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 11 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,813 5,988 6,953
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.64% 18.14% 18.03%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.61% 57.89% 61.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,252 3,849 4,518
10th Percentile £389 £350 £350
25th Percentile £458 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.56% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £733
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £538 £550
% change year-on-year - -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 812 581 418
10th Percentile £20.05 £18.51 £19.89
25th Percentile £35.00 £18.87 £26.63
Median hourly rate £64.09 £25.15 £59.75
Median % change year-on-year +154.83% -57.91% -0.42%
75th Percentile £78.55 £37.50 £71.62
90th Percentile £89.68 £71.00 £80.00
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 17,217 10,344 11,325
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.53% 31.33% 29.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,496 6,423 7,004
10th Percentile £350 £300 £313
25th Percentile £438 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £626 £625 £638
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,318 826 676
10th Percentile £17.18 £17.97 £16.93
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £24.18
Median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +88.87% -49.70% -8.73%
75th Percentile £72.44 £47.97 £67.77
90th Percentile £87.16 £71.35 £75.32
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £53.00
% change year-on-year +88.87% -52.55% +2.14%

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 11 September 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 11 September 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 11 September 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 10,200 £548 +1.95% 3,307
UK excluding London +1 6,645 £538 - 2,465
London +7 3,610 £550 +2.80% 1,111
Work from Home +2 3,114 £525 -2.33% 2,710
South East +1 2,332 £565 +5.12% 728
South West 0 1,419 £550 - 531
North of England +3 1,270 £518 +3.60% 420
Midlands 0 928 £475 -7.77% 258
West Midlands +1 792 £475 -7.77% 165
North West +2 748 £530 - 237
East of England 0 369 £550 - 326
Scotland +14 304 £481 -0.62% 170
Yorkshire +2 302 £500 +2.15% 97
North East 0 241 £475 -2.56% 94
East Midlands 0 129 £450 -4.00% 92
Wales +4 108 £550 +10.00% 46
Northern Ireland +5 36 £650 +8.33% 43

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
1 404 (3.42%) Confluence
2 276 (2.34%) SharePoint
3 173 (1.46%) SAS
4 127 (1.08%) Microsoft Exchange
5 107 (0.91%) Apache
6 102 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
6 102 (0.86%) Apache Spark
7 38 (0.32%) Jupyter
8 36 (0.30%) nginx
9 33 (0.28%) WebLogic
10 26 (0.22%) IIS
11 23 (0.19%) Oracle Application Server
12 22 (0.19%) Skype for Business
12 22 (0.19%) Tomcat
13 19 (0.16%) CMS
14 17 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
15 16 (0.14%) NetWeaver
15 16 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
16 15 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 12 (0.10%) JBoss
Applications
1 212 (1.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 168 (1.42%) Microsoft Office
3 111 (0.94%) Microsoft Project
4 101 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 42 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 23 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
7 18 (0.15%) AutoCAD
8 17 (0.14%) Revit
9 16 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
10 13 (0.11%) Simulink
11 8 (0.068%) Adobe XD
11 8 (0.068%) Chatbot
11 8 (0.068%) Windchill
12 7 (0.059%) Notepad++
12 7 (0.059%) Sketch
13 6 (0.051%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 4 (0.034%) Trello
15 3 (0.025%) OrCAD
16 2 (0.017%) Houdini
16 2 (0.017%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 152 (1.29%) SAP S/4HANA
2 81 (0.69%) Remedy ITSM
3 53 (0.45%) Oracle ERP
4 43 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
5 34 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 30 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 28 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
8 25 (0.21%) Oracle Payroll
8 25 (0.21%) SAP GRC
9 24 (0.20%) SAP PSCD
10 19 (0.16%) Primavera
11 18 (0.15%) SAP FI
12 17 (0.14%) SAP HR
13 16 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
14 13 (0.11%) Findur
15 12 (0.10%) iTrent
15 12 (0.10%) SAP CO
15 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
16 11 (0.093%) NetSuite
16 11 (0.093%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 2,171 (18.38%) Azure
2 2,097 (17.75%) AWS
3 542 (4.59%) GitHub
4 531 (4.50%) Azure DevOps
5 485 (4.11%) Power Platform
6 457 (3.87%) GCP
7 355 (3.01%) GitHub Actions
8 330 (2.79%) Microsoft 365
9 306 (2.59%) Entra ID
10 289 (2.45%) Serverless
11 243 (2.06%) Amazon S3
12 212 (1.79%) AWS Lambda
13 176 (1.49%) SaaS
14 175 (1.48%) OCI
15 172 (1.46%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 164 (1.39%) Amazon EKS
17 151 (1.28%) Amazon EC2
18 139 (1.18%) OpenShift
19 133 (1.13%) AWS CloudFormation
20 119 (1.01%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 470 (3.98%) Firewall
2 382 (3.23%) DNS
3 238 (2.01%) Network Security
4 221 (1.87%) WAN
5 210 (1.78%) VPN
6 187 (1.58%) DHCP
7 168 (1.42%) LAN
8 136 (1.15%) TCP/IP
9 131 (1.11%) BGP
10 119 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
11 105 (0.89%) VLAN
12 92 (0.78%) OSPF
13 91 (0.77%) Wireless
14 77 (0.65%) SSL
15 67 (0.57%) MPLS
15 67 (0.57%) VSAN
16 66 (0.56%) IPsec
17 64 (0.54%) SAN
18 59 (0.50%) SD-WAN
19 50 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 352 (2.98%) Power BI
2 313 (2.65%) PostgreSQL
3 292 (2.47%) SQL Server
4 272 (2.30%) Data Warehouse
5 198 (1.68%) Metadata
6 183 (1.55%) Oracle Database
7 153 (1.30%) Relational Database
8 147 (1.24%) Data Lake
9 135 (1.14%) MongoDB
10 115 (0.97%) Amazon RDS
11 107 (0.91%) MySQL
12 98 (0.83%) NoSQL
13 95 (0.80%) Oracle Reports
14 73 (0.62%) Pentaho
15 69 (0.58%) Amazon Athena
16 67 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
17 58 (0.49%) Tableau
18 56 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
19 55 (0.47%) Big Data
20 50 (0.42%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 663 (5.61%) JIRA
2 589 (4.99%) Git
3 519 (4.39%) GitLab
4 484 (4.10%) Jenkins
5 149 (1.26%) Selenium
6 84 (0.71%) Postman
7 82 (0.69%) SonarQube
8 77 (0.65%) JUnit
9 73 (0.62%) Maven
10 70 (0.59%) JMeter
11 60 (0.51%) Cucumber
12 53 (0.45%) Cypress.io
13 50 (0.42%) Gradle
14 47 (0.40%) Mockito
15 43 (0.36%) REST Assured
16 41 (0.35%) Gatling
17 39 (0.33%) Artifactory
18 38 (0.32%) Visual Studio
18 38 (0.32%) Zephyr
19 34 (0.29%) Bitbucket
General
1 2,637 (22.32%) Social Skills
2 2,425 (20.53%) Public Sector
3 948 (8.03%) Analytical Skills
4 775 (6.56%) Finance
5 413 (3.50%) Military
6 314 (2.66%) Aerospace
7 306 (2.59%) Documentation Skills
8 217 (1.84%) Influencing Skills
9 184 (1.56%) Organisational Skills
10 173 (1.46%) Legal
11 166 (1.41%) Telecoms
12 160 (1.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 148 (1.25%) Banking
14 129 (1.09%) Manufacturing
15 121 (1.02%) Law
16 120 (1.02%) Police
17 68 (0.58%) Presentation Skills
18 48 (0.41%) Local Government
19 46 (0.39%) Marketing
19 46 (0.39%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,904 (16.12%) Architect
2 1,231 (10.42%) Developer
3 1,126 (9.53%) Senior
4 1,061 (8.98%) Lead
5 703 (5.95%) Consultant
6 639 (5.41%) Analyst
7 513 (4.34%) DevOps Engineer
8 500 (4.23%) Data Engineer
9 424 (3.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 372 (3.15%) Technical Architect
11 365 (3.09%) Solutions Architect
12 291 (2.46%) Data Architect
13 285 (2.41%) Software Engineer
14 273 (2.31%) Security Architect
15 255 (2.16%) Network Engineer
16 220 (1.86%) Administrator
17 216 (1.83%) Java Developer
18 213 (1.80%) Azure Engineer
19 207 (1.75%) Delivery Manager
20 203 (1.72%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,006 (8.52%) Terraform
2 456 (3.86%) REST
3 257 (2.18%) Spring
4 252 (2.13%) Kafka
5 236 (2.00%) Spring Boot
6 221 (1.87%) RESTful
7 218 (1.85%) .NET
8 204 (1.73%) React
9 180 (1.52%) Node.js
10 175 (1.48%) SOAP
11 167 (1.41%) JSON
12 134 (1.13%) HTML
13 131 (1.11%) OAuth
14 130 (1.10%) XML
15 122 (1.03%) AngularJS
16 121 (1.02%) Middleware
17 118 (1.00%) Web Services
18 106 (0.90%) Oracle Fusion
19 103 (0.87%) CSS
20 101 (0.85%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 526 (4.45%) Cloud Native
2 442 (3.74%) Onboarding
3 366 (3.10%) Product Ownership
4 312 (2.64%) Data Centre
5 266 (2.25%) Management Information System
6 191 (1.62%) Legacy Systems
7 178 (1.51%) PKI
8 176 (1.49%) Enterprise Software
9 158 (1.34%) CMDB
10 148 (1.25%) Distributed Systems
11 130 (1.10%) Replication
12 124 (1.05%) Hybrid Cloud
13 121 (1.02%) Self-Motivation
14 113 (0.96%) Cyber Threat
15 101 (0.85%) Data Structures
16 97 (0.82%) Operational Technology
17 93 (0.79%) Public Cloud
17 93 (0.79%) Security Operations Centre
18 92 (0.78%) Clustering
19 90 (0.76%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 1,007 (8.52%) Windows
2 809 (6.85%) Linux
3 377 (3.19%) Windows Server
4 233 (1.97%) Unix
5 158 (1.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 146 (1.24%) Windows 10
7 78 (0.66%) Android
8 69 (0.58%) Solaris
9 48 (0.41%) Mac OS
10 44 (0.37%) Apple iOS
11 42 (0.36%) CentOS
12 40 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
13 38 (0.32%) Ubuntu
14 33 (0.28%) AIX
15 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 24 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
17 23 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
18 21 (0.18%) VMS
19 16 (0.14%) Rocky
20 14 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,519 (21.32%) Agile
2 1,826 (15.46%) DevOps
3 1,788 (15.14%) CI/CD
4 1,581 (13.38%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,423 (12.05%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,272 (10.77%) Problem-Solving
7 1,177 (9.96%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,022 (8.65%) Infrastructure as Code
9 942 (7.97%) Migration
10 850 (7.20%) Cybersecurity
11 807 (6.83%) ITIL
12 788 (6.67%) Test Automation
13 753 (6.37%) Containerisation
14 731 (6.19%) Technical Leadership
15 728 (6.16%) Analytics
16 712 (6.03%) Decision-Making
17 709 (6.00%) Roadmaps
18 706 (5.98%) AI
19 685 (5.80%) Software Engineering
20 652 (5.52%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,381 (11.69%) Python
2 1,121 (9.49%) SQL
3 805 (6.81%) Java
4 606 (5.13%) PowerShell
5 406 (3.44%) JavaScript
6 357 (3.02%) Bash
7 238 (2.01%) C#
8 218 (1.85%) TypeScript
9 166 (1.41%) PL/SQL
10 128 (1.08%) Bicep
11 81 (0.69%) Shell Script
12 64 (0.54%) C++
13 58 (0.49%) C
14 56 (0.47%) Go
15 53 (0.45%) Scala
16 50 (0.42%) Apex Code
17 48 (0.41%) Groovy
18 46 (0.39%) Kotlin
19 43 (0.36%) Ruby
20 41 (0.35%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8,998 (76.17%) SC Cleared
2 2,247 (19.02%) DV Cleared
3 475 (4.02%) BPSS Clearance
4 465 (3.94%) Degree
5 226 (1.91%) CISSP
6 187 (1.58%) Cisco Certification
7 177 (1.50%) Azure Certification
8 168 (1.42%) Microsoft Certification
9 147 (1.24%) AWS Certification
10 145 (1.23%) CISM
11 109 (0.92%) PMI Certification
12 105 (0.89%) PMP
13 93 (0.79%) ISTQB
14 84 (0.71%) CCNP
15 74 (0.63%) Computer Science Degree
16 69 (0.58%) CCNA
17 63 (0.53%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 52 (0.44%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 46 (0.39%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
20 44 (0.37%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 536 (4.54%) QA
2 390 (3.30%) Data Quality
3 332 (2.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 323 (2.73%) NIST
5 286 (2.42%) NCSC
6 268 (2.27%) Accessibility
7 227 (1.92%) PMO
8 181 (1.53%) GDPR
9 174 (1.47%) SLA
10 157 (1.33%) GRC
11 87 (0.74%) WCAG
12 65 (0.55%) JSP 440
13 48 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
14 46 (0.39%) NIST 800
15 37 (0.31%) Def Stans
16 28 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 26 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 25 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
19 22 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 22 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 825 (6.98%) Docker
2 625 (5.29%) Active Directory
3 440 (3.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 148 (1.25%) VMware NSX
5 146 (1.24%) VMware ESXi
6 142 (1.20%) Hyper-V
7 131 (1.11%) vSphere
8 91 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
9 46 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
10 42 (0.36%) Firmware
11 40 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
12 27 (0.23%) vCloud
13 25 (0.21%) BitLocker
14 20 (0.17%) NFS
15 14 (0.12%) Squid
16 13 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
17 11 (0.093%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 11 (0.093%) Postfix
18 9 (0.076%) KVM
19 8 (0.068%) UAG
Systems Management
1 1,000 (8.47%) Kubernetes
2 457 (3.87%) Ansible
3 256 (2.17%) Grafana
4 204 (1.73%) Prometheus
5 139 (1.18%) vCenter Server
6 138 (1.17%) SCCM
7 95 (0.80%) SCOM
8 92 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
9 67 (0.57%) Argo
10 65 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
11 49 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
12 48 (0.41%) Puppet
13 41 (0.35%) Data Guard
14 32 (0.27%) Kibana
15 31 (0.26%) Istio
16 29 (0.25%) Control-M
16 29 (0.25%) NetBackup
16 29 (0.25%) Progress Chef
17 27 (0.23%) Nagios
17 27 (0.23%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,542 (13.05%) Microsoft
2 955 (8.08%) Oracle
3 617 (5.22%) VMware
4 551 (4.66%) ServiceNow
5 454 (3.84%) SAP
6 303 (2.56%) Cisco
7 250 (2.12%) Google
8 222 (1.88%) Splunk
9 212 (1.79%) Databricks
10 179 (1.52%) Salesforce
11 150 (1.27%) Red Hat
12 129 (1.09%) Palo Alto
13 117 (0.99%) Informatica
14 108 (0.91%) IBM
14 108 (0.91%) Talend
15 100 (0.85%) Dynatrace
16 94 (0.80%) CyberArk
17 92 (0.78%) Remedy
18 83 (0.70%) SolarWinds
19 80 (0.68%) F5