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 3 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,969 6,126 6,741
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.82% 18.48% 17.72%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.76% 58.49% 60.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,301 3,940 4,289
10th Percentile £400 £338 £350
25th Percentile £463 £440 £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 £537 £550
% change year-on-year +0.09% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 866 630 391
10th Percentile £20.00 £18.51 £20.12
25th Percentile £30.12 £18.87 £28.50
Median hourly rate £63.48 £25.15 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +152.41% -58.08% -
75th Percentile £76.56 £33.75 £71.25
90th Percentile £91.31 £68.88 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +158.45% -58.08% +2.93%

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 17,408 10,474 11,139
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.73% 31.60% 29.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,559 6,535 6,767
10th Percentile £351 £290 £313
25th Percentile £447 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £633 £625 £634
90th Percentile £713 £708 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £521
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.08% -3.02%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,427 884 610
10th Percentile £16.95 £17.87 £17.99
25th Percentile £25.67 £18.87 £25.26
Median hourly rate £46.80 £25.15 £48.18
Median % change year-on-year +86.08% -47.80% -10.08%
75th Percentile £71.50 £42.25 £68.00
90th Percentile £88.75 £70.00 £75.02
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -49.70% -3.66%

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 3 October 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 3 October 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 3 October 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 10,302 £550 +2.33% 6,168
UK excluding London +1 6,671 £538 +0.09% 4,553
London +6 3,668 £550 +1.85% 1,824
Work from Home +2 3,163 £529 -1.58% 3,341
South East +1 2,269 £565 +7.62% 1,190
South West 0 1,396 £550 - 935
North of England +2 1,313 £515 -1.90% 860
Midlands 0 937 £475 -8.39% 479
North West +1 793 £530 -4.72% 498
West Midlands 0 793 £475 -8.57% 295
East of England 0 439 £552 +0.36% 545
Scotland +15 309 £494 +0.25% 388
Yorkshire 0 295 £492 - 166
North East 0 245 £466 -15.23% 203
East Midlands -1 136 £500 +8.11% 183
Wales +4 108 £550 +4.76% 133
Northern Ireland +1 37 £650 +21.50% 62

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
1 398 (3.33%) Confluence
2 262 (2.19%) SharePoint
3 154 (1.29%) SAS
4 122 (1.02%) Microsoft Exchange
5 107 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
6 105 (0.88%) Apache
6 105 (0.88%) Apache Spark
7 40 (0.33%) Jupyter
8 39 (0.33%) WebLogic
9 37 (0.31%) nginx
10 34 (0.28%) CMS
11 25 (0.21%) IIS
12 23 (0.19%) Tomcat
13 22 (0.18%) Skype for Business
14 19 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
15 17 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 16 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
17 13 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
18 11 (0.092%) JBoss
18 11 (0.092%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 214 (1.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 160 (1.34%) Microsoft Office
3 105 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 98 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (0.37%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 20 (0.17%) Windchill
9 19 (0.16%) Revit
10 18 (0.15%) SOLIDWORKS
11 9 (0.075%) Adobe XD
11 9 (0.075%) Chatbot
11 9 (0.075%) Simulink
12 7 (0.058%) Sketch
13 6 (0.050%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 5 (0.042%) Notepad++
15 4 (0.033%) OrCAD
15 4 (0.033%) Trello
16 2 (0.017%) Houdini
16 2 (0.017%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 153 (1.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 82 (0.69%) Remedy ITSM
3 60 (0.50%) Oracle ERP
4 49 (0.41%) Oracle EBS
5 39 (0.33%) Teamcenter
6 32 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 31 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
8 27 (0.23%) Oracle Payroll
9 26 (0.22%) SAP PSCD
10 24 (0.20%) SAP GRC
11 23 (0.19%) SAP FI
12 18 (0.15%) Primavera
12 18 (0.15%) SAP HR
13 17 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
14 15 (0.13%) Maximo
14 15 (0.13%) SAP CO
15 14 (0.12%) Oracle General Ledger
15 14 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
15 14 (0.12%) SAP Payroll
16 13 (0.11%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 2,152 (17.98%) Azure
2 2,103 (17.57%) AWS
3 523 (4.37%) GitHub
4 519 (4.34%) Azure DevOps
5 493 (4.12%) Power Platform
6 466 (3.89%) GCP
7 363 (3.03%) GitHub Actions
8 338 (2.82%) Microsoft 365
9 330 (2.76%) Entra ID
10 277 (2.31%) Serverless
11 243 (2.03%) Amazon S3
12 204 (1.70%) AWS Lambda
13 180 (1.50%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 176 (1.47%) Amazon EKS
15 174 (1.45%) OCI
16 164 (1.37%) SaaS
17 149 (1.24%) Amazon EC2
18 145 (1.21%) OpenShift
19 135 (1.13%) AWS CloudFormation
20 112 (0.94%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 450 (3.76%) Firewall
2 377 (3.15%) DNS
3 244 (2.04%) Network Security
4 207 (1.73%) WAN
5 195 (1.63%) VPN
6 185 (1.55%) DHCP
7 159 (1.33%) LAN
8 139 (1.16%) TCP/IP
9 127 (1.06%) BGP
10 116 (0.97%) Wi-Fi
11 97 (0.81%) VLAN
12 90 (0.75%) Wireless
13 85 (0.71%) OSPF
14 69 (0.58%) SSL
15 68 (0.57%) SAN
16 66 (0.55%) MPLS
17 63 (0.53%) VSAN
18 59 (0.49%) IPsec
19 56 (0.47%) SD-WAN
20 50 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 349 (2.92%) Power BI
2 308 (2.57%) PostgreSQL
3 283 (2.36%) SQL Server
4 260 (2.17%) Data Warehouse
5 211 (1.76%) Metadata
6 183 (1.53%) Oracle Database
7 146 (1.22%) Data Lake
8 142 (1.19%) Relational Database
9 138 (1.15%) MongoDB
10 113 (0.94%) Amazon RDS
11 112 (0.94%) MySQL
12 96 (0.80%) NoSQL
13 86 (0.72%) Oracle Reports
14 70 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
15 69 (0.58%) Pentaho
16 68 (0.57%) Amazon Athena
17 62 (0.52%) Big Data
18 54 (0.45%) Amazon Aurora
19 52 (0.43%) DynamoDB
20 48 (0.40%) Redis
Development Applications
1 653 (5.46%) JIRA
2 584 (4.88%) Git
3 536 (4.48%) GitLab
4 503 (4.20%) Jenkins
5 157 (1.31%) Selenium
6 91 (0.76%) Postman
7 81 (0.68%) Maven
8 78 (0.65%) JMeter
9 77 (0.64%) Cucumber
9 77 (0.64%) JUnit
10 76 (0.63%) SonarQube
11 55 (0.46%) Cypress.io
12 52 (0.43%) Gradle
13 48 (0.40%) REST Assured
14 45 (0.38%) Mockito
15 44 (0.37%) Gatling
16 40 (0.33%) Visual Studio
17 39 (0.33%) Artifactory
18 37 (0.31%) Zephyr
19 33 (0.28%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,704 (22.59%) Social Skills
2 2,466 (20.60%) Public Sector
3 973 (8.13%) Analytical Skills
4 774 (6.47%) Finance
5 434 (3.63%) Military
6 353 (2.95%) Aerospace
7 310 (2.59%) Documentation Skills
8 238 (1.99%) Influencing Skills
9 201 (1.68%) Organisational Skills
10 176 (1.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 174 (1.45%) Manufacturing
12 165 (1.38%) Legal
13 163 (1.36%) Telecoms
14 140 (1.17%) Banking
15 124 (1.04%) Police
16 120 (1.00%) Law
17 74 (0.62%) Presentation Skills
18 56 (0.47%) Local Government
19 54 (0.45%) Aviation
20 42 (0.35%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,944 (16.24%) Architect
2 1,221 (10.20%) Developer
3 1,149 (9.60%) Senior
4 1,059 (8.85%) Lead
5 704 (5.88%) Consultant
6 670 (5.60%) Analyst
7 513 (4.29%) DevOps Engineer
8 481 (4.02%) Data Engineer
9 420 (3.51%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 378 (3.16%) Solutions Architect
11 358 (2.99%) Technical Architect
12 309 (2.58%) Data Architect
13 292 (2.44%) Security Architect
14 258 (2.16%) Software Engineer
15 248 (2.07%) Network Engineer
16 229 (1.91%) Administrator
17 218 (1.82%) Java Developer
18 210 (1.75%) Designer
19 205 (1.71%) Cloud Engineer
20 203 (1.70%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,010 (8.44%) Terraform
2 479 (4.00%) REST
3 270 (2.26%) Kafka
4 254 (2.12%) Spring
5 235 (1.96%) Spring Boot
6 215 (1.80%) RESTful
7 200 (1.67%) .NET
8 191 (1.60%) React
9 184 (1.54%) SOAP
10 175 (1.46%) Node.js
11 159 (1.33%) JSON
12 144 (1.20%) OAuth
13 141 (1.18%) HTML
14 140 (1.17%) XML
15 133 (1.11%) Middleware
16 114 (0.95%) Web Services
17 112 (0.94%) Oracle Fusion
18 109 (0.91%) AngularJS
19 104 (0.87%) CSS
20 100 (0.84%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 545 (4.55%) Cloud Native
2 480 (4.01%) Onboarding
3 384 (3.21%) Product Ownership
4 305 (2.55%) Data Centre
5 274 (2.29%) Management Information System
6 188 (1.57%) Legacy Systems
7 184 (1.54%) Enterprise Software
8 180 (1.50%) PKI
9 170 (1.42%) CMDB
10 133 (1.11%) Distributed Systems
11 129 (1.08%) Hybrid Cloud
12 125 (1.04%) Cyber Threat
13 123 (1.03%) Replication
14 119 (0.99%) Operational Technology
15 109 (0.91%) Self-Motivation
16 102 (0.85%) Data Structures
17 99 (0.83%) Security Operations Centre
17 99 (0.83%) Security Posture
18 90 (0.75%) Public Cloud
19 87 (0.73%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 997 (8.33%) Windows
2 795 (6.64%) Linux
3 370 (3.09%) Windows Server
4 234 (1.96%) Unix
5 154 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 144 (1.20%) Windows 10
7 82 (0.69%) Solaris
8 80 (0.67%) Android
9 49 (0.41%) Mac OS
10 48 (0.40%) Apple iOS
11 44 (0.37%) CentOS
12 42 (0.35%) Ubuntu
13 37 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
14 29 (0.24%) AIX
15 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 24 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
17 22 (0.18%) VMS
18 19 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
19 17 (0.14%) Rocky
20 11 (0.092%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,538 (21.20%) Agile
2 1,825 (15.25%) CI/CD
3 1,815 (15.16%) DevOps
4 1,707 (14.26%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,484 (12.40%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,288 (10.76%) Problem-Solving
7 1,229 (10.27%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,038 (8.67%) Infrastructure as Code
9 961 (8.03%) Migration
10 886 (7.40%) Cybersecurity
11 793 (6.63%) Test Automation
12 790 (6.60%) ITIL
13 773 (6.46%) Decision-Making
14 768 (6.42%) Containerisation
15 765 (6.39%) AI
16 763 (6.37%) Technical Leadership
17 746 (6.23%) Roadmaps
18 717 (5.99%) Analytics
19 685 (5.72%) Software Engineering
20 637 (5.32%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,378 (11.51%) Python
2 1,124 (9.39%) SQL
3 797 (6.66%) Java
4 600 (5.01%) PowerShell
5 417 (3.48%) JavaScript
6 366 (3.06%) Bash
7 227 (1.90%) C#
8 225 (1.88%) TypeScript
9 152 (1.27%) PL/SQL
10 123 (1.03%) Bicep
11 82 (0.69%) Shell Script
12 63 (0.53%) Go
13 60 (0.50%) C++
13 60 (0.50%) Scala
14 50 (0.42%) C
14 50 (0.42%) Groovy
15 49 (0.41%) Kotlin
16 40 (0.33%) T-SQL
17 38 (0.32%) Apex Code
18 35 (0.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 9,126 (76.25%) SC Cleared
2 2,244 (18.75%) DV Cleared
3 558 (4.66%) BPSS Clearance
4 495 (4.14%) Degree
5 224 (1.87%) CISSP
6 187 (1.56%) Azure Certification
7 184 (1.54%) Cisco Certification
8 167 (1.40%) Microsoft Certification
9 161 (1.35%) AWS Certification
10 140 (1.17%) CISM
11 108 (0.90%) PMI Certification
12 99 (0.83%) PMP
13 96 (0.80%) ISTQB
14 85 (0.71%) CCNP
15 74 (0.62%) Computer Science Degree
16 67 (0.56%) CCNA
17 60 (0.50%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 54 (0.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 50 (0.42%) DBS Check
20 44 (0.37%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 544 (4.55%) QA
2 400 (3.34%) Data Quality
3 341 (2.85%) NIST
4 331 (2.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 314 (2.62%) NCSC
6 295 (2.46%) Accessibility
7 224 (1.87%) PMO
8 187 (1.56%) SLA
9 180 (1.50%) GDPR
10 171 (1.43%) GRC
11 86 (0.72%) WCAG
12 55 (0.46%) JSP 440
13 50 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
14 43 (0.36%) NIST 800
15 37 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
16 36 (0.30%) Def Stans
17 31 (0.26%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 22 (0.18%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 21 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 21 (0.18%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 837 (6.99%) Docker
2 644 (5.38%) Active Directory
3 442 (3.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 143 (1.19%) VMware ESXi
5 142 (1.19%) VMware NSX
6 136 (1.14%) Hyper-V
7 135 (1.13%) vSphere
8 94 (0.79%) Virtual Machines
9 45 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
10 40 (0.33%) Firmware
11 37 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
12 25 (0.21%) BitLocker
13 24 (0.20%) vCloud
14 22 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
15 18 (0.15%) NFS
16 13 (0.11%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 11 (0.092%) Microsoft Virtual Server
17 11 (0.092%) Squid
18 10 (0.084%) KVM
19 7 (0.058%) UAG
Systems Management
1 1,026 (8.57%) Kubernetes
2 451 (3.77%) Ansible
3 273 (2.28%) Grafana
4 207 (1.73%) Prometheus
5 138 (1.15%) SCCM
6 130 (1.09%) vCenter Server
7 99 (0.83%) SCOM
8 94 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
9 69 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
10 66 (0.55%) Argo
11 49 (0.41%) Kibana
12 43 (0.36%) Puppet
13 41 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
14 38 (0.32%) Data Guard
15 34 (0.28%) Istio
15 34 (0.28%) NetBackup
16 31 (0.26%) VxRail
17 29 (0.24%) Control-M
18 25 (0.21%) Active Directory Federation Services
19 24 (0.20%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 1,593 (13.31%) Microsoft
2 969 (8.10%) Oracle
3 598 (5.00%) VMware
4 535 (4.47%) ServiceNow
5 446 (3.73%) SAP
6 283 (2.36%) Cisco
7 277 (2.31%) Google
8 225 (1.88%) Splunk
9 188 (1.57%) Databricks
10 160 (1.34%) Salesforce
11 136 (1.14%) Red Hat
12 129 (1.08%) Palo Alto
13 118 (0.99%) Informatica
14 102 (0.85%) Dynatrace
15 101 (0.84%) IBM
16 99 (0.83%) CyberArk
16 99 (0.83%) Talend
17 94 (0.79%) Remedy
18 76 (0.63%) Citrix
18 76 (0.63%) SolarWinds