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 18 September 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 4 3 4
Rank change year-on-year -1 +1 +7
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 5,991 6,899 8,099
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 18.18% 17.91% 16.45%
As % of the Qualifications category 58.00% 61.22% 58.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,887 4,476 5,126
10th Percentile £350 £350 £375
25th Percentile £450 £450 £459
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £537 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.36% - -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -2.27% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 594 410 490
10th Percentile £18.51 £19.96 £19.06
25th Percentile £18.87 £27.00 £45.88
Median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -58.08% - +4.35%
75th Percentile £35.50 £72.22 £72.33
90th Percentile £70.75 £80.06 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £58.59
% change year-on-year -58.08% +2.41% +4.63%

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 10,329 11,269 13,846
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.35% 29.26% 28.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,453 6,946 8,930
10th Percentile £300 £313 £325
25th Percentile £413 £425 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £711 £731 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - +2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 835 654 722
10th Percentile £17.91 £17.00 £16.55
25th Percentile £18.87 £24.18 £26.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £49.50 £54.53
Median % change year-on-year -49.19% -9.22% +21.18%
75th Percentile £45.40 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £71.00 £76.00 £78.36
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £52.50 £52.50
% change year-on-year -52.10% - +16.67%

Security Cleared
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Security Cleared as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Security Cleared 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 18 September 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 18 September 2025.

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 18 September 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 -1 5,188 £538 -2.27% 2,752
UK excluding London -1 3,358 £538 -2.27% 2,543
Work from Home +2 1,787 £538 -2.27% 1,917
London -2 1,771 £538 - 581
South East -1 929 £537 -6.57% 716
South West 0 876 £550 -4.35% 539
North of England -3 617 £511 +2.25% 435
Midlands 0 522 £519 -5.73% 378
West Midlands 0 400 £519 -9.83% 216
North West -1 393 £550 +10.00% 268
East of England +2 250 £550 +6.74% 310
Yorkshire -2 161 £490 +0.93% 137
Scotland -14 142 £493 +12.57% 123
East Midlands -3 105 £463 -11.06% 144
North East +1 74 £484 -3.25% 31
Wales -4 46 £550 +10.00% 53
Northern Ireland -5 37 £588 -2.08% 31

Security Cleared
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 198 (3.30%) Confluence
2 125 (2.09%) SharePoint
3 91 (1.52%) Apache
4 79 (1.32%) Microsoft Exchange
5 44 (0.73%) SAS
6 41 (0.68%) Apache Airflow
7 37 (0.62%) nginx
8 31 (0.52%) IIS
9 30 (0.50%) Apache Spark
10 28 (0.47%) CMS
11 26 (0.43%) WebLogic
12 23 (0.38%) Skype for Business
13 19 (0.32%) Exchange Server 2013
14 17 (0.28%) WordPress
15 15 (0.25%) SharePoint Server
16 14 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2010
17 13 (0.22%) Exchange Server 2003
17 13 (0.22%) Exchange Server 2007
17 13 (0.22%) Office Communications Server
18 11 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 123 (2.05%) Microsoft Office
2 107 (1.79%) Microsoft Excel
3 43 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
4 39 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 24 (0.40%) MS Visio
5 24 (0.40%) Siemens NX
6 23 (0.38%) Simulink
7 12 (0.20%) Sketch
8 11 (0.18%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 9 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
10 8 (0.13%) ProjectWise
11 7 (0.12%) AutoCAD
12 6 (0.10%) Oracle Smart View
12 6 (0.10%) Revit
12 6 (0.10%) Trello
13 5 (0.083%) FrameMaker
13 5 (0.083%) InfoPath
13 5 (0.083%) InVision
13 5 (0.083%) Stateflow
13 5 (0.083%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 126 (2.10%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.62%) Teamcenter
3 29 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
4 28 (0.47%) Oracle ERP
4 28 (0.47%) SAP EWM
5 27 (0.45%) Dynamics CRM
6 23 (0.38%) SAP WM
7 22 (0.37%) SAP HCM
8 20 (0.33%) Primavera
9 18 (0.30%) SAP PS
10 15 (0.25%) Maximo
11 13 (0.22%) SAP HR
12 12 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
13 11 (0.18%) SAP EHS
13 11 (0.18%) SAP MM
14 9 (0.15%) SAP GTS
14 9 (0.15%) SAP PP
15 8 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
15 8 (0.13%) SAP Payroll
15 8 (0.13%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 1,042 (17.39%) AWS
2 823 (13.74%) Azure
3 218 (3.64%) Microsoft 365
4 211 (3.52%) GitHub
5 185 (3.09%) Power Platform
6 179 (2.99%) Amazon S3
7 177 (2.95%) Serverless
8 173 (2.89%) GCP
9 150 (2.50%) Azure DevOps
10 132 (2.20%) SaaS
11 121 (2.02%) GitHub Actions
12 117 (1.95%) AWS CloudFormation
12 117 (1.95%) Entra ID
13 112 (1.87%) Amazon EC2
14 108 (1.80%) AWS Lambda
15 96 (1.60%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 96 (1.60%) Amazon EKS
16 80 (1.34%) OpenShift
17 69 (1.15%) PaaS
17 69 (1.15%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 359 (5.99%) Firewall
2 242 (4.04%) DNS
3 173 (2.89%) VPN
4 154 (2.57%) Network Security
5 124 (2.07%) WAN
6 90 (1.50%) BGP
7 89 (1.49%) DHCP
8 86 (1.44%) LAN
8 86 (1.44%) TCP/IP
9 85 (1.42%) SSL
10 74 (1.24%) SAN
11 58 (0.97%) HTTP
12 55 (0.92%) Wireless
13 54 (0.90%) SMTP
14 53 (0.88%) IPsec
15 50 (0.83%) Cisco ISE
15 50 (0.83%) MPLS
16 49 (0.82%) OSPF
17 45 (0.75%) Wi-Fi
18 42 (0.70%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 195 (3.25%) PostgreSQL
2 120 (2.00%) Amazon RDS
3 118 (1.97%) Power BI
4 90 (1.50%) SQL Server
5 87 (1.45%) MongoDB
6 72 (1.20%) Relational Database
7 70 (1.17%) Oracle Database
8 60 (1.00%) NoSQL
9 54 (0.90%) Big Data
10 52 (0.87%) Data Warehouse
11 50 (0.83%) Elasticsearch
12 46 (0.77%) MySQL
13 38 (0.63%) Amazon Aurora
14 37 (0.62%) Metadata
15 31 (0.52%) Redis
16 30 (0.50%) Data Lake
17 29 (0.48%) Amazon Redshift
18 28 (0.47%) Oracle Reports
19 27 (0.45%) GIS
19 27 (0.45%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 380 (6.34%) JIRA
2 349 (5.83%) Jenkins
3 294 (4.91%) Git
4 242 (4.04%) GitLab
5 96 (1.60%) SonarQube
6 71 (1.19%) Selenium
7 66 (1.10%) JUnit
8 54 (0.90%) Mockito
9 47 (0.78%) Cypress.io
10 44 (0.73%) Bitbucket
11 43 (0.72%) Cucumber
12 42 (0.70%) Liquibase
13 38 (0.63%) Gradle
13 38 (0.63%) Maven
14 36 (0.60%) REST Assured
15 33 (0.55%) Postman
16 32 (0.53%) CircleCI
17 28 (0.47%) MSI
18 27 (0.45%) Artifactory
19 25 (0.42%) Vagrant
General
1 1,607 (26.82%) Public Sector
2 1,445 (24.12%) Social Skills
3 512 (8.55%) Analytical Skills
4 462 (7.71%) Finance
5 216 (3.61%) Military
6 194 (3.24%) Telecoms
7 174 (2.90%) Manufacturing
8 129 (2.15%) Electronics
9 125 (2.09%) Documentation Skills
10 115 (1.92%) Marketing
11 108 (1.80%) Aerospace
12 88 (1.47%) Organisational Skills
13 71 (1.19%) Legal
14 69 (1.15%) Law
15 65 (1.08%) Banking
16 62 (1.03%) Presentation Skills
17 54 (0.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 54 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
18 45 (0.75%) Police
19 31 (0.52%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 791 (13.20%) Architect
2 551 (9.20%) Developer
3 532 (8.88%) Consultant
4 423 (7.06%) Analyst
4 423 (7.06%) Senior
5 354 (5.91%) Lead
6 265 (4.42%) DevOps Engineer
7 192 (3.20%) Network Engineer
8 160 (2.67%) Solutions Architect
9 157 (2.62%) Support Engineer
10 152 (2.54%) Data Engineer
11 143 (2.39%) SAP Consultant
12 128 (2.14%) Project Manager
13 119 (1.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 116 (1.94%) Java Developer
15 114 (1.90%) Security Architect
16 112 (1.87%) Administrator
17 111 (1.85%) AWS Engineer
18 105 (1.75%) Business Analyst
19 100 (1.67%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 195 (3.25%) React
2 181 (3.02%) REST
3 165 (2.75%) Kafka
4 164 (2.74%) Node.js
5 120 (2.00%) SOAP
6 116 (1.94%) Spring
7 111 (1.85%) HTML
8 105 (1.75%) Spring Boot
9 97 (1.62%) XML
10 85 (1.42%) CSS
10 85 (1.42%) RESTful
10 85 (1.42%) Web Services
11 84 (1.40%) JSON
12 77 (1.29%) AngularJS
13 73 (1.22%) .NET
14 55 (0.92%) OAuth
15 54 (0.90%) Elastic Stack
16 52 (0.87%) LDAP
17 49 (0.82%) Oracle Fusion
18 47 (0.78%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 221 (3.69%) Data Centre
2 211 (3.52%) Onboarding
3 154 (2.57%) Management Information System
4 138 (2.30%) PKI
5 99 (1.65%) Cloud Native
6 94 (1.57%) Product Ownership
7 88 (1.47%) Driving Licence
8 74 (1.24%) Security Operations Centre
9 69 (1.15%) Cyber Threat
10 67 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
11 66 (1.10%) CMDB
12 59 (0.98%) Legacy Systems
12 59 (0.98%) Replication
13 55 (0.92%) Private Cloud
14 52 (0.87%) Security Posture
15 51 (0.85%) Enterprise Software
16 47 (0.78%) Hybrid Cloud
17 46 (0.77%) Algorithms
18 40 (0.67%) Analytical Mindset
19 38 (0.63%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 680 (11.35%) Windows
2 428 (7.14%) Linux
3 185 (3.09%) Windows Server
4 132 (2.20%) Windows 10
5 81 (1.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 72 (1.20%) Unix
7 60 (1.00%) Windows Server 2019
8 47 (0.78%) Windows Server 2016
9 44 (0.73%) Mac OS
10 42 (0.70%) VMS
11 39 (0.65%) Android
12 30 (0.50%) Windows Server 2012
13 26 (0.43%) Windows Server 2003
14 25 (0.42%) Amazon Linux
15 24 (0.40%) Apple iOS
16 19 (0.32%) Windows 7
17 18 (0.30%) CentOS
17 18 (0.30%) Ubuntu
18 13 (0.22%) Mac OS X
19 5 (0.083%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,120 (18.69%) Agile
2 848 (14.15%) DevOps
3 722 (12.05%) Problem-Solving
4 712 (11.88%) CI/CD
5 640 (10.68%) Migration
6 460 (7.68%) Stakeholder Management
7 384 (6.41%) ITIL
8 370 (6.18%) Cybersecurity
9 364 (6.08%) Infrastructure as Code
10 335 (5.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 332 (5.54%) Workflow
12 320 (5.34%) Service Management
13 314 (5.24%) Containerisation
14 296 (4.94%) Test Automation
15 292 (4.87%) Microservices
16 290 (4.84%) Business Intelligence
17 282 (4.71%) Continuous Improvement
18 257 (4.29%) Analytics
19 245 (4.09%) Software Engineering
20 243 (4.06%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 662 (11.05%) Python
2 478 (7.98%) SQL
3 445 (7.43%) Java
4 342 (5.71%) PowerShell
5 293 (4.89%) JavaScript
6 176 (2.94%) TypeScript
7 175 (2.92%) Bash
8 121 (2.02%) C#
9 71 (1.19%) Go
10 63 (1.05%) C++
11 51 (0.85%) Groovy
12 49 (0.82%) C
13 47 (0.78%) PL/SQL
14 46 (0.77%) Perl
15 38 (0.63%) MATLAB
16 35 (0.58%) Shell Script
17 33 (0.55%) ABAP
18 30 (0.50%) PHP
19 25 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
20 23 (0.38%) R
Qualifications
1 4,555 (76.03%) SC Cleared
2 969 (16.17%) DV Cleared
3 326 (5.44%) BPSS Clearance
4 272 (4.54%) Degree
5 111 (1.85%) Cisco Certification
6 106 (1.77%) CISSP
7 93 (1.55%) Microsoft Certification
8 87 (1.45%) AWS Certification
9 81 (1.35%) CCNP
10 74 (1.24%) Azure Certification
11 53 (0.88%) CISM
12 44 (0.73%) Computer Science Degree
13 42 (0.70%) ITIL Certification
14 39 (0.65%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 35 (0.58%) CCNA
16 34 (0.57%) DBS Check
17 33 (0.55%) CHECK Team Member
18 27 (0.45%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 27 (0.45%) MCSE
18 27 (0.45%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 212 (3.54%) QA
2 137 (2.29%) NIST
3 136 (2.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 126 (2.10%) SLA
5 112 (1.87%) NCSC
6 108 (1.80%) Data Quality
7 95 (1.59%) Accessibility
8 89 (1.49%) GDPR
9 45 (0.75%) PMO
10 34 (0.57%) JSP 440
11 30 (0.50%) ISO/IEC 20000
11 30 (0.50%) WCAG
12 29 (0.48%) NIST 800
13 27 (0.45%) RMADS
14 25 (0.42%) Def Stans
15 24 (0.40%) GRC
16 16 (0.27%) HIPAA
17 15 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
18 14 (0.23%) IEC 61508
19 13 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 449 (7.49%) Docker
2 345 (5.76%) Active Directory
3 214 (3.57%) VMware Infrastructure
4 92 (1.54%) VMware ESXi
5 64 (1.07%) vSphere
6 52 (0.87%) Hyper-V
7 49 (0.82%) VMware NSX
8 43 (0.72%) Firmware
9 39 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
10 25 (0.42%) Microsoft Virtual Server
10 25 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
10 25 (0.42%) Virtual Servers
11 21 (0.35%) DFS Replication
12 20 (0.33%) Microsoft App-V
12 20 (0.33%) Postfix
13 18 (0.30%) NFS
14 17 (0.28%) Terminal Services
15 15 (0.25%) Dovecot
16 13 (0.22%) Brightmail
16 13 (0.22%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 531 (8.86%) Terraform
2 521 (8.70%) Kubernetes
3 302 (5.04%) Ansible
4 136 (2.27%) Grafana
5 131 (2.19%) Prometheus
6 104 (1.74%) SCCM
7 70 (1.17%) Microsoft Intune
8 60 (1.00%) Single Sign-On
9 56 (0.93%) vCenter Server
10 38 (0.63%) WSUS
11 37 (0.62%) Puppet
12 30 (0.50%) Kibana
13 29 (0.48%) Nessus
14 28 (0.47%) Jamf Pro
15 27 (0.45%) Packer
15 27 (0.45%) vRealize
16 26 (0.43%) FortiGate
17 24 (0.40%) Argo
17 24 (0.40%) Podman
18 23 (0.38%) SCOM
Vendors
1 752 (12.55%) Microsoft
2 413 (6.89%) SAP
3 363 (6.06%) Cisco
4 340 (5.68%) VMware
5 289 (4.82%) Oracle
6 254 (4.24%) ServiceNow
7 173 (2.89%) Splunk
8 130 (2.17%) Juniper
9 101 (1.69%) Google
10 88 (1.47%) IBM
10 88 (1.47%) Palo Alto
11 87 (1.45%) HP
12 79 (1.32%) Dell
12 79 (1.32%) Red Hat
13 69 (1.15%) SolarWinds
14 67 (1.12%) Atlassian
15 63 (1.05%) CheckPoint
15 63 (1.05%) F5
16 61 (1.02%) Salesforce
17 60 (1.00%) Fortinet