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

6 months to
7 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,595 5,847 7,250
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.71% 17.79% 18.58%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.15% 57.13% 61.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,079 3,723 4,833
10th Percentile £381 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £537 £535 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.37% -2.73% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £695 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 844 528 500
10th Percentile £19.25 £18.51 £15.22
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +151.03% -54.27% -8.33%
75th Percentile £78.75 £48.28 £71.79
90th Percentile £88.00 £74.13 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.50 £25.15 £57.16
% change year-on-year +152.49% -56.00% -2.44%

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 16,769 10,234 11,695
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.39% 31.14% 29.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,216 6,336 7,417
10th Percentile £350 £287 £313
25th Percentile £431 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £620 £638
90th Percentile £715 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £514 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.80% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,252 784 856
10th Percentile £17.72 £17.87 £14.48
25th Percentile £25.75 £19.38 £21.25
Median hourly rate £51.75 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +105.77% -41.51% -22.77%
75th Percentile £73.75 £54.15 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.00 £73.75 £77.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +98.81% -44.11% -15.65%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 10,054 £537 -0.09% 2,647
UK excluding London +1 6,526 £525 -2.33% 1,919
London +7 3,562 £550 +3.77% 871
Work from Home +4 3,122 £525 -2.23% 1,270
South East +1 2,462 £560 +4.19% 626
South West 0 1,345 £538 -6.52% 482
North of England +2 1,125 £502 +0.35% 371
Midlands +2 977 £469 -8.40% 174
West Midlands +1 844 £469 -8.54% 129
North West +3 606 £525 - 230
East of England 0 320 £550 +0.92% 167
Yorkshire +2 302 £500 +1.63% 70
Scotland +12 262 £494 +3.08% 81
North East 0 241 £475 -5.00% 75
East Midlands 0 121 £438 -5.30% 45
Wales +2 98 £550 +15.79% 38
Northern Ireland +6 33 £650 +25.00% 19

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
1 415 (3.58%) Confluence
2 272 (2.35%) SharePoint
3 196 (1.69%) SAS
4 120 (1.03%) Microsoft Exchange
5 100 (0.86%) Apache Spark
6 98 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
7 92 (0.79%) Apache
8 39 (0.34%) Jupyter
8 39 (0.34%) WebLogic
9 37 (0.32%) nginx
10 24 (0.21%) IIS
10 24 (0.21%) Tomcat
11 21 (0.18%) Oracle Application Server
12 19 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
13 16 (0.14%) CMS
13 16 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
14 15 (0.13%) NetWeaver
15 13 (0.11%) Skype for Business
16 11 (0.095%) Tuxedo
17 10 (0.086%) JBoss
Applications
1 213 (1.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 152 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
3 99 (0.85%) Microsoft Project
4 81 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 47 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.13%) AutoCAD
7 15 (0.13%) Revit
8 14 (0.12%) Simulink
8 14 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
9 9 (0.078%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.069%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.060%) Notepad++
11 7 (0.060%) Sketch
12 3 (0.026%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 3 (0.026%) Trello
12 3 (0.026%) Windchill
13 2 (0.017%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.017%) Houdini
13 2 (0.017%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 151 (1.30%) SAP S/4HANA
2 82 (0.71%) Remedy ITSM
3 44 (0.38%) Oracle ERP
4 42 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
5 34 (0.29%) Teamcenter
6 33 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 27 (0.23%) Dynamics CRM
8 22 (0.19%) SAP PSCD
9 21 (0.18%) Primavera
10 20 (0.17%) SAP GRC
11 18 (0.16%) Oracle Payroll
12 15 (0.13%) Findur
12 15 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
13 13 (0.11%) Temenos T24
14 12 (0.10%) iTrent
14 12 (0.10%) SAP FI
14 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
15 11 (0.095%) NetSuite
15 11 (0.095%) SAP HR
16 10 (0.086%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,117 (18.26%) Azure
2 2,056 (17.73%) AWS
3 532 (4.59%) GitHub
4 518 (4.47%) Azure DevOps
5 472 (4.07%) Power Platform
6 447 (3.86%) GCP
7 331 (2.85%) GitHub Actions
8 308 (2.66%) Microsoft 365
9 297 (2.56%) Entra ID
10 286 (2.47%) Serverless
11 247 (2.13%) Amazon S3
12 203 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
13 174 (1.50%) OCI
14 167 (1.44%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 167 (1.44%) SaaS
15 163 (1.41%) Amazon EKS
16 158 (1.36%) Amazon EC2
17 152 (1.31%) PaaS
18 137 (1.18%) OpenShift
19 129 (1.11%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 492 (4.24%) Firewall
2 381 (3.29%) DNS
3 229 (1.97%) Network Security
3 229 (1.97%) WAN
4 201 (1.73%) VPN
5 193 (1.66%) LAN
6 188 (1.62%) DHCP
7 144 (1.24%) BGP
8 137 (1.18%) TCP/IP
9 115 (0.99%) OSPF
10 114 (0.98%) Wi-Fi
11 104 (0.90%) VLAN
12 89 (0.77%) Wireless
13 68 (0.59%) MPLS
14 67 (0.58%) IPsec
14 67 (0.58%) VSAN
15 63 (0.54%) SAN
16 62 (0.53%) SSL
17 61 (0.53%) SD-WAN
18 60 (0.52%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 357 (3.08%) Power BI
2 306 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
3 292 (2.52%) SQL Server
4 283 (2.44%) Data Warehouse
5 170 (1.47%) Oracle Database
6 158 (1.36%) Metadata
7 135 (1.16%) Data Lake
8 128 (1.10%) Relational Database
9 110 (0.95%) MongoDB
10 109 (0.94%) Amazon RDS
11 104 (0.90%) Oracle Reports
12 96 (0.83%) Pentaho
13 95 (0.82%) MySQL
14 87 (0.75%) NoSQL
15 70 (0.60%) Amazon Athena
15 70 (0.60%) Amazon Redshift
16 69 (0.60%) Elasticsearch
17 60 (0.52%) Tableau
18 55 (0.47%) Big Data
19 52 (0.45%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 668 (5.76%) JIRA
2 580 (5.00%) Git
3 477 (4.11%) GitLab
4 466 (4.02%) Jenkins
5 128 (1.10%) Selenium
6 83 (0.72%) SonarQube
7 79 (0.68%) JUnit
8 75 (0.65%) Postman
9 70 (0.60%) Maven
10 63 (0.54%) JMeter
11 57 (0.49%) Rational DOORS
12 54 (0.47%) Cucumber
13 50 (0.43%) Visual Studio
14 48 (0.41%) Mockito
15 45 (0.39%) Cypress.io
16 44 (0.38%) Zephyr
17 43 (0.37%) Bitbucket
18 42 (0.36%) Gradle
19 38 (0.33%) Artifactory
20 37 (0.32%) REST Assured
General
1 2,466 (21.27%) Public Sector
2 2,413 (20.81%) Social Skills
3 889 (7.67%) Analytical Skills
4 775 (6.68%) Finance
5 361 (3.11%) Military
6 302 (2.60%) Aerospace
7 288 (2.48%) Documentation Skills
8 173 (1.49%) Influencing Skills
9 171 (1.47%) Legal
10 151 (1.30%) Organisational Skills
11 149 (1.29%) Telecoms
12 135 (1.16%) Banking
13 123 (1.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 104 (0.90%) Manufacturing
14 104 (0.90%) Police
15 100 (0.86%) Law
16 75 (0.65%) Presentation Skills
17 52 (0.45%) Aviation
18 43 (0.37%) Marketing
19 41 (0.35%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,835 (15.83%) Architect
2 1,294 (11.16%) Developer
3 1,091 (9.41%) Senior
4 993 (8.56%) Lead
5 690 (5.95%) Analyst
6 638 (5.50%) Consultant
7 538 (4.64%) Data Engineer
8 472 (4.07%) DevOps Engineer
9 416 (3.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 371 (3.20%) Technical Architect
11 355 (3.06%) Solutions Architect
12 330 (2.85%) Software Engineer
13 284 (2.45%) Security Architect
14 260 (2.24%) Network Engineer
15 243 (2.10%) Data Architect
16 230 (1.98%) Java Developer
17 220 (1.90%) Designer
18 215 (1.85%) Administrator
19 212 (1.83%) Project Manager
20 210 (1.81%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 428 (3.69%) REST
2 268 (2.31%) Spring
3 232 (2.00%) Spring Boot
4 230 (1.98%) .NET
5 227 (1.96%) Kafka
6 214 (1.85%) RESTful
7 203 (1.75%) React
8 185 (1.60%) Node.js
9 166 (1.43%) SOAP
10 155 (1.34%) JSON
11 139 (1.20%) AngularJS
12 126 (1.09%) OAuth
12 126 (1.09%) Web Services
13 121 (1.04%) HTML
14 112 (0.97%) XML
15 106 (0.91%) Middleware
16 97 (0.84%) PySpark
17 92 (0.79%) Playwright
18 88 (0.76%) CSS
19 85 (0.73%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 485 (4.18%) Cloud Native
2 404 (3.48%) Onboarding
3 364 (3.14%) Product Ownership
4 322 (2.78%) Data Centre
5 240 (2.07%) Management Information System
6 199 (1.72%) Legacy Systems
7 170 (1.47%) PKI
8 169 (1.46%) Distributed Systems
9 137 (1.18%) Enterprise Software
10 133 (1.15%) CMDB
11 125 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
12 120 (1.03%) Data Structures
13 116 (1.00%) Hybrid Cloud
14 111 (0.96%) Replication
15 105 (0.91%) Clustering
16 96 (0.83%) Public Cloud
17 89 (0.77%) Virtual Team
18 86 (0.74%) Security Operations Centre
19 83 (0.72%) Cyber Threat
20 75 (0.65%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 951 (8.20%) Windows
2 795 (6.86%) Linux
3 324 (2.79%) Windows Server
4 230 (1.98%) Unix
5 154 (1.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 102 (0.88%) Windows 10
7 99 (0.85%) Android
8 64 (0.55%) Solaris
9 63 (0.54%) Apple iOS
10 48 (0.41%) Mac OS
11 43 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
12 36 (0.31%) AIX
12 36 (0.31%) Ubuntu
13 31 (0.27%) CentOS
14 24 (0.21%) VMS
15 21 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
16 18 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
17 16 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
18 14 (0.12%) Windows 7
19 12 (0.10%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,424 (20.91%) Agile
2 1,806 (15.58%) DevOps
3 1,713 (14.77%) CI/CD
4 1,308 (11.28%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,273 (10.98%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,224 (10.56%) Problem-Solving
7 1,068 (9.21%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 920 (7.93%) Infrastructure as Code
9 900 (7.76%) Migration
10 749 (6.46%) Cybersecurity
11 747 (6.44%) ITIL
12 738 (6.36%) Test Automation
13 731 (6.30%) Analytics
14 720 (6.21%) Containerisation
15 695 (5.99%) Software Engineering
16 671 (5.79%) Roadmaps
17 637 (5.49%) Data Modelling
18 636 (5.49%) Technical Leadership
19 628 (5.42%) AI
19 628 (5.42%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 1,299 (11.20%) Python
2 1,156 (9.97%) SQL
3 822 (7.09%) Java
4 544 (4.69%) PowerShell
5 387 (3.34%) JavaScript
6 317 (2.73%) Bash
7 263 (2.27%) C#
8 192 (1.66%) TypeScript
9 182 (1.57%) PL/SQL
10 111 (0.96%) Bicep
11 93 (0.80%) Shell Script
12 92 (0.79%) C++
13 67 (0.58%) C
14 59 (0.51%) Apex Code
15 56 (0.48%) Kotlin
16 53 (0.46%) Ruby
17 50 (0.43%) Scala
18 47 (0.41%) Go
19 42 (0.36%) Groovy
20 36 (0.31%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8,837 (76.21%) SC Cleared
2 2,191 (18.90%) DV Cleared
3 448 (3.86%) Degree
4 438 (3.78%) BPSS Clearance
5 210 (1.81%) Cisco Certification
6 198 (1.71%) CISSP
7 169 (1.46%) Azure Certification
8 154 (1.33%) Microsoft Certification
9 133 (1.15%) AWS Certification
10 124 (1.07%) CISM
11 107 (0.92%) PMI Certification
12 105 (0.91%) PMP
13 89 (0.77%) CCNA
13 89 (0.77%) CCNP
14 86 (0.74%) ISTQB
15 66 (0.57%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 65 (0.56%) Computer Science Degree
17 53 (0.46%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 51 (0.44%) TOGAF Certification
19 47 (0.41%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 452 (3.90%) QA
2 376 (3.24%) Data Quality
3 312 (2.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 303 (2.61%) NIST
5 251 (2.16%) Accessibility
6 248 (2.14%) NCSC
7 220 (1.90%) PMO
8 182 (1.57%) GDPR
9 142 (1.22%) GRC
10 141 (1.22%) SLA
11 79 (0.68%) WCAG
12 62 (0.53%) JSP 440
13 47 (0.41%) NIST 800
14 46 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
15 32 (0.28%) Def Stans
15 32 (0.28%) Government Security Classifications
16 29 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 28 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 22 (0.19%) RMADS
19 20 (0.17%) COBIT
System Software
1 809 (6.98%) Docker
2 525 (4.53%) Active Directory
3 400 (3.45%) VMware Infrastructure
4 149 (1.29%) VMware NSX
5 132 (1.14%) VMware ESXi
6 115 (0.99%) vSphere
7 110 (0.95%) Hyper-V
8 82 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
9 47 (0.41%) Oracle RAC
10 37 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
11 30 (0.26%) Firmware
12 24 (0.21%) vCloud
13 20 (0.17%) BitLocker
14 17 (0.15%) NFS
15 16 (0.14%) Postfix
15 16 (0.14%) Squid
16 9 (0.078%) KVM
17 8 (0.069%) Microsoft App-V
17 8 (0.069%) Virtual Servers
18 7 (0.060%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 981 (8.46%) Terraform
2 956 (8.24%) Kubernetes
3 433 (3.73%) Ansible
4 264 (2.28%) Grafana
5 212 (1.83%) Prometheus
6 132 (1.14%) vCenter Server
7 111 (0.96%) SCCM
8 87 (0.75%) Microsoft Intune
9 72 (0.62%) SCOM
10 71 (0.61%) Single Sign-On
11 66 (0.57%) Argo
12 57 (0.49%) Oracle RMAN
13 50 (0.43%) Puppet
14 44 (0.38%) FortiGate
15 40 (0.34%) Data Guard
16 31 (0.27%) Progress Chef
17 30 (0.26%) Nagios
18 26 (0.22%) WSUS
19 25 (0.22%) Istio
19 25 (0.22%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 1,364 (11.76%) Microsoft
2 921 (7.94%) Oracle
3 574 (4.95%) VMware
4 556 (4.80%) ServiceNow
5 429 (3.70%) SAP
6 307 (2.65%) Cisco
7 223 (1.92%) Google
8 211 (1.82%) Splunk
9 202 (1.74%) Databricks
10 193 (1.66%) Salesforce
11 156 (1.35%) Red Hat
12 134 (1.16%) Talend
13 129 (1.11%) Informatica
14 119 (1.03%) IBM
15 113 (0.97%) Palo Alto
16 104 (0.90%) Juniper
17 98 (0.85%) F5
18 96 (0.83%) SolarWinds
19 93 (0.80%) Remedy
20 90 (0.78%) Dynatrace