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

6 months to
27 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 3 3 4
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +4
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 7,448 6,511 7,873
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 20.62% 17.75% 17.35%
As % of the Qualifications category 61.91% 60.29% 59.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,900 4,064 4,938
10th Percentile £336 £350 £375
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -1.79%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £650
90th Percentile £719 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 745 361 507
10th Percentile £18.87 £20.12 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.38 £24.18 £46.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £52.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -52.10% -12.50% -
75th Percentile £51.53 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £73.75 £75.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £55.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -54.27% -8.33% -

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 12,030 10,800 13,336
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.30% 29.44% 29.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,752 6,504 8,446
10th Percentile £305 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £423 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £723 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £520 £538
% change year-on-year -3.85% -3.26% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,029 532 758
10th Percentile £17.59 £18.73 £17.74
25th Percentile £19.38 £24.18 £27.56
Median hourly rate £25.15 £42.94 £53.68
Median % change year-on-year -41.43% -20.01% +19.29%
75th Percentile £45.46 £67.01 £68.75
90th Percentile £73.75 £75.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £47.25 £52.50
% change year-on-year -46.77% -10.01% +19.32%

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 November 2025.

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 November 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Top 18 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 November 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 0 6,511 £526 -4.36% 1,894
UK excluding London 0 4,300 £525 -4.55% 1,732
London 0 2,148 £550 +1.85% 446
Work from Home +2 2,104 £538 -0.46% 909
South East -1 1,249 £515 -6.66% 740
South West 0 1,125 £550 -4.35% 474
North of England -1 771 £515 +8.42% 133
Midlands +1 693 £519 -8.76% 150
West Midlands +1 535 £525 -8.70% 123
North West +1 503 £530 +7.51% 102
East of England +2 287 £513 - 244
Yorkshire -11 165 £500 +7.24% 17
Scotland -12 156 £479 -2.30% 57
East Midlands -1 143 £444 -11.25% 27
North East 0 111 £475 +1.06% 16
Wales -3 79 £550 +10.00% 37
Northern Ireland +1 41 £500 -16.67% 14
Channel Islands - 1 - - 1

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
1 273 (3.67%) Confluence
2 186 (2.50%) SharePoint
3 123 (1.65%) Microsoft Exchange
4 103 (1.38%) SAS
5 89 (1.19%) Apache
6 54 (0.73%) Apache Airflow
7 50 (0.67%) nginx
8 44 (0.59%) Apache Spark
9 39 (0.52%) Skype for Business
10 28 (0.38%) CMS
11 25 (0.34%) WebLogic
12 21 (0.28%) IIS
13 15 (0.20%) SharePoint Server
14 14 (0.19%) Exchange Server 2010
14 14 (0.19%) Exchange Server 2013
15 11 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 10 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2003
16 10 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2007
16 10 (0.13%) Office Communications Server
17 9 (0.12%) WordPress
Applications
1 214 (2.87%) Microsoft Office
2 159 (2.13%) Microsoft Excel
3 88 (1.18%) Microsoft Project
4 46 (0.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 36 (0.48%) MS Visio
6 21 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
7 19 (0.26%) Simulink
8 15 (0.20%) Siemens NX
9 11 (0.15%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 10 (0.13%) Sketch
11 8 (0.11%) ProjectWise
12 7 (0.094%) Adobe XD
13 6 (0.081%) Adobe Illustrator
13 6 (0.081%) Oracle Smart View
13 6 (0.081%) Photoshop
13 6 (0.081%) Trello
14 5 (0.067%) AutoCAD
14 5 (0.067%) FrameMaker
14 5 (0.067%) Stateflow
14 5 (0.067%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 178 (2.39%) SAP S/4HANA
2 40 (0.54%) Remedy ITSM
3 29 (0.39%) SAP EWM
3 29 (0.39%) SAP WM
3 29 (0.39%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 23 (0.31%) SAP MM
5 22 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
5 22 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
6 19 (0.26%) Primavera
7 18 (0.24%) Teamcenter
8 17 (0.23%) SAP HCM
9 16 (0.21%) Maximo
10 15 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
11 14 (0.19%) SAP VC
12 13 (0.17%) SAP PS
13 12 (0.16%) SAP EHS
13 12 (0.16%) SAP PP
13 12 (0.16%) SAP QM
14 10 (0.13%) SAP HR
14 10 (0.13%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,258 (16.89%) AWS
2 1,166 (15.66%) Azure
3 361 (4.85%) GitHub
4 330 (4.43%) Microsoft 365
5 272 (3.65%) Power Platform
6 266 (3.57%) Azure DevOps
7 259 (3.48%) GCP
8 222 (2.98%) Serverless
9 195 (2.62%) GitHub Actions
10 187 (2.51%) Amazon S3
11 157 (2.11%) Entra ID
12 136 (1.83%) SaaS
13 133 (1.79%) OpenShift
14 130 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
15 128 (1.72%) AWS CloudFormation
16 123 (1.65%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 119 (1.60%) Amazon EC2
18 106 (1.42%) Amazon EKS
19 91 (1.22%) Virtual Private Cloud
20 87 (1.17%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 378 (5.08%) Firewall
2 262 (3.52%) DNS
3 179 (2.40%) VPN
4 159 (2.13%) Network Security
5 140 (1.88%) WAN
6 110 (1.48%) TCP/IP
7 98 (1.32%) DHCP
8 97 (1.30%) LAN
8 97 (1.30%) Wireless
9 95 (1.28%) BGP
10 80 (1.07%) SSL
11 67 (0.90%) SAN
12 65 (0.87%) Wi-Fi
13 62 (0.83%) MPLS
14 58 (0.78%) Cisco ISE
15 56 (0.75%) VLAN
16 52 (0.70%) IPsec
17 50 (0.67%) HTTP
18 44 (0.59%) SMTP
19 42 (0.56%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 225 (3.02%) PostgreSQL
2 180 (2.42%) Power BI
3 98 (1.32%) Amazon RDS
4 93 (1.25%) SQL Server
5 91 (1.22%) MongoDB
6 90 (1.21%) Oracle Database
7 87 (1.17%) Data Warehouse
8 81 (1.09%) Relational Database
9 76 (1.02%) Metadata
9 76 (1.02%) NoSQL
10 53 (0.71%) Azure SQL Database
11 49 (0.66%) Big Data
12 42 (0.56%) Data Lake
12 42 (0.56%) Pentaho
13 41 (0.55%) Elasticsearch
14 40 (0.54%) Amazon Redshift
15 39 (0.52%) MySQL
16 38 (0.51%) Amazon Athena
17 37 (0.50%) SAS Enterprise Guide
18 32 (0.43%) Redis
Development Applications
1 501 (6.73%) JIRA
2 409 (5.49%) Git
3 394 (5.29%) Jenkins
4 291 (3.91%) GitLab
5 84 (1.13%) Selenium
6 68 (0.91%) JUnit
7 61 (0.82%) SonarQube
8 58 (0.78%) Cypress.io
9 53 (0.71%) Postman
10 51 (0.68%) Bitbucket
11 46 (0.62%) Oracle APEX
12 40 (0.54%) Mockito
13 37 (0.50%) Artifactory
14 34 (0.46%) Maven
15 33 (0.44%) Cucumber
16 31 (0.42%) CircleCI
17 24 (0.32%) REST Assured
17 24 (0.32%) Visual Studio
18 23 (0.31%) MSI
19 22 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,002 (26.88%) Public Sector
2 1,898 (25.48%) Social Skills
3 672 (9.02%) Analytical Skills
4 525 (7.05%) Finance
5 268 (3.60%) Military
6 228 (3.06%) Telecoms
7 213 (2.86%) Manufacturing
8 185 (2.48%) Documentation Skills
9 160 (2.15%) Electronics
10 147 (1.97%) Marketing
11 137 (1.84%) Aerospace
12 110 (1.48%) Legal
13 106 (1.42%) Organisational Skills
14 97 (1.30%) Banking
15 91 (1.22%) Influencing Skills
16 81 (1.09%) Presentation Skills
17 70 (0.94%) Law
18 55 (0.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 42 (0.56%) Police
20 40 (0.54%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 980 (13.16%) Architect
2 770 (10.34%) Developer
3 664 (8.92%) Consultant
4 582 (7.81%) Senior
5 495 (6.65%) Analyst
6 461 (6.19%) Lead
7 331 (4.44%) DevOps Engineer
8 254 (3.41%) Support Engineer
9 210 (2.82%) Network Engineer
10 208 (2.79%) Solutions Architect
11 167 (2.24%) Data Engineer
11 167 (2.24%) SAP Consultant
12 153 (2.05%) Technical Architect
13 150 (2.01%) AWS Engineer
14 135 (1.81%) Platform Engineer
15 133 (1.79%) IT Engineer
16 131 (1.76%) Administrator
17 128 (1.72%) Software Engineer
18 127 (1.71%) Business Analyst
19 124 (1.66%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 283 (3.80%) REST
2 197 (2.65%) Node.js
3 183 (2.46%) React
4 170 (2.28%) Kafka
5 152 (2.04%) JSON
6 135 (1.81%) Spring
7 134 (1.80%) SOAP
8 124 (1.66%) HTML
9 111 (1.49%) XML
10 110 (1.48%) RESTful
11 106 (1.42%) Spring Boot
12 102 (1.37%) AngularJS
13 100 (1.34%) CSS
14 99 (1.33%) .NET
15 97 (1.30%) Web Services
16 78 (1.05%) OAuth
17 71 (0.95%) LDAP
18 66 (0.89%) Elastic Stack
19 60 (0.81%) Oracle Fusion
20 58 (0.78%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 221 (2.97%) Data Centre
2 209 (2.81%) Onboarding
3 192 (2.58%) Cloud Native
4 182 (2.44%) PKI
5 157 (2.11%) Product Ownership
6 156 (2.09%) Management Information System
7 111 (1.49%) Self-Motivation
8 99 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
9 83 (1.11%) Driving Licence
10 79 (1.06%) Cyber Threat
11 70 (0.94%) Replication
12 68 (0.91%) Security Operations Centre
13 67 (0.90%) Security Posture
14 66 (0.89%) Enterprise Software
15 63 (0.85%) CMDB
16 62 (0.83%) Hybrid Cloud
17 57 (0.77%) Private Cloud
18 56 (0.75%) Analytical Mindset
19 53 (0.71%) Public Cloud
20 46 (0.62%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 813 (10.92%) Windows
2 560 (7.52%) Linux
3 192 (2.58%) Windows Server
4 179 (2.40%) Windows 10
5 110 (1.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 92 (1.24%) Android
6 92 (1.24%) Unix
7 84 (1.13%) Mac OS
8 51 (0.68%) VMS
9 35 (0.47%) Ubuntu
9 35 (0.47%) Windows Server 2019
10 29 (0.39%) Apple iOS
11 27 (0.36%) Amazon Linux
12 26 (0.35%) Windows Server 2012
13 25 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
14 24 (0.32%) Windows 7
15 22 (0.30%) CentOS
16 18 (0.24%) Windows Server 2003
17 16 (0.21%) Mac OS X
18 9 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,452 (19.50%) Agile
2 1,129 (15.16%) DevOps
3 1,031 (13.84%) CI/CD
4 887 (11.91%) Problem-Solving
5 777 (10.43%) Migration
6 587 (7.88%) Stakeholder Management
7 514 (6.90%) Cybersecurity
8 508 (6.82%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 493 (6.62%) Infrastructure as Code
10 476 (6.39%) Continuous Improvement
11 471 (6.32%) ITIL
12 414 (5.56%) Containerisation
13 413 (5.55%) Service Management
14 412 (5.53%) Test Automation
14 412 (5.53%) Workflow
15 411 (5.52%) Business Intelligence
16 377 (5.06%) Analytics
17 355 (4.77%) Roadmaps
18 351 (4.71%) Scrum
19 348 (4.67%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 921 (12.37%) Python
2 558 (7.49%) SQL
3 472 (6.34%) PowerShell
4 471 (6.32%) Java
5 383 (5.14%) JavaScript
6 232 (3.11%) Bash
7 202 (2.71%) TypeScript
8 138 (1.85%) C#
9 98 (1.32%) C++
10 82 (1.10%) Go
11 75 (1.01%) PL/SQL
12 70 (0.94%) C
13 69 (0.93%) Shell Script
14 48 (0.64%) ABAP
15 42 (0.56%) Perl
16 41 (0.55%) Ruby
17 34 (0.46%) Groovy
18 32 (0.43%) Bicep
19 31 (0.42%) MATLAB
20 29 (0.39%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 5,740 (77.07%) SC Cleared
2 1,207 (16.21%) DV Cleared
3 357 (4.79%) Degree
4 351 (4.71%) BPSS Clearance
5 142 (1.91%) CISSP
6 129 (1.73%) Microsoft Certification
7 115 (1.54%) Azure Certification
8 114 (1.53%) Cisco Certification
9 110 (1.48%) AWS Certification
10 83 (1.11%) CCNP
10 83 (1.11%) CISM
11 57 (0.77%) Computer Science Degree
11 57 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
12 47 (0.63%) CCNA
13 45 (0.60%) CEH
14 44 (0.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 40 (0.54%) CTC Cleared
16 38 (0.51%) TOGAF Certification
17 37 (0.50%) CHECK Team Member
18 33 (0.44%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 235 (3.16%) QA
2 221 (2.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 215 (2.89%) NIST
4 163 (2.19%) NCSC
5 137 (1.84%) SLA
6 135 (1.81%) Data Quality
6 135 (1.81%) GDPR
7 134 (1.80%) Accessibility
8 62 (0.83%) PMO
9 53 (0.71%) JSP 440
10 46 (0.62%) WCAG
11 44 (0.59%) NIST 800
12 37 (0.50%) GRC
13 31 (0.42%) Def Stans
13 31 (0.42%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 29 (0.39%) COBIT
15 24 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
16 22 (0.30%) RMADS
17 21 (0.28%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 17 (0.23%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 588 (7.89%) Docker
2 414 (5.56%) Active Directory
3 222 (2.98%) VMware Infrastructure
4 76 (1.02%) VMware NSX
5 75 (1.01%) vSphere
6 66 (0.89%) VMware ESXi
7 54 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
8 45 (0.60%) Firmware
9 39 (0.52%) Hyper-V
10 26 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
11 20 (0.27%) DFS Replication
12 19 (0.26%) Postfix
13 15 (0.20%) Dovecot
13 15 (0.20%) NFS
14 11 (0.15%) ISA Server
14 11 (0.15%) Squid
14 11 (0.15%) Terminal Services
15 10 (0.13%) BitLocker
15 10 (0.13%) Brightmail
16 7 (0.094%) UAG
Systems Management
1 716 (9.61%) Kubernetes
2 682 (9.16%) Terraform
3 289 (3.88%) Ansible
4 187 (2.51%) Grafana
5 160 (2.15%) Prometheus
6 113 (1.52%) SCCM
7 99 (1.33%) Single Sign-On
8 82 (1.10%) Microsoft Intune
9 65 (0.87%) vCenter Server
10 59 (0.79%) Argo
11 52 (0.70%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 48 (0.64%) Packer
13 38 (0.51%) Kibana
14 33 (0.44%) Jamf Pro
15 29 (0.39%) vRealize
16 27 (0.36%) FortiGate
17 25 (0.34%) SCOM
18 24 (0.32%) Nessus
18 24 (0.32%) OPNET
19 22 (0.30%) Puppet
Vendors
1 933 (12.53%) Microsoft
2 527 (7.08%) SAP
3 444 (5.96%) Cisco
4 388 (5.21%) Oracle
5 383 (5.14%) VMware
6 346 (4.65%) ServiceNow
7 187 (2.51%) Splunk
8 155 (2.08%) Juniper
9 141 (1.89%) Red Hat
10 124 (1.66%) Google
11 113 (1.52%) Salesforce
12 104 (1.40%) Palo Alto
13 99 (1.33%) Atlassian
14 98 (1.32%) Dell
15 96 (1.29%) HP
16 83 (1.11%) CyberArk
17 78 (1.05%) IBM
18 75 (1.01%) Remedy
19 74 (0.99%) SolarWinds
20 72 (0.97%) Apple