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

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,412 5,689 7,862
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.69% 17.53% 18.39%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.22% 57.09% 61.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,920 3,645 5,144
10th Percentile £382 £350 £340
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -3.64% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £646
90th Percentile £715 £700 £734
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £540 £550
% change year-on-year -2.78% -1.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 839 474 589
10th Percentile £18.31 £18.51 £15.10
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £55.80
Median % change year-on-year +151.03% -54.93% -7.00%
75th Percentile £76.75 £58.94 £72.33
90th Percentile £87.97 £75.00 £83.59
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £57.50
% change year-on-year +151.03% -56.26% -1.16%

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 16,487 9,965 12,767
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.33% 30.71% 29.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,019 6,179 7,959
10th Percentile £350 £281 £310
25th Percentile £430 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £713 £706 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,190 716 1,085
10th Percentile £17.86 £17.87 £14.16
25th Percentile £25.75 £19.44 £20.47
Median hourly rate £52.50 £26.81 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +95.80% -35.39% -24.93%
75th Percentile £73.00 £58.34 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.41 £75.00 £75.15
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +108.75% -41.51% -19.87%

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 July 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 July 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 July 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 9,814 £529 -1.58% 2,555
UK excluding London +1 6,377 £525 -2.78% 2,121
London +7 3,491 £538 +2.38% 731
Work from Home +4 3,128 £525 -1.41% 1,507
South East +1 2,394 £550 - 680
South West 0 1,306 £538 -6.52% 486
North of England +2 1,071 £500 - 362
Midlands +3 948 £469 -8.04% 251
West Midlands +2 811 £470 -8.27% 178
North West 0 572 £525 - 206
East of England +2 329 £551 +5.00% 159
Yorkshire 0 292 £500 +1.63% 99
Scotland +20 288 £498 +7.57% 134
North East +1 235 £475 -5.00% 58
East Midlands -2 124 £418 -12.11% 72
Wales +3 103 £550 +15.79% 55
Northern Ireland +6 32 £650 +27.45% 37

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
1 413 (3.62%) Confluence
2 257 (2.25%) SharePoint
3 173 (1.52%) SAS
4 134 (1.17%) Microsoft Exchange
5 105 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
5 105 (0.92%) Apache Spark
6 97 (0.85%) Apache
7 49 (0.43%) nginx
8 39 (0.34%) Jupyter
8 39 (0.34%) WebLogic
9 27 (0.24%) Tomcat
10 25 (0.22%) IIS
11 20 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
12 18 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
13 16 (0.14%) CMS
13 16 (0.14%) NetWeaver
14 13 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
14 13 (0.11%) Skype for Business
15 12 (0.11%) Tuxedo
16 9 (0.079%) Documentum
Applications
1 191 (1.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 152 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
3 90 (0.79%) Microsoft Project
4 76 (0.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 52 (0.46%) MS Visio
6 18 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.14%) Simulink
8 12 (0.11%) AutoCAD
8 12 (0.11%) Revit
8 12 (0.11%) SOLIDWORKS
9 10 (0.088%) Chatbot
10 7 (0.061%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.061%) Notepad++
11 6 (0.053%) Sketch
12 3 (0.026%) Windchill
13 2 (0.018%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.018%) Lectora
13 2 (0.018%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.018%) PlantUML
13 2 (0.018%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 139 (1.22%) SAP S/4HANA
2 68 (0.60%) Remedy ITSM
3 46 (0.40%) Oracle ERP
4 39 (0.34%) Teamcenter
5 33 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
6 30 (0.26%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 28 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
8 23 (0.20%) SAP PSCD
9 20 (0.18%) Primavera
10 19 (0.17%) SAP GRC
11 15 (0.13%) Findur
11 15 (0.13%) Temenos T24
12 12 (0.11%) iTrent
12 12 (0.11%) Siebel CRM
13 11 (0.096%) Oracle Payables
13 11 (0.096%) Oracle Payroll
13 11 (0.096%) SAP ERP
13 11 (0.096%) SAP HR
14 10 (0.088%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 10 (0.088%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 2,032 (17.81%) AWS
2 2,010 (17.61%) Azure
3 500 (4.38%) GitHub
4 469 (4.11%) Azure DevOps
5 446 (3.91%) Power Platform
6 419 (3.67%) GCP
7 316 (2.77%) GitHub Actions
8 295 (2.58%) Microsoft 365
9 284 (2.49%) Entra ID
10 280 (2.45%) Serverless
11 246 (2.16%) Amazon S3
12 199 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
13 166 (1.45%) Amazon EC2
14 158 (1.38%) OCI
15 155 (1.36%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 152 (1.33%) SaaS
17 151 (1.32%) Amazon EKS
18 149 (1.31%) PaaS
19 146 (1.28%) OpenShift
20 134 (1.17%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 470 (4.12%) Firewall
2 363 (3.18%) DNS
3 244 (2.14%) Network Security
4 232 (2.03%) WAN
5 199 (1.74%) LAN
5 199 (1.74%) VPN
6 179 (1.57%) DHCP
7 149 (1.31%) BGP
8 127 (1.11%) TCP/IP
9 122 (1.07%) OSPF
10 111 (0.97%) VLAN
11 110 (0.96%) Wi-Fi
12 87 (0.76%) Wireless
13 74 (0.65%) MPLS
14 66 (0.58%) SD-WAN
15 64 (0.56%) SAN
16 58 (0.51%) VXLAN
17 57 (0.50%) IPsec
18 50 (0.44%) BIG-IP
19 49 (0.43%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 346 (3.03%) Power BI
2 310 (2.72%) PostgreSQL
3 276 (2.42%) SQL Server
4 271 (2.37%) Data Warehouse
5 171 (1.50%) Oracle Database
6 149 (1.31%) Metadata
7 134 (1.17%) Relational Database
8 129 (1.13%) Data Lake
9 110 (0.96%) MongoDB
10 108 (0.95%) Amazon RDS
11 98 (0.86%) MySQL
12 93 (0.81%) Oracle Reports
13 87 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
14 83 (0.73%) Pentaho
15 73 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
16 71 (0.62%) NoSQL
17 70 (0.61%) Amazon Athena
18 68 (0.60%) Big Data
19 63 (0.55%) Tableau
20 51 (0.45%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 647 (5.67%) JIRA
2 538 (4.71%) Git
3 466 (4.08%) GitLab
4 459 (4.02%) Jenkins
5 126 (1.10%) Selenium
6 85 (0.74%) Postman
6 85 (0.74%) SonarQube
7 84 (0.74%) JUnit
8 65 (0.57%) JMeter
9 58 (0.51%) Maven
9 58 (0.51%) Rational DOORS
10 54 (0.47%) Cucumber
11 47 (0.41%) Cypress.io
12 45 (0.39%) Artifactory
12 45 (0.39%) REST Assured
13 44 (0.39%) Mockito
13 44 (0.39%) Visual Studio
14 42 (0.37%) Bitbucket
15 41 (0.36%) Zephyr
16 39 (0.34%) Gatling
General
1 2,492 (21.84%) Public Sector
2 2,313 (20.27%) Social Skills
3 835 (7.32%) Analytical Skills
4 738 (6.47%) Finance
5 354 (3.10%) Military
6 297 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
7 296 (2.59%) Aerospace
8 178 (1.56%) Legal
9 164 (1.44%) Influencing Skills
10 139 (1.22%) Telecoms
11 136 (1.19%) Banking
12 123 (1.08%) Organisational Skills
13 104 (0.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 99 (0.87%) Manufacturing
15 96 (0.84%) Law
16 90 (0.79%) Police
17 71 (0.62%) Presentation Skills
18 52 (0.46%) Aviation
19 43 (0.38%) Marketing
20 39 (0.34%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,748 (15.32%) Architect
2 1,245 (10.91%) Developer
3 1,027 (9.00%) Senior
4 932 (8.17%) Lead
5 733 (6.42%) Analyst
6 585 (5.13%) Consultant
7 519 (4.55%) Data Engineer
8 509 (4.46%) DevOps Engineer
9 379 (3.32%) Technical Architect
10 378 (3.31%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 341 (2.99%) Software Engineer
12 338 (2.96%) Solutions Architect
13 263 (2.30%) Security Architect
14 260 (2.28%) Network Engineer
15 229 (2.01%) Java Developer
16 223 (1.95%) Business Analyst
17 220 (1.93%) Designer
18 208 (1.82%) AWS Engineer
19 207 (1.81%) Administrator
19 207 (1.81%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 386 (3.38%) REST
2 280 (2.45%) Spring
3 239 (2.09%) Spring Boot
4 221 (1.94%) .NET
5 218 (1.91%) Kafka
6 204 (1.79%) React
7 199 (1.74%) RESTful
8 193 (1.69%) Node.js
9 159 (1.39%) SOAP
10 144 (1.26%) JSON
11 132 (1.16%) AngularJS
12 122 (1.07%) OAuth
13 116 (1.02%) Web Services
14 113 (0.99%) HTML
15 107 (0.94%) Middleware
16 105 (0.92%) PySpark
17 103 (0.90%) LDAP
18 97 (0.85%) XML
19 95 (0.83%) Playwright
20 90 (0.79%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 463 (4.06%) Cloud Native
2 374 (3.28%) Onboarding
3 361 (3.16%) Product Ownership
4 318 (2.79%) Data Centre
5 217 (1.90%) Management Information System
6 192 (1.68%) Legacy Systems
7 161 (1.41%) Distributed Systems
8 158 (1.38%) PKI
9 126 (1.10%) Replication
10 120 (1.05%) CMDB
11 116 (1.02%) Self-Motivation
12 113 (0.99%) Enterprise Software
13 102 (0.89%) Data Structures
14 97 (0.85%) Hybrid Cloud
15 96 (0.84%) Security Posture
16 93 (0.81%) Clustering
17 92 (0.81%) Public Cloud
18 88 (0.77%) Virtual Team
19 87 (0.76%) Security Operations Centre
20 77 (0.67%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 902 (7.90%) Windows
2 778 (6.82%) Linux
3 288 (2.52%) Windows Server
4 217 (1.90%) Unix
5 151 (1.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 97 (0.85%) Android
7 91 (0.80%) Windows 10
8 68 (0.60%) Apple iOS
9 59 (0.52%) Solaris
10 47 (0.41%) Mac OS
11 38 (0.33%) Ubuntu
12 35 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
13 33 (0.29%) AIX
14 28 (0.25%) CentOS
15 22 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
16 19 (0.17%) VMS
17 15 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
18 14 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
19 12 (0.11%) Windows 7
20 10 (0.088%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,319 (20.32%) Agile
2 1,790 (15.69%) DevOps
3 1,658 (14.53%) CI/CD
4 1,216 (10.66%) Problem-Solving
5 1,188 (10.41%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,180 (10.34%) Continuous Improvement
7 977 (8.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 877 (7.68%) Infrastructure as Code
9 864 (7.57%) Migration
10 741 (6.49%) Cybersecurity
11 721 (6.32%) ITIL
12 710 (6.22%) Test Automation
13 702 (6.15%) Containerisation
14 684 (5.99%) Analytics
15 670 (5.87%) Software Engineering
16 649 (5.69%) Roadmaps
17 624 (5.47%) Decision-Making
18 602 (5.28%) Data Modelling
19 569 (4.99%) Technical Leadership
20 564 (4.94%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,277 (11.19%) Python
2 1,099 (9.63%) SQL
3 811 (7.11%) Java
4 517 (4.53%) PowerShell
5 355 (3.11%) JavaScript
6 272 (2.38%) Bash
7 246 (2.16%) C#
8 189 (1.66%) TypeScript
9 172 (1.51%) PL/SQL
10 93 (0.81%) Shell Script
11 91 (0.80%) C++
12 82 (0.72%) Bicep
13 67 (0.59%) C
14 61 (0.53%) Apex Code
15 60 (0.53%) Ruby
16 55 (0.48%) Go
17 53 (0.46%) Kotlin
18 48 (0.42%) Scala
19 44 (0.39%) Ada
20 43 (0.38%) R
Qualifications
1 8,689 (76.14%) SC Cleared
2 2,146 (18.80%) DV Cleared
3 431 (3.78%) Degree
4 389 (3.41%) BPSS Clearance
5 215 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
6 182 (1.59%) CISSP
7 158 (1.38%) Azure Certification
8 135 (1.18%) AWS Certification
9 131 (1.15%) Microsoft Certification
10 108 (0.95%) CISM
11 104 (0.91%) CCNP
12 96 (0.84%) PMP
13 95 (0.83%) PMI Certification
14 94 (0.82%) CCNA
15 79 (0.69%) ISTQB
16 70 (0.61%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 65 (0.57%) Computer Science Degree
18 54 (0.47%) ITIL Certification
19 46 (0.40%) TOGAF Certification
20 42 (0.37%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 449 (3.93%) QA
2 349 (3.06%) Data Quality
3 309 (2.71%) NIST
4 307 (2.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 251 (2.20%) NCSC
6 248 (2.17%) Accessibility
7 189 (1.66%) PMO
8 182 (1.59%) GDPR
9 123 (1.08%) SLA
10 118 (1.03%) GRC
11 64 (0.56%) WCAG
12 62 (0.54%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.43%) NIST 800
14 44 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials
15 35 (0.31%) Def Stans
16 27 (0.24%) RMADS
17 25 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
18 24 (0.21%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 23 (0.20%) COBIT
19 23 (0.20%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 780 (6.83%) Docker
2 485 (4.25%) Active Directory
3 365 (3.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 131 (1.15%) VMware ESXi
4 131 (1.15%) VMware NSX
5 100 (0.88%) vSphere
6 98 (0.86%) Hyper-V
7 85 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
8 50 (0.44%) Oracle RAC
9 35 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
10 32 (0.28%) Firmware
11 25 (0.22%) NFS
12 21 (0.18%) Squid
13 20 (0.18%) BitLocker
13 20 (0.18%) vCloud
14 19 (0.17%) Postfix
15 8 (0.070%) KVM
15 8 (0.070%) Microsoft App-V
15 8 (0.070%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 7 (0.061%) UAG
Systems Management
1 956 (8.38%) Terraform
2 939 (8.23%) Kubernetes
3 405 (3.55%) Ansible
4 281 (2.46%) Grafana
5 227 (1.99%) Prometheus
6 125 (1.10%) vCenter Server
7 90 (0.79%) SCCM
8 83 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
9 68 (0.60%) Microsoft Intune
10 63 (0.55%) Argo
11 55 (0.48%) SCOM
12 53 (0.46%) Oracle RMAN
13 49 (0.43%) FortiGate
14 46 (0.40%) Puppet
15 45 (0.39%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 35 (0.31%) Data Guard
17 30 (0.26%) Progress Chef
18 29 (0.25%) Nagios
19 27 (0.24%) Podman
20 26 (0.23%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,256 (11.01%) Microsoft
2 858 (7.52%) Oracle
3 543 (4.76%) VMware
4 531 (4.65%) ServiceNow
5 390 (3.42%) SAP
6 319 (2.80%) Cisco
7 229 (2.01%) Splunk
8 200 (1.75%) Google
9 190 (1.66%) Databricks
10 187 (1.64%) Salesforce
11 157 (1.38%) Red Hat
12 137 (1.20%) Talend
13 127 (1.11%) Informatica
14 124 (1.09%) IBM
15 111 (0.97%) Palo Alto
16 101 (0.89%) Juniper
17 95 (0.83%) F5
18 94 (0.82%) SolarWinds
19 92 (0.81%) Fortinet
20 88 (0.77%) Citrix