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 29 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,570 5,159 8,042
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.45% 17.68% 18.57%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.21% 57.52% 60.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,217 3,432 5,256
10th Percentile £371 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £689 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £520 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -5.45% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 863 288 525
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £21.46 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £51.75 £57.29
Median % change year-on-year +6.28% -9.66% -4.53%
75th Percentile £72.52 £67.50 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.20 £78.46 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £57.50 £58.00
% change year-on-year -4.35% -0.86% +0.87%

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 15,272 8,969 13,285
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.44% 30.74% 30.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,150 5,666 8,172
10th Percentile £350 £289 £300
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -1.33% -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £620 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £707 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £507 £530
% change year-on-year -1.38% -4.34% +0.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,116 512 1,072
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.20 £13.87
25th Percentile £21.25 £22.27 £17.86
Median hourly rate £47.50 £42.21 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.55% +5.51% -25.93%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.25 £80.09 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.00 £45.00 £40.31
% change year-on-year +4.44% +11.63% -18.64%

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 29 April 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 29 April 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 29 April 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 9,166 £525 -2.33% 1,501
UK excluding London +1 5,853 £520 -5.45% 1,266
London +6 3,237 £525 - 385
Work from Home +4 2,834 £525 - 703
South East +1 2,179 £535 -2.73% 436
South West 0 1,330 £538 -2.98% 271
Midlands +3 899 £475 -9.52% 141
North of England -1 853 £488 -2.50% 263
West Midlands +4 757 £481 -10.43% 111
North West -2 505 £500 - 144
East of England +2 384 £513 +13.89% 126
Yorkshire -2 217 £488 -7.14% 55
Scotland +39 206 £500 +8.11% 26
North East +1 164 £450 -10.00% 68
East Midlands -4 136 £447 -5.92% 30
Wales +4 78 £515 -3.25% 27
Northern Ireland +5 17 £450 -5.26% 10

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
1 409 (3.87%) Confluence
2 217 (2.05%) SharePoint
3 138 (1.31%) Microsoft Exchange
4 130 (1.23%) SAS
5 109 (1.03%) Apache Spark
6 84 (0.79%) Apache
7 71 (0.67%) Apache Airflow
8 51 (0.48%) nginx
9 40 (0.38%) WebLogic
10 24 (0.23%) Jupyter
11 18 (0.17%) Tomcat
12 16 (0.15%) IIS
13 15 (0.14%) CMS
13 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
14 14 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
14 14 (0.13%) Skype for Business
15 13 (0.12%) Oracle Application Server
16 11 (0.10%) ArcGIS
16 11 (0.10%) NetWeaver
17 10 (0.095%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 224 (2.12%) Microsoft Office
2 193 (1.83%) Microsoft Excel
3 120 (1.14%) Microsoft Project
4 85 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.15%) Simulink
8 7 (0.066%) Notepad++
9 6 (0.057%) AutoCAD
10 5 (0.047%) SOLIDWORKS
10 5 (0.047%) Windchill
11 4 (0.038%) Revit
11 4 (0.038%) Siemens NX
11 4 (0.038%) Sketch
12 3 (0.028%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.019%) Chatbot
13 2 (0.019%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.019%) InVision
13 2 (0.019%) Lectora
13 2 (0.019%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 97 (0.92%) SAP S/4HANA
2 46 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
3 45 (0.43%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 31 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
5 29 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
6 26 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 21 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
8 19 (0.18%) Maximo
9 16 (0.15%) SAP PP
10 13 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
10 13 (0.12%) Temenos T24
11 12 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
12 11 (0.10%) Findur
12 11 (0.10%) Oracle Assets
13 10 (0.095%) SAP HCM
14 9 (0.085%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 9 (0.085%) SAP HR
14 9 (0.085%) SAP PM
15 8 (0.076%) iTrent
15 8 (0.076%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,849 (17.49%) AWS
2 1,804 (17.07%) Azure
3 457 (4.32%) GitHub
4 432 (4.09%) GCP
5 406 (3.84%) Azure DevOps
6 380 (3.60%) Power Platform
7 295 (2.79%) Serverless
8 270 (2.55%) Microsoft 365
9 257 (2.43%) GitHub Actions
10 246 (2.33%) Entra ID
11 226 (2.14%) Amazon S3
12 198 (1.87%) AWS Lambda
13 156 (1.48%) AWS CloudFormation
14 153 (1.45%) PaaS
15 141 (1.33%) Amazon EC2
16 138 (1.31%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 138 (1.31%) OpenShift
17 135 (1.28%) Amazon EKS
18 128 (1.21%) IaaS
19 124 (1.17%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 477 (4.51%) Firewall
2 297 (2.81%) DNS
3 237 (2.24%) Network Security
4 230 (2.18%) WAN
5 206 (1.95%) LAN
6 180 (1.70%) VPN
7 145 (1.37%) BGP
7 145 (1.37%) DHCP
8 126 (1.19%) OSPF
9 120 (1.14%) TCP/IP
10 98 (0.93%) VLAN
11 87 (0.82%) Wi-Fi
12 82 (0.78%) Wireless
13 64 (0.61%) MPLS
14 57 (0.54%) SAN
15 55 (0.52%) SD-WAN
16 54 (0.51%) VXLAN
17 53 (0.50%) SSL
18 49 (0.46%) IPsec
19 45 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 293 (2.77%) Power BI
2 269 (2.54%) PostgreSQL
3 237 (2.24%) Data Warehouse
4 197 (1.86%) SQL Server
5 143 (1.35%) Metadata
6 122 (1.15%) Oracle Database
7 118 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
8 106 (1.00%) NoSQL
9 104 (0.98%) MongoDB
10 103 (0.97%) Data Lake
11 102 (0.96%) Relational Database
12 82 (0.78%) Pentaho
13 79 (0.75%) MySQL
14 78 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
15 76 (0.72%) Big Data
16 73 (0.69%) Azure SQL Database
17 69 (0.65%) Tableau
18 68 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
19 67 (0.63%) Oracle Reports
20 60 (0.57%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 642 (6.07%) JIRA
2 497 (4.70%) Git
3 393 (3.72%) Jenkins
4 382 (3.61%) GitLab
5 100 (0.95%) Selenium
6 87 (0.82%) Postman
7 75 (0.71%) JUnit
8 69 (0.65%) SonarQube
9 50 (0.47%) Bitbucket
9 50 (0.47%) Rational DOORS
10 45 (0.43%) Artifactory
11 44 (0.42%) JMeter
12 41 (0.39%) Maven
13 40 (0.38%) Cucumber
13 40 (0.38%) Cypress.io
13 40 (0.38%) Mockito
14 35 (0.33%) Visual Studio
15 32 (0.30%) Oracle APEX
16 30 (0.28%) Zephyr
17 25 (0.24%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 2,400 (22.71%) Public Sector
2 2,293 (21.69%) Social Skills
3 814 (7.70%) Analytical Skills
4 692 (6.55%) Finance
5 354 (3.35%) Military
6 281 (2.66%) Documentation Skills
7 243 (2.30%) Aerospace
8 162 (1.53%) Legal
9 147 (1.39%) Telecoms
10 140 (1.32%) Manufacturing
11 138 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
12 116 (1.10%) Banking
13 113 (1.07%) Organisational Skills
14 95 (0.90%) Presentation Skills
15 86 (0.81%) Law
16 84 (0.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 73 (0.69%) Marketing
18 68 (0.64%) Electronics
19 67 (0.63%) Police
20 35 (0.33%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,602 (15.16%) Architect
2 1,058 (10.01%) Developer
3 926 (8.76%) Senior
4 751 (7.11%) Analyst
5 719 (6.80%) Lead
6 540 (5.11%) Consultant
7 495 (4.68%) Data Engineer
8 481 (4.55%) DevOps Engineer
9 321 (3.04%) Technical Architect
10 316 (2.99%) Software Engineer
11 289 (2.73%) Network Engineer
12 286 (2.71%) Solutions Architect
13 277 (2.62%) Business Analyst
14 256 (2.42%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 220 (2.08%) Azure Engineer
16 217 (2.05%) Project Manager
17 208 (1.97%) Security Architect
18 205 (1.94%) Designer
19 194 (1.84%) AWS Engineer
20 188 (1.78%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 346 (3.27%) REST
2 244 (2.31%) Spring
3 214 (2.02%) Kafka
4 204 (1.93%) Node.js
5 193 (1.83%) Spring Boot
6 189 (1.79%) React
7 178 (1.68%) .NET
8 155 (1.47%) JSON
8 155 (1.47%) SOAP
9 149 (1.41%) RESTful
10 147 (1.39%) LDAP
11 125 (1.18%) PySpark
12 121 (1.14%) AngularJS
13 116 (1.10%) Web Services
14 98 (0.93%) HTML
15 97 (0.92%) OAuth
16 96 (0.91%) Oracle Fusion
17 95 (0.90%) XML
18 85 (0.80%) Elastic Stack
18 85 (0.80%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 352 (3.33%) Cloud Native
2 339 (3.21%) Product Ownership
3 311 (2.94%) Data Centre
4 282 (2.67%) Onboarding
5 195 (1.84%) Management Information System
6 186 (1.76%) PKI
7 134 (1.27%) Legacy Systems
8 133 (1.26%) Security Posture
9 126 (1.19%) Enterprise Software
10 125 (1.18%) Replication
11 122 (1.15%) Distributed Systems
12 120 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
13 91 (0.86%) Public Cloud
14 81 (0.77%) Data Structures
14 81 (0.77%) Hybrid Cloud
15 80 (0.76%) Security Operations Centre
16 77 (0.73%) Clustering
17 73 (0.69%) Virtual Team
18 64 (0.61%) Greenfield Project
19 62 (0.59%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 863 (8.16%) Windows
2 752 (7.11%) Linux
3 247 (2.34%) Windows Server
4 162 (1.53%) Unix
5 127 (1.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 117 (1.11%) Android
7 106 (1.00%) Windows 10
8 67 (0.63%) Apple iOS
9 49 (0.46%) Mac OS
10 41 (0.39%) Ubuntu
11 33 (0.31%) VMS
12 32 (0.30%) Solaris
13 30 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
14 28 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
15 23 (0.22%) AIX
16 22 (0.21%) CentOS
17 17 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
18 15 (0.14%) Windows 7
19 10 (0.095%) Embedded Linux
19 10 (0.095%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,060 (19.49%) Agile
2 1,598 (15.12%) DevOps
3 1,409 (13.33%) CI/CD
4 1,150 (10.88%) Problem-Solving
5 974 (9.21%) Stakeholder Management
6 902 (8.53%) Continuous Improvement
7 880 (8.33%) Migration
8 776 (7.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 726 (6.87%) Infrastructure as Code
10 656 (6.21%) ITIL
11 612 (5.79%) Analytics
12 606 (5.73%) Test Automation
13 600 (5.68%) Cybersecurity
14 573 (5.42%) Containerisation
15 570 (5.39%) Software Engineering
16 565 (5.35%) Roadmaps
17 517 (4.89%) Data Modelling
18 491 (4.65%) Scrum
19 482 (4.56%) Decision-Making
20 459 (4.34%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,221 (11.55%) Python
2 968 (9.16%) SQL
3 662 (6.26%) Java
4 573 (5.42%) PowerShell
5 367 (3.47%) JavaScript
6 222 (2.10%) C#
7 197 (1.86%) Bash
8 187 (1.77%) TypeScript
9 120 (1.14%) PL/SQL
10 107 (1.01%) C++
11 103 (0.97%) Shell Script
12 76 (0.72%) Go
13 71 (0.67%) Ruby
14 70 (0.66%) Scala
15 63 (0.60%) C
16 58 (0.55%) Bicep
17 49 (0.46%) Apex Code
18 48 (0.45%) R
19 45 (0.43%) Kusto Query Language
20 41 (0.39%) Ada
Qualifications
1 8,089 (76.53%) SC Cleared
2 1,853 (17.53%) DV Cleared
3 473 (4.47%) Degree
4 334 (3.16%) BPSS Clearance
5 199 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
6 170 (1.61%) CISSP
7 144 (1.36%) Azure Certification
8 133 (1.26%) AWS Certification
9 119 (1.13%) CCNP
10 110 (1.04%) CISM
11 97 (0.92%) Microsoft Certification
12 83 (0.79%) CCNA
13 78 (0.74%) Computer Science Degree
14 77 (0.73%) ITIL Certification
15 73 (0.69%) PMP
15 73 (0.69%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 69 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
17 66 (0.62%) PMI Certification
18 56 (0.53%) ISTQB
19 49 (0.46%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 370 (3.50%) QA
2 320 (3.03%) Data Quality
3 293 (2.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 292 (2.76%) NIST
5 204 (1.93%) NCSC
6 184 (1.74%) Accessibility
7 166 (1.57%) GDPR
8 155 (1.47%) PMO
9 115 (1.09%) SLA
10 71 (0.67%) JSP 440
11 69 (0.65%) GRC
12 44 (0.42%) COBIT
13 43 (0.41%) NIST 800
14 42 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
15 41 (0.39%) WCAG
16 34 (0.32%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 34 (0.32%) RMADS
17 33 (0.31%) PCI DSS
18 31 (0.29%) Def Stans
19 23 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 688 (6.51%) Docker
2 475 (4.49%) Active Directory
3 289 (2.73%) VMware Infrastructure
4 97 (0.92%) VMware ESXi
5 96 (0.91%) VMware NSX
6 86 (0.81%) Hyper-V
7 80 (0.76%) vSphere
8 72 (0.68%) Virtual Machines
9 42 (0.40%) Firmware
10 33 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
11 20 (0.19%) BitLocker
11 20 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
12 17 (0.16%) NFS
12 17 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 16 (0.15%) Postfix
14 12 (0.11%) Squid
14 12 (0.11%) vCloud
15 8 (0.076%) Microsoft App-V
16 7 (0.066%) KVM
17 6 (0.057%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 881 (8.33%) Kubernetes
2 874 (8.27%) Terraform
3 355 (3.36%) Ansible
4 269 (2.54%) Grafana
5 223 (2.11%) Prometheus
6 115 (1.09%) Single Sign-On
7 98 (0.93%) vCenter Server
8 86 (0.81%) SCCM
9 66 (0.62%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 58 (0.55%) FortiGate
10 58 (0.55%) Microsoft Intune
11 57 (0.54%) Argo
12 40 (0.38%) Packer
12 40 (0.38%) Puppet
13 37 (0.35%) Podman
14 35 (0.33%) Progress Chef
15 34 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
15 34 (0.32%) vRealize
16 30 (0.28%) Kibana
16 30 (0.28%) OPNET
Vendors
1 1,077 (10.19%) Microsoft
2 651 (6.16%) Oracle
3 510 (4.82%) VMware
4 424 (4.01%) ServiceNow
5 395 (3.74%) SAP
6 389 (3.68%) Cisco
7 246 (2.33%) Splunk
8 206 (1.95%) Databricks
9 171 (1.62%) Google
9 171 (1.62%) Red Hat
10 154 (1.46%) Salesforce
11 126 (1.19%) IBM
12 120 (1.14%) Atlassian
12 120 (1.14%) Palo Alto
13 117 (1.11%) Talend
14 110 (1.04%) Juniper
15 97 (0.92%) CyberArk
16 92 (0.87%) Informatica
17 87 (0.82%) Dynatrace
18 86 (0.81%) Remedy