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

6 months to
1 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 3 3 4
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 7,423 6,324 7,910
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 20.77% 17.58% 17.32%
As % of the Qualifications category 62.43% 59.80% 58.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,891 3,973 4,960
10th Percentile £335 £350 £375
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -1.43%
75th Percentile £632 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 745 339 501
10th Percentile £18.87 £20.12 £20.00
25th Percentile £19.38 £24.18 £46.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -49.70% -16.67% -
75th Percentile £53.75 £67.63 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £52.50 £59.50
% change year-on-year -52.10% -11.76% -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 11,891 10,576 13,431
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.28% 29.39% 29.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,695 6,397 8,475
10th Percentile £305 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £422 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £520 £538
% change year-on-year -3.85% -3.26% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,012 508 757
10th Percentile £17.32 £19.12 £17.72
25th Percentile £19.28 £24.18 £27.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £41.71 £53.50
Median % change year-on-year -39.70% -22.05% +18.89%
75th Percentile £45.88 £66.00 £67.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £45.00 £52.05
% change year-on-year -44.11% -13.55% +15.67%

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 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 1 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 1 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 6,502 £525 -4.55% 1,959
UK excluding London 0 4,314 £525 -4.55% 1,793
London +2 2,124 £550 - 415
Work from Home +2 2,078 £538 -0.46% 959
South East -1 1,265 £517 -6.00% 713
South West 0 1,125 £550 -4.35% 499
North of England -1 772 £506 +6.53% 204
Midlands +2 690 £519 -5.73% 129
West Midlands +2 538 £525 -7.33% 101
North West +1 508 £525 +5.85% 142
East of England +2 292 £525 +2.44% 281
Yorkshire -10 163 £500 +9.59% 38
Scotland -11 148 £469 -6.25% 45
East Midlands -1 137 £431 -9.21% 27
North East 0 109 £475 - 27
Wales -4 78 £550 +10.00% 30
Northern Ireland +1 43 £500 -16.67% 13
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
1 274 (3.69%) Confluence
2 184 (2.48%) SharePoint
3 119 (1.60%) Microsoft Exchange
4 102 (1.37%) SAS
5 86 (1.16%) Apache
6 54 (0.73%) Apache Airflow
7 48 (0.65%) Apache Spark
8 45 (0.61%) nginx
9 39 (0.53%) Skype for Business
10 28 (0.38%) CMS
11 25 (0.34%) WebLogic
12 20 (0.27%) IIS
13 15 (0.20%) SharePoint Server
14 14 (0.19%) Exchange Server 2010
15 13 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2013
16 11 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 10 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2003
17 10 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2007
17 10 (0.13%) Office Communications Server
18 9 (0.12%) WordPress
Applications
1 224 (3.02%) Microsoft Office
2 162 (2.18%) Microsoft Excel
3 94 (1.27%) Microsoft Project
4 47 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 34 (0.46%) MS Visio
6 20 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
7 19 (0.26%) Simulink
8 12 (0.16%) Siemens NX
9 11 (0.15%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 10 (0.13%) Sketch
11 8 (0.11%) ProjectWise
12 7 (0.094%) Adobe XD
13 6 (0.081%) Oracle Smart View
14 5 (0.067%) Adobe Illustrator
14 5 (0.067%) FrameMaker
14 5 (0.067%) Photoshop
14 5 (0.067%) PTC Creo
14 5 (0.067%) Stateflow
14 5 (0.067%) Trello
14 5 (0.067%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 181 (2.44%) SAP S/4HANA
2 38 (0.51%) Remedy ITSM
3 30 (0.40%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 29 (0.39%) SAP EWM
4 29 (0.39%) SAP WM
5 24 (0.32%) SAP MM
6 22 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
6 22 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
7 17 (0.23%) Primavera
7 17 (0.23%) SAP HCM
8 16 (0.22%) Maximo
8 16 (0.22%) Teamcenter
9 15 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
10 14 (0.19%) SAP VC
11 13 (0.18%) SAP PP
11 13 (0.18%) SAP PS
12 12 (0.16%) SAP EHS
12 12 (0.16%) SAP QM
13 10 (0.13%) SAP HR
13 10 (0.13%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,234 (16.62%) AWS
2 1,170 (15.76%) Azure
3 356 (4.80%) GitHub
4 326 (4.39%) Microsoft 365
5 269 (3.62%) Power Platform
6 267 (3.60%) Azure DevOps
7 266 (3.58%) GCP
8 221 (2.98%) Serverless
9 190 (2.56%) GitHub Actions
10 184 (2.48%) Amazon S3
11 161 (2.17%) Entra ID
12 134 (1.81%) OpenShift
13 132 (1.78%) SaaS
14 128 (1.72%) AWS CloudFormation
14 128 (1.72%) AWS Lambda
15 123 (1.66%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 119 (1.60%) Amazon EC2
17 108 (1.45%) Amazon EKS
18 93 (1.25%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 88 (1.19%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 370 (4.98%) Firewall
2 256 (3.45%) DNS
3 173 (2.33%) VPN
4 151 (2.03%) Network Security
5 143 (1.93%) WAN
6 108 (1.45%) TCP/IP
7 100 (1.35%) LAN
8 95 (1.28%) DHCP
8 95 (1.28%) Wireless
9 93 (1.25%) BGP
10 80 (1.08%) SSL
11 67 (0.90%) SAN
12 64 (0.86%) Wi-Fi
13 58 (0.78%) MPLS
14 56 (0.75%) Cisco ISE
15 53 (0.71%) VLAN
16 52 (0.70%) IPsec
17 51 (0.69%) HTTP
18 44 (0.59%) OSPF
19 43 (0.58%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 219 (2.95%) PostgreSQL
2 176 (2.37%) Power BI
3 95 (1.28%) Amazon RDS
4 94 (1.27%) SQL Server
5 90 (1.21%) Oracle Database
6 89 (1.20%) MongoDB
7 82 (1.10%) Data Warehouse
8 80 (1.08%) Relational Database
9 79 (1.06%) NoSQL
10 77 (1.04%) Metadata
11 55 (0.74%) Azure SQL Database
12 51 (0.69%) Big Data
13 42 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
14 40 (0.54%) Pentaho
15 38 (0.51%) Amazon Athena
15 38 (0.51%) Amazon Redshift
16 37 (0.50%) SAS Enterprise Guide
17 36 (0.48%) Data Lake
18 35 (0.47%) MySQL
18 35 (0.47%) Redis
Development Applications
1 498 (6.71%) JIRA
2 401 (5.40%) Git
3 382 (5.15%) Jenkins
4 288 (3.88%) GitLab
5 84 (1.13%) Selenium
6 63 (0.85%) JUnit
7 57 (0.77%) Cypress.io
8 55 (0.74%) SonarQube
9 54 (0.73%) Postman
10 46 (0.62%) Bitbucket
10 46 (0.62%) Oracle APEX
11 38 (0.51%) Mockito
12 36 (0.48%) Artifactory
13 33 (0.44%) Cucumber
14 32 (0.43%) Maven
15 25 (0.34%) REST Assured
16 23 (0.31%) CircleCI
17 22 (0.30%) MSI
17 22 (0.30%) Vagrant
17 22 (0.30%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,009 (27.06%) Public Sector
2 1,870 (25.19%) Social Skills
3 669 (9.01%) Analytical Skills
4 515 (6.94%) Finance
5 274 (3.69%) Military
6 225 (3.03%) Telecoms
7 212 (2.86%) Manufacturing
8 180 (2.42%) Documentation Skills
9 154 (2.07%) Electronics
10 143 (1.93%) Marketing
11 136 (1.83%) Aerospace
12 107 (1.44%) Legal
12 107 (1.44%) Organisational Skills
13 93 (1.25%) Banking
14 91 (1.23%) Influencing Skills
15 82 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
16 68 (0.92%) Law
17 52 (0.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 40 (0.54%) Aviation
19 39 (0.53%) Police
Job Titles
1 982 (13.23%) Architect
2 760 (10.24%) Developer
3 657 (8.85%) Consultant
4 593 (7.99%) Senior
5 482 (6.49%) Analyst
6 454 (6.12%) Lead
7 337 (4.54%) DevOps Engineer
8 253 (3.41%) Support Engineer
9 205 (2.76%) Solutions Architect
10 202 (2.72%) Network Engineer
11 174 (2.34%) Data Engineer
12 169 (2.28%) SAP Consultant
13 149 (2.01%) AWS Engineer
14 146 (1.97%) Technical Architect
15 135 (1.82%) IT Engineer
16 134 (1.81%) Platform Engineer
17 132 (1.78%) Administrator
17 132 (1.78%) Software Engineer
18 126 (1.70%) Business Analyst
19 124 (1.67%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 280 (3.77%) REST
2 189 (2.55%) Node.js
3 179 (2.41%) React
4 173 (2.33%) Kafka
5 154 (2.07%) JSON
6 131 (1.76%) SOAP
7 128 (1.72%) Spring
8 120 (1.62%) HTML
9 110 (1.48%) RESTful
10 109 (1.47%) XML
11 102 (1.37%) Spring Boot
12 101 (1.36%) .NET
13 100 (1.35%) AngularJS
14 98 (1.32%) CSS
15 93 (1.25%) Web Services
16 76 (1.02%) OAuth
17 72 (0.97%) LDAP
18 66 (0.89%) Elastic Stack
19 63 (0.85%) Oracle Fusion
20 59 (0.79%) SAP Fiori
Miscellaneous
1 218 (2.94%) Data Centre
2 201 (2.71%) Onboarding
3 194 (2.61%) Cloud Native
4 175 (2.36%) PKI
5 162 (2.18%) Product Ownership
6 150 (2.02%) Management Information System
7 108 (1.45%) Self-Motivation
8 99 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
9 82 (1.10%) Driving Licence
10 78 (1.05%) Cyber Threat
11 70 (0.94%) Replication
12 69 (0.93%) Security Posture
13 67 (0.90%) Security Operations Centre
14 64 (0.86%) CMDB
15 63 (0.85%) Enterprise Software
15 63 (0.85%) Hybrid Cloud
16 56 (0.75%) Analytical Mindset
17 53 (0.71%) Private Cloud
18 48 (0.65%) Public Cloud
19 46 (0.62%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 798 (10.75%) Windows
2 550 (7.41%) Linux
3 188 (2.53%) Windows Server
4 178 (2.40%) Windows 10
5 109 (1.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 95 (1.28%) Android
7 91 (1.23%) Unix
8 85 (1.15%) Mac OS
9 52 (0.70%) VMS
10 36 (0.48%) Ubuntu
11 34 (0.46%) Windows Server 2019
12 29 (0.39%) Apple iOS
13 25 (0.34%) Amazon Linux
13 25 (0.34%) Windows Server 2012
13 25 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
14 24 (0.32%) Windows 7
15 21 (0.28%) CentOS
16 17 (0.23%) Windows Server 2003
17 16 (0.22%) Mac OS X
18 9 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,446 (19.48%) Agile
2 1,130 (15.22%) DevOps
3 1,029 (13.86%) CI/CD
4 887 (11.95%) Problem-Solving
5 764 (10.29%) Migration
6 585 (7.88%) Stakeholder Management
7 506 (6.82%) Cybersecurity
7 506 (6.82%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 487 (6.56%) Infrastructure as Code
9 481 (6.48%) ITIL
10 465 (6.26%) Continuous Improvement
11 415 (5.59%) Containerisation
12 411 (5.54%) Test Automation
13 409 (5.51%) Service Management
14 406 (5.47%) Workflow
15 400 (5.39%) Business Intelligence
16 370 (4.98%) Analytics
17 349 (4.70%) Roadmaps
18 348 (4.69%) Scrum
19 337 (4.54%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 921 (12.41%) Python
2 550 (7.41%) SQL
3 467 (6.29%) PowerShell
4 458 (6.17%) Java
5 386 (5.20%) JavaScript
6 228 (3.07%) Bash
7 190 (2.56%) TypeScript
8 134 (1.81%) C#
9 99 (1.33%) C++
10 83 (1.12%) Go
11 72 (0.97%) C
11 72 (0.97%) PL/SQL
12 70 (0.94%) Shell Script
13 48 (0.65%) ABAP
14 41 (0.55%) Perl
14 41 (0.55%) Ruby
15 34 (0.46%) Groovy
16 32 (0.43%) Bicep
17 31 (0.42%) MATLAB
18 28 (0.38%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 5,718 (77.03%) SC Cleared
2 1,195 (16.10%) DV Cleared
3 355 (4.78%) Degree
4 340 (4.58%) BPSS Clearance
5 138 (1.86%) CISSP
6 123 (1.66%) Microsoft Certification
7 111 (1.50%) Azure Certification
8 109 (1.47%) AWS Certification
8 109 (1.47%) Cisco Certification
9 80 (1.08%) CCNP
10 79 (1.06%) CISM
11 57 (0.77%) Computer Science Degree
12 56 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
13 49 (0.66%) CCNA
14 46 (0.62%) CEH
15 43 (0.58%) TOGAF Certification
16 42 (0.57%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 40 (0.54%) CTC Cleared
18 37 (0.50%) CHECK Team Member
19 32 (0.43%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 230 (3.10%) QA
2 213 (2.87%) NIST
3 210 (2.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 166 (2.24%) NCSC
5 139 (1.87%) SLA
6 136 (1.83%) Data Quality
7 134 (1.81%) GDPR
8 132 (1.78%) Accessibility
9 62 (0.84%) PMO
10 52 (0.70%) JSP 440
11 46 (0.62%) WCAG
12 44 (0.59%) NIST 800
13 38 (0.51%) GRC
14 32 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 29 (0.39%) COBIT
15 29 (0.39%) Def Stans
16 22 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials
17 21 (0.28%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 21 (0.28%) RMADS
18 18 (0.24%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 587 (7.91%) Docker
2 419 (5.64%) Active Directory
3 214 (2.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 74 (1.00%) VMware NSX
5 68 (0.92%) vSphere
6 59 (0.79%) VMware ESXi
7 51 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
8 43 (0.58%) Firmware
9 38 (0.51%) Hyper-V
10 28 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
11 20 (0.27%) DFS Replication
12 18 (0.24%) Postfix
13 15 (0.20%) Dovecot
13 15 (0.20%) NFS
14 11 (0.15%) ISA Server
14 11 (0.15%) Squid
14 11 (0.15%) Terminal Services
15 10 (0.13%) BitLocker
15 10 (0.13%) Brightmail
16 7 (0.094%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 708 (9.54%) Kubernetes
2 675 (9.09%) Terraform
3 279 (3.76%) Ansible
4 182 (2.45%) Grafana
5 155 (2.09%) Prometheus
6 112 (1.51%) SCCM
7 96 (1.29%) Single Sign-On
8 82 (1.10%) Microsoft Intune
9 66 (0.89%) vCenter Server
10 61 (0.82%) Argo
11 53 (0.71%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 45 (0.61%) Packer
13 37 (0.50%) Kibana
14 34 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
15 30 (0.40%) vRealize
16 29 (0.39%) OPNET
17 24 (0.32%) Nessus
17 24 (0.32%) Progress Chef
17 24 (0.32%) Puppet
17 24 (0.32%) SCOM
Vendors
1 932 (12.56%) Microsoft
2 526 (7.09%) SAP
3 431 (5.81%) Cisco
4 384 (5.17%) Oracle
5 374 (5.04%) VMware
6 354 (4.77%) ServiceNow
7 185 (2.49%) Splunk
8 148 (1.99%) Juniper
9 141 (1.90%) Red Hat
10 125 (1.68%) Google
11 114 (1.54%) Salesforce
12 102 (1.37%) Palo Alto
13 100 (1.35%) Dell
14 98 (1.32%) Atlassian
15 97 (1.31%) HP
16 83 (1.12%) CyberArk
17 78 (1.05%) Databricks
17 78 (1.05%) IBM
17 78 (1.05%) Remedy
18 73 (0.98%) Apple