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 26 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,529 5,358 7,868
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.99% 17.46% 17.94%
As % of the Qualifications category 67.48% 58.62% 59.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,434 3,448 4,999
10th Percentile £360 £325 £363
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.65%
75th Percentile £623 £636 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £520 £540 £568
% change year-on-year -3.70% -4.85% +3.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 785 272 511
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.12 £19.99
25th Percentile £20.35 £24.66 £39.48
Median hourly rate £25.15 £57.12 £57.29
Median % change year-on-year -55.97% -0.28% -4.53%
75th Percentile £65.25 £67.63 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.24 £75.23 £83.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £57.33
% change year-on-year -58.08% +4.67% -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 14,122 9,141 13,295
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.08% 29.79% 30.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,321 5,618 8,200
10th Percentile £331 £290 £288
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £517 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.58% -2.42% -2.18%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £650
90th Percentile £720 £716 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £505 £530
% change year-on-year -0.99% -4.72% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,031 444 961
10th Percentile £16.09 £20.00 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £24.18 £20.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -37.13% -5.88% -10.90%
75th Percentile £65.00 £67.25 £64.50
90th Percentile £81.00 £81.77 £77.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £46.71 £44.50
% change year-on-year -46.16% +4.97% -1.11%

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 26 February 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 26 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Top 18 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 26 February 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 +1 8,295 £525 -3.58% 1,395
UK excluding London 0 5,304 £520 -3.70% 1,123
London +5 2,871 £530 +0.95% 367
Work from Home +4 2,619 £525 -0.38% 665
South East +1 1,786 £525 -4.55% 410
South West 0 1,322 £550 -2.22% 261
Midlands +4 851 £495 -10.00% 142
North of England -2 827 £500 +2.04% 167
West Midlands +2 676 £500 -9.26% 103
North West 0 533 £500 +5.26% 101
East of England +1 346 £498 -0.50% 122
Yorkshire -5 174 £500 -4.76% 31
East Midlands 0 173 £425 -16.05% 39
Scotland +9 166 £475 -5.00% 30
North East +1 147 £450 -10.00% 36
Wales -1 81 £515 -1.87% 20
Northern Ireland +11 30 £500 +271.43% 2
Channel Islands - 1 - - 2

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
1 335 (3.52%) Confluence
2 213 (2.24%) SharePoint
3 141 (1.48%) Microsoft Exchange
4 139 (1.46%) SAS
5 82 (0.86%) Apache Spark
6 76 (0.80%) Apache
7 52 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
8 44 (0.46%) nginx
9 41 (0.43%) WebLogic
10 33 (0.35%) Skype for Business
11 21 (0.22%) Jupyter
12 20 (0.21%) CMS
13 19 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
14 13 (0.14%) Tuxedo
15 10 (0.10%) Tomcat
16 9 (0.094%) ArcGIS
17 8 (0.084%) IIS
17 8 (0.084%) OpenStack
18 7 (0.073%) Oracle Workflow
19 5 (0.052%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 255 (2.68%) Microsoft Office
2 189 (1.98%) Microsoft Excel
3 120 (1.26%) Microsoft Project
4 70 (0.73%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 42 (0.44%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.15%) Simulink
8 6 (0.063%) Oracle Smart View
8 6 (0.063%) Sketch
9 5 (0.052%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.052%) Siemens NX
9 5 (0.052%) Windchill
10 4 (0.042%) Chatbot
11 3 (0.031%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.021%) Adobe Illustrator
12 2 (0.021%) CATIA
12 2 (0.021%) Lectora
12 2 (0.021%) Photoshop
12 2 (0.021%) Stateflow
12 2 (0.021%) Trello
Business Applications
1 162 (1.70%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.43%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 31 (0.33%) Oracle ERP
4 28 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
5 25 (0.26%) SAP MM
5 25 (0.26%) Teamcenter
6 22 (0.23%) Dynamics CRM
7 18 (0.19%) SAP PP
8 16 (0.17%) Maximo
8 16 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
9 14 (0.15%) SAP VC
9 14 (0.15%) SAP WM
10 13 (0.14%) SAP EWM
10 13 (0.14%) SAP QM
11 12 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
12 11 (0.12%) Oracle General Ledger
12 11 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
12 11 (0.12%) SAP HCM
13 10 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
14 9 (0.094%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,632 (17.13%) AWS
2 1,545 (16.21%) Azure
3 412 (4.32%) GitHub
4 393 (4.12%) GCP
5 348 (3.65%) Power Platform
6 339 (3.56%) Azure DevOps
7 313 (3.28%) Microsoft 365
8 267 (2.80%) Serverless
9 230 (2.41%) Entra ID
10 217 (2.28%) GitHub Actions
11 207 (2.17%) Amazon S3
12 184 (1.93%) OpenShift
13 174 (1.83%) AWS Lambda
14 145 (1.52%) AWS CloudFormation
15 137 (1.44%) Amazon EC2
16 135 (1.42%) Amazon EKS
17 132 (1.39%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 114 (1.20%) IaaS
19 111 (1.16%) OCI
19 111 (1.16%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 448 (4.70%) Firewall
2 295 (3.10%) DNS
3 222 (2.33%) Network Security
4 196 (2.06%) WAN
5 177 (1.86%) VPN
6 156 (1.64%) LAN
7 149 (1.56%) TCP/IP
8 135 (1.42%) BGP
9 133 (1.40%) DHCP
10 98 (1.03%) Wireless
11 94 (0.99%) VLAN
12 93 (0.98%) OSPF
13 73 (0.77%) MPLS
14 72 (0.76%) Wi-Fi
15 60 (0.63%) SSL
16 57 (0.60%) SAN
17 56 (0.59%) IPsec
18 48 (0.50%) Cisco ISE
19 42 (0.44%) Skype
20 41 (0.43%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 265 (2.78%) PostgreSQL
2 249 (2.61%) Power BI
3 170 (1.78%) Data Warehouse
4 139 (1.46%) SQL Server
5 121 (1.27%) Metadata
6 107 (1.12%) Oracle Database
7 101 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
8 98 (1.03%) MongoDB
9 97 (1.02%) NoSQL
10 90 (0.94%) Relational Database
11 77 (0.81%) Elasticsearch
12 75 (0.79%) Data Lake
13 74 (0.78%) Azure SQL Database
14 67 (0.70%) Big Data
15 62 (0.65%) MySQL
16 60 (0.63%) Pentaho
17 52 (0.55%) Tableau
18 45 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
19 44 (0.46%) DynamoDB
20 42 (0.44%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 555 (5.82%) JIRA
2 462 (4.85%) Git
3 404 (4.24%) Jenkins
4 357 (3.75%) GitLab
5 111 (1.16%) Selenium
6 92 (0.97%) Postman
7 82 (0.86%) JUnit
8 62 (0.65%) Cypress.io
9 57 (0.60%) SonarQube
10 49 (0.51%) Artifactory
11 47 (0.49%) Bitbucket
11 47 (0.49%) Maven
12 45 (0.47%) Oracle APEX
13 44 (0.46%) Cucumber
14 40 (0.42%) Mockito
15 36 (0.38%) REST Assured
16 32 (0.34%) JMeter
17 30 (0.31%) Rational DOORS
17 30 (0.31%) Visual Studio
18 24 (0.25%) Metasploit
General
1 2,424 (25.44%) Public Sector
2 2,300 (24.14%) Social Skills
3 789 (8.28%) Analytical Skills
4 641 (6.73%) Finance
5 334 (3.51%) Military
6 261 (2.74%) Documentation Skills
7 200 (2.10%) Aerospace
8 188 (1.97%) Telecoms
9 187 (1.96%) Manufacturing
10 144 (1.51%) Legal
11 128 (1.34%) Organisational Skills
12 120 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
13 119 (1.25%) Electronics
13 119 (1.25%) Marketing
14 110 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
15 96 (1.01%) Banking
16 70 (0.73%) Law
17 69 (0.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 48 (0.50%) Police
19 36 (0.38%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,328 (13.94%) Architect
2 931 (9.77%) Developer
3 834 (8.75%) Senior
4 715 (7.50%) Analyst
5 647 (6.79%) Consultant
6 564 (5.92%) Lead
7 435 (4.57%) DevOps Engineer
8 348 (3.65%) Data Engineer
9 250 (2.62%) Network Engineer
10 249 (2.61%) Business Analyst
10 249 (2.61%) Solutions Architect
11 248 (2.60%) Software Engineer
12 238 (2.50%) Support Engineer
13 233 (2.45%) Technical Architect
14 197 (2.07%) Tester
15 181 (1.90%) AWS Engineer
16 169 (1.77%) Designer
17 168 (1.76%) Azure Engineer
18 165 (1.73%) Security Architect
19 156 (1.64%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 357 (3.75%) REST
2 223 (2.34%) Node.js
3 209 (2.19%) Spring
4 207 (2.17%) Kafka
5 197 (2.07%) React
6 166 (1.74%) JSON
7 161 (1.69%) Spring Boot
8 160 (1.68%) SOAP
9 150 (1.57%) LDAP
10 128 (1.34%) .NET
11 117 (1.23%) HTML
12 114 (1.20%) AngularJS
12 114 (1.20%) RESTful
13 111 (1.16%) PySpark
14 110 (1.15%) Web Services
15 106 (1.11%) OAuth
15 106 (1.11%) Oracle Fusion
16 103 (1.08%) XML
17 96 (1.01%) CSS
18 82 (0.86%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 296 (3.11%) Data Centre
2 269 (2.82%) Cloud Native
3 266 (2.79%) Product Ownership
4 243 (2.55%) Onboarding
5 206 (2.16%) PKI
6 178 (1.87%) Management Information System
7 141 (1.48%) Security Posture
8 120 (1.26%) Legacy Systems
9 116 (1.22%) Self-Motivation
10 114 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
11 100 (1.05%) Replication
12 82 (0.86%) Security Operations Centre
13 81 (0.85%) Public Cloud
14 78 (0.82%) Driving Licence
14 78 (0.82%) Hybrid Cloud
15 71 (0.75%) Cyber Threat
16 68 (0.71%) Distributed Systems
17 52 (0.55%) Analytical Mindset
18 50 (0.52%) Algorithms
19 48 (0.50%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 879 (9.22%) Windows
2 714 (7.49%) Linux
3 223 (2.34%) Windows Server
4 156 (1.64%) Windows 10
5 128 (1.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 128 (1.34%) Unix
6 123 (1.29%) Android
7 66 (0.69%) Mac OS
8 51 (0.54%) Apple iOS
9 44 (0.46%) Ubuntu
10 38 (0.40%) VMS
11 30 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
12 24 (0.25%) CentOS
12 24 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
13 22 (0.23%) Solaris
14 21 (0.22%) Windows 7
15 14 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
16 12 (0.13%) Mac OS X
17 11 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
18 8 (0.084%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,800 (18.89%) Agile
2 1,434 (15.05%) DevOps
3 1,276 (13.39%) CI/CD
4 1,176 (12.34%) Problem-Solving
5 869 (9.12%) Stakeholder Management
6 823 (8.64%) Migration
7 739 (7.76%) Continuous Improvement
8 653 (6.85%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 619 (6.50%) Cybersecurity
10 609 (6.39%) Infrastructure as Code
11 556 (5.83%) ITIL
12 548 (5.75%) Test Automation
13 523 (5.49%) Containerisation
14 520 (5.46%) Roadmaps
15 518 (5.44%) Analytics
16 449 (4.71%) Business Intelligence
16 449 (4.71%) Software Engineering
17 445 (4.67%) Scrum
18 424 (4.45%) Service Management
19 409 (4.29%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,164 (12.22%) Python
2 795 (8.34%) SQL
3 610 (6.40%) PowerShell
4 547 (5.74%) Java
5 436 (4.58%) JavaScript
6 242 (2.54%) Bash
7 208 (2.18%) TypeScript
8 180 (1.89%) C#
9 106 (1.11%) C++
10 105 (1.10%) PL/SQL
11 102 (1.07%) Shell Script
12 87 (0.91%) Go
13 64 (0.67%) C
14 57 (0.60%) Ruby
15 51 (0.54%) Ada
16 50 (0.52%) Scala
17 42 (0.44%) Bicep
18 41 (0.43%) ABAP
19 39 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
20 37 (0.39%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 7,328 (76.90%) SC Cleared
2 1,585 (16.63%) DV Cleared
3 461 (4.84%) Degree
4 318 (3.34%) BPSS Clearance
5 180 (1.89%) Cisco Certification
6 175 (1.84%) CISSP
7 135 (1.42%) AWS Certification
8 130 (1.36%) Azure Certification
9 129 (1.35%) CCNP
10 119 (1.25%) Microsoft Certification
11 109 (1.14%) CISM
12 88 (0.92%) Computer Science Degree
13 80 (0.84%) CCNA
14 67 (0.70%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 66 (0.69%) ITIL Certification
16 63 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
17 55 (0.58%) ISTQB
18 50 (0.52%) CEH
18 50 (0.52%) PMP
19 49 (0.51%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 314 (3.30%) QA
2 293 (3.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 279 (2.93%) NIST
4 259 (2.72%) Data Quality
5 212 (2.22%) NCSC
6 191 (2.00%) Accessibility
7 177 (1.86%) GDPR
8 128 (1.34%) SLA
9 97 (1.02%) PMO
10 63 (0.66%) GRC
11 60 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 51 (0.54%) WCAG
13 44 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials
14 41 (0.43%) Def Stans
15 38 (0.40%) NIST 800
16 35 (0.37%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 34 (0.36%) PCI DSS
18 32 (0.34%) COBIT
19 26 (0.27%) RMADS
20 25 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 656 (6.88%) Docker
2 495 (5.19%) Active Directory
3 253 (2.66%) VMware Infrastructure
4 92 (0.97%) VMware NSX
5 73 (0.77%) vSphere
6 65 (0.68%) Hyper-V
6 65 (0.68%) VMware ESXi
7 61 (0.64%) Virtual Machines
8 27 (0.28%) Firmware
8 27 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
9 24 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
10 18 (0.19%) BitLocker
11 16 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 15 (0.16%) NFS
13 11 (0.12%) Postfix
13 11 (0.12%) Squid
14 8 (0.084%) vCloud
15 7 (0.073%) Virtual Servers
16 6 (0.063%) KVM
17 5 (0.052%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 844 (8.86%) Kubernetes
2 805 (8.45%) Terraform
3 314 (3.30%) Ansible
4 233 (2.45%) Grafana
5 192 (2.01%) Prometheus
6 132 (1.39%) Single Sign-On
7 103 (1.08%) SCCM
8 96 (1.01%) vCenter Server
9 91 (0.95%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 73 (0.77%) Argo
10 73 (0.77%) Microsoft Intune
11 45 (0.47%) vRealize
12 43 (0.45%) FortiGate
13 41 (0.43%) Podman
14 37 (0.39%) Packer
15 35 (0.37%) Kibana
16 33 (0.35%) Puppet
17 30 (0.31%) OPNET
17 30 (0.31%) Progress Chef
18 26 (0.27%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,065 (11.18%) Microsoft
2 542 (5.69%) Oracle
3 477 (5.01%) VMware
4 458 (4.81%) SAP
5 446 (4.68%) Cisco
6 397 (4.17%) ServiceNow
7 236 (2.48%) Splunk
8 189 (1.98%) Red Hat
9 149 (1.56%) Databricks
10 145 (1.52%) Google
11 144 (1.51%) CyberArk
12 143 (1.50%) Palo Alto
13 133 (1.40%) Juniper
14 132 (1.39%) Salesforce
15 117 (1.23%) Atlassian
16 99 (1.04%) Dell
17 84 (0.88%) Talend
18 82 (0.86%) Dynatrace
19 81 (0.85%) HP
19 81 (0.85%) IBM