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 18 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,473 5,247 8,105
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.71% 17.83% 18.53%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.17% 57.90% 60.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,156 3,508 5,293
10th Percentile £363 £350 £356
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £534 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.59% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £520 £548 £550
% change year-on-year -5.11% -0.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 835 280 511
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.87
25th Percentile £21.33 £24.18 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £52.50 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% - -12.50%
75th Percentile £73.46 £67.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.25 £78.39 £83.41
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £57.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year -4.35% +4.55% -4.35%

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 15,141 9,062 13,410
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.83% 30.79% 30.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,079 5,764 8,290
10th Percentile £344 £290 £300
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £712 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £510 £530
% change year-on-year -1.96% -3.77% +0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,090 504 1,043
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.50 £13.69
25th Percentile £21.25 £22.66 £17.72
Median hourly rate £45.46 £42.75 £39.92
Median % change year-on-year +6.34% +7.09% -23.96%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.31 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.03 £80.89 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.46 £46.30 £40.00
% change year-on-year -1.81% +15.75% -18.37%

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 18 April 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 18 April 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 18 April 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 9,078 £525 -2.33% 1,820
UK excluding London +1 5,819 £520 -5.11% 1,491
London +6 3,176 £525 - 480
Work from Home +3 2,787 £525 -0.66% 798
South East +1 2,144 £533 -3.18% 505
South West 0 1,331 £538 -4.40% 353
Midlands +4 913 £485 -8.49% 165
North of England -1 864 £488 -2.50% 260
West Midlands +3 771 £485 -9.68% 122
North West -1 529 £500 - 151
East of England +2 369 £500 +11.11% 153
Yorkshire -1 209 £488 -7.14% 54
Scotland +30 199 £500 +2.56% 43
North East +1 161 £450 -6.25% 57
East Midlands -2 138 £450 -7.69% 43
Wales +4 76 £525 -3.67% 28
Northern Ireland +12 22 £463 -2.63% 12

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
1 403 (3.85%) Confluence
2 224 (2.14%) SharePoint
3 166 (1.59%) SAS
4 148 (1.41%) Microsoft Exchange
5 109 (1.04%) Apache Spark
6 89 (0.85%) Apache
7 69 (0.66%) Apache Airflow
8 49 (0.47%) nginx
9 40 (0.38%) WebLogic
10 23 (0.22%) Jupyter
11 17 (0.16%) Tomcat
12 16 (0.15%) CMS
13 15 (0.14%) IIS
13 15 (0.14%) Skype for Business
13 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
14 14 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
15 13 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
16 11 (0.11%) ArcGIS
16 11 (0.11%) NetWeaver
17 10 (0.095%) Oracle Application Server
Applications
1 230 (2.20%) Microsoft Office
2 194 (1.85%) Microsoft Excel
3 124 (1.18%) Microsoft Project
4 78 (0.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 47 (0.45%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.15%) Simulink
8 7 (0.067%) Notepad++
9 5 (0.048%) Windchill
10 4 (0.038%) Siemens NX
10 4 (0.038%) Sketch
11 3 (0.029%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.019%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.019%) CATIA
12 2 (0.019%) Chatbot
12 2 (0.019%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.019%) InVision
12 2 (0.019%) Lectora
12 2 (0.019%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.019%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 105 (1.00%) SAP S/4HANA
2 46 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
3 44 (0.42%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 30 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
5 27 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
6 26 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 20 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
8 19 (0.18%) SAP PP
9 17 (0.16%) Maximo
10 13 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
10 13 (0.12%) Temenos T24
11 11 (0.11%) Findur
11 11 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
11 11 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
12 10 (0.095%) SAP HCM
13 9 (0.086%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 9 (0.086%) SAP PM
14 8 (0.076%) SAP EWM
14 8 (0.076%) SAP HR
14 8 (0.076%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 1,812 (17.30%) AWS
2 1,758 (16.79%) Azure
3 452 (4.32%) GitHub
4 437 (4.17%) GCP
5 400 (3.82%) Azure DevOps
6 363 (3.47%) Power Platform
7 301 (2.87%) Serverless
8 288 (2.75%) Microsoft 365
9 247 (2.36%) GitHub Actions
10 239 (2.28%) Entra ID
11 225 (2.15%) Amazon S3
12 201 (1.92%) AWS Lambda
13 156 (1.49%) PaaS
14 155 (1.48%) OpenShift
15 149 (1.42%) AWS CloudFormation
16 136 (1.30%) Amazon EC2
16 136 (1.30%) IaaS
17 134 (1.28%) Amazon EKS
18 126 (1.20%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 123 (1.17%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 475 (4.54%) Firewall
2 296 (2.83%) DNS
3 234 (2.23%) Network Security
4 226 (2.16%) WAN
5 206 (1.97%) LAN
6 177 (1.69%) VPN
7 147 (1.40%) BGP
8 141 (1.35%) DHCP
9 124 (1.18%) TCP/IP
10 119 (1.14%) OSPF
11 104 (0.99%) VLAN
12 88 (0.84%) Wireless
13 68 (0.65%) Wi-Fi
14 67 (0.64%) MPLS
15 57 (0.54%) SAN
16 53 (0.51%) SSL
17 51 (0.49%) SD-WAN
18 49 (0.47%) IPsec
19 47 (0.45%) VXLAN
20 45 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 278 (2.65%) Power BI
2 271 (2.59%) PostgreSQL
3 230 (2.20%) Data Warehouse
4 195 (1.86%) SQL Server
5 154 (1.47%) Metadata
6 125 (1.19%) Oracle Database
7 110 (1.05%) NoSQL
8 109 (1.04%) Amazon RDS
9 104 (0.99%) MongoDB
10 98 (0.94%) Relational Database
11 94 (0.90%) Data Lake
12 85 (0.81%) Azure SQL Database
13 83 (0.79%) MySQL
14 79 (0.75%) Elasticsearch
14 79 (0.75%) Pentaho
15 75 (0.72%) Big Data
15 75 (0.72%) Tableau
16 69 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
17 65 (0.62%) Oracle Reports
18 59 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 640 (6.11%) JIRA
2 516 (4.93%) Git
3 401 (3.83%) Jenkins
4 366 (3.49%) GitLab
5 118 (1.13%) Selenium
6 92 (0.88%) Postman
7 84 (0.80%) JUnit
8 66 (0.63%) SonarQube
9 51 (0.49%) Bitbucket
10 50 (0.48%) Rational DOORS
11 47 (0.45%) Artifactory
12 43 (0.41%) Maven
13 42 (0.40%) Cucumber
13 42 (0.40%) JMeter
13 42 (0.40%) Oracle APEX
14 39 (0.37%) Cypress.io
14 39 (0.37%) Mockito
15 31 (0.30%) Visual Studio
16 30 (0.29%) Zephyr
17 26 (0.25%) REST Assured
General
1 2,445 (23.35%) Public Sector
2 2,293 (21.89%) Social Skills
3 837 (7.99%) Analytical Skills
4 695 (6.64%) Finance
5 348 (3.32%) Military
6 285 (2.72%) Documentation Skills
7 238 (2.27%) Aerospace
8 170 (1.62%) Legal
9 158 (1.51%) Telecoms
10 155 (1.48%) Manufacturing
11 135 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
12 120 (1.15%) Banking
13 112 (1.07%) Organisational Skills
14 98 (0.94%) Presentation Skills
15 87 (0.83%) Marketing
16 81 (0.77%) Electronics
17 80 (0.76%) Law
18 75 (0.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 62 (0.59%) Police
20 33 (0.32%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,599 (15.27%) Architect
2 1,036 (9.89%) Developer
3 920 (8.78%) Senior
4 751 (7.17%) Analyst
5 684 (6.53%) Lead
6 566 (5.40%) Consultant
7 473 (4.52%) Data Engineer
8 452 (4.32%) DevOps Engineer
9 316 (3.02%) Technical Architect
10 309 (2.95%) Software Engineer
11 287 (2.74%) Solutions Architect
12 280 (2.67%) Network Engineer
13 272 (2.60%) Business Analyst
14 225 (2.15%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 216 (2.06%) Azure Engineer
16 214 (2.04%) Project Manager
17 200 (1.91%) Security Architect
18 196 (1.87%) Designer
19 185 (1.77%) Administrator
20 184 (1.76%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 369 (3.52%) REST
2 236 (2.25%) Spring
3 214 (2.04%) Kafka
4 210 (2.01%) Node.js
5 185 (1.77%) React
6 182 (1.74%) Spring Boot
7 179 (1.71%) .NET
8 170 (1.62%) JSON
9 154 (1.47%) SOAP
10 145 (1.38%) RESTful
11 142 (1.36%) LDAP
12 132 (1.26%) PySpark
13 125 (1.19%) AngularJS
14 119 (1.14%) Web Services
15 112 (1.07%) OAuth
16 97 (0.93%) Oracle Fusion
17 96 (0.92%) HTML
17 96 (0.92%) XML
18 86 (0.82%) Middleware
19 80 (0.76%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 348 (3.32%) Product Ownership
2 329 (3.14%) Cloud Native
3 307 (2.93%) Data Centre
4 275 (2.63%) Onboarding
5 196 (1.87%) Management Information System
6 190 (1.81%) PKI
7 131 (1.25%) Security Posture
8 128 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
9 127 (1.21%) Legacy Systems
10 121 (1.16%) Distributed Systems
10 121 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
11 120 (1.15%) Replication
12 95 (0.91%) Public Cloud
13 81 (0.77%) Data Structures
14 79 (0.75%) Security Operations Centre
15 77 (0.74%) Hybrid Cloud
16 73 (0.70%) Virtual Team
17 69 (0.66%) Clustering
18 63 (0.60%) Driving Licence
19 61 (0.58%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 863 (8.24%) Windows
2 742 (7.08%) Linux
3 256 (2.44%) Windows Server
4 154 (1.47%) Unix
5 138 (1.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 123 (1.17%) Android
7 109 (1.04%) Windows 10
8 65 (0.62%) Apple iOS
9 55 (0.53%) Mac OS
10 40 (0.38%) Ubuntu
11 33 (0.32%) VMS
12 30 (0.29%) Solaris
13 29 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
14 27 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
15 23 (0.22%) AIX
16 21 (0.20%) CentOS
17 16 (0.15%) Windows 7
18 14 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
19 10 (0.095%) Windows Server 2008
20 8 (0.076%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,069 (19.76%) Agile
2 1,564 (14.93%) DevOps
3 1,405 (13.42%) CI/CD
4 1,174 (11.21%) Problem-Solving
5 975 (9.31%) Stakeholder Management
6 898 (8.57%) Migration
7 897 (8.56%) Continuous Improvement
8 784 (7.49%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 682 (6.51%) Infrastructure as Code
10 655 (6.25%) ITIL
11 624 (5.96%) Analytics
12 620 (5.92%) Cybersecurity
13 614 (5.86%) Test Automation
14 580 (5.54%) Roadmaps
15 568 (5.42%) Containerisation
16 538 (5.14%) Software Engineering
17 510 (4.87%) Data Modelling
18 507 (4.84%) Scrum
19 468 (4.47%) Decision-Making
20 464 (4.43%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 1,240 (11.84%) Python
2 970 (9.26%) SQL
3 635 (6.06%) Java
4 601 (5.74%) PowerShell
5 388 (3.70%) JavaScript
6 217 (2.07%) C#
7 206 (1.97%) Bash
8 184 (1.76%) TypeScript
9 123 (1.17%) PL/SQL
10 104 (0.99%) Shell Script
11 102 (0.97%) C++
12 76 (0.73%) Go
13 72 (0.69%) Ruby
13 72 (0.69%) Scala
14 57 (0.54%) C
15 53 (0.51%) Bicep
16 50 (0.48%) R
17 48 (0.46%) Apex Code
18 43 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
19 42 (0.40%) Ada
Qualifications
1 8,003 (76.42%) SC Cleared
2 1,841 (17.58%) DV Cleared
3 470 (4.49%) Degree
4 338 (3.23%) BPSS Clearance
5 202 (1.93%) Cisco Certification
6 172 (1.64%) CISSP
7 145 (1.38%) Azure Certification
8 133 (1.27%) AWS Certification
9 129 (1.23%) CCNP
10 108 (1.03%) CISM
11 103 (0.98%) Microsoft Certification
12 85 (0.81%) CCNA
13 78 (0.74%) Computer Science Degree
14 76 (0.73%) ITIL Certification
15 69 (0.66%) PMP
16 68 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
17 63 (0.60%) PMI Certification
18 62 (0.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 59 (0.56%) ISTQB
20 52 (0.50%) CTC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 365 (3.49%) QA
2 318 (3.04%) Data Quality
3 296 (2.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 294 (2.81%) NIST
5 203 (1.94%) NCSC
6 175 (1.67%) Accessibility
7 171 (1.63%) GDPR
8 138 (1.32%) PMO
9 111 (1.06%) SLA
10 68 (0.65%) GRC
10 68 (0.65%) JSP 440
11 45 (0.43%) NIST 800
12 44 (0.42%) COBIT
13 41 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials
14 36 (0.34%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 36 (0.34%) PCI DSS
14 36 (0.34%) WCAG
15 33 (0.32%) RMADS
16 30 (0.29%) Def Stans
17 24 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 693 (6.62%) Docker
2 488 (4.66%) Active Directory
3 286 (2.73%) VMware Infrastructure
4 100 (0.95%) VMware NSX
5 85 (0.81%) VMware ESXi
6 82 (0.78%) Hyper-V
7 76 (0.73%) vSphere
8 56 (0.53%) Virtual Machines
9 37 (0.35%) Firmware
10 31 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
11 20 (0.19%) BitLocker
11 20 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
12 17 (0.16%) NFS
12 17 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 16 (0.15%) Postfix
14 12 (0.11%) Squid
14 12 (0.11%) vCloud
15 8 (0.076%) Microsoft App-V
16 7 (0.067%) KVM
17 6 (0.057%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 883 (8.43%) Kubernetes
2 832 (7.94%) Terraform
3 327 (3.12%) Ansible
4 248 (2.37%) Grafana
5 206 (1.97%) Prometheus
6 124 (1.18%) Single Sign-On
7 93 (0.89%) vCenter Server
8 86 (0.82%) SCCM
9 84 (0.80%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 60 (0.57%) Argo
10 60 (0.57%) Microsoft Intune
11 59 (0.56%) FortiGate
12 39 (0.37%) Puppet
13 38 (0.36%) Packer
14 37 (0.35%) Podman
15 35 (0.33%) vRealize
16 34 (0.32%) Progress Chef
17 31 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
18 30 (0.29%) Kibana
18 30 (0.29%) OPNET
Vendors
1 1,077 (10.28%) Microsoft
2 653 (6.24%) Oracle
3 513 (4.90%) VMware
4 422 (4.03%) ServiceNow
5 410 (3.91%) Cisco
6 405 (3.87%) SAP
7 241 (2.30%) Splunk
8 217 (2.07%) Databricks
9 190 (1.81%) Red Hat
10 173 (1.65%) Google
11 168 (1.60%) Salesforce
12 133 (1.27%) Atlassian
13 127 (1.21%) IBM
14 118 (1.13%) Talend
15 116 (1.11%) Juniper
16 114 (1.09%) Palo Alto
17 102 (0.97%) CyberArk
18 88 (0.84%) Remedy
19 87 (0.83%) Dell
20 83 (0.79%) Fortinet