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

6 months to
17 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,588 5,934 7,219
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.66% 17.93% 18.63%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.18% 57.33% 62.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,111 3,746 4,810
10th Percentile £381 £350 £350
25th Percentile £454 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £534 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.70% -2.95% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £735
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 831 559 489
10th Percentile £19.33 £18.51 £15.22
25th Percentile £27.31 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £64.09 £25.15 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year +154.83% -55.48% -5.85%
75th Percentile £80.00 £48.13 £71.75
90th Percentile £88.00 £73.75 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £58.05
% change year-on-year +158.45% -56.67% +0.95%

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 16,751 10,350 11,614
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.31% 31.27% 29.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,224 6,362 7,379
10th Percentile £350 £288 £313
25th Percentile £431 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £526
Median % change year-on-year - -0.19% -4.36%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £638
90th Percentile £715 £702 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £515 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,264 822 830
10th Percentile £17.72 £17.98 £14.84
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.38 £21.25
Median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -21.82%
75th Percentile £74.00 £53.95 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.72 £73.75 £75.49
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £47.50
% change year-on-year +98.81% -47.05% -7.77%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 10,040 £538 - 1,839
UK excluding London +1 6,537 £525 -2.33% 1,540
London +7 3,542 £550 +3.77% 510
Work from Home +3 3,114 £525 -2.33% 840
South East +1 2,447 £560 +4.19% 513
South West 0 1,362 £540 -6.17% 376
North of England +2 1,151 £510 +2.00% 291
Midlands 0 948 £469 -8.93% 144
West Midlands +1 821 £469 -8.93% 105
North West +2 636 £525 -0.94% 179
East of England 0 329 £550 - 143
Yorkshire +2 300 £492 - 52
Scotland +11 261 £484 +0.26% 71
North East 0 239 £475 -3.80% 63
East Midlands -2 116 £444 -8.92% 38
Wales +4 101 £550 +15.79% 33
Northern Ireland +5 33 £650 +21.50% 8

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
1 405 (3.49%) Confluence
2 277 (2.39%) SharePoint
3 195 (1.68%) SAS
4 120 (1.04%) Microsoft Exchange
5 97 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
5 97 (0.84%) Apache Spark
6 92 (0.79%) Apache
7 36 (0.31%) Jupyter
8 34 (0.29%) nginx
8 34 (0.29%) WebLogic
9 24 (0.21%) IIS
10 23 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
11 22 (0.19%) Tomcat
12 20 (0.17%) Skype for Business
13 18 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
14 17 (0.15%) CMS
14 17 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
15 15 (0.13%) NetWeaver
16 13 (0.11%) JBoss
17 11 (0.095%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 208 (1.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 159 (1.37%) Microsoft Office
3 100 (0.86%) Microsoft Project
4 89 (0.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.37%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.14%) AutoCAD
7 16 (0.14%) Revit
8 15 (0.13%) Simulink
8 15 (0.13%) SOLIDWORKS
9 8 (0.069%) Adobe XD
9 8 (0.069%) Chatbot
10 7 (0.060%) Notepad++
10 7 (0.060%) Sketch
10 7 (0.060%) Windchill
11 5 (0.043%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 3 (0.026%) Trello
13 2 (0.017%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.017%) Houdini
13 2 (0.017%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 146 (1.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 83 (0.72%) Remedy ITSM
3 50 (0.43%) Oracle ERP
4 41 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
5 33 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 33 (0.28%) Teamcenter
6 29 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
7 22 (0.19%) SAP GRC
7 22 (0.19%) SAP PSCD
8 21 (0.18%) Oracle Payroll
8 21 (0.18%) Primavera
9 16 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
10 15 (0.13%) Findur
11 14 (0.12%) SAP HR
12 13 (0.11%) SAP FI
12 13 (0.11%) Temenos T24
13 12 (0.10%) iTrent
13 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
14 11 (0.095%) NetSuite
15 10 (0.086%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,146 (18.52%) Azure
2 2,068 (17.85%) AWS
3 543 (4.69%) GitHub
4 529 (4.57%) Azure DevOps
5 482 (4.16%) Power Platform
6 460 (3.97%) GCP
7 346 (2.99%) GitHub Actions
8 316 (2.73%) Microsoft 365
9 300 (2.59%) Entra ID
10 281 (2.42%) Serverless
11 230 (1.98%) Amazon S3
12 197 (1.70%) AWS Lambda
13 178 (1.54%) OCI
14 171 (1.48%) SaaS
15 163 (1.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 158 (1.36%) Amazon EKS
17 144 (1.24%) Amazon EC2
17 144 (1.24%) PaaS
18 138 (1.19%) OpenShift
19 133 (1.15%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 478 (4.12%) Firewall
2 374 (3.23%) DNS
3 224 (1.93%) Network Security
3 224 (1.93%) WAN
4 206 (1.78%) VPN
5 188 (1.62%) LAN
6 186 (1.61%) DHCP
7 141 (1.22%) TCP/IP
8 133 (1.15%) BGP
9 122 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
10 107 (0.92%) VLAN
11 100 (0.86%) OSPF
12 86 (0.74%) Wireless
13 68 (0.59%) VSAN
14 67 (0.58%) MPLS
15 63 (0.54%) IPsec
15 63 (0.54%) SSL
16 60 (0.52%) SAN
17 59 (0.51%) SD-WAN
18 48 (0.41%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 356 (3.07%) Power BI
2 319 (2.75%) PostgreSQL
3 298 (2.57%) SQL Server
4 287 (2.48%) Data Warehouse
5 168 (1.45%) Oracle Database
6 159 (1.37%) Metadata
7 138 (1.19%) Data Lake
8 137 (1.18%) Relational Database
9 116 (1.00%) MongoDB
10 112 (0.97%) Amazon RDS
11 107 (0.92%) Oracle Reports
12 106 (0.91%) MySQL
13 95 (0.82%) Pentaho
14 86 (0.74%) NoSQL
15 69 (0.60%) Amazon Redshift
16 68 (0.59%) Amazon Athena
17 59 (0.51%) Elasticsearch
17 59 (0.51%) Tableau
18 58 (0.50%) Big Data
19 50 (0.43%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 660 (5.70%) JIRA
2 580 (5.01%) Git
3 492 (4.25%) GitLab
4 489 (4.22%) Jenkins
5 136 (1.17%) Selenium
6 87 (0.75%) Postman
7 82 (0.71%) SonarQube
8 78 (0.67%) JUnit
9 76 (0.66%) JMeter
10 68 (0.59%) Maven
11 59 (0.51%) Cucumber
11 59 (0.51%) Rational DOORS
12 52 (0.45%) Visual Studio
13 48 (0.41%) Cypress.io
13 48 (0.41%) Zephyr
14 47 (0.41%) Mockito
15 43 (0.37%) Gradle
16 42 (0.36%) Bitbucket
17 39 (0.34%) Gatling
18 38 (0.33%) Artifactory
General
1 2,446 (21.11%) Social Skills
2 2,430 (20.97%) Public Sector
3 900 (7.77%) Analytical Skills
4 778 (6.71%) Finance
5 349 (3.01%) Military
6 313 (2.70%) Aerospace
7 299 (2.58%) Documentation Skills
8 184 (1.59%) Influencing Skills
9 167 (1.44%) Legal
10 157 (1.35%) Telecoms
11 156 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
12 142 (1.23%) Banking
13 136 (1.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 113 (0.98%) Manufacturing
15 107 (0.92%) Law
15 107 (0.92%) Police
16 66 (0.57%) Presentation Skills
17 49 (0.42%) Aviation
18 44 (0.38%) Marketing
19 43 (0.37%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,835 (15.84%) Architect
2 1,280 (11.05%) Developer
3 1,108 (9.56%) Senior
4 1,004 (8.66%) Lead
5 668 (5.76%) Consultant
6 651 (5.62%) Analyst
7 531 (4.58%) Data Engineer
8 475 (4.10%) DevOps Engineer
9 421 (3.63%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 372 (3.21%) Technical Architect
11 353 (3.05%) Solutions Architect
12 319 (2.75%) Software Engineer
13 273 (2.36%) Security Architect
14 260 (2.24%) Network Engineer
15 250 (2.16%) Data Architect
16 226 (1.95%) Java Developer
17 219 (1.89%) Administrator
18 216 (1.86%) Designer
19 209 (1.80%) Delivery Manager
20 205 (1.77%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 435 (3.75%) REST
2 260 (2.24%) Spring
3 240 (2.07%) .NET
4 235 (2.03%) Kafka
5 226 (1.95%) Spring Boot
6 220 (1.90%) RESTful
7 199 (1.72%) React
8 180 (1.55%) Node.js
9 175 (1.51%) SOAP
10 154 (1.33%) JSON
11 138 (1.19%) Web Services
12 133 (1.15%) AngularJS
13 130 (1.12%) OAuth
14 126 (1.09%) HTML
15 117 (1.01%) XML
16 109 (0.94%) Middleware
17 94 (0.81%) Playwright
18 92 (0.79%) Oracle Fusion
18 92 (0.79%) PySpark
19 88 (0.76%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 499 (4.31%) Cloud Native
2 413 (3.56%) Onboarding
3 370 (3.19%) Product Ownership
4 300 (2.59%) Data Centre
5 238 (2.05%) Management Information System
6 189 (1.63%) Legacy Systems
7 168 (1.45%) Distributed Systems
8 163 (1.41%) PKI
9 149 (1.29%) Enterprise Software
10 137 (1.18%) CMDB
11 121 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
12 120 (1.04%) Replication
13 116 (1.00%) Hybrid Cloud
14 115 (0.99%) Data Structures
15 95 (0.82%) Security Operations Centre
16 94 (0.81%) Clustering
17 93 (0.80%) Cyber Threat
18 92 (0.79%) Public Cloud
19 88 (0.76%) Virtual Team
20 77 (0.66%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 956 (8.25%) Windows
2 799 (6.90%) Linux
3 326 (2.81%) Windows Server
4 228 (1.97%) Unix
5 150 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 122 (1.05%) Windows 10
7 96 (0.83%) Android
8 62 (0.54%) Solaris
9 60 (0.52%) Apple iOS
10 49 (0.42%) Mac OS
11 40 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 38 (0.33%) Ubuntu
13 35 (0.30%) AIX
14 34 (0.29%) CentOS
15 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 22 (0.19%) VMS
17 21 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
18 18 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
19 14 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
19 14 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,444 (21.09%) Agile
2 1,819 (15.70%) DevOps
3 1,740 (15.02%) CI/CD
4 1,380 (11.91%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,304 (11.25%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,204 (10.39%) Problem-Solving
7 1,118 (9.65%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 950 (8.20%) Infrastructure as Code
9 926 (7.99%) Migration
10 771 (6.65%) Cybersecurity
11 765 (6.60%) Test Automation
12 754 (6.51%) ITIL
13 737 (6.36%) Analytics
14 722 (6.23%) Containerisation
15 691 (5.96%) Software Engineering
16 683 (5.89%) Roadmaps
17 658 (5.68%) Technical Leadership
18 639 (5.51%) Data Modelling
19 638 (5.51%) AI
19 638 (5.51%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 1,311 (11.31%) Python
2 1,154 (9.96%) SQL
3 811 (7.00%) Java
4 565 (4.88%) PowerShell
5 404 (3.49%) JavaScript
6 322 (2.78%) Bash
7 269 (2.32%) C#
8 193 (1.67%) TypeScript
9 172 (1.48%) PL/SQL
10 112 (0.97%) Bicep
11 94 (0.81%) C++
12 85 (0.73%) Shell Script
13 68 (0.59%) C
14 56 (0.48%) Apex Code
15 54 (0.47%) Kotlin
16 53 (0.46%) Ruby
17 52 (0.45%) Scala
18 49 (0.42%) Go
19 45 (0.39%) Groovy
20 37 (0.32%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8,833 (76.23%) SC Cleared
2 2,167 (18.70%) DV Cleared
3 457 (3.94%) Degree
4 442 (3.81%) BPSS Clearance
5 213 (1.84%) CISSP
6 190 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
7 169 (1.46%) Azure Certification
8 159 (1.37%) Microsoft Certification
9 142 (1.23%) CISM
10 134 (1.16%) AWS Certification
11 107 (0.92%) PMI Certification
12 105 (0.91%) PMP
13 97 (0.84%) ISTQB
14 83 (0.72%) CCNA
15 81 (0.70%) CCNP
16 69 (0.60%) Computer Science Degree
17 65 (0.56%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 48 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 45 (0.39%) ITIL Certification
20 44 (0.38%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 486 (4.19%) QA
2 373 (3.22%) Data Quality
3 305 (2.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 300 (2.59%) NIST
5 268 (2.31%) NCSC
6 262 (2.26%) Accessibility
7 216 (1.86%) PMO
8 180 (1.55%) GDPR
9 142 (1.23%) GRC
10 141 (1.22%) SLA
11 79 (0.68%) WCAG
12 66 (0.57%) JSP 440
13 47 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
14 44 (0.38%) NIST 800
15 33 (0.28%) Def Stans
16 29 (0.25%) Government Security Classifications
16 29 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 29 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 23 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
18 22 (0.19%) RMADS
System Software
1 805 (6.95%) Docker
2 543 (4.69%) Active Directory
3 402 (3.47%) VMware Infrastructure
4 151 (1.30%) VMware NSX
5 131 (1.13%) VMware ESXi
6 118 (1.02%) vSphere
7 113 (0.98%) Hyper-V
8 82 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
9 45 (0.39%) Oracle RAC
10 43 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
11 33 (0.28%) Firmware
12 26 (0.22%) BitLocker
13 25 (0.22%) vCloud
14 16 (0.14%) NFS
15 15 (0.13%) Postfix
15 15 (0.13%) Squid
16 11 (0.095%) Virtual Servers
17 8 (0.069%) KVM
18 7 (0.060%) Ceph
18 7 (0.060%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 987 (8.52%) Terraform
2 978 (8.44%) Kubernetes
3 442 (3.81%) Ansible
4 271 (2.34%) Grafana
5 214 (1.85%) Prometheus
6 131 (1.13%) vCenter Server
7 125 (1.08%) SCCM
8 90 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
9 74 (0.64%) SCOM
10 67 (0.58%) Argo
10 67 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
11 55 (0.47%) Oracle RMAN
12 51 (0.44%) Puppet
13 41 (0.35%) Data Guard
14 33 (0.28%) Progress Chef
15 32 (0.28%) Istio
16 30 (0.26%) FortiGate
16 30 (0.26%) Nagios
17 28 (0.24%) WSUS
18 27 (0.23%) Control-M
Vendors
1 1,437 (12.40%) Microsoft
2 944 (8.15%) Oracle
3 583 (5.03%) VMware
4 534 (4.61%) ServiceNow
5 443 (3.82%) SAP
6 296 (2.55%) Cisco
7 238 (2.05%) Google
8 208 (1.79%) Databricks
9 206 (1.78%) Splunk
10 188 (1.62%) Salesforce
11 151 (1.30%) Red Hat
12 130 (1.12%) Talend
13 129 (1.11%) IBM
13 129 (1.11%) Informatica
14 115 (0.99%) Palo Alto
15 96 (0.83%) Dynatrace
16 92 (0.79%) Remedy
17 86 (0.74%) Denodo
17 86 (0.74%) F5
18 85 (0.73%) Juniper