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

6 months to
18 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,191 5,346 7,935
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.66% 17.43% 17.88%
As % of the Qualifications category 66.84% 58.73% 59.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,221 3,418 5,014
10th Percentile £358 £329 £363
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.42% -2.18% -2.65%
75th Percentile £625 £637 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £522 £540 £563
% change year-on-year -3.33% -4.00% +2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 749 266 528
10th Percentile £17.69 £19.41 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.91 £24.26 £40.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £50.75 £58.30
Median % change year-on-year -50.44% -12.95% -2.83%
75th Percentile £65.00 £67.44 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.58 £75.00 £83.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £58.00
% change year-on-year -58.08% +3.45% +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 13,750 9,102 13,433
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.90% 29.67% 30.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,079 5,551 8,278
10th Percentile £325 £294 £294
25th Percentile £418 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.42% -2.18%
75th Percentile £619 £630 £650
90th Percentile £721 £715 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £503 £530
% change year-on-year -0.50% -5.19% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 999 426 962
10th Percentile £15.84 £19.90 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.02 £24.18 £21.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £39.52 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -36.36% -12.18% -2.17%
75th Percentile £63.75 £66.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £76.58 £80.34 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £42.88 £46.18
% change year-on-year -41.35% -7.15% +2.62%

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 18 February 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 18 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Top 18 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 18 February 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 +1 7,984 £525 -4.20% 1,971
UK excluding London 0 5,112 £522 -3.33% 1,682
London +5 2,774 £525 - 498
Work from Home +4 2,515 £531 +0.19% 885
South East +1 1,681 £525 -4.55% 648
South West 0 1,309 £550 -0.18% 368
North of England -2 839 £500 +2.04% 225
Midlands +4 777 £500 -9.17% 214
West Midlands +3 604 £511 -7.55% 147
North West 0 550 £500 +5.26% 123
East of England +2 336 £495 -3.41% 192
East Midlands +3 174 £424 -17.20% 63
Yorkshire -4 171 £500 -4.76% 52
Scotland +8 163 £475 -5.00% 51
North East 0 145 £450 -10.09% 52
Wales -1 82 £525 -0.24% 28
Northern Ireland +10 32 £488 +262.14% 5
Channel Islands - 1 - - 2

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
1 323 (3.51%) Confluence
2 204 (2.22%) SharePoint
3 139 (1.51%) Microsoft Exchange
4 116 (1.26%) SAS
5 81 (0.88%) Apache Spark
6 76 (0.83%) Apache
7 52 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
8 45 (0.49%) nginx
9 38 (0.41%) WebLogic
10 33 (0.36%) Skype for Business
11 20 (0.22%) Jupyter
12 19 (0.21%) CMS
12 19 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
13 12 (0.13%) IIS
14 9 (0.098%) ArcGIS
14 9 (0.098%) Tuxedo
15 8 (0.087%) OpenStack
15 8 (0.087%) Tomcat
16 7 (0.076%) Oracle Workflow
17 6 (0.065%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 253 (2.75%) Microsoft Office
2 181 (1.97%) Microsoft Excel
3 120 (1.31%) Microsoft Project
4 67 (0.73%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.47%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.16%) Simulink
8 6 (0.065%) Sketch
9 5 (0.054%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.054%) Siemens NX
9 5 (0.054%) Windchill
10 4 (0.044%) Chatbot
10 4 (0.044%) Oracle Smart View
11 3 (0.033%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.033%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 3 (0.033%) Stateflow
12 2 (0.022%) Adobe Illustrator
12 2 (0.022%) CATIA
12 2 (0.022%) FrameMaker
12 2 (0.022%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 166 (1.81%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.45%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 28 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
4 25 (0.27%) SAP MM
5 23 (0.25%) SAP EWM
5 23 (0.25%) SAP WM
6 22 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
7 21 (0.23%) Remedy ITSM
8 20 (0.22%) Teamcenter
9 18 (0.20%) SAP PP
10 15 (0.16%) Maximo
11 14 (0.15%) SAP VC
12 13 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
12 13 (0.14%) SAP EHS
12 13 (0.14%) SAP QM
13 12 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
13 12 (0.13%) Primavera
14 11 (0.12%) Oracle General Ledger
14 11 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
14 11 (0.12%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,563 (17.01%) AWS
2 1,523 (16.57%) Azure
3 412 (4.48%) GitHub
4 384 (4.18%) GCP
5 336 (3.66%) Power Platform
6 334 (3.63%) Azure DevOps
7 301 (3.27%) Microsoft 365
8 264 (2.87%) Serverless
9 222 (2.42%) Entra ID
10 217 (2.36%) GitHub Actions
11 202 (2.20%) Amazon S3
12 176 (1.91%) OpenShift
13 171 (1.86%) AWS Lambda
14 145 (1.58%) AWS CloudFormation
15 130 (1.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 130 (1.41%) Amazon EKS
16 128 (1.39%) Amazon EC2
17 108 (1.18%) IaaS
18 103 (1.12%) Amazon ECS
18 103 (1.12%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 432 (4.70%) Firewall
2 286 (3.11%) DNS
3 215 (2.34%) Network Security
4 189 (2.06%) WAN
5 181 (1.97%) VPN
6 150 (1.63%) LAN
7 138 (1.50%) TCP/IP
8 135 (1.47%) BGP
9 128 (1.39%) DHCP
10 90 (0.98%) OSPF
11 86 (0.94%) VLAN
11 86 (0.94%) Wireless
12 73 (0.79%) MPLS
13 68 (0.74%) Wi-Fi
14 61 (0.66%) SSL
15 60 (0.65%) SAN
16 55 (0.60%) IPsec
17 50 (0.54%) Cisco ISE
18 41 (0.45%) Kerberos
18 41 (0.45%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 242 (2.63%) Power BI
2 240 (2.61%) PostgreSQL
3 149 (1.62%) Data Warehouse
4 117 (1.27%) SQL Server
5 116 (1.26%) Metadata
6 101 (1.10%) MongoDB
7 99 (1.08%) Oracle Database
8 98 (1.07%) NoSQL
9 97 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
10 85 (0.92%) Relational Database
11 76 (0.83%) Data Lake
12 74 (0.81%) Elasticsearch
13 72 (0.78%) Azure SQL Database
14 65 (0.71%) Big Data
15 52 (0.57%) MySQL
16 47 (0.51%) Tableau
17 45 (0.49%) Amazon Athena
18 43 (0.47%) Pentaho
19 42 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
19 42 (0.46%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 525 (5.71%) JIRA
2 416 (4.53%) Git
3 372 (4.05%) Jenkins
4 338 (3.68%) GitLab
5 105 (1.14%) Selenium
6 79 (0.86%) Postman
7 69 (0.75%) JUnit
8 63 (0.69%) Cypress.io
9 55 (0.60%) SonarQube
10 48 (0.52%) Artifactory
11 45 (0.49%) Oracle APEX
12 43 (0.47%) Bitbucket
13 40 (0.44%) Cucumber
13 40 (0.44%) Maven
14 36 (0.39%) Mockito
15 35 (0.38%) REST Assured
16 28 (0.30%) JMeter
17 24 (0.26%) Metasploit
17 24 (0.26%) MSI
18 23 (0.25%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,333 (25.38%) Public Sector
2 2,239 (24.36%) Social Skills
3 772 (8.40%) Analytical Skills
4 605 (6.58%) Finance
5 332 (3.61%) Military
6 259 (2.82%) Documentation Skills
7 192 (2.09%) Telecoms
8 188 (2.05%) Manufacturing
9 175 (1.90%) Aerospace
10 139 (1.51%) Legal
11 128 (1.39%) Organisational Skills
12 125 (1.36%) Electronics
13 123 (1.34%) Marketing
14 114 (1.24%) Influencing Skills
15 107 (1.16%) Presentation Skills
16 96 (1.04%) Banking
17 68 (0.74%) Law
18 67 (0.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 43 (0.47%) Police
20 36 (0.39%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,264 (13.75%) Architect
2 887 (9.65%) Developer
3 799 (8.69%) Senior
4 697 (7.58%) Analyst
5 643 (7.00%) Consultant
6 552 (6.01%) Lead
7 442 (4.81%) DevOps Engineer
8 312 (3.39%) Data Engineer
9 244 (2.65%) Solutions Architect
9 244 (2.65%) Support Engineer
10 239 (2.60%) Business Analyst
10 239 (2.60%) Network Engineer
11 224 (2.44%) Software Engineer
12 218 (2.37%) Technical Architect
13 185 (2.01%) Tester
14 180 (1.96%) AWS Engineer
15 170 (1.85%) Azure Engineer
16 153 (1.66%) Project Manager
16 153 (1.66%) Security Architect
17 149 (1.62%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 345 (3.75%) REST
2 214 (2.33%) Node.js
3 205 (2.23%) Kafka
4 195 (2.12%) React
5 194 (2.11%) Spring
6 175 (1.90%) JSON
7 161 (1.75%) SOAP
8 151 (1.64%) LDAP
9 150 (1.63%) Spring Boot
10 114 (1.24%) .NET
11 111 (1.21%) PySpark
11 111 (1.21%) XML
12 110 (1.20%) HTML
13 107 (1.16%) OAuth
14 101 (1.10%) AngularJS
14 101 (1.10%) RESTful
15 98 (1.07%) Oracle Fusion
16 97 (1.06%) Web Services
17 95 (1.03%) CSS
18 78 (0.85%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 288 (3.13%) Data Centre
2 258 (2.81%) Cloud Native
3 254 (2.76%) Product Ownership
4 241 (2.62%) Onboarding
5 206 (2.24%) PKI
6 176 (1.91%) Management Information System
7 141 (1.53%) Security Posture
8 117 (1.27%) Self-Motivation
9 115 (1.25%) Legacy Systems
10 114 (1.24%) Enterprise Software
11 96 (1.04%) Replication
12 79 (0.86%) Security Operations Centre
13 75 (0.82%) Driving Licence
14 74 (0.81%) Public Cloud
15 73 (0.79%) Hybrid Cloud
16 71 (0.77%) Cyber Threat
17 56 (0.61%) Distributed Systems
18 49 (0.53%) Private Cloud
19 48 (0.52%) Algorithms
19 48 (0.52%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 885 (9.63%) Windows
2 691 (7.52%) Linux
3 222 (2.42%) Windows Server
4 174 (1.89%) Windows 10
5 125 (1.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 118 (1.28%) Unix
7 108 (1.18%) Android
8 67 (0.73%) Mac OS
9 44 (0.48%) Apple iOS
10 41 (0.45%) Ubuntu
11 39 (0.42%) VMS
12 29 (0.32%) Windows Server 2016
13 23 (0.25%) CentOS
14 22 (0.24%) Windows 7
14 22 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
15 21 (0.23%) Solaris
16 17 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
17 15 (0.16%) Mac OS X
18 9 (0.098%) Amazon Linux
18 9 (0.098%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,677 (18.25%) Agile
2 1,380 (15.01%) DevOps
3 1,207 (13.13%) CI/CD
4 1,153 (12.54%) Problem-Solving
5 825 (8.98%) Stakeholder Management
6 791 (8.61%) Migration
7 679 (7.39%) Continuous Improvement
8 640 (6.96%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 620 (6.75%) Cybersecurity
10 596 (6.48%) Infrastructure as Code
11 536 (5.83%) ITIL
12 511 (5.56%) Test Automation
13 492 (5.35%) Containerisation
14 482 (5.24%) Analytics
15 461 (5.02%) Roadmaps
16 434 (4.72%) Business Intelligence
17 411 (4.47%) Software Engineering
18 403 (4.38%) Service Management
19 397 (4.32%) Scrum
20 389 (4.23%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,123 (12.22%) Python
2 713 (7.76%) SQL
3 602 (6.55%) PowerShell
4 511 (5.56%) Java
5 419 (4.56%) JavaScript
6 229 (2.49%) Bash
7 209 (2.27%) TypeScript
8 158 (1.72%) C#
9 95 (1.03%) Shell Script
10 92 (1.00%) C++
11 90 (0.98%) PL/SQL
12 85 (0.92%) Go
13 65 (0.71%) C
14 56 (0.61%) Ruby
15 49 (0.53%) Scala
16 47 (0.51%) Ada
17 41 (0.45%) ABAP
17 41 (0.45%) Bicep
18 39 (0.42%) MATLAB
19 38 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 7,058 (76.79%) SC Cleared
2 1,548 (16.84%) DV Cleared
3 450 (4.90%) Degree
4 318 (3.46%) BPSS Clearance
5 168 (1.83%) CISSP
6 166 (1.81%) Cisco Certification
7 131 (1.43%) Azure Certification
8 128 (1.39%) AWS Certification
9 120 (1.31%) CCNP
10 116 (1.26%) Microsoft Certification
11 106 (1.15%) CISM
12 85 (0.92%) Computer Science Degree
13 72 (0.78%) CCNA
14 69 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
15 63 (0.69%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 61 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
17 54 (0.59%) CEH
18 52 (0.57%) GIAC
19 49 (0.53%) Master's Degree
20 47 (0.51%) CHECK Team Member
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 287 (3.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 285 (3.10%) QA
3 269 (2.93%) NIST
4 243 (2.64%) Data Quality
5 203 (2.21%) NCSC
6 183 (1.99%) Accessibility
7 175 (1.90%) GDPR
8 129 (1.40%) SLA
9 93 (1.01%) PMO
10 62 (0.67%) GRC
11 57 (0.62%) JSP 440
12 50 (0.54%) WCAG
13 39 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
13 39 (0.42%) Def Stans
14 36 (0.39%) NIST 800
15 33 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 33 (0.36%) PCI DSS
16 31 (0.34%) COBIT
17 24 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
18 23 (0.25%) RMADS
System Software
1 630 (6.85%) Docker
2 500 (5.44%) Active Directory
3 256 (2.79%) VMware Infrastructure
4 89 (0.97%) VMware NSX
5 72 (0.78%) vSphere
6 65 (0.71%) Hyper-V
7 64 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
7 64 (0.70%) VMware ESXi
8 27 (0.29%) Firmware
9 25 (0.27%) Virtual Desktop
10 22 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
11 18 (0.20%) BitLocker
12 15 (0.16%) NFS
12 15 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 11 (0.12%) Squid
14 10 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.098%) Postfix
16 7 (0.076%) vCloud
16 7 (0.076%) Virtual Servers
17 6 (0.065%) KVM
Systems Management
1 815 (8.87%) Kubernetes
2 793 (8.63%) Terraform
3 299 (3.25%) Ansible
4 220 (2.39%) Grafana
5 187 (2.03%) Prometheus
6 134 (1.46%) Single Sign-On
7 112 (1.22%) SCCM
8 97 (1.06%) vCenter Server
9 92 (1.00%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 73 (0.79%) Argo
11 71 (0.77%) Microsoft Intune
12 45 (0.49%) vRealize
13 40 (0.44%) FortiGate
13 40 (0.44%) Podman
14 39 (0.42%) Kibana
15 35 (0.38%) Packer
16 30 (0.33%) OPNET
16 30 (0.33%) Puppet
17 27 (0.29%) Progress Chef
18 26 (0.28%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,027 (11.17%) Microsoft
2 476 (5.18%) Oracle
3 474 (5.16%) SAP
4 466 (5.07%) VMware
5 444 (4.83%) Cisco
6 376 (4.09%) ServiceNow
7 237 (2.58%) Splunk
8 182 (1.98%) Red Hat
9 147 (1.60%) Databricks
10 145 (1.58%) CyberArk
11 142 (1.54%) Google
12 137 (1.49%) Palo Alto
13 130 (1.41%) Juniper
13 130 (1.41%) Salesforce
14 111 (1.21%) Atlassian
15 102 (1.11%) Dell
16 80 (0.87%) HP
17 79 (0.86%) SolarWinds
18 78 (0.85%) IBM
19 76 (0.83%) Dynatrace