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

6 months to
4 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,609 5,815 6,998
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.64% 18.00% 18.37%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.87% 57.74% 62.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,146 3,726 4,592
10th Percentile £390 £350 £350
25th Percentile £458 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £535 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.93% -2.73% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £538 £550
% change year-on-year - -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 794 558 432
10th Percentile £19.50 £18.51 £17.88
25th Percentile £29.07 £18.87 £24.18
Median hourly rate £64.09 £25.15 £59.50
Median % change year-on-year +154.83% -57.73% -0.83%
75th Percentile £78.70 £41.41 £72.37
90th Percentile £89.08 £71.31 £80.00
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 16,856 10,071 11,285
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.42% 31.17% 29.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,303 6,240 7,066
10th Percentile £350 £300 £313
25th Percentile £438 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £629 £622 £638
90th Percentile £715 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,260 801 703
10th Percentile £17.39 £18.13 £15.75
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.54
Median hourly rate £47.54 £25.15 £48.56
Median % change year-on-year +89.03% -48.21% -11.71%
75th Percentile £72.54 £50.00 £67.78
90th Percentile £87.02 £71.45 £76.84
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £51.72
% change year-on-year +88.87% -51.37% +3.44%

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 September 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 September 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 September 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 10,031 £549 +2.14% 4,245
UK excluding London +1 6,504 £538 - 3,251
London +7 3,576 £550 +3.77% 1,508
Work from Home +2 3,072 £525 -2.33% 2,581
South East +1 2,304 £564 +4.98% 848
South West 0 1,392 £550 -0.45% 760
North of England +3 1,246 £515 +3.00% 611
Midlands 0 909 £475 -7.77% 274
West Midlands +1 772 £475 -7.77% 190
North West +2 732 £530 - 406
East of England 0 348 £550 - 399
Yorkshire +2 299 £500 +2.04% 115
Scotland +12 280 £481 -0.82% 256
North East 0 236 £475 -5.00% 111
East Midlands -1 128 £450 -7.69% 84
Wales +3 107 £550 +15.79% 44
Northern Ireland +6 36 £650 +8.33% 115

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
1 391 (3.37%) Confluence
2 265 (2.28%) SharePoint
3 174 (1.50%) SAS
4 126 (1.09%) Microsoft Exchange
5 106 (0.91%) Apache
6 102 (0.88%) Apache Spark
7 101 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.34%) Jupyter
9 34 (0.29%) nginx
10 30 (0.26%) WebLogic
11 26 (0.22%) IIS
12 23 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
13 22 (0.19%) Skype for Business
13 22 (0.19%) Tomcat
14 18 (0.16%) CMS
15 17 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
15 17 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
16 13 (0.11%) JBoss
17 12 (0.10%) NetWeaver
18 10 (0.086%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 206 (1.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 162 (1.40%) Microsoft Office
3 110 (0.95%) Microsoft Project
4 97 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 40 (0.34%) MS Visio
6 23 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.15%) AutoCAD
7 17 (0.15%) Revit
8 16 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
9 15 (0.13%) Simulink
10 8 (0.069%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.069%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.069%) Windchill
11 7 (0.060%) Notepad++
11 7 (0.060%) Sketch
12 5 (0.043%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 4 (0.034%) Trello
14 3 (0.026%) OrCAD
15 2 (0.017%) Houdini
15 2 (0.017%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 148 (1.27%) SAP S/4HANA
2 80 (0.69%) Remedy ITSM
3 51 (0.44%) Oracle ERP
4 39 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
5 34 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 29 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 27 (0.23%) Dynamics CRM
8 25 (0.22%) SAP GRC
9 24 (0.21%) Oracle Payroll
10 22 (0.19%) SAP PSCD
11 20 (0.17%) Primavera
12 17 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
13 16 (0.14%) SAP FI
13 16 (0.14%) SAP HR
14 13 (0.11%) Findur
15 12 (0.10%) iTrent
15 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
16 11 (0.095%) NetSuite
16 11 (0.095%) Temenos T24
17 10 (0.086%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 2,151 (18.53%) Azure
2 2,087 (17.98%) AWS
3 536 (4.62%) GitHub
4 525 (4.52%) Azure DevOps
5 477 (4.11%) Power Platform
6 454 (3.91%) GCP
7 347 (2.99%) GitHub Actions
8 328 (2.83%) Microsoft 365
9 299 (2.58%) Entra ID
10 284 (2.45%) Serverless
11 237 (2.04%) Amazon S3
12 206 (1.77%) AWS Lambda
13 174 (1.50%) SaaS
14 172 (1.48%) OCI
15 170 (1.46%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 161 (1.39%) Amazon EKS
17 141 (1.21%) Amazon EC2
18 136 (1.17%) OpenShift
19 126 (1.09%) AWS CloudFormation
20 118 (1.02%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 473 (4.07%) Firewall
2 375 (3.23%) DNS
3 229 (1.97%) Network Security
4 225 (1.94%) WAN
5 208 (1.79%) VPN
6 186 (1.60%) DHCP
7 176 (1.52%) LAN
8 137 (1.18%) TCP/IP
9 135 (1.16%) BGP
10 120 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
11 104 (0.90%) VLAN
12 96 (0.83%) OSPF
13 91 (0.78%) Wireless
14 74 (0.64%) SSL
15 66 (0.57%) IPsec
15 66 (0.57%) VSAN
16 65 (0.56%) MPLS
17 63 (0.54%) SAN
18 61 (0.53%) SD-WAN
19 52 (0.45%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 348 (3.00%) Power BI
2 308 (2.65%) PostgreSQL
3 289 (2.49%) SQL Server
4 267 (2.30%) Data Warehouse
5 191 (1.65%) Metadata
6 179 (1.54%) Oracle Database
7 145 (1.25%) Data Lake
7 145 (1.25%) Relational Database
8 131 (1.13%) MongoDB
9 111 (0.96%) Amazon RDS
10 104 (0.90%) MySQL
11 96 (0.83%) NoSQL
12 93 (0.80%) Oracle Reports
13 75 (0.65%) Pentaho
14 70 (0.60%) Amazon Athena
15 65 (0.56%) Elasticsearch
16 58 (0.50%) Big Data
17 57 (0.49%) Amazon Redshift
17 57 (0.49%) Tableau
18 49 (0.42%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 645 (5.56%) JIRA
2 571 (4.92%) Git
3 509 (4.38%) GitLab
4 472 (4.07%) Jenkins
5 142 (1.22%) Selenium
6 81 (0.70%) Postman
7 77 (0.66%) SonarQube
8 75 (0.65%) JMeter
9 73 (0.63%) JUnit
10 69 (0.59%) Maven
11 57 (0.49%) Cucumber
12 54 (0.47%) Cypress.io
13 48 (0.41%) Gradle
14 44 (0.38%) Mockito
15 41 (0.35%) Gatling
15 41 (0.35%) REST Assured
16 39 (0.34%) Visual Studio
17 38 (0.33%) Zephyr
18 36 (0.31%) Artifactory
19 34 (0.29%) Bitbucket
General
1 2,547 (21.94%) Social Skills
2 2,386 (20.55%) Public Sector
3 926 (7.98%) Analytical Skills
4 754 (6.49%) Finance
5 391 (3.37%) Military
6 304 (2.62%) Documentation Skills
7 300 (2.58%) Aerospace
8 207 (1.78%) Influencing Skills
9 176 (1.52%) Organisational Skills
10 168 (1.45%) Legal
11 167 (1.44%) Telecoms
12 157 (1.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 148 (1.27%) Banking
14 116 (1.00%) Law
14 116 (1.00%) Manufacturing
15 114 (0.98%) Police
16 63 (0.54%) Presentation Skills
17 47 (0.40%) Local Government
18 46 (0.40%) Retail
19 45 (0.39%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,874 (16.14%) Architect
2 1,214 (10.46%) Developer
3 1,108 (9.54%) Senior
4 1,050 (9.04%) Lead
5 699 (6.02%) Consultant
6 640 (5.51%) Analyst
7 505 (4.35%) DevOps Engineer
8 500 (4.31%) Data Engineer
9 422 (3.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 366 (3.15%) Technical Architect
11 356 (3.07%) Solutions Architect
12 288 (2.48%) Data Architect
13 284 (2.45%) Software Engineer
14 271 (2.33%) Security Architect
15 256 (2.21%) Network Engineer
16 213 (1.83%) Administrator
17 211 (1.82%) Java Developer
18 203 (1.75%) Azure Engineer
19 201 (1.73%) Delivery Manager
20 198 (1.71%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 990 (8.53%) Terraform
2 448 (3.86%) REST
3 250 (2.15%) Spring
4 246 (2.12%) Kafka
5 229 (1.97%) Spring Boot
6 216 (1.86%) .NET
6 216 (1.86%) RESTful
7 205 (1.77%) React
8 174 (1.50%) Node.js
9 173 (1.49%) SOAP
10 166 (1.43%) JSON
11 131 (1.13%) HTML
11 131 (1.13%) OAuth
12 123 (1.06%) XML
13 121 (1.04%) Web Services
14 119 (1.03%) AngularJS
14 119 (1.03%) Middleware
15 101 (0.87%) CSS
16 100 (0.86%) Oracle Fusion
17 97 (0.84%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 516 (4.44%) Cloud Native
2 438 (3.77%) Onboarding
3 354 (3.05%) Product Ownership
4 308 (2.65%) Data Centre
5 257 (2.21%) Management Information System
6 191 (1.65%) Legacy Systems
7 172 (1.48%) PKI
8 168 (1.45%) Enterprise Software
9 159 (1.37%) CMDB
10 147 (1.27%) Distributed Systems
11 129 (1.11%) Replication
12 123 (1.06%) Hybrid Cloud
13 118 (1.02%) Self-Motivation
14 106 (0.91%) Cyber Threat
15 103 (0.89%) Data Structures
16 95 (0.82%) Security Operations Centre
17 91 (0.78%) Public Cloud
18 90 (0.78%) Clustering
18 90 (0.78%) Operational Technology
19 84 (0.72%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 976 (8.41%) Windows
2 793 (6.83%) Linux
3 367 (3.16%) Windows Server
4 225 (1.94%) Unix
5 153 (1.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 138 (1.19%) Windows 10
7 78 (0.67%) Android
8 65 (0.56%) Solaris
9 49 (0.42%) Mac OS
10 45 (0.39%) Apple iOS
11 40 (0.34%) CentOS
12 39 (0.34%) Ubuntu
12 39 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
13 33 (0.28%) AIX
14 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
15 24 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
16 22 (0.19%) VMS
16 22 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
17 16 (0.14%) Rocky
18 14 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,451 (21.11%) Agile
2 1,789 (15.41%) DevOps
3 1,749 (15.07%) CI/CD
4 1,515 (13.05%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,369 (11.79%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,229 (10.59%) Problem-Solving
7 1,155 (9.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 990 (8.53%) Infrastructure as Code
9 930 (8.01%) Migration
10 833 (7.18%) Cybersecurity
11 789 (6.80%) ITIL
12 767 (6.61%) Test Automation
13 727 (6.26%) Containerisation
14 711 (6.12%) Technical Leadership
15 710 (6.12%) Analytics
16 686 (5.91%) Decision-Making
17 685 (5.90%) Roadmaps
18 683 (5.88%) AI
19 671 (5.78%) Software Engineering
20 644 (5.55%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,344 (11.58%) Python
2 1,103 (9.50%) SQL
3 789 (6.80%) Java
4 579 (4.99%) PowerShell
5 397 (3.42%) JavaScript
6 339 (2.92%) Bash
7 233 (2.01%) C#
8 211 (1.82%) TypeScript
9 162 (1.40%) PL/SQL
10 126 (1.09%) Bicep
11 82 (0.71%) Shell Script
12 64 (0.55%) C++
13 58 (0.50%) C
14 52 (0.45%) Scala
15 50 (0.43%) Apex Code
16 49 (0.42%) Go
17 47 (0.40%) Groovy
18 45 (0.39%) Kotlin
19 43 (0.37%) Ruby
20 39 (0.34%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8,857 (76.29%) SC Cleared
2 2,190 (18.86%) DV Cleared
3 466 (4.01%) BPSS Clearance
4 451 (3.88%) Degree
5 214 (1.84%) CISSP
6 184 (1.58%) Cisco Certification
7 175 (1.51%) Azure Certification
8 164 (1.41%) Microsoft Certification
9 144 (1.24%) AWS Certification
10 140 (1.21%) CISM
11 107 (0.92%) PMI Certification
12 102 (0.88%) PMP
13 92 (0.79%) ISTQB
14 83 (0.71%) CCNP
15 74 (0.64%) Computer Science Degree
16 71 (0.61%) CCNA
17 63 (0.54%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 48 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 46 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
20 45 (0.39%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 521 (4.49%) QA
2 390 (3.36%) Data Quality
3 324 (2.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 313 (2.70%) NIST
5 278 (2.39%) NCSC
6 261 (2.25%) Accessibility
7 228 (1.96%) PMO
8 184 (1.58%) GDPR
9 172 (1.48%) SLA
10 156 (1.34%) GRC
11 85 (0.73%) WCAG
12 65 (0.56%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
14 43 (0.37%) NIST 800
15 36 (0.31%) Def Stans
16 28 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 25 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 24 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
19 22 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 22 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 811 (6.99%) Docker
2 595 (5.13%) Active Directory
3 427 (3.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 146 (1.26%) VMware NSX
5 139 (1.20%) VMware ESXi
6 137 (1.18%) Hyper-V
7 127 (1.09%) vSphere
8 88 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
9 42 (0.36%) Firmware
9 42 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
10 41 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
11 27 (0.23%) vCloud
12 25 (0.22%) BitLocker
13 19 (0.16%) NFS
14 14 (0.12%) Squid
15 13 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
16 11 (0.095%) Postfix
17 9 (0.078%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 9 (0.078%) KVM
18 8 (0.069%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 985 (8.48%) Kubernetes
2 444 (3.82%) Ansible
3 260 (2.24%) Grafana
4 209 (1.80%) Prometheus
5 135 (1.16%) SCCM
5 135 (1.16%) vCenter Server
6 92 (0.79%) SCOM
7 88 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
8 67 (0.58%) Argo
8 67 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
9 50 (0.43%) Oracle RMAN
10 48 (0.41%) Puppet
11 41 (0.35%) Data Guard
12 32 (0.28%) Kibana
13 31 (0.27%) Istio
14 30 (0.26%) Progress Chef
15 29 (0.25%) Control-M
16 28 (0.24%) NetBackup
16 28 (0.24%) WSUS
17 27 (0.23%) Nagios
Vendors
1 1,490 (12.83%) Microsoft
2 935 (8.05%) Oracle
3 602 (5.19%) VMware
4 547 (4.71%) ServiceNow
5 447 (3.85%) SAP
6 307 (2.64%) Cisco
7 246 (2.12%) Google
8 223 (1.92%) Splunk
9 214 (1.84%) Databricks
10 182 (1.57%) Salesforce
11 146 (1.26%) Red Hat
12 130 (1.12%) Palo Alto
13 118 (1.02%) Informatica
14 112 (0.96%) IBM
15 110 (0.95%) Talend
16 100 (0.86%) Dynatrace
17 91 (0.78%) Remedy
18 88 (0.76%) CyberArk
19 81 (0.70%) F5
19 81 (0.70%) SolarWinds