Security Cleared Contracts

Security Clearance
UK

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for Security Cleared qualifications. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months to 7 December 2023 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
7 Dec 2023
Same period 2022 Same period 2021
Rank 4 7 13
Rank change year-on-year +3 +6 -8
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 7,843 10,369 8,623
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 17.47% 13.51% 9.63%
As % of the Qualifications category 59.17% 55.18% 46.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,934 7,328 5,541
10th Percentile £375 £375 £363
25th Percentile £463 £466 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £563 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.22% +7.14% +7.69%
75th Percentile £650 £650 £623
90th Percentile £725 £725 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £560 £550 £500
% change year-on-year +1.82% +10.00% +6.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 488 485 334
10th Percentile £20.00 £18.13 £14.13
25th Percentile £46.18 £21.00 £18.71
Median hourly rate £60.00 £60.00 £43.19
Median % change year-on-year - +38.92% -4.02%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £59.88
90th Percentile £80.00 £78.10 £71.78
UK excluding London median hourly rate £59.27 £60.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year -1.23% +33.33% +7.14%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK

Security Cleared is in the Academic Qualifications and Professional Certifications category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for academic qualifications or professional certifications.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 13,255 18,792 18,363
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 29.53% 24.48% 20.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,370 12,639 11,916
10th Percentile £300 £325 £313
25th Percentile £425 £450 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £515
Median % change year-on-year - +6.80% +8.42%
75th Percentile £650 £650 £608
90th Percentile £725 £740 £699
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £525 £475
% change year-on-year +2.38% +10.53% +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 740 810 723
10th Percentile £17.72 £14.25 £12.75
25th Percentile £27.50 £19.06 £16.25
Median hourly rate £52.50 £45.00 £31.60
Median % change year-on-year +16.67% +42.41% -21.00%
75th Percentile £67.61 £65.75 £53.73
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £66.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £51.89 £45.00 £27.50
% change year-on-year +15.31% +63.64% -18.52%

Security Cleared
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Security Cleared as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Security Cleared.

Daily rate trend for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Security Cleared over the 6 months to 7 December 2023.

Daily rate histogram for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Security Cleared.

Hourly rate trend for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Security Cleared over the 6 months to 7 December 2023.

Hourly rate histogram for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Top 17 Contract 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 7 December 2023. 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 +4 6,920 £550 -2.22% 2,076
UK excluding London +2 4,773 £560 +1.82% 1,593
Work from Home +3 2,762 £550 - 929
London +11 2,218 £550 -8.33% 506
South East +1 1,603 £550 - 547
South West 0 1,487 £575 - 445
North of England +2 596 £550 - 200
North West +5 480 £550 +4.27% 143
Midlands +7 468 £525 +5.00% 171
West Midlands +7 347 £525 +5.00% 126
East of England +2 326 £613 +8.89% 136
Scotland +36 314 £600 +33.33% 92
East Midlands +10 126 £550 +13.70% 45
Wales 0 95 £615 +9.82% 34
Yorkshire -11 95 £550 - 39
North East -3 36 £550 -4.35% 19
Northern Ireland +3 5 £558 +39.46% 4

Security Cleared
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 307 (3.91%) Confluence
2 188 (2.40%) SharePoint
3 57 (0.73%) MS Exchange
4 51 (0.65%) nginx
5 45 (0.57%) Apache
6 30 (0.38%) CMS
7 28 (0.36%) Skype for Business
8 24 (0.31%) IIS
9 22 (0.28%) SharePoint Server
10 20 (0.26%) SAS
11 18 (0.23%) Apache Spark
11 18 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2013
12 17 (0.22%) OpenStack
13 14 (0.18%) WordPress
14 13 (0.17%) Red Hat Fuse
15 11 (0.14%) Apache Airflow
16 10 (0.13%) GeoServer
16 10 (0.13%) JBoss
17 9 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2010
18 8 (0.10%) NServiceBus
Applications
1 259 (3.30%) Microsoft Office
2 98 (1.25%) Microsoft Excel
3 59 (0.75%) Microsoft Project
4 57 (0.73%) MS Visio
5 53 (0.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 33 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
7 18 (0.23%) Simulink
8 10 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.10%) Sketch
9 8 (0.10%) SPSS
9 8 (0.10%) Stata
9 8 (0.10%) Trello
10 7 (0.089%) Oracle Smart View
10 7 (0.089%) SOLIDWORKS
11 5 (0.064%) CATIA
12 4 (0.051%) Adobe Premiere
12 4 (0.051%) Chatbot
12 4 (0.051%) Fusion 360
12 4 (0.051%) Lectora
13 3 (0.038%) InVision
Business Applications
1 64 (0.82%) SAP S/4HANA
2 49 (0.62%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 31 (0.40%) Primavera
4 27 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
5 19 (0.24%) Remedy ITSM
6 17 (0.22%) SAP PSCD
7 16 (0.20%) SAP HR
8 15 (0.19%) SAP HCM
9 13 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
9 13 (0.17%) SAP WM
10 12 (0.15%) SAP FI-CA
11 11 (0.14%) SAP FI
11 11 (0.14%) SAP IS-U
11 11 (0.14%) Teamcenter
12 10 (0.13%) SAP PS
13 9 (0.11%) IBM Planning Analytics
14 8 (0.10%) Magento
14 8 (0.10%) Oracle BPM
14 8 (0.10%) SAP ERP
14 8 (0.10%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,018 (12.98%) AWS
2 858 (10.94%) Azure
3 231 (2.95%) Microsoft 365
4 193 (2.46%) SaaS
5 188 (2.40%) Azure DevOps
6 169 (2.15%) PaaS
7 146 (1.86%) GitHub
8 143 (1.82%) IaaS
9 124 (1.58%) Power Platform
10 115 (1.47%) Serverless
11 110 (1.40%) Entra ID
12 105 (1.34%) GCP
13 89 (1.13%) Cloud Computing
14 80 (1.02%) AWS Lambda
15 70 (0.89%) Amazon S3
16 63 (0.80%) AWS CloudFormation
17 49 (0.62%) Power Automate
18 47 (0.60%) Azure Monitor
19 46 (0.59%) Azure Sentinel
20 45 (0.57%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 555 (7.08%) Firewall
2 355 (4.53%) WAN
3 319 (4.07%) LAN
4 239 (3.05%) Network Security
5 237 (3.02%) DNS
6 209 (2.66%) VPN
7 159 (2.03%) BGP
8 130 (1.66%) 5G
8 130 (1.66%) TCP/IP
9 113 (1.44%) DHCP
10 111 (1.42%) Broadband
11 110 (1.40%) OSPF
12 108 (1.38%) Wireless
13 95 (1.21%) Skype
14 94 (1.20%) SAN
14 94 (1.20%) VLAN
15 90 (1.15%) IPsec
16 82 (1.05%) Internet
17 81 (1.03%) Cisco ASA
18 75 (0.96%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 190 (2.42%) SQL Server
2 166 (2.12%) PostgreSQL
3 95 (1.21%) Relational Database
4 87 (1.11%) Power BI
5 79 (1.01%) Oracle Database
6 75 (0.96%) Elasticsearch
7 65 (0.83%) MySQL
8 64 (0.82%) Amazon RDS
9 56 (0.71%) Big Data
10 50 (0.64%) Metadata
11 44 (0.56%) MongoDB
12 43 (0.55%) NoSQL
13 41 (0.52%) Oracle Reports
14 32 (0.41%) Data Warehouse
15 29 (0.37%) Data Lake
15 29 (0.37%) DynamoDB
16 27 (0.34%) Oracle Database 11g
17 26 (0.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 26 (0.33%) SQL Server Reporting Services
18 23 (0.29%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 455 (5.80%) JIRA
2 299 (3.81%) Git
3 237 (3.02%) Jenkins
4 141 (1.80%) GitLab
5 108 (1.38%) Rational DOORS
6 87 (1.11%) Bitbucket
7 71 (0.91%) Selenium
8 50 (0.64%) Cucumber
9 37 (0.47%) JUnit
10 30 (0.38%) Oracle APEX
10 30 (0.38%) Robot Framework
10 30 (0.38%) Visual Studio
11 27 (0.34%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 24 (0.31%) Maven
13 23 (0.29%) Axure RP
14 22 (0.28%) Eclipse
14 22 (0.28%) SonarQube
14 22 (0.28%) TestRail
15 21 (0.27%) Cypress.io
15 21 (0.27%) Postman
General
1 1,743 (22.22%) Public Sector
2 1,328 (16.93%) Social Skills
3 538 (6.86%) Finance
4 516 (6.58%) Analytical Skills
5 227 (2.89%) Organisational Skills
6 192 (2.45%) Military
7 190 (2.42%) Telecoms
8 183 (2.33%) Law
9 181 (2.31%) Manufacturing
10 143 (1.82%) Electronics
11 138 (1.76%) Aerospace
12 137 (1.75%) Marketing
13 117 (1.49%) Presentation Skills
14 110 (1.40%) Police
15 92 (1.17%) Influencing Skills
16 89 (1.13%) Legal
17 78 (0.99%) Documentation Skills
18 66 (0.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 59 (0.75%) Banking
20 45 (0.57%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 998 (12.72%) Architect
2 778 (9.92%) Developer
3 652 (8.31%) Senior
4 560 (7.14%) Analyst
5 508 (6.48%) Consultant
6 424 (5.41%) Lead
7 310 (3.95%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 291 (3.71%) DevOps Engineer
9 275 (3.51%) Network Engineer
10 271 (3.46%) Project Manager
11 246 (3.14%) Solutions Architect
12 200 (2.55%) Software Engineer
13 175 (2.23%) Delivery Manager
14 172 (2.19%) Business Analyst
15 170 (2.17%) Support Engineer
15 170 (2.17%) Tester
16 152 (1.94%) Administrator
16 152 (1.94%) Network Architect
17 150 (1.91%) Security Architect
18 148 (1.89%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 191 (2.44%) .NET
2 188 (2.40%) Web Services
3 179 (2.28%) REST
4 176 (2.24%) HTML
5 157 (2.00%) CSS
6 120 (1.53%) React
7 115 (1.47%) Node.js
8 102 (1.30%) Spring
9 86 (1.10%) SOAP
10 84 (1.07%) Oracle Fusion
11 71 (0.91%) AngularJS
11 71 (0.91%) LDAP
12 68 (0.87%) Spring Boot
13 64 (0.82%) Kafka
13 64 (0.82%) RESTful
14 57 (0.73%) JSON
15 55 (0.70%) .NET Framework
16 48 (0.61%) 802.1X
17 46 (0.59%) Elastic Stack
18 44 (0.56%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 296 (3.77%) PKI
2 263 (3.35%) Management Information System
3 255 (3.25%) Data Centre
4 156 (1.99%) Product Ownership
5 146 (1.86%) Onboarding
6 124 (1.58%) Data Protection Act
7 116 (1.48%) Self-Motivation
8 108 (1.38%) Mobile App
9 100 (1.28%) Private Cloud
10 99 (1.26%) CMDB
11 73 (0.93%) Driving Licence
12 70 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
13 62 (0.79%) Cloud Native
13 62 (0.79%) Security Operations Centre
13 62 (0.79%) Video Conferencing
14 61 (0.78%) Public Cloud
15 55 (0.70%) Cyber Defence
16 54 (0.69%) Legacy Systems
17 51 (0.65%) Cyber Threat
18 49 (0.62%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 983 (12.53%) Windows
2 881 (11.23%) Linux
3 362 (4.62%) Windows Server
4 177 (2.26%) Windows 10
5 173 (2.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 154 (1.96%) Unix
7 106 (1.35%) Windows Server 2012
8 102 (1.30%) Windows Server 2016
8 102 (1.30%) Windows Server 2019
9 92 (1.17%) Windows 7
10 51 (0.65%) Solaris
11 49 (0.62%) Android
12 44 (0.56%) Ubuntu
13 40 (0.51%) CentOS
14 32 (0.41%) Apple iOS
15 24 (0.31%) VMS
15 24 (0.31%) Windows Server 2003
16 21 (0.27%) Debian
16 21 (0.27%) Windows Server 2008
17 19 (0.24%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,453 (18.53%) Agile
2 795 (10.14%) DevOps
3 757 (9.65%) Problem-Solving
4 701 (8.94%) Stakeholder Management
5 650 (8.29%) Cybersecurity
6 555 (7.08%) Migration
7 552 (7.04%) ITIL
8 527 (6.72%) CI/CD
9 446 (5.69%) Project Management
10 419 (5.34%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 379 (4.83%) Software Engineering
12 337 (4.30%) Service Management
13 333 (4.25%) Test Automation
14 329 (4.19%) Roadmaps
15 328 (4.18%) Change Management
16 312 (3.98%) Scrum
17 310 (3.95%) Project Delivery
18 300 (3.83%) SIEM
19 295 (3.76%) Infrastructure as Code
20 292 (3.72%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 690 (8.80%) Python
2 531 (6.77%) Java
3 481 (6.13%) SQL
4 432 (5.51%) PowerShell
5 356 (4.54%) JavaScript
6 264 (3.37%) C#
7 220 (2.81%) C++
8 203 (2.59%) Bash
9 138 (1.76%) C
10 106 (1.35%) TypeScript
11 85 (1.08%) PL/SQL
12 80 (1.02%) Go
13 76 (0.97%) MATLAB
14 53 (0.68%) Apex Code
15 44 (0.56%) Shell Script
16 42 (0.54%) R
17 39 (0.50%) Ruby
18 36 (0.46%) VBScript
19 34 (0.43%) Ada
20 33 (0.42%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 5,631 (71.80%) SC Cleared
2 1,843 (23.50%) DV Cleared
3 579 (7.38%) Degree
4 276 (3.52%) BPSS Clearance
5 240 (3.06%) Cisco Certification
6 141 (1.80%) CCNA
7 140 (1.79%) CISSP
8 119 (1.52%) CCNP
9 105 (1.34%) SANS
10 101 (1.29%) GIAC
11 98 (1.25%) CISM
12 97 (1.24%) CREST Certified
13 93 (1.19%) Computer Science Degree
14 90 (1.15%) OSCP
15 89 (1.13%) GPEN
16 75 (0.96%) CTC Cleared
17 63 (0.80%) Microsoft Certification
18 57 (0.73%) CESG Certified Professional
18 57 (0.73%) ISTQB
19 56 (0.71%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 226 (2.88%) NCSC
2 188 (2.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 186 (2.37%) NIST
4 175 (2.23%) QA
5 143 (1.82%) GDPR
6 115 (1.47%) PCI DSS
7 110 (1.40%) SLA
8 102 (1.30%) PMO
9 88 (1.12%) Accessibility
10 84 (1.07%) RMADS
11 77 (0.98%) JSP 440
12 62 (0.79%) Data Quality
13 30 (0.38%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 28 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
15 27 (0.34%) GRC
16 25 (0.32%) Def Stans
17 23 (0.29%) Government Security Classifications
18 16 (0.20%) WCAG
19 14 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 14 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 27005
System Software
1 595 (7.59%) Active Directory
2 446 (5.69%) VMware Infrastructure
3 373 (4.76%) Docker
4 119 (1.52%) Firmware
5 102 (1.30%) VMware NSX
6 101 (1.29%) vSphere
7 96 (1.22%) Hyper-V
8 70 (0.89%) VMware ESXi
9 67 (0.85%) Virtual Machines
10 52 (0.66%) Virtual Desktop
11 14 (0.18%) OpenAM
12 13 (0.17%) Microsoft App-V
13 10 (0.13%) KVM
13 10 (0.13%) NFS
13 10 (0.13%) Postfix
13 10 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
14 9 (0.11%) Embedded Firmware
15 8 (0.10%) BitLocker
15 8 (0.10%) Terminal Services
15 8 (0.10%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 449 (5.72%) Terraform
2 414 (5.28%) Kubernetes
3 303 (3.86%) Ansible
4 209 (2.66%) SCCM
5 101 (1.29%) SCOM
6 86 (1.10%) Puppet
7 82 (1.05%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 74 (0.94%) WSUS
9 71 (0.91%) Packer
10 59 (0.75%) FortiGate
11 57 (0.73%) Microsoft Intune
12 54 (0.69%) vCenter Server
13 52 (0.66%) Grafana
14 51 (0.65%) vRealize
15 48 (0.61%) Single Sign-On
16 39 (0.50%) Prometheus
17 38 (0.48%) VxRail
18 35 (0.45%) Nessus
19 31 (0.40%) NetBackup
20 29 (0.37%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 985 (12.56%) Microsoft
2 701 (8.94%) VMware
3 499 (6.36%) Cisco
4 443 (5.65%) Oracle
5 351 (4.48%) SAP
6 267 (3.40%) ServiceNow
7 256 (3.26%) Juniper
8 197 (2.51%) Red Hat
9 155 (1.98%) HP
10 148 (1.89%) Atlassian
11 137 (1.75%) Palo Alto
12 92 (1.17%) Splunk
12 92 (1.17%) Virgin Media
13 88 (1.12%) Salesforce
14 86 (1.10%) IBM
15 84 (1.07%) Dell
15 84 (1.07%) Fortinet
16 83 (1.06%) Citrix
17 79 (1.01%) Google
18 67 (0.85%) Remedy