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

6 months to
2 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,574 5,171 8,046
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.35% 17.63% 18.49%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.27% 57.39% 60.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,232 3,445 5,276
10th Percentile £371 £344 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £529 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.76% -3.82% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £695 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £548 £550
% change year-on-year -4.20% -0.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 862 290 527
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £21.46 £21.46
Median hourly rate £54.00 £50.95 £57.29
Median % change year-on-year +6.00% -11.07% -4.53%
75th Percentile £72.89 £67.44 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £78.39 £84.01
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.78 £57.50 £58.00
% change year-on-year -8.22% -0.86% +0.87%

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 15,265 9,010 13,295
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.27% 30.72% 30.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,156 5,682 8,181
10th Percentile £347 £288 £300
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £536
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.05% -2.55%
75th Percentile £620 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £709 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £501 £535
% change year-on-year -0.10% -6.45% +0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,107 512 1,079
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.13 £13.87
25th Percentile £21.25 £21.92 £17.88
Median hourly rate £47.50 £40.25 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.01% +0.63% -25.93%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.00 £61.55
90th Percentile £85.25 £80.09 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.00 £42.50 £40.94
% change year-on-year +10.59% +3.81% -18.02%

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 +3 9,169 £525 -2.33% 1,849
UK excluding London +1 5,867 £525 -4.20% 1,503
London +6 3,238 £525 - 489
Work from Home +4 2,830 £525 - 824
South East +1 2,193 £538 -2.27% 503
South West 0 1,328 £538 -4.44% 331
Midlands +4 904 £475 -9.52% 169
North of England -1 839 £488 -2.50% 287
West Midlands +4 767 £475 -10.55% 124
North West -2 501 £497 -0.64% 148
East of England +2 382 £525 +16.67% 157
Scotland +39 216 £500 +5.26% 40
Yorkshire -6 206 £476 -9.33% 65
North East +1 166 £453 -12.14% 78
East Midlands -4 131 £450 -5.26% 45
Wales +5 79 £525 -1.41% 35
Northern Ireland +6 17 £450 -5.26% 19

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 (3.81%) Confluence
2 220 (2.08%) SharePoint
3 136 (1.29%) Microsoft Exchange
4 130 (1.23%) SAS
5 106 (1.00%) Apache Spark
6 85 (0.80%) Apache
7 70 (0.66%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.37%) WebLogic
9 38 (0.36%) nginx
10 26 (0.25%) Jupyter
11 19 (0.18%) Tomcat
12 15 (0.14%) CMS
12 15 (0.14%) IIS
12 15 (0.14%) Skype for Business
12 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
13 14 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
14 13 (0.12%) Oracle Application Server
15 11 (0.10%) NetWeaver
16 10 (0.095%) ArcGIS
16 10 (0.095%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 221 (2.09%) Microsoft Office
2 191 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
3 125 (1.18%) Microsoft Project
4 84 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (0.42%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.15%) Simulink
8 7 (0.066%) AutoCAD
8 7 (0.066%) Notepad++
9 6 (0.057%) SOLIDWORKS
10 5 (0.047%) Revit
10 5 (0.047%) Windchill
11 4 (0.038%) Siemens NX
11 4 (0.038%) Sketch
12 3 (0.028%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.019%) Chatbot
13 2 (0.019%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.019%) InVision
13 2 (0.019%) Lectora
13 2 (0.019%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 103 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
2 48 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
3 47 (0.44%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 30 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
5 29 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
6 26 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 20 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
8 19 (0.18%) Maximo
9 16 (0.15%) SAP PP
10 13 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
10 13 (0.12%) Temenos T24
11 12 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
12 11 (0.10%) Findur
12 11 (0.10%) Oracle Assets
13 10 (0.095%) SAP HCM
14 9 (0.085%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 9 (0.085%) SAP GRC
14 9 (0.085%) SAP HR
15 8 (0.076%) iTrent
15 8 (0.076%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,828 (17.29%) AWS
2 1,823 (17.24%) Azure
3 449 (4.25%) GitHub
4 434 (4.10%) GCP
5 405 (3.83%) Azure DevOps
6 388 (3.67%) Power Platform
7 287 (2.71%) Serverless
8 278 (2.63%) Microsoft 365
9 252 (2.38%) Entra ID
9 252 (2.38%) GitHub Actions
10 220 (2.08%) Amazon S3
11 189 (1.79%) AWS Lambda
12 156 (1.48%) PaaS
13 146 (1.38%) AWS CloudFormation
14 141 (1.33%) Amazon EC2
15 137 (1.30%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 136 (1.29%) OpenShift
17 134 (1.27%) Amazon EKS
18 130 (1.23%) IaaS
19 125 (1.18%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 475 (4.49%) Firewall
2 299 (2.83%) DNS
3 234 (2.21%) Network Security
4 229 (2.17%) WAN
5 207 (1.96%) LAN
6 178 (1.68%) VPN
7 146 (1.38%) BGP
8 145 (1.37%) DHCP
9 127 (1.20%) OSPF
10 122 (1.15%) TCP/IP
11 97 (0.92%) VLAN
12 96 (0.91%) Wi-Fi
13 84 (0.79%) Wireless
14 66 (0.62%) MPLS
15 55 (0.52%) SAN
15 55 (0.52%) SD-WAN
16 54 (0.51%) VXLAN
17 53 (0.50%) SSL
18 49 (0.46%) IPsec
19 45 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 298 (2.82%) Power BI
2 256 (2.42%) PostgreSQL
3 235 (2.22%) Data Warehouse
4 198 (1.87%) SQL Server
5 143 (1.35%) Metadata
6 122 (1.15%) Oracle Database
7 112 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
8 106 (1.00%) Data Lake
9 104 (0.98%) MongoDB
10 103 (0.97%) NoSQL
11 99 (0.94%) Relational Database
12 79 (0.75%) Pentaho
13 76 (0.72%) Elasticsearch
14 75 (0.71%) Big Data
14 75 (0.71%) MySQL
15 73 (0.69%) Azure SQL Database
16 69 (0.65%) Tableau
17 68 (0.64%) Oracle Reports
18 67 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
19 62 (0.59%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 637 (6.02%) JIRA
2 482 (4.56%) Git
3 391 (3.70%) Jenkins
4 380 (3.59%) GitLab
5 100 (0.95%) Selenium
6 89 (0.84%) Postman
7 78 (0.74%) JUnit
8 69 (0.65%) SonarQube
9 50 (0.47%) Rational DOORS
10 47 (0.44%) JMeter
11 46 (0.44%) Artifactory
11 46 (0.44%) Bitbucket
12 42 (0.40%) Cucumber
13 41 (0.39%) Maven
14 40 (0.38%) Mockito
15 38 (0.36%) Cypress.io
16 36 (0.34%) Visual Studio
17 30 (0.28%) Zephyr
18 27 (0.26%) Oracle APEX
18 27 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 2,375 (22.46%) Public Sector
2 2,280 (21.56%) Social Skills
3 811 (7.67%) Analytical Skills
4 702 (6.64%) Finance
5 352 (3.33%) Military
6 283 (2.68%) Documentation Skills
7 246 (2.33%) Aerospace
8 167 (1.58%) Legal
9 145 (1.37%) Telecoms
10 137 (1.30%) Manufacturing
11 135 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
12 115 (1.09%) Organisational Skills
13 114 (1.08%) Banking
14 94 (0.89%) Presentation Skills
15 89 (0.84%) Law
16 86 (0.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 69 (0.65%) Marketing
18 68 (0.64%) Police
19 64 (0.61%) Electronics
20 37 (0.35%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,595 (15.08%) Architect
2 1,038 (9.82%) Developer
3 921 (8.71%) Senior
4 753 (7.12%) Analyst
5 727 (6.88%) Lead
6 540 (5.11%) Consultant
7 497 (4.70%) Data Engineer
8 480 (4.54%) DevOps Engineer
9 318 (3.01%) Technical Architect
10 312 (2.95%) Software Engineer
11 297 (2.81%) Network Engineer
12 282 (2.67%) Solutions Architect
13 281 (2.66%) Business Analyst
14 256 (2.42%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 226 (2.14%) Project Manager
16 217 (2.05%) Azure Engineer
17 208 (1.97%) Security Architect
18 207 (1.96%) Designer
19 185 (1.75%) Administrator
20 183 (1.73%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 345 (3.26%) REST
2 246 (2.33%) Spring
3 213 (2.01%) Kafka
4 198 (1.87%) Node.js
5 194 (1.83%) Spring Boot
6 182 (1.72%) React
7 176 (1.66%) .NET
8 151 (1.43%) SOAP
9 150 (1.42%) JSON
10 149 (1.41%) LDAP
11 148 (1.40%) RESTful
12 122 (1.15%) PySpark
13 121 (1.14%) AngularJS
14 114 (1.08%) Web Services
15 99 (0.94%) HTML
16 96 (0.91%) OAuth
16 96 (0.91%) Oracle Fusion
17 92 (0.87%) XML
18 85 (0.80%) Elastic Stack
18 85 (0.80%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 352 (3.33%) Cloud Native
2 344 (3.25%) Product Ownership
3 311 (2.94%) Data Centre
4 296 (2.80%) Onboarding
5 192 (1.82%) Management Information System
6 185 (1.75%) PKI
7 135 (1.28%) Legacy Systems
8 131 (1.24%) Security Posture
9 129 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
10 122 (1.15%) Replication
11 119 (1.13%) Distributed Systems
12 117 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
13 90 (0.85%) Public Cloud
14 80 (0.76%) Data Structures
14 80 (0.76%) Hybrid Cloud
15 79 (0.75%) Clustering
16 76 (0.72%) Security Operations Centre
16 76 (0.72%) Virtual Team
17 64 (0.61%) Greenfield Project
18 61 (0.58%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 873 (8.26%) Windows
2 744 (7.04%) Linux
3 247 (2.34%) Windows Server
4 165 (1.56%) Unix
5 128 (1.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 116 (1.10%) Android
7 104 (0.98%) Windows 10
8 67 (0.63%) Apple iOS
9 50 (0.47%) Mac OS
10 42 (0.40%) Ubuntu
11 36 (0.34%) Solaris
12 33 (0.31%) VMS
13 29 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
14 28 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
15 27 (0.26%) AIX
16 22 (0.21%) CentOS
17 17 (0.16%) Windows 7
18 14 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
19 10 (0.095%) Embedded Linux
19 10 (0.095%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,049 (19.38%) Agile
2 1,598 (15.11%) DevOps
3 1,422 (13.45%) CI/CD
4 1,158 (10.95%) Problem-Solving
5 989 (9.35%) Stakeholder Management
6 922 (8.72%) Continuous Improvement
7 870 (8.23%) Migration
8 781 (7.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 727 (6.88%) Infrastructure as Code
10 645 (6.10%) ITIL
11 614 (5.81%) Cybersecurity
12 611 (5.78%) Analytics
13 609 (5.76%) Test Automation
14 583 (5.51%) Containerisation
15 573 (5.42%) Roadmaps
16 567 (5.36%) Software Engineering
17 513 (4.85%) Data Modelling
18 495 (4.68%) Decision-Making
19 477 (4.51%) Scrum
20 455 (4.30%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,212 (11.46%) Python
2 971 (9.18%) SQL
3 662 (6.26%) Java
4 570 (5.39%) PowerShell
5 357 (3.38%) JavaScript
6 220 (2.08%) C#
7 193 (1.83%) Bash
8 183 (1.73%) TypeScript
9 118 (1.12%) PL/SQL
10 104 (0.98%) C++
11 102 (0.96%) Shell Script
12 75 (0.71%) Go
13 71 (0.67%) Ruby
14 70 (0.66%) Scala
15 60 (0.57%) C
16 59 (0.56%) Bicep
17 50 (0.47%) R
18 49 (0.46%) Apex Code
19 41 (0.39%) Ada
20 40 (0.38%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 8,083 (76.44%) SC Cleared
2 1,875 (17.73%) DV Cleared
3 474 (4.48%) Degree
4 324 (3.06%) BPSS Clearance
5 205 (1.94%) Cisco Certification
6 173 (1.64%) CISSP
7 141 (1.33%) Azure Certification
8 130 (1.23%) AWS Certification
9 120 (1.13%) CCNP
10 113 (1.07%) CISM
11 93 (0.88%) Microsoft Certification
12 84 (0.79%) CCNA
13 78 (0.74%) Computer Science Degree
14 75 (0.71%) PMP
15 72 (0.68%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 71 (0.67%) ITIL Certification
17 70 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
18 64 (0.61%) PMI Certification
19 56 (0.53%) ISTQB
20 48 (0.45%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 376 (3.56%) QA
2 323 (3.05%) Data Quality
3 302 (2.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 298 (2.82%) NIST
5 207 (1.96%) NCSC
6 194 (1.83%) Accessibility
7 164 (1.55%) GDPR
8 162 (1.53%) PMO
9 114 (1.08%) SLA
10 71 (0.67%) GRC
11 65 (0.61%) JSP 440
12 51 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials
13 43 (0.41%) NIST 800
14 41 (0.39%) WCAG
15 35 (0.33%) COBIT
16 34 (0.32%) RMADS
17 33 (0.31%) PCI DSS
18 31 (0.29%) Def Stans
19 27 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
20 24 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 676 (6.39%) Docker
2 482 (4.56%) Active Directory
3 292 (2.76%) VMware Infrastructure
4 98 (0.93%) VMware ESXi
5 97 (0.92%) VMware NSX
6 85 (0.80%) Hyper-V
7 79 (0.75%) vSphere
8 74 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
9 42 (0.40%) Firmware
10 34 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
11 22 (0.21%) BitLocker
12 20 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
13 17 (0.16%) NFS
13 17 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 16 (0.15%) Postfix
15 13 (0.12%) vCloud
16 12 (0.11%) Squid
17 8 (0.076%) Microsoft App-V
18 7 (0.066%) KVM
19 6 (0.057%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 873 (8.26%) Kubernetes
2 850 (8.04%) Terraform
3 355 (3.36%) Ansible
4 268 (2.53%) Grafana
5 223 (2.11%) Prometheus
6 117 (1.11%) Single Sign-On
7 100 (0.95%) vCenter Server
8 85 (0.80%) SCCM
9 65 (0.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 58 (0.55%) FortiGate
11 57 (0.54%) Microsoft Intune
12 55 (0.52%) Argo
13 40 (0.38%) Puppet
14 37 (0.35%) Podman
15 35 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
16 34 (0.32%) Progress Chef
17 33 (0.31%) vRealize
18 31 (0.29%) Nagios
19 30 (0.28%) OPNET
19 30 (0.28%) Packer
Vendors
1 1,090 (10.31%) Microsoft
2 644 (6.09%) Oracle
3 511 (4.83%) VMware
4 426 (4.03%) ServiceNow
5 398 (3.76%) SAP
6 390 (3.69%) Cisco
7 248 (2.35%) Splunk
8 205 (1.94%) Databricks
9 171 (1.62%) Red Hat
10 170 (1.61%) Google
11 143 (1.35%) Salesforce
12 131 (1.24%) IBM
13 120 (1.13%) Palo Alto
14 116 (1.10%) Talend
15 111 (1.05%) Atlassian
15 111 (1.05%) Juniper
16 100 (0.95%) CyberArk
17 92 (0.87%) Informatica
18 88 (0.83%) Dynatrace
18 88 (0.83%) Remedy