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 4 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,696 5,172 7,839
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.86% 17.94% 18.29%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.28% 57.69% 61.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,339 3,401 5,167
10th Percentile £381 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £713 £699 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £536 £550
% change year-on-year -2.05% -2.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 857 319 553
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.48 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.16 £24.21 £21.46
Median hourly rate £57.00 £32.50 £55.80
Median % change year-on-year +75.38% -41.76% -7.00%
75th Percentile £74.26 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.74 £84.89
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £32.50 £57.47
% change year-on-year +69.23% -43.45% -0.05%

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 15,439 8,965 12,823
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.55% 31.10% 29.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,238 5,610 7,971
10th Percentile £350 £275 £310
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £530
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -1.89% -3.64%
75th Percentile £620 £619 £644
90th Percentile £714 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £534
% change year-on-year - -6.30% +1.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,130 536 1,100
10th Percentile £16.98 £17.71 £13.87
25th Percentile £21.33 £22.04 £18.18
Median hourly rate £50.00 £32.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.85% -18.75% -27.27%
75th Percentile £71.87 £65.00 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.50 £76.32
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £32.05 £41.27
% change year-on-year +48.21% -22.33% -21.40%

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 4 June 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 4 June 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 4 June 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 9,254 £525 -2.23% 2,158
UK excluding London +1 5,936 £525 -2.05% 1,695
London +7 3,318 £525 - 568
Work from Home +4 2,901 £525 - 1,103
South East +1 2,220 £550 - 547
South West 0 1,249 £538 -6.52% 441
North of England 0 954 £500 - 292
Midlands +2 883 £469 -10.67% 148
West Midlands +3 760 £470 -10.49% 107
North West -1 525 £514 +2.75% 168
East of England +2 372 £550 +10.00% 157
Yorkshire -5 246 £488 -2.50% 64
Scotland +22 242 £511 +15.21% 75
North East +1 217 £475 -1.04% 61
East Midlands -5 116 £424 -17.32% 41
Wales +6 85 £490 +3.16% 39
Northern Ireland +2 19 £650 +36.84% 32

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
1 388 (3.63%) Confluence
2 229 (2.14%) SharePoint
3 159 (1.49%) SAS
4 129 (1.21%) Microsoft Exchange
5 105 (0.98%) Apache Spark
6 95 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
7 93 (0.87%) Apache
8 42 (0.39%) nginx
9 40 (0.37%) Jupyter
10 36 (0.34%) WebLogic
11 24 (0.22%) Tomcat
12 19 (0.18%) IIS
13 18 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
14 16 (0.15%) CMS
15 15 (0.14%) NetWeaver
15 15 (0.14%) Skype for Business
16 14 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
17 11 (0.10%) Tuxedo
18 10 (0.093%) ArcGIS
19 8 (0.075%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 168 (1.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 149 (1.39%) Microsoft Office
3 77 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 69 (0.65%) Microsoft Project
5 46 (0.43%) MS Visio
6 17 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.15%) Simulink
8 8 (0.075%) SOLIDWORKS
9 7 (0.065%) AutoCAD
9 7 (0.065%) Notepad++
9 7 (0.065%) Revit
10 4 (0.037%) Siemens NX
10 4 (0.037%) Sketch
10 4 (0.037%) Windchill
11 3 (0.028%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.028%) Chatbot
12 2 (0.019%) CATIA
12 2 (0.019%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.019%) Lectora
12 2 (0.019%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 116 (1.08%) SAP S/4HANA
2 59 (0.55%) Remedy ITSM
3 33 (0.31%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 31 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
4 31 (0.29%) Teamcenter
5 29 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
6 23 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
7 14 (0.13%) Findur
7 14 (0.13%) Maximo
7 14 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.12%) SAP GRC
8 13 (0.12%) SAP PSCD
9 12 (0.11%) iTrent
9 12 (0.11%) Temenos T24
10 11 (0.10%) Primavera
11 10 (0.093%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.084%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.084%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.084%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.084%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,905 (17.81%) AWS
2 1,871 (17.49%) Azure
3 451 (4.22%) GitHub
4 426 (3.98%) GCP
5 402 (3.76%) Azure DevOps
6 394 (3.68%) Power Platform
7 272 (2.54%) Serverless
8 264 (2.47%) GitHub Actions
9 262 (2.45%) Microsoft 365
10 253 (2.37%) Entra ID
11 219 (2.05%) Amazon S3
12 191 (1.79%) AWS Lambda
13 161 (1.51%) PaaS
14 157 (1.47%) Amazon EC2
15 147 (1.37%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 142 (1.33%) Amazon EKS
17 138 (1.29%) SaaS
18 136 (1.27%) OpenShift
19 131 (1.22%) OCI
20 118 (1.10%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 481 (4.50%) Firewall
2 319 (2.98%) DNS
3 251 (2.35%) Network Security
4 235 (2.20%) WAN
5 209 (1.95%) LAN
6 181 (1.69%) VPN
7 163 (1.52%) DHCP
8 147 (1.37%) BGP
9 125 (1.17%) OSPF
10 117 (1.09%) TCP/IP
11 115 (1.08%) VLAN
12 108 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
13 85 (0.79%) Wireless
14 68 (0.64%) MPLS
15 63 (0.59%) SAN
16 62 (0.58%) VXLAN
17 57 (0.53%) SD-WAN
18 53 (0.50%) Structured Cabling
19 51 (0.48%) IPsec
20 50 (0.47%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 304 (2.84%) Power BI
2 267 (2.50%) PostgreSQL
3 246 (2.30%) Data Warehouse
4 210 (1.96%) SQL Server
5 146 (1.36%) Oracle Database
6 133 (1.24%) Metadata
7 118 (1.10%) Data Lake
8 113 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
9 104 (0.97%) MongoDB
10 99 (0.93%) Relational Database
11 84 (0.79%) NoSQL
12 83 (0.78%) Pentaho
13 81 (0.76%) Oracle Reports
14 79 (0.74%) MySQL
15 77 (0.72%) Elasticsearch
16 68 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
17 66 (0.62%) Amazon Athena
17 66 (0.62%) Big Data
18 65 (0.61%) Tableau
19 53 (0.50%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 604 (5.65%) JIRA
2 464 (4.34%) Git
3 439 (4.10%) GitLab
4 409 (3.82%) Jenkins
5 120 (1.12%) Selenium
6 90 (0.84%) Postman
7 83 (0.78%) JUnit
8 72 (0.67%) SonarQube
9 60 (0.56%) Rational DOORS
10 59 (0.55%) Artifactory
10 59 (0.55%) JMeter
11 50 (0.47%) Cucumber
12 42 (0.39%) Bitbucket
12 42 (0.39%) Mockito
13 40 (0.37%) Visual Studio
13 40 (0.37%) Zephyr
14 39 (0.36%) Maven
15 38 (0.36%) Cypress.io
16 36 (0.34%) REST Assured
17 30 (0.28%) WebDriver
General
1 2,325 (21.74%) Public Sector
2 2,190 (20.47%) Social Skills
3 729 (6.82%) Analytical Skills
4 669 (6.25%) Finance
5 329 (3.08%) Military
6 297 (2.78%) Documentation Skills
7 272 (2.54%) Aerospace
8 167 (1.56%) Legal
9 123 (1.15%) Banking
9 123 (1.15%) Telecoms
10 122 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
11 107 (1.00%) Manufacturing
12 103 (0.96%) Organisational Skills
13 93 (0.87%) Law
14 87 (0.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 76 (0.71%) Presentation Skills
16 63 (0.59%) Police
17 51 (0.48%) Marketing
18 50 (0.47%) Aviation
19 41 (0.38%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,629 (15.23%) Architect
2 1,005 (9.40%) Developer
3 919 (8.59%) Senior
4 767 (7.17%) Lead
5 733 (6.85%) Analyst
6 529 (4.95%) Data Engineer
7 525 (4.91%) Consultant
8 507 (4.74%) DevOps Engineer
9 347 (3.24%) Technical Architect
10 315 (2.95%) Solutions Architect
11 313 (2.93%) Software Engineer
12 309 (2.89%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 288 (2.69%) Network Engineer
14 265 (2.48%) Business Analyst
15 226 (2.11%) Security Architect
16 219 (2.05%) Project Manager
17 218 (2.04%) Designer
18 212 (1.98%) Azure Engineer
19 194 (1.81%) Delivery Manager
20 193 (1.80%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 333 (3.11%) REST
2 242 (2.26%) Spring
3 200 (1.87%) Kafka
4 199 (1.86%) React
4 199 (1.86%) Spring Boot
5 184 (1.72%) Node.js
6 180 (1.68%) .NET
7 155 (1.45%) SOAP
8 154 (1.44%) LDAP
9 150 (1.40%) RESTful
10 124 (1.16%) JSON
11 120 (1.12%) AngularJS
12 117 (1.09%) PySpark
13 115 (1.08%) Web Services
14 104 (0.97%) OAuth
15 99 (0.93%) Middleware
16 90 (0.84%) HTML
17 85 (0.79%) XML
18 83 (0.78%) Playwright
19 80 (0.75%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 391 (3.66%) Cloud Native
2 331 (3.09%) Product Ownership
3 320 (2.99%) Data Centre
4 298 (2.79%) Onboarding
5 213 (1.99%) Management Information System
6 154 (1.44%) PKI
7 147 (1.37%) Legacy Systems
8 131 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
9 129 (1.21%) Distributed Systems
9 129 (1.21%) Security Posture
10 122 (1.14%) Replication
11 99 (0.93%) Self-Motivation
12 90 (0.84%) Hybrid Cloud
13 89 (0.83%) Public Cloud
14 88 (0.82%) Data Structures
14 88 (0.82%) Security Operations Centre
15 87 (0.81%) Clustering
16 75 (0.70%) CMDB
16 75 (0.70%) Virtual Team
17 72 (0.67%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 843 (7.88%) Windows
2 738 (6.90%) Linux
3 261 (2.44%) Windows Server
4 196 (1.83%) Unix
5 136 (1.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 97 (0.91%) Android
7 88 (0.82%) Windows 10
8 69 (0.65%) Apple iOS
9 53 (0.50%) Solaris
10 39 (0.36%) Mac OS
11 38 (0.36%) Ubuntu
12 31 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 30 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
14 27 (0.25%) AIX
15 24 (0.22%) VMS
16 23 (0.22%) CentOS
17 17 (0.16%) Windows 7
18 15 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
19 12 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
20 11 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,052 (19.18%) Agile
2 1,640 (15.33%) DevOps
3 1,497 (14.00%) CI/CD
4 1,094 (10.23%) Problem-Solving
5 1,028 (9.61%) Stakeholder Management
6 996 (9.31%) Continuous Improvement
7 857 (8.01%) Migration
8 843 (7.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 780 (7.29%) Infrastructure as Code
10 664 (6.21%) Cybersecurity
11 653 (6.11%) Test Automation
12 631 (5.90%) Analytics
13 616 (5.76%) ITIL
14 602 (5.63%) Containerisation
15 588 (5.50%) Software Engineering
16 587 (5.49%) Roadmaps
17 548 (5.12%) Data Modelling
18 540 (5.05%) Decision-Making
19 478 (4.47%) AI
20 474 (4.43%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 1,197 (11.19%) Python
2 990 (9.26%) SQL
3 672 (6.28%) Java
4 547 (5.11%) PowerShell
5 328 (3.07%) JavaScript
6 221 (2.07%) C#
7 212 (1.98%) Bash
8 180 (1.68%) TypeScript
9 126 (1.18%) PL/SQL
10 99 (0.93%) C++
11 96 (0.90%) Shell Script
12 67 (0.63%) Bicep
13 62 (0.58%) Go
13 62 (0.58%) Scala
14 61 (0.57%) Ruby
15 56 (0.52%) C
16 55 (0.51%) Apex Code
17 45 (0.42%) Ada
18 42 (0.39%) R
19 40 (0.37%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 8,187 (76.54%) SC Cleared
2 1,917 (17.92%) DV Cleared
3 425 (3.97%) Degree
4 303 (2.83%) BPSS Clearance
5 218 (2.04%) Cisco Certification
6 182 (1.70%) CISSP
7 135 (1.26%) Azure Certification
8 123 (1.15%) CCNP
9 119 (1.11%) CISM
10 112 (1.05%) AWS Certification
11 102 (0.95%) Microsoft Certification
12 93 (0.87%) CCNA
13 80 (0.75%) PMP
14 74 (0.69%) Computer Science Degree
15 73 (0.68%) PMI Certification
16 71 (0.66%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 69 (0.65%) ISTQB
18 59 (0.55%) ITIL Certification
19 46 (0.43%) GIAC
20 42 (0.39%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 391 (3.66%) QA
2 318 (2.97%) Data Quality
3 303 (2.83%) NIST
4 299 (2.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 210 (1.96%) NCSC
6 205 (1.92%) Accessibility
7 174 (1.63%) GDPR
8 157 (1.47%) PMO
9 120 (1.12%) SLA
10 78 (0.73%) GRC
11 67 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 53 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials
13 44 (0.41%) WCAG
14 41 (0.38%) NIST 800
15 36 (0.34%) RMADS
16 32 (0.30%) Def Stans
17 28 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 25 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
19 24 (0.22%) COBIT
19 24 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 666 (6.23%) Docker
2 465 (4.35%) Active Directory
3 309 (2.89%) VMware Infrastructure
4 112 (1.05%) VMware ESXi
5 105 (0.98%) VMware NSX
6 89 (0.83%) Hyper-V
7 84 (0.79%) vSphere
8 72 (0.67%) Virtual Machines
9 37 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
10 36 (0.34%) Firmware
11 23 (0.22%) NFS
12 21 (0.20%) BitLocker
13 20 (0.19%) vCloud
14 19 (0.18%) Postfix
14 19 (0.18%) Squid
15 18 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
16 15 (0.14%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 9 (0.084%) KVM
18 8 (0.075%) Microsoft App-V
19 6 (0.056%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 862 (8.06%) Terraform
2 837 (7.83%) Kubernetes
3 387 (3.62%) Ansible
4 274 (2.56%) Grafana
5 227 (2.12%) Prometheus
6 112 (1.05%) vCenter Server
7 105 (0.98%) Single Sign-On
8 77 (0.72%) SCCM
9 62 (0.58%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 58 (0.54%) Microsoft Intune
11 53 (0.50%) FortiGate
12 50 (0.47%) Argo
13 42 (0.39%) Oracle RMAN
14 41 (0.38%) Puppet
15 38 (0.36%) Podman
16 37 (0.35%) SCOM
17 30 (0.28%) Nagios
17 30 (0.28%) Progress Chef
18 27 (0.25%) vRealize
19 25 (0.23%) Istio
Vendors
1 1,079 (10.09%) Microsoft
2 707 (6.61%) Oracle
3 512 (4.79%) VMware
4 411 (3.84%) ServiceNow
5 358 (3.35%) Cisco
6 353 (3.30%) SAP
7 246 (2.30%) Splunk
8 210 (1.96%) Databricks
9 172 (1.61%) Google
9 172 (1.61%) Red Hat
10 159 (1.49%) Salesforce
11 141 (1.32%) Talend
12 128 (1.20%) Palo Alto
13 126 (1.18%) IBM
14 106 (0.99%) Informatica
14 106 (0.99%) Juniper
15 98 (0.92%) CyberArk
16 97 (0.91%) Fortinet
17 91 (0.85%) Dynatrace
18 88 (0.82%) F5