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

6 months to
12 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,872 5,208 8,127
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 23.12% 17.70% 18.20%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.31% 58.33% 59.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,607 3,408 5,201
10th Percentile £360 £325 £358
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.22%
75th Percentile £625 £626 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £518 £547 £550
% change year-on-year -5.39% -0.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 836 278 547
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.12 £14.50
25th Percentile £20.50 £24.66 £22.00
Median hourly rate £30.87 £57.13 £54.56
Median % change year-on-year -45.96% +4.70% -9.07%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £84.00 £77.28 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £60.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year -54.17% +9.09% -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 14,452 8,928 13,610
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.85% 30.34% 30.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,498 5,622 8,401
10th Percentile £331 £285 £290
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £516 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.73% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £615 £626 £650
90th Percentile £723 £725 £736
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £512 £525
% change year-on-year -2.39% -2.43% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,081 465 1,034
10th Percentile £16.17 £18.66 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.72 £24.18 £18.15
Median hourly rate £28.50 £42.50 £39.44
Median % change year-on-year -32.94% +7.77% -21.13%
75th Percentile £67.50 £67.50 £62.47
90th Percentile £83.75 £81.80 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £50.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -48.46% +25.00% -16.67%

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 March 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 March 2026.

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 12 March 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 +1 8,569 £525 -3.67% 1,848
UK excluding London +1 5,479 £518 -5.39% 1,568
London +5 2,989 £530 +0.95% 478
Work from Home +4 2,680 £525 -0.38% 880
South East +1 1,947 £525 -4.55% 557
South West 0 1,290 £545 -1.09% 407
Midlands +4 859 £492 -10.55% 161
North of England -1 836 £499 +0.20% 233
West Midlands +4 691 £492 -10.71% 120
North West 0 539 £500 +3.09% 128
East of England +2 356 £494 -1.30% 146
Scotland +12 180 £500 +11.11% 54
Yorkshire -8 178 £484 -7.86% 60
East Midlands 0 165 £434 -15.24% 41
North East 0 149 £450 -4.26% 46
Wales -1 80 £515 -5.47% 38
Northern Ireland +11 28 £500 +64.01% 7
Channel Islands - 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
1 367 (3.72%) Confluence
2 220 (2.23%) SharePoint
3 145 (1.47%) Microsoft Exchange
4 137 (1.39%) SAS
5 89 (0.90%) Apache Spark
6 79 (0.80%) Apache
7 59 (0.60%) Apache Airflow
8 42 (0.43%) nginx
9 40 (0.41%) WebLogic
10 30 (0.30%) Skype for Business
11 22 (0.22%) Jupyter
12 20 (0.20%) CMS
13 17 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
14 15 (0.15%) Tuxedo
15 14 (0.14%) IIS
16 10 (0.10%) ArcGIS
16 10 (0.10%) Tomcat
17 9 (0.091%) Oracle Workflow
18 7 (0.071%) OpenStack
19 6 (0.061%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 254 (2.57%) Microsoft Office
2 200 (2.03%) Microsoft Excel
3 123 (1.25%) Microsoft Project
4 68 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 46 (0.47%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.14%) Simulink
8 6 (0.061%) Sketch
9 5 (0.051%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.051%) Siemens NX
9 5 (0.051%) Windchill
10 4 (0.041%) Chatbot
10 4 (0.041%) Oracle Smart View
11 2 (0.020%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.020%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.020%) CATIA
11 2 (0.020%) InVision
11 2 (0.020%) Photoshop
11 2 (0.020%) PlantUML
11 2 (0.020%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 152 (1.54%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (0.43%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 29 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
4 28 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
5 27 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
6 25 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 24 (0.24%) SAP MM
8 19 (0.19%) SAP PP
9 17 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
10 16 (0.16%) Maximo
11 14 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
11 14 (0.14%) SAP VC
12 13 (0.13%) SAP QM
13 11 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
14 9 (0.091%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
14 9 (0.091%) Primavera
14 9 (0.091%) SAP PM
15 8 (0.081%) Integrated Workplace Management System
15 8 (0.081%) SAP Payroll
15 8 (0.081%) SAP WM
Cloud Services
1 1,687 (17.09%) AWS
2 1,627 (16.48%) Azure
3 449 (4.55%) GitHub
4 420 (4.25%) GCP
5 373 (3.78%) Power Platform
6 365 (3.70%) Azure DevOps
7 321 (3.25%) Microsoft 365
8 271 (2.75%) Serverless
9 250 (2.53%) Entra ID
10 238 (2.41%) GitHub Actions
11 199 (2.02%) Amazon S3
12 180 (1.82%) OpenShift
13 173 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
14 144 (1.46%) AWS CloudFormation
15 131 (1.33%) Amazon EC2
16 130 (1.32%) Amazon EKS
17 124 (1.26%) PaaS
18 121 (1.23%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 118 (1.20%) IaaS
20 111 (1.12%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 448 (4.54%) Firewall
2 279 (2.83%) DNS
3 219 (2.22%) Network Security
4 209 (2.12%) WAN
5 177 (1.79%) LAN
6 172 (1.74%) VPN
7 141 (1.43%) BGP
8 139 (1.41%) TCP/IP
9 132 (1.34%) DHCP
10 102 (1.03%) OSPF
11 97 (0.98%) Wireless
12 89 (0.90%) VLAN
13 76 (0.77%) Wi-Fi
14 73 (0.74%) MPLS
15 53 (0.54%) SAN
16 52 (0.53%) IPsec
17 49 (0.50%) Cisco ISE
18 46 (0.47%) SSL
19 43 (0.44%) Kerberos
20 41 (0.42%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 269 (2.72%) Power BI
2 262 (2.65%) PostgreSQL
3 180 (1.82%) Data Warehouse
4 164 (1.66%) SQL Server
5 126 (1.28%) Metadata
6 112 (1.13%) Oracle Database
7 102 (1.03%) Amazon RDS
7 102 (1.03%) NoSQL
8 99 (1.00%) MongoDB
9 94 (0.95%) Relational Database
10 82 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
11 80 (0.81%) Data Lake
12 72 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
13 71 (0.72%) Big Data
14 70 (0.71%) MySQL
15 60 (0.61%) Pentaho
16 59 (0.60%) Tableau
17 52 (0.53%) Amazon Redshift
18 48 (0.49%) Delta Lake
19 43 (0.44%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 581 (5.89%) JIRA
2 472 (4.78%) Git
3 396 (4.01%) Jenkins
4 358 (3.63%) GitLab
5 123 (1.25%) Selenium
6 87 (0.88%) Postman
7 86 (0.87%) JUnit
8 58 (0.59%) Cypress.io
9 55 (0.56%) SonarQube
10 53 (0.54%) Rational DOORS
11 51 (0.52%) Bitbucket
12 49 (0.50%) Cucumber
13 47 (0.48%) Artifactory
14 45 (0.46%) JMeter
14 45 (0.46%) Maven
15 44 (0.45%) Oracle APEX
16 37 (0.37%) Mockito
16 37 (0.37%) Visual Studio
17 33 (0.33%) REST Assured
18 23 (0.23%) Metasploit
General
1 2,490 (25.22%) Public Sector
2 2,332 (23.62%) Social Skills
3 825 (8.36%) Analytical Skills
4 680 (6.89%) Finance
5 333 (3.37%) Military
6 275 (2.79%) Documentation Skills
7 232 (2.35%) Aerospace
8 192 (1.94%) Manufacturing
9 186 (1.88%) Telecoms
10 152 (1.54%) Legal
11 128 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
12 123 (1.25%) Organisational Skills
13 116 (1.18%) Electronics
14 114 (1.15%) Marketing
15 112 (1.13%) Banking
16 107 (1.08%) Presentation Skills
17 72 (0.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 70 (0.71%) Law
19 54 (0.55%) Police
20 39 (0.40%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,418 (14.36%) Architect
2 972 (9.85%) Developer
3 872 (8.83%) Senior
4 755 (7.65%) Analyst
5 646 (6.54%) Consultant
6 617 (6.25%) Lead
7 412 (4.17%) DevOps Engineer
8 380 (3.85%) Data Engineer
9 273 (2.77%) Solutions Architect
10 265 (2.68%) Business Analyst
11 263 (2.66%) Network Engineer
12 262 (2.65%) Technical Architect
13 258 (2.61%) Software Engineer
14 237 (2.40%) Support Engineer
15 185 (1.87%) Tester
16 179 (1.81%) Designer
17 178 (1.80%) Security Architect
18 175 (1.77%) Project Manager
19 174 (1.76%) Azure Engineer
20 173 (1.75%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 368 (3.73%) REST
2 221 (2.24%) Spring
3 210 (2.13%) Kafka
3 210 (2.13%) Node.js
4 185 (1.87%) React
5 167 (1.69%) SOAP
6 163 (1.65%) Spring Boot
7 161 (1.63%) JSON
8 151 (1.53%) .NET
9 150 (1.52%) LDAP
10 124 (1.26%) RESTful
10 124 (1.26%) Web Services
11 121 (1.23%) AngularJS
12 120 (1.22%) HTML
13 113 (1.14%) PySpark
14 110 (1.11%) OAuth
15 101 (1.02%) Oracle Fusion
16 99 (1.00%) XML
17 95 (0.96%) CSS
18 86 (0.87%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 311 (3.15%) Data Centre
2 302 (3.06%) Product Ownership
3 286 (2.90%) Cloud Native
4 252 (2.55%) Onboarding
5 204 (2.07%) PKI
6 186 (1.88%) Management Information System
7 137 (1.39%) Security Posture
8 124 (1.26%) Self-Motivation
9 123 (1.25%) Legacy Systems
10 110 (1.11%) Enterprise Software
11 101 (1.02%) Replication
12 87 (0.88%) Public Cloud
13 81 (0.82%) Security Operations Centre
14 80 (0.81%) Distributed Systems
15 78 (0.79%) Hybrid Cloud
16 72 (0.73%) Driving Licence
17 69 (0.70%) Data Structures
18 68 (0.69%) Cyber Threat
19 57 (0.58%) Clustering
20 53 (0.54%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 879 (8.90%) Windows
2 709 (7.18%) Linux
3 232 (2.35%) Windows Server
4 142 (1.44%) Windows 10
5 130 (1.32%) Android
6 129 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 124 (1.26%) Unix
8 70 (0.71%) Mac OS
9 52 (0.53%) Apple iOS
10 49 (0.50%) Ubuntu
11 32 (0.32%) VMS
12 31 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
13 24 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 23 (0.23%) CentOS
15 22 (0.22%) Solaris
16 20 (0.20%) Windows 7
17 13 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
18 11 (0.11%) AIX
18 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
19 9 (0.091%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,890 (19.15%) Agile
2 1,480 (14.99%) DevOps
3 1,306 (13.23%) CI/CD
4 1,177 (11.92%) Problem-Solving
5 915 (9.27%) Stakeholder Management
6 839 (8.50%) Migration
7 795 (8.05%) Continuous Improvement
8 714 (7.23%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 623 (6.31%) Cybersecurity
10 606 (6.14%) Infrastructure as Code
11 591 (5.99%) ITIL
12 557 (5.64%) Analytics
13 545 (5.52%) Test Automation
14 540 (5.47%) Roadmaps
15 534 (5.41%) Containerisation
16 466 (4.72%) Software Engineering
17 459 (4.65%) Business Intelligence
18 458 (4.64%) Scrum
19 440 (4.46%) Data Modelling
20 426 (4.32%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 1,168 (11.83%) Python
2 856 (8.67%) SQL
3 620 (6.28%) PowerShell
4 554 (5.61%) Java
5 425 (4.31%) JavaScript
6 224 (2.27%) Bash
7 204 (2.07%) C#
8 193 (1.96%) TypeScript
9 113 (1.14%) C++
10 107 (1.08%) PL/SQL
10 107 (1.08%) Shell Script
11 80 (0.81%) Go
12 66 (0.67%) Ruby
13 65 (0.66%) C
14 51 (0.52%) Scala
15 49 (0.50%) Ada
16 45 (0.46%) Kusto Query Language
17 41 (0.42%) Bicep
18 40 (0.41%) ABAP
19 39 (0.40%) R
Qualifications
1 7,547 (76.45%) SC Cleared
2 1,663 (16.85%) DV Cleared
3 494 (5.00%) Degree
4 323 (3.27%) BPSS Clearance
5 183 (1.85%) Cisco Certification
6 178 (1.80%) CISSP
7 141 (1.43%) AWS Certification
8 131 (1.33%) Azure Certification
9 123 (1.25%) CCNP
10 112 (1.13%) CISM
11 111 (1.12%) Microsoft Certification
12 89 (0.90%) Computer Science Degree
13 80 (0.81%) CCNA
14 69 (0.70%) ITIL Certification
15 66 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
16 58 (0.59%) ISTQB
16 58 (0.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 53 (0.54%) PMP
18 49 (0.50%) CEH
19 48 (0.49%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 324 (3.28%) QA
2 302 (3.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 288 (2.92%) NIST
4 285 (2.89%) Data Quality
5 218 (2.21%) NCSC
6 186 (1.88%) GDPR
7 182 (1.84%) Accessibility
8 125 (1.27%) SLA
9 114 (1.15%) PMO
10 66 (0.67%) JSP 440
11 65 (0.66%) GRC
12 45 (0.46%) WCAG
13 44 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials
14 42 (0.43%) NIST 800
15 37 (0.37%) Def Stans
15 37 (0.37%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 35 (0.35%) COBIT
17 33 (0.33%) PCI DSS
18 26 (0.26%) RMADS
19 24 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 654 (6.62%) Docker
2 487 (4.93%) Active Directory
3 246 (2.49%) VMware Infrastructure
4 92 (0.93%) VMware NSX
5 77 (0.78%) vSphere
6 62 (0.63%) VMware ESXi
7 61 (0.62%) Hyper-V
8 58 (0.59%) Virtual Machines
9 32 (0.32%) Firmware
10 30 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
11 19 (0.19%) BitLocker
11 19 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
12 17 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 15 (0.15%) NFS
14 10 (0.10%) Postfix
15 9 (0.091%) Squid
15 9 (0.091%) vCloud
16 6 (0.061%) KVM
17 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
17 5 (0.051%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 849 (8.60%) Kubernetes
2 788 (7.98%) Terraform
3 317 (3.21%) Ansible
4 247 (2.50%) Grafana
5 204 (2.07%) Prometheus
6 132 (1.34%) Single Sign-On
7 99 (1.00%) SCCM
8 89 (0.90%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 87 (0.88%) vCenter Server
10 70 (0.71%) Argo
11 69 (0.70%) Microsoft Intune
12 50 (0.51%) FortiGate
13 40 (0.41%) Packer
13 40 (0.41%) Podman
14 34 (0.34%) vRealize
15 33 (0.33%) Puppet
16 31 (0.31%) Progress Chef
17 30 (0.30%) OPNET
18 29 (0.29%) Kibana
19 24 (0.24%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,078 (10.92%) Microsoft
2 553 (5.60%) Oracle
3 466 (4.72%) VMware
4 448 (4.54%) SAP
5 427 (4.33%) Cisco
6 409 (4.14%) ServiceNow
7 244 (2.47%) Splunk
8 193 (1.96%) Red Hat
9 163 (1.65%) Databricks
10 158 (1.60%) Google
11 143 (1.45%) CyberArk
12 139 (1.41%) Salesforce
13 130 (1.32%) Juniper
14 129 (1.31%) Palo Alto
15 127 (1.29%) Atlassian
16 112 (1.13%) IBM
17 103 (1.04%) Dell
18 89 (0.90%) HP
19 88 (0.89%) Talend
20 79 (0.80%) Aruba