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

6 months to
18 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,609 5,884 7,219
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.68% 17.90% 18.63%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.20% 57.25% 62.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,129 3,716 4,802
10th Percentile £381 £350 £350
25th Percentile £454 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £534 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.70% -2.95% -
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £737
UK excluding London median daily rate £527 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -1.95% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 834 558 484
10th Percentile £19.39 £18.51 £15.22
25th Percentile £28.55 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £64.09 £25.15 £56.69
Median % change year-on-year +154.83% -55.64% -5.51%
75th Percentile £80.00 £47.97 £72.01
90th Percentile £88.00 £73.75 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £58.30
% change year-on-year +158.45% -56.86% +1.39%

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 16,777 10,277 11,609
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.32% 31.26% 29.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,244 6,313 7,369
10th Percentile £350 £288 £313
25th Percentile £431 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £638
90th Percentile £715 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £515 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,269 822 822
10th Percentile £17.84 £17.98 £14.54
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.38 £21.25
Median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -21.82%
75th Percentile £73.75 £53.93 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.16 £73.75 £76.17
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £47.50
% change year-on-year +98.81% -47.05% -6.40%

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 18 August 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 August 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 August 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 10,059 £538 - 1,853
UK excluding London +1 6,563 £527 -1.95% 1,529
London +7 3,541 £550 +3.77% 520
Work from Home +3 3,115 £525 -2.28% 832
South East +1 2,444 £560 +4.19% 513
South West 0 1,361 £540 -6.09% 387
North of England +3 1,172 £510 +2.00% 277
Midlands 0 945 £469 -8.93% 148
West Midlands +1 817 £469 -8.93% 105
North West +3 656 £525 -0.94% 169
East of England 0 339 £550 - 139
Yorkshire 0 301 £492 - 47
Scotland +12 264 £488 +1.77% 63
North East 0 239 £475 -3.80% 63
East Midlands -2 117 £450 -5.26% 42
Wales +3 103 £550 +15.79% 31
Northern Ireland +5 33 £650 +21.50% 6

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
1 403 (3.47%) Confluence
2 277 (2.39%) SharePoint
3 194 (1.67%) SAS
4 121 (1.04%) Microsoft Exchange
5 96 (0.83%) Apache Spark
6 95 (0.82%) Apache Airflow
7 91 (0.78%) Apache
8 36 (0.31%) Jupyter
9 35 (0.30%) nginx
10 31 (0.27%) WebLogic
11 24 (0.21%) IIS
12 23 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
12 23 (0.20%) Tomcat
13 20 (0.17%) Skype for Business
14 18 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
15 17 (0.15%) CMS
15 17 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
16 15 (0.13%) NetWeaver
17 13 (0.11%) JBoss
18 11 (0.095%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 209 (1.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 160 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
3 103 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 90 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 42 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.14%) AutoCAD
7 16 (0.14%) Revit
8 15 (0.13%) Simulink
8 15 (0.13%) SOLIDWORKS
9 8 (0.069%) Adobe XD
9 8 (0.069%) Chatbot
9 8 (0.069%) Windchill
10 7 (0.060%) Notepad++
10 7 (0.060%) Sketch
11 5 (0.043%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 3 (0.026%) Trello
13 2 (0.017%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.017%) Houdini
13 2 (0.017%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 144 (1.24%) SAP S/4HANA
2 83 (0.71%) Remedy ITSM
3 52 (0.45%) Oracle ERP
4 40 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
5 33 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 33 (0.28%) Teamcenter
6 29 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
7 22 (0.19%) Oracle Payroll
7 22 (0.19%) SAP GRC
7 22 (0.19%) SAP PSCD
8 21 (0.18%) Primavera
9 17 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
10 15 (0.13%) Findur
11 14 (0.12%) SAP HR
12 13 (0.11%) SAP FI
12 13 (0.11%) Temenos T24
13 12 (0.10%) iTrent
13 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
14 11 (0.095%) NetSuite
14 11 (0.095%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,149 (18.51%) Azure
2 2,059 (17.74%) AWS
3 543 (4.68%) GitHub
4 535 (4.61%) Azure DevOps
5 481 (4.14%) Power Platform
6 458 (3.95%) GCP
7 347 (2.99%) GitHub Actions
8 316 (2.72%) Microsoft 365
9 302 (2.60%) Entra ID
10 279 (2.40%) Serverless
11 229 (1.97%) Amazon S3
12 196 (1.69%) AWS Lambda
13 181 (1.56%) OCI
14 172 (1.48%) SaaS
15 162 (1.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 158 (1.36%) Amazon EKS
17 144 (1.24%) PaaS
18 143 (1.23%) Amazon EC2
19 139 (1.20%) OpenShift
20 133 (1.15%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 482 (4.15%) Firewall
2 378 (3.26%) DNS
3 225 (1.94%) WAN
4 223 (1.92%) Network Security
5 207 (1.78%) VPN
6 190 (1.64%) DHCP
7 188 (1.62%) LAN
8 142 (1.22%) TCP/IP
9 132 (1.14%) BGP
10 122 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
11 106 (0.91%) VLAN
12 99 (0.85%) OSPF
13 87 (0.75%) Wireless
14 68 (0.59%) VSAN
15 67 (0.58%) MPLS
16 64 (0.55%) IPsec
16 64 (0.55%) SSL
17 60 (0.52%) SAN
18 59 (0.51%) SD-WAN
19 48 (0.41%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 355 (3.06%) Power BI
2 314 (2.70%) PostgreSQL
3 302 (2.60%) SQL Server
4 284 (2.45%) Data Warehouse
5 169 (1.46%) Oracle Database
6 160 (1.38%) Metadata
7 139 (1.20%) Data Lake
8 137 (1.18%) Relational Database
9 116 (1.00%) MongoDB
10 112 (0.96%) Amazon RDS
11 107 (0.92%) Oracle Reports
12 106 (0.91%) MySQL
13 94 (0.81%) Pentaho
14 87 (0.75%) NoSQL
15 69 (0.59%) Amazon Redshift
16 68 (0.59%) Amazon Athena
17 59 (0.51%) Elasticsearch
17 59 (0.51%) Tableau
18 57 (0.49%) Big Data
19 50 (0.43%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 659 (5.68%) JIRA
2 580 (5.00%) Git
3 494 (4.26%) GitLab
4 492 (4.24%) Jenkins
5 136 (1.17%) Selenium
6 87 (0.75%) Postman
7 82 (0.71%) SonarQube
8 77 (0.66%) JUnit
9 74 (0.64%) JMeter
10 68 (0.59%) Maven
11 60 (0.52%) Rational DOORS
12 56 (0.48%) Cucumber
13 52 (0.45%) Visual Studio
14 48 (0.41%) Zephyr
15 47 (0.40%) Cypress.io
15 47 (0.40%) Mockito
16 43 (0.37%) Gradle
17 42 (0.36%) Bitbucket
18 40 (0.34%) Gatling
19 39 (0.34%) Artifactory
General
1 2,450 (21.10%) Social Skills
2 2,422 (20.86%) Public Sector
3 897 (7.73%) Analytical Skills
4 785 (6.76%) Finance
5 350 (3.01%) Military
6 321 (2.77%) Aerospace
7 297 (2.56%) Documentation Skills
8 186 (1.60%) Influencing Skills
9 167 (1.44%) Legal
10 158 (1.36%) Organisational Skills
11 156 (1.34%) Telecoms
12 144 (1.24%) Banking
13 137 (1.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 117 (1.01%) Manufacturing
15 108 (0.93%) Law
15 108 (0.93%) Police
16 68 (0.59%) Presentation Skills
17 49 (0.42%) Aviation
18 44 (0.38%) Marketing
18 44 (0.38%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,838 (15.83%) Architect
2 1,276 (10.99%) Developer
3 1,111 (9.57%) Senior
4 1,009 (8.69%) Lead
5 669 (5.76%) Consultant
6 648 (5.58%) Analyst
7 525 (4.52%) Data Engineer
8 474 (4.08%) DevOps Engineer
9 426 (3.67%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 373 (3.21%) Technical Architect
11 354 (3.05%) Solutions Architect
12 316 (2.72%) Software Engineer
13 272 (2.34%) Security Architect
14 259 (2.23%) Network Engineer
15 252 (2.17%) Data Architect
16 223 (1.92%) Java Developer
17 219 (1.89%) Administrator
18 215 (1.85%) Designer
19 211 (1.82%) Delivery Manager
20 207 (1.78%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 438 (3.77%) REST
2 252 (2.17%) Spring
3 243 (2.09%) .NET
4 234 (2.02%) Kafka
5 222 (1.91%) Spring Boot
6 220 (1.90%) RESTful
7 197 (1.70%) React
8 178 (1.53%) Node.js
9 175 (1.51%) SOAP
10 154 (1.33%) JSON
11 139 (1.20%) Web Services
12 133 (1.15%) AngularJS
13 131 (1.13%) OAuth
14 126 (1.09%) HTML
15 118 (1.02%) XML
16 111 (0.96%) Middleware
17 97 (0.84%) Oracle Fusion
18 94 (0.81%) Playwright
19 91 (0.78%) PySpark
20 88 (0.76%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 498 (4.29%) Cloud Native
2 412 (3.55%) Onboarding
3 372 (3.20%) Product Ownership
4 302 (2.60%) Data Centre
5 239 (2.06%) Management Information System
6 188 (1.62%) Legacy Systems
7 167 (1.44%) PKI
8 164 (1.41%) Distributed Systems
9 149 (1.28%) Enterprise Software
10 140 (1.21%) CMDB
11 123 (1.06%) Replication
11 123 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
12 115 (0.99%) Data Structures
12 115 (0.99%) Hybrid Cloud
13 96 (0.83%) Security Operations Centre
14 94 (0.81%) Clustering
15 93 (0.80%) Cyber Threat
16 92 (0.79%) Public Cloud
17 88 (0.76%) Virtual Team
18 76 (0.65%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 967 (8.33%) Windows
2 807 (6.95%) Linux
3 338 (2.91%) Windows Server
4 230 (1.98%) Unix
5 154 (1.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 128 (1.10%) Windows 10
7 94 (0.81%) Android
8 63 (0.54%) Solaris
9 58 (0.50%) Apple iOS
10 48 (0.41%) Mac OS
11 42 (0.36%) Ubuntu
12 41 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
13 38 (0.33%) CentOS
14 35 (0.30%) AIX
15 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 22 (0.19%) VMS
16 22 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
17 20 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
18 15 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
19 14 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,445 (21.06%) Agile
2 1,827 (15.74%) DevOps
3 1,745 (15.03%) CI/CD
4 1,393 (12.00%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,314 (11.32%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,203 (10.36%) Problem-Solving
7 1,122 (9.66%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 956 (8.23%) Infrastructure as Code
9 925 (7.97%) Migration
10 780 (6.72%) Cybersecurity
11 767 (6.61%) Test Automation
12 765 (6.59%) ITIL
13 740 (6.37%) Analytics
14 721 (6.21%) Containerisation
15 688 (5.93%) Software Engineering
16 687 (5.92%) Roadmaps
17 661 (5.69%) Technical Leadership
18 644 (5.55%) Decision-Making
19 637 (5.49%) AI
20 636 (5.48%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,305 (11.24%) Python
2 1,149 (9.90%) SQL
3 809 (6.97%) Java
4 568 (4.89%) PowerShell
5 404 (3.48%) JavaScript
6 321 (2.77%) Bash
7 272 (2.34%) C#
8 194 (1.67%) TypeScript
9 169 (1.46%) PL/SQL
10 113 (0.97%) Bicep
11 93 (0.80%) C++
12 86 (0.74%) Shell Script
13 67 (0.58%) C
14 56 (0.48%) Apex Code
15 55 (0.47%) Kotlin
16 53 (0.46%) Ruby
17 51 (0.44%) Scala
18 48 (0.41%) Go
19 45 (0.39%) Groovy
20 37 (0.32%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8,850 (76.23%) SC Cleared
2 2,169 (18.68%) DV Cleared
3 462 (3.98%) Degree
4 446 (3.84%) BPSS Clearance
5 213 (1.83%) CISSP
6 190 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
7 170 (1.46%) Azure Certification
8 160 (1.38%) Microsoft Certification
9 141 (1.21%) CISM
10 134 (1.15%) AWS Certification
11 109 (0.94%) PMI Certification
12 107 (0.92%) PMP
13 100 (0.86%) ISTQB
14 83 (0.71%) CCNA
15 80 (0.69%) CCNP
16 70 (0.60%) Computer Science Degree
17 65 (0.56%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 49 (0.42%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 46 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
20 43 (0.37%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 488 (4.20%) QA
2 371 (3.20%) Data Quality
3 311 (2.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 302 (2.60%) NIST
5 275 (2.37%) NCSC
6 262 (2.26%) Accessibility
7 220 (1.90%) PMO
8 181 (1.56%) GDPR
9 150 (1.29%) GRC
10 145 (1.25%) SLA
11 79 (0.68%) WCAG
12 66 (0.57%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
14 41 (0.35%) NIST 800
15 32 (0.28%) Def Stans
16 29 (0.25%) Government Security Classifications
16 29 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 29 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 23 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
18 22 (0.19%) RMADS
System Software
1 803 (6.92%) Docker
2 557 (4.80%) Active Directory
3 410 (3.53%) VMware Infrastructure
4 150 (1.29%) VMware NSX
5 134 (1.15%) VMware ESXi
6 121 (1.04%) vSphere
7 119 (1.03%) Hyper-V
8 82 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
9 46 (0.40%) Oracle RAC
10 43 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
11 33 (0.28%) Firmware
12 26 (0.22%) BitLocker
13 25 (0.22%) vCloud
14 16 (0.14%) NFS
15 15 (0.13%) Postfix
15 15 (0.13%) Squid
16 12 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
17 8 (0.069%) KVM
18 7 (0.060%) Ceph
18 7 (0.060%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 989 (8.52%) Terraform
2 983 (8.47%) Kubernetes
3 444 (3.82%) Ansible
4 270 (2.33%) Grafana
5 212 (1.83%) Prometheus
6 131 (1.13%) vCenter Server
7 127 (1.09%) SCCM
8 90 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
9 75 (0.65%) SCOM
10 67 (0.58%) Argo
10 67 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
11 56 (0.48%) Oracle RMAN
12 52 (0.45%) Puppet
13 41 (0.35%) Data Guard
14 33 (0.28%) Progress Chef
15 30 (0.26%) FortiGate
15 30 (0.26%) Istio
16 29 (0.25%) Nagios
17 28 (0.24%) WSUS
18 27 (0.23%) Control-M
Vendors
1 1,448 (12.47%) Microsoft
2 952 (8.20%) Oracle
3 591 (5.09%) VMware
4 535 (4.61%) ServiceNow
5 443 (3.82%) SAP
6 298 (2.57%) Cisco
7 239 (2.06%) Google
8 207 (1.78%) Splunk
9 204 (1.76%) Databricks
10 188 (1.62%) Salesforce
11 152 (1.31%) Red Hat
12 130 (1.12%) IBM
13 129 (1.11%) Talend
14 127 (1.09%) Informatica
15 118 (1.02%) Palo Alto
16 96 (0.83%) Dynatrace
17 92 (0.79%) Remedy
18 87 (0.75%) Denodo
18 87 (0.75%) F5
19 85 (0.73%) Juniper