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

6 months to
1 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 11,139 5,445 7,843
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.67% 17.70% 18.17%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.32% 57.39% 60.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,721 3,521 5,142
10th Percentile £381 £338 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £529 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.76% -3.82% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £714 £699 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £537 £550
% change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 840 409 588
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.50 £14.43
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £61.33 £25.15 £56.15
Median % change year-on-year +143.86% -55.21% -6.43%
75th Percentile £75.00 £62.24 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.38 £75.88 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £61.84 £25.15 £58.00
% change year-on-year +145.88% -56.64% +0.87%

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 16,068 9,487 12,871
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.26% 30.85% 29.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,724 5,881 7,948
10th Percentile £350 £275 £311
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £620 £638
90th Percentile £713 £701 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £528
% change year-on-year +2.00% -5.21% +0.48%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,171 641 1,116
10th Percentile £17.40 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £24.19 £20.15 £20.00
Median hourly rate £50.00 £28.00 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +78.57% -31.61% -26.47%
75th Percentile £72.52 £60.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.25 £75.00 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £26.28 £43.00
% change year-on-year +90.26% -38.88% -20.54%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 9,616 £525 -2.33% 2,545
UK excluding London +1 6,244 £525 -2.23% 2,013
London +7 3,412 £530 +0.95% 763
Work from Home +5 3,049 £525 - 1,295
South East +1 2,323 £550 - 646
South West 0 1,308 £538 -4.44% 494
North of England +1 1,024 £500 - 369
Midlands +2 930 £469 -8.51% 207
West Midlands +2 793 £469 -10.67% 158
North West 0 551 £525 +5.00% 224
East of England +2 347 £550 +10.00% 132
Scotland +24 278 £500 +14.29% 115
Yorkshire -1 268 £500 +1.63% 86
North East +1 235 £475 -1.04% 60
East Midlands -1 126 £418 -12.11% 49
Wales +3 97 £538 +13.16% 65
Northern Ireland +4 30 £650 +30.00% 21

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
1 396 (3.56%) Confluence
2 239 (2.15%) SharePoint
3 162 (1.45%) SAS
4 135 (1.21%) Microsoft Exchange
5 107 (0.96%) Apache Spark
6 105 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
7 94 (0.84%) Apache
8 44 (0.40%) Jupyter
8 44 (0.40%) nginx
9 36 (0.32%) WebLogic
10 25 (0.22%) Tomcat
11 21 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
12 19 (0.17%) IIS
13 16 (0.14%) CMS
13 16 (0.14%) NetWeaver
14 15 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
15 14 (0.13%) Skype for Business
16 12 (0.11%) Tuxedo
17 10 (0.090%) ArcGIS
17 10 (0.090%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 174 (1.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 144 (1.29%) Microsoft Office
3 81 (0.73%) Microsoft Project
4 71 (0.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 50 (0.45%) MS Visio
6 17 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.13%) Simulink
8 11 (0.099%) SOLIDWORKS
9 10 (0.090%) AutoCAD
9 10 (0.090%) Chatbot
9 10 (0.090%) Revit
10 7 (0.063%) Notepad++
11 4 (0.036%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.036%) Sketch
12 3 (0.027%) Windchill
13 2 (0.018%) CATIA
13 2 (0.018%) Lectora
13 2 (0.018%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.018%) PlantUML
13 2 (0.018%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 127 (1.14%) SAP S/4HANA
2 64 (0.57%) Remedy ITSM
3 46 (0.41%) Oracle ERP
4 33 (0.30%) Teamcenter
5 32 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 31 (0.28%) Oracle EBS
7 29 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
8 18 (0.16%) Primavera
9 17 (0.15%) SAP PSCD
10 16 (0.14%) SAP GRC
11 15 (0.13%) Findur
11 15 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
11 15 (0.13%) Temenos T24
12 12 (0.11%) iTrent
12 12 (0.11%) Maximo
12 12 (0.11%) Siebel CRM
13 11 (0.099%) SAP ERP
14 10 (0.090%) Oracle Assets
14 10 (0.090%) SAP HR
15 9 (0.081%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,003 (17.98%) AWS
2 1,942 (17.43%) Azure
3 470 (4.22%) GitHub
4 440 (3.95%) Azure DevOps
5 429 (3.85%) Power Platform
6 411 (3.69%) GCP
7 290 (2.60%) GitHub Actions
8 283 (2.54%) Serverless
9 279 (2.50%) Entra ID
9 279 (2.50%) Microsoft 365
10 234 (2.10%) Amazon S3
11 197 (1.77%) AWS Lambda
12 164 (1.47%) Amazon EC2
13 157 (1.41%) SaaS
14 155 (1.39%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 155 (1.39%) PaaS
15 147 (1.32%) OCI
16 145 (1.30%) OpenShift
17 138 (1.24%) Amazon EKS
18 131 (1.18%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 464 (4.17%) Firewall
2 337 (3.03%) DNS
3 245 (2.20%) Network Security
4 232 (2.08%) WAN
5 201 (1.80%) LAN
6 189 (1.70%) VPN
7 171 (1.54%) DHCP
8 142 (1.27%) BGP
9 120 (1.08%) OSPF
10 113 (1.01%) VLAN
11 110 (0.99%) TCP/IP
11 110 (0.99%) Wi-Fi
12 87 (0.78%) Wireless
13 69 (0.62%) MPLS
14 64 (0.57%) SD-WAN
15 63 (0.57%) SAN
16 59 (0.53%) VXLAN
17 52 (0.47%) IPsec
18 51 (0.46%) BIG-IP
19 48 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 335 (3.01%) Power BI
2 299 (2.68%) PostgreSQL
3 263 (2.36%) Data Warehouse
4 246 (2.21%) SQL Server
5 165 (1.48%) Oracle Database
6 145 (1.30%) Metadata
7 128 (1.15%) Data Lake
8 120 (1.08%) Relational Database
9 116 (1.04%) MongoDB
10 115 (1.03%) Amazon RDS
11 95 (0.85%) MySQL
12 87 (0.78%) Elasticsearch
13 86 (0.77%) Pentaho
14 83 (0.75%) Oracle Reports
15 78 (0.70%) Amazon Redshift
16 74 (0.66%) NoSQL
17 73 (0.66%) Amazon Athena
18 68 (0.61%) Big Data
19 66 (0.59%) Tableau
20 56 (0.50%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 633 (5.68%) JIRA
2 508 (4.56%) Git
3 474 (4.26%) GitLab
4 444 (3.99%) Jenkins
5 125 (1.12%) Selenium
6 87 (0.78%) JUnit
7 84 (0.75%) Postman
8 82 (0.74%) SonarQube
9 66 (0.59%) JMeter
10 59 (0.53%) Rational DOORS
11 56 (0.50%) Cucumber
12 48 (0.43%) Artifactory
13 47 (0.42%) Mockito
14 46 (0.41%) Cypress.io
15 45 (0.40%) REST Assured
16 44 (0.40%) Bitbucket
16 44 (0.40%) Maven
17 42 (0.38%) Visual Studio
18 41 (0.37%) Zephyr
19 37 (0.33%) Gatling
General
1 2,444 (21.94%) Public Sector
2 2,250 (20.20%) Social Skills
3 774 (6.95%) Analytical Skills
4 715 (6.42%) Finance
5 347 (3.12%) Military
6 300 (2.69%) Documentation Skills
7 288 (2.59%) Aerospace
8 177 (1.59%) Legal
9 154 (1.38%) Influencing Skills
10 135 (1.21%) Banking
11 126 (1.13%) Telecoms
12 105 (0.94%) Organisational Skills
13 100 (0.90%) Law
14 98 (0.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 96 (0.86%) Manufacturing
16 85 (0.76%) Police
17 78 (0.70%) Presentation Skills
18 56 (0.50%) Aviation
19 42 (0.38%) Marketing
20 38 (0.34%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,702 (15.28%) Architect
2 1,172 (10.52%) Developer
3 974 (8.74%) Senior
4 856 (7.68%) Lead
5 720 (6.46%) Analyst
6 546 (4.90%) Consultant
7 521 (4.68%) Data Engineer
8 503 (4.52%) DevOps Engineer
9 372 (3.34%) Technical Architect
10 351 (3.15%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 349 (3.13%) Software Engineer
12 331 (2.97%) Solutions Architect
13 275 (2.47%) Network Engineer
14 255 (2.29%) Security Architect
15 231 (2.07%) Business Analyst
16 218 (1.96%) Designer
17 217 (1.95%) Project Manager
18 215 (1.93%) Java Developer
19 209 (1.88%) AWS Engineer
20 205 (1.84%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 349 (3.13%) REST
2 264 (2.37%) Spring
3 219 (1.97%) Spring Boot
4 207 (1.86%) Kafka
5 202 (1.81%) React
6 200 (1.80%) .NET
7 193 (1.73%) Node.js
8 172 (1.54%) RESTful
9 143 (1.28%) SOAP
10 133 (1.19%) JSON
11 129 (1.16%) AngularJS
12 115 (1.03%) LDAP
13 114 (1.02%) PySpark
14 112 (1.01%) OAuth
15 110 (0.99%) Web Services
16 100 (0.90%) Middleware
17 97 (0.87%) Playwright
18 95 (0.85%) HTML
19 87 (0.78%) OpenID
20 86 (0.77%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 438 (3.93%) Cloud Native
2 358 (3.21%) Product Ownership
3 342 (3.07%) Onboarding
4 317 (2.85%) Data Centre
5 221 (1.98%) Management Information System
6 169 (1.52%) Legacy Systems
7 150 (1.35%) PKI
8 149 (1.34%) Distributed Systems
9 116 (1.04%) Replication
10 114 (1.02%) Enterprise Software
11 110 (0.99%) CMDB
11 110 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
12 102 (0.92%) Security Posture
13 100 (0.90%) Data Structures
14 94 (0.84%) Hybrid Cloud
15 90 (0.81%) Clustering
16 88 (0.79%) Public Cloud
17 83 (0.75%) Virtual Team
18 80 (0.72%) Security Operations Centre
19 71 (0.64%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 878 (7.88%) Windows
2 748 (6.72%) Linux
3 274 (2.46%) Windows Server
4 198 (1.78%) Unix
5 142 (1.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 94 (0.84%) Android
7 88 (0.79%) Windows 10
8 64 (0.57%) Apple iOS
9 52 (0.47%) Solaris
10 42 (0.38%) Mac OS
11 38 (0.34%) Ubuntu
12 31 (0.28%) AIX
13 30 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
14 26 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
15 22 (0.20%) CentOS
16 19 (0.17%) VMS
17 16 (0.14%) Windows 7
18 15 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
19 14 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
20 11 (0.099%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,249 (20.19%) Agile
2 1,739 (15.61%) DevOps
3 1,598 (14.35%) CI/CD
4 1,168 (10.49%) Problem-Solving
5 1,125 (10.10%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,118 (10.04%) Continuous Improvement
7 922 (8.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 855 (7.68%) Migration
9 823 (7.39%) Infrastructure as Code
10 697 (6.26%) Test Automation
11 688 (6.18%) Cybersecurity
12 679 (6.10%) ITIL
13 668 (6.00%) Containerisation
14 660 (5.93%) Software Engineering
15 647 (5.81%) Analytics
16 620 (5.57%) Roadmaps
17 602 (5.40%) Decision-Making
18 578 (5.19%) Data Modelling
19 542 (4.87%) AI
20 522 (4.69%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,239 (11.12%) Python
2 1,051 (9.44%) SQL
3 762 (6.84%) Java
4 502 (4.51%) PowerShell
5 337 (3.03%) JavaScript
6 240 (2.15%) Bash
7 236 (2.12%) C#
8 194 (1.74%) TypeScript
9 155 (1.39%) PL/SQL
10 98 (0.88%) C++
11 94 (0.84%) Shell Script
12 82 (0.74%) Bicep
13 66 (0.59%) C
14 61 (0.55%) Apex Code
15 59 (0.53%) Ruby
16 57 (0.51%) Go
17 50 (0.45%) Kotlin
18 46 (0.41%) Ada
18 46 (0.41%) Scala
19 43 (0.39%) R
Qualifications
1 8,528 (76.56%) SC Cleared
2 2,036 (18.28%) DV Cleared
3 431 (3.87%) Degree
4 344 (3.09%) BPSS Clearance
5 217 (1.95%) Cisco Certification
6 176 (1.58%) CISSP
7 142 (1.27%) Azure Certification
8 123 (1.10%) Microsoft Certification
9 120 (1.08%) AWS Certification
10 111 (1.00%) CCNP
11 110 (0.99%) CISM
12 96 (0.86%) CCNA
13 86 (0.77%) PMP
14 85 (0.76%) PMI Certification
15 76 (0.68%) ISTQB
16 68 (0.61%) Computer Science Degree
16 68 (0.61%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 56 (0.50%) ITIL Certification
18 40 (0.36%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 38 (0.34%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 430 (3.86%) QA
2 337 (3.03%) Data Quality
3 317 (2.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 312 (2.80%) NIST
5 242 (2.17%) NCSC
6 231 (2.07%) Accessibility
7 188 (1.69%) GDPR
8 173 (1.55%) PMO
9 121 (1.09%) SLA
10 99 (0.89%) GRC
11 68 (0.61%) JSP 440
12 56 (0.50%) WCAG
13 44 (0.40%) NIST 800
14 43 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials
15 33 (0.30%) RMADS
16 32 (0.29%) Def Stans
17 29 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 26 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
19 23 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
19 23 (0.21%) COBIT
System Software
1 730 (6.55%) Docker
2 462 (4.15%) Active Directory
3 333 (2.99%) VMware Infrastructure
4 119 (1.07%) VMware ESXi
5 115 (1.03%) VMware NSX
6 92 (0.83%) Hyper-V
7 88 (0.79%) vSphere
8 82 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
9 39 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
10 34 (0.31%) Firmware
11 29 (0.26%) Virtual Desktop
12 25 (0.22%) NFS
13 23 (0.21%) BitLocker
14 21 (0.19%) Squid
14 21 (0.19%) vCloud
15 19 (0.17%) Postfix
16 13 (0.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 9 (0.081%) Microsoft App-V
18 7 (0.063%) KVM
19 6 (0.054%) Corosync
Systems Management
1 918 (8.24%) Terraform
2 909 (8.16%) Kubernetes
3 386 (3.47%) Ansible
4 267 (2.40%) Grafana
5 223 (2.00%) Prometheus
6 113 (1.01%) vCenter Server
7 90 (0.81%) Single Sign-On
8 85 (0.76%) SCCM
9 67 (0.60%) Microsoft Intune
10 55 (0.49%) Argo
11 52 (0.47%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 50 (0.45%) FortiGate
13 46 (0.41%) SCOM
14 45 (0.40%) Oracle RMAN
15 44 (0.40%) Puppet
16 33 (0.30%) Podman
17 28 (0.25%) Progress Chef
18 27 (0.24%) Nagios
19 26 (0.23%) Kibana
20 25 (0.22%) vRealize
Vendors
1 1,163 (10.44%) Microsoft
2 801 (7.19%) Oracle
3 520 (4.67%) VMware
4 484 (4.35%) ServiceNow
5 355 (3.19%) SAP
6 331 (2.97%) Cisco
7 218 (1.96%) Splunk
8 195 (1.75%) Databricks
9 185 (1.66%) Salesforce
10 183 (1.64%) Google
11 166 (1.49%) Red Hat
12 145 (1.30%) Talend
13 128 (1.15%) Informatica
14 126 (1.13%) IBM
15 114 (1.02%) Palo Alto
16 98 (0.88%) Juniper
17 94 (0.84%) F5
18 93 (0.83%) Fortinet
19 90 (0.81%) SolarWinds
20 86 (0.77%) Citrix