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

6 months to
28 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,598 5,901 7,174
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.58% 18.04% 18.50%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.94% 57.58% 62.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,130 3,760 4,720
10th Percentile £385 £350 £350
25th Percentile £456 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.56% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £537 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -0.09% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 803 568 465
10th Percentile £19.50 £18.51 £15.06
25th Percentile £29.07 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £63.50 £25.15 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +152.49% -56.26% -4.17%
75th Percentile £78.75 £43.75 £71.90
90th Percentile £88.00 £72.50 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £59.50
% change year-on-year +158.45% -57.73% +2.51%

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 16,824 10,249 11,551
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.30% 31.33% 29.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,250 6,336 7,274
10th Percentile £350 £294 £313
25th Percentile £437 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £715 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,262 823 762
10th Percentile £17.43 £17.96 £14.19
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.23 £21.37
Median hourly rate £48.72 £25.15 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +93.72% -44.11% -18.18%
75th Percentile £72.54 £52.50 £67.02
90th Percentile £87.47 £72.50 £75.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £25.15 £48.56
% change year-on-year +89.03% -48.21% -6.96%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 10,025 £545 +1.40% 3,986
UK excluding London +1 6,506 £537 -0.09% 3,029
London +7 3,576 £550 +3.77% 1,402
Work from Home +2 3,070 £525 -2.33% 2,210
South East +1 2,364 £564 +4.98% 820
South West 0 1,365 £549 -1.08% 746
North of England +3 1,235 £513 +1.87% 595
Midlands 0 905 £473 -8.16% 273
West Midlands +1 769 £475 -7.77% 179
North West +4 712 £530 -0.93% 367
East of England 0 333 £550 - 320
Yorkshire +1 307 £500 +1.63% 125
Scotland +11 277 £481 -0.62% 203
North East 0 240 £475 -5.00% 124
East Midlands -1 127 £450 -7.69% 94
Wales +3 108 £550 +10.00% 42
Northern Ireland +4 34 £650 +25.00% 82

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
1 400 (3.45%) Confluence
2 274 (2.36%) SharePoint
3 180 (1.55%) SAS
4 128 (1.10%) Microsoft Exchange
5 100 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
5 100 (0.86%) Apache Spark
6 97 (0.84%) Apache
7 37 (0.32%) Jupyter
8 34 (0.29%) nginx
9 28 (0.24%) WebLogic
10 23 (0.20%) IIS
10 23 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
10 23 (0.20%) Skype for Business
11 22 (0.19%) Tomcat
12 17 (0.15%) CMS
12 17 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
13 16 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
14 13 (0.11%) JBoss
14 13 (0.11%) NetWeaver
15 9 (0.078%) Documentum
Applications
1 204 (1.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 162 (1.40%) Microsoft Office
3 108 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
4 94 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 42 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.21%) 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 3 (0.026%) OrCAD
13 3 (0.026%) Trello
14 2 (0.017%) Houdini
14 2 (0.017%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 145 (1.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 78 (0.67%) Remedy ITSM
3 51 (0.44%) Oracle ERP
4 38 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
5 34 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
5 34 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 29 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 24 (0.21%) SAP GRC
8 23 (0.20%) Oracle Payroll
9 22 (0.19%) SAP PSCD
10 20 (0.17%) Primavera
11 16 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
11 16 (0.14%) SAP FI
12 15 (0.13%) SAP HR
13 13 (0.11%) Findur
14 12 (0.10%) iTrent
14 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
14 12 (0.10%) Temenos T24
15 11 (0.095%) NetSuite
16 10 (0.086%) SAP CO
Cloud Services
1 2,177 (18.77%) Azure
2 2,043 (17.62%) AWS
3 543 (4.68%) Azure DevOps
4 536 (4.62%) GitHub
5 486 (4.19%) Power Platform
6 456 (3.93%) GCP
7 342 (2.95%) GitHub Actions
8 325 (2.80%) Microsoft 365
9 313 (2.70%) Entra ID
10 279 (2.41%) Serverless
11 225 (1.94%) Amazon S3
12 197 (1.70%) AWS Lambda
13 170 (1.47%) OCI
14 168 (1.45%) SaaS
15 163 (1.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 159 (1.37%) Amazon EKS
17 138 (1.19%) Amazon EC2
18 137 (1.18%) OpenShift
19 133 (1.15%) PaaS
20 125 (1.08%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 476 (4.10%) Firewall
2 376 (3.24%) DNS
3 227 (1.96%) WAN
4 224 (1.93%) Network Security
5 216 (1.86%) VPN
6 186 (1.60%) DHCP
7 184 (1.59%) LAN
8 138 (1.19%) BGP
9 137 (1.18%) TCP/IP
10 121 (1.04%) Wi-Fi
11 101 (0.87%) VLAN
12 99 (0.85%) OSPF
13 85 (0.73%) Wireless
14 68 (0.59%) MPLS
14 68 (0.59%) VSAN
15 64 (0.55%) SSL
16 63 (0.54%) IPsec
17 62 (0.53%) SAN
18 61 (0.53%) SD-WAN
19 52 (0.45%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 353 (3.04%) Power BI
2 295 (2.54%) PostgreSQL
3 293 (2.53%) SQL Server
4 266 (2.29%) Data Warehouse
5 174 (1.50%) Oracle Database
6 173 (1.49%) Metadata
7 145 (1.25%) Data Lake
8 138 (1.19%) Relational Database
9 124 (1.07%) MongoDB
10 109 (0.94%) Amazon RDS
11 100 (0.86%) MySQL
12 98 (0.84%) NoSQL
13 89 (0.77%) Oracle Reports
14 76 (0.66%) Pentaho
15 69 (0.59%) Amazon Athena
16 65 (0.56%) Elasticsearch
17 63 (0.54%) Amazon Redshift
18 59 (0.51%) Big Data
19 57 (0.49%) Tableau
20 48 (0.41%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 641 (5.53%) JIRA
2 563 (4.85%) Git
3 498 (4.29%) GitLab
4 466 (4.02%) Jenkins
5 135 (1.16%) Selenium
6 77 (0.66%) SonarQube
7 76 (0.66%) Postman
8 70 (0.60%) JMeter
9 69 (0.59%) JUnit
10 67 (0.58%) Maven
11 54 (0.47%) Cucumber
12 51 (0.44%) Cypress.io
13 47 (0.41%) Rational DOORS
14 45 (0.39%) Gradle
15 43 (0.37%) Visual Studio
16 42 (0.36%) Mockito
17 40 (0.34%) Gatling
18 39 (0.34%) Artifactory
19 38 (0.33%) REST Assured
20 36 (0.31%) Bitbucket
General
1 2,496 (21.52%) Social Skills
2 2,377 (20.49%) Public Sector
3 902 (7.78%) Analytical Skills
4 777 (6.70%) Finance
5 372 (3.21%) Military
6 312 (2.69%) Aerospace
7 304 (2.62%) Documentation Skills
8 201 (1.73%) Influencing Skills
9 169 (1.46%) Organisational Skills
10 168 (1.45%) Telecoms
11 167 (1.44%) Legal
12 142 (1.22%) Banking
12 142 (1.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 118 (1.02%) Manufacturing
14 114 (0.98%) Law
15 113 (0.97%) Police
16 60 (0.52%) Presentation Skills
17 46 (0.40%) Retail
18 44 (0.38%) Aviation
18 44 (0.38%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,859 (16.03%) Architect
2 1,236 (10.66%) Developer
3 1,107 (9.54%) Senior
4 1,050 (9.05%) Lead
5 706 (6.09%) Consultant
6 636 (5.48%) Analyst
7 501 (4.32%) Data Engineer
8 498 (4.29%) DevOps Engineer
9 431 (3.72%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 374 (3.22%) Technical Architect
11 357 (3.08%) Solutions Architect
12 293 (2.53%) Software Engineer
13 271 (2.34%) Data Architect
14 268 (2.31%) Security Architect
15 261 (2.25%) Network Engineer
16 213 (1.84%) Administrator
16 213 (1.84%) Azure Engineer
17 211 (1.82%) Java Developer
18 206 (1.78%) Designer
19 204 (1.76%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 999 (8.61%) Terraform
2 441 (3.80%) REST
3 250 (2.16%) Spring
4 243 (2.10%) Kafka
5 229 (1.97%) .NET
6 224 (1.93%) Spring Boot
7 215 (1.85%) RESTful
8 207 (1.78%) React
9 174 (1.50%) Node.js
10 173 (1.49%) SOAP
11 160 (1.38%) JSON
12 134 (1.16%) OAuth
13 130 (1.12%) HTML
14 129 (1.11%) Web Services
15 121 (1.04%) XML
16 119 (1.03%) AngularJS
17 111 (0.96%) Middleware
18 100 (0.86%) CSS
19 96 (0.83%) Playwright
20 94 (0.81%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 509 (4.39%) Cloud Native
2 418 (3.60%) Onboarding
3 370 (3.19%) Product Ownership
4 307 (2.65%) Data Centre
5 246 (2.12%) Management Information System
6 194 (1.67%) Legacy Systems
7 172 (1.48%) PKI
8 156 (1.35%) CMDB
9 155 (1.34%) Enterprise Software
10 151 (1.30%) Distributed Systems
11 125 (1.08%) Replication
12 123 (1.06%) Hybrid Cloud
13 121 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
14 111 (0.96%) Data Structures
15 96 (0.83%) Cyber Threat
16 94 (0.81%) Public Cloud
17 93 (0.80%) Security Operations Centre
18 87 (0.75%) Clustering
19 86 (0.74%) Operational Technology
20 83 (0.72%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 965 (8.32%) Windows
2 799 (6.89%) Linux
3 351 (3.03%) Windows Server
4 215 (1.85%) Unix
5 155 (1.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 136 (1.17%) Windows 10
7 78 (0.67%) Android
8 62 (0.53%) Solaris
9 51 (0.44%) Mac OS
10 47 (0.41%) Apple iOS
11 42 (0.36%) Ubuntu
12 40 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
13 39 (0.34%) CentOS
14 37 (0.32%) AIX
15 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 23 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
17 22 (0.19%) VMS
17 22 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
18 15 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
19 13 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,420 (20.87%) Agile
2 1,807 (15.58%) DevOps
3 1,727 (14.89%) CI/CD
4 1,465 (12.63%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,325 (11.42%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,207 (10.41%) Problem-Solving
7 1,154 (9.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 979 (8.44%) Infrastructure as Code
9 926 (7.98%) Migration
10 829 (7.15%) Cybersecurity
11 782 (6.74%) ITIL
12 749 (6.46%) Test Automation
13 724 (6.24%) Analytics
14 714 (6.16%) Containerisation
15 688 (5.93%) Technical Leadership
16 673 (5.80%) Roadmaps
17 672 (5.79%) Software Engineering
18 668 (5.76%) Decision-Making
19 655 (5.65%) AI
20 622 (5.36%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,323 (11.41%) Python
2 1,103 (9.51%) SQL
3 793 (6.84%) Java
4 587 (5.06%) PowerShell
5 396 (3.41%) JavaScript
6 334 (2.88%) Bash
7 255 (2.20%) C#
8 203 (1.75%) TypeScript
9 157 (1.35%) PL/SQL
10 125 (1.08%) Bicep
11 81 (0.70%) Shell Script
12 72 (0.62%) C++
13 63 (0.54%) C
14 55 (0.47%) Apex Code
15 51 (0.44%) Scala
16 49 (0.42%) Ruby
17 48 (0.41%) Kotlin
18 47 (0.41%) Go
18 47 (0.41%) Groovy
19 36 (0.31%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8,836 (76.19%) SC Cleared
2 2,178 (18.78%) DV Cleared
3 461 (3.97%) BPSS Clearance
4 460 (3.97%) Degree
5 212 (1.83%) CISSP
6 181 (1.56%) Cisco Certification
7 178 (1.53%) Azure Certification
8 163 (1.41%) Microsoft Certification
9 143 (1.23%) CISM
10 139 (1.20%) AWS Certification
11 109 (0.94%) PMI Certification
12 106 (0.91%) PMP
13 91 (0.78%) ISTQB
14 79 (0.68%) CCNP
15 73 (0.63%) CCNA
16 70 (0.60%) Computer Science Degree
17 64 (0.55%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 49 (0.42%) ITIL Certification
19 47 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 42 (0.36%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 492 (4.24%) QA
2 386 (3.33%) Data Quality
3 317 (2.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 312 (2.69%) NIST
5 279 (2.41%) NCSC
6 256 (2.21%) Accessibility
7 226 (1.95%) PMO
8 184 (1.59%) GDPR
9 166 (1.43%) SLA
10 158 (1.36%) GRC
11 81 (0.70%) WCAG
12 66 (0.57%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
14 43 (0.37%) NIST 800
15 35 (0.30%) Def Stans
16 31 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 28 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
17 28 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 24 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
19 22 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 802 (6.91%) Docker
2 576 (4.97%) Active Directory
3 426 (3.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 149 (1.28%) VMware NSX
5 137 (1.18%) VMware ESXi
6 132 (1.14%) Hyper-V
7 126 (1.09%) vSphere
8 80 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
9 44 (0.38%) Oracle RAC
10 43 (0.37%) Firmware
11 41 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
12 26 (0.22%) BitLocker
12 26 (0.22%) vCloud
13 16 (0.14%) NFS
14 14 (0.12%) Squid
15 13 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
16 11 (0.095%) Postfix
17 9 (0.078%) KVM
18 8 (0.069%) Ceph
18 8 (0.069%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 980 (8.45%) Kubernetes
2 444 (3.83%) Ansible
3 263 (2.27%) Grafana
4 210 (1.81%) Prometheus
5 135 (1.16%) vCenter Server
6 133 (1.15%) SCCM
7 86 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
8 83 (0.72%) SCOM
9 70 (0.60%) Argo
10 69 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
11 52 (0.45%) Oracle RMAN
12 49 (0.42%) Puppet
13 42 (0.36%) Data Guard
14 35 (0.30%) Istio
15 32 (0.28%) Kibana
16 31 (0.27%) Progress Chef
17 30 (0.26%) Nagios
18 29 (0.25%) Control-M
19 27 (0.23%) WSUS
20 26 (0.22%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,493 (12.87%) Microsoft
2 917 (7.91%) Oracle
3 601 (5.18%) VMware
4 539 (4.65%) ServiceNow
5 446 (3.85%) SAP
6 307 (2.65%) Cisco
7 248 (2.14%) Google
8 220 (1.90%) Splunk
9 213 (1.84%) Databricks
10 183 (1.58%) Salesforce
11 151 (1.30%) Red Hat
12 128 (1.10%) Palo Alto
13 127 (1.10%) IBM
14 116 (1.00%) Informatica
15 110 (0.95%) Talend
16 96 (0.83%) Dynatrace
17 88 (0.76%) Remedy
18 83 (0.72%) SolarWinds
19 80 (0.69%) F5
20 79 (0.68%) CyberArk