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

6 months to
10 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,796 5,236 7,965
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.82% 17.83% 18.25%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.40% 57.46% 61.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,424 3,427 5,230
10th Percentile £381 £338 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £623 £650
90th Percentile £714 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 852 339 568
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.48 £14.00
25th Percentile £24.13 £21.79 £21.46
Median hourly rate £57.35 £27.76 £56.15
Median % change year-on-year +106.59% -50.56% -6.43%
75th Percentile £74.32 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.50 £84.62
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.35 £30.46 £57.47
% change year-on-year +88.31% -47.01% -0.05%

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 15,557 9,112 13,045
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.44% 31.02% 29.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,328 5,673 8,090
10th Percentile £350 £275 £310
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £618 £638
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £500 £530
% change year-on-year +1.00% -5.66% +0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,144 565 1,118
10th Percentile £17.01 £17.69 £13.87
25th Percentile £22.18 £21.25 £18.32
Median hourly rate £48.61 £30.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.38% -23.75% -27.27%
75th Percentile £71.50 £64.52 £62.64
90th Percentile £85.18 £77.38 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £30.00 £41.27
% change year-on-year +58.33% -27.30% -21.40%

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 10 June 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 10 June 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 10 June 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 9,333 £525 -2.23% 1,642
UK excluding London +1 6,001 £525 -0.94% 1,360
London +7 3,354 £525 - 401
Work from Home +5 2,947 £525 - 810
South East +1 2,244 £550 - 466
South West 0 1,260 £538 -4.44% 351
North of England +1 967 £500 - 242
Midlands +1 882 £469 -10.67% 114
West Midlands +2 762 £469 -10.67% 82
North West 0 538 £520 +4.00% 145
East of England +2 367 £550 +10.00% 119
Scotland +25 258 £500 +7.18% 53
Yorkshire -3 244 £494 +0.36% 49
North East +1 217 £478 -0.52% 48
East Midlands -5 113 £418 -17.53% 32
Wales +5 85 £490 +3.16% 23
Northern Ireland +5 26 £638 +34.21% 24

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
1 394 (3.65%) Confluence
2 229 (2.12%) SharePoint
3 156 (1.44%) SAS
4 130 (1.20%) Microsoft Exchange
5 103 (0.95%) Apache Spark
6 95 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
7 86 (0.80%) Apache
8 42 (0.39%) nginx
9 40 (0.37%) Jupyter
10 33 (0.31%) WebLogic
11 24 (0.22%) Tomcat
12 21 (0.19%) IIS
13 18 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
14 16 (0.15%) CMS
14 16 (0.15%) NetWeaver
15 15 (0.14%) Skype for Business
16 14 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
17 12 (0.11%) Tuxedo
18 11 (0.10%) ArcGIS
19 8 (0.074%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 173 (1.60%) Microsoft Excel
2 145 (1.34%) Microsoft Office
3 78 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 72 (0.67%) Microsoft Project
5 47 (0.44%) MS Visio
6 16 (0.15%) Simulink
6 16 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
7 9 (0.083%) SOLIDWORKS
8 8 (0.074%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.074%) Chatbot
8 8 (0.074%) Revit
9 7 (0.065%) Notepad++
10 4 (0.037%) Sketch
10 4 (0.037%) Windchill
11 3 (0.028%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.019%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.019%) Lectora
12 2 (0.019%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.019%) PlantUML
12 2 (0.019%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 118 (1.09%) SAP S/4HANA
2 60 (0.56%) Remedy ITSM
3 41 (0.38%) Oracle ERP
4 34 (0.31%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 30 (0.28%) Teamcenter
6 28 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
7 24 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
8 15 (0.14%) Primavera
9 14 (0.13%) Findur
9 14 (0.13%) Maximo
9 14 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
10 13 (0.12%) SAP GRC
10 13 (0.12%) SAP PSCD
11 12 (0.11%) iTrent
11 12 (0.11%) Temenos T24
12 10 (0.093%) Oracle Assets
13 9 (0.083%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 9 (0.083%) Salesforce CRM
13 9 (0.083%) SAP ERP
13 9 (0.083%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,931 (17.89%) AWS
2 1,893 (17.53%) Azure
3 459 (4.25%) GitHub
4 431 (3.99%) GCP
5 411 (3.81%) Azure DevOps
6 402 (3.72%) Power Platform
7 274 (2.54%) Serverless
8 273 (2.53%) GitHub Actions
9 263 (2.44%) Microsoft 365
10 256 (2.37%) Entra ID
11 224 (2.07%) Amazon S3
12 193 (1.79%) AWS Lambda
13 162 (1.50%) PaaS
14 158 (1.46%) Amazon EC2
15 151 (1.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 142 (1.32%) SaaS
17 140 (1.30%) Amazon EKS
18 138 (1.28%) OCI
19 132 (1.22%) OpenShift
20 121 (1.12%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 465 (4.31%) Firewall
2 309 (2.86%) DNS
3 236 (2.19%) Network Security
4 226 (2.09%) WAN
5 199 (1.84%) LAN
6 175 (1.62%) VPN
7 160 (1.48%) DHCP
8 143 (1.32%) BGP
9 121 (1.12%) OSPF
10 112 (1.04%) VLAN
11 110 (1.02%) TCP/IP
11 110 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
12 83 (0.77%) Wireless
13 68 (0.63%) MPLS
14 59 (0.55%) SAN
14 59 (0.55%) VXLAN
15 57 (0.53%) SD-WAN
16 54 (0.50%) Structured Cabling
17 51 (0.47%) IPsec
18 48 (0.44%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 311 (2.88%) Power BI
2 276 (2.56%) PostgreSQL
3 245 (2.27%) Data Warehouse
4 221 (2.05%) SQL Server
5 148 (1.37%) Oracle Database
6 135 (1.25%) Metadata
7 121 (1.12%) Data Lake
8 116 (1.07%) Amazon RDS
9 106 (0.98%) Relational Database
10 101 (0.94%) MongoDB
11 84 (0.78%) MySQL
11 84 (0.78%) Pentaho
12 82 (0.76%) Oracle Reports
13 79 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
13 79 (0.73%) NoSQL
14 69 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
15 68 (0.63%) Amazon Athena
16 67 (0.62%) Tableau
17 66 (0.61%) Big Data
18 56 (0.52%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 613 (5.68%) JIRA
2 468 (4.33%) Git
3 436 (4.04%) GitLab
4 421 (3.90%) Jenkins
5 120 (1.11%) Selenium
6 91 (0.84%) Postman
7 83 (0.77%) JUnit
8 73 (0.68%) SonarQube
9 60 (0.56%) JMeter
10 58 (0.54%) Rational DOORS
11 55 (0.51%) Artifactory
12 52 (0.48%) Cucumber
13 45 (0.42%) Bitbucket
14 42 (0.39%) Cypress.io
15 41 (0.38%) Zephyr
16 40 (0.37%) Mockito
16 40 (0.37%) Visual Studio
17 38 (0.35%) Maven
17 38 (0.35%) REST Assured
18 32 (0.30%) Gatling
General
1 2,335 (21.63%) Public Sector
2 2,180 (20.19%) Social Skills
3 724 (6.71%) Analytical Skills
4 671 (6.22%) Finance
5 334 (3.09%) Military
6 300 (2.78%) Documentation Skills
7 279 (2.58%) Aerospace
8 174 (1.61%) Legal
9 127 (1.18%) Influencing Skills
10 124 (1.15%) Banking
11 116 (1.07%) Telecoms
12 99 (0.92%) Law
12 99 (0.92%) Organisational Skills
13 98 (0.91%) Manufacturing
14 95 (0.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 77 (0.71%) Presentation Skills
16 64 (0.59%) Police
17 49 (0.45%) Aviation
18 47 (0.44%) Marketing
19 40 (0.37%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,650 (15.28%) Architect
2 1,014 (9.39%) Developer
3 932 (8.63%) Senior
4 800 (7.41%) Lead
5 748 (6.93%) Analyst
6 534 (4.95%) Consultant
7 529 (4.90%) Data Engineer
8 510 (4.72%) DevOps Engineer
9 358 (3.32%) Technical Architect
10 319 (2.95%) Software Engineer
10 319 (2.95%) Solutions Architect
11 315 (2.92%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 280 (2.59%) Network Engineer
13 266 (2.46%) Business Analyst
14 236 (2.19%) Security Architect
15 221 (2.05%) Project Manager
16 217 (2.01%) Designer
17 213 (1.97%) Azure Engineer
18 200 (1.85%) Administrator
18 200 (1.85%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 332 (3.08%) REST
2 239 (2.21%) Spring
3 202 (1.87%) React
4 200 (1.85%) Spring Boot
5 198 (1.83%) Kafka
6 185 (1.71%) .NET
7 175 (1.62%) Node.js
8 152 (1.41%) RESTful
9 150 (1.39%) SOAP
10 148 (1.37%) LDAP
11 126 (1.17%) JSON
12 121 (1.12%) AngularJS
13 115 (1.07%) PySpark
13 115 (1.07%) Web Services
14 107 (0.99%) OAuth
15 97 (0.90%) Middleware
16 95 (0.88%) HTML
17 88 (0.82%) Playwright
18 85 (0.79%) OpenID
19 83 (0.77%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 405 (3.75%) Cloud Native
2 338 (3.13%) Product Ownership
3 324 (3.00%) Data Centre
4 308 (2.85%) Onboarding
5 217 (2.01%) Management Information System
6 160 (1.48%) Legacy Systems
7 148 (1.37%) PKI
8 135 (1.25%) Distributed Systems
9 132 (1.22%) Security Posture
10 131 (1.21%) Enterprise Software
11 119 (1.10%) Replication
12 102 (0.94%) Self-Motivation
13 90 (0.83%) Data Structures
14 88 (0.82%) Clustering
14 88 (0.82%) Public Cloud
14 88 (0.82%) Security Operations Centre
15 87 (0.81%) Hybrid Cloud
16 81 (0.75%) CMDB
17 75 (0.69%) Operational Technology
17 75 (0.69%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 839 (7.77%) Windows
2 730 (6.76%) Linux
3 265 (2.45%) Windows Server
4 200 (1.85%) Unix
5 131 (1.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 93 (0.86%) Android
7 81 (0.75%) Windows 10
8 68 (0.63%) Apple iOS
9 54 (0.50%) Solaris
10 37 (0.34%) Mac OS
10 37 (0.34%) Ubuntu
11 32 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
12 30 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
13 27 (0.25%) AIX
14 24 (0.22%) VMS
15 22 (0.20%) CentOS
16 16 (0.15%) Windows 7
17 15 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
18 11 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
18 11 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,073 (19.20%) Agile
2 1,665 (15.42%) DevOps
3 1,508 (13.97%) CI/CD
4 1,093 (10.12%) Problem-Solving
5 1,052 (9.74%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,002 (9.28%) Continuous Improvement
7 874 (8.10%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 863 (7.99%) Migration
9 790 (7.32%) Infrastructure as Code
10 678 (6.28%) Cybersecurity
11 653 (6.05%) Test Automation
12 634 (5.87%) Analytics
13 614 (5.69%) Containerisation
13 614 (5.69%) ITIL
14 599 (5.55%) Software Engineering
15 591 (5.47%) Roadmaps
16 556 (5.15%) Decision-Making
17 553 (5.12%) Data Modelling
18 493 (4.57%) AI
19 486 (4.50%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,215 (11.25%) Python
2 1,000 (9.26%) SQL
3 678 (6.28%) Java
4 538 (4.98%) PowerShell
5 322 (2.98%) JavaScript
6 228 (2.11%) C#
7 216 (2.00%) Bash
8 187 (1.73%) TypeScript
9 134 (1.24%) PL/SQL
10 95 (0.88%) Shell Script
11 93 (0.86%) C++
12 72 (0.67%) Bicep
13 61 (0.57%) Ruby
14 59 (0.55%) C
15 57 (0.53%) Go
15 57 (0.53%) Scala
16 54 (0.50%) Apex Code
17 45 (0.42%) Ada
18 44 (0.41%) Kotlin
19 41 (0.38%) R
Qualifications
1 8,289 (76.78%) SC Cleared
2 1,913 (17.72%) DV Cleared
3 435 (4.03%) Degree
4 314 (2.91%) BPSS Clearance
5 211 (1.95%) Cisco Certification
6 179 (1.66%) CISSP
7 138 (1.28%) Azure Certification
8 117 (1.08%) AWS Certification
8 117 (1.08%) CISM
9 114 (1.06%) CCNP
10 107 (0.99%) Microsoft Certification
11 90 (0.83%) CCNA
12 81 (0.75%) PMP
13 75 (0.69%) PMI Certification
14 73 (0.68%) ISTQB
15 72 (0.67%) Computer Science Degree
16 70 (0.65%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 60 (0.56%) ITIL Certification
18 46 (0.43%) CompTIA Security+
19 43 (0.40%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 400 (3.71%) QA
2 318 (2.95%) Data Quality
3 317 (2.94%) NIST
4 312 (2.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 222 (2.06%) NCSC
6 212 (1.96%) Accessibility
7 178 (1.65%) GDPR
8 167 (1.55%) PMO
9 122 (1.13%) SLA
10 86 (0.80%) GRC
11 68 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 51 (0.47%) Cyber Essentials
13 49 (0.45%) WCAG
14 44 (0.41%) NIST 800
15 36 (0.33%) RMADS
16 33 (0.31%) Def Stans
17 28 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 24 (0.22%) COBIT
18 24 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
19 23 (0.21%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 674 (6.24%) Docker
2 464 (4.30%) Active Directory
3 317 (2.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 115 (1.07%) VMware ESXi
5 107 (0.99%) VMware NSX
6 94 (0.87%) Hyper-V
7 83 (0.77%) vSphere
8 76 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
9 37 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
10 32 (0.30%) Firmware
11 24 (0.22%) NFS
12 22 (0.20%) BitLocker
13 20 (0.19%) vCloud
14 19 (0.18%) Postfix
14 19 (0.18%) Squid
15 17 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
16 15 (0.14%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 9 (0.083%) Microsoft App-V
18 8 (0.074%) KVM
19 6 (0.056%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 875 (8.10%) Terraform
2 842 (7.80%) Kubernetes
3 383 (3.55%) Ansible
4 275 (2.55%) Grafana
5 229 (2.12%) Prometheus
6 113 (1.05%) vCenter Server
7 104 (0.96%) Single Sign-On
8 76 (0.70%) SCCM
9 60 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 59 (0.55%) Microsoft Intune
11 52 (0.48%) FortiGate
12 51 (0.47%) Argo
13 43 (0.40%) Oracle RMAN
14 39 (0.36%) Puppet
15 38 (0.35%) SCOM
16 37 (0.34%) Podman
17 28 (0.26%) vRealize
18 27 (0.25%) Progress Chef
19 26 (0.24%) Nagios
20 25 (0.23%) Istio
Vendors
1 1,080 (10.00%) Microsoft
2 739 (6.85%) Oracle
3 517 (4.79%) VMware
4 426 (3.95%) ServiceNow
5 346 (3.20%) Cisco
6 344 (3.19%) SAP
7 240 (2.22%) Splunk
8 207 (1.92%) Databricks
9 173 (1.60%) Google
10 167 (1.55%) Red Hat
11 165 (1.53%) Salesforce
12 142 (1.32%) Talend
13 127 (1.18%) IBM
14 125 (1.16%) Palo Alto
15 109 (1.01%) Informatica
16 100 (0.93%) Juniper
17 97 (0.90%) CyberArk
18 93 (0.86%) Fortinet
19 91 (0.84%) Dynatrace
20 87 (0.81%) F5