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

6 months to
18 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,928 5,300 8,014
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.68% 17.81% 18.27%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.28% 57.50% 61.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,541 3,442 5,262
10th Percentile £383 £340 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £620 £650
90th Percentile £714 £695 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £536 £550
% change year-on-year -1.96% -2.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 839 371 576
10th Percentile £18.13 £18.50 £14.14
25th Percentile £25.25 £19.13 £21.46
Median hourly rate £60.33 £27.13 £56.15
Median % change year-on-year +122.41% -51.69% -6.97%
75th Percentile £75.00 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.36 £77.50 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.17 £27.39 £57.50
% change year-on-year +119.68% -52.37% -

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 15,774 9,218 13,110
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.30% 30.97% 29.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,501 5,726 8,114
10th Percentile £350 £275 £310
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £614 £638
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £506 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +1.25% -4.76% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,161 600 1,122
10th Percentile £17.23 £17.78 £13.99
25th Percentile £22.68 £20.81 £18.84
Median hourly rate £50.00 £30.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +66.67% -25.00% -27.65%
75th Percentile £72.50 £63.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.50 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.61 £28.50 £41.50
% change year-on-year +70.56% -31.33% -20.95%

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 18 June 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 18 June 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 18 June 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 9,440 £525 -2.23% 1,576
UK excluding London +1 6,096 £525 -1.96% 1,356
London +7 3,372 £525 - 414
Work from Home +5 2,989 £525 - 741
South East +1 2,261 £550 - 468
South West 0 1,293 £538 -4.44% 343
North of England +2 978 £500 - 239
Midlands +2 911 £469 -10.24% 109
West Midlands +2 791 £469 -10.67% 70
North West 0 531 £525 +5.00% 133
East of England +2 361 £550 +10.00% 108
Scotland +24 269 £500 +14.29% 64
Yorkshire -5 250 £500 +1.63% 58
North East +1 228 £480 - 52
East Midlands -6 109 £431 -11.67% 39
Wales +6 87 £500 +5.26% 26
Northern Ireland +7 31 £644 +35.53% 32

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
1 401 (3.67%) Confluence
2 234 (2.14%) SharePoint
3 165 (1.51%) SAS
4 130 (1.19%) Microsoft Exchange
5 103 (0.94%) Apache Spark
6 99 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
7 91 (0.83%) Apache
8 46 (0.42%) Jupyter
9 42 (0.38%) nginx
10 35 (0.32%) WebLogic
11 25 (0.23%) Tomcat
12 18 (0.16%) IIS
12 18 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
13 16 (0.15%) NetWeaver
14 15 (0.14%) CMS
14 15 (0.14%) Oracle Application Server
15 14 (0.13%) Skype for Business
16 12 (0.11%) ArcGIS
16 12 (0.11%) Tuxedo
17 8 (0.073%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 174 (1.59%) Microsoft Excel
2 146 (1.34%) Microsoft Office
3 79 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
4 76 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 48 (0.44%) MS Visio
6 16 (0.15%) Simulink
7 15 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
8 10 (0.092%) SOLIDWORKS
9 9 (0.082%) AutoCAD
9 9 (0.082%) Chatbot
9 9 (0.082%) Revit
10 7 (0.064%) Notepad++
11 4 (0.037%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.037%) Sketch
12 3 (0.027%) Windchill
13 2 (0.018%) CATIA
13 2 (0.018%) Lectora
13 2 (0.018%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.018%) PlantUML
13 2 (0.018%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 124 (1.13%) SAP S/4HANA
2 61 (0.56%) Remedy ITSM
3 42 (0.38%) Oracle ERP
4 33 (0.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 31 (0.28%) Teamcenter
6 30 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
7 26 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
8 16 (0.15%) Primavera
8 16 (0.15%) SAP GRC
8 16 (0.15%) SAP PSCD
9 15 (0.14%) Findur
9 15 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
10 14 (0.13%) Maximo
11 12 (0.11%) iTrent
11 12 (0.11%) Temenos T24
12 10 (0.092%) Oracle Assets
12 10 (0.092%) SAP ERP
12 10 (0.092%) SAP HR
13 9 (0.082%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 9 (0.082%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,969 (18.02%) AWS
2 1,908 (17.46%) Azure
3 456 (4.17%) GitHub
4 429 (3.93%) Azure DevOps
5 417 (3.82%) Power Platform
6 413 (3.78%) GCP
7 281 (2.57%) Serverless
8 274 (2.51%) GitHub Actions
9 270 (2.47%) Entra ID
9 270 (2.47%) Microsoft 365
10 230 (2.10%) Amazon S3
11 197 (1.80%) AWS Lambda
12 166 (1.52%) Amazon EC2
13 159 (1.45%) PaaS
14 156 (1.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 146 (1.34%) SaaS
16 142 (1.30%) Amazon EKS
17 137 (1.25%) OCI
18 136 (1.24%) OpenShift
19 120 (1.10%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 454 (4.15%) Firewall
2 306 (2.80%) DNS
3 241 (2.21%) Network Security
4 225 (2.06%) WAN
5 195 (1.78%) LAN
6 180 (1.65%) VPN
7 160 (1.46%) DHCP
8 139 (1.27%) BGP
9 117 (1.07%) OSPF
10 111 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
11 108 (0.99%) VLAN
12 103 (0.94%) TCP/IP
13 88 (0.81%) Wireless
14 67 (0.61%) MPLS
15 59 (0.54%) SD-WAN
16 58 (0.53%) SAN
16 58 (0.53%) VXLAN
17 52 (0.48%) Structured Cabling
18 51 (0.47%) IPsec
19 48 (0.44%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 323 (2.96%) Power BI
2 286 (2.62%) PostgreSQL
3 264 (2.42%) Data Warehouse
4 228 (2.09%) SQL Server
5 159 (1.45%) Oracle Database
6 139 (1.27%) Metadata
7 131 (1.20%) Data Lake
8 116 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
9 114 (1.04%) Relational Database
10 105 (0.96%) MongoDB
11 87 (0.80%) MySQL
12 86 (0.79%) Pentaho
13 82 (0.75%) Elasticsearch
14 81 (0.74%) Oracle Reports
15 77 (0.70%) NoSQL
16 75 (0.69%) Amazon Redshift
17 72 (0.66%) Amazon Athena
18 66 (0.60%) Tableau
19 64 (0.59%) Big Data
20 56 (0.51%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 630 (5.77%) JIRA
2 488 (4.47%) Git
3 466 (4.26%) GitLab
4 430 (3.93%) Jenkins
5 121 (1.11%) Selenium
6 87 (0.80%) JUnit
7 86 (0.79%) Postman
8 80 (0.73%) SonarQube
9 65 (0.59%) JMeter
10 58 (0.53%) Rational DOORS
11 57 (0.52%) Cucumber
12 52 (0.48%) Artifactory
13 45 (0.41%) Bitbucket
14 43 (0.39%) Cypress.io
14 43 (0.39%) Mockito
15 41 (0.38%) Visual Studio
15 41 (0.38%) Zephyr
16 40 (0.37%) Maven
16 40 (0.37%) REST Assured
17 37 (0.34%) Gatling
General
1 2,410 (22.05%) Public Sector
2 2,205 (20.18%) Social Skills
3 740 (6.77%) Analytical Skills
4 692 (6.33%) Finance
5 343 (3.14%) Military
6 299 (2.74%) Documentation Skills
7 288 (2.64%) Aerospace
8 176 (1.61%) Legal
9 134 (1.23%) Influencing Skills
10 128 (1.17%) Banking
11 117 (1.07%) Telecoms
12 100 (0.92%) Law
13 99 (0.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 97 (0.89%) Organisational Skills
15 94 (0.86%) Manufacturing
16 77 (0.70%) Presentation Skills
17 70 (0.64%) Police
18 54 (0.49%) Aviation
19 46 (0.42%) Marketing
20 41 (0.38%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,660 (15.19%) Architect
2 1,080 (9.88%) Developer
3 954 (8.73%) Senior
4 814 (7.45%) Lead
5 731 (6.69%) Analyst
6 544 (4.98%) Consultant
7 528 (4.83%) Data Engineer
8 517 (4.73%) DevOps Engineer
9 360 (3.29%) Technical Architect
10 324 (2.96%) Software Engineer
10 324 (2.96%) Solutions Architect
11 321 (2.94%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 280 (2.56%) Network Engineer
13 254 (2.32%) Business Analyst
14 240 (2.20%) Security Architect
15 226 (2.07%) Project Manager
16 216 (1.98%) Designer
17 209 (1.91%) Azure Engineer
18 204 (1.87%) Delivery Manager
19 203 (1.86%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 330 (3.02%) REST
2 248 (2.27%) Spring
3 209 (1.91%) Spring Boot
4 201 (1.84%) React
5 194 (1.78%) Kafka
6 187 (1.71%) .NET
7 180 (1.65%) Node.js
8 158 (1.45%) RESTful
9 143 (1.31%) SOAP
10 134 (1.23%) LDAP
11 127 (1.16%) JSON
12 125 (1.14%) AngularJS
13 114 (1.04%) PySpark
13 114 (1.04%) Web Services
14 109 (1.00%) OAuth
15 102 (0.93%) Middleware
16 92 (0.84%) HTML
17 91 (0.83%) Playwright
18 86 (0.79%) OpenID
19 81 (0.74%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 414 (3.79%) Cloud Native
2 348 (3.18%) Product Ownership
3 320 (2.93%) Onboarding
4 309 (2.83%) Data Centre
5 221 (2.02%) Management Information System
6 165 (1.51%) Legacy Systems
7 145 (1.33%) PKI
8 140 (1.28%) Distributed Systems
9 127 (1.16%) Enterprise Software
10 115 (1.05%) Security Posture
11 112 (1.02%) Replication
12 108 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
13 96 (0.88%) CMDB
13 96 (0.88%) Data Structures
14 87 (0.80%) Public Cloud
15 85 (0.78%) Clustering
16 84 (0.77%) Hybrid Cloud
17 82 (0.75%) Security Operations Centre
18 76 (0.70%) Virtual Team
19 75 (0.69%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 836 (7.65%) Windows
2 720 (6.59%) Linux
3 260 (2.38%) Windows Server
4 197 (1.80%) Unix
5 129 (1.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 89 (0.81%) Android
7 82 (0.75%) Windows 10
8 65 (0.59%) Apple iOS
9 55 (0.50%) Solaris
10 38 (0.35%) Mac OS
11 36 (0.33%) Ubuntu
12 31 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
13 29 (0.27%) AIX
14 28 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
15 21 (0.19%) CentOS
15 21 (0.19%) VMS
16 16 (0.15%) Windows 7
17 15 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
18 11 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
18 11 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,149 (19.67%) Agile
2 1,704 (15.59%) DevOps
3 1,545 (14.14%) CI/CD
4 1,114 (10.19%) Problem-Solving
5 1,094 (10.01%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,058 (9.68%) Continuous Improvement
7 899 (8.23%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 863 (7.90%) Migration
9 810 (7.41%) Infrastructure as Code
10 680 (6.22%) Test Automation
11 667 (6.10%) Cybersecurity
12 644 (5.89%) Analytics
13 639 (5.85%) Containerisation
14 621 (5.68%) ITIL
15 620 (5.67%) Software Engineering
16 604 (5.53%) Roadmaps
17 582 (5.33%) Decision-Making
18 566 (5.18%) Data Modelling
19 508 (4.65%) AI
20 491 (4.49%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,201 (10.99%) Python
2 1,038 (9.50%) SQL
3 708 (6.48%) Java
4 511 (4.68%) PowerShell
5 325 (2.97%) JavaScript
6 231 (2.11%) C#
7 217 (1.99%) Bash
8 189 (1.73%) TypeScript
9 142 (1.30%) PL/SQL
10 94 (0.86%) Shell Script
11 93 (0.85%) C++
12 78 (0.71%) Bicep
13 64 (0.59%) Apex Code
13 64 (0.59%) C
14 60 (0.55%) Ruby
15 58 (0.53%) Go
16 52 (0.48%) Scala
17 45 (0.41%) Ada
17 45 (0.41%) Kotlin
18 40 (0.37%) R
Qualifications
1 8,383 (76.71%) SC Cleared
2 1,960 (17.94%) DV Cleared
3 425 (3.89%) Degree
4 329 (3.01%) BPSS Clearance
5 212 (1.94%) Cisco Certification
6 177 (1.62%) CISSP
7 140 (1.28%) Azure Certification
8 123 (1.13%) AWS Certification
9 117 (1.07%) CISM
10 111 (1.02%) Microsoft Certification
11 108 (0.99%) CCNP
12 96 (0.88%) CCNA
13 88 (0.81%) PMP
14 86 (0.79%) PMI Certification
15 75 (0.69%) ISTQB
16 67 (0.61%) Computer Science Degree
17 63 (0.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 56 (0.51%) ITIL Certification
19 41 (0.38%) CompTIA Security+
19 41 (0.38%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 419 (3.83%) QA
2 336 (3.07%) Data Quality
3 313 (2.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 312 (2.86%) NIST
5 233 (2.13%) NCSC
6 214 (1.96%) Accessibility
7 184 (1.68%) GDPR
8 174 (1.59%) PMO
9 123 (1.13%) SLA
10 95 (0.87%) GRC
11 68 (0.62%) JSP 440
12 50 (0.46%) WCAG
13 49 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials
14 44 (0.40%) NIST 800
15 37 (0.34%) RMADS
16 33 (0.30%) Def Stans
17 29 (0.27%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 25 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
19 24 (0.22%) COBIT
20 22 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 694 (6.35%) Docker
2 463 (4.24%) Active Directory
3 309 (2.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 113 (1.03%) VMware ESXi
5 106 (0.97%) VMware NSX
6 91 (0.83%) Hyper-V
7 81 (0.74%) vSphere
8 73 (0.67%) Virtual Machines
9 39 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
10 33 (0.30%) Firmware
11 24 (0.22%) BitLocker
11 24 (0.22%) NFS
12 21 (0.19%) vCloud
13 20 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
14 19 (0.17%) Postfix
14 19 (0.17%) Squid
15 15 (0.14%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 10 (0.092%) Microsoft App-V
17 6 (0.055%) Corosync
17 6 (0.055%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 898 (8.22%) Terraform
2 856 (7.83%) Kubernetes
3 371 (3.39%) Ansible
4 270 (2.47%) Grafana
5 225 (2.06%) Prometheus
6 110 (1.01%) vCenter Server
7 98 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
8 76 (0.70%) SCCM
9 60 (0.55%) Microsoft Intune
10 58 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 54 (0.49%) Argo
12 50 (0.46%) FortiGate
13 45 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
14 42 (0.38%) Puppet
15 39 (0.36%) SCOM
16 38 (0.35%) Podman
17 27 (0.25%) Nagios
17 27 (0.25%) Progress Chef
18 26 (0.24%) vRealize
19 24 (0.22%) vMotion
Vendors
1 1,107 (10.13%) Microsoft
2 763 (6.98%) Oracle
3 497 (4.55%) VMware
4 448 (4.10%) ServiceNow
5 349 (3.19%) SAP
6 338 (3.09%) Cisco
7 227 (2.08%) Splunk
8 202 (1.85%) Databricks
9 185 (1.69%) Salesforce
10 167 (1.53%) Google
11 162 (1.48%) Red Hat
12 146 (1.34%) Talend
13 128 (1.17%) IBM
14 122 (1.12%) Informatica
15 117 (1.07%) Palo Alto
16 101 (0.92%) Juniper
17 93 (0.85%) Fortinet
18 90 (0.82%) F5
19 87 (0.80%) Dynatrace
20 86 (0.79%) Denodo