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 24 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,937 6,037 6,776
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.74% 18.31% 17.78%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.74% 58.15% 60.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,303 3,917 4,356
10th Percentile £400 £350 £350
25th Percentile £462 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.42% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £538 £550
% change year-on-year - -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 857 613 398
10th Percentile £20.00 £18.51 £20.12
25th Percentile £31.50 £18.87 £30.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +158.45% -58.08% -
75th Percentile £77.50 £33.75 £72.35
90th Percentile £90.00 £70.00 £80.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +158.45% -58.08% +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 17,366 10,381 11,122
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.63% 31.49% 29.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,555 6,488 6,788
10th Percentile £350 £300 £313
25th Percentile £443 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £529 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £638
90th Percentile £715 £711 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,391 857 628
10th Percentile £17.17 £17.87 £17.59
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £24.99
Median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +88.87% -49.70% -7.41%
75th Percentile £72.54 £43.25 £68.19
90th Percentile £88.50 £70.06 £75.66
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £52.50
% change year-on-year +88.87% -52.10% -

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 24 September 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 24 September 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 24 September 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 10,287 £550 +2.33% 5,559
UK excluding London +1 6,686 £538 - 3,938
London +6 3,652 £550 +2.33% 1,703
Work from Home +2 3,136 £525 -2.33% 2,807
South East +1 2,284 £564 +5.07% 1,065
South West 0 1,410 £550 - 871
North of England +2 1,290 £515 -1.90% 775
Midlands 0 950 £481 -6.70% 379
West Midlands 0 812 £480 -7.43% 242
North West +1 755 £530 -3.64% 457
East of England 0 421 £587 +6.73% 484
Scotland +17 319 £486 +0.46% 275
Yorkshire +2 302 £492 +0.41% 146
North East 0 254 £470 -6.00% 176
East Midlands -2 132 £450 -2.70% 135
Wales +3 108 £550 +10.00% 67
Northern Ireland +3 35 £650 +18.18% 71

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
1 395 (3.31%) Confluence
2 267 (2.24%) SharePoint
3 171 (1.43%) SAS
4 129 (1.08%) Microsoft Exchange
5 113 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
6 103 (0.86%) Apache Spark
7 100 (0.84%) Apache
8 41 (0.34%) Jupyter
9 38 (0.32%) nginx
10 36 (0.30%) WebLogic
11 32 (0.27%) CMS
12 23 (0.19%) Oracle Application Server
13 22 (0.18%) Skype for Business
14 21 (0.18%) IIS
15 19 (0.16%) Tomcat
16 16 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 16 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
16 16 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
17 11 (0.092%) JBoss
17 11 (0.092%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 214 (1.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 165 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
3 102 (0.85%) Microsoft Project
4 99 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 20 (0.17%) AutoCAD
8 18 (0.15%) Revit
9 17 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
10 16 (0.13%) Windchill
11 10 (0.084%) Adobe XD
11 10 (0.084%) Simulink
12 8 (0.067%) Chatbot
12 8 (0.067%) Sketch
13 7 (0.059%) Notepad++
14 6 (0.050%) Adobe Creative Suite
15 4 (0.034%) OrCAD
15 4 (0.034%) Trello
16 2 (0.017%) Gliffy
16 2 (0.017%) Houdini
Business Applications
1 151 (1.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 82 (0.69%) Remedy ITSM
3 57 (0.48%) Oracle ERP
4 42 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
5 33 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 33 (0.28%) Teamcenter
6 28 (0.23%) Dynamics CRM
7 25 (0.21%) Oracle Payroll
7 25 (0.21%) SAP GRC
7 25 (0.21%) SAP PSCD
8 21 (0.18%) SAP FI
9 19 (0.16%) Primavera
10 17 (0.14%) SAP HR
11 16 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
12 14 (0.12%) SAP CO
13 13 (0.11%) Maximo
14 12 (0.10%) iTrent
14 12 (0.10%) NetSuite
14 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
15 11 (0.092%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 2,161 (18.10%) Azure
2 2,101 (17.60%) AWS
3 515 (4.31%) GitHub
4 514 (4.31%) Azure DevOps
5 490 (4.10%) Power Platform
6 463 (3.88%) GCP
7 348 (2.92%) GitHub Actions
7 348 (2.92%) Microsoft 365
8 329 (2.76%) Entra ID
9 278 (2.33%) Serverless
10 236 (1.98%) Amazon S3
11 203 (1.70%) AWS Lambda
12 178 (1.49%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 173 (1.45%) OCI
14 169 (1.42%) SaaS
15 167 (1.40%) Amazon EKS
16 145 (1.21%) Amazon EC2
17 144 (1.21%) OpenShift
18 129 (1.08%) AWS CloudFormation
19 107 (0.90%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 455 (3.81%) Firewall
2 385 (3.23%) DNS
3 240 (2.01%) Network Security
4 218 (1.83%) WAN
5 200 (1.68%) VPN
6 188 (1.57%) DHCP
7 164 (1.37%) LAN
8 138 (1.16%) TCP/IP
9 130 (1.09%) BGP
10 117 (0.98%) Wi-Fi
11 107 (0.90%) VLAN
12 93 (0.78%) Wireless
13 90 (0.75%) OSPF
14 69 (0.58%) SSL
15 64 (0.54%) MPLS
15 64 (0.54%) SAN
15 64 (0.54%) VSAN
16 62 (0.52%) IPsec
17 61 (0.51%) SD-WAN
18 50 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 348 (2.92%) Power BI
2 307 (2.57%) PostgreSQL
3 280 (2.35%) SQL Server
4 274 (2.30%) Data Warehouse
5 206 (1.73%) Metadata
6 191 (1.60%) Oracle Database
7 146 (1.22%) Data Lake
8 145 (1.21%) Relational Database
9 132 (1.11%) MongoDB
10 110 (0.92%) MySQL
11 109 (0.91%) Amazon RDS
12 97 (0.81%) NoSQL
13 92 (0.77%) Oracle Reports
14 74 (0.62%) Elasticsearch
15 72 (0.60%) Pentaho
16 70 (0.59%) Amazon Athena
17 56 (0.47%) Big Data
18 53 (0.44%) DynamoDB
19 52 (0.44%) Amazon Aurora
19 52 (0.44%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 660 (5.53%) JIRA
2 598 (5.01%) Git
3 525 (4.40%) GitLab
4 493 (4.13%) Jenkins
5 151 (1.26%) Selenium
6 91 (0.76%) Postman
7 84 (0.70%) SonarQube
8 79 (0.66%) JUnit
9 76 (0.64%) Maven
10 71 (0.59%) JMeter
11 67 (0.56%) Cucumber
12 53 (0.44%) Cypress.io
13 51 (0.43%) Gradle
14 47 (0.39%) Mockito
15 44 (0.37%) REST Assured
16 43 (0.36%) Gatling
17 41 (0.34%) Visual Studio
18 39 (0.33%) Zephyr
19 37 (0.31%) Artifactory
20 33 (0.28%) MSI
General
1 2,676 (22.42%) Social Skills
2 2,436 (20.41%) Public Sector
3 957 (8.02%) Analytical Skills
4 770 (6.45%) Finance
5 425 (3.56%) Military
6 337 (2.82%) Aerospace
7 309 (2.59%) Documentation Skills
8 229 (1.92%) Influencing Skills
9 188 (1.57%) Organisational Skills
10 172 (1.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 172 (1.44%) Legal
11 167 (1.40%) Telecoms
12 156 (1.31%) Manufacturing
13 141 (1.18%) Banking
14 126 (1.06%) Law
14 126 (1.06%) Police
15 74 (0.62%) Presentation Skills
16 53 (0.44%) Local Government
17 49 (0.41%) Aviation
18 46 (0.39%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,939 (16.24%) Architect
2 1,226 (10.27%) Developer
3 1,144 (9.58%) Senior
4 1,059 (8.87%) Lead
5 702 (5.88%) Consultant
6 643 (5.39%) Analyst
7 517 (4.33%) DevOps Engineer
8 490 (4.10%) Data Engineer
9 427 (3.58%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 376 (3.15%) Solutions Architect
11 370 (3.10%) Technical Architect
12 302 (2.53%) Data Architect
13 282 (2.36%) Security Architect
14 278 (2.33%) Software Engineer
15 251 (2.10%) Network Engineer
16 228 (1.91%) Administrator
17 220 (1.84%) Java Developer
18 216 (1.81%) Azure Engineer
19 214 (1.79%) Designer
20 209 (1.75%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,003 (8.40%) Terraform
2 480 (4.02%) REST
3 268 (2.25%) Kafka
4 263 (2.20%) Spring
5 241 (2.02%) Spring Boot
6 219 (1.83%) RESTful
7 206 (1.73%) .NET
8 192 (1.61%) React
9 185 (1.55%) SOAP
10 181 (1.52%) Node.js
11 164 (1.37%) JSON
12 142 (1.19%) OAuth
13 139 (1.16%) HTML
14 135 (1.13%) XML
15 127 (1.06%) Middleware
16 118 (0.99%) Web Services
17 116 (0.97%) AngularJS
18 106 (0.89%) CSS
19 102 (0.85%) Oracle Fusion
20 98 (0.82%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 532 (4.46%) Cloud Native
2 466 (3.90%) Onboarding
3 376 (3.15%) Product Ownership
4 304 (2.55%) Data Centre
5 274 (2.30%) Management Information System
6 185 (1.55%) Legacy Systems
7 182 (1.52%) PKI
8 177 (1.48%) Enterprise Software
9 162 (1.36%) CMDB
10 139 (1.16%) Distributed Systems
11 125 (1.05%) Hybrid Cloud
12 122 (1.02%) Cyber Threat
13 120 (1.01%) Replication
14 115 (0.96%) Self-Motivation
15 112 (0.94%) Operational Technology
16 97 (0.81%) Data Structures
17 93 (0.78%) Public Cloud
17 93 (0.78%) Security Posture
18 90 (0.75%) Security Operations Centre
19 89 (0.75%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 1,000 (8.38%) Windows
2 807 (6.76%) Linux
3 369 (3.09%) Windows Server
4 242 (2.03%) Unix
5 161 (1.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 145 (1.21%) Windows 10
7 80 (0.67%) Solaris
8 79 (0.66%) Android
9 49 (0.41%) Mac OS
10 46 (0.39%) Apple iOS
10 46 (0.39%) CentOS
11 40 (0.34%) Ubuntu
12 38 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
13 32 (0.27%) AIX
14 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
15 24 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
16 23 (0.19%) VMS
17 20 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
18 16 (0.13%) Rocky
19 13 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,541 (21.29%) Agile
2 1,818 (15.23%) DevOps
3 1,804 (15.11%) CI/CD
4 1,663 (13.93%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,456 (12.20%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,277 (10.70%) Problem-Solving
7 1,204 (10.09%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,022 (8.56%) Infrastructure as Code
9 966 (8.09%) Migration
10 866 (7.25%) Cybersecurity
11 797 (6.68%) ITIL
12 791 (6.63%) Test Automation
13 764 (6.40%) Containerisation
14 759 (6.36%) Technical Leadership
15 750 (6.28%) Decision-Making
16 746 (6.25%) AI
17 729 (6.11%) Analytics
18 727 (6.09%) Roadmaps
19 695 (5.82%) Software Engineering
20 632 (5.29%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,378 (11.54%) Python
2 1,108 (9.28%) SQL
3 801 (6.71%) Java
4 594 (4.98%) PowerShell
5 415 (3.48%) JavaScript
6 357 (2.99%) Bash
7 234 (1.96%) C#
8 224 (1.88%) TypeScript
9 164 (1.37%) PL/SQL
10 126 (1.06%) Bicep
11 85 (0.71%) Shell Script
12 64 (0.54%) C++
13 60 (0.50%) Go
14 59 (0.49%) Scala
15 54 (0.45%) C
16 50 (0.42%) Groovy
17 48 (0.40%) Kotlin
18 43 (0.36%) Apex Code
19 39 (0.33%) T-SQL
20 34 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 9,107 (76.29%) SC Cleared
2 2,243 (18.79%) DV Cleared
3 521 (4.36%) BPSS Clearance
4 479 (4.01%) Degree
5 228 (1.91%) CISSP
6 196 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
7 191 (1.60%) Azure Certification
8 170 (1.42%) Microsoft Certification
9 154 (1.29%) AWS Certification
10 146 (1.22%) CISM
11 111 (0.93%) PMI Certification
12 101 (0.85%) PMP
13 96 (0.80%) ISTQB
14 93 (0.78%) CCNP
15 75 (0.63%) Computer Science Degree
16 71 (0.59%) CCNA
17 59 (0.49%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 55 (0.46%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 46 (0.39%) TOGAF Certification
20 45 (0.38%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 536 (4.49%) QA
2 387 (3.24%) Data Quality
3 341 (2.86%) NIST
4 332 (2.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 308 (2.58%) NCSC
6 285 (2.39%) Accessibility
7 222 (1.86%) PMO
8 177 (1.48%) GDPR
8 177 (1.48%) SLA
9 170 (1.42%) GRC
10 87 (0.73%) WCAG
11 58 (0.49%) JSP 440
12 49 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
13 45 (0.38%) NIST 800
14 37 (0.31%) Def Stans
15 34 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
16 27 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 22 (0.18%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 21 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 19 (0.16%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 834 (6.99%) Docker
2 642 (5.38%) Active Directory
3 449 (3.76%) VMware Infrastructure
4 148 (1.24%) VMware ESXi
5 144 (1.21%) VMware NSX
6 138 (1.16%) Hyper-V
7 135 (1.13%) vSphere
8 94 (0.79%) Virtual Machines
9 45 (0.38%) Firmware
9 45 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
10 40 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
11 25 (0.21%) vCloud
12 23 (0.19%) BitLocker
13 20 (0.17%) NFS
14 19 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
15 12 (0.10%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 11 (0.092%) Postfix
16 11 (0.092%) Squid
17 10 (0.084%) KVM
18 9 (0.075%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 1,012 (8.48%) Kubernetes
2 445 (3.73%) Ansible
3 266 (2.23%) Grafana
4 203 (1.70%) Prometheus
5 137 (1.15%) SCCM
6 133 (1.11%) vCenter Server
7 99 (0.83%) SCOM
8 91 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
9 69 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
10 68 (0.57%) Argo
11 49 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
12 43 (0.36%) Kibana
13 42 (0.35%) Puppet
14 41 (0.34%) Data Guard
15 34 (0.28%) Istio
16 33 (0.28%) NetBackup
17 32 (0.27%) VxRail
18 29 (0.24%) Control-M
19 25 (0.21%) Nagios
19 25 (0.21%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,571 (13.16%) Microsoft
2 960 (8.04%) Oracle
3 617 (5.17%) VMware
4 546 (4.57%) ServiceNow
5 441 (3.69%) SAP
6 304 (2.55%) Cisco
7 269 (2.25%) Google
8 223 (1.87%) Splunk
9 193 (1.62%) Databricks
10 169 (1.42%) Salesforce
11 144 (1.21%) Red Hat
12 129 (1.08%) Palo Alto
13 110 (0.92%) Informatica
14 107 (0.90%) IBM
15 105 (0.88%) Talend
16 103 (0.86%) Dynatrace
17 99 (0.83%) CyberArk
18 93 (0.78%) Remedy
19 80 (0.67%) Fortinet
19 80 (0.67%) SolarWinds