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

6 months to
6 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,573 5,863 7,254
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.71% 17.81% 18.55%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.20% 57.18% 61.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,066 3,733 4,834
10th Percentile £385 £350 £345
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £537 £534 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.56% -2.91% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £694 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 847 529 501
10th Percentile £19.00 £18.51 £15.22
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +151.03% -54.27% -8.33%
75th Percentile £78.75 £48.75 £71.75
90th Percentile £88.00 £74.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.50 £25.15 £57.44
% change year-on-year +152.49% -56.22% -2.64%

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 16,725 10,253 11,715
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.38% 31.15% 29.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,192 6,339 7,422
10th Percentile £350 £285 £313
25th Percentile £431 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £638
90th Percentile £715 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,253 787 859
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.48
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.38 £21.25
Median hourly rate £52.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +108.75% -41.51% -23.21%
75th Percentile £74.00 £55.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.00 £75.00 £77.09
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +98.81% -44.11% -16.15%

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 6 August 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 6 August 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 6 August 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 10,041 £537 -0.05% 2,592
UK excluding London +1 6,522 £525 -2.33% 1,871
London +7 3,551 £550 +4.76% 854
Work from Home +4 3,119 £525 -2.23% 1,259
South East +1 2,453 £560 +4.19% 627
South West 0 1,343 £538 -6.52% 465
North of England +2 1,131 £502 +0.35% 364
Midlands +3 980 £469 -8.40% 172
West Midlands +1 849 £469 -8.54% 128
North West +2 611 £525 - 220
East of England 0 320 £550 +2.80% 154
Yorkshire +2 303 £500 +1.63% 70
Scotland +11 262 £494 +2.23% 70
North East 0 241 £478 -4.50% 77
East Midlands 0 119 £438 -5.35% 44
Wales +2 97 £550 +15.79% 38
Northern Ireland +6 33 £650 +25.00% 21

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
1 420 (3.63%) Confluence
2 272 (2.35%) SharePoint
3 196 (1.69%) SAS
4 121 (1.05%) Microsoft Exchange
5 99 (0.86%) Apache Spark
6 98 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
7 92 (0.79%) Apache
8 40 (0.35%) WebLogic
9 38 (0.33%) Jupyter
9 38 (0.33%) nginx
10 24 (0.21%) IIS
10 24 (0.21%) Tomcat
11 21 (0.18%) Oracle Application Server
12 19 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
13 16 (0.14%) CMS
13 16 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
14 15 (0.13%) NetWeaver
15 13 (0.11%) Skype for Business
16 12 (0.10%) Tuxedo
17 10 (0.086%) JBoss
Applications
1 214 (1.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 154 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
3 101 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
4 81 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 47 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.13%) AutoCAD
7 15 (0.13%) Revit
8 14 (0.12%) Simulink
8 14 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
9 9 (0.078%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.069%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.060%) Notepad++
11 7 (0.060%) Sketch
12 3 (0.026%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 3 (0.026%) Trello
12 3 (0.026%) Windchill
13 2 (0.017%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.017%) Houdini
13 2 (0.017%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 152 (1.31%) SAP S/4HANA
2 81 (0.70%) Remedy ITSM
3 43 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
3 43 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
4 36 (0.31%) Teamcenter
5 33 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 25 (0.22%) Dynamics CRM
7 22 (0.19%) SAP PSCD
8 21 (0.18%) Primavera
9 20 (0.17%) SAP GRC
10 17 (0.15%) Oracle Payroll
11 15 (0.13%) Findur
12 14 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
13 13 (0.11%) Temenos T24
14 12 (0.10%) iTrent
14 12 (0.10%) SAP FI
14 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
15 11 (0.095%) NetSuite
15 11 (0.095%) SAP HR
16 10 (0.086%) Integrated Workplace Management System
Cloud Services
1 2,111 (18.24%) Azure
2 2,058 (17.78%) AWS
3 530 (4.58%) GitHub
4 511 (4.42%) Azure DevOps
5 469 (4.05%) Power Platform
6 447 (3.86%) GCP
7 327 (2.83%) GitHub Actions
8 308 (2.66%) Microsoft 365
9 295 (2.55%) Entra ID
10 288 (2.49%) Serverless
11 250 (2.16%) Amazon S3
12 205 (1.77%) AWS Lambda
13 171 (1.48%) OCI
14 167 (1.44%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 167 (1.44%) SaaS
15 164 (1.42%) Amazon EKS
16 162 (1.40%) Amazon EC2
17 152 (1.31%) PaaS
18 135 (1.17%) OpenShift
19 125 (1.08%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 490 (4.23%) Firewall
2 380 (3.28%) DNS
3 230 (1.99%) Network Security
4 229 (1.98%) WAN
5 199 (1.72%) VPN
6 193 (1.67%) LAN
7 185 (1.60%) DHCP
8 145 (1.25%) BGP
9 135 (1.17%) TCP/IP
10 116 (1.00%) OSPF
11 113 (0.98%) Wi-Fi
12 105 (0.91%) VLAN
13 90 (0.78%) Wireless
14 68 (0.59%) MPLS
15 67 (0.58%) IPsec
16 66 (0.57%) VSAN
17 64 (0.55%) SAN
18 62 (0.54%) SSL
19 61 (0.53%) SD-WAN
20 60 (0.52%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 357 (3.08%) Power BI
2 305 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
3 286 (2.47%) Data Warehouse
3 286 (2.47%) SQL Server
4 168 (1.45%) Oracle Database
5 156 (1.35%) Metadata
6 138 (1.19%) Data Lake
7 128 (1.11%) Relational Database
8 109 (0.94%) Amazon RDS
9 108 (0.93%) MongoDB
10 104 (0.90%) Oracle Reports
11 96 (0.83%) Pentaho
12 93 (0.80%) MySQL
13 87 (0.75%) NoSQL
14 72 (0.62%) Elasticsearch
15 70 (0.60%) Amazon Athena
16 69 (0.60%) Amazon Redshift
17 60 (0.52%) Tableau
18 55 (0.48%) Big Data
19 54 (0.47%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 670 (5.79%) JIRA
2 576 (4.98%) Git
3 475 (4.10%) GitLab
4 465 (4.02%) Jenkins
5 123 (1.06%) Selenium
6 86 (0.74%) SonarQube
7 82 (0.71%) JUnit
8 76 (0.66%) Postman
9 70 (0.60%) Maven
10 64 (0.55%) JMeter
11 57 (0.49%) Rational DOORS
12 55 (0.48%) Cucumber
13 50 (0.43%) Mockito
14 48 (0.41%) Visual Studio
15 45 (0.39%) Cypress.io
16 44 (0.38%) Zephyr
17 43 (0.37%) Bitbucket
18 40 (0.35%) Gradle
19 39 (0.34%) Artifactory
20 38 (0.33%) REST Assured
General
1 2,465 (21.30%) Public Sector
2 2,400 (20.74%) Social Skills
3 876 (7.57%) Analytical Skills
4 770 (6.65%) Finance
5 362 (3.13%) Military
6 298 (2.57%) Aerospace
7 288 (2.49%) Documentation Skills
8 173 (1.49%) Influencing Skills
9 172 (1.49%) Legal
10 150 (1.30%) Organisational Skills
11 148 (1.28%) Telecoms
12 131 (1.13%) Banking
13 121 (1.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 106 (0.92%) Manufacturing
15 103 (0.89%) Police
16 100 (0.86%) Law
17 77 (0.67%) Presentation Skills
18 52 (0.45%) Aviation
19 43 (0.37%) Marketing
20 41 (0.35%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,836 (15.86%) Architect
2 1,293 (11.17%) Developer
3 1,088 (9.40%) Senior
4 990 (8.55%) Lead
5 694 (6.00%) Analyst
6 631 (5.45%) Consultant
7 540 (4.67%) Data Engineer
8 470 (4.06%) DevOps Engineer
9 411 (3.55%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 371 (3.21%) Technical Architect
11 356 (3.08%) Solutions Architect
12 335 (2.89%) Software Engineer
13 285 (2.46%) Security Architect
14 261 (2.26%) Network Engineer
15 244 (2.11%) Data Architect
16 232 (2.00%) Java Developer
17 218 (1.88%) Designer
18 212 (1.83%) Administrator
19 210 (1.81%) Project Manager
20 209 (1.81%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 426 (3.68%) REST
2 270 (2.33%) Spring
3 234 (2.02%) Spring Boot
4 227 (1.96%) .NET
5 222 (1.92%) Kafka
6 213 (1.84%) RESTful
7 205 (1.77%) React
8 188 (1.62%) Node.js
9 169 (1.46%) SOAP
10 153 (1.32%) JSON
11 142 (1.23%) AngularJS
12 128 (1.11%) Web Services
13 125 (1.08%) OAuth
14 119 (1.03%) HTML
15 107 (0.92%) Middleware
16 105 (0.91%) XML
17 100 (0.86%) PySpark
18 92 (0.79%) Playwright
19 87 (0.75%) CSS
20 81 (0.70%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 485 (4.19%) Cloud Native
2 402 (3.47%) Onboarding
3 363 (3.14%) Product Ownership
4 322 (2.78%) Data Centre
5 240 (2.07%) Management Information System
6 199 (1.72%) Legacy Systems
7 172 (1.49%) Distributed Systems
8 170 (1.47%) PKI
9 135 (1.17%) Enterprise Software
10 132 (1.14%) CMDB
11 123 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
12 120 (1.04%) Data Structures
13 112 (0.97%) Hybrid Cloud
14 110 (0.95%) Replication
15 105 (0.91%) Clustering
16 95 (0.82%) Public Cloud
17 88 (0.76%) Virtual Team
18 84 (0.73%) Security Operations Centre
19 83 (0.72%) Cyber Threat
20 76 (0.66%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 946 (8.17%) Windows
2 795 (6.87%) Linux
3 320 (2.77%) Windows Server
4 233 (2.01%) Unix
5 153 (1.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 101 (0.87%) Windows 10
7 100 (0.86%) Android
8 65 (0.56%) Solaris
9 64 (0.55%) Apple iOS
10 49 (0.42%) Mac OS
11 43 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
12 37 (0.32%) AIX
13 36 (0.31%) Ubuntu
14 31 (0.27%) CentOS
15 24 (0.21%) VMS
16 21 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
17 18 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
18 16 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
19 14 (0.12%) Windows 7
20 12 (0.10%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,428 (20.98%) Agile
2 1,800 (15.55%) DevOps
3 1,702 (14.71%) CI/CD
4 1,302 (11.25%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,268 (10.96%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,222 (10.56%) Problem-Solving
7 1,062 (9.18%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 910 (7.86%) Infrastructure as Code
9 899 (7.77%) Migration
10 748 (6.46%) Cybersecurity
11 740 (6.39%) ITIL
12 728 (6.29%) Analytics
13 727 (6.28%) Test Automation
14 721 (6.23%) Containerisation
15 699 (6.04%) Software Engineering
16 673 (5.82%) Roadmaps
17 636 (5.50%) Data Modelling
18 631 (5.45%) Decision-Making
19 630 (5.44%) AI
19 630 (5.44%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,292 (11.16%) Python
2 1,146 (9.90%) SQL
3 818 (7.07%) Java
4 537 (4.64%) PowerShell
5 380 (3.28%) JavaScript
6 314 (2.71%) Bash
7 257 (2.22%) C#
8 191 (1.65%) TypeScript
9 182 (1.57%) PL/SQL
10 112 (0.97%) Bicep
11 93 (0.80%) Shell Script
12 90 (0.78%) C++
13 65 (0.56%) C
14 60 (0.52%) Apex Code
15 56 (0.48%) Kotlin
16 53 (0.46%) Ruby
17 49 (0.42%) Scala
18 47 (0.41%) Go
19 42 (0.36%) Groovy
20 36 (0.31%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8,819 (76.20%) SC Cleared
2 2,189 (18.91%) DV Cleared
3 446 (3.85%) Degree
4 433 (3.74%) BPSS Clearance
5 212 (1.83%) Cisco Certification
6 196 (1.69%) CISSP
7 169 (1.46%) Azure Certification
8 153 (1.32%) Microsoft Certification
9 135 (1.17%) AWS Certification
10 122 (1.05%) CISM
11 107 (0.92%) PMI Certification
12 105 (0.91%) PMP
13 91 (0.79%) CCNA
14 90 (0.78%) CCNP
15 84 (0.73%) ISTQB
16 69 (0.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 65 (0.56%) Computer Science Degree
18 53 (0.46%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 50 (0.43%) TOGAF Certification
20 48 (0.41%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 456 (3.94%) QA
2 375 (3.24%) Data Quality
3 310 (2.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 302 (2.61%) NIST
5 252 (2.18%) Accessibility
6 245 (2.12%) NCSC
7 220 (1.90%) PMO
8 181 (1.56%) GDPR
9 143 (1.24%) GRC
10 139 (1.20%) SLA
11 79 (0.68%) WCAG
12 61 (0.53%) JSP 440
13 47 (0.41%) NIST 800
14 46 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
15 32 (0.28%) Def Stans
15 32 (0.28%) Government Security Classifications
16 28 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 28 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 22 (0.19%) RMADS
18 19 (0.16%) COBIT
System Software
1 807 (6.97%) Docker
2 524 (4.53%) Active Directory
3 399 (3.45%) VMware Infrastructure
4 148 (1.28%) VMware NSX
5 132 (1.14%) VMware ESXi
6 114 (0.99%) vSphere
7 111 (0.96%) Hyper-V
8 80 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
9 47 (0.41%) Oracle RAC
10 37 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
11 29 (0.25%) Firmware
12 24 (0.21%) vCloud
13 20 (0.17%) BitLocker
14 18 (0.16%) NFS
14 18 (0.16%) Postfix
15 17 (0.15%) Squid
16 10 (0.086%) KVM
17 8 (0.069%) Microsoft App-V
17 8 (0.069%) Virtual Servers
18 7 (0.060%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 975 (8.42%) Terraform
2 951 (8.22%) Kubernetes
3 430 (3.72%) Ansible
4 266 (2.30%) Grafana
5 212 (1.83%) Prometheus
6 132 (1.14%) vCenter Server
7 109 (0.94%) SCCM
8 85 (0.73%) Microsoft Intune
9 72 (0.62%) Single Sign-On
10 69 (0.60%) SCOM
11 67 (0.58%) Argo
12 56 (0.48%) Oracle RMAN
13 50 (0.43%) Puppet
14 45 (0.39%) FortiGate
15 40 (0.35%) Data Guard
16 31 (0.27%) Progress Chef
17 30 (0.26%) Nagios
18 26 (0.22%) WSUS
19 25 (0.22%) Istio
19 25 (0.22%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 1,353 (11.69%) Microsoft
2 908 (7.85%) Oracle
3 576 (4.98%) VMware
4 553 (4.78%) ServiceNow
5 430 (3.72%) SAP
6 306 (2.64%) Cisco
7 223 (1.93%) Google
8 210 (1.81%) Splunk
9 202 (1.75%) Databricks
10 194 (1.68%) Salesforce
11 158 (1.37%) Red Hat
12 134 (1.16%) Talend
13 132 (1.14%) Informatica
14 118 (1.02%) IBM
15 113 (0.98%) Palo Alto
16 104 (0.90%) Juniper
17 97 (0.84%) F5
18 96 (0.83%) SolarWinds
19 92 (0.79%) Remedy
20 91 (0.79%) Dynatrace