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

6 months to
27 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,698 5,126 7,724
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.95% 17.94% 18.10%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.35% 57.74% 60.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,326 3,391 5,123
10th Percentile £381 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £454
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £721 £694 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £537 £550
% change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 863 299 528
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £13.99
25th Percentile £22.66 £22.65 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £32.50 £55.04
Median % change year-on-year +69.23% -40.95% -8.27%
75th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.67 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £37.32 £57.33
% change year-on-year +47.36% -34.90% -0.30%

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 15,427 8,877 12,756
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.65% 31.07% 29.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,228 5,604 7,949
10th Percentile £350 £275 £307
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £530
Median % change year-on-year +0.43% -1.37% -3.64%
75th Percentile £623 £619 £645
90th Percentile £719 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £528
% change year-on-year - -5.30% +0.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,128 500 1,075
10th Percentile £16.35 £17.86 £13.69
25th Percentile £21.33 £21.28 £17.94
Median hourly rate £47.54 £32.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +46.28% -18.75% -27.27%
75th Percentile £71.50 £65.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.25 £78.36 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £32.50 £40.94
% change year-on-year +46.15% -20.62% -21.47%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 9,282 £525 -2.33% 1,884
UK excluding London +1 5,960 £525 -2.23% 1,471
London +6 3,305 £525 - 509
Work from Home +4 2,881 £525 - 953
South East +1 2,243 £550 - 481
South West 0 1,285 £538 -6.52% 379
North of England 0 928 £500 - 277
Midlands +3 873 £470 -10.48% 137
West Midlands +3 748 £470 -10.48% 112
North West -1 525 £504 +0.70% 161
East of England +2 382 £550 +10.00% 130
Yorkshire -7 235 £488 -1.71% 53
Scotland +29 231 £529 +20.91% 53
North East +1 206 £475 -1.04% 64
East Midlands -3 118 £450 -5.26% 25
Wales +4 87 £490 +3.16% 32
Northern Ireland +1 22 £650 +36.84% 13

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
1 389 (3.64%) Confluence
2 223 (2.08%) SharePoint
3 144 (1.35%) SAS
4 130 (1.22%) Microsoft Exchange
5 101 (0.94%) Apache Spark
6 86 (0.80%) Apache
7 78 (0.73%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 38 (0.36%) nginx
10 31 (0.29%) Jupyter
11 21 (0.20%) Tomcat
12 19 (0.18%) IIS
13 18 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
14 15 (0.14%) CMS
14 15 (0.14%) Skype for Business
14 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
15 14 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
16 13 (0.12%) NetWeaver
17 10 (0.093%) ArcGIS
18 8 (0.075%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 177 (1.65%) Microsoft Excel
1 177 (1.65%) Microsoft Office
2 90 (0.84%) Microsoft Project
3 81 (0.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 45 (0.42%) MS Visio
5 18 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
6 14 (0.13%) Simulink
7 8 (0.075%) AutoCAD
8 7 (0.065%) Notepad++
8 7 (0.065%) SOLIDWORKS
9 6 (0.056%) Revit
10 5 (0.047%) Sketch
11 4 (0.037%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.037%) Siemens NX
11 4 (0.037%) Windchill
12 3 (0.028%) Chatbot
13 2 (0.019%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.019%) InVision
13 2 (0.019%) Lectora
13 2 (0.019%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 111 (1.04%) SAP S/4HANA
2 54 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
3 40 (0.37%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 32 (0.30%) Teamcenter
5 30 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
6 29 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
7 24 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.13%) Maximo
8 14 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.12%) Findur
9 13 (0.12%) SAP GRC
10 12 (0.11%) iTrent
10 12 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
10 12 (0.11%) Temenos T24
11 10 (0.093%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.084%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.084%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.084%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.084%) SAP HR
13 8 (0.075%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 1,866 (17.44%) AWS
2 1,846 (17.26%) Azure
3 442 (4.13%) GitHub
4 429 (4.01%) GCP
5 396 (3.70%) Azure DevOps
6 385 (3.60%) Power Platform
7 258 (2.41%) Entra ID
7 258 (2.41%) Serverless
8 254 (2.37%) Microsoft 365
9 250 (2.34%) GitHub Actions
10 207 (1.93%) Amazon S3
11 177 (1.65%) AWS Lambda
12 157 (1.47%) PaaS
13 149 (1.39%) Amazon EC2
14 141 (1.32%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 138 (1.29%) Amazon EKS
16 137 (1.28%) OpenShift
17 132 (1.23%) OCI
18 131 (1.22%) SaaS
19 123 (1.15%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 490 (4.58%) Firewall
2 312 (2.92%) DNS
3 242 (2.26%) Network Security
4 241 (2.25%) WAN
5 215 (2.01%) LAN
6 177 (1.65%) VPN
7 156 (1.46%) DHCP
8 153 (1.43%) BGP
9 131 (1.22%) OSPF
10 118 (1.10%) TCP/IP
11 114 (1.07%) VLAN
12 107 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
13 87 (0.81%) Wireless
14 71 (0.66%) MPLS
15 65 (0.61%) SAN
16 62 (0.58%) Structured Cabling
16 62 (0.58%) VXLAN
17 57 (0.53%) IPsec
18 56 (0.52%) SD-WAN
19 52 (0.49%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 299 (2.79%) Power BI
2 259 (2.42%) PostgreSQL
3 238 (2.22%) Data Warehouse
4 213 (1.99%) SQL Server
5 135 (1.26%) Metadata
6 133 (1.24%) Oracle Database
7 115 (1.07%) Data Lake
8 111 (1.04%) Amazon RDS
9 110 (1.03%) MongoDB
10 98 (0.92%) Relational Database
11 90 (0.84%) NoSQL
12 79 (0.74%) Pentaho
13 77 (0.72%) Elasticsearch
13 77 (0.72%) MySQL
14 75 (0.70%) Oracle Reports
15 68 (0.64%) Big Data
15 68 (0.64%) Tableau
16 62 (0.58%) Amazon Redshift
17 60 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
17 60 (0.56%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 608 (5.68%) JIRA
2 449 (4.20%) Git
3 415 (3.88%) GitLab
4 402 (3.76%) Jenkins
5 113 (1.06%) Selenium
6 88 (0.82%) Postman
7 75 (0.70%) JUnit
8 72 (0.67%) SonarQube
9 60 (0.56%) Rational DOORS
10 56 (0.52%) Artifactory
10 56 (0.52%) JMeter
11 44 (0.41%) Cucumber
12 41 (0.38%) Bitbucket
12 41 (0.38%) Mockito
13 40 (0.37%) Visual Studio
14 39 (0.36%) Maven
15 37 (0.35%) Cypress.io
16 35 (0.33%) REST Assured
16 35 (0.33%) Zephyr
17 30 (0.28%) Gatling
General
1 2,330 (21.78%) Public Sector
2 2,197 (20.54%) Social Skills
3 732 (6.84%) Analytical Skills
4 681 (6.37%) Finance
5 347 (3.24%) Military
6 287 (2.68%) Documentation Skills
7 266 (2.49%) Aerospace
8 166 (1.55%) Legal
9 127 (1.19%) Telecoms
10 122 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
11 119 (1.11%) Banking
12 110 (1.03%) Manufacturing
12 110 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
13 91 (0.85%) Law
14 78 (0.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 78 (0.73%) Presentation Skills
15 61 (0.57%) Police
16 55 (0.51%) Marketing
17 47 (0.44%) Aviation
18 42 (0.39%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 1,627 (15.21%) Architect
2 997 (9.32%) Developer
3 926 (8.66%) Senior
4 750 (7.01%) Lead
5 741 (6.93%) Analyst
6 530 (4.95%) Consultant
7 521 (4.87%) Data Engineer
8 500 (4.67%) DevOps Engineer
9 335 (3.13%) Technical Architect
10 318 (2.97%) Software Engineer
11 302 (2.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 300 (2.80%) Network Engineer
12 300 (2.80%) Solutions Architect
13 265 (2.48%) Business Analyst
14 229 (2.14%) Project Manager
15 218 (2.04%) Designer
16 217 (2.03%) Security Architect
17 214 (2.00%) Azure Engineer
18 191 (1.79%) Administrator
19 190 (1.78%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 331 (3.09%) REST
2 243 (2.27%) Spring
3 205 (1.92%) Kafka
4 202 (1.89%) Spring Boot
5 198 (1.85%) React
6 186 (1.74%) Node.js
7 179 (1.67%) .NET
8 155 (1.45%) LDAP
9 154 (1.44%) SOAP
10 153 (1.43%) RESTful
11 127 (1.19%) JSON
12 121 (1.13%) AngularJS
13 120 (1.12%) PySpark
14 116 (1.08%) Web Services
15 101 (0.94%) OAuth
16 93 (0.87%) Middleware
17 90 (0.84%) HTML
17 90 (0.84%) Oracle Fusion
18 88 (0.82%) XML
19 86 (0.80%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 367 (3.43%) Cloud Native
2 331 (3.09%) Product Ownership
3 325 (3.04%) Data Centre
4 299 (2.79%) Onboarding
5 207 (1.93%) Management Information System
6 159 (1.49%) PKI
7 146 (1.36%) Legacy Systems
8 131 (1.22%) Security Posture
9 130 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
10 125 (1.17%) Distributed Systems
11 122 (1.14%) Replication
12 99 (0.93%) Self-Motivation
13 91 (0.85%) Data Structures
14 88 (0.82%) Hybrid Cloud
15 86 (0.80%) Clustering
16 85 (0.79%) Security Operations Centre
17 84 (0.79%) Public Cloud
18 76 (0.71%) Virtual Team
19 75 (0.70%) CMDB
20 72 (0.67%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 850 (7.95%) Windows
2 748 (6.99%) Linux
3 251 (2.35%) Windows Server
4 195 (1.82%) Unix
5 134 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 100 (0.93%) Android
7 88 (0.82%) Windows 10
8 67 (0.63%) Apple iOS
9 48 (0.45%) Solaris
10 41 (0.38%) Ubuntu
11 40 (0.37%) Mac OS
12 32 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
13 29 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
14 26 (0.24%) AIX
15 25 (0.23%) VMS
16 23 (0.21%) CentOS
17 15 (0.14%) Windows 7
18 13 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
19 12 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
20 10 (0.093%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,038 (19.05%) Agile
2 1,616 (15.11%) DevOps
3 1,462 (13.67%) CI/CD
4 1,113 (10.40%) Problem-Solving
5 1,017 (9.51%) Stakeholder Management
6 958 (8.95%) Continuous Improvement
7 840 (7.85%) Migration
8 808 (7.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 749 (7.00%) Infrastructure as Code
10 653 (6.10%) Cybersecurity
11 632 (5.91%) ITIL
12 631 (5.90%) Test Automation
13 610 (5.70%) Analytics
14 584 (5.46%) Software Engineering
15 581 (5.43%) Roadmaps
16 578 (5.40%) Containerisation
17 548 (5.12%) Data Modelling
18 525 (4.91%) Decision-Making
19 470 (4.39%) AI
20 460 (4.30%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 1,187 (11.10%) Python
2 981 (9.17%) SQL
3 665 (6.22%) Java
4 547 (5.11%) PowerShell
5 335 (3.13%) JavaScript
6 216 (2.02%) C#
7 209 (1.95%) Bash
8 181 (1.69%) TypeScript
9 120 (1.12%) PL/SQL
10 99 (0.93%) C++
11 97 (0.91%) Shell Script
12 69 (0.64%) Go
13 66 (0.62%) Scala
14 64 (0.60%) Ruby
15 62 (0.58%) Bicep
16 57 (0.53%) C
17 53 (0.50%) Apex Code
18 44 (0.41%) R
19 43 (0.40%) Ada
20 40 (0.37%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 8,165 (76.32%) SC Cleared
2 1,940 (18.13%) DV Cleared
3 448 (4.19%) Degree
4 298 (2.79%) BPSS Clearance
5 227 (2.12%) Cisco Certification
6 183 (1.71%) CISSP
7 132 (1.23%) Azure Certification
7 132 (1.23%) CCNP
8 119 (1.11%) CISM
9 111 (1.04%) AWS Certification
10 97 (0.91%) CCNA
10 97 (0.91%) Microsoft Certification
11 80 (0.75%) PMP
12 74 (0.69%) Computer Science Degree
13 72 (0.67%) PMI Certification
14 68 (0.64%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 63 (0.59%) ISTQB
16 56 (0.52%) ITIL Certification
17 49 (0.46%) GIAC
18 44 (0.41%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 382 (3.57%) QA
2 317 (2.96%) Data Quality
3 305 (2.85%) NIST
4 302 (2.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 215 (2.01%) NCSC
6 207 (1.93%) Accessibility
7 175 (1.64%) GDPR
8 157 (1.47%) PMO
9 116 (1.08%) SLA
10 80 (0.75%) GRC
11 68 (0.64%) JSP 440
12 55 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
13 44 (0.41%) WCAG
14 41 (0.38%) NIST 800
15 36 (0.34%) RMADS
16 31 (0.29%) Def Stans
17 28 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 27 (0.25%) PCI DSS
19 25 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
20 24 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 650 (6.08%) Docker
2 472 (4.41%) Active Directory
3 296 (2.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 107 (1.00%) VMware ESXi
5 103 (0.96%) VMware NSX
6 87 (0.81%) Hyper-V
7 83 (0.78%) vSphere
8 69 (0.64%) Virtual Machines
9 37 (0.35%) Firmware
10 35 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
11 24 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
12 23 (0.21%) NFS
13 21 (0.20%) BitLocker
14 20 (0.19%) vCloud
15 19 (0.18%) Postfix
16 18 (0.17%) Squid
17 16 (0.15%) Slurm Workload Manager
18 9 (0.084%) KVM
19 8 (0.075%) Microsoft App-V
20 6 (0.056%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 836 (7.81%) Terraform
2 833 (7.79%) Kubernetes
3 384 (3.59%) Ansible
4 277 (2.59%) Grafana
5 230 (2.15%) Prometheus
6 110 (1.03%) vCenter Server
7 108 (1.01%) Single Sign-On
8 76 (0.71%) SCCM
9 65 (0.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 53 (0.50%) Argo
10 53 (0.50%) FortiGate
10 53 (0.50%) Microsoft Intune
11 42 (0.39%) Puppet
12 40 (0.37%) Oracle RMAN
13 39 (0.36%) Podman
14 34 (0.32%) SCOM
15 33 (0.31%) Progress Chef
16 31 (0.29%) Nagios
17 29 (0.27%) vRealize
18 25 (0.23%) Istio
Vendors
1 1,071 (10.01%) Microsoft
2 680 (6.36%) Oracle
3 513 (4.80%) VMware
4 415 (3.88%) ServiceNow
5 374 (3.50%) Cisco
6 358 (3.35%) SAP
7 243 (2.27%) Splunk
8 215 (2.01%) Databricks
9 178 (1.66%) Red Hat
10 171 (1.60%) Google
11 157 (1.47%) Salesforce
12 137 (1.28%) Talend
13 131 (1.22%) Palo Alto
14 123 (1.15%) IBM
15 109 (1.02%) Juniper
16 104 (0.97%) Informatica
17 98 (0.92%) CyberArk
18 96 (0.90%) Fortinet
19 90 (0.84%) F5
20 84 (0.79%) Dynatrace