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 28 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 8,569 5,495 7,977
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.32% 17.55% 18.07%
As % of the Qualifications category 65.76% 58.76% 59.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,821 3,432 5,102
10th Percentile £350 £350 £363
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -3.51%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £707 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £549 £563
% change year-on-year -4.37% -2.40% +2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 709 284 514
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.12 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.75 £24.66 £42.31
Median hourly rate £25.15 £54.76 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -54.07% -8.74% -
75th Percentile £65.00 £67.25 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.58 £75.00 £83.21
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £59.50 £59.03
% change year-on-year -57.73% +0.80% -1.62%

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 13,030 9,352 13,452
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.94% 29.88% 30.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,621 5,618 8,382
10th Percentile £315 £300 £295
25th Percentile £415 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.24% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £631 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £535
% change year-on-year - -6.54% +1.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 952 457 908
10th Percentile £15.64 £19.06 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.10 £24.18 £21.46
Median hourly rate £25.15 £39.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -35.51% -17.89% +5.56%
75th Percentile £62.50 £66.00 £65.96
90th Percentile £76.58 £77.31 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £42.50 £47.50
% change year-on-year -40.82% -10.53% +5.56%

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 28 January 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 28 January 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 28 January 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 7,496 £525 -4.55% 1,820
UK excluding London 0 4,815 £525 -4.37% 1,586
London +5 2,568 £538 -1.83% 463
Work from Home +4 2,364 £538 -0.46% 862
South East +1 1,516 £514 -6.46% 617
South West 0 1,289 £550 -3.93% 366
North of England -2 810 £500 +5.26% 201
Midlands +4 720 £515 -6.53% 161
West Midlands +2 566 £519 -6.58% 96
North West 0 533 £514 +8.16% 113
East of England +2 334 £492 -4.00% 215
Yorkshire -11 163 £500 +9.59% 59
East Midlands +3 154 £425 -21.70% 64
Scotland +1 140 £463 -7.50% 49
North East 0 138 £450 -14.29% 30
Wales -1 73 £525 +4.48% 39
Northern Ireland +8 36 £500 +271.75% 8
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
1 293 (3.42%) Confluence
2 192 (2.24%) SharePoint
3 131 (1.53%) Microsoft Exchange
4 127 (1.48%) SAS
5 75 (0.88%) Apache
6 64 (0.75%) Apache Spark
7 53 (0.62%) Apache Airflow
8 44 (0.51%) nginx
9 38 (0.44%) Skype for Business
10 29 (0.34%) WebLogic
11 25 (0.29%) CMS
12 18 (0.21%) IIS
13 15 (0.18%) Jupyter
14 11 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
15 9 (0.11%) OpenStack
15 9 (0.11%) SharePoint Server
16 8 (0.093%) ArcGIS
16 8 (0.093%) Tuxedo
17 7 (0.082%) Exchange Server 2010
17 7 (0.082%) Tomcat
Applications
1 250 (2.92%) Microsoft Office
2 155 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
3 108 (1.26%) Microsoft Project
4 64 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 35 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.20%) Simulink
8 7 (0.082%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 7 (0.082%) Sketch
9 6 (0.070%) Oracle Smart View
10 5 (0.058%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.058%) Siemens NX
10 5 (0.058%) Windchill
11 4 (0.047%) FrameMaker
11 4 (0.047%) ProjectWise
11 4 (0.047%) Stateflow
12 3 (0.035%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.035%) Chatbot
13 2 (0.023%) InVision
13 2 (0.023%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 177 (2.07%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.48%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 30 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
3 30 (0.35%) SAP EWM
4 29 (0.34%) SAP WM
5 26 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
6 24 (0.28%) SAP MM
7 19 (0.22%) Maximo
7 19 (0.22%) Remedy ITSM
8 18 (0.21%) SAP PP
9 15 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
10 14 (0.16%) Oracle Assets
10 14 (0.16%) SAP VC
10 14 (0.16%) Teamcenter
11 13 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
11 13 (0.15%) SAP EHS
11 13 (0.15%) SAP QM
12 11 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
12 11 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
12 11 (0.13%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,458 (17.01%) AWS
2 1,434 (16.73%) Azure
3 397 (4.63%) GitHub
4 370 (4.32%) GCP
5 314 (3.66%) Azure DevOps
6 311 (3.63%) Microsoft 365
7 309 (3.61%) Power Platform
8 253 (2.95%) Serverless
9 211 (2.46%) Entra ID
10 208 (2.43%) GitHub Actions
11 195 (2.28%) Amazon S3
12 171 (2.00%) OpenShift
13 156 (1.82%) AWS Lambda
14 135 (1.58%) AWS CloudFormation
15 119 (1.39%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 115 (1.34%) Amazon EC2
17 114 (1.33%) Amazon EKS
18 107 (1.25%) IaaS
18 107 (1.25%) SaaS
19 100 (1.17%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 417 (4.87%) Firewall
2 277 (3.23%) DNS
3 202 (2.36%) Network Security
4 184 (2.15%) VPN
5 176 (2.05%) WAN
6 143 (1.67%) TCP/IP
7 126 (1.47%) LAN
8 116 (1.35%) DHCP
9 113 (1.32%) BGP
10 89 (1.04%) Wireless
11 82 (0.96%) VLAN
12 73 (0.85%) SSL
13 70 (0.82%) Wi-Fi
14 68 (0.79%) MPLS
15 65 (0.76%) OSPF
16 58 (0.68%) IPsec
17 57 (0.67%) SAN
18 46 (0.54%) Skype
19 45 (0.53%) Cisco ISE
20 41 (0.48%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 227 (2.65%) PostgreSQL
2 212 (2.47%) Power BI
3 115 (1.34%) Data Warehouse
4 100 (1.17%) MongoDB
5 99 (1.16%) NoSQL
6 95 (1.11%) SQL Server
7 94 (1.10%) Metadata
7 94 (1.10%) Oracle Database
8 91 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
9 83 (0.97%) Relational Database
10 69 (0.81%) Azure SQL Database
11 59 (0.69%) Data Lake
12 58 (0.68%) Elasticsearch
13 53 (0.62%) Big Data
14 47 (0.55%) Pentaho
15 45 (0.53%) Amazon Athena
16 44 (0.51%) Amazon Redshift
17 43 (0.50%) MySQL
18 42 (0.49%) SAS Enterprise Guide
19 37 (0.43%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 502 (5.86%) JIRA
2 423 (4.94%) Git
3 385 (4.49%) Jenkins
4 334 (3.90%) GitLab
5 99 (1.16%) Selenium
6 77 (0.90%) Postman
7 62 (0.72%) JUnit
8 61 (0.71%) Cypress.io
9 52 (0.61%) SonarQube
10 49 (0.57%) Bitbucket
11 48 (0.56%) Artifactory
12 47 (0.55%) Oracle APEX
13 37 (0.43%) Cucumber
13 37 (0.43%) Maven
14 36 (0.42%) Mockito
15 32 (0.37%) REST Assured
16 25 (0.29%) MSI
17 24 (0.28%) JMeter
18 23 (0.27%) Metasploit
19 22 (0.26%) Gradle
General
1 2,191 (25.57%) Public Sector
2 2,150 (25.09%) Social Skills
3 727 (8.48%) Analytical Skills
4 578 (6.75%) Finance
5 308 (3.59%) Military
6 236 (2.75%) Documentation Skills
7 206 (2.40%) Telecoms
8 204 (2.38%) Manufacturing
9 145 (1.69%) Aerospace
10 142 (1.66%) Electronics
11 137 (1.60%) Marketing
12 123 (1.44%) Organisational Skills
13 119 (1.39%) Legal
14 101 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
15 100 (1.17%) Influencing Skills
16 94 (1.10%) Banking
17 70 (0.82%) Law
18 68 (0.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 38 (0.44%) Police
20 30 (0.35%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,136 (13.26%) Architect
2 853 (9.95%) Developer
3 744 (8.68%) Senior
4 646 (7.54%) Consultant
5 608 (7.10%) Analyst
6 505 (5.89%) Lead
7 430 (5.02%) DevOps Engineer
8 278 (3.24%) Data Engineer
9 245 (2.86%) Support Engineer
10 238 (2.78%) Network Engineer
11 216 (2.52%) Solutions Architect
12 200 (2.33%) Business Analyst
13 196 (2.29%) Software Engineer
14 195 (2.28%) Technical Architect
15 172 (2.01%) Tester
16 169 (1.97%) AWS Engineer
17 155 (1.81%) SAP Consultant
18 153 (1.79%) Azure Engineer
19 147 (1.72%) Senior Developer
20 142 (1.66%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 338 (3.94%) REST
2 211 (2.46%) Node.js
3 190 (2.22%) Kafka
3 190 (2.22%) React
4 164 (1.91%) Spring
5 161 (1.88%) JSON
6 160 (1.87%) SOAP
7 152 (1.77%) LDAP
8 128 (1.49%) Spring Boot
9 121 (1.41%) HTML
10 111 (1.30%) RESTful
10 111 (1.30%) XML
11 110 (1.28%) .NET
12 105 (1.23%) OAuth
13 100 (1.17%) CSS
14 98 (1.14%) Oracle Fusion
14 98 (1.14%) PySpark
15 94 (1.10%) AngularJS
16 91 (1.06%) Web Services
17 80 (0.93%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 259 (3.02%) Data Centre
2 241 (2.81%) Cloud Native
3 239 (2.79%) Product Ownership
4 225 (2.63%) Onboarding
5 199 (2.32%) PKI
6 161 (1.88%) Management Information System
7 131 (1.53%) Security Posture
8 110 (1.28%) Enterprise Software
9 108 (1.26%) Self-Motivation
10 106 (1.24%) Legacy Systems
11 99 (1.16%) Replication
12 84 (0.98%) Cyber Threat
13 77 (0.90%) Driving Licence
14 76 (0.89%) Security Operations Centre
15 69 (0.81%) Public Cloud
16 58 (0.68%) Hybrid Cloud
17 53 (0.62%) Private Cloud
18 52 (0.61%) Distributed Systems
19 50 (0.58%) CMDB
20 49 (0.57%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 880 (10.27%) Windows
2 647 (7.55%) Linux
3 215 (2.51%) Windows Server
4 184 (2.15%) Windows 10
5 116 (1.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 113 (1.32%) Unix
7 95 (1.11%) Android
8 67 (0.78%) Mac OS
9 42 (0.49%) Ubuntu
9 42 (0.49%) VMS
10 32 (0.37%) Apple iOS
11 27 (0.32%) Windows Server 2016
12 24 (0.28%) CentOS
13 22 (0.26%) Windows 7
13 22 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
14 18 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
15 15 (0.18%) Mac OS X
15 15 (0.18%) Solaris
16 14 (0.16%) Amazon Linux
17 12 (0.14%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,591 (18.57%) Agile
2 1,347 (15.72%) DevOps
3 1,184 (13.82%) CI/CD
4 1,060 (12.37%) Problem-Solving
5 764 (8.92%) Migration
6 734 (8.57%) Stakeholder Management
7 616 (7.19%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 598 (6.98%) Continuous Improvement
9 588 (6.86%) Cybersecurity
10 563 (6.57%) Infrastructure as Code
11 515 (6.01%) ITIL
12 496 (5.79%) Test Automation
13 466 (5.44%) Containerisation
14 455 (5.31%) Analytics
15 423 (4.94%) Roadmaps
16 422 (4.92%) Business Intelligence
17 387 (4.52%) Service Management
18 373 (4.35%) Scrum
19 369 (4.31%) Software Engineering
20 361 (4.21%) Workflow
Programming Languages
1 1,067 (12.45%) Python
2 666 (7.77%) SQL
3 586 (6.84%) PowerShell
4 469 (5.47%) Java
5 418 (4.88%) JavaScript
6 224 (2.61%) Bash
7 206 (2.40%) TypeScript
8 148 (1.73%) C#
9 94 (1.10%) C++
9 94 (1.10%) Go
10 85 (0.99%) Shell Script
11 80 (0.93%) PL/SQL
12 68 (0.79%) C
13 51 (0.60%) Ruby
14 46 (0.54%) Scala
15 43 (0.50%) ABAP
15 43 (0.50%) Ada
16 42 (0.49%) MATLAB
17 31 (0.36%) Bicep
17 31 (0.36%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 6,627 (77.34%) SC Cleared
2 1,390 (16.22%) DV Cleared
3 420 (4.90%) Degree
4 288 (3.36%) BPSS Clearance
5 160 (1.87%) CISSP
6 134 (1.56%) Cisco Certification
7 121 (1.41%) Azure Certification
8 118 (1.38%) AWS Certification
9 116 (1.35%) Microsoft Certification
10 106 (1.24%) CCNP
11 100 (1.17%) CISM
12 78 (0.91%) Computer Science Degree
13 68 (0.79%) ITIL Certification
14 61 (0.71%) CCNA
15 58 (0.68%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 56 (0.65%) CEH
17 54 (0.63%) GIAC
18 48 (0.56%) TOGAF Certification
19 45 (0.53%) CHECK Team Member
20 44 (0.51%) CTC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 273 (3.19%) QA
2 259 (3.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 251 (2.93%) NIST
4 204 (2.38%) NCSC
5 202 (2.36%) Data Quality
6 167 (1.95%) Accessibility
7 165 (1.93%) GDPR
8 129 (1.51%) SLA
9 79 (0.92%) PMO
10 55 (0.64%) JSP 440
11 54 (0.63%) GRC
12 51 (0.60%) WCAG
13 39 (0.46%) Def Stans
14 35 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
15 31 (0.36%) COBIT
16 30 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 29 (0.34%) NIST 800
17 29 (0.34%) PCI DSS
18 23 (0.27%) RMADS
19 19 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 621 (7.25%) Docker
2 502 (5.86%) Active Directory
3 239 (2.79%) VMware Infrastructure
4 91 (1.06%) VMware NSX
5 71 (0.83%) vSphere
6 59 (0.69%) VMware ESXi
7 58 (0.68%) Virtual Machines
8 51 (0.60%) Hyper-V
9 34 (0.40%) Firmware
10 27 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
11 18 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
12 17 (0.20%) BitLocker
13 13 (0.15%) Squid
14 11 (0.13%) DFS Replication
14 11 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 10 (0.12%) Postfix
16 9 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
16 9 (0.11%) NFS
17 7 (0.082%) Dovecot
17 7 (0.082%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 802 (9.36%) Kubernetes
2 747 (8.72%) Terraform
3 302 (3.52%) Ansible
4 208 (2.43%) Grafana
5 178 (2.08%) Prometheus
6 132 (1.54%) Single Sign-On
7 114 (1.33%) SCCM
8 97 (1.13%) vCenter Server
9 92 (1.07%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 70 (0.82%) Argo
11 69 (0.81%) Microsoft Intune
12 46 (0.54%) vRealize
13 39 (0.46%) Kibana
14 37 (0.43%) Packer
15 35 (0.41%) Podman
16 33 (0.39%) OPNET
17 29 (0.34%) Progress Chef
18 28 (0.33%) Puppet
19 27 (0.32%) Nessus
20 25 (0.29%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,016 (11.86%) Microsoft
2 494 (5.76%) SAP
3 467 (5.45%) Oracle
4 440 (5.13%) VMware
5 434 (5.06%) Cisco
6 339 (3.96%) ServiceNow
7 228 (2.66%) Splunk
8 167 (1.95%) Red Hat
9 146 (1.70%) CyberArk
10 139 (1.62%) Palo Alto
11 131 (1.53%) Databricks
12 130 (1.52%) Google
13 125 (1.46%) Juniper
14 119 (1.39%) Salesforce
15 109 (1.27%) Atlassian
16 107 (1.25%) Dell
17 85 (0.99%) HP
18 82 (0.96%) Dynatrace
19 74 (0.86%) CheckPoint
20 71 (0.83%) IBM