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

6 months to
12 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 10,890 5,230 7,968
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.79% 17.77% 18.26%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.43% 57.49% 61.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,487 3,412 5,246
10th Percentile £381 £340 £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 £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £536 £550
% change year-on-year -2.01% -2.59% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 862 344 569
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £14.00
25th Percentile £25.15 £21.22 £21.46
Median hourly rate £59.25 £27.63 £55.80
Median % change year-on-year +114.44% -50.48% -7.00%
75th Percentile £74.44 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £78.34 £84.56
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £29.27 £57.44
% change year-on-year +96.45% -49.04% -0.10%

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 15,684 9,098 13,043
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.38% 30.91% 29.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,409 5,658 8,104
10th Percentile £350 £278 £310
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £521 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.82% -0.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £618 £638
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £500 £527
% change year-on-year +1.00% -5.03% +0.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,159 567 1,116
10th Percentile £17.12 £17.72 £13.93
25th Percentile £22.63 £21.02 £18.32
Median hourly rate £50.00 £30.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +63.93% -23.75% -27.27%
75th Percentile £71.75 £64.76 £63.49
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.50 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £30.00 £41.27
% change year-on-year +58.47% -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 12 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 12 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 12 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 9,413 £525 -2.23% 1,960
UK excluding London +1 6,053 £525 -2.01% 1,582
London +7 3,379 £525 - 548
Work from Home +5 2,972 £525 - 1,004
South East +1 2,255 £550 - 504
South West 0 1,273 £538 -4.44% 424
North of England +2 981 £500 - 309
Midlands +2 888 £469 -10.67% 152
West Midlands +2 768 £469 -10.67% 121
North West 0 542 £520 +4.00% 194
East of England +2 371 £550 +10.00% 123
Scotland +25 264 £500 +11.11% 64
Yorkshire -2 246 £494 -1.25% 71
North East +1 226 £475 -1.04% 47
East Midlands -5 113 £418 -17.53% 31
Wales +4 85 £490 +3.16% 28
Northern Ireland +5 27 £619 +30.26% 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
1 395 (3.63%) Confluence
2 233 (2.14%) SharePoint
3 157 (1.44%) SAS
4 133 (1.22%) Microsoft Exchange
5 105 (0.96%) Apache Spark
6 97 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
7 88 (0.81%) Apache
8 42 (0.39%) Jupyter
8 42 (0.39%) nginx
9 34 (0.31%) WebLogic
10 24 (0.22%) Tomcat
11 20 (0.18%) IIS
12 18 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
13 16 (0.15%) NetWeaver
14 15 (0.14%) CMS
14 15 (0.14%) Oracle Application Server
14 15 (0.14%) Skype for Business
15 13 (0.12%) Tuxedo
16 11 (0.10%) ArcGIS
17 8 (0.073%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 172 (1.58%) Microsoft Excel
2 144 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 77 (0.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 74 (0.68%) Microsoft Project
5 47 (0.43%) MS Visio
6 16 (0.15%) Simulink
6 16 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
7 10 (0.092%) SOLIDWORKS
8 9 (0.083%) AutoCAD
8 9 (0.083%) Revit
9 8 (0.073%) Chatbot
10 7 (0.064%) Notepad++
11 4 (0.037%) Sketch
11 4 (0.037%) Windchill
12 3 (0.028%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.018%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.018%) Lectora
13 2 (0.018%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.018%) PlantUML
13 2 (0.018%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 120 (1.10%) SAP S/4HANA
2 60 (0.55%) Remedy ITSM
3 41 (0.38%) Oracle ERP
4 33 (0.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 31 (0.28%) Teamcenter
6 28 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
7 25 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
8 16 (0.15%) SAP GRC
9 15 (0.14%) Findur
9 15 (0.14%) Primavera
10 14 (0.13%) Maximo
10 14 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
11 13 (0.12%) SAP PSCD
12 12 (0.11%) iTrent
12 12 (0.11%) Temenos T24
13 10 (0.092%) Oracle Assets
14 9 (0.083%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 9 (0.083%) Salesforce CRM
14 9 (0.083%) SAP ERP
14 9 (0.083%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,957 (17.97%) AWS
2 1,915 (17.58%) Azure
3 463 (4.25%) GitHub
4 432 (3.97%) GCP
5 416 (3.82%) Azure DevOps
6 409 (3.76%) Power Platform
7 278 (2.55%) GitHub Actions
7 278 (2.55%) Serverless
8 266 (2.44%) Microsoft 365
9 257 (2.36%) Entra ID
10 227 (2.08%) Amazon S3
11 196 (1.80%) AWS Lambda
12 160 (1.47%) Amazon EC2
13 159 (1.46%) PaaS
14 153 (1.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 141 (1.29%) SaaS
16 139 (1.28%) Amazon EKS
17 137 (1.26%) OpenShift
18 136 (1.25%) OCI
19 122 (1.12%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 465 (4.27%) Firewall
2 308 (2.83%) DNS
3 242 (2.22%) Network Security
4 227 (2.08%) WAN
5 200 (1.84%) LAN
6 175 (1.61%) VPN
7 159 (1.46%) DHCP
8 143 (1.31%) BGP
9 121 (1.11%) OSPF
10 111 (1.02%) VLAN
11 110 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
12 109 (1.00%) TCP/IP
13 85 (0.78%) Wireless
14 68 (0.62%) MPLS
15 59 (0.54%) SAN
15 59 (0.54%) SD-WAN
15 59 (0.54%) VXLAN
16 53 (0.49%) Structured Cabling
17 51 (0.47%) IPsec
18 48 (0.44%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 315 (2.89%) Power BI
2 283 (2.60%) PostgreSQL
3 252 (2.31%) Data Warehouse
4 224 (2.06%) SQL Server
5 153 (1.40%) Oracle Database
6 138 (1.27%) Metadata
7 120 (1.10%) Data Lake
8 115 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
9 112 (1.03%) Relational Database
10 104 (0.96%) MongoDB
11 84 (0.77%) Oracle Reports
11 84 (0.77%) Pentaho
12 83 (0.76%) MySQL
13 81 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
14 79 (0.73%) NoSQL
15 72 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
16 71 (0.65%) Amazon Athena
17 67 (0.62%) Tableau
18 66 (0.61%) Big Data
19 56 (0.51%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 620 (5.69%) JIRA
2 483 (4.44%) Git
3 447 (4.10%) GitLab
4 423 (3.88%) Jenkins
5 120 (1.10%) Selenium
6 87 (0.80%) Postman
7 85 (0.78%) JUnit
8 80 (0.73%) SonarQube
9 64 (0.59%) JMeter
10 58 (0.53%) Rational DOORS
11 54 (0.50%) Artifactory
12 53 (0.49%) Cucumber
13 45 (0.41%) Bitbucket
14 43 (0.39%) Cypress.io
15 42 (0.39%) Visual Studio
16 41 (0.38%) Mockito
16 41 (0.38%) Zephyr
17 39 (0.36%) REST Assured
18 38 (0.35%) Maven
19 37 (0.34%) Gatling
General
1 2,361 (21.68%) Public Sector
2 2,203 (20.23%) Social Skills
3 732 (6.72%) Analytical Skills
4 677 (6.22%) Finance
5 337 (3.09%) Military
6 297 (2.73%) Documentation Skills
7 281 (2.58%) Aerospace
8 175 (1.61%) Legal
9 128 (1.18%) Influencing Skills
10 126 (1.16%) Banking
11 115 (1.06%) Telecoms
12 100 (0.92%) Law
13 99 (0.91%) Organisational Skills
14 98 (0.90%) Manufacturing
15 96 (0.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 78 (0.72%) Presentation Skills
17 68 (0.62%) Police
18 49 (0.45%) Aviation
19 47 (0.43%) Marketing
20 41 (0.38%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,662 (15.26%) Architect
2 1,042 (9.57%) Developer
3 954 (8.76%) Senior
4 812 (7.46%) Lead
5 752 (6.91%) Analyst
6 536 (4.92%) Consultant
7 532 (4.89%) Data Engineer
8 513 (4.71%) DevOps Engineer
9 361 (3.31%) Technical Architect
10 326 (2.99%) Software Engineer
11 322 (2.96%) Solutions Architect
12 320 (2.94%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 284 (2.61%) Network Engineer
14 268 (2.46%) Business Analyst
15 242 (2.22%) Security Architect
16 220 (2.02%) Project Manager
17 217 (1.99%) Designer
18 211 (1.94%) Azure Engineer
19 204 (1.87%) Administrator
20 201 (1.85%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 333 (3.06%) REST
2 243 (2.23%) Spring
3 204 (1.87%) Spring Boot
4 202 (1.85%) React
5 200 (1.84%) Kafka
6 187 (1.72%) .NET
7 177 (1.63%) Node.js
8 155 (1.42%) RESTful
9 148 (1.36%) SOAP
10 145 (1.33%) LDAP
11 126 (1.16%) AngularJS
12 124 (1.14%) JSON
13 116 (1.07%) PySpark
14 113 (1.04%) Web Services
15 103 (0.95%) OAuth
16 99 (0.91%) Middleware
17 93 (0.85%) HTML
18 91 (0.84%) Playwright
19 84 (0.77%) OpenID
20 80 (0.73%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 411 (3.77%) Cloud Native
2 344 (3.16%) Product Ownership
3 321 (2.95%) Data Centre
4 316 (2.90%) Onboarding
5 217 (1.99%) Management Information System
6 164 (1.51%) Legacy Systems
7 147 (1.35%) PKI
8 137 (1.26%) Distributed Systems
9 131 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
10 128 (1.18%) Security Posture
11 119 (1.09%) Replication
12 105 (0.96%) Self-Motivation
13 90 (0.83%) Data Structures
14 88 (0.81%) Clustering
14 88 (0.81%) Public Cloud
15 87 (0.80%) CMDB
15 87 (0.80%) Security Operations Centre
16 86 (0.79%) Hybrid Cloud
17 77 (0.71%) Virtual Team
18 75 (0.69%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 837 (7.69%) Windows
2 730 (6.70%) Linux
3 266 (2.44%) Windows Server
4 201 (1.85%) Unix
5 130 (1.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 94 (0.86%) Android
7 81 (0.74%) Windows 10
8 68 (0.62%) Apple iOS
9 54 (0.50%) Solaris
10 37 (0.34%) Mac OS
10 37 (0.34%) Ubuntu
11 32 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
12 30 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
13 29 (0.27%) AIX
14 22 (0.20%) CentOS
15 21 (0.19%) VMS
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 2,109 (19.37%) Agile
2 1,675 (15.38%) DevOps
3 1,525 (14.00%) CI/CD
4 1,103 (10.13%) Problem-Solving
5 1,072 (9.84%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,024 (9.40%) Continuous Improvement
7 888 (8.15%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 874 (8.03%) Migration
9 803 (7.37%) Infrastructure as Code
10 677 (6.22%) Cybersecurity
11 667 (6.12%) Test Automation
12 644 (5.91%) Analytics
13 622 (5.71%) ITIL
14 621 (5.70%) Containerisation
15 614 (5.64%) Software Engineering
16 595 (5.46%) Roadmaps
17 562 (5.16%) Decision-Making
18 558 (5.12%) Data Modelling
19 502 (4.61%) AI
20 492 (4.52%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,219 (11.19%) Python
2 1,019 (9.36%) SQL
3 695 (6.38%) Java
4 531 (4.88%) PowerShell
5 318 (2.92%) JavaScript
6 231 (2.12%) C#
7 216 (1.98%) Bash
8 189 (1.74%) TypeScript
9 137 (1.26%) PL/SQL
10 96 (0.88%) Shell Script
11 94 (0.86%) C++
12 73 (0.67%) Bicep
13 62 (0.57%) C
14 61 (0.56%) Ruby
15 57 (0.52%) Go
15 57 (0.52%) Scala
16 56 (0.51%) Apex Code
17 46 (0.42%) Kotlin
18 45 (0.41%) Ada
19 42 (0.39%) R
Qualifications
1 8,359 (76.76%) SC Cleared
2 1,925 (17.68%) DV Cleared
3 432 (3.97%) Degree
4 322 (2.96%) BPSS Clearance
5 214 (1.97%) Cisco Certification
6 176 (1.62%) CISSP
7 138 (1.27%) Azure Certification
8 120 (1.10%) AWS Certification
9 117 (1.07%) CCNP
10 116 (1.07%) CISM
11 106 (0.97%) Microsoft Certification
12 93 (0.85%) CCNA
13 84 (0.77%) PMP
14 78 (0.72%) PMI Certification
15 74 (0.68%) ISTQB
16 71 (0.65%) Computer Science Degree
17 69 (0.63%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 61 (0.56%) ITIL Certification
19 45 (0.41%) CompTIA Security+
20 42 (0.39%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 408 (3.75%) QA
2 324 (2.98%) Data Quality
3 318 (2.92%) NIST
4 311 (2.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 226 (2.08%) NCSC
6 215 (1.97%) Accessibility
7 178 (1.63%) GDPR
8 170 (1.56%) PMO
9 122 (1.12%) SLA
10 90 (0.83%) GRC
11 68 (0.62%) JSP 440
12 51 (0.47%) Cyber Essentials
12 51 (0.47%) WCAG
13 44 (0.40%) NIST 800
14 36 (0.33%) RMADS
15 33 (0.30%) Def Stans
16 28 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 24 (0.22%) COBIT
17 24 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
18 23 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 682 (6.26%) Docker
2 465 (4.27%) Active Directory
3 317 (2.91%) VMware Infrastructure
4 116 (1.07%) VMware ESXi
5 106 (0.97%) VMware NSX
6 94 (0.86%) Hyper-V
7 84 (0.77%) vSphere
8 76 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
9 39 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
10 32 (0.29%) Firmware
11 24 (0.22%) NFS
12 22 (0.20%) BitLocker
13 20 (0.18%) vCloud
14 19 (0.17%) Postfix
14 19 (0.17%) Squid
15 18 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
16 15 (0.14%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 9 (0.083%) Microsoft App-V
18 7 (0.064%) KVM
19 6 (0.055%) Corosync
Systems Management
1 888 (8.15%) Terraform
2 854 (7.84%) Kubernetes
3 383 (3.52%) Ansible
4 276 (2.53%) Grafana
5 230 (2.11%) Prometheus
6 114 (1.05%) vCenter Server
7 103 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
8 76 (0.70%) SCCM
9 60 (0.55%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 59 (0.54%) Microsoft Intune
11 57 (0.52%) Argo
12 51 (0.47%) FortiGate
13 45 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
14 40 (0.37%) Puppet
15 38 (0.35%) Podman
15 38 (0.35%) SCOM
16 27 (0.25%) Progress Chef
16 27 (0.25%) vRealize
17 26 (0.24%) Nagios
18 25 (0.23%) Istio
Vendors
1 1,089 (10.00%) Microsoft
2 747 (6.86%) Oracle
3 517 (4.75%) VMware
4 434 (3.99%) ServiceNow
5 347 (3.19%) Cisco
6 344 (3.16%) SAP
7 240 (2.20%) Splunk
8 207 (1.90%) Databricks
9 172 (1.58%) Google
9 172 (1.58%) Red Hat
10 169 (1.55%) Salesforce
11 142 (1.30%) Talend
12 126 (1.16%) IBM
13 125 (1.15%) Palo Alto
14 117 (1.07%) Informatica
15 102 (0.94%) Juniper
16 93 (0.85%) CyberArk
16 93 (0.85%) Fortinet
17 91 (0.84%) Dynatrace
18 87 (0.80%) F5