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

6 months to
30 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 11,110 5,420 7,845
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.65% 17.71% 18.17%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.32% 57.35% 60.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,706 3,509 5,143
10th Percentile £380 £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 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £537 £550
% change year-on-year -2.28% -2.32% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 832 402 588
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.50 £14.43
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £61.33 £25.15 £56.15
Median % change year-on-year +143.86% -55.21% -6.43%
75th Percentile £75.00 £62.24 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.49 £76.20 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £61.84 £25.15 £58.00
% change year-on-year +145.88% -56.64% +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 16,028 9,450 12,874
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.23% 30.88% 29.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,706 5,857 7,950
10th Percentile £350 £275 £312
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £521 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.77% -0.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £713 £701 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £507 £500 £528
% change year-on-year +1.40% -5.30% +0.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,161 635 1,116
10th Percentile £17.25 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.78 £20.19 £20.00
Median hourly rate £50.00 £28.15 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +77.62% -31.24% -26.00%
75th Percentile £72.54 £60.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.25 £75.00 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £27.13 £43.00
% change year-on-year +84.33% -36.92% -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 30 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 30 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 30 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 9,588 £525 -2.33% 1,639
UK excluding London +1 6,223 £525 -2.28% 1,313
London +7 3,403 £528 +0.48% 499
Work from Home +5 3,047 £525 - 808
South East +1 2,318 £550 - 472
South West 0 1,301 £538 -4.44% 307
North of England +2 1,008 £500 - 226
Midlands +2 931 £469 -8.49% 128
West Midlands +2 796 £469 -10.58% 87
North West 0 541 £525 +5.00% 135
East of England +2 351 £550 +10.00% 113
Scotland +21 278 £500 +14.29% 52
Yorkshire -2 265 £500 +1.63% 54
North East +1 232 £475 -1.04% 40
East Midlands -1 124 £418 -12.11% 41
Wales +2 96 £525 +10.53% 35
Northern Ireland +5 32 £650 +30.00% 12

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 (3.52%) Confluence
2 234 (2.11%) SharePoint
3 164 (1.48%) SAS
4 134 (1.21%) Microsoft Exchange
5 107 (0.96%) Apache Spark
6 105 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
7 94 (0.85%) Apache
8 44 (0.40%) Jupyter
8 44 (0.40%) nginx
9 36 (0.32%) WebLogic
10 25 (0.23%) Tomcat
11 20 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
12 19 (0.17%) IIS
13 16 (0.14%) CMS
13 16 (0.14%) NetWeaver
14 15 (0.14%) Oracle Application Server
15 14 (0.13%) Skype for Business
16 12 (0.11%) Tuxedo
17 10 (0.090%) ArcGIS
17 10 (0.090%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 173 (1.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 146 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
3 78 (0.70%) Microsoft Project
4 71 (0.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 50 (0.45%) MS Visio
6 15 (0.14%) Simulink
6 15 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.099%) SOLIDWORKS
8 10 (0.090%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.090%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.090%) Revit
9 7 (0.063%) Notepad++
10 4 (0.036%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.036%) Sketch
11 3 (0.027%) Windchill
12 2 (0.018%) CATIA
12 2 (0.018%) Lectora
12 2 (0.018%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.018%) PlantUML
12 2 (0.018%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 127 (1.14%) SAP S/4HANA
2 63 (0.57%) Remedy ITSM
3 46 (0.41%) Oracle ERP
4 33 (0.30%) Teamcenter
5 32 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 30 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
7 29 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
8 18 (0.16%) Primavera
9 17 (0.15%) SAP PSCD
10 16 (0.14%) SAP GRC
11 15 (0.14%) Findur
11 15 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
12 13 (0.12%) Temenos T24
13 12 (0.11%) iTrent
13 12 (0.11%) Maximo
13 12 (0.11%) Siebel CRM
14 11 (0.099%) SAP ERP
15 10 (0.090%) Oracle Assets
15 10 (0.090%) SAP HR
16 9 (0.081%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,012 (18.11%) AWS
2 1,935 (17.42%) Azure
3 466 (4.19%) GitHub
4 437 (3.93%) Azure DevOps
5 430 (3.87%) Power Platform
6 414 (3.73%) GCP
7 288 (2.59%) GitHub Actions
8 284 (2.56%) Serverless
9 278 (2.50%) Entra ID
9 278 (2.50%) Microsoft 365
10 235 (2.12%) Amazon S3
11 198 (1.78%) AWS Lambda
12 163 (1.47%) Amazon EC2
13 157 (1.41%) SaaS
14 155 (1.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 154 (1.39%) PaaS
16 144 (1.30%) OCI
17 141 (1.27%) OpenShift
18 138 (1.24%) Amazon EKS
19 130 (1.17%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 464 (4.18%) Firewall
2 334 (3.01%) DNS
3 243 (2.19%) Network Security
4 231 (2.08%) WAN
5 201 (1.81%) LAN
6 187 (1.68%) VPN
7 169 (1.52%) DHCP
8 138 (1.24%) BGP
9 117 (1.05%) OSPF
10 113 (1.02%) VLAN
11 111 (1.00%) TCP/IP
11 111 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
12 85 (0.77%) Wireless
13 68 (0.61%) MPLS
14 64 (0.58%) SD-WAN
15 63 (0.57%) SAN
16 59 (0.53%) VXLAN
17 51 (0.46%) BIG-IP
17 51 (0.46%) IPsec
18 48 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 337 (3.03%) Power BI
2 299 (2.69%) PostgreSQL
3 266 (2.39%) Data Warehouse
4 248 (2.23%) SQL Server
5 165 (1.49%) Oracle Database
6 148 (1.33%) Metadata
7 132 (1.19%) Data Lake
8 120 (1.08%) Relational Database
9 116 (1.04%) Amazon RDS
9 116 (1.04%) MongoDB
10 95 (0.86%) MySQL
11 87 (0.78%) Elasticsearch
12 86 (0.77%) Pentaho
13 82 (0.74%) Oracle Reports
14 78 (0.70%) Amazon Redshift
15 75 (0.68%) NoSQL
16 74 (0.67%) Amazon Athena
17 68 (0.61%) Big Data
18 66 (0.59%) Tableau
19 56 (0.50%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 628 (5.65%) JIRA
2 503 (4.53%) Git
3 475 (4.28%) GitLab
4 444 (4.00%) Jenkins
5 126 (1.13%) Selenium
6 88 (0.79%) JUnit
7 84 (0.76%) Postman
8 80 (0.72%) SonarQube
9 66 (0.59%) JMeter
10 59 (0.53%) Rational DOORS
11 57 (0.51%) Cucumber
12 48 (0.43%) Artifactory
13 46 (0.41%) Mockito
14 45 (0.41%) REST Assured
15 44 (0.40%) Bitbucket
15 44 (0.40%) Cypress.io
15 44 (0.40%) Maven
16 42 (0.38%) Visual Studio
17 41 (0.37%) Zephyr
18 37 (0.33%) Gatling
General
1 2,444 (22.00%) Public Sector
2 2,239 (20.15%) Social Skills
3 772 (6.95%) Analytical Skills
4 709 (6.38%) Finance
5 344 (3.10%) Military
6 299 (2.69%) Documentation Skills
7 290 (2.61%) Aerospace
8 181 (1.63%) Legal
9 152 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
10 133 (1.20%) Banking
11 127 (1.14%) Telecoms
12 106 (0.95%) Organisational Skills
13 99 (0.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 99 (0.89%) Law
14 96 (0.86%) Manufacturing
15 83 (0.75%) Police
16 78 (0.70%) Presentation Skills
17 55 (0.50%) Aviation
18 44 (0.40%) Marketing
19 39 (0.35%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,696 (15.27%) Architect
2 1,153 (10.38%) Developer
3 974 (8.77%) Senior
4 851 (7.66%) Lead
5 723 (6.51%) Analyst
6 547 (4.92%) Consultant
7 527 (4.74%) Data Engineer
8 504 (4.54%) DevOps Engineer
9 373 (3.36%) Technical Architect
10 350 (3.15%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 347 (3.12%) Software Engineer
12 331 (2.98%) Solutions Architect
13 274 (2.47%) Network Engineer
14 252 (2.27%) Security Architect
15 236 (2.12%) Business Analyst
16 221 (1.99%) Project Manager
17 216 (1.94%) Designer
18 211 (1.90%) Java Developer
19 209 (1.88%) AWS Engineer
20 203 (1.83%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 335 (3.02%) REST
2 265 (2.39%) Spring
3 219 (1.97%) Spring Boot
4 204 (1.84%) Kafka
5 202 (1.82%) React
6 196 (1.76%) .NET
7 193 (1.74%) Node.js
8 168 (1.51%) RESTful
9 137 (1.23%) SOAP
10 131 (1.18%) JSON
11 126 (1.13%) AngularJS
12 117 (1.05%) LDAP
13 115 (1.04%) PySpark
14 110 (0.99%) OAuth
15 109 (0.98%) Web Services
16 98 (0.88%) Middleware
17 97 (0.87%) Playwright
18 92 (0.83%) HTML
19 87 (0.78%) OpenID
20 85 (0.77%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 432 (3.89%) Cloud Native
2 361 (3.25%) Product Ownership
3 337 (3.03%) Onboarding
4 316 (2.84%) Data Centre
5 220 (1.98%) Management Information System
6 169 (1.52%) Legacy Systems
7 150 (1.35%) Distributed Systems
7 150 (1.35%) PKI
8 116 (1.04%) Replication
9 113 (1.02%) Enterprise Software
10 109 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
11 104 (0.94%) CMDB
12 103 (0.93%) Security Posture
13 98 (0.88%) Data Structures
14 93 (0.84%) Hybrid Cloud
15 90 (0.81%) Clustering
16 87 (0.78%) Public Cloud
17 83 (0.75%) Virtual Team
18 80 (0.72%) Security Operations Centre
19 71 (0.64%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 866 (7.79%) Windows
2 743 (6.69%) Linux
3 271 (2.44%) Windows Server
4 197 (1.77%) Unix
5 142 (1.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 93 (0.84%) Android
7 89 (0.80%) Windows 10
8 64 (0.58%) Apple iOS
9 52 (0.47%) Solaris
10 41 (0.37%) Mac OS
11 38 (0.34%) Ubuntu
12 31 (0.28%) AIX
13 30 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
14 26 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
15 22 (0.20%) CentOS
16 21 (0.19%) VMS
17 16 (0.14%) Windows 7
18 15 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
19 14 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
20 11 (0.099%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,231 (20.08%) Agile
2 1,734 (15.61%) DevOps
3 1,592 (14.33%) CI/CD
4 1,161 (10.45%) Problem-Solving
5 1,125 (10.13%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,116 (10.05%) Continuous Improvement
7 924 (8.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 859 (7.73%) Migration
9 818 (7.36%) Infrastructure as Code
10 691 (6.22%) Test Automation
11 688 (6.19%) Cybersecurity
12 673 (6.06%) ITIL
13 664 (5.98%) Containerisation
14 653 (5.88%) Analytics
15 651 (5.86%) Software Engineering
16 622 (5.60%) Roadmaps
17 605 (5.45%) Decision-Making
18 577 (5.19%) Data Modelling
19 539 (4.85%) AI
20 512 (4.61%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,238 (11.14%) Python
2 1,056 (9.50%) SQL
3 756 (6.80%) Java
4 500 (4.50%) PowerShell
5 332 (2.99%) JavaScript
6 237 (2.13%) Bash
7 234 (2.11%) C#
8 192 (1.73%) TypeScript
9 154 (1.39%) PL/SQL
10 98 (0.88%) C++
11 94 (0.85%) Shell Script
12 79 (0.71%) Bicep
13 65 (0.59%) C
14 61 (0.55%) Apex Code
15 59 (0.53%) Ruby
16 58 (0.52%) Go
17 49 (0.44%) Kotlin
18 47 (0.42%) Scala
19 46 (0.41%) Ada
20 43 (0.39%) R
Qualifications
1 8,514 (76.63%) SC Cleared
2 2,019 (18.17%) DV Cleared
3 432 (3.89%) Degree
4 341 (3.07%) BPSS Clearance
5 217 (1.95%) Cisco Certification
6 176 (1.58%) CISSP
7 142 (1.28%) Azure Certification
8 123 (1.11%) Microsoft Certification
9 121 (1.09%) AWS Certification
10 111 (1.00%) CCNP
10 111 (1.00%) CISM
11 95 (0.86%) CCNA
12 87 (0.78%) PMP
13 86 (0.77%) PMI Certification
14 76 (0.68%) ISTQB
15 68 (0.61%) Computer Science Degree
15 68 (0.61%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 56 (0.50%) ITIL Certification
17 40 (0.36%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 38 (0.34%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 427 (3.84%) QA
2 339 (3.05%) Data Quality
3 316 (2.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 312 (2.81%) NIST
5 240 (2.16%) NCSC
6 227 (2.04%) Accessibility
7 190 (1.71%) GDPR
8 172 (1.55%) PMO
9 122 (1.10%) SLA
10 98 (0.88%) GRC
11 70 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 53 (0.48%) WCAG
13 45 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
14 44 (0.40%) NIST 800
15 34 (0.31%) RMADS
16 33 (0.30%) Def Stans
17 29 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 26 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
19 23 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
19 23 (0.21%) COBIT
System Software
1 726 (6.53%) Docker
2 460 (4.14%) Active Directory
3 327 (2.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 116 (1.04%) VMware ESXi
5 114 (1.03%) VMware NSX
6 91 (0.82%) Hyper-V
7 86 (0.77%) vSphere
8 82 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
9 39 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
10 34 (0.31%) Firmware
11 27 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
12 24 (0.22%) NFS
13 23 (0.21%) BitLocker
14 21 (0.19%) Squid
14 21 (0.19%) vCloud
15 19 (0.17%) Postfix
16 13 (0.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 9 (0.081%) Microsoft App-V
18 7 (0.063%) KVM
19 6 (0.054%) Corosync
Systems Management
1 911 (8.20%) Terraform
2 901 (8.11%) Kubernetes
3 384 (3.46%) Ansible
4 266 (2.39%) Grafana
5 222 (2.00%) Prometheus
6 109 (0.98%) vCenter Server
7 91 (0.82%) Single Sign-On
8 85 (0.77%) SCCM
9 66 (0.59%) Microsoft Intune
10 53 (0.48%) Argo
11 52 (0.47%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 50 (0.45%) FortiGate
13 45 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
14 43 (0.39%) SCOM
15 42 (0.38%) Puppet
16 33 (0.30%) Podman
17 28 (0.25%) Progress Chef
18 26 (0.23%) Kibana
18 26 (0.23%) Nagios
19 25 (0.23%) vRealize
Vendors
1 1,155 (10.40%) Microsoft
2 794 (7.15%) Oracle
3 515 (4.64%) VMware
4 479 (4.31%) ServiceNow
5 356 (3.20%) SAP
6 330 (2.97%) Cisco
7 214 (1.93%) Splunk
8 197 (1.77%) Databricks
9 185 (1.67%) Salesforce
10 184 (1.66%) Google
11 163 (1.47%) Red Hat
12 145 (1.31%) Talend
13 128 (1.15%) Informatica
14 124 (1.12%) IBM
15 113 (1.02%) Palo Alto
16 98 (0.88%) Juniper
17 94 (0.85%) Fortinet
18 92 (0.83%) F5
19 87 (0.78%) SolarWinds
20 85 (0.77%) Denodo