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 12 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,593 5,891 7,246
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.72% 17.87% 18.61%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.28% 57.23% 62.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,105 3,734 4,822
10th Percentile £381 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £537 £534 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.66% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 840 544 501
10th Percentile £19.33 £18.51 £15.50
25th Percentile £25.94 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £63.50 £25.15 £56.50
Median % change year-on-year +152.49% -55.49% -5.83%
75th Percentile £80.00 £47.22 £71.90
90th Percentile £88.00 £73.75 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.09 £25.15 £58.30
% change year-on-year +154.83% -56.86% +1.39%

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 16,734 10,294 11,675
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.35% 31.23% 29.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,212 6,355 7,404
10th Percentile £350 £289 £313
25th Percentile £431 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £620 £638
90th Percentile £715 £702 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £514 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.80% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,261 806 851
10th Percentile £17.72 £17.87 £15.10
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.23 £21.25
Median hourly rate £51.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +104.77% -41.51% -21.82%
75th Percentile £73.75 £53.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.16 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £47.50
% change year-on-year +98.81% -47.05% -8.11%

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 12 August 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 12 August 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 12 August 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 10,055 £537 -0.09% 3,693
UK excluding London +1 6,523 £525 -2.33% 2,847
London +7 3,567 £550 +3.77% 1,241
Work from Home +4 3,133 £525 -2.23% 1,979
South East +1 2,445 £560 +4.19% 778
South West 0 1,343 £538 -6.52% 676
North of England +3 1,149 £500 +0.05% 582
Midlands +1 975 £469 -8.74% 238
West Midlands +1 848 £469 -8.93% 181
North West +2 625 £525 - 375
East of England 0 321 £550 +0.46% 278
Yorkshire +2 307 £492 +0.51% 119
Scotland +9 255 £495 +2.48% 204
North East 0 241 £475 -5.00% 109
East Midlands -2 115 £438 -10.15% 56
Wales +2 100 £550 +15.79% 49
Northern Ireland +4 33 £650 +25.00% 80

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
1 416 (3.59%) Confluence
2 271 (2.34%) SharePoint
3 195 (1.68%) SAS
4 123 (1.06%) Microsoft Exchange
5 99 (0.85%) Apache Spark
6 97 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
7 91 (0.78%) Apache
8 39 (0.34%) WebLogic
9 37 (0.32%) Jupyter
10 36 (0.31%) nginx
11 24 (0.21%) IIS
11 24 (0.21%) Tomcat
12 23 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
13 20 (0.17%) Skype for Business
14 18 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
15 16 (0.14%) CMS
15 16 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
16 15 (0.13%) NetWeaver
17 12 (0.10%) JBoss
18 11 (0.095%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 208 (1.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 155 (1.34%) Microsoft Office
3 99 (0.85%) Microsoft Project
4 81 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 45 (0.39%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.13%) AutoCAD
7 15 (0.13%) Revit
7 15 (0.13%) Simulink
8 14 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
9 9 (0.078%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.069%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.060%) Notepad++
11 7 (0.060%) Sketch
12 5 (0.043%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 4 (0.035%) Windchill
14 3 (0.026%) Trello
15 2 (0.017%) Lectora
15 2 (0.017%) Oracle Smart View
15 2 (0.017%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 146 (1.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 81 (0.70%) Remedy ITSM
3 47 (0.41%) Oracle ERP
4 40 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
5 34 (0.29%) Teamcenter
6 33 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 28 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
8 22 (0.19%) SAP PSCD
9 21 (0.18%) Primavera
10 20 (0.17%) Oracle Payroll
10 20 (0.17%) SAP GRC
11 15 (0.13%) Findur
11 15 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
12 13 (0.11%) SAP HR
12 13 (0.11%) Temenos T24
13 12 (0.10%) iTrent
13 12 (0.10%) SAP FI
13 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
14 11 (0.095%) NetSuite
15 10 (0.086%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,117 (18.26%) Azure
2 2,069 (17.85%) AWS
3 550 (4.74%) GitHub
4 525 (4.53%) Azure DevOps
5 476 (4.11%) Power Platform
6 451 (3.89%) GCP
7 349 (3.01%) GitHub Actions
8 306 (2.64%) Microsoft 365
9 298 (2.57%) Entra ID
10 287 (2.48%) Serverless
11 249 (2.15%) Amazon S3
12 203 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
13 177 (1.53%) OCI
14 176 (1.52%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 170 (1.47%) SaaS
16 162 (1.40%) Amazon EKS
17 161 (1.39%) Amazon EC2
18 146 (1.26%) PaaS
19 140 (1.21%) OpenShift
20 135 (1.16%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 488 (4.21%) Firewall
2 383 (3.30%) DNS
3 233 (2.01%) WAN
4 227 (1.96%) Network Security
5 204 (1.76%) VPN
6 198 (1.71%) LAN
7 194 (1.67%) DHCP
8 143 (1.23%) BGP
9 135 (1.16%) TCP/IP
10 119 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
11 113 (0.97%) OSPF
12 110 (0.95%) VLAN
13 89 (0.77%) Wireless
14 67 (0.58%) VSAN
15 66 (0.57%) MPLS
16 64 (0.55%) IPsec
17 63 (0.54%) SAN
18 62 (0.53%) SSL
19 59 (0.51%) VXLAN
20 58 (0.50%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 354 (3.05%) Power BI
2 318 (2.74%) PostgreSQL
3 290 (2.50%) SQL Server
4 289 (2.49%) Data Warehouse
5 169 (1.46%) Oracle Database
6 157 (1.35%) Metadata
7 138 (1.19%) Data Lake
8 132 (1.14%) Relational Database
9 123 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
10 117 (1.01%) MongoDB
11 108 (0.93%) Oracle Reports
12 102 (0.88%) MySQL
13 96 (0.83%) Pentaho
14 84 (0.72%) NoSQL
15 70 (0.60%) Amazon Redshift
16 66 (0.57%) Amazon Athena
16 66 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
17 62 (0.53%) Tableau
18 57 (0.49%) Big Data
19 50 (0.43%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 671 (5.79%) JIRA
2 590 (5.09%) Git
3 493 (4.25%) Jenkins
4 489 (4.22%) GitLab
5 132 (1.14%) Selenium
6 88 (0.76%) Postman
7 84 (0.72%) SonarQube
8 79 (0.68%) JUnit
9 74 (0.64%) JMeter
10 68 (0.59%) Maven
11 60 (0.52%) Rational DOORS
12 58 (0.50%) Cucumber
13 51 (0.44%) Visual Studio
14 48 (0.41%) Zephyr
15 47 (0.41%) Mockito
16 46 (0.40%) Cypress.io
17 45 (0.39%) Bitbucket
18 42 (0.36%) Gradle
19 39 (0.34%) Gatling
20 38 (0.33%) Artifactory
General
1 2,454 (21.17%) Public Sector
2 2,425 (20.92%) Social Skills
3 888 (7.66%) Analytical Skills
4 769 (6.63%) Finance
5 357 (3.08%) Military
6 303 (2.61%) Aerospace
7 288 (2.48%) Documentation Skills
8 179 (1.54%) Influencing Skills
9 171 (1.48%) Legal
10 156 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
11 155 (1.34%) Telecoms
12 140 (1.21%) Banking
13 127 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 108 (0.93%) Police
15 107 (0.92%) Manufacturing
16 103 (0.89%) Law
17 75 (0.65%) Presentation Skills
18 53 (0.46%) Aviation
19 43 (0.37%) Marketing
19 43 (0.37%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,824 (15.73%) Architect
2 1,284 (11.08%) Developer
3 1,104 (9.52%) Senior
4 1,000 (8.63%) Lead
5 676 (5.83%) Analyst
6 647 (5.58%) Consultant
7 534 (4.61%) Data Engineer
8 481 (4.15%) DevOps Engineer
9 421 (3.63%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 367 (3.17%) Technical Architect
11 353 (3.04%) Solutions Architect
12 328 (2.83%) Software Engineer
13 277 (2.39%) Security Architect
14 258 (2.23%) Network Engineer
15 248 (2.14%) Data Architect
16 225 (1.94%) Java Developer
17 219 (1.89%) Administrator
18 218 (1.88%) Designer
19 215 (1.85%) Delivery Manager
20 208 (1.79%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 435 (3.75%) REST
2 268 (2.31%) Spring
3 239 (2.06%) Kafka
4 236 (2.04%) .NET
5 233 (2.01%) Spring Boot
6 212 (1.83%) RESTful
7 200 (1.73%) React
8 184 (1.59%) Node.js
9 173 (1.49%) SOAP
10 157 (1.35%) JSON
11 138 (1.19%) AngularJS
12 135 (1.16%) Web Services
13 126 (1.09%) OAuth
14 123 (1.06%) HTML
15 113 (0.97%) XML
16 112 (0.97%) Middleware
17 96 (0.83%) PySpark
18 92 (0.79%) Playwright
19 89 (0.77%) Oracle Fusion
20 88 (0.76%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 489 (4.22%) Cloud Native
2 396 (3.42%) Onboarding
3 364 (3.14%) Product Ownership
4 314 (2.71%) Data Centre
5 236 (2.04%) Management Information System
6 196 (1.69%) Legacy Systems
7 169 (1.46%) Distributed Systems
7 169 (1.46%) PKI
8 143 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
9 137 (1.18%) CMDB
10 122 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
11 117 (1.01%) Data Structures
11 117 (1.01%) Hybrid Cloud
11 117 (1.01%) Replication
12 104 (0.90%) Clustering
13 97 (0.84%) Public Cloud
14 87 (0.75%) Virtual Team
15 86 (0.74%) Cyber Threat
15 86 (0.74%) Security Operations Centre
16 78 (0.67%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 956 (8.25%) Windows
2 800 (6.90%) Linux
3 323 (2.79%) Windows Server
4 226 (1.95%) Unix
5 154 (1.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 115 (0.99%) Windows 10
7 97 (0.84%) Android
8 66 (0.57%) Solaris
9 61 (0.53%) Apple iOS
10 46 (0.40%) Mac OS
11 42 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
12 36 (0.31%) AIX
13 35 (0.30%) Ubuntu
14 31 (0.27%) CentOS
15 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 22 (0.19%) VMS
17 21 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
18 18 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
19 16 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
20 14 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,443 (21.07%) Agile
2 1,823 (15.73%) DevOps
3 1,741 (15.02%) CI/CD
4 1,345 (11.60%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,290 (11.13%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,206 (10.40%) Problem-Solving
7 1,088 (9.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 944 (8.14%) Infrastructure as Code
9 921 (7.94%) Migration
10 753 (6.50%) Test Automation
11 747 (6.44%) Cybersecurity
12 743 (6.41%) ITIL
13 729 (6.29%) Analytics
14 723 (6.24%) Containerisation
15 696 (6.00%) Software Engineering
16 667 (5.75%) Roadmaps
17 644 (5.56%) Technical Leadership
18 643 (5.55%) Data Modelling
19 631 (5.44%) Decision-Making
20 630 (5.43%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,309 (11.29%) Python
2 1,162 (10.02%) SQL
3 823 (7.10%) Java
4 555 (4.79%) PowerShell
5 401 (3.46%) JavaScript
6 323 (2.79%) Bash
7 268 (2.31%) C#
8 191 (1.65%) TypeScript
9 181 (1.56%) PL/SQL
10 111 (0.96%) Bicep
11 93 (0.80%) C++
12 92 (0.79%) Shell Script
13 68 (0.59%) C
14 56 (0.48%) Apex Code
15 55 (0.47%) Kotlin
16 53 (0.46%) Scala
17 52 (0.45%) Ruby
18 49 (0.42%) Go
19 45 (0.39%) Groovy
20 36 (0.31%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8,848 (76.32%) SC Cleared
2 2,162 (18.65%) DV Cleared
3 447 (3.86%) Degree
4 446 (3.85%) BPSS Clearance
5 205 (1.77%) Cisco Certification
6 201 (1.73%) CISSP
7 169 (1.46%) Azure Certification
8 156 (1.35%) Microsoft Certification
9 137 (1.18%) AWS Certification
10 129 (1.11%) CISM
11 108 (0.93%) PMI Certification
12 104 (0.90%) PMP
13 95 (0.82%) ISTQB
14 85 (0.73%) CCNA
15 84 (0.72%) CCNP
16 67 (0.58%) Computer Science Degree
17 65 (0.56%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 53 (0.46%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 46 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
19 46 (0.40%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 465 (4.01%) QA
2 378 (3.26%) Data Quality
3 304 (2.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 294 (2.54%) NIST
5 256 (2.21%) Accessibility
6 252 (2.17%) NCSC
7 222 (1.91%) PMO
8 181 (1.56%) GDPR
9 143 (1.23%) SLA
10 141 (1.22%) GRC
11 78 (0.67%) WCAG
12 63 (0.54%) JSP 440
13 46 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
13 46 (0.40%) NIST 800
14 32 (0.28%) Def Stans
14 32 (0.28%) Government Security Classifications
15 29 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 20000
16 28 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 23 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
18 22 (0.19%) RMADS
System Software
1 817 (7.05%) Docker
2 527 (4.55%) Active Directory
3 402 (3.47%) VMware Infrastructure
4 149 (1.29%) VMware NSX
5 130 (1.12%) VMware ESXi
6 117 (1.01%) vSphere
7 111 (0.96%) Hyper-V
8 81 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
9 46 (0.40%) Oracle RAC
10 41 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
11 32 (0.28%) Firmware
12 26 (0.22%) BitLocker
13 23 (0.20%) vCloud
14 17 (0.15%) NFS
15 16 (0.14%) Postfix
16 15 (0.13%) Squid
17 11 (0.095%) Virtual Servers
18 9 (0.078%) KVM
19 7 (0.060%) Ceph
19 7 (0.060%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 998 (8.61%) Terraform
2 978 (8.44%) Kubernetes
3 437 (3.77%) Ansible
4 275 (2.37%) Grafana
5 217 (1.87%) Prometheus
6 129 (1.11%) vCenter Server
7 127 (1.10%) SCCM
8 88 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
9 72 (0.62%) SCOM
10 69 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
11 67 (0.58%) Argo
12 56 (0.48%) Oracle RMAN
13 51 (0.44%) Puppet
14 43 (0.37%) FortiGate
15 40 (0.35%) Data Guard
16 31 (0.27%) Progress Chef
17 30 (0.26%) Nagios
18 29 (0.25%) Istio
19 28 (0.24%) WSUS
20 26 (0.22%) Control-M
Vendors
1 1,389 (11.98%) Microsoft
2 936 (8.07%) Oracle
3 575 (4.96%) VMware
4 555 (4.79%) ServiceNow
5 433 (3.74%) SAP
6 305 (2.63%) Cisco
7 227 (1.96%) Google
8 215 (1.85%) Splunk
9 207 (1.79%) Databricks
10 191 (1.65%) Salesforce
11 157 (1.35%) Red Hat
12 132 (1.14%) IBM
13 131 (1.13%) Informatica
13 131 (1.13%) Talend
14 112 (0.97%) Palo Alto
15 98 (0.85%) F5
15 98 (0.85%) Juniper
16 97 (0.84%) Dynatrace
17 93 (0.80%) SolarWinds
18 92 (0.79%) Remedy