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

6 months to
14 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,456 5,226 8,029
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.87% 17.85% 18.45%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.21% 58.00% 60.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,125 3,498 5,229
10th Percentile £363 £340 £358
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £534 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.59% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £520 £548 £550
% change year-on-year -5.11% -0.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 845 280 500
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.87
25th Percentile £21.33 £24.18 £21.46
Median hourly rate £53.00 £54.75 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.20% +4.29% -13.51%
75th Percentile £72.50 £67.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.32 £77.59 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £59.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year -11.02% +7.27% -4.35%

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 15,107 9,011 13,339
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.04% 30.78% 30.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,041 5,732 8,245
10th Percentile £349 £295 £300
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £537
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -2.23% -2.36%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £510 £525
% change year-on-year -1.96% -2.86% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,103 499 1,023
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.50 £13.69
25th Percentile £20.82 £22.86 £17.36
Median hourly rate £43.00 £45.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -4.44% +20.00% -30.56%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.25 £80.67 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.85 £47.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year -9.78% +18.75% -19.90%

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 14 April 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 14 April 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 14 April 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 9,078 £525 -2.78% 1,787
UK excluding London +1 5,811 £520 -5.11% 1,469
London +6 3,184 £525 - 495
Work from Home +4 2,764 £525 -0.66% 730
South East +1 2,136 £531 -3.44% 527
South West 0 1,353 £538 -4.44% 352
Midlands +4 902 £485 -9.68% 151
North of England -1 854 £488 -2.48% 241
West Midlands +4 755 £490 -9.26% 111
North West -1 531 £500 - 140
East of England +2 362 £500 +53.26% 151
Scotland +23 199 £513 +2.50% 37
Yorkshire -5 199 £484 -7.86% 44
North East +1 159 £450 -6.25% 58
East Midlands -1 143 £450 -11.11% 40
Wales +3 81 £550 +1.85% 26
Northern Ireland +10 22 £463 -2.63% 12

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
1 391 (3.74%) Confluence
2 227 (2.17%) SharePoint
3 166 (1.59%) SAS
4 139 (1.33%) Microsoft Exchange
5 103 (0.99%) Apache Spark
6 88 (0.84%) Apache
7 67 (0.64%) Apache Airflow
8 44 (0.42%) nginx
9 40 (0.38%) WebLogic
10 23 (0.22%) Jupyter
11 18 (0.17%) CMS
12 17 (0.16%) Skype for Business
13 16 (0.15%) IIS
14 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
15 14 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
15 14 (0.13%) Tomcat
16 12 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
17 11 (0.11%) ArcGIS
17 11 (0.11%) NetWeaver
18 8 (0.077%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 232 (2.22%) Microsoft Office
2 198 (1.89%) Microsoft Excel
3 130 (1.24%) Microsoft Project
4 77 (0.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 47 (0.45%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.15%) Simulink
8 7 (0.067%) Notepad++
9 5 (0.048%) Windchill
10 4 (0.038%) Siemens NX
10 4 (0.038%) Sketch
11 3 (0.029%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.019%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.019%) CATIA
12 2 (0.019%) Chatbot
12 2 (0.019%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.019%) InVision
12 2 (0.019%) Lectora
12 2 (0.019%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.019%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 109 (1.04%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (0.42%) Remedy ITSM
3 43 (0.41%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 30 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
5 28 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
6 26 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 20 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
8 19 (0.18%) SAP PP
9 18 (0.17%) Maximo
10 13 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
10 13 (0.12%) Temenos T24
11 11 (0.11%) Findur
11 11 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
11 11 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
12 9 (0.086%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.086%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.086%) SAP PM
13 8 (0.077%) SAP EWM
13 8 (0.077%) SAP VC
13 8 (0.077%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,800 (17.21%) AWS
2 1,750 (16.74%) Azure
3 452 (4.32%) GitHub
4 429 (4.10%) GCP
5 406 (3.88%) Azure DevOps
6 370 (3.54%) Power Platform
7 291 (2.78%) Serverless
8 282 (2.70%) Microsoft 365
9 243 (2.32%) Entra ID
10 237 (2.27%) GitHub Actions
11 219 (2.09%) Amazon S3
12 196 (1.87%) AWS Lambda
13 165 (1.58%) OpenShift
14 156 (1.49%) PaaS
15 147 (1.41%) AWS CloudFormation
16 142 (1.36%) IaaS
17 134 (1.28%) Amazon EC2
18 131 (1.25%) Amazon EKS
19 125 (1.20%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 116 (1.11%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 488 (4.67%) Firewall
2 288 (2.75%) DNS
3 235 (2.25%) Network Security
4 230 (2.20%) WAN
5 206 (1.97%) LAN
6 186 (1.78%) VPN
7 148 (1.42%) BGP
8 137 (1.31%) DHCP
9 129 (1.23%) TCP/IP
10 119 (1.14%) OSPF
11 103 (0.99%) VLAN
12 88 (0.84%) Wireless
13 73 (0.70%) Wi-Fi
14 68 (0.65%) MPLS
15 61 (0.58%) SAN
16 57 (0.55%) SSL
17 51 (0.49%) SD-WAN
18 50 (0.48%) IPsec
19 48 (0.46%) Cisco ISE
20 46 (0.44%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 282 (2.70%) Power BI
2 267 (2.55%) PostgreSQL
3 215 (2.06%) Data Warehouse
4 196 (1.87%) SQL Server
5 151 (1.44%) Metadata
6 123 (1.18%) Oracle Database
7 109 (1.04%) Amazon RDS
8 103 (0.99%) NoSQL
9 102 (0.98%) MongoDB
10 97 (0.93%) Relational Database
11 90 (0.86%) Data Lake
12 85 (0.81%) Azure SQL Database
13 83 (0.79%) MySQL
14 78 (0.75%) Elasticsearch
15 74 (0.71%) Tableau
16 70 (0.67%) Pentaho
17 69 (0.66%) Big Data
18 67 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
19 56 (0.54%) Delta Lake
20 55 (0.53%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 616 (5.89%) JIRA
2 509 (4.87%) Git
3 399 (3.82%) Jenkins
4 360 (3.44%) GitLab
5 125 (1.20%) Selenium
6 89 (0.85%) Postman
7 87 (0.83%) JUnit
8 62 (0.59%) SonarQube
9 53 (0.51%) Rational DOORS
10 50 (0.48%) Bitbucket
11 48 (0.46%) JMeter
12 46 (0.44%) Artifactory
13 43 (0.41%) Cypress.io
14 42 (0.40%) Maven
15 41 (0.39%) Cucumber
15 41 (0.39%) Oracle APEX
16 38 (0.36%) Mockito
17 36 (0.34%) Visual Studio
18 30 (0.29%) REST Assured
19 22 (0.21%) MSI
General
1 2,448 (23.41%) Public Sector
2 2,323 (22.22%) Social Skills
3 846 (8.09%) Analytical Skills
4 709 (6.78%) Finance
5 343 (3.28%) Military
6 286 (2.74%) Documentation Skills
7 242 (2.31%) Aerospace
8 171 (1.64%) Legal
9 165 (1.58%) Telecoms
10 159 (1.52%) Manufacturing
11 135 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
12 122 (1.17%) Banking
13 113 (1.08%) Organisational Skills
14 99 (0.95%) Presentation Skills
15 93 (0.89%) Marketing
16 87 (0.83%) Electronics
17 85 (0.81%) Law
18 73 (0.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 66 (0.63%) Police
20 32 (0.31%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,601 (15.31%) Architect
2 1,012 (9.68%) Developer
3 931 (8.90%) Senior
4 747 (7.14%) Analyst
5 682 (6.52%) Lead
6 579 (5.54%) Consultant
7 456 (4.36%) Data Engineer
8 441 (4.22%) DevOps Engineer
9 315 (3.01%) Technical Architect
10 306 (2.93%) Software Engineer
11 290 (2.77%) Network Engineer
12 288 (2.75%) Solutions Architect
13 273 (2.61%) Business Analyst
14 214 (2.05%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 213 (2.04%) Azure Engineer
16 212 (2.03%) Project Manager
17 199 (1.90%) Security Architect
18 198 (1.89%) Designer
19 185 (1.77%) Delivery Manager
20 183 (1.75%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 375 (3.59%) REST
2 235 (2.25%) Spring
3 210 (2.01%) Kafka
4 204 (1.95%) Node.js
5 182 (1.74%) Spring Boot
6 181 (1.73%) React
7 178 (1.70%) .NET
8 167 (1.60%) JSON
9 155 (1.48%) SOAP
10 150 (1.43%) LDAP
11 141 (1.35%) RESTful
12 132 (1.26%) PySpark
13 126 (1.21%) Web Services
14 119 (1.14%) AngularJS
15 104 (0.99%) OAuth
16 99 (0.95%) Oracle Fusion
17 97 (0.93%) XML
18 94 (0.90%) HTML
19 87 (0.83%) Middleware
20 78 (0.75%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 349 (3.34%) Product Ownership
2 321 (3.07%) Cloud Native
3 313 (2.99%) Data Centre
4 268 (2.56%) Onboarding
5 198 (1.89%) Management Information System
6 197 (1.88%) PKI
7 132 (1.26%) Security Posture
7 132 (1.26%) Self-Motivation
8 130 (1.24%) Legacy Systems
9 128 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
10 117 (1.12%) Replication
11 115 (1.10%) Distributed Systems
12 97 (0.93%) Public Cloud
13 82 (0.78%) Data Structures
14 80 (0.77%) Hybrid Cloud
14 80 (0.77%) Security Operations Centre
15 69 (0.66%) Clustering
15 69 (0.66%) Virtual Team
16 62 (0.59%) Driving Licence
17 59 (0.56%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 873 (8.35%) Windows
2 749 (7.16%) Linux
3 253 (2.42%) Windows Server
4 149 (1.43%) Unix
5 135 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 120 (1.15%) Android
7 114 (1.09%) Windows 10
8 62 (0.59%) Apple iOS
9 53 (0.51%) Mac OS
10 40 (0.38%) Ubuntu
11 34 (0.33%) VMS
12 26 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
13 25 (0.24%) Solaris
13 25 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 22 (0.21%) AIX
15 21 (0.20%) CentOS
16 16 (0.15%) Windows 7
17 14 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
18 9 (0.086%) Windows Server 2008
19 8 (0.077%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,056 (19.66%) Agile
2 1,563 (14.95%) DevOps
3 1,398 (13.37%) CI/CD
4 1,176 (11.25%) Problem-Solving
5 974 (9.32%) Stakeholder Management
6 890 (8.51%) Continuous Improvement
7 883 (8.44%) Migration
8 787 (7.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 676 (6.47%) Infrastructure as Code
10 645 (6.17%) ITIL
11 626 (5.99%) Cybersecurity
12 624 (5.97%) Analytics
13 609 (5.82%) Test Automation
14 581 (5.56%) Roadmaps
15 561 (5.37%) Containerisation
16 531 (5.08%) Software Engineering
17 507 (4.85%) Data Modelling
18 497 (4.75%) Scrum
19 463 (4.43%) Business Intelligence
20 461 (4.41%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 1,233 (11.79%) Python
2 953 (9.11%) SQL
3 616 (5.89%) PowerShell
4 615 (5.88%) Java
5 390 (3.73%) JavaScript
6 226 (2.16%) C#
7 214 (2.05%) Bash
8 179 (1.71%) TypeScript
9 122 (1.17%) PL/SQL
10 108 (1.03%) Shell Script
11 105 (1.00%) C++
12 76 (0.73%) Go
13 72 (0.69%) Ruby
14 63 (0.60%) Scala
15 60 (0.57%) C
16 56 (0.54%) Bicep
17 48 (0.46%) Apex Code
17 48 (0.46%) R
18 43 (0.41%) Ada
18 43 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 7,980 (76.32%) SC Cleared
2 1,846 (17.65%) DV Cleared
3 479 (4.58%) Degree
4 327 (3.13%) BPSS Clearance
5 200 (1.91%) Cisco Certification
6 179 (1.71%) CISSP
7 146 (1.40%) Azure Certification
8 132 (1.26%) AWS Certification
9 129 (1.23%) CCNP
10 115 (1.10%) CISM
11 107 (1.02%) Microsoft Certification
12 85 (0.81%) CCNA
13 79 (0.76%) Computer Science Degree
14 75 (0.72%) ITIL Certification
15 68 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
16 67 (0.64%) PMP
17 62 (0.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 61 (0.58%) ISTQB
19 60 (0.57%) PMI Certification
20 52 (0.50%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 361 (3.45%) QA
2 318 (3.04%) Data Quality
3 312 (2.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 299 (2.86%) NIST
5 211 (2.02%) NCSC
6 179 (1.71%) Accessibility
7 174 (1.66%) GDPR
8 133 (1.27%) PMO
9 115 (1.10%) SLA
10 71 (0.68%) JSP 440
11 66 (0.63%) GRC
12 46 (0.44%) NIST 800
13 43 (0.41%) COBIT
14 41 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials
15 40 (0.38%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 39 (0.37%) WCAG
17 36 (0.34%) PCI DSS
18 33 (0.32%) RMADS
19 29 (0.28%) Def Stans
20 24 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 694 (6.64%) Docker
2 483 (4.62%) Active Directory
3 286 (2.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 103 (0.99%) VMware NSX
5 82 (0.78%) VMware ESXi
6 78 (0.75%) vSphere
7 77 (0.74%) Hyper-V
8 54 (0.52%) Virtual Machines
9 37 (0.35%) Firmware
10 31 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
11 23 (0.22%) BitLocker
12 20 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
13 17 (0.16%) NFS
13 17 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 14 (0.13%) Postfix
15 12 (0.11%) Squid
15 12 (0.11%) vCloud
16 8 (0.077%) Microsoft App-V
17 7 (0.067%) KVM
18 6 (0.057%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 878 (8.40%) Kubernetes
2 830 (7.94%) Terraform
3 331 (3.17%) Ansible
4 244 (2.33%) Grafana
5 205 (1.96%) Prometheus
6 125 (1.20%) Single Sign-On
7 96 (0.92%) vCenter Server
8 86 (0.82%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 86 (0.82%) SCCM
9 64 (0.61%) Microsoft Intune
10 63 (0.60%) Argo
11 57 (0.55%) FortiGate
12 38 (0.36%) Puppet
13 37 (0.35%) Packer
14 36 (0.34%) Podman
14 36 (0.34%) Progress Chef
14 36 (0.34%) vRealize
15 31 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
16 30 (0.29%) OPNET
17 28 (0.27%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,072 (10.25%) Microsoft
2 630 (6.03%) Oracle
3 515 (4.93%) VMware
4 424 (4.06%) Cisco
5 418 (4.00%) ServiceNow
6 417 (3.99%) SAP
7 236 (2.26%) Splunk
8 212 (2.03%) Databricks
9 192 (1.84%) Red Hat
10 177 (1.69%) Salesforce
11 155 (1.48%) Google
12 131 (1.25%) Atlassian
13 129 (1.23%) IBM
14 122 (1.17%) Juniper
14 122 (1.17%) Palo Alto
15 105 (1.00%) Talend
16 104 (0.99%) CyberArk
17 87 (0.83%) Dell
17 87 (0.83%) Remedy
18 84 (0.80%) Fortinet