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

6 months to
18 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 11,489 5,735 7,762
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.72% 17.62% 18.43%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.22% 57.26% 61.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,975 3,678 5,094
10th Percentile £381 £340 £340
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £531 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.21% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £646
90th Percentile £716 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 839 484 568
10th Percentile £18.31 £18.50 £15.21
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £62.50 £25.15 £55.04
Median % change year-on-year +148.51% -54.30% -8.27%
75th Percentile £76.75 £58.34 £72.33
90th Percentile £87.97 £75.00 £81.94
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £57.50
% change year-on-year +151.03% -56.26% -2.59%

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 16,597 10,016 12,590
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.37% 30.77% 29.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,088 6,221 7,884
10th Percentile £350 £278 £310
25th Percentile £430 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.10% -0.10% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £713 £704 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,200 729 1,037
10th Percentile £17.73 £17.87 £14.16
25th Percentile £25.75 £19.38 £20.75
Median hourly rate £51.22 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +103.66% -40.82% -24.71%
75th Percentile £73.00 £56.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.41 £75.00 £75.65
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -21.82%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 9,884 £530 -1.40% 1,650
UK excluding London +1 6,417 £525 -2.33% 1,284
London +7 3,516 £538 +2.48% 504
Work from Home +4 3,147 £525 -1.59% 818
South East +1 2,424 £550 +1.22% 456
South West 0 1,300 £538 -6.52% 295
North of England +2 1,081 £500 - 248
Midlands +2 963 £469 -6.20% 136
West Midlands +1 823 £469 -6.20% 97
North West 0 576 £525 - 140
East of England +2 327 £552 +5.14% 108
Yorkshire +2 298 £500 +1.63% 58
Scotland +16 284 £495 +7.03% 45
North East 0 236 £480 -4.00% 51
East Midlands -1 127 £418 -12.11% 39
Wales +3 103 £550 +15.79% 16
Northern Ireland +5 32 £650 +27.45% 8

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
1 411 (3.58%) Confluence
2 260 (2.26%) SharePoint
3 179 (1.56%) SAS
4 131 (1.14%) Microsoft Exchange
5 107 (0.93%) Apache Spark
6 105 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
7 97 (0.84%) Apache
8 50 (0.44%) nginx
9 41 (0.36%) WebLogic
10 39 (0.34%) Jupyter
11 27 (0.24%) Tomcat
12 25 (0.22%) IIS
13 20 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
14 18 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
15 17 (0.15%) CMS
16 16 (0.14%) NetWeaver
17 13 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
18 12 (0.10%) Skype for Business
18 12 (0.10%) Tuxedo
19 9 (0.078%) Documentum
Applications
1 199 (1.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 153 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
3 89 (0.77%) Microsoft Project
4 76 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 51 (0.44%) MS Visio
6 21 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.14%) Simulink
8 12 (0.10%) AutoCAD
8 12 (0.10%) Revit
8 12 (0.10%) SOLIDWORKS
9 10 (0.087%) 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
1 142 (1.24%) SAP S/4HANA
2 70 (0.61%) Remedy ITSM
3 43 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
4 40 (0.35%) Teamcenter
5 35 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
6 30 (0.26%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 28 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
8 23 (0.20%) SAP PSCD
9 20 (0.17%) Primavera
10 19 (0.17%) SAP GRC
11 15 (0.13%) Findur
11 15 (0.13%) Temenos T24
12 12 (0.10%) iTrent
12 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
13 11 (0.096%) Oracle Payables
13 11 (0.096%) Oracle Payroll
13 11 (0.096%) SAP ERP
13 11 (0.096%) SAP HR
14 10 (0.087%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 10 (0.087%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 2,047 (17.82%) Azure
2 2,041 (17.76%) AWS
3 508 (4.42%) GitHub
4 480 (4.18%) Azure DevOps
5 453 (3.94%) Power Platform
6 428 (3.73%) GCP
7 314 (2.73%) GitHub Actions
8 295 (2.57%) Microsoft 365
9 291 (2.53%) Entra ID
10 280 (2.44%) Serverless
11 248 (2.16%) Amazon S3
12 200 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
13 166 (1.44%) Amazon EC2
14 157 (1.37%) OCI
15 156 (1.36%) SaaS
16 155 (1.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 152 (1.32%) Amazon EKS
18 150 (1.31%) PaaS
19 143 (1.24%) OpenShift
20 130 (1.13%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 486 (4.23%) Firewall
2 371 (3.23%) DNS
3 248 (2.16%) Network Security
4 236 (2.05%) WAN
5 209 (1.82%) VPN
6 200 (1.74%) LAN
7 185 (1.61%) DHCP
8 147 (1.28%) BGP
9 134 (1.17%) TCP/IP
10 122 (1.06%) OSPF
11 110 (0.96%) VLAN
12 109 (0.95%) Wi-Fi
13 90 (0.78%) Wireless
14 71 (0.62%) MPLS
15 66 (0.57%) SAN
16 64 (0.56%) SD-WAN
17 63 (0.55%) IPsec
18 58 (0.50%) VXLAN
19 55 (0.48%) VSAN
20 53 (0.46%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 346 (3.01%) Power BI
2 310 (2.70%) PostgreSQL
3 279 (2.43%) SQL Server
4 276 (2.40%) Data Warehouse
5 173 (1.51%) Oracle Database
6 161 (1.40%) Metadata
7 135 (1.18%) Relational Database
8 133 (1.16%) Data Lake
9 111 (0.97%) MongoDB
10 106 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
11 98 (0.85%) MySQL
12 94 (0.82%) Oracle Reports
13 87 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
14 84 (0.73%) Pentaho
15 73 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
16 72 (0.63%) NoSQL
17 70 (0.61%) Amazon Athena
18 68 (0.59%) Big Data
19 62 (0.54%) Tableau
20 49 (0.43%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 651 (5.67%) JIRA
2 543 (4.73%) Git
3 467 (4.06%) GitLab
4 452 (3.93%) Jenkins
5 122 (1.06%) Selenium
6 85 (0.74%) SonarQube
7 82 (0.71%) JUnit
8 81 (0.71%) Postman
9 65 (0.57%) JMeter
10 58 (0.50%) Rational DOORS
11 57 (0.50%) Maven
12 52 (0.45%) Cucumber
13 46 (0.40%) Visual Studio
14 44 (0.38%) Artifactory
14 44 (0.38%) Cypress.io
14 44 (0.38%) Mockito
14 44 (0.38%) REST Assured
15 41 (0.36%) Bitbucket
15 41 (0.36%) Zephyr
16 39 (0.34%) Gatling
General
1 2,501 (21.77%) Public Sector
2 2,344 (20.40%) Social Skills
3 852 (7.42%) Analytical Skills
4 749 (6.52%) Finance
5 358 (3.12%) Military
6 299 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
7 296 (2.58%) Aerospace
8 183 (1.59%) Legal
9 168 (1.46%) Influencing Skills
10 148 (1.29%) Telecoms
11 133 (1.16%) Banking
12 128 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
13 105 (0.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 97 (0.84%) Manufacturing
15 96 (0.84%) Law
15 96 (0.84%) Police
16 70 (0.61%) Presentation Skills
17 54 (0.47%) Aviation
18 43 (0.37%) Marketing
19 38 (0.33%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 1,772 (15.42%) Architect
2 1,256 (10.93%) Developer
3 1,054 (9.17%) Senior
4 942 (8.20%) Lead
5 726 (6.32%) Analyst
6 588 (5.12%) Consultant
7 526 (4.58%) Data Engineer
8 495 (4.31%) DevOps Engineer
9 379 (3.30%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 377 (3.28%) Technical Architect
11 343 (2.99%) Solutions Architect
12 338 (2.94%) Software Engineer
13 272 (2.37%) Security Architect
14 268 (2.33%) Network Engineer
15 230 (2.00%) Java Developer
16 224 (1.95%) Designer
17 222 (1.93%) Business Analyst
18 213 (1.85%) Data Architect
19 206 (1.79%) Project Manager
20 204 (1.78%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 395 (3.44%) REST
2 278 (2.42%) Spring
3 239 (2.08%) Spring Boot
4 224 (1.95%) .NET
5 221 (1.92%) Kafka
6 208 (1.81%) React
7 205 (1.78%) RESTful
8 191 (1.66%) Node.js
9 161 (1.40%) SOAP
10 143 (1.24%) JSON
11 136 (1.18%) AngularJS
12 122 (1.06%) Web Services
13 121 (1.05%) OAuth
14 112 (0.97%) HTML
15 103 (0.90%) Middleware
16 102 (0.89%) PySpark
17 96 (0.84%) LDAP
17 96 (0.84%) XML
18 92 (0.80%) OpenID
19 89 (0.77%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 469 (4.08%) Cloud Native
2 390 (3.39%) Onboarding
3 368 (3.20%) Product Ownership
4 322 (2.80%) Data Centre
5 230 (2.00%) Management Information System
6 196 (1.71%) Legacy Systems
7 169 (1.47%) Distributed Systems
8 160 (1.39%) PKI
9 125 (1.09%) Replication
10 124 (1.08%) CMDB
11 120 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
12 115 (1.00%) Enterprise Software
13 108 (0.94%) Data Structures
14 105 (0.91%) Hybrid Cloud
15 97 (0.84%) Public Cloud
16 96 (0.84%) Clustering
16 96 (0.84%) Security Posture
17 89 (0.77%) Virtual Team
18 84 (0.73%) Security Operations Centre
19 75 (0.65%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 911 (7.93%) Windows
2 788 (6.86%) Linux
3 293 (2.55%) Windows Server
4 224 (1.95%) Unix
5 152 (1.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 99 (0.86%) Android
7 92 (0.80%) Windows 10
8 68 (0.59%) Apple iOS
9 62 (0.54%) Solaris
10 48 (0.42%) Mac OS
11 36 (0.31%) Ubuntu
11 36 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
12 34 (0.30%) AIX
13 27 (0.24%) CentOS
14 23 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 21 (0.18%) VMS
16 15 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
17 13 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
18 11 (0.096%) Windows 7
19 10 (0.087%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,355 (20.50%) Agile
2 1,789 (15.57%) DevOps
3 1,676 (14.59%) CI/CD
4 1,232 (10.72%) Problem-Solving
5 1,218 (10.60%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,207 (10.51%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,007 (8.76%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 885 (7.70%) Infrastructure as Code
9 881 (7.67%) Migration
10 740 (6.44%) Cybersecurity
11 737 (6.41%) ITIL
12 709 (6.17%) Test Automation
13 706 (6.15%) Containerisation
14 695 (6.05%) Analytics
15 672 (5.85%) Software Engineering
16 653 (5.68%) Roadmaps
17 633 (5.51%) Decision-Making
18 620 (5.40%) Data Modelling
19 585 (5.09%) Technical Leadership
20 577 (5.02%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,281 (11.15%) Python
2 1,114 (9.70%) SQL
3 811 (7.06%) Java
4 526 (4.58%) PowerShell
5 357 (3.11%) JavaScript
6 282 (2.45%) Bash
7 250 (2.18%) C#
8 189 (1.65%) TypeScript
9 175 (1.52%) PL/SQL
10 96 (0.84%) Shell Script
11 93 (0.81%) Bicep
12 92 (0.80%) C++
13 67 (0.58%) C
14 61 (0.53%) Apex Code
15 60 (0.52%) Ruby
16 56 (0.49%) Go
17 54 (0.47%) Kotlin
18 49 (0.43%) Scala
19 42 (0.37%) R
20 40 (0.35%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 8,760 (76.25%) SC Cleared
2 2,159 (18.79%) DV Cleared
3 441 (3.84%) Degree
4 399 (3.47%) BPSS Clearance
5 217 (1.89%) Cisco Certification
6 189 (1.65%) CISSP
7 161 (1.40%) Azure Certification
8 139 (1.21%) Microsoft Certification
9 136 (1.18%) AWS Certification
10 114 (0.99%) CISM
11 101 (0.88%) CCNP
11 101 (0.88%) PMI Certification
12 98 (0.85%) PMP
13 94 (0.82%) CCNA
14 79 (0.69%) ISTQB
15 70 (0.61%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 66 (0.57%) Computer Science Degree
17 55 (0.48%) ITIL Certification
18 47 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 47 (0.41%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 437 (3.80%) QA
2 360 (3.13%) Data Quality
3 313 (2.72%) NIST
4 309 (2.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 252 (2.19%) NCSC
6 250 (2.18%) Accessibility
7 193 (1.68%) PMO
8 181 (1.58%) GDPR
9 124 (1.08%) GRC
9 124 (1.08%) SLA
10 68 (0.59%) WCAG
11 62 (0.54%) JSP 440
12 49 (0.43%) NIST 800
13 44 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
14 32 (0.28%) Def Stans
15 27 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
15 27 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 25 (0.22%) RMADS
17 24 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 23 (0.20%) COBIT
System Software
1 784 (6.82%) Docker
2 498 (4.33%) Active Directory
3 372 (3.24%) VMware Infrastructure
4 141 (1.23%) VMware NSX
5 133 (1.16%) VMware ESXi
6 105 (0.91%) vSphere
7 99 (0.86%) Hyper-V
8 85 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
9 51 (0.44%) Oracle RAC
10 35 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
11 32 (0.28%) Firmware
12 25 (0.22%) NFS
13 21 (0.18%) Squid
13 21 (0.18%) vCloud
14 19 (0.17%) BitLocker
15 18 (0.16%) Postfix
16 8 (0.070%) KVM
16 8 (0.070%) Microsoft App-V
16 8 (0.070%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 7 (0.061%) UAG
Systems Management
1 970 (8.44%) Terraform
2 946 (8.23%) Kubernetes
3 416 (3.62%) Ansible
4 282 (2.45%) Grafana
5 227 (1.98%) Prometheus
6 128 (1.11%) vCenter Server
7 94 (0.82%) SCCM
8 82 (0.71%) Single Sign-On
9 72 (0.63%) Microsoft Intune
10 64 (0.56%) Argo
11 56 (0.49%) SCOM
12 54 (0.47%) Oracle RMAN
13 49 (0.43%) FortiGate
14 46 (0.40%) Puppet
15 41 (0.36%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 36 (0.31%) Data Guard
17 30 (0.26%) Nagios
18 29 (0.25%) Progress Chef
19 26 (0.23%) Kibana
19 26 (0.23%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,295 (11.27%) Microsoft
2 868 (7.56%) Oracle
3 552 (4.80%) VMware
4 533 (4.64%) ServiceNow
5 393 (3.42%) SAP
6 321 (2.79%) Cisco
7 227 (1.98%) Splunk
8 209 (1.82%) Google
9 194 (1.69%) Databricks
10 191 (1.66%) Salesforce
11 159 (1.38%) Red Hat
12 138 (1.20%) Informatica
12 138 (1.20%) Talend
13 127 (1.11%) IBM
14 117 (1.02%) Palo Alto
15 105 (0.91%) Juniper
16 99 (0.86%) F5
17 95 (0.83%) SolarWinds
18 94 (0.82%) Fortinet
19 87 (0.76%) Citrix