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

6 months to
24 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,460 5,261 8,105
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.51% 17.81% 18.57%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.07% 57.87% 60.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,153 3,503 5,297
10th Percentile £369 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £694 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £520 £545 £550
% change year-on-year -4.59% -0.91% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 841 289 527
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £21.46 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £51.50 £55.08
Median % change year-on-year +6.80% -6.49% -10.45%
75th Percentile £73.00 £67.25 £70.39
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.67 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £57.50 £57.09
% change year-on-year -4.35% +0.73% -1.17%

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 15,143 9,091 13,401
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.59% 30.78% 30.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,080 5,749 8,271
10th Percentile £350 £295 £300
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £534
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -1.59% -3.00%
75th Percentile £620 £625 £646
90th Percentile £725 £708 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £501 £525
% change year-on-year -0.20% -4.57% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,096 512 1,063
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.22 £13.85
25th Percentile £21.25 £22.27 £17.80
Median hourly rate £46.13 £41.38 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +11.49% +3.44% -25.93%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.25 £79.87 £75.19
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.46 £45.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +1.02% +12.50% -20.00%

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 24 April 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 24 April 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 24 April 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 9,076 £525 -2.33% 1,538
UK excluding London +1 5,775 £520 -4.59% 1,292
London +6 3,212 £525 - 399
Work from Home +3 2,787 £525 - 715
South East +1 2,155 £535 -2.73% 447
South West 0 1,327 £538 -3.62% 279
Midlands +3 870 £483 -8.00% 154
North of England -1 843 £488 -2.50% 247
West Midlands +3 728 £485 -7.97% 120
North West -2 505 £500 - 136
East of England +2 376 £500 +7.67% 138
Yorkshire -6 209 £488 -7.14% 45
Scotland +38 202 £500 +8.11% 30
North East +1 160 £450 -10.00% 68
East Midlands -4 136 £450 -7.69% 34
Wales +3 75 £515 -4.59% 23
Northern Ireland +3 17 £475 - 14

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
1 390 (3.73%) Confluence
2 213 (2.04%) SharePoint
3 139 (1.33%) Microsoft Exchange
4 122 (1.17%) SAS
5 109 (1.04%) Apache Spark
6 85 (0.81%) Apache
7 72 (0.69%) Apache Airflow
8 50 (0.48%) nginx
9 40 (0.38%) WebLogic
10 24 (0.23%) Jupyter
11 18 (0.17%) Tomcat
12 15 (0.14%) CMS
12 15 (0.14%) IIS
12 15 (0.14%) Skype for Business
12 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
13 14 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
14 12 (0.11%) Oracle Application Server
15 11 (0.11%) ArcGIS
15 11 (0.11%) NetWeaver
15 11 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 223 (2.13%) Microsoft Office
2 190 (1.82%) Microsoft Excel
3 122 (1.17%) Microsoft Project
4 80 (0.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (0.42%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.15%) Simulink
8 7 (0.067%) Notepad++
9 6 (0.057%) AutoCAD
10 5 (0.048%) SOLIDWORKS
10 5 (0.048%) Windchill
11 4 (0.038%) Revit
11 4 (0.038%) Siemens NX
11 4 (0.038%) Sketch
12 3 (0.029%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.019%) Chatbot
13 2 (0.019%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.019%) InVision
13 2 (0.019%) Lectora
13 2 (0.019%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 101 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
2 46 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
3 45 (0.43%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 30 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
5 27 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
6 26 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 21 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
8 18 (0.17%) Maximo
9 16 (0.15%) SAP PP
10 13 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
10 13 (0.12%) Temenos T24
11 12 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
12 11 (0.11%) Findur
12 11 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
13 10 (0.096%) SAP HCM
14 9 (0.086%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 9 (0.086%) SAP HR
14 9 (0.086%) SAP PM
15 8 (0.076%) iTrent
15 8 (0.076%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 1,832 (17.51%) AWS
2 1,794 (17.15%) Azure
3 452 (4.32%) GitHub
4 432 (4.13%) GCP
5 415 (3.97%) Azure DevOps
6 370 (3.54%) Power Platform
7 295 (2.82%) Serverless
8 271 (2.59%) Microsoft 365
9 250 (2.39%) GitHub Actions
10 241 (2.30%) Entra ID
11 224 (2.14%) Amazon S3
12 197 (1.88%) AWS Lambda
13 156 (1.49%) PaaS
14 154 (1.47%) AWS CloudFormation
15 139 (1.33%) OpenShift
16 138 (1.32%) Amazon EC2
17 135 (1.29%) Amazon EKS
18 134 (1.28%) IaaS
19 132 (1.26%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 124 (1.19%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 463 (4.43%) Firewall
2 290 (2.77%) DNS
3 233 (2.23%) Network Security
4 225 (2.15%) WAN
5 205 (1.96%) LAN
6 174 (1.66%) VPN
7 143 (1.37%) DHCP
8 140 (1.34%) BGP
9 122 (1.17%) TCP/IP
10 121 (1.16%) OSPF
11 96 (0.92%) VLAN
12 81 (0.77%) Wireless
13 74 (0.71%) Wi-Fi
14 65 (0.62%) MPLS
15 57 (0.54%) SAN
16 52 (0.50%) SSL
17 51 (0.49%) SD-WAN
18 48 (0.46%) IPsec
19 47 (0.45%) VXLAN
20 45 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 283 (2.71%) Power BI
2 268 (2.56%) PostgreSQL
3 228 (2.18%) Data Warehouse
4 195 (1.86%) SQL Server
5 145 (1.39%) Metadata
6 119 (1.14%) Oracle Database
7 111 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
8 107 (1.02%) NoSQL
9 105 (1.00%) MongoDB
10 99 (0.95%) Relational Database
11 95 (0.91%) Data Lake
12 82 (0.78%) MySQL
13 77 (0.74%) Big Data
13 77 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
14 76 (0.73%) Pentaho
15 73 (0.70%) Tableau
16 72 (0.69%) Azure SQL Database
17 66 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
17 66 (0.63%) Oracle Reports
18 57 (0.54%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 623 (5.96%) JIRA
2 500 (4.78%) Git
3 382 (3.65%) Jenkins
4 362 (3.46%) GitLab
5 101 (0.97%) Selenium
6 88 (0.84%) Postman
7 72 (0.69%) JUnit
8 68 (0.65%) SonarQube
9 51 (0.49%) Bitbucket
10 50 (0.48%) Rational DOORS
11 47 (0.45%) Artifactory
12 44 (0.42%) JMeter
13 41 (0.39%) Maven
13 41 (0.39%) Oracle APEX
14 40 (0.38%) Cucumber
15 37 (0.35%) Mockito
16 36 (0.34%) Cypress.io
17 35 (0.33%) Visual Studio
18 30 (0.29%) Zephyr
19 26 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 2,410 (23.04%) Public Sector
2 2,268 (21.68%) Social Skills
3 818 (7.82%) Analytical Skills
4 698 (6.67%) Finance
5 349 (3.34%) Military
6 283 (2.71%) Documentation Skills
7 241 (2.30%) Aerospace
8 163 (1.56%) Legal
9 152 (1.45%) Telecoms
10 147 (1.41%) Manufacturing
11 134 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
12 119 (1.14%) Banking
13 113 (1.08%) Organisational Skills
14 98 (0.94%) Presentation Skills
15 82 (0.78%) Law
16 80 (0.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 77 (0.74%) Marketing
18 72 (0.69%) Electronics
19 61 (0.58%) Police
20 34 (0.33%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,600 (15.30%) Architect
2 1,051 (10.05%) Developer
3 921 (8.80%) Senior
4 751 (7.18%) Analyst
5 707 (6.76%) Lead
6 545 (5.21%) Consultant
7 472 (4.51%) Data Engineer
8 471 (4.50%) DevOps Engineer
9 319 (3.05%) Technical Architect
10 310 (2.96%) Software Engineer
11 287 (2.74%) Solutions Architect
12 282 (2.70%) Network Engineer
13 274 (2.62%) Business Analyst
14 241 (2.30%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 220 (2.10%) Azure Engineer
16 216 (2.07%) Project Manager
17 204 (1.95%) Security Architect
18 203 (1.94%) Designer
19 187 (1.79%) AWS Engineer
20 186 (1.78%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 355 (3.39%) REST
2 239 (2.28%) Spring
3 213 (2.04%) Kafka
4 203 (1.94%) Node.js
5 186 (1.78%) Spring Boot
6 179 (1.71%) .NET
7 178 (1.70%) React
8 162 (1.55%) JSON
9 157 (1.50%) SOAP
10 147 (1.41%) RESTful
11 145 (1.39%) LDAP
12 124 (1.19%) PySpark
13 121 (1.16%) AngularJS
14 120 (1.15%) Web Services
15 100 (0.96%) OAuth
16 99 (0.95%) HTML
16 99 (0.95%) Oracle Fusion
17 96 (0.92%) XML
18 85 (0.81%) Elastic Stack
18 85 (0.81%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 339 (3.24%) Cloud Native
1 339 (3.24%) Product Ownership
2 299 (2.86%) Data Centre
3 278 (2.66%) Onboarding
4 194 (1.85%) Management Information System
5 186 (1.78%) PKI
6 133 (1.27%) Legacy Systems
7 130 (1.24%) Security Posture
8 128 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
9 125 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
10 124 (1.19%) Replication
11 123 (1.18%) Distributed Systems
12 93 (0.89%) Public Cloud
13 81 (0.77%) Data Structures
14 80 (0.76%) Security Operations Centre
15 78 (0.75%) Clustering
16 77 (0.74%) Hybrid Cloud
17 71 (0.68%) Virtual Team
18 67 (0.64%) Greenfield Project
19 62 (0.59%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 854 (8.16%) Windows
2 745 (7.12%) Linux
3 247 (2.36%) Windows Server
4 161 (1.54%) Unix
5 128 (1.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 118 (1.13%) Android
7 106 (1.01%) Windows 10
8 67 (0.64%) Apple iOS
9 49 (0.47%) Mac OS
10 41 (0.39%) Ubuntu
11 33 (0.32%) VMS
12 31 (0.30%) Solaris
13 29 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
14 27 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
15 23 (0.22%) AIX
16 22 (0.21%) CentOS
17 15 (0.14%) Windows 7
17 15 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
18 10 (0.096%) Windows Server 2008
19 8 (0.076%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,037 (19.47%) Agile
2 1,583 (15.13%) DevOps
3 1,384 (13.23%) CI/CD
4 1,148 (10.98%) Problem-Solving
5 966 (9.24%) Stakeholder Management
6 883 (8.44%) Migration
7 881 (8.42%) Continuous Improvement
8 782 (7.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 703 (6.72%) Infrastructure as Code
10 648 (6.20%) ITIL
11 611 (5.84%) Analytics
12 597 (5.71%) Test Automation
13 590 (5.64%) Cybersecurity
14 572 (5.47%) Roadmaps
15 555 (5.31%) Containerisation
16 549 (5.25%) Software Engineering
17 503 (4.81%) Data Modelling
18 494 (4.72%) Scrum
19 475 (4.54%) Decision-Making
20 448 (4.28%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,211 (11.58%) Python
2 967 (9.24%) SQL
3 649 (6.20%) Java
4 588 (5.62%) PowerShell
5 376 (3.59%) JavaScript
6 221 (2.11%) C#
7 200 (1.91%) Bash
8 179 (1.71%) TypeScript
9 124 (1.19%) PL/SQL
10 105 (1.00%) Shell Script
11 104 (0.99%) C++
12 77 (0.74%) Go
13 70 (0.67%) Ruby
14 69 (0.66%) Scala
15 58 (0.55%) Bicep
15 58 (0.55%) C
16 50 (0.48%) Apex Code
17 49 (0.47%) R
18 44 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
19 41 (0.39%) Ada
Qualifications
1 8,001 (76.49%) SC Cleared
2 1,835 (17.54%) DV Cleared
3 468 (4.47%) Degree
4 332 (3.17%) BPSS Clearance
5 193 (1.85%) Cisco Certification
6 170 (1.63%) CISSP
7 146 (1.40%) Azure Certification
8 134 (1.28%) AWS Certification
9 119 (1.14%) CCNP
10 109 (1.04%) CISM
11 100 (0.96%) Microsoft Certification
12 79 (0.76%) Computer Science Degree
13 77 (0.74%) CCNA
13 77 (0.74%) ITIL Certification
14 72 (0.69%) PMP
15 70 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
16 68 (0.65%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 64 (0.61%) PMI Certification
18 56 (0.54%) ISTQB
19 50 (0.48%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 366 (3.50%) QA
2 319 (3.05%) Data Quality
3 291 (2.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 290 (2.77%) NIST
5 200 (1.91%) NCSC
6 173 (1.65%) Accessibility
7 168 (1.61%) GDPR
8 149 (1.42%) PMO
9 108 (1.03%) SLA
10 67 (0.64%) GRC
11 66 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 44 (0.42%) COBIT
13 43 (0.41%) NIST 800
14 40 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
15 35 (0.33%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 35 (0.33%) WCAG
16 33 (0.32%) PCI DSS
16 33 (0.32%) RMADS
17 31 (0.30%) Def Stans
18 23 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 681 (6.51%) Docker
2 474 (4.53%) Active Directory
3 286 (2.73%) VMware Infrastructure
4 96 (0.92%) VMware NSX
5 92 (0.88%) VMware ESXi
6 82 (0.78%) Hyper-V
7 77 (0.74%) vSphere
8 68 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
9 38 (0.36%) Firmware
10 33 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
11 20 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
12 19 (0.18%) BitLocker
13 17 (0.16%) NFS
13 17 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 16 (0.15%) Postfix
15 12 (0.11%) Squid
15 12 (0.11%) vCloud
16 8 (0.076%) Microsoft App-V
17 7 (0.067%) KVM
18 6 (0.057%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 873 (8.35%) Kubernetes
2 861 (8.23%) Terraform
3 342 (3.27%) Ansible
4 256 (2.45%) Grafana
5 217 (2.07%) Prometheus
6 117 (1.12%) Single Sign-On
7 98 (0.94%) vCenter Server
8 84 (0.80%) SCCM
9 68 (0.65%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 59 (0.56%) Microsoft Intune
11 58 (0.55%) Argo
11 58 (0.55%) FortiGate
12 40 (0.38%) Puppet
13 39 (0.37%) Packer
14 36 (0.34%) Podman
15 35 (0.33%) Progress Chef
16 34 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
16 34 (0.33%) vRealize
17 30 (0.29%) OPNET
18 29 (0.28%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,073 (10.26%) Microsoft
2 646 (6.18%) Oracle
3 501 (4.79%) VMware
4 421 (4.02%) ServiceNow
5 400 (3.82%) SAP
6 394 (3.77%) Cisco
7 242 (2.31%) Splunk
8 207 (1.98%) Databricks
9 173 (1.65%) Red Hat
10 169 (1.62%) Google
11 157 (1.50%) Salesforce
12 127 (1.21%) IBM
13 122 (1.17%) Atlassian
14 116 (1.11%) Talend
15 112 (1.07%) Juniper
16 111 (1.06%) Palo Alto
17 98 (0.94%) CyberArk
18 86 (0.82%) Remedy
19 85 (0.81%) Fortinet
20 82 (0.78%) Dell