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

6 months to
23 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,431 5,753 7,579
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.68% 17.61% 18.45%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.26% 57.15% 61.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,936 3,683 5,007
10th Percentile £381 £338 £340
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.47% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £630 £623 £638
90th Percentile £719 £695 £735
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 837 499 547
10th Percentile £18.31 £18.51 £15.39
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £62.50 £25.15 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +148.51% -54.27% -8.33%
75th Percentile £77.50 £56.00 £71.75
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £57.50
% change year-on-year +151.03% -56.26% -3.22%

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 16,505 10,067 12,307
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.30% 30.82% 29.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,025 6,245 7,756
10th Percentile £350 £277 £310
25th Percentile £430 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.10% -0.10% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £638
90th Percentile £713 £701 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,198 744 971
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.25
25th Percentile £25.75 £19.38 £20.75
Median hourly rate £52.25 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +107.75% -41.51% -25.00%
75th Percentile £73.46 £56.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.00 £75.00 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -21.82%

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 23 July 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 23 July 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 23 July 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 +3 9,853 £531 -1.19% 2,068
UK excluding London +1 6,421 £525 -2.33% 1,544
London +7 3,480 £541 +3.02% 649
Work from Home +4 3,103 £525 -1.59% 1,031
South East +1 2,442 £550 +1.07% 516
South West 0 1,299 £538 -6.52% 377
North of England +2 1,087 £500 - 303
Midlands +3 970 £469 -6.20% 155
West Midlands +2 829 £469 -6.20% 114
North West 0 577 £525 -0.38% 166
East of England +2 309 £575 +9.52% 128
Yorkshire +3 299 £500 +1.63% 70
Scotland +19 278 £498 +5.24% 61
North East 0 240 £475 -5.00% 68
East Midlands 0 128 £418 -12.11% 41
Wales +5 103 £550 +15.79% 20
Northern Ireland +5 32 £650 +25.00% 7

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
1 405 (3.54%) Confluence
2 264 (2.31%) SharePoint
3 185 (1.62%) SAS
4 128 (1.12%) Microsoft Exchange
5 106 (0.93%) Apache Spark
6 105 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
7 97 (0.85%) Apache
8 45 (0.39%) WebLogic
9 41 (0.36%) nginx
10 40 (0.35%) Jupyter
11 25 (0.22%) Tomcat
12 24 (0.21%) IIS
13 20 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
14 18 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
15 16 (0.14%) CMS
15 16 (0.14%) NetWeaver
16 14 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
17 12 (0.10%) Skype for Business
17 12 (0.10%) Tuxedo
18 9 (0.079%) Documentum
Applications
1 206 (1.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 151 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 96 (0.84%) Microsoft Project
4 76 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 50 (0.44%) MS Visio
6 21 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.13%) Simulink
8 13 (0.11%) AutoCAD
8 13 (0.11%) Revit
8 13 (0.11%) SOLIDWORKS
9 9 (0.079%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.070%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.061%) Notepad++
12 6 (0.052%) Sketch
13 4 (0.035%) Trello
14 3 (0.026%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 3 (0.026%) Windchill
15 2 (0.017%) CATIA
15 2 (0.017%) CPLEX
15 2 (0.017%) Houdini
Business Applications
1 152 (1.33%) SAP S/4HANA
2 71 (0.62%) Remedy ITSM
3 42 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
4 38 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
4 38 (0.33%) Teamcenter
5 31 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 23 (0.20%) Dynamics CRM
7 22 (0.19%) SAP GRC
7 22 (0.19%) SAP PSCD
8 20 (0.17%) Primavera
9 15 (0.13%) Findur
10 13 (0.11%) Oracle Payroll
10 13 (0.11%) Temenos T24
11 12 (0.10%) iTrent
11 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
12 11 (0.096%) Oracle Payables
12 11 (0.096%) SAP HR
13 10 (0.087%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 10 (0.087%) SAP FI
14 9 (0.079%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,040 (17.85%) Azure
2 2,016 (17.64%) AWS
3 507 (4.44%) GitHub
4 477 (4.17%) Azure DevOps
5 446 (3.90%) Power Platform
6 429 (3.75%) GCP
7 311 (2.72%) GitHub Actions
8 302 (2.64%) Microsoft 365
9 288 (2.52%) Entra ID
10 267 (2.34%) Serverless
11 239 (2.09%) Amazon S3
12 192 (1.68%) AWS Lambda
13 159 (1.39%) SaaS
14 158 (1.38%) OCI
15 157 (1.37%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 157 (1.37%) Amazon EC2
16 154 (1.35%) Amazon EKS
17 151 (1.32%) PaaS
18 137 (1.20%) OpenShift
19 126 (1.10%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 481 (4.21%) Firewall
2 359 (3.14%) DNS
3 240 (2.10%) Network Security
4 235 (2.06%) WAN
5 204 (1.78%) VPN
6 199 (1.74%) LAN
7 180 (1.57%) DHCP
8 148 (1.29%) BGP
9 131 (1.15%) TCP/IP
10 123 (1.08%) OSPF
11 113 (0.99%) Wi-Fi
12 107 (0.94%) VLAN
13 91 (0.80%) Wireless
14 70 (0.61%) MPLS
15 68 (0.59%) SAN
16 65 (0.57%) IPsec
17 63 (0.55%) SD-WAN
18 59 (0.52%) VXLAN
19 57 (0.50%) VSAN
20 54 (0.47%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 341 (2.98%) Power BI
2 310 (2.71%) PostgreSQL
3 282 (2.47%) SQL Server
4 277 (2.42%) Data Warehouse
5 172 (1.50%) Oracle Database
6 163 (1.43%) Metadata
7 132 (1.15%) Data Lake
8 131 (1.15%) Relational Database
9 112 (0.98%) MongoDB
10 104 (0.91%) Amazon RDS
11 99 (0.87%) MySQL
12 94 (0.82%) Oracle Reports
13 85 (0.74%) Pentaho
14 80 (0.70%) Elasticsearch
15 77 (0.67%) NoSQL
16 74 (0.65%) Amazon Redshift
17 69 (0.60%) Amazon Athena
18 66 (0.58%) Big Data
19 61 (0.53%) Tableau
20 49 (0.43%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 648 (5.67%) JIRA
2 547 (4.79%) Git
3 464 (4.06%) GitLab
4 449 (3.93%) Jenkins
5 122 (1.07%) Selenium
6 83 (0.73%) JUnit
7 82 (0.72%) SonarQube
8 78 (0.68%) Postman
9 64 (0.56%) JMeter
10 63 (0.55%) Maven
11 55 (0.48%) Rational DOORS
12 54 (0.47%) Cucumber
13 46 (0.40%) Visual Studio
14 45 (0.39%) Mockito
15 44 (0.38%) Cypress.io
16 42 (0.37%) Artifactory
16 42 (0.37%) REST Assured
16 42 (0.37%) Zephyr
17 40 (0.35%) Bitbucket
18 39 (0.34%) Gatling
General
1 2,472 (21.63%) Public Sector
2 2,310 (20.21%) Social Skills
3 854 (7.47%) Analytical Skills
4 753 (6.59%) Finance
5 360 (3.15%) Military
6 289 (2.53%) Aerospace
7 284 (2.48%) Documentation Skills
8 181 (1.58%) Legal
9 169 (1.48%) Influencing Skills
10 150 (1.31%) Telecoms
11 136 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
12 130 (1.14%) Banking
13 109 (0.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 103 (0.90%) Manufacturing
15 101 (0.88%) Police
16 96 (0.84%) Law
17 72 (0.63%) Presentation Skills
18 53 (0.46%) Aviation
19 41 (0.36%) Marketing
20 38 (0.33%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 1,770 (15.48%) Architect
2 1,251 (10.94%) Developer
3 1,041 (9.11%) Senior
4 960 (8.40%) Lead
5 713 (6.24%) Analyst
6 592 (5.18%) Consultant
7 520 (4.55%) Data Engineer
8 490 (4.29%) DevOps Engineer
9 386 (3.38%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 365 (3.19%) Technical Architect
11 343 (3.00%) Solutions Architect
12 329 (2.88%) Software Engineer
13 277 (2.42%) Security Architect
14 266 (2.33%) Network Engineer
15 226 (1.98%) Java Developer
16 224 (1.96%) Designer
17 220 (1.92%) Data Architect
18 212 (1.85%) Business Analyst
19 206 (1.80%) Project Manager
20 202 (1.77%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 401 (3.51%) REST
2 274 (2.40%) Spring
3 235 (2.06%) Spring Boot
4 227 (1.99%) Kafka
5 220 (1.92%) .NET
6 203 (1.78%) React
7 201 (1.76%) RESTful
8 187 (1.64%) Node.js
9 163 (1.43%) SOAP
10 147 (1.29%) JSON
11 137 (1.20%) AngularJS
12 126 (1.10%) Web Services
13 113 (0.99%) OAuth
14 112 (0.98%) HTML
15 103 (0.90%) Middleware
16 99 (0.87%) PySpark
16 99 (0.87%) XML
17 91 (0.80%) Playwright
18 81 (0.71%) Elastic Stack
19 79 (0.69%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 457 (4.00%) Cloud Native
2 385 (3.37%) Onboarding
3 356 (3.11%) Product Ownership
4 315 (2.76%) Data Centre
5 230 (2.01%) Management Information System
6 197 (1.72%) Legacy Systems
7 171 (1.50%) Distributed Systems
8 165 (1.44%) PKI
9 126 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
10 123 (1.08%) CMDB
11 121 (1.06%) Enterprise Software
12 113 (0.99%) Data Structures
13 112 (0.98%) Replication
14 109 (0.95%) Hybrid Cloud
15 93 (0.81%) Clustering
15 93 (0.81%) Public Cloud
16 91 (0.80%) Security Posture
17 87 (0.76%) Virtual Team
18 81 (0.71%) Security Operations Centre
19 76 (0.66%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 907 (7.93%) Windows
2 782 (6.84%) Linux
3 290 (2.54%) Windows Server
4 229 (2.00%) Unix
5 150 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 98 (0.86%) Android
7 93 (0.81%) Windows 10
8 66 (0.58%) Apple iOS
9 62 (0.54%) Solaris
10 48 (0.42%) Mac OS
11 38 (0.33%) Ubuntu
12 36 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
13 35 (0.31%) AIX
14 29 (0.25%) CentOS
15 21 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
16 20 (0.17%) VMS
17 13 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
17 13 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
18 11 (0.096%) Windows 7
19 10 (0.087%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,356 (20.61%) Agile
2 1,758 (15.38%) DevOps
3 1,656 (14.49%) CI/CD
4 1,221 (10.68%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,215 (10.63%) Problem-Solving
6 1,207 (10.56%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,017 (8.90%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 878 (7.68%) Migration
9 871 (7.62%) Infrastructure as Code
10 736 (6.44%) Cybersecurity
11 734 (6.42%) ITIL
12 712 (6.23%) Containerisation
13 709 (6.20%) Test Automation
14 695 (6.08%) Analytics
15 669 (5.85%) Software Engineering
16 650 (5.69%) Roadmaps
17 626 (5.48%) Decision-Making
18 611 (5.35%) Data Modelling
19 588 (5.14%) AI
20 582 (5.09%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,267 (11.08%) Python
2 1,113 (9.74%) SQL
3 808 (7.07%) Java
4 515 (4.51%) PowerShell
5 358 (3.13%) JavaScript
6 285 (2.49%) Bash
7 250 (2.19%) C#
8 185 (1.62%) TypeScript
9 175 (1.53%) PL/SQL
10 99 (0.87%) Bicep
11 97 (0.85%) Shell Script
12 88 (0.77%) C++
13 63 (0.55%) C
14 59 (0.52%) Apex Code
15 58 (0.51%) Ruby
16 54 (0.47%) Kotlin
17 53 (0.46%) Go
18 49 (0.43%) Scala
19 37 (0.32%) Kusto Query Language
19 37 (0.32%) R
Qualifications
1 8,717 (76.26%) SC Cleared
2 2,160 (18.90%) DV Cleared
3 444 (3.88%) Degree
4 408 (3.57%) BPSS Clearance
5 217 (1.90%) Cisco Certification
6 188 (1.64%) CISSP
7 163 (1.43%) Azure Certification
8 139 (1.22%) Microsoft Certification
9 130 (1.14%) AWS Certification
10 116 (1.01%) CISM
11 103 (0.90%) PMI Certification
12 101 (0.88%) CCNP
13 99 (0.87%) PMP
14 93 (0.81%) CCNA
15 83 (0.73%) ISTQB
16 66 (0.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 64 (0.56%) Computer Science Degree
18 48 (0.42%) ITIL Certification
19 47 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 47 (0.41%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 429 (3.75%) QA
2 363 (3.18%) Data Quality
3 303 (2.65%) NIST
4 302 (2.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 253 (2.21%) Accessibility
6 246 (2.15%) NCSC
7 199 (1.74%) PMO
8 178 (1.56%) GDPR
9 135 (1.18%) GRC
10 125 (1.09%) SLA
11 75 (0.66%) WCAG
12 64 (0.56%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.43%) NIST 800
14 44 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
15 28 (0.24%) Def Stans
15 28 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
16 27 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 25 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 24 (0.21%) RMADS
19 21 (0.18%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 776 (6.79%) Docker
2 495 (4.33%) Active Directory
3 376 (3.29%) VMware Infrastructure
4 140 (1.22%) VMware NSX
5 131 (1.15%) VMware ESXi
6 102 (0.89%) Hyper-V
6 102 (0.89%) vSphere
7 81 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
8 48 (0.42%) Oracle RAC
9 35 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
10 30 (0.26%) Firmware
11 25 (0.22%) NFS
12 21 (0.18%) vCloud
13 19 (0.17%) BitLocker
14 18 (0.16%) Postfix
15 16 (0.14%) Squid
16 9 (0.079%) KVM
17 8 (0.070%) Microsoft App-V
17 8 (0.070%) Slurm Workload Manager
18 7 (0.061%) UAG
Systems Management
1 953 (8.34%) Terraform
2 931 (8.14%) Kubernetes
3 412 (3.60%) Ansible
4 275 (2.41%) Grafana
5 220 (1.92%) Prometheus
6 128 (1.12%) vCenter Server
7 97 (0.85%) SCCM
8 75 (0.66%) Microsoft Intune
9 67 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
10 66 (0.58%) Argo
11 59 (0.52%) SCOM
12 53 (0.46%) Oracle RMAN
13 47 (0.41%) Puppet
14 44 (0.38%) FortiGate
15 36 (0.31%) Data Guard
16 30 (0.26%) Nagios
17 29 (0.25%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 29 (0.25%) Progress Chef
18 28 (0.24%) Podman
19 23 (0.20%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,286 (11.25%) Microsoft
2 884 (7.73%) Oracle
3 553 (4.84%) VMware
4 533 (4.66%) ServiceNow
5 406 (3.55%) SAP
6 315 (2.76%) Cisco
7 218 (1.91%) Splunk
8 211 (1.85%) Google
9 195 (1.71%) Databricks
10 184 (1.61%) Salesforce
11 154 (1.35%) Red Hat
12 141 (1.23%) Informatica
13 140 (1.22%) Talend
14 124 (1.08%) IBM
15 117 (1.02%) Palo Alto
16 103 (0.90%) Juniper
17 98 (0.86%) F5
18 96 (0.84%) SolarWinds
19 92 (0.80%) Fortinet
20 85 (0.74%) Citrix