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

6 months to
9 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 11,799 5,916 6,887
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.66% 18.07% 18.08%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.72% 57.86% 61.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,266 3,792 4,476
10th Percentile £390 £350 £350
25th Percentile £458 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £535 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.93% -2.73% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £733
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £538 £550
% change year-on-year - -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 809 577 416
10th Percentile £19.50 £18.51 £20.06
25th Percentile £29.07 £18.87 £27.00
Median hourly rate £64.09 £25.15 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +154.83% -58.08% -
75th Percentile £78.70 £37.50 £71.79
90th Percentile £89.08 £71.00 £80.00
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 17,170 10,225 11,193
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.52% 31.23% 29.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,500 6,338 6,929
10th Percentile £350 £300 £313
25th Percentile £438 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £627 £623 £638
90th Percentile £715 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,295 820 672
10th Percentile £17.25 £17.98 £16.87
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £24.18
Median hourly rate £47.54 £25.15 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +89.03% -49.70% -9.09%
75th Percentile £72.54 £48.13 £67.77
90th Percentile £87.96 £71.27 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £53.00
% change year-on-year +88.87% -52.55% +2.12%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 10,201 £549 +2.14% 3,749
UK excluding London +1 6,623 £538 - 2,798
London +7 3,624 £550 +3.29% 1,377
Work from Home +2 3,121 £525 -2.33% 2,134
South East +1 2,334 £564 +4.98% 763
South West 0 1,418 £550 -0.23% 610
North of England +3 1,270 £516 +3.25% 523
Midlands 0 931 £475 -7.77% 256
West Midlands +1 792 £475 -7.77% 174
North West +2 748 £530 - 353
East of England 0 359 £550 - 354
Yorkshire +3 303 £500 +2.15% 103
Scotland +12 288 £481 -0.41% 211
North East 0 240 £475 -2.56% 89
East Midlands -1 130 £450 -5.26% 82
Wales +5 107 £550 +15.79% 36
Northern Ireland +5 36 £650 +8.33% 99

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
1 398 (3.37%) Confluence
2 272 (2.31%) SharePoint
3 174 (1.47%) SAS
4 130 (1.10%) Microsoft Exchange
5 107 (0.91%) Apache
6 104 (0.88%) Apache Spark
7 102 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.33%) Jupyter
9 35 (0.30%) nginx
10 33 (0.28%) WebLogic
11 27 (0.23%) IIS
12 23 (0.19%) Oracle Application Server
13 22 (0.19%) Skype for Business
13 22 (0.19%) Tomcat
14 19 (0.16%) CMS
15 17 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
15 17 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
16 14 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 13 (0.11%) JBoss
18 12 (0.10%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 210 (1.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 168 (1.42%) Microsoft Office
3 111 (0.94%) Microsoft Project
4 101 (0.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 42 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 22 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.14%) AutoCAD
7 17 (0.14%) Revit
8 16 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
9 15 (0.13%) Simulink
10 8 (0.068%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.068%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.068%) Windchill
11 7 (0.059%) Notepad++
11 7 (0.059%) Sketch
12 6 (0.051%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 4 (0.034%) Trello
14 3 (0.025%) OrCAD
15 2 (0.017%) Houdini
15 2 (0.017%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 149 (1.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 82 (0.69%) Remedy ITSM
3 51 (0.43%) Oracle ERP
4 43 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
5 34 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 30 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 27 (0.23%) Dynamics CRM
8 25 (0.21%) Oracle Payroll
8 25 (0.21%) SAP GRC
9 22 (0.19%) SAP PSCD
10 20 (0.17%) Primavera
11 17 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
11 17 (0.14%) SAP FI
12 16 (0.14%) SAP HR
13 13 (0.11%) Findur
14 12 (0.10%) iTrent
14 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
15 11 (0.093%) NetSuite
15 11 (0.093%) Remedy AR System
15 11 (0.093%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 2,175 (18.43%) Azure
2 2,106 (17.85%) AWS
3 545 (4.62%) GitHub
4 530 (4.49%) Azure DevOps
5 482 (4.09%) Power Platform
6 456 (3.86%) GCP
7 354 (3.00%) GitHub Actions
8 334 (2.83%) Microsoft 365
9 309 (2.62%) Entra ID
10 290 (2.46%) Serverless
11 244 (2.07%) Amazon S3
12 212 (1.80%) AWS Lambda
13 177 (1.50%) SaaS
14 174 (1.47%) OCI
15 172 (1.46%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 164 (1.39%) Amazon EKS
17 149 (1.26%) Amazon EC2
18 137 (1.16%) OpenShift
19 130 (1.10%) AWS CloudFormation
20 119 (1.01%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 475 (4.03%) Firewall
2 381 (3.23%) DNS
3 236 (2.00%) Network Security
4 227 (1.92%) WAN
5 212 (1.80%) VPN
6 186 (1.58%) DHCP
7 176 (1.49%) LAN
8 139 (1.18%) TCP/IP
9 135 (1.14%) BGP
10 121 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
11 105 (0.89%) VLAN
12 96 (0.81%) OSPF
13 93 (0.79%) Wireless
14 75 (0.64%) SSL
15 67 (0.57%) IPsec
16 66 (0.56%) MPLS
17 65 (0.55%) VSAN
18 63 (0.53%) SAN
19 62 (0.53%) SD-WAN
20 52 (0.44%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 351 (2.97%) Power BI
2 312 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
3 291 (2.47%) SQL Server
4 270 (2.29%) Data Warehouse
5 193 (1.64%) Metadata
6 185 (1.57%) Oracle Database
7 150 (1.27%) Relational Database
8 146 (1.24%) Data Lake
9 132 (1.12%) MongoDB
10 115 (0.97%) Amazon RDS
11 106 (0.90%) MySQL
12 99 (0.84%) NoSQL
13 93 (0.79%) Oracle Reports
14 75 (0.64%) Pentaho
15 70 (0.59%) Amazon Athena
16 67 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
17 60 (0.51%) Big Data
18 58 (0.49%) Tableau
19 57 (0.48%) Amazon Redshift
20 50 (0.42%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 658 (5.58%) JIRA
2 583 (4.94%) Git
3 512 (4.34%) GitLab
4 480 (4.07%) Jenkins
5 151 (1.28%) Selenium
6 84 (0.71%) Postman
7 77 (0.65%) JUnit
7 77 (0.65%) SonarQube
8 75 (0.64%) JMeter
9 71 (0.60%) Maven
10 60 (0.51%) Cucumber
11 54 (0.46%) Cypress.io
12 49 (0.42%) Gradle
13 45 (0.38%) Mockito
14 43 (0.36%) REST Assured
15 41 (0.35%) Gatling
16 38 (0.32%) Visual Studio
16 38 (0.32%) Zephyr
17 36 (0.31%) Artifactory
18 34 (0.29%) Bitbucket
General
1 2,610 (22.12%) Social Skills
2 2,427 (20.57%) Public Sector
3 948 (8.03%) Analytical Skills
4 765 (6.48%) Finance
5 406 (3.44%) Military
6 308 (2.61%) Aerospace
7 307 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
8 212 (1.80%) Influencing Skills
9 183 (1.55%) Organisational Skills
10 177 (1.50%) Legal
11 168 (1.42%) Telecoms
12 158 (1.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 151 (1.28%) Banking
14 126 (1.07%) Manufacturing
15 119 (1.01%) Law
16 116 (0.98%) Police
17 65 (0.55%) Presentation Skills
18 48 (0.41%) Local Government
19 46 (0.39%) Retail
20 45 (0.38%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,900 (16.10%) Architect
2 1,232 (10.44%) Developer
3 1,128 (9.56%) Senior
4 1,065 (9.03%) Lead
5 702 (5.95%) Consultant
6 646 (5.48%) Analyst
7 510 (4.32%) DevOps Engineer
8 507 (4.30%) Data Engineer
9 427 (3.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 370 (3.14%) Technical Architect
11 361 (3.06%) Solutions Architect
12 291 (2.47%) Data Architect
13 288 (2.44%) Software Engineer
14 272 (2.31%) Security Architect
15 260 (2.20%) Network Engineer
16 215 (1.82%) Administrator
16 215 (1.82%) Java Developer
17 211 (1.79%) Azure Engineer
18 207 (1.75%) Delivery Manager
19 200 (1.70%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 997 (8.45%) Terraform
2 455 (3.86%) REST
3 255 (2.16%) Spring
4 250 (2.12%) Kafka
5 232 (1.97%) Spring Boot
6 219 (1.86%) .NET
6 219 (1.86%) RESTful
7 207 (1.75%) React
8 177 (1.50%) Node.js
9 176 (1.49%) SOAP
10 169 (1.43%) JSON
11 132 (1.12%) HTML
12 131 (1.11%) OAuth
13 127 (1.08%) XML
14 122 (1.03%) Web Services
15 121 (1.03%) Middleware
16 120 (1.02%) AngularJS
17 103 (0.87%) Oracle Fusion
18 101 (0.86%) CSS
19 99 (0.84%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 523 (4.43%) Cloud Native
2 440 (3.73%) Onboarding
3 362 (3.07%) Product Ownership
4 313 (2.65%) Data Centre
5 262 (2.22%) Management Information System
6 191 (1.62%) Legacy Systems
7 173 (1.47%) PKI
8 172 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
9 166 (1.41%) CMDB
10 149 (1.26%) Distributed Systems
11 129 (1.09%) Replication
12 123 (1.04%) Hybrid Cloud
13 119 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
14 110 (0.93%) Cyber Threat
15 102 (0.86%) Data Structures
16 96 (0.81%) Operational Technology
17 95 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
18 93 (0.79%) Clustering
18 93 (0.79%) Public Cloud
19 87 (0.74%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 1,000 (8.48%) Windows
2 801 (6.79%) Linux
3 375 (3.18%) Windows Server
4 231 (1.96%) Unix
5 155 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 144 (1.22%) Windows 10
7 77 (0.65%) Android
8 66 (0.56%) Solaris
9 49 (0.42%) Mac OS
10 44 (0.37%) Apple iOS
11 41 (0.35%) CentOS
12 39 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
13 38 (0.32%) Ubuntu
14 33 (0.28%) AIX
15 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 23 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
16 23 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
17 22 (0.19%) VMS
18 16 (0.14%) Rocky
19 14 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,503 (21.21%) Agile
2 1,815 (15.38%) DevOps
3 1,777 (15.06%) CI/CD
4 1,559 (13.21%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,412 (11.97%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,254 (10.63%) Problem-Solving
7 1,171 (9.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,005 (8.52%) Infrastructure as Code
9 939 (7.96%) Migration
10 847 (7.18%) Cybersecurity
11 811 (6.87%) ITIL
12 784 (6.64%) Test Automation
13 742 (6.29%) Containerisation
14 728 (6.17%) Technical Leadership
15 724 (6.14%) Analytics
16 704 (5.97%) Roadmaps
17 703 (5.96%) Decision-Making
18 698 (5.92%) AI
19 684 (5.80%) Software Engineering
20 658 (5.58%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,374 (11.65%) Python
2 1,126 (9.54%) SQL
3 801 (6.79%) Java
4 594 (5.03%) PowerShell
5 403 (3.42%) JavaScript
6 343 (2.91%) Bash
7 237 (2.01%) C#
8 215 (1.82%) TypeScript
9 165 (1.40%) PL/SQL
10 126 (1.07%) Bicep
11 82 (0.69%) Shell Script
12 64 (0.54%) C++
13 58 (0.49%) C
14 53 (0.45%) Scala
15 52 (0.44%) Go
16 51 (0.43%) Apex Code
17 48 (0.41%) Groovy
18 47 (0.40%) Kotlin
19 43 (0.36%) Ruby
20 40 (0.34%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8,995 (76.24%) SC Cleared
2 2,229 (18.89%) DV Cleared
3 469 (3.97%) BPSS Clearance
4 467 (3.96%) Degree
5 219 (1.86%) CISSP
6 186 (1.58%) Cisco Certification
7 177 (1.50%) Azure Certification
8 165 (1.40%) Microsoft Certification
9 145 (1.23%) AWS Certification
10 142 (1.20%) CISM
11 108 (0.92%) PMI Certification
12 103 (0.87%) PMP
13 94 (0.80%) ISTQB
14 84 (0.71%) CCNP
15 74 (0.63%) Computer Science Degree
16 71 (0.60%) CCNA
17 63 (0.53%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 49 (0.42%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 46 (0.39%) ITIL Certification
19 46 (0.39%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 536 (4.54%) QA
2 397 (3.36%) Data Quality
3 332 (2.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 322 (2.73%) NIST
5 283 (2.40%) NCSC
6 267 (2.26%) Accessibility
7 230 (1.95%) PMO
8 186 (1.58%) GDPR
9 176 (1.49%) SLA
10 155 (1.31%) GRC
11 85 (0.72%) WCAG
12 64 (0.54%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
14 44 (0.37%) NIST 800
15 36 (0.31%) Def Stans
16 29 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 26 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 25 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
19 22 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 22 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 820 (6.95%) Docker
2 621 (5.26%) Active Directory
3 434 (3.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 146 (1.24%) VMware NSX
5 142 (1.20%) VMware ESXi
6 139 (1.18%) Hyper-V
7 129 (1.09%) vSphere
8 91 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
9 44 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
10 43 (0.36%) Firmware
11 41 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
12 27 (0.23%) vCloud
13 25 (0.21%) BitLocker
14 20 (0.17%) NFS
15 14 (0.12%) Squid
16 13 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
17 11 (0.093%) Postfix
18 9 (0.076%) Citrix Hypervisor
18 9 (0.076%) KVM
19 8 (0.068%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 995 (8.43%) Kubernetes
2 449 (3.81%) Ansible
3 261 (2.21%) Grafana
4 210 (1.78%) Prometheus
5 138 (1.17%) SCCM
6 136 (1.15%) vCenter Server
7 94 (0.80%) SCOM
8 91 (0.77%) Microsoft Intune
9 67 (0.57%) Argo
9 67 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
10 53 (0.45%) Oracle RMAN
11 48 (0.41%) Puppet
12 41 (0.35%) Data Guard
13 32 (0.27%) Kibana
14 31 (0.26%) Istio
15 29 (0.25%) Control-M
15 29 (0.25%) NetBackup
15 29 (0.25%) Progress Chef
16 27 (0.23%) Nagios
16 27 (0.23%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,526 (12.93%) Microsoft
2 953 (8.08%) Oracle
3 611 (5.18%) VMware
4 556 (4.71%) ServiceNow
5 447 (3.79%) SAP
6 308 (2.61%) Cisco
7 248 (2.10%) Google
8 227 (1.92%) Splunk
9 216 (1.83%) Databricks
10 183 (1.55%) Salesforce
11 148 (1.25%) Red Hat
12 131 (1.11%) Palo Alto
13 118 (1.00%) Informatica
14 112 (0.95%) IBM
15 110 (0.93%) Talend
16 101 (0.86%) Dynatrace
17 94 (0.80%) Remedy
18 93 (0.79%) CyberArk
19 82 (0.69%) F5
19 82 (0.69%) SolarWinds