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

6 months to
13 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,447 5,151 7,856
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.13% 17.77% 18.37%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.54% 57.38% 60.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,151 3,417 5,174
10th Percentile £375 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £721 £689 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £543 £550
% change year-on-year -3.38% -1.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 824 293 526
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £21.25 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £42.50 £57.09
Median % change year-on-year +29.41% -25.55% -4.86%
75th Percentile £73.46 £66.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.00 £84.42
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £52.50 £58.00
% change year-on-year +4.76% -9.48% +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 15,023 8,977 12,977
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.83% 30.98% 30.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,981 5,660 7,999
10th Percentile £350 £285 £305
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -1.50% -3.09%
75th Percentile £619 £623 £650
90th Percentile £719 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £530
% change year-on-year - -5.66% +0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,063 507 1,065
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.13 £13.75
25th Percentile £21.25 £21.27 £17.80
Median hourly rate £50.00 £37.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.33% -6.25% -25.93%
75th Percentile £70.42 £65.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.36 £79.22 £75.85
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £37.50 £40.94
% change year-on-year +26.67% -8.40% -18.12%

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 13 May 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 13 May 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 13 May 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 9,045 £525 -2.33% 1,878
UK excluding London +1 5,806 £525 -3.38% 1,528
London +6 3,210 £525 - 488
Work from Home +4 2,813 £525 - 879
South East +1 2,195 £538 -2.27% 484
South West 0 1,288 £538 -6.52% 326
Midlands +4 861 £475 -9.52% 168
North of England -2 853 £488 -2.50% 314
West Midlands +4 730 £475 -11.55% 124
North West -2 496 £498 -0.32% 173
East of England +2 371 £550 +10.00% 158
Scotland +39 220 £500 +6.95% 51
Yorkshire -13 205 £475 -5.00% 66
North East +1 186 £475 -3.06% 78
East Midlands -3 125 £450 -5.26% 44
Wales +4 84 £500 +5.26% 44
Northern Ireland +8 21 £600 +23.08% 20

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
1 399 (3.82%) Confluence
2 219 (2.10%) SharePoint
3 133 (1.27%) SAS
4 132 (1.26%) Microsoft Exchange
5 106 (1.01%) Apache Spark
6 83 (0.79%) Apache
7 73 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
8 38 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 34 (0.33%) nginx
10 29 (0.28%) Jupyter
11 21 (0.20%) Tomcat
12 15 (0.14%) IIS
12 15 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
12 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
13 14 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
14 13 (0.12%) CMS
14 13 (0.12%) Skype for Business
15 12 (0.11%) NetWeaver
16 10 (0.096%) ArcGIS
17 9 (0.086%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 202 (1.93%) Microsoft Office
2 191 (1.83%) Microsoft Excel
3 114 (1.09%) Microsoft Project
4 84 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.12%) Simulink
8 7 (0.067%) AutoCAD
8 7 (0.067%) Notepad++
9 6 (0.057%) SOLIDWORKS
10 5 (0.048%) Revit
10 5 (0.048%) Windchill
11 4 (0.038%) Siemens NX
11 4 (0.038%) Sketch
12 3 (0.029%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.019%) Chatbot
13 2 (0.019%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.019%) InVision
13 2 (0.019%) Lectora
13 2 (0.019%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 110 (1.05%) SAP S/4HANA
2 46 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
3 39 (0.37%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 29 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
5 28 (0.27%) Teamcenter
6 27 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
7 22 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
8 15 (0.14%) Maximo
9 14 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
9 14 (0.13%) SAP PSCD
10 13 (0.12%) Temenos T24
11 12 (0.11%) Findur
11 12 (0.11%) SAP GRC
12 11 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
13 10 (0.096%) iTrent
13 10 (0.096%) SAP PP
14 9 (0.086%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 9 (0.086%) SAP HCM
14 9 (0.086%) SAP HR
15 8 (0.077%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 1,835 (17.56%) AWS
2 1,798 (17.21%) Azure
3 436 (4.17%) GitHub
4 432 (4.14%) GCP
5 388 (3.71%) Azure DevOps
6 377 (3.61%) Power Platform
7 267 (2.56%) Serverless
8 262 (2.51%) Microsoft 365
9 253 (2.42%) Entra ID
10 248 (2.37%) GitHub Actions
11 210 (2.01%) Amazon S3
12 181 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
13 158 (1.51%) PaaS
14 145 (1.39%) Amazon EC2
15 140 (1.34%) Amazon EKS
16 137 (1.31%) AWS CloudFormation
17 136 (1.30%) OpenShift
18 135 (1.29%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 129 (1.23%) OCI
20 120 (1.15%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 479 (4.59%) Firewall
2 294 (2.81%) DNS
3 227 (2.17%) Network Security
4 222 (2.13%) WAN
5 202 (1.93%) LAN
6 168 (1.61%) VPN
7 145 (1.39%) BGP
8 144 (1.38%) DHCP
9 126 (1.21%) TCP/IP
10 125 (1.20%) OSPF
11 96 (0.92%) VLAN
11 96 (0.92%) Wi-Fi
12 77 (0.74%) Wireless
13 65 (0.62%) MPLS
14 55 (0.53%) SAN
14 55 (0.53%) VXLAN
15 53 (0.51%) SD-WAN
15 53 (0.51%) SSL
16 50 (0.48%) IPsec
17 48 (0.46%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 296 (2.83%) Power BI
2 251 (2.40%) PostgreSQL
3 235 (2.25%) Data Warehouse
4 199 (1.90%) SQL Server
5 135 (1.29%) Metadata
6 123 (1.18%) Oracle Database
7 109 (1.04%) Amazon RDS
8 105 (1.01%) Data Lake
9 101 (0.97%) MongoDB
10 98 (0.94%) Relational Database
11 96 (0.92%) NoSQL
12 82 (0.78%) Pentaho
13 78 (0.75%) Elasticsearch
14 74 (0.71%) Big Data
15 71 (0.68%) MySQL
16 70 (0.67%) Oracle Reports
17 67 (0.64%) Tableau
18 66 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
18 66 (0.63%) Azure SQL Database
19 60 (0.57%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 625 (5.98%) JIRA
2 465 (4.45%) Git
3 391 (3.74%) GitLab
3 391 (3.74%) Jenkins
4 100 (0.96%) Selenium
5 87 (0.83%) Postman
6 74 (0.71%) JUnit
7 67 (0.64%) SonarQube
8 55 (0.53%) Rational DOORS
9 53 (0.51%) Artifactory
10 50 (0.48%) JMeter
11 42 (0.40%) Bitbucket
12 41 (0.39%) Cucumber
13 39 (0.37%) Mockito
13 39 (0.37%) Visual Studio
14 38 (0.36%) Maven
15 36 (0.34%) Cypress.io
16 31 (0.30%) Zephyr
17 27 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
18 25 (0.24%) Gatling
General
1 2,298 (22.00%) Public Sector
2 2,180 (20.87%) Social Skills
3 763 (7.30%) Analytical Skills
4 690 (6.60%) Finance
5 353 (3.38%) Military
6 283 (2.71%) Documentation Skills
7 248 (2.37%) Aerospace
8 168 (1.61%) Legal
9 128 (1.23%) Telecoms
10 119 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
11 115 (1.10%) Manufacturing
12 113 (1.08%) Organisational Skills
13 109 (1.04%) Banking
14 86 (0.82%) Law
15 85 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
16 77 (0.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 69 (0.66%) Police
18 54 (0.52%) Marketing
19 49 (0.47%) Electronics
20 38 (0.36%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,586 (15.18%) Architect
2 972 (9.30%) Developer
3 890 (8.52%) Senior
4 737 (7.05%) Analyst
5 727 (6.96%) Lead
6 521 (4.99%) Consultant
7 513 (4.91%) Data Engineer
8 492 (4.71%) DevOps Engineer
9 316 (3.02%) Technical Architect
10 310 (2.97%) Software Engineer
11 294 (2.81%) Network Engineer
12 287 (2.75%) Solutions Architect
13 269 (2.57%) Business Analyst
14 266 (2.55%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 227 (2.17%) Project Manager
16 213 (2.04%) Azure Engineer
16 213 (2.04%) Designer
17 205 (1.96%) Security Architect
18 186 (1.78%) AWS Engineer
19 184 (1.76%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 320 (3.06%) REST
2 246 (2.35%) Spring
3 211 (2.02%) Kafka
4 199 (1.90%) Spring Boot
5 190 (1.82%) Node.js
6 187 (1.79%) React
7 175 (1.68%) .NET
8 154 (1.47%) LDAP
9 147 (1.41%) SOAP
10 145 (1.39%) RESTful
11 128 (1.23%) JSON
12 120 (1.15%) PySpark
13 117 (1.12%) Web Services
14 116 (1.11%) AngularJS
15 99 (0.95%) Oracle Fusion
16 96 (0.92%) OAuth
17 88 (0.84%) HTML
18 86 (0.82%) Middleware
19 84 (0.80%) Elastic Stack
19 84 (0.80%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 365 (3.49%) Cloud Native
2 337 (3.23%) Product Ownership
3 310 (2.97%) Data Centre
4 288 (2.76%) Onboarding
5 199 (1.90%) Management Information System
6 160 (1.53%) PKI
7 135 (1.29%) Legacy Systems
8 134 (1.28%) Security Posture
9 124 (1.19%) Enterprise Software
10 122 (1.17%) Distributed Systems
10 122 (1.17%) Replication
11 97 (0.93%) Self-Motivation
12 87 (0.83%) Public Cloud
13 84 (0.80%) Data Structures
14 82 (0.78%) Clustering
14 82 (0.78%) Security Operations Centre
15 81 (0.78%) Hybrid Cloud
16 74 (0.71%) Virtual Team
17 70 (0.67%) Greenfield Project
18 63 (0.60%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 851 (8.15%) Windows
2 729 (6.98%) Linux
3 246 (2.35%) Windows Server
4 177 (1.69%) Unix
5 132 (1.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 108 (1.03%) Android
7 88 (0.84%) Windows 10
8 68 (0.65%) Apple iOS
9 46 (0.44%) Mac OS
10 42 (0.40%) Solaris
10 42 (0.40%) Ubuntu
11 29 (0.28%) VMS
11 29 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
11 29 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
12 26 (0.25%) AIX
13 23 (0.22%) CentOS
14 14 (0.13%) Windows 7
15 11 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
15 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
15 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,006 (19.20%) Agile
2 1,587 (15.19%) DevOps
3 1,425 (13.64%) CI/CD
4 1,129 (10.81%) Problem-Solving
5 986 (9.44%) Stakeholder Management
6 909 (8.70%) Continuous Improvement
7 821 (7.86%) Migration
8 764 (7.31%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 727 (6.96%) Infrastructure as Code
10 638 (6.11%) ITIL
11 615 (5.89%) Cybersecurity
12 608 (5.82%) Test Automation
13 596 (5.70%) Analytics
14 580 (5.55%) Containerisation
15 569 (5.45%) Software Engineering
16 566 (5.42%) Roadmaps
17 522 (5.00%) Data Modelling
18 513 (4.91%) Decision-Making
19 456 (4.36%) Scrum
20 446 (4.27%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,189 (11.38%) Python
2 953 (9.12%) SQL
3 652 (6.24%) Java
4 544 (5.21%) PowerShell
5 328 (3.14%) JavaScript
6 218 (2.09%) C#
7 199 (1.90%) Bash
8 173 (1.66%) TypeScript
9 109 (1.04%) PL/SQL
10 99 (0.95%) C++
11 97 (0.93%) Shell Script
12 74 (0.71%) Go
13 69 (0.66%) Scala
14 65 (0.62%) Ruby
15 57 (0.55%) Bicep
15 57 (0.55%) C
16 50 (0.48%) R
17 49 (0.47%) Apex Code
18 41 (0.39%) Kusto Query Language
19 39 (0.37%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 7,957 (76.17%) SC Cleared
2 1,884 (18.03%) DV Cleared
3 454 (4.35%) Degree
4 302 (2.89%) BPSS Clearance
5 210 (2.01%) Cisco Certification
6 175 (1.68%) CISSP
7 134 (1.28%) Azure Certification
8 123 (1.18%) CCNP
9 120 (1.15%) AWS Certification
10 117 (1.12%) CISM
11 93 (0.89%) Microsoft Certification
12 87 (0.83%) CCNA
13 78 (0.75%) PMP
14 75 (0.72%) Computer Science Degree
15 69 (0.66%) PMI Certification
16 68 (0.65%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 67 (0.64%) TOGAF Certification
18 66 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
19 57 (0.55%) ISTQB
20 48 (0.46%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 375 (3.59%) QA
2 319 (3.05%) Data Quality
3 299 (2.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 294 (2.81%) NIST
5 201 (1.92%) Accessibility
6 199 (1.90%) NCSC
7 167 (1.60%) GDPR
8 163 (1.56%) PMO
9 108 (1.03%) SLA
10 73 (0.70%) GRC
11 63 (0.60%) JSP 440
12 53 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
13 43 (0.41%) WCAG
14 39 (0.37%) NIST 800
15 32 (0.31%) RMADS
16 31 (0.30%) PCI DSS
17 30 (0.29%) COBIT
17 30 (0.29%) Def Stans
18 28 (0.27%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 24 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 657 (6.29%) Docker
2 478 (4.58%) Active Directory
3 289 (2.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 101 (0.97%) VMware ESXi
5 97 (0.93%) VMware NSX
6 83 (0.79%) Hyper-V
7 75 (0.72%) vSphere
8 73 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
9 37 (0.35%) Firmware
10 34 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
11 22 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
12 20 (0.19%) NFS
13 19 (0.18%) BitLocker
14 17 (0.16%) Postfix
14 17 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 17 (0.16%) Squid
15 16 (0.15%) vCloud
16 8 (0.077%) KVM
16 8 (0.077%) Microsoft App-V
17 7 (0.067%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 834 (7.98%) Kubernetes
2 826 (7.91%) Terraform
3 360 (3.45%) Ansible
4 265 (2.54%) Grafana
5 218 (2.09%) Prometheus
6 116 (1.11%) Single Sign-On
7 101 (0.97%) vCenter Server
8 76 (0.73%) SCCM
9 65 (0.62%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 56 (0.54%) FortiGate
11 54 (0.52%) Microsoft Intune
12 53 (0.51%) Argo
13 40 (0.38%) Puppet
14 39 (0.37%) Podman
15 36 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
16 34 (0.33%) Progress Chef
17 32 (0.31%) Nagios
18 31 (0.30%) vRealize
19 29 (0.28%) OPNET
20 25 (0.24%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,041 (9.96%) Microsoft
2 648 (6.20%) Oracle
3 509 (4.87%) VMware
4 410 (3.92%) ServiceNow
5 373 (3.57%) SAP
6 364 (3.48%) Cisco
7 248 (2.37%) Splunk
8 204 (1.95%) Databricks
9 170 (1.63%) Google
9 170 (1.63%) Red Hat
10 139 (1.33%) Salesforce
11 129 (1.23%) Talend
12 124 (1.19%) IBM
13 123 (1.18%) Palo Alto
14 102 (0.98%) Juniper
15 98 (0.94%) Atlassian
15 98 (0.94%) CyberArk
16 97 (0.93%) Informatica
17 86 (0.82%) Fortinet
18 84 (0.80%) Dynatrace