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 19 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,597 5,858 7,237
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.65% 17.85% 18.62%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.10% 57.16% 62.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,129 3,704 4,798
10th Percentile £381 £350 £350
25th Percentile £455 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £534 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.75% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £638 £624 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £530 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -1.40% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 821 560 482
10th Percentile £19.33 £18.51 £15.22
25th Percentile £26.25 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £63.50 £25.15 £57.07
Median % change year-on-year +152.49% -55.93% -4.89%
75th Percentile £79.00 £48.13 £72.22
90th Percentile £88.00 £73.75 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.09 £25.15 £58.34
% change year-on-year +154.83% -56.89% +1.46%

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 16,783 10,249 11,642
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.33% 31.23% 29.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,254 6,303 7,364
10th Percentile £350 £288 £313
25th Percentile £433 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.48% -0.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £638
90th Percentile £715 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £515 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,257 823 818
10th Percentile £17.72 £17.98 £14.49
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.38 £21.25
Median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -21.82%
75th Percentile £73.00 £53.95 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.96 £73.75 £76.47
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.77 £25.15 £47.50
% change year-on-year +93.90% -47.05% -6.40%

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 19 August 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 19 August 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 19 August 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 10,050 £538 - 2,973
UK excluding London +1 6,551 £530 -1.40% 2,472
London +7 3,536 £550 +3.77% 919
Work from Home +2 3,088 £525 -2.23% 1,511
South East +1 2,432 £560 +4.19% 666
South West 0 1,363 £540 -6.09% 582
North of England +3 1,184 £510 +2.00% 500
Midlands 0 938 £469 -8.40% 222
West Midlands +1 810 £469 -8.93% 162
North West +3 662 £525 -0.47% 331
East of England 0 335 £550 - 259
Yorkshire +2 305 £492 - 104
Scotland +12 263 £490 +3.16% 169
North East 0 241 £475 -3.80% 88
East Midlands -2 117 £450 -4.00% 59
Wales +4 103 £550 +15.79% 39
Northern Ireland +5 33 £650 +25.00% 72

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 (3.48%) Confluence
2 277 (2.39%) SharePoint
3 194 (1.67%) SAS
4 121 (1.04%) Microsoft Exchange
5 99 (0.85%) Apache Spark
6 98 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
7 94 (0.81%) Apache
8 38 (0.33%) Jupyter
9 35 (0.30%) nginx
10 31 (0.27%) WebLogic
11 24 (0.21%) IIS
12 23 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
12 23 (0.20%) Tomcat
13 21 (0.18%) Skype for Business
14 18 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
15 17 (0.15%) CMS
15 17 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
16 15 (0.13%) NetWeaver
17 13 (0.11%) JBoss
18 11 (0.095%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 207 (1.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 162 (1.40%) Microsoft Office
3 103 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 90 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.37%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.14%) AutoCAD
7 16 (0.14%) Revit
8 15 (0.13%) Simulink
8 15 (0.13%) SOLIDWORKS
9 8 (0.069%) Adobe XD
9 8 (0.069%) Chatbot
9 8 (0.069%) Windchill
10 7 (0.060%) Notepad++
10 7 (0.060%) Sketch
11 5 (0.043%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 3 (0.026%) Trello
13 2 (0.017%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.017%) Houdini
13 2 (0.017%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 143 (1.23%) SAP S/4HANA
2 83 (0.72%) Remedy ITSM
3 51 (0.44%) Oracle ERP
4 40 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
5 33 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 31 (0.27%) Teamcenter
7 29 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
8 22 (0.19%) Oracle Payroll
8 22 (0.19%) SAP GRC
8 22 (0.19%) SAP PSCD
9 21 (0.18%) Primavera
10 17 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
11 14 (0.12%) SAP HR
12 13 (0.11%) Findur
12 13 (0.11%) SAP FI
13 12 (0.10%) iTrent
13 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
13 12 (0.10%) Temenos T24
14 11 (0.095%) NetSuite
15 10 (0.086%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,154 (18.57%) Azure
2 2,051 (17.69%) AWS
3 544 (4.69%) GitHub
4 542 (4.67%) Azure DevOps
5 478 (4.12%) Power Platform
6 456 (3.93%) GCP
7 346 (2.98%) GitHub Actions
8 313 (2.70%) Microsoft 365
9 303 (2.61%) Entra ID
10 281 (2.42%) Serverless
11 231 (1.99%) Amazon S3
12 198 (1.71%) AWS Lambda
13 178 (1.53%) OCI
14 172 (1.48%) SaaS
15 167 (1.44%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 161 (1.39%) Amazon EKS
17 148 (1.28%) Amazon EC2
18 143 (1.23%) PaaS
19 139 (1.20%) OpenShift
20 132 (1.14%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 483 (4.16%) Firewall
2 383 (3.30%) DNS
3 228 (1.97%) WAN
4 225 (1.94%) Network Security
5 208 (1.79%) VPN
6 191 (1.65%) DHCP
7 189 (1.63%) LAN
8 142 (1.22%) TCP/IP
9 136 (1.17%) BGP
10 123 (1.06%) Wi-Fi
11 107 (0.92%) VLAN
12 101 (0.87%) OSPF
13 87 (0.75%) Wireless
14 70 (0.60%) VSAN
15 69 (0.59%) MPLS
16 65 (0.56%) IPsec
17 64 (0.55%) SSL
18 61 (0.53%) SAN
19 60 (0.52%) SD-WAN
20 49 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 352 (3.04%) Power BI
2 309 (2.66%) PostgreSQL
3 305 (2.63%) SQL Server
4 284 (2.45%) Data Warehouse
5 168 (1.45%) Oracle Database
6 162 (1.40%) Metadata
7 142 (1.22%) Data Lake
8 134 (1.16%) Relational Database
9 120 (1.03%) MongoDB
10 114 (0.98%) Amazon RDS
11 106 (0.91%) MySQL
12 105 (0.91%) Oracle Reports
13 92 (0.79%) NoSQL
14 91 (0.78%) Pentaho
15 69 (0.59%) Amazon Athena
15 69 (0.59%) Amazon Redshift
16 61 (0.53%) Elasticsearch
17 59 (0.51%) Big Data
18 57 (0.49%) Tableau
19 50 (0.43%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 661 (5.70%) JIRA
2 579 (4.99%) Git
3 500 (4.31%) GitLab
4 494 (4.26%) Jenkins
5 134 (1.16%) Selenium
6 89 (0.77%) Postman
7 82 (0.71%) SonarQube
8 72 (0.62%) JUnit
9 71 (0.61%) JMeter
10 68 (0.59%) Maven
11 57 (0.49%) Rational DOORS
12 53 (0.46%) Cucumber
13 51 (0.44%) Visual Studio
14 50 (0.43%) Cypress.io
15 48 (0.41%) Zephyr
16 46 (0.40%) Mockito
17 45 (0.39%) Bitbucket
18 42 (0.36%) Gradle
19 40 (0.34%) Gatling
20 39 (0.34%) Artifactory
General
1 2,457 (21.19%) Social Skills
2 2,421 (20.88%) Public Sector
3 895 (7.72%) Analytical Skills
4 781 (6.73%) Finance
5 352 (3.04%) Military
6 314 (2.71%) Aerospace
7 302 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
8 189 (1.63%) Influencing Skills
9 167 (1.44%) Legal
10 159 (1.37%) Telecoms
11 156 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
12 143 (1.23%) Banking
13 139 (1.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 117 (1.01%) Manufacturing
15 108 (0.93%) Police
16 107 (0.92%) Law
17 68 (0.59%) Presentation Skills
18 49 (0.42%) Aviation
19 45 (0.39%) Retail
20 44 (0.38%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,837 (15.84%) Architect
2 1,270 (10.95%) Developer
3 1,109 (9.56%) Senior
4 1,014 (8.74%) Lead
5 671 (5.79%) Consultant
6 645 (5.56%) Analyst
7 516 (4.45%) Data Engineer
8 481 (4.15%) DevOps Engineer
9 425 (3.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 370 (3.19%) Technical Architect
11 352 (3.04%) Solutions Architect
12 311 (2.68%) Software Engineer
13 270 (2.33%) Security Architect
14 261 (2.25%) Network Engineer
15 255 (2.20%) Data Architect
16 219 (1.89%) Java Developer
17 218 (1.88%) Administrator
18 213 (1.84%) Designer
19 208 (1.79%) Project Manager
20 206 (1.78%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 438 (3.78%) REST
2 248 (2.14%) Spring
3 243 (2.10%) .NET
4 235 (2.03%) Kafka
5 224 (1.93%) RESTful
6 221 (1.91%) Spring Boot
7 198 (1.71%) React
8 177 (1.53%) Node.js
9 175 (1.51%) SOAP
10 154 (1.33%) JSON
11 139 (1.20%) Web Services
12 133 (1.15%) AngularJS
13 132 (1.14%) OAuth
14 129 (1.11%) HTML
15 118 (1.02%) XML
16 111 (0.96%) Middleware
17 97 (0.84%) Playwright
18 96 (0.83%) Oracle Fusion
19 91 (0.78%) PySpark
20 89 (0.77%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 504 (4.35%) Cloud Native
2 415 (3.58%) Onboarding
3 371 (3.20%) Product Ownership
4 303 (2.61%) Data Centre
5 238 (2.05%) Management Information System
6 189 (1.63%) Legacy Systems
7 167 (1.44%) PKI
8 165 (1.42%) Distributed Systems
9 152 (1.31%) Enterprise Software
10 141 (1.22%) CMDB
11 123 (1.06%) Replication
11 123 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
12 117 (1.01%) Hybrid Cloud
13 113 (0.97%) Data Structures
14 96 (0.83%) Security Operations Centre
15 95 (0.82%) Clustering
15 95 (0.82%) Cyber Threat
16 91 (0.78%) Public Cloud
17 89 (0.77%) Virtual Team
18 76 (0.66%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 970 (8.36%) Windows
2 804 (6.93%) Linux
3 340 (2.93%) Windows Server
4 227 (1.96%) Unix
5 154 (1.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 130 (1.12%) Windows 10
7 93 (0.80%) Android
8 63 (0.54%) Solaris
9 57 (0.49%) Apple iOS
10 49 (0.42%) Mac OS
11 42 (0.36%) Ubuntu
12 41 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
13 38 (0.33%) CentOS
14 35 (0.30%) AIX
15 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 23 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
17 22 (0.19%) VMS
18 20 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
19 15 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
20 14 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,451 (21.13%) Agile
2 1,839 (15.86%) DevOps
3 1,758 (15.16%) CI/CD
4 1,396 (12.04%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,325 (11.43%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,203 (10.37%) Problem-Solving
7 1,120 (9.66%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 964 (8.31%) Infrastructure as Code
9 924 (7.97%) Migration
10 784 (6.76%) Cybersecurity
11 769 (6.63%) ITIL
12 763 (6.58%) Test Automation
13 738 (6.36%) Analytics
14 720 (6.21%) Containerisation
15 686 (5.92%) Software Engineering
16 680 (5.86%) Roadmaps
17 658 (5.67%) Technical Leadership
18 648 (5.59%) Decision-Making
19 641 (5.53%) AI
20 631 (5.44%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,302 (11.23%) Python
2 1,144 (9.86%) SQL
3 805 (6.94%) Java
4 573 (4.94%) PowerShell
5 408 (3.52%) JavaScript
6 327 (2.82%) Bash
7 272 (2.35%) C#
8 195 (1.68%) TypeScript
9 167 (1.44%) PL/SQL
10 115 (0.99%) Bicep
11 89 (0.77%) C++
12 83 (0.72%) Shell Script
13 67 (0.58%) C
14 56 (0.48%) Apex Code
15 53 (0.46%) Kotlin
15 53 (0.46%) Ruby
16 52 (0.45%) Scala
17 49 (0.42%) Go
18 45 (0.39%) Groovy
19 37 (0.32%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8,836 (76.19%) SC Cleared
2 2,179 (18.79%) DV Cleared
3 458 (3.95%) Degree
4 448 (3.86%) BPSS Clearance
5 214 (1.85%) CISSP
6 192 (1.66%) Cisco Certification
7 170 (1.47%) Azure Certification
8 160 (1.38%) Microsoft Certification
9 143 (1.23%) CISM
10 137 (1.18%) AWS Certification
11 107 (0.92%) PMI Certification
12 105 (0.91%) PMP
13 97 (0.84%) ISTQB
14 83 (0.72%) CCNA
15 82 (0.71%) CCNP
16 70 (0.60%) Computer Science Degree
17 67 (0.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 49 (0.42%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 47 (0.41%) ITIL Certification
20 42 (0.36%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 492 (4.24%) QA
2 375 (3.23%) Data Quality
3 311 (2.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 302 (2.60%) NIST
5 275 (2.37%) NCSC
6 264 (2.28%) Accessibility
7 222 (1.91%) PMO
8 181 (1.56%) GDPR
9 151 (1.30%) GRC
10 147 (1.27%) SLA
11 79 (0.68%) WCAG
12 66 (0.57%) JSP 440
13 48 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
14 41 (0.35%) NIST 800
15 32 (0.28%) Def Stans
16 30 (0.26%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 29 (0.25%) Government Security Classifications
17 29 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 23 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
19 22 (0.19%) RMADS
System Software
1 806 (6.95%) Docker
2 559 (4.82%) Active Directory
3 412 (3.55%) VMware Infrastructure
4 152 (1.31%) VMware NSX
5 137 (1.18%) VMware ESXi
6 124 (1.07%) vSphere
7 120 (1.03%) Hyper-V
8 83 (0.72%) Virtual Machines
9 46 (0.40%) Oracle RAC
10 44 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
11 33 (0.28%) Firmware
12 26 (0.22%) BitLocker
13 25 (0.22%) vCloud
14 16 (0.14%) NFS
15 15 (0.13%) Postfix
15 15 (0.13%) Squid
16 12 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
17 8 (0.069%) KVM
17 8 (0.069%) Microsoft App-V
18 7 (0.060%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 998 (8.61%) Terraform
2 991 (8.55%) Kubernetes
3 450 (3.88%) Ansible
4 269 (2.32%) Grafana
5 210 (1.81%) Prometheus
6 134 (1.16%) vCenter Server
7 129 (1.11%) SCCM
8 90 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
9 75 (0.65%) SCOM
10 68 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
11 67 (0.58%) Argo
12 56 (0.48%) Oracle RMAN
13 52 (0.45%) Puppet
14 41 (0.35%) Data Guard
15 34 (0.29%) Progress Chef
16 33 (0.28%) Istio
17 30 (0.26%) FortiGate
17 30 (0.26%) Nagios
18 28 (0.24%) WSUS
19 27 (0.23%) Control-M
Vendors
1 1,456 (12.55%) Microsoft
2 947 (8.17%) Oracle
3 593 (5.11%) VMware
4 529 (4.56%) ServiceNow
5 441 (3.80%) SAP
6 300 (2.59%) Cisco
7 240 (2.07%) Google
8 209 (1.80%) Splunk
9 206 (1.78%) Databricks
10 186 (1.60%) Salesforce
11 152 (1.31%) Red Hat
12 129 (1.11%) IBM
13 124 (1.07%) Talend
14 122 (1.05%) Informatica
15 118 (1.02%) Palo Alto
16 97 (0.84%) Dynatrace
17 92 (0.79%) Remedy
18 87 (0.75%) Denodo
18 87 (0.75%) F5
19 84 (0.72%) Citrix