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

6 months to
26 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 11,034 5,362 7,907
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.68% 17.73% 18.19%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.26% 57.36% 61.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,650 3,477 5,175
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 £714 £699 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £537 £550
% change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 836 386 589
10th Percentile £18.20 £18.44 £14.45
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £61.33 £25.15 £56.50
Median % change year-on-year +143.86% -55.49% -5.83%
75th Percentile £75.00 £63.44 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.50 £76.25 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £61.67 £25.15 £58.02
% change year-on-year +145.21% -56.65% +0.91%

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 15,931 9,348 12,944
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.31% 30.91% 29.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,644 5,798 7,991
10th Percentile £350 £275 £310
25th Percentile £425 £412 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £620 £638
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £507 £500 £527
% change year-on-year +1.40% -5.12% -0.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,165 614 1,119
10th Percentile £17.43 £17.67 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.78 £20.00 £20.06
Median hourly rate £50.49 £28.34 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +78.14% -30.78% -25.90%
75th Percentile £72.54 £60.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.25 £75.35 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £27.38 £43.00
% change year-on-year +82.65% -36.34% -19.87%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 9,521 £525 -2.33% 1,926
UK excluding London +1 6,169 £525 -2.23% 1,571
London +7 3,384 £525 - 567
Work from Home +5 3,052 £525 - 961
South East +1 2,300 £550 - 502
South West 0 1,305 £538 -4.44% 412
North of England +1 988 £500 +0.05% 284
Midlands +2 918 £469 -8.51% 144
West Midlands +2 795 £470 -10.50% 90
North West 0 528 £525 +5.00% 166
East of England +2 351 £550 +10.00% 121
Scotland +23 275 £500 +14.29% 63
Yorkshire -5 259 £500 +1.63% 74
North East +1 231 £475 -1.04% 47
East Midlands -5 112 £441 -7.24% 53
Wales +4 94 £525 +10.53% 49
Northern Ireland +7 31 £650 +30.00% 30

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
1 391 (3.54%) Confluence
2 235 (2.13%) SharePoint
3 163 (1.48%) SAS
4 133 (1.21%) Microsoft Exchange
5 106 (0.96%) Apache Spark
6 105 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
7 93 (0.84%) Apache
8 45 (0.41%) Jupyter
9 44 (0.40%) nginx
10 35 (0.32%) WebLogic
11 25 (0.23%) Tomcat
12 20 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
13 19 (0.17%) IIS
14 16 (0.15%) CMS
14 16 (0.15%) NetWeaver
15 15 (0.14%) Oracle Application Server
16 14 (0.13%) Skype for Business
17 12 (0.11%) Tuxedo
18 10 (0.091%) ArcGIS
18 10 (0.091%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 173 (1.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 146 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 81 (0.73%) Microsoft Project
4 76 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 49 (0.44%) MS Visio
6 16 (0.15%) Simulink
7 14 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
8 11 (0.100%) SOLIDWORKS
9 10 (0.091%) AutoCAD
9 10 (0.091%) Revit
10 9 (0.082%) 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
1 125 (1.13%) SAP S/4HANA
2 62 (0.56%) Remedy ITSM
3 45 (0.41%) Oracle ERP
4 33 (0.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 33 (0.30%) Teamcenter
5 30 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
5 30 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
6 18 (0.16%) Primavera
7 17 (0.15%) SAP PSCD
8 16 (0.15%) SAP GRC
9 15 (0.14%) Findur
9 15 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
10 12 (0.11%) iTrent
10 12 (0.11%) Maximo
10 12 (0.11%) Siebel CRM
10 12 (0.11%) Temenos T24
11 11 (0.100%) SAP ERP
12 10 (0.091%) Oracle Assets
12 10 (0.091%) SAP HR
13 9 (0.082%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,012 (18.23%) AWS
2 1,926 (17.46%) Azure
3 464 (4.21%) GitHub
4 437 (3.96%) Azure DevOps
5 419 (3.80%) Power Platform
6 418 (3.79%) GCP
7 286 (2.59%) Serverless
8 285 (2.58%) GitHub Actions
9 275 (2.49%) Microsoft 365
10 273 (2.47%) Entra ID
11 234 (2.12%) Amazon S3
12 199 (1.80%) AWS Lambda
13 162 (1.47%) Amazon EC2
14 156 (1.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 156 (1.41%) SaaS
15 152 (1.38%) PaaS
16 142 (1.29%) OCI
16 142 (1.29%) OpenShift
17 138 (1.25%) Amazon EKS
18 130 (1.18%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 457 (4.14%) Firewall
2 326 (2.95%) DNS
3 239 (2.17%) Network Security
4 222 (2.01%) WAN
5 195 (1.77%) LAN
6 181 (1.64%) VPN
7 164 (1.49%) DHCP
8 135 (1.22%) BGP
9 114 (1.03%) OSPF
10 111 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
11 110 (1.00%) VLAN
12 106 (0.96%) TCP/IP
13 86 (0.78%) Wireless
14 70 (0.63%) MPLS
15 63 (0.57%) SAN
15 63 (0.57%) SD-WAN
16 58 (0.53%) VXLAN
17 51 (0.46%) BIG-IP
17 51 (0.46%) IPsec
18 49 (0.44%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 325 (2.95%) Power BI
2 299 (2.71%) PostgreSQL
3 263 (2.38%) Data Warehouse
4 237 (2.15%) SQL Server
5 164 (1.49%) Oracle Database
6 144 (1.31%) Metadata
7 131 (1.19%) Data Lake
8 118 (1.07%) Relational Database
9 114 (1.03%) Amazon RDS
9 114 (1.03%) MongoDB
10 88 (0.80%) MySQL
11 87 (0.79%) Pentaho
12 84 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
13 82 (0.74%) Oracle Reports
14 77 (0.70%) Amazon Redshift
15 75 (0.68%) NoSQL
16 73 (0.66%) Amazon Athena
17 65 (0.59%) Big Data
17 65 (0.59%) Tableau
18 56 (0.51%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 629 (5.70%) JIRA
2 502 (4.55%) Git
3 479 (4.34%) GitLab
4 446 (4.04%) Jenkins
5 126 (1.14%) Selenium
6 88 (0.80%) JUnit
7 84 (0.76%) Postman
8 81 (0.73%) SonarQube
9 66 (0.60%) JMeter
10 59 (0.53%) Rational DOORS
11 57 (0.52%) Cucumber
12 49 (0.44%) Artifactory
13 45 (0.41%) Mockito
13 45 (0.41%) REST Assured
14 44 (0.40%) Bitbucket
14 44 (0.40%) Cypress.io
15 43 (0.39%) Maven
16 42 (0.38%) Visual Studio
17 41 (0.37%) Zephyr
18 37 (0.34%) Gatling
General
1 2,430 (22.02%) Public Sector
2 2,227 (20.18%) Social Skills
3 762 (6.91%) Analytical Skills
4 700 (6.34%) Finance
5 343 (3.11%) Military
6 299 (2.71%) Documentation Skills
7 293 (2.66%) Aerospace
8 178 (1.61%) Legal
9 148 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
10 133 (1.21%) Banking
11 127 (1.15%) Telecoms
12 102 (0.92%) Organisational Skills
13 99 (0.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 99 (0.90%) Law
14 95 (0.86%) Manufacturing
15 78 (0.71%) Presentation Skills
16 74 (0.67%) Police
17 55 (0.50%) Aviation
18 44 (0.40%) Marketing
19 39 (0.35%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,676 (15.19%) Architect
2 1,134 (10.28%) Developer
3 967 (8.76%) Senior
4 853 (7.73%) Lead
5 720 (6.53%) Analyst
6 547 (4.96%) Consultant
7 526 (4.77%) Data Engineer
8 501 (4.54%) DevOps Engineer
9 371 (3.36%) Technical Architect
10 343 (3.11%) Software Engineer
11 339 (3.07%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 327 (2.96%) Solutions Architect
13 273 (2.47%) Network Engineer
14 245 (2.22%) Security Architect
15 236 (2.14%) Business Analyst
16 222 (2.01%) Project Manager
17 215 (1.95%) Designer
18 207 (1.88%) Java Developer
19 205 (1.86%) AWS Engineer
20 202 (1.83%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 337 (3.05%) REST
2 262 (2.37%) Spring
3 215 (1.95%) Spring Boot
4 201 (1.82%) React
5 199 (1.80%) Kafka
6 194 (1.76%) .NET
6 194 (1.76%) Node.js
7 166 (1.50%) RESTful
8 140 (1.27%) SOAP
9 130 (1.18%) JSON
10 125 (1.13%) AngularJS
10 125 (1.13%) LDAP
11 118 (1.07%) PySpark
12 110 (1.00%) OAuth
13 109 (0.99%) Web Services
14 100 (0.91%) Middleware
15 97 (0.88%) Playwright
16 93 (0.84%) HTML
17 87 (0.79%) OpenID
18 85 (0.77%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 433 (3.92%) Cloud Native
2 364 (3.30%) Product Ownership
3 336 (3.05%) Onboarding
4 317 (2.87%) Data Centre
5 223 (2.02%) Management Information System
6 169 (1.53%) Legacy Systems
7 148 (1.34%) Distributed Systems
7 148 (1.34%) PKI
8 117 (1.06%) Enterprise Software
9 112 (1.02%) Replication
10 109 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
11 108 (0.98%) Security Posture
12 102 (0.92%) CMDB
13 96 (0.87%) Data Structures
14 91 (0.82%) Hybrid Cloud
15 88 (0.80%) Public Cloud
16 86 (0.78%) Clustering
17 81 (0.73%) Security Operations Centre
18 78 (0.71%) Virtual Team
19 71 (0.64%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 857 (7.77%) Windows
2 739 (6.70%) Linux
3 264 (2.39%) Windows Server
4 194 (1.76%) Unix
5 143 (1.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 92 (0.83%) Android
7 88 (0.80%) Windows 10
8 64 (0.58%) Apple iOS
9 52 (0.47%) Solaris
10 41 (0.37%) Mac OS
11 39 (0.35%) Ubuntu
12 31 (0.28%) AIX
13 30 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
14 26 (0.24%) Windows Server 2016
15 23 (0.21%) CentOS
16 20 (0.18%) VMS
17 16 (0.15%) 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 2,216 (20.08%) Agile
2 1,718 (15.57%) DevOps
3 1,582 (14.34%) CI/CD
4 1,160 (10.51%) Problem-Solving
5 1,125 (10.20%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,103 (10.00%) Continuous Improvement
7 914 (8.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 858 (7.78%) Migration
9 821 (7.44%) Infrastructure as Code
10 689 (6.24%) Cybersecurity
11 688 (6.24%) Test Automation
12 661 (5.99%) Containerisation
13 653 (5.92%) ITIL
14 650 (5.89%) Analytics
14 650 (5.89%) Software Engineering
15 617 (5.59%) Roadmaps
16 597 (5.41%) Decision-Making
17 567 (5.14%) Data Modelling
18 534 (4.84%) AI
19 513 (4.65%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,233 (11.17%) Python
2 1,048 (9.50%) SQL
3 744 (6.74%) Java
4 498 (4.51%) PowerShell
5 334 (3.03%) JavaScript
6 234 (2.12%) C#
7 231 (2.09%) Bash
8 196 (1.78%) TypeScript
9 152 (1.38%) PL/SQL
10 98 (0.89%) C++
11 96 (0.87%) Shell Script
12 78 (0.71%) Bicep
13 66 (0.60%) C
14 61 (0.55%) Apex Code
15 59 (0.53%) Ruby
16 58 (0.53%) Go
17 49 (0.44%) Scala
18 48 (0.44%) Ada
19 47 (0.43%) Kotlin
20 40 (0.36%) R
Qualifications
1 8,457 (76.64%) SC Cleared
2 1,997 (18.10%) DV Cleared
3 426 (3.86%) Degree
4 338 (3.06%) BPSS Clearance
5 213 (1.93%) Cisco Certification
6 177 (1.60%) CISSP
7 137 (1.24%) Azure Certification
8 120 (1.09%) AWS Certification
9 115 (1.04%) Microsoft Certification
10 111 (1.01%) CISM
11 108 (0.98%) CCNP
12 92 (0.83%) CCNA
13 88 (0.80%) PMP
14 87 (0.79%) PMI Certification
15 76 (0.69%) ISTQB
16 68 (0.62%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 65 (0.59%) Computer Science Degree
18 56 (0.51%) ITIL Certification
19 40 (0.36%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 40 (0.36%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 428 (3.88%) QA
2 340 (3.08%) Data Quality
3 319 (2.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 310 (2.81%) NIST
5 241 (2.18%) NCSC
6 225 (2.04%) Accessibility
7 189 (1.71%) GDPR
8 176 (1.60%) PMO
9 121 (1.10%) SLA
10 98 (0.89%) GRC
11 68 (0.62%) JSP 440
12 53 (0.48%) WCAG
13 45 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
14 42 (0.38%) NIST 800
15 35 (0.32%) 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
1 722 (6.54%) Docker
2 461 (4.18%) Active Directory
3 322 (2.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 116 (1.05%) VMware ESXi
5 114 (1.03%) VMware NSX
6 91 (0.82%) Hyper-V
7 84 (0.76%) vSphere
8 78 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
9 39 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
10 33 (0.30%) Firmware
11 25 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
12 23 (0.21%) BitLocker
12 23 (0.21%) NFS
13 21 (0.19%) vCloud
14 19 (0.17%) Postfix
15 18 (0.16%) Squid
16 13 (0.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 9 (0.082%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.054%) Corosync
18 6 (0.054%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 909 (8.24%) Terraform
2 900 (8.16%) Kubernetes
3 383 (3.47%) Ansible
4 269 (2.44%) Grafana
5 225 (2.04%) Prometheus
6 109 (0.99%) vCenter Server
7 91 (0.82%) Single Sign-On
8 83 (0.75%) SCCM
9 63 (0.57%) Microsoft Intune
10 54 (0.49%) 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 39 (0.35%) SCOM
16 35 (0.32%) Podman
17 28 (0.25%) Progress Chef
18 26 (0.24%) Kibana
18 26 (0.24%) Nagios
18 26 (0.24%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 1,135 (10.29%) Microsoft
2 784 (7.11%) Oracle
3 509 (4.61%) VMware
4 466 (4.22%) ServiceNow
5 353 (3.20%) SAP
6 326 (2.95%) Cisco
7 219 (1.98%) Splunk
8 201 (1.82%) Databricks
9 184 (1.67%) Salesforce
10 182 (1.65%) Google
11 168 (1.52%) Red Hat
12 146 (1.32%) Talend
13 127 (1.15%) Informatica
14 124 (1.12%) IBM
15 109 (0.99%) Palo Alto
16 97 (0.88%) Juniper
17 92 (0.83%) Fortinet
18 90 (0.82%) F5
19 87 (0.79%) SolarWinds
20 86 (0.78%) Denodo