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

6 months to
31 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,638 5,955 7,124
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.65% 18.07% 18.46%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.97% 57.78% 62.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,148 3,806 4,687
10th Percentile £387 £350 £350
25th Percentile £456 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.56% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £537 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -0.09% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 802 574 447
10th Percentile £19.50 £18.51 £15.64
25th Percentile £29.40 £18.87 £24.18
Median hourly rate £63.50 £25.15 £58.49
Median % change year-on-year +152.49% -57.00% -2.52%
75th Percentile £78.75 £43.75 £72.11
90th Percentile £88.00 £71.39 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +158.45% -58.08% +4.50%

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 16,874 10,306 11,483
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.40% 31.27% 29.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,276 6,389 7,208
10th Percentile £350 £299 £313
25th Percentile £438 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £626 £621 £638
90th Percentile £716 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £523 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,264 826 732
10th Percentile £17.41 £17.99 £15.11
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £48.72 £25.15 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +93.72% -47.05% -13.64%
75th Percentile £72.54 £50.94 £67.50
90th Percentile £87.16 £71.98 £76.17
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +89.03% -49.70% -

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 31 August 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 31 August 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 31 August 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 10,066 £545 +1.44% 2,559
UK excluding London +1 6,536 £537 -0.09% 1,950
London +7 3,586 £550 +3.77% 905
Work from Home +2 3,085 £525 -2.33% 1,345
South East +1 2,373 £565 +5.12% 597
South West 0 1,375 £550 -0.90% 510
North of England +3 1,238 £513 +1.87% 366
Midlands 0 911 £473 -8.16% 172
West Midlands +1 774 £475 -7.86% 114
North West +3 715 £530 -1.17% 213
East of England 0 333 £550 - 196
Yorkshire 0 306 £500 +1.63% 69
Scotland +12 278 £481 -0.41% 109
North East 0 241 £475 -5.00% 89
East Midlands -1 128 £450 -7.69% 57
Wales +3 108 £550 +10.00% 27
Northern Ireland +5 35 £650 +25.00% 25

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
1 404 (3.47%) Confluence
2 275 (2.36%) SharePoint
3 177 (1.52%) SAS
4 128 (1.10%) Microsoft Exchange
5 101 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
5 101 (0.87%) Apache Spark
6 98 (0.84%) Apache
7 39 (0.34%) Jupyter
8 34 (0.29%) nginx
9 28 (0.24%) WebLogic
10 23 (0.20%) IIS
10 23 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
10 23 (0.20%) Skype for Business
11 22 (0.19%) Tomcat
12 17 (0.15%) CMS
12 17 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
13 16 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
14 13 (0.11%) JBoss
14 13 (0.11%) NetWeaver
15 9 (0.077%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 205 (1.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 162 (1.39%) Microsoft Office
3 109 (0.94%) Microsoft Project
4 97 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 42 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 23 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.15%) AutoCAD
7 17 (0.15%) Revit
8 16 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
9 15 (0.13%) Simulink
10 8 (0.069%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.069%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.069%) Windchill
11 7 (0.060%) Notepad++
11 7 (0.060%) Sketch
12 5 (0.043%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 3 (0.026%) OrCAD
13 3 (0.026%) Trello
14 2 (0.017%) Houdini
14 2 (0.017%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 149 (1.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 78 (0.67%) Remedy ITSM
3 51 (0.44%) Oracle ERP
4 37 (0.32%) Oracle EBS
5 34 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
5 34 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 29 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 25 (0.21%) SAP GRC
8 24 (0.21%) Oracle Payroll
9 22 (0.19%) SAP PSCD
10 20 (0.17%) Primavera
11 16 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
11 16 (0.14%) SAP FI
11 16 (0.14%) SAP HR
12 13 (0.11%) Findur
13 12 (0.10%) iTrent
13 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
14 11 (0.095%) NetSuite
14 11 (0.095%) Temenos T24
15 10 (0.086%) SAP CO
Cloud Services
1 2,174 (18.68%) Azure
2 2,061 (17.71%) AWS
3 541 (4.65%) Azure DevOps
4 538 (4.62%) GitHub
5 488 (4.19%) Power Platform
6 454 (3.90%) GCP
7 345 (2.96%) GitHub Actions
8 329 (2.83%) Microsoft 365
9 311 (2.67%) Entra ID
10 281 (2.41%) Serverless
11 230 (1.98%) Amazon S3
12 199 (1.71%) AWS Lambda
13 172 (1.48%) OCI
14 171 (1.47%) SaaS
15 166 (1.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 162 (1.39%) Amazon EKS
17 141 (1.21%) Amazon EC2
18 137 (1.18%) OpenShift
19 130 (1.12%) PaaS
20 125 (1.07%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 480 (4.12%) Firewall
2 378 (3.25%) DNS
3 230 (1.98%) WAN
4 227 (1.95%) Network Security
5 222 (1.91%) VPN
6 186 (1.60%) DHCP
7 184 (1.58%) LAN
8 139 (1.19%) BGP
9 138 (1.19%) TCP/IP
10 122 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
11 104 (0.89%) VLAN
12 100 (0.86%) OSPF
13 87 (0.75%) Wireless
14 69 (0.59%) MPLS
15 68 (0.58%) SSL
15 68 (0.58%) VSAN
16 66 (0.57%) IPsec
17 63 (0.54%) SD-WAN
18 62 (0.53%) SAN
19 52 (0.45%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 354 (3.04%) Power BI
2 299 (2.57%) PostgreSQL
3 289 (2.48%) SQL Server
4 268 (2.30%) Data Warehouse
5 179 (1.54%) Metadata
6 175 (1.50%) Oracle Database
7 145 (1.25%) Data Lake
8 142 (1.22%) Relational Database
9 124 (1.07%) MongoDB
10 110 (0.95%) Amazon RDS
11 102 (0.88%) MySQL
12 97 (0.83%) NoSQL
13 91 (0.78%) Oracle Reports
14 77 (0.66%) Pentaho
15 70 (0.60%) Amazon Athena
16 65 (0.56%) Elasticsearch
17 63 (0.54%) Amazon Redshift
18 59 (0.51%) Big Data
19 57 (0.49%) Tableau
20 48 (0.41%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 644 (5.53%) JIRA
2 564 (4.85%) Git
3 503 (4.32%) GitLab
4 471 (4.05%) Jenkins
5 139 (1.19%) Selenium
6 80 (0.69%) Postman
7 78 (0.67%) SonarQube
8 72 (0.62%) JMeter
9 69 (0.59%) JUnit
10 67 (0.58%) Maven
11 54 (0.46%) Cucumber
12 52 (0.45%) Cypress.io
13 46 (0.40%) Gradle
14 42 (0.36%) Mockito
14 42 (0.36%) Rational DOORS
14 42 (0.36%) Visual Studio
15 40 (0.34%) Gatling
16 39 (0.34%) Artifactory
17 38 (0.33%) REST Assured
17 38 (0.33%) Zephyr
General
1 2,518 (21.64%) Social Skills
2 2,383 (20.48%) Public Sector
3 907 (7.79%) Analytical Skills
4 776 (6.67%) Finance
5 376 (3.23%) Military
6 310 (2.66%) Aerospace
7 305 (2.62%) Documentation Skills
8 204 (1.75%) Influencing Skills
9 171 (1.47%) Organisational Skills
10 168 (1.44%) Telecoms
11 167 (1.43%) Legal
12 148 (1.27%) Banking
13 144 (1.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 121 (1.04%) Manufacturing
15 114 (0.98%) Law
16 111 (0.95%) Police
17 59 (0.51%) Presentation Skills
18 46 (0.40%) Retail
19 44 (0.38%) Aviation
19 44 (0.38%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,874 (16.10%) Architect
2 1,230 (10.57%) Developer
3 1,110 (9.54%) Senior
4 1,055 (9.07%) Lead
5 710 (6.10%) Consultant
6 638 (5.48%) Analyst
7 502 (4.31%) DevOps Engineer
8 500 (4.30%) Data Engineer
9 431 (3.70%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 375 (3.22%) Technical Architect
11 355 (3.05%) Solutions Architect
12 289 (2.48%) Software Engineer
13 277 (2.38%) Data Architect
14 270 (2.32%) Security Architect
15 260 (2.23%) Network Engineer
16 214 (1.84%) Administrator
17 211 (1.81%) Azure Engineer
17 211 (1.81%) Java Developer
18 206 (1.77%) Project Manager
19 204 (1.75%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,003 (8.62%) Terraform
2 441 (3.79%) REST
3 251 (2.16%) Spring
4 245 (2.11%) Kafka
5 227 (1.95%) .NET
6 226 (1.94%) Spring Boot
7 216 (1.86%) RESTful
8 208 (1.79%) React
9 175 (1.50%) Node.js
10 174 (1.50%) SOAP
11 162 (1.39%) JSON
12 132 (1.13%) OAuth
13 130 (1.12%) HTML
14 129 (1.11%) Web Services
15 121 (1.04%) XML
16 118 (1.01%) AngularJS
17 113 (0.97%) Middleware
18 100 (0.86%) CSS
19 95 (0.82%) Playwright
20 94 (0.81%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 509 (4.37%) Cloud Native
2 421 (3.62%) Onboarding
3 369 (3.17%) Product Ownership
4 309 (2.66%) Data Centre
5 252 (2.17%) Management Information System
6 195 (1.68%) Legacy Systems
7 173 (1.49%) PKI
8 158 (1.36%) CMDB
8 158 (1.36%) Enterprise Software
9 149 (1.28%) Distributed Systems
10 126 (1.08%) Replication
11 124 (1.07%) Hybrid Cloud
12 119 (1.02%) Self-Motivation
13 107 (0.92%) Data Structures
14 98 (0.84%) Cyber Threat
15 94 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
16 93 (0.80%) Public Cloud
17 87 (0.75%) Operational Technology
18 86 (0.74%) Clustering
19 84 (0.72%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 968 (8.32%) Windows
2 804 (6.91%) Linux
3 355 (3.05%) Windows Server
4 219 (1.88%) Unix
5 156 (1.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 137 (1.18%) Windows 10
7 78 (0.67%) Android
8 62 (0.53%) Solaris
9 51 (0.44%) Mac OS
10 47 (0.40%) Apple iOS
11 40 (0.34%) Ubuntu
11 40 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 39 (0.34%) CentOS
13 37 (0.32%) AIX
14 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
15 24 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
16 22 (0.19%) VMS
16 22 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
17 15 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
18 14 (0.12%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,446 (21.02%) Agile
2 1,809 (15.54%) DevOps
3 1,734 (14.90%) CI/CD
4 1,488 (12.79%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,343 (11.54%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,220 (10.48%) Problem-Solving
7 1,166 (10.02%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 990 (8.51%) Infrastructure as Code
9 929 (7.98%) Migration
10 833 (7.16%) Cybersecurity
11 784 (6.74%) ITIL
12 760 (6.53%) Test Automation
13 723 (6.21%) Analytics
14 716 (6.15%) Containerisation
15 706 (6.07%) Technical Leadership
16 682 (5.86%) Roadmaps
17 676 (5.81%) Decision-Making
18 669 (5.75%) Software Engineering
19 659 (5.66%) AI
20 623 (5.35%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,334 (11.46%) Python
2 1,103 (9.48%) SQL
3 793 (6.81%) Java
4 587 (5.04%) PowerShell
5 398 (3.42%) JavaScript
6 336 (2.89%) Bash
7 245 (2.11%) C#
8 204 (1.75%) TypeScript
9 159 (1.37%) PL/SQL
10 126 (1.08%) Bicep
11 81 (0.70%) Shell Script
12 71 (0.61%) C++
13 63 (0.54%) C
14 54 (0.46%) Apex Code
15 51 (0.44%) Scala
16 48 (0.41%) Kotlin
17 47 (0.40%) Groovy
18 46 (0.40%) Go
18 46 (0.40%) Ruby
19 36 (0.31%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8,864 (76.16%) SC Cleared
2 2,195 (18.86%) DV Cleared
3 464 (3.99%) BPSS Clearance
4 462 (3.97%) Degree
5 212 (1.82%) CISSP
6 181 (1.56%) Cisco Certification
7 179 (1.54%) Azure Certification
8 162 (1.39%) Microsoft Certification
9 143 (1.23%) CISM
10 141 (1.21%) AWS Certification
11 108 (0.93%) PMI Certification
12 105 (0.90%) PMP
13 92 (0.79%) ISTQB
14 80 (0.69%) CCNP
15 72 (0.62%) CCNA
16 71 (0.61%) Computer Science Degree
17 64 (0.55%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 48 (0.41%) ITIL Certification
19 47 (0.40%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 45 (0.39%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 502 (4.31%) QA
2 386 (3.32%) Data Quality
3 322 (2.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 315 (2.71%) NIST
5 281 (2.41%) NCSC
6 256 (2.20%) Accessibility
7 226 (1.94%) PMO
8 184 (1.58%) GDPR
9 164 (1.41%) SLA
10 157 (1.35%) GRC
11 82 (0.70%) WCAG
12 67 (0.58%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
14 44 (0.38%) NIST 800
15 35 (0.30%) Def Stans
16 31 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 28 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
17 28 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 24 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
19 22 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 807 (6.93%) Docker
2 583 (5.01%) Active Directory
3 427 (3.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 151 (1.30%) VMware NSX
5 140 (1.20%) VMware ESXi
6 132 (1.13%) Hyper-V
7 127 (1.09%) vSphere
8 80 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
9 43 (0.37%) Firmware
9 43 (0.37%) Oracle RAC
10 41 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
11 28 (0.24%) vCloud
12 26 (0.22%) BitLocker
13 16 (0.14%) NFS
14 14 (0.12%) Squid
15 13 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
16 11 (0.095%) Postfix
17 9 (0.077%) KVM
18 8 (0.069%) Ceph
18 8 (0.069%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 984 (8.46%) Kubernetes
2 450 (3.87%) Ansible
3 264 (2.27%) Grafana
4 210 (1.80%) Prometheus
5 137 (1.18%) vCenter Server
6 136 (1.17%) SCCM
7 86 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
7 86 (0.74%) SCOM
8 70 (0.60%) Argo
9 69 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
10 51 (0.44%) Oracle RMAN
11 49 (0.42%) Puppet
12 42 (0.36%) Data Guard
13 34 (0.29%) Istio
14 32 (0.27%) Kibana
15 31 (0.27%) Progress Chef
16 30 (0.26%) Nagios
17 29 (0.25%) Control-M
18 27 (0.23%) WSUS
19 26 (0.22%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,506 (12.94%) Microsoft
2 922 (7.92%) Oracle
3 605 (5.20%) VMware
4 539 (4.63%) ServiceNow
5 450 (3.87%) SAP
6 309 (2.66%) Cisco
7 247 (2.12%) Google
8 225 (1.93%) Splunk
9 213 (1.83%) Databricks
10 185 (1.59%) Salesforce
11 149 (1.28%) Red Hat
12 130 (1.12%) Palo Alto
13 124 (1.07%) IBM
14 118 (1.01%) Informatica
15 113 (0.97%) Talend
16 97 (0.83%) Dynatrace
17 88 (0.76%) Remedy
18 84 (0.72%) CyberArk
19 83 (0.71%) F5
19 83 (0.71%) SolarWinds