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

6 months to
1 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 9,555 5,326 8,018
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 23.02% 17.50% 17.95%
As % of the Qualifications category 67.68% 58.26% 59.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,437 3,436 5,085
10th Percentile £360 £325 £360
25th Percentile £450 £444 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.65%
75th Percentile £623 £630 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £519 £540 £563
% change year-on-year -3.94% -4.00% +2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 798 277 534
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.12 £17.80
25th Percentile £20.35 £24.66 £32.63
Median hourly rate £25.58 £56.75 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -54.93% +0.45% -5.85%
75th Percentile £67.50 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.80 £83.21
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £56.49
% change year-on-year -58.08% +6.21% -2.20%

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 14,117 9,141 13,533
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.01% 30.03% 30.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,318 5,630 8,324
10th Percentile £332 £285 £290
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £517 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.52% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £614 £630 £650
90th Percentile £719 £725 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £510 £528
% change year-on-year -1.96% -3.32% -0.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,041 452 1,006
10th Percentile £16.17 £20.12 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £24.42 £19.99
Median hourly rate £25.77 £42.21 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year -38.94% +3.09% -16.45%
75th Percentile £65.00 £67.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £81.24 £81.99 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £47.50 £41.37
% change year-on-year -47.05% +14.83% -8.08%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 8,310 £525 -3.00% 1,960
UK excluding London 0 5,308 £519 -3.94% 1,613
London +5 2,881 £530 +0.95% 521
Work from Home +4 2,624 £525 - 908
South East +1 1,809 £525 -4.55% 631
South West 0 1,312 £550 -2.14% 369
Midlands +4 849 £492 -10.55% 182
North of England -2 817 £497 +3.51% 214
West Midlands +3 677 £495 -10.16% 125
North West 0 531 £500 +5.26% 129
East of England +1 347 £498 -0.50% 174
East Midlands +2 170 £425 -16.05% 56
Scotland +10 168 £475 -1.15% 43
Yorkshire -9 167 £500 -4.76% 49
North East +1 146 £450 -10.00% 37
Wales -2 78 £515 +0.28% 37
Northern Ireland +13 30 £500 +271.11% 5
Channel Islands - 1 - - 2

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
1 340 (3.56%) Confluence
2 212 (2.22%) SharePoint
3 141 (1.48%) Microsoft Exchange
4 139 (1.45%) SAS
5 82 (0.86%) Apache Spark
6 72 (0.75%) Apache
7 53 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
8 43 (0.45%) nginx
9 40 (0.42%) WebLogic
10 31 (0.32%) Skype for Business
11 21 (0.22%) Jupyter
12 19 (0.20%) CMS
13 16 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
14 15 (0.16%) Tuxedo
15 10 (0.10%) Tomcat
16 9 (0.094%) ArcGIS
16 9 (0.094%) IIS
16 9 (0.094%) Oracle Workflow
17 7 (0.073%) OpenStack
18 5 (0.052%) Mattermost
Applications
1 254 (2.66%) Microsoft Office
2 192 (2.01%) Microsoft Excel
3 122 (1.28%) Microsoft Project
4 69 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.45%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.15%) Simulink
8 6 (0.063%) Oracle Smart View
8 6 (0.063%) Sketch
8 6 (0.063%) Windchill
9 5 (0.052%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.052%) Siemens NX
10 4 (0.042%) Chatbot
11 3 (0.031%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.021%) Adobe Illustrator
12 2 (0.021%) CATIA
12 2 (0.021%) InVision
12 2 (0.021%) Photoshop
12 2 (0.021%) PlantUML
12 2 (0.021%) Stateflow
Business Applications
1 159 (1.66%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.43%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 31 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
4 28 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
5 25 (0.26%) SAP MM
5 25 (0.26%) Teamcenter
6 21 (0.22%) Dynamics CRM
7 19 (0.20%) SAP PP
8 16 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
9 15 (0.16%) Maximo
10 14 (0.15%) SAP VC
11 13 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
11 13 (0.14%) SAP QM
11 13 (0.14%) SAP WM
12 12 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
12 12 (0.13%) SAP EWM
13 11 (0.12%) Oracle General Ledger
13 11 (0.12%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 11 (0.12%) SAP HCM
14 9 (0.094%) SAP PM
Cloud Services
1 1,641 (17.17%) AWS
2 1,557 (16.30%) Azure
3 417 (4.36%) GitHub
4 406 (4.25%) GCP
5 352 (3.68%) Power Platform
6 346 (3.62%) Azure DevOps
7 312 (3.27%) Microsoft 365
8 265 (2.77%) Serverless
9 236 (2.47%) Entra ID
10 222 (2.32%) GitHub Actions
11 206 (2.16%) Amazon S3
12 182 (1.90%) OpenShift
13 171 (1.79%) AWS Lambda
14 147 (1.54%) AWS CloudFormation
15 134 (1.40%) Amazon EC2
15 134 (1.40%) Amazon EKS
16 129 (1.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 113 (1.18%) IaaS
18 111 (1.16%) OCI
19 110 (1.15%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 446 (4.67%) Firewall
2 290 (3.04%) DNS
3 218 (2.28%) Network Security
4 195 (2.04%) WAN
5 175 (1.83%) VPN
6 157 (1.64%) LAN
7 145 (1.52%) TCP/IP
8 133 (1.39%) BGP
9 130 (1.36%) DHCP
10 97 (1.02%) Wireless
11 92 (0.96%) OSPF
12 90 (0.94%) VLAN
13 73 (0.76%) Wi-Fi
14 71 (0.74%) MPLS
15 57 (0.60%) SSL
16 54 (0.57%) SAN
17 53 (0.55%) IPsec
18 49 (0.51%) Cisco ISE
19 41 (0.43%) Cisco IOS
19 41 (0.43%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 268 (2.80%) PostgreSQL
2 251 (2.63%) Power BI
3 176 (1.84%) Data Warehouse
4 139 (1.45%) SQL Server
5 121 (1.27%) Metadata
6 105 (1.10%) Oracle Database
7 99 (1.04%) Amazon RDS
8 97 (1.02%) NoSQL
9 95 (0.99%) MongoDB
10 90 (0.94%) Relational Database
11 77 (0.81%) Data Lake
12 76 (0.80%) Azure SQL Database
13 74 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
14 64 (0.67%) Big Data
15 63 (0.66%) MySQL
16 60 (0.63%) Pentaho
17 52 (0.54%) Tableau
18 48 (0.50%) Amazon Redshift
19 44 (0.46%) DynamoDB
20 43 (0.45%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 566 (5.92%) JIRA
2 465 (4.87%) Git
3 406 (4.25%) Jenkins
4 362 (3.79%) GitLab
5 110 (1.15%) Selenium
6 89 (0.93%) Postman
7 83 (0.87%) JUnit
8 61 (0.64%) Cypress.io
9 59 (0.62%) SonarQube
10 50 (0.52%) Bitbucket
11 46 (0.48%) Artifactory
11 46 (0.48%) Cucumber
11 46 (0.48%) Maven
12 44 (0.46%) Oracle APEX
13 36 (0.38%) Mockito
14 35 (0.37%) Rational DOORS
14 35 (0.37%) REST Assured
15 34 (0.36%) JMeter
16 32 (0.33%) Visual Studio
17 24 (0.25%) Metasploit
General
1 2,427 (25.40%) Public Sector
2 2,296 (24.03%) Social Skills
3 790 (8.27%) Analytical Skills
4 644 (6.74%) Finance
5 331 (3.46%) Military
6 258 (2.70%) Documentation Skills
7 208 (2.18%) Aerospace
8 185 (1.94%) Manufacturing
9 184 (1.93%) Telecoms
10 147 (1.54%) Legal
11 131 (1.37%) Organisational Skills
12 118 (1.23%) Influencing Skills
12 118 (1.23%) Marketing
13 117 (1.22%) Electronics
14 110 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
15 100 (1.05%) Banking
16 70 (0.73%) Law
17 69 (0.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 50 (0.52%) Police
19 38 (0.40%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,336 (13.98%) Architect
2 940 (9.84%) Developer
3 831 (8.70%) Senior
4 723 (7.57%) Analyst
5 643 (6.73%) Consultant
6 567 (5.93%) Lead
7 429 (4.49%) DevOps Engineer
8 352 (3.68%) Data Engineer
9 255 (2.67%) Solutions Architect
10 253 (2.65%) Network Engineer
11 252 (2.64%) Business Analyst
12 249 (2.61%) Software Engineer
13 234 (2.45%) Support Engineer
13 234 (2.45%) Technical Architect
14 198 (2.07%) Tester
15 180 (1.88%) AWS Engineer
16 172 (1.80%) Designer
17 169 (1.77%) Security Architect
18 167 (1.75%) Azure Engineer
19 161 (1.68%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 354 (3.70%) REST
2 228 (2.39%) Node.js
3 214 (2.24%) Spring
4 201 (2.10%) Kafka
5 198 (2.07%) React
6 163 (1.71%) Spring Boot
7 162 (1.70%) JSON
8 159 (1.66%) SOAP
9 150 (1.57%) LDAP
10 136 (1.42%) .NET
11 121 (1.27%) HTML
12 120 (1.26%) AngularJS
13 115 (1.20%) RESTful
14 110 (1.15%) PySpark
14 110 (1.15%) Web Services
15 106 (1.11%) OAuth
16 105 (1.10%) Oracle Fusion
17 101 (1.06%) XML
18 94 (0.98%) CSS
19 82 (0.86%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 296 (3.10%) Data Centre
2 275 (2.88%) Cloud Native
3 273 (2.86%) Product Ownership
4 243 (2.54%) Onboarding
5 204 (2.14%) PKI
6 180 (1.88%) Management Information System
7 139 (1.45%) Security Posture
8 117 (1.22%) Legacy Systems
9 116 (1.21%) Self-Motivation
10 111 (1.16%) Enterprise Software
11 99 (1.04%) Replication
12 83 (0.87%) Public Cloud
13 79 (0.83%) Security Operations Centre
14 77 (0.81%) Driving Licence
14 77 (0.81%) Hybrid Cloud
15 70 (0.73%) Distributed Systems
16 67 (0.70%) Cyber Threat
17 50 (0.52%) Clustering
18 49 (0.51%) Algorithms
19 48 (0.50%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 872 (9.13%) Windows
2 694 (7.26%) Linux
3 222 (2.32%) Windows Server
4 153 (1.60%) Windows 10
5 127 (1.33%) Android
5 127 (1.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 121 (1.27%) Unix
7 66 (0.69%) Mac OS
8 52 (0.54%) Apple iOS
9 43 (0.45%) Ubuntu
10 37 (0.39%) VMS
11 30 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
12 24 (0.25%) CentOS
12 24 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
13 22 (0.23%) Solaris
14 21 (0.22%) Windows 7
15 14 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
16 11 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
17 8 (0.084%) Mac OS X
17 8 (0.084%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,815 (19.00%) Agile
2 1,447 (15.14%) DevOps
3 1,286 (13.46%) CI/CD
4 1,170 (12.24%) Problem-Solving
5 878 (9.19%) Stakeholder Management
6 824 (8.62%) Migration
7 758 (7.93%) Continuous Improvement
8 659 (6.90%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 616 (6.45%) Cybersecurity
10 611 (6.39%) Infrastructure as Code
11 557 (5.83%) ITIL
12 541 (5.66%) Test Automation
13 526 (5.50%) Roadmaps
14 521 (5.45%) Analytics
15 520 (5.44%) Containerisation
16 447 (4.68%) Scrum
17 446 (4.67%) Software Engineering
18 445 (4.66%) Business Intelligence
19 420 (4.40%) Service Management
20 416 (4.35%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,160 (12.14%) Python
2 803 (8.40%) SQL
3 606 (6.34%) PowerShell
4 537 (5.62%) Java
5 440 (4.60%) JavaScript
6 236 (2.47%) Bash
7 212 (2.22%) TypeScript
8 186 (1.95%) C#
9 109 (1.14%) C++
10 106 (1.11%) PL/SQL
11 104 (1.09%) Shell Script
12 87 (0.91%) Go
13 65 (0.68%) C
14 59 (0.62%) Ruby
15 51 (0.53%) Ada
16 50 (0.52%) Scala
17 43 (0.45%) Bicep
18 40 (0.42%) ABAP
18 40 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
19 35 (0.37%) R
Qualifications
1 7,334 (76.76%) SC Cleared
2 1,583 (16.57%) DV Cleared
3 463 (4.85%) Degree
4 314 (3.29%) BPSS Clearance
5 182 (1.90%) Cisco Certification
6 174 (1.82%) CISSP
7 134 (1.40%) AWS Certification
8 128 (1.34%) CCNP
9 127 (1.33%) Azure Certification
10 113 (1.18%) Microsoft Certification
11 107 (1.12%) CISM
12 88 (0.92%) Computer Science Degree
13 80 (0.84%) CCNA
14 66 (0.69%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 65 (0.68%) ITIL Certification
16 63 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
17 55 (0.58%) ISTQB
18 51 (0.53%) PMP
19 49 (0.51%) Master's Degree
19 49 (0.51%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 319 (3.34%) QA
2 291 (3.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 277 (2.90%) NIST
4 262 (2.74%) Data Quality
5 209 (2.19%) NCSC
6 191 (2.00%) Accessibility
7 179 (1.87%) GDPR
8 128 (1.34%) SLA
9 103 (1.08%) PMO
10 63 (0.66%) GRC
11 60 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 49 (0.51%) WCAG
13 43 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials
14 41 (0.43%) Def Stans
15 38 (0.40%) NIST 800
16 35 (0.37%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 34 (0.36%) PCI DSS
18 32 (0.33%) COBIT
19 26 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
19 26 (0.27%) RMADS
System Software
1 657 (6.88%) Docker
2 491 (5.14%) Active Directory
3 243 (2.54%) VMware Infrastructure
4 91 (0.95%) VMware NSX
5 71 (0.74%) vSphere
6 63 (0.66%) VMware ESXi
7 61 (0.64%) Hyper-V
8 59 (0.62%) Virtual Machines
9 27 (0.28%) Firmware
9 27 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
10 22 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
11 18 (0.19%) BitLocker
12 16 (0.17%) NFS
12 16 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 11 (0.12%) Postfix
14 10 (0.10%) Squid
15 8 (0.084%) vCloud
16 6 (0.063%) KVM
16 6 (0.063%) Virtual Servers
17 5 (0.052%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 842 (8.81%) Kubernetes
2 800 (8.37%) Terraform
3 313 (3.28%) Ansible
4 236 (2.47%) Grafana
5 193 (2.02%) Prometheus
6 131 (1.37%) Single Sign-On
7 102 (1.07%) SCCM
8 92 (0.96%) vCenter Server
9 90 (0.94%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 73 (0.76%) Argo
11 72 (0.75%) Microsoft Intune
12 46 (0.48%) FortiGate
13 45 (0.47%) vRealize
14 40 (0.42%) Podman
15 37 (0.39%) Packer
16 33 (0.35%) Kibana
17 32 (0.33%) Puppet
18 30 (0.31%) OPNET
19 29 (0.30%) Progress Chef
20 25 (0.26%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,058 (11.07%) Microsoft
2 542 (5.67%) Oracle
3 468 (4.90%) VMware
4 453 (4.74%) SAP
5 436 (4.56%) Cisco
6 400 (4.19%) ServiceNow
7 231 (2.42%) Splunk
8 188 (1.97%) Red Hat
9 150 (1.57%) Databricks
10 146 (1.53%) Google
11 145 (1.52%) CyberArk
12 139 (1.45%) Palo Alto
13 131 (1.37%) Juniper
13 131 (1.37%) Salesforce
14 118 (1.23%) Atlassian
15 99 (1.04%) Dell
16 85 (0.89%) IBM
16 85 (0.89%) Talend
17 81 (0.85%) HP
18 78 (0.82%) Dynatrace