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

6 months to
14 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 12,113 6,252 6,649
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.92% 18.84% 17.74%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.65% 59.19% 60.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,365 4,006 4,174
10th Percentile £400 £325 £348
25th Percentile £463 £438 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.42% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £724 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £540 £528 £550
% change year-on-year +2.27% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 893 645 379
10th Percentile £20.30 £18.51 £20.12
25th Percentile £30.12 £18.87 £30.00
Median hourly rate £64.00 £25.15 £58.38
Median % change year-on-year +154.47% -56.92% -2.71%
75th Percentile £77.50 £33.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £91.31 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +158.45% -58.08% +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 17,645 10,563 10,982
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.93% 31.84% 29.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,668 6,616 6,647
10th Percentile £355 £283 £310
25th Percentile £447 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.43% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £630
90th Percentile £713 £703 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £520
% change year-on-year +5.00% -3.85% -3.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,491 890 568
10th Percentile £16.50 £17.54 £18.13
25th Percentile £25.00 £18.87 £25.47
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -47.05% -11.52%
75th Percentile £72.25 £40.19 £68.00
90th Percentile £89.08 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -49.70% -3.65%

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 October 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 October 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 October 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 10,433 £550 +2.33% 3,929
UK excluding London +1 6,726 £540 +2.27% 2,565
London +5 3,730 £550 +1.85% 1,319
Work from Home +2 3,237 £535 -0.47% 2,118
South East +1 2,300 £575 +9.52% 765
South West 0 1,383 £550 - 535
North of England +2 1,320 £511 -1.64% 534
Midlands 0 956 £475 -8.08% 273
West Midlands 0 806 £473 -9.04% 184
North West +2 802 £525 -4.98% 301
East of England 0 456 £550 - 240
Scotland +9 304 £486 +1.51% 138
Yorkshire -2 296 £488 -0.91% 94
North East 0 240 £470 -10.48% 140
East Midlands +1 142 £500 +11.11% 89
Wales +2 111 £550 -2.22% 69
Northern Ireland +1 36 £650 +21.50% 39

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 (3.33%) Confluence
2 261 (2.15%) SharePoint
3 166 (1.37%) SAS
4 119 (0.98%) Microsoft Exchange
5 111 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
6 107 (0.88%) Apache
6 107 (0.88%) Apache Spark
7 46 (0.38%) nginx
8 41 (0.34%) CMS
9 40 (0.33%) Jupyter
9 40 (0.33%) WebLogic
10 24 (0.20%) IIS
11 23 (0.19%) Tomcat
12 22 (0.18%) Skype for Business
13 17 (0.14%) Oracle Application Server
13 17 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 15 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
15 13 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
16 11 (0.091%) JBoss
16 11 (0.091%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 219 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 152 (1.25%) Microsoft Office
3 106 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 100 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.35%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.18%) AutoCAD
7 22 (0.18%) Windchill
8 19 (0.16%) Revit
9 18 (0.15%) SOLIDWORKS
10 10 (0.083%) Simulink
11 9 (0.074%) Adobe XD
11 9 (0.074%) Chatbot
12 6 (0.050%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 6 (0.050%) Sketch
13 4 (0.033%) OrCAD
13 4 (0.033%) Trello
14 3 (0.025%) Gliffy
14 3 (0.025%) PTC Creo
15 2 (0.017%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 156 (1.29%) SAP S/4HANA
2 82 (0.68%) Remedy ITSM
3 60 (0.50%) Oracle ERP
4 51 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
5 47 (0.39%) Teamcenter
6 34 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
6 34 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 31 (0.26%) Oracle Payroll
8 25 (0.21%) SAP FI
8 25 (0.21%) SAP PSCD
9 24 (0.20%) SAP GRC
10 18 (0.15%) Primavera
10 18 (0.15%) SAP HR
11 17 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
12 15 (0.12%) SAP CO
12 15 (0.12%) SAP Payroll
13 14 (0.12%) Oracle General Ledger
13 14 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
14 13 (0.11%) Maximo
14 13 (0.11%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 2,191 (18.09%) Azure
2 2,128 (17.57%) AWS
3 545 (4.50%) GitHub
4 530 (4.38%) Azure DevOps
5 499 (4.12%) Power Platform
6 463 (3.82%) GCP
7 373 (3.08%) GitHub Actions
8 352 (2.91%) Entra ID
9 343 (2.83%) Microsoft 365
10 277 (2.29%) Serverless
11 240 (1.98%) Amazon S3
12 201 (1.66%) AWS Lambda
13 181 (1.49%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 177 (1.46%) OCI
15 174 (1.44%) Amazon EKS
16 166 (1.37%) SaaS
17 151 (1.25%) Amazon EC2
18 149 (1.23%) OpenShift
19 133 (1.10%) AWS CloudFormation
20 121 (1.00%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 454 (3.75%) Firewall
2 382 (3.15%) DNS
3 250 (2.06%) Network Security
4 207 (1.71%) VPN
5 200 (1.65%) WAN
6 185 (1.53%) DHCP
7 156 (1.29%) LAN
8 142 (1.17%) TCP/IP
9 123 (1.02%) BGP
10 115 (0.95%) Wi-Fi
11 92 (0.76%) Wireless
12 91 (0.75%) VLAN
13 81 (0.67%) OSPF
14 69 (0.57%) SAN
15 66 (0.54%) MPLS
15 66 (0.54%) SSL
16 61 (0.50%) VSAN
17 59 (0.49%) IPsec
18 56 (0.46%) SD-WAN
19 50 (0.41%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 352 (2.91%) Power BI
2 311 (2.57%) PostgreSQL
3 274 (2.26%) SQL Server
4 253 (2.09%) Data Warehouse
5 208 (1.72%) Metadata
6 191 (1.58%) Oracle Database
7 154 (1.27%) Data Lake
8 147 (1.21%) Relational Database
9 144 (1.19%) MongoDB
10 117 (0.97%) Amazon RDS
11 113 (0.93%) MySQL
12 96 (0.79%) NoSQL
13 82 (0.68%) Pentaho
14 80 (0.66%) Oracle Reports
15 68 (0.56%) Elasticsearch
16 62 (0.51%) Amazon Athena
17 58 (0.48%) Big Data
18 55 (0.45%) Amazon Aurora
19 52 (0.43%) SQL Server Integration Services
20 51 (0.42%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 657 (5.42%) JIRA
2 605 (4.99%) Git
3 539 (4.45%) GitLab
4 535 (4.42%) Jenkins
5 156 (1.29%) Selenium
6 93 (0.77%) Postman
7 85 (0.70%) Maven
8 82 (0.68%) Cucumber
9 81 (0.67%) JMeter
10 80 (0.66%) JUnit
11 77 (0.64%) SonarQube
12 59 (0.49%) Cypress.io
13 55 (0.45%) Gradle
14 48 (0.40%) REST Assured
15 47 (0.39%) Mockito
16 46 (0.38%) Gatling
17 41 (0.34%) Visual Studio
18 37 (0.31%) Artifactory
19 35 (0.29%) Bitbucket
19 35 (0.29%) Zephyr
General
1 2,783 (22.98%) Social Skills
2 2,530 (20.89%) Public Sector
3 1,013 (8.36%) Analytical Skills
4 803 (6.63%) Finance
5 449 (3.71%) Military
6 391 (3.23%) Aerospace
7 321 (2.65%) Documentation Skills
8 247 (2.04%) Influencing Skills
9 211 (1.74%) Organisational Skills
10 190 (1.57%) Manufacturing
11 179 (1.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 179 (1.48%) Legal
12 165 (1.36%) Telecoms
13 136 (1.12%) Banking
13 136 (1.12%) Police
14 119 (0.98%) Law
15 73 (0.60%) Presentation Skills
16 60 (0.50%) Local Government
17 58 (0.48%) Aviation
18 41 (0.34%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,961 (16.19%) Architect
2 1,236 (10.20%) Developer
3 1,175 (9.70%) Senior
4 1,048 (8.65%) Lead
5 720 (5.94%) Analyst
6 717 (5.92%) Consultant
7 509 (4.20%) DevOps Engineer
8 488 (4.03%) Data Engineer
9 413 (3.41%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 392 (3.24%) Solutions Architect
11 358 (2.96%) Technical Architect
12 311 (2.57%) Data Architect
13 299 (2.47%) Security Architect
14 248 (2.05%) Software Engineer
15 241 (1.99%) Network Engineer
16 233 (1.92%) Administrator
17 219 (1.81%) Java Developer
18 208 (1.72%) Delivery Manager
19 206 (1.70%) Designer
20 203 (1.68%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,041 (8.59%) Terraform
2 508 (4.19%) REST
3 275 (2.27%) Kafka
4 247 (2.04%) Spring
5 229 (1.89%) Spring Boot
6 224 (1.85%) RESTful
7 205 (1.69%) React
8 194 (1.60%) .NET
9 193 (1.59%) SOAP
10 177 (1.46%) Node.js
11 160 (1.32%) JSON
12 157 (1.30%) OAuth
13 146 (1.21%) HTML
14 144 (1.19%) XML
15 137 (1.13%) Middleware
16 118 (0.97%) Web Services
17 116 (0.96%) Oracle Fusion
18 111 (0.92%) AngularJS
19 109 (0.90%) CSS
20 101 (0.83%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 565 (4.66%) Cloud Native
2 489 (4.04%) Onboarding
3 393 (3.24%) Product Ownership
4 307 (2.53%) Data Centre
5 296 (2.44%) Management Information System
6 203 (1.68%) Enterprise Software
7 189 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
8 184 (1.52%) PKI
9 175 (1.44%) CMDB
10 136 (1.12%) Distributed Systems
11 134 (1.11%) Hybrid Cloud
12 130 (1.07%) Cyber Threat
13 128 (1.06%) Replication
14 122 (1.01%) Operational Technology
15 107 (0.88%) Data Structures
16 104 (0.86%) Self-Motivation
17 102 (0.84%) Security Posture
18 98 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
19 88 (0.73%) AI Agents
19 88 (0.73%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 1,004 (8.29%) Windows
2 798 (6.59%) Linux
3 372 (3.07%) Windows Server
4 218 (1.80%) Unix
5 152 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 145 (1.20%) Windows 10
7 80 (0.66%) Solaris
8 68 (0.56%) Android
9 46 (0.38%) macOS
10 45 (0.37%) CentOS
11 42 (0.35%) Ubuntu
12 38 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
13 37 (0.31%) Apple iOS
14 28 (0.23%) AIX
15 26 (0.21%) Windows 7
15 26 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
16 23 (0.19%) VMS
17 19 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
18 18 (0.15%) Rocky
19 11 (0.091%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,573 (21.24%) Agile
2 1,882 (15.54%) CI/CD
3 1,840 (15.19%) DevOps
4 1,775 (14.65%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,528 (12.61%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,314 (10.85%) Problem-Solving
7 1,239 (10.23%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,068 (8.82%) Infrastructure as Code
9 991 (8.18%) Migration
10 913 (7.54%) Cybersecurity
11 823 (6.79%) Test Automation
12 818 (6.75%) ITIL
13 806 (6.65%) Containerisation
14 786 (6.49%) Roadmaps
15 783 (6.46%) AI
15 783 (6.46%) Decision-Making
16 773 (6.38%) Technical Leadership
17 741 (6.12%) Analytics
18 705 (5.82%) Software Engineering
19 672 (5.55%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 1,415 (11.68%) Python
2 1,135 (9.37%) SQL
3 802 (6.62%) Java
4 614 (5.07%) PowerShell
5 433 (3.57%) JavaScript
6 380 (3.14%) Bash
7 235 (1.94%) TypeScript
8 224 (1.85%) C#
9 148 (1.22%) PL/SQL
10 138 (1.14%) Bicep
11 82 (0.68%) Shell Script
12 61 (0.50%) Scala
13 59 (0.49%) Groovy
14 58 (0.48%) C++
15 57 (0.47%) Go
16 49 (0.40%) C
16 49 (0.40%) Kotlin
17 40 (0.33%) T-SQL
18 37 (0.31%) Apex Code
18 37 (0.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 9,238 (76.27%) SC Cleared
2 2,278 (18.81%) DV Cleared
3 594 (4.90%) BPSS Clearance
4 501 (4.14%) Degree
5 227 (1.87%) CISSP
6 185 (1.53%) Azure Certification
7 178 (1.47%) Cisco Certification
8 175 (1.44%) AWS Certification
9 165 (1.36%) Microsoft Certification
10 148 (1.22%) CISM
11 107 (0.88%) ISTQB
12 105 (0.87%) PMI Certification
13 94 (0.78%) PMP
14 82 (0.68%) CCNP
15 80 (0.66%) Computer Science Degree
16 65 (0.54%) CCNA
17 53 (0.44%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 53 (0.44%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 48 (0.40%) TOGAF Certification
19 45 (0.37%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 548 (4.52%) QA
2 423 (3.49%) Data Quality
3 336 (2.77%) NIST
4 334 (2.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 325 (2.68%) NCSC
6 302 (2.49%) Accessibility
7 221 (1.82%) PMO
8 196 (1.62%) GDPR
9 192 (1.59%) SLA
10 172 (1.42%) GRC
11 91 (0.75%) WCAG
12 53 (0.44%) JSP 440
13 50 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
14 45 (0.37%) Actionable Recommendations
15 40 (0.33%) NIST 800
16 39 (0.32%) Def Stans
17 36 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 23 (0.19%) ISO 9001
19 22 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 22 (0.18%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 861 (7.11%) Docker
2 654 (5.40%) Active Directory
3 438 (3.62%) VMware Infrastructure
4 137 (1.13%) VMware ESXi
5 136 (1.12%) Hyper-V
6 135 (1.11%) vSphere
7 132 (1.09%) VMware NSX
8 93 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
9 48 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
10 46 (0.38%) Firmware
11 37 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
12 24 (0.20%) BitLocker
12 24 (0.20%) vCloud
13 20 (0.17%) Virtual Servers
14 19 (0.16%) NFS
15 14 (0.12%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 11 (0.091%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 11 (0.091%) Squid
17 10 (0.083%) KVM
18 9 (0.074%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 1,058 (8.73%) Kubernetes
2 450 (3.72%) Ansible
3 274 (2.26%) Grafana
4 201 (1.66%) Prometheus
5 147 (1.21%) SCCM
6 123 (1.02%) vCenter Server
7 105 (0.87%) Microsoft Intune
8 97 (0.80%) SCOM
9 71 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
10 64 (0.53%) Argo
11 55 (0.45%) Kibana
12 41 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
13 40 (0.33%) Puppet
14 38 (0.31%) Data Guard
14 38 (0.31%) NetBackup
15 32 (0.26%) Istio
15 32 (0.26%) VxRail
16 29 (0.24%) Control-M
17 24 (0.20%) Nagios
17 24 (0.20%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 1,646 (13.59%) Microsoft
2 962 (7.94%) Oracle
3 590 (4.87%) VMware
4 531 (4.38%) ServiceNow
5 466 (3.85%) SAP
6 287 (2.37%) Google
7 279 (2.30%) Cisco
8 221 (1.82%) Splunk
9 193 (1.59%) Databricks
10 144 (1.19%) Salesforce
11 133 (1.10%) Red Hat
12 128 (1.06%) Palo Alto
13 115 (0.95%) Informatica
14 109 (0.90%) Dynatrace
15 106 (0.88%) Talend
16 101 (0.83%) IBM
17 95 (0.78%) Remedy
18 94 (0.78%) CyberArk
19 77 (0.64%) Citrix
20 76 (0.63%) SolarWinds