Security Cleared Contracts

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 30 April 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 4 3 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 +2 +6
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 5,173 8,092 9,913
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 17.69% 18.56% 16.61%
As % of the Qualifications category 57.55% 60.56% 60.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,446 5,289 6,808
10th Percentile £340 £350 £381
25th Percentile £450 £456 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £528 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.95% - -
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £689 £738 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £547 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -0.55% - +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 290 530 554
10th Percentile £18.50 £13.99 £19.00
25th Percentile £21.46 £21.46 £28.93
Median hourly rate £50.95 £57.33 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -11.13% -4.46% +14.29%
75th Percentile £67.50 £72.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.39 £83.75 £80.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £58.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year -0.86% +0.87% +9.52%

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 8,989 13,363 16,304
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 30.75% 30.65% 27.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,678 8,219 10,866
10th Percentile £288 £300 £325
25th Percentile £413 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £535 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.87% -2.73% +4.76%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £707 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £501 £530 £530
% change year-on-year -5.57% - +6.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 516 1,077 849
10th Percentile £18.13 £13.87 £15.25
25th Percentile £22.00 £17.88 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.72 £40.00 £54.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.79% -25.93% +29.75%
75th Percentile £66.00 £61.60 £68.25
90th Percentile £80.34 £75.25 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £40.94 £49.57
% change year-on-year +9.92% -17.41% +55.44%

Security Cleared
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Security Cleared as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Security Cleared.

Daily rate trend for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Security Cleared over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Security Cleared.

Hourly rate trend for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Security Cleared over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Top 17 Contract 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 30 April 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 -1 4,518 £537 -2.36% 2,205
UK excluding London -1 2,705 £547 -0.55% 1,754
London 0 1,669 £525 -4.55% 543
Work from Home -1 1,617 £525 -4.55% 2,653
South West 0 799 £551 +0.18% 486
South East -1 792 £550 -5.50% 504
North of England +2 581 £500 -4.76% 302
North West 0 412 £500 -4.76% 203
Midlands -3 290 £525 +5.00% 201
West Midlands -2 221 £537 +19.33% 139
East of England -1 171 £450 -10.00% 160
Yorkshire +2 98 £525 - 73
North East +4 80 £508 -3.33% 30
East Midlands -3 69 £475 -13.64% 61
Scotland -42 69 £450 -21.74% 98
Wales -1 36 £533 -11.25% 25
Northern Ireland -5 15 £475 -2.56% 13

Security Cleared
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 165 (3.19%) Confluence
2 157 (3.03%) SharePoint
3 91 (1.76%) Microsoft Exchange
4 71 (1.37%) Apache
5 37 (0.72%) Apache Spark
6 34 (0.66%) nginx
7 27 (0.52%) Skype for Business
8 25 (0.48%) Apache Airflow
9 24 (0.46%) CMS
9 24 (0.46%) IIS
9 24 (0.46%) SAS
10 21 (0.41%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 13 (0.25%) WebLogic
12 12 (0.23%) Traefik
13 10 (0.19%) Camunda
13 10 (0.19%) Tomcat
14 9 (0.17%) Jupyter
14 9 (0.17%) MTS
14 9 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
14 9 (0.17%) WebSphere
Applications
1 110 (2.13%) Microsoft Office
2 81 (1.57%) Microsoft Excel
3 40 (0.77%) Microsoft Project
4 34 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 19 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
6 14 (0.27%) Oracle Smart View
7 12 (0.23%) MS Visio
8 11 (0.21%) Simulink
9 10 (0.19%) Sketch
10 7 (0.14%) Siemens NX
10 7 (0.14%) Trello
11 5 (0.097%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.097%) InfoPath
11 5 (0.097%) Windchill
12 2 (0.039%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.039%) InVision
12 2 (0.039%) ProjectWise
13 1 (0.019%) CATIA
13 1 (0.019%) Revit
13 1 (0.019%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 78 (1.51%) SAP S/4HANA
2 29 (0.56%) Primavera
3 24 (0.46%) Dynamics CRM
3 24 (0.46%) Teamcenter
4 15 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
4 15 (0.29%) SAP PP
5 11 (0.21%) SAP HR
6 10 (0.19%) SAP EWM
7 9 (0.17%) Oracle Payables
7 9 (0.17%) Remedy ITSM
7 9 (0.17%) SAP CO
7 9 (0.17%) SAP Payroll
8 8 (0.15%) Oracle Assets
8 8 (0.15%) Oracle Cash Management
8 8 (0.15%) Oracle ERP
8 8 (0.15%) Oracle Receivables
8 8 (0.15%) SAP CRM
8 8 (0.15%) SAP FI
8 8 (0.15%) SAP FI/CO
8 8 (0.15%) SAP PS
Cloud Services
1 1,066 (20.61%) AWS
2 758 (14.65%) Azure
3 226 (4.37%) Power Platform
4 208 (4.02%) Microsoft 365
5 171 (3.31%) Serverless
6 148 (2.86%) GCP
7 143 (2.76%) Amazon S3
8 132 (2.55%) Azure DevOps
9 126 (2.44%) GitHub
10 121 (2.34%) AWS Lambda
11 120 (2.32%) Entra ID
12 105 (2.03%) SaaS
13 101 (1.95%) AWS CloudFormation
14 80 (1.55%) Amazon EKS
15 75 (1.45%) Amazon EC2
16 74 (1.43%) PaaS
17 69 (1.33%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 68 (1.31%) Power Automate
18 68 (1.31%) PowerApps
19 67 (1.30%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 325 (6.28%) Firewall
2 245 (4.74%) DNS
3 170 (3.29%) VPN
4 150 (2.90%) Network Security
5 127 (2.46%) WAN
6 100 (1.93%) DHCP
7 86 (1.66%) TCP/IP
8 83 (1.60%) BGP
8 83 (1.60%) LAN
9 74 (1.43%) OSPF
10 59 (1.14%) Cisco ASA
10 59 (1.14%) Wi-Fi
11 58 (1.12%) HTTP
11 58 (1.12%) IPsec
12 51 (0.99%) Cisco Firepower
13 47 (0.91%) SMTP
14 45 (0.87%) SSL
15 43 (0.83%) Cisco ISE
16 41 (0.79%) EIGRP
17 39 (0.75%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 222 (4.29%) PostgreSQL
2 157 (3.03%) Power BI
3 128 (2.47%) Relational Database
4 112 (2.17%) SQL Server
5 108 (2.09%) MongoDB
6 97 (1.88%) Data Warehouse
7 96 (1.86%) Oracle Database
8 89 (1.72%) Amazon RDS
9 67 (1.30%) MySQL
10 61 (1.18%) Data Lake
11 56 (1.08%) Big Data
12 53 (1.02%) Tableau
13 51 (0.99%) NoSQL
14 48 (0.93%) Oracle Reports
15 46 (0.89%) Elasticsearch
16 41 (0.79%) Metadata
17 34 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
18 32 (0.62%) Amazon Athena
19 29 (0.56%) Redis
20 24 (0.46%) Neo4j
Development Applications
1 297 (5.74%) JIRA
2 255 (4.93%) Jenkins
3 251 (4.85%) Git
4 181 (3.50%) GitLab
5 76 (1.47%) JUnit
6 63 (1.22%) Selenium
7 52 (1.01%) Cucumber
7 52 (1.01%) SonarQube
8 51 (0.99%) Bitbucket
9 42 (0.81%) Cypress.io
10 40 (0.77%) Gradle
11 39 (0.75%) Mockito
12 37 (0.72%) Maven
13 33 (0.64%) Liquibase
14 32 (0.62%) REST Assured
15 27 (0.52%) MSI
16 25 (0.48%) Postman
17 23 (0.44%) JMeter
18 19 (0.37%) ScriptRunner
19 17 (0.33%) CircleCI
General
1 1,381 (26.70%) Public Sector
2 1,228 (23.74%) Social Skills
3 487 (9.41%) Analytical Skills
4 425 (8.22%) Finance
5 172 (3.32%) Telecoms
6 151 (2.92%) Manufacturing
7 145 (2.80%) Military
8 114 (2.20%) Electronics
9 110 (2.13%) Marketing
10 98 (1.89%) Legal
11 78 (1.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 74 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
13 65 (1.26%) Organisational Skills
14 61 (1.18%) Aerospace
15 60 (1.16%) Law
16 44 (0.85%) Police
17 39 (0.75%) Banking
18 38 (0.73%) Documentation Skills
18 38 (0.73%) Influencing Skills
19 19 (0.37%) Billing
Job Titles
1 781 (15.10%) Architect
2 589 (11.39%) Developer
3 460 (8.89%) Senior
4 374 (7.23%) Analyst
5 289 (5.59%) Lead
6 287 (5.55%) Consultant
7 225 (4.35%) DevOps Engineer
8 206 (3.98%) Data Engineer
9 185 (3.58%) Network Engineer
10 157 (3.03%) Support Engineer
11 145 (2.80%) Solutions Architect
12 139 (2.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 119 (2.30%) Software Engineer
14 114 (2.20%) Business Analyst
15 112 (2.17%) Java Developer
16 110 (2.13%) AWS Engineer
17 107 (2.07%) Technical Architect
18 104 (2.01%) Project Manager
19 103 (1.99%) Security Architect
20 91 (1.76%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 191 (3.69%) React
2 187 (3.61%) Kafka
3 146 (2.82%) Spring
4 143 (2.76%) Spring Boot
5 140 (2.71%) REST
6 131 (2.53%) HTML
7 106 (2.05%) .NET
7 106 (2.05%) CSS
8 102 (1.97%) Node.js
9 94 (1.82%) SOAP
10 83 (1.60%) RESTful
10 83 (1.60%) Web Services
11 66 (1.28%) AngularJS
12 63 (1.22%) Swagger
13 59 (1.14%) OpenAPI
14 53 (1.02%) Oracle Fusion
15 52 (1.01%) XML
16 51 (0.99%) PySpark
17 46 (0.89%) Middleware
18 44 (0.85%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 165 (3.19%) Onboarding
2 164 (3.17%) Data Centre
3 142 (2.75%) PKI
4 139 (2.69%) Management Information System
5 71 (1.37%) Product Ownership
6 70 (1.35%) Driving Licence
7 61 (1.18%) Public Cloud
8 58 (1.12%) Hybrid Cloud
9 50 (0.97%) CMDB
9 50 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
10 43 (0.83%) Security Operations Centre
10 43 (0.83%) Security Posture
11 41 (0.79%) Enterprise Software
12 40 (0.77%) Linux Command Line
13 38 (0.73%) Cloud Native
13 38 (0.73%) Legacy Systems
14 35 (0.68%) Clustering
15 34 (0.66%) Cyber Threat
16 33 (0.64%) Replication
17 31 (0.60%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 609 (11.77%) Windows
2 491 (9.49%) Linux
3 225 (4.35%) Windows Server
4 142 (2.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 123 (2.38%) Windows 10
6 66 (1.28%) Unix
7 45 (0.87%) Windows Server 2019
8 41 (0.79%) CentOS
9 40 (0.77%) Windows Server 2016
10 36 (0.70%) Windows Server 2012
11 32 (0.62%) Android
12 27 (0.52%) Windows 7
13 25 (0.48%) Mac OS
14 22 (0.43%) VMS
15 20 (0.39%) Apple iOS
15 20 (0.39%) Ubuntu
16 19 (0.37%) AIX
17 15 (0.29%) Windows Server 2003
18 11 (0.21%) Solaris
19 10 (0.19%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 994 (19.22%) Agile
2 808 (15.62%) Problem-Solving
3 715 (13.82%) DevOps
4 542 (10.48%) CI/CD
5 390 (7.54%) Migration
6 384 (7.42%) ITIL
7 347 (6.71%) Stakeholder Management
8 327 (6.32%) Microservices
9 326 (6.30%) Containerisation
10 308 (5.95%) Software Engineering
11 285 (5.51%) Test Automation
12 280 (5.41%) Service Management
13 262 (5.06%) Project Management
14 253 (4.89%) Business Intelligence
15 244 (4.72%) Analytics
15 244 (4.72%) Infrastructure as Code
16 231 (4.47%) Cybersecurity
17 197 (3.81%) Roadmaps
18 196 (3.79%) Technical Leadership
19 192 (3.71%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 651 (12.58%) Python
2 567 (10.96%) SQL
3 413 (7.98%) Java
4 354 (6.84%) PowerShell
5 319 (6.17%) JavaScript
6 194 (3.75%) Bash
7 136 (2.63%) C#
8 131 (2.53%) TypeScript
9 91 (1.76%) PL/SQL
10 54 (1.04%) C++
11 51 (0.99%) Go
12 49 (0.95%) ABAP
13 39 (0.75%) Perl
14 30 (0.58%) Shell Script
15 25 (0.48%) R
16 24 (0.46%) Ada
17 23 (0.44%) C
18 21 (0.41%) Groovy
18 21 (0.41%) Scala
18 21 (0.41%) VB
Qualifications
1 4,076 (78.79%) SC Cleared
2 858 (16.59%) DV Cleared
3 295 (5.70%) Degree
4 175 (3.38%) BPSS Clearance
5 158 (3.05%) Cisco Certification
6 100 (1.93%) CCNP
7 98 (1.89%) AWS Certification
8 83 (1.60%) CISSP
9 79 (1.53%) Microsoft Certification
10 73 (1.41%) Computer Science Degree
11 69 (1.33%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 66 (1.28%) ITIL Certification
13 61 (1.18%) CCNA
14 53 (1.02%) CISM
15 49 (0.95%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 35 (0.68%) Azure Certification
17 34 (0.66%) CTC Cleared
18 31 (0.60%) Dell Certification
18 31 (0.60%) MCSE
19 30 (0.58%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 178 (3.44%) QA
2 117 (2.26%) SLA
3 103 (1.99%) NIST
4 93 (1.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 85 (1.64%) Data Quality
6 73 (1.41%) NCSC
7 64 (1.24%) GDPR
8 52 (1.01%) Accessibility
9 49 (0.95%) PMO
10 30 (0.58%) Def Stans
11 26 (0.50%) GRC
12 25 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials
13 24 (0.46%) JSP 440
14 23 (0.44%) HIPAA
15 18 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 15 (0.29%) WCAG
17 12 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
17 12 (0.23%) NIST 800
17 12 (0.23%) PCI DSS
18 11 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 367 (7.09%) Active Directory
2 366 (7.08%) Docker
3 258 (4.99%) VMware Infrastructure
4 84 (1.62%) Hyper-V
5 75 (1.45%) VMware NSX
6 71 (1.37%) VMware ESXi
7 51 (0.99%) vSphere
8 47 (0.91%) Virtual Machines
9 29 (0.56%) Firmware
10 27 (0.52%) Microsoft App-V
11 25 (0.48%) BitLocker
12 22 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
13 20 (0.39%) NFS
14 10 (0.19%) Terminal Services
15 9 (0.17%) Samba
16 8 (0.15%) vCloud
16 8 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.14%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 7 (0.14%) Microsoft Virtual Server
18 5 (0.097%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 492 (9.51%) Kubernetes
2 429 (8.29%) Terraform
3 295 (5.70%) Ansible
4 104 (2.01%) Microsoft Intune
5 97 (1.88%) SCCM
6 92 (1.78%) Grafana
7 84 (1.62%) Prometheus
8 78 (1.51%) vCenter Server
9 76 (1.47%) Puppet
10 48 (0.93%) Progress Chef
11 45 (0.87%) Single Sign-On
12 39 (0.75%) WSUS
13 35 (0.68%) FortiGate
14 33 (0.64%) Packer
15 31 (0.60%) Jamf Pro
16 25 (0.48%) Kibana
17 24 (0.46%) Istio
17 24 (0.46%) vRealize
18 19 (0.37%) Nessus
19 18 (0.35%) Consul
Vendors
1 677 (13.09%) Microsoft
2 384 (7.42%) VMware
3 355 (6.86%) Cisco
4 316 (6.11%) Oracle
5 307 (5.93%) SAP
6 210 (4.06%) ServiceNow
7 124 (2.40%) Palo Alto
8 116 (2.24%) Google
9 112 (2.17%) HP
10 107 (2.07%) Databricks
11 105 (2.03%) Dell
12 98 (1.89%) Juniper
12 98 (1.89%) Red Hat
13 94 (1.82%) Splunk
14 76 (1.47%) Atlassian
15 68 (1.31%) F5
16 66 (1.28%) Citrix
17 58 (1.12%) SolarWinds
18 47 (0.91%) Fortinet
19 45 (0.87%) Apple