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

6 months to
25 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,501 5,761 7,515
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.71% 17.61% 18.52%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.20% 57.08% 61.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,988 3,686 4,992
10th Percentile £381 £338 £340
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.57% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £630 £620 £640
90th Percentile £719 £694 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 843 505 535
10th Percentile £18.31 £18.51 £15.22
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £62.00 £25.15 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +146.52% -54.27% -8.49%
75th Percentile £77.50 £53.86 £71.25
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £57.16
% change year-on-year +151.03% -56.00% -4.73%

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 16,621 10,093 12,140
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.37% 30.85% 29.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,099 6,261 7,684
10th Percentile £350 £278 £313
25th Percentile £430 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £638
90th Percentile £713 £703 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,216 755 941
10th Percentile £17.80 £17.87 £14.25
25th Percentile £25.75 £19.38 £21.19
Median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -25.11%
75th Percentile £73.00 £56.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £86.63 £75.00 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -21.82%

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 25 July 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 25 July 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 25 July 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 9,931 £533 -0.93% 1,868
UK excluding London +1 6,458 £525 -2.33% 1,419
London +7 3,520 £545 +3.81% 584
Work from Home +4 3,116 £525 -1.59% 921
South East +1 2,452 £550 +1.22% 484
South West 0 1,299 £538 -6.52% 334
North of England +2 1,096 £500 +0.05% 286
Midlands +3 982 £469 -6.20% 156
West Midlands +2 839 £469 -6.20% 110
North West -1 584 £525 -0.19% 159
East of England +2 315 £575 +9.52% 113
Yorkshire +1 301 £500 +1.63% 61
Scotland +14 277 £500 +8.11% 41
North East 0 238 £475 -5.00% 66
East Midlands +1 130 £418 -9.73% 46
Wales +4 103 £550 +15.79% 21
Northern Ireland +4 33 £650 +25.00% 9

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
1 410 (3.56%) Confluence
2 266 (2.31%) SharePoint
3 189 (1.64%) SAS
4 126 (1.10%) Microsoft Exchange
5 109 (0.95%) Apache Spark
6 105 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
7 99 (0.86%) Apache
8 45 (0.39%) WebLogic
9 41 (0.36%) nginx
10 39 (0.34%) Jupyter
11 25 (0.22%) Tomcat
12 24 (0.21%) IIS
13 20 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
14 18 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
15 16 (0.14%) CMS
15 16 (0.14%) NetWeaver
16 15 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
17 13 (0.11%) Skype for Business
18 12 (0.10%) Tuxedo
19 9 (0.078%) Documentum
Applications
1 207 (1.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 153 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
3 100 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
4 76 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 50 (0.43%) MS Visio
6 22 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.13%) Simulink
8 13 (0.11%) AutoCAD
8 13 (0.11%) Revit
8 13 (0.11%) SOLIDWORKS
9 9 (0.078%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.070%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.061%) Notepad++
12 6 (0.052%) Sketch
13 4 (0.035%) Trello
14 3 (0.026%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 3 (0.026%) Windchill
15 2 (0.017%) CATIA
15 2 (0.017%) CPLEX
15 2 (0.017%) Houdini
Business Applications
1 152 (1.32%) SAP S/4HANA
2 73 (0.63%) Remedy ITSM
3 44 (0.38%) Oracle ERP
4 41 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
5 38 (0.33%) Teamcenter
6 32 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 23 (0.20%) Dynamics CRM
7 23 (0.20%) SAP PSCD
8 22 (0.19%) SAP GRC
9 21 (0.18%) Primavera
10 15 (0.13%) Findur
11 13 (0.11%) Oracle Payroll
11 13 (0.11%) Temenos T24
12 12 (0.10%) iTrent
12 12 (0.10%) Oracle Payables
12 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
13 11 (0.096%) SAP HR
14 10 (0.087%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 10 (0.087%) NetSuite
14 10 (0.087%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 2,065 (17.95%) Azure
2 2,045 (17.78%) AWS
3 514 (4.47%) GitHub
4 489 (4.25%) Azure DevOps
5 466 (4.05%) Power Platform
6 434 (3.77%) GCP
7 317 (2.76%) GitHub Actions
8 305 (2.65%) Microsoft 365
9 289 (2.51%) Entra ID
10 276 (2.40%) Serverless
11 246 (2.14%) Amazon S3
12 199 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
13 162 (1.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 162 (1.41%) OCI
14 159 (1.38%) Amazon EC2
14 159 (1.38%) Amazon EKS
14 159 (1.38%) SaaS
15 154 (1.34%) PaaS
16 134 (1.17%) OpenShift
17 129 (1.12%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 485 (4.22%) Firewall
2 359 (3.12%) DNS
3 240 (2.09%) Network Security
4 235 (2.04%) WAN
5 203 (1.77%) VPN
6 199 (1.73%) LAN
7 178 (1.55%) DHCP
8 148 (1.29%) BGP
9 131 (1.14%) TCP/IP
10 122 (1.06%) OSPF
11 113 (0.98%) Wi-Fi
12 108 (0.94%) VLAN
13 91 (0.79%) Wireless
14 70 (0.61%) MPLS
15 68 (0.59%) SAN
16 66 (0.57%) IPsec
17 63 (0.55%) SD-WAN
18 59 (0.51%) VXLAN
19 58 (0.50%) VSAN
20 55 (0.48%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 355 (3.09%) Power BI
2 310 (2.70%) PostgreSQL
3 286 (2.49%) SQL Server
4 283 (2.46%) Data Warehouse
5 172 (1.50%) Oracle Database
6 166 (1.44%) Metadata
7 137 (1.19%) Data Lake
8 134 (1.17%) Relational Database
9 111 (0.97%) MongoDB
10 106 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
11 98 (0.85%) MySQL
12 94 (0.82%) Oracle Reports
13 88 (0.77%) Pentaho
14 79 (0.69%) Elasticsearch
14 79 (0.69%) NoSQL
15 74 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
16 69 (0.60%) Amazon Athena
17 67 (0.58%) Big Data
18 62 (0.54%) Tableau
19 51 (0.44%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 656 (5.70%) JIRA
2 552 (4.80%) Git
3 464 (4.03%) GitLab
4 453 (3.94%) Jenkins
5 123 (1.07%) Selenium
6 84 (0.73%) JUnit
7 83 (0.72%) SonarQube
8 78 (0.68%) Postman
9 65 (0.57%) Maven
10 64 (0.56%) JMeter
11 55 (0.48%) Cucumber
11 55 (0.48%) Rational DOORS
12 47 (0.41%) Visual Studio
13 46 (0.40%) Mockito
14 44 (0.38%) Cypress.io
15 42 (0.37%) Artifactory
15 42 (0.37%) REST Assured
15 42 (0.37%) Zephyr
16 41 (0.36%) Bitbucket
17 40 (0.35%) Gatling
General
1 2,510 (21.82%) Public Sector
2 2,348 (20.42%) Social Skills
3 856 (7.44%) Analytical Skills
4 764 (6.64%) Finance
5 364 (3.16%) Military
6 289 (2.51%) Aerospace
7 281 (2.44%) Documentation Skills
8 181 (1.57%) Legal
9 174 (1.51%) Influencing Skills
10 150 (1.30%) Telecoms
11 138 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
12 131 (1.14%) Banking
13 113 (0.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 102 (0.89%) Law
14 102 (0.89%) Manufacturing
14 102 (0.89%) Police
15 72 (0.63%) Presentation Skills
16 52 (0.45%) Aviation
17 43 (0.37%) Marketing
18 38 (0.33%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,794 (15.60%) Architect
2 1,271 (11.05%) Developer
3 1,049 (9.12%) Senior
4 977 (8.49%) Lead
5 712 (6.19%) Analyst
6 600 (5.22%) Consultant
7 523 (4.55%) Data Engineer
8 487 (4.23%) DevOps Engineer
9 391 (3.40%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 369 (3.21%) Technical Architect
11 350 (3.04%) Solutions Architect
12 330 (2.87%) Software Engineer
13 277 (2.41%) Security Architect
14 267 (2.32%) Network Engineer
15 228 (1.98%) Java Developer
16 226 (1.97%) Data Architect
17 222 (1.93%) Designer
18 212 (1.84%) Business Analyst
19 207 (1.80%) Project Manager
20 203 (1.77%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 413 (3.59%) REST
2 274 (2.38%) Spring
3 237 (2.06%) Spring Boot
4 227 (1.97%) Kafka
5 223 (1.94%) .NET
6 202 (1.76%) React
7 201 (1.75%) RESTful
8 189 (1.64%) Node.js
9 169 (1.47%) SOAP
10 151 (1.31%) JSON
11 137 (1.19%) AngularJS
12 129 (1.12%) Web Services
13 115 (1.00%) OAuth
14 114 (0.99%) HTML
15 104 (0.90%) Middleware
16 101 (0.88%) PySpark
16 101 (0.88%) XML
17 92 (0.80%) Playwright
18 82 (0.71%) Elastic Stack
19 81 (0.70%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 465 (4.04%) Cloud Native
2 389 (3.38%) Onboarding
3 357 (3.10%) Product Ownership
4 321 (2.79%) Data Centre
5 234 (2.03%) Management Information System
6 198 (1.72%) Legacy Systems
7 173 (1.50%) Distributed Systems
8 165 (1.43%) PKI
9 127 (1.10%) Enterprise Software
9 127 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
10 125 (1.09%) CMDB
11 116 (1.01%) Data Structures
12 110 (0.96%) Replication
13 109 (0.95%) Hybrid Cloud
14 99 (0.86%) Clustering
15 93 (0.81%) Public Cloud
16 92 (0.80%) Security Posture
17 87 (0.76%) Virtual Team
18 81 (0.70%) Security Operations Centre
19 76 (0.66%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 916 (7.96%) Windows
2 785 (6.83%) Linux
3 292 (2.54%) Windows Server
4 226 (1.97%) Unix
5 153 (1.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 98 (0.85%) Android
7 94 (0.82%) Windows 10
8 66 (0.57%) Apple iOS
9 62 (0.54%) Solaris
10 48 (0.42%) Mac OS
11 37 (0.32%) Ubuntu
12 36 (0.31%) AIX
12 36 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
13 29 (0.25%) CentOS
14 21 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
15 20 (0.17%) VMS
16 13 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
16 13 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
17 11 (0.096%) Windows 7
18 10 (0.087%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,382 (20.71%) Agile
2 1,776 (15.44%) DevOps
3 1,673 (14.55%) CI/CD
4 1,242 (10.80%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,226 (10.66%) Problem-Solving
6 1,225 (10.65%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,035 (9.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 897 (7.80%) Migration
9 881 (7.66%) Infrastructure as Code
10 738 (6.42%) ITIL
11 732 (6.36%) Cybersecurity
12 718 (6.24%) Containerisation
12 718 (6.24%) Test Automation
13 703 (6.11%) Analytics
14 677 (5.89%) Software Engineering
15 659 (5.73%) Roadmaps
16 639 (5.56%) Decision-Making
17 621 (5.40%) Data Modelling
18 603 (5.24%) AI
19 602 (5.23%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,281 (11.14%) Python
2 1,126 (9.79%) SQL
3 817 (7.10%) Java
4 518 (4.50%) PowerShell
5 368 (3.20%) JavaScript
6 286 (2.49%) Bash
7 257 (2.23%) C#
8 188 (1.63%) TypeScript
9 176 (1.53%) PL/SQL
10 102 (0.89%) Bicep
11 97 (0.84%) Shell Script
12 87 (0.76%) C++
13 63 (0.55%) C
14 60 (0.52%) Apex Code
15 58 (0.50%) Ruby
16 54 (0.47%) Kotlin
17 52 (0.45%) Go
18 49 (0.43%) Scala
19 38 (0.33%) Groovy
19 38 (0.33%) R
Qualifications
1 8,788 (76.41%) SC Cleared
2 2,161 (18.79%) DV Cleared
3 450 (3.91%) Degree
4 412 (3.58%) BPSS Clearance
5 216 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
6 186 (1.62%) CISSP
7 163 (1.42%) Azure Certification
8 143 (1.24%) Microsoft Certification
9 134 (1.17%) AWS Certification
10 115 (1.00%) CISM
11 107 (0.93%) PMI Certification
12 103 (0.90%) PMP
13 100 (0.87%) CCNP
14 93 (0.81%) CCNA
15 82 (0.71%) ISTQB
16 66 (0.57%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 64 (0.56%) Computer Science Degree
18 50 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
19 48 (0.42%) TOGAF Certification
20 47 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 440 (3.83%) QA
2 369 (3.21%) Data Quality
3 299 (2.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 299 (2.60%) NIST
4 257 (2.23%) Accessibility
5 240 (2.09%) NCSC
6 204 (1.77%) PMO
7 182 (1.58%) GDPR
8 136 (1.18%) GRC
9 127 (1.10%) SLA
10 75 (0.65%) WCAG
11 65 (0.57%) JSP 440
12 49 (0.43%) NIST 800
13 44 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
14 30 (0.26%) Government Security Classifications
15 28 (0.24%) Def Stans
16 26 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 26 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 22 (0.19%) RMADS
18 20 (0.17%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 784 (6.82%) Docker
2 498 (4.33%) Active Directory
3 381 (3.31%) VMware Infrastructure
4 141 (1.23%) VMware NSX
5 131 (1.14%) VMware ESXi
6 104 (0.90%) vSphere
7 102 (0.89%) Hyper-V
8 81 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
9 49 (0.43%) Oracle RAC
10 36 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
11 30 (0.26%) Firmware
12 24 (0.21%) NFS
13 21 (0.18%) vCloud
14 19 (0.17%) BitLocker
15 18 (0.16%) Postfix
16 16 (0.14%) Squid
17 9 (0.078%) KVM
18 8 (0.070%) Microsoft App-V
19 7 (0.061%) UAG
20 6 (0.052%) Corosync
Systems Management
1 963 (8.37%) Terraform
2 935 (8.13%) Kubernetes
3 417 (3.63%) Ansible
4 275 (2.39%) Grafana
5 220 (1.91%) Prometheus
6 128 (1.11%) vCenter Server
7 100 (0.87%) SCCM
8 77 (0.67%) Microsoft Intune
9 68 (0.59%) Argo
10 66 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
11 60 (0.52%) SCOM
12 54 (0.47%) Oracle RMAN
13 49 (0.43%) Puppet
14 44 (0.38%) FortiGate
15 37 (0.32%) Data Guard
16 30 (0.26%) Nagios
17 29 (0.25%) Progress Chef
18 27 (0.23%) Podman
19 25 (0.22%) Active Directory Federation Services
20 24 (0.21%) Istio
Vendors
1 1,301 (11.31%) Microsoft
2 892 (7.76%) Oracle
3 559 (4.86%) VMware
4 546 (4.75%) ServiceNow
5 409 (3.56%) SAP
6 314 (2.73%) Cisco
7 217 (1.89%) Splunk
8 216 (1.88%) Google
9 199 (1.73%) Databricks
10 188 (1.63%) Salesforce
11 156 (1.36%) Red Hat
12 142 (1.23%) Informatica
13 140 (1.22%) Talend
14 125 (1.09%) IBM
15 116 (1.01%) Palo Alto
16 101 (0.88%) Juniper
17 97 (0.84%) F5
18 96 (0.83%) SolarWinds
19 91 (0.79%) Fortinet
20 86 (0.75%) Citrix