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

6 months to
3 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 11,598 5,880 7,058
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.63% 18.09% 18.43%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.85% 57.83% 62.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,137 3,760 4,638
10th Percentile £390 £350 £350
25th Percentile £458 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.56% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £695 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £538 £550
% change year-on-year - -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 798 571 442
10th Percentile £19.50 £18.51 £15.73
25th Percentile £29.40 £18.87 £24.18
Median hourly rate £63.50 £25.15 £58.49
Median % change year-on-year +152.49% -57.00% -2.52%
75th Percentile £78.38 £43.75 £72.33
90th Percentile £88.32 £72.50 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.55 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +156.64% -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 16,845 10,168 11,376
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.41% 31.28% 29.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,289 6,291 7,134
10th Percentile £350 £300 £313
25th Percentile £438 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £628 £622 £638
90th Percentile £715 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,265 820 723
10th Percentile £17.40 £17.98 £15.18
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £47.54 £25.15 £48.18
Median % change year-on-year +89.03% -47.80% -12.40%
75th Percentile £72.50 £50.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £86.70 £72.50 £76.84
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +88.87% -49.70% -

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 10,026 £549 +2.14% 4,236
UK excluding London +1 6,511 £538 - 3,260
London +7 3,571 £550 +3.77% 1,503
Work from Home +2 3,064 £525 -2.33% 2,401
South East +1 2,318 £564 +4.98% 850
South West 0 1,383 £550 -0.90% 762
North of England +3 1,246 £515 +2.83% 628
Midlands 0 915 £475 -7.77% 278
West Midlands +1 779 £475 -7.77% 189
North West +2 733 £530 - 413
East of England 0 344 £550 - 380
Yorkshire +2 299 £500 +1.63% 118
Scotland +13 281 £481 -0.62% 259
North East 0 236 £475 -5.00% 118
East Midlands -2 127 £450 -10.00% 89
Wales +4 108 £550 +10.00% 43
Northern Ireland +5 35 £650 +16.07% 114

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
1 401 (3.46%) Confluence
2 268 (2.31%) SharePoint
3 175 (1.51%) SAS
4 126 (1.09%) Microsoft Exchange
5 106 (0.91%) Apache
6 103 (0.89%) Apache Spark
7 102 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.34%) Jupyter
9 34 (0.29%) nginx
10 29 (0.25%) WebLogic
11 23 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
12 22 (0.19%) IIS
12 22 (0.19%) Skype for Business
12 22 (0.19%) Tomcat
13 17 (0.15%) CMS
13 17 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
13 17 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
14 13 (0.11%) JBoss
15 12 (0.10%) NetWeaver
16 9 (0.078%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 207 (1.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 162 (1.40%) Microsoft Office
3 110 (0.95%) Microsoft Project
4 98 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 40 (0.34%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.15%) AutoCAD
7 17 (0.15%) Revit
8 16 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
9 15 (0.13%) Simulink
10 8 (0.069%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.069%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.069%) Windchill
11 7 (0.060%) Notepad++
11 7 (0.060%) Sketch
12 5 (0.043%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 3 (0.026%) OrCAD
13 3 (0.026%) Trello
14 2 (0.017%) Houdini
14 2 (0.017%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 148 (1.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 80 (0.69%) Remedy ITSM
3 51 (0.44%) Oracle ERP
4 38 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
5 34 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 30 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
7 29 (0.25%) Teamcenter
8 25 (0.22%) SAP GRC
9 24 (0.21%) Oracle Payroll
10 22 (0.19%) SAP PSCD
11 20 (0.17%) Primavera
12 17 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
13 16 (0.14%) SAP FI
13 16 (0.14%) SAP HR
14 13 (0.11%) Findur
15 12 (0.10%) iTrent
15 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
16 11 (0.095%) NetSuite
16 11 (0.095%) Temenos T24
17 10 (0.086%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 2,155 (18.58%) Azure
2 2,085 (17.98%) AWS
3 538 (4.64%) GitHub
4 525 (4.53%) Azure DevOps
5 483 (4.16%) Power Platform
6 453 (3.91%) GCP
7 347 (2.99%) GitHub Actions
8 326 (2.81%) Microsoft 365
9 299 (2.58%) Entra ID
10 283 (2.44%) Serverless
11 236 (2.03%) Amazon S3
12 205 (1.77%) AWS Lambda
13 174 (1.50%) SaaS
14 171 (1.47%) OCI
15 168 (1.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 163 (1.41%) Amazon EKS
17 141 (1.22%) Amazon EC2
18 136 (1.17%) OpenShift
19 125 (1.08%) AWS CloudFormation
20 119 (1.03%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 477 (4.11%) Firewall
2 377 (3.25%) DNS
3 230 (1.98%) Network Security
4 227 (1.96%) WAN
5 213 (1.84%) VPN
6 188 (1.62%) DHCP
7 180 (1.55%) LAN
8 139 (1.20%) BGP
9 138 (1.19%) TCP/IP
10 120 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
11 106 (0.91%) VLAN
12 100 (0.86%) OSPF
13 90 (0.78%) Wireless
14 74 (0.64%) SSL
15 68 (0.59%) MPLS
16 67 (0.58%) IPsec
17 65 (0.56%) VSAN
18 63 (0.54%) SAN
19 62 (0.53%) SD-WAN
20 53 (0.46%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 352 (3.04%) Power BI
2 310 (2.67%) PostgreSQL
3 288 (2.48%) SQL Server
4 267 (2.30%) Data Warehouse
5 187 (1.61%) Metadata
6 180 (1.55%) Oracle Database
7 145 (1.25%) Data Lake
7 145 (1.25%) Relational Database
8 129 (1.11%) MongoDB
9 109 (0.94%) Amazon RDS
10 106 (0.91%) MySQL
11 96 (0.83%) NoSQL
12 93 (0.80%) Oracle Reports
13 76 (0.66%) Pentaho
14 70 (0.60%) Amazon Athena
15 65 (0.56%) Elasticsearch
16 59 (0.51%) Amazon Redshift
17 58 (0.50%) Big Data
18 57 (0.49%) Tableau
19 49 (0.42%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 649 (5.60%) JIRA
2 570 (4.91%) Git
3 506 (4.36%) GitLab
4 471 (4.06%) Jenkins
5 140 (1.21%) Selenium
6 81 (0.70%) Postman
7 77 (0.66%) SonarQube
8 73 (0.63%) JMeter
9 71 (0.61%) JUnit
10 69 (0.59%) Maven
11 55 (0.47%) Cucumber
12 53 (0.46%) Cypress.io
13 48 (0.41%) Gradle
14 44 (0.38%) Mockito
15 40 (0.34%) Gatling
15 40 (0.34%) REST Assured
16 39 (0.34%) Visual Studio
17 38 (0.33%) Zephyr
18 36 (0.31%) Artifactory
19 35 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,539 (21.89%) Social Skills
2 2,386 (20.57%) Public Sector
3 916 (7.90%) Analytical Skills
4 760 (6.55%) Finance
5 385 (3.32%) Military
6 305 (2.63%) Documentation Skills
7 301 (2.60%) Aerospace
8 206 (1.78%) Influencing Skills
9 176 (1.52%) Organisational Skills
10 168 (1.45%) Telecoms
11 167 (1.44%) Legal
12 155 (1.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 149 (1.28%) Banking
14 117 (1.01%) Manufacturing
15 115 (0.99%) Law
16 114 (0.98%) Police
17 62 (0.53%) Presentation Skills
18 47 (0.41%) Local Government
19 46 (0.40%) Retail
20 45 (0.39%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,864 (16.07%) Architect
2 1,213 (10.46%) Developer
3 1,110 (9.57%) Senior
4 1,048 (9.04%) Lead
5 698 (6.02%) Consultant
6 636 (5.48%) Analyst
7 505 (4.35%) DevOps Engineer
8 500 (4.31%) Data Engineer
9 421 (3.63%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 367 (3.16%) Technical Architect
11 352 (3.04%) Solutions Architect
12 286 (2.47%) Software Engineer
13 285 (2.46%) Data Architect
14 268 (2.31%) Security Architect
15 259 (2.23%) Network Engineer
16 214 (1.85%) Administrator
17 211 (1.82%) Java Developer
18 203 (1.75%) Azure Engineer
18 203 (1.75%) Project Manager
19 199 (1.72%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 994 (8.57%) Terraform
2 444 (3.83%) REST
3 251 (2.16%) Spring
4 245 (2.11%) Kafka
5 230 (1.98%) Spring Boot
6 216 (1.86%) .NET
7 213 (1.84%) RESTful
8 205 (1.77%) React
9 172 (1.48%) Node.js
9 172 (1.48%) SOAP
10 161 (1.39%) JSON
11 131 (1.13%) HTML
12 129 (1.11%) OAuth
13 122 (1.05%) XML
14 121 (1.04%) Web Services
15 117 (1.01%) AngularJS
15 117 (1.01%) Middleware
16 101 (0.87%) CSS
17 96 (0.83%) Playwright
18 95 (0.82%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 517 (4.46%) Cloud Native
2 432 (3.72%) Onboarding
3 356 (3.07%) Product Ownership
4 307 (2.65%) Data Centre
5 251 (2.16%) Management Information System
6 193 (1.66%) Legacy Systems
7 172 (1.48%) PKI
8 165 (1.42%) Enterprise Software
9 159 (1.37%) CMDB
10 147 (1.27%) Distributed Systems
11 129 (1.11%) Replication
12 123 (1.06%) Hybrid Cloud
13 118 (1.02%) Self-Motivation
14 103 (0.89%) Data Structures
15 102 (0.88%) Cyber Threat
16 94 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
17 92 (0.79%) Public Cloud
18 90 (0.78%) Clustering
19 89 (0.77%) Operational Technology
20 83 (0.72%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 975 (8.41%) Windows
2 798 (6.88%) Linux
3 366 (3.16%) Windows Server
4 224 (1.93%) Unix
5 155 (1.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 138 (1.19%) Windows 10
7 78 (0.67%) Android
8 65 (0.56%) Solaris
9 51 (0.44%) Mac OS
10 45 (0.39%) Apple iOS
11 40 (0.34%) CentOS
11 40 (0.34%) Ubuntu
12 39 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
13 35 (0.30%) AIX
14 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
15 22 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
15 22 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
16 21 (0.18%) VMS
17 16 (0.14%) Rocky
18 15 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,448 (21.11%) Agile
2 1,792 (15.45%) DevOps
3 1,745 (15.05%) CI/CD
4 1,503 (12.96%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,365 (11.77%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,226 (10.57%) Problem-Solving
7 1,158 (9.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 991 (8.54%) Infrastructure as Code
9 926 (7.98%) Migration
10 832 (7.17%) Cybersecurity
11 792 (6.83%) ITIL
12 762 (6.57%) Test Automation
13 723 (6.23%) Containerisation
14 714 (6.16%) Analytics
15 706 (6.09%) Technical Leadership
16 686 (5.91%) Roadmaps
17 684 (5.90%) Decision-Making
18 676 (5.83%) AI
19 670 (5.78%) Software Engineering
20 632 (5.45%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,347 (11.61%) Python
2 1,102 (9.50%) SQL
3 793 (6.84%) Java
4 577 (4.97%) PowerShell
5 394 (3.40%) JavaScript
6 339 (2.92%) Bash
7 233 (2.01%) C#
8 210 (1.81%) TypeScript
9 161 (1.39%) PL/SQL
10 125 (1.08%) Bicep
11 82 (0.71%) Shell Script
12 67 (0.58%) C++
13 59 (0.51%) C
14 52 (0.45%) Apex Code
15 51 (0.44%) Scala
16 48 (0.41%) Go
16 48 (0.41%) Kotlin
17 47 (0.41%) Groovy
18 44 (0.38%) Ruby
19 39 (0.34%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8,841 (76.23%) SC Cleared
2 2,184 (18.83%) DV Cleared
3 463 (3.99%) BPSS Clearance
4 453 (3.91%) Degree
5 215 (1.85%) CISSP
6 183 (1.58%) Cisco Certification
7 178 (1.53%) Azure Certification
8 163 (1.41%) Microsoft Certification
9 148 (1.28%) AWS Certification
10 142 (1.22%) CISM
11 107 (0.92%) PMI Certification
12 102 (0.88%) PMP
13 92 (0.79%) ISTQB
14 82 (0.71%) CCNP
15 74 (0.64%) Computer Science Degree
16 71 (0.61%) CCNA
17 63 (0.54%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 47 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 46 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
20 45 (0.39%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 513 (4.42%) QA
2 389 (3.35%) Data Quality
3 322 (2.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 313 (2.70%) NIST
5 277 (2.39%) NCSC
6 259 (2.23%) Accessibility
7 228 (1.97%) PMO
8 186 (1.60%) GDPR
9 172 (1.48%) SLA
10 154 (1.33%) GRC
11 85 (0.73%) WCAG
12 65 (0.56%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
14 42 (0.36%) NIST 800
15 35 (0.30%) Def Stans
16 28 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 25 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 23 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
19 22 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 22 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 809 (6.98%) Docker
2 589 (5.08%) Active Directory
3 426 (3.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 145 (1.25%) VMware NSX
5 139 (1.20%) VMware ESXi
6 133 (1.15%) Hyper-V
7 126 (1.09%) vSphere
8 84 (0.72%) Virtual Machines
9 43 (0.37%) Firmware
10 42 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
10 42 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
11 27 (0.23%) vCloud
12 25 (0.22%) BitLocker
13 15 (0.13%) NFS
14 14 (0.12%) Squid
15 13 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
16 11 (0.095%) Postfix
17 9 (0.078%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 9 (0.078%) KVM
18 8 (0.069%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 981 (8.46%) Kubernetes
2 449 (3.87%) Ansible
3 262 (2.26%) Grafana
4 210 (1.81%) Prometheus
5 135 (1.16%) SCCM
5 135 (1.16%) vCenter Server
6 92 (0.79%) SCOM
7 88 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
8 69 (0.59%) Argo
9 66 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
10 51 (0.44%) Oracle RMAN
11 48 (0.41%) Puppet
12 42 (0.36%) Data Guard
13 32 (0.28%) Istio
13 32 (0.28%) Kibana
14 30 (0.26%) Progress Chef
15 29 (0.25%) Control-M
16 28 (0.24%) Nagios
16 28 (0.24%) NetBackup
16 28 (0.24%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,495 (12.89%) Microsoft
2 929 (8.01%) Oracle
3 602 (5.19%) VMware
4 544 (4.69%) ServiceNow
5 449 (3.87%) SAP
6 310 (2.67%) Cisco
7 245 (2.11%) Google
8 227 (1.96%) Splunk
9 213 (1.84%) Databricks
10 183 (1.58%) Salesforce
11 147 (1.27%) Red Hat
12 130 (1.12%) Palo Alto
13 118 (1.02%) Informatica
14 114 (0.98%) IBM
15 111 (0.96%) Talend
16 99 (0.85%) Dynatrace
17 91 (0.78%) Remedy
18 87 (0.75%) CyberArk
19 83 (0.72%) F5
19 83 (0.72%) SolarWinds