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

6 months to
22 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,118 5,274 8,132
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 23.04% 17.86% 18.36%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.40% 58.57% 59.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,790 3,451 5,249
10th Percentile £363 £331 £359
25th Percentile £448 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.14%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £515 £548 £550
% change year-on-year -6.02% -0.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 831 279 518
10th Percentile £17.73 £19.80 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.50 £24.66 £21.46
Median hourly rate £35.00 £55.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -36.36% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £69.72 £67.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.25 £80.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.00 £60.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year -41.67% +9.09% -4.56%

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 14,793 9,004 13,569
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.69% 30.49% 30.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,751 5,695 8,408
10th Percentile £335 £290 £298
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £614 £625 £650
90th Percentile £720 £715 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,088 479 1,005
10th Percentile £16.17 £18.51 £13.92
25th Percentile £19.98 £24.35 £17.80
Median hourly rate £30.00 £42.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -29.41% +13.33% -28.06%
75th Percentile £67.84 £67.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £84.00 £81.01 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.50 £48.31 £37.50
% change year-on-year -41.01% +28.83% -23.47%

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 March 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 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Top 18 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 March 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 +1 8,789 £525 -4.02% 1,932
UK excluding London +1 5,604 £515 -6.02% 1,603
London +6 3,089 £530 +0.95% 525
Work from Home +4 2,736 £525 -0.19% 813
South East +1 2,052 £525 -4.55% 571
South West 0 1,301 £540 -4.00% 365
Midlands +4 876 £485 -10.19% 168
North of England -1 821 £481 -3.75% 281
West Midlands +2 711 £492 -10.55% 125
North West -2 518 £492 -1.60% 150
East of England +1 356 £494 +3.89% 146
Yorkshire -9 195 £500 -4.76% 71
Scotland +13 184 £500 +11.11% 63
East Midlands +1 161 £447 -12.80% 42
North East 0 140 £450 -4.26% 61
Wales +1 80 £515 -4.59% 32
Northern Ireland +12 27 £463 -2.63% 13
Channel Islands - 1 - -

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
1 383 (3.79%) Confluence
2 230 (2.27%) SharePoint
3 143 (1.41%) Microsoft Exchange
4 140 (1.38%) SAS
5 94 (0.93%) Apache Spark
6 85 (0.84%) Apache
7 62 (0.61%) Apache Airflow
8 43 (0.42%) nginx
9 40 (0.40%) WebLogic
10 29 (0.29%) Skype for Business
11 23 (0.23%) Jupyter
12 20 (0.20%) CMS
13 16 (0.16%) IIS
14 15 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
14 15 (0.15%) Tuxedo
15 13 (0.13%) Tomcat
16 11 (0.11%) NetWeaver
17 10 (0.099%) Oracle Workflow
18 9 (0.089%) ArcGIS
19 6 (0.059%) SAP EP
Applications
1 256 (2.53%) Microsoft Office
2 200 (1.98%) Microsoft Excel
3 130 (1.28%) Microsoft Project
4 71 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 47 (0.46%) MS Visio
6 31 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.12%) Simulink
8 6 (0.059%) Sketch
8 6 (0.059%) Windchill
9 5 (0.049%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.049%) Siemens NX
10 4 (0.040%) Chatbot
11 2 (0.020%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.020%) CATIA
11 2 (0.020%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.020%) InVision
11 2 (0.020%) Lectora
11 2 (0.020%) Oracle Smart View
11 2 (0.020%) Photoshop
11 2 (0.020%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 114 (1.13%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (0.44%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 36 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 28 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
5 27 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
5 27 (0.27%) Teamcenter
6 19 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
6 19 (0.19%) SAP PP
7 16 (0.16%) Maximo
8 15 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
9 14 (0.14%) SAP MM
10 12 (0.12%) Oracle Assets
11 11 (0.11%) Temenos T24
12 9 (0.089%) Findur
12 9 (0.089%) Primavera
12 9 (0.089%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.089%) SAP HR
12 9 (0.089%) SAP PM
13 8 (0.079%) SAP PSCD
13 8 (0.079%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,738 (17.18%) AWS
2 1,706 (16.86%) Azure
3 480 (4.74%) GitHub
4 434 (4.29%) GCP
5 401 (3.96%) Azure DevOps
6 375 (3.71%) Power Platform
7 317 (3.13%) Microsoft 365
8 282 (2.79%) Serverless
9 254 (2.51%) GitHub Actions
10 248 (2.45%) Entra ID
11 211 (2.09%) Amazon S3
12 184 (1.82%) AWS Lambda
13 181 (1.79%) OpenShift
14 149 (1.47%) AWS CloudFormation
15 140 (1.38%) Amazon EC2
16 131 (1.29%) Amazon EKS
17 129 (1.27%) PaaS
18 122 (1.21%) IaaS
19 117 (1.16%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 116 (1.15%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 466 (4.61%) Firewall
2 283 (2.80%) DNS
3 231 (2.28%) Network Security
4 217 (2.14%) WAN
5 185 (1.83%) LAN
5 185 (1.83%) VPN
6 145 (1.43%) BGP
7 138 (1.36%) TCP/IP
8 133 (1.31%) DHCP
9 106 (1.05%) OSPF
10 98 (0.97%) Wireless
11 88 (0.87%) VLAN
12 77 (0.76%) Wi-Fi
13 75 (0.74%) MPLS
14 56 (0.55%) SAN
14 56 (0.55%) SSL
15 54 (0.53%) IPsec
16 51 (0.50%) Cisco ISE
17 44 (0.43%) Kerberos
17 44 (0.43%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 276 (2.73%) PostgreSQL
1 276 (2.73%) Power BI
2 185 (1.83%) Data Warehouse
3 173 (1.71%) SQL Server
4 133 (1.31%) Metadata
5 114 (1.13%) Oracle Database
6 108 (1.07%) NoSQL
7 107 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
8 106 (1.05%) MongoDB
9 102 (1.01%) Relational Database
10 90 (0.89%) Data Lake
11 88 (0.87%) Azure SQL Database
12 75 (0.74%) MySQL
13 73 (0.72%) Elasticsearch
14 70 (0.69%) Big Data
15 63 (0.62%) Pentaho
16 59 (0.58%) Tableau
17 58 (0.57%) Amazon Redshift
18 54 (0.53%) Delta Lake
19 44 (0.43%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 609 (6.02%) JIRA
2 486 (4.80%) Git
3 406 (4.01%) Jenkins
4 353 (3.49%) GitLab
5 116 (1.15%) Selenium
6 87 (0.86%) JUnit
7 80 (0.79%) Postman
8 56 (0.55%) Rational DOORS
9 53 (0.52%) Bitbucket
9 53 (0.52%) SonarQube
10 51 (0.50%) Artifactory
11 49 (0.48%) Cypress.io
12 46 (0.45%) Cucumber
12 46 (0.45%) JMeter
12 46 (0.45%) Maven
13 42 (0.42%) Oracle APEX
14 39 (0.39%) Mockito
15 38 (0.38%) Visual Studio
16 28 (0.28%) REST Assured
17 23 (0.23%) Metasploit
General
1 2,536 (25.06%) Public Sector
2 2,379 (23.51%) Social Skills
3 852 (8.42%) Analytical Skills
4 711 (7.03%) Finance
5 337 (3.33%) Military
6 274 (2.71%) Documentation Skills
7 237 (2.34%) Aerospace
8 186 (1.84%) Manufacturing
9 183 (1.81%) Telecoms
10 159 (1.57%) Legal
11 130 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
12 125 (1.24%) Banking
13 117 (1.16%) Organisational Skills
14 115 (1.14%) Marketing
15 113 (1.12%) Electronics
16 105 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
17 74 (0.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 73 (0.72%) Law
19 55 (0.54%) Police
20 37 (0.37%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,487 (14.70%) Architect
2 979 (9.68%) Developer
3 898 (8.88%) Senior
4 764 (7.55%) Analyst
5 637 (6.30%) Lead
6 631 (6.24%) Consultant
7 418 (4.13%) DevOps Engineer
8 398 (3.93%) Data Engineer
9 289 (2.86%) Solutions Architect
10 280 (2.77%) Technical Architect
11 276 (2.73%) Network Engineer
12 269 (2.66%) Business Analyst
13 268 (2.65%) Software Engineer
14 225 (2.22%) Support Engineer
15 191 (1.89%) Project Manager
16 187 (1.85%) Security Architect
17 186 (1.84%) Tester
18 185 (1.83%) Designer
19 181 (1.79%) Azure Engineer
20 174 (1.72%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 367 (3.63%) REST
2 224 (2.21%) Spring
3 212 (2.10%) Node.js
4 210 (2.08%) Kafka
5 196 (1.94%) React
6 168 (1.66%) JSON
7 167 (1.65%) Spring Boot
8 164 (1.62%) SOAP
9 159 (1.57%) .NET
10 152 (1.50%) LDAP
11 130 (1.28%) RESTful
12 123 (1.22%) PySpark
13 122 (1.21%) AngularJS
14 117 (1.16%) HTML
15 115 (1.14%) Web Services
16 109 (1.08%) OAuth
17 102 (1.01%) Oracle Fusion
18 101 (1.00%) XML
19 92 (0.91%) CSS
20 88 (0.87%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 329 (3.25%) Product Ownership
2 313 (3.09%) Data Centre
3 303 (2.99%) Cloud Native
4 250 (2.47%) Onboarding
5 211 (2.09%) PKI
6 189 (1.87%) Management Information System
7 140 (1.38%) Security Posture
8 127 (1.26%) Legacy Systems
9 126 (1.25%) Self-Motivation
10 118 (1.17%) Enterprise Software
11 115 (1.14%) Replication
12 94 (0.93%) Distributed Systems
13 90 (0.89%) Public Cloud
14 83 (0.82%) Hybrid Cloud
14 83 (0.82%) Security Operations Centre
15 73 (0.72%) Cyber Threat
15 73 (0.72%) Data Structures
16 68 (0.67%) Driving Licence
17 61 (0.60%) Virtual Team
18 59 (0.58%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 897 (8.87%) Windows
2 734 (7.25%) Linux
3 247 (2.44%) Windows Server
4 136 (1.34%) Windows 10
5 132 (1.30%) Android
6 131 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 127 (1.26%) Unix
8 70 (0.69%) Mac OS
9 53 (0.52%) Apple iOS
10 46 (0.45%) Ubuntu
11 33 (0.33%) VMS
11 33 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
12 26 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
13 22 (0.22%) Solaris
14 21 (0.21%) CentOS
15 20 (0.20%) Windows 7
16 15 (0.15%) AIX
17 14 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
18 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
19 10 (0.099%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,978 (19.55%) Agile
2 1,526 (15.08%) DevOps
3 1,348 (13.32%) CI/CD
4 1,217 (12.03%) Problem-Solving
5 933 (9.22%) Stakeholder Management
6 858 (8.48%) Migration
7 836 (8.26%) Continuous Improvement
8 740 (7.31%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 652 (6.44%) Cybersecurity
10 638 (6.31%) Infrastructure as Code
11 628 (6.21%) ITIL
12 580 (5.73%) Analytics
13 564 (5.57%) Roadmaps
14 557 (5.51%) Test Automation
15 555 (5.49%) Containerisation
16 483 (4.77%) Software Engineering
17 476 (4.70%) Data Modelling
18 475 (4.69%) Scrum
19 469 (4.64%) Business Intelligence
20 441 (4.36%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 1,217 (12.03%) Python
2 892 (8.82%) SQL
3 642 (6.35%) PowerShell
4 581 (5.74%) Java
5 420 (4.15%) JavaScript
6 233 (2.30%) Bash
7 210 (2.08%) C#
8 197 (1.95%) TypeScript
9 112 (1.11%) C++
10 108 (1.07%) PL/SQL
11 104 (1.03%) Shell Script
12 78 (0.77%) Go
13 73 (0.72%) Ruby
14 61 (0.60%) C
15 58 (0.57%) Scala
16 47 (0.46%) Bicep
17 46 (0.45%) Ada
18 45 (0.44%) Kusto Query Language
19 43 (0.42%) R
20 41 (0.41%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 7,724 (76.34%) SC Cleared
2 1,741 (17.21%) DV Cleared
3 496 (4.90%) Degree
4 310 (3.06%) BPSS Clearance
5 182 (1.80%) Cisco Certification
6 180 (1.78%) CISSP
7 141 (1.39%) AWS Certification
8 137 (1.35%) Azure Certification
9 121 (1.20%) CCNP
10 114 (1.13%) CISM
11 110 (1.09%) Microsoft Certification
12 87 (0.86%) Computer Science Degree
13 80 (0.79%) CCNA
14 69 (0.68%) ITIL Certification
15 65 (0.64%) TOGAF Certification
16 60 (0.59%) PMP
16 60 (0.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 58 (0.57%) ISTQB
18 53 (0.52%) PMI Certification
19 51 (0.50%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 330 (3.26%) QA
2 319 (3.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 306 (3.02%) NIST
4 297 (2.94%) Data Quality
5 224 (2.21%) NCSC
6 185 (1.83%) GDPR
7 183 (1.81%) Accessibility
8 125 (1.24%) SLA
9 122 (1.21%) PMO
10 69 (0.68%) JSP 440
11 61 (0.60%) GRC
12 48 (0.47%) WCAG
13 47 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials
14 44 (0.43%) NIST 800
15 41 (0.41%) COBIT
15 41 (0.41%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 34 (0.34%) Def Stans
17 33 (0.33%) PCI DSS
18 29 (0.29%) RMADS
19 25 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 673 (6.65%) Docker
2 491 (4.85%) Active Directory
3 263 (2.60%) VMware Infrastructure
4 99 (0.98%) VMware NSX
5 79 (0.78%) vSphere
6 69 (0.68%) Hyper-V
7 68 (0.67%) VMware ESXi
8 59 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
9 29 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
10 28 (0.28%) Firmware
11 22 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
12 21 (0.21%) BitLocker
13 17 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 15 (0.15%) NFS
15 12 (0.12%) Squid
16 10 (0.099%) Postfix
16 10 (0.099%) vCloud
17 7 (0.069%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.059%) KVM
18 6 (0.059%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 866 (8.56%) Kubernetes
2 807 (7.98%) Terraform
3 333 (3.29%) Ansible
4 251 (2.48%) Grafana
5 211 (2.09%) Prometheus
6 133 (1.31%) Single Sign-On
7 102 (1.01%) SCCM
8 92 (0.91%) vCenter Server
9 89 (0.88%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 71 (0.70%) Microsoft Intune
11 70 (0.69%) Argo
12 50 (0.49%) FortiGate
13 39 (0.39%) Packer
13 39 (0.39%) Podman
14 35 (0.35%) Puppet
15 34 (0.34%) Progress Chef
15 34 (0.34%) vRealize
16 30 (0.30%) OPNET
17 28 (0.28%) Kibana
18 25 (0.25%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 1,101 (10.88%) Microsoft
2 565 (5.58%) Oracle
3 488 (4.82%) VMware
4 434 (4.29%) Cisco
5 420 (4.15%) SAP
6 409 (4.04%) ServiceNow
7 247 (2.44%) Splunk
8 201 (1.99%) Red Hat
9 187 (1.85%) Databricks
10 165 (1.63%) Google
11 152 (1.50%) Salesforce
12 145 (1.43%) CyberArk
13 133 (1.31%) Juniper
14 131 (1.29%) Palo Alto
15 130 (1.28%) Atlassian
16 125 (1.24%) IBM
17 106 (1.05%) Dell
18 96 (0.95%) HP
19 91 (0.90%) Talend
20 81 (0.80%) Remedy