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

6 months to
15 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,542 5,148 7,819
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.11% 17.71% 18.32%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.51% 57.30% 60.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,231 3,409 5,153
10th Percentile £375 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £688 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £540 £550
% change year-on-year -2.78% -1.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 827 292 527
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £21.28 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £43.75 £56.89
Median % change year-on-year +25.71% -23.09% -5.19%
75th Percentile £73.60 £66.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.30 £77.47 £84.42
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £54.51 £57.75
% change year-on-year +0.90% -5.61% +0.43%

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 15,166 8,985 12,903
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.80% 30.91% 30.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,080 5,664 7,976
10th Percentile £350 £281 £301
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £521 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -0.86% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £620 £621 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £527
% change year-on-year - -5.17% +0.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,072 508 1,068
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.13 £13.80
25th Percentile £21.25 £21.42 £17.80
Median hourly rate £49.36 £37.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +31.63% -6.25% -25.93%
75th Percentile £70.81 £65.15 £61.35
90th Percentile £85.36 £80.03 £75.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £38.00 £40.94
% change year-on-year +25.00% -7.18% -18.12%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 9,135 £525 -2.28% 1,959
UK excluding London +1 5,850 £525 -2.78% 1,601
London +6 3,256 £525 - 495
Work from Home +4 2,845 £525 - 864
South East +1 2,204 £538 -2.27% 537
South West 0 1,294 £538 -6.52% 360
North of England -1 875 £498 -0.50% 292
Midlands +4 866 £474 -9.71% 165
West Midlands +4 735 £475 -11.64% 119
North West -2 509 £500 - 163
East of England +2 373 £538 +7.55% 164
Scotland +34 221 £500 +11.11% 48
Yorkshire -10 212 £484 -3.25% 53
North East +1 189 £475 -1.04% 77
East Midlands -4 125 £450 -5.26% 46
Wales +5 84 £490 +3.16% 46
Northern Ireland +5 21 £600 +23.08% 21

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
1 402 (3.81%) Confluence
2 219 (2.08%) SharePoint
3 133 (1.26%) SAS
4 132 (1.25%) Microsoft Exchange
5 106 (1.01%) Apache Spark
6 83 (0.79%) Apache
7 72 (0.68%) Apache Airflow
8 38 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 34 (0.32%) nginx
10 29 (0.28%) Jupyter
11 21 (0.20%) Tomcat
12 16 (0.15%) IIS
12 16 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
13 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
14 14 (0.13%) CMS
14 14 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
15 13 (0.12%) Skype for Business
16 12 (0.11%) NetWeaver
17 11 (0.10%) ArcGIS
18 9 (0.085%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 200 (1.90%) Microsoft Office
2 192 (1.82%) Microsoft Excel
3 113 (1.07%) Microsoft Project
4 87 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.12%) 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
12 3 (0.028%) Chatbot
13 2 (0.019%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.019%) InVision
13 2 (0.019%) Lectora
13 2 (0.019%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 112 (1.06%) SAP S/4HANA
2 47 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
3 38 (0.36%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 29 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
4 29 (0.28%) Teamcenter
5 28 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
6 22 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
7 15 (0.14%) Maximo
8 14 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
8 14 (0.13%) SAP PSCD
9 13 (0.12%) SAP GRC
9 13 (0.12%) Temenos T24
10 12 (0.11%) Findur
10 12 (0.11%) iTrent
11 11 (0.10%) Oracle Assets
12 10 (0.095%) SAP PP
13 9 (0.085%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 9 (0.085%) SAP HCM
13 9 (0.085%) SAP HR
14 8 (0.076%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 1,843 (17.48%) AWS
2 1,819 (17.25%) Azure
3 440 (4.17%) GitHub
4 433 (4.11%) GCP
5 390 (3.70%) Azure DevOps
6 383 (3.63%) Power Platform
7 267 (2.53%) Serverless
8 265 (2.51%) Microsoft 365
9 255 (2.42%) Entra ID
10 249 (2.36%) GitHub Actions
11 209 (1.98%) Amazon S3
12 180 (1.71%) AWS Lambda
13 158 (1.50%) PaaS
14 146 (1.38%) Amazon EC2
15 141 (1.34%) Amazon EKS
16 136 (1.29%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 136 (1.29%) AWS CloudFormation
16 136 (1.29%) OpenShift
17 130 (1.23%) OCI
18 121 (1.15%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 485 (4.60%) Firewall
2 300 (2.85%) DNS
3 232 (2.20%) Network Security
4 227 (2.15%) WAN
5 207 (1.96%) LAN
6 175 (1.66%) VPN
7 150 (1.42%) DHCP
8 145 (1.38%) BGP
9 126 (1.20%) TCP/IP
10 125 (1.19%) OSPF
11 103 (0.98%) VLAN
12 96 (0.91%) Wi-Fi
13 85 (0.81%) Wireless
14 67 (0.64%) MPLS
15 61 (0.58%) SAN
16 55 (0.52%) Structured Cabling
16 55 (0.52%) VXLAN
17 53 (0.50%) SD-WAN
17 53 (0.50%) SSL
18 50 (0.47%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 300 (2.85%) Power BI
2 251 (2.38%) PostgreSQL
3 237 (2.25%) Data Warehouse
4 201 (1.91%) SQL Server
5 135 (1.28%) Metadata
6 127 (1.20%) Oracle Database
7 109 (1.03%) Amazon RDS
8 106 (1.01%) Data Lake
8 106 (1.01%) MongoDB
9 101 (0.96%) Relational Database
10 97 (0.92%) NoSQL
11 83 (0.79%) Pentaho
12 77 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
13 74 (0.70%) Big Data
14 72 (0.68%) Oracle Reports
15 71 (0.67%) MySQL
16 70 (0.66%) Tableau
17 65 (0.62%) Amazon Redshift
17 65 (0.62%) Azure SQL Database
18 61 (0.58%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 629 (5.97%) JIRA
2 466 (4.42%) Git
3 396 (3.76%) GitLab
4 395 (3.75%) Jenkins
5 104 (0.99%) Selenium
6 86 (0.82%) Postman
7 74 (0.70%) JUnit
8 66 (0.63%) SonarQube
9 55 (0.52%) Rational DOORS
10 53 (0.50%) Artifactory
11 51 (0.48%) JMeter
12 43 (0.41%) Bitbucket
13 42 (0.40%) Cucumber
14 39 (0.37%) Mockito
15 38 (0.36%) Maven
15 38 (0.36%) Visual Studio
16 36 (0.34%) Cypress.io
17 31 (0.29%) Zephyr
18 29 (0.28%) REST Assured
19 28 (0.27%) Gatling
General
1 2,317 (21.98%) Public Sector
2 2,210 (20.96%) Social Skills
3 757 (7.18%) Analytical Skills
4 692 (6.56%) Finance
5 357 (3.39%) Military
6 288 (2.73%) Documentation Skills
7 251 (2.38%) Aerospace
8 170 (1.61%) Legal
9 127 (1.20%) Telecoms
10 121 (1.15%) Influencing Skills
11 116 (1.10%) Banking
12 114 (1.08%) Manufacturing
12 114 (1.08%) Organisational Skills
13 86 (0.82%) Law
14 84 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
15 77 (0.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 68 (0.65%) Police
17 58 (0.55%) Marketing
18 48 (0.46%) Electronics
19 40 (0.38%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,611 (15.28%) Architect
2 984 (9.33%) Developer
3 900 (8.54%) Senior
4 744 (7.06%) Analyst
5 736 (6.98%) Lead
6 524 (4.97%) Consultant
7 516 (4.89%) Data Engineer
8 495 (4.70%) DevOps Engineer
9 322 (3.05%) Technical Architect
10 314 (2.98%) Software Engineer
11 300 (2.85%) Network Engineer
12 294 (2.79%) Solutions Architect
13 273 (2.59%) Business Analyst
14 268 (2.54%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 226 (2.14%) Project Manager
16 215 (2.04%) Designer
17 214 (2.03%) Azure Engineer
18 209 (1.98%) Security Architect
19 186 (1.76%) Administrator
19 186 (1.76%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 329 (3.12%) REST
2 249 (2.36%) Spring
3 214 (2.03%) Kafka
4 203 (1.93%) Spring Boot
5 195 (1.85%) Node.js
6 189 (1.79%) React
7 176 (1.67%) .NET
8 153 (1.45%) LDAP
9 152 (1.44%) SOAP
10 146 (1.38%) RESTful
11 128 (1.21%) JSON
12 120 (1.14%) AngularJS
12 120 (1.14%) PySpark
13 117 (1.11%) Web Services
14 100 (0.95%) Oracle Fusion
15 98 (0.93%) OAuth
16 88 (0.83%) HTML
16 88 (0.83%) Middleware
17 85 (0.81%) XML
18 84 (0.80%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 363 (3.44%) Cloud Native
2 335 (3.18%) Product Ownership
3 311 (2.95%) Data Centre
4 286 (2.71%) Onboarding
5 201 (1.91%) Management Information System
6 158 (1.50%) PKI
7 138 (1.31%) Legacy Systems
8 134 (1.27%) Security Posture
9 124 (1.18%) Enterprise Software
10 122 (1.16%) Replication
11 121 (1.15%) Distributed Systems
12 97 (0.92%) Self-Motivation
13 88 (0.83%) Public Cloud
14 85 (0.81%) Data Structures
15 83 (0.79%) Security Operations Centre
16 82 (0.78%) Clustering
17 80 (0.76%) Hybrid Cloud
18 75 (0.71%) Virtual Team
19 70 (0.66%) Greenfield Project
20 65 (0.62%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 852 (8.08%) Windows
2 732 (6.94%) Linux
3 245 (2.32%) Windows Server
4 178 (1.69%) Unix
5 133 (1.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 106 (1.01%) Android
7 87 (0.83%) Windows 10
8 66 (0.63%) Apple iOS
9 44 (0.42%) Mac OS
10 42 (0.40%) Solaris
11 40 (0.38%) Ubuntu
12 29 (0.28%) VMS
12 29 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
12 29 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
13 26 (0.25%) AIX
14 22 (0.21%) CentOS
15 14 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 11 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
16 11 (0.10%) Windows Server 2008
17 9 (0.085%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,013 (19.10%) Agile
2 1,599 (15.17%) DevOps
3 1,438 (13.64%) CI/CD
4 1,132 (10.74%) Problem-Solving
5 991 (9.40%) Stakeholder Management
6 913 (8.66%) Continuous Improvement
7 835 (7.92%) Migration
8 769 (7.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 732 (6.94%) Infrastructure as Code
10 650 (6.17%) ITIL
11 622 (5.90%) Cybersecurity
12 618 (5.86%) Test Automation
13 604 (5.73%) Analytics
14 580 (5.50%) Containerisation
15 574 (5.44%) Software Engineering
16 573 (5.44%) Roadmaps
17 538 (5.10%) Data Modelling
18 521 (4.94%) Decision-Making
19 459 (4.35%) Scrum
20 453 (4.30%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,194 (11.33%) Python
2 967 (9.17%) SQL
3 658 (6.24%) Java
4 545 (5.17%) PowerShell
5 335 (3.18%) JavaScript
6 220 (2.09%) C#
7 202 (1.92%) Bash
8 177 (1.68%) TypeScript
9 112 (1.06%) PL/SQL
10 98 (0.93%) C++
10 98 (0.93%) Shell Script
11 73 (0.69%) Go
12 69 (0.65%) Scala
13 68 (0.65%) Ruby
14 58 (0.55%) Bicep
15 56 (0.53%) C
16 50 (0.47%) R
17 49 (0.46%) Apex Code
18 41 (0.39%) Kusto Query Language
19 39 (0.37%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 8,039 (76.26%) SC Cleared
2 1,893 (17.96%) DV Cleared
3 454 (4.31%) Degree
4 301 (2.86%) BPSS Clearance
5 217 (2.06%) Cisco Certification
6 178 (1.69%) CISSP
7 132 (1.25%) Azure Certification
8 126 (1.20%) CCNP
9 122 (1.16%) AWS Certification
10 120 (1.14%) CISM
11 94 (0.89%) CCNA
12 93 (0.88%) Microsoft Certification
13 79 (0.75%) PMP
14 74 (0.70%) Computer Science Degree
15 69 (0.65%) PMI Certification
16 68 (0.65%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 66 (0.63%) TOGAF Certification
18 63 (0.60%) ITIL Certification
19 57 (0.54%) ISTQB
20 50 (0.47%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 380 (3.60%) QA
2 322 (3.05%) Data Quality
3 302 (2.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 297 (2.82%) NIST
5 204 (1.94%) Accessibility
6 200 (1.90%) NCSC
7 168 (1.59%) GDPR
8 161 (1.53%) PMO
9 108 (1.02%) SLA
10 75 (0.71%) GRC
11 63 (0.60%) JSP 440
12 53 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials
13 44 (0.42%) WCAG
14 40 (0.38%) NIST 800
15 33 (0.31%) RMADS
16 32 (0.30%) COBIT
17 31 (0.29%) PCI DSS
18 29 (0.28%) Def Stans
19 28 (0.27%) HMG Security Policy Framework
20 25 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 662 (6.28%) Docker
2 480 (4.55%) Active Directory
3 285 (2.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 102 (0.97%) VMware ESXi
5 97 (0.92%) VMware NSX
6 83 (0.79%) Hyper-V
7 76 (0.72%) vSphere
8 73 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
9 37 (0.35%) Firmware
10 35 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
11 22 (0.21%) NFS
11 22 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
12 19 (0.18%) BitLocker
13 17 (0.16%) Squid
13 17 (0.16%) vCloud
14 16 (0.15%) Postfix
14 16 (0.15%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 8 (0.076%) KVM
15 8 (0.076%) Microsoft App-V
16 6 (0.057%) Corosync
Systems Management
1 833 (7.90%) Kubernetes
2 827 (7.84%) Terraform
3 360 (3.41%) Ansible
4 267 (2.53%) Grafana
5 220 (2.09%) Prometheus
6 115 (1.09%) Single Sign-On
7 103 (0.98%) vCenter Server
8 76 (0.72%) SCCM
9 66 (0.63%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 54 (0.51%) FortiGate
10 54 (0.51%) Microsoft Intune
11 53 (0.50%) Argo
12 40 (0.38%) Puppet
13 39 (0.37%) Podman
14 37 (0.35%) Oracle RMAN
15 34 (0.32%) Progress Chef
16 32 (0.30%) Nagios
17 31 (0.29%) vRealize
18 28 (0.27%) OPNET
19 26 (0.25%) SCOM
Vendors
1 1,054 (10.00%) Microsoft
2 656 (6.22%) Oracle
3 507 (4.81%) VMware
4 419 (3.97%) ServiceNow
5 375 (3.56%) SAP
6 373 (3.54%) Cisco
7 250 (2.37%) Splunk
8 213 (2.02%) Databricks
9 172 (1.63%) Google
9 172 (1.63%) Red Hat
10 144 (1.37%) Salesforce
11 131 (1.24%) Talend
12 124 (1.18%) IBM
12 124 (1.18%) Palo Alto
13 102 (0.97%) Juniper
14 98 (0.93%) CyberArk
14 98 (0.93%) Informatica
15 97 (0.92%) Atlassian
16 88 (0.83%) Fortinet
17 85 (0.81%) F5