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 23 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,942 5,975 6,702
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.77% 18.27% 17.78%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.75% 58.09% 60.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,301 3,874 4,325
10th Percentile £400 £350 £350
25th Percentile £462 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £549 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.23% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £538 £550
% change year-on-year - -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 858 604 397
10th Percentile £20.00 £18.51 £20.12
25th Percentile £31.63 £18.87 £30.00
Median hourly rate £64.09 £25.15 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +154.83% -58.08% -
75th Percentile £77.50 £33.75 £72.50
90th Percentile £89.83 £70.00 £80.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +158.45% -58.08% +4.35%

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 17,371 10,286 10,994
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.67% 31.46% 29.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,547 6,425 6,738
10th Percentile £350 £300 £313
25th Percentile £443 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £529 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £638
90th Percentile £715 £711 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,392 845 628
10th Percentile £17.17 £17.87 £17.59
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £24.99
Median hourly rate £47.54 £25.15 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +89.03% -49.70% -7.41%
75th Percentile £72.54 £43.75 £68.19
90th Percentile £88.00 £70.16 £75.66
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £52.50
% change year-on-year +88.87% -52.10% -

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 23 September 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 23 September 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 23 September 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 10,291 £550 +2.33% 5,252
UK excluding London +1 6,698 £538 - 3,747
London +6 3,647 £550 +2.33% 1,559
Work from Home +2 3,131 £525 -2.33% 2,683
South East +1 2,299 £565 +5.21% 1,048
South West 0 1,419 £550 - 820
North of England +2 1,281 £515 -1.90% 741
Midlands 0 948 £481 -6.70% 364
West Midlands 0 809 £480 -7.43% 229
North West +1 751 £530 -3.64% 438
East of England 0 418 £570 +3.55% 421
Scotland +17 320 £486 +0.67% 266
Yorkshire +1 299 £492 +0.41% 125
North East 0 252 £470 -6.00% 181
East Midlands 0 133 £450 -2.70% 134
Wales +3 108 £550 +10.00% 69
Northern Ireland +3 35 £650 +18.18% 68

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
1 396 (3.32%) Confluence
2 266 (2.23%) SharePoint
3 173 (1.45%) SAS
4 131 (1.10%) Microsoft Exchange
5 113 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
6 103 (0.86%) Apache Spark
7 100 (0.84%) Apache
8 41 (0.34%) Jupyter
9 38 (0.32%) nginx
10 36 (0.30%) WebLogic
11 31 (0.26%) CMS
12 23 (0.19%) Oracle Application Server
13 22 (0.18%) Skype for Business
14 21 (0.18%) IIS
15 19 (0.16%) Tomcat
16 16 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 16 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
16 16 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
17 11 (0.092%) JBoss
17 11 (0.092%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 215 (1.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 165 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
3 102 (0.85%) Microsoft Project
4 99 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 20 (0.17%) AutoCAD
8 18 (0.15%) Revit
9 17 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
10 16 (0.13%) Windchill
11 10 (0.084%) Adobe XD
11 10 (0.084%) Simulink
12 8 (0.067%) Chatbot
12 8 (0.067%) Sketch
13 7 (0.059%) Notepad++
14 6 (0.050%) Adobe Creative Suite
15 4 (0.033%) OrCAD
15 4 (0.033%) Trello
16 2 (0.017%) Gliffy
16 2 (0.017%) Houdini
Business Applications
1 153 (1.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 83 (0.70%) Remedy ITSM
3 56 (0.47%) Oracle ERP
4 41 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
5 34 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 33 (0.28%) Teamcenter
7 29 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
8 25 (0.21%) Oracle Payroll
8 25 (0.21%) SAP GRC
8 25 (0.21%) SAP PSCD
9 21 (0.18%) SAP FI
10 19 (0.16%) Primavera
11 18 (0.15%) SAP HR
12 16 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
13 14 (0.12%) SAP CO
14 13 (0.11%) Maximo
15 12 (0.10%) iTrent
15 12 (0.10%) NetSuite
15 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
16 11 (0.092%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 2,161 (18.10%) Azure
2 2,100 (17.58%) AWS
3 517 (4.33%) Azure DevOps
3 517 (4.33%) GitHub
4 486 (4.07%) Power Platform
5 457 (3.83%) GCP
6 349 (2.92%) GitHub Actions
7 344 (2.88%) Microsoft 365
8 328 (2.75%) Entra ID
9 279 (2.34%) Serverless
10 236 (1.98%) Amazon S3
11 205 (1.72%) AWS Lambda
12 178 (1.49%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 174 (1.46%) OCI
14 168 (1.41%) SaaS
15 166 (1.39%) Amazon EKS
16 147 (1.23%) Amazon EC2
17 145 (1.21%) OpenShift
18 129 (1.08%) AWS CloudFormation
19 108 (0.90%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 459 (3.84%) Firewall
2 388 (3.25%) DNS
3 242 (2.03%) Network Security
4 222 (1.86%) WAN
5 201 (1.68%) VPN
6 191 (1.60%) DHCP
7 169 (1.42%) LAN
8 139 (1.16%) TCP/IP
9 131 (1.10%) BGP
10 118 (0.99%) Wi-Fi
11 108 (0.90%) VLAN
12 93 (0.78%) Wireless
13 91 (0.76%) OSPF
14 69 (0.58%) SSL
15 64 (0.54%) MPLS
15 64 (0.54%) SAN
15 64 (0.54%) VSAN
16 62 (0.52%) IPsec
17 61 (0.51%) SD-WAN
18 50 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 347 (2.91%) Power BI
2 306 (2.56%) PostgreSQL
3 280 (2.34%) SQL Server
4 274 (2.29%) Data Warehouse
5 205 (1.72%) Metadata
6 191 (1.60%) Oracle Database
7 147 (1.23%) Data Lake
8 146 (1.22%) Relational Database
9 130 (1.09%) MongoDB
10 111 (0.93%) Amazon RDS
11 108 (0.90%) MySQL
12 97 (0.81%) NoSQL
13 92 (0.77%) Oracle Reports
14 73 (0.61%) Elasticsearch
15 72 (0.60%) Pentaho
16 70 (0.59%) Amazon Athena
17 57 (0.48%) Big Data
18 53 (0.44%) DynamoDB
18 53 (0.44%) Tableau
19 52 (0.44%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 662 (5.54%) JIRA
2 600 (5.02%) Git
3 523 (4.38%) GitLab
4 498 (4.17%) Jenkins
5 150 (1.26%) Selenium
6 91 (0.76%) Postman
7 83 (0.70%) SonarQube
8 78 (0.65%) JUnit
9 76 (0.64%) Maven
10 71 (0.59%) JMeter
11 66 (0.55%) Cucumber
12 53 (0.44%) Cypress.io
13 51 (0.43%) Gradle
14 47 (0.39%) Mockito
15 44 (0.37%) REST Assured
16 42 (0.35%) Gatling
17 41 (0.34%) Visual Studio
18 39 (0.33%) Zephyr
19 37 (0.31%) Artifactory
20 33 (0.28%) MSI
General
1 2,679 (22.43%) Social Skills
2 2,426 (20.31%) Public Sector
3 957 (8.01%) Analytical Skills
4 773 (6.47%) Finance
5 425 (3.56%) Military
6 334 (2.80%) Aerospace
7 310 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
8 227 (1.90%) Influencing Skills
9 187 (1.57%) Organisational Skills
10 175 (1.47%) Legal
11 168 (1.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 167 (1.40%) Telecoms
13 156 (1.31%) Manufacturing
14 140 (1.17%) Banking
15 127 (1.06%) Law
16 126 (1.06%) Police
17 74 (0.62%) Presentation Skills
18 52 (0.44%) Local Government
19 49 (0.41%) Aviation
20 46 (0.39%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,946 (16.30%) Architect
2 1,226 (10.27%) Developer
3 1,140 (9.55%) Senior
4 1,056 (8.84%) Lead
5 703 (5.89%) Consultant
6 642 (5.38%) Analyst
7 517 (4.33%) DevOps Engineer
8 488 (4.09%) Data Engineer
9 424 (3.55%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 374 (3.13%) Solutions Architect
11 373 (3.12%) Technical Architect
12 301 (2.52%) Data Architect
13 284 (2.38%) Software Engineer
14 282 (2.36%) Security Architect
15 253 (2.12%) Network Engineer
16 230 (1.93%) Administrator
17 220 (1.84%) Java Developer
18 217 (1.82%) Azure Engineer
19 212 (1.78%) Designer
20 209 (1.75%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,006 (8.42%) Terraform
2 478 (4.00%) REST
3 267 (2.24%) Kafka
4 261 (2.19%) Spring
5 240 (2.01%) Spring Boot
6 218 (1.83%) RESTful
7 207 (1.73%) .NET
8 192 (1.61%) React
9 184 (1.54%) Node.js
10 183 (1.53%) SOAP
11 163 (1.36%) JSON
12 141 (1.18%) OAuth
13 139 (1.16%) HTML
14 134 (1.12%) XML
15 127 (1.06%) Middleware
16 119 (1.00%) AngularJS
17 118 (0.99%) Web Services
18 106 (0.89%) CSS
19 102 (0.85%) Oracle Fusion
20 97 (0.81%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 533 (4.46%) Cloud Native
2 465 (3.89%) Onboarding
3 369 (3.09%) Product Ownership
4 306 (2.56%) Data Centre
5 274 (2.29%) Management Information System
6 185 (1.55%) Legacy Systems
6 185 (1.55%) PKI
7 174 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
8 161 (1.35%) CMDB
9 141 (1.18%) Distributed Systems
10 124 (1.04%) Hybrid Cloud
11 121 (1.01%) Replication
12 120 (1.00%) Cyber Threat
13 115 (0.96%) Self-Motivation
14 112 (0.94%) Operational Technology
15 97 (0.81%) Data Structures
16 92 (0.77%) Security Operations Centre
16 92 (0.77%) Security Posture
17 91 (0.76%) Clustering
17 91 (0.76%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 1,001 (8.38%) Windows
2 812 (6.80%) Linux
3 371 (3.11%) Windows Server
4 242 (2.03%) Unix
5 163 (1.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 145 (1.21%) Windows 10
7 79 (0.66%) Android
7 79 (0.66%) Solaris
8 49 (0.41%) Mac OS
9 46 (0.39%) Apple iOS
9 46 (0.39%) CentOS
10 40 (0.33%) Ubuntu
11 39 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
12 33 (0.28%) AIX
13 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
14 24 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
15 23 (0.19%) VMS
16 21 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
17 16 (0.13%) Rocky
18 13 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,543 (21.29%) Agile
2 1,818 (15.22%) DevOps
3 1,809 (15.15%) CI/CD
4 1,657 (13.88%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,458 (12.21%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,280 (10.72%) Problem-Solving
7 1,203 (10.07%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,027 (8.60%) Infrastructure as Code
9 964 (8.07%) Migration
10 863 (7.23%) Cybersecurity
11 796 (6.67%) Test Automation
12 795 (6.66%) ITIL
13 766 (6.41%) Containerisation
14 761 (6.37%) Technical Leadership
15 748 (6.26%) Decision-Making
16 740 (6.20%) AI
17 729 (6.10%) Roadmaps
18 724 (6.06%) Analytics
19 699 (5.85%) Software Engineering
20 633 (5.30%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,378 (11.54%) Python
2 1,110 (9.29%) SQL
3 802 (6.72%) Java
4 595 (4.98%) PowerShell
5 415 (3.48%) JavaScript
6 357 (2.99%) Bash
7 234 (1.96%) C#
8 223 (1.87%) TypeScript
9 165 (1.38%) PL/SQL
10 127 (1.06%) Bicep
11 87 (0.73%) Shell Script
12 65 (0.54%) C++
13 59 (0.49%) Go
14 58 (0.49%) Scala
15 55 (0.46%) C
16 50 (0.42%) Groovy
17 48 (0.40%) Kotlin
18 44 (0.37%) Apex Code
19 39 (0.33%) T-SQL
20 34 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 9,094 (76.15%) SC Cleared
2 2,260 (18.92%) DV Cleared
3 515 (4.31%) BPSS Clearance
4 476 (3.99%) Degree
5 229 (1.92%) CISSP
6 197 (1.65%) Cisco Certification
7 191 (1.60%) Azure Certification
8 170 (1.42%) Microsoft Certification
9 154 (1.29%) AWS Certification
10 147 (1.23%) CISM
11 111 (0.93%) PMI Certification
12 101 (0.85%) PMP
13 96 (0.80%) ISTQB
14 93 (0.78%) CCNP
15 75 (0.63%) Computer Science Degree
16 71 (0.59%) CCNA
17 59 (0.49%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 55 (0.46%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 45 (0.38%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 45 (0.38%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 537 (4.50%) QA
2 386 (3.23%) Data Quality
3 340 (2.85%) NIST
4 330 (2.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 306 (2.56%) NCSC
6 284 (2.38%) Accessibility
7 224 (1.88%) PMO
8 178 (1.49%) GDPR
9 177 (1.48%) SLA
10 170 (1.42%) GRC
11 86 (0.72%) WCAG
12 60 (0.50%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
14 45 (0.38%) NIST 800
15 37 (0.31%) Def Stans
16 33 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
17 25 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 22 (0.18%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 21 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
20 19 (0.16%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 833 (6.98%) Docker
2 640 (5.36%) Active Directory
3 448 (3.75%) VMware Infrastructure
4 147 (1.23%) VMware ESXi
5 144 (1.21%) VMware NSX
6 137 (1.15%) Hyper-V
7 134 (1.12%) vSphere
8 94 (0.79%) Virtual Machines
9 45 (0.38%) Firmware
9 45 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
10 40 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
11 26 (0.22%) vCloud
12 23 (0.19%) BitLocker
13 20 (0.17%) NFS
14 19 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
15 11 (0.092%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 11 (0.092%) Postfix
15 11 (0.092%) Squid
16 10 (0.084%) KVM
17 9 (0.075%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 1,011 (8.47%) Kubernetes
2 445 (3.73%) Ansible
3 267 (2.24%) Grafana
4 205 (1.72%) Prometheus
5 136 (1.14%) SCCM
6 134 (1.12%) vCenter Server
7 99 (0.83%) SCOM
8 91 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
9 69 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
10 68 (0.57%) Argo
11 49 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
12 43 (0.36%) Kibana
12 43 (0.36%) Puppet
13 41 (0.34%) Data Guard
14 33 (0.28%) NetBackup
15 32 (0.27%) Istio
15 32 (0.27%) VxRail
16 29 (0.24%) Control-M
17 27 (0.23%) WSUS
18 26 (0.22%) Nagios
Vendors
1 1,565 (13.11%) Microsoft
2 960 (8.04%) Oracle
3 618 (5.18%) VMware
4 543 (4.55%) ServiceNow
5 452 (3.78%) SAP
6 308 (2.58%) Cisco
7 264 (2.21%) Google
8 227 (1.90%) Splunk
9 194 (1.62%) Databricks
10 170 (1.42%) Salesforce
11 146 (1.22%) Red Hat
12 129 (1.08%) Palo Alto
13 113 (0.95%) Informatica
14 108 (0.90%) IBM
15 105 (0.88%) Talend
16 102 (0.85%) Dynatrace
17 98 (0.82%) CyberArk
18 94 (0.79%) Remedy
19 83 (0.70%) SolarWinds
20 80 (0.67%) Fortinet