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 16 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,495 5,208 8,083
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.85% 17.78% 18.44%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.32% 57.82% 60.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,168 3,485 5,270
10th Percentile £363 £350 £358
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £534 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.59% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £520 £548 £550
% change year-on-year -5.11% -0.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 837 279 503
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.87
25th Percentile £21.33 £24.18 £21.46
Median hourly rate £54.00 £54.51 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% +3.83% -13.51%
75th Percentile £73.46 £67.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.67 £83.68
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.78 £58.79 £55.00
% change year-on-year -10.23% +6.89% -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 15,141 9,008 13,431
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.97% 30.75% 30.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,076 5,717 8,307
10th Percentile £350 £293 £300
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £525 £537
Median % change year-on-year -1.23% -2.23% -2.36%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £510 £525
% change year-on-year -1.96% -2.86% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,097 499 1,029
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.50 £13.69
25th Percentile £20.82 £22.72 £17.60
Median hourly rate £45.46 £45.00 £38.95
Median % change year-on-year +1.02% +15.53% -27.87%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.00 £80.67 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.46 £47.81 £40.00
% change year-on-year -4.91% +19.51% -20.00%

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 16 April 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 16 April 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 16 April 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 9,101 £525 -2.33% 1,800
UK excluding London +1 5,838 £520 -5.11% 1,502
London +6 3,178 £525 - 493
Work from Home +3 2,780 £525 -0.38% 731
South East +1 2,151 £534 -2.98% 533
South West 0 1,345 £538 -4.19% 340
Midlands +4 913 £485 -8.96% 154
North of England -1 859 £488 -2.50% 258
West Midlands +4 770 £485 -9.94% 107
North West -1 531 £500 - 150
East of England +2 365 £500 +35.14% 166
Yorkshire -5 203 £488 -7.14% 51
Scotland +31 199 £500 +2.56% 38
North East +1 160 £450 -6.25% 58
East Midlands -1 139 £450 -7.69% 47
Wales +4 82 £538 -1.38% 26
Northern Ireland +10 22 £463 -2.63% 15

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
1 402 (3.83%) Confluence
2 227 (2.16%) SharePoint
3 169 (1.61%) SAS
4 144 (1.37%) Microsoft Exchange
5 109 (1.04%) Apache Spark
6 89 (0.85%) Apache
7 69 (0.66%) Apache Airflow
8 47 (0.45%) nginx
9 40 (0.38%) WebLogic
10 23 (0.22%) Jupyter
11 17 (0.16%) CMS
11 17 (0.16%) Skype for Business
12 15 (0.14%) IIS
12 15 (0.14%) Tomcat
12 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
13 14 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
14 12 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
15 11 (0.10%) ArcGIS
15 11 (0.10%) NetWeaver
16 10 (0.095%) Oracle Application Server
Applications
1 231 (2.20%) Microsoft Office
2 198 (1.89%) Microsoft Excel
3 127 (1.21%) Microsoft Project
4 77 (0.73%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 46 (0.44%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.15%) Simulink
8 7 (0.067%) Notepad++
9 5 (0.048%) Windchill
10 4 (0.038%) Siemens NX
10 4 (0.038%) Sketch
11 3 (0.029%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.019%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.019%) CATIA
12 2 (0.019%) Chatbot
12 2 (0.019%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.019%) InVision
12 2 (0.019%) Lectora
12 2 (0.019%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.019%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 106 (1.01%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (0.43%) Remedy ITSM
3 43 (0.41%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 30 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
5 28 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
6 26 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 20 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
8 19 (0.18%) SAP PP
9 18 (0.17%) Maximo
10 13 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
10 13 (0.12%) Temenos T24
11 11 (0.10%) Findur
11 11 (0.10%) Oracle Assets
11 11 (0.10%) SAP PSCD
12 9 (0.086%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.086%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.086%) SAP PM
13 8 (0.076%) iTrent
13 8 (0.076%) SAP EWM
13 8 (0.076%) SAP VC
Cloud Services
1 1,820 (17.34%) AWS
2 1,763 (16.80%) Azure
3 459 (4.37%) GitHub
4 439 (4.18%) GCP
5 405 (3.86%) Azure DevOps
6 370 (3.53%) Power Platform
7 299 (2.85%) Serverless
8 286 (2.73%) Microsoft 365
9 245 (2.33%) GitHub Actions
10 240 (2.29%) Entra ID
11 225 (2.14%) Amazon S3
12 202 (1.92%) AWS Lambda
13 162 (1.54%) OpenShift
14 158 (1.51%) PaaS
15 149 (1.42%) AWS CloudFormation
16 142 (1.35%) IaaS
17 135 (1.29%) Amazon EC2
18 133 (1.27%) Amazon EKS
19 126 (1.20%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 116 (1.11%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 485 (4.62%) Firewall
2 297 (2.83%) DNS
3 235 (2.24%) Network Security
4 231 (2.20%) WAN
5 206 (1.96%) LAN
6 181 (1.72%) VPN
7 148 (1.41%) BGP
8 141 (1.34%) DHCP
9 127 (1.21%) TCP/IP
10 119 (1.13%) OSPF
11 104 (0.99%) VLAN
12 88 (0.84%) Wireless
13 74 (0.71%) Wi-Fi
14 67 (0.64%) MPLS
15 58 (0.55%) SAN
16 54 (0.51%) SSL
17 51 (0.49%) SD-WAN
18 50 (0.48%) IPsec
19 47 (0.45%) Cisco ISE
19 47 (0.45%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 283 (2.70%) Power BI
2 273 (2.60%) PostgreSQL
3 229 (2.18%) Data Warehouse
4 195 (1.86%) SQL Server
5 154 (1.47%) Metadata
6 126 (1.20%) Oracle Database
7 112 (1.07%) NoSQL
8 108 (1.03%) Amazon RDS
9 104 (0.99%) MongoDB
10 97 (0.92%) Relational Database
11 93 (0.89%) Data Lake
12 85 (0.81%) Azure SQL Database
13 84 (0.80%) MySQL
14 78 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
14 78 (0.74%) Pentaho
15 76 (0.72%) Tableau
16 75 (0.71%) Big Data
17 69 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
18 63 (0.60%) Oracle Reports
19 59 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 630 (6.00%) JIRA
2 511 (4.87%) Git
3 406 (3.87%) Jenkins
4 366 (3.49%) GitLab
5 130 (1.24%) Selenium
6 95 (0.91%) Postman
7 85 (0.81%) JUnit
8 65 (0.62%) SonarQube
9 51 (0.49%) Rational DOORS
10 50 (0.48%) Bitbucket
11 48 (0.46%) Artifactory
11 48 (0.46%) JMeter
12 43 (0.41%) Cypress.io
12 43 (0.41%) Maven
13 42 (0.40%) Oracle APEX
14 41 (0.39%) Cucumber
15 38 (0.36%) Mockito
16 35 (0.33%) Visual Studio
17 30 (0.29%) REST Assured
18 27 (0.26%) Zephyr
General
1 2,450 (23.34%) Public Sector
2 2,323 (22.13%) Social Skills
3 846 (8.06%) Analytical Skills
4 703 (6.70%) Finance
5 344 (3.28%) Military
6 288 (2.74%) Documentation Skills
7 241 (2.30%) Aerospace
8 171 (1.63%) Legal
9 160 (1.52%) Telecoms
10 159 (1.52%) Manufacturing
11 137 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
12 122 (1.16%) Banking
13 110 (1.05%) Organisational Skills
14 97 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
15 92 (0.88%) Marketing
16 85 (0.81%) Electronics
17 83 (0.79%) Law
18 72 (0.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 64 (0.61%) Police
20 32 (0.30%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,607 (15.31%) Architect
2 1,029 (9.80%) Developer
3 930 (8.86%) Senior
4 754 (7.18%) Analyst
5 681 (6.49%) Lead
6 568 (5.41%) Consultant
7 467 (4.45%) Data Engineer
8 447 (4.26%) DevOps Engineer
9 317 (3.02%) Technical Architect
10 307 (2.93%) Software Engineer
11 290 (2.76%) Solutions Architect
12 288 (2.74%) Network Engineer
13 272 (2.59%) Business Analyst
14 219 (2.09%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 215 (2.05%) Azure Engineer
16 213 (2.03%) Project Manager
17 200 (1.91%) Designer
18 199 (1.90%) Security Architect
19 185 (1.76%) Delivery Manager
20 181 (1.72%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 375 (3.57%) REST
2 236 (2.25%) Spring
3 212 (2.02%) Kafka
4 207 (1.97%) Node.js
5 183 (1.74%) React
6 182 (1.73%) Spring Boot
7 177 (1.69%) .NET
8 173 (1.65%) JSON
9 155 (1.48%) SOAP
10 144 (1.37%) LDAP
11 142 (1.35%) RESTful
12 133 (1.27%) PySpark
13 125 (1.19%) Web Services
14 123 (1.17%) AngularJS
15 110 (1.05%) OAuth
16 99 (0.94%) Oracle Fusion
17 97 (0.92%) HTML
17 97 (0.92%) XML
18 86 (0.82%) Middleware
19 79 (0.75%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 353 (3.36%) Product Ownership
2 326 (3.11%) Cloud Native
3 312 (2.97%) Data Centre
4 273 (2.60%) Onboarding
5 202 (1.92%) Management Information System
6 195 (1.86%) PKI
7 133 (1.27%) Security Posture
8 130 (1.24%) Enterprise Software
8 130 (1.24%) Self-Motivation
9 128 (1.22%) Legacy Systems
10 118 (1.12%) Distributed Systems
10 118 (1.12%) Replication
11 100 (0.95%) Public Cloud
12 82 (0.78%) Data Structures
13 79 (0.75%) Hybrid Cloud
13 79 (0.75%) Security Operations Centre
14 71 (0.68%) Virtual Team
15 70 (0.67%) Clustering
16 62 (0.59%) Driving Licence
17 60 (0.57%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 867 (8.26%) Windows
2 750 (7.15%) Linux
3 252 (2.40%) Windows Server
4 153 (1.46%) Unix
5 138 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 123 (1.17%) Android
7 113 (1.08%) Windows 10
8 65 (0.62%) Apple iOS
9 53 (0.51%) Mac OS
10 39 (0.37%) Ubuntu
11 33 (0.31%) VMS
12 29 (0.28%) Solaris
13 28 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
14 27 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
15 22 (0.21%) AIX
16 20 (0.19%) CentOS
17 16 (0.15%) Windows 7
18 14 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
19 10 (0.095%) Windows Server 2008
20 8 (0.076%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,071 (19.73%) Agile
2 1,576 (15.02%) DevOps
3 1,413 (13.46%) CI/CD
4 1,185 (11.29%) Problem-Solving
5 979 (9.33%) Stakeholder Management
6 898 (8.56%) Continuous Improvement
7 896 (8.54%) Migration
8 790 (7.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 685 (6.53%) Infrastructure as Code
10 649 (6.18%) ITIL
11 635 (6.05%) Analytics
12 625 (5.96%) Cybersecurity
13 620 (5.91%) Test Automation
14 582 (5.55%) Roadmaps
15 569 (5.42%) Containerisation
16 532 (5.07%) Software Engineering
17 518 (4.94%) Data Modelling
18 505 (4.81%) Scrum
19 467 (4.45%) Decision-Making
20 466 (4.44%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 1,247 (11.88%) Python
2 968 (9.22%) SQL
3 627 (5.97%) Java
4 607 (5.78%) PowerShell
5 391 (3.73%) JavaScript
6 223 (2.12%) C#
7 215 (2.05%) Bash
8 182 (1.73%) TypeScript
9 123 (1.17%) PL/SQL
10 107 (1.02%) Shell Script
11 101 (0.96%) C++
12 75 (0.71%) Go
13 72 (0.69%) Ruby
14 70 (0.67%) Scala
15 56 (0.53%) Bicep
15 56 (0.53%) C
16 50 (0.48%) R
17 46 (0.44%) Apex Code
18 43 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
19 41 (0.39%) Ada
Qualifications
1 8,016 (76.38%) SC Cleared
2 1,852 (17.65%) DV Cleared
3 476 (4.54%) Degree
4 335 (3.19%) BPSS Clearance
5 202 (1.92%) Cisco Certification
6 173 (1.65%) CISSP
7 144 (1.37%) Azure Certification
8 132 (1.26%) AWS Certification
9 129 (1.23%) CCNP
10 110 (1.05%) CISM
11 105 (1.00%) Microsoft Certification
12 85 (0.81%) CCNA
13 78 (0.74%) Computer Science Degree
14 74 (0.71%) ITIL Certification
15 68 (0.65%) PMP
15 68 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
16 62 (0.59%) PMI Certification
17 61 (0.58%) ISTQB
17 61 (0.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 51 (0.49%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 365 (3.48%) QA
2 321 (3.06%) Data Quality
3 309 (2.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 301 (2.87%) NIST
5 214 (2.04%) NCSC
6 178 (1.70%) Accessibility
7 171 (1.63%) GDPR
8 137 (1.31%) PMO
9 114 (1.09%) SLA
10 71 (0.68%) JSP 440
11 67 (0.64%) GRC
12 48 (0.46%) NIST 800
13 44 (0.42%) COBIT
14 41 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials
14 41 (0.39%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 39 (0.37%) WCAG
16 36 (0.34%) PCI DSS
17 33 (0.31%) RMADS
18 29 (0.28%) Def Stans
19 24 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 702 (6.69%) Docker
2 483 (4.60%) Active Directory
3 286 (2.73%) VMware Infrastructure
4 102 (0.97%) VMware NSX
5 84 (0.80%) VMware ESXi
6 79 (0.75%) vSphere
7 78 (0.74%) Hyper-V
8 55 (0.52%) Virtual Machines
9 37 (0.35%) Firmware
10 31 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
11 20 (0.19%) BitLocker
11 20 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
12 17 (0.16%) NFS
12 17 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 15 (0.14%) Postfix
14 12 (0.11%) Squid
14 12 (0.11%) vCloud
15 8 (0.076%) Microsoft App-V
16 7 (0.067%) KVM
17 6 (0.057%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 889 (8.47%) Kubernetes
2 840 (8.00%) Terraform
3 329 (3.13%) Ansible
4 247 (2.35%) Grafana
5 206 (1.96%) Prometheus
6 126 (1.20%) Single Sign-On
7 96 (0.91%) vCenter Server
8 85 (0.81%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 85 (0.81%) SCCM
9 63 (0.60%) Argo
10 61 (0.58%) Microsoft Intune
11 59 (0.56%) FortiGate
12 38 (0.36%) Packer
12 38 (0.36%) Podman
12 38 (0.36%) Puppet
13 35 (0.33%) vRealize
14 34 (0.32%) Progress Chef
15 31 (0.30%) Kibana
15 31 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
16 30 (0.29%) OPNET
Vendors
1 1,074 (10.23%) Microsoft
2 651 (6.20%) Oracle
3 515 (4.91%) VMware
4 420 (4.00%) Cisco
4 420 (4.00%) ServiceNow
5 412 (3.93%) SAP
6 240 (2.29%) Splunk
7 214 (2.04%) Databricks
8 193 (1.84%) Red Hat
9 171 (1.63%) Salesforce
10 166 (1.58%) Google
11 132 (1.26%) Atlassian
12 130 (1.24%) IBM
13 120 (1.14%) Juniper
13 120 (1.14%) Palo Alto
14 116 (1.11%) Talend
15 101 (0.96%) CyberArk
16 88 (0.84%) Remedy
17 87 (0.83%) Dell
18 83 (0.79%) Fortinet