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

6 months to
11 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 9,841 5,217 8,151
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 23.13% 17.70% 18.22%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.36% 58.36% 59.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,601 3,420 5,209
10th Percentile £360 £325 £358
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.22%
75th Percentile £623 £626 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £734
UK excluding London median daily rate £517 £540 £550
% change year-on-year -4.26% -1.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 828 276 549
10th Percentile £17.72 £20.12 £14.50
25th Percentile £20.50 £24.66 £22.00
Median hourly rate £29.75 £58.25 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -48.94% +5.91% -8.33%
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £84.00 £77.93 £81.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £60.25 £55.00
% change year-on-year -54.36% +9.55% -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 14,395 8,940 13,648
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.83% 30.33% 30.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,479 5,628 8,419
10th Percentile £335 £285 £290
25th Percentile £421 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £517 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.58% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £614 £626 £650
90th Percentile £720 £725 £733
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £511 £525
% change year-on-year -2.15% -2.67% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,070 463 1,036
10th Percentile £16.17 £18.95 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.66 £24.19 £18.29
Median hourly rate £28.36 £43.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -34.05% +7.50% -20.00%
75th Percentile £66.00 £67.50 £62.63
90th Percentile £83.08 £82.22 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £50.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -48.46% +25.00% -16.67%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 8,542 £525 -3.00% 1,758
UK excluding London +1 5,463 £517 -4.26% 1,419
London +5 2,968 £533 +1.43% 411
Work from Home +4 2,684 £525 -0.38% 818
South East +1 1,937 £525 -4.55% 512
South West 0 1,292 £545 -0.91% 359
Midlands +3 866 £492 -10.55% 148
North of England -1 831 £496 +0.14% 208
West Midlands +3 697 £494 -10.39% 112
North West 0 534 £500 +4.17% 107
East of England +2 354 £495 -1.00% 139
Yorkshire -10 178 £484 -7.86% 54
Scotland +13 174 £500 +11.11% 50
East Midlands 0 166 £425 -17.07% 36
North East 0 149 £450 -4.26% 48
Wales -1 79 £515 -4.59% 33
Northern Ireland +12 28 £500 +64.01% 4
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
1 362 (3.68%) Confluence
2 222 (2.26%) SharePoint
3 146 (1.48%) Microsoft Exchange
4 145 (1.47%) SAS
5 86 (0.87%) Apache Spark
6 75 (0.76%) Apache
7 57 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
8 42 (0.43%) nginx
9 40 (0.41%) WebLogic
10 30 (0.30%) Skype for Business
11 22 (0.22%) Jupyter
12 20 (0.20%) CMS
13 17 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
14 15 (0.15%) Tuxedo
15 11 (0.11%) IIS
16 10 (0.10%) ArcGIS
16 10 (0.10%) Tomcat
17 9 (0.091%) Oracle Workflow
18 7 (0.071%) OpenStack
19 5 (0.051%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 255 (2.59%) Microsoft Office
2 201 (2.04%) Microsoft Excel
3 121 (1.23%) Microsoft Project
4 71 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 47 (0.48%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.13%) Simulink
8 6 (0.061%) Sketch
9 5 (0.051%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.051%) Siemens NX
9 5 (0.051%) Windchill
10 4 (0.041%) Chatbot
10 4 (0.041%) Oracle Smart View
11 2 (0.020%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.020%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.020%) CATIA
11 2 (0.020%) InVision
11 2 (0.020%) Photoshop
11 2 (0.020%) PlantUML
11 2 (0.020%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 150 (1.52%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (0.43%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 29 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
4 28 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
5 27 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
6 25 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 24 (0.24%) SAP MM
8 19 (0.19%) SAP PP
9 16 (0.16%) Maximo
9 16 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
10 14 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
10 14 (0.14%) SAP VC
11 13 (0.13%) SAP QM
12 11 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
13 9 (0.091%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 9 (0.091%) Primavera
13 9 (0.091%) SAP PM
14 8 (0.081%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 8 (0.081%) SAP Payroll
14 8 (0.081%) SAP WM
Cloud Services
1 1,681 (17.08%) AWS
2 1,618 (16.44%) Azure
3 441 (4.48%) GitHub
4 419 (4.26%) GCP
5 370 (3.76%) Power Platform
6 363 (3.69%) Azure DevOps
7 325 (3.30%) Microsoft 365
8 269 (2.73%) Serverless
9 252 (2.56%) Entra ID
10 234 (2.38%) GitHub Actions
11 197 (2.00%) Amazon S3
12 181 (1.84%) OpenShift
13 172 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
14 143 (1.45%) AWS CloudFormation
15 133 (1.35%) Amazon EKS
16 130 (1.32%) Amazon EC2
17 121 (1.23%) PaaS
18 119 (1.21%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 117 (1.19%) IaaS
20 109 (1.11%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 444 (4.51%) Firewall
2 280 (2.85%) DNS
3 218 (2.22%) Network Security
4 209 (2.12%) WAN
5 176 (1.79%) LAN
6 175 (1.78%) VPN
7 138 (1.40%) BGP
8 137 (1.39%) TCP/IP
9 131 (1.33%) DHCP
10 99 (1.01%) OSPF
11 97 (0.99%) Wireless
12 89 (0.90%) VLAN
13 75 (0.76%) Wi-Fi
14 73 (0.74%) MPLS
15 52 (0.53%) SAN
16 51 (0.52%) IPsec
17 48 (0.49%) SSL
18 46 (0.47%) Cisco ISE
19 42 (0.43%) Kerberos
20 40 (0.41%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 265 (2.69%) PostgreSQL
1 265 (2.69%) Power BI
2 178 (1.81%) Data Warehouse
3 158 (1.61%) SQL Server
4 123 (1.25%) Metadata
5 115 (1.17%) Oracle Database
6 101 (1.03%) Amazon RDS
6 101 (1.03%) NoSQL
7 97 (0.99%) MongoDB
8 93 (0.95%) Relational Database
9 82 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
10 78 (0.79%) Data Lake
11 72 (0.73%) Big Data
11 72 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
12 70 (0.71%) MySQL
13 65 (0.66%) Pentaho
14 55 (0.56%) Tableau
15 52 (0.53%) Amazon Redshift
16 47 (0.48%) Delta Lake
17 43 (0.44%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 581 (5.90%) JIRA
2 474 (4.82%) Git
3 400 (4.06%) Jenkins
4 357 (3.63%) GitLab
5 118 (1.20%) Selenium
6 87 (0.88%) Postman
7 84 (0.85%) JUnit
8 58 (0.59%) Cypress.io
9 55 (0.56%) SonarQube
10 51 (0.52%) Bitbucket
11 50 (0.51%) Rational DOORS
12 48 (0.49%) Cucumber
13 47 (0.48%) Artifactory
14 45 (0.46%) Maven
15 44 (0.45%) Oracle APEX
16 41 (0.42%) JMeter
17 36 (0.37%) Mockito
18 35 (0.36%) Visual Studio
19 33 (0.34%) REST Assured
20 23 (0.23%) Metasploit
General
1 2,485 (25.25%) Public Sector
2 2,320 (23.57%) Social Skills
3 820 (8.33%) Analytical Skills
4 676 (6.87%) Finance
5 329 (3.34%) Military
6 268 (2.72%) Documentation Skills
7 231 (2.35%) Aerospace
8 192 (1.95%) Manufacturing
9 187 (1.90%) Telecoms
10 150 (1.52%) Legal
11 128 (1.30%) Organisational Skills
12 127 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
13 116 (1.18%) Electronics
14 115 (1.17%) Marketing
15 111 (1.13%) Banking
16 106 (1.08%) Presentation Skills
17 71 (0.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 70 (0.71%) Law
19 53 (0.54%) Police
20 40 (0.41%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,405 (14.28%) Architect
2 972 (9.88%) Developer
3 865 (8.79%) Senior
4 757 (7.69%) Analyst
5 645 (6.55%) Consultant
6 611 (6.21%) Lead
7 418 (4.25%) DevOps Engineer
8 377 (3.83%) Data Engineer
9 270 (2.74%) Solutions Architect
10 269 (2.73%) Business Analyst
11 262 (2.66%) Network Engineer
12 260 (2.64%) Technical Architect
13 258 (2.62%) Software Engineer
14 238 (2.42%) Support Engineer
15 187 (1.90%) Tester
16 178 (1.81%) Designer
17 174 (1.77%) AWS Engineer
17 174 (1.77%) Azure Engineer
18 172 (1.75%) Security Architect
19 171 (1.74%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 364 (3.70%) REST
2 220 (2.24%) Spring
3 215 (2.18%) Node.js
4 210 (2.13%) Kafka
5 188 (1.91%) React
6 167 (1.70%) SOAP
7 163 (1.66%) Spring Boot
8 159 (1.62%) JSON
9 151 (1.53%) LDAP
10 147 (1.49%) .NET
11 121 (1.23%) RESTful
11 121 (1.23%) Web Services
12 120 (1.22%) AngularJS
12 120 (1.22%) HTML
13 112 (1.14%) PySpark
14 111 (1.13%) OAuth
15 100 (1.02%) Oracle Fusion
16 99 (1.01%) XML
17 95 (0.97%) CSS
18 86 (0.87%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 310 (3.15%) Data Centre
2 299 (3.04%) Product Ownership
3 283 (2.88%) Cloud Native
4 251 (2.55%) Onboarding
5 203 (2.06%) PKI
6 186 (1.89%) Management Information System
7 140 (1.42%) Security Posture
8 122 (1.24%) Legacy Systems
8 122 (1.24%) Self-Motivation
9 110 (1.12%) Enterprise Software
10 100 (1.02%) Replication
11 86 (0.87%) Public Cloud
12 79 (0.80%) Security Operations Centre
13 78 (0.79%) Distributed Systems
13 78 (0.79%) Hybrid Cloud
14 71 (0.72%) Driving Licence
15 66 (0.67%) Cyber Threat
16 65 (0.66%) Data Structures
17 56 (0.57%) Clustering
18 53 (0.54%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 870 (8.84%) Windows
2 701 (7.12%) Linux
3 226 (2.30%) Windows Server
4 140 (1.42%) Windows 10
5 129 (1.31%) Android
6 127 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 123 (1.25%) Unix
8 70 (0.71%) Mac OS
9 53 (0.54%) Apple iOS
10 49 (0.50%) Ubuntu
11 32 (0.33%) VMS
12 30 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
13 23 (0.23%) CentOS
13 23 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
14 22 (0.22%) Solaris
15 20 (0.20%) Windows 7
16 13 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
17 11 (0.11%) AIX
17 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
18 9 (0.091%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,883 (19.13%) Agile
2 1,483 (15.07%) DevOps
3 1,311 (13.32%) CI/CD
4 1,177 (11.96%) Problem-Solving
5 906 (9.21%) Stakeholder Management
6 835 (8.48%) Migration
7 798 (8.11%) Continuous Improvement
8 707 (7.18%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 617 (6.27%) Cybersecurity
10 606 (6.16%) Infrastructure as Code
11 589 (5.99%) ITIL
12 557 (5.66%) Analytics
13 547 (5.56%) Test Automation
14 544 (5.53%) Roadmaps
15 530 (5.39%) Containerisation
16 462 (4.69%) Software Engineering
17 461 (4.68%) Business Intelligence
18 460 (4.67%) Scrum
19 437 (4.44%) Data Modelling
20 429 (4.36%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,169 (11.88%) Python
2 851 (8.65%) SQL
3 615 (6.25%) PowerShell
4 554 (5.63%) Java
5 428 (4.35%) JavaScript
6 223 (2.27%) Bash
7 200 (2.03%) C#
8 199 (2.02%) TypeScript
9 113 (1.15%) C++
10 108 (1.10%) Shell Script
11 106 (1.08%) PL/SQL
12 81 (0.82%) Go
13 65 (0.66%) C
13 65 (0.66%) Ruby
14 51 (0.52%) Scala
15 49 (0.50%) Ada
16 45 (0.46%) Kusto Query Language
17 41 (0.42%) Bicep
18 40 (0.41%) ABAP
19 37 (0.38%) R
Qualifications
1 7,532 (76.54%) SC Cleared
2 1,648 (16.75%) DV Cleared
3 489 (4.97%) Degree
4 324 (3.29%) BPSS Clearance
5 183 (1.86%) Cisco Certification
6 175 (1.78%) CISSP
7 140 (1.42%) AWS Certification
8 134 (1.36%) Azure Certification
9 124 (1.26%) CCNP
10 111 (1.13%) CISM
10 111 (1.13%) Microsoft Certification
11 89 (0.90%) Computer Science Degree
12 81 (0.82%) CCNA
13 69 (0.70%) ITIL Certification
14 66 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
15 58 (0.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 56 (0.57%) ISTQB
17 52 (0.53%) PMP
18 49 (0.50%) CEH
19 48 (0.49%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 326 (3.31%) QA
2 299 (3.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 288 (2.93%) NIST
4 287 (2.92%) Data Quality
5 215 (2.18%) NCSC
6 187 (1.90%) GDPR
7 185 (1.88%) Accessibility
8 126 (1.28%) SLA
9 111 (1.13%) PMO
10 66 (0.67%) GRC
11 65 (0.66%) JSP 440
12 46 (0.47%) WCAG
13 44 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials
14 41 (0.42%) NIST 800
15 38 (0.39%) Def Stans
16 35 (0.36%) COBIT
16 35 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 33 (0.34%) PCI DSS
18 25 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
19 24 (0.24%) RMADS
System Software
1 661 (6.72%) Docker
2 490 (4.98%) Active Directory
3 242 (2.46%) VMware Infrastructure
4 89 (0.90%) VMware NSX
5 72 (0.73%) vSphere
6 61 (0.62%) Hyper-V
6 61 (0.62%) VMware ESXi
7 57 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
8 31 (0.32%) Firmware
9 30 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
10 19 (0.19%) BitLocker
10 19 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
11 17 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 15 (0.15%) NFS
13 10 (0.10%) Postfix
14 9 (0.091%) Squid
14 9 (0.091%) vCloud
15 6 (0.061%) KVM
16 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
16 5 (0.051%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 859 (8.73%) Kubernetes
2 789 (8.02%) Terraform
3 314 (3.19%) Ansible
4 247 (2.51%) Grafana
5 203 (2.06%) Prometheus
6 133 (1.35%) Single Sign-On
7 98 (1.00%) SCCM
8 89 (0.90%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 86 (0.87%) vCenter Server
10 70 (0.71%) Argo
11 69 (0.70%) Microsoft Intune
12 49 (0.50%) FortiGate
13 40 (0.41%) Packer
13 40 (0.41%) Podman
14 35 (0.36%) vRealize
15 33 (0.34%) Puppet
16 31 (0.32%) Progress Chef
17 30 (0.30%) OPNET
18 29 (0.29%) Kibana
19 24 (0.24%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 1,078 (10.95%) Microsoft
2 553 (5.62%) Oracle
3 460 (4.67%) VMware
4 449 (4.56%) SAP
5 427 (4.34%) Cisco
6 408 (4.15%) ServiceNow
7 242 (2.46%) Splunk
8 191 (1.94%) Red Hat
9 161 (1.64%) Databricks
10 157 (1.60%) Google
11 143 (1.45%) CyberArk
12 139 (1.41%) Salesforce
13 131 (1.33%) Juniper
14 127 (1.29%) Palo Alto
15 126 (1.28%) Atlassian
16 110 (1.12%) IBM
17 101 (1.03%) Dell
18 93 (0.95%) Talend
19 86 (0.87%) HP
20 79 (0.80%) Aruba