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 13 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,441 5,759 7,861
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.72% 17.62% 18.39%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.20% 57.25% 61.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,955 3,703 5,143
10th Percentile £381 £350 £340
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -3.64% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £646
90th Percentile £716 £700 £732
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 843 474 589
10th Percentile £18.28 £18.51 £15.10
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £62.50 £25.15 £55.80
Median % change year-on-year +148.51% -54.93% -7.00%
75th Percentile £75.00 £60.00 £72.33
90th Percentile £87.00 £75.00 £83.59
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £57.50
% change year-on-year +151.03% -56.26% -1.86%

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 16,533 10,060 12,806
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.38% 30.78% 29.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,051 6,245 7,956
10th Percentile £350 £280 £310
25th Percentile £429 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.38% -0.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £713 £704 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,196 718 1,085
10th Percentile £17.72 £17.87 £14.16
25th Percentile £25.74 £20.00 £20.47
Median hourly rate £52.25 £27.50 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +90.00% -33.73% -24.72%
75th Percentile £73.00 £58.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.31 £75.00 £75.15
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -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 13 July 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 13 July 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 13 July 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 9,852 £528 -1.86% 2,549
UK excluding London +1 6,398 £525 -2.33% 1,989
London +7 3,501 £538 +2.38% 786
Work from Home +4 3,123 £525 -0.38% 1,308
South East +1 2,390 £550 - 659
South West 0 1,324 £538 -6.52% 586
North of England +2 1,070 £510 +2.00% 302
Midlands +3 958 £469 -6.20% 173
West Midlands +2 820 £470 -7.00% 123
North West 0 580 £525 +4.79% 166
East of England +2 335 £550 +4.76% 160
Scotland +19 282 £500 +3.52% 84
Yorkshire +2 282 £500 +1.63% 64
North East +1 238 £475 -5.00% 73
East Midlands 0 125 £418 -12.11% 49
Wales +2 105 £550 +15.79% 31
Northern Ireland +5 31 £650 +30.00% 21

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
1 414 (3.62%) Confluence
2 253 (2.21%) SharePoint
3 172 (1.50%) SAS
4 135 (1.18%) Microsoft Exchange
5 106 (0.93%) Apache Spark
6 105 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
7 98 (0.86%) Apache
8 46 (0.40%) nginx
9 40 (0.35%) WebLogic
10 39 (0.34%) Jupyter
11 27 (0.24%) Tomcat
12 25 (0.22%) IIS
13 20 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
14 17 (0.15%) CMS
14 17 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
15 16 (0.14%) NetWeaver
16 14 (0.12%) Skype for Business
17 13 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
18 12 (0.10%) Tuxedo
19 9 (0.079%) Documentum
Applications
1 188 (1.64%) Microsoft Excel
2 155 (1.35%) Microsoft Office
3 89 (0.78%) Microsoft Project
4 72 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 53 (0.46%) MS Visio
6 20 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.14%) Simulink
8 12 (0.10%) AutoCAD
8 12 (0.10%) Revit
8 12 (0.10%) SOLIDWORKS
9 10 (0.087%) Chatbot
10 7 (0.061%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.061%) Notepad++
11 5 (0.044%) Sketch
12 3 (0.026%) Windchill
13 2 (0.017%) CATIA
13 2 (0.017%) Lectora
13 2 (0.017%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.017%) PlantUML
13 2 (0.017%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 133 (1.16%) SAP S/4HANA
2 66 (0.58%) Remedy ITSM
3 46 (0.40%) Oracle ERP
4 37 (0.32%) Teamcenter
5 34 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
6 30 (0.26%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 28 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
8 23 (0.20%) SAP PSCD
9 20 (0.17%) Primavera
10 16 (0.14%) SAP GRC
11 15 (0.13%) Findur
11 15 (0.13%) Temenos T24
12 12 (0.10%) iTrent
12 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
13 11 (0.096%) Oracle Payables
13 11 (0.096%) Oracle Payroll
13 11 (0.096%) SAP ERP
13 11 (0.096%) SAP HR
14 10 (0.087%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 10 (0.087%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 2,053 (17.94%) AWS
2 2,017 (17.63%) Azure
3 498 (4.35%) GitHub
4 461 (4.03%) Azure DevOps
5 451 (3.94%) Power Platform
6 417 (3.64%) GCP
7 312 (2.73%) GitHub Actions
8 298 (2.60%) Microsoft 365
9 284 (2.48%) Entra ID
9 284 (2.48%) Serverless
10 246 (2.15%) Amazon S3
11 200 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
12 164 (1.43%) Amazon EC2
13 160 (1.40%) OCI
14 157 (1.37%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 156 (1.36%) SaaS
16 152 (1.33%) Amazon EKS
17 150 (1.31%) PaaS
18 146 (1.28%) OpenShift
19 135 (1.18%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 467 (4.08%) Firewall
2 364 (3.18%) DNS
3 246 (2.15%) Network Security
4 235 (2.05%) WAN
5 202 (1.77%) LAN
6 197 (1.72%) VPN
7 179 (1.56%) DHCP
8 147 (1.28%) BGP
9 123 (1.08%) OSPF
10 120 (1.05%) TCP/IP
11 113 (0.99%) VLAN
12 112 (0.98%) Wi-Fi
13 88 (0.77%) Wireless
14 71 (0.62%) MPLS
15 66 (0.58%) SAN
15 66 (0.58%) SD-WAN
16 57 (0.50%) VXLAN
17 55 (0.48%) IPsec
18 51 (0.45%) BIG-IP
19 47 (0.41%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 349 (3.05%) Power BI
2 309 (2.70%) PostgreSQL
3 268 (2.34%) SQL Server
4 266 (2.32%) Data Warehouse
5 166 (1.45%) Oracle Database
6 150 (1.31%) Metadata
7 134 (1.17%) Relational Database
8 131 (1.15%) Data Lake
9 112 (0.98%) Amazon RDS
10 111 (0.97%) MongoDB
11 100 (0.87%) MySQL
12 91 (0.80%) Oracle Reports
13 89 (0.78%) Elasticsearch
14 87 (0.76%) Pentaho
15 78 (0.68%) Amazon Redshift
16 74 (0.65%) Amazon Athena
16 74 (0.65%) NoSQL
17 68 (0.59%) Big Data
18 64 (0.56%) Tableau
19 54 (0.47%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 651 (5.69%) JIRA
2 540 (4.72%) Git
3 476 (4.16%) GitLab
4 459 (4.01%) Jenkins
5 124 (1.08%) Selenium
6 88 (0.77%) JUnit
7 85 (0.74%) Postman
7 85 (0.74%) SonarQube
8 66 (0.58%) JMeter
9 60 (0.52%) Rational DOORS
10 58 (0.51%) Maven
11 54 (0.47%) Cucumber
12 47 (0.41%) Mockito
13 46 (0.40%) Artifactory
13 46 (0.40%) Cypress.io
13 46 (0.40%) Visual Studio
14 45 (0.39%) REST Assured
15 43 (0.38%) Bitbucket
16 41 (0.36%) Zephyr
17 37 (0.32%) Gatling
General
1 2,504 (21.89%) Public Sector
2 2,328 (20.35%) Social Skills
3 833 (7.28%) Analytical Skills
4 745 (6.51%) Finance
5 355 (3.10%) Military
6 309 (2.70%) Documentation Skills
7 292 (2.55%) Aerospace
8 182 (1.59%) Legal
9 161 (1.41%) Influencing Skills
10 139 (1.21%) Telecoms
11 137 (1.20%) Banking
12 119 (1.04%) Organisational Skills
13 105 (0.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 98 (0.86%) Manufacturing
15 96 (0.84%) Law
16 91 (0.80%) Police
17 73 (0.64%) Presentation Skills
18 54 (0.47%) Aviation
19 41 (0.36%) Marketing
20 39 (0.34%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,757 (15.36%) Architect
2 1,249 (10.92%) Developer
3 1,018 (8.90%) Senior
4 930 (8.13%) Lead
5 730 (6.38%) Analyst
6 575 (5.03%) Consultant
7 531 (4.64%) Data Engineer
8 509 (4.45%) DevOps Engineer
9 383 (3.35%) Technical Architect
10 377 (3.30%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 349 (3.05%) Software Engineer
12 338 (2.95%) Solutions Architect
13 268 (2.34%) Security Architect
14 260 (2.27%) Network Engineer
15 232 (2.03%) Java Developer
16 229 (2.00%) Business Analyst
17 219 (1.91%) Designer
18 212 (1.85%) Project Manager
19 207 (1.81%) AWS Engineer
20 206 (1.80%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 384 (3.36%) REST
2 287 (2.51%) Spring
3 239 (2.09%) Spring Boot
4 218 (1.91%) Kafka
5 215 (1.88%) .NET
6 207 (1.81%) React
7 198 (1.73%) Node.js
8 196 (1.71%) RESTful
9 157 (1.37%) SOAP
10 143 (1.25%) JSON
11 132 (1.15%) AngularJS
12 125 (1.09%) OAuth
13 116 (1.01%) Web Services
14 112 (0.98%) PySpark
15 111 (0.97%) HTML
16 104 (0.91%) Middleware
17 103 (0.90%) LDAP
18 97 (0.85%) Playwright
19 95 (0.83%) XML
20 91 (0.80%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 465 (4.06%) Cloud Native
2 373 (3.26%) Onboarding
3 364 (3.18%) Product Ownership
4 315 (2.75%) Data Centre
5 217 (1.90%) Management Information System
6 189 (1.65%) Legacy Systems
7 162 (1.42%) Distributed Systems
8 152 (1.33%) PKI
9 123 (1.08%) Replication
10 120 (1.05%) CMDB
11 115 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
12 113 (0.99%) Enterprise Software
13 99 (0.87%) Data Structures
14 96 (0.84%) Hybrid Cloud
14 96 (0.84%) Security Posture
15 92 (0.80%) Public Cloud
16 91 (0.80%) Clustering
17 89 (0.78%) Virtual Team
18 87 (0.76%) Security Operations Centre
19 77 (0.67%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 916 (8.01%) Windows
2 780 (6.82%) Linux
3 292 (2.55%) Windows Server
4 216 (1.89%) Unix
5 149 (1.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 98 (0.86%) Android
7 94 (0.82%) Windows 10
8 69 (0.60%) Apple iOS
9 58 (0.51%) Solaris
10 47 (0.41%) Mac OS
11 38 (0.33%) Ubuntu
12 35 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
13 33 (0.29%) AIX
14 28 (0.24%) CentOS
15 22 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
16 19 (0.17%) VMS
17 15 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
18 14 (0.12%) Windows 7
18 14 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
19 10 (0.087%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,322 (20.30%) Agile
2 1,798 (15.72%) DevOps
3 1,679 (14.68%) CI/CD
4 1,223 (10.69%) Problem-Solving
5 1,187 (10.37%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,177 (10.29%) Continuous Improvement
7 978 (8.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 873 (7.63%) Infrastructure as Code
9 857 (7.49%) Migration
10 743 (6.49%) Cybersecurity
11 719 (6.28%) ITIL
12 713 (6.23%) Test Automation
13 703 (6.14%) Containerisation
14 678 (5.93%) Analytics
15 676 (5.91%) Software Engineering
16 655 (5.73%) Roadmaps
17 631 (5.52%) Decision-Making
18 600 (5.24%) Data Modelling
19 564 (4.93%) AI
20 563 (4.92%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,288 (11.26%) Python
2 1,104 (9.65%) SQL
3 816 (7.13%) Java
4 508 (4.44%) PowerShell
5 359 (3.14%) JavaScript
6 265 (2.32%) Bash
7 242 (2.12%) C#
8 192 (1.68%) TypeScript
9 170 (1.49%) PL/SQL
10 96 (0.84%) C++
11 93 (0.81%) Shell Script
12 81 (0.71%) Bicep
13 68 (0.59%) C
14 61 (0.53%) Apex Code
14 61 (0.53%) Ruby
15 59 (0.52%) Go
16 52 (0.45%) Kotlin
17 46 (0.40%) Ada
18 45 (0.39%) Scala
19 44 (0.38%) R
Qualifications
1 8,722 (76.23%) SC Cleared
2 2,139 (18.70%) DV Cleared
3 434 (3.79%) Degree
4 387 (3.38%) BPSS Clearance
5 216 (1.89%) Cisco Certification
6 184 (1.61%) CISSP
7 155 (1.35%) Azure Certification
8 132 (1.15%) Microsoft Certification
9 130 (1.14%) AWS Certification
10 109 (0.95%) CISM
11 105 (0.92%) CCNP
12 94 (0.82%) CCNA
12 94 (0.82%) PMP
13 93 (0.81%) PMI Certification
14 80 (0.70%) ISTQB
15 69 (0.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 67 (0.59%) Computer Science Degree
17 56 (0.49%) ITIL Certification
18 47 (0.41%) TOGAF Certification
19 43 (0.38%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 449 (3.92%) QA
2 348 (3.04%) Data Quality
3 317 (2.77%) NIST
4 314 (2.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 248 (2.17%) NCSC
6 245 (2.14%) Accessibility
7 190 (1.66%) GDPR
8 185 (1.62%) PMO
9 122 (1.07%) SLA
10 113 (0.99%) GRC
11 68 (0.59%) JSP 440
12 63 (0.55%) WCAG
13 48 (0.42%) NIST 800
14 43 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
15 34 (0.30%) Def Stans
16 27 (0.24%) RMADS
17 26 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 25 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
19 23 (0.20%) COBIT
19 23 (0.20%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 781 (6.83%) Docker
2 481 (4.20%) Active Directory
3 358 (3.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 127 (1.11%) VMware ESXi
4 127 (1.11%) VMware NSX
5 100 (0.87%) Hyper-V
6 98 (0.86%) vSphere
7 84 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
8 47 (0.41%) Oracle RAC
9 34 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
10 33 (0.29%) Firmware
11 25 (0.22%) NFS
12 22 (0.19%) BitLocker
13 21 (0.18%) Squid
14 20 (0.17%) vCloud
15 19 (0.17%) Postfix
16 8 (0.070%) KVM
16 8 (0.070%) Microsoft App-V
16 8 (0.070%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 7 (0.061%) UAG
Systems Management
1 957 (8.36%) Terraform
2 953 (8.33%) Kubernetes
3 401 (3.50%) Ansible
4 283 (2.47%) Grafana
5 229 (2.00%) Prometheus
6 121 (1.06%) vCenter Server
7 94 (0.82%) SCCM
8 87 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
9 68 (0.59%) Microsoft Intune
10 65 (0.57%) Argo
11 54 (0.47%) SCOM
12 50 (0.44%) Oracle RMAN
13 49 (0.43%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 49 (0.43%) FortiGate
14 46 (0.40%) Puppet
15 32 (0.28%) Data Guard
16 29 (0.25%) Progress Chef
17 28 (0.24%) Kibana
18 27 (0.24%) Nagios
19 26 (0.23%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,252 (10.94%) Microsoft
2 851 (7.44%) Oracle
3 544 (4.75%) VMware
4 529 (4.62%) ServiceNow
5 375 (3.28%) SAP
6 320 (2.80%) Cisco
7 229 (2.00%) Splunk
8 197 (1.72%) Databricks
9 194 (1.70%) Google
10 188 (1.64%) Salesforce
11 156 (1.36%) Red Hat
12 145 (1.27%) Talend
13 129 (1.13%) Informatica
14 125 (1.09%) IBM
15 108 (0.94%) Palo Alto
16 99 (0.87%) Juniper
17 96 (0.84%) F5
18 94 (0.82%) Fortinet
19 92 (0.80%) SolarWinds
20 88 (0.77%) Citrix