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 14 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,976 5,215 8,111
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 23.11% 17.67% 18.22%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.34% 58.17% 59.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,689 3,398 5,206
10th Percentile £361 £330 £358
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.22%
75th Percentile £625 £626 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £518 £548 £550
% change year-on-year -5.48% -0.45% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 837 277 537
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.12 £14.41
25th Percentile £20.50 £24.66 £22.00
Median hourly rate £33.50 £57.50 £54.56
Median % change year-on-year -41.74% +5.39% -9.07%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.00 £78.50 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.69 £60.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year -53.85% +9.09% -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 14,597 8,965 13,575
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.82% 30.38% 30.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,602 5,632 8,384
10th Percentile £333 £285 £293
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £614 £625 £650
90th Percentile £721 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,085 468 1,023
10th Percentile £16.17 £18.51 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.75 £24.42 £18.16
Median hourly rate £29.00 £45.00 £38.95
Median % change year-on-year -35.56% +15.53% -22.10%
75th Percentile £67.50 £67.50 £61.62
90th Percentile £84.00 £82.15 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £50.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -48.46% +25.00% -18.36%

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 14 March 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 14 March 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 14 March 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 8,657 £525 -3.67% 1,925
UK excluding London +1 5,550 £518 -5.48% 1,658
London +5 3,012 £530 +0.95% 488
Work from Home +4 2,711 £525 - 879
South East +1 1,980 £525 -4.55% 543
South West 0 1,305 £540 -2.53% 417
Midlands +4 863 £492 -10.55% 177
North of England -1 847 £500 - 276
West Midlands +4 695 £492 -10.71% 123
North West 0 546 £500 +1.16% 141
East of England +2 357 £494 -1.30% 168
Scotland +12 185 £500 +11.11% 66
Yorkshire -6 181 £498 -5.24% 77
East Midlands +2 165 £434 -16.27% 52
North East 0 150 £450 -4.26% 59
Wales -1 82 £515 -6.33% 41
Northern Ireland +12 28 £500 +64.01% 10
Channel Islands - 1 - -

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
1 372 (3.73%) Confluence
2 224 (2.25%) SharePoint
3 146 (1.46%) Microsoft Exchange
4 138 (1.38%) SAS
5 93 (0.93%) Apache Spark
6 84 (0.84%) Apache
7 62 (0.62%) Apache Airflow
8 42 (0.42%) nginx
9 40 (0.40%) WebLogic
10 30 (0.30%) Skype for Business
11 22 (0.22%) Jupyter
12 20 (0.20%) CMS
13 17 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
14 16 (0.16%) IIS
15 15 (0.15%) Tuxedo
16 11 (0.11%) Tomcat
17 10 (0.10%) Oracle Workflow
18 9 (0.090%) ArcGIS
19 7 (0.070%) OpenStack
20 6 (0.060%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 258 (2.59%) Microsoft Office
2 204 (2.04%) Microsoft Excel
3 125 (1.25%) Microsoft Project
4 70 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 48 (0.48%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.14%) Simulink
8 6 (0.060%) Sketch
9 5 (0.050%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.050%) Siemens NX
9 5 (0.050%) Windchill
10 4 (0.040%) Chatbot
10 4 (0.040%) Oracle Smart View
11 2 (0.020%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.020%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.020%) CATIA
11 2 (0.020%) InVision
11 2 (0.020%) Photoshop
11 2 (0.020%) PlantUML
11 2 (0.020%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 153 (1.53%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (0.45%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 34 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
4 28 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
5 27 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
6 26 (0.26%) Teamcenter
7 24 (0.24%) SAP MM
8 19 (0.19%) SAP PP
9 18 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
10 16 (0.16%) Maximo
11 15 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
12 14 (0.14%) SAP VC
13 13 (0.13%) SAP QM
14 12 (0.12%) Oracle Assets
15 10 (0.10%) Temenos T24
16 9 (0.090%) SAP PM
17 8 (0.080%) Oracle Receivables
17 8 (0.080%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 8 (0.080%) SAP ERP
17 8 (0.080%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,706 (17.10%) AWS
2 1,646 (16.50%) Azure
3 460 (4.61%) GitHub
4 424 (4.25%) GCP
5 381 (3.82%) Power Platform
6 375 (3.76%) Azure DevOps
7 316 (3.17%) Microsoft 365
8 276 (2.77%) Serverless
9 252 (2.53%) Entra ID
10 243 (2.44%) GitHub Actions
11 203 (2.03%) Amazon S3
12 180 (1.80%) OpenShift
13 177 (1.77%) AWS Lambda
14 144 (1.44%) AWS CloudFormation
15 132 (1.32%) Amazon EC2
15 132 (1.32%) Amazon EKS
16 129 (1.29%) PaaS
17 122 (1.22%) IaaS
18 121 (1.21%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 112 (1.12%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 459 (4.60%) Firewall
2 284 (2.85%) DNS
3 220 (2.21%) Network Security
4 212 (2.13%) WAN
5 181 (1.81%) LAN
6 179 (1.79%) VPN
7 142 (1.42%) BGP
8 140 (1.40%) TCP/IP
9 135 (1.35%) DHCP
10 103 (1.03%) OSPF
11 97 (0.97%) Wireless
12 89 (0.89%) VLAN
13 76 (0.76%) Wi-Fi
14 74 (0.74%) MPLS
15 55 (0.55%) SAN
16 54 (0.54%) SSL
17 52 (0.52%) IPsec
18 49 (0.49%) Cisco ISE
19 43 (0.43%) Kerberos
20 42 (0.42%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 278 (2.79%) Power BI
2 264 (2.65%) PostgreSQL
3 181 (1.81%) Data Warehouse
4 165 (1.65%) SQL Server
5 128 (1.28%) Metadata
6 113 (1.13%) Oracle Database
7 103 (1.03%) Amazon RDS
7 103 (1.03%) NoSQL
8 99 (0.99%) MongoDB
9 95 (0.95%) Relational Database
10 85 (0.85%) Data Lake
11 83 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
12 73 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
13 72 (0.72%) MySQL
14 71 (0.71%) Big Data
15 62 (0.62%) Pentaho
16 60 (0.60%) Tableau
17 55 (0.55%) Amazon Redshift
18 52 (0.52%) Delta Lake
19 43 (0.43%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 587 (5.88%) JIRA
2 475 (4.76%) Git
3 396 (3.97%) Jenkins
4 357 (3.58%) GitLab
5 123 (1.23%) Selenium
6 88 (0.88%) Postman
7 86 (0.86%) JUnit
8 58 (0.58%) Cypress.io
9 56 (0.56%) SonarQube
10 54 (0.54%) Rational DOORS
11 51 (0.51%) Bitbucket
12 49 (0.49%) Cucumber
13 47 (0.47%) Artifactory
14 46 (0.46%) JMeter
15 45 (0.45%) Maven
16 42 (0.42%) Oracle APEX
17 38 (0.38%) Visual Studio
18 37 (0.37%) Mockito
19 33 (0.33%) REST Assured
20 23 (0.23%) Metasploit
General
1 2,513 (25.19%) Public Sector
2 2,342 (23.48%) Social Skills
3 834 (8.36%) Analytical Skills
4 689 (6.91%) Finance
5 334 (3.35%) Military
6 277 (2.78%) Documentation Skills
7 236 (2.37%) Aerospace
8 192 (1.92%) Manufacturing
9 186 (1.86%) Telecoms
10 153 (1.53%) Legal
11 129 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
12 120 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
13 116 (1.16%) Electronics
14 115 (1.15%) Banking
15 114 (1.14%) Marketing
16 109 (1.09%) Presentation Skills
17 74 (0.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 72 (0.72%) Law
19 54 (0.54%) Police
20 39 (0.39%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,444 (14.47%) Architect
2 978 (9.80%) Developer
3 884 (8.86%) Senior
4 764 (7.66%) Analyst
5 650 (6.52%) Consultant
6 622 (6.23%) Lead
7 418 (4.19%) DevOps Engineer
8 388 (3.89%) Data Engineer
9 282 (2.83%) Solutions Architect
10 268 (2.69%) Business Analyst
10 268 (2.69%) Technical Architect
11 267 (2.68%) Network Engineer
12 261 (2.62%) Software Engineer
13 237 (2.38%) Support Engineer
14 187 (1.87%) Tester
15 180 (1.80%) Designer
16 179 (1.79%) Security Architect
17 178 (1.78%) Azure Engineer
17 178 (1.78%) Project Manager
18 173 (1.73%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 369 (3.70%) REST
2 224 (2.25%) Spring
3 211 (2.12%) Node.js
4 210 (2.11%) Kafka
5 187 (1.87%) React
6 166 (1.66%) Spring Boot
7 165 (1.65%) SOAP
8 162 (1.62%) JSON
9 153 (1.53%) .NET
10 151 (1.51%) LDAP
11 125 (1.25%) RESTful
12 124 (1.24%) Web Services
13 121 (1.21%) AngularJS
13 121 (1.21%) HTML
14 118 (1.18%) PySpark
15 111 (1.11%) OAuth
16 103 (1.03%) Oracle Fusion
17 101 (1.01%) XML
18 96 (0.96%) CSS
19 85 (0.85%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 317 (3.18%) Data Centre
2 312 (3.13%) Product Ownership
3 297 (2.98%) Cloud Native
4 252 (2.53%) Onboarding
5 208 (2.09%) PKI
6 187 (1.87%) Management Information System
7 142 (1.42%) Security Posture
8 128 (1.28%) Legacy Systems
8 128 (1.28%) Self-Motivation
9 114 (1.14%) Enterprise Software
10 103 (1.03%) Replication
11 87 (0.87%) Public Cloud
12 82 (0.82%) Distributed Systems
13 81 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
14 79 (0.79%) Hybrid Cloud
15 73 (0.73%) Driving Licence
16 69 (0.69%) Data Structures
17 68 (0.68%) Cyber Threat
18 58 (0.58%) Clustering
19 55 (0.55%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 886 (8.88%) Windows
2 719 (7.21%) Linux
3 238 (2.39%) Windows Server
4 141 (1.41%) Windows 10
5 130 (1.30%) Android
6 129 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 126 (1.26%) Unix
8 70 (0.70%) Mac OS
9 52 (0.52%) Apple iOS
10 49 (0.49%) Ubuntu
11 32 (0.32%) VMS
12 31 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
13 24 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 22 (0.22%) CentOS
14 22 (0.22%) Solaris
15 20 (0.20%) Windows 7
16 13 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
17 12 (0.12%) AIX
18 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
19 10 (0.10%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,926 (19.31%) Agile
2 1,502 (15.06%) DevOps
3 1,326 (13.29%) CI/CD
4 1,187 (11.90%) Problem-Solving
5 925 (9.27%) Stakeholder Management
6 849 (8.51%) Migration
7 808 (8.10%) Continuous Improvement
8 725 (7.27%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 636 (6.38%) Cybersecurity
10 615 (6.16%) Infrastructure as Code
11 605 (6.06%) ITIL
12 568 (5.69%) Analytics
13 556 (5.57%) Test Automation
14 550 (5.51%) Roadmaps
15 541 (5.42%) Containerisation
16 472 (4.73%) Software Engineering
17 468 (4.69%) Business Intelligence
18 462 (4.63%) Scrum
19 451 (4.52%) Data Modelling
20 433 (4.34%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 1,186 (11.89%) Python
2 870 (8.72%) SQL
3 624 (6.26%) PowerShell
4 562 (5.63%) Java
5 426 (4.27%) JavaScript
6 224 (2.25%) Bash
7 207 (2.07%) C#
8 193 (1.93%) TypeScript
9 113 (1.13%) C++
10 109 (1.09%) Shell Script
11 106 (1.06%) PL/SQL
12 78 (0.78%) Go
13 69 (0.69%) Ruby
14 65 (0.65%) C
15 54 (0.54%) Scala
16 49 (0.49%) Ada
17 45 (0.45%) Kusto Query Language
18 43 (0.43%) Bicep
19 40 (0.40%) ABAP
19 40 (0.40%) R
Qualifications
1 7,616 (76.34%) SC Cleared
2 1,692 (16.96%) DV Cleared
3 498 (4.99%) Degree
4 323 (3.24%) BPSS Clearance
5 184 (1.84%) Cisco Certification
6 179 (1.79%) CISSP
7 143 (1.43%) AWS Certification
8 131 (1.31%) Azure Certification
9 123 (1.23%) CCNP
10 113 (1.13%) CISM
11 111 (1.11%) Microsoft Certification
12 87 (0.87%) Computer Science Degree
13 81 (0.81%) CCNA
14 68 (0.68%) ITIL Certification
14 68 (0.68%) TOGAF Certification
15 59 (0.59%) ISTQB
16 58 (0.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 57 (0.57%) PMP
18 51 (0.51%) PMI Certification
19 49 (0.49%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 329 (3.30%) QA
2 307 (3.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 293 (2.94%) NIST
4 290 (2.91%) Data Quality
5 220 (2.21%) NCSC
6 187 (1.87%) GDPR
7 184 (1.84%) Accessibility
8 126 (1.26%) SLA
9 115 (1.15%) PMO
10 67 (0.67%) JSP 440
11 63 (0.63%) GRC
12 48 (0.48%) WCAG
13 44 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
13 44 (0.44%) NIST 800
14 40 (0.40%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 36 (0.36%) Def Stans
16 35 (0.35%) COBIT
17 33 (0.33%) PCI DSS
18 27 (0.27%) RMADS
19 25 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 663 (6.65%) Docker
2 492 (4.93%) Active Directory
3 250 (2.51%) VMware Infrastructure
4 92 (0.92%) VMware NSX
5 77 (0.77%) vSphere
6 64 (0.64%) Hyper-V
6 64 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
7 58 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
8 32 (0.32%) Firmware
9 29 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
10 21 (0.21%) BitLocker
11 19 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
12 17 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 15 (0.15%) NFS
14 10 (0.10%) Postfix
14 10 (0.10%) vCloud
15 9 (0.090%) Squid
16 7 (0.070%) Microsoft App-V
17 6 (0.060%) KVM
17 6 (0.060%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 855 (8.57%) Kubernetes
2 796 (7.98%) Terraform
3 322 (3.23%) Ansible
4 247 (2.48%) Grafana
5 203 (2.03%) Prometheus
6 133 (1.33%) Single Sign-On
7 98 (0.98%) SCCM
8 90 (0.90%) vCenter Server
9 89 (0.89%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 69 (0.69%) Argo
10 69 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
11 50 (0.50%) FortiGate
12 40 (0.40%) Podman
13 38 (0.38%) Packer
14 34 (0.34%) Puppet
14 34 (0.34%) vRealize
15 31 (0.31%) Progress Chef
16 30 (0.30%) OPNET
17 29 (0.29%) Kibana
18 25 (0.25%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 1,083 (10.86%) Microsoft
2 556 (5.57%) Oracle
3 472 (4.73%) VMware
4 450 (4.51%) SAP
5 432 (4.33%) Cisco
6 420 (4.21%) ServiceNow
7 244 (2.45%) Splunk
8 196 (1.96%) Red Hat
9 169 (1.69%) Databricks
10 160 (1.60%) Google
11 144 (1.44%) CyberArk
12 140 (1.40%) Salesforce
13 133 (1.33%) Juniper
14 130 (1.30%) Atlassian
15 129 (1.29%) Palo Alto
16 115 (1.15%) IBM
17 104 (1.04%) Dell
18 90 (0.90%) HP
18 90 (0.90%) Talend
19 79 (0.79%) Aruba