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

6 months to
13 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,499 5,228 8,086
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.85% 17.86% 18.43%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.20% 58.02% 60.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,153 3,496 5,261
10th Percentile £364 £340 £358
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £534 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.59% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £520 £548 £550
% change year-on-year -5.11% -0.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 845 279 503
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.89
25th Percentile £21.25 £24.18 £21.46
Median hourly rate £52.78 £54.99 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -4.03% +4.74% -12.50%
75th Percentile £72.50 £67.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.32 £77.67 £83.68
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £59.50 £55.08
% change year-on-year -11.76% +8.03% -4.22%

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 15,172 9,010 13,438
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.02% 30.78% 30.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,086 5,729 8,305
10th Percentile £349 £295 £300
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £537
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -2.23% -2.36%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £510 £525
% change year-on-year -1.96% -2.86% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,104 496 1,028
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.50 £13.69
25th Percentile £20.82 £22.93 £17.58
Median hourly rate £42.25 £45.00 £38.85
Median % change year-on-year -6.11% +15.83% -27.62%
75th Percentile £69.58 £67.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.25 £80.80 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.25 £47.65 £40.00
% change year-on-year -11.34% +19.13% -19.22%

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 April 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 April 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 13 April 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 9,114 £525 -2.78% 1,716
UK excluding London +1 5,830 £520 -5.11% 1,456
London +6 3,200 £525 - 446
Work from Home +4 2,781 £525 -0.66% 723
South East +1 2,145 £531 -3.44% 514
South West 0 1,361 £538 -4.44% 341
Midlands +4 901 £485 -9.68% 144
North of England -1 854 £488 -2.48% 240
West Midlands +4 754 £492 -8.89% 98
North West -1 531 £500 - 138
East of England +2 364 £500 +53.26% 151
Scotland +24 199 £513 +2.50% 51
Yorkshire -4 199 £484 -7.86% 49
North East +1 159 £450 -6.25% 54
East Midlands -1 143 £450 -11.11% 46
Wales +3 82 £550 +1.85% 33
Northern Ireland +9 22 £463 -2.63% 8

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
1 390 (3.71%) Confluence
2 231 (2.20%) SharePoint
3 166 (1.58%) SAS
4 139 (1.32%) Microsoft Exchange
5 102 (0.97%) Apache Spark
6 88 (0.84%) Apache
7 66 (0.63%) Apache Airflow
8 44 (0.42%) nginx
9 41 (0.39%) WebLogic
10 23 (0.22%) Jupyter
11 18 (0.17%) CMS
12 17 (0.16%) Skype for Business
13 16 (0.15%) IIS
14 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
15 14 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
15 14 (0.13%) Tomcat
16 12 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
17 11 (0.10%) ArcGIS
17 11 (0.10%) NetWeaver
18 8 (0.076%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 232 (2.21%) Microsoft Office
2 198 (1.89%) Microsoft Excel
3 131 (1.25%) Microsoft Project
4 77 (0.73%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 47 (0.45%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.15%) Simulink
8 7 (0.067%) Notepad++
9 5 (0.048%) Windchill
10 4 (0.038%) Siemens NX
10 4 (0.038%) Sketch
11 3 (0.029%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.019%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.019%) CATIA
12 2 (0.019%) Chatbot
12 2 (0.019%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.019%) InVision
12 2 (0.019%) Lectora
12 2 (0.019%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.019%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 112 (1.07%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (0.42%) Remedy ITSM
3 43 (0.41%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 30 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
5 28 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
6 26 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 20 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
8 19 (0.18%) SAP PP
9 18 (0.17%) Maximo
10 14 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
11 13 (0.12%) Temenos T24
12 12 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
13 11 (0.10%) Findur
13 11 (0.10%) SAP PSCD
14 9 (0.086%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 9 (0.086%) SAP HCM
14 9 (0.086%) SAP MM
14 9 (0.086%) SAP PM
15 8 (0.076%) Salesforce CRM
15 8 (0.076%) SAP VC
Cloud Services
1 1,811 (17.25%) AWS
2 1,761 (16.77%) Azure
3 457 (4.35%) GitHub
4 431 (4.11%) GCP
5 410 (3.91%) Azure DevOps
6 372 (3.54%) Power Platform
7 290 (2.76%) Serverless
8 284 (2.71%) Microsoft 365
9 247 (2.35%) Entra ID
10 238 (2.27%) GitHub Actions
11 218 (2.08%) Amazon S3
12 195 (1.86%) AWS Lambda
13 166 (1.58%) OpenShift
14 156 (1.49%) PaaS
15 147 (1.40%) AWS CloudFormation
16 142 (1.35%) IaaS
17 134 (1.28%) Amazon EC2
18 132 (1.26%) Amazon EKS
19 125 (1.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 116 (1.10%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 490 (4.67%) Firewall
2 289 (2.75%) DNS
3 234 (2.23%) Network Security
4 230 (2.19%) WAN
5 206 (1.96%) LAN
6 187 (1.78%) VPN
7 148 (1.41%) BGP
8 136 (1.30%) DHCP
9 129 (1.23%) TCP/IP
10 119 (1.13%) OSPF
11 102 (0.97%) VLAN
12 88 (0.84%) Wireless
13 73 (0.70%) Wi-Fi
14 68 (0.65%) MPLS
15 61 (0.58%) SAN
16 57 (0.54%) SSL
17 51 (0.49%) SD-WAN
18 50 (0.48%) IPsec
19 49 (0.47%) Cisco ISE
20 46 (0.44%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 282 (2.69%) Power BI
2 269 (2.56%) PostgreSQL
3 214 (2.04%) Data Warehouse
4 195 (1.86%) SQL Server
5 151 (1.44%) Metadata
6 124 (1.18%) Oracle Database
7 109 (1.04%) Amazon RDS
8 103 (0.98%) NoSQL
9 102 (0.97%) MongoDB
10 97 (0.92%) Relational Database
11 91 (0.87%) Data Lake
12 85 (0.81%) Azure SQL Database
13 83 (0.79%) MySQL
14 78 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
15 75 (0.71%) Tableau
16 70 (0.67%) Pentaho
17 69 (0.66%) Big Data
18 66 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
19 56 (0.53%) Delta Lake
20 54 (0.51%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 617 (5.88%) JIRA
2 512 (4.88%) Git
3 401 (3.82%) Jenkins
4 363 (3.46%) GitLab
5 124 (1.18%) Selenium
6 88 (0.84%) Postman
7 87 (0.83%) JUnit
8 63 (0.60%) SonarQube
9 53 (0.50%) Rational DOORS
10 51 (0.49%) Bitbucket
11 48 (0.46%) Artifactory
11 48 (0.46%) JMeter
12 44 (0.42%) Cypress.io
13 43 (0.41%) Maven
14 41 (0.39%) Cucumber
14 41 (0.39%) Oracle APEX
15 38 (0.36%) Mockito
16 36 (0.34%) Visual Studio
17 30 (0.29%) REST Assured
18 22 (0.21%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 2,468 (23.51%) Public Sector
2 2,335 (22.24%) Social Skills
3 851 (8.11%) Analytical Skills
4 712 (6.78%) Finance
5 344 (3.28%) Military
6 287 (2.73%) Documentation Skills
7 244 (2.32%) Aerospace
8 171 (1.63%) Legal
9 167 (1.59%) Telecoms
10 163 (1.55%) Manufacturing
11 135 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
12 122 (1.16%) Banking
13 113 (1.08%) Organisational Skills
14 99 (0.94%) Presentation Skills
15 94 (0.90%) Marketing
16 88 (0.84%) Electronics
17 85 (0.81%) Law
18 74 (0.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 66 (0.63%) Police
20 32 (0.30%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,604 (15.28%) Architect
2 1,017 (9.69%) Developer
3 934 (8.90%) Senior
4 752 (7.16%) Analyst
5 685 (6.52%) Lead
6 584 (5.56%) Consultant
7 455 (4.33%) Data Engineer
8 444 (4.23%) DevOps Engineer
9 315 (3.00%) Technical Architect
10 307 (2.92%) Software Engineer
11 291 (2.77%) Network Engineer
12 290 (2.76%) Solutions Architect
13 273 (2.60%) Business Analyst
14 215 (2.05%) Azure Engineer
15 212 (2.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 212 (2.02%) Project Manager
16 201 (1.91%) Designer
17 200 (1.90%) Security Architect
18 185 (1.76%) Delivery Manager
19 183 (1.74%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 379 (3.61%) REST
2 237 (2.26%) Spring
3 210 (2.00%) Kafka
4 208 (1.98%) Node.js
5 184 (1.75%) React
6 183 (1.74%) Spring Boot
7 178 (1.70%) .NET
8 168 (1.60%) JSON
9 157 (1.50%) SOAP
10 150 (1.43%) LDAP
11 142 (1.35%) RESTful
12 132 (1.26%) PySpark
13 126 (1.20%) Web Services
14 120 (1.14%) AngularJS
15 104 (0.99%) OAuth
16 100 (0.95%) Oracle Fusion
17 98 (0.93%) XML
18 97 (0.92%) HTML
19 87 (0.83%) Middleware
20 78 (0.74%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 349 (3.32%) Product Ownership
2 322 (3.07%) Cloud Native
3 313 (2.98%) Data Centre
4 269 (2.56%) Onboarding
5 199 (1.90%) PKI
6 198 (1.89%) Management Information System
7 132 (1.26%) Security Posture
8 131 (1.25%) Self-Motivation
9 130 (1.24%) Legacy Systems
10 128 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
11 118 (1.12%) Replication
12 115 (1.10%) Distributed Systems
13 97 (0.92%) Public Cloud
14 82 (0.78%) Data Structures
15 81 (0.77%) Hybrid Cloud
16 80 (0.76%) Security Operations Centre
17 69 (0.66%) Clustering
18 68 (0.65%) Virtual Team
19 62 (0.59%) Driving Licence
20 59 (0.56%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 878 (8.36%) Windows
2 753 (7.17%) Linux
3 253 (2.41%) Windows Server
4 150 (1.43%) Unix
5 135 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 121 (1.15%) Android
7 113 (1.08%) Windows 10
8 63 (0.60%) Apple iOS
9 54 (0.51%) Mac OS
10 40 (0.38%) Ubuntu
11 35 (0.33%) VMS
12 26 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
13 25 (0.24%) Solaris
13 25 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 22 (0.21%) AIX
15 21 (0.20%) CentOS
16 16 (0.15%) Windows 7
17 14 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
18 9 (0.086%) Windows Server 2008
19 8 (0.076%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,071 (19.73%) Agile
2 1,573 (14.98%) DevOps
3 1,407 (13.40%) CI/CD
4 1,182 (11.26%) Problem-Solving
5 979 (9.32%) Stakeholder Management
6 897 (8.54%) Continuous Improvement
7 886 (8.44%) Migration
8 791 (7.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 679 (6.47%) Infrastructure as Code
10 647 (6.16%) ITIL
11 635 (6.05%) Cybersecurity
12 626 (5.96%) Analytics
13 611 (5.82%) Test Automation
14 582 (5.54%) Roadmaps
15 563 (5.36%) Containerisation
16 532 (5.07%) Software Engineering
17 507 (4.83%) Data Modelling
18 500 (4.76%) Scrum
19 466 (4.44%) Business Intelligence
20 463 (4.41%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 1,239 (11.80%) Python
2 958 (9.12%) SQL
3 624 (5.94%) PowerShell
4 618 (5.89%) Java
5 392 (3.73%) JavaScript
6 227 (2.16%) C#
7 216 (2.06%) Bash
8 181 (1.72%) TypeScript
9 124 (1.18%) PL/SQL
10 109 (1.04%) Shell Script
11 105 (1.00%) C++
12 76 (0.72%) Go
13 72 (0.69%) Ruby
14 62 (0.59%) Scala
15 60 (0.57%) C
16 56 (0.53%) Bicep
17 48 (0.46%) Apex Code
17 48 (0.46%) R
18 43 (0.41%) Ada
18 43 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 8,002 (76.22%) SC Cleared
2 1,860 (17.72%) DV Cleared
3 486 (4.63%) Degree
4 328 (3.12%) BPSS Clearance
5 201 (1.91%) Cisco Certification
6 184 (1.75%) CISSP
7 147 (1.40%) Azure Certification
8 133 (1.27%) AWS Certification
9 129 (1.23%) CCNP
10 116 (1.10%) CISM
11 108 (1.03%) Microsoft Certification
12 85 (0.81%) CCNA
13 80 (0.76%) Computer Science Degree
14 75 (0.71%) ITIL Certification
15 68 (0.65%) PMP
15 68 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
16 62 (0.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 61 (0.58%) ISTQB
17 61 (0.58%) PMI Certification
18 52 (0.50%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 362 (3.45%) QA
2 319 (3.04%) Data Quality
3 315 (3.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 301 (2.87%) NIST
5 213 (2.03%) NCSC
6 182 (1.73%) Accessibility
7 174 (1.66%) GDPR
8 133 (1.27%) PMO
9 116 (1.10%) SLA
10 71 (0.68%) JSP 440
11 67 (0.64%) GRC
12 47 (0.45%) NIST 800
13 43 (0.41%) COBIT
14 42 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
15 41 (0.39%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 40 (0.38%) WCAG
17 36 (0.34%) PCI DSS
18 33 (0.31%) RMADS
19 29 (0.28%) Def Stans
20 25 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 696 (6.63%) Docker
2 488 (4.65%) Active Directory
3 285 (2.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 104 (0.99%) VMware NSX
5 82 (0.78%) VMware ESXi
6 78 (0.74%) vSphere
7 77 (0.73%) Hyper-V
8 54 (0.51%) Virtual Machines
9 37 (0.35%) Firmware
10 31 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
11 23 (0.22%) BitLocker
12 20 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
13 17 (0.16%) NFS
13 17 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 14 (0.13%) Postfix
15 12 (0.11%) Squid
15 12 (0.11%) vCloud
16 8 (0.076%) Microsoft App-V
17 7 (0.067%) KVM
18 6 (0.057%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 882 (8.40%) Kubernetes
2 833 (7.93%) Terraform
3 335 (3.19%) Ansible
4 245 (2.33%) Grafana
5 206 (1.96%) Prometheus
6 125 (1.19%) Single Sign-On
7 97 (0.92%) vCenter Server
8 86 (0.82%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 86 (0.82%) SCCM
9 64 (0.61%) Argo
9 64 (0.61%) Microsoft Intune
10 57 (0.54%) FortiGate
11 38 (0.36%) Podman
11 38 (0.36%) Puppet
12 37 (0.35%) Packer
13 36 (0.34%) Progress Chef
13 36 (0.34%) vRealize
14 31 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
15 30 (0.29%) OPNET
16 28 (0.27%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,082 (10.31%) Microsoft
2 631 (6.01%) Oracle
3 515 (4.91%) VMware
4 425 (4.05%) Cisco
5 422 (4.02%) SAP
6 419 (3.99%) ServiceNow
7 238 (2.27%) Splunk
8 212 (2.02%) Databricks
9 194 (1.85%) Red Hat
10 177 (1.69%) Salesforce
11 155 (1.48%) Google
12 131 (1.25%) Atlassian
13 130 (1.24%) IBM
14 123 (1.17%) Juniper
15 122 (1.16%) Palo Alto
16 104 (0.99%) CyberArk
16 104 (0.99%) Talend
17 87 (0.83%) Dell
17 87 (0.83%) Remedy
18 84 (0.80%) Fortinet