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

6 months to
17 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,480 5,242 8,097
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.78% 17.86% 18.46%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.21% 58.03% 60.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,152 3,505 5,282
10th Percentile £363 £350 £358
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £534 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.59% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £519 £548 £550
% change year-on-year -5.29% -0.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 839 283 505
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.87
25th Percentile £21.33 £24.17 £21.46
Median hourly rate £54.00 £52.00 £53.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.85% -1.89% -11.67%
75th Percentile £73.23 £67.38 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.44 £83.61
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.78 £57.50 £55.44
% change year-on-year -8.22% +3.72% -3.59%

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 15,143 9,033 13,447
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.91% 30.77% 30.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,073 5,738 8,317
10th Percentile £346 £290 £300
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £536
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -2.05% -2.55%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £711 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £510 £525
% change year-on-year -1.96% -2.86% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,096 505 1,035
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.50 £13.69
25th Percentile £20.82 £22.50 £17.66
Median hourly rate £45.46 £42.50 £38.95
Median % change year-on-year +6.96% +9.11% -26.99%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.00 £80.39 £75.15
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.46 £46.30 £40.00
% change year-on-year -1.81% +15.75% -19.27%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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% 1,857
UK excluding London +1 5,822 £519 -5.29% 1,528
London +6 3,177 £525 - 489
Work from Home +3 2,788 £525 -0.38% 813
South East +1 2,146 £535 -2.73% 509
South West 0 1,335 £538 -4.36% 356
Midlands +4 918 £485 -8.49% 168
North of England -1 859 £488 -2.50% 272
West Midlands +4 776 £485 -9.68% 121
North West -1 526 £500 - 156
East of England +2 366 £500 +17.65% 162
Yorkshire -4 205 £488 -7.14% 57
Scotland +31 199 £500 - 45
North East +1 163 £450 -6.25% 61
East Midlands -2 138 £447 -10.63% 47
Wales +4 76 £520 -4.57% 31
Northern Ireland +12 22 £463 -2.63% 15

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
1 405 (3.86%) Confluence
2 222 (2.12%) SharePoint
3 169 (1.61%) SAS
4 146 (1.39%) Microsoft Exchange
5 110 (1.05%) Apache Spark
6 90 (0.86%) Apache
7 69 (0.66%) Apache Airflow
8 48 (0.46%) nginx
9 40 (0.38%) WebLogic
10 24 (0.23%) Jupyter
11 17 (0.16%) Tomcat
12 16 (0.15%) Skype for Business
13 15 (0.14%) CMS
13 15 (0.14%) IIS
13 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
14 14 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
15 12 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
16 11 (0.10%) ArcGIS
16 11 (0.10%) NetWeaver
17 10 (0.095%) Oracle Application Server
Applications
1 232 (2.21%) Microsoft Office
2 194 (1.85%) Microsoft Excel
3 124 (1.18%) Microsoft Project
4 77 (0.73%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 47 (0.45%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.15%) Simulink
8 7 (0.067%) Notepad++
9 5 (0.048%) Windchill
10 4 (0.038%) Siemens NX
10 4 (0.038%) Sketch
11 3 (0.029%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.019%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.019%) CATIA
12 2 (0.019%) Chatbot
12 2 (0.019%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.019%) InVision
12 2 (0.019%) Lectora
12 2 (0.019%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.019%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 105 (1.00%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (0.43%) Remedy ITSM
3 44 (0.42%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 30 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
5 27 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
6 26 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 20 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
8 19 (0.18%) SAP PP
9 17 (0.16%) Maximo
10 13 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
10 13 (0.12%) Temenos T24
11 11 (0.10%) Findur
11 11 (0.10%) Oracle Assets
11 11 (0.10%) SAP PSCD
12 9 (0.086%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.086%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.086%) SAP PM
13 8 (0.076%) iTrent
13 8 (0.076%) SAP EWM
13 8 (0.076%) SAP VC
Cloud Services
1 1,816 (17.33%) AWS
2 1,757 (16.77%) Azure
3 452 (4.31%) GitHub
4 436 (4.16%) GCP
5 399 (3.81%) Azure DevOps
6 361 (3.44%) Power Platform
7 297 (2.83%) Serverless
8 288 (2.75%) Microsoft 365
9 245 (2.34%) GitHub Actions
10 243 (2.32%) Entra ID
11 224 (2.14%) Amazon S3
12 200 (1.91%) AWS Lambda
13 159 (1.52%) OpenShift
14 156 (1.49%) PaaS
15 149 (1.42%) AWS CloudFormation
16 136 (1.30%) IaaS
17 135 (1.29%) Amazon EC2
18 133 (1.27%) Amazon EKS
19 125 (1.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 120 (1.15%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 479 (4.57%) Firewall
2 293 (2.80%) DNS
3 237 (2.26%) Network Security
4 229 (2.19%) WAN
5 206 (1.97%) LAN
6 178 (1.70%) VPN
7 148 (1.41%) BGP
8 140 (1.34%) DHCP
9 125 (1.19%) TCP/IP
10 119 (1.14%) OSPF
11 104 (0.99%) VLAN
12 88 (0.84%) Wireless
13 70 (0.67%) Wi-Fi
14 68 (0.65%) MPLS
15 57 (0.54%) SAN
16 54 (0.52%) SSL
17 51 (0.49%) SD-WAN
18 50 (0.48%) IPsec
19 47 (0.45%) VXLAN
20 45 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 277 (2.64%) Power BI
2 271 (2.59%) PostgreSQL
3 230 (2.19%) Data Warehouse
4 193 (1.84%) SQL Server
5 155 (1.48%) Metadata
6 123 (1.17%) Oracle Database
7 110 (1.05%) NoSQL
8 109 (1.04%) Amazon RDS
9 104 (0.99%) MongoDB
10 98 (0.94%) Relational Database
11 93 (0.89%) Data Lake
12 85 (0.81%) Azure SQL Database
13 83 (0.79%) MySQL
14 79 (0.75%) Pentaho
15 78 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
16 75 (0.72%) Big Data
16 75 (0.72%) Tableau
17 69 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
18 65 (0.62%) Oracle Reports
19 59 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 640 (6.11%) JIRA
2 519 (4.95%) Git
3 403 (3.85%) Jenkins
4 368 (3.51%) GitLab
5 126 (1.20%) Selenium
6 96 (0.92%) Postman
7 86 (0.82%) JUnit
8 66 (0.63%) SonarQube
9 51 (0.49%) Rational DOORS
10 50 (0.48%) Bitbucket
11 47 (0.45%) Artifactory
12 43 (0.41%) Cypress.io
12 43 (0.41%) JMeter
13 42 (0.40%) Maven
13 42 (0.40%) Oracle APEX
14 41 (0.39%) Cucumber
15 39 (0.37%) Mockito
16 32 (0.31%) Visual Studio
17 30 (0.29%) REST Assured
17 30 (0.29%) Zephyr
General
1 2,451 (23.39%) Public Sector
2 2,309 (22.03%) Social Skills
3 844 (8.05%) Analytical Skills
4 695 (6.63%) Finance
5 347 (3.31%) Military
6 288 (2.75%) Documentation Skills
7 239 (2.28%) Aerospace
8 171 (1.63%) Legal
9 161 (1.54%) Telecoms
10 157 (1.50%) Manufacturing
11 136 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
12 119 (1.14%) Banking
13 111 (1.06%) Organisational Skills
14 98 (0.94%) Presentation Skills
15 89 (0.85%) Marketing
16 83 (0.79%) Electronics
16 83 (0.79%) Law
17 75 (0.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 64 (0.61%) Police
19 31 (0.30%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,594 (15.21%) Architect
2 1,034 (9.87%) Developer
3 924 (8.82%) Senior
4 755 (7.20%) Analyst
5 684 (6.53%) Lead
6 568 (5.42%) Consultant
7 470 (4.48%) Data Engineer
8 446 (4.26%) DevOps Engineer
9 312 (2.98%) Technical Architect
10 307 (2.93%) Software Engineer
11 288 (2.75%) Solutions Architect
12 283 (2.70%) Network Engineer
13 272 (2.60%) Business Analyst
14 220 (2.10%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 215 (2.05%) Azure Engineer
16 213 (2.03%) Project Manager
17 200 (1.91%) Security Architect
18 198 (1.89%) Designer
19 184 (1.76%) AWS Engineer
19 184 (1.76%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 373 (3.56%) REST
2 236 (2.25%) Spring
3 214 (2.04%) Kafka
4 207 (1.98%) Node.js
5 184 (1.76%) React
6 182 (1.74%) Spring Boot
7 178 (1.70%) .NET
8 171 (1.63%) JSON
9 154 (1.47%) SOAP
10 145 (1.38%) RESTful
11 143 (1.36%) LDAP
12 134 (1.28%) PySpark
13 125 (1.19%) AngularJS
14 121 (1.15%) Web Services
15 109 (1.04%) OAuth
16 97 (0.93%) Oracle Fusion
17 96 (0.92%) HTML
17 96 (0.92%) XML
18 85 (0.81%) Middleware
19 80 (0.76%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 353 (3.37%) Product Ownership
2 327 (3.12%) Cloud Native
3 309 (2.95%) Data Centre
4 274 (2.61%) Onboarding
5 200 (1.91%) Management Information System
6 195 (1.86%) PKI
7 133 (1.27%) Security Posture
8 128 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
9 127 (1.21%) Legacy Systems
10 126 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
11 120 (1.15%) Distributed Systems
12 119 (1.14%) Replication
13 100 (0.95%) Public Cloud
14 81 (0.77%) Data Structures
15 80 (0.76%) Security Operations Centre
16 79 (0.75%) Hybrid Cloud
17 73 (0.70%) Virtual Team
18 69 (0.66%) Clustering
19 63 (0.60%) Driving Licence
20 60 (0.57%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 857 (8.18%) Windows
2 743 (7.09%) Linux
3 253 (2.41%) Windows Server
4 154 (1.47%) Unix
5 138 (1.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 122 (1.16%) Android
7 109 (1.04%) Windows 10
8 64 (0.61%) Apple iOS
9 53 (0.51%) Mac OS
10 40 (0.38%) Ubuntu
11 33 (0.31%) VMS
12 30 (0.29%) Solaris
13 28 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
14 27 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
15 22 (0.21%) AIX
16 21 (0.20%) CentOS
17 16 (0.15%) Windows 7
18 14 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
19 10 (0.095%) Windows Server 2008
20 8 (0.076%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,077 (19.82%) Agile
2 1,564 (14.92%) DevOps
3 1,409 (13.44%) CI/CD
4 1,184 (11.30%) Problem-Solving
5 983 (9.38%) Stakeholder Management
6 900 (8.59%) Continuous Improvement
7 897 (8.56%) Migration
8 789 (7.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 684 (6.53%) Infrastructure as Code
10 653 (6.23%) ITIL
11 630 (6.01%) Analytics
12 625 (5.96%) Cybersecurity
13 623 (5.94%) Test Automation
14 580 (5.53%) Roadmaps
15 568 (5.42%) Containerisation
16 534 (5.10%) Software Engineering
17 512 (4.89%) Data Modelling
18 509 (4.86%) Scrum
19 468 (4.47%) Decision-Making
20 466 (4.45%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 1,241 (11.84%) Python
2 969 (9.25%) SQL
3 633 (6.04%) Java
4 603 (5.75%) PowerShell
5 387 (3.69%) JavaScript
6 218 (2.08%) C#
7 207 (1.98%) Bash
8 180 (1.72%) TypeScript
9 123 (1.17%) PL/SQL
10 105 (1.00%) Shell Script
11 101 (0.96%) C++
12 75 (0.72%) Go
13 72 (0.69%) Ruby
14 69 (0.66%) Scala
15 56 (0.53%) C
16 55 (0.52%) Bicep
17 50 (0.48%) R
18 48 (0.46%) Apex Code
19 43 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
20 41 (0.39%) Ada
Qualifications
1 8,011 (76.44%) SC Cleared
2 1,842 (17.58%) DV Cleared
3 472 (4.50%) Degree
4 335 (3.20%) BPSS Clearance
5 203 (1.94%) Cisco Certification
6 174 (1.66%) CISSP
7 145 (1.38%) Azure Certification
8 131 (1.25%) AWS Certification
9 129 (1.23%) CCNP
10 109 (1.04%) CISM
11 104 (0.99%) Microsoft Certification
12 85 (0.81%) CCNA
13 78 (0.74%) Computer Science Degree
14 74 (0.71%) ITIL Certification
15 68 (0.65%) PMP
15 68 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
16 62 (0.59%) PMI Certification
16 62 (0.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 60 (0.57%) ISTQB
18 51 (0.49%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 368 (3.51%) QA
2 321 (3.06%) Data Quality
3 309 (2.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 303 (2.89%) NIST
5 215 (2.05%) NCSC
6 174 (1.66%) Accessibility
7 171 (1.63%) GDPR
8 136 (1.30%) PMO
9 111 (1.06%) SLA
10 69 (0.66%) JSP 440
11 68 (0.65%) GRC
12 47 (0.45%) NIST 800
13 44 (0.42%) COBIT
14 41 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials
15 37 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 37 (0.35%) WCAG
16 36 (0.34%) PCI DSS
17 33 (0.31%) RMADS
18 30 (0.29%) Def Stans
19 24 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 695 (6.63%) Docker
2 486 (4.64%) Active Directory
3 283 (2.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 99 (0.94%) VMware NSX
5 85 (0.81%) VMware ESXi
6 80 (0.76%) Hyper-V
7 74 (0.71%) vSphere
8 55 (0.52%) Virtual Machines
9 37 (0.35%) Firmware
10 31 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
11 20 (0.19%) BitLocker
11 20 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
12 17 (0.16%) NFS
12 17 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 16 (0.15%) Postfix
14 12 (0.11%) Squid
14 12 (0.11%) vCloud
15 8 (0.076%) Microsoft App-V
16 7 (0.067%) KVM
17 6 (0.057%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 886 (8.45%) Kubernetes
2 833 (7.95%) Terraform
3 325 (3.10%) Ansible
4 250 (2.39%) Grafana
5 208 (1.98%) Prometheus
6 125 (1.19%) Single Sign-On
7 93 (0.89%) vCenter Server
8 85 (0.81%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 85 (0.81%) SCCM
9 60 (0.57%) Argo
9 60 (0.57%) Microsoft Intune
10 59 (0.56%) FortiGate
11 39 (0.37%) Puppet
12 38 (0.36%) Packer
13 37 (0.35%) Podman
14 35 (0.33%) vRealize
15 34 (0.32%) Progress Chef
16 31 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
17 30 (0.29%) Kibana
17 30 (0.29%) OPNET
Vendors
1 1,077 (10.28%) Microsoft
2 651 (6.21%) Oracle
3 509 (4.86%) VMware
4 419 (4.00%) ServiceNow
5 414 (3.95%) Cisco
6 408 (3.89%) SAP
7 239 (2.28%) Splunk
8 216 (2.06%) Databricks
9 190 (1.81%) Red Hat
10 170 (1.62%) Google
11 168 (1.60%) Salesforce
12 133 (1.27%) Atlassian
13 128 (1.22%) IBM
14 118 (1.13%) Juniper
14 118 (1.13%) Talend
15 116 (1.11%) Palo Alto
16 102 (0.97%) CyberArk
17 87 (0.83%) Remedy
18 86 (0.82%) Dell
19 83 (0.79%) Fortinet