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 2 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 3 3 4
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 7,473 6,267 7,897
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 20.77% 17.56% 17.37%
As % of the Qualifications category 62.39% 59.73% 58.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,930 3,939 4,950
10th Percentile £336 £350 £375
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -1.83%
75th Percentile £632 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 746 336 499
10th Percentile £18.87 £20.12 £20.00
25th Percentile £19.38 £24.18 £46.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -49.70% -16.67% -
75th Percentile £53.46 £67.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £74.93 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £52.50 £59.68
% change year-on-year -52.10% -12.03% -0.53%

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 11,978 10,493 13,392
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.29% 29.40% 29.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,758 6,347 8,439
10th Percentile £305 £309 £300
25th Percentile £413 £421 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £520 £538
% change year-on-year -3.85% -3.26% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,016 505 754
10th Percentile £17.50 £18.94 £17.72
25th Percentile £19.36 £24.18 £27.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £41.50 £53.50
Median % change year-on-year -39.40% -22.43% +18.89%
75th Percentile £45.88 £66.00 £67.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £45.00 £52.05
% change year-on-year -44.11% -13.55% +15.67%

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 2 December 2025.

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 2 December 2025.

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 2 December 2025. 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 6,550 £525 -4.55% 2,206
UK excluding London 0 4,342 £525 -4.55% 2,060
London +2 2,140 £550 - 451
Work from Home +2 2,092 £538 -0.46% 1,068
South East -1 1,280 £519 -5.59% 781
South West 0 1,132 £550 -4.35% 530
North of England -1 777 £506 +6.53% 299
Midlands +2 694 £519 -5.73% 168
West Midlands +2 541 £525 -6.38% 133
North West +1 512 £525 +5.85% 200
East of England +2 292 £525 +3.70% 297
Yorkshire -10 166 £500 +8.11% 63
Scotland -9 148 £463 -7.50% 63
East Midlands -2 138 £425 -10.53% 33
North East 0 112 £475 -2.61% 40
Wales -3 78 £550 +10.00% 42
Northern Ireland +1 42 £500 -16.67% 10
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
1 277 (3.71%) Confluence
2 184 (2.46%) SharePoint
3 119 (1.59%) Microsoft Exchange
4 103 (1.38%) SAS
5 86 (1.15%) Apache
6 54 (0.72%) Apache Airflow
7 48 (0.64%) Apache Spark
8 45 (0.60%) nginx
9 39 (0.52%) Skype for Business
10 28 (0.37%) CMS
11 25 (0.33%) WebLogic
12 20 (0.27%) IIS
13 15 (0.20%) SharePoint Server
14 14 (0.19%) Exchange Server 2010
15 13 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2013
16 11 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 10 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2003
17 10 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2007
17 10 (0.13%) Office Communications Server
18 9 (0.12%) WordPress
Applications
1 227 (3.04%) Microsoft Office
2 162 (2.17%) Microsoft Excel
3 95 (1.27%) Microsoft Project
4 49 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 34 (0.45%) MS Visio
6 20 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
7 19 (0.25%) Simulink
8 12 (0.16%) Siemens NX
9 11 (0.15%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 10 (0.13%) Sketch
11 8 (0.11%) ProjectWise
12 7 (0.094%) Adobe XD
13 6 (0.080%) Oracle Smart View
14 5 (0.067%) AutoCAD
14 5 (0.067%) FrameMaker
14 5 (0.067%) Photoshop
14 5 (0.067%) PTC Creo
14 5 (0.067%) Stateflow
14 5 (0.067%) Trello
14 5 (0.067%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 182 (2.44%) SAP S/4HANA
2 38 (0.51%) Remedy ITSM
3 31 (0.41%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 29 (0.39%) SAP EWM
4 29 (0.39%) SAP WM
5 24 (0.32%) SAP MM
6 22 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
6 22 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
7 17 (0.23%) Primavera
7 17 (0.23%) SAP HCM
8 16 (0.21%) Maximo
8 16 (0.21%) Teamcenter
9 15 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
10 14 (0.19%) SAP VC
11 13 (0.17%) SAP PP
11 13 (0.17%) SAP PS
12 12 (0.16%) SAP EHS
12 12 (0.16%) SAP QM
13 10 (0.13%) SAP HR
13 10 (0.13%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,245 (16.66%) AWS
2 1,178 (15.76%) Azure
3 359 (4.80%) GitHub
4 327 (4.38%) Microsoft 365
5 268 (3.59%) Azure DevOps
5 268 (3.59%) Power Platform
6 267 (3.57%) GCP
7 221 (2.96%) Serverless
8 191 (2.56%) GitHub Actions
9 184 (2.46%) Amazon S3
10 166 (2.22%) Entra ID
11 134 (1.79%) OpenShift
12 132 (1.77%) SaaS
13 131 (1.75%) AWS CloudFormation
14 128 (1.71%) AWS Lambda
15 123 (1.65%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 119 (1.59%) Amazon EC2
17 109 (1.46%) Amazon EKS
18 97 (1.30%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 90 (1.20%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 376 (5.03%) Firewall
2 257 (3.44%) DNS
3 175 (2.34%) VPN
4 153 (2.05%) Network Security
5 144 (1.93%) WAN
6 108 (1.45%) TCP/IP
7 101 (1.35%) LAN
8 97 (1.30%) Wireless
9 96 (1.28%) DHCP
10 93 (1.24%) BGP
11 82 (1.10%) SSL
12 67 (0.90%) SAN
13 64 (0.86%) Wi-Fi
14 61 (0.82%) MPLS
15 57 (0.76%) Cisco ISE
16 54 (0.72%) VLAN
17 52 (0.70%) IPsec
18 51 (0.68%) HTTP
19 44 (0.59%) OSPF
20 43 (0.58%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 219 (2.93%) PostgreSQL
2 175 (2.34%) Power BI
3 95 (1.27%) Amazon RDS
3 95 (1.27%) SQL Server
4 90 (1.20%) MongoDB
4 90 (1.20%) Oracle Database
5 83 (1.11%) Data Warehouse
6 80 (1.07%) NoSQL
6 80 (1.07%) Relational Database
7 78 (1.04%) Metadata
8 55 (0.74%) Azure SQL Database
9 51 (0.68%) Big Data
10 42 (0.56%) Elasticsearch
11 40 (0.54%) Pentaho
12 38 (0.51%) Amazon Athena
12 38 (0.51%) Amazon Redshift
13 37 (0.50%) SAS Enterprise Guide
14 36 (0.48%) Data Lake
14 36 (0.48%) Redis
15 35 (0.47%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 501 (6.70%) JIRA
2 404 (5.41%) Git
3 384 (5.14%) Jenkins
4 289 (3.87%) GitLab
5 85 (1.14%) Selenium
6 63 (0.84%) JUnit
7 57 (0.76%) Cypress.io
8 55 (0.74%) Postman
8 55 (0.74%) SonarQube
9 47 (0.63%) Bitbucket
10 46 (0.62%) Oracle APEX
11 38 (0.51%) Mockito
12 36 (0.48%) Artifactory
13 33 (0.44%) Cucumber
14 32 (0.43%) Maven
15 26 (0.35%) REST Assured
16 23 (0.31%) CircleCI
17 22 (0.29%) MSI
17 22 (0.29%) Vagrant
17 22 (0.29%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,023 (27.07%) Public Sector
2 1,886 (25.24%) Social Skills
3 672 (8.99%) Analytical Skills
4 523 (7.00%) Finance
5 278 (3.72%) Military
6 228 (3.05%) Telecoms
7 214 (2.86%) Manufacturing
8 181 (2.42%) Documentation Skills
9 156 (2.09%) Electronics
10 145 (1.94%) Marketing
11 136 (1.82%) Aerospace
12 108 (1.45%) Legal
12 108 (1.45%) Organisational Skills
13 93 (1.24%) Banking
14 91 (1.22%) Influencing Skills
15 82 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
16 69 (0.92%) Law
17 53 (0.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 40 (0.54%) Aviation
19 39 (0.52%) Police
Job Titles
1 994 (13.30%) Architect
2 764 (10.22%) Developer
3 658 (8.81%) Consultant
4 599 (8.02%) Senior
5 483 (6.46%) Analyst
6 459 (6.14%) Lead
7 338 (4.52%) DevOps Engineer
8 254 (3.40%) Support Engineer
9 208 (2.78%) Network Engineer
10 206 (2.76%) Solutions Architect
11 175 (2.34%) Data Engineer
12 170 (2.27%) SAP Consultant
13 149 (1.99%) AWS Engineer
14 147 (1.97%) Technical Architect
15 135 (1.81%) IT Engineer
15 135 (1.81%) Platform Engineer
16 132 (1.77%) Administrator
16 132 (1.77%) Software Engineer
17 128 (1.71%) Business Analyst
17 128 (1.71%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 281 (3.76%) REST
2 193 (2.58%) Node.js
3 179 (2.40%) React
4 174 (2.33%) Kafka
5 154 (2.06%) JSON
6 131 (1.75%) SOAP
7 130 (1.74%) Spring
8 121 (1.62%) HTML
9 112 (1.50%) RESTful
10 109 (1.46%) XML
11 104 (1.39%) Spring Boot
12 101 (1.35%) .NET
13 100 (1.34%) AngularJS
14 98 (1.31%) CSS
15 94 (1.26%) Web Services
16 77 (1.03%) OAuth
17 72 (0.96%) LDAP
18 66 (0.88%) Elastic Stack
19 63 (0.84%) Oracle Fusion
20 59 (0.79%) SAP Fiori
Miscellaneous
1 219 (2.93%) Data Centre
2 201 (2.69%) Onboarding
3 196 (2.62%) Cloud Native
4 180 (2.41%) PKI
5 163 (2.18%) Product Ownership
6 150 (2.01%) Management Information System
7 108 (1.45%) Self-Motivation
8 99 (1.32%) Legacy Systems
9 82 (1.10%) Driving Licence
10 78 (1.04%) Cyber Threat
11 70 (0.94%) Replication
11 70 (0.94%) Security Posture
12 67 (0.90%) Security Operations Centre
13 64 (0.86%) CMDB
14 63 (0.84%) Enterprise Software
14 63 (0.84%) Hybrid Cloud
15 56 (0.75%) Analytical Mindset
16 53 (0.71%) Private Cloud
17 48 (0.64%) Public Cloud
18 46 (0.62%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 805 (10.77%) Windows
2 553 (7.40%) Linux
3 190 (2.54%) Windows Server
4 178 (2.38%) Windows 10
5 110 (1.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 95 (1.27%) Android
7 92 (1.23%) Unix
8 85 (1.14%) Mac OS
9 52 (0.70%) VMS
10 37 (0.50%) Ubuntu
11 34 (0.45%) Windows Server 2019
12 29 (0.39%) Apple iOS
13 25 (0.33%) Amazon Linux
13 25 (0.33%) Windows Server 2012
13 25 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
14 24 (0.32%) Windows 7
15 21 (0.28%) CentOS
16 17 (0.23%) Windows Server 2003
17 16 (0.21%) Mac OS X
18 9 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,459 (19.52%) Agile
2 1,138 (15.23%) DevOps
3 1,036 (13.86%) CI/CD
4 895 (11.98%) Problem-Solving
5 769 (10.29%) Migration
6 589 (7.88%) Stakeholder Management
7 509 (6.81%) Cybersecurity
7 509 (6.81%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 487 (6.52%) Infrastructure as Code
9 486 (6.50%) ITIL
10 469 (6.28%) Continuous Improvement
11 418 (5.59%) Containerisation
12 415 (5.55%) Test Automation
13 413 (5.53%) Service Management
14 405 (5.42%) Workflow
15 401 (5.37%) Business Intelligence
16 374 (5.00%) Analytics
17 355 (4.75%) Roadmaps
18 349 (4.67%) Scrum
19 340 (4.55%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 925 (12.38%) Python
2 553 (7.40%) SQL
3 470 (6.29%) PowerShell
4 461 (6.17%) Java
5 389 (5.21%) JavaScript
6 229 (3.06%) Bash
7 192 (2.57%) TypeScript
8 134 (1.79%) C#
9 99 (1.32%) C++
10 85 (1.14%) Go
11 72 (0.96%) C
11 72 (0.96%) PL/SQL
12 70 (0.94%) Shell Script
13 48 (0.64%) ABAP
14 41 (0.55%) Perl
14 41 (0.55%) Ruby
15 34 (0.45%) Groovy
16 32 (0.43%) Bicep
17 31 (0.41%) MATLAB
18 28 (0.37%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 5,753 (76.98%) SC Cleared
2 1,208 (16.16%) DV Cleared
3 359 (4.80%) Degree
4 341 (4.56%) BPSS Clearance
5 140 (1.87%) CISSP
6 122 (1.63%) Microsoft Certification
7 112 (1.50%) AWS Certification
7 112 (1.50%) Cisco Certification
8 111 (1.49%) Azure Certification
9 82 (1.10%) CCNP
10 80 (1.07%) CISM
11 57 (0.76%) Computer Science Degree
12 56 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
13 50 (0.67%) CCNA
14 46 (0.62%) CEH
15 44 (0.59%) TOGAF Certification
16 42 (0.56%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 40 (0.54%) CTC Cleared
18 39 (0.52%) CHECK Team Member
19 34 (0.45%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 233 (3.12%) QA
2 217 (2.90%) NIST
3 214 (2.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 169 (2.26%) NCSC
5 137 (1.83%) Data Quality
5 137 (1.83%) GDPR
5 137 (1.83%) SLA
6 133 (1.78%) Accessibility
7 63 (0.84%) PMO
8 54 (0.72%) JSP 440
9 46 (0.62%) WCAG
10 44 (0.59%) NIST 800
11 38 (0.51%) GRC
12 32 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 29 (0.39%) COBIT
13 29 (0.39%) Def Stans
14 24 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
15 22 (0.29%) RMADS
16 21 (0.28%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 20 (0.27%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 590 (7.90%) Docker
2 422 (5.65%) Active Directory
3 217 (2.90%) VMware Infrastructure
4 75 (1.00%) VMware NSX
5 69 (0.92%) vSphere
6 60 (0.80%) VMware ESXi
7 51 (0.68%) Virtual Machines
8 44 (0.59%) Firmware
9 38 (0.51%) Hyper-V
10 30 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
11 20 (0.27%) DFS Replication
12 18 (0.24%) Postfix
13 15 (0.20%) Dovecot
13 15 (0.20%) NFS
14 11 (0.15%) ISA Server
14 11 (0.15%) Squid
14 11 (0.15%) Terminal Services
15 10 (0.13%) BitLocker
15 10 (0.13%) Brightmail
16 7 (0.094%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 711 (9.51%) Kubernetes
2 679 (9.09%) Terraform
3 280 (3.75%) Ansible
4 183 (2.45%) Grafana
5 156 (2.09%) Prometheus
6 112 (1.50%) SCCM
7 96 (1.28%) Single Sign-On
8 82 (1.10%) Microsoft Intune
9 69 (0.92%) vCenter Server
10 61 (0.82%) Argo
11 54 (0.72%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 46 (0.62%) Packer
13 37 (0.50%) Kibana
14 34 (0.45%) Jamf Pro
15 30 (0.40%) OPNET
15 30 (0.40%) vRealize
16 25 (0.33%) Nessus
16 25 (0.33%) SCOM
17 24 (0.32%) Progress Chef
17 24 (0.32%) Puppet
Vendors
1 933 (12.48%) Microsoft
2 531 (7.11%) SAP
3 435 (5.82%) Cisco
4 385 (5.15%) Oracle
5 379 (5.07%) VMware
6 355 (4.75%) ServiceNow
7 185 (2.48%) Splunk
8 149 (1.99%) Juniper
9 142 (1.90%) Red Hat
10 125 (1.67%) Google
11 115 (1.54%) Salesforce
12 102 (1.36%) Palo Alto
13 100 (1.34%) Dell
14 99 (1.32%) Atlassian
15 97 (1.30%) HP
16 84 (1.12%) CyberArk
17 79 (1.06%) Databricks
17 79 (1.06%) Remedy
18 78 (1.04%) IBM
19 73 (0.98%) Apple