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 26 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,537 5,893 7,194
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.51% 18.01% 18.52%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.90% 57.50% 62.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,084 3,755 4,742
10th Percentile £385 £349 £350
25th Percentile £456 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £535 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.51% -2.73% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £732
UK excluding London median daily rate £534 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -0.73% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 808 570 470
10th Percentile £19.45 £18.51 £15.09
25th Percentile £28.38 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £63.50 £25.15 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +152.49% -56.26% -4.17%
75th Percentile £78.75 £45.00 £72.22
90th Percentile £88.00 £73.75 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.09 £25.15 £58.49
% change year-on-year +154.83% -57.00% +1.72%

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 16,745 10,249 11,593
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.22% 31.33% 29.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,209 6,338 7,308
10th Percentile £350 £290 £313
25th Percentile £437 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £622 £638
90th Percentile £715 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £518 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,263 826 776
10th Percentile £17.44 £17.97 £14.49
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.23 £21.37
Median hourly rate £48.81 £25.15 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +94.08% -44.11% -18.18%
75th Percentile £72.54 £53.50 £67.14
90th Percentile £87.96 £73.75 £77.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £25.15 £48.56
% change year-on-year +89.03% -48.21% -6.42%

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 26 August 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 26 August 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 26 August 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 9,973 £540 +0.47% 1,844
UK excluding London +1 6,478 £534 -0.73% 1,498
London +7 3,556 £550 +3.77% 528
Work from Home +2 3,063 £525 -2.33% 925
South East +1 2,369 £563 +4.65% 414
South West 0 1,352 £549 -1.15% 430
North of England +3 1,226 £511 +2.10% 274
Midlands 0 890 £470 -8.74% 145
West Midlands +1 762 £470 -8.74% 101
North West +4 704 £530 -0.09% 147
East of England 0 333 £550 - 158
Yorkshire +2 307 £500 +2.04% 57
Scotland +15 278 £483 -0.21% 86
North East 0 239 £475 -5.00% 74
East Midlands -2 119 £438 -10.21% 44
Wales +4 103 £550 +10.00% 27
Northern Ireland +3 34 £650 +25.00% 13

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 (3.51%) Confluence
2 275 (2.38%) SharePoint
3 181 (1.57%) SAS
4 125 (1.08%) Microsoft Exchange
5 100 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
5 100 (0.87%) Apache Spark
6 97 (0.84%) Apache
7 37 (0.32%) Jupyter
8 34 (0.29%) nginx
9 30 (0.26%) WebLogic
10 24 (0.21%) IIS
11 23 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
12 22 (0.19%) Skype for Business
12 22 (0.19%) Tomcat
13 18 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
14 16 (0.14%) CMS
14 16 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
15 13 (0.11%) JBoss
15 13 (0.11%) NetWeaver
16 9 (0.078%) Documentum
Applications
1 204 (1.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 159 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
3 108 (0.94%) Microsoft Project
4 92 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.37%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.14%) AutoCAD
7 16 (0.14%) Revit
8 15 (0.13%) Simulink
8 15 (0.13%) SOLIDWORKS
9 9 (0.078%) Windchill
10 8 (0.069%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.069%) Chatbot
11 7 (0.061%) Notepad++
11 7 (0.061%) Sketch
12 5 (0.043%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 3 (0.026%) Trello
14 2 (0.017%) CPLEX
14 2 (0.017%) Houdini
14 2 (0.017%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 141 (1.22%) SAP S/4HANA
2 77 (0.67%) Remedy ITSM
3 52 (0.45%) Oracle ERP
4 38 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
5 33 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
5 33 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 27 (0.23%) Teamcenter
7 24 (0.21%) SAP GRC
8 23 (0.20%) Oracle Payroll
9 22 (0.19%) SAP PSCD
10 21 (0.18%) Primavera
11 17 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
12 15 (0.13%) SAP HR
13 14 (0.12%) SAP FI
14 13 (0.11%) Findur
15 12 (0.10%) iTrent
15 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
15 12 (0.10%) Temenos T24
16 11 (0.095%) NetSuite
17 10 (0.087%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,182 (18.91%) Azure
2 2,036 (17.65%) AWS
3 549 (4.76%) Azure DevOps
4 537 (4.65%) GitHub
5 487 (4.22%) Power Platform
6 459 (3.98%) GCP
7 343 (2.97%) GitHub Actions
8 319 (2.77%) Microsoft 365
9 309 (2.68%) Entra ID
10 278 (2.41%) Serverless
11 227 (1.97%) Amazon S3
12 195 (1.69%) AWS Lambda
13 171 (1.48%) OCI
13 171 (1.48%) SaaS
14 162 (1.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 159 (1.38%) Amazon EKS
16 138 (1.20%) Amazon EC2
17 135 (1.17%) PaaS
18 133 (1.15%) OpenShift
19 129 (1.12%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 472 (4.09%) Firewall
2 372 (3.22%) DNS
3 228 (1.98%) WAN
4 221 (1.92%) Network Security
5 210 (1.82%) VPN
6 185 (1.60%) DHCP
6 185 (1.60%) LAN
7 140 (1.21%) BGP
8 135 (1.17%) TCP/IP
9 121 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
10 102 (0.88%) VLAN
11 101 (0.88%) OSPF
12 81 (0.70%) Wireless
13 68 (0.59%) MPLS
14 66 (0.57%) VSAN
15 63 (0.55%) SSL
16 62 (0.54%) IPsec
16 62 (0.54%) SD-WAN
17 58 (0.50%) SAN
18 51 (0.44%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 354 (3.07%) Power BI
2 295 (2.56%) PostgreSQL
3 289 (2.50%) SQL Server
4 270 (2.34%) Data Warehouse
5 170 (1.47%) Oracle Database
6 166 (1.44%) Metadata
7 144 (1.25%) Data Lake
8 137 (1.19%) Relational Database
9 124 (1.07%) MongoDB
10 110 (0.95%) Amazon RDS
11 100 (0.87%) MySQL
12 96 (0.83%) NoSQL
13 89 (0.77%) Oracle Reports
14 76 (0.66%) Pentaho
15 70 (0.61%) Amazon Athena
16 66 (0.57%) Amazon Redshift
17 64 (0.55%) Elasticsearch
18 59 (0.51%) Big Data
19 56 (0.49%) Tableau
20 48 (0.42%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 650 (5.63%) JIRA
2 561 (4.86%) Git
3 495 (4.29%) GitLab
4 467 (4.05%) Jenkins
5 136 (1.18%) Selenium
6 80 (0.69%) SonarQube
7 76 (0.66%) Postman
8 71 (0.62%) JMeter
9 69 (0.60%) JUnit
10 66 (0.57%) Maven
11 54 (0.47%) Cucumber
12 52 (0.45%) Rational DOORS
13 50 (0.43%) Cypress.io
14 45 (0.39%) Visual Studio
15 44 (0.38%) Gradle
16 43 (0.37%) Mockito
17 40 (0.35%) Gatling
18 39 (0.34%) Bitbucket
19 38 (0.33%) Artifactory
19 38 (0.33%) REST Assured
General
1 2,471 (21.42%) Social Skills
2 2,373 (20.57%) Public Sector
3 897 (7.77%) Analytical Skills
4 776 (6.73%) Finance
5 361 (3.13%) Military
6 311 (2.70%) Aerospace
7 302 (2.62%) Documentation Skills
8 195 (1.69%) Influencing Skills
9 170 (1.47%) Organisational Skills
10 168 (1.46%) Legal
11 166 (1.44%) Telecoms
12 145 (1.26%) Banking
13 139 (1.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 116 (1.01%) Manufacturing
15 110 (0.95%) Law
15 110 (0.95%) Police
16 60 (0.52%) Presentation Skills
17 46 (0.40%) Aviation
17 46 (0.40%) Retail
18 44 (0.38%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,852 (16.05%) Architect
2 1,241 (10.76%) Developer
3 1,100 (9.53%) Senior
4 1,046 (9.07%) Lead
5 697 (6.04%) Consultant
6 641 (5.56%) Analyst
7 496 (4.30%) Data Engineer
8 492 (4.26%) DevOps Engineer
9 426 (3.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 374 (3.24%) Technical Architect
11 358 (3.10%) Solutions Architect
12 295 (2.56%) Software Engineer
13 268 (2.32%) Security Architect
14 264 (2.29%) Data Architect
15 258 (2.24%) Network Engineer
16 216 (1.87%) Administrator
17 212 (1.84%) Java Developer
18 211 (1.83%) Azure Engineer
19 209 (1.81%) Project Manager
20 205 (1.78%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 989 (8.57%) Terraform
2 434 (3.76%) REST
3 251 (2.18%) Spring
4 241 (2.09%) Kafka
5 237 (2.05%) .NET
6 224 (1.94%) Spring Boot
7 214 (1.85%) RESTful
8 204 (1.77%) React
9 171 (1.48%) Node.js
10 169 (1.46%) SOAP
11 157 (1.36%) JSON
12 134 (1.16%) OAuth
13 130 (1.13%) HTML
13 130 (1.13%) Web Services
14 124 (1.07%) AngularJS
15 117 (1.01%) XML
16 113 (0.98%) Middleware
17 97 (0.84%) Playwright
18 94 (0.81%) CSS
18 94 (0.81%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 505 (4.38%) Cloud Native
2 417 (3.61%) Onboarding
3 375 (3.25%) Product Ownership
4 301 (2.61%) Data Centre
5 241 (2.09%) Management Information System
6 192 (1.66%) Legacy Systems
7 172 (1.49%) PKI
8 155 (1.34%) Distributed Systems
9 154 (1.33%) CMDB
9 154 (1.33%) Enterprise Software
10 120 (1.04%) Hybrid Cloud
10 120 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
11 119 (1.03%) Replication
12 115 (1.00%) Data Structures
13 94 (0.81%) Public Cloud
14 93 (0.81%) Cyber Threat
14 93 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
15 89 (0.77%) Clustering
16 82 (0.71%) Virtual Team
17 80 (0.69%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 957 (8.30%) Windows
2 793 (6.87%) Linux
3 342 (2.96%) Windows Server
4 218 (1.89%) Unix
5 151 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 134 (1.16%) Windows 10
7 82 (0.71%) Android
8 61 (0.53%) Solaris
9 49 (0.42%) Apple iOS
9 49 (0.42%) Mac OS
10 41 (0.36%) Ubuntu
11 38 (0.33%) CentOS
12 37 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
13 36 (0.31%) AIX
14 26 (0.23%) Windows 7
15 22 (0.19%) VMS
15 22 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
16 21 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
17 15 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
18 13 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,410 (20.89%) Agile
2 1,812 (15.71%) DevOps
3 1,729 (14.99%) CI/CD
4 1,446 (12.53%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,320 (11.44%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,196 (10.37%) Problem-Solving
7 1,145 (9.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 971 (8.42%) Infrastructure as Code
9 915 (7.93%) Migration
10 812 (7.04%) Cybersecurity
11 770 (6.67%) ITIL
12 747 (6.47%) Test Automation
13 723 (6.27%) Analytics
14 710 (6.15%) Containerisation
15 679 (5.89%) Technical Leadership
16 671 (5.82%) Software Engineering
17 667 (5.78%) Roadmaps
18 659 (5.71%) Decision-Making
19 644 (5.58%) AI
20 617 (5.35%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,295 (11.22%) Python
2 1,103 (9.56%) SQL
3 789 (6.84%) Java
4 572 (4.96%) PowerShell
5 395 (3.42%) JavaScript
6 321 (2.78%) Bash
7 259 (2.24%) C#
8 202 (1.75%) TypeScript
9 159 (1.38%) PL/SQL
10 125 (1.08%) Bicep
11 81 (0.70%) Shell Script
12 78 (0.68%) C++
13 66 (0.57%) C
14 56 (0.49%) Apex Code
15 51 (0.44%) Kotlin
15 51 (0.44%) Ruby
15 51 (0.44%) Scala
16 47 (0.41%) Groovy
17 44 (0.38%) Go
18 36 (0.31%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8,780 (76.10%) SC Cleared
2 2,154 (18.67%) DV Cleared
3 457 (3.96%) Degree
4 455 (3.94%) BPSS Clearance
5 210 (1.82%) CISSP
6 184 (1.59%) Cisco Certification
7 176 (1.53%) Azure Certification
8 159 (1.38%) Microsoft Certification
9 142 (1.23%) CISM
10 134 (1.16%) AWS Certification
11 107 (0.93%) PMI Certification
12 104 (0.90%) PMP
13 91 (0.79%) ISTQB
14 80 (0.69%) CCNP
15 74 (0.64%) CCNA
16 69 (0.60%) Computer Science Degree
17 62 (0.54%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 48 (0.42%) ITIL Certification
19 47 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 42 (0.36%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 488 (4.23%) QA
2 381 (3.30%) Data Quality
3 313 (2.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 306 (2.65%) NIST
5 274 (2.37%) NCSC
6 255 (2.21%) Accessibility
7 227 (1.97%) PMO
8 185 (1.60%) GDPR
9 160 (1.39%) SLA
10 156 (1.35%) GRC
11 80 (0.69%) WCAG
12 66 (0.57%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
14 41 (0.36%) NIST 800
15 32 (0.28%) Def Stans
16 29 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 28 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
17 28 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 25 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
19 22 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 798 (6.92%) Docker
2 563 (4.88%) Active Directory
3 411 (3.56%) VMware Infrastructure
4 147 (1.27%) VMware NSX
5 135 (1.17%) VMware ESXi
6 124 (1.07%) Hyper-V
7 122 (1.06%) vSphere
8 81 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
9 43 (0.37%) Oracle RAC
10 41 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
11 36 (0.31%) Firmware
12 26 (0.23%) BitLocker
12 26 (0.23%) vCloud
13 16 (0.14%) NFS
14 14 (0.12%) Squid
15 13 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
16 12 (0.10%) Postfix
17 9 (0.078%) KVM
18 8 (0.069%) Ceph
18 8 (0.069%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 968 (8.39%) Kubernetes
2 438 (3.80%) Ansible
3 263 (2.28%) Grafana
4 211 (1.83%) Prometheus
5 132 (1.14%) vCenter Server
6 131 (1.14%) SCCM
7 85 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
8 77 (0.67%) SCOM
9 67 (0.58%) Argo
9 67 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
10 52 (0.45%) Oracle RMAN
11 48 (0.42%) Puppet
12 42 (0.36%) Data Guard
13 34 (0.29%) Istio
14 31 (0.27%) Progress Chef
15 29 (0.25%) Nagios
16 28 (0.24%) Control-M
16 28 (0.24%) Kibana
17 27 (0.23%) FortiGate
17 27 (0.23%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,478 (12.81%) Microsoft
2 917 (7.95%) Oracle
3 584 (5.06%) VMware
4 531 (4.60%) ServiceNow
5 445 (3.86%) SAP
6 304 (2.64%) Cisco
7 241 (2.09%) Google
8 215 (1.86%) Splunk
9 211 (1.83%) Databricks
10 185 (1.60%) Salesforce
11 146 (1.27%) Red Hat
12 127 (1.10%) IBM
13 120 (1.04%) Palo Alto
14 119 (1.03%) Informatica
15 110 (0.95%) Talend
16 96 (0.83%) Dynatrace
17 86 (0.75%) Remedy
18 81 (0.70%) SolarWinds
19 80 (0.69%) CyberArk
19 80 (0.69%) F5