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

6 months to
26 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,529 5,798 7,491
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.72% 17.61% 18.54%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.24% 57.14% 61.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,008 3,711 4,988
10th Percentile £381 £338 £345
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.94% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £630 £623 £638
90th Percentile £720 £700 £736
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 845 508 533
10th Percentile £18.29 £18.51 £15.22
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £62.50 £25.15 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +148.51% -54.27% -8.33%
75th Percentile £77.50 £53.78 £71.25
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £56.89
% change year-on-year +151.03% -55.79% -3.63%

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 16,651 10,147 12,096
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.38% 30.82% 29.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,121 6,299 7,676
10th Percentile £350 £280 £313
25th Percentile £430 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.48% -0.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £638
90th Percentile £713 £703 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,218 758 929
10th Percentile £17.73 £17.87 £14.25
25th Percentile £25.75 £19.38 £21.19
Median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -24.15%
75th Percentile £73.00 £56.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.00 £75.00 £76.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -21.82%

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 July 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 July 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 July 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 9,956 £535 -0.47% 1,865
UK excluding London +1 6,473 £525 -2.33% 1,420
London +7 3,527 £545 +3.81% 583
Work from Home +4 3,120 £525 -1.59% 932
South East +1 2,460 £550 +1.22% 483
South West 0 1,305 £538 -6.52% 336
North of England +2 1,098 £500 +0.05% 283
Midlands +3 981 £469 -6.20% 154
West Midlands +1 839 £469 -6.20% 110
North West -1 585 £525 -0.38% 160
East of England +2 316 £575 +9.52% 114
Yorkshire +2 302 £500 +1.63% 59
Scotland +15 276 £500 +5.76% 44
North East 0 238 £475 -5.00% 65
East Midlands +1 129 £421 -9.05% 44
Wales +3 103 £550 +15.79% 21
Northern Ireland +4 33 £650 +25.00% 10

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
1 410 (3.56%) Confluence
2 269 (2.33%) SharePoint
3 190 (1.65%) SAS
4 127 (1.10%) Microsoft Exchange
5 109 (0.95%) Apache Spark
6 105 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
7 99 (0.86%) Apache
8 45 (0.39%) WebLogic
9 41 (0.36%) nginx
10 39 (0.34%) Jupyter
11 25 (0.22%) Tomcat
12 24 (0.21%) IIS
13 20 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
14 18 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
15 16 (0.14%) CMS
15 16 (0.14%) NetWeaver
16 15 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
17 13 (0.11%) Skype for Business
18 12 (0.10%) Tuxedo
19 9 (0.078%) Documentum
Applications
1 211 (1.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 153 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
3 101 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 79 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 50 (0.43%) MS Visio
6 23 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.13%) Simulink
8 13 (0.11%) AutoCAD
8 13 (0.11%) Revit
8 13 (0.11%) SOLIDWORKS
9 9 (0.078%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.069%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.061%) Notepad++
12 6 (0.052%) Sketch
13 4 (0.035%) Trello
14 3 (0.026%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 3 (0.026%) Windchill
15 2 (0.017%) CATIA
15 2 (0.017%) CPLEX
15 2 (0.017%) Houdini
Business Applications
1 152 (1.32%) SAP S/4HANA
2 73 (0.63%) Remedy ITSM
3 44 (0.38%) Oracle ERP
4 42 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
5 38 (0.33%) Teamcenter
6 32 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 23 (0.20%) Dynamics CRM
7 23 (0.20%) SAP PSCD
8 22 (0.19%) SAP GRC
9 21 (0.18%) Primavera
10 15 (0.13%) Findur
11 14 (0.12%) Oracle Payroll
12 13 (0.11%) Oracle Payables
12 13 (0.11%) Temenos T24
13 12 (0.10%) iTrent
13 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
14 11 (0.095%) SAP HR
15 10 (0.087%) Integrated Workplace Management System
15 10 (0.087%) NetSuite
15 10 (0.087%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 2,064 (17.90%) Azure
2 2,046 (17.75%) AWS
3 513 (4.45%) GitHub
4 489 (4.24%) Azure DevOps
5 466 (4.04%) Power Platform
6 434 (3.76%) GCP
7 315 (2.73%) GitHub Actions
8 305 (2.65%) Microsoft 365
9 287 (2.49%) Entra ID
10 276 (2.39%) Serverless
11 246 (2.13%) Amazon S3
12 199 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
13 165 (1.43%) OCI
14 162 (1.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 161 (1.40%) SaaS
16 159 (1.38%) Amazon EC2
16 159 (1.38%) Amazon EKS
17 156 (1.35%) PaaS
18 134 (1.16%) OpenShift
19 129 (1.12%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 487 (4.22%) Firewall
2 358 (3.11%) DNS
3 240 (2.08%) Network Security
4 235 (2.04%) WAN
5 203 (1.76%) VPN
6 199 (1.73%) LAN
7 176 (1.53%) DHCP
8 150 (1.30%) BGP
9 131 (1.14%) TCP/IP
10 122 (1.06%) OSPF
11 113 (0.98%) Wi-Fi
12 108 (0.94%) VLAN
13 91 (0.79%) Wireless
14 72 (0.62%) MPLS
15 68 (0.59%) SAN
16 66 (0.57%) IPsec
17 63 (0.55%) SD-WAN
18 59 (0.51%) VXLAN
19 58 (0.50%) SSL
19 58 (0.50%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 355 (3.08%) Power BI
2 309 (2.68%) PostgreSQL
3 287 (2.49%) SQL Server
4 283 (2.45%) Data Warehouse
5 172 (1.49%) Oracle Database
6 166 (1.44%) Metadata
7 137 (1.19%) Data Lake
8 133 (1.15%) Relational Database
9 111 (0.96%) MongoDB
10 106 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
11 99 (0.86%) MySQL
12 96 (0.83%) Oracle Reports
13 88 (0.76%) Pentaho
14 79 (0.69%) Elasticsearch
14 79 (0.69%) NoSQL
15 74 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
16 69 (0.60%) Amazon Athena
17 67 (0.58%) Big Data
18 62 (0.54%) Tableau
19 51 (0.44%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 656 (5.69%) JIRA
2 554 (4.81%) Git
3 465 (4.03%) GitLab
4 454 (3.94%) Jenkins
5 123 (1.07%) Selenium
6 84 (0.73%) SonarQube
7 83 (0.72%) JUnit
8 78 (0.68%) Postman
9 66 (0.57%) Maven
10 64 (0.56%) JMeter
11 55 (0.48%) Cucumber
11 55 (0.48%) Rational DOORS
12 47 (0.41%) Visual Studio
13 46 (0.40%) Mockito
14 44 (0.38%) Cypress.io
15 42 (0.36%) Artifactory
15 42 (0.36%) REST Assured
15 42 (0.36%) Zephyr
16 41 (0.36%) Bitbucket
17 40 (0.35%) Gatling
General
1 2,513 (21.80%) Public Sector
2 2,359 (20.46%) Social Skills
3 864 (7.49%) Analytical Skills
4 770 (6.68%) Finance
5 365 (3.17%) Military
6 289 (2.51%) Aerospace
7 284 (2.46%) Documentation Skills
8 181 (1.57%) Legal
9 174 (1.51%) Influencing Skills
10 150 (1.30%) Telecoms
11 141 (1.22%) Organisational Skills
12 132 (1.14%) Banking
13 113 (0.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 102 (0.88%) Law
14 102 (0.88%) Manufacturing
14 102 (0.88%) Police
15 73 (0.63%) Presentation Skills
16 52 (0.45%) Aviation
17 43 (0.37%) Marketing
18 38 (0.33%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,805 (15.66%) Architect
2 1,274 (11.05%) Developer
3 1,052 (9.12%) Senior
4 978 (8.48%) Lead
5 714 (6.19%) Analyst
6 601 (5.21%) Consultant
7 524 (4.55%) Data Engineer
8 487 (4.22%) DevOps Engineer
9 392 (3.40%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 371 (3.22%) Technical Architect
11 351 (3.04%) Solutions Architect
12 331 (2.87%) Software Engineer
13 277 (2.40%) Security Architect
14 267 (2.32%) Network Engineer
15 230 (1.99%) Data Architect
16 228 (1.98%) Java Developer
17 223 (1.93%) Designer
18 212 (1.84%) Business Analyst
19 208 (1.80%) Project Manager
20 203 (1.76%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 415 (3.60%) REST
2 273 (2.37%) Spring
3 236 (2.05%) Spring Boot
4 228 (1.98%) Kafka
5 224 (1.94%) .NET
6 202 (1.75%) RESTful
7 201 (1.74%) React
8 188 (1.63%) Node.js
9 171 (1.48%) SOAP
10 153 (1.33%) JSON
11 137 (1.19%) AngularJS
12 131 (1.14%) Web Services
13 118 (1.02%) OAuth
14 113 (0.98%) HTML
15 104 (0.90%) Middleware
16 103 (0.89%) XML
17 101 (0.88%) PySpark
18 92 (0.80%) Playwright
19 82 (0.71%) Elastic Stack
20 80 (0.69%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 467 (4.05%) Cloud Native
2 391 (3.39%) Onboarding
3 357 (3.10%) Product Ownership
4 321 (2.78%) Data Centre
5 235 (2.04%) Management Information System
6 199 (1.73%) Legacy Systems
7 173 (1.50%) Distributed Systems
8 167 (1.45%) PKI
9 127 (1.10%) Enterprise Software
9 127 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
10 125 (1.08%) CMDB
11 117 (1.01%) Data Structures
12 109 (0.95%) Hybrid Cloud
13 108 (0.94%) Replication
14 100 (0.87%) Clustering
15 93 (0.81%) Public Cloud
16 92 (0.80%) Security Posture
17 87 (0.75%) Virtual Team
18 82 (0.71%) Security Operations Centre
19 76 (0.66%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 917 (7.95%) Windows
2 786 (6.82%) Linux
3 295 (2.56%) Windows Server
4 227 (1.97%) Unix
5 153 (1.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 98 (0.85%) Android
7 94 (0.82%) Windows 10
8 67 (0.58%) Apple iOS
9 62 (0.54%) Solaris
10 48 (0.42%) Mac OS
11 37 (0.32%) Ubuntu
12 36 (0.31%) AIX
12 36 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
13 29 (0.25%) CentOS
14 21 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
15 20 (0.17%) VMS
16 14 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
17 13 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
18 11 (0.095%) Windows 7
19 10 (0.087%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,383 (20.67%) Agile
2 1,777 (15.41%) DevOps
3 1,673 (14.51%) CI/CD
4 1,249 (10.83%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,232 (10.69%) Problem-Solving
6 1,230 (10.67%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,040 (9.02%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 896 (7.77%) Migration
9 882 (7.65%) Infrastructure as Code
10 739 (6.41%) ITIL
11 735 (6.38%) Cybersecurity
12 718 (6.23%) Containerisation
13 717 (6.22%) Test Automation
14 704 (6.11%) Analytics
15 678 (5.88%) Software Engineering
16 660 (5.72%) Roadmaps
17 641 (5.56%) Decision-Making
18 621 (5.39%) Data Modelling
19 605 (5.25%) AI
20 603 (5.23%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,281 (11.11%) Python
2 1,128 (9.78%) SQL
3 817 (7.09%) Java
4 517 (4.48%) PowerShell
5 368 (3.19%) JavaScript
6 286 (2.48%) Bash
7 259 (2.25%) C#
8 186 (1.61%) TypeScript
9 178 (1.54%) PL/SQL
10 102 (0.88%) Bicep
11 97 (0.84%) Shell Script
12 88 (0.76%) C++
13 63 (0.55%) C
14 60 (0.52%) Apex Code
15 58 (0.50%) Ruby
16 54 (0.47%) Kotlin
17 52 (0.45%) Go
18 49 (0.43%) Scala
19 39 (0.34%) Groovy
20 38 (0.33%) R
Qualifications
1 8,800 (76.33%) SC Cleared
2 2,175 (18.87%) DV Cleared
3 452 (3.92%) Degree
4 414 (3.59%) BPSS Clearance
5 216 (1.87%) Cisco Certification
6 186 (1.61%) CISSP
7 163 (1.41%) Azure Certification
8 143 (1.24%) Microsoft Certification
9 134 (1.16%) AWS Certification
10 115 (1.00%) CISM
11 107 (0.93%) PMI Certification
12 103 (0.89%) PMP
13 100 (0.87%) CCNP
14 93 (0.81%) CCNA
15 82 (0.71%) ISTQB
16 66 (0.57%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 65 (0.56%) Computer Science Degree
18 50 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
19 48 (0.42%) TOGAF Certification
20 47 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 439 (3.81%) QA
2 370 (3.21%) Data Quality
3 300 (2.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 300 (2.60%) NIST
4 258 (2.24%) Accessibility
5 241 (2.09%) NCSC
6 208 (1.80%) PMO
7 182 (1.58%) GDPR
8 137 (1.19%) GRC
9 129 (1.12%) SLA
10 76 (0.66%) WCAG
11 65 (0.56%) JSP 440
12 49 (0.43%) NIST 800
13 44 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
14 30 (0.26%) Government Security Classifications
15 28 (0.24%) Def Stans
16 27 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 26 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 22 (0.19%) RMADS
19 20 (0.17%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 784 (6.80%) Docker
2 498 (4.32%) Active Directory
3 381 (3.30%) VMware Infrastructure
4 142 (1.23%) VMware NSX
5 132 (1.14%) VMware ESXi
6 104 (0.90%) vSphere
7 102 (0.88%) Hyper-V
8 81 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
9 50 (0.43%) Oracle RAC
10 36 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
11 30 (0.26%) Firmware
12 24 (0.21%) NFS
13 22 (0.19%) vCloud
14 19 (0.16%) BitLocker
15 18 (0.16%) Postfix
16 16 (0.14%) Squid
17 9 (0.078%) KVM
18 8 (0.069%) Microsoft App-V
19 7 (0.061%) UAG
20 6 (0.052%) Corosync
Systems Management
1 965 (8.37%) Terraform
2 937 (8.13%) Kubernetes
3 418 (3.63%) Ansible
4 275 (2.39%) Grafana
5 220 (1.91%) Prometheus
6 129 (1.12%) vCenter Server
7 100 (0.87%) SCCM
8 77 (0.67%) Microsoft Intune
9 70 (0.61%) Argo
10 66 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
11 61 (0.53%) SCOM
12 55 (0.48%) Oracle RMAN
13 50 (0.43%) Puppet
14 44 (0.38%) FortiGate
15 38 (0.33%) Data Guard
16 30 (0.26%) Nagios
16 30 (0.26%) Progress Chef
17 27 (0.23%) Podman
18 24 (0.21%) Istio
18 24 (0.21%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 1,305 (11.32%) Microsoft
2 897 (7.78%) Oracle
3 562 (4.87%) VMware
4 547 (4.74%) ServiceNow
5 411 (3.56%) SAP
6 315 (2.73%) Cisco
7 217 (1.88%) Splunk
8 216 (1.87%) Google
9 199 (1.73%) Databricks
10 188 (1.63%) Salesforce
11 156 (1.35%) Red Hat
12 142 (1.23%) Informatica
13 140 (1.21%) Talend
14 125 (1.08%) IBM
15 116 (1.01%) Palo Alto
16 103 (0.89%) Juniper
17 97 (0.84%) F5
18 96 (0.83%) SolarWinds
19 91 (0.79%) Fortinet
20 86 (0.75%) Citrix