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

6 months to
9 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 11,420 5,697 7,946
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.76% 17.64% 18.32%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.30% 57.38% 61.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,937 3,677 5,212
10th Percentile £381 £340 £345
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.03% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £716 £697 £735
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 846 459 593
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.51 £14.50
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £62.50 £25.15 £55.25
Median % change year-on-year +148.51% -54.48% -7.92%
75th Percentile £75.00 £60.00 £72.33
90th Percentile £87.00 £75.00 £81.12
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £25.15 £57.50
% change year-on-year +148.51% -56.26% -

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 16,480 9,928 12,965
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.40% 30.74% 29.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,007 6,162 8,061
10th Percentile £350 £278 £310
25th Percentile £429 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £713 £703 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,198 695 1,107
10th Percentile £17.69 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £25.19 £20.00 £20.12
Median hourly rate £50.00 £27.38 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +82.65% -33.13% -25.56%
75th Percentile £72.54 £58.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.25 £75.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -19.87%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 9,845 £525 -2.33% 2,045
UK excluding London +1 6,395 £525 -2.33% 1,597
London +7 3,492 £538 +2.38% 619
Work from Home +4 3,117 £525 - 1,022
South East +1 2,395 £550 - 574
South West 0 1,322 £538 -6.52% 406
North of England +2 1,057 £500 - 269
Midlands +3 962 £469 -6.25% 145
West Midlands +2 822 £470 -8.02% 104
North West 0 570 £525 +4.79% 156
East of England +2 338 £550 +10.00% 117
Scotland +23 280 £500 +14.29% 70
Yorkshire +2 279 £500 +1.63% 66
North East +1 236 £475 -5.00% 48
East Midlands -1 128 £418 -12.11% 40
Wales +3 106 £550 +15.79% 23
Northern Ireland +6 31 £650 +30.00% 20

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
1 412 (3.61%) Confluence
2 249 (2.18%) SharePoint
3 170 (1.49%) SAS
4 135 (1.18%) Microsoft Exchange
5 107 (0.94%) Apache Spark
6 106 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
7 100 (0.88%) Apache
8 45 (0.39%) nginx
9 42 (0.37%) Jupyter
10 41 (0.36%) WebLogic
11 26 (0.23%) Tomcat
12 21 (0.18%) IIS
12 21 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
13 17 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
14 16 (0.14%) CMS
14 16 (0.14%) NetWeaver
15 14 (0.12%) Skype for Business
16 12 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
16 12 (0.11%) Tuxedo
17 9 (0.079%) Documentum
Applications
1 183 (1.60%) Microsoft Excel
2 150 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
3 88 (0.77%) Microsoft Project
4 71 (0.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 52 (0.46%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.14%) Simulink
8 12 (0.11%) SOLIDWORKS
9 11 (0.096%) AutoCAD
9 11 (0.096%) Revit
10 10 (0.088%) Chatbot
11 7 (0.061%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.061%) Notepad++
12 5 (0.044%) Sketch
13 3 (0.026%) Windchill
14 2 (0.018%) CATIA
14 2 (0.018%) Lectora
14 2 (0.018%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.018%) PlantUML
14 2 (0.018%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 133 (1.16%) SAP S/4HANA
2 66 (0.58%) Remedy ITSM
3 45 (0.39%) Oracle ERP
4 36 (0.32%) Teamcenter
5 34 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
6 31 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 28 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
8 23 (0.20%) SAP PSCD
9 20 (0.18%) Primavera
10 16 (0.14%) SAP GRC
11 15 (0.13%) Findur
11 15 (0.13%) Temenos T24
12 13 (0.11%) Oracle Payables
13 12 (0.11%) iTrent
13 12 (0.11%) Siebel CRM
14 11 (0.096%) SAP ERP
14 11 (0.096%) SAP HR
15 10 (0.088%) Maximo
15 10 (0.088%) Oracle Payroll
16 9 (0.079%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,045 (17.91%) AWS
2 2,014 (17.64%) Azure
3 496 (4.34%) GitHub
4 456 (3.99%) Azure DevOps
5 445 (3.90%) Power Platform
6 412 (3.61%) GCP
7 312 (2.73%) GitHub Actions
8 293 (2.57%) Microsoft 365
9 283 (2.48%) Entra ID
10 280 (2.45%) Serverless
11 247 (2.16%) Amazon S3
12 197 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
13 165 (1.44%) Amazon EC2
14 161 (1.41%) OCI
15 159 (1.39%) SaaS
16 156 (1.37%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 156 (1.37%) PaaS
17 152 (1.33%) Amazon EKS
18 149 (1.30%) OpenShift
19 132 (1.16%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 471 (4.12%) Firewall
2 360 (3.15%) DNS
3 251 (2.20%) Network Security
4 235 (2.06%) WAN
5 202 (1.77%) LAN
6 198 (1.73%) VPN
7 178 (1.56%) DHCP
8 146 (1.28%) BGP
9 122 (1.07%) OSPF
10 119 (1.04%) TCP/IP
11 115 (1.01%) VLAN
12 111 (0.97%) Wi-Fi
13 87 (0.76%) Wireless
14 71 (0.62%) MPLS
15 67 (0.59%) SD-WAN
16 65 (0.57%) SAN
17 59 (0.52%) VXLAN
18 53 (0.46%) IPsec
19 52 (0.46%) BIG-IP
20 48 (0.42%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 346 (3.03%) Power BI
2 303 (2.65%) PostgreSQL
3 265 (2.32%) Data Warehouse
4 260 (2.28%) SQL Server
5 168 (1.47%) Oracle Database
6 148 (1.30%) Metadata
7 130 (1.14%) Data Lake
8 125 (1.09%) Relational Database
9 113 (0.99%) Amazon RDS
10 111 (0.97%) MongoDB
11 93 (0.81%) MySQL
12 91 (0.80%) Oracle Reports
13 90 (0.79%) Elasticsearch
14 87 (0.76%) Pentaho
15 78 (0.68%) Amazon Redshift
16 74 (0.65%) Amazon Athena
16 74 (0.65%) NoSQL
17 68 (0.60%) Big Data
18 64 (0.56%) Tableau
19 53 (0.46%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 648 (5.67%) JIRA
2 524 (4.59%) Git
3 478 (4.19%) GitLab
4 457 (4.00%) Jenkins
5 126 (1.10%) Selenium
6 87 (0.76%) JUnit
7 85 (0.74%) Postman
8 81 (0.71%) SonarQube
9 66 (0.58%) JMeter
10 60 (0.53%) Rational DOORS
11 55 (0.48%) Cucumber
12 48 (0.42%) Maven
13 46 (0.40%) Artifactory
13 46 (0.40%) Cypress.io
13 46 (0.40%) Mockito
13 46 (0.40%) REST Assured
14 43 (0.38%) Bitbucket
15 42 (0.37%) Visual Studio
16 41 (0.36%) Zephyr
17 37 (0.32%) Gatling
General
1 2,496 (21.86%) Public Sector
2 2,330 (20.40%) Social Skills
3 820 (7.18%) Analytical Skills
4 740 (6.48%) Finance
5 355 (3.11%) Military
6 306 (2.68%) Documentation Skills
7 294 (2.57%) Aerospace
8 181 (1.58%) Legal
9 162 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
10 138 (1.21%) Banking
10 138 (1.21%) Telecoms
11 115 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
12 100 (0.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 98 (0.86%) Law
14 97 (0.85%) Manufacturing
15 90 (0.79%) Police
16 75 (0.66%) Presentation Skills
17 53 (0.46%) Aviation
18 39 (0.34%) Marketing
18 39 (0.34%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,753 (15.35%) Architect
2 1,218 (10.67%) Developer
3 1,010 (8.84%) Senior
4 914 (8.00%) Lead
5 725 (6.35%) Analyst
6 574 (5.03%) Consultant
7 532 (4.66%) Data Engineer
8 507 (4.44%) DevOps Engineer
9 387 (3.39%) Technical Architect
10 370 (3.24%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 349 (3.06%) Software Engineer
12 338 (2.96%) Solutions Architect
13 268 (2.35%) Network Engineer
14 267 (2.34%) Security Architect
15 226 (1.98%) Business Analyst
16 223 (1.95%) Designer
16 223 (1.95%) Java Developer
17 217 (1.90%) Project Manager
18 208 (1.82%) AWS Engineer
19 206 (1.80%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 379 (3.32%) REST
2 274 (2.40%) Spring
3 229 (2.01%) Spring Boot
4 214 (1.87%) Kafka
5 207 (1.81%) .NET
6 205 (1.80%) React
7 196 (1.72%) Node.js
8 184 (1.61%) RESTful
9 157 (1.37%) SOAP
10 138 (1.21%) JSON
11 129 (1.13%) AngularJS
12 121 (1.06%) OAuth
13 116 (1.02%) Web Services
14 112 (0.98%) PySpark
15 106 (0.93%) LDAP
16 103 (0.90%) Middleware
17 100 (0.88%) HTML
18 97 (0.85%) Playwright
19 91 (0.80%) OpenID
19 91 (0.80%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 452 (3.96%) Cloud Native
2 371 (3.25%) Onboarding
3 364 (3.19%) Product Ownership
4 321 (2.81%) Data Centre
5 222 (1.94%) Management Information System
6 185 (1.62%) Legacy Systems
7 158 (1.38%) PKI
8 157 (1.37%) Distributed Systems
9 120 (1.05%) CMDB
10 118 (1.03%) Replication
11 114 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
12 112 (0.98%) Enterprise Software
13 99 (0.87%) Data Structures
14 96 (0.84%) Hybrid Cloud
14 96 (0.84%) Security Posture
15 92 (0.81%) Clustering
16 90 (0.79%) Public Cloud
17 87 (0.76%) Virtual Team
18 85 (0.74%) Security Operations Centre
19 76 (0.67%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 912 (7.99%) Windows
2 783 (6.86%) Linux
3 291 (2.55%) Windows Server
4 216 (1.89%) Unix
5 151 (1.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 97 (0.85%) Android
7 93 (0.81%) Windows 10
8 66 (0.58%) Apple iOS
9 58 (0.51%) Solaris
10 47 (0.41%) Mac OS
11 38 (0.33%) Ubuntu
12 33 (0.29%) AIX
13 32 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
14 28 (0.25%) CentOS
15 24 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
16 19 (0.17%) VMS
17 16 (0.14%) Windows 7
18 15 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
19 14 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
20 11 (0.096%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,313 (20.25%) Agile
2 1,787 (15.65%) DevOps
3 1,666 (14.59%) CI/CD
4 1,212 (10.61%) Problem-Solving
5 1,175 (10.29%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,166 (10.21%) Continuous Improvement
7 982 (8.60%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 866 (7.58%) Migration
9 862 (7.55%) Infrastructure as Code
10 735 (6.44%) Cybersecurity
11 720 (6.30%) ITIL
12 712 (6.23%) Test Automation
13 695 (6.09%) Containerisation
14 674 (5.90%) Analytics
15 668 (5.85%) Software Engineering
16 655 (5.74%) Roadmaps
17 630 (5.52%) Decision-Making
18 594 (5.20%) Data Modelling
19 569 (4.98%) AI
20 560 (4.90%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,280 (11.21%) Python
2 1,089 (9.54%) SQL
3 801 (7.01%) Java
4 513 (4.49%) PowerShell
5 352 (3.08%) JavaScript
6 264 (2.31%) Bash
7 238 (2.08%) C#
8 192 (1.68%) TypeScript
9 165 (1.44%) PL/SQL
10 98 (0.86%) C++
11 96 (0.84%) Shell Script
12 80 (0.70%) Bicep
13 69 (0.60%) C
14 61 (0.53%) Apex Code
14 61 (0.53%) Ruby
15 58 (0.51%) Go
16 53 (0.46%) Kotlin
17 46 (0.40%) Ada
17 46 (0.40%) Scala
18 44 (0.39%) R
Qualifications
1 8,710 (76.27%) SC Cleared
2 2,125 (18.61%) DV Cleared
3 436 (3.82%) Degree
4 372 (3.26%) BPSS Clearance
5 219 (1.92%) Cisco Certification
6 186 (1.63%) CISSP
7 151 (1.32%) Azure Certification
8 129 (1.13%) Microsoft Certification
9 126 (1.10%) AWS Certification
10 113 (0.99%) CISM
11 108 (0.95%) CCNP
12 96 (0.84%) CCNA
13 95 (0.83%) PMP
14 93 (0.81%) PMI Certification
15 77 (0.67%) ISTQB
16 70 (0.61%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 67 (0.59%) Computer Science Degree
18 56 (0.49%) ITIL Certification
19 47 (0.41%) TOGAF Certification
20 43 (0.38%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 443 (3.88%) QA
2 347 (3.04%) Data Quality
3 316 (2.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 316 (2.77%) NIST
4 247 (2.16%) NCSC
5 239 (2.09%) Accessibility
6 188 (1.65%) GDPR
7 180 (1.58%) PMO
8 123 (1.08%) SLA
9 108 (0.95%) GRC
10 69 (0.60%) JSP 440
11 60 (0.53%) WCAG
12 47 (0.41%) NIST 800
13 44 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials
14 34 (0.30%) Def Stans
15 29 (0.25%) RMADS
16 28 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 25 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
18 24 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 20000
19 23 (0.20%) COBIT
System Software
1 771 (6.75%) Docker
2 480 (4.20%) Active Directory
3 354 (3.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 128 (1.12%) VMware NSX
5 126 (1.10%) VMware ESXi
6 100 (0.88%) Hyper-V
7 99 (0.87%) vSphere
8 83 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
9 47 (0.41%) Oracle RAC
10 34 (0.30%) Firmware
10 34 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
11 25 (0.22%) NFS
12 23 (0.20%) BitLocker
12 23 (0.20%) vCloud
13 21 (0.18%) Squid
14 19 (0.17%) Postfix
15 11 (0.096%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 9 (0.079%) Microsoft App-V
17 8 (0.070%) KVM
18 7 (0.061%) UAG
Systems Management
1 955 (8.36%) Terraform
2 947 (8.29%) Kubernetes
3 403 (3.53%) Ansible
4 284 (2.49%) Grafana
5 230 (2.01%) Prometheus
6 120 (1.05%) vCenter Server
7 93 (0.81%) SCCM
8 88 (0.77%) Single Sign-On
9 69 (0.60%) Microsoft Intune
10 65 (0.57%) Argo
11 52 (0.46%) SCOM
12 49 (0.43%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 49 (0.43%) FortiGate
12 49 (0.43%) Oracle RMAN
13 47 (0.41%) Puppet
14 32 (0.28%) Data Guard
15 30 (0.26%) Podman
15 30 (0.26%) Progress Chef
16 28 (0.25%) Kibana
16 28 (0.25%) Nagios
Vendors
1 1,234 (10.81%) Microsoft
2 842 (7.37%) Oracle
3 545 (4.77%) VMware
4 524 (4.59%) ServiceNow
5 374 (3.27%) SAP
6 330 (2.89%) Cisco
7 228 (2.00%) Splunk
8 199 (1.74%) Databricks
9 188 (1.65%) Google
9 188 (1.65%) Salesforce
10 159 (1.39%) Red Hat
11 145 (1.27%) Talend
12 129 (1.13%) Informatica
13 125 (1.09%) IBM
14 109 (0.95%) Palo Alto
15 103 (0.90%) Juniper
16 96 (0.84%) F5
17 95 (0.83%) Fortinet
18 93 (0.81%) SolarWinds
19 90 (0.79%) Citrix