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

6 months to
3 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,520 5,870 7,240
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.68% 17.73% 18.55%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.11% 57.21% 61.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,016 3,738 4,848
10th Percentile £385 £340 £344
25th Percentile £453 £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 £695 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 839 529 499
10th Percentile £18.32 £18.51 £15.22
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +151.03% -54.27% -8.33%
75th Percentile £78.73 £48.75 £71.82
90th Percentile £88.00 £73.75 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £57.44
% change year-on-year +151.03% -56.22% -2.67%

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 16,670 10,261 11,681
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.37% 30.99% 29.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,139 6,355 7,433
10th Percentile £350 £281 £313
25th Percentile £431 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £638
90th Percentile £715 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,245 788 857
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.48
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.38 £21.25
Median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -22.77%
75th Percentile £73.00 £55.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £86.19 £74.13 £77.19
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +98.81% -44.11% -15.90%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 9,989 £537 -0.05% 2,748
UK excluding London +1 6,482 £525 -2.33% 2,020
London +7 3,533 £550 +4.76% 866
Work from Home +4 3,107 £525 -1.87% 1,404
South East +1 2,455 £560 +4.19% 699
South West 0 1,326 £538 -6.52% 479
North of England +2 1,129 £505 +1.00% 385
Midlands +3 962 £469 -6.20% 222
West Midlands +1 827 £469 -6.20% 170
North West 0 610 £525 - 223
East of England 0 323 £552 +5.14% 150
Yorkshire +3 303 £500 +1.63% 93
Scotland +11 256 £494 +3.08% 80
North East +1 240 £475 -5.00% 72
East Midlands 0 123 £428 -7.57% 50
Wales +3 97 £550 +15.79% 32
Northern Ireland +5 33 £650 +25.00% 20

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
1 412 (3.58%) Confluence
2 268 (2.33%) SharePoint
3 192 (1.67%) SAS
4 121 (1.05%) Microsoft Exchange
5 102 (0.89%) Apache Spark
6 97 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
7 94 (0.82%) Apache
8 41 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 38 (0.33%) Jupyter
9 38 (0.33%) nginx
10 24 (0.21%) IIS
10 24 (0.21%) Tomcat
11 20 (0.17%) Oracle Application Server
12 19 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
13 16 (0.14%) CMS
13 16 (0.14%) NetWeaver
13 16 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
14 13 (0.11%) Skype for Business
15 12 (0.10%) Tuxedo
16 10 (0.087%) JBoss
Applications
1 209 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 151 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
3 101 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 76 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 46 (0.40%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.13%) Simulink
8 14 (0.12%) AutoCAD
8 14 (0.12%) Revit
8 14 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
9 9 (0.078%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.069%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.061%) Notepad++
11 7 (0.061%) Sketch
12 4 (0.035%) Trello
13 3 (0.026%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 3 (0.026%) Windchill
14 2 (0.017%) CPLEX
14 2 (0.017%) Houdini
14 2 (0.017%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 151 (1.31%) SAP S/4HANA
2 78 (0.68%) Remedy ITSM
3 43 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
4 42 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
5 36 (0.31%) Teamcenter
6 32 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 23 (0.20%) Dynamics CRM
7 23 (0.20%) SAP PSCD
8 20 (0.17%) Primavera
8 20 (0.17%) SAP GRC
9 16 (0.14%) Oracle Payroll
10 15 (0.13%) Findur
11 14 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
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
14 11 (0.095%) SAP HR
15 10 (0.087%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,091 (18.15%) Azure
2 2,050 (17.80%) AWS
3 523 (4.54%) GitHub
4 504 (4.38%) Azure DevOps
5 468 (4.06%) Power Platform
6 441 (3.83%) GCP
7 323 (2.80%) GitHub Actions
8 305 (2.65%) Microsoft 365
9 291 (2.53%) Entra ID
10 286 (2.48%) Serverless
11 252 (2.19%) Amazon S3
12 205 (1.78%) AWS Lambda
13 168 (1.46%) OCI
14 166 (1.44%) SaaS
15 163 (1.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 162 (1.41%) Amazon EC2
17 161 (1.40%) Amazon EKS
18 154 (1.34%) PaaS
19 132 (1.15%) OpenShift
20 127 (1.10%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 489 (4.24%) Firewall
2 371 (3.22%) DNS
3 231 (2.01%) Network Security
4 230 (2.00%) WAN
5 197 (1.71%) VPN
6 195 (1.69%) LAN
7 182 (1.58%) DHCP
8 146 (1.27%) BGP
9 131 (1.14%) TCP/IP
10 117 (1.02%) OSPF
11 114 (0.99%) Wi-Fi
12 107 (0.93%) VLAN
13 92 (0.80%) Wireless
14 68 (0.59%) MPLS
15 67 (0.58%) IPsec
16 63 (0.55%) SAN
16 63 (0.55%) VSAN
17 62 (0.54%) SD-WAN
18 61 (0.53%) SSL
19 60 (0.52%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 356 (3.09%) Power BI
2 306 (2.66%) PostgreSQL
3 282 (2.45%) SQL Server
4 275 (2.39%) Data Warehouse
5 167 (1.45%) Oracle Database
6 153 (1.33%) Metadata
7 135 (1.17%) Data Lake
8 126 (1.09%) Relational Database
9 109 (0.95%) MongoDB
10 106 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
11 99 (0.86%) Oracle Reports
12 94 (0.82%) MySQL
13 90 (0.78%) Pentaho
14 80 (0.69%) NoSQL
15 74 (0.64%) Elasticsearch
16 72 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
17 69 (0.60%) Amazon Athena
18 60 (0.52%) Tableau
19 58 (0.50%) Big Data
20 54 (0.47%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 664 (5.76%) JIRA
2 561 (4.87%) Git
3 467 (4.05%) GitLab
4 458 (3.98%) Jenkins
5 122 (1.06%) Selenium
6 85 (0.74%) SonarQube
7 83 (0.72%) JUnit
8 75 (0.65%) Postman
9 68 (0.59%) Maven
10 65 (0.56%) JMeter
11 56 (0.49%) Cucumber
11 56 (0.49%) Rational DOORS
12 50 (0.43%) Mockito
13 48 (0.42%) Visual Studio
14 45 (0.39%) Cypress.io
15 42 (0.36%) Bitbucket
16 41 (0.36%) Zephyr
17 40 (0.35%) Artifactory
18 39 (0.34%) Gradle
18 39 (0.34%) REST Assured
General
1 2,482 (21.55%) Public Sector
2 2,364 (20.52%) Social Skills
3 867 (7.53%) Analytical Skills
4 764 (6.63%) Finance
5 360 (3.13%) Military
6 288 (2.50%) Aerospace
7 285 (2.47%) Documentation Skills
8 176 (1.53%) Influencing Skills
8 176 (1.53%) Legal
9 149 (1.29%) Telecoms
10 141 (1.22%) Organisational Skills
11 128 (1.11%) Banking
12 119 (1.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 104 (0.90%) Police
14 103 (0.89%) Manufacturing
15 99 (0.86%) Law
16 77 (0.67%) Presentation Skills
17 52 (0.45%) Aviation
18 41 (0.36%) Marketing
19 40 (0.35%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,820 (15.80%) Architect
2 1,297 (11.26%) Developer
3 1,088 (9.44%) Senior
4 983 (8.53%) Lead
5 699 (6.07%) Analyst
6 627 (5.44%) Consultant
7 526 (4.57%) Data Engineer
8 473 (4.11%) DevOps Engineer
9 409 (3.55%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 363 (3.15%) Technical Architect
11 351 (3.05%) Solutions Architect
12 336 (2.92%) Software Engineer
13 285 (2.47%) Security Architect
14 263 (2.28%) Network Engineer
15 236 (2.05%) Data Architect
15 236 (2.05%) Java Developer
16 222 (1.93%) Designer
17 210 (1.82%) Delivery Manager
18 208 (1.81%) Project Manager
19 207 (1.80%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 424 (3.68%) REST
2 270 (2.34%) Spring
3 235 (2.04%) Spring Boot
4 227 (1.97%) .NET
5 223 (1.94%) Kafka
6 208 (1.81%) RESTful
7 207 (1.80%) React
8 188 (1.63%) Node.js
9 172 (1.49%) SOAP
10 155 (1.35%) JSON
11 140 (1.22%) AngularJS
12 130 (1.13%) Web Services
13 125 (1.09%) OAuth
14 115 (1.00%) HTML
15 106 (0.92%) Middleware
16 103 (0.89%) XML
17 102 (0.89%) PySpark
18 91 (0.79%) Playwright
19 82 (0.71%) CSS
20 81 (0.70%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 476 (4.13%) Cloud Native
2 397 (3.45%) Onboarding
3 359 (3.12%) Product Ownership
4 323 (2.80%) Data Centre
5 236 (2.05%) Management Information System
6 197 (1.71%) Legacy Systems
7 173 (1.50%) Distributed Systems
8 171 (1.48%) PKI
9 132 (1.15%) Enterprise Software
10 130 (1.13%) CMDB
11 125 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
12 116 (1.01%) Data Structures
13 108 (0.94%) Hybrid Cloud
13 108 (0.94%) Replication
14 103 (0.89%) Clustering
15 95 (0.82%) Public Cloud
16 88 (0.76%) Virtual Team
17 83 (0.72%) Cyber Threat
18 82 (0.71%) Security Operations Centre
19 80 (0.69%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 928 (8.06%) Windows
2 792 (6.88%) Linux
3 310 (2.69%) Windows Server
4 228 (1.98%) Unix
5 155 (1.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 101 (0.88%) Android
7 98 (0.85%) Windows 10
8 65 (0.56%) Solaris
9 64 (0.56%) Apple iOS
10 48 (0.42%) Mac OS
11 41 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
12 37 (0.32%) AIX
13 35 (0.30%) Ubuntu
14 30 (0.26%) CentOS
15 22 (0.19%) VMS
16 21 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
17 17 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
18 15 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
19 13 (0.11%) Windows 7
20 12 (0.10%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,408 (20.90%) Agile
2 1,780 (15.45%) DevOps
3 1,684 (14.62%) CI/CD
4 1,276 (11.08%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,262 (10.95%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,218 (10.57%) Problem-Solving
7 1,051 (9.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 894 (7.76%) Infrastructure as Code
9 879 (7.63%) Migration
10 745 (6.47%) Cybersecurity
11 735 (6.38%) ITIL
12 713 (6.19%) Analytics
13 708 (6.15%) Test Automation
14 706 (6.13%) Containerisation
15 690 (5.99%) Software Engineering
16 667 (5.79%) Roadmaps
17 635 (5.51%) Decision-Making
18 632 (5.49%) Data Modelling
19 617 (5.36%) Technical Leadership
20 614 (5.33%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,284 (11.15%) Python
2 1,126 (9.77%) SQL
3 819 (7.11%) Java
4 526 (4.57%) PowerShell
5 378 (3.28%) JavaScript
6 303 (2.63%) Bash
7 257 (2.23%) C#
8 191 (1.66%) TypeScript
9 181 (1.57%) PL/SQL
10 106 (0.92%) Bicep
11 93 (0.81%) Shell Script
12 89 (0.77%) C++
13 65 (0.56%) C
14 61 (0.53%) Apex Code
15 57 (0.49%) Kotlin
16 55 (0.48%) Ruby
17 49 (0.43%) Scala
18 48 (0.42%) Go
19 41 (0.36%) Groovy
20 36 (0.31%) R
Qualifications
1 8,796 (76.35%) SC Cleared
2 2,166 (18.80%) DV Cleared
3 447 (3.88%) Degree
4 424 (3.68%) BPSS Clearance
5 212 (1.84%) Cisco Certification
6 190 (1.65%) CISSP
7 166 (1.44%) Azure Certification
8 150 (1.30%) Microsoft Certification
9 134 (1.16%) AWS Certification
10 118 (1.02%) CISM
11 108 (0.94%) PMI Certification
12 104 (0.90%) PMP
13 93 (0.81%) CCNA
13 93 (0.81%) CCNP
14 81 (0.70%) ISTQB
15 68 (0.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 65 (0.56%) Computer Science Degree
17 50 (0.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 48 (0.42%) ITIL Certification
18 48 (0.42%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 445 (3.86%) QA
2 368 (3.19%) Data Quality
3 310 (2.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 306 (2.66%) NIST
5 256 (2.22%) Accessibility
6 246 (2.14%) NCSC
7 211 (1.83%) PMO
8 181 (1.57%) GDPR
9 140 (1.22%) GRC
9 140 (1.22%) SLA
10 78 (0.68%) WCAG
11 63 (0.55%) JSP 440
12 51 (0.44%) NIST 800
13 45 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials
14 32 (0.28%) Government Security Classifications
15 28 (0.24%) Def Stans
15 28 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 20000
16 27 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 22 (0.19%) RMADS
18 19 (0.16%) COBIT
System Software
1 796 (6.91%) Docker
2 516 (4.48%) Active Directory
3 392 (3.40%) VMware Infrastructure
4 146 (1.27%) VMware NSX
5 132 (1.15%) VMware ESXi
6 111 (0.96%) vSphere
7 107 (0.93%) Hyper-V
8 80 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
9 46 (0.40%) Oracle RAC
10 37 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
11 30 (0.26%) Firmware
12 22 (0.19%) vCloud
13 20 (0.17%) BitLocker
14 18 (0.16%) NFS
14 18 (0.16%) Postfix
15 17 (0.15%) Squid
16 10 (0.087%) KVM
17 8 (0.069%) Microsoft App-V
18 7 (0.061%) Ceph
18 7 (0.061%) UAG
Systems Management
1 962 (8.35%) Terraform
2 940 (8.16%) Kubernetes
3 420 (3.65%) Ansible
4 264 (2.29%) Grafana
5 210 (1.82%) Prometheus
6 130 (1.13%) vCenter Server
7 109 (0.95%) SCCM
8 84 (0.73%) Microsoft Intune
9 69 (0.60%) Argo
10 67 (0.58%) SCOM
10 67 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
11 55 (0.48%) Oracle RMAN
12 50 (0.43%) Puppet
13 44 (0.38%) FortiGate
14 39 (0.34%) Data Guard
15 30 (0.26%) Nagios
16 29 (0.25%) Progress Chef
17 25 (0.22%) Podman
17 25 (0.22%) Red Hat Satellite
18 24 (0.21%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,324 (11.49%) Microsoft
2 898 (7.80%) Oracle
3 570 (4.95%) VMware
4 551 (4.78%) ServiceNow
5 430 (3.73%) SAP
6 310 (2.69%) Cisco
7 216 (1.88%) Google
8 207 (1.80%) Splunk
9 199 (1.73%) Databricks
10 197 (1.71%) Salesforce
11 158 (1.37%) Red Hat
12 135 (1.17%) Talend
13 134 (1.16%) Informatica
14 119 (1.03%) IBM
15 111 (0.96%) Palo Alto
16 105 (0.91%) Juniper
17 97 (0.84%) F5
18 95 (0.82%) SolarWinds
19 89 (0.77%) Remedy
20 86 (0.75%) Citrix