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 25 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,486 5,313 7,895
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.97% 17.44% 17.90%
As % of the Qualifications category 67.39% 58.61% 59.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,414 3,424 5,011
10th Percentile £360 £325 £363
25th Percentile £448 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.42% -2.18% -2.65%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £520 £540 £568
% change year-on-year -3.70% -4.85% +3.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 780 272 512
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.12 £19.99
25th Percentile £20.35 £24.66 £38.81
Median hourly rate £25.15 £57.12 £57.09
Median % change year-on-year -55.97% +0.07% -4.86%
75th Percentile £65.00 £67.63 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.24 £75.23 £83.39
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £57.32
% change year-on-year -58.08% +4.68% -0.31%

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 14,076 9,065 13,350
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.08% 29.76% 30.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,299 5,575 8,231
10th Percentile £330 £291 £288
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.42% -2.18%
75th Percentile £614 £630 £650
90th Percentile £719 £718 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £510 £530
% change year-on-year -1.96% -3.77% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,025 443 958
10th Percentile £16.04 £20.00 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £24.19 £20.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -37.13% -5.88% -11.27%
75th Percentile £64.00 £67.25 £64.88
90th Percentile £80.00 £81.88 £77.15
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £47.25 £44.50
% change year-on-year -46.77% +6.17% -1.11%

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 25 February 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 25 February 2026.

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 25 February 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 8,255 £525 -4.20% 1,689
UK excluding London 0 5,285 £520 -3.70% 1,408
London +4 2,853 £530 +0.95% 470
Work from Home +4 2,603 £530 - 761
South East +1 1,768 £525 -4.55% 587
South West 0 1,319 £550 -2.22% 306
Midlands +4 852 £495 -10.00% 160
North of England -2 831 £498 +1.22% 190
West Midlands +2 676 £500 -9.26% 119
North West 0 535 £500 +5.26% 116
East of England +1 345 £498 -0.50% 142
Yorkshire -5 175 £500 -4.76% 39
East Midlands +1 174 £425 -16.05% 41
Scotland +8 164 £475 -5.00% 34
North East 0 148 £450 -10.00% 36
Wales -1 81 £515 -1.87% 20
Northern Ireland +11 30 £500 +271.43% 2
Channel Islands - 1 - - 2

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
1 333 (3.51%) Confluence
2 211 (2.22%) SharePoint
3 141 (1.49%) Microsoft Exchange
4 138 (1.45%) SAS
5 82 (0.86%) Apache Spark
6 76 (0.80%) Apache
7 52 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
8 44 (0.46%) nginx
9 41 (0.43%) WebLogic
10 33 (0.35%) Skype for Business
11 21 (0.22%) Jupyter
12 19 (0.20%) CMS
13 18 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
14 13 (0.14%) Tuxedo
15 10 (0.11%) Tomcat
16 9 (0.095%) ArcGIS
17 8 (0.084%) IIS
17 8 (0.084%) OpenStack
18 7 (0.074%) Oracle Workflow
19 5 (0.053%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 255 (2.69%) Microsoft Office
2 189 (1.99%) Microsoft Excel
3 120 (1.27%) Microsoft Project
4 70 (0.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 41 (0.43%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.15%) Simulink
8 6 (0.063%) Sketch
9 5 (0.053%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.053%) Siemens NX
9 5 (0.053%) Windchill
10 4 (0.042%) Chatbot
10 4 (0.042%) Oracle Smart View
11 3 (0.032%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.021%) Adobe Illustrator
12 2 (0.021%) CATIA
12 2 (0.021%) Lectora
12 2 (0.021%) Photoshop
12 2 (0.021%) PlantUML
12 2 (0.021%) Stateflow
Business Applications
1 160 (1.69%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.43%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 30 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
4 27 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
5 25 (0.26%) SAP MM
6 22 (0.23%) Dynamics CRM
6 22 (0.23%) Teamcenter
7 18 (0.19%) SAP PP
8 16 (0.17%) Maximo
8 16 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
9 15 (0.16%) SAP WM
10 14 (0.15%) SAP EWM
10 14 (0.15%) SAP VC
11 13 (0.14%) SAP QM
12 12 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
13 11 (0.12%) Oracle General Ledger
13 11 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
13 11 (0.12%) SAP HCM
14 10 (0.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 9 (0.095%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,626 (17.14%) AWS
2 1,534 (16.17%) Azure
3 412 (4.34%) GitHub
4 393 (4.14%) GCP
5 344 (3.63%) Power Platform
6 336 (3.54%) Azure DevOps
7 311 (3.28%) Microsoft 365
8 266 (2.80%) Serverless
9 224 (2.36%) Entra ID
10 217 (2.29%) GitHub Actions
11 207 (2.18%) Amazon S3
12 181 (1.91%) OpenShift
13 174 (1.83%) AWS Lambda
14 145 (1.53%) AWS CloudFormation
15 137 (1.44%) Amazon EC2
16 135 (1.42%) Amazon EKS
17 133 (1.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 115 (1.21%) IaaS
19 110 (1.16%) PaaS
20 108 (1.14%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 446 (4.70%) Firewall
2 293 (3.09%) DNS
3 222 (2.34%) Network Security
4 197 (2.08%) WAN
5 178 (1.88%) VPN
6 156 (1.64%) LAN
7 147 (1.55%) TCP/IP
8 136 (1.43%) BGP
9 130 (1.37%) DHCP
10 95 (1.00%) Wireless
11 93 (0.98%) OSPF
12 91 (0.96%) VLAN
13 74 (0.78%) MPLS
14 72 (0.76%) Wi-Fi
15 61 (0.64%) SSL
16 57 (0.60%) IPsec
17 56 (0.59%) SAN
18 49 (0.52%) Cisco ISE
19 42 (0.44%) Skype
20 41 (0.43%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 265 (2.79%) PostgreSQL
2 247 (2.60%) Power BI
3 169 (1.78%) Data Warehouse
4 137 (1.44%) SQL Server
5 120 (1.27%) Metadata
6 107 (1.13%) Oracle Database
7 101 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
8 98 (1.03%) MongoDB
9 97 (1.02%) NoSQL
10 90 (0.95%) Relational Database
11 77 (0.81%) Elasticsearch
12 76 (0.80%) Data Lake
13 74 (0.78%) Azure SQL Database
14 67 (0.71%) Big Data
15 62 (0.65%) MySQL
16 60 (0.63%) Pentaho
17 52 (0.55%) Tableau
18 44 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
18 44 (0.46%) DynamoDB
19 42 (0.44%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 550 (5.80%) JIRA
2 460 (4.85%) Git
3 399 (4.21%) Jenkins
4 357 (3.76%) GitLab
5 113 (1.19%) Selenium
6 92 (0.97%) Postman
7 82 (0.86%) JUnit
8 62 (0.65%) Cypress.io
9 56 (0.59%) SonarQube
10 49 (0.52%) Artifactory
11 47 (0.50%) Maven
12 46 (0.48%) Bitbucket
13 45 (0.47%) Oracle APEX
14 44 (0.46%) Cucumber
15 40 (0.42%) Mockito
16 36 (0.38%) REST Assured
17 32 (0.34%) JMeter
18 30 (0.32%) Rational DOORS
19 29 (0.31%) Visual Studio
20 24 (0.25%) Metasploit
General
1 2,419 (25.50%) Public Sector
2 2,293 (24.17%) Social Skills
3 788 (8.31%) Analytical Skills
4 634 (6.68%) Finance
5 334 (3.52%) Military
6 260 (2.74%) Documentation Skills
7 197 (2.08%) Aerospace
8 189 (1.99%) Telecoms
9 185 (1.95%) Manufacturing
10 142 (1.50%) Legal
11 128 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
12 120 (1.27%) Electronics
12 120 (1.27%) Marketing
13 119 (1.25%) Influencing Skills
14 109 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
15 94 (0.99%) Banking
16 70 (0.74%) Law
17 68 (0.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 47 (0.50%) Police
19 37 (0.39%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,319 (13.90%) Architect
2 924 (9.74%) Developer
3 829 (8.74%) Senior
4 714 (7.53%) Analyst
5 638 (6.73%) Consultant
6 562 (5.92%) Lead
7 437 (4.61%) DevOps Engineer
8 346 (3.65%) Data Engineer
9 250 (2.64%) Network Engineer
10 248 (2.61%) Solutions Architect
11 247 (2.60%) Business Analyst
12 239 (2.52%) Software Engineer
12 239 (2.52%) Support Engineer
13 230 (2.42%) Technical Architect
14 197 (2.08%) Tester
15 181 (1.91%) AWS Engineer
16 169 (1.78%) Azure Engineer
17 167 (1.76%) Designer
18 164 (1.73%) Security Architect
19 157 (1.66%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 355 (3.74%) REST
2 221 (2.33%) Node.js
3 208 (2.19%) Spring
4 207 (2.18%) Kafka
5 197 (2.08%) React
6 168 (1.77%) JSON
7 160 (1.69%) SOAP
7 160 (1.69%) Spring Boot
8 150 (1.58%) LDAP
9 123 (1.30%) .NET
10 114 (1.20%) RESTful
11 113 (1.19%) HTML
12 111 (1.17%) PySpark
13 108 (1.14%) AngularJS
14 106 (1.12%) OAuth
15 105 (1.11%) Web Services
16 104 (1.10%) XML
17 103 (1.09%) Oracle Fusion
18 95 (1.00%) CSS
19 82 (0.86%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 295 (3.11%) Data Centre
2 266 (2.80%) Cloud Native
3 264 (2.78%) Product Ownership
4 242 (2.55%) Onboarding
5 206 (2.17%) PKI
6 178 (1.88%) Management Information System
7 141 (1.49%) Security Posture
8 116 (1.22%) Legacy Systems
9 114 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
9 114 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
10 100 (1.05%) Replication
11 81 (0.85%) Security Operations Centre
12 80 (0.84%) Public Cloud
13 77 (0.81%) Driving Licence
13 77 (0.81%) Hybrid Cloud
14 69 (0.73%) Cyber Threat
15 66 (0.70%) Distributed Systems
16 51 (0.54%) Analytical Mindset
17 49 (0.52%) Algorithms
18 48 (0.51%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 875 (9.22%) Windows
2 710 (7.48%) Linux
3 223 (2.35%) Windows Server
4 157 (1.66%) Windows 10
5 130 (1.37%) Unix
6 128 (1.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 121 (1.28%) Android
8 66 (0.70%) Mac OS
9 50 (0.53%) Apple iOS
10 42 (0.44%) Ubuntu
11 38 (0.40%) VMS
12 30 (0.32%) Windows Server 2016
13 24 (0.25%) CentOS
13 24 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
14 22 (0.23%) Solaris
15 21 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 14 (0.15%) Mac OS X
16 14 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
17 11 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
18 8 (0.084%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,785 (18.82%) Agile
2 1,426 (15.03%) DevOps
3 1,263 (13.31%) CI/CD
4 1,176 (12.40%) Problem-Solving
5 863 (9.10%) Stakeholder Management
6 820 (8.64%) Migration
7 735 (7.75%) Continuous Improvement
8 652 (6.87%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 616 (6.49%) Cybersecurity
10 608 (6.41%) Infrastructure as Code
11 556 (5.86%) ITIL
12 550 (5.80%) Test Automation
13 519 (5.47%) Containerisation
14 515 (5.43%) Analytics
15 514 (5.42%) Roadmaps
16 447 (4.71%) Business Intelligence
17 440 (4.64%) Scrum
18 434 (4.58%) Software Engineering
19 424 (4.47%) Service Management
20 406 (4.28%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,160 (12.23%) Python
2 788 (8.31%) SQL
3 609 (6.42%) PowerShell
4 541 (5.70%) Java
5 428 (4.51%) JavaScript
6 240 (2.53%) Bash
7 208 (2.19%) TypeScript
8 173 (1.82%) C#
9 105 (1.11%) PL/SQL
10 102 (1.08%) C++
10 102 (1.08%) Shell Script
11 87 (0.92%) Go
12 64 (0.67%) C
13 57 (0.60%) Ruby
14 51 (0.54%) Ada
15 50 (0.53%) Scala
16 42 (0.44%) Bicep
17 41 (0.43%) ABAP
18 39 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
19 37 (0.39%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 7,297 (76.92%) SC Cleared
2 1,586 (16.72%) DV Cleared
3 460 (4.85%) Degree
4 320 (3.37%) BPSS Clearance
5 177 (1.87%) Cisco Certification
6 174 (1.83%) CISSP
7 135 (1.42%) AWS Certification
8 129 (1.36%) Azure Certification
9 126 (1.33%) CCNP
10 119 (1.25%) Microsoft Certification
11 108 (1.14%) CISM
12 89 (0.94%) Computer Science Degree
13 77 (0.81%) CCNA
14 67 (0.71%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 66 (0.70%) ITIL Certification
16 63 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
17 55 (0.58%) ISTQB
18 50 (0.53%) CEH
18 50 (0.53%) PMP
19 49 (0.52%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 312 (3.29%) QA
2 290 (3.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 275 (2.90%) NIST
4 257 (2.71%) Data Quality
5 211 (2.22%) NCSC
6 189 (1.99%) Accessibility
7 177 (1.87%) GDPR
8 128 (1.35%) SLA
9 97 (1.02%) PMO
10 63 (0.66%) GRC
11 60 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 50 (0.53%) WCAG
13 44 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials
14 41 (0.43%) Def Stans
15 36 (0.38%) NIST 800
16 34 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 34 (0.36%) PCI DSS
17 32 (0.34%) COBIT
18 25 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
19 24 (0.25%) RMADS
System Software
1 655 (6.90%) Docker
2 494 (5.21%) Active Directory
3 253 (2.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 92 (0.97%) VMware NSX
5 72 (0.76%) vSphere
6 65 (0.69%) Hyper-V
6 65 (0.69%) VMware ESXi
7 61 (0.64%) Virtual Machines
8 27 (0.28%) Firmware
8 27 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
9 24 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
10 18 (0.19%) BitLocker
11 16 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 15 (0.16%) NFS
13 11 (0.12%) Postfix
13 11 (0.12%) Squid
14 8 (0.084%) vCloud
15 7 (0.074%) Virtual Servers
16 6 (0.063%) KVM
17 5 (0.053%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 837 (8.82%) Kubernetes
2 804 (8.48%) Terraform
3 309 (3.26%) Ansible
4 232 (2.45%) Grafana
5 191 (2.01%) Prometheus
6 132 (1.39%) Single Sign-On
7 103 (1.09%) SCCM
8 97 (1.02%) vCenter Server
9 91 (0.96%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 72 (0.76%) Argo
10 72 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
11 45 (0.47%) vRealize
12 43 (0.45%) FortiGate
13 41 (0.43%) Podman
14 38 (0.40%) Packer
15 35 (0.37%) Kibana
16 33 (0.35%) Puppet
17 30 (0.32%) OPNET
17 30 (0.32%) Progress Chef
18 26 (0.27%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,057 (11.14%) Microsoft
2 538 (5.67%) Oracle
3 475 (5.01%) VMware
4 459 (4.84%) SAP
5 445 (4.69%) Cisco
6 391 (4.12%) ServiceNow
7 236 (2.49%) Splunk
8 188 (1.98%) Red Hat
9 148 (1.56%) Databricks
10 145 (1.53%) Google
11 144 (1.52%) CyberArk
12 143 (1.51%) Palo Alto
13 135 (1.42%) Juniper
14 133 (1.40%) Salesforce
15 115 (1.21%) Atlassian
16 98 (1.03%) Dell
17 84 (0.89%) Talend
18 82 (0.86%) Dynatrace
18 82 (0.86%) IBM
19 80 (0.84%) HP