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

6 months to
29 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 2 3 4
Rank change year-on-year +1 +1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 8,025 5,892 7,724
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.75% 17.69% 17.84%
As % of the Qualifications category 64.37% 59.14% 59.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,331 3,744 4,890
10th Percentile £350 £345 £375
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £560
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% -1.79% -0.85%
75th Percentile £627 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £723 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £550 £565
% change year-on-year -4.55% -2.65% +2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 756 297 472
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.62 £21.00
25th Percentile £19.62 £24.18 £46.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -49.70% -16.67% -
75th Percentile £57.81 £67.25 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £81.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £55.00 £59.50
% change year-on-year -54.27% -7.56% -0.83%

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 12,467 9,963 12,990
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.79% 29.91% 30.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,140 6,092 8,206
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £416 £415 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £631 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £502 £540
% change year-on-year -0.37% -7.07% +2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 996 482 741
10th Percentile £16.30 £18.51 £16.29
25th Percentile £19.23 £24.00 £26.24
Median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £52.21
Median % change year-on-year -37.13% -23.38% +16.01%
75th Percentile £52.87 £67.02 £67.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.23 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £42.50 £51.89
% change year-on-year -40.82% -18.10% +16.87%

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 December 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 29 December 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 29 December 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 7,028 £525 -4.55% 4,851
UK excluding London 0 4,637 £525 -4.55% 4,448
London +3 2,307 £545 -0.91% 779
Work from Home +4 2,210 £538 -1.10% 2,479
South East +1 1,446 £525 -4.55% 1,225
South West 0 1,195 £550 -3.08% 780
North of England -2 802 £500 +5.26% 819
Midlands +3 705 £515 -6.53% 702
West Midlands +3 553 £519 -8.48% 385
North West 0 537 £515 +8.44% 447
East of England +2 327 £500 - 742
Yorkshire -17 160 £500 +5.82% 300
Scotland -5 150 £475 -1.15% 148
East Midlands +2 144 £438 -13.37% 281
North East 0 124 £450 -14.29% 77
Wales -2 74 £550 +9.73% 128
Northern Ireland +6 38 £475 -20.83% 54
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
1 278 (3.46%) Confluence
2 186 (2.32%) SharePoint
3 119 (1.48%) Microsoft Exchange
4 112 (1.40%) SAS
5 81 (1.01%) Apache
6 58 (0.72%) Apache Spark
7 49 (0.61%) Apache Airflow
8 37 (0.46%) Skype for Business
9 36 (0.45%) nginx
10 35 (0.44%) WebLogic
11 26 (0.32%) CMS
12 18 (0.22%) IIS
13 12 (0.15%) SharePoint Server
14 11 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2010
15 9 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
15 9 (0.11%) WordPress
16 8 (0.100%) Jupyter
16 8 (0.100%) OpenStack
16 8 (0.100%) Tuxedo
17 7 (0.087%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 254 (3.17%) Microsoft Office
2 164 (2.04%) Microsoft Excel
3 102 (1.27%) Microsoft Project
4 62 (0.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 37 (0.46%) MS Visio
6 20 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
7 18 (0.22%) Simulink
8 13 (0.16%) Siemens NX
9 9 (0.11%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 8 (0.100%) ProjectWise
11 7 (0.087%) Sketch
12 6 (0.075%) Oracle Smart View
13 5 (0.062%) Adobe XD
13 5 (0.062%) FrameMaker
13 5 (0.062%) Stateflow
13 5 (0.062%) Trello
13 5 (0.062%) Windchill
14 4 (0.050%) PTC Creo
15 3 (0.037%) InVision
15 3 (0.037%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 182 (2.27%) SAP S/4HANA
2 40 (0.50%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 36 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
4 30 (0.37%) SAP EWM
5 29 (0.36%) SAP WM
6 27 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
7 24 (0.30%) SAP MM
8 21 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
9 18 (0.22%) SAP PP
9 18 (0.22%) Teamcenter
10 17 (0.21%) SAP HCM
11 16 (0.20%) Maximo
12 15 (0.19%) Oracle General Ledger
13 14 (0.17%) SAP QM
13 14 (0.17%) SAP VC
14 13 (0.16%) SAP EHS
15 12 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
15 12 (0.15%) Primavera
16 11 (0.14%) SAP Payroll
17 10 (0.12%) SAP PS
Cloud Services
1 1,338 (16.67%) AWS
2 1,320 (16.45%) Azure
3 380 (4.74%) GitHub
4 329 (4.10%) GCP
5 325 (4.05%) Microsoft 365
6 291 (3.63%) Azure DevOps
7 283 (3.53%) Power Platform
8 235 (2.93%) Serverless
9 212 (2.64%) GitHub Actions
10 185 (2.31%) Amazon S3
10 185 (2.31%) Entra ID
11 150 (1.87%) OpenShift
12 145 (1.81%) AWS Lambda
13 130 (1.62%) AWS CloudFormation
14 126 (1.57%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 114 (1.42%) Amazon EC2
16 113 (1.41%) Amazon EKS
17 110 (1.37%) SaaS
18 97 (1.21%) IaaS
19 93 (1.16%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 411 (5.12%) Firewall
2 268 (3.34%) DNS
3 190 (2.37%) VPN
4 183 (2.28%) Network Security
5 170 (2.12%) WAN
6 133 (1.66%) TCP/IP
7 125 (1.56%) LAN
8 103 (1.28%) BGP
9 101 (1.26%) DHCP
10 92 (1.15%) Wireless
11 89 (1.11%) SSL
12 73 (0.91%) Wi-Fi
13 67 (0.83%) VLAN
14 63 (0.79%) MPLS
15 62 (0.77%) SAN
16 57 (0.71%) OSPF
17 56 (0.70%) IPsec
18 52 (0.65%) HTTP
19 46 (0.57%) Cisco ISE
20 42 (0.52%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 222 (2.77%) PostgreSQL
2 189 (2.36%) Power BI
3 102 (1.27%) Data Warehouse
4 101 (1.26%) SQL Server
5 97 (1.21%) MongoDB
6 89 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
6 89 (1.11%) NoSQL
7 85 (1.06%) Oracle Database
8 84 (1.05%) Metadata
9 81 (1.01%) Relational Database
10 65 (0.81%) Azure SQL Database
11 53 (0.66%) Big Data
12 48 (0.60%) Elasticsearch
13 45 (0.56%) Data Lake
14 42 (0.52%) Amazon Athena
15 40 (0.50%) Pentaho
15 40 (0.50%) SAS Enterprise Guide
16 39 (0.49%) Amazon Redshift
17 37 (0.46%) MySQL
18 34 (0.42%) Redis
Development Applications
1 513 (6.39%) JIRA
2 414 (5.16%) Git
3 380 (4.74%) Jenkins
4 301 (3.75%) GitLab
5 88 (1.10%) Selenium
6 66 (0.82%) Postman
7 61 (0.76%) JUnit
8 56 (0.70%) Cypress.io
9 50 (0.62%) SonarQube
10 47 (0.59%) Artifactory
10 47 (0.59%) Bitbucket
11 45 (0.56%) Oracle APEX
12 37 (0.46%) Mockito
13 32 (0.40%) Maven
14 31 (0.39%) Cucumber
15 27 (0.34%) REST Assured
16 26 (0.32%) MSI
17 25 (0.31%) CircleCI
18 22 (0.27%) Visual Studio
19 21 (0.26%) JMeter
General
1 2,083 (25.96%) Public Sector
2 2,044 (25.47%) Social Skills
3 709 (8.83%) Analytical Skills
4 545 (6.79%) Finance
5 292 (3.64%) Military
6 221 (2.75%) Telecoms
7 219 (2.73%) Manufacturing
8 196 (2.44%) Documentation Skills
9 155 (1.93%) Electronics
10 146 (1.82%) Marketing
11 144 (1.79%) Aerospace
12 126 (1.57%) Organisational Skills
13 109 (1.36%) Legal
14 95 (1.18%) Banking
15 90 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
16 87 (1.08%) Presentation Skills
17 64 (0.80%) Law
18 60 (0.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 37 (0.46%) Aviation
19 37 (0.46%) Police
Job Titles
1 1,100 (13.71%) Architect
2 787 (9.81%) Developer
3 677 (8.44%) Senior
4 656 (8.17%) Consultant
5 561 (6.99%) Analyst
6 480 (5.98%) Lead
7 387 (4.82%) DevOps Engineer
8 257 (3.20%) Support Engineer
9 227 (2.83%) Network Engineer
10 213 (2.65%) Solutions Architect
11 210 (2.62%) Data Engineer
12 169 (2.11%) Technical Architect
13 168 (2.09%) SAP Consultant
14 162 (2.02%) Software Engineer
15 153 (1.91%) Business Analyst
16 152 (1.89%) AWS Engineer
17 151 (1.88%) Tester
18 145 (1.81%) Administrator
19 142 (1.77%) Platform Engineer
20 135 (1.68%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 319 (3.98%) REST
2 205 (2.55%) Node.js
3 189 (2.36%) React
4 177 (2.21%) Kafka
5 164 (2.04%) JSON
6 156 (1.94%) SOAP
7 133 (1.66%) Spring
8 130 (1.62%) HTML
9 113 (1.41%) XML
10 110 (1.37%) RESTful
10 110 (1.37%) Spring Boot
11 109 (1.36%) LDAP
12 106 (1.32%) .NET
13 104 (1.30%) CSS
14 101 (1.26%) AngularJS
15 98 (1.22%) Web Services
16 86 (1.07%) Oracle Fusion
17 85 (1.06%) OAuth
18 79 (0.98%) PySpark
19 70 (0.87%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 238 (2.97%) Data Centre
2 218 (2.72%) Cloud Native
3 198 (2.47%) Onboarding
4 195 (2.43%) PKI
5 189 (2.36%) Product Ownership
6 151 (1.88%) Management Information System
7 111 (1.38%) Self-Motivation
8 108 (1.35%) Security Posture
9 107 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
10 98 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
11 92 (1.15%) Cyber Threat
12 80 (1.00%) Driving Licence
13 79 (0.98%) Security Operations Centre
14 71 (0.88%) Replication
15 67 (0.83%) Analytical Mindset
16 63 (0.79%) CMDB
17 62 (0.77%) Hybrid Cloud
18 59 (0.74%) Public Cloud
19 50 (0.62%) Distributed Systems
20 48 (0.60%) Cyber Defence
Operating Systems
1 845 (10.53%) Windows
2 603 (7.51%) Linux
3 194 (2.42%) Windows Server
4 176 (2.19%) Windows 10
5 114 (1.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 110 (1.37%) Unix
7 101 (1.26%) Android
8 80 (1.00%) Mac OS
9 50 (0.62%) VMS
10 41 (0.51%) Ubuntu
11 31 (0.39%) Apple iOS
12 28 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
13 25 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
14 21 (0.26%) Windows Server 2012
15 20 (0.25%) CentOS
16 19 (0.24%) Amazon Linux
17 16 (0.20%) Mac OS X
17 16 (0.20%) Windows 7
18 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2003
19 10 (0.12%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,515 (18.88%) Agile
2 1,241 (15.46%) DevOps
3 1,102 (13.73%) CI/CD
4 954 (11.89%) Problem-Solving
5 797 (9.93%) Migration
6 641 (7.99%) Stakeholder Management
7 561 (6.99%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 534 (6.65%) Infrastructure as Code
9 533 (6.64%) Cybersecurity
10 530 (6.60%) ITIL
11 520 (6.48%) Continuous Improvement
12 450 (5.61%) Containerisation
13 447 (5.57%) Test Automation
14 414 (5.16%) Business Intelligence
14 414 (5.16%) Service Management
15 409 (5.10%) Analytics
16 400 (4.98%) Roadmaps
17 396 (4.93%) Workflow
18 362 (4.51%) Scrum
19 353 (4.40%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 1,022 (12.74%) Python
2 601 (7.49%) SQL
3 545 (6.79%) PowerShell
4 441 (5.50%) Java
5 411 (5.12%) JavaScript
6 233 (2.90%) Bash
7 202 (2.52%) TypeScript
8 146 (1.82%) C#
9 97 (1.21%) C++
10 96 (1.20%) Go
11 80 (1.00%) Shell Script
12 74 (0.92%) PL/SQL
13 73 (0.91%) C
14 50 (0.62%) ABAP
15 49 (0.61%) Ruby
16 40 (0.50%) Scala
17 36 (0.45%) Perl
18 33 (0.41%) MATLAB
19 31 (0.39%) Bicep
19 31 (0.39%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 6,208 (77.36%) SC Cleared
2 1,282 (15.98%) DV Cleared
3 405 (5.05%) Degree
4 324 (4.04%) BPSS Clearance
5 147 (1.83%) CISSP
6 133 (1.66%) Cisco Certification
7 122 (1.52%) Microsoft Certification
8 121 (1.51%) Azure Certification
9 112 (1.40%) AWS Certification
10 104 (1.30%) CCNP
11 87 (1.08%) CISM
12 71 (0.88%) Computer Science Degree
13 60 (0.75%) CCNA
14 58 (0.72%) ITIL Certification
15 52 (0.65%) CEH
15 52 (0.65%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 48 (0.60%) TOGAF Certification
17 45 (0.56%) CTC Cleared
18 43 (0.54%) GIAC
19 41 (0.51%) CHECK Team Member
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 244 (3.04%) QA
2 226 (2.82%) NIST
3 223 (2.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 169 (2.11%) NCSC
5 164 (2.04%) Data Quality
6 147 (1.83%) Accessibility
7 146 (1.82%) GDPR
8 133 (1.66%) SLA
9 72 (0.90%) PMO
10 50 (0.62%) WCAG
11 48 (0.60%) JSP 440
12 43 (0.54%) GRC
13 33 (0.41%) NIST 800
14 32 (0.40%) Def Stans
14 32 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 30 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials
16 28 (0.35%) COBIT
17 27 (0.34%) PCI DSS
18 23 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 17 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 603 (7.51%) Docker
2 475 (5.92%) Active Directory
3 223 (2.78%) VMware Infrastructure
4 83 (1.03%) VMware NSX
5 71 (0.88%) vSphere
6 59 (0.74%) VMware ESXi
7 53 (0.66%) Virtual Machines
8 42 (0.52%) Hyper-V
9 40 (0.50%) Firmware
10 30 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
11 16 (0.20%) DFS Replication
12 15 (0.19%) Postfix
13 13 (0.16%) Dovecot
14 12 (0.15%) BitLocker
14 12 (0.15%) Terminal Services
15 11 (0.14%) NFS
16 10 (0.12%) Squid
17 9 (0.11%) ISA Server
18 8 (0.100%) Microsoft App-V
19 7 (0.087%) Brightmail
Systems Management
1 749 (9.33%) Kubernetes
2 717 (8.93%) Terraform
3 312 (3.89%) Ansible
4 200 (2.49%) Grafana
5 170 (2.12%) Prometheus
6 110 (1.37%) SCCM
6 110 (1.37%) Single Sign-On
7 86 (1.07%) vCenter Server
8 81 (1.01%) Microsoft Intune
9 68 (0.85%) Argo
10 66 (0.82%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 41 (0.51%) Kibana
12 37 (0.46%) vRealize
13 36 (0.45%) Packer
14 33 (0.41%) OPNET
15 29 (0.36%) Puppet
16 28 (0.35%) Podman
16 28 (0.35%) Progress Chef
17 27 (0.34%) FortiGate
18 26 (0.32%) Nessus
Vendors
1 973 (12.12%) Microsoft
2 533 (6.64%) SAP
3 441 (5.50%) Cisco
4 422 (5.26%) Oracle
5 409 (5.10%) VMware
6 352 (4.39%) ServiceNow
7 210 (2.62%) Splunk
8 168 (2.09%) Red Hat
9 142 (1.77%) Juniper
10 130 (1.62%) Palo Alto
11 129 (1.61%) Google
12 120 (1.50%) CyberArk
13 117 (1.46%) Salesforce
14 107 (1.33%) Atlassian
15 106 (1.32%) Databricks
16 103 (1.28%) Dell
17 99 (1.23%) HP
18 82 (1.02%) Remedy
19 74 (0.92%) CheckPoint
20 72 (0.90%) Dynatrace