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

6 months to
10 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 11,965 6,210 6,711
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.92% 18.75% 17.69%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.77% 58.88% 60.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,279 3,980 4,224
10th Percentile £400 £325 £350
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 £719 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £540 £533 £550
% change year-on-year +1.41% -3.18% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 875 642 390
10th Percentile £20.00 £18.51 £20.12
25th Percentile £29.07 £18.87 £30.00
Median hourly rate £64.09 £25.15 £59.25
Median % change year-on-year +154.83% -57.55% -1.26%
75th Percentile £77.50 £33.75 £70.25
90th Percentile £91.31 £69.87 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +158.45% -58.08% +1.69%

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 17,399 10,546 11,102
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.87% 31.84% 29.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,516 6,585 6,719
10th Percentile £356 £285 £312
25th Percentile £448 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.43% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £631
90th Percentile £713 £706 £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 1,459 889 590
10th Percentile £16.50 £17.69 £18.03
25th Percentile £25.00 £18.87 £25.40
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -47.05% -11.55%
75th Percentile £72.25 £41.00 £68.75
90th Percentile £88.75 £70.00 £75.49
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -49.70% -3.66%

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 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 10 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 10 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 10,302 £550 +2.33% 6,234
UK excluding London +1 6,655 £540 +1.41% 4,504
London +5 3,685 £550 +1.85% 1,853
Work from Home +2 3,183 £535 -0.47% 3,398
South East +1 2,268 £570 +8.57% 1,140
South West 0 1,380 £550 - 906
North of England +2 1,304 £513 -1.44% 901
Midlands 0 937 £475 -8.39% 458
North West +1 791 £525 -4.55% 553
West Midlands 0 788 £475 -8.65% 296
East of England 0 446 £550 - 536
Scotland +12 308 £490 +1.45% 371
Yorkshire -1 293 £490 -0.46% 161
North East 0 238 £470 -10.48% 207
East Midlands +1 141 £500 +8.11% 161
Wales +3 111 £550 +4.76% 114
Northern Ireland +2 37 £650 +21.50% 112

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
1 395 (3.30%) Confluence
2 259 (2.16%) SharePoint
3 149 (1.25%) SAS
4 118 (0.99%) Microsoft Exchange
5 111 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
6 108 (0.90%) Apache
7 107 (0.89%) Apache Spark
8 45 (0.38%) nginx
9 40 (0.33%) CMS
9 40 (0.33%) Jupyter
10 39 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 24 (0.20%) IIS
12 23 (0.19%) Tomcat
13 22 (0.18%) Skype for Business
14 17 (0.14%) Oracle Application Server
14 17 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 15 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
16 13 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
17 11 (0.092%) JBoss
17 11 (0.092%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 218 (1.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 154 (1.29%) Microsoft Office
3 105 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 101 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 20 (0.17%) Windchill
9 19 (0.16%) Revit
10 18 (0.15%) SOLIDWORKS
11 9 (0.075%) Adobe XD
11 9 (0.075%) Chatbot
11 9 (0.075%) Simulink
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
15 2 (0.017%) Houdini
15 2 (0.017%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 153 (1.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 83 (0.69%) Remedy ITSM
3 60 (0.50%) Oracle ERP
4 51 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
5 43 (0.36%) Teamcenter
6 34 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
6 34 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 31 (0.26%) Oracle Payroll
8 26 (0.22%) SAP PSCD
9 24 (0.20%) SAP FI
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 (0.13%) SAP CO
12 15 (0.13%) 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 2,167 (18.11%) Azure
2 2,089 (17.46%) AWS
3 536 (4.48%) GitHub
4 522 (4.36%) Azure DevOps
5 494 (4.13%) Power Platform
6 461 (3.85%) GCP
7 367 (3.07%) GitHub Actions
8 345 (2.88%) Entra ID
9 340 (2.84%) Microsoft 365
10 274 (2.29%) Serverless
11 240 (2.01%) Amazon S3
12 199 (1.66%) AWS Lambda
13 179 (1.50%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 176 (1.47%) OCI
15 173 (1.45%) Amazon EKS
16 158 (1.32%) SaaS
17 151 (1.26%) Amazon EC2
18 146 (1.22%) OpenShift
19 132 (1.10%) AWS CloudFormation
20 119 (0.99%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 451 (3.77%) Firewall
2 381 (3.18%) DNS
3 248 (2.07%) Network Security
4 205 (1.71%) VPN
5 199 (1.66%) WAN
6 186 (1.55%) DHCP
7 154 (1.29%) LAN
8 142 (1.19%) TCP/IP
9 123 (1.03%) BGP
10 114 (0.95%) Wi-Fi
11 92 (0.77%) VLAN
12 89 (0.74%) Wireless
13 81 (0.68%) OSPF
14 69 (0.58%) SAN
15 66 (0.55%) MPLS
15 66 (0.55%) SSL
16 61 (0.51%) VSAN
17 59 (0.49%) IPsec
18 55 (0.46%) SD-WAN
19 50 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 348 (2.91%) Power BI
2 310 (2.59%) PostgreSQL
3 272 (2.27%) SQL Server
4 253 (2.11%) Data Warehouse
5 208 (1.74%) Metadata
6 189 (1.58%) Oracle Database
7 150 (1.25%) Data Lake
8 147 (1.23%) Relational Database
9 145 (1.21%) MongoDB
10 116 (0.97%) Amazon RDS
11 114 (0.95%) MySQL
12 96 (0.80%) NoSQL
13 81 (0.68%) Oracle Reports
14 74 (0.62%) Pentaho
15 68 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
16 62 (0.52%) Amazon Athena
17 58 (0.48%) Big Data
18 55 (0.46%) Amazon Aurora
19 50 (0.42%) DynamoDB
19 50 (0.42%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 646 (5.40%) JIRA
2 589 (4.92%) Git
3 535 (4.47%) GitLab
4 519 (4.34%) Jenkins
5 155 (1.30%) Selenium
6 91 (0.76%) Postman
7 84 (0.70%) Maven
8 81 (0.68%) JMeter
9 80 (0.67%) Cucumber
10 79 (0.66%) JUnit
11 76 (0.64%) SonarQube
12 57 (0.48%) Cypress.io
13 55 (0.46%) Gradle
14 46 (0.38%) Gatling
14 46 (0.38%) Mockito
14 46 (0.38%) REST Assured
15 41 (0.34%) Visual Studio
16 37 (0.31%) Artifactory
17 36 (0.30%) Zephyr
18 34 (0.28%) Bitbucket
General
1 2,741 (22.91%) Social Skills
2 2,494 (20.84%) Public Sector
3 989 (8.27%) Analytical Skills
4 787 (6.58%) Finance
5 440 (3.68%) Military
6 376 (3.14%) Aerospace
7 315 (2.63%) Documentation Skills
8 244 (2.04%) Influencing Skills
9 206 (1.72%) Organisational Skills
10 186 (1.55%) Manufacturing
11 176 (1.47%) Legal
12 174 (1.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 164 (1.37%) Telecoms
14 136 (1.14%) Banking
15 132 (1.10%) Police
16 119 (0.99%) Law
17 73 (0.61%) Presentation Skills
18 60 (0.50%) Local Government
19 58 (0.48%) Aviation
20 41 (0.34%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,939 (16.21%) Architect
2 1,223 (10.22%) Developer
3 1,161 (9.70%) Senior
4 1,046 (8.74%) Lead
5 707 (5.91%) Consultant
6 699 (5.84%) Analyst
7 508 (4.25%) DevOps Engineer
8 478 (3.99%) Data Engineer
9 412 (3.44%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 384 (3.21%) Solutions Architect
11 356 (2.98%) Technical Architect
12 307 (2.57%) Data Architect
13 296 (2.47%) Security Architect
14 248 (2.07%) Software Engineer
15 242 (2.02%) Network Engineer
16 233 (1.95%) Administrator
17 217 (1.81%) Java Developer
18 203 (1.70%) Designer
19 202 (1.69%) Delivery Manager
20 198 (1.65%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,027 (8.58%) Terraform
2 496 (4.15%) REST
3 273 (2.28%) Kafka
4 247 (2.06%) Spring
5 229 (1.91%) Spring Boot
6 222 (1.86%) RESTful
7 202 (1.69%) React
8 190 (1.59%) .NET
9 187 (1.56%) SOAP
10 175 (1.46%) Node.js
11 156 (1.30%) JSON
12 154 (1.29%) OAuth
13 145 (1.21%) HTML
14 139 (1.16%) XML
15 135 (1.13%) Middleware
16 116 (0.97%) Oracle Fusion
17 113 (0.94%) Web Services
18 110 (0.92%) AngularJS
19 107 (0.89%) CSS
20 99 (0.83%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 553 (4.62%) Cloud Native
2 489 (4.09%) Onboarding
3 387 (3.23%) Product Ownership
4 302 (2.52%) Data Centre
5 284 (2.37%) Management Information System
6 198 (1.65%) Enterprise Software
7 187 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
8 184 (1.54%) PKI
9 173 (1.45%) CMDB
10 135 (1.13%) Distributed Systems
11 134 (1.12%) Hybrid Cloud
12 129 (1.08%) Cyber Threat
13 127 (1.06%) Replication
14 121 (1.01%) Operational Technology
15 105 (0.88%) Self-Motivation
16 103 (0.86%) Data Structures
17 102 (0.85%) Security Posture
18 99 (0.83%) Security Operations Centre
19 87 (0.73%) Public Cloud
20 85 (0.71%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 996 (8.32%) Windows
2 793 (6.63%) Linux
3 373 (3.12%) Windows Server
4 220 (1.84%) Unix
5 152 (1.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 146 (1.22%) Windows 10
7 80 (0.67%) Solaris
8 68 (0.57%) Android
9 45 (0.38%) CentOS
10 43 (0.36%) Mac OS
11 42 (0.35%) Ubuntu
12 38 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
13 37 (0.31%) Apple iOS
14 27 (0.23%) AIX
15 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
15 26 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
16 23 (0.19%) VMS
17 19 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
18 18 (0.15%) Rocky
19 11 (0.092%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,529 (21.14%) Agile
2 1,842 (15.39%) CI/CD
3 1,817 (15.19%) DevOps
4 1,746 (14.59%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,496 (12.50%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,296 (10.83%) Problem-Solving
7 1,224 (10.23%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,055 (8.82%) Infrastructure as Code
9 957 (8.00%) Migration
10 901 (7.53%) Cybersecurity
11 811 (6.78%) ITIL
12 804 (6.72%) Test Automation
13 785 (6.56%) Containerisation
14 775 (6.48%) Roadmaps
15 773 (6.46%) AI
16 771 (6.44%) Decision-Making
17 763 (6.38%) Technical Leadership
18 733 (6.13%) Analytics
19 693 (5.79%) Software Engineering
20 658 (5.50%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 1,388 (11.60%) Python
2 1,114 (9.31%) SQL
3 790 (6.60%) Java
4 610 (5.10%) PowerShell
5 427 (3.57%) JavaScript
6 376 (3.14%) Bash
7 227 (1.90%) TypeScript
8 219 (1.83%) C#
9 149 (1.25%) PL/SQL
10 135 (1.13%) Bicep
11 82 (0.69%) Shell Script
12 60 (0.50%) Scala
13 58 (0.48%) C++
13 58 (0.48%) Groovy
14 57 (0.48%) Go
15 48 (0.40%) C
15 48 (0.40%) Kotlin
16 39 (0.33%) T-SQL
17 37 (0.31%) Apex Code
17 37 (0.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 9,120 (76.22%) SC Cleared
2 2,252 (18.82%) DV Cleared
3 586 (4.90%) BPSS Clearance
4 497 (4.15%) Degree
5 224 (1.87%) CISSP
6 184 (1.54%) Azure Certification
7 176 (1.47%) Cisco Certification
8 167 (1.40%) AWS Certification
9 163 (1.36%) Microsoft Certification
10 144 (1.20%) CISM
11 105 (0.88%) PMI Certification
12 99 (0.83%) ISTQB
13 94 (0.79%) PMP
14 81 (0.68%) CCNP
15 79 (0.66%) Computer Science Degree
16 65 (0.54%) CCNA
17 53 (0.44%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 52 (0.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 48 (0.40%) TOGAF Certification
20 46 (0.38%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 541 (4.52%) QA
2 407 (3.40%) Data Quality
3 333 (2.78%) NIST
4 328 (2.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 317 (2.65%) NCSC
6 295 (2.47%) Accessibility
7 220 (1.84%) PMO
8 191 (1.60%) SLA
9 181 (1.51%) GDPR
10 172 (1.44%) GRC
11 86 (0.72%) WCAG
12 53 (0.44%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
14 40 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
14 40 (0.33%) NIST 800
15 37 (0.31%) Def Stans
16 35 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 22 (0.18%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 22 (0.18%) ISO 9001
18 21 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 844 (7.05%) Docker
2 650 (5.43%) Active Directory
3 438 (3.66%) VMware Infrastructure
4 136 (1.14%) VMware ESXi
5 135 (1.13%) Hyper-V
6 134 (1.12%) vSphere
7 132 (1.10%) VMware NSX
8 91 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
9 48 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
10 40 (0.33%) 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 (0.092%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 11 (0.092%) Squid
17 10 (0.084%) KVM
18 8 (0.067%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 1,037 (8.67%) Kubernetes
2 448 (3.74%) Ansible
3 272 (2.27%) Grafana
4 199 (1.66%) Prometheus
5 146 (1.22%) SCCM
6 123 (1.03%) vCenter Server
7 105 (0.88%) Microsoft Intune
8 97 (0.81%) SCOM
9 69 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
10 64 (0.53%) Argo
11 55 (0.46%) Kibana
12 41 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
13 40 (0.33%) Puppet
14 38 (0.32%) Data Guard
14 38 (0.32%) NetBackup
15 32 (0.27%) Istio
15 32 (0.27%) VxRail
16 29 (0.24%) Control-M
17 24 (0.20%) Nagios
17 24 (0.20%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 1,629 (13.61%) Microsoft
2 958 (8.01%) Oracle
3 589 (4.92%) VMware
4 530 (4.43%) ServiceNow
5 456 (3.81%) SAP
6 285 (2.38%) Google
7 276 (2.31%) Cisco
8 221 (1.85%) Splunk
9 191 (1.60%) Databricks
10 146 (1.22%) Salesforce
11 132 (1.10%) Red Hat
12 128 (1.07%) Palo Alto
13 116 (0.97%) Informatica
14 108 (0.90%) Dynatrace
15 101 (0.84%) IBM
16 99 (0.83%) Talend
17 96 (0.80%) Remedy
18 93 (0.78%) CyberArk
19 76 (0.64%) Citrix
19 76 (0.64%) SolarWinds