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

6 months to
22 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 11,432 5,751 7,622
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.68% 17.63% 18.45%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.31% 57.20% 61.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,939 3,684 5,034
10th Percentile £381 £338 £340
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.47% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £630 £623 £638
90th Percentile £719 £694 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 836 498 550
10th Percentile £18.32 £18.51 £15.47
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £62.50 £25.15 £55.04
Median % change year-on-year +148.51% -54.30% -8.27%
75th Percentile £77.50 £56.00 £71.62
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £57.50
% change year-on-year +151.03% -56.26% -3.22%

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 16,493 10,054 12,373
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.27% 30.81% 29.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,021 6,237 7,796
10th Percentile £350 £275 £310
25th Percentile £430 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.38% -0.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £638
90th Percentile £713 £701 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,192 742 985
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.16
25th Percentile £25.75 £19.38 £20.75
Median hourly rate £52.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +108.75% -41.51% -25.00%
75th Percentile £73.46 £56.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £86.93 £75.00 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -21.82%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 £531 -1.19% 2,075
UK excluding London +1 6,407 £525 -2.33% 1,549
London +7 3,489 £540 +2.86% 648
Work from Home +4 3,107 £525 -1.59% 1,047
South East +1 2,447 £550 - 530
South West 0 1,290 £538 -6.52% 373
North of England +2 1,076 £500 - 311
Midlands +3 969 £469 -6.20% 146
West Midlands +2 827 £469 -6.20% 108
North West +1 569 £525 - 171
East of England +2 310 £575 +9.52% 129
Yorkshire +3 297 £500 +1.63% 72
Scotland +15 280 £498 +5.24% 57
North East 0 239 £475 -5.00% 69
East Midlands +1 129 £418 -12.11% 38
Wales +5 103 £550 +15.79% 22
Northern Ireland +5 32 £650 +27.45% 9

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 (3.53%) Confluence
2 262 (2.29%) SharePoint
3 185 (1.62%) SAS
4 128 (1.12%) Microsoft Exchange
5 106 (0.93%) Apache Spark
6 105 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
7 98 (0.86%) Apache
8 48 (0.42%) nginx
9 46 (0.40%) WebLogic
10 40 (0.35%) Jupyter
11 27 (0.24%) Tomcat
12 24 (0.21%) IIS
13 20 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
14 18 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
15 16 (0.14%) CMS
15 16 (0.14%) NetWeaver
16 14 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
17 12 (0.10%) Tuxedo
18 11 (0.096%) Skype for Business
19 9 (0.079%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 203 (1.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 150 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
3 93 (0.81%) Microsoft Project
4 75 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 50 (0.44%) MS Visio
6 21 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.13%) Simulink
8 12 (0.10%) AutoCAD
8 12 (0.10%) Revit
8 12 (0.10%) SOLIDWORKS
9 10 (0.087%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.070%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.061%) Notepad++
11 7 (0.061%) Sketch
12 4 (0.035%) Trello
13 3 (0.026%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 3 (0.026%) Windchill
14 2 (0.017%) CATIA
14 2 (0.017%) CPLEX
14 2 (0.017%) Houdini
Business Applications
1 151 (1.32%) SAP S/4HANA
2 70 (0.61%) Remedy ITSM
3 42 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
4 38 (0.33%) Teamcenter
5 36 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
6 31 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 23 (0.20%) Dynamics CRM
8 22 (0.19%) SAP GRC
8 22 (0.19%) SAP PSCD
9 20 (0.17%) Primavera
10 15 (0.13%) Findur
11 13 (0.11%) Temenos T24
12 12 (0.10%) iTrent
12 12 (0.10%) Oracle Payroll
12 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
13 11 (0.096%) Oracle Payables
13 11 (0.096%) SAP HR
14 10 (0.087%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 10 (0.087%) SAP FI
15 9 (0.079%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,034 (17.79%) Azure
2 2,014 (17.62%) AWS
3 507 (4.43%) GitHub
4 474 (4.15%) Azure DevOps
5 445 (3.89%) Power Platform
6 425 (3.72%) GCP
7 312 (2.73%) GitHub Actions
8 302 (2.64%) Microsoft 365
9 288 (2.52%) Entra ID
10 273 (2.39%) Serverless
11 243 (2.13%) Amazon S3
12 197 (1.72%) AWS Lambda
13 163 (1.43%) Amazon EC2
14 158 (1.38%) Amazon EKS
15 157 (1.37%) SaaS
16 156 (1.36%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 154 (1.35%) OCI
18 151 (1.32%) PaaS
19 140 (1.22%) OpenShift
20 126 (1.10%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 484 (4.23%) Firewall
2 367 (3.21%) DNS
3 241 (2.11%) Network Security
4 233 (2.04%) WAN
5 209 (1.83%) VPN
6 197 (1.72%) LAN
7 181 (1.58%) DHCP
8 146 (1.28%) BGP
9 137 (1.20%) TCP/IP
10 121 (1.06%) OSPF
11 109 (0.95%) Wi-Fi
12 107 (0.94%) VLAN
13 91 (0.80%) Wireless
14 70 (0.61%) MPLS
15 68 (0.59%) SAN
16 63 (0.55%) IPsec
16 63 (0.55%) SD-WAN
17 59 (0.52%) VXLAN
18 56 (0.49%) VSAN
19 54 (0.47%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 341 (2.98%) Power BI
2 309 (2.70%) PostgreSQL
3 281 (2.46%) SQL Server
4 274 (2.40%) Data Warehouse
5 172 (1.50%) Oracle Database
6 162 (1.42%) Metadata
7 131 (1.15%) Data Lake
7 131 (1.15%) Relational Database
8 111 (0.97%) MongoDB
9 103 (0.90%) Amazon RDS
10 99 (0.87%) MySQL
11 94 (0.82%) Oracle Reports
12 87 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
13 84 (0.73%) Pentaho
14 73 (0.64%) NoSQL
15 72 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
16 69 (0.60%) Amazon Athena
17 65 (0.57%) Big Data
18 62 (0.54%) Tableau
19 49 (0.43%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 646 (5.65%) JIRA
2 542 (4.74%) Git
3 464 (4.06%) GitLab
4 451 (3.95%) Jenkins
5 122 (1.07%) Selenium
6 87 (0.76%) SonarQube
7 83 (0.73%) JUnit
8 78 (0.68%) Postman
9 64 (0.56%) JMeter
10 61 (0.53%) Maven
11 55 (0.48%) Rational DOORS
12 54 (0.47%) Cucumber
13 46 (0.40%) Visual Studio
14 45 (0.39%) Mockito
15 44 (0.38%) Cypress.io
16 43 (0.38%) Artifactory
17 42 (0.37%) REST Assured
17 42 (0.37%) Zephyr
18 41 (0.36%) Bitbucket
19 39 (0.34%) Gatling
General
1 2,474 (21.64%) Public Sector
2 2,316 (20.26%) Social Skills
3 850 (7.44%) Analytical Skills
4 749 (6.55%) Finance
5 358 (3.13%) Military
6 291 (2.55%) Aerospace
7 290 (2.54%) Documentation Skills
8 182 (1.59%) Legal
9 171 (1.50%) Influencing Skills
10 147 (1.29%) Telecoms
11 132 (1.15%) Organisational Skills
12 131 (1.15%) Banking
13 103 (0.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 101 (0.88%) Police
15 100 (0.87%) Manufacturing
16 95 (0.83%) Law
17 70 (0.61%) Presentation Skills
18 53 (0.46%) Aviation
19 42 (0.37%) Marketing
20 38 (0.33%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,775 (15.53%) Architect
2 1,255 (10.98%) Developer
3 1,044 (9.13%) Senior
4 952 (8.33%) Lead
5 717 (6.27%) Analyst
6 586 (5.13%) Consultant
7 519 (4.54%) Data Engineer
8 489 (4.28%) DevOps Engineer
9 386 (3.38%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 372 (3.25%) Technical Architect
11 344 (3.01%) Solutions Architect
12 333 (2.91%) Software Engineer
13 277 (2.42%) Security Architect
14 264 (2.31%) Network Engineer
15 227 (1.99%) Java Developer
16 226 (1.98%) Designer
17 217 (1.90%) Data Architect
18 213 (1.86%) Business Analyst
19 203 (1.78%) Delivery Manager
19 203 (1.78%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 397 (3.47%) REST
2 274 (2.40%) Spring
3 235 (2.06%) Spring Boot
4 224 (1.96%) Kafka
5 218 (1.91%) .NET
6 200 (1.75%) React
7 197 (1.72%) RESTful
8 188 (1.64%) Node.js
9 165 (1.44%) SOAP
10 146 (1.28%) JSON
11 135 (1.18%) AngularJS
12 126 (1.10%) Web Services
13 113 (0.99%) OAuth
14 111 (0.97%) HTML
15 104 (0.91%) Middleware
16 100 (0.87%) XML
17 98 (0.86%) PySpark
18 91 (0.80%) Playwright
19 84 (0.73%) OpenID
20 83 (0.73%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 456 (3.99%) Cloud Native
2 386 (3.38%) Onboarding
3 358 (3.13%) Product Ownership
4 315 (2.76%) Data Centre
5 232 (2.03%) Management Information System
6 196 (1.71%) Legacy Systems
7 170 (1.49%) Distributed Systems
8 163 (1.43%) PKI
9 124 (1.08%) CMDB
10 123 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
11 122 (1.07%) Enterprise Software
12 115 (1.01%) Replication
13 110 (0.96%) Data Structures
14 109 (0.95%) Hybrid Cloud
15 93 (0.81%) Clustering
15 93 (0.81%) Public Cloud
16 92 (0.80%) Security Posture
17 87 (0.76%) Virtual Team
18 83 (0.73%) Security Operations Centre
19 75 (0.66%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 911 (7.97%) Windows
2 787 (6.88%) Linux
3 293 (2.56%) Windows Server
4 229 (2.00%) Unix
5 152 (1.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 98 (0.86%) Android
7 92 (0.80%) Windows 10
8 66 (0.58%) Apple iOS
9 64 (0.56%) Solaris
10 48 (0.42%) Mac OS
11 38 (0.33%) Ubuntu
11 38 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
12 35 (0.31%) AIX
13 29 (0.25%) CentOS
14 23 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 20 (0.17%) VMS
16 15 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
17 13 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
18 10 (0.087%) Embedded Linux
18 10 (0.087%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,347 (20.53%) Agile
2 1,757 (15.37%) DevOps
3 1,653 (14.46%) CI/CD
4 1,220 (10.67%) Problem-Solving
5 1,216 (10.64%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,207 (10.56%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,013 (8.86%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 874 (7.65%) Migration
9 872 (7.63%) Infrastructure as Code
10 737 (6.45%) Cybersecurity
11 735 (6.43%) ITIL
12 708 (6.19%) Test Automation
13 707 (6.18%) Containerisation
14 688 (6.02%) Analytics
15 671 (5.87%) Software Engineering
16 656 (5.74%) Roadmaps
17 628 (5.49%) Decision-Making
18 607 (5.31%) Data Modelling
19 585 (5.12%) AI
20 580 (5.07%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,262 (11.04%) Python
2 1,107 (9.68%) SQL
3 809 (7.08%) Java
4 513 (4.49%) PowerShell
5 356 (3.11%) JavaScript
6 285 (2.49%) Bash
7 248 (2.17%) C#
8 185 (1.62%) TypeScript
9 177 (1.55%) PL/SQL
10 97 (0.85%) Bicep
11 95 (0.83%) Shell Script
12 90 (0.79%) C++
13 63 (0.55%) C
14 60 (0.52%) Apex Code
15 58 (0.51%) Ruby
16 54 (0.47%) Kotlin
17 53 (0.46%) Go
18 48 (0.42%) Scala
19 38 (0.33%) R
20 37 (0.32%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 8,715 (76.23%) SC Cleared
2 2,155 (18.85%) DV Cleared
3 445 (3.89%) Degree
4 405 (3.54%) BPSS Clearance
5 217 (1.90%) Cisco Certification
6 188 (1.64%) CISSP
7 161 (1.41%) Azure Certification
8 140 (1.22%) Microsoft Certification
9 131 (1.15%) AWS Certification
10 115 (1.01%) CISM
11 103 (0.90%) PMI Certification
12 101 (0.88%) CCNP
13 100 (0.87%) PMP
14 93 (0.81%) CCNA
15 83 (0.73%) ISTQB
16 67 (0.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 65 (0.57%) Computer Science Degree
18 50 (0.44%) ITIL Certification
19 47 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 47 (0.41%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 429 (3.75%) QA
2 361 (3.16%) Data Quality
3 305 (2.67%) NIST
4 304 (2.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 252 (2.20%) Accessibility
6 246 (2.15%) NCSC
7 198 (1.73%) PMO
8 177 (1.55%) GDPR
9 132 (1.15%) GRC
10 124 (1.08%) SLA
11 74 (0.65%) WCAG
12 63 (0.55%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.43%) NIST 800
14 44 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
15 28 (0.24%) Def Stans
15 28 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
15 28 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 25 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 20000
16 25 (0.22%) RMADS
17 22 (0.19%) COBIT
System Software
1 777 (6.80%) Docker
2 494 (4.32%) Active Directory
3 377 (3.30%) VMware Infrastructure
4 139 (1.22%) VMware NSX
5 134 (1.17%) VMware ESXi
6 102 (0.89%) vSphere
7 101 (0.88%) Hyper-V
8 83 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
9 51 (0.45%) Oracle RAC
10 35 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
11 30 (0.26%) Firmware
12 25 (0.22%) NFS
13 21 (0.18%) Squid
13 21 (0.18%) vCloud
14 18 (0.16%) BitLocker
14 18 (0.16%) Postfix
15 9 (0.079%) KVM
16 8 (0.070%) Microsoft App-V
16 8 (0.070%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 7 (0.061%) UAG
Systems Management
1 955 (8.35%) Terraform
2 935 (8.18%) Kubernetes
3 411 (3.60%) Ansible
4 281 (2.46%) Grafana
5 225 (1.97%) Prometheus
6 129 (1.13%) vCenter Server
7 96 (0.84%) SCCM
8 75 (0.66%) Microsoft Intune
9 73 (0.64%) Single Sign-On
10 67 (0.59%) Argo
11 59 (0.52%) SCOM
12 54 (0.47%) Oracle RMAN
13 49 (0.43%) FortiGate
14 47 (0.41%) Puppet
15 36 (0.31%) Data Guard
16 31 (0.27%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 30 (0.26%) Nagios
18 29 (0.25%) Progress Chef
19 28 (0.24%) Podman
20 23 (0.20%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,287 (11.26%) Microsoft
2 879 (7.69%) Oracle
3 555 (4.85%) VMware
4 534 (4.67%) ServiceNow
5 403 (3.53%) SAP
6 316 (2.76%) Cisco
7 221 (1.93%) Splunk
8 211 (1.85%) Google
9 194 (1.70%) Databricks
10 186 (1.63%) Salesforce
11 160 (1.40%) Red Hat
12 139 (1.22%) Informatica
13 138 (1.21%) Talend
14 127 (1.11%) IBM
15 115 (1.01%) Palo Alto
16 103 (0.90%) Juniper
17 98 (0.86%) F5
18 96 (0.84%) SolarWinds
19 92 (0.80%) Fortinet
20 85 (0.74%) Citrix