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

6 months to
28 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,591 5,345 7,984
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 23.03% 17.47% 17.95%
As % of the Qualifications category 67.68% 58.37% 59.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,470 3,441 5,075
10th Percentile £360 £325 £363
25th Percentile £450 £446 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.65%
75th Percentile £623 £635 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £519 £540 £565
% change year-on-year -3.89% -4.42% +2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 797 280 517
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.12 £19.99
25th Percentile £20.35 £24.66 £38.39
Median hourly rate £25.15 £55.75 £56.89
Median % change year-on-year -54.89% -2.00% -5.19%
75th Percentile £67.25 £67.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.10 £75.28 £83.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £57.32
% change year-on-year -58.08% +4.68% -0.31%

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 14,172 9,157 13,487
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.03% 29.92% 30.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,361 5,628 8,319
10th Percentile £331 £288 £290
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £517 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.52% -2.42% -2.18%
75th Percentile £614 £630 £650
90th Percentile £719 £725 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £508 £530
% change year-on-year -1.48% -4.25% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,039 455 979
10th Percentile £16.15 £20.12 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £24.19 £20.48
Median hourly rate £25.47 £40.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -37.11% -4.71% -13.27%
75th Percentile £65.00 £67.38 £64.13
90th Percentile £81.24 £80.84 £77.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £46.30 £44.25
% change year-on-year -45.68% +4.63% -1.67%

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 28 February 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 28 February 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 28 February 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 8,342 £525 -2.78% 1,436
UK excluding London 0 5,325 £519 -3.89% 1,204
London +5 2,895 £530 +0.95% 389
Work from Home +4 2,640 £525 -0.38% 667
South East +1 1,808 £525 -4.55% 490
South West 0 1,320 £550 -2.22% 276
Midlands +4 851 £492 -10.55% 135
North of England -2 823 £498 +3.65% 168
West Midlands +2 679 £495 -10.16% 102
North West 0 535 £500 +5.26% 101
East of England +1 349 £498 -0.50% 123
East Midlands +2 170 £425 -16.05% 33
Scotland +9 169 £475 -5.00% 27
Yorkshire -7 169 £500 -4.76% 34
North East +1 146 £450 -10.00% 34
Wales -2 78 £515 +0.28% 17
Northern Ireland +12 30 £500 +271.43% 2
Channel Islands - 1 - - 2

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
1 343 (3.58%) Confluence
2 214 (2.23%) SharePoint
3 142 (1.48%) Microsoft Exchange
4 140 (1.46%) SAS
5 82 (0.85%) Apache Spark
6 75 (0.78%) Apache
7 53 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
8 44 (0.46%) nginx
9 41 (0.43%) WebLogic
10 32 (0.33%) Skype for Business
11 21 (0.22%) Jupyter
12 19 (0.20%) CMS
12 19 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
13 15 (0.16%) Tuxedo
14 10 (0.10%) Tomcat
15 9 (0.094%) ArcGIS
15 9 (0.094%) IIS
15 9 (0.094%) Oracle Workflow
16 7 (0.073%) OpenStack
17 5 (0.052%) Mattermost
Applications
1 256 (2.67%) Microsoft Office
2 192 (2.00%) Microsoft Excel
3 121 (1.26%) Microsoft Project
4 70 (0.73%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.45%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.15%) Simulink
8 6 (0.063%) Oracle Smart View
8 6 (0.063%) Sketch
8 6 (0.063%) Windchill
9 5 (0.052%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.052%) Siemens NX
10 4 (0.042%) Chatbot
11 3 (0.031%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.021%) Adobe Illustrator
12 2 (0.021%) CATIA
12 2 (0.021%) InVision
12 2 (0.021%) Mozilla Thunderbird
12 2 (0.021%) Photoshop
12 2 (0.021%) Stateflow
Business Applications
1 162 (1.69%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.43%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 31 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
4 28 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
5 25 (0.26%) SAP MM
5 25 (0.26%) Teamcenter
6 21 (0.22%) Dynamics CRM
7 19 (0.20%) SAP PP
8 16 (0.17%) Maximo
8 16 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
9 14 (0.15%) SAP VC
10 13 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
10 13 (0.14%) SAP QM
10 13 (0.14%) SAP WM
11 12 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
11 12 (0.13%) SAP EWM
12 11 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
12 11 (0.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 11 (0.11%) SAP HCM
13 9 (0.094%) SAP PM
Cloud Services
1 1,651 (17.21%) AWS
2 1,572 (16.39%) Azure
3 421 (4.39%) GitHub
4 406 (4.23%) GCP
5 353 (3.68%) Power Platform
6 348 (3.63%) Azure DevOps
7 313 (3.26%) Microsoft 365
8 268 (2.79%) Serverless
9 236 (2.46%) Entra ID
10 225 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
11 208 (2.17%) Amazon S3
12 183 (1.91%) OpenShift
13 172 (1.79%) AWS Lambda
14 148 (1.54%) AWS CloudFormation
15 136 (1.42%) Amazon EC2
15 136 (1.42%) Amazon EKS
16 131 (1.37%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 113 (1.18%) IaaS
18 111 (1.16%) OCI
19 110 (1.15%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 449 (4.68%) Firewall
2 297 (3.10%) DNS
3 218 (2.27%) Network Security
4 196 (2.04%) WAN
5 176 (1.84%) VPN
6 157 (1.64%) LAN
7 149 (1.55%) TCP/IP
8 135 (1.41%) DHCP
9 134 (1.40%) BGP
10 98 (1.02%) Wireless
11 94 (0.98%) VLAN
12 93 (0.97%) OSPF
13 73 (0.76%) Wi-Fi
14 71 (0.74%) MPLS
15 57 (0.59%) SSL
16 54 (0.56%) SAN
17 53 (0.55%) IPsec
18 50 (0.52%) Cisco ISE
19 41 (0.43%) Cisco IOS
19 41 (0.43%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 269 (2.80%) PostgreSQL
2 252 (2.63%) Power BI
3 176 (1.84%) Data Warehouse
4 140 (1.46%) SQL Server
5 121 (1.26%) Metadata
6 105 (1.09%) Oracle Database
7 101 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
8 97 (1.01%) NoSQL
9 96 (1.00%) MongoDB
10 90 (0.94%) Relational Database
11 77 (0.80%) Data Lake
12 76 (0.79%) Azure SQL Database
12 76 (0.79%) Elasticsearch
13 67 (0.70%) Big Data
14 63 (0.66%) MySQL
15 61 (0.64%) Pentaho
16 52 (0.54%) Tableau
17 48 (0.50%) Amazon Redshift
18 44 (0.46%) DynamoDB
19 43 (0.45%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 567 (5.91%) JIRA
2 468 (4.88%) Git
3 411 (4.29%) Jenkins
4 362 (3.77%) GitLab
5 111 (1.16%) Selenium
6 89 (0.93%) Postman
7 83 (0.87%) JUnit
8 61 (0.64%) Cypress.io
9 59 (0.62%) SonarQube
10 49 (0.51%) Bitbucket
11 48 (0.50%) Artifactory
12 47 (0.49%) Cucumber
13 46 (0.48%) Maven
14 45 (0.47%) Oracle APEX
15 37 (0.39%) Mockito
16 36 (0.38%) REST Assured
17 35 (0.36%) Rational DOORS
18 34 (0.35%) JMeter
19 32 (0.33%) Visual Studio
20 24 (0.25%) Metasploit
General
1 2,438 (25.42%) Public Sector
2 2,304 (24.02%) Social Skills
3 795 (8.29%) Analytical Skills
4 647 (6.75%) Finance
5 331 (3.45%) Military
6 260 (2.71%) Documentation Skills
7 208 (2.17%) Aerospace
8 186 (1.94%) Manufacturing
9 184 (1.92%) Telecoms
10 147 (1.53%) Legal
11 131 (1.37%) Organisational Skills
12 118 (1.23%) Influencing Skills
12 118 (1.23%) Marketing
13 117 (1.22%) Electronics
14 111 (1.16%) Presentation Skills
15 100 (1.04%) Banking
16 70 (0.73%) Law
17 69 (0.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 48 (0.50%) Police
19 38 (0.40%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,343 (14.00%) Architect
2 946 (9.86%) Developer
3 833 (8.69%) Senior
4 723 (7.54%) Analyst
5 645 (6.73%) Consultant
6 570 (5.94%) Lead
7 432 (4.50%) DevOps Engineer
8 354 (3.69%) Data Engineer
9 255 (2.66%) Solutions Architect
10 253 (2.64%) Network Engineer
11 252 (2.63%) Business Analyst
12 249 (2.60%) Software Engineer
13 240 (2.50%) Support Engineer
14 235 (2.45%) Technical Architect
15 199 (2.07%) Tester
16 181 (1.89%) AWS Engineer
17 170 (1.77%) Designer
18 169 (1.76%) Azure Engineer
19 168 (1.75%) Security Architect
20 162 (1.69%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 357 (3.72%) REST
2 228 (2.38%) Node.js
3 214 (2.23%) Spring
4 205 (2.14%) Kafka
5 199 (2.07%) React
6 164 (1.71%) Spring Boot
7 162 (1.69%) JSON
8 159 (1.66%) SOAP
9 151 (1.57%) LDAP
10 138 (1.44%) .NET
11 121 (1.26%) AngularJS
11 121 (1.26%) HTML
12 115 (1.20%) RESTful
13 111 (1.16%) PySpark
14 110 (1.15%) Web Services
15 107 (1.12%) OAuth
16 105 (1.09%) Oracle Fusion
17 101 (1.05%) XML
18 94 (0.98%) CSS
19 83 (0.87%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 296 (3.09%) Data Centre
2 275 (2.87%) Cloud Native
3 273 (2.85%) Product Ownership
4 243 (2.53%) Onboarding
5 205 (2.14%) PKI
6 180 (1.88%) Management Information System
7 139 (1.45%) Security Posture
8 117 (1.22%) Legacy Systems
9 116 (1.21%) Self-Motivation
10 112 (1.17%) Enterprise Software
11 100 (1.04%) Replication
12 83 (0.87%) Public Cloud
13 79 (0.82%) Security Operations Centre
14 78 (0.81%) Hybrid Cloud
15 77 (0.80%) Driving Licence
16 72 (0.75%) Distributed Systems
17 69 (0.72%) Cyber Threat
18 51 (0.53%) Analytical Mindset
19 50 (0.52%) Clustering
20 49 (0.51%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 881 (9.19%) Windows
2 704 (7.34%) Linux
3 223 (2.33%) Windows Server
4 155 (1.62%) Windows 10
5 127 (1.32%) Android
5 127 (1.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 124 (1.29%) Unix
7 66 (0.69%) Mac OS
8 53 (0.55%) Apple iOS
9 44 (0.46%) Ubuntu
10 38 (0.40%) VMS
11 30 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
12 24 (0.25%) CentOS
12 24 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
13 22 (0.23%) Solaris
14 21 (0.22%) Windows 7
15 14 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
16 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
17 9 (0.094%) Mac OS X
18 8 (0.083%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,824 (19.02%) Agile
2 1,454 (15.16%) DevOps
3 1,295 (13.50%) CI/CD
4 1,180 (12.30%) Problem-Solving
5 880 (9.18%) Stakeholder Management
6 826 (8.61%) Migration
7 759 (7.91%) Continuous Improvement
8 660 (6.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 618 (6.44%) Cybersecurity
10 616 (6.42%) Infrastructure as Code
11 564 (5.88%) ITIL
12 544 (5.67%) Test Automation
13 525 (5.47%) Containerisation
13 525 (5.47%) Roadmaps
14 524 (5.46%) Analytics
15 451 (4.70%) Scrum
15 451 (4.70%) Software Engineering
16 447 (4.66%) Business Intelligence
17 427 (4.45%) Service Management
18 417 (4.35%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,166 (12.16%) Python
2 809 (8.43%) SQL
3 610 (6.36%) PowerShell
4 544 (5.67%) Java
5 443 (4.62%) JavaScript
6 238 (2.48%) Bash
7 213 (2.22%) TypeScript
8 187 (1.95%) C#
9 111 (1.16%) C++
10 107 (1.12%) PL/SQL
11 104 (1.08%) Shell Script
12 87 (0.91%) Go
13 67 (0.70%) C
14 59 (0.62%) Ruby
15 51 (0.53%) Ada
16 50 (0.52%) Scala
17 44 (0.46%) Bicep
18 41 (0.43%) ABAP
19 40 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
20 35 (0.36%) R
Qualifications
1 7,368 (76.82%) SC Cleared
2 1,587 (16.55%) DV Cleared
3 466 (4.86%) Degree
4 315 (3.28%) BPSS Clearance
5 184 (1.92%) Cisco Certification
6 174 (1.81%) CISSP
7 135 (1.41%) AWS Certification
8 133 (1.39%) Azure Certification
9 130 (1.36%) CCNP
10 119 (1.24%) Microsoft Certification
11 108 (1.13%) CISM
12 88 (0.92%) Computer Science Degree
13 81 (0.84%) CCNA
14 66 (0.69%) ITIL Certification
14 66 (0.69%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 63 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
16 55 (0.57%) ISTQB
17 51 (0.53%) PMP
18 50 (0.52%) Master's Degree
19 49 (0.51%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 319 (3.33%) QA
2 292 (3.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 280 (2.92%) NIST
4 263 (2.74%) Data Quality
5 211 (2.20%) NCSC
6 193 (2.01%) Accessibility
7 179 (1.87%) GDPR
8 128 (1.33%) SLA
9 102 (1.06%) PMO
10 63 (0.66%) GRC
11 61 (0.64%) JSP 440
12 50 (0.52%) WCAG
13 43 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials
14 41 (0.43%) Def Stans
15 39 (0.41%) NIST 800
16 35 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 34 (0.35%) PCI DSS
18 32 (0.33%) COBIT
19 26 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
19 26 (0.27%) RMADS
System Software
1 660 (6.88%) Docker
2 494 (5.15%) Active Directory
3 249 (2.60%) VMware Infrastructure
4 91 (0.95%) VMware NSX
5 71 (0.74%) vSphere
6 65 (0.68%) Hyper-V
7 63 (0.66%) VMware ESXi
8 61 (0.64%) Virtual Machines
9 27 (0.28%) Firmware
9 27 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
10 23 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
11 18 (0.19%) BitLocker
12 16 (0.17%) NFS
12 16 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 12 (0.13%) Postfix
14 11 (0.11%) Squid
15 8 (0.083%) vCloud
16 7 (0.073%) Virtual Servers
17 6 (0.063%) KVM
18 5 (0.052%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 845 (8.81%) Kubernetes
2 808 (8.42%) Terraform
3 313 (3.26%) Ansible
4 238 (2.48%) Grafana
5 195 (2.03%) Prometheus
6 131 (1.37%) Single Sign-On
7 103 (1.07%) SCCM
8 93 (0.97%) vCenter Server
9 90 (0.94%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 73 (0.76%) Argo
10 73 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
11 46 (0.48%) FortiGate
12 45 (0.47%) vRealize
13 40 (0.42%) Podman
14 37 (0.39%) Packer
15 33 (0.34%) Kibana
16 32 (0.33%) Puppet
17 30 (0.31%) OPNET
18 29 (0.30%) Progress Chef
19 25 (0.26%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,068 (11.14%) Microsoft
2 544 (5.67%) Oracle
3 473 (4.93%) VMware
4 456 (4.75%) SAP
5 442 (4.61%) Cisco
6 402 (4.19%) ServiceNow
7 233 (2.43%) Splunk
8 189 (1.97%) Red Hat
9 150 (1.56%) Databricks
10 146 (1.52%) Google
11 145 (1.51%) CyberArk
12 141 (1.47%) Palo Alto
13 133 (1.39%) Salesforce
14 132 (1.38%) Juniper
15 120 (1.25%) Atlassian
16 99 (1.03%) Dell
17 86 (0.90%) Talend
18 85 (0.89%) IBM
19 81 (0.84%) Dynatrace
19 81 (0.84%) HP