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 28 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,052 5,410 7,901
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.67% 17.71% 18.19%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.32% 57.34% 60.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,665 3,508 5,177
10th Percentile £381 £338 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £537 £550
% change year-on-year -2.28% -2.32% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 834 394 590
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.50 £14.48
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £61.67 £25.15 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year +145.21% -55.48% -5.85%
75th Percentile £75.00 £62.44 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.50 £76.25 £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 15,943 9,435 12,967
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.26% 30.88% 29.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,653 5,854 8,007
10th Percentile £350 £275 £310
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.91% -0.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £620 £638
90th Percentile £713 £702 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £507 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +1.40% -4.76% -0.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,163 625 1,119
10th Percentile £17.64 £17.83 £14.00
25th Percentile £24.22 £20.24 £20.00
Median hourly rate £51.00 £28.55 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +78.63% -30.26% -26.47%
75th Percentile £72.54 £60.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.25 £75.00 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £27.39 £43.00
% change year-on-year +82.57% -36.31% -21.19%

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 28 June 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 28 June 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 28 June 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 9,537 £525 -2.33% 1,727
UK excluding London +1 6,180 £525 -2.28% 1,420
London +7 3,391 £528 +0.48% 503
Work from Home +5 3,042 £525 - 873
South East +1 2,304 £550 - 486
South West 0 1,299 £538 -4.44% 338
North of England +2 999 £500 - 246
Midlands +2 918 £469 -8.49% 140
West Midlands +2 794 £470 -10.48% 91
North West 0 534 £525 +5.00% 148
East of England +2 350 £550 +10.00% 118
Scotland +25 276 £500 +14.29% 59
Yorkshire -2 264 £500 +1.63% 56
North East +1 231 £475 -1.04% 45
East Midlands -4 113 £441 -7.24% 48
Wales +3 95 £538 +13.16% 45
Northern Ireland +5 31 £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
1 390 (3.53%) Confluence
2 231 (2.09%) SharePoint
3 163 (1.47%) SAS
4 133 (1.20%) Microsoft Exchange
5 105 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
5 105 (0.95%) Apache Spark
6 93 (0.84%) Apache
7 45 (0.41%) Jupyter
8 44 (0.40%) nginx
9 36 (0.33%) WebLogic
10 25 (0.23%) Tomcat
11 20 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
12 19 (0.17%) IIS
13 16 (0.14%) CMS
13 16 (0.14%) NetWeaver
14 15 (0.14%) 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
1 170 (1.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 142 (1.28%) Microsoft Office
3 78 (0.71%) Microsoft Project
4 72 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 50 (0.45%) MS Visio
6 15 (0.14%) Simulink
7 14 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
8 11 (0.100%) SOLIDWORKS
9 10 (0.090%) AutoCAD
9 10 (0.090%) Revit
10 9 (0.081%) Chatbot
11 7 (0.063%) Notepad++
12 4 (0.036%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.036%) Sketch
13 3 (0.027%) Windchill
14 2 (0.018%) CATIA
14 2 (0.018%) Lectora
14 2 (0.018%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.018%) PlantUML
14 2 (0.018%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 126 (1.14%) SAP S/4HANA
2 63 (0.57%) Remedy ITSM
3 45 (0.41%) Oracle ERP
4 33 (0.30%) Teamcenter
5 32 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 30 (0.27%) 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 (0.14%) Findur
11 15 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
12 12 (0.11%) iTrent
12 12 (0.11%) Maximo
12 12 (0.11%) Siebel CRM
12 12 (0.11%) Temenos T24
13 11 (0.100%) SAP ERP
14 10 (0.090%) Oracle Assets
14 10 (0.090%) SAP HR
15 9 (0.081%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,008 (18.17%) AWS
2 1,924 (17.41%) Azure
3 467 (4.23%) GitHub
4 436 (3.94%) Azure DevOps
5 420 (3.80%) Power Platform
6 415 (3.75%) GCP
7 288 (2.61%) GitHub Actions
8 284 (2.57%) Serverless
9 277 (2.51%) Entra ID
10 275 (2.49%) Microsoft 365
11 235 (2.13%) Amazon S3
12 198 (1.79%) AWS Lambda
13 162 (1.47%) Amazon EC2
14 157 (1.42%) SaaS
15 156 (1.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 154 (1.39%) PaaS
17 142 (1.28%) OCI
18 141 (1.28%) OpenShift
19 138 (1.25%) Amazon EKS
20 131 (1.19%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 459 (4.15%) Firewall
2 330 (2.99%) DNS
3 243 (2.20%) Network Security
4 226 (2.04%) WAN
5 195 (1.76%) LAN
6 185 (1.67%) VPN
7 167 (1.51%) DHCP
8 135 (1.22%) BGP
9 114 (1.03%) OSPF
10 113 (1.02%) VLAN
11 111 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
12 108 (0.98%) TCP/IP
13 84 (0.76%) Wireless
14 68 (0.62%) MPLS
15 64 (0.58%) SD-WAN
16 63 (0.57%) SAN
17 59 (0.53%) VXLAN
18 51 (0.46%) BIG-IP
18 51 (0.46%) IPsec
19 49 (0.44%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 327 (2.96%) Power BI
2 299 (2.71%) PostgreSQL
3 264 (2.39%) Data Warehouse
4 243 (2.20%) SQL Server
5 164 (1.48%) Oracle Database
6 147 (1.33%) Metadata
7 132 (1.19%) Data Lake
8 119 (1.08%) Relational Database
9 115 (1.04%) Amazon RDS
9 115 (1.04%) MongoDB
10 92 (0.83%) MySQL
11 87 (0.79%) Elasticsearch
11 87 (0.79%) Pentaho
12 82 (0.74%) Oracle Reports
13 78 (0.71%) Amazon Redshift
14 74 (0.67%) Amazon Athena
14 74 (0.67%) NoSQL
15 66 (0.60%) Big Data
15 66 (0.60%) Tableau
16 56 (0.51%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 628 (5.68%) JIRA
2 503 (4.55%) Git
3 477 (4.32%) GitLab
4 446 (4.04%) Jenkins
5 126 (1.14%) Selenium
6 88 (0.80%) JUnit
7 84 (0.76%) Postman
8 80 (0.72%) SonarQube
9 66 (0.60%) JMeter
10 59 (0.53%) Rational DOORS
11 57 (0.52%) Cucumber
12 49 (0.44%) Artifactory
13 46 (0.42%) Mockito
14 45 (0.41%) REST Assured
15 44 (0.40%) Bitbucket
15 44 (0.40%) Cypress.io
16 43 (0.39%) Maven
17 42 (0.38%) Visual Studio
18 41 (0.37%) Zephyr
19 37 (0.33%) Gatling
General
1 2,433 (22.01%) Public Sector
2 2,225 (20.13%) Social Skills
3 764 (6.91%) Analytical Skills
4 705 (6.38%) Finance
5 344 (3.11%) Military
6 298 (2.70%) Documentation Skills
7 291 (2.63%) Aerospace
8 178 (1.61%) Legal
9 151 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
10 133 (1.20%) Banking
11 125 (1.13%) Telecoms
12 103 (0.93%) Organisational Skills
13 99 (0.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 99 (0.90%) Law
14 95 (0.86%) Manufacturing
15 77 (0.70%) Police
15 77 (0.70%) Presentation Skills
16 55 (0.50%) Aviation
17 44 (0.40%) Marketing
18 39 (0.35%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,684 (15.24%) Architect
2 1,140 (10.31%) Developer
3 969 (8.77%) Senior
4 851 (7.70%) Lead
5 718 (6.50%) Analyst
6 547 (4.95%) Consultant
7 523 (4.73%) Data Engineer
8 503 (4.55%) DevOps Engineer
9 372 (3.37%) Technical Architect
10 345 (3.12%) Software Engineer
11 342 (3.09%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 328 (2.97%) Solutions Architect
13 272 (2.46%) Network Engineer
14 249 (2.25%) Security Architect
15 235 (2.13%) Business Analyst
16 221 (2.00%) Project Manager
17 216 (1.95%) Designer
18 211 (1.91%) Java Developer
19 206 (1.86%) AWS Engineer
20 203 (1.84%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 334 (3.02%) REST
2 264 (2.39%) Spring
3 217 (1.96%) Spring Boot
4 202 (1.83%) React
5 201 (1.82%) Kafka
6 194 (1.76%) .NET
7 193 (1.75%) Node.js
8 167 (1.51%) RESTful
9 137 (1.24%) SOAP
10 130 (1.18%) JSON
11 125 (1.13%) AngularJS
12 120 (1.09%) LDAP
13 115 (1.04%) PySpark
14 110 (1.00%) OAuth
15 109 (0.99%) Web Services
16 99 (0.90%) Middleware
17 97 (0.88%) Playwright
18 92 (0.83%) HTML
19 87 (0.79%) OpenID
20 85 (0.77%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 433 (3.92%) Cloud Native
2 366 (3.31%) Product Ownership
3 336 (3.04%) Onboarding
4 317 (2.87%) Data Centre
5 222 (2.01%) Management Information System
6 169 (1.53%) Legacy Systems
7 149 (1.35%) Distributed Systems
8 148 (1.34%) PKI
9 114 (1.03%) Enterprise Software
9 114 (1.03%) Replication
10 109 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
11 103 (0.93%) CMDB
11 103 (0.93%) Security Posture
12 96 (0.87%) Data Structures
13 92 (0.83%) Hybrid Cloud
14 88 (0.80%) Clustering
15 87 (0.79%) Public Cloud
16 81 (0.73%) Security Operations Centre
17 80 (0.72%) Virtual Team
18 71 (0.64%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 860 (7.78%) Windows
2 742 (6.71%) Linux
3 268 (2.42%) Windows Server
4 197 (1.78%) Unix
5 142 (1.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 92 (0.83%) Android
7 87 (0.79%) Windows 10
8 64 (0.58%) Apple iOS
9 52 (0.47%) Solaris
10 41 (0.37%) Mac OS
11 38 (0.34%) Ubuntu
12 31 (0.28%) AIX
13 30 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
14 26 (0.24%) Windows Server 2016
15 22 (0.20%) CentOS
16 21 (0.19%) VMS
17 16 (0.14%) Windows 7
18 15 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
19 13 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
20 11 (0.100%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,225 (20.13%) Agile
2 1,726 (15.62%) DevOps
3 1,589 (14.38%) CI/CD
4 1,161 (10.50%) Problem-Solving
5 1,122 (10.15%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,105 (10.00%) Continuous Improvement
7 915 (8.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 857 (7.75%) Migration
9 822 (7.44%) Infrastructure as Code
10 691 (6.25%) Test Automation
11 687 (6.22%) Cybersecurity
12 663 (6.00%) Containerisation
13 657 (5.94%) ITIL
14 652 (5.90%) Software Engineering
15 649 (5.87%) Analytics
16 619 (5.60%) Roadmaps
17 601 (5.44%) Decision-Making
18 568 (5.14%) Data Modelling
19 536 (4.85%) AI
20 511 (4.62%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,235 (11.17%) Python
2 1,049 (9.49%) SQL
3 749 (6.78%) Java
4 498 (4.51%) PowerShell
5 333 (3.01%) JavaScript
6 235 (2.13%) Bash
7 234 (2.12%) C#
8 192 (1.74%) TypeScript
9 153 (1.38%) PL/SQL
10 98 (0.89%) C++
11 95 (0.86%) Shell Script
12 80 (0.72%) Bicep
13 65 (0.59%) C
14 61 (0.55%) Apex Code
15 59 (0.53%) Ruby
16 58 (0.52%) Go
17 47 (0.43%) Kotlin
17 47 (0.43%) Scala
18 46 (0.42%) Ada
19 41 (0.37%) R
Qualifications
1 8,471 (76.65%) SC Cleared
2 2,004 (18.13%) DV Cleared
3 426 (3.85%) Degree
4 338 (3.06%) BPSS Clearance
5 214 (1.94%) Cisco Certification
6 178 (1.61%) CISSP
7 140 (1.27%) Azure Certification
8 121 (1.09%) AWS Certification
9 119 (1.08%) Microsoft Certification
10 112 (1.01%) CISM
11 109 (0.99%) CCNP
12 92 (0.83%) CCNA
13 87 (0.79%) PMP
14 86 (0.78%) PMI Certification
15 76 (0.69%) ISTQB
16 68 (0.62%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 66 (0.60%) Computer Science Degree
18 56 (0.51%) ITIL Certification
19 40 (0.36%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 39 (0.35%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 427 (3.86%) QA
2 338 (3.06%) Data Quality
3 316 (2.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 311 (2.81%) NIST
5 240 (2.17%) NCSC
6 225 (2.04%) Accessibility
7 187 (1.69%) GDPR
8 172 (1.56%) PMO
9 120 (1.09%) SLA
10 98 (0.89%) GRC
11 69 (0.62%) JSP 440
12 53 (0.48%) WCAG
13 45 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
14 43 (0.39%) NIST 800
15 34 (0.31%) RMADS
16 33 (0.30%) Def Stans
17 29 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 26 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
19 24 (0.22%) COBIT
20 23 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 725 (6.56%) Docker
2 458 (4.14%) Active Directory
3 323 (2.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 116 (1.05%) VMware ESXi
5 114 (1.03%) VMware NSX
6 91 (0.82%) Hyper-V
7 85 (0.77%) vSphere
8 80 (0.72%) Virtual Machines
9 39 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
10 34 (0.31%) Firmware
11 26 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
12 23 (0.21%) BitLocker
12 23 (0.21%) NFS
13 21 (0.19%) vCloud
14 19 (0.17%) Postfix
14 19 (0.17%) Squid
15 13 (0.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 9 (0.081%) Microsoft App-V
17 7 (0.063%) KVM
18 6 (0.054%) Corosync
Systems Management
1 912 (8.25%) Terraform
2 902 (8.16%) Kubernetes
3 383 (3.47%) Ansible
4 269 (2.43%) Grafana
5 225 (2.04%) Prometheus
6 109 (0.99%) vCenter Server
7 91 (0.82%) Single Sign-On
8 84 (0.76%) SCCM
9 65 (0.59%) Microsoft Intune
10 53 (0.48%) Argo
11 52 (0.47%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 50 (0.45%) FortiGate
13 45 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
14 42 (0.38%) Puppet
15 41 (0.37%) SCOM
16 34 (0.31%) Podman
17 28 (0.25%) Progress Chef
18 26 (0.24%) Kibana
18 26 (0.24%) Nagios
19 25 (0.23%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 1,135 (10.27%) Microsoft
2 788 (7.13%) Oracle
3 510 (4.61%) VMware
4 469 (4.24%) ServiceNow
5 355 (3.21%) SAP
6 328 (2.97%) Cisco
7 217 (1.96%) Splunk
8 197 (1.78%) Databricks
9 184 (1.66%) Salesforce
10 183 (1.66%) Google
11 165 (1.49%) Red Hat
12 146 (1.32%) Talend
13 128 (1.16%) Informatica
14 123 (1.11%) IBM
15 111 (1.00%) Palo Alto
16 98 (0.89%) Juniper
17 94 (0.85%) Fortinet
18 91 (0.82%) F5
19 87 (0.79%) SolarWinds
20 86 (0.78%) Denodo