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

6 months to
20 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 10,594 5,200 7,769
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.00% 17.83% 18.26%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.57% 57.52% 60.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,276 3,440 5,154
10th Percentile £380 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £529 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.76% -3.82% -
75th Percentile £625 £623 £650
90th Percentile £725 £689 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £540 £550
% change year-on-year -2.78% -1.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 824 299 514
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £13.91
25th Percentile £21.33 £22.15 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £40.00 £55.80
Median % change year-on-year +37.50% -28.32% -7.00%
75th Percentile £73.46 £66.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.18 £78.43 £84.43
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £51.50 £57.47
% change year-on-year +6.80% -10.39% -0.05%

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 15,227 9,041 12,797
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.63% 31.00% 30.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,134 5,692 7,977
10th Percentile £350 £281 £306
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £532
Median % change year-on-year - -1.32% -3.27%
75th Percentile £623 £619 £646
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £530
% change year-on-year - -5.66% +0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,070 515 1,058
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.07 £13.69
25th Percentile £21.33 £21.57 £17.73
Median hourly rate £47.80 £37.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.45% -6.25% -27.25%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.03 £80.00 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £36.65 £40.30
% change year-on-year +29.62% -9.07% -19.40%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 +2 9,169 £525 -2.23% 1,837
UK excluding London +1 5,876 £525 -2.78% 1,506
London +6 3,267 £525 - 471
Work from Home +3 2,856 £525 - 886
South East +1 2,199 £550 - 534
South West 0 1,290 £538 -6.52% 348
North of England 0 906 £500 - 264
Midlands +3 860 £472 -10.10% 151
West Midlands +3 731 £472 -10.10% 109
North West -1 515 £500 - 162
East of England +2 374 £550 +10.00% 139
Yorkshire -9 227 £478 -4.40% 43
Scotland +33 224 £525 +16.67% 51
North East +1 200 £475 -1.04% 61
East Midlands -4 122 £450 -5.26% 42
Wales +6 87 £490 +3.16% 34
Northern Ireland +2 23 £644 +35.53% 18

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
1 390 (3.68%) Confluence
2 221 (2.09%) SharePoint
3 129 (1.22%) Microsoft Exchange
3 129 (1.22%) SAS
4 108 (1.02%) Apache Spark
5 84 (0.79%) Apache
6 73 (0.69%) Apache Airflow
7 39 (0.37%) WebLogic
8 34 (0.32%) nginx
9 30 (0.28%) Jupyter
10 19 (0.18%) Tomcat
11 17 (0.16%) IIS
11 17 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
12 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
13 14 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
14 13 (0.12%) CMS
14 13 (0.12%) NetWeaver
14 13 (0.12%) Skype for Business
15 10 (0.094%) ArcGIS
16 9 (0.085%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 187 (1.77%) Microsoft Office
2 186 (1.76%) Microsoft Excel
3 102 (0.96%) Microsoft Project
4 87 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.13%) Simulink
8 7 (0.066%) AutoCAD
8 7 (0.066%) Notepad++
9 6 (0.057%) SOLIDWORKS
10 5 (0.047%) 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
1 108 (1.02%) SAP S/4HANA
2 50 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
3 39 (0.37%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 31 (0.29%) Teamcenter
5 29 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
6 28 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
7 23 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.13%) Maximo
8 14 (0.13%) SAP PSCD
9 13 (0.12%) Findur
9 13 (0.12%) iTrent
9 13 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
10 12 (0.11%) SAP GRC
10 12 (0.11%) Temenos T24
11 11 (0.10%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.085%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.085%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.085%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.085%) SAP HR
13 8 (0.076%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 1,840 (17.37%) AWS
2 1,811 (17.09%) Azure
3 442 (4.17%) GitHub
4 427 (4.03%) GCP
5 392 (3.70%) Azure DevOps
6 382 (3.61%) Power Platform
7 268 (2.53%) Serverless
8 254 (2.40%) Microsoft 365
9 253 (2.39%) Entra ID
10 249 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
11 211 (1.99%) Amazon S3
12 183 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
13 156 (1.47%) PaaS
14 151 (1.43%) Amazon EC2
15 144 (1.36%) Amazon EKS
16 140 (1.32%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 133 (1.26%) AWS CloudFormation
17 133 (1.26%) OpenShift
18 129 (1.22%) OCI
19 123 (1.16%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 479 (4.52%) Firewall
2 300 (2.83%) DNS
3 231 (2.18%) Network Security
3 231 (2.18%) WAN
4 207 (1.95%) LAN
5 172 (1.62%) VPN
6 150 (1.42%) DHCP
7 146 (1.38%) BGP
8 125 (1.18%) OSPF
9 119 (1.12%) TCP/IP
10 107 (1.01%) VLAN
11 104 (0.98%) Wi-Fi
12 83 (0.78%) Wireless
13 67 (0.63%) MPLS
14 60 (0.57%) SAN
15 57 (0.54%) Structured Cabling
15 57 (0.54%) VXLAN
16 52 (0.49%) SD-WAN
16 52 (0.49%) SSL
17 51 (0.48%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 299 (2.82%) Power BI
2 254 (2.40%) PostgreSQL
3 237 (2.24%) Data Warehouse
4 204 (1.93%) SQL Server
5 138 (1.30%) Metadata
6 132 (1.25%) Oracle Database
7 113 (1.07%) Amazon RDS
8 109 (1.03%) Data Lake
8 109 (1.03%) MongoDB
9 99 (0.93%) Relational Database
10 97 (0.92%) NoSQL
11 79 (0.75%) Pentaho
12 77 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
13 74 (0.70%) Big Data
14 71 (0.67%) MySQL
15 70 (0.66%) Oracle Reports
15 70 (0.66%) Tableau
16 65 (0.61%) Amazon Redshift
17 64 (0.60%) Azure SQL Database
18 61 (0.58%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 608 (5.74%) JIRA
2 461 (4.35%) Git
3 402 (3.79%) GitLab
3 402 (3.79%) Jenkins
4 110 (1.04%) Selenium
5 85 (0.80%) Postman
6 76 (0.72%) JUnit
7 68 (0.64%) SonarQube
8 56 (0.53%) Rational DOORS
9 54 (0.51%) JMeter
10 52 (0.49%) Artifactory
11 43 (0.41%) Bitbucket
11 43 (0.41%) Cucumber
12 41 (0.39%) Mockito
13 40 (0.38%) Maven
14 38 (0.36%) Visual Studio
15 37 (0.35%) Cypress.io
16 32 (0.30%) REST Assured
17 31 (0.29%) Zephyr
18 30 (0.28%) Gatling
General
1 2,324 (21.94%) Public Sector
2 2,186 (20.63%) Social Skills
3 743 (7.01%) Analytical Skills
4 688 (6.49%) Finance
5 349 (3.29%) Military
6 283 (2.67%) Documentation Skills
7 250 (2.36%) Aerospace
8 168 (1.59%) Legal
9 127 (1.20%) Telecoms
10 118 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
11 116 (1.09%) Banking
12 112 (1.06%) Manufacturing
13 109 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
14 88 (0.83%) Law
15 81 (0.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 81 (0.76%) Presentation Skills
16 60 (0.57%) Police
17 59 (0.56%) Marketing
18 47 (0.44%) Electronics
19 44 (0.42%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,616 (15.25%) Architect
2 998 (9.42%) Developer
3 914 (8.63%) Senior
4 742 (7.00%) Analyst
5 738 (6.97%) Lead
6 524 (4.95%) Consultant
7 512 (4.83%) Data Engineer
8 501 (4.73%) DevOps Engineer
9 328 (3.10%) Technical Architect
10 318 (3.00%) Software Engineer
11 301 (2.84%) Network Engineer
12 295 (2.78%) Solutions Architect
13 285 (2.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 269 (2.54%) Business Analyst
15 221 (2.09%) Project Manager
16 217 (2.05%) Designer
17 215 (2.03%) Azure Engineer
18 210 (1.98%) Security Architect
19 190 (1.79%) Administrator
20 189 (1.78%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 331 (3.12%) REST
2 250 (2.36%) Spring
3 213 (2.01%) Kafka
4 204 (1.93%) Spring Boot
5 196 (1.85%) Node.js
6 194 (1.83%) React
7 177 (1.67%) .NET
8 154 (1.45%) SOAP
9 149 (1.41%) RESTful
10 148 (1.40%) LDAP
11 125 (1.18%) JSON
12 121 (1.14%) AngularJS
13 120 (1.13%) PySpark
14 116 (1.09%) Web Services
15 96 (0.91%) Oracle Fusion
16 95 (0.90%) OAuth
17 93 (0.88%) Middleware
18 90 (0.85%) HTML
19 86 (0.81%) Playwright
20 85 (0.80%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 359 (3.39%) Cloud Native
2 326 (3.08%) Product Ownership
3 310 (2.93%) Data Centre
4 287 (2.71%) Onboarding
5 204 (1.93%) Management Information System
6 152 (1.43%) PKI
7 141 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
8 134 (1.26%) Security Posture
9 126 (1.19%) Enterprise Software
10 124 (1.17%) Distributed Systems
11 121 (1.14%) Replication
12 95 (0.90%) Self-Motivation
13 88 (0.83%) Data Structures
14 87 (0.82%) Public Cloud
15 85 (0.80%) Security Operations Centre
16 83 (0.78%) Clustering
17 80 (0.76%) Hybrid Cloud
18 75 (0.71%) Virtual Team
19 73 (0.69%) Greenfield Project
20 70 (0.66%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 845 (7.98%) Windows
2 742 (7.00%) Linux
3 247 (2.33%) Windows Server
4 182 (1.72%) Unix
5 132 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 100 (0.94%) Android
7 83 (0.78%) Windows 10
8 67 (0.63%) Apple iOS
9 44 (0.42%) Solaris
10 41 (0.39%) Mac OS
11 39 (0.37%) Ubuntu
12 32 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
13 29 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
14 26 (0.25%) AIX
14 26 (0.25%) VMS
15 21 (0.20%) CentOS
16 14 (0.13%) Windows 7
17 13 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
18 11 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
19 10 (0.094%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,011 (18.98%) Agile
2 1,611 (15.21%) DevOps
3 1,444 (13.63%) CI/CD
4 1,116 (10.53%) Problem-Solving
5 992 (9.36%) Stakeholder Management
6 927 (8.75%) Continuous Improvement
7 831 (7.84%) Migration
8 774 (7.31%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 735 (6.94%) Infrastructure as Code
10 636 (6.00%) ITIL
11 622 (5.87%) Cybersecurity
12 614 (5.80%) Test Automation
13 597 (5.64%) Analytics
14 583 (5.50%) Software Engineering
15 579 (5.47%) Containerisation
16 574 (5.42%) Roadmaps
17 540 (5.10%) Data Modelling
18 529 (4.99%) Decision-Making
19 462 (4.36%) AI
20 460 (4.34%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 1,185 (11.19%) Python
2 966 (9.12%) SQL
3 662 (6.25%) Java
4 541 (5.11%) PowerShell
5 336 (3.17%) JavaScript
6 219 (2.07%) C#
7 201 (1.90%) Bash
8 177 (1.67%) TypeScript
9 113 (1.07%) PL/SQL
10 99 (0.93%) C++
11 97 (0.92%) Shell Script
12 72 (0.68%) Ruby
13 71 (0.67%) Go
14 70 (0.66%) Scala
15 58 (0.55%) Bicep
16 57 (0.54%) C
17 54 (0.51%) Apex Code
18 47 (0.44%) R
19 40 (0.38%) Ada
19 40 (0.38%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 8,089 (76.35%) SC Cleared
2 1,906 (17.99%) DV Cleared
3 441 (4.16%) Degree
4 305 (2.88%) BPSS Clearance
5 216 (2.04%) Cisco Certification
6 171 (1.61%) CISSP
7 131 (1.24%) Azure Certification
8 126 (1.19%) CCNP
9 115 (1.09%) CISM
10 114 (1.08%) AWS Certification
11 93 (0.88%) CCNA
11 93 (0.88%) Microsoft Certification
12 74 (0.70%) PMP
13 71 (0.67%) Computer Science Degree
14 66 (0.62%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 65 (0.61%) PMI Certification
16 62 (0.59%) ITIL Certification
17 60 (0.57%) ISTQB
18 53 (0.50%) TOGAF Certification
19 49 (0.46%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 381 (3.60%) QA
2 317 (2.99%) Data Quality
3 304 (2.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 301 (2.84%) NIST
5 205 (1.94%) Accessibility
6 202 (1.91%) NCSC
7 170 (1.60%) GDPR
8 157 (1.48%) PMO
9 105 (0.99%) SLA
10 75 (0.71%) GRC
11 65 (0.61%) JSP 440
12 56 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials
13 45 (0.42%) WCAG
14 40 (0.38%) NIST 800
15 33 (0.31%) RMADS
16 32 (0.30%) COBIT
17 31 (0.29%) PCI DSS
18 29 (0.27%) Def Stans
19 28 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
20 25 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 663 (6.26%) Docker
2 463 (4.37%) Active Directory
3 290 (2.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 104 (0.98%) VMware ESXi
5 99 (0.93%) VMware NSX
6 85 (0.80%) Hyper-V
7 79 (0.75%) vSphere
8 71 (0.67%) Virtual Machines
9 36 (0.34%) Firmware
10 35 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
11 24 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
12 22 (0.21%) NFS
13 19 (0.18%) BitLocker
14 18 (0.17%) vCloud
15 17 (0.16%) Squid
16 16 (0.15%) Postfix
16 16 (0.15%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 8 (0.076%) KVM
17 8 (0.076%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.057%) Corosync
Systems Management
1 835 (7.88%) Kubernetes
2 826 (7.80%) Terraform
3 366 (3.45%) Ansible
4 274 (2.59%) Grafana
5 224 (2.11%) Prometheus
6 110 (1.04%) Single Sign-On
7 104 (0.98%) vCenter Server
8 74 (0.70%) SCCM
9 63 (0.59%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 54 (0.51%) Microsoft Intune
11 53 (0.50%) Argo
11 53 (0.50%) FortiGate
12 40 (0.38%) Puppet
13 39 (0.37%) Oracle RMAN
14 38 (0.36%) Podman
15 33 (0.31%) Progress Chef
16 32 (0.30%) Nagios
17 30 (0.28%) vRealize
18 29 (0.27%) SCOM
19 25 (0.24%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,047 (9.88%) Microsoft
2 656 (6.19%) Oracle
3 509 (4.80%) VMware
4 411 (3.88%) ServiceNow
5 366 (3.45%) SAP
6 364 (3.44%) Cisco
7 251 (2.37%) Splunk
8 213 (2.01%) Databricks
9 171 (1.61%) Red Hat
10 166 (1.57%) Google
11 152 (1.43%) Salesforce
12 127 (1.20%) Talend
13 125 (1.18%) Palo Alto
14 120 (1.13%) IBM
15 104 (0.98%) Juniper
16 99 (0.93%) Informatica
17 94 (0.89%) CyberArk
18 89 (0.84%) Fortinet
19 88 (0.83%) Atlassian
20 86 (0.81%) Dynatrace