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

6 months to
22 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,655 5,122 7,709
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.05% 17.78% 18.15%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.70% 57.45% 60.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,297 3,390 5,106
10th Percentile £380 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £454
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £529 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.76% -3.82% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £689 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 843 295 518
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £13.95
25th Percentile £22.63 £22.65 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £36.65 £55.80
Median % change year-on-year +50.09% -34.33% -7.00%
75th Percentile £74.00 £65.68 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.38 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £42.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +29.41% -26.09% -

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 15,288 8,915 12,744
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.64% 30.94% 30.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,149 5,624 7,936
10th Percentile £350 £278 £306
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year - -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £623 £619 £645
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +0.90% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,091 502 1,058
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.13 £13.69
25th Percentile £21.33 £22.06 £17.80
Median hourly rate £48.05 £36.25 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.55% -9.38% -27.27%
75th Percentile £71.50 £65.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.25 £79.87 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £35.00 £40.94
% change year-on-year +35.71% -14.51% -18.12%

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 22 May 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 22 May 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 22 May 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 9,231 £525 -2.33% 1,801
UK excluding London +1 5,924 £525 -2.33% 1,520
London +7 3,283 £525 - 440
Work from Home +4 2,863 £525 - 876
South East +1 2,225 £550 - 526
South West 0 1,298 £538 -6.52% 353
North of England 0 915 £500 - 283
Midlands +2 862 £472 -10.10% 144
West Midlands +3 734 £472 -10.10% 103
North West -1 517 £500 - 169
East of England +2 373 £550 +10.00% 133
Yorkshire -11 232 £488 -1.71% 58
Scotland +34 228 £529 +19.21% 52
North East +1 203 £478 -2.55% 58
East Midlands -5 121 £450 -5.26% 41
Wales +5 87 £490 +3.16% 37
Northern Ireland +1 22 £650 +36.84% 23

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
1 392 (3.68%) Confluence
2 222 (2.08%) SharePoint
3 137 (1.29%) SAS
4 129 (1.21%) Microsoft Exchange
5 101 (0.95%) Apache Spark
6 80 (0.75%) Apache
7 74 (0.69%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.37%) WebLogic
9 35 (0.33%) nginx
10 30 (0.28%) Jupyter
11 20 (0.19%) Tomcat
12 18 (0.17%) IIS
13 17 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
14 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
15 14 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
16 13 (0.12%) CMS
16 13 (0.12%) NetWeaver
16 13 (0.12%) Skype for Business
17 10 (0.094%) ArcGIS
18 8 (0.075%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 186 (1.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 184 (1.73%) Microsoft Office
3 100 (0.94%) Microsoft Project
4 87 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.40%) MS Visio
6 18 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.12%) Simulink
8 8 (0.075%) AutoCAD
9 7 (0.066%) Notepad++
9 7 (0.066%) SOLIDWORKS
10 6 (0.056%) Revit
11 4 (0.038%) Siemens NX
11 4 (0.038%) Sketch
11 4 (0.038%) Windchill
12 3 (0.028%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.028%) Chatbot
13 2 (0.019%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.019%) InVision
13 2 (0.019%) Lectora
13 2 (0.019%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 111 (1.04%) SAP S/4HANA
2 53 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
3 38 (0.36%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 32 (0.30%) Teamcenter
5 30 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
6 28 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
7 23 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.13%) Maximo
8 14 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
8 14 (0.13%) SAP GRC
9 13 (0.12%) Findur
9 13 (0.12%) iTrent
10 12 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
10 12 (0.11%) Temenos T24
11 11 (0.10%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.084%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.084%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.084%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.084%) SAP HR
13 8 (0.075%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 1,847 (17.33%) AWS
2 1,823 (17.11%) Azure
3 446 (4.19%) GitHub
4 430 (4.04%) GCP
5 391 (3.67%) Azure DevOps
6 382 (3.59%) Power Platform
7 263 (2.47%) Serverless
8 257 (2.41%) Entra ID
9 254 (2.38%) Microsoft 365
10 253 (2.37%) GitHub Actions
11 207 (1.94%) Amazon S3
12 182 (1.71%) AWS Lambda
13 157 (1.47%) PaaS
14 149 (1.40%) Amazon EC2
15 143 (1.34%) Amazon EKS
16 140 (1.31%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 137 (1.29%) OpenShift
18 131 (1.23%) OCI
19 128 (1.20%) AWS CloudFormation
20 126 (1.18%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 486 (4.56%) Firewall
2 302 (2.83%) DNS
3 238 (2.23%) WAN
4 236 (2.21%) Network Security
5 211 (1.98%) LAN
6 177 (1.66%) VPN
7 149 (1.40%) BGP
7 149 (1.40%) DHCP
8 128 (1.20%) OSPF
9 119 (1.12%) TCP/IP
10 108 (1.01%) VLAN
11 106 (0.99%) Wi-Fi
12 87 (0.82%) Wireless
13 69 (0.65%) MPLS
14 60 (0.56%) SAN
15 59 (0.55%) VXLAN
16 58 (0.54%) Structured Cabling
17 54 (0.51%) SD-WAN
18 53 (0.50%) IPsec
18 53 (0.50%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 295 (2.77%) Power BI
2 256 (2.40%) PostgreSQL
3 237 (2.22%) Data Warehouse
4 207 (1.94%) SQL Server
5 134 (1.26%) Metadata
6 132 (1.24%) Oracle Database
7 113 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
8 111 (1.04%) Data Lake
9 110 (1.03%) MongoDB
10 96 (0.90%) Relational Database
11 93 (0.87%) NoSQL
12 79 (0.74%) Pentaho
13 76 (0.71%) Elasticsearch
14 74 (0.69%) MySQL
15 71 (0.67%) Big Data
15 71 (0.67%) Oracle Reports
16 69 (0.65%) Tableau
17 64 (0.60%) Amazon Redshift
18 61 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
19 59 (0.55%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 608 (5.71%) JIRA
2 457 (4.29%) Git
3 407 (3.82%) GitLab
4 403 (3.78%) Jenkins
5 111 (1.04%) Selenium
6 85 (0.80%) Postman
7 76 (0.71%) JUnit
8 72 (0.68%) SonarQube
9 56 (0.53%) Rational DOORS
10 55 (0.52%) JMeter
11 53 (0.50%) Artifactory
12 43 (0.40%) Bitbucket
13 42 (0.39%) Cucumber
14 41 (0.38%) Mockito
15 39 (0.37%) Maven
16 38 (0.36%) Visual Studio
17 36 (0.34%) Cypress.io
18 34 (0.32%) REST Assured
19 32 (0.30%) Zephyr
20 30 (0.28%) Gatling
General
1 2,321 (21.78%) Public Sector
2 2,186 (20.52%) Social Skills
3 736 (6.91%) Analytical Skills
4 687 (6.45%) Finance
5 347 (3.26%) Military
6 286 (2.68%) Documentation Skills
7 262 (2.46%) Aerospace
8 163 (1.53%) Legal
9 127 (1.19%) Telecoms
10 119 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
11 116 (1.09%) Banking
12 110 (1.03%) Manufacturing
13 109 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
14 89 (0.84%) Law
15 81 (0.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 80 (0.75%) Presentation Skills
17 61 (0.57%) Police
18 56 (0.53%) Marketing
19 46 (0.43%) Aviation
20 43 (0.40%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 1,625 (15.25%) Architect
2 1,003 (9.41%) Developer
3 913 (8.57%) Senior
4 749 (7.03%) Lead
5 748 (7.02%) Analyst
6 522 (4.90%) Consultant
7 513 (4.81%) Data Engineer
8 501 (4.70%) DevOps Engineer
9 336 (3.15%) Technical Architect
10 316 (2.97%) Software Engineer
11 304 (2.85%) Network Engineer
12 299 (2.81%) Solutions Architect
13 292 (2.74%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 267 (2.51%) Business Analyst
15 226 (2.12%) Project Manager
16 219 (2.06%) Designer
17 214 (2.01%) Security Architect
18 212 (1.99%) Azure Engineer
19 193 (1.81%) Administrator
20 184 (1.73%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 330 (3.10%) REST
2 251 (2.36%) Spring
3 207 (1.94%) Kafka
4 205 (1.92%) Spring Boot
5 195 (1.83%) React
6 193 (1.81%) Node.js
7 175 (1.64%) .NET
8 153 (1.44%) SOAP
9 152 (1.43%) LDAP
9 152 (1.43%) RESTful
10 125 (1.17%) JSON
11 121 (1.14%) AngularJS
12 115 (1.08%) Web Services
13 114 (1.07%) PySpark
14 101 (0.95%) OAuth
15 96 (0.90%) Oracle Fusion
16 92 (0.86%) HTML
16 92 (0.86%) Middleware
17 85 (0.80%) Playwright
17 85 (0.80%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 360 (3.38%) Cloud Native
2 330 (3.10%) Product Ownership
3 317 (2.98%) Data Centre
4 296 (2.78%) Onboarding
5 207 (1.94%) Management Information System
6 155 (1.45%) PKI
7 142 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
8 136 (1.28%) Security Posture
9 126 (1.18%) Enterprise Software
10 123 (1.15%) Distributed Systems
11 121 (1.14%) Replication
12 96 (0.90%) Self-Motivation
13 88 (0.83%) Data Structures
14 86 (0.81%) Public Cloud
14 86 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
15 85 (0.80%) Clustering
16 81 (0.76%) Hybrid Cloud
17 76 (0.71%) Virtual Team
18 72 (0.68%) CMDB
18 72 (0.68%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 848 (7.96%) Windows
2 745 (6.99%) Linux
3 247 (2.32%) Windows Server
4 189 (1.77%) Unix
5 132 (1.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 101 (0.95%) Android
7 84 (0.79%) Windows 10
8 67 (0.63%) Apple iOS
9 46 (0.43%) Solaris
10 41 (0.38%) Mac OS
11 40 (0.38%) Ubuntu
12 32 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
13 29 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
14 26 (0.24%) AIX
15 25 (0.23%) VMS
16 22 (0.21%) CentOS
17 14 (0.13%) Windows 7
18 13 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
19 12 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
20 10 (0.094%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,014 (18.90%) Agile
2 1,612 (15.13%) DevOps
3 1,447 (13.58%) CI/CD
4 1,118 (10.49%) Problem-Solving
5 1,010 (9.48%) Stakeholder Management
6 936 (8.78%) Continuous Improvement
7 836 (7.85%) Migration
8 794 (7.45%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 737 (6.92%) Infrastructure as Code
10 650 (6.10%) Cybersecurity
11 632 (5.93%) ITIL
12 615 (5.77%) Test Automation
13 604 (5.67%) Analytics
14 582 (5.46%) Containerisation
15 581 (5.45%) Software Engineering
16 576 (5.41%) Roadmaps
17 540 (5.07%) Data Modelling
18 528 (4.96%) Decision-Making
19 462 (4.34%) AI
20 456 (4.28%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 1,178 (11.06%) Python
2 965 (9.06%) SQL
3 659 (6.18%) Java
4 544 (5.11%) PowerShell
5 332 (3.12%) JavaScript
6 214 (2.01%) C#
7 205 (1.92%) Bash
8 178 (1.67%) TypeScript
9 115 (1.08%) PL/SQL
10 99 (0.93%) C++
11 96 (0.90%) Shell Script
12 71 (0.67%) Ruby
13 70 (0.66%) Go
14 67 (0.63%) Scala
15 60 (0.56%) Bicep
16 56 (0.53%) C
17 54 (0.51%) Apex Code
18 46 (0.43%) R
19 40 (0.38%) Ada
19 40 (0.38%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 8,138 (76.38%) SC Cleared
2 1,924 (18.06%) DV Cleared
3 448 (4.20%) Degree
4 301 (2.82%) BPSS Clearance
5 220 (2.06%) Cisco Certification
6 180 (1.69%) CISSP
7 130 (1.22%) Azure Certification
8 127 (1.19%) CCNP
9 119 (1.12%) CISM
10 111 (1.04%) AWS Certification
11 95 (0.89%) CCNA
12 94 (0.88%) Microsoft Certification
13 77 (0.72%) PMP
14 74 (0.69%) Computer Science Degree
15 68 (0.64%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 66 (0.62%) PMI Certification
17 60 (0.56%) ISTQB
18 56 (0.53%) ITIL Certification
19 51 (0.48%) TOGAF Certification
20 50 (0.47%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 380 (3.57%) QA
2 310 (2.91%) Data Quality
3 308 (2.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 306 (2.87%) NIST
5 213 (2.00%) NCSC
6 202 (1.90%) Accessibility
7 174 (1.63%) GDPR
8 161 (1.51%) PMO
9 109 (1.02%) SLA
10 78 (0.73%) GRC
11 68 (0.64%) JSP 440
12 56 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials
13 43 (0.40%) WCAG
14 40 (0.38%) NIST 800
15 36 (0.34%) RMADS
16 31 (0.29%) PCI DSS
17 30 (0.28%) Def Stans
18 28 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 25 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
20 23 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 656 (6.16%) Docker
2 464 (4.35%) Active Directory
3 293 (2.75%) VMware Infrastructure
4 107 (1.00%) VMware ESXi
5 101 (0.95%) VMware NSX
6 86 (0.81%) Hyper-V
7 82 (0.77%) vSphere
8 72 (0.68%) Virtual Machines
9 35 (0.33%) Firmware
9 35 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
10 24 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
11 22 (0.21%) NFS
12 20 (0.19%) vCloud
13 19 (0.18%) BitLocker
14 18 (0.17%) Postfix
15 17 (0.16%) Squid
16 16 (0.15%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 9 (0.084%) KVM
18 8 (0.075%) Microsoft App-V
19 6 (0.056%) Corosync
Systems Management
1 839 (7.87%) Kubernetes
2 827 (7.76%) Terraform
3 374 (3.51%) Ansible
4 275 (2.58%) Grafana
5 227 (2.13%) Prometheus
6 110 (1.03%) Single Sign-On
7 109 (1.02%) vCenter Server
8 75 (0.70%) SCCM
9 64 (0.60%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 54 (0.51%) Microsoft Intune
11 53 (0.50%) Argo
11 53 (0.50%) FortiGate
12 42 (0.39%) Puppet
13 39 (0.37%) Oracle RMAN
13 39 (0.37%) Podman
14 33 (0.31%) Progress Chef
14 33 (0.31%) SCOM
15 31 (0.29%) Nagios
16 30 (0.28%) vRealize
17 25 (0.23%) Istio
Vendors
1 1,054 (9.89%) Microsoft
2 664 (6.23%) Oracle
3 512 (4.81%) VMware
4 418 (3.92%) ServiceNow
5 368 (3.45%) Cisco
6 364 (3.42%) SAP
7 249 (2.34%) Splunk
8 210 (1.97%) Databricks
9 176 (1.65%) Red Hat
10 169 (1.59%) Google
11 151 (1.42%) Salesforce
12 130 (1.22%) Talend
13 128 (1.20%) Palo Alto
14 122 (1.15%) IBM
15 106 (0.99%) Juniper
16 101 (0.95%) Informatica
17 95 (0.89%) CyberArk
18 91 (0.85%) Fortinet
19 88 (0.83%) F5
20 86 (0.81%) Atlassian