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

6 months to
15 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 11,781 5,905 6,868
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.65% 18.19% 18.01%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.75% 57.99% 61.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,215 3,810 4,466
10th Percentile £390 £350 £350
25th Percentile £459 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £543 £535 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.40% -2.73% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £720 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £537 £550
% change year-on-year +0.09% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 817 580 413
10th Percentile £20.00 £18.51 £20.02
25th Percentile £33.68 £18.87 £27.00
Median hourly rate £64.00 £25.15 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +154.47% -58.08% -
75th Percentile £77.50 £34.06 £72.33
90th Percentile £90.00 £70.02 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +158.45% -58.08% +2.41%

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 17,136 10,182 11,183
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.49% 31.37% 29.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,436 6,330 6,905
10th Percentile £350 £300 £313
25th Percentile £438 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £621 £638
90th Percentile £713 £700 £726
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,323 820 663
10th Percentile £17.17 £17.98 £17.00
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £24.18
Median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +88.87% -49.70% -8.73%
75th Percentile £72.25 £44.25 £67.91
90th Percentile £87.43 £71.00 £75.37
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 15 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 15 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 15 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 10,169 £550 +2.33% 5,694
UK excluding London +1 6,622 £538 +0.09% 4,128
London +6 3,600 £550 +2.42% 1,934
Work from Home +2 3,106 £525 -2.33% 3,144
South East +1 2,316 £565 +5.12% 1,004
South West 0 1,412 £550 - 929
North of England +3 1,260 £515 +3.00% 849
Midlands 0 935 £475 -7.77% 375
West Midlands +1 800 £475 -8.39% 244
North West +2 736 £530 - 564
East of England 0 377 £550 - 496
Yorkshire +2 303 £500 +2.15% 163
Scotland +17 301 £481 -3.80% 328
North East 0 242 £475 -5.00% 147
East Midlands -1 128 £450 -2.70% 131
Wales +5 106 £550 +4.76% 66
Northern Ireland +3 36 £650 +8.33% 135

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
1 397 (3.37%) Confluence
2 273 (2.32%) SharePoint
3 173 (1.47%) SAS
4 126 (1.07%) Microsoft Exchange
5 99 (0.84%) Apache
5 99 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
6 96 (0.81%) Apache Spark
7 38 (0.32%) Jupyter
7 38 (0.32%) nginx
8 34 (0.29%) WebLogic
9 23 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
10 22 (0.19%) Skype for Business
11 21 (0.18%) IIS
11 21 (0.18%) Tomcat
12 19 (0.16%) CMS
13 16 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
13 16 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
14 15 (0.13%) NetWeaver
14 15 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 11 (0.093%) JBoss
Applications
1 211 (1.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 165 (1.40%) Microsoft Office
3 108 (0.92%) Microsoft Project
4 99 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 41 (0.35%) MS Visio
6 23 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
7 18 (0.15%) AutoCAD
8 17 (0.14%) Revit
9 16 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
10 12 (0.10%) Simulink
11 10 (0.085%) Windchill
12 8 (0.068%) Adobe XD
12 8 (0.068%) Chatbot
13 7 (0.059%) Notepad++
13 7 (0.059%) Sketch
14 6 (0.051%) Adobe Creative Suite
15 4 (0.034%) Trello
16 3 (0.025%) OrCAD
17 2 (0.017%) Houdini
17 2 (0.017%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 153 (1.30%) SAP S/4HANA
2 77 (0.65%) Remedy ITSM
3 54 (0.46%) Oracle ERP
4 41 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
5 31 (0.26%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 29 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 28 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
8 25 (0.21%) Oracle Payroll
8 25 (0.21%) SAP GRC
8 25 (0.21%) SAP PSCD
9 19 (0.16%) Primavera
9 19 (0.16%) SAP HR
10 18 (0.15%) SAP FI
11 15 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
12 13 (0.11%) Findur
13 12 (0.10%) iTrent
13 12 (0.10%) SAP CO
13 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
14 11 (0.093%) NetSuite
14 11 (0.093%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 2,157 (18.31%) Azure
2 2,084 (17.69%) AWS
3 525 (4.46%) GitHub
4 520 (4.41%) Azure DevOps
5 479 (4.07%) Power Platform
6 457 (3.88%) GCP
7 350 (2.97%) GitHub Actions
8 335 (2.84%) Microsoft 365
9 310 (2.63%) Entra ID
10 284 (2.41%) Serverless
11 237 (2.01%) Amazon S3
12 208 (1.77%) AWS Lambda
13 174 (1.48%) OCI
14 173 (1.47%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 168 (1.43%) SaaS
16 166 (1.41%) Amazon EKS
17 149 (1.26%) Amazon EC2
18 143 (1.21%) OpenShift
19 132 (1.12%) AWS CloudFormation
20 111 (0.94%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 455 (3.86%) Firewall
2 375 (3.18%) DNS
3 238 (2.02%) Network Security
4 218 (1.85%) WAN
5 204 (1.73%) VPN
6 183 (1.55%) DHCP
7 164 (1.39%) LAN
8 136 (1.15%) TCP/IP
9 128 (1.09%) BGP
10 119 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
11 105 (0.89%) VLAN
12 91 (0.77%) Wireless
13 88 (0.75%) OSPF
14 69 (0.59%) SSL
15 67 (0.57%) VSAN
16 66 (0.56%) MPLS
17 63 (0.53%) IPsec
18 61 (0.52%) SAN
19 58 (0.49%) SD-WAN
20 48 (0.41%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 344 (2.92%) Power BI
2 315 (2.67%) PostgreSQL
3 290 (2.46%) SQL Server
4 272 (2.31%) Data Warehouse
5 197 (1.67%) Metadata
6 185 (1.57%) Oracle Database
7 155 (1.32%) Relational Database
8 144 (1.22%) Data Lake
9 133 (1.13%) MongoDB
10 113 (0.96%) Amazon RDS
11 108 (0.92%) MySQL
12 99 (0.84%) NoSQL
13 95 (0.81%) Oracle Reports
14 73 (0.62%) Pentaho
15 69 (0.59%) Elasticsearch
16 68 (0.58%) Amazon Athena
17 55 (0.47%) Big Data
18 54 (0.46%) Tableau
19 52 (0.44%) Amazon Redshift
20 51 (0.43%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 661 (5.61%) JIRA
2 588 (4.99%) Git
3 519 (4.41%) GitLab
4 490 (4.16%) Jenkins
5 144 (1.22%) Selenium
6 84 (0.71%) Postman
7 82 (0.70%) SonarQube
8 75 (0.64%) JUnit
8 75 (0.64%) Maven
9 66 (0.56%) JMeter
10 58 (0.49%) Cucumber
11 53 (0.45%) Cypress.io
12 51 (0.43%) Gradle
13 46 (0.39%) Mockito
14 43 (0.36%) REST Assured
15 42 (0.36%) Gatling
16 40 (0.34%) Artifactory
17 39 (0.33%) Visual Studio
17 39 (0.33%) Zephyr
18 34 (0.29%) Bitbucket
General
1 2,635 (22.37%) Social Skills
2 2,413 (20.48%) Public Sector
3 948 (8.05%) Analytical Skills
4 773 (6.56%) Finance
5 419 (3.56%) Military
6 312 (2.65%) Aerospace
7 302 (2.56%) Documentation Skills
8 219 (1.86%) Influencing Skills
9 184 (1.56%) Organisational Skills
10 176 (1.49%) Legal
11 164 (1.39%) Telecoms
12 159 (1.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 144 (1.22%) Banking
14 134 (1.14%) Manufacturing
15 122 (1.04%) Law
16 120 (1.02%) Police
17 67 (0.57%) Presentation Skills
18 48 (0.41%) Local Government
19 46 (0.39%) Aviation
19 46 (0.39%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,912 (16.23%) Architect
2 1,223 (10.38%) Developer
3 1,123 (9.53%) Senior
4 1,050 (8.91%) Lead
5 708 (6.01%) Consultant
6 637 (5.41%) Analyst
7 515 (4.37%) DevOps Engineer
8 490 (4.16%) Data Engineer
9 422 (3.58%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 369 (3.13%) Technical Architect
11 363 (3.08%) Solutions Architect
12 294 (2.50%) Data Architect
13 288 (2.44%) Software Engineer
14 271 (2.30%) Security Architect
15 249 (2.11%) Network Engineer
16 230 (1.95%) Administrator
17 216 (1.83%) Java Developer
18 211 (1.79%) Azure Engineer
19 206 (1.75%) Cloud Engineer
20 200 (1.70%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,008 (8.56%) Terraform
2 457 (3.88%) REST
3 256 (2.17%) Spring
4 253 (2.15%) Kafka
5 235 (1.99%) Spring Boot
6 219 (1.86%) RESTful
7 214 (1.82%) .NET
8 202 (1.71%) React
9 181 (1.54%) Node.js
10 177 (1.50%) SOAP
11 168 (1.43%) JSON
12 134 (1.14%) HTML
13 133 (1.13%) OAuth
13 133 (1.13%) XML
14 122 (1.04%) AngularJS
14 122 (1.04%) Middleware
15 119 (1.01%) Web Services
16 104 (0.88%) CSS
17 103 (0.87%) Oracle Fusion
18 101 (0.86%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 520 (4.41%) Cloud Native
2 444 (3.77%) Onboarding
3 357 (3.03%) Product Ownership
4 306 (2.60%) Data Centre
5 264 (2.24%) Management Information System
6 184 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
7 176 (1.49%) Enterprise Software
8 174 (1.48%) PKI
9 159 (1.35%) CMDB
10 147 (1.25%) Distributed Systems
11 127 (1.08%) Replication
12 124 (1.05%) Hybrid Cloud
13 114 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
14 113 (0.96%) Cyber Threat
15 103 (0.87%) Operational Technology
16 98 (0.83%) Data Structures
17 93 (0.79%) Security Operations Centre
18 92 (0.78%) Public Cloud
19 89 (0.76%) Clustering
20 86 (0.73%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 999 (8.48%) Windows
2 808 (6.86%) Linux
3 368 (3.12%) Windows Server
4 232 (1.97%) Unix
5 156 (1.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 147 (1.25%) Windows 10
7 79 (0.67%) Android
8 71 (0.60%) Solaris
9 50 (0.42%) Mac OS
10 45 (0.38%) Apple iOS
11 43 (0.36%) CentOS
12 39 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
13 38 (0.32%) Ubuntu
14 32 (0.27%) AIX
15 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 25 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
17 22 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
18 21 (0.18%) VMS
19 16 (0.14%) Rocky
20 13 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,494 (21.17%) Agile
2 1,814 (15.40%) DevOps
3 1,786 (15.16%) CI/CD
4 1,578 (13.39%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,420 (12.05%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,271 (10.79%) Problem-Solving
7 1,169 (9.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,025 (8.70%) Infrastructure as Code
9 942 (8.00%) Migration
10 838 (7.11%) Cybersecurity
11 791 (6.71%) ITIL
12 777 (6.60%) Test Automation
13 754 (6.40%) Containerisation
14 735 (6.24%) Technical Leadership
15 724 (6.15%) Analytics
16 715 (6.07%) AI
17 711 (6.04%) Decision-Making
18 706 (5.99%) Roadmaps
19 693 (5.88%) Software Engineering
20 639 (5.42%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,370 (11.63%) Python
2 1,109 (9.41%) SQL
3 805 (6.83%) Java
4 603 (5.12%) PowerShell
5 411 (3.49%) JavaScript
6 361 (3.06%) Bash
7 235 (1.99%) C#
8 220 (1.87%) TypeScript
9 165 (1.40%) PL/SQL
10 126 (1.07%) Bicep
11 78 (0.66%) Shell Script
12 65 (0.55%) C++
13 58 (0.49%) Go
14 56 (0.48%) C
15 50 (0.42%) Scala
16 49 (0.42%) Groovy
17 48 (0.41%) Apex Code
18 46 (0.39%) Kotlin
19 41 (0.35%) T-SQL
20 39 (0.33%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 8,982 (76.24%) SC Cleared
2 2,225 (18.89%) DV Cleared
3 484 (4.11%) BPSS Clearance
4 464 (3.94%) Degree
5 220 (1.87%) CISSP
6 185 (1.57%) Azure Certification
6 185 (1.57%) Cisco Certification
7 172 (1.46%) Microsoft Certification
8 149 (1.26%) AWS Certification
9 141 (1.20%) CISM
10 107 (0.91%) PMI Certification
11 101 (0.86%) PMP
12 93 (0.79%) ISTQB
13 84 (0.71%) CCNP
14 75 (0.64%) Computer Science Degree
15 68 (0.58%) CCNA
16 63 (0.53%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 52 (0.44%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 47 (0.40%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
19 46 (0.39%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 537 (4.56%) QA
2 388 (3.29%) Data Quality
3 328 (2.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 319 (2.71%) NIST
5 283 (2.40%) NCSC
6 265 (2.25%) Accessibility
7 225 (1.91%) PMO
8 179 (1.52%) GDPR
9 172 (1.46%) SLA
10 158 (1.34%) GRC
11 84 (0.71%) WCAG
12 61 (0.52%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
14 44 (0.37%) NIST 800
15 36 (0.31%) Def Stans
16 27 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
17 25 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 23 (0.20%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 22 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
20 20 (0.17%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 821 (6.97%) Docker
2 628 (5.33%) Active Directory
3 435 (3.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 147 (1.25%) VMware NSX
5 146 (1.24%) VMware ESXi
6 139 (1.18%) Hyper-V
7 127 (1.08%) vSphere
8 92 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
9 46 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
10 42 (0.36%) Firmware
11 40 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
12 26 (0.22%) vCloud
13 23 (0.20%) BitLocker
14 20 (0.17%) NFS
15 15 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
16 14 (0.12%) Squid
17 11 (0.093%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 11 (0.093%) Postfix
18 9 (0.076%) Embedded Firmware
18 9 (0.076%) KVM
Systems Management
1 1,007 (8.55%) Kubernetes
2 451 (3.83%) Ansible
3 262 (2.22%) Grafana
4 210 (1.78%) Prometheus
5 141 (1.20%) SCCM
6 135 (1.15%) vCenter Server
7 95 (0.81%) SCOM
8 93 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
9 68 (0.58%) Argo
9 68 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
10 48 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
11 47 (0.40%) Puppet
12 41 (0.35%) Data Guard
13 32 (0.27%) Istio
13 32 (0.27%) Kibana
14 31 (0.26%) NetBackup
15 29 (0.25%) Control-M
15 29 (0.25%) Progress Chef
15 29 (0.25%) VxRail
16 27 (0.23%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,550 (13.16%) Microsoft
2 958 (8.13%) Oracle
3 607 (5.15%) VMware
4 541 (4.59%) ServiceNow
5 458 (3.89%) SAP
6 296 (2.51%) Cisco
7 252 (2.14%) Google
8 224 (1.90%) Splunk
9 206 (1.75%) Databricks
10 177 (1.50%) Salesforce
11 148 (1.26%) Red Hat
12 128 (1.09%) Palo Alto
13 115 (0.98%) Informatica
14 106 (0.90%) Talend
15 103 (0.87%) IBM
16 102 (0.87%) Dynatrace
17 99 (0.84%) CyberArk
18 88 (0.75%) Remedy
19 81 (0.69%) SolarWinds
20 80 (0.68%) Fortinet