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

6 months to
14 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,731 5,947 6,921
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.67% 18.19% 18.02%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.80% 58.05% 61.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,186 3,847 4,503
10th Percentile £390 £350 £350
25th Percentile £459 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £543 £535 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.40% -2.73% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £722 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £537 £550
% change year-on-year +0.09% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 812 578 414
10th Percentile £20.05 £18.51 £20.04
25th Percentile £33.26 £18.87 £27.00
Median hourly rate £63.75 £25.15 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +153.48% -58.08% -
75th Percentile £77.50 £34.69 £72.22
90th Percentile £89.98 £70.05 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +158.45% -58.08% +2.41%

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 17,050 10,245 11,275
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.50% 31.34% 29.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,384 6,379 6,977
10th Percentile £350 £300 £313
25th Percentile £440 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £623 £638
90th Percentile £713 £700 £732
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,315 820 666
10th Percentile £17.17 £17.98 £17.00
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £24.18
Median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +88.87% -49.70% -9.09%
75th Percentile £71.47 £45.00 £68.00
90th Percentile £86.70 £71.00 £75.83
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £53.00
% change year-on-year +88.87% -52.55% +0.95%

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 14 September 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 14 September 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 14 September 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 10,130 £550 +2.33% 4,942
UK excluding London +1 6,596 £538 +0.09% 3,662
London +7 3,588 £550 +2.95% 1,690
Work from Home +2 3,091 £525 -2.33% 3,723
South East +1 2,310 £565 +5.12% 927
South West 0 1,408 £550 - 788
North of England +3 1,257 £515 +3.00% 711
Midlands 0 927 £475 -7.77% 356
West Midlands +1 792 £475 -8.39% 218
North West +2 735 £530 - 452
East of England 0 373 £550 - 470
Yorkshire +4 301 £500 +2.15% 165
Scotland +16 300 £481 -3.80% 298
North East 0 242 £475 -3.80% 120
East Midlands -1 128 £450 -2.70% 136
Wales +4 106 £550 +10.00% 63
Northern Ireland +3 36 £650 +8.33% 108

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
1 396 (3.38%) Confluence
2 273 (2.33%) SharePoint
3 172 (1.47%) SAS
4 126 (1.07%) Microsoft Exchange
5 99 (0.84%) Apache
5 99 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
6 96 (0.82%) Apache Spark
7 38 (0.32%) Jupyter
7 38 (0.32%) nginx
8 33 (0.28%) WebLogic
9 23 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
10 22 (0.19%) Skype for Business
11 21 (0.18%) IIS
11 21 (0.18%) Tomcat
12 19 (0.16%) CMS
13 16 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
13 16 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
14 15 (0.13%) NetWeaver
14 15 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 11 (0.094%) JBoss
Applications
1 209 (1.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 165 (1.41%) Microsoft Office
3 107 (0.91%) Microsoft Project
4 99 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 41 (0.35%) MS Visio
6 23 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
7 18 (0.15%) AutoCAD
8 17 (0.14%) Revit
9 16 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
10 12 (0.10%) Simulink
11 8 (0.068%) Adobe XD
11 8 (0.068%) Chatbot
11 8 (0.068%) Windchill
12 7 (0.060%) Notepad++
12 7 (0.060%) Sketch
13 6 (0.051%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 4 (0.034%) Trello
15 3 (0.026%) OrCAD
16 2 (0.017%) Houdini
16 2 (0.017%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 151 (1.29%) SAP S/4HANA
2 77 (0.66%) Remedy ITSM
3 54 (0.46%) Oracle ERP
4 41 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
5 31 (0.26%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 29 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 28 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
8 25 (0.21%) Oracle Payroll
8 25 (0.21%) SAP GRC
8 25 (0.21%) SAP PSCD
9 19 (0.16%) Primavera
10 18 (0.15%) SAP FI
10 18 (0.15%) SAP HR
11 15 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
12 13 (0.11%) Findur
13 12 (0.10%) iTrent
13 12 (0.10%) SAP CO
13 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
14 11 (0.094%) NetSuite
14 11 (0.094%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 2,145 (18.28%) Azure
2 2,074 (17.68%) AWS
3 524 (4.47%) GitHub
4 519 (4.42%) Azure DevOps
5 475 (4.05%) Power Platform
6 454 (3.87%) GCP
7 349 (2.98%) GitHub Actions
8 334 (2.85%) Microsoft 365
9 308 (2.63%) Entra ID
10 284 (2.42%) Serverless
11 236 (2.01%) Amazon S3
12 208 (1.77%) AWS Lambda
13 173 (1.47%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 173 (1.47%) OCI
14 167 (1.42%) SaaS
15 166 (1.42%) Amazon EKS
16 149 (1.27%) Amazon EC2
17 141 (1.20%) OpenShift
18 132 (1.13%) AWS CloudFormation
19 111 (0.95%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 452 (3.85%) Firewall
2 375 (3.20%) DNS
3 238 (2.03%) Network Security
4 216 (1.84%) WAN
5 204 (1.74%) VPN
6 183 (1.56%) DHCP
7 162 (1.38%) LAN
8 136 (1.16%) TCP/IP
9 127 (1.08%) BGP
10 118 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
11 105 (0.90%) VLAN
12 90 (0.77%) Wireless
13 88 (0.75%) OSPF
14 69 (0.59%) SSL
15 66 (0.56%) MPLS
16 65 (0.55%) VSAN
17 63 (0.54%) IPsec
18 61 (0.52%) SAN
19 57 (0.49%) SD-WAN
20 48 (0.41%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 340 (2.90%) Power BI
2 312 (2.66%) PostgreSQL
3 288 (2.46%) SQL Server
4 271 (2.31%) Data Warehouse
5 195 (1.66%) Metadata
6 183 (1.56%) Oracle Database
7 154 (1.31%) Relational Database
8 143 (1.22%) Data Lake
9 133 (1.13%) MongoDB
10 113 (0.96%) Amazon RDS
11 106 (0.90%) MySQL
12 98 (0.84%) NoSQL
13 95 (0.81%) Oracle Reports
14 72 (0.61%) Pentaho
15 69 (0.59%) Elasticsearch
16 68 (0.58%) Amazon Athena
17 55 (0.47%) Big Data
18 53 (0.45%) Tableau
19 52 (0.44%) Amazon Redshift
20 51 (0.43%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 658 (5.61%) JIRA
2 583 (4.97%) Git
3 519 (4.42%) GitLab
4 487 (4.15%) Jenkins
5 144 (1.23%) Selenium
6 84 (0.72%) Postman
7 82 (0.70%) SonarQube
8 75 (0.64%) JUnit
9 73 (0.62%) Maven
10 65 (0.55%) JMeter
11 58 (0.49%) Cucumber
12 53 (0.45%) Cypress.io
13 50 (0.43%) Gradle
14 46 (0.39%) Mockito
15 43 (0.37%) REST Assured
16 41 (0.35%) Gatling
17 40 (0.34%) Artifactory
18 39 (0.33%) Visual Studio
18 39 (0.33%) Zephyr
19 34 (0.29%) Bitbucket
General
1 2,619 (22.33%) Social Skills
2 2,404 (20.49%) Public Sector
3 941 (8.02%) Analytical Skills
4 768 (6.55%) Finance
5 416 (3.55%) Military
6 310 (2.64%) Aerospace
7 298 (2.54%) Documentation Skills
8 218 (1.86%) Influencing Skills
9 183 (1.56%) Organisational Skills
10 174 (1.48%) Legal
11 164 (1.40%) Telecoms
12 159 (1.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 144 (1.23%) Banking
14 132 (1.13%) Manufacturing
15 121 (1.03%) Law
16 119 (1.01%) Police
17 67 (0.57%) Presentation Skills
18 48 (0.41%) Local Government
19 46 (0.39%) Aviation
19 46 (0.39%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,900 (16.20%) Architect
2 1,220 (10.40%) Developer
3 1,119 (9.54%) Senior
4 1,050 (8.95%) Lead
5 704 (6.00%) Consultant
6 632 (5.39%) Analyst
7 511 (4.36%) DevOps Engineer
8 488 (4.16%) Data Engineer
9 420 (3.58%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 368 (3.14%) Technical Architect
11 362 (3.09%) Solutions Architect
12 292 (2.49%) Data Architect
13 288 (2.46%) Software Engineer
14 270 (2.30%) Security Architect
15 249 (2.12%) Network Engineer
16 228 (1.94%) Administrator
17 213 (1.82%) Java Developer
18 210 (1.79%) Azure Engineer
19 206 (1.76%) Cloud Engineer
20 199 (1.70%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,004 (8.56%) Terraform
2 453 (3.86%) REST
3 255 (2.17%) Spring
4 251 (2.14%) Kafka
5 234 (1.99%) Spring Boot
6 219 (1.87%) RESTful
7 214 (1.82%) .NET
8 202 (1.72%) React
9 181 (1.54%) Node.js
10 175 (1.49%) SOAP
11 166 (1.42%) JSON
12 134 (1.14%) HTML
13 131 (1.12%) OAuth
14 130 (1.11%) XML
15 122 (1.04%) AngularJS
16 120 (1.02%) Middleware
17 117 (1.00%) Web Services
18 103 (0.88%) CSS
18 103 (0.88%) Oracle Fusion
19 101 (0.86%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 517 (4.41%) Cloud Native
2 442 (3.77%) Onboarding
3 356 (3.03%) Product Ownership
4 303 (2.58%) Data Centre
5 263 (2.24%) Management Information System
6 184 (1.57%) Legacy Systems
7 174 (1.48%) PKI
8 173 (1.47%) Enterprise Software
9 159 (1.36%) CMDB
10 146 (1.24%) Distributed Systems
11 126 (1.07%) Replication
12 123 (1.05%) Hybrid Cloud
13 114 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
14 112 (0.95%) Cyber Threat
15 100 (0.85%) Operational Technology
16 98 (0.84%) Data Structures
17 92 (0.78%) Public Cloud
17 92 (0.78%) Security Operations Centre
18 89 (0.76%) Clustering
19 86 (0.73%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 996 (8.49%) Windows
2 803 (6.85%) Linux
3 367 (3.13%) Windows Server
4 231 (1.97%) Unix
5 156 (1.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 147 (1.25%) Windows 10
7 79 (0.67%) Android
8 70 (0.60%) Solaris
9 50 (0.43%) Mac OS
10 45 (0.38%) Apple iOS
11 43 (0.37%) CentOS
12 39 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
13 38 (0.32%) Ubuntu
14 32 (0.27%) AIX
15 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 25 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
17 22 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
18 21 (0.18%) VMS
19 16 (0.14%) Rocky
20 14 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,478 (21.12%) Agile
2 1,806 (15.40%) DevOps
3 1,776 (15.14%) CI/CD
4 1,572 (13.40%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,415 (12.06%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,261 (10.75%) Problem-Solving
7 1,162 (9.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,022 (8.71%) Infrastructure as Code
9 937 (7.99%) Migration
10 837 (7.13%) Cybersecurity
11 788 (6.72%) ITIL
12 775 (6.61%) Test Automation
13 750 (6.39%) Containerisation
14 732 (6.24%) Technical Leadership
15 718 (6.12%) Analytics
16 711 (6.06%) AI
17 707 (6.03%) Decision-Making
18 700 (5.97%) Roadmaps
19 690 (5.88%) Software Engineering
20 637 (5.43%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,364 (11.63%) Python
2 1,099 (9.37%) SQL
3 797 (6.79%) Java
4 599 (5.11%) PowerShell
5 407 (3.47%) JavaScript
6 360 (3.07%) Bash
7 235 (2.00%) C#
8 220 (1.88%) TypeScript
9 164 (1.40%) PL/SQL
10 126 (1.07%) Bicep
11 77 (0.66%) Shell Script
12 66 (0.56%) C++
13 58 (0.49%) Go
14 57 (0.49%) C
15 50 (0.43%) Scala
16 49 (0.42%) Groovy
17 48 (0.41%) Apex Code
18 46 (0.39%) Kotlin
19 41 (0.35%) T-SQL
20 39 (0.33%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 8,942 (76.23%) SC Cleared
2 2,221 (18.93%) DV Cleared
3 482 (4.11%) BPSS Clearance
4 459 (3.91%) Degree
5 222 (1.89%) CISSP
6 185 (1.58%) Cisco Certification
7 183 (1.56%) Azure Certification
8 171 (1.46%) Microsoft Certification
9 148 (1.26%) AWS Certification
10 143 (1.22%) CISM
11 106 (0.90%) PMI Certification
12 100 (0.85%) PMP
13 93 (0.79%) ISTQB
14 84 (0.72%) CCNP
15 75 (0.64%) Computer Science Degree
16 68 (0.58%) CCNA
17 62 (0.53%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 52 (0.44%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 46 (0.39%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
20 45 (0.38%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 533 (4.54%) QA
2 385 (3.28%) Data Quality
3 327 (2.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 320 (2.73%) NIST
5 283 (2.41%) NCSC
6 264 (2.25%) Accessibility
7 223 (1.90%) PMO
8 179 (1.53%) GDPR
9 172 (1.47%) SLA
10 157 (1.34%) GRC
11 84 (0.72%) WCAG
12 63 (0.54%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
14 43 (0.37%) NIST 800
15 36 (0.31%) Def Stans
16 25 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
16 25 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 23 (0.20%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 22 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 20 (0.17%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 815 (6.95%) Docker
2 624 (5.32%) Active Directory
3 433 (3.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 145 (1.24%) VMware ESXi
4 145 (1.24%) VMware NSX
5 139 (1.18%) Hyper-V
6 126 (1.07%) vSphere
7 92 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
8 46 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
9 42 (0.36%) Firmware
10 40 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
11 26 (0.22%) vCloud
12 23 (0.20%) BitLocker
13 20 (0.17%) NFS
14 15 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
15 14 (0.12%) Squid
16 11 (0.094%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 11 (0.094%) Postfix
17 9 (0.077%) Embedded Firmware
17 9 (0.077%) KVM
Systems Management
1 1,000 (8.52%) Kubernetes
2 450 (3.84%) Ansible
3 259 (2.21%) Grafana
4 208 (1.77%) Prometheus
5 141 (1.20%) SCCM
6 135 (1.15%) vCenter Server
7 95 (0.81%) SCOM
8 93 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
9 68 (0.58%) Argo
10 66 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
11 48 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
12 47 (0.40%) Puppet
13 41 (0.35%) Data Guard
14 32 (0.27%) Kibana
15 31 (0.26%) Istio
16 30 (0.26%) NetBackup
17 29 (0.25%) Control-M
17 29 (0.25%) Progress Chef
18 28 (0.24%) VxRail
19 27 (0.23%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,541 (13.14%) Microsoft
2 950 (8.10%) Oracle
3 605 (5.16%) VMware
4 537 (4.58%) ServiceNow
5 456 (3.89%) SAP
6 294 (2.51%) Cisco
7 252 (2.15%) Google
8 221 (1.88%) Splunk
9 204 (1.74%) Databricks
10 177 (1.51%) Salesforce
11 146 (1.24%) Red Hat
12 127 (1.08%) Palo Alto
13 115 (0.98%) Informatica
14 106 (0.90%) Talend
15 103 (0.88%) IBM
16 101 (0.86%) Dynatrace
17 97 (0.83%) CyberArk
18 88 (0.75%) Remedy
19 81 (0.69%) SolarWinds
20 79 (0.67%) Fortinet