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 15 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 12,125 6,257 6,696
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.93% 18.84% 17.78%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.58% 59.16% 60.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,360 4,006 4,211
10th Percentile £400 £325 £345
25th Percentile £463 £438 £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 £540 £525 £550
% change year-on-year +2.86% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 901 646 382
10th Percentile £20.00 £18.51 £20.12
25th Percentile £29.07 £18.87 £30.00
Median hourly rate £63.48 £25.15 £58.34
Median % change year-on-year +152.41% -56.89% -2.77%
75th Percentile £77.25 £33.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £91.31 £70.00 £75.00
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 17,680 10,576 11,053
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.97% 31.85% 29.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,674 6,634 6,698
10th Percentile £353 £285 £310
25th Percentile £447 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £532 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.24% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £630
90th Percentile £713 £706 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £520
% change year-on-year +5.00% -3.85% -3.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,508 889 573
10th Percentile £16.50 £17.59 £18.13
25th Percentile £24.84 £18.87 £25.36
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -47.05% -11.49%
75th Percentile £71.69 £40.00 £68.00
90th Percentile £88.85 £70.16 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -49.70% -3.65%

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 15 October 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 15 October 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 15 October 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 +1 10,442 £550 +2.33% 1,415
UK excluding London +1 6,714 £540 +2.86% 1,143
London +5 3,753 £550 +1.85% 381
Work from Home +2 3,235 £535 -0.47% 926
South East +1 2,293 £575 +9.52% 389
South West 0 1,384 £550 - 259
North of England +2 1,322 £512 -1.55% 226
Midlands 0 948 £475 -8.39% 113
North West +2 804 £530 -4.12% 125
West Midlands 0 795 £475 -8.65% 83
East of England 0 453 £550 - 110
Scotland +11 304 £486 +0.46% 34
Yorkshire -1 296 £488 -0.91% 39
North East 0 240 £470 -10.48% 63
East Midlands +2 145 £500 +9.59% 30
Wales +3 113 £550 -2.22% 29
Northern Ireland +1 36 £650 +21.50% 9

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
1 394 (3.25%) Confluence
2 261 (2.15%) SharePoint
3 164 (1.35%) SAS
4 120 (0.99%) Microsoft Exchange
5 109 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
6 107 (0.88%) Apache
7 103 (0.85%) Apache Spark
8 45 (0.37%) nginx
9 42 (0.35%) CMS
10 40 (0.33%) Jupyter
10 40 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 24 (0.20%) IIS
12 23 (0.19%) Tomcat
13 22 (0.18%) Skype for Business
14 17 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 16 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
16 15 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
17 13 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
18 11 (0.091%) JBoss
18 11 (0.091%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 218 (1.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 154 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
3 105 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
4 99 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.35%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.18%) AutoCAD
7 22 (0.18%) Windchill
8 19 (0.16%) Revit
9 18 (0.15%) SOLIDWORKS
10 10 (0.082%) Simulink
11 9 (0.074%) Adobe XD
11 9 (0.074%) Chatbot
12 6 (0.049%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 6 (0.049%) Sketch
13 4 (0.033%) OrCAD
13 4 (0.033%) Trello
14 3 (0.025%) Gliffy
14 3 (0.025%) PTC Creo
15 2 (0.016%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 156 (1.29%) SAP S/4HANA
2 81 (0.67%) Remedy ITSM
3 60 (0.49%) Oracle ERP
4 51 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
5 48 (0.40%) Teamcenter
6 34 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 33 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
8 31 (0.26%) Oracle Payroll
9 25 (0.21%) SAP FI
9 25 (0.21%) SAP PSCD
10 24 (0.20%) SAP GRC
11 18 (0.15%) Primavera
11 18 (0.15%) SAP HR
12 17 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
13 15 (0.12%) SAP CO
13 15 (0.12%) SAP Payroll
14 14 (0.12%) Oracle General Ledger
14 14 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
15 13 (0.11%) Maximo
15 13 (0.11%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 2,199 (18.14%) Azure
2 2,122 (17.50%) AWS
3 541 (4.46%) GitHub
4 534 (4.40%) Azure DevOps
5 499 (4.12%) Power Platform
6 459 (3.79%) GCP
7 368 (3.04%) GitHub Actions
8 354 (2.92%) Entra ID
9 346 (2.85%) Microsoft 365
10 273 (2.25%) Serverless
11 237 (1.95%) Amazon S3
12 198 (1.63%) AWS Lambda
13 180 (1.48%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 177 (1.46%) OCI
15 173 (1.43%) Amazon EKS
16 170 (1.40%) SaaS
17 150 (1.24%) Amazon EC2
18 149 (1.23%) OpenShift
19 133 (1.10%) AWS CloudFormation
20 123 (1.01%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 454 (3.74%) Firewall
2 383 (3.16%) DNS
3 250 (2.06%) Network Security
4 210 (1.73%) VPN
5 201 (1.66%) WAN
6 186 (1.53%) DHCP
7 156 (1.29%) LAN
8 142 (1.17%) TCP/IP
9 124 (1.02%) BGP
10 114 (0.94%) Wi-Fi
11 94 (0.78%) VLAN
12 92 (0.76%) Wireless
13 82 (0.68%) OSPF
14 69 (0.57%) SAN
15 67 (0.55%) SSL
16 66 (0.54%) MPLS
17 61 (0.50%) VSAN
18 60 (0.49%) IPsec
19 57 (0.47%) SD-WAN
20 51 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 350 (2.89%) Power BI
2 310 (2.56%) PostgreSQL
3 278 (2.29%) SQL Server
4 245 (2.02%) Data Warehouse
5 208 (1.72%) Metadata
6 190 (1.57%) Oracle Database
7 154 (1.27%) Data Lake
8 148 (1.22%) Relational Database
9 143 (1.18%) MongoDB
10 117 (0.96%) Amazon RDS
11 114 (0.94%) MySQL
12 89 (0.73%) NoSQL
13 78 (0.64%) Pentaho
14 75 (0.62%) Oracle Reports
15 68 (0.56%) Elasticsearch
16 59 (0.49%) Amazon Athena
17 54 (0.45%) Big Data
18 53 (0.44%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 52 (0.43%) Amazon Aurora
20 51 (0.42%) Redis
Development Applications
1 647 (5.34%) JIRA
2 604 (4.98%) Git
3 536 (4.42%) GitLab
4 533 (4.40%) Jenkins
5 151 (1.25%) Selenium
6 88 (0.73%) Postman
7 84 (0.69%) Maven
8 82 (0.68%) Cucumber
8 82 (0.68%) JMeter
9 79 (0.65%) JUnit
10 74 (0.61%) SonarQube
11 59 (0.49%) Cypress.io
12 55 (0.45%) Gradle
13 48 (0.40%) REST Assured
14 46 (0.38%) Gatling
14 46 (0.38%) Mockito
15 41 (0.34%) Visual Studio
16 37 (0.31%) Artifactory
17 35 (0.29%) Bitbucket
18 34 (0.28%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,789 (23.00%) Social Skills
2 2,542 (20.96%) Public Sector
3 1,019 (8.40%) Analytical Skills
4 808 (6.66%) Finance
5 454 (3.74%) Military
6 399 (3.29%) Aerospace
7 324 (2.67%) Documentation Skills
8 248 (2.05%) Influencing Skills
9 215 (1.77%) Organisational Skills
10 195 (1.61%) Manufacturing
11 181 (1.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 180 (1.48%) Legal
13 166 (1.37%) Telecoms
14 136 (1.12%) Banking
14 136 (1.12%) Police
15 118 (0.97%) Law
16 74 (0.61%) Presentation Skills
17 61 (0.50%) Aviation
17 61 (0.50%) Local Government
18 42 (0.35%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 1,958 (16.15%) Architect
2 1,231 (10.15%) Developer
3 1,179 (9.72%) Senior
4 1,052 (8.68%) Lead
5 718 (5.92%) Consultant
6 716 (5.91%) Analyst
7 511 (4.21%) DevOps Engineer
8 483 (3.98%) Data Engineer
9 414 (3.41%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 393 (3.24%) Solutions Architect
11 357 (2.94%) Technical Architect
12 311 (2.56%) Data Architect
13 298 (2.46%) Security Architect
14 247 (2.04%) Software Engineer
15 241 (1.99%) Network Engineer
16 235 (1.94%) Administrator
17 218 (1.80%) Java Developer
18 210 (1.73%) Delivery Manager
19 206 (1.70%) Designer
20 204 (1.68%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,042 (8.59%) Terraform
2 508 (4.19%) REST
3 275 (2.27%) Kafka
4 246 (2.03%) Spring
5 228 (1.88%) Spring Boot
6 225 (1.86%) RESTful
7 204 (1.68%) React
8 194 (1.60%) .NET
8 194 (1.60%) SOAP
9 175 (1.44%) Node.js
10 161 (1.33%) JSON
11 157 (1.29%) OAuth
12 145 (1.20%) XML
13 143 (1.18%) HTML
14 138 (1.14%) Middleware
15 116 (0.96%) Oracle Fusion
16 115 (0.95%) Web Services
17 107 (0.88%) CSS
18 106 (0.87%) AngularJS
19 101 (0.83%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 566 (4.67%) Cloud Native
2 490 (4.04%) Onboarding
3 399 (3.29%) Product Ownership
4 304 (2.51%) Data Centre
5 299 (2.47%) Management Information System
6 203 (1.67%) Enterprise Software
7 190 (1.57%) Legacy Systems
8 184 (1.52%) PKI
9 175 (1.44%) CMDB
10 134 (1.11%) Hybrid Cloud
11 133 (1.10%) Distributed Systems
12 131 (1.08%) Cyber Threat
13 129 (1.06%) Replication
14 122 (1.01%) Operational Technology
15 109 (0.90%) Data Structures
16 105 (0.87%) Self-Motivation
17 104 (0.86%) Security Posture
18 98 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
19 92 (0.76%) AI Agents
20 86 (0.71%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 1,007 (8.31%) Windows
2 796 (6.56%) Linux
3 375 (3.09%) Windows Server
4 218 (1.80%) Unix
5 151 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 146 (1.20%) Windows 10
7 80 (0.66%) Solaris
8 67 (0.55%) Android
9 46 (0.38%) macOS
10 45 (0.37%) CentOS
11 42 (0.35%) Ubuntu
12 38 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
13 36 (0.30%) Apple iOS
14 28 (0.23%) AIX
15 26 (0.21%) Windows 7
15 26 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
16 23 (0.19%) VMS
17 19 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
18 18 (0.15%) Rocky
19 11 (0.091%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,569 (21.19%) Agile
2 1,883 (15.53%) CI/CD
3 1,842 (15.19%) DevOps
4 1,788 (14.75%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,543 (12.73%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,315 (10.85%) Problem-Solving
7 1,241 (10.24%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,068 (8.81%) Infrastructure as Code
9 993 (8.19%) Migration
10 914 (7.54%) Cybersecurity
11 820 (6.76%) Test Automation
12 819 (6.75%) ITIL
13 808 (6.66%) Containerisation
14 795 (6.56%) Roadmaps
15 786 (6.48%) AI
16 785 (6.47%) Decision-Making
17 775 (6.39%) Technical Leadership
18 742 (6.12%) Analytics
19 710 (5.86%) Software Engineering
20 677 (5.58%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 1,411 (11.64%) Python
2 1,133 (9.34%) SQL
3 797 (6.57%) Java
4 612 (5.05%) PowerShell
5 428 (3.53%) JavaScript
6 378 (3.12%) Bash
7 235 (1.94%) TypeScript
8 225 (1.86%) C#
9 148 (1.22%) PL/SQL
10 139 (1.15%) Bicep
11 83 (0.68%) Shell Script
12 59 (0.49%) Groovy
12 59 (0.49%) Scala
13 58 (0.48%) C++
14 56 (0.46%) Go
15 49 (0.40%) C
15 49 (0.40%) Kotlin
16 41 (0.34%) T-SQL
17 37 (0.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 36 (0.30%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 9,255 (76.33%) SC Cleared
2 2,278 (18.79%) DV Cleared
3 596 (4.92%) BPSS Clearance
4 507 (4.18%) Degree
5 226 (1.86%) CISSP
6 189 (1.56%) Azure Certification
7 177 (1.46%) Cisco Certification
8 176 (1.45%) AWS Certification
9 165 (1.36%) Microsoft Certification
10 148 (1.22%) CISM
11 108 (0.89%) ISTQB
12 104 (0.86%) PMI Certification
13 94 (0.78%) PMP
14 84 (0.69%) Computer Science Degree
15 82 (0.68%) CCNP
16 65 (0.54%) CCNA
17 53 (0.44%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 52 (0.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 49 (0.40%) TOGAF Certification
20 44 (0.36%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 553 (4.56%) QA
2 429 (3.54%) Data Quality
3 333 (2.75%) NIST
4 332 (2.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 322 (2.66%) NCSC
6 303 (2.50%) Accessibility
7 219 (1.81%) PMO
8 196 (1.62%) GDPR
9 193 (1.59%) SLA
10 170 (1.40%) GRC
11 91 (0.75%) WCAG
12 53 (0.44%) JSP 440
13 51 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
14 45 (0.37%) Actionable Recommendations
15 40 (0.33%) Def Stans
16 39 (0.32%) NIST 800
17 37 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 23 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 23 (0.19%) ISO 9001
19 22 (0.18%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 861 (7.10%) Docker
2 659 (5.44%) Active Directory
3 440 (3.63%) VMware Infrastructure
4 138 (1.14%) VMware ESXi
5 137 (1.13%) Hyper-V
6 135 (1.11%) vSphere
7 132 (1.09%) VMware NSX
8 92 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
9 48 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
10 46 (0.38%) Firmware
11 37 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
12 24 (0.20%) BitLocker
12 24 (0.20%) vCloud
13 20 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
14 19 (0.16%) NFS
15 14 (0.12%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 11 (0.091%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 11 (0.091%) Squid
17 10 (0.082%) KVM
18 9 (0.074%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 1,061 (8.75%) Kubernetes
2 449 (3.70%) Ansible
3 269 (2.22%) Grafana
4 198 (1.63%) Prometheus
5 149 (1.23%) SCCM
6 124 (1.02%) vCenter Server
7 106 (0.87%) Microsoft Intune
8 97 (0.80%) SCOM
9 72 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
10 64 (0.53%) Argo
11 53 (0.44%) Kibana
12 41 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
13 40 (0.33%) Puppet
14 38 (0.31%) Data Guard
14 38 (0.31%) NetBackup
15 34 (0.28%) Istio
16 32 (0.26%) VxRail
17 29 (0.24%) Control-M
18 24 (0.20%) Nagios
18 24 (0.20%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 1,656 (13.66%) Microsoft
2 954 (7.87%) Oracle
3 593 (4.89%) VMware
4 529 (4.36%) ServiceNow
5 468 (3.86%) SAP
6 286 (2.36%) Google
7 278 (2.29%) Cisco
8 218 (1.80%) Splunk
9 194 (1.60%) Databricks
10 143 (1.18%) Salesforce
11 132 (1.09%) Red Hat
12 127 (1.05%) Palo Alto
13 115 (0.95%) Informatica
14 111 (0.92%) Dynatrace
15 101 (0.83%) IBM
16 99 (0.82%) Talend
17 94 (0.78%) CyberArk
17 94 (0.78%) Remedy
18 77 (0.64%) Citrix
19 75 (0.62%) SolarWinds