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

6 months to
21 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 11,550 5,893 7,264
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.56% 17.98% 18.66%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.93% 57.32% 62.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,092 3,741 4,813
10th Percentile £385 £348 £350
25th Percentile £456 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £534 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.75% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £735
UK excluding London median daily rate £533 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -0.93% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 808 565 481
10th Percentile £19.33 £18.51 £15.10
25th Percentile £28.38 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £63.50 £25.15 £56.50
Median % change year-on-year +152.49% -55.49% -5.83%
75th Percentile £78.75 £47.50 £71.75
90th Percentile £88.00 £73.75 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.55 £25.15 £58.30
% change year-on-year +156.64% -56.86% +1.39%

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 16,756 10,280 11,679
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.28% 31.36% 30.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,216 6,335 7,385
10th Percentile £350 £289 £313
25th Percentile £434 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £620 £638
90th Percentile £716 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £515 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,262 829 816
10th Percentile £17.51 £17.98 £14.75
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.38 £21.25
Median hourly rate £48.77 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +93.90% -41.51% -21.82%
75th Percentile £72.54 £53.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.16 £73.75 £75.32
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £25.15 £47.50
% change year-on-year +89.03% -47.05% -6.40%

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 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 21 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 21 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 10,004 £540 +0.47% 1,976
UK excluding London +1 6,505 £533 -0.93% 1,593
London +7 3,542 £550 +3.77% 558
Work from Home +2 3,070 £525 -2.33% 857
South East +1 2,407 £563 +4.65% 526
South West 0 1,360 £547 -1.65% 394
North of England +3 1,198 £511 +2.20% 304
Midlands 0 909 £469 -8.93% 154
West Midlands +1 783 £469 -8.93% 114
North West +3 682 £530 -0.09% 178
East of England 0 333 £550 - 159
Yorkshire +2 303 £492 - 62
Scotland +14 269 £488 +2.63% 61
North East 0 237 £475 -5.00% 69
East Midlands -3 118 £438 -7.89% 40
Wales +5 103 £550 +15.79% 28
Northern Ireland +3 33 £650 +25.00% 7

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
1 411 (3.56%) Confluence
2 280 (2.42%) SharePoint
3 188 (1.63%) SAS
4 125 (1.08%) Microsoft Exchange
5 100 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
5 100 (0.87%) Apache Spark
6 96 (0.83%) Apache
7 37 (0.32%) Jupyter
8 34 (0.29%) nginx
9 28 (0.24%) WebLogic
10 24 (0.21%) IIS
11 23 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
12 21 (0.18%) Skype for Business
12 21 (0.18%) Tomcat
13 18 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
14 17 (0.15%) CMS
14 17 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
15 15 (0.13%) NetWeaver
16 13 (0.11%) JBoss
17 9 (0.078%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 202 (1.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 158 (1.37%) Microsoft Office
3 104 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
4 88 (0.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.37%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.14%) AutoCAD
7 16 (0.14%) Revit
8 15 (0.13%) Simulink
8 15 (0.13%) SOLIDWORKS
9 8 (0.069%) Adobe XD
9 8 (0.069%) Chatbot
9 8 (0.069%) Windchill
10 7 (0.061%) Notepad++
10 7 (0.061%) Sketch
11 5 (0.043%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 3 (0.026%) Trello
13 2 (0.017%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.017%) Houdini
13 2 (0.017%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 145 (1.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 78 (0.68%) Remedy ITSM
3 50 (0.43%) Oracle ERP
4 39 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
5 33 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 32 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
7 31 (0.27%) Teamcenter
8 23 (0.20%) SAP GRC
9 22 (0.19%) Oracle Payroll
9 22 (0.19%) SAP PSCD
10 21 (0.18%) Primavera
11 17 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
12 14 (0.12%) SAP FI
12 14 (0.12%) SAP HR
13 13 (0.11%) Findur
14 12 (0.10%) iTrent
14 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
14 12 (0.10%) Temenos T24
15 11 (0.095%) NetSuite
16 10 (0.087%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,166 (18.75%) Azure
2 2,047 (17.72%) AWS
3 545 (4.72%) Azure DevOps
4 541 (4.68%) GitHub
5 485 (4.20%) Power Platform
6 456 (3.95%) GCP
7 345 (2.99%) GitHub Actions
8 319 (2.76%) Microsoft 365
9 306 (2.65%) Entra ID
10 280 (2.42%) Serverless
11 229 (1.98%) Amazon S3
12 195 (1.69%) AWS Lambda
13 171 (1.48%) OCI
14 170 (1.47%) SaaS
15 165 (1.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 158 (1.37%) Amazon EKS
17 145 (1.26%) Amazon EC2
18 142 (1.23%) PaaS
19 134 (1.16%) OpenShift
20 131 (1.13%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 484 (4.19%) Firewall
2 382 (3.31%) DNS
3 231 (2.00%) WAN
4 224 (1.94%) Network Security
5 208 (1.80%) VPN
6 192 (1.66%) LAN
7 191 (1.65%) DHCP
8 144 (1.25%) TCP/IP
9 139 (1.20%) BGP
10 125 (1.08%) Wi-Fi
11 109 (0.94%) VLAN
12 101 (0.87%) OSPF
13 86 (0.74%) Wireless
14 70 (0.61%) VSAN
15 67 (0.58%) MPLS
16 63 (0.55%) SD-WAN
17 62 (0.54%) SSL
18 61 (0.53%) IPsec
18 61 (0.53%) SAN
19 50 (0.43%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 352 (3.05%) Power BI
2 306 (2.65%) PostgreSQL
3 297 (2.57%) SQL Server
4 280 (2.42%) Data Warehouse
5 167 (1.45%) Oracle Database
6 160 (1.39%) Metadata
7 142 (1.23%) Data Lake
8 135 (1.17%) Relational Database
9 120 (1.04%) MongoDB
10 111 (0.96%) Amazon RDS
11 102 (0.88%) MySQL
12 101 (0.87%) Oracle Reports
13 93 (0.81%) NoSQL
14 83 (0.72%) Pentaho
15 72 (0.62%) Amazon Athena
16 71 (0.61%) Amazon Redshift
17 63 (0.55%) Elasticsearch
18 59 (0.51%) Big Data
19 55 (0.48%) Tableau
20 49 (0.42%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 660 (5.71%) JIRA
2 569 (4.93%) Git
3 493 (4.27%) GitLab
4 482 (4.17%) Jenkins
5 134 (1.16%) Selenium
6 86 (0.74%) Postman
7 81 (0.70%) SonarQube
8 71 (0.61%) JMeter
9 67 (0.58%) JUnit
9 67 (0.58%) Maven
10 53 (0.46%) Cucumber
11 52 (0.45%) Rational DOORS
11 52 (0.45%) Visual Studio
12 50 (0.43%) Cypress.io
13 46 (0.40%) Bitbucket
14 45 (0.39%) Mockito
14 45 (0.39%) Zephyr
15 44 (0.38%) Gradle
16 39 (0.34%) Artifactory
16 39 (0.34%) Gatling
General
1 2,454 (21.25%) Social Skills
2 2,394 (20.73%) Public Sector
3 897 (7.77%) Analytical Skills
4 780 (6.75%) Finance
5 353 (3.06%) Military
6 310 (2.68%) Aerospace
7 301 (2.61%) Documentation Skills
8 191 (1.65%) Influencing Skills
9 167 (1.45%) Legal
10 162 (1.40%) Organisational Skills
11 159 (1.38%) Telecoms
12 146 (1.26%) Banking
13 138 (1.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 119 (1.03%) Manufacturing
15 113 (0.98%) Police
16 111 (0.96%) Law
17 67 (0.58%) Presentation Skills
18 46 (0.40%) Aviation
19 45 (0.39%) Retail
20 44 (0.38%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,846 (15.98%) Architect
2 1,263 (10.94%) Developer
3 1,110 (9.61%) Senior
4 1,030 (8.92%) Lead
5 684 (5.92%) Consultant
6 636 (5.51%) Analyst
7 506 (4.38%) Data Engineer
8 486 (4.21%) DevOps Engineer
9 428 (3.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 375 (3.25%) Technical Architect
11 355 (3.07%) Solutions Architect
12 311 (2.69%) Software Engineer
13 271 (2.35%) Security Architect
14 261 (2.26%) Network Engineer
15 255 (2.21%) Data Architect
16 218 (1.89%) Java Developer
17 211 (1.83%) Administrator
18 209 (1.81%) Project Manager
19 206 (1.78%) Azure Engineer
20 202 (1.75%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 995 (8.61%) Terraform
2 437 (3.78%) REST
3 247 (2.14%) Spring
4 244 (2.11%) .NET
5 237 (2.05%) Kafka
6 221 (1.91%) Spring Boot
7 220 (1.90%) RESTful
8 204 (1.77%) React
9 175 (1.52%) Node.js
10 173 (1.50%) SOAP
11 157 (1.36%) JSON
12 139 (1.20%) Web Services
13 134 (1.16%) HTML
14 133 (1.15%) AngularJS
15 132 (1.14%) OAuth
16 119 (1.03%) XML
17 113 (0.98%) Middleware
18 97 (0.84%) Playwright
19 96 (0.83%) Oracle Fusion
20 94 (0.81%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 505 (4.37%) Cloud Native
2 412 (3.57%) Onboarding
3 373 (3.23%) Product Ownership
4 305 (2.64%) Data Centre
5 237 (2.05%) Management Information System
6 190 (1.65%) Legacy Systems
7 171 (1.48%) PKI
8 160 (1.39%) Distributed Systems
9 154 (1.33%) Enterprise Software
10 145 (1.26%) CMDB
11 123 (1.06%) Replication
12 122 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
13 119 (1.03%) Hybrid Cloud
14 114 (0.99%) Data Structures
15 97 (0.84%) Security Operations Centre
16 94 (0.81%) Clustering
16 94 (0.81%) Cyber Threat
17 90 (0.78%) Public Cloud
18 86 (0.74%) Virtual Team
19 76 (0.66%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 968 (8.38%) Windows
2 798 (6.91%) Linux
3 340 (2.94%) Windows Server
4 224 (1.94%) Unix
5 151 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 128 (1.11%) Windows 10
7 88 (0.76%) Android
8 61 (0.53%) Solaris
9 54 (0.47%) Apple iOS
10 49 (0.42%) Mac OS
11 41 (0.35%) Ubuntu
12 39 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
13 37 (0.32%) CentOS
14 35 (0.30%) AIX
15 26 (0.23%) Windows 7
16 23 (0.20%) VMS
17 22 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
18 21 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
19 14 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
20 13 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,438 (21.11%) Agile
2 1,830 (15.84%) DevOps
3 1,754 (15.19%) CI/CD
4 1,413 (12.23%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,312 (11.36%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,194 (10.34%) Problem-Solving
7 1,127 (9.76%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 966 (8.36%) Infrastructure as Code
9 923 (7.99%) Migration
10 792 (6.86%) Cybersecurity
11 762 (6.60%) ITIL
12 759 (6.57%) Test Automation
13 723 (6.26%) Analytics
14 715 (6.19%) Containerisation
15 693 (6.00%) Software Engineering
16 669 (5.79%) Roadmaps
17 667 (5.77%) Technical Leadership
18 650 (5.63%) Decision-Making
19 636 (5.51%) AI
20 618 (5.35%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,302 (11.27%) Python
2 1,133 (9.81%) SQL
3 804 (6.96%) Java
4 573 (4.96%) PowerShell
5 412 (3.57%) JavaScript
6 323 (2.80%) Bash
7 275 (2.38%) C#
8 202 (1.75%) TypeScript
9 163 (1.41%) PL/SQL
10 118 (1.02%) Bicep
11 86 (0.74%) C++
12 82 (0.71%) Shell Script
13 66 (0.57%) C
14 56 (0.48%) Apex Code
15 52 (0.45%) Kotlin
15 52 (0.45%) Ruby
15 52 (0.45%) Scala
16 47 (0.41%) Groovy
17 46 (0.40%) Go
18 36 (0.31%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8,795 (76.15%) SC Cleared
2 2,167 (18.76%) DV Cleared
3 459 (3.97%) Degree
4 444 (3.84%) BPSS Clearance
5 211 (1.83%) CISSP
6 196 (1.70%) Cisco Certification
7 172 (1.49%) Azure Certification
8 160 (1.39%) Microsoft Certification
9 141 (1.22%) CISM
10 140 (1.21%) AWS Certification
11 106 (0.92%) PMI Certification
12 104 (0.90%) PMP
13 95 (0.82%) ISTQB
14 88 (0.76%) CCNP
15 84 (0.73%) CCNA
16 73 (0.63%) Computer Science Degree
17 67 (0.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 47 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 47 (0.41%) ITIL Certification
19 41 (0.35%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 495 (4.29%) QA
2 374 (3.24%) Data Quality
3 314 (2.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 307 (2.66%) NIST
5 275 (2.38%) NCSC
6 257 (2.23%) Accessibility
7 224 (1.94%) PMO
8 181 (1.57%) GDPR
9 153 (1.32%) GRC
9 153 (1.32%) SLA
10 79 (0.68%) WCAG
11 64 (0.55%) JSP 440
12 47 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
13 43 (0.37%) NIST 800
14 34 (0.29%) Def Stans
15 30 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 30 (0.26%) ISO/IEC 20000
16 28 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
17 25 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
18 23 (0.20%) RMADS
System Software
1 798 (6.91%) Docker
2 557 (4.82%) Active Directory
3 415 (3.59%) VMware Infrastructure
4 152 (1.32%) VMware NSX
5 136 (1.18%) VMware ESXi
6 125 (1.08%) vSphere
7 122 (1.06%) Hyper-V
8 82 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
9 42 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
10 41 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
11 35 (0.30%) Firmware
12 26 (0.23%) BitLocker
13 25 (0.22%) vCloud
14 16 (0.14%) NFS
15 15 (0.13%) Squid
16 13 (0.11%) Postfix
17 12 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
18 9 (0.078%) KVM
19 8 (0.069%) Ceph
19 8 (0.069%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 976 (8.45%) Kubernetes
2 447 (3.87%) Ansible
3 267 (2.31%) Grafana
4 211 (1.83%) Prometheus
5 135 (1.17%) vCenter Server
6 130 (1.13%) SCCM
7 88 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
8 75 (0.65%) SCOM
9 68 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
10 67 (0.58%) Argo
11 52 (0.45%) Puppet
12 51 (0.44%) Oracle RMAN
13 40 (0.35%) Data Guard
14 34 (0.29%) Progress Chef
15 32 (0.28%) Istio
16 30 (0.26%) Nagios
17 29 (0.25%) FortiGate
18 28 (0.24%) Control-M
19 27 (0.23%) WSUS
20 26 (0.23%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,463 (12.67%) Microsoft
2 930 (8.05%) Oracle
3 594 (5.14%) VMware
4 532 (4.61%) ServiceNow
5 443 (3.84%) SAP
6 306 (2.65%) Cisco
7 239 (2.07%) Google
8 210 (1.82%) Databricks
9 209 (1.81%) Splunk
10 186 (1.61%) Salesforce
11 148 (1.28%) Red Hat
12 126 (1.09%) IBM
13 123 (1.06%) Informatica
14 121 (1.05%) Palo Alto
15 118 (1.02%) Talend
16 94 (0.81%) Dynatrace
17 87 (0.75%) Remedy
18 82 (0.71%) Denodo
18 82 (0.71%) F5
18 82 (0.71%) SolarWinds