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

6 months to
15 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 10,487 5,218 8,033
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.87% 17.81% 18.45%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.28% 57.93% 60.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,152 3,488 5,232
10th Percentile £363 £346 £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 848 279 500
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.87
25th Percentile £21.33 £24.17 £21.46
Median hourly rate £53.00 £54.99 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.62% +4.74% -13.51%
75th Percentile £72.66 £67.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.67 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.78 £59.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year -11.30% +8.18% -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 15,137 9,008 13,345
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.01% 30.75% 30.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,063 5,719 8,249
10th Percentile £350 £293 £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 1,107 499 1,023
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.48 £13.69
25th Percentile £20.82 £22.61 £17.50
Median hourly rate £43.69 £45.00 £38.16
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% +17.94% -29.34%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.10 £80.67 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.69 £48.31 £40.00
% change year-on-year -9.56% +20.78% -20.00%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 +2 9,103 £525 -2.33% 1,785
UK excluding London +1 5,838 £520 -5.11% 1,484
London +6 3,178 £525 - 495
Work from Home +3 2,776 £525 -0.38% 732
South East +1 2,145 £532 -3.31% 517
South West 0 1,353 £538 -4.40% 340
Midlands +4 911 £485 -9.68% 153
North of England 0 856 £488 -2.47% 260
West Midlands +4 765 £485 -10.19% 109
North West -1 533 £500 - 153
East of England +2 367 £500 +47.06% 156
Yorkshire -5 199 £484 -7.86% 45
Scotland +27 198 £500 +5.26% 44
North East +1 159 £450 -6.25% 63
East Midlands -1 142 £450 -10.00% 44
Wales +3 82 £538 -0.46% 28
Northern Ireland +10 22 £463 -2.63% 14

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
1 400 (3.81%) Confluence
2 227 (2.16%) SharePoint
3 168 (1.60%) SAS
4 137 (1.31%) Microsoft Exchange
5 107 (1.02%) Apache Spark
6 88 (0.84%) Apache
7 69 (0.66%) Apache Airflow
8 45 (0.43%) 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 (0.10%) ArcGIS
17 11 (0.10%) NetWeaver
18 8 (0.076%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 232 (2.21%) Microsoft Office
2 200 (1.91%) Microsoft Excel
3 130 (1.24%) Microsoft Project
4 78 (0.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 46 (0.44%) 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
1 106 (1.01%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (0.43%) Remedy ITSM
3 43 (0.41%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 31 (0.30%) 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 (0.10%) Findur
11 11 (0.10%) Oracle Assets
11 11 (0.10%) SAP PSCD
12 9 (0.086%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.086%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.086%) SAP PM
13 8 (0.076%) SAP EWM
13 8 (0.076%) SAP VC
13 8 (0.076%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,817 (17.33%) AWS
2 1,749 (16.68%) Azure
3 455 (4.34%) GitHub
4 434 (4.14%) GCP
5 405 (3.86%) Azure DevOps
6 374 (3.57%) Power Platform
7 296 (2.82%) Serverless
8 280 (2.67%) Microsoft 365
9 241 (2.30%) GitHub Actions
10 240 (2.29%) Entra ID
11 225 (2.15%) Amazon S3
12 200 (1.91%) AWS Lambda
13 163 (1.55%) OpenShift
14 157 (1.50%) PaaS
15 148 (1.41%) AWS CloudFormation
16 142 (1.35%) IaaS
17 136 (1.30%) Amazon EC2
18 132 (1.26%) Amazon EKS
19 126 (1.20%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 115 (1.10%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 486 (4.63%) Firewall
2 289 (2.76%) DNS
3 234 (2.23%) Network Security
4 230 (2.19%) WAN
5 207 (1.97%) LAN
6 185 (1.76%) VPN
7 149 (1.42%) BGP
8 138 (1.32%) DHCP
9 129 (1.23%) TCP/IP
10 120 (1.14%) OSPF
11 103 (0.98%) VLAN
12 88 (0.84%) Wireless
13 74 (0.71%) Wi-Fi
14 68 (0.65%) MPLS
15 61 (0.58%) SAN
16 54 (0.51%) SSL
17 51 (0.49%) SD-WAN
18 50 (0.48%) IPsec
19 48 (0.46%) Cisco ISE
20 47 (0.45%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 286 (2.73%) Power BI
2 268 (2.56%) PostgreSQL
3 224 (2.14%) Data Warehouse
4 195 (1.86%) SQL Server
5 153 (1.46%) Metadata
6 124 (1.18%) Oracle Database
7 110 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
7 110 (1.05%) NoSQL
8 103 (0.98%) MongoDB
9 97 (0.92%) Relational Database
10 92 (0.88%) Data Lake
11 85 (0.81%) Azure SQL Database
12 83 (0.79%) MySQL
13 77 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
14 76 (0.72%) Tableau
15 75 (0.72%) Pentaho
16 73 (0.70%) Big Data
17 68 (0.65%) Amazon Redshift
18 60 (0.57%) Oracle Reports
19 58 (0.55%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 625 (5.96%) JIRA
2 511 (4.87%) Git
3 403 (3.84%) Jenkins
4 365 (3.48%) GitLab
5 130 (1.24%) Selenium
6 94 (0.90%) Postman
7 88 (0.84%) JUnit
8 64 (0.61%) SonarQube
9 53 (0.51%) Rational DOORS
10 50 (0.48%) Bitbucket
11 48 (0.46%) JMeter
12 46 (0.44%) Artifactory
13 44 (0.42%) Cypress.io
14 43 (0.41%) Maven
15 41 (0.39%) Cucumber
15 41 (0.39%) Oracle APEX
16 39 (0.37%) Mockito
17 36 (0.34%) Visual Studio
18 30 (0.29%) REST Assured
19 26 (0.25%) Zephyr
General
1 2,448 (23.34%) Public Sector
2 2,331 (22.23%) Social Skills
3 850 (8.11%) Analytical Skills
4 705 (6.72%) Finance
5 342 (3.26%) Military
6 284 (2.71%) Documentation Skills
7 244 (2.33%) Aerospace
8 172 (1.64%) Legal
9 160 (1.53%) Telecoms
10 159 (1.52%) Manufacturing
11 137 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
12 122 (1.16%) Banking
13 113 (1.08%) Organisational Skills
14 97 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
15 93 (0.89%) Marketing
16 87 (0.83%) Electronics
17 83 (0.79%) Law
18 72 (0.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 66 (0.63%) Police
20 32 (0.31%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,608 (15.33%) Architect
2 1,021 (9.74%) Developer
3 932 (8.89%) Senior
4 755 (7.20%) Analyst
5 681 (6.49%) Lead
6 573 (5.46%) Consultant
7 463 (4.41%) Data Engineer
8 443 (4.22%) DevOps Engineer
9 317 (3.02%) Technical Architect
10 308 (2.94%) Software Engineer
11 289 (2.76%) Network Engineer
12 288 (2.75%) Solutions Architect
13 273 (2.60%) Business Analyst
14 213 (2.03%) Azure Engineer
14 213 (2.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 212 (2.02%) Project Manager
16 199 (1.90%) Designer
16 199 (1.90%) Security Architect
17 185 (1.76%) Delivery Manager
18 183 (1.75%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 375 (3.58%) REST
2 237 (2.26%) Spring
3 210 (2.00%) Kafka
4 206 (1.96%) Node.js
5 183 (1.75%) React
5 183 (1.75%) Spring Boot
6 177 (1.69%) .NET
7 168 (1.60%) JSON
8 157 (1.50%) SOAP
9 144 (1.37%) LDAP
10 142 (1.35%) RESTful
11 132 (1.26%) PySpark
12 128 (1.22%) Web Services
13 123 (1.17%) AngularJS
14 104 (0.99%) OAuth
15 99 (0.94%) Oracle Fusion
16 98 (0.93%) XML
17 96 (0.92%) HTML
18 87 (0.83%) Middleware
19 78 (0.74%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 351 (3.35%) Product Ownership
2 324 (3.09%) Cloud Native
3 315 (3.00%) Data Centre
4 268 (2.56%) Onboarding
5 200 (1.91%) Management Information System
6 196 (1.87%) PKI
7 133 (1.27%) Security Posture
8 131 (1.25%) Self-Motivation
9 130 (1.24%) Enterprise Software
10 129 (1.23%) Legacy Systems
11 118 (1.13%) Distributed Systems
12 117 (1.12%) Replication
13 100 (0.95%) Public Cloud
14 82 (0.78%) Data Structures
15 79 (0.75%) Security Operations Centre
16 78 (0.74%) Hybrid Cloud
17 70 (0.67%) Clustering
17 70 (0.67%) Virtual Team
18 63 (0.60%) Driving Licence
19 60 (0.57%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 871 (8.31%) Windows
2 753 (7.18%) Linux
3 250 (2.38%) Windows Server
4 150 (1.43%) Unix
5 136 (1.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 121 (1.15%) Android
7 114 (1.09%) Windows 10
8 64 (0.61%) Apple iOS
9 54 (0.51%) Mac OS
10 40 (0.38%) Ubuntu
11 33 (0.31%) 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 (0.076%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,068 (19.72%) Agile
2 1,567 (14.94%) DevOps
3 1,406 (13.41%) CI/CD
4 1,183 (11.28%) Problem-Solving
5 975 (9.30%) Stakeholder Management
6 888 (8.47%) Continuous Improvement
7 885 (8.44%) Migration
8 791 (7.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 681 (6.49%) Infrastructure as Code
10 648 (6.18%) ITIL
11 628 (5.99%) Analytics
12 622 (5.93%) Cybersecurity
13 621 (5.92%) Test Automation
14 580 (5.53%) Roadmaps
15 562 (5.36%) Containerisation
16 533 (5.08%) Software Engineering
17 513 (4.89%) Data Modelling
18 506 (4.83%) Scrum
19 467 (4.45%) Business Intelligence
20 466 (4.44%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 1,237 (11.80%) Python
2 961 (9.16%) SQL
3 621 (5.92%) Java
4 610 (5.82%) PowerShell
5 394 (3.76%) JavaScript
6 226 (2.16%) C#
7 216 (2.06%) Bash
8 181 (1.73%) TypeScript
9 122 (1.16%) PL/SQL
10 108 (1.03%) Shell Script
11 104 (0.99%) C++
12 75 (0.72%) Go
13 72 (0.69%) Ruby
14 65 (0.62%) Scala
15 59 (0.56%) C
16 56 (0.53%) Bicep
17 50 (0.48%) R
18 48 (0.46%) Apex Code
19 43 (0.41%) Ada
19 43 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 8,008 (76.36%) SC Cleared
2 1,850 (17.64%) DV Cleared
3 478 (4.56%) Degree
4 331 (3.16%) BPSS Clearance
5 202 (1.93%) Cisco Certification
6 175 (1.67%) CISSP
7 144 (1.37%) Azure Certification
8 132 (1.26%) AWS Certification
9 129 (1.23%) CCNP
10 111 (1.06%) CISM
11 106 (1.01%) Microsoft Certification
12 85 (0.81%) CCNA
13 78 (0.74%) Computer Science Degree
14 75 (0.72%) ITIL Certification
15 68 (0.65%) PMP
15 68 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
16 62 (0.59%) PMI Certification
17 61 (0.58%) ISTQB
17 61 (0.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 51 (0.49%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 363 (3.46%) QA
2 321 (3.06%) Data Quality
3 310 (2.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 300 (2.86%) NIST
5 211 (2.01%) NCSC
6 178 (1.70%) Accessibility
7 171 (1.63%) GDPR
8 137 (1.31%) PMO
9 115 (1.10%) SLA
10 71 (0.68%) JSP 440
11 68 (0.65%) GRC
12 47 (0.45%) NIST 800
13 44 (0.42%) COBIT
14 41 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials
15 39 (0.37%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 39 (0.37%) WCAG
16 36 (0.34%) PCI DSS
17 33 (0.31%) RMADS
18 29 (0.28%) Def Stans
19 24 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 698 (6.66%) Docker
2 477 (4.55%) Active Directory
3 285 (2.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 103 (0.98%) VMware NSX
5 82 (0.78%) VMware ESXi
6 78 (0.74%) vSphere
7 76 (0.72%) Hyper-V
8 55 (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 15 (0.14%) Postfix
15 12 (0.11%) Squid
15 12 (0.11%) vCloud
16 8 (0.076%) Microsoft App-V
17 7 (0.067%) KVM
18 6 (0.057%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 879 (8.38%) Kubernetes
2 836 (7.97%) Terraform
3 333 (3.18%) Ansible
4 248 (2.36%) Grafana
5 207 (1.97%) Prometheus
6 123 (1.17%) Single Sign-On
7 96 (0.92%) vCenter Server
8 85 (0.81%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 84 (0.80%) SCCM
10 63 (0.60%) Argo
11 61 (0.58%) Microsoft Intune
12 58 (0.55%) FortiGate
13 38 (0.36%) Packer
13 38 (0.36%) Puppet
14 37 (0.35%) Podman
15 36 (0.34%) Progress Chef
16 35 (0.33%) vRealize
17 31 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
18 30 (0.29%) Kibana
18 30 (0.29%) OPNET
Vendors
1 1,066 (10.16%) Microsoft
2 642 (6.12%) Oracle
3 513 (4.89%) VMware
4 422 (4.02%) Cisco
5 421 (4.01%) ServiceNow
6 414 (3.95%) SAP
7 239 (2.28%) Splunk
8 212 (2.02%) Databricks
9 193 (1.84%) Red Hat
10 176 (1.68%) Salesforce
11 158 (1.51%) Google
12 131 (1.25%) Atlassian
13 129 (1.23%) IBM
14 122 (1.16%) Juniper
15 121 (1.15%) Palo Alto
16 113 (1.08%) Talend
17 101 (0.96%) CyberArk
18 88 (0.84%) Remedy
19 87 (0.83%) Dell
20 83 (0.79%) Fortinet