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

6 months to
20 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,983 5,318 8,002
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.69% 17.81% 18.23%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.32% 57.55% 61.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,600 3,464 5,251
10th Percentile £381 £338 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £623 £650
90th Percentile £716 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £537 £550
% change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 837 376 586
10th Percentile £18.20 £18.50 £14.39
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £21.60
Median hourly rate £60.91 £25.41 £56.50
Median % change year-on-year +139.71% -55.02% -5.84%
75th Percentile £75.00 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.42 £77.50 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.91 £27.13 £57.75
% change year-on-year +124.55% -53.03% +0.43%

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 15,844 9,241 13,090
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.28% 30.95% 29.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,572 5,751 8,089
10th Percentile £350 £275 £310
25th Percentile £425 £411 £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 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £507 £500 £530
% change year-on-year +1.40% -5.66% +0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,165 599 1,132
10th Percentile £17.24 £17.86 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.00 £20.24 £19.23
Median hourly rate £50.00 £30.00 £40.25
Median % change year-on-year +66.67% -25.47% -27.24%
75th Percentile £72.54 £63.13 £64.25
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.50 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £28.00 £42.25
% change year-on-year +78.57% -33.73% -19.52%

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 20 June 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 20 June 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 20 June 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 9,485 £525 -2.33% 1,517
UK excluding London +1 6,149 £525 -2.23% 1,318
London +7 3,367 £525 - 408
Work from Home +5 3,026 £525 - 729
South East +1 2,286 £550 - 437
South West 0 1,305 £538 -4.44% 335
North of England +2 987 £500 - 237
Midlands +2 915 £469 -10.67% 115
West Midlands +2 796 £469 -10.58% 80
North West 0 536 £525 +5.00% 134
East of England +2 360 £550 +10.00% 100
Scotland +22 272 £500 +14.29% 57
Yorkshire -4 254 £500 +1.63% 61
North East +1 228 £480 +0.05% 47
East Midlands -5 108 £438 -7.89% 35
Wales +5 89 £513 +7.89% 37
Northern Ireland +7 31 £644 +35.53% 36

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 (3.67%) Confluence
2 233 (2.12%) SharePoint
3 166 (1.51%) SAS
4 129 (1.17%) Microsoft Exchange
5 103 (0.94%) Apache Spark
6 102 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
7 92 (0.84%) Apache
8 45 (0.41%) Jupyter
9 43 (0.39%) nginx
10 35 (0.32%) WebLogic
11 25 (0.23%) Tomcat
12 19 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
13 18 (0.16%) IIS
14 16 (0.15%) NetWeaver
15 15 (0.14%) CMS
15 15 (0.14%) Oracle Application Server
16 14 (0.13%) Skype for Business
17 12 (0.11%) ArcGIS
17 12 (0.11%) Tuxedo
18 8 (0.073%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 175 (1.59%) Microsoft Excel
2 146 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
3 79 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
4 76 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 49 (0.45%) MS Visio
6 16 (0.15%) Simulink
7 14 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
8 10 (0.091%) SOLIDWORKS
9 9 (0.082%) AutoCAD
9 9 (0.082%) Chatbot
9 9 (0.082%) Revit
10 7 (0.064%) Notepad++
11 4 (0.036%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.036%) Sketch
12 3 (0.027%) Windchill
13 2 (0.018%) CATIA
13 2 (0.018%) Lectora
13 2 (0.018%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.018%) PlantUML
13 2 (0.018%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 124 (1.13%) SAP S/4HANA
2 61 (0.56%) Remedy ITSM
3 43 (0.39%) Oracle ERP
4 33 (0.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 31 (0.28%) Teamcenter
6 30 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
7 27 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
8 16 (0.15%) Primavera
8 16 (0.15%) SAP GRC
8 16 (0.15%) SAP PSCD
9 15 (0.14%) Findur
9 15 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
10 14 (0.13%) Maximo
11 12 (0.11%) iTrent
11 12 (0.11%) Temenos T24
12 10 (0.091%) Oracle Assets
12 10 (0.091%) SAP ERP
12 10 (0.091%) SAP HR
12 10 (0.091%) Siebel CRM
13 9 (0.082%) Integrated Workplace Management System
Cloud Services
1 1,997 (18.18%) AWS
2 1,921 (17.49%) Azure
3 460 (4.19%) GitHub
4 433 (3.94%) Azure DevOps
5 422 (3.84%) Power Platform
6 420 (3.82%) GCP
7 286 (2.60%) Serverless
8 279 (2.54%) GitHub Actions
9 275 (2.50%) Entra ID
10 272 (2.48%) Microsoft 365
11 234 (2.13%) Amazon S3
12 199 (1.81%) AWS Lambda
13 165 (1.50%) Amazon EC2
14 158 (1.44%) PaaS
15 157 (1.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 150 (1.37%) SaaS
17 141 (1.28%) Amazon EKS
18 139 (1.27%) OCI
19 137 (1.25%) OpenShift
20 122 (1.11%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 459 (4.18%) Firewall
2 314 (2.86%) DNS
3 244 (2.22%) Network Security
4 226 (2.06%) WAN
5 198 (1.80%) LAN
6 184 (1.68%) VPN
7 158 (1.44%) DHCP
8 136 (1.24%) BGP
9 115 (1.05%) OSPF
10 113 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
11 111 (1.01%) VLAN
12 107 (0.97%) TCP/IP
13 86 (0.78%) Wireless
14 66 (0.60%) MPLS
15 60 (0.55%) SD-WAN
16 58 (0.53%) VXLAN
17 57 (0.52%) SAN
18 52 (0.47%) IPsec
18 52 (0.47%) Structured Cabling
19 49 (0.45%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 329 (3.00%) Power BI
2 294 (2.68%) PostgreSQL
3 264 (2.40%) Data Warehouse
4 231 (2.10%) SQL Server
5 161 (1.47%) Oracle Database
6 143 (1.30%) Metadata
7 132 (1.20%) Data Lake
8 116 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
9 114 (1.04%) Relational Database
10 111 (1.01%) MongoDB
11 88 (0.80%) MySQL
12 87 (0.79%) Pentaho
13 82 (0.75%) Elasticsearch
13 82 (0.75%) Oracle Reports
14 76 (0.69%) Amazon Redshift
14 76 (0.69%) NoSQL
15 73 (0.66%) Amazon Athena
16 66 (0.60%) Tableau
17 64 (0.58%) Big Data
18 56 (0.51%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 636 (5.79%) JIRA
2 493 (4.49%) Git
3 473 (4.31%) GitLab
4 440 (4.01%) Jenkins
5 121 (1.10%) Selenium
6 86 (0.78%) JUnit
6 86 (0.78%) Postman
7 80 (0.73%) SonarQube
8 66 (0.60%) JMeter
9 59 (0.54%) Rational DOORS
10 58 (0.53%) Cucumber
11 50 (0.46%) Artifactory
12 45 (0.41%) Bitbucket
13 44 (0.40%) Mockito
14 43 (0.39%) Cypress.io
15 42 (0.38%) Visual Studio
16 41 (0.37%) Zephyr
17 40 (0.36%) Maven
17 40 (0.36%) REST Assured
18 37 (0.34%) Gatling
General
1 2,429 (22.12%) Public Sector
2 2,224 (20.25%) Social Skills
3 751 (6.84%) Analytical Skills
4 694 (6.32%) Finance
5 349 (3.18%) Military
6 298 (2.71%) Documentation Skills
7 292 (2.66%) Aerospace
8 176 (1.60%) Legal
9 136 (1.24%) Influencing Skills
10 132 (1.20%) Banking
11 118 (1.07%) Telecoms
12 99 (0.90%) Law
13 98 (0.89%) Organisational Skills
14 96 (0.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 94 (0.86%) Manufacturing
16 78 (0.71%) Presentation Skills
17 70 (0.64%) Police
18 56 (0.51%) Aviation
19 45 (0.41%) Marketing
20 40 (0.36%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,675 (15.25%) Architect
2 1,096 (9.98%) Developer
3 956 (8.70%) Senior
4 829 (7.55%) Lead
5 734 (6.68%) Analyst
6 545 (4.96%) Consultant
7 529 (4.82%) Data Engineer
8 509 (4.63%) DevOps Engineer
9 366 (3.33%) Technical Architect
10 333 (3.03%) Software Engineer
11 329 (3.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 327 (2.98%) Solutions Architect
13 279 (2.54%) Network Engineer
14 249 (2.27%) Business Analyst
15 243 (2.21%) Security Architect
16 224 (2.04%) Project Manager
17 216 (1.97%) Designer
18 205 (1.87%) AWS Engineer
18 205 (1.87%) Delivery Manager
19 204 (1.86%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 334 (3.04%) REST
2 250 (2.28%) Spring
3 210 (1.91%) Spring Boot
4 202 (1.84%) React
5 194 (1.77%) Kafka
6 190 (1.73%) Node.js
7 185 (1.68%) .NET
8 160 (1.46%) RESTful
9 142 (1.29%) SOAP
10 133 (1.21%) LDAP
11 127 (1.16%) JSON
12 126 (1.15%) AngularJS
13 117 (1.07%) PySpark
14 113 (1.03%) Web Services
15 108 (0.98%) OAuth
16 102 (0.93%) Middleware
17 92 (0.84%) HTML
18 91 (0.83%) Playwright
19 86 (0.78%) OpenID
20 82 (0.75%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 425 (3.87%) Cloud Native
2 353 (3.21%) Product Ownership
3 326 (2.97%) Onboarding
4 312 (2.84%) Data Centre
5 224 (2.04%) Management Information System
6 169 (1.54%) Legacy Systems
7 145 (1.32%) PKI
8 141 (1.28%) Distributed Systems
9 129 (1.17%) Enterprise Software
10 112 (1.02%) Replication
11 111 (1.01%) Security Posture
12 109 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
13 97 (0.88%) CMDB
14 96 (0.87%) Data Structures
15 92 (0.84%) Hybrid Cloud
16 89 (0.81%) Public Cloud
17 85 (0.77%) Clustering
18 82 (0.75%) Security Operations Centre
19 76 (0.69%) Virtual Team
20 73 (0.66%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 847 (7.71%) Windows
2 734 (6.68%) Linux
3 260 (2.37%) Windows Server
4 200 (1.82%) Unix
5 135 (1.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 91 (0.83%) Android
7 84 (0.76%) Windows 10
8 65 (0.59%) Apple iOS
9 56 (0.51%) Solaris
10 40 (0.36%) Mac OS
11 36 (0.33%) Ubuntu
12 30 (0.27%) AIX
12 30 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 27 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
14 22 (0.20%) CentOS
15 21 (0.19%) VMS
16 16 (0.15%) Windows 7
17 15 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
18 11 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
18 11 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,185 (19.89%) Agile
2 1,706 (15.53%) DevOps
3 1,559 (14.19%) CI/CD
4 1,136 (10.34%) Problem-Solving
5 1,115 (10.15%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,084 (9.87%) Continuous Improvement
7 908 (8.27%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 863 (7.86%) Migration
9 814 (7.41%) Infrastructure as Code
10 682 (6.21%) Cybersecurity
10 682 (6.21%) Test Automation
11 650 (5.92%) Analytics
12 641 (5.84%) Containerisation
13 638 (5.81%) ITIL
14 634 (5.77%) Software Engineering
15 612 (5.57%) Roadmaps
16 590 (5.37%) Decision-Making
17 568 (5.17%) Data Modelling
18 517 (4.71%) AI
19 505 (4.60%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,214 (11.05%) Python
2 1,045 (9.51%) SQL
3 719 (6.55%) Java
4 507 (4.62%) PowerShell
5 331 (3.01%) JavaScript
6 229 (2.09%) C#
7 218 (1.98%) Bash
8 196 (1.78%) TypeScript
9 146 (1.33%) PL/SQL
10 96 (0.87%) C++
11 95 (0.86%) Shell Script
12 79 (0.72%) Bicep
13 65 (0.59%) C
14 62 (0.56%) Apex Code
15 59 (0.54%) Ruby
16 58 (0.53%) Go
17 50 (0.46%) Scala
18 46 (0.42%) Ada
18 46 (0.42%) Kotlin
19 40 (0.36%) R
Qualifications
1 8,416 (76.63%) SC Cleared
2 1,986 (18.08%) DV Cleared
3 427 (3.89%) Degree
4 333 (3.03%) BPSS Clearance
5 215 (1.96%) Cisco Certification
6 181 (1.65%) CISSP
7 142 (1.29%) Azure Certification
8 121 (1.10%) AWS Certification
9 117 (1.07%) CISM
10 114 (1.04%) Microsoft Certification
11 112 (1.02%) CCNP
12 94 (0.86%) CCNA
13 87 (0.79%) PMP
14 85 (0.77%) PMI Certification
15 75 (0.68%) ISTQB
16 67 (0.61%) Computer Science Degree
16 67 (0.61%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 56 (0.51%) ITIL Certification
18 42 (0.38%) CompTIA Security+
19 41 (0.37%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 421 (3.83%) QA
2 339 (3.09%) Data Quality
3 318 (2.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 316 (2.88%) NIST
5 240 (2.19%) NCSC
6 217 (1.98%) Accessibility
7 185 (1.68%) GDPR
8 175 (1.59%) PMO
9 122 (1.11%) SLA
10 96 (0.87%) GRC
11 68 (0.62%) JSP 440
12 51 (0.46%) WCAG
13 47 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
14 45 (0.41%) NIST 800
15 35 (0.32%) RMADS
16 33 (0.30%) Def Stans
17 29 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 25 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
19 24 (0.22%) COBIT
20 23 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 704 (6.41%) Docker
2 466 (4.24%) Active Directory
3 316 (2.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 117 (1.07%) VMware ESXi
5 110 (1.00%) VMware NSX
6 91 (0.83%) Hyper-V
7 84 (0.76%) vSphere
8 73 (0.66%) Virtual Machines
9 39 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
10 33 (0.30%) Firmware
11 24 (0.22%) BitLocker
11 24 (0.22%) NFS
12 22 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
13 21 (0.19%) vCloud
14 19 (0.17%) Postfix
15 18 (0.16%) Squid
16 14 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 10 (0.091%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.055%) Corosync
18 6 (0.055%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 898 (8.18%) Terraform
2 874 (7.96%) Kubernetes
3 381 (3.47%) Ansible
4 271 (2.47%) Grafana
5 226 (2.06%) Prometheus
6 112 (1.02%) vCenter Server
7 95 (0.86%) Single Sign-On
8 81 (0.74%) SCCM
9 61 (0.56%) Microsoft Intune
10 58 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 54 (0.49%) Argo
12 50 (0.46%) FortiGate
13 45 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
14 42 (0.38%) Puppet
15 39 (0.36%) SCOM
16 37 (0.34%) Podman
17 27 (0.25%) Nagios
17 27 (0.25%) Progress Chef
17 27 (0.25%) vRealize
18 25 (0.23%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 1,116 (10.16%) Microsoft
2 772 (7.03%) Oracle
3 509 (4.63%) VMware
4 450 (4.10%) ServiceNow
5 348 (3.17%) SAP
6 336 (3.06%) Cisco
7 226 (2.06%) Splunk
8 197 (1.79%) Databricks
9 184 (1.68%) Salesforce
10 172 (1.57%) Google
11 168 (1.53%) Red Hat
12 147 (1.34%) Talend
13 127 (1.16%) IBM
14 125 (1.14%) Informatica
15 116 (1.06%) Palo Alto
16 99 (0.90%) Juniper
17 92 (0.84%) Fortinet
18 90 (0.82%) F5
19 86 (0.78%) Dynatrace
19 86 (0.78%) SolarWinds