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

6 months to
14 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 11,567 5,901 7,252
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.66% 17.93% 18.63%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.18% 57.33% 62.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,091 3,730 4,824
10th Percentile £381 £350 £350
25th Percentile £453 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £537 £535 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.47% -2.82% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 833 554 499
10th Percentile £19.33 £18.51 £15.44
25th Percentile £26.25 £18.87 £22.11
Median hourly rate £63.50 £25.15 £56.89
Median % change year-on-year +152.49% -55.79% -5.19%
75th Percentile £80.00 £48.13 £71.50
90th Percentile £88.00 £73.75 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £58.05
% change year-on-year +158.45% -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 16,719 10,293 11,685
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.31% 31.27% 30.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,204 6,336 7,411
10th Percentile £350 £289 £313
25th Percentile £431 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £638
90th Percentile £715 £704 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £514 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.80% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,256 815 849
10th Percentile £17.72 £17.97 £15.06
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.38 £21.25
Median hourly rate £51.25 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +103.78% -41.51% -21.82%
75th Percentile £73.81 £53.95 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.16 £73.75 £76.40
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 14 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 14 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 14 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 10,027 £538 - 3,756
UK excluding London +1 6,531 £525 -2.33% 2,888
London +7 3,528 £550 +3.77% 1,265
Work from Home +3 3,119 £525 -2.33% 1,999
South East +1 2,453 £560 +4.19% 799
South West 0 1,349 £538 -6.52% 688
North of England +2 1,146 £505 +1.00% 586
Midlands 0 962 £469 -8.93% 233
West Midlands +1 835 £469 -8.93% 178
North West +2 628 £525 -0.94% 380
East of England 0 326 £550 - 285
Yorkshire +3 303 £492 - 117
Scotland +11 257 £493 +1.76% 203
North East 0 239 £475 -5.00% 109
East Midlands -2 115 £438 -10.15% 54
Wales +2 100 £550 +15.79% 51
Northern Ireland +4 33 £650 +25.00% 81

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
1 408 (3.53%) Confluence
2 273 (2.36%) SharePoint
3 198 (1.71%) SAS
4 122 (1.05%) Microsoft Exchange
5 97 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
5 97 (0.84%) Apache Spark
6 92 (0.80%) Apache
7 36 (0.31%) Jupyter
8 35 (0.30%) WebLogic
9 34 (0.29%) nginx
10 24 (0.21%) IIS
11 23 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
12 22 (0.19%) Tomcat
13 20 (0.17%) Skype for Business
14 18 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
15 17 (0.15%) CMS
16 16 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
17 15 (0.13%) NetWeaver
18 12 (0.10%) JBoss
19 11 (0.095%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 206 (1.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 154 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
3 100 (0.86%) Microsoft Project
4 88 (0.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (0.38%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.14%) AutoCAD
7 16 (0.14%) Revit
8 15 (0.13%) Simulink
8 15 (0.13%) SOLIDWORKS
9 9 (0.078%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.069%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.061%) Notepad++
11 7 (0.061%) Sketch
12 5 (0.043%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 4 (0.035%) Windchill
14 3 (0.026%) Trello
15 2 (0.017%) CPLEX
15 2 (0.017%) Houdini
15 2 (0.017%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 146 (1.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 82 (0.71%) Remedy ITSM
3 48 (0.41%) Oracle ERP
4 41 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
5 34 (0.29%) Teamcenter
6 33 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 28 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
8 22 (0.19%) SAP GRC
8 22 (0.19%) SAP PSCD
9 21 (0.18%) Oracle Payroll
9 21 (0.18%) Primavera
10 16 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
11 15 (0.13%) Findur
12 13 (0.11%) SAP FI
12 13 (0.11%) SAP HR
12 13 (0.11%) Temenos T24
13 12 (0.10%) iTrent
13 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
14 11 (0.095%) NetSuite
15 10 (0.086%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,122 (18.35%) Azure
2 2,059 (17.80%) AWS
3 547 (4.73%) GitHub
4 526 (4.55%) Azure DevOps
5 479 (4.14%) Power Platform
6 453 (3.92%) GCP
7 347 (3.00%) GitHub Actions
8 308 (2.66%) Microsoft 365
9 296 (2.56%) Entra ID
10 282 (2.44%) Serverless
11 235 (2.03%) Amazon S3
12 198 (1.71%) AWS Lambda
13 177 (1.53%) OCI
14 170 (1.47%) SaaS
15 165 (1.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 159 (1.37%) Amazon EKS
17 147 (1.27%) Amazon EC2
18 144 (1.24%) PaaS
19 140 (1.21%) OpenShift
20 133 (1.15%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 484 (4.18%) Firewall
2 382 (3.30%) DNS
3 230 (1.99%) WAN
4 223 (1.93%) Network Security
5 203 (1.75%) VPN
6 194 (1.68%) LAN
7 193 (1.67%) DHCP
8 144 (1.24%) BGP
9 137 (1.18%) TCP/IP
10 120 (1.04%) Wi-Fi
11 112 (0.97%) OSPF
12 107 (0.93%) VLAN
13 86 (0.74%) Wireless
14 68 (0.59%) VSAN
15 66 (0.57%) MPLS
16 64 (0.55%) IPsec
17 63 (0.54%) SSL
18 60 (0.52%) SAN
19 58 (0.50%) SD-WAN
19 58 (0.50%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 355 (3.07%) Power BI
2 317 (2.74%) PostgreSQL
3 294 (2.54%) SQL Server
4 286 (2.47%) Data Warehouse
5 167 (1.44%) Oracle Database
6 155 (1.34%) Metadata
7 135 (1.17%) Data Lake
7 135 (1.17%) Relational Database
8 119 (1.03%) MongoDB
9 113 (0.98%) Amazon RDS
10 107 (0.93%) Oracle Reports
11 104 (0.90%) MySQL
12 97 (0.84%) Pentaho
13 84 (0.73%) NoSQL
14 69 (0.60%) Amazon Redshift
15 67 (0.58%) Amazon Athena
16 61 (0.53%) Elasticsearch
17 60 (0.52%) Tableau
18 57 (0.49%) Big Data
19 49 (0.42%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 661 (5.71%) JIRA
2 582 (5.03%) Git
3 490 (4.24%) GitLab
3 490 (4.24%) Jenkins
4 134 (1.16%) Selenium
5 88 (0.76%) Postman
6 83 (0.72%) SonarQube
7 77 (0.67%) JUnit
8 76 (0.66%) JMeter
9 68 (0.59%) Maven
10 59 (0.51%) Cucumber
10 59 (0.51%) Rational DOORS
11 52 (0.45%) Visual Studio
12 48 (0.41%) Zephyr
13 47 (0.41%) Cypress.io
14 46 (0.40%) Mockito
15 43 (0.37%) Bitbucket
15 43 (0.37%) Gradle
16 39 (0.34%) Gatling
17 38 (0.33%) Artifactory
General
1 2,428 (20.99%) Social Skills
2 2,425 (20.96%) Public Sector
3 898 (7.76%) Analytical Skills
4 772 (6.67%) Finance
5 352 (3.04%) Military
6 309 (2.67%) Aerospace
7 294 (2.54%) Documentation Skills
8 181 (1.56%) Influencing Skills
9 167 (1.44%) Legal
10 155 (1.34%) Organisational Skills
11 153 (1.32%) Telecoms
12 141 (1.22%) Banking
13 129 (1.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 112 (0.97%) Manufacturing
15 110 (0.95%) Police
16 105 (0.91%) Law
17 67 (0.58%) Presentation Skills
18 50 (0.43%) Aviation
19 44 (0.38%) Marketing
20 43 (0.37%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,813 (15.67%) Architect
2 1,277 (11.04%) Developer
3 1,104 (9.54%) Senior
4 1,001 (8.65%) Lead
5 666 (5.76%) Analyst
6 653 (5.65%) Consultant
7 531 (4.59%) Data Engineer
8 479 (4.14%) DevOps Engineer
9 420 (3.63%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 368 (3.18%) Technical Architect
11 352 (3.04%) Solutions Architect
12 324 (2.80%) Software Engineer
13 271 (2.34%) Security Architect
14 262 (2.27%) Network Engineer
15 245 (2.12%) Data Architect
16 226 (1.95%) Java Developer
17 218 (1.88%) Designer
18 217 (1.88%) Administrator
19 211 (1.82%) Delivery Manager
20 206 (1.78%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 433 (3.74%) REST
2 263 (2.27%) Spring
3 235 (2.03%) .NET
3 235 (2.03%) Kafka
4 229 (1.98%) Spring Boot
5 215 (1.86%) RESTful
6 198 (1.71%) React
7 181 (1.56%) Node.js
8 173 (1.50%) SOAP
9 154 (1.33%) JSON
10 135 (1.17%) AngularJS
10 135 (1.17%) Web Services
11 126 (1.09%) OAuth
12 123 (1.06%) HTML
13 113 (0.98%) XML
14 109 (0.94%) Middleware
15 94 (0.81%) Playwright
16 92 (0.80%) PySpark
17 91 (0.79%) Oracle Fusion
18 87 (0.75%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 490 (4.24%) Cloud Native
2 407 (3.52%) Onboarding
3 372 (3.22%) Product Ownership
4 305 (2.64%) Data Centre
5 239 (2.07%) Management Information System
6 189 (1.63%) Legacy Systems
7 169 (1.46%) PKI
8 168 (1.45%) Distributed Systems
9 146 (1.26%) Enterprise Software
10 139 (1.20%) CMDB
11 121 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
12 118 (1.02%) Replication
13 115 (0.99%) Data Structures
13 115 (0.99%) Hybrid Cloud
14 103 (0.89%) Clustering
15 94 (0.81%) Public Cloud
16 90 (0.78%) Security Operations Centre
17 89 (0.77%) Cyber Threat
17 89 (0.77%) Virtual Team
18 78 (0.67%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 958 (8.28%) Windows
2 798 (6.90%) Linux
3 323 (2.79%) Windows Server
4 226 (1.95%) Unix
5 151 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 117 (1.01%) Windows 10
7 97 (0.84%) Android
8 63 (0.54%) Solaris
9 61 (0.53%) Apple iOS
10 47 (0.41%) Mac OS
11 40 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 37 (0.32%) Ubuntu
13 35 (0.30%) AIX
14 33 (0.29%) CentOS
15 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 21 (0.18%) VMS
17 20 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
18 18 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
19 14 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
19 14 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,442 (21.11%) Agile
2 1,813 (15.67%) DevOps
3 1,736 (15.01%) CI/CD
4 1,366 (11.81%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,299 (11.23%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,206 (10.43%) Problem-Solving
7 1,104 (9.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 945 (8.17%) Infrastructure as Code
9 920 (7.95%) Migration
10 759 (6.56%) Test Automation
11 755 (6.53%) Cybersecurity
12 754 (6.52%) ITIL
13 731 (6.32%) Analytics
14 719 (6.22%) Containerisation
15 698 (6.03%) Software Engineering
16 678 (5.86%) Roadmaps
17 647 (5.59%) Technical Leadership
18 640 (5.53%) Data Modelling
19 632 (5.46%) AI
20 629 (5.44%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 1,310 (11.33%) Python
2 1,152 (9.96%) SQL
3 817 (7.06%) Java
4 563 (4.87%) PowerShell
5 402 (3.48%) JavaScript
6 325 (2.81%) Bash
7 268 (2.32%) C#
8 194 (1.68%) TypeScript
9 178 (1.54%) PL/SQL
10 111 (0.96%) Bicep
11 93 (0.80%) C++
12 87 (0.75%) Shell Script
13 68 (0.59%) C
14 56 (0.48%) Apex Code
15 55 (0.48%) Kotlin
16 53 (0.46%) Scala
17 52 (0.45%) Ruby
18 49 (0.42%) Go
19 45 (0.39%) Groovy
20 37 (0.32%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8,816 (76.22%) SC Cleared
2 2,163 (18.70%) DV Cleared
3 452 (3.91%) Degree
4 439 (3.80%) BPSS Clearance
5 203 (1.75%) CISSP
6 198 (1.71%) Cisco Certification
7 169 (1.46%) Azure Certification
8 157 (1.36%) Microsoft Certification
9 134 (1.16%) AWS Certification
10 133 (1.15%) CISM
11 107 (0.93%) PMI Certification
12 105 (0.91%) PMP
13 96 (0.83%) ISTQB
14 82 (0.71%) CCNA
15 81 (0.70%) CCNP
16 67 (0.58%) Computer Science Degree
17 65 (0.56%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 49 (0.42%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 46 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
20 43 (0.37%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 475 (4.11%) QA
2 375 (3.24%) Data Quality
3 305 (2.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 296 (2.56%) NIST
5 259 (2.24%) Accessibility
5 259 (2.24%) NCSC
6 216 (1.87%) PMO
7 179 (1.55%) GDPR
8 142 (1.23%) GRC
9 141 (1.22%) SLA
10 78 (0.67%) WCAG
11 62 (0.54%) JSP 440
12 46 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
13 45 (0.39%) NIST 800
14 33 (0.29%) Def Stans
15 29 (0.25%) Government Security Classifications
15 29 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 29 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 20000
16 23 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
17 22 (0.19%) RMADS
System Software
1 807 (6.98%) Docker
2 528 (4.56%) Active Directory
3 401 (3.47%) VMware Infrastructure
4 151 (1.31%) VMware NSX
5 131 (1.13%) VMware ESXi
6 118 (1.02%) vSphere
7 111 (0.96%) Hyper-V
8 81 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
9 45 (0.39%) Oracle RAC
10 41 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
11 33 (0.29%) Firmware
12 26 (0.22%) BitLocker
13 25 (0.22%) vCloud
14 16 (0.14%) NFS
15 15 (0.13%) Postfix
15 15 (0.13%) Squid
16 11 (0.095%) Virtual Servers
17 8 (0.069%) KVM
18 7 (0.061%) Ceph
18 7 (0.061%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 991 (8.57%) Terraform
2 981 (8.48%) Kubernetes
3 441 (3.81%) Ansible
4 273 (2.36%) Grafana
5 216 (1.87%) Prometheus
6 131 (1.13%) vCenter Server
7 125 (1.08%) SCCM
8 89 (0.77%) Microsoft Intune
9 74 (0.64%) SCOM
10 68 (0.59%) Argo
11 67 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
12 55 (0.48%) Oracle RMAN
13 50 (0.43%) Puppet
14 41 (0.35%) Data Guard
14 41 (0.35%) FortiGate
15 31 (0.27%) Istio
15 31 (0.27%) Progress Chef
16 30 (0.26%) Nagios
17 28 (0.24%) WSUS
18 27 (0.23%) Control-M
Vendors
1 1,410 (12.19%) Microsoft
2 938 (8.11%) Oracle
3 580 (5.01%) VMware
4 543 (4.69%) ServiceNow
5 436 (3.77%) SAP
6 303 (2.62%) Cisco
7 235 (2.03%) Google
8 215 (1.86%) Splunk
9 206 (1.78%) Databricks
10 189 (1.63%) Salesforce
11 152 (1.31%) Red Hat
12 132 (1.14%) Talend
13 131 (1.13%) Informatica
14 129 (1.12%) IBM
15 115 (0.99%) Palo Alto
16 96 (0.83%) Dynatrace
16 96 (0.83%) F5
16 96 (0.83%) Juniper
17 93 (0.80%) Remedy
18 92 (0.80%) SolarWinds