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 5 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,811 5,287 7,904
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 23.05% 17.47% 17.95%
As % of the Qualifications category 67.84% 58.18% 59.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,613 3,420 5,027
10th Percentile £358 £325 £360
25th Percentile £448 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.31%
75th Percentile £623 £629 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £519 £540 £568
% change year-on-year -3.98% -4.85% +3.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 810 276 523
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.12 £17.72
25th Percentile £20.41 £24.66 £27.65
Median hourly rate £25.77 £56.75 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -54.59% +0.45% -5.85%
75th Percentile £67.50 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £75.88 £83.22
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.58 £60.00 £56.49
% change year-on-year -57.37% +6.21% -1.98%

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 14,461 9,088 13,350
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.97% 30.03% 30.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,541 5,628 8,227
10th Percentile £331 £285 £287
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £614 £627 £650
90th Percentile £719 £725 £734
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £510 £528
% change year-on-year -1.96% -3.32% -0.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,054 453 988
10th Percentile £16.17 £20.02 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.40 £24.19 £19.99
Median hourly rate £25.77 £42.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -39.36% +6.25% -20.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £67.50 £63.41
90th Percentile £82.25 £82.22 £76.67
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £47.81 £40.94
% change year-on-year -47.39% +16.77% -10.02%

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 5 March 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 5 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Top 18 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 5 March 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 +1 8,530 £525 -2.78% 1,722
UK excluding London 0 5,437 £519 -3.98% 1,360
London +5 2,969 £530 +0.95% 507
Work from Home +4 2,686 £525 -0.19% 838
South East +1 1,885 £525 -4.55% 494
South West 0 1,327 £550 -0.18% 335
Midlands +4 865 £492 -10.55% 137
North of England -2 832 £492 +0.41% 206
West Midlands +3 692 £495 -10.16% 103
North West 0 535 £500 +5.26% 129
East of England +1 350 £498 -0.50% 141
Yorkshire -8 176 £480 -8.57% 42
Scotland +11 171 £475 -1.15% 42
East Midlands +2 171 £425 -17.07% 34
North East +1 150 £450 -10.00% 36
Wales -2 79 £515 +0.28% 37
Northern Ireland +12 30 £500 +271.11% 3
Channel Islands - 1 - - 1

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
1 347 (3.54%) Confluence
2 224 (2.28%) SharePoint
3 148 (1.51%) Microsoft Exchange
4 143 (1.46%) SAS
5 82 (0.84%) Apache Spark
6 73 (0.74%) Apache
7 57 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
8 43 (0.44%) nginx
9 40 (0.41%) WebLogic
10 32 (0.33%) Skype for Business
11 21 (0.21%) Jupyter
12 20 (0.20%) CMS
13 16 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
14 15 (0.15%) Tuxedo
15 10 (0.10%) Tomcat
16 9 (0.092%) ArcGIS
16 9 (0.092%) IIS
16 9 (0.092%) Oracle Workflow
17 7 (0.071%) OpenStack
18 6 (0.061%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 256 (2.61%) Microsoft Office
2 194 (1.98%) Microsoft Excel
3 122 (1.24%) Microsoft Project
4 69 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (0.45%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.13%) Simulink
8 6 (0.061%) Oracle Smart View
8 6 (0.061%) Sketch
9 5 (0.051%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.051%) Siemens NX
9 5 (0.051%) Windchill
10 4 (0.041%) Chatbot
11 3 (0.031%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.020%) Adobe Illustrator
12 2 (0.020%) CATIA
12 2 (0.020%) InVision
12 2 (0.020%) Photoshop
12 2 (0.020%) PlantUML
12 2 (0.020%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 160 (1.63%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (0.43%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 30 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
4 28 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
5 25 (0.25%) SAP MM
5 25 (0.25%) Teamcenter
6 24 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
7 19 (0.19%) SAP PP
8 18 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
9 16 (0.16%) Maximo
10 14 (0.14%) SAP VC
11 13 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
11 13 (0.13%) SAP QM
12 12 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
12 12 (0.12%) SAP WM
13 11 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
13 11 (0.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 11 (0.11%) SAP EWM
13 11 (0.11%) SAP HCM
14 9 (0.092%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,671 (17.03%) AWS
2 1,607 (16.38%) Azure
3 436 (4.44%) GitHub
4 415 (4.23%) GCP
5 364 (3.71%) Power Platform
6 363 (3.70%) Azure DevOps
7 322 (3.28%) Microsoft 365
8 269 (2.74%) Serverless
9 253 (2.58%) Entra ID
10 234 (2.39%) GitHub Actions
11 209 (2.13%) Amazon S3
12 185 (1.89%) OpenShift
13 172 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
14 146 (1.49%) AWS CloudFormation
15 138 (1.41%) Amazon EC2
16 132 (1.35%) Amazon EKS
17 129 (1.31%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 123 (1.25%) PaaS
19 118 (1.20%) IaaS
20 112 (1.14%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 452 (4.61%) Firewall
2 296 (3.02%) DNS
3 221 (2.25%) Network Security
4 200 (2.04%) WAN
5 181 (1.84%) VPN
6 162 (1.65%) LAN
7 145 (1.48%) TCP/IP
8 134 (1.37%) BGP
9 132 (1.35%) DHCP
10 97 (0.99%) Wireless
11 93 (0.95%) OSPF
12 90 (0.92%) VLAN
13 74 (0.75%) Wi-Fi
14 72 (0.73%) MPLS
15 56 (0.57%) SSL
16 54 (0.55%) SAN
17 53 (0.54%) IPsec
18 48 (0.49%) Cisco ISE
19 42 (0.43%) Kerberos
20 41 (0.42%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 269 (2.74%) PostgreSQL
2 260 (2.65%) Power BI
3 180 (1.83%) Data Warehouse
4 153 (1.56%) SQL Server
5 122 (1.24%) Metadata
6 109 (1.11%) Oracle Database
7 102 (1.04%) Amazon RDS
8 101 (1.03%) NoSQL
9 97 (0.99%) MongoDB
10 92 (0.94%) Relational Database
11 79 (0.81%) Azure SQL Database
12 77 (0.78%) Data Lake
13 75 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
14 67 (0.68%) Big Data
15 63 (0.64%) MySQL
16 62 (0.63%) Pentaho
17 54 (0.55%) Tableau
18 50 (0.51%) Amazon Redshift
19 44 (0.45%) DynamoDB
20 43 (0.44%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 575 (5.86%) JIRA
2 475 (4.84%) Git
3 412 (4.20%) Jenkins
4 363 (3.70%) GitLab
5 113 (1.15%) Selenium
6 88 (0.90%) Postman
7 84 (0.86%) JUnit
8 61 (0.62%) Cypress.io
8 61 (0.62%) SonarQube
9 51 (0.52%) Bitbucket
10 49 (0.50%) Artifactory
11 47 (0.48%) Cucumber
11 47 (0.48%) Maven
12 44 (0.45%) Oracle APEX
13 40 (0.41%) Rational DOORS
14 36 (0.37%) Mockito
15 35 (0.36%) JMeter
16 34 (0.35%) REST Assured
16 34 (0.35%) Visual Studio
17 24 (0.24%) Metasploit
General
1 2,491 (25.39%) Public Sector
2 2,331 (23.76%) Social Skills
3 809 (8.25%) Analytical Skills
4 669 (6.82%) Finance
5 334 (3.40%) Military
6 261 (2.66%) Documentation Skills
7 220 (2.24%) Aerospace
8 189 (1.93%) Manufacturing
9 186 (1.90%) Telecoms
10 149 (1.52%) Legal
11 133 (1.36%) Organisational Skills
12 126 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
13 118 (1.20%) Marketing
14 117 (1.19%) Electronics
15 111 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
16 104 (1.06%) Banking
17 73 (0.74%) Law
18 69 (0.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 51 (0.52%) Police
20 38 (0.39%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,376 (14.03%) Architect
2 966 (9.85%) Developer
3 852 (8.68%) Senior
4 748 (7.62%) Analyst
5 665 (6.78%) Consultant
6 598 (6.10%) Lead
7 435 (4.43%) DevOps Engineer
8 358 (3.65%) Data Engineer
9 260 (2.65%) Business Analyst
10 259 (2.64%) Solutions Architect
11 258 (2.63%) Network Engineer
12 255 (2.60%) Software Engineer
13 245 (2.50%) Technical Architect
14 241 (2.46%) Support Engineer
15 197 (2.01%) Tester
16 183 (1.87%) Designer
17 179 (1.82%) AWS Engineer
18 176 (1.79%) Azure Engineer
19 173 (1.76%) Security Architect
20 167 (1.70%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 362 (3.69%) REST
2 232 (2.36%) Node.js
3 217 (2.21%) Spring
4 204 (2.08%) Kafka
5 201 (2.05%) React
6 166 (1.69%) SOAP
7 162 (1.65%) Spring Boot
8 159 (1.62%) JSON
9 153 (1.56%) LDAP
10 147 (1.50%) .NET
11 122 (1.24%) AngularJS
11 122 (1.24%) HTML
12 120 (1.22%) RESTful
13 119 (1.21%) Web Services
14 111 (1.13%) PySpark
15 110 (1.12%) OAuth
16 104 (1.06%) Oracle Fusion
17 98 (1.00%) XML
18 95 (0.97%) CSS
19 86 (0.88%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 302 (3.08%) Data Centre
2 286 (2.92%) Product Ownership
3 281 (2.86%) Cloud Native
4 249 (2.54%) Onboarding
5 208 (2.12%) PKI
6 181 (1.84%) Management Information System
7 142 (1.45%) Security Posture
8 123 (1.25%) Self-Motivation
9 118 (1.20%) Legacy Systems
10 111 (1.13%) Enterprise Software
11 103 (1.05%) Replication
12 85 (0.87%) Public Cloud
13 80 (0.82%) Security Operations Centre
14 78 (0.80%) Hybrid Cloud
15 74 (0.75%) Distributed Systems
15 74 (0.75%) Driving Licence
16 68 (0.69%) Cyber Threat
17 58 (0.59%) Data Structures
18 56 (0.57%) Clustering
19 50 (0.51%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 891 (9.08%) Windows
2 710 (7.24%) Linux
3 230 (2.34%) Windows Server
4 152 (1.55%) Windows 10
5 129 (1.31%) Android
5 129 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 123 (1.25%) Unix
7 67 (0.68%) Mac OS
8 54 (0.55%) Apple iOS
9 46 (0.47%) Ubuntu
10 38 (0.39%) VMS
11 32 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
12 25 (0.25%) CentOS
12 25 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
13 22 (0.22%) Solaris
14 21 (0.21%) Windows 7
15 14 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
16 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
17 9 (0.092%) Windows Server 2003
18 8 (0.082%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,859 (18.95%) Agile
2 1,491 (15.20%) DevOps
3 1,310 (13.35%) CI/CD
4 1,190 (12.13%) Problem-Solving
5 910 (9.28%) Stakeholder Management
6 840 (8.56%) Migration
7 782 (7.97%) Continuous Improvement
8 685 (6.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 629 (6.41%) Infrastructure as Code
10 627 (6.39%) Cybersecurity
11 578 (5.89%) ITIL
12 548 (5.59%) Test Automation
13 542 (5.52%) Analytics
14 539 (5.49%) Roadmaps
15 531 (5.41%) Containerisation
16 456 (4.65%) Software Engineering
17 455 (4.64%) Business Intelligence
18 453 (4.62%) Scrum
19 429 (4.37%) Service Management
20 423 (4.31%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,176 (11.99%) Python
2 835 (8.51%) SQL
3 628 (6.40%) PowerShell
4 551 (5.62%) Java
5 448 (4.57%) JavaScript
6 237 (2.42%) Bash
7 213 (2.17%) TypeScript
8 205 (2.09%) C#
9 110 (1.12%) C++
10 108 (1.10%) Shell Script
11 107 (1.09%) PL/SQL
12 86 (0.88%) Go
13 65 (0.66%) C
14 63 (0.64%) Ruby
15 51 (0.52%) Scala
16 50 (0.51%) Ada
17 46 (0.47%) Kusto Query Language
18 44 (0.45%) Bicep
19 40 (0.41%) ABAP
20 36 (0.37%) R
Qualifications
1 7,517 (76.62%) SC Cleared
2 1,635 (16.66%) DV Cleared
3 486 (4.95%) Degree
4 319 (3.25%) BPSS Clearance
5 185 (1.89%) Cisco Certification
6 176 (1.79%) CISSP
7 135 (1.38%) AWS Certification
8 131 (1.34%) Azure Certification
9 128 (1.30%) CCNP
10 117 (1.19%) Microsoft Certification
11 109 (1.11%) CISM
12 91 (0.93%) Computer Science Degree
13 82 (0.84%) CCNA
14 69 (0.70%) ITIL Certification
15 67 (0.68%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 63 (0.64%) TOGAF Certification
17 57 (0.58%) ISTQB
18 55 (0.56%) PMP
19 52 (0.53%) PMI Certification
20 50 (0.51%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 323 (3.29%) QA
2 298 (3.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 285 (2.90%) NIST
4 267 (2.72%) Data Quality
5 218 (2.22%) NCSC
6 197 (2.01%) Accessibility
7 183 (1.87%) GDPR
8 131 (1.34%) SLA
9 106 (1.08%) PMO
10 68 (0.69%) GRC
11 63 (0.64%) JSP 440
12 48 (0.49%) WCAG
13 43 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
14 41 (0.42%) Def Stans
15 40 (0.41%) NIST 800
16 35 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 34 (0.35%) COBIT
17 34 (0.35%) PCI DSS
18 26 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
18 26 (0.27%) RMADS
System Software
1 669 (6.82%) Docker
2 503 (5.13%) Active Directory
3 251 (2.56%) VMware Infrastructure
4 95 (0.97%) VMware NSX
5 75 (0.76%) vSphere
6 66 (0.67%) VMware ESXi
7 63 (0.64%) Hyper-V
7 63 (0.64%) Virtual Machines
8 29 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
9 27 (0.28%) Firmware
10 21 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
11 19 (0.19%) BitLocker
12 17 (0.17%) NFS
13 16 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 11 (0.11%) Postfix
15 10 (0.10%) Squid
16 9 (0.092%) vCloud
17 6 (0.061%) KVM
17 6 (0.061%) Microsoft App-V
17 6 (0.061%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 861 (8.78%) Kubernetes
2 820 (8.36%) Terraform
3 320 (3.26%) Ansible
4 241 (2.46%) Grafana
5 197 (2.01%) Prometheus
6 132 (1.35%) Single Sign-On
7 102 (1.04%) SCCM
8 94 (0.96%) vCenter Server
9 91 (0.93%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 74 (0.75%) Argo
10 74 (0.75%) Microsoft Intune
11 47 (0.48%) FortiGate
12 46 (0.47%) vRealize
13 40 (0.41%) Podman
14 39 (0.40%) Packer
15 33 (0.34%) Kibana
15 33 (0.34%) Puppet
16 30 (0.31%) OPNET
16 30 (0.31%) Progress Chef
17 25 (0.25%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,091 (11.12%) Microsoft
2 552 (5.63%) Oracle
3 480 (4.89%) VMware
4 456 (4.65%) SAP
5 440 (4.48%) Cisco
6 407 (4.15%) ServiceNow
7 234 (2.39%) Splunk
8 192 (1.96%) Red Hat
9 153 (1.56%) Databricks
9 153 (1.56%) Google
10 144 (1.47%) CyberArk
11 139 (1.42%) Palo Alto
12 135 (1.38%) Juniper
13 134 (1.37%) Salesforce
14 123 (1.25%) Atlassian
15 101 (1.03%) Dell
16 94 (0.96%) IBM
17 87 (0.89%) Talend
18 83 (0.85%) HP
19 79 (0.81%) Dynatrace