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 7 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,312 5,615 7,889
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.73% 17.64% 18.24%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.39% 57.29% 61.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,847 3,631 5,177
10th Percentile £381 £338 £345
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £529 £529 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -3.82% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £716 £699 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 845 432 585
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.50 £14.36
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £61.84 £25.15 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year +145.88% -55.48% -5.85%
75th Percentile £75.00 £60.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.50 £75.00 £82.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £25.15 £58.05
% change year-on-year +148.51% -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 16,303 9,801 12,902
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.31% 30.80% 29.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,883 6,087 8,007
10th Percentile £350 £275 £310
25th Percentile £428 £412 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.48% -0.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £620 £638
90th Percentile £713 £703 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,183 667 1,099
10th Percentile £17.26 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £24.36 £20.24 £20.12
Median hourly rate £50.49 £27.50 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +83.58% -32.83% -25.56%
75th Percentile £72.54 £58.88 £64.63
90th Percentile £85.25 £75.00 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -18.75%

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 7 July 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 7 July 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 7 July 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 9,757 £525 -2.33% 2,224
UK excluding London +1 6,332 £525 -2.33% 1,727
London +7 3,466 £538 +2.38% 697
Work from Home +4 3,092 £525 - 1,094
South East +1 2,364 £550 - 589
South West 0 1,306 £538 -6.52% 439
North of England +1 1,046 £500 - 299
Midlands +3 950 £469 -8.04% 164
West Midlands +2 809 £470 -8.20% 115
North West 0 561 £525 +5.00% 169
East of England +2 348 £550 +10.00% 125
Scotland +24 279 £500 +14.29% 85
Yorkshire +1 278 £500 +1.63% 85
North East +1 237 £475 -3.06% 46
East Midlands -1 129 £418 -12.11% 48
Wales +4 103 £550 +15.79% 31
Northern Ireland +6 31 £650 +30.00% 23

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
1 401 (3.54%) Confluence
2 242 (2.14%) SharePoint
3 167 (1.48%) SAS
4 135 (1.19%) Microsoft Exchange
5 107 (0.95%) Apache Spark
6 106 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
7 96 (0.85%) Apache
8 44 (0.39%) Jupyter
8 44 (0.39%) nginx
9 38 (0.34%) WebLogic
10 25 (0.22%) Tomcat
11 21 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
12 19 (0.17%) IIS
13 17 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
14 16 (0.14%) CMS
14 16 (0.14%) NetWeaver
15 14 (0.12%) Skype for Business
16 12 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
16 12 (0.11%) Tuxedo
17 9 (0.080%) Documentum
Applications
1 179 (1.58%) Microsoft Excel
2 148 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
3 87 (0.77%) Microsoft Project
4 68 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 52 (0.46%) MS Visio
6 18 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.14%) Simulink
8 12 (0.11%) SOLIDWORKS
9 11 (0.097%) AutoCAD
9 11 (0.097%) Revit
10 10 (0.088%) Chatbot
11 7 (0.062%) Notepad++
12 5 (0.044%) Adobe XD
13 4 (0.035%) Sketch
14 3 (0.027%) Windchill
15 2 (0.018%) CATIA
15 2 (0.018%) Lectora
15 2 (0.018%) Oracle Smart View
15 2 (0.018%) PlantUML
15 2 (0.018%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 130 (1.15%) SAP S/4HANA
2 66 (0.58%) Remedy ITSM
3 45 (0.40%) Oracle ERP
4 35 (0.31%) Teamcenter
5 33 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
6 31 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 28 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
8 23 (0.20%) SAP PSCD
9 20 (0.18%) Primavera
10 16 (0.14%) SAP GRC
11 15 (0.13%) Findur
11 15 (0.13%) Temenos T24
12 13 (0.11%) Oracle Payables
13 12 (0.11%) iTrent
13 12 (0.11%) Siebel CRM
14 11 (0.097%) SAP ERP
15 10 (0.088%) Maximo
15 10 (0.088%) SAP HR
16 9 (0.080%) Oracle Payroll
16 9 (0.080%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,021 (17.87%) AWS
2 1,972 (17.43%) Azure
3 488 (4.31%) GitHub
4 442 (3.91%) Azure DevOps
5 437 (3.86%) Power Platform
6 413 (3.65%) GCP
7 306 (2.71%) GitHub Actions
8 292 (2.58%) Microsoft 365
9 280 (2.48%) Entra ID
10 277 (2.45%) Serverless
11 241 (2.13%) Amazon S3
12 195 (1.72%) AWS Lambda
13 162 (1.43%) Amazon EC2
14 159 (1.41%) OCI
14 159 (1.41%) SaaS
15 154 (1.36%) PaaS
16 153 (1.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 149 (1.32%) Amazon EKS
18 147 (1.30%) OpenShift
19 131 (1.16%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 463 (4.09%) Firewall
2 353 (3.12%) DNS
3 248 (2.19%) Network Security
4 234 (2.07%) WAN
5 202 (1.79%) LAN
6 196 (1.73%) VPN
7 174 (1.54%) DHCP
8 142 (1.26%) BGP
9 119 (1.05%) OSPF
10 112 (0.99%) VLAN
10 112 (0.99%) Wi-Fi
11 110 (0.97%) TCP/IP
12 87 (0.77%) Wireless
13 70 (0.62%) MPLS
14 66 (0.58%) SD-WAN
15 65 (0.57%) SAN
16 59 (0.52%) VXLAN
17 52 (0.46%) BIG-IP
17 52 (0.46%) IPsec
18 48 (0.42%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 339 (3.00%) Power BI
2 295 (2.61%) PostgreSQL
3 262 (2.32%) Data Warehouse
4 254 (2.25%) SQL Server
5 168 (1.49%) Oracle Database
6 143 (1.26%) Metadata
7 127 (1.12%) Data Lake
8 122 (1.08%) Relational Database
9 113 (1.00%) Amazon RDS
10 112 (0.99%) MongoDB
11 92 (0.81%) MySQL
12 90 (0.80%) Oracle Reports
13 89 (0.79%) Elasticsearch
14 87 (0.77%) Pentaho
15 78 (0.69%) Amazon Redshift
16 74 (0.65%) Amazon Athena
16 74 (0.65%) NoSQL
17 68 (0.60%) Big Data
18 64 (0.57%) Tableau
19 54 (0.48%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 634 (5.60%) JIRA
2 512 (4.53%) Git
3 473 (4.18%) GitLab
4 449 (3.97%) Jenkins
5 125 (1.11%) Selenium
6 87 (0.77%) JUnit
7 84 (0.74%) Postman
8 81 (0.72%) SonarQube
9 66 (0.58%) JMeter
10 60 (0.53%) Rational DOORS
11 55 (0.49%) Cucumber
12 46 (0.41%) Artifactory
12 46 (0.41%) Mockito
12 46 (0.41%) REST Assured
13 45 (0.40%) Cypress.io
13 45 (0.40%) Maven
14 43 (0.38%) Bitbucket
15 41 (0.36%) Visual Studio
15 41 (0.36%) Zephyr
16 37 (0.33%) Gatling
General
1 2,468 (21.82%) Public Sector
2 2,292 (20.26%) Social Skills
3 804 (7.11%) Analytical Skills
4 737 (6.52%) Finance
5 352 (3.11%) Military
6 303 (2.68%) Documentation Skills
7 293 (2.59%) Aerospace
8 182 (1.61%) Legal
9 160 (1.41%) Influencing Skills
10 136 (1.20%) Banking
11 134 (1.18%) Telecoms
12 111 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
13 98 (0.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 97 (0.86%) Manufacturing
15 94 (0.83%) Law
16 86 (0.76%) Police
17 77 (0.68%) Presentation Skills
18 53 (0.47%) Aviation
19 40 (0.35%) Marketing
20 38 (0.34%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 1,745 (15.43%) Architect
2 1,194 (10.56%) Developer
3 999 (8.83%) Senior
4 892 (7.89%) Lead
5 723 (6.39%) Analyst
6 566 (5.00%) Consultant
7 528 (4.67%) Data Engineer
8 501 (4.43%) DevOps Engineer
9 383 (3.39%) Technical Architect
10 365 (3.23%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 349 (3.09%) Software Engineer
12 339 (3.00%) Solutions Architect
13 268 (2.37%) Security Architect
14 266 (2.35%) Network Engineer
15 226 (2.00%) Business Analyst
16 220 (1.94%) Designer
17 219 (1.94%) Java Developer
18 217 (1.92%) Project Manager
19 205 (1.81%) AWS Engineer
19 205 (1.81%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 369 (3.26%) REST
2 268 (2.37%) Spring
3 224 (1.98%) Spring Boot
4 207 (1.83%) Kafka
5 201 (1.78%) React
6 200 (1.77%) .NET
7 195 (1.72%) Node.js
8 179 (1.58%) RESTful
9 153 (1.35%) SOAP
10 135 (1.19%) JSON
11 127 (1.12%) AngularJS
12 117 (1.03%) OAuth
13 114 (1.01%) Web Services
14 111 (0.98%) PySpark
15 109 (0.96%) LDAP
16 102 (0.90%) Middleware
17 97 (0.86%) Playwright
18 96 (0.85%) HTML
19 89 (0.79%) OpenID
19 89 (0.79%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 439 (3.88%) Cloud Native
2 358 (3.16%) Onboarding
2 358 (3.16%) Product Ownership
3 315 (2.78%) Data Centre
4 221 (1.95%) Management Information System
5 176 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
6 154 (1.36%) PKI
7 151 (1.33%) Distributed Systems
8 117 (1.03%) CMDB
8 117 (1.03%) Replication
9 113 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
10 108 (0.95%) Enterprise Software
11 99 (0.88%) Data Structures
12 96 (0.85%) Security Posture
13 95 (0.84%) Hybrid Cloud
14 92 (0.81%) Clustering
15 90 (0.80%) Public Cloud
16 87 (0.77%) Virtual Team
17 85 (0.75%) Security Operations Centre
18 75 (0.66%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 899 (7.95%) Windows
2 770 (6.81%) Linux
3 291 (2.57%) Windows Server
4 214 (1.89%) Unix
5 150 (1.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 98 (0.87%) Android
7 89 (0.79%) Windows 10
8 66 (0.58%) Apple iOS
9 57 (0.50%) Solaris
10 47 (0.42%) Mac OS
11 38 (0.34%) Ubuntu
12 33 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 32 (0.28%) AIX
14 27 (0.24%) CentOS
15 25 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
16 19 (0.17%) VMS
17 16 (0.14%) Windows 7
18 15 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
19 14 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
20 11 (0.097%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,279 (20.15%) Agile
2 1,756 (15.52%) DevOps
3 1,631 (14.42%) CI/CD
4 1,195 (10.56%) Problem-Solving
5 1,152 (10.18%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,142 (10.10%) Continuous Improvement
7 966 (8.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 859 (7.59%) Migration
9 839 (7.42%) Infrastructure as Code
10 717 (6.34%) Cybersecurity
11 708 (6.26%) ITIL
12 702 (6.21%) Test Automation
13 681 (6.02%) Containerisation
14 663 (5.86%) Software Engineering
15 657 (5.81%) Analytics
16 638 (5.64%) Roadmaps
17 622 (5.50%) Decision-Making
18 586 (5.18%) Data Modelling
19 563 (4.98%) AI
20 543 (4.80%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,257 (11.11%) Python
2 1,071 (9.47%) SQL
3 782 (6.91%) Java
4 505 (4.46%) PowerShell
5 347 (3.07%) JavaScript
6 255 (2.25%) Bash
7 235 (2.08%) C#
8 191 (1.69%) TypeScript
9 158 (1.40%) PL/SQL
10 100 (0.88%) C++
11 94 (0.83%) Shell Script
12 79 (0.70%) Bicep
13 69 (0.61%) C
14 61 (0.54%) Apex Code
15 60 (0.53%) Ruby
16 58 (0.51%) Go
17 53 (0.47%) Kotlin
18 46 (0.41%) Ada
18 46 (0.41%) Scala
19 44 (0.39%) R
Qualifications
1 8,632 (76.31%) SC Cleared
2 2,098 (18.55%) DV Cleared
3 435 (3.85%) Degree
4 366 (3.24%) BPSS Clearance
5 217 (1.92%) Cisco Certification
6 183 (1.62%) CISSP
7 146 (1.29%) Azure Certification
8 123 (1.09%) Microsoft Certification
9 122 (1.08%) AWS Certification
10 111 (0.98%) CISM
11 108 (0.95%) CCNP
12 95 (0.84%) CCNA
13 89 (0.79%) PMP
14 88 (0.78%) PMI Certification
15 77 (0.68%) ISTQB
16 69 (0.61%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 67 (0.59%) Computer Science Degree
18 56 (0.50%) ITIL Certification
19 44 (0.39%) TOGAF Certification
20 42 (0.37%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 438 (3.87%) QA
2 336 (2.97%) Data Quality
3 318 (2.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 316 (2.79%) NIST
5 245 (2.17%) NCSC
6 235 (2.08%) Accessibility
7 190 (1.68%) GDPR
8 178 (1.57%) PMO
9 122 (1.08%) SLA
10 104 (0.92%) GRC
11 70 (0.62%) JSP 440
12 59 (0.52%) WCAG
13 46 (0.41%) NIST 800
14 45 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
15 34 (0.30%) Def Stans
16 31 (0.27%) RMADS
17 28 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 24 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
19 23 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
19 23 (0.20%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 757 (6.69%) Docker
2 471 (4.16%) Active Directory
3 345 (3.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 126 (1.11%) VMware ESXi
5 121 (1.07%) VMware NSX
6 95 (0.84%) Hyper-V
7 92 (0.81%) vSphere
8 82 (0.72%) Virtual Machines
9 47 (0.42%) Oracle RAC
10 34 (0.30%) Firmware
11 32 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
12 25 (0.22%) NFS
13 23 (0.20%) BitLocker
13 23 (0.20%) vCloud
14 21 (0.19%) Squid
15 19 (0.17%) Postfix
16 12 (0.11%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 9 (0.080%) Microsoft App-V
18 7 (0.062%) KVM
18 7 (0.062%) UAG
Systems Management
1 932 (8.24%) Terraform
2 927 (8.19%) Kubernetes
3 394 (3.48%) Ansible
4 281 (2.48%) Grafana
5 227 (2.01%) Prometheus
6 120 (1.06%) vCenter Server
7 94 (0.83%) SCCM
8 89 (0.79%) Single Sign-On
9 68 (0.60%) Microsoft Intune
10 64 (0.57%) Argo
11 52 (0.46%) SCOM
12 51 (0.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 49 (0.43%) FortiGate
13 49 (0.43%) Oracle RMAN
14 47 (0.42%) Puppet
15 32 (0.28%) Data Guard
16 31 (0.27%) Podman
17 30 (0.27%) Progress Chef
18 28 (0.25%) Kibana
18 28 (0.25%) Nagios
Vendors
1 1,204 (10.64%) Microsoft
2 825 (7.29%) Oracle
3 537 (4.75%) VMware
4 509 (4.50%) ServiceNow
5 369 (3.26%) SAP
6 328 (2.90%) Cisco
7 227 (2.01%) Splunk
8 198 (1.75%) Databricks
9 189 (1.67%) Google
10 187 (1.65%) Salesforce
11 159 (1.41%) Red Hat
12 145 (1.28%) Talend
13 129 (1.14%) Informatica
14 124 (1.10%) IBM
15 110 (0.97%) Palo Alto
16 103 (0.91%) Juniper
17 96 (0.85%) F5
18 94 (0.83%) Fortinet
19 93 (0.82%) SolarWinds
20 89 (0.79%) Citrix