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 29 October 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 3 3 4
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +6
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 6,666 6,535 7,885
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 19.50% 17.76% 16.79%
As % of the Qualifications category 60.21% 60.64% 58.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,309 4,121 4,955
10th Percentile £325 £350 £375
25th Percentile £443 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £537 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.36% - -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 670 344 507
10th Percentile £18.51 £20.12 £19.99
25th Percentile £18.87 £25.93 £45.94
Median hourly rate £25.15 £55.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -54.27% -8.33% -
75th Percentile £33.75 £68.75 £70.58
90th Percentile £69.50 £75.00 £80.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £55.25 £57.33
% change year-on-year -54.48% -3.63% -4.45%

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 11,071 10,776 13,398
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.39% 29.29% 28.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,012 6,564 8,599
10th Percentile £288 £312 £308
25th Percentile £413 £423 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £635 £650
90th Percentile £712 £725 £729
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £515 £535
% change year-on-year -2.91% -3.74% +1.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 932 497 752
10th Percentile £17.08 £18.13 £17.28
25th Percentile £18.87 £24.18 £26.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £53.00
Median % change year-on-year -45.54% -12.87% +17.78%
75th Percentile £40.07 £67.02 £70.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £48.56 £51.89
% change year-on-year -48.21% -6.42% +15.31%

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 29 October 2025.

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 29 October 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Top 18 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 29 October 2025. 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 0 5,782 £537 -2.36% 2,558
UK excluding London 0 3,824 £525 -4.55% 2,185
Work from Home +2 1,964 £540 -0.92% 1,159
London 0 1,931 £550 - 722
South East -1 1,045 £520 -5.45% 858
South West 0 983 £550 -4.35% 536
North of England -2 723 £515 +8.46% 341
Midlands +1 616 £519 -9.19% 183
West Midlands 0 467 £520 -9.57% 128
North West +1 461 £550 +13.05% 229
East of England +1 262 £550 - 240
Yorkshire -2 173 £491 +9.11% 66
Scotland -14 165 £485 +14.12% 29
East Midlands 0 132 £463 -2.63% 53
North East 0 97 £481 +11.27% 46
Wales -3 72 £600 +20.00% 59
Northern Ireland -2 43 £500 -16.67% 12
Channel Islands - 1 - - 2

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
1 214 (3.21%) Confluence
2 171 (2.57%) SharePoint
3 108 (1.62%) Microsoft Exchange
4 96 (1.44%) SAS
5 90 (1.35%) Apache
6 49 (0.74%) Apache Airflow
7 35 (0.53%) nginx
8 34 (0.51%) Skype for Business
9 26 (0.39%) IIS
10 25 (0.38%) Apache Spark
11 24 (0.36%) WebLogic
12 23 (0.35%) CMS
13 16 (0.24%) Exchange Server 2013
14 15 (0.23%) SharePoint Server
15 11 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2010
15 11 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 11 (0.17%) WordPress
16 10 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2003
16 10 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2007
16 10 (0.15%) Office Communications Server
Applications
1 168 (2.52%) Microsoft Office
2 140 (2.10%) Microsoft Excel
3 52 (0.78%) Microsoft Project
4 37 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 33 (0.50%) MS Visio
6 21 (0.32%) Siemens NX
7 19 (0.29%) Simulink
8 13 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
9 11 (0.17%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 11 (0.17%) Sketch
10 8 (0.12%) ProjectWise
11 7 (0.11%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.11%) AutoCAD
12 6 (0.090%) Adobe Illustrator
12 6 (0.090%) Oracle Smart View
12 6 (0.090%) Photoshop
12 6 (0.090%) Revit
12 6 (0.090%) Trello
13 5 (0.075%) Navisworks
13 5 (0.075%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 166 (2.49%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (0.53%) Remedy ITSM
3 29 (0.44%) SAP EWM
3 29 (0.44%) Teamcenter
4 28 (0.42%) SAP WM
5 26 (0.39%) Oracle ERP
6 21 (0.32%) SAP MM
7 20 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
7 20 (0.30%) SAP HCM
8 19 (0.29%) Primavera
9 16 (0.24%) Maximo
9 16 (0.24%) Oracle General Ledger
9 16 (0.24%) SAP PS
10 12 (0.18%) SAP EHS
11 11 (0.17%) SAP HR
11 11 (0.17%) SAP VC
11 11 (0.17%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
12 10 (0.15%) SAP QM
13 9 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
13 9 (0.14%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,113 (16.70%) AWS
2 1,001 (15.02%) Azure
3 309 (4.64%) GitHub
4 306 (4.59%) Microsoft 365
5 241 (3.62%) Power Platform
6 218 (3.27%) GCP
7 217 (3.26%) Azure DevOps
8 176 (2.64%) Serverless
9 172 (2.58%) Amazon S3
10 164 (2.46%) GitHub Actions
11 148 (2.22%) Entra ID
12 137 (2.06%) SaaS
13 124 (1.86%) OpenShift
14 122 (1.83%) Amazon EC2
15 105 (1.58%) AWS CloudFormation
16 104 (1.56%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 99 (1.49%) AWS Lambda
18 92 (1.38%) Amazon EKS
19 86 (1.29%) Virtual Private Cloud
20 74 (1.11%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 364 (5.46%) Firewall
2 259 (3.89%) DNS
3 172 (2.58%) VPN
4 154 (2.31%) Network Security
5 132 (1.98%) WAN
6 103 (1.55%) TCP/IP
7 99 (1.49%) BGP
8 89 (1.34%) DHCP
8 89 (1.34%) SSL
9 85 (1.28%) LAN
10 81 (1.22%) Wireless
11 76 (1.14%) SAN
12 59 (0.89%) Cisco ISE
12 59 (0.89%) MPLS
13 55 (0.83%) VLAN
13 55 (0.83%) Wi-Fi
14 52 (0.78%) IPsec
15 48 (0.72%) HTTP
16 45 (0.68%) SD-WAN
17 43 (0.65%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 206 (3.09%) PostgreSQL
2 163 (2.45%) Power BI
3 103 (1.55%) SQL Server
4 94 (1.41%) Amazon RDS
5 91 (1.37%) MongoDB
6 87 (1.31%) Oracle Database
7 73 (1.10%) Data Warehouse
8 70 (1.05%) Relational Database
9 65 (0.98%) NoSQL
10 57 (0.86%) Metadata
11 41 (0.62%) Big Data
11 41 (0.62%) Elasticsearch
12 40 (0.60%) MySQL
13 39 (0.59%) Azure SQL Database
14 37 (0.56%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 36 (0.54%) Amazon Redshift
15 36 (0.54%) Data Lake
16 34 (0.51%) Pentaho
17 33 (0.50%) Amazon Aurora
18 31 (0.47%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 412 (6.18%) JIRA
2 380 (5.70%) Jenkins
3 346 (5.19%) Git
4 270 (4.05%) GitLab
5 88 (1.32%) Selenium
6 78 (1.17%) SonarQube
7 69 (1.04%) JUnit
8 59 (0.89%) Cypress.io
9 49 (0.74%) Postman
10 40 (0.60%) Bitbucket
10 40 (0.60%) Mockito
11 39 (0.59%) Maven
12 36 (0.54%) Cucumber
13 33 (0.50%) Artifactory
14 31 (0.47%) CircleCI
15 30 (0.45%) REST Assured
16 27 (0.41%) JMeter
17 26 (0.39%) MSI
18 24 (0.36%) Vagrant
18 24 (0.36%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,811 (27.17%) Public Sector
2 1,639 (24.59%) Social Skills
3 562 (8.43%) Analytical Skills
4 476 (7.14%) Finance
5 235 (3.53%) Military
6 214 (3.21%) Telecoms
7 200 (3.00%) Manufacturing
8 156 (2.34%) Documentation Skills
9 150 (2.25%) Electronics
10 135 (2.03%) Marketing
11 126 (1.89%) Aerospace
12 97 (1.46%) Organisational Skills
13 90 (1.35%) Legal
14 76 (1.14%) Banking
15 66 (0.99%) Law
15 66 (0.99%) Presentation Skills
16 64 (0.96%) Influencing Skills
17 47 (0.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 39 (0.59%) Aviation
18 39 (0.59%) Police
Job Titles
1 817 (12.26%) Architect
2 657 (9.86%) Consultant
3 618 (9.27%) Developer
4 488 (7.32%) Senior
5 448 (6.72%) Analyst
6 408 (6.12%) Lead
7 300 (4.50%) DevOps Engineer
8 220 (3.30%) Support Engineer
9 202 (3.03%) Network Engineer
10 179 (2.69%) Solutions Architect
11 162 (2.43%) SAP Consultant
12 155 (2.33%) Data Engineer
13 119 (1.79%) Administrator
14 118 (1.77%) IT Engineer
15 116 (1.74%) AWS Engineer
15 116 (1.74%) Security Engineer
16 115 (1.73%) Tester
17 114 (1.71%) Project Manager
18 112 (1.68%) Technical Architect
19 109 (1.64%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 242 (3.63%) REST
2 184 (2.76%) React
3 175 (2.63%) Node.js
4 150 (2.25%) Kafka
5 132 (1.98%) SOAP
6 122 (1.83%) HTML
7 120 (1.80%) JSON
8 112 (1.68%) Spring
9 104 (1.56%) XML
10 98 (1.47%) Web Services
11 95 (1.43%) CSS
11 95 (1.43%) RESTful
12 94 (1.41%) AngularJS
13 91 (1.37%) Spring Boot
14 81 (1.22%) .NET
15 66 (0.99%) OAuth
16 63 (0.95%) LDAP
17 58 (0.87%) Elastic Stack
18 52 (0.78%) Oracle Fusion
19 51 (0.77%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 217 (3.26%) Data Centre
2 210 (3.15%) Onboarding
3 152 (2.28%) Management Information System
4 147 (2.21%) PKI
5 144 (2.16%) Cloud Native
6 118 (1.77%) Product Ownership
7 93 (1.40%) Self-Motivation
8 83 (1.25%) Driving Licence
9 82 (1.23%) Legacy Systems
10 80 (1.20%) Cyber Threat
11 78 (1.17%) Security Operations Centre
12 65 (0.98%) CMDB
13 64 (0.96%) Replication
14 59 (0.89%) Enterprise Software
14 59 (0.89%) Security Posture
15 56 (0.84%) Private Cloud
16 54 (0.81%) Hybrid Cloud
17 48 (0.72%) Analytical Mindset
18 42 (0.63%) CSOC
19 41 (0.62%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 763 (11.45%) Windows
2 495 (7.43%) Linux
3 196 (2.94%) Windows Server
4 164 (2.46%) Windows 10
5 104 (1.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 84 (1.26%) Unix
7 77 (1.16%) Mac OS
8 72 (1.08%) Android
9 57 (0.86%) Windows Server 2019
10 46 (0.69%) Windows Server 2016
11 44 (0.66%) VMS
12 29 (0.44%) Ubuntu
13 28 (0.42%) Apple iOS
14 25 (0.38%) Amazon Linux
15 23 (0.35%) Windows Server 2012
16 21 (0.32%) Windows Server 2003
17 19 (0.29%) CentOS
18 16 (0.24%) Windows 7
19 15 (0.23%) Mac OS X
20 9 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,240 (18.60%) Agile
2 987 (14.81%) DevOps
3 899 (13.49%) CI/CD
4 789 (11.84%) Problem-Solving
5 712 (10.68%) Migration
6 518 (7.77%) Stakeholder Management
7 474 (7.11%) Cybersecurity
8 432 (6.48%) Infrastructure as Code
9 413 (6.20%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 389 (5.84%) ITIL
11 385 (5.78%) Workflow
12 373 (5.60%) Continuous Improvement
13 369 (5.54%) Business Intelligence
14 364 (5.46%) Containerisation
15 363 (5.45%) Test Automation
16 359 (5.39%) Service Management
17 320 (4.80%) Analytics
18 304 (4.56%) Microservices
19 291 (4.37%) Roadmaps
20 287 (4.31%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 806 (12.09%) Python
2 496 (7.44%) SQL
3 433 (6.50%) Java
4 431 (6.47%) PowerShell
5 337 (5.06%) JavaScript
6 232 (3.48%) Bash
7 184 (2.76%) TypeScript
8 125 (1.88%) C#
9 88 (1.32%) C++
10 78 (1.17%) Go
11 63 (0.95%) C
12 59 (0.89%) Shell Script
13 52 (0.78%) PL/SQL
14 48 (0.72%) Perl
15 37 (0.56%) Groovy
16 32 (0.48%) ABAP
16 32 (0.48%) MATLAB
17 27 (0.41%) Ada
18 25 (0.38%) Bicep
19 24 (0.36%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 5,117 (76.76%) SC Cleared
2 1,077 (16.16%) DV Cleared
3 327 (4.91%) BPSS Clearance
4 308 (4.62%) Degree
5 128 (1.92%) CISSP
6 118 (1.77%) Microsoft Certification
7 116 (1.74%) Cisco Certification
8 93 (1.40%) Azure Certification
9 88 (1.32%) AWS Certification
10 84 (1.26%) CCNP
11 70 (1.05%) CISM
12 53 (0.80%) Computer Science Degree
13 41 (0.62%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 40 (0.60%) CCNA
15 38 (0.57%) CHECK Team Member
15 38 (0.57%) ITIL Certification
16 34 (0.51%) CEH
17 33 (0.50%) CTC Cleared
18 32 (0.48%) OSCP
19 30 (0.45%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 233 (3.50%) QA
2 199 (2.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 192 (2.88%) NIST
4 157 (2.36%) NCSC
5 141 (2.12%) SLA
6 132 (1.98%) Accessibility
7 122 (1.83%) Data Quality
8 115 (1.73%) GDPR
9 46 (0.69%) WCAG
10 43 (0.65%) JSP 440
11 39 (0.59%) NIST 800
12 38 (0.57%) PMO
13 31 (0.47%) GRC
13 31 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 30 (0.45%) Def Stans
15 29 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
16 24 (0.36%) RMADS
17 22 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 19 (0.29%) HIPAA
19 14 (0.21%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 522 (7.83%) Docker
2 386 (5.79%) Active Directory
3 209 (3.14%) VMware Infrastructure
4 76 (1.14%) vSphere
5 73 (1.10%) VMware ESXi
6 61 (0.92%) VMware NSX
7 45 (0.68%) Virtual Machines
8 42 (0.63%) Firmware
9 37 (0.56%) Hyper-V
10 28 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
11 24 (0.36%) Microsoft Virtual Server
11 24 (0.36%) Virtual Servers
12 21 (0.32%) DFS Replication
13 18 (0.27%) Postfix
14 17 (0.26%) NFS
15 15 (0.23%) Dovecot
16 11 (0.17%) Squid
17 10 (0.15%) Brightmail
17 10 (0.15%) ISA Server
18 9 (0.14%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 618 (9.27%) Kubernetes
2 575 (8.63%) Terraform
3 299 (4.49%) Ansible
4 166 (2.49%) Grafana
5 148 (2.22%) Prometheus
6 125 (1.88%) SCCM
7 83 (1.25%) Single Sign-On
8 81 (1.22%) Microsoft Intune
9 57 (0.86%) vCenter Server
10 53 (0.80%) Argo
11 47 (0.71%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 34 (0.51%) WSUS
13 33 (0.50%) Packer
14 32 (0.48%) Kibana
15 31 (0.47%) Jamf Pro
16 26 (0.39%) FortiGate
17 25 (0.38%) Nessus
17 25 (0.38%) vRealize
18 24 (0.36%) SCOM
19 23 (0.35%) Podman
Vendors
1 870 (13.05%) Microsoft
2 473 (7.10%) SAP
3 416 (6.24%) Cisco
4 359 (5.39%) VMware
5 345 (5.18%) Oracle
6 284 (4.26%) ServiceNow
7 202 (3.03%) Splunk
8 153 (2.30%) Juniper
9 133 (2.00%) Red Hat
10 108 (1.62%) Google
11 95 (1.43%) Palo Alto
11 95 (1.43%) Salesforce
12 94 (1.41%) HP
13 89 (1.34%) Dell
14 84 (1.26%) IBM
15 81 (1.22%) SolarWinds
16 75 (1.13%) CyberArk
17 71 (1.07%) F5
18 64 (0.96%) Apple
18 64 (0.96%) Atlassian