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

6 months to
5 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,543 5,850 7,277
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.70% 17.78% 18.57%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.14% 57.14% 62.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,044 3,723 4,849
10th Percentile £385 £350 £344
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £537 £534 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.66% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £725 £691 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 841 528 499
10th Percentile £18.69 £18.51 £15.22
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +151.03% -54.27% -8.33%
75th Percentile £78.75 £48.28 £71.82
90th Percentile £88.00 £73.75 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.50 £25.15 £57.44
% change year-on-year +152.49% -56.22% -2.64%

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 16,695 10,238 11,730
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.39% 31.11% 29.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,175 6,323 7,429
10th Percentile £350 £282 £313
25th Percentile £431 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £638
90th Percentile £715 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,244 786 855
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.48
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.38 £21.25
Median hourly rate £52.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +108.75% -41.51% -23.21%
75th Percentile £74.00 £55.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.00 £74.38 £77.30
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +98.81% -44.11% -16.15%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 10,015 £538 - 2,619
UK excluding London +1 6,499 £525 -2.33% 1,931
London +7 3,546 £550 +4.76% 827
Work from Home +4 3,121 £525 -2.05% 1,298
South East +1 2,449 £560 +4.19% 635
South West 0 1,334 £538 -6.52% 483
North of England +2 1,128 £503 +0.60% 363
Midlands +3 977 £469 -6.20% 188
West Midlands +1 847 £469 -8.22% 138
North West +2 612 £525 - 219
East of England 0 320 £550 +4.76% 160
Yorkshire +3 303 £500 +1.63% 74
Scotland +11 258 £493 +1.97% 71
North East +1 237 £478 -4.50% 73
East Midlands -1 118 £438 -5.41% 49
Wales +2 97 £550 +15.79% 50
Northern Ireland +6 33 £650 +25.00% 20

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
1 419 (3.63%) Confluence
2 270 (2.34%) SharePoint
3 196 (1.70%) SAS
4 119 (1.03%) Microsoft Exchange
5 99 (0.86%) Apache Spark
6 96 (0.83%) Apache Airflow
7 91 (0.79%) Apache
8 41 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 38 (0.33%) Jupyter
9 38 (0.33%) nginx
10 24 (0.21%) IIS
10 24 (0.21%) Tomcat
11 21 (0.18%) Oracle Application Server
12 19 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
13 16 (0.14%) CMS
13 16 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
14 15 (0.13%) NetWeaver
15 13 (0.11%) Skype for Business
16 12 (0.10%) Tuxedo
17 10 (0.087%) JBoss
Applications
1 210 (1.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 152 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 99 (0.86%) Microsoft Project
4 79 (0.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 47 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.12%) AutoCAD
7 14 (0.12%) Revit
7 14 (0.12%) Simulink
8 13 (0.11%) SOLIDWORKS
9 9 (0.078%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.069%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.061%) Notepad++
11 7 (0.061%) Sketch
12 3 (0.026%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 3 (0.026%) Trello
12 3 (0.026%) Windchill
13 2 (0.017%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.017%) Houdini
13 2 (0.017%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 152 (1.32%) SAP S/4HANA
2 80 (0.69%) Remedy ITSM
3 43 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
3 43 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
4 36 (0.31%) Teamcenter
5 34 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 25 (0.22%) Dynamics CRM
7 23 (0.20%) SAP PSCD
8 21 (0.18%) Primavera
9 20 (0.17%) SAP GRC
10 17 (0.15%) Oracle Payroll
11 15 (0.13%) Findur
12 14 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
13 13 (0.11%) Temenos T24
14 12 (0.10%) iTrent
14 12 (0.10%) SAP FI
14 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
15 11 (0.095%) NetSuite
15 11 (0.095%) SAP HR
16 10 (0.087%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,102 (18.21%) Azure
2 2,050 (17.76%) AWS
3 525 (4.55%) GitHub
4 509 (4.41%) Azure DevOps
5 469 (4.06%) Power Platform
6 444 (3.85%) GCP
7 323 (2.80%) GitHub Actions
8 306 (2.65%) Microsoft 365
9 291 (2.52%) Entra ID
10 286 (2.48%) Serverless
11 250 (2.17%) Amazon S3
12 204 (1.77%) AWS Lambda
13 171 (1.48%) OCI
14 166 (1.44%) SaaS
15 165 (1.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 162 (1.40%) Amazon EC2
16 162 (1.40%) Amazon EKS
17 151 (1.31%) PaaS
18 135 (1.17%) OpenShift
19 126 (1.09%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 491 (4.25%) Firewall
2 375 (3.25%) DNS
3 232 (2.01%) WAN
4 231 (2.00%) Network Security
5 200 (1.73%) VPN
6 196 (1.70%) LAN
7 184 (1.59%) DHCP
8 147 (1.27%) BGP
9 133 (1.15%) TCP/IP
10 118 (1.02%) OSPF
11 114 (0.99%) Wi-Fi
12 106 (0.92%) VLAN
13 91 (0.79%) Wireless
14 69 (0.60%) MPLS
15 67 (0.58%) IPsec
16 66 (0.57%) VSAN
17 64 (0.55%) SAN
18 62 (0.54%) SD-WAN
19 61 (0.53%) SSL
20 60 (0.52%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 355 (3.08%) Power BI
2 306 (2.65%) PostgreSQL
3 285 (2.47%) SQL Server
4 281 (2.43%) Data Warehouse
5 168 (1.46%) Oracle Database
6 156 (1.35%) Metadata
7 136 (1.18%) Data Lake
8 128 (1.11%) Relational Database
9 110 (0.95%) MongoDB
10 107 (0.93%) Amazon RDS
11 101 (0.87%) Oracle Reports
12 95 (0.82%) Pentaho
13 91 (0.79%) MySQL
14 87 (0.75%) NoSQL
15 72 (0.62%) Elasticsearch
16 70 (0.61%) Amazon Athena
17 69 (0.60%) Amazon Redshift
18 58 (0.50%) Tableau
19 56 (0.49%) Big Data
20 54 (0.47%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 667 (5.78%) JIRA
2 572 (4.96%) Git
3 467 (4.05%) GitLab
4 462 (4.00%) Jenkins
5 123 (1.07%) Selenium
6 85 (0.74%) SonarQube
7 82 (0.71%) JUnit
8 75 (0.65%) Postman
9 69 (0.60%) Maven
10 64 (0.55%) JMeter
11 56 (0.49%) Rational DOORS
12 55 (0.48%) Cucumber
13 50 (0.43%) Mockito
14 48 (0.42%) Visual Studio
15 45 (0.39%) Cypress.io
16 42 (0.36%) Bitbucket
17 41 (0.36%) Zephyr
18 40 (0.35%) Gradle
19 39 (0.34%) Artifactory
20 38 (0.33%) REST Assured
General
1 2,467 (21.37%) Public Sector
2 2,390 (20.71%) Social Skills
3 876 (7.59%) Analytical Skills
4 764 (6.62%) Finance
5 360 (3.12%) Military
6 297 (2.57%) Aerospace
7 287 (2.49%) Documentation Skills
8 176 (1.52%) Influencing Skills
9 173 (1.50%) Legal
10 151 (1.31%) Telecoms
11 144 (1.25%) Organisational Skills
12 132 (1.14%) Banking
13 120 (1.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 104 (0.90%) Manufacturing
14 104 (0.90%) Police
15 100 (0.87%) Law
16 76 (0.66%) Presentation Skills
17 52 (0.45%) Aviation
18 42 (0.36%) Marketing
19 41 (0.36%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,831 (15.86%) Architect
2 1,294 (11.21%) Developer
3 1,089 (9.43%) Senior
4 985 (8.53%) Lead
5 696 (6.03%) Analyst
6 630 (5.46%) Consultant
7 536 (4.64%) Data Engineer
8 471 (4.08%) DevOps Engineer
9 409 (3.54%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 368 (3.19%) Technical Architect
11 357 (3.09%) Solutions Architect
12 336 (2.91%) Software Engineer
13 285 (2.47%) Security Architect
14 263 (2.28%) Network Engineer
15 241 (2.09%) Data Architect
16 235 (2.04%) Java Developer
17 219 (1.90%) Designer
18 211 (1.83%) Administrator
19 210 (1.82%) Delivery Manager
20 209 (1.81%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 426 (3.69%) REST
2 269 (2.33%) Spring
3 233 (2.02%) Spring Boot
4 229 (1.98%) .NET
5 222 (1.92%) Kafka
6 213 (1.85%) RESTful
7 205 (1.78%) React
8 188 (1.63%) Node.js
9 169 (1.46%) SOAP
10 154 (1.33%) JSON
11 142 (1.23%) AngularJS
12 128 (1.11%) Web Services
13 126 (1.09%) OAuth
14 118 (1.02%) HTML
15 107 (0.93%) Middleware
16 106 (0.92%) XML
17 100 (0.87%) PySpark
18 91 (0.79%) Playwright
19 86 (0.75%) CSS
20 81 (0.70%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 484 (4.19%) Cloud Native
2 399 (3.46%) Onboarding
3 362 (3.14%) Product Ownership
4 325 (2.82%) Data Centre
5 238 (2.06%) Management Information System
6 200 (1.73%) Legacy Systems
7 172 (1.49%) Distributed Systems
8 170 (1.47%) PKI
9 135 (1.17%) Enterprise Software
10 130 (1.13%) CMDB
11 121 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
12 120 (1.04%) Data Structures
13 113 (0.98%) Hybrid Cloud
14 110 (0.95%) Replication
15 104 (0.90%) Clustering
16 95 (0.82%) Public Cloud
17 88 (0.76%) Virtual Team
18 82 (0.71%) Cyber Threat
19 81 (0.70%) Security Operations Centre
20 77 (0.67%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 937 (8.12%) Windows
2 797 (6.90%) Linux
3 315 (2.73%) Windows Server
4 231 (2.00%) Unix
5 155 (1.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 100 (0.87%) Android
7 99 (0.86%) Windows 10
8 65 (0.56%) Solaris
9 64 (0.55%) Apple iOS
10 49 (0.42%) Mac OS
11 41 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
12 37 (0.32%) AIX
13 36 (0.31%) Ubuntu
14 31 (0.27%) CentOS
15 22 (0.19%) VMS
16 21 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
17 17 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
18 15 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
19 13 (0.11%) Windows 7
20 12 (0.10%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,412 (20.90%) Agile
2 1,795 (15.55%) DevOps
3 1,694 (14.68%) CI/CD
4 1,291 (11.18%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,270 (11.00%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,226 (10.62%) Problem-Solving
7 1,062 (9.20%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 905 (7.84%) Infrastructure as Code
9 889 (7.70%) Migration
10 746 (6.46%) Cybersecurity
11 738 (6.39%) ITIL
12 723 (6.26%) Analytics
13 717 (6.21%) Test Automation
14 715 (6.19%) Containerisation
15 694 (6.01%) Software Engineering
16 673 (5.83%) Roadmaps
17 635 (5.50%) Data Modelling
18 634 (5.49%) Decision-Making
19 629 (5.45%) AI
20 620 (5.37%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,284 (11.12%) Python
2 1,138 (9.86%) SQL
3 818 (7.09%) Java
4 533 (4.62%) PowerShell
5 378 (3.27%) JavaScript
6 309 (2.68%) Bash
7 258 (2.24%) C#
8 191 (1.65%) TypeScript
9 181 (1.57%) PL/SQL
10 111 (0.96%) Bicep
11 93 (0.81%) Shell Script
12 89 (0.77%) C++
13 64 (0.55%) C
14 60 (0.52%) Apex Code
15 57 (0.49%) Kotlin
16 53 (0.46%) Ruby
17 49 (0.42%) Scala
18 46 (0.40%) Go
19 41 (0.36%) Groovy
20 36 (0.31%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8,804 (76.27%) SC Cleared
2 2,176 (18.85%) DV Cleared
3 449 (3.89%) Degree
4 431 (3.73%) BPSS Clearance
5 214 (1.85%) Cisco Certification
6 193 (1.67%) CISSP
7 165 (1.43%) Azure Certification
8 151 (1.31%) Microsoft Certification
9 133 (1.15%) AWS Certification
10 120 (1.04%) CISM
11 107 (0.93%) PMI Certification
12 104 (0.90%) PMP
13 93 (0.81%) CCNA
13 93 (0.81%) CCNP
14 81 (0.70%) ISTQB
15 69 (0.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 67 (0.58%) Computer Science Degree
17 52 (0.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 49 (0.42%) TOGAF Certification
19 48 (0.42%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 448 (3.88%) QA
2 374 (3.24%) Data Quality
3 311 (2.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 304 (2.63%) NIST
5 255 (2.21%) Accessibility
6 247 (2.14%) NCSC
7 214 (1.85%) PMO
8 180 (1.56%) GDPR
9 141 (1.22%) GRC
10 138 (1.20%) SLA
11 80 (0.69%) WCAG
12 63 (0.55%) JSP 440
13 47 (0.41%) NIST 800
14 46 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
15 32 (0.28%) Government Security Classifications
16 30 (0.26%) Def Stans
17 28 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 27 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 22 (0.19%) RMADS
20 19 (0.16%) COBIT
System Software
1 805 (6.97%) Docker
2 517 (4.48%) Active Directory
3 395 (3.42%) VMware Infrastructure
4 149 (1.29%) VMware NSX
5 131 (1.13%) VMware ESXi
6 114 (0.99%) vSphere
7 110 (0.95%) Hyper-V
8 80 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
9 46 (0.40%) Oracle RAC
10 37 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
11 29 (0.25%) Firmware
12 23 (0.20%) vCloud
13 20 (0.17%) BitLocker
14 18 (0.16%) NFS
14 18 (0.16%) Postfix
15 17 (0.15%) Squid
16 10 (0.087%) KVM
17 8 (0.069%) Microsoft App-V
18 7 (0.061%) Ceph
18 7 (0.061%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 971 (8.41%) Terraform
2 950 (8.23%) Kubernetes
3 426 (3.69%) Ansible
4 265 (2.30%) Grafana
5 211 (1.83%) Prometheus
6 130 (1.13%) vCenter Server
7 108 (0.94%) SCCM
8 84 (0.73%) Microsoft Intune
9 68 (0.59%) Argo
9 68 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
10 67 (0.58%) SCOM
11 55 (0.48%) Oracle RMAN
12 50 (0.43%) Puppet
13 45 (0.39%) FortiGate
14 39 (0.34%) Data Guard
15 30 (0.26%) Nagios
16 29 (0.25%) Progress Chef
17 25 (0.22%) Podman
17 25 (0.22%) Red Hat Satellite
17 25 (0.22%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,336 (11.57%) Microsoft
2 907 (7.86%) Oracle
3 572 (4.96%) VMware
4 552 (4.78%) ServiceNow
5 430 (3.73%) SAP
6 309 (2.68%) Cisco
7 220 (1.91%) Google
8 209 (1.81%) Splunk
9 202 (1.75%) Databricks
10 194 (1.68%) Salesforce
11 159 (1.38%) Red Hat
12 134 (1.16%) Talend
13 132 (1.14%) Informatica
14 119 (1.03%) IBM
15 112 (0.97%) Palo Alto
16 105 (0.91%) Juniper
17 97 (0.84%) F5
17 97 (0.84%) SolarWinds
18 90 (0.78%) Remedy
19 88 (0.76%) Dynatrace