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

6 months to
23 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 10,986 5,358 7,918
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.63% 17.88% 18.15%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.25% 57.62% 61.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,609 3,480 5,194
10th Percentile £381 £338 £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 £715 £699 £737
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £537 £550
% change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 838 390 585
10th Percentile £18.10 £18.50 £14.36
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £60.91 £25.15 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year +142.19% -55.48% -5.85%
75th Percentile £75.00 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.36 £77.22 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.91 £25.15 £57.50
% change year-on-year +142.19% -56.26% -

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 15,865 9,299 12,970
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.24% 31.03% 29.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,601 5,774 8,010
10th Percentile £350 £275 £312
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £618 £638
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £506 £500 £533
% change year-on-year +1.20% -6.19% +1.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,166 618 1,129
10th Percentile £17.25 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.00 £20.24 £19.17
Median hourly rate £50.00 £29.26 £40.25
Median % change year-on-year +70.88% -27.30% -26.82%
75th Percentile £72.54 £62.44 £64.25
90th Percentile £85.25 £76.25 £75.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.84 £27.94 £42.50
% change year-on-year +74.80% -34.26% -20.80%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 9,495 £525 -2.33% 1,666
UK excluding London +1 6,153 £525 -2.23% 1,376
London +7 3,368 £525 - 490
Work from Home +5 3,030 £525 - 828
South East +1 2,289 £550 - 456
South West 0 1,310 £538 -4.44% 329
North of England +2 986 £500 - 263
Midlands +2 918 £469 -10.67% 125
West Midlands +1 798 £469 -10.67% 87
North West 0 534 £525 +5.00% 153
East of England +2 358 £550 +10.00% 110
Scotland +24 268 £500 +14.29% 63
Yorkshire -5 254 £500 +1.63% 62
North East +1 229 £480 - 53
East Midlands -4 109 £438 -7.89% 38
Wales +2 89 £513 +7.89% 39
Northern Ireland +7 31 £644 +35.53% 27

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
1 402 (3.66%) Confluence
2 234 (2.13%) SharePoint
3 165 (1.50%) SAS
4 130 (1.18%) Microsoft Exchange
5 105 (0.96%) Apache Spark
6 103 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
7 92 (0.84%) Apache
8 45 (0.41%) Jupyter
9 44 (0.40%) nginx
10 35 (0.32%) WebLogic
11 25 (0.23%) Tomcat
12 19 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
13 18 (0.16%) IIS
14 16 (0.15%) NetWeaver
15 15 (0.14%) CMS
15 15 (0.14%) Oracle Application Server
16 14 (0.13%) Skype for Business
17 12 (0.11%) Tuxedo
18 11 (0.10%) ArcGIS
19 8 (0.073%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 175 (1.59%) Microsoft Excel
2 147 (1.34%) Microsoft Office
3 79 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
4 77 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 48 (0.44%) MS Visio
6 16 (0.15%) Simulink
7 14 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
8 10 (0.091%) SOLIDWORKS
9 9 (0.082%) AutoCAD
9 9 (0.082%) Chatbot
9 9 (0.082%) Revit
10 7 (0.064%) Notepad++
11 4 (0.036%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.036%) Sketch
12 3 (0.027%) Windchill
13 2 (0.018%) CATIA
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
1 124 (1.13%) SAP S/4HANA
2 61 (0.56%) Remedy ITSM
3 44 (0.40%) Oracle ERP
4 32 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 31 (0.28%) Teamcenter
6 30 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
7 28 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
8 16 (0.15%) Primavera
8 16 (0.15%) SAP GRC
8 16 (0.15%) SAP PSCD
9 15 (0.14%) Findur
9 15 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
10 14 (0.13%) Maximo
11 12 (0.11%) iTrent
11 12 (0.11%) Temenos T24
12 10 (0.091%) Oracle Assets
12 10 (0.091%) SAP ERP
12 10 (0.091%) SAP HR
12 10 (0.091%) Siebel CRM
13 9 (0.082%) Integrated Workplace Management System
Cloud Services
1 2,006 (18.26%) AWS
2 1,923 (17.50%) Azure
3 459 (4.18%) GitHub
4 437 (3.98%) Azure DevOps
5 424 (3.86%) Power Platform
6 418 (3.80%) GCP
7 284 (2.59%) Serverless
8 279 (2.54%) GitHub Actions
9 273 (2.48%) Microsoft 365
10 271 (2.47%) Entra ID
11 231 (2.10%) Amazon S3
12 197 (1.79%) AWS Lambda
13 163 (1.48%) Amazon EC2
14 157 (1.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 150 (1.37%) PaaS
15 150 (1.37%) SaaS
16 143 (1.30%) OpenShift
17 139 (1.27%) Amazon EKS
17 139 (1.27%) OCI
18 128 (1.17%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 459 (4.18%) Firewall
2 317 (2.89%) DNS
3 238 (2.17%) Network Security
4 220 (2.00%) WAN
5 194 (1.77%) LAN
6 180 (1.64%) VPN
7 162 (1.47%) DHCP
8 136 (1.24%) BGP
9 115 (1.05%) OSPF
10 113 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
11 109 (0.99%) TCP/IP
11 109 (0.99%) VLAN
12 86 (0.78%) Wireless
13 66 (0.60%) MPLS
14 60 (0.55%) SD-WAN
15 58 (0.53%) VXLAN
16 57 (0.52%) SAN
17 52 (0.47%) IPsec
17 52 (0.47%) Structured Cabling
18 49 (0.45%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 331 (3.01%) Power BI
2 295 (2.69%) PostgreSQL
3 264 (2.40%) Data Warehouse
4 234 (2.13%) SQL Server
5 162 (1.47%) Oracle Database
6 145 (1.32%) Metadata
7 132 (1.20%) Data Lake
8 115 (1.05%) Relational Database
9 114 (1.04%) Amazon RDS
10 110 (1.00%) MongoDB
11 88 (0.80%) MySQL
12 87 (0.79%) Pentaho
13 82 (0.75%) Elasticsearch
13 82 (0.75%) Oracle Reports
14 76 (0.69%) Amazon Redshift
14 76 (0.69%) NoSQL
15 73 (0.66%) Amazon Athena
16 66 (0.60%) Tableau
17 64 (0.58%) Big Data
18 56 (0.51%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 637 (5.80%) JIRA
2 496 (4.51%) Git
3 474 (4.31%) GitLab
4 443 (4.03%) Jenkins
5 121 (1.10%) Selenium
6 87 (0.79%) JUnit
7 85 (0.77%) Postman
8 81 (0.74%) SonarQube
9 66 (0.60%) JMeter
10 59 (0.54%) Rational DOORS
11 58 (0.53%) Cucumber
12 49 (0.45%) Artifactory
13 45 (0.41%) Bitbucket
13 45 (0.41%) Mockito
14 43 (0.39%) Cypress.io
15 42 (0.38%) Maven
15 42 (0.38%) Visual Studio
16 41 (0.37%) Zephyr
17 40 (0.36%) REST Assured
18 37 (0.34%) Gatling
General
1 2,433 (22.15%) Public Sector
2 2,218 (20.19%) Social Skills
3 760 (6.92%) Analytical Skills
4 693 (6.31%) Finance
5 349 (3.18%) Military
6 299 (2.72%) Documentation Skills
7 294 (2.68%) Aerospace
8 175 (1.59%) Legal
9 137 (1.25%) Influencing Skills
10 134 (1.22%) Banking
11 119 (1.08%) Telecoms
12 99 (0.90%) Organisational Skills
13 98 (0.89%) Law
14 96 (0.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 93 (0.85%) Manufacturing
16 78 (0.71%) Presentation Skills
17 71 (0.65%) Police
18 56 (0.51%) Aviation
19 47 (0.43%) Marketing
20 40 (0.36%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,671 (15.21%) Architect
2 1,104 (10.05%) Developer
3 958 (8.72%) Senior
4 830 (7.56%) Lead
5 733 (6.67%) Analyst
6 547 (4.98%) Consultant
7 528 (4.81%) Data Engineer
8 503 (4.58%) DevOps Engineer
9 367 (3.34%) Technical Architect
10 338 (3.08%) Software Engineer
11 328 (2.99%) Solutions Architect
12 327 (2.98%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 278 (2.53%) Network Engineer
14 246 (2.24%) Business Analyst
15 240 (2.18%) Security Architect
16 223 (2.03%) Project Manager
17 216 (1.97%) Designer
18 205 (1.87%) Delivery Manager
19 202 (1.84%) AWS Engineer
19 202 (1.84%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 335 (3.05%) REST
2 252 (2.29%) Spring
3 214 (1.95%) Spring Boot
4 201 (1.83%) React
5 196 (1.78%) Kafka
6 191 (1.74%) Node.js
7 187 (1.70%) .NET
8 162 (1.47%) RESTful
9 139 (1.27%) SOAP
10 130 (1.18%) LDAP
11 126 (1.15%) AngularJS
11 126 (1.15%) JSON
12 116 (1.06%) PySpark
13 111 (1.01%) Web Services
14 109 (0.99%) OAuth
15 102 (0.93%) Middleware
16 91 (0.83%) HTML
16 91 (0.83%) Playwright
17 86 (0.78%) OpenID
18 82 (0.75%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 424 (3.86%) Cloud Native
2 356 (3.24%) Product Ownership
3 328 (2.99%) Onboarding
4 309 (2.81%) Data Centre
5 224 (2.04%) Management Information System
6 168 (1.53%) Legacy Systems
7 144 (1.31%) Distributed Systems
7 144 (1.31%) PKI
8 125 (1.14%) Enterprise Software
9 112 (1.02%) Replication
10 107 (0.97%) Security Posture
11 106 (0.96%) Self-Motivation
12 99 (0.90%) CMDB
13 96 (0.87%) Data Structures
14 92 (0.84%) Hybrid Cloud
15 88 (0.80%) Public Cloud
16 85 (0.77%) Clustering
17 80 (0.73%) Security Operations Centre
18 77 (0.70%) Virtual Team
19 73 (0.66%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 849 (7.73%) Windows
2 734 (6.68%) Linux
3 259 (2.36%) Windows Server
4 197 (1.79%) Unix
5 138 (1.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 93 (0.85%) Android
7 87 (0.79%) Windows 10
8 64 (0.58%) Apple iOS
9 53 (0.48%) Solaris
10 41 (0.37%) Mac OS
11 36 (0.33%) Ubuntu
12 30 (0.27%) AIX
12 30 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 27 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
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 2,181 (19.85%) Agile
2 1,712 (15.58%) DevOps
3 1,557 (14.17%) CI/CD
4 1,145 (10.42%) Problem-Solving
5 1,123 (10.22%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,094 (9.96%) Continuous Improvement
7 906 (8.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 854 (7.77%) Migration
9 814 (7.41%) Infrastructure as Code
10 686 (6.24%) Cybersecurity
11 679 (6.18%) Test Automation
12 654 (5.95%) Analytics
13 646 (5.88%) Containerisation
14 642 (5.84%) ITIL
15 640 (5.83%) Software Engineering
16 611 (5.56%) Roadmaps
17 592 (5.39%) Decision-Making
18 568 (5.17%) Data Modelling
19 521 (4.74%) AI
20 507 (4.61%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,218 (11.09%) Python
2 1,045 (9.51%) SQL
3 725 (6.60%) Java
4 499 (4.54%) PowerShell
5 332 (3.02%) JavaScript
6 228 (2.08%) C#
7 226 (2.06%) Bash
8 196 (1.78%) TypeScript
9 147 (1.34%) PL/SQL
10 97 (0.88%) C++
11 95 (0.86%) Shell Script
12 80 (0.73%) Bicep
13 65 (0.59%) C
14 62 (0.56%) Apex Code
15 58 (0.53%) Go
16 57 (0.52%) Ruby
17 49 (0.45%) Scala
18 47 (0.43%) Ada
19 46 (0.42%) Kotlin
20 40 (0.36%) R
Qualifications
1 8,427 (76.71%) SC Cleared
2 1,968 (17.91%) DV Cleared
3 426 (3.88%) Degree
4 334 (3.04%) BPSS Clearance
5 214 (1.95%) Cisco Certification
6 179 (1.63%) CISSP
7 143 (1.30%) Azure Certification
8 121 (1.10%) AWS Certification
9 116 (1.06%) Microsoft Certification
10 114 (1.04%) CISM
11 110 (1.00%) CCNP
12 93 (0.85%) CCNA
13 88 (0.80%) PMP
14 87 (0.79%) PMI Certification
15 75 (0.68%) ISTQB
16 66 (0.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 64 (0.58%) Computer Science Degree
18 56 (0.51%) ITIL Certification
19 40 (0.36%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 40 (0.36%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 421 (3.83%) QA
2 343 (3.12%) Data Quality
3 316 (2.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 315 (2.87%) NIST
5 240 (2.18%) NCSC
6 220 (2.00%) Accessibility
7 184 (1.67%) GDPR
8 176 (1.60%) PMO
9 121 (1.10%) SLA
10 97 (0.88%) GRC
11 68 (0.62%) JSP 440
12 52 (0.47%) WCAG
13 47 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
14 45 (0.41%) NIST 800
15 35 (0.32%) RMADS
16 33 (0.30%) Def Stans
17 28 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 25 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
19 24 (0.22%) COBIT
20 23 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 705 (6.42%) Docker
2 459 (4.18%) Active Directory
3 315 (2.87%) VMware Infrastructure
4 116 (1.06%) VMware ESXi
5 110 (1.00%) VMware NSX
6 89 (0.81%) Hyper-V
7 84 (0.76%) vSphere
8 74 (0.67%) Virtual Machines
9 39 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
10 32 (0.29%) Firmware
11 23 (0.21%) BitLocker
11 23 (0.21%) NFS
12 22 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
13 21 (0.19%) vCloud
14 19 (0.17%) Postfix
15 18 (0.16%) Squid
16 14 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 9 (0.082%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.055%) Corosync
18 6 (0.055%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 905 (8.24%) Terraform
2 884 (8.05%) Kubernetes
3 379 (3.45%) Ansible
4 272 (2.48%) Grafana
5 227 (2.07%) Prometheus
6 110 (1.00%) vCenter Server
7 93 (0.85%) Single Sign-On
8 81 (0.74%) SCCM
9 61 (0.56%) Microsoft Intune
10 54 (0.49%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 54 (0.49%) Argo
11 50 (0.46%) FortiGate
12 45 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
13 41 (0.37%) Puppet
14 39 (0.35%) SCOM
15 36 (0.33%) Podman
16 27 (0.25%) Progress Chef
17 26 (0.24%) Nagios
17 26 (0.24%) Red Hat Satellite
18 25 (0.23%) vRealize
Vendors
1 1,128 (10.27%) Microsoft
2 775 (7.05%) Oracle
3 506 (4.61%) VMware
4 457 (4.16%) ServiceNow
5 347 (3.16%) SAP
6 329 (2.99%) Cisco
7 223 (2.03%) Splunk
8 197 (1.79%) Databricks
9 187 (1.70%) Salesforce
10 177 (1.61%) Google
11 171 (1.56%) Red Hat
12 147 (1.34%) Talend
13 126 (1.15%) IBM
14 125 (1.14%) Informatica
15 115 (1.05%) Palo Alto
16 97 (0.88%) Juniper
17 92 (0.84%) Fortinet
18 89 (0.81%) F5
19 88 (0.80%) Dynatrace
20 86 (0.78%) Denodo