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 30 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 3 3 4
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +4
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 7,450 6,376 7,937
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 20.79% 17.58% 17.33%
As % of the Qualifications category 62.31% 59.83% 58.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,899 3,999 4,979
10th Percentile £335 £350 £375
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -1.79%
75th Percentile £632 £638 £650
90th Percentile £723 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £550 £556
% change year-on-year -4.55% -1.12% +1.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 746 343 502
10th Percentile £18.87 £20.12 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.40 £24.18 £46.05
Median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -49.70% -16.67% -
75th Percentile £53.75 £67.63 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £52.50 £59.27
% change year-on-year -52.10% -11.41% -1.23%

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 11,956 10,657 13,482
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.36% 29.39% 29.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,724 6,436 8,517
10th Percentile £305 £309 £300
25th Percentile £413 £423 £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 1,015 514 757
10th Percentile £17.50 £19.07 £17.72
25th Percentile £19.38 £24.18 £27.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £41.71 £53.50
Median % change year-on-year -39.70% -22.05% +18.89%
75th Percentile £48.73 £66.00 £67.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £45.59 £51.90
% change year-on-year -44.83% -12.16% +15.33%

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 30 November 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 30 November 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 30 November 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 6,523 £525 -4.55% 1,673
UK excluding London 0 4,330 £525 -4.55% 1,553
London +1 2,128 £550 - 399
Work from Home +2 2,093 £538 -0.46% 791
South East -1 1,272 £517 -6.00% 666
South West 0 1,123 £550 -4.35% 446
North of England -1 777 £506 +6.53% 126
Midlands +2 697 £519 -5.73% 121
West Midlands +2 542 £525 -7.33% 95
North West +1 512 £525 +5.21% 87
East of England +2 292 £525 +3.70% 229
Yorkshire -10 164 £500 +9.59% 22
Scotland -10 150 £475 -5.00% 44
East Midlands -1 140 £450 -7.69% 26
North East 0 109 £475 - 20
Wales -3 78 £550 +10.00% 31
Northern Ireland +1 42 £500 -16.67% 11
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
1 272 (3.65%) Confluence
2 184 (2.47%) SharePoint
3 121 (1.62%) Microsoft Exchange
4 102 (1.37%) SAS
5 88 (1.18%) Apache
6 54 (0.72%) Apache Airflow
7 48 (0.64%) Apache Spark
8 47 (0.63%) nginx
9 39 (0.52%) Skype for Business
10 28 (0.38%) CMS
11 25 (0.34%) WebLogic
12 21 (0.28%) 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
1 221 (2.97%) Microsoft Office
2 162 (2.17%) Microsoft Excel
3 93 (1.25%) Microsoft Project
4 47 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 34 (0.46%) MS Visio
6 22 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
7 19 (0.26%) Simulink
8 15 (0.20%) 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 (0.081%) Oracle Smart View
14 5 (0.067%) Adobe Illustrator
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
1 181 (2.43%) SAP S/4HANA
2 38 (0.51%) Remedy ITSM
3 30 (0.40%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 29 (0.39%) SAP EWM
4 29 (0.39%) SAP WM
5 24 (0.32%) SAP MM
6 23 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
7 22 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
8 19 (0.26%) Teamcenter
9 18 (0.24%) Primavera
10 17 (0.23%) SAP HCM
11 16 (0.21%) Maximo
12 15 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
13 14 (0.19%) SAP VC
14 13 (0.17%) SAP PP
14 13 (0.17%) SAP PS
15 12 (0.16%) SAP EHS
15 12 (0.16%) SAP QM
16 10 (0.13%) SAP HR
16 10 (0.13%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,240 (16.64%) AWS
2 1,172 (15.73%) Azure
3 358 (4.81%) GitHub
4 327 (4.39%) Microsoft 365
5 270 (3.62%) Power Platform
6 267 (3.58%) Azure DevOps
6 267 (3.58%) GCP
7 221 (2.97%) Serverless
8 190 (2.55%) GitHub Actions
9 184 (2.47%) Amazon S3
10 161 (2.16%) Entra ID
11 134 (1.80%) OpenShift
11 134 (1.80%) SaaS
12 128 (1.72%) AWS CloudFormation
12 128 (1.72%) AWS Lambda
13 123 (1.65%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 119 (1.60%) Amazon EC2
15 108 (1.45%) Amazon EKS
16 93 (1.25%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 88 (1.18%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 375 (5.03%) Firewall
2 259 (3.48%) DNS
3 176 (2.36%) VPN
4 153 (2.05%) Network Security
5 144 (1.93%) WAN
6 111 (1.49%) TCP/IP
7 101 (1.36%) LAN
8 97 (1.30%) DHCP
8 97 (1.30%) Wireless
9 95 (1.28%) BGP
10 81 (1.09%) SSL
11 66 (0.89%) SAN
12 64 (0.86%) Wi-Fi
13 58 (0.78%) MPLS
14 56 (0.75%) Cisco ISE
14 56 (0.75%) VLAN
15 54 (0.72%) IPsec
16 51 (0.68%) HTTP
17 46 (0.62%) OSPF
18 44 (0.59%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 221 (2.97%) PostgreSQL
2 177 (2.38%) Power BI
3 96 (1.29%) Amazon RDS
4 94 (1.26%) SQL Server
5 90 (1.21%) MongoDB
5 90 (1.21%) Oracle Database
6 83 (1.11%) Data Warehouse
7 81 (1.09%) Relational Database
8 79 (1.06%) NoSQL
9 77 (1.03%) Metadata
10 56 (0.75%) Azure SQL Database
11 51 (0.68%) Big Data
12 42 (0.56%) Elasticsearch
13 40 (0.54%) Pentaho
14 38 (0.51%) Amazon Athena
14 38 (0.51%) Amazon Redshift
15 37 (0.50%) Data Lake
15 37 (0.50%) SAS Enterprise Guide
16 36 (0.48%) MySQL
17 35 (0.47%) Redis
Development Applications
1 498 (6.68%) JIRA
2 404 (5.42%) Git
3 386 (5.18%) Jenkins
4 292 (3.92%) GitLab
5 84 (1.13%) Selenium
6 64 (0.86%) JUnit
7 57 (0.77%) Cypress.io
8 56 (0.75%) SonarQube
9 54 (0.72%) Postman
10 48 (0.64%) Bitbucket
11 46 (0.62%) Oracle APEX
12 38 (0.51%) Mockito
13 36 (0.48%) Artifactory
14 33 (0.44%) Cucumber
15 32 (0.43%) Maven
16 25 (0.34%) REST Assured
17 23 (0.31%) CircleCI
17 23 (0.31%) MSI
18 22 (0.30%) JMeter
18 22 (0.30%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,017 (27.07%) Public Sector
2 1,883 (25.28%) Social Skills
3 668 (8.97%) Analytical Skills
4 522 (7.01%) Finance
5 273 (3.66%) Military
6 228 (3.06%) Telecoms
7 215 (2.89%) Manufacturing
8 181 (2.43%) Documentation Skills
9 157 (2.11%) Electronics
10 146 (1.96%) Marketing
11 136 (1.83%) Aerospace
12 108 (1.45%) Legal
13 107 (1.44%) Organisational Skills
14 95 (1.28%) Banking
15 92 (1.23%) Influencing Skills
16 82 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
17 68 (0.91%) Law
18 53 (0.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 40 (0.54%) Aviation
19 40 (0.54%) Police
Job Titles
1 980 (13.15%) Architect
2 766 (10.28%) Developer
3 663 (8.90%) Consultant
4 593 (7.96%) Senior
5 482 (6.47%) Analyst
6 456 (6.12%) Lead
7 337 (4.52%) DevOps Engineer
8 255 (3.42%) Support Engineer
9 206 (2.77%) Solutions Architect
10 205 (2.75%) Network Engineer
11 173 (2.32%) Data Engineer
12 169 (2.27%) SAP Consultant
13 150 (2.01%) AWS Engineer
14 147 (1.97%) Technical Architect
15 136 (1.83%) IT Engineer
16 134 (1.80%) Platform Engineer
17 133 (1.79%) Administrator
18 132 (1.77%) Software Engineer
19 126 (1.69%) Business Analyst
19 126 (1.69%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 281 (3.77%) REST
2 189 (2.54%) Node.js
3 179 (2.40%) React
4 173 (2.32%) Kafka
5 155 (2.08%) JSON
6 133 (1.79%) SOAP
7 130 (1.74%) Spring
8 121 (1.62%) HTML
9 111 (1.49%) XML
10 110 (1.48%) RESTful
11 103 (1.38%) Spring Boot
12 101 (1.36%) AngularJS
13 100 (1.34%) .NET
14 98 (1.32%) CSS
15 94 (1.26%) Web Services
16 76 (1.02%) OAuth
17 72 (0.97%) LDAP
18 66 (0.89%) Elastic Stack
19 63 (0.85%) Oracle Fusion
20 59 (0.79%) SAP Fiori
Miscellaneous
1 220 (2.95%) Data Centre
2 206 (2.77%) Onboarding
3 194 (2.60%) Cloud Native
4 179 (2.40%) PKI
5 160 (2.15%) Product Ownership
6 150 (2.01%) Management Information System
7 110 (1.48%) Self-Motivation
8 98 (1.32%) Legacy Systems
9 82 (1.10%) Driving Licence
10 78 (1.05%) Cyber Threat
11 70 (0.94%) Replication
12 69 (0.93%) Security Posture
13 67 (0.90%) Security Operations Centre
14 64 (0.86%) CMDB
15 63 (0.85%) Enterprise Software
15 63 (0.85%) Hybrid Cloud
16 56 (0.75%) Analytical Mindset
17 55 (0.74%) Private Cloud
18 49 (0.66%) Public Cloud
19 46 (0.62%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 803 (10.78%) Windows
2 555 (7.45%) Linux
3 190 (2.55%) Windows Server
4 177 (2.38%) Windows 10
5 111 (1.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 95 (1.28%) Android
7 91 (1.22%) Unix
8 85 (1.14%) Mac OS
9 52 (0.70%) VMS
10 36 (0.48%) Ubuntu
10 36 (0.48%) Windows Server 2019
11 29 (0.39%) Apple iOS
12 25 (0.34%) Amazon Linux
12 25 (0.34%) Windows Server 2012
12 25 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
13 24 (0.32%) Windows 7
14 22 (0.30%) CentOS
15 18 (0.24%) Windows Server 2003
16 16 (0.21%) Mac OS X
17 9 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,449 (19.45%) Agile
2 1,132 (15.19%) DevOps
3 1,031 (13.84%) CI/CD
4 893 (11.99%) Problem-Solving
5 765 (10.27%) Migration
6 590 (7.92%) Stakeholder Management
7 508 (6.82%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 506 (6.79%) Cybersecurity
9 488 (6.55%) Infrastructure as Code
10 480 (6.44%) ITIL
11 469 (6.30%) Continuous Improvement
12 416 (5.58%) Containerisation
13 414 (5.56%) Test Automation
14 410 (5.50%) Service Management
15 409 (5.49%) Workflow
16 404 (5.42%) Business Intelligence
17 371 (4.98%) Analytics
18 348 (4.67%) Roadmaps
19 347 (4.66%) Scrum
20 340 (4.56%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 925 (12.42%) Python
2 554 (7.44%) SQL
3 471 (6.32%) PowerShell
4 459 (6.16%) Java
5 386 (5.18%) JavaScript
6 231 (3.10%) Bash
7 190 (2.55%) TypeScript
8 133 (1.79%) C#
9 100 (1.34%) C++
10 83 (1.11%) Go
11 73 (0.98%) PL/SQL
12 72 (0.97%) C
13 70 (0.94%) Shell Script
14 48 (0.64%) ABAP
15 41 (0.55%) Perl
15 41 (0.55%) Ruby
16 34 (0.46%) Groovy
17 32 (0.43%) Bicep
18 31 (0.42%) MATLAB
19 28 (0.38%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 5,734 (76.97%) SC Cleared
2 1,212 (16.27%) DV Cleared
3 353 (4.74%) Degree
4 343 (4.60%) BPSS Clearance
5 138 (1.85%) CISSP
6 125 (1.68%) Microsoft Certification
7 112 (1.50%) Azure Certification
8 110 (1.48%) Cisco Certification
9 109 (1.46%) AWS Certification
10 81 (1.09%) CCNP
10 81 (1.09%) CISM
11 57 (0.77%) Computer Science Degree
12 56 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
13 49 (0.66%) CCNA
14 46 (0.62%) CEH
15 43 (0.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 41 (0.55%) TOGAF Certification
17 40 (0.54%) CTC Cleared
18 37 (0.50%) CHECK Team Member
19 32 (0.43%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 230 (3.09%) QA
2 213 (2.86%) NIST
3 212 (2.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 166 (2.23%) NCSC
5 139 (1.87%) SLA
6 136 (1.83%) Data Quality
7 134 (1.80%) GDPR
8 132 (1.77%) Accessibility
9 63 (0.85%) PMO
10 52 (0.70%) JSP 440
11 46 (0.62%) WCAG
12 44 (0.59%) NIST 800
13 37 (0.50%) GRC
14 32 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 30 (0.40%) Def Stans
16 29 (0.39%) COBIT
17 22 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials
18 21 (0.28%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 21 (0.28%) RMADS
19 18 (0.24%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 588 (7.89%) Docker
2 418 (5.61%) Active Directory
3 219 (2.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 76 (1.02%) VMware NSX
5 72 (0.97%) vSphere
6 62 (0.83%) VMware ESXi
7 52 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
8 45 (0.60%) Firmware
9 39 (0.52%) Hyper-V
10 29 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
11 20 (0.27%) DFS Replication
12 18 (0.24%) Postfix
13 16 (0.21%) NFS
14 15 (0.20%) Dovecot
15 11 (0.15%) ISA Server
15 11 (0.15%) Squid
15 11 (0.15%) Terminal Services
16 10 (0.13%) BitLocker
16 10 (0.13%) Brightmail
17 7 (0.094%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 711 (9.54%) Kubernetes
2 677 (9.09%) Terraform
3 287 (3.85%) Ansible
4 182 (2.44%) Grafana
5 155 (2.08%) Prometheus
6 113 (1.52%) SCCM
7 95 (1.28%) Single Sign-On
8 82 (1.10%) Microsoft Intune
9 66 (0.89%) vCenter Server
10 61 (0.82%) Argo
11 52 (0.70%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 45 (0.60%) Packer
13 37 (0.50%) Kibana
14 34 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
15 30 (0.40%) vRealize
16 27 (0.36%) OPNET
17 25 (0.34%) SCOM
18 24 (0.32%) Nessus
18 24 (0.32%) Progress Chef
18 24 (0.32%) Puppet
Vendors
1 936 (12.56%) Microsoft
2 531 (7.13%) SAP
3 436 (5.85%) Cisco
4 386 (5.18%) Oracle
5 381 (5.11%) VMware
6 352 (4.72%) ServiceNow
7 186 (2.50%) Splunk
8 153 (2.05%) Juniper
9 142 (1.91%) Red Hat
10 125 (1.68%) Google
11 114 (1.53%) Salesforce
12 104 (1.40%) Palo Alto
13 99 (1.33%) Dell
14 97 (1.30%) HP
15 96 (1.29%) Atlassian
16 83 (1.11%) CyberArk
17 78 (1.05%) Databricks
17 78 (1.05%) IBM
18 76 (1.02%) Remedy
19 73 (0.98%) SolarWinds