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

6 months to
21 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,446 5,736 7,626
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.71% 17.60% 18.45%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.29% 57.22% 61.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,941 3,670 5,036
10th Percentile £381 £338 £340
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.47% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £626 £625 £638
90th Percentile £719 £694 £729
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 841 493 550
10th Percentile £18.31 £18.51 £15.47
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £62.50 £25.15 £55.04
Median % change year-on-year +148.51% -54.30% -8.27%
75th Percentile £77.50 £57.24 £71.62
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £57.50
% change year-on-year +151.03% -56.26% -4.01%

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 16,518 10,025 12,378
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.33% 30.76% 29.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,028 6,216 7,798
10th Percentile £350 £275 £310
25th Percentile £430 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.38% -0.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £620 £638
90th Percentile £713 £703 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,196 738 985
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.16
25th Percentile £25.75 £19.38 £20.75
Median hourly rate £52.25 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +107.75% -41.51% -25.00%
75th Percentile £73.00 £56.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.81 £75.00 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -21.82%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 £531 -1.19% 2,030
UK excluding London +1 6,408 £525 -2.33% 1,484
London +7 3,495 £540 +2.86% 642
Work from Home +4 3,111 £525 -1.59% 990
South East +1 2,445 £550 +1.22% 513
South West 0 1,295 £538 -6.52% 354
North of England +2 1,072 £500 - 304
Midlands +3 964 £469 -6.20% 142
West Midlands +1 824 £469 -6.20% 103
North West +1 567 £525 -0.38% 168
East of England +2 315 £575 +9.52% 124
Yorkshire +2 296 £500 +1.63% 72
Scotland +14 282 £498 +7.57% 49
North East 0 238 £475 -5.00% 65
East Midlands +1 127 £418 -12.11% 39
Wales +4 103 £550 +15.79% 19
Northern Ireland +4 32 £650 +27.45% 9

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
1 405 (3.54%) Confluence
2 261 (2.28%) SharePoint
3 184 (1.61%) SAS
4 128 (1.12%) Microsoft Exchange
5 106 (0.93%) Apache Spark
6 105 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
7 98 (0.86%) Apache
8 48 (0.42%) nginx
9 43 (0.38%) WebLogic
10 39 (0.34%) Jupyter
11 27 (0.24%) Tomcat
12 24 (0.21%) IIS
13 20 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
14 18 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
15 16 (0.14%) CMS
15 16 (0.14%) NetWeaver
16 14 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
17 12 (0.10%) Tuxedo
18 11 (0.096%) Skype for Business
19 9 (0.079%) Documentum
Applications
1 201 (1.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 151 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 91 (0.80%) Microsoft Project
4 76 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 50 (0.44%) MS Visio
6 22 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.13%) Simulink
8 12 (0.10%) AutoCAD
8 12 (0.10%) Revit
8 12 (0.10%) SOLIDWORKS
9 10 (0.087%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.070%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.061%) Notepad++
11 7 (0.061%) Sketch
12 4 (0.035%) Trello
13 3 (0.026%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 3 (0.026%) Windchill
14 2 (0.017%) CATIA
14 2 (0.017%) CPLEX
14 2 (0.017%) Houdini
Business Applications
1 144 (1.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 70 (0.61%) Remedy ITSM
3 43 (0.38%) Oracle ERP
4 39 (0.34%) Teamcenter
5 35 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
6 31 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 23 (0.20%) Dynamics CRM
8 22 (0.19%) SAP PSCD
9 20 (0.17%) Primavera
10 19 (0.17%) SAP GRC
11 15 (0.13%) Findur
12 13 (0.11%) Temenos T24
13 12 (0.10%) iTrent
13 12 (0.10%) Oracle Payroll
13 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
14 11 (0.096%) Oracle Payables
14 11 (0.096%) SAP HR
15 10 (0.087%) Integrated Workplace Management System
16 9 (0.079%) Salesforce CRM
16 9 (0.079%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,037 (17.80%) Azure
2 2,020 (17.65%) AWS
3 507 (4.43%) GitHub
4 472 (4.12%) Azure DevOps
5 448 (3.91%) Power Platform
6 424 (3.70%) GCP
7 311 (2.72%) GitHub Actions
8 298 (2.60%) Microsoft 365
9 290 (2.53%) Entra ID
10 273 (2.39%) Serverless
11 244 (2.13%) Amazon S3
12 197 (1.72%) AWS Lambda
13 163 (1.42%) Amazon EC2
14 157 (1.37%) SaaS
15 155 (1.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 155 (1.35%) Amazon EKS
16 154 (1.35%) OCI
17 151 (1.32%) PaaS
18 140 (1.22%) OpenShift
19 127 (1.11%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 485 (4.24%) Firewall
2 369 (3.22%) DNS
3 239 (2.09%) Network Security
4 232 (2.03%) WAN
5 209 (1.83%) VPN
6 198 (1.73%) LAN
7 182 (1.59%) DHCP
8 146 (1.28%) BGP
9 136 (1.19%) TCP/IP
10 121 (1.06%) OSPF
11 109 (0.95%) Wi-Fi
12 107 (0.93%) VLAN
13 91 (0.80%) Wireless
14 69 (0.60%) MPLS
15 66 (0.58%) SAN
16 64 (0.56%) IPsec
17 62 (0.54%) SD-WAN
18 58 (0.51%) VXLAN
19 56 (0.49%) VSAN
20 53 (0.46%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 345 (3.01%) Power BI
2 309 (2.70%) PostgreSQL
3 280 (2.45%) SQL Server
4 276 (2.41%) Data Warehouse
5 172 (1.50%) Oracle Database
6 163 (1.42%) Metadata
7 132 (1.15%) Data Lake
7 132 (1.15%) Relational Database
8 111 (0.97%) MongoDB
9 103 (0.90%) Amazon RDS
10 98 (0.86%) MySQL
11 94 (0.82%) Oracle Reports
12 87 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
13 84 (0.73%) Pentaho
14 73 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
15 71 (0.62%) NoSQL
16 69 (0.60%) Amazon Athena
17 65 (0.57%) Big Data
18 63 (0.55%) Tableau
19 49 (0.43%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 645 (5.64%) JIRA
2 539 (4.71%) Git
3 460 (4.02%) GitLab
4 451 (3.94%) Jenkins
5 120 (1.05%) Selenium
6 86 (0.75%) SonarQube
7 82 (0.72%) JUnit
8 77 (0.67%) Postman
9 65 (0.57%) JMeter
10 58 (0.51%) Maven
10 58 (0.51%) Rational DOORS
11 54 (0.47%) Cucumber
12 44 (0.38%) Artifactory
12 44 (0.38%) Mockito
12 44 (0.38%) Visual Studio
13 43 (0.38%) Cypress.io
14 42 (0.37%) REST Assured
15 41 (0.36%) Gatling
15 41 (0.36%) Zephyr
16 40 (0.35%) Bitbucket
General
1 2,475 (21.62%) Public Sector
2 2,322 (20.29%) Social Skills
3 847 (7.40%) Analytical Skills
4 746 (6.52%) Finance
5 359 (3.14%) Military
6 295 (2.58%) Aerospace
7 294 (2.57%) Documentation Skills
8 183 (1.60%) Legal
9 170 (1.49%) Influencing Skills
10 146 (1.28%) Telecoms
11 130 (1.14%) Banking
11 130 (1.14%) Organisational Skills
12 104 (0.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 100 (0.87%) Police
14 97 (0.85%) Manufacturing
15 95 (0.83%) Law
16 69 (0.60%) Presentation Skills
17 54 (0.47%) Aviation
18 43 (0.38%) Marketing
19 38 (0.33%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 1,774 (15.50%) Architect
2 1,251 (10.93%) Developer
3 1,052 (9.19%) Senior
4 948 (8.28%) Lead
5 719 (6.28%) Analyst
6 585 (5.11%) Consultant
7 525 (4.59%) Data Engineer
8 489 (4.27%) DevOps Engineer
9 386 (3.37%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 373 (3.26%) Technical Architect
11 343 (3.00%) Solutions Architect
12 334 (2.92%) Software Engineer
13 276 (2.41%) Security Architect
14 265 (2.32%) Network Engineer
15 228 (1.99%) Java Developer
16 225 (1.97%) Designer
17 216 (1.89%) Business Analyst
17 216 (1.89%) Data Architect
18 207 (1.81%) Project Manager
19 203 (1.77%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 391 (3.42%) REST
2 275 (2.40%) Spring
3 237 (2.07%) Spring Boot
4 221 (1.93%) Kafka
5 218 (1.90%) .NET
6 199 (1.74%) React
7 197 (1.72%) RESTful
8 187 (1.63%) Node.js
9 162 (1.42%) SOAP
10 142 (1.24%) JSON
11 133 (1.16%) AngularJS
12 122 (1.07%) Web Services
13 114 (1.00%) OAuth
14 110 (0.96%) HTML
15 103 (0.90%) Middleware
16 100 (0.87%) PySpark
17 97 (0.85%) XML
18 90 (0.79%) Playwright
19 88 (0.77%) LDAP
20 87 (0.76%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 462 (4.04%) Cloud Native
2 386 (3.37%) Onboarding
3 359 (3.14%) Product Ownership
4 316 (2.76%) Data Centre
5 232 (2.03%) Management Information System
6 197 (1.72%) Legacy Systems
7 169 (1.48%) Distributed Systems
8 162 (1.42%) PKI
9 124 (1.08%) CMDB
10 122 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
11 115 (1.00%) Replication
12 114 (1.00%) Enterprise Software
13 108 (0.94%) Data Structures
14 107 (0.93%) Hybrid Cloud
15 97 (0.85%) Public Cloud
16 95 (0.83%) Security Posture
17 91 (0.80%) Clustering
18 88 (0.77%) Virtual Team
19 84 (0.73%) Security Operations Centre
20 74 (0.65%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 906 (7.92%) Windows
2 781 (6.82%) Linux
3 289 (2.52%) Windows Server
4 226 (1.97%) Unix
5 152 (1.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 99 (0.86%) Android
7 92 (0.80%) Windows 10
8 67 (0.59%) Apple iOS
9 63 (0.55%) Solaris
10 49 (0.43%) Mac OS
11 38 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
12 37 (0.32%) Ubuntu
13 35 (0.31%) AIX
14 28 (0.24%) CentOS
15 23 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
16 20 (0.17%) VMS
17 15 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
18 13 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
19 10 (0.087%) Embedded Linux
19 10 (0.087%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,345 (20.49%) Agile
2 1,762 (15.39%) DevOps
3 1,658 (14.49%) CI/CD
4 1,222 (10.68%) Problem-Solving
5 1,219 (10.65%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,206 (10.54%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,010 (8.82%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 879 (7.68%) Infrastructure as Code
9 878 (7.67%) Migration
10 741 (6.47%) Cybersecurity
11 734 (6.41%) ITIL
12 707 (6.18%) Test Automation
13 705 (6.16%) Containerisation
14 694 (6.06%) Analytics
15 674 (5.89%) Software Engineering
16 655 (5.72%) Roadmaps
17 630 (5.50%) Decision-Making
18 616 (5.38%) Data Modelling
19 580 (5.07%) Technical Leadership
20 579 (5.06%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,266 (11.06%) Python
2 1,107 (9.67%) SQL
3 808 (7.06%) Java
4 511 (4.46%) PowerShell
5 353 (3.08%) JavaScript
6 283 (2.47%) Bash
7 246 (2.15%) C#
8 185 (1.62%) TypeScript
9 175 (1.53%) PL/SQL
10 97 (0.85%) Bicep
11 94 (0.82%) Shell Script
12 93 (0.81%) C++
13 66 (0.58%) C
14 60 (0.52%) Apex Code
15 59 (0.52%) Ruby
16 54 (0.47%) Kotlin
17 53 (0.46%) Go
18 50 (0.44%) Scala
19 39 (0.34%) Ada
19 39 (0.34%) R
Qualifications
1 8,724 (76.22%) SC Cleared
2 2,163 (18.90%) DV Cleared
3 439 (3.84%) Degree
4 398 (3.48%) BPSS Clearance
5 217 (1.90%) Cisco Certification
6 187 (1.63%) CISSP
7 161 (1.41%) Azure Certification
8 137 (1.20%) Microsoft Certification
9 135 (1.18%) AWS Certification
10 115 (1.00%) CISM
11 101 (0.88%) CCNP
11 101 (0.88%) PMI Certification
12 98 (0.86%) PMP
13 94 (0.82%) CCNA
14 81 (0.71%) ISTQB
15 66 (0.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 64 (0.56%) Computer Science Degree
17 51 (0.45%) ITIL Certification
18 47 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 47 (0.41%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 428 (3.74%) QA
2 361 (3.15%) Data Quality
3 311 (2.72%) NIST
4 307 (2.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 250 (2.18%) Accessibility
5 250 (2.18%) NCSC
6 198 (1.73%) PMO
7 177 (1.55%) GDPR
8 128 (1.12%) GRC
9 125 (1.09%) SLA
10 70 (0.61%) WCAG
11 62 (0.54%) JSP 440
12 50 (0.44%) NIST 800
13 43 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
14 32 (0.28%) Def Stans
15 27 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
15 27 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 25 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 20000
16 25 (0.22%) RMADS
17 22 (0.19%) COBIT
System Software
1 778 (6.80%) Docker
2 497 (4.34%) Active Directory
3 376 (3.28%) VMware Infrastructure
4 139 (1.21%) VMware NSX
5 133 (1.16%) VMware ESXi
6 101 (0.88%) vSphere
7 99 (0.86%) Hyper-V
8 82 (0.72%) Virtual Machines
9 51 (0.45%) Oracle RAC
10 35 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
11 30 (0.26%) Firmware
12 25 (0.22%) NFS
13 21 (0.18%) Squid
13 21 (0.18%) vCloud
14 18 (0.16%) BitLocker
14 18 (0.16%) Postfix
15 9 (0.079%) KVM
16 8 (0.070%) Microsoft App-V
16 8 (0.070%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 7 (0.061%) UAG
Systems Management
1 962 (8.40%) Terraform
2 936 (8.18%) Kubernetes
3 409 (3.57%) Ansible
4 280 (2.45%) Grafana
5 224 (1.96%) Prometheus
6 129 (1.13%) vCenter Server
7 96 (0.84%) SCCM
8 75 (0.66%) Microsoft Intune
9 74 (0.65%) Single Sign-On
10 67 (0.59%) Argo
11 58 (0.51%) SCOM
12 54 (0.47%) Oracle RMAN
13 49 (0.43%) FortiGate
14 45 (0.39%) Puppet
15 36 (0.31%) Data Guard
16 33 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 30 (0.26%) Nagios
18 27 (0.24%) Progress Chef
19 26 (0.23%) Podman
20 23 (0.20%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,285 (11.23%) Microsoft
2 873 (7.63%) Oracle
3 554 (4.84%) VMware
4 532 (4.65%) ServiceNow
5 395 (3.45%) SAP
6 316 (2.76%) Cisco
7 222 (1.94%) Splunk
8 209 (1.83%) Google
9 195 (1.70%) Databricks
10 185 (1.62%) Salesforce
11 161 (1.41%) Red Hat
12 139 (1.21%) Informatica
13 138 (1.21%) Talend
14 127 (1.11%) IBM
15 115 (1.00%) Palo Alto
16 103 (0.90%) Juniper
17 97 (0.85%) F5
18 96 (0.84%) SolarWinds
19 93 (0.81%) Fortinet
20 85 (0.74%) Citrix