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

6 months to
25 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 11,959 6,056 6,822
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.80% 18.35% 17.77%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.80% 58.31% 60.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,318 3,932 4,381
10th Percentile £399 £348 £350
25th Percentile £463 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.42% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £538 £550
% change year-on-year - -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 852 617 398
10th Percentile £20.00 £18.51 £20.12
25th Percentile £31.22 £18.87 £30.00
Median hourly rate £64.09 £25.15 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +154.83% -58.08% -
75th Percentile £77.50 £33.75 £72.35
90th Percentile £90.00 £70.00 £80.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +158.45% -58.08% +4.35%

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 17,383 10,386 11,197
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.68% 31.47% 29.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,575 6,502 6,834
10th Percentile £350 £300 £313
25th Percentile £443 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £529 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £632 £625 £638
90th Percentile £715 £711 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,385 858 629
10th Percentile £17.07 £17.87 £17.60
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £24.50
Median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +88.87% -49.70% -7.41%
75th Percentile £72.54 £43.00 £68.00
90th Percentile £88.75 £70.00 £75.57
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £52.35
% change year-on-year +86.88% -51.95% -0.30%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 10,294 £550 +2.33% 5,214
UK excluding London +1 6,683 £538 - 3,705
London +6 3,658 £550 +1.85% 1,604
Work from Home +2 3,152 £525 -2.33% 2,684
South East +1 2,273 £564 +6.06% 1,011
South West 0 1,414 £550 - 822
North of England +2 1,289 £515 -1.90% 720
Midlands 0 950 £481 -6.89% 372
West Midlands 0 812 £481 -7.23% 236
North West +1 760 £530 -5.36% 439
East of England 0 423 £587 +6.73% 412
Scotland +17 319 £486 +0.26% 269
Yorkshire +2 303 £492 +0.41% 116
North East 0 247 £466 -6.75% 167
East Midlands -1 131 £470 +0.27% 134
Wales +3 108 £550 +10.00% 68
Northern Ireland +3 35 £650 +18.18% 77

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
1 395 (3.30%) Confluence
2 268 (2.24%) SharePoint
3 170 (1.42%) SAS
4 129 (1.08%) Microsoft Exchange
5 113 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
6 103 (0.86%) Apache Spark
7 102 (0.85%) Apache
8 41 (0.34%) Jupyter
9 39 (0.33%) nginx
10 36 (0.30%) WebLogic
11 32 (0.27%) CMS
12 22 (0.18%) Skype for Business
13 21 (0.18%) IIS
14 19 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
14 19 (0.16%) Tomcat
15 16 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 16 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
15 16 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
16 11 (0.092%) JBoss
16 11 (0.092%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 213 (1.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 165 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
3 101 (0.84%) Microsoft Project
4 99 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 21 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 19 (0.16%) Revit
9 18 (0.15%) SOLIDWORKS
10 17 (0.14%) Windchill
11 10 (0.084%) Adobe XD
11 10 (0.084%) Simulink
12 8 (0.067%) Chatbot
12 8 (0.067%) Sketch
13 7 (0.059%) Notepad++
14 6 (0.050%) Adobe Creative Suite
15 4 (0.033%) OrCAD
15 4 (0.033%) Trello
16 2 (0.017%) Gliffy
16 2 (0.017%) Houdini
Business Applications
1 153 (1.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 83 (0.69%) Remedy ITSM
3 57 (0.48%) Oracle ERP
4 41 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
5 33 (0.28%) Teamcenter
6 32 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 28 (0.23%) Dynamics CRM
8 25 (0.21%) Oracle Payroll
8 25 (0.21%) SAP GRC
8 25 (0.21%) SAP PSCD
9 21 (0.18%) SAP FI
10 19 (0.16%) Primavera
11 17 (0.14%) SAP HR
12 16 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
13 14 (0.12%) SAP CO
14 13 (0.11%) Maximo
15 12 (0.10%) iTrent
15 12 (0.10%) NetSuite
15 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
16 11 (0.092%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 2,164 (18.10%) Azure
2 2,104 (17.59%) AWS
3 515 (4.31%) Azure DevOps
3 515 (4.31%) GitHub
4 490 (4.10%) Power Platform
5 460 (3.85%) GCP
6 352 (2.94%) Microsoft 365
7 347 (2.90%) GitHub Actions
8 330 (2.76%) Entra ID
9 279 (2.33%) Serverless
10 240 (2.01%) Amazon S3
11 204 (1.71%) AWS Lambda
12 177 (1.48%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 173 (1.45%) OCI
14 168 (1.40%) SaaS
15 167 (1.40%) Amazon EKS
16 144 (1.20%) Amazon EC2
17 138 (1.15%) OpenShift
18 129 (1.08%) AWS CloudFormation
19 107 (0.89%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 459 (3.84%) Firewall
2 385 (3.22%) DNS
3 243 (2.03%) Network Security
4 216 (1.81%) WAN
5 200 (1.67%) VPN
6 188 (1.57%) DHCP
7 166 (1.39%) LAN
8 138 (1.15%) TCP/IP
9 132 (1.10%) BGP
10 116 (0.97%) Wi-Fi
11 105 (0.88%) VLAN
12 92 (0.77%) Wireless
13 91 (0.76%) OSPF
14 71 (0.59%) SSL
15 65 (0.54%) VSAN
16 64 (0.54%) MPLS
16 64 (0.54%) SAN
17 61 (0.51%) IPsec
18 59 (0.49%) SD-WAN
19 50 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 347 (2.90%) Power BI
2 306 (2.56%) PostgreSQL
3 284 (2.37%) SQL Server
4 270 (2.26%) Data Warehouse
5 208 (1.74%) Metadata
6 192 (1.61%) Oracle Database
7 146 (1.22%) Data Lake
8 145 (1.21%) Relational Database
9 133 (1.11%) MongoDB
10 111 (0.93%) MySQL
11 108 (0.90%) Amazon RDS
12 97 (0.81%) NoSQL
13 89 (0.74%) Oracle Reports
14 75 (0.63%) Elasticsearch
15 71 (0.59%) Pentaho
16 70 (0.59%) Amazon Athena
17 57 (0.48%) Big Data
18 52 (0.43%) DynamoDB
19 51 (0.43%) Amazon Aurora
19 51 (0.43%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 662 (5.54%) JIRA
2 595 (4.98%) Git
3 527 (4.41%) GitLab
4 492 (4.11%) Jenkins
5 151 (1.26%) Selenium
6 89 (0.74%) Postman
7 78 (0.65%) SonarQube
8 77 (0.64%) JUnit
9 75 (0.63%) Maven
10 72 (0.60%) JMeter
11 68 (0.57%) Cucumber
12 52 (0.43%) Cypress.io
13 51 (0.43%) Gradle
14 45 (0.38%) Gatling
14 45 (0.38%) Mockito
15 44 (0.37%) REST Assured
16 41 (0.34%) Visual Studio
17 39 (0.33%) Zephyr
18 37 (0.31%) Artifactory
19 33 (0.28%) MSI
General
1 2,678 (22.39%) Social Skills
2 2,451 (20.50%) Public Sector
3 958 (8.01%) Analytical Skills
4 768 (6.42%) Finance
5 427 (3.57%) Military
6 339 (2.83%) Aerospace
7 307 (2.57%) Documentation Skills
8 229 (1.91%) Influencing Skills
9 187 (1.56%) Organisational Skills
10 174 (1.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 173 (1.45%) Legal
12 166 (1.39%) Telecoms
13 158 (1.32%) Manufacturing
14 144 (1.20%) Banking
15 124 (1.04%) Law
16 123 (1.03%) Police
17 75 (0.63%) Presentation Skills
18 53 (0.44%) Local Government
19 49 (0.41%) Aviation
20 43 (0.36%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,947 (16.28%) Architect
2 1,221 (10.21%) Developer
3 1,146 (9.58%) Senior
4 1,063 (8.89%) Lead
5 703 (5.88%) Consultant
6 643 (5.38%) Analyst
7 517 (4.32%) DevOps Engineer
8 492 (4.11%) Data Engineer
9 426 (3.56%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 377 (3.15%) Solutions Architect
11 370 (3.09%) Technical Architect
12 302 (2.53%) Data Architect
13 287 (2.40%) Security Architect
14 277 (2.32%) Software Engineer
15 252 (2.11%) Network Engineer
16 229 (1.91%) Administrator
17 216 (1.81%) Azure Engineer
18 215 (1.80%) Designer
18 215 (1.80%) Java Developer
19 209 (1.75%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,004 (8.40%) Terraform
2 479 (4.01%) REST
3 269 (2.25%) Kafka
4 260 (2.17%) Spring
5 239 (2.00%) Spring Boot
6 218 (1.82%) RESTful
7 208 (1.74%) .NET
8 193 (1.61%) React
9 184 (1.54%) SOAP
10 180 (1.51%) Node.js
11 163 (1.36%) JSON
12 142 (1.19%) OAuth
13 139 (1.16%) HTML
14 135 (1.13%) XML
15 127 (1.06%) Middleware
16 115 (0.96%) Web Services
17 109 (0.91%) AngularJS
18 105 (0.88%) CSS
18 105 (0.88%) Oracle Fusion
19 98 (0.82%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 533 (4.46%) Cloud Native
2 469 (3.92%) Onboarding
3 378 (3.16%) Product Ownership
4 306 (2.56%) Data Centre
5 277 (2.32%) Management Information System
6 186 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
7 181 (1.51%) PKI
8 178 (1.49%) Enterprise Software
9 162 (1.35%) CMDB
10 137 (1.15%) Distributed Systems
11 125 (1.05%) Hybrid Cloud
12 122 (1.02%) Cyber Threat
13 119 (1.00%) Replication
14 115 (0.96%) Self-Motivation
15 113 (0.94%) Operational Technology
16 97 (0.81%) Data Structures
17 96 (0.80%) Security Posture
18 93 (0.78%) Public Cloud
19 91 (0.76%) Security Operations Centre
20 89 (0.74%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 1,002 (8.38%) Windows
2 805 (6.73%) Linux
3 372 (3.11%) Windows Server
4 245 (2.05%) Unix
5 162 (1.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 147 (1.23%) Windows 10
7 82 (0.69%) Solaris
8 78 (0.65%) Android
9 48 (0.40%) Mac OS
10 46 (0.38%) CentOS
11 45 (0.38%) Apple iOS
12 40 (0.33%) Ubuntu
13 38 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
14 32 (0.27%) AIX
15 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 24 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
17 22 (0.18%) VMS
18 20 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
19 16 (0.13%) Rocky
20 13 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,543 (21.26%) Agile
2 1,824 (15.25%) DevOps
3 1,808 (15.12%) CI/CD
4 1,669 (13.96%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,462 (12.23%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,277 (10.68%) Problem-Solving
7 1,210 (10.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,021 (8.54%) Infrastructure as Code
9 969 (8.10%) Migration
10 870 (7.27%) Cybersecurity
11 796 (6.66%) ITIL
12 785 (6.56%) Test Automation
13 763 (6.38%) Containerisation
14 762 (6.37%) Technical Leadership
15 750 (6.27%) Decision-Making
16 746 (6.24%) AI
17 729 (6.10%) Roadmaps
18 721 (6.03%) Analytics
19 688 (5.75%) Software Engineering
20 631 (5.28%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,380 (11.54%) Python
2 1,112 (9.30%) SQL
3 793 (6.63%) Java
4 594 (4.97%) PowerShell
5 415 (3.47%) JavaScript
6 357 (2.99%) Bash
7 236 (1.97%) C#
8 223 (1.86%) TypeScript
9 164 (1.37%) PL/SQL
10 126 (1.05%) Bicep
11 85 (0.71%) Shell Script
12 62 (0.52%) C++
13 60 (0.50%) Go
14 59 (0.49%) Scala
15 52 (0.43%) C
16 50 (0.42%) Groovy
17 48 (0.40%) Kotlin
18 43 (0.36%) Apex Code
19 39 (0.33%) T-SQL
20 34 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 9,129 (76.34%) SC Cleared
2 2,243 (18.76%) DV Cleared
3 523 (4.37%) BPSS Clearance
4 481 (4.02%) Degree
5 231 (1.93%) CISSP
6 196 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
7 190 (1.59%) Azure Certification
8 170 (1.42%) Microsoft Certification
9 154 (1.29%) AWS Certification
10 147 (1.23%) CISM
11 110 (0.92%) PMI Certification
12 101 (0.84%) PMP
13 97 (0.81%) ISTQB
14 92 (0.77%) CCNP
15 75 (0.63%) Computer Science Degree
16 72 (0.60%) CCNA
17 60 (0.50%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 56 (0.47%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 46 (0.38%) TOGAF Certification
20 45 (0.38%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 537 (4.49%) QA
2 390 (3.26%) Data Quality
3 340 (2.84%) NIST
4 334 (2.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 309 (2.58%) NCSC
6 289 (2.42%) Accessibility
7 220 (1.84%) PMO
8 178 (1.49%) SLA
9 177 (1.48%) GDPR
10 170 (1.42%) GRC
11 86 (0.72%) WCAG
12 58 (0.48%) JSP 440
13 50 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
14 46 (0.38%) NIST 800
15 36 (0.30%) Def Stans
16 35 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
17 28 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 22 (0.18%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 21 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
20 20 (0.17%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 837 (7.00%) Docker
2 647 (5.41%) Active Directory
3 451 (3.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 147 (1.23%) VMware ESXi
5 141 (1.18%) VMware NSX
6 137 (1.15%) Hyper-V
7 135 (1.13%) vSphere
8 95 (0.79%) Virtual Machines
9 45 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
10 42 (0.35%) Firmware
11 40 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
12 25 (0.21%) BitLocker
12 25 (0.21%) vCloud
13 20 (0.17%) NFS
14 19 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
15 12 (0.10%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 11 (0.092%) Squid
17 10 (0.084%) KVM
17 10 (0.084%) Postfix
18 8 (0.067%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 1,012 (8.46%) Kubernetes
2 443 (3.70%) Ansible
3 264 (2.21%) Grafana
4 202 (1.69%) Prometheus
5 137 (1.15%) SCCM
6 133 (1.11%) vCenter Server
7 99 (0.83%) SCOM
8 93 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
9 69 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
10 62 (0.52%) Argo
11 49 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
12 44 (0.37%) Kibana
13 42 (0.35%) Puppet
14 41 (0.34%) Data Guard
15 36 (0.30%) Istio
16 33 (0.28%) NetBackup
17 32 (0.27%) VxRail
18 29 (0.24%) Control-M
19 27 (0.23%) Nagios
20 25 (0.21%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,573 (13.15%) Microsoft
2 963 (8.05%) Oracle
3 614 (5.13%) VMware
4 545 (4.56%) ServiceNow
5 442 (3.70%) SAP
6 305 (2.55%) Cisco
7 269 (2.25%) Google
8 223 (1.86%) Splunk
9 187 (1.56%) Databricks
10 169 (1.41%) Salesforce
11 139 (1.16%) Red Hat
12 130 (1.09%) Palo Alto
13 110 (0.92%) Informatica
14 107 (0.89%) IBM
15 104 (0.87%) Talend
16 103 (0.86%) Dynatrace
17 98 (0.82%) CyberArk
18 94 (0.79%) Remedy
19 82 (0.69%) SolarWinds
20 79 (0.66%) Fortinet