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

6 months to
20 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,557 5,900 7,231
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.60% 17.97% 18.65%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.99% 57.30% 62.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,101 3,743 4,800
10th Percentile £383 £343 £350
25th Percentile £456 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £534 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.75% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £638 £623 £640
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £531 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -1.19% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 810 563 479
10th Percentile £19.33 £18.51 £15.22
25th Percentile £28.13 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £63.50 £25.15 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +152.49% -56.26% -4.17%
75th Percentile £78.75 £47.81 £72.33
90th Percentile £88.00 £73.75 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.09 £25.15 £58.49
% change year-on-year +154.83% -57.00% +1.72%

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 16,752 10,297 11,620
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.31% 31.36% 29.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,227 6,345 7,361
10th Percentile £350 £288 £313
25th Percentile £433 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £528
Median % change year-on-year +0.48% -1.04% -4.00%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £638
90th Percentile £716 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £515 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,249 827 815
10th Percentile £17.70 £17.97 £14.65
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.38 £21.25
Median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -21.82%
75th Percentile £72.54 £53.81 £65.50
90th Percentile £87.32 £73.75 £76.69
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.77 £25.15 £47.50
% change year-on-year +93.90% -47.05% -6.40%

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 20 August 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 20 August 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 20 August 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 10,013 £538 +0.09% 2,198
UK excluding London +1 6,511 £531 -1.19% 1,741
London +7 3,540 £550 +3.77% 657
Work from Home +2 3,071 £525 -2.23% 946
South East +1 2,417 £560 +4.19% 559
South West 0 1,359 £540 -2.91% 443
North of England +3 1,188 £510 +2.00% 314
Midlands 0 918 £469 -8.47% 163
West Midlands +1 791 £469 -8.74% 122
North West +3 669 £525 -0.94% 184
East of England 0 332 £550 - 182
Yorkshire 0 303 £492 - 67
Scotland +12 264 £490 +3.16% 76
North East 0 240 £475 -3.80% 68
East Midlands -2 116 £438 -10.15% 41
Wales +5 103 £550 +15.79% 30
Northern Ireland +4 33 £650 +25.00% 12

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
1 405 (3.50%) Confluence
2 280 (2.42%) SharePoint
3 183 (1.58%) SAS
4 123 (1.06%) Microsoft Exchange
5 99 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
5 99 (0.86%) Apache Spark
6 95 (0.82%) Apache
7 37 (0.32%) Jupyter
8 36 (0.31%) nginx
9 29 (0.25%) WebLogic
10 24 (0.21%) IIS
11 23 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
11 23 (0.20%) Tomcat
12 21 (0.18%) Skype for Business
13 18 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
14 17 (0.15%) CMS
14 17 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
15 15 (0.13%) NetWeaver
16 13 (0.11%) JBoss
17 11 (0.095%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 205 (1.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 159 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
3 103 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 90 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.37%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.14%) AutoCAD
7 16 (0.14%) Revit
8 15 (0.13%) Simulink
8 15 (0.13%) SOLIDWORKS
9 8 (0.069%) Adobe XD
9 8 (0.069%) Chatbot
9 8 (0.069%) Windchill
10 7 (0.061%) Notepad++
10 7 (0.061%) Sketch
11 5 (0.043%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 3 (0.026%) Trello
13 2 (0.017%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.017%) Houdini
13 2 (0.017%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 144 (1.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 78 (0.67%) Remedy ITSM
3 51 (0.44%) Oracle ERP
4 40 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
5 33 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 31 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
6 31 (0.27%) Teamcenter
7 22 (0.19%) Oracle Payroll
7 22 (0.19%) SAP GRC
7 22 (0.19%) SAP PSCD
8 21 (0.18%) Primavera
9 17 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
10 14 (0.12%) SAP FI
10 14 (0.12%) SAP HR
11 13 (0.11%) Findur
12 12 (0.10%) iTrent
12 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
12 12 (0.10%) Temenos T24
13 11 (0.095%) NetSuite
14 10 (0.087%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,154 (18.64%) Azure
2 2,043 (17.68%) AWS
3 544 (4.71%) Azure DevOps
4 541 (4.68%) GitHub
5 479 (4.14%) Power Platform
6 456 (3.95%) GCP
7 344 (2.98%) GitHub Actions
8 318 (2.75%) Microsoft 365
9 306 (2.65%) Entra ID
10 279 (2.41%) Serverless
11 228 (1.97%) Amazon S3
12 194 (1.68%) AWS Lambda
13 174 (1.51%) OCI
14 172 (1.49%) SaaS
15 164 (1.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 159 (1.38%) Amazon EKS
17 145 (1.25%) Amazon EC2
18 142 (1.23%) PaaS
19 134 (1.16%) OpenShift
20 131 (1.13%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 481 (4.16%) Firewall
2 381 (3.30%) DNS
3 229 (1.98%) WAN
4 227 (1.96%) Network Security
5 207 (1.79%) VPN
6 192 (1.66%) DHCP
6 192 (1.66%) LAN
7 143 (1.24%) TCP/IP
8 137 (1.19%) BGP
9 125 (1.08%) Wi-Fi
10 108 (0.93%) VLAN
11 101 (0.87%) OSPF
12 86 (0.74%) Wireless
13 71 (0.61%) VSAN
14 67 (0.58%) MPLS
15 62 (0.54%) SSL
16 61 (0.53%) IPsec
16 61 (0.53%) SAN
16 61 (0.53%) SD-WAN
17 50 (0.43%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 351 (3.04%) Power BI
2 310 (2.68%) PostgreSQL
3 301 (2.60%) SQL Server
4 279 (2.41%) Data Warehouse
5 166 (1.44%) Oracle Database
6 160 (1.38%) Metadata
7 142 (1.23%) Data Lake
8 134 (1.16%) Relational Database
9 120 (1.04%) MongoDB
10 111 (0.96%) Amazon RDS
11 105 (0.91%) MySQL
12 104 (0.90%) Oracle Reports
13 92 (0.80%) NoSQL
14 84 (0.73%) Pentaho
15 70 (0.61%) Amazon Athena
16 69 (0.60%) Amazon Redshift
17 62 (0.54%) Elasticsearch
18 57 (0.49%) Big Data
19 55 (0.48%) Tableau
20 49 (0.42%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 654 (5.66%) JIRA
2 566 (4.90%) Git
3 498 (4.31%) GitLab
4 484 (4.19%) Jenkins
5 131 (1.13%) Selenium
6 89 (0.77%) Postman
7 81 (0.70%) SonarQube
8 71 (0.61%) JMeter
9 68 (0.59%) JUnit
10 67 (0.58%) Maven
11 54 (0.47%) Rational DOORS
12 53 (0.46%) Cucumber
13 52 (0.45%) Visual Studio
14 50 (0.43%) Cypress.io
15 48 (0.42%) Zephyr
16 46 (0.40%) Bitbucket
16 46 (0.40%) Mockito
17 43 (0.37%) Gradle
18 40 (0.35%) Gatling
19 39 (0.34%) Artifactory
General
1 2,448 (21.18%) Social Skills
2 2,404 (20.80%) Public Sector
3 894 (7.74%) Analytical Skills
4 781 (6.76%) Finance
5 353 (3.05%) Military
6 310 (2.68%) Aerospace
7 302 (2.61%) Documentation Skills
8 193 (1.67%) Influencing Skills
9 166 (1.44%) Legal
10 161 (1.39%) Telecoms
11 160 (1.38%) Organisational Skills
12 144 (1.25%) Banking
13 138 (1.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 119 (1.03%) Manufacturing
15 112 (0.97%) Police
16 110 (0.95%) Law
17 68 (0.59%) Presentation Skills
18 47 (0.41%) Aviation
19 45 (0.39%) Marketing
19 45 (0.39%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,836 (15.89%) Architect
2 1,267 (10.96%) Developer
3 1,109 (9.60%) Senior
4 1,020 (8.83%) Lead
5 677 (5.86%) Consultant
6 635 (5.49%) Analyst
7 505 (4.37%) Data Engineer
8 483 (4.18%) DevOps Engineer
9 426 (3.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 369 (3.19%) Technical Architect
11 352 (3.05%) Solutions Architect
12 312 (2.70%) Software Engineer
13 270 (2.34%) Security Architect
14 262 (2.27%) Network Engineer
15 254 (2.20%) Data Architect
16 218 (1.89%) Java Developer
17 214 (1.85%) Administrator
18 208 (1.80%) Designer
19 207 (1.79%) Project Manager
20 206 (1.78%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 996 (8.62%) Terraform
2 439 (3.80%) REST
3 248 (2.15%) Spring
4 243 (2.10%) .NET
5 234 (2.02%) Kafka
6 221 (1.91%) RESTful
6 221 (1.91%) Spring Boot
7 200 (1.73%) React
8 176 (1.52%) Node.js
9 175 (1.51%) SOAP
10 154 (1.33%) JSON
11 138 (1.19%) Web Services
12 132 (1.14%) AngularJS
12 132 (1.14%) OAuth
13 130 (1.12%) HTML
14 118 (1.02%) XML
15 112 (0.97%) Middleware
16 97 (0.84%) Oracle Fusion
16 97 (0.84%) Playwright
17 91 (0.79%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 503 (4.35%) Cloud Native
2 416 (3.60%) Onboarding
3 371 (3.21%) Product Ownership
4 304 (2.63%) Data Centre
5 236 (2.04%) Management Information System
6 189 (1.64%) Legacy Systems
7 169 (1.46%) PKI
8 162 (1.40%) Distributed Systems
9 154 (1.33%) Enterprise Software
10 144 (1.25%) CMDB
11 123 (1.06%) Replication
11 123 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
12 119 (1.03%) Hybrid Cloud
13 113 (0.98%) Data Structures
14 96 (0.83%) Security Operations Centre
15 95 (0.82%) Clustering
15 95 (0.82%) Cyber Threat
16 88 (0.76%) Public Cloud
17 87 (0.75%) Virtual Team
18 76 (0.66%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 968 (8.38%) Windows
2 801 (6.93%) Linux
3 340 (2.94%) Windows Server
4 223 (1.93%) Unix
5 153 (1.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 129 (1.12%) Windows 10
7 91 (0.79%) Android
8 63 (0.55%) Solaris
9 56 (0.48%) Apple iOS
10 49 (0.42%) Mac OS
11 41 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 40 (0.35%) Ubuntu
13 37 (0.32%) CentOS
14 35 (0.30%) AIX
15 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 23 (0.20%) VMS
16 23 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
17 20 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
18 15 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
19 14 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,433 (21.05%) Agile
2 1,827 (15.81%) DevOps
3 1,749 (15.13%) CI/CD
4 1,406 (12.17%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,312 (11.35%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,195 (10.34%) Problem-Solving
7 1,125 (9.73%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 963 (8.33%) Infrastructure as Code
9 924 (8.00%) Migration
10 787 (6.81%) Cybersecurity
11 762 (6.59%) ITIL
12 754 (6.52%) Test Automation
13 725 (6.27%) Analytics
14 714 (6.18%) Containerisation
15 690 (5.97%) Software Engineering
16 673 (5.82%) Roadmaps
17 661 (5.72%) Technical Leadership
18 650 (5.62%) Decision-Making
19 639 (5.53%) AI
20 619 (5.36%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,296 (11.21%) Python
2 1,136 (9.83%) SQL
3 802 (6.94%) Java
4 572 (4.95%) PowerShell
5 409 (3.54%) JavaScript
6 326 (2.82%) Bash
7 273 (2.36%) C#
8 198 (1.71%) TypeScript
9 168 (1.45%) PL/SQL
10 116 (1.00%) Bicep
11 88 (0.76%) C++
12 81 (0.70%) Shell Script
13 67 (0.58%) C
14 56 (0.48%) Apex Code
15 53 (0.46%) Kotlin
16 52 (0.45%) Ruby
16 52 (0.45%) Scala
17 47 (0.41%) Go
18 46 (0.40%) Groovy
19 37 (0.32%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8,798 (76.13%) SC Cleared
2 2,173 (18.80%) DV Cleared
3 456 (3.95%) Degree
4 448 (3.88%) BPSS Clearance
5 211 (1.83%) CISSP
6 193 (1.67%) Cisco Certification
7 170 (1.47%) Azure Certification
8 161 (1.39%) Microsoft Certification
9 140 (1.21%) CISM
10 138 (1.19%) AWS Certification
11 106 (0.92%) PMI Certification
12 104 (0.90%) PMP
13 98 (0.85%) ISTQB
14 84 (0.73%) CCNA
14 84 (0.73%) CCNP
15 70 (0.61%) Computer Science Degree
16 67 (0.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 48 (0.42%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 47 (0.41%) ITIL Certification
19 41 (0.35%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 494 (4.27%) QA
2 369 (3.19%) Data Quality
3 311 (2.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 302 (2.61%) NIST
5 274 (2.37%) NCSC
6 262 (2.27%) Accessibility
7 223 (1.93%) PMO
8 182 (1.57%) GDPR
9 152 (1.32%) GRC
10 148 (1.28%) SLA
11 79 (0.68%) WCAG
12 65 (0.56%) JSP 440
13 47 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
14 42 (0.36%) NIST 800
15 33 (0.29%) Def Stans
16 30 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 30 (0.26%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 28 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
18 24 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
19 22 (0.19%) RMADS
System Software
1 800 (6.92%) Docker
2 553 (4.78%) Active Directory
3 414 (3.58%) VMware Infrastructure
4 153 (1.32%) VMware NSX
5 138 (1.19%) VMware ESXi
6 125 (1.08%) vSphere
7 120 (1.04%) Hyper-V
8 83 (0.72%) Virtual Machines
9 44 (0.38%) Oracle RAC
10 41 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
11 33 (0.29%) Firmware
12 26 (0.22%) BitLocker
13 25 (0.22%) vCloud
14 16 (0.14%) NFS
15 15 (0.13%) Squid
16 14 (0.12%) Postfix
17 12 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
18 8 (0.069%) KVM
18 8 (0.069%) Microsoft App-V
19 7 (0.061%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 981 (8.49%) Kubernetes
2 450 (3.89%) Ansible
3 268 (2.32%) Grafana
4 210 (1.82%) Prometheus
5 135 (1.17%) vCenter Server
6 129 (1.12%) SCCM
7 89 (0.77%) Microsoft Intune
8 75 (0.65%) SCOM
9 68 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
10 67 (0.58%) Argo
11 53 (0.46%) Oracle RMAN
12 52 (0.45%) Puppet
13 40 (0.35%) Data Guard
14 34 (0.29%) Progress Chef
15 32 (0.28%) Istio
16 30 (0.26%) FortiGate
16 30 (0.26%) Nagios
17 28 (0.24%) WSUS
18 27 (0.23%) Control-M
19 26 (0.22%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,458 (12.62%) Microsoft
2 939 (8.12%) Oracle
3 593 (5.13%) VMware
4 532 (4.60%) ServiceNow
5 440 (3.81%) SAP
6 301 (2.60%) Cisco
7 240 (2.08%) Google
8 208 (1.80%) Databricks
8 208 (1.80%) Splunk
9 186 (1.61%) Salesforce
10 151 (1.31%) Red Hat
11 126 (1.09%) IBM
12 119 (1.03%) Informatica
12 119 (1.03%) Palo Alto
12 119 (1.03%) Talend
13 97 (0.84%) Dynatrace
14 87 (0.75%) Remedy
15 83 (0.72%) F5
15 83 (0.72%) SolarWinds
16 82 (0.71%) Denodo