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

6 months to
19 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 10,966 5,314 7,996
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.70% 17.82% 18.22%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.30% 57.55% 61.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,575 3,457 5,251
10th Percentile £381 £340 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £620 £650
90th Percentile £714 £695 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 842 373 579
10th Percentile £18.20 £18.50 £14.22
25th Percentile £25.71 £18.87 £21.46
Median hourly rate £60.91 £25.50 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year +138.86% -54.86% -6.40%
75th Percentile £75.00 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.36 £77.50 £83.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.91 £27.13 £57.50
% change year-on-year +124.55% -52.83% -

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 15,823 9,233 13,084
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.31% 30.96% 29.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,544 5,740 8,094
10th Percentile £350 £275 £310
25th Percentile £425 £412 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £614 £638
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £507 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +1.40% -4.76% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,167 599 1,124
10th Percentile £17.22 £17.76 £13.99
25th Percentile £22.72 £20.00 £19.13
Median hourly rate £50.00 £30.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +66.67% -25.00% -27.65%
75th Percentile £72.52 £63.13 £63.88
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.50 £75.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.84 £28.00 £41.50
% change year-on-year +74.43% -32.53% -20.95%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 9,467 £525 -2.23% 1,845
UK excluding London +1 6,122 £525 -0.94% 1,552
London +7 3,374 £525 - 519
Work from Home +5 3,012 £525 - 945
South East +1 2,274 £550 - 490
South West 0 1,299 £538 -4.44% 402
North of England +2 982 £500 +0.45% 298
Midlands +2 913 £469 -10.67% 152
West Midlands +2 794 £470 -10.54% 115
North West 0 534 £525 +5.00% 177
East of England +2 362 £550 +10.00% 107
Scotland +24 269 £500 +14.29% 76
Yorkshire -4 252 £500 +1.63% 74
North East +1 227 £480 +0.05% 52
East Midlands -5 108 £438 -7.89% 37
Wales +4 87 £500 +5.26% 45
Northern Ireland +7 31 £644 +35.53% 23

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
1 401 (3.66%) Confluence
2 233 (2.12%) SharePoint
3 166 (1.51%) SAS
4 130 (1.19%) Microsoft Exchange
5 103 (0.94%) Apache Spark
6 100 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
7 91 (0.83%) Apache
8 45 (0.41%) Jupyter
9 42 (0.38%) 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
1 174 (1.59%) Microsoft Excel
2 146 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
3 79 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
4 76 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 48 (0.44%) MS Visio
6 16 (0.15%) Simulink
7 15 (0.14%) 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%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,987 (18.12%) AWS
2 1,918 (17.49%) Azure
3 458 (4.18%) GitHub
4 430 (3.92%) Azure DevOps
5 419 (3.82%) GCP
6 418 (3.81%) Power Platform
7 284 (2.59%) Serverless
8 277 (2.53%) GitHub Actions
9 272 (2.48%) Entra ID
10 269 (2.45%) Microsoft 365
11 232 (2.12%) Amazon S3
12 199 (1.81%) AWS Lambda
13 167 (1.52%) Amazon EC2
14 160 (1.46%) PaaS
15 156 (1.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 149 (1.36%) SaaS
17 142 (1.29%) Amazon EKS
18 138 (1.26%) OCI
19 136 (1.24%) OpenShift
20 122 (1.11%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 457 (4.17%) Firewall
2 309 (2.82%) DNS
3 242 (2.21%) Network Security
4 224 (2.04%) WAN
5 196 (1.79%) LAN
6 179 (1.63%) VPN
7 160 (1.46%) DHCP
8 137 (1.25%) BGP
9 115 (1.05%) OSPF
10 112 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
11 109 (0.99%) VLAN
12 103 (0.94%) TCP/IP
13 88 (0.80%) Wireless
14 65 (0.59%) MPLS
15 59 (0.54%) SAN
16 58 (0.53%) SD-WAN
16 58 (0.53%) VXLAN
17 52 (0.47%) Structured Cabling
18 51 (0.47%) IPsec
19 48 (0.44%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 325 (2.96%) Power BI
2 288 (2.63%) PostgreSQL
3 265 (2.42%) Data Warehouse
4 229 (2.09%) SQL Server
5 159 (1.45%) Oracle Database
6 141 (1.29%) Metadata
7 132 (1.20%) Data Lake
8 117 (1.07%) Amazon RDS
9 114 (1.04%) Relational Database
10 108 (0.98%) MongoDB
11 87 (0.79%) MySQL
12 86 (0.78%) Pentaho
13 82 (0.75%) Elasticsearch
14 81 (0.74%) Oracle Reports
15 77 (0.70%) NoSQL
16 75 (0.68%) Amazon Redshift
17 72 (0.66%) Amazon Athena
18 66 (0.60%) Tableau
19 64 (0.58%) Big Data
20 56 (0.51%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 633 (5.77%) JIRA
2 490 (4.47%) Git
3 468 (4.27%) GitLab
4 434 (3.96%) 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 58 (0.53%) Cucumber
9 58 (0.53%) Rational DOORS
10 51 (0.47%) Artifactory
11 45 (0.41%) Bitbucket
12 44 (0.40%) Mockito
13 43 (0.39%) Cypress.io
14 41 (0.37%) Visual Studio
14 41 (0.37%) Zephyr
15 40 (0.36%) Maven
15 40 (0.36%) REST Assured
16 37 (0.34%) Gatling
General
1 2,422 (22.09%) Public Sector
2 2,207 (20.13%) Social Skills
3 744 (6.78%) Analytical Skills
4 694 (6.33%) Finance
5 344 (3.14%) Military
6 298 (2.72%) Documentation Skills
7 290 (2.64%) Aerospace
8 175 (1.60%) Legal
9 134 (1.22%) Influencing Skills
10 130 (1.19%) Banking
11 117 (1.07%) Telecoms
12 101 (0.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 99 (0.90%) Law
14 97 (0.88%) Organisational Skills
15 94 (0.86%) Manufacturing
16 78 (0.71%) Presentation Skills
17 70 (0.64%) Police
18 55 (0.50%) Aviation
19 46 (0.42%) Marketing
20 40 (0.36%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,665 (15.18%) Architect
2 1,090 (9.94%) Developer
3 955 (8.71%) Senior
4 818 (7.46%) Lead
5 735 (6.70%) Analyst
6 542 (4.94%) Consultant
7 528 (4.81%) Data Engineer
8 510 (4.65%) DevOps Engineer
9 363 (3.31%) Technical Architect
10 327 (2.98%) Solutions Architect
11 325 (2.96%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 324 (2.95%) Software Engineer
13 281 (2.56%) Network Engineer
14 251 (2.29%) Business Analyst
15 241 (2.20%) Security Architect
16 225 (2.05%) Project Manager
17 216 (1.97%) Designer
18 209 (1.91%) Azure Engineer
19 205 (1.87%) Delivery Manager
20 203 (1.85%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 332 (3.03%) REST
2 248 (2.26%) Spring
3 209 (1.91%) Spring Boot
4 202 (1.84%) React
5 195 (1.78%) Kafka
6 186 (1.70%) .NET
7 185 (1.69%) Node.js
8 159 (1.45%) RESTful
9 143 (1.30%) SOAP
10 134 (1.22%) LDAP
11 128 (1.17%) JSON
12 125 (1.14%) AngularJS
13 115 (1.05%) PySpark
14 113 (1.03%) Web Services
15 108 (0.98%) OAuth
16 103 (0.94%) Middleware
17 93 (0.85%) HTML
18 91 (0.83%) Playwright
19 85 (0.78%) OpenID
20 81 (0.74%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 419 (3.82%) Cloud Native
2 353 (3.22%) Product Ownership
3 323 (2.95%) Onboarding
4 311 (2.84%) Data Centre
5 222 (2.02%) Management Information System
6 167 (1.52%) Legacy Systems
7 145 (1.32%) PKI
8 141 (1.29%) Distributed Systems
9 130 (1.19%) Enterprise Software
10 113 (1.03%) Security Posture
11 112 (1.02%) Replication
12 108 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
13 96 (0.88%) CMDB
13 96 (0.88%) Data Structures
14 89 (0.81%) Public Cloud
15 88 (0.80%) Hybrid Cloud
16 85 (0.78%) Clustering
17 81 (0.74%) Security Operations Centre
18 76 (0.69%) Virtual Team
19 73 (0.67%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 839 (7.65%) Windows
2 723 (6.59%) Linux
3 260 (2.37%) Windows Server
4 199 (1.81%) Unix
5 132 (1.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 91 (0.83%) Android
7 82 (0.75%) Windows 10
8 65 (0.59%) Apple iOS
9 56 (0.51%) Solaris
10 40 (0.36%) Mac OS
11 35 (0.32%) Ubuntu
12 31 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
13 30 (0.27%) AIX
14 28 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
15 22 (0.20%) CentOS
16 21 (0.19%) VMS
17 16 (0.15%) Windows 7
18 15 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
19 11 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
19 11 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,168 (19.77%) Agile
2 1,703 (15.53%) DevOps
3 1,553 (14.16%) CI/CD
4 1,123 (10.24%) Problem-Solving
5 1,102 (10.05%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,071 (9.77%) Continuous Improvement
7 905 (8.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 865 (7.89%) Migration
9 815 (7.43%) Infrastructure as Code
10 680 (6.20%) Test Automation
11 677 (6.17%) Cybersecurity
12 646 (5.89%) Analytics
13 643 (5.86%) Containerisation
14 627 (5.72%) ITIL
15 624 (5.69%) Software Engineering
16 611 (5.57%) Roadmaps
17 585 (5.33%) Decision-Making
18 566 (5.16%) Data Modelling
19 512 (4.67%) AI
20 496 (4.52%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,208 (11.02%) Python
2 1,041 (9.49%) SQL
3 715 (6.52%) Java
4 510 (4.65%) PowerShell
5 331 (3.02%) JavaScript
6 231 (2.11%) C#
7 216 (1.97%) Bash
8 193 (1.76%) TypeScript
9 143 (1.30%) PL/SQL
10 95 (0.87%) Shell Script
11 94 (0.86%) C++
12 79 (0.72%) Bicep
13 64 (0.58%) C
14 62 (0.57%) Apex Code
15 60 (0.55%) Ruby
16 58 (0.53%) Go
17 52 (0.47%) Scala
18 46 (0.42%) Kotlin
19 45 (0.41%) Ada
20 40 (0.36%) R
Qualifications
1 8,411 (76.70%) SC Cleared
2 1,967 (17.94%) DV Cleared
3 428 (3.90%) Degree
4 332 (3.03%) BPSS Clearance
5 212 (1.93%) Cisco Certification
6 178 (1.62%) CISSP
7 142 (1.29%) Azure Certification
8 124 (1.13%) AWS Certification
9 117 (1.07%) CISM
10 111 (1.01%) Microsoft Certification
11 109 (0.99%) CCNP
12 95 (0.87%) CCNA
13 87 (0.79%) PMP
14 85 (0.78%) PMI Certification
15 75 (0.68%) ISTQB
16 68 (0.62%) Computer Science Degree
17 64 (0.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 56 (0.51%) ITIL Certification
19 41 (0.37%) CompTIA Security+
19 41 (0.37%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 418 (3.81%) QA
2 337 (3.07%) Data Quality
3 316 (2.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 313 (2.85%) NIST
5 234 (2.13%) NCSC
6 216 (1.97%) Accessibility
7 184 (1.68%) GDPR
8 174 (1.59%) PMO
9 124 (1.13%) SLA
10 96 (0.88%) GRC
11 68 (0.62%) JSP 440
12 50 (0.46%) WCAG
13 47 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
14 45 (0.41%) NIST 800
15 37 (0.34%) RMADS
16 32 (0.29%) Def Stans
17 30 (0.27%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 25 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
19 24 (0.22%) COBIT
20 21 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 699 (6.37%) Docker
2 465 (4.24%) Active Directory
3 312 (2.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 116 (1.06%) VMware ESXi
5 107 (0.98%) VMware NSX
6 91 (0.83%) Hyper-V
7 82 (0.75%) vSphere
8 73 (0.67%) Virtual Machines
9 39 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
10 33 (0.30%) Firmware
11 24 (0.22%) BitLocker
11 24 (0.22%) NFS
12 21 (0.19%) vCloud
13 20 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
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
1 903 (8.23%) Terraform
2 864 (7.88%) Kubernetes
3 378 (3.45%) Ansible
4 271 (2.47%) Grafana
5 226 (2.06%) Prometheus
6 112 (1.02%) vCenter Server
7 97 (0.88%) Single Sign-On
8 77 (0.70%) SCCM
9 60 (0.55%) 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
18 26 (0.24%) vRealize
19 24 (0.22%) vMotion
Vendors
1 1,107 (10.09%) Microsoft
2 766 (6.99%) Oracle
3 499 (4.55%) VMware
4 447 (4.08%) ServiceNow
5 349 (3.18%) SAP
6 334 (3.05%) Cisco
7 227 (2.07%) Splunk
8 201 (1.83%) Databricks
9 184 (1.68%) Salesforce
10 168 (1.53%) Google
11 164 (1.50%) Red Hat
12 146 (1.33%) Talend
13 128 (1.17%) IBM
14 123 (1.12%) Informatica
15 116 (1.06%) Palo Alto
16 100 (0.91%) Juniper
17 94 (0.86%) Fortinet
18 89 (0.81%) F5
19 87 (0.79%) Dynatrace
20 86 (0.78%) Denodo