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 7 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 2 3 4
Rank change year-on-year +1 +1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 7,596 6,305 7,915
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 20.94% 17.66% 17.40%
As % of the Qualifications category 62.64% 59.80% 58.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,018 3,986 4,961
10th Percentile £340 £350 £375
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.22%
75th Percentile £632 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £550 £560
% change year-on-year -4.55% -1.79% +1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 752 333 497
10th Percentile £18.82 £20.12 £20.00
25th Percentile £19.38 £24.18 £46.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -49.70% -16.67% -
75th Percentile £52.87 £67.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £53.76 £59.68
% change year-on-year -53.21% -9.93% -0.53%

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 12,126 10,544 13,419
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.42% 29.53% 29.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,881 6,411 8,455
10th Percentile £306 £307 £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 £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £515 £538
% change year-on-year -2.91% -4.19% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,015 505 755
10th Percentile £17.06 £18.94 £17.72
25th Percentile £19.23 £24.18 £27.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £42.50 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -40.82% -19.05% +16.67%
75th Percentile £45.46 £66.00 £67.66
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £51.90
% change year-on-year -45.54% -11.01% +15.32%

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 7 December 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 7 December 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 7 December 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 +1 6,658 £525 -4.55% 2,182
UK excluding London 0 4,408 £525 -4.55% 2,003
London +2 2,174 £550 - 438
Work from Home +2 2,103 £538 -0.46% 1,199
South East -1 1,309 £520 -5.45% 733
South West 0 1,147 £550 -4.35% 510
North of England -1 777 £513 +7.89% 293
Midlands +2 705 £517 -6.05% 174
West Midlands +2 550 £520 -5.54% 132
North West 0 513 £525 +5.21% 194
East of England +2 301 £500 -2.44% 311
Yorkshire -15 163 £500 +6.38% 64
Scotland -8 148 £463 -7.50% 60
East Midlands -1 140 £431 -9.21% 40
North East 0 114 £475 -2.61% 39
Wales -4 77 £550 +10.00% 42
Northern Ireland +3 42 £500 -16.67% 12
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
1 273 (3.59%) Confluence
2 184 (2.42%) SharePoint
3 122 (1.61%) Microsoft Exchange
4 104 (1.37%) SAS
5 88 (1.16%) Apache
6 52 (0.68%) Apache Airflow
6 52 (0.68%) Apache Spark
7 44 (0.58%) nginx
8 39 (0.51%) Skype for Business
9 34 (0.45%) WebLogic
10 28 (0.37%) CMS
11 20 (0.26%) IIS
12 15 (0.20%) SharePoint Server
13 14 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2010
14 13 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2013
15 11 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 10 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2003
16 10 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2007
16 10 (0.13%) Office Communications Server
17 9 (0.12%) WordPress
Applications
1 242 (3.19%) Microsoft Office
2 162 (2.13%) Microsoft Excel
3 105 (1.38%) Microsoft Project
4 53 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 34 (0.45%) MS Visio
6 21 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
7 18 (0.24%) Simulink
8 12 (0.16%) Siemens NX
9 11 (0.14%) Sketch
10 10 (0.13%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 8 (0.11%) Adobe XD
11 8 (0.11%) ProjectWise
12 6 (0.079%) Oracle Smart View
13 5 (0.066%) FrameMaker
13 5 (0.066%) PTC Creo
13 5 (0.066%) Stateflow
13 5 (0.066%) Trello
13 5 (0.066%) Windchill
14 4 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
14 4 (0.053%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 182 (2.40%) SAP S/4HANA
2 39 (0.51%) Remedy ITSM
3 34 (0.45%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 29 (0.38%) SAP EWM
4 29 (0.38%) SAP WM
5 24 (0.32%) SAP MM
6 23 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
6 23 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
7 17 (0.22%) Primavera
7 17 (0.22%) SAP HCM
8 16 (0.21%) Maximo
9 15 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
9 15 (0.20%) Teamcenter
10 14 (0.18%) SAP VC
11 13 (0.17%) SAP PP
12 12 (0.16%) SAP EHS
12 12 (0.16%) SAP PS
12 12 (0.16%) SAP QM
13 10 (0.13%) SAP Payroll
13 10 (0.13%) SAP PM
Cloud Services
1 1,266 (16.67%) AWS
2 1,194 (15.72%) Azure
3 359 (4.73%) GitHub
4 330 (4.34%) Microsoft 365
5 273 (3.59%) GCP
6 269 (3.54%) Azure DevOps
7 268 (3.53%) Power Platform
8 225 (2.96%) Serverless
9 192 (2.53%) GitHub Actions
10 186 (2.45%) Amazon S3
11 169 (2.22%) Entra ID
12 138 (1.82%) AWS CloudFormation
12 138 (1.82%) OpenShift
13 130 (1.71%) AWS Lambda
14 129 (1.70%) SaaS
15 124 (1.63%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 118 (1.55%) Amazon EC2
17 110 (1.45%) Amazon EKS
18 98 (1.29%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 90 (1.18%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 379 (4.99%) Firewall
2 259 (3.41%) DNS
3 176 (2.32%) VPN
4 148 (1.95%) WAN
5 146 (1.92%) Network Security
6 112 (1.47%) TCP/IP
7 103 (1.36%) LAN
8 99 (1.30%) Wireless
9 97 (1.28%) DHCP
10 94 (1.24%) BGP
11 81 (1.07%) SSL
12 71 (0.93%) SAN
13 68 (0.90%) Wi-Fi
14 61 (0.80%) MPLS
15 58 (0.76%) Cisco ISE
16 55 (0.72%) IPsec
16 55 (0.72%) VLAN
17 49 (0.65%) HTTP
18 47 (0.62%) OSPF
19 41 (0.54%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 220 (2.90%) PostgreSQL
2 176 (2.32%) Power BI
3 98 (1.29%) SQL Server
4 95 (1.25%) MongoDB
5 92 (1.21%) Amazon RDS
5 92 (1.21%) Oracle Database
6 88 (1.16%) Data Warehouse
7 83 (1.09%) NoSQL
8 81 (1.07%) Relational Database
9 79 (1.04%) Metadata
10 58 (0.76%) Azure SQL Database
11 52 (0.68%) Big Data
12 43 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
13 40 (0.53%) Pentaho
14 39 (0.51%) Amazon Redshift
15 38 (0.50%) Amazon Athena
15 38 (0.50%) Data Lake
15 38 (0.50%) MySQL
16 37 (0.49%) SAS Enterprise Guide
17 35 (0.46%) Redis
Development Applications
1 512 (6.74%) JIRA
2 410 (5.40%) Git
3 388 (5.11%) Jenkins
4 297 (3.91%) GitLab
5 85 (1.12%) Selenium
6 61 (0.80%) JUnit
7 58 (0.76%) Cypress.io
7 58 (0.76%) Postman
8 56 (0.74%) SonarQube
9 47 (0.62%) Bitbucket
10 46 (0.61%) Oracle APEX
11 36 (0.47%) Artifactory
11 36 (0.47%) Mockito
12 33 (0.43%) Cucumber
13 31 (0.41%) Maven
14 27 (0.36%) MSI
15 26 (0.34%) REST Assured
16 23 (0.30%) CircleCI
17 22 (0.29%) JMeter
17 22 (0.29%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,054 (27.04%) Public Sector
2 1,907 (25.11%) Social Skills
3 678 (8.93%) Analytical Skills
4 536 (7.06%) Finance
5 288 (3.79%) Military
6 231 (3.04%) Telecoms
7 217 (2.86%) Manufacturing
8 186 (2.45%) Documentation Skills
9 157 (2.07%) Electronics
10 148 (1.95%) Marketing
11 135 (1.78%) Aerospace
12 113 (1.49%) Organisational Skills
13 110 (1.45%) Legal
14 94 (1.24%) Banking
15 93 (1.22%) Influencing Skills
16 83 (1.09%) Presentation Skills
17 69 (0.91%) Law
18 54 (0.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 39 (0.51%) Aviation
20 38 (0.50%) Police
Job Titles
1 1,004 (13.22%) Architect
2 776 (10.22%) Developer
3 664 (8.74%) Consultant
4 610 (8.03%) Senior
5 498 (6.56%) Analyst
6 469 (6.17%) Lead
7 344 (4.53%) DevOps Engineer
8 259 (3.41%) Support Engineer
9 209 (2.75%) Network Engineer
10 206 (2.71%) Solutions Architect
11 182 (2.40%) Data Engineer
12 170 (2.24%) SAP Consultant
13 153 (2.01%) AWS Engineer
14 152 (2.00%) Technical Architect
15 139 (1.83%) Platform Engineer
16 137 (1.80%) Software Engineer
17 136 (1.79%) Tester
18 134 (1.76%) IT Engineer
19 131 (1.72%) Administrator
20 129 (1.70%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 282 (3.71%) REST
2 195 (2.57%) Node.js
3 178 (2.34%) React
4 176 (2.32%) Kafka
5 160 (2.11%) JSON
6 135 (1.78%) Spring
7 134 (1.76%) SOAP
8 123 (1.62%) HTML
9 115 (1.51%) RESTful
10 113 (1.49%) XML
11 109 (1.43%) Spring Boot
12 102 (1.34%) AngularJS
13 99 (1.30%) .NET
13 99 (1.30%) CSS
14 96 (1.26%) Web Services
15 80 (1.05%) OAuth
16 74 (0.97%) Oracle Fusion
17 72 (0.95%) LDAP
18 68 (0.90%) Elastic Stack
19 61 (0.80%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 222 (2.92%) Data Centre
2 201 (2.65%) Onboarding
3 196 (2.58%) Cloud Native
4 181 (2.38%) PKI
5 169 (2.22%) Product Ownership
6 150 (1.97%) Management Information System
7 108 (1.42%) Self-Motivation
8 101 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
9 83 (1.09%) Driving Licence
10 78 (1.03%) Cyber Threat
11 73 (0.96%) Security Posture
12 71 (0.93%) Replication
13 68 (0.90%) Security Operations Centre
14 67 (0.88%) CMDB
15 63 (0.83%) Enterprise Software
16 61 (0.80%) Hybrid Cloud
17 56 (0.74%) Analytical Mindset
18 52 (0.68%) Private Cloud
19 50 (0.66%) Public Cloud
20 46 (0.61%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 825 (10.86%) Windows
2 570 (7.50%) Linux
3 191 (2.51%) Windows Server
4 178 (2.34%) Windows 10
5 111 (1.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 103 (1.36%) Unix
7 96 (1.26%) Android
8 85 (1.12%) Mac OS
9 50 (0.66%) VMS
10 41 (0.54%) Ubuntu
11 34 (0.45%) Windows Server 2019
12 28 (0.37%) Apple iOS
13 25 (0.33%) Windows Server 2012
13 25 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
14 24 (0.32%) Windows 7
15 23 (0.30%) Amazon Linux
16 21 (0.28%) CentOS
17 17 (0.22%) Windows Server 2003
18 16 (0.21%) Mac OS X
19 9 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,483 (19.52%) Agile
2 1,154 (15.19%) DevOps
3 1,056 (13.90%) CI/CD
4 908 (11.95%) Problem-Solving
5 771 (10.15%) Migration
6 599 (7.89%) Stakeholder Management
7 513 (6.75%) Cybersecurity
7 513 (6.75%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 500 (6.58%) ITIL
9 495 (6.52%) Infrastructure as Code
10 480 (6.32%) Continuous Improvement
11 426 (5.61%) Containerisation
12 422 (5.56%) Test Automation
13 412 (5.42%) Service Management
14 403 (5.31%) Business Intelligence
15 401 (5.28%) Workflow
16 386 (5.08%) Analytics
17 362 (4.77%) Roadmaps
18 348 (4.58%) Scrum
19 343 (4.52%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 946 (12.45%) Python
2 573 (7.54%) SQL
3 473 (6.23%) PowerShell
4 467 (6.15%) Java
5 396 (5.21%) JavaScript
6 237 (3.12%) Bash
7 193 (2.54%) TypeScript
8 133 (1.75%) C#
9 100 (1.32%) C++
10 90 (1.18%) Go
11 75 (0.99%) Shell Script
12 74 (0.97%) PL/SQL
13 73 (0.96%) C
14 48 (0.63%) ABAP
15 45 (0.59%) Ruby
16 40 (0.53%) Perl
17 33 (0.43%) Groovy
18 31 (0.41%) Bicep
19 30 (0.39%) MATLAB
20 29 (0.38%) Scala
Qualifications
1 5,853 (77.05%) SC Cleared
2 1,237 (16.28%) DV Cleared
3 374 (4.92%) Degree
4 330 (4.34%) BPSS Clearance
5 142 (1.87%) CISSP
6 123 (1.62%) Microsoft Certification
7 116 (1.53%) Cisco Certification
8 114 (1.50%) AWS Certification
9 113 (1.49%) Azure Certification
10 84 (1.11%) CCNP
11 80 (1.05%) CISM
12 56 (0.74%) Computer Science Degree
13 55 (0.72%) ITIL Certification
14 51 (0.67%) CCNA
15 47 (0.62%) CEH
15 47 (0.62%) TOGAF Certification
16 45 (0.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 42 (0.55%) CTC Cleared
18 41 (0.54%) CHECK Team Member
19 36 (0.47%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 234 (3.08%) QA
2 219 (2.88%) NIST
3 214 (2.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 171 (2.25%) NCSC
5 145 (1.91%) Data Quality
6 141 (1.86%) GDPR
7 139 (1.83%) SLA
8 137 (1.80%) Accessibility
9 67 (0.88%) PMO
10 53 (0.70%) JSP 440
11 46 (0.61%) WCAG
12 42 (0.55%) NIST 800
13 39 (0.51%) GRC
14 32 (0.42%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 29 (0.38%) COBIT
15 29 (0.38%) Def Stans
16 25 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials
17 22 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 21 (0.28%) PCI DSS
18 21 (0.28%) RMADS
System Software
1 593 (7.81%) Docker
2 429 (5.65%) Active Directory
3 215 (2.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 78 (1.03%) VMware NSX
5 71 (0.93%) vSphere
6 58 (0.76%) VMware ESXi
7 50 (0.66%) Virtual Machines
8 42 (0.55%) Firmware
9 36 (0.47%) Hyper-V
10 31 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
11 19 (0.25%) DFS Replication
12 16 (0.21%) Postfix
13 15 (0.20%) NFS
14 14 (0.18%) Dovecot
15 12 (0.16%) ISA Server
16 11 (0.14%) Terminal Services
17 10 (0.13%) BitLocker
17 10 (0.13%) Brightmail
17 10 (0.13%) Squid
18 7 (0.092%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 729 (9.60%) Kubernetes
2 685 (9.02%) Terraform
3 286 (3.77%) Ansible
4 186 (2.45%) Grafana
5 157 (2.07%) Prometheus
6 111 (1.46%) SCCM
7 97 (1.28%) Single Sign-On
8 80 (1.05%) Microsoft Intune
9 70 (0.92%) vCenter Server
10 62 (0.82%) Argo
11 57 (0.75%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 46 (0.61%) Packer
13 37 (0.49%) Kibana
14 33 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
14 33 (0.43%) OPNET
15 31 (0.41%) vRealize
16 27 (0.36%) Progress Chef
17 26 (0.34%) Puppet
18 25 (0.33%) Nessus
18 25 (0.33%) SCOM
Vendors
1 940 (12.37%) Microsoft
2 535 (7.04%) SAP
3 436 (5.74%) Cisco
4 404 (5.32%) Oracle
5 379 (4.99%) VMware
6 364 (4.79%) ServiceNow
7 186 (2.45%) Splunk
8 151 (1.99%) Red Hat
9 149 (1.96%) Juniper
10 121 (1.59%) Google
11 117 (1.54%) Salesforce
12 105 (1.38%) Palo Alto
13 104 (1.37%) Dell
14 102 (1.34%) Atlassian
15 99 (1.30%) HP
16 85 (1.12%) CyberArk
16 85 (1.12%) Remedy
17 84 (1.11%) Databricks
18 78 (1.03%) IBM
19 74 (0.97%) Apple