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 22 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,882 5,945 6,780
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.78% 18.30% 17.84%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.80% 58.16% 61.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,253 3,858 4,382
10th Percentile £400 £349 £350
25th Percentile £461 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £549 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.23% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £538 £550
% change year-on-year - -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 856 596 401
10th Percentile £20.00 £18.51 £20.12
25th Percentile £31.88 £18.87 £30.00
Median hourly rate £64.09 £25.15 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +154.83% -58.08% -
75th Percentile £77.50 £35.13 £72.50
90th Percentile £89.42 £70.08 £80.59
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +158.45% -58.08% +4.35%

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 17,270 10,222 11,109
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.65% 31.47% 29.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,482 6,385 6,811
10th Percentile £350 £300 £313
25th Percentile £440 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £528 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.52% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £638
90th Percentile £715 £711 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,381 837 637
10th Percentile £17.17 £17.87 £17.05
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £24.18
Median hourly rate £47.54 £25.15 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +89.03% -49.70% -7.41%
75th Percentile £72.50 £43.75 £68.00
90th Percentile £88.00 £70.50 £75.74
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £52.50
% change year-on-year +88.87% -52.10% +1.18%

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 22 September 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 22 September 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 22 September 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 10,238 £550 +2.33% 5,909
UK excluding London +1 6,670 £538 - 4,222
London +6 3,624 £550 +2.33% 1,945
Work from Home +2 3,116 £525 -2.33% 3,249
South East +1 2,291 £564 +4.98% 1,064
South West 0 1,419 £550 - 926
North of England +2 1,271 £515 -1.90% 874
Midlands 0 941 £475 -7.77% 388
West Midlands +1 806 £475 -8.39% 254
North West +1 743 £530 -3.64% 562
East of England 0 417 £570 +3.55% 492
Scotland +16 317 £483 -0.21% 328
Yorkshire +4 299 £492 +0.20% 180
North East 0 250 £475 -5.00% 156
East Midlands -1 129 £450 -2.70% 134
Wales +4 106 £550 +10.00% 70
Northern Ireland +3 35 £650 +18.18% 129

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
1 393 (3.31%) Confluence
2 266 (2.24%) SharePoint
3 173 (1.46%) SAS
4 131 (1.10%) Microsoft Exchange
5 112 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
6 103 (0.87%) Apache Spark
7 100 (0.84%) Apache
8 41 (0.35%) Jupyter
9 37 (0.31%) nginx
10 36 (0.30%) WebLogic
11 31 (0.26%) CMS
12 23 (0.19%) Oracle Application Server
13 22 (0.19%) Skype for Business
14 20 (0.17%) IIS
15 19 (0.16%) Tomcat
16 16 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 16 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
16 16 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
17 11 (0.093%) JBoss
17 11 (0.093%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 213 (1.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 165 (1.39%) Microsoft Office
3 102 (0.86%) Microsoft Project
4 97 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 20 (0.17%) AutoCAD
8 18 (0.15%) Revit
9 17 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
10 15 (0.13%) Windchill
11 10 (0.084%) Adobe XD
11 10 (0.084%) Simulink
12 8 (0.067%) Chatbot
12 8 (0.067%) Sketch
13 7 (0.059%) Notepad++
14 6 (0.050%) Adobe Creative Suite
15 4 (0.034%) OrCAD
15 4 (0.034%) Trello
16 2 (0.017%) Houdini
16 2 (0.017%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 151 (1.27%) SAP S/4HANA
2 82 (0.69%) Remedy ITSM
3 56 (0.47%) Oracle ERP
4 41 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
5 33 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 32 (0.27%) Teamcenter
7 29 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
8 25 (0.21%) Oracle Payroll
8 25 (0.21%) SAP GRC
8 25 (0.21%) SAP PSCD
9 21 (0.18%) SAP FI
10 19 (0.16%) Primavera
11 16 (0.13%) SAP HR
12 15 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
13 14 (0.12%) SAP CO
14 13 (0.11%) Maximo
15 12 (0.10%) iTrent
15 12 (0.10%) NetSuite
15 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
16 11 (0.093%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 2,146 (18.06%) Azure
2 2,090 (17.59%) AWS
3 513 (4.32%) Azure DevOps
3 513 (4.32%) GitHub
4 482 (4.06%) Power Platform
5 453 (3.81%) GCP
6 346 (2.91%) GitHub Actions
7 338 (2.84%) Microsoft 365
8 324 (2.73%) Entra ID
9 278 (2.34%) Serverless
10 233 (1.96%) Amazon S3
11 204 (1.72%) AWS Lambda
12 176 (1.48%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 174 (1.46%) OCI
14 168 (1.41%) SaaS
15 165 (1.39%) Amazon EKS
16 147 (1.24%) Amazon EC2
17 145 (1.22%) OpenShift
18 128 (1.08%) AWS CloudFormation
19 109 (0.92%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 458 (3.85%) Firewall
2 385 (3.24%) DNS
3 238 (2.00%) Network Security
4 222 (1.87%) WAN
5 199 (1.67%) VPN
6 191 (1.61%) DHCP
7 169 (1.42%) LAN
8 139 (1.17%) TCP/IP
9 131 (1.10%) BGP
10 118 (0.99%) Wi-Fi
11 108 (0.91%) VLAN
12 93 (0.78%) Wireless
13 91 (0.77%) OSPF
14 68 (0.57%) SSL
15 64 (0.54%) MPLS
15 64 (0.54%) VSAN
16 62 (0.52%) IPsec
16 62 (0.52%) SAN
17 61 (0.51%) SD-WAN
18 50 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 346 (2.91%) Power BI
2 305 (2.57%) PostgreSQL
3 279 (2.35%) SQL Server
4 275 (2.31%) Data Warehouse
5 206 (1.73%) Metadata
6 190 (1.60%) Oracle Database
7 147 (1.24%) Data Lake
8 146 (1.23%) Relational Database
9 129 (1.09%) MongoDB
10 111 (0.93%) Amazon RDS
11 106 (0.89%) MySQL
12 97 (0.82%) NoSQL
13 93 (0.78%) Oracle Reports
14 73 (0.61%) Elasticsearch
15 72 (0.61%) Pentaho
16 70 (0.59%) Amazon Athena
17 57 (0.48%) Big Data
18 53 (0.45%) DynamoDB
18 53 (0.45%) Tableau
19 51 (0.43%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 658 (5.54%) JIRA
2 596 (5.02%) Git
3 520 (4.38%) GitLab
4 493 (4.15%) Jenkins
5 146 (1.23%) Selenium
6 87 (0.73%) Postman
7 82 (0.69%) SonarQube
8 76 (0.64%) JUnit
8 76 (0.64%) Maven
9 70 (0.59%) JMeter
10 64 (0.54%) Cucumber
11 53 (0.45%) Cypress.io
12 51 (0.43%) Gradle
13 47 (0.40%) Mockito
14 42 (0.35%) Gatling
14 42 (0.35%) REST Assured
15 40 (0.34%) Visual Studio
16 39 (0.33%) Zephyr
17 36 (0.30%) Artifactory
18 32 (0.27%) MSI
General
1 2,654 (22.34%) Social Skills
2 2,408 (20.27%) Public Sector
3 957 (8.05%) Analytical Skills
4 766 (6.45%) Finance
5 422 (3.55%) Military
6 332 (2.79%) Aerospace
7 309 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
8 227 (1.91%) Influencing Skills
9 187 (1.57%) Organisational Skills
10 174 (1.46%) Legal
11 168 (1.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 166 (1.40%) Telecoms
13 155 (1.30%) Manufacturing
14 136 (1.14%) Banking
15 125 (1.05%) Law
16 123 (1.04%) Police
17 73 (0.61%) Presentation Skills
18 52 (0.44%) Local Government
19 49 (0.41%) Aviation
20 46 (0.39%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,933 (16.27%) Architect
2 1,222 (10.28%) Developer
3 1,135 (9.55%) Senior
4 1,048 (8.82%) Lead
5 706 (5.94%) Consultant
6 640 (5.39%) Analyst
7 514 (4.33%) DevOps Engineer
8 485 (4.08%) Data Engineer
9 422 (3.55%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 371 (3.12%) Technical Architect
11 368 (3.10%) Solutions Architect
12 299 (2.52%) Data Architect
13 281 (2.36%) Software Engineer
14 279 (2.35%) Security Architect
15 252 (2.12%) Network Engineer
16 228 (1.92%) Administrator
17 220 (1.85%) Java Developer
18 217 (1.83%) Azure Engineer
19 212 (1.78%) Designer
20 208 (1.75%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,000 (8.42%) Terraform
2 473 (3.98%) REST
3 262 (2.21%) Kafka
4 259 (2.18%) Spring
5 238 (2.00%) Spring Boot
6 214 (1.80%) RESTful
7 205 (1.73%) .NET
8 192 (1.62%) React
9 182 (1.53%) Node.js
10 180 (1.51%) SOAP
11 163 (1.37%) JSON
12 139 (1.17%) OAuth
13 136 (1.14%) HTML
14 133 (1.12%) XML
15 126 (1.06%) Middleware
16 119 (1.00%) AngularJS
16 119 (1.00%) Web Services
17 105 (0.88%) CSS
18 103 (0.87%) Oracle Fusion
19 96 (0.81%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 526 (4.43%) Cloud Native
2 463 (3.90%) Onboarding
3 365 (3.07%) Product Ownership
4 304 (2.56%) Data Centre
5 274 (2.31%) Management Information System
6 185 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
7 182 (1.53%) PKI
8 172 (1.45%) Enterprise Software
9 159 (1.34%) CMDB
10 140 (1.18%) Distributed Systems
11 122 (1.03%) Hybrid Cloud
12 120 (1.01%) Cyber Threat
13 118 (0.99%) Replication
14 114 (0.96%) Self-Motivation
15 112 (0.94%) Operational Technology
16 96 (0.81%) Data Structures
17 92 (0.77%) Security Operations Centre
17 92 (0.77%) Security Posture
18 91 (0.77%) Public Cloud
19 89 (0.75%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 994 (8.37%) Windows
2 809 (6.81%) Linux
3 369 (3.11%) Windows Server
4 237 (1.99%) Unix
5 162 (1.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 144 (1.21%) Windows 10
7 79 (0.66%) Android
8 75 (0.63%) Solaris
9 49 (0.41%) Mac OS
10 46 (0.39%) Apple iOS
10 46 (0.39%) CentOS
11 40 (0.34%) Ubuntu
12 39 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
13 31 (0.26%) AIX
14 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
15 24 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
16 23 (0.19%) VMS
17 21 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
18 16 (0.13%) Rocky
19 13 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,523 (21.23%) Agile
2 1,804 (15.18%) DevOps
3 1,791 (15.07%) CI/CD
4 1,646 (13.85%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,445 (12.16%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,270 (10.69%) Problem-Solving
7 1,187 (9.99%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,021 (8.59%) Infrastructure as Code
9 948 (7.98%) Migration
10 861 (7.25%) Cybersecurity
11 790 (6.65%) ITIL
12 785 (6.61%) Test Automation
13 758 (6.38%) Containerisation
14 756 (6.36%) Technical Leadership
15 744 (6.26%) Decision-Making
16 739 (6.22%) AI
17 723 (6.08%) Analytics
18 722 (6.08%) Roadmaps
19 695 (5.85%) Software Engineering
20 629 (5.29%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,368 (11.51%) Python
2 1,105 (9.30%) SQL
3 795 (6.69%) Java
4 593 (4.99%) PowerShell
5 411 (3.46%) JavaScript
6 357 (3.00%) Bash
7 230 (1.94%) C#
8 221 (1.86%) TypeScript
9 166 (1.40%) PL/SQL
10 125 (1.05%) Bicep
11 84 (0.71%) Shell Script
12 64 (0.54%) C++
13 59 (0.50%) Go
14 57 (0.48%) Scala
15 55 (0.46%) C
16 50 (0.42%) Groovy
17 48 (0.40%) Kotlin
18 44 (0.37%) Apex Code
19 39 (0.33%) T-SQL
20 34 (0.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 9,042 (76.10%) SC Cleared
2 2,254 (18.97%) DV Cleared
3 508 (4.28%) BPSS Clearance
4 474 (3.99%) Degree
5 230 (1.94%) CISSP
6 196 (1.65%) Cisco Certification
7 189 (1.59%) Azure Certification
8 170 (1.43%) Microsoft Certification
9 153 (1.29%) AWS Certification
10 147 (1.24%) CISM
11 111 (0.93%) PMI Certification
12 101 (0.85%) PMP
13 96 (0.81%) ISTQB
14 93 (0.78%) CCNP
15 75 (0.63%) Computer Science Degree
16 71 (0.60%) CCNA
17 61 (0.51%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 54 (0.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 45 (0.38%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 45 (0.38%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 534 (4.49%) QA
2 386 (3.25%) Data Quality
3 339 (2.85%) NIST
4 328 (2.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 302 (2.54%) NCSC
6 280 (2.36%) Accessibility
7 223 (1.88%) PMO
8 178 (1.50%) GDPR
9 176 (1.48%) SLA
10 168 (1.41%) GRC
11 85 (0.72%) WCAG
12 61 (0.51%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
14 45 (0.38%) NIST 800
15 37 (0.31%) Def Stans
16 32 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
17 25 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 22 (0.19%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 21 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
20 19 (0.16%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 828 (6.97%) Docker
2 635 (5.34%) Active Directory
3 443 (3.73%) VMware Infrastructure
4 147 (1.24%) VMware ESXi
5 143 (1.20%) VMware NSX
6 136 (1.14%) Hyper-V
7 133 (1.12%) vSphere
8 94 (0.79%) Virtual Machines
9 45 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
10 44 (0.37%) Firmware
11 40 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
12 26 (0.22%) vCloud
13 23 (0.19%) BitLocker
14 20 (0.17%) NFS
15 18 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
16 11 (0.093%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 11 (0.093%) Postfix
16 11 (0.093%) Squid
17 10 (0.084%) KVM
18 9 (0.076%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 1,004 (8.45%) Kubernetes
2 443 (3.73%) Ansible
3 264 (2.22%) Grafana
4 202 (1.70%) Prometheus
5 135 (1.14%) SCCM
6 134 (1.13%) vCenter Server
7 99 (0.83%) SCOM
8 90 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
9 69 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
10 67 (0.56%) Argo
11 49 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
12 43 (0.36%) Kibana
13 42 (0.35%) Puppet
14 41 (0.35%) Data Guard
15 32 (0.27%) NetBackup
15 32 (0.27%) VxRail
16 31 (0.26%) Istio
17 29 (0.24%) Control-M
18 27 (0.23%) WSUS
19 26 (0.22%) Nagios
Vendors
1 1,551 (13.05%) Microsoft
2 956 (8.05%) Oracle
3 615 (5.18%) VMware
4 542 (4.56%) ServiceNow
5 449 (3.78%) SAP
6 308 (2.59%) Cisco
7 259 (2.18%) Google
8 225 (1.89%) Splunk
9 195 (1.64%) Databricks
10 170 (1.43%) Salesforce
11 146 (1.23%) Red Hat
12 129 (1.09%) Palo Alto
13 113 (0.95%) Informatica
14 105 (0.88%) Talend
15 104 (0.88%) IBM
16 102 (0.86%) Dynatrace
17 97 (0.82%) CyberArk
18 93 (0.78%) Remedy
19 83 (0.70%) SolarWinds
20 80 (0.67%) Fortinet