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 4 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,517 5,173 7,975
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.29% 17.66% 18.48%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.34% 57.41% 60.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,188 3,443 5,246
10th Percentile £372 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £529 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.76% -3.82% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £694 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £548 £550
% change year-on-year -4.20% -0.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 853 292 526
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £21.46 £21.46
Median hourly rate £54.00 £50.20 £57.30
Median % change year-on-year +7.58% -12.40% -4.50%
75th Percentile £73.00 £67.31 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £78.27 £84.42
UK excluding London median hourly rate £54.50 £56.75 £58.00
% change year-on-year -3.96% -2.16% +0.87%

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 15,167 9,011 13,184
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.15% 30.76% 30.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,081 5,681 8,135
10th Percentile £348 £285 £300
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £704 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £501 £530
% change year-on-year -0.10% -5.57% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,089 516 1,076
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.13 £13.86
25th Percentile £21.25 £21.92 £17.86
Median hourly rate £47.50 £40.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.75% - -25.93%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.81 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.25 £80.05 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £40.72 £40.94
% change year-on-year +16.66% -0.55% -17.91%

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 4 May 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 4 May 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 4 May 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 9,116 £525 -2.23% 2,092
UK excluding London +1 5,820 £525 -4.20% 1,772
London +6 3,232 £525 - 507
Work from Home +4 2,812 £525 - 957
South East +1 2,179 £538 -2.27% 544
South West 0 1,304 £538 -4.44% 379
Midlands +4 900 £475 -9.52% 205
North of England -2 835 £488 -2.50% 339
West Midlands +4 765 £475 -11.55% 139
North West -2 492 £497 -0.70% 171
East of England +2 383 £525 +16.67% 213
Scotland +36 215 £500 - 55
Yorkshire -5 206 £476 -9.33% 81
North East +1 171 £475 -6.40% 91
East Midlands -3 129 £450 -5.26% 66
Wales +5 76 £525 +5.00% 48
Northern Ireland +4 17 £450 -5.26% 27

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
1 401 (3.81%) Confluence
2 221 (2.10%) SharePoint
3 133 (1.26%) Microsoft Exchange
4 130 (1.24%) SAS
5 106 (1.01%) Apache Spark
6 85 (0.81%) Apache
7 70 (0.67%) Apache Airflow
8 38 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 37 (0.35%) nginx
10 26 (0.25%) Jupyter
11 20 (0.19%) Tomcat
12 15 (0.14%) CMS
12 15 (0.14%) IIS
12 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
13 14 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
14 13 (0.12%) Oracle Application Server
15 12 (0.11%) Skype for Business
16 11 (0.10%) NetWeaver
17 10 (0.095%) ArcGIS
17 10 (0.095%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 215 (2.04%) Microsoft Office
2 190 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
3 122 (1.16%) Microsoft Project
4 83 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.15%) Simulink
8 7 (0.067%) AutoCAD
8 7 (0.067%) Notepad++
9 6 (0.057%) SOLIDWORKS
10 5 (0.048%) Revit
10 5 (0.048%) Windchill
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
1 103 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
2 48 (0.46%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 47 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
4 30 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
5 29 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
6 26 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 20 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
8 17 (0.16%) 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 (0.10%) Findur
12 11 (0.10%) Oracle Assets
13 10 (0.095%) SAP HCM
14 9 (0.086%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 9 (0.086%) SAP GRC
14 9 (0.086%) SAP HR
15 8 (0.076%) iTrent
15 8 (0.076%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,817 (17.28%) AWS
2 1,814 (17.25%) Azure
3 442 (4.20%) GitHub
4 431 (4.10%) GCP
5 400 (3.80%) Azure DevOps
6 387 (3.68%) Power Platform
7 283 (2.69%) Serverless
8 278 (2.64%) Microsoft 365
9 249 (2.37%) GitHub Actions
10 248 (2.36%) Entra ID
11 219 (2.08%) Amazon S3
12 187 (1.78%) AWS Lambda
13 156 (1.48%) PaaS
14 144 (1.37%) AWS CloudFormation
15 142 (1.35%) Amazon EC2
16 136 (1.29%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 136 (1.29%) OpenShift
17 134 (1.27%) Amazon EKS
18 125 (1.19%) OCI
19 124 (1.18%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 474 (4.51%) Firewall
2 293 (2.79%) DNS
3 234 (2.22%) Network Security
4 225 (2.14%) WAN
5 204 (1.94%) LAN
6 173 (1.64%) VPN
7 146 (1.39%) BGP
8 142 (1.35%) DHCP
9 127 (1.21%) OSPF
10 122 (1.16%) TCP/IP
11 94 (0.89%) VLAN
12 93 (0.88%) Wi-Fi
13 84 (0.80%) Wireless
14 65 (0.62%) MPLS
15 55 (0.52%) SAN
16 54 (0.51%) SD-WAN
16 54 (0.51%) VXLAN
17 53 (0.50%) SSL
18 49 (0.47%) IPsec
19 45 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 297 (2.82%) Power BI
2 250 (2.38%) PostgreSQL
3 235 (2.23%) Data Warehouse
4 197 (1.87%) SQL Server
5 141 (1.34%) Metadata
6 120 (1.14%) Oracle Database
7 112 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
8 106 (1.01%) Data Lake
9 103 (0.98%) MongoDB
10 101 (0.96%) NoSQL
11 99 (0.94%) Relational Database
12 79 (0.75%) Pentaho
13 77 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
14 75 (0.71%) Big Data
15 73 (0.69%) MySQL
16 72 (0.68%) Azure SQL Database
17 69 (0.66%) Tableau
18 68 (0.65%) Oracle Reports
19 67 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
20 61 (0.58%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 632 (6.01%) JIRA
2 477 (4.54%) Git
3 386 (3.67%) Jenkins
4 377 (3.58%) GitLab
5 100 (0.95%) Selenium
6 89 (0.85%) Postman
7 76 (0.72%) JUnit
8 69 (0.66%) SonarQube
9 50 (0.48%) Rational DOORS
10 47 (0.45%) JMeter
11 45 (0.43%) Artifactory
12 44 (0.42%) Bitbucket
13 42 (0.40%) Cucumber
14 41 (0.39%) Maven
15 40 (0.38%) Mockito
16 38 (0.36%) Cypress.io
17 36 (0.34%) Visual Studio
18 30 (0.29%) Zephyr
19 27 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
20 24 (0.23%) Gatling
General
1 2,348 (22.33%) Public Sector
2 2,255 (21.44%) Social Skills
3 797 (7.58%) Analytical Skills
4 693 (6.59%) Finance
5 349 (3.32%) Military
6 282 (2.68%) Documentation Skills
7 246 (2.34%) Aerospace
8 166 (1.58%) Legal
9 137 (1.30%) Telecoms
10 130 (1.24%) Influencing Skills
10 130 (1.24%) Manufacturing
11 114 (1.08%) Banking
11 114 (1.08%) Organisational Skills
12 92 (0.87%) Presentation Skills
13 89 (0.85%) Law
14 86 (0.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 67 (0.64%) Police
16 63 (0.60%) Marketing
17 58 (0.55%) Electronics
18 37 (0.35%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,580 (15.02%) Architect
2 1,028 (9.77%) Developer
3 917 (8.72%) Senior
4 746 (7.09%) Analyst
5 723 (6.87%) Lead
6 534 (5.08%) Consultant
7 500 (4.75%) Data Engineer
8 487 (4.63%) DevOps Engineer
9 315 (3.00%) Technical Architect
10 309 (2.94%) Software Engineer
11 297 (2.82%) Network Engineer
12 279 (2.65%) Business Analyst
12 279 (2.65%) Solutions Architect
13 260 (2.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 224 (2.13%) Project Manager
15 218 (2.07%) Azure Engineer
16 210 (2.00%) Security Architect
17 209 (1.99%) Designer
18 185 (1.76%) AWS Engineer
19 184 (1.75%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 338 (3.21%) REST
2 246 (2.34%) Spring
3 213 (2.03%) Kafka
4 196 (1.86%) Node.js
5 194 (1.84%) Spring Boot
6 180 (1.71%) React
7 174 (1.65%) .NET
8 150 (1.43%) LDAP
8 150 (1.43%) SOAP
9 145 (1.38%) RESTful
10 141 (1.34%) JSON
11 122 (1.16%) PySpark
12 121 (1.15%) AngularJS
13 114 (1.08%) Web Services
14 97 (0.92%) HTML
15 96 (0.91%) Oracle Fusion
16 94 (0.89%) OAuth
17 88 (0.84%) XML
18 85 (0.81%) Middleware
19 84 (0.80%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 353 (3.36%) Cloud Native
2 343 (3.26%) Product Ownership
3 311 (2.96%) Data Centre
4 297 (2.82%) Onboarding
5 187 (1.78%) Management Information System
6 178 (1.69%) PKI
7 133 (1.26%) Legacy Systems
8 130 (1.24%) Security Posture
9 127 (1.21%) Enterprise Software
10 122 (1.16%) Replication
11 118 (1.12%) Distributed Systems
12 109 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
13 88 (0.84%) Public Cloud
14 80 (0.76%) Hybrid Cloud
15 79 (0.75%) Clustering
16 78 (0.74%) Data Structures
17 76 (0.72%) Security Operations Centre
18 75 (0.71%) Virtual Team
19 65 (0.62%) Greenfield Project
20 59 (0.56%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 863 (8.21%) Windows
2 734 (6.98%) Linux
3 247 (2.35%) Windows Server
4 164 (1.56%) Unix
5 127 (1.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 115 (1.09%) Android
7 100 (0.95%) Windows 10
8 67 (0.64%) Apple iOS
9 50 (0.48%) Mac OS
10 42 (0.40%) Ubuntu
11 36 (0.34%) Solaris
12 32 (0.30%) VMS
13 29 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
14 28 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
15 27 (0.26%) AIX
16 22 (0.21%) CentOS
17 14 (0.13%) Windows 7
17 14 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
18 10 (0.095%) Embedded Linux
18 10 (0.095%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,027 (19.27%) Agile
2 1,589 (15.11%) DevOps
3 1,414 (13.44%) CI/CD
4 1,142 (10.86%) Problem-Solving
5 984 (9.36%) Stakeholder Management
6 918 (8.73%) Continuous Improvement
7 859 (8.17%) Migration
8 774 (7.36%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 725 (6.89%) Infrastructure as Code
10 637 (6.06%) ITIL
11 610 (5.80%) Cybersecurity
12 607 (5.77%) Analytics
13 606 (5.76%) Test Automation
14 583 (5.54%) Containerisation
15 565 (5.37%) Roadmaps
15 565 (5.37%) Software Engineering
16 508 (4.83%) Data Modelling
17 494 (4.70%) Decision-Making
18 467 (4.44%) Scrum
19 449 (4.27%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,203 (11.44%) Python
2 957 (9.10%) SQL
3 661 (6.29%) Java
4 558 (5.31%) PowerShell
5 350 (3.33%) JavaScript
6 220 (2.09%) C#
7 191 (1.82%) Bash
8 181 (1.72%) TypeScript
9 113 (1.07%) PL/SQL
10 102 (0.97%) C++
11 100 (0.95%) Shell Script
12 75 (0.71%) Go
13 70 (0.67%) Scala
14 68 (0.65%) Ruby
15 60 (0.57%) C
16 59 (0.56%) Bicep
17 50 (0.48%) R
18 49 (0.47%) Apex Code
19 41 (0.39%) Ada
20 40 (0.38%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 8,031 (76.36%) SC Cleared
2 1,876 (17.84%) DV Cleared
3 466 (4.43%) Degree
4 316 (3.00%) BPSS Clearance
5 205 (1.95%) Cisco Certification
6 173 (1.64%) CISSP
7 139 (1.32%) Azure Certification
8 128 (1.22%) AWS Certification
9 120 (1.14%) CCNP
10 113 (1.07%) CISM
11 94 (0.89%) Microsoft Certification
12 84 (0.80%) CCNA
13 78 (0.74%) Computer Science Degree
14 74 (0.70%) PMP
15 72 (0.68%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 70 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
17 67 (0.64%) ITIL Certification
18 63 (0.60%) PMI Certification
19 55 (0.52%) ISTQB
20 48 (0.46%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 376 (3.58%) QA
2 322 (3.06%) Data Quality
3 298 (2.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 294 (2.80%) NIST
5 202 (1.92%) NCSC
6 194 (1.84%) Accessibility
7 163 (1.55%) GDPR
8 161 (1.53%) PMO
9 112 (1.06%) SLA
10 71 (0.68%) GRC
11 64 (0.61%) JSP 440
12 51 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials
13 42 (0.40%) NIST 800
14 41 (0.39%) WCAG
15 34 (0.32%) RMADS
16 33 (0.31%) PCI DSS
17 32 (0.30%) COBIT
18 31 (0.29%) Def Stans
19 26 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
20 23 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 674 (6.41%) Docker
2 477 (4.54%) Active Directory
3 292 (2.78%) VMware Infrastructure
4 98 (0.93%) VMware ESXi
5 97 (0.92%) VMware NSX
6 84 (0.80%) Hyper-V
7 79 (0.75%) vSphere
8 73 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
9 42 (0.40%) Firmware
10 34 (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 13 (0.12%) vCloud
16 12 (0.11%) Squid
17 8 (0.076%) Microsoft App-V
18 7 (0.067%) KVM
19 6 (0.057%) Corosync
Systems Management
1 870 (8.27%) Kubernetes
2 846 (8.04%) Terraform
3 354 (3.37%) Ansible
4 267 (2.54%) Grafana
5 222 (2.11%) Prometheus
6 116 (1.10%) Single Sign-On
7 100 (0.95%) vCenter Server
8 82 (0.78%) SCCM
9 65 (0.62%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 58 (0.55%) FortiGate
11 56 (0.53%) Microsoft Intune
12 55 (0.52%) Argo
13 40 (0.38%) Puppet
14 37 (0.35%) Podman
15 35 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
16 34 (0.32%) Progress Chef
17 33 (0.31%) vRealize
18 31 (0.29%) Nagios
19 30 (0.29%) OPNET
19 30 (0.29%) Packer
Vendors
1 1,077 (10.24%) Microsoft
2 637 (6.06%) Oracle
3 511 (4.86%) VMware
4 419 (3.98%) ServiceNow
5 392 (3.73%) SAP
6 382 (3.63%) Cisco
7 245 (2.33%) Splunk
8 205 (1.95%) Databricks
9 171 (1.63%) Google
10 170 (1.62%) Red Hat
11 143 (1.36%) Salesforce
12 128 (1.22%) IBM
13 120 (1.14%) Palo Alto
14 117 (1.11%) Talend
15 110 (1.05%) Juniper
16 108 (1.03%) Atlassian
17 99 (0.94%) CyberArk
18 93 (0.88%) Informatica
19 88 (0.84%) Dynatrace
20 87 (0.83%) Remedy