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

6 months to
6 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 10,601 5,176 7,976
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.26% 17.66% 18.48%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.33% 57.39% 60.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,244 3,442 5,247
10th Percentile £372 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £527 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.38% -4.18% -
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 862 292 526
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £21.41 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £50.20 £57.30
Median % change year-on-year +9.57% -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 £55.00 £56.75 £58.00
% change year-on-year -3.08% -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 15,291 9,019 13,187
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.11% 30.76% 30.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,164 5,698 8,137
10th Percentile £350 £287 £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 £707 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £530
% change year-on-year - -5.66% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,102 515 1,076
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.13 £13.86
25th Percentile £21.25 £21.59 £17.86
Median hourly rate £47.50 £40.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.75% - -25.93%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.88 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.25 £80.06 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £40.59 £40.94
% change year-on-year +17.02% -0.85% -17.41%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 9,186 £525 -2.23% 2,229
UK excluding London +1 5,882 £525 -4.20% 1,892
London +6 3,258 £525 - 541
Work from Home +4 2,845 £525 - 1,046
South East +1 2,199 £538 -2.27% 577
South West 0 1,306 £538 -4.44% 373
Midlands +4 913 £475 -9.52% 206
North of England -1 849 £488 -2.50% 382
West Midlands +4 776 £475 -11.55% 129
North West -2 497 £496 -0.76% 185
East of England +2 385 £525 +16.67% 237
Scotland +42 218 £500 +11.11% 66
Yorkshire -7 210 £476 -9.43% 85
North East +1 175 £475 -5.00% 115
East Midlands -3 131 £463 -2.63% 77
Wales +4 83 £500 +5.26% 55
Northern Ireland +7 20 £450 -5.26% 33

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
1 411 (3.88%) Confluence
2 222 (2.09%) SharePoint
3 134 (1.26%) Microsoft Exchange
4 130 (1.23%) SAS
5 104 (0.98%) Apache Spark
6 85 (0.80%) Apache
7 70 (0.66%) 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%) IIS
12 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
13 14 (0.13%) CMS
13 14 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
13 14 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
14 13 (0.12%) Skype for Business
15 11 (0.10%) NetWeaver
16 10 (0.094%) ArcGIS
17 9 (0.085%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 215 (2.03%) Microsoft Office
2 192 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
3 123 (1.16%) Microsoft Project
4 82 (0.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (0.42%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.15%) Simulink
8 7 (0.066%) AutoCAD
8 7 (0.066%) Notepad++
9 6 (0.057%) SOLIDWORKS
10 5 (0.047%) Revit
10 5 (0.047%) Windchill
11 4 (0.038%) Siemens NX
11 4 (0.038%) Sketch
12 3 (0.028%) 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 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
2 48 (0.45%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 46 (0.43%) Remedy ITSM
4 31 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
5 29 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
6 26 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 21 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
8 17 (0.16%) Maximo
9 15 (0.14%) SAP PP
10 14 (0.13%) SAP PSCD
11 13 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
11 13 (0.12%) Temenos T24
12 11 (0.10%) Findur
12 11 (0.10%) Oracle Assets
13 10 (0.094%) iTrent
13 10 (0.094%) SAP HCM
14 9 (0.085%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 9 (0.085%) SAP GRC
14 9 (0.085%) SAP HR
15 8 (0.075%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 1,838 (17.34%) AWS
2 1,831 (17.27%) Azure
3 445 (4.20%) GitHub
4 432 (4.08%) GCP
5 405 (3.82%) Azure DevOps
6 386 (3.64%) Power Platform
7 281 (2.65%) Serverless
8 279 (2.63%) Microsoft 365
9 253 (2.39%) GitHub Actions
10 252 (2.38%) Entra ID
11 215 (2.03%) Amazon S3
12 185 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
13 158 (1.49%) PaaS
14 144 (1.36%) AWS CloudFormation
15 140 (1.32%) Amazon EC2
16 138 (1.30%) OpenShift
17 137 (1.29%) Amazon EKS
18 132 (1.25%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 126 (1.19%) IaaS
20 125 (1.18%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 476 (4.49%) Firewall
2 293 (2.76%) DNS
3 235 (2.22%) Network Security
4 226 (2.13%) WAN
5 204 (1.92%) LAN
6 173 (1.63%) VPN
7 146 (1.38%) BGP
8 141 (1.33%) DHCP
9 125 (1.18%) OSPF
10 122 (1.15%) TCP/IP
11 97 (0.92%) Wi-Fi
12 94 (0.89%) VLAN
13 84 (0.79%) Wireless
14 68 (0.64%) MPLS
15 56 (0.53%) SAN
16 54 (0.51%) SD-WAN
16 54 (0.51%) VXLAN
17 53 (0.50%) SSL
18 51 (0.48%) IPsec
19 45 (0.42%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 299 (2.82%) Power BI
2 252 (2.38%) PostgreSQL
3 234 (2.21%) Data Warehouse
4 197 (1.86%) SQL Server
5 140 (1.32%) Metadata
6 121 (1.14%) Oracle Database
7 111 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
8 106 (1.00%) Data Lake
9 101 (0.95%) MongoDB
10 99 (0.93%) NoSQL
11 98 (0.92%) Relational Database
12 79 (0.75%) Pentaho
13 78 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
14 74 (0.70%) Big Data
15 72 (0.68%) MySQL
16 71 (0.67%) Azure SQL Database
17 70 (0.66%) Oracle Reports
18 68 (0.64%) Tableau
19 67 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
20 60 (0.57%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 642 (6.06%) JIRA
2 476 (4.49%) Git
3 395 (3.73%) Jenkins
4 388 (3.66%) GitLab
5 99 (0.93%) Selenium
6 91 (0.86%) Postman
7 78 (0.74%) JUnit
8 69 (0.65%) SonarQube
9 52 (0.49%) Artifactory
10 51 (0.48%) Rational DOORS
11 49 (0.46%) JMeter
12 45 (0.42%) Bitbucket
13 41 (0.39%) Cucumber
13 41 (0.39%) Maven
13 41 (0.39%) Mockito
14 37 (0.35%) Cypress.io
15 36 (0.34%) Visual Studio
16 31 (0.29%) Zephyr
17 27 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
18 24 (0.23%) Gatling
General
1 2,347 (22.14%) Public Sector
2 2,272 (21.43%) Social Skills
3 797 (7.52%) Analytical Skills
4 697 (6.57%) Finance
5 352 (3.32%) Military
6 282 (2.66%) Documentation Skills
7 246 (2.32%) Aerospace
8 169 (1.59%) Legal
9 138 (1.30%) Telecoms
10 129 (1.22%) Influencing Skills
11 127 (1.20%) Manufacturing
12 116 (1.09%) Banking
13 115 (1.08%) Organisational Skills
14 91 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
15 90 (0.85%) Law
16 86 (0.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 67 (0.63%) Police
18 60 (0.57%) Marketing
19 56 (0.53%) Electronics
20 37 (0.35%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,601 (15.10%) Architect
2 1,023 (9.65%) Developer
3 922 (8.70%) Senior
4 751 (7.08%) Analyst
5 728 (6.87%) Lead
6 533 (5.03%) Consultant
7 504 (4.75%) Data Engineer
8 490 (4.62%) DevOps Engineer
9 315 (2.97%) Technical Architect
10 312 (2.94%) Software Engineer
11 299 (2.82%) Network Engineer
12 283 (2.67%) Solutions Architect
13 278 (2.62%) Business Analyst
14 262 (2.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 226 (2.13%) Project Manager
16 220 (2.08%) Azure Engineer
17 214 (2.02%) Security Architect
18 212 (2.00%) Designer
19 186 (1.75%) Administrator
19 186 (1.75%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 338 (3.19%) REST
2 250 (2.36%) Spring
3 216 (2.04%) Kafka
4 199 (1.88%) Spring Boot
5 193 (1.82%) Node.js
6 181 (1.71%) React
7 173 (1.63%) .NET
8 151 (1.42%) LDAP
9 148 (1.40%) SOAP
10 147 (1.39%) RESTful
11 139 (1.31%) JSON
12 121 (1.14%) AngularJS
12 121 (1.14%) PySpark
13 115 (1.08%) Web Services
14 96 (0.91%) HTML
14 96 (0.91%) Oracle Fusion
15 93 (0.88%) OAuth
16 87 (0.82%) Elastic Stack
17 86 (0.81%) Middleware
17 86 (0.81%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 357 (3.37%) Cloud Native
2 348 (3.28%) Product Ownership
3 311 (2.93%) Data Centre
4 300 (2.83%) Onboarding
5 190 (1.79%) Management Information System
6 176 (1.66%) PKI
7 136 (1.28%) Legacy Systems
8 131 (1.24%) Security Posture
9 126 (1.19%) Enterprise Software
10 124 (1.17%) Replication
11 118 (1.11%) Distributed Systems
12 107 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
13 88 (0.83%) Public Cloud
14 81 (0.76%) Hybrid Cloud
15 80 (0.75%) Data Structures
16 79 (0.75%) Clustering
17 77 (0.73%) Security Operations Centre
18 73 (0.69%) Virtual Team
19 65 (0.61%) Greenfield Project
20 61 (0.58%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 872 (8.23%) Windows
2 735 (6.93%) Linux
3 250 (2.36%) Windows Server
4 171 (1.61%) Unix
5 127 (1.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 114 (1.08%) Android
7 101 (0.95%) Windows 10
8 67 (0.63%) Apple iOS
9 50 (0.47%) Mac OS
10 42 (0.40%) Ubuntu
11 37 (0.35%) Solaris
12 32 (0.30%) VMS
13 29 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
14 28 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
15 27 (0.25%) AIX
16 22 (0.21%) CentOS
17 15 (0.14%) Windows 7
18 14 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
19 10 (0.094%) Embedded Linux
19 10 (0.094%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,051 (19.35%) Agile
2 1,603 (15.12%) DevOps
3 1,437 (13.56%) CI/CD
4 1,147 (10.82%) Problem-Solving
5 991 (9.35%) Stakeholder Management
6 923 (8.71%) Continuous Improvement
7 859 (8.10%) Migration
8 784 (7.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 733 (6.91%) Infrastructure as Code
10 639 (6.03%) ITIL
11 621 (5.86%) Cybersecurity
12 620 (5.85%) Test Automation
13 606 (5.72%) Analytics
14 594 (5.60%) Containerisation
15 573 (5.41%) Software Engineering
16 566 (5.34%) Roadmaps
17 516 (4.87%) Data Modelling
18 501 (4.73%) Decision-Making
19 469 (4.42%) Scrum
20 449 (4.24%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,208 (11.40%) Python
2 970 (9.15%) SQL
3 667 (6.29%) Java
4 565 (5.33%) PowerShell
5 346 (3.26%) JavaScript
6 218 (2.06%) C#
7 194 (1.83%) Bash
8 182 (1.72%) TypeScript
9 119 (1.12%) PL/SQL
10 100 (0.94%) C++
11 97 (0.92%) Shell Script
12 76 (0.72%) Go
13 70 (0.66%) Scala
14 69 (0.65%) Ruby
15 60 (0.57%) Bicep
15 60 (0.57%) C
16 50 (0.47%) R
17 49 (0.46%) Apex Code
18 41 (0.39%) Ada
19 40 (0.38%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 8,095 (76.36%) SC Cleared
2 1,889 (17.82%) DV Cleared
3 467 (4.41%) Degree
4 318 (3.00%) BPSS Clearance
5 209 (1.97%) Cisco Certification
6 178 (1.68%) CISSP
7 139 (1.31%) Azure Certification
8 128 (1.21%) AWS Certification
9 121 (1.14%) CCNP
10 117 (1.10%) CISM
11 95 (0.90%) Microsoft Certification
12 87 (0.82%) CCNA
13 77 (0.73%) Computer Science Degree
14 75 (0.71%) PMP
15 72 (0.68%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 70 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
17 67 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
18 64 (0.60%) PMI Certification
19 58 (0.55%) ISTQB
20 50 (0.47%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 382 (3.60%) QA
2 321 (3.03%) Data Quality
3 302 (2.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 298 (2.81%) NIST
5 202 (1.91%) NCSC
6 197 (1.86%) Accessibility
7 167 (1.58%) GDPR
8 165 (1.56%) PMO
9 111 (1.05%) SLA
10 71 (0.67%) GRC
11 65 (0.61%) JSP 440
12 52 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
13 42 (0.40%) NIST 800
14 40 (0.38%) WCAG
15 33 (0.31%) PCI DSS
15 33 (0.31%) RMADS
16 32 (0.30%) COBIT
17 31 (0.29%) Def Stans
18 28 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 23 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 680 (6.41%) Docker
2 482 (4.55%) Active Directory
3 297 (2.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 99 (0.93%) VMware ESXi
5 98 (0.92%) VMware NSX
6 85 (0.80%) Hyper-V
7 78 (0.74%) vSphere
8 74 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
9 42 (0.40%) Firmware
10 34 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
11 20 (0.19%) BitLocker
11 20 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
12 18 (0.17%) NFS
13 17 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 16 (0.15%) Postfix
15 14 (0.13%) vCloud
16 12 (0.11%) Squid
17 8 (0.075%) Microsoft App-V
18 7 (0.066%) KVM
19 6 (0.057%) Corosync
Systems Management
1 873 (8.24%) Kubernetes
2 852 (8.04%) Terraform
3 357 (3.37%) Ansible
4 270 (2.55%) Grafana
5 225 (2.12%) Prometheus
6 115 (1.08%) Single Sign-On
7 102 (0.96%) vCenter Server
8 85 (0.80%) SCCM
9 64 (0.60%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 57 (0.54%) FortiGate
11 56 (0.53%) Argo
12 55 (0.52%) Microsoft Intune
13 41 (0.39%) Puppet
14 37 (0.35%) Podman
15 35 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
15 35 (0.33%) Progress Chef
16 33 (0.31%) vRealize
17 31 (0.29%) Nagios
17 31 (0.29%) OPNET
18 29 (0.27%) Packer
Vendors
1 1,079 (10.18%) Microsoft
2 651 (6.14%) Oracle
3 518 (4.89%) VMware
4 420 (3.96%) ServiceNow
5 390 (3.68%) SAP
6 385 (3.63%) Cisco
7 245 (2.31%) Splunk
8 204 (1.92%) Databricks
9 172 (1.62%) Google
10 169 (1.59%) Red Hat
11 142 (1.34%) Salesforce
12 129 (1.22%) IBM
13 126 (1.19%) Talend
14 121 (1.14%) Palo Alto
15 109 (1.03%) Juniper
16 108 (1.02%) Atlassian
17 100 (0.94%) CyberArk
18 94 (0.89%) Informatica
19 88 (0.83%) Dynatrace
20 86 (0.81%) Fortinet