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

6 months to
10 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,552 5,917 7,218
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.66% 17.85% 18.60%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.11% 57.29% 62.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,057 3,761 4,823
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 842 545 500
10th Percentile £19.33 £18.51 £15.47
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £56.15
Median % change year-on-year +151.03% -55.21% -6.43%
75th Percentile £79.75 £47.50 £72.01
90th Percentile £88.00 £73.75 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.50 £25.15 £58.05
% change year-on-year +152.49% -56.67% +0.95%

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 16,716 10,328 11,628
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.34% 31.15% 29.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,172 6,378 7,405
10th Percentile £350 £290 £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 1,263 804 850
10th Percentile £17.72 £17.87 £15.08
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.14 £21.25
Median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -21.82%
75th Percentile £73.23 £53.88 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.00 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £47.50
% change year-on-year +98.81% -47.05% -8.46%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 10,011 £538 - 2,741
UK excluding London +1 6,496 £525 -2.33% 1,984
London +7 3,551 £550 +3.77% 918
Work from Home +4 3,117 £525 -2.23% 1,276
South East +1 2,433 £560 +4.19% 647
South West 0 1,341 £538 -6.52% 496
North of England +2 1,128 £507 +1.30% 381
Midlands +1 977 £469 -8.40% 175
West Midlands +1 845 £469 -8.93% 127
North West +2 609 £525 - 238
East of England 0 322 £550 - 180
Yorkshire +1 302 £500 +1.63% 70
Scotland +12 259 £495 +3.34% 87
North East 0 241 £475 -5.00% 76
East Midlands -1 120 £438 -5.30% 48
Wales +3 100 £550 +15.79% 38
Northern Ireland +5 33 £650 +25.00% 19

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
1 415 (3.59%) Confluence
2 272 (2.35%) SharePoint
3 194 (1.68%) SAS
4 119 (1.03%) Microsoft Exchange
5 101 (0.87%) Apache Spark
6 97 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
7 92 (0.80%) Apache
8 39 (0.34%) Jupyter
8 39 (0.34%) 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 12 (0.10%) JBoss
17 11 (0.095%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 214 (1.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 149 (1.29%) Microsoft Office
3 101 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
4 81 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 45 (0.39%) 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 (0.078%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.069%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.061%) Notepad++
11 7 (0.061%) Sketch
12 4 (0.035%) Windchill
13 3 (0.026%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 3 (0.026%) Trello
14 2 (0.017%) Lectora
14 2 (0.017%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.017%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 150 (1.30%) SAP S/4HANA
2 81 (0.70%) Remedy ITSM
3 46 (0.40%) Oracle ERP
4 42 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
5 33 (0.29%) Teamcenter
6 32 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 28 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
8 22 (0.19%) SAP PSCD
9 21 (0.18%) Primavera
10 20 (0.17%) SAP GRC
11 18 (0.16%) 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%) SAP HR
14 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
15 11 (0.095%) NetSuite
16 10 (0.087%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,116 (18.32%) Azure
2 2,059 (17.82%) AWS
3 539 (4.67%) GitHub
4 521 (4.51%) Azure DevOps
5 474 (4.10%) Power Platform
6 450 (3.90%) GCP
7 336 (2.91%) GitHub Actions
8 311 (2.69%) Microsoft 365
9 297 (2.57%) Entra ID
10 285 (2.47%) Serverless
11 246 (2.13%) Amazon S3
12 202 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
13 176 (1.52%) OCI
14 173 (1.50%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 168 (1.45%) SaaS
16 165 (1.43%) Amazon EKS
17 160 (1.39%) Amazon EC2
18 150 (1.30%) PaaS
19 137 (1.19%) OpenShift
20 132 (1.14%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 492 (4.26%) Firewall
2 382 (3.31%) DNS
3 226 (1.96%) Network Security
3 226 (1.96%) WAN
4 202 (1.75%) VPN
5 192 (1.66%) LAN
6 188 (1.63%) DHCP
7 142 (1.23%) BGP
8 138 (1.19%) TCP/IP
9 114 (0.99%) OSPF
10 113 (0.98%) Wi-Fi
11 105 (0.91%) VLAN
12 90 (0.78%) Wireless
13 67 (0.58%) VSAN
14 65 (0.56%) IPsec
14 65 (0.56%) MPLS
15 63 (0.55%) SAN
16 62 (0.54%) SSL
17 60 (0.52%) SD-WAN
17 60 (0.52%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 356 (3.08%) Power BI
2 309 (2.67%) PostgreSQL
3 291 (2.52%) SQL Server
4 284 (2.46%) Data Warehouse
5 168 (1.45%) Oracle Database
6 158 (1.37%) Metadata
7 137 (1.19%) Data Lake
8 129 (1.12%) Relational Database
9 117 (1.01%) Amazon RDS
10 114 (0.99%) MongoDB
11 106 (0.92%) Oracle Reports
12 99 (0.86%) MySQL
13 96 (0.83%) Pentaho
14 87 (0.75%) NoSQL
15 70 (0.61%) Amazon Redshift
16 67 (0.58%) Amazon Athena
16 67 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
17 62 (0.54%) Tableau
18 57 (0.49%) Big Data
19 51 (0.44%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 666 (5.77%) JIRA
2 585 (5.06%) Git
3 482 (4.17%) GitLab
4 474 (4.10%) Jenkins
5 129 (1.12%) Selenium
6 84 (0.73%) SonarQube
7 79 (0.68%) JUnit
7 79 (0.68%) Postman
8 70 (0.61%) Maven
9 66 (0.57%) JMeter
10 58 (0.50%) Rational DOORS
11 55 (0.48%) Cucumber
12 50 (0.43%) Visual Studio
13 48 (0.42%) Mockito
14 45 (0.39%) Cypress.io
14 45 (0.39%) Zephyr
15 44 (0.38%) Bitbucket
16 42 (0.36%) Gradle
17 38 (0.33%) Artifactory
17 38 (0.33%) Gatling
General
1 2,456 (21.26%) Public Sector
2 2,419 (20.94%) Social Skills
3 888 (7.69%) Analytical Skills
4 767 (6.64%) Finance
5 358 (3.10%) Military
6 300 (2.60%) Aerospace
7 284 (2.46%) Documentation Skills
8 173 (1.50%) Influencing Skills
9 171 (1.48%) Legal
10 154 (1.33%) Organisational Skills
11 149 (1.29%) Telecoms
12 136 (1.18%) Banking
13 126 (1.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 108 (0.93%) Manufacturing
15 105 (0.91%) Police
16 100 (0.87%) Law
17 74 (0.64%) Presentation Skills
18 53 (0.46%) Aviation
19 43 (0.37%) Marketing
20 41 (0.35%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,831 (15.85%) Architect
2 1,288 (11.15%) Developer
3 1,094 (9.47%) Senior
4 996 (8.62%) Lead
5 677 (5.86%) Analyst
6 643 (5.57%) Consultant
7 538 (4.66%) Data Engineer
8 469 (4.06%) DevOps Engineer
9 415 (3.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 372 (3.22%) Technical Architect
11 354 (3.06%) Solutions Architect
12 327 (2.83%) Software Engineer
13 279 (2.42%) Security Architect
14 256 (2.22%) Network Engineer
15 248 (2.15%) Data Architect
16 228 (1.97%) Java Developer
17 221 (1.91%) Administrator
18 219 (1.90%) Designer
19 208 (1.80%) Delivery Manager
20 207 (1.79%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 430 (3.72%) REST
2 267 (2.31%) Spring
3 234 (2.03%) .NET
4 232 (2.01%) Kafka
4 232 (2.01%) Spring Boot
5 214 (1.85%) RESTful
6 202 (1.75%) React
7 185 (1.60%) Node.js
8 170 (1.47%) SOAP
9 158 (1.37%) JSON
10 139 (1.20%) AngularJS
11 131 (1.13%) Web Services
12 126 (1.09%) OAuth
13 122 (1.06%) HTML
14 114 (0.99%) XML
15 110 (0.95%) Middleware
16 97 (0.84%) PySpark
17 91 (0.79%) Playwright
18 88 (0.76%) CSS
19 87 (0.75%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 479 (4.15%) Cloud Native
2 400 (3.46%) Onboarding
3 363 (3.14%) Product Ownership
4 319 (2.76%) Data Centre
5 237 (2.05%) Management Information System
6 197 (1.71%) Legacy Systems
7 168 (1.45%) Distributed Systems
8 167 (1.45%) PKI
9 139 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
10 137 (1.19%) CMDB
11 124 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
12 117 (1.01%) Data Structures
12 117 (1.01%) Replication
13 115 (1.00%) Hybrid Cloud
14 106 (0.92%) Clustering
15 96 (0.83%) Public Cloud
16 89 (0.77%) Virtual Team
17 87 (0.75%) Security Operations Centre
18 82 (0.71%) Cyber Threat
19 78 (0.68%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 949 (8.22%) Windows
2 793 (6.86%) Linux
3 320 (2.77%) Windows Server
4 229 (1.98%) Unix
5 153 (1.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 103 (0.89%) Windows 10
7 99 (0.86%) Android
8 64 (0.55%) Solaris
9 63 (0.55%) Apple iOS
10 48 (0.42%) Mac OS
11 42 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
12 36 (0.31%) AIX
13 35 (0.30%) Ubuntu
14 31 (0.27%) CentOS
15 24 (0.21%) VMS
16 21 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
17 18 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
18 16 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
19 14 (0.12%) Windows 7
20 12 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,415 (20.91%) Agile
2 1,806 (15.63%) DevOps
3 1,719 (14.88%) CI/CD
4 1,316 (11.39%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,276 (11.05%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,219 (10.55%) Problem-Solving
7 1,074 (9.30%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 930 (8.05%) Infrastructure as Code
9 910 (7.88%) Migration
10 745 (6.45%) Cybersecurity
11 744 (6.44%) ITIL
12 741 (6.41%) Test Automation
13 731 (6.33%) Analytics
14 723 (6.26%) Containerisation
15 692 (5.99%) Software Engineering
16 669 (5.79%) Roadmaps
17 641 (5.55%) Data Modelling
18 640 (5.54%) Technical Leadership
19 629 (5.44%) AI
20 625 (5.41%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 1,294 (11.20%) Python
2 1,159 (10.03%) SQL
3 823 (7.12%) Java
4 541 (4.68%) PowerShell
5 391 (3.38%) JavaScript
6 318 (2.75%) Bash
7 268 (2.32%) C#
8 191 (1.65%) TypeScript
9 182 (1.58%) PL/SQL
10 110 (0.95%) Bicep
11 94 (0.81%) Shell Script
12 93 (0.81%) C++
13 67 (0.58%) C
14 59 (0.51%) Apex Code
15 55 (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 8,821 (76.36%) SC Cleared
2 2,161 (18.71%) DV Cleared
3 447 (3.87%) Degree
4 441 (3.82%) BPSS Clearance
5 207 (1.79%) Cisco Certification
6 201 (1.74%) CISSP
7 169 (1.46%) Azure Certification
8 154 (1.33%) Microsoft Certification
9 136 (1.18%) AWS Certification
10 127 (1.10%) CISM
11 108 (0.93%) PMI Certification
12 105 (0.91%) PMP
13 87 (0.75%) ISTQB
14 86 (0.74%) CCNA
15 85 (0.74%) CCNP
16 67 (0.58%) Computer Science Degree
17 65 (0.56%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 54 (0.47%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 50 (0.43%) TOGAF Certification
20 47 (0.41%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 456 (3.95%) QA
2 377 (3.26%) Data Quality
3 308 (2.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 296 (2.56%) NIST
5 253 (2.19%) Accessibility
6 252 (2.18%) NCSC
7 221 (1.91%) PMO
8 183 (1.58%) GDPR
9 142 (1.23%) GRC
10 141 (1.22%) SLA
11 78 (0.68%) WCAG
12 64 (0.55%) JSP 440
13 46 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
13 46 (0.40%) NIST 800
14 32 (0.28%) Def Stans
14 32 (0.28%) Government Security Classifications
15 28 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 28 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 20000
16 22 (0.19%) RMADS
17 20 (0.17%) COBIT
System Software
1 810 (7.01%) Docker
2 522 (4.52%) Active Directory
3 401 (3.47%) VMware Infrastructure
4 149 (1.29%) VMware NSX
5 130 (1.13%) VMware ESXi
6 115 (1.00%) vSphere
7 109 (0.94%) Hyper-V
8 81 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
9 47 (0.41%) Oracle RAC
10 39 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
11 32 (0.28%) Firmware
12 23 (0.20%) vCloud
13 19 (0.16%) BitLocker
14 17 (0.15%) NFS
15 16 (0.14%) Postfix
15 16 (0.14%) Squid
16 10 (0.087%) Virtual Servers
17 9 (0.078%) KVM
18 7 (0.061%) Ceph
18 7 (0.061%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 987 (8.54%) Terraform
2 961 (8.32%) Kubernetes
3 431 (3.73%) Ansible
4 266 (2.30%) Grafana
5 213 (1.84%) Prometheus
6 129 (1.12%) vCenter Server
7 113 (0.98%) SCCM
8 90 (0.78%) 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 (0.35%) Data Guard
16 31 (0.27%) Progress Chef
17 30 (0.26%) Nagios
18 26 (0.23%) Istio
18 26 (0.23%) WSUS
19 24 (0.21%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,375 (11.90%) Microsoft
2 920 (7.96%) Oracle
3 570 (4.93%) VMware
4 553 (4.79%) ServiceNow
5 435 (3.77%) SAP
6 305 (2.64%) Cisco
7 224 (1.94%) Google
8 213 (1.84%) Splunk
9 201 (1.74%) Databricks
10 194 (1.68%) Salesforce
11 156 (1.35%) Red Hat
12 131 (1.13%) Talend
13 129 (1.12%) Informatica
14 122 (1.06%) IBM
15 113 (0.98%) Palo Alto
16 101 (0.87%) Juniper
17 98 (0.85%) F5
18 96 (0.83%) SolarWinds
19 94 (0.81%) Dynatrace
20 92 (0.80%) Remedy