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

6 months to
21 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,634 5,178 7,750
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.04% 17.79% 18.22%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.61% 57.48% 60.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,282 3,419 5,135
10th Percentile £380 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £529 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.76% -3.82% -
75th Percentile £625 £624 £650
90th Percentile £725 £689 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 835 300 516
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £13.93
25th Percentile £21.72 £22.23 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £37.25 £55.80
Median % change year-on-year +47.65% -33.24% -7.00%
75th Percentile £73.46 £65.65 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.22 £84.42
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £44.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +25.00% -23.48% -

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 15,276 9,009 12,782
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.66% 30.95% 30.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,147 5,671 7,961
10th Percentile £350 £281 £306
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year - -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £623 £619 £646
90th Percentile £721 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £501 £500 £530
% change year-on-year +0.10% -5.66% +0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,080 516 1,058
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.13 £13.69
25th Percentile £21.33 £21.63 £17.80
Median hourly rate £47.80 £35.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.56% -12.50% -27.26%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.25 £78.55 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £32.50 £40.94
% change year-on-year +46.15% -20.62% -18.12%

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 21 May 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 21 May 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 21 May 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 +2 9,210 £525 -2.28% 1,804
UK excluding London +1 5,910 £525 -2.33% 1,491
London +6 3,277 £525 - 455
Work from Home +4 2,859 £525 - 877
South East +1 2,217 £550 - 523
South West 0 1,300 £538 -6.52% 347
North of England 0 911 £500 - 266
Midlands +3 862 £472 -10.10% 145
West Midlands +2 733 £472 -10.10% 103
North West -1 516 £500 - 162
East of England +2 371 £550 +10.00% 139
Yorkshire -10 229 £480 -4.00% 48
Scotland +36 227 £533 +18.44% 52
North East +1 203 £478 -2.55% 58
East Midlands -4 122 £450 -5.26% 42
Wales +6 87 £490 +3.16% 34
Northern Ireland +1 23 £644 +35.53% 18

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
1 394 (3.71%) Confluence
2 221 (2.08%) SharePoint
3 135 (1.27%) SAS
4 129 (1.21%) Microsoft Exchange
5 106 (1.00%) Apache Spark
6 80 (0.75%) Apache
7 73 (0.69%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.37%) WebLogic
9 35 (0.33%) nginx
10 30 (0.28%) Jupyter
11 20 (0.19%) Tomcat
12 18 (0.17%) IIS
13 17 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
14 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
15 14 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
16 13 (0.12%) CMS
16 13 (0.12%) NetWeaver
16 13 (0.12%) Skype for Business
17 10 (0.094%) ArcGIS
18 8 (0.075%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 186 (1.75%) Microsoft Excel
1 186 (1.75%) Microsoft Office
2 101 (0.95%) Microsoft Project
3 87 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 43 (0.40%) MS Visio
5 18 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
6 14 (0.13%) Simulink
7 7 (0.066%) AutoCAD
7 7 (0.066%) Notepad++
8 6 (0.056%) SOLIDWORKS
9 5 (0.047%) Revit
10 4 (0.038%) Siemens NX
10 4 (0.038%) Sketch
10 4 (0.038%) Windchill
11 3 (0.028%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.028%) Chatbot
12 2 (0.019%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.019%) InVision
12 2 (0.019%) Lectora
12 2 (0.019%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 112 (1.05%) SAP S/4HANA
2 51 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
3 38 (0.36%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 32 (0.30%) Teamcenter
5 30 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
6 28 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
7 23 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.13%) Maximo
8 14 (0.13%) SAP GRC
9 13 (0.12%) Findur
9 13 (0.12%) iTrent
9 13 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
10 12 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
10 12 (0.11%) Temenos T24
11 11 (0.10%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.085%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.085%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.085%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.085%) SAP HR
13 8 (0.075%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 1,843 (17.33%) AWS
2 1,815 (17.07%) Azure
3 451 (4.24%) GitHub
4 429 (4.03%) GCP
5 393 (3.70%) Azure DevOps
6 384 (3.61%) Power Platform
7 266 (2.50%) Serverless
8 255 (2.40%) Entra ID
8 255 (2.40%) GitHub Actions
9 254 (2.39%) Microsoft 365
10 208 (1.96%) Amazon S3
11 183 (1.72%) AWS Lambda
12 156 (1.47%) PaaS
13 149 (1.40%) Amazon EC2
14 145 (1.36%) Amazon EKS
15 141 (1.33%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 135 (1.27%) OpenShift
17 130 (1.22%) AWS CloudFormation
17 130 (1.22%) OCI
18 125 (1.18%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 484 (4.55%) Firewall
2 300 (2.82%) DNS
3 235 (2.21%) WAN
4 234 (2.20%) Network Security
5 209 (1.97%) LAN
6 176 (1.66%) VPN
7 149 (1.40%) BGP
7 149 (1.40%) DHCP
8 128 (1.20%) OSPF
9 119 (1.12%) TCP/IP
10 108 (1.02%) VLAN
11 106 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
12 86 (0.81%) Wireless
13 68 (0.64%) MPLS
14 61 (0.57%) SAN
15 59 (0.55%) VXLAN
16 57 (0.54%) Structured Cabling
17 54 (0.51%) SD-WAN
18 53 (0.50%) IPsec
18 53 (0.50%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 299 (2.81%) Power BI
2 257 (2.42%) PostgreSQL
3 237 (2.23%) Data Warehouse
4 205 (1.93%) SQL Server
5 137 (1.29%) Metadata
6 133 (1.25%) Oracle Database
7 113 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
8 110 (1.03%) MongoDB
9 109 (1.03%) Data Lake
10 98 (0.92%) Relational Database
11 96 (0.90%) NoSQL
12 79 (0.74%) Pentaho
13 77 (0.72%) Elasticsearch
14 73 (0.69%) MySQL
15 71 (0.67%) Big Data
16 70 (0.66%) Oracle Reports
16 70 (0.66%) Tableau
17 64 (0.60%) Amazon Redshift
17 64 (0.60%) Azure SQL Database
18 59 (0.55%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 611 (5.75%) JIRA
2 462 (4.34%) Git
3 408 (3.84%) Jenkins
4 407 (3.83%) GitLab
5 112 (1.05%) Selenium
6 85 (0.80%) Postman
7 76 (0.71%) JUnit
8 72 (0.68%) SonarQube
9 56 (0.53%) Rational DOORS
10 55 (0.52%) JMeter
11 51 (0.48%) Artifactory
12 43 (0.40%) Bitbucket
13 42 (0.39%) Cucumber
14 41 (0.39%) Mockito
15 39 (0.37%) Maven
16 38 (0.36%) Visual Studio
17 36 (0.34%) Cypress.io
18 34 (0.32%) REST Assured
19 31 (0.29%) Zephyr
20 30 (0.28%) Gatling
General
1 2,332 (21.93%) Public Sector
2 2,185 (20.55%) Social Skills
3 742 (6.98%) Analytical Skills
4 689 (6.48%) Finance
5 349 (3.28%) Military
6 283 (2.66%) Documentation Skills
7 258 (2.43%) Aerospace
8 169 (1.59%) Legal
9 124 (1.17%) Telecoms
10 120 (1.13%) Influencing Skills
11 117 (1.10%) Banking
12 111 (1.04%) Organisational Skills
13 109 (1.03%) Manufacturing
14 88 (0.83%) Law
15 81 (0.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 80 (0.75%) Presentation Skills
17 61 (0.57%) Police
18 56 (0.53%) Marketing
19 45 (0.42%) Aviation
20 44 (0.41%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 1,628 (15.31%) Architect
2 1,000 (9.40%) Developer
3 915 (8.60%) Senior
4 746 (7.02%) Analyst
4 746 (7.02%) Lead
5 521 (4.90%) Consultant
6 514 (4.83%) Data Engineer
7 504 (4.74%) DevOps Engineer
8 335 (3.15%) Technical Architect
9 315 (2.96%) Software Engineer
10 302 (2.84%) Network Engineer
11 299 (2.81%) Solutions Architect
12 289 (2.72%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 268 (2.52%) Business Analyst
14 222 (2.09%) Project Manager
15 218 (2.05%) Designer
16 215 (2.02%) Azure Engineer
17 210 (1.97%) Security Architect
18 192 (1.81%) Administrator
19 187 (1.76%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 331 (3.11%) REST
2 252 (2.37%) Spring
3 214 (2.01%) Kafka
4 206 (1.94%) Spring Boot
5 194 (1.82%) Node.js
5 194 (1.82%) React
6 175 (1.65%) .NET
7 153 (1.44%) RESTful
7 153 (1.44%) SOAP
8 150 (1.41%) LDAP
9 125 (1.18%) JSON
10 121 (1.14%) AngularJS
11 118 (1.11%) PySpark
12 115 (1.08%) Web Services
13 99 (0.93%) OAuth
14 96 (0.90%) Oracle Fusion
15 92 (0.87%) HTML
15 92 (0.87%) Middleware
16 86 (0.81%) Playwright
17 85 (0.80%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 359 (3.38%) Cloud Native
2 329 (3.09%) Product Ownership
3 312 (2.93%) Data Centre
4 292 (2.75%) Onboarding
5 206 (1.94%) Management Information System
6 154 (1.45%) PKI
7 141 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
8 136 (1.28%) Security Posture
9 126 (1.18%) Enterprise Software
10 125 (1.18%) Distributed Systems
11 120 (1.13%) Replication
12 96 (0.90%) Self-Motivation
13 89 (0.84%) Data Structures
14 87 (0.82%) Public Cloud
15 86 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
16 83 (0.78%) Clustering
17 82 (0.77%) Hybrid Cloud
18 75 (0.71%) Virtual Team
19 73 (0.69%) Greenfield Project
20 71 (0.67%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 842 (7.92%) Windows
2 743 (6.99%) Linux
3 244 (2.29%) Windows Server
4 183 (1.72%) Unix
5 132 (1.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 100 (0.94%) Android
7 82 (0.77%) Windows 10
8 67 (0.63%) Apple iOS
9 45 (0.42%) Solaris
10 41 (0.39%) Mac OS
11 40 (0.38%) Ubuntu
12 32 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
13 29 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
14 26 (0.24%) AIX
15 25 (0.24%) VMS
16 22 (0.21%) CentOS
17 14 (0.13%) Windows 7
18 13 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
19 12 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
20 10 (0.094%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,016 (18.96%) Agile
2 1,616 (15.20%) DevOps
3 1,448 (13.62%) CI/CD
4 1,118 (10.51%) Problem-Solving
5 1,006 (9.46%) Stakeholder Management
6 933 (8.77%) Continuous Improvement
7 833 (7.83%) Migration
8 787 (7.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 737 (6.93%) Infrastructure as Code
10 639 (6.01%) Cybersecurity
11 638 (6.00%) ITIL
12 618 (5.81%) Test Automation
13 605 (5.69%) Analytics
14 586 (5.51%) Containerisation
15 585 (5.50%) Roadmaps
16 580 (5.45%) Software Engineering
17 543 (5.11%) Data Modelling
18 533 (5.01%) Decision-Making
19 463 (4.35%) AI
20 456 (4.29%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 1,181 (11.11%) Python
2 963 (9.06%) SQL
3 661 (6.22%) Java
4 542 (5.10%) PowerShell
5 334 (3.14%) JavaScript
6 215 (2.02%) C#
7 204 (1.92%) Bash
8 179 (1.68%) TypeScript
9 113 (1.06%) PL/SQL
10 98 (0.92%) C++
11 96 (0.90%) Shell Script
12 71 (0.67%) Go
13 70 (0.66%) Ruby
13 70 (0.66%) Scala
14 58 (0.55%) Bicep
15 56 (0.53%) C
16 54 (0.51%) Apex Code
17 47 (0.44%) R
18 40 (0.38%) Ada
18 40 (0.38%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 8,122 (76.38%) SC Cleared
2 1,912 (17.98%) DV Cleared
3 448 (4.21%) Degree
4 303 (2.85%) BPSS Clearance
5 218 (2.05%) Cisco Certification
6 174 (1.64%) CISSP
7 130 (1.22%) Azure Certification
8 127 (1.19%) CCNP
9 115 (1.08%) CISM
10 110 (1.03%) AWS Certification
11 94 (0.88%) CCNA
12 91 (0.86%) Microsoft Certification
13 75 (0.71%) Computer Science Degree
13 75 (0.71%) PMP
14 67 (0.63%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 65 (0.61%) PMI Certification
16 62 (0.58%) ITIL Certification
17 60 (0.56%) ISTQB
18 53 (0.50%) TOGAF Certification
19 50 (0.47%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 380 (3.57%) QA
2 317 (2.98%) Data Quality
3 305 (2.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 303 (2.85%) NIST
5 207 (1.95%) NCSC
6 204 (1.92%) Accessibility
7 171 (1.61%) GDPR
8 159 (1.50%) PMO
9 105 (0.99%) SLA
10 77 (0.72%) GRC
11 66 (0.62%) JSP 440
12 56 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials
13 44 (0.41%) WCAG
14 40 (0.38%) NIST 800
15 33 (0.31%) RMADS
16 32 (0.30%) COBIT
17 31 (0.29%) PCI DSS
18 29 (0.27%) Def Stans
19 28 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
20 25 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 662 (6.23%) Docker
2 462 (4.34%) Active Directory
3 291 (2.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 104 (0.98%) VMware ESXi
5 101 (0.95%) VMware NSX
6 85 (0.80%) Hyper-V
7 80 (0.75%) vSphere
8 71 (0.67%) Virtual Machines
9 36 (0.34%) Firmware
10 35 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
11 24 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
12 22 (0.21%) NFS
13 19 (0.18%) BitLocker
13 19 (0.18%) vCloud
14 17 (0.16%) Postfix
14 17 (0.16%) Squid
15 16 (0.15%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 8 (0.075%) KVM
16 8 (0.075%) Microsoft App-V
17 6 (0.056%) Corosync
Systems Management
1 846 (7.96%) Kubernetes
2 827 (7.78%) Terraform
3 371 (3.49%) Ansible
4 276 (2.60%) Grafana
5 228 (2.14%) Prometheus
6 110 (1.03%) Single Sign-On
7 106 (1.00%) vCenter Server
8 74 (0.70%) SCCM
9 63 (0.59%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 53 (0.50%) Argo
10 53 (0.50%) FortiGate
10 53 (0.50%) Microsoft Intune
11 42 (0.39%) Puppet
12 39 (0.37%) Oracle RMAN
12 39 (0.37%) Podman
13 32 (0.30%) Progress Chef
14 31 (0.29%) Nagios
14 31 (0.29%) SCOM
15 30 (0.28%) vRealize
16 25 (0.24%) Istio
Vendors
1 1,043 (9.81%) Microsoft
2 660 (6.21%) Oracle
3 511 (4.81%) VMware
4 415 (3.90%) ServiceNow
5 368 (3.46%) Cisco
6 365 (3.43%) SAP
7 250 (2.35%) Splunk
8 213 (2.00%) Databricks
9 176 (1.66%) Red Hat
10 170 (1.60%) Google
11 151 (1.42%) Salesforce
12 128 (1.20%) Palo Alto
13 127 (1.19%) Talend
14 121 (1.14%) IBM
15 106 (1.00%) Juniper
16 99 (0.93%) Informatica
17 94 (0.88%) CyberArk
18 91 (0.86%) Fortinet
19 88 (0.83%) Atlassian
19 88 (0.83%) F5