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

6 months to
20 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 11,468 5,787 7,698
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.73% 17.64% 18.44%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.28% 57.34% 61.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,954 3,707 5,083
10th Percentile £381 £340 £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 £626 £625 £640
90th Percentile £718 £700 £735
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 840 490 557
10th Percentile £18.31 £18.51 £15.22
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £62.50 £25.15 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +148.51% -54.27% -8.33%
75th Percentile £76.88 £57.44 £71.25
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £57.44
% change year-on-year +151.03% -56.22% -3.32%

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 16,553 10,093 12,514
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.36% 30.77% 29.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,051 6,266 7,874
10th Percentile £350 £278 £310
25th Percentile £430 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £713 £704 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,198 736 1,011
10th Percentile £17.73 £17.87 £14.16
25th Percentile £25.75 £19.25 £20.76
Median hourly rate £52.25 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +107.75% -40.82% -25.74%
75th Percentile £73.00 £56.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.50 £75.00 £75.00
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 20 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 20 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 20 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 9,867 £531 -1.19% 1,666
UK excluding London +1 6,409 £525 -2.33% 1,304
London +7 3,507 £540 +2.86% 499
Work from Home +4 3,126 £525 -1.59% 812
South East +1 2,435 £550 +1.62% 469
South West 0 1,293 £538 -6.52% 301
North of England +2 1,079 £500 - 249
Midlands +3 961 £469 -6.20% 133
West Midlands +1 820 £470 -6.16% 97
North West 0 575 £525 - 136
East of England +2 323 £569 +8.33% 113
Yorkshire +2 296 £500 +1.63% 63
Scotland +16 283 £495 +7.03% 44
North East 0 237 £478 -4.50% 51
East Midlands -1 128 £418 -12.11% 36
Wales +2 102 £550 +15.79% 16
Northern Ireland +4 32 £650 +27.45% 8

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
1 407 (3.55%) Confluence
2 259 (2.26%) SharePoint
3 183 (1.60%) SAS
4 128 (1.12%) Microsoft Exchange
5 107 (0.93%) Apache Spark
6 105 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
7 97 (0.85%) Apache
8 48 (0.42%) nginx
9 41 (0.36%) WebLogic
10 39 (0.34%) Jupyter
11 27 (0.24%) Tomcat
12 25 (0.22%) IIS
13 20 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
14 18 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
15 17 (0.15%) CMS
16 16 (0.14%) NetWeaver
17 13 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
18 12 (0.10%) Tuxedo
19 11 (0.096%) Skype for Business
20 9 (0.078%) Documentum
Applications
1 201 (1.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 152 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
3 91 (0.79%) Microsoft Project
4 76 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 50 (0.44%) MS Visio
6 22 (0.19%) 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
1 141 (1.23%) SAP S/4HANA
2 70 (0.61%) Remedy ITSM
3 43 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
4 39 (0.34%) Teamcenter
5 35 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
6 30 (0.26%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 24 (0.21%) Dynamics CRM
8 22 (0.19%) SAP PSCD
9 20 (0.17%) Primavera
10 19 (0.17%) SAP GRC
11 15 (0.13%) Findur
12 13 (0.11%) Temenos T24
13 12 (0.10%) iTrent
13 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
14 11 (0.096%) Oracle Payables
14 11 (0.096%) Oracle Payroll
14 11 (0.096%) SAP HR
15 10 (0.087%) Integrated Workplace Management System
16 9 (0.078%) SAP ERP
16 9 (0.078%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 2,038 (17.77%) Azure
2 2,031 (17.71%) AWS
3 509 (4.44%) GitHub
4 475 (4.14%) Azure DevOps
5 447 (3.90%) Power Platform
6 427 (3.72%) GCP
7 314 (2.74%) GitHub Actions
8 296 (2.58%) Microsoft 365
9 289 (2.52%) Entra ID
10 277 (2.42%) Serverless
11 246 (2.15%) Amazon S3
12 198 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
13 164 (1.43%) Amazon EC2
14 155 (1.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 155 (1.35%) OCI
14 155 (1.35%) SaaS
15 152 (1.33%) Amazon EKS
16 150 (1.31%) PaaS
17 144 (1.26%) OpenShift
18 127 (1.11%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 482 (4.20%) Firewall
2 368 (3.21%) DNS
3 241 (2.10%) Network Security
4 235 (2.05%) WAN
5 209 (1.82%) VPN
6 199 (1.74%) LAN
7 182 (1.59%) DHCP
8 148 (1.29%) BGP
9 135 (1.18%) TCP/IP
10 122 (1.06%) OSPF
11 110 (0.96%) VLAN
12 109 (0.95%) Wi-Fi
13 90 (0.78%) Wireless
14 72 (0.63%) MPLS
15 66 (0.58%) SAN
16 65 (0.57%) IPsec
17 63 (0.55%) SD-WAN
18 58 (0.51%) VXLAN
19 55 (0.48%) VSAN
20 53 (0.46%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 344 (3.00%) Power BI
2 310 (2.70%) PostgreSQL
3 281 (2.45%) SQL Server
4 276 (2.41%) Data Warehouse
5 172 (1.50%) Oracle Database
6 161 (1.40%) Metadata
7 133 (1.16%) Data Lake
7 133 (1.16%) Relational Database
8 110 (0.96%) MongoDB
9 105 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
10 98 (0.85%) MySQL
11 94 (0.82%) Oracle Reports
12 87 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
13 84 (0.73%) Pentaho
14 73 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
15 72 (0.63%) NoSQL
16 70 (0.61%) Amazon Athena
17 68 (0.59%) Big Data
18 62 (0.54%) Tableau
19 49 (0.43%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 647 (5.64%) JIRA
2 537 (4.68%) Git
3 464 (4.05%) GitLab
4 449 (3.92%) Jenkins
5 121 (1.06%) Selenium
6 87 (0.76%) SonarQube
7 82 (0.72%) JUnit
8 80 (0.70%) Postman
9 65 (0.57%) JMeter
10 58 (0.51%) Rational DOORS
11 57 (0.50%) Maven
12 52 (0.45%) Cucumber
13 46 (0.40%) Visual Studio
14 44 (0.38%) Artifactory
14 44 (0.38%) Cypress.io
14 44 (0.38%) Mockito
15 43 (0.37%) REST Assured
16 41 (0.36%) Bitbucket
16 41 (0.36%) Zephyr
17 39 (0.34%) Gatling
General
1 2,480 (21.63%) Public Sector
2 2,328 (20.30%) Social Skills
3 849 (7.40%) Analytical Skills
4 747 (6.51%) Finance
5 359 (3.13%) Military
6 298 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
7 297 (2.59%) Aerospace
8 184 (1.60%) Legal
9 168 (1.46%) Influencing Skills
10 147 (1.28%) Telecoms
11 131 (1.14%) Banking
12 129 (1.12%) Organisational Skills
13 105 (0.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 98 (0.85%) Police
15 97 (0.85%) Manufacturing
16 96 (0.84%) Law
17 70 (0.61%) Presentation Skills
18 54 (0.47%) Aviation
19 43 (0.37%) Marketing
20 38 (0.33%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,778 (15.50%) Architect
2 1,254 (10.93%) Developer
3 1,052 (9.17%) Senior
4 948 (8.27%) Lead
5 716 (6.24%) Analyst
6 583 (5.08%) Consultant
7 526 (4.59%) Data Engineer
8 489 (4.26%) DevOps Engineer
9 383 (3.34%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 374 (3.26%) Technical Architect
11 344 (3.00%) Solutions Architect
12 339 (2.96%) Software Engineer
13 275 (2.40%) Security Architect
14 269 (2.35%) Network Engineer
15 230 (2.01%) Java Developer
16 225 (1.96%) Designer
17 218 (1.90%) Business Analyst
18 215 (1.87%) Data Architect
19 207 (1.81%) Project Manager
20 203 (1.77%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 391 (3.41%) REST
2 276 (2.41%) Spring
3 237 (2.07%) Spring Boot
4 220 (1.92%) .NET
4 220 (1.92%) Kafka
5 205 (1.79%) React
6 204 (1.78%) RESTful
7 188 (1.64%) Node.js
8 160 (1.40%) SOAP
9 143 (1.25%) JSON
10 135 (1.18%) AngularJS
11 122 (1.06%) Web Services
12 116 (1.01%) OAuth
13 112 (0.98%) HTML
14 103 (0.90%) Middleware
15 102 (0.89%) PySpark
16 94 (0.82%) XML
17 92 (0.80%) LDAP
18 89 (0.78%) OpenID
18 89 (0.78%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 467 (4.07%) Cloud Native
2 387 (3.37%) Onboarding
3 364 (3.17%) Product Ownership
4 320 (2.79%) Data Centre
5 229 (2.00%) Management Information System
6 196 (1.71%) Legacy Systems
7 169 (1.47%) Distributed Systems
8 162 (1.41%) PKI
9 124 (1.08%) CMDB
10 121 (1.06%) Replication
10 121 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
11 114 (0.99%) Enterprise Software
12 108 (0.94%) Data Structures
13 105 (0.92%) Hybrid Cloud
14 97 (0.85%) Public Cloud
15 96 (0.84%) Clustering
15 96 (0.84%) Security Posture
16 88 (0.77%) Virtual Team
17 83 (0.72%) Security Operations Centre
18 74 (0.65%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 908 (7.92%) Windows
2 781 (6.81%) Linux
3 292 (2.55%) Windows Server
4 225 (1.96%) Unix
5 152 (1.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 99 (0.86%) Android
7 91 (0.79%) Windows 10
8 67 (0.58%) Apple iOS
9 62 (0.54%) Solaris
10 48 (0.42%) Mac OS
11 37 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
12 36 (0.31%) Ubuntu
13 35 (0.31%) AIX
14 27 (0.24%) CentOS
15 23 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
16 20 (0.17%) VMS
17 15 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
18 13 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
19 10 (0.087%) Embedded Linux
19 10 (0.087%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,351 (20.50%) Agile
2 1,770 (15.43%) DevOps
3 1,664 (14.51%) CI/CD
4 1,226 (10.69%) Problem-Solving
5 1,219 (10.63%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,201 (10.47%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,006 (8.77%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 880 (7.67%) Infrastructure as Code
9 878 (7.66%) Migration
10 735 (6.41%) ITIL
11 734 (6.40%) Cybersecurity
12 705 (6.15%) Containerisation
12 705 (6.15%) Test Automation
13 695 (6.06%) Analytics
14 674 (5.88%) Software Engineering
15 653 (5.69%) Roadmaps
16 631 (5.50%) Decision-Making
17 619 (5.40%) Data Modelling
18 579 (5.05%) Technical Leadership
19 576 (5.02%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,275 (11.12%) Python
2 1,112 (9.70%) SQL
3 810 (7.06%) Java
4 516 (4.50%) PowerShell
5 355 (3.10%) JavaScript
6 283 (2.47%) Bash
7 248 (2.16%) C#
8 186 (1.62%) TypeScript
9 175 (1.53%) PL/SQL
10 95 (0.83%) Shell Script
11 94 (0.82%) Bicep
12 93 (0.81%) C++
13 67 (0.58%) C
14 60 (0.52%) Apex Code
15 59 (0.51%) Ruby
16 55 (0.48%) Go
17 54 (0.47%) Kotlin
18 49 (0.43%) Scala
19 42 (0.37%) R
20 40 (0.35%) Ada
Qualifications
1 8,740 (76.21%) SC Cleared
2 2,163 (18.86%) DV Cleared
3 440 (3.84%) Degree
4 396 (3.45%) BPSS Clearance
5 217 (1.89%) Cisco Certification
6 186 (1.62%) CISSP
7 160 (1.40%) Azure Certification
8 139 (1.21%) Microsoft Certification
9 135 (1.18%) AWS Certification
10 114 (0.99%) CISM
11 101 (0.88%) CCNP
11 101 (0.88%) PMI Certification
12 98 (0.85%) PMP
13 94 (0.82%) CCNA
14 80 (0.70%) ISTQB
15 70 (0.61%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 65 (0.57%) Computer Science Degree
17 54 (0.47%) ITIL Certification
18 47 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 47 (0.41%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 432 (3.77%) QA
2 360 (3.14%) Data Quality
3 312 (2.72%) NIST
4 307 (2.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 251 (2.19%) NCSC
6 250 (2.18%) Accessibility
7 196 (1.71%) PMO
8 178 (1.55%) GDPR
9 127 (1.11%) GRC
10 124 (1.08%) SLA
11 68 (0.59%) WCAG
12 62 (0.54%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.43%) NIST 800
14 44 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
15 32 (0.28%) Def Stans
16 27 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
16 27 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 25 (0.22%) RMADS
18 24 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 20000
19 23 (0.20%) COBIT
System Software
1 776 (6.77%) Docker
2 495 (4.32%) Active Directory
3 374 (3.26%) VMware Infrastructure
4 137 (1.19%) VMware NSX
5 135 (1.18%) VMware ESXi
6 105 (0.92%) vSphere
7 99 (0.86%) Hyper-V
8 85 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
9 51 (0.44%) Oracle RAC
10 35 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
11 31 (0.27%) 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 (0.078%) KVM
16 8 (0.070%) Microsoft App-V
16 8 (0.070%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 7 (0.061%) UAG
Systems Management
1 961 (8.38%) Terraform
2 940 (8.20%) Kubernetes
3 413 (3.60%) Ansible
4 281 (2.45%) Grafana
5 226 (1.97%) Prometheus
6 131 (1.14%) vCenter Server
7 94 (0.82%) SCCM
8 79 (0.69%) Single Sign-On
9 73 (0.64%) Microsoft Intune
10 66 (0.58%) Argo
11 57 (0.50%) SCOM
12 54 (0.47%) Oracle RMAN
13 49 (0.43%) FortiGate
14 46 (0.40%) Puppet
15 36 (0.31%) Data Guard
16 35 (0.31%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 30 (0.26%) Nagios
18 28 (0.24%) Progress Chef
19 26 (0.23%) Podman
20 23 (0.20%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,284 (11.20%) Microsoft
2 870 (7.59%) Oracle
3 553 (4.82%) VMware
4 533 (4.65%) ServiceNow
5 390 (3.40%) SAP
6 320 (2.79%) Cisco
7 227 (1.98%) Splunk
8 210 (1.83%) Google
9 193 (1.68%) Databricks
10 188 (1.64%) Salesforce
11 161 (1.40%) Red Hat
12 139 (1.21%) Informatica
13 138 (1.20%) Talend
14 127 (1.11%) IBM
15 117 (1.02%) Palo Alto
16 105 (0.92%) Juniper
17 98 (0.85%) F5
18 95 (0.83%) SolarWinds
19 94 (0.82%) Fortinet
20 87 (0.76%) Citrix