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 19 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 3 3 4
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +4
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 7,252 6,454 7,943
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 20.31% 17.81% 17.15%
As % of the Qualifications category 61.34% 60.70% 58.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,738 4,039 4,956
10th Percentile £327 £350 £371
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.64% - -2.22%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £650
90th Percentile £715 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 751 348 519
10th Percentile £18.87 £20.12 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.49 £25.26 £45.94
Median hourly rate £25.15 £55.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -54.27% -8.33% -
75th Percentile £47.31 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £55.00 £59.03
% change year-on-year -54.27% -6.83% -1.62%

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 11,823 10,632 13,473
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.12% 29.34% 29.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,581 6,431 8,540
10th Percentile £300 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £420 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £719 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £519 £532
% change year-on-year -3.66% -2.49% +1.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,037 504 768
10th Percentile £17.65 £19.40 £17.72
25th Percentile £19.38 £24.18 £27.38
Median hourly rate £25.15 £45.00 £53.67
Median % change year-on-year -44.11% -16.15% +19.26%
75th Percentile £45.46 £67.01 £68.97
90th Percentile £73.75 £75.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £47.50 £52.50
% change year-on-year -47.05% -9.52% +16.67%

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 19 November 2025.

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 19 November 2025.

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 19 November 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 0 6,345 £530 -3.64% 2,628
UK excluding London 0 4,201 £525 -4.55% 2,071
London +1 2,091 £550 - 753
Work from Home +2 2,068 £540 - 1,390
South East -1 1,202 £513 -6.82% 781
South West 0 1,088 £550 -4.35% 573
North of England -2 764 £515 +8.42% 212
Midlands +1 678 £519 -9.83% 192
West Midlands 0 524 £520 -9.57% 153
North West +1 498 £536 +12.84% 145
East of England +2 282 £525 +1.20% 307
Yorkshire -9 167 £500 +7.24% 37
Scotland -12 159 £475 - 55
East Midlands -1 139 £456 -8.75% 37
North East 0 106 £475 +5.09% 31
Wales -2 81 £550 +10.00% 33
Northern Ireland 0 44 £500 -16.67% 24
Channel Islands - 1 - - 1

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
1 264 (3.64%) Confluence
2 181 (2.50%) SharePoint
3 125 (1.72%) Microsoft Exchange
4 102 (1.41%) SAS
5 90 (1.24%) Apache
6 55 (0.76%) nginx
7 50 (0.69%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.54%) Skype for Business
9 33 (0.46%) Apache Spark
10 27 (0.37%) CMS
11 26 (0.36%) WebLogic
12 25 (0.34%) IIS
13 15 (0.21%) SharePoint Server
14 14 (0.19%) Exchange Server 2013
15 13 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2010
16 11 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 10 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2003
17 10 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2007
17 10 (0.14%) Office Communications Server
18 9 (0.12%) WordPress
Applications
1 200 (2.76%) Microsoft Office
2 146 (2.01%) Microsoft Excel
3 73 (1.01%) Microsoft Project
4 39 (0.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 35 (0.48%) MS Visio
6 22 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
7 19 (0.26%) Simulink
8 17 (0.23%) Siemens NX
9 11 (0.15%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 11 (0.15%) Sketch
10 8 (0.11%) ProjectWise
11 7 (0.097%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.097%) AutoCAD
12 6 (0.083%) Adobe Illustrator
12 6 (0.083%) Oracle Smart View
12 6 (0.083%) Photoshop
12 6 (0.083%) Revit
12 6 (0.083%) Trello
13 5 (0.069%) Navisworks
13 5 (0.069%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 174 (2.40%) SAP S/4HANA
2 40 (0.55%) Remedy ITSM
3 29 (0.40%) SAP EWM
3 29 (0.40%) SAP WM
4 25 (0.34%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 24 (0.33%) Teamcenter
6 23 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
7 22 (0.30%) SAP MM
8 21 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
8 21 (0.29%) Maximo
9 20 (0.28%) Primavera
10 17 (0.23%) SAP HCM
11 16 (0.22%) SAP PS
12 15 (0.21%) Oracle General Ledger
13 14 (0.19%) SAP VC
14 12 (0.17%) SAP EHS
14 12 (0.17%) SAP QM
15 10 (0.14%) SAP HR
15 10 (0.14%) SAP Payroll
16 9 (0.12%) SAP PP
Cloud Services
1 1,214 (16.74%) AWS
2 1,136 (15.66%) Azure
3 354 (4.88%) GitHub
4 332 (4.58%) Microsoft 365
5 267 (3.68%) Power Platform
6 266 (3.67%) Azure DevOps
7 248 (3.42%) GCP
8 201 (2.77%) Serverless
9 185 (2.55%) Amazon S3
10 183 (2.52%) GitHub Actions
11 158 (2.18%) Entra ID
12 145 (2.00%) SaaS
13 128 (1.77%) OpenShift
14 123 (1.70%) AWS CloudFormation
15 121 (1.67%) Amazon EC2
16 120 (1.65%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 115 (1.59%) AWS Lambda
18 94 (1.30%) Amazon EKS
19 89 (1.23%) Virtual Private Cloud
20 84 (1.16%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 378 (5.21%) Firewall
2 266 (3.67%) DNS
3 178 (2.45%) VPN
4 158 (2.18%) Network Security
5 135 (1.86%) WAN
6 106 (1.46%) TCP/IP
7 97 (1.34%) BGP
7 97 (1.34%) DHCP
8 95 (1.31%) LAN
9 92 (1.27%) Wireless
10 83 (1.14%) SSL
11 67 (0.92%) SAN
12 64 (0.88%) MPLS
13 60 (0.83%) Wi-Fi
14 57 (0.79%) VLAN
15 56 (0.77%) Cisco ISE
16 54 (0.74%) IPsec
17 50 (0.69%) HTTP
18 46 (0.63%) SMTP
19 42 (0.58%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 225 (3.10%) PostgreSQL
2 177 (2.44%) Power BI
3 98 (1.35%) Amazon RDS
4 97 (1.34%) SQL Server
5 90 (1.24%) MongoDB
5 90 (1.24%) Oracle Database
6 79 (1.09%) Data Warehouse
7 76 (1.05%) Relational Database
8 73 (1.01%) NoSQL
9 69 (0.95%) Metadata
10 50 (0.69%) Azure SQL Database
11 45 (0.62%) Big Data
12 44 (0.61%) MySQL
13 43 (0.59%) Elasticsearch
13 43 (0.59%) Pentaho
14 38 (0.52%) Data Lake
15 37 (0.51%) Amazon Redshift
15 37 (0.51%) SAS Enterprise Guide
16 33 (0.46%) Amazon Athena
17 31 (0.43%) Redis
Development Applications
1 482 (6.65%) JIRA
2 399 (5.50%) Git
3 384 (5.30%) Jenkins
4 276 (3.81%) GitLab
5 85 (1.17%) Selenium
6 75 (1.03%) SonarQube
7 67 (0.92%) JUnit
8 58 (0.80%) Cypress.io
9 53 (0.73%) Postman
10 49 (0.68%) Bitbucket
11 45 (0.62%) Oracle APEX
12 39 (0.54%) Mockito
13 38 (0.52%) Artifactory
14 35 (0.48%) Maven
15 34 (0.47%) Cucumber
16 30 (0.41%) CircleCI
17 26 (0.36%) REST Assured
17 26 (0.36%) Visual Studio
18 23 (0.32%) MSI
18 23 (0.32%) Rational DOORS
General
1 1,956 (26.97%) Public Sector
2 1,858 (25.62%) Social Skills
3 639 (8.81%) Analytical Skills
4 518 (7.14%) Finance
5 254 (3.50%) Military
6 232 (3.20%) Telecoms
7 217 (2.99%) Manufacturing
8 178 (2.45%) Documentation Skills
9 166 (2.29%) Electronics
10 150 (2.07%) Marketing
11 137 (1.89%) Aerospace
12 104 (1.43%) Organisational Skills
13 103 (1.42%) Legal
14 93 (1.28%) Banking
15 87 (1.20%) Influencing Skills
16 79 (1.09%) Presentation Skills
17 71 (0.98%) Law
18 54 (0.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 44 (0.61%) Police
20 41 (0.57%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 934 (12.88%) Architect
2 743 (10.25%) Developer
3 662 (9.13%) Consultant
4 554 (7.64%) Senior
5 480 (6.62%) Analyst
6 441 (6.08%) Lead
7 317 (4.37%) DevOps Engineer
8 250 (3.45%) Support Engineer
9 207 (2.85%) Network Engineer
10 195 (2.69%) Solutions Architect
11 161 (2.22%) Data Engineer
11 161 (2.22%) SAP Consultant
12 143 (1.97%) AWS Engineer
13 140 (1.93%) Technical Architect
14 130 (1.79%) IT Engineer
15 127 (1.75%) Platform Engineer
16 125 (1.72%) Administrator
17 122 (1.68%) Tester
18 121 (1.67%) Software Engineer
19 120 (1.65%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 278 (3.83%) REST
2 189 (2.61%) Node.js
3 180 (2.48%) React
4 154 (2.12%) Kafka
5 150 (2.07%) JSON
6 135 (1.86%) SOAP
7 121 (1.67%) HTML
8 119 (1.64%) Spring
9 112 (1.54%) XML
10 108 (1.49%) RESTful
11 101 (1.39%) Web Services
12 100 (1.38%) CSS
13 98 (1.35%) AngularJS
14 97 (1.34%) Spring Boot
15 92 (1.27%) .NET
16 76 (1.05%) OAuth
17 72 (0.99%) LDAP
18 64 (0.88%) Elastic Stack
19 56 (0.77%) SAML
20 54 (0.74%) SAP Fiori
Miscellaneous
1 217 (2.99%) Onboarding
2 213 (2.94%) Data Centre
3 186 (2.56%) PKI
4 175 (2.41%) Cloud Native
5 158 (2.18%) Management Information System
6 142 (1.96%) Product Ownership
7 111 (1.53%) Self-Motivation
8 96 (1.32%) Legacy Systems
9 82 (1.13%) Driving Licence
10 78 (1.08%) Cyber Threat
11 74 (1.02%) Security Operations Centre
12 70 (0.97%) Replication
13 67 (0.92%) Enterprise Software
14 64 (0.88%) CMDB
15 62 (0.85%) Security Posture
16 59 (0.81%) Hybrid Cloud
17 58 (0.80%) Private Cloud
18 56 (0.77%) Analytical Mindset
19 49 (0.68%) Public Cloud
20 43 (0.59%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 804 (11.09%) Windows
2 549 (7.57%) Linux
3 192 (2.65%) Windows Server
4 182 (2.51%) Windows 10
5 109 (1.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 91 (1.25%) Android
6 91 (1.25%) Unix
7 86 (1.19%) Mac OS
8 51 (0.70%) VMS
9 37 (0.51%) Windows Server 2019
10 34 (0.47%) Ubuntu
11 32 (0.44%) Apple iOS
12 28 (0.39%) Amazon Linux
13 26 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
14 25 (0.34%) Windows Server 2012
15 24 (0.33%) CentOS
16 23 (0.32%) Windows 7
17 19 (0.26%) Windows Server 2003
18 15 (0.21%) Mac OS X
19 9 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,409 (19.43%) Agile
2 1,110 (15.31%) DevOps
3 993 (13.69%) CI/CD
4 870 (12.00%) Problem-Solving
5 770 (10.62%) Migration
6 566 (7.80%) Stakeholder Management
7 512 (7.06%) Cybersecurity
8 484 (6.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 478 (6.59%) Infrastructure as Code
10 451 (6.22%) Continuous Improvement
11 449 (6.19%) ITIL
12 422 (5.82%) Workflow
13 411 (5.67%) Service Management
14 406 (5.60%) Business Intelligence
15 399 (5.50%) Test Automation
16 385 (5.31%) Containerisation
17 361 (4.98%) Analytics
18 344 (4.74%) Scrum
19 333 (4.59%) Roadmaps
20 321 (4.43%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 901 (12.42%) Python
2 551 (7.60%) SQL
3 478 (6.59%) PowerShell
4 457 (6.30%) Java
5 377 (5.20%) JavaScript
6 244 (3.36%) Bash
7 191 (2.63%) TypeScript
8 132 (1.82%) C#
9 98 (1.35%) C++
10 80 (1.10%) Go
11 72 (0.99%) PL/SQL
12 70 (0.97%) C
13 68 (0.94%) Shell Script
14 48 (0.66%) ABAP
14 48 (0.66%) Perl
15 35 (0.48%) Groovy
16 32 (0.44%) MATLAB
17 31 (0.43%) Ruby
18 30 (0.41%) Bicep
19 28 (0.39%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 5,593 (77.12%) SC Cleared
2 1,175 (16.20%) DV Cleared
3 344 (4.74%) Degree
4 340 (4.69%) BPSS Clearance
5 144 (1.99%) CISSP
6 128 (1.77%) Microsoft Certification
7 118 (1.63%) Cisco Certification
8 111 (1.53%) Azure Certification
9 105 (1.45%) AWS Certification
10 86 (1.19%) CCNP
11 82 (1.13%) CISM
12 56 (0.77%) Computer Science Degree
13 53 (0.73%) ITIL Certification
14 47 (0.65%) CCNA
15 45 (0.62%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 43 (0.59%) CEH
17 39 (0.54%) CHECK Team Member
18 38 (0.52%) CTC Cleared
19 33 (0.46%) GIAC
19 33 (0.46%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 235 (3.24%) QA
2 215 (2.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 213 (2.94%) NIST
4 168 (2.32%) NCSC
5 144 (1.99%) SLA
6 130 (1.79%) Accessibility
7 128 (1.77%) GDPR
8 125 (1.72%) Data Quality
9 54 (0.74%) JSP 440
10 53 (0.73%) PMO
11 45 (0.62%) NIST 800
12 44 (0.61%) WCAG
13 34 (0.47%) GRC
14 31 (0.43%) Def Stans
14 31 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 28 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials
16 24 (0.33%) RMADS
17 22 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 21 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 20 (0.28%) COBIT
System Software
1 568 (7.83%) Docker
2 414 (5.71%) Active Directory
3 223 (3.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 78 (1.08%) vSphere
5 73 (1.01%) VMware NSX
6 71 (0.98%) VMware ESXi
7 49 (0.68%) Virtual Machines
8 45 (0.62%) Firmware
9 42 (0.58%) Hyper-V
10 28 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
11 21 (0.29%) DFS Replication
12 20 (0.28%) Postfix
13 16 (0.22%) NFS
14 15 (0.21%) Dovecot
15 11 (0.15%) Squid
15 11 (0.15%) Terminal Services
16 10 (0.14%) BitLocker
16 10 (0.14%) Brightmail
16 10 (0.14%) ISA Server
17 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 688 (9.49%) Kubernetes
2 661 (9.11%) Terraform
3 292 (4.03%) Ansible
4 180 (2.48%) Grafana
5 155 (2.14%) Prometheus
6 115 (1.59%) SCCM
7 91 (1.25%) Single Sign-On
8 85 (1.17%) Microsoft Intune
9 64 (0.88%) vCenter Server
10 58 (0.80%) Argo
11 51 (0.70%) Packer
12 49 (0.68%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 39 (0.54%) Kibana
14 33 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
15 28 (0.39%) FortiGate
15 28 (0.39%) vRealize
16 27 (0.37%) SCOM
17 24 (0.33%) Consul
17 24 (0.33%) Nessus
18 22 (0.30%) Nmap
Vendors
1 922 (12.71%) Microsoft
2 519 (7.16%) SAP
3 446 (6.15%) Cisco
4 382 (5.27%) Oracle
4 382 (5.27%) VMware
5 330 (4.55%) ServiceNow
6 186 (2.56%) Splunk
7 156 (2.15%) Juniper
8 134 (1.85%) Red Hat
9 117 (1.61%) Google
10 111 (1.53%) Salesforce
11 99 (1.37%) Palo Alto
12 97 (1.34%) HP
13 96 (1.32%) Dell
14 90 (1.24%) Atlassian
15 86 (1.19%) CyberArk
16 85 (1.17%) IBM
17 77 (1.06%) SolarWinds
18 73 (1.01%) F5
19 71 (0.98%) Apple