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

6 months to
19 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,584 5,205 7,769
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.03% 17.82% 18.25%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.57% 57.45% 60.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,280 3,444 5,154
10th Percentile £380 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.85% -3.73% -
75th Percentile £625 £623 £650
90th Percentile £725 £688 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £540 £550
% change year-on-year -2.78% -1.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 818 296 514
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £13.91
25th Percentile £21.33 £21.28 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £40.30 £55.80
Median % change year-on-year +36.49% -27.79% -7.00%
75th Percentile £73.46 £66.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.93 £84.43
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £52.00 £57.47
% change year-on-year +5.77% -9.52% -0.05%

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 15,214 9,060 12,827
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.67% 31.02% 30.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,135 5,710 7,978
10th Percentile £350 £281 £306
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year - -1.50% -3.09%
75th Percentile £623 £620 £646
90th Percentile £721 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £533
% change year-on-year - -6.10% +1.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,064 512 1,058
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.04 £13.69
25th Percentile £21.25 £21.25 £17.73
Median hourly rate £47.80 £37.25 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +28.31% -6.88% -27.25%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.25 £79.87 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £37.07 £40.30
% change year-on-year +28.13% -8.01% -19.40%

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 19 May 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 19 May 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 19 May 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 9,165 £525 -2.23% 1,918
UK excluding London +1 5,862 £525 -2.78% 1,536
London +6 3,270 £525 - 505
Work from Home +3 2,840 £525 - 863
South East +1 2,202 £550 - 537
South West 0 1,294 £538 -6.52% 351
North of England -1 889 £500 - 285
Midlands +3 860 £472 -10.10% 152
West Midlands +3 731 £472 -10.10% 111
North West -1 514 £500 - 162
East of England +2 377 £550 +10.00% 154
Scotland +32 223 £525 +16.67% 41
Yorkshire -13 214 £480 -4.00% 52
North East +1 197 £475 -1.04% 73
East Midlands -5 123 £450 -5.26% 41
Wales +3 82 £475 -5.00% 36
Northern Ireland +2 22 £638 +34.21% 17

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 (3.70%) Confluence
2 223 (2.11%) SharePoint
3 130 (1.23%) Microsoft Exchange
4 129 (1.22%) SAS
5 107 (1.01%) Apache Spark
6 83 (0.78%) Apache
7 73 (0.69%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.37%) WebLogic
9 34 (0.32%) nginx
10 30 (0.28%) Jupyter
11 20 (0.19%) Tomcat
12 17 (0.16%) IIS
12 17 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
13 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
14 14 (0.13%) CMS
14 14 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
15 13 (0.12%) NetWeaver
15 13 (0.12%) Skype for Business
16 10 (0.094%) ArcGIS
17 9 (0.085%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 191 (1.80%) Microsoft Office
2 190 (1.80%) Microsoft Excel
3 105 (0.99%) Microsoft Project
4 87 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.13%) Simulink
8 7 (0.066%) AutoCAD
8 7 (0.066%) Notepad++
9 6 (0.057%) SOLIDWORKS
10 5 (0.047%) Revit
10 5 (0.047%) Windchill
11 4 (0.038%) Siemens NX
11 4 (0.038%) Sketch
12 3 (0.028%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.028%) Chatbot
13 2 (0.019%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.019%) InVision
13 2 (0.019%) Lectora
13 2 (0.019%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 112 (1.06%) SAP S/4HANA
2 49 (0.46%) Remedy ITSM
3 39 (0.37%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 31 (0.29%) Teamcenter
5 29 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
6 28 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
7 23 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.13%) Maximo
8 14 (0.13%) SAP PSCD
9 13 (0.12%) Findur
9 13 (0.12%) iTrent
9 13 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.12%) SAP GRC
10 12 (0.11%) Temenos T24
11 11 (0.10%) Oracle Assets
12 10 (0.094%) SAP PP
13 9 (0.085%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 9 (0.085%) SAP ERP
13 9 (0.085%) SAP HCM
13 9 (0.085%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,835 (17.34%) AWS
2 1,815 (17.15%) Azure
3 439 (4.15%) GitHub
4 429 (4.05%) GCP
5 393 (3.71%) Azure DevOps
6 382 (3.61%) Power Platform
7 266 (2.51%) Serverless
8 259 (2.45%) Microsoft 365
9 253 (2.39%) Entra ID
10 249 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
11 210 (1.98%) Amazon S3
12 180 (1.70%) AWS Lambda
13 157 (1.48%) PaaS
14 149 (1.41%) Amazon EC2
15 142 (1.34%) Amazon EKS
16 135 (1.28%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 134 (1.27%) AWS CloudFormation
17 134 (1.27%) OpenShift
18 129 (1.22%) OCI
19 123 (1.16%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 477 (4.51%) Firewall
2 298 (2.82%) DNS
3 231 (2.18%) Network Security
3 231 (2.18%) WAN
4 208 (1.97%) LAN
5 175 (1.65%) VPN
6 148 (1.40%) DHCP
7 146 (1.38%) BGP
8 125 (1.18%) OSPF
9 122 (1.15%) TCP/IP
10 105 (0.99%) VLAN
11 95 (0.90%) Wi-Fi
12 83 (0.78%) Wireless
13 66 (0.62%) MPLS
14 59 (0.56%) SAN
15 56 (0.53%) Structured Cabling
16 55 (0.52%) VXLAN
17 52 (0.49%) SD-WAN
17 52 (0.49%) SSL
18 51 (0.48%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 300 (2.83%) Power BI
2 249 (2.35%) PostgreSQL
3 237 (2.24%) Data Warehouse
4 205 (1.94%) SQL Server
5 136 (1.28%) Metadata
6 132 (1.25%) Oracle Database
7 111 (1.05%) MongoDB
8 109 (1.03%) Amazon RDS
9 106 (1.00%) Data Lake
10 102 (0.96%) Relational Database
11 97 (0.92%) NoSQL
12 79 (0.75%) Pentaho
13 77 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
14 74 (0.70%) Big Data
15 71 (0.67%) MySQL
15 71 (0.67%) Oracle Reports
16 70 (0.66%) Tableau
17 65 (0.61%) Amazon Redshift
18 63 (0.60%) Azure SQL Database
19 61 (0.58%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 610 (5.76%) JIRA
2 460 (4.35%) Git
3 400 (3.78%) GitLab
4 394 (3.72%) Jenkins
5 108 (1.02%) Selenium
6 86 (0.81%) Postman
7 73 (0.69%) JUnit
8 65 (0.61%) SonarQube
9 56 (0.53%) Rational DOORS
10 54 (0.51%) JMeter
11 52 (0.49%) Artifactory
12 43 (0.41%) Bitbucket
12 43 (0.41%) Cucumber
13 39 (0.37%) Mockito
14 38 (0.36%) Maven
14 38 (0.36%) Visual Studio
15 36 (0.34%) Cypress.io
16 32 (0.30%) REST Assured
17 31 (0.29%) Zephyr
18 30 (0.28%) Gatling
General
1 2,324 (21.96%) Public Sector
2 2,192 (20.71%) Social Skills
3 747 (7.06%) Analytical Skills
4 690 (6.52%) Finance
5 349 (3.30%) Military
6 286 (2.70%) Documentation Skills
7 251 (2.37%) Aerospace
8 168 (1.59%) Legal
9 126 (1.19%) Telecoms
10 121 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
11 117 (1.11%) Banking
12 115 (1.09%) Manufacturing
13 111 (1.05%) Organisational Skills
14 86 (0.81%) Law
15 82 (0.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 80 (0.76%) Presentation Skills
17 62 (0.59%) Police
18 59 (0.56%) Marketing
19 47 (0.44%) Electronics
20 43 (0.41%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,608 (15.19%) Architect
2 996 (9.41%) Developer
3 912 (8.62%) Senior
4 749 (7.08%) Analyst
5 744 (7.03%) Lead
6 526 (4.97%) Consultant
7 513 (4.85%) Data Engineer
8 498 (4.71%) DevOps Engineer
9 323 (3.05%) Technical Architect
10 316 (2.99%) Software Engineer
11 297 (2.81%) Network Engineer
12 295 (2.79%) Solutions Architect
13 280 (2.65%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 276 (2.61%) Business Analyst
15 222 (2.10%) Project Manager
16 218 (2.06%) Azure Engineer
16 218 (2.06%) Designer
17 210 (1.98%) Security Architect
18 192 (1.81%) Administrator
19 188 (1.78%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 326 (3.08%) REST
2 251 (2.37%) Spring
3 216 (2.04%) Kafka
4 205 (1.94%) Spring Boot
5 193 (1.82%) React
6 192 (1.81%) Node.js
7 178 (1.68%) .NET
8 151 (1.43%) SOAP
9 149 (1.41%) LDAP
10 144 (1.36%) RESTful
11 126 (1.19%) JSON
12 122 (1.15%) AngularJS
13 120 (1.13%) PySpark
14 114 (1.08%) Web Services
15 96 (0.91%) Oracle Fusion
16 94 (0.89%) OAuth
17 92 (0.87%) Middleware
18 90 (0.85%) HTML
19 88 (0.83%) Playwright
20 86 (0.81%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 358 (3.38%) Cloud Native
2 331 (3.13%) Product Ownership
3 310 (2.93%) Data Centre
4 283 (2.67%) Onboarding
5 202 (1.91%) Management Information System
6 152 (1.44%) PKI
7 138 (1.30%) Legacy Systems
8 134 (1.27%) Security Posture
9 124 (1.17%) Enterprise Software
10 121 (1.14%) Replication
11 120 (1.13%) Distributed Systems
12 97 (0.92%) Self-Motivation
13 89 (0.84%) Data Structures
14 88 (0.83%) Public Cloud
15 85 (0.80%) Security Operations Centre
16 83 (0.78%) Clustering
17 81 (0.77%) Hybrid Cloud
18 75 (0.71%) Virtual Team
19 71 (0.67%) Greenfield Project
20 67 (0.63%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 846 (7.99%) Windows
2 738 (6.97%) Linux
3 245 (2.31%) Windows Server
4 183 (1.73%) Unix
5 133 (1.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 102 (0.96%) Android
7 84 (0.79%) Windows 10
8 67 (0.63%) Apple iOS
9 44 (0.42%) Solaris
10 42 (0.40%) Mac OS
11 39 (0.37%) Ubuntu
12 32 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
13 29 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
14 26 (0.25%) AIX
14 26 (0.25%) VMS
15 21 (0.20%) CentOS
16 14 (0.13%) Windows 7
17 12 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
18 11 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
19 10 (0.094%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,008 (18.97%) Agile
2 1,603 (15.15%) DevOps
3 1,441 (13.61%) CI/CD
4 1,123 (10.61%) Problem-Solving
5 987 (9.33%) Stakeholder Management
6 925 (8.74%) Continuous Improvement
7 837 (7.91%) Migration
8 777 (7.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 743 (7.02%) Infrastructure as Code
10 639 (6.04%) ITIL
11 621 (5.87%) Cybersecurity
12 617 (5.83%) Test Automation
13 599 (5.66%) Analytics
14 582 (5.50%) Containerisation
15 578 (5.46%) Software Engineering
16 570 (5.39%) Roadmaps
17 543 (5.13%) Data Modelling
18 524 (4.95%) Decision-Making
19 458 (4.33%) AI
20 454 (4.29%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 1,189 (11.23%) Python
2 963 (9.10%) SQL
3 663 (6.26%) Java
4 538 (5.08%) PowerShell
5 335 (3.17%) JavaScript
6 220 (2.08%) C#
7 201 (1.90%) Bash
8 178 (1.68%) TypeScript
9 113 (1.07%) PL/SQL
10 98 (0.93%) Shell Script
11 97 (0.92%) C++
12 72 (0.68%) Go
13 70 (0.66%) Scala
14 69 (0.65%) Ruby
15 60 (0.57%) Bicep
16 57 (0.54%) C
17 53 (0.50%) Apex Code
18 49 (0.46%) R
19 41 (0.39%) Kusto Query Language
20 40 (0.38%) Ada
Qualifications
1 8,078 (76.32%) SC Cleared
2 1,905 (18.00%) DV Cleared
3 442 (4.18%) Degree
4 309 (2.92%) BPSS Clearance
5 212 (2.00%) Cisco Certification
6 173 (1.63%) CISSP
7 131 (1.24%) Azure Certification
8 123 (1.16%) CCNP
9 116 (1.10%) CISM
10 115 (1.09%) AWS Certification
11 94 (0.89%) Microsoft Certification
12 90 (0.85%) CCNA
13 74 (0.70%) PMP
14 71 (0.67%) Computer Science Degree
15 66 (0.62%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 65 (0.61%) PMI Certification
17 62 (0.59%) ITIL Certification
18 59 (0.56%) ISTQB
19 57 (0.54%) TOGAF Certification
20 49 (0.46%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 383 (3.62%) QA
2 319 (3.01%) Data Quality
3 303 (2.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 299 (2.83%) NIST
5 207 (1.96%) Accessibility
6 202 (1.91%) NCSC
7 171 (1.62%) GDPR
8 158 (1.49%) PMO
9 106 (1.00%) SLA
10 76 (0.72%) GRC
11 63 (0.60%) JSP 440
12 55 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials
13 46 (0.43%) WCAG
14 40 (0.38%) NIST 800
15 33 (0.31%) RMADS
16 32 (0.30%) COBIT
17 31 (0.29%) PCI DSS
18 30 (0.28%) Def Stans
19 28 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
20 26 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 660 (6.24%) Docker
2 467 (4.41%) Active Directory
3 281 (2.65%) VMware Infrastructure
4 101 (0.95%) VMware ESXi
5 96 (0.91%) VMware NSX
6 81 (0.77%) Hyper-V
7 76 (0.72%) vSphere
8 73 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
9 36 (0.34%) Firmware
10 35 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
11 24 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
12 22 (0.21%) NFS
13 19 (0.18%) BitLocker
14 18 (0.17%) vCloud
15 17 (0.16%) Squid
16 16 (0.15%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 15 (0.14%) Postfix
18 8 (0.076%) KVM
18 8 (0.076%) Microsoft App-V
19 6 (0.057%) Corosync
Systems Management
1 833 (7.87%) Terraform
2 830 (7.84%) Kubernetes
3 364 (3.44%) Ansible
4 270 (2.55%) Grafana
5 223 (2.11%) Prometheus
6 112 (1.06%) Single Sign-On
7 102 (0.96%) vCenter Server
8 77 (0.73%) SCCM
9 64 (0.60%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 54 (0.51%) Microsoft Intune
11 53 (0.50%) Argo
11 53 (0.50%) FortiGate
12 41 (0.39%) Puppet
13 39 (0.37%) Oracle RMAN
14 38 (0.36%) Podman
15 34 (0.32%) Progress Chef
16 32 (0.30%) Nagios
17 30 (0.28%) vRealize
18 29 (0.27%) SCOM
19 24 (0.23%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,050 (9.92%) Microsoft
2 658 (6.22%) Oracle
3 500 (4.72%) VMware
4 410 (3.87%) ServiceNow
5 371 (3.51%) SAP
6 360 (3.40%) Cisco
7 251 (2.37%) Splunk
8 214 (2.02%) Databricks
9 174 (1.64%) Red Hat
10 169 (1.60%) Google
11 152 (1.44%) Salesforce
12 127 (1.20%) Talend
13 123 (1.16%) Palo Alto
14 121 (1.14%) IBM
15 102 (0.96%) Juniper
16 98 (0.93%) Informatica
17 95 (0.90%) CyberArk
18 88 (0.83%) Atlassian
18 88 (0.83%) Fortinet
19 85 (0.80%) Dynatrace