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

6 months to
28 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 11,498 5,780 7,424
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.75% 17.65% 18.49%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.34% 57.21% 61.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,983 3,697 4,948
10th Percentile £383 £339 £345
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.94% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £630 £620 £638
90th Percentile £724 £694 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 846 515 526
10th Percentile £18.31 £18.51 £15.22
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £62.75 £25.15 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +149.50% -54.27% -8.33%
75th Percentile £78.65 £53.13 £71.25
90th Percentile £88.00 £74.50 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £56.50
% change year-on-year +151.03% -55.49% -5.52%

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 16,581 10,104 11,990
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.37% 30.85% 29.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,078 6,264 7,609
10th Percentile £350 £281 £313
25th Percentile £431 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.48% -0.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £638
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,220 765 912
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.25
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £21.19
Median hourly rate £52.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +108.75% -41.51% -23.88%
75th Percentile £73.75 £56.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.02 £75.00 £76.15
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -21.79%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 9,942 £535 -0.47% 1,886
UK excluding London +1 6,469 £525 -2.33% 1,413
London +7 3,518 £545 +3.81% 611
Work from Home +4 3,110 £525 -1.59% 940
South East +1 2,461 £550 +1.30% 478
South West 0 1,310 £538 -6.52% 333
North of England +2 1,105 £500 - 282
Midlands +3 974 £469 -6.20% 163
West Midlands +1 834 £469 -6.20% 122
North West 0 590 £525 -0.38% 157
East of England +1 319 £563 +5.14% 123
Yorkshire +3 303 £500 +1.63% 63
Scotland +13 267 £498 +3.00% 36
North East 0 239 £475 -5.00% 63
East Midlands 0 128 £424 -8.38% 41
Wales +4 101 £550 +15.79% 22
Northern Ireland +4 33 £650 +25.00% 11

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
1 413 (3.59%) Confluence
2 272 (2.37%) SharePoint
3 194 (1.69%) SAS
4 125 (1.09%) Microsoft Exchange
5 108 (0.94%) Apache Spark
6 104 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
7 98 (0.85%) Apache
8 42 (0.37%) WebLogic
9 41 (0.36%) nginx
10 39 (0.34%) Jupyter
11 25 (0.22%) Tomcat
12 24 (0.21%) IIS
13 20 (0.17%) Oracle Application Server
13 20 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
14 16 (0.14%) NetWeaver
15 15 (0.13%) CMS
15 15 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
16 13 (0.11%) Skype for Business
17 12 (0.10%) Tuxedo
18 9 (0.078%) Documentum
Applications
1 212 (1.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 151 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
3 103 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
4 78 (0.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 51 (0.44%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.13%) Simulink
8 13 (0.11%) AutoCAD
8 13 (0.11%) Revit
8 13 (0.11%) SOLIDWORKS
9 9 (0.078%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.070%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.061%) Notepad++
11 7 (0.061%) Sketch
12 4 (0.035%) Trello
13 3 (0.026%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 3 (0.026%) Windchill
14 2 (0.017%) CATIA
14 2 (0.017%) CPLEX
14 2 (0.017%) Houdini
Business Applications
1 152 (1.32%) SAP S/4HANA
2 73 (0.63%) Remedy ITSM
3 42 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
3 42 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
4 38 (0.33%) Teamcenter
5 32 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 23 (0.20%) Dynamics CRM
6 23 (0.20%) SAP PSCD
7 22 (0.19%) SAP GRC
8 21 (0.18%) Primavera
9 15 (0.13%) Findur
9 15 (0.13%) Oracle Payroll
10 13 (0.11%) Oracle Payables
10 13 (0.11%) Temenos T24
11 12 (0.10%) iTrent
11 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
12 11 (0.096%) SAP HR
13 10 (0.087%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 10 (0.087%) NetSuite
13 10 (0.087%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 2,065 (17.96%) Azure
2 2,034 (17.69%) AWS
3 514 (4.47%) GitHub
4 493 (4.29%) Azure DevOps
5 468 (4.07%) Power Platform
6 433 (3.77%) GCP
7 317 (2.76%) GitHub Actions
8 310 (2.70%) Microsoft 365
9 285 (2.48%) Entra ID
10 278 (2.42%) Serverless
11 246 (2.14%) Amazon S3
12 199 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
13 164 (1.43%) SaaS
14 163 (1.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 163 (1.42%) OCI
15 158 (1.37%) Amazon EC2
15 158 (1.37%) Amazon EKS
16 154 (1.34%) PaaS
17 133 (1.16%) OpenShift
18 129 (1.12%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 484 (4.21%) Firewall
2 355 (3.09%) DNS
3 238 (2.07%) Network Security
4 235 (2.04%) WAN
5 201 (1.75%) VPN
6 199 (1.73%) LAN
7 174 (1.51%) DHCP
8 150 (1.30%) BGP
9 128 (1.11%) TCP/IP
10 120 (1.04%) OSPF
11 115 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
12 108 (0.94%) VLAN
13 91 (0.79%) Wireless
14 71 (0.62%) MPLS
15 68 (0.59%) IPsec
16 65 (0.57%) SAN
17 62 (0.54%) SD-WAN
18 59 (0.51%) VXLAN
19 58 (0.50%) SSL
19 58 (0.50%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 357 (3.10%) Power BI
2 307 (2.67%) PostgreSQL
3 287 (2.50%) SQL Server
4 283 (2.46%) Data Warehouse
5 170 (1.48%) Oracle Database
6 163 (1.42%) Metadata
7 136 (1.18%) Data Lake
8 130 (1.13%) Relational Database
9 106 (0.92%) MongoDB
10 105 (0.91%) Amazon RDS
11 99 (0.86%) MySQL
11 99 (0.86%) Oracle Reports
12 90 (0.78%) Pentaho
13 79 (0.69%) NoSQL
14 77 (0.67%) Elasticsearch
15 74 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
16 69 (0.60%) Amazon Athena
17 65 (0.57%) Big Data
18 60 (0.52%) Tableau
19 51 (0.44%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 663 (5.77%) JIRA
2 556 (4.84%) Git
3 461 (4.01%) GitLab
4 455 (3.96%) Jenkins
5 121 (1.05%) Selenium
6 85 (0.74%) SonarQube
7 84 (0.73%) JUnit
8 76 (0.66%) Postman
9 67 (0.58%) Maven
10 63 (0.55%) JMeter
11 55 (0.48%) Cucumber
11 55 (0.48%) Rational DOORS
12 47 (0.41%) Mockito
12 47 (0.41%) Visual Studio
13 44 (0.38%) Cypress.io
14 42 (0.37%) Zephyr
15 41 (0.36%) Artifactory
15 41 (0.36%) Bitbucket
16 40 (0.35%) REST Assured
17 37 (0.32%) Gatling
General
1 2,505 (21.79%) Public Sector
2 2,352 (20.46%) Social Skills
3 866 (7.53%) Analytical Skills
4 765 (6.65%) Finance
5 366 (3.18%) Military
6 291 (2.53%) Aerospace
7 286 (2.49%) Documentation Skills
8 179 (1.56%) Influencing Skills
9 178 (1.55%) Legal
10 149 (1.30%) Telecoms
11 143 (1.24%) Organisational Skills
12 128 (1.11%) Banking
13 112 (0.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 103 (0.90%) Manufacturing
14 103 (0.90%) Police
15 102 (0.89%) Law
16 72 (0.63%) Presentation Skills
17 51 (0.44%) Aviation
18 43 (0.37%) Marketing
19 38 (0.33%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,811 (15.75%) Architect
2 1,281 (11.14%) Developer
3 1,061 (9.23%) Senior
4 968 (8.42%) Lead
5 703 (6.11%) Analyst
6 604 (5.25%) Consultant
7 524 (4.56%) Data Engineer
8 479 (4.17%) DevOps Engineer
9 395 (3.44%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 368 (3.20%) Technical Architect
11 353 (3.07%) Solutions Architect
12 332 (2.89%) Software Engineer
13 277 (2.41%) Security Architect
14 268 (2.33%) Network Engineer
15 233 (2.03%) Data Architect
16 230 (2.00%) Java Developer
17 225 (1.96%) Designer
18 209 (1.82%) Business Analyst
19 207 (1.80%) Project Manager
20 204 (1.77%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 413 (3.59%) REST
2 268 (2.33%) Spring
3 233 (2.03%) Spring Boot
4 225 (1.96%) .NET
5 221 (1.92%) Kafka
6 204 (1.77%) React
7 203 (1.77%) RESTful
8 185 (1.61%) Node.js
9 170 (1.48%) SOAP
10 154 (1.34%) JSON
11 139 (1.21%) AngularJS
12 131 (1.14%) Web Services
13 122 (1.06%) OAuth
14 113 (0.98%) HTML
15 107 (0.93%) Middleware
16 103 (0.90%) XML
17 101 (0.88%) PySpark
18 88 (0.77%) Playwright
19 81 (0.70%) CSS
19 81 (0.70%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 470 (4.09%) Cloud Native
2 397 (3.45%) Onboarding
3 358 (3.11%) Product Ownership
4 322 (2.80%) Data Centre
5 239 (2.08%) Management Information System
6 198 (1.72%) Legacy Systems
7 172 (1.50%) Distributed Systems
8 166 (1.44%) PKI
9 129 (1.12%) Enterprise Software
10 128 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
11 127 (1.10%) CMDB
12 118 (1.03%) Data Structures
13 108 (0.94%) Hybrid Cloud
14 104 (0.90%) Replication
15 99 (0.86%) Clustering
16 94 (0.82%) Public Cloud
17 88 (0.77%) Virtual Team
18 85 (0.74%) Security Posture
19 81 (0.70%) Security Operations Centre
20 75 (0.65%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 913 (7.94%) Windows
2 781 (6.79%) Linux
3 300 (2.61%) Windows Server
4 226 (1.97%) Unix
5 152 (1.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 100 (0.87%) Android
7 95 (0.83%) Windows 10
8 67 (0.58%) Apple iOS
9 63 (0.55%) Solaris
10 48 (0.42%) Mac OS
11 37 (0.32%) Ubuntu
12 36 (0.31%) AIX
12 36 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
13 29 (0.25%) CentOS
14 21 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
15 20 (0.17%) VMS
16 14 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
17 13 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
18 11 (0.096%) Windows 7
19 10 (0.087%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,384 (20.73%) Agile
2 1,774 (15.43%) DevOps
3 1,672 (14.54%) CI/CD
4 1,253 (10.90%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,233 (10.72%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,220 (10.61%) Problem-Solving
7 1,039 (9.04%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 883 (7.68%) Infrastructure as Code
8 883 (7.68%) Migration
9 737 (6.41%) ITIL
10 731 (6.36%) Cybersecurity
11 716 (6.23%) Containerisation
12 712 (6.19%) Test Automation
13 711 (6.18%) Analytics
14 682 (5.93%) Software Engineering
15 661 (5.75%) Roadmaps
16 641 (5.57%) Decision-Making
17 626 (5.44%) Data Modelling
18 608 (5.29%) AI
19 600 (5.22%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,277 (11.11%) Python
2 1,121 (9.75%) SQL
3 818 (7.11%) Java
4 514 (4.47%) PowerShell
5 371 (3.23%) JavaScript
6 281 (2.44%) Bash
7 259 (2.25%) C#
8 184 (1.60%) TypeScript
9 180 (1.57%) PL/SQL
10 102 (0.89%) Bicep
11 96 (0.83%) Shell Script
12 86 (0.75%) C++
13 62 (0.54%) C
14 60 (0.52%) Apex Code
15 56 (0.49%) Ruby
16 54 (0.47%) Kotlin
17 52 (0.45%) Go
18 49 (0.43%) Scala
19 39 (0.34%) Groovy
20 37 (0.32%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 8,779 (76.35%) SC Cleared
2 2,177 (18.93%) DV Cleared
3 453 (3.94%) Degree
4 419 (3.64%) BPSS Clearance
5 214 (1.86%) Cisco Certification
6 184 (1.60%) CISSP
7 164 (1.43%) Azure Certification
8 145 (1.26%) Microsoft Certification
9 130 (1.13%) AWS Certification
10 114 (0.99%) CISM
11 107 (0.93%) PMI Certification
12 102 (0.89%) PMP
13 98 (0.85%) CCNP
14 93 (0.81%) CCNA
15 81 (0.70%) ISTQB
16 66 (0.57%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 63 (0.55%) Computer Science Degree
18 49 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
19 48 (0.42%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 48 (0.42%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 441 (3.84%) QA
2 376 (3.27%) Data Quality
3 301 (2.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 299 (2.60%) NIST
5 255 (2.22%) Accessibility
6 240 (2.09%) NCSC
7 210 (1.83%) PMO
8 181 (1.57%) GDPR
9 139 (1.21%) GRC
10 135 (1.17%) SLA
11 75 (0.65%) WCAG
12 64 (0.56%) JSP 440
13 50 (0.43%) NIST 800
14 44 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
15 31 (0.27%) Government Security Classifications
16 29 (0.25%) Def Stans
17 28 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 27 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 22 (0.19%) RMADS
20 20 (0.17%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 783 (6.81%) Docker
2 496 (4.31%) Active Directory
3 378 (3.29%) VMware Infrastructure
4 141 (1.23%) VMware NSX
5 133 (1.16%) VMware ESXi
6 105 (0.91%) vSphere
7 102 (0.89%) Hyper-V
8 81 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
9 47 (0.41%) Oracle RAC
10 37 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
11 30 (0.26%) Firmware
12 22 (0.19%) NFS
12 22 (0.19%) vCloud
13 20 (0.17%) BitLocker
14 18 (0.16%) Postfix
15 16 (0.14%) Squid
16 9 (0.078%) KVM
17 8 (0.070%) Microsoft App-V
18 7 (0.061%) UAG
19 6 (0.052%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 962 (8.37%) Terraform
2 932 (8.11%) Kubernetes
3 412 (3.58%) Ansible
4 269 (2.34%) Grafana
5 213 (1.85%) Prometheus
6 130 (1.13%) vCenter Server
7 103 (0.90%) SCCM
8 84 (0.73%) Microsoft Intune
9 70 (0.61%) Argo
10 65 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
11 61 (0.53%) SCOM
12 55 (0.48%) Oracle RMAN
13 50 (0.43%) Puppet
14 44 (0.38%) FortiGate
15 38 (0.33%) Data Guard
16 30 (0.26%) Nagios
17 29 (0.25%) Progress Chef
18 27 (0.23%) Podman
19 24 (0.21%) Istio
19 24 (0.21%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 1,307 (11.37%) Microsoft
2 896 (7.79%) Oracle
3 558 (4.85%) VMware
4 550 (4.78%) ServiceNow
5 416 (3.62%) SAP
6 312 (2.71%) Cisco
7 214 (1.86%) Google
8 210 (1.83%) Splunk
9 200 (1.74%) Databricks
10 191 (1.66%) Salesforce
11 157 (1.37%) Red Hat
12 141 (1.23%) Informatica
13 140 (1.22%) Talend
14 125 (1.09%) IBM
15 115 (1.00%) Palo Alto
16 102 (0.89%) Juniper
17 97 (0.84%) F5
18 94 (0.82%) SolarWinds
19 90 (0.78%) Fortinet
20 86 (0.75%) Citrix