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

6 months to
13 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 12,051 6,207 6,650
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.94% 18.85% 17.73%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.70% 59.15% 60.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,320 3,977 4,176
10th Percentile £400 £325 £348
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 £720 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £540 £529 £550
% change year-on-year +2.08% -3.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 884 644 381
10th Percentile £20.08 £18.51 £20.12
25th Percentile £29.07 £18.87 £30.00
Median hourly rate £64.05 £25.15 £58.38
Median % change year-on-year +154.65% -56.92% -2.71%
75th Percentile £77.50 £33.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £91.31 £70.00 £75.00
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 17,542 10,494 10,988
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.94% 31.87% 29.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,589 6,568 6,650
10th Percentile £356 £283 £310
25th Percentile £447 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.43% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £630
90th Percentile £713 £704 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £520
% change year-on-year +5.00% -3.85% -3.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,480 890 571
10th Percentile £16.50 £17.59 £18.13
25th Percentile £25.00 £18.87 £25.43
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -47.05% -11.35%
75th Percentile £72.25 £40.41 £68.00
90th Percentile £89.08 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -49.70% -3.64%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 +1 10,381 £550 +2.33% 3,877
UK excluding London +1 6,690 £540 +2.08% 2,475
London +5 3,718 £550 +0.92% 1,340
Work from Home +2 3,216 £535 -0.47% 2,081
South East +1 2,286 £572 +8.95% 730
South West 0 1,378 £550 - 520
North of England +2 1,310 £512 -1.46% 523
Midlands 0 954 £475 -8.39% 274
West Midlands 0 804 £474 -8.85% 182
North West +1 797 £525 -4.98% 293
East of England 0 450 £550 - 226
Scotland +12 303 £486 +1.51% 126
Yorkshire -1 294 £488 -0.91% 92
North East 0 237 £470 -10.48% 139
East Midlands +1 142 £500 +9.59% 91
Wales +1 110 £550 -2.22% 69
Northern Ireland +1 36 £650 +21.50% 35

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
1 403 (3.34%) Confluence
2 260 (2.16%) SharePoint
3 164 (1.36%) SAS
4 117 (0.97%) Microsoft Exchange
5 112 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
6 108 (0.90%) Apache
7 107 (0.89%) Apache Spark
8 45 (0.37%) nginx
9 41 (0.34%) CMS
10 40 (0.33%) Jupyter
10 40 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 24 (0.20%) IIS
12 23 (0.19%) Tomcat
13 22 (0.18%) Skype for Business
14 17 (0.14%) Oracle Application Server
14 17 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 15 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
16 13 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
17 11 (0.091%) JBoss
17 11 (0.091%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 218 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 152 (1.26%) Microsoft Office
3 106 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 100 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 21 (0.17%) Windchill
9 19 (0.16%) Revit
10 18 (0.15%) SOLIDWORKS
11 10 (0.083%) Simulink
12 9 (0.075%) Adobe XD
12 9 (0.075%) Chatbot
13 6 (0.050%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 6 (0.050%) Sketch
14 4 (0.033%) OrCAD
14 4 (0.033%) Trello
15 3 (0.025%) Gliffy
16 2 (0.017%) NUKE
16 2 (0.017%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 155 (1.29%) SAP S/4HANA
2 81 (0.67%) Remedy ITSM
3 60 (0.50%) Oracle ERP
4 51 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
5 45 (0.37%) Teamcenter
6 34 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
6 34 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 31 (0.26%) Oracle Payroll
8 25 (0.21%) SAP FI
8 25 (0.21%) SAP PSCD
9 24 (0.20%) SAP GRC
10 18 (0.15%) Primavera
10 18 (0.15%) SAP HR
11 17 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
12 15 (0.12%) SAP CO
12 15 (0.12%) SAP Payroll
13 14 (0.12%) Oracle General Ledger
13 14 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
14 13 (0.11%) Maximo
14 13 (0.11%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 2,178 (18.07%) Azure
2 2,116 (17.56%) AWS
3 542 (4.50%) GitHub
4 526 (4.36%) Azure DevOps
5 496 (4.12%) Power Platform
6 462 (3.83%) GCP
7 372 (3.09%) GitHub Actions
8 346 (2.87%) Entra ID
9 340 (2.82%) Microsoft 365
10 276 (2.29%) Serverless
11 240 (1.99%) Amazon S3
12 201 (1.67%) AWS Lambda
13 180 (1.49%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 177 (1.47%) OCI
15 174 (1.44%) Amazon EKS
16 164 (1.36%) SaaS
17 151 (1.25%) Amazon EC2
18 148 (1.23%) OpenShift
19 134 (1.11%) AWS CloudFormation
20 119 (0.99%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 452 (3.75%) Firewall
2 382 (3.17%) DNS
3 250 (2.07%) Network Security
4 206 (1.71%) VPN
5 199 (1.65%) WAN
6 186 (1.54%) DHCP
7 155 (1.29%) LAN
8 142 (1.18%) TCP/IP
9 123 (1.02%) BGP
10 114 (0.95%) Wi-Fi
11 92 (0.76%) VLAN
12 90 (0.75%) Wireless
13 81 (0.67%) OSPF
14 69 (0.57%) SAN
15 66 (0.55%) MPLS
15 66 (0.55%) SSL
16 61 (0.51%) VSAN
17 59 (0.49%) IPsec
18 55 (0.46%) SD-WAN
19 50 (0.41%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 350 (2.90%) Power BI
2 311 (2.58%) PostgreSQL
3 275 (2.28%) SQL Server
4 254 (2.11%) Data Warehouse
5 206 (1.71%) Metadata
6 191 (1.58%) Oracle Database
7 152 (1.26%) Data Lake
8 148 (1.23%) Relational Database
9 144 (1.19%) MongoDB
10 116 (0.96%) Amazon RDS
11 113 (0.94%) MySQL
12 96 (0.80%) NoSQL
13 81 (0.67%) Oracle Reports
14 80 (0.66%) Pentaho
15 68 (0.56%) Elasticsearch
16 62 (0.51%) Amazon Athena
17 58 (0.48%) Big Data
18 55 (0.46%) Amazon Aurora
19 52 (0.43%) SQL Server Integration Services
20 51 (0.42%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 656 (5.44%) JIRA
2 599 (4.97%) Git
3 537 (4.46%) GitLab
4 530 (4.40%) Jenkins
5 156 (1.29%) Selenium
6 93 (0.77%) Postman
7 85 (0.71%) Maven
8 81 (0.67%) Cucumber
8 81 (0.67%) JMeter
9 80 (0.66%) JUnit
10 76 (0.63%) SonarQube
11 58 (0.48%) Cypress.io
12 55 (0.46%) Gradle
13 47 (0.39%) Mockito
13 47 (0.39%) REST Assured
14 46 (0.38%) Gatling
15 41 (0.34%) Visual Studio
16 37 (0.31%) Artifactory
17 36 (0.30%) Zephyr
18 34 (0.28%) Bitbucket
General
1 2,769 (22.98%) Social Skills
2 2,517 (20.89%) Public Sector
3 1,007 (8.36%) Analytical Skills
4 797 (6.61%) Finance
5 448 (3.72%) Military
6 383 (3.18%) Aerospace
7 317 (2.63%) Documentation Skills
8 245 (2.03%) Influencing Skills
9 208 (1.73%) Organisational Skills
10 188 (1.56%) Manufacturing
11 178 (1.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 178 (1.48%) Legal
12 164 (1.36%) Telecoms
13 136 (1.13%) Banking
14 134 (1.11%) Police
15 119 (0.99%) Law
16 73 (0.61%) Presentation Skills
17 60 (0.50%) Local Government
18 58 (0.48%) Aviation
19 41 (0.34%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,954 (16.21%) Architect
2 1,229 (10.20%) Developer
3 1,169 (9.70%) Senior
4 1,047 (8.69%) Lead
5 717 (5.95%) Analyst
6 714 (5.92%) Consultant
7 506 (4.20%) DevOps Engineer
8 486 (4.03%) Data Engineer
9 414 (3.44%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 392 (3.25%) Solutions Architect
11 357 (2.96%) Technical Architect
12 310 (2.57%) Data Architect
13 297 (2.46%) Security Architect
14 247 (2.05%) Software Engineer
15 240 (1.99%) Network Engineer
16 233 (1.93%) Administrator
17 218 (1.81%) Java Developer
18 205 (1.70%) Delivery Manager
19 202 (1.68%) Designer
20 200 (1.66%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,035 (8.59%) Terraform
2 504 (4.18%) REST
3 275 (2.28%) Kafka
4 245 (2.03%) Spring
5 227 (1.88%) Spring Boot
6 222 (1.84%) RESTful
7 205 (1.70%) React
8 192 (1.59%) .NET
8 192 (1.59%) SOAP
9 175 (1.45%) Node.js
10 158 (1.31%) JSON
11 155 (1.29%) OAuth
12 144 (1.19%) HTML
13 142 (1.18%) XML
14 137 (1.14%) Middleware
15 116 (0.96%) Oracle Fusion
16 114 (0.95%) Web Services
17 110 (0.91%) AngularJS
18 107 (0.89%) CSS
19 99 (0.82%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 562 (4.66%) Cloud Native
2 489 (4.06%) Onboarding
3 393 (3.26%) Product Ownership
4 305 (2.53%) Data Centre
5 291 (2.41%) Management Information System
6 201 (1.67%) Enterprise Software
7 188 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
8 184 (1.53%) PKI
9 174 (1.44%) CMDB
10 135 (1.12%) Distributed Systems
11 134 (1.11%) Hybrid Cloud
12 130 (1.08%) Cyber Threat
13 128 (1.06%) Replication
14 122 (1.01%) Operational Technology
15 105 (0.87%) Data Structures
15 105 (0.87%) Self-Motivation
16 102 (0.85%) Security Posture
17 98 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
18 88 (0.73%) AI Agents
18 88 (0.73%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 999 (8.29%) Windows
2 794 (6.59%) Linux
3 372 (3.09%) Windows Server
4 218 (1.81%) Unix
5 152 (1.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 146 (1.21%) Windows 10
7 80 (0.66%) Solaris
8 68 (0.56%) Android
9 46 (0.38%) macOS
10 45 (0.37%) CentOS
11 42 (0.35%) Ubuntu
12 38 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
13 37 (0.31%) Apple iOS
14 28 (0.23%) AIX
15 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
15 26 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
16 23 (0.19%) VMS
17 19 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
18 18 (0.15%) Rocky
19 11 (0.091%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,557 (21.22%) Agile
2 1,871 (15.53%) CI/CD
3 1,830 (15.19%) DevOps
4 1,767 (14.66%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,515 (12.57%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,310 (10.87%) Problem-Solving
7 1,231 (10.21%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,064 (8.83%) Infrastructure as Code
9 981 (8.14%) Migration
10 908 (7.53%) Cybersecurity
11 818 (6.79%) Test Automation
12 813 (6.75%) ITIL
13 800 (6.64%) Containerisation
14 781 (6.48%) AI
14 781 (6.48%) Decision-Making
15 780 (6.47%) Roadmaps
16 770 (6.39%) Technical Leadership
17 737 (6.12%) Analytics
18 699 (5.80%) Software Engineering
19 667 (5.53%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 1,410 (11.70%) Python
2 1,131 (9.39%) SQL
3 797 (6.61%) Java
4 610 (5.06%) PowerShell
5 430 (3.57%) JavaScript
6 379 (3.14%) Bash
7 233 (1.93%) TypeScript
8 221 (1.83%) C#
9 148 (1.23%) PL/SQL
10 135 (1.12%) Bicep
11 82 (0.68%) Shell Script
12 62 (0.51%) Scala
13 58 (0.48%) Groovy
14 57 (0.47%) C++
14 57 (0.47%) Go
15 49 (0.41%) Kotlin
16 48 (0.40%) C
17 40 (0.33%) T-SQL
18 37 (0.31%) Apex Code
18 37 (0.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 9,188 (76.24%) SC Cleared
2 2,265 (18.80%) DV Cleared
3 592 (4.91%) BPSS Clearance
4 499 (4.14%) Degree
5 226 (1.88%) CISSP
6 185 (1.54%) Azure Certification
7 177 (1.47%) Cisco Certification
8 172 (1.43%) AWS Certification
9 165 (1.37%) Microsoft Certification
10 147 (1.22%) CISM
11 106 (0.88%) ISTQB
12 104 (0.86%) PMI Certification
13 93 (0.77%) PMP
14 81 (0.67%) CCNP
15 79 (0.66%) Computer Science Degree
16 65 (0.54%) CCNA
17 53 (0.44%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 53 (0.44%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 48 (0.40%) TOGAF Certification
19 45 (0.37%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 545 (4.52%) QA
2 419 (3.48%) Data Quality
3 333 (2.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 333 (2.76%) NIST
4 324 (2.69%) NCSC
5 297 (2.46%) Accessibility
6 221 (1.83%) PMO
7 195 (1.62%) GDPR
8 191 (1.58%) SLA
9 172 (1.43%) GRC
10 89 (0.74%) WCAG
11 53 (0.44%) JSP 440
12 50 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
13 44 (0.37%) Actionable Recommendations
14 40 (0.33%) NIST 800
15 37 (0.31%) Def Stans
16 36 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 23 (0.19%) ISO 9001
18 22 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 22 (0.18%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 857 (7.11%) Docker
2 649 (5.39%) Active Directory
3 439 (3.64%) VMware Infrastructure
4 136 (1.13%) VMware ESXi
5 135 (1.12%) Hyper-V
6 134 (1.11%) vSphere
7 132 (1.10%) VMware NSX
8 93 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
9 48 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
10 43 (0.36%) Firmware
11 37 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
12 24 (0.20%) BitLocker
12 24 (0.20%) vCloud
13 20 (0.17%) Virtual Servers
14 19 (0.16%) NFS
15 14 (0.12%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 11 (0.091%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 11 (0.091%) Squid
17 10 (0.083%) KVM
18 8 (0.066%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 1,050 (8.71%) Kubernetes
2 450 (3.73%) Ansible
3 273 (2.27%) Grafana
4 200 (1.66%) Prometheus
5 147 (1.22%) SCCM
6 123 (1.02%) vCenter Server
7 105 (0.87%) Microsoft Intune
8 97 (0.80%) SCOM
9 71 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
10 63 (0.52%) Argo
11 54 (0.45%) Kibana
12 41 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
13 40 (0.33%) Puppet
14 38 (0.32%) Data Guard
14 38 (0.32%) NetBackup
15 32 (0.27%) Istio
15 32 (0.27%) VxRail
16 29 (0.24%) Control-M
17 24 (0.20%) Nagios
17 24 (0.20%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 1,635 (13.57%) Microsoft
2 963 (7.99%) Oracle
3 590 (4.90%) VMware
4 529 (4.39%) ServiceNow
5 465 (3.86%) SAP
6 286 (2.37%) Google
7 277 (2.30%) Cisco
8 221 (1.83%) Splunk
9 193 (1.60%) Databricks
10 144 (1.19%) Salesforce
11 132 (1.10%) Red Hat
12 128 (1.06%) Palo Alto
13 115 (0.95%) Informatica
14 108 (0.90%) Dynatrace
15 105 (0.87%) Talend
16 101 (0.84%) IBM
17 94 (0.78%) Remedy
18 92 (0.76%) CyberArk
19 77 (0.64%) Citrix
20 76 (0.63%) SolarWinds