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

6 months to
23 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,478 5,260 8,121
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.57% 17.81% 18.58%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.05% 57.91% 60.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,158 3,503 5,303
10th Percentile £368 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £698 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £520 £548 £550
% change year-on-year -5.11% -0.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 853 288 520
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.98
25th Percentile £21.33 £21.87 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £50.95 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.96% -7.37% -10.57%
75th Percentile £73.00 £67.31 £70.39
90th Percentile £85.20 £78.46 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £57.50 £56.49
% change year-on-year -4.35% +1.79% -2.20%

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 15,175 9,083 13,437
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.69% 30.76% 30.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,097 5,746 8,300
10th Percentile £350 £295 £300
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £620 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £709 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £510 £525
% change year-on-year -1.96% -2.86% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,108 512 1,056
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.39 £13.77
25th Percentile £21.25 £22.27 £17.80
Median hourly rate £45.46 £41.38 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.87% +3.44% -25.93%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.00 £80.54 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.46 £45.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +1.02% +12.50% -20.00%

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 23 April 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 23 April 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 23 April 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 +2 9,087 £525 -2.33% 1,700
UK excluding London +1 5,800 £520 -5.11% 1,424
London +6 3,202 £525 - 445
Work from Home +3 2,779 £525 - 766
South East +1 2,154 £533 -3.08% 474
South West 0 1,325 £538 -4.02% 310
Midlands +3 873 £483 -8.00% 169
North of England -1 865 £488 -2.50% 268
West Midlands +3 731 £485 -7.97% 123
North West -1 526 £500 - 144
East of England +2 376 £500 +11.11% 156
Yorkshire -3 210 £488 -7.14% 57
Scotland +34 202 £500 +8.11% 35
North East +1 164 £450 -10.00% 69
East Midlands -3 137 £450 -10.00% 46
Wales +4 76 £515 -5.47% 31
Northern Ireland +6 19 £475 - 16

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
1 392 (3.74%) Confluence
2 222 (2.12%) SharePoint
3 146 (1.39%) Microsoft Exchange
4 122 (1.16%) SAS
5 110 (1.05%) Apache Spark
6 86 (0.82%) Apache
7 72 (0.69%) Apache Airflow
8 50 (0.48%) nginx
9 40 (0.38%) WebLogic
10 24 (0.23%) Jupyter
11 18 (0.17%) Tomcat
12 16 (0.15%) CMS
13 15 (0.14%) IIS
13 15 (0.14%) Skype for Business
13 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
14 14 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
15 11 (0.10%) ArcGIS
15 11 (0.10%) NetWeaver
15 11 (0.10%) Oracle Application Server
15 11 (0.10%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 226 (2.16%) Microsoft Office
2 191 (1.82%) Microsoft Excel
3 123 (1.17%) Microsoft Project
4 80 (0.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 45 (0.43%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.15%) Simulink
8 7 (0.067%) Notepad++
9 6 (0.057%) AutoCAD
10 5 (0.048%) SOLIDWORKS
10 5 (0.048%) Windchill
11 4 (0.038%) Revit
11 4 (0.038%) Siemens NX
11 4 (0.038%) Sketch
12 3 (0.029%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.019%) Chatbot
13 2 (0.019%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.019%) InVision
13 2 (0.019%) Lectora
13 2 (0.019%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 106 (1.01%) SAP S/4HANA
2 46 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
3 45 (0.43%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 30 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
5 27 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
6 26 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 21 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
8 18 (0.17%) Maximo
8 18 (0.17%) SAP PP
9 13 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.12%) Temenos T24
10 12 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
11 11 (0.10%) Findur
11 11 (0.10%) Oracle Assets
12 10 (0.095%) SAP HCM
13 9 (0.086%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 9 (0.086%) SAP HR
13 9 (0.086%) SAP PM
14 8 (0.076%) iTrent
14 8 (0.076%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 1,825 (17.42%) AWS
2 1,783 (17.02%) Azure
3 451 (4.30%) GitHub
4 430 (4.10%) GCP
5 415 (3.96%) Azure DevOps
6 372 (3.55%) Power Platform
7 296 (2.82%) Serverless
8 275 (2.62%) Microsoft 365
9 248 (2.37%) GitHub Actions
10 243 (2.32%) Entra ID
11 224 (2.14%) Amazon S3
12 197 (1.88%) AWS Lambda
13 156 (1.49%) PaaS
14 152 (1.45%) AWS CloudFormation
15 139 (1.33%) OpenShift
16 138 (1.32%) Amazon EC2
17 135 (1.29%) Amazon EKS
17 135 (1.29%) IaaS
18 132 (1.26%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 125 (1.19%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 469 (4.48%) Firewall
2 289 (2.76%) DNS
3 235 (2.24%) Network Security
4 223 (2.13%) WAN
5 203 (1.94%) LAN
6 174 (1.66%) VPN
7 146 (1.39%) BGP
8 142 (1.36%) DHCP
9 122 (1.16%) TCP/IP
10 119 (1.14%) OSPF
11 103 (0.98%) VLAN
12 83 (0.79%) Wireless
13 74 (0.71%) Wi-Fi
14 64 (0.61%) MPLS
15 57 (0.54%) SAN
16 52 (0.50%) SSL
17 51 (0.49%) SD-WAN
18 48 (0.46%) IPsec
19 46 (0.44%) VXLAN
20 45 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 284 (2.71%) Power BI
2 267 (2.55%) PostgreSQL
3 227 (2.17%) Data Warehouse
4 195 (1.86%) SQL Server
5 144 (1.37%) Metadata
6 116 (1.11%) Oracle Database
7 111 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
8 108 (1.03%) NoSQL
9 105 (1.00%) MongoDB
10 99 (0.94%) Relational Database
11 95 (0.91%) Data Lake
12 82 (0.78%) MySQL
13 77 (0.73%) Big Data
13 77 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
14 76 (0.73%) Pentaho
15 73 (0.70%) Azure SQL Database
15 73 (0.70%) Tableau
16 67 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
17 65 (0.62%) Oracle Reports
18 57 (0.54%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 626 (5.97%) JIRA
2 503 (4.80%) Git
3 383 (3.66%) Jenkins
4 363 (3.46%) GitLab
5 104 (0.99%) Selenium
6 88 (0.84%) Postman
7 74 (0.71%) JUnit
8 67 (0.64%) SonarQube
9 51 (0.49%) Bitbucket
10 50 (0.48%) Rational DOORS
11 47 (0.45%) Artifactory
12 45 (0.43%) JMeter
13 43 (0.41%) Maven
14 42 (0.40%) Cucumber
14 42 (0.40%) Oracle APEX
15 39 (0.37%) Mockito
16 36 (0.34%) Cypress.io
17 34 (0.32%) Visual Studio
18 30 (0.29%) Zephyr
19 26 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 2,427 (23.16%) Public Sector
2 2,282 (21.78%) Social Skills
3 836 (7.98%) Analytical Skills
4 699 (6.67%) Finance
5 352 (3.36%) Military
6 281 (2.68%) Documentation Skills
7 241 (2.30%) Aerospace
8 172 (1.64%) Legal
9 153 (1.46%) Manufacturing
10 152 (1.45%) Telecoms
11 136 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
12 121 (1.15%) Banking
13 113 (1.08%) Organisational Skills
14 98 (0.94%) Presentation Skills
15 82 (0.78%) Law
16 79 (0.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 79 (0.75%) Marketing
17 75 (0.72%) Electronics
18 60 (0.57%) Police
19 34 (0.32%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,598 (15.25%) Architect
2 1,048 (10.00%) Developer
3 925 (8.83%) Senior
4 751 (7.17%) Analyst
5 706 (6.74%) Lead
6 551 (5.26%) Consultant
7 473 (4.51%) Data Engineer
8 467 (4.46%) DevOps Engineer
9 319 (3.04%) Technical Architect
10 311 (2.97%) Software Engineer
11 287 (2.74%) Solutions Architect
12 282 (2.69%) Network Engineer
13 274 (2.62%) Business Analyst
14 241 (2.30%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 221 (2.11%) Azure Engineer
16 215 (2.05%) Project Manager
17 201 (1.92%) Designer
17 201 (1.92%) Security Architect
18 186 (1.78%) Administrator
19 185 (1.77%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 355 (3.39%) REST
2 241 (2.30%) Spring
3 213 (2.03%) Kafka
4 203 (1.94%) Node.js
5 188 (1.79%) Spring Boot
6 179 (1.71%) .NET
6 179 (1.71%) React
7 164 (1.57%) JSON
8 157 (1.50%) SOAP
9 147 (1.40%) RESTful
10 143 (1.36%) LDAP
11 125 (1.19%) PySpark
12 121 (1.15%) AngularJS
13 119 (1.14%) Web Services
14 103 (0.98%) OAuth
15 101 (0.96%) HTML
15 101 (0.96%) Oracle Fusion
16 97 (0.93%) XML
17 85 (0.81%) Middleware
18 84 (0.80%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 350 (3.34%) Product Ownership
2 334 (3.19%) Cloud Native
3 305 (2.91%) Data Centre
4 277 (2.64%) Onboarding
5 197 (1.88%) Management Information System
6 186 (1.78%) PKI
7 132 (1.26%) Legacy Systems
8 130 (1.24%) Security Posture
9 129 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
10 126 (1.20%) Replication
10 126 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
11 124 (1.18%) Distributed Systems
12 93 (0.89%) Public Cloud
13 81 (0.77%) Data Structures
14 80 (0.76%) Security Operations Centre
15 77 (0.73%) Clustering
15 77 (0.73%) Hybrid Cloud
16 71 (0.68%) Virtual Team
17 66 (0.63%) Greenfield Project
18 62 (0.59%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 865 (8.26%) Windows
2 754 (7.20%) Linux
3 257 (2.45%) Windows Server
4 159 (1.52%) Unix
5 139 (1.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 120 (1.15%) Android
7 108 (1.03%) Windows 10
8 67 (0.64%) Apple iOS
9 51 (0.49%) Mac OS
10 40 (0.38%) Ubuntu
11 33 (0.31%) VMS
12 31 (0.30%) Solaris
13 29 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
14 27 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
15 23 (0.22%) AIX
16 21 (0.20%) CentOS
17 15 (0.14%) Windows 7
17 15 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
18 10 (0.095%) Windows Server 2008
19 8 (0.076%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,045 (19.52%) Agile
2 1,576 (15.04%) DevOps
3 1,383 (13.20%) CI/CD
4 1,160 (11.07%) Problem-Solving
5 966 (9.22%) Stakeholder Management
6 888 (8.47%) Continuous Improvement
7 887 (8.47%) Migration
8 786 (7.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 695 (6.63%) Infrastructure as Code
10 651 (6.21%) ITIL
11 608 (5.80%) Analytics
12 601 (5.74%) Cybersecurity
13 599 (5.72%) Test Automation
14 575 (5.49%) Roadmaps
15 559 (5.33%) Containerisation
16 550 (5.25%) Software Engineering
17 503 (4.80%) Data Modelling
18 496 (4.73%) Scrum
19 474 (4.52%) Decision-Making
20 454 (4.33%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 1,220 (11.64%) Python
2 969 (9.25%) SQL
3 650 (6.20%) Java
4 601 (5.74%) PowerShell
5 379 (3.62%) JavaScript
6 222 (2.12%) C#
7 214 (2.04%) Bash
8 178 (1.70%) TypeScript
9 125 (1.19%) PL/SQL
10 106 (1.01%) Shell Script
11 103 (0.98%) C++
12 77 (0.73%) Go
13 71 (0.68%) Ruby
14 70 (0.67%) Scala
15 58 (0.55%) C
16 57 (0.54%) Bicep
17 49 (0.47%) Apex Code
17 49 (0.47%) R
18 44 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
19 41 (0.39%) Ada
Qualifications
1 8,020 (76.54%) SC Cleared
2 1,828 (17.45%) DV Cleared
3 469 (4.48%) Degree
4 333 (3.18%) BPSS Clearance
5 199 (1.90%) Cisco Certification
6 170 (1.62%) CISSP
7 146 (1.39%) Azure Certification
8 134 (1.28%) AWS Certification
9 127 (1.21%) CCNP
10 108 (1.03%) CISM
11 101 (0.96%) Microsoft Certification
12 85 (0.81%) CCNA
13 79 (0.75%) Computer Science Degree
14 77 (0.73%) ITIL Certification
15 71 (0.68%) PMP
16 70 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
17 68 (0.65%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 64 (0.61%) PMI Certification
19 58 (0.55%) ISTQB
20 50 (0.48%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 367 (3.50%) QA
2 318 (3.03%) Data Quality
3 288 (2.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 285 (2.72%) NIST
5 201 (1.92%) NCSC
6 175 (1.67%) Accessibility
7 168 (1.60%) GDPR
8 146 (1.39%) PMO
9 111 (1.06%) SLA
10 68 (0.65%) GRC
11 67 (0.64%) JSP 440
12 44 (0.42%) COBIT
13 43 (0.41%) NIST 800
14 40 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
15 37 (0.35%) WCAG
16 36 (0.34%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 33 (0.31%) PCI DSS
17 33 (0.31%) RMADS
18 31 (0.30%) Def Stans
19 23 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 682 (6.51%) Docker
2 479 (4.57%) Active Directory
3 291 (2.78%) VMware Infrastructure
4 96 (0.92%) VMware NSX
5 92 (0.88%) VMware ESXi
6 82 (0.78%) Hyper-V
7 78 (0.74%) vSphere
8 68 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
9 38 (0.36%) Firmware
10 33 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
11 20 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
12 19 (0.18%) BitLocker
13 17 (0.16%) NFS
13 17 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 16 (0.15%) Postfix
15 12 (0.11%) Squid
15 12 (0.11%) vCloud
16 8 (0.076%) Microsoft App-V
17 7 (0.067%) KVM
18 6 (0.057%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 875 (8.35%) Kubernetes
2 856 (8.17%) Terraform
3 341 (3.25%) Ansible
4 257 (2.45%) Grafana
5 216 (2.06%) Prometheus
6 117 (1.12%) Single Sign-On
7 98 (0.94%) vCenter Server
8 85 (0.81%) SCCM
9 74 (0.71%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 59 (0.56%) FortiGate
10 59 (0.56%) Microsoft Intune
11 58 (0.55%) Argo
12 40 (0.38%) Packer
12 40 (0.38%) Puppet
13 37 (0.35%) Podman
14 35 (0.33%) Progress Chef
15 34 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
15 34 (0.32%) vRealize
16 31 (0.30%) Kibana
17 30 (0.29%) OPNET
Vendors
1 1,078 (10.29%) Microsoft
2 644 (6.15%) Oracle
3 510 (4.87%) VMware
4 427 (4.08%) ServiceNow
5 404 (3.86%) SAP
6 402 (3.84%) Cisco
7 241 (2.30%) Splunk
8 209 (1.99%) Databricks
9 185 (1.77%) Red Hat
10 169 (1.61%) Google
11 157 (1.50%) Salesforce
12 127 (1.21%) IBM
13 122 (1.16%) Atlassian
14 115 (1.10%) Talend
15 112 (1.07%) Palo Alto
16 111 (1.06%) Juniper
17 100 (0.95%) CyberArk
18 86 (0.82%) Remedy
19 84 (0.80%) Dell
19 84 (0.80%) Fortinet