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

6 months to
16 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,652 5,932 7,228
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.70% 17.93% 18.64%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.17% 57.33% 62.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,150 3,746 4,819
10th Percentile £381 £350 £350
25th Percentile £453 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £537 £534 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.61% -2.95% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £640
90th Percentile £725 £700 £735
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 835 559 497
10th Percentile £19.33 £18.51 £15.39
25th Percentile £26.44 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £64.09 £25.15 £55.80
Median % change year-on-year +154.83% -54.93% -7.00%
75th Percentile £80.00 £48.13 £71.25
90th Percentile £88.00 £73.75 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £57.50
% change year-on-year +158.45% -56.26% -

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 16,845 10,348 11,632
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.37% 31.27% 30.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,288 6,362 7,388
10th Percentile £350 £288 £313
25th Percentile £431 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £526
Median % change year-on-year - -0.24% -4.32%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £638
90th Percentile £715 £702 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £514 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.80% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,263 822 844
10th Percentile £17.72 £17.98 £14.94
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.38 £21.25
Median hourly rate £51.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +102.78% -41.51% -21.82%
75th Percentile £74.00 £53.95 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.80 £73.75 £75.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £47.50
% change year-on-year +98.81% -47.05% -8.46%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 10,095 £538 - 2,722
UK excluding London +1 6,570 £525 -2.33% 2,032
London +7 3,560 £550 +3.77% 884
Work from Home +3 3,140 £525 -2.33% 1,324
South East +1 2,463 £560 +4.19% 672
South West 0 1,362 £538 -6.48% 511
North of England +2 1,150 £510 +2.00% 367
Midlands 0 963 £469 -8.93% 177
West Midlands +1 835 £469 -8.93% 134
North West +2 633 £525 -0.94% 235
East of England 0 331 £550 - 177
Yorkshire +2 302 £492 - 61
Scotland +11 262 £484 +0.26% 93
North East 0 239 £475 -3.80% 74
East Midlands -2 116 £444 -8.92% 42
Wales +4 101 £550 +15.79% 42
Northern Ireland +5 33 £650 +21.50% 34

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
1 411 (3.53%) Confluence
2 278 (2.39%) SharePoint
3 198 (1.70%) SAS
4 122 (1.05%) Microsoft Exchange
5 98 (0.84%) Apache Spark
6 97 (0.83%) Apache Airflow
7 92 (0.79%) Apache
8 36 (0.31%) Jupyter
9 35 (0.30%) WebLogic
10 34 (0.29%) nginx
11 24 (0.21%) IIS
12 23 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
13 22 (0.19%) Tomcat
14 20 (0.17%) Skype for Business
15 18 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
16 17 (0.15%) CMS
16 17 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
17 15 (0.13%) NetWeaver
18 12 (0.10%) JBoss
19 11 (0.094%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 210 (1.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 160 (1.37%) Microsoft Office
3 100 (0.86%) Microsoft Project
4 90 (0.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (0.38%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.14%) AutoCAD
7 16 (0.14%) Revit
8 15 (0.13%) Simulink
8 15 (0.13%) SOLIDWORKS
9 9 (0.077%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.069%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.060%) Notepad++
11 7 (0.060%) Sketch
11 7 (0.060%) Windchill
12 5 (0.043%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 3 (0.026%) Trello
14 2 (0.017%) CPLEX
14 2 (0.017%) Houdini
14 2 (0.017%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 146 (1.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 83 (0.71%) Remedy ITSM
3 51 (0.44%) Oracle ERP
4 41 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
5 34 (0.29%) Teamcenter
6 33 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 28 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
8 22 (0.19%) SAP GRC
8 22 (0.19%) SAP PSCD
9 21 (0.18%) Oracle Payroll
9 21 (0.18%) Primavera
10 16 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
11 15 (0.13%) Findur
12 13 (0.11%) SAP FI
12 13 (0.11%) SAP HR
12 13 (0.11%) Temenos T24
13 12 (0.10%) iTrent
13 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
14 11 (0.094%) NetSuite
15 10 (0.086%) Integrated Workplace Management System
Cloud Services
1 2,151 (18.46%) Azure
2 2,079 (17.84%) AWS
3 548 (4.70%) GitHub
4 533 (4.57%) Azure DevOps
5 483 (4.15%) Power Platform
6 459 (3.94%) GCP
7 348 (2.99%) GitHub Actions
8 317 (2.72%) Microsoft 365
9 299 (2.57%) Entra ID
10 283 (2.43%) Serverless
11 235 (2.02%) Amazon S3
12 199 (1.71%) AWS Lambda
13 180 (1.54%) OCI
14 172 (1.48%) SaaS
15 166 (1.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 160 (1.37%) Amazon EKS
17 148 (1.27%) Amazon EC2
18 146 (1.25%) PaaS
19 140 (1.20%) OpenShift
20 134 (1.15%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 489 (4.20%) Firewall
2 385 (3.30%) DNS
3 236 (2.03%) WAN
4 224 (1.92%) Network Security
5 206 (1.77%) VPN
6 199 (1.71%) LAN
7 196 (1.68%) DHCP
8 145 (1.24%) BGP
9 141 (1.21%) TCP/IP
10 122 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
11 112 (0.96%) OSPF
12 107 (0.92%) VLAN
13 86 (0.74%) Wireless
14 68 (0.58%) VSAN
15 67 (0.58%) MPLS
16 64 (0.55%) IPsec
17 63 (0.54%) SSL
18 60 (0.51%) SAN
18 60 (0.51%) SD-WAN
19 58 (0.50%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 357 (3.06%) Power BI
2 319 (2.74%) PostgreSQL
3 298 (2.56%) SQL Server
4 288 (2.47%) Data Warehouse
5 167 (1.43%) Oracle Database
6 160 (1.37%) Metadata
7 137 (1.18%) Data Lake
7 137 (1.18%) Relational Database
8 119 (1.02%) MongoDB
9 114 (0.98%) Amazon RDS
10 107 (0.92%) Oracle Reports
11 105 (0.90%) MySQL
12 97 (0.83%) Pentaho
13 85 (0.73%) NoSQL
14 70 (0.60%) Amazon Athena
15 69 (0.59%) Amazon Redshift
16 61 (0.52%) Elasticsearch
17 60 (0.51%) Tableau
18 57 (0.49%) Big Data
19 50 (0.43%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 666 (5.72%) JIRA
2 583 (5.00%) Git
3 493 (4.23%) GitLab
4 492 (4.22%) Jenkins
5 137 (1.18%) Selenium
6 88 (0.76%) Postman
7 83 (0.71%) SonarQube
8 77 (0.66%) JUnit
9 76 (0.65%) JMeter
10 68 (0.58%) Maven
11 59 (0.51%) Cucumber
11 59 (0.51%) Rational DOORS
12 52 (0.45%) Visual Studio
13 48 (0.41%) Cypress.io
13 48 (0.41%) Zephyr
14 46 (0.39%) Mockito
15 43 (0.37%) Bitbucket
15 43 (0.37%) Gradle
16 40 (0.34%) Gatling
17 38 (0.33%) Artifactory
General
1 2,460 (21.11%) Social Skills
2 2,448 (21.01%) Public Sector
3 905 (7.77%) Analytical Skills
4 780 (6.69%) Finance
5 353 (3.03%) Military
6 314 (2.69%) Aerospace
7 300 (2.57%) Documentation Skills
8 185 (1.59%) Influencing Skills
9 168 (1.44%) Legal
10 157 (1.35%) Telecoms
11 156 (1.34%) Organisational Skills
12 143 (1.23%) Banking
13 135 (1.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 113 (0.97%) Manufacturing
15 110 (0.94%) Police
16 107 (0.92%) Law
17 67 (0.58%) Presentation Skills
18 50 (0.43%) Aviation
19 44 (0.38%) Marketing
20 43 (0.37%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,839 (15.78%) Architect
2 1,280 (10.99%) Developer
3 1,110 (9.53%) Senior
4 1,010 (8.67%) Lead
5 667 (5.72%) Analyst
6 662 (5.68%) Consultant
7 534 (4.58%) Data Engineer
8 481 (4.13%) DevOps Engineer
9 421 (3.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 372 (3.19%) Technical Architect
11 354 (3.04%) Solutions Architect
12 322 (2.76%) Software Engineer
13 274 (2.35%) Security Architect
14 265 (2.27%) Network Engineer
15 249 (2.14%) Data Architect
16 226 (1.94%) Java Developer
17 218 (1.87%) Administrator
17 218 (1.87%) Designer
18 212 (1.82%) Delivery Manager
19 206 (1.77%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 436 (3.74%) REST
2 264 (2.27%) Spring
3 239 (2.05%) .NET
4 236 (2.03%) Kafka
5 230 (1.97%) Spring Boot
6 219 (1.88%) RESTful
7 200 (1.72%) React
8 181 (1.55%) Node.js
9 176 (1.51%) SOAP
10 156 (1.34%) JSON
11 138 (1.18%) Web Services
12 135 (1.16%) AngularJS
13 130 (1.12%) OAuth
14 126 (1.08%) HTML
15 118 (1.01%) XML
16 109 (0.94%) Middleware
17 95 (0.82%) Playwright
18 94 (0.81%) Oracle Fusion
19 92 (0.79%) PySpark
20 88 (0.76%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 499 (4.28%) Cloud Native
2 413 (3.54%) Onboarding
3 374 (3.21%) Product Ownership
4 311 (2.67%) Data Centre
5 238 (2.04%) Management Information System
6 190 (1.63%) Legacy Systems
7 172 (1.48%) PKI
8 168 (1.44%) Distributed Systems
9 149 (1.28%) Enterprise Software
10 139 (1.19%) CMDB
11 121 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
12 120 (1.03%) Replication
13 116 (1.00%) Data Structures
14 115 (0.99%) Hybrid Cloud
15 104 (0.89%) Clustering
16 97 (0.83%) Security Operations Centre
17 94 (0.81%) Public Cloud
18 92 (0.79%) Cyber Threat
19 89 (0.76%) Virtual Team
20 78 (0.67%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 969 (8.32%) Windows
2 804 (6.90%) Linux
3 326 (2.80%) Windows Server
4 228 (1.96%) Unix
5 151 (1.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 122 (1.05%) Windows 10
7 97 (0.83%) Android
8 63 (0.54%) Solaris
9 61 (0.52%) Apple iOS
10 48 (0.41%) Mac OS
11 40 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 38 (0.33%) Ubuntu
13 36 (0.31%) AIX
14 34 (0.29%) CentOS
15 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 22 (0.19%) VMS
17 21 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
18 18 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
19 14 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
19 14 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,463 (21.14%) Agile
2 1,831 (15.71%) DevOps
3 1,751 (15.03%) CI/CD
4 1,392 (11.95%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,312 (11.26%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,221 (10.48%) Problem-Solving
7 1,122 (9.63%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 954 (8.19%) Infrastructure as Code
9 931 (7.99%) Migration
10 774 (6.64%) Cybersecurity
11 769 (6.60%) Test Automation
12 766 (6.57%) ITIL
13 738 (6.33%) Analytics
14 723 (6.20%) Containerisation
15 696 (5.97%) Software Engineering
16 687 (5.90%) Roadmaps
17 659 (5.66%) Technical Leadership
18 646 (5.54%) Data Modelling
19 645 (5.54%) AI
20 643 (5.52%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 1,319 (11.32%) Python
2 1,165 (10.00%) SQL
3 823 (7.06%) Java
4 568 (4.87%) PowerShell
5 406 (3.48%) JavaScript
6 325 (2.79%) Bash
7 268 (2.30%) C#
8 195 (1.67%) TypeScript
9 178 (1.53%) PL/SQL
10 112 (0.96%) Bicep
11 93 (0.80%) C++
12 87 (0.75%) Shell Script
13 68 (0.58%) C
14 56 (0.48%) Apex Code
15 55 (0.47%) Kotlin
16 53 (0.45%) Ruby
16 53 (0.45%) Scala
17 49 (0.42%) Go
18 45 (0.39%) Groovy
19 37 (0.32%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8,876 (76.18%) SC Cleared
2 2,181 (18.72%) DV Cleared
3 461 (3.96%) Degree
4 441 (3.78%) BPSS Clearance
5 214 (1.84%) CISSP
6 199 (1.71%) Cisco Certification
7 170 (1.46%) Azure Certification
8 160 (1.37%) Microsoft Certification
9 143 (1.23%) CISM
10 135 (1.16%) AWS Certification
11 108 (0.93%) PMI Certification
12 106 (0.91%) PMP
13 97 (0.83%) ISTQB
14 83 (0.71%) CCNA
15 81 (0.70%) CCNP
16 70 (0.60%) Computer Science Degree
17 65 (0.56%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 49 (0.42%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 46 (0.39%) ITIL Certification
20 45 (0.39%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 486 (4.17%) QA
2 378 (3.24%) Data Quality
3 308 (2.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 303 (2.60%) NIST
5 268 (2.30%) NCSC
6 263 (2.26%) Accessibility
7 217 (1.86%) PMO
8 181 (1.55%) GDPR
9 142 (1.22%) GRC
10 141 (1.21%) SLA
11 79 (0.68%) WCAG
12 66 (0.57%) JSP 440
13 47 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
14 45 (0.39%) NIST 800
15 33 (0.28%) Def Stans
16 29 (0.25%) Government Security Classifications
16 29 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 29 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 23 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
18 22 (0.19%) RMADS
System Software
1 810 (6.95%) Docker
2 543 (4.66%) Active Directory
3 401 (3.44%) VMware Infrastructure
4 151 (1.30%) VMware NSX
5 131 (1.12%) VMware ESXi
6 118 (1.01%) vSphere
7 111 (0.95%) Hyper-V
8 82 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
9 45 (0.39%) Oracle RAC
10 43 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
11 33 (0.28%) Firmware
12 26 (0.22%) BitLocker
13 25 (0.21%) vCloud
14 16 (0.14%) NFS
15 15 (0.13%) Postfix
15 15 (0.13%) Squid
16 11 (0.094%) Virtual Servers
17 8 (0.069%) KVM
18 7 (0.060%) Ceph
18 7 (0.060%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 996 (8.55%) Terraform
2 987 (8.47%) Kubernetes
3 443 (3.80%) Ansible
4 273 (2.34%) Grafana
5 216 (1.85%) Prometheus
6 131 (1.12%) vCenter Server
7 125 (1.07%) SCCM
8 89 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
9 74 (0.64%) SCOM
10 68 (0.58%) Argo
11 67 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
12 55 (0.47%) Oracle RMAN
13 50 (0.43%) Puppet
14 41 (0.35%) Data Guard
14 41 (0.35%) FortiGate
15 32 (0.27%) Istio
15 32 (0.27%) Progress Chef
16 30 (0.26%) Nagios
17 28 (0.24%) WSUS
18 27 (0.23%) Control-M
Vendors
1 1,440 (12.36%) Microsoft
2 947 (8.13%) Oracle
3 582 (4.99%) VMware
4 549 (4.71%) ServiceNow
5 439 (3.77%) SAP
6 305 (2.62%) Cisco
7 238 (2.04%) Google
8 219 (1.88%) Splunk
9 209 (1.79%) Databricks
10 189 (1.62%) Salesforce
11 152 (1.30%) Red Hat
12 132 (1.13%) Talend
13 131 (1.12%) Informatica
14 129 (1.11%) IBM
15 115 (0.99%) Palo Alto
16 97 (0.83%) Dynatrace
17 96 (0.82%) F5
17 96 (0.82%) Juniper
18 94 (0.81%) Remedy
19 92 (0.79%) SolarWinds