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 13 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,911 5,215 8,110
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 23.14% 17.70% 18.20%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.36% 58.27% 59.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,644 3,402 5,203
10th Percentile £360 £330 £358
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.22%
75th Percentile £625 £626 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £515 £548 £550
% change year-on-year -5.94% -0.45% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 835 277 535
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.12 £14.50
25th Percentile £20.50 £24.66 £22.00
Median hourly rate £33.50 £57.50 £54.56
Median % change year-on-year -41.74% +5.39% -9.07%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £84.00 £78.50 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £60.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year -54.55% +10.00% -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 14,498 8,950 13,583
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.85% 30.38% 30.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,535 5,625 8,389
10th Percentile £333 £285 £292
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £615 £626 £650
90th Percentile £723 £725 £734
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,082 466 1,023
10th Percentile £16.17 £19.30 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.73 £24.54 £18.07
Median hourly rate £28.50 £45.00 £38.95
Median % change year-on-year -36.67% +15.53% -22.10%
75th Percentile £67.50 £67.50 £61.62
90th Percentile £84.00 £82.18 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £50.00 £39.96
% change year-on-year -48.46% +25.13% -17.67%

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 13 March 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 13 March 2026.

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 13 March 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 8,596 £525 -4.11% 1,860
UK excluding London +1 5,504 £515 -5.94% 1,580
London +5 2,998 £530 +0.95% 485
Work from Home +4 2,694 £525 - 881
South East +1 1,955 £525 -4.55% 529
South West 0 1,298 £540 -2.26% 412
Midlands +4 858 £492 -10.55% 166
North of England -1 841 £500 - 259
West Midlands +4 691 £492 -10.71% 123
North West 0 543 £500 +1.73% 136
East of England +2 357 £494 -1.30% 153
Scotland +11 182 £500 +11.11% 55
Yorkshire -7 178 £484 -7.86% 71
East Midlands +1 164 £434 -16.27% 41
North East 0 150 £450 -4.26% 53
Wales -1 82 £515 -5.47% 35
Northern Ireland +12 28 £500 +64.01% 6
Channel Islands - 1 - -

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
1 371 (3.74%) Confluence
2 222 (2.24%) SharePoint
3 145 (1.46%) Microsoft Exchange
4 138 (1.39%) SAS
5 92 (0.93%) Apache Spark
6 83 (0.84%) Apache
7 61 (0.62%) Apache Airflow
8 42 (0.42%) nginx
9 40 (0.40%) WebLogic
10 30 (0.30%) Skype for Business
11 22 (0.22%) Jupyter
12 20 (0.20%) CMS
13 17 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
14 16 (0.16%) IIS
15 15 (0.15%) Tuxedo
16 11 (0.11%) Tomcat
17 10 (0.10%) Oracle Workflow
18 9 (0.091%) ArcGIS
19 7 (0.071%) OpenStack
20 6 (0.061%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 256 (2.58%) Microsoft Office
2 203 (2.05%) Microsoft Excel
3 125 (1.26%) Microsoft Project
4 70 (0.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 48 (0.48%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.14%) Simulink
8 6 (0.061%) Sketch
9 5 (0.050%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.050%) Siemens NX
9 5 (0.050%) Windchill
10 4 (0.040%) Chatbot
10 4 (0.040%) Oracle Smart View
11 2 (0.020%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.020%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.020%) CATIA
11 2 (0.020%) InVision
11 2 (0.020%) Photoshop
11 2 (0.020%) PlantUML
11 2 (0.020%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 153 (1.54%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (0.43%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 32 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
4 28 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
5 27 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
6 25 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 24 (0.24%) SAP MM
8 19 (0.19%) SAP PP
9 18 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
10 16 (0.16%) Maximo
11 15 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
12 14 (0.14%) SAP VC
13 13 (0.13%) SAP QM
14 12 (0.12%) Oracle Assets
15 9 (0.091%) SAP PM
15 9 (0.091%) Temenos T24
16 8 (0.081%) Oracle Receivables
16 8 (0.081%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
16 8 (0.081%) SAP ERP
16 8 (0.081%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,698 (17.13%) AWS
2 1,638 (16.53%) Azure
3 457 (4.61%) GitHub
4 423 (4.27%) GCP
5 379 (3.82%) Power Platform
6 373 (3.76%) Azure DevOps
7 315 (3.18%) Microsoft 365
8 273 (2.75%) Serverless
9 250 (2.52%) Entra ID
10 241 (2.43%) GitHub Actions
11 200 (2.02%) Amazon S3
12 180 (1.82%) OpenShift
13 175 (1.77%) AWS Lambda
14 143 (1.44%) AWS CloudFormation
15 131 (1.32%) Amazon EC2
15 131 (1.32%) Amazon EKS
16 126 (1.27%) PaaS
17 120 (1.21%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 119 (1.20%) IaaS
19 112 (1.13%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 453 (4.57%) Firewall
2 282 (2.85%) DNS
3 219 (2.21%) Network Security
4 211 (2.13%) WAN
5 179 (1.81%) LAN
6 176 (1.78%) VPN
7 142 (1.43%) BGP
8 140 (1.41%) TCP/IP
9 134 (1.35%) DHCP
10 103 (1.04%) OSPF
11 97 (0.98%) Wireless
12 89 (0.90%) VLAN
13 76 (0.77%) Wi-Fi
14 74 (0.75%) MPLS
15 55 (0.55%) SAN
16 52 (0.52%) IPsec
17 49 (0.49%) Cisco ISE
18 46 (0.46%) SSL
19 43 (0.43%) Kerberos
20 42 (0.42%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 276 (2.78%) Power BI
2 263 (2.65%) PostgreSQL
3 181 (1.83%) Data Warehouse
4 164 (1.65%) SQL Server
5 128 (1.29%) Metadata
6 113 (1.14%) Oracle Database
7 102 (1.03%) NoSQL
8 101 (1.02%) Amazon RDS
9 97 (0.98%) MongoDB
10 95 (0.96%) Relational Database
11 84 (0.85%) Data Lake
12 83 (0.84%) Azure SQL Database
13 72 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
14 71 (0.72%) Big Data
15 70 (0.71%) MySQL
16 60 (0.61%) Pentaho
16 60 (0.61%) Tableau
17 53 (0.53%) Amazon Redshift
18 51 (0.51%) Delta Lake
19 43 (0.43%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 585 (5.90%) JIRA
2 473 (4.77%) Git
3 395 (3.99%) Jenkins
4 356 (3.59%) GitLab
5 123 (1.24%) Selenium
6 87 (0.88%) Postman
7 86 (0.87%) JUnit
8 58 (0.59%) Cypress.io
9 55 (0.55%) SonarQube
10 53 (0.53%) Rational DOORS
11 51 (0.51%) Bitbucket
12 48 (0.48%) Cucumber
13 47 (0.47%) Artifactory
14 46 (0.46%) JMeter
15 45 (0.45%) Maven
16 42 (0.42%) Oracle APEX
17 38 (0.38%) Visual Studio
18 37 (0.37%) Mockito
19 33 (0.33%) REST Assured
20 23 (0.23%) Metasploit
General
1 2,505 (25.27%) Public Sector
2 2,327 (23.48%) Social Skills
3 829 (8.36%) Analytical Skills
4 685 (6.91%) Finance
5 332 (3.35%) Military
6 276 (2.78%) Documentation Skills
7 232 (2.34%) Aerospace
8 192 (1.94%) Manufacturing
9 186 (1.88%) Telecoms
10 152 (1.53%) Legal
11 129 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
12 121 (1.22%) Organisational Skills
13 116 (1.17%) Electronics
14 114 (1.15%) Marketing
15 113 (1.14%) Banking
16 108 (1.09%) Presentation Skills
17 72 (0.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 71 (0.72%) Law
19 54 (0.54%) Police
20 39 (0.39%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,432 (14.45%) Architect
2 974 (9.83%) Developer
3 878 (8.86%) Senior
4 759 (7.66%) Analyst
5 649 (6.55%) Consultant
6 619 (6.25%) Lead
7 418 (4.22%) DevOps Engineer
8 385 (3.88%) Data Engineer
9 277 (2.79%) Solutions Architect
10 267 (2.69%) Business Analyst
11 266 (2.68%) Technical Architect
12 264 (2.66%) Network Engineer
13 258 (2.60%) Software Engineer
14 236 (2.38%) Support Engineer
15 187 (1.89%) Tester
16 180 (1.82%) Designer
17 178 (1.80%) Azure Engineer
17 178 (1.80%) Security Architect
18 177 (1.79%) Project Manager
19 173 (1.75%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 368 (3.71%) REST
2 222 (2.24%) Spring
3 209 (2.11%) Kafka
3 209 (2.11%) Node.js
4 185 (1.87%) React
5 165 (1.66%) SOAP
6 164 (1.65%) Spring Boot
7 161 (1.62%) JSON
8 153 (1.54%) .NET
9 150 (1.51%) LDAP
10 124 (1.25%) RESTful
10 124 (1.25%) Web Services
11 121 (1.22%) AngularJS
11 121 (1.22%) HTML
12 116 (1.17%) PySpark
13 111 (1.12%) OAuth
14 103 (1.04%) Oracle Fusion
15 101 (1.02%) XML
16 96 (0.97%) CSS
17 85 (0.86%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 315 (3.18%) Data Centre
2 307 (3.10%) Product Ownership
3 295 (2.98%) Cloud Native
4 252 (2.54%) Onboarding
5 204 (2.06%) PKI
6 187 (1.89%) Management Information System
7 136 (1.37%) Security Posture
8 127 (1.28%) Legacy Systems
8 127 (1.28%) Self-Motivation
9 111 (1.12%) Enterprise Software
10 102 (1.03%) Replication
11 87 (0.88%) Public Cloud
12 82 (0.83%) Distributed Systems
13 81 (0.82%) Security Operations Centre
14 78 (0.79%) Hybrid Cloud
15 72 (0.73%) Driving Licence
16 68 (0.69%) Cyber Threat
16 68 (0.69%) Data Structures
17 57 (0.58%) Clustering
18 55 (0.55%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 883 (8.91%) Windows
2 715 (7.21%) Linux
3 236 (2.38%) Windows Server
4 141 (1.42%) Windows 10
5 130 (1.31%) Android
6 127 (1.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 126 (1.27%) Unix
8 70 (0.71%) Mac OS
9 52 (0.52%) Apple iOS
10 49 (0.49%) Ubuntu
11 32 (0.32%) VMS
12 31 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
13 24 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 22 (0.22%) CentOS
14 22 (0.22%) Solaris
15 20 (0.20%) Windows 7
16 13 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
17 12 (0.12%) AIX
18 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
19 9 (0.091%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,908 (19.25%) Agile
2 1,494 (15.07%) DevOps
3 1,318 (13.30%) CI/CD
4 1,180 (11.91%) Problem-Solving
5 920 (9.28%) Stakeholder Management
6 848 (8.56%) Migration
7 801 (8.08%) Continuous Improvement
8 713 (7.19%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 627 (6.33%) Cybersecurity
10 609 (6.14%) Infrastructure as Code
11 598 (6.03%) ITIL
12 566 (5.71%) Analytics
13 550 (5.55%) Test Automation
14 543 (5.48%) Roadmaps
15 538 (5.43%) Containerisation
16 468 (4.72%) Software Engineering
17 466 (4.70%) Business Intelligence
18 460 (4.64%) Scrum
19 450 (4.54%) Data Modelling
20 428 (4.32%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 1,179 (11.90%) Python
2 866 (8.74%) SQL
3 619 (6.25%) PowerShell
4 558 (5.63%) Java
5 424 (4.28%) JavaScript
6 224 (2.26%) Bash
7 206 (2.08%) C#
8 193 (1.95%) TypeScript
9 113 (1.14%) C++
10 109 (1.10%) Shell Script
11 106 (1.07%) PL/SQL
12 78 (0.79%) Go
13 69 (0.70%) Ruby
14 65 (0.66%) C
15 53 (0.53%) Scala
16 49 (0.49%) Ada
17 45 (0.45%) Kusto Query Language
18 42 (0.42%) Bicep
19 40 (0.40%) ABAP
19 40 (0.40%) R
Qualifications
1 7,578 (76.46%) SC Cleared
2 1,668 (16.83%) DV Cleared
3 498 (5.02%) Degree
4 323 (3.26%) BPSS Clearance
5 183 (1.85%) Cisco Certification
6 178 (1.80%) CISSP
7 142 (1.43%) AWS Certification
8 131 (1.32%) Azure Certification
9 123 (1.24%) CCNP
10 112 (1.13%) CISM
11 111 (1.12%) Microsoft Certification
12 88 (0.89%) Computer Science Degree
13 80 (0.81%) CCNA
14 68 (0.69%) ITIL Certification
15 67 (0.68%) TOGAF Certification
16 59 (0.60%) ISTQB
17 58 (0.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 57 (0.58%) PMP
19 51 (0.51%) PMI Certification
20 49 (0.49%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 328 (3.31%) QA
2 305 (3.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 289 (2.92%) Data Quality
3 289 (2.92%) NIST
4 219 (2.21%) NCSC
5 186 (1.88%) GDPR
6 183 (1.85%) Accessibility
7 126 (1.27%) SLA
8 114 (1.15%) PMO
9 67 (0.68%) JSP 440
10 64 (0.65%) GRC
11 47 (0.47%) WCAG
12 44 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
13 43 (0.43%) NIST 800
14 40 (0.40%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 36 (0.36%) Def Stans
16 35 (0.35%) COBIT
17 33 (0.33%) PCI DSS
18 27 (0.27%) RMADS
19 25 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 656 (6.62%) Docker
2 489 (4.93%) Active Directory
3 248 (2.50%) VMware Infrastructure
4 92 (0.93%) VMware NSX
5 77 (0.78%) vSphere
6 63 (0.64%) Hyper-V
6 63 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
7 58 (0.59%) Virtual Machines
8 32 (0.32%) Firmware
9 29 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
10 20 (0.20%) BitLocker
11 19 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
12 17 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 15 (0.15%) NFS
14 10 (0.10%) Postfix
15 9 (0.091%) Squid
15 9 (0.091%) vCloud
16 6 (0.061%) KVM
16 6 (0.061%) Microsoft App-V
16 6 (0.061%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 848 (8.56%) Kubernetes
2 792 (7.99%) Terraform
3 318 (3.21%) Ansible
4 246 (2.48%) Grafana
5 203 (2.05%) Prometheus
6 131 (1.32%) Single Sign-On
7 98 (0.99%) SCCM
8 89 (0.90%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 88 (0.89%) vCenter Server
10 69 (0.70%) Argo
11 68 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
12 50 (0.50%) FortiGate
13 40 (0.40%) Podman
14 38 (0.38%) Packer
15 34 (0.34%) vRealize
16 33 (0.33%) Puppet
17 31 (0.31%) Progress Chef
18 30 (0.30%) OPNET
19 29 (0.29%) Kibana
20 25 (0.25%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 1,080 (10.90%) Microsoft
2 554 (5.59%) Oracle
3 468 (4.72%) VMware
4 450 (4.54%) SAP
5 427 (4.31%) Cisco
6 411 (4.15%) ServiceNow
7 244 (2.46%) Splunk
8 194 (1.96%) Red Hat
9 167 (1.68%) Databricks
10 160 (1.61%) Google
11 143 (1.44%) CyberArk
12 140 (1.41%) Salesforce
13 130 (1.31%) Juniper
14 129 (1.30%) Atlassian
14 129 (1.30%) Palo Alto
15 114 (1.15%) IBM
16 104 (1.05%) Dell
17 90 (0.91%) HP
18 88 (0.89%) Talend
19 79 (0.80%) Aruba