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

6 months to
2 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 11,569 5,883 7,125
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.59% 18.09% 18.45%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.81% 57.84% 62.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,108 3,758 4,684
10th Percentile £388 £350 £350
25th Percentile £458 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.56% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £697 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £537 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -0.05% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 799 570 448
10th Percentile £19.50 £18.51 £15.66
25th Percentile £30.94 £18.87 £24.18
Median hourly rate £64.00 £25.15 £58.43
Median % change year-on-year +154.47% -56.96% -2.61%
75th Percentile £78.70 £43.75 £72.01
90th Percentile £88.00 £71.56 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +158.45% -58.08% +4.35%

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 16,812 10,171 11,483
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.37% 31.27% 29.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,258 6,292 7,204
10th Percentile £350 £300 £313
25th Percentile £438 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £626 £623 £638
90th Percentile £715 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,264 819 732
10th Percentile £17.42 £17.98 £15.11
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £48.77 £25.15 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +93.90% -47.05% -13.64%
75th Percentile £72.54 £50.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £87.00 £71.66 £76.17
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +89.03% -49.70% -

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 10,001 £549 +2.14% 4,223
UK excluding London +1 6,505 £537 -0.05% 3,241
London +7 3,555 £550 +3.77% 1,506
Work from Home +2 3,065 £525 -2.33% 2,407
South East +1 2,328 £564 +4.98% 822
South West 0 1,376 £550 -0.90% 771
North of England +3 1,242 £515 +2.83% 651
Midlands 0 908 £475 -7.77% 266
West Midlands +1 773 £475 -7.77% 174
North West +3 729 £530 -1.17% 423
East of England 0 343 £550 - 366
Yorkshire 0 298 £500 +1.63% 119
Scotland +13 283 £481 -0.41% 258
North East 0 237 £475 -5.00% 130
East Midlands -1 126 £450 -7.69% 92
Wales +4 107 £550 +10.00% 41
Northern Ireland +5 35 £650 +16.07% 117

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 (3.48%) Confluence
2 266 (2.30%) SharePoint
3 176 (1.52%) SAS
4 124 (1.07%) Microsoft Exchange
5 103 (0.89%) Apache
5 103 (0.89%) Apache Spark
6 102 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
7 39 (0.34%) Jupyter
8 34 (0.29%) nginx
9 28 (0.24%) WebLogic
10 23 (0.20%) IIS
10 23 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
11 22 (0.19%) Skype for Business
11 22 (0.19%) Tomcat
12 17 (0.15%) CMS
12 17 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 17 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
13 13 (0.11%) JBoss
14 12 (0.10%) NetWeaver
15 9 (0.078%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 205 (1.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 161 (1.39%) Microsoft Office
3 109 (0.94%) Microsoft Project
4 98 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 41 (0.35%) MS Visio
6 23 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.15%) AutoCAD
7 17 (0.15%) Revit
8 16 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
9 15 (0.13%) Simulink
10 8 (0.069%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.069%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.069%) Windchill
11 7 (0.061%) Notepad++
11 7 (0.061%) Sketch
12 5 (0.043%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 3 (0.026%) OrCAD
13 3 (0.026%) Trello
14 2 (0.017%) Houdini
14 2 (0.017%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 148 (1.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 80 (0.69%) Remedy ITSM
3 52 (0.45%) Oracle ERP
4 37 (0.32%) Oracle EBS
5 33 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 31 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
7 28 (0.24%) Teamcenter
8 25 (0.22%) SAP GRC
9 24 (0.21%) Oracle Payroll
10 22 (0.19%) SAP PSCD
11 20 (0.17%) Primavera
12 17 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
13 16 (0.14%) SAP FI
13 16 (0.14%) SAP HR
14 13 (0.11%) Findur
15 12 (0.10%) iTrent
15 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
16 11 (0.095%) NetSuite
16 11 (0.095%) Temenos T24
17 10 (0.086%) SAP CO
Cloud Services
1 2,159 (18.66%) Azure
2 2,074 (17.93%) AWS
3 532 (4.60%) GitHub
4 529 (4.57%) Azure DevOps
5 484 (4.18%) Power Platform
6 451 (3.90%) GCP
7 341 (2.95%) GitHub Actions
8 321 (2.77%) Microsoft 365
9 300 (2.59%) Entra ID
10 279 (2.41%) Serverless
11 229 (1.98%) Amazon S3
12 201 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
13 173 (1.50%) SaaS
14 172 (1.49%) OCI
15 167 (1.44%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 163 (1.41%) Amazon EKS
17 139 (1.20%) Amazon EC2
18 136 (1.18%) OpenShift
19 125 (1.08%) AWS CloudFormation
20 118 (1.02%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 478 (4.13%) Firewall
2 376 (3.25%) DNS
3 230 (1.99%) WAN
4 228 (1.97%) Network Security
5 217 (1.88%) VPN
6 187 (1.62%) DHCP
7 181 (1.56%) LAN
8 140 (1.21%) BGP
9 139 (1.20%) TCP/IP
10 120 (1.04%) Wi-Fi
11 106 (0.92%) VLAN
12 101 (0.87%) OSPF
13 87 (0.75%) Wireless
14 74 (0.64%) SSL
15 69 (0.60%) MPLS
16 67 (0.58%) IPsec
17 65 (0.56%) VSAN
18 64 (0.55%) SD-WAN
19 63 (0.54%) SAN
20 53 (0.46%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 352 (3.04%) Power BI
2 304 (2.63%) PostgreSQL
3 290 (2.51%) SQL Server
4 266 (2.30%) Data Warehouse
5 185 (1.60%) Metadata
6 176 (1.52%) Oracle Database
7 145 (1.25%) Relational Database
8 144 (1.24%) Data Lake
9 125 (1.08%) MongoDB
10 108 (0.93%) Amazon RDS
10 108 (0.93%) MySQL
11 95 (0.82%) NoSQL
12 92 (0.80%) Oracle Reports
13 75 (0.65%) Pentaho
14 71 (0.61%) Amazon Athena
15 65 (0.56%) Elasticsearch
16 62 (0.54%) Amazon Redshift
17 58 (0.50%) Big Data
18 57 (0.49%) Tableau
19 49 (0.42%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 643 (5.56%) JIRA
2 565 (4.88%) Git
3 504 (4.36%) GitLab
4 470 (4.06%) Jenkins
5 139 (1.20%) Selenium
6 81 (0.70%) Postman
7 76 (0.66%) SonarQube
8 73 (0.63%) JMeter
9 69 (0.60%) JUnit
10 67 (0.58%) Maven
11 55 (0.48%) Cucumber
12 54 (0.47%) Cypress.io
13 48 (0.41%) Gradle
14 43 (0.37%) Mockito
15 41 (0.35%) Visual Studio
16 40 (0.35%) Gatling
17 39 (0.34%) Rational DOORS
17 39 (0.34%) REST Assured
18 38 (0.33%) Zephyr
19 36 (0.31%) Artifactory
General
1 2,527 (21.84%) Social Skills
2 2,373 (20.51%) Public Sector
3 909 (7.86%) Analytical Skills
4 760 (6.57%) Finance
5 382 (3.30%) Military
6 305 (2.64%) Aerospace
7 304 (2.63%) Documentation Skills
8 205 (1.77%) Influencing Skills
9 171 (1.48%) Organisational Skills
10 168 (1.45%) Telecoms
11 165 (1.43%) Legal
12 148 (1.28%) Banking
13 146 (1.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 118 (1.02%) Manufacturing
15 114 (0.99%) Law
16 112 (0.97%) Police
17 62 (0.54%) Presentation Skills
18 46 (0.40%) Retail
19 44 (0.38%) Marketing
20 43 (0.37%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,857 (16.05%) Architect
2 1,211 (10.47%) Developer
3 1,106 (9.56%) Senior
4 1,043 (9.02%) Lead
5 697 (6.02%) Consultant
6 631 (5.45%) Analyst
7 505 (4.37%) Data Engineer
8 500 (4.32%) DevOps Engineer
9 423 (3.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 368 (3.18%) Technical Architect
11 355 (3.07%) Solutions Architect
12 288 (2.49%) Software Engineer
13 282 (2.44%) Data Architect
14 267 (2.31%) Security Architect
15 257 (2.22%) Network Engineer
16 215 (1.86%) Administrator
17 209 (1.81%) Java Developer
18 204 (1.76%) Azure Engineer
19 203 (1.75%) Project Manager
20 202 (1.75%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 991 (8.57%) Terraform
2 437 (3.78%) REST
3 249 (2.15%) Spring
4 244 (2.11%) Kafka
5 228 (1.97%) Spring Boot
6 219 (1.89%) .NET
7 212 (1.83%) RESTful
8 208 (1.80%) React
9 171 (1.48%) Node.js
10 166 (1.43%) SOAP
11 160 (1.38%) JSON
12 131 (1.13%) HTML
13 129 (1.12%) OAuth
14 120 (1.04%) Web Services
14 120 (1.04%) XML
15 117 (1.01%) AngularJS
15 117 (1.01%) Middleware
16 101 (0.87%) CSS
17 97 (0.84%) Playwright
18 95 (0.82%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 512 (4.43%) Cloud Native
2 428 (3.70%) Onboarding
3 360 (3.11%) Product Ownership
4 305 (2.64%) Data Centre
5 252 (2.18%) Management Information System
6 193 (1.67%) Legacy Systems
7 172 (1.49%) PKI
8 161 (1.39%) Enterprise Software
9 159 (1.37%) CMDB
10 148 (1.28%) Distributed Systems
11 128 (1.11%) Replication
12 123 (1.06%) Hybrid Cloud
13 116 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
14 103 (0.89%) Data Structures
15 102 (0.88%) Cyber Threat
16 94 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
17 92 (0.80%) Public Cloud
18 89 (0.77%) Operational Technology
19 85 (0.73%) Clustering
20 82 (0.71%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 977 (8.44%) Windows
2 798 (6.90%) Linux
3 365 (3.15%) Windows Server
4 223 (1.93%) Unix
5 155 (1.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 139 (1.20%) Windows 10
7 77 (0.67%) Android
8 65 (0.56%) Solaris
9 51 (0.44%) Mac OS
10 45 (0.39%) Apple iOS
11 40 (0.35%) CentOS
11 40 (0.35%) Ubuntu
12 39 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
13 36 (0.31%) AIX
14 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
15 22 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
15 22 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
16 21 (0.18%) VMS
17 16 (0.14%) Rocky
18 15 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,436 (21.06%) Agile
2 1,784 (15.42%) DevOps
3 1,737 (15.01%) CI/CD
4 1,486 (12.84%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,354 (11.70%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,218 (10.53%) Problem-Solving
7 1,156 (9.99%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 986 (8.52%) Infrastructure as Code
9 921 (7.96%) Migration
10 825 (7.13%) Cybersecurity
11 784 (6.78%) ITIL
12 760 (6.57%) Test Automation
13 718 (6.21%) Containerisation
14 713 (6.16%) Analytics
15 704 (6.09%) Technical Leadership
16 682 (5.90%) Roadmaps
17 675 (5.83%) Decision-Making
18 673 (5.82%) AI
19 669 (5.78%) Software Engineering
20 628 (5.43%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,345 (11.63%) Python
2 1,104 (9.54%) SQL
3 786 (6.79%) Java
4 579 (5.00%) PowerShell
5 396 (3.42%) JavaScript
6 338 (2.92%) Bash
7 234 (2.02%) C#
8 206 (1.78%) TypeScript
9 159 (1.37%) PL/SQL
10 125 (1.08%) Bicep
11 82 (0.71%) Shell Script
12 70 (0.61%) C++
13 62 (0.54%) C
14 53 (0.46%) Apex Code
15 51 (0.44%) Scala
16 46 (0.40%) Go
16 46 (0.40%) Groovy
16 46 (0.40%) Kotlin
17 45 (0.39%) Ruby
18 40 (0.35%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8,821 (76.25%) SC Cleared
2 2,179 (18.83%) DV Cleared
3 464 (4.01%) BPSS Clearance
4 454 (3.92%) Degree
5 213 (1.84%) CISSP
6 182 (1.57%) Cisco Certification
7 179 (1.55%) Azure Certification
8 164 (1.42%) Microsoft Certification
9 145 (1.25%) AWS Certification
10 142 (1.23%) CISM
11 106 (0.92%) PMI Certification
12 102 (0.88%) PMP
13 92 (0.80%) ISTQB
14 81 (0.70%) CCNP
15 74 (0.64%) Computer Science Degree
16 71 (0.61%) CCNA
17 63 (0.54%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 47 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 45 (0.39%) ITIL Certification
19 45 (0.39%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 505 (4.37%) QA
2 386 (3.34%) Data Quality
3 319 (2.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 311 (2.69%) NIST
5 273 (2.36%) NCSC
6 256 (2.21%) Accessibility
7 226 (1.95%) PMO
8 181 (1.56%) GDPR
9 168 (1.45%) SLA
10 155 (1.34%) GRC
11 84 (0.73%) WCAG
12 64 (0.55%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
14 42 (0.36%) NIST 800
15 35 (0.30%) Def Stans
16 28 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 25 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 24 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
19 22 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 22 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 803 (6.94%) Docker
2 587 (5.07%) Active Directory
3 426 (3.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 146 (1.26%) VMware NSX
5 139 (1.20%) VMware ESXi
6 131 (1.13%) Hyper-V
7 125 (1.08%) vSphere
8 82 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
9 43 (0.37%) Firmware
10 42 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
11 41 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
12 27 (0.23%) vCloud
13 25 (0.22%) BitLocker
14 15 (0.13%) NFS
15 14 (0.12%) Squid
16 13 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
17 11 (0.095%) Postfix
18 9 (0.078%) Citrix Hypervisor
18 9 (0.078%) KVM
19 8 (0.069%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 973 (8.41%) Kubernetes
2 448 (3.87%) Ansible
3 263 (2.27%) Grafana
4 209 (1.81%) Prometheus
5 137 (1.18%) SCCM
6 135 (1.17%) vCenter Server
7 92 (0.80%) SCOM
8 86 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
9 69 (0.60%) Argo
10 67 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
11 50 (0.43%) Oracle RMAN
12 48 (0.41%) Puppet
13 42 (0.36%) Data Guard
14 32 (0.28%) Istio
14 32 (0.28%) Kibana
15 30 (0.26%) Progress Chef
16 29 (0.25%) Control-M
16 29 (0.25%) Nagios
17 28 (0.24%) NetBackup
17 28 (0.24%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,488 (12.86%) Microsoft
2 926 (8.00%) Oracle
3 603 (5.21%) VMware
4 541 (4.68%) ServiceNow
5 449 (3.88%) SAP
6 308 (2.66%) Cisco
7 244 (2.11%) Google
8 227 (1.96%) Splunk
9 213 (1.84%) Databricks
10 184 (1.59%) Salesforce
11 147 (1.27%) Red Hat
12 130 (1.12%) Palo Alto
13 118 (1.02%) IBM
13 118 (1.02%) Informatica
14 112 (0.97%) Talend
15 97 (0.84%) Dynatrace
16 90 (0.78%) Remedy
17 86 (0.74%) CyberArk
18 84 (0.73%) SolarWinds
19 83 (0.72%) F5