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 28 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 3 3 4
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +4
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 7,481 6,451 7,919
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 20.72% 17.62% 17.35%
As % of the Qualifications category 62.14% 60.02% 59.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,925 4,018 4,967
10th Percentile £335 £350 £375
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -1.79%
75th Percentile £633 £638 £650
90th Percentile £723 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 741 360 512
10th Percentile £18.87 £20.12 £20.00
25th Percentile £19.38 £24.18 £46.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £52.35 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -51.95% -12.76% -
75th Percentile £51.50 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £73.75 £75.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £55.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -54.27% -8.33% -

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 12,038 10,748 13,416
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.35% 29.36% 29.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,771 6,455 8,492
10th Percentile £305 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £420 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £518 £538
% change year-on-year -3.38% -3.72% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,018 531 765
10th Percentile £17.53 £18.97 £17.72
25th Percentile £19.38 £24.18 £27.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £42.88 £53.67
Median % change year-on-year -41.35% -20.10% +19.26%
75th Percentile £45.46 £67.01 £68.75
90th Percentile £73.75 £75.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £46.71 £52.50
% change year-on-year -46.16% -11.02% +16.67%

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 28 November 2025.

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 28 November 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Top 18 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 28 November 2025. 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 0 6,542 £526 -4.45% 1,808
UK excluding London 0 4,334 £525 -4.55% 1,646
London +1 2,149 £550 +1.48% 456
Work from Home +2 2,115 £538 -0.46% 840
South East -1 1,270 £517 -6.00% 708
South West 0 1,127 £550 -4.35% 460
North of England -1 778 £513 +7.89% 129
Midlands +2 698 £519 -5.81% 130
West Midlands +2 540 £525 -8.38% 102
North West +1 509 £525 +6.49% 91
East of England +2 287 £513 - 245
Yorkshire -11 167 £500 +8.11% 22
Scotland -10 153 £463 -3.75% 51
East Midlands +1 143 £450 -7.69% 28
North East 0 110 £475 +0.53% 19
Wales -2 80 £550 +10.00% 33
Northern Ireland +1 43 £500 -16.67% 12
Channel Islands - 1 - - 1

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
1 274 (3.66%) Confluence
2 186 (2.49%) SharePoint
3 122 (1.63%) Microsoft Exchange
4 103 (1.38%) SAS
5 89 (1.19%) Apache
6 54 (0.72%) Apache Airflow
7 49 (0.65%) nginx
8 47 (0.63%) Apache Spark
9 39 (0.52%) Skype for Business
10 28 (0.37%) CMS
11 25 (0.33%) WebLogic
12 21 (0.28%) IIS
13 15 (0.20%) SharePoint Server
14 14 (0.19%) Exchange Server 2010
15 13 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2013
16 11 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 10 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2003
17 10 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2007
17 10 (0.13%) Office Communications Server
18 9 (0.12%) Documentum
Applications
1 216 (2.89%) Microsoft Office
2 160 (2.14%) Microsoft Excel
3 92 (1.23%) Microsoft Project
4 47 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 36 (0.48%) MS Visio
6 22 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
7 19 (0.25%) Simulink
8 15 (0.20%) Siemens NX
9 11 (0.15%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 10 (0.13%) Sketch
11 8 (0.11%) ProjectWise
12 7 (0.094%) Adobe XD
13 6 (0.080%) Oracle Smart View
13 6 (0.080%) Trello
14 5 (0.067%) Adobe Illustrator
14 5 (0.067%) FrameMaker
14 5 (0.067%) Photoshop
14 5 (0.067%) PTC Creo
14 5 (0.067%) Stateflow
14 5 (0.067%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 179 (2.39%) SAP S/4HANA
2 40 (0.53%) Remedy ITSM
3 30 (0.40%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 29 (0.39%) SAP EWM
4 29 (0.39%) SAP WM
5 23 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
5 23 (0.31%) SAP MM
6 22 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
7 19 (0.25%) Teamcenter
8 18 (0.24%) Primavera
9 17 (0.23%) SAP HCM
10 16 (0.21%) Maximo
11 15 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
12 14 (0.19%) SAP VC
13 13 (0.17%) SAP PS
14 12 (0.16%) SAP EHS
14 12 (0.16%) SAP PP
14 12 (0.16%) SAP QM
15 10 (0.13%) SAP HR
15 10 (0.13%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,261 (16.86%) AWS
2 1,170 (15.64%) Azure
3 364 (4.87%) GitHub
4 328 (4.38%) Microsoft 365
5 271 (3.62%) Power Platform
6 266 (3.56%) Azure DevOps
7 264 (3.53%) GCP
8 223 (2.98%) Serverless
9 196 (2.62%) GitHub Actions
10 185 (2.47%) Amazon S3
11 157 (2.10%) Entra ID
12 135 (1.80%) SaaS
13 134 (1.79%) OpenShift
14 130 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
15 129 (1.72%) AWS CloudFormation
16 123 (1.64%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 119 (1.59%) Amazon EC2
18 108 (1.44%) Amazon EKS
19 93 (1.24%) Virtual Private Cloud
20 89 (1.19%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 382 (5.11%) Firewall
2 265 (3.54%) DNS
3 181 (2.42%) VPN
4 160 (2.14%) Network Security
5 145 (1.94%) WAN
6 111 (1.48%) TCP/IP
7 101 (1.35%) LAN
8 100 (1.34%) BGP
9 98 (1.31%) DHCP
9 98 (1.31%) Wireless
10 82 (1.10%) SSL
11 66 (0.88%) SAN
12 64 (0.86%) Wi-Fi
13 62 (0.83%) MPLS
14 58 (0.78%) Cisco ISE
15 57 (0.76%) IPsec
16 56 (0.75%) VLAN
17 51 (0.68%) HTTP
18 46 (0.61%) OSPF
19 44 (0.59%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 223 (2.98%) PostgreSQL
2 178 (2.38%) Power BI
3 99 (1.32%) Amazon RDS
4 93 (1.24%) SQL Server
5 91 (1.22%) MongoDB
6 90 (1.20%) Oracle Database
7 85 (1.14%) Data Warehouse
8 81 (1.08%) Relational Database
9 77 (1.03%) Metadata
9 77 (1.03%) NoSQL
10 52 (0.70%) Azure SQL Database
11 50 (0.67%) Big Data
12 42 (0.56%) Pentaho
13 41 (0.55%) Elasticsearch
14 40 (0.53%) Amazon Redshift
15 39 (0.52%) Data Lake
16 38 (0.51%) Amazon Athena
17 37 (0.49%) MySQL
17 37 (0.49%) SAS Enterprise Guide
18 33 (0.44%) Redis
Development Applications
1 503 (6.72%) JIRA
2 411 (5.49%) Git
3 393 (5.25%) Jenkins
4 293 (3.92%) GitLab
5 84 (1.12%) Selenium
6 65 (0.87%) JUnit
7 60 (0.80%) SonarQube
8 58 (0.78%) Cypress.io
9 53 (0.71%) Postman
10 50 (0.67%) Bitbucket
11 46 (0.61%) Oracle APEX
12 39 (0.52%) Mockito
13 36 (0.48%) Artifactory
14 33 (0.44%) Cucumber
14 33 (0.44%) Maven
15 31 (0.41%) CircleCI
16 24 (0.32%) REST Assured
16 24 (0.32%) Visual Studio
17 23 (0.31%) MSI
18 22 (0.29%) Vagrant
General
1 2,021 (27.02%) Public Sector
2 1,906 (25.48%) Social Skills
3 675 (9.02%) Analytical Skills
4 526 (7.03%) Finance
5 269 (3.60%) Military
6 229 (3.06%) Telecoms
7 216 (2.89%) Manufacturing
8 186 (2.49%) Documentation Skills
9 160 (2.14%) Electronics
10 147 (1.96%) Marketing
11 137 (1.83%) Aerospace
12 110 (1.47%) Legal
13 105 (1.40%) Organisational Skills
14 96 (1.28%) Banking
15 91 (1.22%) Influencing Skills
16 82 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
17 69 (0.92%) Law
18 54 (0.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 41 (0.55%) Police
20 40 (0.53%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 983 (13.14%) Architect
2 773 (10.33%) Developer
3 664 (8.88%) Consultant
4 598 (7.99%) Senior
5 488 (6.52%) Analyst
6 458 (6.12%) Lead
7 334 (4.46%) DevOps Engineer
8 256 (3.42%) Support Engineer
9 212 (2.83%) Network Engineer
10 207 (2.77%) Solutions Architect
11 171 (2.29%) Data Engineer
12 167 (2.23%) SAP Consultant
13 152 (2.03%) Technical Architect
14 150 (2.01%) AWS Engineer
15 135 (1.80%) Platform Engineer
16 134 (1.79%) IT Engineer
17 133 (1.78%) Administrator
18 128 (1.71%) Software Engineer
19 126 (1.68%) Business Analyst
20 125 (1.67%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 283 (3.78%) REST
2 196 (2.62%) Node.js
3 182 (2.43%) React
4 170 (2.27%) Kafka
5 154 (2.06%) JSON
6 135 (1.80%) SOAP
7 133 (1.78%) Spring
8 123 (1.64%) HTML
9 111 (1.48%) XML
10 110 (1.47%) RESTful
11 106 (1.42%) Spring Boot
12 101 (1.35%) AngularJS
13 100 (1.34%) CSS
14 98 (1.31%) .NET
15 96 (1.28%) Web Services
16 76 (1.02%) OAuth
17 72 (0.96%) LDAP
18 66 (0.88%) Elastic Stack
19 62 (0.83%) Oracle Fusion
20 58 (0.78%) SAP Fiori
Miscellaneous
1 223 (2.98%) Data Centre
2 210 (2.81%) Onboarding
3 192 (2.57%) Cloud Native
4 184 (2.46%) PKI
5 157 (2.10%) Product Ownership
6 152 (2.03%) Management Information System
7 111 (1.48%) Self-Motivation
8 99 (1.32%) Legacy Systems
9 81 (1.08%) Driving Licence
10 78 (1.04%) Cyber Threat
11 70 (0.94%) Replication
12 69 (0.92%) Security Posture
13 67 (0.90%) Security Operations Centre
14 65 (0.87%) Enterprise Software
15 64 (0.86%) CMDB
16 62 (0.83%) Hybrid Cloud
17 57 (0.76%) Private Cloud
18 56 (0.75%) Analytical Mindset
19 54 (0.72%) Public Cloud
20 47 (0.63%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 810 (10.83%) Windows
2 558 (7.46%) Linux
3 192 (2.57%) Windows Server
4 177 (2.37%) Windows 10
5 110 (1.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 92 (1.23%) Android
7 91 (1.22%) Unix
8 84 (1.12%) Mac OS
9 52 (0.70%) VMS
10 36 (0.48%) Windows Server 2019
11 35 (0.47%) Ubuntu
12 29 (0.39%) Apple iOS
13 26 (0.35%) Amazon Linux
14 25 (0.33%) Windows Server 2012
14 25 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
15 24 (0.32%) Windows 7
16 22 (0.29%) CentOS
17 18 (0.24%) Windows Server 2003
18 16 (0.21%) Mac OS X
19 9 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,466 (19.60%) Agile
2 1,133 (15.15%) DevOps
3 1,040 (13.90%) CI/CD
4 897 (11.99%) Problem-Solving
5 776 (10.37%) Migration
6 592 (7.91%) Stakeholder Management
7 508 (6.79%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 507 (6.78%) Cybersecurity
9 494 (6.60%) Infrastructure as Code
10 478 (6.39%) Continuous Improvement
11 477 (6.38%) ITIL
12 422 (5.64%) Service Management
13 417 (5.57%) Containerisation
14 415 (5.55%) Test Automation
15 411 (5.49%) Workflow
16 408 (5.45%) Business Intelligence
17 378 (5.05%) Analytics
18 358 (4.79%) Roadmaps
19 351 (4.69%) Microservices
19 351 (4.69%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 930 (12.43%) Python
2 555 (7.42%) SQL
3 474 (6.34%) PowerShell
4 472 (6.31%) Java
5 388 (5.19%) JavaScript
6 232 (3.10%) Bash
7 202 (2.70%) TypeScript
8 136 (1.82%) C#
9 99 (1.32%) C++
10 83 (1.11%) Go
11 74 (0.99%) PL/SQL
12 70 (0.94%) C
13 69 (0.92%) Shell Script
14 48 (0.64%) ABAP
15 42 (0.56%) Perl
16 41 (0.55%) Ruby
17 34 (0.45%) Groovy
18 32 (0.43%) Bicep
19 31 (0.41%) MATLAB
20 28 (0.37%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 5,758 (76.97%) SC Cleared
2 1,219 (16.29%) DV Cleared
3 357 (4.77%) Degree
4 347 (4.64%) BPSS Clearance
5 137 (1.83%) CISSP
6 126 (1.68%) Microsoft Certification
7 116 (1.55%) Cisco Certification
8 113 (1.51%) Azure Certification
9 111 (1.48%) AWS Certification
10 86 (1.15%) CCNP
11 83 (1.11%) CISM
12 58 (0.78%) Computer Science Degree
13 57 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
14 48 (0.64%) CCNA
15 45 (0.60%) CEH
16 44 (0.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 40 (0.53%) CTC Cleared
18 39 (0.52%) TOGAF Certification
19 37 (0.49%) CHECK Team Member
20 33 (0.44%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 235 (3.14%) QA
2 218 (2.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 214 (2.86%) NIST
4 164 (2.19%) NCSC
5 139 (1.86%) SLA
6 138 (1.84%) Data Quality
7 134 (1.79%) GDPR
8 133 (1.78%) Accessibility
9 64 (0.86%) PMO
10 53 (0.71%) JSP 440
11 46 (0.61%) WCAG
12 44 (0.59%) NIST 800
13 38 (0.51%) GRC
14 32 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 31 (0.41%) Def Stans
16 29 (0.39%) COBIT
17 22 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials
17 22 (0.29%) RMADS
18 21 (0.28%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 17 (0.23%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 593 (7.93%) Docker
2 417 (5.57%) Active Directory
3 224 (2.99%) VMware Infrastructure
4 77 (1.03%) VMware NSX
5 75 (1.00%) vSphere
6 67 (0.90%) VMware ESXi
7 53 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
8 45 (0.60%) Firmware
9 39 (0.52%) Hyper-V
10 25 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
11 20 (0.27%) DFS Replication
12 19 (0.25%) Postfix
13 16 (0.21%) NFS
14 15 (0.20%) Dovecot
15 11 (0.15%) ISA Server
15 11 (0.15%) Squid
15 11 (0.15%) Terminal Services
16 10 (0.13%) BitLocker
16 10 (0.13%) Brightmail
17 7 (0.094%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 723 (9.66%) Kubernetes
2 685 (9.16%) Terraform
3 291 (3.89%) Ansible
4 189 (2.53%) Grafana
5 162 (2.17%) Prometheus
6 113 (1.51%) SCCM
7 96 (1.28%) Single Sign-On
8 82 (1.10%) Microsoft Intune
9 66 (0.88%) vCenter Server
10 59 (0.79%) Argo
11 52 (0.70%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 47 (0.63%) Packer
13 37 (0.49%) Kibana
14 34 (0.45%) Jamf Pro
15 30 (0.40%) vRealize
16 26 (0.35%) FortiGate
16 26 (0.35%) SCOM
17 25 (0.33%) OPNET
18 24 (0.32%) Nessus
18 24 (0.32%) Puppet
Vendors
1 937 (12.53%) Microsoft
2 529 (7.07%) SAP
3 446 (5.96%) Cisco
4 388 (5.19%) VMware
5 387 (5.17%) Oracle
6 353 (4.72%) ServiceNow
7 185 (2.47%) Splunk
8 155 (2.07%) Juniper
9 142 (1.90%) Red Hat
10 125 (1.67%) Google
11 113 (1.51%) Salesforce
12 106 (1.42%) Palo Alto
13 99 (1.32%) Atlassian
14 98 (1.31%) Dell
15 96 (1.28%) HP
16 83 (1.11%) CyberArk
17 78 (1.04%) IBM
18 77 (1.03%) Databricks
19 76 (1.02%) Remedy
20 74 (0.99%) SolarWinds