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 16 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,771 6,013 6,858
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.69% 18.25% 17.93%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.76% 58.21% 61.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,195 3,894 4,452
10th Percentile £390 £350 £350
25th Percentile £459 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £545 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.49% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £724 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £538 £550
% change year-on-year - -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 830 590 410
10th Percentile £20.00 £18.51 £19.96
25th Percentile £34.26 £18.87 £27.00
Median hourly rate £64.55 £25.15 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +156.64% -58.08% -
75th Percentile £77.50 £34.69 £72.22
90th Percentile £90.00 £70.24 £80.06
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +158.45% -58.08% +2.41%

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 17,119 10,329 11,188
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.54% 31.36% 29.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,405 6,446 6,894
10th Percentile £350 £300 £313
25th Percentile £440 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £713 £707 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,341 831 654
10th Percentile £17.18 £17.87 £17.00
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £24.18
Median hourly rate £48.00 £25.15 £49.50
Median % change year-on-year +90.85% -49.19% -9.08%
75th Percentile £72.54 £45.00 £68.00
90th Percentile £88.00 £71.00 £76.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £52.50
% change year-on-year +88.87% -52.10% +1.16%

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 16 September 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 16 September 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 16 September 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 10,156 £550 +2.33% 5,943
UK excluding London +1 6,628 £538 - 4,242
London +6 3,582 £550 +2.33% 2,031
Work from Home +2 3,099 £525 -2.33% 3,219
South East +1 2,316 £565 +5.12% 1,018
South West 0 1,409 £550 - 954
North of England +3 1,264 £515 +1.78% 883
Midlands 0 936 £475 -7.77% 403
West Midlands +1 800 £475 -8.39% 262
North West +2 738 £530 -3.64% 589
East of England 0 380 £550 - 502
Scotland +17 306 £481 -3.80% 329
Yorkshire +2 304 £500 +2.15% 171
North East 0 243 £475 -1.81% 147
East Midlands -1 129 £450 -2.70% 141
Wales +4 105 £550 - 67
Northern Ireland +3 36 £650 +10.64% 139

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
1 395 (3.36%) Confluence
2 271 (2.30%) SharePoint
3 173 (1.47%) SAS
4 127 (1.08%) Microsoft Exchange
5 100 (0.85%) Apache
5 100 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
6 99 (0.84%) Apache Spark
7 38 (0.32%) Jupyter
7 38 (0.32%) nginx
8 35 (0.30%) WebLogic
9 23 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
10 22 (0.19%) Skype for Business
11 21 (0.18%) Tomcat
12 20 (0.17%) IIS
13 19 (0.16%) CMS
14 16 (0.14%) NetWeaver
14 16 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 16 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
14 16 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
15 11 (0.093%) JBoss
Applications
1 210 (1.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 165 (1.40%) Microsoft Office
3 107 (0.91%) Microsoft Project
4 98 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 42 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
7 18 (0.15%) AutoCAD
8 17 (0.14%) Revit
9 16 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
10 12 (0.10%) Simulink
11 11 (0.093%) Windchill
12 9 (0.076%) Adobe XD
13 8 (0.068%) Chatbot
14 7 (0.059%) Notepad++
14 7 (0.059%) Sketch
15 6 (0.051%) Adobe Creative Suite
16 4 (0.034%) Trello
17 3 (0.025%) OrCAD
18 2 (0.017%) Houdini
18 2 (0.017%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 152 (1.29%) SAP S/4HANA
2 77 (0.65%) Remedy ITSM
3 54 (0.46%) Oracle ERP
4 43 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
5 32 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 29 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
6 29 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 25 (0.21%) Oracle Payroll
7 25 (0.21%) SAP GRC
7 25 (0.21%) SAP PSCD
8 19 (0.16%) Primavera
8 19 (0.16%) SAP HR
9 18 (0.15%) SAP FI
10 15 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
11 12 (0.10%) Findur
11 12 (0.10%) iTrent
11 12 (0.10%) NetSuite
11 12 (0.10%) SAP CO
11 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
12 11 (0.093%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 2,147 (18.24%) Azure
2 2,077 (17.65%) AWS
3 520 (4.42%) GitHub
4 516 (4.38%) Azure DevOps
5 478 (4.06%) Power Platform
6 454 (3.86%) GCP
7 347 (2.95%) GitHub Actions
8 334 (2.84%) Microsoft 365
9 311 (2.64%) Entra ID
10 282 (2.40%) Serverless
11 236 (2.00%) Amazon S3
12 206 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
13 174 (1.48%) OCI
14 171 (1.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 168 (1.43%) SaaS
16 164 (1.39%) Amazon EKS
17 148 (1.26%) Amazon EC2
18 142 (1.21%) OpenShift
19 130 (1.10%) AWS CloudFormation
20 111 (0.94%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 453 (3.85%) Firewall
2 377 (3.20%) DNS
3 234 (1.99%) Network Security
4 217 (1.84%) WAN
5 201 (1.71%) VPN
6 184 (1.56%) DHCP
7 164 (1.39%) LAN
8 136 (1.16%) TCP/IP
9 128 (1.09%) BGP
10 119 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
11 105 (0.89%) VLAN
12 91 (0.77%) Wireless
13 88 (0.75%) OSPF
14 69 (0.59%) SSL
15 66 (0.56%) MPLS
15 66 (0.56%) VSAN
16 61 (0.52%) IPsec
16 61 (0.52%) SAN
17 57 (0.48%) SD-WAN
18 48 (0.41%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 343 (2.91%) Power BI
2 311 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
3 288 (2.45%) SQL Server
4 273 (2.32%) Data Warehouse
5 197 (1.67%) Metadata
6 186 (1.58%) Oracle Database
7 151 (1.28%) Relational Database
8 141 (1.20%) Data Lake
9 132 (1.12%) MongoDB
10 113 (0.96%) Amazon RDS
11 107 (0.91%) MySQL
12 96 (0.82%) NoSQL
13 95 (0.81%) Oracle Reports
14 72 (0.61%) Pentaho
15 69 (0.59%) Elasticsearch
16 68 (0.58%) Amazon Athena
17 55 (0.47%) Big Data
18 53 (0.45%) Tableau
19 51 (0.43%) Amazon Aurora
19 51 (0.43%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 659 (5.60%) JIRA
2 585 (4.97%) Git
3 521 (4.43%) GitLab
4 484 (4.11%) Jenkins
5 144 (1.22%) Selenium
6 84 (0.71%) Postman
7 82 (0.70%) SonarQube
8 77 (0.65%) Maven
9 73 (0.62%) JUnit
10 66 (0.56%) JMeter
11 58 (0.49%) Cucumber
12 53 (0.45%) Cypress.io
13 49 (0.42%) Gradle
14 44 (0.37%) Mockito
15 43 (0.37%) REST Assured
16 42 (0.36%) Gatling
17 40 (0.34%) Artifactory
18 39 (0.33%) Visual Studio
18 39 (0.33%) Zephyr
19 32 (0.27%) MSI
General
1 2,648 (22.50%) Social Skills
2 2,406 (20.44%) Public Sector
3 946 (8.04%) Analytical Skills
4 777 (6.60%) Finance
5 419 (3.56%) Military
6 317 (2.69%) Aerospace
7 299 (2.54%) Documentation Skills
8 221 (1.88%) Influencing Skills
9 188 (1.60%) Organisational Skills
10 177 (1.50%) Legal
11 164 (1.39%) Telecoms
12 159 (1.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 142 (1.21%) Banking
14 135 (1.15%) Manufacturing
15 122 (1.04%) Law
16 119 (1.01%) Police
17 67 (0.57%) Presentation Skills
18 48 (0.41%) Local Government
19 47 (0.40%) Marketing
20 46 (0.39%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,914 (16.26%) Architect
2 1,219 (10.36%) Developer
3 1,121 (9.52%) Senior
4 1,049 (8.91%) Lead
5 709 (6.02%) Consultant
6 638 (5.42%) Analyst
7 515 (4.38%) DevOps Engineer
8 484 (4.11%) Data Engineer
9 422 (3.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 372 (3.16%) Technical Architect
11 359 (3.05%) Solutions Architect
12 295 (2.51%) Data Architect
13 284 (2.41%) Software Engineer
14 272 (2.31%) Security Architect
15 244 (2.07%) Network Engineer
16 231 (1.96%) Administrator
17 217 (1.84%) Java Developer
18 209 (1.78%) Azure Engineer
19 207 (1.76%) Cloud Engineer
20 203 (1.72%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,005 (8.54%) Terraform
2 458 (3.89%) REST
3 258 (2.19%) Spring
4 251 (2.13%) Kafka
5 237 (2.01%) Spring Boot
6 218 (1.85%) RESTful
7 212 (1.80%) .NET
8 198 (1.68%) React
9 182 (1.55%) Node.js
10 177 (1.50%) SOAP
11 166 (1.41%) JSON
12 134 (1.14%) XML
13 133 (1.13%) OAuth
14 132 (1.12%) HTML
15 122 (1.04%) Middleware
16 120 (1.02%) AngularJS
17 119 (1.01%) Web Services
18 103 (0.88%) CSS
18 103 (0.88%) Oracle Fusion
19 100 (0.85%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 520 (4.42%) Cloud Native
2 449 (3.81%) Onboarding
3 354 (3.01%) Product Ownership
4 304 (2.58%) Data Centre
5 265 (2.25%) Management Information System
6 183 (1.55%) Legacy Systems
7 177 (1.50%) Enterprise Software
8 175 (1.49%) PKI
9 158 (1.34%) CMDB
10 148 (1.26%) Distributed Systems
11 127 (1.08%) Replication
12 123 (1.04%) Hybrid Cloud
13 115 (0.98%) Cyber Threat
13 115 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
14 105 (0.89%) Operational Technology
15 97 (0.82%) Data Structures
16 93 (0.79%) Public Cloud
16 93 (0.79%) Security Operations Centre
17 89 (0.76%) Clustering
18 87 (0.74%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 996 (8.46%) Windows
2 805 (6.84%) Linux
3 369 (3.13%) Windows Server
4 234 (1.99%) Unix
5 157 (1.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 146 (1.24%) Windows 10
7 78 (0.66%) Android
8 72 (0.61%) Solaris
9 50 (0.42%) Mac OS
10 44 (0.37%) Apple iOS
10 44 (0.37%) CentOS
11 39 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
12 38 (0.32%) Ubuntu
13 31 (0.26%) AIX
14 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
15 25 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
16 22 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
17 21 (0.18%) VMS
18 16 (0.14%) Rocky
19 13 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,500 (21.24%) Agile
2 1,805 (15.33%) DevOps
3 1,781 (15.13%) CI/CD
4 1,598 (13.58%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,422 (12.08%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,268 (10.77%) Problem-Solving
7 1,175 (9.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,020 (8.67%) Infrastructure as Code
9 941 (7.99%) Migration
10 842 (7.15%) Cybersecurity
11 789 (6.70%) ITIL
12 773 (6.57%) Test Automation
13 749 (6.36%) Containerisation
14 745 (6.33%) Technical Leadership
15 727 (6.18%) Analytics
16 723 (6.14%) Decision-Making
17 716 (6.08%) AI
18 713 (6.06%) Roadmaps
19 690 (5.86%) Software Engineering
20 635 (5.39%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,365 (11.60%) Python
2 1,102 (9.36%) SQL
3 806 (6.85%) Java
4 596 (5.06%) PowerShell
5 410 (3.48%) JavaScript
6 361 (3.07%) Bash
7 234 (1.99%) C#
8 218 (1.85%) TypeScript
9 166 (1.41%) PL/SQL
10 126 (1.07%) Bicep
11 79 (0.67%) Shell Script
12 65 (0.55%) C++
13 58 (0.49%) Go
14 56 (0.48%) C
15 50 (0.42%) Groovy
15 50 (0.42%) Scala
16 48 (0.41%) Apex Code
17 46 (0.39%) Kotlin
18 39 (0.33%) T-SQL
19 38 (0.32%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 8,971 (76.21%) SC Cleared
2 2,228 (18.93%) DV Cleared
3 487 (4.14%) BPSS Clearance
4 467 (3.97%) Degree
5 221 (1.88%) CISSP
6 189 (1.61%) Azure Certification
7 186 (1.58%) Cisco Certification
8 172 (1.46%) Microsoft Certification
9 150 (1.27%) AWS Certification
10 141 (1.20%) CISM
11 108 (0.92%) PMI Certification
12 100 (0.85%) PMP
13 94 (0.80%) ISTQB
14 84 (0.71%) CCNP
15 72 (0.61%) Computer Science Degree
16 68 (0.58%) CCNA
17 63 (0.54%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 53 (0.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 47 (0.40%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
20 46 (0.39%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 531 (4.51%) QA
2 383 (3.25%) Data Quality
3 324 (2.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 323 (2.74%) NIST
5 292 (2.48%) NCSC
6 267 (2.27%) Accessibility
7 228 (1.94%) PMO
8 179 (1.52%) GDPR
9 174 (1.48%) SLA
10 158 (1.34%) GRC
11 83 (0.71%) WCAG
12 60 (0.51%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
14 45 (0.38%) NIST 800
15 35 (0.30%) Def Stans
16 28 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
17 25 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 22 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 22 (0.19%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 20 (0.17%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 815 (6.92%) Docker
2 630 (5.35%) Active Directory
3 432 (3.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 146 (1.24%) VMware ESXi
5 145 (1.23%) VMware NSX
6 138 (1.17%) Hyper-V
7 127 (1.08%) vSphere
8 92 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
9 46 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
10 42 (0.36%) Firmware
11 40 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
12 26 (0.22%) vCloud
13 23 (0.20%) BitLocker
14 20 (0.17%) NFS
15 15 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
16 14 (0.12%) Squid
17 11 (0.093%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 11 (0.093%) Postfix
18 9 (0.076%) Embedded Firmware
18 9 (0.076%) KVM
Systems Management
1 1,005 (8.54%) Kubernetes
2 450 (3.82%) Ansible
3 259 (2.20%) Grafana
4 208 (1.77%) Prometheus
5 140 (1.19%) SCCM
6 136 (1.16%) vCenter Server
7 96 (0.82%) SCOM
8 93 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
9 68 (0.58%) Argo
9 68 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
10 49 (0.42%) Oracle RMAN
11 47 (0.40%) Puppet
12 41 (0.35%) Data Guard
13 33 (0.28%) Kibana
14 32 (0.27%) Istio
15 31 (0.26%) NetBackup
16 29 (0.25%) Control-M
16 29 (0.25%) Progress Chef
16 29 (0.25%) VxRail
17 26 (0.22%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,551 (13.18%) Microsoft
2 960 (8.16%) Oracle
3 603 (5.12%) VMware
4 537 (4.56%) ServiceNow
5 459 (3.90%) SAP
6 292 (2.48%) Cisco
7 252 (2.14%) Google
8 224 (1.90%) Splunk
9 205 (1.74%) Databricks
10 179 (1.52%) Salesforce
11 147 (1.25%) Red Hat
12 128 (1.09%) Palo Alto
13 112 (0.95%) Informatica
14 106 (0.90%) Talend
15 102 (0.87%) Dynatrace
15 102 (0.87%) IBM
16 97 (0.82%) CyberArk
17 88 (0.75%) Remedy
18 80 (0.68%) SolarWinds
19 78 (0.66%) Fortinet