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

6 months to
26 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,674 5,128 7,720
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.99% 17.93% 18.10%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.54% 57.64% 60.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,309 3,392 5,121
10th Percentile £380 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.85% -3.73% -
75th Percentile £625 £623 £650
90th Percentile £721 £689 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £537 £550
% change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 855 303 527
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £13.99
25th Percentile £22.63 £21.64 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £32.50 £55.08
Median % change year-on-year +69.23% -40.99% -8.21%
75th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.44 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £36.65 £57.33
% change year-on-year +50.09% -36.08% -0.30%

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 15,349 8,896 12,755
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.62% 31.10% 29.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,182 5,617 7,949
10th Percentile £350 £275 £307
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £530
Median % change year-on-year +0.48% -1.42% -3.64%
75th Percentile £623 £619 £645
90th Percentile £719 £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 1,115 503 1,075
10th Percentile £16.35 £17.87 £13.69
25th Percentile £21.33 £21.25 £17.94
Median hourly rate £47.54 £32.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +46.28% -18.75% -27.27%
75th Percentile £71.50 £65.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.25 £78.19 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £32.50 £40.63
% change year-on-year +46.15% -20.01% -22.06%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 9,259 £525 -2.33% 1,797
UK excluding London +1 5,946 £525 -2.23% 1,414
London +6 3,291 £525 - 497
Work from Home +4 2,863 £525 - 963
South East +1 2,228 £550 - 468
South West 0 1,293 £538 -6.52% 355
North of England 0 930 £500 - 267
Midlands +2 871 £470 -10.49% 129
West Midlands +3 746 £470 -10.48% 102
North West -1 528 £511 +2.20% 155
East of England +2 378 £550 +10.00% 127
Yorkshire -9 234 £488 -1.71% 56
Scotland +28 230 £525 +20.00% 56
North East +1 206 £475 -1.04% 57
East Midlands -5 118 £450 -5.26% 27
Wales +5 87 £490 +3.16% 32
Northern Ireland +2 22 £650 +36.84% 15

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
1 393 (3.68%) Confluence
2 222 (2.08%) SharePoint
3 144 (1.35%) SAS
4 130 (1.22%) Microsoft Exchange
5 101 (0.95%) Apache Spark
6 84 (0.79%) Apache
7 77 (0.72%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.37%) WebLogic
9 37 (0.35%) nginx
10 32 (0.30%) Jupyter
11 21 (0.20%) Tomcat
12 19 (0.18%) IIS
13 18 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
14 15 (0.14%) Skype for Business
14 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
15 14 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
16 13 (0.12%) CMS
16 13 (0.12%) NetWeaver
17 10 (0.094%) ArcGIS
18 8 (0.075%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 179 (1.68%) Microsoft Excel
2 178 (1.67%) Microsoft Office
3 94 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 81 (0.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 18 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.13%) Simulink
8 8 (0.075%) AutoCAD
9 7 (0.066%) Notepad++
9 7 (0.066%) SOLIDWORKS
10 6 (0.056%) Revit
11 5 (0.047%) Sketch
12 4 (0.037%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.037%) Siemens NX
12 4 (0.037%) Windchill
13 3 (0.028%) Chatbot
14 2 (0.019%) CPLEX
14 2 (0.019%) InVision
14 2 (0.019%) Lectora
14 2 (0.019%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 112 (1.05%) SAP S/4HANA
2 53 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
3 39 (0.37%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 32 (0.30%) Teamcenter
5 30 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
6 28 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
7 24 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
8 15 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
9 14 (0.13%) Maximo
9 14 (0.13%) SAP GRC
10 13 (0.12%) Findur
11 12 (0.11%) iTrent
11 12 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
11 12 (0.11%) Temenos T24
12 11 (0.10%) Oracle Assets
13 9 (0.084%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 9 (0.084%) SAP ERP
13 9 (0.084%) SAP HCM
13 9 (0.084%) SAP HR
14 8 (0.075%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,854 (17.37%) AWS
2 1,831 (17.15%) Azure
3 444 (4.16%) GitHub
4 430 (4.03%) GCP
5 396 (3.71%) Azure DevOps
6 382 (3.58%) Power Platform
7 259 (2.43%) Entra ID
8 257 (2.41%) Serverless
9 254 (2.38%) Microsoft 365
10 252 (2.36%) GitHub Actions
11 207 (1.94%) Amazon S3
12 176 (1.65%) AWS Lambda
13 157 (1.47%) PaaS
14 151 (1.41%) Amazon EC2
15 140 (1.31%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 138 (1.29%) Amazon EKS
16 138 (1.29%) OpenShift
17 130 (1.22%) OCI
17 130 (1.22%) SaaS
18 126 (1.18%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 486 (4.55%) Firewall
2 307 (2.88%) DNS
3 240 (2.25%) Network Security
4 239 (2.24%) WAN
5 210 (1.97%) LAN
6 174 (1.63%) VPN
7 153 (1.43%) DHCP
8 151 (1.41%) BGP
9 130 (1.22%) OSPF
10 118 (1.11%) TCP/IP
11 114 (1.07%) VLAN
12 110 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
13 87 (0.82%) Wireless
14 69 (0.65%) MPLS
15 65 (0.61%) SAN
16 62 (0.58%) Structured Cabling
17 59 (0.55%) VXLAN
18 56 (0.52%) SD-WAN
19 54 (0.51%) IPsec
20 51 (0.48%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 296 (2.77%) Power BI
2 255 (2.39%) PostgreSQL
3 238 (2.23%) Data Warehouse
4 211 (1.98%) SQL Server
5 134 (1.26%) Oracle Database
6 133 (1.25%) Metadata
7 113 (1.06%) Data Lake
8 112 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
9 109 (1.02%) MongoDB
10 97 (0.91%) Relational Database
11 88 (0.82%) NoSQL
12 79 (0.74%) Pentaho
13 77 (0.72%) Elasticsearch
14 75 (0.70%) MySQL
14 75 (0.70%) Oracle Reports
15 70 (0.66%) Big Data
16 68 (0.64%) Tableau
17 62 (0.58%) Amazon Redshift
18 60 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
18 60 (0.56%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 610 (5.71%) JIRA
2 447 (4.19%) Git
3 418 (3.92%) GitLab
4 406 (3.80%) Jenkins
5 112 (1.05%) Selenium
6 86 (0.81%) Postman
7 77 (0.72%) JUnit
8 72 (0.67%) SonarQube
9 60 (0.56%) Rational DOORS
10 56 (0.52%) Artifactory
11 55 (0.52%) JMeter
12 44 (0.41%) Cucumber
13 42 (0.39%) Bitbucket
13 42 (0.39%) Mockito
14 39 (0.37%) Maven
14 39 (0.37%) Visual Studio
15 37 (0.35%) Cypress.io
16 35 (0.33%) Zephyr
17 34 (0.32%) REST Assured
18 30 (0.28%) Gatling
General
1 2,325 (21.78%) Public Sector
2 2,183 (20.45%) Social Skills
3 730 (6.84%) Analytical Skills
4 683 (6.40%) Finance
5 347 (3.25%) Military
6 285 (2.67%) Documentation Skills
7 263 (2.46%) Aerospace
8 164 (1.54%) Legal
9 126 (1.18%) Telecoms
10 122 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
11 118 (1.11%) Banking
12 111 (1.04%) Organisational Skills
13 110 (1.03%) Manufacturing
14 91 (0.85%) Law
15 81 (0.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 78 (0.73%) Presentation Skills
17 61 (0.57%) Police
18 54 (0.51%) Marketing
19 46 (0.43%) Aviation
20 42 (0.39%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 1,614 (15.12%) Architect
2 996 (9.33%) Developer
3 916 (8.58%) Senior
4 748 (7.01%) Lead
5 743 (6.96%) Analyst
6 526 (4.93%) Consultant
7 521 (4.88%) Data Engineer
8 503 (4.71%) DevOps Engineer
9 332 (3.11%) Technical Architect
10 319 (2.99%) Software Engineer
11 303 (2.84%) Network Engineer
12 298 (2.79%) Solutions Architect
13 296 (2.77%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 265 (2.48%) Business Analyst
15 228 (2.14%) Project Manager
16 218 (2.04%) Designer
16 218 (2.04%) Security Architect
17 214 (2.00%) Azure Engineer
18 192 (1.80%) Administrator
19 189 (1.77%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 328 (3.07%) REST
2 243 (2.28%) Spring
3 205 (1.92%) Kafka
4 201 (1.88%) Spring Boot
5 196 (1.84%) React
6 188 (1.76%) Node.js
7 177 (1.66%) .NET
8 156 (1.46%) LDAP
9 153 (1.43%) SOAP
10 150 (1.41%) RESTful
11 125 (1.17%) JSON
12 121 (1.13%) AngularJS
13 116 (1.09%) PySpark
14 115 (1.08%) Web Services
15 102 (0.96%) OAuth
16 94 (0.88%) Oracle Fusion
17 92 (0.86%) Middleware
18 90 (0.84%) HTML
19 88 (0.82%) XML
20 85 (0.80%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 362 (3.39%) Cloud Native
2 329 (3.08%) Product Ownership
3 324 (3.04%) Data Centre
4 303 (2.84%) Onboarding
5 205 (1.92%) Management Information System
6 153 (1.43%) PKI
7 145 (1.36%) Legacy Systems
8 132 (1.24%) Security Posture
9 129 (1.21%) Enterprise Software
10 123 (1.15%) Distributed Systems
11 122 (1.14%) Replication
12 96 (0.90%) Self-Motivation
13 90 (0.84%) Data Structures
14 86 (0.81%) Hybrid Cloud
15 85 (0.80%) Clustering
15 85 (0.80%) Public Cloud
15 85 (0.80%) Security Operations Centre
16 77 (0.72%) Virtual Team
17 73 (0.68%) CMDB
17 73 (0.68%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 846 (7.93%) Windows
2 743 (6.96%) Linux
3 248 (2.32%) Windows Server
4 196 (1.84%) Unix
5 133 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 101 (0.95%) Android
7 89 (0.83%) Windows 10
8 67 (0.63%) Apple iOS
9 47 (0.44%) Solaris
10 40 (0.37%) Mac OS
10 40 (0.37%) Ubuntu
11 32 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
12 29 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
13 26 (0.24%) AIX
14 25 (0.23%) VMS
15 23 (0.22%) CentOS
16 15 (0.14%) Windows 7
17 13 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
18 12 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
19 10 (0.094%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,026 (18.98%) Agile
2 1,615 (15.13%) DevOps
3 1,456 (13.64%) CI/CD
4 1,113 (10.43%) Problem-Solving
5 1,009 (9.45%) Stakeholder Management
6 957 (8.97%) Continuous Improvement
7 833 (7.80%) Migration
8 802 (7.51%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 743 (6.96%) Infrastructure as Code
10 652 (6.11%) Cybersecurity
11 630 (5.90%) ITIL
12 625 (5.86%) Test Automation
13 608 (5.70%) Analytics
14 584 (5.47%) Software Engineering
15 581 (5.44%) Containerisation
16 577 (5.41%) Roadmaps
17 545 (5.11%) Data Modelling
18 525 (4.92%) Decision-Making
19 468 (4.38%) AI
20 453 (4.24%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 1,185 (11.10%) Python
2 980 (9.18%) SQL
3 660 (6.18%) Java
4 546 (5.12%) PowerShell
5 333 (3.12%) JavaScript
6 214 (2.00%) C#
7 207 (1.94%) Bash
8 180 (1.69%) TypeScript
9 120 (1.12%) PL/SQL
10 99 (0.93%) C++
11 97 (0.91%) Shell Script
12 71 (0.67%) Go
13 66 (0.62%) Ruby
13 66 (0.62%) Scala
14 63 (0.59%) Bicep
15 57 (0.53%) C
16 53 (0.50%) Apex Code
17 46 (0.43%) R
18 42 (0.39%) Ada
19 40 (0.37%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 8,149 (76.34%) SC Cleared
2 1,929 (18.07%) DV Cleared
3 443 (4.15%) Degree
4 300 (2.81%) BPSS Clearance
5 224 (2.10%) Cisco Certification
6 182 (1.71%) CISSP
7 130 (1.22%) Azure Certification
8 129 (1.21%) CCNP
9 118 (1.11%) CISM
10 111 (1.04%) AWS Certification
11 97 (0.91%) CCNA
11 97 (0.91%) Microsoft Certification
12 78 (0.73%) PMP
13 73 (0.68%) Computer Science Degree
14 67 (0.63%) PMI Certification
14 67 (0.63%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 63 (0.59%) ISTQB
16 56 (0.52%) ITIL Certification
17 49 (0.46%) GIAC
18 45 (0.42%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 383 (3.59%) QA
2 314 (2.94%) Data Quality
3 304 (2.85%) NIST
4 302 (2.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 215 (2.01%) NCSC
6 206 (1.93%) Accessibility
7 174 (1.63%) GDPR
8 157 (1.47%) PMO
9 116 (1.09%) SLA
10 80 (0.75%) GRC
11 68 (0.64%) JSP 440
12 55 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials
13 44 (0.41%) WCAG
14 41 (0.38%) NIST 800
15 36 (0.34%) RMADS
16 30 (0.28%) Def Stans
17 28 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 27 (0.25%) PCI DSS
19 25 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
20 23 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 651 (6.10%) Docker
2 470 (4.40%) Active Directory
3 291 (2.73%) VMware Infrastructure
4 106 (0.99%) VMware ESXi
5 99 (0.93%) VMware NSX
6 87 (0.82%) Hyper-V
7 82 (0.77%) vSphere
8 69 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
9 37 (0.35%) Firmware
10 35 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
11 24 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
12 23 (0.22%) NFS
13 21 (0.20%) BitLocker
14 20 (0.19%) vCloud
15 19 (0.18%) Postfix
16 18 (0.17%) Squid
17 16 (0.15%) Slurm Workload Manager
18 9 (0.084%) KVM
19 8 (0.075%) Microsoft App-V
20 6 (0.056%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 837 (7.84%) Terraform
2 831 (7.79%) Kubernetes
3 377 (3.53%) Ansible
4 277 (2.60%) Grafana
5 230 (2.15%) Prometheus
6 109 (1.02%) Single Sign-On
7 108 (1.01%) vCenter Server
8 76 (0.71%) SCCM
9 65 (0.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 53 (0.50%) Argo
10 53 (0.50%) FortiGate
10 53 (0.50%) Microsoft Intune
11 41 (0.38%) Puppet
12 40 (0.37%) Oracle RMAN
12 40 (0.37%) Podman
13 33 (0.31%) SCOM
14 32 (0.30%) Progress Chef
15 31 (0.29%) Nagios
16 29 (0.27%) vRealize
17 25 (0.23%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,063 (9.96%) Microsoft
2 679 (6.36%) Oracle
3 506 (4.74%) VMware
4 416 (3.90%) ServiceNow
5 371 (3.48%) Cisco
6 360 (3.37%) SAP
7 242 (2.27%) Splunk
8 210 (1.97%) Databricks
9 179 (1.68%) Red Hat
10 171 (1.60%) Google
11 154 (1.44%) Salesforce
12 137 (1.28%) Talend
13 128 (1.20%) Palo Alto
14 124 (1.16%) IBM
15 106 (0.99%) Juniper
16 104 (0.97%) Informatica
17 99 (0.93%) CyberArk
18 92 (0.86%) Fortinet
19 90 (0.84%) F5
20 83 (0.78%) Dynatrace