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 2 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,638 5,197 7,869
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.81% 17.96% 18.28%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.21% 57.72% 61.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,298 3,422 5,194
10th Percentile £381 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £714 £698 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £537 £550
% change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 859 311 552
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.38 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.68 £23.58 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £32.50 £56.15
Median % change year-on-year +69.23% -42.11% -6.43%
75th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £78.36 £84.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £35.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +57.14% -39.13% -

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 15,370 9,004 12,878
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.51% 31.12% 29.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,200 5,648 8,016
10th Percentile £350 £275 £310
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £530
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -1.89% -3.64%
75th Percentile £619 £619 £645
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £535
% change year-on-year - -6.54% +1.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,120 527 1,101
10th Percentile £16.49 £17.57 £13.87
25th Percentile £21.33 £21.50 £18.13
Median hourly rate £50.00 £32.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.85% -18.75% -27.27%
75th Percentile £71.50 £65.00 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.84 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £32.05 £41.23
% change year-on-year +48.21% -22.27% -21.47%

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 2 June 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 2 June 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 2 June 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 9,209 £525 -2.33% 2,187
UK excluding London +1 5,905 £525 -2.23% 1,758
London +7 3,295 £525 - 555
Work from Home +4 2,889 £525 - 1,116
South East +1 2,206 £550 - 552
South West 0 1,254 £538 -4.44% 465
North of England 0 941 £500 - 306
Midlands +2 872 £469 -10.58% 162
West Midlands +3 747 £470 -10.48% 117
North West -1 521 £515 +3.00% 190
East of England +2 378 £550 +10.00% 146
Yorkshire -7 239 £488 -1.71% 63
Scotland +27 236 £518 +16.62% 72
North East +1 213 £475 -1.04% 54
East Midlands -2 118 £444 -13.41% 45
Wales +5 85 £490 +3.16% 56
Northern Ireland +1 19 £650 +36.84% 33

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
1 382 (3.59%) Confluence
2 224 (2.11%) SharePoint
3 147 (1.38%) SAS
4 128 (1.20%) Microsoft Exchange
5 104 (0.98%) Apache Spark
6 91 (0.86%) Apache
7 85 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.37%) nginx
9 36 (0.34%) Jupyter
10 35 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 21 (0.20%) Tomcat
12 19 (0.18%) IIS
13 18 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
14 15 (0.14%) CMS
14 15 (0.14%) Skype for Business
15 14 (0.13%) NetWeaver
15 14 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
16 11 (0.10%) Tuxedo
17 10 (0.094%) ArcGIS
18 8 (0.075%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 171 (1.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 155 (1.46%) Microsoft Office
3 80 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 76 (0.71%) Microsoft Project
5 45 (0.42%) MS Visio
6 17 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.15%) Simulink
8 8 (0.075%) SOLIDWORKS
9 7 (0.066%) AutoCAD
9 7 (0.066%) Notepad++
9 7 (0.066%) Revit
10 5 (0.047%) Sketch
11 4 (0.038%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.038%) Siemens NX
11 4 (0.038%) Windchill
12 3 (0.028%) Chatbot
13 2 (0.019%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.019%) InVision
13 2 (0.019%) Lectora
13 2 (0.019%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 113 (1.06%) SAP S/4HANA
2 56 (0.53%) Remedy ITSM
3 35 (0.33%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 31 (0.29%) Teamcenter
5 29 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
6 28 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
7 23 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.13%) Maximo
8 14 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.12%) Findur
9 13 (0.12%) SAP GRC
9 13 (0.12%) SAP PSCD
10 12 (0.11%) iTrent
10 12 (0.11%) Temenos T24
11 10 (0.094%) Oracle Assets
11 10 (0.094%) Primavera
12 9 (0.085%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.085%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.085%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.085%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,875 (17.63%) AWS
2 1,846 (17.35%) Azure
3 445 (4.18%) GitHub
4 426 (4.00%) GCP
5 399 (3.75%) Azure DevOps
6 384 (3.61%) Power Platform
7 267 (2.51%) Serverless
8 260 (2.44%) GitHub Actions
9 256 (2.41%) Microsoft 365
10 252 (2.37%) Entra ID
11 211 (1.98%) Amazon S3
12 184 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
13 155 (1.46%) PaaS
14 152 (1.43%) Amazon EC2
15 144 (1.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 140 (1.32%) Amazon EKS
17 137 (1.29%) OpenShift
18 133 (1.25%) SaaS
19 131 (1.23%) OCI
20 120 (1.13%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 482 (4.53%) Firewall
2 317 (2.98%) DNS
3 246 (2.31%) Network Security
4 237 (2.23%) WAN
5 212 (1.99%) LAN
6 178 (1.67%) VPN
7 162 (1.52%) DHCP
8 149 (1.40%) BGP
9 127 (1.19%) OSPF
10 119 (1.12%) TCP/IP
11 115 (1.08%) VLAN
12 111 (1.04%) Wi-Fi
13 84 (0.79%) Wireless
14 68 (0.64%) MPLS
15 65 (0.61%) SAN
16 61 (0.57%) VXLAN
17 58 (0.55%) Structured Cabling
18 56 (0.53%) SD-WAN
19 54 (0.51%) IPsec
20 50 (0.47%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 298 (2.80%) Power BI
2 263 (2.47%) PostgreSQL
3 238 (2.24%) Data Warehouse
4 207 (1.95%) SQL Server
5 137 (1.29%) Oracle Database
6 132 (1.24%) Metadata
7 116 (1.09%) Data Lake
8 112 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
9 105 (0.99%) MongoDB
10 99 (0.93%) Relational Database
11 86 (0.81%) NoSQL
12 80 (0.75%) Pentaho
13 78 (0.73%) MySQL
14 76 (0.71%) Oracle Reports
15 74 (0.70%) Elasticsearch
16 67 (0.63%) Big Data
16 67 (0.63%) Tableau
17 64 (0.60%) Amazon Redshift
18 63 (0.59%) Amazon Athena
19 54 (0.51%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 601 (5.65%) JIRA
2 452 (4.25%) Git
3 428 (4.02%) GitLab
4 401 (3.77%) Jenkins
5 117 (1.10%) Selenium
6 87 (0.82%) Postman
7 80 (0.75%) JUnit
8 73 (0.69%) SonarQube
9 60 (0.56%) Rational DOORS
10 59 (0.55%) Artifactory
10 59 (0.55%) JMeter
11 48 (0.45%) Cucumber
12 42 (0.39%) Mockito
13 40 (0.38%) Bitbucket
13 40 (0.38%) Visual Studio
14 39 (0.37%) Maven
15 38 (0.36%) Cypress.io
16 37 (0.35%) Zephyr
17 34 (0.32%) REST Assured
18 29 (0.27%) Gatling
General
1 2,307 (21.69%) Public Sector
2 2,176 (20.45%) Social Skills
3 722 (6.79%) Analytical Skills
4 664 (6.24%) Finance
5 329 (3.09%) Military
6 294 (2.76%) Documentation Skills
7 268 (2.52%) Aerospace
8 165 (1.55%) Legal
9 124 (1.17%) Telecoms
10 123 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
11 118 (1.11%) Banking
12 107 (1.01%) Manufacturing
13 106 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
14 91 (0.86%) Law
15 85 (0.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 77 (0.72%) Presentation Skills
17 62 (0.58%) Police
18 52 (0.49%) Marketing
19 49 (0.46%) Aviation
20 40 (0.38%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 1,620 (15.23%) Architect
2 995 (9.35%) Developer
3 911 (8.56%) Senior
4 746 (7.01%) Lead
5 731 (6.87%) Analyst
6 524 (4.93%) Data Engineer
7 522 (4.91%) Consultant
8 500 (4.70%) DevOps Engineer
9 345 (3.24%) Technical Architect
10 315 (2.96%) Software Engineer
11 309 (2.90%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 306 (2.88%) Solutions Architect
13 291 (2.74%) Network Engineer
14 263 (2.47%) Business Analyst
15 224 (2.11%) Security Architect
16 223 (2.10%) Project Manager
17 219 (2.06%) Designer
18 209 (1.96%) Azure Engineer
19 191 (1.80%) AWS Engineer
20 190 (1.79%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 328 (3.08%) REST
2 240 (2.26%) Spring
3 199 (1.87%) React
4 198 (1.86%) Kafka
5 197 (1.85%) Spring Boot
6 181 (1.70%) Node.js
7 178 (1.67%) .NET
8 155 (1.46%) LDAP
9 154 (1.45%) SOAP
10 150 (1.41%) RESTful
11 126 (1.18%) JSON
12 123 (1.16%) AngularJS
13 117 (1.10%) PySpark
13 117 (1.10%) Web Services
14 106 (1.00%) OAuth
15 95 (0.89%) Middleware
16 89 (0.84%) HTML
17 87 (0.82%) XML
18 86 (0.81%) Oracle Fusion
19 85 (0.80%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 380 (3.57%) Cloud Native
2 327 (3.07%) Product Ownership
3 325 (3.06%) Data Centre
4 299 (2.81%) Onboarding
5 207 (1.95%) Management Information System
6 154 (1.45%) PKI
7 146 (1.37%) Legacy Systems
8 132 (1.24%) Enterprise Software
9 129 (1.21%) Security Posture
10 126 (1.18%) Distributed Systems
11 123 (1.16%) Replication
12 98 (0.92%) Self-Motivation
13 89 (0.84%) Data Structures
13 89 (0.84%) Hybrid Cloud
14 88 (0.83%) Public Cloud
15 87 (0.82%) Clustering
16 85 (0.80%) Security Operations Centre
17 77 (0.72%) CMDB
18 76 (0.71%) Virtual Team
19 71 (0.67%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 836 (7.86%) Windows
2 737 (6.93%) Linux
3 255 (2.40%) Windows Server
4 193 (1.81%) Unix
5 135 (1.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 96 (0.90%) Android
7 87 (0.82%) Windows 10
8 67 (0.63%) Apple iOS
9 51 (0.48%) Solaris
10 40 (0.38%) Ubuntu
11 39 (0.37%) Mac OS
12 31 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 29 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
14 27 (0.25%) AIX
15 24 (0.23%) VMS
16 23 (0.22%) CentOS
17 15 (0.14%) Windows 7
18 13 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
19 12 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
20 11 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,030 (19.08%) Agile
2 1,621 (15.24%) DevOps
3 1,468 (13.80%) CI/CD
4 1,093 (10.27%) Problem-Solving
5 1,017 (9.56%) Stakeholder Management
6 977 (9.18%) Continuous Improvement
7 848 (7.97%) Migration
8 827 (7.77%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 769 (7.23%) Infrastructure as Code
10 653 (6.14%) Cybersecurity
11 638 (6.00%) Test Automation
12 619 (5.82%) ITIL
13 616 (5.79%) Analytics
14 588 (5.53%) Containerisation
15 586 (5.51%) Software Engineering
16 582 (5.47%) Roadmaps
17 549 (5.16%) Data Modelling
18 533 (5.01%) Decision-Making
19 468 (4.40%) Scrum
19 468 (4.40%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,185 (11.14%) Python
2 974 (9.16%) SQL
3 660 (6.20%) Java
4 546 (5.13%) PowerShell
5 328 (3.08%) JavaScript
6 218 (2.05%) C#
7 212 (1.99%) Bash
8 179 (1.68%) TypeScript
9 123 (1.16%) PL/SQL
10 98 (0.92%) C++
11 95 (0.89%) Shell Script
12 67 (0.63%) Bicep
13 65 (0.61%) Go
14 64 (0.60%) Ruby
14 64 (0.60%) Scala
15 56 (0.53%) C
16 54 (0.51%) Apex Code
17 45 (0.42%) Ada
18 41 (0.39%) R
19 40 (0.38%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 8,138 (76.50%) SC Cleared
2 1,901 (17.87%) DV Cleared
3 432 (4.06%) Degree
4 299 (2.81%) BPSS Clearance
5 221 (2.08%) Cisco Certification
6 179 (1.68%) CISSP
7 132 (1.24%) Azure Certification
8 126 (1.18%) CCNP
9 116 (1.09%) CISM
10 112 (1.05%) AWS Certification
11 100 (0.94%) Microsoft Certification
12 95 (0.89%) CCNA
13 79 (0.74%) PMP
14 73 (0.69%) Computer Science Degree
15 71 (0.67%) PMI Certification
16 70 (0.66%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 62 (0.58%) ISTQB
18 58 (0.55%) ITIL Certification
19 45 (0.42%) GIAC
20 41 (0.39%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 382 (3.59%) QA
2 318 (2.99%) Data Quality
3 302 (2.84%) NIST
4 299 (2.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 209 (1.96%) Accessibility
6 208 (1.96%) NCSC
7 171 (1.61%) GDPR
8 155 (1.46%) PMO
9 116 (1.09%) SLA
10 78 (0.73%) GRC
11 67 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 53 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials
13 44 (0.41%) WCAG
14 41 (0.39%) NIST 800
15 36 (0.34%) RMADS
16 32 (0.30%) Def Stans
17 28 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 25 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
19 24 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
20 23 (0.22%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 654 (6.15%) Docker
2 464 (4.36%) Active Directory
3 303 (2.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 108 (1.02%) VMware ESXi
5 106 (1.00%) VMware NSX
6 87 (0.82%) Hyper-V
7 82 (0.77%) vSphere
8 70 (0.66%) Virtual Machines
9 36 (0.34%) Firmware
9 36 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
10 23 (0.22%) NFS
11 21 (0.20%) BitLocker
12 20 (0.19%) vCloud
13 19 (0.18%) Postfix
13 19 (0.18%) Squid
14 18 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
15 15 (0.14%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 9 (0.085%) KVM
17 8 (0.075%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.056%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 845 (7.94%) Terraform
2 831 (7.81%) Kubernetes
3 384 (3.61%) Ansible
4 276 (2.59%) Grafana
5 229 (2.15%) Prometheus
6 110 (1.03%) vCenter Server
7 107 (1.01%) Single Sign-On
8 74 (0.70%) SCCM
9 64 (0.60%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 53 (0.50%) FortiGate
10 53 (0.50%) Microsoft Intune
11 52 (0.49%) Argo
12 41 (0.39%) Oracle RMAN
12 41 (0.39%) Puppet
13 37 (0.35%) Podman
14 34 (0.32%) SCOM
15 31 (0.29%) Nagios
15 31 (0.29%) Progress Chef
16 27 (0.25%) vRealize
17 25 (0.24%) Istio
Vendors
1 1,066 (10.02%) Microsoft
2 691 (6.50%) Oracle
3 510 (4.79%) VMware
4 411 (3.86%) ServiceNow
5 361 (3.39%) Cisco
6 353 (3.32%) SAP
7 244 (2.29%) Splunk
8 211 (1.98%) Databricks
9 175 (1.65%) Red Hat
10 171 (1.61%) Google
11 157 (1.48%) Salesforce
12 139 (1.31%) Talend
13 131 (1.23%) Palo Alto
14 123 (1.16%) IBM
15 106 (1.00%) Juniper
16 104 (0.98%) Informatica
17 98 (0.92%) CyberArk
18 96 (0.90%) Fortinet
19 88 (0.83%) Dynatrace
20 87 (0.82%) F5