Security Cleared Contracts

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 26 July 2024, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Jul 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 3 5 11
Rank change year-on-year +2 +6 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 7,433 8,659 9,988
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 18.51% 15.93% 11.18%
As % of the Qualifications category 61.96% 59.30% 50.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,955 5,638 6,974
10th Percentile £345 £388 £388
25th Percentile £450 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year - - +10.00%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £737 £725 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £550 £535
% change year-on-year - +2.80% +11.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 526 484 398
10th Percentile £15.22 £19.06 £19.06
25th Percentile £22.00 £46.00 £28.60
Median hourly rate £55.00 £60.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% +72.68%
75th Percentile £71.25 £72.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £83.31 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £56.50 £59.42 £54.00
% change year-on-year -4.91% +10.03% +77.92%

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 11,997 14,602 19,647
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 29.87% 26.87% 21.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,614 9,575 13,257
10th Percentile £313 £340 £350
25th Percentile £425 £450 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +2.33% +7.50%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £738 £738 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £525 £500
% change year-on-year - +5.00% +7.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 912 705 758
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.59 £14.25
25th Percentile £21.19 £26.00 £20.00
Median hourly rate £43.00 £56.49 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.88% +25.53% +60.71%
75th Percentile £65.00 £70.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £76.15 £80.25 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.00 £54.77 £44.00
% change year-on-year -21.49% +24.48% +69.23%

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
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Security Cleared.

Daily rate trend for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Security Cleared over the 6 months to 26 July 2024.

Daily rate histogram for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Security Cleared.

Hourly rate trend for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Security Cleared over the 6 months to 26 July 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Top 17 Contract 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 26 July 2024. 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 6,610 £550 - 1,013
UK excluding London +1 4,802 £550 - 888
London +1 1,952 £537 -2.28% 207
Work from Home 0 1,890 £550 - 489
South East 0 1,751 £595 +13.33% 280
South West 0 1,384 £551 -4.92% 234
North of England +4 630 £500 -8.63% 177
Midlands +5 581 £520 -5.45% 96
West Midlands +6 446 £519 -5.64% 71
North West 0 431 £501 -6.74% 135
Scotland +13 236 £438 -12.50% 45
East of England -1 234 £545 -0.91% 57
Yorkshire +11 160 £525 -8.30% 28
East Midlands +5 134 £525 -10.64% 25
Wales -2 68 £500 -4.76% 22
North East -1 49 £420 -20.00% 15
Northern Ireland +19 39 £575 +4.55% 13

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
1 235 (3.16%) Confluence
2 231 (3.11%) SharePoint
3 144 (1.94%) Microsoft Exchange
4 54 (0.73%) Apache
5 28 (0.38%) Apache Spark
6 25 (0.34%) CMS
7 24 (0.32%) nginx
7 24 (0.32%) SAS
8 21 (0.28%) SharePoint Server
9 16 (0.22%) Exchange Server 2013
10 15 (0.20%) IIS
11 13 (0.17%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
12 12 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2010
13 11 (0.15%) CICS
14 10 (0.13%) Appian
14 10 (0.13%) Skype for Business
15 9 (0.12%) Apache Airflow
15 9 (0.12%) OpenStack
16 8 (0.11%) ArcGIS
16 8 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 248 (3.34%) Microsoft Office
2 142 (1.91%) Microsoft Excel
3 66 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 62 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 47 (0.63%) MS Visio
6 41 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.30%) AutoCAD
8 14 (0.19%) Simulink
9 9 (0.12%) Sketch
9 9 (0.12%) Trello
10 8 (0.11%) Acrobat
11 6 (0.081%) Revit
12 5 (0.067%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 5 (0.067%) Adobe Premiere
12 5 (0.067%) Photoshop
13 4 (0.054%) Adobe XD
14 2 (0.027%) Siemens NX
14 2 (0.027%) SPSS
14 2 (0.027%) Windchill
15 1 (0.013%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 46 (0.62%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (0.47%) SAP QM
2 35 (0.47%) Teamcenter
3 33 (0.44%) SAP EWM
4 27 (0.36%) Primavera
5 25 (0.34%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 19 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
7 18 (0.24%) Remedy ITSM
8 17 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
9 10 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
9 10 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
10 9 (0.12%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 8 (0.11%) SAP GTS
12 7 (0.094%) SAP ERP
12 7 (0.094%) SAP PS
13 5 (0.067%) Magento
13 5 (0.067%) SAP BPC
13 5 (0.067%) SAP MM
13 5 (0.067%) SAP SD
13 5 (0.067%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 910 (12.24%) Azure
2 877 (11.80%) AWS
3 293 (3.94%) Microsoft 365
4 176 (2.37%) Power Platform
5 155 (2.09%) GitHub
6 135 (1.82%) Azure DevOps
7 124 (1.67%) Serverless
8 119 (1.60%) GCP
9 116 (1.56%) Entra ID
10 109 (1.47%) OCI
10 109 (1.47%) SaaS
11 108 (1.45%) PaaS
12 99 (1.33%) Amazon S3
12 99 (1.33%) OpenShift
13 90 (1.21%) AWS Lambda
14 88 (1.18%) IaaS
15 74 (1.00%) Amazon EC2
15 74 (1.00%) Dynamics 365
16 60 (0.81%) Cloud Computing
17 53 (0.71%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 430 (5.79%) Firewall
2 262 (3.52%) WAN
3 192 (2.58%) VPN
4 185 (2.49%) DNS
5 181 (2.44%) LAN
6 175 (2.35%) Network Security
7 170 (2.29%) BGP
8 127 (1.71%) DHCP
9 102 (1.37%) MPLS
10 101 (1.36%) IPsec
11 88 (1.18%) OSPF
12 84 (1.13%) SAN
13 77 (1.04%) TCP/IP
14 71 (0.96%) Wireless
15 70 (0.94%) SSL
15 70 (0.94%) Wi-Fi
16 64 (0.86%) Cisco Firepower
17 62 (0.83%) SD-WAN
18 55 (0.74%) Intrusion Detection
19 50 (0.67%) EIGRP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 206 (2.77%) SQL Server
2 180 (2.42%) PostgreSQL
3 109 (1.47%) Relational Database
4 105 (1.41%) Power BI
5 104 (1.40%) Oracle Database
6 82 (1.10%) Big Data
7 81 (1.09%) Data Warehouse
8 77 (1.04%) MySQL
9 67 (0.90%) Elasticsearch
10 61 (0.82%) Amazon RDS
11 57 (0.77%) NoSQL
12 54 (0.73%) Amazon Redshift
13 50 (0.67%) Data Lake
14 45 (0.61%) Metadata
14 45 (0.61%) MongoDB
14 45 (0.61%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 37 (0.50%) Tableau
16 30 (0.40%) RDBMS
17 26 (0.35%) Adabas
17 26 (0.35%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 389 (5.23%) JIRA
2 290 (3.90%) Git
3 247 (3.32%) Jenkins
4 167 (2.25%) GitLab
5 73 (0.98%) Selenium
6 67 (0.90%) Bitbucket
7 63 (0.85%) Visual Studio
8 52 (0.70%) SonarQube
9 39 (0.52%) JUnit
10 38 (0.51%) Cucumber
11 37 (0.50%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 30 (0.40%) Sonatype Nexus
13 29 (0.39%) Rational DOORS
14 28 (0.38%) MSI
14 28 (0.38%) REST Assured
14 28 (0.38%) Robot Framework
15 26 (0.35%) PVCS
16 25 (0.34%) Cypress.io
17 24 (0.32%) Artifactory
17 24 (0.32%) TestRail
General
1 1,566 (21.07%) Public Sector
2 1,233 (16.59%) Social Skills
3 570 (7.67%) Finance
4 533 (7.17%) Analytical Skills
5 228 (3.07%) Telecoms
6 170 (2.29%) Military
7 160 (2.15%) Manufacturing
8 137 (1.84%) Electronics
9 133 (1.79%) Marketing
10 127 (1.71%) Aerospace
11 115 (1.55%) Presentation Skills
12 95 (1.28%) Legal
13 80 (1.08%) Organisational Skills
14 72 (0.97%) Banking
15 61 (0.82%) Law
15 61 (0.82%) Police
16 53 (0.71%) Influencing Skills
17 33 (0.44%) Documentation Skills
18 26 (0.35%) Retail
19 24 (0.32%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,152 (15.50%) Architect
2 665 (8.95%) Developer
3 576 (7.75%) Senior
4 551 (7.41%) Analyst
5 536 (7.21%) Consultant
6 413 (5.56%) Lead
7 331 (4.45%) DevOps Engineer
8 317 (4.26%) Network Engineer
9 300 (4.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 227 (3.05%) Support Engineer
11 215 (2.89%) Project Manager
12 187 (2.52%) Network Architect
13 182 (2.45%) Solutions Architect
14 159 (2.14%) Software Engineer
14 159 (2.14%) Technical Architect
15 150 (2.02%) Administrator
15 150 (2.02%) SAP Consultant
16 138 (1.86%) Data Engineer
17 133 (1.79%) Security Architect
18 132 (1.78%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 185 (2.49%) REST
2 167 (2.25%) React
3 159 (2.14%) .NET
4 126 (1.70%) Spring Boot
5 117 (1.57%) HTML
5 117 (1.57%) Spring
6 112 (1.51%) Web Services
7 106 (1.43%) Node.js
8 105 (1.41%) CSS
9 81 (1.09%) Kafka
10 68 (0.91%) Elastic Stack
11 66 (0.89%) RESTful
12 51 (0.69%) XML
13 50 (0.67%) ARM Templates
14 49 (0.66%) .NET Core
14 49 (0.66%) Apache NiFi
15 47 (0.63%) Oracle Fusion
16 45 (0.61%) AngularJS
17 38 (0.51%) PySpark
18 35 (0.47%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 326 (4.39%) PKI
2 253 (3.40%) Data Centre
3 206 (2.77%) Management Information System
4 136 (1.83%) Onboarding
5 118 (1.59%) Cyber Defence
6 116 (1.56%) Cyber Threat
7 109 (1.47%) Self-Motivation
8 100 (1.35%) Product Ownership
9 79 (1.06%) Security Operations Centre
10 76 (1.02%) Cyber Kill Chain
11 73 (0.98%) Cloud Native
11 73 (0.98%) Public Cloud
12 61 (0.82%) Linux Command Line
13 56 (0.75%) Clustering
14 54 (0.73%) Private Cloud
14 54 (0.73%) Replication
15 52 (0.70%) Legacy Systems
16 51 (0.69%) Driving Licence
17 45 (0.61%) Greenfield Project
18 44 (0.59%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 1,067 (14.35%) Windows
2 801 (10.78%) Linux
3 330 (4.44%) Windows Server
4 192 (2.58%) Windows 10
5 177 (2.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 152 (2.04%) Unix
7 104 (1.40%) Windows Server 2019
8 96 (1.29%) Android
9 88 (1.18%) Apple iOS
10 79 (1.06%) Windows Server 2012
11 78 (1.05%) Windows 7
12 76 (1.02%) Windows Server 2016
13 46 (0.62%) Solaris
14 39 (0.52%) zOS
15 38 (0.51%) AIX
16 26 (0.35%) Mac OS X
17 24 (0.32%) CentOS
18 23 (0.31%) VMS
19 20 (0.27%) Ubuntu
20 14 (0.19%) FreeRTOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,199 (16.13%) Agile
2 882 (11.87%) DevOps
3 780 (10.49%) Problem-Solving
4 567 (7.63%) Cybersecurity
5 521 (7.01%) ITIL
6 472 (6.35%) CI/CD
7 420 (5.65%) Service Management
8 415 (5.58%) Stakeholder Management
9 412 (5.54%) Project Management
10 399 (5.37%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 395 (5.31%) Migration
12 354 (4.76%) Software Engineering
13 300 (4.04%) SIEM
14 297 (4.00%) Analytics
15 294 (3.96%) Change Management
16 285 (3.83%) Project Delivery
17 284 (3.82%) Mentoring
18 271 (3.65%) Roadmaps
19 268 (3.61%) Configuration Management
20 265 (3.57%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 628 (8.45%) Python
2 462 (6.22%) SQL
3 457 (6.15%) Java
4 451 (6.07%) PowerShell
5 273 (3.67%) JavaScript
6 205 (2.76%) C#
7 144 (1.94%) C
8 138 (1.86%) Bash
9 110 (1.48%) TypeScript
10 106 (1.43%) C++
11 88 (1.18%) PL/SQL
12 86 (1.16%) Shell Script
13 59 (0.79%) Go
14 38 (0.51%) Perl
15 35 (0.47%) ABAP
16 33 (0.44%) Bicep
16 33 (0.44%) Ruby
16 33 (0.44%) VBScript
17 31 (0.42%) PHP
17 31 (0.42%) R
Qualifications
1 4,991 (67.15%) SC Cleared
2 2,179 (29.32%) DV Cleared
3 452 (6.08%) Degree
4 206 (2.77%) BPSS Clearance
5 149 (2.00%) Cisco Certification
6 112 (1.51%) CCNA
7 109 (1.47%) Computer Science Degree
8 86 (1.16%) CCNP
8 86 (1.16%) Microsoft Certification
9 85 (1.14%) CISSP
10 60 (0.81%) Azure Certification
11 53 (0.71%) CISM
12 51 (0.69%) AWS Certification
13 50 (0.67%) PMP
14 47 (0.63%) APMP
15 45 (0.61%) Master's Degree
16 44 (0.59%) PMI Certification
17 41 (0.55%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 37 (0.50%) ISTQB
19 34 (0.46%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 195 (2.62%) SLA
2 178 (2.39%) NIST
3 171 (2.30%) QA
4 108 (1.45%) PMO
5 88 (1.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 83 (1.12%) Data Quality
7 67 (0.90%) NIST 800
8 63 (0.85%) Accessibility
9 62 (0.83%) NCSC
10 33 (0.44%) GDPR
11 29 (0.39%) RMADS
12 26 (0.35%) Disclosure Scotland
13 24 (0.32%) Government Security Classifications
14 23 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
15 22 (0.30%) JSP 440
16 19 (0.26%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 17 (0.23%) Cyber Essentials
18 16 (0.22%) HIPAA
19 12 (0.16%) GRC
19 12 (0.16%) WCAG
System Software
1 525 (7.06%) Active Directory
2 390 (5.25%) VMware Infrastructure
3 369 (4.96%) Docker
4 161 (2.17%) VMware NSX
5 127 (1.71%) vSphere
6 122 (1.64%) Hyper-V
7 106 (1.43%) VMware ESXi
8 91 (1.22%) Virtual Machines
9 58 (0.78%) Firmware
10 37 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
11 15 (0.20%) KVM
12 12 (0.16%) XenApp
13 9 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
13 9 (0.12%) VMFS
13 9 (0.12%) XenDesktop
14 6 (0.081%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
15 5 (0.067%) BitLocker
15 5 (0.067%) iptables
16 4 (0.054%) LXC
16 4 (0.054%) RACF
Systems Management
1 497 (6.69%) Kubernetes
2 492 (6.62%) Terraform
3 440 (5.92%) Ansible
4 171 (2.30%) SCCM
5 106 (1.43%) Grafana
6 92 (1.24%) WSUS
7 76 (1.02%) Prometheus
8 75 (1.01%) vCenter Server
9 70 (0.94%) Microsoft Intune
10 66 (0.89%) Puppet
10 66 (0.89%) SCOM
11 61 (0.82%) Kibana
12 47 (0.63%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 46 (0.62%) FortiGate
14 45 (0.61%) Progress Chef
15 44 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
16 37 (0.50%) logstash
17 28 (0.38%) Rancher
18 27 (0.36%) Argo
18 27 (0.36%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 1,119 (15.05%) Microsoft
2 622 (8.37%) VMware
3 399 (5.37%) Cisco
4 380 (5.11%) Oracle
5 367 (4.94%) SAP
6 235 (3.16%) Juniper
7 196 (2.64%) Red Hat
8 164 (2.21%) ServiceNow
9 142 (1.91%) Atlassian
10 113 (1.52%) Palo Alto
11 112 (1.51%) F5
12 111 (1.49%) Dell
13 104 (1.40%) IBM
14 96 (1.29%) HP
15 83 (1.12%) Citrix
16 77 (1.04%) Google
17 71 (0.96%) Splunk
18 67 (0.90%) Fortinet
19 63 (0.85%) SolarWinds
20 52 (0.70%) CyberArk