10 312 (2.92%) Software Engineer
11 310 (2.90%) Solutions Architect
12 309 (2.89%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 292 (2.73%) Network Engineer
14 263 (2.46%) Business Analyst
15 226 (2.12%) Security Architect
16 222 (2.08%) Project Manager
17 216 (2.02%) Designer
18 211 (1.98%) Azure Engineer
19 193 (1.81%) AWS Engineer
20 190 (1.78%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 328 (3.07%) REST
2 238 (2.23%) Spring
3 198 (1.85%) Kafka
4 197 (1.84%) React
5 195 (1.83%) Spring Boot
6 181 (1.69%) Node.js
7 179 (1.68%) .NET
8 155 (1.45%) LDAP
9 153 (1.43%) SOAP
10 149 (1.40%) RESTful
11 126 (1.18%) JSON
12 120 (1.12%) AngularJS
12 120 (1.12%) PySpark
13 114 (1.07%) Web Services
14 104 (0.97%) OAuth
15 98 (0.92%) Middleware
16 88 (0.82%) HTML
17 85 (0.80%) XML
18 84 (0.79%) Playwright
19 81 (0.76%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 388 (3.63%) Cloud Native
2 329 (3.08%) Product Ownership
3 326 (3.05%) Data Centre
4 300 (2.81%) Onboarding
5 212 (1.99%) Management Information System
6 154 (1.44%) PKI
7 147 (1.38%) Legacy Systems
8 132 (1.24%) Enterprise Software
9 131 (1.23%) Security Posture
10 127 (1.19%) Distributed Systems
11 123 (1.15%) Replication
12 98 (0.92%) Self-Motivation
13 90 (0.84%) Data Structures
13 90 (0.84%) Hybrid Cloud
14 88 (0.82%) Security Operations Centre
15 87 (0.81%) Clustering
15 87 (0.81%) Public Cloud
16 78 (0.73%) CMDB
17 76 (0.71%) Virtual Team
18 72 (0.67%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 838 (7.85%) Windows
2 738 (6.91%) Linux
3 256 (2.40%) Windows Server
4 194 (1.82%) Unix
5 136 (1.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 97 (0.91%) Android
7 88 (0.82%) Windows 10
8 69 (0.65%) Apple iOS
9 53 (0.50%) Solaris
10 39 (0.37%) Mac OS
11 38 (0.36%) Ubuntu
12 31 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 30 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
14 27 (0.25%) AIX
15 24 (0.22%) VMS
16 23 (0.22%) CentOS
17 17 (0.16%) Windows 7
18 15 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
19 12 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
20 11 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,039 (19.09%) Agile
2 1,632 (15.28%) DevOps
3 1,490 (13.95%) CI/CD
4 1,092 (10.22%) Problem-Solving
5 1,023 (9.58%) Stakeholder Management
6 987 (9.24%) Continuous Improvement
7 855 (8.01%) Migration
8 835 (7.82%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 775 (7.26%) Infrastructure as Code
10 664 (6.22%) Cybersecurity
11 647 (6.06%) Test Automation
12 628 (5.88%) Analytics
13 615 (5.76%) ITIL
14 594 (5.56%) Containerisation
15 586 (5.49%) Software Engineering
16 585 (5.48%) Roadmaps
17 550 (5.15%) Data Modelling
18 538 (5.04%) Decision-Making
19 472 (4.42%) AI
20 471 (4.41%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,195 (11.19%) Python
2 987 (9.24%) SQL
3 662 (6.20%) Java
4 547 (5.12%) PowerShell
5 327 (3.06%) JavaScript
6 219 (2.05%) C#
7 214 (2.00%) Bash
8 178 (1.67%) TypeScript
9 123 (1.15%) PL/SQL
10 99 (0.93%) C++
11 95 (0.89%) Shell Script
12 67 (0.63%) Bicep
13 65 (0.61%) Go
14 63 (0.59%) Scala
15 62 (0.58%) Ruby
16 57 (0.53%) C
17 55 (0.51%) Apex Code
18 45 (0.42%) Ada
19 41 (0.38%) R
20 40 (0.37%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 8,173 (76.53%) SC Cleared
2 1,902 (17.81%) DV Cleared
3 428 (4.01%) Degree
4 303 (2.84%) BPSS Clearance
5 221 (2.07%) Cisco Certification
6 181 (1.69%) CISSP
7 133 (1.25%) Azure Certification
8 126 (1.18%) CCNP
9 118 (1.10%) CISM
10 113 (1.06%) AWS Certification
11 100 (0.94%) Microsoft Certification
12 95 (0.89%) CCNA
13 80 (0.75%) PMP
14 73 (0.68%) Computer Science Degree
14 73 (0.68%) PMI Certification
15 69 (0.65%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 66 (0.62%) ISTQB
17 58 (0.54%) ITIL Certification
18 46 (0.43%) GIAC
19 42 (0.39%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 389 (3.64%) QA
2 320 (3.00%) Data Quality
3 304 (2.85%) NIST
4 301 (2.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 211 (1.98%) NCSC
6 206 (1.93%) Accessibility
7 175 (1.64%) GDPR
8 158 (1.48%) PMO
9 119 (1.11%) SLA
10 78 (0.73%) GRC
11 67 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 53 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials
13 44 (0.41%) WCAG
14 41 (0.38%) NIST 800
15 36 (0.34%) RMADS
16 32 (0.30%) Def Stans
17 28 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 25 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
19 24 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
19 24 (0.22%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 660 (6.18%) Docker
2 464 (4.34%) Active Directory
3 306 (2.87%) VMware Infrastructure
4 110 (1.03%) VMware ESXi
5 105 (0.98%) VMware NSX
6 88 (0.82%) Hyper-V
7 82 (0.77%) vSphere
8 71 (0.66%) Virtual Machines
9 37 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
10 36 (0.34%) Firmware
11 23 (0.22%) NFS
12 21 (0.20%) BitLocker
13 20 (0.19%) vCloud
14 19 (0.18%) Postfix
14 19 (0.18%) Squid
15 17 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
16 15 (0.14%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 9 (0.084%) KVM
18 8 (0.075%) Microsoft App-V
19 6 (0.056%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 857 (8.02%) Terraform
2 833 (7.80%) Kubernetes
3 389 (3.64%) Ansible
4 277 (2.59%) Grafana
5 230 (2.15%) Prometheus
6 110 (1.03%) vCenter Server
7 105 (0.98%) Single Sign-On
8 74 (0.69%) SCCM
9 62 (0.58%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 56 (0.52%) Microsoft Intune
11 53 (0.50%) FortiGate
12 50 (0.47%) Argo
13 42 (0.39%) Oracle RMAN
13 42 (0.39%) Puppet
14 38 (0.36%) Podman
15 34 (0.32%) SCOM
16 31 (0.29%) Progress Chef
17 30 (0.28%) Nagios
18 27 (0.25%) vRealize
19 25 (0.23%) Istio
Vendors
1 1,073 (10.05%) Microsoft
2 701 (6.56%) Oracle
3 510 (4.78%) VMware
4 412 (3.86%) ServiceNow
5 363 (3.40%) Cisco
6 355 (3.32%) SAP
7 244 (2.28%) Splunk
8 212 (1.99%) Databricks
9 173 (1.62%) Red Hat
10 171 (1.60%) Google
11 157 (1.47%) Salesforce
12 142 (1.33%) Talend
13 132 (1.24%) Palo Alto
14 125 (1.17%) IBM
15 107 (1.00%) Informatica
16 106 (0.99%) Juniper
17 98 (0.92%) CyberArk
18 97 (0.91%) Fortinet
19 89 (0.83%) Dynatrace
20 88 (0.82%) F5