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 9 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,941 6,204 6,737
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.91% 18.71% 17.74%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.78% 58.76% 60.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,277 3,969 4,246
10th Percentile £400 £325 £350
25th Percentile £463 £438 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.42% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £719 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £540 £534 £550
% change year-on-year +1.22% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 872 642 391
10th Percentile £20.00 £18.51 £20.12
25th Percentile £29.07 £18.87 £30.00
Median hourly rate £64.05 £25.15 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +154.65% -58.08% -
75th Percentile £76.88 £33.75 £70.75
90th Percentile £91.31 £70.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +158.45% -58.08% +2.05%

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 17,360 10,559 11,139
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.85% 31.84% 29.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,510 6,590 6,740
10th Percentile £356 £282 £311
25th Percentile £448 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.43% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £631
90th Percentile £713 £704 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £520
% change year-on-year +5.00% -3.85% -3.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,448 891 595
10th Percentile £16.50 £17.69 £18.03
25th Percentile £25.00 £18.87 £25.43
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -47.05% -11.52%
75th Percentile £71.69 £41.71 £68.75
90th Percentile £88.75 £70.00 £75.91
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -49.70% -3.66%

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 9 October 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 9 October 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 9 October 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 +1 10,284 £550 +2.33% 5,597
UK excluding London +1 6,640 £540 +1.22% 3,855
London +5 3,682 £550 +1.85% 1,728
Work from Home +2 3,172 £532 -1.12% 2,908
South East +1 2,262 £570 +8.57% 1,065
South West 0 1,379 £550 - 761
North of England +2 1,308 £515 -1.03% 718
Midlands 0 930 £475 -8.39% 400
North West +1 792 £525 -4.55% 411
West Midlands 0 781 £475 -8.65% 264
East of England 0 441 £550 - 477
Scotland +12 307 £490 -0.51% 297
Yorkshire -1 293 £492 - 123
North East 0 241 £470 -10.48% 186
East Midlands 0 141 £500 +11.11% 135
Wales +2 111 £550 +4.76% 100
Northern Ireland +2 37 £650 +21.50% 69

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
1 395 (3.31%) Confluence
2 256 (2.14%) SharePoint
3 146 (1.22%) SAS
4 118 (0.99%) Microsoft Exchange
5 111 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
6 107 (0.90%) Apache
6 107 (0.90%) Apache Spark
7 45 (0.38%) nginx
8 40 (0.33%) Jupyter
9 39 (0.33%) CMS
9 39 (0.33%) WebLogic
10 24 (0.20%) IIS
11 23 (0.19%) Tomcat
12 22 (0.18%) Skype for Business
13 17 (0.14%) Oracle Application Server
13 17 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 16 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
15 13 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
16 11 (0.092%) JBoss
16 11 (0.092%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 213 (1.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 155 (1.30%) Microsoft Office
3 103 (0.86%) Microsoft Project
4 99 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 20 (0.17%) Windchill
9 19 (0.16%) Revit
10 18 (0.15%) SOLIDWORKS
11 9 (0.075%) Adobe XD
11 9 (0.075%) Chatbot
11 9 (0.075%) Simulink
12 6 (0.050%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 6 (0.050%) Sketch
13 4 (0.033%) OrCAD
13 4 (0.033%) Trello
14 2 (0.017%) Gliffy
14 2 (0.017%) Houdini
14 2 (0.017%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 154 (1.29%) SAP S/4HANA
2 81 (0.68%) Remedy ITSM
3 60 (0.50%) Oracle ERP
4 50 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
5 42 (0.35%) Teamcenter
6 35 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
7 33 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 29 (0.24%) Oracle Payroll
9 26 (0.22%) SAP PSCD
10 24 (0.20%) SAP FI
10 24 (0.20%) SAP GRC
11 18 (0.15%) Primavera
11 18 (0.15%) SAP HR
12 17 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
13 15 (0.13%) SAP CO
13 15 (0.13%) SAP Payroll
14 14 (0.12%) Oracle General Ledger
14 14 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
15 13 (0.11%) Maximo
15 13 (0.11%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 2,158 (18.07%) Azure
2 2,087 (17.48%) AWS
3 534 (4.47%) GitHub
4 519 (4.35%) Azure DevOps
5 495 (4.15%) Power Platform
6 463 (3.88%) GCP
7 366 (3.07%) GitHub Actions
8 346 (2.90%) Entra ID
9 341 (2.86%) Microsoft 365
10 276 (2.31%) Serverless
11 240 (2.01%) Amazon S3
12 200 (1.67%) AWS Lambda
13 179 (1.50%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 175 (1.47%) OCI
15 174 (1.46%) Amazon EKS
16 160 (1.34%) SaaS
17 151 (1.26%) Amazon EC2
18 144 (1.21%) OpenShift
19 133 (1.11%) AWS CloudFormation
20 119 (1.00%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 452 (3.79%) Firewall
2 380 (3.18%) DNS
3 249 (2.09%) Network Security
4 207 (1.73%) VPN
5 202 (1.69%) WAN
6 185 (1.55%) DHCP
7 155 (1.30%) LAN
8 143 (1.20%) TCP/IP
9 125 (1.05%) BGP
10 115 (0.96%) Wi-Fi
11 93 (0.78%) VLAN
12 88 (0.74%) Wireless
13 83 (0.70%) OSPF
14 68 (0.57%) SSL
15 67 (0.56%) MPLS
16 66 (0.55%) SAN
17 62 (0.52%) VSAN
18 59 (0.49%) IPsec
19 56 (0.47%) SD-WAN
20 50 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 347 (2.91%) Power BI
2 310 (2.60%) PostgreSQL
3 274 (2.29%) SQL Server
4 254 (2.13%) Data Warehouse
5 209 (1.75%) Metadata
6 189 (1.58%) Oracle Database
7 149 (1.25%) Data Lake
8 145 (1.21%) Relational Database
9 144 (1.21%) MongoDB
10 117 (0.98%) Amazon RDS
11 113 (0.95%) MySQL
12 96 (0.80%) NoSQL
13 81 (0.68%) Oracle Reports
14 73 (0.61%) Pentaho
15 69 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
16 63 (0.53%) Amazon Athena
17 59 (0.49%) Big Data
18 55 (0.46%) Amazon Aurora
19 51 (0.43%) DynamoDB
19 51 (0.43%) Redis
Development Applications
1 644 (5.39%) JIRA
2 593 (4.97%) Git
3 536 (4.49%) GitLab
4 518 (4.34%) Jenkins
5 157 (1.31%) Selenium
6 92 (0.77%) Postman
7 83 (0.70%) Maven
8 80 (0.67%) Cucumber
8 80 (0.67%) JMeter
9 79 (0.66%) JUnit
10 76 (0.64%) SonarQube
11 57 (0.48%) Cypress.io
12 53 (0.44%) Gradle
13 46 (0.39%) Mockito
13 46 (0.39%) REST Assured
14 45 (0.38%) Gatling
15 41 (0.34%) Visual Studio
16 37 (0.31%) Artifactory
16 37 (0.31%) Zephyr
17 33 (0.28%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,720 (22.78%) Social Skills
2 2,495 (20.89%) Public Sector
3 978 (8.19%) Analytical Skills
4 786 (6.58%) Finance
5 437 (3.66%) Military
6 371 (3.11%) Aerospace
7 316 (2.65%) Documentation Skills
8 241 (2.02%) Influencing Skills
9 203 (1.70%) Organisational Skills
10 183 (1.53%) Manufacturing
11 173 (1.45%) Legal
12 172 (1.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 166 (1.39%) Telecoms
14 135 (1.13%) Banking
15 133 (1.11%) Police
16 120 (1.00%) Law
17 73 (0.61%) Presentation Skills
18 60 (0.50%) Local Government
19 57 (0.48%) Aviation
20 41 (0.34%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 1,925 (16.12%) Architect
2 1,223 (10.24%) Developer
3 1,154 (9.66%) Senior
4 1,050 (8.79%) Lead
5 702 (5.88%) Consultant
6 694 (5.81%) Analyst
7 511 (4.28%) DevOps Engineer
8 477 (3.99%) Data Engineer
9 407 (3.41%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 379 (3.17%) Solutions Architect
11 354 (2.96%) Technical Architect
12 307 (2.57%) Data Architect
13 297 (2.49%) Security Architect
14 253 (2.12%) Software Engineer
15 243 (2.04%) Network Engineer
16 234 (1.96%) Administrator
17 216 (1.81%) Java Developer
18 202 (1.69%) Designer
19 200 (1.67%) Delivery Manager
20 198 (1.66%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,024 (8.58%) Terraform
2 494 (4.14%) REST
3 272 (2.28%) Kafka
4 249 (2.09%) Spring
5 230 (1.93%) Spring Boot
6 224 (1.88%) RESTful
7 202 (1.69%) React
8 196 (1.64%) .NET
9 186 (1.56%) SOAP
10 177 (1.48%) Node.js
11 156 (1.31%) JSON
12 154 (1.29%) OAuth
13 145 (1.21%) HTML
14 138 (1.16%) XML
15 133 (1.11%) Middleware
16 115 (0.96%) Oracle Fusion
17 113 (0.95%) Web Services
18 111 (0.93%) AngularJS
19 107 (0.90%) CSS
20 101 (0.85%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 553 (4.63%) Cloud Native
2 484 (4.05%) Onboarding
3 386 (3.23%) Product Ownership
4 302 (2.53%) Data Centre
5 285 (2.39%) Management Information System
6 196 (1.64%) Enterprise Software
7 187 (1.57%) Legacy Systems
8 183 (1.53%) PKI
9 170 (1.42%) CMDB
10 137 (1.15%) Distributed Systems
11 134 (1.12%) Hybrid Cloud
12 129 (1.08%) Replication
13 127 (1.06%) Cyber Threat
14 119 (1.00%) Operational Technology
15 105 (0.88%) Self-Motivation
16 102 (0.85%) Data Structures
16 102 (0.85%) Security Posture
17 99 (0.83%) Security Operations Centre
18 88 (0.74%) Public Cloud
19 85 (0.71%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 994 (8.32%) Windows
2 788 (6.60%) Linux
3 373 (3.12%) Windows Server
4 221 (1.85%) Unix
5 150 (1.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 147 (1.23%) Windows 10
7 80 (0.67%) Solaris
8 68 (0.57%) Android
9 44 (0.37%) CentOS
10 42 (0.35%) Mac OS
11 40 (0.33%) Ubuntu
12 38 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
13 37 (0.31%) Apple iOS
14 27 (0.23%) AIX
15 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
15 26 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
16 23 (0.19%) VMS
17 19 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
18 17 (0.14%) Rocky
19 11 (0.092%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,527 (21.16%) Agile
2 1,842 (15.43%) CI/CD
3 1,815 (15.20%) DevOps
4 1,726 (14.45%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,491 (12.49%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,288 (10.79%) Problem-Solving
7 1,221 (10.23%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,053 (8.82%) Infrastructure as Code
9 952 (7.97%) Migration
10 897 (7.51%) Cybersecurity
11 805 (6.74%) ITIL
12 800 (6.70%) Test Automation
13 784 (6.57%) Containerisation
14 770 (6.45%) AI
15 769 (6.44%) Decision-Making
16 764 (6.40%) Roadmaps
17 762 (6.38%) Technical Leadership
18 733 (6.14%) Analytics
19 697 (5.84%) Software Engineering
20 652 (5.46%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 1,388 (11.62%) Python
2 1,110 (9.30%) SQL
3 795 (6.66%) Java
4 608 (5.09%) PowerShell
5 430 (3.60%) JavaScript
6 373 (3.12%) Bash
7 227 (1.90%) TypeScript
8 225 (1.88%) C#
9 149 (1.25%) PL/SQL
10 135 (1.13%) Bicep
11 81 (0.68%) Shell Script
12 63 (0.53%) Go
13 60 (0.50%) Scala
14 58 (0.49%) C++
14 58 (0.49%) Groovy
15 48 (0.40%) C
15 48 (0.40%) Kotlin
16 39 (0.33%) T-SQL
17 38 (0.32%) Apex Code
18 37 (0.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 9,107 (76.27%) SC Cleared
2 2,240 (18.76%) DV Cleared
3 579 (4.85%) BPSS Clearance
4 496 (4.15%) Degree
5 226 (1.89%) CISSP
6 185 (1.55%) Azure Certification
7 180 (1.51%) Cisco Certification
8 165 (1.38%) AWS Certification
9 163 (1.37%) Microsoft Certification
10 145 (1.21%) CISM
11 105 (0.88%) PMI Certification
12 97 (0.81%) ISTQB
13 94 (0.79%) PMP
14 83 (0.70%) CCNP
15 78 (0.65%) Computer Science Degree
16 65 (0.54%) CCNA
17 54 (0.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 54 (0.45%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 48 (0.40%) TOGAF Certification
19 46 (0.39%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 541 (4.53%) QA
2 404 (3.38%) Data Quality
3 337 (2.82%) NIST
4 332 (2.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 319 (2.67%) NCSC
6 295 (2.47%) Accessibility
7 218 (1.83%) PMO
8 188 (1.57%) SLA
9 181 (1.52%) GDPR
10 173 (1.45%) GRC
11 86 (0.72%) WCAG
12 54 (0.45%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
14 40 (0.33%) NIST 800
15 39 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
16 37 (0.31%) Def Stans
17 33 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 22 (0.18%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 22 (0.18%) ISO 9001
19 21 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 843 (7.06%) Docker
2 651 (5.45%) Active Directory
3 440 (3.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 138 (1.16%) VMware ESXi
5 135 (1.13%) Hyper-V
6 134 (1.12%) vSphere
7 133 (1.11%) VMware NSX
8 91 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
9 48 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
10 40 (0.33%) Firmware
11 37 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
12 24 (0.20%) BitLocker
12 24 (0.20%) vCloud
13 22 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
14 18 (0.15%) NFS
15 14 (0.12%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 11 (0.092%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 11 (0.092%) Squid
17 10 (0.084%) KVM
18 8 (0.067%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 1,038 (8.69%) Kubernetes
2 448 (3.75%) Ansible
3 275 (2.30%) Grafana
4 202 (1.69%) Prometheus
5 145 (1.21%) SCCM
6 125 (1.05%) vCenter Server
7 104 (0.87%) Microsoft Intune
8 97 (0.81%) SCOM
9 69 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
10 64 (0.54%) Argo
11 55 (0.46%) Kibana
12 41 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
13 40 (0.33%) Puppet
14 38 (0.32%) Data Guard
14 38 (0.32%) NetBackup
15 33 (0.28%) Istio
16 31 (0.26%) VxRail
17 29 (0.24%) Control-M
18 24 (0.20%) Nagios
18 24 (0.20%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 1,616 (13.53%) Microsoft
2 959 (8.03%) Oracle
3 591 (4.95%) VMware
4 525 (4.40%) ServiceNow
5 453 (3.79%) SAP
6 285 (2.39%) Google
7 276 (2.31%) Cisco
8 222 (1.86%) Splunk
9 189 (1.58%) Databricks
10 150 (1.26%) Salesforce
11 131 (1.10%) Red Hat
12 129 (1.08%) Palo Alto
13 116 (0.97%) Informatica
14 109 (0.91%) Dynatrace
15 100 (0.84%) IBM
16 99 (0.83%) Talend
17 95 (0.80%) CyberArk
18 94 (0.79%) Remedy
19 76 (0.64%) Citrix
19 76 (0.64%) SolarWinds