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

6 months to
10 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 11,411 5,683 7,919
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.68% 17.56% 18.34%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.11% 57.21% 61.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,930 3,668 5,195
10th Percentile £381 £349 £340
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -3.64% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £715 £694 £732
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 845 460 595
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 £80.99
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £25.15 £57.50
% change year-on-year +148.51% -56.26% -0.23%

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 16,512 9,934 12,917
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.37% 30.70% 29.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,029 6,174 8,038
10th Percentile £350 £279 £310
25th Percentile £429 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.05% -0.05% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £713 £703 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,197 699 1,106
10th Percentile £17.54 £17.87 £14.03
25th Percentile £25.24 £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 £73.00 £58.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.30 £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 10 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 10 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 10 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 9,828 £525 -2.33% 2,508
UK excluding London +1 6,379 £525 -2.33% 2,040
London +7 3,491 £538 +2.38% 708
Work from Home +5 3,130 £525 - 1,250
South East +1 2,373 £550 - 637
South West 0 1,324 £538 -6.52% 616
North of England +2 1,058 £502 +0.35% 349
Midlands +2 965 £469 -6.20% 162
West Midlands +2 825 £470 -6.98% 118
North West 0 571 £525 +4.79% 194
East of England +2 337 £550 +7.32% 156
Scotland +21 281 £500 +14.29% 90
Yorkshire +2 279 £500 +1.63% 64
North East +1 236 £475 -3.06% 92
East Midlands 0 127 £418 -12.11% 43
Wales +3 106 £550 +15.79% 32
Northern Ireland +5 31 £650 +30.00% 22

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
1 413 (3.62%) Confluence
2 250 (2.19%) SharePoint
3 171 (1.50%) SAS
4 135 (1.18%) Microsoft Exchange
5 107 (0.94%) Apache Spark
6 106 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
7 101 (0.89%) Apache
8 46 (0.40%) nginx
9 42 (0.37%) WebLogic
10 41 (0.36%) Jupyter
11 27 (0.24%) Tomcat
12 23 (0.20%) IIS
13 20 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
14 17 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
15 16 (0.14%) CMS
15 16 (0.14%) NetWeaver
16 14 (0.12%) Skype for Business
17 12 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
17 12 (0.11%) Tuxedo
18 9 (0.079%) Documentum
Applications
1 185 (1.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 152 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
3 87 (0.76%) Microsoft Project
4 71 (0.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 51 (0.45%) 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 (1.17%) 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 30 (0.26%) 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 12 (0.11%) iTrent
12 12 (0.11%) Oracle Payables
12 12 (0.11%) Siebel CRM
13 11 (0.096%) SAP ERP
13 11 (0.096%) SAP HR
14 10 (0.088%) Maximo
14 10 (0.088%) Oracle Payroll
15 9 (0.079%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,056 (18.02%) AWS
2 2,019 (17.69%) Azure
3 494 (4.33%) GitHub
4 457 (4.00%) Azure DevOps
5 446 (3.91%) Power Platform
6 413 (3.62%) GCP
7 310 (2.72%) GitHub Actions
8 296 (2.59%) Microsoft 365
9 284 (2.49%) Entra ID
10 281 (2.46%) Serverless
11 248 (2.17%) Amazon S3
12 198 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
13 165 (1.45%) Amazon EC2
14 161 (1.41%) OCI
15 157 (1.38%) SaaS
16 156 (1.37%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 152 (1.33%) Amazon EKS
18 151 (1.32%) PaaS
19 149 (1.31%) OpenShift
20 135 (1.18%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 467 (4.09%) Firewall
2 362 (3.17%) DNS
3 248 (2.17%) Network Security
4 233 (2.04%) WAN
5 201 (1.76%) LAN
6 194 (1.70%) VPN
7 179 (1.57%) DHCP
8 144 (1.26%) BGP
9 122 (1.07%) OSPF
10 119 (1.04%) TCP/IP
11 113 (0.99%) VLAN
12 111 (0.97%) Wi-Fi
13 87 (0.76%) Wireless
14 71 (0.62%) MPLS
15 67 (0.59%) SD-WAN
16 66 (0.58%) SAN
17 57 (0.50%) 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
2 306 (2.68%) PostgreSQL
3 265 (2.32%) Data Warehouse
4 264 (2.31%) SQL Server
5 168 (1.47%) Oracle Database
6 149 (1.31%) Metadata
7 130 (1.14%) Data Lake
8 129 (1.13%) Relational Database
9 113 (0.99%) Amazon RDS
10 112 (0.98%) MongoDB
11 96 (0.84%) 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 54 (0.47%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 649 (5.69%) JIRA
2 531 (4.65%) Git
3 479 (4.20%) GitLab
4 459 (4.02%) Jenkins
5 126 (1.10%) Selenium
6 88 (0.77%) JUnit
7 85 (0.74%) Postman
8 82 (0.72%) SonarQube
9 66 (0.58%) JMeter
10 60 (0.53%) Rational DOORS
11 55 (0.48%) Cucumber
12 50 (0.44%) Maven
13 47 (0.41%) Mockito
14 46 (0.40%) Artifactory
14 46 (0.40%) Cypress.io
14 46 (0.40%) REST Assured
15 43 (0.38%) Bitbucket
15 43 (0.38%) Visual Studio
16 41 (0.36%) Zephyr
17 37 (0.32%) Gatling
General
1 2,504 (21.94%) Public Sector
2 2,331 (20.43%) Social Skills
3 825 (7.23%) Analytical Skills
4 739 (6.48%) Finance
5 356 (3.12%) Military
6 307 (2.69%) Documentation Skills
7 293 (2.57%) Aerospace
8 181 (1.59%) Legal
9 162 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
10 138 (1.21%) Banking
10 138 (1.21%) Telecoms
11 118 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
12 103 (0.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 98 (0.86%) Law
13 98 (0.86%) Manufacturing
14 90 (0.79%) Police
15 73 (0.64%) Presentation Skills
16 54 (0.47%) Aviation
17 40 (0.35%) Marketing
18 39 (0.34%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,746 (15.30%) Architect
2 1,227 (10.75%) Developer
3 1,010 (8.85%) Senior
4 918 (8.04%) Lead
5 725 (6.35%) Analyst
6 574 (5.03%) Consultant
7 532 (4.66%) Data Engineer
8 510 (4.47%) DevOps Engineer
9 384 (3.37%) Technical Architect
10 371 (3.25%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 350 (3.07%) Software Engineer
12 338 (2.96%) Solutions Architect
13 266 (2.33%) Security Architect
14 261 (2.29%) Network Engineer
15 226 (1.98%) Business Analyst
16 225 (1.97%) Java Developer
17 218 (1.91%) Designer
18 216 (1.89%) Project Manager
19 208 (1.82%) AWS Engineer
20 206 (1.81%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 383 (3.36%) REST
2 280 (2.45%) Spring
3 231 (2.02%) Spring Boot
4 217 (1.90%) Kafka
5 210 (1.84%) .NET
6 206 (1.81%) React
7 198 (1.74%) Node.js
8 187 (1.64%) RESTful
9 157 (1.38%) SOAP
10 141 (1.24%) JSON
11 130 (1.14%) AngularJS
12 124 (1.09%) OAuth
13 116 (1.02%) Web Services
14 112 (0.98%) PySpark
15 106 (0.93%) LDAP
16 103 (0.90%) HTML
16 103 (0.90%) Middleware
17 97 (0.85%) Playwright
18 92 (0.81%) XML
19 91 (0.80%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 461 (4.04%) Cloud Native
2 374 (3.28%) Onboarding
3 363 (3.18%) Product Ownership
4 316 (2.77%) Data Centre
5 223 (1.95%) Management Information System
6 187 (1.64%) Legacy Systems
7 161 (1.41%) Distributed Systems
8 155 (1.36%) PKI
9 121 (1.06%) CMDB
9 121 (1.06%) Replication
10 114 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
11 112 (0.98%) Enterprise Software
12 99 (0.87%) Data Structures
13 97 (0.85%) Hybrid Cloud
14 96 (0.84%) Security Posture
15 92 (0.81%) Public Cloud
16 91 (0.80%) Clustering
17 87 (0.76%) Virtual Team
18 85 (0.74%) Security Operations Centre
19 77 (0.67%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 910 (7.97%) Windows
2 785 (6.88%) Linux
3 289 (2.53%) Windows Server
4 215 (1.88%) Unix
5 154 (1.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 97 (0.85%) Android
7 94 (0.82%) Windows 10
8 66 (0.58%) Apple iOS
9 57 (0.50%) Solaris
10 47 (0.41%) Mac OS
11 38 (0.33%) Ubuntu
12 34 (0.30%) AIX
13 32 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
14 29 (0.25%) CentOS
15 23 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
16 19 (0.17%) VMS
17 15 (0.13%) Windows 7
17 15 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
18 14 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
19 11 (0.096%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,310 (20.24%) Agile
2 1,794 (15.72%) DevOps
3 1,677 (14.70%) CI/CD
4 1,214 (10.64%) Problem-Solving
5 1,181 (10.35%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,172 (10.27%) Continuous Improvement
7 980 (8.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 869 (7.62%) Infrastructure as Code
9 864 (7.57%) Migration
10 735 (6.44%) Cybersecurity
11 716 (6.27%) ITIL
12 709 (6.21%) Test Automation
13 699 (6.13%) Containerisation
14 676 (5.92%) Analytics
15 673 (5.90%) Software Engineering
16 657 (5.76%) Roadmaps
17 631 (5.53%) Decision-Making
18 596 (5.22%) Data Modelling
19 568 (4.98%) AI
20 559 (4.90%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,287 (11.28%) Python
2 1,091 (9.56%) SQL
3 809 (7.09%) Java
4 509 (4.46%) PowerShell
5 355 (3.11%) JavaScript
6 266 (2.33%) Bash
7 240 (2.10%) C#
8 191 (1.67%) TypeScript
9 167 (1.46%) PL/SQL
10 98 (0.86%) C++
11 95 (0.83%) Shell Script
12 80 (0.70%) Bicep
13 69 (0.60%) C
14 61 (0.53%) Apex Code
14 61 (0.53%) Ruby
15 59 (0.52%) Go
16 53 (0.46%) Kotlin
17 46 (0.40%) Ada
17 46 (0.40%) Scala
18 44 (0.39%) R
Qualifications
1 8,713 (76.36%) SC Cleared
2 2,109 (18.48%) DV Cleared
3 436 (3.82%) Degree
4 375 (3.29%) BPSS Clearance
5 217 (1.90%) Cisco Certification
6 185 (1.62%) CISSP
7 152 (1.33%) Azure Certification
8 130 (1.14%) Microsoft Certification
9 128 (1.12%) AWS Certification
10 111 (0.97%) CISM
11 106 (0.93%) CCNP
12 94 (0.82%) PMP
13 93 (0.82%) CCNA
13 93 (0.82%) PMI Certification
14 77 (0.67%) ISTQB
15 69 (0.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 67 (0.59%) Computer Science Degree
17 56 (0.49%) ITIL Certification
18 47 (0.41%) TOGAF Certification
19 43 (0.38%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 445 (3.90%) QA
2 350 (3.07%) Data Quality
3 315 (2.76%) NIST
4 313 (2.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 250 (2.19%) NCSC
6 241 (2.11%) Accessibility
7 188 (1.65%) GDPR
8 180 (1.58%) PMO
9 124 (1.09%) SLA
10 109 (0.96%) GRC
11 69 (0.60%) JSP 440
12 60 (0.53%) WCAG
13 48 (0.42%) NIST 800
14 44 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials
15 34 (0.30%) Def Stans
16 29 (0.25%) RMADS
17 28 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 25 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
19 24 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 20000
20 23 (0.20%) COBIT
System Software
1 777 (6.81%) Docker
2 479 (4.20%) Active Directory
3 353 (3.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 126 (1.10%) VMware NSX
5 125 (1.10%) VMware ESXi
6 100 (0.88%) Hyper-V
7 98 (0.86%) 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 22 (0.19%) BitLocker
13 21 (0.18%) Squid
14 20 (0.18%) vCloud
15 19 (0.17%) Postfix
16 10 (0.088%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 8 (0.070%) KVM
17 8 (0.070%) Microsoft App-V
18 7 (0.061%) UAG
Systems Management
1 961 (8.42%) Terraform
2 954 (8.36%) Kubernetes
3 406 (3.56%) Ansible
4 284 (2.49%) Grafana
5 230 (2.02%) Prometheus
6 117 (1.03%) vCenter Server
7 95 (0.83%) 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 50 (0.44%) Oracle RMAN
13 49 (0.43%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 49 (0.43%) FortiGate
14 46 (0.40%) Puppet
15 32 (0.28%) Data Guard
16 30 (0.26%) Progress Chef
17 29 (0.25%) Podman
18 28 (0.25%) Kibana
19 27 (0.24%) Nagios
Vendors
1 1,237 (10.84%) Microsoft
2 844 (7.40%) Oracle
3 541 (4.74%) VMware
4 524 (4.59%) ServiceNow
5 374 (3.28%) SAP
6 322 (2.82%) Cisco
7 229 (2.01%) Splunk
8 200 (1.75%) 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
13 126 (1.10%) IBM
14 108 (0.95%) Palo Alto
15 100 (0.88%) Juniper
16 96 (0.84%) F5
17 95 (0.83%) Fortinet
18 92 (0.81%) SolarWinds
19 89 (0.78%) Citrix