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

6 months to
11 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 11,479 5,717 7,896
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.70% 17.62% 18.36%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.14% 57.31% 61.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,978 3,683 5,184
10th Percentile £381 £348 £340
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -3.64% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £715 £698 £731
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 846 464 591
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.51 £14.72
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £62.50 £25.15 £55.80
Median % change year-on-year +148.51% -54.93% -7.00%
75th Percentile £75.00 £60.00 £72.42
90th Percentile £87.00 £75.00 £81.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £25.15 £57.50
% change year-on-year +148.51% -56.26% -1.16%

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 16,603 9,976 12,858
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.39% 30.74% 29.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,094 6,194 8,008
10th Percentile £350 £280 £310
25th Percentile £428 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £524 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.24% -0.24% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £622 £638
90th Percentile £713 £702 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,198 706 1,091
10th Percentile £17.56 £17.87 £14.16
25th Percentile £25.20 £20.00 £20.24
Median hourly rate £50.00 £27.45 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +82.15% -33.86% -24.72%
75th Percentile £72.54 £58.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.25 £75.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -20.54%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 9,884 £525 -2.33% 1,985
UK excluding London +1 6,414 £525 -2.33% 1,531
London +7 3,513 £538 +2.38% 611
Work from Home +4 3,144 £525 - 1,021
South East +1 2,392 £550 - 564
South West 0 1,327 £538 -6.52% 388
North of England +2 1,068 £502 +0.35% 234
Midlands +3 967 £469 -6.20% 149
West Midlands +2 827 £470 -7.84% 110
North West 0 577 £525 +4.90% 139
East of England +2 338 £550 +4.76% 117
Scotland +21 282 £500 +3.52% 62
Yorkshire +1 282 £500 +1.63% 52
North East +1 239 £475 -3.06% 44
East Midlands -1 127 £418 -12.11% 39
Wales +3 106 £550 +15.79% 22
Northern Ireland +5 31 £650 +30.00% 18

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
1 416 (3.62%) Confluence
2 252 (2.20%) SharePoint
3 172 (1.50%) SAS
4 135 (1.18%) Microsoft Exchange
5 107 (0.93%) Apache Spark
6 106 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
7 101 (0.88%) Apache
8 46 (0.40%) nginx
9 42 (0.37%) WebLogic
10 41 (0.36%) Jupyter
11 27 (0.24%) Tomcat
12 25 (0.22%) IIS
13 21 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
14 17 (0.15%) CMS
14 17 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
15 16 (0.14%) NetWeaver
16 14 (0.12%) Skype for Business
17 12 (0.10%) Palantir Foundry
17 12 (0.10%) Tuxedo
18 9 (0.078%) Documentum
Applications
1 187 (1.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 155 (1.35%) Microsoft Office
3 87 (0.76%) Microsoft Project
4 72 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 53 (0.46%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.14%) Simulink
8 12 (0.10%) AutoCAD
8 12 (0.10%) Revit
8 12 (0.10%) SOLIDWORKS
9 10 (0.087%) Chatbot
10 7 (0.061%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.061%) Notepad++
11 5 (0.044%) Sketch
12 3 (0.026%) Windchill
13 2 (0.017%) CATIA
13 2 (0.017%) Lectora
13 2 (0.017%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.017%) PlantUML
13 2 (0.017%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 133 (1.16%) SAP S/4HANA
2 66 (0.57%) Remedy ITSM
3 46 (0.40%) Oracle ERP
4 37 (0.32%) Teamcenter
5 34 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
6 30 (0.26%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 28 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
8 23 (0.20%) SAP PSCD
9 20 (0.17%) Primavera
10 16 (0.14%) SAP GRC
11 15 (0.13%) Findur
11 15 (0.13%) Temenos T24
12 12 (0.10%) iTrent
12 12 (0.10%) Oracle Payables
12 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
13 11 (0.096%) SAP ERP
13 11 (0.096%) SAP HR
14 10 (0.087%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 10 (0.087%) Maximo
14 10 (0.087%) Oracle Payroll
Cloud Services
1 2,071 (18.04%) AWS
2 2,033 (17.71%) Azure
3 498 (4.34%) GitHub
4 462 (4.02%) Azure DevOps
5 450 (3.92%) Power Platform
6 420 (3.66%) GCP
7 312 (2.72%) GitHub Actions
8 297 (2.59%) Microsoft 365
9 286 (2.49%) Entra ID
10 284 (2.47%) Serverless
11 250 (2.18%) Amazon S3
12 200 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
13 166 (1.45%) Amazon EC2
14 161 (1.40%) OCI
15 158 (1.38%) SaaS
16 157 (1.37%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 153 (1.33%) Amazon EKS
18 151 (1.32%) PaaS
19 148 (1.29%) OpenShift
20 135 (1.18%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 471 (4.10%) Firewall
2 362 (3.15%) DNS
3 251 (2.19%) Network Security
4 237 (2.06%) WAN
5 203 (1.77%) LAN
6 196 (1.71%) VPN
7 179 (1.56%) DHCP
8 148 (1.29%) BGP
9 124 (1.08%) OSPF
10 119 (1.04%) TCP/IP
11 114 (0.99%) VLAN
12 111 (0.97%) Wi-Fi
13 88 (0.77%) Wireless
14 73 (0.64%) MPLS
15 68 (0.59%) SD-WAN
16 66 (0.57%) SAN
17 58 (0.51%) VXLAN
18 54 (0.47%) IPsec
19 52 (0.45%) BIG-IP
20 48 (0.42%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 349 (3.04%) Power BI
2 311 (2.71%) PostgreSQL
3 268 (2.33%) SQL Server
4 267 (2.33%) Data Warehouse
5 169 (1.47%) Oracle Database
6 152 (1.32%) Metadata
7 134 (1.17%) Relational Database
8 132 (1.15%) Data Lake
9 113 (0.98%) Amazon RDS
10 112 (0.98%) MongoDB
11 100 (0.87%) MySQL
12 92 (0.80%) Oracle Reports
13 90 (0.78%) Elasticsearch
14 87 (0.76%) Pentaho
15 79 (0.69%) Amazon Redshift
16 75 (0.65%) NoSQL
17 74 (0.64%) Amazon Athena
18 68 (0.59%) Big Data
19 64 (0.56%) Tableau
20 54 (0.47%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 652 (5.68%) JIRA
2 544 (4.74%) Git
3 480 (4.18%) GitLab
4 463 (4.03%) Jenkins
5 126 (1.10%) Selenium
6 88 (0.77%) JUnit
7 86 (0.75%) Postman
8 84 (0.73%) SonarQube
9 66 (0.57%) JMeter
10 60 (0.52%) Rational DOORS
11 57 (0.50%) Maven
12 55 (0.48%) Cucumber
13 47 (0.41%) Mockito
14 46 (0.40%) Artifactory
14 46 (0.40%) Cypress.io
14 46 (0.40%) REST Assured
14 46 (0.40%) Visual Studio
15 43 (0.37%) Bitbucket
16 41 (0.36%) Zephyr
17 37 (0.32%) Gatling
General
1 2,516 (21.92%) Public Sector
2 2,340 (20.39%) Social Skills
3 838 (7.30%) Analytical Skills
4 744 (6.48%) Finance
5 358 (3.12%) Military
6 311 (2.71%) Documentation Skills
7 293 (2.55%) Aerospace
8 182 (1.59%) Legal
9 162 (1.41%) Influencing Skills
10 141 (1.23%) Telecoms
11 138 (1.20%) Banking
12 120 (1.05%) Organisational Skills
13 106 (0.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 98 (0.85%) Law
14 98 (0.85%) Manufacturing
15 91 (0.79%) Police
16 73 (0.64%) Presentation Skills
17 54 (0.47%) Aviation
18 41 (0.36%) Marketing
19 39 (0.34%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 1,755 (15.29%) Architect
2 1,242 (10.82%) Developer
3 1,020 (8.89%) Senior
4 931 (8.11%) Lead
5 732 (6.38%) Analyst
6 577 (5.03%) Consultant
7 534 (4.65%) Data Engineer
8 512 (4.46%) DevOps Engineer
9 384 (3.35%) Technical Architect
10 373 (3.25%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 351 (3.06%) Software Engineer
12 337 (2.94%) Solutions Architect
13 269 (2.34%) Security Architect
14 264 (2.30%) Network Engineer
15 231 (2.01%) Business Analyst
16 229 (1.99%) Java Developer
17 218 (1.90%) Designer
18 216 (1.88%) Project Manager
19 209 (1.82%) AWS Engineer
20 207 (1.80%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 387 (3.37%) REST
2 287 (2.50%) Spring
3 239 (2.08%) Spring Boot
4 220 (1.92%) Kafka
5 215 (1.87%) .NET
6 208 (1.81%) React
7 202 (1.76%) Node.js
8 194 (1.69%) RESTful
9 158 (1.38%) SOAP
10 143 (1.25%) JSON
11 131 (1.14%) AngularJS
12 125 (1.09%) OAuth
13 117 (1.02%) Web Services
14 114 (0.99%) PySpark
15 112 (0.98%) HTML
16 105 (0.91%) Middleware
17 104 (0.91%) LDAP
18 98 (0.85%) Playwright
19 95 (0.83%) XML
20 91 (0.79%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 465 (4.05%) Cloud Native
2 378 (3.29%) Onboarding
3 364 (3.17%) Product Ownership
4 319 (2.78%) Data Centre
5 226 (1.97%) Management Information System
6 189 (1.65%) Legacy Systems
7 162 (1.41%) Distributed Systems
8 154 (1.34%) PKI
9 123 (1.07%) Replication
10 121 (1.05%) CMDB
11 114 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
12 113 (0.98%) Enterprise Software
13 99 (0.86%) Data Structures
14 97 (0.85%) Hybrid Cloud
15 96 (0.84%) Security Posture
16 93 (0.81%) Public Cloud
17 91 (0.79%) Clustering
18 87 (0.76%) Security Operations Centre
18 87 (0.76%) Virtual Team
19 78 (0.68%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 920 (8.01%) Windows
2 786 (6.85%) Linux
3 291 (2.54%) Windows Server
4 215 (1.87%) Unix
5 152 (1.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 98 (0.85%) Android
7 95 (0.83%) Windows 10
8 68 (0.59%) Apple iOS
9 57 (0.50%) Solaris
10 47 (0.41%) Mac OS
11 38 (0.33%) Ubuntu
12 34 (0.30%) AIX
13 33 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
14 29 (0.25%) CentOS
15 23 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
16 19 (0.17%) VMS
17 15 (0.13%) Windows 7
17 15 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
18 14 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
19 11 (0.096%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,329 (20.29%) Agile
2 1,806 (15.73%) DevOps
3 1,693 (14.75%) CI/CD
4 1,226 (10.68%) Problem-Solving
5 1,196 (10.42%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,183 (10.31%) Continuous Improvement
7 988 (8.61%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 874 (7.61%) Infrastructure as Code
9 870 (7.58%) Migration
10 743 (6.47%) Cybersecurity
11 722 (6.29%) ITIL
12 713 (6.21%) Test Automation
13 706 (6.15%) Containerisation
14 682 (5.94%) Analytics
15 678 (5.91%) Software Engineering
16 659 (5.74%) Roadmaps
17 634 (5.52%) Decision-Making
18 602 (5.24%) Data Modelling
19 573 (4.99%) AI
20 564 (4.91%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,294 (11.27%) Python
2 1,107 (9.64%) SQL
3 817 (7.12%) Java
4 509 (4.43%) PowerShell
5 363 (3.16%) JavaScript
6 267 (2.33%) Bash
7 244 (2.13%) C#
8 193 (1.68%) TypeScript
9 169 (1.47%) PL/SQL
10 98 (0.85%) C++
11 95 (0.83%) Shell Script
12 82 (0.71%) Bicep
13 69 (0.60%) C
14 62 (0.54%) Apex Code
15 61 (0.53%) Ruby
16 59 (0.51%) Go
17 53 (0.46%) Kotlin
18 46 (0.40%) Ada
18 46 (0.40%) Scala
19 44 (0.38%) R
Qualifications
1 8,759 (76.30%) SC Cleared
2 2,129 (18.55%) DV Cleared
3 437 (3.81%) Degree
4 385 (3.35%) BPSS Clearance
5 217 (1.89%) Cisco Certification
6 186 (1.62%) CISSP
7 155 (1.35%) Azure Certification
8 132 (1.15%) Microsoft Certification
9 130 (1.13%) AWS Certification
10 111 (0.97%) CISM
11 105 (0.91%) CCNP
12 94 (0.82%) CCNA
12 94 (0.82%) PMP
13 93 (0.81%) PMI Certification
14 80 (0.70%) ISTQB
15 69 (0.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 67 (0.58%) Computer Science Degree
17 56 (0.49%) ITIL Certification
18 48 (0.42%) TOGAF Certification
19 43 (0.37%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 450 (3.92%) QA
2 353 (3.08%) Data Quality
3 319 (2.78%) NIST
4 316 (2.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 253 (2.20%) NCSC
6 245 (2.13%) Accessibility
7 191 (1.66%) GDPR
8 182 (1.59%) PMO
9 125 (1.09%) SLA
10 111 (0.97%) GRC
11 69 (0.60%) JSP 440
12 63 (0.55%) WCAG
13 48 (0.42%) NIST 800
14 44 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
15 34 (0.30%) Def Stans
16 29 (0.25%) RMADS
17 28 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 25 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
19 24 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 20000
20 23 (0.20%) COBIT
System Software
1 786 (6.85%) Docker
2 481 (4.19%) Active Directory
3 355 (3.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 127 (1.11%) VMware NSX
5 126 (1.10%) VMware ESXi
6 100 (0.87%) Hyper-V
7 99 (0.86%) vSphere
8 84 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
9 47 (0.41%) Oracle RAC
10 34 (0.30%) Firmware
10 34 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
11 25 (0.22%) NFS
12 22 (0.19%) BitLocker
13 21 (0.18%) Squid
14 20 (0.17%) vCloud
15 19 (0.17%) Postfix
16 10 (0.087%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 8 (0.070%) KVM
17 8 (0.070%) Microsoft App-V
18 7 (0.061%) UAG
Systems Management
1 965 (8.41%) Terraform
2 961 (8.37%) Kubernetes
3 405 (3.53%) Ansible
4 284 (2.47%) Grafana
5 230 (2.00%) Prometheus
6 119 (1.04%) vCenter Server
7 95 (0.83%) SCCM
8 87 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
9 69 (0.60%) Microsoft Intune
10 65 (0.57%) Argo
11 52 (0.45%) SCOM
12 50 (0.44%) Oracle RMAN
13 49 (0.43%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 49 (0.43%) FortiGate
14 46 (0.40%) Puppet
15 32 (0.28%) Data Guard
16 30 (0.26%) Progress Chef
17 29 (0.25%) Podman
18 28 (0.24%) Kibana
19 27 (0.24%) Nagios
Vendors
1 1,250 (10.89%) Microsoft
2 853 (7.43%) Oracle
3 544 (4.74%) VMware
4 528 (4.60%) ServiceNow
5 376 (3.28%) SAP
6 324 (2.82%) Cisco
7 230 (2.00%) Splunk
8 201 (1.75%) Databricks
9 193 (1.68%) Google
10 190 (1.66%) Salesforce
11 157 (1.37%) Red Hat
12 145 (1.26%) Talend
13 129 (1.12%) Informatica
14 126 (1.10%) IBM
15 110 (0.96%) Palo Alto
16 100 (0.87%) Juniper
17 97 (0.85%) F5
18 95 (0.83%) Fortinet
19 92 (0.80%) SolarWinds
20 90 (0.78%) Citrix