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

6 months to
12 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,531 5,191 7,909
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.17% 17.78% 18.39%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.55% 57.47% 60.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,200 3,439 5,220
10th Percentile £375 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £527 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.38% -4.18% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £689 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £540 £550
% change year-on-year -2.78% -1.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 840 299 527
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £21.27 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £46.30 £56.89
Median % change year-on-year +18.79% -18.61% -5.19%
75th Percentile £73.46 £66.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.67 £84.42
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £53.51 £58.00
% change year-on-year +2.79% -7.75% +0.87%

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 15,141 9,032 13,069
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.87% 30.93% 30.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,047 5,698 8,072
10th Percentile £350 £285 £305
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £619 £623 £650
90th Percentile £720 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £533
% change year-on-year - -6.19% +1.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,082 514 1,069
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.13 £13.82
25th Percentile £21.25 £21.46 £17.80
Median hourly rate £48.05 £39.18 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +22.64% -2.05% -25.93%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.46 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.36 £80.07 £75.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £39.66 £40.94
% change year-on-year +19.77% -3.13% -17.91%

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 12 May 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 12 May 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 12 May 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 9,126 £525 -2.23% 1,877
UK excluding London +1 5,862 £525 -2.78% 1,534
London +6 3,232 £525 - 484
Work from Home +4 2,825 £525 - 865
South East +1 2,207 £540 -1.82% 509
South West 0 1,301 £538 -4.44% 328
Midlands +4 884 £475 -9.52% 167
North of England -2 857 £488 -2.50% 309
West Midlands +4 750 £475 -10.55% 125
North West -2 496 £497 -0.64% 172
East of England +2 374 £525 +8.67% 145
Scotland +36 221 £500 +6.95% 47
Yorkshire -14 207 £475 -5.00% 60
North East +1 188 £475 -3.06% 79
East Midlands -4 128 £463 -2.63% 42
Wales +5 85 £500 - 42
Northern Ireland +9 19 £550 +12.82% 21

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
1 402 (3.82%) Confluence
2 221 (2.10%) SharePoint
3 133 (1.26%) SAS
4 131 (1.24%) Microsoft Exchange
5 108 (1.03%) Apache Spark
6 85 (0.81%) Apache
7 73 (0.69%) Apache Airflow
8 38 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 34 (0.32%) nginx
10 29 (0.28%) Jupyter
11 21 (0.20%) Tomcat
12 15 (0.14%) IIS
12 15 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
12 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
13 14 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
14 13 (0.12%) CMS
14 13 (0.12%) Skype for Business
15 11 (0.10%) NetWeaver
16 10 (0.095%) ArcGIS
17 9 (0.085%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 207 (1.97%) Microsoft Office
2 192 (1.82%) Microsoft Excel
3 117 (1.11%) Microsoft Project
4 84 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (0.42%) MS Visio
6 21 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.14%) Simulink
8 7 (0.066%) AutoCAD
8 7 (0.066%) Notepad++
9 6 (0.057%) SOLIDWORKS
10 5 (0.047%) Revit
10 5 (0.047%) Windchill
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
1 110 (1.04%) SAP S/4HANA
2 47 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
3 43 (0.41%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 29 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
5 28 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
6 27 (0.26%) Teamcenter
7 22 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
8 15 (0.14%) Maximo
9 14 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
9 14 (0.13%) SAP PSCD
10 13 (0.12%) Temenos T24
11 12 (0.11%) Findur
11 12 (0.11%) SAP GRC
11 12 (0.11%) SAP PP
12 11 (0.10%) Oracle Assets
13 10 (0.095%) iTrent
14 9 (0.085%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 9 (0.085%) SAP HCM
14 9 (0.085%) SAP HR
15 8 (0.076%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 1,842 (17.49%) AWS
2 1,816 (17.24%) Azure
3 445 (4.23%) GitHub
4 430 (4.08%) GCP
5 395 (3.75%) Azure DevOps
6 379 (3.60%) Power Platform
7 274 (2.60%) Serverless
8 267 (2.54%) Microsoft 365
9 256 (2.43%) Entra ID
9 256 (2.43%) GitHub Actions
10 212 (2.01%) Amazon S3
11 184 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
12 158 (1.50%) PaaS
13 143 (1.36%) Amazon EC2
14 139 (1.32%) AWS CloudFormation
15 138 (1.31%) Amazon EKS
16 137 (1.30%) OpenShift
17 134 (1.27%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 129 (1.22%) OCI
19 123 (1.17%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 479 (4.55%) Firewall
2 294 (2.79%) DNS
3 229 (2.17%) Network Security
4 222 (2.11%) WAN
5 202 (1.92%) LAN
6 169 (1.60%) VPN
7 145 (1.38%) BGP
8 143 (1.36%) DHCP
9 125 (1.19%) OSPF
9 125 (1.19%) TCP/IP
10 97 (0.92%) Wi-Fi
11 95 (0.90%) VLAN
12 78 (0.74%) Wireless
13 65 (0.62%) MPLS
14 57 (0.54%) SAN
15 55 (0.52%) VXLAN
16 53 (0.50%) SD-WAN
16 53 (0.50%) SSL
17 50 (0.47%) IPsec
18 47 (0.45%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 298 (2.83%) Power BI
2 252 (2.39%) PostgreSQL
3 235 (2.23%) Data Warehouse
4 199 (1.89%) SQL Server
5 137 (1.30%) Metadata
6 124 (1.18%) Oracle Database
7 111 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
8 106 (1.01%) Data Lake
9 101 (0.96%) MongoDB
10 100 (0.95%) Relational Database
11 98 (0.93%) NoSQL
12 82 (0.78%) Pentaho
13 79 (0.75%) Elasticsearch
14 75 (0.71%) Big Data
15 71 (0.67%) MySQL
16 70 (0.66%) Oracle Reports
17 68 (0.65%) Azure SQL Database
17 68 (0.65%) Tableau
18 66 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
19 60 (0.57%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 626 (5.94%) JIRA
2 465 (4.42%) Git
3 394 (3.74%) Jenkins
4 391 (3.71%) GitLab
5 99 (0.94%) Selenium
6 88 (0.84%) Postman
7 77 (0.73%) JUnit
8 69 (0.66%) SonarQube
9 55 (0.52%) Rational DOORS
10 51 (0.48%) Artifactory
11 50 (0.47%) JMeter
12 42 (0.40%) Bitbucket
12 42 (0.40%) Cucumber
13 40 (0.38%) Mockito
14 39 (0.37%) Visual Studio
15 38 (0.36%) Maven
16 35 (0.33%) Cypress.io
17 31 (0.29%) Zephyr
18 27 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
19 25 (0.24%) Gatling
General
1 2,319 (22.02%) Public Sector
2 2,220 (21.08%) Social Skills
3 774 (7.35%) Analytical Skills
4 695 (6.60%) Finance
5 355 (3.37%) Military
6 281 (2.67%) Documentation Skills
7 251 (2.38%) Aerospace
8 170 (1.61%) Legal
9 131 (1.24%) Telecoms
10 125 (1.19%) Influencing Skills
11 117 (1.11%) Manufacturing
12 115 (1.09%) Organisational Skills
13 111 (1.05%) Banking
14 90 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
15 87 (0.83%) Law
16 82 (0.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 69 (0.66%) Police
18 54 (0.51%) Marketing
19 50 (0.47%) Electronics
20 38 (0.36%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,601 (15.20%) Architect
2 984 (9.34%) Developer
3 896 (8.51%) Senior
4 747 (7.09%) Analyst
5 728 (6.91%) Lead
6 525 (4.99%) Consultant
7 511 (4.85%) Data Engineer
8 492 (4.67%) DevOps Engineer
9 317 (3.01%) Technical Architect
10 314 (2.98%) Software Engineer
11 294 (2.79%) Network Engineer
12 284 (2.70%) Solutions Architect
13 278 (2.64%) Business Analyst
14 267 (2.54%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 229 (2.17%) Project Manager
16 215 (2.04%) Azure Engineer
17 212 (2.01%) Designer
18 211 (2.00%) Security Architect
19 184 (1.75%) AWS Engineer
20 182 (1.73%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 326 (3.10%) REST
2 248 (2.35%) Spring
3 215 (2.04%) Kafka
4 201 (1.91%) Spring Boot
5 192 (1.82%) Node.js
6 186 (1.77%) React
7 178 (1.69%) .NET
8 153 (1.45%) LDAP
9 149 (1.41%) SOAP
10 146 (1.39%) RESTful
11 129 (1.22%) JSON
12 122 (1.16%) PySpark
13 118 (1.12%) AngularJS
13 118 (1.12%) Web Services
14 99 (0.94%) Oracle Fusion
15 95 (0.90%) OAuth
16 90 (0.85%) HTML
17 86 (0.82%) Middleware
18 85 (0.81%) Elastic Stack
18 85 (0.81%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 372 (3.53%) Cloud Native
2 339 (3.22%) Product Ownership
3 310 (2.94%) Data Centre
4 291 (2.76%) Onboarding
5 198 (1.88%) Management Information System
6 164 (1.56%) PKI
7 138 (1.31%) Legacy Systems
8 133 (1.26%) Security Posture
9 125 (1.19%) Enterprise Software
10 123 (1.17%) Distributed Systems
10 123 (1.17%) Replication
11 99 (0.94%) Self-Motivation
12 87 (0.83%) Public Cloud
13 84 (0.80%) Data Structures
14 81 (0.77%) Clustering
15 80 (0.76%) Hybrid Cloud
15 80 (0.76%) Security Operations Centre
16 74 (0.70%) Virtual Team
17 70 (0.66%) Greenfield Project
18 63 (0.60%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 860 (8.17%) Windows
2 726 (6.89%) Linux
3 248 (2.35%) Windows Server
4 176 (1.67%) Unix
5 130 (1.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 108 (1.03%) Android
7 94 (0.89%) Windows 10
8 68 (0.65%) Apple iOS
9 46 (0.44%) Mac OS
10 42 (0.40%) Solaris
10 42 (0.40%) Ubuntu
11 33 (0.31%) VMS
12 29 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
12 29 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
13 27 (0.26%) AIX
14 22 (0.21%) CentOS
15 14 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 11 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
16 11 (0.10%) Windows Server 2008
16 11 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,019 (19.17%) Agile
2 1,592 (15.12%) DevOps
3 1,436 (13.64%) CI/CD
4 1,142 (10.84%) Problem-Solving
5 989 (9.39%) Stakeholder Management
6 916 (8.70%) Continuous Improvement
7 850 (8.07%) Migration
8 773 (7.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 735 (6.98%) Infrastructure as Code
10 637 (6.05%) ITIL
11 621 (5.90%) Cybersecurity
12 610 (5.79%) Test Automation
13 603 (5.73%) Analytics
14 594 (5.64%) Containerisation
15 574 (5.45%) Software Engineering
16 569 (5.40%) Roadmaps
17 521 (4.95%) Data Modelling
18 513 (4.87%) Decision-Making
19 459 (4.36%) Scrum
20 448 (4.25%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,190 (11.30%) Python
2 961 (9.13%) SQL
3 664 (6.31%) Java
4 545 (5.18%) PowerShell
5 333 (3.16%) JavaScript
6 221 (2.10%) C#
7 196 (1.86%) Bash
8 178 (1.69%) TypeScript
9 113 (1.07%) PL/SQL
10 100 (0.95%) C++
11 97 (0.92%) Shell Script
12 75 (0.71%) Go
13 70 (0.66%) Scala
14 66 (0.63%) Ruby
15 59 (0.56%) Bicep
16 58 (0.55%) C
17 51 (0.48%) R
18 48 (0.46%) Apex Code
19 40 (0.38%) Ada
19 40 (0.38%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 8,027 (76.22%) SC Cleared
2 1,889 (17.94%) DV Cleared
3 462 (4.39%) Degree
4 304 (2.89%) BPSS Clearance
5 211 (2.00%) Cisco Certification
6 176 (1.67%) CISSP
7 139 (1.32%) Azure Certification
8 127 (1.21%) AWS Certification
9 122 (1.16%) CCNP
10 117 (1.11%) CISM
11 93 (0.88%) Microsoft Certification
12 86 (0.82%) CCNA
13 77 (0.73%) PMP
14 75 (0.71%) Computer Science Degree
15 70 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
16 69 (0.66%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 68 (0.65%) ITIL Certification
18 66 (0.63%) PMI Certification
19 55 (0.52%) ISTQB
20 49 (0.47%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 377 (3.58%) QA
2 320 (3.04%) Data Quality
3 301 (2.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 295 (2.80%) NIST
5 205 (1.95%) NCSC
6 199 (1.89%) Accessibility
7 172 (1.63%) GDPR
8 163 (1.55%) PMO
9 106 (1.01%) SLA
10 74 (0.70%) GRC
11 64 (0.61%) JSP 440
12 53 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials
13 42 (0.40%) WCAG
14 39 (0.37%) NIST 800
15 33 (0.31%) PCI DSS
16 32 (0.30%) COBIT
16 32 (0.30%) RMADS
17 30 (0.28%) Def Stans
18 27 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 24 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 664 (6.31%) Docker
2 484 (4.60%) Active Directory
3 292 (2.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 101 (0.96%) VMware ESXi
5 97 (0.92%) VMware NSX
6 83 (0.79%) Hyper-V
7 77 (0.73%) vSphere
8 74 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
9 39 (0.37%) Firmware
10 34 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
11 22 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
12 20 (0.19%) BitLocker
12 20 (0.19%) NFS
13 17 (0.16%) Postfix
13 17 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 16 (0.15%) vCloud
15 14 (0.13%) Squid
16 8 (0.076%) KVM
16 8 (0.076%) Microsoft App-V
17 7 (0.066%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 848 (8.05%) Kubernetes
2 837 (7.95%) Terraform
3 357 (3.39%) Ansible
4 267 (2.54%) Grafana
5 223 (2.12%) Prometheus
6 115 (1.09%) Single Sign-On
7 101 (0.96%) vCenter Server
8 82 (0.78%) SCCM
9 65 (0.62%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 56 (0.53%) FortiGate
11 55 (0.52%) Argo
11 55 (0.52%) Microsoft Intune
12 40 (0.38%) Puppet
13 37 (0.35%) Podman
14 35 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
14 35 (0.33%) Progress Chef
15 33 (0.31%) vRealize
16 32 (0.30%) Nagios
17 30 (0.28%) OPNET
18 26 (0.25%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,055 (10.02%) Microsoft
2 649 (6.16%) Oracle
3 510 (4.84%) VMware
4 419 (3.98%) ServiceNow
5 375 (3.56%) SAP
6 367 (3.48%) Cisco
7 247 (2.35%) Splunk
8 208 (1.98%) Databricks
9 171 (1.62%) Google
10 169 (1.60%) Red Hat
11 137 (1.30%) Salesforce
12 129 (1.22%) Talend
13 128 (1.22%) IBM
14 123 (1.17%) Palo Alto
15 103 (0.98%) Juniper
16 101 (0.96%) Atlassian
17 99 (0.94%) CyberArk
18 97 (0.92%) Informatica
19 88 (0.84%) Dynatrace
20 86 (0.82%) Fortinet