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

6 months to
19 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 10,465 5,236 8,123
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.66% 17.79% 18.58%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.13% 57.88% 60.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,160 3,505 5,296
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £460
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 £699 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £520 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -5.45% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 839 281 518
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.95
25th Percentile £21.33 £24.17 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £52.50 £54.02
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -2.80% -9.98%
75th Percentile £73.46 £67.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.25 £78.36 £83.51
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £57.50 £55.80
% change year-on-year -4.35% +3.05% -2.96%

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 15,138 9,047 13,433
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.78% 30.75% 30.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,088 5,755 8,292
10th Percentile £344 £295 £300
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £709 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £510 £530
% change year-on-year -1.96% -3.77% +0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,093 505 1,051
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.43 £13.69
25th Percentile £21.25 £22.50 £17.78
Median hourly rate £45.46 £42.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.96% +6.25% -23.81%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.20 £80.84 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.46 £46.30 £40.00
% change year-on-year -1.81% +15.75% -18.80%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 9,071 £525 -2.33% 1,914
UK excluding London +1 5,809 £520 -5.45% 1,577
London +6 3,178 £525 - 493
Work from Home +3 2,786 £525 -0.38% 807
South East +1 2,144 £533 -3.18% 514
South West 0 1,334 £538 -4.40% 366
Midlands +4 906 £485 -8.96% 173
North of England -1 859 £488 -2.50% 288
West Midlands +4 764 £485 -9.94% 121
North West -1 526 £500 - 163
East of England +2 369 £500 +11.11% 179
Yorkshire -4 207 £488 -7.14% 64
Scotland +31 199 £500 +2.56% 37
North East +1 161 £450 -6.25% 63
East Midlands -2 138 £450 -7.69% 52
Wales +4 76 £520 -4.57% 33
Northern Ireland +9 21 £475 - 16

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
1 403 (3.85%) Confluence
2 223 (2.13%) SharePoint
3 160 (1.53%) SAS
4 147 (1.40%) Microsoft Exchange
5 109 (1.04%) Apache Spark
6 89 (0.85%) Apache
7 69 (0.66%) Apache Airflow
8 49 (0.47%) nginx
9 40 (0.38%) WebLogic
10 23 (0.22%) Jupyter
11 17 (0.16%) Tomcat
12 16 (0.15%) CMS
13 15 (0.14%) IIS
13 15 (0.14%) Skype for Business
13 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
14 14 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
15 13 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
16 11 (0.11%) ArcGIS
16 11 (0.11%) NetWeaver
17 10 (0.096%) Oracle Application Server
Applications
1 230 (2.20%) Microsoft Office
2 194 (1.85%) Microsoft Excel
3 124 (1.18%) Microsoft Project
4 78 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 47 (0.45%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.15%) Simulink
8 7 (0.067%) Notepad++
9 5 (0.048%) Windchill
10 4 (0.038%) Siemens NX
10 4 (0.038%) Sketch
11 3 (0.029%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.019%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.019%) CATIA
12 2 (0.019%) Chatbot
12 2 (0.019%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.019%) InVision
12 2 (0.019%) Lectora
12 2 (0.019%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.019%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 107 (1.02%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (0.43%) Remedy ITSM
2 45 (0.43%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 30 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
4 27 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
5 26 (0.25%) Teamcenter
6 20 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
7 19 (0.18%) SAP PP
8 17 (0.16%) Maximo
9 13 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.12%) Temenos T24
10 11 (0.11%) Findur
10 11 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
10 11 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
11 10 (0.096%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.086%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.086%) SAP PM
13 8 (0.076%) SAP EWM
13 8 (0.076%) SAP HR
13 8 (0.076%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 1,810 (17.30%) AWS
2 1,760 (16.82%) Azure
3 453 (4.33%) GitHub
4 436 (4.17%) GCP
5 403 (3.85%) Azure DevOps
6 363 (3.47%) Power Platform
7 301 (2.88%) Serverless
8 285 (2.72%) Microsoft 365
9 247 (2.36%) GitHub Actions
10 239 (2.28%) Entra ID
11 224 (2.14%) Amazon S3
12 201 (1.92%) AWS Lambda
13 156 (1.49%) PaaS
14 154 (1.47%) OpenShift
15 149 (1.42%) AWS CloudFormation
16 136 (1.30%) Amazon EC2
16 136 (1.30%) IaaS
17 134 (1.28%) Amazon EKS
18 126 (1.20%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 123 (1.18%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 473 (4.52%) Firewall
2 296 (2.83%) DNS
3 233 (2.23%) Network Security
4 224 (2.14%) WAN
5 205 (1.96%) LAN
6 176 (1.68%) VPN
7 146 (1.40%) BGP
8 141 (1.35%) DHCP
9 123 (1.18%) TCP/IP
10 119 (1.14%) OSPF
11 103 (0.98%) VLAN
12 88 (0.84%) Wireless
13 66 (0.63%) MPLS
13 66 (0.63%) Wi-Fi
14 57 (0.54%) SAN
15 53 (0.51%) SSL
16 51 (0.49%) SD-WAN
17 48 (0.46%) IPsec
18 47 (0.45%) VXLAN
19 45 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 279 (2.67%) Power BI
2 270 (2.58%) PostgreSQL
3 228 (2.18%) Data Warehouse
4 195 (1.86%) SQL Server
5 153 (1.46%) Metadata
6 125 (1.19%) Oracle Database
7 110 (1.05%) NoSQL
8 109 (1.04%) Amazon RDS
9 104 (0.99%) MongoDB
10 99 (0.95%) Relational Database
11 94 (0.90%) Data Lake
12 85 (0.81%) Azure SQL Database
13 83 (0.79%) MySQL
14 79 (0.75%) Elasticsearch
15 78 (0.75%) Pentaho
16 75 (0.72%) Big Data
16 75 (0.72%) Tableau
17 69 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
18 65 (0.62%) Oracle Reports
19 59 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 640 (6.12%) JIRA
2 514 (4.91%) Git
3 398 (3.80%) Jenkins
4 365 (3.49%) GitLab
5 117 (1.12%) Selenium
6 91 (0.87%) Postman
7 83 (0.79%) JUnit
8 66 (0.63%) SonarQube
9 51 (0.49%) Bitbucket
10 50 (0.48%) Rational DOORS
11 47 (0.45%) Artifactory
12 43 (0.41%) Maven
13 42 (0.40%) Cucumber
13 42 (0.40%) JMeter
13 42 (0.40%) Oracle APEX
14 39 (0.37%) Cypress.io
14 39 (0.37%) Mockito
15 31 (0.30%) Visual Studio
16 30 (0.29%) Zephyr
17 26 (0.25%) REST Assured
General
1 2,444 (23.35%) Public Sector
2 2,288 (21.86%) Social Skills
3 835 (7.98%) Analytical Skills
4 695 (6.64%) Finance
5 347 (3.32%) Military
6 285 (2.72%) Documentation Skills
7 238 (2.27%) Aerospace
8 170 (1.62%) Legal
9 158 (1.51%) Telecoms
10 155 (1.48%) Manufacturing
11 135 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
12 120 (1.15%) Banking
13 112 (1.07%) Organisational Skills
14 98 (0.94%) Presentation Skills
15 87 (0.83%) Marketing
16 81 (0.77%) Electronics
17 80 (0.76%) Law
18 75 (0.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 62 (0.59%) Police
20 33 (0.32%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,597 (15.26%) Architect
2 1,039 (9.93%) Developer
3 919 (8.78%) Senior
4 750 (7.17%) Analyst
5 689 (6.58%) Lead
6 566 (5.41%) Consultant
7 473 (4.52%) Data Engineer
8 454 (4.34%) DevOps Engineer
9 316 (3.02%) Technical Architect
10 311 (2.97%) Software Engineer
11 287 (2.74%) Solutions Architect
12 279 (2.67%) Network Engineer
13 272 (2.60%) Business Analyst
14 226 (2.16%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 217 (2.07%) Azure Engineer
16 214 (2.04%) Project Manager
17 200 (1.91%) Security Architect
18 195 (1.86%) Designer
19 186 (1.78%) Administrator
20 184 (1.76%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 367 (3.51%) REST
2 236 (2.26%) Spring
3 214 (2.04%) Kafka
4 210 (2.01%) Node.js
5 186 (1.78%) React
6 182 (1.74%) Spring Boot
7 179 (1.71%) .NET
8 169 (1.61%) JSON
9 154 (1.47%) SOAP
10 145 (1.39%) RESTful
11 142 (1.36%) LDAP
12 132 (1.26%) PySpark
13 125 (1.19%) AngularJS
14 119 (1.14%) Web Services
15 112 (1.07%) OAuth
16 97 (0.93%) Oracle Fusion
17 96 (0.92%) HTML
17 96 (0.92%) XML
18 86 (0.82%) Middleware
19 80 (0.76%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 348 (3.33%) Product Ownership
2 328 (3.13%) Cloud Native
3 307 (2.93%) Data Centre
4 274 (2.62%) Onboarding
5 195 (1.86%) Management Information System
6 188 (1.80%) PKI
7 131 (1.25%) Security Posture
8 128 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
9 127 (1.21%) Legacy Systems
10 121 (1.16%) Distributed Systems
10 121 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
11 120 (1.15%) Replication
12 95 (0.91%) Public Cloud
13 80 (0.76%) Data Structures
14 79 (0.75%) Security Operations Centre
15 77 (0.74%) Hybrid Cloud
16 72 (0.69%) Virtual Team
17 69 (0.66%) Clustering
18 63 (0.60%) Driving Licence
19 61 (0.58%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 861 (8.23%) Windows
2 743 (7.10%) Linux
3 256 (2.45%) Windows Server
4 154 (1.47%) Unix
5 139 (1.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 123 (1.18%) Android
7 108 (1.03%) Windows 10
8 65 (0.62%) Apple iOS
9 55 (0.53%) Mac OS
10 40 (0.38%) Ubuntu
11 33 (0.32%) VMS
12 30 (0.29%) Solaris
13 29 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
14 27 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
15 23 (0.22%) AIX
16 21 (0.20%) CentOS
17 15 (0.14%) Windows 7
18 14 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
19 10 (0.096%) Windows Server 2008
20 8 (0.076%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,062 (19.70%) Agile
2 1,566 (14.96%) DevOps
3 1,404 (13.42%) CI/CD
4 1,172 (11.20%) Problem-Solving
5 972 (9.29%) Stakeholder Management
6 897 (8.57%) Continuous Improvement
6 897 (8.57%) Migration
7 783 (7.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 683 (6.53%) Infrastructure as Code
9 653 (6.24%) ITIL
10 618 (5.91%) Analytics
11 612 (5.85%) Test Automation
12 607 (5.80%) Cybersecurity
13 579 (5.53%) Roadmaps
14 566 (5.41%) Containerisation
15 541 (5.17%) Software Engineering
16 507 (4.84%) Data Modelling
17 506 (4.84%) Scrum
18 468 (4.47%) Decision-Making
19 464 (4.43%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 1,237 (11.82%) Python
2 969 (9.26%) SQL
3 635 (6.07%) Java
4 601 (5.74%) PowerShell
5 388 (3.71%) JavaScript
6 218 (2.08%) C#
7 206 (1.97%) Bash
8 185 (1.77%) TypeScript
9 123 (1.18%) PL/SQL
10 103 (0.98%) Shell Script
11 102 (0.97%) C++
12 76 (0.73%) Go
13 72 (0.69%) Ruby
13 72 (0.69%) Scala
14 57 (0.54%) C
15 53 (0.51%) Bicep
16 50 (0.48%) R
17 48 (0.46%) Apex Code
18 43 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
19 42 (0.40%) Ada
Qualifications
1 8,006 (76.50%) SC Cleared
2 1,829 (17.48%) DV Cleared
3 469 (4.48%) Degree
4 337 (3.22%) BPSS Clearance
5 201 (1.92%) Cisco Certification
6 172 (1.64%) CISSP
7 145 (1.39%) Azure Certification
8 133 (1.27%) AWS Certification
9 128 (1.22%) CCNP
10 108 (1.03%) CISM
11 103 (0.98%) Microsoft Certification
12 85 (0.81%) CCNA
13 78 (0.75%) Computer Science Degree
14 76 (0.73%) ITIL Certification
15 69 (0.66%) PMP
16 68 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
17 63 (0.60%) PMI Certification
18 62 (0.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 59 (0.56%) ISTQB
20 52 (0.50%) CTC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 364 (3.48%) QA
2 319 (3.05%) Data Quality
3 297 (2.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 294 (2.81%) NIST
5 202 (1.93%) NCSC
6 175 (1.67%) Accessibility
7 170 (1.62%) GDPR
8 138 (1.32%) PMO
9 111 (1.06%) SLA
10 68 (0.65%) GRC
10 68 (0.65%) JSP 440
11 45 (0.43%) NIST 800
12 44 (0.42%) COBIT
13 41 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials
14 36 (0.34%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 36 (0.34%) PCI DSS
14 36 (0.34%) WCAG
15 33 (0.32%) RMADS
16 30 (0.29%) Def Stans
17 24 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 691 (6.60%) Docker
2 486 (4.64%) Active Directory
3 286 (2.73%) VMware Infrastructure
4 100 (0.96%) VMware NSX
5 85 (0.81%) VMware ESXi
6 82 (0.78%) Hyper-V
7 76 (0.73%) vSphere
8 56 (0.54%) Virtual Machines
9 37 (0.35%) Firmware
10 31 (0.30%) 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 (0.067%) KVM
17 6 (0.057%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 882 (8.43%) Kubernetes
2 833 (7.96%) Terraform
3 327 (3.12%) Ansible
4 248 (2.37%) Grafana
5 206 (1.97%) Prometheus
6 124 (1.18%) Single Sign-On
7 93 (0.89%) vCenter Server
8 85 (0.81%) SCCM
9 84 (0.80%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 60 (0.57%) Argo
10 60 (0.57%) Microsoft Intune
11 59 (0.56%) FortiGate
12 39 (0.37%) Packer
12 39 (0.37%) Puppet
13 37 (0.35%) Podman
14 35 (0.33%) vRealize
15 34 (0.32%) Progress Chef
16 31 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
17 30 (0.29%) Kibana
17 30 (0.29%) OPNET
Vendors
1 1,075 (10.27%) Microsoft
2 649 (6.20%) Oracle
3 512 (4.89%) VMware
4 421 (4.02%) ServiceNow
5 408 (3.90%) Cisco
5 408 (3.90%) SAP
6 242 (2.31%) Splunk
7 217 (2.07%) Databricks
8 191 (1.83%) Red Hat
9 174 (1.66%) Google
10 168 (1.61%) Salesforce
11 133 (1.27%) Atlassian
12 127 (1.21%) IBM
13 117 (1.12%) Talend
14 114 (1.09%) Juniper
14 114 (1.09%) Palo Alto
15 102 (0.97%) CyberArk
16 87 (0.83%) Dell
16 87 (0.83%) Remedy
17 83 (0.79%) Fortinet