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

6 months to
25 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,669 5,153 7,710
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.04% 17.89% 18.10%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.68% 57.63% 60.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,308 3,410 5,115
10th Percentile £380 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £454
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £529 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.76% -3.82% -
75th Percentile £625 £624 £650
90th Percentile £725 £689 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £537 £550
% change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 851 305 525
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £13.99
25th Percentile £22.63 £22.00 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £32.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +69.23% -40.91% -8.33%
75th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.38 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £39.00 £57.33
% change year-on-year +41.03% -31.97% -0.30%

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 15,311 8,941 12,746
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.63% 31.05% 29.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,161 5,647 7,945
10th Percentile £350 £275 £307
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £530
Median % change year-on-year +0.38% -1.32% -3.64%
75th Percentile £623 £619 £645
90th Percentile £720 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £504 £500 £528
% change year-on-year +0.75% -5.30% +0.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,106 506 1,073
10th Percentile £16.35 £17.87 £13.69
25th Percentile £21.33 £21.26 £17.88
Median hourly rate £47.54 £32.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +46.28% -18.75% -27.27%
75th Percentile £70.50 £65.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.93 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £32.50 £40.33
% change year-on-year +46.15% -19.40% -22.18%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 9,244 £525 -2.33% 1,785
UK excluding London +1 5,921 £525 -2.23% 1,430
London +6 3,297 £525 - 469
Work from Home +4 2,862 £525 - 859
South East +1 2,222 £550 - 490
South West 0 1,291 £538 -4.57% 350
North of England 0 920 £500 - 269
Midlands +2 864 £470 -10.48% 137
West Midlands +3 738 £470 -10.48% 107
North West -1 521 £511 +2.20% 158
East of England +2 375 £550 +10.00% 127
Yorkshire -8 230 £488 -1.71% 60
Scotland +34 229 £525 +20.00% 49
North East +1 205 £478 -2.55% 53
East Midlands -4 119 £450 -5.26% 30
Wales +5 86 £490 +3.16% 26
Northern Ireland +2 22 £650 +36.84% 14

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
1 391 (3.66%) Confluence
2 222 (2.08%) SharePoint
3 140 (1.31%) SAS
4 128 (1.20%) Microsoft Exchange
5 100 (0.94%) Apache Spark
6 82 (0.77%) Apache
7 76 (0.71%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.37%) WebLogic
9 35 (0.33%) nginx
10 31 (0.29%) Jupyter
11 20 (0.19%) Tomcat
12 18 (0.17%) IIS
13 17 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
14 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
15 14 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
16 13 (0.12%) CMS
16 13 (0.12%) NetWeaver
16 13 (0.12%) Skype for Business
17 10 (0.094%) ArcGIS
18 8 (0.075%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 183 (1.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 180 (1.69%) Microsoft Office
3 95 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 86 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.40%) MS Visio
6 18 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.13%) Simulink
8 8 (0.075%) AutoCAD
9 7 (0.066%) Notepad++
9 7 (0.066%) SOLIDWORKS
10 6 (0.056%) Revit
11 4 (0.037%) Siemens NX
11 4 (0.037%) Sketch
11 4 (0.037%) Windchill
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 (1.05%) SAP S/4HANA
2 53 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
3 39 (0.37%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 32 (0.30%) Teamcenter
5 31 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
6 28 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
7 23 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.13%) Maximo
8 14 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
8 14 (0.13%) SAP GRC
9 13 (0.12%) Findur
9 13 (0.12%) iTrent
10 12 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
10 12 (0.11%) Temenos T24
11 11 (0.10%) 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
13 8 (0.075%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 1,853 (17.37%) AWS
2 1,830 (17.15%) Azure
3 443 (4.15%) GitHub
4 433 (4.06%) GCP
5 392 (3.67%) Azure DevOps
6 381 (3.57%) Power Platform
7 258 (2.42%) Entra ID
8 257 (2.41%) Serverless
9 253 (2.37%) Microsoft 365
10 251 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
11 207 (1.94%) Amazon S3
12 177 (1.66%) AWS Lambda
13 157 (1.47%) PaaS
14 151 (1.42%) Amazon EC2
15 142 (1.33%) Amazon EKS
16 139 (1.30%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 138 (1.29%) OpenShift
18 129 (1.21%) OCI
19 128 (1.20%) SaaS
20 126 (1.18%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 486 (4.56%) Firewall
2 304 (2.85%) DNS
3 238 (2.23%) Network Security
3 238 (2.23%) WAN
4 210 (1.97%) LAN
5 175 (1.64%) VPN
6 152 (1.42%) DHCP
7 151 (1.42%) BGP
8 130 (1.22%) OSPF
9 119 (1.12%) TCP/IP
10 112 (1.05%) VLAN
11 106 (0.99%) Wi-Fi
12 89 (0.83%) Wireless
13 69 (0.65%) MPLS
14 63 (0.59%) SAN
15 60 (0.56%) Structured Cabling
16 59 (0.55%) VXLAN
17 55 (0.52%) SD-WAN
18 54 (0.51%) IPsec
18 54 (0.51%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 295 (2.77%) Power BI
2 258 (2.42%) PostgreSQL
3 241 (2.26%) Data Warehouse
4 210 (1.97%) SQL Server
5 134 (1.26%) Metadata
6 133 (1.25%) Oracle Database
7 114 (1.07%) Data Lake
8 112 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
8 112 (1.05%) MongoDB
9 96 (0.90%) Relational Database
10 92 (0.86%) NoSQL
11 79 (0.74%) Pentaho
12 76 (0.71%) Elasticsearch
13 74 (0.69%) MySQL
14 73 (0.68%) Oracle Reports
15 70 (0.66%) Big Data
16 68 (0.64%) Tableau
17 63 (0.59%) Amazon Redshift
18 60 (0.56%) Azure SQL Database
19 59 (0.55%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 604 (5.66%) JIRA
2 450 (4.22%) Git
3 410 (3.84%) GitLab
4 403 (3.78%) Jenkins
5 113 (1.06%) Selenium
6 86 (0.81%) Postman
7 77 (0.72%) JUnit
8 72 (0.67%) SonarQube
9 56 (0.52%) Rational DOORS
10 55 (0.52%) JMeter
11 53 (0.50%) Artifactory
12 44 (0.41%) Cucumber
13 43 (0.40%) Bitbucket
14 42 (0.39%) Mockito
15 39 (0.37%) Maven
16 38 (0.36%) Cypress.io
16 38 (0.36%) Visual Studio
17 34 (0.32%) REST Assured
17 34 (0.32%) Zephyr
18 30 (0.28%) Gatling
General
1 2,323 (21.77%) Public Sector
2 2,182 (20.45%) Social Skills
3 730 (6.84%) Analytical Skills
4 683 (6.40%) Finance
5 345 (3.23%) Military
6 286 (2.68%) Documentation Skills
7 263 (2.47%) Aerospace
8 164 (1.54%) Legal
9 126 (1.18%) Telecoms
10 122 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
11 117 (1.10%) Banking
12 110 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
13 109 (1.02%) Manufacturing
14 89 (0.83%) Law
15 80 (0.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 79 (0.74%) Presentation Skills
17 61 (0.57%) Police
18 55 (0.52%) Marketing
19 46 (0.43%) Aviation
20 42 (0.39%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 1,621 (15.19%) Architect
2 1,002 (9.39%) Developer
3 914 (8.57%) Senior
4 748 (7.01%) Lead
5 746 (6.99%) Analyst
6 524 (4.91%) Consultant
7 519 (4.86%) Data Engineer
8 499 (4.68%) DevOps Engineer
9 333 (3.12%) Technical Architect
10 316 (2.96%) Software Engineer
11 304 (2.85%) Network Engineer
12 302 (2.83%) Solutions Architect
13 293 (2.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 266 (2.49%) Business Analyst
15 227 (2.13%) Project Manager
16 219 (2.05%) Designer
17 217 (2.03%) Security Architect
18 210 (1.97%) Azure Engineer
19 194 (1.82%) Administrator
20 186 (1.74%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 332 (3.11%) REST
2 250 (2.34%) Spring
3 208 (1.95%) Kafka
4 205 (1.92%) Spring Boot
5 196 (1.84%) React
6 192 (1.80%) Node.js
7 176 (1.65%) .NET
8 154 (1.44%) LDAP
9 153 (1.43%) RESTful
9 153 (1.43%) SOAP
10 125 (1.17%) JSON
11 120 (1.12%) AngularJS
12 115 (1.08%) PySpark
13 114 (1.07%) Web Services
14 102 (0.96%) OAuth
15 94 (0.88%) Oracle Fusion
16 93 (0.87%) HTML
17 92 (0.86%) Middleware
18 87 (0.82%) XML
19 84 (0.79%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 362 (3.39%) Cloud Native
2 326 (3.06%) Product Ownership
3 319 (2.99%) Data Centre
4 301 (2.82%) Onboarding
5 205 (1.92%) Management Information System
6 151 (1.42%) PKI
7 145 (1.36%) Legacy Systems
8 136 (1.27%) Security Posture
9 128 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
10 123 (1.15%) Distributed Systems
11 121 (1.13%) Replication
12 95 (0.89%) Self-Motivation
13 89 (0.83%) Data Structures
14 86 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
15 85 (0.80%) Clustering
15 85 (0.80%) Public Cloud
16 83 (0.78%) Hybrid Cloud
17 77 (0.72%) Virtual Team
18 72 (0.67%) CMDB
18 72 (0.67%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 845 (7.92%) Windows
2 742 (6.95%) Linux
3 248 (2.32%) Windows Server
4 191 (1.79%) Unix
5 133 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 102 (0.96%) Android
7 84 (0.79%) Windows 10
8 67 (0.63%) Apple iOS
9 47 (0.44%) Solaris
10 40 (0.37%) Mac OS
11 39 (0.37%) Ubuntu
12 31 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 29 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
14 26 (0.24%) AIX
15 25 (0.23%) VMS
16 22 (0.21%) CentOS
17 13 (0.12%) Windows 7
17 13 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
18 12 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
19 9 (0.084%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,009 (18.83%) Agile
2 1,610 (15.09%) DevOps
3 1,450 (13.59%) CI/CD
4 1,114 (10.44%) Problem-Solving
5 1,013 (9.49%) Stakeholder Management
6 950 (8.90%) Continuous Improvement
7 838 (7.85%) Migration
8 797 (7.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 738 (6.92%) Infrastructure as Code
10 653 (6.12%) Cybersecurity
11 626 (5.87%) ITIL
12 618 (5.79%) Test Automation
13 606 (5.68%) Analytics
14 584 (5.47%) Containerisation
15 582 (5.46%) Roadmaps
16 580 (5.44%) Software Engineering
17 540 (5.06%) Data Modelling
18 528 (4.95%) Decision-Making
19 464 (4.35%) AI
20 453 (4.25%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 1,181 (11.07%) Python
2 969 (9.08%) SQL
3 663 (6.21%) Java
4 542 (5.08%) PowerShell
5 336 (3.15%) JavaScript
6 214 (2.01%) C#
7 206 (1.93%) Bash
8 178 (1.67%) TypeScript
9 113 (1.06%) PL/SQL
10 99 (0.93%) C++
11 96 (0.90%) Shell Script
12 71 (0.67%) Go
13 67 (0.63%) Ruby
14 66 (0.62%) Scala
15 61 (0.57%) Bicep
16 57 (0.53%) C
17 53 (0.50%) Apex Code
18 46 (0.43%) R
19 40 (0.37%) Ada
19 40 (0.37%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 8,145 (76.34%) SC Cleared
2 1,925 (18.04%) DV Cleared
3 445 (4.17%) Degree
4 299 (2.80%) BPSS Clearance
5 221 (2.07%) Cisco Certification
6 180 (1.69%) CISSP
7 130 (1.22%) Azure Certification
8 127 (1.19%) CCNP
9 118 (1.11%) CISM
10 111 (1.04%) AWS Certification
11 95 (0.89%) CCNA
12 94 (0.88%) Microsoft Certification
13 77 (0.72%) PMP
14 73 (0.68%) Computer Science Degree
15 68 (0.64%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 65 (0.61%) PMI Certification
17 62 (0.58%) ISTQB
18 56 (0.52%) ITIL Certification
19 49 (0.46%) GIAC
20 46 (0.43%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 384 (3.60%) QA
2 312 (2.92%) Data Quality
3 307 (2.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 305 (2.86%) NIST
5 216 (2.02%) NCSC
6 205 (1.92%) Accessibility
7 175 (1.64%) GDPR
8 159 (1.49%) PMO
9 111 (1.04%) SLA
10 79 (0.74%) GRC
11 68 (0.64%) JSP 440
12 55 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials
13 43 (0.40%) WCAG
14 41 (0.38%) NIST 800
15 36 (0.34%) RMADS
16 31 (0.29%) PCI DSS
17 30 (0.28%) Def Stans
18 28 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 25 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
20 23 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 657 (6.16%) Docker
2 465 (4.36%) Active Directory
3 294 (2.76%) VMware Infrastructure
4 106 (0.99%) VMware ESXi
5 101 (0.95%) VMware NSX
6 87 (0.82%) Hyper-V
7 82 (0.77%) vSphere
8 69 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
9 35 (0.33%) Firmware
9 35 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
10 24 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
11 23 (0.22%) NFS
12 20 (0.19%) vCloud
13 19 (0.18%) BitLocker
14 18 (0.17%) Postfix
14 18 (0.17%) Squid
15 16 (0.15%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 9 (0.084%) KVM
17 8 (0.075%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.056%) Corosync
Systems Management
1 836 (7.84%) Kubernetes
2 829 (7.77%) Terraform
3 374 (3.51%) Ansible
4 275 (2.58%) Grafana
5 227 (2.13%) Prometheus
6 109 (1.02%) Single Sign-On
7 108 (1.01%) vCenter Server
8 74 (0.69%) SCCM
9 64 (0.60%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 53 (0.50%) Argo
10 53 (0.50%) FortiGate
10 53 (0.50%) Microsoft Intune
11 41 (0.38%) Puppet
12 40 (0.37%) Oracle RMAN
13 39 (0.37%) Podman
14 33 (0.31%) SCOM
15 32 (0.30%) Progress Chef
16 31 (0.29%) Nagios
17 30 (0.28%) vRealize
18 26 (0.24%) Istio
Vendors
1 1,053 (9.87%) Microsoft
2 669 (6.27%) Oracle
3 510 (4.78%) VMware
4 415 (3.89%) ServiceNow
5 368 (3.45%) Cisco
6 362 (3.39%) SAP
7 243 (2.28%) Splunk
8 210 (1.97%) Databricks
9 177 (1.66%) Red Hat
10 170 (1.59%) Google
11 153 (1.43%) Salesforce
12 131 (1.23%) Talend
13 126 (1.18%) Palo Alto
14 123 (1.15%) IBM
15 105 (0.98%) Juniper
16 102 (0.96%) Informatica
17 98 (0.92%) CyberArk
18 91 (0.85%) Fortinet
19 88 (0.82%) F5
20 84 (0.79%) Dynatrace