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

6 months to
29 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,656 5,948 7,115
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.63% 18.05% 18.47%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.92% 57.73% 62.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,166 3,802 4,685
10th Percentile £385 £350 £350
25th Percentile £456 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.56% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £537 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -0.09% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 802 573 451
10th Percentile £19.50 £18.51 £15.73
25th Percentile £29.07 £18.87 £24.18
Median hourly rate £63.75 £25.15 £58.30
Median % change year-on-year +153.48% -56.86% -2.83%
75th Percentile £78.75 £43.75 £71.82
90th Percentile £88.00 £71.20 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £59.75
% change year-on-year +158.45% -57.91% +3.91%

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 16,913 10,304 11,457
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.38% 31.27% 29.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,307 6,385 7,210
10th Percentile £350 £297 £313
25th Percentile £437 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £715 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £523 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,262 825 738
10th Percentile £17.42 £17.99 £15.10
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £21.56
Median hourly rate £48.61 £25.15 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +93.28% -47.05% -13.64%
75th Percentile £72.54 £50.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £87.16 £71.37 £75.66
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £25.15 £49.00
% change year-on-year +89.03% -48.67% -4.85%

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 29 August 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 29 August 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 29 August 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 10,078 £545 +1.40% 4,043
UK excluding London +1 6,537 £537 -0.09% 3,137
London +7 3,599 £550 +3.77% 1,447
Work from Home +2 3,088 £525 -2.33% 2,272
South East +1 2,372 £565 +5.12% 813
South West 0 1,376 £550 -0.90% 755
North of England +3 1,239 £513 +1.87% 650
Midlands 0 912 £474 -8.06% 267
West Midlands +1 775 £475 -7.77% 179
North West +3 715 £530 -1.17% 416
East of England 0 333 £550 - 331
Yorkshire 0 307 £500 +1.63% 135
Scotland +9 278 £481 -0.41% 226
North East 0 241 £475 -5.00% 119
East Midlands -1 128 £450 -7.69% 88
Wales +3 108 £550 +10.00% 41
Northern Ireland +5 35 £650 +25.00% 106

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
1 404 (3.47%) Confluence
2 275 (2.36%) SharePoint
3 180 (1.54%) SAS
4 128 (1.10%) Microsoft Exchange
5 102 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
6 101 (0.87%) Apache Spark
7 99 (0.85%) Apache
8 39 (0.33%) Jupyter
9 34 (0.29%) nginx
10 28 (0.24%) WebLogic
11 23 (0.20%) IIS
11 23 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
11 23 (0.20%) Skype for Business
12 22 (0.19%) Tomcat
13 17 (0.15%) CMS
13 17 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
14 16 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
15 13 (0.11%) JBoss
15 13 (0.11%) NetWeaver
16 9 (0.077%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 205 (1.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 162 (1.39%) Microsoft Office
3 108 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
4 95 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 42 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 23 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.15%) AutoCAD
7 17 (0.15%) Revit
8 16 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
9 15 (0.13%) Simulink
10 8 (0.069%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.069%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.069%) Windchill
11 7 (0.060%) Notepad++
11 7 (0.060%) Sketch
12 5 (0.043%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 3 (0.026%) OrCAD
13 3 (0.026%) Trello
14 2 (0.017%) Houdini
14 2 (0.017%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 149 (1.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 78 (0.67%) Remedy ITSM
3 51 (0.44%) Oracle ERP
4 38 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
5 34 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
5 34 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 29 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 25 (0.21%) SAP GRC
8 23 (0.20%) Oracle Payroll
9 22 (0.19%) SAP PSCD
10 20 (0.17%) Primavera
11 16 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
11 16 (0.14%) SAP FI
11 16 (0.14%) SAP HR
12 13 (0.11%) Findur
13 12 (0.10%) iTrent
13 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
13 12 (0.10%) Temenos T24
14 11 (0.094%) NetSuite
15 10 (0.086%) SAP CO
Cloud Services
1 2,188 (18.77%) Azure
2 2,065 (17.72%) AWS
3 544 (4.67%) Azure DevOps
4 543 (4.66%) GitHub
5 489 (4.20%) Power Platform
6 457 (3.92%) GCP
7 347 (2.98%) GitHub Actions
8 327 (2.81%) Microsoft 365
9 314 (2.69%) Entra ID
10 283 (2.43%) Serverless
11 230 (1.97%) Amazon S3
12 199 (1.71%) AWS Lambda
13 172 (1.48%) OCI
13 172 (1.48%) SaaS
14 166 (1.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 162 (1.39%) Amazon EKS
16 141 (1.21%) Amazon EC2
17 138 (1.18%) OpenShift
18 133 (1.14%) PaaS
19 125 (1.07%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 482 (4.14%) Firewall
2 379 (3.25%) DNS
3 232 (1.99%) WAN
4 228 (1.96%) Network Security
5 223 (1.91%) VPN
6 187 (1.60%) DHCP
7 185 (1.59%) LAN
8 140 (1.20%) BGP
9 138 (1.18%) TCP/IP
10 122 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
11 104 (0.89%) VLAN
12 101 (0.87%) OSPF
13 87 (0.75%) Wireless
14 69 (0.59%) MPLS
15 68 (0.58%) SSL
15 68 (0.58%) VSAN
16 66 (0.57%) IPsec
17 64 (0.55%) SD-WAN
18 62 (0.53%) SAN
19 52 (0.45%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 355 (3.05%) Power BI
2 299 (2.57%) PostgreSQL
3 294 (2.52%) SQL Server
4 270 (2.32%) Data Warehouse
5 179 (1.54%) Metadata
6 177 (1.52%) Oracle Database
7 145 (1.24%) Data Lake
8 141 (1.21%) Relational Database
9 124 (1.06%) MongoDB
10 110 (0.94%) Amazon RDS
11 102 (0.88%) MySQL
12 98 (0.84%) NoSQL
13 91 (0.78%) Oracle Reports
14 77 (0.66%) Pentaho
15 70 (0.60%) Amazon Athena
16 65 (0.56%) Elasticsearch
17 64 (0.55%) Amazon Redshift
18 60 (0.51%) Big Data
19 59 (0.51%) Tableau
20 48 (0.41%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 645 (5.53%) JIRA
2 565 (4.85%) Git
3 503 (4.32%) GitLab
4 471 (4.04%) Jenkins
5 138 (1.18%) Selenium
6 80 (0.69%) Postman
7 78 (0.67%) SonarQube
8 72 (0.62%) JMeter
9 69 (0.59%) JUnit
10 67 (0.57%) Maven
11 55 (0.47%) Cucumber
12 52 (0.45%) Cypress.io
13 46 (0.39%) Gradle
14 43 (0.37%) Rational DOORS
15 42 (0.36%) Mockito
15 42 (0.36%) Visual Studio
16 40 (0.34%) Gatling
17 39 (0.33%) Artifactory
18 38 (0.33%) REST Assured
18 38 (0.33%) Zephyr
General
1 2,517 (21.59%) Social Skills
2 2,397 (20.56%) Public Sector
3 904 (7.76%) Analytical Skills
4 782 (6.71%) Finance
5 377 (3.23%) Military
6 312 (2.68%) Aerospace
7 306 (2.63%) Documentation Skills
8 206 (1.77%) Influencing Skills
9 170 (1.46%) Organisational Skills
10 169 (1.45%) Telecoms
11 167 (1.43%) Legal
12 150 (1.29%) Banking
13 144 (1.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 121 (1.04%) Manufacturing
15 114 (0.98%) Law
16 112 (0.96%) Police
17 59 (0.51%) Presentation Skills
18 46 (0.39%) Retail
19 44 (0.38%) Aviation
19 44 (0.38%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,872 (16.06%) Architect
2 1,234 (10.59%) Developer
3 1,115 (9.57%) Senior
4 1,055 (9.05%) Lead
5 713 (6.12%) Consultant
6 643 (5.52%) Analyst
7 504 (4.32%) Data Engineer
8 501 (4.30%) DevOps Engineer
9 433 (3.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 376 (3.23%) Technical Architect
11 356 (3.05%) Solutions Architect
12 290 (2.49%) Software Engineer
13 276 (2.37%) Data Architect
14 269 (2.31%) Security Architect
15 261 (2.24%) Network Engineer
16 214 (1.84%) Administrator
17 213 (1.83%) Azure Engineer
18 211 (1.81%) Java Developer
19 207 (1.78%) Project Manager
20 205 (1.76%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,007 (8.64%) Terraform
2 442 (3.79%) REST
3 251 (2.15%) Spring
4 245 (2.10%) Kafka
5 227 (1.95%) .NET
6 226 (1.94%) Spring Boot
7 216 (1.85%) RESTful
8 208 (1.78%) React
9 175 (1.50%) Node.js
10 174 (1.49%) SOAP
11 162 (1.39%) JSON
12 134 (1.15%) OAuth
13 130 (1.12%) HTML
14 129 (1.11%) Web Services
15 121 (1.04%) XML
16 118 (1.01%) AngularJS
17 113 (0.97%) Middleware
18 100 (0.86%) CSS
19 96 (0.82%) Playwright
20 94 (0.81%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 512 (4.39%) Cloud Native
2 420 (3.60%) Onboarding
3 370 (3.17%) Product Ownership
4 310 (2.66%) Data Centre
5 248 (2.13%) Management Information System
6 195 (1.67%) Legacy Systems
7 174 (1.49%) PKI
8 158 (1.36%) Enterprise Software
9 157 (1.35%) CMDB
10 151 (1.30%) Distributed Systems
11 127 (1.09%) Replication
12 124 (1.06%) Hybrid Cloud
13 122 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
14 108 (0.93%) Data Structures
15 97 (0.83%) Cyber Threat
16 94 (0.81%) Public Cloud
16 94 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
17 87 (0.75%) Clustering
17 87 (0.75%) Operational Technology
18 84 (0.72%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 970 (8.32%) Windows
2 805 (6.91%) Linux
3 354 (3.04%) Windows Server
4 216 (1.85%) Unix
5 155 (1.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 138 (1.18%) Windows 10
7 78 (0.67%) Android
8 62 (0.53%) Solaris
9 51 (0.44%) Mac OS
10 47 (0.40%) Apple iOS
11 42 (0.36%) Ubuntu
12 40 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
13 39 (0.33%) CentOS
14 37 (0.32%) AIX
15 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 24 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
17 22 (0.19%) VMS
17 22 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
18 15 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
19 13 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,443 (20.96%) Agile
2 1,816 (15.58%) DevOps
3 1,740 (14.93%) CI/CD
4 1,486 (12.75%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,340 (11.50%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,216 (10.43%) Problem-Solving
7 1,168 (10.02%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 993 (8.52%) Infrastructure as Code
9 933 (8.00%) Migration
10 834 (7.16%) Cybersecurity
11 785 (6.73%) ITIL
12 762 (6.54%) Test Automation
13 727 (6.24%) Analytics
14 719 (6.17%) Containerisation
15 701 (6.01%) Technical Leadership
16 684 (5.87%) Roadmaps
17 677 (5.81%) Decision-Making
18 672 (5.77%) Software Engineering
19 659 (5.65%) AI
20 628 (5.39%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,338 (11.48%) Python
2 1,110 (9.52%) SQL
3 796 (6.83%) Java
4 589 (5.05%) PowerShell
5 399 (3.42%) JavaScript
6 335 (2.87%) Bash
7 251 (2.15%) C#
8 204 (1.75%) TypeScript
9 159 (1.36%) PL/SQL
10 126 (1.08%) Bicep
11 80 (0.69%) Shell Script
12 71 (0.61%) C++
13 63 (0.54%) C
14 55 (0.47%) Apex Code
15 51 (0.44%) Scala
16 49 (0.42%) Ruby
17 48 (0.41%) Kotlin
18 47 (0.40%) Go
18 47 (0.40%) Groovy
19 37 (0.32%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8,887 (76.24%) SC Cleared
2 2,190 (18.79%) DV Cleared
3 465 (3.99%) BPSS Clearance
4 462 (3.96%) Degree
5 212 (1.82%) CISSP
6 183 (1.57%) Cisco Certification
7 179 (1.54%) Azure Certification
8 164 (1.41%) Microsoft Certification
9 143 (1.23%) CISM
10 141 (1.21%) AWS Certification
11 109 (0.94%) PMI Certification
12 106 (0.91%) PMP
13 91 (0.78%) ISTQB
14 80 (0.69%) CCNP
15 73 (0.63%) CCNA
16 72 (0.62%) Computer Science Degree
17 64 (0.55%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 49 (0.42%) ITIL Certification
19 47 (0.40%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 43 (0.37%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 500 (4.29%) QA
2 387 (3.32%) Data Quality
3 321 (2.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 315 (2.70%) NIST
5 281 (2.41%) NCSC
6 257 (2.20%) Accessibility
7 226 (1.94%) PMO
8 184 (1.58%) GDPR
9 166 (1.42%) SLA
10 159 (1.36%) GRC
11 82 (0.70%) WCAG
12 67 (0.57%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
14 44 (0.38%) NIST 800
15 35 (0.30%) Def Stans
16 31 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 28 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
17 28 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 24 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
19 22 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 809 (6.94%) Docker
2 584 (5.01%) Active Directory
3 427 (3.66%) VMware Infrastructure
4 149 (1.28%) VMware NSX
5 137 (1.18%) VMware ESXi
6 132 (1.13%) Hyper-V
7 126 (1.08%) vSphere
8 81 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
9 43 (0.37%) Firmware
9 43 (0.37%) Oracle RAC
10 41 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
11 26 (0.22%) BitLocker
11 26 (0.22%) vCloud
12 16 (0.14%) NFS
13 14 (0.12%) Squid
14 13 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
15 11 (0.094%) Postfix
16 9 (0.077%) KVM
17 8 (0.069%) Ceph
17 8 (0.069%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 988 (8.48%) Kubernetes
2 450 (3.86%) Ansible
3 266 (2.28%) Grafana
4 212 (1.82%) Prometheus
5 136 (1.17%) SCCM
6 135 (1.16%) vCenter Server
7 87 (0.75%) Microsoft Intune
8 84 (0.72%) SCOM
9 70 (0.60%) Argo
10 69 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
11 51 (0.44%) Oracle RMAN
12 49 (0.42%) Puppet
13 42 (0.36%) Data Guard
14 35 (0.30%) Istio
15 32 (0.27%) Kibana
16 31 (0.27%) Progress Chef
17 30 (0.26%) Nagios
18 29 (0.25%) Control-M
19 27 (0.23%) WSUS
20 26 (0.22%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,505 (12.91%) Microsoft
2 925 (7.94%) Oracle
3 603 (5.17%) VMware
4 539 (4.62%) ServiceNow
5 452 (3.88%) SAP
6 311 (2.67%) Cisco
7 248 (2.13%) Google
8 224 (1.92%) Splunk
9 214 (1.84%) Databricks
10 184 (1.58%) Salesforce
11 151 (1.30%) Red Hat
12 130 (1.12%) Palo Alto
13 125 (1.07%) IBM
14 118 (1.01%) Informatica
15 113 (0.97%) Talend
16 97 (0.83%) Dynatrace
17 88 (0.75%) Remedy
18 84 (0.72%) F5
18 84 (0.72%) SolarWinds
19 82 (0.70%) CyberArk