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

6 months to
5 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,840 6,132 6,742
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.77% 18.58% 17.74%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.71% 58.53% 60.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,213 3,938 4,270
10th Percentile £400 £327 £350
25th Percentile £463 £438 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.42% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £722 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £540 £537 £550
% change year-on-year +0.56% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 860 634 392
10th Percentile £19.99 £18.51 £20.12
25th Percentile £29.86 £18.87 £30.00
Median hourly rate £63.31 £25.15 £59.75
Median % change year-on-year +151.72% -57.91% -0.42%
75th Percentile £76.00 £33.75 £71.25
90th Percentile £91.31 £68.75 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.55 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +156.64% -58.08% +2.41%

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 17,233 10,477 11,146
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.68% 31.74% 29.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,440 6,541 6,755
10th Percentile £350 £283 £310
25th Percentile £447 £413 £423
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £634 £625 £634
90th Percentile £713 £703 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £523
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.31% -2.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,425 888 612
10th Percentile £16.63 £17.82 £18.00
25th Percentile £25.50 £18.87 £25.36
Median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +78.93% -47.05% -11.35%
75th Percentile £71.43 £42.00 £68.00
90th Percentile £88.75 £69.99 £75.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -49.70% -3.66%

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 5 October 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 5 October 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 5 October 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 10,196 £550 +2.33% 5,771
UK excluding London +1 6,591 £540 +0.56% 4,179
London +6 3,641 £550 +2.33% 1,698
Work from Home +2 3,131 £530 -1.40% 3,124
South East +1 2,246 £565 +7.62% 1,126
South West 0 1,377 £550 - 866
North of England +2 1,308 £515 -1.90% 800
Midlands 0 915 £481 -6.92% 447
North West +1 793 £530 -3.64% 452
West Midlands 0 772 £475 -8.43% 279
East of England 0 435 £551 +0.18% 462
Scotland +11 301 £488 -1.02% 335
Yorkshire +1 294 £492 - 143
North East 0 241 £466 -13.26% 207
East Midlands 0 135 £500 +9.59% 167
Wales +3 103 £550 +4.76% 123
Northern Ireland +2 37 £650 +21.50% 60

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
1 394 (3.33%) Confluence
2 259 (2.19%) SharePoint
3 146 (1.23%) SAS
4 122 (1.03%) Microsoft Exchange
5 106 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
6 105 (0.89%) Apache Spark
7 103 (0.87%) Apache
8 40 (0.34%) Jupyter
9 39 (0.33%) WebLogic
10 37 (0.31%) nginx
11 34 (0.29%) CMS
12 24 (0.20%) IIS
13 23 (0.19%) Tomcat
14 22 (0.19%) Skype for Business
15 19 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
16 17 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 16 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
18 13 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
19 11 (0.093%) JBoss
19 11 (0.093%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 210 (1.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 156 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 105 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 97 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 41 (0.35%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.19%) AutoCAD
8 20 (0.17%) Windchill
9 19 (0.16%) Revit
10 18 (0.15%) SOLIDWORKS
11 9 (0.076%) Adobe XD
11 9 (0.076%) Chatbot
11 9 (0.076%) Simulink
12 7 (0.059%) Sketch
13 6 (0.051%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 4 (0.034%) OrCAD
14 4 (0.034%) Trello
15 2 (0.017%) Gliffy
15 2 (0.017%) Houdini
15 2 (0.017%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 152 (1.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 80 (0.68%) Remedy ITSM
3 60 (0.51%) Oracle ERP
4 49 (0.41%) Oracle EBS
5 39 (0.33%) Teamcenter
6 32 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 31 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
8 27 (0.23%) Oracle Payroll
9 26 (0.22%) SAP PSCD
10 24 (0.20%) SAP GRC
11 23 (0.19%) SAP FI
12 18 (0.15%) Primavera
12 18 (0.15%) SAP HR
13 17 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
14 15 (0.13%) SAP CO
15 14 (0.12%) Oracle General Ledger
15 14 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
15 14 (0.12%) SAP Payroll
16 13 (0.11%) Maximo
16 13 (0.11%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 2,129 (17.98%) Azure
2 2,079 (17.56%) AWS
3 524 (4.43%) GitHub
4 508 (4.29%) Azure DevOps
5 485 (4.10%) Power Platform
6 465 (3.93%) GCP
7 364 (3.07%) GitHub Actions
8 335 (2.83%) Microsoft 365
9 326 (2.75%) Entra ID
10 273 (2.31%) Serverless
11 240 (2.03%) Amazon S3
12 201 (1.70%) AWS Lambda
13 177 (1.49%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 174 (1.47%) Amazon EKS
15 173 (1.46%) OCI
16 161 (1.36%) SaaS
17 149 (1.26%) Amazon EC2
18 145 (1.22%) OpenShift
19 133 (1.12%) AWS CloudFormation
20 112 (0.95%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 445 (3.76%) Firewall
2 375 (3.17%) DNS
3 241 (2.04%) Network Security
4 203 (1.71%) WAN
5 192 (1.62%) VPN
6 183 (1.55%) DHCP
7 157 (1.33%) LAN
8 138 (1.17%) TCP/IP
9 127 (1.07%) BGP
10 115 (0.97%) Wi-Fi
11 95 (0.80%) VLAN
12 89 (0.75%) Wireless
13 85 (0.72%) OSPF
14 68 (0.57%) SAN
14 68 (0.57%) SSL
15 66 (0.56%) MPLS
16 63 (0.53%) VSAN
17 59 (0.50%) IPsec
18 54 (0.46%) SD-WAN
19 50 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 341 (2.88%) Power BI
2 307 (2.59%) PostgreSQL
3 280 (2.36%) SQL Server
4 254 (2.15%) Data Warehouse
5 208 (1.76%) Metadata
6 183 (1.55%) Oracle Database
7 146 (1.23%) Data Lake
8 140 (1.18%) Relational Database
9 137 (1.16%) MongoDB
10 113 (0.95%) Amazon RDS
11 110 (0.93%) MySQL
12 95 (0.80%) NoSQL
13 84 (0.71%) Oracle Reports
14 69 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
15 68 (0.57%) Pentaho
16 64 (0.54%) Amazon Athena
17 60 (0.51%) Big Data
18 54 (0.46%) Amazon Aurora
19 52 (0.44%) DynamoDB
20 48 (0.41%) Redis
Development Applications
1 639 (5.40%) JIRA
2 581 (4.91%) Git
3 524 (4.43%) GitLab
4 503 (4.25%) Jenkins
5 154 (1.30%) Selenium
6 91 (0.77%) Postman
7 81 (0.68%) Maven
8 78 (0.66%) JMeter
9 76 (0.64%) Cucumber
9 76 (0.64%) JUnit
9 76 (0.64%) SonarQube
10 55 (0.46%) Cypress.io
11 52 (0.44%) Gradle
12 47 (0.40%) REST Assured
13 45 (0.38%) Mockito
14 44 (0.37%) Gatling
15 40 (0.34%) Visual Studio
16 39 (0.33%) Artifactory
17 36 (0.30%) Zephyr
18 33 (0.28%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,674 (22.58%) Social Skills
2 2,442 (20.63%) Public Sector
3 957 (8.08%) Analytical Skills
4 766 (6.47%) Finance
5 428 (3.61%) Military
6 351 (2.96%) Aerospace
7 308 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
8 236 (1.99%) Influencing Skills
9 200 (1.69%) Organisational Skills
10 175 (1.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 174 (1.47%) Manufacturing
12 165 (1.39%) Legal
13 162 (1.37%) Telecoms
14 140 (1.18%) Banking
15 122 (1.03%) Police
16 120 (1.01%) Law
17 73 (0.62%) Presentation Skills
18 56 (0.47%) Local Government
19 55 (0.46%) Aviation
20 42 (0.35%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,916 (16.18%) Architect
2 1,215 (10.26%) Developer
3 1,143 (9.65%) Senior
4 1,050 (8.87%) Lead
5 697 (5.89%) Consultant
6 666 (5.63%) Analyst
7 506 (4.27%) DevOps Engineer
8 465 (3.93%) Data Engineer
9 410 (3.46%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 372 (3.14%) Solutions Architect
11 352 (2.97%) Technical Architect
12 305 (2.58%) Data Architect
13 289 (2.44%) Security Architect
14 257 (2.17%) Software Engineer
15 246 (2.08%) Network Engineer
16 227 (1.92%) Administrator
17 219 (1.85%) Java Developer
18 206 (1.74%) Designer
19 202 (1.71%) Cloud Engineer
20 199 (1.68%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 998 (8.43%) Terraform
2 475 (4.01%) REST
3 268 (2.26%) Kafka
4 251 (2.12%) Spring
5 232 (1.96%) Spring Boot
6 214 (1.81%) RESTful
7 198 (1.67%) .NET
8 189 (1.60%) React
9 182 (1.54%) SOAP
10 174 (1.47%) Node.js
11 157 (1.33%) JSON
12 144 (1.22%) OAuth
13 140 (1.18%) HTML
14 138 (1.17%) XML
15 130 (1.10%) Middleware
16 113 (0.95%) Web Services
17 111 (0.94%) Oracle Fusion
18 109 (0.92%) AngularJS
19 104 (0.88%) CSS
20 97 (0.82%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 542 (4.58%) Cloud Native
2 479 (4.05%) Onboarding
3 378 (3.19%) Product Ownership
4 306 (2.58%) Data Centre
5 272 (2.30%) Management Information System
6 187 (1.58%) Legacy Systems
7 183 (1.55%) Enterprise Software
8 180 (1.52%) PKI
9 169 (1.43%) CMDB
10 133 (1.12%) Distributed Systems
11 128 (1.08%) Hybrid Cloud
12 123 (1.04%) Cyber Threat
12 123 (1.04%) Replication
13 119 (1.01%) Operational Technology
14 107 (0.90%) Self-Motivation
15 100 (0.84%) Data Structures
15 100 (0.84%) Security Operations Centre
16 98 (0.83%) Security Posture
17 87 (0.73%) Clustering
17 87 (0.73%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 986 (8.33%) Windows
2 786 (6.64%) Linux
3 368 (3.11%) Windows Server
4 226 (1.91%) Unix
5 153 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 144 (1.22%) Windows 10
7 82 (0.69%) Solaris
8 76 (0.64%) Android
9 47 (0.40%) Mac OS
10 44 (0.37%) Apple iOS
10 44 (0.37%) CentOS
11 41 (0.35%) Ubuntu
12 37 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
13 29 (0.24%) AIX
14 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
15 24 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
16 22 (0.19%) VMS
17 19 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
18 17 (0.14%) Rocky
19 11 (0.093%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,507 (21.17%) Agile
2 1,808 (15.27%) CI/CD
3 1,793 (15.14%) DevOps
4 1,692 (14.29%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,463 (12.36%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,273 (10.75%) Problem-Solving
7 1,208 (10.20%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,027 (8.67%) Infrastructure as Code
9 944 (7.97%) Migration
10 879 (7.42%) Cybersecurity
11 786 (6.64%) ITIL
12 782 (6.60%) Test Automation
13 764 (6.45%) Containerisation
14 760 (6.42%) Decision-Making
15 758 (6.40%) Technical Leadership
16 757 (6.39%) AI
17 739 (6.24%) Roadmaps
18 705 (5.95%) Analytics
19 680 (5.74%) Software Engineering
20 630 (5.32%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,371 (11.58%) Python
2 1,103 (9.32%) SQL
3 787 (6.65%) Java
4 596 (5.03%) PowerShell
5 416 (3.51%) JavaScript
6 368 (3.11%) Bash
7 223 (1.88%) C#
7 223 (1.88%) TypeScript
8 149 (1.26%) PL/SQL
9 122 (1.03%) Bicep
10 79 (0.67%) Shell Script
11 63 (0.53%) Go
12 60 (0.51%) Scala
13 59 (0.50%) C++
14 50 (0.42%) C
14 50 (0.42%) Groovy
15 48 (0.41%) Kotlin
16 40 (0.34%) T-SQL
17 38 (0.32%) Apex Code
18 35 (0.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 9,012 (76.11%) SC Cleared
2 2,237 (18.89%) DV Cleared
3 557 (4.70%) BPSS Clearance
4 490 (4.14%) Degree
5 224 (1.89%) CISSP
6 184 (1.55%) Cisco Certification
7 182 (1.54%) Azure Certification
8 167 (1.41%) Microsoft Certification
9 160 (1.35%) AWS Certification
10 141 (1.19%) CISM
11 107 (0.90%) PMI Certification
12 98 (0.83%) PMP
13 96 (0.81%) ISTQB
14 85 (0.72%) CCNP
15 73 (0.62%) Computer Science Degree
16 68 (0.57%) CCNA
17 58 (0.49%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 54 (0.46%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 50 (0.42%) DBS Check
20 42 (0.35%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 536 (4.53%) QA
2 397 (3.35%) Data Quality
3 340 (2.87%) NIST
4 329 (2.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 315 (2.66%) NCSC
6 289 (2.44%) Accessibility
7 220 (1.86%) PMO
8 187 (1.58%) SLA
9 180 (1.52%) GDPR
10 170 (1.44%) GRC
11 86 (0.73%) WCAG
12 55 (0.46%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
14 42 (0.35%) NIST 800
15 37 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
16 36 (0.30%) Def Stans
17 31 (0.26%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 22 (0.19%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 21 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 21 (0.18%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 832 (7.03%) Docker
2 636 (5.37%) Active Directory
3 437 (3.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 142 (1.20%) VMware ESXi
5 137 (1.16%) VMware NSX
6 136 (1.15%) Hyper-V
7 133 (1.12%) vSphere
8 92 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
9 45 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
10 39 (0.33%) Firmware
11 37 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
12 24 (0.20%) BitLocker
12 24 (0.20%) vCloud
13 22 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
14 18 (0.15%) NFS
15 13 (0.11%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 11 (0.093%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 11 (0.093%) Squid
17 10 (0.084%) KVM
18 7 (0.059%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 1,022 (8.63%) Kubernetes
2 448 (3.78%) Ansible
3 272 (2.30%) Grafana
4 206 (1.74%) Prometheus
5 135 (1.14%) SCCM
6 128 (1.08%) vCenter Server
7 97 (0.82%) SCOM
8 92 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
9 66 (0.56%) Argo
9 66 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
10 47 (0.40%) Kibana
11 42 (0.35%) Puppet
12 41 (0.35%) Oracle RMAN
13 38 (0.32%) Data Guard
14 34 (0.29%) NetBackup
15 33 (0.28%) Istio
16 31 (0.26%) VxRail
17 29 (0.24%) Control-M
18 24 (0.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
18 24 (0.20%) Nagios
Vendors
1 1,578 (13.33%) Microsoft
2 948 (8.01%) Oracle
3 588 (4.97%) VMware
4 530 (4.48%) ServiceNow
5 439 (3.71%) SAP
6 282 (2.38%) Cisco
7 276 (2.33%) Google
8 222 (1.88%) Splunk
9 186 (1.57%) Databricks
10 151 (1.28%) Salesforce
11 136 (1.15%) Red Hat
12 129 (1.09%) Palo Alto
13 115 (0.97%) Informatica
14 102 (0.86%) Dynatrace
15 100 (0.84%) IBM
16 99 (0.84%) CyberArk
17 95 (0.80%) Talend
18 92 (0.78%) Remedy
19 77 (0.65%) SolarWinds
20 74 (0.63%) Citrix