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

6 months to
28 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,555 5,192 8,042
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.47% 17.69% 18.57%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.21% 57.64% 60.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,210 3,461 5,256
10th Percentile £371 £340 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £694 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £520 £549 £550
% change year-on-year -5.28% -0.18% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 862 290 523
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £21.60 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £52.25 £56.89
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -8.15% -6.29%
75th Percentile £72.50 £67.50 £72.42
90th Percentile £85.23 £78.39 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £57.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year -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 15,250 9,008 13,279
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.46% 30.69% 30.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,140 5,698 8,172
10th Percentile £350 £290 £300
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £620 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £709 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £507 £530
% change year-on-year -1.43% -4.30% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,113 514 1,068
10th Percentile £16.81 £18.20 £13.86
25th Percentile £21.25 £22.27 £17.80
Median hourly rate £47.00 £42.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.59% +6.25% -25.93%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.25 £80.07 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £46.90 £45.01 £40.28
% change year-on-year +4.20% +11.75% -19.35%

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 April 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 April 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 April 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 9,154 £525 -2.33% 2,055
UK excluding London +1 5,840 £520 -5.28% 1,805
London +6 3,234 £525 - 537
Work from Home +4 2,820 £525 - 1,044
South East +1 2,180 £536 -2.60% 548
South West 0 1,323 £538 -3.10% 387
Midlands +3 892 £475 -9.52% 219
North of England -1 854 £488 -2.50% 383
West Midlands +4 750 £482 -10.22% 174
North West -2 506 £497 -0.70% 231
East of England +2 382 £525 +16.67% 160
Yorkshire -6 215 £488 -7.14% 72
Scotland +38 206 £500 +8.11% 44
North East +1 166 £450 -10.00% 84
East Midlands -4 136 £450 -5.26% 41
Wales +4 79 £515 -4.59% 98
Northern Ireland +7 18 £475 - 17

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
1 403 (3.82%) Confluence
2 215 (2.04%) SharePoint
3 138 (1.31%) Microsoft Exchange
4 128 (1.21%) SAS
5 109 (1.03%) Apache Spark
6 85 (0.81%) Apache
7 71 (0.67%) Apache Airflow
8 51 (0.48%) nginx
9 40 (0.38%) WebLogic
10 24 (0.23%) Jupyter
11 18 (0.17%) Tomcat
12 16 (0.15%) IIS
13 15 (0.14%) CMS
13 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
14 14 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
14 14 (0.13%) Skype for Business
15 13 (0.12%) Oracle Application Server
16 11 (0.10%) ArcGIS
16 11 (0.10%) NetWeaver
17 10 (0.095%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 224 (2.12%) Microsoft Office
2 190 (1.80%) Microsoft Excel
3 121 (1.15%) Microsoft Project
4 82 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (0.42%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.15%) Simulink
8 7 (0.066%) Notepad++
9 6 (0.057%) AutoCAD
10 5 (0.047%) SOLIDWORKS
10 5 (0.047%) Windchill
11 4 (0.038%) Revit
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
1 101 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
2 47 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
3 45 (0.43%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 31 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
5 29 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
6 26 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 21 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
8 18 (0.17%) 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 (0.085%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 9 (0.085%) SAP HR
14 9 (0.085%) SAP PM
15 8 (0.076%) iTrent
15 8 (0.076%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 1,833 (17.37%) AWS
2 1,800 (17.05%) Azure
3 456 (4.32%) GitHub
4 430 (4.07%) GCP
5 409 (3.87%) Azure DevOps
6 378 (3.58%) Power Platform
7 297 (2.81%) Serverless
8 272 (2.58%) Microsoft 365
9 255 (2.42%) GitHub Actions
10 245 (2.32%) Entra ID
11 226 (2.14%) Amazon S3
12 200 (1.89%) AWS Lambda
13 157 (1.49%) AWS CloudFormation
14 155 (1.47%) PaaS
15 140 (1.33%) Amazon EC2
16 139 (1.32%) OpenShift
17 138 (1.31%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 136 (1.29%) Amazon EKS
19 129 (1.22%) IaaS
20 127 (1.20%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 474 (4.49%) Firewall
2 297 (2.81%) DNS
3 236 (2.24%) Network Security
4 227 (2.15%) WAN
5 206 (1.95%) LAN
6 180 (1.71%) VPN
7 144 (1.36%) DHCP
8 143 (1.35%) BGP
9 124 (1.17%) OSPF
10 120 (1.14%) TCP/IP
11 98 (0.93%) VLAN
12 83 (0.79%) Wi-Fi
13 82 (0.78%) Wireless
14 65 (0.62%) MPLS
15 57 (0.54%) SAN
16 53 (0.50%) SSL
17 52 (0.49%) SD-WAN
18 51 (0.48%) VXLAN
19 49 (0.46%) IPsec
20 45 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 291 (2.76%) Power BI
2 268 (2.54%) PostgreSQL
3 236 (2.24%) Data Warehouse
4 196 (1.86%) SQL Server
5 147 (1.39%) Metadata
6 122 (1.16%) Oracle Database
7 114 (1.08%) Amazon RDS
8 107 (1.01%) NoSQL
9 103 (0.98%) MongoDB
10 101 (0.96%) Data Lake
11 99 (0.94%) Relational Database
12 80 (0.76%) MySQL
12 80 (0.76%) Pentaho
13 77 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
14 76 (0.72%) Big Data
15 73 (0.69%) Azure SQL Database
16 72 (0.68%) Tableau
17 69 (0.65%) Amazon Redshift
18 67 (0.63%) Oracle Reports
19 59 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 636 (6.03%) JIRA
2 495 (4.69%) Git
3 389 (3.69%) Jenkins
4 371 (3.51%) GitLab
5 100 (0.95%) Selenium
6 87 (0.82%) Postman
7 74 (0.70%) JUnit
8 70 (0.66%) SonarQube
9 50 (0.47%) Bitbucket
9 50 (0.47%) Rational DOORS
10 45 (0.43%) Artifactory
11 43 (0.41%) JMeter
12 41 (0.39%) Maven
13 40 (0.38%) Cucumber
14 39 (0.37%) Cypress.io
14 39 (0.37%) Mockito
15 35 (0.33%) Oracle APEX
15 35 (0.33%) Visual Studio
16 30 (0.28%) Zephyr
17 25 (0.24%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 2,411 (22.84%) Public Sector
2 2,297 (21.76%) Social Skills
3 819 (7.76%) Analytical Skills
4 700 (6.63%) Finance
5 350 (3.32%) Military
6 282 (2.67%) Documentation Skills
7 242 (2.29%) Aerospace
8 164 (1.55%) Legal
9 149 (1.41%) Telecoms
10 144 (1.36%) Manufacturing
11 138 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
12 117 (1.11%) Banking
13 113 (1.07%) Organisational Skills
14 97 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
15 84 (0.80%) Law
16 82 (0.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 75 (0.71%) Marketing
18 69 (0.65%) Electronics
19 66 (0.63%) Police
20 35 (0.33%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,602 (15.18%) Architect
2 1,060 (10.04%) Developer
3 927 (8.78%) Senior
4 751 (7.12%) Analyst
5 719 (6.81%) Lead
6 547 (5.18%) Consultant
7 485 (4.59%) Data Engineer
8 478 (4.53%) DevOps Engineer
9 322 (3.05%) Technical Architect
10 313 (2.97%) Software Engineer
11 289 (2.74%) Network Engineer
12 288 (2.73%) Solutions Architect
13 277 (2.62%) Business Analyst
14 250 (2.37%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 221 (2.09%) Azure Engineer
16 216 (2.05%) Project Manager
17 206 (1.95%) Security Architect
18 205 (1.94%) Designer
19 191 (1.81%) Administrator
19 191 (1.81%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 349 (3.31%) REST
2 242 (2.29%) Spring
3 213 (2.02%) Kafka
4 206 (1.95%) Node.js
5 189 (1.79%) Spring Boot
6 186 (1.76%) React
7 178 (1.69%) .NET
8 155 (1.47%) JSON
8 155 (1.47%) SOAP
9 147 (1.39%) LDAP
9 147 (1.39%) RESTful
10 124 (1.17%) PySpark
11 122 (1.16%) AngularJS
12 119 (1.13%) Web Services
13 99 (0.94%) Oracle Fusion
14 98 (0.93%) HTML
14 98 (0.93%) OAuth
15 95 (0.90%) XML
16 85 (0.81%) Elastic Stack
17 84 (0.80%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 350 (3.32%) Cloud Native
2 340 (3.22%) Product Ownership
3 307 (2.91%) Data Centre
4 280 (2.65%) Onboarding
5 195 (1.85%) Management Information System
6 184 (1.74%) PKI
7 132 (1.25%) Security Posture
8 129 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
8 129 (1.22%) Legacy Systems
9 125 (1.18%) Replication
10 123 (1.17%) Distributed Systems
11 121 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
12 91 (0.86%) Public Cloud
13 84 (0.80%) Data Structures
14 80 (0.76%) Security Operations Centre
15 79 (0.75%) Hybrid Cloud
16 78 (0.74%) Clustering
17 72 (0.68%) Virtual Team
18 67 (0.63%) Greenfield Project
19 62 (0.59%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 861 (8.16%) Windows
2 746 (7.07%) Linux
3 246 (2.33%) Windows Server
4 161 (1.53%) Unix
5 127 (1.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 117 (1.11%) Android
7 109 (1.03%) Windows 10
8 67 (0.63%) Apple iOS
9 49 (0.46%) Mac OS
10 41 (0.39%) Ubuntu
11 33 (0.31%) VMS
12 32 (0.30%) Solaris
13 30 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
14 28 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
15 23 (0.22%) AIX
16 22 (0.21%) CentOS
17 17 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
18 15 (0.14%) Windows 7
19 10 (0.095%) Embedded Linux
19 10 (0.095%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,050 (19.42%) Agile
2 1,591 (15.07%) DevOps
3 1,396 (13.23%) CI/CD
4 1,152 (10.91%) Problem-Solving
5 974 (9.23%) Stakeholder Management
6 894 (8.47%) Continuous Improvement
7 884 (8.38%) Migration
8 777 (7.36%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 721 (6.83%) Infrastructure as Code
10 657 (6.22%) ITIL
11 614 (5.82%) Analytics
12 603 (5.71%) Test Automation
13 595 (5.64%) Cybersecurity
14 570 (5.40%) Roadmaps
15 568 (5.38%) Containerisation
16 564 (5.34%) Software Engineering
17 515 (4.88%) Data Modelling
18 492 (4.66%) Scrum
19 482 (4.57%) Decision-Making
20 457 (4.33%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,218 (11.54%) Python
2 962 (9.11%) SQL
3 656 (6.22%) Java
4 577 (5.47%) PowerShell
5 368 (3.49%) JavaScript
6 221 (2.09%) C#
7 197 (1.87%) Bash
8 186 (1.76%) TypeScript
9 120 (1.14%) PL/SQL
10 105 (0.99%) C++
11 103 (0.98%) Shell Script
12 76 (0.72%) Go
13 71 (0.67%) Ruby
13 71 (0.67%) Scala
14 60 (0.57%) C
15 58 (0.55%) Bicep
16 49 (0.46%) Apex Code
17 48 (0.45%) R
18 45 (0.43%) Kusto Query Language
19 40 (0.38%) Ada
Qualifications
1 8,072 (76.48%) SC Cleared
2 1,858 (17.60%) DV Cleared
3 473 (4.48%) Degree
4 332 (3.15%) BPSS Clearance
5 199 (1.89%) Cisco Certification
6 171 (1.62%) CISSP
7 144 (1.36%) Azure Certification
8 134 (1.27%) AWS Certification
9 119 (1.13%) CCNP
10 110 (1.04%) CISM
11 98 (0.93%) Microsoft Certification
12 83 (0.79%) CCNA
13 79 (0.75%) Computer Science Degree
14 77 (0.73%) ITIL Certification
15 73 (0.69%) PMP
15 73 (0.69%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 69 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
17 66 (0.63%) PMI Certification
18 55 (0.52%) ISTQB
19 49 (0.46%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 371 (3.51%) QA
2 320 (3.03%) Data Quality
3 293 (2.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 291 (2.76%) NIST
5 202 (1.91%) NCSC
6 181 (1.71%) Accessibility
7 169 (1.60%) GDPR
8 152 (1.44%) PMO
9 114 (1.08%) SLA
10 69 (0.65%) GRC
11 68 (0.64%) JSP 440
12 44 (0.42%) COBIT
13 43 (0.41%) NIST 800
14 42 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
15 40 (0.38%) WCAG
16 34 (0.32%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 33 (0.31%) PCI DSS
17 33 (0.31%) RMADS
18 31 (0.29%) Def Stans
19 23 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 686 (6.50%) Docker
2 476 (4.51%) Active Directory
3 290 (2.75%) VMware Infrastructure
4 97 (0.92%) VMware ESXi
4 97 (0.92%) VMware NSX
5 86 (0.81%) Hyper-V
6 81 (0.77%) vSphere
7 69 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
8 41 (0.39%) Firmware
9 33 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
10 20 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
11 19 (0.18%) BitLocker
12 17 (0.16%) NFS
12 17 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 16 (0.15%) Postfix
14 12 (0.11%) Squid
14 12 (0.11%) vCloud
15 8 (0.076%) Microsoft App-V
16 7 (0.066%) KVM
17 6 (0.057%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 878 (8.32%) Kubernetes
2 872 (8.26%) Terraform
3 352 (3.33%) Ansible
4 266 (2.52%) Grafana
5 222 (2.10%) Prometheus
6 115 (1.09%) Single Sign-On
7 98 (0.93%) vCenter Server
8 85 (0.81%) SCCM
9 66 (0.63%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 58 (0.55%) Argo
10 58 (0.55%) FortiGate
10 58 (0.55%) Microsoft Intune
11 41 (0.39%) Packer
12 40 (0.38%) Puppet
13 37 (0.35%) Podman
14 35 (0.33%) Progress Chef
15 34 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
15 34 (0.32%) vRealize
16 30 (0.28%) Kibana
16 30 (0.28%) OPNET
Vendors
1 1,076 (10.19%) Microsoft
2 652 (6.18%) Oracle
3 510 (4.83%) VMware
4 424 (4.02%) ServiceNow
5 404 (3.83%) SAP
6 392 (3.71%) Cisco
7 246 (2.33%) Splunk
8 207 (1.96%) Databricks
9 172 (1.63%) Red Hat
10 171 (1.62%) Google
11 157 (1.49%) Salesforce
12 125 (1.18%) IBM
13 122 (1.16%) Atlassian
14 117 (1.11%) Palo Alto
15 116 (1.10%) Talend
16 110 (1.04%) Juniper
17 97 (0.92%) CyberArk
18 87 (0.82%) Informatica
18 87 (0.82%) Remedy
19 86 (0.81%) Dynatrace