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

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,993 6,080 6,703
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.84% 18.39% 17.72%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.79% 58.24% 60.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,325 3,928 4,277
10th Percentile £394 £335 £350
25th Percentile £462 £443 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.42% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £537 £550
% change year-on-year +0.09% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 859 623 392
10th Percentile £20.00 £18.51 £20.12
25th Percentile £30.12 £18.87 £29.25
Median hourly rate £63.48 £25.15 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +152.41% -58.08% -
75th Percentile £76.38 £33.75 £72.05
90th Percentile £91.06 £69.75 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £60.46
% change year-on-year +158.45% -58.40% +4.25%

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 17,434 10,440 11,050
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.75% 31.58% 29.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,583 6,528 6,719
10th Percentile £350 £285 £313
25th Percentile £444 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £635
90th Percentile £713 £711 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,409 875 610
10th Percentile £17.00 £17.87 £17.99
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £25.26
Median hourly rate £46.80 £25.15 £48.78
Median % change year-on-year +86.08% -48.44% -8.82%
75th Percentile £71.50 £42.63 £68.75
90th Percentile £88.75 £70.00 £75.49
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -49.70% -3.64%

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 1 October 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 1 October 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 1 October 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 10,322 £550 +2.33% 5,703
UK excluding London +1 6,681 £538 +0.09% 4,053
London +6 3,674 £550 +2.33% 1,777
Work from Home +2 3,172 £528 -1.86% 2,991
South East +1 2,273 £565 +7.62% 1,105
South West 0 1,402 £550 - 871
North of England +3 1,307 £515 -1.90% 765
Midlands 0 945 £475 -8.39% 402
West Midlands 0 803 £475 -8.43% 261
North West +1 789 £530 -4.07% 464
East of England 0 437 £574 +4.36% 492
Scotland +15 312 £495 +0.51% 306
Yorkshire +1 292 £492 +0.20% 129
North East 0 246 £466 -11.19% 178
East Midlands -1 134 £500 +8.11% 140
Wales +4 108 £550 +4.76% 92
Northern Ireland +2 36 £650 +21.50% 60

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
1 398 (3.32%) Confluence
2 267 (2.23%) SharePoint
3 161 (1.34%) SAS
4 127 (1.06%) Microsoft Exchange
5 111 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
6 109 (0.91%) Apache
7 108 (0.90%) Apache Spark
8 41 (0.34%) Jupyter
9 39 (0.33%) WebLogic
10 37 (0.31%) nginx
11 34 (0.28%) CMS
12 25 (0.21%) IIS
13 22 (0.18%) Skype for Business
13 22 (0.18%) Tomcat
14 19 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
15 16 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 16 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
16 14 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
17 11 (0.092%) JBoss
17 11 (0.092%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 216 (1.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 164 (1.37%) Microsoft Office
3 105 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 101 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 45 (0.38%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 19 (0.16%) Revit
8 19 (0.16%) Windchill
9 18 (0.15%) SOLIDWORKS
10 9 (0.075%) Adobe XD
10 9 (0.075%) Chatbot
10 9 (0.075%) Simulink
11 7 (0.058%) Notepad++
11 7 (0.058%) Sketch
12 6 (0.050%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 4 (0.033%) OrCAD
13 4 (0.033%) Trello
14 2 (0.017%) Gliffy
14 2 (0.017%) Houdini
Business Applications
1 150 (1.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 82 (0.68%) Remedy ITSM
3 60 (0.50%) Oracle ERP
4 48 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
5 38 (0.32%) Teamcenter
6 33 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 32 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
8 27 (0.23%) Oracle Payroll
9 26 (0.22%) SAP PSCD
10 24 (0.20%) SAP GRC
11 22 (0.18%) SAP FI
12 18 (0.15%) Primavera
12 18 (0.15%) SAP HR
13 17 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
14 15 (0.13%) Maximo
15 14 (0.12%) Oracle General Ledger
15 14 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
15 14 (0.12%) SAP CO
16 12 (0.10%) NetSuite
16 12 (0.10%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 2,162 (18.03%) Azure
2 2,107 (17.57%) AWS
3 517 (4.31%) GitHub
4 515 (4.29%) Azure DevOps
5 500 (4.17%) Power Platform
6 466 (3.89%) GCP
7 357 (2.98%) GitHub Actions
8 348 (2.90%) Microsoft 365
9 331 (2.76%) Entra ID
10 279 (2.33%) Serverless
11 246 (2.05%) Amazon S3
12 208 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
13 182 (1.52%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 173 (1.44%) Amazon EKS
15 170 (1.42%) OCI
16 166 (1.38%) SaaS
17 151 (1.26%) Amazon EC2
18 144 (1.20%) OpenShift
19 132 (1.10%) AWS CloudFormation
20 112 (0.93%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 456 (3.80%) Firewall
2 386 (3.22%) DNS
3 243 (2.03%) Network Security
4 212 (1.77%) WAN
5 200 (1.67%) VPN
6 188 (1.57%) DHCP
7 163 (1.36%) LAN
8 139 (1.16%) TCP/IP
9 128 (1.07%) BGP
10 116 (0.97%) Wi-Fi
11 98 (0.82%) VLAN
12 91 (0.76%) Wireless
13 87 (0.73%) OSPF
14 71 (0.59%) SSL
15 67 (0.56%) SAN
16 65 (0.54%) MPLS
17 64 (0.53%) VSAN
18 61 (0.51%) IPsec
19 58 (0.48%) SD-WAN
20 50 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 355 (2.96%) Power BI
2 306 (2.55%) PostgreSQL
3 280 (2.33%) SQL Server
4 265 (2.21%) Data Warehouse
5 209 (1.74%) Metadata
6 184 (1.53%) Oracle Database
7 147 (1.23%) Data Lake
8 142 (1.18%) Relational Database
9 134 (1.12%) MongoDB
10 112 (0.93%) MySQL
11 110 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
12 94 (0.78%) NoSQL
13 87 (0.73%) Oracle Reports
14 73 (0.61%) Elasticsearch
15 69 (0.58%) Amazon Athena
16 67 (0.56%) Pentaho
17 62 (0.52%) Big Data
18 53 (0.44%) DynamoDB
19 52 (0.43%) Amazon Aurora
20 50 (0.42%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 660 (5.50%) JIRA
2 583 (4.86%) Git
3 536 (4.47%) GitLab
4 504 (4.20%) Jenkins
5 159 (1.33%) Selenium
6 92 (0.77%) Postman
7 81 (0.68%) Maven
8 78 (0.65%) JUnit
9 77 (0.64%) Cucumber
9 77 (0.64%) SonarQube
10 76 (0.63%) JMeter
11 54 (0.45%) Cypress.io
12 51 (0.43%) Gradle
13 48 (0.40%) REST Assured
14 46 (0.38%) Mockito
15 44 (0.37%) Gatling
16 40 (0.33%) Visual Studio
17 39 (0.33%) Artifactory
17 39 (0.33%) Zephyr
18 32 (0.27%) MSI
General
1 2,694 (22.46%) Social Skills
2 2,461 (20.52%) Public Sector
3 970 (8.09%) Analytical Skills
4 783 (6.53%) Finance
5 430 (3.59%) Military
6 349 (2.91%) Aerospace
7 311 (2.59%) Documentation Skills
8 236 (1.97%) Influencing Skills
9 198 (1.65%) Organisational Skills
10 176 (1.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 168 (1.40%) Legal
12 167 (1.39%) Manufacturing
12 167 (1.39%) Telecoms
13 142 (1.18%) Banking
14 123 (1.03%) Police
15 120 (1.00%) Law
16 75 (0.63%) Presentation Skills
17 55 (0.46%) Local Government
18 53 (0.44%) Aviation
19 42 (0.35%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,944 (16.21%) Architect
2 1,224 (10.21%) Developer
3 1,147 (9.56%) Senior
4 1,056 (8.81%) Lead
5 706 (5.89%) Consultant
6 661 (5.51%) Analyst
7 514 (4.29%) DevOps Engineer
8 493 (4.11%) Data Engineer
9 428 (3.57%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 376 (3.14%) Solutions Architect
11 361 (3.01%) Technical Architect
12 305 (2.54%) Data Architect
13 289 (2.41%) Security Architect
14 259 (2.16%) Software Engineer
15 251 (2.09%) Network Engineer
16 230 (1.92%) Administrator
17 223 (1.86%) Java Developer
18 216 (1.80%) Designer
19 208 (1.73%) Azure Engineer
20 207 (1.73%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,017 (8.48%) Terraform
2 478 (3.99%) REST
3 270 (2.25%) Kafka
4 259 (2.16%) Spring
5 239 (1.99%) Spring Boot
6 215 (1.79%) RESTful
7 200 (1.67%) .NET
8 189 (1.58%) React
9 184 (1.53%) SOAP
10 175 (1.46%) Node.js
11 159 (1.33%) JSON
12 144 (1.20%) OAuth
13 139 (1.16%) HTML
14 138 (1.15%) XML
15 130 (1.08%) Middleware
16 115 (0.96%) Web Services
17 111 (0.93%) Oracle Fusion
18 109 (0.91%) AngularJS
19 103 (0.86%) CSS
20 99 (0.83%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 540 (4.50%) Cloud Native
2 479 (3.99%) Onboarding
3 383 (3.19%) Product Ownership
4 309 (2.58%) Data Centre
5 270 (2.25%) Management Information System
6 186 (1.55%) Legacy Systems
7 183 (1.53%) PKI
8 182 (1.52%) Enterprise Software
9 166 (1.38%) CMDB
10 135 (1.13%) Distributed Systems
11 129 (1.08%) Hybrid Cloud
12 122 (1.02%) Cyber Threat
13 120 (1.00%) Replication
14 115 (0.96%) Operational Technology
15 110 (0.92%) Self-Motivation
16 103 (0.86%) Data Structures
17 99 (0.83%) Security Posture
18 98 (0.82%) Security Operations Centre
19 92 (0.77%) Public Cloud
20 90 (0.75%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 1,007 (8.40%) Windows
2 795 (6.63%) Linux
3 375 (3.13%) Windows Server
4 239 (1.99%) Unix
5 152 (1.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 145 (1.21%) Windows 10
7 82 (0.68%) Solaris
8 79 (0.66%) Android
9 49 (0.41%) Mac OS
10 48 (0.40%) Apple iOS
11 44 (0.37%) CentOS
12 40 (0.33%) Ubuntu
13 37 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
14 31 (0.26%) AIX
15 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 24 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
17 21 (0.18%) VMS
18 19 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
19 16 (0.13%) Rocky
20 11 (0.092%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,559 (21.34%) Agile
2 1,823 (15.20%) CI/CD
3 1,819 (15.17%) DevOps
4 1,694 (14.12%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,472 (12.27%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,285 (10.71%) Problem-Solving
7 1,220 (10.17%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,040 (8.67%) Infrastructure as Code
9 977 (8.15%) Migration
10 877 (7.31%) Cybersecurity
11 797 (6.65%) ITIL
12 792 (6.60%) Test Automation
13 773 (6.45%) Decision-Making
14 770 (6.42%) Containerisation
15 763 (6.36%) Technical Leadership
16 761 (6.35%) AI
17 743 (6.20%) Roadmaps
18 723 (6.03%) Analytics
19 683 (5.69%) Software Engineering
20 637 (5.31%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,379 (11.50%) Python
2 1,125 (9.38%) SQL
3 808 (6.74%) Java
4 598 (4.99%) PowerShell
5 414 (3.45%) JavaScript
6 361 (3.01%) Bash
7 229 (1.91%) C#
8 225 (1.88%) TypeScript
9 154 (1.28%) PL/SQL
10 127 (1.06%) Bicep
11 86 (0.72%) Shell Script
12 62 (0.52%) Go
13 61 (0.51%) Scala
14 60 (0.50%) C++
15 51 (0.43%) C
16 49 (0.41%) Groovy
16 49 (0.41%) Kotlin
17 39 (0.33%) Apex Code
18 38 (0.32%) T-SQL
19 35 (0.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 9,143 (76.24%) SC Cleared
2 2,249 (18.75%) DV Cleared
3 545 (4.54%) BPSS Clearance
4 490 (4.09%) Degree
5 222 (1.85%) CISSP
6 190 (1.58%) Cisco Certification
7 189 (1.58%) Azure Certification
8 169 (1.41%) Microsoft Certification
9 158 (1.32%) AWS Certification
10 139 (1.16%) CISM
11 110 (0.92%) PMI Certification
12 100 (0.83%) PMP
13 97 (0.81%) ISTQB
14 89 (0.74%) CCNP
15 74 (0.62%) Computer Science Degree
16 69 (0.58%) CCNA
17 61 (0.51%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 55 (0.46%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 49 (0.41%) DBS Check
20 45 (0.38%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 541 (4.51%) QA
2 398 (3.32%) Data Quality
3 340 (2.83%) NIST
4 328 (2.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 314 (2.62%) NCSC
6 299 (2.49%) Accessibility
7 225 (1.88%) PMO
8 188 (1.57%) SLA
9 178 (1.48%) GDPR
10 170 (1.42%) GRC
11 86 (0.72%) WCAG
12 56 (0.47%) JSP 440
13 50 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
14 43 (0.36%) NIST 800
15 37 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
16 36 (0.30%) Def Stans
17 30 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 22 (0.18%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 21 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
20 20 (0.17%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 837 (6.98%) Docker
2 653 (5.44%) Active Directory
3 445 (3.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 145 (1.21%) VMware ESXi
5 143 (1.19%) VMware NSX
6 140 (1.17%) Hyper-V
7 136 (1.13%) vSphere
8 94 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
9 46 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
10 41 (0.34%) Firmware
11 37 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
12 26 (0.22%) BitLocker
13 25 (0.21%) vCloud
14 22 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
15 20 (0.17%) NFS
16 13 (0.11%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 11 (0.092%) Microsoft Virtual Server
17 11 (0.092%) Squid
18 10 (0.083%) KVM
18 10 (0.083%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 1,031 (8.60%) Kubernetes
2 451 (3.76%) Ansible
3 273 (2.28%) Grafana
4 207 (1.73%) Prometheus
5 138 (1.15%) SCCM
6 132 (1.10%) vCenter Server
7 99 (0.83%) SCOM
8 96 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
9 69 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
10 64 (0.53%) Argo
11 49 (0.41%) Kibana
12 44 (0.37%) Puppet
13 42 (0.35%) Oracle RMAN
14 38 (0.32%) Data Guard
15 36 (0.30%) Istio
16 34 (0.28%) NetBackup
17 31 (0.26%) VxRail
18 29 (0.24%) Control-M
19 25 (0.21%) Nagios
19 25 (0.21%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,584 (13.21%) Microsoft
2 965 (8.05%) Oracle
3 602 (5.02%) VMware
4 543 (4.53%) ServiceNow
5 444 (3.70%) SAP
6 297 (2.48%) Cisco
7 280 (2.33%) Google
8 226 (1.88%) Splunk
9 189 (1.58%) Databricks
10 161 (1.34%) Salesforce
11 134 (1.12%) Red Hat
12 129 (1.08%) Palo Alto
13 113 (0.94%) Informatica
14 103 (0.86%) IBM
15 102 (0.85%) Dynatrace
16 99 (0.83%) CyberArk
17 98 (0.82%) Talend
18 94 (0.78%) Remedy
19 79 (0.66%) SolarWinds
20 78 (0.65%) Fortinet