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 29 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,414 5,818 7,368
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.72% 17.73% 18.49%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.37% 57.22% 61.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,946 3,719 4,901
10th Percentile £385 £338 £345
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.94% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £634 £621 £638
90th Percentile £725 £694 £735
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 835 523 525
10th Percentile £18.32 £18.51 £15.33
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +151.03% -54.27% -8.33%
75th Percentile £78.75 £51.10 £71.25
90th Percentile £88.00 £73.75 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £56.89
% change year-on-year +151.03% -55.79% -3.63%

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 16,453 10,167 11,894
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.31% 30.98% 29.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,025 6,305 7,540
10th Percentile £350 £281 £313
25th Percentile £431 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £618 £638
90th Percentile £714 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,204 773 901
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.48
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.38 £21.19
Median hourly rate £52.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +108.75% -41.51% -23.30%
75th Percentile £74.00 £56.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.16 £75.00 £76.99
UK excluding London median hourly rate £51.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +102.78% -41.51% -21.19%

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 29 July 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 29 July 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 29 July 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 +3 9,883 £536 -0.37% 2,046
UK excluding London +1 6,426 £525 -2.33% 1,546
London +7 3,491 £548 +4.38% 651
Work from Home +4 3,080 £525 -1.59% 1,050
South East +1 2,440 £550 +2.33% 532
South West 0 1,311 £538 -6.52% 364
North of England +2 1,107 £501 +0.10% 295
Midlands +3 958 £469 -6.20% 168
West Midlands +1 822 £469 -6.20% 124
North West 0 595 £525 -0.38% 158
East of England 0 321 £563 +5.14% 140
Yorkshire +3 299 £500 +1.63% 63
Scotland +14 258 £488 +3.12% 49
North East 0 237 £475 -5.00% 75
East Midlands +1 124 £428 -7.57% 44
Wales +3 97 £550 +15.79% 22
Northern Ireland +5 33 £650 +25.00% 12

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
1 410 (3.59%) Confluence
2 269 (2.36%) SharePoint
3 192 (1.68%) SAS
4 123 (1.08%) Microsoft Exchange
5 104 (0.91%) Apache Spark
6 98 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
7 95 (0.83%) Apache
8 41 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 40 (0.35%) nginx
10 38 (0.33%) Jupyter
11 24 (0.21%) IIS
11 24 (0.21%) Tomcat
12 20 (0.18%) Oracle Application Server
12 20 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
13 16 (0.14%) NetWeaver
14 15 (0.13%) CMS
14 15 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
15 13 (0.11%) Skype for Business
16 12 (0.11%) Tuxedo
17 10 (0.088%) JBoss
Applications
1 208 (1.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 147 (1.29%) Microsoft Office
3 103 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
4 77 (0.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 46 (0.40%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.13%) Simulink
8 13 (0.11%) AutoCAD
8 13 (0.11%) Revit
8 13 (0.11%) SOLIDWORKS
9 9 (0.079%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.070%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.061%) Notepad++
11 7 (0.061%) Sketch
12 4 (0.035%) Trello
13 3 (0.026%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 3 (0.026%) Windchill
14 2 (0.018%) CPLEX
14 2 (0.018%) Houdini
14 2 (0.018%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 151 (1.32%) SAP S/4HANA
2 76 (0.67%) Remedy ITSM
3 43 (0.38%) Oracle EBS
3 43 (0.38%) Oracle ERP
4 37 (0.32%) Teamcenter
5 32 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 23 (0.20%) SAP PSCD
7 22 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
8 21 (0.18%) Primavera
9 20 (0.18%) SAP GRC
10 16 (0.14%) Oracle Payroll
11 15 (0.13%) Findur
12 13 (0.11%) Oracle Payables
12 13 (0.11%) Temenos T24
13 12 (0.11%) iTrent
13 12 (0.11%) Siebel CRM
14 11 (0.096%) NetSuite
14 11 (0.096%) SAP FI
15 10 (0.088%) Integrated Workplace Management System
15 10 (0.088%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 2,062 (18.07%) Azure
2 2,026 (17.75%) AWS
3 512 (4.49%) GitHub
4 492 (4.31%) Azure DevOps
5 461 (4.04%) Power Platform
6 433 (3.79%) GCP
7 317 (2.78%) GitHub Actions
8 303 (2.65%) Microsoft 365
9 281 (2.46%) Entra ID
10 276 (2.42%) Serverless
11 246 (2.16%) Amazon S3
12 200 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
13 163 (1.43%) SaaS
14 161 (1.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 160 (1.40%) OCI
16 158 (1.38%) Amazon EC2
17 156 (1.37%) Amazon EKS
18 150 (1.31%) PaaS
19 132 (1.16%) OpenShift
20 127 (1.11%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 482 (4.22%) Firewall
2 359 (3.15%) DNS
3 233 (2.04%) Network Security
4 231 (2.02%) WAN
5 197 (1.73%) VPN
6 195 (1.71%) LAN
7 176 (1.54%) DHCP
8 145 (1.27%) BGP
9 129 (1.13%) TCP/IP
10 117 (1.03%) OSPF
11 113 (0.99%) Wi-Fi
12 107 (0.94%) VLAN
13 91 (0.80%) Wireless
14 69 (0.60%) MPLS
15 65 (0.57%) IPsec
16 64 (0.56%) SAN
17 62 (0.54%) SD-WAN
18 60 (0.53%) VSAN
18 60 (0.53%) VXLAN
19 58 (0.51%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 352 (3.08%) Power BI
2 307 (2.69%) PostgreSQL
3 282 (2.47%) SQL Server
4 274 (2.40%) Data Warehouse
5 165 (1.45%) Oracle Database
6 152 (1.33%) Metadata
7 135 (1.18%) Data Lake
8 128 (1.12%) Relational Database
9 104 (0.91%) Amazon RDS
9 104 (0.91%) MongoDB
10 99 (0.87%) Oracle Reports
11 96 (0.84%) MySQL
12 91 (0.80%) Pentaho
13 75 (0.66%) Elasticsearch
13 75 (0.66%) NoSQL
14 73 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
15 69 (0.60%) Amazon Athena
16 60 (0.53%) Big Data
17 59 (0.52%) Tableau
18 52 (0.46%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 659 (5.77%) JIRA
2 552 (4.84%) Git
3 460 (4.03%) GitLab
4 452 (3.96%) Jenkins
5 121 (1.06%) Selenium
6 84 (0.74%) SonarQube
7 83 (0.73%) JUnit
8 76 (0.67%) Postman
9 67 (0.59%) Maven
10 64 (0.56%) JMeter
11 56 (0.49%) Cucumber
12 54 (0.47%) Rational DOORS
13 48 (0.42%) Mockito
14 46 (0.40%) Visual Studio
15 43 (0.38%) Cypress.io
16 42 (0.37%) Zephyr
17 41 (0.36%) Bitbucket
18 40 (0.35%) Artifactory
19 38 (0.33%) REST Assured
20 36 (0.32%) Gatling
General
1 2,462 (21.57%) Public Sector
2 2,336 (20.47%) Social Skills
3 849 (7.44%) Analytical Skills
4 761 (6.67%) Finance
5 362 (3.17%) Military
6 288 (2.52%) Aerospace
7 279 (2.44%) Documentation Skills
8 178 (1.56%) Influencing Skills
9 174 (1.52%) Legal
10 146 (1.28%) Telecoms
11 141 (1.24%) Organisational Skills
12 126 (1.10%) Banking
13 113 (0.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 106 (0.93%) Police
15 101 (0.88%) Law
15 101 (0.88%) Manufacturing
16 76 (0.67%) Presentation Skills
17 52 (0.46%) Aviation
18 39 (0.34%) Marketing
19 38 (0.33%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 1,789 (15.67%) Architect
2 1,273 (11.15%) Developer
3 1,065 (9.33%) Senior
4 966 (8.46%) Lead
5 688 (6.03%) Analyst
6 610 (5.34%) Consultant
7 526 (4.61%) Data Engineer
8 475 (4.16%) DevOps Engineer
9 396 (3.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 365 (3.20%) Technical Architect
11 349 (3.06%) Solutions Architect
12 334 (2.93%) Software Engineer
13 277 (2.43%) Security Architect
14 264 (2.31%) Network Engineer
15 229 (2.01%) Java Developer
16 224 (1.96%) Designer
17 222 (1.94%) Data Architect
18 210 (1.84%) Project Manager
19 205 (1.80%) Administrator
20 204 (1.79%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 412 (3.61%) REST
2 265 (2.32%) Spring
3 229 (2.01%) Spring Boot
4 224 (1.96%) .NET
5 221 (1.94%) Kafka
6 203 (1.78%) React
6 203 (1.78%) RESTful
7 183 (1.60%) Node.js
8 172 (1.51%) SOAP
9 155 (1.36%) JSON
10 139 (1.22%) AngularJS
11 129 (1.13%) Web Services
12 123 (1.08%) OAuth
13 113 (0.99%) HTML
14 106 (0.93%) Middleware
15 104 (0.91%) XML
16 102 (0.89%) PySpark
17 88 (0.77%) Playwright
18 80 (0.70%) CSS
19 79 (0.69%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 472 (4.14%) Cloud Native
2 396 (3.47%) Onboarding
3 358 (3.14%) Product Ownership
4 322 (2.82%) Data Centre
5 233 (2.04%) Management Information System
6 198 (1.73%) Legacy Systems
7 172 (1.51%) Distributed Systems
8 166 (1.45%) PKI
9 128 (1.12%) CMDB
9 128 (1.12%) Enterprise Software
10 125 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
11 115 (1.01%) Data Structures
12 107 (0.94%) Hybrid Cloud
13 103 (0.90%) Replication
14 101 (0.88%) Clustering
15 93 (0.81%) Public Cloud
16 88 (0.77%) Virtual Team
17 82 (0.72%) Security Posture
18 80 (0.70%) Security Operations Centre
19 74 (0.65%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 912 (7.99%) Windows
2 778 (6.82%) Linux
3 303 (2.65%) Windows Server
4 228 (2.00%) Unix
5 154 (1.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 97 (0.85%) Android
7 95 (0.83%) Windows 10
8 65 (0.57%) Solaris
9 64 (0.56%) Apple iOS
10 47 (0.41%) Mac OS
11 40 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 36 (0.32%) AIX
13 35 (0.31%) Ubuntu
14 30 (0.26%) CentOS
15 22 (0.19%) VMS
16 21 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
17 16 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
18 14 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
19 12 (0.11%) Windows 7
20 11 (0.096%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,373 (20.79%) Agile
2 1,763 (15.45%) DevOps
3 1,659 (14.53%) CI/CD
4 1,249 (10.94%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,240 (10.86%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,202 (10.53%) Problem-Solving
7 1,032 (9.04%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 878 (7.69%) Infrastructure as Code
9 869 (7.61%) Migration
10 735 (6.44%) ITIL
11 726 (6.36%) Cybersecurity
12 705 (6.18%) Analytics
13 704 (6.17%) Test Automation
14 703 (6.16%) Containerisation
15 683 (5.98%) Software Engineering
16 658 (5.76%) Roadmaps
17 636 (5.57%) Decision-Making
18 619 (5.42%) Data Modelling
19 599 (5.25%) Technical Leadership
20 598 (5.24%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,277 (11.19%) Python
2 1,113 (9.75%) SQL
3 810 (7.10%) Java
4 514 (4.50%) PowerShell
5 369 (3.23%) JavaScript
6 290 (2.54%) Bash
7 252 (2.21%) C#
8 182 (1.59%) TypeScript
9 178 (1.56%) PL/SQL
10 102 (0.89%) Bicep
11 96 (0.84%) Shell Script
12 85 (0.74%) C++
13 62 (0.54%) C
14 60 (0.53%) Apex Code
15 55 (0.48%) Ruby
16 54 (0.47%) Kotlin
17 52 (0.46%) Go
18 49 (0.43%) Scala
19 40 (0.35%) Groovy
20 36 (0.32%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 8,717 (76.37%) SC Cleared
2 2,160 (18.92%) DV Cleared
3 440 (3.85%) Degree
4 416 (3.64%) BPSS Clearance
5 213 (1.87%) Cisco Certification
6 185 (1.62%) CISSP
7 166 (1.45%) Azure Certification
8 146 (1.28%) Microsoft Certification
9 131 (1.15%) AWS Certification
10 114 (1.00%) CISM
11 107 (0.94%) PMI Certification
12 103 (0.90%) PMP
13 95 (0.83%) CCNP
14 92 (0.81%) CCNA
15 81 (0.71%) ISTQB
16 69 (0.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 63 (0.55%) Computer Science Degree
18 50 (0.44%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 49 (0.43%) TOGAF Certification
20 48 (0.42%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 439 (3.85%) QA
2 366 (3.21%) Data Quality
3 300 (2.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 297 (2.60%) NIST
5 252 (2.21%) Accessibility
6 242 (2.12%) NCSC
7 210 (1.84%) PMO
8 179 (1.57%) GDPR
9 139 (1.22%) GRC
10 135 (1.18%) SLA
11 74 (0.65%) WCAG
12 64 (0.56%) JSP 440
13 50 (0.44%) NIST 800
14 42 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials
15 32 (0.28%) Government Security Classifications
16 28 (0.25%) Def Stans
16 28 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 28 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 22 (0.19%) RMADS
18 18 (0.16%) COBIT
System Software
1 779 (6.82%) Docker
2 501 (4.39%) Active Directory
3 383 (3.36%) VMware Infrastructure
4 143 (1.25%) VMware NSX
5 130 (1.14%) VMware ESXi
6 107 (0.94%) vSphere
7 102 (0.89%) Hyper-V
8 81 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
9 45 (0.39%) Oracle RAC
10 37 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
11 30 (0.26%) Firmware
12 22 (0.19%) vCloud
13 20 (0.18%) BitLocker
13 20 (0.18%) NFS
14 18 (0.16%) Postfix
15 16 (0.14%) Squid
16 10 (0.088%) KVM
17 8 (0.070%) Microsoft App-V
18 7 (0.061%) UAG
19 6 (0.053%) Corosync
Systems Management
1 954 (8.36%) Terraform
2 926 (8.11%) Kubernetes
3 413 (3.62%) Ansible
4 265 (2.32%) Grafana
5 211 (1.85%) Prometheus
6 129 (1.13%) vCenter Server
7 103 (0.90%) SCCM
8 81 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
9 68 (0.60%) Argo
10 65 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
11 62 (0.54%) SCOM
12 54 (0.47%) Oracle RMAN
13 50 (0.44%) Puppet
14 44 (0.39%) FortiGate
15 38 (0.33%) Data Guard
16 30 (0.26%) Nagios
17 29 (0.25%) Progress Chef
18 25 (0.22%) Istio
18 25 (0.22%) Podman
18 25 (0.22%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 1,295 (11.35%) Microsoft
2 895 (7.84%) Oracle
3 559 (4.90%) VMware
4 550 (4.82%) ServiceNow
5 424 (3.71%) SAP
6 309 (2.71%) Cisco
7 211 (1.85%) Google
8 205 (1.80%) Splunk
9 198 (1.73%) Databricks
10 194 (1.70%) Salesforce
11 158 (1.38%) Red Hat
12 139 (1.22%) Informatica
12 139 (1.22%) Talend
13 119 (1.04%) IBM
14 113 (0.99%) Palo Alto
15 104 (0.91%) Juniper
16 97 (0.85%) F5
17 94 (0.82%) SolarWinds
18 90 (0.79%) Fortinet
19 87 (0.76%) Denodo