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 8 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,642 5,851 7,223
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.72% 17.79% 18.54%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.14% 57.08% 61.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,111 3,722 4,816
10th Percentile £381 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £537 £535 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.37% -2.73% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £695 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 849 529 501
10th Percentile £19.31 £18.51 £15.22
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +151.03% -54.27% -8.33%
75th Percentile £78.75 £48.75 £71.75
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.50 £25.15 £57.25
% change year-on-year +152.49% -56.07% -0.43%

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 16,838 10,251 11,661
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.41% 31.16% 29.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,264 6,335 7,402
10th Percentile £350 £288 £313
25th Percentile £431 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £715 £703 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,256 785 855
10th Percentile £17.73 £17.87 £14.65
25th Percentile £25.75 £19.38 £21.25
Median hourly rate £51.75 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +105.77% -41.51% -22.00%
75th Percentile £73.53 £54.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.00 £75.00 £77.30
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £46.18
% change year-on-year +98.81% -45.54% -11.52%

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 8 August 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 8 August 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 8 August 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 +3 10,088 £537 -0.09% 2,607
UK excluding London +1 6,549 £525 -2.33% 1,893
London +7 3,577 £550 +3.77% 862
Work from Home +4 3,134 £525 -2.23% 1,250
South East +1 2,465 £560 +4.19% 619
South West 0 1,347 £538 -6.52% 480
North of England +2 1,129 £501 +0.10% 366
Midlands +2 985 £469 -8.40% 166
West Midlands +1 850 £469 -8.74% 120
North West +2 608 £525 - 224
East of England 0 322 £550 - 165
Yorkshire +3 304 £500 +1.63% 71
Scotland +13 264 £495 +3.34% 80
North East 0 241 £475 -5.00% 74
East Midlands 0 123 £438 -5.30% 46
Wales +2 100 £550 +15.79% 38
Northern Ireland +7 33 £650 +25.00% 18

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
1 416 (3.57%) Confluence
2 273 (2.34%) SharePoint
3 197 (1.69%) SAS
4 120 (1.03%) Microsoft Exchange
5 101 (0.87%) Apache Spark
6 98 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
7 92 (0.79%) Apache
8 39 (0.33%) Jupyter
8 39 (0.33%) WebLogic
9 37 (0.32%) nginx
10 24 (0.21%) IIS
10 24 (0.21%) Tomcat
11 22 (0.19%) Oracle Application Server
12 19 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
13 16 (0.14%) CMS
13 16 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
14 15 (0.13%) NetWeaver
15 13 (0.11%) Skype for Business
16 11 (0.094%) JBoss
16 11 (0.094%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 214 (1.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 152 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
3 101 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
4 81 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 47 (0.40%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.13%) AutoCAD
7 15 (0.13%) Revit
7 15 (0.13%) Simulink
8 14 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
9 9 (0.077%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.069%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.060%) Notepad++
11 7 (0.060%) Sketch
12 3 (0.026%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 3 (0.026%) Trello
12 3 (0.026%) Windchill
13 2 (0.017%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.017%) Houdini
13 2 (0.017%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 151 (1.30%) SAP S/4HANA
2 83 (0.71%) Remedy ITSM
3 46 (0.40%) Oracle ERP
4 42 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
5 34 (0.29%) Teamcenter
6 33 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 27 (0.23%) Dynamics CRM
8 22 (0.19%) SAP PSCD
9 21 (0.18%) Primavera
10 20 (0.17%) SAP GRC
11 18 (0.15%) Oracle Payroll
12 15 (0.13%) Findur
12 15 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
13 13 (0.11%) Temenos T24
14 12 (0.10%) iTrent
14 12 (0.10%) SAP FI
14 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
15 11 (0.094%) NetSuite
15 11 (0.094%) SAP HR
16 10 (0.086%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,132 (18.31%) Azure
2 2,073 (17.81%) AWS
3 542 (4.66%) GitHub
4 523 (4.49%) Azure DevOps
5 475 (4.08%) Power Platform
6 454 (3.90%) GCP
7 339 (2.91%) GitHub Actions
8 312 (2.68%) Microsoft 365
9 301 (2.59%) Entra ID
10 287 (2.47%) Serverless
11 248 (2.13%) Amazon S3
12 204 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
13 177 (1.52%) OCI
14 171 (1.47%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 168 (1.44%) SaaS
16 165 (1.42%) Amazon EKS
17 161 (1.38%) Amazon EC2
18 153 (1.31%) PaaS
19 137 (1.18%) OpenShift
20 131 (1.13%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 497 (4.27%) Firewall
2 384 (3.30%) DNS
3 231 (1.98%) WAN
4 230 (1.98%) Network Security
5 204 (1.75%) VPN
6 195 (1.67%) LAN
7 189 (1.62%) DHCP
8 145 (1.25%) BGP
9 138 (1.19%) TCP/IP
10 115 (0.99%) OSPF
11 114 (0.98%) Wi-Fi
12 105 (0.90%) VLAN
13 90 (0.77%) Wireless
14 68 (0.58%) MPLS
15 67 (0.58%) IPsec
15 67 (0.58%) VSAN
16 63 (0.54%) SAN
17 62 (0.53%) SSL
18 61 (0.52%) SD-WAN
18 61 (0.52%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 359 (3.08%) Power BI
2 308 (2.65%) PostgreSQL
3 293 (2.52%) SQL Server
4 287 (2.47%) Data Warehouse
5 171 (1.47%) Oracle Database
6 159 (1.37%) Metadata
7 137 (1.18%) Data Lake
8 129 (1.11%) Relational Database
9 114 (0.98%) Amazon RDS
10 111 (0.95%) MongoDB
11 106 (0.91%) Oracle Reports
12 96 (0.82%) MySQL
12 96 (0.82%) Pentaho
13 87 (0.75%) NoSQL
14 70 (0.60%) Amazon Athena
14 70 (0.60%) Amazon Redshift
15 69 (0.59%) Elasticsearch
16 62 (0.53%) Tableau
17 56 (0.48%) Big Data
18 52 (0.45%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 670 (5.76%) JIRA
2 584 (5.02%) Git
3 482 (4.14%) GitLab
4 475 (4.08%) Jenkins
5 130 (1.12%) Selenium
6 84 (0.72%) SonarQube
7 79 (0.68%) JUnit
7 79 (0.68%) Postman
8 70 (0.60%) Maven
9 66 (0.57%) JMeter
10 57 (0.49%) Rational DOORS
11 55 (0.47%) Cucumber
12 50 (0.43%) Visual Studio
13 48 (0.41%) Mockito
14 46 (0.40%) Cypress.io
15 45 (0.39%) Zephyr
16 44 (0.38%) Bitbucket
17 42 (0.36%) Gradle
18 38 (0.33%) Artifactory
18 38 (0.33%) Gatling
General
1 2,477 (21.28%) Public Sector
2 2,441 (20.97%) Social Skills
3 901 (7.74%) Analytical Skills
4 778 (6.68%) Finance
5 362 (3.11%) Military
6 301 (2.59%) Aerospace
7 291 (2.50%) Documentation Skills
8 173 (1.49%) Influencing Skills
8 173 (1.49%) Legal
9 153 (1.31%) Organisational Skills
10 150 (1.29%) Telecoms
11 136 (1.17%) Banking
12 124 (1.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 107 (0.92%) Manufacturing
14 105 (0.90%) Police
15 102 (0.88%) Law
16 75 (0.64%) Presentation Skills
17 53 (0.46%) Aviation
18 43 (0.37%) Marketing
19 41 (0.35%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,847 (15.86%) Architect
2 1,294 (11.11%) Developer
3 1,095 (9.41%) Senior
4 995 (8.55%) Lead
5 691 (5.94%) Analyst
6 644 (5.53%) Consultant
7 539 (4.63%) Data Engineer
8 474 (4.07%) DevOps Engineer
9 416 (3.57%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 374 (3.21%) Technical Architect
11 356 (3.06%) Solutions Architect
12 330 (2.83%) Software Engineer
13 285 (2.45%) Security Architect
14 261 (2.24%) Network Engineer
15 248 (2.13%) Data Architect
16 228 (1.96%) Java Developer
17 220 (1.89%) Designer
18 217 (1.86%) Administrator
19 212 (1.82%) Project Manager
20 211 (1.81%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 433 (3.72%) REST
2 268 (2.30%) Spring
3 233 (2.00%) .NET
3 233 (2.00%) Kafka
4 232 (1.99%) Spring Boot
5 215 (1.85%) RESTful
6 203 (1.74%) React
7 187 (1.61%) Node.js
8 170 (1.46%) SOAP
9 158 (1.36%) JSON
10 140 (1.20%) AngularJS
11 129 (1.11%) Web Services
12 128 (1.10%) OAuth
13 122 (1.05%) HTML
14 114 (0.98%) XML
15 110 (0.94%) Middleware
16 97 (0.83%) PySpark
17 93 (0.80%) Playwright
18 88 (0.76%) CSS
19 87 (0.75%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 488 (4.19%) Cloud Native
2 404 (3.47%) Onboarding
3 365 (3.14%) Product Ownership
4 323 (2.77%) Data Centre
5 240 (2.06%) Management Information System
6 200 (1.72%) Legacy Systems
7 171 (1.47%) PKI
8 169 (1.45%) Distributed Systems
9 141 (1.21%) Enterprise Software
10 137 (1.18%) CMDB
11 126 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
12 119 (1.02%) Data Structures
13 116 (1.00%) Hybrid Cloud
14 114 (0.98%) Replication
15 106 (0.91%) Clustering
16 96 (0.82%) Public Cloud
17 89 (0.76%) Virtual Team
18 88 (0.76%) Security Operations Centre
19 83 (0.71%) Cyber Threat
20 77 (0.66%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 959 (8.24%) Windows
2 804 (6.91%) Linux
3 327 (2.81%) Windows Server
4 232 (1.99%) Unix
5 155 (1.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 104 (0.89%) Windows 10
7 99 (0.85%) Android
8 64 (0.55%) Solaris
9 63 (0.54%) Apple iOS
10 48 (0.41%) Mac OS
11 43 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
12 36 (0.31%) AIX
12 36 (0.31%) Ubuntu
13 31 (0.27%) CentOS
14 25 (0.21%) VMS
15 22 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
16 18 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
17 16 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
18 14 (0.12%) Windows 7
19 12 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,438 (20.94%) Agile
2 1,816 (15.60%) DevOps
3 1,727 (14.83%) CI/CD
4 1,324 (11.37%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,284 (11.03%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,233 (10.59%) Problem-Solving
7 1,083 (9.30%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 932 (8.01%) Infrastructure as Code
9 913 (7.84%) Migration
10 757 (6.50%) Cybersecurity
11 753 (6.47%) ITIL
12 743 (6.38%) Test Automation
13 734 (6.30%) Analytics
14 725 (6.23%) Containerisation
15 696 (5.98%) Software Engineering
16 675 (5.80%) Roadmaps
17 645 (5.54%) Data Modelling
18 644 (5.53%) Technical Leadership
19 634 (5.45%) AI
20 633 (5.44%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 1,310 (11.25%) Python
2 1,162 (9.98%) SQL
3 826 (7.10%) Java
4 547 (4.70%) PowerShell
5 395 (3.39%) JavaScript
6 320 (2.75%) Bash
7 268 (2.30%) C#
8 193 (1.66%) TypeScript
9 182 (1.56%) PL/SQL
10 111 (0.95%) Bicep
11 94 (0.81%) Shell Script
12 93 (0.80%) C++
13 68 (0.58%) C
14 59 (0.51%) Apex Code
15 56 (0.48%) Kotlin
16 53 (0.46%) Ruby
17 52 (0.45%) Scala
18 46 (0.40%) Go
19 42 (0.36%) Groovy
20 36 (0.31%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8,873 (76.22%) SC Cleared
2 2,192 (18.83%) DV Cleared
3 453 (3.89%) Degree
4 442 (3.80%) BPSS Clearance
5 211 (1.81%) Cisco Certification
6 202 (1.74%) CISSP
7 170 (1.46%) Azure Certification
8 155 (1.33%) Microsoft Certification
9 134 (1.15%) AWS Certification
10 127 (1.09%) CISM
11 108 (0.93%) PMI Certification
12 106 (0.91%) PMP
13 89 (0.76%) CCNA
13 89 (0.76%) CCNP
14 87 (0.75%) ISTQB
15 67 (0.58%) Computer Science Degree
16 66 (0.57%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 54 (0.46%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 51 (0.44%) TOGAF Certification
19 47 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 457 (3.93%) QA
2 380 (3.26%) Data Quality
3 315 (2.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 307 (2.64%) NIST
5 254 (2.18%) Accessibility
6 253 (2.17%) NCSC
7 222 (1.91%) PMO
8 183 (1.57%) GDPR
9 143 (1.23%) GRC
10 141 (1.21%) SLA
11 79 (0.68%) WCAG
12 64 (0.55%) JSP 440
13 47 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
13 47 (0.40%) NIST 800
14 32 (0.27%) Def Stans
14 32 (0.27%) Government Security Classifications
15 29 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 28 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 22 (0.19%) RMADS
18 20 (0.17%) COBIT
System Software
1 813 (6.98%) Docker
2 529 (4.54%) Active Directory
3 404 (3.47%) VMware Infrastructure
4 149 (1.28%) VMware NSX
5 132 (1.13%) VMware ESXi
6 115 (0.99%) vSphere
7 112 (0.96%) Hyper-V
8 82 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
9 47 (0.40%) Oracle RAC
10 39 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
11 32 (0.27%) Firmware
12 24 (0.21%) vCloud
13 20 (0.17%) BitLocker
14 17 (0.15%) NFS
15 16 (0.14%) Postfix
15 16 (0.14%) Squid
16 10 (0.086%) Virtual Servers
17 9 (0.077%) KVM
18 8 (0.069%) Microsoft App-V
19 7 (0.060%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 991 (8.51%) Terraform
2 964 (8.28%) Kubernetes
3 435 (3.74%) Ansible
4 267 (2.29%) Grafana
5 213 (1.83%) Prometheus
6 132 (1.13%) vCenter Server
7 114 (0.98%) SCCM
8 90 (0.77%) Microsoft Intune
9 72 (0.62%) SCOM
10 71 (0.61%) Single Sign-On
11 66 (0.57%) Argo
12 57 (0.49%) Oracle RMAN
13 51 (0.44%) Puppet
14 44 (0.38%) FortiGate
15 40 (0.34%) Data Guard
16 31 (0.27%) Progress Chef
17 30 (0.26%) Nagios
18 26 (0.22%) Istio
18 26 (0.22%) Red Hat Satellite
18 26 (0.22%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,380 (11.85%) Microsoft
2 927 (7.96%) Oracle
3 579 (4.97%) VMware
4 560 (4.81%) ServiceNow
5 432 (3.71%) SAP
6 310 (2.66%) Cisco
7 225 (1.93%) Google
8 215 (1.85%) Splunk
9 204 (1.75%) Databricks
10 194 (1.67%) Salesforce
11 158 (1.36%) Red Hat
12 134 (1.15%) Talend
13 129 (1.11%) Informatica
14 123 (1.06%) IBM
15 115 (0.99%) Palo Alto
16 104 (0.89%) Juniper
17 98 (0.84%) F5
18 96 (0.82%) SolarWinds
19 94 (0.81%) Dynatrace
19 94 (0.81%) Remedy