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

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,712 5,148 7,805
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.90% 17.90% 18.22%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.23% 57.69% 60.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,345 3,405 5,187
10th Percentile £381 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £715 £692 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 868 306 537
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.44 £13.99
25th Percentile £22.68 £22.48 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £32.50 £55.25
Median % change year-on-year +69.23% -41.18% -7.92%
75th Percentile £74.00 £65.19 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £78.53 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £36.65 £57.33
% change year-on-year +50.09% -36.08% -0.30%

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 15,473 8,923 12,806
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.63% 31.03% 29.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,267 5,624 8,010
10th Percentile £350 £275 £310
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £530
Median % change year-on-year +0.91% -1.84% -3.64%
75th Percentile £620 £619 £645
90th Percentile £715 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £534
% change year-on-year - -6.28% +1.62%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,134 519 1,084
10th Percentile £16.35 £17.86 £13.74
25th Percentile £21.33 £21.39 £18.00
Median hourly rate £48.05 £32.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +47.85% -18.75% -27.27%
75th Percentile £71.50 £65.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.25 £78.37 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £32.05 £40.94
% change year-on-year +48.21% -21.71% -18.12%

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 29 May 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 29 May 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 29 May 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 9,286 £525 -2.33% 1,332
UK excluding London +1 5,949 £525 -0.94% 1,142
London +7 3,322 £525 - 324
Work from Home +4 2,896 £525 - 579
South East +1 2,229 £550 - 412
South West 0 1,274 £538 -4.44% 264
North of England 0 940 £500 - 201
Midlands +3 872 £470 -10.50% 109
West Midlands +3 747 £470 -10.48% 84
North West -1 524 £513 +2.50% 114
East of England +2 383 £550 +7.32% 117
Yorkshire -5 242 £484 -2.47% 46
Scotland +26 234 £518 +15.00% 38
North East +1 211 £475 -1.04% 42
East Midlands -2 118 £444 -6.58% 25
Wales +5 86 £490 +3.16% 26
Northern Ireland +2 20 £644 +35.53% 9

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
1 386 (3.60%) Confluence
2 225 (2.10%) SharePoint
3 145 (1.35%) SAS
4 130 (1.21%) Microsoft Exchange
5 101 (0.94%) Apache Spark
6 88 (0.82%) Apache
7 81 (0.76%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.36%) nginx
8 39 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 33 (0.31%) Jupyter
10 21 (0.20%) Tomcat
11 19 (0.18%) IIS
12 18 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
13 15 (0.14%) CMS
13 15 (0.14%) Skype for Business
13 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
14 14 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
15 13 (0.12%) NetWeaver
16 10 (0.093%) ArcGIS
17 8 (0.075%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 175 (1.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 169 (1.58%) Microsoft Office
3 84 (0.78%) Microsoft Project
4 82 (0.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 45 (0.42%) MS Visio
6 17 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.14%) Simulink
8 9 (0.084%) AutoCAD
9 8 (0.075%) SOLIDWORKS
10 7 (0.065%) Notepad++
10 7 (0.065%) Revit
11 5 (0.047%) Sketch
12 4 (0.037%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.037%) Siemens NX
12 4 (0.037%) Windchill
13 3 (0.028%) Chatbot
14 2 (0.019%) CPLEX
14 2 (0.019%) InVision
14 2 (0.019%) Lectora
14 2 (0.019%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 111 (1.04%) SAP S/4HANA
2 56 (0.52%) Remedy ITSM
3 38 (0.35%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 31 (0.29%) Teamcenter
5 30 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
6 28 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
7 24 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.13%) Maximo
8 14 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.12%) Findur
9 13 (0.12%) SAP GRC
9 13 (0.12%) SAP PSCD
10 12 (0.11%) iTrent
10 12 (0.11%) Temenos T24
11 10 (0.093%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.084%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.084%) Primavera
12 9 (0.084%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.084%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.084%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,885 (17.60%) AWS
2 1,848 (17.25%) Azure
3 446 (4.16%) GitHub
4 424 (3.96%) GCP
5 399 (3.72%) Azure DevOps
6 383 (3.58%) Power Platform
7 265 (2.47%) Serverless
8 259 (2.42%) Microsoft 365
9 258 (2.41%) Entra ID
10 256 (2.39%) GitHub Actions
11 211 (1.97%) Amazon S3
12 183 (1.71%) AWS Lambda
13 156 (1.46%) PaaS
14 151 (1.41%) Amazon EC2
15 142 (1.33%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 140 (1.31%) Amazon EKS
17 136 (1.27%) OpenShift
18 132 (1.23%) SaaS
19 131 (1.22%) OCI
20 127 (1.19%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 489 (4.56%) Firewall
2 316 (2.95%) DNS
3 244 (2.28%) Network Security
4 239 (2.23%) WAN
5 213 (1.99%) LAN
6 180 (1.68%) VPN
7 162 (1.51%) DHCP
8 148 (1.38%) BGP
9 127 (1.19%) OSPF
10 119 (1.11%) TCP/IP
11 115 (1.07%) VLAN
12 111 (1.04%) Wi-Fi
13 86 (0.80%) Wireless
14 70 (0.65%) MPLS
15 65 (0.61%) SAN
16 61 (0.57%) VXLAN
17 58 (0.54%) Structured Cabling
18 56 (0.52%) SD-WAN
19 53 (0.49%) IPsec
20 52 (0.49%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 296 (2.76%) Power BI
2 261 (2.44%) PostgreSQL
3 238 (2.22%) Data Warehouse
4 210 (1.96%) SQL Server
5 136 (1.27%) Oracle Database
6 133 (1.24%) Metadata
7 115 (1.07%) Data Lake
8 112 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
9 108 (1.01%) MongoDB
10 99 (0.92%) Relational Database
11 87 (0.81%) NoSQL
12 79 (0.74%) Pentaho
13 78 (0.73%) MySQL
14 76 (0.71%) Oracle Reports
15 75 (0.70%) Elasticsearch
16 67 (0.63%) Big Data
16 67 (0.63%) Tableau
17 63 (0.59%) Amazon Redshift
18 61 (0.57%) Amazon Athena
19 54 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 607 (5.67%) JIRA
2 451 (4.21%) Git
3 420 (3.92%) GitLab
4 403 (3.76%) Jenkins
5 112 (1.05%) Selenium
6 88 (0.82%) Postman
7 76 (0.71%) JUnit
8 72 (0.67%) SonarQube
9 60 (0.56%) Rational DOORS
10 58 (0.54%) Artifactory
11 56 (0.52%) JMeter
12 44 (0.41%) Cucumber
13 42 (0.39%) Mockito
14 41 (0.38%) Bitbucket
15 40 (0.37%) Visual Studio
16 39 (0.36%) Maven
17 37 (0.35%) Cypress.io
17 37 (0.35%) Zephyr
18 34 (0.32%) REST Assured
19 29 (0.27%) Gatling
General
1 2,323 (21.69%) Public Sector
2 2,197 (20.51%) Social Skills
3 730 (6.81%) Analytical Skills
4 679 (6.34%) Finance
5 341 (3.18%) Military
6 292 (2.73%) Documentation Skills
7 267 (2.49%) Aerospace
8 168 (1.57%) Legal
9 126 (1.18%) Telecoms
10 121 (1.13%) Influencing Skills
11 118 (1.10%) Banking
12 109 (1.02%) Manufacturing
12 109 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
13 92 (0.86%) Law
14 81 (0.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 77 (0.72%) Presentation Skills
16 61 (0.57%) Police
17 54 (0.50%) Marketing
18 48 (0.45%) Aviation
19 42 (0.39%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 1,635 (15.26%) Architect
2 998 (9.32%) Developer
3 912 (8.51%) Senior
4 753 (7.03%) Lead
5 745 (6.95%) Analyst
6 526 (4.91%) Consultant
7 522 (4.87%) Data Engineer
8 501 (4.68%) DevOps Engineer
9 338 (3.16%) Technical Architect
10 317 (2.96%) Software Engineer
11 307 (2.87%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 306 (2.86%) Solutions Architect
13 298 (2.78%) Network Engineer
14 265 (2.47%) Business Analyst
15 229 (2.14%) Project Manager
16 224 (2.09%) Security Architect
17 223 (2.08%) Designer
18 210 (1.96%) Azure Engineer
19 194 (1.81%) AWS Engineer
20 191 (1.78%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 328 (3.06%) REST
2 242 (2.26%) Spring
3 202 (1.89%) Kafka
4 200 (1.87%) Spring Boot
5 199 (1.86%) React
6 185 (1.73%) Node.js
7 177 (1.65%) .NET
8 154 (1.44%) LDAP
9 153 (1.43%) SOAP
10 151 (1.41%) RESTful
11 126 (1.18%) JSON
12 121 (1.13%) AngularJS
13 117 (1.09%) Web Services
14 115 (1.07%) PySpark
15 105 (0.98%) OAuth
16 94 (0.88%) Middleware
17 89 (0.83%) HTML
18 88 (0.82%) XML
19 87 (0.81%) Oracle Fusion
20 86 (0.80%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 379 (3.54%) Cloud Native
2 332 (3.10%) Product Ownership
3 327 (3.05%) Data Centre
4 299 (2.79%) Onboarding
5 208 (1.94%) Management Information System
6 159 (1.48%) PKI
7 146 (1.36%) Legacy Systems
8 132 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
9 129 (1.20%) Security Posture
10 126 (1.18%) Distributed Systems
11 123 (1.15%) Replication
12 97 (0.91%) Self-Motivation
13 89 (0.83%) Data Structures
13 89 (0.83%) Hybrid Cloud
14 88 (0.82%) Public Cloud
15 87 (0.81%) Clustering
16 85 (0.79%) Security Operations Centre
17 77 (0.72%) CMDB
18 76 (0.71%) Virtual Team
19 71 (0.66%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 855 (7.98%) Windows
2 751 (7.01%) Linux
3 254 (2.37%) Windows Server
4 198 (1.85%) Unix
5 135 (1.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 98 (0.91%) Android
7 88 (0.82%) Windows 10
8 67 (0.63%) Apple iOS
9 49 (0.46%) Solaris
10 42 (0.39%) Ubuntu
11 39 (0.36%) Mac OS
12 31 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 29 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
14 27 (0.25%) AIX
15 24 (0.22%) VMS
16 23 (0.21%) CentOS
17 15 (0.14%) Windows 7
18 13 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
19 12 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
20 10 (0.093%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,034 (18.99%) Agile
2 1,631 (15.23%) DevOps
3 1,471 (13.73%) CI/CD
4 1,102 (10.29%) Problem-Solving
5 1,017 (9.49%) Stakeholder Management
6 973 (9.08%) Continuous Improvement
7 853 (7.96%) Migration
8 823 (7.68%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 769 (7.18%) Infrastructure as Code
10 654 (6.11%) Cybersecurity
11 631 (5.89%) Test Automation
12 628 (5.86%) ITIL
13 616 (5.75%) Analytics
14 586 (5.47%) Software Engineering
15 584 (5.45%) Containerisation
15 584 (5.45%) Roadmaps
16 547 (5.11%) Data Modelling
17 534 (4.99%) Decision-Making
18 465 (4.34%) Technical Leadership
19 463 (4.32%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 1,189 (11.10%) Python
2 978 (9.13%) SQL
3 664 (6.20%) Java
4 549 (5.13%) PowerShell
5 332 (3.10%) JavaScript
6 218 (2.04%) C#
7 216 (2.02%) Bash
8 182 (1.70%) TypeScript
9 122 (1.14%) PL/SQL
10 97 (0.91%) C++
10 97 (0.91%) Shell Script
11 69 (0.64%) Go
12 67 (0.63%) Bicep
13 65 (0.61%) Ruby
14 64 (0.60%) Scala
15 55 (0.51%) C
16 53 (0.49%) Apex Code
17 45 (0.42%) Ada
18 41 (0.38%) R
19 40 (0.37%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 8,185 (76.41%) SC Cleared
2 1,930 (18.02%) DV Cleared
3 443 (4.14%) Degree
4 300 (2.80%) BPSS Clearance
5 225 (2.10%) Cisco Certification
6 181 (1.69%) CISSP
7 132 (1.23%) Azure Certification
8 129 (1.20%) CCNP
9 117 (1.09%) CISM
10 113 (1.05%) AWS Certification
11 100 (0.93%) Microsoft Certification
12 96 (0.90%) CCNA
13 80 (0.75%) PMP
14 73 (0.68%) Computer Science Degree
15 72 (0.67%) PMI Certification
16 71 (0.66%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 64 (0.60%) ISTQB
18 58 (0.54%) ITIL Certification
19 49 (0.46%) GIAC
20 42 (0.39%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 382 (3.57%) QA
2 319 (2.98%) Data Quality
3 305 (2.85%) NIST
4 302 (2.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 212 (1.98%) NCSC
6 210 (1.96%) Accessibility
7 174 (1.62%) GDPR
8 155 (1.45%) PMO
9 116 (1.08%) SLA
10 79 (0.74%) GRC
11 69 (0.64%) JSP 440
12 55 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
13 44 (0.41%) WCAG
14 41 (0.38%) NIST 800
15 37 (0.35%) RMADS
16 32 (0.30%) Def Stans
17 28 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 25 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
18 25 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
18 25 (0.23%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 652 (6.09%) Docker
2 471 (4.40%) Active Directory
3 301 (2.81%) VMware Infrastructure
4 109 (1.02%) VMware ESXi
5 107 (1.00%) VMware NSX
6 87 (0.81%) Hyper-V
7 83 (0.77%) vSphere
8 69 (0.64%) Virtual Machines
9 37 (0.35%) Firmware
10 36 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
11 22 (0.21%) NFS
12 21 (0.20%) BitLocker
13 20 (0.19%) vCloud
13 20 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
14 19 (0.18%) Postfix
14 19 (0.18%) Squid
15 15 (0.14%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 9 (0.084%) KVM
17 8 (0.075%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.056%) Corosync
Systems Management
1 851 (7.94%) Terraform
2 829 (7.74%) Kubernetes
3 385 (3.59%) Ansible
4 274 (2.56%) Grafana
5 227 (2.12%) Prometheus
6 112 (1.05%) vCenter Server
7 108 (1.01%) Single Sign-On
8 74 (0.69%) SCCM
9 65 (0.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 53 (0.49%) FortiGate
10 53 (0.49%) Microsoft Intune
11 51 (0.48%) Argo
12 41 (0.38%) Oracle RMAN
12 41 (0.38%) Puppet
13 38 (0.35%) Podman
14 33 (0.31%) SCOM
15 32 (0.30%) Progress Chef
16 31 (0.29%) Nagios
17 28 (0.26%) vRealize
18 25 (0.23%) Istio
Vendors
1 1,073 (10.02%) Microsoft
2 687 (6.41%) Oracle
3 514 (4.80%) VMware
4 413 (3.86%) ServiceNow
5 369 (3.44%) Cisco
6 355 (3.31%) SAP
7 245 (2.29%) Splunk
8 211 (1.97%) Databricks
9 176 (1.64%) Red Hat
10 171 (1.60%) Google
11 157 (1.47%) Salesforce
12 138 (1.29%) Talend
13 131 (1.22%) Palo Alto
14 123 (1.15%) IBM
15 107 (1.00%) Juniper
16 103 (0.96%) Informatica
17 98 (0.91%) CyberArk
18 97 (0.91%) Fortinet
19 88 (0.82%) F5
20 87 (0.81%) Dynatrace