Security Cleared Contracts

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 21 June 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Jun 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 4 3 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 +2 +6
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 5,344 7,996 9,017
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 17.83% 18.21% 16.25%
As % of the Qualifications category 57.32% 61.15% 60.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,476 5,236 6,064
10th Percentile £338 £350 £385
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -
75th Percentile £623 £650 £650
90th Percentile £697 £738 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £537 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -2.45% - +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 382 589 503
10th Percentile £18.50 £14.45 £19.06
25th Percentile £18.87 £22.00 £41.25
Median hourly rate £25.24 £56.49 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -55.33% -5.85% +11.11%
75th Percentile £65.00 £72.50 £70.13
90th Percentile £77.47 £83.75 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.28 £57.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year -54.30% - +6.48%

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 9,323 13,075 14,970
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.11% 29.78% 26.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,768 8,065 9,949
10th Percentile £275 £311 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £618 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £533 £530
% change year-on-year -6.24% +0.61% +6.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 606 1,135 736
10th Percentile £17.87 £14.00 £15.25
25th Percentile £20.43 £19.25 £22.44
Median hourly rate £30.00 £40.33 £55.29
Median % change year-on-year -25.60% -27.06% +24.24%
75th Percentile £62.88 £64.25 £68.75
90th Percentile £76.25 £75.25 £79.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £42.50 £53.67
% change year-on-year -34.12% -20.80% +53.33%

Security Cleared
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Security Cleared as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Security Cleared.

Daily rate trend for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Security Cleared over the 6 months to 21 June 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Security Cleared.

Hourly rate trend for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Security Cleared over the 6 months to 21 June 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Top 17 Contract 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 21 June 2025. 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 -1 4,607 £538 -2.27% 8,992
UK excluding London -1 2,858 £537 -2.45% 6,770
London 0 1,643 £525 - 2,732
Work from Home -1 1,629 £525 -4.55% 5,589
South East -1 804 £550 -8.33% 1,682
South West 0 802 £563 +2.27% 1,497
North of England +1 569 £500 -2.44% 1,247
North West +1 380 £500 -2.44% 768
Midlands -2 373 £525 - 889
West Midlands 0 275 £525 +0.67% 565
East of England -2 205 £500 -9.09% 798
Yorkshire +6 131 £492 -1.70% 354
Scotland -24 103 £438 -5.91% 434
East Midlands -4 95 £475 -13.64% 320
North East +2 66 £480 -4.00% 127
Wales -3 33 £475 -15.56% 181
Northern Ireland -8 26 £475 -13.64% 99

Security Cleared
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 180 (3.37%) Confluence
2 124 (2.32%) SharePoint
3 87 (1.63%) Microsoft Exchange
4 78 (1.46%) Apache
5 31 (0.58%) Apache Spark
5 31 (0.58%) nginx
6 30 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
7 24 (0.45%) IIS
7 24 (0.45%) Skype for Business
8 22 (0.41%) CMS
9 21 (0.39%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 15 (0.28%) Camunda
11 13 (0.24%) SAS
12 12 (0.22%) Anypoint
12 12 (0.22%) WebLogic
13 10 (0.19%) Exchange Server 2010
13 10 (0.19%) Exchange Server 2013
13 10 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
13 10 (0.19%) WebSphere
14 9 (0.17%) WordPress
Applications
1 118 (2.21%) Microsoft Office
2 91 (1.70%) Microsoft Excel
3 53 (0.99%) Microsoft Project
4 26 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 24 (0.45%) Spreadsheet
6 16 (0.30%) Siemens NX
7 14 (0.26%) Oracle Smart View
7 14 (0.26%) Simulink
8 12 (0.22%) Sketch
9 9 (0.17%) MS Visio
10 8 (0.15%) Trello
10 8 (0.15%) Windchill
11 7 (0.13%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.13%) AutoCAD
11 7 (0.13%) Revit
12 5 (0.094%) InfoPath
13 4 (0.075%) InVision
14 3 (0.056%) Adobe Illustrator
14 3 (0.056%) Fusion 360
14 3 (0.056%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 63 (1.18%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.69%) Teamcenter
3 32 (0.60%) Primavera
4 25 (0.47%) Dynamics CRM
5 14 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
6 13 (0.24%) Oracle ERP
6 13 (0.24%) SAP PS
7 12 (0.22%) Remedy ITSM
7 12 (0.22%) SAP PP
8 11 (0.21%) Oracle Payables
8 11 (0.21%) SAP HCM
9 10 (0.19%) Oracle General Ledger
9 10 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
10 9 (0.17%) Oracle Assets
10 9 (0.17%) SAP EWM
10 9 (0.17%) SAP GTS
10 9 (0.17%) SAP HR
11 8 (0.15%) Oracle Cash Management
11 8 (0.15%) SAP CO
11 8 (0.15%) SAP CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,053 (19.70%) AWS
2 733 (13.72%) Azure
3 192 (3.59%) Power Platform
4 178 (3.33%) Microsoft 365
5 170 (3.18%) GCP
6 164 (3.07%) Serverless
7 159 (2.98%) GitHub
8 150 (2.81%) Amazon S3
9 116 (2.17%) SaaS
10 113 (2.11%) Azure DevOps
11 105 (1.96%) AWS Lambda
12 97 (1.82%) Amazon EC2
12 97 (1.82%) AWS CloudFormation
13 91 (1.70%) Entra ID
14 77 (1.44%) Amazon EKS
15 68 (1.27%) GitHub Actions
16 66 (1.24%) OCI
16 66 (1.24%) PaaS
17 65 (1.22%) Amazon SQS
18 61 (1.14%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 351 (6.57%) Firewall
2 234 (4.38%) DNS
3 158 (2.96%) VPN
4 153 (2.86%) Network Security
5 116 (2.17%) WAN
6 83 (1.55%) BGP
7 82 (1.53%) DHCP
8 79 (1.48%) LAN
9 65 (1.22%) TCP/IP
10 58 (1.09%) OSPF
11 57 (1.07%) Cisco Firepower
12 56 (1.05%) IPsec
13 52 (0.97%) Cisco ISE
13 52 (0.97%) SAN
14 51 (0.95%) HTTP
15 47 (0.88%) Cisco ASA
15 47 (0.88%) SSL
15 47 (0.88%) Wi-Fi
16 44 (0.82%) SMTP
17 43 (0.80%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 188 (3.52%) PostgreSQL
2 142 (2.66%) Power BI
3 109 (2.04%) Amazon RDS
3 109 (2.04%) Relational Database
4 97 (1.82%) Data Warehouse
5 87 (1.63%) SQL Server
6 86 (1.61%) MongoDB
7 72 (1.35%) Oracle Database
8 66 (1.24%) MySQL
9 55 (1.03%) NoSQL
10 50 (0.94%) Big Data
10 50 (0.94%) Oracle Reports
11 47 (0.88%) Tableau
12 45 (0.84%) Elasticsearch
13 39 (0.73%) Data Lake
14 35 (0.65%) Metadata
15 33 (0.62%) Amazon Aurora
16 31 (0.58%) Redis
17 30 (0.56%) Amazon Redshift
18 27 (0.51%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 308 (5.76%) JIRA
2 278 (5.20%) Jenkins
3 239 (4.47%) Git
4 194 (3.63%) GitLab
5 85 (1.59%) SonarQube
6 77 (1.44%) JUnit
7 62 (1.16%) Selenium
8 53 (0.99%) Cypress.io
9 50 (0.94%) Mockito
10 48 (0.90%) Bitbucket
11 46 (0.86%) Gradle
11 46 (0.86%) Maven
12 42 (0.79%) Liquibase
13 37 (0.69%) Cucumber
14 34 (0.64%) MSI
15 29 (0.54%) REST Assured
16 27 (0.51%) JMeter
17 23 (0.43%) CircleCI
17 23 (0.43%) Sonatype Nexus
18 22 (0.41%) Postman
General
1 1,352 (25.30%) Public Sector
2 1,349 (25.24%) Social Skills
3 466 (8.72%) Analytical Skills
4 465 (8.70%) Finance
5 171 (3.20%) Military
6 164 (3.07%) Telecoms
7 142 (2.66%) Manufacturing
8 120 (2.25%) Electronics
9 106 (1.98%) Marketing
10 88 (1.65%) Legal
11 71 (1.33%) Documentation Skills
11 71 (1.33%) Presentation Skills
12 66 (1.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 65 (1.22%) Law
14 60 (1.12%) Organisational Skills
15 57 (1.07%) Aerospace
16 50 (0.94%) Police
17 45 (0.84%) Banking
18 38 (0.71%) Influencing Skills
19 21 (0.39%) Billing
Job Titles
1 787 (14.73%) Architect
2 568 (10.63%) Developer
3 421 (7.88%) Senior
4 364 (6.81%) Analyst
5 360 (6.74%) Consultant
6 334 (6.25%) Lead
7 204 (3.82%) DevOps Engineer
8 199 (3.72%) Network Engineer
9 182 (3.41%) Data Engineer
10 153 (2.86%) Solutions Architect
11 151 (2.83%) Support Engineer
12 131 (2.45%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 129 (2.41%) Security Architect
14 121 (2.26%) Project Manager
15 117 (2.19%) Java Developer
16 100 (1.87%) Business Analyst
17 97 (1.82%) Technical Architect
18 91 (1.70%) AWS Engineer
19 89 (1.67%) IT Engineer
19 89 (1.67%) Network Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 182 (3.41%) Kafka
2 181 (3.39%) React
3 152 (2.84%) REST
3 152 (2.84%) Spring
4 139 (2.60%) Spring Boot
5 131 (2.45%) Node.js
6 124 (2.32%) HTML
7 100 (1.87%) SOAP
8 97 (1.82%) CSS
9 91 (1.70%) Web Services
10 76 (1.42%) AngularJS
11 75 (1.40%) .NET
12 74 (1.38%) RESTful
13 73 (1.37%) XML
14 56 (1.05%) Swagger
15 54 (1.01%) Oracle Fusion
16 53 (0.99%) OpenAPI
17 51 (0.95%) Elastic Stack
18 49 (0.92%) JSON
19 42 (0.79%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 203 (3.80%) Data Centre
2 196 (3.67%) Onboarding
3 147 (2.75%) Management Information System
4 121 (2.26%) PKI
5 88 (1.65%) Driving Licence
6 81 (1.52%) Product Ownership
7 58 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
8 53 (0.99%) Security Operations Centre
9 51 (0.95%) CMDB
10 47 (0.88%) Cloud Native
11 45 (0.84%) Enterprise Software
12 44 (0.82%) Security Posture
13 43 (0.80%) Hybrid Cloud
14 40 (0.75%) Public Cloud
15 39 (0.73%) CSOC
15 39 (0.73%) Linux Command Line
15 39 (0.73%) Private Cloud
16 37 (0.69%) Cyber Threat
17 36 (0.67%) Algorithms
17 36 (0.67%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 639 (11.96%) Windows
2 405 (7.58%) Linux
3 233 (4.36%) Windows Server
4 141 (2.64%) Windows 10
5 92 (1.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 65 (1.22%) Windows Server 2019
7 50 (0.94%) Windows Server 2016
8 38 (0.71%) Android
9 35 (0.65%) Unix
10 31 (0.58%) Mac OS
11 30 (0.56%) Windows 7
11 30 (0.56%) Windows Server 2012
12 28 (0.52%) VMS
13 21 (0.39%) Windows Server 2003
14 19 (0.36%) Apple iOS
15 16 (0.30%) CentOS
16 12 (0.22%) Ubuntu
17 11 (0.21%) Oracle Linux
18 8 (0.15%) AIX
18 8 (0.15%) Amazon Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,051 (19.67%) Agile
2 780 (14.60%) Problem-Solving
3 670 (12.54%) DevOps
4 517 (9.67%) CI/CD
5 481 (9.00%) Migration
6 382 (7.15%) Stakeholder Management
7 340 (6.36%) ITIL
8 327 (6.12%) Containerisation
9 321 (6.01%) Microservices
10 290 (5.43%) Service Management
11 287 (5.37%) Cybersecurity
12 273 (5.11%) Test Automation
13 263 (4.92%) Business Intelligence
14 258 (4.83%) Project Management
15 256 (4.79%) Infrastructure as Code
16 254 (4.75%) Software Engineering
17 252 (4.72%) Analytics
18 227 (4.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 214 (4.00%) Technical Leadership
20 206 (3.85%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 633 (11.85%) Python
2 492 (9.21%) SQL
3 439 (8.21%) Java
4 368 (6.89%) PowerShell
5 295 (5.52%) JavaScript
6 191 (3.57%) Bash
7 146 (2.73%) TypeScript
8 126 (2.36%) C#
9 83 (1.55%) PL/SQL
10 55 (1.03%) C++
11 48 (0.90%) Perl
12 35 (0.65%) Go
13 30 (0.56%) ABAP
13 30 (0.56%) Groovy
14 29 (0.54%) VB
15 25 (0.47%) PHP
15 25 (0.47%) R
16 24 (0.45%) C
17 23 (0.43%) Kotlin
18 21 (0.39%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 4,152 (77.69%) SC Cleared
2 892 (16.69%) DV Cleared
3 287 (5.37%) Degree
4 233 (4.36%) BPSS Clearance
5 155 (2.90%) Cisco Certification
6 102 (1.91%) CCNP
7 97 (1.82%) CISSP
8 86 (1.61%) AWS Certification
9 74 (1.38%) Microsoft Certification
10 70 (1.31%) Computer Science Degree
11 67 (1.25%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 54 (1.01%) CISM
13 53 (0.99%) CCNA
14 49 (0.92%) ITIL Certification
15 46 (0.86%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 45 (0.84%) Azure Certification
17 31 (0.58%) Dell Certification
17 31 (0.58%) Oracle Certification
18 27 (0.51%) DBS Check
19 23 (0.43%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 207 (3.87%) QA
2 130 (2.43%) SLA
3 104 (1.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 96 (1.80%) NIST
5 88 (1.65%) Data Quality
6 79 (1.48%) NCSC
7 64 (1.20%) Accessibility
8 61 (1.14%) GDPR
9 52 (0.97%) PMO
10 33 (0.62%) JSP 440
11 23 (0.43%) Def Stans
12 22 (0.41%) HIPAA
12 22 (0.41%) NIST 800
13 20 (0.37%) RMADS
13 20 (0.37%) WCAG
14 19 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
15 18 (0.34%) GRC
15 18 (0.34%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 12 (0.22%) PCI DSS
17 10 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 401 (7.50%) Docker
2 345 (6.46%) Active Directory
3 253 (4.73%) VMware Infrastructure
4 91 (1.70%) VMware ESXi
5 77 (1.44%) Hyper-V
6 58 (1.09%) vSphere
7 46 (0.86%) VMware NSX
8 38 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
9 30 (0.56%) Firmware
10 27 (0.51%) Virtual Servers
11 26 (0.49%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 25 (0.47%) Microsoft App-V
13 22 (0.41%) BitLocker
14 17 (0.32%) NFS
14 17 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
15 10 (0.19%) Terminal Services
16 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
16 8 (0.15%) Postfix
17 6 (0.11%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 6 (0.11%) Brightmail
Systems Management
1 459 (8.59%) Kubernetes
2 436 (8.16%) Terraform
3 326 (6.10%) Ansible
4 107 (2.00%) SCCM
5 94 (1.76%) Grafana
6 88 (1.65%) Prometheus
7 77 (1.44%) Microsoft Intune
8 70 (1.31%) Puppet
9 62 (1.16%) vCenter Server
10 50 (0.94%) WSUS
11 49 (0.92%) Single Sign-On
12 41 (0.77%) Progress Chef
13 34 (0.64%) FortiGate
14 27 (0.51%) Jamf Pro
15 24 (0.45%) Data Guard
15 24 (0.45%) Kibana
16 23 (0.43%) Packer
17 18 (0.34%) PowerCLI
17 18 (0.34%) SCOM
17 18 (0.34%) vRealize
Vendors
1 674 (12.61%) Microsoft
2 385 (7.20%) VMware
3 373 (6.98%) Cisco
4 315 (5.89%) SAP
5 294 (5.50%) Oracle
6 206 (3.85%) ServiceNow
7 130 (2.43%) Splunk
8 121 (2.26%) Dell
9 116 (2.17%) Google
10 112 (2.10%) HP
11 111 (2.08%) Juniper
12 105 (1.96%) Palo Alto
13 87 (1.63%) Red Hat
14 80 (1.50%) Atlassian
15 77 (1.44%) SolarWinds
16 72 (1.35%) Databricks
17 68 (1.27%) F5
18 66 (1.24%) IBM
19 60 (1.12%) Citrix
20 49 (0.92%) Fortinet