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

6 months to
20 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 11,865 6,002 6,866
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.74% 18.24% 17.82%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.73% 58.05% 60.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,240 3,896 4,447
10th Percentile £400 £349 £350
25th Percentile £461 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £548 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.05% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £720 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £538 £550
% change year-on-year - -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 849 596 409
10th Percentile £20.00 £18.51 £20.02
25th Percentile £33.68 £18.87 £27.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +158.45% -58.08% -
75th Percentile £77.50 £35.50 £72.50
90th Percentile £89.80 £70.08 £80.12
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 17,262 10,340 11,257
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.62% 31.43% 29.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,479 6,462 6,913
10th Percentile £350 £300 £313
25th Percentile £440 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £527 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.29% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £713 £712 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,375 839 651
10th Percentile £17.01 £17.87 £17.00
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £24.18
Median hourly rate £47.54 £25.15 £49.00
Median % change year-on-year +89.03% -48.67% -9.26%
75th Percentile £72.54 £43.88 £68.00
90th Percentile £88.00 £71.00 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £52.50
% change year-on-year +88.87% -52.10% +1.18%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 10,221 £550 +2.33% 5,126
UK excluding London +1 6,673 £538 - 3,598
London +6 3,606 £550 +2.33% 1,643
Work from Home +2 3,118 £525 -2.33% 2,669
South East +1 2,306 £564 +4.98% 952
South West 0 1,417 £550 - 814
North of England +3 1,267 £516 -0.72% 684
Midlands 0 948 £481 -6.60% 338
West Midlands +1 810 £481 -7.23% 223
North West +1 740 £530 -3.64% 416
East of England 0 404 £550 - 463
Scotland +15 316 £483 -0.41% 267
Yorkshire +2 297 £492 +0.41% 132
North East 0 251 £475 -1.04% 140
East Midlands -1 131 £450 -2.70% 115
Wales +4 106 £550 +10.00% 60
Northern Ireland +4 36 £650 +18.18% 72

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
1 393 (3.31%) Confluence
2 268 (2.26%) SharePoint
3 173 (1.46%) SAS
4 131 (1.10%) Microsoft Exchange
5 111 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
6 102 (0.86%) Apache Spark
7 100 (0.84%) Apache
8 39 (0.33%) Jupyter
9 37 (0.31%) nginx
10 36 (0.30%) WebLogic
11 23 (0.19%) Oracle Application Server
12 22 (0.19%) CMS
12 22 (0.19%) Skype for Business
13 20 (0.17%) IIS
14 19 (0.16%) Tomcat
15 16 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 16 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
15 16 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
16 11 (0.093%) JBoss
16 11 (0.093%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 212 (1.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 165 (1.39%) Microsoft Office
3 102 (0.86%) Microsoft Project
4 97 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
7 20 (0.17%) AutoCAD
8 18 (0.15%) Revit
9 17 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
10 14 (0.12%) Windchill
11 10 (0.084%) Adobe XD
11 10 (0.084%) Simulink
12 8 (0.067%) Chatbot
12 8 (0.067%) Sketch
13 7 (0.059%) Notepad++
14 6 (0.051%) Adobe Creative Suite
15 4 (0.034%) Trello
16 3 (0.025%) OrCAD
17 2 (0.017%) Houdini
17 2 (0.017%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 154 (1.30%) SAP S/4HANA
2 80 (0.67%) Remedy ITSM
3 56 (0.47%) Oracle ERP
4 41 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
5 33 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 32 (0.27%) Teamcenter
7 30 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
8 26 (0.22%) Oracle Payroll
9 25 (0.21%) SAP GRC
9 25 (0.21%) SAP PSCD
10 19 (0.16%) Primavera
10 19 (0.16%) SAP FI
11 17 (0.14%) SAP HR
12 15 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
13 13 (0.11%) SAP CO
14 12 (0.10%) iTrent
14 12 (0.10%) Maximo
14 12 (0.10%) NetSuite
14 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
15 11 (0.093%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 2,148 (18.10%) Azure
2 2,088 (17.60%) AWS
3 516 (4.35%) Azure DevOps
4 513 (4.32%) GitHub
5 481 (4.05%) Power Platform
6 451 (3.80%) GCP
7 345 (2.91%) GitHub Actions
8 335 (2.82%) Microsoft 365
9 323 (2.72%) Entra ID
10 278 (2.34%) Serverless
11 237 (2.00%) Amazon S3
12 205 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
13 176 (1.48%) OCI
14 174 (1.47%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 168 (1.42%) SaaS
16 164 (1.38%) Amazon EKS
17 149 (1.26%) Amazon EC2
18 144 (1.21%) OpenShift
19 127 (1.07%) AWS CloudFormation
20 110 (0.93%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 460 (3.88%) Firewall
2 382 (3.22%) DNS
3 238 (2.01%) Network Security
4 218 (1.84%) WAN
5 200 (1.69%) VPN
6 189 (1.59%) DHCP
7 165 (1.39%) LAN
8 139 (1.17%) TCP/IP
9 130 (1.10%) BGP
10 118 (0.99%) Wi-Fi
11 107 (0.90%) VLAN
12 92 (0.78%) Wireless
13 90 (0.76%) OSPF
14 68 (0.57%) SSL
15 65 (0.55%) MPLS
16 64 (0.54%) VSAN
17 62 (0.52%) IPsec
17 62 (0.52%) SAN
18 60 (0.51%) SD-WAN
19 50 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 344 (2.90%) Power BI
2 304 (2.56%) PostgreSQL
3 280 (2.36%) SQL Server
4 276 (2.33%) Data Warehouse
5 206 (1.74%) Metadata
6 189 (1.59%) Oracle Database
7 146 (1.23%) Data Lake
8 145 (1.22%) Relational Database
9 128 (1.08%) MongoDB
10 111 (0.94%) Amazon RDS
11 106 (0.89%) MySQL
12 97 (0.82%) NoSQL
13 94 (0.79%) Oracle Reports
14 72 (0.61%) Elasticsearch
14 72 (0.61%) Pentaho
15 70 (0.59%) Amazon Athena
16 56 (0.47%) Big Data
17 52 (0.44%) Amazon Redshift
17 52 (0.44%) DynamoDB
17 52 (0.44%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 659 (5.55%) JIRA
2 590 (4.97%) Git
3 524 (4.42%) GitLab
4 491 (4.14%) Jenkins
5 145 (1.22%) Selenium
6 86 (0.72%) Postman
7 82 (0.69%) SonarQube
8 75 (0.63%) Maven
9 74 (0.62%) JUnit
10 67 (0.56%) JMeter
11 62 (0.52%) Cucumber
12 53 (0.45%) Cypress.io
13 50 (0.42%) Gradle
14 46 (0.39%) Mockito
15 42 (0.35%) REST Assured
16 40 (0.34%) Gatling
16 40 (0.34%) Visual Studio
17 39 (0.33%) Zephyr
18 36 (0.30%) Artifactory
19 32 (0.27%) MSI
General
1 2,657 (22.39%) Social Skills
2 2,412 (20.33%) Public Sector
3 954 (8.04%) Analytical Skills
4 768 (6.47%) Finance
5 425 (3.58%) Military
6 328 (2.76%) Aerospace
7 309 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
8 227 (1.91%) Influencing Skills
9 187 (1.58%) Organisational Skills
10 174 (1.47%) Legal
11 168 (1.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 164 (1.38%) Telecoms
13 155 (1.31%) Manufacturing
14 139 (1.17%) Banking
15 124 (1.05%) Law
16 121 (1.02%) Police
17 72 (0.61%) Presentation Skills
18 51 (0.43%) Local Government
19 49 (0.41%) Aviation
20 47 (0.40%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,933 (16.29%) Architect
2 1,222 (10.30%) Developer
3 1,134 (9.56%) Senior
4 1,039 (8.76%) Lead
5 711 (5.99%) Consultant
6 637 (5.37%) Analyst
7 513 (4.32%) DevOps Engineer
8 487 (4.10%) Data Engineer
9 425 (3.58%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 371 (3.13%) Technical Architect
11 366 (3.08%) Solutions Architect
12 296 (2.49%) Data Architect
13 281 (2.37%) Software Engineer
14 278 (2.34%) Security Architect
15 251 (2.12%) Network Engineer
16 229 (1.93%) Administrator
17 219 (1.85%) Java Developer
18 214 (1.80%) Azure Engineer
19 210 (1.77%) Designer
20 209 (1.76%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 998 (8.41%) Terraform
2 468 (3.94%) REST
3 259 (2.18%) Kafka
3 259 (2.18%) Spring
4 238 (2.01%) Spring Boot
5 214 (1.80%) RESTful
6 206 (1.74%) .NET
7 192 (1.62%) React
8 180 (1.52%) Node.js
9 178 (1.50%) SOAP
10 163 (1.37%) JSON
11 139 (1.17%) OAuth
12 134 (1.13%) HTML
13 133 (1.12%) XML
14 126 (1.06%) Middleware
15 119 (1.00%) AngularJS
15 119 (1.00%) Web Services
16 104 (0.88%) CSS
17 102 (0.86%) Oracle Fusion
18 95 (0.80%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 526 (4.43%) Cloud Native
2 456 (3.84%) Onboarding
3 365 (3.08%) Product Ownership
4 304 (2.56%) Data Centre
5 275 (2.32%) Management Information System
6 184 (1.55%) Legacy Systems
7 182 (1.53%) PKI
8 173 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
9 159 (1.34%) CMDB
10 140 (1.18%) Distributed Systems
11 124 (1.05%) Hybrid Cloud
12 121 (1.02%) Cyber Threat
12 121 (1.02%) Replication
13 115 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
14 112 (0.94%) Operational Technology
15 96 (0.81%) Data Structures
16 92 (0.78%) Security Operations Centre
16 92 (0.78%) Security Posture
17 91 (0.77%) Public Cloud
18 89 (0.75%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 999 (8.42%) Windows
2 812 (6.84%) Linux
3 372 (3.14%) Windows Server
4 237 (2.00%) Unix
5 163 (1.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 145 (1.22%) Windows 10
7 79 (0.67%) Android
8 75 (0.63%) Solaris
9 49 (0.41%) Mac OS
10 46 (0.39%) Apple iOS
10 46 (0.39%) CentOS
11 40 (0.34%) Ubuntu
12 39 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
13 31 (0.26%) AIX
14 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
15 24 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
16 23 (0.19%) VMS
17 21 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
18 16 (0.13%) Rocky
19 13 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,522 (21.26%) Agile
2 1,805 (15.21%) DevOps
3 1,790 (15.09%) CI/CD
4 1,638 (13.81%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,442 (12.15%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,272 (10.72%) Problem-Solving
7 1,185 (9.99%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,019 (8.59%) Infrastructure as Code
9 949 (8.00%) Migration
10 856 (7.21%) Cybersecurity
11 794 (6.69%) ITIL
12 777 (6.55%) Test Automation
13 757 (6.38%) Containerisation
14 748 (6.30%) Technical Leadership
15 739 (6.23%) Decision-Making
16 732 (6.17%) AI
17 722 (6.09%) Analytics
17 722 (6.09%) Roadmaps
18 690 (5.82%) Software Engineering
19 631 (5.32%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,365 (11.50%) Python
2 1,106 (9.32%) SQL
3 794 (6.69%) Java
4 596 (5.02%) PowerShell
5 406 (3.42%) JavaScript
6 359 (3.03%) Bash
7 232 (1.96%) C#
8 217 (1.83%) TypeScript
9 166 (1.40%) PL/SQL
10 127 (1.07%) Bicep
11 84 (0.71%) Shell Script
12 65 (0.55%) C++
13 59 (0.50%) Go
14 57 (0.48%) Scala
15 55 (0.46%) C
16 50 (0.42%) Groovy
17 48 (0.40%) Kotlin
18 45 (0.38%) Apex Code
19 39 (0.33%) T-SQL
20 34 (0.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 9,027 (76.08%) SC Cleared
2 2,252 (18.98%) DV Cleared
3 505 (4.26%) BPSS Clearance
4 474 (3.99%) Degree
5 229 (1.93%) CISSP
6 192 (1.62%) Azure Certification
6 192 (1.62%) Cisco Certification
7 170 (1.43%) Microsoft Certification
8 152 (1.28%) AWS Certification
9 146 (1.23%) CISM
10 110 (0.93%) PMI Certification
11 100 (0.84%) PMP
12 96 (0.81%) ISTQB
13 89 (0.75%) CCNP
14 74 (0.62%) Computer Science Degree
15 71 (0.60%) CCNA
16 61 (0.51%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 54 (0.46%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 45 (0.38%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
18 45 (0.38%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 533 (4.49%) QA
2 390 (3.29%) Data Quality
3 340 (2.87%) NIST
4 330 (2.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 300 (2.53%) NCSC
6 279 (2.35%) Accessibility
7 222 (1.87%) PMO
8 178 (1.50%) GDPR
9 175 (1.47%) SLA
10 165 (1.39%) GRC
11 85 (0.72%) WCAG
12 61 (0.51%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
14 46 (0.39%) NIST 800
15 38 (0.32%) Def Stans
16 31 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
17 25 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 22 (0.19%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 21 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
20 19 (0.16%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 826 (6.96%) Docker
2 638 (5.38%) Active Directory
3 436 (3.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 147 (1.24%) VMware ESXi
5 143 (1.21%) VMware NSX
6 138 (1.16%) Hyper-V
7 133 (1.12%) vSphere
8 94 (0.79%) Virtual Machines
9 45 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
10 42 (0.35%) Firmware
11 40 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
12 26 (0.22%) vCloud
13 23 (0.19%) BitLocker
14 20 (0.17%) NFS
15 18 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
16 11 (0.093%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 11 (0.093%) Postfix
16 11 (0.093%) Squid
17 10 (0.084%) KVM
18 9 (0.076%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 1,004 (8.46%) Kubernetes
2 447 (3.77%) Ansible
3 263 (2.22%) Grafana
4 202 (1.70%) Prometheus
5 136 (1.15%) SCCM
6 134 (1.13%) vCenter Server
7 99 (0.83%) SCOM
8 91 (0.77%) Microsoft Intune
9 69 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
10 67 (0.56%) Argo
11 49 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
12 46 (0.39%) Puppet
13 42 (0.35%) Kibana
14 41 (0.35%) Data Guard
15 32 (0.27%) Istio
15 32 (0.27%) NetBackup
15 32 (0.27%) VxRail
16 28 (0.24%) Control-M
17 27 (0.23%) Progress Chef
17 27 (0.23%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,553 (13.09%) Microsoft
2 958 (8.07%) Oracle
3 609 (5.13%) VMware
4 542 (4.57%) ServiceNow
5 461 (3.89%) SAP
6 301 (2.54%) Cisco
7 255 (2.15%) Google
8 225 (1.90%) Splunk
9 201 (1.69%) Databricks
10 170 (1.43%) Salesforce
11 148 (1.25%) Red Hat
12 129 (1.09%) Palo Alto
13 115 (0.97%) Informatica
14 106 (0.89%) Talend
15 104 (0.88%) IBM
16 101 (0.85%) Dynatrace
17 97 (0.82%) CyberArk
18 91 (0.77%) Remedy
19 83 (0.70%) SolarWinds
20 80 (0.67%) Fortinet