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 17 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,626 5,229 7,763
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.08% 17.80% 18.24%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.51% 57.49% 60.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,293 3,461 5,144
10th Percentile £375 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £625 £623 £650
90th Percentile £725 £688 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £540 £550
% change year-on-year -2.78% -1.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 833 297 513
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £13.89
25th Percentile £21.46 £21.25 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £40.59 £55.80
Median % change year-on-year +35.50% -27.26% -7.00%
75th Percentile £73.75 £66.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.84 £84.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £52.25 £57.44
% change year-on-year +5.26% -9.04% -0.10%

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 15,287 9,095 12,842
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.77% 30.96% 30.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,167 5,741 7,961
10th Percentile £350 £281 £306
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year - -1.41% -3.18%
75th Percentile £621 £620 £646
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £530
% change year-on-year - -5.66% +0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,081 512 1,056
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.13 £13.69
25th Percentile £21.25 £21.25 £17.72
Median hourly rate £50.00 £37.25 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +34.23% -6.88% -26.69%
75th Percentile £71.50 £65.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.36 £79.87 £75.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £37.50 £40.28
% change year-on-year +26.77% -6.89% -19.45%

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 17 May 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 17 May 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 17 May 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 9,212 £525 -2.23% 1,884
UK excluding London +1 5,899 £525 -2.78% 1,530
London +6 3,281 £525 - 481
Work from Home +3 2,860 £525 - 1,306
South East +1 2,230 £546 -0.68% 519
South West 0 1,299 £538 -6.52% 347
North of England -1 888 £498 -0.50% 281
Midlands +3 866 £474 -9.71% 150
West Midlands +3 735 £475 -9.62% 110
North West -1 517 £500 - 162
East of England +2 377 £550 +10.00% 159
Scotland +35 223 £500 +11.11% 44
Yorkshire -12 213 £480 -4.00% 52
North East +1 193 £475 -1.04% 69
East Midlands -4 125 £450 -5.26% 40
Wales +5 83 £475 - 43
Northern Ireland +5 21 £619 +30.26% 20

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
1 400 (3.76%) Confluence
2 220 (2.07%) SharePoint
3 133 (1.25%) Microsoft Exchange
3 133 (1.25%) SAS
4 106 (1.00%) Apache Spark
5 83 (0.78%) Apache
6 72 (0.68%) Apache Airflow
7 39 (0.37%) WebLogic
8 34 (0.32%) nginx
9 29 (0.27%) Jupyter
10 21 (0.20%) Tomcat
11 16 (0.15%) IIS
11 16 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
13 14 (0.13%) CMS
13 14 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
14 13 (0.12%) NetWeaver
14 13 (0.12%) Skype for Business
15 11 (0.10%) ArcGIS
16 9 (0.085%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 197 (1.85%) Microsoft Office
2 192 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
3 110 (1.04%) Microsoft Project
4 88 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.40%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.13%) Simulink
8 7 (0.066%) AutoCAD
8 7 (0.066%) Notepad++
9 6 (0.056%) SOLIDWORKS
10 5 (0.047%) Revit
10 5 (0.047%) Windchill
11 4 (0.038%) Siemens NX
11 4 (0.038%) Sketch
12 3 (0.028%) Adobe XD
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 48 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
3 38 (0.36%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 30 (0.28%) Teamcenter
5 29 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
6 28 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
7 23 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
8 15 (0.14%) Maximo
9 14 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
9 14 (0.13%) SAP PSCD
10 13 (0.12%) iTrent
10 13 (0.12%) SAP GRC
10 13 (0.12%) Temenos T24
11 12 (0.11%) Findur
12 11 (0.10%) Oracle Assets
13 10 (0.094%) SAP PP
14 9 (0.085%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 9 (0.085%) SAP ERP
14 9 (0.085%) SAP HCM
14 9 (0.085%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,857 (17.48%) AWS
2 1,829 (17.21%) Azure
3 443 (4.17%) GitHub
4 435 (4.09%) GCP
5 392 (3.69%) Azure DevOps
6 384 (3.61%) Power Platform
7 269 (2.53%) Serverless
8 265 (2.49%) Microsoft 365
9 255 (2.40%) Entra ID
10 250 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
11 211 (1.99%) Amazon S3
12 182 (1.71%) AWS Lambda
13 159 (1.50%) PaaS
14 148 (1.39%) Amazon EC2
15 144 (1.36%) Amazon EKS
16 137 (1.29%) AWS CloudFormation
17 136 (1.28%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 136 (1.28%) OpenShift
18 132 (1.24%) OCI
19 121 (1.14%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 485 (4.56%) Firewall
2 303 (2.85%) DNS
3 233 (2.19%) Network Security
4 230 (2.16%) WAN
5 209 (1.97%) LAN
6 174 (1.64%) VPN
7 152 (1.43%) DHCP
8 146 (1.37%) BGP
9 127 (1.20%) TCP/IP
10 125 (1.18%) OSPF
11 105 (0.99%) VLAN
12 96 (0.90%) Wi-Fi
13 85 (0.80%) Wireless
14 68 (0.64%) MPLS
15 62 (0.58%) SAN
16 56 (0.53%) Structured Cabling
17 55 (0.52%) VXLAN
18 53 (0.50%) SD-WAN
19 52 (0.49%) SSL
20 51 (0.48%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 301 (2.83%) Power BI
2 252 (2.37%) PostgreSQL
3 238 (2.24%) Data Warehouse
4 204 (1.92%) SQL Server
5 136 (1.28%) Metadata
6 129 (1.21%) Oracle Database
7 111 (1.04%) Amazon RDS
8 110 (1.04%) MongoDB
9 106 (1.00%) Data Lake
10 103 (0.97%) Relational Database
11 98 (0.92%) NoSQL
12 83 (0.78%) Pentaho
13 77 (0.72%) Elasticsearch
14 74 (0.70%) Big Data
15 72 (0.68%) MySQL
15 72 (0.68%) Oracle Reports
16 70 (0.66%) Tableau
17 65 (0.61%) Amazon Redshift
17 65 (0.61%) Azure SQL Database
18 61 (0.57%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 625 (5.88%) JIRA
2 469 (4.41%) Git
3 400 (3.76%) GitLab
4 398 (3.75%) Jenkins
5 108 (1.02%) Selenium
6 87 (0.82%) Postman
7 74 (0.70%) JUnit
8 66 (0.62%) SonarQube
9 55 (0.52%) Rational DOORS
10 53 (0.50%) Artifactory
11 52 (0.49%) JMeter
12 44 (0.41%) Cucumber
13 43 (0.40%) Bitbucket
14 39 (0.37%) Mockito
15 38 (0.36%) Maven
15 38 (0.36%) Visual Studio
16 36 (0.34%) Cypress.io
17 31 (0.29%) REST Assured
17 31 (0.29%) Zephyr
18 30 (0.28%) Gatling
General
1 2,338 (22.00%) Public Sector
2 2,222 (20.91%) Social Skills
3 759 (7.14%) Analytical Skills
4 699 (6.58%) Finance
5 356 (3.35%) Military
6 293 (2.76%) Documentation Skills
7 254 (2.39%) Aerospace
8 171 (1.61%) Legal
9 128 (1.20%) Telecoms
10 122 (1.15%) Influencing Skills
11 119 (1.12%) Banking
12 116 (1.09%) Manufacturing
13 114 (1.07%) Organisational Skills
14 86 (0.81%) Law
15 83 (0.78%) Presentation Skills
16 80 (0.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 68 (0.64%) Police
18 59 (0.56%) Marketing
19 48 (0.45%) Electronics
20 43 (0.40%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,618 (15.23%) Architect
2 996 (9.37%) Developer
3 908 (8.55%) Senior
4 749 (7.05%) Analyst
5 742 (6.98%) Lead
6 528 (4.97%) Consultant
7 516 (4.86%) Data Engineer
8 496 (4.67%) DevOps Engineer
9 325 (3.06%) Technical Architect
10 317 (2.98%) Software Engineer
11 300 (2.82%) Network Engineer
12 296 (2.79%) Solutions Architect
13 277 (2.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 276 (2.60%) Business Analyst
15 226 (2.13%) Project Manager
16 216 (2.03%) Azure Engineer
16 216 (2.03%) Designer
17 211 (1.99%) Security Architect
18 190 (1.79%) Administrator
18 190 (1.79%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 332 (3.12%) REST
2 252 (2.37%) Spring
3 217 (2.04%) Kafka
4 206 (1.94%) Spring Boot
5 196 (1.84%) Node.js
6 192 (1.81%) React
7 178 (1.68%) .NET
8 153 (1.44%) LDAP
8 153 (1.44%) SOAP
9 147 (1.38%) RESTful
10 128 (1.20%) JSON
11 122 (1.15%) AngularJS
12 120 (1.13%) PySpark
13 117 (1.10%) Web Services
14 100 (0.94%) Oracle Fusion
15 99 (0.93%) OAuth
16 90 (0.85%) Middleware
17 89 (0.84%) HTML
18 86 (0.81%) Playwright
18 86 (0.81%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 369 (3.47%) Cloud Native
2 335 (3.15%) Product Ownership
3 314 (2.96%) Data Centre
4 288 (2.71%) Onboarding
5 202 (1.90%) Management Information System
6 158 (1.49%) PKI
7 141 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
8 135 (1.27%) Security Posture
9 125 (1.18%) Enterprise Software
10 123 (1.16%) Replication
11 121 (1.14%) Distributed Systems
12 97 (0.91%) Self-Motivation
13 90 (0.85%) Public Cloud
14 88 (0.83%) Data Structures
15 86 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
16 83 (0.78%) Clustering
17 82 (0.77%) Hybrid Cloud
18 75 (0.71%) Virtual Team
19 70 (0.66%) Greenfield Project
20 66 (0.62%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 859 (8.08%) Windows
2 743 (6.99%) Linux
3 249 (2.34%) Windows Server
4 182 (1.71%) Unix
5 136 (1.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 107 (1.01%) Android
7 88 (0.83%) Windows 10
8 67 (0.63%) Apple iOS
9 44 (0.41%) Mac OS
9 44 (0.41%) Solaris
10 41 (0.39%) Ubuntu
11 30 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
12 29 (0.27%) VMS
12 29 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
13 26 (0.24%) AIX
14 22 (0.21%) CentOS
15 14 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 12 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
17 11 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
18 10 (0.094%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,024 (19.05%) Agile
2 1,609 (15.14%) DevOps
3 1,451 (13.66%) CI/CD
4 1,139 (10.72%) Problem-Solving
5 993 (9.35%) Stakeholder Management
6 926 (8.71%) Continuous Improvement
7 845 (7.95%) Migration
8 780 (7.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 741 (6.97%) Infrastructure as Code
10 649 (6.11%) ITIL
11 630 (5.93%) Cybersecurity
12 622 (5.85%) Test Automation
13 607 (5.71%) Analytics
14 585 (5.51%) Containerisation
15 582 (5.48%) Roadmaps
16 578 (5.44%) Software Engineering
17 543 (5.11%) Data Modelling
18 526 (4.95%) Decision-Making
19 458 (4.31%) Scrum
20 455 (4.28%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,202 (11.31%) Python
2 971 (9.14%) SQL
3 664 (6.25%) Java
4 548 (5.16%) PowerShell
5 338 (3.18%) JavaScript
6 222 (2.09%) C#
7 203 (1.91%) Bash
8 178 (1.68%) TypeScript
9 112 (1.05%) PL/SQL
10 98 (0.92%) C++
10 98 (0.92%) Shell Script
11 73 (0.69%) Go
12 70 (0.66%) Scala
13 69 (0.65%) Ruby
14 59 (0.56%) Bicep
15 57 (0.54%) C
16 51 (0.48%) Apex Code
17 50 (0.47%) R
18 41 (0.39%) Kusto Query Language
19 39 (0.37%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 8,099 (76.22%) SC Cleared
2 1,924 (18.11%) DV Cleared
3 453 (4.26%) Degree
4 305 (2.87%) BPSS Clearance
5 215 (2.02%) Cisco Certification
6 178 (1.68%) CISSP
7 132 (1.24%) Azure Certification
8 125 (1.18%) CCNP
9 122 (1.15%) AWS Certification
10 120 (1.13%) CISM
11 94 (0.88%) Microsoft Certification
12 92 (0.87%) CCNA
13 80 (0.75%) PMP
14 74 (0.70%) Computer Science Degree
15 70 (0.66%) PMI Certification
16 69 (0.65%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 63 (0.59%) ITIL Certification
17 63 (0.59%) TOGAF Certification
18 58 (0.55%) ISTQB
19 50 (0.47%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 385 (3.62%) QA
2 322 (3.03%) Data Quality
3 302 (2.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 297 (2.80%) NIST
5 206 (1.94%) Accessibility
6 202 (1.90%) NCSC
7 171 (1.61%) GDPR
8 162 (1.52%) PMO
9 108 (1.02%) SLA
10 76 (0.72%) GRC
11 64 (0.60%) JSP 440
12 53 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials
13 45 (0.42%) WCAG
14 40 (0.38%) NIST 800
15 33 (0.31%) RMADS
16 32 (0.30%) COBIT
17 31 (0.29%) PCI DSS
18 30 (0.28%) Def Stans
19 28 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
20 25 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 667 (6.28%) Docker
2 480 (4.52%) Active Directory
3 291 (2.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 104 (0.98%) VMware ESXi
5 98 (0.92%) VMware NSX
6 84 (0.79%) Hyper-V
7 78 (0.73%) vSphere
8 74 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
9 36 (0.34%) Firmware
10 35 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
11 23 (0.22%) NFS
11 23 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
12 19 (0.18%) BitLocker
13 18 (0.17%) vCloud
14 17 (0.16%) Squid
15 16 (0.15%) Postfix
15 16 (0.15%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 8 (0.075%) KVM
16 8 (0.075%) Microsoft App-V
17 6 (0.056%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 839 (7.90%) Kubernetes
2 835 (7.86%) Terraform
3 365 (3.43%) Ansible
4 269 (2.53%) Grafana
5 222 (2.09%) Prometheus
6 114 (1.07%) Single Sign-On
7 103 (0.97%) vCenter Server
8 76 (0.72%) SCCM
9 66 (0.62%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 54 (0.51%) FortiGate
10 54 (0.51%) Microsoft Intune
11 53 (0.50%) Argo
12 41 (0.39%) Puppet
13 39 (0.37%) Podman
14 38 (0.36%) Oracle RMAN
15 34 (0.32%) Progress Chef
16 32 (0.30%) Nagios
17 31 (0.29%) vRealize
18 28 (0.26%) SCOM
19 25 (0.24%) OPNET
Vendors
1 1,058 (9.96%) Microsoft
2 665 (6.26%) Oracle
3 513 (4.83%) VMware
4 421 (3.96%) ServiceNow
5 373 (3.51%) SAP
6 371 (3.49%) Cisco
7 251 (2.36%) Splunk
8 215 (2.02%) Databricks
9 176 (1.66%) Red Hat
10 172 (1.62%) Google
11 150 (1.41%) Salesforce
12 131 (1.23%) Talend
13 124 (1.17%) IBM
13 124 (1.17%) Palo Alto
14 102 (0.96%) Juniper
15 98 (0.92%) CyberArk
15 98 (0.92%) Informatica
16 94 (0.88%) Atlassian
17 88 (0.83%) Fortinet
18 85 (0.80%) F5