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

6 months to
21 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,352 5,348 7,968
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.83% 17.40% 17.84%
As % of the Qualifications category 67.30% 58.58% 59.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,313 3,438 5,044
10th Percentile £359 £325 £363
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.42% -2.18% -2.65%
75th Percentile £625 £637 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £736
UK excluding London median daily rate £520 £540 £563
% change year-on-year -3.70% -4.00% +2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 776 266 532
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.12 £19.99
25th Percentile £20.21 £24.66 £40.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £55.51 £58.15
Median % change year-on-year -54.69% -4.55% -3.08%
75th Percentile £65.06 £67.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £80.72 £75.00 £83.39
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £58.00
% change year-on-year -58.08% +3.45% +0.87%

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 13,895 9,129 13,502
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.93% 29.70% 30.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,164 5,602 8,321
10th Percentile £325 £294 £290
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.42% -2.18%
75th Percentile £615 £630 £650
90th Percentile £719 £715 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £508 £530
% change year-on-year -1.48% -4.25% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,020 429 972
10th Percentile £16.01 £20.00 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.25 £24.18 £21.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -37.13% -11.11% -4.26%
75th Percentile £64.00 £67.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £82.25 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £45.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year -44.11% -2.56% +2.62%

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 21 February 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 21 February 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 21 February 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 8,122 £525 -4.20% 1,844
UK excluding London 0 5,202 £520 -3.70% 1,569
London +5 2,817 £525 - 478
Work from Home +4 2,572 £528 -0.47% 876
South East +1 1,728 £522 -5.09% 610
South West 0 1,303 £550 -0.72% 350
North of England -2 831 £498 +3.65% 208
Midlands +4 821 £500 -9.09% 191
West Midlands +2 646 £500 -9.26% 138
North West 0 536 £500 +5.26% 117
East of England +1 343 £500 - 172
Yorkshire -8 174 £500 -4.76% 46
East Midlands +2 173 £425 -17.07% 52
Scotland +7 168 £488 -2.50% 46
North East 0 148 £450 -10.00% 46
Wales -1 82 £520 -0.93% 33
Northern Ireland +11 30 £500 +271.43% 5
Channel Islands - 1 - - 2

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
1 322 (3.44%) Confluence
2 200 (2.14%) SharePoint
3 139 (1.49%) Microsoft Exchange
4 131 (1.40%) SAS
5 82 (0.88%) Apache Spark
6 76 (0.81%) Apache
7 52 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
8 45 (0.48%) nginx
9 41 (0.44%) WebLogic
10 32 (0.34%) Skype for Business
11 21 (0.22%) Jupyter
12 19 (0.20%) CMS
13 18 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
14 11 (0.12%) Tuxedo
15 10 (0.11%) Tomcat
16 9 (0.096%) ArcGIS
16 9 (0.096%) IIS
17 8 (0.086%) OpenStack
18 7 (0.075%) Oracle Workflow
19 5 (0.053%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 254 (2.72%) Microsoft Office
2 187 (2.00%) Microsoft Excel
3 119 (1.27%) Microsoft Project
4 70 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 42 (0.45%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.15%) Simulink
8 6 (0.064%) Sketch
9 5 (0.053%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.053%) Siemens NX
9 5 (0.053%) Windchill
10 4 (0.043%) Chatbot
10 4 (0.043%) Oracle Smart View
11 3 (0.032%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.032%) Mozilla Thunderbird
12 2 (0.021%) Adobe Illustrator
12 2 (0.021%) CATIA
12 2 (0.021%) InVision
12 2 (0.021%) Photoshop
12 2 (0.021%) Stateflow
Business Applications
1 158 (1.69%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.44%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 30 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
4 26 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
5 25 (0.27%) SAP MM
6 22 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
6 22 (0.24%) Teamcenter
7 18 (0.19%) SAP PP
8 17 (0.18%) SAP WM
9 16 (0.17%) SAP EWM
10 15 (0.16%) Maximo
11 14 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
11 14 (0.15%) SAP VC
12 13 (0.14%) SAP QM
13 12 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
14 11 (0.12%) Oracle General Ledger
14 11 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
14 11 (0.12%) SAP HCM
15 10 (0.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
16 9 (0.096%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,607 (17.18%) AWS
2 1,530 (16.36%) Azure
3 410 (4.38%) GitHub
4 393 (4.20%) GCP
5 342 (3.66%) Power Platform
6 333 (3.56%) Azure DevOps
7 305 (3.26%) Microsoft 365
8 267 (2.86%) Serverless
9 223 (2.38%) Entra ID
10 218 (2.33%) GitHub Actions
11 209 (2.23%) Amazon S3
12 181 (1.94%) OpenShift
13 175 (1.87%) AWS Lambda
14 142 (1.52%) AWS CloudFormation
15 133 (1.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 133 (1.42%) Amazon EKS
16 131 (1.40%) Amazon EC2
17 108 (1.15%) IaaS
18 107 (1.14%) OCI
19 104 (1.11%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 441 (4.72%) Firewall
2 283 (3.03%) DNS
3 218 (2.33%) Network Security
4 188 (2.01%) WAN
5 176 (1.88%) VPN
6 148 (1.58%) LAN
7 139 (1.49%) TCP/IP
8 134 (1.43%) BGP
9 125 (1.34%) DHCP
10 91 (0.97%) OSPF
11 90 (0.96%) Wireless
12 85 (0.91%) VLAN
13 73 (0.78%) MPLS
14 68 (0.73%) Wi-Fi
15 62 (0.66%) SSL
16 57 (0.61%) IPsec
17 55 (0.59%) SAN
18 49 (0.52%) Cisco ISE
19 41 (0.44%) Kerberos
20 40 (0.43%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 250 (2.67%) PostgreSQL
2 247 (2.64%) Power BI
3 159 (1.70%) Data Warehouse
4 125 (1.34%) SQL Server
5 119 (1.27%) Metadata
6 106 (1.13%) Oracle Database
7 103 (1.10%) Amazon RDS
8 98 (1.05%) MongoDB
9 97 (1.04%) NoSQL
10 88 (0.94%) Relational Database
11 76 (0.81%) Data Lake
12 75 (0.80%) Elasticsearch
13 72 (0.77%) Azure SQL Database
14 67 (0.72%) Big Data
15 56 (0.60%) MySQL
16 54 (0.58%) Pentaho
17 52 (0.56%) Tableau
18 45 (0.48%) Amazon Athena
19 42 (0.45%) Delta Lake
19 42 (0.45%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 536 (5.73%) JIRA
2 443 (4.74%) Git
3 388 (4.15%) Jenkins
4 353 (3.77%) GitLab
5 113 (1.21%) Selenium
6 82 (0.88%) Postman
7 80 (0.86%) JUnit
8 63 (0.67%) Cypress.io
9 54 (0.58%) SonarQube
10 48 (0.51%) Artifactory
11 45 (0.48%) Oracle APEX
12 44 (0.47%) Cucumber
13 42 (0.45%) Maven
14 40 (0.43%) Bitbucket
15 38 (0.41%) Mockito
16 35 (0.37%) REST Assured
17 33 (0.35%) JMeter
18 29 (0.31%) Rational DOORS
19 24 (0.26%) Metasploit
19 24 (0.26%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,384 (25.49%) Public Sector
2 2,260 (24.17%) Social Skills
3 777 (8.31%) Analytical Skills
4 623 (6.66%) Finance
5 332 (3.55%) Military
6 256 (2.74%) Documentation Skills
7 193 (2.06%) Aerospace
8 191 (2.04%) Telecoms
9 185 (1.98%) Manufacturing
10 141 (1.51%) Legal
11 130 (1.39%) Organisational Skills
12 121 (1.29%) Electronics
12 121 (1.29%) Marketing
13 117 (1.25%) Influencing Skills
14 105 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
15 93 (0.99%) Banking
16 69 (0.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 67 (0.72%) Law
18 43 (0.46%) Police
19 38 (0.41%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,290 (13.79%) Architect
2 908 (9.71%) Developer
3 812 (8.68%) Senior
4 709 (7.58%) Analyst
5 632 (6.76%) Consultant
6 556 (5.95%) Lead
7 440 (4.70%) DevOps Engineer
8 336 (3.59%) Data Engineer
9 247 (2.64%) Solutions Architect
10 245 (2.62%) Business Analyst
11 244 (2.61%) Network Engineer
12 236 (2.52%) Support Engineer
13 230 (2.46%) Software Engineer
14 224 (2.40%) Technical Architect
15 190 (2.03%) Tester
16 183 (1.96%) AWS Engineer
17 169 (1.81%) Azure Engineer
18 165 (1.76%) Designer
19 160 (1.71%) Security Architect
20 155 (1.66%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 351 (3.75%) REST
2 217 (2.32%) Node.js
3 208 (2.22%) Kafka
4 204 (2.18%) Spring
5 196 (2.10%) React
6 171 (1.83%) JSON
7 161 (1.72%) SOAP
8 156 (1.67%) Spring Boot
9 150 (1.60%) LDAP
10 119 (1.27%) .NET
11 111 (1.19%) PySpark
12 109 (1.17%) HTML
13 107 (1.14%) RESTful
13 107 (1.14%) XML
14 106 (1.13%) OAuth
15 102 (1.09%) AngularJS
16 101 (1.08%) Oracle Fusion
17 100 (1.07%) Web Services
18 94 (1.01%) CSS
19 79 (0.84%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 290 (3.10%) Data Centre
2 263 (2.81%) Cloud Native
2 263 (2.81%) Product Ownership
3 238 (2.54%) Onboarding
4 202 (2.16%) PKI
5 175 (1.87%) Management Information System
6 140 (1.50%) Security Posture
7 116 (1.24%) Legacy Systems
8 113 (1.21%) Enterprise Software
8 113 (1.21%) Self-Motivation
9 95 (1.02%) Replication
10 78 (0.83%) Public Cloud
10 78 (0.83%) Security Operations Centre
11 76 (0.81%) Driving Licence
12 75 (0.80%) Hybrid Cloud
13 69 (0.74%) Cyber Threat
14 63 (0.67%) Distributed Systems
15 50 (0.53%) Algorithms
16 49 (0.52%) Analytical Mindset
17 48 (0.51%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 858 (9.17%) Windows
2 699 (7.47%) Linux
3 218 (2.33%) Windows Server
4 157 (1.68%) Windows 10
5 126 (1.35%) Unix
6 125 (1.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 116 (1.24%) Android
8 66 (0.71%) Mac OS
9 46 (0.49%) Apple iOS
10 43 (0.46%) Ubuntu
11 39 (0.42%) VMS
12 29 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
13 23 (0.25%) CentOS
13 23 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
14 22 (0.24%) Solaris
15 21 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 14 (0.15%) Mac OS X
16 14 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
17 11 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
18 9 (0.096%) Amazon Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,734 (18.54%) Agile
2 1,402 (14.99%) DevOps
3 1,239 (13.25%) CI/CD
4 1,156 (12.36%) Problem-Solving
5 847 (9.06%) Stakeholder Management
6 803 (8.59%) Migration
7 722 (7.72%) Continuous Improvement
8 647 (6.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 620 (6.63%) Cybersecurity
10 603 (6.45%) Infrastructure as Code
11 551 (5.89%) ITIL
12 533 (5.70%) Test Automation
13 507 (5.42%) Containerisation
14 506 (5.41%) Analytics
15 502 (5.37%) Roadmaps
16 444 (4.75%) Business Intelligence
17 422 (4.51%) Software Engineering
18 419 (4.48%) Scrum
19 417 (4.46%) Service Management
20 402 (4.30%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,140 (12.19%) Python
2 755 (8.07%) SQL
3 598 (6.39%) PowerShell
4 527 (5.64%) Java
5 421 (4.50%) JavaScript
6 232 (2.48%) Bash
7 207 (2.21%) TypeScript
8 163 (1.74%) C#
9 102 (1.09%) Shell Script
10 99 (1.06%) PL/SQL
11 97 (1.04%) C++
12 84 (0.90%) Go
13 64 (0.68%) C
14 57 (0.61%) Ruby
15 49 (0.52%) Ada
15 49 (0.52%) Scala
16 42 (0.45%) Bicep
17 41 (0.44%) ABAP
18 38 (0.41%) MATLAB
19 37 (0.40%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 7,187 (76.85%) SC Cleared
2 1,556 (16.64%) DV Cleared
3 453 (4.84%) Degree
4 317 (3.39%) BPSS Clearance
5 172 (1.84%) CISSP
6 166 (1.78%) Cisco Certification
7 130 (1.39%) Azure Certification
8 128 (1.37%) AWS Certification
9 119 (1.27%) CCNP
10 115 (1.23%) Microsoft Certification
11 110 (1.18%) CISM
12 85 (0.91%) Computer Science Degree
13 71 (0.76%) CCNA
14 65 (0.70%) ITIL Certification
15 63 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
15 63 (0.67%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 52 (0.56%) GIAC
17 51 (0.55%) CEH
18 50 (0.53%) ISTQB
19 49 (0.52%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 296 (3.17%) QA
2 289 (3.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 272 (2.91%) NIST
4 253 (2.71%) Data Quality
5 208 (2.22%) NCSC
6 192 (2.05%) Accessibility
7 175 (1.87%) GDPR
8 128 (1.37%) SLA
9 94 (1.01%) PMO
10 62 (0.66%) GRC
11 59 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 51 (0.55%) WCAG
13 43 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials
14 40 (0.43%) Def Stans
15 36 (0.38%) NIST 800
16 34 (0.36%) PCI DSS
17 33 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 32 (0.34%) COBIT
19 25 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
20 23 (0.25%) RMADS
System Software
1 648 (6.93%) Docker
2 491 (5.25%) Active Directory
3 250 (2.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 87 (0.93%) VMware NSX
5 71 (0.76%) vSphere
6 63 (0.67%) Hyper-V
6 63 (0.67%) VMware ESXi
7 61 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
8 27 (0.29%) Firmware
9 26 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
10 24 (0.26%) Virtual Desktop
11 18 (0.19%) BitLocker
12 16 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 15 (0.16%) NFS
14 11 (0.12%) Postfix
14 11 (0.12%) Squid
15 7 (0.075%) vCloud
15 7 (0.075%) Virtual Servers
16 6 (0.064%) KVM
16 6 (0.064%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 827 (8.84%) Kubernetes
2 796 (8.51%) Terraform
3 299 (3.20%) Ansible
4 226 (2.42%) Grafana
5 190 (2.03%) Prometheus
6 133 (1.42%) Single Sign-On
7 102 (1.09%) SCCM
8 93 (0.99%) vCenter Server
9 91 (0.97%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 72 (0.77%) Argo
11 68 (0.73%) Microsoft Intune
12 45 (0.48%) vRealize
13 41 (0.44%) FortiGate
14 40 (0.43%) Podman
15 38 (0.41%) Packer
16 35 (0.37%) Kibana
17 30 (0.32%) OPNET
18 29 (0.31%) Puppet
19 27 (0.29%) Progress Chef
20 26 (0.28%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,032 (11.04%) Microsoft
2 511 (5.46%) Oracle
3 462 (4.94%) SAP
4 461 (4.93%) VMware
5 443 (4.74%) Cisco
6 386 (4.13%) ServiceNow
7 238 (2.54%) Splunk
8 185 (1.98%) Red Hat
9 148 (1.58%) Databricks
10 145 (1.55%) Google
11 144 (1.54%) CyberArk
12 140 (1.50%) Palo Alto
13 133 (1.42%) Salesforce
14 132 (1.41%) Juniper
15 112 (1.20%) Atlassian
16 99 (1.06%) Dell
17 82 (0.88%) IBM
18 80 (0.86%) HP
19 79 (0.84%) Dynatrace
20 78 (0.83%) SolarWinds