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

6 months to
25 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 11,039 5,365 7,926
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.69% 17.81% 18.19%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.28% 57.52% 61.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,656 3,483 5,195
10th Percentile £381 £340 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £715 £700 £735
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £537 £550
% change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 837 382 591
10th Percentile £18.20 £18.50 £14.50
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £60.91 £25.15 £56.50
Median % change year-on-year +142.19% -55.49% -5.83%
75th Percentile £75.00 £63.75 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.42 £76.25 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.91 £25.15 £58.00
% change year-on-year +142.19% -56.64% +0.87%

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 15,934 9,328 12,988
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.31% 30.97% 29.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,650 5,796 8,020
10th Percentile £350 £275 £311
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £638
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £507 £500 £530
% change year-on-year +1.40% -5.66% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,166 606 1,133
10th Percentile £17.46 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.57 £20.00 £19.25
Median hourly rate £50.00 £28.58 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +74.98% -30.20% -25.73%
75th Percentile £72.54 £60.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.25 £75.25 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £27.40 £43.00
% change year-on-year +82.48% -36.28% -19.87%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 9,535 £525 -2.33% 1,674
UK excluding London +1 6,176 £525 -2.23% 1,376
London +7 3,392 £525 - 497
Work from Home +5 3,054 £525 - 823
South East +1 2,301 £550 - 460
South West 0 1,313 £538 -4.44% 331
North of England +2 986 £500 - 260
Midlands +2 919 £469 -9.37% 129
West Midlands +2 794 £469 -10.58% 83
North West 0 529 £525 +5.00% 157
East of England +2 352 £550 +10.00% 109
Scotland +25 274 £500 +14.29% 63
Yorkshire -3 256 £500 +1.63% 58
North East +1 230 £475 -1.04% 50
East Midlands -4 114 £438 -7.89% 45
Wales +3 93 £525 +10.53% 43
Northern Ireland +6 31 £644 +32.05% 18

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 (3.58%) Confluence
2 236 (2.14%) SharePoint
3 162 (1.47%) SAS
4 133 (1.20%) Microsoft Exchange
5 106 (0.96%) Apache Spark
6 105 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
7 93 (0.84%) Apache
8 46 (0.42%) Jupyter
9 44 (0.40%) nginx
10 35 (0.32%) WebLogic
11 25 (0.23%) Tomcat
12 19 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
13 18 (0.16%) IIS
14 16 (0.14%) CMS
14 16 (0.14%) NetWeaver
15 15 (0.14%) Oracle Application Server
16 14 (0.13%) Skype for Business
17 12 (0.11%) Tuxedo
18 11 (0.100%) ArcGIS
19 9 (0.082%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 174 (1.58%) Microsoft Excel
2 146 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 80 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
4 76 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 49 (0.44%) MS Visio
6 16 (0.14%) Simulink
7 14 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
8 11 (0.100%) SOLIDWORKS
9 10 (0.091%) AutoCAD
9 10 (0.091%) Revit
10 9 (0.082%) Chatbot
11 7 (0.063%) Notepad++
12 4 (0.036%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.036%) Sketch
13 3 (0.027%) Windchill
14 2 (0.018%) CATIA
14 2 (0.018%) Lectora
14 2 (0.018%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.018%) PlantUML
14 2 (0.018%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 125 (1.13%) SAP S/4HANA
2 62 (0.56%) Remedy ITSM
3 45 (0.41%) Oracle ERP
4 33 (0.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 31 (0.28%) Teamcenter
6 30 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
6 30 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
7 17 (0.15%) Primavera
8 16 (0.14%) SAP GRC
8 16 (0.14%) 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 11 (0.100%) Siebel CRM
13 10 (0.091%) Oracle Assets
13 10 (0.091%) SAP ERP
13 10 (0.091%) SAP HR
14 9 (0.082%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,016 (18.26%) AWS
2 1,935 (17.53%) Azure
3 466 (4.22%) GitHub
4 441 (3.99%) Azure DevOps
5 420 (3.80%) GCP
6 419 (3.80%) Power Platform
7 287 (2.60%) Serverless
8 286 (2.59%) GitHub Actions
9 277 (2.51%) Entra ID
10 276 (2.50%) Microsoft 365
11 234 (2.12%) Amazon S3
12 199 (1.80%) AWS Lambda
13 163 (1.48%) Amazon EC2
14 157 (1.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 156 (1.41%) SaaS
16 155 (1.40%) PaaS
17 146 (1.32%) OpenShift
18 140 (1.27%) OCI
19 138 (1.25%) Amazon EKS
20 130 (1.18%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 460 (4.17%) Firewall
2 325 (2.94%) DNS
3 239 (2.17%) Network Security
4 226 (2.05%) WAN
5 199 (1.80%) LAN
6 184 (1.67%) VPN
7 164 (1.49%) DHCP
8 138 (1.25%) BGP
9 117 (1.06%) OSPF
10 112 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
11 109 (0.99%) VLAN
12 107 (0.97%) TCP/IP
13 86 (0.78%) Wireless
14 70 (0.63%) MPLS
15 63 (0.57%) SD-WAN
16 62 (0.56%) SAN
17 58 (0.53%) VXLAN
18 54 (0.49%) IPsec
19 52 (0.47%) Structured Cabling
20 51 (0.46%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 325 (2.94%) Power BI
2 301 (2.73%) PostgreSQL
3 262 (2.37%) Data Warehouse
4 235 (2.13%) SQL Server
5 162 (1.47%) Oracle Database
6 144 (1.30%) Metadata
7 132 (1.20%) Data Lake
8 118 (1.07%) Relational Database
9 114 (1.03%) Amazon RDS
10 113 (1.02%) MongoDB
11 89 (0.81%) MySQL
12 87 (0.79%) Pentaho
13 82 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
13 82 (0.74%) Oracle Reports
14 77 (0.70%) Amazon Redshift
15 75 (0.68%) NoSQL
16 73 (0.66%) Amazon Athena
17 65 (0.59%) Big Data
17 65 (0.59%) Tableau
18 56 (0.51%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 630 (5.71%) JIRA
2 502 (4.55%) Git
3 477 (4.32%) GitLab
4 446 (4.04%) Jenkins
5 122 (1.11%) Selenium
6 89 (0.81%) JUnit
7 84 (0.76%) Postman
8 81 (0.73%) SonarQube
9 66 (0.60%) JMeter
10 59 (0.53%) Rational DOORS
11 58 (0.53%) Cucumber
12 49 (0.44%) Artifactory
13 46 (0.42%) Mockito
14 45 (0.41%) Bitbucket
15 44 (0.40%) Maven
16 43 (0.39%) Visual Studio
17 42 (0.38%) Cypress.io
17 42 (0.38%) REST Assured
18 41 (0.37%) Zephyr
19 37 (0.34%) Gatling
General
1 2,437 (22.08%) Public Sector
2 2,223 (20.14%) Social Skills
3 760 (6.88%) Analytical Skills
4 700 (6.34%) Finance
5 346 (3.13%) Military
6 302 (2.74%) Documentation Skills
7 294 (2.66%) Aerospace
8 177 (1.60%) Legal
9 147 (1.33%) Influencing Skills
10 133 (1.20%) Banking
11 125 (1.13%) Telecoms
12 103 (0.93%) Organisational Skills
13 100 (0.91%) Law
14 99 (0.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 97 (0.88%) Manufacturing
16 78 (0.71%) Presentation Skills
17 74 (0.67%) Police
18 56 (0.51%) Aviation
19 45 (0.41%) Marketing
20 39 (0.35%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,681 (15.23%) Architect
2 1,128 (10.22%) Developer
3 969 (8.78%) Senior
4 848 (7.68%) Lead
5 719 (6.51%) Analyst
6 544 (4.93%) Consultant
7 524 (4.75%) Data Engineer
8 505 (4.57%) DevOps Engineer
9 375 (3.40%) Technical Architect
10 345 (3.13%) Software Engineer
11 335 (3.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 327 (2.96%) Solutions Architect
13 276 (2.50%) Network Engineer
14 243 (2.20%) Security Architect
15 237 (2.15%) Business Analyst
16 223 (2.02%) Project Manager
17 215 (1.95%) Designer
18 206 (1.87%) Azure Engineer
19 204 (1.85%) AWS Engineer
20 203 (1.84%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 337 (3.05%) REST
2 262 (2.37%) Spring
3 216 (1.96%) Spring Boot
4 204 (1.85%) React
5 199 (1.80%) Kafka
6 195 (1.77%) Node.js
7 192 (1.74%) .NET
8 164 (1.49%) RESTful
9 141 (1.28%) SOAP
10 129 (1.17%) JSON
11 127 (1.15%) LDAP
12 126 (1.14%) AngularJS
13 118 (1.07%) PySpark
14 110 (1.00%) OAuth
15 109 (0.99%) Web Services
16 101 (0.91%) Middleware
17 93 (0.84%) HTML
17 93 (0.84%) Playwright
18 87 (0.79%) OpenID
19 85 (0.77%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 431 (3.90%) Cloud Native
2 365 (3.31%) Product Ownership
3 336 (3.04%) Onboarding
4 318 (2.88%) Data Centre
5 224 (2.03%) Management Information System
6 167 (1.51%) Legacy Systems
7 148 (1.34%) Distributed Systems
7 148 (1.34%) PKI
8 123 (1.11%) Enterprise Software
9 112 (1.01%) Replication
10 109 (0.99%) Security Posture
10 109 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
11 101 (0.91%) CMDB
12 96 (0.87%) Data Structures
13 94 (0.85%) Hybrid Cloud
14 87 (0.79%) Public Cloud
15 86 (0.78%) Clustering
16 81 (0.73%) Security Operations Centre
17 78 (0.71%) Virtual Team
18 71 (0.64%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 854 (7.74%) Windows
2 735 (6.66%) Linux
3 264 (2.39%) Windows Server
4 195 (1.77%) Unix
5 141 (1.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 92 (0.83%) Android
7 87 (0.79%) Windows 10
8 64 (0.58%) Apple iOS
9 52 (0.47%) Solaris
10 41 (0.37%) Mac OS
11 39 (0.35%) Ubuntu
12 30 (0.27%) AIX
12 30 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 26 (0.24%) Windows Server 2016
14 22 (0.20%) CentOS
15 20 (0.18%) VMS
16 16 (0.14%) Windows 7
17 15 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
18 13 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
19 11 (0.100%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,206 (19.98%) Agile
2 1,723 (15.61%) DevOps
3 1,581 (14.32%) CI/CD
4 1,154 (10.45%) Problem-Solving
5 1,126 (10.20%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,103 (9.99%) Continuous Improvement
7 912 (8.26%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 857 (7.76%) Migration
9 824 (7.46%) Infrastructure as Code
10 689 (6.24%) Cybersecurity
11 686 (6.21%) Test Automation
12 660 (5.98%) Containerisation
13 654 (5.92%) Analytics
13 654 (5.92%) Software Engineering
14 653 (5.92%) ITIL
15 615 (5.57%) Roadmaps
16 598 (5.42%) Decision-Making
17 569 (5.15%) Data Modelling
18 534 (4.84%) AI
19 514 (4.66%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,238 (11.21%) Python
2 1,050 (9.51%) SQL
3 740 (6.70%) Java
4 500 (4.53%) PowerShell
5 336 (3.04%) JavaScript
6 234 (2.12%) C#
7 229 (2.07%) Bash
8 196 (1.78%) TypeScript
9 149 (1.35%) PL/SQL
10 98 (0.89%) C++
11 96 (0.87%) Shell Script
12 82 (0.74%) Bicep
13 66 (0.60%) C
14 61 (0.55%) Apex Code
15 60 (0.54%) Ruby
16 59 (0.53%) Go
17 49 (0.44%) Scala
18 48 (0.43%) Ada
19 46 (0.42%) Kotlin
20 40 (0.36%) R
Qualifications
1 8,466 (76.69%) SC Cleared
2 1,989 (18.02%) DV Cleared
3 427 (3.87%) Degree
4 337 (3.05%) BPSS Clearance
5 216 (1.96%) Cisco Certification
6 180 (1.63%) CISSP
7 141 (1.28%) Azure Certification
8 120 (1.09%) AWS Certification
9 118 (1.07%) Microsoft Certification
10 114 (1.03%) CISM
11 111 (1.01%) CCNP
12 93 (0.84%) CCNA
13 88 (0.80%) PMP
14 87 (0.79%) PMI Certification
15 76 (0.69%) ISTQB
16 68 (0.62%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 65 (0.59%) Computer Science Degree
18 56 (0.51%) ITIL Certification
19 40 (0.36%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 40 (0.36%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 427 (3.87%) QA
2 341 (3.09%) Data Quality
3 321 (2.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 314 (2.84%) NIST
5 244 (2.21%) NCSC
6 221 (2.00%) Accessibility
7 188 (1.70%) GDPR
8 176 (1.59%) PMO
9 120 (1.09%) SLA
10 98 (0.89%) GRC
11 68 (0.62%) JSP 440
12 53 (0.48%) WCAG
13 45 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
13 45 (0.41%) NIST 800
14 35 (0.32%) RMADS
15 33 (0.30%) Def Stans
16 29 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 26 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
18 24 (0.22%) COBIT
19 23 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 722 (6.54%) Docker
2 466 (4.22%) Active Directory
3 320 (2.90%) VMware Infrastructure
4 115 (1.04%) VMware ESXi
5 113 (1.02%) VMware NSX
6 91 (0.82%) Hyper-V
7 83 (0.75%) vSphere
8 78 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
9 38 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
10 33 (0.30%) Firmware
11 24 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
12 23 (0.21%) BitLocker
12 23 (0.21%) NFS
13 21 (0.19%) vCloud
14 19 (0.17%) Postfix
15 18 (0.16%) Squid
16 14 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 9 (0.082%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.054%) Corosync
18 6 (0.054%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 914 (8.28%) Terraform
2 902 (8.17%) Kubernetes
3 381 (3.45%) Ansible
4 269 (2.44%) Grafana
5 225 (2.04%) Prometheus
6 108 (0.98%) vCenter Server
7 93 (0.84%) Single Sign-On
8 83 (0.75%) SCCM
9 63 (0.57%) Microsoft Intune
10 54 (0.49%) Argo
11 53 (0.48%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 50 (0.45%) FortiGate
13 44 (0.40%) Oracle RMAN
14 42 (0.38%) Puppet
15 39 (0.35%) SCOM
16 36 (0.33%) Podman
17 28 (0.25%) Progress Chef
18 26 (0.24%) Kibana
18 26 (0.24%) Nagios
18 26 (0.24%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 1,139 (10.32%) Microsoft
2 778 (7.05%) Oracle
3 509 (4.61%) VMware
4 460 (4.17%) ServiceNow
5 350 (3.17%) SAP
6 329 (2.98%) Cisco
7 221 (2.00%) Splunk
8 201 (1.82%) Databricks
9 185 (1.68%) Salesforce
10 183 (1.66%) Google
11 172 (1.56%) Red Hat
12 147 (1.33%) Talend
13 127 (1.15%) Informatica
14 126 (1.14%) IBM
15 112 (1.01%) Palo Alto
16 97 (0.88%) Juniper
17 92 (0.83%) Fortinet
18 90 (0.82%) F5
19 87 (0.79%) SolarWinds
20 86 (0.78%) Dynatrace