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

6 months to
11 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,588 5,884 7,245
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.70% 17.87% 18.61%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.23% 57.28% 62.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,093 3,734 4,821
10th Percentile £383 £350 £350
25th Percentile £451 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £537 £535 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.47% -2.82% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £699 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 843 546 502
10th Percentile £19.33 £18.51 £15.50
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.06
Median hourly rate £63.50 £25.15 £56.50
Median % change year-on-year +152.49% -55.48% -5.84%
75th Percentile £80.00 £47.97 £71.86
90th Percentile £88.00 £73.75 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 £25.15 £58.17
% change year-on-year +154.47% -56.77% +1.17%

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 16,739 10,272 11,674
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.34% 31.20% 29.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,202 6,341 7,402
10th Percentile £350 £290 £313
25th Percentile £431 £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 £703 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £514 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.80% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,264 805 852
10th Percentile £17.72 £17.87 £15.10
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.23 £21.25
Median hourly rate £51.25 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +103.78% -41.51% -21.82%
75th Percentile £73.53 £53.95 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.16 £73.75 £77.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £47.50
% change year-on-year +98.81% -47.05% -7.77%

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 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 11 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 11 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 10,046 £538 - 2,868
UK excluding London +1 6,518 £525 -2.33% 2,184
London +7 3,567 £550 +3.77% 884
Work from Home +4 3,132 £525 -2.23% 1,419
South East +1 2,445 £560 +4.19% 667
South West 0 1,340 £538 -6.52% 554
North of England +2 1,136 £505 +1.00% 451
Midlands +1 980 £469 -8.40% 225
West Midlands +1 850 £469 -8.93% 178
North West +2 615 £525 - 297
East of England 0 323 £551 +0.18% 163
Yorkshire +3 304 £500 +1.63% 81
Scotland +10 259 £495 +2.48% 94
North East 0 241 £475 -5.00% 75
East Midlands -1 118 £438 -6.61% 47
Wales +2 99 £550 +15.79% 43
Northern Ireland +4 33 £650 +25.00% 25

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
1 417 (3.60%) Confluence
2 272 (2.35%) SharePoint
3 194 (1.67%) SAS
4 125 (1.08%) Microsoft Exchange
5 100 (0.86%) Apache Spark
6 97 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
7 91 (0.79%) Apache
8 39 (0.34%) WebLogic
9 37 (0.32%) Jupyter
10 36 (0.31%) nginx
11 24 (0.21%) IIS
11 24 (0.21%) Tomcat
12 23 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
13 19 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
13 19 (0.16%) Skype for Business
14 16 (0.14%) CMS
14 16 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
15 15 (0.13%) NetWeaver
16 12 (0.10%) JBoss
17 11 (0.095%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 210 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 153 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 100 (0.86%) Microsoft Project
4 81 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 45 (0.39%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.13%) AutoCAD
7 15 (0.13%) Revit
7 15 (0.13%) Simulink
8 14 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
9 9 (0.078%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.069%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.060%) Notepad++
11 7 (0.060%) Sketch
12 4 (0.035%) Windchill
13 3 (0.026%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 3 (0.026%) Trello
14 2 (0.017%) Lectora
14 2 (0.017%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.017%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 148 (1.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 81 (0.70%) Remedy ITSM
3 47 (0.41%) Oracle ERP
4 41 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
5 33 (0.28%) Teamcenter
6 32 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 28 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
8 22 (0.19%) SAP PSCD
9 21 (0.18%) Primavera
10 20 (0.17%) Oracle Payroll
10 20 (0.17%) SAP GRC
11 15 (0.13%) Findur
11 15 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
12 13 (0.11%) Temenos T24
13 12 (0.10%) iTrent
13 12 (0.10%) SAP FI
13 12 (0.10%) SAP HR
13 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
14 11 (0.095%) NetSuite
15 10 (0.086%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,121 (18.30%) Azure
2 2,067 (17.84%) AWS
3 546 (4.71%) GitHub
4 525 (4.53%) Azure DevOps
5 479 (4.13%) Power Platform
6 450 (3.88%) GCP
7 343 (2.96%) GitHub Actions
8 307 (2.65%) Microsoft 365
9 298 (2.57%) Entra ID
10 288 (2.49%) Serverless
11 247 (2.13%) Amazon S3
12 203 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
13 177 (1.53%) OCI
14 175 (1.51%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 169 (1.46%) SaaS
16 163 (1.41%) Amazon EKS
17 161 (1.39%) Amazon EC2
18 148 (1.28%) PaaS
19 138 (1.19%) OpenShift
20 134 (1.16%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 493 (4.25%) Firewall
2 386 (3.33%) DNS
3 231 (1.99%) WAN
4 227 (1.96%) Network Security
5 204 (1.76%) VPN
6 197 (1.70%) LAN
7 193 (1.67%) DHCP
8 142 (1.23%) BGP
9 138 (1.19%) TCP/IP
10 118 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
11 112 (0.97%) OSPF
12 109 (0.94%) VLAN
13 90 (0.78%) Wireless
14 67 (0.58%) VSAN
15 65 (0.56%) MPLS
16 64 (0.55%) IPsec
16 64 (0.55%) SAN
17 62 (0.54%) SSL
18 59 (0.51%) SD-WAN
18 59 (0.51%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 358 (3.09%) Power BI
2 311 (2.68%) PostgreSQL
3 290 (2.50%) Data Warehouse
4 288 (2.49%) SQL Server
5 167 (1.44%) Oracle Database
6 157 (1.35%) Metadata
7 137 (1.18%) Data Lake
8 132 (1.14%) Relational Database
9 120 (1.04%) Amazon RDS
10 113 (0.98%) MongoDB
11 107 (0.92%) Oracle Reports
12 99 (0.85%) MySQL
13 96 (0.83%) Pentaho
14 85 (0.73%) NoSQL
15 70 (0.60%) Amazon Redshift
16 66 (0.57%) Amazon Athena
16 66 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
17 62 (0.54%) Tableau
18 57 (0.49%) Big Data
19 51 (0.44%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 670 (5.78%) JIRA
2 590 (5.09%) Git
3 489 (4.22%) GitLab
4 486 (4.19%) Jenkins
5 131 (1.13%) Selenium
6 85 (0.73%) Postman
7 83 (0.72%) SonarQube
8 78 (0.67%) JUnit
9 70 (0.60%) Maven
10 69 (0.60%) JMeter
11 58 (0.50%) Rational DOORS
12 56 (0.48%) Cucumber
13 51 (0.44%) Visual Studio
14 48 (0.41%) Zephyr
15 46 (0.40%) Cypress.io
15 46 (0.40%) Mockito
16 44 (0.38%) Bitbucket
17 42 (0.36%) Gradle
18 39 (0.34%) Gatling
19 38 (0.33%) Artifactory
General
1 2,455 (21.19%) Public Sector
2 2,427 (20.94%) Social Skills
3 893 (7.71%) Analytical Skills
4 764 (6.59%) Finance
5 357 (3.08%) Military
6 303 (2.61%) Aerospace
7 286 (2.47%) Documentation Skills
8 176 (1.52%) Influencing Skills
9 171 (1.48%) Legal
10 156 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
11 151 (1.30%) Telecoms
12 136 (1.17%) Banking
13 127 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 108 (0.93%) Manufacturing
14 108 (0.93%) Police
15 102 (0.88%) Law
16 75 (0.65%) Presentation Skills
17 53 (0.46%) Aviation
18 43 (0.37%) Marketing
19 41 (0.35%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,831 (15.80%) Architect
2 1,286 (11.10%) Developer
3 1,101 (9.50%) Senior
4 999 (8.62%) Lead
5 679 (5.86%) Analyst
6 645 (5.57%) Consultant
7 534 (4.61%) Data Engineer
8 477 (4.12%) DevOps Engineer
9 419 (3.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 370 (3.19%) Technical Architect
11 353 (3.05%) Solutions Architect
12 329 (2.84%) Software Engineer
13 280 (2.42%) Security Architect
14 256 (2.21%) Network Engineer
15 248 (2.14%) Data Architect
16 224 (1.93%) Java Developer
17 218 (1.88%) Designer
18 216 (1.86%) Administrator
19 211 (1.82%) Delivery Manager
20 207 (1.79%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 433 (3.74%) REST
2 267 (2.30%) Spring
3 236 (2.04%) .NET
4 233 (2.01%) Kafka
5 232 (2.00%) Spring Boot
6 213 (1.84%) RESTful
7 202 (1.74%) React
8 185 (1.60%) Node.js
9 171 (1.48%) SOAP
10 157 (1.35%) JSON
11 138 (1.19%) AngularJS
12 134 (1.16%) Web Services
13 126 (1.09%) OAuth
14 122 (1.05%) HTML
15 115 (0.99%) XML
16 111 (0.96%) Middleware
17 97 (0.84%) PySpark
18 92 (0.79%) Playwright
19 90 (0.78%) Oracle Fusion
20 88 (0.76%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 488 (4.21%) Cloud Native
2 398 (3.43%) Onboarding
3 364 (3.14%) Product Ownership
4 318 (2.74%) Data Centre
5 235 (2.03%) Management Information System
6 197 (1.70%) Legacy Systems
7 169 (1.46%) Distributed Systems
7 169 (1.46%) PKI
8 142 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
9 138 (1.19%) CMDB
10 122 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
11 117 (1.01%) Data Structures
11 117 (1.01%) Hybrid Cloud
12 116 (1.00%) Replication
13 104 (0.90%) Clustering
14 97 (0.84%) Public Cloud
15 88 (0.76%) Security Operations Centre
16 87 (0.75%) Virtual Team
17 83 (0.72%) Cyber Threat
18 78 (0.67%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 957 (8.26%) Windows
2 802 (6.92%) Linux
3 322 (2.78%) Windows Server
4 227 (1.96%) Unix
5 154 (1.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 112 (0.97%) Windows 10
7 96 (0.83%) Android
8 64 (0.55%) Solaris
9 61 (0.53%) Apple iOS
10 46 (0.40%) Mac OS
11 42 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
12 36 (0.31%) AIX
13 35 (0.30%) Ubuntu
14 31 (0.27%) CentOS
15 23 (0.20%) VMS
15 23 (0.20%) Windows 7
16 21 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
17 18 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
18 16 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
19 14 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,429 (20.96%) Agile
2 1,823 (15.73%) DevOps
3 1,736 (14.98%) CI/CD
4 1,330 (11.48%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,281 (11.05%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,216 (10.49%) Problem-Solving
7 1,079 (9.31%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 943 (8.14%) Infrastructure as Code
9 919 (7.93%) Migration
10 749 (6.46%) Test Automation
11 747 (6.45%) Cybersecurity
12 744 (6.42%) ITIL
13 730 (6.30%) Analytics
14 724 (6.25%) Containerisation
15 696 (6.01%) Software Engineering
16 669 (5.77%) Roadmaps
17 643 (5.55%) Technical Leadership
18 640 (5.52%) Data Modelling
19 626 (5.40%) AI
19 626 (5.40%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 1,305 (11.26%) Python
2 1,161 (10.02%) SQL
3 820 (7.08%) Java
4 552 (4.76%) PowerShell
5 396 (3.42%) JavaScript
6 323 (2.79%) Bash
7 269 (2.32%) C#
8 191 (1.65%) TypeScript
9 182 (1.57%) PL/SQL
10 111 (0.96%) Bicep
11 94 (0.81%) C++
11 94 (0.81%) Shell Script
12 68 (0.59%) C
13 56 (0.48%) Apex Code
14 55 (0.47%) Kotlin
15 53 (0.46%) Ruby
15 53 (0.46%) Scala
16 48 (0.41%) Go
17 45 (0.39%) Groovy
18 36 (0.31%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8,840 (76.29%) SC Cleared
2 2,171 (18.73%) DV Cleared
3 447 (3.86%) BPSS Clearance
3 447 (3.86%) Degree
4 206 (1.78%) Cisco Certification
5 204 (1.76%) CISSP
6 170 (1.47%) Azure Certification
7 154 (1.33%) Microsoft Certification
8 138 (1.19%) AWS Certification
9 129 (1.11%) CISM
10 108 (0.93%) PMI Certification
11 105 (0.91%) PMP
12 94 (0.81%) ISTQB
13 85 (0.73%) CCNA
14 84 (0.72%) CCNP
15 67 (0.58%) Computer Science Degree
16 65 (0.56%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 54 (0.47%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 49 (0.42%) TOGAF Certification
19 47 (0.41%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 462 (3.99%) QA
2 377 (3.25%) Data Quality
3 308 (2.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 298 (2.57%) NIST
5 254 (2.19%) NCSC
6 253 (2.18%) Accessibility
7 221 (1.91%) PMO
8 183 (1.58%) GDPR
9 142 (1.23%) GRC
9 142 (1.23%) SLA
10 78 (0.67%) WCAG
11 64 (0.55%) JSP 440
12 47 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
13 46 (0.40%) NIST 800
14 32 (0.28%) Def Stans
14 32 (0.28%) Government Security Classifications
15 29 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 29 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 20000
16 22 (0.19%) RMADS
17 21 (0.18%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 813 (7.02%) Docker
2 526 (4.54%) Active Directory
3 401 (3.46%) VMware Infrastructure
4 149 (1.29%) VMware NSX
5 130 (1.12%) VMware ESXi
6 116 (1.00%) vSphere
7 111 (0.96%) Hyper-V
8 83 (0.72%) Virtual Machines
9 47 (0.41%) Oracle RAC
10 41 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
11 32 (0.28%) Firmware
12 25 (0.22%) BitLocker
13 23 (0.20%) vCloud
14 17 (0.15%) NFS
15 16 (0.14%) Postfix
16 15 (0.13%) Squid
17 10 (0.086%) Virtual Servers
18 9 (0.078%) KVM
19 7 (0.060%) Ceph
19 7 (0.060%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 999 (8.62%) Terraform
2 973 (8.40%) Kubernetes
3 435 (3.75%) Ansible
4 269 (2.32%) Grafana
5 215 (1.86%) Prometheus
6 129 (1.11%) vCenter Server
7 122 (1.05%) SCCM
8 89 (0.77%) Microsoft Intune
9 72 (0.62%) SCOM
10 69 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
11 67 (0.58%) Argo
12 57 (0.49%) Oracle RMAN
13 51 (0.44%) Puppet
14 43 (0.37%) FortiGate
15 40 (0.35%) Data Guard
16 31 (0.27%) Progress Chef
17 30 (0.26%) Nagios
18 29 (0.25%) Istio
19 28 (0.24%) WSUS
20 25 (0.22%) Control-M
Vendors
1 1,383 (11.93%) Microsoft
2 929 (8.02%) Oracle
3 572 (4.94%) VMware
4 556 (4.80%) ServiceNow
5 432 (3.73%) SAP
6 303 (2.61%) Cisco
7 224 (1.93%) Google
8 214 (1.85%) Splunk
9 202 (1.74%) Databricks
10 191 (1.65%) Salesforce
11 155 (1.34%) Red Hat
12 131 (1.13%) Talend
13 130 (1.12%) Informatica
14 126 (1.09%) IBM
15 111 (0.96%) Palo Alto
16 98 (0.85%) F5
16 98 (0.85%) Juniper
17 94 (0.81%) Dynatrace
18 93 (0.80%) SolarWinds
19 92 (0.79%) Remedy