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 3 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,602 5,218 8,014
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 23.02% 17.47% 17.98%
As % of the Qualifications category 67.75% 58.28% 59.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,471 3,374 5,091
10th Percentile £360 £325 £360
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.31%
75th Percentile £623 £630 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £519 £540 £564
% change year-on-year -3.98% -4.21% +2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 799 272 531
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.12 £17.72
25th Percentile £20.38 £24.66 £30.83
Median hourly rate £25.77 £57.12 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -54.89% +1.12% -5.85%
75th Percentile £67.50 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £76.18 £83.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £56.49
% change year-on-year -58.08% +6.21% -5.35%

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 14,173 8,953 13,521
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.97% 29.98% 30.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,358 5,531 8,335
10th Percentile £331 £285 £288
25th Percentile £420 £413 £423
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £517 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £614 £628 £650
90th Percentile £719 £725 £732
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £510 £525
% change year-on-year -1.96% -2.86% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,042 446 998
10th Percentile £16.17 £20.06 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.38 £24.50 £19.99
Median hourly rate £25.77 £42.21 £40.28
Median % change year-on-year -38.94% +4.79% -19.45%
75th Percentile £65.00 £67.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £81.50 £82.18 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £47.81 £40.97
% change year-on-year -47.39% +16.68% -8.96%

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 3 March 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 3 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Top 18 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 3 March 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 +1 8,349 £525 -2.78% 1,792
UK excluding London 0 5,327 £519 -3.98% 1,422
London +5 2,899 £530 +0.95% 499
Work from Home +4 2,624 £525 -0.38% 868
South East +1 1,826 £525 -4.55% 523
South West 0 1,310 £550 -0.09% 347
Midlands +4 852 £492 -10.55% 146
North of England -2 819 £492 +2.50% 214
West Midlands +3 681 £495 -10.16% 108
North West 0 533 £500 +5.26% 137
East of England +1 346 £498 -0.50% 152
East Midlands +2 169 £425 -17.07% 37
Scotland +10 168 £475 -1.15% 44
Yorkshire -8 168 £498 -5.24% 45
North East +1 145 £450 -10.00% 33
Wales -2 78 £515 +0.28% 24
Northern Ireland +14 30 £500 +271.11% 4
Channel Islands - 1 - - 2

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
1 341 (3.55%) Confluence
2 214 (2.23%) SharePoint
3 142 (1.48%) SAS
4 141 (1.47%) Microsoft Exchange
5 82 (0.85%) Apache Spark
6 73 (0.76%) Apache
7 54 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
8 43 (0.45%) nginx
9 40 (0.42%) WebLogic
10 31 (0.32%) Skype for Business
11 21 (0.22%) Jupyter
12 19 (0.20%) CMS
13 16 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
14 15 (0.16%) Tuxedo
15 10 (0.10%) Tomcat
16 9 (0.094%) ArcGIS
16 9 (0.094%) IIS
16 9 (0.094%) Oracle Workflow
17 7 (0.073%) OpenStack
18 5 (0.052%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 255 (2.66%) Microsoft Office
2 194 (2.02%) Microsoft Excel
3 122 (1.27%) Microsoft Project
4 69 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.45%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.14%) Simulink
8 6 (0.062%) Oracle Smart View
8 6 (0.062%) Sketch
9 5 (0.052%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.052%) Siemens NX
9 5 (0.052%) Windchill
10 4 (0.042%) Chatbot
11 3 (0.031%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.021%) Adobe Illustrator
12 2 (0.021%) CATIA
12 2 (0.021%) InVision
12 2 (0.021%) Photoshop
12 2 (0.021%) PlantUML
12 2 (0.021%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 159 (1.66%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.43%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 31 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
4 28 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
5 25 (0.26%) SAP MM
6 24 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 21 (0.22%) Dynamics CRM
8 19 (0.20%) SAP PP
9 18 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
10 15 (0.16%) Maximo
11 14 (0.15%) SAP VC
12 13 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
12 13 (0.14%) SAP QM
13 12 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
13 12 (0.12%) SAP WM
14 11 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
14 11 (0.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
14 11 (0.11%) SAP EWM
14 11 (0.11%) SAP HCM
15 9 (0.094%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,647 (17.15%) AWS
2 1,567 (16.32%) Azure
3 421 (4.38%) GitHub
4 409 (4.26%) GCP
5 353 (3.68%) Power Platform
6 347 (3.61%) Azure DevOps
7 311 (3.24%) Microsoft 365
8 264 (2.75%) Serverless
9 238 (2.48%) Entra ID
10 223 (2.32%) GitHub Actions
11 206 (2.15%) Amazon S3
12 183 (1.91%) OpenShift
13 171 (1.78%) AWS Lambda
14 146 (1.52%) AWS CloudFormation
15 134 (1.40%) Amazon EC2
16 132 (1.37%) Amazon EKS
17 129 (1.34%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 113 (1.18%) IaaS
19 112 (1.17%) OCI
19 112 (1.17%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 448 (4.67%) Firewall
2 291 (3.03%) DNS
3 219 (2.28%) Network Security
4 197 (2.05%) WAN
5 176 (1.83%) VPN
6 158 (1.65%) LAN
7 145 (1.51%) TCP/IP
8 134 (1.40%) BGP
9 131 (1.36%) DHCP
10 97 (1.01%) Wireless
11 93 (0.97%) OSPF
12 90 (0.94%) VLAN
13 72 (0.75%) Wi-Fi
14 71 (0.74%) MPLS
15 56 (0.58%) SSL
16 54 (0.56%) SAN
17 53 (0.55%) IPsec
18 49 (0.51%) Cisco ISE
19 41 (0.43%) Cisco IOS
19 41 (0.43%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 267 (2.78%) PostgreSQL
2 253 (2.63%) Power BI
3 177 (1.84%) Data Warehouse
4 144 (1.50%) SQL Server
5 121 (1.26%) Metadata
6 108 (1.12%) Oracle Database
7 99 (1.03%) Amazon RDS
8 98 (1.02%) NoSQL
9 94 (0.98%) MongoDB
10 91 (0.95%) Relational Database
11 77 (0.80%) Azure SQL Database
12 76 (0.79%) Data Lake
13 74 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
14 65 (0.68%) Big Data
15 62 (0.65%) MySQL
16 60 (0.62%) Pentaho
17 54 (0.56%) Tableau
18 49 (0.51%) Amazon Redshift
19 44 (0.46%) DynamoDB
20 43 (0.45%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 566 (5.89%) JIRA
2 468 (4.87%) Git
3 405 (4.22%) Jenkins
4 360 (3.75%) GitLab
5 110 (1.15%) Selenium
6 88 (0.92%) Postman
7 83 (0.86%) JUnit
8 61 (0.64%) Cypress.io
9 59 (0.61%) SonarQube
10 50 (0.52%) Bitbucket
11 46 (0.48%) Artifactory
11 46 (0.48%) Cucumber
11 46 (0.48%) Maven
12 44 (0.46%) Oracle APEX
13 37 (0.39%) Rational DOORS
14 36 (0.37%) Mockito
15 34 (0.35%) JMeter
15 34 (0.35%) REST Assured
16 33 (0.34%) Visual Studio
17 24 (0.25%) Metasploit
General
1 2,444 (25.45%) Public Sector
2 2,299 (23.94%) Social Skills
3 794 (8.27%) Analytical Skills
4 649 (6.76%) Finance
5 332 (3.46%) Military
6 258 (2.69%) Documentation Skills
7 212 (2.21%) Aerospace
8 185 (1.93%) Telecoms
9 184 (1.92%) Manufacturing
10 146 (1.52%) Legal
11 131 (1.36%) Organisational Skills
12 121 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
13 118 (1.23%) Marketing
14 117 (1.22%) Electronics
15 109 (1.14%) Presentation Skills
16 103 (1.07%) Banking
17 70 (0.73%) Law
18 69 (0.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 51 (0.53%) Police
20 37 (0.39%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,340 (13.96%) Architect
2 940 (9.79%) Developer
3 836 (8.71%) Senior
4 733 (7.63%) Analyst
5 647 (6.74%) Consultant
6 573 (5.97%) Lead
7 430 (4.48%) DevOps Engineer
8 356 (3.71%) Data Engineer
9 256 (2.67%) Solutions Architect
10 255 (2.66%) Network Engineer
11 254 (2.65%) Business Analyst
12 251 (2.61%) Software Engineer
13 237 (2.47%) Technical Architect
14 236 (2.46%) Support Engineer
15 195 (2.03%) Tester
16 179 (1.86%) AWS Engineer
17 174 (1.81%) Designer
18 169 (1.76%) Azure Engineer
18 169 (1.76%) Security Architect
19 162 (1.69%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 350 (3.65%) REST
2 228 (2.37%) Node.js
3 213 (2.22%) Spring
4 200 (2.08%) Kafka
5 199 (2.07%) React
6 161 (1.68%) Spring Boot
7 158 (1.65%) JSON
8 157 (1.64%) SOAP
9 151 (1.57%) LDAP
10 138 (1.44%) .NET
11 122 (1.27%) HTML
12 121 (1.26%) AngularJS
13 116 (1.21%) RESTful
14 111 (1.16%) PySpark
15 109 (1.14%) Web Services
16 106 (1.10%) OAuth
17 105 (1.09%) Oracle Fusion
18 96 (1.00%) XML
19 95 (0.99%) CSS
20 82 (0.85%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 297 (3.09%) Data Centre
2 277 (2.88%) Cloud Native
3 275 (2.86%) Product Ownership
4 243 (2.53%) Onboarding
5 205 (2.13%) PKI
6 180 (1.87%) Management Information System
7 139 (1.45%) Security Posture
8 119 (1.24%) Self-Motivation
9 116 (1.21%) Legacy Systems
10 110 (1.15%) Enterprise Software
11 100 (1.04%) Replication
12 84 (0.87%) Public Cloud
13 79 (0.82%) Security Operations Centre
14 77 (0.80%) Hybrid Cloud
15 73 (0.76%) Driving Licence
16 72 (0.75%) Distributed Systems
17 67 (0.70%) Cyber Threat
18 51 (0.53%) Clustering
18 51 (0.53%) Data Structures
19 49 (0.51%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 874 (9.10%) Windows
2 694 (7.23%) Linux
3 222 (2.31%) Windows Server
4 151 (1.57%) Windows 10
5 127 (1.32%) Android
6 126 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 121 (1.26%) Unix
8 66 (0.69%) Mac OS
9 52 (0.54%) Apple iOS
10 45 (0.47%) Ubuntu
11 37 (0.39%) VMS
12 30 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
13 24 (0.25%) CentOS
13 24 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
14 22 (0.23%) Solaris
15 21 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 14 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
17 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
18 8 (0.083%) Windows Server 2003
19 7 (0.073%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,818 (18.93%) Agile
2 1,452 (15.12%) DevOps
3 1,290 (13.43%) CI/CD
4 1,171 (12.20%) Problem-Solving
5 880 (9.16%) Stakeholder Management
6 827 (8.61%) Migration
7 765 (7.97%) Continuous Improvement
8 661 (6.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 616 (6.42%) Infrastructure as Code
10 615 (6.40%) Cybersecurity
11 561 (5.84%) ITIL
12 538 (5.60%) Test Automation
13 527 (5.49%) Roadmaps
14 524 (5.46%) Analytics
15 522 (5.44%) Containerisation
16 448 (4.67%) Software Engineering
17 447 (4.66%) Business Intelligence
18 445 (4.63%) Scrum
19 420 (4.37%) Service Management
20 419 (4.36%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,164 (12.12%) Python
2 814 (8.48%) SQL
3 609 (6.34%) PowerShell
4 536 (5.58%) Java
5 442 (4.60%) JavaScript
6 236 (2.46%) Bash
7 213 (2.22%) TypeScript
8 193 (2.01%) C#
9 109 (1.14%) C++
10 106 (1.10%) PL/SQL
11 105 (1.09%) Shell Script
12 86 (0.90%) Go
13 64 (0.67%) C
14 62 (0.65%) Ruby
15 50 (0.52%) Ada
15 50 (0.52%) Scala
16 43 (0.45%) Bicep
17 40 (0.42%) ABAP
17 40 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
18 36 (0.37%) R
Qualifications
1 7,369 (76.74%) SC Cleared
2 1,590 (16.56%) DV Cleared
3 466 (4.85%) Degree
4 314 (3.27%) BPSS Clearance
5 184 (1.92%) Cisco Certification
6 174 (1.81%) CISSP
7 134 (1.40%) AWS Certification
8 128 (1.33%) CCNP
9 126 (1.31%) Azure Certification
10 112 (1.17%) Microsoft Certification
11 107 (1.11%) CISM
12 89 (0.93%) Computer Science Degree
13 81 (0.84%) CCNA
14 66 (0.69%) ITIL Certification
14 66 (0.69%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 63 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
16 56 (0.58%) ISTQB
17 52 (0.54%) PMP
18 50 (0.52%) PMI Certification
19 49 (0.51%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 318 (3.31%) QA
2 292 (3.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 279 (2.91%) NIST
4 263 (2.74%) Data Quality
5 209 (2.18%) NCSC
6 191 (1.99%) Accessibility
7 179 (1.86%) GDPR
8 129 (1.34%) SLA
9 105 (1.09%) PMO
10 66 (0.69%) GRC
11 60 (0.62%) JSP 440
12 48 (0.50%) WCAG
13 43 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials
14 41 (0.43%) Def Stans
15 38 (0.40%) NIST 800
16 35 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 34 (0.35%) PCI DSS
18 32 (0.33%) COBIT
19 26 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
20 25 (0.26%) RMADS
System Software
1 656 (6.83%) Docker
2 491 (5.11%) Active Directory
3 243 (2.53%) VMware Infrastructure
4 91 (0.95%) VMware NSX
5 71 (0.74%) vSphere
6 63 (0.66%) VMware ESXi
7 61 (0.64%) Hyper-V
8 60 (0.62%) Virtual Machines
9 28 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
10 27 (0.28%) Firmware
11 21 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
12 18 (0.19%) BitLocker
13 16 (0.17%) NFS
13 16 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 11 (0.11%) Postfix
15 10 (0.10%) Squid
16 8 (0.083%) vCloud
17 6 (0.062%) KVM
17 6 (0.062%) Virtual Servers
18 5 (0.052%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 843 (8.78%) Kubernetes
2 803 (8.36%) Terraform
3 314 (3.27%) Ansible
4 236 (2.46%) Grafana
5 194 (2.02%) Prometheus
6 130 (1.35%) Single Sign-On
7 102 (1.06%) SCCM
8 92 (0.96%) vCenter Server
9 90 (0.94%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 73 (0.76%) Argo
10 73 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
11 47 (0.49%) FortiGate
12 45 (0.47%) vRealize
13 40 (0.42%) Podman
14 38 (0.40%) Packer
15 33 (0.34%) Kibana
16 32 (0.33%) Puppet
17 30 (0.31%) OPNET
18 29 (0.30%) Progress Chef
19 25 (0.26%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,057 (11.01%) Microsoft
2 547 (5.70%) Oracle
3 469 (4.88%) VMware
4 453 (4.72%) SAP
5 438 (4.56%) Cisco
6 399 (4.16%) ServiceNow
7 232 (2.42%) Splunk
8 190 (1.98%) Red Hat
9 151 (1.57%) Databricks
10 147 (1.53%) Google
11 144 (1.50%) CyberArk
12 139 (1.45%) Palo Alto
13 133 (1.39%) Juniper
13 133 (1.39%) Salesforce
14 120 (1.25%) Atlassian
15 101 (1.05%) Dell
16 88 (0.92%) IBM
17 85 (0.89%) Talend
18 82 (0.85%) HP
19 78 (0.81%) Dynatrace